This morning was the first frost in Bloomington, Indiana — or, at the very least, the first at our house. This is a relatively early first frost; I’m more accustomed to it staying hot until sometime in November, at some point during which God hits a switch and the temperature drops fifty degrees in a week. Given that my ancestors, centuries ago, were roaming the frozen wastes of Scandinavia wearing fur loincloths and swinging battleaxes, and that I’ve inherited their programming to stay perfectly comfortable in cold temperatures while wearing shorts and a t-shirt, as well as having to face the unpleasant corollary that above 75 degrees Fahrenheit I tend to be very uncomfortable no matter how little I’m wearing, I am very, very, very much okay with an early frost. The nice thing about cold weather is that you can always put more on. Hot weather… well, not so much. There’s only so much you can take off. (And trust me, you’re thankful for that — very very very thankful.)
What I emphatically don’t like is getting to the top step of my front porch on my way out to the car and realizing, in rapid succession, a) the first frost has arrived very much unannounced and b) I need to grab onto something very quickly. I am not one normally given to quoting John Mayer, but gravity, stay the hell away from me. Otherwise, I will be in repair (again).
For those who have asked — I do not, as of yet, have any information on the outcome of Fr. John Peck’s 16 October meeting with Metropolitan Gerasimos. All I know is that Fr. John is still listed here on the Prescott Orthodox Church website as the priest. Once I hear something I will post it (if I can).
A couple of links to pass along — Anna passed along the article “Keeping the End in View” by James R. Payton, Jr., over at Christianity Today. Prof. Payton, a Protestant, is also the author of Light From the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition, a book which I have not yet read myself, but I have heard Orthodox say that it is a better introduction to Orthodoxy than some books by Orthodox authors. (One hopes that he has less in common with Daniel Clendenin than with, say, Met. Kallistos Ware.) The article is an examination of the Orthodox Christian understanding of “theosis,” comparing it to how Protestants understand conversion, justification, and sanctification as “phases” of salvation. In general, Prof. Payton treats the Orthodox position quite favorably, but there are two points I’d like to mention.
In Orthodox teaching, “image” and “likeness” are not the same: the first is gift, the second, goal.
This is a matter of some imprecision; it’s not called “Orthodox teaching,” it’s called “the Greek language.” εἰκών and ὁμοίωσις are the words in question, and as even a cursory examination of their entries in either Liddell-Scott or BDAG shows pretty quickly, these are different words with related-but-different meanings, and authors do not use them interchangeably. This has nothing to do with “Orthodox teaching” except insofar as Orthodox teaching reflects how the Greek Fathers use the words. “Policy” and “law” are English words which have related but ultimately different meanings, for example. If a German author wrote that “In American politics, ‘law’ and ‘policy’ are not the same…” it would be a similar situation. It’s an issue of what the words mean, not an issue of how they’re treated by a particular group of people.
While evangelicals can learn from the Orthodox, it is fair to note that Orthodox believers can learn from us, too. The Eastern presentation of salvation can smudge the distinct steps of salvation. Justification and sanctification often get folded into the broader concept of theosis, and they become so blurred that Orthodox believers often don’t know what to make of the terms. They would be well served by an explanation of how the steps of salvation as presented in apostolic teaching fit into the larger package of divinization.
While appreciating Prof. Payton’s open-minded, open-armed approach and thus being willing to lay aside concerns about how patronizing this paragraph might be, I will suggest that he fails to mention that the issues he brings up are addressed by the participation of the Orthodox Christian in the sacramental life of the Church. I assume he knows this, and that this is a concept which probably will sail right over the heads of most CT readers, so I can understand why he doesn’t go there, but ultimately the picture he paints is misleading.
I would also direct your attention to the paper, “Approaching the Educated Person in the Post-Christian Era” by Abp. Lazar Puhalo (ret., OCA). I don’t necessarily agree with every point, but I think it’s worth reading and discussing. I might have more to say about it later.
Current reading: The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George H. Nash. Whether one agrees with everybody he describes or not, the story he tells is fascinating. I may have more to say about this later.
By the way, I’m considering participating in NaNoWriMo for purposes of finishing a first draft of a particular writing project of mine. I’m not sure I’d quite hit 50,000 words, but I’d have a draft finished finally, after four years of picking away at something.
I’ll wrap this up for now by saying that my application for West European Studies has been submitted, and that now it’s just a matter of my letters of recommendation rolling in. Hopefully I’ll know something soon. In the meantime, another option has come up in terms of a departmental home, and the person who suggested it did so unprompted. I don’t want to say much more about it for the time being. For right now I’ll just say that I’m flipping two coins, West European Studies and this other possibility, and we’ll see what comes up. Maybe both will come up heads, in which case I’m decidedly not opposed to leaving IU with more rather than less. Maybe both will come up tails, and I really will have to leave here with 30+ worthless graduate credits. We’ll see. Meanwhile, a near-annual conversation with a particular faculty member about said options has led to this person dubbing me a “professional applicant.” I suppose he/she isn’t wrong.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be prepared for the frost.
“You say amvon, I say ambo…”
So, following a quick trip to the hardware store for a quart of paint and brushes, we headed to All Saints yesterday to do what was necessary. “How good of an idea is this,” I asked Lucas, “letting guys like you and me into the nave by ourselves with paint and brushes?”
Hagia Sophia it ain’t, and I’m not going to argue that it’s gorgeous (particularly with the power outlets on the sides), but it at least looks more or less intentional. (Alas, Fr. Peter is just going to use the prothesis table behind the iconostasis rather than use one of our outdoor shrines as a skevophylakion.) We’ll see how it goes tonight — it sounds like we will have some number of visiting clergy and interested people from the community and around the area, including a contingent of folks from 
On 22 October 2008, at 6pm, 
This was my final project for the French reading knowledge class I took this summer. It is a short essay Fr. John Meyendorff wrote for a book entitled Synthronon: Art et Archéologie de la fin de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age (Paris: Libraire C. Klincksieck, 1968). I’ve seen it cited before, but to the best of my knowledge it has never been translated into English. This is the first half; the second half is forthcoming. Numbered footnotes are Meyendorff’s; cross notes are mine (usually a comment, for the sake of the instructor, as to why I chose to translate something the way I did, in at least one occasion in response to his remarks on an early draft).
Conference day itself was a fascinating experience. The papers were all very interesting, ranging from linguistics to textual traditions to St. Ephrem the Syrian and so on. The intellectual dynamic, largely because of reasons mentioned above but also because of other factors — it was on an openly Christian campus, there was a crucifix on the wall of the room in which we presented, a faculty member said a blessing before lunch, one of the Notre Dame faculty present as well as the keynote speaker were priests themselves, etc. My paper, which deals with liturgical imagery in martyrdom accounts, includes some supporting detail such as specific attestation to the baptismal practice of threefold immersion in sources such as the Didache, Apostolic Constitutions, etc. and it’s there because the professor for whom I wrote it was extremely skeptical of the legitimacy of assertions about exactly that kind of liturgical practice. When I was reading that part of the paper to this group, however, I felt sort of silly, because it was clear that these weren’t people who needed to be convinced on those kinds of points.
On a less academic and more tourist-y note, I’ll just say the Notre Dame campus struck me just the right way on just the right day. The Basilica is something else, inside and out — although, people, I don’t care what you think about Catholicism, don’t go into Catholic churches if all you’re going to do is go in to leave Jack Chick tracts. That happened while I was in the Basilica, and it was simply embarrassing. I’m not going to go in and start leaving Archbishop Chrysostomos publications in the pews — it’s just bad manners, and shows an utter lack of class. Going into somebody else’s house for the express purpose of insulting them is poor Christianity indeed.
So, one thing we found at the Notre Dame bookstore that I volunteered to buy as soon as I saw they had it: 
Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist 