ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY THEN AND NOW: The Gifts of God to the Saints

Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism.

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written.

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.

September 21, 2010

The Gifts of God to the Saints

In addition to other charisms possessed by the godly Euthymius, he also received this one from God—the grace of living with carnivorous and poisonous animals without being harmed by them. This should be doubted by no one initiated into Holy Scripture, who has precise knowledge that when God dwells in a man and rests upon him all beings are subject to him, as they were to Adam before he transgressed God’s commandment. Not only the wild animals but the very elements are subject to such a man: to my statement bear witness those who divided the sea, curbed the Jordan, made the sun stand still, turned fire into dew and performed innumerable other prodigies. According the very God who worked these miracles subjected to the inspired Euthymius also not only the visible but also the spiritual monsters, I mean the spiritual powers of wickedness; for such are the charisms bestowed by God.

From the "Life of St. Euthymius" by St. Cyril of Scythopolis (The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans. R.M. Price [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991], pp. 18-9).