Orthodoxy

About ethos..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpA3T2xFabw

"(An issue today is) we only depend on Western Theology mixing it with Orthodoxy. Believe me, the most dangerous problem is that Protestantism wears black turbans to work in the Orthodox Church.

If it's a Protestant brother dressed in a handsome suit you may reject his talk but if wearing a black turban he's considered a father.

This is the worst problem we're facing nowadays. People spread Western (ie. Non-Orthodox) ideas in the Church.

You would find such principles crawling in the Church. What would happen then? When one organizes a meeting all protestants attend it and keep shouting, but if he preached other words (ie. Orthodox Theology) they would leave and his meeting would vanish. So (they say) it's better to do so to win people's favour (ie. Seeker-focused, reductionism to keep people attending).

Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy."

+ HH Pope Shenouda III from a talk "Communion with God" April 24, 1991

*Emphasis and context in Italics added

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on Good and Evil

From: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/63396.htm?fb_action_ids=10201343108567265&fb_action_types=og.recommends

"GOODNESS IS TESTED BY ITS ENCOUNTER WITH EVIL"

 In 1972, Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Surouzh participated in a discussion aired on British radio. His opponent was the British journalist Anatoly Goldberg (1910-1982), an agnostic who was born in Riga, Latvia and later emigrated to Great Britain. The following discussion became a chapter in a book entitled, God: Yes or No? Discussions between believers and unbelievers, published by Nikea publishers (Moscow), who granted Pravoslavie.ru permission to publish it. We present an English translation of that discussion here.

Theosis in St Silouan and Elder Sophrony of Essex

Wonderful article originally posted on "Monks and Mermaids" blog:  http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2010/02/theosis-in-saint-silouan-athonite-and.html

"THEOSIS" IN SAINT SILOUAN THE ATHONITE AND STARETS SOPHRONY OF ESSEX
By Christopher Veniamin (Delivered at the St. Tikhon's Annual Lecture series, September 30, 1997)

Source: Veniamin, Christopher. "Theosis" in Saint Silouan the Athonite and Starets Sophrony of Essex // Alive in Christ: The Magazine of the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania, Orthodox Church in America. 1997. Vol. XIII. N 3. P. 22-27. http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2010/02/theosis-in-saint-silouan-athonite-and.html

On Patristic Consensus

It is worthy to note that according to our Orthodox Church not any one of the Fathers alone can comprehend the Truth in  its fullness as the whole Church does. Some of them had at times fallen into error and at times contradicted one another.

For this reason our Church has never canonized patristic theology in its every word and has not even established a compulsory list of the Fathers and their writings

To acknowledge the true Church tradition we must not simply know and quote the Fathers. but we must penetrate their spirit and attain “the patristic mind”

+ Fr. Tadros Malaty, Traditon and Orthodoxy, 50 - 51

In other words, one should not bring a sola scriptura methodology to the study of the Fathers. The readings of the Fathers, the Saints and the contemporary witness of the Church are to be read by the Church and within Tradition, and ultimately for participation in the Divine Life of Christ. 

Theotokos and Theosis

"From eternity, God provided for a communion with His creation that would remain forever. In that communion mankind would attain to the eternal theosis for which it was made. The communion, of course, is the Incarnation through the Ever-Virgin. Mankind’s existence and, therefore, that of all creation is inexorably tied to Mary because she was always to be the Mother of the Incarnate Word. The fathers say that neither the course of human events nor necessity of any kind forced the Uncreated One to join to Himself a creaturely mode of existence. God did not become flesh because some actions of the devil or of man made it necessary, but because it was the divine plan and mystery from before the ages. Despite the works of Satan and the coming of sin into the world, the eternal will of God was undeterred, and it moved forward.

History and the course of human events were the occasion and not the cause of the Incarnation. The Incarnation did not take place for the Crucifixion; the Crucifixion took place so the Incarnation and the eternal communion of God and man could be fulfilled despite Satan, sin, and death. Explaining that there was no necessity in God the Father that required the death of His Son, St. Gregory the Theologian says the Father “neither asked for Him nor demanded Him, but accepts [His death] on account of the economy [of the Incarnation] and because mankind must be sanctified by the humanity of God.” 

St. Gregory is telling us that, from before the ages, it was the divine will for mankind to be sanctified and made immortal by communion with the humanity of the Incarnate God, but corruptibility and death came and stood in the way.  By His Passion and Resurrection, Jesus Christ destroyed these obstacles and saved, that is, preserved, mankind for the Incarnation’s eternal communion of the God-Man and immortal men. St. John of Damascus repeats the same idea that the Incarnation is a prior and indeed ontological purpose in itself, and that redemption is the means to that end. Thus, he says the Holy Virgin “came to serve in the salvation of the world so that the ancient will of God for the Incarnation of the Word and our own theosis may be fulfilled through her.”

+ Dr George Gabriel

The Sacrament

Below is a fascinating article by Philip Sherrard referenced in a recent talk by Fr. Peter Galadza entitled "Liturgy: Where the Holy One Seeks Us":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRUVyhsdI9s

The Sacrament
by Philip Sherrard (Published in The Orthodox Ethos: Studies in Orthodoxy vol. I, ed A.J . Philippou , Holywell Press, Oxford 1964, p. 133- 139)

http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/en_main/catehism/theologia_zoi/themata.asp?cat=leit&NF=1&contents=contents.asp&main=texts&file=2.htm

On Marriage, Family Life and Monasticism

"Discussions comparing marriage and monasticism are rarely profitable. Each person must find his own path of salvation by asking God to show him which path is best for him — and ‘work out his salvation’(Phil. 2:12) in the circumstances." + Sister Magdalen of Essex

"The Beloved" by Fr Matthew the Poor

The Beloved
by Fr Matthew the Poor (Fr. Matta el-Meskeen)

[Love carries in it all the mysteries

of divinity, creation, salvation

and the promised inheritance.]

“He destined us to be his sons

through Jesus Christ, according

to the purpose of his will, to the

praise of his glorious grace which

he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

(Eph. 1:5-6)

A Faith That Cannot Be Argued

From http://orthodoxruminations.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/overshadowed/

"Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered among men to be zealous for truth as not yet learned what truth is really like: once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf."

"The gift of God and of the knowledge of Him is not a cause of turmoil and clamor; rather this gift is entirely filled with a peace in which the Spirit, love and humility reside. The following is a sign of the coming of the Spirit: the person whom the Spirit has overshadowed is made perfect in these very virtues."

"God is reality. The person whose mind has become aware of God does not even possess a tongue with which to speak, but God resides in his heart in great serenity. He experiences no stirring of zeal or argumentativeness, nor is he stirred by anger. He can not even be aroused concerning the faith.”

St. Isaac of Syria

"I have said before that Orthodoxy is not a Faith one can be argued into. It needs be experienced. As always, come and see what it’s all about." + Orthodox Ruminations

The Delight of Love

"The man who knows the delight of the love of God-when the soul, warmed by grace, loves both God and her brother-knows in part that 'the kingdom of God is within us'.Blessed is the soul that loves her brother, for our brother is our life." + St Silouan the Athonite

Pastoral Counselor Training Epistle

Dr. Stephen Muse's book on pastoral counselling "When Hearts Become Flame" (available from the Orthodox Research Institute Press) begins with an interesting Epistle for Counselors adapted from 1 Corinthians 13. The book appears to be a wonderful reference and resource for anyone engaged in social work, counselling and psychology.

BookTalk with Dr. Richard Long - Dr. Stephen Muse & Chaplain Michael Hart from CSU.TV on Vimeo.

Pastoral Counselor Training Epistle
(With thanks to the Apostle Paul)

Prayers For Our Enemies

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"

+ Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Gospel of Luke 23:34, KJV

"And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep."

+ St Stephen the Protomartyr and Archdeacon, Acts 7:60, KJV

Beloved, reminder that in spite of all the horrors, violence and persecution that is currently occurring in Egypt and Syria, Christians continue to pray and bless those who seek to harm us. 

Reminder that our brothers and sisters who commit atrocities against us are sinners like us. They are not our real enemy. If we ask for justice let it not be for their punishment, but rather for their and our repentance, for mercy and for the revelation of love that is stronger than death.

Reminder to pray to be free from the real enemy that is our passions and sins, from the temptations of the evil one, from the delusions and lusts that keep human beings captive. 

"let us be glorious, let us embrace one another and speak to those that hate us; let us forgive all things..."

It is of course much easier said than done...May we be given the humility to pray such prayers from the depth of our being, recalling the Paschal truth that "Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing Life."

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on us sinners and save us. Amen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSemFc7QQE4

Orthodox Prayers For Our Enemies

C.S.Lewis: An 'Anonymous Orthodox'? by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

C.S.Lewis: an 'anonymous Orthodox'?

By Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia

From a talk given to the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society on 29 November 1994, Published in Sobornost, new series 17.2 (1995) , 9-27

'Good sense, good manners, and good Christianity'

In his interesting article on C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Church, 'Under the Russian cross', Dr Andrew Walker recalls a dinner party in London at which a senior Greek bishop from Constantinople described Lewis as an 'anonymous Orthodox'.¹ Was the Greek bishop right? Certainly, as Andrew Walker observes, Lewis has an enthusiastic following among Orthodox Christians. There are Orthodox bookshops which stock virtually no works by any non-Orthodox author, with one striking exception - C.S. Lewis. I can also think of Orthodox clergy, strictly traditionalist in their outlook, who use Mere Christianity as their main text-book when instructing catechumens.

Recension and Remembrance

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”

+ Revelation 2:17, NKJV

"We also have another name, one which we do not know. You remember the passage in the Book of Revelation which says that in the Kingdom each will receive a white stone with a name written on it, a name which is known only to God and to him who receives it. This is no nickname, no family name, no Christian name. It is a name, a word, that is exactly identical with us, which coincides with us, which is us. We may almost say it is a word which God pronounced when he willed us into existence and which is us, as we are it. This name defines our absolute and unrepeatable uniqueness as far as God is concerned. No one can know the name, as no one can, in the last analysis, know anyone as God knows him; and yet it is out of this name that everything else comes that can be known about us."

+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (New York: Paulist Press, 1970) 102.

"Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening....Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head”. When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked around you, you saw them."

+ CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

"...lead me back to be refashioned into that ancient beauty of Your likeness."

+ Evlogetaria for the Dead, Tone 5, Orthodox Funeral Hymn

The Coptic Orthodox Horologion

"Egyptian Christianity began in Alexandria and was Greek. By the third century, however, there were numerous converts among the Copts, and the Scriptures and liturgy were already in the native tongue. But it was not until the rise of monasticism that the Coptic Church solidified as a native counterbalance to the cosmopolitan, theologically sophisticated, hellenic Church of Alexandria, whose speculative, spiritualizing intellectualism stood in marked contrast to the popular, traditionalistic piety of the South, a largely oral culture transmitted through sayings, proverbs, ritual, rather than through theological treatises. This monastic culture— concrete, popular, ascetic—created the liturgy and offices of the Coptic Church. It is a highly penitential, contemplative rite, long, solemn, even monotonous, with much less speculative poetry, symbolic splendor and sumptuous ceremonial than, for example, the Byzantine tradition. 

Today's Coptic Rite is basically the usage of Scetis somewhat modified by later reforms. Patriarch Gabriel II Ibn Turayk (1131-1145) reduced the number of anaphoras to the present three, and Gabriel V (1409-1427) composed a Liturgical Order to unify the divergent usages of Egypt. These regulations still govern the Coptic Rite today. 

The basic structure of the office of Scetis described by Cassian is still clearly visible in the hours of the present Coptic Horologion, though in monasteries the weekday hours are now done in common, and the cursus has been filled out with the other canonical hours that ultimately became a fixed part of the official daily prayer cycle in most traditions."

+ Fr Robert Taft, S.J. "The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West:The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today" 2nd Revised Edition (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1993) 250-251

Letter to a New Convert

"Living Orthodoxy is based on paradox, which is carried on into worship – private or public." 

+ Mother Thekla

Letter to a New Convert

by Mother Thekla

Why CS Lewis is just so irritating

Why CS Lewis is just so irritating
by Khoria Frederica Mathewes-Green

http://www.pravmir.com/why-c-s-lewis-is-so-irritating-part-1/

The Orthodoxy of CS Lewis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rysaREEBMVw

The Orthodox CS Lewis
by Robert C. Stroud, in AGAIN Magazine Volume 21, No. 1.

He was a devout Anglican, but proclaimed a message which resonates in deep harmony with Orthodox believers. He was buried following a funeral mass in his home parish, yet laid to rest with an Orthodox cross of flowers adorning his casket. He was friend and advisor to Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy, yet admired Orthodox priests "whose faces, he thought, looked more spiritual than those of most Catholic or Protestant clergy." His name was Clive Staples Lewis.

Parakesis

Paraklesis to the Theotokos In English
(Supplicatory Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZg-Es-IdaE

Service of the Small Paraklesis to the Most-Holy Theotokos

The Paraklesis, or Service of Supplication

http://www.stspeterandpaulboulder.org/Pages/Documents/Booklets/Paraklesis.pdf

Compiled at the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver ©2008

Faith as Theosis

During a Thomas Sunday Sermon this year I heard a priest in Toronto say: 

"Faith...that's not the same thing as believing in things...like believing in electricity, or taxes or that there was a man on the moon...that's not what faith is about...It's not about believing in things you can't quite figure out...In the Old Testament the root word of faith is in reference to a mother, a nurse, or someone who looks after children, and it is associated with caring, protecting, rending a cure, with education...It is about trusting a relationship...a trusting relationship that is good and life giving...that is where the word Faith comes from and is understood in the Old Testament...a relational power...a force, an energy that unites the creature with the Creator...it's not just an intellectual 'I believe in God' but rather something that brings us into relationship and unites us with God...that's Faith. Faith is what happens between two persons, that's different than simply believing..."

Likewise Fr Stephen Freeman, in a recent post on his blog discusses how much of our ideas about faith are equated with mental assertions and belief as thought. This characterizes the popularity of the concept that faith is a proclamation, public confession, emotional experience, or mental activity directed towards a packaged second-storey 'pie-in-the-sky' greater being. This is the theism that atheists so love to attack with demands for 'evidence.' This is also the theism that much of the consumerist mega-Churches continue to propagate. This understanding of God however is not the same as the encounter with the Living God, or with participation in the Life of the Holy Trinity.

The two-storey presuppositions of modern Christianity, with its iconoclasm and docetism, is what another priest, Fr Andrew Stephen Damick, defines as the New Gnosticism in Chapter 5 of "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy". Specifically that:

Gnosticism was sharply marked by individualism, the belief that salvation was ultimately a private matter rather than a communal experience. The gnostics also stressed that salvation was obtained by saving knowledge rather than by faithful participation in sacramental church life. The gnostics religious system was strongly dualistic, believing that "spiritual" things were good, while the physical world was evil or at best unimportant. In its understanding of salvation and of culture in general, gnosticism was also profoundly escapist, seeking to withdraw from the world. Gnosticism placed a heavy emphasis on personal ecstatic experience contrasted with the "ordinary" ritual and sacramental life of most Christian believers. (Fr Andrew Stephen Damick, "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" [Chesterton: Conciliar Press, 2011] 103)

All three priests quoted and mentioned so far are not decrying mental activity. Fr Stephen Freeman for example even asserts that "God gave man a mind and He meant for him to use it. But “using” our mind and being caught up in an endless series of mental connections are not the same thing." 

And later in the comments section:

"I like being with my wife, and sometimes I think about her. But, I don’t have to in order to benefit from being with her. Being with someone and thinking about them are not synonymous always. It’s, of course, normal to think about those whom we love, and to think about God, but it becomes problematic when we begin to relate to our thoughts about someone instead of relating to the person himself. Orthodox practice allows us to get out of our “mind.” And that, strangely, allows us to have peace of mind." + Fr Stephen Freeman, Comments section of post "Get out of your mind!"

So it is not the use of the mind that's the issue but rather the equating of faith as mental activity, belief as mental gymnastics, or the use of the mind and ideas [including blogs like this one] as a replacement for participation with the Person of Christ, and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

"Nowhere in the Scripture or in the consensus of the Fathers do we see the notion that faith is just an inner, mental knowledge or even a feeling. Faith is rather an ongoing, dynamic relationship of trust and cooperation of the believer with God. Faith is a life of communion. Just as a marriage is not made merely by the wedding ceremony or the exchange of rings, salvation is not made by making a single decision for Christ. It is merely begun by that act, and like marriage, which St. Paul uses as a metaphor for salvation in Ephesians 5, salvation must be maintained and nurtured in order to come to full fruition." (Damick, 109)

"The physicality of the Church and all that is in it (including the physical presence and noise of the people gathered there) are truly sacramental – they are not there to make us think – they are there to love, to cherish, to honor, to make God present, to be “the least of these.” + Fr Stephen Freeman

Faith is participation of one's whole being in the Life of Christ, which in the Orthodox Church also involves participation in the life of the Body of Christ, in the Church, in the Communion of Saints. Fr Alexander Schmemann says the following about this relational understanding and encounter we call faith:

"...when I say “I believe in God,” then I am making an affirmation which requires a choice, a decision. In other words, it presupposes some kind of very personal participation by my entire being. As soon as this personal participation, this choice disappears, then my faith dies, becomes in fact non-existent. Genuine faith of this sort is far from our norm, and therefore faith must in no way be reduced to simply an objective, independent part of my convictions and worldview. (Fr. Alexander Schmemann, "I Believe...: Celebration of Faith Vol.1" [New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003] 19-20) 

"...faith, in the Christian experience, is the fruit and manifestation not simply of knowledge; it is not a conclusion based on reasoning and analysis. Faith is not an intellectual calculation, but neither is it simply religious emotion which is here for a moment and then perhaps evaporates and is gone. Faith is the encounter, the real encounter between what is deepest in a person — that thirst which is so distinctly a part of him, and that toward which his thirst is directed—even if he doesn’t know what it is. St Augustine was the one who spoke best about this “realization of that which is hoped for” and the “certitude of things not seen,” when he said: “You made us for Yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” But this also brings us to the third and most enigmatic word of our confession of faith: “I believe in God”—this brings us to the word “God.” (Schmemann, 22)

"...faith is a response, which not only presupposes the presence of the one to whom we respond, but witnesses to that presence as well. Faith is a responding movement not of the soul alone, but of the entire person with his whole being. Suddenly he hears something, suddenly he sees something, and surrenders himself to that movement. This is expressed in the language of Christianity by saying that faith comes from God, through His initiative, through His call. It is always a response to Him, a person’s surrender to Him who gives Himself. As Pascal said so wonderfully: “God says to us: You would not be searching for me, unless you had already found me.” And because faith is a response, a responding movement, it always remains a search, a thirst, a yearning. (Schmemann, 24-25) 

"It is not because I want eternal life after death that I believe in God; on the contrary, I believe in eternal life because I believe in God. (Schmemann, 26)

"Faith is the touching of a mystery, it is to perceive another dimension to absolutely everything in the world. In faith, the mysterious meaning of life comes alive. Beneath the simple, explicable, one-dimensional surface of things their genuine content begins to shine. Nature herself begins to speak out and to witness to what is above her, within her, but separate from her. To speak in the simplest possible terms: faith sees, knows, senses...the presence of God in the world. Faith in the affirmation of the apostle Paul is the “conviction of things unseen” (Heb 11:1); truly, for the believer everything in life and life itself begins to be experienced as revelation. “The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork!” (Ps 19:1). This is not poetry; it is the voice, the witness, of faith. (Schmemann, 59-60)

To return to our first quote of this post (the bit from the Thomas Sunday sermon), perhaps we can once again suggest (with risk of reducing or packaging) that Faith in the Orthodox Church is relationship, is relational, is Communion with Love, Communion in Life. Faith is not an intellectual exercise or reliant on rational proofs, Faith is participating in the Life of Christ, Faith is the Lives of the Saints, Faith is Theosis. 

Or as Fr Aidan Kimel states:

“Faith” therefore comprehends everything that we think of as constituting life in Christ: belief, trust, baptism, Eucharist, prayer, worship, ascetical discipline, works of charity, care for the poor. We are saved by being “in Christ”; we are saved by being “in the Spirit”; we are saved by our participation in the divine life of the Holy Trinity (theosis). That we sinners now find ourselves dwelling in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is sheer and utter grace." + Fr Aidan Kimel, "Ruminating Romans: Is faith a condition of salvation?" 

May we live this Faith, this Way, this Truth, this Life. May on our hearts be written the True Knowledge and Life of Love by the Saints in whom all His desires are manifest, and may we write that same Faith on the hearts of our descendants. May grace and peace be multiplied to us in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises.

May we participate in this Grace and not in a theoretical faith. Wherever we look, whatever we do, and whatever and whoever we are, let us "find Christ and rejoice in Him."

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers and all the Saints, may our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

"...the concept of "faith and works” in the Orthodox Church is inseparable from the living person of Christ, who is the source of faith and works alike in human life. The utlimate end of both faith and works is the glorification of God the Father — an essential work that belongs exclusively to Christ: "Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Ph. 2:11)."

+ Fr Matthew the Poor, The Communion of Love 

(New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984) 115-116 

“Saints in Christ” means that they draw their righteousness from Christ’s righteousness, and their sainthood from Christ’s sainthood. Therefore, they are truly righteous and truly saints. Theologically speaking, faith in Christ means union with Christ based on salvation, receiving the Holy Spirit and eternal life. Union with Christ also implies communion in Christ, that is, sharing in eternal life. 

+ Fr Matthew the Poor, The Titles of Christ

(Rollinsford: Orthodox Research Institute, 2008) 123

+ + +

* ps. Both Fr Aidan Kimel and Fr Stephen Freeman's posts are included below for reference:

Women and Icons

Here's a repost of the article "Women with Icons" by Jocelyn Mathewes, referenced originally on Susan Katherine Sanders' blog: http://katherinesandersicons.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/women-and-icons/

Women with Icons
by Jocelyn Mathewes

You be the image

Fr Robert Taft in a retreat to Eastern Rite Catholic priests called attention to an honest embrace of their identity. His prayer can also be applied to Orthodox who might be tempted by methods and approaches that are from the pop-Christian and reductionist milleu. One gets the sense that Fr Robert Taft is encouraging an authentic witness and not senseless appropriation of things contrary to the Tradition, especially when such appropriation includes anti-eccelsial presuppositions or reductionist theology rooted in a trends of 'relevance'.

"Priests in the Russian and some other Byzantine-Slavonic traditions wear a pectoral cross inscribed on the back with an inscription that begins "Obraz budi— You be the image!" That is my wish and prayer for you today: that you in your ministry be the icon for others of what the Church wants you to be, by knowing, loving, and living your authentic tradition as the Church wishes it to be."

+ Archimandrite Robert Taft

May we be transformed and confromed into to that ancient beauty from where we were called from. 

Glory to the Holy Trinity.

Obstacles to Faith

An excellent post by Fr Stephen Freeman that again calls out the issue of the Two Storey Universe and the presuppositions of the millitant atheist, reductionist and secular worldview. A worldview that has been perpetuated by the Reformation's (and one could also say, Islam's) movement to de-sacramentalize, conquer  and categorize the world into 'sacred' vs 'profane.' 

It's a fascinating and challenging article and one that reminds Orthodox not to buy into the trends and theology of Mega-Church Evangelicalism, Reformation-rooted reductionism, the imposition of 'dhimmah', the slow decay of the 'millah' and the 'millet', and the resurgence of heresies the Church has already responded to with her witness of the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us and save us!

Obstacles to Faith
By Fr Stephen Freeman

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/06/26/obstacles-to-faith-2/

The Passive or Active Poor "as Christ"

In addition to their identity as kin, the needy are constructed as heavenly citizens and entitled to civic justice by virtue of their identity as bearers of the divine image. Consequently they are entitled to patronage — in modern language they have “rights” — ultimately by virtue of their relationship to God the creator, who has given them both their human nature and membership in the civic community known as the kingdom of heaven. These are “rights” explicitly dependent on these relational affiliations.

This citizenship depends, further, on a special identification of the poor with Christ, and emphasizing the incarnate nature of deity in Christ. The metaphor of Matthew 25, in which ministering to the poor is ministering to Christ, is a dominant theme throughout all three Cappadocians’ writings on poverty relief. Gregory of Nazianzus especially emphasizes this image at the end of his sermon. To see the poor “as Christ” may, to the modern consciousness, seem to make them into a passive image, a symbol that erases individuality and looks past the needy to the “more worthy” Christ for whom they are signifiers. The Cappadocians, however, do not constrain their image to this passive model. Nazianzen emphasizes the poor persons active participation in the divine and liturgical image. He describes them as

[o]ur brothers in God...born with the same nature...compounded of nerves and bones as we are; more than this, they also have received the same divine image as we have, and have perhaps guarded it better...They have put on the same Christ. . . [and] have been made sharers with us of the same...doctrine, the same Testaments, the same Assemblies, the same mysteries, the same hope, Christ. 

Gregory of Nazianzus is not here implying that only orthodox church members deserve assistance. In fact, both Nazianzen and Nyssen emphasized the universal nature of God's goodness to all creation. It is precisely in these references to divine identity where we find the language of "human rights” in the Gregories: terms referring explicitly to equality, rights and freedom. Nazianzen exhorts his audience to “resolve to imitate the justice [ίσότης] of God” (Or. 14.24), whose gifts are '‘equally upon all, the just and unjust alike, upholding the dignity of our nature by the worthiness of his gifts” (Or. 14.25). Both authors link this justice with a return to Eden. Nazianzen in fact uses ίσονομία, a Greet: political term meaning “equality of rights.” “At the fall came hatred and strife and the deceits of the serpent...I would have you look back to our primary equality of rights [τήν πρώτην ίσονομίαν] not to the later division...Reverence the ancient freedom [τήν άρχαίαν έλευθερίαν τίμησον]. Reverence yourself. Cover the shame [άτιμία] of your own kindred.”

While ίσονομία does not occur in Gregory of Nyssa's two homilies, Nyssen understands the divine nature in the poor as that which entitles them to respect and value, emphasizing that the poor have indeed taken on the very prosōpon of Christ himself “Don't despise these prostrate ones as if they merit no respect. Ask who they are and discover their worth. They have put on the face [τό πρόσωπον] of our saviour. The Lord has given them his own prosōpon [that they might be] the stewards of our hope, the guardians of royalty (οί θυρωροί τής βασιλείας)”

He also reminds his audience to “[r]emember who they are...human beings [ανθρώπων άνθρωποι] in no way different from the common nature” (κοινήν φύσιν).

Nyssen also seeks a restoration to Eden: “Mercy and good deeds,” he says, “are works God loves; they divinize [θεόω] those who practice them and stamp them into the likeness of goodness that they may become the image of the primordial Being” (είκών τής πρώτης). Because the poor are spiritual kin, Nyssen says, “It is just that brothers will reap an equal part of the inheritance.” Thus, by their essential relationship with human and divine, the poor are here constructed as having “equal rights'” to justice, compassion, and all aspects of the heavenly inheritance. By helping the poor, the donors also attain citizenship in the heavenly kingdom; at the end of his first sermon, Nyssen praises the author of Psalm 90, who seeks an appreciation of his own mortality and dies “as an intact and flawless citizen of the world to come. May we all attain the same by the philanthrōpia of our Lord Jesus Christ...”

Thus the Cappadocians here “entitle” the poor, constructing for them a social identity using language evocative of “rights.” Yet these are ever dependent rights. The power of the poor depends on their place of primary honor in the kingdom of God.

It depends on their revisionist identity (in these texts) as kin. The rights of these poor depend on their constructed religious role: as patrons, engaging in civic gift exchanges by receiving alms and effecting redemption.

It depends on their assigned position as legal witnesses before God for justice. These rights ultimately depend on the way the authors understand the poor to image the divine. They are not, here, in any sense “existential” rights, but deliberately depend on a particular religious perspective within a particular culture.

Source: Holman, Susan R. "The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 149-151.