iwpoe wrote:

Clearly- in the high style of the nineteenth century. To be honest the real Kierkegaardian danger is melodrama and camp not irrationality. He has no means for reigning in either, and romanticism has gotten lost in both at present.

The Fathers wouldn't like that at all. It's a startlingly obvious invitation to prelest (spiritual pride/deception), for anyone with eyes to see. Romantic subjectivism cannot be the way to Christ, because it turns man in on himself and will lead him to find something within himself to which he has associated passionate strength, and to misinterpret this as God.

iwpoe wrote:

Mmmm, it's the modern "rationalists" who cast romanticism that way. The passions are not opposed to reason, but all are unified in the person and exemplified at their best in the man of worth. Nor either are they subjective in the sense a rationalist means. They are neither merely personal nor distorting: to rage is to rage at a man which is to see his wrongs, and his weaknesses, and the most direct path straight to the heart of him.

Also, and I don't know if this holds in Orthodoxy, but remember that for Augustine, to look "inside" is to find God. We are not so alienated from God that the divine presence is not to be found "in" us also. I should think that if the passions are directed at God and turn one towards Godly things, then we should not consider them in opposition to God. This is the closest I'll come to defending pentecostalism, lol, but I think that "enthusiasts" and "charismatics" of all sorts aren't utterly wrong. They are spiritually lopsided, but it's understandable as an overreaction in this age.

I don't think we disagree at all. I expressed myself imprecisely for the sake of brevity.

An image which the Fathers use is that of a circle. Arrayed along its circumference are all the passions and all of our powers, and in the middle is the real spiritual centre, where God may be found. When we are bound by our passions, we're dispersed and thrown around the outside circumference. We can only see the territory we presently occupy, so the demands of the present passion seem large, overpowering and very important. But when we become gathered together in the centre with God, we're securely seated, and we can survey and direct all our passions and powers towards their right ends. None of them are inherently wrong, but they are totally disordered before we correct them in this way.

Now, the problem with finding God inside us is that he's, well, God! God is absolutely ineffable. It is absolutely impossible to grasp hold of God. The only way we can ever perceive God within us is if by his grace he shows us. When we go looking inside ourselves for God, we cannot possibly find him, because God is not one of the "objects" inside us to be found. He can't possibly be, he's God. If we're determined to locate God inside us by our own powers, what we will identify as God is something pleasant-looking along the outer rim of that circle. And yet, he is, nevertheless, somehow inside us. It is a great, terrible and wondrous mystery.

That Orthodox unintelligible reserve in God, that stubborn part of it that closed the schools in Athens, and preferred mysticism to intelligible theology, does make me wary.

Seán Mac Críodáin wrote:

Here is where I would, if I could, discourse on Palamism, but I'm not up to it.

I'm aware of Palamas.