10 Facts About the Panagia of "Axion Estin"

Below are ten little known facts about the Holy Icon of Panagia "Axion Estin":

1. To arrive at the exact date when the Archangel Gabriel revealed the hymn "Axion Estin", we calculate according to the following facts:

- The synaxarion for the feast says it took place during the reign of the emperors Basil (976-1025) and his brother Constantine Porphyrogenitos (1025–1028), and the patriarchate of St. Nicholas Chrysoberges (980-995), in the year 980 (6490 years from the creation of the world).

- However, 6490 is not 980, but 982.

- We also read in the ancient sources that the miracle took place on a Sunday and the date was June 11. Since June 11th fell on a Sunday in 982, we can assume this is the date the miracle took place.

2. The second part of the hymn "Axion Estin", which begins "More honorable than the Cherubim", was written by St. Kosmas the Poet in the 8th century.

3. With few exceptions, the hymn "Axion Estin" is chanted during the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, in the same tone as the previous Cherubic Hymn. However, according to Athonite tradition, the Archangel Gabriel chanted it in the second tone.

4. The Service to the Panagia "Axion Estin" was written by a Russian hierodeacon named Benedict in 1838. It was published four times in Athens (1854, 157, 1890, 1971) and one time in Karyes, Mount Athos (1924). It was translated into Slavonic twice, once in Constantinople (1861) and once in Thessaloniki (1910). The synaxarion read during the Orthros was written by the Protos Seraphim. The Doxastikon was written by Monk Averkios, a representative of Xenophontos Monastery, in 1923.

5. The Litany with the Icon of Panagia "Axion Estin", which takes place on Bright Monday, is for the following reasons, according to the sources:

- Out of love for the Panagia.

- For the sanctification of homes.

- For the blessing of the fruits.

- To abolish insects and other harmful living things from the gardens, trees and vines.

- For physical health.

6. Before the wars of the 20th century, the litany of Bright Monday would gather more than 2000 people.

7. In 1508, the following miracle took place on Bright Monday. The monks of the Dionysian Cell could not be found to welcome the Icon to their Cell. They had abandoned the Cell and hid themselves. That night a strong rain and hail destroyed their vines, trees, and gardens, though that of their neighbors was perfectly fine. The monks realized their sin and went to the Monastery of Dionysiou to confess to Saint Niphon, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was there. He gave them an appropriate canon for repentance, and the following year they welcomed the Holy Icon with much honor, and begged forgiveness from the monks on their knees for not receiving them the prior year.

8. Twice the Monastery of Koutloumousiou did not welcome the Holy Icon during the litany of Bright Monday, because they considered themselves a large Monastery and did not feel the need to recognize the traditions of the other monasteries. As a result, the first time the boat of the Monastery was burned together with its watch tower, and the second time the walls of the newly-built trapeza and other buildings of the Monastery fell.

9. In 1963, in honor of the 1,000 year anniversary of Mount Athos, the Holy Icon of Panagia "Axion Estin" was brought to Athens. Thousands came to venerate this treasure of Orthodoxy with great emotion. This was the first time the Icon left the Holy Mountain.

10. Night and day services take place at Protaton, where the Icon is kept, before the Panagia "Axion Estin", and dozens daily venerate the Holy Icon, leaving their names and those of their loved ones for commemoration.

The Holy Cell of Axion Estin

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Cathedral of the Resurrection in Tirana Consecrated

The third largest Orthodox church in Europe was consecrated today, 24 June 2012, in Tirana, Albania, after 8 years of construction and an investment of millions of euros. The consecration of the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ was attended by many political and religious figures, including Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durres, and All Albania, President Bamir Topi, Prime Minister Sali Berisha, opposition leader Edi Rama, representatives from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Archbishop Demetrios of America, the leader of the Albanian Archdiocese of Boston, and a large number of clergy and laity.

The Cathedral is in the central square of Tirana and was added to existing buildings which belong to three historical periods: the Turkish occupation by the Mosque of Etem Beu (1794) and the clock tower (1822); the "Italian" decade of the 1930's-40's which are the Town Hall and the other ministry buildings; and the Communist period from which came the operas, the national museum, the central bank, etc.

Thus the clock tower, which measures at 35 meters and is a registered trademark of Tirana, will not be alone anymore, as a few meters south will stand the bell tower of the Cathedral at 46 meters.

The land area is about five thousand square meters, and the church itself occupies 1660 square meters. This consecration coincided with the 20th anniversary of Anastasios of Tirana as Archbishop in Albania.

The complex, besides many works in marble, is divided into several parts. The ancient church in the northwest corner is dedicated to the Birth of Christ, then to the east side is the seat of the Holy Synod, while inside the premises has a cultural and conference center, amphitheater and library.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

C.I.A. Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition

Eric Schmitt

June 21, 2012

The New York Times

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.

The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has recently escalated his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. With Russia blocking more aggressive steps against the Assad government, the United States and its allies have instead turned to diplomacy and aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.

By helping to vet rebel groups, American intelligence operatives in Turkey hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties. “C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,” said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts.

American officials and retired C.I.A. officials said the administration was also weighing additional assistance to rebels, like providing satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements. The administration is also considering whether to help the opposition set up a rudimentary intelligence service. But no decisions have been made on those measures or even more aggressive steps, like sending C.I.A. officers into Syria itself, they said.

The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters. President Obama and his top aides are seeking to pressure Russia to curb arms shipments like attack helicopters to Syria, its main ally in the Middle East.

“We’d like to see arms sales to the Assad regime come to an end, because we believe they’ve demonstrated that they will only use their military against their own civilian population,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said after Mr. Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, met in Mexico on Monday.

Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and C.I.A. would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, some details of which were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal.

Until now, the public face of the administration’s Syria policy has largely been diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

The State Department said Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would meet with her Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Pacific foreign ministers in St. Petersburg, Russia, next Thursday. The private talks are likely to focus, at least in part, on the crisis in Syria.

The State Department has authorized $15 million in nonlethal aid, like medical supplies and communications equipment, to civilian opposition groups in Syria.

The Pentagon continues to fine-tune a range of military options, after a request from Mr. Obama in early March for such contingency planning. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators at that time that the options under review included humanitarian airlifts, aerial surveillance of the Syrian military, and the establishment of a no-fly zone.

The military has also drawn up plans for how coalition troops would secure Syria’s sizable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons if an all-out civil war threatened their security.

But senior administration officials have underscored in recent days that they are not actively considering military options. “Anything at this point vis-à-vis Syria would be hypothetical in the extreme,” General Dempsey told reporters this month.

What has changed since March is an influx of weapons and ammunition to the rebels. The increasingly fierce air and artillery assaults by the government are intended to counter improved coordination, tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, according to members of the Syrian National Council and other activists.

Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria. Turkey has repeatedly denied it was extending anything other than humanitarian aid to the opposition, mostly via refugee camps near the border. The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers.

American military analysts offered mixed opinions on whether these arms have offset the advantages held by the militarily superior Syrian Army. “The rebels are starting to crack the code on how to take out tanks,” said Joseph Holliday, a former United States Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan who is now a researcher tracking the Free Syrian Army for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

But a senior American officer who receives classified intelligence reports from the region, compared the rebels’ arms to “peashooters” against the government’s heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.

The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, has recently begun trying to organize the scattered, localized units that all fight under the name of the Free Syrian Army into a more cohesive force.

About 10 military coordinating councils in provinces across the country are now sharing tactics and other information. The city of Homs is the notable exception. It lacks such a council because the three main military groups in the city do not get along, national council officials said.

Jeffrey White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who tracks videos and announcements from self-described rebel battalions, said there were now about 100 rebel formations, up from roughly 70 two months ago, ranging in size from a handful of fighters to a couple of hundred combatants.

“When the regime wants to go someplace and puts the right package of forces together, it can do it,” Mr. White said. “But the opposition is raising the cost of those kinds of operations.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon. Souad Mekhennet also contributed reporting.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

An Interpretation of the Name "JOHN"

According to Nikephoros Theotokis (a Greek scholar and theologian of the late eighteenth century, who became an archbishop in the southern provinces of Russia and is considered by Greeks as a "Teacher of the Nation"), in his treatise on the Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner, writes: "The name Ioannis (Ιωάννης or John), sent from above by the All-Holy Spirit, was given to him by the Archangel Gabriel, to Zachariah, saying: 'and you shall call his name Ioannis'."

Theotokis goes on to interpret this name according to each individual letter, of which in Greek there are seven: Ι.Ω.Α.Ν.Ν.Η.Σ or I.O.A.N.N.I.S. This was given to him to fulfill the prophecy of the Prophetess Hannah, who in 1 Samuel 2:5 says "she who was barren has borne seven children"; one "child" is represented by one letter from the name Ioannis. Also, in Holy Scripture the number seven is found many times and is considered holy.

Below is the Divine Mystery of the name Ioannis derived from the seven letters of the Greek alphabet, according to Nikephoros Theotokis:

Ι = Ιεραρχίες or Hierarchies:

According to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote The Celestial Hierarchy, there are three Ιεραρχίες (Hierarchies, Spheres or Triads) of angels, with each Hierarchy containing three Orders or Choirs. They are as follows:

1 First Hierarchy

1.1 Seraphim

1.2 Cherubim

1.3 Thrones or Ophanim

2 Second Hierarchy

2.1 Dominions

2.2 Virtues

2.3 Powers or Authorities

3 Third Hierarchy

3.1 Principalities or Rulers

3.2 Archangels

3.3 Angels

There is also a Tenth Order, which according to Orthodox tradition fell through the tempting of Satan and became Demons. This Tenth Order was replaced on earth by the Order of Monastics, which is why when a monastic is tonsured they receive the "Angelic Schema", by virtue of their living as earthly angels through their virginity, total reliance on God, and their constant prayers. Monastics are thus the Tenth Order of Angels, and it is from Saint John the Forerunner that monastics received an initial example of their lifestyle. St. John is the first and chief of the Order of Monastics, and the day of his joyous birth marks the beginning of the Monastic Order. Theotokis also mentions that according to Greek numerals, the letter "I" is the Greek value for ten, which is symbolic for the Honorable Forerunner.

Ω = A Pre-Image of the Two Natures of Christ:

According to Theotokis, "Ω" is a pre-image of the First Coming of Christ, just like "I" was a pre-image of St. John the Forerunner. According to scholars, the letter "Ω" has its origins in putting two "O" together to form one letter; thus "OO" became "Ω" (two Omikrons became one Omega). The letters "OO" together are what pre-image Christ's two Natures, both the Divine and Human, as well as pre-imaging His eternalness through the never-ending circle shape of the letter. Essentially the meaning is that the God-man, Jesus Christ, has neither beginning nor ending. Since the "OO" together became the last letter of the Greek alphabet "Ω", we also recall the title Christ gave Himself in Revelation 1:8, where He says: "I am the Alpha and the Omega".

ΑΝΝ = Ανάσταση Νεκρών or Resurrection [of the] Dead:

Following the pre-image of the birth of John the Forerunner through the letter "I", and the pre-image of the First Coming of Christ through the letter "Ω", the next three letters in the name Ioannis go together to pre-image the Second Coming of Christ. The "AN" together are the first two letters of the word "Ανάσταση" (Resurrection) and the next "N" is the first letter of the word "Νεκρών" (Dead), which confesses the creedal statement that we believe "in the resurrection of the dead" at the end of the age.

H = The Eighth Age:

The letter "H" according to Greek numerals is the letter for the number eight, and the number eight according to Orthodox tradition pre-images the Eighth Age, which is the post-apocalytpic age to come following this present age. And just as we confessed through the letters "ANN" our belief "in the resurrection of the dead", so now we continue to also confess the creedal statement "and the life of the age to come".

Σ = Twice-Perfect:

According to Greek numerals, the letter "Σ" is valued at 200. 200 comes to us by adding together two 100's. The number 100 in Holy Scripture is a number of perfection. When you add two 100's together, however, you make something beyond perfect or twice-perfect. This beyond perfect number therefore images the beyond perfect and ageless age of the life to come.

This is the Divine Mystery behind the name Ioannis, according to Nikephoros Theotokis.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Reclusive Hermitess Christina Has Reposed

According to Romfea.gr, today, Saturday 23 June 2012, at the age of 87 years old, the Eldress Christina reposed.

The Eldress was born in 1925 and was from Kilkis Akritas, though she lived a reclusive ascetic life for many years at the Hermitage she herself founded in Prasinada Paranesti.

She was tonsured a nun at the Holy Sepulcher by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Benedict, and received the Great Schema from the Archbishop of Sinai Damianos.

It should be noted that the Eldress lived the life of a hermitess at Sinai. She also helped established the Holy Monastery of Panagia Pangaiotissa, in the Holy Metropolis of Eleutheroupolis. From here she received the blessing from her spiritual father, the blessed Elder Eusebios Vittis, to live an eremitic life in Paranesti.

She was perhaps the only hermitess in Greece; a recluse nun who helped many people through her prayers and admonitions.

The funeral of Eldress Christina will take place today at 17:00 at the Holy Monastery of Panagia Pangaiotissa in Eleutheroupolis, presided by Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Eleutheroupolis.

Finally the Eldress will be buried at her own Hermitage, in a grave she has prepared for herself.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Troubled Monk Apparently Commits Suicide in Arizona

Theodore Kalmoukos

June 21, 2012

The National Herald

At the St. Anthony's Monastery in Florence, AZ, a 27 year-old novice monk took his life with a gun on the dawn of June 11.

Scott Nevins was a novice for six years at St. Anthony, one of the 21 Monasteries established by Elder Ephraim, the former abbot of the Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos. From Modesto, CA Nevins was a convert to Orthodoxy. He had left the Monastery 15 months ago in the middle of the night and went to Oregon and enrolled in college. He returned the Monastery armed with two guns and a knife on June 10.

When he pulled into the Monastery parking lot he was met by a night watchman monk. He drove a short distance away. The watchman drove his car toward the area where Nevins had parked. At some point, Nevins shot himself according to police accounts, and was flown by a helicopter to an area hospital, where he died. An autopsy was scheduled to be performed.

The Monastery belongs ecclesiastically and canonically to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America through the Metropolis of San Francisco under Metropolitan Gerasimos. TNH was unable to reach Archbishop Demetrios or Nevins' parents for comment.

The authorities have not established a motive why Nevins took his life or why he returned to the Monastery armed with two guns and a knife. In e-mails that he exchanged with Abbot Paisios and another monk, Fr. Ilarion, Nevins wrote that he had been threatened by other monks including elder Ephraim whom he described as "charlatan."

When he quickly left the Monastery 15 months earlier, Nevins had left his oral retainer behind, among other personal items. He had requested that the Monastery retrieve it, but the monk who cleaned his room had thrown it away. Nevins insisted to be reimbursed $4,000 for it, but the Monastery offered to send him to an orthodontist in California and to pay to replace it; Nevins refused.

Nevins sent an email to Ilarion stating among other things that "you have to pay for the retainer. I am calling the sheriff if you don't and getting a lawyer." He also wrote that "I had to leave in a hurry, and I forgot my retainer. I had to leave because of the immediate threat to my personal safety. A number of the fathers, including the elder were after me, and a threat against my life was made. Did you even ask elder Ephraim if he had threatened me? Oh, no, you just know these things without having to ask."

In another email to Ilarion, Nevins wrote that "elder Ephraim is a charlatan, he's lying about being holy and being a good person. When I discovered this, he threatened me and I had to leave immediately, in the middle of the night, which is why my retainers and baptismal certificate were left behind."

Ilarion replied to Nevins that "please note that on the day you left here we were really concerned about your whereabouts and safety, so I called the Sheriff's office and filed a missing person report because you didn't leave a note nor did you inform anyone. Later that night the Sheriff's office called and informed me that they spoke to your father/mother and that you left here for good. The Sheriff's deputy said you went to a friend's house. The morning you left, you were seen going to church, getting the elder's blessing and walking out the front gate around Liturgy time 3AM holding a small bag. No one thought anything at the time, but they told me about it a day or two later."

Ilarion also wrote to Nevins that "the elder has never threatened anyone who wanted to leave here. All who come here as novices or guests come of their own free will and leave of their own free will. No one is forced to be here and all monks and novices have access to a telephone."

Nevins replied to Ilarion: "the elder has never threatened anyone" uhhh…you live in a fantasy world. I didn't ask you for your opinion as to why I left the way I did; actually Fr. Paisios told me that I was to leave with nothing. Absolutely nothing; so, I did. I didn't have a bag in my hand. And another thing, your Elder Ephraim is a complete charlatan! He isn't holy at all! Not at all! He is lying about everything. The deception is unbelievable."

At some point Nevins appeared very angry and he threatened Ilarion and also Elder Ephraim and used inappropriate language. On April 20 he wrote to Ilarion: "hey worthless, deadbeat, loser, give a direct phone number to the All Holy and Thrice Blessed Eminent and Despotic Elder of the Monastery, so that I can tell the person in charge what I really think about Your All Worthlessness! I truly feel like ripping your face off of your skull! I don't know what to do, dumba**. Help me! Hey, …s**t-head, ask The All Holy Elder Ephraim if he feels like having every tooth beaten out of his Skull, because that's how I feel".

Passios told TNH "that the young man was not progressing here and I told him if he wanted to go back home and do something with his life."

As to why Nevins left, Paisios said "he simply couldn't stay here. He wasn't telling me many things. We were talking frequently but he was not telling me the reasons that he wanted to stay here."

Regarding Nevins' overall behavior at the Monastery, Paisios said that "he was not talking much, he was coming to his work but he was in another world." Paisios revealed that "on Monday June 4, he called me and threatened me saying `I will blow your brains with a gun.' I told him that it would be good for him to go and see a psychotherapist. He told me that `I already had gone and I am well.'

Paisios is convinced that Nevins "came to the Monastery to kill us and then take his own life."

Paisios said that during most of the time that Nevins was a novice "he did not show any signs [of peculiar behavior]. A year before he left he was in contact with some people who were acquaintances and friends and he had some concerns. I remember one time he had said to me that the white flowers in the oleanders in the Monastery's garden is the symbol of Satanists".

If the Monastery notified his parents when they saw the signs that something had changed on Nevins, Paisios said "we did not have a connection because they were saying that we had stolen their child, that we had brainwashed him."

Speaking about Nevins' allegations that elder Ephraim had threatened him, Paisios said "all these were in his fantasy" and he added that "Fr. Ephraim doesn't threat nor has any intent to threat anybody." Paisios added that Nevins "did not have any contact with the Elder who does not speak English and Scott did not speak Greek."

Paisios said that the Monastery checks prospective monks' past to determine whether they have ever taken antidepressant drugs, at which point it does not admit them. He refuted the possibility that the Monastery watchman could have killed Nevins, maintaining that the police confirmed that Nevins had taken his own life.

According to Paisios, the Monastery has 39 monks and 6 novices, 45 in total. It was built in 1995 and Paisios said "it cost 8 to 9 million dollars, which came from donations." He denied that abbot Ephraim from the Vatopedi Monastery of Mt. Athos has given money to the Monasteries built and controlled by Fr. Ephraim's of Arizona. "No, no, how do these things circulate," Paisios said. When he was reminded about the official news announcement issued by the Vatopedi Monastery on October 9, 2008 that $2 million was given as assistance to various causes including "in ecclesiastical institutions and Monasteries in America and many Eparchies of the Ecumenical Patriarchate" Paisios said "we have never asked and we have never been offered [money]."

Paisios attributed how all these 21 Monasteries were established throughout the Archdiocese within only a few years "as a miracle" and added "we do not do anything secretive [and we have not] received any funds from Vatopedi. These [rumors] are baseless."

Regarding Nevins' death, Metropolitan Gerasimos issued the following letter:

Dear Brothers in Christ,

The responsibility we share as the ordained ministers of the Holy Gospel is a sacred trust bestowed upon us by Holy Ordination. Our ministry is replete with joy and sorrow that we experience with the people of God entrusted to our spiritual care.

It is, therefore, my paternal obligation to inform you of a tragic event that has occurred within the boundaries of our Holy Metropolis. A young man who had come to our Faith and became a novice at the Holy Monastery of St. Anthony the Great, and subsequently left the Monastery for unknown reasons last year, took his life last Monday morning at approximately 2:45AM. Scott Nevins, 27 years old, had spent six years at St. Anthony's. Last year, after leaving the Monastery he enrolled in a college in Oregon. In the early hours of last Monday morning, Scott took his life in an area near the monastery.

The proper authorities are investigating this incident and we will cooperate in every way necessary. In addition, the Metropolis is conducting an investigation into this matter.

On behalf of the Holy Metropolis of San Francisco we wish to extend our prayers and love to the Nevins family. May Christ Jesus, our Lord, God and Savior look with mercy upon the soul of his departed servant. Eternal be his memory!

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

You Cannot Be Spiritual Without Being Religious

Kevin DeYoung

June 19, 2012

The Gospel Coalition

At the end of 1 Corinthians 2:13 Paul uses a popular word: spiritual. It’s a popular word for us, and it was a popular word in Paul’s day. They desired spirituality just as much. They loved spiritual gurus, and so do we. But not everything spiritual is truly spiritual.

When you hear the word “spiritual” certain images come to mind. You think of someone very quiet and contemplative. Or maybe you picture someone with hands raised in a demonstrative expression of worship. You may think of your spontaneous, free-wheeling, “Spirit-led” friend. The spiritual person in your mind may be the young woman deeply interested in miracles and mystery, or maybe the old man earnestly pursuing a relationship with a higher power. To be “spiritual” in our day is to be vaguely interested in the supernatural and loosely committed to practices like prayer and meditation.

And yet, all of these indicators are what Jonathan Edwards would call non-signs. They don’t prove anything one way or another. It’s not bad to be contemplative or demonstrative or spontaneous. There’s nothing wrong with being interested in prayer, miracles, or a higher power. These interests and practices could be good or bad, depending on other factors. But by themselves, these things are not spiritual, not according to Paul’s definition.

The spiritual person understands spiritual truths (1 Cor. 2:13). He receives what the Spirit imparts. By contrast, the natural person (the unspiritual person) does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him (v. 14). Paul is clearly distinguishing between two categories of people. On one side you have spiritual people who accept spiritual things. Opposite them you have unspiritual people who do not accept spiritual things. What makes a person spiritual, then, is the embrace of spiritual things.

And what are the spiritual things Paul has in mind?

We must let scriptural context, and not our immediate culture, answer that question. Paul has just finished explaining that the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing (1:18). His preaching does not look like wisdom to the wise ones in the world. Nevertheless, he continues to know nothing among the Corinthians except Christ and him crucified (2:2). Paul knows that what Jews and Greeks want to condemn is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). But you have to have ears to hear it. This message, considered foolish by many, is wisdom among the mature (1 Cor. 2:6). Though the rulers of this age did not understand it and therefore crucified the Lord of glory, the message of the cross is actually the revealed wisdom of God, once hidden from view and decreed before the ages began (2:7). The “spiritual things” refers to the gospel proclamation revealed by the Spirit and entrusted to Paul and his apostolic band.

The spiritual person, therefore, is the one who accepts the message of the cross. We are truly spiritual if, and only if, the Spirit of Christ has given us the mind of Christ to receive the good news concerning the death and resurrection of Christ. No matter how much you like angels, or how much you pray, or how often you mediate, or how much you are into yoga, or how much you believe in miracles, if you do not understand, cherish, and embrace the cross you are not a spiritual person. The spiritual person discerns spiritual things, starting with the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross for sinners like you and me. To accept this gospel, with all its doctrinal and religious contours, is the beginning of true spirituality. For in the end, our slogans and endless searching do not count for much, neither does our interest in reading Chicken Soup for the Soul. If we reject the message of the cross, we have rejected the Spirit’s revelatory work. And when we spurn the Spirit we forfeit the right to be considered spiritual.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Muslim Group Offended By 'Christian' Tomatoes

Alex Murashko

June 20, 2012

Christian Post

A Salafist group from Egypt appears to be trying to retract a post on Facebook that warned that eating tomatoes are "forbidden because they are Christian."

However, the Muslim traditionalist group, calling themselves the Popular Egyptian Islamic Association, apparently still finds tomatoes offensive if they are cut in such a way that reveals the shape of a cross, according to the Now Lebanon website.

Along with a photo of a tomato cut in half to reveal what could be viewed as a cross, the group originally posted on Facebook: "Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises the cross instead of Allah and says that Allah is three (a reference to the Trinity).

"[God help us]. I implore you to spread this photo because there is a sister from Palestine who saw the prophet of Allah [Mohammad] in a vision and he was crying, warning his nation against eating them [tomatoes]. If you don't spread this [message], know that it is the devil who stopped you," according to a translation by Now Lebanon.

More than 2,700 comments were left under the warning posted 10 days ago, perhaps prompting the association to give this response:

"We didn't say you can't eat tomatoes. We said don't cut it in [such a way that reveals] the cross shape."

Although many of the comments made on the Facebook post were not suitable for re-publishing, one blogger posting on his blog joked, "Warning! Your salad could be making you into an Infidel!"

There is an estimated 5-6 million Salafis in Egypt. The Salafis are generally considered to be more traditional than other Muslim sects. Last year, a group of hardline Muslims, including Salafis, were responsible for the burning of several Christian churches and businesses in Egypt that later resulted in hundreds of deaths during demonstrations against the destruction.

According to a German domestic intelligence report done in 2010, Salafism is the fastest growing Islamic movement in the world.

A writer for The Blaze categorized most news coming out of the Middle East as "intriguing, bizarre and unceasingly concerning," but said the forbidden tomatoes story "actually crosses into a comical sphere."

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Documentary: "Culture of Fear"

The documentary details the epidemic of fear in our society, ranging from child predators to immigrants and from flu pandemic to terrorism. It features interviews with Dr. Noam Chomsky, a renowned linguist, human behaviorist, and political activist; US House Representative Dennis Kucinich, once US presidential candidate; and many other experts offering an in-depth exploration of the culture of fear. Culture of Fear is a term used by certain scholars, writers, journalists and politicians who believe that some in society incite fear in the general public to achieve political goals.

The term is used to describe fears about Islamic terrorism which, it is argued, are fears that are usually exaggerated or irrational in nature. The term has also been used to describe irrational fear in other contexts, such as citizens fearing persons of different ethnic backgrounds, or neighborhood residents fearing retribution if they assist police in identifying criminals.

Source

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

The Relentless Cult of Novelty

The following address was delivered when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature in 1993. It was translated by Solzhenitsyn's sons, Ignat and Stephan. The title was provided by The New York Times, where the essay was first printed.

By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole.

There is a long accepted truth about art that "style is the man" ("le style est l'homme”). This means that every work of a skilled Musician, Artist or Writer is shaped by an absolutely unique combination of personality traits, creative abilities and individual as well as national experience. And since such a combination can never be recreated, art (but I shall here speak primarily of literature) possesses infinite variety across the ages and among different peoples.

The Divine Plan is such that there is no limit to the appearance of ever new and dazzling creative talents, none of whom, however, negate in any way the works of their outstanding predecessor, even though they may be 500 or 2,000 years removed. The unending quest for what is new and fresh is never closed to us, but this does not deprive our grateful memory of all that came before.

No new work of art comes into existence (whether consciously or unconsciously) without an organic link to what was created earlier. But it is equally true that a healthy conservatism must be flexible both in terms of creation and perceptive to the old and to the new, to venerable and worthy traditions, and to the freedom to explore, without which no future can ever be born.

At the same time the artist must not forget that creative freedom can be dangerous, for the fewer artistic limitations he imposes on his own work, the less chance he has for artistic success. The loss of a responsible organizing force weakens or even ruins the structure, the meaning and the ultimate value of a work of art.

Every age and ever form of creative endeavor owes much to those outstanding artists whose untiring labors brought forth new meanings and new rhythms. But in the 20th century, the necessary equilibrium between tradition and the search for the new has been repeatedly upset by a falsely understood “avant-gardism"--a raucous, impatient "avant-gardism” at any cost.

Dating from before World War I, this movement undertook to destroy all commonly accepted art--its forms, language, features and properties--in its drive to build a kind of "super-art" which would then supposedly spawn the New Life itself.

It was suggested that literature should start anew "on a blank sheet of paper." (Indeed, some never went much beyond this stage.) Destruction, thus, became the apotheosis of this belligerent avant-gardism. It aimed to tear down the entire centuries-long cultural tradition, to break and disrupt the natural flow of artistic development by a sudden leap forward.

This goal was to be achieved through any empty pursuit of novel forms as an end in itself, all the while lowering the standards of craftsmanship for oneself to the point of slovenliness and artistic crudity, at times combined with a meaning so obscured as to shade into unintelligibility.

This aggressive impulse might be interpreted as a mere product of personal ambition, were it not for the fact that in Russia (and I apologize to those gathered here for speaking mostly of Russia, but in our time it is impossible to bypass the harsh and extensive experience of my country) this impulse and its manifestations preceded and foretold the most physically destructive revolution of the 20th century.

Before erupting on the streets of Petrograd, this cataclysmic revolution erupted on the pages of the artistic and literary journals of the capital's bohemian circles. It is there that we first heard scathing imprecations against the entire Russian and European way of life, the calls to sweep away all religions or ethical codes, to tear down, overthrow, and trample all existing traditional culture, along with the selfextolment of the desperate innovators themselves, innovators who never did succeed m producing anything of worth.

Some of these appeals literally called for the destruction of the Racines, the Murillos and the Raphaels, "so that bullets would bounce off museum walls." As for the classics of Russian literature, they were to be "thrown overboard from the ship of modernity."

Cultural history would have to begin anew. The cry was "Forward! Forward!"--its authors already called themselves "futurists" as though they had now stepped over and beyond the present, and were bestowing upon us what was undoubtedly the genuine art of the Future.

But no sooner did the revolution explode in the streets, than those "futurists" who only recently, in their manifesto entitled "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste," had preached an "insurmountable hatred toward the existing language" these same "futurists" changed their name to the "Left Front," now directly joining the revolution at its leftmost flank. It thus became clear that the earlier outbursts el this "avant-gardism" were no mere literary froth, but had very real embodiment in life.

Beyond their intent to overturn the entire culture, they aimed to uproot life itself. And when the communists gained unlimited power (their own battle cry called for tearing the existing world "down to its foundations," so as to build a new Unknown Beautiful World in its stead, with equally unlimited brutality) they not only opened wide the gates of publicity and popularity to this horde of so-called "avant-gardists," but even gave some of them, as to faithful allies, power to administrate over culture.

Granted, neither the ragings of this pseudo "avant-garde" nor its power over culture lasted long; there followed a general coma of all culture. We in the USSR began to trudge, downcast, through a 70-year long ice age, under whose heavy glacial cover one could barely discern the secret heart-beat of a handful of great poets and writers. These were almost entirely unknown to their own country, not to mention the rest of the world, until much later. With the ossification of the totalitarian Soviet regime, its inflated pseudo-culture ossified as well, turning into the loathsome ceremonial forms of so-called "socialist realism."

Some individuals have been eager to devote numerous critical analyses to the essence and significance of this phenomenon. I would not have written a single one, for it is outside the bounds of art altogether: the object of study, the style of "socialist realism," never existed.

One does not need to be an expert to see that it consisted of nothing more than servility, a style defined by "What would you care for?" or "Write whatever the Party commands." What scholarly discussion can possibly take place here?

And now, having lived through these seventy lethal years inside Communism's iron shell, we are crawling out, though barely alive. A new age has clearly begun, both for Russia and for the whole world. Russia lies utterly ravaged and poisoned; its people are in a state of unprecedented humiliation, and are on the brink of perishing physically, perhaps even biologically.

Given the current condition of national life, and the sudden exposure and ulceration of the wounds amassed over the years, it is natural that literature should experience a pause. The voices that bring forth the nation's literature need time before they can begin to sound once again. However, some writers have emerged who appreciate the removal of censorship, and the new unlimited artistic freedom mostly in one sense for allowing uninhibited "self-expression."

The point is to express one's own perception of one's surroundings, often with no sensitivity toward today's ills and scars, and with a visible emptiness of heart; to express the author's personality, whether it is significant or not, to express it with no sense of responsibility toward the morals of the public, and especially of the young, and at times thickly lacing the language with obscenities which for hundreds of years were considered unthinkable to put in print, but now seem to be almost in vogue.

The confusion of minds after seventy years of total oppression is more than understandable. The artistic perception of the younger generation finds itself in shock, humiliation, resentment, amnesia. Unable to find in themselves the strength fully to withstand and refute Soviet dogma in the past, many young writers have now given in to the more accessible path of pessimistic relativism. Yes, they say, communist doctrines were a great lie, but then again, absolute truths do not exist anyhow, and trying to find them is pointless. Nor is it worth the trouble to strive for some kind of higher meaning.

And in one sweeping gesture of vexation, classical Russian literature--which never disdained reality and sought the truth--is dismissed as next to worthless. Denigrating the past is deemed to be the key to progress. And so it has once again become fashionable in Russia to ridicule, debunk, and toss overboard the great Russian literature, steeped as it is in love and compassion toward all human beings, and especially toward those who suffer. And in order to facilitate this operation of discarding, it is announced that the lifeless and servile "socialist realism" had in fact been an organic continuation of full-blooded Russian literature.

Thus, we witness, through history's various threshold, a recurrence of one and the same perilous anti-cultural phenomenon, with its rejection of and contempt for all foregoing tradition, and with its mandatory hostility toward whatever is universally accepted. Before, it burst in upon us with the fanfares and gaudy flags of "futurism"; today the term "post-modernism" is applied. (Whatever the meaning intended for this term, its lexical make up involves an incongruity: the seeming claim that a person can think and experience after the period in which he is destined to live.)

For a post-modernist, the world does not possess values that have reality. He even has an expression for this: "The world as text," as something secondary, as the text of an author's work, wherein the primary object of interest is the author himself in his relationship to the work, his own introspection. Culture, in this view, ought to be directed inward at itself (which is why these works are so full of reminiscences, to the point of tastelessness); it alone is valuable and real. For this reason, the concept of play acquires a heightened importance--not the Mozartian playfulness of a Universe overflowing with joy, but a forced playing upon the strings of emptiness, where an author need have no responsibility to anyone.

A denial of any and all ideals is considered courageous. And in this voluntary self-delusion, "post-modernism" sees itself as the crowning achievement of all previous culture, the final link in its chain (A rash hope, for already there is talk of the birth of "conceptualism." a term that has yet to be convincingly defined in terms of its relationship to art, though no doubt this too will duly be attempted. And then there is already post-avant-gardism; and it would be no surprise if we were to witness the appearance of a "post-post-modernism.") We could have sympathy for this constant searching, but only as we have sympathy for the suffering of a sick man. The search is doomed by its theoretical premises to forever remaining a secondary or tertiary exercise, devoid of life or of a future.

But let us shift our attention to the more complex flow of this process. Even though the 20th century has seen the more bitter and disheartening lot fall to the peoples under Communist domination, our whole world is living through a century of spiritual illness, which could not but give rise to a similar ubiquitous illness in art. Although for other reasons, a similar "post-modernist" sense of confusion about the world has also arisen in the West.

Alas, at a time of unprecedented rise in the material benefits of civilization, and ever improving standards of living, the West, too, has been undergoing an erosion and obscuring of high moral and ethical ideals. The spiritual axis of life has grown dim, and to some lost artists, the world has now appeared m seeming senseless, as an absurd conglomeration of debris.

Yes, world culture today is of course in crisis, a crisis of great severity. The newest directions in art seek to outpace this crisis on the wooden horse of clever stratagems----on the assumption that if one invents deft, resourceful new methods, it will be as though the crisis never was. Vain hopes. Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole Indeed, something greater than a phenomenon confined to art can be discerned shimmering here beneath the surface---shimmering not with light but with an ominous crimson glow.

Looking intently, we can see that behind these ubiquitous and seemingly innocent experiments of rejecting "antiquated" tradition, there lies a deep seated hostility towards any spirituality. This relentless cult of novelty, with its assertion that art need not be good or pure, just so long as it is new, newer, and newer still, conceals an unyielding and long sustained attempt to undermine, ridicule and uproot all moral precepts. There is no God, there is no truth, the universe is chaotic, all is relative, "the world as text," a text any post-modernist is willing to compose. How clamorous it all is, but also, how helpless.

For several decades now, world literature, music, painting, and sculpture have exhibited a stubborn tendency to grow not higher but to the side, not toward the highest achievements of craftsmanship and of the human spirit but toward their disintegration into a frantic and insidious "novelty." To decorate public spaces we put up sculptures that aestheticize pure ugliness--but we no longer register surprise.

And if visitors from outer space were to pick up our music over the airwaves, how would they ever guess that earthlings once had a Bach, a Beethoven, and Schubert, now abandoned as out of date and obsolete?

If we, the creators of art, will obediently submit to this downward slide, if we cease to hold dear the great cultural tradition of the foregoing centuries together with the spiritual foundations from which it grew, we will be contributing to a highly dangerous fall of the human spirit on earth, to a degeneration of mankind into some kind of lower state, closer to the animal world.

And yet, it is hard to believe that we will allow this to occur. Even in Russia, so terribly ill right now, we wait and hope that after the coma and a period of silence, we shall feel the breath of a reawakening Russian literature, and that we shall witness the arrival of fresh new forces--of our younger brothers.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Saint Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata

Hieromartyr Eusebius of Samosota (Feast Day - June 22)

The Hieromartyr Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata, stood firmly for the Orthodox Confession of Faith proclaimed at the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in the year 325. For this he underwent persecution by the Arians, being repeatedly deprived of his see and banished. The emperor Constantius (337-361), patron of the Arians, learned that St Eusebius kept a conciliar decree regarding the election of the Orthodox Archbishop Meletius to the See of Antioch. He commanded him to give up the decree. The saint boldly refused to do as ordered. The enraged emperor sent a message that if he did not give up the decree, then his right hand would be cut off. St Eusebius stretched out both hands to the emissary saying, "Cut them off, but I will not give up the Decree of the Council, which denounces the wickedness and iniquity of the Arians." The emperor Constantius marveled at the audacity of the bishop, but did not harm him.

During the reign of Justin the Apostate (361-363), even more difficult times ensued, and an open persecution against Christians began. St Eusebius, having concealed his identity, went about in the garb of a soldier across the whole of Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine, urging Christians to the Orthodox Faith. He established priests and deacons in desolated churches, and he consecrated bishops who renounced the Arian heresy. After Julian the Apostate's death, he was succeeded by the pious emperor Jovian (363-364), during whose reign the persecutions stopped. Returning from exile, St Meletius (February 12) convened a local Council at Antioch in the year 379 on the advice of St Eusebius. Twenty-seven bishops participated, and it reaffirmed the Orthodox teaching of the First Ecumenical Council. The Arians signed the conciliar definition, fearing the steadfast defenders of Orthodoxy, the holy hierarchs Meletius, Eusebius and Pelagios, who had great influence with the emperor. After the death of Jovian the Arian Vanlentus (364-378) came to power.

The Orthodox were again subjected to persecution. St Meletius was banished to Armenia, St Pelagius to Arabia, and St Eusebius was condemned to exile in Thrace. Having received the imperial decree, St Eusebius left Samosata by night so as to prevent tumult among the people that esteemed him. Having learned of of the bishop's departure, believers followed after him and with tears entreated him to return. The saint refused the entreaty of those who had come, saying that he had to obey the authorities. The saint urged his flock to hold firm to Orthodoxy, blessed them and set off to the place of exile. The Arian Eunomios became Bishop of Samosata, but the people did not accept the heretic. The Orthodox would not go to the church and avoided meeting with him. The heretical Arian perceived that it was impossible to attract the independent flock to him.

The emperor Gracian (375-383) came upon the throne, and all the Orthodox hierarchs banished under the Arians were brought back from exile. St Eusebius also returned to Samosata and continued with the task of building up the Church. Together with St Meletius he supplied Orthodox hierarchs and clergy to Arian places. In the year 380 he arrived in the Arian city of Dolikhina to establish the Orthodox bishop Marinus there. An Arian woman threw a roof tile at the holy bishop's head. As he lay dying, he asked her for wine and requested those around not to do her any harm. The body of St Eusebius was taken to Samosata and was buried by his flock. The saint's nephew, Antiochus, succeeded him and the Samosata Church continued to confess the Orthodox Faith, firmly spread through the efforts of the holy Hieromartyr Eusebius.

Saint Gregory the Theologian addressed several letters to Eusebius (PG 37:87, 91, 126-130); he had such reverence for him, that in one letter to him, commending himself to Saint Eusebius' prayers, he said, "That such a man should deign to be my patron also in his prayers, will gain for me, I am persuaded, as much strength as I should have gained through one of the holy martyrs."

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone

As a sharer of the ways and a successor to the throne of the Apostles, O inspired of God, thou foundest discipline to be a means of ascent to divine vision. Wherefore, having rightly divided the word of truth, thou didst also contest for the Faith even unto blood, O Hieromartyr Eusebius. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls be saved.

Kontakion in the Fourth Tone

You lived piously as a bishop, and trod the path of martyrdom. You extinguished idolatrous burnt offerings, Hierarch Eusebius. Since you have boldness before Christ God, entreat Him that our souls may be saved.

Source

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Saint Julian of Cilicia

St. Julian of Tarsus (Feast Day - June 21) 

St. Julian, the son of a pagan senator and a Christian mother, was born in the Cilician city of Anazerva. Upon the death of his father, St. Julian's mother moved to Tarsus, another city in Cilicia. Here she baptized young Julian, teaching him, along with his letters, the basic tenets of the Faith and the rules of Christian piety.

When Julian was 18 years old, there arose a great persecution of Christians, instigated by the Roman Emperor Diocletian (who reigned from 284 to 305). Julian was among those Christians arrested and brought to the magistrate Marcian for trial. But neither cruel torments nor threats nor promises of gifts and honors could incline the pious youth to turn away from Christ and bring sacrificial offerings to the pagan idols. For a whole year they led Julian from city to city in Cilicia, putting him to tortures everywhere, but he, adamantly, remained firm in his confession of faith in Jesus Christ.

When St. Julian was brought to the coastal city of Egaia, the heathens there forced open the holy martyr's mouth and crammed it with meat and blood that had been offered to idols, thinking thereby to defile the pure and holy servant of Christ with unclean sacrifices. Then they imprisoned St. Julian in a dungeon. His pious mother, who had been accompanying him everywhere, praying to the Lord to strengthen St. Julian in his painful trial, came there to see him. When the torturers seized her and brought her before the magistrate, she begged to be given three days in the dungeon with her son in order to persuade him to worship the idols. The magistrate granted her request. But she, spending day and night in the dungeon conversing with her son, exhorted him with tears and maternal love to bear these temporary torments to the end, in order to receive from the Lord eternal blessings in the kingdom of martyrs.

When three days had passed, St. Julian was brought, together with his mother, to the magistrate for trial. Thinking that the mother had succeeded in persuading her son to bring offerings to the idols, the magistrate began to praise her for her exhortations, but she loudly and fearlessly began to confess the name of Jesus Christ and to condemn pagan godlessness. And St. Julian also dauntlessly confessed and glorified Jesus Christ as the one true God, and exposed the pantheism of the pagans. The infuriated magistrate ordered them both--mother and son--to be tortured. After many torments, they chopped off the feet of the Saint's mother, the very feet on which she had traveled about from Tarsus, following after her son; the holy martyr Julian was put in a sack filled with sand and various poisonous reptiles, and tossed into the sea. Thus did St. Julian reach the end of his sufferings. Not long thereafter, his pious mother likewise died a martyr's death, and both received crowns of victory from Christ God.

St. Julian's body was carried to shore by the waves, and there it was found by a pious widow from Alexandria who had it buried with honor. Somewhat later, Julian' s holy relics were brought to Antioch. St. John Chrysostom, when he was a presbyter in that city, honored the memory of holy martyr Julian with words of praise.

St. John Chrysostom said: "From the mouth of the martyr proceeded a holy voice and, together with the voice, a light emanated brighter than the rays of the sun." Further, he added: "Take anyone, be it a madman or one possessed, and bring him to the grave of this Saint where the relics of the martyr repose and you will see how he [the demon] without fail will leap out and flee as from a burning fire." It is obvious from these words how numerous miracles must have taken place at the grave of St. Julian.

Apolytikion in the Fifth Tone

O inspired Julian, your mother guided you to become a glorious soldier of Christ. You were clad in the armor of the Spirit, entering the contest and destroying the enemy. Now pray to Christ our God for us all.

Kontakion in the Second Tone

Today we praise Julian, the unconquerable holy warrior, the champion and vessel of truth to whom we cry: Intercede with Christ our God for us all.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Redemption or Deification? (3 of 3)

III. The Significance of Cabasilas’ Response

1. The Spectre of a Truncation of the Divine Œconomy from

Creation-Deification to Fall-Redemption: Eastern and Western 

Christianity

CABASIlAS beheld the spectre of this truncation extending over the West and, in the fourteenth century, reaching the East as well. In the face of this suffocating cloud, he raised up his inspired teaching as a purifying filter.

He did not do this in a contentious spirit: on the one hand because no one had directly attacked the Orthodox teaching on this point, no one had discredited as heretical the saying that “God becometh man, that He might make Adam God,” as Barlaam had done with the uncreated Divine Energies, and on the other hand, because he had not lost hope of the Christian West returning to the Catholic Faith.

He spoke with a Catholic voice, overbalancing Anselm, the starting point of Scholasticism; and, in overbalancing him, he exposed Anselm’s tragic error, at the same time leaving the way open for its amendment. Thus, he proved himself a true ecumenical theologian, and there is hope that once his teaching has been scrutinized and evaluated from a dogmatic perspective, it could become the starting point for a productive dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the other Christian confessions.14

But the West did not pay attention to Nicholas Cabasilas to the extent, and, above all, in the way, that it should have done. It did not push him aside, to be sure; nor did it regard him as a heretic, as it did Palamas. It published his writings, it translated them, but it did not understand them. And it continues to this day to asphyxiate within the narrow confines of the Sin-Redemption axis.

This mutilated understanding of the Divine Œconomy has passed to us, too, as we have already said, as part of the general syndrome of the captivity of Orthodox theology to Scholasticism and its ramifications, and so much so that St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, who spoke the language of the Eastern Fathers, was misunderstood on this point.

He was subjected by certain persons “who devote themselves, in particular, to sacred theology,” as he describes them, to the attack that Cabasilas had escaped. And he responded with a work entitled “A Defense of My Annotation Concerning Our Lady, the Theotokos, in the Book Unseen Warfare,” an exciting text for our subject, in which he poses the problem openly for the first time.15

But what actually is the problem? More precisely, what are the consequences of Anselm’s erroneous answer to the question “Cur Deus homo?” and what is the significance of Cabasilas’ different response? Is the expansion of the axis, from Fall-Redemption to Creation-Deification, really the core of his teaching? In the final part of our study we will be an attempt to answer these questions.

2. Overcoming the Idea that the Mysteries are Mere Religious 

Obligations. The Church as the World United with God, and the 

World as the House of God.

FIRST, Cabasilas’ teaching on the mysteries and the Church expounds precisely this core theme.

As is well known, the Scholastics, operating on the Sin-Redemption axis, defined the Sacraments (Mysteries) as the visible rites whereby the sacred institution of the Church, in which Divine Grace is in some way stored up, imparts this Grace to the faithful.

And they distinguished two elements in the Sacraments: the sensible signs and their essence, which was the invisible, but not uncreated Divine Grace. The faithful are obliged to have recourse to Sacraments performed by Priests in order to receive Divine Grace from the Church and thus be not in a state of sin but in a state of grace, in other words, a state of redemption. For the Scholastics, and also for many contemporary Eastern theologians and preachers, the sacraments are the quintessential religious obligations of the faithful. The Church is understood, and functions within this perspective as religion.

But Cabasilas, operating on the Creation-Deification axis, views the Mysteries and the Church in an entirely different perspective.

The primary and supreme Mystery of our Faith, which, according to the Apostle Paul, is Christ, the Incarnation and the Divine Œconomy of the Word, is seen by the Byzantine mystic as refracted in such a way that it becomes concrete and active within time through the Mysteries.

Following the Fathers, and in particular St. John Chrysostomos, Cabasilas teaches that there is an inner identity between the historical body of Jesus and the Church, between the energies of the actual body of the Lord and the Mysteries.

The Mysteries extend the functions of that body in a real way and make available its life in very truth. “The rites that are celebrated belong to the Mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation itself” (392D).

Participating in the Bread of the Eucharist, we are grafted into the Body of Christ, and that same Body is the Body of the Church. For this reason, the Church is created, organized, and lives within the Mysteries.

"The Church is represented in the mysteries not as in symbols, but as the members are in the heart and as the branches of a plant are in the root, and, as the Lord has said, as the branches are in the vine. For here there is not merely a commonality of names or an analogy by resemblance, but an actual identity" (452CD).

Cabasilas’ ecclesiology is clearly Mysteriological. In this area, he anticipates the twentieth century, in which Orthodoxy has made its great contribution to Christianity as a whole, the so-called Eucharistic ecclesiology. Indeed, he gives the latter its true foundation: The Body of Christ, grafting into which transforms a social whole, precisely through the Spirit, into the people of God. For it is certainly not the gathering of the people from which the Eucharist derives, but Christ. It is He Who gathers, and He Who celebrates the Eucharist. Contemporary Eucharistic ecclesiology, which perhaps manifests a certain weakness on this point, could gain much from giving due attention to the teaching of Cabasilas, that great Eucharistic theologian of Christianity.

The central ecclesial Mystery, according to Cabasilas, is the Divine Eucharist, which re-presents (i.e., actively presents anew in each specific place and time) the Œconomy of the Savior, the assumption, cleansing, and transfiguration of creation into his Body.

But from the Eucharist flow a multitude of sacred rites, whose purpose is to sanctify life, to transfigure all the actual structural elements in people’s relationship with each other and with the world. The Mysteries are the “gate” and the “way”—elsewhere Cabasilas also calls them

"This way the Lord traced by coming to us, this gate He opened by entering into the world. When He returned to the Father, He did not allow it to be closed, but from Him He comes through it to sojourn among men; or rather, He is constantly present with us and will be forever.... Therefore, ‘This is none other than the house of God....’" (Genesis 28:17; 504CD).

God, Who before the Incarnation was “homeless” in regard to creation, now finds a created place in which to sojourn, a created dwelling.16 Thus, there is now within creation not only the altar at which God is worshipped—a typical feature of religion—but God Himself, and humanity becomes God’s family. The transformation goes even deeper. The Church is not only God’s house and His family, but His Body.

This complete union of created and Uncreated does not destroy the bounds of space and time, but stretches them, makes them transparent, and transfigures them. Creation, reconstituted and restructured through the Mysteries—which is called Church—has new dimensions, functions, and life; the dimensions, functions and life of the Body of the Risen Lord.

Henceforth, everything can be gathered together and can live within creation in a new way; neither human only nor exclusively Divine, but Theanthropic.

The reality of religion, that is, the organization of life in view of or in relation to God, and simple worship of God, is radically transcended; in the Church, we have union with God.

As a genuine Father of the Catholic Church, Cabasilas reveals the entire breadth of Christianity. The exclusiveness which is equally a typical feature of religion is also transcended. Orthodox ecclesiology is shown to be a new, Theanthropic cosmology.

It is obvious how far we are from the Scholastics’ understanding, and what height and depth and breadth we are called to attain once we find our place on the axis of Creation-Deification.

This leads us to the second problem, crucial both for the fourteenth century and for our own—that of the relationship between Church and world, which Cabasilas places on the axis of CreationDeification and solves in a remarkable way.

3. Overcoming the Conflict between Church and World. The

Opposition Between Church and World Ontologically Non-existent on the Unifying Axis of Creation-Deification. The Danger on 

the Antithetical Axis of Sin-Redemption of Reducing the Church 

to a Mere Religious, Worldly Institution.

THE CHURCH, for Cabasilas, is not in the world simply as an ark. Cosmologically speaking, there is no difference between world and Church. The created nature of the Church is the world. Within the segment of creation that the Word assumed at His Incarnation, sin was crushed and creation realized the purpose for

which it had been created from the beginning. With the hypostatic union, the Word’s creation became His Body; it found its true center, which is external to creation.

Its nature does not alter, but is cleansed and restored, since sin is contrary to nature; and, furthermore, the world in Christ is perfected, it fulfills its destiny.

The Church is the world which has attained to its destiny, fully realized and truly living through the life of the Flesh of the Lord, the life of the Spirit.

The portion of creation initially assumed by Christ became henceforth “chrism” for the rest of creation. The movement is twofold. Christ is extended within time, and the world is assumed.

Christ is extended as He assumes the world. The Church is not a static condition, simply and solely a sacred institution in the world. It is a dynamic, transforming movement.

It is the everlasting marriage within time and space of the Creator with his creation, the enduring mingling of the created with the Uncreated. In this unconfused mingling in Christ of created with uncreated nature, creation is recast within the flesh of the Lord; it is reconstructed Mysteriologically, transfigured without being destroyed—it is sin that is destroyed—and it becomes Body of Christ and lives as such.

Cabasilas can say this because on the axis of Creation-Deification evil does not change creation ontologically, being as it is something relative and accidental. However great may be the Devil’s dominion over creation—and it is great; whatever disfigurement may be caused by sin— and it causes truly tragic distortions; in its innermost, true nature creation remains “very good.”

If we add to this truth the realities of the “garments of skin,” which Cabasilas also talks about, i.e., the fact that even the postlapsarian functioning of the world becomes, through God’s compassionate intervention, a gift and a blessing, despite being the natural consequence of the process of the Fall, and that in this postlapsarian world the Word became incarnate without sin and assumed this world, without confusion, but also without division, then we understand why Orthodox theologians from Paul to the Cappadocians, John of Damascus during the Iconoclast controversy, and Gregory Palamas strove to safeguard against heretics the participation of the body and of matter in the union with God.

On the axis of Creation-Deification, which is not antithetical, but unifying and catholic, the chasm between Church and world is shown to be ontologically non-existent. The problem which has been the scourge of the West for centuries, and for us Easterners in our century, is demonstrated to be, in essence, a pseudo-problem. It remains solely as a moral problem.

Turning to the truncated, radically antithetical axis of Sin-Redemption, here the world is understood within the Fall, and the Church can only function as a religious institution, stronger or weaker according to the circumstances, which tries to impose itself and, when it cannot, to compromise with the world.

Correspondingly, if the Church gives the impression that its sole purpose is the redemption of the world from sin, the world declines this offer, not understanding even what sin is, and sees the Church as one ideology among others, with its own religious presuppositions and aims. It is a fact for historians that this point marks the birth of atheism.

But if the Church sees the world as God’s creation and helps it to correct its orientation and the distortions that evil causes for it, to find its true way of functioning which is fitting to its real nature, and to achieve completeness in Christ, if Christ is presented not as the leader of the Christian faction or of the ideology of Christianity, but as the purpose towards which the world tends—then the attitude of the world may be different.

It was the axis of Creation-Transfiguration of creation, or grafting of all created realities into the Body of Christ, or Deification, that the Fathers of the Church took as their basis; and they achieved the magnificent task of taking up the elements of their age and building up the Church with the same materials that their age offered them, and thus revealed God as truly incarnate within their actual world, as Savior not only of souls but also of bodies, in other words, Savior of life.

This was the task that the Holy Fathers from Thessaloniki, Gregory and Nicholas, accomplished in the fourteenth century. This is what we twentieth-century Christians are called to undertake.

But in order for this to happen, it is clear that we must first of all rid ourselves of the idea that Christ is solely the Redeemer from sin, and see Him once again as Alpha and Omega, as the true Savior, which is to say at once Redeemer and Recapitulator of the entire world. We must restore to the Divine Œconomy all of its breadth and meaning.

4. Overcoming the Fear of Sin as the Central Motive of Spiritual Life. Christ, the Beginning, Middle, and End of Spiritual 

Life.

BUT Cabasilas’ correct answer to “Cur Deus homo?” also brings the liberation of man from evil and sin. No matter how terrifying evil may be, since it, and not Christ, is merely an episode and an event, it proves, in the final analysis, insignificant. The understanding of man—of salvation, spiritual life, and so forth—is disjoined from evil and joined to Christ.

Ascesis, charity, etc. are not the “good works” that will counterbalance our sins before God’s justice and in that way offer Him satisfaction.

God is not a “sadistic father” who takes satisfaction in torturing his children. Ascesis is a vigorous struggle against evil. And man can throw himself into this struggle much more easily, with hope and joy, if his aim is to develop the seeds of godlikeness that he has within him, a longing for all the elements of his being to be united with Christ, and not simply fear of sin.

The real sin, for Cabasilas, is for man to remain outside Christ, to consider that he is sufficient on his own, i.e., autonomy. Adam’s greatest sin, the sin that engendered all of the others, was that he wanted to live with the life of his nature, to exist independently of God. This led him to death.

Cabasilas is unambiguous on this point. If man is not alive with the life of Christ, he is dead, even if he is a fine and good person socially or religiously, even if he formally observes the prescriptions of the law. On the axis of Fall-Redemption, justice and law are dominant. On the axis of Creation-Deification, sin consists in making oneself autonomous, in self-sufficiency. And this, according to the ascetic Fathers, was the greatest danger lurking even for the redeemed. The dominant figure on this axis is Christ.

Therefore, the ethos of Orthodox believers is not legalistic, but theocentric. Any virtue in man has value to the extent that it is a virtue of Christ, says Cabasilas. For only what is incorporated in Christ and, consequently, spiritual (“born from above”) is able to surmount the biological boundaries of corruption and death. “In this way the Saints are blessed, because of the blessed One Who is with them” (613A).

The holiness of the saints is due to the fact that they have united their will to the will of Christ. The wisdom of the truly wise, those who uncover the truth by Divine inspiration, is due to their having united their mind with the mind of Christ. “From themselves and from human nature and effort there is nothing whatever... Rather, they are holy because of the Holy One, righteous and wise because of the righteous and wise One Who abides with them” (613A).

For this reason, Cabasilas advises, “be merciful” not in a human way “but as your Father is merciful.”

The faithful are called to love “in the love with which Paul ‘yearned with the affection of Jesus Christ’” (Philippians 1:8), and to have the love “with which the Son loved the Father,” and the peace that is not human, but of Christ. For, as the birth is “Divine and preternatural,” so also “the new life, its regime and philosophy, and all these things are new and spiritual” (616A).

This Pauline Christocentricity which places Christ as the beginning, middle, and end of the world and of history is the core of Cabasilas’ work. This is the basis on which he gave a correct answer to the question, “Cur Deus homo?,” confined the Fall-Redemption axis to its proper bounds and revealed the true breadth of the Divine Œconomy, which begins from Creation and reaches to Deification, that extension without end of created man within the uncreated God.

As has become evident from the few examples that we have been able to give within the scope of this study, Cabasilas placed on this axis all the realities of faith, spiritual life, and the Church, and revealed their true nature and their extraordinary transformative dynamism.

5. The Exodus of Today’s Faithful into the Open Horizon of 

the Divine Œconomy.

IN AN age when everything was changing, when Byzantium was collapsing, when the modern era was being born, God, through His faithful servant Nicholas, left this great truth as a dowry, we might say, for His people.

And in our own days, when the modern era is showing its true face, it seems that God is moving our theology and our Church to discover and exploit this treasure that He has bequeathed to us.

He is moving us to free ourselves at last from the bonds of the Western Middle Ages and cease to be tormented by their consequences, to escape from the framework of the Sin-Redemption axis, from academicism, from the “religious” conception of the Church, and so much else, and to venture into the open horizon of the Divine Œconomy, to sense its grandeur, and to participate according to our calling in the work that the Father has been accomplishing “until now” for the transfiguration of the world—including our own contemporary world—through the Spirit into the Body of His Son.

Notes:

14. It is quite literally a shame and an error that in the contemporary dialogue between Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologians on a subject which was central for Cabasilas, that of the Mysteries, this great theologian and Church Father has been ignored. In an era not long after the schism, when discussions concerning union were at their height, Cabasilas, certainly not by chance, elaborated an entire theology of the Mysteries. In this theology, which superbly draws together the whole Patristic tradition before him, he also takes into account and adopts organically whatever can be adopted of the inquiries of the early, and not yet completely schematized Scholasticism. It is a purely Orthodox theology, a profound theology, which views the Mysteries at once in their ontological and ethical dimensions. Indeed, since Cabasilas, as an Orthodox, operates on the theological and cosmological-anthropological planes simultaneously, his theology leads clearly to deification, and calls to deification all human beings and all the world. This dimension of good news for the world is yet another reason why Cabasilas is particularly relevant today, quite literally modern. If we add to this the fact that up until now Roman Catholic theologians have not reacted negatively to his theology, we can understand how fruitful it could prove if his teaching were to be taken seriously in the current dialogue concerning the Mysteries.

15. For an English version of this text, see Deification in Christ, pp. 227-237—Trans.

16. “After the Fall and before the Virgin came into existence, God was ‘homeless’ [ἄοικος] (which means without a hearth, one who has no family or fatherland) and it is precisely the Virgin who prepares a place and a dwelling for Him, that is, introduces Him into the human family” (Nellas, Ἡ Θεομήτωρ, p. 128).

* Source: Panagiotes Nellas, “Λύτρωση ἢ Θέωση; Τὸ ἐρώτημα τοῦ ᾿Ανσέλμου ‘Γιατί ὁ Θεὸς ἔγινε ἄνθρωπος’ καὶ ὁ Νικόλαος Καβάσιλας” [Redemption or deification? Anselm’s question, “Why did God become man?” and Nicolas Cabasilas], Σύναξη, No. 6 (Spring 1983), pp. 17-36.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr