Our Roman Spatha sword titled “the Augustine,” in the Apologia blade series that I partnered with @dawson_knives to create, just launched. To find out more or to purchase your own, go to dawsonknives.com/products/au….

Ortho rules around icons and the theology of "essence/energies" are 8th century inventions at the earliest. Consider Eastern Orthodox Byzantinist, Fr. Andrew Louth, who taught Patristics at Oxford and Durham: “It would seem obvious to a historian that neither the eighth-century doctrine of the necessity of making and venerating icons nor the fourteenth-century Palamite distinction between the essence and energies can really be found in the fourth century Fathers.” [“Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category in Orthodoxy and Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on his Eightieth Birthday” (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005, 47]