Penal Law in the Church?

There is no such thing as "penal law"in the Orthodox Church. We aren't into punishment. A priest hardly ever lays a "penance" upon us after we have confessed our sins, unless it is a very grave sin such as adultery, and then he may prescribe some discipline as medicine for soul and body, although he will still read the prayer of absolution over us. He may even tell us we are not spiritual healthy enough to receive Holy Communion for the time being, without harming ourselves further. This, because we believe partaking of the awesome Mysteries of the Lord without proper preparation backfires and is actually damaging to soul and body. (I Corinthians 11:29-20)

Even excommunication is supposed to be an act of love, for the correction and healing of the person and, in the second place, for the good of the Church. (I Corinthians 5: 4-7) Excommunication does NOT mean toe the line or go to hell.

Anyway, we don't have penal law. Everybody is already in bad enough shape and the whole idea is the cure their miseries, not add to them.

Marriage and Celibacy

I've been a member for many years (10?) of a very liberal Catholic discussion group online. Recently someone there asked me some questions about married Orthodox priests. So I answered, and for about 36 hours there was dead silence on the normally active list. When someone finally did reply, it was to ask, "How do you know Jesus was celibate? Scripture doesn't say anything about that."

And with that the debate was off and running, over, of all things, whether Jesus was really celibate! From there, all kinds of side trails opened up: how reliable are the Gospels anyway, as history? When Jesus "praised eunuchs," did that amount to endorsing celibacy? Surely St. Paul's preference for celibacy could be explained as a reaction to his mistaken idea that Christ would return any day or any moment now? (Implication: Christ didn't; hence we can dismiss the Apostle's advice.)

I didn't participate in any of this, wondering what was the point, why it was such a big deal to them. Then it occurred to me, "Well, it's because they're against priestly celibacy" so finally I wrote this, and now I think I'd like to share it with you:


Oh, goodness. A debate over whether Jesus was married is the last response I would ever have expected to my post. I suppose the argument arises because this impinges upon the hot-button issue of mandatory priestly celibacy. Perhaps it also has to do with other imposed sexual disciplines I've heard Catholics complain of, who call it oppression.

Well, we do not have anything we consider oppression coming from the Orthodox Church. Mandatory clerical celibacy is obviously a non-issue with us. The Christian ideals concerning divorce and contraception are applied to us by our priests and bishops under the guidance of the Holy Spirit on a case-by-case basis, more strictly or more leniently, according to what we are able to bear without being crushed; that is, the rules are applied according to what will best support each person's eventual salvation. So, unless you wish to engage in guilt-free fornication or adultery, there's nothing you'd be inclined to consider tyranny. The rest of us aren't fighting any sexual battles with our hierarchy.

For that reason, perhaps, we feel quite free and easy about accepting the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, which says Jesus was never married. (Note: we do not accept what Catholics call Tradition; that is something else.) Neither do we worry about what scholars say about the historicity of the Gospels; instead, we concern ourselves with what holy people (those in whom Christ is clearly manifest) have told us the Gospels mean for us, that same meaning also taught us from within our own hearts where the Holy Spirit dwells and teaches.

When we say celibacy is the higher life-style, we do not mean marriage is not holy! For the Orthodox, it most emphatically is. It is an exalted life-style. In fact, Christian celibacy itself is a kind of marriage, the most exalted form of marriage: taking Christ for ones Spouse.

Having no political stake in it, we also have no difficulty accepting what Jesus said about celibacy. He said it's for the sake of attaining salvation, implying it's a higher life-style. But He also stressed, it is NOT a discipline meant for everybody. (The Orthodox understand Jesus' remarks about people making themselves eunuchs to mean that they practice celibacy. Not that they literally castrate themselves.) After Jesus gave His teaching about divorce,

His disciples said to Him, "If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry." But He said to them, "All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it." (Matthew 19:10-12)

St. Paul's teaching is in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. He also favors virginity over marriage, admitting that this is his own judgment and not a divine command. He also points out that it is not meant to fetter anyone, but to conduce toward their own happiness and spiritual advancement. The Orthodox still find his advice applicable and wise. Whether or not the time is short before the Lord's return – a thing nobody knows – we all ought to live as though it were very short indeed. And we for sure don't think it would be wise to pit our own "wisdom" against that of the Holy, Glorious Apostle. Or to accept anybody else's over his.

You are obviously free to disagree. I'm just explaining the Orthodox understanding, in response to some questions.

Kill Zeus

Sunday night, we had a priest from a Russian Orthodox parish give us a pre-Lenten talk on living a balanced Orthodox life in an unbalanced world.  He made some very good points.

He reminded us that ascetical practice is not, for the Orthodox, a matter of self-loathing or of punishing ourselves.  It's a matter of becoming spiritually fit, same as we exercise to become physically fit.  We need this discipline because the enemy's team is very strong, very disciplined, and very aggressive.  (He meant, of course, spiritual enemies, not other human beings.)

He reminded us that humility is also not a form of self-loathing; it's having our inflated images of ourselves punctured by a healthy dose of reality.  The main reality is that we are utterly dependent upon God for absolutely everything.  But to see reality is no easy thing, precisely because of our pride and other passions.  It takes effort. 

Are our efforts to try to make God love us?  No way!  He already loves us no matter what we do or do not do.  To try to make Him reward us?  No way!  One is only rewarded for service "above and beyond" duty, but no matter how much we may succeed at being good Christians, it's never more than our duty.   Our efforts are to become strong, healthy Christians.

In talking about the God of love, the priest said that in non-Orthodox ways of thinking -which he knows well, having been a Methodist minsiter for 20 years and having his PhD in theology - God is loving, yes, but He can also be like Don Corleone:  "You've offended me!  Now I'm going to have to kill you.  And your family."  (Okay, this is satire, yes, but unless you can say specifically what is unjust about it and why, I submit that it is right on the mark.)

That deity, he said, is not God, it's Zeus.  "And I know Zeus is a Greek guy, but please, get rid of him.  Banish him from your hearts and minds.  He is not our God.  Kill Zeus."

Amen.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

or, The God of Order, Revisited

Order is Heaven's first law. As the law of the physical universe is mathematical, the law of the spiritual universe is logical. That which has no place in system, is not of God, is not truth. All his works reflect his unity and self-consistency. -- C. P. Krauth, Conservative Reformation p. 176

I found this quote on Pastor Weedon’s blog and I wrote in his comment box that I thought I’d put a brief remark or two about it here. This is going to be brief because I’ve already written three posts about the God of Order, here, here, and here.

What started me writing about it, being blown away by all its implications, was an excellent podcast (I mean an even more superb one than usual!) by Matthew Gallatin, which I hope you will take a few minutes (14) to listen to. Matthew puts deep things into words all of us can easily understand, so do not let the subject matter intimidate you.

This statement by Krauth represents the fundamental difference between Western and Eastern Christianity. It is from here that West diverges from East, and from this all the other differences in theology stem. At least, that's what Matthew Gallatin thinks and I agree, finding he has made an excellent case for his point.

There is no question, of course, that God is a God of order. (That's why true doctrine does not, ever, contradict itself.)  The question is whether “order is Heaven’s first law.” Whether it is THE thing in which God’s perfection is first and foremost manifest, whether it is the primary thing about God.

This idea comes from Plato, ironically enough, through the Platonizing influence of St. Augustine of Hippo. (Ironically in view of how often Western commentators imagine Orthodox Christianity has uncritically gobbled up pagan Greek philosophy.)

God as Eastern Christians know Him, revealed not by Plato but Jesus Christ, is above all else the God of Love, the God of self-emptying, self-forgetting, other-directed, pure and perfect Love, and this Love is Heaven’s first law.   Love, not mathematics, is the first law of the physical universe, and Love, not logic, is the first law of the spiritual universe.  It's in His infinite, unconditional Love that God's perfection is manifested.  (Matthew 5, last several verses).

That’s a profound difference. It has implications for every facet of theology. Take, for example, creation. The God of Love created humankind as an expression of His Love, created us to make us godlike and blessed forevermore. The God of Order created humankind because without us, His perfect Order would be incomplete, imperfect.

Or take the doctrine of sin. For the Eastern Christian, sin is most fundamentally a betrayal of Love. For the Westerner, it is most basically a disruption of God’s Perfect Moral Order.

Or take God’s response to sin. The God of Love, immediately upon the fall of Adam and Eve, devotes Himself to healing us and restoring us to intimate, free, loving communion with Himself and each other. The God of Order has to be concerned first of all with mending the breach sin has created in that Order. His perfection is at stake and He must defend it as his first order of business.

And restoring good order involves punishment, and not just punishment for chastisement, as in Orthodoxy, but punishment for the sake of the good order. How is punishment supposed to restore order? I do not know! I've spent years trying to decipher that. But I think it’s because the pain and suffering of punishment are thought to “balance out” the guilty pleasure one had taken in sinning. The one is supposed to make up ("pay for") the other. In Eastern understanding, there is no way  for anybody (including Jesus Christ) to make up to God for past sin. There’s just nothing that could undo it except forgiveness. 

Or take eschatology (the doctrines concerning the last things: the end of the world, judgment, heaven and hell). The ultimate destiny the God of Love has ordained for us is perfect, free, loving, intimate oneness with Him, participation together in His very Life. The goal for us of the God of Order is that we should attain to a state of moral perfection.

So every doctrine, from the beginning to the end, is different depending upon whether we choose the God of Plato or the God of Jesus Christ.   But do listen to Gallatin's podcast, as he puts things far better than I can, and more simply and more clearly and with many biblical references in the bargain.  He explains all this in detail.

“God is love.”

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. (from I Corinthians 13, emphases mine)

From Matthew 232 (See also Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28):

34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' [fn4] 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

P.S.) Orthodoxy, in common with today's scientists (!), doesn't really believe in "Laws of Nature", either, but I'll save that for another post in a day or two.

The Word Became Flesh

When you take fallen, sinful human nature and unite it in a single person with divine nature, what happens? Here's what you may suppose happened, as expressed on a minister's blog a few days ago.

It is the fact that God has sullied Himself with the filth of the human race and bound Himself to us for all eternity: "The Word became flesh."

But as we sing every Sunday, Christ "without change became man and was crucified..." That's an echo of the Council of Chalcedon, which decreed that divine and human nature were united in Christ without change, without confusion, without separation, and without compartmentalization.

That's to say, the Divine Nature was in no way compromised. There's just no way poor human nature has any ability to sully the infinitely good and holy God even in the least degree. Our darkness can never even partially overcome His Light, or our weakness overpower His might.

No, the reverse happened: human nature was purified, sanctified, and made fit to dwell in one Person with the Divine. This, by the way, is the pattern we see over and over again in the Lord's encounters with sinners. He isn't possessed by their demons but casts them out. He doesn't become sick, but makes the sick well. He doesn't contract sin, but sinners become holy.

Christ, at His conception, re-created human nature within Himself. That's the meaning of the Incarnation.

Maybe the Problem is, it Just Sounds Too Good to be True

As often as I’ve said it before, it bears repeating now and then: Orthodox Christianity is the only religion in the whole world that truly preaches a God of pure Love. This I say quite soberly, not trying either to boast or to exaggerate. But if you think this is an exaggeration, show me any other religion that has a god of pure love. I shall be thrilled to be proven wrong, thrilled.

Hinduism? It has many gods, none of them particularly loving, as we understand the term.

Buddhism?  It has no god.

Islam? Allah is frequently termed “the all-compassionate, the all-merciful,” but Allah will send you to hell in a literal heartbeat (your last heartbeat) if you don’t do what he wants. And look what he has his followers do, at the point of the sword. Some love.

Judaism? It teaches that God loves Israel, but how much He loves the other nations is debatable, since (a) they are not the Chosen People and (b) they are all going to serve Israel someday if they don’t already. Jews do not believe God loves us enough to have come among us in person, or to have died and risen for us and thereby have destroyed/transfigured death for us.


Liberal Protestantism or liberal Catholicism?  They don’t believe these things, either. In fact, if you believe the Jesus Seminar, you have to believe Jesus spent His whole life saying just about nothing! Or at least, nothing noteworthy, nothing much worth handing down to posterity or putting into writing.  I once said this in a liberal Catholic forum, and the people there were furious.  One of them said he was a personal friend of one of the J.S. scholars, and he would write this scholar to get his reply to my dreadful, slanderous remark.  The Jesus Seminar scholar wrote back with a heh-heh, well, yes, what I had said was pretty much the case.  Admirable young fellow, Jesus, in many ways, but not much given to words.

Traditional Catholicism? Conservative/Evangelical Protestantism? They both tell us they certainly believe God is loving, even that God is love, but then they turn right around and ascribe the most atrocious, unloving behaviors to Him, like sending people to hell, or arbitrarily not electing some people to salvation and the non-elect never even have a genuine chance.  Or they tell you God required His own Son, the only good and innocent man who ever lived, to be tortured and killed to pay Him off so He would/could let the rest of us off the hook. In other words, outright, gratuitous forgiveness doesn’t exist. In fact, some people think it would be immoral; sins must be avenged or paid for. 

In Catholicism, your eternal punishment is remitted when you repent and confess, but you still have “temporal punishment” to undergo in Purgatory, unless the Pope grants you a plenary indulgence. Again, true forgiveness doesn’t exist.  Pay up, buddy!   Or get the Pope to take your payment out of his "Treasury of Merits."

Or else, if you're Protestant, count on Jesus to have paid up for you. 

Lutherans talk about “The Terrors of Conscience,” which terrors couldn’t exist if they understood God’s love; it would be sorrow instead of terror.  One Lutheran pastor even has a blog post about how God hates sinners.  (It overlooks Luke 6:35: "He [God] is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.") 

In summary, what all these various denominations say is yes, God is loving, but love is not His only attribute, not the whole story.  There's also this "flip side" of God.   

Only Orthodoxy affirms that love is no mere “attribute” of God at all, existing alongside other attributes.  Rather, “God IS love” (I John 4:8,16) and there’s nothing alongside that love, balancing it or acting as a brake on it or a counterweight to it or tempering it or making it conditional. There is no conflict in God, as in, "Yes, He loves us BUT..."  There's no "but".  There’s no flip side, no dark side, nothing opposing or limiting His love, nothing about Him that needs appeasing or placating or buying off.  His love is eternal, infinite (!) and unconditional.

Really, truly, no exaggeration:  In all the world, the one and only champion of pure,True Love is Orthodox Christianity.  Holy Orthodoxy alone, while still believing in justice, judgment, and hell, understands these in such a way as to be able, truly and consistently, to teach that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”  (I John 1:5)

Ye Shall Know the Truth (Part 3 of 3)

If we say we know the Truth, does that not set up a rather ugly, unloving divide between we who know the Truth and they who don’t?

The first thing I want to say is, yes, there is some sort of a “we-they” set up whenever any party says he knows the Truth. That distinction, or even division, has always been there and always will be to the end of time, and maybe eternally, for all we know. There is always Jew and Gentile or Mormon and Gentile, Catholic and non-Catholic, Christian and non-Christian, Muslim or infidel, saved or unsaved. It’s unavoidable.

It's also biblical; as far back as Cain and Abel, God discriminates among people, distinguishing those who love Him and those who don’t. “If you will keep My commandments,” He tells the Israelites repeatedly, “I will be your God and you shall be My people.” (Exodus 6:7, Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 7:23, 11:4, 30:22, Ezekiel 36:28) Christ says that one day He will divide the sheep from the goats, will separate the wheat from the chaff.

There’s always a we and they, because the dividing line between Truth and Falsehood, that is, between love and self-serving, is always sharp. Moreover, to blur it would already be to serve falsehood. To blur it for the sake of "unity" or "brotherhood" would be an oxymoron, since the Truth IS unity and brotherhood.

There's always a we and a they, but the thing to notice is what kind of a we-they it is in Christianity.

Christianity, looking back at the Old Testament through the eyes of Christian revelation, does not view Israel as simply “the Chosen People.” Instead, as St. Paul points out in Galatians 3:8, Christianity holds that Israel was chosen for a specific purpose and mission (and honor, yes): to bring forth the Messiah, the Christ, the Light of the World, for the sake of the whole world, not merely for the sake of the Jews. God repeatedly said to Abraham, “In thee shall all nations be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3, 18:18, 22:18, 26:4, 28:14)

St. Paul writing to the Christians in Gentile Ephesus (in today’s Turkey) explains how this has come true:

Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh--who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands-- that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:11-18)

The dividing line between Jew and Gentile had been the Law, the Commandments, which the Jews obeyed (or were supposed to) and the Gentiles didn't. Now Christ has removed the Commandments as the division, setting God’s relationship with mankind on a new (yet not new at all!), universal footing: faith. Now the Temple worship of the Jews has been superceded by the sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross, for everyone, not just Jews.

To the Galatians, the Apostle writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (3:28-29) and to the Colossians, “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond [nor] free: but Christ [is] all, and in all.” (3:11)

In fact, the Christian hope is that in Christ, all things, including nature itself, will be revealed as gathered up and reconciled in Christ.

Well, sure, you say, all the divisions are considered healed within the Christian fold, but there's still "them" outside it.

St. Paul reminds us frequently (for example, in Ephesians 2 and Colossians 3) that we have all been there, done that. Moreover, we still sin, the same as any unbeliever. These two considerations alone should be enough to shut our mouths whenever we feel any impulse to judge anyone. But there’s more. There’s more because to refrain from judging others is only one facet of loving others, and to love everyone and everything is the Christian vocation. “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8)

Fr. Gregory (Hogg) has a quote on his blog from Dovstoyevsky that expresses the Christian’s calling marvelously. Here is a snippet from it, but do treat yourself to the whole:

Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you- alas, it is true of almost every one of us!... My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side- a little happier, anyway- and children and all animals, if you were nobler than you are now.

St. Isaac the Syrian says, in one of his most famous passages:

The heart that is inflamed in this way embraces the entire creation – man, birds, animals and even demons. At the recollection of them, and at the sight of them, such a man’s eyes fill with tears that arise from the great compassion which presses on his heart. The heart grows tender and cannot endure to hear of or look upon any injury or even the smallest suffering inflicted upon anything in creation. For this reason such a man prays increasingly with tears even for irrational animals and for the enemies of truth and for all who harm it, that they may be guarded and be forgiven. The compassion which pours out from his heart without measure, like God’s, extends even to reptiles.

This is the love of Christ; and it is all-embracing; nothing can separate us from it, not, “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing.” (Romans 8:35, 38-39)

This is Christ’s love, and it reaches across all divisions. It’s only when we fail to live that love that we set up a “we” and a “they”. In truth, as Solzhenitsyn said, the line between good and evil is not between “us” and “them”, but runs right through every human heart.

P.S. The Orthodox do NOT believe that to be Orthodox is necessarily to be saved, or that not to be Orthodox is necessarily not to be saved.

Ye Shall Know the Truth (Part 2 of 3)

Why is it that if anybody claims to know The Truth, that is, the Secret of the Universe, the Mystery of the Ages, this claim sounds both ludicrous and arrogant in modern ears?

Jesus promised that if we live His teachings, “then you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (That’s a big “if” that usually is ignored when people quote the rest of the verse.)

The Apostles were not ashamed when they claimed to be preaching The Truth. St. Paul speaks of

“the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” (Colossians 1:26-28)

"Christ in you, the hope of glory." That is the Mystery, the Meaning of it All.

St. Paul also wrote:

We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But as it is written:

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. (I Cor. 2:7-12)

And St. John says, “For the law was given by Moses, [but] grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)

The Apostles knew that they knew The Truth, and were not bashful about saying so. Yet today it begins to seem downright arrogant in and of itself for any person to suppose he knows Truth; it allegedly exhibits an alarming degree of confidence in himself.

For Protestants and liberal Catholics (who’ve given up belief in the infallibility of the pope), this would indeed be true, since it's by their own efforts they arrive at their convictions. They get out their Bibles, together with whatever other writings they consider relevant, and figure out what they believe. They check it against their creeds or confessions to see if those creeds or confessions match their own convictions, or if not, whether these creeds, confessions, or arguments can persuade them to change their convictions.

In that context, yes, to say one has found The Truth is tantamount to claiming to be smarter than others, and/or holier, and/or (as in the case of the pope) specially privileged. And yes, any of these positions does smack of arrogance.

An Orthodox Christian, however, does not assume he can know anything by his own effort alone, or that he is competent to interpret the Scriptures or is worthy to judge anything. He consults his brothers and sisters, especially his spiritual father and those in whom the Life of Christ is most manifest, the saints (including, via their writings, those who have already gone to their rest). No one person in the Church knows everything there is to know of Christ, but there are always some among us who know the answer for which we are searching.

If an Orthodox Christian has trouble accepting any teaching, he assumes that his sin-clouded reason is at fault, not the teaching of the Church. He keeps searching for enlightenment. He knows from experience that God will show him the answer in due course, and the answer will satisfy his whole being, spirit, soul, mind and heart. He knows the answer will bring peace, release, joy, and an infusion of new life. He knows he will come to understand where he had gone wrong, and why. He keeps praying, reading the Scriptures and other writings, and keeps asking those who are holier than himself until this happens, until the revelation given the whole Church from the beginning is revealed also to him. Truth is more revealed than discovered.

If an Orthodox Christian seems to hear God speaking to him in his heart during prayer, he does not assume it really is God. He considers that he is unworthy to receive direct revelation from God. Therefore, the "revelation" is more likely to be from the devil, who can masquerade as an angel of light. Even if it came from God, the Orthodox Christian considers it likely he may have misinterpreted it in his sin-scarred mind. Thus, instead of saying, "Jesus told me…", he runs to his spiritual father, confesses what has happened, and seeks guidance.

In short, for the Orthodox Christian, his confession of The Truth is not arrogance, but the simple acknowledgment of a miracle: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined.” (Isaiah 9:2)

For the Orthodox Christian, his confidence is precisely not in himself.

Or if it is, or if we are proud in any other way, then, Orthodox or not, we have not yet found the Truth, either.

P.S.) I’m not sure how this ties in with the above, but somehow Fr. Stephen’s recent post does. Here’s a snippet from it to whet your appetite; please go read the whole thing.

…the existence of the Orthodox Church stands as a stark witness to the True and Living God - not the idea of a God – but God. In my own conversion, I was utterly shocked by this fact. I had read about Orthodoxy for years. I agreed with it for years. I would have even readily agreed for years to everything the Orthodox Church said of itself, and yet I remained outside. When, at last, my family and I were actually received into the Church, I was staggered by the reality of God. I know that sounds strange (since I had been an ordained Anglican priest for 18 years prior to that) but such was the case. There was no longer any question about discussing God, or refining the tradition, or even debating how all of it was to be applied. I was now in the thick of things and God was raining down in canon, text, Bishop, sacrament, penance, sight, sound, rubrics (which I could not begin to fathom at first) – everything!

Thus, I surprised friends constantly in my first year or so of Orthodoxy when they asked me what was the most important thing about my conversion. My constant reply (to this day) was: the existence of God.

Ye Shall Know the Truth (Part 1 of 3)

In C.S. Lewis’ wonderful little book, The Great Divorce, residents of hell are allowed to take a trip to the outer fringes of heaven. There, each of them meets one of the redeemed, who tries to persuade the visitor to become a resident of heaven. Most of them, though, have other agendas more important to them. They aren’t willing to let go of their varying pieces of hell.

One of these visitors is an apostate Anglican bishop. His issue is that he is unwilling to face Truth. In fact, he is unwilling to accept that there even is any such thing as Truth. But even if there is, he is much more interested in perpetually looking for it than in actually finding it. Talking to an old friend of his named Dick about the prospect of acknowledging Truth, he says, “Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will it leave me the free play of mind, Dick? I must insist on that, you know.”

Dick replies, “You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry, for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.”

In the end, the bishop goes back to hell, where he has a discussion group for the sharing of ideas. He would rather tickle his intellect than face up to Reality.

Our postmodern world is like that. Too many people believe, as an absolute truth, that there is no such thing as absolute truth. The assertion that there is comes across to them as laughable, and the claim to know Truth, as sheer arrogance. It seems to them far humbler, far more realistic, to be forever on a quest, or a journey. In this worldview, we are all on the path toward whatever truths we can discover or create for ourselves, but the path never arrives at “The Truth.” A phrase of St. Paul’s comes to mind: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

For the Christian, The Truth = Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ = The Truth (John 14:6). He is God’s own enfleshed Intellect (Logos), the embodied Wisdom of God, the Dayspring from on high Who has visited us (Luke 1:78).

Christ has come and has revealed Himself, the Incarnate Truth, to the whole world. He healed the sick, cured the lame, made the blind to see, ruled the sea, rose from the grave, and appeared to hundreds of people alive and glorified. And then He poured down upon the world the Spirit of Truth, by Whom He still leads us into all Truth.

For us to deny that there is Truth and that we have encountered that Truth is to deny Christ, as Peter did. To deny that there is Truth would also require us to deny the Holy Spirit. For anyone who has met Christ or been led by the Holy Spirit to deny Truth is, in turn, to deny our conscience, to deny our deepest awareness of ourselves, to deny the ultimate meaning of our lives, to tear apart the fabric of our own being, to destroy ourselves. It is impossible.

But isn’t it pretty arrogant to say, “We know the Truth”?

And doesn’t that assertion set up a rather ugly, unloving “we-they” dichotomy, as in we who know the truth and ye who do not?

I hope to explore each of those questions in later posts.

Iconoclasm

Yesterday we celebrated the end of the heresy of Iconoclasm. After centuries of controversy and debate, the Church put this bitter issue to rest, supposedly once and for all, declaring in Ecumenical Council that to kiss an icon or bow before it or carry it in procession is not worship. Not worship. NOT. And icons were to be restored, the official decree mandated, to churches lacking them.

The Church resolved this question, folks, in the year 843! So why are some people still scandalized about kissing an icon, or bowing before it, or carrying it aloft in processions? Why is this controversy, this officially condemned heresy, still alive and well today? Are people ignorant of history? Or do they think they know better than an Ecumenical Council? What is it?

Quiz

What's the difference between saying God is an Essence shared among three Persons or God is a communion of Three Persons, each possessing the same Essence, whole and entire?

Why does it really matter which we say? Is there anything more to this than the old chicken and egg quandary? Is there more to it than a linguistic habit? (Yes, yes, and oh, yes!)

And why should we care anyway about an issue apparently so arcane?




UPDATE



If I tell you God is One Essence with a mysterious Threeness about it such that three Persons have it, I have issued you an invitation to think, because the very first issue is, what in the dickens is an essence? We don’t even know what’s the essence of a rock or a tree or a cloud or a human being, let alone a Divine Being. It’s not that the Divine Essence is necessarily an abstraction in itself, but it is in effect. It corresponds to nothing we know in the concrete world; it is, for us, a mental construct only, and a content-free one, at that. The challenge is to figure out what it means, if anything; and truth will be defined by how closely our concepts correspond to the object of our thought (which, however, is immeasurable, intangible). Theology will be a struggle to discern the correct concepts, an exercise in reason.

If I tell you God is Persons, well, we have models of Personhood all around us, in ourselves and in other human beings. If I tell you God is a communion of love among these Persons, we have a model of that, too, in human marriage. If I tell you the love among these Persons results in the creation of the Universe, we have a concrete model of that, too, in childbirth and human families. If I tell you God is a communion of three Persons, I have issued you an invitation to communion, because the very first issue is the realization that I am outside that communion. The challenge will be how to be a part of it. To know God will be defined as how intimately you enter into this blessed Communion; Truth will mean the degree in which your life participates in God’s. Theology will be a struggle to live the Divine Life, an exercise in articulating it.

What Christos Yannaras wrote of another distinction, that between God’s Essence and God’s Uncreated Energies, also applies here; The difference in emphasis

represents two fundamentally different visions of truth. This does not mean simply two different theoretical views or interpretations, but two diametrically opposite ways of life, with concrete spiritual, historical, and cultural consequences.

Bowing and Kissing

The Orthodox do plenty of bowing in church. There are, I think, three different times during the Divine Liturgy when the priest bows before the people, and the people bow back. We also bow to persons we pass. We bow whenever the priest censes us, as the appropriate posture for receiving God's blessing. We bow before one another when asking forgiveness. We bow before icons to greet the saint depicted, and/or to humble ourselves before the saint or the event depicted.

We do a lot of kissing, too. We kiss one another. We kiss the book of the Gospels, we kiss the cross, we kiss the chalice, we kiss the priest's hand, we kiss icons.

If bowing or kissing meant worshipping, we'd be polytheists for sure, and some very strange gods we'd have, too!

The Path to Unity

The Orthodox way of doing things is to submit to one another in the fear of God. (Eph. 5:21). Or, again, "All of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (I Peter 5:5) An Orthodox Christian does not assume he can know anything by his own effort alone, or is competent to interpret the Scriptures by himself or worthy to judge anything. He consults his brothers and sisters, especially those in whom the Life of Christ is most manifest, the saints, including (via their writings) those who have gone to their rest.

If an Orthodox Christian has trouble accepting anything, he assumes not that the teaching, but that his sin-clouded reason is at fault. He keeps searching for enlightenment. He knows from experience that God will show him the answer in due course, and the answer will satisfy his whole being, spirit, soul, mind and heart. He knows the answer will bring peace, release, joy, and an infusion of new life. He knows he will come to understand where he had gone wrong, and why. He keeps praying, reading the Scriptures and other writings, and keeps asking those who are holier than himself until this happens.

If he hears God speaking to him in his heart during prayer, he does not assume it is God. He considers that he is unworthy to receive direct revelation from God. Therefore, the "revelation" is more likely to be from the Satan, who can masquerade as an angel of light. Even if it came from God, the Orthodox Christian considers it likely he may have misinterpreted it in his sin-scarred mind. Thus, instead of saying, "Jesus told me…", he runs to his spiritual father, confesses what has happened, and seeks guidance.

In such ways as these, we seek and find consensus not only with our brothers and sisters on earth, but with our departed predecessors in the Faith. This path, the path of humble submission each to the other, has worked for us for two millennia.

Clearing up a Couple of Points

Recently, I wrote a post about how there is no such thing as being "on our own" or "apart from God," although there is indeed such a thing as "apart fom faith".

Now I'd like to point out two similar straw men that come up fairly regularly.

First Straw Man:

It's true the Orthodox do not exercise "private judgment", but this is not because we are required to kow-tow to the corporate judgment of the Church. Instead, it is because, in the Church, there is no such thing as "private judgment". We can, do, must excersise personal judgment, of course, but it is never anything like private. This is because of the nature of the communion the Holy Spirit gives us in Christ, in the saints and in one another, one Body, one Heart, one Mind, one Love, one Life. His Life is Mine is the English title of one of Archimandrite Sophrony's books; but so is your life mine; and my life also is yours, in the Church. Even a convert's becoming Orthodox is never a private decision. It involves the penitent, his spiritual father, his parish, and the whole Church on earth and in heaven. Above all, it involves the Holy Spirit.

We don't "surrender" our personal judgment to the Church, either. We are allowed humbly, prayerfully, to wrestle with issues all we like, until the Holy Spirit gives us to understand for ourselves, until we no longer need to take anybody else's word for it. We are not expected merely to capitulate.

Second Straw Man:

There is such thing as the Church setting up false doctrine or setting up doctrine "on her own" or of her own initiative. A body doing this has ceased beforehand to be the Church, or else never was. The Church, the Body of Christ, is always animated by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. Does this mean you will never hear anything false coming from an Orthodox pulpit, or read anything false in an Orthodox publication? I wish! No; it means falsehoods come from certain people or groups within the Church, but they do not accord with Christian teaching. True Christian doctrine is what has been believed from the beginning.

Is a doctrine true because the Church says it, or does the Church say it because under the guidance of the Holy Spirit she has recognized it to be true? The latter, of course, technically. But in practice, in the true Church, these two turn out to be equivalent.

On Yesterday's Epistle

It’s just hard, for someone raised in the West, especially, to understand very clearly, once for all, that God has no dark side. No dark side. None. “God is love, and he who lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” God isn’t love on the one hand but something else on the other. He is not love but also justice; rather, His justice IS His mighty love in action. He is not love but also holiness, for his love precisely is His holiness. It’s His love, not His fastidiousness, that makes Him all good; it is the God Who is love, before Whom we bow and make solemn processions and stand in awe and cry, “Holy, holy, holy!”. God is love through and through, pure, unadulterated love, period.

Many of us converts to Orthodoxy know this in our heads, yet the image of the angry god persists, to some degree, in our imagination and in our feelings, and yes, it has a deleterious effect upon our ability to relate to Him the way we should. Perhaps it is the image of our own parents that lingers in us, who loved us but still threatened us; perhaps it’s just the feelings inculcated into us when we were young, that take years to dissipate (and only when not stimulated).

To be sure, there are in sacred Scriptures many images of God as vengeance and wrath. These the Church has always taken iconically. They are word pictures, verbal icons, of what will happen to us if we hate God. But icons represent spiritual reality. They show divinized souls rather than camera-accurate bodies. They use inverse perspective to show what our eyes cannot see (three sides of a building, for example). They conflate historical events to make a theological point.

The Scriptural passages about God’s vengeance and wrath are like that. They are spot-on portraits of our souls’ condition if we estrange ourselves from all that is true, lovely, bright, pure, loving, meaningful – all, in short, that makes living worthwhile; for that is what we reject if we reject God. If you do not want God, then physical darkness is an icon of the true darkness you will have chosen. Fire and brimstone (sulphur), prison, earthquakes, pestilence, famine, slaughter, the worm that dies not, these are material icons of the (much worse!) ultimate destruction you yourself gradually wreaked upon your personality, your character, your soul, if you despised Him Who is Love, Life, Truth, Beauty. (I'm not saying some of these didn't happen historically; I am speaking of how the Church interprets and applies them.)

Ours is not a god who is out to get you if you don’t watch out! That's demons you're thinking of. The truth is the opposite; He gives Himself totally to you; and when you come to judgment, the criteria used will not be whether you did this or failed to do that. No, the only real issue will be whether, deep down, you truly want God or not. Nobody who genuinely wants God will be turned away. If you will have Him, He will have you. (And I do not mean anybody will be saved apart from Christ or apart from His Church; but that’s another issue for some other post.)

God really is all that is most dear, most delightful, most beautiful. And He is all these eternally, and nothing contrary to these.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:

"For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."

37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death
nor life,
nor angels
nor principalities
nor powers,
nor things present
nor things to come,
39 nor height
nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:35-39)

Grace and Freedom: Two Words, One Mystery

This is from Vladimir Lossky's book, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 1976). This excerpt appears near the beginning of Chapter Ten; in my edition, it begins on page 197.

The notion of merit is foreign to the Eastern tradtion. The word is seldom encountered in the spiritual writings of the Eastern Church, and has not the same meaning as in the West. The explanation is to be sought in the general attitude of Eastern theology towards grace and free will. In the East, this question has never had the urgency which it assumed in the West from the time of St. Augustine onwards. The Eastern tradition never separates these two elements: grace and human freedom are manifested simultaneously and cannot be conceived apart from each other. St. Gregory of Nyssa describes very clearly the reciprocal bond that makes of grace and free will two poles of one and the same reality: 'As the grace of God cannot descend upon souls which flee from their salvation, so the power of human virtue is not of itself sufficient to raise to perfection souls which have no share in grace ... the righteousness of works and the grace of the Spirit, coming together to the same place, fill the soul in which they are united with the life of the blessed.' ('De Instituto Christiano', P.G., XLVI, 289 C.)

Note (my own): St. Gregory does not mean God deprives anybody of His grace, but that some people do not want it and God will not force Himself upon them. But in the blessed, grace and works unite and together fill the soul. Lossky continues:

Thus, grace is not a reward for the merit of the human will, as Pelagianism would have it; but no more is it the cause of the 'meritorious acts' of our free will., For it is not a question of merits but of a co-operation, of a synergy of the two wills, divine and human, a harmony in which grace bears ever more and more fruit, and is appropriated - 'acquired' - by the human person. Grace is a presence of God within us which demands constant effort on our part; these efforts, however, in no way determine grace, nor does grace act upon our liberty as if it were external or foreign to it.

If you are not a theology buff, you'll probably be glad to stop reading right here. But if you like this sort of stuff, here's a bit more. The above paragraph continues:

This doctrine, faithful to the apophatic spirit of Eastern tradition, expresses the mystery of the coincidence of grace and human freedom in good workis, without recourse to positive and rational terms. The fundamental error of Pelagius was that of transposing the mystery of grace on to a rational plane, by which process grace and liberty, realities of the spiritual order, are transformed into two mutually exclusive concepts which then have to be reconciled, as if they were two objects exterior to one another. St. Augustine, in his attack on Pelagianism, followed the example of his adversary intaking his stand on the same rational ground, where there was no possibility of the question ever being resolved.

True Humanism

It strikes me that Orthodox Christians are the world’s true humanists in one sense. That is, we have a much higher view of mankind than secular humanists or Catholics or the children of the Reformation or anybody else I know.

We have a far more exalted view of the human being than secular humanists do for at least two reasons. The first is, we believe man is created in the Image of God; that his whole being is patterned after the Holy Trinity. (This takes at least a chapter or two to begin to explain in detail, though.) The second is, we believe mankind’s intended destiny is do be deified, to be glorified and godlike, and more than that, actually to participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity. Because every human being, including unbelievers, including criminals, including every single person, is a bearer of the image of God and is called to become a god, every human being is “more honorable than the cherubim, incomparably more glorious than the seraphim.” (For anyone not up on your angelology, cherubim and seraphim are the higher ranks of angels.) We are higher than the angels because angels remain forever God’s servants and ours, whereas we are God’s children and called to be His heirs.

In Christianity, God actually came to us in human flesh, that fact alone bringing great honor upon humankind, greater honor than any other creature ever had. More than this, though, He died in human flesh and raised that human flesh from death, transfiguring it into something glorious and immortal. And if that weren’t enough, He did not shed that human flesh when He “ascended into heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father,” meaning the Lord of the entire Universe, who lives and reigns forever and ever, now and forevermore does so with a human body.

It is our exalted view of what a human being is that leads us to wish to protect all human beings, and to oppose abortion on demand, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and yes, physician-assisted murder. Nobody but God Himself has the right to decide when a human life shall end, and even if he had the right, nobody has the wisdom or the love or the dispassion to be qualified to make such a decision.

Orthodox Christianity also has a higher view of mankind than, say, the Vatican, as her history amply demonstrates. And so does her theology, as for example when she considers religious liberty a civil right but not a moral one, except for Roman Catholics.

Orthodoxy also has a higher view of mankind than Protestants. We do not agree with John Calvin that humanity is “but rottenness and a worm”. (Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3) It is true that worms are better than we are in that they do not sin; but then worms never had the capacity either to sin or to do anything morally good. We do not believe in Calvin’s Total Depravity. Everything is us is indeed affected by sin, but not everything is completely destroyed.

We also hold a higher opinion of man than the Reformers because, unlike most of them, we believe that Man still has free will. True, we do not believe our will is entirely unimpeded; indeed, our passions and our ignorance importune our will vigorously and continuously. Nevertheless, despite their heavy lobbying, ultimately we choose what to do, and we can choose evil or we can, when presented with the opportunity, choose God.

Orthodox Christianity also insists that we are not individuals, as the Reformers assumed; rather, we are persons; and persons, the Orthodox Church teaches, only blossom as persons in communion with other persons. That means you are more than my brother or my sister; you are to me another self. I am to love you as I love myself because you are myself, you are another me, inhabiting different skin. And this is so whether you consider yourself my friend or foe. Orthodoxy insists that if I haven’t learned to love my enemy, I haven’t yet learned true love at all; I do not yet love anyone rightly.

So I think if you really want to exalt human beings, you want to be an Orthodox Christian.

Rethinking Reading, by Fr. Stephen

Here's Fr. Stephen again, on reading the Bible. I'm reprinting it for your convenience, but heartily recommend you read it at his own blog, so you can profit from the comments there as well.

by Fr. Stephen Freeman

If, as I have wrtten, the Orthodox Church itself is the proper interpretation of Scripture - then one might ask, “How am I supposed to read the Scriptures if their interpretation is the Church?” It is a good, even an obvious question, but one which points us to the very thing at hand: the nature of interpretation.

In general usage, to speak of interpreting something is to speak of explaining and commenting and seeking questions of meaning. Of course, this presupposes that the answer to the question is something that can be spoken, explained, commented, etc. Thus, interpretation is seen as essentially a literary question.

I have taken my lead from two verses of Scripture - both of which illustrate how I am re-presenting interpretation. The first is St. Paul’s statement to the Christians in Corinth:

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:2-3).

And St. John’s description of Christ as the exegesis of the Father [John 1:18]:

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared (exegato) him.

(Exegesis is the technical term that theologians use when they speak of explaining a passage of Scripture.)

Thus the question can be pushed back and asked, “How are the Corinthians an epistle?” and “What does it mean that Christ exegetes the Father?”

In both cases the answer is not a literary event, but a matter of a life lived. Christ so exegetes the Father that He can say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father,” (John 14:9). God did not make Himself known by giving us words about Himself. Those who think the Scriptures are the revelation of God are sadly mistaken. Christians are not Muslims. Christ Himself is the Word of the Father and it is through Christ that we know God, not through the Bible. The Scriptures have their place of great importance and are an essential part of the life of the Church, but that place is precisely that of which I am writing.

The revelation of God to the people of Corinth is not to be found in St. Paul’s two epistles written to the young Church in that city, but in the Church itself. They are God’s revelation to Corinth, “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God; not in tables of stone but in the fleshy tables of the heart.”

If the people of Corinth do not see and come to know Christ in and through the Church, His Body, which has been established in that place, then Corinth will not know God.

Some of this goes to the very heart of the Church’s existence. It has become a commonplace in modern Christianity to reduce the Church to a fellowship of convenience, existing only to encourage and strengthen individual Christians (this is particularly true in Evangelical Christianity but has spread as a larger cultural understanding as well). Whereas the Scriptures speak quite differently of the Church.

The Church:

Is the Pillar and Ground of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15);

Is the Fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:23).

Is the very Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12 and other places).

Is the Bride of Christ (Rev. 21:2 and elsewhere).

Such descriptions in no way fit an organization whose purpose is to encourage and strengthen individual Christians. The modern understanding of the Church is blasphemous in its denial of God’s own description of His Bride, His Fullness, His Body, the Pillar and Ground of Truth.

The Church is an epistle just as Christ exegetes the Father. Christ said, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). In the same manner, Christ is the life of the Church. The Church does not exist merely to speak words about Christ but to manifest the very life of Christ among mankind. The Church has no other life.

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 2:2-4).

Thus we do not “read” the Church as though we were reading a book. We “read” the Church as its life impacts and informs our own life. If we are part of the Church, then our life itself is to be increasingly the life of Christ, an epistle written on the fleshy tables of the heart. But this is not for us to do as individuals, for we cannot do this outside the Church and without the life that is lived by the whole Church. We do not Baptize ourselves.

The great challenge to the Orthodox Church in the modern world is to remain the Church, to be God’s faithful epistle to the world and not simply an exotic brand of modernized Christianity. For we are an epistle, written by the Spirit of the Living God, not an organization whose programs entertain the interested.

Let the dead bury the dead. The Church has to be about living a Life.

Please forgive me if the force of my writing in this post is in any way scandalous. I do not mean to cause someone to stumble, but rather to point the way to the truth of God’s Church and the place of Scripture within it.

Faith in What or in Whom?

Someone recently wrote on the Internet that she had always supposed the proof for Jesus was to be found in the Bible. The Bible was what supported our belief in Christ.

If this were so, then please notice what the situation would be. Our faith in Christ would be derivative, derived from the Bible. If we believed in Christ "for the Bible tells me so", then our faith in Christ would be a function of that, would be secondary. Our primary faith would be in the Bible.

The word for that is not "Christian" but "biblicist".

On Authority

In Roman Catholicism, ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice resides in the pope. Among Protestants and other children of the Reformation who don’t like to call themselves Protestants, ultimate authority is accorded to the Holy Scriptures. (If pressed, Catholics and Protestants alike will tell you God Himself is the ultimate Authority, but they mean either insofar as He acts through the pope, or insofar as He has inspired the Bible.)

There are large problems with both of these forms of authority, problems apart from the fact that in each case, 500 years was more than enough to prove them simply unworkable. The papacy has shown itself, over and over again, too easily and grossly corruptible, while “Sola Scriptura” is the poison pill that has divided its adherents into almost countless denominations and sects, as each subgroup of them holds to its own interpretation of the sacred texts. The other problems are summarized by the fact that both these forms of authority are external. Being external is considered by many people a good and even necessary thing, as they do not trust what goes on in their hearts. But that is precisely the nub of the problem: why don’t they? From sad experience? What has happened, then, that the Holy Spirit in their own hearts no longer leads them into paths of truth (hence, of unity), so that they turn to a man or a book to do this? Why does their practice in effect deny what St. Paul wrote: “But we have the mind of Christ.” (I Corinthians 2:16)?

An external authority means an artificial, unnatural authority, one that must be imposed upon a person, and that in turn means the person upon whom it is imposed quite naturally chafes under it. He (rightly!) has a notorious tendency to rebel against it – and in the process, to try to discredit pope or Scripture.

You can’t discredit the Holy Spirit in the Church and in her children. He is pure Goodness, pure Truth, pure Love; He is now your highest principle and your best, new self in Christ. You can’t deny the Truth He discloses in your heart, either, for now He has made you yourself a firsthand witness of that Truth (Christ), has made you, therefore, your own authority, and no longer someone who merely relies upon the word of another. That is the surest Authority there could ever be, but simultaneously, the only Authority that leaves you free, utterly free. That’s why the Orthodox don’t speak of binding anybody’s conscience; our consciences are never bound at all. We need no coercion to profess what is flowing into our own minds from our own hearts, where the Holy Spirit lives and guides.

You can disregard the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but you still cannot but acknowledge the Truth against which you are acting, and you always know it as your own Truth. You always know that in acting apart from the Holy Spirit, you are not merely violating some external precept, but are tearing your own self apart. But if you are true to Him, hence to yourself, “if you remain in My word,” says Jesus, then “you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32) Every other authority, whether man or book, puts you into servitude; the Holy Spirit alone makes you free.