Comments

9 responses to “The Luminous Eye”

1. 

   Matthew

   December 11, 2008

   I just received the same thing within the last week and am very excited. I’ve been taking distance course from Holy Trinity Seminary and haven’t had the time to get into it. I’ve loved reading the hymns, St. Ephrem on creation and other various writings of St. Ephrem and St. Isaac. I look forward to your musings as I’ve enjoyed the many you’ve posted in the past. Thank-you for all you’ve been doing on-line

2. 

   Moses

   December 11, 2008

   Father or Matthew, what exactly is the book about?

3. 

   fatherstephen

   December 11, 2008

   It’s about the writings of St. Ephrem (which being in Syriac tend to have a slightly different flavor than the Greek fathers) looking particularly at a number of themes within his writings. Most of his theological writings, interestingly, are poems (frequently sung as hymns). In that, he is like St. Gregory the Theologian who was also a theological poet. We have too few if any today.

   I personally think, for instance, that Fr. Alexander Schmemann was a poetic theologian. It’s not that he wrote poetry, but his writing is far more poetic than most theologians. Oddly, I did not conclude this until I read his journals. There, the soul of a poet seems obvious.

4. 

   david peri

   December 12, 2008

   I received my copy couple weeks ago. A great book to read and understand theology is a new way…in poetry. St Ephrem is as Orthodox as the other church fathers…as much as Saints Athanasius, Basil and the two Gregorys. We do not understand theology only in the basic doctrines; but in poetry it goes beyond these boundaries because, as the Brock mentions, Ephrem´s approach to theology, avoids–indeed abhors–definitions which he regards as boundaries that impose limits..(unquote).

   Brock´s book is excellant reading if you can grasp what he is doing. Many people may have a hard time because our theological thinking is geared for straight-forward, neat packages of doctrine which is typical of Western Christianity.

   The latest podcast from http://www.monachos.net in the U.K. has the latest feature that may give another insight. You can access this on Ancientfaithradio.com

5. 

   John

   December 12, 2008

   I look forward to hearing more from this book. I can also recommend “The Spiritual Psalter of St. Ephrem the Syrian.” It is a great treasure.

6. 

   Jonathan

   December 12, 2008

   I started reading the same book a week or so ago, hope to complete over Christmas break. A copy of St. Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise was actually the first Patristic work I ever bought.

   I’ve two books you might want to look at some time Father. One is the Syriac Fathers on Prayer put out by Cistercian Press if I recall correctly; the other is On the Mother of God by Jacob of Serug and is a Popular Patristic volume. The Jacob of Serug volume is particularly beautiful and insightful.

7. 

   Wei Hsien

   December 12, 2008

   I hope you’ll enjoy it, Father! It’s one of my favorite books, and the section on St. Ephrem’s theological method is worth the price of the whole.

8. 

   Canadian

   December 14, 2008

   I have just recently joined a discussion group on the Ancient Christian East at CCEL.org. We are reading the hymns of St. Ephrem. The images from his writing come at you in waves, each line is pregnant with meaning. You just get one in your mind and there is another, then another. His writing reminds me of the style I hear in the Troparion and Kontakion hymns in Orthodoxy. Beautiful. Read slow!
   Pax Christi.

9. 

   Collator

   December 18, 2008

   Another volume dealing with similar themes is Robert Murray, _Symbols of Church and Kingdom_, which looks at the Syriac writers preceding Chalcedon, but focuses on St. Aphrahat and St. Ephrem. It was highly recommended to me by several people, so I bought it last spring, but haven’t read it yet.