(Idealism, Marxism, Positivism). These philosophies had become the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution,
“The purpose of theology is to safeguard against misunderstandings that frustrate a Christian life of prayer.”
― Maximus the Confessor
― Maximus the Confessor
“In the renunciation of one’s own will to follow the will of God consists the self-renunciation commanded by the Savior, which is an indispensable condition of salvation and Christian perfection. In fact, this is so indispensable that unless this condition is satisfied, salvation is impossible, and Christian perfection even more impossible.”
― The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life
― The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life
“Just think—we must give an account of every idle word!8 How much more serious will be our account for the word of God, preached with vainglory and at the instigation of vainglory!”
― The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life
― The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life
“…egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, ‘We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.’ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.”
― Triumf człowieka pospolitego
― Triumf człowieka pospolitego
“Captured by the ideological animus, both socialist and liberal-democratic art abandoned the criterion of beauty - considered anachronistic and of dubious political value - and replaced it with the criterion of correctness.”
― Triumf człowieka pospolitego
― Triumf człowieka pospolitego
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