Quote:
|
Originally Posted by !@#$%!
suchfriends, i googled st john chrysostum and the search or original texts turned up some dull antisemitic shit. i know it was the times, 20/20 hindsight, etc., yet still it was unpalatable (i happen to like jews). in any case, know any disease-free texts you'd recommend?
|
this should do..
I recommend someone more like
John of Damascus or Saint Augustin or
Gregory of Nyssa myself, but I do enjoy John Chrysostom. All the early Church Fathers were brilliant and they have some ridiculously insightful things to say, but you must read through them, and some of them are quite dense. I think John of Damascus comes across as the most readily accessible, but keep in mind that these are deeply religious works, and their insights on more practical matters, while equally eloquent (for example)
Quote:
|
Of all existing things there is a twofold manner of apprehension, the consideration of them being divided between what appertains to intellect and what appertains to the senses; and besides these there is nothing to be detected in the nature of existing things, as extending beyond this division. Now these two worlds have been separated from each other by a wide interval, so that the sensible is not included in those qualities which mark the intellectual, nor this last in those qualities which distinguish the sensible, but each receives its formal character from qualities opposite to those of the other. The world of thought is bodiless, impalpable, and figureless; but the sensible is, by its very name, bounded by those perceptions which come through the organs of sense.
|
( From Gregory of Nyssa ), are peppered in less frequently then their glorious theological discussions. These are no Pat Robertsons or even Billy Grahams, the Church Fathers know their shit. John of Damascus of discusses matters of science and even atheism quite frequently and intelligently, and from an open minded perspective. Not quite
vitriolic as John Chrysostum can be, but John of Chrysostum's real gift to the Church was in poetry, hymnals and liturgies, his theological treatises were a bit on the diatribe...
in regards to the jewish discussions, keep in mind that in the 1st-9th centuries, Jewish kingdoms in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were potent military and economic threats to their rival Christian powers in Byzantium, East Africa and the Near East. Jews and Christians often sparred for influence, and some of the writings on both camps are rather similar to Cold War propaganda campaigns to either explain or simply demonize the other.