Spiritual plagiarism

[anglomedved]

In a late-night conversation I said recently of Archimandrite Sophrony and of his book on Starets Silouane that "I don't like people walking in other people's spiritual boots".

Was I being too harsh?

Comments

[yakov-krotov.livejournal.com]

"Не любви" - сурово, а в целом мягко, я так не умею. Но само явление - разновидность идолопоклонства - в каком-то объёме неизбежно в любом духовном возрасте, увы, хотя должно бы заканчиваться с совершеннолетием.

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

Is there not, at least in western Christianity, an idea that you get beyond any idolatry, to a situation where there is the naked you and a pretty naked Christ - nudus christianus nudo Christo sequens.

[yakov-krotov.livejournal.com]

I guess, this is the Bible. Abraham, Isaak and Yakov... But nudeness... Sin deprived human from some invisible clothes--clothes of God's Glory. To be in this glory is not to be naked. Every time when I glorify a creation, not Creator, I am making an idol and losing my own glorious clothes. Lord Jesus wasn't naked on the cross, He was in the same Light as on the Tabor. Idol-making is in modern philosofical term an objectivisation. The problem is that salvation came out to be two-staged and in the world where we are saved through faith, not through vision, we still cannot live without objectivisation, without involuntary process of perception of outer world, people included, as something dead, stable, materialistic. We cannot avoid being another, losing (or not finding) our own name and face. It is very painful to walk without any shoes (Andersen's mermaid.) I think there must be some tolerance and lenience of a pedagogical sort to objectivation. Yes, idol-making is sinful. But looking on the woman with lust is also sinful, but to some extent it is so inevitable in some age... Memory is a strange thing, and it is very hard to restrict ourselves with "remember those who led you" without making "those" idols a little bit... Ingratitude is more dangerous and more widespread temptation...

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

I need to think about this one a bit more. It is a question of just how much of his glory Christ laid aside a) at the time of his incarnation and b) at the time of his crucifixion. I'll be back.