Witness, NM

Tag: materialism

  • Mysticism, Mission, and Monsters

    Mysticism, Mission, and Monsters

    Enoch, Bertrand Russell, and the consequences of reductionism “Imagine that there are three powerful and mighty giants of the Philistines, upon whom depends the whole hostile army of the demonic Holofernes (cf. Judith 2:4). When these three have been overthrown and slain, all the power of the demons is fatally weakened. These three giants are…

  • Champion and the Idiot

    Champion and the Idiot

    Love is an Apocalypse “I had heard a good deal about him before and, among other things, that he was an atheist. He’s really a very learned man, and I was glad to be talking with a true scholar… He doesn’t believe in God. Only one thing struck me: it was as if that was…

  • Against Utility

    Against Utility

    Seeking the heart amidst revival “And I shall give you a new heart and establish a new spirit in you and remove the heart made of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I shall establish my spirit in you, and I shall work so that you walk in my…

  • If A, Then A

    If A, Then A

    Law of Forgiveness “For if ye forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their transgressions, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew 6:14-15). The Sermon on the Mount changed my life. Nothing compares. While Pentecost restored what was broken…

  • Under the Paschal Light pt. ii

    Under the Paschal Light pt. ii

    The Anti-Liturgy of Pessimism Last week we looked at philosophical pessimism in the West and how its assumptions infiltrate and shape the social imaginary, a term used by philosopher Charles Taylor to describe deep-seated intuitions of a people embedded within their culture. While philosophical pessimism remains a niche worldview, its presuppositions have broadly permeated the…

  • Romanticism, Slavophilism, and the Philosophy of Division

    Romanticism, Slavophilism, and the Philosophy of Division

    A follow-up to the “Messiah or Mouthpiece?” series The transition from Romanticism to Slavophilism in 19th-century Russia shaped the nation’s collective consciousness, fostering a search for a uniquely Russian identity grounded in Orthodoxy. In contrast to Romanticism’s fragmentation of spiritual authority in the Protestant West, Russian Romanticism provided a philosophical framework for reclaiming Orthodoxy as…