Thank you for responding to me. I am humbled and honoured that you did so, since you are a much more prolific and talented writer than myself.
Your treatment of Orthodoxy I find to be fair and impartial. I would just observe that many of the "negatives" you list are in fact strengths. For example, the fact that Orthodoxy seems to be losing, in a worldly sense, accords with our eschatology: in the last days, as per the Book of Revelation, there will be very few true Christians left. I also do not believe that the rejection of Aristotelian logic within the religion means that Orthodox are proscribed from using it in non-religious fields like science and finance.
I agree that Orthodoxy's static way of viewing things may inhibit personal growth, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. To give you an extreme example: suppose that you have a choice between staying in your small town to take care of your dying uncle, or moving to NYC to make millions of dollars. Clearly, your personal growth is inhibited in the former choice, but it would be the correct choice.
Finally, I would correct you in one regard: I did not come to Orthodoxy via marriage, though I can understand how my Substack article gave that impression. My wife and I converted to Orthodoxy in 2019, though my wife is of immigrant stock.
Once again, thank you for an extraordinarily insightful and well-written response, as well as a review of His Grace Kallistos's book!
Thank you for your response and your insights, Ignatius. Getting critical feedback helps me and hopefully helps others on their spiritual journeys. I would not have considered Orthodoxy as an exception to the egalitarian ratchet effect without your commentary, at least not at that time, and it gave me a lot to think about. I will update the post to correct the comment about how you came to Orthodoxy.
Does it bother you at all that you guys have been predicting "the last days" for two millennia now, and they have yet to show up? What if Orthodoxy just dies out completely?
I recently started attending a Russian Orthodox Church. My husband and I went out of curiosity and I was taken a back by how much reverence there was during the Divine Liturgy. I grew up Catholic but never felt at ease there, especially seeing how they treated the Eucharist, with lay people without consecrated hands handing out the Body of Christ like Halloween candy.
I pray for AB Vigano and all the priests, bishops and nuns persecuted by the corrupt leaders in the Vatican.
I have a lot to learn about Eastern Orthodox Christianity but I strongly believe I have finally found where I am supposed to be. And finding out that my new priest never closed the Church during the lockdowns was especially important for us. Faith not fear.
Thank you for this article. I look forward to reading everything you linked. God bless!
Thank you for the comment, Nomero. I agree that finding a service with a priest who rejected the hysteria surrounding Covid, and especially avoided any shutdown, is important. God bless you as well.
I don't read those biblical passages as advocating equality or egalitarianism. There is still a "first" and "last;" the hierarchy is simply based on spiritual as opposed to worldly categories. Paul used athletic and monarchical imagery that presupposed a Christian community as a kind of divine glory-seeking assembly of spiritual aristocrats, not recognized by the world but known to God and one another. I would say that the overall thrust of Pauline theology is that the Way represents a narrow path for those who seek a higher purpose than the world offers, and that those people in turn belong to a community of the elect superior to all earthly bonds. Nothing in Pauling theology presupposes an overthrow of existing political institutions and when the existing system embraced his theology no such change occurred. Egalitarianism is a modern ideology that stems from the Enlightenment which stems from largely from Calvinism.
Hi Librarian, from my formulation (and Nietzsche's) the egalitarianism started as a form of spiritual egalitarianism. If everyone is equal in the eyes of Christ and God so long as they believed (and were therefore superior to non-believers, a very unusual concept in Hellenist polytheistic times), that radically undermined the Hellenist Roman Emperor's claims to divinity and in turn to his legitimacy to rule -- a radical undermining not offset despite Christianity's claims in Matthew 22:15-22 to "Render unto Caesar." Catholicism provided a hierarchical rigidity that kept this core egalitarianism in check, but the undermining of the Catholic structure eventually led to the secular materialist liberalism we have today. That's the argument, anyway...
Nietzsche's background was Lutheran and his early training was in Protestant theology. He seems to have envisioned the same sort of early Church as Luther, largely devoid of hierarchy and institutional character. This was a very common approach among not only theologians but German academics of the time more generally- something starts off simply and then progresses to order and stratification, and the essence of a thing lies in its earliest instantiation. For him though, this was a bug, not a feature. In any case, his assumptions about the institutional character of the early Church were wrong and his views about pagan religious belief largely romantic generalizations drawn from his reading of Classical and pre-Classical literature.
The spiritual legitimacy of the emperors was not based on their personal divinity as such (few emperors claimed to be gods themselves) but the divine power manifested in their person on the part of tutelary deities. The success of the Emperor Constantine in that sense rested on his framing of that idea in Christian terms; his god was the Most High God. The transition from non-Christian to Christian rule involved no real change in terms of power or hierarchy as such. The biggest problem the new Christian state had was not a Christian rejection of hierarchy, but the parallel hierarchy on the part of the bishops, which had existed since the first century and formed almost a state-within-a-state in the Empire.
> "Pauline theology is that the Way represents a narrow path for those who seek a higher purpose than the world offers"
Even under best-case (judenfrei) conditions, it is Confucianism. Which led Korea and China to fossilise and then be ruined by the industrialised forced of Japan and America. I'd pass.
There is no higher purpose than the material survival of the collective. Everything else is unabashed suicide.
As an Orthodox living in Greece I will add that the reason behind the popularity of ultra-proressive views is the fact that a large part of the youth is supportive of communism and socialism, especially in the universities where they claim the resistance to the nationalist dictatorship between 1967-1974. When I see Americans complaining about the spread of communism in their country online I laugh because it’s not even close to the extent here, they protest every 2-3 days, shut down streets, clash with the police in universities, it’s a menace. If we were in the Warsaw Pact I doubt it would be the same. By the way I enjoyed the review, in my opinion if someone wants to convert to Orthodoxy he should find a local church and after getting familiar he may start learning the related language (if there is no liturgy in his language of course). Also about your last point I don’t think religion is the only force to defeat the globohomo, real pious people share a lot in common among themselves independent of affiliation so we should overcome these obstacles.
Thank you for the comment, Chadbertarian. This is an interesting perspective. From what I have seen the Eastern European countries who were in the Warsaw Pact and who suffered under communism have been more resistant to the race/gender/sexual orientation egalitarianism that is rapidly destroying the West -- they've seen the results of such ideologies, and they seem to prefer to put their head down and focus on actual living in the present as opposed to promises of future utopia. It is a healthy approach. “The future is the only transcendental value for men without God.” - Albert Camus, The Rebel
You are spot on that, Eastern Europeans don’t believe in pure ideological dogmatism and instead try to adapt to the current conditions and improve their positions. Their progress is quite discernible, if you go to northern Greek regions you can see that many recent holiday resorts have been built by Bulgarians and in most areas tourism depends on the inflow of people from other Balkan countries. Meanwhile, the average Greek is rushing to apply for the trending welfare check, food or a gasoline pass depending on the period. By the way, I am an IR student and I am not sure about the demographics of your audience but I wanted to say that I have been following you for some months and you never disappoint with your class content. All the best in the future!
I would add that monotheism with an all-power and omniscient and all-good makes no sense metaphysically. Evil cannot be adequately explained. You need a foil. Dualism makes more sense. It is at least logically consistent.
i often hear this argument from abrahamists, "but muh free will though" and I would struggle to concisely explain why this is not an explanation for anything. this prompted me to start writing an article that kept getting bigger and bigger until i have an almost-done book on the question of evil. you wrote an essay about it too i believe?
Your book sounds really interesting and I look forward to reading it. The problem of evil is endlessly fascinating we are hit with examples of it daily. To your question, I see free will and an omniscient God as being fundamentally contradictory. If God knows what you will choose ahead of time (as he is outside of space and time) as well as God being omnipotent, free will is simply an illusion.
Yes and free will doesn’t explain the existence of evil. To have a choice between an and b there first needs to be a and b. If Yahweh is the creator of everything then he created b which is evil. But how can a good god create evil? Ah well the Christians just said that evil doesn’t exist. Check and mate.
The traditional Christian perspective is that evil is simply the absence of good/God's light. But that has its own problems, namely (1) how can the absence of something still not be God's creation (as you state), and (2) the traditional perspective denies reincarnation, so what happens to children who die young and invalids who have no chance to choose? Purgatory until Judgment Day is an unsatisfactory answer...
The best fit I can see is simply that the universe is run by a set of amoral physical laws as an arena so that the assholes can get sorted out in the afterlife having their hearts weighed on the Scale of Ma'at, but the only thing you really have empirical evidence for is the universe and the physical laws. Plus you still have to ask why evil people would be allowed to come into existence in the first place if the only purpose is for a god to amuse himself tossing them into hell, which is a rather sadistic pastime for the divine.
Schopenhauer: "As a reliable compass for orienting yourself in life nothing is more useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place of atonement, a sort of penal colony. When you have done this you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments, and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected but will find them entirely in order, well knowing that each of us is here being punished for his existence and each in his own particular way."
In the news today, the biggest religious conflict is of course between Jews and Muslims in Israel and Palestine. But underlying that is the leftist claim that supporting the Muslims is "decolonization".
If the leftists want to decolonize something, they should start with Constantinople. It was the first Christian city in the world. Muslims conquered it by force, enslaved the people, and colonized it.
If the leftists oppose colonialism, why don't they demand that Constantinople (which the colonizers call "Istanbul") be freed from Muslim rule and returned to Eastern Orthodox control, and the Turkish colonizers wiped out?
TBH I’ve never really seen statistics of homosexuality meaning much since it always feels like the data is all over the place and you can synthesize just about any conclusions from it.
The better indicators are always going to marriage, abortion, family and STDs.
No one would call the Middle-East anything but homophobic, but yet nevertheless they are plagued by their own host of degeneracies and social maladies, even if they do have their redeeming qualities.
For Russia in particular simply look at the rate of abortions, STDs and divorce. That to me is a lot more telling.
Even though I practice in a Buddha school these days, I grew up in Eastern Orthodoxy and I still maintain an interest. In fact, I hold the view that Christianity is, in a larger sense, a Buddha school (not Shakyamuni’s Buddhism as it’s known today) but that’s another discussion (Greek Buddha by Beckwith barely scratches the surface). This summation of the Orthodox faith in your article is about as good as can be. There are some things that could be mentioned but probably beyond the scope of this essay. Things of a more metaphysical nature, like the uniquely Orthodox experience of God/Christ as Light (the Tabor Light), which also has parallels in Buddhism. In any case, having just finished reading Father George Calciu’s book (Interviews, Homilies and Talks), here’s a couple of (meta)quotes from the book that stood out for me. On the meaning of suffering Calciu quotes Paul Claudel, who writes that “Christ did not come into the world to eliminate suffering... he came to fill human suffering with His presence,” so here you have an Orthodox agreeing with a Catholic. Then on the nature of Communion he quotes Staniloae (another giant figure in modern Orthodoxy) who used to say that “If I walk on the street after the Holy Liturgy and I see a priest and an angel coming out of the church, I bow before the priest, not before the angel”. Interesting to dig into Calciu’s (and Staniloae’s) political background/affiliations (rarely mentioned in their books for obvious reasons)... Again, these are just a couple random notes. Great article, as usual!
Nice response, Max, thanks for sharing a bit of your story and Father George Calciu's and for those quotes. Calciu does have an interesting background. How did you transition from Eastern Orthodoxy to Buddhism?
Interestingly it was an experience of light, which I may write about at some point, maybe even here on Substack. Suffice to say that for something that transformative to happen it generally has to hit you on a very deep level, some place beyond reason’s reaches. Even Christianity spread like wildfire because it touched people’s hearts, not because it won some theological debate. All the unpacking (the writing, the reasoning, the dogma etc) comes after the ‘event’ (which in my case was not really an apostasy but rather a widening of the frame, as it were...)
Interesting essay, packed with info which needs to be digested. But right off the bat, this:
"This was initially intended on a spiritual level to undermine the Roman Emperor’s claim to divinity, but in recent centuries evolved to mean on the physical plane as well."
The reminds me of what some "conservative" writers say about the Declaration's "All men are created equal" : that it's really just a piece of rhetoric intended to undermine the divine right of kings to rulership (and thus allowing George III to be rightfully dismissed). The idea was that there would be no kings among us, rather than the obvious falsehood that "everyone is equal" in everyway, but the latter interpretation has come to be standard, even among "Straussian" conservatives.
For example, the Anglican church in the US evolved into the Episcopal Church, which is "episcopal" in the sense that there are only bishops, no archbishops, cardinals and no Pope. But of course, there ARE bishops. Interestingly, Judaism and Islam work the same way, no Popes, everyone is simply a believer, but they do have rabbis, imams, etc. recognized as having some kind of authority.
> Interestingly, Judaism and Islam work the same way, no Popes, everyone is simply a believer, but they do have rabbis, imams, etc. recognized as having some kind of authority.
Well Islam had a Caliph until a century ago. Judaism had the priesthood until the destruction of the temple, technically it still does although they currently play a largely ceremonial role.
I'll have to read up on this Caliph stuff. About priests, that's the thing, the destruction of the temple put an end to the priesthood, since no sacrifices could be offered, and Judaism was reorganized into "Rabbinic Judaism" which we have today. Rabbis function like gurus or wise men; they're just employees of each congregation, hired by the board, like a business; they can be fired if their get too troublesome, or else you can just go to another synagogue (some of which, oddly enough, are called "temples")
Now, the Catholics (and I suppose the Orthodox) still have priests, since they claim that the Eucharist is a real sacrifice, so you have all the rituals, bells, incense, blood/wine, etc. Protestants reject all that, to a greater or lesser degree, hence all the denominations, but all sharing a "congregational" structure with Jews (one denomination is even just called "Congregational") to whatever extent they reject sacrificialism. As ususual, Anglican/Episcopalism is a little of both, having kinda/sorta priests and bishops but nothing else. Mormons I don't know about, but they do seem to have priests and a big Temple.
This is actually the most important topic on Earth right now, because the unpleasantness in the ME is entirely based on groups warring over the Temple Mount. There's a group of ultra-Jews who want to actually rebuild the Temple and start offering sacrifices again, supported by American Evangelicals who think this is what's needed to bring back Christ. Each group thinks the other will then be either wiped out or will convert to the other side, so they are happy to help each other bring about Armageddon.
So Catholics/Orthodox/Anglicans have priests who sacrifice Jesus all day long, while the Evangelical Protestants/Jews think we need to rebuild the Temple so Jesus can come back. I guess that makes the former less troublesome, but if you focus on this stuff rather than St. Thomas etc. it does seem that Christianity wasn't a good idea after all.
> Protestants reject all that, to a greater or lesser degree, hence all the denominations, but all sharing a "congregational" structure with Jews (one denomination is even just called "Congregational") to whatever extent they reject sacrificialism.
In practice, I suspect one of the most important (frequently unrecognized) structure in many denominations is how they structure their seminaries, for that is who many were infiltrated by modernism.
> As ususual, Anglican/Episcopalism is a little of both, having kinda/sorta priests and bishops but nothing else.
Right you are! I went too far, and they didn't go that far, part of their "kinda Catholic" doctrines.
I should have remembered this from my time working at an Episcopalian charity. Soon after coming aboard, I referred to someone unknown to me as an "Archbishop," since he was in some big city like Chicago or LA or something. I was then instructed in the correct nomenclature. Nothing Episcopalians like more than telling ignorant sons of immigrants what every Real American knows.
This also gives me the chance to retail this anecdote: So, I guess the Archbishop of Canterbury is the head Anglican, and his Episcopal counterpart is a mere "Presiding Bishop" elected every ten years. So when Harry and Meghan wed, they had this guy go over to give a sermon; probably because he's black, as well as being head of the EC. So everyone at the charity was miffed by how the BBC and other media outlets called this unknown guy "a preacher from Chicago." No so much fun being on the other end of the snoot, eh?
"A religion that is static and unchanging seems like it will always lag behind in the times, which may be a good thing (as it resists the egalitarian ratchet effect) but it also makes it susceptible to falling behind technologically, which requires a belief in the power of transformative and rapid change to advance. "
I'll note that Nikola Tesla was Eastern Orthodox. How much of an active member he was is under both debate and historical rewriting from everyone but the Serbian church says he qualifies for canonized sainthood if they can get his ash remains back. He did also live a life reminiscent of celibate monasticism.
All that to say that the EO mindset may hinder technological growth but it also resists the corrosive influence of soyence - the politically correct regime of wrong science such as Einstein, moneyed doctored studies, transgender theory and so on which may leave it better off by default to discover unbiased aspects of reality.
Some elements from your strengths contradict each other. For example one of the strengths you list is "The potential for revolutionary change" rather contradicting the rest of your article which emphasizes Orthodoxy's stability.
Word choice could have been better on that one, thanks. The point is that if globohomo fails (which it has few indications of happening) Orthodoxy offers a comprehensive alternative structure and worldview ready to step into the picture to fill that void, whereas other religions, corrupted by the same secular and rationalist forces, are likely not.
Consider that the Orthodox also call him Saint and yet he does not appear to have any deviation doctrinally with what later became considered controversial when expressed in the Filioque.
Haven't read the post yet. It has been my impression that Russia is to Europe is what Galicia is to Russia - its schizo, parochial, redneck, idiot part. The real Europe was England and Germany - Germany went pagan, and was killed by its sister England who proceeded to do... what is going on now.
There is little point trying to put one's hopes in Poland or Russia aside from their arguably European genetic heritage. Intellectually, they are brain-damaged and hopeless. They were never alive. And even genetics-wise, they are no Nordic barbarians that preserved Roman heritage in whatever mangled by Christianity form it was continued.
...And to anyone acting autistically-surprised why I mentioned Russia - it's because the Orthodox religion does not exist outside the bounds of Russia in anything approaching the European level of sophistication. Pardon me, Syrian cave-dwellers do not count. Westerners seem somewhat autistic talking about "Orthodoxy" when it's a religion bound to certain blood and soil - no matter how mutt in this case. Of course, this tendency is reinforced by the rootless cosmopolitan nature of America - with random Hindu temples popping up in New Jersey, and nobody pulling out the pitch-forks.
César Tort, no matter how delusional, at least admonishes White Nationalists for not creating a political party. And I talk of "White Juche" partially to underline how fantastical Aryan revival looks like at this point under these circumstances.
Orthodox Russia has given us anarchism, Bolshevism, and a castration movement (skoptsy). I'll pass.
On another note, I've had an idea that I have no clue as to whether to voice it, so maybe you might ponder it. - What is going to be the fate of modern woke-ass astronomical nomenclature? I have randomly obeyed the YouTube algorithm, and what do I see? A crater on Mercury named in honour of a Haitian Negro toilet! Right next to a Mexican black fæces sink.
Am I the only one on the planet wondering how the future Sino-Korean civilisation changes it all to comprehensible-to-a-healthy-person hanzi in a post-Christian future? They may also feel free to rename that abominable name ʻOumuamua to Rama... unless tensions with India prevent it, haha.
Hi Adunai, one of the criticisms mentioned in the article is that Orthodoxy is tied to ethnicity/nationalism which makes it difficult to join, and that Orthodoxy is likely to continue to lose on the material plane. Regarding NASA, it claimed a number of years ago that Islamic outreach was their top goal in 2010: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-new-mission-for-nasa-reach-out-to-muslim-world . So space has been ruined and skinsuited for a long time. I'm a fan of and impressed by what SpaceX is doing, though.
> "space has been ruined and skinsuited for a long time."
Of course, I meant the future where America bites the dust, and the Asians pick up from the ashes. I just marvel at the idea of renaming all those craters named after dead black women (Copernicus may stay). The Muslims are somewhat irrelevant as I doubt them to have any interest in piloting spacecraft - unless to do 9/11 against Chinese space habitats.
Unless any of that is bunk, and we reach AGI in the next couple of years. It feels so schizophrenic to talk about the future and culture and war when the next steam-engine train may be invented. César Tort for one gets hung up on the notion of consciousness, whatever that means. Others outright ignore it. Methinks, it will come to your beloved banking cartel to show the wonders of AI to the dim masses, hehe.
The fall and decline of the Roosh forum serves as a reminder that right now Christians only cry about free speech because they're the ones being censored, same as the Progressives and Jews crying about free speech back when they were censored. Given the opportunity, true believers always become totalitarian.
I don't even fault them for this. Any society is going to have limits on speech in order to promote whatever its core values are and deny whatever its core values are against. America's "freedom of speech" was curtailed historically in many ways, such as denying publication to disfavored books, limiting and curtailing people's abilities to organize, controlling the messaging through the MSM (which had a monopoly until the internet, etc.). Douglass Mackey definitely doesn't feel like he has free speech.
The issue I had was its momentum -- if the goal is simply "pursuit of whatever Roosh thinks", then the forum would have long-term problems (and it did). If the goal was to convert and proselytize, or at least for believers of various stripes to support each other, then it needed a much more "open tent" approach. There is a successor forum run by others at https://christisking.eu/ and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Running a forum is difficult.
Totally, but the forum had started out as a PUA forum and then slowly morphed into mainly political discussion, only taking a 90 degree turn into Christianity when Roosh had his soul saved. The forum produced way more right-wing dissidents than it did Christians though, since the sudden religious edicts on what could be discussed drove off practically everyone who wasn't already religious. In comparison the shift from game to politics was allowed to happen organically.
Thank you for responding to me. I am humbled and honoured that you did so, since you are a much more prolific and talented writer than myself.
Your treatment of Orthodoxy I find to be fair and impartial. I would just observe that many of the "negatives" you list are in fact strengths. For example, the fact that Orthodoxy seems to be losing, in a worldly sense, accords with our eschatology: in the last days, as per the Book of Revelation, there will be very few true Christians left. I also do not believe that the rejection of Aristotelian logic within the religion means that Orthodox are proscribed from using it in non-religious fields like science and finance.
I agree that Orthodoxy's static way of viewing things may inhibit personal growth, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. To give you an extreme example: suppose that you have a choice between staying in your small town to take care of your dying uncle, or moving to NYC to make millions of dollars. Clearly, your personal growth is inhibited in the former choice, but it would be the correct choice.
Finally, I would correct you in one regard: I did not come to Orthodoxy via marriage, though I can understand how my Substack article gave that impression. My wife and I converted to Orthodoxy in 2019, though my wife is of immigrant stock.
Once again, thank you for an extraordinarily insightful and well-written response, as well as a review of His Grace Kallistos's book!
Thank you for your response and your insights, Ignatius. Getting critical feedback helps me and hopefully helps others on their spiritual journeys. I would not have considered Orthodoxy as an exception to the egalitarian ratchet effect without your commentary, at least not at that time, and it gave me a lot to think about. I will update the post to correct the comment about how you came to Orthodoxy.
Does it bother you at all that you guys have been predicting "the last days" for two millennia now, and they have yet to show up? What if Orthodoxy just dies out completely?
I recently started attending a Russian Orthodox Church. My husband and I went out of curiosity and I was taken a back by how much reverence there was during the Divine Liturgy. I grew up Catholic but never felt at ease there, especially seeing how they treated the Eucharist, with lay people without consecrated hands handing out the Body of Christ like Halloween candy.
I pray for AB Vigano and all the priests, bishops and nuns persecuted by the corrupt leaders in the Vatican.
I have a lot to learn about Eastern Orthodox Christianity but I strongly believe I have finally found where I am supposed to be. And finding out that my new priest never closed the Church during the lockdowns was especially important for us. Faith not fear.
Thank you for this article. I look forward to reading everything you linked. God bless!
Thank you for the comment, Nomero. I agree that finding a service with a priest who rejected the hysteria surrounding Covid, and especially avoided any shutdown, is important. God bless you as well.
I don't read those biblical passages as advocating equality or egalitarianism. There is still a "first" and "last;" the hierarchy is simply based on spiritual as opposed to worldly categories. Paul used athletic and monarchical imagery that presupposed a Christian community as a kind of divine glory-seeking assembly of spiritual aristocrats, not recognized by the world but known to God and one another. I would say that the overall thrust of Pauline theology is that the Way represents a narrow path for those who seek a higher purpose than the world offers, and that those people in turn belong to a community of the elect superior to all earthly bonds. Nothing in Pauling theology presupposes an overthrow of existing political institutions and when the existing system embraced his theology no such change occurred. Egalitarianism is a modern ideology that stems from the Enlightenment which stems from largely from Calvinism.
Hi Librarian, from my formulation (and Nietzsche's) the egalitarianism started as a form of spiritual egalitarianism. If everyone is equal in the eyes of Christ and God so long as they believed (and were therefore superior to non-believers, a very unusual concept in Hellenist polytheistic times), that radically undermined the Hellenist Roman Emperor's claims to divinity and in turn to his legitimacy to rule -- a radical undermining not offset despite Christianity's claims in Matthew 22:15-22 to "Render unto Caesar." Catholicism provided a hierarchical rigidity that kept this core egalitarianism in check, but the undermining of the Catholic structure eventually led to the secular materialist liberalism we have today. That's the argument, anyway...
Nietzsche's background was Lutheran and his early training was in Protestant theology. He seems to have envisioned the same sort of early Church as Luther, largely devoid of hierarchy and institutional character. This was a very common approach among not only theologians but German academics of the time more generally- something starts off simply and then progresses to order and stratification, and the essence of a thing lies in its earliest instantiation. For him though, this was a bug, not a feature. In any case, his assumptions about the institutional character of the early Church were wrong and his views about pagan religious belief largely romantic generalizations drawn from his reading of Classical and pre-Classical literature.
The spiritual legitimacy of the emperors was not based on their personal divinity as such (few emperors claimed to be gods themselves) but the divine power manifested in their person on the part of tutelary deities. The success of the Emperor Constantine in that sense rested on his framing of that idea in Christian terms; his god was the Most High God. The transition from non-Christian to Christian rule involved no real change in terms of power or hierarchy as such. The biggest problem the new Christian state had was not a Christian rejection of hierarchy, but the parallel hierarchy on the part of the bishops, which had existed since the first century and formed almost a state-within-a-state in the Empire.
> "Pauline theology is that the Way represents a narrow path for those who seek a higher purpose than the world offers"
Even under best-case (judenfrei) conditions, it is Confucianism. Which led Korea and China to fossilise and then be ruined by the industrialised forced of Japan and America. I'd pass.
There is no higher purpose than the material survival of the collective. Everything else is unabashed suicide.
As an Orthodox living in Greece I will add that the reason behind the popularity of ultra-proressive views is the fact that a large part of the youth is supportive of communism and socialism, especially in the universities where they claim the resistance to the nationalist dictatorship between 1967-1974. When I see Americans complaining about the spread of communism in their country online I laugh because it’s not even close to the extent here, they protest every 2-3 days, shut down streets, clash with the police in universities, it’s a menace. If we were in the Warsaw Pact I doubt it would be the same. By the way I enjoyed the review, in my opinion if someone wants to convert to Orthodoxy he should find a local church and after getting familiar he may start learning the related language (if there is no liturgy in his language of course). Also about your last point I don’t think religion is the only force to defeat the globohomo, real pious people share a lot in common among themselves independent of affiliation so we should overcome these obstacles.
Thank you for the comment, Chadbertarian. This is an interesting perspective. From what I have seen the Eastern European countries who were in the Warsaw Pact and who suffered under communism have been more resistant to the race/gender/sexual orientation egalitarianism that is rapidly destroying the West -- they've seen the results of such ideologies, and they seem to prefer to put their head down and focus on actual living in the present as opposed to promises of future utopia. It is a healthy approach. “The future is the only transcendental value for men without God.” - Albert Camus, The Rebel
You are spot on that, Eastern Europeans don’t believe in pure ideological dogmatism and instead try to adapt to the current conditions and improve their positions. Their progress is quite discernible, if you go to northern Greek regions you can see that many recent holiday resorts have been built by Bulgarians and in most areas tourism depends on the inflow of people from other Balkan countries. Meanwhile, the average Greek is rushing to apply for the trending welfare check, food or a gasoline pass depending on the period. By the way, I am an IR student and I am not sure about the demographics of your audience but I wanted to say that I have been following you for some months and you never disappoint with your class content. All the best in the future!
I would add that monotheism with an all-power and omniscient and all-good makes no sense metaphysically. Evil cannot be adequately explained. You need a foil. Dualism makes more sense. It is at least logically consistent.
i often hear this argument from abrahamists, "but muh free will though" and I would struggle to concisely explain why this is not an explanation for anything. this prompted me to start writing an article that kept getting bigger and bigger until i have an almost-done book on the question of evil. you wrote an essay about it too i believe?
Your book sounds really interesting and I look forward to reading it. The problem of evil is endlessly fascinating we are hit with examples of it daily. To your question, I see free will and an omniscient God as being fundamentally contradictory. If God knows what you will choose ahead of time (as he is outside of space and time) as well as God being omnipotent, free will is simply an illusion.
Yes, the essay is here:
https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/meditations-on-the-problem-of-evil
Yes and free will doesn’t explain the existence of evil. To have a choice between an and b there first needs to be a and b. If Yahweh is the creator of everything then he created b which is evil. But how can a good god create evil? Ah well the Christians just said that evil doesn’t exist. Check and mate.
The traditional Christian perspective is that evil is simply the absence of good/God's light. But that has its own problems, namely (1) how can the absence of something still not be God's creation (as you state), and (2) the traditional perspective denies reincarnation, so what happens to children who die young and invalids who have no chance to choose? Purgatory until Judgment Day is an unsatisfactory answer...
The best fit I can see is simply that the universe is run by a set of amoral physical laws as an arena so that the assholes can get sorted out in the afterlife having their hearts weighed on the Scale of Ma'at, but the only thing you really have empirical evidence for is the universe and the physical laws. Plus you still have to ask why evil people would be allowed to come into existence in the first place if the only purpose is for a god to amuse himself tossing them into hell, which is a rather sadistic pastime for the divine.
Schopenhauer: "As a reliable compass for orienting yourself in life nothing is more useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place of atonement, a sort of penal colony. When you have done this you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments, and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected but will find them entirely in order, well knowing that each of us is here being punished for his existence and each in his own particular way."
In the news today, the biggest religious conflict is of course between Jews and Muslims in Israel and Palestine. But underlying that is the leftist claim that supporting the Muslims is "decolonization".
If the leftists want to decolonize something, they should start with Constantinople. It was the first Christian city in the world. Muslims conquered it by force, enslaved the people, and colonized it.
If the leftists oppose colonialism, why don't they demand that Constantinople (which the colonizers call "Istanbul") be freed from Muslim rule and returned to Eastern Orthodox control, and the Turkish colonizers wiped out?
TBH I’ve never really seen statistics of homosexuality meaning much since it always feels like the data is all over the place and you can synthesize just about any conclusions from it.
The better indicators are always going to marriage, abortion, family and STDs.
No one would call the Middle-East anything but homophobic, but yet nevertheless they are plagued by their own host of degeneracies and social maladies, even if they do have their redeeming qualities.
For Russia in particular simply look at the rate of abortions, STDs and divorce. That to me is a lot more telling.
Even though I practice in a Buddha school these days, I grew up in Eastern Orthodoxy and I still maintain an interest. In fact, I hold the view that Christianity is, in a larger sense, a Buddha school (not Shakyamuni’s Buddhism as it’s known today) but that’s another discussion (Greek Buddha by Beckwith barely scratches the surface). This summation of the Orthodox faith in your article is about as good as can be. There are some things that could be mentioned but probably beyond the scope of this essay. Things of a more metaphysical nature, like the uniquely Orthodox experience of God/Christ as Light (the Tabor Light), which also has parallels in Buddhism. In any case, having just finished reading Father George Calciu’s book (Interviews, Homilies and Talks), here’s a couple of (meta)quotes from the book that stood out for me. On the meaning of suffering Calciu quotes Paul Claudel, who writes that “Christ did not come into the world to eliminate suffering... he came to fill human suffering with His presence,” so here you have an Orthodox agreeing with a Catholic. Then on the nature of Communion he quotes Staniloae (another giant figure in modern Orthodoxy) who used to say that “If I walk on the street after the Holy Liturgy and I see a priest and an angel coming out of the church, I bow before the priest, not before the angel”. Interesting to dig into Calciu’s (and Staniloae’s) political background/affiliations (rarely mentioned in their books for obvious reasons)... Again, these are just a couple random notes. Great article, as usual!
Nice response, Max, thanks for sharing a bit of your story and Father George Calciu's and for those quotes. Calciu does have an interesting background. How did you transition from Eastern Orthodoxy to Buddhism?
Interestingly it was an experience of light, which I may write about at some point, maybe even here on Substack. Suffice to say that for something that transformative to happen it generally has to hit you on a very deep level, some place beyond reason’s reaches. Even Christianity spread like wildfire because it touched people’s hearts, not because it won some theological debate. All the unpacking (the writing, the reasoning, the dogma etc) comes after the ‘event’ (which in my case was not really an apostasy but rather a widening of the frame, as it were...)
Very interesting, would love to read about it if you decide to write about it on Substack.
Isn’t pessimism the antidote to egalitarianism in Russia? This is a land where if you ask someone how they are, they say “Normal.”
Great question, Jonathon. I have an upcoming post on the virtues of philosophical pessimism...
Interesting essay, packed with info which needs to be digested. But right off the bat, this:
"This was initially intended on a spiritual level to undermine the Roman Emperor’s claim to divinity, but in recent centuries evolved to mean on the physical plane as well."
The reminds me of what some "conservative" writers say about the Declaration's "All men are created equal" : that it's really just a piece of rhetoric intended to undermine the divine right of kings to rulership (and thus allowing George III to be rightfully dismissed). The idea was that there would be no kings among us, rather than the obvious falsehood that "everyone is equal" in everyway, but the latter interpretation has come to be standard, even among "Straussian" conservatives.
For example, the Anglican church in the US evolved into the Episcopal Church, which is "episcopal" in the sense that there are only bishops, no archbishops, cardinals and no Pope. But of course, there ARE bishops. Interestingly, Judaism and Islam work the same way, no Popes, everyone is simply a believer, but they do have rabbis, imams, etc. recognized as having some kind of authority.
> Interestingly, Judaism and Islam work the same way, no Popes, everyone is simply a believer, but they do have rabbis, imams, etc. recognized as having some kind of authority.
Well Islam had a Caliph until a century ago. Judaism had the priesthood until the destruction of the temple, technically it still does although they currently play a largely ceremonial role.
I'll have to read up on this Caliph stuff. About priests, that's the thing, the destruction of the temple put an end to the priesthood, since no sacrifices could be offered, and Judaism was reorganized into "Rabbinic Judaism" which we have today. Rabbis function like gurus or wise men; they're just employees of each congregation, hired by the board, like a business; they can be fired if their get too troublesome, or else you can just go to another synagogue (some of which, oddly enough, are called "temples")
Now, the Catholics (and I suppose the Orthodox) still have priests, since they claim that the Eucharist is a real sacrifice, so you have all the rituals, bells, incense, blood/wine, etc. Protestants reject all that, to a greater or lesser degree, hence all the denominations, but all sharing a "congregational" structure with Jews (one denomination is even just called "Congregational") to whatever extent they reject sacrificialism. As ususual, Anglican/Episcopalism is a little of both, having kinda/sorta priests and bishops but nothing else. Mormons I don't know about, but they do seem to have priests and a big Temple.
This is actually the most important topic on Earth right now, because the unpleasantness in the ME is entirely based on groups warring over the Temple Mount. There's a group of ultra-Jews who want to actually rebuild the Temple and start offering sacrifices again, supported by American Evangelicals who think this is what's needed to bring back Christ. Each group thinks the other will then be either wiped out or will convert to the other side, so they are happy to help each other bring about Armageddon.
So Catholics/Orthodox/Anglicans have priests who sacrifice Jesus all day long, while the Evangelical Protestants/Jews think we need to rebuild the Temple so Jesus can come back. I guess that makes the former less troublesome, but if you focus on this stuff rather than St. Thomas etc. it does seem that Christianity wasn't a good idea after all.
> Protestants reject all that, to a greater or lesser degree, hence all the denominations, but all sharing a "congregational" structure with Jews (one denomination is even just called "Congregational") to whatever extent they reject sacrificialism.
In practice, I suspect one of the most important (frequently unrecognized) structure in many denominations is how they structure their seminaries, for that is who many were infiltrated by modernism.
> As ususual, Anglican/Episcopalism is a little of both, having kinda/sorta priests and bishops but nothing else.
Anglicans have archbishops.
"Anglicans have archbishops."
Right you are! I went too far, and they didn't go that far, part of their "kinda Catholic" doctrines.
I should have remembered this from my time working at an Episcopalian charity. Soon after coming aboard, I referred to someone unknown to me as an "Archbishop," since he was in some big city like Chicago or LA or something. I was then instructed in the correct nomenclature. Nothing Episcopalians like more than telling ignorant sons of immigrants what every Real American knows.
This also gives me the chance to retail this anecdote: So, I guess the Archbishop of Canterbury is the head Anglican, and his Episcopal counterpart is a mere "Presiding Bishop" elected every ten years. So when Harry and Meghan wed, they had this guy go over to give a sermon; probably because he's black, as well as being head of the EC. So everyone at the charity was miffed by how the BBC and other media outlets called this unknown guy "a preacher from Chicago." No so much fun being on the other end of the snoot, eh?
"A religion that is static and unchanging seems like it will always lag behind in the times, which may be a good thing (as it resists the egalitarian ratchet effect) but it also makes it susceptible to falling behind technologically, which requires a belief in the power of transformative and rapid change to advance. "
I'll note that Nikola Tesla was Eastern Orthodox. How much of an active member he was is under both debate and historical rewriting from everyone but the Serbian church says he qualifies for canonized sainthood if they can get his ash remains back. He did also live a life reminiscent of celibate monasticism.
All that to say that the EO mindset may hinder technological growth but it also resists the corrosive influence of soyence - the politically correct regime of wrong science such as Einstein, moneyed doctored studies, transgender theory and so on which may leave it better off by default to discover unbiased aspects of reality.
Some elements from your strengths contradict each other. For example one of the strengths you list is "The potential for revolutionary change" rather contradicting the rest of your article which emphasizes Orthodoxy's stability.
Word choice could have been better on that one, thanks. The point is that if globohomo fails (which it has few indications of happening) Orthodoxy offers a comprehensive alternative structure and worldview ready to step into the picture to fill that void, whereas other religions, corrupted by the same secular and rationalist forces, are likely not.
It's more than enough when understood and applied properly.
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-56271052?r=1nm0v2
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-65923518?r=1nm0v2
St. Gregory of Nyssa: On Not Three Gods
Consider that the Orthodox also call him Saint and yet he does not appear to have any deviation doctrinally with what later became considered controversial when expressed in the Filioque.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2905.htm
Haven't read the post yet. It has been my impression that Russia is to Europe is what Galicia is to Russia - its schizo, parochial, redneck, idiot part. The real Europe was England and Germany - Germany went pagan, and was killed by its sister England who proceeded to do... what is going on now.
There is little point trying to put one's hopes in Poland or Russia aside from their arguably European genetic heritage. Intellectually, they are brain-damaged and hopeless. They were never alive. And even genetics-wise, they are no Nordic barbarians that preserved Roman heritage in whatever mangled by Christianity form it was continued.
...And to anyone acting autistically-surprised why I mentioned Russia - it's because the Orthodox religion does not exist outside the bounds of Russia in anything approaching the European level of sophistication. Pardon me, Syrian cave-dwellers do not count. Westerners seem somewhat autistic talking about "Orthodoxy" when it's a religion bound to certain blood and soil - no matter how mutt in this case. Of course, this tendency is reinforced by the rootless cosmopolitan nature of America - with random Hindu temples popping up in New Jersey, and nobody pulling out the pitch-forks.
César Tort, no matter how delusional, at least admonishes White Nationalists for not creating a political party. And I talk of "White Juche" partially to underline how fantastical Aryan revival looks like at this point under these circumstances.
Orthodox Russia has given us anarchism, Bolshevism, and a castration movement (skoptsy). I'll pass.
On another note, I've had an idea that I have no clue as to whether to voice it, so maybe you might ponder it. - What is going to be the fate of modern woke-ass astronomical nomenclature? I have randomly obeyed the YouTube algorithm, and what do I see? A crater on Mercury named in honour of a Haitian Negro toilet! Right next to a Mexican black fæces sink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manley_(crater)?useskin=vector
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izquierdo_(crater)?useskin=vector
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveinsdóttir_(crater)?useskin=vector
Am I the only one on the planet wondering how the future Sino-Korean civilisation changes it all to comprehensible-to-a-healthy-person hanzi in a post-Christian future? They may also feel free to rename that abominable name ʻOumuamua to Rama... unless tensions with India prevent it, haha.
Hi Adunai, one of the criticisms mentioned in the article is that Orthodoxy is tied to ethnicity/nationalism which makes it difficult to join, and that Orthodoxy is likely to continue to lose on the material plane. Regarding NASA, it claimed a number of years ago that Islamic outreach was their top goal in 2010: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-new-mission-for-nasa-reach-out-to-muslim-world . So space has been ruined and skinsuited for a long time. I'm a fan of and impressed by what SpaceX is doing, though.
> "space has been ruined and skinsuited for a long time."
Of course, I meant the future where America bites the dust, and the Asians pick up from the ashes. I just marvel at the idea of renaming all those craters named after dead black women (Copernicus may stay). The Muslims are somewhat irrelevant as I doubt them to have any interest in piloting spacecraft - unless to do 9/11 against Chinese space habitats.
Unless any of that is bunk, and we reach AGI in the next couple of years. It feels so schizophrenic to talk about the future and culture and war when the next steam-engine train may be invented. César Tort for one gets hung up on the notion of consciousness, whatever that means. Others outright ignore it. Methinks, it will come to your beloved banking cartel to show the wonders of AI to the dim masses, hehe.
The fall and decline of the Roosh forum serves as a reminder that right now Christians only cry about free speech because they're the ones being censored, same as the Progressives and Jews crying about free speech back when they were censored. Given the opportunity, true believers always become totalitarian.
I don't even fault them for this. Any society is going to have limits on speech in order to promote whatever its core values are and deny whatever its core values are against. America's "freedom of speech" was curtailed historically in many ways, such as denying publication to disfavored books, limiting and curtailing people's abilities to organize, controlling the messaging through the MSM (which had a monopoly until the internet, etc.). Douglass Mackey definitely doesn't feel like he has free speech.
The issue I had was its momentum -- if the goal is simply "pursuit of whatever Roosh thinks", then the forum would have long-term problems (and it did). If the goal was to convert and proselytize, or at least for believers of various stripes to support each other, then it needed a much more "open tent" approach. There is a successor forum run by others at https://christisking.eu/ and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Running a forum is difficult.
Totally, but the forum had started out as a PUA forum and then slowly morphed into mainly political discussion, only taking a 90 degree turn into Christianity when Roosh had his soul saved. The forum produced way more right-wing dissidents than it did Christians though, since the sudden religious edicts on what could be discussed drove off practically everyone who wasn't already religious. In comparison the shift from game to politics was allowed to happen organically.