The Holy Trinity in the North and the South

St Nikolai Velimirovich writes in his Prayers by the Lake (Prayer XXXIV),

Where there is one, there is no love.  Where there are two united there is only a semblance of love.  Where three are united, there is love.  Your name is Love because Your name is trinity in Unity.

If You were solitary, You would not be love but hatred.

If You were a duality, You would be an alternation of love and hatred.  But You are a trinity, and therefore You are love, and in You there is neither darkness nor alternation.

 . . .

Love sacrifices itself, and does not feel that the sacrifice is giving but rather receiving (pgs. 60-1).

There is no love in one, for there is no ‘other’ on behalf of whom he can sacrifice himself, for whom he can completely empty himself.  Two can exchange love in this way, but their love is still incomplete.  A third person is needed (the Holy Ghost), one who can rejoice in the love of the first two (the Father and the Son), while strengthening and perfecting their love with his own.  Thus does the All Holy Trinity become all perfect and radiant and harmonious in the mutual life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (Fr Dumitru Stăniloae, The Holy Trinity, pgs. 24-5).

Furthermore, ‘If there were four [or more--W. G.], everything would not be in this direct, uninterrupted relationship.  There would always be a “He” on the outside.  It would be obvious that someone would always be left out’ (p. 58).

The teaching of the Holy Trinity:  Here is a bright separating line between New England and the South.

The Puritans of New England drifted into Unitarianism (and worse) long ago (A. J. Conyers, ‘The Real Old Time Religion’, http://www.thesouthernpartisan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/03.1-ARCHIVEConyersOldTimeRel-25p.pdf, pgs. 10-14), the idea of the lonely god.  It is not surprising, then, that New Englanders come across as cold and unfriendly; they partake of the nature of their god.

The South, having kept a stronger sense of the trinitarian nature of God (Thomas Landess, ‘A Note on the Origin of Southern Ways’, Why the South Will Survive, p. 161), reflects this in the warmth, kindness, givingness, and hospitality of her people.

But her moorings were not secure (being severed from the firm ground of Orthodoxy from her beginning), and she was further shaken by the War and Reconstruction that destroyed the plantation system, which had been a bulwark against very much harmful innovation in religion and other areas.

The hearts of her people are now hardening all the more, as New England dogmas of God, man, and the creation seep into them:  Worldly success is the sign of God’s favor; those cursed by God (the poor and ‘undeveloped’ peoples) and all the natural world may be exploited to attain ‘success’, for God is not in these fallen creatures and corrupted matter - only in his chosen ones (gnosticism); wars of aggression may be waged to take resources from the ‘accursed’ peoples or to try to ‘reform’ them (‘exporting democracy’); money, comfort, and things for oneself are the end of life.

And the political leaders of the South are taking us straight down this path of perdition: preaching economic development and growth as the cure for all ills.  Nor do the churches speak much of renunciation, continual repentance, and the like.  Thus do they betray their own people.

‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’ (I John 5:21).

Works Cited

Landess, Thomas H.  ‘A Note on the Origin of Southern Ways’.  Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand.  Wilson, ed.  Athens, Ga.: U. of Georgia Press, 1981.

Stăniloae, Fr Dumitru.  The Holy Trinity: In the Beginning There Was Love.  Clark, trans.  Brookline, Mass.:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012.

Velimirovich, St Nikolai.  A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, Vol. V:  Prayers by the Lake.  3^rd ed.  Mika and Scott, trans.  Grayslake, Il.:  Diocese of New Gracanica and Midwestern America, 2010.

Sometimes the West Admits Its Errors Plainly

In an otherwise good essay on the failures of modern public education, Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg says this, ‘Where Jerusalem and Athens meet, the cardinal virtues are made perfect by the theological virtues that signal the true ends of all human souls . . .’ (‘The False Promises of Public Education’, http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/05/false-promises-public-education.html, posted May 2014, accessed 13 May 2014).  Here in one short sentence is seen the main trouble with the West:  It has imported pagan Greek theology into Christianity, particularly the Neoplatonic theology of Plotinus, which posits a trinity of the One, the Nous, and the World-soul:

There are two finite particulars which the One creates in Plotinos’ system: the Nous (mind) and the World-soul.  The One, without any activity on its part, naturally produces the Nous.  This Nous in turn produces the World-soul in company with the agency of the One.  The Neoplatonic universe thus takes on a definitive, three-storied structural subordination.  At the pinnacle is the One, acting as the Uncaused Cause of all.  In an intermediary position comes the Nous (mind), caused by the One and, along with the One, causing the World-soul.  In the last position comes the World soul, emanating from both the Uncaused Cause and the Caused Cause.  As a study of Aristotelian logic and physics, this subordination is classic: the One has absolutely no distinctions; the Nous has one distinction, that of being caused by the One, and the World-soul, has two distinctions, those of being caused by two different types of causes.

Source:  Dr Joseph Farrell, ‘A Theological Introduction to the Mystagogy of St Photios’, http://www.anthonyflood.com/farrellphotios.htm, posted 9 September 2009, accessed 9 June 2014

In the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, as Dr Farrell goes on to show, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit correspond to the One, the Nous, and the World-soul, respectively.  What the Western churches have done in this marriage of paganism and Christianity is to reject the personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit.  Paul Elmer More, a New England Roman Catholic (from New Hampshire), spells this out most clearly in his book The Catholic Faith (1931).  Speaking of the Apostles’ Creed, he says:

‘In the treatment of the Father and the Son the note is definitely personal, as the words Father and Son themselves imply, and as the activities ascribed to the second person affirm.  On the contrary, the activity connected with the Holy Ghost . . . is not of a person, nor of an individual, but denotes rather the influence of the spirit of God (i.e. of the Father and the Son) working within and upon the spirit of man’ (p. 82).

Roman Catholics, he continues, reject ‘dogmatic trinitarianism’, ‘belief in three persons, equally distinct and equally individual’ and affirm instead ‘a double personality, or the double revelation of a personal God, whose spirit of Grace is the Comforter of our human spirit and its eternal Advocate.’  He quotes Hippolytus for support:  ‘I will not say two Gods, but one God and two persons, and a third economy which is the Grace of the Holy Ghost’ (p. 83).

Prof More quite flatly declares the Roman Catholic dogma of God to be ‘binatarianism’ rather than trinitarianism (pgs. 83-4). 

In the West, therefore, all who accept the Roman Catholic view of God (including the Protestants who have not rejected this part of their Catholic inheritance) confess belief in two divine persons, the Father and the Son, and in one created impersonal spirit (the Holy Spirit).  This dogma has been crystallized in the Western version of the Nicene Creed, which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, rather than from the Father alone, as is found in the original form of the Creed and the Holy Scriptures.

From here all the sicknesses of the West do flow.  The Pope, proclaiming himself the Vicar of Christ on earth, makes bold to share with Him control over the grace of the Holy Spirit, giving it to whom he pleases.  Protestants, not well disposed to this idea (and rightfully so), declare the universal priesthood of believers - that the grace of God is available to all who ask for it, without the mediation of clergy of any kind.  Just as in Plotinian theology, so now in Western theology and life, an endless series of opposing pairs is begun, bringing with them endless wrack and strife, not limited to the religious sphere, a deranged shifting between one extreme and the other: the one and the many, dictator vs the masses, ruler vs ruled, socialism vs libertarianism, the Pope vs Protestants, clergy vs laymen, celibacy vs debauchery, heaven vs earth, corporations vs labor, collective vs individual, executive vs legislature, national vs local, and so on and so on.

All of this is quite foreign to Orthodox Christianity, which remains free of pagan distortions, in which the full divinity and personhood of each of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity is preserved.  Here, in Orthodoxy, though elevated to a special rank because of the duties they are expected to perform, bishops, priests, and secular rulers are not cut off wholly from the congregation and citizenry as some sort of separate castes, but remain a part of their number.  All are one in the Church: separate gifts and duties, but one Divine-human Body. 

Humility, love, the cutting off of one’s will for the sake of another, harmony, peacefulness, and other virtues have thus been more readily seen in Orthodox countries (though they have their faults, as any human society will) than in those that have fallen into the downward spiral of Western theology since the Great Schism.  For the life of the All Holy Trinity (which is reflected in the Orthodox Church) is the voluntary self-emptying of Each of the Persons, all equal in dignity and holiness, for the sake of the Others out of love, and not an opposition of One to Another out of a necessity created by the inequality of the Persons.

Because the South’s trinitarianism was stronger than New England’s (though still imperfect, being crusted over with Catholic and Protestant thought), she fared better until recently when the latter’s ideas began to firmly root themselves here.  It is the South’s great need (and that of all Western peoples) to return to an Orthodox understanding of the Holy Trinity, or truly the path of Antichrist will be opened wide as the desire for another savior will continue to grow in the hearts of men amid all the sturm and drang issuing from false dogma.

So, what shall we have?  Life and love from the Holy Trinity?  Or hatred and death from the two posing as three? 

Works Cited

More, Paul Elmer.  The Catholic Faith.  Princeton, Nj.:  Princeton UP, 1931.

Pentecost Monday, 9 June 2014

Christian Persecution in the Ukraine Has Begun

As was mentioned in the post of 21 May, wherever the EU and the American Empire go to war lately, persecution of Christians has followed.  The trend is now confirmed in the Ukraine, where killing and exile of Christians is now underway:

http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/the-west-is-alienated-from-christ-and-therefore-intolerant/

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/71145.htm

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/71143.htm

This is not to be wondered at.  For the same groups of men who financed the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Soviets in Russia and Mao in China are directing the affairs of state in Western Europe and the [u]nited States. 

http://www.infowars.com/the-greatest-generation-sacrificed-for-the-bankers/

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2013/09/1913-2013-hundredyear-of-horrific-wars_20.html

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-dont-things-ever-change-in.html

They earnestly desire the destruction of the Church.  Guard yourselves against them, little flock.

‘ . . . mighty men which were of old, men of renown’ -- Genesis 6:4, Part VIII

As we began this short look into St Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, so let us end it - with the lives of two good kings, Ine and Cædwalla, who shame our current political class by their renouncing of worldly power for the sake of obtaining a blessed inheritance in the kingdom which is to come.

These two bear special importance for us as Southerners, coming as they do from Wessex, the fountainhead of the English culture - loyalty to a distinguished lord (the gentleman-planter), life centered around the lord’s hall (the plantation), of the soil - that came to flourish across the South.  Their ensample of limited power, wise law-writing, and support of the Church is one that all Southrons should desire to see practiced amongst ourselves and elsewhere.

For more information on these two kings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A6dwalla_of_Wessex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ine_of_Wessex

From St Bede’s History:

CHAPTER VII

CÆDWALLA, KING OF THE WEST SAXONS, WENT TO ROME TO BE BAPTIZED; HIS SUCCESSOR INA ALSO DEVOUTLY REPAIRED TO THE SAME CHURCH OF THE HOLY APOSTLES. [A.D. 688.]

IN the third year of the reign of Alfrid, Caedwalla, king of the West Saxons, having most honorably governed his nation two years, quitted his crown for the sake of our Lord and his everlasting kingdom, and went to Rome, being desirous to obtain the peculiar honor of being baptized in the church of the blessed apostles, for he had learned that in baptism alone, the entrance into heaven is opened to mankind; and he hoped at the same time, that laying down the flesh, as soon as baptized, he should immediately pass to the eternal joys of heaven; both which things, by the blessing of our Lord, came to pass accord. mg as he had conceived in his mind. For coming to Rome, at the time that Sergius was pope, he was baptized on the holy Saturday before Easter Day, in the year of our Lord 689, and being still in his white garments, he fell sick, and departed this life on the 20th of April, and was associated with the blessed in heaven. At his baptism, the aforesaid pope had given him the name of Peter, to the end that he might be also united in name to the most blessed prince of the apostles, to whose most holy body his pious love had brought him from the utmost bounds of the earth. He was likewise buried in his church, and by the pope's command an epitaph written on his tomb, wherein the memory of his devotion might be preserved for ever, and the readers or hearers might be inflamed with religious desire by the example of what he had done.

The epitaph was this-

High state and place, kindred, a wealthy crown,
Triumphs, and spoils in glorious battles won,
Nobles, and cities walled, to guard his state,
High palaces, and his familiar seat,
Whatever honors his own virtue won,
Or those his great forefathers handed down,
Caedwal armipotent, from heaven inspir'd,
For love of heaven hath left, and here retir'd;
Peter to see, and Peter's sacred chair,
The royal pilgrim traveled from afar,
Here to imbibe pure draughts from his clear stream,
And share the influence of his heavenly beam;
Here for the glories of a future claim,
Converted, chang'd his first and barbarous name.
And following Peter's rule, he from his Lord
Assumed the name at Father Sergius' word,
At the pure font, and by Christ's grace made clean,
In heaven is free from former taints of sin.
Great was his faith, but greater God's decree,
Whose secret counsels mortal cannot see
Safe came he, e'en from Britain's isle, o'er seas,
And lands, and countries, and through dangerous ways,
Rome to behold, her glorious temple see,
And mystic presents offer'd on his knee-
Now in the grave his fleshly members lie,
His soul, amid Christ's flock, ascends the sky.
Sure wise was he to lay his sceptre down,
And gain in heaven above a lasting crown.

Here was deposited Caedwalla, called also Peter, king of the Saxons, on the twelfth day of the kalends of May, the second indiction. He lived about thirty years, in the reign of the most pious emperor, Justinian, in the fourth year of his consulship, in the second year of our apostolic lord, Pope Sergius.

When Cædwalla went to Rome, Inn succeeded him on the throne, being of the blood royal; and having reigned thirty-seven years over that nation, he gave up the king. dom in like manner to younger persons, and went away to Rome, to visit the blessed apostles, at the time when Gregory was pope, being desirous to spend some time of his pilgrimage upon earth in the neighborhood of the holy place, that he might be more easily received by the saints into heaven. The same thing, about the same time, was done through the zeal of many of the English nation, noble and ignoble, laity and Clergy, men and women (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book V, Chapter VII, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book5.asp, posted April 1999 by Paul Halsall, accessed 6 June 2014).

All of those mentioned in St Bede’s History, Southerner, are our forefathers and foremothers: saints, kings, bishops, monks, nuns, missionaries, hermits, poets, peasants, English, Irish, African, and so on.  They, just like our nearest of kin, are worthy of our attention and affection.  So let us hear of them, learn of and from them, honor them as good and pious children ought, to the glory of God, Who is wonderful in His saints and to Whom is due all worship forever and ever, world without end.  Amen.

Georgia in the Crosshairs? And Some Good News from Wisconsin

The State of Georgia seems to be caught in a tug-of-war between the forces of evil and the forces of good.  The mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, was invited to attend the yearly Bilderberg meeting (mentioned in yesterday’s post also), where some of the most powerful Christ- and tradition-hating men and women of the world gather to formulate policy. 

Attendee list:

http://www.infowars.com/official-bilderberg-2014-membership-list-released/

Story out of Atlanta station WXIA:

http://www.infowars.com/atlanta-mayor-reed-to-participate-in-annual-bilderberg-meeting/

Also troubling is the presence in Georgia of a monument named the Georgia Guidestones, a monolith that calls for an ‘Age of Reason’ (which, as the French and Russian Revolutions have shown, is the same as a violently anti-Christian order) and a world population of 500,000,000, among other things.

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones, entry dated 6 May 2014, accessed 5 June 2014

She did take a step in the right direction, however, with approval by her State Legislature and Governor to place the Ten Commandments at the capitol building.

http://christiannews.net/2014/03/16/georgia-lawmakers-approve-bill-to-place-ten-commandments-monument-at-state-capitol/

http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/display/20132014/HB/702

And so the spiritual battle of the people of Georgia continues.

Meanwhile, from Wisconsin, comes encouraging secession news:

In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It was voted down May 3, but the move received national press. The Daily Beast published an article on both the resolution and modern secession movements in Vermont and Alaska, and the Drudge Report included a link to the story.

 . . .

There is, however, a sliver-lining to this exchange. We are starting to win. In the aftermath of 1865, no one would have attempted to insert a secession resolution (innocuous as it was) into a State Party platform, particularly in Wisconsin, the birthplace of Lincoln’s Republican Party. That is until now. Secession was bloodied and bludgeoned on the battlefield, but it is the American tradition, codified by Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and pursued in both the North and South several times before the War in 1861. The rise of secessionist groups in the United States in the last twenty years is clear proof that the Lincoln myth of perpetual Union and forced association is fading, albeit slowly.

Young people have seen that the emperor has no clothes and are flocking to the principles of independence in growing numbers, both personally and politically. And it is peaceful. There are Michael Murphys in every State. Our job is to cultivate them, to help them understand that the Southern political tradition of Washington, Jefferson, Taylor, Henry, Calhoun, Lee, Davis, and Bledsoe did not die after Appomattox. It lives in the spirit of liberty, of independence, and most importantly, of truth.

Source:  Brion McClanahan, http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/cheesehead-secessionists/, posted 22 May 2014, accessed 5 June 2014

The Uprising in Europe

The European soul, sickened by decades and centuries of man worship, money worship, nation worship, government worship, etc., is beginning to show signs of recovery.  Traditionalist parties that denounced the absolutist, all-providing European Union government and massive immigration made great gains in the EU’s parliamentary elections.  Pat Buchanan’s insight is helpful:

Memorial Day will likely bring alarmist headlines in the elite media about a populist fever raging in Europe, and manifest in the shocking returns from the elections for the European Parliament.

Marine Le Pen’s National Front may run first in France, and Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party first in Britain.

What is happening in Europe?

In his unpublished “Leviathan and Its Enemies,” my late friend Sam Francis wrote of the coming crisis of the “soft managerial state,” of which the European Union is a textbook example.

Oswald Spengler used the word “Civilization” to describe “the terminal phase of a cultural organism,” wrote Francis. In 1941, Pitirim Sorokin described the characteristics of a Spenglerian “Civilization”:

“[C]osmopolitanism and the megalopolis vs. ‘home,’ ‘race,’ ‘blood group’ and ‘fatherland’; scientific irreligion or abstract dead metaphysics instead of the religion of the heart; ‘cold matter-of-factness’ vs. reverence and tradition and respect for age; internationalist ‘society’ instead of ‘my country’ and state (nation); money and abstract values in lieu of earth and real (living) values; ‘mass’ instead of ‘folk’; sex in lieu of motherhood … and so on.”

Between the managerial state and the civilization and culture that preceded it, the polarities are stark.

Yet they mirror the clashes of today as the European Union of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman’s vision exhibits unmistakable symptoms of disintegration and decay.

In a way, this is remarkable.

For undeniably the rise of the EU has coincided with an unprecedented rise in the standard of living for the hundreds of millions from the Atlantic to the Baltic and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

Still, though Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Parliament of man” and “Federation of the world” captured the imagination of 19th-and 20th-century one-worlders, the dream has proven incapable of capturing the hearts of European peoples. Who would die for the Brussels bureaucracy?

 . . .

Source: http://buchanan.org/blog/specter-haunting-europe-6416, posted 23 May 2014, accessed 4 June 2014 (originally viewed at www.lewrockwell.com)

All this is surely good to see, but there may be some hardship along the way as this traditionalist upsurge has gotten the attention of the anti-human globalist elite, who see the masses of mankind as raw material to accomplish their various scientific, corporate, political, and religious ends.

Bilderberg, the annual gathering of the world’s most powerful politicians and business magnates, is clearly shaping global policies by positioning its favored politicians as world leaders, determining the timetables of military conflicts and influencing the economic policies of nearly every nation on the planet, impacting the lives of billions around the globe.

Daniel Estulin, an author and expert on the Bilderberg Group, has learned from his internal sources several items on Bilderberg’s agenda for this year’s conference in Copenhagen, Denmark which began yesterday:

 . . .

3) The rise of nationalism within Europe that is challenging the power structure of the European Union – the recent victories of the populist United Kingdom Independence Party, which opposes the European Union, is particularly concerning to the Bilderberg Group because the EU, and its Euro currency, were formulated by the group at its second annual meeting in 1955.

 . . .

Source: Kit Daniels, http://www.infowars.com/leaked-secret-agenda-from-bilderberg-2014-revealed/, posted 30 May 2014, accessed 4 June 2014 (bolding in original)

This should embolden us in the South and the rest of the States, who have always been a bit less trusting in an all-powerful central government than the nations of Western Europe, that it is possible to waken the sleeping masses to the dangers fast approaching from godless socialism and capitalism, immorality, untrammeled immigration, nihilism, etc.

But at the same time, let us be sure that our goal is not itself an idolatrous notion of freedom or prosperity or culture, lest the final state of the Southern people be worse than the first (St Luke 11:23-26).  Without salvation, without the True Faith about the True God, there is nothing (St Mark 8:34-38).

May God help us all.

Good News on Abortion

From Russia:

A group of Orthodox Christian activists claim that they have gathered 100,000 signatures under a petition seeking to completely ban abortions in Russia – a number enough to make it a valid legislative initiative.

In the near future all the documents will be submitted to the authorities and the activists will be waiting for an official reaction to their demands, a member of the Public Chamber, priest Aleksander Pelin was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The leader of the activists, Dmitriy Tsorionov elaborated on the initiative, and said that it seeks a complete legislative ban on all abortions, including those made on medical advice and on all abortive means of contraception, such as intrauterine devices and hormonal pills. Tsorionov said his group was not protesting against barrier contraceptives, such as condoms.

According to Russian Law any petition that gathers at least 100,000 signatures of support becomes a draft law and must be considered by parliament. The signatures must be gathered on the special government portal and come from registered Russian citizens. People can also vote against the initiatives on the same portal, but the votes against do not influence the documents’ movement, at least technically.

 . . .

Source:  http://www.pravmir.com/christian-activists-gather-enough-support-launch-bill-banning-abortion/, posted 29 May 2014, accessed 3 June 2014

Meanwhile, though some restrictions have successfully been placed on abortion in this Union, the main direction continues to be toward debauchery and apostasy.  In education, for ensample, the corporate-backed, federal government-guided Common Core program is requiring pornographic books be read by students at various grade levels.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/common-core-sexualizes-american-school-children

And this sexualization of children is no accident:

http://www.infowars.com/current-sexualization-of-children-predicted-in-1932-novel/

Now is the time for the South to consider and enact new ways to protect what remains of her Christian culture: nullification (town, county/parish, and state level), secession, kings, initiatives and referendums, and so forth.

May the Lord grant us time to repent.