Well, now it’s official. Donald J Trump is President-elect Donald J Trump.
This is powerful stuff. So powerful in fact that I believe we are living in momentous times. If I may be so bold, I truly believe that the entire election from the announcement to the primaries to the nomination to the actual election itself was providential.
Now I realize how hurtful and even scandalous these words may sound, especially given the garrulousness and obnoxiousness of the President-elect. He is no choirboy. He never was.
But the fact that he won and that his opponents are as driven to distraction if not outright rage means that there is more at play here than simple politics. The inability of the Left to concede their flaws, their missteps, and their miscalculations to this very day means that God’s grace has departed from their midst. They are in a vicious cycle of anger and bitterness and unless they repent, they will never be able to break out of this cycle.
So far, the auguries don’t look encouraging. Instead of owning up to their defects (and the defects of their candidate), they are now blaming Russia for their loss. Worse, they are goading the incumbent president to issue even more bellicose statements. And to what end? To actually start a war? A war that we could very well wind up losing? A war that could very well wipe out humanity?
What insanity.
Instead, they should google a map called “The Clinton Archipelago.” It looks like some scattered islands. But it’s not. It’s the United States and all the counties that Hillary carried.
(Click to enlarge)
It paints a dire picture for the future of the Democratic Party. One could easily travel from Washington State to Florida without crossing one county, one city or one state that went for Hillary. That’s not a good thing. It’s been said that you can’t rule a country that you’ve never been to. I’d say that was Hillary’s problem. But it’s also any future Democrat’s problem.
In his challenge to unseat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio said as much. “We Democrats” he said, “are no longer a national party.” And instead of proving him wrong, they overwhelmingly voted for the failure that is Pelosi again.
It’s not that Progressives are stupid. Turn on Morning Joe any day of the weak and you’ll see some hard-hitting analysis about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party, where they went wrong. The host, Joe Scarborough, asked Jake Tapper one morning: “What have the Democrats done to so alienate the people?” He gave the statistics: close to one thousand legislative offices lost and dozens of governorships since Obama took office. The elections of 2010, 2014 and 2016 were nothing less than bloodbaths. A foreign observer would be forgiven for thinking that Obama was a covert GOP operative placed in power for the express purpose of hollowing out the Democratic Party from within.
The trouble is, Joe Scarborough is a Republican and conservative. As far as the cable and broadcast media, Morning Joe is about the only place you could go to see Democrats talking honestly about where they went wrong. For more in-depth (and saltier) analysis you have to go to YouTube to see more honest Liberals try to come to grips with what happened to them. (I recommend The Jimmy Dore Show for some really powerful punches.)
The litany of failure is truly horrible to behold. As Scarborough pointed out, not only does the GOP control most of the Statehouses but they have a solid majority of State delegations in the Congress. Even if 37 faithless Electors turned on Trump yesterday he still would have won because of the overwhelming control which the GOP has in the House of Representatives.
All the above didn’t happen because the Republicans are clean-living; they were just lucky in their enemies. Through their venality, their stupidity and their corruption, the Democrats made it happen.
So now, the Rogue won. And boy does it feel good. And you know what? It’s going to go on feeling good. You wanna know why? Besides launching the greatest upset in American history, Trump took the rule book, the one which guided the careers of pundits and staffers and consultants –all those who make up the DC mandarinate–and tore it to shreds. Trump broke the rice bowls of the Mike Murphys and James Carvilles of the world. For that alone I am eternally grateful.
Worse, he devalued their services. And he undercut the Mainstream Media. The New York Times is feeling such a pinch that it has to sublet eight stories in order to make ends meet. Megyn Kelley would like to leave Fox but CNN can’t afford her. Now she’s in negotiations with ABC. The joke’s on her: her ratings on Fox are tanking. Do you think the Murdochs are going to offer her as much as she’s making now when her contract comes up for renewal? I doubt it.
This was a campaign done on the cheap. No more do we have to listen to the pollsters and the talking heads on MSNBC, CNN or Fox. Their services are no longer necessary. More likely, their contracts can be renogiated (if you know what I mean). There was more cogent analysis on YouTube which was by and large more correct that anything on the legacy media. Think about it. And these people did it for free. And they were more entertaining.
Yep, it’s a brand new world out there. The old rules have been broken. Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Trump –and America–are continuing the Rebellion against the Old Order. November 8th was the start of the Uprising.
Buckle your seat-belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
“momentous” does not equate “good” times.
Certainly, Nazi Germany was “momentous”.
Also, God’s grace leaving? You are adapting Protestant thinking in saying such things. That is not Orthodox. God does not withdraw nor withhold his Grace. He is everywhere present and fills all things.
Please don’t fall into the trap of adapting Protestant theology because you are so enamored with American Republican Conservatism and it’s corresponding morality, which has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.
Talk about broad brushing. You could easily change liberals to conservatives in your essay and it is equivalently meaningless.
I’m not a liberal. But your comment just reinforces what I already believe about certain conservatives.
Annoyed, I understand your reticence at my startling assertion that “God’s grace [may] have left the Democratic Party’s elite.” (I paraphrase.) And I don’t for a second believe in the godliness of the GOP, so let’s get that off the table right now.
But consider how earnestly, how diligently, how single-mindedly the Cultural Marxists have implemented their program in America over the last 50 years. That’s simply undisputable. Their political wing for this un-godly edeavor has been (for better or worse) the Democratic Party.
This is hard and bitter medicine, particularly for me as I was a registered Democrat until I was 30.
Well, their mojo has decisively faded:
https://spectator.org/the-desperate-revisionism-of-the-left/
“Look, there is the Light at the end of the tunnel!”
Sorry, Misha has a sense of humor too.
The Holy Scriptures and Orthodox spiritual writings are full of descriptions of grace departing… now that’s “Protestant” to use that phrase?? As a matter of fact, both truths are affirmed: God fills all things and yet grace can depart…
Wisdom of Solomon 1:1-7
Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth: think of the Lord with a good (heart,) and in simplicity of heart seek him. For he will be found of them that tempt him not; and sheweth himself unto such as do not distrust him. For froward thoughts separate from God: and his power, when it is tried, reproveth the unwise. For into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter; nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin. For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without understanding, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in. For wisdom is a loving spirit; and will not acquit a blasphemer of his words: for God is witness of his reins, and a true beholder of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. For the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world: and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice.
Are you saying God does not (cannot?) intervene in human affairs? That’s silly.
That is not Orthodox. God does not withdraw nor withhold his Grace.
Really?
Kings are never repudiated?
Fig trees are never cursed?
Lamp stands are never removed?
Annoyed, God most certainly DOES withhold His grace. Read the Book of Job, the major and minor prophets. Heck, just read any of the Holy Scriptures. Grace is defined as deliverance from enemies, affliction, or adversity. It also denotes enablement, daily guidance, forgiveness, and preservation. Where on earth did you learn that because God fillest all things, He extends His grace to all people?
Go and learn what the Orthodox Church teaches what the grace of God is.
“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” – John 1:4
Now that Trump is safely elected and destined to take office, an explanation is in order:
The Political Economy of Planet Earth
A.F.K. Organski once wrote a book called The Stages of Political Development. In it, he sketched out several stages through which societies pass on the way to full economic development. The striking thing about his analysis was that it was purely one addressing the physical/material reality of economic development – yet it was not Marxist or even Marxian, though it owed a lot to the work of Karl Marx.
As we all know, there was a primitive communalism among undeveloped human beings. I will not go into Darwin and evolution at this point because the final chapter on that debate has not been written as of yet. However, assuming a biblical narrative, nonetheless, the earliest humans shared resources. Men were in charge, women assisted and bore children.
Political science is the study of political history. And political history is the history of two things: bread and guns, or to put it more generally, resources and weapons. In a cosmos or inhabited world with limited resources, weapons become an issue. The question is “Who gets what and when?”, and the larger question is, “Who decides ‘who gets what and when?’?”
So we moved from primitive communalism through the stages of tribal government, kings and emperors. There was a primitive capitalism of sorts at work during this second period. Private or state ownership of the main resources: land, chattel and people. And there was a system of redistribution: taxation and the movement of wealth to the needy and to those who kept order, the military/state/empire.
Along the way, of course, avarice and envy being what they are, there was quite a bit of competition between political entities for domination of their own areas, other areas and resources in general. This competition can be characterized as politics/war. And the important thing to remember about this is that human beings are quite ingenious when they are highly motivated. That is to say, we are the most efficient predators on the face of the earth, especially when we intend to hunt other humans, and we develop better and more efficient ways to do so pretty much instinctively.
This is the story of technological advancement which goes hand in hand with economic and political development. The organizing principle of any society is warfare. This is of necessity. Societies that do not learn this lesson early cease to remain self determining. Resources must be secured for survival, production and reproduction. It is that simple.
Now, as production becomes more efficient, more sophisticated goods become available. This is the story of industrialization as well, the phenomenon that gave us the modern world and modern capitalism. At this point we have to discuss “value added”. Capitalism/profit works because the owner of the means of production sells a good for less than it cost him to produce. The cost of acquisition and/or production was less than the sale price. Thus the difference, the profit, is pocketed by the owner/employer. This makes trade worthwhile beyond simple barter. It explains also the need for money. Money is simply a way to keep track of value pursuant to trade.
Capitalism as we know it emerged from the imperial/mercantilist era but the concept is just as simple as I have outlined above. It is the effects of capitalism which are complex to explain. Marx had a valid point about capitalism and it is this: Capitalism is very, very efficient at production of goods. It is also quite efficient at the distribution of goods. However, capitalism, in a closed system, inevitably results in what is called the “capitalist contradiction”. This is not a theory. It is a law of physics. If you pay workers less than the value of their labor (i.e., less than the amount you gain from their efforts), which is what capitalism does to create value added, you will have warehouses full of goods, a small class of people with lots of wealth, and a large number of people with no money to purchase the goods.
Capitalism is a machine and that is simply the way it operates. So what is necessary is redistribution of wealth. The stage of political development where mankind figures out how to deal with this law of production, which the United States and the world figured out during and after the Great Depression, is the national welfare state, the third stage of political development.
Organski classified the United States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as national welfare states. Their different ideologies were not what he was looking at. What he was looking at was the way they produced, distributed and redistributed. Now, the thing about national welfare states is that they are always looking for new markets. One of the funniest lines in his book was the observation that the Nazis “were certainly aggressive in their pursuit of new markets”. This is a key facet of a capitalist national welfare state. Owners always want to expand outside the closed circle wherein they operate. This is of necessity. The reason is that when you remain inside a closed circle, eventually unions develop and the profit margin declines. The work force organizes because it is being squeezed evermore and presents ultimatums regarding wages and conditions. This reduces the profit margin. So the search for greater profits compels capitalists to expand outside their economic circle.
This is called economic imperialism. In our world, it is called globalization. MNC’s do not want production confined to their countries of origin. To do so reduces profits. There is no international union force. There are no international price controls or labor regulations. Therefore, the workers outside of developed countries can be exploited mercilessly and the working class of the developed world can be starved into submission to the ruling elites – i.e., to the whims of their cultural fancies. This is the Davos crowd, Soros, the DNC and the RINO’s, in case you need names named. And this has been what they have been doing to decent people.
The good news is that Organski did the math, as can you, and figured out that the next stage of political development is the Age of Abundance. This the age that the evil vermin who just lost the last election were hoping to stave off as long as possible. It is unclear how much they understood of what they were doing, but it was truly diabolical – literally.
As you may know “Putinism” or “sovereign democracy” seems to be taking over the world; or at least the non-Islamic part of it. This is all part of God’s plan. Yes, you read that right. It is all part of God’s plan. It is no coincidence that sovereign democracy first flourished in an Orthodox culture. All the elements for it to flourish are there. The Germans did the world a great disservice when they sent Lenin back in to Russia in an effort to sabotage the Russian war effort. It cost them, and the world, quite dearly.
“Sovereign democracy” is essentially participatory monarchy. Insofar as representative government can be Christian, sovereign democracy fits the bill. It combines a strong executive, traditional values, a national welfare state and reciprocal trade. There is certainly room for the press in a sovereign democracy, but the press must be held accountable. This is what you saw in the last election. The MSM were totally beholden to globalists. Their ideology blinded them to what was really going on and still does. Their worship of “equality” as a god corrupted their souls and our society. Their marriage to the idea of gender and economic equality and racial entitlement, as well as their commitment to the service of their worst passions and perversions turned them to minions of the evil one.
Reciprocal trade prevents the capitalist contradiction from reaching the point of socialist revolution. What the Davos crowd was counting on was to keep their sick system going long enough that they could seize control as the vanguard of the proletariat and start the Soviet experiment all over again, this time with feminism and perversion as added attractions to their atheism. Yes, you read that right. That is what these evil minions of the devil intended.
Now, a word about Islam. Islam is a false religion. Muhammad may have started out with good intentions, but the result of his efforts was ignorance and economic stagnation. Shariah forbids the charging of interest and the use of insurance. Without these tools, there would be no economic development. These are certainly sharp instruments, dangerous tools. Interest was restricted under the Law of Moses, for example. Yet the reason that Islamic civilization did not develop is partly due to its prohibition of these to devices of economic development. Without them, all you have is land and oil as sources of wealth. Large scale production requires investment. Either you will have a totalitarian state do it (like the Soviet Union), or it has to be done using a controlled form of interest and insurance.
This is where we stand today. So, “What does God have to do with this?”, you might ask.
I’m glad you asked. Here’s what:
There is no place else to go for man beyond the Age of Abundance, unless . . . well, we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about the Age of Abundance.
As production becomes more efficient and working conditions improve within a closed capitalist system of national welfare, the standard of living of everyone therein improves – and dramatically, not just the wealthiest. As this progresses, the work week shortens as well. Robotic production will increasingly obviate the need for human blue collar work. Work will become increasingly cerebral rather than labor intensive. We are seeing that today. Organski was a prophet of sorts.
This is a blessing, of course. At the same time, as we know evermore about ourselves and the world, we are learning how to prolong life and combat disease. We are learning more about the human psyche and about the resolution of neuroses and psychological disorders. We are approaching true sanity, true self realization. I don’t want to sound too kumbaya, but it is true. Self-realization and self-actualization as psychological phenomena are intimately related to what Christians call theosis, deification.
This is my favorite part, and should be yours too:
If all of the above is true, and it obviously is, then we are faced with a material reality which is absolutely destined for self-realization/theosis. It is just a question of time and how much resistance mankind introduces through foolish choices.
We all know that matter and energy are essentially the same thing. I have explained that in previous posts. Mass/gravity, according to physics, is essentially a product of the tension of the energy fields which constitute matter.
What I am saying is that everything that you see around you is – must be – at the core, energy. Pure energy. “In Him was Life; and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Part of what we call “miracles” are the transmutation of matter and energy, much like in the Star Trek series. Recall the transporter system they used? This transmutation must be possible – for God. That is the missing piece.
And soon, God will no longer have any reason to conceal Himself. Because resistance to His Kingdom is near an end. The ability of those who deny His existence to deny His existence is quickly expiring. Something had to have created a complex world. It cannot arise out of nothing. Its matrix, its internal logic of development had to have originated with a Programmer. There is no other possible explanation. There is no coincidence that improbable.
So get ready for the miraculous. I guarantee you it is coming. The era of the “test of faith” is coming to a close. Soon, one will not need faith to believe in the supernatural. It will be obvious. If there is a God and an imperfect world in which evil is rampant, there must be a devil. He will no longer be concerned about concealing himself either.
Specifically, there are two kinds of miracles: “coincidence” and “direct intervention”.
Coincidence is the one you will notice first. For instance, about this time 25 years ago, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. It is not a coincidence that progressive rule just ended in America. Nor is it a coincidence that the Russian ambassador to Turkey was murdered on the same day as the electoral college voted.
This type of thing will slowly pick up to a maddening pace. The only people who will not be surprised by some of it will be Christians, especially Orthodox Christians who know their eschatology. You will see an “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit as well as heightened activity of the evil one and his minions. I repeat, the “coincidences” will start to pile up first; then, eventually, overtly miraculous things will start to happen – true transmutations of energy and matter. It is this type of thing which is prophesied in the Apocalypse of John and some other books of the Bible. I am not sure how much of it will literally manifest itself and how much is allegorical. We will not know until it happens, unless God sends some of us advance notice.
It won’t stop until the world is of one mind about reality. I do not know how long it will take or how dramatic it will get. I can say that God likes round numbers and that is why in the past that I have guessed, essentially, that around Ascension in the year 2029 or 2030 would be a poetic end to the drama. Just as the Apostles saw Christ disappear into the heavens, so it is written that He will return.
“So get ready for the miraculous. I GUARANTEE you it is coming. The era of the “test of faith” is coming to a close. Soon, one will not need faith to believe in the supernatural. It will be obvious. IF(IF MISHA?) there is a God and an imperfect world in which evil is rampant, there must be a devil. He will no longer be concerned about concealing him either.”
Well the great Prophet Misha GUARANTEES IT! So it must be so. Misha my advice to you: Stay away from sharp objects, your head may POP!
” For a time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And turn away ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”(2 Timothy 4:3-4:4)
Misha, don’t have the time or energy to address all of your points, but. I do see some major problems: 1. The reliance of your main source and therefore you on the Hegalian-Marxist dialectic; 2. the bugger problem is a merging of the myth of progress which relies on that dialectic and Christian eschatology which tends to deny the personal incarnate Lord and replace it with a divine ethos or imperative; 3. your construction is both too logical and too linear.
So as creative and interesting as it is, I reject it as indicative of “God’s Plan”. You are unlikely to be wholly wrong, but I find your conclusion to he highly suspect.
Have a Merry Christmas
Michael Bauman, Just keep it short and simple. Only a fool predicts the end. Some think themselves more clever than our Lord Jesus Christ. Live the day, as your last.
“But about that day and hour NO ONE knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the Father” Matthew 24:36
Simple my friend, Merry Christmas Michael
But George, your Republicans in NC buckled to the corporate commercial interests and the media and other elites–just like they did in Indiana–and repealed the bathroom bill that, according to NPR had “forced transgendered persons to use bathrooms designated for use by their birth ‘gender’ (sic)”. As long as the commercialized, entertainment media and the consumption economy rule we are in for continued hedonism and decadence, corruption and our ultimate demise as a society. Could Misha be right that we are still in the final act with the denouement not far off? What St. Seraphim of Sarov (and others) have predicted would seem to say so . . . Though we have a moment of reprieve, I don’t see the Donald actually reversing much of this. Too deep seated in our non-culture. To many sacred calves that would have to be slain and idols that each of us would have to cast aside and destroy: commercialized sports, film, gratuitous violence and sex on television and video games (all as protected “free speech”), school consolidation and ever-larger schools with busing and more levels of administration, a toleration of lying and deceit in the form of spin, and ever growing idolization of individual rights unhinged from accompanying duties or any form of honor, slovenly dress because it’s comfortable. No, we fail to realize how widespread and deep the disorder is–and we don’t want to know–because it would require radical repentance and painful costs in the short-run. Frankly, we live as if this world and this life is all there is and as if temporary pain and death were the worst of enemies. Christ God is the only way and He is the last One we are willing to publicly acknowledge and devote ourselves, our souls and bodies to, as living sacrifices. No, we do not act and live as if He is real–no, not even we Orthodox.
But we may begin to turn the ship, if we ourselves repent and amend our ways in private and in public and begin to confess with increasing frequency and with every fibre of our being that Jesus Christ is Lord and stand ready to give to anyone who asks the reason for the hope that is in us.
lxc+
I don’t know that Trump will do much, but he certainly has emboldened those who will do something to oppose the way of things.
The reversal of fortune will continue for the democrats until they realize, and represent those in the middle who do the work and pay the bills, and forget their imagined utopia. What LBJ started with” The Great Society” has come full circle, and failed. Time for the restart button to be depressed. Republicans must now realize we don’t care about fake patriotism. They came to the cliffs edge towards extinction, and Trump saved their party.
Most Americans want what America used to be, a place where hard work could provide a man and his family a decent living. A government that protects it’s citizens first, not foreigners, and peace through strength. Simple NO?
Megyn Kelley would like to leave Fox but CNN can’t afford her. Now she’s in negotiations with ABC. The joke’s on her: her ratings on Fox are tanking. Do you think the Murdochs are going to offer her as much as she’s making now when her contract comes up for renewal? I doubt it.
Oh, I do hope you are right!
Anyone who has an opinion on Mr. Trump ought to take a very close look at his cabinet appointments and dear old friends, like Sen Shumer, rabid anti -gun 2nd amendment.hater.Just the cops and the thugs get to use weapons, if Chucky gets his way. Anyone heard anything about FedCoin? The Zionists got all the best positions, and are poised to make a killing if there is a draconian solution to economic collapse proposed.
Republicans cannot make the same mistake the Democrats did and assume a personal victory by a charismatic leader is an institutional one and it is replicatable.
To continue the “revolt” as you call it, the electorate at the state level will have to become more engaged, knowledgeable and committed.
Otherwise in 8 years we will be presented with even worse choices.
Of course.
That being said, this election was in my view a binary. Either the Democrats/RINOs/NeverTrumpers would win and thereby permanently destroy the GOP or Trump would win and permanently destroy the Dem/Neocons. Given the hatred, the despair and the continued delusion to believe that because they won 2,000,000 more illegal-alien/cat-lady/welfare-queen votes in California (and dead people’s votes in Illinois), they really won the election, I don’t believe that the Dems have it within them to look honestly in the mirror.
Their hatred of the results was so great that they gave Jill Stein $7,000,000 for a recount. This money will now go into the Green Party’s treasury so that in 2020, they’ll be on the ballot of at least 40 states. Therefore, like the Libertarians (who reached the threshold to be in all 50 states), there will be three left-wing parties on the ballot in 2020: the Dems, the Libertarians, and the Greens. The Libertarians will increase their share from 5% IMO and the Greens will approach 4% at least. Both of these numbers will be taken out of the hide of the Dems.
I have a gut feeling that one of Trump’s fronts gave Stein the initial capital to start up this recount effort. 90% came from the Hillary people.
Anyway, as the Duke of Wellington said about Waterloo: “It was a close-run thing.”
Appearance George. We have no idea what the reality is.
Trump has appointed David Friedman as ambassador to Israel. Friedman basically believes that the Palestinian state should not exist. You can imagine that Israel is excited about this pick, because it’s sending the message that Trump will support the elimination of the Palestinians.
Not pleased with Friedman. But like Steve Mnuchin over at Treasury, Trump is covering all his bases.
Trump has also picked Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. Basically, Scott Pruitt doesn’t think the EPA should exist.
Trump will be able to create jobs though by opening up protected areas to fracking, drilling, mining, etc. The “not in my backyard” types won’t stand a chance unless they are in the Billionaire Boys Club.
The focus is now to remove Trump as soon as possible. His hubris and believing he is all powerful will be his downfall. His cabinet is creating an oligarchy and Trump will not remove himself of his business interests. This administration will be the most corrupt in all of U.S. history. Another JFK removal is quite possible!
As a conservative, I see very little conservatism in Trump’s personality and methods of operation. And yet something tells me that the Hand of the Lord is covering him for a time. Think of it: everything –and I mean EVERYthing–was thrown at him before the election. And a whole lot of other things thrown at him after. The “Hamilton Elector” conspiracy being the most interesting one. But what happened? Hillary (who I’ve come to believe is a high figure in the Deep State) lost more electors than Trump did. The irony!
“Man plans, God laughs.”
George,
A final observation on this little drama and then on to battle the Sunnis:
So you might ask yourself, “Why?”; i.e., why would God bother to go through all this trouble Himself and allow the world to go through all this trouble? I think I know the answer to that, but it is so monumentally fantastic that I simply can’t share it with anyone until I talk to some other furry ones, from Athos for example, and hear what they think of it. To me, it is the only possible reason that I can think of, but a man has to know his limitations. In the consensus of noetic elders is the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
PS: You have to have a wicked sense of humor to truly appreciate this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/world/europe/turkey-assassination-erdogan.html?_r=0
The NYT seems to think that Erdogan did not go far enough in purging his country of Muslims opposed to his fanatical totalitarian rule. The man thinks he is Allah and has developed a personality cult around him and the NYT still believes his bs.
God forbid. But a President Pence would be outstanding in his own right.
For those who think everything will be great with Putin’s Russia, remember Putin only wants Trump over Clinton, so that he may use friendly relations to get what he wants for his kingdom.
Trump better be ready for Putin’s manipulations. No doubt Putin will test Trump a couple times before Trump even realizes it, he’s being played. Hope Trump has the hand of God for protection against the ex kbg man.
Correction KGB
“muh Russia”
Oh, one more thing that I think may be significant, but controversial:
I could be wrong about this, and I may be prepared to defer to some council if they find differently, but I see nothing in the Orthodox faith opposed to concubinage.
To put it a different way, biblical adultery is when a man has intercourse with another man’s wife. I know of no decisive definition in Orthodoxy for what constitutes fornication. What I can say is that historically, Orthodox men have had sexual relations with single female servants. This does not seem to be objectionable to God. That is to say, if she’s single and on the payroll, it’s ok.
Now, of course, I’m not advocating rape. I’m also not advocating sexual harassment at the workplace. But the purpose of holy laws controlling sexual activity is to preserve the integrity of the family, prevent prostitution, and guard against the emergence of unsupported children and mothers, “widows and orphans”. It is an economic thing.
There is no giving and taking in marriage in the world to come. We still have all our equipment and are fully functional.
“And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.”
Notice, it was the wives, not the concubines, that sunk Solomon. Also, the problem with the wives was not the volume but the quality. He was marrying pagans. Orthodoxy has tended to confine marriage to one man and one woman. But God is not a prude. I repeat: There is no giving and taking in marriage in the world to come.
This is logical if you think of it demographically.
What I can say is that historically, Orthodox men have had sexual relations with single female servants.
???
Orthodox people have done a lot of bad things. I dare say there are Orthodox people in hell too.
George, I am really curious to hear your opinion, on Misha’s post above, in regards to his opinion on concubines, and polygamy.
I dunno, Misha? Personally I thought it was satire. However, given the modernist desire to enshrine sin as the ontological ground of being (because that’s what the LGBTers maintain), then why can’t a red-blooded male, who is polygynous by nature, share his body with a red-blooded female (who is hypergamous by nature)?
Not that I’m advocating it; this is just a thought experiment. Yet I believe an inevitability given our loss of sacramental mystery.
You have to pay particular attention to what I am saying, and what I am not saying. It is the nature of a woman to want to belong to one man. It is not the nature of a man to want to belong to anyone, let alone a woman. On that much, I hope we can agree. Now, the woman has her own ideas of which man and what it means to belong, to be sure. But there it is.
I am not advocating polygamy. It seems to me a very wise idea for a man to have only one wife – an alpha female for him, the alpha male. Yet the original meaning of fornication was to lay with whores, harlotry. It is difficult for us to imagine how society was at the time of Christ, but both Jewish and Roman society were thoroughly patriarchal – patriarchal to a degree that even most modern men would find unsettling because we have been lulled into a more feminist/matriarchal mindset (by the devil).
Then, the thing that was seen as dangerous was an independent woman doing sexual business for herself. Men were the tree of lineage, hence the geneologies. Women were adornments on the Christmas tree: beautiful and fertile. An independent woman selling her sexuality was a source of instability because it was at odds with the culture of reproduction and the hierarchy of the family. You didn’t want prostitution for the same reason you didn’t want unsupported widows and orphans – needy women and children in the streets unattached to any particular source of support: a particular man.
You simply didn’t have single females wandering around beholden to no one at that time. They didn’t exist except as widows, orphans or prostitutes. Almost all females “belonged” to their fathers, husbands or eldest sons. Oh, occasionally you might find some wealthy widow or what not. But that was about it. It was seen as a fate worse than death. Notice that Christ essentially gave his holy mother to St. John to be her son when He was on the cross. Unattached females were seen as a playground for the devil.
Now, in the modern world, we face a different situation but the Law of God has not changed. It is just hard for us to see through the feminist/matriarchal/demonic fog. Europe has a serious demographic problem. We can agree on that. America has a potential one too. Muslims are outbreeding us. It is that simple. Moreover, when social security was first instituted, there were between 14-17 retirees for every working person. Now it is more like 3-4 to one and the system is insolvent. This is a demographic problem: “demographic winter” as it is called. It is quite real. It could result in a Muslim Western Europe which first undergoes economic collapse. We may avoid the same thing in America due to the Hispanic population. But if we don’t get immigration under control, the Hispanic population will take over demographically. We need not argue about these things, they are quite real.
So what is the solution to this? Obviously, women need to start having babies – babies that have a home and can be supported. But what if the women can’t find men who want to support them and their children? Does this not interfere with reproduction? Of course.
So, concubinage. The era of beta females. As men begin to regain their economic stature in a Christianizing society, they will naturally want to head (and I mean by that be the dominant head) of families. This will be an uneven process, however. Not all men will gain their economic standing and the courage to proceed, nor will they gain the Christian faith and confidence in the glorious future which Christ has prepared for us in this life and the next at the same rate. But reproduction is an imperative, both by demographic necessity in our efforts to retain our own culture and battle Islam, and by divine imperative in that the Lord’s first command to living things is to be fruitful and multiply.
A formal or informal scheme of concubinage or beta females would facilitate this process and I simply can’t find anything objectionable to the idea in traditional Orthodoxy. Everything I see in the Fathers seems to be geared toward discouraging adultery and harlotry. Concubinage is neither of these things. What we sometimes wish to classify as “fornication” in the modern world; i.e., premarital sex, did indeed occur in the ancient world. However, the conditions were radically different as I have described above. I am fairly confident that the “sexual immorality” that is offensive to the Lord and to which St. Paul objected as being an impediment to the Kingdom of Heaven is harlotry, the original meaning of the Greek word he uses. The other phenomenon was much more rare: couples married early. And though there was heterosexual cohabitation, sometimes it was permitted:
* * *
“XXI. If a man living with a wife is not satisfied with his marriage and falls into fornication, I account him a fornicator, and prolong his period of punishment. Nevertheless, we have no canon subjecting him to the charge of adultery, if the sin be committed against an unmarried woman. For the adulteress, it is said, “being polluted shall be polluted,” Jeremiah 3:1 and she shall not return to her husband: and “He that keeps an adulteress is a fool and impious.” He, however, who has committed fornication is not to be cut off from the society of his own wife. So the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication, but the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house. The argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained.
XXII. Men who keep women carried off by violence, if they carried them off when betrothed to other men, must not be received before removal of the women and their restoration to those to whom they were first contracted, whether they wish to receive them, or to separate from them. In the case of a girl who has been taken when not betrothed, she ought first to be removed, and restored to her own people, and handed over to the will of her own people whether parents, or brothers, or any one having authority over her. If they choose to give her up, the cohabitation may stand; but, if they refuse, no violence should be used.
XXVI. Fornication is not wedlock, nor yet the beginning of wedlock. Wherefore it is best, if possible, to put asunder those who are united in fornication. If they are set on cohabitation, let them admit the penalty of fornication. Let them be allowed to live together, lest a worse thing happen.
XL. The woman who yields to a man against her master’s will commits fornication; but if afterwards she accepts free marriage, she marries. The former case is fornication; the latter marriage. The covenants of persons who are not independent have no validity.
XLII. Marriages contracted without the permission of those in authority, are fornication. If neither father nor master be living the contracting parties are free from blame; just as if the authorities assent to the cohabitation, it assumes the fixity of marriage.”
* * *
– All from ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA, Canonica Secunda. To Amphilochius, concerning the Canons. Letter 199, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202199.htm
The above betrays a worldview in stark contrast to our own and the “fornication” that seems to be frowned upon is distinguishable from cohabitation. That is to say, “fornication” probably does not include the category of concubinage and may not even reach so far as to include all premarital sex.
Most times when someone says: Not that I’m advocating it, it usually means they are.
George is the one who said, “Not that I’m advocating it.”
As to concubinage, I merely looked at the Fathers, cited some of what St. Basil said on the subject, and observed that it fits for our times. I have no objection to concubinage but I’m not saying, “This is God’s will.”. God can manifest His will to us in any way He sees fit.
As to the interplay of politics and theology, this is my interpretation of events, a working model, if you will. If you have a better one, please offer it. I do not claim to be a prophet, just a pious Orthodox Christian. However, I know what I see and I know what our faith teaches.
I would say the following though. Trump has all the marks of a patriarchalist and he has asked for a list of those working on “gender equality”:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/506629695/trump-team-asks-state-dept-to-name-those-working-on-gender-equality
Guess what’s coming.
In the spirit of Christmas, I will not feed your Demons Misha. May god bless you, and feed you with holy wisdom. O Theos na se potesi
Lord have Mercy..Correction: May God bless you..
Quote from the link above:
…except in the case of Muslims, Islamic countries, and ‘faithful’ allies like Saudi Arabia about whose practices we choose to remain selectively silent and “respectful.” All others are subject to our corruption.
Christ is born ! Merry Christmas to all the world!
For the record Misha, you said that you are not advocating rape, and workplace sexual harassment in your ridiculous post, in regards to concubine servants, and polygamy
I’m sure there are many in the state of Utah who might agree with your post.
Dino, if I may disagree based on my own experience with Millennials, I can honestly say that concubinage would be a definite step up from what is available to them at present. Trust me, it’s horrible.
I work in a profession in which 95% of the ancillary personnel is female. Maybe 15% of them are married to gainfully employed men. The rest are either living in sin (only some with men who are gainfully employed) or are dating very infrequently. Gone are the days of young women below a certain socio-economic level actually getting married. That train left the station about 10 years ago depending on which part of the country you were living in. Now it’s so bad that even moderately pretty young women can’t find a decent guy to go out on a date –it’s that bad.
Mind you, this is all the results of sin –easy divorce for men, which led to feminism and now MGTOW (Men Going their own Way) if not outright homosexuality. You can’t sanction one sin –concubinage–in order to eradicate these other sins –desperate women with little hope of getting married to men their own age.
Nevertheless, what Misha is describing is the reality. Worse, thanks to Gay, Inc, a new orthodoxy obtains: one that is based on sexuality being the basis of ontology. We can jump up and down and scream all we want, moralize all we want or whatever, but the natural polygamy of men and the equally natural hypergamy of women cannot be legislated out of existence. Especially now when any effort at moralism regarding sodomy has been placed out of bounds.
An important factor you leave out George is our economic system and approach. People are less and less looked upon as humans with families but as discreet economic capital whose value rests only in the ability to perform income producing activities. Everything and everyone is capitalized. There is no room for spouses and children. In fact they may very well be an economic liability.
It is the utilitarian attitude.
The atomizing effect of Nihilism. No communion. No community. No life. Ideology offers to replace what is missing.
George, I’m actually really disappointed to hear you really think that today’s women are better off as concubines, than at least trying to find a decent man. I don’t buy that for a second.
Perhaps both sexes should seek out the internal, before always seeking the perfect external. Men only looking for the perfect model body, while woman seek deep pocketed Brad Pitt types. The clueless then can never understand why they are not happy.
Simply giving up is not the answer, catching a clue and realizing perfection is not reality. Sacrifice must be made in marriage, and most are too selfish.
Try this George, explain and offer polygamy to a few of those unhappy females, if they don’t slap you, then see how they feel about being servant concubines, even to the Orthodox don’t you see how silly you sound?
Actually, I’m not Dino. Please, everyone: I am NOT advocating for concubinage in any way, shape, manner or form. All I’m saying is that because the sodomites have succeeded in destroying the Christian concept of marriage AND making sexual passions the basis of human personhood, the civil sanction of polygamy, polyamory, paedophilia and even bestiality is inevitable.
See, this is what I’m talking about:
http://nbc4i.com/2016/03/24/police-woman-recorded-herself-having-sex-with-dogs/
Remember, the animals in question were not “unduly harmed.” They did with this woman what was only in their nature.
Fact is concubinage, or polygamy would not help the sodomites, pseudo-Christians,and atheists, as they have already destroyed themselves. George I get it, we have probably beat this dead horse enough.
Dino!,
I, and I alone, am suggesting that concubinage will prove to be useful in Christian circles in the years to come, whether de jure or de facto, no matter. I’m sure it is not offensive to God because it was not offensive to the Church Fathers. That settles it for me. I don’t have to advocate anything or suggest anything. It’s more like a prediction, if you will.
It just happens to fit and that’s about it.
Okie, dokie, smokie!
Stop, Mr. Michalopulos. It is one thing to blaspheme the Holy Fathers in some blatant, obvious “whirlwind” of diminished capacity, and you making “social” generalizations of your particular experience. If are you are attempting to make an argument in support of continuing to publish lunacy, I don’t exactly know whether to observe that your comment is ludicrous or lamentable.
Not fair Dr S. My “limited” experience is rather global and growing from what I gather from talking to other men my age. I don’t want to make an issue of it, but if I wanted to I could easily partake of what is being offered to me from these young twenty-somethings.
George, just because I like you, here is a hypothetical for you to ponder on this silly little subject, that no doubt the demons enjoy us wasting are time on. Thanks Misha! A parable of sorts for you to finish/answer for me.
Say a man who lives in Colorado City, which is a polygamist town, decides he want to leave the original Mormon faith, and join The Greek Orthodox Church. He packs up his five wives, and their thirty children, and heads over to Denver to meet with Metropolitan Isaiah. The man, and his five wives, and thirty children want to be baptized into our church. What is Metropolitan Isaiah to do? Break up the marriages, and the family, leaving four wives and 25 children without a husband, and father, or bless the four other wives, as the man’s wives, or concubine servants? Better yet what would Saint Basil of Caesarea do, and would Met. Isaiah follow his lead?
Yes I know not are, but our. I promise I will proof read more. New Years resolution 2017! Just have no time, and always in a rush. At least I won’t be chastised by his grace. I wonder if his absence is permanent, or just for the Old Calendar Nativity fast.
Good question, Dino. Here is what I heard that Arb Anastasios (now the Primate of Albania) did while he was a missionary in Africa: he allowed the polygamous patriarch to keep his plural wives and offspring thereof because otherwise they would be banished to a life of poverty if not outright starvation. BUT, polygamy was off-limits to all subsequent generations. That seems fair and just. (As for the sexual angle, my guess is that we’re talking older people here where sex is not an issue.)
As for your hypothetical example of the Mormon clan moving to Denver and being received into the Faith by Met Isaiah, women can find gainful employment in modern-day America so they wouldn’t have to continue to cleave onto the sole patriarch of said family. Also, we have convents in America where an extra wife could retreat to in order to get out of that plural marriage. (In the African example, there were no extant female monasteries.)
Just some thoughts.
So George I assume you’re saying Metropolitan would not allow the polygamist family intact. If so why not if there is no sin , according to the Bible or cannons? According to Misha. Would not Metropolitan be kind enough to grant economia, to the polygamist converts?
Good point. The only answer I can give is the old legal maxim: hard cases make bad law.
Let’s look at this deeper and be thankful that the Supreme Court ruled in 1892 that the US was “a Christian Republic” and therefore, polygamy was against the law. And therefore not a serious threat to the body politic. The upshot of all this was if the Territory of Utah wanted to join the Union as a State, then the Mormon Church would have to outlaw polygamy (which they did). This is why, btw, we look at outlaw Mormon sects with bemusement.
Let’s go further down the road and see what needs to be done so that this continues to not be a problem:
1. Continue to maintain that we are a Christian Republic (i.e. enforce normative moral codes),
2. Restrict immigration from Islamic and/or non-Christian areas where polygamy is the norm (i.e. repeal Hart-Celler),
3. Refuse to continue to be the world hegemon, thereby removing the need for us to station our troops on foreign soil and/or treating with non-Christian nations other than on a case-by-case basis (i.e. isolationism),
4. Do away with Welfare. That alone would drive a stake through the heart of Matriarchy as well as stop lazy, no-good bums from inseminating plural wives while they sit at the mosque all day and listen to imams say how horrible the West is. Or better yet, restrict Welfare to only intact, monogamous families who are part of the same core demographic as the host nation.
5. Repeal the 14th Amendment or at least the cockeyed interpretation that allows anchor-babies to be automatic citizens.
Polygamy is sinful according to our Church Tradition. It was merely allowed in the Old Testament because that was the sinful nature of mankind.
God allowed sinful, adulterous women to be ancestors of Jesus as well. He did not condone it or sanction it.
George, trying to be funny, and failed. Promise I’m done.
George,
Yeah, that about covers it. As to welfare, you get the point. Don’t enable matriarchy. It’s that simple.
George, Your five points are spot on. The polygamist in Utah are the biggest leaches we have here in America, far worse than inner city welfare cases. First wife no problem, but every other has an average of four to a dozen children. Keep in mind the second, and so forth wives are not legally married so their family are entitled to welfare for 4-15 wives and up to 150 children. What a racket those oh so holy, original Mormons have achieved!
A. I am not advocating polygamy and have specifically said so.
B. I do not know whether polygamy is offensive to God in any way, shape or form; i.e., I do not know that it is sinful; marriage is between one man and one woman; however, I have not read anything in Scripture that would prevent a man [but not a woman] from engaging in multiple “one man, one woman” marriages. A woman could not do this because adultery is inherently sinful, and adultery is for a married woman to have sex with someone other than her husband. This assumes that a woman can only have one husband.
You see, the problem with polyandry is paternity. In a society where men rule (and this was absolutely non-negotiable to the Church Fathers), men need to know which women belong to them and which children are theirs. What do you think all those “begats” are about?
Thus I do not believe that polygamy, where a man has more than one wife, is inherently sinful. However, the Church has generally restricted or forbidden it from early times, bishops having the power to bind and loose through canon law, and that’s fine with me.
C. I stand by what I have said about concubinage. I’m sure it is accurate. However, whether such a policy is adopted by the Church or American society is a matter of indifference to me. It may be a good idea to restrict polygamy, but not concubinage, for the following reason: Marriage is a permanent arrangement, or at least, it is designed to be so. A married woman is thus permanently off the market. If you have polygamy, you may not have enough women to go around and soon face the same problems as our Muslim friends: large populations of frustrated young men.
Concubinage obviates this while allowing reproduction to proceed aggressively. A concubine can always get married later and have her own husband. Thus women are not taken permanently out of the marriage pool.
This just “cleans up” the current situation that we have on the ground here in America.
Alexandria would allow him to keep his wives and children but not to marry any more. He could not replace wives as they die off.
Misha is talking about Roman law which prevented people of different social classes from marrying not the situation today. For example, St Augustine and the mother of his son is an example of this. In fact the emperor Marcian changed the law to allow virtuous poor girls to marry Senators; and later on in the Justinian Code if Actress or Prostitutes left that life they up could marry a high class Senator. This situation no longer exists. The closest thing in modern America was when blacks and whites could not marry legally. This is gone.
No, Cynthia, that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about exactly what I described. Nothing more, nothing less.
The dramatic change in conditions boils down to this: The 20th-21st century West is unique in that we have abandoned the patriarchy in favor of de facto matriarchy and feminism. Thus we have a plethora of “independent women” running around, “belonging” to no father, husband or eldest son, and free to have sex with whomever they please.
That situation is what would be utterly offensive to the Church Fathers and is deeply offensive to God. God is not a feminist. He does not approve of liberated women, period. I cannot possibly stress that enough. It is the Gospel truth.
The entire pattern of male-female relations described for us in Scripture and the Fathers is directed to preventing what we now have today – a diabolical feminist matriarchy. It results in high rates of divorce, marital discord, abortion, single (female) parent families, cycles of poverty, boys who never grow up to be men because they have not strong male role model, and high crime rates.
We need not argue about it, the evidence is overwhelming. We just have to come to grips with this truth and repent.
Repentance is what all these fools want to avoid with their “Resistance”.
Dino,
Don’t be disingenuous. I have never advocated polygamy. Now, if the bishops found it useful in some situation, I would not oppose it. But I am not advocating it. What I have said is based on passages like this:
“XL. The woman who yields to a man against her master’s will commits fornication; but if afterwards she accepts free marriage, she marries. The former case is fornication; the latter marriage. The covenants of persons who are not independent have no validity.” – http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202199.htm – Letter 199, St. Basil to Amphilochius
At least some of the Fathers, perhaps all of them, assumed that there was a distinction between fornication and concubinage. Thus though some canon might be construed to prohibit any and all premarital sex (I do not believe that term existed at the time), it is certainly not part of the Orthodox faith in the sense of being the catholic consensus of the Fathers. Servitude was an exception. We no longer have slaves. Now servants have more rights. We call them “employees”.
The logic is unassailable. The only question is whether it is good public policy, not whether it is offensive to God. It is not.
I repeat: The problem with men, whether married or unmarried, having sex with unmarried women is the support of the progeny. Roman, Jewish and early Christian society were not as prudish as we are. The circumstances were different. The patriarchy was ubiquitous so there were very, very few “liberated women”. Moreover, various forms of servitude were in existence. “Fornication” was primarily harlotry: independent women charging numerous men for their sexual services which thus upset the patriarchal apple-cart by creating bastards with no right of support from their fathers who could not be identified due to the nature of harlotry.
Or to put a sharp point on it: The Church Fathers absolutely would have rejected the concept of single (female) parentage.
Can you finally see the sick power of feminist ideology?
Misha sorry if I offend, I speak to you as a brother in Christ, and I’m not perfect.
Dino, I take no offense.
No autopsy, no foul.
Behold this delicious piece of denial:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/12/28/4597941.htm
Misha, I have never really been interested in all the theories, and predictions of our Lord’s second coming. All predictions in the past have been false, and so will future predictions. You no doubt know your judgement will come, regardless if in the 2nd coming, or in your natural or God forbid unnatural death. So why risk going into sin, and worries with predictions. They do none of us any good.
My only prediction of the 2nd coming of our Lord, is that it will be like nothing anyone could ever imagine. All will be quite surprised not only by the time of his arrival, but who will be put with the goats, and who will be put with the sheep.
Dino,
The reason I write about the Second Coming is that I do see on the horizon an end to human history coming that is squarely in keeping with St. John’s description of the Second Coming in his Apocalypse. After Enlightenment Liberalism is spent and the West is taken over by dominant party Rightists (not American progressive liberals and not “conservative” liberals who have dominated the Republican perty), there will be only two serious contenders as perspectives to understand the world: Traditional Christianity (with Orthodoxy as its most accurate expression) and Islam. The secular worldview that most of us hold, even those who very much consider themselves conservative believers, will no longer hold water.
The beginning of this metamorphosis away from the Enlightenment Liberal worldview is what this whole Putinist/Trumpist revolution is about. The MSM having been discredited, the only reliable moorings for an increasing number of people in the West will be “Mere Christianity”. It already informs the moral and economic outlook of a great many people in flyover country.
Progressive Liberalism – even American Conservativism – has no explanation for what is happening to American politics or that of Western Europe. They are in ideological free fall. That is why you have the Republican resistance to aspects of the Trump agenda. They do not fit American Conservatism. Nor does the rise and success of Putinism in Russia.
There is a collective scratching of the head and “This can’t be happening!”
There will be much more of this to come.
What is reviving itself, because nothing else works in the world as God created it, is holy monarchy. It is an attenuated version in keeping with the fashion of representative government which preoccupies the West. However, a “representative” government with a dominant party in firm control and a strong executive leading is very much like a monarchy. Especially if it promotes sound economic policy (welfare state, patriarchy (anti-feminism/anti-matriarchy, reciprocal trade). This is why Putin is sometimes described as a tsar and Trump soon will be.
But the broader point is that the above state of affairs, when it comes to full fruition in this country, assuming that similar events unfold in Western Europe, will signal the end of the dominant ideology of the West and the death of its binary vision of a strong to moderate left and a weak right engaging in electoral “competition” with the media shaping public opinion.
Soon, a dominant party will shape public opinion in the West through a renewed media apparatus. The market will be there. Fox is a decent start. More will follow. This is how it gradually unfolded in Russia.
As Christianity arises again in the West as the most plausible means of explaining human events, replacing Enlightenment Liberalism’s standard of ever improving human progress with man as the measure of all things, Christians will come to notice what Muslims already know: Christianity and Islam are on an inevitable collision course. Only one of us gets out alive.
This is so because of the way the devil constructed Islam. Orthodox Christianity is the Truth, the faith upon which the world was created. Islam came afterwards and purports to refute it. That alone should tell you that Islam had diabolical origins.
But it is even more transparent than that. Not only is Islamic eschatology the opposite of Orthodox Christian eschatology – their returning messiah (Isa) leads the Muslims to attack the Jews, their antichrist defends the Jews – but the entire focus of their religion, “Islam”, “submission”, is to conquer the world by force or conversion and treaties are always only temporary affairs. It is the duty of Muslims to attack in all directions until everyone in the world is either converted to Islam or, in the case of “people of the Book”, reduced to dhimmi status, second or third class citizens under Muslim rule.
Lately, Muslims have been dispensing with the whole dhimmi thing and just killing Christians ans Jews outright and without mercy.
This lays the groundwork for the Final Conflict. A leader will arise and attempt to unite the Muslims against the Jews of Israel and against Christianity. This will be the antichrist.
I do not purport to know exactly how long this will all take to unfold. 2032-33 as an approximate time for the Second Coming to wind up this little show is simply a guess on my part. Putinism and Trumpism along with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development goals (part of which push feminism in the Islamic world) will radicalize much of the Islamic world in a fashion similar to the animus of ISIS currently.
Hey, I wish I could broker a deal to make it all right, but God revealed this stuff to St. John for a reason. I doubt if it can be changed, frankly.
If you look at the False Prophet of the Apocalypse as representing Muhammad and Islam, you can see that its power emerges from the earth (petroleum) and that it has two horns (Sunni and Shiite). Now, in the end, a fantastic creature may literally arise from the earth as St. John described. I’m not discounting that possibility.
I could go on regarding the eschatology but I will refrain at present. Suffice it to say that the Protestant fundamentalists get quite a few things wrong. The millenium is the Church Age, pre-millenialism is heresy (“His Kingdom shall have no end”). They invent a “rapture” where Scripture merely says that we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye and shall rise to meet Christ in the air upon His Return.
Basically, fundamentalist Protestants invented the pre-millenialism and the Rapture in order to spare themselves having to live through the Tribulation described in the Apocalypse. But there is no escape. All the living will experience it. Many will not survive it though.
It does make sense in a way. At the end of it all, when Christ returns, we shall be changed into our supernatural resurrected bodies suddenly and without warning. One might think of the Tribulation as an earthly version of the aerial tollhouses for those living in the period just before the general resurrection since many of them will live through the Tribulation and be receive supernatural bodies without benefit of a particular judgment.
Happy New Year
Misha many happy new years to you as well.
Most topics in your essay might be and come to be. But! In regards to what is done are earth and what the heavens response will be. In my opinion not much. What we on earth find of great importance means nothing to our Lord.
I appreciate your long response, but my advice to you is that you take care of yourself and those in the circle you love.
If it wasn’t satire, he has gone completely off the rails.
Crazy
Gail, are your thoughts also identical to Misha, not just your prayers?
Well, George, it’s not JUST the sodomites who are the issue and the world is incapable of “destroying the concept of Christian marriage.” It’s a sacrament. No one has that power.
It is equally impossible to rank order alternatives from the least to most objectionable, Misha. It’s a positive threshold. If a practice is inconsistent with the teachings of the Church, it is unacceptable . . . period. Concubinage is clearly unacceptable, regardless of how it stacks up to anything else. Suggesting it’s not inconsistent with Orthodoxy is just bizarre. It’s fornication. It’s a sin.
You all DO realize that for the first time in recent history, “Atlas Shrugged.” Successful industrialists, united with the “Danny Zuko” element, miraculously (and I do believe it was a miracle), “shrugged” the elite. It took a lot of male energy to do that. – Meanwhile, the great enablers of the weak (many of them women; maybe most) are imploding as we speak. You can literally hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth. – EVERYTHING is changing. Men are becoming empowered and that “de facto matriarchy and feminism” you’re so worried about, Misha, is about to shrink.
Dino, you know better than that! I admire Misha as a sparring partner and as a friend, but his world view and my world view are often at odds. Seems our prayers are more in alignment.
Gail, Sorry couldn’t help myself. I know you’re a good sport, so no harm right?
Never, Dino. We’re always good.
Gail,
Peace to you, Gail. I know that this is a difficult period of time for many women and girls. That sound you hear is the height of the pendulum’s swing to the left. When gravity kicks in . . . what I would prefer is a soft landing.
A lot of “math” is going to be done in many heads as we move forward. This is inevitable. The prevailing wisdom was that there is no objective reality. That is not the case.
God is the objective reality: Essence and Energy.
He is.
We know this because we are.
Gail, you are a woman of intelligence, conviction and courage. May God Bless you and your activities in the coming year.
Michael, thank you. You, too, my friend.
Misha, I have often agreed with and appreciated your thinking and arguments, but lately you’re been writing a voluminous amounts, of which much is highly speculative–and this one attempting to justify concubinage is unfounded and wholly inconsistent with the creation mandate and the fruitful, permanent one-flesh union of man and wife.
You’ve lost me with this one . . .
It might be time to turn off the pc and turn to prayer, the Nativity Fast and gratitude for the Incarnation and the offer of theosis.
lxc+
No, lexcaritas, I am correct and wholly in keeping with the Fathers, as I have attempted to explain here. Marriage is indeed the one flesh union of one man and one woman. Subsequent to that union, under Western Christian law, there was only one legal person there – the man. The wife was subsumed into him.
And I do not advocate polygamy. I do suggest that concubinage is an option since it was allowed by the Fathers, as I have demonstrated. However, regarding polygamy, though a marriage is between one man and one woman, I know of nothing that would prevent this arrangement from being repeated by the man. God’s law forbids adultery, so a woman could not have multiple husbands or lovers.
I do not advocate polygamy because it is probably bad public policy; however, Solomon had 300 wives and 700 concubines. God only criticized him for the idolatry of his wives, not the number.
You do not fully appreciate the damage that Western feminism has done to our sensibilities.
The equation you do not seem able to accept is this:
fornication = whoring
Where else were men going to get it when there were very few, if any, independent women? That’s what the original Greek word meant, and that’s all it meant, really. They had a different word for cohabitation.
Hey, I’m just trying to help you become a liberated “masculinist”. Don’t fight it. God approves. It’s part of theosis.
One can vow chastity and enter a monastic setting. This is a very great good, though only a limited number of people should attempt it, obviously, if we want to continue civilization. Removed from temptations of the flesh and Mammon, one can focus wholeheartedly on the passions and ascending St. John’s Ladder.
Or one can choose life in the world, as I have. Theosis is possible in either setting. I assume Vladimir Lossky experienced it based on his writing. I’m sure there are also noetic fathers on Athos and in the monastic communities. I do not know how many of us there are “at large”.
But, no matter. I seek nothing but to serve God. God is love. Only He can untie all the knots that we tie in our souls. I write all that I do out of a sense of mercy and as a caution.
God is coming to us. Get ready.
Here is an excellent explanation of it by Met. Hierotheos. God and man differ in their power and creative potential. Man is entirely derivative and dependent:
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Nous
Misha, stating that concubinage is an option because it was allowed by the Holy Fathers is reminiscent of Mark 10 when it was suggested to Christ that divorce was acceptable because Moses allowed it. Seems Christ wasn’t persuaded by this argument, and neither am I. The Church teaches that sex outside of marriage is a sin. Marriage is defined as the relationship between one man and one woman. If you don’t ascribe to this, you are a heretic. If you’re living in a way contrary to this, you are an unrepentant sinner. I say “unrepentant” because you continue to advocate for something that flies in the face of the Church’s teachings.
I don’t know what you mean by “this,” but if you’re talking about our specific time, it is no more “difficult” for women and girls than it’s always been; it’s just different. The single greatest challenge women face today is having to assume both the male and female role. Women have been forced to leave their homes and enter the workforce because men don’t provide. We are more likely to have college degrees and comprise 50% of the workforce. We are paid less and periodically have to put our careers on hold for childbearing, which puts us at an extreme disadvantage, as we are often the primary breadwinners in our families. We’re also the primary (generally the sole) caregivers (children and the elderly) so we haven’t abdicated OUR role; we’ve just taken on yours. If we’re struggling and more than a little pissed off, is it any wonder why? Can you also understand WHY women may opt for contraception and abortion when the burden of having another child may be the difference between surviving and going under?
Instead of mobilizing men to assume their God-given responsibilities, you’re bitching and moaning about feminism and women’s rights, recommending we turn back the clock so women can go back to being concubines (mistresses) and baby makers.
THIS is what’s wrong with society. Weak men wanting to subjugate women so they don’t feel threatened. Women will never allow this because we know that unless we “keep on truckin” everything will collapse. We are barely holding it together, I’ll admit, but make no mistake, this world keeps on turning because of women. If we quit going to school and quit our jobs to focus on our families, you men would fall on your collective asses. You already have. This sad, upside down state of affairs is all on you and only you can fix it.
Instead of leading the charge, Misha, you search the annals of the canons to find some justification for men having sex outside of marriage. Are you sure this is a good use of your time?
If I may at this point: one of the arguments peddled by MGTOW is that women initiate divorce 80% of the time. This is true. However it overlooks a massive context, and that is that this factoid is a recent phenomenon. Ever since women (were forced) to enter the work force, they began to resent having to bring a paycheck and take care of the family. Something has to give. She can’t be both a caregiver and a bread-winner. And when her husband’s employment prospects dry up then she’s justifiably out the door.
In my opinion, godly women who are in stable marriages with a husband who takes seriously his role as head of household (and who provides at least 75% or more of the income) have absolutely no desire to get out of their marriages –generally speaking.
A very sound, very reasonable comment, Gail. How would you assess the trajectory of your reeling & redirection of passion to date? A heretic you called him. Madonna Mia! You’ve heard Rhonda Rousy got her ass kicked – KO’d in the first round. Scott advertises himself as a martial artist & mystic elsewhere, Gail. Even a beta believes he can defeat a woman – even Rhonda Rousy. Now, as near as I can tell, he is everything in a male you just railed against, yet arrogant, narcissistic, and presumptuous enough to speak as if he were a real male. Who’s supporting him? I swear he can outlast you in this. Prrrrrrrrrrrrr. You are being baited by someone who has a forum & an audience. Better spend his time doing what? He’s got nothing else to do, and he’s bored. Cats toy with mice. Not much more to the dynamic.
justifiably out the door? this view of marriage is like legal prostitution put out for financial or other material gain. HOW DOES THIS FIT THE ORTHODOX STANDARD FOR DIVORCE? if her husband’s job dries up she can work and he can take care of the kids.
The problem Justina is that there is no sacramental or broadly Christian understanding of marriage anymore.
We are reduced to accepting a mechanistic understanding of sexual reality, one interestingly enough, which is unrealistic.
What do I mean by that? Mainly this: that men and women are interchangeable economic units. Never have been, never will be. While it is true that some women can (and do) make more money than their husbands, these are outliers. Worse than this is the fact that when a class of people succumb to a matriarchy, chaos ensues (think the black community in the inner cities and poor whites in the Rust Belt). And then, the only reason that the matriarchy (such as it is) can survive is because 70% of the country still has the resources to subsidize it. I.E. Welfare, AFDC, SSI, etc.
Even in those marriages in which both are gainfully employed and the man still makes slightly more than the wife, the inner covenant between the couple is broken. She often works just as hard as her husband for her paycheck but still is expected to come home and do 80% or more of the housework. The sacramental understanding of nature is almost impossible to maintain under such circumstances.
Leaving aside the duties of the man, how is a working mother going to be a caregiver and nurturer to her family when she is responsible to another man outside her marriage (i.e. her employer)? Because of the nature of my profession, I often have to drop what I’m doing and go to a job site. It’s not enjoyable but it’s my job –it’s how I put bread on the table. When my sons were younger they didn’t like it necessarily as I had to miss more than a few of their football games, but there mother was always there. Their disappointment was alleviated significantly because my wife was available to them 100% of the time.
The point I’m trying to make is that many married mothers who work outside the home have thought long and hard about their sacrifices. They remember their mothers (or more accurately) their grandmothers who functioned as real matriarchs, who ruled the domestic roost and who understood the division of labor between the sexes as natural (if not necessarily God-inspired). This natural arrangement today is sundered.
This is stereotypic, bumbling stereotypy and racism. If you would speak with such authority and confidence that your comments are true, convince me with legitimate research and direct text from the Patristic Tradition of the Church. You cannot.
What exactly is the order of nature to which you refer here? What is its context in this broken, devastated, and fallen creation in which we find ourselves, ourselves broken? The Light “was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not.” (Jn. 1:10-11) You would treat symptoms as if they were the disease. As I pointlessly wrote to Scott, Jesus wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. Why? His creature, formed with His right hand, in the image and likeness of our God, lay dead and corrupted in the tomb before Him, in defiance of the natural order, contrary to His wish and intention in creating us. Scott would have us believe our God is enraged at feminism and matriarchy, and we men are compelled to “take power” forcibly because God despises matriarchy. Well, our God stood gazing into the tomb, observing the tragedy of our defiance and disobedience, and wept, and offered Himself as payment for our choices.
St. Paul wrote that our God desires that “all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth,” (1 Tim. 2:4) but harshly warns us of the danger of those who would lead us astray, describing them as “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim. 3:7) Physicians of symptoms. What to do? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33) Someone needs to state the obvious.
Nailed it, Gail. God bless you
If I may Gail, while I agree with much that you say. It is not just that men have abandoned our responsibility although that is a factor, it is also that consumer/hedonistic culture has both seduced and coerced men into abandoning our responsibilities.
There is a chicken-egg thing going on. Of course men in general have been easy marks and we have been since those indescribably arrogant words: “This woman you gave me…”
Cringe.
It will take both men and women working together in Christ to begin to heal. It is a major work. Chastity and faithfulness are important virtues. Faithfulness being more important if only one is achieved IMO.
Michael, Gail, et al: I just saw this on another blog. It encapsulates the nature of hypergamy that is inherent to the fair sex:
http://nypost.com/2016/12/30/science-says-these-are-the-men-who-will-make-you-orgasm/
The upshot is that as a society we have been operating under the delusion of sexual egalitarianism. It also explains why Trump was able to brush off his obnoxious arguments as related in the Billy Bush tape.
If physical stimulation is taken as a constant, women have the strongest orgasms for men whom they perceive to be pleasantly dominating. In our society, it often comes down to looks and money, but that is the dynamic. Women also like guys with “a sense of humor”; i.e., who keep it upbeat and can manage their moods.
The MSM tells them something different, but it really doesn’t matter. One of the funniest parts of the movie, “Trainwreck”, was when the main character, Amy Schumer, realizes that she’s fallen in love at a party her sister puts on. She’s having a meltdown because she feels trapped and she starts talking for a minute about the best sex she ever had. Her sister reminds her that that guy is in prison. She says she’s been thinking about visiting him.
Women, you gotta love em. They are fairly predictable if you know how they’re programmed and what to look for. Feminism makes them less predictable because it is bs – garbage in, garbage out.
Now would be a very good time for men, in general, to stop deferring to women. I mean, if she’s a judge, that’s different. But, just in general.
To put it yet another way:
Everything that women have achieved through feminism and the women’s movement – every last thing – everything – has been achieved at the expense of children and men.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/1/political-correctness-dies-hard/
BAIT.
Bait.
bAit.
baIt.
baiT.
Be a man.
See THIS is what reels in and redirects my passion, Michael. Stupidity! I can’t respond to stupid and Misha just crossed that threshold. I’m done. 🙂
May I have this dance, Gail?
No apologies Gail, dear.
Just speaking truth to power.
Misha, I’d thought I’d give you an idea of what I am really like. I’m not a feminist, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmEvKXIWng0
:)))))
Gail,
That would be a distraction. Feminists don’t want to kill men. They want to subdue them. And they have done a very, very good job of it as of the present moment.
Feminists like beta males, gays, etc., and cannot stand alpha males. They are attracted to them. But their ideological blinders prevent them from seeing reality for what it is. Males on average are larger than females. Males have androgens circulating in their systems in greater concentrations than females. That is why we tend to be more aggressive, all things being equal.
Whether it is nature, or from God, or to produce desirable results like reducing abortion, preserving families, procreation, reducing poverty and reforming the gangsta outlaw culture of drugs, crime and habitual violence, the patriarchy is the only way forward.
It’s binary. Like a light switch. Either “on” or “off”.
To not embrace the patriarchy is to be a feminist.
But, better to persuade than to coerce. There is a certain inevitability to it that allows for its gradual emergence. Feminism came by turning up the heat on the frog so that the frog was boiled before it could escape. So should masculinism, perhaps.
Or all at once. Either way is fine with me.
But feminism has spent itself.
Now the pendulum falls.
Misha, one can really only know the other sex *in relationship* and based on what you’ve described, you’re seeing women from a distance, almost in caricature.
If I were to view you men at a distance, I might mistrust you, too, but I have been very fortunate to have worked side by side with you, had you as friends and been in close personal relationships with you. Not even Trump sets me off. My favorite bosses are just like him! My point is this: I have known many, many men in a variety of contexts and I genuinely respect and appreciate you. I BELIEVE in you so much that I know, with God’s help, you can fix this crazy, upside down world we live in. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.
You don’t seem to have the same faith that I have in your own gender. You see yourself as weak and vulnerable in relationship to women. Women are predators to you. If you really KNEW women, knew them *in relationship*, I believe you might think differently. I believe you would like us. You would want to care for us, protect us, engage us, rely on us and cultivate the natural goodness and intelligence God gave us to be your partners in life. You would also come to appreciate the struggles we face and how ill-equipped we are to operate without you. Our failings boil down to pretty much one thing: abandonment. We need you to stand up for us, be accountable, and take care of us so we can take care of you. What you’re seeing in the media and all around you is female energy run amok. Behind these distorted images, is the real pain of being alone and the delusion that tells us that in your absence, we can and must fill your role. We can’t. We’re failing miserably and we can’t change anything because we need YOU to do it.
Michael is right. Maybe it’s time to spend more time away from your computer. Talk to women more.
AND Michael is wrong. (smile) I don’t write about this stuff for Misha. I’m writing about women for all you men, especially those of you who are in the clergy, and more than a few of you know that. With understanding comes forgiveness and with forgiveness, restoration.
Moleben of repentance for sin of abortion approved by Russian Orthodox Church / OrthoChristian.Com http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/99908.htm
Gail,
…
I will say this: It is the feminist matriarchy which is the problem with modern Western society. It is exactly as I have described, placing the power we do in the hands of women is completely wrongheaded and antichristian. It is precisely why we have the evils of abortion, single (female) parent families, promiscuity, cycles of poverty and escalating violence. It is the motivating factor behind the gansta culture which views modern Western manhood as effeminate (which it inarguably is).
Nothing will change unless the Whore of Babylon is destroyed.
What needs to be done is to gut the matriarchal legal edifice and restore some form of coverture. It is hard to believe, but the social tension will propel the politicians to do it. You can see it starting with abortion already. That is just the tip of the iceberg. This is not like before. This is a tsunami. That’s what’s got the Left scared piss-less. They are sensitive enough that they can feel it. Some in the center and on the right are not.
I can see it on a daily basis because I reside at the rock bottom of the social ladder, by choice. I had to get away from it all and clear my head. I was self medicating and it was not good.
What I found in my new digs was the reality of what men have become in our society. It is tragic and wonderful at the same time. I’m kind of their mascot and I minister to them in a way, checking on those I know at the shelter, even the cats. I know why some of these guys are in the shelter. I know why marriage is so f’ed up. I know why the gansta culture is the only thing that blacks and poor white men can see as a viable modus vivendi given the matriarchy.
A hard rain is going to fall.
PS: It’s nothing personal, Gail. I’m sure you’re a fine lady. I have nothing against you. It’s just that that is where the line is drawn. I didn’t draw it, God did.
Really George? As much I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, this is WAY over the top. As a brother in Christ, I would admonish you not only not to pursue this line of irrational reasoning, but to find sources for your arguments that are in line with Orthodox Christianity. Hint: You will find none that support this nonsense as being anything other than a perversion of our humanity.
This sort of worldly trash is thoroughly unbecoming of a Christian. I beg of you to stop now.
Brian,
Actually it makes perfect sense if you have the mind of the Fathers and not the mind of modern Western Liberalism. The Fem/Pervs and the Sunnis are the enemies of Christ for the reasons that I have elaborated here. The Church Fathers were convinced and dedicated “male chauvinists” in the sense of legislating morality to protect and perpetuate the patriarchy (the rule by men/fathers). They abhorred the notion of independent women whom they characterized as “harlots”. At that time, that was about the only category of “independent women” there was. The evil they sought to avoid was single (female) parent families with all the social disfunction and pathology that accompanies this lifestyle – abortion, out of wedlock births, fatherless “families”, boys without male role models, girls without models of what a father should be so they go out and perpetuate the problem – just a big bottomless mess. Babylon, Mother of all Whores.
The sentiments of the Fathers about perversion are well known and we need not revisit them here. LGBT has hitched a ride on Feminazi, Inc., thus my term: Fem/Perv. It’s all the same vile crap, really.
Thus, the feminist matriarchy must die. Tragically, it has the force of law in America and the West. That legal regime is what needs to change. Hopefully the incoming administration will make a running start at it.
We certainly picked the right man for the job.
Brian, I appreciated the admonishment. No worries however: I am not endorsing polygamy in any way. Unfortunately, the very post-Christian world as it is presently constituted will have us grappling with this phenomenon whether we want to or not. (And this, btw, is a side-effect of accepting the term “gay” as a signifier.
Take a look at this news story about a woman who escaped a polygamist cult but kept the polygamous family she helped create:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/why-i-left-a-polygamist-colony-but-stayed-in-my-plural-marriage
Instead of running to Christ and His Church (or what we broadly call Christendom), she sees nothing wrong with sharing her husband with her “sister-wife.” I’m afraid we are going to see more of this. And not because of increased Islamic immigration (although this will serve as a force-multiplier).
George,
To be clear, the admonishment was related to the link in your comment above and your apparent agreement. I couldn’t give a flying flip whether the ‘research’ referenced in the link is true or not, nor do my thoughts have anything to do with political correctness or indoctrination into feminism, an equally wretched perversion of humanity that has wreaked untold havoc on our culture (In this – and only this – respect, Misha is correct in his premise, though not his elaboration).
But in reference to that reprehensible link you wrote:
“It encapsulates the nature of hypergamy that is inherent to the fair sex.”
Can you not see that this is manifestly false? Can you not see that this is not “according to nature” (as the Fathers understood this phrase) and that it is not “inherent,” but rather that it is according to the thoroughly degraded, sick, animalistic nature of humanity when it is willfully severed from its Creator? And perhaps more importantly, can you not see that if such perverted premises are accepted as “facts of nature” then every fact of the same nature (homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality and every perversion known to man) falls into the same category?
You cannot argue (as you rightly do) against any one of these perversions without arguing against all of them. And if you accept any one of these aberrations of humanity as a ‘fact of nature’ (“That’s just the way God made them”) you forfeit all credibility to argue against any of them and unwittingly fall into the same error of the enemies of the Faith.
Brian, you are correct. When I use the word “nature” as referenced in this article, it shows that even as a Christian, I have bought into the debased nature of language.
Of course, our nature is one to be divine.
Brian,
What we think of as nature is the Fallen condition of our material reality. Other than through revelation, we have no other reference point. However, even in this Fallen condition (especially in this Fallen condition), God has distinguished between wheat and chafe, good and evil.
Now, it is the Fallen nature of women to pursue hypergamy and that’s what we’re stuck with until the Second Coming. I think we can agree on that. More power to those women who seek to overcome it.
As far as “patronage” is concerned, I take it that no one contests that the Church Fathers allowed married men to have sex with their female servants. We can have that conversation for as long as we need to but I have already shown that they did and that what they referred to as “fornication” was whoring. From the female perspective, it is called prostitution. From the male prospective, it is called “whoring” or “fornication”.
Everything that I have written is perfectly in line with the Fathers. Prove me wrong.
But let us establish what standard of proof you would need to show: You would have to show that there was some consensus among the Fathers that sex between a man and his female servant was fornication or sin. There is absolutely no doubt that God did not consider sex with servants a sin in the Old Testament. I have already shown the distinctions that St. Basil made. He works with these distinct categories: adultery (married woman having sex with someone other than her husband), fornication (“whoring”), master-servant sex (concubinage or patronage) and cohabitation (unusual, but he permitted it under some circumstances).
It is important to be clear on this because the stakes are quite high. Islam is taking over Europe demographically and the US is in a sort of demographic stall that is wreaking havoc with our social safety net. Patriarchy is the answer to this. Perhaps it needs to be phased in. I’m sure God does not want to drag everyone out of the cave into the light too quickly and painfully.
But that is the answer.
The man would be the “patron”. He may or may not have a wife. The other women, if any, would be “nannies”. They would be paid as housekeepers and babysitters, but not for sex. Thus, we avoid any problems with meretricious contracts.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nanny
My conversation was with George. Who am I to dispute with a hesychast of your degree?
One of the significant problems in your demagogic assumptions in regard to the “distinctions” being made by St. Basil the Great,
is your reliance – as near as I can tell – upon the translation(s) as seemingly provided by Blomfield Jackson and the NPNF Series. I undoubtedly should have consulted the PG texts earlier…
“It is important to be clear on this because the stakes are quite high,” couldn’t be a truer statement in retrospect, if only because you are so insistent. As I already pointed out to you earlier this evening, St. Gregory Palamas indicates there is no distinction between fornication and adultery in the eyes of the Judge of the “imaginings and intentions of our hearts.” It begs the question as to why you make no comment that the Lord Himself states, “Whoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, commits adultery against her [μοιχᾶται ἐπ’ αὐτήν]. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she commits adultery.” (Mk. 10:11-12) You would be foolish to suggest that St. Basil the Great – or any of the Holy Fathers – would disagree. Period.
The word for prostitution, fornication, sodomy, sexual impurity, pedophilia (which is often euphamized as “taking a boy into company for sinful purpose”), and frequently idolatry by analogy is πόρνος. This is to be distinguished from the word for adultery, which is μοίχω (μοιχωμαι). The word for concubine is παλλακὴ, which only occurs in the Old Testament, and not even once in the writings of Blessed Basil. And just to show you how delicious it can actually get, Scott, you have these examples from the Prophet Hosea, Ch. 4, speaking here of idolatry:
And how did this all begin, Scott? Ask the Prophet: “They have gone a-whoring [ἐπόρνευσαν], and shall by no means prosper.” (v.10) Now, it seems to me, you should be asking yourself, what exactly was St. Basil the Great thinking when he set these “standards of proof?” And relying on that question, I would ask you to demonstrate to me why I would be incorrect in stating: Canon XXI. “If a man living with a wife is not satisfied with his marriage and falls into prostitution [πορνείαν], I account him guilty of sexual impurity [πόρνον], and prolong his period of punishment. Nevertheless, we have no canon subjecting him to the charge of adultery [μοιχείας], if the sin be committed against an unmarried woman”; or, Canon XXVI: “Prostitution is not marriage, or the beginning of marriage [Ἡ πορνεία γάμος οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ γάμου ἀρχή]”; or, Canon XL. “The woman who yields to a man against her master’s will commits sexual impurity [ἐπόρνευσεν]; but if afterwards she accepts free marriage, she marries. The former case is prostitution [πορνεία]; the latter marriage [γάμος]”; and finally, Canon XLII. “Marriages contracted without the permission of those in authority, are prostitution [πορνεῖαί εἰσιν].” I will venture to say that mine is a purely rhetorical question at this point, not a Google challenge, as you do not have a clue.
“I am fairly confident that the “sexual immorality” that is offensive to the Lord and to which St. Paul objected as being an impediment to the Kingdom of Heaven is harlotry, the original meaning of the Greek word he uses.” Please post the “original” meaning of the word, Scott, but I will tell you that the translators of the Septuagint took the Hebrew “zanah” – harlot – and translated it as πόρνη. Regardless, there seems to be no way out of this but to ask you to take a seat as you have sorely exhausted your capabilities, beginning as merely provocative to walking the fine line of heresy.
Stankovich,
It is obvious that you have nothing else to offer. You keep churning the same tired nonsense and simply can’t face the fact that the Fathers made these distinctions and were horrified by the notion of independent women in control of their own sexuality. That is what it all adds up to. I have shown it conclusively from St. Basil. I could do it with other Fathers if I wanted to. I need not repeat myself.
Go bother the flies. You have no point. Your cause is lost and dying.
Gail and George,
I simply can no longer feel sorry at all for women given the current circumstances and what progressives/feminists have put males through. They do not deserve any sympathy whatsoever.
The problem is feminism, the matriarchy. It must be destroyed. I cannot say it loudly or long enough. It has resulted in the social decay we have today and the low rates of fertility. It is no coincidence, it is the cause.
I do not exonerate men. In fact, unless men in particular throw off their blinders, re-embrace the patriarchy, reject feminism and the matriarchy, and legislate a new patriarchal social edifice, then it will simply continue to stagnate. The only solution is for men to stand up and retake power, not ask for it, not eek out existence in a matriarchal framework.
Take power.
The social forces will militate and motivate toward the re-establisment of the patriarchy because that is the natural order which God created. The results of feminism are so God awful because feminism defies the natural order.
It cannot do so indefinitely. God exists. He despises feminism. Read Scripture and the Fathers if you doubt it.
Despises it.
I strongly suggest again that you close the computer and go and speak with a licensed mental health professional. Otherwise, close the computer, go out and get a job, and actually be a male.
Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (Jn. 11:35) for what reason? His creature, fashioned at His very hand and in the image and likeness of the Trinity defied the natural order and lay dead in a tomb before Him! Where to begin? “But seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33) Wow, doesn’t that sound familiar. You foolishly preach we treat the symptoms of the disease as the patient dies.
Get off the internet, Scott. Go speak with someone. Get my email from Mr. Michalopulos.
Michael,
Give it up, Michael. I’m not going anywhere. You can tell me to stop over and over and it will have no effect whatever. Tire yourself out if you wish. Happy New Year!!!
Stankovitch-
Your posts single handedly make this blog next to unreadable for myself. I really wish there was some ignore feature enabled.
You are so full of yourself and your self proclaimed wisdom it is sickening. I only hope that those investigating Orthodoxy don’t stumble upon this blog and take your posts too seriously.
Steven,
Let me clarify: I am not a wise man. I am a learned man. There is a big difference. I am rarely, if ever, the source of anything I write, which is why I am so scrupulous in my citations. My posts are intended to be rich with the wisdom of the Holy Fathers, the Holy Scripture, and and our Holy Tradition. Obviously, you can’t tell the difference between Orthodox Theology and blasphemy against the Fathers; heresy regarding the nature of the Eucharist and our relationship to God our Creator; and filth and Google-inspired degradation against women and mothers, and ultimately she who “opened the kingdom and commenced the peace,” the Theotokos and Mother of the Light. I am full of myself, brother?
As for you needing an “ignore feature,” let me say that I would have had absolutely no difficulty ignoring you, except you misspelled my name. Ironic, no?
Sorry Steven,
I have to completely disagree with you. Dr. Stankovich’s wisdom is not self proclaimed, it is readily apparent to any unbiased reader. I admire excellence and brilliance; Dr. Stankovich is truly brilliant. I’ll bet he has an IQ of at least 165, perhaps, even higher.
There are nuggets of wisdom in every one of his posts. Personally, I’ve learned a great deal from reading his wise words. May I suggest that you do the same?
ME THINKS! Misha and Mr. Stankovich, need a time out from each. Lost track who trolls who anymore. Are you sure your roots are not Jewish, Mr. Stankovich? You sure do nag like a old Jewish mother, perhaps give it a rest. Misha, no words of advice for you, I know better.
Yeah, yeah, Dino, writing on the wall. I’ll give it a rest. Someone imagining that actually reading the words of the Holy Fathers would be sufficient to cease your fawning-love-sick-like-a-little-girl over someone who says people take control over his mind and has been initiated into the hesychastic knowledge of the Last Days is “nagging like a Jewish mother.” Nice touch, Dino. in fact, delicious. Prrrrrrrrr. Welcome to the world of faggotry and post-modern Attention Deficit Hyperacticity Disorder. Big tip, Dino: it’s cyclical. Remember that. Something bad is bound to happen, but I offered, didn’t I? I will leave your little prince alone.
Mr. Stankovich, Thanks for a good laugh, good to know you DO have a funny bone in you! I believe you to be both wise, and a learned man, just not humble enough to know when to quit. Perhaps also a bit egocentric to think you can diagnose and treat Misha over the internet. In regards to my feelings for Misha, all I can say is they are the same I have for you.
Mr. Stankovich. One question. What faggotry have I entered into, according to you? I understand Misha stated he has severe ADHD, but you lost me with faggotry.
First, I neither diagnosed nor attempted to treat anyone, and secondly, I was not referring to you.
There is a group of men loving men here that really think they have the world well understood, when in fact, they are confused about SOME parts of Christianity or Orthodoxy, etc. And their relationship with each other is perceived as or so strong, they prefer to not speak during times of disagreement, or slap each other on the back when they do agree, or gang up on wisdom. While it is certainly a stretch on conventional faggotry; Dr S believes that references to faggotry will bother them, or he enjoys the references subtleties (as do I). However, the reference is a little to, shall we say, brainy, for most of them. Frankly, when a priest willingly coins in to a conversation here to disagree with a poster, it is almost never to disagree with a certain group of posters who are just ignored. That is the Fraternal Brotherhood of Monomakhos (hereafter FBOM) to which Stankovich refers, where a certain group enjoy slapping each others backs-figuratively, or looking away when they should be disgusted.
Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant.
Anony,
Great perspective! Please slap yourself on the back from yours truly!
Mr. Stankovich, I assumed you meant Misha’s world of faggotry, and post modern ADHD. Again I understand the ADHD, as Misha stated he suffers from it, but, how has his words or actions lately fallen into faggotry? Is faggotry combined with ADHD a new diagnosis which is (Big Tip) cyclical, and dangerous? Or in your words: “Something bad is bound to happen” ….”I will leave your little prince alone.” Please advise!
Please also advise me if you prefer Mr. Stankovich or Dr. Stankovich.
Dino,
Here’s what I advize: 1) pursuant to the findings of the longitudinal Minnesota Nun Study for both risk & protective factors related to Alzheimer’s & Dementia in Adults, it seems that intense analytical activity (e.g. academic reading, logic puzzles, debate, and so on) well into their 80’s, as well as a supplement of folic acid, seem to be significant protective factors; 2) a single daily dose of aspirin (there is some debate if the current recommendation of 80 mg is more or less effective than the “standard” OTC dose of 325 mg) is astonishingly effective in preventing both initial & repeated cardiac events & CVA’s, and in the prevention of some colon cancers (see your doctor before beginning such a regimen, as there are some risks associated with GI bleeding in some sensitive individuals); and finally, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mk. 12:30-31)
And this, my friend Dino, being your first & last “consultation,” comes entirely without charge. Keep me in your prayers!
Touching! I love it when brothers can agree!
Mr/Dr. Stankovich,
Check, check, and check. Thank you, and I will!
PS
Thanks for not taking yourself too seriously. A little humor while still making ones point is always appreciated. Try not worrying too much about the prince. I’m not a Doctor, but I believe this blog is a good release for our friend.
Be careful with the aspirins friends. I have seen an aspirin addict. It is short lived as addictions go because you end up passing out from internal bleeding after awhile and the only remedy is to go cold turkey or die. It was my father, I warned him. After his hospitalization, I didn’t have the heart to even go as it would have been an I told u. He still holds onto an aspirin regimen, just not 2-3000 mg a day. I remember the day I told him he was going to burn a hole in his stomach and he said, “naaawww”.
I knew a beautiful girl whose boyfriend committed suicide. She felt so bad about it, she took 30 aspirins or so. Before the day of internet enlightenment, I’m speculating she thought it would be non-fatal, but enough for her to get some help. It wasn’t. This started out lighthearted; sorry. It is a powerful drug. George is the expert, all I’ve got is the anecdotal, not the antidote.
St. Basil the Great
First Canonical Letter, Canon VI. The fornication of canonical persons is not to be reckoned as wedlock, and their union is to be completely dissolved, for this is both profitable for the security of the Church and will prevent the heretics from having a ground of attack against us, as though we induced men to join us by the attraction of liberty to sin.
Second Canonical Letter, Canon XXI: If a man living with a wife is not satisfied with his marriage and falls into fornication, I account him a fornicator, and prolong his period of punishment. Nevertheless, we have no canon subjecting him to the charge of adultery, if the sin be committed against an unmarried woman. For the adulteress, it is said, “being polluted shall be polluted,” and she shall not return to her husband: and “He that keepeth an adulteress is a fool and impious.” He, however, who has committed fornication is not to be cut off from the society of his own wife. So the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication, but the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house. The argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained.
Third Canonical Letter, Canon LIX: The fornicator will not be admitted to participation in the sacrament for seven years; weeping two; hearing two; kneeling two; and standing one: in the eighth he will be received into communion.
Yes, but fornication is harlotry.
“So the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication, but the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house.”
You have to bear in mind the contrast he is making, between adultery and harlotry. If a man goes out whoring, the wife should take him back. But a husband should expel an adulterous wife.
“The argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained.”
Or, to put it differently, “It takes some explaining, but that’s the tradition.”
Misha, there is a huge difference between Tradition and practice. Just because men had concubines in the past, and that practice was tolerated, does not make it a Tradition. Customs do not dictate the teachings of the Church. Never have. The Church teaches sex outside of marriage is a sin. Period. She is not going to substitute her teachings with ancient practices to address the woes of society. Surely you realize that. One of the reasons our society is so screwed up is because we have a plethora of “concubines” already! They are called “baby mommas” and the “baby daddies” have to support the offspring of these dalliances because it’s the law. Look how well THAT turned out! Irresponsible men, impregnating immoral women, creating a generation of screwed up kids. (No moral woman is going to accept bringing a “concubine” into her home so it’s ludicrous to even entertain that idea.) And women do not “have to have babies.” In many cases, it would be better if they didn’t.
Your brain seems to go into overdrive when you think about these things. It’s really quite simple. Men are accountable to God. If men confined sex to marriage, impregnated only their wives and loved their wives as Christ loves the Church, women would not have the power to screw anything up! Think about it!
Can’t leave you guys alone for even a second!
Gail, we need to remember 70 virgins in Heaven is the Muslim dream, NOT ours!
Yeah, Dino, but it seems like some are advocating for 70 virgins here on earth! They’re going to have a hard time finding them, I can tell you that!
That’s sweet, Dino. But there is no sexual activity in a heavenly repose since we have no bodies.
However, that does raise an excellent question: We will have resurrected bodies in the age to come. But Christ Himself said that there would be no giving or taking in marriage.
If all sex outside of marriage is inherently sinful, hmmmm, that does create a problem, doesn’t it? But if we are not meant to have pure, sinless sex, why were Adam and Eve created with complimentary equipment before the Fall?
The answer to your question is in the fact that you are ambitious, but unqualified. If you had actually read the Holy Fathers, you would not be so “perplexed,” or arrogant.
St.Gregory Palamas wrote that, because it is sourced in our fallen nature, “the flesh’s impulse to reproduce is οΰκ έκτος παντάπαιν άμαρτίασ έςτί, “not all together without sin” (Homily XIV). Both St. Athanasius the Great (Interpretation on the Psalms, 50) and St. Chrysostom (On Genesis, Homily IV, 4) both indicate that the sexual relationship in marriage is a “consequence” of the fall; St. Maximos the Confessor (PG 91:1309A) and St. Chrysostom both agreed that the fall and death necessitated marriage; St. John of Damascus (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV, 24) wrote that marriage is simply “conformity to the post-fallen state brought about by death”; both St. Maximos (Ambigua, XLI op cit.) and St. Chrysostom also agreed that, had it not been for the fall, “God would have multiplied the human race in a different fashion,” St. Maximos using the examples of the creation of the angelic life, the virgin birth, and Gal. 3:3, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?” as proof. How would this “different fashion” have been accomplished? St. Gregory Palamas and St. Gregory the Theologian both indicated that, like the Archangel who could not answer the question of the Virgin, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” (Lk. 1:34), it is sufficient to simply understand that “The Holy Spirit shall come on you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you. (v.35). That would pretty much be the short answer to your “problem,” Scott.
Let me conclude by saying St. Gregory was foolishly dismissed on this site by you Google scholars, and this will I address again, but I am struck by his love and awe of the Mother of God. It then becomes so obvious how in this sick & twisted monologue on chastity, purity, the “nature” of women, the inherent “flaws” and weaknesses of femininity, and the baiting and toying of the discussion here, she is lost to a con game of the pathology of boredom. But these same Fathers, and more, saw her not as a “reference” by which to judge feminists, femininity, females, matriarchs, and mothers, but as the “protectress of those which came after, and through her those good things which are eternal shall be received.” They understood this so well that they concluded, without this woman, their is no salvation, there is no Christ, there is no Savior, there is returning to the Father.
“She began the peace, and she opened the Kingdom,” wrote St. John of Damascus, “and she is our foundation of faith.”
How is possible that anyone who loves the Theotokos – the glory of all women and mothers – is not disgusted with this ludicrous, filthy disparagement of woman, chastity, sexual purity, the sanctity of marriage, and motherhood? Worse is the prospect that this is nothing more than a sick, twisted intent to “ruffle feathers” and bait posters into “outrage” for pleasure – something I believe is the case. What has been completely lost here is that the model, the image, and the glory of women, is not some hipster, millennial, progressive whore who enjoys being “dominated” during sex, but she who is the greatest of all creation, who brings joy to all who sorrow, and is the Protectress of Christians.
An aside to Steven: Is this unreadable to you? Is this me a bit too “full of myself” for your taste? This isn’t about me, pal; this is about allowing the “symphony” of the Holy Fathers and the Holy Scripture to address blasphemy in their own words.
Hi Michael,
Excellent post. I found it extremely helpful. If I may make a suggestion: keep dispelling the darkness with your light and wisdom.
Sorry Stankjoshka,
You are expecting us to believe that God created men and women with the equipment for procreation, gave the order to them before the Fall to “be fruitful and multiply”:
Genesis 1:26-31:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
. . . but somehow reserved non-conjugal reproduction for those created in his likeness and image.
No, that’s your sick dream, not that of the Fathers.
They recognized that the Curse that God pronounced on Adam and Eve and their progeny at the Fall affected reproduction, to be sure. However, the effect was just as He described in the Curse:
Genesis 3:16-20:
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.”
Quit being a gnostic.
It is all just as I have written. The mind of the Fathers is thoroughly patriarchal. If mankind wishes to get in line with God, the patriarchy will be restored and we will prosper. If not, well, we are tempting Him.
I have no quarrel with the idea that marriage is a consequence of the Fall. After the Fall, death entered the world as did scarcity. We have limited resources. Under those circumstances, marriage was given to man to protect his inheritance and progeny. Without death and without a limitation on resources, the state prior to the Fall and after the General Resurrection, there is no need for marriage. That is why Christ Himself said that there would be no giving or taking in marriage in the world to come:
Matthew 22:29-33:
“Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine.”
Get behind me, Stankjoshka. That was weak and you’re still boring.
PS: Leave the Bogomater’ out of this. She does not support your drivel and you have no point concerning her. I revere her and pray to her every day – Bogoroditsa Devo, Dostoina Jest, Vzbrannoi Vojevoda, etc.
Rarely has a word been more fitly spoken.
All I can say is “Amen.”
I replied to this but it got lost somewhere. Here’s an abbreviated version:
Genesis 1:26-28:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Genesis 3:16:
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Before the Fall, God created Adam and Eve in the flesh to sexually reproduce without any sin. There was no evil or sin in the world at that time. None. After the Fall, He cursed Eve to give birth in pain and to be ruled over by her husband like a slave, rather than a worthy assistant.
In the Resurrection, we will have material bodies, but they will be supernatural “spiritual bodies” as St. Paul described them. There will be no marriage just as Christ foretold. As we were meant to reproduce without sin in the flesh from the very beginning, there will be no need for marriage since there will be no scarcity or jealousy.
We will be like the angels in that our material bodies will be able to dematerialize and rematerialize where we (or God) want(s) them to. That is the power Christ had in His Resurrected Body. We know that we shall not be subject to the laws of gravity because He said that we would rise to meet Him in the air upon His Second Coming.
Any more questions?
You may want to rethink your Gnosticism, Stankjoshka.
The ancient commentary to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Creation of Man (Ειϛ Τον Ανφροπον, PG 45) notes that he intended this writing as an “addendum” to naturally flow from the Hexǽmeron of St. Basil the Great, and presumes a “familiarity” with the writings of St. Basil. Your response betrays the fact that you obviously have not read St. Basil, nor are you familiar with this essay by St. Gregory, or you would have simply remained silent at the words of the Holy Fathers. If you are, in fact, interested in learning, I suggest you 1) devote twice as much time to the brilliant, enlightening, and God-inspired dogmatic works of our Blessed Father Basil the Great as you did to a single, obscure canonical point that reflected the Roman tradition of his day; 2) turn you attention to section XVI of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Creation of Man, entitled, “A contemplation of the Divine utterance which said— “Let us make man after our image and likeness”; wherein is examined what is the definition of the image, and how the passible and mortal is like to the Blessed and Impassible, and how in the image there are male and female, seeing these are not in the prototype.”? 3) and only then, refer to St. Gregory’s discussion in section XVII: “What we must answer to those who raise the question—”If procreation is after sin, how would souls have come into being if the first of mankind had remained sinless?”
Now, if I am not mistaken, “joining with the Holy Fathers,” St. Gregory of Nyssa articulates the precise Tradition expressed by Sts. Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Maximos the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, John of Damascus, and Gregory Palamas – Pillars of Orthodoxy and Defenders of the Orthodox Faith to a man.
You stand corrected, Scott. Not by me, but by the Patristic Tradition of the Church. You would be wise to stop compounding your error.
?
I see no conflict with what I have written and the Fathers. You are the Gnostic who seems to ignore the obvious.
I agree with the Fathers that marriage is not the manner by which we will multiply in the next life as homo resurrectus. It seems that the method was beyond their comprehension based on their reading of scripture. It seems from what you quoted that they perhaps neglected, or for whatever reason did not proceed, to “do the math”.
But the plain fact is, Stnakjoshka, that Adam and Eve were created with functioning genitalia and were given the command to “be fruitful and multiply” as I have quoted. That they did not get around to it before the Fall is no matter. That is exactly what they were created to do.
What you seem to miss regarding the angels is that they are “bodiless powers”. We affirm so when we speak of them in the hymnology of the Church. They need no bodies to be as they are.
But man is different. A man is body and soul together. We know we will have resurrected material bodies. So unless you have another explanation for where the additional bodies will come from that seem to be contemplated in the Fathers’ writing, you should stand down and, as I have said, rethink you Gnosticism.
“The ancient commentary to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Creation of Man (Ειϛ Τον Ανφροπον, PG 45) notes that he intended this writing as an “addendum” to naturally flow from the Hexǽmeron of St. Basil the Great, and presumes a “familiarity” with the writings of St. Basil. ”
From what are you quoting, Stankjoshka? This is clearly not an Orthodox statement:
Man was first made “in the image of God:” and this conception excludes the idea of distinction of sex. In the first creation of man all humanity is included, according to the Divine foreknowledge: “our whole nature extending from the first to the last” is “one image of Him Who is.” But for the Fall, the increase of the human race would have taken place as the increase of the angelic race takes place, in some way unknown to us. The declension of man from his first estate made succession by generation necessary: and it was because this declension and its consequences were present to the Divine mind that God “created them male and female.”
Whatever it was or intended to be, it is not part of Tradition because it clearly contradicts the account of the creation of man presented in Genesis.
Misha, the body reflects the nature of our being. Male and female are not just physical realities, they are ontological realities as well. Perhaps cosmic.
Sex is just one rather small part of the entire synergistic way in which are created. The fact that we tend to focus so much attention on physical sex is a result of the Fall.
There is a conjugal element to our union with Christ that is intertwined with our male/female nature. So there must be a transfigured male/female interrelationship that transcends physical sex.
Won’t know ’till we get there.
“So there must be a transfigured male/female interrelationship that transcends physical sex.”
To that particular choice of words, I have no objection. “Transcending” is not the same as replacing.
What do Moslem women dream about?
“The Church teaches sex outside of marriage is a sin. Period.”
There are Orthodox clerics and laity who teach this. There are also Orthodox clerics and laity who teach things like, “We know where the Church is, but not where it isn’t.” Modernist Orthodox are not a sound source for Orthodox teaching. That is why I do not frequent their churches.
I reject your claim that all sex outside of marriage is fornication. St. Basil certainly did not agree with that. We interpret Scripture through the eyes of the Church Fathers, not modern sensibilities. Just repeating that “The Church teaches that sex outside marriage is a sin.” does not make it so. Repeat it all you want.
All of this stuff is aimed at whoring:
“Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? where there are many efforts at abortion? where there is murder before the birth? for even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love potions, and countless other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after idolatries, the thing [fornication] seems to belong to things indifferent, aye, and to many that have wives, too.
— St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on Romans
“What happens these days, at any rate, is not marriage but business dealings and partying: when the young are corrupted even before marriage, and after marriage still have eyes for another woman, what good is marriage, tell me? So the punishment is greater, the sin unpardonable, when despite his wife living with him he is unfaithful to her and commits adultery. I mean, after marriage, even if the one who corrupts the married man is a prostitute, it is a case of adultery. Now, this happens, and they betake themselves to women who are whores, because they did not practice self-control before marriage. This is the source of fights, abuse, broken homes and daily squabbles; this is the source of the love for one’s wife waning and dying, since association with the prostitutes puts an end to it. But if he learns to practice self-control, he will consider his wife more desirable than anyone, will look upon her with great favor, maintain harmony with her, and where there is peace and harmony, all good things will come to that house.”
– John Chrysostom (around A.D. 347 to around A.D. 407), Homilies on Hannah, Homily 1, in St. John Chrysostom, Old Testament Homilies, Volume 1, p. 81 (2003), Robert C. Hill translator.
VIII. Churn milk and it will be butter; Proverbs 30:33 examine this and perhaps you may find something more nourishing in it. For I think that the Word here seems to deprecate second marriage. For, if there were two Christs, there may be two husbands or two wives; but if Christ is One, one Head of the Church, let there be also one flesh, and let a second be rejected; and if it hinder the second what is to be said for a third? The first is law, the second is indulgence, the third is transgression, and anything beyond this is swinish, such as has not even many examples of its wickedness. Now the Law grants divorce for every cause; but Christ not for every cause; but He allows only separation from the whore; and in all other things He commands patience. He allows to put away the fornicatress, because she corrupts the offspring; but in all other matters let us be patient and endure; or rather be enduring and patient, as many as have received the yoke of matrimony. If you see lines or marks upon her, take away her ornaments; if a hasty tongue, restrain it; if a meretricious laugh, make it modest; if immoderate expenditure or drink, reduce it; if unseasonable going out, shackle it; if a lofty eye, chastise it. It is uncertain which is in danger, the separator or the separated. Let your fountain of water, it says, be only your own, and let no stranger share it with you; Proverbs 5:17 and, let the colt of your favours and the stag of your love company with you; do thou then take care not to be a strange river, nor to please others better than your own wife. But if you be carried elsewhere, then you make a law of lewdness for your partner also. Thus says the Saviour. – St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 37, VIII
XIX. For it is not only bodily sin which is called fornication and adultery, but any sin you have committed, and especially transgression against that which is divine. Perhaps you ask how we can prove this:— They went a whoring, it says, with their own inventions. Do you see an impudent act of fornication? And again, They committed adultery in the wood. See you a kind of adulterous religion? Do not then commit spiritual adultery, while keeping your bodies chaste. Do not show that it is unwillingly you are chaste in body, by not being chaste where you can commit fornication. Why have you done your impiety? Why are you hurried to vice, so that it is all one to call a man a Eunuch or a villain? Place yourselves on the side of men, and, even though so late, have some manly thoughts. Avoid the women’s apartments; do not let the disgrace of proclamation be added to the disgrace of the name. Would you have us persevere a little longer in this discourse, or are you tired with what we have said? Nay, by what follows let even the eunuchs be honoured. For the word is one of praise.- St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 37, XIX
Reading through the Fathers, one gets the following impression: What they did not like was women being shared so that one could not tell whose children were whose and so that no man was responsible for the support of the shared woman and her offspring of indeterminate paternity.
Fornication for them was prostitution or, alternatively, they seem to have been willing to categorize things as fornication that caused the same type of confusion; i.e., the problem of support and identification of paternity. That was the problem, the sin to be avoided. That was/is fornication.
That does not cover all sex outside of marriage and certainly does not cover sex with servants. Object though one might, it just isn’t true.
The Orthodox treat as Tradition the consensus of the Church Fathers. There is no consensus of the Church Fathers that fornication includes concubinage or certain other forms of cohabitation that do not qualify as harlotry or prostitution. That which is not prohibited is permitted.
Wow, looks more and more like the dualing banjos out of Deliverance.
Da, da, da, da, da, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Michael Bauman,
While it may appear to you as nothing more than a “battle of the bands,” personally, my mind shakes at the brilliance and wisdom of the Holy Fathers, their absolute precision in choosing the words they did, their knowledge of the Holy Scripture, their familiarity with the writings of the Fathers before and contemporary to them, and their absolute love of the Truth.
In nearly every other thread, I read nothing but moronic, repetitive, empty discussions of American politics which do not interest me – nor my ultimate salvation – in the least. Your posts, Michael Bauman, have become cynical and mean, focused only on the trash of this world, and the creeps that inhabit. And imagine, everyday of the year on the lips of our Father Seraphim of Sarov was the Pascha Canon: “Today all things are filled with light! Heaven and earth, and all the places under the earth. So let all creation then celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, by which it is strengthened!” Not tomorrow. Not after our martyrdom. Not in the End. Today, Michael Bauman. And if you seriously are unable to find any joy or consolation in the words of the Holy Scripture or the Fathers I have posted, I accept responsibility.
In any event, I most sincerely ask your forgiveness for offending you. In concluding with him acknowledged as the “summation” of the Most Blessed Fathers, St. Gregory Palamas, I am finished with this issue, as it has now taken a turn to mocking me personally, and that is both uncalled for and desperate.
Mr. Stankovich,
You are a good sport. You have certainly “kept me on my toes”. No one else could have written the challenges you have. So long as we understand each other, you are welcome at any banquet in which I participate.
I did not provide “challenges.” I provided the indisputable Patristic tradition of the Church in the specific words of the Holy Fathers themselves. You were not “kept on your toes,” but brought to your knees, where, in my estimation, you should remain for positing “theories” of filth built on distinctions in a language you do not comprehend, and an interpretation you cannot even sustain before me, let alone the remainder of Orthodox scholars. You remain a poseur, Google searcher, and rodent.
You seriously don’t even realize that you lost? Wow. I mean Genesis is clear that men and women were meant to physically procreate even before sin entered into the world. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that it will be any different in the world to come except for a few quasi-Gnostic lines that were “supposed to be included” in something Gregory of Nyssa wrote.
Talk about a sore loser.
Ouch! Mr. Stankovich! I guess peace pipes are only for breaking in your book. Misha was clearly offering a toke, and you blew him off, slapped him down(knees), and threw in a few insults, for good measure, on your way out. Hell, he even addressed you as Mr. Stankovich! Now your back to square one, with the prince.
Misha,
You talk as if you and Dr. Stankovich are equals. My friend, nothing could be further from the truth. Dr Stankovich makes you like the foolish monkey that you are. When Dr. Stankovich speaks to you or anyone else, you should keep your mouth shut and drink deeply from his well of wisdom. Dr. Stankovich is an extremely learned, erudite scholar and polymath; you are not. Like EF Hutton, when Dr. Stankovich speaks, you must listen and refrain from your troglodytic nonsense.
Peter,
E.F. Hutton? That’s too funny! I assume you’ve fallen into satire at this point.
Michael S. I said Dueling Banjoes, not battle of the bands.
I like that song. Really good pickers. But it does have a limit when the back and forth ceases to make good music.
I was merely stating I thought that time has come.
” That which is not prohibited is permitted.”
Fr. Florovsky directs us to the teachings of St. Iranaeus:
Secondly, our Holy Tradition is not derived from the “consensus of the Church Fathers,” but from what Irenaeus termed as the “rule of truth,” (κανων της αλιθειας) which was “nothing else than the witness and preaching of the Apostles, their κηρυγμα , which was “deposited” in the Church and entrusted to her by the Apostles, and then was faithfully kept and handed down, with complete unanimity in all places, by the succession of accredited pastors: Those who, together with the succession of the episcopacy, have received the firm charisma of truth.” [op. cit. IV. 26. 2]
You have taken the “gems” of the Holy Fathers and fashioned them into a filth, defending them with “quips” that no more reflect the Truth nor living practice of the Church, and you are a rodent: quietly spreading this filth by gnawing, gnawing, gnawing away at the Truth. I ask again: Who in their right mind would be investing such energy in defending such blasphemy and filth?
Stankovich,
You have no idea what you are talking about. You received your training in Orthodoxy from neo-Patristics who had a tenuous grasp of the Faith, at best. You then proceeded to lose yourself in perverse Gnosticism due to your proclivities. That is why your thinking is so warped and nonsensical.
Scott,
Do you believe in the divinity of Christ? Your retrogressive, misogynistic posts are clearly heretical. Perhaps, you haven’t left your Islam behind. That’s what I get from reading you; a lot of Muslim nonsense.
Peter,
Of course I believe in the divinity of Christ and I have condemned Islam as a false religion and dangerous political ideology. …Christianity was universally patriarchal (what you refer to as “misogynistic”) and real Christianity remains so. Muslims were allowed by Muhammad to have four wives. The Hebrews in the Old Testament were clearly polygamous. It’s not a question and God was fine with it.
As Christianity developed, the bishops, who have the power to bind and loose, tended to limit men to one wife. But it should be admitted without objection that men ruled over women during the period of the Church Fathers and that servitude was practiced. It should also be admitted without objection that some, perhaps all (I have not done a survey) did not object to the paterfamilias having sexual relations with his female servants. St Basil’s letters, for example, are clear on that.
Also, we need not argue that the origin of male authority over women is anything other than from God. God was quite explicit in telling men that women were created as “worthy helpers” for them, so that men should not be alone and so that we might be fruitful and multiply. St. Paul refused to put women in a position of authority over men. Wives are admonished to obey their husbands, husbands to love their wives.
We all know that this is the Law of God, we just have been arrogant enough to reject it. Thus we have abortion, high divorce rates, a plethora of single (female) parent families, a matriarchy of public assistance flowing through the mother, a matriarchy in that a wife can unilaterally decide for any reason to divorce her husband, keep the kids and tax him for support – all at the drop of a hat. And all she has to do to get the police to put him out of the house is to claim (whether truthfully or not) that he hit her.
That’s a matriarchy. A matriarchy murders its offspring, enslaves and oppresses men, created cycles of poverty and violence due to the fact that little girls and little boys have no authoritative role models of fathers. It results in the drug and gang culture of the black community and, increasingly, the poor white community.
All of it, every last little bit of it, can and should be laid at the feet of feminism.
Υπεραγία Θεοτόκε, σώσον ημάς!
John 2:4:
“λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, γύναι; οὔπω ἥκει ἡ ὥρα μου.”
Пресвятая Богородица спаси нас и Христе помилуй!
How is a man having sex with his servant … any different than prostitution?
Isn’t that the definition of prostitution?
Misha, sexual relations between Adam and Eve happened after the fall from Paradise. In Paradise there was no need for sex. It was after the fall that Adam and Eve lost their virginity.
Virginity is prized among the saints. Christ and the Theotokos are the supreme examples. The restoration of the image and likeness of God in mankind happens in virginity.
No, Joseph. It is just as I have described. Fornication is harlotry; i.e., prostitution. Sex between a man and his servants is not prostitution. He employs the servants for other things besides sex.
The other main difference between prostitution and concubinage is that in prostitution we are talking about one woman with many men. Not so with concubinage. This was St. Basil’s point when he prohibited a female servant from having sex with any man against her master’s wishes. The evil to be obviated was independent women having children with no means of support other than selling their bodies to a multitude of men. That creates social instability, boys with no role models and no male parentage, cycles of violence, crime and poverty – just like single (female) parent families today.
It is obvious if you are not blinded by the matriarchy and feminism. Real Christianity is a feminist’s worst nightmare.
I repeat, loud and clear, God is not a prude and “fornication” is not equal to “sex outside of marriage”. I have proven it beyond any serious doubt with reference to St. Basil’s letters. Under certain circumstances he allows cohabitation and his writing only takes issue with female servants having sex with someone other than their master or someone that the master approves of. It is crystal clear in black and white.
Get over it. It’s just an idea to help with the demographic problem. As a practical matter, it will probably work out that way in American society just as it has in all patriarchal societies once we restore the patriarchy here.
I’m just looking at what I see as inevitable trends. I doubt anyone can stop it. God is omnipotent. He only gives the devil limited leeway. You don’t have to approve, accept or like it.
It just doesn’t matter.
If I am not mistaken, you are the one who argued that the singular “opinion” of a Father was of no particular significance in consideration of Tradition. In my estimation, you have done nothing but take the obscure musings of a single Father, writing in a singular context, and contrived an entirely false presumption as to his intention. It would then seem that the only possible way to prove me incorrect is to invoke your own previously used criterion of Tradition and demonstrate to the contrary. From what I have read, and in the comments of others, this will not happen as, to play on Mr. Michaleopulos’ comment elsewhere, “anecdote of the Father’s does not good theology make.”
The remainder of your commentary, particularly in regard to your racist interpretation of modeling for male children, etc. is simply unfounded in the psychiatric literature – and don’t test me, Scott – so your arrogant comment, ” Get over it” pretty much signals that while your intention is big, your capability is not. How about enough of this pointless, ignorant, unhelpful blasphemy that no one in their right mind would claim responsibility for defending on the back of a Holy Father, and we move on?
Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .
Misha,
Servants are hired, and then they eventually quit, retire, or are fired. Being a servant is not a lifetime commitment like marriage. I’m trying to understand your point of view. How is a man having sex with a paid servant who also cooks and does laundry, any different than engaging in prostitution?
What is the motivation to get rid of someone if you like them? The sex would be exclusively with you. That’s the sensible practice. If a cohabitant wished to have her own husband, she could give notice. Paternity obligations follow the children; however, the really important thing is that there is a patriarchal domestic situation. Everybody’s purring, all of one mind, etc . . .
Misha,
C’mon, you’re a smart guy. Even if a woman commits one act of prostitution in her lifetime, and with only one man, it’s still an act of prostitution. Yes, it’s common enough for people to have affairs with their employees or servants, but if they really like each other, why don’t they marry?
Hard truth Misha: “Real Christianity is a feminist’s worst nightmare.” Not a woman’s , but yes a feminist for sure. Go back fifty years, most woman were satisfied at home with their children, so long as the husband supported the home. Slowly it became near impossible for one bread winner to support. Hence woman began working, children put in day care raised by strangers, and Hollywood values on televisions, keeping the young entertained.
Now we have a couple generations, never knowing what it’s like to be raised by a mother at home, and many with fathers only visited on every other weekends. That is if the father wants to visit. Drugs began that vicious cycle 50 years ago. Now the internet has opened the pandora’s box of “knowledge” for all to see the evils of the world, before a child’s mind even begins to develop. Sex, violence, and murder will never shock again, as they are played out every minute of the day for all with the click of a mouse. The days of Caliguala have returned. The Devil and his minions here on earth have destroyed what was once a true Christian based nation. Yes Misha, Feminism is also the enemy of Orthodox Christians!
Vai me !
Where to start?
First we have the eschaton explained via dialectical materialism, with the impending advent of global “thesois”? Perhaps, Mr. Scott has forgotten that the eschaton occurs after the deception of the anti-Christ, and that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
2 Corinthians 11:14
“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 1in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12
Then we have the bizarre assertion that there will be no marriage in the Kingdom of Heaven; but there will be concubinage? Perhaps, Mr Scott should read the entire passage: “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven” Matthew 22:30 Do the “asomatos dynamois ton ouranon” have concubines ?
To quote Bishop Tikhon: ” What an idea!”
So much non-sense posing as Orthodox Christianity! Where are the clerics who post here that might correct this insanity?
The Psalmist tells us “Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men, who cannot save.” Psalm 146:3
Yet some of the posters here are glorifying Trump as their savior, as some sort of anointed Messiah.
My friends, only “One is Lord, Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Amen”
To put your hopes in any savior other than Jesus Christ is simply idolatry, which is the origin of so many delusions and sins, including sexual immorality.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:21 -24
Two weeks ago you were preparing for an armed insurrection against the Trump election – which never happened. The Democrats have publicly accepted their defeat and the Obamas have publicly pledged their best effort to assist President-elect Trump during the transition. Michelle Obama made that statement in a televised interview on ABC. I’m sure you can find the video if you look.
One would think that you would settle down after Mr. Trump’s victory; but frankly some of you seem to have come completely unhinged.
I’ll say it again “Political Orthodoxy” is a heresy and a satanic delusion.
The proof is right here for all to see on your own blog.
Lord have mercy!
This is not a “political Orthodox” blog, Francis. From it’s inception 8 or so years ago, my main focus was on Tradition, Politics and Culture.
In truth, the only Orthodox polity that is truly Orthodox is a monarchy (dyarchy actually) in which there is a symphonia between the Imperium and the Sacerdotum.
Nope! The only true Orthodox polity is the Kingdom of God!
“And the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God, and of His Christ. And He will rule forever and ever! Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent regneith!
Congratulations, George! I actually had to look up “hypergamous”.
Idolatry indeed!
Francis,
Christ said there would be no marriage in the world to come. That we will live like the angels does not subtract from the fact that angels are bodiless powers and men will have resurrected bodies, material as Christ’s was after the Resurrection, but supernatural in what they can do. We were created male and female to continue being male and female for all eternity. Why else would Adam and Eve have been created without sin, potentially immortal, but with the ability to procreate?
You make no sense whatsoever.
Francis, I have told you the truth. I just happened to finish out the chess game in my mind first, or among the first, of believers. What I have been telling you about will happen. Orthodoxy will get stronger and will face off with Islam. Islam will be led by the antichrist against the Church.
Trump’s election is one of the last pieces setting up the board for the final chess match. Taoism and even Hinduism will give way to Orthodox Christianity. Taoism is a precursor of Christianity. Hinduism was an aborted attempt of man toward Trintarian thinking. Their problem was that they ended up with a quaternity: Brahman as the ultimate Godhead with Krishna, Shiva and Vishnu being their lower Trinity. Shiva is the outlier. Jung observed as much. Remove Shiva who loosely corresponds to the devil in Christianity and you have an early sketch of the Trinity.
Progressivism has spent itself and will recede. Europe is still in its spell and America seems to be emerging from its spell.
What you cannot abide, Francis, is that God chose Putin as an agent to propagate Orthodoxy and embolden the West through Trump to rise to the occasion. But that is your loss.
I do not trust in man, only in God. But His works are becoming increasingly obvious to understand. You do not seem to fully appreciate what is happening. It is not just socialism, Marxism/communism and Progressive Liberalism that have just begun their death throes. It is Enlightenment Liberalism, the Medusa that spawned them all. That is why you have the cognitive dissonance, depression and emotional free fall on the Left. They know that the entire American political spectrum was essentially varying degrees of Liberalism, from Progressive to Conservative. What is prevailing now is a different creature entirely: Classical Conservatism, the political doctrine of kings. It alone combined public largesse (the welfare state) with traditional values and decisive leadership. What Trump and Putin are being accused of is fascism. But fascism is totalitarian, not Christian. What is taking hold is Christian government – Christian Classical Conservatism. Its emerging form is the type of government that Russia has now and that America will soon have, “sovereign democracy”; i.e., a representative structure with an elected legislature and a judiciary, but with a much more powerful executive than that to which we are accustomed in America.
Again, the die is cast. This is an inevitable consequence of the last election and the will of God.
What is very, very difficult for everyone including the readers of this blog to believe, is that Orthodox Christianity, alone of all the theories of reality that humans entertain, is objectively real. God is just as Orthodoxy teaches that He is. Orthodox theology represents all reality, not just some theoretical reality in catechisms. It explains everything that there is to explain in the universe that is observable to us. Furthermore, because it is revealed by God, it explains things which are not observable by us.
You don’t have to believe me and I don’t have to convince you.
God will.
“I’ll say it again ‘Political Orthodoxy’ is a heresy and a satanic delusion.”
Francis, “Political Orthodoxy” was the worldview of the Church Fathers. That is undeniable. I am not the heretic here.
Misha, How do you KNOW what God wants to use Putin, or Trump for? Does God speak to you, and tell you these things or are you just guessing? What makes you, and our generation so special? Do you not see that every generation has visionaries who believe their generation will be the last. Let’s use Dino’s time machine and give it a try my prophetic friend. We only need to go back a hundred or so odd years and move to the present: Think of soldiers stuck in the trenches of World War 1, their world is on fire, surrounded by their dead, with no hope of survival, I’m sure many believed the 2nd coming was near.
Did not many Russians predict the beginning of the end times, with the Communist revolution, killing of the Tsar, and the murder of millions, and burning of all their churches.
Did not the Armenians see the end signs with their marches of death, lead by their Muslim Turkish murderers.
What about the Chinese during their massacre, delivered by the Japanese, or later by Mao.
What of the Jews during their round up into slavery, and hot ovens.
What of the starvation of the Greeks during the occupation.
What was running through the minds of Germans, and Russian soldiers during the battle of Stalingrad, or American soldiers, through the battles of Europe, and through the Pacific horrors!
Think of a mother or father, or child sitting in the middle of Nagasaki, or Hiroshima, after the blasts, how can that not be the end in their minds?
Let’s not forget drop and cover during the cold war, Cuban missile crisis, JFK, Vietnam, many thought the end was near as well.
How about old Reagan, and Gorbachev, pointing missiles at each other?AIDS? The down fall of the Soviet Union?
911? The internet? Gay rights? And now we have the Muslim problem. You see Misha, every generation has a Misha, who believes the end is near. I’m sure if you spoke to monastics, they would tell you, to be careful with those voices in your head, and who or where they are coming from. Even Jesus was humble and of course wise enough, to state that only the Father knows, not the Son, when the end will be, yet you even give us nice round years. Lord have mercy!
When you get down to two opposing forces on earth, you know the end is near. That is clear from Scripture. Enlightenment Liberalism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism . . . these are not, or are no longer, universal worldviews. Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism are imperfect precursors of Orthodox Christianity. Western Christianity is simply a heretical offshoot of Orthodoxy.
Think of the movie, The Highlander. There are only two left: Orthodoxy and Islam.
Exactly when? I have no idea. I can’t predict the future in that way. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math if you know where to look. God simply showed me where to look.
And He still does.
baiting I say
Francis, as I noted above the enshrinement of the Hegalian-Marxist dialectic at the heart of Misha’s inventive bit of fiction robs it of all reality.
As I also noted his attitude on marriage is crazy.
No reason to waste time or energy rebutting either one. Good humor is hard to find.
Seriously, Mr. Frost? You must remember the old trick of “baiting” back in the day, when you were given a link and told it was something very pertinent, something that would provide great insight into the discussion at hand; and when you followed the link you were taken to this. It was referred to as Rickrolling, after the performer of this song, Rick Astley. More apropos of Scott in his “Misha” incarnation, however, is the Russian version of the “baiting” phenomenon they refer to as Trololo. Aye! Scott’s got nothing else to do but be bored and compose… Pardon me Mr. Frost, I see the raised hand of Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Yes, Fr. Alexander. “Pardon me, but who cares?” Point taken and thank you Dean Schmemann. Sorry, Mr. Frost. Scott has nothing else to do but play on the internet. Again, my apologies, I see the raised hand of Moot, founder of the 4Chan site. “My money says he’s beta.” Ha! I need to close this down, Mr. Frost, but it’s attention-seeking bait he’ll “defend before a council” (which will have to suffice because he’s not a member of the Bar to do it in court). My cut, Mr. Frost? I’m selling t-shirts of Mickey Rourke in Barfly saying, “Bitches for all my male Orthodox friends!” and 25% to Mr. Michalopulos because this is a site mainly focused on Tradition, Politics, and Culture.
This is a time for the clerics to run. They only get on the podium for applause.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440380/obama-email-alias-clinton-why-fbi-didnt-prosecute-hillary
Just as I told George’s gentle readers in real time, as this was happening.
Look, you all may think that I’m bat poop crazy and that’s fine. I could care less. I’ll tell you what I really am though: I am a very intelligent ex-attorney with a vicious case of ADHD who got in over his head in a law practice and took to a homeless shelter – my own little monastery – for a few years to pray and repent of my avarice and self-will. Along the way, I became a devout hesychast and got utterly hip deep into the mystical theology of our Church and became ever closer to God.
And He has blessed me with the insight I have shared with you and considerably more regarding His Ultimate Reality (to the extent that we can understand and experience it) that I’d rather not share on social media.
Now this entitles me to precisely . . . nothing. I ask nothing of other people. I need nothing since He takes care of me. I’m content to watch His Show from whatever vantage point He has in mind for me. I’m very much like the lap cat that Marlon Brando plays with at the beginning of the Godfather movie. Let Vito represent God, I am His lapcat. That’s all I ever want to be.
So, as long as George entertains my musings, which I am pretty sure are in accord with God’s feelings on these subjects, I will continue. I’m not going to say a word at odds with traditional Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy is simply true. I follow the Law of God insofar as it is practicable and discernible.
Let me repeat myself, “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15): What you have been writing is shocking; not in the sense of “challenging” to the existing order by it unique interpretation of things, but rather deeply disturbing, irrational, and nonsensical. You are making erroneous assumptions and frankly are believing faulty and unreliable information delivered by your brain. These are not the symptoms of a “vicious case of ADHD.” You need to go and speak with a licensed, qualified, professional.
Sometimes The Gospels, are screaming at us, yet we fail to listen, and turn the page. Lord have Mercy!
Allow me to double down, Stankjoshka:
All I have written here is very, very likely to come to pass. It is not because God has shown me “visions” or spoken actual words in my ears. It is because He has given me a gift of insight pursuant to my prayer life.
To summarize: Enlightenment Liberalism is on its last legs. Man is not the measure of all things and the voice of the people is not the voice of God. The voice of the people in the last election was a plurality for nuclear war with the Russian Federation and a Democratic Party run totalitarian plantation of feminism, reverse racism, abortion, euthanasia and perversion. God intervened through a little trick our Founding Fathers included in the Constitution of the United States – an antidemocratic trick.
Trump will govern as a strong executive, much like Vladimir Putin has in Russia. That is the political wave of the future. It is as monarchial as representative government can be. Essentially, once consensus builds around the policies of “sovereign [monarchial] democracy”, nothing else can compete because it is generally satisfying to the public. Relatively low taxes, reciprocal trade, race blind policies, a restoration of the patriarchy in some form and a fairly generous welfare state – all combined with responsible exploitation of natural resources (including oil and natural gas) for the good of the state. Legislation should be proposed considered and voted upon in light of the prevailing norms/moral code of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which varies very little in its conservative forms across the spectrum of the Eastern Orthodox, traditional Roman Catholic and fundamentalist [yes, that word should cease to be taboo] Protestant confessions.
Foreign policy should be along the lines of Samuel Huntington’s thesis regarding the Clash of Civilizations with regional hegemons controlling their respective areas and the United States functioning as a sort of chairman of the board of hegemons. This is very in keeping with Orthodoxy, reminiscent of our system of primates, eparchies and synods.
One hegemonic sphere, however, is going to be particularly problematic and will need to be contained and ultimately forced into “submission” to the rest. That is the Sunni Muslim hegemonic sphere. It will be perpetually problematic because it is guided by an ideology inspired by the devil that demands that its members make war in all directions, with periods for systematic truces, until the world is subordinated to its infernal domination.
Out of this hegemonic sphere, antichrist will arise to lead his armies against the people of God and all matters will be resolved in a major conflagration accompanied by divine intervention and the return of Our Lord.
Details from God Almighty will be forthcoming in the news and in our daily lives. Coincidence will increase to the level that it is maddening to unbelievers but reassuring to those who hold the Christian, particularly the Orthodox Christian, faith. This is so because reality is itself programmed by the God revealed to us in the Orthodox Faith. Everything is guided towards His will, so there is really no “coincidence” except wild card variables introduced by the devil and our own bad inspired by this fallen angel and his minions.
I assume, since God is Lord over matter and energy, that He can transmute one into another and thus do conspicuous miracles. The devil and his minions also may have limited powers in this regard. That being the case, it is also very likely that we will start to see evermore ubiquitous supernatural phenomena as the final chapters of our fallen history proceed. Look to the Christian Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers as a guide to how to interpret these phenomena.
Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, to the extent possible, will conform themselves in line to Orthodox Christianity. They will be seen increasingly as regional precursors to the full revelation of God, by God in Holy Orthodoxy. When Taoists become evermore convinced that the Tao became flesh and dwelt among us; when Buddhists become evermore convinced that only the physical self dissolves at death and that the personal soul simply joins for a time with Nirvana (“not even an empty universe”; i.e., Absolute Fullness, beyond Being and Non-Being, the Dispassionate One) in anticipation of being rejoined to new bodies; when Hinduism realizes that Christianity is a form of Hinduism with Shiva being only a minor being responsible for all the evil and destruction in the world, Christ being Brahman’s avatar; and when Confucians realize that their system is Chinese in character, much like the Law of Moses was Hebrew in character, and that the High God over their ancestral god’s (“Thou shalt have no other god before me.”) is the Tao/Yahweh, then all will resolve into one mindset or phronema.
All may become overt Christians, explaining their heritage as precursors to the Truth, or may simply grow their confessions in this direction and wait for the Second Coming. Of course, the sooner they embrace the full truth, the better for their eternal souls.
Shiite Islam may also be reconcilable in this way, but perhaps not. That is for Shiites and God to decide. However, treaty with them may be very useful in our ongoing battles with Sunnism.
I am completely serious. This is not satire.
Glory to God in the Highest and Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
PS: If you want to see the ProgLibs version of the eschaton, rent the movie 2012 Watch it in light of what I have written here. It has all the ProgLib ideological twists that you would expect based on their ideology though, mercifully, they left the perv stuff mostly out of it. Humanity gets wiped out in a flood (analagous to a flood of Progressive Liberalism), the best and brightest and some of the most wealthy (the Davos crowd) survive in huge arks to repopulate a world without religion.
Sick, but beautiful in their eyes. And the sun gets to be the bad guy.
There will be an eschaton, but our Lord promised that He would never again destroy the world by flood. ProgLibs were in the process of succumbing to totalitarianism, an essential element of real fascism. But, of course, you don’t need totalitarianism (the state as god) if you are on God’s side.
Merry Christmas to all you New Calendar types.
This is really too good to be true, but it is. Obama in the United States on his way out of office signed into law the following creation of a Ministry of Truth in the United States:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law
Moreover, the Europeans are working on the very same thing:
https://www.rt.com/news/371552-germany-fake-news-defense-center/
These will develop into excellent tools for Trump to use to control the press in the United States and for the emerging “Far Right” parties to do the same in Europe once they take power. This will not save the leftist European elites in the coming elections. They have no time to construct anything really effective and they are too scared of excessive censorship to make it really work for them. But the successors to Obama and the European left will have the legislation in place to leash the press already in place when they come to power and the Left will only have themselves to blame.
This is too delicious. The ProgLibs are doing the Will of God without even realizing it.
Слава Богу!
Слава Трампу!
Слава Путину!
И Слава Победе!
Allow me to say a few words about the history of “fake news”. The first legally protected “fake news” story was a NYT advertisement/story about resistance to the desegregation – civil rights movement. The NYT defamed local law enforcement in Alabama regarding their activities against protesters. They misreported the facts of the circumstances. The NYT was sued for libel (written defamation as opposed to slander which is spoken) and later published a partial retraction regarding some of the events misreported. The Warren Court, the source of all good judicial legislation, created a new “Constitutional standard” for defamation by the press. It requires that the plaintiff prove that the press had evidence in their possession that demonstrated “actual malice” (aka “scienter”), i.e., that they had physical evidence that demonstrated what they were reporting was false at the time that they reported it. You can read the facts of this case here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
The problem with the standard is that not only does the plaintiff have to prove that the defendant lied, even if they lied with malicious intent. The plaintiff must show that the defendant had evidence in its possession at the time they published a story, even if it was malicious fiction, which allowed the defendant to know that the story was in fact untrue.
It is a license to lie and it is evil. It is also, at present, the law in the United States of America.
It was a bad decision, giving the press a license to lie and misrepresent the truth for their own political purposes and it succeeded at what it was created to accomplish: It gave a blank check to the MSM.
Look for this decision to be overturned if Trump has an opportunity to appoint enough originalist judges and justices on the high court and the federal courts.
Folks,
You have to understand something. Though I am very smart, there are also a lot of other very smart people in the world. They can think through this thing, piece by piece, like I can. But only those who hold the Orthodox faith have a chance of understanding this. We are the only ones who make the requisite assumptions about reality to be able to process what is going on. For others, they are caught in conundrums created by their erroneous assumptions, their heresies, if you will. That is what is causing the cognitive dissonance. They can’t believe what their brains are trying to tell them.
You are now receiving a systematic message, Scott, that the only observable cognitive dissonance to be found here sources in you: “Either this is satire, or he is really off the rails.” Apparently no one but me has the courage to tell you directly and with love that you need to take a break, turn off the computer, and seek the assistance of a licensed, qualified healthcare professional. What you have been writing is shocking; not in the sense of “challenging” to the existing order by it unique interpretation of things, but rather deeply disturbing, irrational, and nonsensical, followed by an astonishingly arrogant permission to “publish” it on multiple sites. You are making erroneous assumptions and frankly are believing faulty and unreliable information delivered by your brain. You need to go and speak with a professional.
Mr. Michalopulos, when you have to question if commentary was “parody” or satire, and receive the response that resides above me, you are an enabler of denial, not a defender of free speech. Denial, by its very nature and the amount of psychic energy necessary for its maintenance, is a “short-acting” defense, with one notable exception: when it is supported externally. I sincerely hope I am, in the end, wrong, but only you have to live with that decision.
Give it up, Stankjoshka. The game is up. God exists and He is just exactly like He has described Himself in Scripture and Holy Tradition. Let God arise and His enemies be scattered.
You will not dismiss nor mock me with pseudo-religious chatter, Scott. God is not revealed in irrational, nonsensical, disturbing commentary that borders on blasphemy. The Lord describes Himself as “the way, the truth, and the life.” (Jn. 14:6) and your perception of the Scripture and Holy Tradition is wrong. Take a break, Scott. I would be happy to help you.
Yawn . . .
You’re boring me, Stankjoshka.
That’s a lie, Scott. I just reigned you in for a bit, that’s all. Made you, and everyone else, actually pay attention. And on some level you have to be grateful, Scott, because you are out of control. But we both know you cannot sustain it. And so it goes… It can’t be easy, Scott, but it shouldn’t be so difficult.
Misha, please research on the subject of virginity in Holy Tradition. Why is it important and salvific that Christ and the Theotokos are virgin? Why do the saints prize virginity so much?
Joseph,
What’s your point? I know what they prize and I know what they allow.
Men and women were created to be fruitful and multiply. We need not argue about that. What is precious about male and or female virginity is the control of one’s libido in pursuit of theosis. Sex can be a distraction, though it is necessary for reproduction. People are not defined by their sexual proclivities. That is the error of perverts. All sexuality besides heterosexuality is unnatural and perverted. It is the byproduct of psychoses or, if you will, a departure from the phronema of Sacred Tradition. This should be so obvious from the hardware as to need no explanation, but the serpent is indeed clever.
Misha,
We live in a society that predominately identifies itself by it’s heterosexual proclivities. I’m not talking about marriage, I’m talking about lust. Turn on the TV, turn on your computer, open a magazine or look at a billboard, and even though the ads may claim to be selling toothpaste, anyone in advertising knows that the pretty face is usually selling heterosexual attraction.
Also our culture is rife with unnatural and perverted heterosexual practices. There’s
heterosexual divorce, heterosexual adultery, heterosexual remarriage, heterosexual fueled abortions, heterosexual rape, heterosexual paedopholia, heterosexual polygamous relationships, heterosexual pornography, heterosexual prostitution. By the way, slavery does exist in the US. Human trafficking is a big problem that largely goes unnoticed.
I’m amused. That was an interesting rant. I suppose I have nothing whatsoever to say negative about heterosexuality. We reject a fourth marriage. The service for the second or third is more penitential. We reject abortion. We reject rape. We reject any paedophilia. We reject polygamy, but reserve the right to allow cohabitants if there is a serious demographic crisis of insufficient fathers. We reject pornography and prostitution.
As far as human trafficking goes, that was settled by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. We will hunt down kidnappers and make them wish they had never been born.
Misha,
As you just wrote, the Church has some rather negative things to say about certain heterosexual inclinations and behaviours, but at the same time, it’s tempered by a pastoral sensibility that hopes to bring healing and repentance. St Innocent of Alaska blessed the polygamous marriages of natives in Alaska who converted to Christianity, but with the clear message that this was an aberration of marriage, and that the tradition would end going forward. Tsar Ivan Grozny was not allowed in the Church after he married the fourth time. He built his famous porch in the Kremlin beside the Church so he could watch the services through a window.
Well the Democrats claim they got 3 million more popular votes for Hillary Clinton and if it were actually 15 or 20 million I would be more impressed but then shouldn’t she have won
someth’n? She won nuth’n honey. Watching Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC
I recorded it, they knew early on, Hillary lost. When I came home from voting and saw all the “futures” down 5% in the market with the DOW and S&P I knew Trump won, knew it was a positive sign anyway and then they showed the cameras at Hillary headquarters lots of concern, some breaking down in tears, as early as it was, then we wait for another key state, Trump wins, then their told to go home by Podesta no party no drink not get drunk but wake up sober tomorrow morning and protest Hillary’s election lost so yeah, be a good loyal democrat. When the market plunged and I saw that I knew that was something good. Then
heard a state go down and democrats all in MELTDOWN mode, I had a beer and cigarette.
Case in point:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/19/moveonorg_director_anna_galland_electoral_college_protests_are_a_harbinger_of_what_is_to_come.html
. . . and sooooo delicious:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-klein-pantsuit-nation-20161226-story.html
Finally, someone tells it like it is. Assange addressed the whole hacking thing. He suspected earlier that some of it came from the Russians, but he did not receive it from the Russian government; i.e., from a state actor.
I assume what probably happened is that private hackers who were motivated to shed light on the inner corrupt workings of the DNC “infiltrated and secured” the documents later released to Wikileaks.
As I told some people I trust at the time, it would not surprise me if it were Russians, perhaps former FSB types, who knows? One does not leave a business card at the site of clandestine activity. It’s not capability, it’s motivation. What other culture is motivated enough to want to see Trump in and Hillary defeated that they would screw around with this stuff? I can tell you, Russians love Trump. I mean I have seen videos from friends in Russian bars where the guys are shouting about how much they like the man.
I think 2017 is going to be a good year.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312431-wikileaks-founder-obama-admin-trying-to-delegitimize-trump