If you haven't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and/or you don't want to know the really big plot spoiler I will reveal in my rant, do not click on the link to continue reading.
I'm serious: You will be reading about THE REALLY BIG THING THAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF THE BOOK if you read any further.
Are you sure you wanna?
TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVE ANY HESITATION.
Are you sure?
IT'S STILL NOT TOO LATE TO TURN BACK. BUT IF YOU CONTINUE READING I WON'T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.
Alright then. What's the password?
Heh. Jes' kiddin'. Rant now ensues . . .
Dumbledore?! For pity's sake! Dumbledore?! C'mon, give me a Snape, heck I'd've taken a Ginny, or, *gulp*, even a Ron. But not Dumbledore.
Oh, sure, I know. When you have a young or inexperienced protagonist who is being guided by a nearly omniscient or omnipotent mentor, you've got to kill off or severely incapacitate the mentor for the protagonist to grow into the full hero the narrative (and the readers) demand.
But Dumbledore . . . *sigh*
The book as a whole lacked that sort of action-and-riddle-driven plot that all of the previous books have been known for. And I'm not sure I think Harry's lessons with Dumbledore provided the most effective way for us to get the backstory. 'Course, that being said, it was always difficult to put the book down and attend to my real life duties.
But the writing was much better, much tighter. There seemed to be not a wasted paragraph in this one. All of the side stories provided the appropriate comic relief or pause prior to rebuilding the tension. I must say, I was very pleased to see Ron and Hermione get together. And we all knew it would be Ginny and Harry; that's been obvious for the last few books. Snape's killing of Dumbledore was a complete surprise, which shows how well Ms. Rowling has written his character. But there was just enough foreshadowing from the very beginning (Dumbledore's dead hand, anyone?) so that last night, with about a third of the book to go, I looked at my wife and said, "She's going to kill off Dumbledore."
Verdammt! I was right.
I kept hoping I was wrong. But when the expected did, after all, happen, I have to say, I got teary. I liked Dumbledore better than I ever did Harry.
She's a good writer. But still . . . J K Rowling sucks.
[Note: Lengthy post. Updated (4:00pm CDT) with links to the message board discussion I refer to.]
I come from a church tradition which very strongly believed that for a church or group to claim that they were (a part of) the Church of Christ, they had to look, act, and believe like the New Testament Church. Thus, with respect to Church polity (it's organization and structure), in the Restoration Movement churches in which I grew up, trained for ministry, and whom I served for a time as a minister, we believed that there ought be no church organization higher than the local congregation, and that the leaders of the church were men who served as elders and deacons. We rejected any notion of the ministry of a bishop, or the very ancient practice of the Church being led by bishops, priests and deacons.
Recently, I engaged some members of the Restoration Movement on one of their message boards about this very thing. (The thread is about something else--as always happens on message boards--but the discussion I'm referring to turns to the topic under consideration in this blog post right about here. My comment precipitating the ensuing discussion is the second one from the bottom.) I was challenged to present a case that the first century, New Testament Church was indeed governed by bishops, priests and deacons. So I did. And I want to share this with you all today.
My argument is essentially this: In the New Testament there is a clear association of the ministry of apostle and bishop, and further that these roles were associated with the Lord's Supper. Further, in the New Testament the Lord's Supper is presented not only sacramentally, but sacrificially. Church leadership grows out of this association with the Lord's Supper.
As I understand it, the contention has been that St. Ignatios' ecclesiology is alien and an imposition on the NT. I claim that this assertion is false. I think it is based on a fundamental error, which is the fairly singular (not necessarily exclusive) reliance on the appearance/use of the terms for bishop/presbyter/deacon and on explicit delineation of Church structure.
I think this is mistaken for the following reasons:
1. The NT strongly suggests (as I will show) a much different account of local Church polity than that of presbyters and deacons, and that the beginning of the distinction between bishops and presbyters had already begun within the lifetime of the Apostles, and, indeed, that in the first century, the predominant term for one group of leaders in the local Church was that of bishop.
2. One element--often overlooked in these discussion--of Church leadership in the NT revolved around the sacrifice of the Lord's Supper, which is tied to Jesus' heavenly service.
3. Further, the continuity between these ideas revealed in the NT and then in the Didache, and then in St. Clement and then in St. Ignatios reveals a fairly clear historical pattern in which what began in the NT developed fully by the end of the first century (minimally at least in Asia Minor).
I am not arguing that St. Ignatios' monoepiscopal structure is explicitly mentioned in the NT. But there is, I maintain, a very clear line tracing right back to the NT which serves as the foundation for what St. Ignatios talks about.
In other words, it is the will of God, as revealed in his written word, that the sacrificial sacrament of the Lord's Supper be the foundation for the organization of his Church around bishops, priests and deacons.
What follows then, expanded and slightly revised, is the evidence for my case.
The New Testament
Consider the following brief points.
1 Peter 2:25: Jesus is called our bishop
Acts 1:20: The office of the bishop is tied to the Apostles.
Acts 13:2: When the prophets and teachers in Antioch were ministering (lit. “liturgizing”) the Holy Spirit indicated that Paul and Barnabas should be set apart for the work God had for them.
Hebrews 8:7: Jesus is our minister (lit. “liturgist”) in the heavenly tabernacle (cf. Romans 15:16 below)
Hebrews 10:11: speaks of Old Testament “liturgizing”; i. e., offering the sacrifices.
Romans 15:16: St. Paul refers to himself as a minister (lit., “liturgist”) who ministers the Gospel as a priest (lit. “priest-working”) (cf. Hebrews 8:7 above).
Acts 20:7: St. Paul meets with the Church at Troas specifically to observe the Lord's Supper.
1 Corinthians 11:34: St. Paul says, in specific reference to the Lord's Supper and its proper observance, that he will come and set things in order (or appoint, ordain, etc.).
1 Corinthians 10:16-21: The Lord's Supper is explicitly tied to sacrificial offerings, both Old Testament and pagan, and the “table” of the Lord's Supper is clearly depicted, in context, as an altar.
1 Corinthians 11:17ff: In conjunction with 1 Corinthians 10:16-21 above, the elements of the Lord's Supper are united with the Body and Blood of Jesus
Hebrews 9:12-15; 10:10: Through the sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood we have a new and better covenant; which in conjunction with the 1 Corinthians passages above indicates a sacrificial understanding of the Lord's Supper.
Acts 20:28: Some or all of the elders at Ephesus are said to have been made bishops by the Holy Spirit
1 Timothy 3: the office of bishop is described
1 Timothy 5:17: certain elders are said to have ruled well, and as such are said to be worthy of “double reward”; which may indicate remuneration
1 Corinthians 9:1ff: the Apostles were known at times to have received remuneration for their work
1 Peter 5:1-2: presbyters were told to exercise oversight (be a bishop) over their flocks.
In the New Testament it already is seen that we have the Lord's Supper observed as a sacrifice of the altar, that the office of the Apostle is seen in a priestly typology with Christ, that bishops were tied to the office of the Apostles, and that a single Apostle (and thus bishop?) presided over the Lord's Supper when it was observed. This is amazingly aligned with what St. Ignatios and St. Clement, and, surprise, the Didache say.
1 Clement, the Didache, and St. Ignatios
(Even though access to the early Church Fathers has been made much easier due to the internet, still these rich letters from our older Church family are very unfamiliar to us. So I will cite these documents with some fullness. If you don't have access to these documents, you can read the Didache here, and St. Clement's and St. Ignatios' letters here.)
1. The Lord's Supper is a sacrificial offering
And on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled; for this sacrifice it is that was spoken of by the Lord; {In every place and at every time offer Me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great king, saith the Lord and My name is wonderful among the nations.}(Didache 14)
2. Prophets and teachers are the chief-priests
But every true prophet desiring to settle among you {is worthy of his food.} In like manner a true teacher {is} also {worthy,} like {the workman, of his food.} Every firstfruit then of the produce of the wine-vat and of the threshing-floor, of thy oxen and of thy sheep, thou shalt take and give as the firstfruit to the prophets; for they are your chief-priests. (Didache 13.1-4)
3. Bishops and deacons are to be appointed in the Church, who perform the service of the prophets and teachers (making them chief-priests).
Appoint for yourselves therefore bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of money, and true and approved; for unto you they also perform the service of the prophets and teachers. (Didache 15)
4. Clement unfolds a four-fold ministry as a type of the Old Testament order of high priest, priests, Levites and laymen. Christian worship is presented in sacrificial terms.
He has enjoined offerings [to be presented] and service to be performed [to Him], and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him.Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not. For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen. (1 Clement 40)
4. The previous mentioned OT typological ministry is explicitly applied to the Church at Corinth, a strict clerical order is enjoined. There is to be only one place for the sacrifice of the altar; that is, only one celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Let every one of you, brethren, give thanks to God in his own order, living in all good conscience, with becoming gravity, and not going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him. Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death. Ye see, brethren, that the greater the knowledge that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed. (1 Clement 41)
5. The Apostles appointed bishops and deacons in the various cities.
The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus saith the Scripture in a certain place, "I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith." (1 Clement 42)
6. The Apostles set up a means for the orderly succession of the episcopate, and those duly appointed who have served well should not be ejected from the episcopate.
Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that ye have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour.(1 Clement 44)
And then there are these citations from St. Ignatios. I've saved them till last not only for chronological reasons (they are the latest historically of the ones we're considering), but also so that it can be seen that there is an unbroken continuity between St. Ignatios and the New Testament.
1. Bishops are God's will and are installed throughout the Church. The unity of the Church is manifested through the bishop and presbyters.
For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ. Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also ye do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And do ye, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, ye may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that ye are indeed the members of His Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, that thus ye may always enjoy communion with God.(Ephesians 3-4)
2. The bishop unites through his service at the altar of the Eucharist.
For if I in this brief space of time, have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop — I mean not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature — how much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, that so all things may agree in unity! Let no man deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, “God resisteth the proud.” Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God.(Ephesians 5)
3. As St. Clement above, St. Ignatios unrolls a fourfold ministry: bishop (presiding in God's place), presbyters (apostles), deacons, and, in St. Clement's terms, the laity who are being addressed. The clergy preside over the laity via the altar.
I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed. Do ye all then, imitating the same divine conduct, pay respect to one another, and let no one look upon his neighbour after the flesh, but do ye continually love each other in Jesus Christ. Let nothing exist among you that may divide you; but be ye united with your bishop, and those that preside over you, as a type and evidence of your immortality. As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by Himself nor by the apostles, so neither do ye anything without the bishop and presbyters. Neither endeavour that anything appear reasonable and proper to yourselves apart; but being come together into the same place, let there be one prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope, in love and in joy undefiled. There is one Jesus Christ, than whom nothing is more excellent. Do ye therefore all run together as into one temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from one Father, and is with and has gone to one.(Magnesians 6-7)
4. Being established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles means being subject to the bishop, presbyters, and deacons and to one another.
Study, therefore, to be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles, that so all things, whatsoever ye do, may prosper both in the flesh and spirit; in faith and love; in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit; in the beginning and in the end; with your most admirable bishop, and the well-compacted spiritual crown of your presbytery, and the deacons who are according to God. Be ye subject to the bishop, and to one another, as Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit; that so there may be a union both fleshly and spiritual.(Magnesians 13)
5. Same as above. Apart from the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons there is no Church--because there is no Eucharist.
For, since ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as ye indeed do, so without the bishop ye should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found. It is fitting also that the deacons, as being [the ministers] of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, should in every respect be pleasing to all. For they are not ministers of meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They are bound, therefore, to avoid all grounds of accusation [against them], as they would do fire. In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the Sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church. Concerning all this, I am persuaded that ye are of the same opinion. For I have received the manifestation of your love, and still have it with me, in your bishop, whose very appearance is highly instructive, and his meekness of itself a power; whom I imagine even the ungodly must reverence, seeing they are also pleased that I do not spare myself. But shall I, when permitted to write on this point, reach such a height of self-esteem, that though being a condemned man, I should issue commands to you as if I were an apostle? (Trallians 2-3)
He that is within the altar is pure, but he that is without is not pure; that is, he who does anything apart from the bishop, and presbytery, and deacons, such a man is not pure in his conscience. (Trallians 7)
6. Separation from the bishop is schism from the Church because it is schism from the altar of the Eucharist.
For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange opinion, he agrees not with the passion [of Christ.]. (Philadelphians 3)
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (Philadelphians 4)
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils. (Smyrnaeans 7)
See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. (Smyrnaeans 8)
The purpose of this exercise has been to demonstrate that the clear Eucharistic episcopal polity of St. Ignatios was not an aberration from New Testament Christianity, and, indeed, was also reflective of first century Christianity.
It is so abundantly clear that there is a single mind running from the New Testament through the Didache through St. Clement to St. Ignatios. Now it remains to discern what each of us should do in light of it.
From the Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments blog comes this Breaking News: Orthodox Leave NCC
Dearborn, Michigan. July 28, 2005.This afternoon the General Convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America voted overwhelmingly to leave the National Council of Churches of Christ. The General Convention is holding its annual meeting this week in Dearborn, Michigan.The action was not a temporary “suspension” of membership, but a formal withdrawal from the NCC. The clergy unanimously approved the withdrawal, followed by a unanimous vote of the lay delegates supporting the move. An announcement of the final vote was met with thunderous applause by the Convention.
Reasons given for the withdrawal include the general liberalism of the NCC, whose General Secretary, Bob Edgar, withdrew his signature from a statement defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Metropolitan PHILIP, head of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, was reportedly outspoken in calling for the church to withdraw from the NCC, stating that the relationship had proven fruitless.
The National Council of the Churches of Christ has listed on its website "36 member communions and denominations." It now has 35.
Note: An interview about this vote and its consequences with the Very Rev. Olof Scott, the newly-elected chairman of the Department of Interfaith Relationships, is scheduled to air on Ancient Faith Radio this coming Sunday, July 31, 2005, at 5 PM EDT.
In an open letter, nine of the bishops of the Anglican Communion Network have acknowledged the open breach in ECUSA, and are pledged to doing something about it.
Dear Bishop Andrew and Brothers and Sisters of the Standing Committee,Seventeen bishops, thirteen of them diocesans, wrote you on the 14th of April. We wrote you about the very public conflict between you, the Bishop and Standing Committee, and six Connecticut parishes.
In April we pled that you might turn back from this conflict. We asked whether it was not Bishop Andrew's actions that had abandoned the (Anglican) Communion: participation in the New Hampshire consecration, ordination of same-sex partnered clergy, and refusal to allow appeal to the Panel of Reference. We called on you as Bishop and Standing Committee to turn back from continued abuse and mis-application of the Canon on Abandonment of Communion [Title IV, Canon 10] in dealing with these six parishes and their clergy.
On July 13th Bishop Andrew led a team who invaded St. John's, Bristol, confiscated their buildings and accounts, and without vestry consultation installed a priest-in-charge. All of these things were done under the pretext of abandonment of communion, the Standing Committee having indicted the clergy of all six parishes on that charge on April 29th.
What do they intend to do? First, they are
shaping of a presentment against you [Bishop Smith] for conduct unbecoming [Title IV, Can.1, Sec.1 (j)] a Bishop of this Church;
They are also raising legal funds for the parishes and priests, licensing the priests, and so forth.
It's incredibly likely that counter-presentment charges may be brought against the signatories for crossing dioscesan boundaries. But ultimately, I think it unlikely that any presentments will hold. Not in the current climate of Anglican schism.
I note that my former Episcopal bishop, Peter Beckwith of Springfield, is the second signatory. He's a godly man.
Meghan Cox Gurdon talks about J K Rowling's magical prose:
What leaps out from the intricate storyline and wonderfully fresh prose--still, after six books!--of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is the jaw-dropping scope of J.K. Rowling's achievement even before she publishes the last in the series.With each book she has revealed progressively more of her brilliantly clever parallel world, from the first and comparatively simple volumes for and about younger children through the darker and more detailed later books. It is only as we proceed--and ideas seemingly thrown casually into the mix ripen into great significance--that it becomes clear that it's a world she has seen in its fantastic complexity all along. We enthusiasts, we happy millions, can only marvel at her skill at sustaining innumerable narrative skeins and wrapping them ever more tightly together--in the process keeping us. . .rapt.
I'm about a third of the way through book six, and I give this evaluation a hearty "Amen!"
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
I've said this before, but I thought this might be a nice way to sum up my previous posts on ecumenism.
I would say that the first most important question a person can ask is "Who is the Christ?"
The second most important question is "Where is His Church?"
For there is no such thing as a Church-less Christian (which Ephesians 4, among other texts, nicely affirms).
But it is also manifestly true that not every church or group claiming to be, or be part of, the Church are telling the truth. This is not to say that they are intentionally lying; just that their claims are not consonant with ecclesial reality. For churches and groups fundamentally contradict one another on central issues such as baptism and the Lord's Supper, the ordination of women, and human sexuality. And the Holy Spirit would not have led all these groups into these contradictions.
So we are left with two options:
1. Either we must deny that Christ left behind and indwells His Church on earth; or,
2. We must deny that knowing God's will on important matters such as baptism and the Lord's Supper really matters.
Neither option is true to Scripture. (Note by the way that option 2 does not necessarily mean we have to have exhaustive knowledge of God's will. But surely we should be able to work out the major stuff.)
This leaves us with the following facts: Christ did, in fact, leave behind and indwells his Church on earth AND that knowing God's will on important matters such as baptism and the Lord's Supper really does matter.
Which leaves us with the second most important question: Where is His Church?
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV
Ecumenism V
Ecumenism VI]
Back in March and April the soteriology diablog was hot and heavy, but eventually died down. (I continue to post links to any further responses the participants have.)
Recently, at the invite of a commenter on this blog, I registered over at Grace Centered Message Forums (a largely churches of Christ venue). As a result of participation in one message thread I am still involved in, I decided to actually make the case for human free will/free choice/freedom to choose. Note that the case is made from a Christian standpoint and not from a strictly a-religious philosophical one. My arguments would be much different for that sort of audience.
If you're interested in the discussion, begin here. But if you just want to read my initial posts sans responses, click on the "continue reading" link below.
First Post:
I've been critical of the responses from a few members on this board that deny humans have any free will (or freedom to choose) when it comes to cooperation with the grace of God prior to regeneration. I've decided that it's probably time for me to put up or shut up: I should advance my own arguments for free will/free choice. I can hardly do so in a single post, so what I will attempt to do is give the broad outline of the argument(s), and allow any ensuing discussion/criticism to bring out more specific details. (I should note, by the way, that I am building here on the extensive conversation that went on in March and April via my own blog; links to which discussion can be found here.) But that will have to wait for my next post, since I need to articulate some basic “ground rules” orienting the discussion.
First of all, before we can begin, we must realize that what we say about human nature is bound up with our understanding of Christ, since he was fully God and fully human. Thus, if we go wrong on our understanding of human nature, we will go wrong on our understanding of Christ's Person. Furthermore, our understanding of the Person of Christ is bound up with our understanding of the Holy Trinity. If we get wrong our understanding of Christ's Person, we will go wrong on our understanding of the Godhead, since Christ is fully God and fully human. That is to say, the essential connections between what we say of humanity, Christ and the Trinity are critical to a proper articulation of free will (or freedom to choose). This must be our common starting point. If we don't agree on this, no conversation can continue.
In light of this, we can start our discussion either with human nature, or with the nature of the Holy Trinity, or with the Person of Christ. But our conversation will always be guided by the touchstone of the Holy Trinity who is the source and cause of all existence.
Secondly, though what we say cannot contradict Scripture, our discussion will necessarily go beyond an exegesis of Scripture. This is so because not all exegesis of Scripture is correct, and all exegesis of Scripture necessarily entails presuppositions (philosophical and theological) that precede our engagement with Scripture (for example: that humans can even understand Scripture). Thus, all our arguments will not only have to be consonant with the whole of Scripture, but they will also have to conform to logical norms including truth and falsity and validity. (Some conclusions of arguments can be true, even if the argument itself is invalid, of course, but this does not negate the necessity for rational explication of an argument.) This is not to say that human reason trumps Scripture, I hasten to say. Rather it is to affirm that our God is the God who created reason and he is a God who does not contradict himself. Thus, if an argument fails logical validity, the failures of the argument must be examined. God is beyond reason, but God is not against it.
Finally, not every single point of an argument can be (nor need be) tied directly to a Scriptural referent. For example, I am going to assume that nearly everyone on this board believes in the dogma of the Holy Trinity (i. e., that God is both one God and three Persons). However, no single referent or body of referents from Scripture unambiguously proclaim this dogma. Rather, we must approach these verses with certain presuppositions (God is one, Scripture is entirely consistent and does not contradict itself, etc.) and using our presuppositions argue for the doctrine of the Trinity. That argument is, of course, fully consistent with the explicit testimony of Scripture and does not contradict any Scripture in any way. But my point is that we do not have any clear and unambiguous texts which describe God as one God who is three Persons. This is important because many of the arguments that are made for and against human free will/freedom to choose do this very thing: they use Scriptural referents to argue for their position, but those referents to not explicitly or unambiguously state what it is the person is arguing. They may support it (which is what the argument is about), but they may not explicitly state it. Thus it is illegitimate for any partner in this discussion to attempt to “trump” his opponent with “Book, chapter and verse me on that, bucko!” Either the argument is consonant with Scripture or it is not. Failure to provide a single Scriptural referent or body of referents that explicitly or unambiguously state the person's point is not necessarily a failure to substantiate that point. (It might be, but not necessarily.)
I see that already my basic ground rules have made this post quite long. So I'll end it here and engage in any dialogue that comes up, before I go on to post the outline of my argument for free will.
Second Post:
Despite my previous intent to begin my argument for free will/freedom to choose with this post, upon further reflection I decided it was fundamental to the discussion to set out a list of terms and their definitions so that it won't be necessary to divert the argument once it's underway. So here are a handful of important terms that will play a part in the debate.
Free Will/Free Choice/Freedom to Choose:
Here I mean not that the will is absolutely free, but that humans are free to direct the will to whatever end they choose. That is to say, given fallen human nature, our wills will be influenced by our natures toward certain ends (sexual immorality, gluttony, lying, stealing), but that as human persons or agents, we can direct that will toward other ends (chastity, moderation, truth-telling, etc.).
In other words, though our wills are not absolutely free of our natures, they are not absolutely determined by our natures. It is fundamental to the human person to have the capacity to direct our wills toward ends that we choose. We may not be able to accomplish the ends we choose (flying to the moon with our own arms flapping), but we can so direct our wills that we will this end.
Soft determinism; Compatibilism:
In our context this is the belief that God ultimately determines all human actions and all human fates. Humans do not have free will in the libertarian/indeterminist sense. Human will is only free to do that which God determines. This almost always include a view of postlapsarian (i. e., “after the Fall”) human nature that understands the human will to be entirely bound and determined by sin. Not infrequently this view also understands original sin as guilt; that is, all humans inherit not merely mortality and corruption from Adam and Eve's sin, but also their guilt as well.
It should be noted that not all compatibilists are soft determinists, but in our context the terms are interchangeable. That is to say soft determinists believe that human free will is compatible with God's determining it. But of course by free will compatibilists and soft determinists only mean that humans are free only to will what God and their sinful nature have already determined them to will.
Mongergism:
Is the belief that there is only one agent in human regeneration: God. All humans are passive objects of God's inscrutable decision to either regenerate or damn particular human beings. “Monergism” comes from monos + ergon, or “one-work..” Most monergists admit that after regeneration the human agent becomes an active subject/agent cooperating with God in his own sanctification (and overall salvation). However, this acceptance of post-regeneration synergism is fatal to the entire monergist position.
Pelagianism:
Is the belief that man can, by his own act of faith, accomplish his own regeneration and sanctification. Pelagianism holds that human nature is inherently uncorrupted, and that the human act of repentance cleanses the human soul of the stain of sin. Pelagianism does believe that the act of God in Christ is the means by which regeneration and salvation is obtained, but the obtaining of such is entirely within the ability of humans to do.
Semi-Augustinianism:
Augustinianism (which it must be stressed is not the same thing as what St. Augustine believed and taught) is the belief that humans are entirely corrupt and unable to exercise faith or do any act pleasing to God apart from God's own direct act on the human agent. Most soft-determinists and compatibilists (in our discussion here) are Augustinians.
Semi-Augustinianism, then, is the belief that humans are, indeed, corrupt, but that that corruption does not so bind their will that they cannot choose to believe or to place their faith and trust in God to accomplish his salvific work in them. Semi-Augustinianism, for my purposes, can be synonymous with synergism.
Semi-Pelagianism:
Is the belief that the human nature is not inherently corrupt, but that each one must be cleansed and forgiven of his own personal sins. Semi-Pelagianism holds that the human will is free and can choose to accept God's grace on its own. Once the human agent has made an act of faith, then God acts to regenerate and save the human agent.
Synergism:
Is the belief that God is the primary and ultimate agent of human regeneration and salvation, but that humans also actively cooperate with God by exercising faith and by obeying his commands. All this human activity is empowered by the Holy Spirit and grace, but it is also fully the activity of the human agent as well.
In other words, Pelagianism believes that humans enact their own regeneration by faith (and God puts his seal of approval on the act of faith); monergism believes that God enacts human salvation apart from any activity from the human agent; and semi-Pelagianism believes that humans and God meet halfway in the act of regeneration, man choosing to believe which calls forth God's action of regeneration. All three of these positions believe that there must be a strict separation of the acts of the human agent and the act of God; they believe in some version of “either/or.” Synergism, on the other hand, does not subscribe to that dichotomy. Synergism contends that God is the primary and ultimate agent of human regeneration and salvation and that the human agent can freely cooperate with God's gracious act.
Regeneration; Justification; Sanctificaton; Salvation:
Although most soft determinists want to divvy up salvation into specific logical categories (regneration, justification and sanctification), this is an entirely new innovation which is neither supported in Scripture nor has the historic Church ever held such categories. Salvation is all one work. It can be seen from the standpoint of regeneration or justification or sanctification, but none of these three categories can in reality be separated from another. Regeneration is not only new birth/recreation it is also fully justification and sanctification. Similarly for justification and sanctification. All of them necessarily imply and contain the others.
This matters because soft determinists and monergists want to maintain a strict logical separation of these terms. But they have no Scriptural support for such a logical separation, nor can their argument sustain this contention.
Work(s):
I've saved the most contentious for last, and expect to spend some time discussing this before I begin my argument. The reasons for this is that different people mean different things when they use the terms “work” or “works” and thus are essentially arguing different positions from one another under the assumption that everyone means the same thing. I want to forestall this so that it is clear both what I mean and about what the argument is contending.
Works, at least in the context of human salvation, are almost always described in the New Testament as “works of the law” (throughout Romans and Galatians), “works of righteousness” (Titus 3:5) or “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:19); occasionally “works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11). Note especially the characterization of the Old Testament sacrifices as “dead works” in Hebrews 9:14. Very rarely is “work(s)” (in the context of salvation/justification) without any qualifier; notably 1 Corinthians 3:13-15 and Ephesians 2:8-10. In fact, if Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” is paralleled with Romans 3:27-28 “Where then is the boasting? It is excluded. Through what law? Of works? No, but through the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” we see the tenor of St. Paul's thought on what it means to not be saved by works. Interestingly, Jesus himself calls belief or faith a work (John 6:29).
Clearly then, when it comes to “work” or “works” in the context of salvation, a “work” is not just any act in which a human engages. Rather the New Testament definition of a “work” is something like this: any human act or acts which one does and in which one trusts as a basis for one's salvation or justification. After all, if Jesus himself defines faith and belief as a work, and if no work at all can be the basis for our salvation, then we cannot be saved even by faith.
So, once again, the definition of “work” or “works” that will guide my argument is as follows:
Any human act or acts which one does and in which one trusts as a basis for one's salvation or justification.
So, with the ground rules of my original post and the clarification of terminology in this post, I am ready to begin my argument. However, recognizing that some of my definitions here might be disputed, I'll allow for some time for criticism and response.
Third Post:
In this post, I will outline my argument in a brief summary. As will be seen from my argument, it revolves around three key terms that I did not include in my list of definitions. This is because each of these terms themselves play a fundamental role in my argument and those definitions themselves must be argued as part of the overall argument. This will be clear as I proceed. And as I proceed, I will add more to the points summarized here. The purpose of this post is to give an idea of the argument I'm presenting, and to allow comments on it. More detailed support and explanation will be given as the discussion ensues as I respond to criticisms.
Argument Summary:
The Holy Trinity, angels (fallen and unfallen), and all humans have their appropriate nature (divine, angelic and human), the willing which operates from that nature, and personhood, which is the individual instance of the person's (divine, angelic, and human) nature and willing. For all beings that have a nature, that nature is fundamentally the same for all those beings who share that nature (i. e., God's nature is absolutely the same among all the Persons of the Trinity; all angelic beings, fallen and unfallen, have the same angelic nature, and all human beings from Adam to Christ share the same human nature). The same is true for willing. All the Persons of the Godhead share the same willing, as do all angels share angelic willing and all humans share human willing. Thus, all natures and willings are identical for the beings that partake of those natures and willings.
When we come to personhood, however, we come to the differences between persons. Each person exercises, or puts to use, the nature and the willing that they have respectively. God the Father wills in the way that is unique to His Person, God the Son wills in the way unique to His Person, and God the Holy Spirit wills in the way unique to His Person; and all three Persons will with the same willing. The divine willing is absolutely one, and each divine Person's will is unique to that Person. So Christ could say that His will was to do the will of the Father. Theirs was one willing, but two different Persons willing in ways unique to their Person. This is true of angelic beings as well. The difference between fallen and unfallen angels is not the angelic nature they necessarily share (else they wouldn't be angels, but two different classes of created beings), but the personal manner in which they exercise the willing that is joined to angelic nature. Some angels will to follow Satan, some will to follow God. Similarly, this is true of human beings as well.
Here, however, we must begin to make important distinctions. For the purposes of our discussion, angelic nature, willing and personhood will be pretty much ignored as not essential to the discussion (though it may creep in from time to time in an illustrative manner). Also, one of the fundamental and essential distinctions we must make is that between the uncreated nature of the Holy Trinity and the created natures of humans and angels. That difference notwithstanding however, precisely because God is the creator of all angels and humans, and especially since humans are made in God's image, it follows that if God has a nature, willing and personhood, then angels and humans do, as well.
A further distinction needs to be made between created human nature and fallen human nature, and the relation of willing to the nature. Adam was created corruptible (able to be corrupted) but sinless. His created human nature was untainted by any evil or sin. A holy God cannot create anything sinful. Indeed, his willing was united to his created nature so as to be oriented toward what his nature desired. That is to say, there were no evil inclinations in Adam's nature that would orient his nature to sin, for God would not have created Adam with any evil inclinations. So when Adam sinned, he did so apart from anything in his nature or willing that would influence him to sin. How did he sin? He did so by, as a person, so choosing to make use of his will such that he disobeyed God. In so doing, the human nature that could have remained incorrupt was corrupted. And because all human persons share the same human nature, and since Adam (and Eve who shared the same nature as Adam) corrupted that nature through his sin, all humans since Adam have a corrupted nature. Our nature is now such as to experience death, or separation from God (physical and spiritual).
But notice something important: Adam's nature did not become sinful, because it was not Adam's nature that sinned, but Adam the person. In other words, human nature, though subject to death, is not sinful. For if human nature were inherently sinful, then Christ could not have taken on human nature without fundamentally altering it (in which case it wouldn't be human nature anymore), or ceasing to be entirely holy. Human nature has been corrupted, which is to say, it has been defaced or damaged from its original state. This is fundamental: natures do not sin, persons do.
This is the time to address the inexcusable mistranslation that the NIV has foisted on English speaking Christians. There are, on my count, thirteen verses in which the NIV (mis)translates the Greek word “flesh” as “sinful nature,” or some variant thereof: Romans 7:5, 18; 8:3; 13:14; 1 Corinthians 5:5; Galatians 5:13; 6:8; Ephesians 2:3; Colossians 2:11, 13; 2 Peter 2:10; Romans 8:6 (“the mind of sinful man”; lit. “mind of the flesh”); and Romans 8:7 (“sinful mind”; lit. “the mind that is set on the flesh”). This is a question-begging translation that assumes what it seeks to prove; i. e., that these verses are talking about a human nature that is inherently sinful.
It is not, however, human nature that is sinful, but the energy in a person (the flesh) which inclines us to sin. (Cf. Romans 7:5.) This principle of the flesh entered humanity with the death that resulted from Adam's sin. And it is through sin that the principle of death works in each person. Take a look at Romans 7:13-23. St. Paul notes that in his inner being he actually delights in the law. But the sin in him (the principle of the flesh) carries out evil. Note especially verse eighteen in this regard. St. Paul does not say that no good lies in his person, but that no good resides in his flesh. For he finds the will (to do good), but the doing of the good he does not find. (Note: The ESV is just wrong here on its translation of this verse and also betrays a pernicious circularity.) But this is as one would expect: If a nature is not sinful, but still retains God's image, it would still naturally incline to God, the nature's willing would incline to do good. In other words, humans still retain the inclination of the human nature to do good and desire God, but through their own personal sins, they have allowed the sinful principle of the flesh to work in them such that they find themselves doing the evil their natures are not willing to do.
This simply illustrates that human acts are not bound to human nature; i.e., we can act against our natural inclinations. In other words, the locus of human freedom is in the personhood that humans have. We have natures which will, but unlike animals that do not have personhood, we are free to act against our own natural inclinations. Persons act, not natures. And if Scripture points out that we can, in fact, act against the inclinations of our nature, fallen or unfallen, then we have the freedom to choose to act in whatever ways we so choose. If I choose to pray, fast, or give alms, I do so freely, and insofar as nothing impedes my action, I will be able to accomplish that which I choose. (However, since doing good is not the basis for God's saving us, our doing good works will not save us.)
This is the fundamental synergist account of how humans can freely choose to act in whatever ways the so choose. Humans are not determined, either by God or by their natures, to act in certain ways. This is how God has created us, and it is his will that we have this kind of freedom.
Providing further irrefutable proof as to why it's a good thing Kerry was not elected President, the fatuous Senator (who by the way once served four months in Vietnam and made home movies of his experience) demands that the White House Release Records on Roberts:
Democratic Sen. John Kerry urged the White House on Friday to release "in their entirety" all documents and memos from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' tenure in two Republican administrations."We cannot do our duty if either Judge Roberts or the Bush administration hides elements of his professional record," said the Massachusetts senator who was his party's presidential candidate last year.
The White House won't, of course, and shouldn't. It would be against the law (attorney-client privilege, separation of powers, yada yada yada). But this is the response the White House could give:
"Sure, Senator. Give us somewhere in the vicinity of about two years, and after the Roberts confirmation process is long done and over with, we'll release the records. . . to a select newspaper. You wouldn't have a problem with that at all now would you?"
St. John the Wonderworker, "The Church as the Body of Christ":
Fully abiding in the Church is already victory over sin and complete purification therefrom. To some degree everything sinful estranges us from the Church and keeps us out of the Church; this is why in the prayer read at confession over every penitent we have the phrase: "reconcile, and unite unto Thy Holy Church. " Through repentance a Christian is cleansed and united closely to Christ in partaking of the Holy Mysteries, but later the grime of sin again settles upon him and estranges him from Christ and the Church, and therefore repentance and communion are again necessary. As long as the earthly life of a man endures, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness goes on within him. However high a spiritual and moral state one might achieve, a gradual, or even headlong and deep fall into the abyss of sin is always possible. Therefore, communion of the holy Body and Blood of Christ, which strengthens our contact with Him and refreshes us with the living streams of the grace of the Holy Spirit flowing through the Body of the Church, is necessary for everyone. How very important communion of the Holy Mysteries is we see from the life of St. Onuphrius the Great to whom, as well as to other hermits dwelling in the same desert, angels brought Holy Communion; and in the life of St. Mary of Egypt we read that her final wish after many years of desert life was the reception of the Holy Mysteries. The lives of St. Sabbatius of Solovki and a multitude of others tell us similar things. Not in vain did the Lord speak and say: "Amen, amen, I say unto you, except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you" [John] 6:23).To partake of the Body and Blood of Christ is to receive in oneself the Risen Christ, the victor over death, granting to those with Him victory over sin and death.
Preserving in ourselves the grace-filled gift of Communion, we have a guarantee and foretaste of the blessed, eternal life of the soul and body.
Up to the very "Day of Christ, " His Second Coming and the Judgment of the whole world, the struggle of sin with righteousness will continue, individually in each person and collectively in all mankind.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
The Church Is Holy
In the Creed we confess our belief in the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” in the same way that we confess our belief “in one God the Father Almighty,” “in one Lord Jesus Christ,” and “in the Holy Spirit the Lord, and Giver of life.” But my good friend Tripp has asked me several times, how is it that the Church does not sin when those who are members of the Church do, indeed, sin?
While it is tempting to respond by saying: We believe the Church is holy, that She does not sin. What else is there to say?--I rather suppose I owe my friend a bit more than that.
It must first be remembered that the Church is a theandric institution, at once both human and divine. The Church is Christ's Body, and just as the communication of the divine and human in the Person of Christ was, as Chalcedon affirms, “without change, separation, confusion or division,” so, too, the union of the human and the divine in the Church is not some hybrid different in kind than either the divine or the human, yet is not separable in that either can be considered (as the Church) apart from one another or delineable into a human part here or a divine part there, nor does not the union alter either the divine or human natures. And if this be true, then if Christ the head be holy and sinless, so, too, must His Body be holy and sinless.
Yet, Christians sin. And if being Christian is only possible insofar as one is a member of the Church, then how is it that the Church is not in sin when the members are?
If I may say so, first of all, the question betrays the failure of perspective. When viewed from the vantage point of human sinfulness it is almost axiomatic to suppose that we would bring our sins into the Church, infecting it from within. But this is a view of the Church that fails, significantly, to take into account the divine nature of the Church. The Church was not adopted by God. He did not wait for the right human society to flower and then take that group under his wing. This is the adoptionist Christological heresy applied to the Church. No, God himself built the Church on those whom He himself called (prophets and apostles), with His Son being the Head that gives the Church its very life. The Church is holy, therefore, not because humans do holy things more or less consistently, but because Christ Himself is Holy.
This failure of perspective must be corrected by viewing the Church from its source in Christ. Indeed, the Church participates in the holiness of the Trinity in that God calls the Church into being, through the life and work of His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Church is wholly indwelt by the Trinity--it is the house of God (1 Timothy 3:15), where God lives--and therefore is holy, for otherwise God could not indwell the Church (cf. Hebrews 12:14). In Christ the fullness of God dwelt bodily, says St. Paul, and the Church is complete in Him (Colossians 2:9-10). God is greater than human sin, and his holiness drives out our corruption.
That is to say, salvation according to the Christian faith is that union with God which divinizes human nature. But that deification happens only in and through the Church. Like Christ, the Church's humanity is deified through the communication with the divine that God accomplishes in uniting human nature with Himself in Christ. Just as Christ's human nature was deified from the moment of conception, so, too, is the human nature of the Church deified and made holy from its inception. Just as in Christ there was no sin to be found, nor did he ever sin, so, too, in the Church there is no sin to be found, nor does she sin. Like Christ, the human nature of the Church is deified by communion with the divine, which is Christ Himself, Her Head.
However, we must make an important and fundamental distinction between human nature and our own personal mode of existence. That is to say, human nature is not replaced but restored by way of our incorporation into the Church. Our personal mode of existence, however, has been in bondage to sin, through a human nature that has been corrupted in the Fall. When human nature is brought into union with God, and therefore deified, we are made free from our bondage to sin and our personal mode of existence--where we exercise our will, or one might say, what use we make of our human nature--must be brought into conformity with God's transfiguration of human nature. And it is precisely our union with the Church that brings about our sanctification. We are saved not as individuals and then incorporated into Christ's Body, rather we are saved through the divine energies manifested in Christ's Body. Because the Church is completely holy, Her individual members, who are brought into union with Christ and therefore with the Trinity by way of incorporation into the Church, are made holy by being the Church. What must happen on the personal level, then, is for the personal mode of existence to be united with deified humanity. This is done by way of repentance and the Mysteries of the Church.
So, when members sin, they are not, as it were, legal representatives of the Church, whose sin and guilt are then reckoned to the Church. Rather, they are engaging in actions which are wholly their own moral responsibility by way of their personal mode of existence. These sinful acts, which are not of the Church, orient them away from the Life of Christ in the Church. Since deification is an organic process, however, and not a fundamentally juridical one, each sin act does not necessarily completely sever members from the Church, with a requisite and proportionate act of repentance necessary to restore them to the Church (though of course such a sin is possible; cf. 1 John 5:16-17). One does not, as it were, jump in and out of salvation. But sin acts left unrepented do lead toward a disposition in one's personal mode of existence that can, ultimately, sever one from the Church, and therefore from salvation.
So it is that the Church can be completely holy and without stain, and yet Her members commit personal sin.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV
Ecumenism V]
This site has a wonderful account of the revelation of the incorrupt relics of St. John and photos of the relics. May you be blessed by these as was I:
In the spirit of my posts on ecumenism, I wanted to pass on this link by poet, philosopher and lay theologian Alexei S. Khomiakov: "The Church is One."
Some excerpts:
1.
The Church is one. Her unity follows of necessity from the unity of God; for the Church is not a multitude of persons in their separate individuality, but a unity of the grace of God, living in a multitude of rational creatures, submitting themselves willingly to grace. Grace, indeed, is also given to those who resist it, and to those who do not make use of it (who hide their talent in the earth), but these are not in the Church. In fact, the unity of the Church is not imaginary or allegorical, but a true and substantial unity, such as is the unity of many members in a living body.The Church is one, notwithstanding her division as it appears to a man who is still alive on earth. It is only in relation to man that it is possible to recognize a division of the Church into visible and invisible; her unity is, in reality, true and absolute. Those who are alive on earth, those who have finished their earthly course, those who, like the angels, were not created for a life on earth, those in future generations who have not yet begun their earthly course, are all united together in one Church, in one and the same grace of God; for the creation of God which has not yet been manifested is manifest to Him; and God hears the prayers and knows the faith of those whom He has not yet called out of non-existence into existence. Indeed the Church, the Body of Christ, is manifesting forth and fulfilling herself in time, without changing her essential unity or inward life of grace. And therefore, when we speak of "the Church visible and invisible," we so speak only in relation to man.
2.
The man who takes Scripture only, and founds the Church on it alone, is in reality rejecting the Church, and is hoping to found her afresh by his own powers: the man who takes tradition and works only, and depreciates the importance of Scripture, is likewise in reality rejecting the Church, and constituting himself a judge of the Spirit of God, who spoke by the Scripture. For Christian knowledge is a matter, not of intellectual investigation, but of a living faith, which is a gift of grace. Scripture is external, an outward thing, and tradition is external, and works are external: that which is inward in them is the one Spirit of God. From tradition taken alone, or from scripture or from works, a man can but derive an external and incomplete knowledge, which may indeed in itself contain truth, for it starts from truth, but at the same time must of necessity be erroneous, inasmuch as it is incomplete. A believer knows the Truth, but an unbeliever does not know it, or at least only knows it with an external and imperfect knowledge. The Church does not prove herself either as Scripture or as tradition or as works, but bears witness to herself, just as the Spirit of God, dwelling in her, bears witness to Himself in the Scriptures. The Church does not ask: Which Scripture is true, which tradition is true, which Council is true, or what works are pleasing to God: for Christ knows His own inheritance, and the Church in which He lives knows by inward knowledge, and cannot help knowing, her own manifestations.
3.
The Church, even upon earth, lives, not an earthly human life, but a life of grace which is divine. Wherefore not only each of her members, but she herself as a whole, solemnly calls herself Holy. Her visible manifestation is contained in the Sacraments, but her inward life in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in faith, hope, and love. Oppressed and persecuted by enemies without, at times agitated and lacerated within by the evil passions of her children, she has been and ever will be preserved without wavering or change wherever the Sacraments and spiritual holiness are preserved. Never is she either disfigured or in need of reformation. She lives not under a law of bondage, but under a law of liberty. She neither acknowledges any authority over her, except her own, nor any tribunal, but the tribunal of faith (for reason does not comprehend her), and she expresses her love, her faith, and her hope in her prayers and rites, suggested to her by the Spirit of truth and by the grace of Christ.
The MSM always jumps on conservatives--and that mythical bogey "the religious right"--for having a one-issue mind on political matters: it's all about overturning Roe v. Wade.
But yesterday morning, after the President's announcement of his nomination of Judge Roberts the night before, what were all the morning shows talking about? You bet: the possibility that Judge Roberts could play a role in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Pot meet kettle.
As usual, the MRC has a good rundown of all the MSM hysterical blather. Start reading here.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
It should by now be clear how it is that the modern ecumenical movement has failed, and, indeed, can only fail. Here, however, I want to come at the point again from another angle.
I hope that it can be seen that Church unity is accomplished by the Holy Trinity through the Eucharist presided over by the bishop. Certainly there is doctrinal or dogmatic unity, and institutional unity is important as well. But these are founded on the Eucharist which embodies the fullness of the Gospel: the reality of the Holy Trinity, the proclamation of the Incarnation, the unity of the Holy Trinity and of the Church with and in the Trinity.
Modern ecumenism fails by way of two fallacies (Roman Catholics and Orthodox would call these fallacies heresies): 1) reductionism and 2) the denial of the Church.
Let's start with the latter. Protestants simply cannot get around the reality that Rome and the Orthodox each claim to be the one true Church--which means Protestants (and Rome or the Orthodox) are not. Protestants can only continue in ecumenical efforts by denying this claim, either actively and intentionally or passively by simply ignoring the claim. Concomitantly, Protestants claim to be a part of the one true Church (which, in Protestantism is an invisible, spiritual entity). But simple denial is no argument. It's a fallacy. Further, Protestant ecclesiology fails to follow through on the logic of the Incarnation. That is to say, given the Incarnation, the Church must itself be incarnate. This entails an historic institution whose life is instantiated in quite specific ways. There is an objective standard against which Protestant ecclesiologies can be measured. Not only that, Protestants beg the question of the true Church by simply assuming they are (a part of) it.
(Aside: Protestants could claim the same sort of question begging of Rome or the Orthodox. However both Rome and Orthodox have objective, rational arguments supporting these claims. Not to mention the simple fact that the Roman Catholic Church, or, as I would contend, the Orthodox Church, is. That is to say, the claim to exclusivity is based on the reality of that which is itself what it claims to be. Clearly, between Rome and Orthodox, I stand on the side of the Orthodox and these reflections have been written from that perspective. But I will not here argue for Orthodoxy over Rome. That has been done by abler minds and more Christ-like spirits than mine.)
But Protestants commit another fallacy as well: reductionism. How can it not be otherwise when not only do Protestants differ from Roman Catholics and Orthodox in their fundamental doctrinal beliefs, but, as importantly, differ among themselves as well. Given that, in contradistinction to Rome and the Orthodox, Protestants start from contradictory beliefs, ecumenism cannot even get off the ground without beginning to pare away those things that are “not essential” to the Gospel. Despite my great esteem and admiration for C. S. Lewis, there is no such thing as “mere Christianity” which can be boiled down to an essence. (And in fact, those who argue for a “mere Christianity” would not even all agree with C. S. Lewis on what “mere Christianity” actually is.) What is essential to the Gospel? All of it. It is as essential to the Gospel that we affirm Jesus of Nazareth to be God in the flesh as it is that we affirm divorce is a sin as it is that we fast, pray and give alms, as it is that we affirm the wine and the bread are the Blood and Body of Christ, and so it goes.
In other words, true Christianity is maximalist not minimalist, and the only Christian unity that can obtain in reality is the unity that affirms all of the Gospel. This is not to say that all Gospel things are important in the same ways (one would rightly prioritize the importance of the truth about the Eucharist over the specific ways one fasts or prays or gives alms and the sanctity of marriage over these). But all Gospel things are important and cannot be relegated to adiaphora. Because quite frankly, once one wields the knife to cut, the cutting will and must take on a life of its own. One simply need trace the life of the Christian churches in America over the last two hundred years. Both evangelical and mainline congregations have abandoned the sanctity of marriage by not only allowing for multiple divorces but also for divorced clergy to continue to serve at the altar. Not coincidentally, American Christians are increasingly affirming that Jesus is not the only pathway to God, and even questioning his divinity. After all, if marriage is not at the core of the Gospel, then why need one continue to adhere to Jesus' exclusivity or even his divinity? Reductionism is a fallacy precisely because it assumes what it must first prove: that some Gospel things are unnecessary.
The Church has always held--as was briefly noted in the previous post--that unity in Christ is maximalist. That means bishops, sacramental Eucharists, and one true visible Church. Protestants will not bring about Church unity via these two fallacies/heresies. But they may become one with the Church if they reject these fallacies/heresies and embrace the fullness of the Church which has remained whole, one and complete for two millennia.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Why "Toleration, Mutual Respect and Cooperation" Do Not Make Christian Unity
In the first post, one of the definitions of unity within ecumenism shied away from organic unity and spoke instead of a “unity” promoting “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation.” This “unity” is fostered “between Christian churches and denominations, or between Christianity and other faiths.” This, itself, should provide a clue as to why tolerance, mutual respect and cooperation is no basis for unity, nor is it, itself, the sort of unity Christ prayed for (cf. John 17).
First of all, Scripture is clear. It is not “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation” which create, or, frankly, even foster unity. Rather, Scripture is clear:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? Because we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake from the one bread. (1Co 10:16-17)
That is to say, the Holy Eucharist effects our unity in Christ. It is utterly a Trinitarian act: the Father is invoked, the Spirit comes upon “us and these gifts,” and communicants participate in the Body and Blood of the Son.
This unity in the Eucharist is reiterated by St. Ignatios of Antioch.
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (To the Philadelphians 4 [emphasis added])
Note, importantly, the intimate connection between bishop and Eucharist.
If Jesus Christ shall graciously permit me through your prayers, and if it be His will, I shall, in a second little work which I will write to you, make further manifest to you [the nature of] the dispensation of which I have begun [to treat], with respect to the new man, Jesus Christ, in His faith and in His love, in His suffering and in His resurrection. Especially [will I do this] if the Lord make known to me that ye come together man by man in common through grace, individually, in one faith, and in Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man and the Son of God, so that ye obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ. (To the Ephesians 20 [emphasis added])
In fact, schism over the Eucharist is Church schism.
They [who deny the Incarnation] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils.See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. (To the Smyrnaeans 7-8 [emphasis added])
In other words, all the “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation” in the world will not be able to accomplish what the Holy Trinity accomplishes in the Eucharist. It is the Eucharist, presided over by the bishop, that is the center of our unity. Where there is schism over the Eucharist, no amount of agreed statements, handshakes, or declarations can bring about that unity that is sought.
If the schisms of the Church are to be healed, they will be healed in the Holy Eucharist. There is only one Eucharist that is truly the Lord's Eucharist. And it is there that we all must be reconciled and united.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
More Delaina Pics
[Note: If pics fail to load it's because downloads where the pics are stored has been exceeded for the hour. Check back later.]
Here's the first pictures of the newly expanded family, on Delaina's first day.
Note the blurred image of Sofie. That girl can't sit still fer a minute!
Delaina with her grandma Micki (my mom).
Sofie: Mother hen and Momma imitator.
The Healy's on Delaina's first outing.
[All photos courtesy of my mom.]
Well, as is well known by now, and was by 6:45pm CDT last night, more than an hour before Bush's public announcement, Judge John Roberts has been nominated to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy of the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor.
Most of the news coverage was politely laudatory of Judge Roberts, though the "conservative" label got thrown out in a way that one wonders if a Ginsburg-like successor had been nominated whether the "liberal" label would have been at all applied.
However, what is interesting is that even in the laudatory coverage, but especially in the critical covergae, what is the one thing the media highlighted? That's right, abortion.
And they say the religious right is obsessed with abortion. "I know you are but what am I." Darn hypocrites.
(Some roundup of the immediate reactions last night can be seen at MRC's website--and they'll doubtless have stuff from the morning shows later this afternoon, to which I'll link when it comes out.)
Judge Roberts now has his own advocacy website: JudgeRoberts.com
In any case, here's a vita from FindLaw.com.
And here's a quickie roundup of various groups' statements on Judge Roberts:
Left
NOW Vows to Fight Extremist Court Nominee (NOW)
Tonight, George W. Bush announced the nomination of John G. Roberts to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court."Once again, George Bush has chosen partisan politics and paybacks over uniting the country," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy. "Roberts' background shows a political ideology that is inconsistent with the independence we have a right to expect from the Supreme Court. He does not have a commitment to the basic values of fairness and equality, and our hard-won rights will be in jeopardy if he is confirmed."
"NOW will fight Roberts' confirmation through a nationwide grassroots lobbying campaign. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, leaves us a legacy as a centrist and independent jurist who upheld the rights of women. We don't need someone with an extremist political agenda, tied to special interests, who will tarnish that legacy," said Gandy.
The Supreme Court at Risk (NARAL)
President Bush has nominated anti-choice activist John Roberts to fill swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.If Roberts is confirmed to a lifetime appointment, there is little doubt that he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade. As Deputy Solicitor General under the first President Bush, he argued to the Supreme Court that “Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled....” We must not allow someone who’s spent his career advocating ending the right to choose to be appointed to the most important court in our country.
NAF's Statement of Opposition (National Abortion Federation)
The National Abortion Federation opposes the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the United States Supreme Court. We also opposed Roberts when he was nominated to the District of Columbia Circuit because of his hostility to Roe v. Wade.Judge Roberts has argued for the reversal of Roe and stated that there was "no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution" for the reasoning behind Roe. As Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts co-authored a brief in Rust v. Sullivan arguing that "[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled…" in a case where the validity of Roe was not even at issue.
NAF is very concerned that if confirmed, Roberts would vote to weaken or even overturn Roe. We implore the Senate to closely examine his judicial philosophies on privacy and women's reproductive freedom. Since the day he took office in 2001, President Bush has advanced his agenda to restrict women's access to reproductive health care. His nomination of Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court is another part of this strategy.
Judge John Roberts is Supreme Court nominee; careful scrutiny needed (National Women's Law Center)
President Bush has said his model justices are Scalia and Thomas, both of whom are hostile to fundamental rights and freedoms for all Americans. Far right advocates have made it abundantly clear that they will not accept a nominee whom they do not trust to serve their agenda. The public has a right to know why the White House and its far-right allies are so confident that John Roberts meets their test for a Supreme Court justice. . . .What we do know about Judge Roberts’s record raises serious concerns. He has repeatedly refused to say whether he believes in a constitutional right to privacy, or whether that right encompasses a woman’s right to choose. He has advanced legal positions that are hostile to women’s legal rights, including Title IX.
President Bush Nominates Right-Wing John Roberts to Supreme Court (Feminist Majority Foundation)
“I am extremely disappointed that the President did not appoint a centrist woman to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “We are now going back to tokenism for women on the highest court in the land.”“Everything we know about Judge Roberts’ record thus far indicates that he will be a solid vote against women’s rights and Roe v. Wade,” Smeal continued. “If he is to be confirmed by senators who support women’s rights, he must say where he stands on Roe and the right to privacy. The burden is on him.”
John Roberts: Sparse Record Raises Serious Concerns (People For the American Way)
Federal appeals court Judge John Roberts, nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a sparse public record; and several of his judicial opinions and argued cases raise real concerns about his suitability for the Supreme Court, said People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas.“It is extremely disappointing that the President did not choose a consensus nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor,” said Neas. “John Roberts’ record raises serious concerns and questions about where he stands on crucial legal and constitutional issues – it will be critical for Senators and the American people to get answers to those questions. Replacing O’Connor with someone who is not committed to upholding Americans’ rights, liberties, and legal protections would be a constitutional catastrophe.”
Roberts Nomination Raises Concerns--Needs Full Review by Senate (Alliance for Justice)
“At this time, Alliance for Justice cannot support Judge Roberts’ elevation to the Supreme Court. While we will be conducting a complete analysis of his record on and off the bench, an initial review has led to serious concerns about whether he will be fair, independent and will protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans. . . .“One wonders why, unlike some reported to have been on the president’s short list, Judge Roberts has the support of not only mainstream conservatives, but the radical right as well. Let’s be clear: Judge Roberts is not a stealth nominee, because the president’s inner circle knows his views well, even if Americans do not. And given the administration’s track record of selecting ideologically-driven, divisive candidates for the bench, it would be unsurprising if Judge Roberts embraces a judicial philosophy that is insensitive to the rights and protections that, over the past century, have brought us closer to realizing the twin ideals of freedom and equality. We hope he doesn’t.
Oppose John Roberts' Supreme Court Nomination (MoveOn.org)
In nominating John Roberts, the president has chosen a right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation's highest court instead of a judge who would protect the rights of the American people. Working for mining companies, Roberts opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be "overruled," and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion.
Right
Statement on Roberts Nomination (Republican Jewish Coalition)
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) applauds President Bush's nomination of Judge John Roberts and encourages the Senate to act swiftly on his confirmation."Judge Roberts is, according to his peers and bipartisan supporters, a jurist of the utmost integrity and intellect," said RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks. "The fact that prominent Jewish Democrat lawyers such as former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler and former Solicitor General Seth Waxman heralded Judge Roberts, upon his nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, as 'one of the very best and most highly respected appellate lawyers in the nation, with a deserved reputation as a brilliant writer and oral advocate' speaks to his superior qualifications."
"President Bush defied the dire predictions of Democrats by nominating a mainstream jurist like Judge Roberts - who, just a two years ago, was approved by the vast majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and then was unanimously approved by the full Senate," Brooks remarked. "The Senate and interest groups should follow suit by using this nomination to unite our country, rather than using it to divide us and to fill their fundraising coffers."
CFJ Congratulates President on Roberts Nomination (Committee for Justice)
The Committee for Justice, which promotes constitutionalist judicial nominees, today congratulated President Bush on nominating Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court and called on the Senate to confirm him without delay."John Roberts has had one of the most distinguished legal careers in modern times," CFJ Chairman C. Boyden Gray said. "His outstanding education and career, high character, and faithfulness to the Constitution make him an excellent fit for the court at this moment. His nomination is a solid first step towards returning the federal judiciary to its proper role in our system." . . .
"While we know liberal senators will resort to hyperbole against Judge Roberts, we call on moderate and red state Democratic senators such as Ben Nelson (Neb.), Joe Lieberman (Conn.), and Mark Pryor (Ark.) to ensure a fair and respectful confirmation process," Gray added. "It seems to us that a justice who will not use his power to redefine traditional marriage, strike under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, and undermine private property rights is well within the mainstream of American public opinion and legal thought."
CFIF Praises Judge Roberts's Nomination to the Supreme Court (Center for Individual Freedom)
President Bush today nominated Judge John Roberts to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. In response, Jeff Mazzella, President of the Center for Individual Freedom, a non-profit advocacy organization that has been working in the judicial confirmation arena for more than three years, made the following statement:“Judge Roberts is an outstanding nominee.
“Judge Roberts is a well-qualified, mainstream choice who will stand up for the Constitution and reject the temptation to legislate from the bench. He has a clear record demonstrating that he understands that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, not an evolving set of flexible guidelines.
“With Judge Roberts’s nomination, President Bush has kept his campaign promise to select a Supreme Court justice who will put the Constitution first.
“Already, liberals and their special interest puppet masters are promising a war. But instead of making the confirmation process a war, Senators should make sure that the process is fair. And it must include a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), specializing in constitutional law said today that John Roberts, Jr., the nominee named by President Bush for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, is an exceptional choice who will bring sound legal reasoning to the high court.“Judge Roberts is an exceptional choice who will bring sound legal reasoning to the Supreme Court of the United States,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ, who argues regularly before the high court. “He was one of the most gifted advocates before the high court and has served with distinction on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In my dealings with Judge Roberts over the years, I have found him to be a ‘lawyer’s lawyer’ exhibiting uncommon insight and judgment. A man of character, Judge Roberts understands the Constitution and has a record of applying the law – not legislating from the bench. He is extremely well suited and well qualified to serve this country on the nation’s highest court. We call on the Senate to begin the confirmation process and move swiftly to conduct fair hearings and to confirm this exceptional nominee.”
FRC Welcomes President Bush's Supreme Court Nomination (Family Research Council)
Family Research Council welcomed President Bush's nomination of Judge John Roberts to succeed retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. FRC President Tony Perkins released the following statement."President Bush has chosen an exceptionally well-qualified and impartial nominee for the Supreme Court. Judge Roberts is widely respected for his fair judgment, intellect and integrity, all things qualifying him to serve as the next Supreme Court Justice. I believe that Judge Roberts will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.
"Judge Roberts is well-qualified and experienced and he deserves a fair up or down vote. There should be a fair hearing for this fair minded judge."
President Bush Nominated to the Supreme Court a Strict Constructionist in Judge John Roberts (Christian Coalition of America)
Roberta Combs, President of the Christian Coalition of America said, "We are believing that President Bush kept his campaign promise today when he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court. We are trusting that Judge Roberts is in the mold of Supreme Court justices who President Bush promised to appoint to the Supreme Court: such as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman said that John G. Roberts was "in the ballpark" amongst a list of 3 names of nominees who would avoid a filibuster. Hopefully, this is a sign that there will be bipartisan support for Judge Roberts."Recently the Christian Coalition announced the formation of its Judicial Task Force with chairmen in every state in the country, created to ensure that the U.S. Senate allows fair “up or down” votes on all nominees to the federal judiciary. Now that President Bush has nominated Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court, it is critical that pro-life and pro-family Americans speak up and have their voices heard in this process.
The President's Supreme Choice (Concerned Women for America)
President Bush has selected the Honorable John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, to take the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.“Everything we know about Judge Roberts tells us that he fulfills the President’s promise to nominate a judge who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel. “That’s why the President nominated him to the D.C. Circuit. He clerked for Rehnquist, which says a lot.”
No reasonable person can claim that Judge Roberts is “out-of-the-mainstream” or that his judicial philosophy or record constitutes “extraordinary circumstances” that would justify Democrats engaging in an abusive filibuster in order to deny him an up-or-down vote. The confirmation process should occur without partisan political rancor and be in keeping with the dignity of the Court. The past is the best evidence of future expectations. And there’s plenty of reasons to expect the Left to re-run plays from their judicial warfare book—distort-defame-delay. The problem for the left is that the American people are on to them and won’t stand for obstructionist, partisan politics.
“Judge Roberts is widely respected for his appellate advocacy, having argued some 39 cases before the Supreme Court. He knows how to think on his feet, his warm engaging personality will serve him well at his hearing and be a big plus for him with the American people,” LaRue concluded.
Dr. Juan Cole may be an intelligent guy, he is, after all, as his blog so clearly proclaims, a "Professor of History." Unfortunately this post (via email from Tripp) belies the "Informed Comment" title of his blog.
He starts with the tendentious rendering of Eric Rudolph as a "notorious Christian terrorist." And Dr. Cole wants to make hay of his own neologism.
As his sister-in-law made clear, Rudolph is driven by the ideology of the "Christian Identity" hate group. Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombing was likewise connected to Christian identity and their "Elohim City".Of course, you won't see the headline above in American newspapers, even though any Muslim who acts as Rudolph did would be called an "Islamic terrorist" (a particularly objectionable term because "Islamic" means "having to do with the Muslim faith). It is like talking about "terrorism rooted in Christianity."
Hog pooey.
Here's what Dr. Cole may not know.
Christianity does not call for killing non-Christians. Christians from all groups have denounced killers like Rudolph who misuse the name of Christ for their demonic agendas. How many abortion clinic bombings have there been in the last ten years?
The Koran actually does call for killing non-Muslims, and Muslim sympathy for the terrorist suicide bombers is very widespread around the world. Very, very few Muslims have ever condemned the terrorist suicide bombings. How many suicide bombings have there been in just the last year alone?
Dr. Cole needs to get more informed.
Delaina Pics
Some pics of her first day of life.
Me with Delaina after Divine Liturgy.
And here is her going home day pics.
Gotta love the hat, tho!
[All photos courtesy of my mom.]
PBS has a two-part story on the emergent church. You can read the story and/or watch the video at the following links.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Why Protestants--and Not Orthodox--Must Change Their Ecclesiology for Union to Obtain
In the two previous posts, I reflected on the difficulty of ecumenism precisely on the difference of understanding on what unity actually is, and on the impossibility to adjudicate the differences in dogma between Christian groups from within ecumenism. I also noted in the previous post that there can only be one criterion of truth and of unity: that of Christ himself, and that ecclesiologies that depart from this criterion are not only Church heresies, but ultimately Christological heresies as well.
Among Protestants generally, the dominant ecclesiologies seem to be: Nestorian (the Church is human and divine, both divided off from one another--humans do not partake of the divine nature but are in juridical relationship with the Godhead, and sanctified as morally pure humans--but called by the common name of “Church”), adoptionist (the Church is only a human institution, but has been adopted by God as his people, but is not otherwise divine), Arian (the Church is the highest human organization created by God, but not divine and always forever separated from union with God), or even perhaps a variant of gnosticism (the Church is neither human nor divine, but something like a bridge of those with “spiritual knowledge” for uninitiated humanity to the unite with the divine). This is not to deny that some Protestants have what seem on their face to be formally orthodox ecclesiologies, but in that they do not seem to sense the implications of their not becoming Catholic or Orthodox one wonders if the point is being missed.
So, if Protestant ecclesiologies are themselves deficient, then it stands to reason that their ecclesiologies must change if there is to be the sort of union Christ speaks of and embodies in Himself. For if Mary gave birth only to Christ's humanity, but did not birth Him who is fully God and fully Man, then neither does the Church give birth, by the Spirit, to deified humanity. The great divide between God and man is never overcome, and we remain separated from Him forever. This is the Nestorian ecclesiology, if you will. We become perfect and even sinless humans, but remain forever separated from God. All the rest of the Protestant heretical ecclesiologies also suffer from this ultimate conclusion: there is no union of the Church with God, but an eternal separation. Christians are perfect and sinless, but nothing more than “superhumanity.” Christ died only to make persons morally perfect, not to unite them to God.
Now clearly most Protestants don't intend this conclusion. They speak of union with God. But what sort of union is it? It's just like human fellowship. God is our Father. Jesus is our “bigger” brother. The Holy Spirit--well here is where the analogy falls apart (which itself should be a huge flashing warning sign). But there is no actual, real participation in God. The union is filial. But it is not the taking on of God's energies. It is red-orange painted on iron. It is not iron turning red-orange from taking on the fire's energy.
Further, for those Protestants who seem to formally have an ecclesiology that matches up with that of historic Christianity, there is a huge disconnect from the implications of such formal orthodoxy. For if it is the case that the Church is a divine-human institution, if the Church really is the Body of Christ, then it cannot be the case that any Protestant Church can, as a church, be that Body. But if that Protestant Church is not the Body of Christ, then intentional membership within that body is intentional schism. And the spiritual consequences and dangers of schism ought be obvious.
Please note two important things. I am not arguing for the failure of Protestant churches to be, in any real sense, the Body of Christ on the basis of the fact that either the Orthodox or Roman Catholic Churches claim to be that Body. Rather, I am arguing for that failure on the basis of the tenor of Protestant ecclesiologies themselves. In that these ecclesiologies instantiate Christiological heresies, they fail to instantiate the Church. And if that is the case, then no Protestant church can, of itself, be the Church. In fact, even those Protestants who espouse a formal ecclesiological orthodoxy, only end up intentionally perpetuating schism.
Now, it may well be that Protestants would deny that their respective ecclesiologies are tantamount to Christological heresies. I'm willing to predict that they will deny either that these Christological heresies apply to ecclesiology (or that their ecclesiology is no heresy) or deny that they adhere to these heresies. But they will have to argue for the former denial(s), and they still fall to the schism charge in light of the latter.
Since it is the case that the modern ecumenical movement arose from within Protestantism, then it is the Protestant ecclesiologies what will have to change for the reasons above. For even if all the Protestants of the globe are able to achieve an organic union, they will still remain Protestant. It may be an advance for ecumenism, but it will still be a failure for the unity of the Church.
Secondly, I am not arguing that anyone outside of Orthodoxy (or, to argue on principle, of Roman Catholicism) are not Christian in any sense. That may or may not be the case. But it is not part of my argument here. On a personal level, my opinion is that the Spirit of God blows where He wills, and although there is fact of the Body of Christ I have no basis to judge those outside the Church (which, sacramentally speaking, I, myself, still am outside the Church). In any case, salvation is not a given until, well, it's a given. There are many Orthodox (and Roman Catholic) who will fail to be saved and will be in hell. “Membership” is no guarantee.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Criterion of Truth
One of the first and most important problems within ecumenism is by what means truth claims will be judged. For the simple fact of the matter is that irreconcilable contradictions in dogma among Christian groups are rife. Is baptism a sacrament and necessary for salvation, or is it merely a symbol without any salvific effect? Are the elements of the Lord's Supper really the Body and Blood of our Lord, or are they merely elements that have been assigned by Christians a certain metaphorical meaning? Is the Orthodox Church the one true visible Church Christ founded, or is the Roman Catholic Church that Church? Is Church unity necessarily visible, or is Church unity really only an invisible spiritual reality?
I've painted these in starker terms than is perhaps necessary, but not, I think, illegitimately. For while it is true that one can hold both that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of the Lord and that the Church, through Christ's command, has, indeed, assigned metaphorical meaning to these elements, still one cannot hold that the elements have only metaphorical meaning and yet somehow are also metaphysically and really identified as Christ's Body and Blood. And while one may certainly affirm both that the Orthodox (or Catholic) Church is the one, true, visible Body of Christ and the invisible and spiritual reality of Church unity, still one cannot hold that Church unity is only or even primarily invisible and that any one particular Christian group is Christ's true Church. And so it goes.
But how does one otherwise adjudicate these fundamental and irresoluble contradictions? It can be done only by agreement on a single criterion or a definitive set of criteria. And it is just here that ecumenism fails, for of itself it cannot offer any such criterion.
What, after all, could it offer? Little else but either confusion or coercion. Either the Holy Spirit contradicts himself, or agreement must be enforced by political means. For it cannot be that the Holy Spirit has led one group of believers to one dogma and another group to another dogma which utterly contradicts the first. And if Church unity is invisible and spiritual, then the visible, fleshly unity among believers can be little more than politics and contractual arrangements. Either dogma matters or institutional conformity matters. But if dogma does not matter, what use institutional conformity? And how does one discriminate among dogma so as to know which is more important than another? What fellowship does one really have if groups cannot even agree on the place of baptism and the realities of the Lord's Supper? If we can't agree on how one becomes a Christian, nor on whether or not the Lord's Supper is the central act of God among his worshipping Body, then what, really, do we have? In the end, if all we have is respect and tolerance, what sort of unity is that? And what does it say about that sort of unity that we can have the exact same unity with non-Christian religions?
No, either we have an agreement on a single criterion, or we merely enforce political cohesion.
However, let us be clear here what is meant by “agreement on a single criterion.” It does not mean the making of a case for what seems best suited for such an endeavor. Rather, what is meant is the mutual coming to terms of the criterion that already exists. That is to say, the criterion is not something we produce or formulate ourselves. Rather it is something that is an objective fact whether or not we ourselves ever know it to be so. Ecumenism then has nothing of itself to offer. For it cannot agree on a criterion.
What I mean is this: For the Christian, the criterion of truth is Christ himself, who is “the way, the true, and the life” (John 14:6) and “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). If Christ is the criterion, then what we say about Church unity must be the sort of unity he describes in John 17; i.e., that it is the same sort of unity shared between the Father and the Son, and between the Holy Trinity and us. So it is not a stretch to say that, what one says about the Church is what one says about Christ. If one has a deficient view of the Church, one will likely have a deficient view of Christ. Church heresies are tantamount to Christological heresies.
It is of the utmost importance, then, that what we say of Church unity conforms to what Christ has said and who He is. That is to say, while the union Jesus shares with the Father is ineffable, it is total. There are no gradations. Furthermore, if the unity shared among the disciples is a participation in that unity shared among the Holy Trinity, there is no division. Indeed, there is union of minds and wills. Furthermore, if Jesus is the Theandros, his Church is theanthropic. It is not some mere adoptionist or Eutychian institution. Like Christ, the Church is human and divine, no less one than the other. Like Christ, the union of the Church with her Lord is incarnate, and therefore, like Christ, whose divine and human natures are united without change, separation, division or confusion, the Church's unity is at once visible and invisible, at once one and plural. And if this union is living and dynamic, that is to say, if it is more than political, it cannot but have a dynamic connection through time and geography with the living Church in history and in heaven.
Clearly, then, what we have seen of ecumenism since its modern inception about a century ago is utterly deficient. It cannot instantiate, manifest, or even argue for the sort of unity Christ both prays for and makes possible. It does not have one mind, one way of life, or even the living connection with the past. The Church starts with both unity and plurality. Not one or the other. Just like the Holy Trinity.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous post:
Ecumenism I]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Wikipedia has a helpful article on Christian ecumenism.
Because the meanings of "Christianity" are diverse, the description of what is meant by "Christian ecumenism" can take any of several directions.On the one hand, ecumenism is "interfaith dialogue" between representatives of diverse faiths, not necessarily with the intention of reconciling the professors of other faiths into full, organic unity with one another but simply to promote better relations. With some Christian perspectives on ecumenism, there is no other principle of ecumenism than this. They aim only toward the promotion of toleration, mutual respect and cooperation, whether between Christian churches and denominations, or between Christianity and other faiths. Thus, the World Council of Churches is an instrument in both, the Ecumenical Movement and the Interfaith Movement. However, this is not the case for all Christian ecumenical initiatives; and it would be difficult if not impossible to discuss them together, when much of the Christian world makes a definite difference between the two ideas. Therefore, readers are referred to the thorough discussion of ecumenism in the sense of the promotion of mutual appreciation and improvement between diverse religions, under the entry on religious pluralism.
On the other hand, ecumenism means the aim to reconcile all who profess Christian faith, into a single, visible organization, for example, through union with the Roman Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church. Ecumenism in this sense focuses on the special problem of the relationship between Christian denominations, where Christianity is dogmatically defined.
This distinction between the two primary understandings of ecumenism (Protestant and Orthodox/Roman Catholic) is extremely important. Protestants find the Orthodox insistence on being the one, true, visible Church tiresome. But that is because Protestants come at the issue of ecumenism from a completely different ecclesiology from Orthodoxy.
Although I readily concede the following to be somewhat superficial, generally, I think it correct to describe Roman Catholic ecclesiology as “one over many” where unity obtains (in part) administratively in the see of Rome; Protestant ecclesiology as “many over one” where unity obtains pluralistically; and Orthodox ecclesiology as “both one and many” where unity is the catholicity of the local Church at the same time that it is the plurality of all the local Churches. With regard to Protestant ecclesiology, then, from the Orthodox perspective, the error is a mirror image of the Roman Catholic error. Whereas the Pope is the locus of the instantiation of the infallibility of the Church, in Protestantism, infallibility is instantiated in the individual. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church's unity is a visible adminstration linked to Rome, in Protestantism, the unity is necessarily invisible, and secured through the individual's adherence to his interpretation (and as many people of like mind with whom he can associate) of what constitutes the apostle's teaching. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church's apostolicity is historically tangible in episcopal succession and fidelity to conciliar dogma, in Protestantism, apostolicity is necessarily and exclusively doctrinal. So, for Orthodox, the Protestant ecclesiological error is bound up with that of the Catholic.
For Orthodox, Church unity is visible, incarnational, historical. For Protestants, Church unity is invisible, spiritual, and ahistorical. Protestant church unity is based on doctrinal agreement and the willingness to endure contradiction. That is to say, one will find the common denominator to which all can say “Amen,” and allow the differences, however substantive, to not matter. (One can see how easily portable this methodology is from the context of intra-Protestant dialogues to that between different faiths entirely.) But is this even Christian? (Cf. 1 Timothy 3:15)
Note here the substance of my complaint: It is not that Protestants aren't Orthodox. It's that Protestants have an ecclesiology that cannot be reconciled to Orthodox ecclesiology, and therefore ecumenical efforts cannot be aimed first at union. If two parties cannot even agree on what the endpoint should be, in what way can their efforts be fruitful? That is to say, for Orthodox, ecclesiology is not merely a doctrinal point, but a way of living. And one can only assume this is true of Protestants as well. This being the case, then, until Protestants change their ecclesiology, there can be no union. (More on that point later.) Protestants may be satisfied with toleration, respect and an invisible “unity.” But Orthodox cannot be so satisfied.
[This is a first in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.]
Gene Edward Veith pretty much nails it in his, "A nation of deists."
Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton have coined a phrase that describes perfectly the dominant American religion: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.Those authors are researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and have written up their findings in a new book: Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press).
And here's the scary part:
After interviewing over 3,000 teenagers, the social scientists summed up their beliefs:(1) "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."
(2) "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."
(3) "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."
(4) "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem."
(5) "Good people go to heaven when they die."
Yep, there's no other name for it: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. (Hmmm. Maybe Barna is on to something. And here. And here. This might be part of the reason why.)
Veith again:
MTD has become the "dominant civil religion." And it is "colonizing" American Christianity. To the point, these secular scholars conclude, "a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."
See Barna above.
[M]uch that passes for Christian teaching says nothing about Christ. Instead, it consists of pop psychology, self-help platitudes, and the power of positive thinking.
Joel Osteen, anyone?
First, read this copy of an SI article by Rick Reilly on Dick and Rick Hoyt, father-son triathlete and marathon running team. Who are they?
Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.It’s a remarkable record of exertion — all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.
For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly stabilized boat being pulled by Dick.
At Rick’s birth in 1962 the umbilical cord coiled around his neck and cut off oxygen to his brain. Dick and his wife, Judy, were told that there would be no hope for their child’s development.
"It’s been a story of exclusion ever since he was born," Dick told me. "When he was eight months old the doctors told us we should just put him away — he’d be a vegetable all his life, that sort of thing. Well those doctors are not alive any more, but I would like them to be able to see Rick now."
From the Reilly article:
[A]fter a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."
That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"
Reilly continues:
This year [2005], at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time."No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century." . . .
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."
You can pick up more information at Team Hoyt.
If you haven't been reading John Stamps' series of reflections on St. Gregory Palamas over at The Orthodox Way blog, you're missing out on a real treat. Take, for example, his most recent post, Who can argue against life?--the Triads of St Gregory Palamas.
Here are two snippets to whet your appetite.
Orthodox faith is deeper than moving around mental concepts between our ears. Jesus' parable of the wise man and the foolish man (Matthew 7:24-27) comes to mind here. If your faith is ultimately built on mere argument and conjecture, how can it possibly stand against the storms of doubt that assail us?
And this:
St Gregory's bottom-line to his fellow monk: Trust your own experience with God and don't be swayed by mere argument. If your belief in God is based exclusively on arguments pro or con, then you'll constantly be changing your mind. Doubt yourself. Doubt your own intellectual capacities. Doubt anything, but don't be so foolish as to doubt the experience of the saints. But by his belligerence shown towards the Athonite monks, Barlaam demonstrates that he would rather prove himself in the right than accept the age-old traditions of Eastern spirituality. He would rather argue than pray!Now St Gregory doesn't renounce the "outer learning." It is perfectly fine for gaining knowledge of the world. What it doesn't do is tell us anything accurate about God.
The Birth
When Anna determined to birth Delaina through the care of a midwife, I was less than thrilled. Not that I had anything against midwifery, mind you. But when it comes to the health of my family, I want all the marvels of modern medicine at our immediate disposal. The whole midwife thing just smacked of new-agey hippie-ness. Not fer me, thank yew very much.
But for those readers who know my wife, Anna is not easily dissuaded once her mind has fixed on a goal. And her goal was simple and clear: a water birth with a midwife. And by golly, that's just what she got. She wanted that with Sofie, but her employer switched insurance providers just before her last trimester and she wasn't able to make the switch.
Sofie's birth was marvelous, of course. I was a weepy, gooey mess. (Tripp can authenticate this claim, by the way.) But Anna's ob-gyn had already determined that if Anna went a week over her due date, he would induce her labor. And that, in fact, was what happened. Although Anna paid attention to her body's labor, since it was chemically induced, and her first delivery, there was more a feeling of not being in control, of things just happening to her and Sofie. And I was pretty much useless. As Sofie was being born, I stood at Anna's shoulder while all the medical personnel north of the Mason-Dixon line worked around my wife. I briefly saw Sofie crowning, and the rest of the time I could only see Sofie as she had emerged from the womb. It was still a marvelous sight, but so very much filtered. I was an observer. They could have put me on the other side of a glass wall.
After Sofie had been born, while she was on the warming table and getting checked out, I could touch her and kiss her. But those first initial moments are lost behind that barrier.
Delaina's birth was gloriously and completely different for us both. First of all, and most importantly, Anna's body, not some doctor, dictated when Delaina would be born. Anna could listen to her body and had a good sense of what was going on and how imminent was the birth. In fact, we all went to Vespers just a few hours before Delaina was born--while Anna's contractions were five minutes apart. After Vespers, we drove my mom and Sofie home and headed to the hospital. We got there between ten and ten-thirty and Delaina was born about three hours later.
When we got to the birthing suite, the midwife filled up the tub, while Anna worked through the stronger and more regular contrations. She could walk freely and sit up. I could apply pressure to her lower back and otherwise help her. The midwife was there to encourage us and chart all the stuff that was happening naturally. With about twenty-minutes to go (though we did not know it then), Anna got into the tub and let the last minutes of her active labor happen. It was, by Anna's account, a much easier birth. No drugs. The pain was mitigated somewhat by the warm water. And no intrusion of a SWAT team of medical personnel. It was Anna, one of her friends, the midwife and me. (Though for insurance/legal reasons, a couple of nurses popped in and out from time to time.) And only at the end, when Anna needed some help repositioning so that Delaina's shoulder could make it out of the birth canal did the midwife really insert herself into Anna's labor.
Delaina was born quickly and placed on Anna's chest, where she let out her first cries. Anna then laid Delaina on her upraised knees, balancing her in the water. We were able to feel the last pulsations of the umbilical cord as blood and nutrients flowed for the last time to Delaina. I got to cut the cord. And after they took Delaina to the warming table for measurements, I was able to give her my paternal blessing in the presence of the icons of the Theotokos and the Christ, and the vials of oil from the vigil lamps of the tombs of St. John of San Francisco and Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina.
But best of all, I got to nap for a couple of hours with Anna and Delaina before I headed home to get my mom and Sofie and give thanks in the Divine Liturgy.
I have invested quite a bit of thinking (this is the thirteenth post of this series) around the notion of philosophia as a way of life (with obvious reliance on Pierre Hadot's works Philosophy as a Way of Life and What is Ancient Philosophy?), and of Christianity as a philosophia. That ancient philosophy understood itself differently from present day academic philosophy would seem to go without saying (though the implications of that assertion are surely much more controversial), and that several important second century Christian documents present Christianity as a philosophia, similar though superior to ancient philosophiai, ought also be relatively uncontroversial. But whether one ought to invest in advocacy of the notion of Christianity as a philosophia is surely less obvious. What is important is to simply live the Christian faith as it has been passed down from the incarnate ministry of our Lord to today.
That is to say, the imposition of the structures of ultimate principles (logoi), a distinctive discourse (dialogos), and soulish exercises (askeses) is the imposition of external classificatory categories and structures that it is not clear arise naturally from within Christianity itself. That is to say, while the Holy Trinity, the Divine Liturgy and prayer (logoi, dialogos, and askesis, respectively) are in themselves entirely Christian, the organization of these realities along the lines suggested above is arguably questionable. One could argue that these are Hadot's own classification of aspects of ancient philosophical schools, which schools themselves might well not classify themselves in this way, and that further, to apply Hadot's structures on Christianity via ancient philosophy is suspect at best.
But as a heuristic device, at very least, these categories and structures can prove helpful in reflecting on the Christian Faith and its practice, and I hope these reflections have made this evident.
As I hope I have demonstrated, there can be no compartmentalizing of the Christian Faith and life, for the divine call is total and radical, and in this way it brings wholeness and unity to otherwise fractured human existence. That is to say, the way of life, the philosophia that is Christianity cannot be added to one's existence, as though a weekend hobby. It is, rather, the entirety of that which revolves around the Holy Trinity, the center of one's existence.
There are at least two implications of this which ought be obvious. First, the organic wholeness of Christianity makes impossible any division away from the way of life transmitted without interruption from Pentecost as well any division within the way Christians have always lived. That is to say, there can be no spontaneous generation of the Christian philosophia. One cannot affirm the fundamental Christian realities or principles, nor can one study and imitate the unique Christian discourse and askeses, without taking on the Christian way of life from within that life Christians have practiced from the beginning. That is to say, Christianity cannot be franchised. One must become a part of the only philosophia that is Christianity if one is to truly have that way of life that is Christian. I will say it bluntly. The some purported twenty-odd thousand Protestant groups worldwide seek this very impossibility: to make the Church over from scratch as from theory. I know whence I speak, for my heritage churches' raison d'etre was to “restore the New Testament Church in our day,” leap-frogging over some seventeen hundred years of the life of the Church to “start anew.” But this is little better than schism, well-intentioned though it be. There is only one New Testament Church, and true to Christ's promise, it has never ceased to exist. This is the Church with the original and life-giving philosophia. All others, simply by virtue of failing to live the Christian way of life from within, ultimately create other philosophiai which are not that which comes from Christ in the Holy Spirit and Pentecost.
Nor can any of the fundamental structures which organize Christianity as a philosophia be isolated from or emphasized out of proportion to the rest. By this I mean that one cannot elevate the elements, say, of dialogos over those of askesis. Doctrine cannot replace practice. (Nor, for that matter, practice doctrine.) Having spent nearly my entire life as a Protestant (which, formally, I still am, though I have been pursuing Orthodoxy for three years and hope soon sacramentally to become Orthodox), I can tell you that while Protestantism arguably pursues the fundamental principles of the Christian Faith, in most instances various Protestant groups focus either on doctrine--and too often a particular doctrine derived apart from the mind of the Church--over the way of life that that doctrine entails, or they focus on practice over the living doctrine needed to justify and support those practices. What results is on the one hand a sort of neo-gnosticism, in which as long as one believes correctly (witness the various confessional documents and statements of faith of Protestant bodies and groups), one has done the primary thing necessary, and the practice of that doctrine, though not unimportant, is given much less focus. On the other hand there is the imposition of practices that are hardly conformed to historic Christianity, and are justified ad hoc either through the purported ends sought or achieved, or through a superficial prooftexting of Scripture and doctrine which deviates from the objective and historic Christian norm (witness many of the practices that go on in “discipling” ministries and charismatic groups).
Further, the way of life of the Christian Faith will necessarily and essentially put us in opposition to our non-Christian neighbor, our culture and society, and all that which opposes Christ. That is to say, by virtue of living the Christian Faith, we will have enemies, human and demonic. If there is one overriding rebellion of the ecumenical/interfaith movements against biblical and historic Christianity it is this: the Church has enemies. “Do not be surprised,” St. John tells us, “that the world hates you” (1 John 3:13). This is the same St. John who says “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). And: “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9). Indeed, St. John is merely being faithful to the Lord who Himself said:
"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.' (John 15:18-25)
Thus, as much as it offends the sensibilities of the world, even and especially the religious world that claims Christ's name, Christians must be steadfast in maintaining their Lord's exclusive claims: He is the way the truth and the life (John 14:6), and there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 5:12). Indeed, He who fills the universe has chosen to inhabit His unique dwelling place, the household of God, the Church (Ephesians 1:22-23; 1 Timothy 3:15).
This is not to say that there is no good at all in one's non-Christian neighbor or in human society--for the Church has never believed that the image of God has been utterly destroyed in mankind--but it is to say that fragmented revelations of the divine image do not constitute the whole. Just because some religious teaching may participate in an incomplete way with the truth of which the Church is pillar and ground does not mean that such a religion or its teaching is Christian. It simply means that on this or another point which converges with the Christian Faith, Christians can affirm this specific teaching, while also obligating themselves to the clarity of love that reiterates Christ's exclusive claims. But in affirming these fragmentary truths, we also affirm the fullness which the Church alone possesses.
None of these truths are comfortable, nor are they given to the making of social friendships. But that is the way of things in the life that is Christianity. That we find these truths uncomfortable ourselves, or find ourselves resistant to them, may only illustrate how far we are from the Christian philosophia. Please God that all of us may be more and more conformed to the life of Christ in His Church.
[The remainder of the posts in this series can be found here.]
Cathy Scott's Seraphim Rose: The True Story and Private Letters (Regina Orthodox Press, 2000), is a deeply flawed book. Less than a biographical work, it is a polemic: primarily a reaction to Not of This World, Hieromonk Damascene Christenson's first biography of Father Seraphim Rose (to be replaced in 2003 with the vastly improved Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works). Despite its deep flaws, however, it is a book well worth reading, and for those who revere Father Seraphim and wish to know as much about his life as possible, it is a book well worth owning.
Ms. Scott begins her work with
Much has been written about my uncle, Eugene Rose, who in 1970 became Monk Seraphim Rose. This book is a biography based on true and first-hand accounts from his family, friends, priests, and professors. Most importantly, it includes his personal correspondence from the time he left home for college to his passing in Redding, California, nearly three decades later. This compilation is the true account of his life's journey, which led him into Orthodoxy. It is not a purified version of his life. The sanitized version was authored in 1993 by Monk Damascene Christenson in Not of This World. Large portions of Eugene's life were omitted in that version. [Emphasis added]
However, in reading Ms. Scott's biographical insertions and the letters of (then) Eugene Rose, it becomes clear that only one primary factor of Father Seraphim's life had been omitted in Not of This World: his homosexuality. Ms. Scott refers to this a few paragraphs later in the same introduction by a tortuous circumlocution (apparently not wanting to give the game away until later in the book).
Long before he became a monk, he gave up certain things, including what the Church considers to be immoral actions. From my research, I learned that Eugene quit that behavior around 1960, when he embraced Orthodoxy and the rules of the Church, even before he joined that faith, in 1962, and a decade before he became a monk.
Without knowing in advance that Ms. Scott is referring to homosexual behavior, one is hard pressed to grasp what connections she intends between “immoral actions” and “that behavior.” Drugs? Gambling? Masturbation? All condemned by the Church. Aside from the fact of ostensibly delaying (until pp. 71ff) the shock value of “outing” the “pre-Father Seraphim” Eugene Rose, this is just bad writing.
Regrettably, the pot shots at Not of This World, do not end with this initial reference, but are inserted in a few other places throughout the rest of the book (pp. xii, 55-56, 235). But in reading the two books, Ms. Scott's and Not of This World, it becomes clear that the things Ms. Scott objects to are the omission of any overt reference to Father Seraphim's pre-Chrismation homosexual behavior and the characterization of him in his college days as “an angry young man” (Scott p xii).
But instead of an angry young man, Ms. Scott, through interviews with Father Seraphim's college friends, presents a young man “in pain” who didn't convert to Orthodoxy “and embrace that rigidity without needing to” (p. 160). Ms. Scott attributes to John Zeigel that “Eugene turned to the priesthood as an escape.” She goes on to quote Zeigel (“a postulant for the Catholic priesthood before he came out as a homosexual”) directly: “I was headed in that direction,” he said. “Once I found love, I reversed my directions. That put me at a crossroads. I woke up from this narrow Orthodoxy.” (p. 160) So, instead of an angry young man, Ms. Scott presents Father Seraphim as essentially a neurotic who became Orthodox to ease his pain. One wonders which is the worse.
But this failure of explanation with regard to Father Seraphim's conversion to Orthodoxy is only compounded by the extended reflection Ms. Scott records of Eugene's friends of his rejection of academia and an academic career as “a waste” (p. 163-164).
Embarrassingly, whatever her research entailed for her book, she clearly did not research the philosphy that formed so much a part of Father Seraphim's college formation. She refers to “David Hume, a philosopher who was into skepticism” (p. 26), as though Hume's lifework could be reduced to a fad he engaged in: he was “into” skepticism. And the reduction of Arthur Schopenhauer to a “nineteenth-century philosopher of pessimism” (p. 26) is equally egregious.
In addition to these failures is Ms. Scott's clear lack of comprehension of Orthodoxy itself. She is clearly not Orthodox, and very little of her work presents Orthodoxy in a sympathetic light. Although the only outright criticisms of Orthodoxy come from the mouths of Eugene's college friends, she lets these criticisms stand without fuller explanation, either from herself or other potential interviewees (such as Hieromonk Ambrose [Alexey] Young, Val Harvey, and other of Father Seraphim's spiritual children).
But perhaps the chief flaw of Ms. Scott's book is that it is so poorly written. Much of the book is the stringing together of Father Seraphim's letters with occasional comments about the date of the letter and to whom it was written. And if Ms. Scott's work is intended to be a “true story” of Father Seraphim's life, the great bulk, two-thirds, of the work (pp. 1-161) mark out Father Seraphim's life up to the completion of his master's thesis in 1961 (less than a year prior to his Chrismation into the Orthodox Church). Only the last eighty pages (163-243) have anything to do with the last half of Father Seraphim's life. If this is a “true story” of Father Seraphim's life, it pays comparatively scant attention to what Father Seraphim himself considered to be the most fundamental aspect of his being.
These criticisms notwithstanding, Ms. Scott does not otherwise oversensationalize Father Seraphim's homosexual behavior, nor presents Orthodoxy as a cult. One supposes that she intends an “objective” viewpoint, letting Father Seraphim's friends and family, and Father Seraphim himself in his early letters, speak to the various matters. Indeed, through this revelation of Father Seraphim's homosexual behavior, and his later rejection of it, Ms. Scott, perhaps unwittingly, provides hope for those who struggle with same-sex attraction and wish to be conformed to the life of Christ in the Church.
But most important are the letters themselves. Perhaps not obviously so at first, upon repeated readings they set out the gradual conversion of Father Seraphim from his former life to his life as Orthodox. This background makes much more rich one's own reading of the truly worthwhile biography Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works.
To my knowledge, Ms. Scott's book is out of print, though one may contact the publisher.
Talk about a reason to circumcize them boys!
Circumcision may offer Africa AIDS hope: Procedure linked to much lower rate of new HIV infections
Think: Rachel Scott. Columbine. God. Award winning short film. Worth six minutes of your time.
A Response to Marilyn Adamson's Article Titled 'Is There A God?' (pdf file)
James Taranto writes about The Roe Effect:
It is a statement of fact, not a moral judgment, to observe that every pregnancy aborted today results in one fewer eligible voter 18 years from now. More than 40 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973, and these are not randomly distributed across the population. Black women, for example, have a higher abortion ratio (percentage of pregnancies aborted) than Hispanic women, whose abortion ratio in turn is higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Since blacks vote Democratic in far greater proportions than Hispanics, and whites are more Republican than Hispanics or blacks, ethnic disparities in abortion ratios would be sufficient to give the GOP a significant boost--surely enough to account for George W. Bush's razor-thin Florida victory in 2000.The Roe effect, however, refers specifically to the nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion. It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents' values. This would seem to ensure that Americans born after Roe v. Wade have a greater propensity to vote for the pro-life party--that is, Republican--than they otherwise would have. . . .
Critics of the Roe effect hypothesis point out that abortion does not necessarily diminish a woman's lifetime fertility. A woman may, for example, have an abortion while in college, but later marry and bear children--children she might not have had, had she been forced to carry her collegiate pregnancy to term. Yet it is not clear how much this might mitigate the Roe effect. Some women do abort their final pregnancy, and delayed childbearing is one manifestation of the Roe effect. If a woman has a child at, say, age 30 rather than 20, one additional census passes before the child counts toward his state's congressional and electoral college apportionment, and two or three presidential elections pass before he reaches voting age. The compounding element applies here as well; if a woman has a daughter at 30 rather than 20, the daughter reaches childbearing age a decade later than she otherwise would have. Moreover, attitudes about abortion and politics are subject to change with age and experience, and usually in a conservative direction. Thus, some women who delay childbearing contribute to the Roe effect on both ends: by having abortions when they are young, single, and pro-choice, and by bearing children when they are older, married, and pro-life.
Read the rest at the link above.
In his review, Pre-emptive Executions?, Steve Sailer takes on Freakonomics:
Since 1999, the University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt has been pushing his theory that legal abortion is responsible for half of the recent fall in crime. This assertion is the most prominent element in Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the entertaining new book Levitt co-wrote with journalist Stephen J. Dubner. . . .The theory that legalizing abortion cuts crime is hardly original to Levitt, but it has long been more whispered than printed. Levitt’s hypothesis embarrasses pro-choicers, who don’t want public discussion of how quite a few people, from crusading eugenicist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger onward, have backed fertility control as a way to limit “undesirables.” Since blacks undergo about three times as many abortions as whites per capita, white liberals realize that endorsing Levitt’s reasoning could be politically disastrous. . . .
Levitt’s theory rests on two plausible-sounding statements. First, he claims that abortion lowers the number of “unwanted” babies, who would be more likely to commit crimes someday. Second, crime did fall. Levitt writes, “In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years—the years during which young men enter their criminal prime—the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals.”
Although Levitt’s research has been praised by normally hardheaded gentlemen such as George Will and Robert Samuelson, few have probed its statistical complexities. Overall crime-trend data are frequently questionable. For example, the city of Atlanta long understated crime to attract the 1996 Olympics. The FBI’s homicide statistics, however, are more trustworthy because, as Arthur Miller might have said, attention must be paid to a dead body with a hole in it.According to Levitt’s logic, murder should have declined first among the youngest and last among the oldest. Did it? Unfortunately for Levitt, the opposite is true. The murder rate for Americans age 25 and over started falling way back in 1981 (when the youngest person in this cohort was born in 1956) and fell fairly steadily for two decades. Indeed, in contrast to his theory about post-Roe individuals being especially law-abiding, the adult murder rate has only begun to creep back up now that people born after Roe have begun to make up a noticeable fraction of those 25 and up. From 1999 through 2002 (the latest year available, when a 25-year-old would have been born four years after Roe), the murder rate among 25- to 34-year-olds has risen 17 percent, while continuing to drop among the under-25s.
But the acid test of Levitt’s theory is this: did the first New, Improved Generation culled by legalized abortion actually grow up to be more lawful teenagers than the last generation born before legalization? Hardly. Instead, the first cohort to survive legalized abortion went on the worst youth murder spree in American history.
Abortion became legal in 1970 in California, New York, and three smaller states. Let’s compare the murder rate of 14- to 17-year-olds in 1983 (who were born in the last pre-legalization years of 1965-1969) with that of 14- to 17-year-olds a decade later in 1993 (who were born in the high-abortion years of 1975-1979). Was this post-Roe cohort better behaved than their pre-legalization elders? Not exactly. Their murder rate was 3.1 times worse.
In contrast, 18- to 24-year-olds in 1993—some born before legalization, some after—committed 86 percent more murders than a decade earlier, while people 25 and up—all born before legalization—were 18 percent less lethal. Back in 1983, 14- to 17-year-olds were barely more than half as likely as 25- to 34-year-olds to kill. In 1993 and 1994, however, this purportedly better-bred generation of juveniles was more than twice as deadly as 25- to 34-year-olds.
Although Levitt desperately wants to avoid talking about race in relation to abortion and crime, blacks make an ideal test case for his theory because, as Levitt himself has noted, black women have about triple the number of abortions per capita as white women. So Levitt’s theory suggests that black teens should have “benefited” more than whites from abortion. Instead, black 14- to 17-year-olds were an apocalyptic 4.4 times more murderous in 1993 than a decade earlier. The black-white teen murder ratio grew from five times worse in 1983 to 11 times worse in 1993, according to the FBI.
The embarrassing truth, as Levitt admitted to me when I debated him on Slate.com in 1999, is that when he dreamed up his theory with John J. Donohue, he looked at crime rates in 1985 and 1997 and paid little attention to the vast crack epidemic that laid waste to urban America in between.
It makes no sense to credit abortion for any subsequent improvement in the behavior of the first post-Roe generation, when abortion so dismally failed to keep them on the straight and narrow when they were juveniles. Instead, the most obvious explanation for the ups and downs of the murder rate is the ups and downs of the crack business.
Read the rest at the link above.
I had intended for this to be my final post (at least for some time) on Christianity and philosophia. But my own recent experiences and a request from a fellow parishioner have prodded me to focus my attention on Christian philosophia and the Sacrament, or Mystery, of Marriage and concomitant fatherhood. So my concluding thoughts will have to come next time.
It should go without saying that if one wants to know deeper and more worthwhile thoughts than mine on Christian fatherhood, one should talk to the sort of Christian man who has seen daughters enter the convent or become khourias, matushkas and presbyteras and has seen sons become priests and monastics, who has seen his grandchildren baptized, and whose wife embodies Proverbs 31. That is the sort of man St. Paul envisions in 1 Timothy 3:4 and Ephesians 5:21-6:9.
Further, one must also be adamant about that fact that marriage and fatherhood are subsumed within the Christian philosophia, within the Christian way of life, and are not ends to themselves, or separate ways of life. One should be cautious about using such terms as “balancing” marriage or parenthood and a career since this gives rise to the sort of compartmentalizing thought that fragments life and fractures that which should be whole. One does not add marriage and fatherhood to one's life as though to one's resume. Rather, marriage and fatherhood, if they are to be full, complete and joyful, must be grounded in and arise from within the Christian philosophia. For only the philosophia that is Christianity can give them life and meaning.
We see this precisely in the haustafel passage in Ephesians 5:21-6:9. It must not be forgotten that Ephesians 5 follows Ephesians 4, and that Ephesians 4 itself comes from Ephesians 1-3. For if
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and insight, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, for an administration of the fullness of the times, He might bring together all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on the earth--In Him. (Ephesians 1:7-10)
and if
He subjected all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him filling all things in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23)
and if
you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
and if
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
then when St. Paul writes about the Christian household in Ephesians 5:21-6:9, it is clear that such a household comes out of the reality of the Church, the household of God, founded in and on Christ.
This means, of course, that marriage and fatherhood will be grounded in the same logoi, or principles, the same dialogos, or discourse, and the same askeses, or soulish exercises, that form the philosophia that is Christianity. Just as the Holy Eucharist is the central Sacrament of the Church's life, so, too, is the Holy Eucharist the central Sacrament of marriage and fatherhood. Just as Christian discourse is grounded in the Creed, so, too are marriage and fatherhood grounded. Just as fasting, prayer and almsgiving are the “ good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10), so, too, do these mark out the formation of Christians husbands for their wives (and wives for their husbands) and of Christian fathers for their children.
For the Christian husband, the procreation and nurture of children is both the natural and concomitant obligation and responsibility that accompanies this one-fleshed covenant. That children are no longer thought of as an obvious and integral part of marriage in our society is surely a strong indication of its fallenness into the demonic hatred of life. This does not negate the legitimate, though rare, vocation of a couple toward married celibacy, nor does it entail a condemnation and judgment on those couples who are infertile. The one is a calling that must be confirmed by the Church and has produced not a few saints, the other is pathway that must be ministered to by the Church and has likewise produced not a few saints. But both of these are exceptions that prove the rule. Children are the natural procreative end of the union of man and wife, and the embodiment of the conjugal fidelity, trust, love and joy which knit the two lives together.
That is to say, for the Christian husband, marriage is not about individual satisfaction and fulfillment, but about giving himself up for wife and children, as did Christ for the Church, in an act of love that accomplishes the presentation of his family before God in holiness (Ephesians 5:25-33). That is to say, a Christian husband and father sees his marital and paternal duties to be not the mere physical provision necessary to his home (though this is not discounted in any way), but rather that even the procurement of physical provision is focused on and in the life of repentance and sanctification Christ makes real for his Church. This may very well mean that the Christian husband and father sets aside the career he once envisioned for himself, or his various pursuits and desires, as a hindrance and obstacle to the salvation of his wife and children. In a very real sense, the headship of the Christian husband and father embodies for his family--and the watching world--St. Paul's words to the Corinthians: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3). If for Christ to do the will of his Father and to accomplish his work was his food (John 4:34), then the Christian husband and father will not find life and peace anywhere else.
Perhaps the one distinctive feature of marriage and of Christian fatherhood, especially as these reflect the way of life, the philosophia of the Church, is the understanding that our Lord's is a Kingdom “not of this world” (John 18:36). This means that the concerns of a Christian husband and father, reflective as they are of the Christian philosophia, are oriented not toward this-worldly satisfaction and success, but toward the Kingdom that has already broken into this world and is our inheritance and home. For the Christian husband and father, this may well mean crucifying his own deep and natural longings for grandchildren and a paternal legacy to foster and encourage a monastic vocation in his children. It will certainly mean the most difficult task of inculcating in his children a holy distaste for the ungodly aspects of our culture, particularly its deadly self-absorption, gluttonous consumption and unbridled lust. It will mean that from the wedding and from conception onward, he will have to build into his marriage and his children an identification with the Church and her Lord that is as deep and as natural as breathing. All this of course is predicated on the fact that the Christian husband and father is himself living a life of repentance characterized by this Kingdom orientation.
In other words, Christian marriage and Christian fatherhood are themselves particular embodiments of a distinctive way of life that both silently condemns the surrounding culture and embodies for it the good news of life in Christ, the way of life that sets of Christianity from all other philosophiai.
[The remainder of the posts in this series can be found here.]
Transitions
It should go without saying that changing from a married household to a family household was a big transition. I still remember those early weeks when Anna struggled with the effects of the hormonal changes and lack of sleep. There were many tears and feelings of helplessness, even hopelessness. She received appropriate care for post-partum depression, and got the sort of additional support from friends here in Chicago that often came just in time. (This was before we started attending All Saints regularly as a whole family.)
Distracted as I was able to be with school and work, my own struggles revolved around my impatience with myself at my obvious inadequacies as a parent. I was learning how to be a dad at the same time Anna was learning to be a mom, and Sofie to be a daughter. These things sorted themselves out in time. I learned that my salvation will come precisely in and through my successes and failures as a parent, that Sofie has a guardian angel--and more importantly a heavenly Father who loves and cares for her in ways utterly ineffable. I learned that the darker days were earliest on, as my body ached for sleep and my emotions fell in line with that lack. Most of all, I learned that parental sorrow is almost never without its greater and deeper joys. I have been completely overwhelmed by these graces. May I also be made worthy of them.
But now we are in a whole new time of transition: from that of a household with a child, to a household with children. As unutterable were the feelings of helplessness then, so are they as unspeakable now. The old impatience is there still, and the lack of sleep, already anticipated, still hits as hard. Having gone through nearly two years of raising Sofie, we find ourselves with the skills we did not once have. We do not panic now when Delaina cries inexplicably. We know that sometimes newborns just do that. We are better able to gauge Delaina's needs than we ever were with Sofie.
Now, however, when we could otherwise enjoy our parental skill set earned over the last couple of years, we find ourselves having to learn new skills: parenting two children. One would not think this so hard, at least in theory. Just do what was done with the first child--minus the mistakes--and double it. How far from the truth! The "No" imperatives that flow from our mouths to Sofie surely overwhelm her as they do us. Whereas we were already in the midst of the limit-setting of the "terrible two's" now we have a whole new list relative to Delaina. We also have a whole new reservoir of impatience when Sofie does not meet our demands.
This, of course, furthers her own acting out, and this simply perpetuates the cycle of "No's" and offering either/or alternatives. She is overwhelmed as are we. So much so that last night at dinner, after a long acting-out episode, she climbed into Anna's lap and fell asleep. The tender trust and exhaustion Sofie exhibited pierced us deeply. Anna hugged her and her maternal tears fell down on Sofie's slumbering head. I prayed silently for the Lord to have mercy on us all, through the prayers of his all-holy Mother.
I know these days will give way to joy and laughter, for they are already filled with these things. But the hard moments remain. Please God that they continue to be the means of our salvation.
Sofie, Big Sister Extraordinaire
Sofie has begun fulfilling her big sisterly duties quite handily. She wasted no time in holding her baby sister. In fact, now, whenever Daddy or Momma are holding Delaina, Sofie claps her hands together twice, spreads her arms wide and opens and closes her fists in a gesture indicating we should hand over her little sister forthwith. This gesture is accompanied by either "Lubby" or "Lubby baby."
Sofie has also already taken it upon herself to teach Delaina--or, as Sofie calls her, "Deleema"--the important things little sisters need to know, like the song "Winkle, winkle, winkle winkle" (sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), with the accompanying "winkling" motions with one's hands over one's head. She has also acquainted Delaina with the names of various body parts: toe, eyebrow, mow (mouth), no (nose), ear, and chin.
Unfortunately, Sofie has yet to grasp the concept of "gentle." One of the first things she did when we took her to the hospital to meet her little sister for the first time was put Delaina in a headlock. I thought the poor child was going to turn blue had not Momma stepped in.
Indeed, we worried that we would have to deal with jealousy issues from the get go. Those may indeed come later. And it is true that, although Anna can hold Delaina as often and as long as she wants without Sofie interfering, the moment I hold Delaina, Sofie is crawling into my lap, with either a "Lubby Daddy" or a "Huh (hug)," No, instead ours has been the opposite problem: how to teach Sofie that she doesn't need to hold the baby every moment that she's awake.
But the thing that makes this twice-graced daddy proud as can be is a particular lesson that Sofie has tried to teach Delaina three times now. It's the most important one in Sofie's paedagogy. Sofie puts her little fingers together, attempts to make the sign of the cross over Delaina and says, "Our Father, Amen."
It is absolutely amazing what Sofie absorbs and then puts into practice just out of the blue.
I'm at home right now with "the girls" (what an amazing, wonderful, delicious phrase!). Anna is out running errands. Sofie is watching a video about numbers and counting--and practicing, though she keeps leaving out "four." "One-two-three-five!" Delaina is nestled in my neck sucking her fist. I'm typing one-handed.
This is heaven on earth!
Delaina Rose Healy was born at 1:45 a.m., today 3 July, the second Sunday after Pentecost and the feast of the holy martyr Hyacinthos. She weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz., and was a long 19 1/2 inches. She looks just like her big sister Sofie! Today would have been the 34th birthday of Anna's brother, Delane (may his memory be eternal).
Momma (Anna) and Delaina are doing fine.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!
From the St. Herman account of his life:
To the manager of the orphanage where he lived, who had spoken in the spring of 1966 of a diocesan meeting to be held three years later, he indicated, "I will not be here then. " In May, 1966, a woman who had known Vladika for twelve years - and whose testimony, according to Metropolitan Philaret, is "worthy of complete confidence" - was amazed to hear him say, "I will die soon, at the end of June... not in San Francisco, but in Seattle.... " Metropolitan Philaret himself testifies of Vladika's extraordinary final farewell to him when returning to San Francisco from the last session of the Synod which he attended in New York. After the Metropolitan had served the customary moleben before traveling, Vladika, instead of sprinkling his own head with holy water, as is always done by hierarchs, bent low and asked the Metropolitan to sprinkle him; and after this, instead of the usual mutual kissing of hands, Vladika firmly took the Metropolitan's hand and kissed it, withdrawing his own . . .
Again, on the evening before his departure for Seattle, four days before his death, Vladika astonished a man for whom he had just served a moleben with the words, " You will not kiss my hand again. " And on the day of his death, at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy which he celebrated, he spent three hours in the altar praying, emerging not long before his death, which occurred at 3:50 p. m. on July 2 (June 19, OS), 1966. He died in his room in the parish building next to the church, without preparatory signs of any illness or affliction. He was heard to fall and, having been placed in a chair by those who ran to help him, breathed his last peacefully and with little evident pain, in the presence of the miracle working Kursk Icon of the Sign. Thus was Vladika found worthy to imitate the blessed death of his patron, St. John of Tobolsk.
St. Herman Brotherhood account of St. John's Life (and another here).
An Account of the Examination of the Incorrupt Relics of St. John the Wonderworker
Services to St. John, especially an Akathist to St. John
Troparion (Tone 5)
Thy care for thy flock in its sojourn has prefigured the supplications which thou didst ever offer up for the whole world. Thus do we believe, having come to know thy love, O holy hierarch and wonder-worker John. Wholly sanctified by God through the ministry of the all-pure Mysteries, and thyself strengthened thereby, thou didst hasten unto suffering, O most gladsome healer--hasten now also to the aid of us who honor thee with all our heart.
Kontakion (Tone 4)
Thy heart hath gone out to all who entreat thee with love, O holy hierarch John, and who remember the struggle of thy whole industrious life, and thy painless and easy repose, O faithful servant of the all-pure Directress.
Troparion (Tone 6)
Glorious apostle to an age of coldness and unbelief, invested with the grace-filled power of the saints of old, divinely-illumined seer of heavenly mysteries, feeder of orphans, hope of the hopeless, thou didst enkindle on earth the fire of love for Christ upon the dark eve of the day of judgment; pray now that this sacred flame may also rise from our hearts.
Kontakion of St John (Tone 8)
Chosen wonderworker and superb servant of Christ/ who pourest out in the latter times/ inexhaustible streams of inspiration and multitude of miracles,/ we praise thee with love and call out to thee:/ Rejoice, holy Hierarch John, wonderworker of the latter times.
O beloved Hierarch John, while living amongst us thou didst see the future as if present, distant things as if near the hearts and minds of men as if they were thine own. We know that in this thou wast illumined by God, with Whom thou wast ever in the mystical communion of prayer, and with Whom thou now abidest eternally. As thou once didst hear the mental petitions of thy far-scattered flock even before they could speak to thee, so now hear our prayers and bring them before the Lord. Thou hast gone over unto the life unaging, unto the other world, yet thou art in truth not far from us, for heaven is closer to us than our own souls. Show us who feel frightened and alone the same compassion that thou didst once show to the trembling fatherless ones. Give to us who have fallen into sin, confusion and despair the same stern yet loving instruction that thou didst once give to thy chosen flock. In thee we see the living likeness of our Maker, the living spirit of the Gospel and the foundation of our Faith. In the pure life that thou hast led during our sinful times, we see a model of virtue, a source of instruction and inspiration. Beholding the grace bestowed upon thee, we know that God hath not abandoned His people. It is rather we that haste fallen from Him, and so must regain the likeness of Divinity as thou hast done. Through thine intercession, O blessed one, grant that we may increase our striving toward our heavenly homeland, setting our affections on things above, laboring in prayer and virtue, waging war against the attacks of our fallen nature. Invoke the mercy of God, that we may one day join thee in His Kingdom. For our deepest wish is to live forever with Him, with the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
To reiterate from my previous post: Christianity as a philosophia has three important components: a fundamental principle (or principles), or logos(-oi); in which is rooted a distinct discourse and discursive method, or a way of speaking and thinking; around which are built specific "soulish exercises," or askeses, which serve to inculcate the fundamental principle(s) and to further the communal discourse. Apologia, or defense, is certainly part of a way of life, but is not necessarily a dominant feature of such discourse, and in any case is meant as a defense more than as a proselytizing method. Proselytization of converts occurrs via the public nature of the way of life in which a particular philosophia is lived. Potential disciples "drop in" as it were on the dialogoi and instruction that goes on in philosophia (which philosophia is an embodiment of the three primary components noted above) and in an existential pre-theoretical choice, attracted by the beauty and goodness they perceive in that philosophia, enter the community as a disciple and take up that way of life, its principles and its particular disourse.
Modern Christianity, and modern society in general, has lost this conception of a particular philosophy (or religion, or, more broadly, worldview) as a way of life. Belief has been so separated from life-ways, that one can hold any number of beliefs, even systematically, which are in conflict with the way one lives ones life, and yet still be considered a faithful adherent of the belief system one espouses. Take, for example, the affluent Buddhism of various celebrites, or consumerist Christianity, or what have you. This may well be why a statistically large percentage of the American population thinks of themselves as Christian, but whose lives do not significantly resemble the way of life that has been Christianity through two millennia. It is certainly how it is that members of our society can, over a period of a lifetime, adhere to any number of differing belief systems without significantly altering the way they live.
Modern evangelization efforts tend to feed rather than correct this phenomenon, centered as they all too often are on a change of belief prior to a change of life. In methodology that reflects more a market consumerism than historic evangelization, modern attempts at witnessing focus on "relevance," and therapeutic solutions to life critical scenarios (all oriented toward the improvement of one's own life) that will inexplicably occur simply by changing one's belief system.
This is backward from the practice of ancient Christianity wherein converts were first inculcated in a way of life and then were catechised in the more systematic beliefs and doctrines that Christians held. Whereas today we seek salvation prior to conversion, ancient Christianity sought salvation through conversion. One did not register a "decision," later to be instructed in the faith. One first took on the way of life the Church lived as an inextricable part of the process of conversion. Ancient Christianity understood salvation not as a point in time but as a life-process extended through time and into eternity.
That is to say, if Christianity is primarily a way of life rather than a confession, then evangelization will be by way of that way of life. It will be incarnational, and centered around and in the community that is the Church. Indeed, no evangelization could take place apart from the Church. Potential converts will be "won" to the faith in and through the very means by which the life of the Church is expressed: the Liturgy; the devotion to the apostle's teaching; the Sacraments; communal fellowship from home to home, with each home an ecclesiola, or "little church"; prayers around the table and at the undertaking of various tasks, especially the utilization of the Jesus prayer and the tchotki; the care of the widows, the orphans, the poor; the commitment of each home to care for its extended members, especially the old and infirm; the emphasis on procreation and the celebration and protection of the new life; and on and on.
It is through the intersection and intertwining of non-Church members with the life of the Church of her members that the beauty and goodness of the Christian philosophia will open pathways for the listening and the reception of Christian discourse in the Scriptures and Liturgy, the sermons and catechetical instructions, the written texts of doctrine and the lives of the saints. Only in the context of a way of life will Chrisitan discourse make any sort of sense or in any way be warranted. Not even pragmatic arguments meant for the secularized public square can provide justification for Christianity's unique principles, or Logoi, and the revelation that proceeds from them.
Regrettably, modern Christianity resembles too much the various philosophiai which oppose it, and the explication of its doctrines are then at intuitive variance with the ways of life presented to found those teachings. The judgment of those outside the Church on us as hypocrites is only too well-matched. It is not for us to strengthen our discourse so much as it is for us to strengthen our way of life in the life of the Church.
Specifically this means, of course, daily repentance from being conformed to the mind of the society outside the Church and the daily offering of our bodies as our reasonable act of worship. That is to say, the incarnate embodiment of our faith. Pragmatically, this means inviting non-Christians into the circles of our way of life, to allow them to see this Faith embodied. On the strength of the beauty and goodness they see, like the disciples of antiquity, they will make the pre-theoretical existential choice to take on this way of life and be inculcated in its principles and discourses.
I will, in the next reflection, draw these posts to a close with some concluding thoughts.
[The remainder of the posts in this series can be found here.]