Kyrie Eleison

The Heavens are Declaring

2012-02-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

A song of the Mbuti Pygmies:

"In the beginning was God,
Today is God,
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body."

Source.

Ugh...

2012-01-21T16:05:00.000-08:00

In a foolish blunder, I have signed up for Facebook. If you are a user of that infernal identity theft kit, look me up at your leisure...

Russia Gives the US a Taste of its own Moralistic Medicine

2011-12-28T17:30:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, we've had this coming for a long time.

You have to give Russia credit, it seems to be the one major country willing to call the US out directly on its hypocrisy.

O the Mystery! The Creator Becomes a Creature!

2011-12-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

"O come let us rejoice in the Lord, telling of this present mystery:

The middle wall of partition hath been demolished, the fiery sword is removed, the cherub withdraweth from the gate of life, and I partake of the food of paradise, from whence I was driven away because of disobedience.

For the Image of the Father, the Image of His Eternity, doth assume the form of a servant, issuing forth from the mother who knew not wedlock, without undergoing change.

Yet He hath remained our true God as He was before, and He hath received what He was not, becoming man in his love for mankind.

To Him let us cry aloud, 'O God who was born of the virgin, have mercy on us!'"

Source: Lord I Have Cried 1 from Christ is Born.

Quote for the Day: a Responsible Musician

2011-11-30T18:23:00.000-08:00

“The truth of it is every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation.”

Source. Perhaps a little overstated, but essentially she's right.

Joining the Clones

2011-11-18T15:33:00.001-08:00

I have purchased an Apple product. Or rather, I received one for free when I renewed my AT&T contract last week. So far, my iphone 3gs has been very easy to use and actually a wonderful blessing due to my ability to manage my email and finances when I'm away from my computer.

So, does anyone have any good Apps to recommend?

To End Any Suspense...

2011-11-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

After only five days of prep work I passed my CDL test today. Wow.

CDL Test Tomorrow

2011-11-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'll be taking a driver's test for my class A driver's license. I need a class A in order to keep my job. Please say a prayer for me, dear readers, that everything will work out.

More Proto-Credal Language in Tertullian

2011-10-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Previously, I had commented on finding some language that was strikingly similar to the Nicene Creed in Tertullian's On the Veiling of Virgins. (The actual post can be found here.)

Last night I also discovered some new, strikingly creed-like language in his Against Praxeas:

"We, however, as we indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or οἰκονομία , as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete,the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost."

Does Latin Christianity Contain the Seeds of Filioquism From its Inception?

2011-10-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Tertullian (c. 200 AD) writes in Against Praxeas:

"But as for me, who derive the Son from no other source but from the substance of the Father, and (represent Him) as doing nothing without the Father’s will, and as having received all power from the Father, how can I be possibly destroying the Monarchy from the faith, when I preserve it in the Son just as it was committed to Him by the Father? The same remark (I wish also to be formally) made by me with respect to the third degree in the Godhead, because I believe the Spirit to proceed from no other source than from the Father through the Son."

Some Things I Have Learned About Early Christianity

2011-10-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

As those of you who follow my blog regularly already know, over the past few years, I have been making a stuttering attempt to aquatint myself with the bulk of Christian literature from the first, second, and early third centuries. Of course, my motive is to pry into the ancient sources, to see what I can learn about what was really being believed and taught at those times.

I remember once, just before I left Kentucky, sitting on the bed of a truck talking to Kent Steinke. Kent was, and no doubt is, an odd fellow. Most people of my acquaintance in Kentucky generally dismissed the things he had to say, but I did not. We had a long conversation on that truck bed about many very serious topics, but one of the two that stuck with me deeply over these years was his counsel that I should not become Orthodox. I remember him saying that Orthodoxy was essentially a great temptation to Protestants because we craved antiquity and steadiness. And he was willing to grant that Orthodoxy was ancient and that its faith and practice were unchanging in their core. "But," said he, "Orthodoxy is not reflective of an unchanging apostolic Christianity, it is reflective of an unchanging fourth century Christianity."

This assertion has been bumping around in the back of my mind for years. Nevertheless, I think that by sheer volume of evidence I can now put it to bed and I can say with firmness that if Orthodox Christianity is not reflective of apostolic Christianity, that is, if our faith and practice has deviated significantly from the faith delivered to the Apostles, then it is actually most reflective of late first and second century Christianity and not of something more distant, and certainly not something "corrupted" by Constantine.

Some recent (and not-so-recent) discoveries I have made include:

*A firmly established three-fold order of Christian ministry (bishops, priests, deacons): Letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (105 - 115 AD), the Shepard of Hermas (middle of second century), Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200)

*A physical altar used in Christian worship: St. Ignatius of Antioch (105 - 115 AD)

*Clear "real presence" or "real transformation" theology regarding the Eucharist: St. Ignatius of Antioch (105 - 115 AD)

*The definite use of an established (i.e. non-extemporaneous) consecration prayer for the Eucharist: Didache (late first to middle second century)

*The belief that baptism is a salvific act of God (and hence not merely symbolic): Justin Martyr's First Apology (c. 150 AD) and Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD), see also John 3, Mark 16:16, and 1 Peter 3:20-21

*The belief that a second sacramental act of public confession was necessary to expunge post-baptismal sins: Tertullian, On Repentance (c. 200 AD)

*The belief that baptism is properly only administered by immersion except in cases where necessity dictates otherwise: Didache (late first to middle second century)

*Baptism is in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Didache (late first to middle second century), see also Matthew 28:19

*Baptism should follow a three-fold pattern (three dunks in immersion, three pours when pouring): Didache (late first to middle second century)

*Baptism should only be given with the bishop's consent: St. Ignatius of Antioch (105 - 115 AD), Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*Baptism is immediately followed by Chrismation: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*Baptism of blood doctrine (a.k.a. "baptism of desire): Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*Pascha and Pentecost are celebrated as feasts in the Church: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*Pascha is seen as the best time to baptize, followed by Pentecost: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*The very young are being baptized in the Church: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*The church uses a system of baptismal sponsors: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*The salvation of baptismal sponsors is somewhat tied to the ultimate salvation of the persons they have sponsored: Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*Baptism should be preceded by fasting: Didache (late first to middle second century), Tertullian's On Baptism (c. 200 AD)

*There is a class of unbaptized persons who are formally preparing for baptism (i.e. catachumens): Tertullian's On Repentance (c. 200 AD)

*There are formal prayers ("sacramental words") said at a baptism beyond the three-fold formula, one of which involves the enrolling of the new Christian as a "soldier" - this practice is still a part of an Orthodox baptism to this day: Tertullian's Ad Martyras (c. 200 AD)

*Private prayer should have "the legitimate and customary prayers as a foundation," and should always include the Lord's prayer: Tertullian's On Prayer (c. 200 AD)

*The kiss of peace should be exchanged at corporate prayer: Tertullian's On Prayer (c. 200 AD)

*Angels intercede for Christians: Hermas (middle of the second century), cf. Matt. 18:10

*Christians can intercede for the departed, even to the point of prompting God to save them at the resurrection: Acts of Paul and Thecla (middle of second century), Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (c. 200 AD), cf. 2 Macc. 12:32-45

*Christians use the sign of the cross: Acts of Paul and Thecla (middle of second century)

*Some Christians practiced monasticism: Acts of Paul and Thecla (middle of second century)

*Christians venerated the bodies of martyrs: Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 150 AD)

*Christians kept records of the dates of martyrdoms as "birthdays" and commemorated them annually: Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 150 AD)

If I'd have been keeping a formal catalog of these things, no doubt my list could be quite a great deal longer. Needless to say, regardless of what one thinks of these practices, whether or not they are apostolic or acceptable to the apostolic faith, these sorts of things were going on and being believed in in the second century. A lot of the things that my friend Kent attributed to a much later age were already deeply entrenched parts of Christian faith and practice hundreds of years earlier. To wit, these are simply not "Constantinian compromises" with paganism or fourth century novelties. They are something much older.

An Orthodox Understanding of Mission

2011-10-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

I would recommend this ROCOR article on mission first to all Orthodox Christians who feel a desire and calling to do missionary work (which hopefully is the vast majority of us). I would also recommend it especially to our clergy, as a reminder and clarification of what they have no doubt already been taught.

A teaser:

"The world does not need more generic missionaries. It does not need simply ‘Christian-flavoured’ social work. It does not need it, and it will reject it.

But the world desperately needs to be shown the way into the Kingdom of Heaven..."

A Very Worthwhile Sermon

2011-10-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

I would highly recommend this sermon by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick to my readers. All I can really add is that I think he's right. These days are much more reflective of the world before Christendom than of the broad period of Christendom.

A Beautiful Icon from Kostov Iconography

2011-10-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

"And the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove (Luke 3:22)."

www.kostoviconography.com

Archbishop Christopher, Metropolitan of the Czech Lands on Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague

2011-10-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

"Czechs began to venerate Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague as saints immediately after they were burned at the stake. Jerome of Prague was the first to call Jan Hus a saint—at the very Council of Constance, which condemned Jan Hus and which awaited a “statement of repentance” and condemnation from Jerome of Jan Hus. They were venerated for two hundred years. However, after the defeat by the Catholic Leagues at the fatal battle on White Hill in 1620 and the forced Catholicization of the Czech people, the names of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague were basically outlawed. In 1918, when Czechoslovakia became an independent state, the modernist Church took the name of Jan Hus. The communists called him something of a revolutionary. In fact, he never called for modernism in his sermons, but spoke only about the undistorted, original teaching of Jesus Christ, which was in fact Orthodoxy."

[Interviewer] Does that mean that Jan Hus’s and Jerome’s martyric deaths could be considered martyrdom for Orthodoxy?

"It was precisely of Orthodoxy that they were accused. This was one of the points of accusation of their heresy. However, they considered themselves Catholics and officially were so. Only at the end of the twentieth century did the Primate of the Roman Catholic Church, John Paul II, express his deep regret over their burning at the stake. But he did not go beyond regret. And they both, Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, died for the undistorted faith, for the pure faith of Christ—that is, for Orthodoxy. Therefore we are completely justified in canonizing them as saints. This has already been confirmed by the Church of Cyprus and the Greek Church. Other Orthodox Churches also support us."

Upcoming Bible Study

2011-10-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand, my Friday night Bible study will reconvene at Sojourner Truth Ministries possibly as early as Friday the 21st. When we meet, we'll be meeting at 7pm and the class will run to 9pm and the class will be scheduled for every third Friday. This time around, we'll be studying the Gospel of Luke and then, Lord willing, the Acts of the Apostles. Everyone is welcome to attend regardless of creed or prior knowledge. So for folks in the Williamsport area, leave me a comment if you're interested and I'll give you further instructions about how to get there.

(It is possible that I'll be changing the location of the study, the day of the week or time of day, so please just bear with me as I get ready to kick off a new Bible study which, I hope by God's grace, will be edifying and spiritually enlightening both to myself and to those who come to study with me.)

Grace and Peace,

Ed

Kostov Iconography

2011-10-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

A young couple from my church recently asked me to post a plug for their new website. The website is Kostov Iconography, and it showcases the work of a Bulgarian iconographer named Dian Kostov, who at one time had been the wife's art teacher.

www.kostoviconography.com

Quote for the Day: the Passion of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas

2011-09-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

"Possibly such a woman could not have been slain unless she herself had willed it...."

Chrismation is Very Old and Occurs Directly After Baptism in Antiquity

2011-09-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

Tertullian (c. 170 - c. 230) writes in On Baptism:

"After this, when we have issued from the font, we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction,--(a practice derived) from the old discipline, wherein on entering the priesthood, men were wont to be anointed with oil from a horn, ever since Aaron was anointed by Moses. Whence Aaron is called "Christ," from the "chrism," which is "the unction;" which, when made spiritual, furnished an appropriate name to the Lord, because He was "anointed" with the Spirit by God the Father; as written in the Acts: "For truly they were gathered together in this city against Thy Holy Son whom Thou hast anointed." Thus, too, in our case, the unction runs carnally, (i.e. on the body,) but profits spiritually; in the same way as the act of baptism itself too is carnal, in that we are plunged in water, but the effect spiritual, in that we are freed from sins."

Additional Thoughts on the Acts of Paul and Thecla

2011-09-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Having re-read the Acts of Paul and Thecla today, I would like to offer some additional thoughts on the text.

My first thought is that the author is entirely Orthodox in his theology. This book is clearly a production of a man of Catholic faith. He never misrepresents the gospel in any way through his good characters, mainly Paul and Thecla.

However, in spite of his Orthodoxy, the author has what would be in my view a slightly overzealous presentation of the virtue of chastity and virginity. The central question of the work, which comes up over and over again, and which precedes every major persecution of Thecla is, "will Thecla be able to preserve her virginity?" The author weaves all manner of subtle and overt threats into his presentation. Thecla is ultimately spared from her multiple suitors and would-be rapists by the grace of God, and this fact is very important for the author, for at the end of Paul's beatitude sermon which is the first Christian sermon that Thecla hears, the author reports Paul to say, "Blessed are the bodies and souls of virgins; for they are acceptable to God, and shall not lose the reward of their virginity; for the word of their (heavenly) Father shall prove effectual to their salvation in the day of his Son, and they shall enjoy rest for evermore." This is by far the longest Pauline beatitude in the sermon, and is quite certainly the teaching which controls the major theme of the work as a whole.

Nevertheless, while Paul and Thecla both hold a very high estimation of virginity, only their enemies such as Paul's troublesome companions Demas and Hermogenes (probably mentioned in 2 Tim. 4:10 and 2 Tim. 1:15, respectively) actually say that Paul forbids marriage or that celibacy is a requirement for salvation. Thus, the author implicitly rejects those who claim that Paul (and all true Christians) are calling for universal celibacy.

Another interesting facet of this work is that it very much puts on display the work of women and of the young in responding to and spreading Christianity. At the beginning of the work, St. Thecla is a mere 18 years old, and she quickly decides to become a convert after she hears Paul's preaching. Later in the book, she comes to Paul bringing with her "many young men and women." After this, Paul actually gives her the instruction that she is to "go, and teach the word of the Lord." In response, she goes first to Iconium and then, taking up residence in Seleucia, "enlightened many in the knowledge of Christ." Thus we can see very plainly that it was not unacceptable for women to be teachers and evangelists in the early Church. In fact, it was quite laudable. However, what is also very clear is that St. Thecla never attempts to assume a role such as presbyter or bishop for herself, and the text nowhere suggests that she might preside at the prayers or "the breaking of bread" as St. Paul does at the beginning of the account. Nor is there really any direct account of St. Thecla preaching in the ecclesia.

One true oddity in the text is a self-baptism. While it is an established Christian tradition that anyone may baptize in the case of an emergency, I have never heard of an instance of someone baptizing himself. However, this is just what we encounter in the center of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, where Thecla assumes that she is about to be killed, and announces that she is baptizing herself as she dives into the Roman arena portable 'shark tank' that her persecutors have brought forth to throw her into. God miraculously saves her from the beasts, and this is surely to be seen as a sign that he is confirming her baptism. When she later encounters Paul, who had earlier refused to baptize her on account of her limited contact with Christianity, she tells him that she has baptized herself and he actually does not object to it. Certainly, the author could not be encouraging self-baptism. Perhaps he is merely relaying the events as he had heard they happened. Sometimes the truth is indeed strange.

One other thing about St. Thecla's baptism which I find interesting is that it is done nude. Now, of course, in the story this is a matter of necessity, seeing as St. Thecla has been stripped so that she can be further humiliated as the beasts devour her. However, I have to wonder if this isn't also illustrative of a practice in the early centuries of doing all baptisms nude. (I am actually not sure if this practice began with the John the Baptist, with the apostles or not long thereafter at some point in the second century. I am also uncertain as to whether or not it was universal in the Churches, or if it was practiced in some but not in others. What I am sure of is that the liturgical function of deaconesses in later centuries would be to baptize, and that this fact was not at all unrelated to the practice of baptizing nude.)

Anyway, those are some more of my thoughts regarding the Acts of Paul and Thecla. I may comment some more on the Acts later, but I'm not sure I will.

Quote for the Day: St. Thecla

2011-09-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

"Grant me only the seal of Christ, and no temptation shall affect me!"

-------------------------------------------

Spoken as she was begging St. Paul that he should baptize her and bring her along as his companion.

Source.

St. Paul's Speech Before the Governer of Iconium in the Acts of Paul and Thecla

2011-09-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

"As I am now called to give an account, O governor, of my doctrines, I desire your audience.

That God, who is a God of vengeance, and who stands in need of nothing but the salvation of his creatures, has sent me to reclaim them from their wickedness and corruptions, from all (sinful) pleasures, and from death; and to persuade them to sin no more.

On this account, God sent his Son Jesus Christ, whom I preach, and in whom I instruct men to place their hopes as that person who only had such compassion on the deluded world, that it might not, O governor, be condemned, but have faith, the fear of God, the knowledge of religion, and the love of truth.

So that if I only teach those things which I have received by revelation from God, where is my crime?"

Source.

Some Notes on the Acts of Paul and Thecla

2011-09-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I read the Acts of Paul and Thecla, a work which deals primarily with the account of the life of St. Thecla of Iconium, who lived in the first and second centuries. While it has been known from antiquity to have been a forgery and not truly a contemporary account of apostolic happenings, I found the reading quite interesting for a number of reasons.

First of all, I was interested by a lot of the casual references to practices that would indicate that things were going on by the second half of the second century (the definite time of the writing of the account) which many would ascribe to later eras. For instance, Thecla makes the sign of the cross over herself at least twice in the account. Contemporary Orthodox oral tradition maintains that the sign of the cross is apostolic. While its presence so casually in this account does not really confirm that belief, what it does say is that by the end of the second century, the practice was already so widespread, common, and normal in Christian life, that the writer and his readers would all have easily believed that the practice was used by men of the apostolic era.

Another practice and belief which I find fascinating in the account is Thecla's presumably effectual prayer for the dead. When Thecla is held captive in the house of the noblewoman Trifina, Trifina's daughter, who died before Thecla's arrival, appears to her mother in a dream and begs her to have Thecla pray for her, that she might be "translated to a state of happiness." When her mother makes the request to Thecla, she makes matters more explicit, asking that her daughter be translated "to eternal life." Again, there is no attempt made to justify such a practice in the text, and indeed, narrativally, it functions basically to explain Trifina's friendship with Thecla rather than to expound a doctrine.

A third reference in the work which I find interesting is the explicit mention of Christian monasticism, and the assumption of the writer that it was present in the late apostolic and early post-apostolic era. Late in the story we find Thecla living in a cave with a group of celibate "gentlewomen" who have "abandoned the world" and who are leading "a monastic life" with Thecla. In some of contemporary Orthodox oral tradition, particularly out of Syria, St. Thecla is actually the originator of Christian monasticism. Thus, monasticism would have its roots in Thecla's direct adaptation of St. Paul's teachings on virginity and on continuing in the marital state in which one is called to Christianity. The author of the present account, however, does not make such a claim regarding St. Thecla, and given that the work is a hagiography, one might reasonably assume that if the author believed that St. Thecla was the first Christian monastic, that he certainly would have spelled it out in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, what can be said it that St. Thecla without a doubt represents one of very first examples of Christian monasticism and like St. Anthony much later, her influence and the accounts of her life did much to promote the practice.

I also find it interesting that the account of St. Thecla's monasticism contains a number of features which will become almost a standard in later monastic hagiography. For instance, Thecla "abandons the world" and retreats to an uninhabited area. She prays and lives alone for many years and undergoes "a great many grievous temptations of the devil" which she overcomes "by the assistance which she had from Christ." After this, we are told that a number of women seek her out and become her disciples, and begin to live with her in the cave. As her fame spreads, people begin to seek her out and ask her to sure their diseases, and she cures many people and exorcises demons. Finally, some envious men seek to persecute her on account of her righteous deeds. Such features are very common in later monastic literature and it is interesting to find them already displayed so prominently in such an early account.

I have a few more things to say regarding the Acts of Paul and Thecla, but I shall have to wait a little while. Hopefully I'll be able to write more on the subject later today.

Quote for the Day: St. Paul

2011-09-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

"If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself."

2 Timothy 2:11-13

A Life Well Lived: Memory Eternal, Archbishop Dmitri

2011-08-28T05:57:00.000-07:00

Archbishop Dmitri, retired bishop of Dallas and the South, passed away this morning.

May God grant him rest eternal and blessed repose in the Lord Jesus, and may he grant us the eternal continuance of his servant Dmitri's effectual prayers.

Please, dear readers, read this biographical testament to God's grace to his Church through the life and work of his holy and honorable servant, Dmitri.

Quote for the Day: C. S. Lewis

2011-08-22T17:03:00.000-07:00

"All theology of the liberal type involves at some point -- and often involves throughout -- the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by His followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars....

The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance."

Source.

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I would also add that this tendency to view a fairly quick misunderstanding followed by a much later doctrinal recovery is also inherent in most types of Protestantism. So in some sense, such a liberal tendency is something of a "demythologized" version of what earlier Protestants had already been doing. (It's almost like Marx mimicking Hegel through the lens of Feuerbach, if one is familiar with that set of philosophical movements.)

That being said, in partial defense of the earlier Protestants, at least they invoked a belief that God was giving them direct insight. Thus, their claims to have recovered the lost heart of the gospel are not quite so arrogant, because they truly believed that God the Holy Spirit was opening their minds to see that which was lost.

Pray and Never, Never Give Up

2011-08-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

“It is of great signiﬁcance if there is a person who truly prays in a family. Prayer attracts God’s Grace and all the members of the family feel it, even those whose hearts have grown cold. Pray always."

-Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

Free Football on the Internet

2011-08-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I must admit that I'm just posting this because my spiritual father asked me today if I was still writing about football. No doubt if he views the site this will amuse him.

In any event, I wanted to share a website I found where you can watch free live streaming NFL football. It should be good for every game, all season long (at least until the Feds shut it down like the site I used last year):

http://www.firstrowsports.eu/

Enjoy!

An Additional Adventist Falsehood Worth Mentioning

2011-08-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Ellen White, again in The Great Controversy, wrote that the Medieval Church "supplanted" "the scriptural ordinance of the Lord's supper" with "the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass." She went on to say that "Papist priests pretended, by their senseless mummery, to convert the simple bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. With blasphemous presumption, they openly claimed the power of 'creating God, the Creator of all things.'" She then goes on to assert that any Christian who did not assent to this "horrible, Heaven-insulting heresy" would be put to death.

First of all, I'm not sure if any sizable group of people in the Middle Ages would have even thought to deny the real transformation of the elements. It was not a novelty being introduced at that time, it had simply been the faith of the Church from all time. As such, I'm not sure how she comes up with the notion of people being "put to death" for denying the real presence and real transformation.

Secondly, were it not for spiritual blindness, it should be obvious that the Scriptures and beyond that, the Church in every generation, do in fact teach a doctrine of the real transformation of the elements. I could of course belabor this point, but I think that a quotation of Martin Luther quoting the Mass which is quoting the Scripture should be sufficient. Regarding the bread, Jesus said, "this is my Body."

Some Falsehoods Propagated by E. G. White in Early Adventism

2011-08-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

Having finished the Gilgamesh Epic, I turned my attention to a more modern work, Ellen White's The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. White, for those who do not know her, was a leading figure in the nineteenth century movements that transformed much of Millerite millenialism and revivalism into the continuing religious groups today known as "Adventism."

I'm not sure if I'm going to continue reading this book, but its partisan nature and lack of historical accuracy are apparent even in its beginning. For instance, the pope, who White describes as "the representative of Satan," is said to openly style himself "Lord God the Pope," thus making himself equal to divinity. Quite frankly, I am not a fan of the papacy (at least in the last millenium or so), and many of the claims White brings up regarding papal supremacy or infallibility are agreeable to me and I am sure her criticisms are appropriate. However, I have never, in all my studies of Church history, ever heard of someone making the claim that the pope actually had other people refer to him as God. Even the worst of the Medieval popes wouldn't have done this, as far as I can discern.

White further makes the claim that "for hundreds of years the circulation of the Bible was prohibited. The people were forbidden to read it or to have it in their houses." I'm pretty sure that this is not technically true. I think that the Roman Church did not actively encourage people to own a copy of the Bible in the late Medieval period, but I am aware of some educated (and generally wealthy) laymen who did own copies of the Holy Scriptures.

Additionally, White makes the assertion that the veneration of images and relics by Christians was deliberately started by corrupt Roman emperors who sought to give pagan converts "a substitute for idols." Quite frankly, evidence of the veneration of relics and the use of images predates the legalization of Christianity.

In order to support the doctrine of image worship, White claims that Rome "expunged from the Law of God" the second commandment. I am not aware of any Medieval Roman Catholic Bibles that do not list the second commandment. That being said, she might have meant only that they counted the second commandment as a subsegment of the first commandment and numbered the whole body of them slightly differently. Even so, I'm not sure how this could be seen as somehow "expunging" it from the list. If the text still remains, it really doesn't matter how it's numbered.

Not surprisingly, she asserts that in the first centuries the Christians kept "the true Sabbath" (i.e. Saturday) as their primary day of worship. Such a claim is historically baseless and just flat wrong. She also asserts that early Christians, deceived by Satan, turned Saturday into a fasting day, thus making it unpopular and preparing for the conversion of the primary day of worship to Sunday under the Roman emperors. Frankly, I have never heard of such a thing. The earliest tradition I am aware of is that Friday was the first weekly Christian fast day and that Wednesday was added to it in time, thus giving the early Christians two fasting days which rivaled the two mid-week fasts of the Pharisees (Tuesday and Thursday).

Finally, it behooves me to say something about Mrs. White's premise which lies behind much of her poppycock. She proposes that because "the ten commandments were spoken by God Himself, and were written by his own hand," "they are of divine, and not human, composition." In contrast, she writes that the bulk of the Scripture "presents a union of the divine and the human" similar to the "union which existed in the nature of Christ."

While one cannot doubt that Mrs. White had a great respect for the Holy Scriptures and a great esteem for their authority, one can discern a certain distinction being made here, in that the Ten Commandments are seen as wholly divine, whereas the rest of the Scriptures suffer somewhat from the admixture of the divine with the human. Thus, for White, the Ten Commandments form the center of Revelation and are "immutable." They are for all people and are unchangeable. This predisposition is very clearly behind her historical imaginings about the early Church and the Sabbath, etc.

However, as an Orthodox Christian, there is something still more troubling about White's focus on the Ten Commandments. Whether she meant it in this way or not, her giving of preeminence to the Ten Commandments and to things which she viewed as being of merely divine origin as opposed to "divine and human" origin is something of an attack on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That is, in classical Christian theology, it is the teachings, traditions, commandments, and customs of Christ which have preeminence. Christ is the locus of God's revelation. The Law, including the Ten Commandments, had but a "shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities" (Heb 10:1). The ordinances of the Law, including the Sabbatical Law from the Ten Commandments, were "a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ" (Col 2:17).

It is fairly ironic that White emphasizes the importance of God speaking in the Sinai Theophany and yet does not assign the same level of importance to God (the Father) speaking in the Theophany at Jesus' baptism or in the Theophany of the Transfiguration. In both cases, God points to the Lord Jesus, and in the second case, explicitly tells the disciples to listen to (i.e. obey) him. Apparently, for White, the fact that Moses once received stone tablets inscribed by God renders his transmissions of those words and those of subsequent generations of scribes absolutely beyond human admixture. In contrast, apparently the disciples of Jesus and the writers of the gospels were only able to achieve an inferior "union of the divine and of the human" in their recollections of Christ's words and of the Theophanies.

For the first Christians, as for Orthodox Christians today, the focus of God's revelation for all time is Christ. Thus, the Sinai Theophany must be interpreted through the lens of Jesus' Theophanies. Any commandment of the Law must be interpreted under the controlling rubric of the Law of Christ, the Law of Love, the "Perfect Law of Liberty" (James 1:25). The New Covenant controls and replaces the Old Covenant, which was founded on the premise of the faithfulness of the Old Israel. The New Covenant is founded on the faithfulness of the New Israel, and He was faithful unto death, and having destroyed death, faithlessness has no power over Him. To attempt to resubject Christ or Christians to the Mosaic Law and to insist that they live by its precepts is foolishness, and is indeed the ancient heresy of judaizing. The Law of Moses was a good Law, but it was a Law whose central purpose was to reveal to fallen, Old Israel who Christ would be when he came. When Christ came, he assumed Old Israel, taking the flesh of the Patriarchs upon himself, and by his death and resurrection recreated it a New Israel. Whatever might have existed of Old Israel, then, is dead, and remains dead, and is under a curse, for it is written, "cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this Law by carrying them out" (Deut 27:26). To walk backwards, then, and to grasp at Judaism and at the Law of Moses, is to place oneself and one's presumptuousness ahead of the grace of Christ.

St. Ignatius, representative of his apostolic teachers, writes:

"If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death--whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master--how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead.

Let us not, therefore, be insensible to His kindness. For were He to reward us according to our works, we should cease to be. Therefore, having become His disciples, let us learn to live according to the principles of Christianity. For whosoever is called by any other name besides this, is not of God. Lay aside, therefore, the evil, the old, the sour leaven, and be ye changed into the new leaven, which is Jesus Christ. Be ye salted in Him, lest any one among you should be corrupted, since by your savour ye shall be convicted. It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God."

I would also recommend as an authority on this subject St. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians.

Some Reflections on the Gilgamesh Epic and the Book of Genesis

2011-08-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

I have just finished my first reading of the ancient Sumerian Gilgamesh Epic. On the whole, I'm very glad I read it. I had been told that there were a number of parallels between things in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Genesis, and things in the Gilgamesh Epic. I would say that I find the comparisons that the scholarly community commonly makes between the two works to be generally well-placed. There is a lot of common culture and a lot of common myth that undergirds the Sumerian Epic and the Hebrew Origins Story.

However, I should state in beginning my reflection, that these works are still wildly different from one another in scope, worldview, and purpose. The Book of Genesis is primarily an origins story. That is, it attempts to explain to a specific group of people (the Hebrews) where they have come from, why their world is the way it is, who they are in the world, who God is, and how God relates to them. As such, Genesis sets up and answers a lot of questions. It also, interestingly enough, sets up a lot of questions that it does not fully answer, and thus concludes in a knowingly incomplete fashion, awaiting a fulfillment beyond the scope of the narrative.

The Gilgamesh Epic, in contrast, is much more of a classic hero story. In fact, despite the wildly different times, places, and cultures involved in their writing, the work that I have read that I would most directly compare it to is Beowulf. While it does explain some origins of things (e.g. the wall of the Eanna Temple in Uruk), origins are not really part of the focus of the story. The focus of the story is on the epic struggles of the hero, Gilgamesh, who is two-thirds divine and one-third human. By virtue of his divine bloodline, Gilgamesh is very mighty and crafty, but by virtue of his human bloodline, he is mortal and is certainly not portrayed as perfectly invincible in any sense. Gilgamesh struggles with a series of major opponents in the work until the death of a friend forces him to turn his attention to an enemy that is greater than all of the others he has faced: the inevitability of his own death. Interestingly enough, despite an epic quest to defeat or elude death, Gilgamesh is ultimately thwarted and returns to Uruk with the knowledge that he no longer has any understanding of how to overcome his own mortality. At this point, the story ends rather abruptly with Gilgamesh boasting of his city and his building accomplishments to a traveling companion.

While parallels to things biblical occur throughout the Gilgamesh Epic, the locus of the majority of the parallels occurs in the section of the narrative in which Gilgamesh goes in search of the Divine Utanapishtim in order to find out how to attain eternal life. Utanapishtim was once a mortal man living in the city of Shuruppak on the Euphrates. When the Great Gods hatched a plan to destroy humanity with a Flood, the god Ea warned Utanapishtim and told him to construct a boat in which to preserve humanity and also animal life. Very much like the biblical Noah, Utanapishtim obeys, leaves the city, and constructs a massive boat, although his seems to have been bigger than the one in the Noah story, having seven levels instead of three. Interestingly enough, when the rain comes, it lasts only 7 days instead of forty as with Noah. (Although in either case, both numbers would have symbolized completeness to the ancient Hebrews, at least.) After the deluge, Utanapishtim's craft becomes lodged on a mountain, like Noah's. Further, like Noah, he sends out birds to see whether they will return. If the birds do not return, then he will know that there is dry land somewhere. Interestingly enough, again like Noah, Utanapishtim sends out a dove and a raven (though he also sends a swallow). However, the birds are sent in a different order, and a different bird gives Utanapishtim the confirmation that he may come out of the ark. Utanapishtim sends the dove first, and it returns to him, then he sends the swallow and then the raven. When the raven does not return, he knows that it is safe for him to exit the boat. Noah, in contrast, sends three flights, but the first is the raven, which does not return and the last two are made by the dove. The dove's first mission is unsuccessful and it returns to Noah. In the second mission, it is successful, and returns again, but this time bearing in its beak a sprig of olive wood. (Both the dove and the olive branch have since become symbols of peace in Western culture. I am not entirely sure if they would have been in Hebrew culture at the time of the writing of Genesis, but such an interpretation would make sense.)

After he departs from the boat, Utanapishtim, like Noah, releases the animals and offers a sacrifice. In both of the cases, God or the gods smell the pleasing aroma of the sacrifice and grant some form of blessing, expressing definite regret in the Gilgamesh Epic and a change of plan in the Book of Genesis.

Another very interesting parallel that occurs in the stories occurs after Gilgamesh fails at Utanapishtim's first suggestion for how a man might obtain eternal life. In his second suggestion, Utanapishtim suggests that Gilgamesh dive deep underwater and retrieve a certain plant that is said to be able to restore a person's youth. Gilgamesh retrieves the plant, and carries it with him on his journey back to Uruk, intending to administer it to an old man to see if it works. If it does work, no doubt he will be able to live forever from it, he reasons. Interestingly enough, while Gilgamesh is bathing on his return journey, a snake slithers up and steals his panacea. After the snake consumes his hope, it sheds its skin, rather ironically, showing that while Gilgamesh's youth will not be restored to him, the snake's is. To bring this into direct comparison with Genesis, it is interesting that in both accounts it is the deeds of a snake that keep humanity from living forever.

Another interesting parallel in the accounts is the understanding of humanity coming from dirt and returning to dirt. While in Gilgamesh the verbiage seems to be more of "clay," while the Hebrews tended to use the word "dust," the understanding that humanity comes from the soil and will return to the soil is common. At the creation of Enkidu, a major character in Gilgamesh, a goddess takes some clay from her hand and flings it into the wilderness, producing Enkidu. This is at least somewhat similar to God forming man "from the dust of the ground" and breathing in his nostrils in Genesis 2. Similarly, where the Hebrews used expressions such as people "returning to dust" for what happens when people die, the writer(s) of Gilgamesh frequently uses "turning into clay" as an expression for death and corruption.

There is more in there that I could bring out, but time is (as always) prohibitive. I hope you've enjoyed this post, dear readers. Please feel free to ask me anything or share your thoughts.

The Lament of Gilgamesh

2011-08-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

"Tavern-keeper, should not my cheeks be emaciated?
Should my heart not be wretched, my features not haggard?
Should there not be sadness deep within me!
Should I not look like one who has been traveling a long
distance,
and should ice and heat not have seared my face!
..., should I not roam the wilderness?

My friend, the wild ass who chased the wild donkey, panther of
the wilderness,
Enkidu, the wild ass who chased the wild donkey, panther of
the wilderness,
we joined together, and went up into the mountain.
We grappled with and killed the Bull of Heaven,
we destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
we slew lions in the mountain passes!
My friend, whom I love deeply, who went through every hard-
ship with me,
Enkidu, whom I love deeply, who went through every hardship
with me,
the fate of mankind has overtaken him.

Six days and seven nights I mourned over him
and would not allow him to be buried,
until a maggot fell out of his nose.
I was terrified by his appearance(!),
I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness.
The issue of my friend oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long trails through the wilderness.
The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long roads through the wilderness.
How can I stay silent, how can I be still!
My friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Will I lie down, never to get up again?"

Source.

Quote for the Day: the Epic of Gilgamesh

2011-08-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

'A slippery path is not feared by two people who help each
other....'

'A three-ply rope cannot be cut.'

Source.

A Scripture for Transfiguration

2011-08-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

Isaiah 60:1-5, 19-22:

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the LORD will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.
The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.
“Lift up your eyes all around, and see:
They all gather together, they come to you;
Your sons shall come from afar,
And your daughters shall be nursed at your side.
Then you shall see and become radiant,
And your heart shall swell with joy;
Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you....

“The sun shall no longer be your light by day,
Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you;
But the LORD will be to you an everlasting light,
And your God your glory.
Your sun shall no longer go down,
Nor shall your moon withdraw itself;
For the LORD will be your everlasting light,
And the days of your mourning shall be ended.
Also your people shall all be righteous;
They shall inherit the land forever,
The branch of My planting,
The work of My hands,
That I may be glorified.
A little one shall become a thousand,
And a small one a strong nation.
I, the LORD, will hasten it in its time.”

The World Changes So Much

2011-07-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

When I was born, in 1982, theological liberalism was already very old news. Depending on how one wants to define and document it, "theological liberalism," "modernism," "progressivism," "lattitudinarianism," or however one chooses to label it, had been around for a long time, at least 100 years, and in some circles, many more.

However, while it was around at the time of my birth, and indeed was already exerting massive amounts of influence on Protestant and Catholic culture in the United States and Western Europe, its effects were still fairly muted in the liturgical lives of most of the communities with which it has been associated.

Theological liberalism is, in my estimation, a bastardization of the early Reformer's call, "semper reformada!" When the early Reformers spoke of the Church's need to "always reform," they universally had in mind the notion of going back to something better. Like all Christians before them, save potentially (and significantly) medieval and modern Roman Catholics, the early Protestants looked back to the age of the Apostles as an age which set precedents, something of a golden age of revelation. The Orthodox Church asserts that the fullness of revelation that will ever be given to humanity about God was given to us in the ministry of the Theanthropos, Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and in the lives of the Apostles. However, we very much assert (and I think this is something we share with the Reformers, as well), that through time the Holy Spirit might lead the Church into new and deeper ways of understanding and expressing those things which the Lord Jesus revealed to us. Therefore, in both classical Protestantism and Orthodoxy, there is a sense in which "the tradition" (to use the Orthodox word) or "the revelation" (to use a more Protestant-friendly word) was and is unchanging.

However, because of the beginnings of Protestantism, with its understanding of a broken Roman Catholic tradition and attempt to reestablish true, apostolic doctrine and ways of living, there could never be the same sense of continuity that Holy Orthodoxy has about its relationship to the faith and practices of the Apostles.

Therefore the Reformers raised the cry, "semper reformada" (always reform), for two reasons. First, they did not trust themselves completely to hold on to the true revelation (or gospel, or tradition, or however you want to parse it). Due to their own experiences in their Roman Catholic background, their generally very high view of human sinfulness, and (I would posit) their low view of the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit, the Reformers called on one another and on future generations to challenge one another to see if they were holding on to the biblical faith as maintained by the Apostles. If they were to find through their study of Scripture that they were not, then their church ought to be purified.

But secondly, I think there was a certain hesitancy amongst many of the Reformers to declare that the reforms were over. As they studied, came to various conclusions, schismed from one another, revised their positions, et cetera, the Reformers seemed only rarely able to say of their faith with great certainty, "we have seen the True Light, we have received the Heavenly Spirit, we have found the True Faith," as the Orthodox so confidently proclaim at every liturgy. Martin Luther may have expressed a great deal of Germanic bravado about his doctrines, but his continued revising of his own positions throughout his life does give the impression that even for him, the Reformation was never really finished.

Now for some, Protestantism did calcify into established "Orthodoxies," in which a central document such as the Augsburg Confession or the Westminster Confession of Faith became a standard of theology for a specific group. However, for the majority of Protestants who have ever lived, there has been something of a sense of the "unfinished Reformation." Thus, new groups arise in every generation, and although they increasingly do not remember "semper reformada" or the Reformers, they basically have the same objective: to "get back to" or "recover" the Apostolic Church.

Now, in contrast to these, there has developed another party in Protestantism, which has infiltrated Roman Catholicism in the last century, and is starting to make moves to infiltrate Holy Orthodoxy in this century (God forbid these heretics success in their schemes!), which also initially took the call to always reform the Church as their touchstone, but who are not looking to return the Church to the doctrines and practices of the Apostolic past, they are rather looking to update the Church doctrinally, spiritually, socially, and liturgically to some form of "enlightened Christianity" which has been purified from its errors and the superstitions it held in the past. But unlike the Reformers, who aimed at abolishing unchristian superstitions and reestablishing Apostolic beliefs, for theological liberals, Apostolic beliefs largely are the superstitions. Therefore, just as in Roman Catholic theology as it has developed and been justified since the schism, there is a notion of "progressive revelation" amongst theological liberals. However, unlike in Roman Catholicism where there is at least an attempt made to harmonize new revelations and dogmas with older ones, theological liberals tend to reject older understandings (read also, "understandings that they do not personally adhere to, regardless of provenance") in the name of "new revelation," "a better understanding," or "a new move of the Spirit."

(As an aside, quite frankly, most of the language of theological liberals regarding revelation and the Spirit sickens me. I have very little doubt that when they use such terms it is with the utmost cynicism, because I cannot truly believe that the majority of them are anything but atheists who are too cowardly to admit it and face the consequences. Their language is a ploy to maintain a certain appearance of continuity with the past, to placate some in their congregations, and to keep their Judas hands in the purses of more traditional Protestant believers.)

As I noted at the beginning of this post and in the title, I have lived on this good, God-created planet for a mere 29 years, and things that were unconscionable when I was a little child have already become mainstream. After over 100 years of labor in the mainstream Protestant seminaries and hierarchies, theological liberals have effectively transformed the theologies even of most of the faithful of the Evangelical Lutheran, UCC, PCUSA, Episcopal, and American Baptist Churches. They have made a great deal of headway amongst United Methodists and Roman Catholics (in America).

Of course, there have been major coups along the way in terms of the liturgical lives of these churches. In all of the Protestant ones mentioned, women have been permitted ordination. Certainly, there has been a gradual deemphasis of creeds and confessions, but even so, things are happening today at a much faster rate than ever they did when I was a child. Most of the churches I have mentioned express official approval of homosexual lifestyles, most are indifferent to divorce, etc. But really, I see the final transformation as yet to come.

Increasingly, the beliefs of theological liberals are totally reshaping the worship of their communities. It's fairly shocking, but really all one has to do is go to youtube and one can find some truly odd rituals performed by Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, members of the UCC, etc. Generally, I would describe the aesthetic trend amongst these people to be towards pseudo-pagan, pseudo-Native American, and "New Age" forms of spirituality. However, I don't believe for one second that the majority of the people who practice such rituals actually believe anything like traditional pagan or Native American belief systems. I see them as essentially post-Enlightenment "rationalists" who are either cynical atheists or agnostics or who have sort of a general notion of a (usually Unitarian) God or "divine force" or something. Though they call themselves Christians, they are gradually (or in some cases, not-so-gradually) giving up all traditional symbols of Christianity. Such change is bound to come. Eventually, at some level, what we believe effects what we do.

In response to theological liberals, and as an Orthodox Christian, I have only one thing to say: "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered... As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish, as wax melts before the fire... So the sinners will perish before the face of God, but let the righteous be glad!"

Now, an example of what I mean about theological liberalism transforming liturgies, let me furnish a scene from the liturgy which touched off the writing of this post: from the PSUSA 219th General Conference.

I Don't Think My Dad Will Ever Forgive Them

2011-07-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

If anyone thinks that my becoming Orthodox was an easy thing, think again. It was painful for me on a great number of levels, one of which was the familial.

My parents were dead-set against my becoming Orthodox. While he couched it in terms of it "hurting your mother," his words and his responses very much belied and continue to belie the notion that it was all about mom.

I remember in the midst of the process him telling me that I was being used by the devil and that demonic agents had me where they wanted me. He went on to explain that the demons had changed course with me, that it was apparent to them that they could no longer outright destroy my faith, but now they wanted to bog me down, make me ineffective, and preoccupy me with stupid, useless things. Of course, he went on to further explain that becoming Orthodox meant that I would be bogged down, especially because I would be held out of the ministry for at least three years.

Anyway, while my relationship with my mom has recovered greatly and she even occasionally expresses interest about the way Orthodox people do things, my normally tolerant dad is still very much upset and very much angry about the whole thing.

His anger usually expresses itself in degrading comments about aspects of Orthodox canon law that he thinks are stupid. He really, really hates the fasts. I'm not sure why, but usually every Wednesday or Friday when I happen to eat with him I have to endure another comment about those "stupid fasts." Obviously, he can't believe that Orthodox fasts do a person any good. I think he also thinks of them as overly legalistic due to their complexity and possibly even that they are not "real fasting," since they are not total fasts.

I find it fairly bizarre just how much my dad loves the Amish, given the fact that he hates precisely those aspects of Orthodoxy the most which are the most stereotypically "Amish" in character. That is, he hates the rules. When I was telling him (erroneously, as it turns out) that a priest who gets a divorce for any reason is dismissed from the priesthood last night, he flew into a rage. How, he asked, could a priest be held responsible for things that he may have had no control over? I had no ready answer for him at the time, as I was stunned by his fury, so I blurted out that a priest could also be dismissed for accidentally running someone over with his car. He then howled that "that was equally stupid" but that I had not answered his question about the priest being thrown out for a divorce that was not his fault.

That question aside, I'm pretty sure my dad will never forgive them. I wonder if he'd be doing the same sorts of things if I'd have become Amish? Maybe he sees the ways of the Amish as "quaint" and nonthreatening, because, after all, it's not as though they're actually going to convert anyone. Many of the things he complains about in Orthodox piety, most especially closed communion, are facets of Amish piety as well.

My dad is broad, accepting sort of man. There's a lot of pietism in him. I believe that one of his great virtues is his ability to be tolerant of those he disagrees with. I just wonder why it is that since the day I first brought up the idea of becoming Orthodox he has with such vehement fury hated the notion.

Please, dear readers, pray for him and for your sinful servant.

What is the Purpose of Genesis?

2011-07-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

I've started pecking at the later chapters of the book of Genesis recently. It's fascinating. I'm thinking that there are definitely different schools of tradition that underlie the various accounts. But that's not really why I'm blogging today.

Reading through Genesis I could see some very definite purposes to the various accounts. For instance, some accounts explain things like why this or that place is named like it is. However, none of these little things that I noticed can be said to be one of the major reasons for the composition of Genesis. So that caused me to ask just what the major reasons behind the composition of Genesis were.

I put this question to a Protestant fellow who comes to church with me tonight, and he replied that in his estimation, the book of Genesis was written (at least in its final form) around the time of the Babylonian exile and that its central point was that the Israelites had the right to possess the Promised Land. I liked his answer from the perspective that it was something I hadn't really thought about before (I was familiar with the late dating theories but not with the notion of the text justifying Israel's claims on the land). However, I think he's probably wrong. Of course, the book does implicitly justify Israel's later inhabitation of the Promised Land by recording the promise itself, but I don't really think that is the central purpose of the book. Though I must admit that I have never given any great thought to just what the purpose of Genesis is (at least, not since I've attained my majority and have begun to incessantly ask that question of every biblical book).

Is it mostly a story of origins? If so, why write a story or origins? Do you write a story to remind people who they are or who they ought to be? Dear readers, I'd treasure your insight if you have any.

Quote for the Day: a Chinese Governmental Official

2011-07-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

"We understand politics, but your government’s continued recklessness is astonishing..."

Source.

Quote for the Day: the VSO

2011-07-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

"Only in this day and age do people identify themselves by what the[y] fornicate with."

Source.

For the record, I have read the Catacomb Chronicles on and off for some time now and I still have no idea what "the VSO" stands for.

Quote for the Day: St. Ignatius of Antioch

2011-07-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

"Do not speak of Jesus Christ, and yet set your desires on the world. Let not envy find a dwelling-place among you; nor even should I, when present with you, exhort you to it, be persuaded to listen to me, but rather give credit to those things which I now write to you. For though I am alive while I write to you, yet I am eager to die. My love has been crucified, and there is no fire in me desiring to be fed; but there is within me a water that lives and speaks, saying to me inwardly, Come to the Father. I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life. I no longer wish to live after the manner of men..."

-Ignatius to the Romans, 7:1-8:1.

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I am not worthy of such words, and I could not truly speak such words about myself on this day, dear readers. But I truly want, in the midst of my conflicting desires, this one for earthly food and this one for heavenly, this one for the world to come and this one for the fleeting pleasures of the age, to be able to say such words in sincerity. Then, saying such things, I shall know that I have attained that perfection to which the Lord has called me, for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life shall all have been extinguished in me, and a pure love, a crucified love, shall reign in my soul. Oh Lord, let me please see such a thing in the flesh, let me experience that certainty that I just no longer want any created thing, but now want only "the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life."

Neutered, Part 2

2011-07-05T11:43:00.001-07:00

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Neutered!

2011-07-03T14:23:00.001-07:00

I feel neutered. My work demanded that I shave my face in order to fulfill the new company policy. As a man, I have a very hard time being clean-shaven. It's not that I sit around in judgment of other men who shave their faces or something silly like that, it's just that I feel like, as a man, I ought to have a beard. The ancient Hebrews all wore beards. The ancient Fathers wore beards. The Lord Jesus Christ himself, the preeminent man and the Man from which all true manhood is derived, wore a beard.

My mother, typical of our age, wanted to see me clean shaven so that she could see "what I really look like at age 29." The assumption (which I believe is the assumption of our broader culture as well) is that my shaved face is my true face, whereas wearing a beard is like having something covering my face. I disagree. I believe that, as a man, my natural face is my face with a beard, and not my clean shaven face. My clean shaven face is something of a reduction of my natural face. It's as though something is missing.

I have to say, while I am grateful for my job and would not otherwise contemplate leaving, this decision on the part of management deeply angers and offends me. It's not as though I disagree with the logic of what they've done, but I feel as though they've stolen something from me. Certainly, they've stolen another little piece of my freedom and individuality. I resent it, and that's really all I have to say about it.

For those of you who are now curious to see the little girl face that they've made me wear, I'll post a picture when I get my laptop hooked up sometime tonight or in the next couple of days.

I had that beard for two and a half years. I regret its passing and I pledge that one day I will replace it with one more epic and culture-defying than it's predecessor. Down with modern man who in his perversity rejects the God-given gift of hair! Down with Babylon and down with the Devil!

And for those of you clean-faced weenie men out there who are offended by my rant, I have only one suggestion in hendiadys: grow a beard and grow a pair.

An African Coworker Reacts to the New York Gay Marriage Legislation

2011-06-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

"If God does not punish the United States for this, then on the day of judgment he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."

Quote for the Day: St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome (590-604 AD)

2011-06-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

"Whoever calls himself universal bishop, or desires this title, is, by his pride, the precursor to the Antichrist."

Source: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, p. 36.

Job is Confusing

2011-06-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am not ashamed to admit it, I find the Book of Job confusing. I found it confusing as a Protestant, I still find it confusing as an Orthodox.

In its literary character it reminds me somewhat of a Greek dialogue such as those of Plato or St. Justin's Dialogue with Trypho. Like such works, it is quite obviously didactic in character. That is, after we read the dialogue, we are supposed to come away from it edified.

It is written in Hebrew poetry, with the exception of a few short sections of "scene setting" prose and the conclusion. Much of the content seems to come directly from the Hebrew wisdom school as expressed in such books as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ben Sira. It also makes use of sweeping natural imagery that is very, very reminiscent of Hebrew poetry and psalmody. One is perhaps even slightly tempted to see the book as an extended "complaint psalm," given its poetic character.

As for the book's dating, I am too ill-informed to make a guess, but I would guess it is written long after the events it describes. One of my OT professors in college suggested that the entire content was fictitious. That is, she suggested that maybe there never was a Job, that he was just a literary character for the purposes of this book. I tend to be of the opinion that he was a figure of the distant past at the time of the writing of this book, a man whose suffering and righteousness were well-established in Hebrew legend. Of course, the themes of horrible suffering in spite of great righteousness would have struck the Hebrew mind as odd. In spite of the fact that there are psalms which indicate righteous sufferers and a whole theology of being put to the test by God as a good thing, the general Hebrew conception of horrible calamity is that it was a punishment from God leveled against people for wicked behavior (especially exceptionally wicked behavior, cf. the end of 2 Kings). Perhaps one of the major points of Job is to attempt to set that record straight: if you suffer, it may not mean that you are wicked or that you have deserved it.

In any case, as I said, I find the book somewhat confusing. It certainly was not what I would have expected as a Protestant. I remember thinking of that OT line, "there is none righteous, no, not one" and saying to myself, "well if that is the case, how can God be pleased with Job's insistence on his own righteousness?" Granted his horrific situation, Job's listing off of his good deeds (e.g. Ch. 31) really reminds me still of the Pharisee's proclamation of his good deeds in Jesus' parable in the gospel. Now as for Job's friends (who I have always had difficulty telling apart, I have not read it closely, but literarily they seem to all function with the same part), their arguments amount to an attempt at justifying God. In order to justify God in the calamity, they seem to see no alternative than to condemn Job as a sinner and to try to say that the things that happened to him are in fact just in the inscrutable wisdom of God. It is very interesting that the men who try to justify God, God condemns, and the man who tries to justify himself, God acquits. Again, this is not what I would expect, as a Christian. But then again, this is a pre-Christian book, and so perhaps the controlling ethos is something fairly distinct from the Christian.

But then again, when God appears, he does seem to condemn Job in a sense. He does not quarrel with Job over his righteous deeds or any of that, he just seems to pass it over (and I would say, tacitly accept it as true). His quarrel is with Job for questioning him, for calling into question his goodness and justice.

Job, for his part, does what I instinctively think is always the action in the righteous when he meets God: he acknowledges his smallness and ignorance and repents.

But then, God also says that Job "has spoken of me what is right" in his condemnation of Job's friends. So is Job wrong or is he not? Job's friends are clearly wrong for trying to pervert justice by declaring Job guilty of crimes he did not commit, but God specifically says they have spoken wrongly about him. What could he mean in this instance?

On the whole, I find the book confusing. Perhaps that means I should study it more, but I think instead I'll pass on to other reading. Does anyone have any comments that might help me sort out just what is going on in the book of Job?

Republicans, Stop Being Stupid, Tax Me More

2011-06-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I really don't want to pay taxes. Frankly, in some fantasy world that I might entertain from time to time I'd like to dream that I was never taxed for anything at all. I spend probably entirely too much time in my life cataloging my potential tax deductions, now that they are meaningful to me. (Sadly, I do this at least once a week...)

So no, I really don't want to pay taxes as an individual, as a "private citizen." However, as a man who is hopefully a patriot in his heart, I see a potentially devastating time of economic upheaval coming, and its root cause is profligate and irresponsible use of American money (and more importantly, credit) by elected officials.

Really, there is only one way out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into: a combination of reduced government spending and increased government revenues. It's really very simple. As a former Republican (now Independent), it's the Republicans who are frustrating me most in this. With their absurd obsession with keeping taxes low (especially for those poor, victimized people who make over $250,000 per year) and with military spending, the Republicans are probably doing at least as much as the Democrats to bankrupt our country, debase our currency, and ruin our good name throughout the world.

My request is this: Republicans, wake up. Come off your sacred dogmas about trickle down economics and the like and do what virtually every fairly unbiased observer agrees needs to be done: raise taxes. Raise taxes, cut back on military spending (and adventurism) and its subsequent "nationbuilding," and maybe the Democrats will give up more concessions on social programs. You're asking the Democrats to sacrifice their agendas when you are unwilling to sacrifice your own. For the good of the country, I urge you to raise my taxes. I don't want to pay, but make me pay anyway. We need to get out of this mess with the utmost haste, and if you cannot see that and just want to play politics, then you are unworthy of the offices with which the American people have entrusted you.

Sincerely,

A Concerned American

Glenn Coffee on Why He Quit the 49ers

2011-05-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

"As far as the NFL goes, I have a hard time putting it like this because it sounds kind of harsh, but I feel like it ruins a lot of lives more than anything else. And that goes for people who have short careers in the NFL and long careers in the NFL. Because what happens is they see that as success. And money throughout your life has nothing to [compare] with your salvation in Christ.

A lot of players get that money. And they chase that money, man, and I feel that they're really missing the true meaning of life. So I'm constantly afraid for the NFL and the players, because kids growing up nowadays, they see that as the end all, be all. And that's just not the case."

Source.

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A truly noble sentiment, indeed.

The Ultimate Fruit of Real Love

2011-05-17T04:06:00.000-07:00

Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos:

"A Greek-American doctor had once visited me. He was Orthodox, but didn’t have too much to do with religion. He didn’t even keep the fast on Fridays nor did he go to Church very often. He recently had an experience, and wanted to discuss it with someone.

One evening, while he was praying in his apartment, the “heavens opened up”. He was flooded by light, and the ceiling disappeared, as did the other forty floors above his apartment. He remained in that flood of light for a very long time – he couldn’t even tell for how long!

I stood amazed! I could feel and understand that this incident was “from God”. It was real. He had actually seen the “uncreated light”.

What had he done in his lifetime? How did he live to deserve such divine things?

He was married; he had a wife and children. His wife had said to him: “I’m sick and tired of housework; I want to be able to go out for a walk every now and then.”

Well, she wasn’t exactly employed, so she started to go out with her girlfriends and pressured him into accompanying her every night on her outings. After a while, she said: “I want to be able to go out with my girlfriends, alone.” He accepted this, for his children’s sake. Later, she wanted to go on vacation by herself. What could he do? He gave her money and the car.

She then asked him to rent out an apartment, so that she could live on her own; she would also invite her friends over. He would speak to her, he would counsel her, "How do our children feel about all this?" She was adamant. In the end, she extracted a large sum of money from him and deserted him. She felt too confined!

A few years later, he learnt that she had ended up a prostitute in the clubs of Piraeus!

He was distraught! He lamented over her fate! He thought of looking for her, but what would he tell her?

He knelt down to pray: “My God, help me, tell me what to say, what to do, to save this soul." You see, he was hurting for her. He wanted “that soul to be saved”. No male ego, no vindictiveness, no contempt. He truly hurt inside, seeing her wretched state. He ached for her salvation.

That was the moment when God opened up the heavens and flooded him with His light.

You see! You see! He was in America! And in what kind of an environment was he living? And yet, how many of us live on this Holy Mountain, within the grace of the Holy Mother of God, without any sort of progress!

Glory be to God! Glory be to God!"

Source.

Many Years!

2011-05-14T20:03:00.000-07:00

My brother Alex was married today to his long-time girlfriend and then fiance Courtney Brewer.

I was honored to be his best man.

Alex, Courtney, many, many years to you and abundant blessings in all things!

Some Possibilities

2011-05-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure what my life at Pumpco is going to be like at this point, but one thing I can say for certain is that I'll be having every third week completely off. Now as I understand it, it'll run from Monday night to Monday night, this week off. So I'll leave work for home after my Monday shift and won't have to be back to the hotel until the following Monday evening.

So now the major question becomes, what will I do with a whole week off? Immediately, a few suggestions come to mind. First, I'd like to do some ministry. I think I'll restart my bible study at Sojourner Truth, although it'll have to be on an every third week basis as opposed to weekly. Fr. Dan has suggested that I should continue my Fathers class at Holy Cross, but I don't see how I can on an every third week basis.

Second, I'd like to make a little more money. I wonder if there is some sort of every third week side business I could get involved with? Obviously, I don't want to pour a ton of time into such a thing, but something I could do sort of "at my own pace" for some extra cash would be nice. I hope this doesn't seem greedy, as the Lord has blessed me abundantly with a way out of my financial distress. Nevertheless, I think it's a prudent thing to earn some money while I can, because no doubt the days of famine are going to come on me again in the not-so-distant future. (Hopefully it shall not be seven years!)

Third, I'd like to take some time to travel and catch up on some old friendships. With weeks off at a time, I should be very flexible to do just that. The only downside is that such extravagance will potentially harm my money-saving and debt-paying goals.

Is there any way I can find to balance these three things? I wonder if it can be done? Any suggestions, dear readers, are most welcome.

A New Job (Again)

2011-04-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Pumpco

$60,000 guaranteed a year plus major upside and $40/day per diem.

Hopefully a more peaceful and well-organized environment.

Frac Frac Frac!

Missing the Fast

2011-04-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

It is certainly not the case for all Orthodox people, but every year I have been Orthodox I have found some people who express wistfulness at the end of the Great Fast about how it passed "too quickly" and that they "feel like it should have been longer."

This wistfulness is, I believe, based in something very contrary to the world's understanding of fasting. I believe that when the world thinks of fasting, they think of something like useless self-torture. In fasting, they might say, the faithful torture themselves in order to get favor with God in some sort of divine brownie point system. Of course, to the faithful, such a notion of fasting is repellant. The purpose of fasting is discipline and self-control, and the willing subjection of our bodily impulses to the will of God. It is like an athletic training, and it helps us to better engage in the sold-out life of prayer to which every believer is called.

So the great fast has ended, and this year I find myself among the wistful. I did not accomplish the many things that the Great Fast set out before me to accomplish. In particular, I did not love my enemies and certainly did not pray for those who offended or persecuted me. I did not restrain my tongue, but let it wag freely this way and that. I did not engage more deeply in the life of prayer, but rather let my hectic work schedule dominate me and cut me off from the heavenly life of the Spirit and of the Kingdom.

How then shall I face Pascha? How then shall I face the end of the world? The time of preparation has passed and my sin is still with me, burning like a fire! Yes, I have received the sacrament of Holy Confession, and I am forgiven from the things past, but without gaining strength, how will I keep my word - how will I repent of these things and not do them anymore? O my tongue, if only I could cut you out and be rid of you, for indeed there is much truth in what St. James has written of you, you fire! How can you dare to praise God in the sanctuary and then fill yourself with gossip, slander, abuse, and innuendo at all other times? Perhaps it were better that you could not speak at all!

The time of the great Feast is a time of joy, but it is also a time that I fear. If I have not controlled my passions during the Fast, how will I keep them in check during the Great Feast? Brothers, pray for me, a sinner, that I might receive the feast with joy and that it might be to my sanctification, purification, and healing!

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life! Christ is risen!

Christ is Risen!

2011-04-24T01:45:00.000-07:00

"O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept. To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages. Amen."

-St. John Chrysostom

Quote for the Day: Wednesday Bridegroom Matins

2011-04-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

"Envy cannot distinguish value."

[Spoken regarding Judas.]

The Methodists are Paid!

2011-04-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

This check marks my paying the final portion of the $18,500 I borrowed from the United Methodist Church in order to fund my education. Indeed, ultimately, I could not pay my debts, and this is an act of God's grace and mercy! To him be praise forever and ever!

"I am bound by the vows I have made, God, I will pay you the debt of thanks" (Psalm 56:12 NJB)!

Only $24,000 more to go!

Out and About

2011-04-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I've been staying out of town for work without internet access recently, so my posting will be very slow for the next couple of weeks.

I've been working in a place called Potato City, PA.

Habakkuk's Declaration of Fidelity

2011-03-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation" (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

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This reminds me so much of Job! I read Habakkuk again last night with great pleasure. It's a very interesting book, containing basically two prophecies, one at the beginning and one at the end. The first is that Judah will be destroyed by Babylon because of her wickedness. The second is that Babylon is truly unfit to judge anyone and so God will destroy it in due time. If you've never read this short book or if it has been a while, I'd highly recommend it.

Cool Western Saint Icon Website

2011-03-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

Want to see some Orthodox depictions of St. Hubert or find out who St. Gwen the Three Breasted was? If you're a nerd like me, you probably do. And if that's what you're into, then here's a neat website for you: Western Saints Icon Project. Enjoy!

All saints of Switzerland! Long live der Schweiz!

Evangelicalism and Patripassianism

2011-03-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

In ancient times in the Church there were various people who taught doctrines that the Fathers anathematized as "Patripassianism." Patripassianism, put neatly, is the doctrine that during the crucifixion somehow the Father suffered.

In ancient times, this heresy had two loci which are basically foreign to Evangelical theology. The first locus of the heresy was another heresy, namely "Modalism" (also called "Monarchianism" and "Sabellianism"). Modalists attempted to defend the unity of God by rejecting the doctrine that there were multiple Persons in God. That is to say, because they believed that God was one, they assumed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all "modes" of the same divine Person. Therefore, in reality, God was really actually only one Person who played three distinct roles in his revelation. There was no ontological or eternal distinction between the Persons of the Father and the Son, because these revealed "Persons" were really masks worn by the same one Person.

Thus, because Modalists could say that Jesus suffered, and because they believed that Jesus, the Son, was also the same Divine Person as the Father, they could say that the Father suffered.

The second type of Patripassianism occurred amongst specifically Trinitarian believers. Such believers believed very firmly in the perichoretic "interpenetration" of the Father and the Son, meaning that the Father and the Son eternally interpenetrate one another, so that neither exists without the other at any point, though they are indeed two Persons. This ancient belief is held in common with Orthodox and some Evangelicals, although in my experience those Evangelicals who speak of or affirm perichoresis tend to have had Orthodox instruction at some point (and this is most common amongst Wesleyan types who appreciate Orthodox Trinitarian doctrine).

For Trinitarian Patripassianists, the Father's place "in" Christ meant that he was also present in the Person who was crucified. Because Christ was God, the Father was in Christ, and Christ suffered on the cross, Trinitarian Patripassianists asserted that the Father had also suffered in the crucifixion, because, being in his Son, he shared in his Son's sufferings. Thus, to wound the Son is to wound the Father.

On the face of it, this doctrine makes a lot of sense. Nevertheless, it was deemed to be heretical by the Church for two major reasons. First, it failed to grasp the Christian teaching on the divine nature. For the Orthodox, God is in nature incapable of suffering. Therefore, it is impossible to harm him or affect him negatively in any way. Created persons have no weapons to use against God. He cannot be angered (as humans understand anger), he cannot he made to mourn, he cannot be irritated or injured in any way. Neither can he suffer compulsion or necessity. In his omnipotence, he is untouchable, and anything which he brings forth he brings forth freely and without animal pain or animal passion. Secondly, Patripassianism fails to properly understand the two natures of Christ. Because the divine nature is incapable of suffering, Christ suffered only in his human nature. Thus, while he truly suffered as a Person, he did not suffer in his divine nature, and the Father, likewise, did not suffer because of the union of his divine nature with the Son's.

Continuing my discussion of modern Evangelicalism in light of Orthodox doctrines and the ancient heresies, I conclude that though they do not share the same theological predilections of the ancient Patripassianists, Evangelicals are in large measure Patripassians because they teach that the Father suffered at the crucifixion.

As a rule, Evangelicals are not modalists, and so they do not share in modalistic Patripassianism. Nor do they tend to dwell on the implications of their belief in the Trinity enough to even begin to come up with the notion that the Father might suffer because he is eternally unified to his Son and therefore "in" his Son.

Evangelical Patripassianism is something much more primal. Whether it is expressed as the Father experiencing sorrow because of being separated from his Son or because of being betrayed by his creatures or it is expressed as the Father feeling anger either at the Jews or at his beloved Son who was being made the locus of his just punishment of sin, I think that it is not unfair to say that Evangelicals tend to see humanity as in some way truly causing the Father to suffer at the cross. (As a proof of this, I would note how often Evangelicals tend to image God in their hymnography as conflicted, torn between love and wrath, as the crucifixion is taking place.)

Such a view seems to greatly aid in interpreting a great number of biblical passages in which God mourns or is wrathful, etc. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Fathers viewed such a shallow literalism as truly beneath the immutable, impassable, and omnipotent God who had revealed himself to Israel. As God, the Father could not suffer, if for no other reason than that to be made to suffer would indicate that created beings could in fact effect God, thus drawing his omnipotence and sovereignty into question, amongst other things.

For the Orthodox, God was, is, and ever will be beyond suffering and passion. The Son of God suffered and died on the cross, but only as far as his human nature was concerned. His divine nature, identical to that of the Father, endured his crucifixion without suffering and without death, for indeed it cannot either suffer or die (nor, blessedly, can it ever now be separated from his human nature in his unified Personhood).

Praises be to the Christ who suffered to deliver his people!

Fleshing Out the Distinctions: Some Implications of Common Evangelical Beliefs Surrounding the Atonement

2011-03-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

Two posts ago, I attempted to give a quick overview of some of the doctrinal underpinnings of Orthodox understandings of the Atonement. Whether or not I expressed it well, key to my discussion was the Orthodox attempt to hold several core theological beliefs together. First, Orthodox are committed to believing in the immutability of God. Secondly, Orthodox are committed to believing that Jesus Christ is "theanthropos," the "God-man." As a part of this belief, we also assert that Christ's two natures, human and divine, are each fully complete and unconfused with each other, such that he can be said to possess a complete divine nature, as the Father does, and a complete human nature, as Adam does, and not any sort of distorted admixture of the two. Third, Orthodox are committed to the invincibility and impassibility of the Divine Nature. That is, God is by nature not able to be harmed or to be caused to suffer. We believe that each of these beliefs can be found in the Scriptures, and that they were explicitly or implicitly a part of the original gospel proclamation of the Christian Church.

Evangelicals as a group believe many good and right things about God. Certainly, they are much better students of the Scriptures than are their liberal Protestant counterparts. Moreover, by some act of God's mercy, they also nearly universally uphold many of the doctrinal formulae which were promulgated by the ancient Ecumenical Councils, though they nearly always reject the authority of these councils themselves as binding upon their faith (inasmuch as they are even aware that the councils ever took place).

As such, I can say with confidence that Evangelicals as a block believe in the Holy Trinity, in the two natures of Christ, in God's omnipotence and in his omnipresence. Moreover, I think it would also be appropriate to say that Evangelicals believe in God's immutability, though this is an aspect of God that I have only rarely heard discussed in evangelical circles.

So I think that we can say that, on the surface of it, there is a great commonality between Orthodox and Evangelical believers on many central Christian teachings.

Nevertheless, while Evangelicals have many of the right words and ideas, they are often combined together in ways that the ancient Fathers explicitly rejected as heretical.

Perhaps the most common Evangelical confusion relates to something at the very center of the faith: the Incarnation. What does it mean when we say that the Son of God became a man? What does it mean when we say he has two natures?

Obviously, Evangelicals have the same words as we do about these doctrines, but what content do they fill their words with? Generally speaking, I find that most Evangelicals (including myself when I was one) do not understand phrases like "perfect God and perfect man" in the Orthodox manner. This is perhaps most clearly borne out in their language about the Atonement.

In referencing the Atonement, many Evangelicals speak about Christ's death culminating in "God being ripped from God." Using texts such as 2 Cor 5:21, wherein we read that the Father made Christ "to be sin, who knew no sin," and Hab 1:13, wherein we read that God's eyes are "too pure to look upon evil," they assert that the Father somehow "turned away" from his Son in his wrath toward the sin his Son was bearing, separating them and allowing his Son to go down to the dead.

However, in this view, we see something which is clearly not the Orthodoxy of the Fathers. To the Fathers, Christ is truly God. And to be truly God implies that one has the same nature or essence as God (i.e. the Father). But as we have already seen, Evangelical theology embraces many Orthodox doctrines about God, including for instance God's omnipresence and his inability to be harmed or killed. So what do we mean by the Incarnation? What do we mean by the death of Christ?

For Evangelicals, the answer seems to be that Christ, in the humiliation of his Incarnation, ceases to be God in the same way in which the Father is God. That is, Christ becomes truly localized and truly mortal without retaining the fullness of his divine nature, consubstantial to the Father's. Thus, whereas before the Incarnation, Christ is suspending the world with the Father and the Spirit by the power of his omnipresent Godhead, after the Incarnation, the Son ceases to hold the world in place and such duties fall entirely on the Father and the Spirit. Thus, the Son's essence changes in the Incarnation, what his divinity consists of changes, because the Evangelical probably cannot say that Christ, having become incarnate is still omnipresent and still upholding the universe with the Father and the Spirit. And even if he can say at the moment of Christ's Incarnation that he is still with the Father, the fact that he teaches that the Son and the Father are separated at the cross clearly reveals that the Incarnation has caused the Son to cease to have at least one property of divinity, because if he were still with the Father (and perichoretically "in" the Father), then he could not be "separated" from the Father.

I am in no way attempting to engage in a battle of ancient heresy name-calling. I can't stand it when Calvinists call virtually everyone they disagree with "Pelagians" for one reason or another, and I am similarly irritated by Orthodox and Catholics who engage in the same sort of thing. Nevertheless, I think it is important to point out that this Evangelical theology has much in common with the some of the worst elements of the ancient Monophysite heresy. That is, there is a failure to clearly distinguish Christ's natures, and this results in a sort of belief in the incarnate Christ as not God, but as a demigod. God cannot perish and God cannot cease to be in any place, because all places constantly have their being in him. If Jesus' divinity truly is the same divinity, "of one essence" with the divinity of the Father, then he cannot cease to be everywhere, and more than everywhere, he cannot cease to be in the Father just as the Father is in him.

Beyond this, this probable, latent Monophysitism in Evangelical theology challenges the ancient teaching on the immutability of God. If Christ is God in the same way that the Father is God, how can he give up his omnipresence, and, in the Atonement, his position "in" the Father and still remain of one essence or nature with the Father? The answer is that he cannot. Therefore, the best that the Evangelical who wishes to retain the "God ripped from God" narrative can say is that Christ is not of the same essence, but, like the extreme minority position at Nicea, that Christ has a "similar" essence to that of the Father. It is similar but not the same, for if it were the same it could not change, it could not cease to be everywhere, and it could not cease to be in the Father.

There are no doubt a number of other very important issues surrounding the Atonement and how Orthodox and Evangelicals understand it which I should write about, but this is probably long enough for one blog post, especially a post so very dense as this one. As a disclaimer to Evangelicals who I hope may read this, please know that it is not my intention to pleasure my sinful pride with triumphalism or to falsely exaggerate differences for some unholy end. It is my intention for you as it is for myself that we share in one true faith, worshiping the one Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. There are in fact serious and wide divides between us, which I have alleged come from a common Evangelical misunderstanding of the nature of Christ's divinity. This misunderstanding gravely wounds Evangelical theology throughout a great portion of its content, as I may make plain in other posts if the Lord so blesses me with time and inspiration. The most important thing is that we be right about who God is. Everything else flows from that.

Grace in Jesus Christ,

Ignatius Edward Hunter

Japan and Chernobyl

2011-03-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

O God, please do not punish us again as our arrogance deserves. Save the people of Japan and all of your people from the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. Deliver us from another Chernobyl, please, in your great mercy.

Perhaps, O Lord, it would be best if we did not so lightly play with such radioactive forces. I confess, myself, that I have long seen them as "the answer" to traditional power plants. But now, faced with a potential hundred-thousand year catastrophe, I repent of my arrogant thoughts, my "knowing better."

Please, O Lord, for the sake of your Church which is in Japan, Russia, Korea, and China, spare these people the devastation of a nuclear catastrophe. Amen.

UPDATE: I've read now that theoretically these reactors, while dangerous, are not capable of producing a Chernobyl-like catastrophe. I sincerely hope that this is true.

Issues Underlying the Atonement Question

2011-03-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid that the mountains are calling once more, so I shall have to be brief.

One thing that I think frequently divides Orthodox and Evangelical believers when we come to talk about salvation in Christ is the understanding of the atonement.

I think that, at least in part, one of the central things which tends to divide us on this issue is our understanding of theology proper. In other words, it's not as much a question of what Christ did as who God is which leads to our divisions.

For Orthodox believers, God is immutable. That is, he is unchanging. We do not try to understand exactly how this unchanging nature might play out in all situations, but we certainly do in several ways which pertain directly to the conversation at hand.

For the first part, the unchangeable divine nature of Christ does not suffer or die in the crucifixion. Because he is God, he is not by nature subject to suffering. However, because he was also man, he can (and did) suffer and die. Secondly, there was never a time when Christ was not "everywhere present, filling all things." As the liturgy tells us every Sunday, the "only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God" of his own will became incarnate "without change" and was crucified. In a festal hymn (I believe) we speak of Christ returning to the heavens which he never left. This is the language of paradox, ultimately.

But God's unchangeable nature also has ramifications for the role of the Father in the atonement. It is our conviction that because God does not change, neither do his intentions for us. Obviously, at the crucifixion (although more precisely after the whole incarnation-death-resurrection-ascension-session cycle), something changes in the relationship between God and man. It is our conviction that God does not change, therefore, if a change takes place, it must be a change in humanity.

With this being said, I realize that the language of God's wrath being turned away is virtually omnipresent throughout the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers, and the liturgy itself. It is not our intention to eliminate such language, as we are sometimes accused of, but to put it in its proper place and indeed to interpret it correctly.

One of the major questions at hand in our discussions of the atonement is "who changes?" Is it the Father who changes, or is it humanity who changes? Obviously, evangelicals tend to interpret the language of God's wrath as indicating that it is God who has changed. To (hopefully not crassly) caricature, it is to say, "God was angry with you, but something happened in him which made him not angry anymore, he laid his anger upon his Son and his Son's death quenched his anger." (Another potential problem that this creates in some but not all evangelical theologies is a potential division between the character and motivations of the Father and the Son, but I have not the time to explore this issue further.)

In Orthodox theology, on the other hand, there can be no such change in God's demeanor, and so much of the language of wrath in the Holy Scriptures (etc.) must, of necessity, take on a somewhat metaphorical and anthropomorphical character. He cannot be truly wrathful toward us as human beings understand wrath, because if that were the case, coupled with his immutability, his wrath toward us would be an eternal wrath (and moreover, because of the solidarity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, it would be the eternal wrath of all three, unable to be mediated by any source).

For the Orthodox, God's will for us is very much a constant. It is his will that we should have life, and part of this life, proper to our nature, is to be eternally united to the godhead through union with with the Son and the Holy Spirit. This was his will for us in the Garden, after the Fall, and indeed from the creation of the world itself. When we became defective, incapable of entering into this life of God's (because we were divided from it by a chasm of sin and death), God showed the constancy of his will for us by sending his only Son to expiate our sin, destroy our death, and restore to us the possibility of eternal communion with God, the thing for which we were made.

God is not changed in the atonement, it is humanity that is changed. Regarding God's wrath, it is present, but only insofar as the created things stray from the purposes for which they were created.

I need to say more about this, because I believe there are many things I have not explicated clearly. In any event, dear readers, if you think I have committed any glaring errors (especially of the factual type), please feel free to correct me.

Now it's off to the mountains to showcase some manly bravado!

The Basic Message of the Gospel

2011-03-04T04:35:00.000-08:00

From St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:1-8):

"I want to make quite clear to you, brothers, what the message of the gospel that I preached to you is; you accepted it and took your stand on it, and you are saved by it, if you keep to the message I preached to you; otherwise your coming to believe was in vain.

The tradition I handed on to you in the first place, a tradition which I had myself received, was that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that on the third day, he was raised to life, in accordance with the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas; and later to the Twelve; and next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still with us, though some have fallen asleep; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all he appeared to me too, as though I was a child born abnormally."

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Often when I hear people talking about "the gospel" or "the good news," it seems to me that they are not being perfectly clear about what they mean. Obviously, one little soundbite like this cannot meaningfully convey the whole gospel truth to the uninitiated, because it doesn't tell us who or what Christ is, etc. However, the thing that I like about this passage as a "soundbite of the gospel" is that it is so clearly resurrectional in its character. What is the "good news?" A man has been raised up from the dead and been given eternal life. And this man has prepared a way for all men to receive eternal life as well, if they believe in his message and follow the path he has marked out for them.

There is a basic simplicity, a beauty about this message that touches the soul. God, in his love for man, has mediated the abolition of death.

President Obama on the NFL Labor Situation

2011-03-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

"You’ve got owners, most of whom are worth close to $1 billion. You’ve got players who are making millions are dollars. My working assumption at a time when people are having to cut back, compromise and worry about making the mortgage and paying for their kids’ college education is that the two parties should be able to work it out without the President of the United States intervening."

Source.

Egyptian Army in Control of State, Persecuting Christians

2011-02-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

"For the second time in as many days, Egyptian armed force stormed the 5th century old St. Bishoy monastery in Wadi el-Natroun, 110 kilometers from Cairo. Live ammunition was fired, wounding two monks and six Coptic monastery workers. Several sources confirmed the army's use of RPG ammunition. Four people have been arrested including three monks and a Coptic lawyer who was at the monastery investigating yesterday's army attack.

Monk Aksios Ava Bishoy told activist Nader Shoukry of Freecopts the armed forces stormed the main entrance gate to the monastery in the morning using five tanks, armored vehicles and a bulldozer to demolish the fence built by the monastery last month to protect themselves and the monastery from the lawlessness which prevailed in Egypt during the January 25 Uprising.

"When we tried to address them, the army fired live bullets, wounding Father Feltaows in the leg and Father Barnabas in the abdomen," said Monk Ava Bishoy. "Six Coptic workers in the monastery were also injured, some with serious injuries to the chest."

The injured were rushed to the nearby Sadat Hospital, the ones in serious condition were transferred to the Anglo-Egyptian Hospital in Cairo.

Father Hemanot Ava Bishoy said the army fired live ammunition and RPGs continuously for 30 minutes, which hit part of the ancient fence inside the monastery. "The army was shocked to see the monks standing there praying 'Lord have mercy' without running away. This is what really upset them," he said. "As the soldiers were demolishing the gate and the fence they were chanting 'Allahu Akbar' and 'Victory, Victory'"."

Source.

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Yep. Looks like Egypt is headed for a secular democracy.

A Russian Folk Saying

2011-02-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

”The church is not in the logs but in the ribs.”

Source.

Quote for the Day: Edward Almasy

2011-02-21T05:34:00.000-08:00

"Calvinism is what happens when a lawyer reads poetry."

-From a conversation at a Monday night Bible study.

Is Atheism the Only Alternative to Christianity? I Don't Think So.

2011-02-21T03:20:00.000-08:00

For many years while I was an evangelical, especially when I was a teenager and very influenced by avowedly "fundamentalist" Christians, I had in mind a sharp contrast between revealed religion (i.e. Christianity) and atheism. It was so sharp that the abandonment of one almost certainly necessitated the adoption of the other.

This became very important in college, as some of the central tenants of the fundamentalism I believed were challenged and torn down. I feared greatly at the time that my logic would lead me eventually to reject Christianity and to embrace atheism. I definitely came very close a couple of times.

But looking back on it now, I see that the fundamentalism I believed and the atheism I was pushed towards were very much creatures of the same mindset. Both of them, perhaps not explicitly and perhaps not universally, were systems which put an enormous stress on human reason. I think that, like many of the enlightenment thinkers from which these modern belief systems sprung, everything that exists can be ultimately understood. Moreover, everything that exists must be able to be replicated and confined and categorized in the human mind. (And of course, we already have everything we need to know, so we can make little slogan-arguments to hurl at one another and with which to sway simple and thoughtless people.)

These days, perhaps under the influence of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, or perhaps under the influence of greater maturity and (I hope) wisdom, I'm pretty sure that if I were to walk away from Christianity (and I won't), I would certainly be a theist of some sort. I find the evidence for God in the universe to be absolutely staggering. As I work in nature and learn more about geology, I am astounded by the intricate layers of complexity that it takes to set a system in place so that we can have ground to stand on and seas which give us oxygen. And this is but the half of it. Look at the sheer volume of preconditions for human life (and indeed the layers that human life exists in). When you think of the intricate complexity of nature and the general constancy of nature's cycles, how can you help not being moved to awe? Moreover, I find it hard not to see an artificer in this.

One thing that Orthodox Christianity does very well in my opinion is that it embraces the awe, embraces the mystery, and not only is unafraid to answer "I don't know" to many questions, but is even able to say that which seems fairly obvious to me now - there are probably things that we can't possibly know. I wonder now if there are atheists on the other side of the divide who are in love with the world as I am, and who are tickled by that feeling of my own smallness and the vastness of nature and the never-ending mystery which surrounds me and which I will be forever ignorant of. Most of the atheists I meet are small-minded men (or perhaps "immature" would be a better word) who rush in to hurl slogans and shallow logical proofs at people, as much to justify themselves and to assimilate others for their own shallow comfort as to really attempt to get to the bottom of things. The same, I believe, can be said of most of the fundamentalists I encounter.

O Lord, deliver me from such simplicities, and make me hostile to no man, but willing to seek the truth with all and to see the goodness in all. For indeed all are your creation, the works of your hands, whether they know it or not.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Fr. Andrew Damick on Evangelism and Ecumenism

2011-02-17T16:47:00.000-08:00

"I'm a big believer in what I like to call "Ecumenism with a Gun." That is, we should be engaging other Christians and non-Christian religions vigorously, but we should be doing it with a firm commitment to the doctrines and practices of our faith. I expect nothing less from those other believers, as well. To be frank, the hand-holding, "Kumbaya"-singing spirit of syncretism is neither particularly inspiring nor even useful. What's the point? If it's to get together and have coffee and doughnuts, I think I'd rather do that with the tax collectors and sinners, thank you. But if we're interested in the Truth and how the Truth calls us to repent and conform ourselves to what we encounter there, then that's something different.

That doesn't mean we need to be mean or to attack people, but it does mean we shouldn't apologize for our faith or downplay the parts that some folks may find uncomfortable. It's precisely in discomfort in the face of the truth that we actually have the possibility for repentance. And if we do not make clear what we believe and have a clear sense of what other religions teach, then that encounter will never be possible in any dialogue, debate, etc. If we really love people, then we'll do nothing less. Love demands truth."

Source.

Celibacy Preferable to Marriage in the New Testament

2011-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

Just because I love to stir things up, I thought I'd dig out a few quotes on celibacy for the heck of it. The notion that celibacy is superior to marriage is actually found in the New Testament, it is not the invention of some kooky, medieval Roman Catholics. However, this teaching is layered with the notion that celibacy is a gift that God has given to some Christians but not to all of them. Moreover, marriage is universally upheld as desirable and good for those who have not been given the gift to live now in the flesh as they will eternally in the kingdom. Some Christian eras have overemphasized this gift, ours hates it and desires to do away with the practice altogether.

--------------------------------

"The disciples said to him [Jesus], 'If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry.' But he replied, 'It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. There are eunuchs born so from their mother's womb, there are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can' (Matthew 19:10-12).

"I should still like everyone to be as I [Paul] am myself; but everyone has his own gift from God, one this kind and the next something different. To the unmarried and to widows I say: it is good for them to stay as they are, like me. But if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry, since it is better to be married than to be burnt up" (1 Corinthians 7:7-9).

St. Justin on Prophecy, Sin, and Repentance

2011-02-14T13:42:00.000-08:00

"But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must [of necessity] have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must [of necessity] have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably [wicked], but not because God had created them so. So that if they repent, all who wish for it can obtain mercy from God: and the Scripture foretells that they shall be blessed, saying, 'Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not sin;' that is, having repented of his sins, that he may receive remission of them from God; and not as you deceive yourselves, and some others who resemble you in this, who say, that even though they be sinners, but know God, the Lord will not impute sin to them."

Arius in His Own Words

2011-02-13T17:22:00.000-08:00

"In brief, God is inexpressible to the Son.

For He is in himself what He is, that is, indescribable,
So that the Son does not comprehend any of these things or have the understanding to explain them.

For it is impossible for him to fathom the Father, who is by Himself.

For the Son himself does not even know his own essence ('ousia').

For being Son, his existence is most certainly at the will of the Father.

What reasoning allows, that he who is from the Father should comprehend and know his own parent? For clearly that which has a beginning is not able to conceive of or grasp the existence of that which has no beginning."

Source.

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While this is a fairly blatant passage in which Arianism will strike the modern Christian as heretical, from the scarps of his writings that have survived, his heresies often seem more difficult to discern. Perhaps the most shocking thing about him is the sheer volume of biblical passages that are susceptible to his interpretations.

A Thanksgiving for Providence in the Face of My Inadequacies

2011-02-12T14:23:00.000-08:00

God is deep, deeper than all of the depths of the world and of the cosmos. And if there is anything my friendship with Walter Hunker has taught me, it is that one can only push into the mysteries of who God is just so far. At some point everything snaps, everything breaks down. Whether one is a genius or a man of moderate intellect, there comes a point where one must say, "the eyes of my intellect can perceive no more." "The tools by which I thought I perceived were not solid, they are revealed as symbol, revealed as metaphor, and I stand dumbfounded by the reality of the thing which stands behind the symbol, for it is much greater than the symbol, so much greater that I, wretched man that I am, cannot perceive it, and certainly cannot know it as I know common things."

So I give thanks to God that my forgiveness, my salvation, does not rest ultimately on the precision of my belief, but instead on the great mercy. As I survey the vast landscape of the history of man, even the history of the very Church, I am astounded by the babel, the cacophony of competing voices, each demanding assent, often in different ways and different directions.

Marcion, Arius, Montanus, and many, many more began their careers as Catholic Christians. How, O Lord, can I be assured that my end will not be the same as theirs? I find that my thoughts wither and shift, and I am swayed this way and that by every wind of fine speech that comes my way.

And while I confess that I know that you are of great mercy, not holding the dogmatism of words and phrases against men, nor again begrudging the simple that he cannot understand the words of prophets and deeper men, yet also I know that the universe was made with a Word and that we men shall be judged by our words.

Therefore I give you thanks for the Church, O Lord, which mysteriously does what I cannot do alone. It is she who holds your words of life which you entrusted to her. And because we men are weak and our hearts are hard, she ministers to us with external signs of those things which all men, were we but truly honest and upright, would know by intuition in our hearts.

I give thanks for the sacred Scriptures, in which the prophets and apostles have laid out the very words and teachings of the Christ, preserved in the Church for the holy edification and formation of a people pleasing to God.

I give thanks for the Liturgy, whose every moment is a teaching, elucidating the sacred Mysteries.

I give thanks for the Mysteries, which in sign and in substance call me back and straighten the roads of my thought, causing me to recall who God is and thus who I am.

I give thanks for the Icons, refreshing my memories to the mighty acts of God among men.

I give thanks for the council of men, successors to the apostles and to those first called Christians, for their active presence. For while it is easy for one man to be led astray and harder for many men, still in the company of a vast multitude of brothers and fellow travelers, it is nearly impossible that all should lose their bearings, direction, and identity.

I give thanks most of all for the Heavenly King, the promised Comforter, to whom was given the task of leading the Church into all truth. I may err and fall away, accepting money or the things of the flesh like Judas or accepting foolish philosophy or reasoning like Arius, but this is the promise of God made with humanity: the Church will endure, and the Holy Spirit will not allow her destruction through being misled. Some may fall away, but some will always persist.

O Lord, hold not my ignorance, nor my lack of precision against me, but in your mercy and lovingkindness blot out my transgressions, for many and small are my sins, threatening to kill me with a death of a thousand cuts, subtly steering the rudder of my soul into an ocean of vanity and false things. Have mercy on me O great God, merciful to sinners and rushing to the aid of the penitent. Have mercy on me and help me to walk that line, for as my spiritual father has said, "heresy is easy, it is orthodoxy that is hard." Help me O Lord to be conformed to your revelation in my mind, heart, and soul, that I may think pure thoughts and do only those things which are pleasing to you, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom belong glory, honor, and worship in the Church, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Problems in Western Orthodoxy

2011-02-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

When I entered Holy Orthodoxy almost two years ago, I knew on an intellectual level that there were problems in American (and world) Orthodoxy, and that these problems would be there of necessity, for, as some like to say, "there never was a golden age of the Church." In other words, there never was a time when there weren't heretics within the Church, heretics outside the Church, temptations, persecutions, and the like. Even in the apostolic age we have evidence of numerous schisms, heresies, and individual rejections of Christ and of the Church. This is nothing new. Our Lord himself says of these things, "such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come" (Matt 18:7).

So, as I said, I expected to meet heresy within the Holy Church, and I have met some. I have even, I am ashamed to say, been swayed by some and for short spans of time adopted some, attempting to add them and reconcile them to my understandings of the faith. By God's grace I believe my mind has been delivered from these things, though with, I hope, a renewed humility.

So without further ado, I shall attempt to make a list of those things which are affecting us, and which I believe will affect us more strongly in the coming years as the old, ethnic identities of our communities continue to melt away and we are further populated by the American peoples.

First, I see a very problematic tendency in American Orthodoxy to over-demonize "the West" to the point of compromising some things which are truly Christian in an attempt to distinguish ourselves from Protestants and Roman Catholics. First, I would respond to this tendency with a recommendation: hold up the value of everything which is truly good and give thanks to God that it was not destroyed in what was quite literally the fall of Western Christianity and the birth of a new set of religions in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Some good things were not completely destroyed and some were destroyed and then partially or completely recovered in the faiths of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Not everything they hold up or place value on is false or misunderstood. Some of their understandings are perfectly fine, and there is no reason to exaggerate the differences, because by so doing we can easily bring ourselves to pride and to its child, heresy.

A great example of this issue can be found in some very popular American understandings of justification, hell, and the judgment. It is of course widely known that Western Christianity has been obsessed with legal understandings of the Atonement virtually to the exclusion of all others. Moreover, Western Christians have tended to take biblical legal language at face value and not interpreted it as potentially metaphorical, although I can think of some recent exceptions to this rule. I firmly believe that there is an overemphasis on legality which has in some instances stunted and in some instances completely deformed biblical teaching in the West for the greater part of the last millennium.

Nevertheless, there is no room in Orthodoxy for a theology which rejects biblical legal language and legal metaphor, as some Orthodox Christians seem to want to do. It is true that the language of theosis and the language of ontology often have a very soothing effect on the ears of modern Americans, who are eager for the therapeutic and intolerant of the language of wrath, judgment, and justice. Nevertheless, such language is essential to the gospel. It is true, as St. Athanasius says, that God could have forgiven sins without the shedding of Christ's blood, but did he? Moreover, as St. Athanasius also says, such forgiveness would have lacked lasting effect, for legal justification without the abolition of death, the reopening of the way to paradise, and the unification of God and man would have been ineffectual. Nevertheless, the truth still remains: Christ died for our sins and our participation in his death (in faith and in the mysteries of the Church) is the cause of our justification, both in a secondary, legal sense and in a primary, ontological sense.

Therefore, those who try to pit Western theories of substitutionary atonement against Eastern models of theosis and the like should remember to tread lightly. While I do believe that the classical Western models are probably heretical in their deficiencies, it is important that we do not, in responding to these things, propose our own deficient "Eastern" models and hold them up, claiming they were what the Fathers always taught, when in fact they are stripped down, un-Christian, and in the end, of our own invention. Even if the legal reality is only of secondary importance, this does not mean it is not an essential part of Orthodoxy, which cannot be removed without violence to the whole. It is not in vain that the Scriptures speak of God as "the judge of all the earth" (Gen 18:25). We can try to get so technical with our presumed knowledge of what is reality and what is metaphor and what is ontology and what anthropomorphism that we are found to be empty, clanging gongs and not true, Spirit-filled Christians. Met. Kallistos was very helpful to me in this regard, as I heard a lecture by him cautioning us to recall that salvation, like all things related to God, is best understood first as a mystery. And while we may create models or use metaphors to explain the mystery, it is still at its heart a mystery, an action of God. It is bigger than our models, and beyond our comprehension.

Thus, I caution the Orthodox Church in the Americas to be careful with how we address Western understandings of justification, for if we are not careful and compassionate, we may end up falling into the devil's trap.

A second major group of heresies that I have seen in the expanding American churches relate to accommodations to popular, secular understandings from the broader society. One such heresy which often piggybacks on a rejection of the atonement and the judgment as being legal events or of having at the least strongly legal components is the rejection of eternal damnation. Eternal damnation is a doctrine of the Church, and while a small number of saints have questioned it, it still is what it is. The Lord says quite plainly that some will go away into "everlasting punishment" (Matt 25:46). This is not a negotiable, it is a part of the Orthodox faith. Why else do you think in the liturgy we pray so fervently for "a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ?"

Some also seem to want to compromise in the Orthodox standards regarding women as priests. The Church is riddled with compromise in this direction already, look at the abandonment of headcoverings in so many parishes. It may not be modern or fashionable or in keeping with the feminism you are being taught dear sisters, but you have to ask yourselves who you want to be. Do you want to imitate first the world, who teaches you that you are oppressed and that you need to "press for your rights," or do you want to imitate the most Holy Theotokos? Who was more holy, who more fit to lead than she? And yet look at her icon! She did not lord her holiness nor her exulted position in God's plan over anyone, but was submissive to her husband, the carpenter, and consented to be taught by St. John, though no doubt he felt unequal to the task. Are we better, then, than the Theotokos, that we should fail to imitate her in her deference and humility? God has appointed the holy priesthood as a male institution. Some things he has given to the male, and some to the female. To desire things which are not in truth possible for a person is foolish and ungodly. Rather, whether you find yourself male or female, seek to live a humble life in keeping with your personhood and calling.

I see other errors cropping up in how we approach marriage, contraception, and abortion. Marriage in the Orthodox Church is primarily about the salvation of the soul, or rather, a further step in working out the salvation of the soul. It is not to be entered into lightly, nor exited lightly, as is the American custom. Normally, one of its aims is childbearing, and thus it is not Orthodox to use contraception in order to convenience oneself or to have more money to spend on one's pleasures. If a question of medical necessity arises, consult your priest and use contraception only with his blessing. Likewise, sex before marriage, though the cultural norm, is not acceptable in the faith.

Abortion is a monstrosity, and I see some Orthodox seeming to start to waffle on the issue. Sometimes you hear left-leaning Orthodox deflect criticisms of abortion into criticisms of the death penalty. This needs to stop. If you privately want to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, more power to you. However, the Church has teachings against abortion, we do not teach that the civil authorities cannot use the death penalty. Perhaps it is best that our society be done with the death penalty altogether. Nevertheless, I want to hear you say that abortion is a sin and a crime against humanity that must be protested. This is the teaching of the Church.

No doubt I have more to say about such things and many other things we need to do to resist the world, strengthen our faith, and get our house in order. Nevertheless, I'm out of time for today, so I leave you with my blessings.

In Heaven or on Earth?

2011-02-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

From the recent Sobor (Synod) of the bishops of the Russian Church:

ELCA Determined to Follow Footsteps of ECUSA

2011-02-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

It is frankly amazing to me just how far the disintegration of the classical expressions of Protestant Christianity in the United States has progressed.

Not only has the ELCA decided to ordain practicing homosexuals, many of them are now openly changing their liturgical expressions and abandoning the doctrine of God as put forth by apostolic Christianity.

Following a link I just saw on Ad Orientem, I discovered a "feminist" Lutheran congregation that openly androgynizes Christ, calling him/her Christ-Sophia, and which prays to "grandmother in the south," etc.

Here is the group's take-off on the Lord's Prayer:

"Our Mother who is within us
we celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come.
Your will be done,
unfolding from the depths within us.
Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limits
and we let go.
You support us in our power
and we act with courage.
For you are the dwelling place within us
the empowerment around us
and the celebration among us
now and for ever. Amen."

Those who replace the Christian God with some polytheistic pseudo-feminine monstrosity are anathema!

Drugs, the Druggist, the Wood, and the Cross

2011-01-29T14:23:00.001-08:00

(This post is in honor of my medicine fabricating brother, David Hunter.)

The Lord has brought forth medicinal herbs from the ground, and no one sensible will despise them.

Did not a piece of wood once sweeten the water, thus giving proof of its power?

He has also given some people knowledge, so that they may draw credit from his mighty works. He uses these for healing and relieving pain; the druggist makes up a mixture from them. Thus, there is no end to his activities; thanks to him, well-being exists throughout the world.

(Sirach 38:4-8)

------------------------

Probably my favorite part of the quote is the author's allusion to wood sweetening water. I feel like the reference might be to some act of Moses in the desert, but I can't recall what or where and having looked for it I could not find it. (Please help me, dear readers, if you do know what Ben Sira was referring to.)

In any case, as a Christian I cannot help but see "wood which sweetens water" as a reference to the cross, which has forever sweetened water, making it the very agent of the new birth. This quote reminded me tremendously of a quote by my patron saint, "He was born and baptized, that by his passion he might purify the water" (Ign. Eph. 18).

The Doctor

2011-01-27T23:26:00.001-08:00

(This post goes out in tribute to Dr. Matt Perkins.)

Treat the doctor with the honour that is his due, in consideration of his services; for he too has been created by the Lord.

Healing itself comes from the Most High, like a gift received from a king.

The doctor's learning keeps his head high, and the great regard him with awe.

My child, when you are ill, do not rebel, but pray to the Lord and he will heal you. Renounce your faults, keep your hands unsoiled, and cleanse your heart from all sin. Offer incense and a memorial of fine flour, make as rich an offering as you can afford. Then let the doctor take over -- the Lord created him too -- do not let him leave you, for you need him. There are times when good health depends on doctors. For they, in their turn, will pray the Lord to grant them the grace to relieve and to heal, and so prolong your life. Whoever sins in the eyes of his Maker, let such a one come under the care of the doctor!

(Sirach 38:1-3, 9-15)

101.5 Hours

2011-01-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I've once again beat my personal best. I worked 101.5 hours last week. Wow. Kyrie eleison!

Other Random Factoids

2011-01-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

The second Orthodox chapel-church in Antarctica is in the process of being built and a third is in the planning phase.

We are indeed a peculiar people. We even have icon corners on the space station.

Best Blessing Ever: the Blessing of the Riot Police

2011-01-10T12:49:00.001-08:00

Okay, so maybe it's not literally the best ever, but it's pretty cool. Too bad these guys have to work so much in modern Greece.

The only thing I can think of that is clearly better is Patriarch Kirill's suggestion that he would like to go to space in order to bless the great void. (Apparently, he is an accomplished pilot, but I doubt if the state would allow a man of his age to travel to space for any reason.)

It's Getting Close Now

2011-01-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

I have only $2000 left to pay on my second biggest set of student loans. Considering I owed $18,500 on them in January 2010, I'd say I've made good progress this year. The Lord continues to bless me financially. Glory to thy pity, glory to thy dispensation, O Lord!

"Joy to the World:" a Nietzshian Perspective

2010-12-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

"The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of a beast of prey; monsters filled with joy, they can return from a fearful succession of murder, arson, rape, and torture with the same joy in their hearts, the same contentment in their souls as if they had indulged in some student's rag.... When a man is capable of commanding, when he is by nature a "Master," when he is violent in act and gesture, of what importance are treaties to him?... To judge morality properly, it must be replaced by two concepts borrowed from zoology: the taming of a beast and the breeding of a specific species."

---------------

It is good to know one's enemies. This man was an enemy of the Cross and of all mankind. Source.

An Excellent Example to Follow at Christmas Time

2010-12-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

"Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel

"Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know'st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither."
Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather

"Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing"

Seriously, though, it's better to hear it. Merry Christmas, everyone! (And remember to bless the poor, if the Lord gives you means!)

Quote for the Day: Walter Hunker

2010-12-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

[This quote is the entire contents of a message Walter left on my voicemail today.]

"The Eagles... they came back..."

St. Epiphanius of Cyprus on Honoring the Virgin

2010-12-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

"There is equal harm in both these heresies, both when men demean the Virgin, and when, on the contrary, they glorify her beyond what is proper."

Quoted by Clark Carlton in his book, The Truth, p. 148.

By Faith Allein

2010-12-04T18:28:00.000-08:00

"Luther rejected the Epistle of St. James theologically but of necessity retained it in the German Bible, even if as a kind of appendix. The ending of Luther's Preface to his edition of the German Bible, which was omitted in later editions, reads in the German of his time: "Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel, und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel, sonderlich die zu den Romern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. Das sind die Bucher, die der Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer sehest and horist. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein evangelisch Art an ihr hat" — "for that reason St. James' Epistle is a thoroughly straw epistle, for it has indeed no evangelical merit to it." Luther rejected it theologically "because it gives righteousness to works in outright contradiction to Paul and all other Scriptures... because, while undertaking to teach Christian people, it does not once mention the passion, the resurrection, the Spirit of Christ; it names Christ twice, but teaches nothing about him; it calls the law a law of liberty, while Paul calls it a law of bondage, of wrath, of death and of sin."

Luther even added the word "alone" — allein — in Romans 3:28 before "through faith" — durch den Glauben — precisely to counter the words in James 2:24:"You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith only” — οράτε ότι εξ έργων δικαιούται άνθρωπος και ουκ εκ πίστεως μόνον. What is more is that Luther became very aggressive and arrogant in his response to the criticism that he had added "alone" to the Biblical text. "If your papist makes much useless fuss about the word sola, allein, tell him at once: Doctor Martin Luther will have it so and says: Papist and donkey are one thing; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. For we do not want to be pupils and followers of the Papists, but their masters and judges." Luther continues in a bantering manner in an attempt to imitate St. Paul in the latter's response to his opponents. "Are they doctors? So am I. Are they learned? So am I. Are they preachers? So am I. Are they theologians? So am I. Are they philosophers? So am I. Are they writers of books? So am I. And I shall further boast: I can expound Psalms and Prophets; which they cannot. I can translate; which they cannot... Therefore the word allein shall remain in my New Testament, and though all pope-donkeys should get furious and foolish, they shall not get the word out." In some German editions the word "allein" was printed in larger type! Some critics of Luther's translation have accused him of deliberately translating inaccurately to support his theological view. As early as 1523 Dr. Emser, an opponent of Luther, claimed that Luther's translation contained "a thousand grammatical and fourteen hundred heretical errors." This is exaggerated but the fact does remain that there are numerous errors in Luther's translation."

Source.

And Then There was One

2010-11-07T17:44:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to my brother Alex and to his fiance Courtney on their engagement today. He joins my brother David who was engaged earlier this year to his long time girlfriend Jackie.

Congratulations to both couples and many years to all.

(This of course leaves me, predictably, as the lone matrimonial holdout. From my mom's perspective, two down, one to go. Unfortunately for mom, I'm also the problem case.)

Childbearing: an Honorable Path of Theosis

2010-11-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing- if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety (1 Timothy 2:13-15).

Lecture Series on Themes in St. Ignatius to be Held in Emmaus, PA

2010-11-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

Fr. Andrew Damick is offering the above lecture series to explore the named themes in the seven surviving writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the disciple of St. John the Theologian. I imagine that these lectures will be of tremendous spiritual benefit to all who attend. I'm not sure as yet if I'll be able to make any of them, but I know I'd really like to.

To contact Fr. Andrew, visit his blog or his parish's website.

Three Potentially Scary Facts about Reese Roper from Wikipedia

2010-10-30T14:01:00.001-07:00

When I was looking for the lyrics to that Roper song that I posted the excerpt from in my last post, I stumbled unto the Wikipedia page for Reese Roper.

There were three things I found fairly disturbing from the Wiki-blurb. While I will freely admit that each of these things may not be as bad as they seem to me on the surface, they just don't look good, generally.

1) Since his FIF days, Reese has become a "licensed pastor" for a "Alliance of Renewal Churches."

2) He co-founded a church in Colorado called "Scum of the Earth Church."

3) "In 2008 he was elected as a delegate to the Democratic Primary for the City and County of Denver, and then to the State of Colorado Democratic Primary."

Taken together, I find it fairly disturbing that Reese would become a pastor through some strange, fairly obscure organization, found a church with an incredibly edgy name and which on the surface of it would seem to be the same sort of showy megachurch style church that he so frequently criticized, and that he would become active in politics after taking so many jabs at over-politicized "moral majority" type Christians in his music over the years.

The last thing particularly disturbs me. I had always thought that Reese was pretty politically neutral and that he thought that Christians should not be hoodwinked into being some sort of "religious wing of the Republican Party" or some such thing. I appreciated his critique of the marriage of Republican politics and evangelicalism when I was an evangelical. Hopefully he's not trying to go all Sojourners and seduce people into trying to marry evangelicalism to Democratic politics. When I was in seminary I found those people repugnant.

Fairly or unfairly, finding out those facts from the Wikipedia article have caused me to have questions about Reese Roper. I had always assumed that he wanted to shake up "conservative" evangelical types and to make them uncomfortable with some of their subtle hypocrisies. Now I wander if he wasn't much more radical than I had understood, if he wasn't trying to lead people to other answers that he had in mind, specifically. Maybe his songs criticizing evangelicalism's alliance with the Republicans or his critiques of big industry and the like were really all pointed in the direction of "vote Democrat." And what if his songs about his renunciation of homophobia were not simply telling Christians that love must look beyond a person's current sinfulness and were actually trying to make homosexuality theologically and practically acceptable as a "Christian lifestyle?"

I don't want to believe these things about Reese, but I thought I'd throw them up there for consideration. As I said, I'm starting to have some doubts about the man. Any thoughts?

Reese Roper on Abuses in the American Megachurch

2010-10-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

Voices shrill
cutting silence like they mean to kill
Some pep rally where we scream His name
like God was loosing in a football game

Silver tongues
all the spirit of an iron lung
Selling highs as if we needed one
Flash the lights so not be outdone
Counterfeit
wanting joy so much we take a hit
like a tapeworm deep in hunger digs
Waste the sacred just to feed these pigs

If this is real, then you must find it
between the space of grace and grim
It's nothing you can manufacture
your walls cannot contain Him

From the Roper song, Day of Pigs.

If I Were Andy Reid...

2010-10-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

At this point, I think I'd not let my opponents know which QB I was going to start on any given week throughout the rest of the season. Think about the insidious brilliance of that suggestion. Kevin Kolb and Mike Vick are radically different quarterbacks. Kolb is a traditional pocket passer. He's nimble outside of the pocket, but ideally he wants to stay in the pocket and beat you cerebrally. Mike Vick is very much the opposite. While he has developed tremendously as a true quarterback under Reid's tutelage, he ultimately wants to beat you on his instincts, his jerky, unpredictable motion, and by manipulating you, usually outside the pocket, with the threat of his lightning-fast legs.

Further emphasizing the differences, Kolb is a normal, right-handed quarterback. Vick, on the other hand, is a rare lefty. If Reid alternates his starters in an unpredictable fashion, he not only forces opposing teams to double game plan for accurate pocket-passer versus athletic playmaker, he also forces them to game plan to attack the quarterback's blind side on BOTH sides of the line. It's truly brilliant.

Of course, this strategy has risks, especially for the Eagles' offensive line. It is possible that having to vary protection styles constantly will undermine their ability to work together as a unit. However, I think the risks outweigh the rewards. After all, the o-line will have all week to practice with the intended starter, whereas the opponents won't know who will actually start. And with all of the weapons the Eagles have, imagine what the element of surprise at the quarterback position could contribute. Both of these guys both want and deserve the ball. I think the Eagles should find a way to try to have their cake and eat it too. That whole Kolb starting with Vick coming in for "wildcat" plays was a bad idea from the get-go. Now alternating starters each week to manipulate opponents, that is classic. The only question we'd have to ask is "which one gets to start in the Superbowl?" Fly Eagles, Fly, baby!

Quote for the Day: Reese Roper

2010-10-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

"If Jesus Christ is truth, then I am mostly lies. If Jesus Christ is love, then I have failed to try."

From the FIF song, "Eulogy."

St. Theophan the Recluse on Submitting to the Spirit of the Times

2010-10-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

"This is the benefit of this special treatment and leniency, such as you want to hear from preachers! When you put all this deep in your heart, it is not right for you to want us to make any concessions in Christian doctrine, having the wrong desire to be pleased by us. On the contrary, you are obliged to persistently demand from us to remain true to doctrine, as strictly and firmly as possible.

Have you ever heard of the indulgences of the Pope of Rome? Here is what they are: special treatment and leniency, which he gives defying the law of Christ. And what is the result? From all of this, the West is corrupt in faith and in their way of life, and is now getting lost in its disbelief and in the unrestrained life with its indulgences.

The Pope changed many doctrines, spoiled all the sacraments, nullified the canons concerning the regulation of the Church and the correction of morals. Everything has begun going contrary to the will of the Lord, and has become worse and worse.

Then came along Luther, a smart man, but stubborn. He said, “The Pope changed everything as he wanted, why shouldn't I do the same?” He started to modify and re-modify everything in his own way, and in this way established the new Lutheran faith, which only slightly resembles what the Lord had commanded and the Holy Apostles delivered to us.

After Luther came the philosophers. And they in turn said, “Luther has established himself a new faith, supposedly based on the Gospel, though in reality based on his own way of thinking. Why, then, don't we also compose doctrines based on our own way of thinking, completely ignoring the Gospel?” They then started rationalizing, and speculating about God, the world, and man, each in his own way. And they mixed up so many doctrines, that one gets dizzy just counting them.

Now the Westerners have the following views: Believe what you think best, live as you like, satisfy whatever captivates your soul. This is why they do not recognize any law or restriction and they do not abide by God's word. Their road is wide, all obstacles displaced. Their way is broad, all the obstacles taken out. But the broad road leads to perdition, according to what the Lord says. This is where leniency in teaching has led!"

From the sermon "Why Christianity Should Not Change with the Times" (December 29, 1863).

Iconography

2010-10-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

I recently found out in conversation with a young woman in our congregation who is from Bulgaria that in Bulgaria if one wants to become an iconographer, one must study theology for four years.

She is herself an artist, and has told me that she has some ambition to perhaps someday become an iconographer. Being an artist, she assured me that she had (or could easily aquire) the technical expertise that one needs in order to paint (or "write") an icon. What seems to daunt her greatly is what she perceives as the spiritual requirement (for in Bulgaria the task of "studying theology" is not merely an academic study of doctrines, it is in fact a wholistic attempt at spiritual transformation which includes both the mind and the soul).

I must say, the fear with which the Bulgarian iconographers approach their work seems a great marvel to me. They know that they are trying to communicate truth about God, to preach the gospel as it were, with line and color. Therefore, they also know that St. James' words about teaching apply to them regarding the "greater condemnation." Blessed are all men who walk in fear and reverence, and cursed are all men who walk in pride and presumption. Deliver us, O Lord, from pride.

Bad Advice of the Day: a Methodist Music Minister

2010-10-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

"Just because you think it's a sin or something, don't not live with a girl before you marry her."

(Advice given to yours truly at work yesterday.)

Crown Me (with Many Crowns, Sadly)

2010-10-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Well, my routine visit to the dentist today turned into a prescription for a root canal and two crowns. Sheesh.

All I could think is that it must be easy for this dentist to sit there and tell me I should spend more than my gross income for a month on dental procedures. Do you think they have any conception of how much money $3000 is for a working class person?

Blogging the Texts: Romans (1:1-15 Overview)

2010-10-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

St. Paul's initial introduction of himself in v. 1 quickly lapses into a larger, pointed doctrinal statement in vv. 2-5 in which he manages to introduce himself in a way that hints at the theme of his letter by mentioning one of the purposes of his calling, namely that he is called to apostleship "for obedience to the faith among all nations" (v. 5, the Greek word for "nations" in a Jewish context often refers specifically to non-Jewish peoples, i.e. "the Gentiles").

In v. 6, he swings the conversation to his readers and in v. 7 actually specifies that his letter is to the Church in Rome, offering a blessing in the place of a greeting in his typical "grace and peace" wordplay.

In v. 8, St. Paul offers a quick praise for his intended readers and then he moves into a brief description of his disposition toward them and his plans in which he has tried to involve them. From here, as we shall detail in some time, he begins his discussion of the purpose of his letter in v. 16.

As I have mentioned above, there are some things in this introductory section which foreshadow the broader contents of the letter, but basically this beginning is simple and functional: this is who I am, this is what my mission is, this is who you are, hello, I like you, I want to come visit for these reasons. This section is functional, as I have said, but like all of the writings of the Fathers, it drips over with layers of spiritual nourishment, and these layers I intend to peel back so that we may feast together on this spiritual honey in those posts which follow.

Goodnight friends, and God bless you.

A Brief Aside

2010-10-06T19:17:00.001-07:00

I simply cannot understand how anyone can hold to the authority of Scripture and also hold to the formula that a person is justified by faith alone.

I mean, how much more directly can it be said than by St. James in the Holy Scriptures themselves?

He writes, "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24). How much more clear could it be? If you refuse to believe it and still cling to the "faith alone" doctrine, do you not set yourself above the Scriptures and above the God who inspired them?