Excerpts From the Letters of Saint Mark of Ephesus

On Those Who Accepted the Florentine Union

"These people admit with the Latins that the Holy Spirit proceeds and derives His existence from the Son. Yet, with us, they say the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Latins imagine that this addition to the Creed is lawful and just, but we will not so much as pronounce it. They state that unleavened bread is the body of Christ, but we dare not communicate it. Is this not sufficient to exhibit that they came to the Latin council not to investigate the truth, which they once possessed and then betrayed, but simply to earn some gold and attain a false union? Behold, they read two Creeds as they did before. They perform two different liturgies - one on leavened and the other on unleavened bread. They perform two baptisms - one by triple immersion and the other by aspersion; one with Holy Chrism and the other without it. All our Orthodox customs are different from those of the Latins, including our fasts, Church rites, icons, and many other things. What sort of union is this then, when it has no external sign? How could they come together, each retaining his own?"

On Communion With the Latin Church

"Flee brethren! Flee communion with the incommunicable and the commemoration of the uncommemorative. Behold, I, Mark, the sinner, tell you that whoever commemorates the Pope as an Orthodox prelate is guilty. Moreover, one who minds the dogmas of the Latins will be judged with the Latins, and will be deemed a betrayer of the Faith."

On Latin Theology

"They desire also to preserve their own...and at the same time do not follow the traditions of the Fathers."

"If the Latins have not departed from the correct Faith, then we have cut them off unjustly. However, if they have departed from the Faith, regarding the theology of the Holy Spirit, to Whom to blaspheme is the greatest of all perils, clearly, they are heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics."

On Accepting Latin Converts to Orthodoxy

"We must not sanctify one of the Latin race through the divine and most pure gifts given by priestly hands, unless that one shall first resolve to depart from Latin dogmas and customs and shall be catechized and joined to the Orthodox."

On Essence and Energies of God in the Fathers

"We must not be surprised if we do not find among the ancients any clear and defined distinction between the essence of God and His energies. If, in our time, after the solemn confirmation of this truth, the partisans of profane wisdom have created so much trouble in the Church over this question - and have accused Her of polytheism - what mischief would not have been perpetrated in earlier times against this truth by those puffed up with vain learning. This is why our theologians always insisted in the simplicity of God more than the distinctions which exist in Him. It would have been inopportune to exhibit the teaching concerning the essence and energies before those who had enough trouble admitting the distinction of hypostases. Thus, by a wise economy this sacred teaching has become clarified in the course of time, God using for this purpose the foolish attacks of heretics."

On the Pope

"For us, the Pope is as one of the Patriarchs - and only if he is Orthodox; whereas, they proclaim him Vicar of Christ, Father and Teacher of all Christians. Flee from them, O brethren, and from communion with them. 'For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if even his ministers transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works'" (2 Cor. 11:13-15).

Source: P.G. 160 and translated by Holy Apostles Convent in The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Edgar Allen Poe As A Philhellene

Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston on the 19th of January, 1809. In 1822 he entered the University of Charlottesville where he studied Greek and obtained distinctions in Latin and French in 1826. His love for the Greek language, Greek mythology and ancient Greece are clearly evident in his poetry.

One of Poe's biggest poetic influences was the Romantic poet Lord Byron. While Poe was a student in 1823 Lord Byron was venturing off to Greece to fight on behalf of the Hellenic cause against the Ottomans. This inspired many in the West towards a philhellenic spirit, especially when news spread of his death at 36 years of age from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece on the 19th of April in 1824. Among those inspired was Edgar Allen Poe.

In 1827, aroused himself by the heroic efforts of the Greeks and in emulation of Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe and an acquaintance, Ebenezer Burling, determined to travel to Greece and offer their aid to the insurgents. Burling dropped out of the adventure however, either due to parental urging or cowardice, thus forcing Poe to venture alone to Europe. Poe was absent for more than a year, but the adventure of his journey was never told. Something held him back from telling about this period in his life and various stories were invented to fill in the blanks. That he reached England is of little doubt, but whether or not he beheld what he called "The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is still uncertain. In his writings he does seem to allude to the scenery of Greece and Italy, but there is no reliable data to prove he ever reached there. The story that he arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia and extricated for his misbehavior is likely not true. In 1829 we find him again at home temporarily in Richmond, Virginia.

Poe may have never arrived in Greece nor have fought for the Hellenic cause, but his philhellenism is evident in at least his efforts and desire to make a similar sacrifice as did Lord Byron. Maybe one day we will find out what really happened to him in that silent philhellenic year.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

A Monastery Made of Six-Million Matchsticks

Michelangelo spent only three years carving David. Da Vinci’s depiction of The Last Supper required just three. This giant model of the Rila Monastery by Bulgarian artist Plamen Ignatov demanded 16 years of dedication.

Officially known as the Monastery of Saint Ivan of Rila, it is Bulgaria’s largest Eastern Orthodox Monastery. It was founded in the 10th century — reportedly growing from a cave that housed the monastery’s founder. After being rebuilt at the end of the 15th century, it long served as a repository for Bulgarian culture during times of foreign occupation — including nearly 500 years of Ottoman rule. The Rila Monastery is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site and receives nearly a million visitors annually.

The model is currently on display in the Bulgarian capitol of Sofia at the National Archaeological Museum.




Source

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning”

The late astronomer Robert Jastrow detailed in his 1978 book God and the Astronomers how cosmologists were repulsed by the idea the universe had a beginning. He found it quizzical that they would have such an emotional reaction. They all realized that a beginning out of nothing was implausible without a Creator. Since then, various models allowing for an eternal universe brought secular cosmologists relief from their emotional pains. It now appears that relief was premature.

In New Scientist today, Lisa Grossman reported on ideas presented at a conference entitled “State of the Universe” convened last week in honor of Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday. Some birthday; he got “the worst presents ever,” she said: “two bold proposals posed serious threats to our existing understanding of the cosmos.” Of the two, the latter is most serious: a presentation showing reasons why “the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.”

It is well-known that Hawking has preferred a self-existing universe. Grossman quotes him saying, “‘A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God,’ Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.”

In her article, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event,” Grossman explains that “For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well as the future.” These models were consistent with the big bang, she notes. Unfortunately, “as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead.” Here are the models in brief and why they don’t work:


1.Eternal inflation: Built on Alan Guth’s 1981 inflation proposal, this model imagines bubble universes forming and inflating spontaneously forever. Vilenkin and Guth had debunked this idea as recently as 2003. The equations still require a boundary in the past.

2.Eternal cycles: A universe that bounces endlessly from expansion to contraction has a certain appeal to some, but it won’t work either. “Disorder increases with time,” Grossman explained. “So following each cycle, the universe must get more and more disordered.” Logically, then, if there had already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe would already been in a state of maximum disorder, even if the universe gets bigger with each bounce. Scratch that model.

3.Eternal egg: One last holdout was the “cosmic egg” model that has the universe hatching out of some eternally-existing static state. “Late last year Vilenkin and graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that the egg could not have existed forever after all, as quantum instabilities would force it to collapse after a finite amount of time (arxiv.org/abs/1110.4096).” No way could the egg be eternal.

The upshot of this is clear. No model of an eternal universe works. Vilenkin concluded, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” An editorial at New Scientist called this, “The Genesis Problem.”

Source

Read also: Vilenkin’s Verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Church the Body of Christ

By Christos Voulgaris

All New Testament authors agree that the condition in which creation found itself after the fall, caused by man’s disobedience and sin (cf. Acts 13:22-31; Rom. 8:18-25; etc.) suggests also the way to its restoration. Indeed, re-creation consists in God’s action on the human level, through the incarnation of the Son, where He combats Satan who had become “the ruler of this world” (Matth.9:34; 12:24; Mk. 3:22; Lk. 11:15; John 12:31, 16:11, 14:30; Gal. 1:4; etc.), breaks his power and sets man free from his subjection to him and, along with him the entire creation as well (Rom. 8:15ff). This is to say that salvation is not accomplished by man himself, but by God and in particular by man’s appropriation of Christ’s human nature to himself. In other words, sin and evil enter the world after man’s estrangement and separation from God, while salvation is the condition caused by man’s communion with God. Both conditions affect the entire creation. Summing up this idea St. John observes that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and from his fullness have we all received and therefore, “to all who received him, believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12-16; cf. Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 4:4-6; etc). Therefore, the real, i.e. the Son’s incarnate presence in the world and effects of his work upon men, consisting in their adoption again as God’s sons, constitute an ecclesiological event which excludes the possibility to regard the Church as an invisible entity in a cosmic sense, in accordance with the platonic ideas or the Gnostic myths, because the historical reality of the incarnation, experienced by all those who believed in the Son, stresses also the historical reality of the Church as that specific human society of all those believing in and saved by the incarnate Son.

This, however, is not enough when we refer to the Church as a historical reality, because it cannot be restricted to a mere human institution. As a historical reality, the Church combines in itself both, the divine and the human. As St. John says again, “our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” became possible by the Son’s entrance into history: “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands… and the life was made manifest, and we saw it… that which we seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us” (1 John 1:1-3; cf. Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-20; 1 Tim. 3:16; etc.). This fellowship with Christ is an endless reality for humanity, continuing even after his exultation because it is worked out by the Holy Spirit (John 14:8) and is realized within the Church, since it is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in the believers: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matth. 28:20; John 17:11ff). Because the Church came into being as a historical reality by Christ’s presence and in the world, it follows that Christ and his Church are inseparably knit together. This is why the Church’s task and mission in the world is “to make known the manifold wisdom of God to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord… and make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for all ages in God who created all things” (Ephes. 3:9-11). The Church extends to the whole creation which is thus re-created by joining it. This is the mystery in God’s manifold wisdom which Paul speaks about in Ephesians and Colossians by extending the boundaries of the Church to the boundaries of creation. Thus the Church is God’s new creation because in it all things are recapitulated in Christ, “things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephes. 1:10). Though visible and historical in appearance, and divine and human in nature, the Church is a mystery in itself, as a mystery is the person of Christ in whom are inseparably united the divine and the human, uncreated and created.

This explains why any definition of the Church is absent in the New Testament. Instead of a definition, the New Testament authors give plenty of information with regard to the place and life of the Church in the world and describe it by a variety of symbolisms which express the same reality, i.e. that within which God’s communion with man and the entire created order takes place in the person of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. The common denominator in all these metaphors is the person of Christ who is the formative factor and the connecting link of the members. This is how St. John Chrysostom speaks about them: “Christ is the head, we are the body… He is the foundation stone, we are the building; he is the vineyard, we are the wine; he is the groom, we are the bride; he is the shepherd, we are the sheep; he is the way, we are the walking ones; we are also the temple, he is the resident; he is the first-born, we are the brothers; he is the heir, we are the co-heirs; he is the life, we are the living; he is the resurrection, we are the risen; he is the light, we are the enlightened” (1 Cor. Hom. 8,4; M.P.G. 61:72).

Belonging to the whole, all parts form a unity and as such their relationship to one another is defined by the whole which is Christ, their generating and formative factor. This reality is better expressed by St. Paul’s metaphor about the Church as “Body”, “the body of Christ”. No doubt, the metaphor of the “body” offers the most appropriate and accurate description of the Church’s nature because it presents it as the extension and continuity of the incarnation of the divine Logos, so that Ecclesiology proper is directly related to Theology, to Soteriology and to Eschatology. In this way the Church is, as Paul puts it, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephes. 1:22,23), i.e. as that entity within which the unity of the entire creation is again achieved (Ephes. 1:10).

Looking at it closely, the “body” metaphor is not new with Paul. It is also used in the Septuagint (with no equivalent in the Hebrew Bible), the Rabbinic literature, Stoicism and Gnosticism, and as such it was known to Paul’s readers. Nevertheless, while in them it denoted collectivity and solidarity, in Paul it denotes the Church as a living organism, i.e. the body of Christ, and there is no trace of a stage at which he regarded the Church as “body” without considering it as “the body of Christ”. This is to say that the Church is a “body” only with reference to the person of Christ.

The first instance in which Paul works out the metaphor with reference to the Church is 1 Cor. 12:12-27 where he concludes (v. 27) that Christians form a body as members of it only because they are members of Christ by participating to him on account of their appropriation of his saving work to themselves. This makes it clear that the description of the Church as “the body of Christ” is not occasioned by the metaphor; rather, it was the Church which was first defined as “the body of Christ” and then the conception of the Christians as members of the body was formed. In other words, Christians are members of the body because they participate in the body of Christ which as the Church. Obviously then, this idea clearly gives priority to the incarnation event for the formation of the body of Christ. Christology thus is the foundation of Ecclesiology.

The metaphor of the body expresses an ontological entity of a variety of members with different functions but of the same nature (Rom. 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:12-31; Ephes. 4:11-16). What connects the members to each other is not their external similarity and uniformity but the oneness of their nature, and in this case the human nature of the incarnate Son of God in which they participate through Baptism. Their unity in nature, however, does not make them identical as persons, but one in Christ, because in baptism each individual person-member imitates sacramentally Christ by putting on his own human nature free from sin (Gal. 3:27) and so enlightened by the Holy Spirit he becomes son of God by adoption and thus is led into perfection and immortality (Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogue, I,4). This is what Paul stresses in Rom. 6:3-11. The “first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom.8:23; Cf. 2 Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6; Ephes. 1:13; Tit. 3:5; etc.), repeats at baptism the event of Pentecost within each individual and so the baptized one becomes “pneumatikos” (1 Cor. 2:13ff; Gal. 6:1; 1 Pet. 2:5) by being re-created and reborn into a new life, the life “from above”, i.e. “of water and the Spirit” (1John 3,3-6). It is this radical change affected at baptism which attaches every individual into the body of Christ, the Church, where every distinction disappears to the extent that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for they are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Salvation becomes an experience only when man joins the body of Christ and becomes part of the whole. Therefore, the individual can become a member only if he belongs to the body of Christ, the Church, in which he is united with him and with the other members. In the Church, his body, Christ’s humanity reflects its prerogatives upon his members who thus do not live to themselves but to Christ to whom they ever since belong (Rom. 14:7-8; Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:15; Phil. 1:21; 1 Pet. 2:4-5), because the life of the head is poured out to its body. This makes it clear why writing to the Corinthians Paul does not ask if the Church is divided, but rather if Christ is divided (1 Cor. 1:13; 12:12). In the same sense Christ reproved Saul on the road to Damascus not by asking him why he persecuted the Church, but rather why he persecuted him (Acts 9:4).

The close unity between Christ, the Church and the Christians has nothing in common with the idea of a “corporate personality” put out in Europe at the end of the 19th century. Their unity is centered in Christ’s human nature in which individual members retain their individuality as persons. No one is absorbed by the other, as in Gnosticism. We can see this clearer in 1 Cor. 12 where Paul speaks about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church. In order to emphasize the unity and the variety in the body of the Church, Paul says that the variety of the gifts comes “from the Spirit”, in the same way as the variety of the services stems “from the same Lord” and the variety of the workings comes “from the same God” (1 Cor. 12:4-5), because “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (v.7), “who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (v. 11). The oneness of the Spirit does not lead to the confusion of the various gifts. The same principle, says Paul, applies to the Church which as a body has a variety of members baptized into it “by one Spirit” (vs. 12-13), but with different functions. In the Church, Christians “are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (vs. 24-27). The opposite creates confusion which destroys the reality of the body, the Church: ”if all were a single organ, where would be the body? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body” (vs. 19-20).

In his epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians, when he speaks about the Church as the body of Christ, Paul never depicts Christ as the head of the Church. In them he only stresses the unity of the Christians in Christ as members of the Church. The idea of Christ as the head of the Church, his body, occurs in the epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians where the Apostle speaks about the relationship of the Church as a whole to Christ (Ephes. 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; Col. 1:18). However, as in 1 Cor. 12:3 “no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit”, so also in Ephes. 3:16 the riches of Christ’s glory can be “strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man”, so that the Body of the Church consists of members; filled with the Spirit” (Ephes. 5:18). In other words, “the equipment of the saints… for building up the body of Christ” is worked out by the Holy Spirit, but comes from Christ as a source “who is the head,… from whom the whole body joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and up builds itself in love” (Ephes. 4:12-16; Cf. Col. 2:19). Christ’s place as the head of the one body of the Church underlines the unbreakable unity of both, while at the same time it distinguishes the head from the body as two separate entities, as it also distinguishes each member of the body from the rest. Christ and Church can not be identified, nor do the members of the Church. Their unity is considered in a collective sense, in which each part is united with the rest in substance, while it retains its individuality and distinct entity. Furthermore, Christ’s place as head of the Church indicates that neither the Church can be body without the Church as his body. This makes it plain why the Church is necessary component of Christ’s divine-and-human person, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephes. 1:23).

This phrase describes the divine-and-human nature of the overall body of the Church as a living organism, i.e. the unbreakable unity of its divine and human elements, in which the divine is the head, Christ. While the human is Christ’s humanity appropriated by the members of the Church in baptism. Thus the Church is connected with the event of the incarnation of the divine Logos and through him with the other two persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit, with which the Logos-Son is related by their common divine nature. Being the human body of the incarnate Son, then, the Church realizes the unity and communion between the Triune God and humanity achieved by the incarnation and the overall redemptive work of the Son. Since the sonship of Christ is an internal issue of the Holy Trinity, on account of the common divine nature of its persons, likewise the Church must be seen in the context of Christ’s “consubstantiality” with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Or, to put it in other words, the Church as a historical entity falls within the context of its inner relationship with Christ, because its nature is defined by its unity with Christ, on the human level, and by his consubstantiality with the Father and the Holy Spirit, on the divine level. Through his incarnation, the Son connects the Church with the Holy Trinity in his own divine-and-human person (Cf. Ephes. 2:4-6). Christ’s perfect humanity forms the nature, as well as the entity of the Church which in this way constitutes the perpetual continuation of his incarnation extending beyond time. Hence, any thought of an ontological separation between Christ and Church rules out both, the fact of Christ’s incarnation and the reality of the Church. Without its ontological connection with Christ, the Church becomes a mere social organization. Christ and the Church together form a “whole”; without Christ it is nothing; in him the Church is everything. Without the Church Christ the Son is not incarnate, because after his incarnation the Son can be thought of only as both divine and human and, therefore, only with the Church, while the Church can be thought of only in Christ and with Christ as his human body, i.e. as “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephes. 1:23). Here we meet with the extreme paradox: the unity which Christ forms with the Church is in some way identified with himself: he is the whole Christ, body and head. While he is a part of the whole, he is also the whole, the incarnate divine Son. And while the Church exists as a community in its own right, it at the same time is the body of the distinct person of Christ, the humanity of the incarnate Son and Logos.

That this paradox is so, i.e. that the appropriation of humanity by the divine Logos at his incarnation is tantamount to the formation of the Church as his body, in an objective sense, even before any human persons joined it as members, is evident in Ephes. 5:22-30, where the unity between man and woman in the Sacrament of Marriage is placed parallel to the unity between Christ and the Church after the incarnation. The expressions: “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Ephes. 5:25; Acts 20:28), and “that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (v. 26), suggest the objective existence of an entity before the incarnation proper living in sin, which the Son took to himself by becoming human and cleansed it. Christ’s body here is the entire human nature “per se”, not the body’s human members who are added to it by appropriating to themselves the human nature of the Son. Human nature cleansed from sin comprises the Church as Christ’s and so human persons are added to it as its members afterwards, so that we can say that as Christ’s body the Church exists as an objective reality even before or regardless of its members. The Church exists objectively at the incarnation and because of it, even without members. Christ’s human nature, being his human body, is the place within which he works out eternally the redemption and salvation of each particular human person and through them the salvation of the entire created order, to which humanity belongs (Cf. Rom. 8:14ff).

Now we can understand better Christ’s expression “in me” (εν εμοί) in John 6:56 and 15:1-10, as well as Paul’s frequent expression “in Christ” (εν Χριστώ) denoting not man’s identification with or absorption by Christ, but his unity with and in Christ’s humanity. Man’s unity with Christ does not deform him, but conforms him “to the image” of the incarnate Son (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 2:20.), which has nothing to do again with the idea of “corporate personality”. In the Church, the relationship is a member relationship to the head and the body, the whole Christ. In the same sense is also understood Paul’s formula “in Christ” with reference to Christ’s correspondence with Adam which defines the relationship between the “one” and the “many”. On account of the unity or the oneness of human nature, Adam’s fall extends to all of his descendents, while their individuality is preserved by their active participation in Adam’s sin when each human person does exactly what Adam did in the past, being thus for it personally responsible: “εφ’ ω πάντες ήμαρτον» (“because all men sinned on account of it”, Rom. 5:12). Influenced by Satan fallen human persons inherit Adam’s sin which is “like the transgression of Adam” («επί τω ομοιώματι της παραβάσεως Αδάμ», Rom. 5:14). This fact rules out the rabbinic idea, according to which Adam constitutes the coherence of mankind in the sense that all men were created “in him”. Restricting the hereditary transmission of the original sin and ignoring Satan’s role in it, we are forced to deny the existence of righteous men in the Old Testament, on the one hand, and accept the universal salvation of all men by Christ without their active appropriation of his saving work to themselves, on the other. In this case, personal freedom and responsibility are done away with, and together with them active membership in the Church as well. In Paul’s expression “for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22), we must understand the fall and restoration of human nature as objective conditions to which men participate personally by their own free will. Being unable to achieve salvation because of his fallen nature, man in Christ obtains it by actively sharing in Christ’s human nature cleansed from sin. This is why the Old Testament law could not save man (Heb. 7:19), even though, as God’s work, the law was “holy” and “good” and “spiritual” (Rom. 7:12-16), being thus restricted to the role of “our custodian until Christ came” (Gal. 3:23). Conditions changed however, when "God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). Thus, “in Adam” and “in Christ’ we understand human nature in its two conditions: of sinfulness and sinlessness, i.e. the body of Adam, human nature, and “the body of Christ which is the Church” (Col. 1:24).

In conclusion, we observe that it is in full agreement with Pauline thought when St. John Chrysostom comments that at his incarnation Christ “took to himself the flesh of the Church” (“εκκλησίας σάρκα ανέλαβεν”) (M.P.G. 52:429) and formed it into his own body animated by himself as its head. The mystery of Christ “which was kept secret for long ages” (Rom. 16:25; Ephes. 3:4, 5:9; Col. 1:26) has been disclosed as Church in the fullness of time “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephes. 1:10), “that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephes. 3:10-11; Col. 1:16-20). Comprising all creation, visible and invisible, the Church unites in itself “all things” with Christ as “head over all things” (Ephes. 1:22-23), so that in the Church man comes into communion not only with those other human members of it, but also with all those creatures which are subjected to Christ and accept him as “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15).

Source

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

When Is It Appropriate To Receive Holy Communion?

I have often been asked by new converts to Orthodoxy and even life-long members when it was appropriate for one to receive Holy Communion. This is usually the basic advice I give that I thought I would share with all.

Orthodox Christians are generally encouraged to receive Holy Communion at every Divine Liturgy. The purpose of the Divine Liturgy is to enter into communion with God, and the way this is done is by participating fully in the Divine Liturgy. One should avoid being late for the Divine Liturgy when receiving Holy Communion, as this shows a certain amount of disrespect for the great gift one is receiving, but if you are late you should not be later than the Gospel reading. The Divine Liturgy is the communal service and gathering of God's people (this is what the word "liturgy" means), so it requires full participation, as much as possible.

Many people worry and despair over the fact that certain sins in their life make them unworthy of receiving Holy Communion. However, as human beings who often sin every day, we are all unworthy of receiving Holy Communion and there is really nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy to receive the Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We should never approach Holy Communion saying "we are now worthy". But there are certain "grave" sins that we can commit that are sins not only out of habit (personal sins which require daily confession before God), but also sins against our fellow man that require resolve before receiving Holy Communion. For example, to bear a grudge against someone, to have hate towards a person, and to withhold forgiveness are all sins against our neighbor that require patching up before approaching the cup of love and forgiveness. As Jesus said: "Forgive and you will be forgiven" according to the measure that you forgive your neighbor. Some also have what are known as "sins against the Church" which require a general confession and repentance before a spiritual father or confessor (a priest) before one can approach Holy Communion, after a proper repentance to show one's humble approach before God's grace. Such sins are things like adultery, fornication, divorce, murder and heresy (holding blasphemous teachings opposed to the tradition of the Church).

Saying this, what is required for Holy Communion participation is summed up in the words said by the priest before distributing the holy gifts: "With the fear of God, faith and love, draw near". Humility is the most basic requirement, and trying to the best of our ability to live the life of the Church as set down by Christ, the Apostles and the Saints throughout history. The Church is a hospital for sinners, so the least we can do is to receive the "medicine of immortality" (this is what the Church Fathers called Holy Communion) acknowledging our sickness and seeking the entire treatment offered by the Church for our healing.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

When Marriage Makes One A Philosopher

The following advice is given by St. John Chrysostom for married couples who seek a divorce; that it is better to become a philosopher in such matters rather than interrupt the union of a husband and wife, which is forbidden by the Church and discouraged at all costs even if lawful.

"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates

"This is the higher philosophy, not only not to requite evil with evil, but to render good for evil." - St. John Chrysostom

By St. John Chrysostom

Though she be poor do not upbraid her: though she be foolish, do not trample on her, but train her rather: because she is a member of you, and you have become one flesh. "But she is trifling and drunken and passionate." You ought then to grieve over these things, not to be angry; and to beseech God, and exhort her and give her advice, and do every thing to remove the evil. But if you strike her thou dost aggravate the disease: for fierceness is removed by moderation, not by rival fierceness.

With these things bear in mind also the reward from God: that when it is permitted you to cut her off, and you do not so for the fear of God, but bearest with so great defects, fearing the law appointed in such matters which forbids to put away a wife whatsoever disease she may have: you shall receive an unspeakable reward. Yea, and before the reward you shall be a very great gainer, both rendering her more obedient and becoming yourself more gentle thereby. It is said, for instance, that one of the heathen philosophers, who had a bad wife, a trifler and a brawler, when asked, "Why, having such an one, he endured her;" made reply, "That he might have in his house a school and training-place of philosophy. For I shall be to all the rest meeker," says he, "being here disciplined every day." Did you utter a great shout? Why, I at this moment am greatly mourning, when heathens prove better lovers of wisdom than we; we who are commanded to imitate angels, nay rather who are commanded to follow God Himself in respect of gentleness.

But to proceed: it is said that for this reason the philosopher having a bad wife, cast her not out; and some say that this very thing was the reason of his marrying her. But I, because many men have dispositions not exactly reasonable, advise that at first they do all they can, and be careful that they take a suitable partner and one full of all virtue. Should it happen, however, that they miss their end, and she whom they have brought into the house prove no good or tolerable bride, then I would have them at any rate try to be like this philosopher, and train her in every way, and consider nothing more important than this. Since neither will a merchant, until he have made a compact with his partner capable of procuring peace, launch the vessel into the deep, nor apply himself to the rest of the transaction. And let us then use every effort that she who is partner with us in the business of life and in this our vessel, may be kept in all peace within. For thus shall our other affairs too be all in calm, and with tranquility shall we run our course through the ocean of the present life. Compared with this, let house, and slaves, and money, and lands, and the business itself of the state, be less in our account. And let it be more valuable than all in our eyes that she who with us sits at the oars should not be in mutiny and disunion with us. For so shall our other matters proceed with a favoring tide, and in spiritual things also we shall find ourselves much the freer from hindrance, drawing this yoke with one accord; and having done all things well, we shall obtain the blessings laid up in store; unto which may we all attain, through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, be glory, power, and honor, now and ever, and world without end. Amen.

From Homily 26 on First Corinthians.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Hymn of Praise: The Lord Above All

The God Above All

By St. Nikoali Velimirovich

(For the Feasts of St. Anthony the Great, St. Theodosius the Great and St. George the New Martyr of Ioannina)

Above all divisions, above all classes,
The fearless God stands; the Lord above armies.
The wealthy he does not despise, nor, of the poor, is He ashamed.
Of the powerful, He is not afraid and, to the sinful, He beckons: Come!
Saints from everywhere, for Himself, He recruits
This one who begs and that one who rules
As a cherry-picker that plucks only the sweet cherries
Without concern, whether the branches are coarse or smooth,
Into one beautiful wreath, the Lord weaves all,
Only when the souls are repentant and holy.
Anthony the wonderful, throughout his life fasted,
Theodosius, the whole world, treated with Christ.
And George of Ioannina, his blood for Christ, shed -
All three, the Lord loved, eternally.
The Lord does not have loathing toward His crops
Nor toward other weaknesses of the created world.
Toward all, He is the same, but toward Him, all are not,
To everyone, He is of service; to everything merciful,
Always, above everything and above all classes,
Always, the fearless God; the Lord above armies.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Archbishop Jovan Transferred to the Strictest Closed Section of the Prison

His Beatitude Archbishop of Ochrid and Metropolitan of Skopje Jovan, on January 16th, in the afternoon hours, was transferred from the prison reception section to the closed section of the prison.

Although the procedure of deciding whether he should be allowed a retrial and be released free pending trial is still not finished, the prison authorities decided to put Archbishop Jovan in the section where the sanctions with strictest treatment are executed.

The sentence that Archbishop Jovan received in the court process in which he was sentenced in his absence is two years and 6 months imprisonment, which is not at all a sentence deserving the strictest closed treatment, since other prisoners, sentenced to much longer prison terms, are receiving the open, or the semi-open treatment.

According to the information reaching the public, that decision is the result of the demands of the schismatic Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC) which insisted Archbishop Jovan be confined under most strict prison conditions, and make all communications outside the prison more difficult for him.

From the Office of the Archbishopric of Ohrid and Metropolitanate of Skopje.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Church Fathers and Slavery

By Demetrios Constantelos

Many monks contributed much toward a more just and moral society. From the ranks of the monks emerged the earliest condemnation of slavery. Gregory the Theologian, bishop of Nazianzus first, and later Patriarch of Constantinople, denounced the practice of holding slaves. His friend Basil of Ceasarea did not favor it but tolerated the institution as an established evil. Their contemporary Eustathios of Sebasteia condemned slavery and even advocated revolts by slaves. Later in the eighth and early ninth centuries, Theodore the Studite denounced slavery and forbade monks to possess, and the monastery to employ, slaves. In his rules for the hegoumenos of the Studios Monastery, Theodore advised: "You shall not possess a slave either for your own use or for your monastery or for the fields, since man was created in the image of God." Eustathios, the twelfth century monk, archbishop of Thessaloniki, and critic and reformer of monasticism, condemned slavery as an evil and unnatural institution and advocated manumission.

- Christian Faith and Cultural Heritage: Essays from a Greek Orthodox Perspective, p. 162.

Symeon of Thessaloniki (+ 1429), in various questions set forth by the bishop of Pentapoleos Gregory, was asked the following question: "Which is more important and valuable, to help in the release of a captive or to distribute an amount to ten poor people?" Symeon's position indicates the care of the Church which often emphasized the duty of Christians to liberate captives and slaves.

...

Generally the Byzantine community did not simply pray for "the captives and for their salvation" as one of the petitions of the Divine Liturgy says, but it offered what it could towards purchasing their release by often paying large sums.

- Poverty, Society, and Philanthropy in the Late Mediaeval Greek World

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Movie Reviews: Carnage; Contraband

My movie reviews this week include one film that was released in limited venues in 2011 but was just released where I live, and another film that fits into the mold of new releases for early January.

1. Carnage (2011)

Story: Two pairs of parents hold a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a fight, though as their time together progresses, increasingly childish behavior throws the evening into chaos.

Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly

Official Trailer
Official Website
IMDB

Review: Though I have never seen Yasmina Reza’s 2008 play “Le Dieu du Carnage" ("God of Carnage") from which this film is adapted, I am very familiar with the work of Roman Polanski who is brilliant at putting his characters in tightly confined spaces until they eventually burst. This movie questions the veneer of human civilization, which is set in place by society to quench self-interest and rage. Though it begins with polite and civilized intentions, given enough time the ego will display its insecurities, arrogance and anxieties, its class resentments and domestic bile. The simplicity of the film is amazing (it basically has only four actors that never leave a Brooklyn apartment), the performances of the actors are brilliant (four of the best actors in entertainment today), and the comedic/sarcastic tone throughout the film coupled with its scathing message is clever and thoroughly entertaining. I left the film wondering how inhuman our humanity can be.

Rating:
1. Contraband (2012)

Story: To protect his brother-in-law from a drug lord, a former smuggler heads to Panama to score millions of dollars in counterfeit bills.

Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Kate Beckinsale

Official Trailer
Official Website
IMDB

Review: Number one at the box office this weekend was Contraband, an entertaining and watchable heist thriller is a remake of the 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam and directed by that films star and reset in New Orleans. It's the type of movie that has a predictable ending, but like a roller coaster you ride it for the experience of getting there. For this it does a good job. Mark Wahlburg, like Liam Neeson, has that badass-yet-tender quality that fits his character in the film well. It was an enjoyable action movie if your in the mood for such a film, which I was when I saw it.

Rating:

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Lepers of Mount Athos (1891)

Dr. Zambaco Pasha, a well-known and distinguished writer on leprosy, was a native of Constantinople and strongly believed that leprosy was not a contagious disease. In 1891 he published the book Voyages chez les Lépreux (Paris, 1891) in which he devotes a chapter to the lepers of Mount Athos (read the original in French here, pp. 219-238), whom he uniquely describes. Below is a very paraphrased section of this account.

Near Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos there was a hospice for lepers where the monks without reservation cared for the lepers through the 19th century. Lepers had previously sought shelter in the forests of Mount Athos, and they fed only on herbs and roots.

The leper colony on Mount Athos was about ten minutes from Iveron Monastery. Though European leper hospices were in much better condition, this one on Mount Athos was in very good condition where patients found shelter and food. It provided a place so the lepers would not be alone to die of hunger without any medical care.

The patron saints of the leprosarium were the Holy Unmercenary Saints and the cost for its functioning was 6,000 francs a year. It was located on a picturesque hillside surrounded by ancient trees to shelter the patients from the extreme heat of the sun. In the spring wild flowers gave the area a beautiful fragrance along with many bright colors.

The property consisted of a ground floor with seven rooms. Each room had a window and a fireplace for the winter. A greenhouse was also built so the patients could walk through when it rained outside. A small church was built out of the same material as the building. The garden was divided into two parts - one for the cultivation of vegetables and one for flowers to please the patients.

There were 8 to 20 leper patients living at this colony at a time. Their diet mainly consisted of vegetables. Monks and hermits visited them constantly. They often spent many days among them, sharing their meals, housing, etc. They even wore the clothing of the lepers and slept on their sheets, full of dried pus from wounds and ulcers. Some monks did this for many years without any reservation. Despite this, none of them ever contracted leprosy.

Priests associated with the colony lived among the lepers for fifteen or thirty years and never became leprous. They ate together with them and lived a common life with them, but they remained unharmed. Dr. Phanouriadi is mentioned at the end of the chapter and describes how a young man slept in the same room, used the same utensils and drank from the same cup of Patient #8 for nine years and remained unharmed. A second young man was linked to another patient for thirteen years but remained in a healthy condition. Dr. Phanouriadi observed this colony for five years and concluded that none of those attending to the lepers ever came down with leprosy themselves.

Dr. Pasha mentions how a few years prior a leper gave dinner to a priest and a deacon. The patient had leprous sores on his hand, but still did household chores like serving at the table. While serving the priest and deacon a few drops of pus dropped into their soup. Though the priest rebuked the careless leper, he still did not refuse to eat the soup with spices.

Patients to the colony at Iveron came from Ierissos, the Peloponnese, Mytilene, Volos, Thassos, Kalymnos, etc. Dr. Phanouriadi, who was a physician on Mount Athos, said that all were admitted there. Most often those who were admitted caught leprosy from an infected parent or grandparent, with the first symptoms appearing between the ages of 8 and 20. Dr. Phanouriadi never encountered a younger child with leprosy. Leprosy phymatode was the most common form.

With Leprosy trophonévrosique one can live and grow old. On Athos there was an eighty-year-old leper who caught the disease at the age of thirty. Some had the disease for 35 or even 55 years.

Most patients belonged to families of farmers and sailors who suffered all kinds of deprivations in their childhood. They were badly dressed, had no heat in the winter, were vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather and suffered the most wretched poverty.

Often the lepers came from places where they were considered contagious, and thus were exiled. If they ever violated this mandate to return among the healthy they were often killed. There were some places where lepers were allowed to eat and live among the healthy without any precautions. No one wanted to marry a leper however, and if a spouse contracted the disease while married the healthy spouse was allowed to obtain a divorce. More often though in these places lepers continued to live normal lives and had children and there was no divorce sought.

All the lepers of Mount Athos knew that poor nutrition, especially pork, oil, salted fish, and eels were very harmful to their health. They feared, too, cold and moisture, which propelled their deterioration.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Former Journalist Now An Ascetic On Mount Athos

In a cave of "horrific" Karoulia on Mount Athos rests the Serbian monk Fr. Seraphim in the summertime. Because the winters here are particularly harsh, the rest of the year he lives in a wooden house outside of a cave which fits only one person at a time. Four boards and a rug are enough for him to sleep, as he told us.

Fr. Seraphim, the father of a 16-year-old girl, studied economics and worked as a media television journalist. "The things I believed in my religion had nothing to do with what I was doing as a journalist - two opposing roads with different values", he said.

"Here I pray for my daughter and my wife; I have not abandoned them. Noetically I am with them. I fell in love with our Triune God. In this way we will all benefit", he noted characteristically.

Fr. Seraphim is very tall and imposing. He lives by himself at a steep point of Karoulia. However he says: "I do not live alone here, I have many companions", he told me. And when he was asked "Who?", he responded to me: "The thousands of angels which you see only when you labor for the soul and not only the body. The body we sustain with some goods which are offered by the All-Good One."

"One day I had nothing to eat, and behold the miracle: I saw an eagle coming at a very high speed towards my cave and I said to myself what will he take with him...I had a bad thought. But as he was approaching I noticed that he was holding something. It was a fresh fish! Well, with this I passed the day," related Fr. Seraphim.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Video: Meteora In 1924

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Ephraim of Vatopaidi To Remain In Custody Despite Acquittal

January 13, 2012
Interfax

The partial acquittal by the Greek supreme court of Archimandrite Ephraim, the abbot of the Vatopaidi Monastery on Mt. Athos, prosecuted in connection with real estate deals between his monastery and the Greek state, does not mean his release from custody.

"This decision [acquitting of Father Ephraim] applies to the ruling of the Rhodope court of appeal but not to the ruling of the Athens court of appeal under which Father Ephraim was taken into custody. The acquittal by the [supreme court] is one more positive phase in the Vatopaidi case but it doesn't cancel the order on the pretrial detention of Archimandrite Ephraim," spokesman for the Russian Society of Friends of the Vatopedi Monastery told Interfax-Religion.

So Archimandrite Ephraim "remains behind bars and still needs support," the spokesman said.

The supreme court annulled a ruling by the Rhodope court of appeal to put the archimandrite and two others in detention for 10 months with three years' deferment.

The proceedings against Ephraim, which were first opened in Rhodope and then in Athens, will be reviewed by the appeal court of Thrace.

Archimandrite Ephraim was arrested by court order last month.

Late in December, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia wrote a letter to Greek President Karolos Papoulias in which he asked for Ephraim to be released, expressing surprise at the detention of "a monk who poses no public danger and has repeatedly offered to cooperate with the investigators."

The head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, branded Ephraim's arrest as an attack against the Mt. Athos community and against Orthodoxy as a whole.

Influential Russian politicians and the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed support for the archimandrite.

Among those who rose up in his defense was Russia's Foundation of St. Andrew the First-Called, which brought the Belt of the Most Holy Mother of God to Russia this autumn in what was the first time the highly venerated Orthodox relic, which is kept at the Vatopaidi Monastery, was taken outside Greece.

The cincture was shown in various Russian cities from October 20 to November 28 and was seen by nearly 3 million people, including top Russian state leaders.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople issued a statement in which it deplored the Ephraim affair but said it respected the independence of Greek justice and generally avoided interfering with unfinished court cases, one reason being it does not know all the details of any such case.

The Constantinople Patriarchate also pointed out the fact that the Athonite community comprising its see includes monks of various nationalities and did not authorize the entire world Orthodox community nor give it the right to interfere in the affairs of other Churches.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

God’s Gulag

A remote archipelago is one of Russia’s holiest places—and its most haunted.

By Jeffrey Taylor
January 2012
The Atlantic

From the upper reaches of the whitewashed belfry—between the gunmetal onion domes of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral—a giant bell announced the evening liturgy. Scarved women in loose woolen skirts and shaggy-bearded monks in black frocks hurried across the cobbled courtyard of Solovetsky Monastery, passing me, their eyes averted.

I turned to face the sun above the massive stone walls, seeking a warmth that’s fleeting here in Russia’s farthest-flung holy citadel, located on the largest of the Solovetsky Islands amid the gale-lashed White Sea, just outside the Arctic Circle.

The Solovetsky Monastery ranks as one of the country’s most important. But the monastery, and indeed the Solovetsky Islands (Solovki, for short) themselves, also played host to Joseph Stalin’s most notorious prison, the gulag to which he banished many of his ideological opponents. This dual purpose has made Solovetsky Monastery a kind of Russian Golgotha, a temple-graveyard haunted by both the holy and the horrifying. Mass graves are scattered across the island. My guide summed up the experience of living here: “Wherever we go here, we feel we’re stepping on bones.”

Even from Moscow, where I live, a trip to the Solovki, almost 650 miles due north, is a long one—and tough on new arrivals. A choppy flight landed me on a runway plagued with Arctic mosquitoes; a kidney-bruising ride from the airport by four-wheel-drive van took me down a pitted dirt track into the shack-and-barrack settlement of fewer than 1,000. My hotel, tranquil and half-embowered in alder trees and birches, stood by an abandoned prison open to the winds, with skulls and crossbones still painted on cell doors. Almost everywhere I went during my stay, I heard the wind, not voices, and was alone or almost alone or felt alone—a sublime, and at times eerie, experience. But perhaps not a new one.

The prospect of solitude drew the first Russians here. Early in the 15th century, two monks debarked on the island’s northern coast, seeking a place of religious retreat amid pristine taiga and bog. They initiated cloistral traditions that led, soon after, to the founding of Solovetsky Monastery. But almost from the beginning, the Solovetsky Islands were also abodes of exile and detention. The isolation and severe climate well suited the penal needs of an authoritarian state ruled by a czar. Monks both served God and acted as prison wardens. In the monastery’s darkest corners, they built cells that would hold a spectrum of prisoners, from the dissident gentry and errant clergy, to rebellious Cossacks and Decembrist revolutionaries.

I climbed stairs above the monastery’s granary and examined a few of the cells—low, vaulted brick chambers with tiny barred windows overlooking the desolate, churning Bay of Prosperity. The experience created by the monks was easily outdone when the Bolsheviks instituted a reign of sadistic terror that earned the Solovki infamy throughout the Soviet Union. Behind glass in one of the monastery’s chilly, damp corridors, an exposition of photographs and documents displays that regime’s grisly legacy—twisted corpses strewn across fields, stacked skulls, ransacked churches, smashed church bells, and orders of execution. In 1923, the authorities reconstituted the monastery-prison (and the rest of the island) as the country’s first concentration camp, designed to “rehabilitate” the most potentially dangerous “enemies of the people”—writers, poets, academics, and anyone else who fell afoul of the revolution. During the 1930s, when Stalin and Hitler enjoyed cordial, if wary, relations, German officers visited the island and studied its “correctional” regimen, gleaning elements that they would soon put to use on a far more horrific scale.

The macabre cruelties of all the Soviet gulags have been well documented, but even so, those of the Solovki stand out. Camp officials welcomed each group of arriving inmates by immediately shooting two prisoners dead, and pummeling the rest with shovels. Locked in unheated cells in the winter, the prisoners slept in piles three or four deep for warmth. Guards doused some in water and made them huddle for hours in the cold. Of the 80,000 Soviets condemned to the Solovki between 1923 and 1939, some 40,000 died here.

Finally, even for Stalinist authorities on the mainland, the Solovki’s unsanctioned atrocities exceeded the acceptable. In 1939, the camp was closed, and some of its administrators were executed. The remaining prisoners were moved to the mainland. As another tour guide, the historian Oleg Kodola, pointed out, “By 1940, the whole country had been turned into a prison camp. It made no difference which side of the barbed wire you were on.”

It does now, of course. In 1967, Soviet authorities opened a museum in Solovetsky Monastery, and monks returned in 1990. Judging from the conservative dress of most of the Russian tourists around me in the courtyard, a good number were on a pilgrimage of sorts, something the former, atheistic regime would never have countenanced. Their presence, and that of the monks heading to church for evening services, reminds one that, to survive in the Solovki’s austere setting, faith may be the one constant.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Jacques Barzun On Science, Facts, and Darwin’s Influence

Jacques Martin Barzun (born November 30, 1907) is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America (1945) being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United States. In 2000 he wrote his popular book From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present.

In 1941 he wrote Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage. Below are a few worthwhile quotes from the book:

On Science:

Science as a Delphic oracle exists only in the popular imagination and the silent assumptions of certain scientists. At any given time there are only searchers who agree or disagree. The March of Science is not an orderly army or parade, but rather a land rush for the free spaces ahead. This means a degree of anarchy. Besides, fogeyism, faddism, love of stability, self-seeking, personal likes and dislikes, and all other infirmities of mind, play as decisive a part in science as in any other cultural enterprise.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 336

On Facts:

Facts themselves are not the “hard” or “cold” items to which we constantly appeal in order to silence our opponents. They are in a sense products of our ingenuity and often inseparable from our hypothetical interpretation of them. Most statistical fallacies come from neglect of this usual obstacle, just as our imputations of ignorance or bad motives come from supposing that our “undeniable facts” are direct messages from experience which can mean only one thing.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 337

On Darwin’s Influence:

Part of their [Darwin, Marx, and Wagner] success in reaching and teaching a great miscellaneous audience lay, surely, in their being somewhat less than great thinkers. When their systems are examined they appear unusually, almost incredibly, incoherent, both in thought and in form. Of the many books which Darwin, Marx, and Wagner have left us not one is a masterpiece. With their work as a whole our practices show that we are not satisfied. We cut them, abstract them, reorder their parts to make them palatable: they failed in artistry at least. Imperfectly aware of their intellectual antecedents and impatient of exact expression, they jumbled together a bewildering collection of truths and errors and platitudes. They borrowed and pilfered without stint or shame, whence the body of each man’s work stands as a sort of Scripture, quotable for almost all purposes on an infinity of subjects.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 324

On Natural Selection:

To scientists and laymen alike, the appeal of natural selection was manifold. It had the persuasiveness of “small doses”; it was entirely automatic, doing away with both the religious will of a Creator and the Lamarckian will of his creatures; it substituted a “true cause” for the “metaphysical” sort of explanation; lastly, natural selection was an exact parallel in nature to the kind of individual competition familiar to everyone in the social world of man. By joining the well-established notion of natural selection to the development theory which had been talked about for a hundred years, Darwin was felt to have solved the greatest problem of modern science. He had explained life, or almost. He had at any rate shown the primary animal basis of human progress and told “its law and cause.”

— Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 57

The genetic fallacy dating back to Comte is at the root of the trouble — the fallacy of reducing all experiences to one condition of their origin and so killing meanings by explanations. With its mechanical and historical bias, evolution reduced everything to something else. From fear of being anthropomorphic, it deanthropomorphized man. With its suspicion that feeling was an epiphenomenon, it made “refined music” into a “a factor of survival.” Nothing as what it seemed.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 91

“We are not descended from the apes, but we are rapidly getting there.”

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 96

Believers in the class struggle often saw little difference between race and class…The North and South of Italy were races, with the industrial North naturally superior. Anglos-Saxons and Latins were two races, since Protestantism and Industry could be aligned against Catholicism and centralized government…Politics, art, religion, language, science, everything had a natural, therefore a racial, basis. Nations were races and professions too; there were races of poets and races of sailors, races of democrats and races of pessimists, races of struggle-for-lifers and races of suicides. Apparently the only race not entered on the books was the race of true Christians.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 97

In truth, once the word “selection” was used, no other course was possible, than that of personifying Nature and making her “watch and seize unerringly” those of her children who deserved survival. The idea of merely resisting the universe, sitting tight and enduring, was not sufficiently anthropomorphic. Competition with other species or individuals, victory earned because of inward merit or determination to win — these were intelligible principles.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 125

The same injection of a selecting mind into natural affairs led to picturing animals as constantly at each other’s throats. Enlightened opinion condemned as “sentimental” the view that Nature was harmonious; calling it “cruel” instead, and not seeing that to speak of cruelty in reference to the millions of seeds or eggs that perish is a piece of far worse sentimentality. For there is balance and interdependency among living things, whereas ascribing conscious agency to Nature can make it be anything one wants: Nature is kind in that it solicitously feeds the frog with gnats; it is cruel in that it allows innocent gnats to be eaten by frogs. Still as an excuse for human cruelty the ascription was endlessly useful…

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 125 – 126

The small random variation would accumulate, and in course of time lead to partial or complete change of form. New species would arise bearing new and useful characteristics; for all changes, in order to be perpetuated, must be adaptive, that is to say, must be of help to the creature possessing them.

Such is Darwin’s “distinctive theory,” and its correspondence with the argument of the classical economists to prove that unlimited competition brings out the best and cheapest product is complete. Even now, after a century of criticism, the persuasive exposition of either theory leaves the mind paralyzed with enchantment. It is so simple, so neat, so like a well-designed machine,. Even better than a machine, in that it really provides for perpetual motion; the struggle for existence is constant, so is variation; improvement should therefore be endless. After its beauty had once been grasped it was difficult not to fall down and adore the theory.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 58 – 59

On Materialism In Science:

Now materialism in science produced such magnificent results in practical life that to the men of the late nineteenth century these results seemed tantamount to a proof of the system. Thousands of miles of railway track, millions of yards of cloth, unlimited steam power, iron and steel machinery, devices for instant communication, and the multiplication of innumerable conveniences for the benefit of mankind — all struck the imaginations of men so forcibly as to make any questioning of the materialist assumption look like superstitious folly. At the same time, the age-old passion for uniformity drove the scientists to explain by material cause the inner life of man which alone gave value to the things. Vitalism was thus driven out of biology and man came once more to be considered a machine — a physico-chemical compound — as he had been in the middle of the eighteenth century.

-Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 9 – 10

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Skull of Saint Tatiana the Martyr of Rome

Read her life: Saint Tatiana the Martyr of Rome

After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), when the pious prince Neagoe Basarab (1512-1521) ruled in Romania, the Craioveşti rulers brought the skull of Saint Tatiana and the relics of Saint Gregory of Decapolite to Bistritsa Monastery. In 1955 the skull of Saint Tatiana was brought to the Cathedral of Saint Demetrios in Craiova, Romania. It is encased with the skulls of Sts. Sergius, Bacchus and Niphon of Constantinople.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

What the Allegorist Origen Taught About Adam and Eve

Dr. Denis Alexander, who is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University, is an eminently qualified molecular biologist with a very odd combination of theological beliefs. In a recent article in The Guardian (December 23, 2011) entitled, "Evolution, Christmas and the Atonement", he rejected belief in a literal Adam and Eve and an historical Fall, on the grounds that it was totally incompatible with scientific discoveries over the last few decades, which clearly indicate that “we last shared a common ancestor with the chimps about 5-6 million years ago, and humans have been gradually emerging through a series of hominid intermediates ever since.” Dr. Alexander had no time for belief in an immaterial soul, either: in his view, it is our complex brains that endow us with free will.

[Dr. Alexander cites Philo and Origen as justification for his theological beliefs. But do these writers support his theories. The author shows this is not the case. Below the position of Origen is set forward.]

What did Origen (c. 185-254 A.D.) teach about Adam and Eve?

It might surprise Dr. Alexander to learn that Origen also taught that Adam was a real, historical individual. In the Preface to his work, De Principiis, Origen summarizes the central points of Christian doctrine, as taught by the apostles:

4. The particular points clearly delivered in the teaching of the apostles are as follows:—

First, that there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into being — God from the first creation and foundation of the world — the God of all just men, of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noe [Noah], Sere [Serug], Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets; and that this God in the last days, as He had announced beforehand by His prophets, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to call in the first place Israel to Himself, and in the second place the Gentiles, after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. This just and good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself gave the law and the prophets, and the Gospels, being also the God of the apostles and of the Old and New Testaments.

Secondly, that Jesus Christ Himself, who came (into the world), was born of the Father before all creatures; that, after He had been the servant of the Father in the creation of all things — for by Him were all things made — He in the last times, divesting Himself (of His glory), became a man, and was incarnate although God, and while made a man remained the God which He was; that He assumed a body like to our own, differing in this respect only, that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit: that this Jesus Christ was truly born, and did truly suffer, and did not endure this death common (to man) in appearance only, but did truly die; that He did truly rise from the dead; and that after His resurrection He conversed with His disciples, and was taken up (into heaven).

Then, thirdly, the apostles related that the Holy Spirit was associated in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son. But in His case it is not clearly distinguished whether He is to be regarded as born or innate, or also as a Son of God or not: for these are points which have to be inquired into out of sacred Scripture according to the best of our ability, and which demand careful investigation. And that this Spirit inspired each one of the saints, whether prophets or apostles; and that there was not one Spirit in the men of the old dispensation, and another in those who were inspired at the advent of Christ, is most clearly taught throughout the Churches. (Italics mine – VJT.)

Origen was writing before the ecumenical councils of Nicea (325 A.D.) and Constantinople (381 A.D.) had been held; hence his vagueness regarding the Holy Spirit.

Notice that in the passage above, Origen describes God as “the God of all just men, of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noe [Noah], Sere [Serug], Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets.” Since Origen is giving a summary here of the essentials of Christian teaching, and since he clearly regards the other individuals named as historical characters, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that for Origen, the historicity of Adam was an essential Christian teaching.

In Book II, Chapter 3 of his work, De Principiis, Origen discusses the beginning of the world, and attacks the view of those philosophers who hold that everything goes around again and again, in a never-ending cycle. Origen contends that such a view would make a mockery of free will:

4. And now I do not understand by what proofs they can maintain their position, who assert that worlds sometimes come into existence which are not dissimilar to each other, but in all respects equal. For if there is said to be a world similar in all respects (to the present), then it will come to pass that Adam and Eve will do the same things which they did before: there will be a second time the same deluge, and the same Moses will again lead a nation numbering nearly six hundred thousand out of Egypt; Judas will also a second time betray the Lord; Paul will a second time keep the garments of those who stoned Stephen; and everything which has been done in this life will be said to be repeated – a state of things which I think cannot be established by any reasoning, if souls are actuated by freedom of will, and maintain either their advance or retrogression according to the power of their will. For souls are not driven on in a cycle which returns after many ages to the same round, so as either to do or desire this or that; but at whatever point the freedom of their own will aims, there do they direct the course of their actions. (Italics mine – VJT.)

Once again, the reader will notice the reference to Adam and Eve. Since Origen is making a point about actual choices made by actual individuals in time past, he clearly intends to affirm the literal historicity of Adam and Eve. For if he did not, then what about Moses, Judas and Paul? Are they mythical too?

But wait, there’s more! In Book I, chapter 22 of his Commentary on the Gospel of John, Origen declares that Wisdom is Christ’s fundamental characteristic: Jesus is the Wisdom of God, who was sent into the world in order to redeem it. Origen writes that Jesus is called the light of the world, because men, who are spiritually darkened by wickedness, need the light. Likewise, Jesus is called the first-born from the dead, because He had to rescue those who had died. Origen explains that this was necessary only because Adam and Eve fell and failed to attain the goal of freedom from bodily death and corruption, that God had originally planned for them:

Now God is altogether one and simple; but our Saviour, for many reasons, since God set Him forth a propitiation and a first fruits of the whole creation, is made many things, or perhaps all these things; the whole creation, so far as capable of redemption, stands in need of Him. And, hence, He is made the light of men, because men, being darkened by wickedness, need the light that shines in darkness, and is not overtaken by the darkness; had not men been in darkness, He would not have become the light of men. The same thing may be observed in respect of His being the first-born of the dead. For supposing the woman had not been deceived, and Adam had not fallen, and man created for incorruption had obtained it, then He would not have descended into the grave, nor would He have died, there being no sin, nor would His love of men have required that He should die, and if He had not died, He could not have been the first-born of the dead. We may also ask whether He would ever have become a shepherd, had man not been thrown together with the beasts which are devoid of reason, and made like to them. (Italics mine – VJT.)

In the above passage, there can be no doubt that Origen believed in a real Fall, in which one woman (Eve) was deceived, and one man (Adam) fell from grace. Had it not been for the Fall, man would have escaped the grim fate of bodily corruption, which is our lot. In other words, Origen taught that human beings would not have died had Adam and Eve not fallen. Contrary to Dr. Alexander, Origen clearly believed that the Bible teaches that physical death originates with the sin of Adam.

Origen, discusses some other consequences of the Fall in Contra Celsum, Book VII, chapter 28, where he writes that “the earth … was originally cursed for the transgression of Adam.” He goes on to explain:

For these words, "Cursed shall the ground be for what you have done; with grief, that is, with labour, shall you eat of the fruit of it all the days of your life", were spoken of the whole earth, the fruit of which every man who died in Adam eats with sorrow or labour all the days of his life. And as all the earth has been cursed, it brings forth thorns and briers all the days of the life of those who in Adam were driven out of paradise; and in the sweat of his face every man eats bread until he returns to the ground from which he was taken.

(Emphases mine – VJT.)

In his article written for The Guardian, Dr. Alexander maintains that for Origen, Adam is Everyman. Alexander even contends that Scripture supports this view, since “the definite article in front of Adam in chapters 2 and 3 – ‘the man’ – suggests a representative man.” But we can see from the above passage that Origen’s point is quite a different one. Precisely because Adam is the original man, he is a type or symbol for the whole human race. Hence, in Adam, every man died. And in Adam, every man was driven out of Paradise. There is nothing in the above passage that Augustine would have disagreed with.

In Contra Celsum, Book VI, chapter 36, Origen criticises the pagan philosopher Celsus for mocking a Christian doctrine which he does not understand: the doctrine of the resurrection. Origen affirms in passing that “death was in Adam”:

Celsus, moreover, has often mocked at the subject of a resurrection,— a doctrine which he did not comprehend; and on the present occasion, not satisfied with what he has formerly said, he adds, And there is said to be a resurrection of the flesh by means of the tree; not understanding, I think, the symbolic expression, that through the tree came death, and through the tree comes life, because death was in Adam, and life in Christ. (Italics mine – VJT.)

It would have been easy to overlook this passage if I had not previously highlighted other passages where Origen explicitly declares his belief in a literal Adam. But now we can see that Origen probably understood the saying, “death was in Adam, and life in Christ,” in a fully orthodox Christian sense.

Now we can address the celebrated passage in Contra Celsum, Book IV, chapter 40, where Origen seems to affirm that Adam is a purely symbolic figure. In this passage, Origen is replying to an objection made by the pagan philosopher Celsus, that if God were truly omnipotent, then surely one insignificant man, Adam, could not have thwarted his purposes by sinning at the very beginning of human history; for an omnipotent God could have simply prevented Adam from succumbing to temptation. Origen replies that the consequences of the sin of Adam apply not to one human being but to the entire human race:

For as those whose business it is to defend the doctrine of providence do so by means of arguments which are not to be despised, so also the subjects of Adam and his son will be philosophically dealt with by those who are aware that in the Hebrew language Adam signifies man; and that in those parts of the narrative which appear to refer to Adam as an individual, Moses is discoursing upon the nature of man in general. For in Adam (as the Scripture says) all die, and were condemned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, the word of God asserting this not so much of one particular individual as of the whole human race. For in the connected series of statements which appears to apply as to one particular individual, the curse pronounced upon Adam is regarded as common to all (the members of the race), and what was spoken with reference to the woman is spoken of every woman without exception. (Italics mine – VJT.)

Origen is not arguing here that Adam is Everyman, as Dr. Alexander thinks. Instead, he is arguing that precisely because the name “Adam” means “man in general,” the consequences of the historical Adam’s Fall must affect the whole human race. Origen is employing typological reasoning here: he is arguing that because Adam’s name has a certain significance (“man in general”), his actions have a mystical (one is tempted to say, magical) significance for the whole of humanity. The same goes for Eve.

Origen was surprisingly literal in his interpretation of Genesis

In the very next chapter, Origen goes on to interpret Genesis in a way that should make Dr. Alexander blush with embarrassment. Yes, Dr. Alexander’s theological hero believed in a literal global flood and an Ark! In Contra Celsum, Book IV, chapter 41, Origen addresses head-on the objections of the pagan philosopher Celsus, who scoffed at the notion of a Deluge covering the entire earth, and of an Ark that carried the survivng humans and animals. Origen argued that the Ark was the product of one hundred years of careful construction by Noah, who was also assisted by God, according to the book of Genesis. Moreover, Origen maintained that the Ark would have been quite big enough to hold all the animals, if the Biblical cubits were Egyptian cubits, which were several times longer than standard cubits. Finally, Origen reasoned that the animals would have been perfectly secure inside the Ark, as it was specially designed by God:

After this he [Celsus] continues as follows: "They [Jews and Christians] speak, in the next place, of a deluge, and of a monstrous ark, having within it all things, and of a dove and a crow as messengers, falsifying and recklessly altering the story of Deucalion; not expecting, I suppose, that these things would come to light, but imagining that they were inventing stories merely for young children." Now in these remarks observe the hostility — so unbecoming a philosopher — displayed by this man towards this very ancient Jewish narrative. For, not being able to say anything against the history of the deluge, and not perceiving what he might have urged against the ark and its dimensions — viz., that, according to the general opinion, which accepted the statements that it was three hundred cubits in length, and fifty in breadth, and thirty in height, it was impossible to maintain that it contained (all) the animals that were upon the earth, fourteen specimens of every clean and four of every unclean beast — he merely termed it monstrous, containing all things within it. Now wherein was its monstrous character, seeing it is related to have been a hundred years in building, and to have had the three hundred cubits of its length and the fifty of its breadth contracted, until the thirty cubits of its height terminated in a top one cubit long and one cubit broad? Why should we not rather admire a structure which resembled an extensive city, if its measurements be taken to mean what they are capable of meaning, so that it was nine myriads of cubits long in the base, and two thousand five hundred in breadth? And why should we not admire the design evinced in having it so compactly built, and rendered capable of sustaining a tempest which caused a deluge? For it was not daubed with pitch, or any material of that kind, but was securely coated with bitumen. And is it not a subject of admiration, that by the providential arrangement of God, the elements of all the races were brought into it, that the earth might receive again the seeds of all living things, while God made use of a most righteous man to be the progenitor of those who were to be born after the deluge?

That’s how Origen defended the Biblical account of the Flood. This is the Christian theologian whom Dr. Alexander lauds for “interpreting the early chapters of Genesis figuratively – as a theological essay, not as science”? Surely you jest, Dr. Alexander.

But I haven’t finished yet. In Contra Celsum, Book I, chapter 19, Origen declares himself to be a young-earth creationist:

After these statements [assailing the Mosaic narrative - VJT], Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that, while concealing his wish, intimates his agreement with those who hold that the world is uncreated.

There you have it. According to Origen, Genesis actually teaches that the world is less than 10,000 years old!

Let me hasten to add that I believe, with Dr. Alexander, that the world is much, much older than 10,000 years. I see no reason to doubt the evidence of science, which suggests that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and I’ve read so many different interpretations of the “days” in Genesis that I think it would be foolish to insist that the human author of Genesis intended to declare that the world was only a few thousand years old – especially as some Church Fathers interpreted the “days” in a non-literal manner. But on the subject of Adam and Eve, there is a theological unanimity among both Jewish and Christian teachers and religious authorities from antiquity: all of them insisted that Adam and Eve were real, historical individuals. Yes, even Philo and Origen. We cannot rewrite the past to suit our whims. Facts must be faced.

Source

Tweet

Share on Tumblr