SAET » I want him as my patron saint » The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology

February 14, 2012 by Matthew Mason

I want him as my patron saint

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Sometimes one can’t help warming to someone.

He was a small shrunken vivid man, bald-headed, with a long red beard and red eyebrows like Athanasius, wrinkled, nearly always in pain, haggard with vigils and fastings….He feared no one. He had an uruly humor. He is the only man who is known to have dared to laugh at Basil. He was quick-tempered, sullen, unhappy in the company of most people, strangely remote from the world. Appointed to the Patriarchate of Constantinople against his will, he found it Arian and in a few swift months converted it to the orthodox faith. He was the first Christian poet, and wrote prose so angelically, and throughout his life gloried in the Greek poet Pindar, who celebrated athletes and spoke only of human glory. He loved God, and then the art of letters, and then men – in that order.
(Robert Payne on of Gregory Nazianzus, quoted in Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, IVP, 1998, p. 65.)

Categories: General | Matthew Mason | patristics
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  [...] friend posted this on FB; it juxtaposes Matthew’s previous post rather nicely. Just yesterday, trying to understand the rising fascination with Barth, I wondered [...]
  
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About the SAET Blog

Welcome to the SAET blog. Herein you will find the theological/pastoral ramblings of the Rev. Matthew Mason, the good Doctor Jason Hood, and Pastor Gerald Hiestand. All three write under the premise that theology and the pastorate belong together, and that (at least some) pastors must once again function as writing theologians for the wider church, for the ecclesial renewal of theology and the theological renewal of the church.

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Gerald Hiestand
Gerald has served as the SAET board president since 2006. He has been in pastoral ministry since 1999, and serves currently as the Senior Associate Pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, IL.

Jason Hood
Jason is a graduate of Rhodes College, Reformed Theological Seminary, Highland Theological College and the Univ. of Aberdeen. Jason works as Scholar-in-Residence and director of Christ College Residency Program at Christ UMC. He's trying to figure out the twitter thing, @jasonbhood, and sometimes writes for ChristianityToday.com.

Matthew Mason
Matthew earned an MTh at Oak Hill College, London. He is an Assistant Pastor at Church of the Resurrection, Washington D. C. (Anglican Mission in the Americas), and edits Ecclesia Reformanda, a journal of Reformed theology.

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I want him as my patron saint

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