Category Archives: Theology

Anthropology in Poetry and Prose

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Becoming Human by John Behr

Becoming Human

Becoming Human by John Behr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been doing some writing on the subject of Christian Anthropology, but after reading John Behr’s slim volume, I don’t know that I’m up to the task. I certainly can do no better than John Behr.

“The glory of God is a living human being.” This first quote alone, from St Irenaeus of Lyon, contains so much theology that one could spend a lifetime studying it. That simple sentence encompases everything we know and everything we cannot know about ourselves, our relationship with humanity, and the reciprocity between us and God.

But wait, there’s more!

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Divine Silence in the Face of Evil

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A woman cries at the funeral of Christians killed in Maaloula.

A woman cries at the funeral of Christians killed in Maaloula.

The problem of the existence of evil and death, given the power and goodness of God, is called theodicy. Even young children sometimes ask questions about whether God created evil and, if He did not, how and why He allows evil to exist. This is a profound question, one that has been wrestled with by young and old, by the simple and the educated, by both saint and sinner alike. And yet there is another more profound question.

Why is God silent in the face of evil? Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica makes mention of this, the Divine silence, in connection with Christ’s own suffering and death. “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth” (Acts 8:32). Christ himself was silent in the face of this great evil being done to him. He did not object, he did not present a defence, he did not protest his innocence. All of which made the act of the Jewish and Roman leaders even more monstrous.

I do not have a satisfactory answer to the existence of evil, at least not an answer that will satisfy once and for all. Neither do I understand the Divine silence in the face of evil, especially the evil done to the Church, which is his body. Yet I also know that Christ is most present with us during times of suffering. He suffers with us, and we suffer with Him. In Mark chapter 13, Jesus tells us to give no thought as to what we will speak when we are called to give an account of our faith, for the Holy Spirit will speak through us.  Perhaps God speaks through  and with the voice the martyrs. If this is true, then the voice of the martyrs speaks not truth to power, but truth with power.

Job himself suffered, and no satisfactory answer for his suffering was given him. Yet Job spoke truth with power when he said: “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job 19:25-27).

The psalmist cries out with us against the evil of this world. “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps 73:1-3). This is perhaps the clearest expression of the problem of theodicy, which becomes a problem when we take our eyes off of God and focus one our neighbor’s continuing good fortune in the face of their own sin. When we cease repenting our own sins and focus on the sin of our brother, the goodness of God seems far away. The psalmist continues his protest against God until something changes. “When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;  Until I went into the sanctuary of God” (Ps 73:16-17).

When reading this, I cannot help but think of Peter the disciple walking on the water, until he takes his eyes off of Jesus and focuses on his immediate circumstances. He begins to sink, until he cries out to Jesus, who pulls him from the water and places him back in the boat, which reminds us of Noah’s Ark, which is a type of the church.

I have no answers to the problem of evil. I only hope that when my time comes, that the Holy Spirit speaks through me as powerfully as He speaks through one of the new martyrs of Syria: “I am a Christian, and if you want to kill me for this, I do not object to it.”

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/64403.htm

Repristination and the Plan of Salvation

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The Harrowing of Hades, fresco in the parecclesion of the Chora Church, Istanbul, c. 1315, raising Adam and Eve is depicted as part of the Resurrection icon, as it always is in the East.

The Harrowing of Hell. This representation of Christ’s descent into Hell shows Him breaking down the gates of hell and restoring Adam and Eve to Paradise.

My first indication that something was seriously wrong with the various Protestant communions was when I read the Didache (aka The Teaching Of The Lord To The Gentiles By The Twelve Apostles.) This document very likely preserves the order of the church in Jerusalem; scholars now believe to be a first century document, likely before A.D. 70, placing it well within the apostolic era.[1] Here was a different expression of Christianity, one completely foreign to me, yet one the apostles did not seem to have a problem with.

One thing that struck me is that although the Didache contains a great deal of information about how to live and worship as a Christian community, it contains nothing of what I recognized as doctrine. I compared this to the Apostolic Traditions, written by Hippolytus in the third century to preserve the church order and practices in use in Alexandria; once again, it contains nothing of what we today would call doctrine. Finally, I came across the Apostolic Constitutions, a second or third century work containing fourth and fifth century interpolations, a document preserving the church order of Asia Minor. This work is more extensive than the first two, yet only the sixth book against Heresies contains any doctrine—and apart from a creedal portion in Section III entitled An Exposition of the Preaching of the Apostles, most of the work consists of a description of various errors or of the prescriptions of the apostles. What we would term the doctrinal portion of this work is surprisingly brief.

I found a similar concern in the epistles of the apostle Paul. The first two thirds are usually concerned with correcting certain matters of theology, while the latter third is concerned with matters of church order, and with prescriptions for holy living. The epistles to the Corinthian Church are even more explicit, mixing prescriptions for church order and discipline, theology, and exhortations to holy living throughout these letters. How we live as Christians mattered to the apostle. We are to live out our faith; we are to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Other New Testament authors say the same. James tells us to resist the devil (Jas 4:7). In his exhortation to holy living, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews write: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).

I now had three different church orders from different regions: one from the apostolic era, one from the era prior to Constantine, one from after Constantine, and all saying basically the same thing. What I had was an expression of Christianity that I could not deny, yet could not explain either. These Christians were concerned with how one lived in community with each other and before the world, and with how they were organized and worshiped as church. These two were not separate areas, but were commingled together in a manner I found confusing. As I was working at Lutheran seminary at the time, I raised these issues with some of the professors. The basic answer I got was that we could not repristinate, a word that means to restore something to its state of original purity. This was an implicit admission that we no longer believed and worshiped in a manner like the early church. Somehow they were alright with that, but I couldn’t make sense of it.

The attempt to “revive the faith of a pristine church” is the functional definition of repristination. In Lutheran history, repristination was an attempt to restore historical Lutheranism over and against the Prussian Union, which attempted to unify the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany. Although the founder of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (C.F.W. Walther) is historically identified as part of this movement, today the term is generally used in a perjorative sense, for a romantic attachment to a golden age.

Interestingly, that was the same argument used to explain all the changes in Lutheran practice and worship from the time of Luther. It also became clear that neither Luther, Melanchthon, nor Chemnitz would have been welcome in most Lutheran churches, as they believed, taught, and confessed a different faith than did modern Lutherans. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.[2] Not only did Lutherans not worship the same way as the ancient church, they didn’t even worship the same way as the Lutheran Reformers. That indicated that they had a different doctrinal understanding than did the Reformers, who had a different doctrinal understanding than did the ancient fathers of the church. It became clear that the argument against repristination was a tacit admission that the Lutheran faith had changed.

Fr. Anthony McGuckin, in his book “The Orthodox Church”, brings up the issue of repristination when discussing the mystery of marriage. While the Pharisees had a contractual understanding of marriage, similar to that found in modern civil law. Jesus expressed a different understanding of marriage, one of intense, interpersonal communion. The Pharisees came to Jesus and tested him by asking if it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any reason. Jesus answered with a reference to the orders of creation, and the covenant God made with humanity when He instituted marriage. “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt 19:5-6). Of this, Fr. McGuckin writes:

Over and against the economies that were necessary for society where hardness of heart was the common order of the day, Christ begins to set a new standard for his church, which itself goes back to the more fundamental creation covenant, which he has come to restore and repristinate in his church. The Mosaic law of contractual divorce is made to give way to a higher ‘law of one flesh’, that is communion. It is God who bonds a man and a woman in a mystical union that grows out of the union of flesh. This psycho-physical bond is a profound sacrament of the love Christ has for his church.” (McGuckin 2011)

We humans seek to justify our departure from the truth by telling ourselves that we cannot repristinate, that we cannot return to the state of original purity, that we cannot return to Eden. And yet this is countered by St. Irenaeus and his discussion of the economy of salvation as one of recapitulation, as the restoration of the natural order of things, as the reopening of the gates of paradise so that whosoever will may come.

The Protestant urge for the restoration of the early church is an admirable thing. And yet that restoration is nothing without repristination, without a return to Eden and the restoration of the state of original righteousness.

Bibliography

McGuckin, John Anthony. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

 

[1] There are differences of opinion about this. Some date the Didache as early as 50 A.D., while others date it as late as the 4th century. The reason for an early date rests on a number of pieces of evidence. First, the Didache uses the ‘Two Ways’ description of Christianity; the Way was an early way of referring to Christianity (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 19:23; 22:4; 24:14; 24:22). Second, the Didache does not reference the different factions surrounding different apostles, suggesting an early date. Third, the Didache does not reference the growth of heresies, also suggesting an early date. Fourth, the Didache refers to itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers, and ways of determining their legitimacy. This was a problem in the earliest church, suggesting an early date. Fifth, it appears that Bishops and Deacons were, at this time, chosen by their congregations rather than the later tradition of election, then ordination by the bishops. Sixth, there is no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Seventh, after the martyrdom of St. James in 63 A.D., the historian Eusebius writes that the Jerusalem Christians were warned to leave Jerusalem due to its imminent destruction. The Jewish historian Josephus writes that this flight of Christians occurred in 64 A.D. (Jewish War 2, 20, 1) This flight from Jerusalem is not referenced in the Didache.

[2] Lex Orandi – the law of prayer; Lex Credendi – the law of belief. Loosely translated, this states that the law of prayer is the law of belief. The way you prayer (and worship) is the way you believe. This is transitive, in that the way you believe is reflected in the way you prayer. Thus a change in the way you pray and worship reflects a change in your beliefs, while a change in beliefs is reflected in the way you worship.

Book cover for "The Orthodox Church" by John Anthony McGuckin

The Orthodox Church

Salvation and the Veneration [honoring] of Saints

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The Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles

The Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles

Book cover for "The Orthodox Church" by John Anthony McGuckin

“It is a great mistake to think that the soul finds Christ nakedly and alone. The Lord always comes to us in the family, and through the medium of the love of other members of the communion. He came to his world through the Holy Virgin. He comes to us in faith, even to this day, through the ministry of those who have loved us and nurtured us, and formed our minds and characters in a thousand ways. He comes to us in the Scriptures, directly, yes, but also through the countless hundreds of thousands who have transcribed, collected the texts, and preached them to society over centuries. There is no direct and solipsistically solitary path to the Christ. If we find Christ we find the heart of love and communion. Those who wish to find the Lord alone, and possess him alone, have not found the true Lord. In some places in the world superstition may indeed have perverted the cult of the saints, so that it has degenerated into a disturbingly non-Christian phenomenon. Orthodoxy does not generally manifest that social condition. If it does appear, the clergy correct it energetically. The Orthodox veneration of the saints is widely understood by all levels of the faithful, educated or not. And the celebration of the saints is deeply integrated with the sense of the church as a communion of word and sacrament. This has been a pattern of Eastern Christian life since the earliest centuries, when the tombs of the martyrs grew into being the local parish churches.
“Orthodoxy, in its heard, does not understand a personalist attitude that issues in the form of a latent (or not so latent!) hostility to the saints, and finds it to be defective in its comprehension of the communion of salvation. It is difficult to express the significance of family to those whose experience of earthly families has been insignificant, or worse, damaging. But the action of the saints, still philanthropic and still assisting the lives of Christians on earth, is a fact of authentic Christian family life, and for the Orthodox is part of their very faith-confession that Christ has saved hot a host of solitary righteous people, but rather an elect communion of beings: humanity and angels, who are brought together in him and through him in a bond of love that constitutes the New Being of the Kingdom.” (McGuckin 2011)
Bibliography
McGuckin, John Anthony. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

 

 

a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing

Wise orators stand mute as fish.

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Book cover for "The Orthodox Church" by John Anthony McGuckin

The Orthodox Church

NOTE: The following is an excerpt of Fr. John Anthony McGuckin’s book “The Orthodox Church”. I highly recommend it.

…This is only a brief argument using scriptural indications to speak about historical tradition soberly received and reverently passed on. It will hardly convince a generation of so-called historical scholars who have mutilated the scriptural record they set out to comment on, using the premise that ‘nothing unusual can happen in the world, that is not entirely explicable by reference to things that are usual’: and thus ‘explaining’ the Virgin birth for their readership as a ‘magical’ explaining away of an illegitimate birth. But the Akathist hymn gave a good response to this in ancient times:

Wise orators stand mute as fish before you Theotokos; for they are unable to explain how you could remain a virgin and yet give birth. But we who marvel at the mystery of faith can cry out to you: All hail, you who are the chosen vessel of God.

The Virgin Mary stands not only as a Christological bulwark, epitomizing the ultimate ‘scandal of our faith’ that if she is called the Theotokos, her Son must be confessed as divine (God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, as the Creed has it). But in many ways she is a ‘Bronze Gate’ in a contemporary world abounding in reductionist and faithless exegesis. She who treasured all these stories and tales of wonder about her Son in her heart, as the evangelist tells us, is still one who refuses to allow the sacred kerygma of the Gospel to be watered down and made palatable to the tastes and conceptions of those who are far from being deeply rooted i the strange and paradoxical ways of a God who, with the world’s salvation in the balance, chose a simple and innocent heart which was ready to say to him: ‘Let it be done in me, as I am your servant. The choice of an unmarried first-century Jewish woman from a rural backwater was a contradiction of the ‘wisdom of this world’, and still is. It is perhaps why theological reflection on the Theotokos (so prevalent and powerful in the early church) has fallen into relative silence today.

McGuckin, John Anthony. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

 

Evidence from Silence

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Dormition of the Theotokos

Dormition of the Theotokos

“In the fourth century, bishop Epiphanius noted, cautiously, that nobody knows if or whether Mary died, nor if she was buried, nor the location of her grave.” Philip Jenkins, “Why Mary?”

Several years ago, while I was still Lutheran, my pastor noted a number of interesting things about Mary. In particular, he mentioned that although there were church all over the holy land commemorating various persons and events, there were no churches where Mary died, nor was anyone claiming her gravesite, or claiming to have her bodily relics. This is so unusual that it must mean something. We cannot be dogmatic about it, but it does support the position of most of the world’s Christians that there was a miracle attached to her death, such that her body was lost. How and in what way we don’t know, except for the evidence preserved in the liturgy and in the apocryphal writings.

Fr. George Calciu on the Uncreated Light

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Father George Calciu

Fr. George Calciu

I can tell you about the burning bush. The burning bush was seen by Moses, and he understood that God was there. He tried to approach, and the voice of God said, Put off thy shoes from off thy feed, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground (Ex 3:5). The bush was enveloped in Light, but the Light did not consume it. It was the same Light that God gives to man, which in touching us does not consume us. Only sin is consumed in us, as this Light gives us perfection or makes us better.

Icon of The Mother of God of the Burning Bush

The Mother of God of the Burning Bush

You know that this burning bush represents the Mother of God, who received in herself the absolute Light of Jesus Christ, the fire. We say in our prayers before receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ: “Rejoicing and trembling at once, I who am straw partake of fire, and, strange wonder! I am ineffably bedewed, like the bush of old, which burnt without being consumed.”[1] It is true: we take in our mouth the fire — God, Jesus Christ — but we are not burnt because the fire consumes nothing except for sin [Isa 6:1-7].

In Exodus we read: The glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day He called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children

of Israel (Ex 24:16-17). This means that the mountain was covered by that Uncreated Light which cannot be comprehended by us.

God said to Moses: Thou canst not see My face: for there shall no man see Me, and live…. Thou shalt see My back parts, but My face shall not be seen (ex 33:20, 23). No one can see God and be alive because we can never see or understand the Essence of God. He is above everything: above every mind, above every possibility of being misunderstood. Even the angels cannot see the face of God, that is, His Essence. They see only his “back parts,” that is, His Uncreated Energies.

Prophet Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments

Prophet Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments

What did Moses see? He saw precisely the Uncreated Light of Energies. After that, he lived: this means he did not see the face of God, but saw only His Uncreated Energies. The Holy Fathers say that we, like the angels, can only see the “back parts” of God. We can see only from the back and never see His face.

Afterwards, when Moses was invited by God to the top of Mount Sinai and wrote down the Ten Commandments, the glory of God again filled the mountain. Moses didn’t see the face of God, he saw only the Uncreated Light.

Sometimes this Light makes the body and soul come near to perfection, and thus the body begins to shine. The Light is incorporated by the body and becomes visible to the physical eyes. That is why Moses, when he came down from the mountain, covered his face with a veil: the shining of his face was unbearable for the Jews to look at (cf. Ex 34:33-35). The Uncreated Energy was present in his body, not only in his spirit.

Fr. George Calciu. Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. Platina. Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. 2010. 264-265.

[1] Prayer of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

Spiritual Combat, Social Cohesion, and Monasticism

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St Anthony the Great, founder of Christian Monasticism

St Anthony the Great, founder of Christian Monasticism

The experience of the early church is somewhat analogous to that of soldiers in combat — men (and women) who are motivated and held together by social cohesion. The early church lived within the Roman empire, and the presence of occupying soldiers served as an ever-present reminder that violence and death was never far away. The New Testament reflects this reality, and the language of warfare is often used as a description of the spiritual life.  The apostle writes: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds)” (2 Cor 10:3-4). And again: “This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience” (1 Tim 1:18-19). In his epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle exhorts them to put on their spiritual armor, reminding them: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12).

The early church saw itself as an army engaged in a spiritual battle. They were persecuted by the Roman Empire, which was a physical manifestation of the spiritual battles they faced together. This united them in common cause. Luke describes the situation of the primitive church in this manner:

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. …Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. (Acts 4:32, 34)

A study by the Strategic Studies Institute (Wong, et al) entitled Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War puts it this way:

Social cohesion appears to serve two roles in combat motivation. First, because of the close ties to other soldiers, it places a burden of responsibility on each soldier to achieve group success and protect the unit from harm. Soldiers feel that although their individual contribution to the group may be small, it is still a critical part of unit success and therefore important.

…This desire to contribute to the unit mission comes not from a commitment to the mission, but a social compact with the members of the primary group.

…The second role of cohesion is to provide the confidence and assurance that someone soldiers could trust was “watching their back.” This is not simply trusting in the competence, training, or commitment to the mission of another soldier, but trusting in someone they regarded as closer than a friend who was motivated to look out for their welfare. In the words of one infantryman, “You have got to trust them more than your mother, your father, or girlfriend, or your wife, or anybody. It becomes almost like your guardian angel.”

The presence of comrades imparts a reassuring belief that all will be well. As one soldier stated, “It is just like a big family. Nothing can come to you without going through them first. It is kind of comforting.” One soldier noted, “If he holds my back, then I will hold his, and nothing is going to go wrong.” Another added, “If you are going to war, you want to be able to trust the person who is beside you. If you are his friend, you know he is not going to let you down. . . . He is going to do his best to make sure that you don’t die.” (Wong, et al. 2003, 10-11)

Sebastian Junger, in the book War, describes the bond that unites people who have engaged in combat.

When men say they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at — you’d have to be deranged — it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life.

It’s such a pure, clean standard that men can completely remake themselves in war. You could be anything back home — shy, ugly, rich, poor, unpopular — and it won’t matter because it’s of no consequence in a firefight, and therefore of no consequence, period. The only thing that matters is your level of dedication to the rest of the group, and that is almost impossible to fake. (Junger 2010, 233-234)

As the apostle notes, the church of Jesus Christ engages in warfare against “principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” But whereas the armies of this world mete out death and destruction on a horrific scale, the armies of the Lord are content to die with Him, and for Him. Therein lies the fundamental difference between the armies of this world and the armies of the Lord. In his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges writes of “the narcotic of war that quickly transforms men into beasts”, and of “the ecstatic high of violence and the debilitating mental and physical destruction that comes with prolonged exposure to war’s addiction.” (Hedges 2002, 87) Whereas war turns men into beasts, engaging in spiritual battle has the opposite effect — it turns individuals into persons, and persons into sons of God. War is about death and desolation, whereas spiritual battle is about re-creation, sanctification, and ultimately about salvation.

Soldiers may enlist for reasons of ideology and patriotism, but men do not fight and die for an ideology. They will, however, fight and die for each other. (Junger 2010, 243) Chris Hedges, embedded with the Marines prior to the invasion of Iraq, reports the following conversation:

No one ever charges into battle for God and country. “Just remember,” a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, “that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other.” (Hedges 2002, 38)

It would be easy to say that the early church was the same way — that early Christians were motivated more by their love for each other than their love for the Lord. There are two factors to consider here. First, the primary motivation of the primitive church was the living memory of Jesus as proclaimed by those who knew him in his life, death, and resurrection. This apostolic witness, which was later written down for subsequent generations, was the primary motivation for the growth of the church. It must be understood that for the early church, this was not a matter of ideology, nor of mythology, but the passing on of eye-witness and personally verifiable accounts. The primitive church was filled with people who were eyewitnesses of the risen Lord. The apostle John reminds us of what he personally witnessed, saying that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (Joh 1:14). Jesus was not the subject of a dead ideology; instead, He is the risen Lord of all. The author of Hebrews notes of Christ: “both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11). Our Lord was made man, and remains yet a man; as Chalcedon says, He is: “consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted.” (P. Schaff, NPNF2-14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils 2005, 388) What was true of Christians in the early church is true of us today: we are His brothers, which makes us all brethren in Christ.

But secondly, we must not discount the degree to which the teachings of the apostles and the witness of the martyrs and confessors served to create and reinforce the social cohesion of the early church. There is a clear historical distinction to be made between the early church and the post-Constantine church. After the edict of Milan that made Christianity legal, it became socially respectable and financially advantageous to attach oneself to the church. The witness of Christ and for Christ was weakened, as was the essential brotherhood of all believers. The desire to recover the living witness and brotherhood of the early church in all its intensity was (and still remains) the primary reason for monasticism.

Bibliography

Hedges, Chris. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.

Junger, Sebastian. War. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2010.

Schaff, Philip. NPNF2-14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2005.

Wong, Leonard, Thomas A. Kolditz, Raymond A. Millen, and Terrence M. Potter. “Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War.” Strategic Studies Institute. July 2003. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub179.pdf (accessed August 9, 2010).

 

St. John of Krondstadt on the connection between the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation

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Jesus Christ, Emmanuel

Jesus Christ, Emmanuel

In order that the Lord may unite Himself with anybody, it is necessary that that man should be perfectly free from the impurity of sin and be adorned with virtues, or that he should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world; that he should acknowledge his sins, should sincerely condemn them, considering them foolish, and that he should ask with all his heart to be forgiven them, firmly intending not to sin again in future. It was in this manner that all the saints were united with the Lord and became holy.

Union with God is achieved either through a life of virtue or a life of repentance. The lives of the saints demonstrate that these are one and the same thing.  As St. Sisoe of the Desert said on his deathbed, (to the astonishment of his fellow monks): “I have not yet begun to repent.” Given this, what are we to make of the Virgin Mary? In what way was she worthy to become the Mother of God the Word, and is such a life possible for us?

How holy therefore must be our Lady, the Mother of God, with Whom God the Word Himself, the Light everlasting, was most truly united: ” the true light, Which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world,” [647] whom “the Holy Ghost came upon,” and whom “the power of the Most High overshadowed”! [648] How holy and most holy must be our Lady, the Mother of the Lord, Who became the temple of God, not made with hands, and was entirely penetrated, in all Her thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds, by the Holy Ghost, and from Whose blood the Creator Himself made flesh for Himself? Truly She is most holy, firm, steadfast, immovable, unchangeable throughout all eternity in Her most high, divine holiness, for the all-perfect God, Who humanly became Her Son, made Her all-perfect by reason of Her most great humility, Her love of purity and the source of purity, God; Her entire renunciation of the world, and Her attachment with all Her thoughts to the heavenly kingdom, and especially by reason of the fact that She became His Mother, carried Him in Her womb, and afterwards in Her most-pure arms, nourished with Her most-pure milk, Him Who feeds all creatures, cared for Him, caressed Him, suffered and sorrowed for Him, shed tears for Him, lived Her whole life for Him, for Him alone was wholly absorbed in His Spirit and was one heart, one soul with Him, one holiness with Him! O highest unity of love and holiness of the most-pure Virgin Mary and Her Divine Son, the Lord Jesus Christ! Wonderful, too, are God’s saints by their entire love for the Lord, by the streams of blood and sweat they shed out of love for the Lord.

The Virgin Mary is one of us. She was not conceived immaculately, as the Latins falsely claim, for then Our Lord would not have been fully human either. In the words of Irenaeus of Lyons” “For that which He [i.e. Christ] has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” If Mary was unique amongst humanity, then Jesus Christ partook of that uniqueness — in which case the efficacy of Christ’s saving work is called into question.

The Virgin Mary has been glorified in and by means of her humility. Of all of humanity, she was the first to “see Him as He is”. Therefore, when we honor the Virgin Mary, we honor the One who built for Himself a body of her flesh and blood, and became one of us. We honor the Virgin Mary for her renunciation of the world, and her total focus on her Son, Jesus Christ. The totality of focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, as shown in the life of the Virgin Mary, and indeed of all the saints, is not simply a curiosity, but a matter of life and death. Their example shows us the way to life everlasting. Thanks be to God.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch; St John of Kronstadt (2010-05-26). My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God (Kindle Locations 4453-4468).  . Kindle Edition.

St. John of Krondstadt on the Panagia

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The Great Panagia

The Great Panagia

You earth-born creatures, who have not purity, triumph in the fact that the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, has entirely and superabundantly attained the purity of soul and body unattainable to you; triumph in this, and pray to Her, that She may teach you and your children to pass your lives in purity in this corrupt world, so full of temptations. It is because of Her purity, humility, and virtues, and because She was found worthy of becoming the Mother of God the Word, that, when offering the bloodless sacrifice, we offer gratitude to the Heavenly Father, and say: “Especially to the Most Holy …. Glorious Lady, the Mother of God . . . .” [640] –that is, we offer to Thee our verbal service, glory, and thanksgiving.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch; St John of Kronstadt (2010-05-26). My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God (Kindle Locations 4426-4431). . Kindle Edition.