Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Lenten Prayer Of St. Ephrem The Syrian

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

St. Ephrem the Syrian

O Lord and Master of my life!
Take from me the spirit of sloth,
faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience,
and love to Thy servant.

Yea, Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother, for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.

Discourse “On Love” by St. Ephrem (+373):

So then, my beloved brethren, let us not prefer anything, let us not hasten to obtain anything more than love. Let no one have anything against anyone, let no one repay evil for evil. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, but let us forgive our debtors everything and let us welcome love, because love covers a multitude of sins.

Because what gain is there, my children, if someone has everything, but does not have love which saves? For just as if someone were to make a great dinner in order to invite the King and the rulers, and were to prepare everything sumptuously, so that nothing might be lacking, but had no salt, would anyone be able to eat that dinner? Certainly not. But he would have lost everything he had spent and wasted all his hard work, and brought ridicule on himself from those he had invited. So it is in the present instance. For what advantage is there in toiling against winds, without love? For without it every deed, every action is unclean. Even if someone has attained complete chastity, or fasts, or keeps vigil; whether they pray or give banquets for the poor; even if they think of offering gifts, or first fruits, or offering; whether they build churches, or do anything else, without love all those things will be reckoned as nothing by God. For the Lord is not pleased by them. Listen to the Apostle when he says, ‘If I speak with the tongues of Angels and of humans; if I have prophecy and know all mysteries, and have complete knowledge, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I gain nothing’. For one who has enmity against their brother and thinks they offer something to God, will be as though they sacrificed a dog, and their offering will be reckoned as the wages of prostitution.

Posted by John Couretas in Bible and Theology at 12:13 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
christianity, lent, love, orthodox

Virtue and Freedom in a Culture of Enterprise

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Last week I participated in the inaugural “Culture of Enterprise in an Age of Globalization” symposium at the Cato Institute. The event, co-sponsored by Cato and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, is part of an ambitious new program that aims to encourage scholarly reflection on and greater awareness of those factors that contribute to the building and maintaining of a humane and vibrant economy—a “culture of enterprise.”

The papers are available for listening or viewing at Cato’s site.

If you observe very much of the conference, you will see that, while there is much common ground with respect to economic freedom, there is some tension between those who emphasize cultural issues (including virtue and morality) and those who minimize the importance of those issues. It is not news that there are differences between, for lack of more precise descriptions, “free market Christians” and “secular libertarians.” What puzzles me a bit, however, is opposition to the very notion of virtue, reflection on which, as I stressed in my talk, predates the birth of Christ and is part and parcel of the Western intellectual tradition.

Among the symposium’s exchanges was one between George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan and me about the relative importance of “political culture” and “personal culture” in the development of a thriving economy. I confess to not yet being certain about what the two terms are supposed to mean, but, operating on my guess about the distinction between the two, I wonder what Professor Caplan would do with the problem of corruption. Obviously it increases transaction costs and therefore is a major drain on economic productivity. It seems to me that it is also clearly a matter of personal culture. Not that it is not also a matter of political culture, but that is the point I tried to make in the course of my remarks: one cannot ultimately separate the two. In any case, virtue is necessary in the context of either political or personal culture—a claim that, it seems to me, should not be controversial among advocates of a culture of enterprise.

Posted by Kevin Schmiesing in News and Events at 10:13 | Comment (1) | Trackback