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There are a number of tech-savvy academics reflecting from the cutting edge of technology and teaching. Among these is the ProfHacker blog, the Institute for the Future of the Book and (the more web elusive) “Digital Humanities” which each represent a community of creative faculty in higher education with an interest in the thoughtful and thorough use of new technology in their teaching. Faculty use twitter, blogging, and other internet applications in the classroom, with a critical eye to whether this technology augments or impacts their teaching. There isn’t nearly the same energy invested in digital theology, ethics, or biblical studies, but I’m hoping to be a part of changing that! This is my first, in what I hope to be many posts casting a critical, but interested gaze on the thoughtful use of technology in theological pedagogy and a proper Christian contribution to the digital public space.

One of the reasons I like the Digital Humanities is because of their emphasis on “Open Access.” I’m convinced that I participate in the scholarly life standing on the shoulders of many benevolent people. This includes many people that I’ll likely never meet, including the Scottish taxpayers who have been incredibly generous in funding my PhD. With that in mind, I am keen to make sure that my output as a scholar is freely available when possible and appropriate.* But it’s not enough to just put stuff up online where it will never see the light of day, so my interest is to find the best possible way in which to contribute to existing online collaborative research and learning.

Since I’ve just been working on this over the past couple weeks, I thought a good place to start would be with a quick look at the best way to share bibliographies (i.e. a list of books and articles on a particular subject) with others, and how to weave these into existing public conversations. I maintain two fairly substantial bibliographies related to my research on this blog, and because the hunting down of resources can take so much time, I’ve been working on getting them online. My hope is that this can save others some time and that this will enable them to pick up the subject more quickly and accomplish more in their research. Right now these bibliographies are just plain text pages hosted in this blog, but for this post, I surveyed several alternative services to see if there is a web-related technology that might offer a better way to post a bibliography online.

Mendely

Meant to be an open source replacement for bibliographic software like EndNote, Mendeley also adds in a healthy dose of social networking. You can synchronize your entries on CiteULike and your zotero database (see more below), and they have a web importer that you can use to import links while you’re surfing when you come across an interesting book or article. Mendeley has an open API, which means that anyone can create software interfaces for the databases you create. I initially tested Mendeley over a year ago, and their Desktop application was pretty feature-bare and buggy. Now they’re nearly at a full 1.0 release and have an iOS app for your iPod as well. Mendeley has recently moved towards a moderate-fee system to generate revenue for this non-profit project. You get allocated a certain amount of online storage space where you references and attachments are stored, and then you have to pay for additional space. I’ve got no problems with this model, as it allows moderate users to go free, and encourages heavier users to support the system they’re using.

For my purposes here, Mendeley doesn’t really have an online bibliography feature, but you can create research interest Groups, which others can join, and you can group references in folders which you can then share with others. On the plus side, it is possible to add any reference, books, journals, etc. Also, you can add tags to items, which, when viewed online by other Mendeley members who have joined your group, can be sorted on the fly by tags.

On the negative side, you have to be creative in adding summaries and comments to the papers, as all the data remains within your reference data. Further, only Mendeley members can access the bibliography and group once its is created. Also, because you’re not working with plain text, it is hard to identify relations between references, which in the case of John Zizioulas is quite significant has his works have been translated multiple times.

Zotero

Zotero started as a plugin for the popular firefox web browser. The idea was to create a quick and easy way of grabbing academic content while surfing online and then storing it in a lightweight database for the purpose of citation in academic writing. I was admittedly skeptical of zotero when it was first released a few years ago, but since then it has developed into a really mature project. They are close to a release of a stand-alone version of the software so you’re not restricted to your web browser. Further, they store the reference data in a standard sqlite database, which you can deposit wherever you like on your computer. This is open-source software being developed collaboratively by anyone who wants to contribute, and so their import engine is probably one of the best available. You can quickly grab an article and download its content from all sorts of major websites including google scholar, the New York Times, and so forth. Zotero has also recently adopted the same online storage model as Mendeley, for those who are interested in synchronising all your references across multiple computers.

For the purpose of this review, I found that Zotero has much the same solution for sharing references. You can create a research group, and associate references with them. This options follows roughly the same cues as Mendeley while offering slightly less, so unless you’re invested in Zotero for a particular reason I’d look elsewhere, while checking back in to see how this develops in the future.

CiteULike

Moving beyond the previous two options, which are anchored in a software program, CiteULike is purely web based, offering a user-generated catalogue of academic research, with a healthy dash of social networking. It is important to note at the outset that CiteULike is a free service, run by a for-profit venture, and supported by what are somewhat visually-intrusive google ads. You can link to friends who are also on CiteULike and stay on top of articles they add and recommend. Like most of the other services that are heavily web-connected, CiteULike is primarily used by researchers in the sciences (including economists and other business-school types), so the social features are less than impressive for someone doing work primarily in the humanities.

Connotea

Connotea exists in the same genre as CiteULike, while offering a much cleaner interface. One gets the impression, however, that they have a smaller user base and if you’re a scientist, this might mean that less of the articles you’re looking to add aren’t already there. Similarly, this meant that it could only import 11 of my references.
WorldCat
Still in the web-based, but in an entirely different genre, WorldCat is a service that aims to integrate public and university library catalogues. Along with this, if you become a registered user, you can add “book lists” which are bibliographies which link to books that are catalogued in worldcat, along with brief notes for each work you’ve chosen and global tags for the list itself.

I should also add a quick plug for the amateur librarian out there. Many of these public library catalogues rely on volunteers to keep their catalogues organized. I’m often submitting requests to the folks at worldcat.org to combine books and correct (the admittedly rare) data errors. I’ve also got a librarian account at LibraryThing which is a service similar to worldcat, though which promotes more along the lines of user based book reviews. You’ll find a similar, though less academic service with GoodReads.

Sente, Papers, EndNote, Bookends, etc.

The last category, not to be forgotten, are those software based applications you can use to organize bibliographies, but which lack a web-based component. I use Sente myself. But none of these applications offer any sort of web-based bibliographies. At best you can organize and format references in a software program, and then augment the references as plain text. This is what I’ve done for the blog, and a process I’m hoping to transcend…

My conclusion?

I like the smooth interface of Mendeley, which has something on Zotero, I think. But both present a very limited range of options for annotating your bibliography. I should note that many faculty now encourage their students to learn Zotero and provide bibliographies for their courses for the ease of student use. CiteULike offers a thicker set of options and a more sophisticated set of social tools, but their ads are intrusive, and their features are still limited. I love the degree to which WorldCat it plugged into public library catalogues, but their interface is quite limited and it’s hopelessly tedious to add references which are not books (i.e. journal articles, etc.).

This leads me to still prefer a blog post in which I can narrate my choices more fully, and add hyperlinks as appropriate. What I’ve decided, I think, it to stick with what I’m using currently on my two bibliographies hosted here (and the more to follow) and to augment them. What I’ve concluded here is that a software solution, at least what is currently on offer, cannot replace the basic art of writing. Along these lines, I’m encouraged by the work by the folks at the “Institute for the Future of the Book” to bring digital publishing back closer to the hand-written page by enabling marginal notes and comments on digital pages. The blog includes a comments space, and I hope to add the possibility of marginal notation soon as well. I’m looking to get some more independent web server space and port this blog to Joomla. Once I’m there, I can use the J!Research plugin. Or, I may stick with wordpress and use the CommentPress plugin (see the great in-depth article here and see a sample on display here). In the meantime, I’d be curious to hear from others who are either hoping to write, or looking to read bibliographies to hear what your experience with the services I’ve reviewed here has been. Have I missed anything? Are there features you’d like to see in public communication of research like this?

Notes:

* I’m actually fairly reluctant about the idea of self-publishing, not because I want to profit off books (ask most theologians and they’ll tell you that book sales hardly augment their salaries) but rather because I think that it is especially important for theologians to have their work scrutinised careful by editorial staffs that are cultivated by publishing houses. If anything, we would benefit from less and not more theological writing.

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Cross-posted on Wondering Fair

As the millionth bus drove past me with an advertisement for the latest installation of the Twilight saga (though this term seems generous as “saga” might usually imply a sustained plot line with a broad scope), my thoughts this morning turned to our recent obsession with vampires. Perhaps in contrast to some, I’m not all that opposed to the so-called Goth movement. I think that there is a great deal of honesty in people’s, often teens, dissatisfaction with this generation’s superficial notions of beauty and substance. What I’m not quite so sure about is the new flood of gothic romance novels (and now movies) which seem to have exploded on the shelves of my local bookstore.

This 21st century focus on ‘gothic’ fashion and sensibilities parallels some aspects of the earlier movement in 18-19th century modern literature which brought us such classics as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Following the new ‘Romantic ‘ focus on emotion, feeling, and the potential that we might find some glimpse of the sublime in the extremes of feeling, these authors sought to explore the contours of terror. Strangely enough, John Muir’s appreciation of the experience of standing before the extreme majesty of a mountain range arose out of the same basic interest which compelled the writers of gothic fiction to imagine the horrors of ghosts, phantasms, and monsters.

Yet there is a contrast to be found, at least with respect to Frankenstein, in the posture towards monstrosity. Monsters in the earlier gothic sense were hazy and impressionistic. Frankenstein was the name of the inventor who made the horrible creature which bore no name. Our monsters now seem rather less monstrous and much more human. In a strange way, the two categories (human and monster) which the gothic writers mobilised with such success have begun to converge in the contemporary imagination. While those 19th century writers sought to produce an extreme state of fear, (which was thought to have a positive result in the long run) these contemporary monsters seem so much more pathetic and lonely. This sort of monstrosity offers a mirror by which we can look at ourselves, though the extremes of violence and capacity which they represent are not in the end extremes at all.

This is where I wonder whether the contemporary gothic movement might do with a bit more careful construal of its purposes. To be sure, false impressions of beauty are horribly deceptive, and deserve unmasking. Similarly, monstrosity can be a useful trope by which to examine our own capabilities and proclivities. But have our societies just grown comfortable with the fact that we’re monstrous on some level, and given up acting in protest against the violence, brutality, and ugliness which lies at the heart of monstrosity? This seems to me to be some of the more sinister message behind the characters’ persistent quest to sleep with a Vampire. Isn’t the purpose, at least as those older gothic writers saw it, to unmask monstrosity? To identify its otherness?

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Cross-posted on Wondering Fair

An accident unravelled before my eyes a few weeks ago. As I was walking down a quiet street with a busy intersection, it struck my ears first, which caught the unexpected combined sounds of a screech, thud, and then a weak cry. As I turned, my eyes found a sweet older woman lying in the middle of the street, next to her bicycle, cycle-basket and purse contents strewn across the road.

I feared the worst, as most likely did the driver involved, who left his car in a great hurry and knelt at her side. From my distance I couldn’t make out his words, and as nearby people seemed to have the situation well in hand, I continued my walk, unsettled but not wanting to be a voyeur. It turned out that I was going the wrong way (my usual me…), and as I returned 20 minutes later, the road was already clear. To my even greater surprise, I found the driver and cyclist standing on the side of the road, speaking, somewhat tenderly. As I watched, the driver gave the cyclist a gentle hug and they went on their way, apparently none the worse for wear.

I share this experience because the unfolding of it caught me by surprise. My thoughts turned to other accidents that I had witnessed and the aftermath that had ensued. Drivers, victims, or both, shouting at one another, each trying to establish fault by decibels. This incident struck me as so dissonant, precisely because the two involved were gracious and tender towards one another.

In the midst of a letter where he writes about freedom, Paul commends exactly this sort of mutually compassionate interaction. He suggests:

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are
 thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:9–21 NRSV)

I know nothing about the faith of the two people involved in this accident, but that need not prevent their showing the truly authentic Christian love that Paul is writing about here. An accident has forged friends out of strangers; they not only showed care, but even affection, for one another. The hurt lady, especially, could be enraged by the accident, but, as Paul says, she overcame the evil of the situation with good spirit, and went home smiling instead of grudging, with a story to entertain people at dinner. Very often we write lofty poetry about love, and describes the heights of romantic rapture, but I guess love can be as simple as helping out a stranger, and being kind to those who have been careless and thrown us face down on the road.

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Cross-posted on Wondering Fair

Much gets said these days about liberty and freedom across the political spectrum. At the heart of talk about “inalienable rights” is usually the notion of freedom, and in the contemporary context, we find political systems often construed as protectors of personal rights. Yet when the foundation for the notion of justice and right is personal liberty, or “freedom,” problems arise.

Let me give an example. Freedoms can often be pitted against one another: the exercise of one person’s right to free speech can enable the defamation of another person, impinging upon their right to maintain an accurate depiction of their character and reputation. Similarly, my right to affordable food can impinge upon the right of another person to just working conditions in a distant land. Amidst these sorts of troubles, it remains unpopular to suggest that religious faith might offer some sort of a solution, and while this sentiment is deeply rooted in Western history, it is not necessarily productive.

With the rise of Protestantism, the medieval notion of authority came under threat. Long-held convictions regarding the subject of moral authority were questioned, leaving people wondering whether they owed allegiance to the pope, the prince, or neither. After over a century of bloody wars and conflict across Europe over the subject of religion, a treaty was struck and Christian doctrine was sidelined as a unifying factor for the political identities of the emerging European states, at the Peace of Westphalia. Leaders concluded that it would be best to sideline religion for the sake of social stability. Following a few generations after this legacy, the philosopher Immanuel Kant developed a new way of moral thinking that could respect the need for social order but leave faith conviction on the sidelines. The system he imagined has become one of the more enduring philosophical legacies for the succeeding centuries!

Fast-forward to the present day, and it has become clear that, though Kant offered a new sort of “objectivity,” there were losses as well. In order to grant coherence to the concept of duty in this newly secular modern world, objectivity became the new focal point of moral deliberation. And this objectivity comes at a cost, as Plato suggests: “If we are to have clear knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body” (Phaedo). Old theological notions such as justice, were replaced with new secular ones like “fairness” and “equality.” But this brave new world can be bleak at times, as the secular vision for the good life, which was to be achieved through science and engineering, has been frustrated in a wide variety of circumstances, including new wars, Nazi projects in human engineering, and fascist experiments in social engineering. To be fair, this new Scientific society has also brought us refrigeration and disposable toilet cleaners, but one is often left wondering… where is the idea of the “good life”?

In Kant’s vision, created particularities had to be left on the sidelines along with the creator. In privileging our rational faculties for the sake of objectively discerning our duties, Kant also left behind the role of our emotional lives and the unique contours and needs of the social life of neighbourhoods.

I would argue much is to be gained with a re-affirmation that at the true center of freedom lies the notion that we are created, contingent creatures. In the wake of the creeping failure of the modern orientations for the moral life – progress, science, engineering – in some cases people have finally given up on orienting our societies to any sort of purpose at all. And, without an orientation, we are prone to wander. As Augustine observed in another age of violent conflict, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you [God]” (inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te). I think it is no accident that Augustine puts this in the plural as well. Not only are our personal lives prone to disorientation when we have nothing by which to order them, so too is our common life prone to wander restlessly searching for an orientation which can guide our life together.

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Cross-posted on Wondering Fair

Fear can be scarier when it is shared. I can remember several moments in the past few years where I’ve felt a palpable shared sense of fear, first in the build-up to the Iraq war, then more recently with the “financial crisis.” In each case, I can remember feeling that moral dilemmas, which would ordinarily involve some fairly straight-forward thinking, have become muddled and unclear.

So I became unsure, for instance, over whether a pre-emptive military policy in Iraq really had some merit. I had been opposed to this idea for years, but such conviction was harder to maintain after the evening news was saturated for weeks with stories about the possibility of long range nuclear missiles and chemical weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein. Similarly, I remember that same sense of uncertainty – what might be called a cloud of fear – following me around when the financial crisis supposedly threatened the stability of our social institutions, including the viability of entire governments. Again, social fear was palpable as we assessed the limited options for economic recovery being proposed, which have now resulted in many countries propping up the very institutions and their leadership which bear responsibility for the economic crisis. Strange decisions result from strange times.

I’ve just spent the past weekend at an academic conference discussing another, perhaps even stronger, fear cloud – the threat of climate change. Speakers helpfully pointed out that climate change is but one of several issues which are accelerated by our consumptive lifestyles and disdain for the limits that God seems to have placed in the creation, as we face water shortages, peak oil, soil destruction, pollution, dead zones in the ocean, and the list could go on. I imagine we all have a personal, concrete experience with the some troubling ecological issue, whether that be a recent water shortage, the ugly smell of a nearby landfill, or extreme weather patterns.

One of the most useful interactions I had at this conference was a theological discussion on a proper Christian response to fear. What resources and guidance does our faith provide in seeking to respond to ecological or financial crisis? A frequent exhortation that appears in the Bible is to “fear the Lord.” Indeed Psalm 111:10 suggests that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” The hebrew word used in the Psalm for fear, yārēʾ, actually encompasses a wider range of meaning, including fear, reverence, to honor, worship, or be afraid of. There is some wisdom embedded in the language itself here, I think; it suggests that what we fear, we may also grant overriding control over our moral lives. Thus, if I fear the financial crisis, i.e. my own financial ruin, at the root of this fear is my own love of money and the economy which secures my wealth. Similarly, fears of environmental destruction may reflect an underlying worship of the patterns I am familiar with, such as a ready supply of tropical fruits or an abundance of consumer products without any indication of their source or true cost. In short, my fear may reflect an underlying reluctance to see change, whatever the source.

A Christian response to such fear, I think, is the act of repentance. In this, we identify the underlying idolatries (or distorted loves) that generate our fears and express regret for the destructiveness these misguided attachments have caused. Next, we detach our loyalties from them, and place our trust instead in the only thing which can correspond to our highest aspirations: the personal God who created us. This redirection offers an entirely new orientation by which we can respond to bad news and conceive of our life within changed circumstances. This orientation holds, even if the pennies are few and the winter comes too early.

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From Gregory Nazianzus, “Second Theological Oration”, IX, p.291-2

IX. And thus we see that God is not a body. For no inspired teacher has yet asserted or admitted such a notion, nor has the sentence of our own Court allowed it. Nothing then remains but to conceive of Him as incorporeal. But this term Incorporeal, though granted, does not yet set before us—or contain within itself His Essence, any more than Unbegotten, or Unoriginate, or Unchanging, or Incorruptible, or any other predicate which is used concerning God or in reference to Him. For what effect is produced upon His Being or Substance3445 by His having no beginning, and being
incapable of change or limitation? Nay, the whole question of His Being is still left for the further consideration and exposition of him who truly has the mind of God and is advanced in contemplation. For just as to say “It is a body,” or “It was begotten,” is not sufficient to present clearly to the mind the various objects of which these predicates are used, but you must also express the subject of which you use them, if you would present the object of your thought clearly and adequately (for every one of these predicates, corporeal, begotten, mortal, may be used of a man,
or a cow, or a horse). Just so he who is eagerly pursuing the nature of the Self-existent will not stop at saying what He is not, but must go on beyond what He is not, and say what He is; inasmuch as it is easier to take in some single point than to go on disowning point after point in endless detail, in order, both by the elimination of negatives and the assertion of positives to arrive at a comprehension of this subject. But a man who states what God is not without going on to say what He is, acts much in the same way as one would who when asked how many twice five make, should answer, “Not two, nor three, nor four, nor five, nor twenty, nor thirty, nor in short any number below ten, nor any
multiple of ten;” but would not answer “ten,” nor settle the mind of his questioner upon the firm ground of the answer. For it is much easier, and more concise to shew what a thing is not from what it is, than to demonstrate what it is by stripping it of what it is not. And this surely is evident to every one.

“X. Now since we have ascertained that God is incorporeal, let us proceed a little further with our examination. Is He Nowhere or Somewhere. For if He is Nowhere, then some person of a very inquiring turn of mind might ask, How is it then that He can even exist? For if the non-existent is nowhere, then that which is nowhere is also perhaps non-existent. But if He is Somewhere, He must be either in the Universe, or above the Universe. And if He is in the Universe, then He must be either in some part or in the whole. If in some part, then He will be circumscribed by that part which is less than Himself; but if everywhere, then by one which is further and greater—I mean the Universal, which contains the Particular; if the Universe is to be contained by the Universe, and no place is to be free from circumscription. This follows if He is contained in the Universe. And besides, where was He before the Universe was created, for this is a point of no little difficulty. But if He is above the Universe, is there nothing to distinguish this from the Universe, and where is this above situated? And how could this Transcendence and that which is transcended be distinguished in thought, if there is not a limit to divide and define them? Is it not necessary that there shall be some mean to mark off the Universe from that which is above the Universe? And what could this be but Place, which we have already rejected? For I have not yet brought forward the point that God would be altogether circumscript, if He were even comprehensible in thought: for comprehension is one form of circumscription.”

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The first non-canonical instalce of a “rule of faith” appears twice in the writing of Ignatius of Antioch. The first, shown below, is in his Epistle to the Trallians, ch 9 (additional material that appears in the longer Greek recension is included below in brackets). The second instance appears in his letter to the Christians at Smyrna.

Be deaf, therefore, when any would speak to you apart from (at variance with) JESUS CHRIST
[the Son of God],
who was descended from the family of David,
born of Mary,
who truly was born
[both of God and of the Virgin …
truly took a body; for the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us
without sin …],
ate and drank [truly],
truly suffered persecution under Pontius Pilate,
was truly [and not in appearance]
crucified and died …
who was also truly raised from the dead [and rose after three days],
his Father raising him up …
[and after having spent forty days with the Apostles,
was received up to the Father,
and sits on his right hand,
waiting till his enemies are put under his feet].

Κωφώθητε οὖν, ὅταν ὑμῖν χωρὶς Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ λαλῇ τις
[τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ]
τοῦ ἐκ γένους [γενομένου] Δαβὶδ
τοῦ ἐκ Μαρίας,
ὃς ἀληθῶς ἐγεννήθη
[καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ καὶ ἐκ παρθένου …
ἀληθῶς ἀνέλαβε σῶμα· ὁ Λόγος
γὰρ σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐπολιτεύσατο
ἄνευ ἁμαρτίας …],
ἔφαγέν τε καὶ ἔπιεν [ἀληθῶς],
ἀληθῶς ἐδιώχθη ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου,
ἀληθῶς [δὲ, καὶ οὐ δοκήσει] ἐσταυρώθη
καὶ ἀπέθανεν …
ὃς καὶ ἀληθῶς ἠγέρθη ἀπὸ νεκρῶν [καὶ ἀνέστη διὰ τριῶν ἡμερῶν],
ἐγείροντος αὐτὸν τοῦ Πατρὸς αὐτοῦ …
[καὶ τεσσαράκοντα ἡμέρας συνδιατρίψας τοῖς Ἀποστόλοις,
ἀνελήφθη πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα·
καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ,
περιμένων ἕως ἄν τεθῶσιν οἱ ἐχθροὶ αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ].

From Schaff, Creeds V.II P.11-12

For those who are curious, here is the version from Smyr.:
Smyr. 1:1   I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who made you so wise, for I observed that you are established in an unshakable faith, having been nailed, as it were, to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in both body and spirit, and firmly established in love by the blood of Christ, totally convinced with regard to our Lord that he is truly of the family of David with respect to human descent, Son of God with respect to the Divine will and power, truly born of a virgin, baptized by John in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, 2 truly nailed in the flesh for us under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetarch (from its fruit we derive our existence, that is, from his divinely blessed suffering), in order that he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in the one body of his church.
Smyr. 2:1   For he suffered all these things for our sakes, in order that we might be saved;[98] and he truly suffered just as he truly raised himself—not, as certain unbelievers say, that he suffered in appearance only (it is they who exist in appearance only!). Indeed, their fate will be determined by what they think: they will become disembodied and demonic.
Smyr. 3:1   For I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection; 2 and when he came to Peter and those with him, he said to them: “Take hold of me; handle me and see that I am not a disembodied demon.” And immediately they touched him and believed, being closely united with his flesh and blood. For this reason they too despised death; indeed, they proved to be greater than death. 3 And after his resurrection he ate and drank with them like one who is composed of flesh, although spiritually he was united with the Father.

Tral. 9:1 Κωφώθητε οὖν, ὅταν ὑμῖν χωρὶς Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ λαλῇ τις, τοῦ ἐκ γένους Δαυίδ, τοῦ ἐκ Μαρίας, ὅς ἀληθῶς ἐγεννήθη, ἔφαγέν τε καὶ ἔπιεν, ἀληθῶς ἐδιώχθη ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου, ἀληθῶς ἐσταυρώθη καὶ ἀπέθανεν, βλεπόντων τῶν [98] ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ ὑποχθονίων· 2 ὅς καὶ ἀληθῶς ἠγέρθη ἀπὸ νεκρῶν, ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ, ὅς καὶ κατὰ τὸ ὁμοίωμα [99] ἡμᾶς τοὺς πιστεύοντας αὐτῷ οὕτως ἐγερεῖ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, οὗ χωρὶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ζῆν οὐκ ἔχομεν.

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36. Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom
of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made
partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal glory, and,
in a word, our being brought into a state of all “fulness of blessing,” both in this world and in
the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in store for us, by promise hereof, through faith,
beholding the reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we await the full
enjoyment. If such is the earnest, what the perfection? If such the first fruits, what the complete
fulfilment? Furthermore, from this too may be apprehended the difference between the grace that
comes from the Spirit and the baptism by water: in that John indeed baptized with water, but our
Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost. “I indeed,” he says, “baptize you with water unto repentance;
but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Here He calls the trial at the judgment the baptism of
fire, as the apostle says, “The fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is.” And again,
“The day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire.” And ere now there have been
some who in their championship of true religion have undergone the death for Christ’s sake, not
in mere similitude, but in actual fact, and so have needed none of the outward signs of water for
their salvation, because they were baptized in their own blood. Thus I write not to disparage
the baptism by water, but to overthrow the arguments of those who exalt themselves against the
Spirit; who confound things that are distinct from one another, and compare those which admit of
no comparison.”

(Basil, “On the Holy Spirit”, xv.36 & 38, In Schaff, NPNF 2.08, p.22-23)

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He says as much in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”; and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd, “Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranges all things and brought them out of non-existence into being.” Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared.” For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ; and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree, they might continue forever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, “Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die.” “Ye shall surely die”—not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

Source: Athanasius, On the Incarnation rev. ed, trans. by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996).