Two Cities, the Modern Self, and a World of Silence

Our year-end campaign (“Hope in the City of God”) has a lofty but necessary goal of recruiting 100 new Eighth Day Members. We are almost a third of the way there with 29 new members! If you value the content in this free weekly email, please consider supporting Eighth Day Institute financially through a membership (and/or share this content with a friend and encourage him/her to also join). Due to COVID, donations were down 47% in November and they are down 31% for the year. This is not sustainable. Please read the President's letter here and help us reach our goal of 100 new members so we can continue the work of renewing culture through faith & learning!

Now dig into this week’s Microsynaxis.

In Christ,

Erin “John” Doom

1. Bible and Fathers: “The City of Cain and the City of Jesus” by Fr. Matthew Baker

Genesis 4:16-24: Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech. And Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah bore Tubalcain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubalcain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say: I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” 

Today’s Patristic Word reflects on the passage above. It comes from the late Fr. Matthew Baker and was penned to be delivered three days after his tragic death (March 1, 2015) at the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy at his parish (Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Norwich, CT). Fr. Matthew was more steeped in the work of Fr Georges Florovsky than anybody in the 21st century and Florovsky’s influence on this homily is apparent from the beginning (and explicitly so at the end). Here are the opening two paragraphs:

1. Cain in his anger has slain his brother Abel. He is far from the presence of the Lord, a wander and a fugitive: lost in the land of Nod—“the land of wandering.” He is east of Eden: fixed at the point of departure, with no direction. But rather than accept the Lord’s promise of protection (Gen 4:15), Cain seeks a place of security apart from God. He founds a city, and calls it “Enoch,” meaning “discipline,” “utilization.” Cain, the son of Adam: the first murderer; the founder of the first city.

This is the anti-Eden: an economy, a social order, all of man’s making. Cast out from God’s kingdom, Cain founds his own kingdom—a kingdom without God. With Cain’s descendants, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-cain, come the marks of civilization: agriculture, fine art, technology (Gen. 4:20-22). But, as the story of Lamech shows, these benefits are accompanied by a continued pattern of vengeance and bloodshed (Gen. 4:23-24).

Read the whole thing here.

2. Books & Culture: “Max Picard’s Silence” by Ed Hagenstein

Eighth Day Press published The World of Silence back in 2002. It’s an amazing book with poetic-like prose. The Front Porch Republic recently published a reflection on Picard’s book. After Ed Hagenstein read this book, he has returned to it repeatedly; as have I over the last 18 years. Here’s Hagenstein’s summary of Picard’s view of silence:

For Picard, silence is not defined as an absence of sound, nor as a void of any sort. Much the opposite, silence has substance and a reality that will impress itself on us if we are exposed to it. Picard put this in traditional metaphysical terms: silence has Being.

[…] In its essence, silence is utterly immune to human efforts to measure, quantify, exploit, explain or otherwise reduce to our own terms. Silence is absolutely different from us; it is vaster in extent and duration than we can imagine.

In its vastness and otherness, silence can be a refuge. If we enter into it, we leave behind whatever is stifling about the human affairs in which we are immersed. Where silence reigns, the merely human cannot follow. This is true, most obviously, of noise, which Picard hated. But it is true, too, of other human plagues, such as the tyranny of the human pecking order. If we feel unattractive or dull in comparison to peers, silence can help. Encounter it in its fullness, and those cares will dissolve. Silence cares nothing about our looks, and we will care less, too, as we enter into real silence.

Read the whole reflection here.

3. Essays et al: “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: And How the Church Can Respond” by Carl Trueman

Several weeks ago in the Nov 19 issue of Microsynaxis, I shared an interview Rod Dreher conducted with Carl Trueman on his new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. I’m currently reading the book and it is excellent….and important the way I think Taylor’s A Secular Age (and his Sources of the Self) is, along with MacIntyre’s After Virtue and Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic (all four of those books factor into Trueman’s argument). I also recently stumbled upon an article by the same title as his book which Trueman wrote months before its release. Although the subtitle is different—And How the Church Can Respond—it’s an excellent encapsulation of the book. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Historians are the great relativizers of the present. When someone declares that the times in which we live are unprecedented, the task of the historian is to offer a sanctimonious response, by pointing out that, in actual fact, this or that event, action, idea, or pattern of behavior was previously evident in 13th-century Florence or Periclean Athens, or during the time of the Tang Dynasty in China. And such relativizing is often true and always a helpful corrective to the temptation to idolize or catastrophize our present age.

Yet for all of the continuities and precedents that likely exist in the past for the way we live in the present, it’s arguable that the times in which we live today do exhibit a number of pathologies whose coincidence is unprecedented. This doesn’t necessarily mean the church’s response needs to be as novel as the times, as I will argue below; but it does mean that we need to reflect on the implications of our times, lest we panic overmuch or rest too much on our laurels.

The unprecedented coincidence of our times is that of the plastic, psychological notion of the self and the liquidity, or instability, of our traditional institutions.

Read the whole thing here to discover what Trueman means by those terms in the previous sentence. And then be sure to get a copy of the book from Eighth Day Books.

Finally, don’t forget, if you’ve been encouraged, challenged, enlightened, or found any value whatsoever in my labor of love through Microsynaxis (or any of the other many EDI endeavors), please do consider supporting the work of renewing culture by joining the community of Eighth Day Members. Learn more about membership here and/or contribute to our year-end campaign here. Among many other perks, you’ll begin receiving the weekly member’s issue of Synaxis, which this coming weekend will include:

• Liturgy: The Conception by St Anna of the Theotokos
• Fathers: “The Conception of Mary” by Fr. Thomas Hopko
• Poetry: W. H. Auden
• Books & Culture: Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety by E. R. Dodds: “Foreword” by Henry Chadwick and “Heresies” by W. H. Auden
• Essays et al: "Summarizing the Age of Paradise" by Fr. John Strickland
• Essays et al: "Bradley Birzer’s 'Beyond Tenebrae'” by Roger Thomas
• Essays et al: "The Myth Made Fact: Book Teaser" by Louis Markos

Thanks for considering!

In Christ,

Erin "John" Doom

Eighth Day Institute, Founder & Director