Posted by Al on 10/15/2007, 11:01 am, in reply to "AGAIN, Augustinianism" Read the article again, this time, paying close attention to his statement: "We Orthodox ignore St. Augustine to our own spiritual peril. We need to understand him, if only to understand why we think the way we do, so that we don't trip over our own mental furniture." While we Orthodox do not accept everything that Blessed Augustine wrote, we do agree with him on some points. AND, for those of us who live in the West, our witness to the heterodox is better armed when we understand this one man who is a major influence on the thought and practice of virtually all heterodox. Is it not better to engage the heterodox from a position of knowledge than one of ignorance? Fr John Meyendorf and I discussed Augustine at very great length many years ago when I was a catechumen. He identified the strengths and weaknesses, so to speak, from an Orthodox perspective, in the writings of Augustine, and what Fr John had to say about it made my journey from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy much more complete. Hopefully, your post was more than just knee-jerk anti-Papism, or perhaps even knee jerk anit-Evangelical Orthodoxism. I see no effort on the part of the author to Augustinianize the Orthodox Church. In the main, we tend to have only a little bit of knowledge of Augustine, and as the old saying goes: "A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing" My Orthodoxy is not threatened by this article, and neither should yours. In Christ
Message modified by user Al 10/15/2007, 11:02 am
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