Mr. McKnight,
Besides the obvious… and the really obvious… you doth protest too much on cowardice. How quickly you throw this word around at the virtuous (re-read what you said… you called a virtuous man a coward and didn’t bat an eye, amidst your bizarre defense of a sexual deviant who attempts to twist Tradition into disgusting perversion), but when your own absurd cowardice (with regard to God) is pointed out… you respond with OUTRAGE.
I defined cowardice above, but you either ignored this definition or failed to comprehend it. Sophistry is blinding… All you can see is your own self inflated ideas.
You are “done with this conversation”? What conversation? You posted a twisted sophistic rant… I pointed out this annoying fact… you flipped out in outrage… there were kind attempts to console you by others… which failed… but before I get a chance to answer to any of your nonsense myself, you flee for the hills. I wouldn’t call this flight cowardice however, it is actually a good thing. Speaking less in public is a wise move on your part… for that matter it would be a good move for me as well.
I will join you in being “done with this conversation”.
Lord have mercy on us blind and cowardly sinners, of whom I am chief.
]]>Well said. Lord have mercy!
]]>“Your raising concern for my soul is premised on my supposed cowardly words.”
No. It is not.
]]>Elijah,
Please understand that I really don’t care (nor should you) about anyone’s opinion of what you have written. What I care about is your soul.
]]>Elijah,
Without commenting on anything Michael has written here, you keep insisting that ‘the argument’ be engaged. You are essentially asking us to engage the question, “Hath God said..?” to which the only true answer that does not descend into equal sophistry of some kind is a simple yes. If you wish to understand why God hath said it, is necessary that you first believe Him, for…
“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
Or, as Christ said,
“If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.”
Neither will I speak on my own authority. Truth is not revealed through argument. The fullness, life, and beauty of the commandments of God is revealed and known only to those who obey Him. And so I ask you again: Why do you engage – and continue to demand that we engage – the arguments of those who do not obey God’s commandments?
]]>Another characteristic of identity politics is the loss of manly virtue. Men who cannot handle robust debate with other men lapse into victim mythology where their interlocutors are castigated for not displaying feminine sentiments.
]]>There’s a neo-Puritan strain in identity politics that reacts to criticism by shaming the critic. Nothing in Michael’s response above constitutes “judging” or any such thing and the call to consider St. Ephraim’s prayer is merely an attempt to close down the discussion.
]]>James,
How about flipping that around… Would you rather be ax murdered by your son, or sodomized? Personally, I’d rather be murdered any day, even if it takes “40 whacks”. I suspect most men see it that way. Why? Because sodomy is disgusting, degrading and unnatural in the worst way. Everyone dies, but not everyone is sodomized. Death, even a violent death is more natural than sodomy.
Not that interesting, simply an outgrowth of natural law.
M. (Tired of Sophistry)
And for the love of all that is good in the world, please STOP communicating your horrible ideas publicly. “every idle word” and all that.
Lord have mercy! If you can’t handle the truths of Orthodox Tradition you are free to go start your own Protestant sect.
A “coward” is one who loves the will of men more than the will of God. You sir have written cowardly words.
M. (Tired of Sophistry)
]]>If you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail… If you’re an unrepentant militant homosexual who embraces the LGBT secular agenda and attacks the Orthodox Church and right-teaching theologians, every man-to-man close friendship “must” be homoerotic.
]]>“My sole but nevertheless major critique of Jakim’s presentation is contextual. From 1904 to 1909—all but the first year covered in this collection—Florensky was partnered with Sergei Troitsky, his roommate at the Academy, in what we now call a same-sex relationship. The significance of this for the present volume lies in Florensky’s emphasis, in Pillar and Ground, that this “friendship” provided the inspiration for his entire intellectual and literary activity. While we might forgive Florensky’s Russian editor and grandson, the priest-monk Andronik Trubachev, for his reluctance to acknowledge the nature of his grandfather’s friendship with Troitsky, Jakim’s failure to mention Troitsky at all in the three places where it would have been logical to do so in his introduction seems considerably more baffling.” — Giacomo Sanfilippo
“Florensky’s speech to the philosophical circle of the Moscow Theological Academy in January 1906, “Dogmatism and Dogmatics” (pp. 119-38), begins with this dedication: “To my uniquely cherished friend, Sergey Semyonovich Troitsky.” Trubachev identifies Troitsky in a footnote as “perhaps [emphasis mine] Florensky’s closest friend. He was married to Florensky’s sister, Olga” (p. 119). Yet Troitsky did not enter into this unconsummated marriage until three years later. Just two weeks after Florensky delivered “Dogmatism and Dogmatics,” he spent part of a major church holyday writing a shockingly homoerotic love poem to Troitsky entitled “Two Knights.”
Their relationship resurfaces, if more implicitly, in “The Salt of the Earth” (pp. 164-222), Florensky’s tribute to their spiritual father, a priest-monk at Gethsemane Skete: “Whenever a pair of friends would come to see Father Isidore, he’d always express his joy and approval of their friendship” (p. 203). ” — Giacomo Sanfilippo
What St. John meant is that sodomy kills the soul. The distortion and death of the soul is a worse condition than the death of the body.
]]>Michael Kinsey writes: “The great theologian St John Chrysostom wrote, they are worse than murders”
So you’re saying that, if you had to choose, you’d rather your son go on a killing spree with a hatchet and take out a dozen kids in a grade school than be a homosexual?
I’m not really sure what to say other than … that’s interesting.
]]>, they perish. We do gays no favor by approving their conduct. And I believe the Lord Jesus will condemn anything in favor of the lbgt agenda. Do the Vision, it is the ONLY WAY THAT WORKS.
]]>