Even a cursory glance at the early patristic writings up until the 5th century will show that the church Fathers did not use such terminology as “the experience of the church” or “the living community of faith.” Rather, their reference to the correctness of the faith of the community was the prophetic and apostolic teaching communicated through God’s servants, the prophets and the apostles. And no wonder, since they were raised on the one valid source of the knowledge of God, the only kanon of theology (or word about God), which was nothing other than the word of God Himself as imbedded in His scripture. And it is from this God that they learned His language. They learned that the biblical communities, Israel and the church, are always erring, sinning, and harloting after other gods. They learned that these communities are always in need of the prophets and apostles, whom God sends them, to chastise them and to call them back to the path that leads to salvation and life. The Fathers of the church did not earn their appellation as Fathers honoris causa; they earned it because they did to the best of their ability what every true father is supposed to do: they begot children and raised them with the authority of the one who knows better….

If, as we Orthodox maintain, salvation is the ultimate business of the church, then the main, if not foremost, occupation of the church’s leaders ought to be the study and teaching of scripture.

~ Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “Scripture in Theological Education”

 People can do me no evil, as long as I have no wounds.

I saw two caves, one of which revealed an echo, while the other had none. And many curious children were visiting the former and were mischievously carrying out shouting matches with the cave. But from the other cave visitors were quickly returning, because it was not answering them with an echo.

If my soul is wounded, every worldly evil will resound within it. And people will laugh at me, and will throng more and more strongly with their shouting.

But truly, evil-speaking people will not harm me, if my tongue has forgotten how to speak evil.

Nor will external malice sadden me, if there is no malice in my heart to resound like a goatskin drum

Nor shall I be able to respond to ire with ire, if the lair of ire within me has been vacated and there is nothing to be aroused.

Nor will human passions titillate me, if the passions within me have been reduced to ashes.

Nor will the unfaithfulness of friends sadden me, if I have resolved to have You for my friend.

Nor can the injustice of the world crush me, if injustice has been expelled from my thoughts.

Nor will the deceitful spirits of worldly pleasure, honor and power entice me, if my soul is like an immaculate bride, who receives only the Holy Spirit and yearns for Him alone.

People cannot shove anyone into hell, unless that person shoves himself. Nor can people hoist anyone up on their shoulders to the throne of God, unless that person elevates himself.

If my soul has no open windows, no mud can be thrown into it.

Let all nature rise up against me; it can do nothing to me except a single thing—to become the grave of my body more swiftly.

Every worldly crop is covered with fertilizer, so that it will sprout as soon as possible and grow better. If my soul, alas, were to abandon her virginity and receive the seed of this world into herself, then she would also have to accept the manure, which the world throws onto its field.

But I call upon You day and night: come dwell in my soul and close all those places where my enemies can enter. Make the cavern of my soul empty and silent, so that no one from the world will want to enter it.

O my soul, my only concern, be on guard and learn to distinguish between the voices striking your ears. And once you hear the voice of your Lord, abandon your silence and resound with all your strength.

O my soul, cavern of eternity, never permit temporal thieves to enter you and kindle their fire within you. Keep quiet, when they shout to you. Stay still, when they bang on you. And patiently await your Master. For He will truly come.

~ St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Prayers by the Lake, XVIII

I would start, as an Orthodox boy, with the fact that everyone who is Orthodox has agreed to “deny himself, take up his cross and follow Christ.” The ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, is found precisely in its weakness and is found there because God wants it that way.  If salvation means loving my enemies like God loves His enemies, then I am far better served by my weakness than my excellence. If humility draws the Holy Spirit, then my weakness is far more useful than any excellence I may possess.

The Orthodox Church has perhaps the weakest ecclesiology of all, because it depends, moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart. “Brethren, let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” These are the words that introduce the Creed each Sunday, and they are the words that are the bedrock of our ecclesiology.

 ~ Fr. Stephen, “The Ecclesiology of the Cross”

I take Fr. Stephen to be saying that there is no intrinsic form or institution that guarantees the Church. We don’t have an infallible pope with a direct line to God (or an infallible “teaching magisterium”). We don’t have an infallible interpretation of Scripture — and reliance only on Scripture for all truth (sola Scriptura). No, our Pillar and Ground is that… we don’t have one. Not in ourselves. Not in any form or institution or method or system. No “best practices.” No latest and greatest accounting package. No institutional structure, carefully crafted chain of command, or revised organizational Statute. No constitution or “rule of law” is going to fix us or guarantee the Church or any given incarnation of it. No democratic, participatory, grass-roots, people-power form of governance, however American, will save anything, not even the greatest cause we can imagine living for, not even the evangelization of the Americas.

Having nothing, however, we have everything. For “humility draws the Holy Spirit.” For desert warriors — those who fight the demons — humility is everything. If a monk thinks he can fight the devil (in his pride), he immediately loses, and the devil wins. Only God can win. We win only if, in abject humility, we admit our utter powerlessness and call upon Him to save us.

And when we call, He does. 

In a sense, then, we do believe in in sola gratia, sola fidei — grace alone, faith alone. But this does not mean there is nothing we can do. God does give commands to us. Love each other. Forgive each other. “Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other, or the whole thing falls apart.” In humility. Loving our enemies, even as Christ loved and forgave those who crucified Him.

Nor is it only for the bishops. We ALL say, “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess…” How can we have one mind if we have no love? How can we love if we have no unity of mind? How can we be Orthodox? How can we be the Church, Pillar and Ground of Truth? We cannot.

This is what it means to pick up a Cross. And in that Cross is victory — God’s victory.

Only His victory can be the victory of the Church, its “bedrock ecclesiology.” No form or institution, policy or procedure, can save us.

Thus we see that these great bishops, theologians and preachers were not alone in their efforts. They were in a real sense the products of a community of faith, devotion and learning; as well as its leaders and teachers. In contemplating the lives and works of Basil, Gregory and John we realize, more than anything else, how a small group of faithful people can do much for the edification of the Church and the salvation of souls. We see also how no one can live in isolation, how even the greatest of the saints needed other saints to inspire and encourage them, to instruct and support them in their service. We see as well that intelligence and learning are not enough. Peoples’ minds must be devoted to God and to divine wisdom and truth, but one must love God not only with all one’s mind, but with all one’s heart, soul and strength as well. The three holy hierarchs were men of ascetic discipline and fervent prayer. They were men of the Church, and not of the academy. And they were men who were willing not only to preach, but to practice what they preached; not only to talk but to work; and not only to work but to suffer for the Word of God Who came himself into the world not only to preach, but to suffer and die for the sake of the salvation of all. The times in which the three hierarchs lived were terrible times for the Church, certainly not less dark and depressing than the present times, and perhaps even more so in many respects. But these men, and the women who stood with them, were able to persevere faithfully to the end. It is because of these people in the past that we have Christian life in the Church today.

~ Fr. Thomas Hopko, The Winter Pascha, commenting on the Three Holy Hierarchs, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom (feast day January 30) 

The two “bad” ways would easily lead to either leaving the faith and/or to becoming stunted (as to spiritual growth) within the faith. The first bad way is to try to create “system” at all costs, i.e. a “system of belief” (a “worldview”?) that is entirely logical, based on unquestioned or unquestionable foundational assumptions, that derives everything from those assumptions, that claims to be “complete” with respect to all necessary beliefs (“truths”), and so on. Why is the mania towards “system” bad? Put simply, because God won’t fit into a box. Neither will people, individually or as collectives. Neither will the Church. Neither will history. Neither will life — much less eternal life! Human brains are amazing, but they aren’t omnipotent. Of course, in no way am I saying faith is *irrational*. But a rational *system* is not going to be possible, to create, to live in, to know in. By its very nature as a “system,” it would have to be too simple, too limited, too uni-directional, too narrow, without enough facets to do justice to Scripture, to Christian experience, to the fullness of Christian life as it is known by the saints of the Church, to do justice to Christ Himself. And isn’t He what we’re after?

Second “bad” thing. It is to think we are capable of stepping up and outside and judging from a universal standpoint — a “view from everywhere”; or (and this is virtually equivalent) a “view from nowhere.” It is to think we can be completely “objective.” Scholars of “comparative religion” easily take such a stance, or people who have studied lots of religions and denominations and who can “compare and contrast” them. Because they know a lot and can bring an intellectual analysis and evaluation to a variety of different faiths, they find it impossible to actually commit to any one of them. They stand above. They are “cats who walk alone.” And they like it this way. (I’m sure all of us know someone like this… I have a wonderful man in our parish who is like this. I like him a lot, and I respect him. But ultimately I worry that he is missing out on so much…) Why stand aloof? Apparently, it is either because such people “find truth in ALL religions” or because they “find truth in NONE of them,” supposedly being able to “explain them away” (from a “naturalistic” perspective). Witness the recent spate of books (given much media attention lately) that claim to debunk Christianity or religious belief or the existence of God. The truth is that we are all highly situated beings, with pasts, with presents, with expectations about the future. We live in places. We live with people. We feel things, know things, worry about things. Life impacts us and forms us in a myriad variety of ways. We can’t BE “objective.” There simply is no such thing for a human being. We are born and live and die inside “skins.” We don’t have a God’s eye view — of anything. We have to interpret our experiences and thoughts and feelings, and we have them! They are unique, not like anyone else’s. Sure, we can share a lot, empathize, relate to each other. But ultimately we are who we are. We can’t stand above and understand everyone ELSE (and act as if we have no self of our own). My guess is that whether we choose a faith or not, and which faith we choose to use as a guide to reality (who is God, what is the world, what is man, what is salvation, all those fundamental questions); however we select a Way as to how to live that points us onward to what “the goal” is, it will depend largely (wholly!) on our lived-in realities, with God guiding us. No doubt we will move from one thing to the next, from faith to faith or within a chosen Way. People are religiously mobile today. The person who stands outside or “above” (and I don’t mean the genuine atheist if such becomes his commitment) is simply failing to commit to a view of anything. He sets himself above judging, above making any choice, above taking any responsibility for HIS life, his own existence, in his own “skin,” the one that has been given him, within which he has been asked to LIVE.

Neutral intellectual activity: critique or criticism. Our world makes much of “critical thinking.” It can be good, and it can be bad. We are called to “discern the spirits,” but we can also analyze and criticize the beauty, depth, truth, and goodness right out of everything. The bad form of criticism tends toward over-systemization, or, to the reverse extreme, to “deconstruction” and a “view from nowhere.” It is to come to believe in nothing, because nothing is “worthy” of being believed in, because all can be criticized and torn down or “explained away.” One begins to feel very superior — and also very despairing. It’s a lonely way to live. On the other hand, in today’s pluralistic world, if we do CARE to believe in SOMETHING, we don’t have any choice but to be critical, to think hard, to search, to research, to question, to grow, and to use our MINDS as best we can — along with our hearts, feelings, senses, experience, and all of our whole en-skinned beings. I think it’s important to keep due proportion. Spend more time on important things and far less time on unimportant things. People get critical (with a death grip!) on the stupidest things… and then they let the biggest gaffs in sense and logic slide through unquestioned! They will have five-hour (five week, five month!) conversations about things that deserve five minutes, and vice versa. Know when to let things go. Sometimes there isn’t any answer, or an any answer that you can know…. yet. Learn how to ask good questions, and then re-ask them, reformulate them. Questions grow just as knowledge and understanding does. Most importantly? Know how to hold out for the truth. If an answer really isn’t good enough, don’t accept it! Or, give it credit only for what is due. Accept partial truths as partial. People love to jump to The Truth — so they think they HAVE it — when they have barely scratched the surface. Is this an uncomfortable place to be? To be waiting? Holding out? Not yet having a full-blown opinion? Especially in today’s sound-byte world? YES. But it is worth it to HOLD OUT for what is really true and not commit oneself whole-heartedly or whole-mindedly to what is not worthy of that commitment. So there is balance to critical thinking.

Good things — I am waxing long here, so I’ll try to be briefer. The first is to use the mind to construct, not deconstruct or destroy, and not to build whole “systems.” Rather, the intellectual task is smaller. It is to build pictures, thought pictures, truth-pictures, of a certain aspect of the faith, or life, or God, something to help one navigate intellectual, emotional, and spiritual realms. Cognitive psych folks would probably call them “heuristics” or interpretive tools. We can use our minds actively to construct mental tools to help us believe, to help us know God, to help us function and live and grow in the faith. These are NOT strangle-hold items; they are mental tools. This is how Scripture itself works, through narratives, prophecy, proverbs, parables, exhortations, and so on. There is a complete rhetorical package folded in, rich and diverse. One doesn’t need a neat, deductive, exhaustive “system” to be able to draw on a rich, meaning-filled, repertoire of guarding and guiding thought-pictures. There is truth that can reach deep into a person’s soul. Liturgies are full of such pictures. They can be grasped on many levels. And it is the job of the mind — along with the senses and feelings — to search them out, take them in, make them conscious, use them to “talk to ourselves” when necessary. Probably the most important truth-picture I can think of is Christ descending into Hades and pulling Adam and Eve from their graves. He conquers death, trampling down death by death, as we say at Pascha. Such a picture isn’t going to reduce to a “dogma” or any kind of rational “system.” In literary form, it’s more like a myth, a story, even some sort of prophetic vision. And yet, for Christian belief — FAITH — there is no deeper truth or source of our love for God, that He rescues US from death. Christ dies to “give the devil his due” (which is to be trampled on, and to vomit out the living whom he has swallowed, literally choking on having taken a man and having swallowed GOD). The Fathers use graphic imagery, rhetorical, exhortatory, to paint pictures for childlike and mature believers alike. There are unfathomable depths of meaning folded in, and in the folds of which we spend a lifetime as Christians continuing to probe.

The second good intellectual activity is closely tied to the first, and that is, to try to find words to express our faith. We need to be able to “talk to ourselves” about what we believe, what we experience, what we desire. We need to be able to tell God in prayer. We need to be able to appreciate the words of the Fathers and of the Liturgy — i.e. receive expressions as well as generate them. At times we require to be able to talk with others. There is a genuine mental exercise here, to put faith into words that can be shared, even if only with ourselves or our confessor or God Himself. The truth-pictures that we need to cultivate to deepen and give fulness to our faith — as human beings (and therefore cultural beings) — find spoken and artistic expression in words and icons, in Scripture, in hymns, and so forth. There is a definite mental component (but not only mental!) in this search for expression and to appropriate the Church’s way of speaking and knowing.

We can’t, therefore, set our intellects aside, or leave them behind when we enter into faith, or search out faith, or critique the faith-proposals of the world (and of God) that come at us. There is NO SUCH THING as faith “versus” reason. That whole dichotomy makes zero sense. I simply do not understand how the west has been so hung up on it for centuries. We are whole persons. We have minds, bodies, souls, hearts, emotions, senses, attachments, “skins” that we live in, deep cultural, mental, and experiential “skins.” To live as Christians “in our skins” requires all we have to give in terms of intellectual — and all other ways of being and knowing — effort and work. We are whole people. Christians, of all people, are called to be whole.

Our conversation from yesterday has been rattling around in my head ever since. I know we talked about “goals” for the parish and so on. What do people “need” and so forth? How are people’s talents to be melded together? I think, most of all, if we want things to be better — in whatever department, worship, Church school, parish council, money, volunteering, cleaning, A&E, whatever it is — I think the key is for people to WANT what’s really good. People have to WANT to worship, to learn, to work, to give, to cooperate, to know God, to pray, to fast, to be saved! That’s what God wants, for us to WANT Him!

Now, how do you “make” somebody “want” something? You can’t! There’s no way. All I think you can do is to WANT the right things yourself and, hopefully, somehow, God willing, that desire and love and zeal will overflow onto others. People will see OUR love and our joy and our desire to worship, and they will wonder what’s that all about? And hopefully they will come to want it, too. It’s like a kid with an iPod. Soon all the kids want an iPod. Why? Because the kid who has it wears it all the time and thinks it’s COOL. He is totally into it. :)

Unless ye become like little children… :) We heard that today. Kids so easily WANT stuff. And what are we supposed to want? The Kingdom. Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

Just think if people wanted the Kingdom like they want to watch sports, or they want a new outfit or a tasty meal, or an iPod, or whatever else it is that people want today. Isn’t God even better than all those things?? Uh, Yeah! Way better!

So, we really can’t “do” anything about other people. There they are. All we can want for them is that they will come to WANT the best things. In the meantime, what do WE do? Well, I think we have to work. We work as hard as we can, AND we work as hard as we can at the most important things (i.e. worthwhile things, desirable things, things worth wanting), AND we work as joyfully as we can. The joy is key, because that is what will make people want to work at those worthwhile things also and to give their life to them.

So, want the best things and work at the most worthwhile things and be joyful. And let God take care of everything else! Let Him take care of everybody else! Love people, forgive them, help them when we can. Commend them to God. What else can we do??

Now if only I could want and work better and more joyfully… <sigh>. What a struggle that can be.

Grant your blessing, Lord.

It was my desire to be silent, and not to make a public display of the rustic rudeness of my tongue. For silence is a matter of great consequence when one’s speech is mean. And to refrain from utterance is indeed an admirable thing, where there is lack of training; and verily he is the highest philosopher who knows how to cover his ignorance by abstinence from public address. Knowing, therefore, the feebleness of tongue proper to me, I should have preferred such a course. Nevertheless the spectacle of the onlookers impels me to speak. Since, then, this solemnity is a glorious one among our festivals, and the spectators form a crowded gathering, and our assembly is one of elevated fervour in the faith, I shall face the task of commencing an address with confidence. And this I may attempt all the more boldly, since the Father requests me, and the Church is with me, and the sainted martyrs with this object strengthen what is weak in me.

For these have inspired aged men to accomplish with much love a long course, and constrained them to support their failing steps by the staff of the word; and they have stimulated women to finish their course like the young men, and have brought to this, too, those of tender years, yea, even creeping children. In this wise have the martyrs shown their power, leaping with joy in the presence of death, laughing at the sword, making sport of the wrath of princes, grasping at death as the producer of deathlessness, making victory their own by their fall, through the body taking their leap to heaven, suffering their members to be scattered abroad in order that they might hold their souls, and, bursting the bars of life, that they might open the gates of heaven.

And if any one believes not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden under foot, that the chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound, let him look on the martyrs disporting themselves in the presence of death, and taking up the jubilant strain of the victory of Christ. O the marvel! Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death. “O death, where is your sting! O grave, where is your victory?” ^{1 Corinthians 15:55} Hades and the devil have been despoiled, and stripped of their ancient armour, and cast out of their peculiar power. And even as Goliath had his head cut off with his own sword, so also is the devil, who has been the father of death, put to rout through death; and he finds that the selfsame thing which he was wont to use as the ready weapon of his deceit, has become the mighty instrument of his own destruction. Yea, if we may so speak, casting his hook at the Godhead, and seizing the wonted enjoyment of the baited pleasure, he is himself manifestly caught while he deems himself the captor, and discovers that in place of the man he has touched the God.

By reason thereof do the martyrs leap upon the head of the dragon, and despise every species of torment. For since the second Adam has brought up the first Adam out of the deeps of Hades, as Jonah was delivered out of the whale, and has set forth him who was deceived as a citizen of heaven to the shame of the deceiver, the gates of Hades have been shut, and the gates of heaven have been opened, so as to offer an unimpeded entrance to those who rise thither in faith.

In olden time Jacob beheld a ladder erected reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. But now, having been made man for man’s sake, He who is the Friend of man has crushed with the foot of His divinity him who is the enemy of man, and has borne up the man with the hand of His Christhood, and has made the trackless ether to be trodden by the feet of man. Then the angels were ascending and descending; but now the Angel of the great counsel neither ascends nor descends: for whence or where shall He change His position, who is present everywhere, and fills all things, and holds in His hand the ends of the world? Once, indeed, He descended, and once He ascended,—not, however, through any change of nature, but only in the condescension of His philanthropic Christhood; and He is seated as the Word with the Father, and as the Word He dwells in the womb, and as the Word He is found everywhere, and is never separated from the God of the universe.

Aforetime did the devil deride the nature of man with great laughter, and he has had his joy over the times of our calamity as his festal-days. But the laughter is only a three days’ pleasure, while the wailing is eternal; and his great laughter has prepared for him a greater wailing and ceaseless tears, and inconsolable weeping, and a sword in his heart. This sword did our Leader forge against the enemy with fire in the virgin furnace, in such wise and after such fashion as He willed, and gave it its point by the energy of His invincible divinity, and dipped it in the water of an undefiled baptism, and sharpened it by sufferings without passion in them, and made it bright by the mystical resurrection; and herewith by Himself He put to death the vengeful adversary, together with his whole host. What manner of word, therefore, will express our joy or his misery? For he who was once an archangel is now a devil; he who once lived in heaven is now seen crawling like a serpent upon earth; he who once was jubilant with the cherubim, is now shut up in pain in the guard-house of swine; and him, too, in fine, shall we put to rout if we mind those things which are contrary to his choice, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power unto the ages of the ages. Amen.

~ St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, “On All the Saints” 

‘All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of the divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness,’ says Philaret of Moscow.

~*~*~ 

In the course of a short exchange in the comments on this article (on his blog - see link above), Fr. Stephen wrote,

“I think life and death are such realities, that if the gospel is lovingly presented in those terms, most people will get it. It’s getting through to those who have avoided the topic for years, or had no idea that it could be addressed that is hard….many unbelievers have made their peace with the notion of non-existence and are not troubled by it….”

My reply was as follows: 

There are many factors involved in preaching the (real) Gospel, which has to do with being — life and death. We have a “death denying” culture, for one. People today are not confronted daily, as they were in almost all ages past, with the reality of disease, corruption, life-threatening injury, and death. When death hits today, it is a shock and numbing, and our culture and medical establishment simply try to pacify and soothe. The goal seems to be for death to become a “natural part of life” and/or for it to be dealt with in the most calm, rational, and sanitary manner. Horror and grief are not tolerated (they are not “dignified”) — probably because without a real Gospel, there is no way TO deal with them. For their part, Christians merely talk about the person “going home” to God. Is that a comfort?? It has nothing to do with the Gospel that tramples down death! I wish all funerals could be Orthodox funerals. That would be a way — perhaps “the” way — for people to hear the Gospel when it matters most.

As to non-believers, the honest seekers at any rate, I think they don’t want to succumb to a delusion, which is what they see Christianity (the false kind) as. It’s fake. Or, it’s outright distasteful. Who wants to worship a “God” whose morals (and it’s all about morality, remember) you think are below your own. The legacy of Christian civilization is that God IS moral (unlike the old pagan gods), but the fear among non-believers today, for various reasons, is that He is not a nice guy or a good guy. Shamefully, there are plenty of Christians who promote that view. I have heard it first hand: “It doesn’t matter if He is not ‘nice.’ It’s who he IS. So suck it up and comply… and BELIEVE… or risk going to hell.” It is inexcusable! Who would want to believe in such a God? And if a person did, what would that say about him?

You also wrote, “But the Gospel has been preached in all kinds of settings. Because it is the truth, it will and can be successfully preached. Orthodoxy has barely even begun its mission to America.”

For a long time after my conversion I left off reading (and reading and reading), which I had done previously. It was time for me just to “be” in the Church and hear the Church’s words IN Church — and not to have all the voices one finds in books rattling around (mentally, intellectually, with no ground in Reality) in my head. Lately, however, I have gone back to studying a little. It is time. But I have wrestled with the reason for those studies. What is it I am looking for (and what ought I to be studying)? I am slowly coming to the conclusion that it is “useful words” or “expressive words” that I am seeking, ways to “successfully preach the truth.” Not that I am a preacher, but as a Christian I have to be able to speak about my faith and to witness to it. It is very difficult to do, esp. in the face of all the alternative “Christianities” out there.

One also needs more than Scripture to do so, for Scripture is interpreted in too many ways. You have written about Fr. Behr and how he presents St. Irenaeus’ explanation of the mosaic of Christ’s face as a KING vs. a fox. This is it exactly. We have to know how to arrange the mosaic tiles of Scripture. The Fathers teach this art of arrangement. But they do it for an age and a culture that is long past. Still, as we do today, they were dealing with non-believers and with Christian heresies (departures from the real Gospel), so they should have wisdom.

Another part of why I need to read and study is to try to keep a sure handle on the Truth within my own post-Florovskian crucible. The assaults of the world are many.