Nathan Duffy > Recent Status Updates

"The senses, the memory, and the imagination must be guarded, not only against things which are a direct temptation to sin, but against everything which may engage the mind in passing interests when it should be bent upon the unseen realities. The intellect too must be called off from all vain curiosity, from all learning or enquiry pursued merely for its own sake." - From the intro by H.A. Hodges

"Theology differs from the vision of God in the same way as the knowledge of a thing differs from the possession of it."

"The witness of the saints is not intellectual and conjectural, but empirical... Because they have freed their nous from reasoning , passions, and environmental conditions, the nous has been illuminated by divine Grace and guided to the vision of God."

"If God the Fat­her chose Her, God the Holy Spi­rit des­cen­ded upon Her, and God the Son dwelt in Her, submitted to Her in the days of His youth, was con­cerned for Her when hanging on the Cros­s, t­hen should not eve­ry­one who con­fes­ses the Holy Tri­nity vene­rate Her?"

"[F]ear not hatred from others, but hatred within yourself."

"[M]odern scholars tend to ascribe secondary causes to historical events, thinking them to be the real causes. The real cause[s] are the soul and God ... these two things actualize the whole of history."

"Orthodoxy is not merely a 'tradition' like any other -- a 'handing down' of spiritual wisdom from the past; it is God's Truth here and now." - Fr. Seraphim

"Behind the Iron Curtain, opposition to Christianity was obvious: materialism was forced on the people as a ideology. In the West the enemy was much more subtle: materialism permeated all aspects of life, including religion, and was accepted unconsciously, thus being far more difficult to overcome."

"Never before has there been such an age of false teachers as this pitiful twentieth century, so rich in material gadgets and so poor in mind and soul. Every conceivable opinion -- even the most absurd, even those hitherto rejected by the universal consent of all civilized peoples -- now has its platform and its own 'teacher.'"

"It is not a 'new Christianity' of social action, ecumenism, empty ideas and false 'love' that God calls man to, but (as always in the past) a life of repentance, spiritual struggle, grace, in the Church, attested by miracles. It is this life that even today softens and converts the heart of man to God." - Fr. Seraphim Rose

There's a remarkable excerpt of a letter on pp. 250-251 re: Fr. Seraphim's reaction to his converting to Orthodoxy that is eerily familiar for myself and some of my friends.

"The religion of the 'Grand Inquisitor' takes fundamental Christian values -- peace, brotherhood, unity, love -- and distorts them toward the furtherance of purely earthly aims. It does not openly do away with Christianity; it only reinterprets it so thoroughly that sincere Christians are eventually led to work for the same goals as secular idealists who are seeking to build their kingdom of heaven on earth."

"The academic world--and these words are neither lightly nor easily spoken--has become today, in large part, a source of corruption. It is corrupting to hear or read the words of men who do not believe in truth. It is yet more corrupting to receive, in place of truth, more learning and scholarship which, if they are presented as ends in themselves, are no more than parodies of the truth they were meant to serve"