Topic outline

  • General

  • On teaching attentiveness

    • by F A T H E R   P A U L


      AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN approach to education today must include an active participation of our students, faculty and families in the divine worship of the Orthodox Church.   Experiential knowledge gained by all those involved that is not dialectical permits the child to begin to map their internal spiritual landscape pneumatically through the cultivation of Christ-centered attentiveness.  

      The deacon's repeated exhortation of the faithful with the phrase "Let us be attentive!" marks a clear goal for Orthodox corporate worship "as Church" -- specifically in the Divine Liturgy.  The faithful Orthodox Christians are a people roused out of the sleep of death and darkness through eucharist.  To quote the prophet Isaias, the assembled faithful become through the uncreated grace called down by the priest:  

      "The people who walked in darkness who have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on whom light has shined." (9:2)

      How attentiveness is revealed, cultivated and handed down in such participation in eucharistic synaxis is explained at length by Father Maximos Constas in his book The art of seeing .


      In other words, as the faithful praying Church, all the liturgical elements come together in us as a whole: all creation is re-capitulated in Christ.  This the Holy Spirit accomplishes in making the Body of the resurrected Christ present in the world.  The Holy Spirit has the definitive role in shaping the child's soul and body:  the iconostasis, the clergy, the psalmody, the hymns, the gestures, the proclamation of word of Scripture, the incense, the assembled body of believers.   All these elements and much more, the entire world itself, are conjugated into the stillness in the presence of the Living Trinitarian God.   Learning such stillness through "right worship" is not an intellectual appreciation, but a convergence of God and creatures in the person of the child.

      Cultivating
      attentiveness

      Teaching children not 
      to fidget in church



      Father Maximos Constas is the Interim Dean of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. Fr. Maximos is an internationally recognized scholar with expertise in the theology of the Church Fathers, and has been serving as Senior Research Scholar at Holy Cross since 2011. He was a monk at the Monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, and prior to that was an Associate Professor of Theology at Harvard University.

    • Quote from Constas, M. (2014). The art of seeing. Alhambra, Calif.: Sebastian Press, pp.16-17.

  • Theanthropic versus humanistic education

    • Popović, Justin File

      Popović, J. (2009). Man and the God-man. Alhambra, Calif.: Sebastian Press, pp.57-66.

    • About the author Page

      From the text

      "Regarding education, this conclusion can be stated thus:  Christ is the ideal Man Whom human education seeks as its goal, its purpose, and its ideal.  With Him and from Him, we men know what a real, ideal and perfect man is.  In Him we have the model according to which any man can build himself up into an ideally good, righteous, perfect, and complete man."

      "Examine closely and objectively the internal architecture of that [theanthropic] education: the plan, the fabric, the program, the soul, the spirit: all is evangelical, all is theanthropic.  All its values are divine and all its methods evangelical."

      "Education (enlightenment) is simply the projection of sanctity, the radiation of light; the saint shines and, thereby, enlightens and sanctifies.  Education is entirely conditioned by sanctity; only a saint can be a true educator and enlightener.  Without the saints, there can be no enlighteners; without holiness, there can be no education; without enlightenment there can be no sanctification.  Sanctity is sanctity only by divine light."

      "...frivolous faith in the omnipotence of humanistic science, education, culture, technology, and humanistic civilization borders on insanity.  Under its tragic influence, Europe humanistic education has created a conflict between Church and school, which has always spelled catastrophe for our Orthodox people."

  • On the classical humanistic system

    • Dutilh Novaes, Catarina. Page

      Novaes, C. D. (2017, January 17). The rise and fall and rise of logic – Catarina Dutilh Novaes | Aeon Essays. Retrieved from https://aeon.co/essays/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-logic

      N.B.  For internal use only

    • From the text

      "Disputations were one of the main approaches for intellectual enquiry in medieval Europe."

      "This widespread presence of disputations and related genres has been described as ‘the institutionalisation of conflict’."

      "The downfall of the disputational culture roughly coincided with the introduction of new printing techniques in Europe..."

      "The history of logic leads us to question the individualistic conception of knowledge and of our cognitive lives we inherited from Descartes..."

  • Philosophy of Upbringing in Writings of St. John Chrysostom

    • Bishop Dr. Jovan (Puric) Page
      Purić, J. (2013). Philosophy of Upbringing in Writings of St. John Chrysostom | Serbian Orthodox Church [Official web site].  Available at: http://www.spc.rs/eng/philosophy_upbringing_writings_st_john_chrysostom.



      From the Text

      "In his writings Chrysostom exposes the way along which the contemporary Orthodox pedagogical theory (as well as the secular one) and praxis could return to the ancient Church pedagogy, based on experience."

      "By integrating, through the contemporary Christian synthesis, all the best elements of Antique secular and humanistic models of education into the biblical, New Testamental pedagogical model, Chrysostom’s theological-pedagogical thought is relevant even today, perhaps more relevant than ever before."

      "Chrysostom’s continuous pastoral admonishing of the faithful that there is nothing more significant for Christians in this world than the Eucharist indicates the essential importance of Divine Liturgy for his pedagogy as a whole."

      "The very process, course of the Liturgy is a transition from history into Eschaton, from “existential concerns” into the light of the “eternal Day of the Kingdom of God”."

  • A Full Frontal Attack on the Copernican Revolution

    • VIDEO Page

      A talk delivered by Jonathan Pageau at the Spring 2018 Lecture of the St. Basil Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture at Eastern University.  The speaker explores the traditional notion of the "center" and how it shows us not only why we have sacred places and sacred identities, but also how it is the basis for all perception, even underlying scientific understanding.  Jonathan Pageau is a graduate of the Painting and Drawing program at Concordia University in Montreal.  He studied Orthodox Theology and Iconology at the University of Sherbrooke.  Since 2003 Jonathan has been carving different types of liturgical objects. He is an iconography and carving editor for Orthodox Arts Journal  and teaches icon carving with Hexamaeron, a non-profit organization dedicated to the sacred-arts.