Christian Literature General

which of Kierkegaard's works should i start at? either/or or sickness unto death?

a very precise warning, by Fr. Seraphim Rose, to those who think of themselves as cultural christians or "spiritual but not religious" and, the lukewarm types and so forth.

neither, instead try his less famous works that are more accessible.

"Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing"
"Practice in Christianity"
"Philosophical Fragments"

and then try either/or, 'the concept of anxiety' and his better known stuff.

this will help you decide "Orthodox Monk gives a advice to a Roman Catholic" :
youtube.com/watch?v=mduJtl8k3dQ

youtube.com/watch?v=VydJle4ZIp8

>Third Order
>charism
Care to enlighten this thread about what the heck those things are? Yes, I could use google, but it's more fun this way.

A lot of monastic orders have "third orders", which are for lay people to be able to participate in the spiritual life of the order without having to be celebate. Its a lot less rigourous than a real monastic life, but its fairly rigourous by lay standards. The Carmelite Third Order, for instance, requires you to wear a Our Lady of Carmel scapular at all times and to meditate at least half an hour every day.

A charism is just a particular kind of spiritual practice that exists within Catholicism, since each order or spiritual trend tends to have different techniques and emphases. Be it a Benedictine charism, a Franciscan charism, a Carmelite charism, a Dominican charism, a Marist charism, etc. etc.

You sound kind of like girardfag.

You need a higher conception of how world-historical developments come together from mere particulars. The mean and meagre is all true, but so is the symbolic. Christ is exactly what the most credulous and least erudite believer reads him as in the Gospels, without even noticing mean or superfluous aspects of the narrative, and he is also the thinned-out historicist truth of what Christ was. In the end, both (and all) will be encompassed in Christ, in Logos. In the end, somehow, both come together.

The greatest mystery of Christ is that he exists as a concrete conceptualisation, as a conquest of humanity's Spirit from the void, whatsoever. The idea of a Logos overflowing and undergirding all merely "logical" reason, and the idea that that Logos is pure Love and Imagination. Why would that idea even exist? What you're undergoing IS the mystery, the inability to understand the ineffable and infinite in concrete concepts, and bring it down to the level of the merely discursive, to become something dead and familiar. Christ is a pole star for seekers of knowledge, not a factoid to be learned and placed on a mental shelf.

"Credo quia absurdam" should not be understood only discursively, like one of those factoids. It is not an arid epistemic moment of thought, as if "belief" can be separated from knowledge and action (cf. Wittgenstein's late lectures on religion). It's more like a (William) Jamesian pragmatist yearning after the essential truth of the mystery, that points beyond and outside of your current, discursive knowledge and your current capacities to know, like a Kantian regulative principle.

You are already participating in the mystery by seeing the beauty of what Christ possibly represents, or straining to see what others seem to see. A greater understanding of the grubby historical nature of Christianity will ultimately only lead you to higher holiness t bh.

You should read Emerson also.

>celibacy is rigorous

implying that sinning in the face of God through fornication is not rigorous in itself

Favourite Christian theologians and Catholic philosophers?

Catholic thread:
Bye-bye, inclusivists!

Yours truly,
Sage

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite for me.

It's funny because the modern Catholic Church is ecumenical and inclusive. But hey, keep larping and pretending you're in the middle ages.

...

What is the best literature on Gnosticism and Christian Hermeticism respectively?

I think you might want this chart

If you want to get into Christian Mysticism, I always recommend starting with St. John of the Cross. If you think you have a decent enough understanding, Cloud of Unknowing is always touted as one of the pinnacles

The capture of natural lighting in this painting is utterly phenomenal

It's really impossible for it to stay such. It's the old guard from the 70s that's dying without leaving anyone to follow in their footsteps. All of us here will witness the exclusivity in the style of neo scholasticim and a return to tradition. There are virtually no Catholic progressive intellectuals today. Rahners and Lubacs are all gone, by the Grace of God.

Thanks ve rygoo dtaste

Books on useless shit: the chart.

If you're interested in western occultism, they are not useless. Have you ever thought of that?

I don't know who girardfag is, but I appreciate the response. I can't get myself to see Christ as a historical person, anymore than I can see Orpheus, Musaeus, Laozi or Hermes Trismegistus as one – I can appreciate him as a poetic representation of the Logos though, an intermediary saviour figure like Mithras.

In many ways, this doubt goes back to Xenophanes's criticism of the cultural anthropomorphism of the gods, which the Platonists resolved by seeing their pagan gods as symbolic representations of higher principles, in much the same way as the later Pseudo-Dionysius considered the angels "mens", or "of intellect" (in the Plotinian hypostases).

I understand your point, but it is something I must contemplate for a good while.

Christian Hermeticism is a bit of a misnormer. I think this is so because the term is often conflated or considered synonymous with Christian Neoplatonism.

When the Corpus Hermetica was translated by Marsilio Ficino, several of it's ideas were adapted by luminaries such as Pico Della Mirandola, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Giordano Bruno.

However, as Hanegraaff has argued at lenght in his introduction, it was only embraced fully by Lodovico Lazzerelli, who considered Christ as an incarnation of Poimandres.

Nag Hammadi Library
Dead Sea Scrolls
Corpus Hermetica
Chaldean Oracles
Greek Magical Papyrus

Is this the wolfe general?

No that is

Why can’t you see Christ as a historical person? There is a decent amount of evidence. Do you doubt Buddha and Socrates existences too?

You should read Meditations on the Tarot.

>Western Occulticism
>not useless

I'm not him, but I struggle with the same problem. It's not that I doubt that Jesus existed, no more than I doubt that Socrates existed, but I have a hard time imagining them as real people. I know I am a literal brainlet, but I can't imagine the past in a way that makes it real. Napoleon is like a metaphor for conquest, Stalin a metaphore for autocracy, etc. I can recognize objectively that they were real and did things, but not in a way that gives me the capacity to appreciate their humanity. Anyone understand this problem?

wikiwand.com/en/Christ_myth_theory

you should explain yourself instead of just posting a wiki. nobody is going to respond to a whole wiki article

Morr like asshurt general lmao

Few scholars believe this theory

Kierkegaard would tell you to just take a leap of faith. Don't lose a piece of yourself in the infinite.

Well you don't really read about their day to day life which makes them seem like ...real. It's hard to imagine them as real people since you are missing a certain connection.

I know, so any suggestions on how to improve this? I feel like I will struggle with a personal connection to Jesus until I can do that

Much thanks for posting this, great channel, bless you user

you'll believe jesus was the literal God incarnate but not that people in the past were human beings too?

Father Spyridon is a great speaker on the old teachings, but beware that his comments on contemporary society are a bit crazy. He wrote an entire book about how capitalism and technology is the work of the devil.

I can believe in God but I can't identify with Jesus as a person as well as a God, so I don't feel as though I can make any personal connection to God except as an abstract concept. Maybe I'm just talking to myself in circles idk

Does the idea of Christianity being a mystery cult make it more or less appealing to you? Certainly gives it a longer and more pagan pedigree in addition to its Jewishness.

I don't know. It's okay if I don't understand things, there's tons of things I don't understand and it makes sense that God is one of them. But I feel like I am missing something essential (some feeling of 'connection' maybe)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS TIME

>GENERAL

The Bible (Ignatius Study Bible Recommended)
The catechism of your denomination

>accepted English versions of Bible

NABRE
Douay Rheims
RSV

>THEOLOGY

>novice

Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger
The Last Superstition by Edward Feser
The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
CATHOLICISM by Robert Barron
The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware
Outlines of Moral Theology by Francis J. Connell

>intermediate

Scholastic Metaphysics by Edward Feser
God: His Existence and His Nature by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
Natural Theology by Bernard Boedder
The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy by Etienne Gilson
Against Heresies
City of God
Christianity for Modern Pagans
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church

>advanced

Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Summa Contra Gentiles
Summa Theologiae
On the Incarnation
The Didache
Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

>SPIRITUAL LIFE

>novice

The Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales
Story of a Soul by St. Therese
The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr Seraphim Rose
Nihilism - Fr Seraphim Rose

part 1

Jesus was fully man and fully God. It is similar to the concept of an avatar. Except unique insofar as its trinitatrian character is concerned. Truth comes from the Logos. And the Logos walked among us. It is the mystery of all mysteries. God became man so man may become God.

part 2/2

>intermediate

The Interior Castle
Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignatius
Dialogues by St. Catherine of Sienna
True Devotion to Mary
True Devotion to the Holy Spirit

>advanced

The Cloud of Unknowing
The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
The Desert Fathers
The Philokalia
The Ladder of Divine Ascent
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis

>MEMETICS

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Rene Girard

>HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Rome Sweet Home
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
After Virtue
Christendom I: Founding of Christendom
Theology and Social Theory by John Millbank
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams
Life of St.Anthony by Saint Athanasius
Life of St Francis of Assisi by Saint Bonaventure
Silouan the Athonite by Archimandrite Sophrony
The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyol
The Formation of Christendom by Christopher Dawson
The Dividing of Christendom by Christoper Dawson

>FICTION

Don Quixote
Diary of a Country Priest
The Divine Comedy
Paradise Lost
Silence by Shusaku Endo
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Faust
Les Miserables
The Canterbury Tales
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Brothers Karamazov
A Man for All Seasons
The Pillars of the Earth
The Lord of the Rings
The Chronicles of Narnia
Lord of the World
Parzifal
Joseph of Arimathea: A Romance of the Grail
The Arthurian Cycle
Quo Vadis

whats wrong with the NASB or ASV versions of the bible

Part of engaging with a tradition is being able to entertain the idea. What prejudices do you have that prevent your suspension of disbelief?

NASB is just Protestant. ASV is just a King James revision.

so please explain how they're inaccurate

its a paradox. it's not really supposed to make a lot of logical sense.

were you raised protestant? i was raised baptist and they love to harp on personal relationships with jesus. personally, i never believed i could "talk" with jesus. I simply follow his teachings and hope that he will guide me.

NRSV is Catholic and has nice poetry.

I think I described it already. it's not about disbelief. I believe he was real, I just can't imagine it

I know that he was a man but while I can believe in God and even believe in God walking on earth, I can't imagine a man. I guess I just can't imagine a perfectly good man as anything other than a story for moral edification. How do you make Jesus more real to you as a person?

I was raised protestant (though I'm going through RCIA). I appreciate hearing that, I always felt like Iwas the only one who it wasn't "connecting" for for some reason. Do you think that's enough? Why do some people feel this connection and we don't? Thanks for the inspiration

so prayer is a Protestant invention? hm sure glad I'm Protestant then
Its also considered a liberal and inaccurate translation
>muh gender neutral pronouns

I don't know much about the NASB besides being Protestant, so my claim to inaccuracy would just be the lacking of the deuterocanonical books. It is best to have a Bible carrying all the Biblical books rather than less or more.

The ASV shares this same issue and phrasing issues that are popular Protestant interpretation of doctrinal views. Such as "highly favored" rather than "full of grace" in the arrival of the angel to Mary.

Sorry to be brief but Bible translations aren't a forte at all. Hope that helped.

>so prayer is a Protestant invention?
Certainly hope this was sarcastic.

you're not alone at all. i was raised baptist but probably would consider myself agnostic from 13-23. its mostly because i never felt like i resonated to what i was being told.

eventually i realized that my spiritual beliefs are my own, and that they will never perfectly align with any denomination or creed. we could speculate all day on whats "enough" or why some people think they converse with Jesus at will, but at the end of the day, since we both believe in Jesus and strive to live virtuous lives, I think we will be looked at fairly on judgement day.

I was being sarcastic, I just thought "I never believed I could talk to Jesus" and "Protestants always harp on about relationships with Jesus" were rather ignorant statements coming from a professing Christian.

prayer is a one-way dialogue. it's not a discussion.

not true
God responds through his word and sometimes through his servants on earth.

Thanks friend. God bless you

i agree. what im saying is, you can't just call up jesus and ask him to talk about something. you pray, ASK, and hope that he responds in some shape or fashion. thats not a talk.

>prayer as just conversation with God

To my knowledge prayer is traditionally understood as application of the heart and mind towards God. This relates to not just petition, thanksgiving, and the like but also meditation and contemplation.

in my experience as someone raised protestant i learned it only as a petition. ive moved past that narrow understanding now, but it was worth mentioning to the other user who seemed to have been raised similarly.

Thanks for the heads up, doesn't bother me too much as its pretty easy to ignore those things with how beautiful and edifying what ive seen so far has been.
Granted conspiracy theories can be pretty retarded, but preachers who wholeheartedly endorse capitalism are much worse imo.

We are made in the image of God. When we slow down in prayer we listen to that stillness within wherein is found the voice of God. We are also made in the image of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I think your problem is common tho. Hence why some people connect better with Mary or the Saints.

Another take:

Christ is the medium of salvation and it is through his sacrifice that we are absolved of sin. When we sin we should meditate on what we should have done and make penance and when the temptation of sin arises we should remember Christ’s perfect example.

“Singing is praying twice!”
-some music teacher trying to teach us catholic school kids to sing

She's only half wrong, however. You can prayer through song. It depends on your disposition during the singing.

Reminder that KJV is the most beautiful and influential English language Bible, and the one most widely used by English speakers.

I personally use the KJV as a Catholic for my reading, however, mine is a facsimile of the first edition therefore it has the apocrypha. I also own a Catholic study Bible for historical context and the Book of Common Prayer as a lectionary.

Nonetheless, I don't hold any Anglican credos. I do however have a lot of respect for what they managed to do with the Empire and I believe that the Church of England played an immense yet underrated role in that. I would love to see more Anglicans return to the Roman Catholic Church because I think we would gain a lot from them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_tuum_praesidium
reminder that praying to mary is traced back to a 3rd century anonymous Egyptian document and not to the apostles or a church father

thanks, this one could be pretty helpful, I think

That says the earliest record of a hymn for Mary is that Coptic hymn, not that the tradition is traced back to this. In fact, this implies the opposite.

NRSV isn't catholic, I think you're confusing it with something else

The NRSV is considered highly accurate by Bible researchers actually, top scholars like Bruce Metzger worked on it. The gender-neutral stuff is unnecessary but it's a valid translation choice since it's done where the addressee isn't a single gender. For example, Paul calling fellow believers adelphoi ("brothers") doesn't mean he literally thought they were all male, so the NRSV's "brothers and sisters" makes sense in terms of translating the meaning. Though I do think it's not needed since you can tell all that from context. The only real issue is in the book of Proverbs when it translates "son" to "child", I understand why since the instructions aren't explicitly aimed at males only, but education in the ANE was squarely aimed at males so it's likely the Proverbs are specifically referring to male boys and men.

When looking at specifics, I find that the NABRE is usually more literal when it comes to the NT epistles. So I use a mix of translations, NRSV for most books, RSV for Proverbs, NABRE for epistles. Sometimes NJPS for the psalms since the poetry is nicer, though it only uses the Masoretic Text so I don't rely on it.

Basically, using multiple (good) translations is the best thing to do. None are perfect.

The NASB is a revision of the ASV by the Lockman Foundation, an evangelical protestant group. It was made as a competitor to the RSV which was attacked for being too "liberal" (read: not slavishly sticking to KJV readings). As such, it's basically tailored for a protestant apologetic view, such as flatly translating doulos as "bond-servant", which is a common way to step around the issue of Paul calling people slaves. I'd describe it as an inferior ESV (itself a revision of the RSV in reaction to the NRSV being too "liberal").

>Such as "highly favored" rather than "full of grace" in the arrival of the angel to Mary.
"Favoured one" is the most accurate to the original Greek. "Full of grace" is an artefact of the Latin translation and adds the implication of Grace which isn't in the Greek text.

where should I start with C.S Lewis' writings on christianity

>NRSV isn’t Catholic
My bad. I was comparing translations at half-price and liked the NRSV and assumed it was Catholic cause it contained the Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical Books.

mere christianity

Don't, it's a horrible waste of time. Read someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

1. Mere Christianity
2. Weight of Glory
3. Abolition of Man

And then keep going from there, all of his works are good. (Never read his fiction though, only his Christian apologetics)

Get out lad. CS Lewis should be canonized as a an Anglican Saint for the amount of people he has converted with his writings.

Want to read more Luther but I'm intimidated by the sheer amount of stuff he published. Anyone got tips for delving into his works?

Read commentary on Romans which was super interesting. Lots of stuff insight and lots of errors, but that's expected.

You've got it the other way around. Papists trigger Lutherans.

Isn't King Charles the Martyr the only saint unique to the Church of England? I always thought their claim for his sainthood a bit tenuous, even moreso than the Russian Orthodox Church's claim for Czar Nicholas II's sainthood.

>Never read his fiction though
S C R E W T A P E
Unless you are counting that under apologetics

>simplicity of the Trinity
u wot

Just the mere image of Luther drives most people on this board into a frenzy, don't kid yourself

>Its also considered a liberal
since when is that a bad thing
>and inaccurate translation
no

But you can't pray with shitty Catholic guitar music, the saying is from st. Augustine about chant.

If I wanted to start going to church again. How would I start? How would I know I'm in a quality church?

Also, how do I start going by myself? I honestly don't have or know anyone that would want to go with me. It's not a social anxiety thing. I'm not really that socially akward, just more introverted and I tend to keep to myself. I'm in my early 20's so what groups or church activities can I join to become more involved? Thank you!

>How would I start? How would I know I'm in a quality church?
Find an FSSP or ICR parish or diocesan Tridentine mass if it is available. Buy a Latin-native language missal to help you understand it (I stopped using it after 3-4 masses, the Latin is extremely easy to memorise and follow because it's a special Catholic sort)

>Also, how do I start going by myself? I honestly don't have or know anyone that would want to go with me.
Church isn't a social activity, it is a sacrifice and you go there because you wish to prostrate yourself before God and receive his body and blood (probably not allowed at this point for you)
>I'm not really that socially akward, just more introverted and I tend to keep to myself. I'm in my early 20's so what groups or church activities can I join to become more involved?
Most people here are like that and I ignore just about all the social activities because Church is in fact not a social event. You aren't there to meet people.

I am slowly working my way up to Christian theology (On pre-socratics, hope to tackle Plato and Aristotle while reading more of the OT before getting to Christian theologians) but I have a hard time understanding or believing the traditional depiction of God. If he is all powerful, and immanent through his will, why does he need angels as emissaries, and why did he need to speak to humans? I also don't understand how God is expected to appreciate or be present in prayer/service, this aspect seems anthropomorphic, personal, and odd.
I am also having trouble understanding what the Holy Spirit is supposed to be or how it is supposed to operate.
I want to believe, and from what I am reading so far I feel like I could believe in the future, but I just don't connect sometimes. I know I need to have faith but I don't know how that would feel like.

I count screwtape as apologetics

Literally all it takes is google. The Anglican communion has many saints and they continue to create more of them. Sainthood is different in the Anglican communion though. A Saint is someone who lived such a good life that other Christians might be able to find some wisdom in reading about them or thinking about the actions of that person. It's not superstitious nonsense like the Catholic canonization process.