Paradise and Utopia

In this episode Father John discusses a few tendencies in Calvinism that would serve to undermine the place of paradise in Reformation Christendom, especially the doctrine of "total depravity" and the spiritual anxiety that accompanied it.

In this episode Fr. John explores the life of Protestant father John Calvin and the reformer's contribution to the Reformation project.

In this episode Father John describes some of the most noteworthy effects of the Protestant Reformation on Western Christendom, emphasizing the decline of a sacramental basis for civilization and the rise of a primarily moral one.

In this anecdotal introduction to the final reflection of Part 2 of the podcast, Father John relates the extraordinary story of a Reformation-era town that declared itself the kingdom of Christ on earth, a "New Jerusalem." Expressing a profound absence of God in the world, however, the story of Reformation Muenster was in fact a sign of the fall of a Christendom centered upon the experience of par...

In this episode Father John concludes his reflection on the critical state of western Christendom on the eve of modern times, exploring how the Reformation tried to resolve the issue of anthropological pessimism but ironically served to intensify it.

In this episode, Father John continues his discussion of developments that led to the Protestant Reformation, emphasizing doctrines and practices related to human salvation.

In this latest episode on the impending Protestant Reformation, Fr. John discusses ways in which the long legacy of pessimism about the human condition and the world in general undermined western Christendom at one of her most critical moments.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses ways in which papal supremacy led to the growing sense of crisis that preceded the Protestant Reformation.

Returning after a long absence from the podcast, Fr. John in this episode introduces a new reflection on the crisis of western Christendom prior to the Reformation by discussing the penitential context of Martin Luther's famous Ninety-Five Theses.

Fr. John describes the desanctification of the world that began to occur in the time leading up to the Great Schism.

Fr. John looks at a couple of consequences of St. Augustine's anthropology in the West.

Fr. John continues to discuss St. Augustine by looking first at his notorious doctrine of original sin and its impact on the conception of man in the West.

Fr. John addresses the foundations in the West of a growing pessimism about man's condition, paying particular attention to Augustine.

Fr. John contends that to understand the coming of the Renaissance and its humanism, one really needs to understand how in the West the doctrines about man became increasingly pessimistic.

Fr. John discusses the dignity of man according to the Greek Fathers

In this final episode of his reflection on Muscovite Russia, Fr. John describes the Old Believer Schism as a crisis in the formerly optimistic cosmology of eastern Christendom, leading to its decline on the eve of modern times.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses Muscovite Russia's encounter with the West in the face of Uniatism, military invasion, and theological "captivity," all of which contributed to the decline of eastern Christendom.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses an important and fateful development in the history of Russian Christendom before modern times, the Possessor Controversy.

In this episode Father John describes the rise of the Muscovite state within Russian Christendom, and the way its Orthodox leaders began to see themselves as heirs to the fallen Byzantine Empire.

Having related the fall of Byzantium to the Turks, Fr. John now begins a reflection on the only remaining Orthodox state in eastern Christendom, Muscovite Russia. In this introductory anecdote he tells of an event in the history of this "Third Rome" that signaled the coming decline of ecclesio-political symphony, and with it the experience of paradise.

In this final episode of Reflection 17, Fr. John relates the final catastrophe to befall eastern Christendom during the period, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

Fr. John gives an account of the atmosphere in Italy in which Orthodox and Roman Catholic delegates met to discuss the possibility of union in the middle of the fifteenth century. Only one of the Orthodox would refuse to sign the resulting Treaty of Union, Saint Mark of Ephesus.

In this episode, Fr. John draws upon several scholarly works to show how hesychasm protected eastern Christendom from the forces that had begun to lead the new Christendom of the west away from traditional Christianity.

In this episode, Fr. John describes why Saint Gregory's defense of hesychasm against the westernized Barlaam represented a defense not only of Orthodoxy, but of Christendom itself.

Fr. John introduces the force that kept traditional Christianity on course at a moment of crisis in the east, Hesychasm, and how it maintained Christendom's focus on paradise.