Greetings, Myrrh Sea! I'm thankful to hear of your interest; it is encouraging. There's always a chance I could do something like that for an online community at some point, but for now I think it's important to keep the focus on our private community. However, I try to be available to anyone who wants to talk about, well, anything, so if you're ever interested, feel free to reach out. It would be nice to meet you.
Great piece, thanks Cormac for the share! All about 'dem Cosmic Chiasms. Looking forward to those sketches of Romans and Corinthians when you have time to dust those off the shelf. A few thoughts:
- The fractal mapping of the tripartite architecture of the soul (i.e. reason, incensive thymos, appetitive epithymia) to the nine virtues is very fascinating. How do you think about bolstering the case here - for example, why is love-joy-peace more "logos" in nature and longstanding-kindness-goodness "Thymic" etc? And then on the sub-fractal level that one inversion is an interesting nuance but curious how the other virtues relate to each other. Have any Fathers or folks done a more granular mapping here? Seems like an interesting thread to pull on.
- In that line of thinking, would have to go through in more detail but it would be interesting for let's say John of Damascus's work to map scripture to virtue / vices rationale more explicitly. For example the "soul and body having five senses" each potentially corresponding to each of the five points of the pentad fractal structure for NT (Christ) and OT (Adam) respectively [which of course maps to Isaac and Ishmael using your fractal sweet spot]. And then the virtues / vices are potentially the main theses for sub-fractals? But perhaps it's not as rigorous as that
Hi Tomer! I appreciate your enthusiasm — sorry for the delayed response; I’ve been swamped, and you give a lot to consider here. Whenever I read the Church Fathers on the subject of the virtues and vices (like the excellent piece you cite by St. John Damascene from the Philokalia), it’s clear to me that they are writing from experience, and that I, to understand them properly, must have that experience too. Their words can help lead me into that experience, and that must be the purpose for my contemplation of such texts. With a little bit of experience practicing the virtues, I can see just enough to understand what I’m being taught in order to get a little bit more. But another great reason to study and contemplate the virtues, which I certainly detect in your response, is out of sheer love for them, because there’s hardly anything else more worthwhile to think about.
When it comes to parsing the virtues listed as the fruit of the Spirit, I’m reading them all in context and relating them to each other. And I see a fractal, which means it can’t be so simple as to associate longsuffering — the Greek for which is macrothymia, as in long-thymos-ness — with thymos because within the triad of longsuffering-kindness-goodness, it stands for the rational aspect relative to kindness and goodness. To be longsuffering, one must have so turned one’s incensive aspect towards virtue as to be permanently steadfast in it. All thymic virtue will thus descend from this one virtue the way all virtues descend from rational virtue. Kindness is the thymic version of thymic virtue because it entails bending one’s repulsive powers away from one’s neighbors, where vice would have them directed, and towards vice itself. Goodness is the epithymetic version of thymic virtue in that it denotes the attractive half of ethics — ethics being a thymic field of human praxis, the way aesthetics pertains to epithymia.
Love, joy, and peace meanwhile are very general, all-encompassing virtues, in which all other virtues reside. Longsuffering, kindness, and goodness all abide in peace. Faithfulness, meekness, and temperance all abide in joy. Love is the crown, the “greatest of all” (1 Cor. 13:13), containing all virtue. Love never fails. It lasts the longest. You see how longsuffering is a thymic rendition of that?
That would be the next one that I do, for sure. I just don't know when I'll be blessed with the time to pull it off! I know for certain I'm booked through the end of the year. We'll see what doorways 2025 opens up.
Glory to God for your work, will this online Bible study you're working on be possible to join if we're from another parish?
Greetings, Myrrh Sea! I'm thankful to hear of your interest; it is encouraging. There's always a chance I could do something like that for an online community at some point, but for now I think it's important to keep the focus on our private community. However, I try to be available to anyone who wants to talk about, well, anything, so if you're ever interested, feel free to reach out. It would be nice to meet you.
Great piece, thanks Cormac for the share! All about 'dem Cosmic Chiasms. Looking forward to those sketches of Romans and Corinthians when you have time to dust those off the shelf. A few thoughts:
- The structure reminds me of the five points in Gary North's thesis too for additional consilience (which is more covenantal in nature) - https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/that_you_may_prosper.pdf
- The fractal mapping of the tripartite architecture of the soul (i.e. reason, incensive thymos, appetitive epithymia) to the nine virtues is very fascinating. How do you think about bolstering the case here - for example, why is love-joy-peace more "logos" in nature and longstanding-kindness-goodness "Thymic" etc? And then on the sub-fractal level that one inversion is an interesting nuance but curious how the other virtues relate to each other. Have any Fathers or folks done a more granular mapping here? Seems like an interesting thread to pull on.
- In that line of thinking, would have to go through in more detail but it would be interesting for let's say John of Damascus's work to map scripture to virtue / vices rationale more explicitly. For example the "soul and body having five senses" each potentially corresponding to each of the five points of the pentad fractal structure for NT (Christ) and OT (Adam) respectively [which of course maps to Isaac and Ishmael using your fractal sweet spot]. And then the virtues / vices are potentially the main theses for sub-fractals? But perhaps it's not as rigorous as that
- https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/philokalia/john-of-damaskos-on-the-virtues-and-the-vices.html
Hi Tomer! I appreciate your enthusiasm — sorry for the delayed response; I’ve been swamped, and you give a lot to consider here. Whenever I read the Church Fathers on the subject of the virtues and vices (like the excellent piece you cite by St. John Damascene from the Philokalia), it’s clear to me that they are writing from experience, and that I, to understand them properly, must have that experience too. Their words can help lead me into that experience, and that must be the purpose for my contemplation of such texts. With a little bit of experience practicing the virtues, I can see just enough to understand what I’m being taught in order to get a little bit more. But another great reason to study and contemplate the virtues, which I certainly detect in your response, is out of sheer love for them, because there’s hardly anything else more worthwhile to think about.
When it comes to parsing the virtues listed as the fruit of the Spirit, I’m reading them all in context and relating them to each other. And I see a fractal, which means it can’t be so simple as to associate longsuffering — the Greek for which is macrothymia, as in long-thymos-ness — with thymos because within the triad of longsuffering-kindness-goodness, it stands for the rational aspect relative to kindness and goodness. To be longsuffering, one must have so turned one’s incensive aspect towards virtue as to be permanently steadfast in it. All thymic virtue will thus descend from this one virtue the way all virtues descend from rational virtue. Kindness is the thymic version of thymic virtue because it entails bending one’s repulsive powers away from one’s neighbors, where vice would have them directed, and towards vice itself. Goodness is the epithymetic version of thymic virtue in that it denotes the attractive half of ethics — ethics being a thymic field of human praxis, the way aesthetics pertains to epithymia.
Love, joy, and peace meanwhile are very general, all-encompassing virtues, in which all other virtues reside. Longsuffering, kindness, and goodness all abide in peace. Faithfulness, meekness, and temperance all abide in joy. Love is the crown, the “greatest of all” (1 Cor. 13:13), containing all virtue. Love never fails. It lasts the longest. You see how longsuffering is a thymic rendition of that?
Thank you Cormac for taking the time for getting back. Very insightful!
Thank you for this Cormac! Do you think you might try an outline for Ephesians? Παναγία μαζί σου!
That would be the next one that I do, for sure. I just don't know when I'll be blessed with the time to pull it off! I know for certain I'm booked through the end of the year. We'll see what doorways 2025 opens up.