Orthodoxy

One of the more interesting sites I have come across lately in my desert wanderings is the following: http://www.romanity.org. Of particular interest to the parched Protestant may be the doctrines of hesychasm/theosis, hell, and tithing. Just as Rosenstock-Huessy remarked that the thirsty Westerner finds refreshment in the Baroque and German music of Bach or Handel (they composing in an earlier period of Western spirituality that even Nietzsche admitted was a more genuinely "cheerful" time), so the jaded and weary Protestant may take comfort in the fact that all Truth for all time has not been delivered merely to Charles Finney, Hal Lindsey, and John Calvin.
If nothing else, perusal of this site will contribute to the ongoing effort made here to engage different elements of the true tradition across the boards in a concord that will preserve distinctions and richness of our variegated ecclesiastical history, while exalting the invisible harmony that prevails wherever the Spirit blows. It is this which, I maintain, is discerning the spiritual body of Christ, and also contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints: not dogmatism and polemics, but the joyful science of the Logos.
One has to wonder what effect the decimation and decapitation of the Church had upon the transmission of the faith in the period between 100AD and the Diocletian persecutions. In these formative years, fire, sword, and heresy ravaged the young faith, which fought back for its life desperately. If individuals can quench the Spirit, and churches, could not an entire century or even a millenia of ecclesiastical history be somewhat imperfect insofar as it erred from the councils of perfection? Any other view leads into infinite controversies over what constitutes the "true Church". My own tradition skips from Paul to Augustine, and from there straight to Calvin and Geneva, and from there to Hodge, Warfield, and the Princeton school, then from there to Bahnsen, Rushdoony, and Douglas Wilson. It is a shortcoming which I confess is "for my sins", and one which I must labor to overcome.
This is not to belittle the Catholic tradition, to which I will return in later posts. It is only to recognize that, as Protestants, we are uncomfortably still to close to Catholicism to objectively evaluate it in charity and spiritual discernment.
The two mottos of this site, to continue my dedication, will be "Reforming the Reformation" and "For My Sins". This, I hope, will capture the spirit of things.
As Wooster asks "where will it all end?", and Jeeves answers, "who can say, sir?". I will propose, and God shall dispose.

PS. We shall have a separate column on Anglicanism, Jane Austen, and the world of Bertie and Wooster, but that's for a rainy day. Cheers and what ho!