ORA ET LABORA

Orthodox Life

2011-01-03T23:15:00.002+01:00

Dear long-suffering readers,

I have good news, and I have bad news. The bad news is that I must declare this blog officially dead. The good news is that my work will continue in a better, more traditional, and more lasting form. As of the January/February, 2011, issue, I have become one of the editors of Orthodox Life, the popular English-language publication of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY. This periodical, which has been in continuous publication since 1950, is currently undergoing a renewal in both content and design after several years of relative decline.

If you have enjoyed the material found on this blog, then I assure you that you will enjoy the new Orthodox Life.

I urge you all to subscribe! For more information, go here.

Hiatus

2010-07-12T17:22:00.002+02:00

On June 20 I was separated from my computer when transferred to another ward of the hospital. I have not had access to my laptop since. I'll now be able to use it a couple minutes a day, mainly to check email, but I won't be able to resume blogging until I've been released from the hospital, which may be a couple weeks from now. I appreciate your patience and ask your prayers.

My Syllabus

2010-06-20T07:18:00.002+02:00

As I've had to occasion to mention a number of times, I taught for several years at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY. I taught a variety of subjects: Principles of Orthodoxy, English, ESL, New Testament Greek, and Russian History. The subject that I was most excited to teach was always Principles of Orthodoxy, a two-semester sequence that I envisioned as a sort of introduction to theology. Here, for your interest, is the basic syllabus I used:

First Semester

Genesis, 1-11;
Genesis, 12-50;
Exodus;
Prophetic texts (handout -- the 12 Holy Saturday readings from Vespers);
St. Matthew;
St. Mark;
St. Luke and Acts;
St John and Epistles;
Romans;
Ephesians and Colossians;
Revelation.

Second semester

The Didache;
The Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch;
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies (selections);
St. Athanasius, Against the Heathen, chapters 1-8;
St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation;
St. Athanasius, Life of St. Anthony the Great;
St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit;
St. Gregory the Theologian, Theological Orations;
St. Gregory of Nyssa, Epistle to Peter [aka St Basil, Epistle 38];
St. Gregory of Nyssa, That There Are Not Three Gods;
St. Cyril of Alexandria, Second and Third Epistles to Nestorius; The Formula of Reunion
The Chalcedonion Definition;
St. John of Damascus, Homilies on the Dormition;
St John of Damascus, First Treatise on the Holy Images;
St. Gregory Palamas, Hagioritic Tome;
St. Seraphim of Sarov, Conversation with Motovilov.

I really love to read the Scriptures and Holy Fathers!

How to Dress in Church

2010-06-20T07:16:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: My acquaintance assures me that women of all ages are bound to attend services in church with their head covered by a scarf. Tell me, is this so, and what in general is permitted to wear when one goes to church, both for women and for men.

Answer: The necessity of women covering their head during prayer (in church and at home) has its foundation in the First Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (cf., 11:3-16). Inasmuch as woman was created from man and as the helpmate of man, she must demonstrate this in her external appearance, and above all – to cover her head during prayer. Inasmuch as this ceremonial statute has a spiritual-symbolic meaning, it must be fulfilled regardless of age. The Church is the preserver of the best traditions, and therefore one needs to dress traditionally: women – a skirt or dress of sufficient length, men – trousers (it’s not proper to enter a church in shorts). Even summers it’s improper to bear one’s arms. Sports clothes do not befit the conditions of a church. Unusual, attention-attraction apparel is undesirable. And, of course, one mustn’t come to church in torn, dirty clothes. The main thing to remember is that church is the house of God, and one must enter it with reverence.

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

2010-06-19T09:07:00.003+02:00

Tomorrow is the fourth Sunday after Pentecost. On it we celebrate the memory of the Hieromartyr Theodotus, Bishop of Ancyra. Here is a brief life:

The Holy Martyr Theodotus lived in Ancyra of Galatia in the third century. He was distinguished by his kindliness and concern. At the height of the persecution under Diocletian (284-305) he provided Christians with everything they needed, and gave them shelter in his home. There they secretly celebrated church services.

St Theodotus visited the Christian captives in prison, paid their bail, and reverently buried the bodies of martyrs who had been thrown to the wild beasts. Once he buried the bodies of seven holy women martyrs, who were drowned in the sea (May 18). They reported this to the governor.

After refusing to offer sacrifice to idols, and denouncing the folly of paganism, St Theodotus confessed Christ as God, for which they subjected him to terrible tortures and beheaded him with a sword. They wanted to burn the holy martyr's body, but could not do so because of a storm which had arisen, so they gave his holy relics to a certain Christian for burial.

St Theodotus is also commemorated on May 18.

Online resources:

Menaion service: Greek, Slavonic.
Ochtoechos service (tone 3): Greek, Slavonic, English.
Epistle reading: Romans 6: 18-23.
Gospel reading: Matthew 8: 5-13.
St John Chrysostom, homily 12 on Romans.
St John Chrysostom, homily on 26 Matthew.
Blessed Theophylact, Gospel commentary.
Archbishop Andrei of Rockland, sermon.
Fr Andrew Phillips, sermon.
Fr Milan Medakovic, sermon.
Fr George Dimpoulos, sermon.

Why a New Name at Tonsure?

2010-06-19T09:04:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: In connection with what, at a tonsure to monasticism, is the one receiving the schema given a new name?

Answer: Monasticism is a free-will renunciation from the good and values of the world. At the tonsure the future monk gives vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to his spiritual constructor. The departure from the world from ancient times is an image of death. The one born to a new life receives a new name. According to Holy Scripture, a name is not simply a distinguishing mark for a person, but expresses the essence and meaning of the named. The Lord told the Patriarch: “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall they name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee” (Gen 17:4-5).

A name is given to the one being tonsured. The future monk hears his name for the first time during the tonsure. From that moment on he feels himself a new person.

It is the same thing with the tonsure to the Great Schema. Although the vows of the Great Schema are the same as with the Small Schema, the strictest rules are laid upon the tonsured. This means yet another birth, which is accompanied by a change of name.

Reading Group, 5g

2010-06-19T09:01:00.002+02:00

Conclusion

a. It was co-suffering love for sinful mankind that accomplished redemption. The juridical understanding was that Christ took upon Himself God’s wrath.

b. If Christ had descended to hell after his spiritual suffering, but without the Cross, would anyone be able to imagine the depth of those sorrows and to understand the inner union of His soul with the whole of human nature?

c. If there were on Christian who knew only of the Savior’s spiritual suffering and another who knew of His physical torments, the latter would likely mourn His death with greater compunction.

d. This is because our nature is so coarse that it is very difficult for it to enter into the concept of the purely spiritual torments of Christ.

e. Christ’s bodily suffering and death were primarily necessary so that believers would value His spiritual suffering as incomparably greater.

f. Christ’s cleansing Blood, saving Cross, life-giving Tomb and healing wounds are all expressions and images which are substituted fro the general concept of Christ’s redeeming Passion. We are far from insisting that the only meaning of our Lord’s bodily suffer and, in particular, of His crucifixion and death was to provide the faithful with a way of conceiving His spiritual grief.

g. It may be objected that such an interpretation is unheard of.

h. Salvation is our conscious process of perfection and communion with God; therefore, the truths of revelation united with it should be bound to out inner experience and not be allowed to remain as if completely incomprehensible mysteries which we do not understand.

i. The author is convinced that the explanation of the truth of the doctrine of redemption which have been here expounded is in accord with the teaching of the Church, but is even more firmly convinced of the Church’s infallibility so that, if it were proved that this explanation does not coincide with her teaching, he would consciously renounce his views on this dogma.

What do you make of the accusations leveled against this essay that: a) it introduces a novel doctrine into the Church; b) that it underemphasizes Christ’s human fear at Gethsemane; and that c) it shifts the locus of Christ’s redemption from the Cross to Gethsemane? How would Metropolitan Anthony himself reply to these charges?

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (5 of 5)

2010-06-18T06:19:00.003+02:00

The fifth and concluding chapter of Jean-Claude Larchet’s remarkable study, Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing, is devoted to “A Most Singular Kind of Folly – The Fool for Christ.” The true fool for Christ, Larchet notes, should not be confused either with the illiterate or the “innocent” (such as Dostoevksy’s Prince Myshkin). Speaking of the true fool for Christ, Larchet writes: “Not only do they not suffer any intellectual handicap, but in reality, as we shall see, they possess a superlative ability to feign their state of insanity, to perfectly adapt it to the situations they encounter and the spiritual goals they wish to achieve, giving symbolic significance to their acts and their words, and concealing the good they do.” The fool, “by his incoherent speech and disorderly actions, or, to the contrary, but his mutism, exhibits symptoms characteristic of real insanity.” But it must be insisted that “he is even completely sound of mind.” He is like an actor, “who totally invests himself in his role, but nevertheless remains himself.”

Scriptural foundations for this brand of ascesis can be found among the Prophets of the Old Testament, as well as in St Paul’s many words about how the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God – although in the latter case, “foolishness” is “taken in the spiritual and not psychopathological sense, unless by analogy.”

The two fundamental motives for taking upon oneself the podvig of foolishness are humility and detachment from the world. The fool is detached from the world “by means of three traits favored by this state, namely solitude (exterior and interior), the status of stranger, and poverty.” A third motive is charity, particularly with regard to the most deprived. Foolishness for Christ’s sake has its own spiritual presuppositions: a call from God or a personal vocation approved by God and an already highly accomplished spiritual life. Larchet concludes with these words:

Lastly it would appear that foolishness for Christ constitutes a special ascetic path enabling the individual to realize three Christian virtues: humility, detachment from the world, and charity. The salos [fool] uses simulated madness to seek out and experience the first by means of humiliations which this counterfeit state draws upon him in surroundings rather intolerant of fools, to realize the second by making himself a wretch and a pariah, to practice the third hidden from the eyes of the world, and by keeping as close as possible to most destitute. All the characteristics generally recognized can be connected, in our opinion, to one or another of these three virtues.

However, this detachment achieved in extreme poverty and by becoming a stranger (xeniteia) can just as well be lived in the ordinary monastic state, especially the eremetic. As to charity for those on society’s fringes, it can be exercised secretly outside of the status of fool, but it also characterizes the saloi living in cities, As a result the only characteristic common to all saloi and truly specific to their state seems to be a maximalist search for humility, constantly experienced through the disdain, humiliation, and suffering unjustly endured “for Christ.”

I would recommend this remarkable study without reservation to all.

The Names Jesus and Mary

2010-06-18T06:18:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: I’ve heard that one should not name a girl Mary born on the Birth of the Theotokos. And that altogether one may not name a girl Mary in honor of the Theotokos, whenever she was born. Is this so? Explain, please, why.

Answer: In our Church it is not accepted to give a name in honor of Jesus Christ and the Mother of God. The reason is the deep reverence before Their holiness. The name of Jesus is given in honor of the Holy Righteous Jesus of Navin. The widespread name of Mary in Russia among Orthodox Christians is in honor of the holy God-pleasers Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, and others.

Reading Group, 5f

2010-06-18T06:15:00.002+02:00

Concerning the Heresy of “Original Sin”

a. It may be asked: Could the redemption have been effected without the physical sufferings and death of the Redeemer? Could it have been effected only by means of those spiritual griefs and torments which He endured in Gethsemane? And isn’t too little attention given to the significance of Adam’s sin?

b. A reply depends on the words on Saint Paul to the Romans (5:12), specifically whether it should be translated “because all men have sinned” or “because in him all sinned.” Adam was not so much the cause of our sinfulness as he was the first to sin, and even if we were not his children, we would sin all the same.

c. The Apostle Paul distinguishes the event of Adam’s fall a the means – the way thought which sin appeared in the world – from the consequences of it, even though Adam’s sin with the cause.

d. Adam is not actively responsible for the indwelling of sin in the whole world, but rather was a sort of door which opened the way for sin.

e.Men are not condemned by Adam’s sin and, but for their own sinfulness, the consequence of which (death) began will Adam; but all have sinned, not in Adam, but because of Adam.

What conception of original sin is Metropolitan Anthony criticizing? And what conception does he offer in its place?
What consequences for redemption to the juridical understanding of original sin, and Metropolitan Anthony’s understanding, bear?

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (4 of 5)

2010-06-17T07:06:00.004+02:00

The fourth chapter of Jean-Claude Larchet’s study, Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing, is dedicated to “Insanity of Spiritual Origin.” Larchet opens the chapter with these words:

Although, for the Fathers, one category of mental illness or form of insanity had a somatic etiology, and a second category a demonic one, the third category is of spiritual origin. While the first has (our fallen) nature for its cause and the second demons, the free will on an individual is responsible for the third, even if demonic activity and our free will sometimes share responsibility in the first two situations.

“Mental illnesses of spiritual origin,” Larchet writes, “should not be confused with the spiritual illnesses themselves.” For the Fathers, “an important share of the disorders today considered to be purely psychic actually have to do with the spiritual realm. In this sense the nosography and treatment of spiritual illnesses embraces, but goes beyond psychopathology.” In comparing the modern psychiatric perspective with that of the Fathers, the following points can be made.

1) A certain number of problems examined by standard modern nosography appear to be related to what Patristic nosology called the passion of pride. Modern psychiatry, while not unaware of the pathogenic character of this attitude, has however divorced it from its moral and spiritual dimension, most often designating it as a “self-valorization” or “hypertrophy of the ego.” This attitude is present to a high degree in paranoid psychoses. It is also found in hysteria. Many of the difficulties in maintaining relationships – a symptom present in the majority of neuroses – can be connected with it. (...)

2) The anxiety and anguish present in most psychoses as well as in all neuroses can be linked in part to what the Fathers considered to be the passion of fear and sadness.

3) The aggressiveness to be found in the majority of neuroses and in certain psychoses can be linked to the passion of “anger” in the broad sense we have defined it.

4) Debility, a symptom common to many mental illnesses corresponds rather closely to one of the essential components of acedia.

5) Depressive symptoms, to be found in many neuroses and psychoses, can be directly linked to acedia and sadness.

6) Apart from these symptoms, several syndromes appear to be connected to the passions in spiritual nosology.

7) The neurotic phobias appear to have some connection with the passion of fear; they are moreover standardly defined as “agonizing fears.”

8) Anxiety neurosis can be understood in relation to the passion of sadness, but also and above all to fear.

9) Psychotic melancholia can be to some degree connected with both acedia and sadness, especially in its extreme form of “despair."

Without any doubt the closest and most direct relationship can be established between the acedia and sadness of Patristic nosology and the different forms of depression. Nor has this relationship failed to attract the attention of certain psychiatrists who have recently devoted several studies to this subject. And its importance warrants our repeating the essentials of the analysis we have devoted to these two passions, limiting ourselves however to their psychic dimensions and effects.

Larchet begins with a consideration of the nosology of sadness, writing: “Sadness (lupe) appears to be state of soul which, beside the simple meaning of the word, involves discouragement, debility, psychic heaviness and sorrow, dejection, distress, oppression, and depression most often accompanied by anxiety and even with anguish. Larchet notes the following causes for sadness: the frustration of desires, anger, unmotivated sadness, and demonic activity. Larchet then turns to a discussion of the nosology of acedia, which he writes “is akin to sadness, and to such a degree is this the case that St Gregory the Great, the inspirer of the ascetic tradition in the West, unites the two passions of acedia and sadness into a single one. The eastern ascetical tradition however distinguishes between them.”

The treatment of sadness, more than of other passions, “presupposes the awareness that one is ill and that one wishes to be cured.” The first possible cause of sadness “is the frustration of an existing or anticipated pleasure, and more to the point the loss of some sensible good, the frustration of some desire, or disappointment over some worldly hope”; a second case of sadness is anger, “whether it follows from it or is the consequence of some offense suffered, frequently taking in such a case the form of spite.” Treating acedia is even more difficult, as “it has the peculiarity of seizing all the faculties of the soul and inflaming nearly all the passions.” Treatment comes through through resistance, patience, hope, grief and tears, the remembrance of death, manual labor and, above all, prayer.

God willing, I’ll continue with Larchet’s fifth and final chapter, “A Most Singular Kind of Folly – the Fool for Christ,” tomorrow.

When Prostrations?

2010-06-17T07:04:00.001+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Is it proper to make prostrations in the Liturgy during the time of “Catechumens, bow your heads unto the Lord” and “Axios” (during an ordination)?

Answer: During the petition “Catechumens, bow your head unto the Lord” and “Axios” there are no prostrations, according to the Typikon.

Reading Group, 5e

2010-06-17T07:02:00.000+02:00

Resolving the Perplexities

a. The following perplexities must be resolved: 1) For what purpose, then, were the crucifixion of the Lord on the Cross and His death? 2) Why is He called a sacrifice for our sins and a propitiation of the Heavenly Father for us? And what is the meaning of the Apostolic words that His blood cleanses us from sins? 3) Why is it said that we must have become sinful and condemned through Adam’s disobedience, if we must explain the whole economy of salvation only in terms of moral values and make even metaphysical concepts, such as “nature” dependent upon them?

b. Russian readers will receive very sympathetically this transition of all theology into moral monism, and will judge it the best refutation of the criticism of Tolstoy.

c. It may be objected that the above three obstacles arose not only under the influence of feudal justice, but from the Epistles of the Apostles.

d. The action of redemption consists only in the rebirth of a person, while rebirth consists in his transformation. If a fallen person could correct himself only through repentance and a struggle with himself under the guidance of God’s commandments, and the good examples of righteous envoys of God, then redemption would not have been necessary.

e. In order to obtain a decisive victory, human nature needs help from without, help which is from someone Who is both holy, and Who co-suffers with it.

f. The Creator is responsible for the fact that it is impossible to find any other means for the rebirth and salvation of man except the incarnation of the Son of God and the grievous agony of His co-suffering love toward us.

g. It is in this sense that one can affirm that Christ was a sacrifice for our sinful life. One can admit use of the term “satisfaction of God’s justice,” but only in a peripheral way.

h. The comparison of Christ’s sufferings with the Old Testament sacrifices is completely without foundation.

i. Nowhere will one encounter the idea tat the animal being sacrificed was thought of as taking upon itself a punishment on behalf of people.

j. The analogy between Christ’s suffering and death and the Old Testament sacrifice is repeated many times in the New Testament, but those sacrifices are not given any other interpretation here either.

k. Only with great difficulty were Christians reconciled to the loss of the Old Testament religious order.

l. The main aim of Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews was to comfort them in the loss of these externals and to explain that the spiritual comfort given by that service is doubly preserved for Christians.
m. These epistles, in speaking about Christ’s sacrifice, do not view them as punishment, but as a gift to God the Father.

How is Metropolitan Anthony using the term “moral monism” and how does this relate to his criticism of Tolstoy?
What does Metropolitan Anthony mean by stating that if man could self-regenerate, he’d have no need of redemption?
How does Metropolitan Anthony justify his claim that there is no similarity between Old Testament sacrifices and Christ’s sacrifice? How does he explain the analogies in the New Testament.
What is Metropolitan Anthony’s conception of justice, as it applies to the redemption?

Interview with A. I. Sidorov (2 of 2)

2010-06-16T08:44:00.003+02:00

Continued from yesterday:

– Tell us, please, which works of the Fathers are closest to you?

– I can name St Athanasius: his On the Incarnation of the Word of God is not only a classic but is, in my view, a masterpiece. Or the Life of St Anthony by the same saint. In general, each Father has a work that is especially dear to me. Take St Maximus. Certain of his works made it into the Philokalia, that is, into an anthology of patristic ascesis, for example, his Chapters on Love, where the spiritual experience of this great ascetic and no less great Orthodox thinker is found in concentrated form. It also gives me real pleasure to read such crystal clear works as, for example, the Ancient Paterikon. But the problem for me is that I continually feel the absence in myself of an equal spiritual experience, which would allow me fully to accept the patristic work.

– Are the questions considered by the Holy Fathers of the epoch of earliest Christianity still relevant?

– And how! Even as a young man I came to the conclusion that the thoughts expressed by us and seeming to us fairly original, actually in principle already existed and were expressed early, only in different words. One can probably say that the number of authentic principle questions, as with their answers, are not very many. What are the main ones for an Orthodox person? The first and most important question is: how is one saved? And the Holy Fathers answered it, and their answers are as relevant for us, as they were relevant many centuries ago.

It’s sometimes said that the Fathers did not always raise, for example, the question of social service. But what is social service? This is an expression of our faith, for faith without works is dead. Therefore social service remains one of the tertiary moments of the main question: how is one saved? If you try to realize this salvation, helping people, looking after the sick or going to a prison, then in this way you are striving towards the goal of Christian life. And here it behoves us to remember that the acquisition of this goal is not possible without placing priority of the inner over the external. And the internal is prayerful podvig, spiritual progress, and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Without these social service and other external activities are unthinkable. This is an axiom of Orthodox life.

– Why do clergy now appeal to the authority of Fathers of the twentieth century, and not to the ancient Fathers?

– That’s far from the case. I often hear how priests in their sermons appeal to Fathers of the distant ecclesiastical past. And how could it be without this? After all, the Church lives in eternity. And St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and St John of Kronstadt are, along with St Maximus the Confessor, our contemporaries. Contemporaries not in the sense that they live at the same time as us, but in that they live in eternity, to which we seek constantly to commune with. It’s possible that contemporary priests appeal more often to the spiritual writers of the nineteenth and twentieth century because the Fathers of these times speak a language more understandable for us. However, I repeat that I’ve met many priests who continually cite St John Chrysostom, and St Basil the Great, and so forth. Therefore I wouldn’t say that they appeal only to Fathers of the twentieth century.

– Students write term paper and dissertations in patrology. Do the seminarians make reach conclusions which can be called essential and interesting?
– Of course they do. There are a number of works which become for the seminarians themselves essential and interesting, because such strata of seeing the world immediately open to them, about which they either thought superficially or not completely in that light. There are, of course, empty papers, but there are very serious works.

– It’s well known that patrology is also part of the academic syllabus in the theological academy. How, in principle, do the seminary and academy courses differ?

– I happen to teach both in seminary and in the academy, for which reason I have chosen the following principle: in the academy we cover that patristic heritage which was not covered in seminary. But, unfortunately, one specific point arises: people come to the academy from different seminaries, where patrology is taught differently. Although there is basic course, much depends on local resources, teachers, and the like. Sometimes that which is taught in the Moscow or Sretensky Seminaries is unknown in other places. Therefore a very difficult problem faces a teacher in the academy: is it worth it or not to cover material which in principle should have been covered in the seminary.

In my opinion, in the academy there should be a specialized class which would cover certain defined material of a specific period, such as, for example, the growth of monastic writing of the “golden age,” or ecclesiastical writers of the sixth century, where these periods are studied more carefully an deeply. In the academy there should be specialization. But now the level of preparation of students from various seminaries is different, and this causes difficulties. Therefore the teacher has to all the time manoeuvre between a specialized course and general themes. So I’ll read you a lecture, for instance, about St Dionysius of Alexandria, and it happens that students from some provincial seminary won’t have heard of him. So one’s obliged to repeat oneself.

Moreover, it’s often forgotten that the preparation of lectures is a very laborious process, taking up several years – and all the more so for specialized courses. We evaluate the work of a teacher according to an entirely primitive schema: according to lecture hours; but these hours represent just the tip of an enormous iceberg of the work of a teacher. By the way, I may say that I always strive beforehand to repeat and renew even a course I have been teaching for several years – and this always takes a defined amount of time.

– Is patrology taught in secular institutions?

– As far as I know, in secular institutions patristics are taught as the history of Christian writing or as a part of philosophy.

– Are students offered today quality textbooks of patrology?

– There are plenty of textbooks. Fr John Meyendorff’s Introduction to Patristic Theology is well known. Not long ago appeared among us the book of Rassaphore-monk Vsevolod (Philipev), The Way of the Holy Fathers: Patrology. The books of Konstantin Efimovich Skurat are very valuable. A more fundamental textbook is N. I. Sagrada’s Lectures in Patrology. But there is a great failure from the point of view of textbooks in church writing and theology for the period after the “golden age” in Byzantium. Here one needs to prepare a special course (or, better, courses.)

– You often warn seminarians about the use of improperly translated patristic texts. Whose translations do you consider successful and adequate?

– As I understand it, the question is about contemporary translators? Again I repeat that any translation is just a translation. Every translator, consciously or unconsciously, makes mistakes. There are no translators who never make mistakes, and this is connected with many purely subjective things.

Undoubtedly, there are good translators. Among us I can name Alesksei Georgievich Dunaev who, as a philologist, translates very well. In particular, the newly discovered works of St Mavarius of Egpyt are translated not at all badly. But, unfortunately, his perspective on the patristic heritage is deeply, in my mind, incorrect. And here arises the question: what is a good translation?

Translation is either the clear transfer of the original from a purely philological point of view, or instead it’s a vision of deep layers. I often deal with old translations, and I like them more than some new translations, although they don’t lack their own mistakes. But in them is the culture of translation, closely related not only with the culture of the language, but also with the culture of a Church worldview and outlook. A patristic text – these are texts of Homer or Shakespeare, which, by the way, has been repeatedly translated, and each translator translated them in his own way. Church translations are that which lives and works in the catholic consciousness of the Church. Old translations of the Holy Fathers differ from new ones in that in them is present a deep ecclesiastical culture. On the level of this culture, today’s generation of translators can not be compared with them. Personally, I am already thirty years in the Church and feel with every fiber of my soul just how long and difficult is the process of absorbing an ecclesiastical language and ecclesiastical way of life. In the old translations there are mistakes, are errors, but they bear within themselves a remarkable ecclesiastical elegance. It seems to me that contemporary translations sometimes suffer superficiality, a planeness, and do not raise the spiritual depths of the original

– Aleksei Ivanovich, what plans do you have for the future? Is there a translation of a patristic work that you would like to accomplish?

– Plans for the future – well, that’s as the Lord will give, I have practically finished the Question and Answers to Thalassius of St Maximos the Confessor, and I would like to publish the full text of this translation, the first part of which appeared almost twenty years ago. Now I’ll be working on it. And further I have plans to publish the works of St Theoleptus of Philadelphia, the translation of which is also nearing to an end. I hope, with God’s help, to finish it. I hope that God will give me time and strength for this, for usually there’s not enough of them. And I would still like to translate more!

– And what is the interest of these translations upon which you’re working?

– The Question and Answers to Thalassius by St Maximus the Confessor is interesting in that, in the given work, there is a sort of “masterpiece” of patristic theology and asceticism. This is a living synthesis of spiritual experience and elevated divine contemplation. Therefore one must go deeply into the difficult thought of the father, in his difficult language – here, by the way, is where my commentaries are born. Because sometimes it’s unclear to me what this Father is saying. I try to explain the places that are incomprehensible to me, to find patristic parallels. That’s how the commentaries arise, which, so I hope, may be useful to others and especially to thoughtful readers. I am consequently translating very slowly. Problems also arise when, understanding the Greek text, I’m unable to put them into Russian. Therefore it becomes necessary to divide phrases and invent some sort of insertions so that it will sound adequate in Russian. But the work by itself is definitely one of the heights of patristic thought.

St Theoleptos is interesting in that he was the teacher of St Gregory Palamas and an outstanding Hesychast, who is known to us only by one incorrect translation of one work in the Philokalia. In the twentieth century new manuscripts were found, including more than twenty works by the saint. We began the translation of these works with my former student – now he’s already Fr Alexander Przhegorlinsky. We had wanted to publish them quickly, but it turned out that the finalization of the translations took up much time, which, as always there isn’t enough of.

St Theoleptos of Philadelphia is a unique author. He demonstrates that hesychasm is not so much an argument about essence and energy in God, as it is a unique spiritual experience, gained by many generations of Orthodox monks. Saint Theoliptos was not touched by these disputes, but his work shows the deep foundation of all of hesychasm as a predominantly inner activity. Without St Theoleptos the entire tradition of Orthodox spirituality in its best expression is incomprehensible.

Besides the above, I am also interested in studying St Anastasius of Sinai, several translations of whose works have already published. Right now I am working on his remarkable work under the title Questions and Answers. There are many plans, and which of them will come to fruition – God alone knows.

– What store of knowledge should a seminarian have who has completed a course of patrology?

–It’s desirable, of course, to have as great amount of baggage as possible, but dragging large baggage is often heavy. When you get on a plane, one can take only a certain number of pounds to avoid overloading. In the same way, the baggage of a seminarian must include a given amount of knowledge. I would like that they would have at least an approximate knowledge of who a certain Father was, and when he lived.

For example, at the Liturgy we are constantly commemorating the great universal teachers. But who was St Basil the Great? He was, after all, a living man, who lived a short but rich and vivid life, wrote works, many of them of a surprising freshness of a grace-filled mind, in which is reflected his unique spiritual visage. And this visage differed from the visage of his friend, St Gregory the Theologian. And seminarians, in my opinion, should save in their souls the spiritual visage of one or another Father of the Church, which is like an “icon” inside our souls.

In conclusion I’d like to express the wish that seminarians read both the Holy Fathers and works about the Holy Fathers. Without such reading it is not possible to attain the full of spiritual experience and knowledge.

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (3 of 5)

2010-06-16T08:39:00.002+02:00

Jean-Claude Larchet dedicates the third chapter of his book, Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing, to a consideration of insanity of demonic origin. He begins: “According to the Fathers, another cause for insanity was the direct intervention of demons.” The Fathers “distinguished quite clearly between physical and demonic etiologies, not only with regard to illness or infirmities of different kinds, but even for identical diseases or infirmities arising from different causes.” This goes to show “that having recourse to a demonic etiology is no way indicates a naivete of belief, an ignorance of other causes, or an inability to explain things otherwise.” Indeed, to “ascribe a belief in demonic etiology to a lack of education in monastic communities is to forget that some of these monks were among the most cultivated men of their times, and that several of them possessed extensive medical knowledge.” Distinguishing etiologies in cases of insanity, however, requires the gift of discernment: “Only those who have obtained the charism of the discerning of spirits from God are capable of exercising this spiritual discrimination.” The process is rendered complex by the way the devil can act both on the body and, to a limited extent, the soul. Larchet writes:

In general, when the devil cannot act directly on the soul, he will act through the intermediary of the body. He has no immediate access to the spirit of the Christian, because by baptism he has lost the power that he formerly could exercise and he has been expelled from the depth of the soul where he wishes to work. He has been expelled from the depth of the soul where he formerly made his residence and has been replaced by the grace of the Holy Trinity that now surrounds the heart of the baptized. As long as the baptized individual guards the grace which is in him by keeping his will turned toward God, the devil remains unable to approach his soul. However, the “bath of holiness in now way presents the demons form attacking us.” The devil attempts to seduce the soul by multiple suggestions that the individual however has the power to repel, by means of the divine grace which is in him.

The individual is tested and fortified by demonic possession. St Diodochos of Photiki writes:

It is for a good purpose that the demons are allowed to dwell within the body, even of those who are struggling vigorously against sin; for in this way man’s free will is constantly put to the test. [Thus] God allows [Satan] to do this, so that a man, after passing through a trial of storm and fire, may come in the end to full enjoyment of divine blessings.

If the Baptized Christian “even for a moment turns away from grace, which acts like a rampart defending his heart, he becomes once again susceptible to the power of Satan, and the latter, profiting from this relaxation, is able to introduce the seeds of disturbance into the citadel of the soul.” In such cases, demons “can penetrate the soul directly because grace no longer dwells within it, and thus can go so far as to result in possession.” Passions, taken to an extreme, can lead to an opening for the demons; in fact “the passions, insofar as they subsist in man, constitute in themselves to a certain degree a form of demonic possession.”

Most striking about the Fathers’ attitude with regard to the possessed/insane is their positive attitude. First, “the possessed person is frequently not considered to be someone subject to divine chastisement, or simply suffering the natural consequences of a sinful state signifying the definite loss os sin’s victim, but someone undergoing a trial authorized by God in order to purify him and bring him to a superior spiritual state.” St John Cassian writes:

We ought to hold unwaveringly to two things. The first is that not one of these persons in ever tried without the permission of God. The second is that everything which is brought upon us by God, whether it appears sad or joyful at the time, is ordained as a most tender father and a most merciful physician for our benefit. Therefore they are handed over as it were to pedagogues in order to be humiliated. Thus, when they leave this world... [they] may either be brought to the other life in a more purified condition or be struck with a light punishment.

Possession can have a positive effect upon the soul. Larchet writes:

[T]hose afflicted are given the chance from now on, in the troubles that assail them, for a thorough questioning of their previous way of life, for a true purification, and for a conversion of their being which perhaps in any other way. Having one’s soul and body shaken by demonic forces can lead to the discovery of realities which had been ignored. By experiencing the terrible malice of the evil spirits in the depth of one’s soul, the misery of those deprived of divine protection suddenly comes into sharp focus. These people can then, in their distress, be led to call upon God with great intensity for deliverance from the hell in which they find themselves. Withstanding, through God, every evil that must be borne, they can be purified by suffering and strengthened by patience. This hard battle that must be fought plays the role, then, of a difficult asceticism, an asceticism capable of producing spiritual transformations which, by the end, can be revealed to be extraordinary and proportionate to the unusual trials they have had to undergo.

The Fathers manifest an attitude of profound respect for the possessed/insane. This if, first of all, “because of the previously given reason that such a destiny can hide some mysterious judgment of God and is likely to lead the individual on a path of spiritual progress, or can at least serve in some manner for his benefit.” Second, the insane or possessed person “remains a brother who has an even greater need not to be held in contempt or rejected, but on the contrary to be loved and helped since he finds himself in a condition of great suffering.” Thus, “far from being excluded from the fraternal community, the possessed person, while submitting to his trials, finds himself integrated with the community through the helping attention of his particular situation of suffering and distress deserve.”

The insane or possessed person maintains his humanity; it is simply subject to a parasite. Therefore, we do not regard him as we would the devil. Larchet adds in a footnote that “Historians agree in recognizing that, in the West, it is only after the Renaissance that, by an unbelievable confusion, the possessed/insane are considered the devil’s accomplices, and so implicated, pursued, and penalized in ‘witch hunts.’” The Fathers “do not identify him with his madness.”

A saint is not only capable, thanks to his faculty of discernment, of not only properly diagnosing insanity of demonic origin, but he is also capable of healing the possessed person. The saints, above all, invoke “the Name of Jesus, which is especially effective in combating demons and so can deliver men from insanity.” They also use the Sign of the Cross, “the seal of the presence of Christ which places the individual under the grace of Christ crucified, the conquerer of every evil, of all suffering, all corruption, and the destroyer of the power of Satan.” The saints also make recourse to other means: “holy oil used either by rubbing or unction, holy water, and sometimes the laying on of hands. The traditional form of exorcism is which a saint orders the demons to leave is reported in a few cases.” The saints also used prayer and fasting (cf., Mk 9:29). The possessed person himself must also pray for his deliverance, for God “does not grant healing unless it is asked of him.”

I’ll continue tomorrow with chapter four, “Insanity of Spiritual Origin.”

Unction and Forgiveness

2010-06-16T08:37:00.003+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: How true is it that, at the celebration of the Mystery of Unction, forgotten sins are forgiven? I hear this in every sermon on this theme, but I have also encountered the opinion that this is all folklore, to put it gently. I’d like to know the opinion of a “specialist.”

Answer: The Mystery of Unction is one of the seven Mysteries, in which is accomplished the healing of soul and body through the prayerful calling down on the sick man the grace of God and seven anointings with holy oil. This Mystery was established by our Lord Jesus Christ (c.f., Mk 6:13). Of its existence in the Ancient Church witnesses the Catholic Epistle of the Apostle James: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14). In the same Epistle the forgiveness of sins is spoken of: "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him" (James 5:15).

The Holy Fathers write of the forgiveness of sins in the Mystery of Unction: “The power of the Mystery of Unction is in that in it are forgiven in particular those sins which were forgotten according to human weakness, and after forgiveness of sins gives physical health, if it be God’s will” (St Ambrose of Optina).

Reading Group, 5d

2010-06-16T08:35:00.000+02:00

The “Law of Being” which Gives Healing Power to Co-Suffering Love

a. In considering the expression “The Son of God took on our nature,” it’s necessary to elucidate what nature is.

b. It is correctly explained in textbooks that the person or hypostasis is an individual principle of which there are three in the Holy Trinity but one in the God-Man, and that nature is the sun of the properties of a given nature. But we have come to understand nature as only the abstraction and summation of properties present in each personal individually and, consequently, comprising a single general abstract idea, and only that.

c. Dive revelation and our Church dogmatic teach otherwise. The nature of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity is one, and we do not say that we have three gods, but one God.

d. St Gregory of Nyssa teaches that the expression “three men” is incorrect, because man in one, though there exist separate human persons. But the reader may object: “What is there in common if they hate and cannot even tolerate one another?”

e. The answer is found in the very question itself. God did not create man for hatred and self-love, and the consciousness of the sharp separateness from each other is an abnormal condition, borne of sin.

f. The common human nature is above all a collective will.

g. It may be objected that a common will is not felt with other people, but it can be felt with animals.

h. This is indeed the case now, but it was not always so, as St Basil the Great, the Gospel of St John, and St Paul demonstrate.

i. The unity of human nature, broken by the sin of Adam and his descendants, is to be gradually reestablished through Christ and His redeeming love with such strength that in the future life this oneness will be expressed more strongly than the present multiplicity of human persons, and Christ, united with us into one Being, shall be called the new Man, the One Church, He being its head.

j. The salvation which Christ brought to mankind consists not only of the conscious assimilation of Christ’s principal truths and His love, but also in the fact that by means of His co-suffering love, Christ obliterates the partition which sin has set up between people, reestablishes the original oneness of nature and obtains direct access into the spiritual bosom of human nature.The direct entry of Christ’s nature and His good volition into our nature is called grace. The subjective feelings of co-suffering love becomes an objective power which re-establishes the oneness of human nature.

How does Metropolitan Anthony define human nature? How are its unity and disunity manifested?
How does this affect an “objective” understanding of the mystery of redemption?

Who is Fr Job?

2010-06-15T16:32:00.003+02:00

I recently received a question asking who Fr Job was. I've found a short biography online, and have translated and hyperlinked it for you:

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) was born in 1942. In 1966, he graduated from the philosophy department of Moscow State University, and then received the degree of aspirantura. He defended his candidate’s dissertation in the Institute of Philosophy on the theme “A Systematic Analysis of the Changes in Social Organization”; then for fifteen years he worked as a senior research fellow at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for System Studies, Academy of Sciences. He graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary, and then the Theological Academy. He defended his thesis for the degree of Candidate in Theology. He taught Foundational Theology at the Moscow Theological Seminary and Old Testament at the Theological Academy. He is in charge of the "Questions to a Priest" on the site Pravoslavie.ru.

In 1990, he was ordained a deacon, and was ordained to the priesthood in the same year. He has served at the St. Vladimir Church in Starykh Sadekh, the St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Church in Khamovniki, and Ivanovo Monastery [all in Moscow]. Since 2003, he has lived at the Sretensky Monastery [in Central Moscow]. In April 2005, he was tonsured to monasticism with the name Job [his Baptismal name had been Athanasius].

For a clear explanation of what these degrees mean, see here.

Interview with A. I. Sidorov (1 of 2)

2010-06-15T08:45:00.005+02:00

I've previously offered two excerpts (one, two) from an interview with one of my living theological heroes, Professor A. I. Sidorov. I now offer the complete translation, in two parts, of a new interview with Dr Sidorov. My thanks go out to Natalia Mikhaylova for thoroughly vetting the translation, and to Isaac (Gerald) Herrin for proofing it. The interview was conducted May 21, 2010 by Vyacheslav Golzow, a fourth-year seminarian at Sretensky Theological Seminary.

Patrology is the Vital Life of the Church

Aleksei Ivanovich Sidorov is a doctor of church history and a professor of the Moscow Theological Academy and the Sretensky Theological Seminary. Born in 1944, in 1975 he graduated from the historical faculty of Moscow State University in the department of the history of the ancient world, and completed the degree of aspirant from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of General History. A. I. Sidorov has published ten books, among which are The Works of St Maximus the Confessor: Theology and Ascetic Tracts; The Works of Abba Evagrius: Ascetic and Theological Tracts; Blessed Theodorit of Cyprus: History of the Lovers of God; Course of Patrology: The Emergence of Church Letters, and more than 100 scholarly articles.

– Aleksei Ivanovich, please tell us what patrology is and when it arose.

– I wrote about this in my first (and so far only) volume of patrology. Patrology is the teaching about the Fathers which, however, is not limited only to the Holy Fathers; ecclesiastical writers must also fit into it. Without it patrology can not be complete. If we, for instance, do not study Clement of Alexandria, who was not a Church Father, but was a brilliant ecclesiastical writer and thinker, then we will not understand the formation of all patristic theology.

Strictly speaking, patrology, as a science, arose in recent times, but I don’t want to speak of it strictly in a scientific meaning, because its subject is the vital life of the Church, this is an authentic patristic Tradition, which lives in the Church and began immediately after the Apostles. Why do we study the apostolic fathers such as the Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-Bearer? Because he spoke and studied in the spirit of Tradition. One could say that patrology as a science of the Fathers and the very life of the Church are inseparably united. One cannot, like some of us sometimes do, separate the science of the Fathers from the living current of Church Tradition, as something differing in origin from this Tradition. Such an approach, in my opinion, is fatal for patrology.

– How does patrology differ from patristics?

– Previously it was considered that patristics studies only the teaching of the Fathers, but patrology includes in itself three main elements: the life of the Fathers, their works, and their theology. But at the present time these two understandings are practically mutually interchangeable. I prefer the word patrology, but this is just my personal opinion.

– Aleksei Ivanovich, which periods are defined in the study of patristic writing?

– I usually give this periodization at the very beginning of the introduction to patrology. I must warn that patrology does not have an upper limit, and therefore in theological school they have begun to study Russian and general Slavonic patrology. One could say that this “pushes” patrology’s upper limit, for our Orthodox Church is forever generating more and more Fathers. Soon, I think, “new Greek patrology” should be studied.

I myself study classical patrology, which takes up the enormous epoch from the end of the first century and ends in the Greek East with the fall of Byzantium. Within this enormous epoch exist more concrete periods, although this periodization cannot always be defined with exact borders. Traditionally one always defines the pre-Nicene period, and then the “golden age” of patristic writing. Several general tendencies emerge in the “golden age”: for example, the Cappadocian Fathers, the “new Alexandrians” (St Athanasius the Great and Cyrill of Alexandria), the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the Antiochian school, the Latin Fathers and ecclesiastical writers. Syrian patrology also appears: Aphraates, the Persian Sage, St Ephraim the Syrian. But after the “golden age” begins a period that is hard to fix – until the beginning of iconoclasm: it takes up two and a half centuries. Following them, that is after St John of Damascus, begins Byzantine patrology proper with its own distinguishing features, but it so far is less studied than the preceding periods.

– When did the subject “Patrology” appear among the disciplines taught in theological schools?

– In Russia, this course began in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and its appearance, in my opinion, was wholly rightful. If one is to study the Tradition of the Church, how can one not study patrology in theological schools?

– How many classes of students-seminarians study patrology?

– In the seminary patrology is studied for three years.

– What guides you in the composition of a course?

– Every course is always a creation. Before I used to think that it was enough to write a book and there you go, read! But, as it turns out, a book isn’t enough. It happens that students either don’t read the textbooks, or they cursorily glance at them, and therefore the material either doesn’t reach them or catches up with them only superficially. Besides, everything that’s written in books is received differently than the spoken word. Sometimes they say: “Why, in fact, are lectures necessary?” Once I, too, thought roughly the same way, and then I understood that the living word and books – these are entirely different things. In what the teacher gives, a given amount of informative material is always, naturally, present, but the point is not so much in information, as much as how the teacher choses the material and how he presents it. Here arises the creativity of teaching, which depends on his personal opinions, spiritual experience, and even cultural and aesthetic sympathies. It is very important to establish a living connection with the auditorium. Every course is unique and unrepeatable, and the teaching depends on how the material is received by the auditorium. To find a point of contact from the first lesson, as a rule, is difficult; but later the relationship between the teacher and students usually develops and the line of teaching to a given course arises. Of course, there is a specific syllabus, and the teacher is bound to follow them. But into this “matrix” one can put different structures, in which the pedagogical approach of every teacher arises. One should always remember one simple thing: a pedagog is not a computer who gives information – and study it. Every lecture is a “synergy” between the teacher and students. And the success of the teacher depends a great deal on the latter.

– How long have you studied the patristic heritage?

– From the time I entered the Church, for about thirty years.

– Aleksei Ivanovich, the readers of this website would like to know in more detail about your academic works.

– I now have ten books and more than 100 articles. The greatest number of them are translations and commentary. I opened this enormous stratum completely involuntarily, since I am not a philologist in the proper sense of this word. But the translation of the Holy Fathers immediately became for me not simply the main object of my scholarly interests, but began simultaneously with the process of churchification. Unfortunately, there never was enough, and there isn’t enough, time for these translations. I can say one thing: the most blessed state for me is when I am translating the Holy Fathers and more exactly – communing with them. They are, after all, alive and are my spiritual instructors.

– You know ancient Greek perfectly. Where did you study it? Could you ever have thought that you might use it for the translation of the Holy Fathers?

– To know ancient Greek perfectly is impossible, because it’s a dead language. Simply, the more one translates the better one gets at it; when one often works with the Greek text, one develops specific ways of working with the text. But I repeat yet again that I’m not a philologist, and there are gifted philologists who are much more professional than I am. For me philology was and remains a simple instrument. In my time I graduated from the Moscow State University, the department of the history of the ancient world and the department of ancient languages – the were always closely connected. An historian must know the language tools. But an historian cannot posses languages as well as a philologist does.

However I can not call myself an historian in the exact sense of this word. In my university years and after them I was always drawn to the study of ancient philosophy: Plato, Plotinus, and neo-Platonism. Before my coming to the Church I was actively involved with this, as well as with gnosticism. Naturally, in the Soviet period no one could teach me how to translate the Holy Fathers. Andrei Cheslavovich Kazarzhevsky, whose lectures I attended, taught a purely philological discipline: the language of the New Testament, and in his lectures strove to avoid “religious associations” (for which one could be simply thrown out of the university). I had to become an autodidact. I’m still studying, since every Holy Father, to whose work I turn, demands a constantly deepening “entry” into him. Normally I translate two or three texts, and every author becomes my teacher. I’m sixty-five years old and can honestly admit, without showing off, that up until now I’m constantly studying.

As far as patristic texts are concerned, they are practically untranslatable, inasmuch as, as a rule, one retells more or less adequately these texts. I am convinced that every translation is only a translation. It will never have the status of “first freshness” because of the transferral of its content through the means of another language. But such a conveyance requires the translator to understand the author and for me that’s fundamental. To understand not only with the intellect, with the mind, but more importantly with the heart. Therefore I am deeply certain that only a church person can translate the Holy Fathers. If he’s not a church person, he simply will not understand what’s being talked about, even if he is the most brilliant philologist.

– What do you suggest: should a seminarian know ancient Greek in order to study patrology?

– It’s desirable, in any case. But, knowing the load of seminarians, I see in this a certain luxury. One needs to study Greek earlier. And what does it mean to study a language? Language is a labor, and therefore there is fruit to this labor, that is the knowledge of a new language, which is always valuable if it serves to glorify God, and not personal vainglory and pride.

In general, the more languages one knows, the more comprehensible one’s own language will become, inasmuch as in the study of a foreign language you begin to understand and value your own language. Therefore I have always supported the initiative for students of our theological schools to study ancient languages – Greek and Latin, but the real results of this study leave much to be desired.

However, the undoubted fact should be pointed out, that the deep study of foreign languages is not necessary for the majority of seminarians, for we aren’t a language college. What’s necessary here is a rational minimum, necessary for general growth. But I do think that it’s sensible to have small language groups (even one or two students) on every class for those wishing to study more deeply ancient and modern languages.

– What tendencies in the study of patrology exist in the West and in Russia? Are there methodological peculiarities?

– I’d put the question differently. The West is very different, and beyond this. It is undergoing a catastrophic de-Christianization. In the West there are Catholics and there are Protestants, and the Fathers of the Church are studied by both Catholics and Protestants. The Fathers are studied even by non-confessional people; that is, unbelievers. As in Russia, there are also philosophers who study the works of the Holy Fathers with a specific approach. But if we’re talking about patrology, then of course we in Russia are very much indebted to what goes on in the West. And I personally am grateful to Catholic scholars who publishes texts of the Holy Fathers, and we use their work. We also use the fruits of Protestant scholars, and their work in the study of, for example, Macarius of Egypt should be acknowledged.

But if we regard patrology (not patristics) as a fundamental discipline, then here church-ness is presupposed, and in my opinion it is the fundamental criterion in approaching patristic works. So, for example, St Gregory Palamas is studied in the West. Catholics approach him variously, in relation to their convictions and views, the swinging of which can be very significant: some scholars almost sympathize with him, and others consider him completely foreign to the Catholic tradition. But among us also his teaching is sometimes taken as a certain intellectual system, focusing attention on the importance of the distinction between essence and energy in God. But here one must understand that, no matter what problems could arise while studying the works of St Gregory Palamas, the most important postulate for us is the recognition that he is a Holy Father. This saint is an inseparable part of church Tradition, and he is higher than any scholar, who might find some flaw in his argument or some other imperfection. And he is above us on the strength of one fact, that he is a Holy Father.

If we start from the recognition of holiness at the study of the patristic heritage, then this is our main and distinguishing principle of an Orthodox approach to the patristic heritage. For Catholics, Gregory Palamas is one of the Byzantine writers; he is not a Holy Father and is not recognized as such by them, but for us he is one of the main links of the patristic Tradition. And when they talk about some sort of “Palamism,” I have always protested and am protesting, this inadequate term. Then let’s call the teaching of St Maximus the Confessor “Maximusism” and study him as “Maximusism.” When we do this, we remove a Holy Father from the context of the patristic Tradition. By the way, Vladyka Basil (Krivoshein), and Vladimir Nikolaevich Lossky, and Fr Geroges Florovsky wrote about this. They all beautifully felt the living connection of St Gregory Palmas with the patristic Tradition.

– What, in your opinion, is the greatest difficulty in the study of the patristic heritage for contemporary seminarians? Are there works that are especially difficult to understand?

– You see, here one must understand and feel the context. Try simply to read a work, for example, St John Chrysostom’s homilies on the Gospel according to Matthew. After a certain time almost every seminarian is going to get bored, and with the boredom come a tiredness: this is a different language, a different world and culture, and, consequently, the culture of the word is different. One must undertake an inner podvig in order that St John Chrysostom would become clear and understandable. This is what I call a kind of ascesis, that is, the overcoming of our sinful idleness, and people, as is known, don’t often want to overcome it and use force. Such an ascesis assumes, of course, that one lives all one’s life as the Fathers teach. Therefore here often arise problems.

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (2 of 5)

2010-06-15T08:41:00.001+02:00

Dr Jean-Claude Larchet begins his second chapter of his book Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing, “Insanity Due to Somatic Problems,” with this statement: “The Fathers did not fail to recognize that certain forms of folly or insanity had a physiological origin, and in doing so were in agreement with the medical conceptions prevalent at the time.” St Gregory of Nyssa offers an explanation of the relationship of mind and body using a standard metaphor:

Since the whole body is made like some musical instrument, just as it often happens in the case of those who know how to play, but are unable, because of the unfitness of the instrument does not admit of their art, to show their skill (for that which is destroyed by time, or broken by a fall, or rendered useless by rust or decay is mute and inefficient, even if it be breathed upon by one who may be an excellent artist in flute-playing); so too the mind, passing over the the whole instrument, and touching each of the parts in a mode corresponding to its intellectual activities, according to its nature, produces its proper effect on those parts which are in a natural condition, but remains inoperative and ineffective upon those which are unable to admit the movement of its art; for the mind is somehow naturally adapted to be in close relation with that which is in a natural condition, but to be alien from that which is removed from nature. [And again], Each organ of the human composition has its own special activity. The power of the soul can remain effective, if the organ in question is maintained in a natural and healthy condition.

Therefore, “when psychic disorders are due to somatic problems, the soul itself is not defective, only its expression and manifestation are affected.” It is, Larchet writes, “the entire soul (which includes the spirit) that is affected by disorders, but it is, we repeat, only affected in its activity by means of the body. Only the possibility of this activity is destroyed or modified in the soul itself: the body alone impedes the normal realization of the soul and distorts its expression.”

The psychiatric symptoms that are presented in such cases “are not disorders of the soul except from a very superficial point of view. The insanity which in certain cases of its aspects gives its name to these disorders is strictly speaking not a sickness of the soul, but of the body.” Two consequences follow: first, “one can and indeed must base one’s treatment on purely physiological grounds because the soul is not itself involved, but only what is purely somatic”; second, “the treatment should be aimed at returning the bodily instrument to its normal state, to reconstitute the order of nature in a manner that leaves the soul intact in its essence, and thereby allow it once again [to] express itself normally, which is to say, without manifesting itself in difficulty because of the trouble with its mediating organ.”

But in treatment of insanity it is essential to determine the correct etiology; not all manifestations of insanity have a somatic origin. Larchet writes:

For, even if a naturalistic, materialistic, organistic, or mechanistic medicine asserts that insanity is necessarily caused by an organic disorder, the Patristic perspective, while admitting such to be true in certain cases, as we have just seen, refuses to extend this explanation to all cases; it also recognizes other possible causes, as will be seen in what follows. That the body in cases of insanity is always to some degree involved does not necessarily point to its causative or determining role, but holds to the strict relationship between the body and soul in the human composite. According to the Patristic anthropology, tis relationship, as we have seen, is ambivalent. The body conditions the soul, which in the totality of the human being possess the power of command, of giving the body life and movement, and making it the constant organ of its various acts. Every action of the soul is reflected and manifested in the body. Thus somatic disorders can have their origin in the natural action of the body by the intervention of elements foreign to the soul and can inhibit or disorganize the soul’s functioning without the sou being in any way troubled. But it is equally possible for what is involved on the plane of the body might have its origin in the soul itself and it is these possibilities which we must define.

I’ll continue with chapter three tomorrow

Inherited Rings

2010-06-15T08:39:00.001+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: How should I act with a ring that was taken from my departed grandmother and given to me in memory? Should it be blessed? Does wearing it involve anything negative?
 
Answer: The conveying of a marriage ring from older generations to younger generations fully corresponds to tradition. There is nothing negative in the ring. You can bless it with holy water, reading the prayer of blessing of all things (in the Prayer Book).

Reading Group, 5c

2010-06-15T08:36:00.002+02:00

Bearers of Co-Suffering Love

Ministers of Redemption

a. Attention will now be directed to the bearers of co-suffering love and in what feeling and experience it is expressed.

b. The Church clearly teaches those who would partake of the Holy Mysteries that the grace of regeneration is given from the co-suffering love of Christ the Savior.

c. Examples can be found in the prayers before Communion, in St Paul, and in the prayer for the consecration of bishops.

d. The co-suffering love of a mother, friend, a spiritual shepherd or an apostle is operative only when it attracts Christ, the true Shepherd.

e. That which grace-bearing people can do only in part and only for some people, our Heavenly Redeemer can do, and does do, completely and for all.

f. During that night in Gethsemane, the thought and feeling of the God-Man embraced all of fallen humanity, and wept with grief over each one individually, as only the all-knowing divine heart could. Our redemption consisted in this.

g. Having suffered in His loving soul over our imperfection, the Lord poured into our nature a wellspring of new, vital strength.

h. If may be objected that is must be shown how this causes this communion of the Redeemer with those being redeemed; and it might also be objected that only a secondary significance is given the His physical sufferings, the shedding of His blood and death.

i. It may be replied that in the transmission of the compassionate, loving energies of the Redeemer into the spiritual nature of a believing person who calls upon His help, we find manifested a purely objective law of our spiritual nature revealed in our dogmas, but which our dogmatic sciences has not noticed.

j. The Savior’s prayer in Gethsemane was not inspired by fear of His approaching sufferings and death.

k. The Lord’s torments in Gethsemane came from a contemplation of the sinful life and evil disposition of all human generations.

l. Following St Paul (Heb 5:7), Christ prayed not for deliverance, but for relief fro His overwhelming grief for sinful mankind.

m. Comforted by the appearance of the angel, Christ went forth bravely to meet His enemies.

n Now the discussion will turn to the question of by what means Christ’s co-suffering love is redeeming.

1. How can Metropolitan Anthony claim that our redemption consisted in Christ’s co-suffering at Gethsemane?

First Celebration of the Feast of St Justin of Ćelije

2010-06-14T14:01:00.003+02:00

Today, as I mentioned in my last post, is the first celebration of the feast day of St Justin of Ćelije. (Today was chosen because it is Fr Justin's nameday.) In honor of this historic occasion, I offer a translation done by myself and Aida Zamilova Judah of an article by Hieromonk Nektary (Radovanović) and originally published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1984, No.2.

Through the Pages of the Theological Works of
Archimandite Justin (Popović)

In the local Orthodox Churches the name of the doctor of theology Archimandirte Justin (Popović +1979) is well known.

Archimandrite Justin was born on April 7, 1894, on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, in the ancient Serbian city of Vranje into the pious family of a priest, which had given the Serbian Church seven generations of clergy. In Baptism he was given the name Blagoje, in honor of the Feast of the Annunciation.

In the years 1905 to 1914, Blagoje Popović studied in the Seminary of St. Sava of Serbia in Belgrade. In his young years he was especially interested in questions of contemporary literature and philosophy. He gave the greatest attention to the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, about whom he later wrote two studies: The Philosophy and Religion of F. M. Dostoevsky and Dostoevsky on Europe and Slavism.

Patristic works made a decisive influence on the formation of Archimandrite Justin’s spiritual character. The Holy Fathers were for him, and remained to the end of his life, irreplaceable teachers and instructors. He was wholly guided by their teachings. Archimandrite Justin especially loved St. John Chrysostom, to whom he prayed without ceasing with childlike sincerity: “I feel a particular merciful closeness of St. John Chrysostom to me, a sinner,” he wrote, “My soul ascends to him in prayer: enlighten me by thy prayers... grant me to struggle in your struggle...”

In 1916, Blagoje Popović accepted the monastic tonsure with the name Justin, in honor of Hieromartyr Justin the Philosopher (+166; memory on June 1). Indeed, like him, Archimandrite Justin was an authentic thinker who assimilated the truth of Christianity. At the foundation of his theology he put humblemindedness, following in this the example of St. John Chrysostom, to whom, as is known, belong the remarkable words: “The foundation of our Christian philosophy is humblemindedness, for without it truth is blind.” It is precisely for this reason that in his Divine contemplation Fr. Justin does not talk about Christ as an ordinary person (or an “historical personage”), but rather as the God-Man, the Savior of the world. Fr. Justin considered authentic divine theologizing of Christ in the Holy Spirit to be only that Divine contemplation in which the mind and the heart (thought and feeling) were united in prayer, passing into contemplation and Divine vision. He often said: “Heavy is any of my thoughts, which, having arisen, is not converted into prayer.”

Shortly after his tonsure, with the blessing of the Serbian Metropolitan Dimitri (later His Holiness, the Patriarch of Serbia), Fr. Justin went to Petersburg, where he entered the theological academy. During the time of his study in the academy, Fr. Justin got to know Orthodox Russia well and to love it deeply. Here he obtained a wide theological knowledge. Here he grew spiritually, being acquainted with Russian holy things and the works of saints. From this time and throughout his life, Fr. Justin deeply loved St. Serge of Radonezh and other Russian saints; he became close to St. Seraphim of Sarov in a spiritual, prayerful way. Even then Fr. Justin understood that the soul of the people, its spirit, is hidden in the great deeds of saints, for true Orthodoxy is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

In June 1916, Fr. Justin went to England, where he enrolled at Oxford University. He studied there until 1919 and then returned to his homeland. In the same year he went to Athens, where until 1921 he worked on his doctoral dissertation The Problem of the Personality and of Knowledge According to St. Macarius of Egypt, which he successfully defended in 1926 in Athens. (A part of the dissertation was later published in the journal Theology, Righteousness, and Life. Athens, 1962, pp. 153-175). All these years the prayerful podvig of Fr. Justin increased, which is evident in his spiritual contemplations: “How many years must a man introduce the fragrant leaven of Heaven into the dough of his essence, how many years must he spend remaking himself by the evangelical virtues! From the cave of my body I see Thee, O Lord, and keep looking, and yet I cannot see you completely. I know, I feel, and know that Thou are the only Architect, O Lord, Who can build the eternal home of my soul. The builders are prayer, tears, fasting, love, humility, meekness, patience, hope, co-suffering. . .”

From 1921, Fr. Justin taught New Testament, dogmatic theology, and patrology at the seminary at Sremska Karlovci. In 1922, he was ordained hieromonk, and from that time became a spiritual father to many in the flock.

In 1930, the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church appointed Fr. Justin the assistant of Bishop Joseph of Bitola. The common task for Vladyka Joseph and his assistant became the organization of Orthodox parishes in Czechoslovakia, especially in the Preshov region in the so-called Carpatorossia, where at the time the Uniates began to return to the bosom of Orthodoxy.

Fr. Justin gave much energy to this indeed difficult but God-pleasing work. Slovak Christians themselves sought out help. For that reason, His Grace Joseph asked the Holy Synod to consecrate Fr. Justin as bishop of the newly-restored Mukachevo diocese in Transcarpathia. But Fr. Justin refused the episcopal rank. His letter to Vladyka Joseph witnesses to that: “I ask Your Grace to pardon me and forgive me for doing this. I write this by the irresistible conviction of my conscience... I’ve refused before and I refuse again to accept the rank of bishop. My refusal is not the result of a passing mood. I looked at myself long and hard, according to the Gospel, and judged myself according to the Gospel, and arrived at the unchangeable conclusion: I cannot accept the rank of bishop under any circumstances. For I know myself very well: it is very difficult to keep my own soul within the boundaries of Christ’s goodness, not to mention hundreds of thousands of other people’s souls. And to answer for them before God.”

In 1932, Fr. Justin returned from Czechoslovakia and began to work on the first volume of his Dogmatics, which was published the same year. Then he became a professor at the Theological Seminary in Sremska Karlovci. Two years later the Holy Synod appointed him docent in the Theological Faculty at the University of Belgrade.

In 1935, Fr. Justin published the second volume of his Dogmatics, in which he expounds the Orthodox teaching on the God-Man and His deed (Christology and Soteriology).

In the same years, together with other prominent members of the Serbian spiritual culture, Fr. Justin participated in the founding of the Serbian Philosophical Society.

In 1948, Fr. Justin was appointed spiritual father of the Chelje women’s monastery. He stayed here to the end of his life, dedicating his time to prayer, Divine contemplation, and scholarly theological and translation work.

Quite a lot has been written in various Orthodox magazines about Fr. Justin’s contribution to contemporary Orthodox theology. A special issue of the Greek church magazine Paradosis (Tradition) for 1979 was dedicated to him.

The author of one of the articles published in connection with Fr. Justin’s repose wrote, covering his life and work: “... it would not be an exaggeration if we characterized him as one of the most outstanding contemporary Fathers of Orthodox theology.”

As an author, Fr. Justin left behind a voluminous legacy: three volumes of Dogmatics, twelve volumes of The Lives of Saints, various theological works, and numerous epistles and letters.

Fr. Justin’s inner, spiritual experience is captured in his works full of theological depths and elevated poetry.

The most important works that help penetrate the spirit of the theologizing of Archimandrite Justin (Popović) are his Dogmatics and The Lives of Saints.

In the introduction to the first volume of his Dogmatics, Fr. Justin writes: “Moved from non-existence to All-existence, man, dressed in the marvelous form of matter and spirit, takes a pilgrimage through the marvelous mysteries of God. The further he is from non-being and the closer to All-being, the more he hungers for immortality and sinlessness, all the more he thirsts for the inaccessible and eternal. But there is a tyrannical pull to non-existence, and sin and death greedily conceal the soul. All the wisdom of life is to overcome non-being in ourselves and around us and to immerse ourselves entirely in All-being. The Holy Spirit teaches this wisdom, for He is wisdom and knowledge – grace-given wisdom and grace-given knowledge about the nature of being; and the center of this knowledge is the knowledge of the Divine and the human, the invisible and the visible. Divine contemplation in the Holy Spirit is at the same time a morally creative power which, through the process of man imitating God on the path of ascetic, grace-filled perfection, multiplies in man Divine knowledge of God and the world. Being enlivened by the Holy Spirit is the only art that can, from a variegated and very complex human essence, sculpt a person in the likeness of God, in the image of Christ.

“Knowledge of God in the Holy Spirit is, in this way, that truth about God, the world, and man that the Orthodox Church calls the dogmas of faith. Therefore dogmatics is a science of the eternal truths of God that are revealed to people so that they may put them into practice in their lives and through that attain the eternal goal of our existence, of our martyric pilgrimage from non-being to All-being...”

The living embodiments of these Divinely-revealed truths, Fr. Justin believed, are the saints⎯the bearers of these truths and at the same time their preachers and confessors.

The Orthodox dogmatist must turn with all his works to the saints, to learn from them, to be in prayerful communion with them, in fasting and spiritual wakefulness. Thus, the work of an Orthodox dogmatist is the podvig of sobering his mind.

In the introduction to his book An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, St. John of Damascus once and for all consolidated the guiding principle for establishing a dogmatic system: “I will not say anything of myself, but will explain briefly what God’s wise men told.” Citing these words of the great saint, Fr. Justin witnesses: “I, in my nothingness and misery, can hardly dare to say that I have kept to his principle. If anything in my work is good, evangelical, and Orthodox, then all that belongs to the Holy Fathers, and everything that is opposed to that is mine, only my own…”

Fr. Justin says that through the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Divine Truths became more accessible to man. And this means that Christ is inevitably replicated in every Christian, for every Christian is an organic part of Christ’s Church, which is His Divine-human Body.

Fr. Justin saw the path to immortality in the organic unity of man with the person of the God-Man Christ, with His Body, with the Church. “I know and I feel,” he wrote, “that only in Him and with Him I am an eternal self, a divine eternal self. Without this I do not need myself.”

The goal of the Church’s ministry is that all believers would unite organically and personally with the Person of Christ, so that their self-perception would become Christ-perception and their self-consciousness would become Christ-consciousness; so that their whole life would be the life of Christ and so that they no longer live, but Christ in them (Gal 2: 20).

To find oneself is to find in oneself the God-Man Christ, but He dwells only in His Church, who is His living incarnation. It is a Divine-human eternity, incarnate within space and time. It is in the world, but not of the world (Jn 18:36). Therefore in the Church the Person of the God-Man Christ is the only guide leading man though mortality and temporality into immortality and eternity.

God became man, while remaining God, so that as God he would give the human nature Divine power that would lead man to the closest Divine-human unity with God. And this Divine power of His constantly works in His Divine-human body – the Church, uniting people with God through grace and holy life. For the Church cannot be anything other than a pure and miracle-working Divine-human organism, in which the participation of God’s grace and man’s freedom forms immortality and deifies everything human, everything except sin. In the Divine-human organism of the Church every believer is like a living cell that becomes an integral part of that organism and lives by its Divine-human power.

Calling the Church the Body of Christ, the holy Apostle Paul establishes a link between its essence and the mystery of God’s Incarnation and shows that the living and unchangeable foundation of the Church is in that “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). This truth is the main truth of the Church, its foundation. The Church is primarily a Divine-human organism and only then a human community.

The nature of the Church is Divine and human, from which follows its Divine-human activity in the world: everything Divine becomes incarnate in man and humanity. Therefore the mission of the Church, in its very nature, is to bring about the Divine-human, spiritual values in the human world.

Confessing the God-Man, the Church, as Fr. Justin emphasized, also confesses man in his authentic and God-created unity. For without the God-Man there is no true man.

The ontology of the human person is its Divine image. Through the Divine image, man is given all the Divine strength to achieve eternal perfection: “My infinity draws me to Thee, O Infinite God!”

The value of man, Fr. Justin witnesses, is determined by what is in his inner world. In its unfathomable depths that inner world is in contact with the Absolute Reality, the bearer of Which man is. Supporting such a connection, that is, absorbing in themselves the eternal spiritual kingdom, Christians by virtue of their continuous spiritual growth become endless, although not without beginning. And indeed, who can explore the metaphysical depths of man? “For who among men knoweth the things of a man, except the spirit of the man that is in him” (1 Cor 2:11). He who earnestly observes the material and spiritual realities of the universe cannot but feel the presence of an infinite mystery in all phenomena. The human spirit persistently strives to comprehend the mysterious. The constant movement of the human spirit in that direction is the second, supernatural component of him as a person. Keeping in mind the natural component also, Fr. Justin resolves the fundamental question of anthropology in this manner: “We can conclude that man is man exactly because he is the bearer of an individual supernatural gift that manifests itself in self-perfection, creativity, and intellectual activity.” The whole human spirit longs for eternity: through consciousness and through the senses, through will and through all life, and that means that it longs for immortality. Thus, Fr. Justin considered the human aspiration to infinity, to immortality, belongs to the very essence of the human spirit.

Created in the image of God, man is full of spiritual yearning, for the Divine image is the principle thing in man’s essence. And this aspiration of the Divinely-imaged soul towards its Archetype is natural.

By giving man the [seemingly impossible] commandment: “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mt 5:48), Lord Jesus Christ pointed to the [real] possibility of realization, through grace, of the Divinely-imaged human being. He would not have commanded something impossible.

The image of God in man’s nature, Fr. Justin remarks, has an ontological and a teleological meaning: ontological, because in it is the essence of the human being; teleological, because it indicates the goal of life: unity with God.

However, by bending his free will to sin, man, instead of becoming a communicant of the Divine life by virtue of the Divine image of his soul, put a distance between himself and the Divine. He shrunk into his shell and began to live without the supernatural Guide inherent to his soul. That was his first act of opposing his own essence created in the Divine image. Since that moment, man has made himself godless by forcing God out of himself into the transhuman, otherworldly transcendence and found himself before a gaping abyss that separated man and God. The human essence suffered a catastrophe that disrupted the God-created nature of man and shifted its center. Consequently, man lost the ability to understand himself and the world around him.

Man's love of sin gave the devil power over him, which brought about the danger of “the devil-man” appearing. It was at this point that God-Man came to the world to save man from sin, evil, devil, and eternal death.

Through His death on the Cross our Lord Jesus Christ made it possible for man to return to his own Divine image, to transition from sin to Light and Truth, from death to Life.

When the God-Man Jesus Christ elevated Himself on the Cross, He at the same time elevated man to the first level of Heaven, on which He reconciled the two worlds—the Heavenly and the earthly; He connected Heaven and earth. At the top of that ladder is He Himself—the King of Glory, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Behold, O man, the many opportunities for you to grow upwards! From the bottom of the abyss to the top of the heaven, and higher than any heaven!

The ability to think is Divine in nature and has a heavenly origin. It was given to man to link him to Heaven, to God, to eternity.

But pride, this powerful instrument of the enemy of salvation, caused human thought to separate itself from God and caused man to imagine himself infallible.

The true spiritual formation of man lies exclusively in his victory over death, in the ultimate transfiguration of his soul and body, in his liberation from sin and evil—those sources of death. Certainty about immortality comes through knowing God; that knowledge, as it is, does not tolerate sin that engenders death.

Starting in 1972, Archimandrite Justin began the publication of his twelve-volume work on the saints of the Orthodox Church called The Lives of Saints, which he had compiled long ago. Publication of this significant work was finished at the end of 1978, which has an important significance. Soon after the publication of The Lives of Saints, hagiology was introduced as a permanent course into the program of studies in religious seminaries.

While Fr. Justin's Dogmatics is the fruit of his predominantly ecclesiastical and scientific research, The Lives of Saints reveals the spiritual experience of a man who is filled with Christ to his very depths. The Lives of Saints shows us the mysterious path to Christ that all the ascetics had walked on. The author of The Lives of Saints, being an ascetic himself, understands the tears of ascetics, being a martyr for faith—the pain of martyrs, being a monk—the monastic experience of comprehending the Divine, and being a modern Orthodox theologian—the theology of the Fathers and teachers of the Church.

Fr. Justin started his translation into Serbian and his systematic work on the lives of the Orthodox Church saints after World War II.

Fr. Justin comments on his reasons for writing that “simple,” in comparison to his dogmatic works, book, “The lives of saints are, as a matter of fact, dogmatics incarnate, because in them all the eternal and holy dogmatic truths come to life in all their life-creating and meaningful power.”

The lives of saints most visibly confirm that the dogmas are not only ontological truths in themselves and for themselves, but that every dogma is the source of Eternal Life and holy spirituality, according to the words of the Savior: “. . . the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (Jn 6:63). For every word of God gives man a saving, sanctifying force that fills him with joy, revives, and transforms him. The lives of saints contain all Orthodox ethics in all its magnificence and irresistible force. The lives of saints are “the only pedagogics of Orthodoxy” and “an Orthodox encyclopedia of a sort.” Fr. Justin views “The Lives of Saints” as a sequel to the Acts of the Apostles, which tell about the spread of Christianity and confirm it. The lives of saints are the Gospel, life, truth, love, faith, eternity, and the power of the Lord, for “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

In any century, the Lord grants the same grace and performs the same Divine acts for all who believe in Him. Saints, as Fr. Justin remarks, “are the people in whom the holy Divine-human life of Christ is being continued from generation to generation and unto the end of the ages.” They all constitute the Body of Christ⎯the Church, and are inseparably united with Christ and among themselves. The river of immortal Divine life begins with the God-Man Christ, and Christians come through Him to Eternal life. The lives of saints are of great significance, because “we cannot reach” the holy and Eternal life “individually, but we can do it with all the saints, with their help and under their guidance, through the Holy Mysteries and the good works in the Church.” 

It was this significance of the saints and, consequently, the importance of their lives for our salvation in the Church that caused Fr. Justin to write in Serbian the first complete Orthodox Synaxarian, that is a compilation of the hagiographies of saints.

Important sources for Fr. Justin were the Synaxarian by St. Nicodemus the Athonite, The Lives of Saints (Menologion) by Saint Dimitry of Rostov, original Greek manuscripts from various critical editions, the Church of Constantinople Synaxarian, and many other patristic and theological works.

The writer ends The Lives of Saints with a historic overview of attempts to write down the lives of saints in early Christianity, starting with the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Apostle Luke first described “the labors and sufferings of the first disciples of our Savior and of His successors.”

Following this overview, Father Justin analyzes the narrations about the holy ascetics published as Pateriks, Herontiks, and Limonars as well as collections of the lives of saints of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period, and so on, up to the modern critical scientific publications of the ancient hagiographic manuscripts. Those publications are characterized by the spirit of rationalistic criticism which has defined, according to Fr. Justin’s words, “the position of their authors against the lives of saints.”

According to the Orthodox tradition, Fr. Justin distributes the abundant hagiographic material of the liturgical year throughout the indiction. Every separate volume (for September, October, etc.,) contains the lives of saints who are commemorated in one particular month. The lives of saints commemorated on the same day are assigned a special chapter. In addition, whenever space permits, he publishes a picture of one of the Orthodox churches or monasteries named after the saint being remembered. The entire twelve volume publication includes images of more than two hundred Orthodox churches that vividly demonstrate the characteristic features of the church architecture of the Orthodox peoples from Alaska to Korea and Japan and from Africa to India. The life of every saint is usually accompanied by the pictures of his ancient and new icons. At the end of each volume there is an alphabetic index of the names of the saints whose lives are described in the volume.

Fr. Justin was hoping to publish the thirteenth, final volume dedicated to the Paschal cycle, that is, to the Lenten Triodion and the Pentecostarion.

Simultaneously with the publication of The Lives of Saints, the hagiographies of the most revered Serbian saints were published in separate editions. The publication of The Lives of Saints aroused a great interest among the Serbian church community, especially among the professors of the Serbian Church history in religious schools. Those books are being currently used as textbooks for students of those schools. Abundant information on Church history, hagiography, patristics, dogmatics, as well as canoncial, pastoral, liturgical, and homiletical materials are put together on the 8,300 pages of The Lives of the Saints. Archimandrite Justin managed to make the Synxarian not only a narrative text and a scientific work, but also a work revealing a deep theological knowledge. The publication soon became a rare book.

This hagiological work by Fr. Justin is priceless for the Serbian Church. The lives of the Serbian saints contain the history of the Serbian Church and the Serbian state. The holy Nemanjić dynasty, beginning with its holy ancestor Simeon, the founder of the Chilandar monastery on Mount Athos, and his son St. Sava, the first Serbian archbishop, and ending with its last descendant martyr Uroš, combined the crown with the Cross, having united the ecclesiastic and state history of the Serbs. Of invaluable help in theological training will be also the lives of other, non-Serbian saints, as well as many quotations from the theological works by the Fathers and Teachers and the holy ascetics of the Church, which are published in this first complete Serbian Synaxarian.

The Lives are of great importance to Orthodoxy as a whole. According to God’s dispensation, Fr. Justin studied in England, where he came in contact with the non-Orthodox world and its way of thinking; in Russia, where He grasped the depth of Russian Orthodox spirituality; and in Athens, where he, as he himself would say, fell in love with the Holy Fathers’ Tradition. In Athens he met the outstanding Greek theologians of his time⎯Professors Balan and Diovuniotis, and studied with the later famous professor of dogmatics, now academician John Karmiris. Here he received the opportunity to study the Byzantine manuscripts that later became part of his Synaxarian. Such knowledge of many Orthodox peoples and traditions enabled Fr. Justin to create a work that can be truly considered common for all Orthodox people because of its scale and significance.

As time goes on, this work by Fr. Justin will play an increasingly important role in introducing the non-Orthodox and non-Christians to Orthodoxy and its spiritual values. This original ecclesiastical and scientific work is a model of an Orthodox Synaxarian. From now on it will be impossible to compile a Synaxarian without knowing Archimandrite Justin’s work.

Among the published works by Archimandrite Justin, except for the ones mentioned previously, we shall point out the following: The Epistemology of St. Isaac the Syrian, a collection of articles titled Man and the God-Man. Studies in Orthodox Theology, The Foundations of Theology, Theology of St. Sava as a Philosophy of Life, The Life of St. Sava and St. Simeon, The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, and On the Forthcoming Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.

Father Justin’s theological works, in the words of academician John Karmiris, are the pinnacle of spiritual self-expression of the Serbian Church (preface to the Greek edition of the book Man and God-Man. Athens, 1st ed. 1969. 2nd ed. 1974. p. 7).

Archimandrite Justin also left behind some unpublished works: Through Life With Apostle Paul (a multi-volume interpretation of Apostle Paul’s epistles); Interpretation of the General Epistles of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian; Interpretation of the Gospels according to Sts. Matthew and John; the thirteenth volume of The Lives of Saints⎯ The Lenten and Flowery Triodions; akathists to many saints, and other numerous theological and liturgical texts. Archimandrite Justin, a humble priest and a prominent theologian, belongs not only to the Serbian Church, but to the whole Orthodox world.

As Metropolitan Irenaeos of Crete said of him: “He was a gift of Divine grace that the Lord gave to His Orthodox Church.”

St Justin and Patristic Tradition

2010-06-14T13:53:00.007+02:00

Here, in honor of the first celebration of the feast of St Justin of Celije, is a translation of a selection from an article by a spiritual son, Bishop Artemije, retired Bishop of Raska and Prizren, entitled "Saint Justin and Patristic Tradition." It was specially translated for this site by Olga Lissenkova and edited by myself.

Father Justin lived by Tradition and in Tradition, and therefore lived, thought, spoke, and wrote according to patristic Tradition.

Just as one of the main attributes of truth is immutability, inasmuch as it always and everywhere exists in itself, as something immutable, like God Himself, so too in Father Justin was there one trait that is not often met even among certain Holy Fathers. It is that Father Justin, from his youth, beginning with his first written and published lines until his last recorded thought, throughout the whole course of his life as a productive writer and thinker, always remained faithful to himself or, it is better to say, to the truth which he received and in agreement with the Tradition he served, about which he thought and wrote. His style, his language, and his fearlessness when it concerned truth and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, remained unchanged throughout the entire course of his life. In this respect, before he reposed he truly never needed to repent of anything or to renounce anything in his thought or deeds, which distinguishes him from other minds, even great ones.

He had the rare happiness – or, better to say, God’s mercy and Providence – to have from the very beginning entered the right way of following the Lord Jesus Christ through following the Holy Fathers and Holy Tradition, and he never veered away from it, neither “to the right nor to the left,” whatever dangers or circumstances came his way. This is what is especially admirable and attractive in Father Justin. He is a bright example of a person rigidly persisting in truth, thanks to which the Church lives and creates.

To many, such a position of Father Justin seemed to come from stubbornness, insubordination, separatism, and lack of respect for the generally accepted manners and norms of his time. He suffered much from this and was pursued by his enemies, but he could not renounce his way, because this way was not his, but Christ’s, as Father Justin himself somewhere wrote. Many did and still do judge and condemn his actions, because his correct evangelical position, which was in full agreement with the the Tradition of the Apostles and Holy Fathers, burned them like live coals, witnessing, although not always verbally, that they were not on the right path and would not come back to the correct way because the wrong way was much more pleasant and convenient. Father Justin’s only concern was to “oblige God and be faithful to His truth.” What people thought of his views and deeds did not bother him very much, as he was ready to suffer a thousand deaths (his own words) for God’s truth, if only this were possible. This is why many contemporaries who knew Father Justin were of the opinion, and some express in openly, that Father Justin was and remains the conscience of the Serbian Church – and we would add, not only the Serbian. As Father Justin grew, lived, and created in the environment of the evangelical Divine-human reality, and through this in the environment of the whole Holy Tradition of the Apostles and Holy Fathers of Christ’s Orthodox Church, he belongs to the wholeness of the Universal Catholic Church, as all the Holy Fathers and all of God’s saints do. Not one single saint remains confined to the narrow limits of one people or any one local Church: inasmuch as he is saved in the Church, together with all the saints, so he belongs to them all.

Father Justin was a complex and multifaceted personality, which makes him close and “one’s own” to all groups and categories in which the Holy Fathers can be referred to according to one or another attribute.

Through his interest in world literature and philosophy, Father Justin resembled and was close to the learned Fathers of the Church, especially to Martyr Justin the Philosopher, whose name he accepted in monasticism, and the great Cappadocians: Sts Basil the Great and Gregory the Theology. Thanks to a profound and thorough knowledge and study of Greek literature and philosophy, they felt the incapacity of human thought alone to solve the eternal questions of human existence and, with all their souls, all their hearts, and all their minds they gave themselves to Christ. Like them, in his youth Father Justin was attracted by secular wisdom and “philosophy… after the tradition of men” (Col. 2: 8), but soon he saw that this was leading, all the more bitterly and all the more deeply, to the somber labyrinth of this world, from which one cannot find a way out, and with all his being he gave himself to the only true and unchangeable Wisdom – the God-Man Christ. On this way of this “philosophy according to Christ,” Father Justin had indispensable teachers and luminous examples to follow in the persons of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, especially St John Chrysostom, St. Macarius of Egypt, Sts. Athanasius and Basil, Sts Isaac the Syrian and Symeon the New Theologian, and many others. Having learnt by his own experience that the secret of any saint is the Lord Jesus, Who is everything in his soul, in his conscience, in his heart, in his life and in his actions, Father Justin wisely concludes that “the contemporary Christian can be a true Christian only if he is guided by the saints day in and day out.”

As close as he was to the learned Fathers and theologians of the Holy Church, Father Justin was no less close and akin to the group of, secularly speaking, “unlearned” Fathers, such as St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia and St. Spyridon of Tremithous, and many others. Like these Holy Fathers, he was notable for a childishly pure and sincere faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he crystallized this faith into superhuman prayerful-ascetic podvigs, in which he was burning, not pitying himself. His ascetic life and ceaseless prayer, accompanied by plentiful tears and internal cries of the soul, against his will could not be kept secret, and attracted and amazed not only Orthodox souls raised in the fear of God, but also some people of other faiths who had the opportunity to get to know Father Justin more closely. For him, throughout all his life, he was guided by the words of St. Gregory the Theologian’s: “One must purify oneself first, before teaching others to be pure; one must become wise oneself first, before teaching others to be wise; one must become the light oneself, and only then enlighten others; one must come close to God first, before bringing others to Him; one must become a saint oneself, before sanctifying others.” Applying this patristic rule, Father Justin, by his selfless podvigs (especially those of fasting, prayer, and tears) mercilessly turned himself into a great ascetic of our time, and in so came to resemble the Holy Fathers: the ascetics and true theologians of Christ.

From this proximity and similarity of Father Justin’s life to that of the Holy Fathers naturally arose the theological faithfulness and compliance with the patristic Tradition mentioned above. Indeed, as his ascetically virtuous life was not a simple copy of any one or another Holy Father’s life, but the original personal and inimitable life “with all the saints,” so too his theology is not simply a mechanical rendering of patristic theology, but its organic maturity and development. It is nothing other than, in theological language, the description and expression of the personal experience of the knowledge of the mystery of the incarnation of the God-Man Christ in the personal lives of all believers. All his works testify to this, from his school and college notebooks to his last published and as-yet unpublished works.

Photograph: the future Bishop Artemije with St Justin outside the church in Ćelije.

Andrei Voznesensky: RIP

2010-06-14T12:15:00.003+02:00

Serge Schmemann (the son of Fr Alexander) has an editorial tribute to the late poet Andrei Voznesensky up at The New York Times.

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing (1 of 5)

2010-06-14T08:26:00.002+02:00

Dr Jean-Claude Larchet begins his introduction to his book Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East with a survey of the many and competing systems of etiologies and therapies that exist today for the treatment of mental illness. He states that the goal of the present book is “to offer some insight into the manner in which early Christians viewed, understood, and treated insanity, and to show the benefits, however modest, that the thought and experience of the early Christians can provide.” He writes:

While modern psychiatry by and large appears to be split up into various schools, each holding to contradictory theories and claiming exclusive value for their own point of view, it is interesting to see that Christian thought developed a complex conception which recognized three etiological origin: organic, demonic and spiritual, and that each of these were associated with different and specific forms of treatment. This allows us to state from the beginning that the widespread idea among historians, namely, that the Fathers considered all mental illness to be the result of diabolic possession, is completely false.

For mental disorders diagnosed as organic, the Fathers “recommended such appropriate medical therapy as was available in the days.” As concerns the demonic, the Fathers considered the possessed not to be accomplices of the devil, but rather victims, and as such entitled to special attention and solicitude.” However barbaric demonic possession may seem to many today, “the similarity between aspects of the pattern thus brought to light [by modern psychiatry] and those that Christianity generally attributes to demonic activity is quite striking, with an impulsive lewdness and a relentless will to do harm being the most obvious.” The third etiology, mental illness from spiritual problems, is “generally defined as one or another of the passions developed to an extreme.” The nosology and therapy of spiritual maladies by the Fathers is of special interest today for two reasons. First, “it represents the cumulative experience and fruit of many generations of ascetics who have explored the depth of human soul and have come to a knowledge of even its innermost recesses in great detail; at the same time, they have spent their entire lives in mastering and transforming the soul and have acquired a unique and remarkably efficacious experience.” Second, the Fathers “envisioned man in all his complexity, taking into account the many dimensions of his being, including the problems posed by his very existence (especially its meaning), his overall destiny and his relationship with God.”

Another aim of this book is “to present the attitude of the great saints towards ‘fools,’ an attitude animated in particular by the Christian ideal of charity. But first it is necessary “to have some idea of the anthropological bases underlying their conceptions.” The work will conclude with a treatment of the phenomenon of the “fool for Christ.”

Larchet begins his first chapter with the assertion that the Holy Fathers “often insist that the human being is neither body nor soul in isolation, but entirely and indissociably both.” The two influence each other, with the result “that every movement of the soul is accompanied by a movement of the body and every movement of the body by that of the soul.” Nonetheless, “the soul, being incorporeal, has a different nature than the body and is superior to it.”

The Fathers normally distinguish three “powers” in the human soul: the vegetative, the function of which is “nutrition growth and generation”; the animal or appetitive, which comprises two elements: irrascability or ardor (thumos) and concupiscability (epithumetikon), “which encompasses desire, affectivity, and other surge urges; and reason, the two principles faculties of which are the spirit (pneuma) and intellect (nous). (Here Larchet notes that the authors of the first centuries used the former term, while Byzantine and subsequent writers preferred the latter term.) However, it should be pointed out that “the ‘elements’ that can be distinguished in the soul do not constitute three different souls, nor three separate parts.” Some Fathers used the dichotomous body-soul model, and others the trichotomous spirit/intellect-soul-body model.

God willing, I’ll continue with chapter two tomorrow.

Marriage with the Non-Orthodox

2010-06-14T08:22:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: I myself am Orthodox, but I am going to marry a girl who was Baptized in an Old Believer Church. Now she attends a Protestant non-denominational church, but she has not received Baptism there. After our engagement we’d like to get married, but in the Orthodox church we were refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Old Believers; in the Old Believer church we were also refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Orthodox. But the Pentecostalist “church” marries everyone without any question. My future wife said that she doesn’t want to be Baptized Orthodox, and I respect her opinion; in my turn, I also don’t want to be rebaptized.

I want to ask the question: how does the Church look on us being married by Protestants, and is this allowable in principle. And in general may a Protestant perform the Mystery of marriage?

Answer: Canon 72 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council strictly forbids an Orthodox person to marry a heterodox person. The Holy Fathers based themselves on the Christian understanding of the family as the most important life union in the goal of salvation. There is even a definition: the small Church. It is obvious that such a union can be built only on a spiritual foundation. Marriage is possible only under the condition of the sincere conversion of a heterodox person to Orthodoxy.

Reading Group, 5b

2010-06-14T08:19:00.001+02:00

Juridical Vengeance or Co-Suffering Love
A More Positive Exposition of the Moral Content of the Dogma of Redemption

a. To provide an Orthodox interpretation of the dogma of the redemption it is necessary to produce a feasible work in which the interpretation of the dogma is the central thesis. The treatise will proceed by observing what constantly occurs in life.

b. The assimilation of redemption by faith is regeneration. The example of Zacchaeus provides a better example of regeneration than the parable of the prodigal son.

c. There are three types of influence leading to regeneration: admonition, example, and something greater.

d. A person who is not deeply corrupted is sometimes brought to reason by exhortation and good example. Sometimes this is accomplished by a power placed into them, and this power is the force of regeneration, and by this power Christ has redeemed us.

e. By grace, people, and especially priests, are granted a certain portion of this power of regeneration.

f. The main question is: by what means does the Lord redeem and regenerate us?

g. The third force of regeneration is the power of co-suffering love, which sets regeneration in motion.

h. The co-suffering love of one who perceives the fall of a neighbor with as much grief as if he himself were the sinner is a powerful force of regeneration.

i. Only the first glimmer of such a manifestation of God’s regenerating grace is encountered.

j. Dostoevsky, in his earlier works, focused attention not upon those who serve in the mystery of regeneration, but upon those upon whom it was bestowed.

k. In The Brothers Karamazov he portrayed the characters of two such examples of brotherly love. The Prologue provides similar examples.

l. The influence of grace-bearing co-suffering love lies in its leading the soul out of a condition of moral indifference toward a definite decision, to be with God or against God.

m. Contact with regenerating grace does not destroy one’s freedom.

n. The Elder Jerome attracted about 2,000 monks to Mt Athos by his meekness and compassion, and his spirit blocked the way of sinners and brought people to repentance.

o. Dostoevsky portrays this action of co-suffering love, which divides people into those being regenerated and those being condemned.

p. One ought not to be disturbed by the use of secular literature in explaining dogma.

q. The principle of strength of moral regeneration is the power of co-suffering love.

r. The earnest of this gift is imparted in the mystery of ordination.

How can it be said that Christ has redeemed us by the power of regeneration? How does the regeneration that comes through Christ differ from that which comes through people?
What is the connection between the power of regeneration and the exercise of free will?

The Theology of Illness (3 of 3)

2010-06-13T09:22:00.003+02:00

The third and concluding chapter of Jean-Claude Larchet’s book, The Theology of Illness, is entitled “Christian Paths toward Healing.” He begins:

If sickness and suffering can and should be spiritually transcended and transfigured in Christ, and if they can constitute an ascetic pathway capable of leading the ill person to spiritual heights, nevertheless they should never be either desired or sought after.

The struggle again illness is, indeed “a part of the larger struggle one is called to assume against the powers of evil.” The one true Physician is Christ. Indeed, “in order the show that it is the whole person Christ came to save, the Fathers and the entire Tradition of the Church are careful to present him as both ‘Physician of bodies’ and ‘Physician of souls.’” When the saints heal, it is precisely in the name of Christ.

Larchet then turns to a consideration of spiritual paths toward healing, beginning with prayer. He writes: “For the grace of God rests on all mankind – and in fullness upon those who are baptized. In order to receive it one need only face it and be open to it.” Praying for one’s neighbor and the prayer of the saints are also effective against illness. The saints are able to heal us through the deification they have received in Christ:

They can do so because they have been deified through grace and have become participants in divine Life and Power. We pray especially to the Mother of God, the first human being to have been fully deified and glorified, “the comfort of the afflicted and the healing of the sick,” “the hope of the hopeless,” ‘the strength of those who are struggling,” “unquenchable and inexhaustible treasure of healing,” “from whom marvels spring forth and healing flows out.

Healing from the saints also comes indirectly through their holy relics, “which are suffused with and radiate these energies.”

After considering the charism of healing and its nature and limits, Larchet turns to a treatment of Holy Unction. Speaking of the seven prayers read during the service of Holy Unction, Larchet writes:

Bringing to mind the mercy and compassion which God has always shown mankind, they ask him to preserve the life of the sick person, to alleviate his suffering, and to heal and strengthen his body. Most importantly, they ask God to forgive his sins, to confirm his spiritual life, to assure his salvation and sanctification, and to accomplish the regeneration of his entire being and the renewal of his life in Christ. Each prayer puts special emphasis on one or the other of these elements, but all of them connect the consolation of the soul with that of the body, spiritual healing with physical healing, and they emphasize the fundamental importance of the former without underestimating that of the latter.

The author also considers the use of holy water, which “conveys the healing energies of God by virtue of the Holy Spirit,” as well as that of the sign of the cross, which “invokes and effects the energies of the Holy Trinity, it is the effective sign of Christ’s victory over death and corruption, over sin and the power of the devil and of demons, and consequently over the illness connected with them.” He also considers the rite of exorcism, because according to the Church Fathers, “the devil and demons are at the root of certain illnesses. Larchet writes:

Thus, if we refer to the Gospels, we observe that possession and illness, or infirmities, are presented as orders of reality situated on two different planes, each with its own attributes, and not necessarily connected to one another. First of all, possession and illness, or infirmities, are clearly distinguished in a number of passages. This fact alone makes it impossible to equate the two. Secondly, the majority of illnesses, or infirmities, referred to in connection with the miracles of Christ are not shown to be in any way connected with possession. Thirdly, in certain cases, a person may be afflicted with both possession and illness (or infirmity) without the two conditions having any correlation.

Exorcism “is a sign that Christ has come to restore to mankind the kingdom which we had lost and to reclaim on our behalf the power we had given up to Satan. It has its place under the Name of the Lord of hosts.” The afflicted person, however, must be worthy to receive this grace: “To those invoke his Name, he grants this power only in proportion to their faith and to the purity of their hearts.” Exorcism, however, is not a technique; its “effectiveness depends above all on the spiritual well-being of the one putting it into practice.” The power of the demons, and the need for exorcisms, has changed over the ages. Nevertheless, especially with the expansion of Christianity, demonic activity, while manifesting its intensity, has changed shape and begun to manifest itself differently: it has become diluted, more subtle, harder to pinpoint and less overt.”

Larchet next turns his attention to the role of secular medicine, noting that “Christians have had recourse, since the beginning of the Christian era and in direct continuity with the Old Testament tradition, to any secular means of healing that the medical sciences of their age had to offer.” Medicine is “seen as a very special way of putting charity into practice,” and “from a spiritual perspective, the value of medicine lies in the orientation of the one who implements it.” During the Byzantine era, it was the Orthodox Church (including many individual Fathers) who “took the initiative to organize the medical profession into the systematic treatment and care of patients in a hospital setting,” and the Church itself took “the initiative in hiring, paying and organizing the services of professional physicians.”

There were also early Christians who took a “maximalist position,” rejecting the use of secular medicine, but they were always in the minority and, in a number of cases, heretics or schismatics (e.g., Tatian, Tertullian, and Arnobius of Sicca, who were linked to Montanism, Encratism, and Marcionites, respectively). There were likewise some Fathers, such as St Barsanuphius of Gaza, who looked askew on medicine, but in whose case his pronouncements were guided to the individual rather than universal in scope. “What actually seems important to Saint Barsanuphius,” Larchet notes, “is that one never forget, every time one resorts to medicine, that it is always God who heals through then”

Larchet goes on to consider a spiritual understanding of secular means of healing. The Fathers “emphasize that the remedies found in nature or created from natural elements, as well as the art of discovering, extracting and making them, just like the art of applying them beneficially, all have their origin in God.” St Diadochus of Photike even claims that God created herbs for their medicinal use: “As man’s experience would one day lead him to develop the art of medicine, for this reason these remedies preexisted.” “A physician,” Larchet writes, “through his art as well as through the medicine he prescribes, is merely implementing the divine energies that were generously poured out by the Creator, in all created beings as well as in the human spirit.”

It must always remembered, however, that “healing itself, while resulting from natural processes, actually comes fro God.” This stands in opposition to modern naturalism:

The Christian attitude is thus diametrically opposed to naturalism and sees as an illusion the belief that the medical arts and remedies are, in and of themselves, good and effective means of healing. St Barsanuphius emphasizes that “without God, nothing avails, not even the physician.” And he adds: “Do not forget that without God there is no healing for anyone.”

This is why Christians, while they rely of physicians, see them simply as mediators.

While recognizing the benefits of medicine, the Fathers also emphasize its limitations. St Isaac of Syria, for instance, “attributes to the lowest order of knowledge to any science or technique ‘governed by the body,‘ that is, ‘preoccupied only with this world,‘ and ‘does not see the Providence of God directs us.’” But since man is more than a body, the soul need not be forgotten. The healing of the body symbolizes and foretells the healing of our whole being, and illnesses of the soul are more serious than those of the body, since the former “hinders man’s entire being, body and soul, from being saved.” The nature of health in this world is always relative, but we are promised future incorruptibility and immortality in the next world. Christ’s miracles “seem to be primarily visible signs of this coming restoration, where our bodies will be healed once and for all of every illness and we will experience a perfect and permanent health.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ came to save not only the soul, but also the body: “He dies so not only in this life where he calls man to know, in both body and soul, the first-fruits of divine blessings, but also in the hereafter where, once his body has been raised and made incorruptible, he can rejoice in them fully in his entire being for all eternity. At the resurrection, each person “will be clothed with his own body, but it will be free of the imperfections, the weakness, the corruptibility, and the mortality that are characteristic of its current nature.” Speaking of the resurrection, Larchet writes: “Then man will experience in his body a perfect, complete and permanent health, that he might receive – in this body as in his soul – the fullness of grace.” (What awaits those consigned to hell, Larchet doesn’t say.)

This exemplary work deserves a place in the library of every Orthodox Christian – and in every hospital as well.

Why Crowns at a Wedding?

2010-06-13T09:18:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Tell me, why are crowns held over the heads of those being married?

Answer: During the Mystery of Marriage, crowns are borne on the heads of the bride and groom as a symbol of celebration, glory, and majesty. This is indicated in the mysteriological words which the priest pronounces: “Our Lord God, in glory and honor I marry [them].” This custom is altogether ancient. Holy Scripture speaks of it: “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels” (Is 61:10)

The crowns on the heads of the bridge and groom are also foreshadowings of those victorious incorruptible crowns with await us in the Heavenly Kingdom, if they build their family as a salvific union and, conquering all the afflictions and temptations of this world, inherit eternal life.

Reading Group, 5a

2010-06-13T09:13:00.002+02:00

The Moral Idea of the Dogma of Redemption

One: Background Discussion of Scholastic Errors

a. The formulation of the dogma of redemption has been the subject of constant reformulation in recent times. No one has yet given a clear, direct answer to the question of why Christ’s incarnation, sufferings, and resurrection are saving for us.

b. Three points have been established: 1) the juridical teaching is borrowed entirely from the non-Orthodox; 2) it is not found in the Holy Scriptures or the Holy Fathers; 3) this teaching cannot be brought into accord with either the doctrine of Divine righteousness or with the doctrine of His mercy.

c. The juridical teaching about redemption gives occasion to enemies of Christianity. It is taken from the law of feudal knighthood.

d. These remnants of paganism among the Roman Catholics of the middle ages have been passed down as the basis of the principles of the duel.

e. Medieval and later scholastic theology strove to explicate the redemption of mankind by Christ’s sufferings from the point of view of a duel. It would be reasonable to conclude from this perspective that the Lord showed mercilessness and injustice.

f. Scholastic theologians reply that not only the Son manifested love in accepting the crucifixion, but so did the Father Who subjected Him to it.

g. It is not denied for a moment that salvation would have been impossible had not the Lord suffered and risen from the dead.

h. Some may object that the juridical theory is not alien to the Holy Scriptures and to Sacred Tradition.

i. The goal will be to bring our interpretation of the dogma into full accord with the Fathers.

Two: A More Detailed Discussion of the Sources of the Juridical Heresy

a. Professor Svetlov asserts that the primary significance for our salvation belongs not so much to Christ’s sufferings, as to His incarnation.

b. Archimandrite Hilarion (Troitsky) did not reach a conclusion concerning the relationship between Christ’s sufferings and our salvation.

c. In response to Professor Skaballanovich, it is argued that the contemporaries of the Fathers understood the redeeming grace so clearly that there was no need for an exposition of it?

d. The internal contradictions of the juridical theory have become a commonplace.

e. These questions arise: In what aspect of Christ’s incarnation and sufferings do we find the cause of the fact that we are made more perfect? Ought we to consider Christ’s incarnation as saving for us only because He manifested in the person a demonstration of perfection? Why is this salutary for us? Precisely what does it mean to say that “He received us into His nature”?

f. Archbishop Sergei’s dissertation argues that our salvation consists in out spiritual perfection, the subduing of lust, the gradual liberation from the passions, and communion with the Godhead.

g. The juridical theory could be called “moral monism.”

h. The Pauline term righteousness (dikaiosuni) received its juridical character among scholastic theologians.

i. In order to answer the question of why Christ’s suffering and resurrection are saving for us the relationship of these sacred events must be brought into relationship with our longing for perfection and our inner struggle between good and evil. This question must be answered: “How does Christ’s passion help us in this, and why are we unable to attain holiness and communion of God without it?”

j. Due to the work of others, there is no need to prove: 1) that the juridical teaching came from the Latins; and 2) that redemption is the gift of grace which bestows the capacity to work out our own salvation, and that salvation is spiritual perfection through moral struggle and attainment of communion with God.

What is the range of opinions to which Metropolitan Anthony is responding? Why are they insufficient?
What are the fundamental questions about the dogma of redemption which Metropolitan Anthony raises?
What does Metropolitan Anthony mean by calling the juridical theory of redemption “moral monism”?

Kontoglou on Scientific Theologians

2010-06-12T21:37:00.005+02:00

I've lifted the following from Joseph Patterson at Mind in the Heart, who in turn lifted it from Constantine Cavarnos, Meetings with Kontoglou.

At my next noteworthy meeting with Kontoglou, which took place at his home in the evening of Sunday, April 20, 1958, our conversation was chiefly on contemporary Greek theologians and on Byzantine art in the West.

Kontoglou spoke of certain scientific (epistemones) theologians, men who had studied theology in Europe and brought to the Greek universities a rather cerebral and so- called liberal mode of theologizing. Theocletos Pharmakidis (1784-1862), he noted, was the first Greek theologian of this type. Of recent ones, he cited Demetrios Balanos.

Such theologians, he said, regard traditional Orthodox theology, which comes from the roots of Christianity and from the Greek Fathers, as ossified, and they come as renewers of it. Actually, they lack real faith, lack interior, spiritual life. They view theology as a science, comparable to chemistry and physics, which employ discursive reason as their instrument and give rationalistic explanations.

In criticizing theologians of this type, he quoted a statement of St. Dionysios the Areopagite, that one cannot gain possession of the truths of Christianity in a purely intellectualistic manner, that these have to be experienced, lived. He also read the following passage from St. Symeon the New Theologian (11th century), the greatest of the mystics of Byzantium:
He who thinks that because he has been disciplined in secular wisdom he knows everything will never succeed in beholding the mysteries of God, until he first wills to humble himself and become a fool, divesting himself both of his pride and of the knowledge which he has acquired. For he who does this, and follows with unhesitating faith those who are wise in things divine, and is guided by them, comes together with them to the city of the living God. And led and illumined by the Holy Spirit he sees and is taught those things which no other man can behold and learn. And then he becomes one taught by God (Kontoglou, Pege Zoes, Fount of Life, 1951, p. 82).
In a book which was published four years after our meeting, he wrote about such theologians:
Today's theologians have become scientists, like the doctors, chemists and engineers, because by presenting themselves as such they will be honored by the world. And they go to Europe, the place of spiritual darkness, to receive a degree. They stuff their heads with a multitude of ungrounded and vain philosophies, and come to our land to transmit their unbelief instead of the Faith…. They do not enter into the Heavenly Kingdom, and hinder others from entering, as our Lord has said. Their punishment is that they do not see any of the wondrous things that are seen by believers, and hence they lack contrition and are cold. They are separated from God and His Kingdom, because they love the glory of men, instead of the glory of God (Semeion Mega, A Great Sign, 1962, pp. 16-17).
In another book, Papa-Nicholas Planas, which was published three years later, again emphasizing the importance of faith and piety, he says:
They endeavor today, with the plight of the Church, to find its causes, and hold that the answer is to be found in scientific theological education. But the evil is to be remedied only by education in piety (eusebeia)…. What will it benefit the Church if students go to (say) Geneva? They will return with Protestant principles. We are told by these same persons that our Church has remained behind a whole century. How good it would have been if the members of the Church today had the piety of those who lived a century ago! External [secular], scientific education is fine when it is joined to piety (Athens, 1965, p. 46).
From Meetings with Kontoglou, by Constantine Cavarnos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1992), pp. 128-130.

The Elder Porphyrios on Simplicity

2010-06-12T21:26:00.003+02:00

The Elder Porphyrios, in Wounded by Love:

When simplicity is lacking and you say, 'I'll do this, that and the other, and God will give me what I ask for', then nothing happens. Yes indeed, I should do this, that and the other, but with such secrecy and such simplicity and such meekness, that even I who ask for the thing am unconscious of it.

Do everything simply and meekly. Do nothing with ulterior motives. Don't say 'I'll do this in order to have that result', but do it naturally, without taking cognizance of it. That is, pray simply and don't think about what God will bestow on your soul. Don't make any calculations. You know of course, what God bestows when you enter into communion with Him, but it is as if you don't know. ...

Your heart must be simple, and not divided and dishonest, sincere and not devious and self-seeking. All people desire to find a good and simple soul; they feel comfortable with such a person and they approach him without fear and without suspicion. And such a person lives with inner peace ad has good relations with everyone and with all creation.

See also "Simplicity" - Chapter 87 from Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works.

The Mark of Orthodoxy

2010-06-12T21:04:00.005+02:00

Photios Kontoglou writes:

"The mark of Orthodoxy is simplicity of heart which brings faith."

I couldn't agree more. I've been very sick for two years. My illness has at time striped away everything external, leaving me alone with myself. Everything superfluous has slipped away. My faith has been tried to my very core, and I've been left searching for essentials. Academic learning has been of no use to me, nor have learned books. I've found consolation above all in the reading of the New Testament which, in its simplicity, more than any other book places us face to face with Christ. I've rediscovered a simple and real piety that had gotten lost underneath my sophistication. I've learned to keep it simple, as the cliche goes, and it indeed has led to a faith that book learning never could.

Department of Customer Service

2010-06-12T18:25:00.004+02:00

This web log began as something entirely private and personal. Having recently left academia (both as student and teacher), I found that my reading had become entirely passive, since there was no need to criticize, interpret, or present the material. The original intention of this blog was simply as a depository for reading notes. I gradually accumulated readers, then got a big boost when I got an endorsement from my friend Patrick Barnes at the Orthodox Christian Information Center and a couple of other blogs. My daily readership has remained pretty steady at a little over 300 people a day.

Now that I have readers, I feel an obligation to provide daily content. I get very little feedback in either comments or emails, however, and therefore don’t have much of an idea of how people respond to the blog. To help me to make this site better, I’d be very grateful if readers could let me know, either in the comments below or by email what it is they like and what it is they don’t like. What do you actually read, and what do you simply scan? Do you like the questions and answers with Fr Job (I still have about 975 to go!)? Would you like more translations, or more book summaries/reviews? More from myself? Please, really, do let me know.

Now, to the reading group. For reasons that I can’t entirely comprehend, it hasn’t really taken off. But this week we’ll be looking at Metropolitan Anthony’s “Dogma of Redemption,” which is the essay that everybody talks and argues about. So if you have a copy of the book (or can read Russian) and haven’t been actively participating, now’s a good time to start.

I eagerly await your comments, whether positive or negative!

All Saints of Britain and Ireland

2010-06-12T12:26:00.011+02:00

Tomorrow, the third Sunday after Pentecost, is also the Feast of All Saints of Britain and Ireland. This feast was established by decree of the Russian Orthodox Church on August 21, 2007. (Today also, incidentally, is the commemoration of All Saint of Novgorod, All Saints of Volgoda, All Saints of Belarus, All Saints of Pskov, and All Saints of St Petersburg.)

Here is a list of all the saints included in the above icon:

SAINTS INCLUDED IN THE ICON OF ALL SAINTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND
All these Saints are Saints of the Undivided Church, honoured in this country by the Orthodox up to 1054. We are simply putting back into the calendar what was in it up to that date. In the notes we have not included the more fanciful details from medieval sources but have kept to sober information.
Five Saints of the Universal calendar are included because of their links with these islands: Holy Apostle Aristobulos of the Seventy, because he evangelized Britain, St Joseph of Arimathea who came to Britain, St George who is Patron of England as well as of Greece and Russia; and Apostles Andrew (Patron of Scotland) and Simon Zelotes (who preached and was martyred in Britain).
ST ADRIAN, born in Africa, was twice offered the vacant archbishopric of Canterbury and twice declined. However, on the second occasion he suggested the Greek monk Theodore. St Theodore was accepted, on the condition that Adrian go with him. The flourishing state of the English Church in St Theodore's time owed much to St Adrian. He died in 710.
ST AEDH MACBRICC founded many churches at Meath of which he was Bishop. He is particularly invoked for the cure of headache. He died in 588.
ST AFAN, grandson of a king, was a disciple of St Dewi. He died in Llanafan, Powys.
ST AIDAN, one of the most glorious of the Celtic Saints, was a leading evangelizer of the North. Originally from St Columba's monastery of Iona he became Bishop of Lindisfarne. Many incidents are recorded concerning his love and humility. He was friend of kings and beggars. He died in 651.
ST ALBAN, Protomartyr of England. When still a pagan he sheltered a Christian priest, was converted by him, and when soldiers came for the priest during the persecution of Diocletian Alban, dressed in the priest's clothes, gave himself up and was beheaded in his place. He suffered in 303.
ST ALDHELM was the first English scholar of distinction, and became first Bishop of Sherborne. His brief episcopacy was marked by energy and enterprise. He died in 709.
ST ALPHEGE, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr. When the Danes invaded Canterbury Alphege was taken captive and a ransom demanded for him. He would not allow the ransom to be paid and the Danes killed him. He suffered in 1012.
ST ASAPH, a monk who was trained in the discipline of the monastic life by St Kentigern Mungo, whom he succeeded as bishop of the diocese of St Asaph in North Wales in the 6th century.
ST ATRACTA who is renowned for her powers of curing illness. In her lifetime her convent at Killaraght was the scene of many miraculous healing. She lived in the 6th century.
ST AUGUSTINE, sent by St Gregory Dialogus and consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. With a band of forty monks he evangelized England. He founded two more episcopal sees, London and Rochester. He died in 605.
ST AUSTOL lived as a hermit for many years in Cornwall and has given his name to the town of St Austell. He worked with St Samson in his missionary endeavours in Brittany. He died in the 6th century.
ST BEOCA founded a monastery at Lough Derg in Donegal, Ireland, in the late 5th century.
ST BEUNO was the uncle and spiritual father of St Winifred. Through his prayers she was miraculously restored to life. He founded monasteries in North Wales. He died in early 7th century.
ST BIRINUS missionized the people of Wessex and set up his see at Dorchester on the Thames. He baptized King Cyneglis, built churches and brought many to God through his labours. He died in the 7th century.
ST BONIFACE, a native of Devonshire, he missionized Germany, and the results of his labours endured. He brought other missionaries from England, including women and died in Friesland in 754 or 755.
ST BRANWALLADER was a companion of St Samson of Dol. He was a Celt from Brittany who eventually became Bishop of Jersey in the Channel Islands. He died in the 6th century.
ST BRANNOCK was tutor to the children of the Welsh ruler Brychan in the 6th century. He accompanied King Brychan on a pilgrimage to the Tombs of the Apostles, returning through Brittany where he stayed for may years, founding churches. He returned to Britain, 'floating over the sea on a stone coffin', and settled at Braunton in Devonshire. His holy relics are today believed to be interred under the altar of the parish church there.
ST BRENDAN THE VOYAGER, an Irish monk who had 3,000 monks under his direction and founded many monasteries. He set sail with a band of 33 monks, and the miraculous events of his voyages are recorded. He visited America and also travelled extensively in Scotland, Wales and Brittany. After many years of monastic toil he died in about 578.
ST BRIGID, the daughter of an Irish chieftain, established the first convent for women in Ireland. The Book of Lismore records: "She was innocent, she was abstinent, she was prayerful, she was patient: she was glad in God's commandments: she was firm, she was loving: she was a consecrated casket for keeping Christ's Body and His Blood: she was a temple of God, her heart and mind were a throne of rest for the Holy Spirit". She died in 524.
ST BRYNACH left Ireland in the 5th century and settled in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where he remained a pious hermit.
ST CADWALADR was the last king of Powys (Wales) who gave up his kingdom to become a monk and went on a pilgrimage to Rome where he died in the 9th century (an ancestor of Fr David)
ST CAINNECH. Devotion to him in Ireland is second only to that accorded to St Patrick and St Brigid. He is renowned as a poet and lover of lonely places. He founded many monasteries and later went to Scotland where he worked with St Columba of Iona. After a life resplendent with miracles he died in 599.
ST CEDD founded the Abbey of Lastingham. He became Bishop of the East Saxons and founded many churches.
ST COLMAN OF LINDISFARNE. A monk of Iona, he became third Bishop of Lindisfarne and represented the Celtic party at the fateful Synod of Whitby in 644 at which the Celtic customs and traditions were suppressed. He and his fellow monks did not accept the decisions of the Synod and withdrew first to Iona and then to Ireland, where he established two monasteries to maintain the Celtic customs. He died in 675.
ST COLMAN OF ARMAGH was a disciple of St Patrick, by whom he was buried.
ST COLUMBA OF IONA is one of the best-known spiritual giants of the Celtic Church Educated by St Finian of Clonard, he was ordained priest and spent many years teaching and preaching. A youth who had taken refuge with him was slain by the king, Columba avenged his death, and in penitence for the battle he had caused, he went into voluntary exile in Scotland where he founded the monastery of Iona. For centuries the centre of the evangelization of the North, the monastery's influence endured through the centuries and is still a place of pilgrimage. St Columba died in 593.
ST CUTHBERT used to take long journeys on horseback and on foot into the remotest parts of Northumbria to minister to the scattered people and keep the spirit of Christianity alive among them. Consecrated Bishop, he continued in the same way. A worker of miracles, he attracted people by the beauty of holiness which shone from him. He died in 687.
ST CUTHMAN, a confessor who lived a holy life as a shepherd in Sussex in the 9th century.
ST DAMIAN. In the 2nd century he came to preach the Gospel in Britain at the invitation of St Lucius, King of the Britons.
ST DEINIOL, son of a Celtic chieftain, founded two monasteries in North Wales, both named Bangor. With St Dewi and St Dyfrig held synod of bishops in 545. He died about 584.
ST DEWI (DAVID), consecrated at Jerusalem. His birth, early years, and the rest of his life were attended by miracles. He founded monasteries which followed the way of life of the Desert Fathers. Although his rule was strict many monks came to him. He went with St Teilo and St Padarn on pilgrimage to Jerusalem (where he was consecrated). On returning to Wales he attended the great Synod of Landewi Brefi where he was acclaimed leader in Wales and his monastery there was designated the chief monastery of Britain. The decrees of the Synod were written down by St David and accepted by the whole Church in Britain. He died in 589.
ST DUBTACH, Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland from 497 until his righteous repose in 513.
ST DUNSTAN, born 10 years after the death of King Alfred, founded a monastery at Glastonbury and later became Archbishop of Canterbury. The present coronation rite of the English sovereign derives from that compiled and used by Dunstan for the coronation of King Edgar. As Archbishop he was a champion of church discipline; but although many feared his sternness all marvelled at his sanctity, so that he became known as 'The good Archbishop'. He died in 988.
ST DYFRIG, the Abbot-Bishop who is one of the most famous of the Saints of Wales. He was the founder of Welsh monasticism, establishing many monasteries in Wales and the West of England. In old age he retired to the Island of Bardsey where he died in 545.
ST EANSWYTHE, Saxon princess and founder of the first convent in England in Folkestone. She died around 640.
ST EDBERT, a monk in Lindisfarne who succeeded St Cuthbert as Bishop. He died in 698.
ST EDITH OF WILTON was the natural daughter of King Edgar and Wulfrida. Her mother took her as a baby to the nunnery at Wilton, near Salisbury, and she lived there all her short life, 'knowing not the world rather than forsaking it'. She refused the abbacy of Wilton and other convents, preferring to serve her sisters in the most humble capacities.
ST EDMUND, king of East Anglia and Martyr. He was captured in battle against the Danes and, refusing to share his Christian kingdom with the heathen invaders, he was tied to a tree and shot through with arrows, then beheaded, in 869. He was very soon revered as a martyr and his body was enshrined at Bury St Edmunds where a great abbey was founded in 1020.
ST EDWARD THE MARTYR. The son of King Edgar, he was assassinated in 978 at the instigation of his stepmother, and a year later he came to be venerated as a Saint and Martyr. His relics rested in the nuns' church at Wareham.
ST EDWIN, King, baptized with his nobles and many others by St Paulinus of York. He reigned in a Christian spirit, bringing peace and order to his kingdom. He was killed fighting the pagan Mercians and was revered as a Saint and Martyr. He died in 632.
ST EGWIN, Bishop of Worcester and founder of Evesham Monastery. The foundation was inspired by a vision of the mother of God. He died about 715.
ST ELSTAN, monk at Abington Abbey in the reign of Edgar the Peaceable, then bishop of Winchester. He died in 981.
ST EOCHOD is remembered as Apostle of the Picts in Scotland where he preached the Gospel in accordance with the wishes of St Columba. He died in 597.
ST ERCONWALD. St Theodore of Canterbury appointed Erconwald Bishop of the East Saxons with his See in London. He founded a monastery at Chertsey and another for nuns at Barking. He died in 693.
ST ETHELBURGA, sister of St Erconwald, was appointed by him Abbess of the monastery at Barking. She is said to have shown herself in every way worthy of her brother, in holiness of life and in care for those under her. Miracles were recorded at her monastery during her lifetime. She died about 676.
ST ETHELDREDA, or Audrey, one of the most revered of Anglo Saxon women Saints. The daughter of King Anna of the East Angles, she retired to the double monastery which she had founded at Ely. Many miracles were attributed to her intercession. She died in 697.
ST ETHELWALD. A monk at Glastonbury under St Dunstan. He founded a monastery at Abingdon, and later a number of others including Peterborough. He was consecrated Bishop of Winchester. He died in 984.
ST FAILBHE, Abbot of Iona in the 7th century.
ST FELIX was born in Burgundy, and went to preach in East Anglia. He converted king Anna and his daughters, founded the monastery at Soham and many schools (one of them in Cambridge). He built his cathedral in Dunwich. He died in 646.
ST FINIAN, an outstanding Irish scholar who went to Scotland to be trained in the monastic life at Candida Casa, the great monastic school founded by St Ninian. On returning to Ireland he founded a monastery at Moville in County Down of which he became Abbot-Bishop. He died in 576.
ST FRIDESWIDE, Patron Saint of the city and university of Oxford, where she founded a monastery. Her shrine there became a centre for pilgrimage. She died about 735.
ST FUGATIUS. With St Damian he came to preach the Gospel in Britain in the 2nd century at the invitation of St Lucius, King of the Britons.
Ss FURSEY and FOILLAN. St Fursey was an Irish monk who came to England and founded a monastery At Burgh Castle in Norfolk, in the deserted remains of a Roman fortress. During an illness his soul was parted from his body and he saw heaven and hell. So great were the crowds of pilgrims who came to him that he departed into solitude, leaving the monastery to the care of his brother St Foillan. After living as a hermit he founded another monastery at Lagny in France. He died there in 633 and four years later, when his body was moved to a more worthy resting place, it was found to be incorrupt. His brother St Foillan, Hieromartyr, after leaving Burgh Castle founded another monastery at Fosses in Belgium, where he was murdered in 655.
ST GERAINT, confessor, king, friend and father of Saints, who in the 6th century was the spiritual son of St Teilo, at whose hands he received the Last rites before entering the heavenly abode. In the world St Geraint was King of Devon.
ST GERMAN, a British Celt who was converted to Christianity by St German of Auxerre, whose name he took. He received a martyr's crown in present-day Normandy in 460.
ST GERMAN of MAN was born in Brittany and went to Ireland to stay with St Patrick. He became Bishop of the Isle of Man about 466.
ST GILDAS THE WISE was born in Scotland and became of pupil of St Illtyd of Wales. He was extremely learned and became one of the foremost historians of the Celtic era. For much of his life he remained in the West Country as a solitary, before visiting Ireland and Brittany. He died at the Monastery of Rhuys (which he had founded) in 570.
ST GLADYS, daughter of King Brychan of Brecknock, wife of St Gwynllyn, and mother of St Cadoc , in the 6th century.
ST GUTHLAC. As a youth he entered the army of King Ethelred of Mercia, but soon left it to enter the monastery at Repton, where he engaged in ascetic struggle. From there he withdrew to a hermitage in the Fens where he lived in the tradition of the Desert Fathers. He had a close relationship with birds and animals. He died in his hermitage in 719, and the place became Crowland Abbey in later times.
ST HEDDA, disciple of St Birinus. When the Diocese of Dorchester was divided, St Hedda was consecrated Bishop of the separated part. He was known as a good and just man who in carrying out his duties was guided rather by an inborn love of virtue than by what he had read in books.
ST HELIER, born in Belgium of pagan Saxon parents, he was instructed in the Faith by his Christian tutor. He was baptized and trained in the ascetic life at the monastery of Nanteuil, and also taught the Celtic language. From there he went to a group of strict hermits on the Isle of Jersey and later withdrew to a cave in the rocks. From there he missionised the local inhabitants. When pirates raided the island St Helier preached Christ to them and was killed, thus becoming Jersey's first Martyr, in 560.
ST HERBERT, disciple and friend of St Cuthbert, was venerated in the Lake District and is still remembered there. He lived as a hermit on the island in Lake Derwent Water which bears his name. He died in 687.
ST HIEU, Abbess of Tadcaster, Yorkshire, was instructed in the monastic life by St Aidan. She died in 657.
ST HILDA was Abbess of the double monastery of Whitby. She supported the Celtic party at the Synod of Whitby, and was counsellor of Kings, Bishops and ordinary folk. Filled with wisdom, all who knew her called her Mother, such was her godliness and grace. She died in 680.
ST IA was born in Ireland and migrated to Cornwall, settling at Porthya, now St Ives. She was to have travelled to Cornwall with St Fingar and his companions but somehow they left without her. As a sign that her mission was pleasing to God, a leaf was miraculously enlarged to carry her over the sea and she who was last to leave was the first to arrive. For many years she laboured for Christ before receiving a martyr's crown in 450.
ST ILLTYD, one of the most celebrated of the Welsh Saints, spent his early life at court, but renounced the world and became a monk. He was a disciple of St Cadoc and later founded the abbey known as Llan-Illtut (Llantwit) which became a 'nursery' for many of the Saints of the Celtic church. He died in 505.
ST JUSTUS, son of St Geraint. He became a monk and lived in a solitary cell. He eventually settled in a place which perpetuated his name, St Just-in-Penwith. He died in the 6th century.
ST KENELM, King of Mercia and Martyr, venerated in South and West Britain.. His life says he was seven years old when murdered in 821. His shrine was at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire.
ST KENNERA, a holy virgin who lived as a solitary at Kirk-Kinner in Scotland (Galloway) in the 5th century.
ST KENTIGERN MUNGO, missionary Bishop in Strathclyde, now Glasgow. When driven out by persecution he went first to Cumberland and then to Wales where he founded the monastery at St Asaph. He returned to Scotland and continued his missionary work there, travelling everywhere by foot. He was a severe ascetic, spending the nights in prayer and psalmody. He performed many miracles and died in 603.
ST KEVIN is chiefly remembered as the founder of the great abbey of Glendalough where he died in 618.
ST MAELRHYS witnessed to the Faith on the isle of Bardsey (the Isle of Saints) in the 6th century.
ST MACHAR was an Irishman who crossed to Iona with St Columba and later became a missionary bishop in central Scotland with his cathedral at Old Aberdeen, it is said of him that he 'brought many to the Faith, erected many churches, extinguished the worship of false gods and cast down idols', in the 6th century.
ST MACNIS was baptized by St Patrick and later consecrated Bishop by him. He died in 514.
ST MELOR, a boy Martyr who was murdered by his uncle wishing to usurp his father’s throne. There are churches dedicated to him in Wiltshire, and a holy well in Callington, Cornwall.
ST MEWAN, disciple and relative of St Samson of Dol. He entered a monastery in Brittany and later founded another. He died in 617.
ST MONENNA, a pious virgin who built one of the first convents in Ireland. She is known as 'daughter of Elijah' because she sought perfection on a mountainside. She and her companions imitated the lives of the desert fathers and obtained instruction in the monastic life from Candida Casa. She died in 517.
ST MORWENNA, a daughter of Brychan who led a virtuous life and witnessed to Christ in Cornwall in the 5th century. Her memory is perpetuated in several place-names in Cornwall.
ST NECTAN. He desired to follow the eremitical life of St Anthony and set sail, intending to settle wherever his boat should rest. This proved to be Hartland in Devonshire. He fell into the hands of robbers, preached the Gospel to them, and was beheaded. Miraculously he picked up his head and carried it to a nearby fountain. One of his two murderers was converted at the sight, and buried him. Many miracles occurred at the place where his relics rested.
ST NEOT probably lived at the time of King Alfred the Great (10th century). He was thought to be a monk of Glastonbury and later a hermit in Cornwall.
ST NINIAN was the son of a Christian chieftain. In his youth he went on pilgrimage to Rome and venerated at the Tombs of the Apostles and at the Catacombs. He was consecrated Bishop and studied with St Ambrose of Milan and St Martin of Tours before returning to Britain. He founded the famous monastery of Candida Casa with its 'University', the only educational centre in northern Britain, since the Romans had closed all the schools when their troops left. He laboured for more than 30 years for the conversion of northern Britain. He died in 432.
ST NONNA, mother of St David. She went on a missionary journey to Cornwall.
ST OSWALD, king and Martyr. He was baptized on the holy Island of Iona, and later sent for missionaries from there to evangelize his kingdom. In response, St Aidan came to Northumbria and established the monastery of Lindisfarne. The champion of heathenism, Penda of Mercia, attacked Northumbria and Oswald was slain in battle, praying for his subjects with his last breath.
ST OSWIN, King and Martyr. He succeeded his cousin St Oswald. Educated by St Aidan, he was renowned for courtesy and humility. He was murdered in 651.
ST OSYTH, Queen. She was the wife of Sighere, King of the East Saxons, and she founded a monastery at Chick, where she died. The village there later came to be called St Osyth.
ST PATRICK, patron of Ireland, known as the Enlightener of Ireland. His father was a deacon and a Roman official in Northern Britain, but Patrick was captured and carried into slavery in Ireland. Enduring hardship, his Christian spirit developed. He escaped to France and was educated by St Martin of Tours and prepared for his missionary labours in Ireland. He was consecrated Bishop and returned to Ireland in 405. When he died in 463 most of Ireland had been converted.
ST PAULINUS OF YORK was one of the second band of missionaries sent from Rome to England in 601 and was consecrated by St Justus of Canterbury. When Ethelburga, sister of king Edbald of Kent, went to York to marry King Edwin of Northumbria, St Paulinus accompanied her as chaplain. He baptized King Edwin, his nobles and many others, at Pascha.
ST PETROC was the son of a Welsh king, but when his father died he refused to succeed him but became a monk. He spent some time in Ireland and then with three companions, St Croiden, St Megan and St Dagan, he came to Cornwall, establishing many churches there and in Devon, He also undertook missionary journeys and pilgrimages, visiting Brittany, Rome and Jerusalem. He died in 564.
ST SERIOL, a 6th century Welsh Saint who has given his name to Yriys-Seriol, a Welsh island.
ST SERVAN, Apostle of the Orkney Islands in the 6th century. He became Abbot of Culross where he educated St Kentigern Mungo. He reposed at Culross where he was buried.
Ss SOCRATES and STEPHEN, who were martyred in Monmouthshire in 304 under the persecution of Diocletian.
ST SWITHIN, Bishop of Winchester and advisor to Egbert, King of West Saxons. He died in 862.
ST TERNAN was a missionary among the Picts in Northern Britain in the 6th century. He was founder and Abbot-Bishop of Culross monastery in Fifeshire. He was educated at Candida Casa.
ST THENEVA was the mother of St Kentigern Mungo and with him is venerated in the Glasgow area (6th century).
ST THEODORE OF CANTERBURY, A Greek monk from Tarsus, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. His achievements were chiefly in organization, administration and discipline.
ST ULTAN was brother of Ss Fursey and Foillan. He succeeded St Foillan as Abbot of Fosses, and he too was revered there, as a Saint. He died in 686.
ST URITH OF CHITTLEHAMPTON, a Celtic maiden of pure and holy life who had been converted to Christianity by the Bishop St Kea in the 6th century. With patience she suffered the jealousy of her heathen stepmother, who eventually was overcome with hatred and bribed haymakers to attack and kill St Urith with their scythes. The place of her martyrdom was marked by the miraculous appearance of a spring in the Devonshire village of Chittlehampton.
ST WALBURGA, a nun of Wimborne. She was a sister of St Willibald and with him joined St Boniface's missionary band to Germany, where she died in 779. Her shrine became famous for the miraculous oil which exuded from it.
Ss WILLIBALD and WYNBALD, brothers, accompanied St Boniface on his mission to Germany in the 8th century. Before that Winebald had been the first known English pilgrim to the Holy Land.
ST WINIFRED, a niece of St Beuno of Wales, was beheaded by a heathen suitor when she defended her virginity. St Beuno arrived at the scene and prayed that the martyr's body might be made whole and restored to life. This was granted, and in thanksgiving St Winifred became a nun, and later Abbess of her monastery in Denbighshire. She died in 650.
ST WITHBURGA, the youngest of St Etheldreda's three saintly sisters, lived in solitude for some years at Holkham, near Walsingham. She later founded a monastery at Dereham where she died in 743. Her body was found incorrupt 50 years later and was translated to Ely to lie with her sisters'. In the spot where she died at Dereham a well sprang forth with healing properties, and it is still there today.
ST YRCHARD, a native of Scotland who was ordained by St Ternan. They laboured together to preach the Gospel to the heathen Picts in the 5th century.

Other online resources:

Liturgical service.
Three homilies by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, from 1978, 1988, 1999.
Fr Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition (selections).
Timeline of Orthodoxy in the British Isles.
Many icons with brief lives.

The Third Sunday After Pentecost

2010-06-12T09:46:00.008+02:00

Tomorrow is the third Sunday after Pentecost. On it we commemorate the memory of the Apostle Hermas of the Seventy. Here is how St Nikolai Velimirovich presents the life of St Hermas:

One of the Seventy, he is mentioned in the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans (16:14). A Greek by birth, he spent a long time in Rome. He was bishop in Philippoupolis, and finished his life a martyr. He compiled the very instructive book `The Shepherd' through revelations from the angels of God. Hermas was a rich man, but fell into extreme poverty through his own sins and those of his sons. A man appeared to him, clad in white and with a staff in his hand, and told him that he was the angel of repentance, sent to him before the end of his life. The angel gave him twelve commandments: 1. To believe in God. 2. To live in simplicity and innocence. 3. To love truth and flee from falsehood. 4. To guard his thoughts in chastity. 5. To learn patience and magnanimity of soul. 6. To know that a good and an evil spirit attend every man. 7. To fear God, but not the devil. 8. To perform every good deed and to restrain himself from every evil one. 9. To pray to God in faith from the depths of his heart, so that his prayer might be heard. 10. To preserve himself from melancholy, the daughter of doubt, and from anger. 11. To try true and false prophecies. 12. To preserve himself from every evil desire.

Online resources:

Menaion service in Greek and Slavonic.
Octoechos service (tone 2) in Greek, Slavonic, and English.
Epistle reading: Romans 5: 1-10.
Gospel reading: Matthew 6: 22-33.
St John Chrysostom, homily 21 on Matthew.
Blessed Theophylact, Gospel commentary.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, sermon.
Archbishop Andrei of Rockland, sermon.
Fr Anthony Phillips, sermon.
Fr Seraphim Holland, sermon.
Fr George Dimopoulos, sermon.
Fr Anthony Coniaris, sermon.
The Shepherd of Hermas.

On the Day of Communion

2010-06-12T09:45:00.001+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: How should one behave on the day one has received Communion?

Answer: After Communion one must preserve the holiness. It’s sensible to restrain one’s tongue and to avoid all idle talk. One must flee from everything vain, from the passionate, and in general from everything spiritually unhelpful. One needs to be especially attentive to oneself, because on such a day the enemy without fail tries to lead one into temptation. If Communion was on a weekday, then one must without fail fulfill one’s responsibilities. Nothing hinders working. The opinion that on the day of Communion one cannot kiss icons or the hand of a priest is unfounded. There is no indication of this in the Holy Fathers or the liturgical books. It’s better to restrain from prostrations until evening, because one has received the greatest holy thing: the Body and Blood of the Lord. But if during a moleben everyone falls to their knees, then you can too do so without worrying. The main thing is to be in a joyful disposition and to thank God.

The Theology of Illness (2 of 3)

2010-06-12T09:39:00.002+02:00

The second chapter of Jean-Claude Larchet’s remarkable study, The Theology of Illness, is entitled “The Spiritual Meaning of Illness.” The author begins with a treatment of the ambivalence of health and illness. The meaning of the two is ambivalent: neither is an absolute good nor an absolute evil. Larchet writes:

By itself illness does not have the power to separate man from God; therefore from a spiritual point of view it cannot be considered to be a source of evil in his life. St John Chrysostom notes: “If the soul is in good health, bodily illness can in no way harm a man.” Illness, then, is only evil in appearance. It can even constitute a blessing for man in the sense that, if one uses it appropriately, one can draw from it considerable spiritual benefit, thereby making of what was originally a sin of mortality into an instrument of salvation.

Indeed, “in certain cases and from the point of view of that which is spiritually good for man, illness can be paradoxically considered as a higher good than health and therefore as preferable to health.” But such an attitude requires looking at illness as something more than a simple biological reality. “In the corruption and suffering of the body,” Larchet writes, one experiences the weakness of one’s own earthly being, the ephemeral character of one’s existence in this world, and, generally speaking, one’s fragility, inadequacy, contingency, and personal limits. Understood correctly, one’s spiritual intelligence is “refined by suffering.”

To take a philosophical attitude towards illness, as the Fathers urge us to, “means to strive to discover the intentions and aims of God with regard to ourselves.” The suffering that accompanies illness “should be considered in the same way as the usually inevitable side-effects of medicines used by physicians. St John Chrysostom writes:

The physician is not only a physician when he orders baths, adequate nourishment, and when he order the patient to walk through flower gardens, but also when he burns and cuts... Thus knowing that God loves us more than all the physicians combined, we need not worry not have any need to ask him to justify the means he employs. Rather, whether he wants to be indulgent or severe, let us abandon ourselves to him. For by either of these means, his desire is always to save us and to unite us to himself.

The author next turns to a consideration of illness as an opportunity for spiritual progress:

There are two ways in which we can say that illness is due to sin. In the first place, illness occurs as a consequence of “original” sin, a factor common to the descendants of Adam, or as the result of some person sin. In the second place, illness occurs as a means given by God for man’s purification from sin.

Sickness and suffering can even take the place of ascetic practices. St Syncletica writes: “Fasting and sleeping on the ground are prescribed for us because of pleasures. But if illness weakens these pleasures, there is no longer any justification for these practices.”

To emerge victorious from the testing of illness, “a person must first of all avoid passively submitting to the illness and its suffering, and allowing himself to be dominated, enclosed and beaten down by it. To the contrary, it is essential that the person do all possible to preserve a dynamic attitude of vigilance, in expectation of receiving divine assistance.” In the face of suffering, the virtue of patience is necessary above all others, and it is chiefly by prayer that an ill person receives help from God. Larchet writes:

God gives us what is spiritually the best for us. From this point of view, restoration of health is sometimes beneficial. But sometimes continuation of the illness provides a providential opportunity to receive an even greater benefit.

By praying only for health, “the ill person merely seeks the fulfillment of his own will, because the human will always desires the lessening of pain and suffering.” Prayer during illness “should not be limited to requests; it should also include thanksgiving.” For illness to be a way of holiness “patience and thanksgiving [must] come first.” With regard to patience, St John Cassian writes:

The advantage that illness can sometimes present appears quite close with the beatitude illustrated by the poor, ulcerated Lazarus. Scripture makes no mention at all in his regard of any virtue. His great patience in supporting his poverty and illness alone merits the blessed fortune to be admitted into the bosom of Abraham.

God willing, I’ll post on the third and final chapter, “Christian Paths toward Healing,” tomorrow.

Illustration: The parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

Reading Group Schedule

2010-06-12T09:38:00.001+02:00

Here’s the reading schedule for the final chapter, “The Moral Idea of the Dogma of Redemption” (the chapter you’ve all been waiting for):

Sunday: part one and two.
Monday: part three.
Tuesday: part four
Wednesday: part five.
Thursday: part six.
Friday: part seven.
Saturday: part eight.

Reading Group, 4g

2010-06-12T09:36:00.002+02:00

To believe in Church means to believe that:

a. Jesus Christ reestablished the unity of human nature lost by man through the fall.

b. This unity is a living moral force.

c. This force always exists and earth and is the sole means through which God leads people to salvation.

d. People in the Church comprise one spiritual being. They so strengthen this unity that it
resembles the unity of the Divine Nature. Thus it fills each human personality with holiness.

e. The fullness of Divine gifts is preserved at all times in the culture of people for salvation.

f. The Church militant is designated to preserve unharmed the source of divine life and to transmit it both through teaching and prayer.

g. The task of each person wishing to be saved is to bring himself into accord with these holy dispositions of the Church.

h. The free accord with the life of the Church is a free obedience.

i. Life in the Church is encountered by the life of each individual. The Church must have certain defined external forms. The general bases which define this external order is the New Testament. These more particular aspects of Church order comprise an object of Holy Tradition.

j. All external conditions which define the Church are filled with the same spirit of love and holiness. The conditions are not external in the literal sense of this word, but in that they must somehow be visible in order to guide the life of souls.

Has Metropolitan Anthony successfully defied the moral idea of the dogma of the Church? What was his argument, and how did it progress through the course of the essay?

St Nikolai Velimirovich on Tolstoy

2010-06-11T12:57:00.004+02:00

Since War and Peace is all the rage these days in the Orthodox blogosphere, I thought the following words from St Nikolai Velimirovich, which I've partially quoted before, might be apropos:

THE HOLY SYNOD AND TOLSTOI.

When Count Tolstoi was excommunicated by the Holy Synod of Russia because "he preached the teachings which are contrary to the Christian faith," the world was divided in opinion and sympathy into two parts. The partisans of Tolstoi were in the majority in the Western world; those of the Holy Synod in Russia and the Orthodox East. Yet Holy Russia rejected Tolstoi with much more compassion than Western Europe approved of him. It was a human tragedy which is not often repeated in history and was understood only by Russia. The conflict was more stern than appeared on the surface. The problems in question meant not less than the dilemma: either the Christian world was to continue or it must return to the starting point of human history and begin all anew. A little blade of grass in the field said to its green neighbours: "Why do we grow up? It is nonsense and pain. In growing up we grow in complications, which enhance the darkness and pain of our lives. I propose, therefore, to go back into seeds, from which we have grown big and unhappy."

So spoke one blade of grass to the field. And the field replied: "Although perhaps we are growing in nonsense and pain, still we cannot return, we must grow and go our way in the belief that we are not mistaken."

That is the simile of Tolstoi and the Holy Synod.

A CIRCLE OR A DRAMA.

Tolstoi perceived life as a circle, with the beginning everywhere and with the end everywhere. The Holy Synod, representing Slav Orthodoxy, perceived life as a drama with a beginning and an end in space and time. From his point of view, Tolstoi thought it possible for mankind to stop a mistaken course of things and to begin anew, to cast away all the burdens of culture, of State, Church, militarism, worldly ambitions, the vanities of towns, to draw the curtain on the past and to come back to the field and forest, to plough and sow, to listen to the life of Nature and to live with Nature and God in unison.

The Holy Synod, from their point of view, thought that the past is the very foundation of the present and future, and that in separating us from the past we were as an uprooted plant, condemned to inevitable death, while in continuing the world-drama we are going the only possible way. The beginning of sin in this drama is in Adam, the beginning of salvation is in Christ. We cannot live without taking notice even of the life of Adam and without connecting our life with Christ's. And all the other millions of human beings between those two milestones, between Adam and Christ, and Christ and us, are greater or smaller foundations, or conditions, or even disturbances of our own life.

"My understanding is against your traditions," said Tolstoi.

"Our traditions are against your understandings," replied the Holy Synod.

But that was not all.

The difference existed also in views on

HAPPINESS AND ATONEMENT.

Tolstoi was much troubled by the suffering of men. He himself saw, felt and described an immense amount of this suffering in various forms. The problem of happiness was his most cherished problem. He believed that men can be made happy in this life, and even more—that they are created in order to be happy. He refused quite definitely the idea of atonement as inconceivable and contrary to the idea of God. Human life has been normal and happy as long as men lived their simple life without towns and without all urban complications. Life can again be made a normal and happy one as God wills, if we only return to the primitive simplicity of the peasants.

The Holy Synod was not opposed to the happiness of men, but they did not believe either that happiness is attainable in this world or that it is the aim of our life on earth. Did it not occur quite in the beginning of the world's history that there lived on earth two brothers, Cain and Abel, two farmers, without any burden of culture, and with all the Tolstoian simplicity of life? Yet is it not reported that one killed the other?

Life is a drama, a tragic drama even, and not at all a metaphysical immobility or a quasi-mobility, or even an eternal circulus viciosus. There are three stages of human life: the first stage before the sin, in God-like naïveté, the second in sin, and the third after the atonement, life in perfection, when there will be "a new earth and a new heaven." We are in the middle stage, where life means sin and atonement, therefore in the most tragic stage. Life in the first and third stages may consist entirely in contemplation, but the life which we are actually living consists of deeds, of sins and virtues, i.e., of the struggle between good and evil, of suffering and purification, of a tragic heroism, of atonement.

The Theology of Illness (1 of 3)

2010-06-11T12:25:00.004+02:00

Question of health and sickness have been very much on my mind these past two years, and for this reason I have decided to return to two books authored by the remarkable French Orthodox scholar, Jean-Claude Larchet: The Theology of Illness and Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing, (the third volume of the trilogy, The Therapy of Spiritual Illness is due out in English this summer from Alexander Press). I hope to blog about these two books over the course of the next several days, covering one chapter a day.

The co-translator of the book, Fr John Beck, describes the structure of The Theology of Illness in these words:

The author begins with consideration of the relation between sickness and sin, providing a traditional yet refreshingly contemporary view of human nature and the human person. The questions he considers are fundamental: the origins of sin in a fallen world, its impact on physical health, and the healing of human nature by the incarnate Son of God. In the second chapter, he discusses the positive value of illness: how it can engender spiritual growth, patience and prayer. Finally, he takes up the matter of healing as a means of glorifying God, stressing again the crucial role of prayer and sacramental grace in promoting genuine health.

In his introduction, Dr Larchet notes:

The development of medicine in a purely naturalist perspective served to objectify illness, making of it a reality considered in itself and for itself. Illness came to be construed as uniquely physiological and somehow independent of the afflicted person. Rather than treat the person, many physicians today treat illnesses or organs. This fact – complicated by diagnostic methods that are increasingly quantitative and abstract, together with therapeutic methods that are more and more technical – has had as its primary consequence the effect of considerably depersonalizing medical practice.

As a result “a great many of our contemporaries to expect that salvation comes from medicine and encourage them to make of the physician a new priest of modern times, a king who holds over them the power of life or death, and a prophet of their ultimate destiny.

Professor Larchet begins his first chapter with the assertion that “God cannot be considered to be the author of illness, suffering and death.” Man in the original state of his nature was immortal, but “the incorruptibility and immortality of the first man were due solely to divine grace.” The prelapsarian state of man was what we call paradise; here the Fathers affirm that man was not created in paradise but placed there by God. Here Larchet offers this tantalizing footnote concerning the place of Adam in human history:

The Fathers have radically different conceptions of the origin of man than those held by modern science. The history of man as it is conceived by human paleontology, as compared with the point of view of Holy Tradition, refers only to the history of humanity outside of paradise. The Fathers would see homo habilis not as a representative of humanity as he emerged from the hands of God, but as already fallen from his original state, fallen in the lowest state of his “involution,’ and beginning to develop himself according to a new mode of existence. (It is important, therefore, to avoid confusing the state of spiritual infancy attributed by the Fathers to Adam at the time of his creation [...] with the historical “infancy” or a state of underdevelopment that characterized the earliest human beings.) The original condition of man as is presented by Scripture and the Fathers is situated in another temporal order than that of historical knowledge: it does not belong to the time of sensible realities (chronos), but to the duration of spiritual realities (aion), which eludes historical science because it belongs to the sphere of spiritual history. Without being “non-temporal” (because it had a beginning in time and developed over time, which it in fact began), the existence of Adam in his primitive state is “ante-historical,” just as human existence following the parousia will be post-historical. Spiritual history, then, cannot be replaced by historical science The teaching of Tradition about human origins is neither more nor less incomplete with our present knowledge of human paleontology than is the faith of the Church in the eucharistic transformation of bread and wine into Body and Blood of Christ with the findings of the science of chemistry, or faith in the Ascension of Christ with the findings of physics and astronomy. In each of these cases, we are dealing with two different modes of apprehension that cannot be reduced one to another. Each concerns different modes of being and becoming. Faith and spiritual knowledge correspond to a domain in which the laws of nature are transcended and to a mode of existence that is, in the proper sense of the term, “super-natural.”

Larchet, following the Fathers, states that “the source of illness, infirmities, sufferings, corruption, and death, together with all other evils that presently afflict human nature, in the personal will of man, in the bad use to which he has put his free will, that is, in the sin which he committed in Paradise.” Yet the world was created good, but it was man’s responsibility to preserve it as such: “God created man as a microcosm within the macrocosm, so that man might recapitulate every created being.” According to St Maximus the Confessor, “man’s primary mission was to unite Paradise with the rest of the earth, and thereby to enable all other created beings to participate in the conditions of Paradise.”

Larchet next poses the question of whether people are responsible for the illness that afflict them. He answers that individuals are not; the responsibility is in the nature we inherited from Adam. Larchet clarifies that, according to the Eastern Fathers, “men inherit not the sin of Adam itself, but rather its consequences.” St Cyril of Alexandria writes:

Nature fell ill from sin through the disobedience of a single man, Adam. Thereby the multitude of human beings was made sinful; not because they shared Adam’s sin – they did not even exist yet; but because they shared his nature which had fallen under the law of sin.

For this reason one can say that “illnesses that afflict human beings appear to be due not to their person sins, but to the fact that they share in the fallen human nature of their first father Adam.” But not everything can be blamed on Adam, since we imitate him:

All men, in fact, bear responsibility to the degree that they have become imitators of Adam. It is because Adam’s descendants have also committed sin that the consequences of Adam’s sin have affected them. This is precisely St Paul’s teaching: “by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; thus death spread to all men, because all men sinned." 

We are all co-responsible with Adam; we have developed and multiplied the consequences of his fall; there is a “solidarity in evil between Adam and his descendants.” This leaves us with a “collective responsibility in the face of misfortune that strikes our neighbor, of which illness is merely one expression.”

Larchet goes on to consider the healing of human nature by the Incarnate Word:

By His Incarnation, Christ has overthrown the barrier which separates our nature from God and has opened nature once more to the deifying energies of uncreated grace. By his redemptive work, He has freed us from the tyranny of the devil and destroyed the power of sin. By His death, He has triumphed over death and corruption. By His resurrection, He has granted us new and eternal life. And it is not only human nature, but also the creation as a whole which Christ heals and restores, by uniting it in Himself with God the Father, thereby abolishing the divisions and ending the the disorders that reigned within it because of sin.

Yet that begs the question of why illness persists. Larchet replies:

The restoration and deification of human nature accomplished in the hypostasis of Christ remains potential for human hypostases unless and until they are incorporated and united in His. This incorporation and uniting are accomplished within the Church – which is the Body of Christ – by the grace of the Holy Spirit communicated in the sacraments. It is necessary, nevertheless, that man collaborate in this transformation of himself by grace. He must work (cf. Phil 2:12) to appropriate it; he must open himself to it and assimilate himself to it by constant effort. Through baptism he puts off the “old man” (Eph 4:22) and puts on Christ (Gal 3:27). Thereby he becomes the “new man” – but only potentially. He needs to actualize this transformation in himself from his fallen nature to a restored and deified nature. This can only occur by virtue of a process of growth which presupposes first a constant renunciation of the fallen state of human nature, an ongoing struggle against temptations and self-purification, and second, acquisition of a renewed nature in Christ by practicing the commandments (cf. Mat 7:14; 11:12), one falls again and again, and no one can claim to be without sin (cf. 1 Jn 1:8-10; Rom 3:10-12).

It will only be at the end of time “that the restoration of all things will take place,” when “the order and harmony destroyed by sin will be restored and the benefits acquired by Christ in his work of redeeming and deifying our human nature will be fully communicated to all.”

Larchet concludes with a consideration of the connection between illnesses of the body and illness of the soul, offering the surprising proposition that the “illnesses of the body, far form being directly engendered by illnesses of the soul, are to the contrary provoked by the health of the soul.”

This is a remarkable work, deeply steeped in the patristic tradition yet eminently readable, and one that I would urge all to acquire and read attentively. I hope to treat chapter two tomorrow.

Reading Group, 4f

2010-06-11T09:54:00.003+02:00

The Church Militant

a. A question might arise about how the earthly as well as the heavenly Church might be called holy and sinless.

b. A primary refutation of Protestantism is their abolishing of prayerful communion with the saints and prayer for the deceased.

c. The Church must have in each epoch a manifestation which is known and adequate to itself. On earth, the struggle between the implanted new Church nature and the old nature, the quantitative fullness of Christ’s gifts to the Church must live and act. The mystical energy for good which is given to the Christian soul in addition to its consciousness as grace-filled gifts must also be seen to live and act.

d. The majority of the Lord’s parables about the Kingdom of God concern the militant Church.

How does Metropolitan Anthony respond to the objection that in his presentation of the dogma of the Church there is neither the teaching of the Church as an organized society or an indication of the sense in which the earthly as well as the heavenly Church is called holy and sinless?

Hieromonk Averky: Eternal Memory

2010-06-11T09:09:00.003+02:00

Today is the seventh anniversary of the repose of the ever-memorable Hieromonk Averky (Moreno) of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY. Those Orthodox who have been online for a few years might remember him as a frequent commentator at the discussion forums at monachos.net.

Fr Averky was literally the first person I met when I entered Holy Trinity Monastery in the summer of 1992. He was a remarkable character: by turns generous and exacting, tender and ferocious, he always made his presence known. At the time he was the guestmaster, which put me under his care. Working for him to his satisfaction was no easy charge, I can assure you with all the force of my memory. A non-Russian himself, he served for many visitors as a sort of spiritual and cultural interpreter with the Russian monastery. I kept in contact with him through his final illness. Whatever psychic wounds I still carry from working under him as taskmaster, I mourn his passing and miss him greatly.

Here is a tribute to Fr Averky that was written by Rassaphore-monk Vsevolod shortly after his death seven years ago:

On June 11, 2004, at 5:30 AM, our brother of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, Hieromonk Averky (Moreno), fell asleep in the Lord.

Fr. Averky was born on May 2, 1945, in Pocatello, Idaho, and was one of those Americans who sailed the turbulent seas of the 60's while seeking truth, finally arriving at the saving shore of Holy Orthodoxy. When Fr. Averky was baptized in San Francisco, the future Abbot Herman (Podmoshensky) and Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose, +1982) sang in the choir. The story of Fr. Averky's conversion to Orthodoxy is amazing. When he was studying in the Roman Catholic Seminary, one of his teachers was a Uniate. When leaving for vacation once, he gave Fr. Averky an Orthodox icon for safe-keeping. Fr. Averky, by nature gifted with a refined aesthetic sense, was moved by the beauty of the Orthodox painting. Having become interested in Orthodoxy, he went to the library and checked out recordings of Russian ecclesiastical chant-and again he was moved. Then he had the thought: "If the Orthodox paint such beautiful icons and sing with such feeling, then they must be a special people with special Christianity!"

This reminds one of the conversion of the Russian people to Orthodoxy through observing the beauty of the Church. The beauty of Christianity, which saves the world, continues to draw searching souls to Christ. Having come to Orthodoxy through beauty, Fr. Averky remained assiduously devoted to this beauty: he continually ordered many icons from various iconographers, in this way glorifying the Saviour, the Theotokos, the angels and the saints. Incidently, among the icons which he had painted was the icon of the Theotokos, the Surety of Sinners. It was probably not a coincidence that Fr. Averky was granted to end his earthly journey on the feast day of this icon.

When we think of our reposed brother, the words of the prayer to the Surety of Sinners become deeply heartfelt: "Every kind of despondency ceases and the fear from despair vanishes, sinners with sorrowful hearts find comfort and are illuminated brightly with heavenly love: for now the Mother of God extends to us a saving hand, and announces from Her most pure image: I am the Surety of sinners to My Son; he has given His hand on their behalf to hear Me always." Fr. Averky loved very much to give people presents, and this made him happy like a child. And this is the present he received from the Mother of God, the Surety of Sinners.

Fr. Averky not only accepted Orthodoxy, but with his whole being he became Russian Orthodox, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Just like Fr. Seraphim (Rose) he learned the Russian language and knew well the Russian culture. Fr. Averky recalled how in earlier times, when Russian emigrants invited him as a guest for dinner, besides the traditional hospitality, they would recite verses from Pushkin, Lermontov, and Yessenin, play the guitar, concertina, and the balalaika, and carry on interesting conversation. At the same time Fr. Averky was very zealous in the helping of the Orthodox mission among the Americans. He loved to serve molebens, pannykhidas and liturgy in the English language. The mother of Fr. Averky, thanks to the efforts of her son, converted to Orthodoxy before her death.

It must be said that Fr. Averky was distinguished by a rather sharp character and he was not always mild-mannered in his relations with people. However, the Lord granted him a Christian death, shameless and peaceful. In preparing for death, he asked everyone for forgiveness, confessed his sins, and communed of the Holy Mysteries. In the final days, up to 20 people would come to visit him daily in the hospital, where he lay. He remained conscious until the very end. There was no evidence of his sufferings on his face, and his attention was focused as he passed on to a new life.

His Eminence, Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York, the Superior of Holy Trinity Monastery, was the main celebrant at the monastic funeral of Hieromonk Averky, on Saturday, June 12th. Six priests and two deacons also concelebrated. At the funeral, Metropolitan Laurus said a brief word in memory of Fr. Averky, how he arrived at our monastery thirty years ago, studied at Holy Trinity Seminary, after which he became the cell attendant of the ever-memorable Archbishop Seraphim of Chicago and Detroit and of Archbishop Alypy. He also served in various parishes in the U.S.: in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; San Diego, California. After this he returned to the monastery and fulfilled various obediences here, including serving in parishes.

Let us pray that the Saviour receive the soul of Fr. Averky into a dwelling of everlasting beauty!

Jordanville, 2004

Huried Confessions

2010-06-11T09:07:00.007+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: I prepared for Confession, and wrote my sins on a piece of paper. In the church there were lots of people, and the Batiushka didn’t have the possibility of listening to me or reading my piece of paper. The prayer of absolution was read over me, but the priest did not know what I had written. In such a case do I need to confess these sins once again, or are they already forgiven by the Lord?

Answer: In order to receive forgiveness of sins from God, one needs to have in the soul a sincere penitential feeling and confess one’s transgressions. St John of Kronstadt wrote: “The Master, as the Seer of Hearts, knows that people are inclined to all extreme falls, and having fallen, often get up, therefore he gave the commandment to forgive falls into sin; and He Himself is the first to fulfill His holy word: as soon as you say from your heart 'I repent' – at that moment you’re forgiven" (My Life in Christ). You had penitence, you named your sins to God, the priest read the prayer of absolution – that means your transgressions are forgiven. You don’t need to repent of them further. Another time, when there aren’t so many people, the priest can read your piece of paper with your sins, perhaps, and ask questions and give beneficial advice.

Hilarity

2010-06-10T16:26:00.001+02:00

If you want to read something unintentionally hilarious, go here.

Orthodox Spirituality and the Philokalia (3 of 3)

2010-06-10T08:37:00.003+02:00

The third part of Fr Placide’s study The Orthodox Church and the Philokalia is entitled “The Influence of Philocalic Spirituality,” and is divided into four parts: “Philocalic Spirituality in Greece,” "The Paisyan Renewal in Russia,” “The Hesychast Tradition in Romania,” and “The Philokalia and the West.” Most of what’s covered in this section should already be familiar to any reader who has an acquintance with the literature. My only point of criticism is Fr Placide’s claim that both St Seraphim of Sarov and St Herman of Alaska had copies of The Philokalia. That claim meets with my sternest skepticism. I also have to disagree with this comment of Fr Placide, concerning Fr Dumitru Staniloae: “He is unquestionably the first contemporary theologian to rediscover the essential place of St Gregory Palamas’ thought in the theological and spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy.” If we are to take the adjective “contemporary” literally, then I would agree – Fr Dumitru wrote about Palamas before Fr John Meyendorf, Archbishop Basil (Krivocheine), and Vladimir Lossky. But if we take it to mean “modern,” that Fr Placide is mistaken. Sympathetic interest in the life and thought of Palamas in Russia goes back at least to 1860, in the pioneering work of Igumen Modest (Strel’bitskii), later Archbishop of Volynsk and Zhitomir. His book, originally written as a Master’s thesis and published in 1860, initiated a period of serious interest in the Hesychast controversies among Russian patrologists and Byzantinists – though not, notably, among dogmatic theologians – that would last until the Revolution of 1917.

Fr Placide’s chapter on “The Philokalia and the West” was of particular interest to me, since I’m completely ignorant of Western mysticism. The author shows a number of points of astonishing convergence, but ultimately the divergences way heavier. After a sympathetic treatment of John of the Cross (whom he calls “the most representative mystical author of Roman Catholicism” and his idea of the “dark night of the soul,” Fr Placide writes:

A notable difference exists between the experience lived by John of the Cross (and many spiritual people of the West) and that of the Orthodox contemplatives, for whom the experience of God is nothing but light and warmth. The experience of the “passive night of the spirit” is undoubtedly the result of an authentic experience of God, in which human psychology is shaped during the first stages of the spiritual life by a practice of discursive meditation, using reasoning and sensibility in the very depths of faith. Between the attentive vocal prayer recommended to beginners in Orthodox and Western meditation, there exists a gap analogous to the one that separates the icon from religious art found in the Carmels of Spain at the time of the Teresian reform. A similar difference cannot remain without effect on the spiritual experience.

All in all, Fr Placide’s book receives my highest recommendation to all readers.

Sins Unto Death

2010-06-10T08:35:00.003+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: What does the following phrase from the First Catholic Epistle of St John the Theologian mean: “All unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not unto death” (1 Jn 5:17)?

Answer: Every departure from the commandments of God and breaking of the law of God (in deed, word, and even thought) is a sin. In another place in the same catholic epistle the Apostle writes: “sin is lawlessness” (1 Jn 3:4). Sins are conscious and unconscious, committed by ignorance and carelessness. Among conscious sins mortal sins are given special place. To them belong: conscious and intentional apostasy from faith, obstinate denial of God, hatred and ill-will to people (“The one not loving his brother abideth in death,” 1 Jn 3:14), bold condemnation of the commandments of God. They are committed in the deep inculcation in man of sin and attachment to evil. Mortal sins exterminate in man love for God and make man dead to the reception of Divine grace. The greatest sin is that against the Holy Spirit (c.f., Mt. 12:31-32; Mk 3: 28-30; Lk 12: 10). It is not forgiven.

The Holy Apostle John the Theologian is saying that one should pray for those who have not sinned unto death. For those who have sinned unto death, he does not give instruction, but also does not immediately forbid it. Their stubborn rejection of the truth, disbelief, obduracy and hardness in sin makes prayer for them, as a rule, fruitless. The most effective medicine for them is affliction. The question is appropriate: why not send all sinners such afflictions? The Lord, Who knows the condition of every heart, knows to whom to send afflictions, and who would sin even more if sent afflictions. And Divine love is extended unto such people. Since the lot of such unrepentant sinners is not identical, their punishment will be according to the degree of transgression, since God does not want that their afflictions to increase. For those, who are capable of spiritual growth, afflictions are a great and salvific act of God’s mercy.

Reading Group, 4e

2010-06-10T08:31:00.002+02:00

More Particular Definitions of the Church

a. The Church is first of all that grace-filled and holy life which was established by Christ, and which will exist inviolably and unfaltering on earth up to His second coming, encompassed from without by certain forms and manifesting itself in the holy manifestations of faith.

b. The difference between the concept of the Church with the concept of human nature originally created by God consists in that the life of the human essence or of human nature in each person would be expressed directly and without impediment had there been no fall.

c.The instilling of a new nature (Grace) takes place first of all through a conscious assimilation of Christ’s life or of Christianity, and also through a mysterious penetration of the newly grace-filled nature of the Church into our personality.

d. When Christ and the Apostles speak of the rebirth or cleansing of our nature through the word of teaching, they mean the conscious penetration by the new life expounded in Divine teaching. There is also the unconscious and secret growth of the grace-filled seed on new nature in the soul of a believer.

e. The Church is a energy such as is contained and spread by a conscious principle.

f. The mission of the church is first of all to guard unharmed the conscious content of the newly grace-filled life; second, to spread divine teaching amidst unbelievers; and third to lead believers to complete permeation by this life.

How does Metropolitan Anthony advance his argument in this section?
How does Metropolitan Anthony fill the usual lacuna concerning the mission of the church?

Ascending Mount Sinai

2010-06-09T21:26:00.004+02:00

The following song, if we are to believe père Placide, is commonly used in vacation camps of the young Orthodox in Greece:

I have left Pharaoh,
The slavery in Egypt,
Following Moses,
To ascend Mt. Sinai.

To climb Mt. Sinai,
Oh, how I desire
To arrive at the Holy Summit
While saying the prayer.

The ascent is very hard;
Lord, give patience,
Firmness, strength, and power
To acquire the prayer.

To say the prayer,
One must reject
And chase from one's thought
All the things of this world.

At the outset, say the prayer
Vocally, with labor,
And later, with time,
It will descend to your heart.

Fix your attention well
On the words of the prayer.
If not, you will get lost
In a world of imagination.

The clever one is irritated,
Aggravated by the prayer;
Therefore, do not be afraid
When he wages war on you.

The words of the prayer
Carry savory fruits;
They are sweeter than honey.
You cannot imagine this,

And do not ask me
How the prayer works.
I would not be able to explain it;
It is a divine mystery.

When you see the prayer
Acting inside of you,
Keep it carefully,
In great humility.

Reverend Elder,
My spiritual Moses,
Give your benediction
That I may acquire the prayer.

The Virgin Mother of God,
The mystic hegumen,
Blesses all the monks
And gives them the prayer.

Oh, how much I desire
To ascend Sinai,
To arrive at the Holy Summit,
Saying the prayer.

Sinner's Crossroads

2010-06-09T20:15:00.002+02:00

While no true Hesychast would approve of this, I must testify to my love for a radio program on WFMU called Sinner's Crossroads. The DJ, Kevin Nutt, describes the selection of music he plays as:

Scratchy vanity 45s, pilfered field recordings, muddy off-the-radio sounds, homemade congregational tapes and vintage commercial gospel throw-downs; a little preachin', a little salvation, a little audio tomfoolery.

It is so much fun, and much better for the soul than rock music. Playlists and archives can be found here, and the podcast (how it reaches me) is easily searchable on iTunes.

Don't Go Looking for the Light

2010-06-09T12:46:00.004+02:00

St Diadochus of Photice writes:

One should not approach the ascetic life with the express hope or goal of divine visions, for fear that Satan finds the soul susceptible to deceit from then on. The goal is to arrive at the love of God in a feelings of total certainty of the heart, which means all of one's heart, all of one's soul, all of one's thoughts (cf. Luke 10:27). The one who is moved through the grace of God lives far from the world, even when he is present in the world.

One Hundred Gnostic Chapters 40.

St John the Russian

2010-06-09T11:51:00.002+02:00

Today the Church celebrates the memory of St John the Russian, a saint little known in Russia but greatly venerated in Greece. A life, based on one written by Photios Kontoglou, can be read here. More on St John can be found here, here, here, and here.

Postcards from Kiev

2010-06-09T10:20:00.016+02:00

The Kiev-Caves Lavra

Convent of the Holy Protection, with relics of the foundress, St Anastasia.

The Florov Convent

Archbishop Mark Entering the Church of St Elias

Monastery of the Entrance; below, Bishop Agapit

Monastery of the Holy Trinity and St Jonah

Source.

Reading Group, 4d

2010-06-09T06:54:00.002+02:00

The Church and the Individual

a. Scripture and Tradition say that the Lord came to earth to restore man to which he was before his fall, and to restore in mankind His image, which had been darkened by the passions. This was an image of the Triune Divinity, and in this image restores mankind through the ordering of the Church.

b. We feel ourselves endowed with a nature, both physical and psychic. It is this psychic nature common to all men and present within us, which is the human nature.

c. We must understand the single human nature not as an actual essence, but as a sort of abstract, general concept.

d. If people had not fallen there would be revealed in their hearts also the life of that common Divinely created human nature.

e. Fallen mankind has reached such a degree of individualism that the distinction between “I” and “not I” has become a starting point in human nature, while the triunity of God has become unfathomable.

f. The Redeemer has restored this singularity of human nature in the life of the Church which He founded.

g. St Basil the Great says: 1) human nature was one before the fall; 2) that it was cut apart by the fall; 3) that angels who had not fallen into sin of self-love and disobedience preserved this unity of their nature unharmed; 4) that the Savior came to restore this unity in fallen mankind; 5) that the restoration is expressed in the freeing from self-love, strife, and stubbornness, and the restoration of the love of Christ and of obedience in their hearts; and 6) that divine redemption consists primarily in the restoration of this newly-grace filled unity.

Why does Metropolitan Anthony “psychic” nature as human nature?
How does Metropolitan Anthony understand human nature, collectively and singly?

Spiritual Ill Health

2010-06-09T06:52:00.001+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Everything burns inside me (throat) when I approach holy things (reading, people). I feel that something unclear in sitting in me, and I don’t have the strength to overcome it.

Answer: Such a sick feeling when coming into contact with holy things witnesses to spiritual ill health. The reading of a few prayers is not enough. You have to strictly investigate yourself: how much does your life correspond to the holy tradition of Orthodoxy and the rule of the Church, which is the “pillar and foundation and truth” (1 Tim 3:15). Are you attracted to games of chance (and this includes computer games), have you left serious sins unconfessed? Participation in the holy Mysteries (Confession, Communion, Unction) should be regular.

Healing from such an infirmity does not happen instantly, but one needs to believe that the God Who loves you is powerful enough to give you spiritual healing, seeing your efforts and labors.

Orthodox Spirituality and the Philokalia (1 of 3)

2010-06-08T19:54:00.008+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I happened to mention in a post my interest in a newish book by Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), whom many of you may know from his conversion story in Fr Alexander Golitzin's The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos. (The original French of the text is here.) Perhaps because I'm not a convert myself, I'm not generally a fan of the genre of conversion story, but I found Fr Placide's account too charming to resist and have long wanted to hear more from him. Fr Placide is abbot of the Monastery of St Anthony the Great in Saint Laurent in Royans and is a sometimes professor of patristics at the St Serge Institute in Paris. He is the author or translator of nearly a dozen books in French, including a translation of the Psalter.

The book I mentioned in my post is entitled Orthodox Spirituality and the Philokalia. Due to the kindness of a reader (you know who you are), a copy was sent to me, and I am hungrily consuming it – perhaps too quickly for the subject matter, it should be said. The book is made up of three parts: a concise overview of the monastic tradition up to and including the creation of The Philokalia; then a long thematic anthology of representative selections from the Fathers focusing on theosis and hesychastic prayer; and a concluding chapter with a historical narrative tracing the influence of the Philocalic tradition in both East and West. I'll comment on each of these three parts separately.

Following a brief introduction, Fr Placide offers a narrative covering all those Fathers and ecclesiastical writers whom he views as being part of the great Philocalic tradition, from the origins of monasticism to the publication of The Philokalia. This is what he covers:

One: The Origins of Hesychasm. First, the Age of the Desert Fathers: St Anthony the Great, the Desert Fathers and the Church Fathers, Evagrius of Pontus and the Alexandrian Tradition, St Macarius of Egypt, St Diadochus of Photike, St Isaiah the Anchorite, St Mark the Ascetic.

Second, The Expansion of Hesychasm: the monks of Sinai, spiritual authors of the Syrian language.

Third, Theology and Spirituality in Byzantium: St Maximus the Confessor and Thalassius of Lybia, St Symeon the New Theologian and Nicetas Stetathos, St John and St Peter of Damascus.

Fourth, Athonite Hesychasm: St Nicephorus the Solitary, Theoleptus of Philadelphia, St Gregory Palamas, Kallistos Angelikoudes, St Callistus I and St Callistus and Ignatius of Xanthopoulos; St Mark of Ephesus; Hesychasm in the Balkans and in Russia.

Two: The Epoch of the Philokalia: St Paisy Velichkovsky, the Kollyvades of Mount Athos and the Greek Philokalia.

The writing is clear and concise, the author's voice sympathetic yet critical. It's wonderfully refreshing to read a scholarly treatment which speaks both with erudition and with deep piety and veneration for its subject matter. Particularly interesting is his treatment of spurious works. Speaking of the works of St Anthony the Great included in the Philokalia (shunted into an appendix in the English edition), Fr Placide writes:

The first author represented in the Philokalia is St. Antony the Great, venerated by all of Christian tradition as "the Father of monks." It matters little that modern criticism points out the apocryphal character of the treatise attributed to him in this collection. The name of Antony alone has symbolic value.

So far as I've read, I can give the book a ringing endorsement. Tomorrow I'll post on part two (Thematic Anthology).

Reading Group, 4c

2010-06-08T10:13:00.002+02:00

The Absence of this Concept in Contemporary Morality and Philosophy

a. Both humanistic and Protestant morality have arrived at the conclusion that in order to strengthen love it is necessary to break away from scholastic concepts. Instead, they wish to establish a single divine life diffused in creatures and striving to blend once again into one blessed fullness, thereby replacing spiritualism with pantheism.

b. This contradiction between egoism and the principle of love is not resolved by the searching of philosophical thought as long as this thought is based on one or another principles of natural life. The Church represents a concept in which the “not I” is not somehow the opposite of the “I.” The most typical representatives of this combination are found in the categories of holy martyrs, ascetics, and hierarchs of the Church.

c. The Christian truth about the Church frees man from the natural contradiction between the self-consciousness of the individual and self-denying love as a principle of life.

What are the three categories of which Metropolitan Anthony speaks, and what do they represent?
How does Metropolitan Anthony draw his definition of the Church not from concepts of earthly life, but from the teaching of the Triune Being of God?

Menstruation and Communion

2010-06-08T09:07:00.003+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Explain to me, please, why women may not enter a church when they are unclean (during menstruation)? After what period of time after the completion of these days may they venerate holy things and Commune? How should one behave if during this time one finds oneself on a pilgrimage? I’ve heard that such a prohibition has not always existed, and comes from the tradition of the ancient Syrian Church. Please explain.

Answer: In agreement with the statutes of the Divinely-reveled Old Testament religion, cleanliness (spiritual-moral and physical) is an essential requirement for approaching all things holy. Sin leads to inner uncleanliness. Physical uncleanliness in the books of Law in the Old Testament included: leprosy, purulent discharge, carnal emissions, the time of cleansing after childbirth (forty days for a boy, eighty days for a girl; Lev. 12), female bleeding (monthly and pathological), touching a decaying body (corpse). According to the religious understanding of ancient cultures, uncleanliness was not a sin, but it was genetically related with it. It is with this meaning that the holy prophets used it: Isaiah (6:5), Ezekiel (22:5), Zechariah (13:2). The word “clean” is also etymologically connected with a moral condition. It means luminous, emitting light (Job 17:9; Isaiah 50:12). The New Testament Church abolished ritual uncleanliness. The primary condition for our union with God is inner purity: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8). The New Testament Church of Christ, in abolishing the Old Testament statutes of ritual purity, simultaneously preserved restrictions for women during childbirth and during menstruation. The second canon of St Dionysius of Alexandria (third century) reads: “Concerning menstruous women, whether they ought to enter the temple of God while in such a state, I think it superfluous even to put the question. For, I think, not even themselves, being faithful and pious, would dare when in this state either to approach the Holy Table or to touch the body and blood of Christ. For not even the woman with a twelve years’ issue would come into actual contact with Him, but only with the edge of His garment, to be cured. There is no objection to one’s praying no matter how he may be or to one’s remembering the Lord at any time and in any state whatever, and petitioning to receive help; but if one is not wholly clean both in soul and in body, he shall be prevented from coming up to the Holy of Holies.”

For further discussion, from varying perspectives, of this contentious issue, see the following articles:

Sr Vassa Larin, Ritual Impurity.
Fr Sergei Sveshnikov, On “Ritual Impurity”: In Response to Sister Vassa (Larin); More to the Point: Should Nuns Light Their Icon Lamps?
Orthodox Tradition, Menstruation, Emissions, and Holy Communion.
Fr Andrew Phillips, Q & A (scroll almost to the bottom of the page).
Russian speaking readers will also want to look here, here, and here.

Reading Group, 4b

2010-06-07T09:26:00.002+02:00

The Main Thought in the Dogma of the Church

a. The ultimate goal regarding members of the Church is found in the Lord’s words: “I will also that those whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me... that the love with which Thou has loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:24, 26). The intermediate goal consists in the constant spiritual perfecting of the individual in the Church, in the sanctification of the Christian by the Truth of Christ.

b. The claim that the Church is a society rather than a body is unfounded.

c. The Church is a likeness of the Trinitarian existence, a likeness in which many personalities become a single essence. As long as man sympathizes with Christian law only so far as his own natural inclinations go, he will never accept the fullness of Christian love.

d. Natural man is an incarnate contradiction and nowhere does the inner contradiction of his nature show itself with such force as in the feeling of natural love.

What is, in fact, “the main thought in the dogma of the Church”?
Why does Metropolitan Anthony prefer the “comparison” of the Church as a body to the “definition” of the Church as a society?
Why does Metropolitan Anthony believe that the existence of the Church is incomprehensible to the “old man” (c.f., Col. 3:9)?
In what way is man an “incarnate contradiction”?

Communion and Excommunication

2010-06-07T08:53:00.001+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: Is it true that a person who over the course of a year does not go to Confession or Communion is automatically excluded from the Church?

Answer: No. One must prepare for Confession and approach this Mystery. It can be performed only by a priest or bishop.

What are the Fruits of Repentance?

2010-06-06T10:23:00.003+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: What are the fruits of true repentance and penitence for one’s sins?

Answer: The goal of repentance is to be freed from the burden of sin and to receive mercy from God. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:13). The one bearing repentance must not stop on this path, but continue following the spiritual life. Everything that we do should bear fruit: “But not being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end of everlasting life” (Rom. 6:22). In another epistle the Holy Apostle Paul speaks more systematically about the goals of the spiritual life, which are unthinkable without regular repentance: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:22-23). Without this our Christianity becomes external. Spiritual fruits on earth prepare us for the blessed life in the Heavenly Kingdom.

Reading Group, 4a

2010-06-06T10:09:00.003+02:00

The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Church

Foreword
a. When an author offers his readers an explanation of Christian dogma, he reckons least of all to introduce anything new into the consciousness of the Church. Even before the fourth century the Church knew from the Gospel and Tradition that the Father and Son are one, but how to relate these truths to the human philosophical concepts of person and nature was taught to people by the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council.

b. If a contemporary person discusses the truths of the faith in new terminology, while remaining in agreement with Orthodox theology, he will be met with ill will by those who are devotees of scholastic textbooks.

c. While the moral content of the faith has always been evident in liturgical worship, contemporary theology, as a science, is in want of clearly expressed and consistent formulations of precisely what moral concepts are contained in the truths of the faith.
1.
a. Of all the dogmas of the faith, that of the Church is subjected to the most intense attack.

b. It was precisely the truth of the Church which was the main force for attracting the newly enlightened peoples and nations to Christ.

c. An explanation will follow of how the dogma of the Church possess for the spiritual perfection of the individual.

d. God revealed to us all of His properties and His providential decrees that are needed for our salvation and concealed all that does not have a direct relationship to this purpose.

e. The purpose of the Church is clearly set forth and defined: the spiritual growth of Christians.

f. It begs the question to define the Church as a society, as it doesn’t say what it’s forth. A contemporary definition of the Church as the Body of Christ didn’t vary from the essential premise shared by scholastics.

g. Thesis: for man’s salvation or, what is the same, for the spiritual perfection of man, three elements are necessary: man himself, God, and the Church.

What is the nature of the polemic that Metropolitan Anthony is engaging in vis-a-vis contemporary treatments of the Church? What understandings of the Church is he objecting to, and (based on what’s been read so far) how does he propose to respond to them?

Confession and Forgiveness

2010-06-05T21:46:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: About six years ago I went to a sect and was baptized there, and later I left the sect and never again went there -- it had become repulsive to me. If I repent, will I be forgiven this horrible sin? In my soul and heart I feel that I acted stupidly, but it seems to me that what I did was a very serious sin and now I will bear this in me until the end of my life. I’m simply ashamed for my action. Is it possible somehow to be freed from this feeling, because I want to forget it and never remember it again? It bothers me very much. One more question. Where I live there is no Orthodox church nearby, so what do you advise me?

Answer: The Holy Fathers called repentance a second Baptism. The sincerely repentant receive full forgiveness of their sins. Your sin is very serious, but one must fully trust God’s Word and remember the boundless mercy of God. Deep repentance has nothing to do with despair. On the contrary, such a person should rejoice: “this thy brother was dead, and is alive again: and was lost, and is found” (Lk 15:32).

Until you have the ability to go to the Mystery of Confession in an Orthodox church, repent “in your cell.” In order to bear the fruits of repentance, read daily until Holy Pascha the Canon of Repentance.

Sunday of All Saints of Russia

2010-06-04T05:53:00.009+02:00

Since I don't know when I'll next be online, I'll post for the Sunday service now. Here is my translation of a short homily by Metropolitan Philaret of Eastern America and New York:

Today’s feast day is a special feast day. It appeared not very long ago in Church life, inasmuch as a feast in honor of Russian saints did not exist in the good old days. It appeared. And now it has a special meaning and significance, because after the glorification of the New Martyrs of Russia took place we see that no single people, no single country, has given as many saints as has the Russian country and the Russian people.

And now we, beloved, have here edification and, if you like, also a rebuke, because these saints who were glorified now and added to the ranks of Russian saints lived in nightmarish conditions: in conditions of dire persecution, not only in terms of abuse and torture, but also in the sense of moral oppression. They, however, resisted and were the first martyrs in these horrible years of difficulty.

Therefore we need to take them as an example – we who live in freedom. However, our lives are not at all faithful to Christian law! The Russian saints call us to follow after them, not only to glorify them. Once the Holy Hierarch Theophan the Recluse wrote that if one wants to glorify a saint, then one should not only glorify him, but emulate his podvigs. This should be known about everyone who glorified the Lord and His greatness during these terrible years and remained faithful sons and daughters of the Orthodox Church. Amen.

Online resources:

Menaion service in Slavonic.
Octoechos (tone 1) in Greek, Slavonic, and English.
Epistle reading: Romans 2:10-16 (Sunday); Hebrews 11:33-12:2 (Saints).
Gospel reading: Matthew 4:18-23 (Sunday); Matthew 4:25-5:12 (Saints).
St John Chrysostom, homily 28 on Hebrews.
Blessed Theophylact, Gospel commentary.
St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, sermon.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, sermon, The Conversion of Russia.
Archbishop Andrei of Rockland, sermon.
Archimandrite John (Krestiankin), sermon.
Fr Sergei Sveshnikov, sermon.
Fr Seraphim Holland, sermons (one, two).
Fr. John McCuen, sermon.
Fr George Dimopoulos, sermon.
Liturgical rubrics.

Fine, Thanks: Russians and Depression

2010-06-04T05:02:00.002+02:00

Andrew Soloman, in The Noonday Demon: At Atlas of Depression, writes:

Anna Halberstadt, a New York-based psychiatrist who works exclusively with Russian immigrants disappointed by the United States, said, "You have to be able to hear in the Russian context what these people are saying. If a Soviet-born Russian person were to come to my office and not complain about anything, I'd have him hospitalized. If he complains about everything, I know he is fine. Only if he were to show signs of extreme paranoia or excruciating pain would I think he might be getting depressed. It's our cultural norm. 'How are you?' 'Not so good' is the standard answer for Russians. It's part of what confuses them about the U.S., this statement that seems ridiculous, really: 'Fine, thanks, and how are you?' And honestly it's difficult for me too, even now, to hear people say this. 'Fine, thank you.' Who's fine?"

The Church's Hierarchy

2010-06-04T04:20:00.006+02:00

The newly-glorified St Justin of Ćelije writes the following in his work, The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism:

The hierarchy, in all its theanthropic values and dimensions, comes essentially from the eternal High Priest, the priest forever (Ps. 109:4), the Theanthropos, the Lord Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Theanthropy is, therefore, the essence and criterion of hierarchy. It is from Him and He is in it (cf. Eph. 4:11-13). For this reason, He identifies Himself with it as He says to the holy apostles: He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me... And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Lk. 10:16; Matt 28:20). Where the Theanthropos, the Lord Christ, the eternal High Priest is, there is the hierarchy and there the eternal priesthood (cf. Heb. 7:21-27). The Church, as Christ the Theanthropos, is indeed the only true possessor and guardian of the eternal, theanthropic priesthood and hierarchy which, though the holy mysteries, unceasingly pours forth all the divine powers that men require for piety, for theanthropic life in both this world and the next, for deification, for becoming like the God-Man (cf. II Pet. 1:2-4). This all comes to pass naturally and logically in the Church as the theanthropic Body, the organism, in which the laws of the Head, the Lord Jesus the Theanthropos, are supreme. This truth in apostolic-patristic Tradition therefore prevails: "The bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop." [1] And again: "Where Christ is, there is the Universal Church." [2] Saint Ignatius the God-bearer, a disciple of the apostles, commands the Christians: "Respect the deacons, all of you, as Jesus Christ, the bishop as being a type of the Father, the priests as God's council, as the company of the apostles. Without these, one cannot speak of a Church." [3]

Both as an organism and as an organization, the Church is in all respects a unique being in our earthly world. It is, as an organism, theanthropic: the Lord Jesus Christ Himself perpetuated through all ages and all eternities. As an organization, it is a theanthropic organization of clergy and laity, as well as having other earthly characteristics. The Theanthropos and divine humanity are the supreme value and standard throughout. The Theanthropos is always the only Head of the Church as an organization. Where He, the God-Man, is replaced by a man, even if he is a hundred times infallible, there the God-Man is beheaded and the Church is no more. The theanthropic, apostolic hierarchy disappears, and along with it apostolic primacy and succession.

The holy Tradition of the holy Orthodox Church, in its entirety, is Christ the Theanthrop0s Himself. What could men add to holy Tradition, to Christ the all-perfect Theanthropos? In comparison with the supreme riches of the Theanthropos, all men of all times on this planet of God's, and every man in particular, are mere paupers. They are mere paupers who have, through sin, completely impoverished themselves by death, which deprives them of everything divine, heavenly, immortal and eternal. And the supremely rich and merciful Lord Christ endows every man, in exchange for apostolic faith in Him, with all eternal and incorruptible divine riches: eternal truth, justice, love, life and everything that only the God of love, the only true Philanthropos, can give to man. For this reason, there is only one true grace and one immortal joy for human beings in all the worlds: the Theanthropos the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him lies the whole mystery of both God and man. Great and sweet is the mystery of our faith, our piety: God was manifest in the flesh (cf. I Tim 3:16). For all these reasons, the wondrous Lord Christ, the Theanthropos, is the one thing needful to a man and to mankind in all worlds, visible and invisible (cf. Lk. 10:42).

[1] St Cyprian: "Episcopus est in Ecclesia, et Ecclesia in episcopo," Epist. 66 (& 69).

[2] St Ignatius the God-Bearer, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, VIII:2.

[3] idem, Epistle to the Trallaeans: III.

Back to the Hospital

2010-06-04T01:41:00.002+02:00

Due to a worsening of health, I'm being compelled to return to the hospital. I will likely be there for about two weeks. I'll be taking my laptop with me, but am unsure when and if I'll be able to get an internet connection. Therefore posting may be spotty for some time. I'll keep you all informed. And please do remember my health and salvation in your prayers.

Sins Before Baptism

2010-06-04T01:35:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: I was Baptized five years ago. I have never been to Confession. I want to confess during the Great Fast. Is it necessary to remember and tell about what I did before Baptism? I’ve heard that when a person is Baptized, then he is considered clean before God and doesn’t need to confess what was before Confession, even if it was something horrible: I had an abortion. Is this the case? After all, the soul of my killed child exists all the same. Could Baptism have taken this sin from me? Do I need to talk about it at Confession?

Answer: In the Mystery of Baptism, man is cleansed of all sins, regardless of age. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom. 6:3-8). This truth is consolidated in the Symbol of faith: “I confess on Baptism for the remission of sins.” St John of Damascus writes: “Therefore, the forgiveness of sins is give through Baptism to all equally, and the grace of the Spirit according to the measure of faith and pre-cleansing.”

If a sin (including mortal ones) were after Baptism, forgiveness is given to man through sincere repentance. St Dimitry of Rostov writes: “Are sins always forgiven if we repent of them according to the necessary correction? Always; at the same time, when the sinner calls out to the Lord with a contrite heart, he is heard by Him, like the publican, Zacchaeus, Manasseh, David, the sinful woman, etc.

My Living Theological Heroes

2010-06-04T00:02:00.018+02:00

1. Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany

The late Fr John Romanides wrote: "an Orthodox theologian and spiritual father is the same thing. One cannot be a theologian without being a spiritual father and one cannot be a spiritual father without being a theologian." Pride of place, therefore, goes to my own spiritual father, His Eminence, Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany. Vladyka Mark received his formal theological education at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade (this in addition to receiving a PhD in Slavic philology from the University of Heidelberg). More importantly, however, he was a disciple of both St Justin of Ćelije and Schemamonk Nikodom of Karoulia on Mount Athos. I have learned more from him than from any other living person, and cannot separate the theological from the spiritual in that which I've learned from him. His own academic interest is primarily in St Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow.

2. Archpriest John Behr

My thesis adviser and general theological mentor while studying in the M.Th. program at St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary was Archpriest John Behr. He has shaped my mind more than any professor I've had before or since; if Vladyka Mark is my spiritual father, then Fr John is my theological father. Most of what I learned from him came not in the classroom, but over tea in his kitchen.

3. Fr Andrew Louth

When completing my M.Th. I applied to, and was accepted at, Durham University for doctoral work in theology under the direction of Fr Andrew Louth. Unfortunately, however, I couldn't get the funding together, and the plan had to be abandoned. I continue to read Fr Louth's work nonetheless, and find that his Discerning the Mystery: An Essay of the Nature of Theology bears endless rereading.

4. Igumen Alexander (Golitzin)

Fr Alexander is remarkable for his work on three fronts: the defense and rehabilitation of St Dionysius the Areopagite in academic theology; his translations of the works of St Symeon the New Theologian; and his work on Second Temple Judaism and the roots of Christianity. Many of his essays on all three topics can be read here.

5. Jean-Claude Larchet

I've written about my ardent admiration for Dr Larchet here. I'm very excited to announce that I've been informed by representatives of Alexander Press that his book The Therapy of Spiritual Maladies, the crown of his trilogy on spiritual health and illness (the first two books being The Theology of Illness and Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing) should be released in July. An extremely prolific author, one can only hope more and more of his works (a partial list of which can be found here) will be translated into English.

6. Bishop Atanasije (Jevtic)

As I've mentioned a number of times, the unofficial patron saint of this blog is the newly-glorified St Justin of Ćelije. During his lifetime a small group of dedicated disciples gathered around him, one of whom was Bishop Atanasije. Two collections of his essays have recently appeared in English under the titles Christ – The Alpha and Omega and Emmanuel: The Only Begotten and First Born Among Many Brethren. One of the most popular translations I've done for this blog was his series on repentance, confession, and fasting (one, two, three, four).

7. A. I. Sidorov

Long-time readers will remember my two-part translation (one, two) of an interview with the remarkable Russian patrologist, Aleksei Ivanovich Sidorov, author of ten books and more than 100 articles. Dr Sidorov is anything but a dry academic; he is a popular teacher at the Moscow Theological Academy and the Sretensky Theological Seminary as well as a man of burning faith and great enthusiasm. I hope to translate another interview with him in the very near future.

Romanides: A Sympathetic but Critical Reading

2010-06-03T23:24:00.002+02:00

The late Protopresbyter John Romanides (+2001) is, in my estimation, the most influential Greek Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. Even those who have not read his books themselves (and they tend to be dense) have found his insights second-hand in the works of theologians such as Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, Metropolitan Athanasius of Lismassol (the hero of The Mountain of Silence), Fr George Mettalinos, and many others. The only other figure whose influence even compares with that of Fr Romanides is that of Metropolitan John (Zizoulas) of Pergamon. Loyalties tend to be sharp: either one accepts Romanides with intense loyalty or one rejects him altogether.

I myself was once very much of a Romanides-ite, back in the days when his works were available mainly by photocopy (now nearly all his English-language works have been assembled on this website; see also his lectures, which have been recently published by Uncut Mountain Supply). I met him several times in Paris in 1989-90. My own theological mindset has since gradually grown away from that of Fr Romanides. Rather than expound my own criticisms, however, I though I’d reproduce below the very sympathetic yet critical reading offered by one of his former students, Fr Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, in his work The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective, Volume One, Scripture, Tradition, and Hermeneutics. Fr Stylianopoulos turns to Fr John after a summary treatment of a number of other contemporary Orthodox theologians:

The hermeneutical position of Father John Romanides, the final one to be reviewed here, in part answers the last questions. Such questions could be addressed if one could point to a living authority which would combine in itself the mystical and the discursive, the transcendent and the practical, and thus act as normative criterion and unfailing discernment of Christian truth in the every changing present and unknown future. This is exactly the hermeneutical position of Father Romanides, who constructs an entire theological and biblical hermeneutic based on the model of the charismatic saint. [1] The following paragraphs summarize his position.

For Professor Romanides, the saints par excellence were the prophets and the apostles, those who had direct experiences of God in a continuous and dynamic state of glorification, which is called by the Church fathers theoria or theosis by grace. According to Professor Romanides, the sublime revelatory experiences of the prophets and the apostles were beyond speculative concepts and images, granting to the beholders immediate knowledge of God and enabling them to guide others toward God infallibly to through concept-bearing words and images appropriate to the level of understanding of their hearts. This tradition of the vision of God and participation in the divine glory is a living tradition in Eastern Christianity, continuing in a presumably limited number of known and unknown saints today – an ongoing Pentecost that constitutes the highest revelation and knowledge of God. An intriguing point by Father Romanides is that the true meaning of sola Scriptura is none other than theosis, deification by grace, summing up the God among prophets, apostles, and saints. The same unitive experience is the “key to opening the Bible’s secrets... [without which] the Bible remains a hidden mystery even to biblical scholars,” [2] whether Orthodox or not. For Romanides, only the true saint (“saint alone?”) – the one who has moved beyond the stage of purification and has reached the stage of illumination and perfection – can unerringly interpret biblical revelation at the level of words and concepts by virtue of enjoying the “same species of knowledge” as did the prophets and the apostles themselves.

Professor Romanides’ hermeneutical proposal vigorously claims independent theoretical aspects and practical applications [3], that is, it advocates a unity of the mystical and the practical. On the practical side, one can find today unnamed saints who have attained theoria, are wholly liberated from the enslavement of sin, the devil, and selfish love; and who, in God’s glory and selfless love are infallible witnesses and instructors of the ways of God. They are theologians in the classic sense of the word – authoritative knowers and spokespersons of God not by speculative reason but by direct experience of God in the manner of the prophets and the apostles. Such persons and only such persons, who have been cleansed of their evil passions and have reached at least illumination and the discernment of spirits, if not actual theosis, can be true guides in biblical interpretation. All others are only “so-called theologians,” presumably imposters and perverters of truth in varying degrees. According to this “theoria – based theology,” learning and application go together. The student must attach himself to a teacher who has experienced illumination. The teacher, as spiritual father, can guide the student but cannot actualize in him theoria, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit alone. Nevertheless, all this means that
an Orthodox theologian and spiritual father is the same thing. One cannot be a theologian without being a spiritual father and one cannot be a spiritual father without being a theologian. [4]

On the theoretical side, Father Romanides offers equally important observations. He raises the critically presuppositions of theologizing as such. According to Father John, the Augustinian approach to Scripture and theology departed from the biblical and patristic experiential model and lost sight, as well of the decisive distinction between Creator and creature. It assumed in platonic fashion the existence of eternal archetypes or uncreated universals, and thus presupposed a real similarity or analogy between the uncreated and created orders of being, as if both belonged to a single system of truth, which could be penetrate by the human intellect. In specific moments of inspiration, so Augustine taught, according to Professor Romanides, God infallibly conveyed what he wanted to the biblical authors in concept-bearing words and images that the authors themselves did not necessarily fully understand. In this Augustinian perspective, the Bible was identified with created forms of divine revelation. Revelation itself was erroneously identified with the very words of Scripture. Consequently, the human intellect, ever probing the world of immutable divine truths, could gradually gain higher knowledge of the eternal archetypes, including the mystery of the Holy Trinity – a knowledge that could be even superior to that of the prophets and the apostles themselves. This Augustinian epistemology, according to Professor Romanides, is the fatal substructure of all Western speculative thought, which necessarily cracked in modern centuries as philosophical nominalism and scientific study of the flux of all things “weakened the idea of unchanging and immutable truths so dear to western philosophical and theological systems.” In these terms, one could also quite likely explain the general collapse in Western culture of belief in the existence of absolute truth, law, and moral norms as criteria of thought and conduct. [5]

Here is how Professor Romanides sums up his hermeneutical position:

Dialectical speculation can never become the source of authoritative teaching as though the Church, whether by means of a Pope, or Councils or Protestant Biblical scholars, could transform research into dogma...

The authority for Christian truth is not the written words of the Bible themselves which cannot in themselves either express God or convey an adequate concept concerning God, but rather the individual Apostle, Prophet and Saint who is glorified in Christ and united in this experience of glory to all the friends of God of all ages.

Thus the Bible, the writings of the Fathers and the decisions of the Councils are not revelation, but about revelation. Revelation itself transcends words and concepts although it inspires those participating in divine glory to express accurately and unerringly what is inexpressible in words and concepts...

For the Fathers authority is not only the Bible, but the Bible plus those glorified... The Bible as a book is not in itself either inspired or infallible. It becomes inspired and infallible when the communion of the Saints who have the experience of divine glory described in, but not conveyed by, the Bible. To those outside of the living tradition of theoria the Bible is a Book which does not unlock its mysteries. [6]

Professor Romanides‘ hermeneutical thought is incisive in both its biblical focus on the direct experience of God which is the heart of biblical revelation, as well as in its philosophical sophistication, a radical liberation of thought from platonist epistemology. As regards the latter, to affirm that trust must be sought in personal and relational terms rather than abstract and eternal archetypes, is simultaneously relief from the anguish of a philosophical deadend and, as well, the opening of new horizons in the search for lived truth. As regards the former, to lift up the significance of the immediate and direct experience of God is to engage the substance of Scripture’s witness and, as well, the essence of the common human odyssey. For nothing is more profound and urgent than for each human being to gain personal intimations of the living God.

Indeed, the personal-experiental and the nominalist-philosophical perspectives are integrated in a most intriguing way by Professor Romanides, a way that simply rings true and gives his thought a powerful and attractive unity. It is certainly a worthy witness of the great Church fathers who, as philosophical sophisticates in their age, increasingly turned their back to Plato and deliberately followed the biblical way of knowing God. Not the least of Professor Romanides‘ merits is to remind modern scholars of the essential continuity and coherence of biblical and patristic theology. In his own efforts to exorcise the platonist ghost that always drives persons to relate more to abstract truths and absolute values rather than the living God himself, he has clearly discerned what is the core of patristic thought, namely, the scriptural content and vision. The way of the fathers is the way of Scripture. One could add that faithfulness to Scripture was precisely the driving force that pushed back the horizons of platonism in the thought of ancient Christian thinkers, an interesting way of thinking about how “Moses overcame Plato,” that is, how platonist ontology gave way to biblical personalism. [7]

However, the hermeneutical proposal by Professor Romanides is burdened by one-sidedness in its own way because of certain unnecessarily extreme claims that detract from the value and persuasiveness of Father John’s thought. On the philosophical level, leaving aside the question of the interpretation of Augustine to experts in this area, a radical kind of nominalism must be tempered with the consideration that “concept-bearing words and images” carry a certain stability of meaning. While rejecting the idea of eternal universals and archetypes, one must still take account of the biblical and patristic view that there are in Scripture clear and abiding teachings about God and his ways accessible to all. One does not necessarily have to adopt platonist metaphysics about immutable truth to affirm that the Bible, at the communication level of words and images, contains abiding insights, principles, and truths concerning such things as God and idols, grace and free will, love and hate, honesty and lying, forgiveness and retaliation, justice and exploitation, giving and selfishness, hope and despair.

One does not have to read very far in the theological and practical writings of the Church fathers, such as Basil and Chrysostom, to see the massive authority they attached to the letter and plain meaning of Scripture as secure instruction about God and his will for all. These fathers relied heavily on the clarity and stability of meaning resident in the biblical text they derived by grammatical exegesis and assumed that any reader could follow without esoteric techniques. To claim that “the Bible is not inspired” as it stands is to fly into the face of the whole patristic tradition and undercut Scripture’s plain witness to God’s dealing with all people. To seem to claim that stable and secure meaning at the level of words and images cannot at all be gained by ordinary human understanding is to undercut at once human communication, scholarship, as well as the hope of meaningful dialogue and possible reconciliation between disputants, whether orthodox or heretical. We are not saying that the plain meaning of word and images available to all is everything but that it is an integral part of that same truth about God and of God, which all are invited to seek.

The central difficulty of Professor Romanides‘ proposal is the extreme convergence on the charismatic saint who seems to be raised above the Bible, above the Councils, and even above the Church. We do not question the rich and valued tradition of spiritual fathers in Eastern Christianity. [8] Nor do we question the foundational role of the key biblical figures and of the great saints in the total life of the people of God. What we do question is the exclusivity of the charismatic model, which seems to raise the saint to a theological super figure. One is tempted to compare the vagueness of the ideal saint of whom so much is required to the vagueness of the Protestant emphasis on the word of God to which similar superiority is attributed.

But who are these supreme saints who enjoy an exactly identical experience of God and can communicate unerringly between them and with others who are not blessed with theoria? After the experience of the transfiguration of Jesus, John and James were not above looking for special honors in the coming kingdom they apparently still awaited in earthly form (Mk 10:35ff.). Despite their unarguable stature, the apostles Peter and Paul could have a striking difference on an important matter of ecclesial life, which compelled Paul to face up to Peter (Gal 2:11-14). [9] The Book of Acts also reports “a sharp contention” between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark’s instability which caused their separation in missionary work (Acts 15:36-41). If such disputes occurred among the apostles, one would not be hard pressed to provide numerous examples from among the Church fathers themselves. In fact, most heretics could be described as charismatic figures.

What evidence does Professor Romanides provide for the above hermeneutical model? Three references from St Gregory the Theologian about the impossibility of conceiving God and the necessity of spiritual cleansing when seeking knowledge of the sublime mystery of God. [10] He also refers to the verb thereo (“observe,” “perceive,” “behold,” etc.) used in the Gospel of John in connection with seeing and knowing Christ. Father Romanides takes the liberty of translating this verb as a noun (“may have theoria,” Jn 17:24) and thereby injecting in it the technical patristic meaning. But the noun is never used in the Gospel of John and only once in the entire New Testament and there with a different nuance (Lk 23:48), hardly sufficient scriptural evidence for a technical, heightened understanding of theoria. In fact, the Fourth Gospel offers an abundance of gnosiological terms (eidenai, gignoskein, pisteuein, blepein, oran, theorein, etc.), all of them applied indiscriminately to Christ’s relations to all, believers and unbelievers.

With regard to Gregory, the intent of the first two cited orations is that, duly cleansed, let us philosophize within our proper bounds” [11] because “the divine nature cannot be apprehended by human reason.” [12] Gregory is talking about proper use of reason fulfilled by faith. [13] His appeal to mystical knowledge is over against Arian and Eunomian rationalism, not the ordinary use of reason in gaining knowledge about God, which is available to all. Gregory himself makes ample use of both reason and rhetoric gained from his classical Greek education, not least in his use of the Greek notion of theosis which, to be sure, he fills with biblical meaning. All this is by no means to deny that the experiential and mystical dimension is unimportant in either the Fourth Gospel or Gregory. On the contrary, we affirm its importance in both. However, it is to point out that neither the Fourth Gospel, nor Gregory, in their overall witness raise the charismatic believer or saint as the infallible criterion of the knowledge of God and about God above Scripture and above the Church. The total testimony of the Bible and the fathers does not support such an exclusive model as a hermeneutical criterion.

In biblical and theological hermeneutics, we cannot be satisfied with a proposal that seems to suggest that the authoritative charismatic figure is beyond critique, a position open to the charge of arbitrariness and subjectivism. The charismatic figure is important in the Judeo-Christian tradition but cannot be separated from the people of God, the realm of the faith community whose corporate character is the prevailing point of reference. The apostolic advice is: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world (Jn 4:1).” Among the Church fathers, St Symeon the New Theologian advocated, as perhaps no other Orthodox saint, the unerring wisdom and even sinlessness of the beholder of Christ’s glory, and himself claimed to be such. Nevertheless, despite his strong statements about the spiritual blindness of all others, he invites his hearers, who had not yet beheld the glory of the risen Christ, to judge for themselves the truthfulness of his own words. For example, he writes: “This, in my opinion, is the truth of the matter, and such is God’s counsel toward us... You, on your part, must see and test that which we say.” [14]

Charismatic claims must be tested out by the communal tradition and life of the Church as the final criterion. Experience of God belongs to the whole Church and not only to an elite group, which would smack of gnosticism. Personal mystical cognition has significance, especially for the beholders of the glory of God, but cannot exclusively either dominate or absorb access to knowledge of God available to all. For otherwise, not only would the faithful be deprived of their role of guardian of the faith but also the Church would be cut off from communication with the world to which it is charged to preach the gospel meaningfully. Rather, a hermeneutical model is needed that takes into account a greater balance between faith and reason, mystical cognition and scholarship, individual and faith community, Church and culture, according to the testimony of the Church fathers.

Footnotes:

[1] A comprehensive statement of his position may be found in his length article “Critical Examination of the Applications of Theology,” in Proces-Verbaux du deuxieme Congres de Theologie Orthodoxe, ed, Savas Agouridis (Athens, 1978), pp. 413-441). Father Romanides many years ago was my first theology professor at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and he opened my eyes to exciting theological insights and to the necessity of paying close attention to “presuppositions.” To him I owe my foundational theological thinking, albeit qualified by critical historical scholarship of the Bible and the Church fathers. Father Romanides is now retired but still active in Greece and abroad. [He reposed in 2001 -- F.C.]

[2] Ibid., p. 423 and more broadly pp. 421-426.

[3] Father Romanides time and again confidently parallels his theological and hermeneutical approach to the experimental method of the hard and soft sciences, involving both interdependent theorizing and actual testing by observable and measurable standards, pp. 413, 423, 432, and 436-437.

[4] Ibid., p. 434. See also pp. 432-433.

[5] Ibid., pp. 413, 416, 418-421.

[6] Ibid., pp. 427 and 432.

[7] J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 33, writes that, according to the Eastern fathers, “theology was not a science of divine ontology but of divine revelation.” This patristic emphasis on faith and Scripture, rather than on reason and philosophical speculation – while viewing the two perspectives as complementary and mutually supportive, not antithetical – is more fully laid out by Pelikan in his Christianity and Classical Culture. In contemporary Orthodox theology, biblical and patristic personalism as contrasted to Greek philosophical ontology is the touchstone of the work of John D. Zizoulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985) and Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984).

[8] See Kallistos Ware, “The Spiritual Father in Orthodox Christianity,” CC (Summer/Fall, 1974), pp. 269-312, and Irenee Hausherr, S. J., Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), with a foreword by Kallistos Ware. Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, ends his study on the ancient monastic use of Scripture by underscoring the significance of persons who lived Scripture and were “Christ-bearers” and “mediators of God to humanity.” His ending sentence reads: “The ultimate expression of the desert hermeneutic was a person [his emphasis], one who embodied the sacred texts and who drew others out of themselves into a world of infinite possibilities,” p. 300.

[9] One can understand but not accept the interpretation of some Church fathers, going back to Origen, that Peter and Paul simulated the conflict in order to teach a lesson to Jewish and Gentiles Christians. But, on the premise of the dignity and unfailing agreement between apostles, would not these Christians also be offended even by a simulated conflict, just as later Christians were apparently offended who took the disagreement as real?

[10] Theological Orations, 1.3; 2.3, and 2.14.

[11] Theological Orations, 1.5.

[12] Ibid., 211.

[13] See Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzen by Frederick W. Norris who lifts up the following Gregorian citation, p. v: “When we abandon faith to take the power of reason as our shield, when we use philosophical enquiry to destroy the credibility of the Spirit, then reason gives way in the face of the vastness of realities... Give way it must... [being] the frail organ of human understanding. What happens then? The frailty of our reasoning looks like a frailty in our creed. Thus it is that as Paul too judges, smartness of argument is revealed as a nullifying of the Cross. Faith, in fact, is what gives fullness to our reasoning” (Oration 29.21).

[14] C. J. deCatazaro, trans. Symeon the New Theologian: Discourses, p. 354

Are Tonsure and Burial Mysteries?

2010-06-03T20:20:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: How did the teaching concerning the Mysteries arise? Why is tonsure a Mystery, but burial not? Why do certain priests say: “Everything in the Church, it’s all a Mystery"?

Answer: According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, a Mystery is a sacred act in which, under a visible form, the invisible grace of the Holy Spirit is given. They were established by the Savior and the Holy Apostles. The ritual aspect was formed gradually.

Monastic tonsure is not a Mystery, Burial is the prayerful commemoration and rite of forgiveness with the departed children of the Church. A Mystery may be performed only on the living. He upon whom a Mystery is performed must prayerfully participate in it.

Despair = Suicide

2010-06-02T05:08:00.004+02:00

From St John of the Ladder (5:38):

Nothing equals or excels God's mercies. Therefore, he who despairs is committing suicide. A sign of true repentance is the acknowledgment that we deserve all the afflictions, visible and invisible, that comes upon us, and even greater ones. Moses, after seeing God in the bush, returned again to Egypt, that is, to darkness and to the brick-making of Pharaoh, who was symbolical of the spiritual Pharaoh. But he went back again to the bush, and not only to the bush, but also up the mountain. Whoever has known divine vision will never despair of himself. Job became a beggar, bu he became twice as rich again.

The Warmth of Dickens

2010-06-02T04:53:00.003+02:00

An excerpt from an “Orthodox Survival Course” given by Hieromonk Seraphim in 1975, as reproduced in Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works:

In our present society, boys by the time they are fourteen or fifteen years old know all about sexual sins, much more than even married people used to know. They know exactly what is going on in the movies, they see it, and the whole atmosphere in which they live is one of indulgence. “Why fight against this sort of thing?” it is said. “It’s natural.” Obviously, they are being prepared for a life of indulgence in sin.

Such a boy may be given the standard of truth, which is chastity, virginity; but this is a very high and difficult standard if all he has in mind is the abstract idea of chastity in order to fight against this all-pervading atmosphere of sensuality which attacks not only the mind but also the heart – and the body directly. He sees everywhere billboards which lead to temptation, and the magazines which he can now look at are frightful; and all this is much stronger than the single idea of being pure. In fact, everybody will laugh at that idea, and the poor boy will have a very difficult time not just in resisting, but even in seeing that he should resist temptation, because all the evidence is against it except for that one little abstract truth that he should be pure. In this respect he can be helped by literature...

The boy can read something like David Copperfield, which describes a boy growing up: not some kind of monk or ascetic hero, but just an ordinary boy growing up in a different time... It’s true that this is a worldly book about people living in the world – but that world is quite different [from today’s world]. Already you get a different perspective on things: that the world has not always been the way it is now; that the standard which is now in the air is one kind of world and there are other kinds; and that this is a different, normal world in which, although the element of sex is present, it has a definite role. You get strength from seeing what was normal in that time, from the way Dickens describes this young boy growing up and falling in love. He is embarrassed to be around the girl and never thinks about dirty things because nothing like that ever comes up; whereas if you read any contemporary novel that’s all you get. This book shows a much higher view of love, which is of course for the sake of marriage, which is for the sake of children. The whole of one’s life is bound up with this, and the thought never comes up in this book that one can have some kind of momentary satisfaction and then pass on to the next girl. David Copperfield is full of dreams of this woman, how he is going to live with her and be a big man of the world. It is assumed that he has sexual relations after he’s married, but this is involved with what one is going to do with one’s whole life.

Again, this gives strength to a boy who is himself occupied with precisely these temptations. When he asks questions like, “How do I behave towards a girl?” – an abstract sort of standard doesn’t help much. But if he sees how this fictional person, who is very true to life at a different age, was so embarrassed, so concerned, so polite, so idealistic and tender, this inspires him to behave himself more normally, according to past standards. And in such a novel we see how many sides there are to the whole question of love and sex, how complicated it is in our whole human nature. Although no Orthodoxy is preached, the whole atmosphere is filled with at least a large remnant of Christian values, and this gives a definite help to the boy on his own level, not on a spiritual level, but on the level of his leading an everyday life in the world.

Also, Dickens communicates an extremely warm feeling about life, about human relationships, which is not given in schools today. And this very feeling of warmth about human relationships might have more effect on keeping a boy pure than giving him the abstract standard of Orthodoxy...

The warmth of Dickens can help break through one-sided rationalism better than years of arguments, because even if you accept the truth you can still be cold and rationalistic and insensitive. Simply reading Dickens can already produce in one tears of gratitude for having the true religion of love. The earnestness and compassion of Dostoevsky can help break through one’s self-love and complacency. Even someone like Thomas Mann, who doesn’t have the qualities of great warmth and compassion, can give one a deeper insight into the wrongness of the path of Western life.

Fr Seraphim had this to say about films, when asked if there were any that portray Christian virtue:

There are a lot of them, but they don’t make them any more. Maybe they do once in a while, but it is very rare. Old movies, especially ones that are dramatizations of novels or classic plays, are often very well done and there is a point to them. Everything in Dickens is that way; it is full of Christianity. He doesn’t mention Christ even, but it is full of love. In The Pickwick Papers, for example, the hero Mr Pickwick is a person who refuses to give up his innocence in trusting people. Finally he gets put in the debtor’s prison because he trusted someone. There comes to him the man who put him in prison and seduced his relative, and who has now been put in prison himself. Mr Pickwick weeps over the man and gives him money so he can buy a meal, because the man has no money to but food in debtor’s prison. One sees this man, this criminal who has been taking advantage of everyone, and one little tear forms in the man’s eye. In the end Mr Pickwick is triumphant, because he trusted men; and he wins because people’s hearts are changed.

There are lots of old movies like this which show either the passions of men, the innocence of men, or various Christian virtues. In fact, these nineteenth-century novels on which they are based are very down-to-earth and real; and they show how to live a normal Christian life, how to deal with these various passions that arise. They do not give it on a spiritual level, but by showing it in life, and by having a basic Christian understanding of life, they are very beneficial. I don’t know of any movies nowadays that are that way. Maybe here and there you can find one, but they have all become so weird... For examples, Dickens is heartwarming with regard to normal, everyday life, but the recent movie E.T. is heartwarming with regard to some kind of freakish thing, which becomes something like a savior.

I think we should seek out more of these old movies. For a group – say, a church group – to get together and show these old movies would be very good, especially for the young people.

Reading Group: Comments are Open

2010-06-02T02:41:00.004+02:00

There is only one reading group post this week, on the chapter on the moral idea of the dogma of the Holy Spirit, and it can be found here. Let's get the discussion going!

Fr John Behr on the Trinity

2010-06-02T01:23:00.004+02:00

Taken from The Living Pulpit (April-June, 1999), by Fr John Behr:

The Trinity: Scripture and the Greek Fathers

Some 30 years ago, Karl Rahner claimed that most Christians are “mere monotheists,” that if the doctrine of the Trinity proved to be false, the bulk of popular Christian literature, and the mindset it reflects, would not have to be changed. Unfortunately, this is largely still true.

Defining the doctrine of the Trinity as a mystery which cannot be fathomed by unaided human reason invites a position such as Melanchthon’s: “We adore the mysteries of the Godhead. That is better than to investigate them.” But the danger of not reflecting carefully on what has been revealed, as it has been revealed, is that we remain blinded by our own false gods and idols, however theologically constructed.

So how can Christians believe in and worship the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and yet claim that there is only one God, not three? How can one reconcile monotheism with trinitarian faith?

My comments here follow the structure of revelation as presented in Scripture and reflected upon by the Greek Fathers of the fourth century, the age of trinitarian debates. To avoid the confusion into which explanations often fall, it is necessary to distinguish between: the one God; the one substance common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and the one-ness or unity of these Three.

The Father alone is the one true God. This keeps to the structure of the New Testament language about God, where with only a few exceptions, the world “God” (theos) with an article (and so being used, in Greek, as a proper noun) is only applied to the one whom Jesus calls Father, the God spoken of in the scriptures. This same fact is preserved in all ancient creeds, which begin: I believe in one God, the Father...”

“For us there is one God, the Father... and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:6). The proclamation of the divinity of Jesus Christ is made no so much by describing Him as “God” (theos used, in Greek, without an article is as a predicate, and so can be used of creatures; cf. John 10:34-35), but by recognizing Him as “Lord” (Kyrios). Beside being a common title (“sir”), this word had come to be used, in speech, for the unpronounceable, divine, name of God Hiself, YHWH. When Paul states that God bestowed upon the crucified and risen Christ the “name above ever name” (Phil 2:9), this is an affirmation that this one is all that YHWH Himself is, without being YHWH. This is again affirmed in the creeds. “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God... true God of true God.”

According to the Nicene creed, the Son is “consubstantial with the Father.” St Athanasius, the Father who did more than anyone else to forge Nicene orthodoxy, indicated that “what is said of the Father is said in Scripture of the Son also, all but His being called Father” (On the Synods, 49). It is important to note how respectful such theology is of the total otherness of God in comparison with creation: such doctrines are regulative of our theological language, not a reduction of God to a being alongside other beings. It is also important to note the essential asymmetry of the relation between the Father and the Son: the Son derives from the Father; He is, as the Nicene creed put it, “of the essence of the Father” – they do not both derive from one common source. This is what is usually referred to as the Monarchy of the Father.

St Athanasius also began to apply the same argument used for defending the divinity of the Son, to a defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit: just as the Son Himself must be fully divine if He is to save us, for only God can save, so also must Holy Spirit be divine if He is to give life to those who lie in death. Again there is an asymmetry, one which also goes back to Scripture: we receive the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead as the Spirit of Christ, one which enables us to call on God as “Abba.” Though we receive the Spirit through Christ, the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, yet this already implies the existence of the Son, and therefore that the Spirit proceeds from the Father already in relation to the Son (see especially St Gregory of Nyssa, To Ablabius: That there are not Three Gods).

So there is one God and Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, and one Holy Spirit, three “persons” (hypostases) who are the same or one in essence (ousia); three persons equally God, possessing the same natural properties, yet really God, possessing the same natural properties, yet really distinct, known by their personal characteristics. Besides being one in essence, these three persons also exist in total one-ness or unity.

There are three characteristics ways in which this unity is described by the Greek Fathers. The first is in terms of communion: “The unity [of the three] lies in the communion of the Godhead” as St Basil the Great puts it (On the Holy Spirit 45). The emphasis here on communion acts as a safeguard against any tendency to see the three persons as simply different manifestations of the one nature; if they were simply different modes in which the one God appears, then such an act of communion would not be possible. The similar way of expressing the divine unity is in terms of “coinherence” (perichoresis): the Father, Son and Holy Spirit indwell in one another, totally transparent and interpenetrated by the other two. This idea clearly stems from Christ’s words in the Gospel of John: “I am in the Father and the Father in me” (14:11). Having the Father dwelling in HIm in this way, Christ reveals to us the Father, He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).

The third way in which the total unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is manifest is in their unity of work or activity. Unlike three human beings who, at best, can only cooperate, the activity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one. God works, according to the image of St Irenaeus, with His two Hands, the Son and the Spirit. More importantly, “the work of God,” according to St Irenaeus, “is the fashioning of man” into the image and likeness of God (Against the Heretics 5.15.2), a work which embraces, inseparably, both creation and salvation, for it is only realized in and by the crucified and risen One: the will of the Father is effected by the Son in the Spirit.

Such, then, is how the Greek Fathers, following Scripture, maintained that there is but one God, whose Son and Spirit are equally God, in a unity of essence and of existence, without compromising the uniqueness of the one true God.

The question remains, of course, concerning the point of such reflection. There are two directions for answering the question. There are two directions for answering the question. Theological reflection is, to begin with, an attempt to answer the central question posed by Christ Himself: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15). Yet at the same time, it also indicates the destiny to which we are also called, the glorious destiny of those who suffer with Christ, who have been “conformed to the image of His Son, the first-born, of many brethren” (Rom 8:29). What Christ is as first-born, we too may enjoy, in Him, when we also enter into the communion of love: “The glory which though hast given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22).

See also my Attempt to Summarize Trinitarian Theology, which was highly influenced by Fr John. See also the following online articles by Fr John:

The following books are available as "limited previews" by Google Books:

He has also completed a new book, which should be published in March 2011: The Case Against Diodore and Thedore .

Second Marriages

2010-06-02T01:20:00.002+02:00

Q & A with Fr Job:

Question: How is the Mystery of marriage performed, if one of the spouses is marrying a second time, and the other for the first time? As far as I know, there are two rites of marriage.

Answer: If one of those marrying is being married for the first time, then the Mystery is always performed in its full rite.