The ‘Strange Woman’ of Proverbs

The ‘Strange Woman’ of Proverbs
The Book of Proverbs refers to the strange woman. For example, Chapter 5 says:
[1] My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
[2] That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
[3] For the lips of a strange woman drop as an [...]

Philo – Higher Pleasures

Philo – Higher Pleasures
On the Giants 10.40

X. (40) And the sentence which follows, “I am the Lord,” is uttered with great beauty and with most excessive propriety, “for,” says the Lord, “oppose, my good man, the good of the flesh to that of the soul, and of the whole man;” therefore the pleasure of the [...]

Philo on the temptation of Adam and Eve

ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION, II{*}
II. (4) …”For I will make him,” says God, “a help-meet for him.” And, in the second place, is younger than the object to be helped; for, first of all, God created the mind [i.e., Adam], and subsequently he prepares to make its helper [Eve, as we shall see]. But all this [...]

Resource: The Psychological Basis of the Jesus Prayer

Description of Work
The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart is a three-volume work dedicated to the the study of the foundations of the Jesus Prayer. It has been written by an Orthodox monk, Fr Theophanes (Constantine). The complete text has been published on-line on the Internet, and the links given below are to [...]

On Philo’s Allegorical Exigesis of Genesis

On Philo’s Allegorical Exigesis of Genesis
While this shorter explanation in a catechetical form [Questions and Answers on Genesis] was intended for more extensive circles, Philo’s special and chief scientific work is his large allegorical commentary on Genesis [Allegorical Interpretation I-III]…
These two works frequently approximate each other as to their contents. For in the Quaestiones et [...]

Intentions and the Higher Self

[Here are some notes I made previously on the subject of intentions and the Higher Self. They need to be developed more fully and perhaps integrated with other material.  But I think the idea here is important -- the main reason I'm posting these notes to the blog is so that I don't I don't [...]

Evagrius Ponticus and the ‘Wanderer’ Demon

The Wanderer Demon
Evagrius Ponticus is an important but (in Latin Catholicism) under-appreciated Church Father. An astute psychologist, Evagrius analyzed in exacting detail the cognitive psychology of religious life. One major legacy is his formalization of the idea of the seven deadly sins. This is a more sophisticated concept than people often realize; his purpose was [...]

Patristic Psychology

The ancients were far better psychologists than we give them credit for. It is a supreme folly of modern men to think we are vastly intellectually superior to the ancients. True, we are technologically more sophisticated, but there is no evidence that we are fundamentally better and deeper thinkers than they.
Indeed, there is good reason [...]

On the stages of contemplation – St Bernard of Clairvaux

On the Stages of Contemplation
From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux
Let us take our stand on the tower, leaning with all our strength on Christ, the most solid rock, as it is written: He has set my feet on a rock, he has guided my steps. Thus firmly established, let us begin to contemplate, [...]

Notes: On the unity of world religious culture

I recently ran across the following quote from 20th-century Christian author, C. S. Lewis in his book, The Abolition of Man. These remarks preface an assemblage of quotes that relate to what Lewis termed Natural Law, which he more or less equated with ancient Chinese term, the Tao:
The idea of collecting independent testimonies presupposes [...]