René-Nicolas Ehni, Well-Known and Controversial French Author and Playright Who Converted to Greek Orthodoxy, Has Reposed

René-Nicolas Ehni was born on 29 April 1935, in Rixheim of the Alsace region of France, into a Jewish working class family. He lived as a child and teenager in Eschentzwiller, his schooling taking him to Colmar (in Saint-André) and Mulhouse (at the Lycée Lambert). The languages he spoke were Alsatian and he later learned French, German, and Greek.

His first vocation was to become an actor. He went to Paris, passed the entrance examination for the conservatory on rue Blanche in 1953, and started a small career acting in Paris theater before spending nearly three years in war in Algeria for his military service.

The Cave of Panagia Sarantaskaliotissa (or the Cave of Pythagoras) in Samos

Description

On the southeast side of Mount Kerkis, in the wild ravine of Kiourka, at an altitude of 350m above sea level, is the cave of the Panagia Sarantaskaliotissa (Gr: forty steps) or the Cave of Pythagoras, with an impressive view to the southeast, which reaches the sea.

At the front of the cave is a chapel, dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, which in addition to the name Panagia Sarantaskaliotissa is also known as Panagia Phaneromeni (Gr: revealed one) and celebrates on September 8th every year.

Inside the cave there is a small tank that is filled with water from the stalactites and then begins a dangerous abyss with a great depth.

The Rational Man According To St. Anthony the Great

By Dr. Constantine Cavarnos

Introductory Remarks

St Anthony (ca. 250-356 A.D.) is one of the great masters of the spiritual life of Eastern Christendom. He has been held in the highest esteem by Christians of the East from his own time down to the present. One of his eminent admirers was St Athanasius, who knew him personally and wrote a biography of him, which is one of the best sources of information we have about him. Two other outstanding admirers of this great saint are St Macarius, Metropolitan of Corinth (1731-1805) and St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (1748-1809). They have included at the beginning of the Philokalia, which was compiled and edited by them and published in 1782, a work containing many sayings and observations which have traditionally been attributed to St Anthony.

The Theological Crisis and Its Impact on Daily Ecclesiastical Life (5 of 6)

...continued from part four.

e) "Ontological and Existential"

These two words, "ontological" and "existential", are often used in spoken and written words by people who know Orthodox theology. Apparently they do it in the sense that "ontology" means what is real, what exists, and not something insubstantial and imaginary. Also, "existential" implies existential problems related to the beginning and end of existence, what is life, what is death, what happens after death, what is the meaning of existence; they are the answers to the "borderline" issues of human life. In this sense I also used these two words in the past, especially in discussions with scientists and young people, pupils and students, and they made a particular impression.

However, from my studies of both patristic and western scholastic theology, existentialist theology and Russian theology, I understand that these are problematic to the Orthodox patristic tradition, and in fact those who use them negate Orthodox theology or differ from it.

The Place of Thought in the Acceptance of the God-Man

Archimandrite Kyrillos Kostopoulos

Man is a thinking being. By thinking he on the one hand confirms his existence, and on the other hand he captures the essence of things.

The Cartesian dictum is well known: "Cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am."

Thought is interposed between the internal activation of ourselves and external stimuli. So we have expressive, fantastic, logical, subjective, emotional and objective thinking.

Whatever I think, exists, because by thinking I realize my existence, the existence of which is directly related to the object, which exists.

However, the Triune God is not an object, which simply enters into a relationship with my thought. He is God, Who has manifested Himself in the flesh: "God has appeared in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16).

The Human Body: Ascesis and Exercise

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

1. The Human Body according to Ancient Greek Philosophy

From ancient times, the mystery of man engaged philosophers who, as expected, studied man in relation to the He who Is, God. The questions of what man is, what the body is and what motivates the body are questions of utmost significance and importance.

According to one interpretation, in Greek the word "body" (sōma) derives from the word sēma meaning, “sign”. Among many other meanings, the word sēma means a pointer showing a grave. Therefore, in this sense, the word sōma refers to ancient Greek philosophy, which viewed the body as a sēma -­‐‑ the grave of the soul.

Study is Intoxicating, Knowledge is Beautiful, Faith is Infinite

By Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavriotiki

Study is intoxicating. Our world is made with unimaginable beauty and wisdom. These two things are worth discovering by someone as much as they can. You just have to do it with human humility, not with the audacity of a pseudo-god. It must be approached within its limits.

Human knowledge, understanding and wisdom is not infinite nor complete. And nature itself shows us our limits.

Our Education in God

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

Lecture to Athens University students in the Hall of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece on the 2nd Sunday of Great Lent in 1989 (9th of April 1989).

Education is a widely discussed issue in our days. The problem is that we have very distorted views on this important subject. We hear various things that are at least not Orthodox. By this we do not mean humanists, that is, those who have a humanist education based mostly on the intellect and rationality, but rather we mean those Christians who identify man-centered education with Christian education. The identification and equality of these two wisdoms, these two types of knowledge is a heretical position and has been denounced by all the Holy Fathers.

The subject is very serious. In this speech we intend to elaborate on the great subject of education in God. Before proceeding to a precise analysis of education in God, I think it is worthwhile to see the differences between the two educations, in accordance with the teaching of a great Father of the Church, St. Gregory Palamas. St. Gregory lived in the 14th century when there was a strong humanist trend out of which the humanist renaissance was born. The 14th century has many common features with our own era, so the reference to the debate between St. Gregory and Barlaam is very constructive.

1. The two types of education

Barlaam, being a bearer of a humanistic spirit, taught that there exists one single truth. In other words, truth is single and was given by God to mankind by the prophets and the philosophers. Naturally, St. Gregory refutes this position. After presenting his whole teaching which is inspired by the Holy Spirit, which we will quote below, he ends with a question: “How is the truth one?” More specifically, Barlaam argued that what happens in philosophy is similar to what happens in health. There is no difference between the health offered by God and the health offered by medical care, and the same holds true of wisdom. "God gave it to the prophets and the apostles, and He gave it to us through the words of the divine workers (theourgoi) and the lessons of philosophy, by which we seek and find wisdom." Barlaam’s teaching is revealed clearly in the question posed by Akindynos to St. Gregory Palamas. As is well known, Akindynos expresses Barlaam’s view. He (Akindynos) says that he has heard some people saying that monks, too, should seek worldly wisdom, because one cannot be delivered from ignorance and false beliefs, nor attain perfect dispassion, nor achieve sanctity “unless he collects knowledge from everywhere, especially from Greek education”. In other words, Barlaam argued that ancient Greek philosophy is God’s gift given to philosophers by revelation, similar to the way it was given to the Apostles and the Prophets, and, therefore, this education provides the knowledge of beings as well as the knowledge of God. So Barlaam and many others like him argued about the singleness of truth and this was done to the detriment of Revelation and in favor of philosophy. It was truly a great danger for the Orthodox Church.

St. Gregory Palamas detected the risk of the secularization of Orthodox theology and this is why he addressed this falsehood. I do not intend to include all the arguments and the whole teaching by St. Gregory. I will mention only the central points which will illustrate his differentiation from Barlaam the philosopher.

First of all, in his writings the Saint had to make a distinction between the two wisdoms and the two types of knowledge. There can be no confusion between these two wisdoms. A strong support for this teaching, apart from his own personal experience, is derived from the experience and teaching of St. Paul. Our Saint uses the words of the Apostle repeatedly: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). He also uses another quote by the Apostle: “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:4-8). He also refers to the passage by St. James the Lord’s Brother who says on divine wisdom: “Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15). He also mentions other passages from the Bible to show the difference between the two wisdoms and types of knowledge, but I am not going to cite them all. I think that what has been mentioned is sufficient to show that the teaching about the distinction of the two types of knowledge, the intellectual and the spiritual, is the Church’s teaching and an experience of all saints.

Analyzing the apostolic passage from the epistle to the Corinthians we mentioned above, St. Gregory states that there is abyssal difference between the wisdom of the philosophers and the wisdom of the Prophets and Apostles. He writes characteristically: "The mind of the worldly philosophers is God-given, having by nature intellectual wisdom, but has been diverted by the evil one’s suggestions to foolish and wicked and senseless [wisdom], and transformed wisdom to dominating such ideas." Like sensual pleasure for child-bearing in lawful marriages cannot be called God’s gift, but rather of the flesh and of nature, even if nature was created by God, we can say the same about worldly knowledge. Even if man uses it well, it is “a natural not a spiritual gift”. If we add that there is a worldly education which is against God, then we can say that this wisdom is intellectual and demonic. This is why St. Gregory asks: “What is the relationship between a God-inspired teaching and vanity? And what does divine wisdom care about the truths of the stars?”

But very often humanistic wisdom is not simply different from divine wisdom. It is also opposite to it. Human wisdom “is contrary to true and spiritual knowledge”. In fact, St. Gregory argues that all human heresies have sprung out of human wisdom, whose center is rationality and human thinking. "And if you examine, you will see that all or most of the heresies have their origin here." The Saint’s observation is remarkable. If we examine Church history carefully we will find out that all heretics originated from human thinking and a man-centered view of life. They always tried to explore and analyse the Church’s truth through their reason. On the contrary, the Holy Fathers were based on the method of Orthodox piety, which is the purification of the heart and the illumination of the nous. After these two stages of spiritual life, they attained the knowledge of God and theologized inspired by God and unerringly within the Church.

But St. Gregory Palamas does not limit himself to this general point. He goes deeper. He stresses that there is a huge difference between the Prophets-Apostles and the philosophers. If it is true that human wisdom and knowledge brings sanctity to man and guides him to the knowledge of God, then those who have this education would be “more God-like” and “more God-seers” than the Fathers and the Prophets during the times of the Law of Moses. He brings the example of John the Forerunner, who reached a very high level of grace, without ever studying human wisdom. As is well known, St. John the Forerunner lived in the desert since his early childhood. St. Gregory asks: "Where in the desert are the schools of this futile philosophy, which they call redeeming?" He stresses the difference between the principle of the philosophers “know thyself” and the teaching of the saints “watch thyself”. If one looks carefully at the philosophers’ command “know thyself”, he will realize that it contains a lot of false belief. It is closely related to the teaching of reincarnation. The philosophers teach that one can obtain perfect knowledge if he examines thoroughly himself and find out where he lived in the past, in what body he was attached, what he did and how he was called. Naturally, by doing this search to himself, in reality he becomes the devil’s obedient instrument who whispers various interpretations to him. For this reason, according to St. Gregory Palamas, there is no relationship and no similarity whatsoever between the saints and the philosophers, nor, of course, between the teaching of the Apostles-Prophets and the teaching of the philosophers. If it seems that there is agreement in certain words and terms, it is an agreement only on external words, while in the depth there is a difference. He writes: "If a Father happens to say the same things as those in the world, the similarity is only in the words; in the meanings there is a lot of distance; because the first have, according to Paul, the mind of Christ, while the second speak out of human intellect, if not something worse." The Holy Fathers have the mind of Christ, while the philosophers and the worldly wise men speak out of their own thinking and sometimes are instruments of the devil.

This position is not an exclusive teaching of St. Gregory Palamas. It is the teaching of the Church, which is expressed by her genuine children, namely the Holy Fathers. The Saint cites passages from the teaching of St. Basil the Great who, speaking on hesychasm as a basic requirement for the acquisition of the knowledge of God, writes: "This is the good and beneficial school for someone devoted to learning; while the school of the Athenians is wicked, for they do nothing but say and hear what is new, even though now there are some who imitate their way of life, being a friend of evil spirits." St. Basil the Great calls the school of the Athenians wicked and the preoccupation with it is a friend of wicked spirits. He also presents part of St. Basil’s letter to Eustathios, where it is clearly shown that St. Basil regretted his occupation with human education: "I have wasted a lot of time in useless things and ruined almost all my youth in futility, by spending time in attending lessons of a wisdom made foolish by God, and then, like waking up from a deep sleep, I realized the uselessness of the wisdom of the rulers of an age which will be abolished, and I cried a lot for my wretched life, wishing to find some guidance."

In addition to St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Palamas cites a passage by St. Gregory of Nyssa on philosophy. According to this passage, philosophy is “barren and fruitless, giving product to no one, nor leading to the light of the knowledge of God”, while the wisdom of the Spirit is “most fertile and gives birth to many children”, has given rebirth to thousands of people right away and led them from dreadful darkness to the marvelous light of God.

St. Gregory Palamas defines also the true philosopher. A true philosopher is “he who seeks and does the will of God”, “he who has active words and wise action”. This passage reminds us of the truth that when Patristic texts mention that a Christian is a true philosopher they do not mean one who possesses worldly wisdom and education, who has an advanced intellect, but rather one who has the Grace of God in him. I point this out because, based on such patristic passages, there are some who claim that the Fathers of the Church were philosophers and cultivated philosophy. But as we have seen before, there is a great difference between theologians and philosophers.

There is also a great difference between worldly education and education in God. St. Gregory teaches that education in God starts with the fear of God, which then brings continuous prayer to God in compunction and the keeping of the gospel commandments. When through these ways man experiences reconciliation with God, fear is transformed to love and the pain of prayer is converted to joy, and then the flower of illumination blossoms, and by illumination man is offered the knowledge of the mysteries of God. This is true education. On the other hand, an education which starts not from fear of God, as is done with worldly education and wisdom, does not lead to the knowledge of God. Therefore, education in God is offered to a man whose soul is imbued with the fear of God, compunction, and unceasing prayer. He who follows and studies this wisdom reaches the knowledge of the mysteries of God, that is, salvation.

Since I would not like to remain on a theoretical level, in what follows I will analyze in more detail the progression of the education in God. It will be shown that education in God is something specific. Only those who follow this course can become true theologians and, therefore, move from the image to the likeness, that is, to deification. It will be shown that human education is intellectual, rational, while education in God is of the heart. Therefore, there exists an abyssal difference between the two.

2. Education in God

Education in God consists of the coming and hiding of Grace, of all the knowledge about God and the eternal life offered to man who receives these comings and hidings of uncreated Grace. This education in God is a mystery, because everything acted within the Church is a mystery. We are based very much on the teaching of Holy Fathers, who are “initiated by experience” and have received God’s revelation about these realities.

There are several passages about education in God in the Old and the New Testament. We do not intend to cite them extensively. We may refer only to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. By way of introduction we may state that Christians who originated from the Jews, to whom St. Paul addresses his epistle, received Christ’s Grace and right after that were persecuted by their compatriots. They were a little shaken, so the Apostle writes this epistle stressing some truths including that persecution and, generally, temptation is inextricably linked to the children of God. The whole Chapter 12 of the Epistle to the Hebrews is devoted to this mystery of education.

But this temptation was not only external. It was internal, too. The first Christians faced the problem of the lifting of God’s Grace from their heart and could not comprehend this abandonment by God. They were completely unable to interpret this phenomenon of spiritual life, that is, the participation in the Cross of Christ. St. Paul aims at this objective. We may say, according to the testimony of our saints, that the Apostle mostly refers to this kind of education. Because God works in a way incomprehensible to human reason.

In the works of the Holy Fathers, spiritual life is presented as having several stages. They mostly distinguish three, the purification of the heart, the illumination of the nous and deification. St. Maximos calls them “practical philosophy”, “natural theoria” and “mystical theology”. This distinction originates with Aristotle and continues to the Holy Fathers, with a different content though. Professor Panagiotis Christou, elaborating on the “method of religious experience”, describes the distinction of the three phases in religious life. Aristotle divides the phases of religious life in ethical, natural and theological. "Origen, in his beloved metaphorical method, says that a Christian acquires Christ through the practical one as a Host, through the natural one as a King, and through theology as God." The steps of spiritual life are three, according to Christ’s saying: “I am the way (ethical) and the truth (natural) and the life (theology)” (John 14:6). Evagrius defines Christianity as the “doctrine of our Savior Jesus Christ constituted of practical and natural and theological”. The same distinction is observed in St. Diadochos of Fotiki, in St. Symeon the New Theologian (who divided his chapters into practical, gnostic, theological) and even in St. Gregory Palamas who used the same distinction in his chapters (ethical, natural, theological).

However, when studying the works of the Holy Fathers, especially the so-called neptic ones, we encounter another gradation of spiritual life. This gradation is deeper without abolishing the former stages of spiritual life. Because, according to the experience of many Holy Fathers, the transition from one stage to another is achieved by the working of the Grace of God and the pain from the deprivation of Grace until its new coming. So, according to this, we can distinguish three stages in spiritual life: the coming of Grace, the hiding of Grace from man, and its new coming to man’s heart. The God-bearing Fathers express this deep experience in their works, and, in what follows, we will try to present it to the extent possible.

St. Makarios the Egyptian refers to this fact in his spiritual sermons. He writes: "He who hears a word reaches compunction and, after this, grace is lowered by divine providence to man’s benefit, and he enters war, exercises and education, and struggles and competes against Satan, and after a long road and struggle he is awarded victory and becomes a Christian."

This is a remarkable observation. It manifests what was said before, namely that education is the fight during the lifting of Grace, and also shows clearly that the stages of spiritual life are identified with the coming, the lowering, and the new coming of the Grace of God. Indeed, he remarks characteristically that a person becomes a Christian not with the compunction caused by the coming of Grace, but rather with the struggle that will follow. Then he acquires the experience and knowledge of God, as will be expressed below.

St. Silouan the Athonite expresses the same experience:

"The Elder had an empirical knowledge of spiritual progression. He showed three essential stages of it: first, the receiving of grace; second, its lifting and, third, its reacquisition by a struggle of humility. There have been many who received the grace, not only within the Church but outside it too -- because there is no favoritism in the Lord – but there is no one who has kept the first grace and only a few have re-acquired it. Someone who ignores the period of the second coming, someone who has not passed through the struggle for its return, essentially has an incomplete spiritual experience. Elder Silouan was rich through his personal experience and also well trained theoretically in the ascetic writings of the Fathers of the Church; by God’s gift he was not only faithful to the tradition of the Church but also the experience of the great Fathers was repeated in him."

Let us see in more detail these three stages of the spiritual life.

a) The first coming of Grace

In the texts of the Old and the New Testament we see clearly that God manifests Himself to the Prophets in various ways. “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1).

God contracts with each person a personal covenant. He does not want us to have knowledge about Him through the testimonies of others. He Himself appears and gives His knowledge, and man acquires his own personal testimony about God. This first personal contact with God occurs at a time unanticipated by man or even after a painful search. It might also happen to a man fighting against Him. This is the case of St. Paul who saw God; Christ Himself appears and contracts a personal covenant with him, at the time he was going to fight against Him. This personal coming of Grace is a holy state. Man’s soul gets to know God as a person, albeit dimly. He understands with his heart, his nous as the Fathers say, that God is not an abstract state nor an impersonal power or a great value, but a Person.

This first coming of God’s Grace, which is tasted differently by each one, is a life full of inner experiences of the heart and of mystical spree. St. Diadochos of Fotiki writes: "In the beginning Grace is accustomed to illuminate the mind in much [spiritual] perception in Grace’s own light."

At another point he writes: "In the beginning of our progress, if indeed we warmly and ardently desire the virtue of God, the Holy Spirit makes the nous taste in every [spiritual] perception and inner spiritual assurance the sweetness of God, so that the nous would be able to know in exact knowledge the perfect reward of the God-loving ascetical practices."

With this first period of the coming of God we receive one chapter of a new life, one chapter of Grace. God attracts us to Him, so that after a lot of struggle and sacrifices we become acquainted with Him. We will refer to this pain, this struggle below. Here we must note that this new period of God’s calling is a period of sweetness, spiritual joy, of inner experiences of the heart.

A lot of people live this paschal atmosphere. It suffices to mention a written testimony about the state in which St. Silouan lived after Christ’s appearance to him:

"At the moment of God’s epiphany his whole existence was informed that his sins had been absolved. The flames of Hades that roared around him disappeared, the hell he experienced for half a year stopped. He was now granted to live the special joy and great rest of appeasement with God. In his soul a new sweet feeling of love for God and people, each and every person, dominated. The prayer of repentance ceased, that unbearable fiery search for absolution which did not allow sleep to come to his eyelids went away. Did this mean that he could now quietly give over to sleeping? Of course not.

The first period after the epiphany, Silouan's soul, who got to know its resurrection and saw the light of true and eternal existence, lived in a paschal feast. Everything was beautiful: the world was magnificent, people were congenial, nature was unspeakably beautiful, the body changed and became lighter, strength was added, God’s words gave joy to the soul, all-night vigils in the church and, above all, prayers in the cell became sweet. Overflowing by joy the soul felt compassion for people and prayed for the whole world."

It is impossible to describe this state in words. The experience of uncreated Grace cannot be contained in created words. Only a reborn person, a person initiated by experience, is able to perceive this reality. Everything is new during this period. He feels the presence of God as a personal experience, he views the essence of beings in all creation. Everything is clear. Birds and trees acquire a new dimension. He sees everything in the perspective of eternity, under the energy of uncreated Grace and uncreated Light. Mankind’s common problems no longer occupy him. He does not care for others’ opinion about him. He is indifferent to any hardship. His sole preoccupation is prayer and communion with God. It is a life centered on love. This love was born by the coming of Grace. “Blessed is he who has acquired such a desire for God, like a maniac lover has for his beloved one … Pierced by such an arrow, someone said about himself (and I admire it) that 'I sleep due to the need of nature, but my heart is alert due to the multitude of love'."

Passions are not activated. Man “suffers deification”.

The first coming of Grace to man’s heart is a shocking experience. Man feels a whole life inside him. When St. Symeon was asked how one can know that he has Divine Grace in him, he said that this is most natural. He realizes that he has become a temple of the Holy Spirit and that the Grace of God camps in him the same way a pregnant woman realizes the existence of an embryo in her womb. It is not a sentimental excitement and elation, but rather a sense of life.

In this state man finds what the Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers call the “deep heart”. The nous, returning to the heart from its previous dispersion through the senses in the surrounding world, initially locates the bodily organ of the heart and then enters the so-called spiritual heart, that is, the center of man’s existence. We can say, according to the teaching of the so-called neptic fathers, that the heart is the place which is discovered by asceticism in Grace, and where God Himself is revealed. In reality, when we speak about the person in the Church we mean this place of the heart. A person is the “inner self, the unfading … spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:4). Finding this blessed place is essential, because this constitutes man’s salvation. When asked about this, Abba Pambo replied: “If you have heart you can be saved." Inside the heart, which in patristic theology is identified with the nous, man is united with God, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, “God united with gods and became known in the heart”. Then the heart becomes a temple where an unceasing Divine Liturgy is celebrated, and in this case man becomes a true priest of Divine Grace, or “spiritual clergy” according to St. Gregory the Sinaite.

The union of the nous (attention) with the heart is evident, that is, man has proofs of this union. I would like to mention three proofs at this point.

The first is that there is a pain in the bodily organ of the heart. A pain which seems like a wound, but causes a spiritual pleasure, tranquility and inner peace. This pain holds the nous to the prayer done in the heart. This pain brings together the whole existence of man on this point. In this state, man thinks and acts through the heart. A faith is developed which, according to St. Gregory Palamas, is a “comprehension of the heart”.

A second indication is that tears of compunction start flowing. The Holy Fathers teach that when there is a sweetest state of compunction, this is a clear indication that the nous has been united with the heart. This compunction is associated with joyful tears.

A third indication is that prayer is done by itself. This unceasing prayer is not simply a movement of reason, but something deeper. Man hears clearly the bodily heartbeat, and simultaneously under this beat at a long distance, as he feels it, another beat is heard, faster than the natural heartbeat. This is the beat of the spiritual heart, a fact which means that the spiritual heart has been discovered and then man becomes a person. For the person is revealed from above, it is the coming of the Reign of God in the heart. The Prayer of the Heart is said unceasingly with this spiritual beat. Man does not try to pray, but prayer is done by itself. It is self-activated, both during the work of daytime and even during sleep-time. That is, while he sleeps a few hours so that the body gets a rest, during that state he feels very well that the heart is sleepless and prays, in accordance with the saying of St. John of the Ladder who comments on a passage in the Song of Songs: “I am asleep and my heart is awake. I sleep due to the need of nature and my heart is alert due to the multitude of love." When he wakes up he senses very well that the body has slept, but he also senses very clearly that the heart has not stopped praying.

I would like to describe a few more states experienced by man when he becomes a temple of the All-Holy Spirit, that is, when Divine Grace dwells in his heart.

A communion of love with God is established. It is not simply a psychological state or even simply a spiritual experience of the element of physical love. It is a purely spiritual experience. Then man comprehends St. Maximus the Confessor's saying that God “is lover and beloved” or what St. Ignatius the God-bearer calls Christ love (“eros”): "My love has been crucified." I repeat, this is not physical eros, because it has been preceded by the purification of the heart. In fact, when this spiritual eros operates, the passions become inoperative. Man lives in a state of dispassion. He experiences God in the desert as well as in the crowds.

The spiritual senses are also developed, namely, the noetic sense, noetic vision and noetic hearing. The whole nous is concentrated inside the heart. This way it achieves the unification of man’s entire existence. He realizes very well that he is reborn. He senses warmth in the heart, both the physical and the spiritual one. It is the same experience the Disciples had on the road to Emmaus, when they said: “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road?” This warmth rejuvenates man’s entire existence. It feeds him and gives life to him.

This causes a deepest peace in our thoughts. In the process of purification the nous discards continuously all foreign elements which covered it before like scales. It thus becomes lighter and always finds shelter in the heart. There it hears the voice of God several times. God speaks to him and reveals His will inside the heart. There is a personal acquaintance with God and thus he acquires the spiritual knowledge of God.

However, this course is not a course of emotional joy. Spiritual joy is closely associated with spiritual mourning. The Holy Fathers use a word to express this well. It is the word “harmolype”(joyful-sadness). Despite the certainty of God’s existence, despite the feeling of God’s presence and of His love, he feels simultaneously deep repentance. This is how we realize that this joy is genuine and true. The nous, entering the heart, sees on the one hand God’s love and on the other his own impurity, because man’s sanctity cannot even be compared to God’s sanctity. Therefore, he often is immersed in lamentation. This may be expressed physically, but, mostly, it is done inside the heart. He feels his heart shedding tears, weeping, and these tears cleanse the heart from sin and the passions.

Having this inner life, man sees the essence of beings in all of nature, since in the teaching of the Holy Fathers there are uncreated logoi in all nature, not simply natural laws. He sees all things differently. He feels he has acquired a new sense of life. He reads the texts of the Holy Scripture and of the Holy Fathers in a different way. He acquires new eyes and a new perception. Even a brief reading transfuses blood of life to the heart.

At that point the passions no longer act. Man experiences his rebirth. At the same time other people around him have an irrepressible thirst for contempt. He is not saddened by this contempt, in fact he loves it and seeks it even more.

St. Basil the Great, analyzing this severe and unbearable desire felt by those who have the Grace of God, says characteristically: "Blessed are those who love to see the true beauty; having attached themselves to it through love, and being in love with the heavenly and blessed love, they neglect their family and friends and their houses and all their possessions; and neglecting even their physical need for food and water they cling only to the divine and pure love."

b) The lifting of Grace – a course to the desert

However, this state is not going to last for long. The duration of Grace after the first coming is different for each person. It depends on various factors. On his zeal, on God’ economy, on his way of life, etc. Nevertheless, after a certain period Grace is lowered.

In the works of the Holy Fathers this state is known. There are differences in the terminology. Lowering, lifting, abandonment, abandonment by God, etc. Nevertheless, it refers to the same thing which is due to various reasons.

What is the lifting of Grace? Is it a real lifting and abandonment? How is it possible for God to completely abandon man?

The Fathers are expressive on this point: "Of course it is not an objective full withdrawal of Grace, rather the soul subjectively experiences the reduction of the power of Grace as abandonment by God."

The “vision” of God is reduced by various degrees and man experiences this reduction as abandonment by God.

St. Diadochos of Fotiki refers to an educational concession and a concession by aversion. The first occurs for reasons God knows, and they contribute to our salvation and our education, while the second is for our sins.

These show clearly that Grace is not completely removed from man, but rather hides itself, or better, lowers itself, to give man the opportunity to grapple with sin, to fight against passions, and to seek fiercely its new return. This fight, as will be shown below, is painful and has a different duration for each person. Nevertheless, man is in a desert for several years. He feels as if he is walking in a spiritual desert, in a land without the life-giving breath of Divine Grace.

What is the purpose of the lowering of Divine Grace? St. Diadochos writes: "Being true infants of the Grace of God, we believe that we are nurtured by it by small concessions and abundant invocation, so that by its goodness we manage to become a perfect man, to attain to the whole measure." This way we grow up spiritually and from “breast-fed” infants we attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, that is, we reach communion with Christ. This communion is man’s salvation.

Besides, we are impassioned men, and thus we are unable to hold the Grace of God. Grace indicates the road and the goal to us and then leaves us to cleanse ourselves in order to achieve this “goal”. Several times in our spiritual life we feel that the body is unable to follow the soul’s progression to Deification. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). Through education in God the body acquires a certain ability to follow the course of the soul.

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, referring to the journey of the Magi, to the adoration of Christ, and specifically to the fact that they lost the star guiding them, writes:

"Like the bright star that guided and consoled the Magi in their journey hid itself, in order to test their patience and their bravery and then reappeared and caused them greater joy than before; 'when they saw the star, they were overjoyed' (Matthew 2:10), the Grace of God usually does the same to its servants and friends, as the so-called neptic Fathers say, and especially St. Diadochos. Sometimes, like a child-loving mother, she consoles and gladdens her children with her noetic illumination and divine energy and gifts, illuminating their nous, bringing contrition most sweetly to their heart and warming it and stimulating it towards the love of God; and sometimes it hides itself from them and allows temptations to go to them, like a mother often hides from her children to test their patience and brave heart, so that through temptations and grief they become grownups and not remain infants forever, to cry and ask strongly for the Divine Grace they have lost. And thus, after they enjoy it again, they rejoice even more, like a child who loses his mother and searches for her weeping and crying, and when he sees her somewhere runs with unspeakable joy and crying and laughing, and at the same time falls into her lap."

This period is a period of the assimilation of the Grace which man had tasted in his first contact with it. Doctrinal consciousness is born out of this assimilation. And this assimilation lasts many years for an ascetic and athlete of this spiritual course.

However, this beyond blessed period is not so easy. Man goes through pain and great sorrow. The Holy Fathers stress this side too in their works, speaking out of personal experience.

St. Isaac the Syrian describes part of this pain: “And at some point our soul is drowned and becomes as if tossed in the waves. Even if one reads Scripture, or celebrates the Liturgy, or does anything, whatever he approaches he receives darkness upon darkness. And he goes out and often is not even allowed to approach. And he does not believe that he undergoes a transformation and this is done in peace. That hour is full of despair and fear, and the hope in God and consolation by his faith have been completely ejected out of his soul; and it is throughout filled with hesitation and fear."

The pain is great. The soul has known God and now has lost this communion. Before it got to know God, everything was agreeable. Human life with its details and its pleasant moments gladdened it. Now they no longer do. At the same time it has lost God’s Grace and is inconsolable. It falls to a despair in God. This is the privilege of despair. Crying becomes a way of life. Repentance is insatiable. God’s Grace which lies secretly in man’s heart helps him not despair. Thus he starts concentrated prayer, undeterred sighing, an inexhaustible source of tears. He cries out for God. His life is imbued in pain.

St. Symeon the New Theologian describes vividly this experience:

"Oh, what is this reality hidden to all created essence!
What is this intelligible light, which no one sees
And what is this abundant wealth, which no one in the world
Has ever been able to discover or possess totally?
It is elusive to all, the world cannot contain it.
It is most longed for, more than the entire world;
It is desirable also, as much as this God surpasses
Visible things created by Him.
It is in that that I am wounded by His love,
Insofar as I do not see it, I dry up in my mind,
My nous and my heart are burning and groan.
I wander and I am on fire, searching here and there,
And nowhere do I find the Lover of my soul.
I frequently cast glances all around to see my Beloved
And He, the invisible One, never shows Himself to me."

Then we are able to speak about Adam’s lament within the confines of our personal life. Then we are able to understand Adam’s grief after he committed the sin. This is how Elder Silouan felt it. He felt the loss of Grace, or the lowering of Grace, as Forefather Adam did. This is why he writes in a doleful and supplicatory way:

"The silence of the desert does not delight me.

The mountain tops do not attract me.

The beauty of forests and meadows does not bring me rest.

The singing of the birds does not sooth my pain.

Nothing, nothing gives me joy now.

My soul has cracked of too much sorrow.

I have insulted my beloved God.

Even if the Lord would take me to paradise again I would lament there sadly, sorely:

For I have embittered my beloved God."

Expelled from Paradise, springs of tears gushed out of Adam’s wounded heart. Similarly, every soul that has known the Lord laments for Him and says:

"Where are you Lord?

Why do you hide Your face?

My soul has not seen your Light for long and seeks You full of sorrow.

Where is my Lord?

Why don’t I see Him in my soul?

What hinders Him from dwelling in me?

Christ-like humility and love for my enemies are not in me.

For God is love infinite, love impossible to explain."

Then, the athlete experiences death existentially, because man’s separation from God is true death. God is life. Departure from life inevitably brings death. During this period man may experience the memory of death as a gift. We repeat, this is not human despair, it is despair-in-God. It is not a human fear of God, it is a fear of God by Grace. We realize this because in the second case there is inspiration, prayer!

According to the Fathers, the memory of death is not a remembrance of death, because this is something anyone can have by viewing the corruptibility of the world. It is that too, but mostly the memory of death is a gift.

God has died for him. Essentially he himself has died for God. The athlete of this spiritual life sees death in his depths, throughout his existence. And, as he lives a Paschal experience and everything outside is bright when he feels the Grace inside him, the opposite happens with the feeling of death dominating his existence. Everything is dead. Nothing satisfies him. He sees death everywhere. He sees that all humans are mortal. For this reason he does not ask for power from mortals. Is it not a macabre sight to see someone being the ruler of mortals and of the dead, to be the ruler in a cemetery?

This is man’s self-emptying in the model of Christ’s self-emptying. The saints definitely pass through this state. It is hades, an experience of hell. The flames of hell burn everything. Inner disposition, desire, even the body itself.

It is important to mention and try to explain this period of spiritual life, because there are many who go through it but do not know what exactly it is. They reach complete despair, ignoring the character of spiritual life, ignoring education in God. Thus, they feel lost, they despair. There are cases where monks abandoned monastic life and went to the world violating the promises they gave to God during their tonsure. Others run to psychiatrists to obtain an explanation of these states, and others still go mad.

To all these we say that this is a natural state. All those fighting the good fight pass through this temptation. This way they acquire spiritual experience. For this reason there is need for a lot of patience, intense and concentrated prayer. St. Paul the Apostle writes: “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined — and everyone undergoes discipline — then you are not legitimate, not true sons at all” (Hebrew 12:7-9)

It must be said that even a little prayer during this period is equivalent with many hours of prayer of the previous period. Man learns to pray noetically during this period. He learns many ways of noetic prayer. Because of severe pain, of great repentance, the athlete’s nous concentrates on the heart. He cries. Like a ship throwing an anchor to the bottom of the sea, similarly the nous is thrown to the heart. It stays there and this constitutes noetic prayer.

After learning that this is a natural state, we have to learn the ways of dealing with it.

Patristic teaching recommends patience, prayer, and resorting to teachers who know these truly blessed states by experience. Obviously we need persons who have passed through these stages. These are true and proper spiritual fathers who can guide the people of God. This is the great value of the monks for our times. They comfort, they guide, and they inspire and calm people.

St. Diadochos stresses that it is impossible to acquire the perfection of Divine Grace. This is why the soul aches, this is why it has to struggle, so that it receives Grace bit by bit, until man acquires life and immortality devours mortality.

c) The new coming of Grace

After many years of struggle, Grace comes again to man and fills him with inner joy. It also brings the knowledge of God and everything divine to him. St. Symeon the New Theologian is a bearer of this tradition and life. He writes in a poem:

"But when I begin to weep, as desperate, then

He shows Himself and He looks at me, He who contemplates all creatures.

In amazement, I admire the splendour of His beauty,

And how, having opened the heavens, the Creator inclined

And showed me His glory, indescribable, marvellous.

And so who could draw nearer to Him?

Or how would he be carried away towards measureless heights?

While I reflect on this, He Himself is discovered within myself,

Resplendent in the interior of my miserable heart,

Illuminating me on all sides with His immortal splendour,

Shining upon all my members with His rays,

Completely intertwined with me, He embraces me totally,

He gives Himself to me, the unworthy one,

And I am filled with His love and His beauty,

And I am sated with divine delight and sweetness.

I share in the light, I participate also in the glory,

And my face shines like my Beloved’s,

And all my members become bearers of light.

Then I finally become more beautiful than those who are beautiful,

Wealthier than those who are wealthy and more than all the mighty

I am mighty and greater than kings,

And much more precious than all that is visible,

Not only more than the world or the men of the world, but also more than Heaven

And all the angels of Heaven, for I possess the Creator of the whole universe.

To whom is due glory and honor, now and forever. Amen."

And in another poem the same Father writes:

"Again the light illumines me, again it is distinctly seen,

Again it opens the heavens, again it cuts through the night.

Again it brings all things into being, again it alone is seen.

Again it takes me out of all visible things."

The new coming of God’s Grace takes man out of the spiritual desert in which he lived before and moreover liberates him from the spiritual hades in which he was. Hades is a place where the rays of uncreated Grace do not enter, or rather where they are experienced as fire. The hades of personal life is filled with light with the coming of Christ’s Grace. Christ liberated the just ones of the Old Testament with His descent to hades and likewise He Himself takes man out of the peculiar spiritual mortification. The fire of hell and despair, which burned him before, is now transformed to the light of eternal life. He comprehends very well the distinction between cerebral knowledge and the empirical knowledge of God, because the knowledge of God is offered through the illumination of the nous and the vision of God.

He then acquires an inner tranquility which is not shaken, not affected by anything external. Everything psychological is transformed to spiritual experience. The Grace of God is united with man’s nature and makes it light.

In his previous states man experienced intense fluctuations and changes, sometimes fire sometimes light, but now he lives a spiritual balance.

Man’s existence has been cured. The struggle with God has ceased. The soul knows God well. Although he feels that he is the biggest sinner, he also feels that he is reborn and is certain that some other body sinned, some other person committed sins. And, indeed, he is another person, because now there is a new, reborn man. The body is transformed and is able to withstand the new life. In general, he feels a deep tranquility and spiritual balance. Christ becomes his life and his delight. Despite his unworthiness he feels a member of the risen body of Christ.

In this state, man becomes a theologian, or rather a spring of theology. Theology springs, emanates from all his existence. St. John of the Ladder writes: “The growth of fear is the beginning of love, but a complete state of purity is the foundation of theology. He who has perfectly united his feeling to God is mystically led by Him to an understanding of His words. But without this union it is difficult to speak about God. The engrafted Word perfects purity, and slays death by His presence; and after the slaying of death, the disciple of theology is illumined. The Word of the Lord which is from God the Father is pure, and remains so eternally. But he who has not come to know God merely speculates. Purity makes its disciple a theologian, who of himself grasps the dogmas of the Trinity."

He who has passed through this course becomes “a God-inspired book for others”, according to the words of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

If man does not go through these stages, he cannot be considered a Christian, according to the words of St. Makarios we mentioned in the beginning. It is only then that he “becomes a Christian”. Moreover, one cannot be considered to be a priest, a spiritual father, if he has not known the coming, the hiding and the new coming of Divine Grace. Because then he will have a mutilated spiritual experience. Of course, it is possible for man to leave this world while being in the desert of the spiritual life, that is, during the period of the lifting of Grace. This is what happens with most Christians. Nevertheless, if he has patience and if he perseveres, he will also enter the Reign of God, as happened with Moses. He did not enter the land of promise, but he is Moses the Great who has so much glory that he appeared during Christ’s Transfiguration.

This is education in God. It is neither rational knowledge nor a memorization of scriptural and patristic passages; it is a personal knowledge of the coming and lifting of Grace. This education has no relation with schools and books; it is related to our staying within the whole atmosphere of Orthodox Tradition.

We must pray to God to open for us the way of His knowledge, to acquire this education, even if we pass through a lot of spiritual pain. At the same time, we must ask him not to abandon us completely, but give us consolation and comfort during that period, so that we manage to withstand the great burden of sorrows.

The road to the Reign of God passes through mysterious paths. Education in God is incomprehensible to human reason and to the criteria of this world, but is the only secure way to attain communion with God.

Source

Was St. Dionysios the Areopagite a Neoplatonist?

By Protopresbyter Fr. John Romanides

Aristotle speaks about an unmoved mover. He claims that there are about forty-nine unmoved entities that are in a state of pure actuality. Although they themselves do not move, they do not cause motion in others. Like a magnet, they move other beings by attraction. The presence of entelechy, the self-actualizing fulfillment of a thing's distinctive nature, is what drives motion to completion. Through entelechy, something in a potential state achieves its active or actual state. For example, a seed from a tree is a potential tree. When it falls to the ground and finds conditions appropriate for growth, it sprouts and becomes an actual tree. While it is still a potential tree it has not yet been perfected, because its inherent entelechy has not completed the course of its development. For a seed, perfection is attained when it becomes a tree.

But according to Aristotle, there are also unmoved movers that do not possess this inherent potential, but are in a state of pure actuality or are completely active by nature. He maintains that they were always in existence, that they will always exist, and that they move all things by attraction. Whatever undergoes this transformation from a potential state to an actualized state progresses towards its perfection, and the attractive force that guides it towards this perfection originates in the unmoved movers. That is Aristotle's teaching in a few words.

Now we encounter the same ideas on this topic in the Neoplatonists that we encounter in Aristotle. Plato, on the other hand, did not deal with this subject as far as we know. But when we turn to the Church Fathers, we encounter a certain St. Dionysios the Areopagite who is accused of Platonizing and Neoplatonizing, even though he clearly tells us that God is not solely an unmoved mover. He is also moved. There is in God an aspect that is capable of suffering or undergoing change. Naturally, St. Dionysios is writing this in opposition to Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. But it is also irrefutable proof that St. Dionysios the Areopagite was by no means in league with Neoplatonists, even though he used their language.

The suggestion that God is not only an unmoved mover, but also moved, is heresy to Neoplatonists and Aristotelians. It is an idea that does not withstand the test of reason and that consequently indicates that the Fathers did not practice philosophy. When the Fathers say that God is both an unmoved mover and also moved, they show us that we cannot apply any human categories to God. If we do try to apply them, then we will run into logical contradictions at every turn. This truth about God, however, is not derived from philosophy, but from the experience of theosis. By experience, the Fathers know that our concepts about God lose all value when we gaze directly at God Himself and behold that reality, which is none other than God Himself.

From Patristic Theology: The University Lectures of Fr. John Romanides, pp. 71-73.

A Confrontation Between Eugenios Voulgaris and Voltaire

By John Sanidopoulos

Archbishop Eugenios Voulgaris (1716-1806) was the greatest Greek scholar of the 18th century, whose fame crossed the borders of Greece into Europe. In 1771 he left Constantinople and settled in Leipzig, due to a disagreement with Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril Loukaris.

King Frederick IV of Prussia admired the knowledge and wisdom of Voulgaris, and called him in 1772 to his court in Berlin to discuss such metaphysical questions as "Is there a hell?" and "Does paradise exist?". There, Voulgaris met Voltaire (1694-1778), a deist and rationalist who was among the famous thinkers of the French Enlightenment, and they discussed many theological and philosophical issues.

Both Voulgaris and Voltaire were invited to the royal dinner. Because that particular day was a fasting day in the Orthodox Church, a discussion on Orthodox fasting took place. Voltaire, who was a strong critic of the Roman Catholic Church, thought it ironic how such a wise and knowledgeable man as Voulgaris embraced such a superstition as fasting. A "confrontation" ensued.

"I do not believe in paradises and hells," began Voltaire. "I enjoy my life like a party! I eat meat whenever I want, without fretting if it is Wednesday or Friday or Lent! On Sundays and feasts I sleep to my content, without being concerned with having to go to church! I make love with any woman I want, and I go to the taverns where I dance and frolic without the fear that I will go to hell, because I do not believe in such a fairy tale."

Eugenios Voulgaris then responded to Voltaire:

"You say that you enjoy your life, because of this and that. But I also enjoy my life. When I eat fasting foods instead of meats on Wednesdays, Fridays and during Lent, and when I wake up and go to church on Sunday mornings and feasts, my soul is filled! When I pray for this or that reason, my soul rejoices! So what is the difference between us?

I doubt that you have peace in your heart. Let alone the fact that you are tormented by the nightmares of hell! Well? Is this what it is to live? And if after death there does exist a paradise and hell, woe to you! You will lose out in the other life as well! And even if after death there is no paradise and hell, I will still come out the winner! I win in this present life! I enjoy it! Neither does anxiety eat me up about what happens after death. Well? Who is the most fortunate? I who believe in eternal life, or you who do not believe?"

Voltaire had no response.

An Atheists Critique of Secular Humanist Progressivism

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9

Atheist Philosopher John Gray, in his new book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths, argues that the secular humanist belief in progress based on reason goes against science and history and is nothing but a superstition. He writes:

“The evidence of science and history is that humans are only ever partly and intermittently rational, but for modern humanists the solution is simple: human beings must in future be more reasonable. These enthusiasts for reason have not noticed that the idea that humans may one day be more rational requires a greater leap of faith than anything in religion.”

In an earlier work, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, he was more blunt: “Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.”

According to a review in The National Interest:

"Though for decades his reputation was confined largely to intellectual circles, Gray’s public profile rose significantly with the 2002 publication of Straw Dogs, which sold impressively and brought him much wider acclaim than he had known before. The book was a concerted and extensive assault on the idea of progress and its philosophical offspring, secular humanism. The Silence of Animals is in many ways a sequel, plowing much the same philosophical ground but expanding the cultivation into contiguous territory mostly related to how mankind—and individual humans—might successfully grapple with the loss of both metaphysical religion of yesteryear and today’s secular humanism. The fundamentals of Gray’s critique of progress are firmly established in both books and can be enumerated in summary.

First, the idea of progress is merely a secular religion, and not a particularly meaningful one at that. 'Today,' writes Gray in Straw Dogs, 'liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was once possessed by revealed religion. Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.'"

To read the rest of the review in National Interest, see here.

Who Really Is A Bigot?

The word "bigot" is being thrown around more and more these days, especially since September 11, 2001 when the world woke up to the realization that there are a lot of "haters" in the world. At this time Militant Islam brought out the Militant Atheists which revealed Militant Secularism which helped give rise to Militant Politics (both liberal and conservative). One reaction gives birth to another reaction, so that the world is now a roaring flame from having reached a boiling point of extreme anger. As for who is right and who is wrong is not the issue, but the issue is how people use these movements to push their agendas, albeit in a very angry way. These days, for example, we have another extreme reaction where a very small group of people began getting a lot of media attention a few years ago for screaming "God hates fags!", and out of anger the opposition began yelling back "Bigots!". Very few in the world would agree with the former slogan, but the latter for me is very ambiguous and is being thrown around more and more by the rising Militant Secularist type against anything that disagrees with their position, especially if they are members of a religion or a different political party. For this reason I wanted to examine it a bit more to see how the word should be properly used, if used at all.

The exact origin of the word bigot is unknown. It may have come from the German bei and gott, or the English by God. William Camden wrote that the Normans were first called bigots, when their Duke Rollo, who receiving Gisla, daughter of King Charles, in marriage refused to kiss the king's foot in token of subjection, unless the king would hold it out for that purpose. Being urged to it by those present, Rollo answered hastily, "No by God", whereupon the King turning about, called him bigot; which name passed from him to his people. This story is likely fictional, as Gisla is unknown in Frankish sources. However, it is true that the French used the term bigot as an abuse for the Normans.

A bigot is most often defined as a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own. In other words, a bigot may be any person who regards his own faith and views in matters of religion as unquestionably right, and any belief or opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable or wicked. Or, a bigot is a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion.

Outside of the word's common association with prejudice, the dictionary definition of a bigot includes one who holds rigidly to an idea. Again, holding to what you believe to be true is, by itself, not inherently bad. Even the simple act of one person believing another to be a bigot, and refusing to be convinced otherwise, is itself a prime example of bigotry. According to this definition EVERYONE is a bigot. Everyone has a group that they have no tolerance for. It doesn’t matter if you are liberal, conservative, or moderate. Consider this; a bigot is someone who says they aren't a bigot.

Bigot is also used as a term of derision to imply contempt or disapproval. One noteworthy example of this is how the word bigot is increasingly being used to defame those who do not believe marriage between homosexuals should be validated in church or public policy.

It’s much easier to call someone a bigot than to consider their arguments. Elbert Hubbard said: "If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names." Name-calling is a form of an attack, based upon one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests, rather than one’s intellect or reason. It draws a vague equivalence between a concept and a person, group or idea. By linking the person or idea being attacked to a negative symbol, the propagandist hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

It's always amusing to watch those who bellow and brag about how superior they are, become strident and defensive, when their views are questioned or challenged! The only defense one has to deflect the truth is to resort to derogatory comments and personal attacks. Name-calling is the attempt to distract the uninformed observer from the message by attacking the messenger. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Resort is had to ridicule when reason is against us."

The most powerful and persuasive contributions are made by those that don’t resort to cheap name calling and show that they can articulate their rebuttal rather than resort to the lazy way out of personal abuse.

Those who resort to brow-beating, name-calling, bullying, bashing, harassment, threats, mockery, and rudeness, instead of humbly and honestly facing the real issue, only stroke their own ego. They stroke their ego even further when they consider themselves more tolerant than those whom they call bigots. Eric Hoffer declared: "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." Name-calling is verbal abuse; a crude substitute for argument. It is the strategy of cowards: If you don't agree with someone, shout him down and call him names, so you think you win. Those who resort to name calling IMMEDIATELY discredit themselves and any ideas they have regardless of the validity.

G. K. Chesterton wrote: "We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end." He also confirmed: "The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all." 

Bigot is most simply defined as the favoring of one argument over another. Bigotry, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad, but simply an inclination towards one idea over another. Examples of bigotry could be a preference for ice cream over broccoli, believing that the earth is spherical instead of flat, or the inclination to think that the Bible causes more harm than good. The question is not "Who is a bigot", but rather "About what are you bigoted and why?"

Charles Spurgeon, England's best-known preacher during the second half of the nineteenth century, declared: "The glorious charity of the present day is such, that it believes lies to be as good as truth; and lies and truth have met together and kissed each other; and he that telleth truth is called a bigot, and truth has ceased to be honorable in the world!"

We are left with answering the question: who really is a bigot? We can safely assume that those who call others bigots are in reality yelling at their own reflection. In my opinion, we are left with only two choices - it is either that EVERYONE is a bigot or NOONE is a bigot. I leave it to the reader to decide which is the fairer choice.

The Way of Purification, Illumination and Theosis

By Metropolitan Daniel of Kaisariani, Vyronas and Hymettus

On the Second Sunday of the Fast of Holy and Great Lent we honor the great theologian and Father of the fourteenth century, Saint Gregory Palamas (1269-1359), the Archbishop of Thessaloniki and the teacher and champion of hesychasm, who defended the Orthodox spiritual tradition and life, opposing the views of the monk Barlaam the Calabrian.

Saint Gregory Palamas and the Calabrian monk Barlaam clashed during the first half of the fourteenth century over a very important theological issue.

In this our short summary we will confine ourselves to a few of the issues of the conflict, known as the Hesychastic Controversy, and the difference between theology and philosophy.

The monk Barlaam, influenced by the Aristotelianism of his era (14th cent.), in which the currant of humanism had begun, believed deeply in the value of classical education, while not denying his faith in God. Teaching philosophy in Constantinople, he claimed that through wisdom and knowledge man could attain moral purity, perfection, and deification. Essentially, he considered as unnecessary the ascetic life of the monks - prayer, abstinence, the exercise of the virtues, and the entire spiritual struggle.

He taught that these do not contribute to the perfection of man. He thought that faith was not enough to relieve the minds of mankind from 'ignorance and false doctrine", and indeed, if anyone reached patristic "passionlessness", it was impossible for him to reach perfection and holiness if he does not give himself over to a "Hellenic education". His views were based on the bizarre notion that human knowledge is a gift of God that peers through revelatory knowledge, which was given through the Prophets and Apostles.

To the contrary, Saint Gregory Palamas argued that there are two wisdoms: one which meets the needs of secular life and intellectual curiosity and the other which leads to salvation. This distinction is justified by the existence of a dual gift of God, some of which are natural and given to all of humanity, and some of which are supernatural and spiritual and are given to the pure and holy.

This God-illumined Father taught that philosophy introduces man to a knowledge of beings, and indeed partially, because the passions of sins have obscured the discernment of man, who philosophizes based on speculation and conjecture, creating contradictions and disagreements. This explains the fact that a philosophical theory is reversed by another, a newer one over the former. The task of theology is the supreme gift of God to man, acquired through asceticism. Those gifted by God with knowledge and wisdom are far superior to philosophers and scientists. Theology reveals God to man, what his human nature is, and finally what is his spiritual condition.

The Church synodically rejected the views of Barlaam and accepted and upheld by the Synodal Decisions of 1341, 1347 and 1351 the teaching of the God-bearing Father, who interpreted unerringly the spiritual tradition of the Church, as it was lived and delivered by our God-bearing Fathers, as the way of the purification, illumination and theosis of mankind.

Source: Democracy, March 31, 2013. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

What the Ancient Greeks Would Have Thought About Gay Marriage

By Robert R. Reilly

It is ironic that the proponents of homosexuality so often point to ancient Greece as their paradigm because of its high state of culture and its partial acceptance of homosexuality or, more accurately, pederasty. Though some ancient Greeks did write paeans to homosexual love, it did not occur to any of them to propose homosexual relationships as the basis for marriage in their societies. The only homosexual relationship that was accepted was between an adult male and a male adolescent. This relationship was to be temporary, as the youth was expected to get married and start a family as soon as he reached maturity.

The idea that someone was a “homosexual” for life or had this feature as a permanent identity would have struck them as more than odd. In other words, “homosexuality”, for which a word in Greek did not exist at the time (or in any other language until the late 19th century), was purely transitory. It appears that many of these mentoring relationships in ancient Greece were chaste and that the ones that were not rarely involved sodomy. Homosexual relationships between mature male adults were not accepted. This is hardly the idealized homosexual paradise that contemporary “gay” advocates harken back to in an attempt to legitimize behavior that would have scandalized the Greeks.

What is especially ironic is that ancient Greece’s greatest contribution to Western civilization was philosophy, which discovered that the mind can know things, as distinct from just having opinions about them, that objective reality exists, and that there is some purpose implied in its construction.

The very idea of Nature and natural law arose as a product of this philosophy, whose first and perhaps greatest exponents, Socrates and Plato, were unambiguous in their condemnation of homosexual acts as unnatural. In the Laws, Plato’s last book, the Athenian speaker says that, "I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust." (Laws 636C; see also Symposium of Xenophon, 8:34, Plato’s Symposium, 219B-D).

For Socrates, the sight of beauty is not to be taken as something in itself, but as a reflection of divine Beauty and the ultimate Good toward which Eros directs the soul. It is an error, therefore, to be diverted by the reflection in one’s search for the ultimate Good, which is the source of beauty. Beauty stirs and awakens the soul, but it is philosophy that provides the means of perceiving and coming to know the Good.

As a consequence of this metaphysical view, Socrates sees the erotic attraction of a grown man (erastes) for a beautiful male youth (eromenos or paidika) within the perspective of the erotic drive for wisdom. This drive will be thwarted by a life of self-indulgence and can proceed only with a life of self-discipline. Therefore, the relationship between the erastes and the eromenos should be of the older enlightening the younger in philosophical education. This means that any physical touching by the older man of the younger must be in regards to the latter “as a son,” as Socrates puts it, and not further than that.

What went further than that, Socrates condemned. He loathed sodomy. According to Xenophon in The Memorabilia (i 2.29f.), Socrates saw that Kritias was sexually importuning the youth of whom Kritias was enamored, “wanting to deal with him in the manner of those who enjoy the body for sexual intercourse”. Socrates objected that “what he asks is not a good thing.” Socrates said that, “Kritias was no better off than a pig if he wanted to scratch himself against Euthydemos as piglets do against stones.”

In Phaedrus (256 a-b), Socrates makes clear the moral superiority of the loving male relationship that avoids being sexualized: “If now the better elements of the mind, which lead to a well-ordered life and to philosophy, prevail, they live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth, self-controlled and orderly, holding in subjection that which causes evil in the soul and giving freedom to that which makes for virtue…”

By their chastity, these Platonic lovers have, according to another translation of the text, “enslaved” the source of moral evil in themselves and “liberated” the force for good. This was the kind of mentoring relationship of which Socrates and Plato approved. On the other hand, “he who is forced to follow pleasure and not good (239c)” because he is enslaved to his passions will perforce bring harm to the one whom he loves because he is trying to please himself, rather than seeking the good of the other.

In the Laws, Plato makes clear that moral virtue in respect to sexual desire is not only necessary to the right order of the soul, but is at the heart of a well-ordered polis. The Athenian speaker says:

… I had an idea for reinforcing the law about the natural use of the intercourse which procreates children, abstaining from the male, not deliberately killing human progeny or ‘sowing in rocks and stones’, where it will never take root and be endowed with growth, abstaining too from all female soil in which you would not want what you have sown to grow.

This law when it has become permanent and prevails—if it has rightly become dominant in other cases, just as it prevails now regarding intercourse with parents— confers innumerable benefits. In the first place, it has been made according to nature; also, it effects a debarment from erotic fury and insanity, all kinds of adultery and all excesses in drink and food, and it makes man truly affectionate to their own wives: other blessings also would ensue, in infinite number, if one could make sure of this law. (The Laws 838-839)

The central insight of classical Greek philosophy is that the order of the city is the order of the soul writ large. If there is disorder in the city, it is because of disorder in the souls of its citizens. This is why virtue in the lives of the citizens is necessary for a well-ordered polis. This notion is reflected in the Athenian’s statement concerning the political benefits of the virtue of chastity.

The relationship between virtue and political order is, of course, par excellence, the subject of Aristotle’s works. It was a preoccupation of not only philosophy, but of drama as well. Just read The Bacchae by Euripides. Euripides and the Classical Greeks knew that Eros is not a plaything. In The Bacchae, as brilliantly explicated by E. Michael Jones, Euripides showed exactly how unsafe sex is when disconnected from the moral order. When Dionysus visits Thebes, he entices King Penthius to view secretly the women dancing naked on the mountainside in Dionysian revelries. Because Penthius succumbs to his desire to see “their wild obscenities,” the political order is toppled, and the queen mother, Agave, one of the bacchants, ends up with the severed head of her son Penthius in her lap — an eerie premonition of abortion.

The lesson is clear: Once Eros is released from the bonds of family, Dionysian passions can possess the soul. Giving in to them is a form of madness because erotic desire is not directed toward any end that can satisfy it. It is insatiable. “That which causes evil in the soul” – in which Plato includes homosexual intercourse – will ultimately result in political disorder.

For Aristotle, the irreducible core of a polity is the family. Thus, Aristotle begins The Politics not with a single individual, but with a description of a man and a woman together in the family, without which the rest of society cannot exist. As he says in The Politics, “first of all, there must necessarily be a union or pairing of those who cannot exist without one another.” Later, he states that “husband and wife are alike essential parts of the family.”

Without the family, there are no villages, which are associations of families, and without villages, there is no polis. “Every state is [primarily] composed of households,” Aristotle asserts. In other words, without households – meaning husbands and wives together in families – there is no state. In this sense, the family is the pre-political institution. The state does not make marriage possible; marriage makes the state possible. Homosexual marriage would have struck Aristotle as an absurdity since you could not found a polity on its necessarily sterile relations. This is why the state has a legitimate interest in marriage, because, without it, it has no future.

If Aristotle is correct – that the family is the primary and irreducible element of society – then chastity becomes the indispensable political principle because it is the virtue which regulates and makes possible the family – the cornerstone unit of the polis. Without the practice of this virtue, the family becomes inconceivable. Without it, the family disintegrates. A healthy family is posited upon the proper and exclusive sexual relationship between a husband and wife. The family alone is capable of providing the necessary stability for the profound relationship which sexual union both symbolizes and cements and for the welfare of the children that issue from it.

Violations of chastity undermine not only the family, but society as a whole. This accounts for Aristotle’s pronounced condemnation of adultery, which he finds all the more odious if committed while the wife is pregnant: “For husband or wife to be detected in the commission of adultery – at whatever time it may happen, in whatever shape or form, during all the period of their being married and being called husband and wife – must be made a matter of disgrace. But to be detected in adultery during the very period of bringing children into the world is a thing to be punished by a stigma of infamy proportionate to such an offense.” (The Politics, XVI, 18) Aristotle understood that the laws were, or should be, ordered toward the formation of a certain kind of person – toward the realization of a virtuous citizenry.

This is why Aristotle forbids adultery, wants to make it disgraceful in all circumstances, not only because it subverts virtue, but because it attacks the political foundations of society. Adultery becomes a political problem because it violates chastity, which is indispensable to a rightly ordered polis. There is no comparable condemnation of adultery in homosexual marriage in Aristotle because such an institution would have been inconceivable to him, as it has been throughout history until recent times. That is because it is a self-contradiction. Marriage cannot be based on an act which is in itself a violation of chastity, because something cannot be its opposite. A homosexual household would not make sense to Aristotle since it could not contain parents and all the generational relations that spring from them, which makes the polis possible. What did not make sense then still does not make sense now, and for the same reasons.

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