emperor Constantine

St Neilos the Ascetic, Philokalia
Morality

St Neilos on Ascetic Discourses in the Philokalia

08/16/2023 Bruce Strom 0

St Neilos contrasts the holy men “who live for the soul alone, turning away from the body and its wants,” the holy men who have no need to flatter the wealthy because they live simply, to those of us who, “instead of courageously struggling against our difficulties, come fawning to the wealthy, like puppies wagging their tails in the hope of being tossed a bare bone or some crumbs. To get what we want, we can them benefactors and protectors of Christians, attributing every virtue to them, even though they may be utterly wicked.” […]

St Augustine’s Confessions, His Conversion, Baptism, St Monica’s Death, and Philosophy, Books 8 & 9
Morality

St Augustine’s Confessions, His Conversion, Baptism, St Monica’s Death, and Philosophy, Books 8 & 9

04/21/2023 Bruce Strom 1

Baptism and confession in ancient Rome were very viewed much more seriously in the ancient world than they are today, as the Christian persecutions were in living memory. St Augustine was baptized in the year 387 while the former Emperor Constantine the Great started favoring Christianity in the year 312, putting to an end the vicious persecution of Christians under the preceding Emperor Diocletian, which was only seventy-five years ago.

Although the severe Diocletian persecutions were fading into history, many Christians had parents or grandparents who suffered and martyred for their Christian faith. There was a strong feeling among the Christians that they needed to be serious about baptism, that committing mortal sins after baptism could endanger their immortal soul. Constantine was baptized on his deathbed since he feared damnation for those enemies that were killed on the battlefield. Monica had delayed her son’s baptism because she was not sure he could repent of the inevitable sins teenagers with raging hormones would commit, and he declined to be baptized until he left the Manichean heresy in his middle age. Many Christians in the time of St Augustine desired to be as serious about their faith as the martyrs were about the faith that they sacrificed their life for.

This explains Augustine’s anxieties as he prepares himself for the challenge of living as perfect a Christian life as possible after his baptism. His anxiety was that he could not control his passions, a common concern in a Roman world so deeply influenced by Stoic philosophy. St Augustine tells us several conversion stories that were shared with him before his own conversion story. […]

AntiSemitism

John Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, and the Church Fathers Preach Against the Judaizers and the Jews

01/20/2019 Bruce Strom 0

John Chrysostom is the most strident of the early Church writers in his writings opposing the Judaizers where he warned his flock that Christians should not adopt Jewish customs and practices, that Christians needed to celebrate the Church festivals rather than the Jewish festivals, that Christians should not attend services at the synagogue. His work “Against the Judaizers” is so polemic that it is far more anti-Semitic than the writings of Barnabas and St Justin Martyr and many other church fathers, it is painful for us modern readers to read, we who remember the horrific events of the Holocaust. This work is not in the standard collection of the works of the Nicene and Anti-Nicene Fathers, but it was widely read in medieval times and afterward, and unfortunately was used to justify the European and Russian pogroms and persecutions against the Jews.[2]

One scholar who has pondered the problems posed polemic stands against the Judaizers by St John Chrysostom and also St Cyril is Robert Wilken. In this book “John Chrysostom and the Jews,” he explores the history of the early church to better understand the world of the early Church Fathers. We cannot totally excuse the errors in the teachings of the early Church Fathers, but neither can we blindly judge and condemn them for not knowing the lessons of the Holocaust. There is nothing wrong with reading the Church Fathers as they apply to our modern world, but particularly in this case we should also let the Church Fathers in their ancient historical context, we need to do both lest we have a distorted understanding of the history of our faith. […]