From Terry Mattingly here are 20 Ways to Control Television in Your Family's Life, or at least the ones that struck me:
1 - Have only one television set in the home. . . . Having only one set at least makes the family confront this imaginary [TV] world together.
3 - Children should never watch TV alone. If you stick with this rule, it will have an amazing impact on your whole family.
4 - Learn to program your VCR. Jay Leno says that whenever he visits his parents’ house, dozens of electronic gadgets are blinking “12:00, 12:00, 12:00.” That won’t do. If you can program your VCR, you can control what you watch and when you choose to watch it. You can mark up the local TV listings and tape the good stuff. This leads to the rule that we try to follow in our household. We strive to average watching only one hour of visual media a day—on tape. (As a journalist, I allow myself in addition one news show.)
5 - Have a greatest-hits shelf, containing taped programs that are worth repeated use. You might consider getting a “classic” movie cable channel, so that you can teach your children not to be prejudiced against the past.
8 - Talk back to the TV. Voice your opinions—especially on the moral and religious content in programs and even in advertisements. Let your children, every now and then, see you reject the content or the quality of a TV show or rented movie so completely that you turn it off.
9 - Allow no TV on Saturday mornings before noon. Ever. This is the time slot in which children are first hooked on niche culture, youth fads, and the idea that it is good for them to purchase their own identities at the mall. Saturday morning TV is a parent-free zone.
11 - Dare to consider this: No TV at all during Great Lent.
12 - Men! Dare to consider this: One sporting event a week on television. Women! Ditch Oprah, the high priestess of American pantheism.
13 - Whenever you can, read the books before you watch movies based on books, even if this means skipping a movie for some time. Why? You can teach children a great truth—that stories have creators that shape them and the values contained in them. Plus, there is more story in the book. That’s the real version.
14 - Understand what it means to purchase a VHS tape or a DVD. When you do this, you are recommending this movie or program to your children for repeated viewing. You are saying that there is something in it that we want to see many, many times. Why? Why is it that good? Have that conversation.
15 - It is good for parents to have a favorite TV show or movie and to explain to their children why it matters so much to them. We must confess that our entertainment choices affect us and say something about who we are.
17 - It’s okay to enjoy fun movies, even if they make little or no sense. God created fun. Silliness can be relaxing. Don’t let your children think you are a grouch all the time on media issues. Embrace the Pink Panther and Laurel and Hardy.
18 - Tell other parents about your rules and ask them for help when their children interact with your children. Share your rules with school personnel and after-school workers and ask for their help.
19 - Vocalize exceptions to the rules. We will all bend our media rules for special events, like the Olympics or “Alec Guinness Week” on Turner Classic Movies. But if we speak these exceptions out loud, it will only reinforce the rules and make them easier to understand.
20 - Demand positive, as well as negative, media feedback from your church leaders. Form an Internet circle for parents, in order to share info and views with friends. Post the addresses of helpful web sites on the church’s web site. Praise the good and pass on videocassettes.
And, yes, dare to talk to your priest about this part of your lives, including in confession. The condition that I call “separation of church and life” is a heresy.
Sofie has begun to be a bit more independent. Right now, this is a good thing.
A couple of examples. On Tuesday, Sofie took a long mid-day nap. Once she woke up, she spent most of the aternoon sitting on the futon next to Anna flipping through one of Anna's magazines and her own board books. They sat there together for most of the rest of the afternoon. Anna got up and did some odds and ends from time to time. Sofie stayed on the futon "reading." This would normally be considered unusual. In the recent past, when Anna's out of sight, Sofie is anxious--if she even let's Anna get out of sight.
This morning, Sofie got up at her normal time (five-o-dark-hundred). I knew she would be up till I left for work. I had hoped to pray the morning office, but was sure Sofie would demand my focused attention. Then I remembered Anna's recounting of Tuesday afternoon. So I thought I would try an experiment.
I sat Sofie on the futon with the "book of the morning"--the one she was attentive to today. I then lit the vigil lamp and invoked the Trinity. I crossed myself with the blessing cross and venerated it. Then it occurred to me: I need to include Sofie. So I walked over to the futon, signed her with the blessing cross and offered it to her to kiss, which she did. I then continued with the rest of my prayers.
Sofie didn't stay on the futon, but she did stay occupied, moving here and there playing with this and that. A couple of times she came up to me, wanting me to pick her up. While I continued to pray, I stroked her hair and signed the cross on her forehead. That seemed to satisfy her and she continued to play. Sofie played noisily, I don't hesitate to say. And with the need to keep half-an-eye on her to make sure she wasn't going to climb on or grab something that would result in her being hurt, I also don't hesitate to say that it wasn't an instance of the most focused attention I've ever given to my prayers. But maybe other parents out there will sympathize with me when I say that since Sofie was born, I don't often have the luxury of the sort of focused attention in worship that I once did.
Our prayers wound down. Sofie would sing in her own way when I sang the Gloria or other refrains and hymns. When it was over, I venerated our diptych of the Theotokos and the Pantokrator. I brought them over to Sofie where she was playing, and she kissed them, too.
Yes, this sort of independence is good. Call me in a decade and the sort of independence that will be on its way may not feel quite so good.
Thank God for everything.
The Incarnation and the Resurrection
The bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead follows necessarily from the Incarnation. If it was essential to God's work of accomplishing our salvation that Jesus be fully human and fully divine, that is to say, if it was essential that Jesus have a human body, then the human body is essential to the afterlife. We are not, after all, going to be disembodied spirits in heaven. If our salvation is accomplished bodily, then our resurrection from the dead will be a bodily one. This is borne out in the several resurrection narratives in the New Testament. In Luke 24:39-43, Jesus asks his disciples to “handle him” to see that it is he. He asks them for a piece of broiled fish, which he eats in their presence. In John 20:17, Jesus exhorts Mary Magdalene not to “cling to him” which she could not have done if he were an immaterial spirit. Later in the chapter, at 20:27, he encourages Thomas to put his fingers into the nail marks in his hands, and to place his hand into side. Given Thomas' reluctance to believe Jesus had risen from the dead without tangible proof, one would be hard pressed to understand Jesus' words in any other way than to indicate he is, indeed, a bodily presence. We may well question how it was the nail marks and the spear wound remained as tangible signs of the crucifixion in his resurrected body, but this does not take away from the central point: Jesus rose bodily from the dead. Paul himself continues in this tradition, in 1 Corinthians 15, explaining that the resurrection from death is essential to the Christian gospel, and that such a resurrection involves a body, though such a body is a spiritual one, different, if continuous, with our flesh and blood body.
More to the point, without the Incarnation, the Resurrection is a useless and unnecessary addendum. If there were no Incarnation, then either through moral striving, or through noetic enlightenment, or both, we have our salvation. We need no Resurrection because we need no bodily salvation. It is the bodily aspect of the Incarnation that demands a bodily Resurrection, even if that body is of a kind Paul can only describe as spiritual and heavenly.
Non-Christian religions, and Christian heresies, very much want to downplay or dismiss the Incarnation for an emphasis on the immaterial soul. The material world is maya, or worse, concretely evil. But this sort of understanding doesn't stand up to the sort of unconscious counterevidence we live each day. While many of us may prize, admire, and even envy, the intellectual acumen of our beloved, or the purity of their soul, in point of fact, we also want the body that goes along with that mind and soul. We may well one day discover what it is like to kiss telepathically, but I rather suppose few of us would enjoy it as much as the more conventional kissing we do. We may well miss the mere presence of our beloved when they are absent from us, but it is not a mere presence we wish to embrace. We prefer the warmth of body pressed to body, the tautness of the muscles executing the embrace, the scent of the hair, the fragrance of the perfume. We may occasionally engage in mental fantasy, but what we truly want is the humiliating joy of the sexual embrace. In short, our joy and satisfaction in our beloved is tied to a body. Does it not make sense that our future hope will not be something disembodied, but more truly embodied? I understand both the Scriptures and the Church Fathers and the Saints to affirm that there will be no sexual intercourse in heaven. But I cannot imagine that there will not be embrace.
But my own predilections aside, the logic of the Incarnation and the explicit texts of the Scriptures necessitate a bodily Resurrection. The Church Fathers have said emphatically that nothing that has not been assumed can be saved. Jesus, being fully human as well as fully divine, is the reality of not only a mind, a heart and a soul that is filled and transfigured with Life, but so, too, the flesh, the body. Union with God must include the transfiguration of the physical, if the Incarnation is what Christians claim it to be. God does not merely save our souls, he saves our bodies as well. We see this in the biblical accounts of Jesus' own bodily Resurrection, but in the accounts of the lives of the saints whose bodies withstood impossible physical travails, seeming impervious to the elements. Limbs did not freeze in subzero temperatures. Extremes of fasting did not destroy the flesh, for Life transfigured them and made real Christ's own words: they had food of which we do not know, for their food was to do the will of God.
The Resurrection, just as the Incarnation, is not only about the body, but it is not not about the body. Just as death involves soul and body, so the Resurrection involves soul and body. The principle of death lives in us physically, as well as morally and spiritually. Though we live in a society that takes great pains to hide the fact of death, we do not escape it's reality. We fall sick. We age. We grow old. But the grace of God is that from the moment of our new birth, we begin to experience the Resurrection. Death must still take its toll on us, just as our Lord had to suffer death. But just as death has been swallowed up in the death of Christ, so too, our baptismal death gives us a pledge of our inheritance, so that though outwardly day by day we waste away, inwardly we are being recreated in the new man (2 Corinthians 4:16).
Jennifer has an understandable reaction to the following piece from Touchstone's Mere Comments of 22 September. The author of the post, S M Hutchens writes:
The argument, made in the name of realism by a number of Evangelicals, that English is changing, so reason demands Bible translations must be altered to reflect changing usage, refuses to face head-on the essential question of whether these changes are being forced upon the culture by an anti-Christian ideology to put forward its views, and if so, what should be done about it by Christians. This position reminds me very much of the Christians who were willing to give the Hitler salute because the changing culture demanded it and they didn't really intend anything unorthodox by it. The question for both is, what do these changes stand for, and what is the Christian response? In our view, the grammatical changes in the TNIV reflect egalitarian ideology, which is not Christian, and is, indeed, the principal heresy the Church has been called upon to deal with and reject in this age. . . .
At Touchstone we rarely use the word "complementarian" because it seems to steer a bit shy of the rock of offense, which we believe needs to be clearly identified lest it be missed in all the fog thrown up by egalitarians: Christianity is a patriarchal faith which teaches that the Image of God is perfectly and completely expressed in a male human being--indeed, that maleness is the very sign of sexual inclusiveness. If one believes that in, by, through, and for Christ, none of whose characteristics, including his sex, are superfluous to his being, everything was made, everything subsists, and everything will be consummated, and understands the implications of this belief, he will reject egalitarianism and its grammar.
Whether or not this is a true example of Godwin's law (as the first respondent to Jennifer's post suggests), I'll leave for others to evaluate.
But the point Mr. Hutchens raises is germane: is egalitarianism Christian? If it is not, then the translations which reflect this theology are promoting heresy. If it is, then what does one do with a biblical text that is so often patriarchal? It would seem that it is encumbent upon Christians to alter their own sacred texts. But on what authority do we do that?
The Incarnation and Union with God
The Incarnation is the lynch pin to the Christian understanding of union with God. In some religions, union with God is accomplished through the acceptance of esoteric doctrines regarding God. In other religions, union with God is accomplished by the divesting of the illusion of selfhood and personhood, the melting, as it were, of oneself into the divine and impersonal essence. But in Christianity, union with God is accomplished only through the God-man, Christ. As Christ, himself, declared: No one comes to the Father, except through him (John 14:6). Union with God is accomplished in and through a particular Person.
Christianity is different from other religions in that union with God is accomplished by grace through faith. It does not preclude human striving, for Christians are called to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13). But it precludes any possibility of that union on the basis of human effort alone (Ephesians 2:8-10). Christianity is different in that, though it does require the acceptance of certain doctrines, of certain ways of life, for Christ called all Christians to be taught everything he commanded (Matthew 28:20), salvation is not accomplished on the basis of the acceptance of these doctrines alone. It is not merely an intellectual faith. It does not compartmentalize the intellect off from the body, the mind from the heart, the soul from the spirit. It is different also in that, though it does require the taking on of a certain form of living, for Christ called all Christians to obey everything he commanded (Matthew 28:20), salvation is not accomplished on the basis of human effort alone. It is not merely a religion of good deeds.
Christ is neither merely a divine Teacher, or merely a moral Exemplar: he is the Author of Life. Being the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word in whom all things were created, all that he says and does is Life. If we are in union with him, we are in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit, we have life in ourselves. This union with God, this indwelling within us of Life, is accomplished in a synergy of grace and faith with our free will. We will to receive him who comes to us. We will to partake of the divine nature revealed to us and manifest in us. This union is accomplished by grace, not by our mere human striving, through the means of faith, which we both freely will and freely receive as gift.
Contact with this Life within us does not leave us the same, but changes us, transfigures us. We cannot partake of the holy without ourselves being sanctified. We cannot be given life without becoming ever more alive. We must strive always to fight the principle of death which has infected our flesh, soul and spirit. And that striving is painful and costly. It is death to the death which infuses us. We must strive because the principle of free will is never abrogated. We may as freely reject the gift as we freely received it. Union is a process, a way of life, that cannot be said to have been accomplished until we are finally resurrected in the consummation of all things.
Just as Jesus is the union of the human and divine, and in this way, our only way to union with God, so the union with God is a transfiguration in that Life that affects heart, soul, mind and strength. It has been said that nothing that has not been assumed can be saved. Jesus, being fully human as well as fully divine, is the reality of not only a mind, a heart and a soul that is filled and transfigured with Life, but so, too, the flesh, the body. Our striving is not merely one of moral effort, of spiritual war, but a striving that involves “strength” our body. Christian theology is completely holistic: every nook and cranny of our lives is invaded by God's gracious energies. And that invasion, that whole union results in the transformation of all that we are, all the we do, all that we say and think.
This union with God, in short, is pervasive, involving the whole of a human being, body and soul, mind and heart. We know that it is completely transformative because of the relation of the Incarnation with the bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Ooops. I missed it. Talk Like a Pirate Day was a week ago Sunday. I first learned about Talk Like a Pirate Day while listening to the radio on my morning commute to work when I lived in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, I failed to write the date in my planner, and have, ever since, forgotten when Talk Like a Pirate Day was. Well, that, and it hasn't been marketed by Hallmark yet.
But thanks to a little googling, I came up with Dave Barry's column on Talk Like a Pirate Day from a couple of years ago. It gives some of the background.
So, I'll have to give a hearty "ARRRR!" to my mateys out there in the blogosphere and look forward to next year.
Oh, and you can call me:
Within weeks, the report from the Lambeth Commission, which met to discuss how to address the sharp disparity among Anglican bodies on the role of Scripture and tradition in the debates over human sexuality, will be made public. (It has already been delivered to the primates, as I understand it.)
As my Anglican brothers and sisters await the report and its implications, I want to commend the following publications put out by the Anglican Communion Institute (all are in .pdf format):
True Union in the Body? (against the creation of rites for the blessing of same sex unions, 2002)
Claiming Our Anglican Identity (a paper commissioned last year)
Communion and Discipline (a submission to the recently completed Lambeth Commission)
The Incarnation and the Trinity
Without the Incarnation, we would have no certain knowledge of the Trinity. We would have hints and indications, for our Christ-centered reading can now see them in the holy texts of the Old Testament. But we would have no clear revelation from God. Only the revelation of God in Christ makes known to us the fact that God is a Trinity of Persons. In the Son, God is revealed as the Father; in the Son we are given the promise of the Pentecostal advent of the Holy Spirit. Christ, himself, testified that he and the Father are one (John 10:30), and took on himself the holy Name, “I AM” (John 8:58). In Christ's birth, the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:35). In Christ's baptism, the Holy Spirit manifested himself with the Father and the Son (Luke 3:21-22). Apart from Christ there is no revelation of the Trinity.
This means that attacks on the reality of the Incarnation, arguments which seek to diminish the truth about Christ's Person, are also attacks and arguments against the teaching of the Trinity, and similarly, arguments against the Trinity are an attack on the Incarnation. If one seeks to diminish the Personhood of Christ, one will also diminish the Personhood of the Father and the Holy Spirit. But if we diminish the Personhood of the members of the Trinity, we no longer have a Trinity, but a variety of modes in which God manifests himself. We may still ascribe Personhood to God (as does Judaism and Islam), but we have no Trinity.
Yet if we have no Trinity, we have no Christianity. The belief in the Trinity is inscribed in the Nicene Creed, the only affirmation of faith accepted universally by all the Church. I do not mean to denigrate the other creeds (such as the Apostles' Creed) which have come down to us, but rather to emphasize that the one Creed which has universal acceptance from all the Church necessitates a Trinitarian understanding of God for all Christians. So, if we deny the Incarnation, we deny the Trinity which Christ revealed to us, and, in effect, we deny the Christian Faith.
I have drawn some sharp lines of demarcation here, with regard to the implications of the Incarnation and belief in the Trinity, a line which says, “This is Christian” and “This is not Christian.” But I want to emphasize why the conjoining of the Incarnation and the Trinity is both important and a blessing to us.
If God is not a Trinity of Persons, as Jesus revealed, then Christ is little more than an avatar, the embodiment of a divine principle or force, but not fully God. God is making a revelation in Christ, if Jesus is nothing but an avatar, but is not revealing himself (Hebrews 1:3). Furthermore, Jesus cannot be a unique manifestation of God, since there can be many avatars of God without diminishing other manifestations. Yet if Jesus is uniquely God, not only can he reveal God's Person, God himself, to us, but there can be no other manifestation of God that attains this revelation or reaches this height of glory. In other words, if there is no Trinity, as classically understood, then Jesus is not uniquely God in the flesh. He may be an avatar, but there may be greater avatars to come. Jesus need hardly be considered the last and greatest. Furthermore, if Jesus is only an avatar, he does not fully manifest God or the divine principle. He may represent the highest revelation yet known, but this hardly need be a complete and final revelation. Furthermore, if there were no Incarnation, we would have no knowledge of the Trinity. The two doctrines are inseparably connected at the point of the Person of Jesus.
The blessing of the revelation of the Trinity in the Incarnation is that God is revealed as both a unified essence and as a union of Persons. God is a unique being, a singular essence, of which like there is no other. If God were not a Person we would be hard pressed to avoid the risk of failing to distinguish this essence from any other unique physical or metaphysical essence. For all we know, God may just be something like gravity, or the mystical aether once thought to form the essence within which the universe existed. But if God is a Person, even a Person distinctly different from our human experience of personhood, then not only is he supremely unique, as he may be as a force, but more to the point, it is possible to have fellowship with him, for only persons can said to be in fellowship with one another. I have accidental encounters with rocks. I do not have fellowship with them. I may “know” rocks, but not in the same way I know my wife. Or, for that matter, God.
In other words, the Incarnation opens up the reality of the Trinity to us—dimly as we can comprehend it—which itself opens up the real possibility of relationship, fellowship with God. We can relate to God as persons. We need not annihilate our personhood so as to achieve some sort of impersonal union with an impersonal force or principle. We may, as it were, become ever more human, not less, in our fellowship with God.
Which brings me to the next implication of the Incarnation: the accomplishment of union between ourselves and God.
Word from the road yesterday is that Delane is out of ICU and is doing well. Thank you for your prayers. We are waiting now for suitable transplant organs.
Thursday morning we left for Tripp and Trish's wedding in Virginia. With us in the Toyota for the 1600-mile round trip were Justin and Mae (and here and here), themselves affianced and set to wed next summer. We made it to Princeton, West Virginia, stayed the night there, then went on into Lynchburg on Friday. On Saturday, I got a chance to drive over to Roanoke and visit my friend, Brent (scroll down to last picture), who's a philosophy professor at the college. It was a short visit, but we got to meet his daughter, Aubrey (born exactly one month before Sofie), and he and Aubrey got to meet Sofie.
Saturday was a beautiful day for a wedding: sunny blue skies and mild temperatures. The wedding and reception following was an amazing mix of diverse family and friends. I got to meet a couple of the people with whom I've interacted on Tripp's blog. One of them, on introducing herself to me remarked: "You're that annoying Orthodox convert." Yep. 'Spose so. But apparently my wife's charm overcame my annoying nature, and Kate has agreed to sew a dress for Anna. I also met Megan, with whom I've most vociferously disagreed in comments on Tripp's blog. Apparently, she and I both seperately remarked to Tripp that on meeting one another the universe did not implode as both matter and anti-matter actually shook hands.
The trip back on Sunday was a long one, but safe. It's now Monday, and I'm full-speed back into my normal week. At work all day today, then my class tonight.
You're now caught up.
The Reality of the Incarnation
Let's be absolutely clear on this: if one does not understand the Incarnation correctly, one will not live correctly other Christian doctrines. If one tends to emphasize the divine attributes of Jesus (and thus in some way to deny the human aspects), in sort of a Gnosticism or adoptionism, then one will emphasize belief over action, inner spiritual-emotional states over the pragmatic struggle of living in the ways Jesus lived, and participating in his life. If one tends to emphasize the human attributes of Jesus (and thus in some way to deny the divine aspects), in a sort of docetism, then one will emphasize the more superficial behavioral states of Christianity, indeed, to steer towards chilianism (the heresy of utopia) over the proper adherence to the Faith once for all delivered to the saints. Only a correct understanding of the Incarnation can keep the human being whole and avoid the anthropic schism which dehumanizes. Of course, being correct on the Incarnation does not guarantee correctness on other doctrines; one may still go wrong in some way. But the centrality of the Incarnation necessitates proper fidelity to God's revelation in Christ: it is the plumb line of the Christian Faith.
God's supreme revelation to humankind was not given in a nation, nor in a written text. God's last word to us is his Son (Hebrews 1.1-4). The fulfillment of his Covenant is the Person of Christ. There is nothing else left for God to do: his final will has been accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth, though it is clear that this accomplishment is even now being worked out in the final consummation of all things.
It is precisely this single ultimate revelation in Christ that is the focal point, the beginning and the end, of all Christian theology. If God did not take on human flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, then all that Jesus said and did, however we may construe it as noble and exemplary, is empty of meaning and promise. But if Jesus is whom he claimed to be, if the Second Person of the Trinity did, indeed, receive our humanity from Mary, then everything he said and did changes everything we say and do, all our thoughts and inner passions. If Jesus is he who is from everlasting, then every particle of our physical being, all the invisible inner stuff that makes us uniquely who we are, soul and spirit, thought and energy, bone and sinew, every breath and surge of blood, is changed, transfigured in the glory that is his.
The Incarnation matters. On it depends everything that ever was, is, or ever shall be.
From The Ascetic Life of Fr. Seraphim Rose, by Father Seraphim's spiritual son, Father Alexey Young:
I had the privilege of knowing him from 1966, around the time of the repose of St. Archbishop John Maximovitch, who was his spiritual father. Fr. Seraphim was a layman at that time--he didn't even have the famous beard of his later years, yet--, and then he became a Reader in the Cathedal shortly after I first met him.I do not know what his Cell Rule was, nor how many prostrations he did. He never spoke of it. He was a very private man. But I and others who were close to him know that he said The Prayer unceasingly and was probably a full hesychast in his last years. I never saw him without a prayer rope moving through his fingers.
He was extremely calm and peaceful at all times. I never saw him angry or agitated about anything (and I saw him in many different situations over the years), and only once ever saw him laugh. Yet he wasn't sour and downcast, either. Just very "still." He wasn't particularly outgoing, but always participated "normally" in situations, although he didn't dominate conversations. His voice was very quiet; you had to really listen in order to hear him, and his singing voice was tenor.
So far as I know, he kept only the usual monastic fast, which included the Fast of the Angels on Mondays. I was present at many, many meals over the years at the monastery. He always ate whatever was on his plate but never reached for seconds. Of course he never ate between meals, and always observed the monastic practice of never having food in his cell. Sometimes, when he was alone at the monastery (which wasn't often), he skipped meals, but this probably had more to do with being an "absent minded professor" than with any ascetic practice. In my home he ate normally, not skimping, but also never having seconds. I once asked him if he had any favorite food, favorite dishes, and he said that he didn't. When I asked the other monks they said they never had any idea of a favorite food, that he never spoke of food at all.
As an ascetic exercise, however, he wore a very heavy scratchy wool neck scarf around his throat, under his cassock, even in very hot weather. I didn't know about this until his last years when, once in a while, it would peek above the level of the neck of his cassock. When I asked the other monks about it they said it was an ascetic practice--like a hair shirt. He felt that unusual or extraordinary ascetic practices were not for our times, however. He said that just to be a good and decent and pious Orthodox Christian was already a huge "ascetic practice"! So he never gave a blessing to any of his spiritual children to do much beyond the normal fasting rules of the Church and the Morning and Evening Prayers in the prayerbook. He allowed me, at that time, to say The Prayer for no more than one half hour a day, and never assigned prostrations (except as appointed during weekday and lenten services) except as a penance. He felt that converts in particular tend to go overboard very easily and then they end up with what he called "spiritual indigestion." Better to go very slowly, he said, and always just "from strength to strength."
Fr. Seraphim took a "sponge bath" at a basin in his cell from time to time, but always took a thorough shower once a year, just before his annual visit to his mother. He never smelled and never looked unclean or dirty. As far as keeping "healthy" in any other ways, I was aware that he took a daily multi-vitamin, only out of obedience, but otherwise he had no interest whatever in health matters. I once asked him if he or the monastery had health insurance. He pointed up with his index finger and said (indicating heaven), "THAT is my 'health insurance'."
I had one or two experiences of his clairvoyance, where he literally read my mind (or rather, read my heart), but this was not a constant or frequent phenomenon in my experience. However, his prayers for someone were very powerful, and after his death I know personally of a very dramatic healing of someone from terminal cancer as a result of his intercession. He clearly is a man for our times. The late Archbishop Anthony of San Francisco said that he was the "first" genuine American "podvizhnik" ("righteous struggler"), and so therefore an example to us all. On the fortieth day after his repose, the late saintly Bishop Nektary--who knew him very well--spontaneously sang a "Magnification" to him as a monk-saint, so this constituted the very first "local veneration" of him. Fr. Seraphim was probably the first authentic patristic scholar in the English language. He would never have said this about himself, of course, but it's true.
At 11:09 in the a.m., on this date way back when, I came into the world prematurely. At five pounds, fifteen inches, I was a tiny thing, and had to be on oxygen for a couple of weeks. I was two weeks old before my mother could even hold me. But I clearly survived my beginnings with plentiful food, plentiful hugs, and just darn good parenting. I sure ain't the tiny thing I once was.
For all the good that my life has been, thanks be to my parents and to God. For all the bad, well, that's my fault.
Today also happens to be the leavetaking of the feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross and the feast day of St. Quadratus, Bishop of Athens. From the Orthodox Church in America website:
Saint Quadratus, Apostle of the 70 preached the Word of God at Athens and at Magnesia (eastern peninsula of Thessaly), and was Bishop of Athens. His biographer called him "a morning star" among the clouds of paganism. He converted many pagans to the true faith in Christ the Savior, and his preaching aroused the hatred of the pagans. Once, an angry mob fell upon the saint to pelt him with stones. Preserved by God, St. Quadratus remained alive, and they threw him into prison, where he died of starvation. His holy body was buried in Magnesia.
In the year 126, St. Quadratus wrote an Apologia in defence of Christianity. Presented to the emperor Hadrian (117-138), the Apologia affected the persecution of Christians, since the emperor issued a decree saying that no one should be convicted without just cause. This Apologia was known to the historian Eusebios in the fourth century. At the present time, only part of this Apologia survives, quoted by Eusebios: "The deeds of our Savior were always witnessed, because they were true. His healings and raising people from the dead were visible not only when they were healed and raised, but always. They lived not only during the existence of the Savior upon the earth, but they also remained alive long after His departure. Some, indeed, have survived to our own time."
Troparion of St Quadratus Tone 1
Thy life became radiant with wisdom; thou didst draw down the fire of the Spirit/ and discern the doctrines of life,/ Quadratus, Apostle of Christ./ We cry to thee as to an enlightener:/ Glory to Christ Who has glorified thee; glory to Him Who has crowned thee:/ glory to Him Who through thee works healings for all.
Kontakion of St Quadratus Tone 8
O Lord, the world offers to Thee the Apostle Quadratus as a holy Hierarch and Martyr./ As we hymn his memory we pray Thee/ to grant forgiveness to those who sing: Alleluia.
Annie Dillard ends her meditations with a prayer for Julie.
There is Julie Norwich. Julie Norwich is salted with fire. She is preserved like a salted fillet from all evil, baptized at birth into time and now into eternity, into the bladelike arms of God. For who will love her now, without a face, when women with faces abound, and people are so? People are reasoned, while God is mad. They love only beauty; who knows what God loves? Happy birthday, little one and wise: you got there early, the easy way. The world knew you before you knew the world. The gods in their boyish, brutal games bore you like a torch, a firebrand, recklessly over the heavens, to the glance of the one God, fathomless and mild, dissolving you into the sheets.
You might as well be a nun. You might as well be God's chaste bride, chased by plunderers to the high caves of solitude, to the hearthless rooms empty of voices, and of warm limbs hooking your heart to the world. Look how he loves you! Are you bandaged now, or loose in a sterilized room? Wait till they hand you a mirror, if you can hold one, and know what it means. That skinlessness, that black shroud of flesh in strips on your skull, is your veil. There are two kinds of nuns, out of the cloister or in. You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work. Forget whistling: you have no lips for that, or for kissing the face of a man or a child. Learn Latin, an it please my Lord, learn the foolish downward look called Custody of the Eyes.
And learn power, however sweet they call you, learn power, the smash of the holy once more, and signed by its name. Be victim to abruptness and seizures, events intercalated, swellings of heart. You'll climb trees. You won't be able to sleep, or need to, for the joy of it. Mornings, when light spreads over the pastures like wings, and fans a secret color into everything, and beats the trees senseless with beauty, so that you can't tell whether the beauty is in the trees--dazzling in cells like yellow sparks or green flashing waters--or on them--a transfiguring silver air charged with the wings' invisible motion; mornings, you won't be able to walk for the power of it: earth's too round. And by long and waking day--Sext, None, Vespers--when the grasses, living or dead, drowse while the sun reels, or lash in any wind, when sparrows hush and tides slack at the ebb, or flood up the beaches and cliffsides tangled with weed, and hay waits, and elsewhere people buy shoes--then you kneel, clattering with thoughts, ill, or some days erupting, some days holding the altar rail, gripping the brass-bolt altar rail, so you won't fly. Do you think I don't believe this? You have no idea, none. And nights? Nights after Compline under the ribs of Orion, nights in rooms at lamps or windows like moths? Nights you see Deneb, one-eyed over the trees; you vanish into the sheets, shrunken, your eyes bright as candles and as sightless, exhausted. Nights Murzim, Arcturus, Aldebaran in the Bull: You cry, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! Held, held fast by love in the world like the moth in wax, your life a wick, your head on fire with prayer, held utterly, outside and in, you sleep alone, if you call that alone, you cry God.
Julie Norwich; I know. Surgeons will fix your face. This will all be a dream, an anecdote, something to tell your husband one night: I was burned. Or if you're scarred, you're scarred. People love the good not much less than the beautiful, and the happy as well, or even just the living, for the world of it all, and heart's home. You'll dress your own children, sticking their arms through the sleeves. Mornings you'll whistle, full of the pleasure of days, and afternoons this or that, and nights cry love. So live. I'll be the nun for you. I am now.
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
Today is Friday, November 20. Julie Norwich is in the hospital, burned; we can get no word of her condition. People released from burn wards, I read once, have a very high suicide rate. They had not realized, before they were burned, that life could include such suffering, nor that they personally could be permitted such pain. No drugs ease the pain of third-degree burns, because burns destroy skin: the drugs simply leak into the sheets. His disciples asked Christ about a roadside beggar who had been blind from birth, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" And Christ, who spat on the ground, made a mud of his spittle and clay, plastered the mud over the man's eyes, and gave him sight, answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the words of God should be made manifest in him." Really? If we take this answer to refer to the affliction itself--and not the subsequent cure--as "God's works made manifest," then we have, along with "Not as the world gives do I give unto you," two meager, baffling, and infuriating answers to one of the few questions worth asking, to wit, What in the Sam Hill is going on here?
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do? . . .
Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a "spiritual scale," and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of the substance is: Holy the Firm.
Holy the Firm: and is Holy the Firm in touch with metals and minerals? With salts and earths? O fcourse, and straight on up, till "up" ends by curing back. Does something that touched something that touched Holy the Firm in touch with the Absolute at base seep into ground water, into grain; are islands rooted in it, and trees? Of course. . . .
But if Holy the Firm is "underneath salts," if Holy the Firm is matter at its dullest, Aristotle's materia prima, absolute zero, and since Holy the Firm is in touch with the Absolute at base, then the circle is unbroken. And it is. Thought advances, and the world creates itself, by the gradual positing of, and belief in, a series of bright ideas. Time and space are in touch with the Absolute at base. Eternity sockets twice into time and space curves, bound and bound by idea. Matter and spirit are of a piece but distinguishable; God has a stake guaranteed in all the world. And the universe is real and not a dream, not a manufacture of the sense; subject may know object, knowledge may proceed, and Holy the Firm is in short the philosopher's stone.
***
These are only ideas, by the single handful. Lines, lines, and their infinite points! Hold hands and crack the whip, and yank the Absolute out of there and into the light, God pale and astounded, spraying a spiral of salts and earths, God footloose and flung. And cry down the line to his passing white ear, "Old Sir! Do you hold space from buckling by a finger in its hold? O Old! Where is your other hand?" His right hand is clenching, calm, round the exploding left hand of Holy the Firm
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
Facing squarely the rock mountain and the salt sea, the airplane fallen from the sky, and little Julie Norwich burned, Annie Dillard is ready. Am I?
I know only enough of God to worship him, by any means ready to hand. There is an anomalous specificity to all our experience in space, a scandal of particularity, by which God burgeons up or showers down into the shabbiest of occasions, and leaves his creation's dealings with him in the hands of purblind and clumsy amateurs. This is all we are and all we ever were: God kann nicht anders. This process in time is history; in space, at such shocking random, it is mystery. . . .
There is one church here, so I go to it. On Sunday mornings I quit the house and wander down the hill to the white frame church in the firs. On a big Sunday there might be twenty of us there; often I am the only person under sixty, and feel as though I'm on an archaeological tour of Soviet Russia. The members are of mixed denominations; the minister is a Congregationalist, and wears a white shirt. The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world--for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God's grace to all--in the middle of this he stopped, and burst out, "Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week." After a shocked pause, he continued reading the prayer. Because of this, I like him very much. "Good morning!" he says after the first hymn and invocation, startling me witless every time, and we all shout back, "Good morning!" . . .
The higher Christian churches--where, if anywhere, I belong--come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
Julie Norwich lies burned in the hospital. Annie Dillard continues her meditation.
So I read. Angels, I read, belong to nine different orders. Seraphs are the highest; they are aflame with love for God, and stand closer to him than the others. Seraphs love God; cherubs, who are second, possess perfect knowledge of him. So love is greater than knowledge; how could I have forgotten? The seraphs are born of a stream of fire issuing from under God's throne. They are, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, "all wings," having, as Isaiah noted, six wings apiece, two of which they fold over their eyes. Moving perpetually toward God, they perpetually praise him, crying Holy, Holy, Holy. . . . But, according to some rabbinic writings, they can sing only the first "Holy" before the intensity of their love ignites them again and dissolves them again, perpetually, into flames. "Abandon everything," Dionysius told his disciple. "God despises ideas."
God despises everything, apparently. If he abandoned us, slashing creation loose at its base from any roots in the real: and if we in turn abandon everything--all these illusions of time and space and lives--in order to love only the real: then where are we? Thought itself is impossible, for subject can have no guaranteed connection with object, nor any object with God. Knowledge is impossible. We are precisely nowhere, sinking on an entirely imaginary ice floe, into entirely imaginary seas themselves adrift. Then we reel out love's long line alone toward a God less lovable than a grasshead, who treats us less well than we treat our lawns.
Of faith, I have nothing, only of truth: that this one God is a brute and a traitor, abandoning us to time, to necessity and the engines of matter unhinged. This is no leap; this is evidence of things seen: one Julie, one sorrow, one sensation bewildering the heart, and enraging the mind, and causing me to look at the world stuff apalled, at the blithering rock of trees in a random wind, at my hand like some gibberish sprouted, my fist opening and closing, so that I think, Have I once turned my hand in this circus, have I ever called it home? . . .
Faith would be, in short, that God has any willful connection with time whatsoever, and with us. For I know it as given that God is all good. And I take it also as given that whatever he touches has meaning, if only in his mysterious terms, the which I readily grant. The question is, then, whether God touches anything. Is anything firm, or is time on the loose? Did Christ descend once and for all to no purpose, in a kind of divine and kenotic suicide, or ascend once and for all, pulling his cross up after him like a rope ladder home? Is there--even if Christ holds the tip of things fast and stretches eternity clear to the dim souls of men--is there no link at the base of things, some kernel or air deep in the matrix of matter from which universe furls like a ribbon twined into time?
Has God a hand in this? Then it is a good hand. But has he a hand in it at all? Or is he a holy fire burning self-contained for power's sake alone? Then he knows himself blissfully as flame unconsuming, as all brilliance and beauty and power, and the rest of us can go hang. Then the accidental universe spins mute, obedient only to its own gross terms, meaningless, out of mind, and alone. The universe is neither contingent upon nor participant in the holy, in being itself, the real, the power play of fire. The universe is illusion merely, not one speck of it real, and we are not only its victims, falling always into or smashed by a planet slung by its sun--but also its captives, bound by the mineral-made ropes of o ur senses.
But how do we know--how could we know--that the real is there? By what freak chance does the skin of illusion ever split, and reveal to us the real, which seems to know us by name, and by what freak chance and why did the capacity to prehend it evolve?
I sit at the window, chewing the bones in my wrist. Pray for them: for Julie, for Jesse her father, for Ann her mother, pray. Who will teach us to pray?
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
I continue to swallow the necessary medicine. Dillard continues:
Jesse her father had grabbed her clear of the plane this morning, and was hauling her off when the fuel blew. A gob of flung ignited vapor hit her face, or something flaming from the plane or fir tree hit her face. No one else was burned, or hurt in any way.
***
So this is where we are. Ashes, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparenntly perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the millstones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other--for world and all the products of extension--is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
The routine: supper, bath, book, Our Father, lights out, Church hymns, bed. This is what it takes to get Sofie to sleep, though by seven or so in the evening, she's a willing accomplice to the whole thing. And really, once the bath is over, the rest takes just minutes.
In a darkened nursery, with your daughter in your arms, having prayed the Our Father, with the Phos hilaron and the Nunc dimittis on your lips, sometimes the questions are stilled. At least for a while.
One is not wrong to take brief comfort in that.
"Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me." (Psalm 131:2)
In 1975, Annie Dillard spent some time on the islands of Puget Sound. In the course of a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in November, a plane crashed on the island. From the events of that week, she wrote a book, Holy the Firm. I am reading it now because I need to. Here are some excerpts.
I came here to study hard things--rock mountain and salt sea--and to temper my spirit on their edges. "Teach me thy ways, O Lord" is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend. . . .
Into this world falls a plane.
The earth is a mineral speckle planted in trees. The plane snagged its wing on a tree, fluttered in a tiny arc, and struggled down.
I heard it go. The cat looked up. There was no reason: the plane's engine simply stilled after takeoff, and the light plane failed to clear the firs. It fell easily; one wing snagged on a fir top; the metal fell down the air and smashed in the thin woods where cattle browse; the fuel exploded; and Julie Norwich seven years old burnt off her face.
Little Julie mute in some room at St. Joe's now, drugs dissolving into the sheets. Little Julie with her eyes naked and spherical, baffled. Can you scream without lips? Yes. But do children in long pain scream?
It is November 19 and no wind, and no hope of heaven, and no wish for heaven, since the meanest of people show more mercy than hounding and terrorist gods. . . .
The volunteer firemen have mustered; the fire trucks have come--stampeding Shuller's sheep--and gone, bearing burnt Julie and Jesse her father to the emergency room in town, leaving the rest of us to gossip, fight grass fires on the airstrip, and pray, or wander from window to window, fierce.
So she is burnt on her face and neck, Julie Norwich. The one whose teeth are short in a row, Jesse and Ann's oldest, red-kneed, green-socked, carrying cats.
--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977)
The kick in the crotch that life sometimes brings does it's job. It focuses one's attention.
Trouble is: where's that attention focused?
I've slightly rearranged the links running down the left side of this blog. I've moved the group of links to Orthodox sites to the top, and added a group of links to Scriptures and Patristics. These links are to Greek and Latin resources: Greek and Latin Bibles; Latin Rule of St. Benedict, one of my patrons; and patristic resources (some in Greek). Links to the Orthodox blogs, and all the other myriad blogs I read, follow.
UPDATE
I've now added a link to the Hebrew Scriptures (i. e., the Old Testament sans "Apocrypha").
My resume? I have a bachelor's degree in theology, and MA in contemporary philosophy and theology, and soon-to-be-finished master's degree in theological studies, and, for good measure, I'm nearing the end of a doctoral degree in philosophy.
And I am as dumb as a friggin' post. No, really. I am one hundred percent @*!%-ing stupid.
Anna spoke with Delane last night. You want to know where the ultimately unusable organs came from? Death from the hurricanes. That's right, Ms. Frances provided moments of hope for my brother-in-law. Is it understandable that Delane watches Ivan with an interest I myself cannot know?
What the hell is going on? I don't know. I'm too stupid to get it.
This latest development with Anna's brother, Delane, I think has become the last straw for me. I. Am. Angry. These are not feast day meditations. But they are what they are.
I am Psalm 77:8-9 angry. "Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forevermore? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?" I am Job 7:11 angry. "Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul." I am pointing the accusing finger. I want answers. I want results. I want Delane healed and whole. I want his children to have a father who will give his daughter away in marriage, who will give his fatherly advice to sons who act like they don't want to hear but secretly long for it. I want him to bounce grandchildren on his knees.
This three years of suffering is a manifest evil. It is wrong. I have a just complaint. Where are these miracles that others testify of? Where is this healing we are promised? I want God to act. I want death and corruption to be put to death. Do we not sing about this every Divine Liturgy? Are these just words?
Where is the power of God? I want an answer. Why does he not act? How much suffering must a man endure before God brings healing? How many of Delane's loved ones must have their faith stretched to the breaking point? Does God want to destroy faith? This endless cycle of hope and disappointment is just a hellish injustice. How much can one take?
[Note: This is the first post of a multi-part essay on the Incarnation.]
Introduction
It all starts with the Incarnation. Take away the Incarnation and all of Christian theology falls apart. Christianity is utterly unique—whatever similarities it shares with other faiths—on this one point alone: it teaches as non-negotiable dogma that Jesus is God-made-flesh. Take that away and the doctrine of the Trinity falls apart, as does the promise inherent in Jesus' bodily Resurrection from the dead, and of union with God in Christ. So, too, does the doctrine of the Church and her Sacraments, as well as the proper understanding of Mary. All of these uniquely Christian doctrines, these ways of life, are emptied of any reality if the Incarnation is taken away.
This is why insistence on absolute fidelity to the Christian teaching and way of life on the Incarnation is crucial. Everything uniquely Christian about our faith depends on it. If you go wrong on the Incarnation, you cannot go right on any other doctrine. In terms of the standard on Christian teaching on the Incarnation, one must look to the definition given at the council of Chalcedon (here):
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us.
Simply put: in Jesus' one Person are two natures and two wills, human and divine, operating in perfect union and harmony, providing for us in his Person a bridge to the Father, and not a bridge only but the single means of union with God, of a partaking of the divine nature.
On a Saturday a lot like this one, eleven years ago, one Anna Geno said "I do" to this ol' goof. I've been counting my blessings ever since.
Praise the Lord for a good woman!
In an earlier post, I was sincerely and most conscientiously attempting to avoid the overtly political, and the consequences of/responses to that post showed most clearly my failure to do so. In this post, therefore, I am most sincerely and most conscientiously attempting to speak directly of the political and give most concretely my individual opinion.
Here it is: What are the Kerry campaign, the Democrats, and their allies thinking?
Kerry and Co. got schlocked by the anti-Kerry Swift Boat 527 in July and August, despite Kerry's almost obsessive focus on his military war record, which was most vividly on display at the DNC in June. [Bush had been getting his own schellacking from all the anti-Bush/Democratic 527s like MoveOn.org, the Media Fund (Harold Ickes' group), America Coming Together (the Rosenthal-led Soros-Lewis group).] Almost every pundit and Democratic strategist and their dog told Kerry to get the frick-frack away from Vietnam. Get back to the issues of the economy, health care, and Social Security. Indeed, there was that much-touted leak of the 90-minute Clinton-Kerry phone call giving essentially the same advice.
So what happens? This week we return to Vietnam and revisit (for the latest of several go-'rounds) Bush's National Guard service. This seems very much like a losing strategy. It didn't keep Bush out of the governor's office (or boot him out of it), nor did it keep him from the Oval Office. But maybe third-time's-the-charm? I don't know.
But aside from the questionable strategy, now the thing has absolutely blown up in their faces: there is significant doubt about the documents alleging some sort of malfeasance in the Bush camp vis-a-vis his National Guard duty. There's recanted sworn testimony and allegedly forged documents. Everyone and their dog is backing away from these documents. Not only is Bush's service now no longer in the spotlight, the story itself is a story. This may well be one of the most devastating blows to attacks on Bush's military service: the credibility factor for every subsequent attack will now be front-and-center. Instead of the attack getting the focus, the bona fides of the attack will garner the scrutiny.
But if this isn't bad enough, next week the infamous Kitty Kelly, mudraking biographer, will reportedly be spending three days--three days!--on the Today show alone. If I were John Kerry and the Democrats, why in the name of all that's rational would I remotely think of aligning myself with the attacks of a disreputable author?
If I may venture a prediction here? These two weeks will have done more to undermine the credibility of anti-Bush attacks than anything the Bush folks themselves could have cooked up. In short, barring some unforeseen, previously unknown, fatally egregious and one hundred percent verifiable Bush foul-up (past or present), the anti-Bush crowd has done more to protect President Bush from criticism--to in effect, coat him with Teflon--than anything the pro-Bushies could have ever hoped to have done in their most wild imaginations.
How does Kerry "recover" from this? It's hard to say. At the end of next week, there will be only six weeks till the election. That can be an eternity, in some respects, but it is also a very, very short time. Kerry needs to finally listen to his handlers and advisers: Get off the war and get on the issues! Granted, the economy has solidified, according to the Fed Chairman, and the polling seems to suggest that the electorate is responding favorably if not overwhelmingly so to Bush's policies on Social Security and health care. But the military thing is a proven albatross around the neck. And ultimately, the issues are the only things voters really want to know.
What does Kerry stand for, in policy terms, on the economy, health care and Social Security? I know he has a platform, but no one knows what it is. And that's my point. All we know is that he served in Vietnam. We haven't heard a thing about his service in the Senate. If "Give-'em-Zell" Miller got it all wrong during the RNC, we wouldn't know it, because Kerry and Co. hasn't shown us how it was wrong.
Like Bush or no, at least one has the ability to disagree with him: we know that Bush holds to military pre-emption, we know his stance on faith-based social programs, his stance on marriage, abortion and stem cell research, what he wants to do with Social Security, what he's done with Medicare, etc. Why doesn't Kerry run on his record rather than his Vietnam service? I can understand that in the beginning he might want to emphasize his military record as a counterfoil to Bush and the war in Iraq. But it is a proven losing strategy. It's time to say clearly what he's for and how that differs from Bush.
It's one thing to run on anti-Bush sentiment. But that can only take a candidate so far. Eventually people are going to want to know not what you're against (Bush in the White House) but what you're for (_________?).
There. There's my overt politickin' for now.
In the provocative Priesthood and the Masculinity of Christ, R. Mary Hayden Lemmons argues the following point:
The refusal of the Catholic Church to ordain women as priests has left many feeling that the Church considers women to be inferior to men. They have difficulty reconciling the Church's proclamations of sexual equality with the 1994 papal argument of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. In that document, John Paul II reaffirmed the 1977 teaching of Inter Insigniores and proclaims that the Church lacks the authority to ordain women, since Christ did not appoint women as apostles and since the historical tradition has restricted priestly ordination to men.
These papal arguments have not been very persuasive due to the common conviction that equality requires gender neutrality--even within the ministries of Christ. If this were so, masculinity would be irrelevant for the mission of Christ. But this is not true. The masculinity of Christ is crucial to his mission of remedying the effects of original sin.
According to Genesis, original sin deprived the human race of its original unity with God and deeply affected the original unity of man and woman. As a result, Christ had an humanitarian mission to restore unity with God and a gender mission to restore heterosexual unity. The humanitarian mission required that Christ be fully human and fully God. Accordingly, since women are as human as men, God could have incarnated as a woman. A female Christ could have restored the human race to its original unity with God. It is not Christ's humanitarian mission that required Christ to be male.
The maleness of Christ is required to restore the unity between men and women disrupted by original sin. Genesis 3:16 says, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." This passage indicates three gender consequences of original sin: the excessive desire or obsession of women for their men, male domination over women and sexual inequality. Freeing the human race from these consequences of original sin constitute Christ's gender mission.
These consequences are significant. In his letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, John Paul II identifies male domination with chauvinism and blames it for the many ways in which women suffer from the lack of proper appreciation for her equality and dignity. Chauvinism—as a consequence of Original sin—required that the Christ be a man. Due to chauvinism, a female Christ would not have been recognized by men as being their lord, their rabbi, their savior. Christ exemplified sacrificial love, which chauvinism identifies as a weakness and as a peculiarity of women. According to chauvinism, maleness is about power, independence, and control. Not so, taught Christ. Rather, masculinity is for the sake of pouring out one's life for another in love, not for the sake of dominating self-gratification.
Fallen women also needed Christ to be incarnated as a man-and not only to teach men a lesson. Original sin weakened femininity to the point where it blinded women to the truth about her desire for love. Original sin derailed woman's transcendent passion for God with an egocentric passion for man-for a Mr. Right able to satisfy the yearnings of her heart. Fallen woman thus assumes either that Mr. Right will be perfect or that accommodating his chauvinism will be the sacrifice that enables her to be loved. Thus, woman needs not only to be freed from the harms of chauvinism but also from the misdirection of her desire. Women need to learn not only that there can only be one perfect man, Jesus Christ, but also that men need not be chauvinistic. If Christ had been incarnated as a woman, these lessons would have been untaught. Thus, the gender mission of Christ required Christ to be incarnated as a man for the sake of women as well as for the sake of men.
If Christ had to be incarnated as a man in order to fulfill his gender mission, then it is not possible for women to undertake this mission. If it is not possible for women to undertake the gender mission, then it is not possible for women to be ordained Catholic priests. For the Catholic priest images Christ in his gender mission as well as in his humanitarian mission. This is particularly the case since the Catholic Church was founded to counter the effects of Original Sin.
[Via Touchstone's Mere Comments (third item down).]
Notes one respondent to this article at the Touchstone blog: “This argument is literally nonsensical to our contemporaries, including our Christian ones.” Writes Fr. David Mills: "A good friend, an 'complementarian' [one who holds traditional sex distinctions] Evangelical who lives and works in egalitarian Evangelical circles, sometimes sends similar articles to his e-mail circle. He always gets snarky responses like 'The road of sanctification has nothing to do with gender' and pseudo-scholarly rebukes that he is 'privileging' the 1950s or the Victorian period, which were supposedly the origin of the conservative view of 'gender relations.'
"The answers are often revealing. His perky friend mapping out the road to sanctification did not seem to realize that her statement is straightforwardly Gnostic. I mean, how can sanctification have nothing to do with sex, when we are embodied, therefore sexed, creatures?
"And if that is true, might it also be true that as the sexes are different, so their ways to sanctification might be different? And if that is true, might it also be true that each has a role to play in the sanctification of the other? As God made sexual difference necessary to the regeneration of the species, indeed to the creation of new human souls, might He have made sexual difference necessary to its redemption? The Christian mind, uninfluenced by modern ideas of sexual identity, naturally answers yes to the second and third questions, I think."
On Monday night, newly rented DVD in hand, I watched, for the first time, Mel Gibson's phenomenal movie "The Passion of the Christ." I cannot express how powerfully moved I was.
By that I do not mean simply emotionally moved. I was moved emotionally. Primarily by the scene, early on in the movie, of Peter's betrayal and his guilt and self-condemnation. Almost as powerfully by the scene in which the Theotokos hold's her Son's lifeless body and looks directly into the camera--and thus straight into one's own eyes. I was ready for the scene, expecting it, because I'd already read about it. But I was not prepared for the existential impact: I did this, not anyone else, me--by my own fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault. The subversive hatred and fear of the Jewish elders, the sadism of the Roman torturers, the spitting of the crowd--Mary's gaze brought home the brutal, ugly reality: it was all my fault. The tortured cry of Christ: "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?" felt like sharp iron thrust through me, both an indictment and my own cry in the desolation of my mortality, sin and guilt. It was strong, strong stuff.
Now I'm in a dilemma. I purchase movies for my own home collection primarily to relive the experience. That experience may be oriented around ideas and writing and story line, or it may be the thrill of the experience of good moviemaking. But how could I justify my purchase of "The Passion" on these grounds? Somehow buying "The Passion" for the experience of it seems horribly narcissistic and self-centered: which is precisely why the events depicted in "The Passion" happened!
But what would be an appropriate reason? Not for the experience, surely, at least not solely or even primarily. But what about as something like an icon? Icons are meant to be "windows into heaven" as the proverbial saying goes. They are meant to give us glimpses into divine realities. "The Passion" surely does that. This, then, would be both an appropriate and honorable reason for purchasing the DVD, it seems to me.
Still, there is a distinct difference between icons and a movie. Both are stylized--Gibson's graphic depiction of the physical violence of course is highly stylized. Both point to realities, godly realities, beyond themselves. Yet I remain in ambiguity.
I'm not sure how to articulate my hesitation. It's not as though icons depicting the crucifixion are bloodless, though some are more bloody than others. And it's not a case of simply wondering whether my mental iconography of the Passion should be the traditional iconography of the Church as opposed to the one of the film. There are a variety of traditional icons, each with their own distinctive emphases, and the one that lodges in one's mind will be the one that shapes one's primary responses to the Passion. Nor is it the case that the film excites the passions (grief, conviction, etc.), whereas traditional icons invite contemplation. One of the most moving icons I've ever experienced is the first one I came across of the "Extreme Humiliation" depicting Christ's repose in the tomb. And Gibson's "The Passion" has unleashed some sincere contemplation within me in the past couple of days.
What the ambiguity also is not, is some sort of concern over soteriological doctrine. Enough wise Orthodox have responded to that issue to quell any concern on my part on whether "The Passion of the Christ" can be meaningfully appropriated by Orthodox Christians. Nor is it a matter of the sort of aversion to mass popularity. I think it mostly true that if most of a consumerist, narcissistic society is for something, one should pause and reflect, and then avoid it. But though "The Passion" turned into something of a cultural phenomenon, I don't hesitate to appropriate it for my home on that basis alone.
But still I hesitate. And I'm not sure why. Is it that traditional icons have something that "The Passion of the Christ" does not have? Traditional icons have the considered experience of the Church over time. "The Passion" is too new. However, that is not usually a conscious consideration on my part, in whatever way it may play a significant unconscious role. Is it that, as a new father, and as an inquirer into Orthodoxy, my role as "priest" in the home has taken on ever-larger significance and seriousness? Am I hesistant because I am unsure of the effects on my family and our piety? Perhaps. But again, not in an overtly conscious way.
In the end, I have no real way to articulate my hesitation. "The Passion of the Christ" is one of the most important movies I've ever seen. And I'm not sure if I want to add it to my home collection. Why that is, I cannot say.
From the Zenit News Agency, an article citing research establishing the biological foundation of behavioral differences between the sexes:
Nevertheless, Rhoads argues that "Men and women still have different natures and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests." In support of this affirmation he cites research from a number of sources demonstrating that the behavioral and psychological differences between men and women are in fact real, and not due to social conditioning.
Some sex-difference research has identified the hormonal environment of fetuses in mothers' wombs as a factor explaining differences between male and female behavior. And neuroscientists have found that men have fewer connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, with men's brains in general being more compartmentalized than women's.
Male-female divergences are evident from the earliest age, notes Rhoads. Even 1-day-old infants show behavioral differences, with females responding more strongly to the sound of crying. Three-day-old girls maintain eye contact with a silent adult for twice as long as boys. And 4-month-old girls can distinguish photographs of those they know from other people, something boys are generally not capable of doing. Boys, on the other hand, by the age of 5 months are more interested than girls in three-dimensional geometric forms and blinking lights.
Once infants are a year old they can rapidly distinguish between the sexes of their playmates, preferring to associate with those of their own sex. Tests have shown this to be the case even when the newly arrived infants are dressed in the clothes of the opposite sex. Thus, baby girls quickly identify as female another baby, even if it is dressed in masculine clothes.
He goes on to show how these difference continue to manifest themselves into adulthood.
A church planter, and restorationist Christian (my church home up until about eight years ago), Justin gets on down about What Jesus Said About Violence, Nonviolence, Pacifism, etc.
Under these headings:
1: Misconceptions about Non-Pacifists
2: What Pacifists Believe
3: What Jesus Says about Violence
4: Necessary Roughness
5: Defending the Weak - The Prophetic Mandates
6: Being Realistic
Justin examines many of the issues. And the comments (some 17 at the time of this posting) continues some lively examination and conversation on the matter.
Conservative Democrat, Zell Miller, gave President Bush the highest praise:
I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man.
I am moved by the respect he shows the First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.
I can identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see," and I like the fact that he's the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.
He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.
I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
(I particularly and deliciously enjoy that last sentence: "I have knocked on the door of this man' soul and found someone home." Wow. I mean, wow! Can I borrow this for the eulogy at my funeral?)
More from Zell on the American soldier:
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
(Would that more of us remembered this.)
Dr. Jack Kinneer, minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, once a seminarian at St. Vladimir's Seminary, has written a piece entitled, A Calvinist Looks at Orthodoxy (from the December 1998 edition of New Horizons).
Both Karl and Doug have offered some responses, but I thought I'd offer a bit more extended evaluation.
But I did not belong to the communion of churches often called Eastern Orthodox, but more properly called simply Orthodox. I was not Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or Antiochian Orthodox. As far as the Orthodox at St. Vladimir’s were concerned, I was not Orthodox, regardless of my agreement with them on various doctrines.
Here we have the first significant disconnect. For all Dr. Kinneer's time at SVS it is surprising that he failed to come to a very important understanding: Orthodoxy is not just about right belief. Orthodoxy is about a whole life, it's about being a member of the family. One doesn't cobble the dogmatic pronouncements of the Seven Councils and the Nicene Creed onto an otherwise Protestant life. Dr. Kinneer is not Orthodox, not because he isn't fully Orthodox in his beliefs, but because he doesn't belong to the family called Orthodoxy.
I am not the only Calvinist to have become acquainted with Orthodoxy in recent years. Sadly, a number have not only made the acquaintance, but also left the Reformed faith for Orthodoxy. What is Orthodoxy and what is its appeal to some in the Reformed churches?This is more evidence that Dr. Kinneer has an important disconnect between what he thinks he knows about Orthodoxy and what Orthodoxy really is. For all that he genuinely appreciates certain aspects of Orthodoxy, what it comes down to for Dr. Kinneer is that Orthodoxy isn't Reformed. He is mystified that fellow Reformed ministers “jump ship” for Orthodoxy. Toward the end of the article he writes: “I am grieved when Reformed friends sacrifice this greater good [i.e., a “more biblical understanding” of particular doctrines important to the Reformed] for the considerable but lesser goods of Orthodox liturgy and piety.” For Dr. Kinneer, Orthodoxy is primarily about right belief. But in this, he fails to fully understand Orthodoxy.
That initial criticism aside, however, in the next five paragraphs, on the appeal of Orthodoxy, are an excellent historical summary, and a fair and sympathetic description of the appeal of Orthodoxy's apostolic connections and its liturgical life. Would that that sympathetic assessment continued with a more open and honest appraisal of Orthodoxy, its life, worship and teachings.
Dr. Kinneer lists several “shortcomings” he finds in Orthodoxy, namely: 1) a lack of a “Westminster Confession”-like summary of the faith, 2) a failure to understand justification by faith, 3) a problem with nominal members, 4) an inadequate understanding of sovereign grace, 5) the non-biblical use of icons, 6) a lower view of the Bible than the Church Fathers had, 7) a passionate commitment to monasticism, 8) prayers to Mary, 9) the development of the liturgy through complicated long, historical process. We'll take these one-by-one.
Dr. Kinneer begins his critique with the following:
A comparison of the Reformed faith with the Orthodox faith would be a massive undertaking, made all the more difficult because Orthodoxy has no doctrinal statement comparable to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Orthodoxy is the consensus of faith arising from the ancient Fathers and the ecumenical councils. This includes the forty-nine volumes of the Ante- and Post-Nicene Fathers, plus the writings of the hermits and monastics known collectively as the Desert Fathers! It would take an entire issue of New Horizons just to outline the topics to be covered in a comparison of Orthodoxy and Reformed Christianity.
It's difficult to quite know what the good doctor is after here. Is he faulting Orthodoxy for not having a succinct statement of faith? If so, why isn't the Nicene Creed good enough? Or is it that Dr. Kinneer finds it daunting to confront the entire witness of the Orthodox Church? He wouldn't be culpable for thinking that, of course. It is a daunting prospect. But I would humbly submit that if Dr. Kinneer did a bit more thorough work, he would find many of his criticisms falling by the wayside. As Karl mentioned, a look at St. John Damascene's An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, is an excellent and accessible place to begin.
Next, Dr. Kinneer thinks the Orthodox have an inadequate understanding of “justification by faith.”
First, in my experience, the Orthodox do not understand justification by faith. Some reject it. Others tolerate it, but no one I met or read seemed to really understand it. Just as Protestants can make justification the whole (rather than the beginning) of the gospel, so the Orthodox tend to make sanctification (which they call "theosis" or deification) the whole gospel. In my estimation, this is a serious defect. It weakens the Orthodox understanding of the nature of saving faith.
Dr. Kinneer assumes that his understanding of the term “justification by faith” is normative, and that Orthodoxy ought to fit his definition. So, on his own terms, yes, it would be correct that many Orthodox wouldn't understand what his belief on “justification by faith” means. But clearly Dr. Kinneer doesn't understand the Orthodox understanding of “justification by faith” which he rightly calls “theosis” but wrongly limits to “sanctification.” Dr. Kinneer's theology splits justification by faith from sanctification. Orthodoxy does not. So it's no wonder that Dr. Kinneer found the lack of comprehension. Why should Orthodox get his own distinctive doctrine? And has Dr. Kinneer actually looked into what the Church has believed about “justification by faith” from the beginning? Or is he so wed to his late Reformation understanding of the term that he cannot see his is the innovation?
His next criticism is, quite frankly, a cheap shot.
Orthodoxy also has a real problem with nominal members. Many Orthodox Christians have a very inadequate understanding of the gospel as Orthodoxy understands it. Their religion is often so intertwined with their ethnicity that being Russian or Greek becomes almost synonymous with being Orthodox. This is, by the way, a critique I heard from the lips of Orthodox leaders themselves. This is not nearly as serious a problem in Reformed churches because our preaching continually stresses the necessity for a personal, intimate trusting, receiving, and resting upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Such an emphasis is blurred among the Orthodox.
First of all, let it be said that, yes, Orthodox would freely admit, with sorrow and shame, that too many do not have a living faith, many are Orthodox in name, but have theologies and lifestyles that match the non-Orthodox secularist consumerist society in which they are immersed. But I frankly find it offensive, and a show of hubris, that Dr. Kinneer does not think such problems go on in his own denomination. I don't doubt Dr. Kinneer's affirmation that OPC sermons stress the message he claims they do. But I do have doubts that OPC members are more vibrant in their faith than the Orthodox. It seems that Dr. Kinneer views his own church through rose-colored glasses.
The ethnic phyletism of Orthodoxy has been soundly and clearly condemned as a heresy. Dr. Kinneer is right to criticize it. But does Dr. Kinneer not think that Reformed Presbyterianism does not have its own ethnic issues? Perhaps not in the same fashion or degree as Orthodoxy, but one wonders if being Dutch or Scottish and being Reformed is not often equated in some Presbyterian minds.
Furthermore, Dr. Kinneer's criticism comes very close to the judgmentalism and hyprocisy Jesus explicitly condemns in Matthew 7.1ff.
Dr. Kinneer goes on to indict Orthodox for not understanding grace.
Second, the Orthodox have a very inadequate understanding of sovereign grace. It is not fair to say that they are Pelagians. (Pelagius was a Western Christian who denied original sin and taught that man’s will is free to choose good.) But they are definitely not Augustinians (Calvinists) on sin and grace. In a conversation with professors and doctoral students about the nature of salvation, I quoted Ezekiel 36:26–27 as showing that there is a grace of God that precedes faith and enables that human response. One professor said in response, "I never thought of that verse in that way before." The Orthodox have not thought a lot about sin, regeneration, election, and so forth. Their view of original sin (a term which they avoid) falls far short of the teaching of Paul. Correspondingly, their understanding of Christ’s atonement and God’s calling is weak as well. Their views could best be described as undeveloped. If you want to see this for yourself, read Chrysostom on John 6:44–45, and then read Calvin on the same passage.
We're not Pelagians (thank, God!), but, we're not Augustinians. The mind boggles. And what, pray tell, makes Augustine (and later Calvin) a greater authority than all the other Fathers of the Church? Dr. Kinneer doesn't say. The best Dr. Kinneer can seem to do is note that his (presumably Calvinist) interpretation of Ezekiel gives rise to a rather ambiguous comment from one of the professors. But was the professor just being nice? There are many ways to inflect that sentence.
But for Dr. Kinneer to assert “The Orthodox have not thought a lot about sin, regeneration, election, and so forth. Their view of original sin (a term which they avoid) falls far short of the teaching of Paul. Correspondingly, their understanding of Christ’s atonement and God’s calling is weak as well. Their views could best be described as undeveloped” is so outrageous one hesitates to know where to begin? Has Dr. Kinneer been to or at least read the Divine Liturgy?
O Only-begotten Son and Word of God, who art immortal, yet didst deign for our salvation to be incarnate of the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary; and without change wast made man; and wast crucified also, O Christ our God, and by thy death didst Death subdue; who art one of the Holy Trinity, glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit: save us.
and
With these blessed Powers we also, O Master who lovest mankind, cry aloud and say: Holy art thou and all-holy, thou and thine Only-begotten Son, and thy Holy Spirit: holy art thou and all-holy, and magnificent is thy glory: Who hast so loved thy world as to give thine Only-begotten Son, that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; Who when he had come and had fulfilled all the dispensation for us, in the night in which he was betrayed,-- or rather, gave himself up for the life of the world,--took bread in his holy and pure and blameless hands; and when he had given thanks and blessed it, and hallowed it and broken it, he gave it to his holy Disciples and Apostles, saying: Take, eat: this is my Body which is broken for you, for the remission of sins. Amen. Likewise, after supper, he took the cup, saying: Drink ye all of this: this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for any, for the remission of sins. Amen. Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious Coming: Thine own of thine own we offer unto thee, in behalf of all, and for all.
Has Dr. Kinneer read St. Athanasius? “For He was made man that we might be made God” (On the Incarnation 54.3). It seems not. Dr. Kinneer apparently thinks that the four hundred years of development of the Reformed theology far outweighs the nineteen hundred years of Orthodox theology. His blinkered ignorance is breathtaking.
But let's compare St. John Chrysostom with John Calvin, shall we? First St. John on the Gospel of John 6:44-45:
Ver. 44. "No man can come unto Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw Him."
The Manichaeans spring upon these words, saying, "that nothing lies in our own power"; yet the expression showeth that we are masters of our will. "For if a man cometh to Him," saith some one, "what need is there of drawing?" But the words do not take away our free will, but show that we greatly need assistance. And He implieth not an unwilling comer, but one enjoying much succor. Then He showeth also the manner in which He draweth; for that men may not, again, form any material idea of God, He addeth,
Ver. 46. "Not that any man hath seen God, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father."
"How then," saith some one, "doth the Father draw?" This the Prophet explained of old, when he proclaimed beforehand, and said,
Ver. 45. "They shall all be taught of God." (Isa. liv. 13.)
Seest thou the dignity of faith, and that not of men nor by man, but by God Himself they shall learn this? And to make this assertion credible, He referred them to their prophets. "If then `all shall be taught of God,' how is it that some shall not believe?" Because the words are spoken of the greater number. Besides, the prophecy meaneth not absolutely all, but all that have the will. For the teacher sitteth ready to impart what he hath to all, and pouring forth his instruction unto all.
It's not clear what Dr. Kinneer finds problematic here—unless it's the equation of Manichean determinism with heresy . . . something that would be brush up hard against Dr. Kinneer's own convictions.
Next, John Calvin on the same verses:
44. No man can come to me, unless the Father, who hath sent me, draw him. He does not merely accuse them of wickedness, but likewise reminds them, that it is a peculiar gift of God to embrace the doctrine which is exhibited by him; which he does, that their unbelief may not disturb weak minds. For many are so foolish that, in the things of God, they depend on the opinions of men; in consequence of which, they entertain suspicions about the Gospel, as soon as they see that it is not received by the world. Unbelievers, on the other hand, flattering themselves in their obstinacy, have the hardihood to condemn the Gospel because it does not please them. On the contrary, therefore, Christ declares that the doctrine of the Gospel, though it is preached to all without exception, cannot be embraced by all, but that a new understanding and a new perception are requisite; and, therefore, that faith does not depend on the will of men, but that it is God who gives it.
Unless the Father draw him. To come to Christ being here used metaphorically for believing, the Evangelist, in order to carry out the metaphor in the apposite clause, says that those persons are drawn whose understandings God enlightens, and whose hearts he bends and forms to the obedience of Christ. The statement amounts to this, that we ought not to wonder if many refuse to embrace the Gospel; because no man will ever of himself be able to come to Christ, but God must first approach him by his Spirit; and hence it follows that all are not drawn, but that God bestows this grace on those whom he has elected. True, indeed, as to the kind of drawing, it is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant. It is a false and profane assertion, therefore, that none are drawn but those who are willing to be drawn, as if man made himself obedient to God by his own efforts; for the willingness with which men follow God is what they already have from himself, who has formed their hearts to obey him.
45. It is written in the Prophets. Christ confirms by the testimony of Isaiah what he said, that no man can come to him, unless he be drawn by the Father. He uses the word prophets in the plural number, because all their prophecies had been collected into one volume, so that all the prophets might justly be accounted one book. The passage which is here quoted is to be found in Isaiah 54:13, where, speaking of the restoration of the Church, he promises to her, sons taught by the instruction of God. Hence it may easily be inferred, that the Church cannot be restored in any other way than by God undertaking the office of a Teacher, and bringing believers to himself. The way of teaching, of which the prophet speaks, does not consist merely in the external voice, but likewise in the secret operation of the Holy Spirit. In short, this teaching of God is the inward illumination of the heart.
And they shall be all taught by God. As to the word all, it must be limited to the elect, who alone are the true children of the Church. Now it is not difficult to see in what manner Christ applies this prediction to the present subject. Isaiah shows that then only is the Church truly edified, when she has her children taught by God. Christ, therefore, justly concludes that men have not eyes to behold the light of life, until God has opened them. But at the same time, he fastens on the general phrase, all; because he argues from it, that all who are taught by God are effectually drawn, so as to come; and to this relates what he immediately adds,
Whosoever therefore hath heard my Father. The amount of what is said is, that all who do not believe are reprobate and doomed to destruction; because all the sons of the Church and heirs of life are made by God to be his obedient disciples. Hence it follows, that there is not one of all the elect of God who shall not be a partaker of faith in Christ. 6 Again, as Christ formerly affirmed that men are not fitted for believing, until they have been drawn, so he now declares that the grace of Christ, by which they are drawn, is efficacious, so that they necessarily believe.
These two clauses utterly overturn the whole power of free will, of which the Papists dream. For if it be only when the Father has drawn us that we begin to come to Christ, there is not in us any commencement of faith, or any preparation for it. On the other hand, if all come whom the Father hath taught, He gives to them not only the choice of believing, but faith itself. When, therefore, we willingly yield to the guidance of the Spirit, this is a part, and, as it were, a sealing of grace; because God would not draw us, if He were only to stretch out his hand, and leave our will in a state of suspense. But in strict propriety of language He is said to draw us, when He extends the power of his Spirit to the full effect of faith. They are said to hear God, who willingly assent to God speaking to them within, because the Holy Spirit reigns in their hearts.
Cometh to me. He shows the inseparable connection that exists between him and the Father. For the meaning is, that it is impossible that any who are God's disciples shall not obey Christ, and that they who reject Christ refuse to be taught by God; because the only wisdom that all the elect learn in the school of God is, to come to Christ; for the Father, who sent him, cannot deny himself.
Well, this much is obvioius: St. John Chrysostom is not John Calvin. And It's probably obvious as to who is the better Calvinist. But it's hardly clear that St. John fails to understand grace. St. John does fail to understand Calvinist grace. But there's good reason for that. It hadn't yet been invented.
Dr. Kinneer should also check out selection from St. John Damascene's Exposition dealing with freewill and predestination.
His next criticism has to do with icons.
Third, the Orthodox are passionately committed to the use of icons (flat images of Christ, Mary, or a saint) in worship. Indeed, the annual Feast of Orthodoxy celebrates the restoration of icons to the churches at the end of the Iconoclast controversy (in a.d. 843). For the Orthodox, the making and venerating of icons is the mark of Orthodoxy—showing that one really believes that God the Son, who is consubstantial with the Father, became also truly human. Since I did not venerate icons, I was repeatedly asked whether or not I really believed in the Incarnation. The Orthodox are deeply offended at the suggestion that their veneration of icons is a violation of the second commandment. But after listening patiently to their justifications, I am convinced that whatever their intentions may be, their practice is not biblical. However, our dialogue on the subject sent me back to the Bible to study the issue in a way that I had not done before. The critique I would offer now is considerably different than the traditional Reformed critique of the practice.
First, one needs to ask whether Dr. Kinneer has read St. John Damascene's apology for the holy icons? Because, if he had, he would have seen that are icons biblical. He does, however, rightly tie iconography to the Incarnation. That is the primary point of iconography: it is a witness to God-made-flesh. It's interesting that Dr. Kinneer's “orthodoxy” was questioned, given his lack of veneration of icons. It shows how closely the practice of icon veneration is tied to the Person of Jesus. It's also intriguing that Dr. Kinneer admits his critique post-exposure to Orthodoxy would now be different. One could wish he would note what is that difference.
His final major criticism, however, once again shocks and bewilders.
Finally, many of the Orthodox tend to have a lower view of the Bible than the ancient Fathers had. At least at St. Vladimir’s, Orthodox scholars have been significantly influenced by higher-critical views of Scripture, especially as such views have developed in contemporary Roman Catholic scholarship. This is, however, a point of controversy among the Orthodox, just as it is among Catholics and Protestants. Orthodoxy also has its divisions between liberals and conservatives. But even those who are untainted by higher-critical views rarely accord to Scripture the authority that it claims for itself or which was accorded to it by the Fathers. The voice of Scripture is largely limited to the interpretations of Scripture found in the Fathers.
Dr. Kinneer is judging all of Orthodoxy on the opinions of a few academics. I don't necessarily fault him for this. One starts from one's own experiences. But surely Dr. Kinneer has enough mental acumen and objectivity to know that one needs to cast one's nets a bit wider. Has Dr. Kinneer talked to priests “out in the field.” Is Dr. Kinneer aware that the (truncated) Bible he uses came directly from Orthodoxy? Is he not aware of the commentaries of the Church Fathers? Has he not read modern Orthodox authors? Dr. Kinneer is not talking about ignorance of Scripture—though his church and Orthodoxy would stand indicted as many of each group's members do not know the Scriptures as intimately was we should. Rather, Dr. Kinneer is talking about Orthodox holding theologically liberal views of Scripture.
One should also note that Dr. Kinneer may well confuse a high opinion of Scripture with holding a particular view of the inspiration of Scripture; namely, plenary verbal inerrancy in the autographs. But this is a particularly modern notion, arising out of the wars over theological liberalism. It is not only the a view not found in Church history, it's not one found among the Reformers. If the Reformers didn't hold Dr. Kinneer's view of inerrancy, did they, too, fail to hold Scripture in high regard?
Dr. Kinneer goes on to make some quick, offhand criticisms:
There is much else to be said. Orthodoxy is passionately committed to monasticism. Its liturgy includes prayers to Mary. And the Divine Liturgy, for all its antiquity, is the product of a long historical process. If you want to follow the "liturgy" that is unquestionably apostolic, then partake of the Lord’s Supper, pray the Lord’s Prayer, sing "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs," and say "amen," "hallelujah," and "maranatha." Almost everything else in any liturgy is a later adaptation and development.
Dr. Kinneer doesn't clarify what his problem is with monasticism. So there's nothing here to respond to. Passionate commitment to monasticism is a very good thing.
Dr. Kinneer apparently has problems with addressing prayers to his fellow church members. I suppose he never asks anyone else to pray for him. He may well do that, I suppose. But it's hardly a Christian practice. Praying to our fellow Christians (better stated as “asking the intercessions of our fellow Christians”) is a time-honored, Scriptural practice. That's why we “pray to” Mary.
Dr. Kinneer's backhand to the Divine Liturgy is just silly. Does his church use a special building for worship services? Does Dr. Kinneer's church have Sunday School? Do they have pews? What about hymnbooks? Do they have Bibles? If so, then their liturgy is a product of a (not very long) historical process. All these things are later adaptations and developments from the conception of the first century Christians he upholds.
Thankfully, Dr. Kinneer does end with some positives:
But these criticisms do not mean that we have nothing to learn from Orthodoxy. Just as the Orthodox have not thought a lot about matters that have consumed us (such as justification, the nature of Scripture, sovereign grace, and Christ’s work on the cross), so we have not thought a lot about what have been their consuming passions: the Incarnation, the meaning of worship, the soul’s perfection in the communicable attributes of God (which they call the energies of God), and the disciplines by which we grow in grace. Let us have the maturity to keep the faith as we know it, and to learn from others where we need to learn.
These are suprisingly honest evaluations. He does admit that Reformed Presbyterianism has important weaknesses. But notice that he appeals to a tradition: “Let us have the maturity to keep the faith as we know it . . . .” This is what Orthodoxy is doing. Which has the greater authority and connection to the apostolic deposit?
Unfortunately, he ends with some simpleminded polemic: “I would love to see my Orthodox friends embrace a more biblical understanding of these matters. And I am grieved when Reformed friends sacrifice this greater good for the considerable but lesser goods of Orthodox liturgy and piety.” This begs so many questions, it would take some time to unravel. How does Dr. Kinneer know the Reformed faith is biblical? On what basis does he judge liturgy and piety as lesser goods?
These are questions that ultimately must come down to the question of authority. But this is something Dr. Kinneer doesn't touch on at all.