Preserving Our Connection Through the Ages
Knower of God’s gifts and most beloved, behold the eternal watchtower, the fortress where the consummate soldier in Christ stands sentinel against sin and despair’s forces: the Logos domain representing constant prayer and ceaseless self-correction. The structure of virtues is a cyclical shape, in which they virtues reinforce one another, and I was best able to represent with a chart. In Logos’ domain, centralised residency paramount, these virtues uphold soul amidst time and the storms of temptation.
Power <-> Mastery
EROS (yellow):
Altruism <-> Egoism
TELOS (oranges):
Craft <-> Product
KRATOS (red):
Resist <-> Conform
Centralised Domain Residency: Victory’s Keystone
Moderation allowing for highest reason is a state where mind, body, spirit align as close as they can, and despite imperfection, with divine order. Active engagement is absolutely necessary to maintain this balance, disciplined Loyalty (4) and Patience (6) cultivation. Spiritual victory’s key? The soldier in Christ. He is unbound by lower domain chaos, ascending actively to Logos’s centralised domains residency.
Between the two stands Excellence, but also, still later, Ethics. As Loyalty and Patience expand, so too must Excellence with them. Loyalty binds us to divine order, this bulwark against division and discordant forces is sheath to the sword of Truth and Willpower. Patience accepts delays due to societally bridgeable differences, helmet against defensible blows, allowing us to keep our heads. These are opposites across the chart of the Diligent Dozen, revealing the community-assembling nature of the Structural Virtues. Together with the other virtues in between, they form an unbreakable fortress enduring ages, withstanding all trials.
Saints’ Perseverance
History resounds with saints embodying eternal perseverance, martyrs facing death fearlessly, reformers standing firm against tyranny, and visionaries seeing beyond horizons of the ages. Surely they would fail and make mistakes, though learning from them instead of persisting. In Structural Virtues Theory (SVT), these figures are indeed outliers as disciplined virtue-building exemplars, understanding spiritual mastery as a lifelong journey, not some instantaneous triumph. Soldiers in Christ must emulate this perseverance, standing firm amidst adversity, and trust the divine order unfolding through time by God’s hand. The darkest hour always fails, as truth of light prevails.
How does the fortress tower stand? Balance. Modern buildings with protection against earthquakes are designed to move with it, and these survive such calamities best. Far from some static state, these virtues involve dynamic processes of coming to greater understandings. Even our strengths we come with present weaknesses in our reliance upon them, for which we must overcome. This can sometimes take quite a lot of time to iron out what we are not immediately grasping. The soldier in Christ continually refines the self through the virtues, building upon them, and aligning ever closer with the divine order. The path of transformation, after all, is where every trial becomes opportunity, as steps in hardship toward eternal life.