Articles by Bruce Strom

About Bruce Strom

I was born and baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran. I made the mistake of reading works written by Luther, he has a bad habit of writing seemingly brilliant theology, but then every few pages he stops and calls the Pope often very vulgar names, what sort of Christian does that? Currently I am a seeker, studying church history and the writings of the Church Fathers. I am involved in the Catholic divorce ministries in our diocese, and have finished the diocese two-year Catholic Lay Ministry program. Also I took a year of Orthodox off-campus seminary courses. This blog explores the beauty of the Early Church and the writings and history of the Church through the centuries. I am a member of a faith community, for as St Augustine notes in his Confessions, you cannot truly be a Christian unless you worship God in the walls of the Church, unless persecution prevents this. This blog is non-polemical, so I really would rather not reveal my denomination here.

St Diadochos of Photiki, Blog 2, On Spiritual Knowledge

09/22/2018 Bruce Strom 1

St Diadochos teaches that when “the energy of the Holy Spirit is within us,” “the soul is kindled into Love for God and, free from all fantasy and image, moves untroubled by doubt towards Him, drawing the body with it into the depths of that ineffable love. The Love which comes from the Holy Spirit so inflames the soul that all its parts cleave ineffably and with utter simplicity to the delight of its love and longing for the divine.” […]

St Diadochos of Photiki, Blog 1, On Spiritual Knowledge

09/20/2018 Bruce Strom 1

Like the Didache, this beatitude by St Diadochos begins with love. St Diadochos teaches us, “All spiritual contemplation should be governed by faith, hope, and love, but most of all by love. Faith and hope teach us to detach ourselves from visible delights, but love unites the soul with the excellence of God, searching out the Invisible by means of intellectual perception.” […]

Mandela Talking with the Enemy and Freedom, Blog 4

09/16/2018 Bruce Strom 2

This chapter Mandela titles “Talking with the enemy.” Indeed, the ruling National Party was starting to realize that majority rule was inevitable. They were coming under increasing political and financial pressure, new sanctions were imposed by the UN, US, and other countries, more companies closed their operations in South Africa, banks and investors decreased their holdings in the country, ANC acts of sabotage increased, protests and riots and bloodshed on both sides kept increasing, the days of apartheid were numbered. […]

Mandela, Decades Spent In Prison, blog 3

09/13/2018 Bruce Strom 3

Prison made Mandela a living martyr. Mandela had the good fortune to be the first military director of the ANC just as it started its campaign of sabotage, which meant he was that rarest of generals, the general who had no blood on his hands. His blood free hands allowed him to successfully make the transition to majority rule after apartheid was abandoned.
Mandela was a stoic. He echoes Epictetus when he writes, “prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. No man or institution can rob me of my dignity because I refuse to part with it for any price or pressure. I never seriously considered the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day.” […]

Mandela as a Reluctant Revolutionary, Blog 2

09/11/2018 Bruce Strom 4

Mandela was a reluctant revolutionary. He recalls his thoughts at the time, “I began to suspect that both legal and extra-constitutional protests would soon be impossible. In India, Gandhi had been dealing with a foreign power that was more realistic and farsighted, unlike the Afrikaners in South Africa. Non-violent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end. For me, nonviolence was not a moral principal but a strategy; there is no moral in using an ineffective weapon.” […]

Nelson Mandela, Blog 1, A Childhood in Transition

09/09/2018 Bruce Strom 5

Although Mandela never mentions stoicism, his public and private life demonstrates stoic qualities. Mandela in his law practice and later in his politics strives to work for the public good, avoids strong emotions, lives in spartan simplicity, accepts his present lot in life, is tolerant and forgiving in his relationships with both friends and enemies, always keeping open lines of communication with bitter enemies, but never avoiding the difficult decisions thrust upon us both by events and by those close to us who disappoint us. […]

St Maximus the Confessor and St Augustine, Discussing Problem of Self Love

08/31/2018 Bruce Strom 3

In his day, St Maximus faced problems of definition when describing the Trinity and the Incarnation. Today we have a different problem. Rather than letting the Scriptures or the Church Fathers define key spiritual words such as love, we understand concepts like love using definitions formulated by psychologists. Sadly, we do not even realize when there is discordance between them. In nearly all of the writings of St Maximus, self-love and perfect love are polar opposites, and self-love is the mother of all passions and vices. […]

Ordinary Life and Justice in Ancient Athens, Rome, and Israel

08/18/2018 Bruce Strom 6

The ancient world is very different from the modern world. We in the modern world view life is sacred, today we expect our children to survive until old age, because modern medicine ensures a long healthy life to most of us. If I had lived in the ancient world, I would have died as a teenager from appendicitis. In the ancient world, parents often did not name their children until they were a few weeks old due to the high infant mortality rate. Only half of children survived to adulthood, some scholars estimate that only one in ten survived to a ripe old age.
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Exposing Origins and Nature of the Wiccan Movement, from Atlantic Magazine

07/30/2018 Bruce Strom 0

In all probability, not a single element of the Wiccan story is true. The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a distinctly new religion, a 1950s concoction influenced by such things as Masonic ritual and a late-nineteenth-century fascination with the esoteric and the occult, and that various assumptions informing the Wiccan view of history are deeply flawed. Furthermore, scholars generally agree that there is no indication, either archaeological or in the written record, that any ancient people ever worshipped a single, archetypal goddess—a conclusion that strikes at the heart of Wiccan belief. […]

St Irenaeus Blog 3 Allegorical Interpretations of Scripture

07/25/2018 Bruce Strom 2

After Adam and Eve had eaten of the apple they were ashamed and hid, weaving coverings of fig leaves, a rather itchy leaf. St Irenaeus tells us, “Adam adopted a dress suited for his disobedience, awed by the fear of God,” which is the beginning of wisdom, “waiting for God’s coming.” By his dress he admits to himself, “I by disobedience lost that robe of sanctity which I had from the Spirit, I do now acknowledge that I am deserving” of such uncomfortable dress, which tortures the body. God, who is merciful, clothes them instead in a more comfortable tunics of skins of fur. They were then driven out of Paradise and the Tree of Life because “God pitied them and did not desire that he should continue a sinner forever, nor that his sins become immortal.” God set a limit to his sin by imposing death, “so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live in God.” There would be life in Christ, as St Paul exhorts, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” […]