"Amid billows of mysteries have I fallen"

"This Jesus has made so many symbols | that I have fallen into the sea of them" (trans. Sebastian Brock, The harp of the Spirit:  eighteen poems of St. Ephrem, 2nd enlarged ed., Studies supplementary to Sobernost 4 (Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, 1983), 16).

"This Jesus has multiplied for us mysteries. Amid billows of mysteries have I fallen, which show me in parable the life of the dead, in all mysteries and in all types" (trans. Stopford, NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 13 (1898), p. 202; CCEL).

"Hic Jesus multiplicavit nobis typos, incidi in mare typorum, qui mihi parabolizant resurrectionem mortuorum omnimodis figuris et imaginibus" (trans. Bickell, Carmina Nisibena (1866), 157; Syriac, 70 ff.).

ܗܢܐ ܝܫܘܥ ܐܣܓܝ ܠܢ ܪ̈ܙܐ
ܒܝܬ ܓ̈ܠܠܐ ܕܐܪ̈ܙܘܗܝ ܢܦܠܬ ܕܐܡܬܠ ܠܢ ܚܝܬ ܡ̈ܝܬܐ
ܒܟܠ ܪ̈ܙܝܢ ܘܒܟܠ ܛܘ̈ܦܗܝܢ

     St. Ephraem the Syrian, Carmina Nisibena 39.17.  Original Syriac (which I do not read, and, so, may well have mangled):  CSCO 240, Scriptores Syri 102.2, ed. Beck (1963), p. 27 l. 25-p. 28 l. 1.  Selectable.

"a fractious movement"

      "Others draw conclusions that set them apart from Lutherans and Zwinglians as well as at odds with Anabaptists[, not to mention, of course, the Catholic Church].  The lay nobleman Caspar Schenckfeld begins as a follower of Luther and helps to establish the Reformation in Liegnitz, Silesia, east of Saxony.  But the Eucharistic controversy leads him to his own sacramentarian understanding of the Lord’s Supper.  He believes Christians should refrain from receiving the Eucharist until a visible moral improvement in their lives makes them worthy of the sacrament.  Schwenckfeld stops receiving the Eucharistic bread in early 1526 and, as it turns out, never receives it again before his death in 1561.  Schenckfeld and others, collectively known as 'spiritualists,' simply take an either-or distinction between matter and spirit and the interior nature of faith to their logical extremes.  In various ways, they emerge from the evangelical movement of the 1520s as yet another expression that shows the diversity of the early Reformation."

     Brad Gregory, Rebel in the ranks:  Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the conflicts that continue to shape our world (New York:  HarperOne, 2017), chap. 3, A fractious movement.

'Orthodox' means orthodox in life as well as faith

"The Creed does not speak of the struggle of faithful living. It is for this reason that genetic orthodoxy, unlike creedal [(for many a merely aesthetic)] orthodoxy, has something to say about the contours of the Christian life, and what it says is traditional: male, female, nuptial union, sex, children, families, death, and generations—all under God’s dominion. Genetic orthodoxy learns from Genesis that faithful living is not stable and serene. It is filled with pitfalls, yearnings, failures, sterilities, confusions, unexpected joys, regrets, wandering loves, and the rest. There is a line, but it is one that wavers and wobbles, sometimes frays and dissolves, only to be wrenched back into its clarity of direction."

     Ephraim Radner, "Creedal orthodoxy won't save us," First things no. 366 (October 2026):  75 (76-75).  Image:  Wycliffe College.