the grimpler cometh

"It is truly meet to bless thee, the Theotokos, ever blessed and most blameless, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, the very Theotokos, thee do we magnify."

~From the Prayer Rule of St. Pachomius the Great

polite greeting (it's me, boy)

introduction (i'm the ps5)

establish credentials (speaking to you inside your brain)

establish purpose (leave the girl, we don't need her)

The Roman Catholic Scholastic thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote in his massive work, the Summa Theologiae, that theology is the "highest scientia" since a high degree of rationality is required to understand the most important and complex philosophical concepts about God. The universities that developed during the Scholastic period in the Christian West were intended to teach students how to deal in this "science" of theology through rigorous conceptual analysis. Theology was considered to be the preeminent Scholastic endeavor, a good thing in many ways. Yet, as a result of the high regard for logic and rationality in medieval Roman Catholicism, those who studied and taught (the "doctors") came to be more highly regarded than the monks and nuns (the "religious") whose main vocation was to pray.

Theology began to be expounded by scholars outside of the context of prayer, pastoral ministry, and liturgical worship. Pelikan traces this specific change in the West through the changing job description of the theologian. He notes that, between AD 100 and 600, most theologians were bishops; from 600 to 1500 in the West they were monks. But after 1500, Western theologians are university professors: "Gregory I, who died in 604, was a bishop who had been a monk; Martin Luther, who died in 1546, was a monk who became a university professor. Each of these lifestyles has left its mark on the job description of a theologian." After the sixteenth century in the West, the task of theology increasingly became separated from its earlier moorings to the worship of the community and the spiritual disciplines.

From an Eastern Orthodox point of view, knowledge of God comes only from an encounter with the God who has revealed Himself: "What may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them" (Rom. 1:19). Thus, theology can never be separated from prayer, worship, and contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Metropolitan Ware affirms that all true Orthodox theology is mystical: "Just as mysticism divorced from theology becomes subjective and heretical, so theology, when it is not mystical, degenerates into an arid scholasticism, 'academic' in the bad sense of the word." That is to say, Orthodox mystical theology guards against either unacceptable extreme: subjective and heretical, or arid and academic.

A hermit declared with evident satisfaction that "God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire."

Obviously upset, the Staretz St Silouan said: "Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there you looked down and saw someone burning in hell fire, would you feel happy?"

"It can't be helped. It would be their own fault," said the hermit.

Three absolutely true, straight paths to heaven.

The first is to never sin. We've lost that path, it doesn't exist anymore. The second is to condemn no one, then the Lord will not condemn us. We have lost this way too.

Only one thing remains - to be merciful, then the Lord will be merciful to us. This is all we have left. We must be gentle, generous, kind, loving, merciful. This is the way He left us. Let's not lose it either.