Pano Kostouros

Your spinal fluids need replacing....💉💉💙💙

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

https://t.co/4knl53nIzu

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

"How mistaken are those people who seek happiness outside of themselves, in foreign lands and journeys, in riches and glory, in great possessions and pleasures, in diversions and vain things, which have a bitter end! In the same thing to construct the tower of happiness outside of ourselves as it is to build a house in a place that is consistently shaken by earthquakes. Happiness is found within ourselves, and blessed is the man who has understood this. Happiness is a pure heart, for such a heart becomes the throne of God. Thus says Christ of those who have pure hearts: 'I will visit them, and will walk in them, and I will be a God to them, and they will be my people.' (II Cor. 6:16) What can be lacking to them? Nothing, nothing at all! For they have the greatest good in their hearts: God Himself!"

- Saint Nektarios of Aegina

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

Father Savvas Agioritis on the "peripatetic confusion" of the wandering and exiled nous in this life.

"When a person functions properly—meaning they are spiritually healed—then the noetic energy (that is, the activity of the nous) exists within the heart and there it prays unceasingly. Then the human being functions correctly.

However, when a person is unhealed and ruled by passions, this noetic energy, instead of in some way revolving within the heart, unfolds and becomes attached to the brain, to the rational faculty. In this rational faculty, in the brain, all meanings and thoughts come from the environment through the senses. All the senses and nerves—the optic nerve and so on—lead to the brain.

The noetic energy should be in the heart. When it becomes fixed in the brain, then the concepts of the brain descend into the heart and, one might say, a short circuit occurs. The person becomes confused and makes gods out of created things in his environment, receiving the influence of his brain and the mental images that exist in it from the senses. He makes idols. This is how idolatry happens.

When a person is healed, the noetic energy gathers in the heart and is directed toward God, Who has no relation to the environment. As we said, there is absolutely no similarity.

This is the therapy that the Church offers: that a person may break this short circuit, this confusion between reason and heart, and allow reason and the brain to deal with the environment through the senses, while the heart works for God."

Hieromonk Savvas Agioritis (Homily, Nov 9, 2014), A "Short Circuit" Leads to Idolatry

[Justino Carneiro @katechon22]

Protestant ecclesiology is an outgrowth of papal ecclesiology.

First, medieval theologians distinguished three concepts that, in their view, had been conflated in the term "Body of Christ": the natural human body of Jesus Christ, the Eucharistic mystery, and the Church.

The application of the concept of "body" to the Church was developed in accordance with the concept of "corporation" inherited from Roman law and distinguished from the body of Christ in the sense of the Eucharistic mystery. The Church as corpus would, in effect, become a juridical corporation. As explained by Ernst Kantorowicz, medieval theologians and jurists, in order to justify the continuity of the organic unity of an institution through time, distinguished three temporal modalities: aeternitas, aevum and tempus. Within the scope of aevum, the ecclesial corporation acquires the dimension of perpetuity common to angels and celestial intelligences, being neither eternal like God nor strictly temporal like individual men (cf. Vatican I: "the perpetuity of the primacy of blessed Peter in the Roman pontiffs"). It is in this sense of aevum that the epithet mysticum henceforth came to be applied to the Church. The Church as a legal corporation is what is denoted by the syntagma corpus mysticum. As Henri de Lubac demonstrated, the adjective mysticum, originally belonging to the sacramental sphere in the West, was gradually transferred to the legal sphere of the institution.

As a unitary juridical entity distinct from its constituent members, the Church as a corporation acquires the legal status of a persona ficta. Yet, insofar as the papal conception of the Church is monarchical, the persona ficta of the Church cannot but be the Pope himself. The Pope is, in this sense, the head of the ecclesial juridical corporation, endowed with a legal personality independent of its members. This legal personification of the Church implies a surreptitious separation and subsequent hypostatization of its dual divine-human reality, whose new relation of representation recalls the Nestorian notion of the "prosopic union" of the human and the divine in Christ.

Papal ecclesiology further articulated this legal and corporate notion through the dual conception of the Church as Ecclesia militans – the visible Church – and Ecclesia triumphans – the invisible Church. Submission and obedience to the Pope, as the foundation of membership in the visible corporate Church, became the necessary condition for access to the triumphant Church, the invisible and heavenly counterpart of the visible Church on earth.

Eucharistic communion ceases to be the operative means by which the faithful are incorporated into the Body of Christ. The body of Christ present in the Eucharistic mystery ceases to be the sacramental foundation of the Church and is relegated to a secondary role, becoming merely a sign of belonging to the corporate Church, whose foundation is obedience to the Pope.

Reformers such as Luther and Calvin would adopt this notion, though now to designate the Church as a mystical body (spirituale et arcanum Christi corpus) – spiritual and invisible –, as opposed to the Church as a political and visible body (corpus politicum dumtaxat).

This idea of the mystical and invisible Church would also be appropriated by the esoteric movements of the seventeenth century, such as Rosicrucianism, and later by Freemasonry.

The separation of the Church from the eucharistic body of Christ opened the door to the conception of an esoteric and mystical ecclesia distinct from the Body of Christ as such. Contrasted with the representation of the Catholic Church as a merely political and external institution, this notion would come to assume the contours of an ecclesia not confined to Christianity itself, but transcending it, with Christianity conceived as an exoteric religion.

In the context of the Protestant movements, the emphasis on understanding the Church as the invisible Church – the true corpus mysticum of Christ, distinct from and opposed to the corrupt papal institution – resulted in the impossibility of drawing institutional boundaries between Church and State, since the Church, as corpus mysticum interpreted in this new sense, possessed no visible earthly form. Thus, all political and institutional aspects of the Protestant denominations were necessarily left in the hands of the princes who protected the various congregations and, ultimately, in the hands of the state.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@ZOAMAXXING https://t.co/D4oTHSPP34

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

We must always be apodictic in our Faith and walk with Christ!

"You may know that in the dispute between Barlaam and St Gregory, in which Barlaam proposed the dialectical method as a means of finding the truth, St Gregory Palamas invoked apodictic reasoning, demonstrability, as the highest criterion of truth. He says, as is well known, that disjunctive syllogisms sometimes make something non-existent exist, and sometimes the opposite, whereas the apodictic method is always unerring. However, St Gregory Palamas himself says that our Holy Fathers recommend that we use reason, but in what way? Divinely. In other words, the most important thing is spiritual experience, which sheds light upon reasoning. If we do not have illumination, and if we do not have dispassion and grace in our soul, our reasoning may lead us into delusions.

Reasoning, as a function of the whole human being, is not necessary only for monks, but it is absolutely essential. You will actually notice in the writings of the holy Fathers that they contain powerful reasoning. The greatness of the holy Fathers lies not only in their spiritual experience and in their love, their virtues and their illumination, but also in their power of reasoning. Look at Athanasius in his anti-heretical arguments. We have syllogisms in the theology of St Gregory the Theologian against Eunomius, Palamas has syllogisms, and Maximus has lots of them."

— Fr. John Romanides

"Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance"
— St. Matt. 3:8

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@ZOAMAXXING Did you dream about this proposition last night?

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@ZOAMAXXING "Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul...Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear."

- Saint Porphyrios

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@EthanWayne2001 Would you like to be an Orthobro? It's a simple procedure we do behind monasteries and trailer parks in Russia 🙃🙂

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@AngloVarangian You need a big dose, my friend.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@AngloVarangian Nah, bro. If you want to call me a nominalist, at least link the correct tweet on the subject.

https://t.co/y4bIiLcv7r

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

Have you even bothered to read the materials I sent you?

Fr. John is not subtly rejecting St. Leo's Tome. Where are you getting that? In fact, in his article on St. Cyril and Chalcedon, he explicitly says that Leo's Tome is "adequately Orthodox" and "definitely not Nestorian," while also insisting that it was accepted at Chalcedon only as a document against Eutyches and only in light of, and in subordination to, the letters and Twelve Chapters of St. Cyril. His critique is not a rejection of Leo's Tome itself, but a rejection of treating Leo's Tome as though it were an autonomous Latin standard detached from Cyril, Chalcedon, Constantinople II, and the wider Patristic framework.

The same point applies to "immanent universals." His rejecting a particular Latin or Augustinian metaphysical framework does not automatically amount to rejecting Orthodox Christology or falling into strict nominalism. In fact, the problem of universals isn't one completely "solved" in the Orthodox Church as the Fathers use this convention in different ways according to apologetic and theological needs, which is why Fr. John Romanides in the Christology article says,

"From the experience of theosis or the vision of God the prophets, apostles, and saints know that there is no similarity whatsoever between the uncreated and the created. This means that the created beings are not copies of uncreated archetypes and forms. Creation is unique as creation per se as the uncreated is unique per se. This means that if universals do exist they do not in any case belong to the uncreated dimension of existence.

From the viewpoint of the divine presence and energy in creation, this means that God does not relate Himself as one general or genetic pattern in which the specific members of a genus participate as parts related to a whole. The experience of theosis reveals that the totality of God is related to each individual as individual regardless of whether this individual is a part or a specific or an individual member of a genus or species or similar or identical in nature with others. It is not a part of the divine that is related to part of creation, nor all of God related to all of creation. But, each Person of the Holy Trinity coinhering in the other divine Persons is in totality related to each created individual being."

He says "if universals" exist, because he's aware of the fact that the Fathers had slightly differing views on this.

Prof. Johannes Zachhuber outlines this here for the early Church.
https://t.co/253bn7b0Pk

The Cappadocians utilized the distinction and relationship between universal/particular to help them articulate the distinction/relationship between ousia (the common and the universal) and hypostasis (the unique and the particular).

St. Augustine's Divine Conceptualism is much closer to a Platonic model than the Cappadocian or later Maximian approaches. No one here disputes that.

Sure, St. Maximos develops a more dynamic account in which universals and particulars are mutually implicated within the providential structure of creation and its return to God in Christ:

"Universals are contained by particulars through alteration whereas particulars mutate into universals when they are destroyed by dissolution. And the coming into being of the former is inaugurated by the destruction of the latter, while the destruction of the latter comes about through the generation of the former, for the combination of one universal with another, which brings more particulars into being, is a process of alteration that results in the destruction of the universal, whereas the reduction of particulars to universals, through the dissolution of their composition, is at once the cause of their destruction and the ongoing existence and creation of universals...this is the constitution of the sensible world."
- St. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, Vol I, pg. 275-277 (Ambiguum 10:83)

"God alone exercises providence over all beings, and not simply over some beings and not others, as certain secular philosophers have taught, but absolutely over all things, including universals and particulars, according to the single and unchanging purpose of His goodness.

… For the universals subsist in the particulars, and do not in any way possess their principle of being and existence by themselves, then it is quite clear that, if the particulars were to disappear, the corresponding universals would cease to exist."
- Ibid., pg. 313-315 (Ambiguum 10:101)

"For particulars are never predicated of universals, nor species of genera, nor what is contained of what contains, and this is why universals cannot be converted into particulars, nor genera into species, nor common qualities into the traits of an individual, nor – to put it concisely – what contains into what is contained."
- Ibid., pg. 385 (Ambiguum 17:4)

"But the Wisdom and Prudence of God the Father is the Lord Jesus Christ, who through the power of wisdom sustains the universals of beings, and through the prudence of understanding embraces the parts from which they are completed, since He is by nature the Creator and Provider of all things, and through Himself draws into one those that are separated, dissolved strife among being, and binding together all things in peaceful friendship and undivided concord, but in heaven and on earth, as the divine apostle says."

- St. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, Vol II, trans. Fr. Maximos Constas, Harvard University Press, pg. 117-119 (Ambiguum 41:11), here St. Maximos is quoting St. Dionysios the Areopagite’s On The Divine Names, from the chapter "Perfect and the One"

But the strict "denial of 'in re' universals" perspective isn't entirely unique to Fr. John. St. Photios the Great, in both Amphilochium 77 and 231, explicitly denies "in rem" universals and relegates their status entirely to "post rem" epistemic and denotative abstractions in the human mind, and that we cannot rightly attribute to them in themselves any causal power.

This paper demonstrates this clearly.
https://t.co/uvjJxDIDt9

Here's a key section in it that I will substantiate with Scholarios later on,

"It seems that Photius is not even interested in securing a causal role for in re universals. This point is made through a brief but strong remark: « For Socrates is a man or animal by himself » (l. 94, καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν Σωκράτης ἄνθρωπος ἢ ζῷον καθ’ αὑτό). This remark is made in contrast to the fact that « man or animal is corporeal not by itself nor from the beginning nor by nature, but as something declarative and indicative of a subject body that embraces its relation with it (ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἢ τὸ ζῷον σωματικὸν οὐ καθ’ αὑτὸ οὐδ’ ἄνωθεν οὐδὲ φύσει, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐξαγγελτικὸν καὶ δηλωτικὸν ὑποκειμένου σώματος καὶ τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸ περιπτυσσόμενον σχέσιν) ». If this remark is taken seriously and literally, it indicates an opinionated view on universals, a clear-cut understanding of the universal as posterior to the individuals, and the negation of a traditional view on universals. It is not the universal man realized in Socrates which is responsible for the fact that Socrates is a man; but the fact that Socrates is a man is a primary ontological fact. Socrates is a man by himself; like Plato is a man by himself, like Aristotle is a man by himself. The universal man is just the concept obtained by abstraction from the consideration of these various men. It is a mental construction, posterior to the individuals, and not an entity which causes the being of the individuals.

The last statement goes one step further: genera and species are names (ὀνόματα). They are not real things – and absolutely not self-subsisting entities. It now seems clear that Photius could not be considered to be a realist, neither in the Platonic transcendent sense, nor in the immanent sense. He defends a position exactly like that of Aristotle’s in the De Anima: the universal animal is either nothing or posterior, « τὸ δὲ ζῷον τὸ καθόλου ἤτοι οὐθέν ἐστιν ἢ ὕστερον » (402b7).

A confirmation of this ontological conviction is found in Amph. 231 where Photius asks whether in the Incarnation Christ assumed a general human being or a particular human being (« Πότερον ὁ Χριστὸς τὸν καθόλου ἄνθρωπον ἀνελάβετο ἢ τὸν ἐπὶ μέρους; »). In this text, we find what is probably the clearest statement of Photius on the mode of being of universals:

'ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ καὶ φαντασίᾳ αὕτη γὰρ ἡ τοῦ καθόλου ὕπαρξις

in thought alone and in imagination, such is the existence of the universal' "
-- St. Photios, Amph. 231

On top of that read what he has to say in the beginning of Amphilochium 16:

"Moses called the earth 'invisible' because it had not yet enjoyed the possibility of appearing, as it was covered by the flood of waters. For there was the power and force of the deep, which on the one hand soaked the natural dryness of the earth, and on the other did not allow it to enjoy its own adornment, which consisted of kinds of plants and grasses, and the other beauty of flowers and fruits. Also, the earth was invisible because there was not yet the man created with the capacity to see it. "

Notice how St. Photios stresses that one of the reasons Moses called the Earth "ἀόρατος" or "unseeable" was because the Earth at that time had not a human being to behold it with his mind or senses. That's curious because he didn't need to mention that part explicitly if he were a strict Realist in a philosophical sense. Does that make St. Photios a nominalist, though? Is there a possible way to see things beyond this strict duality without being arbitrary?

At the beginning of the Triads, in his response to Barlaam, St. Gregory Palamas describes the Logoi of beings as ἀνειδέοι, ἀσχημάτιστοι, θεῖα θελήματα: formless divine intentions, not specific determinate forms grasped by the discursive intellect in a Platonic manner nor gleaned by the senses peripatetically in an Aristotelean one as God is beyond matter and form. So, would St. Gregory's refusal to treat the logoi as either Platonic universals or Aristotelian immanent forms make him a nominalist? Or does it show, instead, that he refuses to reduce the divine will to a created dialectic?

St. Gennadios Scholarios here, in defining conceptual distinction, states unambiguously that universals reside solely in the mind of man. He also says that the individual particularized realities signified are not therefore ONLY in the mind, but rather that the mind abstracts realities as universals and then reciprocally predicates their concrete individualities as particulars and vice versa.

"The so-called conceptual distinction exists only in those things that are said to belong to thought and are secondary intentional concepts. It is thus called because it arises from the mind’s resourcefulness and resides solely within the mind. For the human intellect, endowed by God with great abundance, abstracts certain simple and universal notions from particular and composite realities, thereby advancing toward knowledge. Conversely, it also imposes distinctions upon these notions by subdivision, working back into particulars; these are called secondary intentions and concepts of thought. They belong to discourse, not primarily to the thing itself, and it is around these that logical methodology revolves.

For instance, genus as such is a universal and a concept, and so is species. However, these do not exist in the thing itself as such. They both come into being and exist through an abstraction from realities, and they exist and are apprehended only in the mind. Yet sometimes they are also observed in reality, for which reason they are abstracted, so that the intellect may, through them, acquire precise knowledge of realities—not as universals, but rather as more essential parts of those realities that possess a structure opposite to the one previously mentioned.

Thus, species contains, while genus is contained by species. In such cases, the acts of containing and being contained are attributed not to the secondary intentions, but to the realities themselves, from which they were abstracted by the power of the intellect, examined as universals, and then reapplied to the realities.

Hence, we call man an animal essentially, but we do not also call animal genus essentially. For if we did so, we would then reason that man is a genus, which is altogether false. Instead, animal exists in reality according to its proper being, that is, as a living and sentient essence. Yet it is called a genus conceptually in its relation to the things subsumed under it, which partake in this essence essentially.

From such intellectual abundance, the mind sometimes forms propositions, treating the same thing in two ways. For instance, it apprehends that Peter is Peter, or that man is man, and it predicates the definition of the defined, separating them, and again reciprocally predicates, as things that are equivalent and convertible. In this way, it employs two notions for one and the same thing, even though there is a greater distinction here than in predicating something of itself. For here, one is a name, while the other is a phrase; one is singular, while the other is composite of multiple elements. Yet even so, the defined and its definition are nonetheless one and the same thing, which is why they are interchangeable.

In those intentions derived from abstraction by the power of the intellect, which are also called beings of reason and secondary intentions, the conceptual distinction exists. For after intentions corresponding to primary concepts, which exist outside the mind as things in themselves, are conceived and thereby come to exist in the mind, both their distinction and their union occur within the mind—such as when it is said that Peter is Peter. For in reality, Peter does not become subject to or predicated of himself, nor is he divided, but it is the intellect that performs these operations, both dividing him into definitions and then uniting them again in the proposition. Such division or conjunction places nothing within Peter himself."
-- St. Gennadios Scholarios, ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE DIVINE ESSENCE AND ITS ENERGIES. Section 2.

According to Scholarios and Photios, to say that universals "inhere" in particulars and that particulars are made for the universals is to say that God made this world intelligible and compatible with the human psyche, but does this statement automatically make them and Fr. John Romanides nominalists ?

The problem with nominalism in the West is that it solely relies on the individual man's active intellect to give order and structure to the external world, so if you deny "immanent" or "in rem" universals, you must also necessarily deny the stability of the world, making it a realm of random flux, but the Byzantine (and Saintly mind) does not need to choose between autonomous universals and nominalist flux, because it grounds the intelligibility of creation in God's providential and dynamically determined will.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@OrthodoxPole81 Maybe Roosh and Pearl will end up as the ex-Red Pill power couple.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@3kliksphilip https://t.co/Y1I3c052pr

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@legiturbene @AngloVarangian Catholics don't believe that the Uncreated Light can be seen or leave any discernable trace or imprint in this world

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

Have you even bothered to read the materials I sent you?

Fr. John is not subtly rejecting St. Leo's Tome. Where are you getting that? In fact, in his article on St. Cyril and Chalcedon, he explicitly says that Leo's Tome is "adequately Orthodox" and "definitely not Nestorian," while also insisting that it was accepted at Chalcedon only as a document against Eutyches and only in light of, and in subordination to, the letters and Twelve Chapters of St. Cyril. His critique is not a rejection of Leo's Tome itself, but a rejection of treating Leo's Tome as though it were an autonomous Latin standard detached from Cyril, Chalcedon, Constantinople II, and the wider Patristic framework.

The same point applies to "immanent universals." His rejecting a particular Latin or Augustinian metaphysical framework does not automatically amount to rejecting Orthodox Christology or falling into strict nominalism. In fact, the problem of universals isn't one completely "solved" in the Orthodox Church as the Fathers use this convention in different ways according to apologetic and theological needs, which is why Fr. John Romanides in the Christology article says,

"From the experience of theosis or the vision of God the prophets, apostles, and saints know that there is no similarity whatsoever between the uncreated and the created. This means that the created beings are not copies of uncreated archetypes and forms. Creation is unique as creation per se as the uncreated is unique per se. This means that if universals do exist they do not in any case belong to the uncreated dimension of existence.

From the viewpoint of the divine presence and energy in creation, this means that God does not relate Himself as one general or genetic pattern in which the specific members of a genus participate as parts related to a whole. The experience of theosis reveals that the totality of God is related to each individual as individual regardless of whether this individual is a part or a specific or an individual member of a genus or species or similar or identical in nature with others. It is not a part of the divine that is related to part of creation, nor all of God related to all of creation. But, each Person of the Holy Trinity coinhering in the other divine Persons is in totality related to each created individual being."

He says "if universals" exist, because he's aware of the fact that the Fathers had slightly differing views on this.

Prof. Johannes Zachhuber outlines this here for the early Church.
https://t.co/253bn7b0Pk

The Cappadocians utilized the distinction and relationship between universal/particular to help them articulate the distinction/relationship between ousia (the common and the universal) and hypostasis (the unique and the particular).

St. Augustine's Divine Conceptualism is much closer to a Platonic model than the Cappadocian or later Maximian approaches. No one here disputes that.

Sure, St. Maximos develops a more dynamic account in which universals and particulars are mutually implicated within the providential structure of creation and its return to God in Christ:

"Universals are contained by particulars through alteration whereas particulars mutate into universals when they are destroyed by dissolution. And the coming into being of the former is inaugurated by the destruction of the latter, while the destruction of the latter comes about through the generation of the former, for the combination of one universal with another, which brings more particulars into being, is a process of alteration that results in the destruction of the universal, whereas the reduction of particulars to universals, through the dissolution of their composition, is at once the cause of their destruction and the ongoing existence and creation of universals...this is the constitution of the sensible world."
- St. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, Vol I, pg. 275-277 (Ambiguum 10:83)

"God alone exercises providence over all beings, and not simply over some beings and not others, as certain secular philosophers have taught, but absolutely over all things, including universals and particulars, according to the single and unchanging purpose of His goodness.

… For the universals subsist in the particulars, and do not in any way possess their principle of being and existence by themselves, then it is quite clear that, if the particulars were to disappear, the corresponding universals would cease to exist."
- Ibid., pg. 313-315 (Ambiguum 10:101)

"For particulars are never predicated of universals, nor species of genera, nor what is contained of what contains, and this is why universals cannot be converted into particulars, nor genera into species, nor common qualities into the traits of an individual, nor – to put it concisely – what contains into what is contained."
- Ibid., pg. 385 (Ambiguum 17:4)

"But the Wisdom and Prudence of God the Father is the Lord Jesus Christ, who through the power of wisdom sustains the universals of beings, and through the prudence of understanding embraces the parts from which they are completed, since He is by nature the Creator and Provider of all things, and through Himself draws into one those that are separated, dissolved strife among being, and binding together all things in peaceful friendship and undivided concord, but in heaven and on earth, as the divine apostle says."

- St. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, Vol II, trans. Fr. Maximos Constas, Harvard University Press, pg. 117-119 (Ambiguum 41:11), here St. Maximos is quoting St. Dionysios the Areopagite’s On The Divine Names, from the chapter "Perfect and the One"

But the strict "denial of 'in re' universals" perspective isn't entirely unique to Fr. John. St. Photios the Great, in both Amphilochium 77 and 231, explicitly denies "in rem" universals and relegates their status entirely to "post rem" epistemic and denotative abstractions in the human mind, and that we cannot rightly attribute to them in themselves any causal power.

This paper demonstrates this clearly.
https://t.co/uvjJxDIDt9

Here's a key section in it that I will substantiate with Scholarios later on,

"It seems that Photius is not even interested in securing a causal role for in re universals. This point is made through a brief but strong remark: « For Socrates is a man or animal by himself » (l. 94, καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν Σωκράτης ἄνθρωπος ἢ ζῷον καθ’ αὑτό). This remark is made in contrast to the fact that « man or animal is corporeal not by itself nor from the beginning nor by nature, but as something declarative and indicative of a subject body that embraces its relation with it (ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἢ τὸ ζῷον σωματικὸν οὐ καθ’ αὑτὸ οὐδ’ ἄνωθεν οὐδὲ φύσει, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐξαγγελτικὸν καὶ δηλωτικὸν ὑποκειμένου σώματος καὶ τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸ περιπτυσσόμενον σχέσιν) ». If this remark is taken seriously and literally, it indicates an opinionated view on universals, a clear-cut understanding of the universal as posterior to the individuals, and the negation of a traditional view on universals. It is not the universal man realized in Socrates which is responsible for the fact that Socrates is a man; but the fact that Socrates is a man is a primary ontological fact. Socrates is a man by himself; like Plato is a man by himself, like Aristotle is a man by himself. The universal man is just the concept obtained by abstraction from the consideration of these various men. It is a mental construction, posterior to the individuals, and not an entity which causes the being of the individuals.

The last statement goes one step further: genera and species are names (ὀνόματα). They are not real things – and absolutely not self-subsisting entities. It now seems clear that Photius could not be considered to be a realist, neither in the Platonic transcendent sense, nor in the immanent sense. He defends a position exactly like that of Aristotle’s in the De Anima: the universal animal is either nothing or posterior, « τὸ δὲ ζῷον τὸ καθόλου ἤτοι οὐθέν ἐστιν ἢ ὕστερον » (402b7).

A confirmation of this ontological conviction is found in Amph. 231 where Photius asks whether in the Incarnation Christ assumed a general human being or a particular human being (« Πότερον ὁ Χριστὸς τὸν καθόλου ἄνθρωπον ἀνελάβετο ἢ τὸν ἐπὶ μέρους; »). In this text, we find what is probably the clearest statement of Photius on the mode of being of universals:

'ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ καὶ φαντασίᾳ αὕτη γὰρ ἡ τοῦ καθόλου ὕπαρξις

in thought alone and in imagination, such is the existence of the universal' "
-- St. Photios, Amph. 231

On top of that read what he has to say in the beginning of Amphilochium 16:

"Moses called the earth 'invisible' because it had not yet enjoyed the possibility of appearing, as it was covered by the flood of waters. For there was the power and force of the deep, which on the one hand soaked the natural dryness of the earth, and on the other did not allow it to enjoy its own adornment, which consisted of kinds of plants and grasses, and the other beauty of flowers and fruits. Also, the earth was invisible because there was not yet the man created with the capacity to see it. "

Notice how St. Photios stresses that one of the reasons Moses called the Earth "ἀόρατος" or "unseeable" was because the Earth at that time had not a human being to behold it with his mind or senses. That's curious because he didn't need to mention that part explicitly if he were a strict Realist in a philosophical sense. Does that make St. Photios a nominalist, though? Is there a possible way to see things beyond this strict duality without being arbitrary?

At the beginning of the Triads, in his response to Barlaam, St. Gregory Palamas describes the Logoi of beings as ἀνειδέοι, ἀσχημάτιστοι, θεῖα θελήματα: formless divine intentions, not specific determinate forms grasped by the discursive intellect in a Platonic manner nor gleaned by the senses peripatetically in an Aristotelean one as God is beyond matter and form. So, would St. Gregory's refusal to treat the logoi as either Platonic universals or Aristotelian immanent forms make him a nominalist? Or does it show, instead, that he refuses to reduce the divine will to a created dialectic?

St. Gennadios Scholarios here, in defining conceptual distinction, states unambiguously that universals reside solely in the mind of man. He also says that the individual particularized realities signified are not therefore ONLY in the mind, but rather that the mind abstracts realities as universals and then reciprocally predicates their concrete individualities as particulars and vice versa.

"The so-called conceptual distinction exists only in those things that are said to belong to thought and are secondary intentional concepts. It is thus called because it arises from the mind’s resourcefulness and resides solely within the mind. For the human intellect, endowed by God with great abundance, abstracts certain simple and universal notions from particular and composite realities, thereby advancing toward knowledge. Conversely, it also imposes distinctions upon these notions by subdivision, working back into particulars; these are called secondary intentions and concepts of thought. They belong to discourse, not primarily to the thing itself, and it is around these that logical methodology revolves.

For instance, genus as such is a universal and a concept, and so is species. However, these do not exist in the thing itself as such. They both come into being and exist through an abstraction from realities, and they exist and are apprehended only in the mind. Yet sometimes they are also observed in reality, for which reason they are abstracted, so that the intellect may, through them, acquire precise knowledge of realities—not as universals, but rather as more essential parts of those realities that possess a structure opposite to the one previously mentioned.

Thus, species contains, while genus is contained by species. In such cases, the acts of containing and being contained are attributed not to the secondary intentions, but to the realities themselves, from which they were abstracted by the power of the intellect, examined as universals, and then reapplied to the realities.

Hence, we call man an animal essentially, but we do not also call animal genus essentially. For if we did so, we would then reason that man is a genus, which is altogether false. Instead, animal exists in reality according to its proper being, that is, as a living and sentient essence. Yet it is called a genus conceptually in its relation to the things subsumed under it, which partake in this essence essentially.

From such intellectual abundance, the mind sometimes forms propositions, treating the same thing in two ways. For instance, it apprehends that Peter is Peter, or that man is man, and it predicates the definition of the defined, separating them, and again reciprocally predicates, as things that are equivalent and convertible. In this way, it employs two notions for one and the same thing, even though there is a greater distinction here than in predicating something of itself. For here, one is a name, while the other is a phrase; one is singular, while the other is composite of multiple elements. Yet even so, the defined and its definition are nonetheless one and the same thing, which is why they are interchangeable.

In those intentions derived from abstraction by the power of the intellect, which are also called beings of reason and secondary intentions, the conceptual distinction exists. For after intentions corresponding to primary concepts, which exist outside the mind as things in themselves, are conceived and thereby come to exist in the mind, both their distinction and their union occur within the mind—such as when it is said that Peter is Peter. For in reality, Peter does not become subject to or predicated of himself, nor is he divided, but it is the intellect that performs these operations, both dividing him into definitions and then uniting them again in the proposition. Such division or conjunction places nothing within Peter himself."
-- St. Gennadios Scholarios, ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE DIVINE ESSENCE AND ITS ENERGIES. Section 2.

According to Scholarios and Photios, to say that universals "inhere" in particulars and that particulars are made for the universals is to say that God made this world intelligible and compatible with the human psyche, but does this statement automatically make them and Fr. John Romanides nominalists ?

The problem with nominalism in the West is that it solely relies on the individual man's active intellect to give order and structure to the external world, so if you deny "immanent" or "in rem" universals, you must also necessarily deny the stability of the world, making it a realm of random flux, but the Byzantine (and Saintly mind) does not need to choose between autonomous universals and nominalist flux, because it grounds the intelligibility of creation in God's providential and dynamically determined will.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@AngloVarangian Just read, pray, lift

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

Are you culturally and historically illiterate barbarians going to quote-mine St. John Chrysostom in the same way you quote-mine the Scriptures themselves?

https://t.co/2ImO85aqtU

The Bible is not your personal self-help spellbook, nor a projection screen for your psychologically tarnished tramas.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

Lol, God doesn't "need" interpreters. We, in our wretched and sinful state, need holy interpreters and guides to prevent our delusions from poisoning the interpretation of His word. We are masters at gaslighting ourselves and deceiving others.

St. John Chrysostom said that if we had been able to live a life so pure in the Grace [Energies] of God, we'd not need the Scriptures at all. God speaks in his logoi to all creatures, but He allowed for the Scriptures to be compiled and promulgated in the Orthodox Church to aid us because of our stubborness.

Here is how St. John begins his commentary on the New Testament:

"It were indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written Word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second best course.

For that the former was better, God has made manifest, both by His words, and by His doings. Since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.

And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for He, says our Lord, shall bring all things to your remembrance. John 14:26 And that you may learn that this was far better, hear what He says by the Prophet: I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them, and, they shall be all taught of God. And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said, that they had received a law not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." - St. John Chrysostom, Homily 1 on Matthew, Preface [emphasis mine]

https://t.co/vMs18RiYsF

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

What @paleochristcon said isn't far from reality, making this a really good argument. Over the last few centuries, we've seen countless poor and absurd Bible translations that, when compared to the ancient manuscripts, function as essentially "new" and "different" versions doing the same thing he described here.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@AngloVarangian @Secundogenitura @OrthodoxEthos @GnomeRad https://t.co/9xE0rG1TL0

https://t.co/K8hGuf6x84

Read these very carefully and you tell me.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@EthanWayne2001 God-forbid Fr Josiah witness to an audience of attractive young women.

[Pano Kostouros @PeeksProduction]

@EthanWayne2001 I'll give you a hug, Ethan.