St. Ephraim the Syrian -- Intercession

Praying through the spiritual psalter of St. Ephraim the Syrian (as compiled by St. Theophan the Recluse), the depth and richness of the prayers is astonishing. Sincere repentance, deep humility, and thanksgiving form the backbone of the prayers, which touch on all aspects of the spiritual life. Here St. Ephraim pleads for the intercessions of the Holy Saints of God.

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Who will not lament for me, who have renounced the eternal kingdom for the sake of meagre pleasures, ignoring the eternal fire? Having surrendered myself to the passions, I have destroyed the integrity of my soul and become like the unreasoning beasts.

At one time I found myself rich with gifts, but now I have come to love the poverty of the passions. I have become a stranger to the virtues and departed for the distant land of corruption. I am half dead; I have only a tiny remnant of life in me.

Because I am this way by mine own free choice, I cannot even raise mine eyes to the kindhearted Lord.

Lament, O blessed and righteous ones, for me who am caught in the embrace of passions and sin.
Lament, O ascetics, for me who am a glutton and voluptuary.
Lament, O merciful and condescending ones, for me who am hardhearted and cause much grief.
Lament, O God-pleasers, for me who strive to please men.
Lament, O ye who have attained meekness, for me who am irritable and wrathful.
Lament, O humble ones, for me who am pompous and arrogant.
Lament, O ye who have attained the nonacquisitiveness of the apostles, for me who, burdened by my love for possessions, cling to material things.
Lament, O ye who have loved lamentation and hated laughter, for me who have loved laughter and hated lamentation.
Lament, ye who contemplate the judgement that will come after death, for me who affirm that I remember the judgement but act to the contrary.

Pray, O saints of God, for my soul which is convulsed by all manner of passions. Inasmuch as you are able, help me, O saints of God.

For I know that if you beseech God, the Lover of mankind, all will be granted you from the sea of His kindness. And, like our man-befriending God, so also when I, a sinner, beseech you, do not despise my supplication; for I have not the boldness to pray to Him myself because of the multitude of my sins.

Your role it is, O saints, to intercede for sinners, God's role it is to have mercy on those who despair.
O saints of God, pray to the King on behalf of the prisoner. Pray to the Pastor on behalf of the sheep. Pray to Life on behalf of the corpse, that He might lend His hand to aid me and strengthen my humble soul in its feebleness.

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St. Ephraim of Syria, pray to God for us!

Being, Consciousness, Bliss [Review]

Astonishingly, given the somewhat deceptive (or perhaps inept) marketing of the book, this was David Bentley Hart's best book to date, which is saying something monumental. What neither the title, nor the jacket cover, nor even the blurb reviews reveal is that the book is primarily a relentless, blistering attack on the superstitions and credulous fideisms of materialism. Over and against this decrepit and impoverished philosophy of reality, and in response to its inept attempts to demystify the world, Hart turns to the common deposit of theistic metaphysical tradition for the arresting and compelling antidote. 

In the mystery of being, in the mystery of consciousness, and in the manner that they blissfully coinhere as a surfeit of physical reality, the Supernatural, the Absolute, the Good, Beauty -- in a word -- God is immediately present to us in every moment. Yet we dull and numb ourselves to this reality in innumerable ways, but especially through the barbarisms of the 'mechanical philosophy' that we have inherited from 'the Enlightenment'. 

As for the attempts of naturalism to sweep away such an obvious reality, Hart is insistent all such attempts are pitifully incoherent and suffer massive -- almost certainly insuperable -- explanatory deficiencies. While the traditional metaphysical arguments for God -- arguing from contingency to a necessary and absolute ground of being, for example -- are comparatively sublime with scarcely any of the objections lodged against them being worth serious consideration.

According to Hart, most materialistic attempts to deal with the question of being either try to dismiss the central question -- namely "why is there something rather than nothing?" -- as a fallacy of grammar or as ultimately unintelligible (it clearly is not), or to posit that the sum total of contingent, physical reality might somehow (magically and irrationally) add up to the source of its own being, and not itself be contingent. And that's when they're not being really sloppy, confusing cosmology for metaphysics and making simplistic category errors such as mistaking a quantum vaccuum for 'nothing.'

Similarly impotent are the physicalist accounts of consciousness, which Hart sees as an undeniably immaterial datum, and the most primordial one of them all, present to each of us in every moment and upon which all other realities that we perceive are dependent. Hart claims there is an infinite qualitative abyss between the neurochemical events which consciousness is dependent upon and consciousness as experienced, such that no number of purely quantitative mechanical steps could ever give rise to this peculiar and fortuitous subjective interiority, which each of us owes all our knowledge, experience, and awareness to. Hart writes:

Most attempts to provide an answer [to the question of consciousness] without straying beyond the boundaries of materialist orthodoxy are ultimately little more than vague appeals to the power of cumulative complexity: somehow, the argument goes, a sufficient number of neurological systems and subsystems operating in connection with one another will at some point naturally produce unified, self-reflective, and intentional consciousness, or at least (as strange as this may sound) the illusion of such consciousness. This is probably just another version of the pleonastic fallacy, another hopeless attempt to overcome a qualitative difference by way of an indeterminably large number of gradual quantitative steps. Even if it is not, it remains a supposition almost cruelly resistant to scientific investigation or demonstration, simply because consciousness as an actual phenomenon is entirely confined to the experience of a particular mind, a particular subject.

With this being the case, materialist accounts of consciousness reek of magical thinking. Even if we grant that one day neurobiology will exhaustively map every aspect of the brain, science will have not come a step closer to puncturing through the veil and entering into the content and interiority of the purely subjective conscious mind. One can only deny that such an immaterial, or supernatural, reality exists -- if one can at all -- by sacrificing reason itself on the alter of materialism in a self-immolating act. A high price to pay, indeed, if one is to prize 'reason' and 'empiricism' above all else, as so many scientistic materialists putatively do. 

Just as impossible to account for on materialistic terms is the innate human longing for the Good and the concomitant abhorrence of evil, which materialists must deny as being in any sense 'real' in favor of them being illusions in a deterministic universe (though few of them seem willing to fully come to terms with this logical inevitability). If you can't but do what you are bound by the laws of physics to do -- as you are no more than matter in motion -- no materialistic morality can ever amount to anything more than nonsense. As Hart puts it:

A naturalist morality is a manifest absurdity, something rather on the order of a square circle, and it requires almost heroic contortions of logic to make the notion seem credible. Fortunately, the human will to believe is indefatigable.

Attempts to ground morality in evolutionary incentives (once materialism has cleared the hurdle of being and consciousness, which it necessarily can not do) are ultimately tragically resistant to empirical verification, and must always remain just-so fables. This doesn't mean that it's completely false that certain evolutionarily advantageous 'moral' traits are preserved and passed along via natural selection acting on genetic material, but this hardly is an account of the actual nature of human morality as it exists. From a materialist perspective what would be called 'moral' can't be other than that which is evolutionarily advantageous, and our genetic so-called 'self-interest' (wherever it comes from, and whatever it is exactly), is tied to the interest of, for example, our tribe. Hence a degree of selflessness and cooperation (at least within the tribe, though usually not between tribes) is more likely to ensure the passing on of our genetic material. This hardly explains the origin of the moral impulse, however, rather only its transmission within the species. And even then, only to an incomplete degree, when we consider the many ways that the moral impulse far exceeds, and often contradicts, the dictates of evolutionary incentives. The evolutionary explanations of this phenomenon are quite clearly ludicrous attempts to force the data into a conceptual scheme which has no room for it. 

Central to Hart's argument is the claim that most of the contemporary debates surrounding God do not have as their subject the God of traditional theistic metaphysics, but rather some particularly potent cosmic demiurge, or watchmaker god, or an especially large and benevolent gentleman who is perhaps the first of a long series of causes, but not Being as such which gratuitously donates being to beings. Not the God who is utterly transcendent and fully imminent, filling all things, yet beyond all things. Not the fullness of actuality, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. etc. Once such a confusion is eliminated, and the content of the concept of God is understood as it has widely and traditionally understood by the venerable contemplative theistic traditions, most of the contemporary debates melt away into utter irrelevance.

Hart covers a great deal more than I've hinted at here: teleology and intentionality in consciousness as necessary elements of reality, and without which we can't begin to reason; the self-defeating and demonstrably false assertion of scientific empiricism having an exclusive claim to genuine knowledge; qualia as a datum inexplicable by naturalism; the materialist failure to dispel with free will; the manner in which being, consciousness, and bliss interrelate and are not only metaphysical explanations of God, but also phenomenological explanations of the human encounter with God; the absolute poverty of materialistic aesthetic accounts; mystical experience visa vis contemplative prayer and asceticism as the only 'empirical' means for investigating 'the God claim'. Just to name a few. 

Rising above the nature of the current debate on such issues -- both sides of which usually share covertly atheistic presuppositions -- Hart's lucid argumentation, acerbic wit, and stellar prose masterfully combine to produce one of the most stunning, potent, holistic, and engaging arguments for belief in God and against materialism that I've ever read.

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P.S. In one of the blurb reviews advertising the book, Hart was said to have been advocating an 'ecumenical theism'. Happily, that's not exactly accurate. To an Orthodox -- or any religious particularist, really, but especially to Orthodox -- such language can sound like syncrenistic sloppiness, if not heresy. Hart makes clear in the introduction that in attempting to define 'God' as precisely as possible, and in accordance with the overlapping metaphysical wisdom of all the venerable theistic traditions, he isn't advocating a milquetoast relativism or against particularism, and certainly not denying the truth of the full revelation of God in Christ. Rather, he is only attempting to provide clarity to an essentially philosophical debate that is desperately in need of it. He is quick to note that, such philosophical knowledge about God, is not the same as union with God or knowledge of God, in accordance with Orthodox teaching.

On Behalf of All

I've happily accepted an invitation to be a contributor to the top-notch Orthodox blog On Behalf of All. My first contribution is a response to Timothy George at First Things on the question of 'Is Jesus a Baptist?' Check it out. Also be sure to bookmark, add to your reading feed, follow on Twitter (@OnBehalfOfAll) or Facebook, or otherwise keep track of On Behalf of All!

Top 10 Things Protestants Should Know About Orthodoxy

A trad Roman Catholic follower of mine on Twitter asked me to compose my own version of this list of 10 things Protestants should know about Orthodoxy, since I had commented that my own list would be quite different. While Dunn's list is pithy and lighthearted, mine is somewhat more self-serious. I'm sure there are similar lists out there written by more knowledgeable people, and these points will be quick glosses of subjects which could be expounded upon in great length, but here is my list.

1)  Tradition.

Holy Tradition is how the faith is passed on. The Bible is not the sole criterion of the faith, rather it is one aspect -- though an especially glorious, radiant, central, and exalted aspect -- of Holy Tradition. The Church, the Body of Christ, is a living organism and her faith is a living faith. The Holy Spirit is not only operative and authoritative within the Church when the Apostles were putting pen to papyrus, but also when they taught by their word (2 Thess. 2:15), when they convened councils to make decisions on controversial matters in the Church (Acts 15), when they are passing on their authority to others (1 Tim. 4:14; Acts 6:2-6), and when they decided on the canon of Scripture. The New Testament is the written expression of apostolic tradition, and as such is authoritative as an extension of the authority of the Church which Christ established (Matt. 16:18-19). But this authority can never be divorced from the Church, and the Bible is true and authoritative to the extent that the Church wrote, canonized, interprets, and teaches it. These functions are integrally related, which is why you can't take one of them (the canon, for example), and divorce it from its source and life, which is the Church.

Because the following is true, Ecumenical councils and their canons are received as authoritative and binding on the whole Church (though their application is left to the Bishops). This is also why the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the definitive statement of Faith of the Orthodox Church, being the product of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils.

2) Salvation.

Salvation is not a juridical imputation of Christ's righteousness which transpires the moment one first 'believes'. Certainly Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension are our salvation, and it is only by Christ's gracious acts in history that salvation is possible. Without Christ we would be dead in our sins and without hope. And it is through faith that we receive His grace, but faith is not mere intellectual assent, it's also faithfulness; living in accordance with that faith in the Church. Individuals can truly respond to the free gift of salvation that Christ offers, or reject it. Responding means an ongoing process of being saved, and being saved means union with Christ in his Church through the sacraments and by the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox Church calls this process theosis. We are called to become "partakers of the divine nature", in the words of St. Peter. With this being the case, there is no 'assurance of salvation', and instead we are called to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12).

3) Sacramentality.

The Orthodox Church is highly sacramental. The sacraments of the Church are the mysteries of Christ through which his grace is made incarnate in the Church by the Holy Spirit. The grace of Christ is offered freely to all through his Church, and the sacraments are the means by which it comes to us. In Baptism, the priest calls the Holy Spirit down onto the waters and we mystically join in Christ's death and resurrection, putting off the old man, being grafted into the Body of Christ, and thereby being made into new creatures. The change that is effected is not merely an outward sign of an inward change of heart, but it is in the waters of the font that an actual, real ontological change is affected. This is why it's necessary that we are baptized (John 3:5), and it's true that baptism actually removes our sins (Acts 2:38). The Eucharist is the body and blood of our Lord (Matt. 26:26-28; John 6; 1 Cor. 11:27-29), given for the healing of soul and body and the binding together and sustaining of the Church. The Orthodox Church recognizes 7 'official' sacraments (Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Communion, Holy Orders, Confession, Marriage, Holy Unction),  though it doesn't teach that sacramentality is confined to these things.

4) Ecclesiology.

The Orthodox Church is the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" referred to in the Nicene creed. It is the Church that Christ founded. The authority that Christ gave to the Apostles is passed down by apostolic succession within the Church -- that is by the laying on of hands to the successors of the Apostles, the Bishops. The Orthodox Church has uniquely and exclusively maintained apostolic succession and fidelity to the faith as handed down by Christ and the apostles, without addition or subtraction. Orthodoxy rejects the innovative 'branch theory' of ecclesiology which holds that the Church is invisible. In the first millenia of the Church, there were no 'denominations': there was the Church and schismatic sects who willfully departed from the Church. St. Paul writes that there "must be heresies among you" so that the truth can manifest itself (1 Cor. 11:19). And so it is today. The Orthodox Church also rejects Roman ecclesiology (as it developed and came to a head in the 11th century) which holds that the pope is the head of the Church, with a special claim to authority over the other bishops. The head of the Church is Christ and all the bishops share equally in the apostolic inheritance, despite the bishop of Rome's exalted place of honor in the early church.

5) Anti-innovation.

The Orthodox Church teaches that the faith was delivered "once for all to the Saints" (Jude 1:3) and that "Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday, and forever" (Heb 13:8). As such, Orthodoxy rejects in principle innovations in doctrine, praxis, or worship as deviations from Holy Tradition. If it's new, it can't be true. Various small-t traditions -- some good, some neutral, some bad -- obviously exist within every local church and differ from culture to culture and age to age. It's important to distinguish these variable traditions of men which exist in the church from infallible Holy Tradition, the Tradition of God. Guidance for such discernment is provided by the teachings of the Church.

6) Authority.

Bishops are the recipients of the fullness of Apostolic authority. They are the locus of authority in the Church, and a priest's authority is derivative of that of the bishop. Not everyone who hears the Gospel preached and responds positively thereby becomes an authority on the things of Christ and the Church. We don't see this in the New Testament. This is uniquely the ministry of the priesthood. Just as Christ chose twelve to be his disciples, so his chosen and set-apart disciples choose and ordain those who are to receive the apostolic ministry of the priesthood. However, this authority is also subject to what is called 'conciliarity', meaning lay people have a role in receiving decisions of bishops as in accordance with the rule of faith. The 'amen' of the people is a necessary element, as this prevents rogue councils of bishops from legitimizing heresy, for example.

Because the Church possesses the mysteries of Christ by the Holy Spirit, and its teachings are therefore authoritative, the proper disposition of any member of the Church -- lay person, deacon, monastic, or bishop -- is one of humble obedience. If the Church teaches something that you don't agree with, then it's incumbent upon you to acknowledge that you are wrong, give up your personal opinion and submit to the authority of the Church.

7) Asceticism

Asceticism -- persistent repentance, prayer, fasting, labor (physical and spiritual), self-denial and obedience etc. -- is the authentic mode of Christian spiritual life, and not something that is "just for monastics" or -- a much worse slander -- not Christian at all. It is the means by which we enter into the life of Christ and partake of his suffering, taking up our cross daily and denying ourselves. We're called to not only thankfully receive suffering and hardship as it comes to us as a means for our own growth and upbuilding (though we are so called), but also to willfully search out and walk the path of the cross, which is the path of Christ. The pitfalls along this path -- such as empty outward performance without true inward contrition and humility, or haughty self-righteousness -- are perilous indeed, but it is in walking this path that we are forced to confront such temptations and, by God's grace and our own struggle, overcome them to our own sanctification and the benefit of all we come in contact with.

Those who are able to devote themselves most fully to a Christian life of asceticism are the monastics, who have a special place in the life of the Church. They devote themselves to prayer for the world, to living a life of obedience and self-abjection for Christ's sake, and it is from their ranks that many of our bishops come from. Monasteries also have an important relationship in maintaining standards for the whole church, which laity look to for inspiration, edification, and example.

8) Liturgy.

The worship of the Orthodox Church is liturgical. As with matters of doctrine and morality, how we worship is extremely important and is authoritatively passed down within the Church. Indeed, it is in the services of the Church that theology is actually done. Lex credendi lex orandi. The hymnography, prayers, iconography, liturgical calendar, and architecture of the church all work together to express the truths of -- and draw us into the life of -- the Holy Trinity. The form of worship is closely and intimately bound up with the 'content' of it, and loosing standards on the form inevitably affects content. Examining those traditions where worship is not done in accordance with Church tradition always reveals a corresponding 'loosing' of standards elsewhere -- doctrinally and morally, for example. But such practical concerns are not the main reason for liturgical worship, rather it's because liturgical worship is of apostolic provenance, and the Church is One -- the Saints (and the angels) in heaven worship with us in one accord, and we worship with them. And so we worship how the Saints worshiped when they were alive on earth.

9) Veneration vs. Worship.

In the Orthodox Church we venerate. We venerate the cross, the Holy Icons, the Holy Gospel, the relics of Saints and other things. Veneration (ghoulia in Greek) is not worship (latreia in Greek), which is reserved for God alone. We venerate Holy items because, as St. John of Damascus says, "I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation!"

10) The Theotokos and All the Saints.

The Theotokos -- Mary the Ever-Blessed, Most Pure, and Mother of Our God -- has an exalted place in the Orthodox Church. She is the first of all the Saints, and we ask for her Holy intercessions more frequently than any other Saint, and also venerate her in accordance with scripture (Luke 1:48). This is because God found her worthy to be His Mother, and she submitted to His will. Her powerful intercessions are evident in the Gospels as it is through them that Christ performs His first miracle. He tells her it's not the time to do his first miracle, yet when his mother effectively insists, He goes on to perform it anyway (John 2:1-10). If Christ honors His Mother -- and even obeys her! -- shouldn't we do the same? And shouldn't we desire her miraculous intercessions on our behalf? We pray to the Theotokos and the Saints because God is the God of the living not the dead (Matt. 22:32; Mark 12:27), and the Saints are alive in Christ. With this being the case, we turn to them for prayer first and foremost because "prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (James 5:16).

The Saints also edify us through their lives and their writings, by being examples of how to live a Christian life, and a testimony to the authentic reality of the experience of God in the Church. Because the Church isn't a fossilized object waiting to be exhumed, but is a living organism, new Saints are always being made and nourishing the Church with the wisdom of the Holy Fathers. But whether it's a living Saint or a Saint in heaven who we come into contact with through the Tradition of the Church, we should look to them as examples and submit to the wisdom of those who have beheld the true light of Christ.

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For a trad Roman Catholic, much of this will be familiar. My list of 10 things Catholics should know about Orthodoxy would be somewhat different, on the Orthodox view of issues like the filioque, the papacy, liturgical theology, modernism, divine essence and energies as opposed to 'created grace', etc. But, being that I come from a Protestant background and not a Roman Catholic one, those are things I'm also much less equipped to comment on in an illuminating manner.

Much more could be said on each of the above points, so please forgive any imprecision or mistakes. If anything in the above list is wrong, which is entirely possible, please correct me.

St. Herman of Alaska & The Science of Sciences

In the life of St. Herman titled Herman: A Wilderness Saint, the following remarkable letter is referenced and, after coming across it, I felt compelled to share it. It was written in 1819 by Simeon Ivanovich Ianaovskii some time after he had become the main ruler of the Russian colonies in America (e.g. Alaska), where St. Herman was the head of the spiritual mission. The letter cites a malady all too common in the modern world -- certainly not unique to early 19th century Russia -- and its cure. Enjoy:

   I was thirty years old when I met Father Herman. It should be mentioned that I trained at a naval college. I knew much science and had read widely but, unfortunately, the science of sciences -- that is, the Law of God -- I hardly understood even superficially and what I did know was theoretical, not applied to life. I was a Christian only in name, while in my soul and in action, I was a free-thinker and a deist. In this I was like almost everyone who has been trained in colleges and official institutions...
    What is more, I did not acknowledge the divine nature and sanctity of our religion; I had read many of the godless essays of Voltaire and other philosophers of the eighteenth century.
    Father Herman immediately noticed this and wanted to convert me. It was not easy! I had to be convinced, to be shown the holiness of our faith; this is why it required time, knowledge, and the ability to speak well and convincingly.
    To my great surprise, this simple uneducated monk, Father Herman, inspired by grace, spoke so forcefully, so wisely, and argued so convincingly that it seemed to me no erudition or earthly wisdom could hold out against his words! Father Herman truly had a great mind, sound thought, and had read many spiritual books; most importantly, he had the grace of God!
    We spoke unceasingly: about love, about God, about eternity, about the salvation of the soul, about the Christian life, and other things. An unceasing flood of sweet conversation flowed from his mouth!
    Through such constant talks and by the prayers of the holy elder, the Lord converted me wholly to the path of truth, and I became a true Christian. For all of this, I am obliged to Father Herman; he is my true benefactor. 

O Blessed Father Herman of Alaska, together with all the Saints and the Heavenly Hosts, pray to God that on each of us He will bestow wisdom for our mind, strength for our will, light for our spirit, enabling us to attain to the true peace of life which is from God alone. Amen.

Christ and Nihil

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." - Matt. 6:24

"Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." - James 4:4

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." - Rev. 3:15-16

When it comes to God and his Kingdom, there is no halfway allegiance. There is allegiance and defiance; fidelity and apostasy; communion and exile. The verses above are just a small sampling of a consistent theme that runs throughout the New Testament: the Incarnation of the Word of God inaugurates the Kingdom of God on Earth, and this Kingdom stands victorious over and against the kingdom of the "god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4), i.e. Satan.

Because God alone -- and participation in His life, the life of the Holy Trinity -- constitutes true being, rejection of this life in favor of kingdom of this world that is passing away, constitutes a turning inward to the Self and self-will, and therefore toward nothingness and non-being. Toward the nihil.

In his short text Nihilism -- which was to be but one chapter in his unfinished magnum opus THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF MAN -- Fr. Seraphim Rose seizes on this fundamental truth and uses it as a matrix for analyzing the condition of the modern world. If rejection of Christ is ultimately a single phenomena, then that phenomena lies behind, underneath, and within every species of unbelief and idolatry. There should be a discernible continuity that unites all who stand opposed to God, whether they know it or not and despite any apparent differences.

If this is true, then the same force that gives life to Liberalism, Humanism, Scientism, Realism, New-Age spiritualisms, and compromised and worldly Christianities is the same force that gave us Nazism and Bolshevism. The differences between these various phenomena must be a quantitative rather than qualitative one; a difference of degree rather than of kind. And Fr. Serpahim traces the contours of this modern dialectic with acute precision.

While Fr. Seraphim keenly analyzes the specific instances of the various manifestations of nihilism in the modern world -- in areas of philosophy, politics, religion, and art -- the basic argument is echoed with characteristic verve and brilliance by David Bentley Hart in his magnificent essay Christ and Nothing, which concludes this way:

But we Christians — while not ignoring how appalling such a condition is — should yet rejoice that modernity offers no religious comforts to those who would seek them. In this time of waiting, in this age marked only by the absence of faith in Christ, it is well that the modern soul should lack repose, piety, peace, or nobility, and should find the world outside the Church barren of spiritual rapture or mystery, and should discover no beautiful or terrible or merciful gods upon which to cast itself. With Christ came judgment into the world, a light of discrimination from which there is neither retreat nor sanctuary. And this means that, as a quite concrete historical condition, the only choice that remains for the children of post-Christian culture is not whom to serve, but whether to serve Him whom Christ has revealed or to serve nothing — the nothing. No third way lies open for us now, because — as all of us now know, whether we acknowledge it consciously or not — all things have been made subject to Him, all the thrones and dominions of the high places have been put beneath His feet, until the very end of the world, and — simply said — there is no other god.

Let us then cast ourselves upon the only God Who Is, Christ our true God, and pray that He would have mercy upon us.

California Pilgrimage



An Orthodox friend of mine recently invited me to join him and some parishioners from his previous parish on a pilgrimage to St. John monastery in Manton, St. Herman monastery in Platina (resting place of Blessed Seraphim Rose), and finally to Holy Virgin cathedral in San Francisco (resting place of St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco). All of my fellow pilgrims had been to other monasteries and on other pilgrimages, while this would be my first time doing either.



Fr. Innocent prepping for Matins



Last week we departed for Manton and were greeted by the guileless and pleasant superior of the monastery, Fr. Innocent. After we met some of the other monks and settled in, we attended vespers. The next day we went to liturgy at 6 AM, and afterward had breakfast with the monks who ate in silence as one of them reads from the lives of the saints, as is customary. Later we pilgrims helped with some of the monks obediences as they fixed fences, retrieved honey from beehives, and made candles in the workshop (unfortunately I was busy during this time and didn't get any pictures).

Frescoes in the lower church at St. Herman.



The solitude and beauty of the monastery along with the simple, humble lifestyle of the monks was quite a change of pace from our normal hectic lives, and a welcome one at that. It's conducive to prayer, spiritual reading, and directing of one's attention toward God and heavenly things. It also gives one a different vision on the way that life can (and should) be lived and experienced.

Our next stop was St. Herman of Alaska monastery in Platina, which was founded by Fr. Herman and Fr. Seraphim Rose, with the blessing of St. John. St. Herman monastery is on a peacefully secluded piece of land, and the monastery is quite rustic, without any electricity or hot water. Fr. Seraphim and Fr. Herman wanted to live the fully Christian monastic life, in the tradition of the early Orthodox desert monastics, completely forsaking the comforts of the world for Christ's (and their soul's) sake.

 



Fr. Nicodemus showing us Fr. Seraphim Rose's kellie

It was a joy to experience the beautiful services at Platina in the magnificent Church building -- even when they began at 4:30 in the A.M.  When we weren't attending services we took a tour of the grounds with the delightful Fr. Nicodemus as our tour guide, explored (and patronized) the bookstore -- stocked with the writings of Fr. Seraphim and other material that the monks of St. Herman publish themselves, such as Fr Josiah's (my own priest's) newly published book -- or venerated and prayed at Fr. Seraphim's grave.

Abbot Damascene was eminently hospitable and gracious as were all the monks, showing themselves to have hearts of humility and service. 

While the treasures of the monastery could continue to be expounded upon, let us turn to our final destination: San Francisco. 

When we arrived in San Francisco we first went to the orphanage that St. John started, which is now a parish. As a very welcome and pleasant surprise, Archimandrite Irenei -- an incredible Orthodox scholar whom I had met at my home parish of St. Andrew once -- was serving at the orphanage (which is now a parish) and gave us a tour of St. John's living quarters, while telling the history of St. John and the orphanage. We took turns sitting in the chair that St. John would sleep in (he never slept in a bed). A chair which has, since his repose, imparted miraculous grace to some sick and injured people. Fr. Irenei went on to serve vespers in the chapel inside the orphanage, which was beautiful and mostly in Russian.

The next day we went to the spectacular Holy Virgin cathedral, where the incorrupt relics of St. John reside. After venerating the relics of St. John and placing a letter containing petitions for intercession under his casket -- it's said that he reads them all -- a hierarchal liturgy took place, presided over by his Eminence Archbishop Kyrill, which was as stunningly gorgeous as the iconography on the walls.

Afterwards we talked with one of the chanters who served during liturgy, a 16 year-old Romanian son of a priest, and he told a remarkable story of how St. John healed his grandmother. She had acquired muscular dystrophy, which had made it difficult for her to get around and caused her to fall down often. This caused grief for the entire family. One night she said the Akathist to St. John before falling into a sweet sleep. While sleeping, she dreamed that St. John came to her with a censor and censed her body. When she woke up she ran around the house and was healed! The family returns to the cathedral once a year to show their gratitude to St. John for his powerful intercession. This is just one of countless such stories that testify to St. John's wonderworking ministry.

Oh Holy Saint of God, St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, intercede with Christ on our behalf!

 

The Face of God -- Pagan Antiquity and Christianity

Icon of the Resurrection of Our Lord

Over at On Behalf of All, Vincent Martini recently posted on the topic of the resurrection of Christ and the charge by skeptics that this event is a myth that was borrowed and re-imagined from pagan mystery cults. Drawing heavily on N.T. Wright's scholarship in The Resurrection of the Son of God, Vincent points out that the "dying and rising" gods of said cults were gods whose "resurrections" are cyclical  and are linked to the perpetual cycles of life and death within nature. Appeasing these gods or attempting to commune with them had the chief purpose of ensuring a prosperous harvest. As Martini and Wright both point out, this is somewhat a far cry from the resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God, the 2nd person of the Trinity, who conquers death itself and in whom the Kingdom of God is made manifest on the Earth.

Skeptics are quite fond of pointing out the similarities between Christianity and certain mystery cults of antiquity, in order to insinuate that the similarities are (somehow) evidence of Christianity being some sort of fraud or myth. But these similarities are often cherrypicked from a wide range of beliefs and cults, omitting all those which bear no resemblance, and focusing on anything that has even a superficial resemblance. The result is usually a drastic exaggeration of the actual parallels and overlap.

In addition, there is often a historical confusion over which direction the influence is running in. Many ancient religions and cults were influenced by the spread of Christianity, and adopted elements into themselves. Shoddy amateur scholarship that pollutes the internet is prone to see any similarity and falsely infer that the influence necessarily ran in the other direction, since paganism in general preceded Christianity.

With all that said, to the extent that there is some legitimate overlap between certain elements of Christian worship, piety, and devotion and that of certain pagan cults, this is hardly surprising and is no challenge to the truth of Christianity.

In the February 2013 issue of First Things, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart addresses this topic from this angle.[1] Granting that there are more substantial similarities than some Christians usually feel comfortable admitting -- sacramental initiation rites which are supposed to conquer the power of death, for example -- Hart notes that it's a false inference from these facts to the story of Christ being false or somehow stolen from the pagan religions.

There was a brief period in the early heady days of anthropology of religion when James Frazer was still in fashion, during which it was regarded by many as something of a scandal that so many seemingly common elements could be found in both Christianity of the early centuries and many of the pagan devotions of late antiquity. To this day in fact, there are Christians who become terribly anxious at the suggestion that the early Church, in many places, had something of the form of an Asiatic or Hellenistic mystery cult, or that other sects that offered salvation with a savior deity cherished some of the same religious aspirations of Christianity.

Really, though, there is nothing alarming or even surprising in the discovery that the gospel spoke to religious hopes that existed outside its corporate boundaries, or that early Christian devotion should have been expressed in forms not wholly alien to the culture and language of its time.

On the contrary, we confess that Christ came "in the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4), so it makes sense that his coming into the world would constitute the fulfillment of certain religious longings of the world which was, after all, created through Him. Longing such as as the desire to see the "face of God", as expressed -- among other places -- in Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Hart notes that these religious expectations are both fulfilled and overturned in Christ. The face of God is revealed, but it's revealed in a scandalous form: that of a crucified Jewish peasant.

My main interest in the discussion is to affirm that these two apologetic approaches are compatible, rather than mutually exclusive. Provided that the apologist is careful not to blithely dismiss all similarities while accurately articulating the great, significant divergence that does in fact occur with the advent of Christianity.


[1] - This article is behind a paywall. Hart has a similar piece from 2011 that is available for free here.

Orthodox Witness in an Un-Orthodox World

"[T]hat servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more." - Luke 12:47-48

This passage has many applications for us in life. We can think of it in terms of spiritual gifts, money, power, talent, or health. In all of these respects, the more that you have been given, the more you will be required to offer these things to others, and ultimately back to God as a living sacrifice.

Another application of this verse that is not typically stressed is with regard to truth. To whom much truth is given, much will be required. Not only required in terms of offering truth itself to others but -- because truth (along with love) is the wellspring of other blessings -- also in terms of offering the many fruits of the truth back to God through others.

Yikes. If the Orthodox church is the place where God's truth in Christ is revealed in its fullness (as I affirm), then woe unto us who have found Orthodoxy and don't live accordingly! To Orthodox people, much truth has been given; of Orthodox people much will be required. If you're a rotten scoundrel who was blessed to find the Orthodox Church, as I am, this should be somewhat disconcerting. Of course, the grace, beauty, and truth found in the Church is more than enough to compensate for being held to this higher standard. But receiving the riches of Christ through the Church in a way that transforms you does entail cooperating with Him and with Her. And this, of course, is not always easy as it entails taking up our cross daily and following Christ.

If you're a Christian of any other stripe, and believe that stripe to be the most true stripe, then -- from your perspective -- all of this would still apply to you as well, and it should cause no small amount of consternation. Knowing our master's will, how much worse is it that we don't follow it? Much worse.

For many of my family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances, I'm the only Orthodox person that they know personally. Whether it's fair or not and whether they do it consciously or not, people will primarily be judging what Orthodoxy is all about by looking at my life. Much more than how I can answer questions about my faith, or speak intelligently about my reasons for converting (though we are to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within us, 1 Peter 3:15), people ultimately look at whether you're walking the walk and whether your life testifies to the transformative truth that you have found. Again, for sinful wretches like myself this is somewhat unhappy news as it means that, not only am I a wretch, but I'll be held to a higher standard before God. Double whammy, as it were.

In addition to the comfort to be found in Christ's promises and his sanctifying, transfiguring grace (by which I can become less and less of a wretch as I submit to Him and His Church, and therefore become more and more suited to meet the higher standard), another load off is the gift of the divine services. A common refrain in Orthodox circles in response to curious parties is "come and see" (I suspect as a reference to John 1:39, 46). As Fr. Josiah, my spiritual father, says of catechism:

The best catechism is in frequent and watchful attendance at the divine services. This is true because the Church prays what she believes, and believes what she prays.  Every service of prayer is deep theology, and all true theology is prayer.

This catechism of the services is not only for catechumens, but for anyone who wants to know what the Orthodox Church is about.

Other than a holy life (something I don't yet have to offer), the services of the Church are our most potent tool for evangelization. If I can successfully plead with an interlocutor not to judge Orthodoxy by the example that my shabby life puts forth, some pressure is taken off by getting them to attend divine services. At those services there are holy people doing holy things, and worshiping the Holy Trinity in Spirit and Truth. All within the context of the intensely beautiful divine liturgy.

In an highly un-Orthodox society, it's best to share the burden of witnessing, and put forth the corporate life of the Church as the nonpareil witness to the content and beauty of the Orthodox faith, because it is there that the Body of Christ is revealed in all its splendor. Though ultimately our own individual lives must also be transfigured and become shining, sanctifying microcosms of Christ that testify powerfully to the hope that is within us.

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Oh Lord Jesus Christ, Our God, have mercy upon us and save us.

"Picking and Choosing" and The Bible

If you follow debates between liberal and conservative evangelicals, you will often see an exchange come down to the conservative accusing the liberal of selectively reading scripture -- of ignoring or downplaying the parts he doesn't like, while accentuating the bits that he does. To which the liberal will often retort that selectivity is unavoidable. That "we all pick and choose." The upshot being that there is no extra-hermeneutical vantage to occupy, and that the meaning of scripture isn't entirely self-disclosing.

While it's true that our presuppositions and biases will inevitably affect how scripture is understood, and that there is no neutral, assumption-less space from which to view the Bible, it doesn't follow that "we all must pick and choose." This is only the case if you believe that the individual and his conscience is the ultimate authority with regard to the meaning of the text. While this approach is standard within Protestantism, it isn't the only option available to us. Rather than selectively reading the Bible according to our own biases, we can also choose to submit our understanding to the authority of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, and to whom was given the Holy Spirit to guide it "into all truth" (John 16:13).

What the conservative evangelical often doesn't realize is that he's wisely, but unconsciously, appealing to tradition in these arguments. Though he might deny it, he isn't appealing exclusively to the text itself, but to what he perceives to be the traditional understandings of the text. He (again, wisely) feels there's something unsettling about novel interpretations of scripture and has a visceral reaction against it, but can't really do anything about it if his only recourse is to the Bible itself, since the Bible itself can be twisted and manipulated, as the Bible itself warns. (2 Peter 3:16) And if it can, then who's to say who's doing the twisting and manipulating and who isn't?

Blessedly, Our Lord Jesus Christ didn't hand down a book to the Apostles that could be interpreted in various contradictory ways, nor did the Apostles hand one down to their followers. What was handed down was the gospel of Christ -- His life and His commandments -- and the Holy Spirit. This was transmitted by oral and written apostolic tradition (2 Thess. 2:15), with the written tradition eventually becoming the New Testament. But just as the New Testament was written, compiled, and canonized by the Church with the seal and guidance of the Holy Spirit, so must the New Testament be read, interpreted, and lived within the Church according to the Holy Spirit. If you adopt the Church as hermeneutic, the question is no longer "what do I think about this passage?", but "what does the Church teach that this passage means?"

Admittedly, this approach to the question somewhat short-circuits the entire dialogue. If evangelicals did this they wouldn't be evangelicals. Nevertheless, it's critical to point out that not all hermeneutical approaches leave us equally "picking and choosing" from the Bible.

Mystery and Marriage Revisionism

I honestly don't have a great interest in issues of Christian feminism and egalitarianism, as my previous entry and this one might suggest. But this seems to be the front from which the left is staging its assault on traditional Christian teaching, and I am a great fan of Christ, His Church, and the traditions they have established and handed down. That being the case, this stuff becomes difficult to avoid.

Being Orthodox, I suppose you can avoid it by simply resting in the assurance that there is no such thing as a completely novel understanding of any Christian doctrine that is also correct, therefore being assured that egalitarianism is false and anathema, for example. The problem is that there is a nation of Christians being confronted with these challenges to traditionalist Christianity who have no such bulwark. They might really be open to persuasion, which would spiritually harm not only them, but also the broader culture and the Christian witness to the world.

All that to preface my response to this guest column by Kristen Rosser on Rachel Held Evans' blog, in which Rosser marshals historical-critical exegesis to call into question whether Paul really meant what he said about marriage being "a great mystery" which "concerns Christ and the Church." Or, she would say, whether he means what most claim that he means.

Let's start at the end where she attempts to allay fears that the motivation for such convoluted interpretations of Scripture is unbiblical conformance to modern culture. No, she assures us, because she and her husband are "best friends" just like they want to be. Are you waiting for the scriptural citation that says that marriage is a kind of sanctified best-friendship-with-benefits? Me too. Not to mention everything the Bible teaches about marriage that belies that denuded, small understanding utterly -- such as the very passage she is interrogating.

Her chief claim -- that in Ephesians 5:21-32, Paul either isn't using Christ and the Church as an illustration for marriage, or if he is it's not about authority and submission but about giving and sacrifice -- is partly correct, part straw-man, and partly incorrect. Correct is that the relationship of husband to wife and Christ to the Church is not solely -- or even necessarily centrally -- about authority and submission. This is also the straw-man because no complementarians or traditionalists claim that these relationships are solely about that. This being the case, her supposed corrective -- explaining that Christ sacrificially, lovingly, and in all humility gives his life for the Church, thereby coming down to her station and raising her up to glory -- is no corrective at all. No complementarians or marriage traditionalists deny this aspect of Christ's relationship to the Church, or that it is a template for marriage. Her implicit, unstated premise is that this understanding is mutually exclusive with headship, authority, and submission, which of course doesn't follow. Christ both humbly dies for and serves the Church, raising her up to glory and  is her head to whom she lovingly submits.

She expends some energy explaining literary "chiastic sandwiches", which -- even if one accepts as the proper literary framework for the passage -- doesn't really get her any purchase in the argument because, again, the central point -- "That He might present to Himself the church in all her glory" -- is not one that any traditionalist misses, downplays, or denies anyway.

Part of the problem is Kristen's myopic focus on this single passage. Even setting aside the game of hermeneutical Twister she plays, a simple cross-reference could have saved her from making such errors. Take 1st Corinthians 11:3, for instance, which says that "the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God." If Ephesians 5:21-32 wasn't clear enough, this fortifies its obvious, unmistakable meaning (as does the rest of Scripture and Holy Tradition).

She starts to make a somewhat interesting point, pointing out that Paul uses the word "mystery" to describe the way marriage is a reflection of Christ and the Church. But she immediately goes astray, reducing this great mystery to a one-way illustration that shows marriage being kinda, sorta like Christ and the Church in one specific, narrowly circumscribed way. Whereas the traditional understanding of the great mystery is much more holistic and mutually reinforcing i.e. that Christian marriage images forth Christ and the Church, just as Christ and the Church shows us what marriage is all about. Bizarrely, she points out that "illustration" isn't used in the passage, only to reduce this great mystery to precisely a simple illustration.

If you compare her understanding of this great mystery to the other great mysteries of the Church, such as Holy Baptism and the Eucharist, it becomes clear that her understanding is much too small, reductionist, and narrow to possibly be correct. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says in his book The Orthodox Way:

In the proper religious sense of the term, “mystery” signifies not only hiddenness but disclosure. The Greek noun mysterion [from which we get the word 'sacrament'] is linked with the verb myein, meaning “to close the eyes or mouth.” The candidate for initiation into certain of the pagan mystery religions was first blindfolded and led through a maze of passages; then suddenly his eyes were uncovered and he saw, displayed all round him, the secret emblems of the cult. So, in the Christian context, we do not mean by a “mystery” merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively be­cause it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.

This proper understanding of the sacraments of the Church (marriage being one) can't be reconciled with her systematization of the mystery wherein she claims that the mystery is all hiddenness now, and only disclosure in the eschaton.

Marriage revisionists are right to view passages like this one from Ephesians -- if understood simply, straightforwardly, and in accordance with the rest of the Bible and the traditions of the Church -- as incompatible with their desire to re-imagine marriage. It's amusing to watch them tap-dance around the obvious, but it's also too dangerous to let go by without serious challenge.

Eucharistic Reflection

In the 6th chapter of the Gospel According to St. John, Jesus teaches His followers that He is the Bread of Life, the true Manna from Heaven, of which the manna given in the wilderness by Moses is only a pale shadow and type of. As his Jewish followers express bewilderment at Christ claiming to be bread, and to have "come down from Heaven", Our Lord drives the point home:

53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
...
60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”
...
66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

Note that Our Lord prefaces the teaching with "Most assuredly I say to you", and repeats that His flesh is food and His blood drink emphatically and many times over. When this teaching scandalizes many of his followers, He doesn't chase after them and say "Come back, come back, you misunderstand! I just mean that in the future, once I'm no longer with you, you'll have to eat a cracker and drink grape juice while thinking about me every once in a while." Surely if that was all that he meant He wouldn't have phrased it as He did, or allowed this teaching to turn people away from Him. That would be cruel. Christ does often use enigmatic sayings which can't be understood by his disciples except in the full light of His self-revelation (i.e. until His work is completed and the Holy Spirit is given), but He doesn't intentionally mislead, or drive away, His followers for trivial reasons. So He has to have meant what He said.

Many modern readers will want to metaphoricalize Christ's teaching here and say that he is simply talking about having faith in the Crucified and Glorified Savior. That "eating and drinking" Christ means being crucified with Christ through faith in Him, which is a hard teaching as well. But this isn't a parable, and Christ's words are unequivocal. It is, of course, through faith in Christ and through Holy Baptism -- wherein we truly die and are raised with Christ -- that we become worthy to partake of the Eucharist, but the Body and Blood of the Holy Table are not mere ornamental accessories of the faith. Rather they are an essential, life-giving centrality. As this passage clearly insists, and as is reinforced without equivocation by the tradition and teachings of the Church.

Original Sin & Christ's Full Humanity

The Gospel Coalition has a series of installments answering theological questions that are emailed to them. The most recent installment has Luke Stamps, a professor at California Baptist University, addressing a question that was submitted regarding whether Christ assumed a fallen human nature -- the view of Protestant luminaries Barth and Torrance, as well as that of the Orthodox Church.

The piece essentially answers the question in the negative: there are too many 'problems' with the view that Christ assumed a fallen human nature (and therefore, full human nature as it actually exists). Stamps does at least acknowledge the validity of the motivation for adopting the view but ultimately rejects it. He gives a series of reasons for rejecting it, though they all ultimately hinge on the fact that "the mainstream Reformed understanding of original sin [is that] to possess a fallen nature is to be guilty before God." But this amounts to question-begging. The very question at hand is whether this view of original sin is correct.

In Stamps' first reason for rejecting the view, he says that fallenness is not an essential feature of human nature as such, but rather a result of the fall. "Fallenness is a not a 'part' of humanity that must be healed." While it's true that fallenness is not an eternal feature of human nature, it is still an aspect of human nature post-Fall and outside of union with Christ. Stamps is positing human nature as a static, eternal thing rather than something subject to change, and he does so without any justification given.

His second reason is the one that directly invokes the Reformed understanding of original sin, and as such is the one that makes the least sense. "Presumably 'fallenness' in [the FHN] context means possessing a propensity toward sin, even if no actual sin is committed. But how could a human being in this state not be condemnable in the eyes of a holy God?" His question seems to answer itself. How can God neglect to find something condemnable which is not worthy of condemnation? If your premises force you to ask such questions, it's time to re-examine your premises.

The third objection appeals to a christological conundrum that doesn't actually exist. Stamps asks "how could the infallible Son of God be joined to a morally fallen human nature?" Could one not also ask how the uncircumscribable God could become circumscribed in the womb of the Virgin? Or how the infinite God became finite? Or how the impassible God suffered on the Cross? Are any of these mysteries of the Incarnation any less irresolvable for us? Unless you're rejecting the Incarnation itself as self-contradictory on rationalist grounds -- which no Christian is permitted to do -- then this just is not a difficulty. Further, it calls into question the necessity of, for example, the Cross. If Christ has taken on pre-Fall human nature only, then is the 'flesh' of fallen man really being crucified at the cross? And if not, what good does it do us who indeed possess a fallen human nature?

He goes on to make a specious distinction between the scripturally undeniable "fallen experience" of Christ and taking on a fallen human nature. If Christ is just dwelling amongst fallenness as a passer-through, and not taking it into himself, then how is it that our salvation is affected?

Stamps quotes St. Gregory the Theologian's maxim that "that which is not assumed is not healed." Just so.

The Church as Hermeneutic

Because the matter of ecclesiology -- that is the question of "What/Who is the Church?" -- was the primary catalyst for my conversion to Orthodoxy, and because my chief witness as an Orthodox Christian is likely to be to groups of friends and family who are evangelical Protestants (or lapsed ones), I've been reflecting on the issue some more. Having found what I view to be the answer to the question, the issue of how to share that answer becomes a matter that requires cultivating a loving, charitable disposition through much thought and prayer. This issue becomes especially acute in the midst of the Holiday season.

It also requires a strengthening of my own understanding. This being the case, I recently read the book The Non-Orthodox and the essay The Church is Visible and One, both by Patrick Barnes. Both cite, and extensively quote, various Orthodox sources -- Patristic and contemporary -- as well as some Protestant voices, such as T.F. Torrance. I also recently re-watched the stellar lecture by David Bentley Hart on The Intersection of Scripture and Theology (below), which on one level functions as a crypto-Orthodox apologia for the Patristic view of Scripture. A topic which inevitably ties back into ecclesiology.

One key takeaway from Hart's lecture is that, contra modern sensibilities, historical-critical methods of reading Scripture -- as valuable as they often are -- in no sense supersede or make invalid the ways the Church has traditionally read and understood Scripture. He specifically is talking about how the early Fathers read much of the Old Testament allegorically (which isn't always to say non-literally, as Hart explains). This is a narrower point that opens into the broader idea that because Scripture can be read and interpreted many ways, and often in contradictory and irreconcilable ways, an authority is needed. A Church who is united in matters of Truth needs a mechanism for settling disputes in how Scripture is understood and taught, as well as in many other matters. The mechanism the Apostles established in Acts 15, and passed down to their followers, was the conciliar model of Church authority. The convening of Church councils, within which the Holy Spirit is judging and guiding authoritatively (Acts 15:28).

While it is a popular (and true, so far as it goes) postmodern paradigm that no text has an inherent, self-disclosing meaning, and that every act of reading is already an act of interpretation, this truth -- along with either an explicit or effective belief in sola scriptura -- is too often used to lend purchase to a broad relativism. A hermeneutic buffet from which we all necessarily must partake. From which we must make interpretive choices which are not inherently superior to another hermeneutical lens, provided both are equally internally consistent. In response to a naive belief in a text that is fully self-disclosing of meaning, we have a reactionary belief in a divided -- not merely 'diverse and not divided', as I incorrectly speculated on in the past -- Church, which can and must permit mutually exclusive and contradictory understandings of Scripture, because there is no governing authority to which to turn. The situation yields as many interpretations as there are interpreters. A distant cry from the New Testament promise that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church "into all truth" (John 16:13) [emphasis mine].

And, where there is broad agreement among evangelicals on their (small number) of central non-negotiables, such as a proper Christology and Trinitarianism, this consensus was very much forged in the fires of the early Church's creedal formulas and the subsequent cleaving to them by the historical Church. That is, it's a product not of strict scriptural exegesis alone (though of course the orthodox position is eminently and uniquely scriptural), but of the conciliar authority of the Church.

Given all this, the Church's self-understanding as professed in the Creed isn't much in question. As Protestant scholar T.F. Torrance says:

[F]or Nicene ecclesiology the focus of attention was on the incorporation of believers into the Body of Christ on the ground of reconciliation with God which He had accomplished in and through His bodily death and resurrection. That is to say, it was precisely the visible, empirical Church in space and time that was held to be the Body of Christ.

The 12th article of the Creed ("I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church") was referring to this one, visible, concrete, historical entity.

So while my understanding continues to develop and cohere, and as I endeavor to make my life a living testament to the riches and truths uniquely found in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, the living Body of Christ, the question of how to effectively witness is a sensitive one. Certainly the guiding principle must always to be to speak the truth in love, and to humbly recognize that the Grace bestowed to the Church is meant for all men equally. Something that is much easier to say, and to understand intellectually, than to actually live out. Pride is the quintessential sin, after all.

I suspect my spiritual Father would advise me that the period of one's catechesis isn't chiefly a time to focus on witnessing in any direct way, since I am still very much a humble beginner whose focus should be on my own drawing nearer to God and spiritual development. A process that acts as its own witness and testimony. Something I very much would take to heart, if he were to advise me thus. Though sharing my experience and fielding questions on these issues, especially with the holidays approaching, is unavoidable, as I'm sure Father Josiah would acknowledge. May the author of all truth, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, grant us wisdom and the contrite heart of a servant with which to share it.

On Necessity and Love

"Is it necessary?"

As a former Protestant in the process of converting to Orthodoxy who still has a circle of friends that are predominantly Protestant, this question comes up a lot especially with regard to the 'peculiars' of Orthodoxy that are foreign to the evangelical Protestant world. At catechism this past Sunday it seemed that my fellow catechumens often encounter this same sort of question regarding Orthodox doctrine and praxis.

The more generous and ecumenical-minded evangelical is prone to look on things like veneration of icons, high Mariology, and prayer to the Saints as possibly "OK", but as superfluous and perhaps detracting from the "more important stuff." And certainly not as "necessary". So why bother?

But is the question of "necessity" the right question to be asking? Do we serve a God of necessity? Is creation necessary? Is humanity necessary? Did He create because some force outside of himself was compelling Him to do so? Was a higher-up breathing down his neck, pressuring him to turn in His Creation science project on time?

By no means! The Triune God of love is self-sufficient and in need of nothing (Acts 17:24-25). The act of Creation is a gracious self-outpouring of God's love, through his Word, and in no way "necessary". As beings created in His image, our salvation lies in recovering this self-outpouring love within us, through the redemptive, restorative ministry of Jesus Christ and His life-giving Cross.

Not to mention that if we did serve a God of necessity, His first order of business would be to destroy me for my innumerable transgressions. Thank God for His unnecessary mercy.

A better set of questions might be whether something is profitable, honorable, praiseworthy, or good. Even on these grounds, most evangelical Protestants would still take issue with some of these elements of Orthodoxy, but at least they would be asking the right questions!

A New Catechumen and the Saints - Journey to Orthodoxy (part 6)

St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom,
and St. Gregory the Theologian

Today marked a significant event in my journey to Orthodoxy as I was made into a catechumen during divine liturgy at St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside. The process of converting to Orthodoxy can be conceived of in 3 stages: courtship, engagement, and marriage. Today marked the end of the courtship stage (which previous installments in this series described certain elements of), and the beginning of the engagement phase. Here is an excerpt from something Father Josiah wrote called How to Become an Orthodox Christian, explaining what has just transpired for the newly enrolled catechumen.

At this point the inquirer has made a definitive decision to become an Orthodox Christian forever. He knows that this commitment is not a denominational switch, but an approach to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. It is a commitment to faithfully serve God as a member of the Orthodox Church no matter where one lives on this earth. The catechumen is engaged to the Church, and will complete this engagement with the spiritual marriage which is holy baptism. It is expected at this juncture that the new catechumen inform in writing any religious body in which he was previously a member his desire to be removed from the membership of said body. The catechumen is numbered amongst a class of catechumens that belongs to the particular parish, and will begin the formal process of catechesis. From this point the catechumen self-identifies to the outside world as an Orthodox Christian. Should the catechumen die before reception into the church, he will be buried as an Orthodox Christian.

So today begins my catechesis and I am now an Orthodox Christian (though not yet a full member). I'm elated and very grateful to Father Josiah and all the kind people at St. Andrew who have been so warm and welcoming to me, including my fellow catechumens. May the Lord Christ bless the catechumens of St. Andrew, through the intercessions of the Saints.

 Now, speaking of the intercessions of the Saints, let's pick up where the previous installment left off.

The primary Protestant objections to prayer to the Saints seem to be either that it's unnecessary -- there is one mediator between man and God, the God-man Christ Jesus, so why get anyone else involved? -- or about practical questions of whether the dead Saints can hear our prayers. Again, my reservations were of a similar character, though they weren't very strong. Nonetheless, I investigated the matter and the following are some things I took away from the Orthodox explanation of the practice.

Even if the Great Saints of the Church couldn't intercede on our behalf, it should still be obvious why Christians ought to want them to. James 5:16 says that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." All Christians know that it's good to pray for each other and to ask for the intercessory prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ (even when they aren't particularly Holy brothers and sisters, we often still ask). But why limit this practice to those who are alive in the flesh, rather than to all those who are alive in Christ? If we are made into new creatures in Christ (2. Cor 5:17), freed from enslavement to death in the water of Baptism (Romans 6:3-4), sharing in Christ's resurrection to new life here and now, and not at some undetermined time in the future, then a practical implication of this is that those who have fallen asleep in the Lord aren't actually dead in the fullest sense. The Church of Christ consists of all those who are in Christ, whether living or dead. And with the Church being a communal reality, this means we still commune with those who are not currently with us in tangible ways.

Further, the practice of invoking the Saints, asking for their intercessions, reading their words, praying their prayers, and venerating icons of them keeps concrete examples in our mind of the types of lives that are possible to live given the transformative power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. Christ remains our ultimate standard, of course, but without a constant awareness of our spiritual inheritance, and the lives of the best of our forebears in the Faith, our own spiritual lives will be much impoverished.

Also, as always with Orthodox doctrine and praxis, praying to the Saints is found early in Church history and has Apostolic provenance (though, of course, some non-Orthodox dispute this). As that is far from my area of expertise, I'll refrain from wading into those waters here.

This is a brief defense of the practice, but -- as should be apparent -- it opens up into the broader issue of how death is to be understood for Christians. Which is another topic I'm not especially qualified to comment on in any depth, but suffice it to say that there is a stark difference here between Orthodox and Protestant tradition as evidenced by the burial practices, praying for the reposed in a liturgical way, etc.

This post somewhat chronologically catches us up to where my journey is at present. I plan to continue the series throughout my catechesis and perhaps beyond. If you have questions, comments, or things you'd like me to address, please comment below.

Mary, and Icons, and Saints -- Oh my! (Journey to Orthodoxy, part 5)

Icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa

Some common stumbling blocks for Protestants examining or approaching Orthodoxy are the high mariology, the presence and veneration of icons in worship, and the practice of praying to and asking for the intercessions of the saints -- all three of these having certain points of intersection with each other. From a Protestant perspective, certain aspects of these practices and doctrines are usually outright objectionable, while other aspects are seen as tolerable, but simply unnecessary or superfluous. From an Orthodox perspective -- as I've come to understand it -- these are not simply matters of optional worship preferences which the Orthodox happen to have adopted, but are vital elements of the life and mind of the Orthodox Church and are consistent with the fullness of the Faith as it was once delivered to the Saints.

For Protestants -- and for myself, when beginning to explore Orthodoxy -- the question immediately would be what the Scriptural basis for the beliefs and practices are. As earlier entries in the series attempted to explain, given how the Orthodox understanding of Scripture, its relationship with tradition, and how authority is derived within the Church, it's unsurprising that there would be areas of significant divergence between traditions. Which is not to say that there is no Scriptural basis for the practices and beliefs. Orthodox would just say that the scriptural basis are all the verses that are not regularly underlined, or exhaustively cross-referenced, or are poorly understood due to a divergent hermeneutic. For example, some Orthodox note that Mary takes up approximately 10% of both Matthew and Luke's gospel, and that the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) declares that all generations will call Mary blessed. This, admittedly, seems less of a prescription and more of a description, but nevertheless, why not regularly -- rather than once a year -- call Mary blessed given her amazing role in bringing Salvation to the world? This is just one example of how Scripture accords with and provides a basis for the practices. For other examples check out series on the Ancient Faith Radio program Our Life in Christ, which has series on all these topics. That's a good starting point, anyway.

In addition to this, Orthodox would appeal to the Apostolic tradition and the Faith as it was handed down -- some of which by word and not epistle -- all of which accords with scripture, but which can't necessarily be plucked from it absent the proper hermeneutic within the life of the Church.

Icon of Christ's Baptism

At the council of Nicaea, before a canon of the New Testament existed, it was established that, for example, Christ is homooúsios with the Father, or "of one substance". The language of homooúsios isn't Biblical language, but it is still confessed by all Christians and deviations from this belief are considered heretical by virtually all of historic Christianity. There is, of course, a rich and bountiful Scriptural basis for this doctrine, but the doctrine was established before an authoritative canon of Scripture was. So just as the persons of the Trinity are homooúsios with one another, and just as this doctrine was established and settled by the conciliar model of ecclesial authority, via Apostolic tradition, so too with the veneration of icons, intercessions of the Saints, and a high mariology.

Just as the First and Second Ecumenical councils, at Nicaea and Constantinople, gave us the Creed, which is the standard ecumenical confession of the faith of Christians, the Seventh Ecumenical Council declared iconoclasm to be heresy. Just as the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon established the canon of Scripture -- which all Christians adhere to -- the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus established that Mary is theotokos -- the birth-giver of God. That is, not merely the mother of Jesus's human nature and not the divine Logos -- as Nestorius was teaching -- but of God the Son.

Protestants take issue with these beliefs and practices on various levels. They might not object to calling Mary theotokos, for example, but they will object to praying to her or the Saints. They might not have a problem with making icons, or adorning churches with them (though they don't do it), but they do have a problem with their veneration because it seems like idol worship to them. This is approximately where I was when I began attending orthodox services, though by that time I had adopted the stance of a learner and was open to the possibility that I was ignorant. With this in mind, I sought answers on these issues.

Icon of Mary, the Theotokos, with Christ.

A very brief theological defense of a high mariology and of the place of iconography in worship is this: the Incarnation. Both of these elements of doctrine and praxis are consequences of an affirmation of the Incarnation. If Christ is fully man and fully God, then Mary can properly be called the mother of God, or theotokos. If Christ is, as St. Paul says, the "image [or icon] of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), then the invisible God -- who can not be pictured -- now can be in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

Also, where the iconography and the mariology merge -- in icons of Mary -- Christ is virtually always depicted with Mary. She is significant because of Christ's significance, and Orthodox veneration of her always points to Christ. She was an obedient and pure servant of God's, but it's ultimately about what God has done through her and which she cooperated with. She was the first believer; She was the culmination of Israel's lineage and was chosen to bear God the Word; Christ took his human nature from her flesh; the uncircumscribable and uncontainable God was circumscribed and contained in her womb. These are magnificent, holy mysteries and it is a disservice to Christ and the reality of his Incarnation to diminish or downplay them in any way.

Of course, many evangelicals might say "well yeah, I affirm most of those things about Mary", which points to a broader issue with evangelicalism. If you affirm that, then why is it omitted from your prayers and worship? This is a separate issue, one that is somewhat touched on in earlier posts, but in my experience it is unhelpful to officially affirm doctrines on your doctrinal statement -- "Christ was born of the Virgin Mary", perhaps -- which then have no consequence in the language or shape of liturgical worship and life. If it is a truth and it's something you affirm, then let it loose, don't keep it quietly locked away on the Church website.

As for Protestants who wouldn't affirm Mary as theotokos or -- to bring up another issue -- her ever-virginity, one wonders why they don't seeing as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Wesley all did.

Returning to the issue of icons and their veneration, the chief issue here is that the 2nd commandment says not to make a graven image and worship it. Orthodox venerate icons but don't worship them, as worship belongs to God alone.

If God's truth can be contained and transmitted through Scripture, which of course it can, then why can it not be contained and transmitted by image? Orthodox see both scripture and iconography as different vessels of the same truth, the truth of the Gospel. One are words written by human hands, hands belonging to members of Christ's church who have the Holy Spirit; the other are images written by human hands, hands belonging to members of Christ's Church who have the Holy Spirit. Both bearing witness to the same truth(s).

As for veneration of icons, I found this illustration helpful: when a World War II fighter pilot kissed a photograph of his wife, was he committing adultery? Was he confused? Did he love the photograph more than his wife? Was he unaware that the image is an icon of a living reality that is not contained by the image? Of course not. The same is true of Orthodox veneration of icons. Icons transmit the Gospel, they are a window to the spiritual realm, they are a testament to the fact that the saints are alive in Christ and not dead, they affirm the reality of the Incarnation, and they are a monument to the beauty of God. Thus when Orthodox venerate them they are affirming these truths and simultaneously ascribing honor and veneration to the living truth which the icon images forth.

As this post is getting lengthy, I will cut it off here and address prayers to the Saints, intercessions of the Saints, and the Orthodox understanding of death in the next post (all of which ties in to the issue of icons, since much iconography in the Orthodox Church depicts saints and martyrs of the Church). I may also touch on an issue I said I would address but neglected, that of the Great Schism and the filioque.