Reprint: Why Did Jesus Die? (Parts 4-6)

Why Did Jesus Die? (04) To Release us From Death
by Being Our Sin Offering

Sin wears two masks; sin is death and sin is guilt. In the West, people tend to emphasize the deeds of sin, making it virtually synonymous with guilt. In the East, we tend to emphasize the condition of sin, making it virtually synonymous with death. Both points of view are valid, although only when held together. To undo sin, both guilt and death must be overcome. The next post in this series will discuss how Christ’s death deals with our guilt. In this post, let’s examine how the flesh and blood of the new Passover Lamb take away the sin of the world viewed as death. We’ve already mentioned how Christ’s dying itself undoes death, simply by bringing Life to the death's nothingness; but how is it His Body takes away the deadly effect of sin, and His Blood infuses immortal life into us?

There are numerous places in the Old Testament in which God teaches Israel that the life of a person or an animal is in its blood. (And of course in a way, that’s literally true, since blood cells, like any of our cells, carry DNA; yet it is not the literal, but the typological meaning of blood that interests us for purposes of this discussion.) That is why animals had to be butchered, not strangled: because their blood, being the seat of life, was sacred to God. If you killed an animal, you must pour out its blood onto the ground and cover it up, and not eat or drink it; or if it were a sacrificial animal, you must consecrate its blood to the Lord.

And what did the Lord want with it? Does He delight in blood? Does blood give Him any kind of satisfaction, whether emotional or legal or moral? That is not what the Lord Himself says. Listen:

And whatever man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell among you, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, 'No one among you shall eat blood, nor shall any stranger who dwells among you eat blood.' (Leviticus 17:10-12)

“And I have given it to you upon the altar,” says God, “to make atonement for your souls.” The Hebrew word we translate “souls” is nephesh, which means soul or self or life. The blood atones for, makes up for, the sinner’s lack of life. It gives life. Ultimately, the blood is God’s offering to us. He has no other use for it. He is not bloodthirsty. He is not some Jewish variant of the volcano god. Blood is not the prerequisite for His forgiveness, as if divine forgiveness had a price; instead, blood, like the bronze serpent, or as with the healing of the paralytic, is the form His forgiveness takes: giving us healing and Life. Wherever in the Bible you see "blood," think, "Life."

This is why the animals were sacrificed, not to punish them (although they themselves might disagree!) but that we might offer their flesh to God and to obtain their life-giving blood for us; and blood's life-giving property is why it was used in the Old Testament for ritual purification of all sorts of things:

19. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20. saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you." 21. Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. 22. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. (Hebrews 9:19-22)

The Greek word should be translated "remission" here, not "forgiveness," since books, tabernacles, and vessels of ministry do not have guilt and need no forgiveness -- although it is also true that God's forgiveness comes in and through blood, as we shall see. Yet these inanimate things, too, although having no sin or guilt, needed to be purified with blood. In Exodus 29:36-27, atonement is even made for the altar. These guiltless items are sprinkled with blood to purify them from the taint of death because they are all part of the fallen world, part of the order of sin and death. They must be purified to be fit for use in the Lord’s worship. We, too, must be purified of the death in us to be compatible with the immortal God.

What? Isn’t all this more than a litle superstitious? Can animal blood really cure death?

No, of course not. We must constantly remember that all these things are types, that is teaching tools, of the reality to come. They only receive their full truth in Christ. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4) These sacrifices only made one ritually clean. (Hebrews 9:13) They did not give eternal life. They didn’t particularly please God, either, even though He had ordained them. “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.” That’s Psalm 40:6, and quoting it, Hebrews 10:6: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.”

“It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” This was not because the price was too low, as most of the non-Orthodox preach (a mere irrational animal in exchange for a reason-endowed human being). Neither does it mean God’s promise to forgive in these rituals was false. Instead, it means that God forgave without the need of any compensation or payback or punishment! God's forgiveness is pure gift; it cannot be bought - for any price, by anyone, not even by Jesus. This is what true forgiveness is, of course: to revoke the penalty, cancel the debt, give up the right to be compensated, to decide not to take revenge. Anything involving payback is not forgiveness at all, but the opposite. Forgiveness and payback are mutually exclusive. So God did not require any price for His forgiveness. Or rather, the price He required, blood, was not for Himself, but strictly as a teaching device for us.

Yet all those whom God truly forgave in the sacrificial rituals died, went to Hades. God’s forgiveness alone, although sufficient to remove guilt, does not remove death. This is because guilt is an interpersonal affair or else a legal one; therefore personal forgiveness or a legal declaration is enough to remit it. Death, however, is far more than an interpersonal or legal matter. It is a state of being, or rather, lack of being. It can be removed neither by forgiveness alone, nor by the blood of animals.

Rather, the removal, indeed, the reversal of death must await the coming of Him, of whom these sacrifices are the foreshadowings. In Christ, human flesh and blood are united to divinity. In His flesh and blood He grappled with death and conquered it ("bore our sins on the tree"). In His flesh and blood He rose from the grave, was glorified, and was taken up into heaven; and in His flesh and blood He sits upon His heavenly throne. Christ’s flesh and blood, unlike those of animals, really are immortal. His flesh nourishes a whole new order of life in us, namely, His very own, divine, eternal life; and His blood is our true Fountain of Immortality. That is why Jesus offered up His flesh and blood, and how by feeding us upon these medicines, He takes away the sin of the world, considered as death. This is one sense in which Jesus died to be our sin offering, and also how He can be our Passover Lamb, whose flesh nourished Israel for the journey to freedom and whose blood fended off the Angel of Death.

Jesus said, “Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53)

You have redeemed us from the curse of the Law by Your precious Blood. By being nailed to the Cross and pierced with the Spear, You have poured forth immortality on mankind. O our Saviour, glory to You.

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Why Did Jesus Die? (Part 05) To Release us From Guilt

Jesus Died to be Our Sin Offering, Releasing us From Guilt

In the previous post, we saw how the main idea behind a sin offering in the Old Testament was not to punish an animal in the place of a sinner (although killing it certainly had the same effect!) but to offer it to God and to obtain its blood, the seat of its life, and to shed that blood so as to release the life in it.

Similarly, there is no idea in Christ’s death of God displacing our punishment onto Him, although His dying had the same effect. That is why we do sometimes speak of His death as punishment, metaphorically. We mean that the Crucifixion had the appearance and the effect of punishment although that was not its purpose.

In fact, a sin offering, in the Old Testament, didn’t even have to be an animal. If you couldn’t afford a bullock or goat, or even two doves or pigeons, a measure of the finest flour would suffice. (Leviticus 5:11-13) Flour cannot be punished, cannot suffer, cannot die, from which observation alone we ought to learn that punishment, suffering, and death were not the point of a sin offering.

Even if you only offered God that measure of flour, He would still forgive, because the offering was never the price of His forgiveness in the first place. His forgiveness has no price. It’s absolutely free, a notion that only bothers the devil, or only bothers us when we are considering others (not ourselves) receiving God's mercy for free.

So if a sin offering to God is not an exchange for His forgiveness, what is it for? It’s for just that: an offering! When we have offended someone, and we go to that person for forgiveness, the gracious thing to do is not to show up empty-handed! A sin offering is something you give to God as a gift, like the flowers a man brings his wife after a quarrel. The calf or birds or handful of flour or flowers are a token of your offering of yourself. That's what is needed if the relationship is to be restored.

And just such an offering, Christ made on the Cross on behalf of all of us. He offered God His body and blood, His life and His death, His faith and loyalty, His love, His obedience, His all, holding back nothing.

Now when we speak of perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience, we need to notice that perfection in these virtues requires extreme circumstances not merely to demonstrate the perfection, but first of all to elicit it. Easier circumstances summon easier forms of courage, easier degrees of faith and love and obedience. Harder circumstances call us to exert a more difficult faith, love, and obedience. Only the most extreme circumstances allow us to exert perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience. That necessary, most extreme circumstance, for Jesus, was the Cross. That is why the author of Hebrews says, “...though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (Hebrews 5:8-9)

His dying was necessary in order to exercise obedience and love and faith to the point of perfection. That is to say, He never backed away from truth though the cost were death; He never acted out of anything but faith and love, never abandoned God or cursed Him, and above all, He did not refuse us His life-giving body and blood when called upon to donate them. In short, He died to defeat satan by love and faith and obedience, because satan is not utterly defeated until you have let him throw his worst weapons at you.

This, then, is another sense in which Christ died to be a sin offering, for obedience, made possible by faith and flowing from love, is the perfect sacrifice. "Has the LORD [as great] delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey [is] better than sacrifice, [and] to hearken than the fat of rams." (I Samuel 15:22. See also Isaiah 1:10-20, Jeremiah 7:22-23, Hosea 6:6.)

In Hebrews, we read (and this is very important):

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:

"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
Then I said, 'Behold, I have come--
In the volume of the book it is written of Me--
To do Your will, O God.'"

Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second.

By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:4-9)

Christ “takes away the first”, that is, Old Testament kinds of sacrifice, and comes with a body (i.e., as a human being) to enable Him to practice obedience; He thereby establishes “the second”, that is, the sacrifice of obedience to the Will of God.

And God was pleased with this offering. Or, we can say, God was propitiated, for it means the same thing. “Propitiated” does not here imply soothing God’s ruffled feathers, calming His temper tantrum, or appeasing His wrath. It simply means pleased.

And this perfect obedience (a work of perfect love premised upon perfect faith), due the Creator from all men, Christ offered on behalf of us all, and God accepted it as being from all of us. St. Paul writes, “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Romans 5:19)

God having accepted the offering of perfection on behalf of us all, there remains nothing to punish, no place for punishment, no application for it. For Him to require both perfection and punishment would have been not only unjust and immoral, but also illegal.

Not that any amount of suffering by anybody could ever offset guilt, anyway; only repentance can. Only faith cures faithlessness; only love heals lovelessness; only obedience corrects disobedience. Suffering merely punishes guilt (and momentarily, it's true, fends off guilt feelings) without addressing its causes or providing any genuine relief.

Christ deals with its causes. He not only offers His perfection to God on our behalf, but also offers it to us, that we may partake of it as branches partake of the Vine’s sap. When we are grafted into Him in Holy Baptism and when the Holy Spirit comes to reside in us in Holy Chrismation, immediately the seeds of righteousness are planted in us; already we partake of Christ's righteous, holy, never-ending Life.

This is how Christ, on the Cross, deals with our guilt. His Life-bearing Blood is shed upon the world. His Body is offered for our spiritual food. His offering to the Father of perfect faith and love and obedience reverses, remediates, replaces, and legally more than offsets our own faithlessness, lovelessness, and disobedience. Thus, at the cross, "justice and mercy kiss," as indeed they always had.

But God does not work such miracles for people He has not forgiven. It is impossible He could have done all this for us and yet be holding a grudge against us. Therefore, this sacrifice, upon the Cross displayed, from the Cross offered to God as a pleasing (propitiatory) sacrifice, from the Cross given to us as new possibilities of which we may partake, shows us God’s forgiveness streaming down upon the world. The Cross is not some basis for God's forgiveness, as if a basis were needed; neither is it only a revelation of His forgiveness. Instead, the Cross is the ultimate form God’s forgiveness takes.** The Cross cleanses our conscience, persuading us that God loves us, has always loved us and ever shall love us; and that God forgives us, always has forgiven us and ever shall forgive us - period, no matter what.

God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)



**If this sentence alarms you, see my earlier post on what God's eternal, never-changing love for us does and does not mean.)


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Why Did Jesus Die? (06) To Become our True Mercy Seat

In the Temple Solomon built was an enormous bronze bowl, sitting on twelve bronze bulls. It was 45 feet in circumference. It had a name; it was called “The Sea.” (II Chronicles 4:2, I Kings 7:33)

Also in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies, was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a wooden chest plated with pure gold and it contained holy relics. The lid, also of wood covered with pure gold, had a statue of a cherub on either end of it. (A cherub is a glorious rank of angel, not one of those cute, winged, Valentine babies.) The space on the Ark’s lid between the cherubim was the Mercy Seat. It was where God’s mercy was to be met. It was where, once a year, the high priest sprinkled animal blood. You’ll recall from previous posts in this series that in Hebrew thought, where blood is, there is life. Mercy was given from the top of the Ark of the Covenant because the life-giving blood was sprinkled there.

The Mercy Seat, then, is the place of God’s favor and mercy. (And this, regardless of how the ancient Israelites may have understood it.) The Mercy Seat is neither where God’s changeless favor and mercy are won nor where His free gift is bought, but where His mercy and favor appear, in the form of the blood. That blood is the token of our life offered back to God together with the animal's, and life from an animal (typifying Life from Christ) being offered to the sinner.

The Glory of God shone above the Mercy Seat, and it was the place where God promised to dwell and to “meet with thee.” (Exodus 25:17-22)

The Mercy Seat is described in Hebrews. “…above [the Ark] were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat.” (Hebrews 9:5)

The word “mercy seat” in this verse as well as in the Old Testament (Septuagint Bible) is, in Greek, hilasterion (“hee-la-STARE-ee-own” if you use the Erasmian pronunciation). The word also means “propitiation,” in reference to the Mercy Seat, for the Mercy Seat, like the giant bronze bowl, had a name. It was called “The Propitiation.” Thus, the verse in Hebrews could have been translated, “…above [the Ark] were the cherubim of glory overshadowing The Propitiation.” Bear in mind that propitiation, for the Christian, has no implication of changing the unchanging God. (And this, regardless of how the ancient Israelites may have understood it.)

St. Paul tells us that Christ is our new and true hilasterion:

“… whom God set forth as a hilasterion through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because of the paresis of the sins that were previously committed, by God’s forbearance.” (Romans 3:25)

The Greek word, paresis (“PAR-eh-seess”) is related to paralysis and means weakness or numbing effect. God had up to now left us in this semi-paralyzed state inflicted upon us by our sins; but now, to demonstrate His righteousness, He comes to free us, providing us a new Mercy Seat, “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (v. 26)

Here is what St. John Chrysostom had to say about this passage, Romans 3:25-26:

For he does not say “for the sins,” but, “for the relaxing,” that is, the deadness. For there was no longer any hope of recovering health, but as the paralyzed body needed the hand from above, so doth the soul which hath been deadened. And what is indeed worse, a thing which he sets down as a charge, and points out that it is a greater accusation. Now what is this? That the last state was incurred in the forbearance of God. For you cannot plead, he means, that you have not enjoyed much forbearance and goodness. But the words “at this time” are those of one who is pointing out the greatness of the power and love toward man. For after we had given all over, (he would say,) and it were time to sentence us, and the evils were waxed great and the sins were in their full, then He displayed His own power, that you might learn how great is the abundance of righteousness with Him. For this, had it taken place at the beginning, would not have had so wonderful and unusual an appearance as now, when every sort of cure was found unavailing. (St. John Chrysostom, Commentary on Romans, Homily VII.)

While we were sinning, the Saint says, God was being kind and indulgent. As a result, our affliction grew worse. God let it, because had He healed us right away, the wonder would not have appeared as great. If God were to cure you of typhoid the first time you coughed, would you even know He had done it? But if He were to wait until you were nearly dead, and then raise you from your sickbed in perfect health...!

God forbore to wreak vengeance upon us. That doesn't mean He is about to change course now! No, now His righteousness is going to be demonstrated a different, new, better way: by rescuing us from our sin. He rescues us from it by destroying it, as we've seen. Revenge, in comparison with this, would be a crude and childish justice. It would be the "eye for an eye" kind of justice Christ used to contrast with the kind He wanted us to practice in order to be like our heavenly Father: turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give your cloak to the man who stole your coat. Such "justice" would be merely retaliation by a petty god instead of correction by the True God.

The true justice of the true and living God is to make things just; that is, to set things back to rights, to make things as they were intended to be, to make the story end as it should. (Yes, I know; there are quite a few people who think the story ought to end with certain people frying in hell, but of course such an attitude is hardly loving, hardly Christian! And it remains to be seen what ending our gracious, kind, compassionate, good God will bestow, perhaps one far beyond our ability to imagine.)

Paresis can also be translated “passing over, letting pass, neglecting, disregarding”. That would render the verse: “… whom God set forth as The Propitiation [Mercy Seat] through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because of the passing by of the sins that were previously committed, by God’s forbearance.”

If we use "passing by" to translate paresis, we must be careful not to accuse God, or attribute to St. Paul an accusation against God, of having failed to supply chastisement in appropriate measure! This He certainly did all along, as the Holy Scriptures abundantly attest.

What He had not provided for us until “the present time” was a definitive escape from sin and death. God, by waiting until the time was right to send the Son into the world, had appeared to be neglecting the catastrophe of sin and simply allowing His handiwork (us) to die! What kind of a supposedly all-powerful and loving God would do that? Now He comes to demonstrate that He does not overlook our plight. Now He shows His supreme righteousness (justice), exceeding any we had ever imagined, by justifying those who live by faith in Christ – which justifying, in New Testament usage, is the same as giving us life.

In the words of St. Irenaeus,

For if man, who had been created by God that he might live, after losing life, through being injured by the serpent that had corrupted him, should not any more return to life, but should be utterly [and for ever] abandoned to death, God would [in that case] have been conquered, and the wickedness of the serpent would have prevailed over the will of God. But inasmuch as God is invincible and long-suffering, He did indeed show Himself to be long-suffering in the matter of the correction of man and the probation of all, as I have already observed; and by means of the second man [Christ] did He bind the strong man [satan], and spoiled his goods, (Matthew 11:29) and abolished death, vivifying that man who had been in a state of death. (St. Ireneaus, Against Heretics, 3, XXIII, 1.)

Christ, then, died to be our new Mercy Seat, the place where God meets us, where His own Life-bearing blood is sacrificed to bring us Divine Life, and God is pleased to display His righteousness by justifying (vivifying) us.

We will have more to ponder concerning justification in the next post in this series.

Reprint: Why Did Jesus Die (Parts 1-3)

Why Did Jesus Die? (01) To Heal God’s People

There’s a rather strange story in the Old Testament about an incident that occurred as Israel was journeying from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land:

Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread." So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.

Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live."

So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:6-9)

What’s curious about this story is the method God uses to cure His children. A bronze serpent on a pole, what’s with that?

Christian readers, though, see here (as in virtually every page of the Old Testament) a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. And where do we get this idea? From Jesus Himself! For this is one of those times when Scripture does interpet Scripture. Jesus said:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:14-17)

All Christians are fond of quoting John 3:16, but for some reason, few quote these verses just before and after it. But when we do read the context, we notice two or three very interesting things. One is that the phrase, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” occurs twice within three short verses. Jesus repeats Himself, as if for emphasis. I have come to heal you, who have all been bitten by the ancient serpent of Eden. I am like that bronze snake Moses lifted up. As those who looked upon the bronze serpent lived, so those who look to Me in faith shall live forever.

This theme of destroying death and giving of life, the Lord’s own analogy (though not His only one), is the central, guiding motif of Orthodox teaching about the Cross: Jesus died to bestow upon the world eternal life. Every other thing we say about the atonement is one or another facet of this gem, is another way of getting at the fathomless mystery of how Christ destroys death and gives immortal life. This is the framework into which all the other pieces are fitted: that by death, Christ trampled down death and bestowed life upon those in the tombs.

We notice, in passing, that the story in Numbers gives no hint of that bronze serpent being punished in the place of disobedient Israel! It was raised for their healing, for their life. That’s what Christ twice says. In fact, it lifted their punishment. When Moses prayed, God simply forgave, without punishing anyone. The serpent on the pole was the form His forgiveness took. He demonstrated His forgiveness by healing the people. In just such a way, Christ, too, while on the Cross, prayed to the Father, "forgive them, for they know not what they do." And the Father did, still without having to punish anyone, and the Cross is the form His forgiveness takes, for upon it, our death is healed.

And yet, in an entirely different sense, that bronze serpent mounted on the pole definitely implies punishment; see the next post in this series, in which we will also examine how Christ's death could heal anybody else of death. How does that work?

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Why Did Jesus Die? (02) To Crucify Death and Sin

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

In the previous post, we saw how Moses fashioned a bronze serpent and raised it on a pole; how those who had been bitten by live serpents were healed when they looked at that bronze serpent and lived; and how Christ compared His coming crucifixion to that healing, life-giving event.

But a serpent, of all things, to typify Christ? Why? Isn’t that more of an anti-type? Hasn’t the serpent always, since Eden, typified the devil?

Yes, and that is exactly why God told Moses to fashion that particular symbol: on purpose to foreshadow the fact that Christ, in dying, crucified sin. Or as St. Paul puts it, “[God] made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin.” (Corinthians 5:21)

This does not mean any such simplistic thing as that God the Father was blaming the Blameless One for everybody else’s sin! Even if we do sometimes say so metaphorically, at the literal level we would never consider that any form of justice, much less Divine Justice.

Instead, “[God] made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin” means that when Christ dies, so does sin. In His death, sin is crucified. How does His dying destroy sin? By destroying death. Think of death as a scorpion, whose tail, lashing out, stings us. The stings it inflicts are sins. (cf. I Cor. 15:56)

Yes, it works both ways. Originally, sin (not God) made us mortal. Now mortality, death, residing in our very genes, erupts in us as sin, making a disastrous downward spiral. The more we sin, the more we die (move further and further from God-our-Life) and the more we die, the more we sin. The sicker we become, the more symptoms we show; and the more symptoms appear, the sicker we feel. To be free from the symptom (sin) we must be free of the disease (death). If we are not to keep on being stung by sin, the scorpion, death, must be killed.

How does death cause us to sin? It does it in two ways, for death means two things.

First, death is the separation of body and soul from God, a condition we inherit, in which we are born. (It is not a reciprocal separation, for if He were to abandon us, we could not live a moment! But it is separation in that we have abandoned Him.) In this separation, we are largely blind to God and to all the things concerning Him. We are more oriented toward ourselves than to our Creator, meaning we are warped. From this blindness come sins. From this self-serving come more sins.

Secondly, we are all aware that one day, inescapably, our bodies, too, shall die. This awareness spurs more sins. Pause for a while (preferably a long while!) to reflect how differently we would live if there were no fear of death; how different would be our behavior if we knew nothing could ever harm us, nothing could ever end our lives, if we weren’t always thinking, “Life is short,” as in, “too short to put up with you,” or, “too short not to enjoy as fully as possible, even at the expense of others.” There would be no point in so much of our sinning if it just weren’t true that “tomorrow we die.” As it is, though, death is the devil’s whip, keeping us slavishly, even feverishly, pursuing his agenda. Quick, amass your fortune now, he whispers, so you can live high in whatever time remains. Be ruthless if necessary. Or, You’re getting older now; you are going to have to get tough if you are to become famous enough for your name to live on after you. Or, Since you will die unless you ____ (fill in the blank with steal, kill, lie, or any other sin), do it.

The more we ponder it, the more we realize how free we would be, free as Adam and Eve were, free from compulsion to sin, free to choose goodness, but for the death we carry around inside us.

Fr. John Romanides explains in detail how the fear of death causes us to sin.

In the first place, the deprivation of divine grace impairs the mental powers of the newborn infant; thus, the mind of man has a tendency toward evil from the beginning. This tendency grows strong when the ruling force of corruption becomes perceptible in the body. Through the power of death and the devil, sin that reigns in man gives rise to fear and anxiety and to the general instinct of self-preservation or survival. Thus, Satan manipulates man’s fear and his desire for self-satisfaction, raising up sin in him, in other words, transgression against the divine will regarding unselfish love, and provoking man to stray from his original destiny. Since weakness is caused in the flesh by death, satan moves man to countless passions and leads him to devious thoughts, actions, and selfish relations with God as well as with his fellow man. ..

Because of death, man must first attend to the necessities of life in order to stay alive. In this struggle, self-interests are unavoidable. Thus, man is unable to live in accordance with his original destiny of unselfish love. This state of subjection under the reign of death is the root of man’s weaknesses in which he becomes entangled in sin at the urging of the demons and by his own consent. Resting in the hands of the devil, the power of the fear of death is the root from which self-aggrandizement, egotism, hatred, envy, and other similar passions spring up. In addition to the fact that man “subjects himself to anything in order to avoid dying,” he constantly fears that his life is without meaning. Thus, he strives to demonstrate to himself and to others that it has worth. He loves flatterers and hates his detractors. He seeks his own and envies the success of others. He loves those who love him and hates those who hate him. He seeks security and happiness in wealth, glory, bodily pleasures… (The Ancestral Sin, pp. 162-163)

So the very condition of death and corruptibility (being liable to harm), itself, plus the fear of death, together keep us in subjection to sin.

But Jesus, dying, transforms death. Exactly how He does this is a mystery beyond human comprehension, which is why we have so many models of what goes on in the atonement. But we sometimes compare it with what happens when a strong light is turned on in a dark place: the light “wins” out and ends the darkness - because darkness is nothing but lack of light particles. Similarly, when death and Life Himself meet, His infinite Life more than cancels out death - because death is nothing but the absence of life. Jesus destroys death the way you destroy ignorance when you give someone knowledge: by bringing to it what was lacking, by filling up the void. Jesus dies as Man, and as God fills up death with His own, immortal, infinite, eternal Life. And in destroying death as The End, in making of it a portal to new Life instead, Jesus destroys our slavery to sin. That’s why we say that in dying on the Cross, Jesus crucified sin. Hence, the bronze serpent fashioned by Prophet Moses. It was to signify this beforehand.

It is not a case of God the Father judging the whole world guilty and then transferring that guilt to the only innocent Man who ever lived. Besides being the grossest injustice imaginable, such a notion ignores the revealed fact that God the Father is not our Judge; only Christ Himself is. (John 5:22) Moreover, the judging of the world is reserved for when Christ comes again; it did not happen on the Cross, except in the sense that the world there supremely demonstrated its guilt. “And He shall come again,” we say in the Creed, “to judge the living and the dead…” Christ shall judge the world when He returns and shall pass sentence. But not yet, not this time, “For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Meanwhile, on the cross, the world indeed gets its day in court, but notice: not yet as the defendant! “Now is the judgment of this world,” says the Lord, “now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31) The “prince of this world” means the devil. The world, here, is in court as the victim who is to be awarded the verdict it seeks against its tyrant. God’s Justice here is freeing His people and reclaiming us from the tyrant, for we are rightfully His own. Now the ancient serpent is about to be defanged, on the Cross. (See Genesis 3:15) Now, by dying, Christ is about to trample down death by death.

* * * * *

Why Did Jesus Die? (03) To be our Passover Lamb

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. (I Corinthians 5:7)

On the night God had promised to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and to lead them out of that country, they had assembled, per His commandment, to sacrifice lambs and roast them, to eat the meat with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They came with their belongings packed, fully dressed, down to their belts and sandals, every woman and young girl wearing gold and silver jewelry she had begged from her Egyptian mistress. They had obeyed God’s order to smear some of the lambs’ blood over the doorposts and lintels of each house they occupied. God had warned that on this night, He would cause all the firstborn of Egypt to die, including every firstborn animal. But the angel of death would pass over any house marked with the blood of the sacrificed lambs. So the people of God huddled over their feasts, while a great cry went up all over Egypt, for there was not a house in which someone had not died. Pharaoh sent word to Moses, imploring him to take the Israelites and get out of Egypt immediately. He did. Six hundred thousand Israelites departed, plus a mixed crowd of others, plus herds and flocks, with all their belongings, plus all the borrowed jewelry. They carried with them the bones of their forefather, Joseph, who had foreseen this day and had asked them to carry his bones out with them. (For the full story, read Exodus, Chapter 12.)

But after the initial shock had worn off, the Egyptians began regretting that they had released their slaves. Pharaoh sent his chariots after them to bring them back.

And the Angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them. So it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. Thus it was a cloud and darkness to the one, and it gave light by night to the other, so that the one did not come near the other all that night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

Now it came to pass, in the morning watch, that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He troubled the army of the Egyptians. And He bound their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty; and the Egyptians said, "Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians."

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, on their chariots, and on their horsemen." And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained. But the children of Israel had walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

So the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt; so the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and His servant Moses. (Exodus 14:19-31)

The Passover festival has been kept by the Jews annually ever since, all these thousands of years, to commemorate those two nights, the night Israel left Egypt, and the night Israel crossed the sea dry-shod and was rescued from the Egyptian army.

Of all the kinds of sacrifices in the Old Testament, the kind the biblical writers find by far the best typifies Christ is, perhaps surprisingly, not the sin offering, but the Passover lamb. Christ was a sin offering, too, although not in the Western sense of that phrase (and I'll make that the topic of two other posts), but more than anything else, He is viewed as the Passover Lamb. That is why He died at Passover, and why His last meal was the Passover meal. That is why St. John goes out of his way to point out that none of Christ’s bones was broken. (John 19:36). That “a bone of him shall not be broken” is a prophecy in Psalm 34:20, but it is also something God had commanded the Israelites concerning the Passover Lamb: “In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you break one of its bones." (Exodus 12:46)

That "the Lamb of God" refers to the Passover lamb, is seen even more clearly when we consider that a sin offering, if it was to be a lamb and if it was to be offered by ordinary people like you and me, had to be female! (Leviticus 4:32, 5:6) Thus, the lamb-as-sin-offering is not a particularly apt image of Christ. We have to believe this is no accident. Goats and cattle had to be male. We have never heard of anyone saying, "Behold the Goat of God!" or, "Behold the Calf of God!"

Christ died as our new Passover Lamb. We celebrate the new Passover at every Divine Liturgy, where His flesh feeds us and His blood, the Fountain of Immortality, keeps death from our door. He leads us safely across the dark sea of death to the promised land on the far side.

How His blood could possibly keep the Angel of Death at bay or His flesh could be the bread of eternal life will be the topic for the next post of this series.

Interpreting Part of Isaiah 53

From the fourth of the seven Gospel readings we did in church last night:

Now when it was evening, they brought to Him many who were possesed, and He cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick, that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, who said, "He Himself took up our infirmities, and bore the burden of our infirmities, and bore the burden of our ills." (Matthew 8:16-17

I think it was s-p who first brought this to my attention. Most non-Orthodox people interpret the Isaiah verse very differently from the way St. Matthew does.

New Hint for Husbands

Should your wife ever ask you if she still has on makeup, the perfect answer is:

"No, but I'm not sure you need any."

Christ-centered, Cross-focussed...

... and Scripture-saturated

If anyone wants to attend a service that fills this description, the Orthodox services on Thursday and Friday nights are incomparable. Literally; you will find nothing like them anywhere. Of course, any Orthodox service has more Scripture and scriptural references than you'll find elsewhere, but these two stand out especially.

Thursday night there are 12 Gospel readings dealing with the arrest in the garden through the death of Jesus, and the first few are quite long. Intersperse these with prayers and hymns and you get at least two hours worth.

Friday night, who can describe? You truly just have to be there. Come prepared to stay for as long as it takes.

In Greek churches, the Enkomia (high praises, usually mistranslated, "Lamentations", are set to hauntingly beautiful music.

Participate in both services and you will be able, forever after, to answer "YES!" when asked, "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?" Yes, you will have been there. Yes, you will have become a firsthand witness of these awesome events.

Consider yourself invited.

P.S.) You do not have to cross yourself, kiss any icons, or do anything that may make you uncomfortable. Nobody will notice what you do or don't do.

Judgement: "Now" or Later?

Last night we read from the 12th chapter of St.John's Gospel. In v. 31, Jesus says, "Now is the judgement of the world; now will the prince of the world be cast out."

The prince of the world is, of course, the devil. Now the world is to be ridded of his tyranny. Notice: here, the world is the plaintiff, not the defendant. The world is now going to receive the relief and redress it seeks. Its despot is to be overthrown.

In verses 47-48, Jesus returns to the theme of judgment: "And if anyone hears my words, and does not keep them, it is not I who judge him; for I have not come not to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me, and does not accept my words, has what judges him: the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day."

The Cross, then, is not God's judgement upon the world, but for the world. The world will become the defendant "on the last day."

And the Judge will not be the Father, as is commonly supposed, but the Son. (John 5:22) The Judge will be the very One Who came into the world not to judge it, but to save it. (John 3:17)

And if that sounds a bit as if the book has been cooked (in our favor, that is), I think nobody who makes it past the Pearly Gates will find any cause to complain.

P.S.) If this confuses anyone, and makes you ask, "Well, then, what was the Crucifixion all about?" I refer you to the series "Why Did Jesus Die?" that I posted beginning on 30 June, 2008. There are so many ways to think of Jesus' death that the series took 17 installments!

Here We Go...

...plunged into Holy Week. Last night's first Bridegroom Service, always hard-hitting, struck me especially in a few places we sing all the time, not only in Holy Week.

From Psalm 87:

Will You work wonders for the dead? Will the shades arise to give You thanks? Do they declare Your mercy in the grave, and Your truth among those who have perished? Are Your wonders made known in the darkness, or Your justice in the land of oblivion?

And Holy Week made me realize that, although the Psalmist intended these as rhetorical questions, we now know that the answer to each one is, "YES!" Yes! Yes, You work wonders for the dead! Yes, the shades arise to give You thanks! Yes, Your mercy has been declared in the grave, and Your truth among those who have perished! Yes, your wonders are made known in the darkness, and Yor justice in the land of oblivion! Alleluia!

From Psalm 102: "Not according to our sins does He deal with us, nor does He requite us according to our crimes." No, that ugly thing is not what Holy Week is all about, not about Divine Revenge, displaced upon Christ. No. He knows how we were formed; He remembers that we are dust. His compassion is boundless - bounded not even by any need to requite evil with punishment.

"Hear another parable. There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard, and put a hedge about it, and dug a wine vat in it, and built a tower, and he let it out to husbandmen, and wend abroad. But when the fruit season drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, to receive his fruits..." And the husbandmen killed the servants, and eventually the son and heir. The husbandmen, not the son's father. Not the householder.

And then there's one of my favorite prayers, for years now, sung in the grim fourth plagal tone: "Bring more evils upon them, O Lord, bring more evils upon those who are glorious upon earth. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia." This one scandalized me the first time I ever heard it. But of course it means, "Do not let the elites [continue to] oppress us. Foil their plots, thwart their schemes, overthrow their tyranny, save us from them.

Answers, Finally

Recently, I've been asking this question of every Catholic I could find, online or in person: Why do Catholics believe their hierarchy when it claims to be the ultimate authority in matters of faith and morals? What leads Catholics to accept this claim?

And finally, yesterday, two of them answered me. In case you'd like to know, here's what they said. (Bear in mind, these are very liberal Catholics, not traditionalists by a long stretch.)

From George:

Look, psychology has very easy explanations for this. Here's one. Many people are very busy trying just to survive and provide necessary care for family members. It should not be surprising, then, to find people who WANT life to be simpler than it is. Accepting authority and following that authority's teaching can make life a lot easier than having to study issues and use one's brain to make one's own decisions. The rule is this: When people WANT something to be so, you should not be surprised to find them deciding that it is so. In this case, when people WANT a moral authority to exist, don't be surprised that they will find that a moral authority DOES exist - and that for some of them it will be the RCC.

The truth is: there is NO infallible authority or infallible combination of authorities. Human reason, which itself is fallible, is the best tool we have. And the conscience is our best guide to behavior. It is our duty to take steps to inform our conscience, and also to follow it.

From Joan:

It is just as in other spheres; when people have had far more knowledge and experience of some matter, be it in law, medicine or whatever, we tend to believe them as the default option unless we have good reason to believe them to be mistaken, or not in full possession of the facts.

Well, I just thought this was very interesting. Notice, too, a couple of interesting underlying assumptions. For example, there is the assumption that the [only] alternative to accepting the Catholic hierarchy as authority is to work it all out for oneself, what we might call the "Protestant alternative". Another is that the Catholic hierarchy has the requisite experience.

I can think of other answers to my question, as well, but what I wanted to know was what Catholics think the answer is.

One Man's Trash ...

... is his wife's treasure. And vice-versa. This fact of life is making it hard for us to get rid of stuff.

STUFF! Stuff, stuff, stuff. How did we come to be drowning in stuff, so much stuff this four-bedroom house can't hold it all?

At least most of my too-small clothes are gone; I've finally concluded that if I ever really do get down to a size 14 again, I'll deserve a whole new wardrobe.

St. Augustine said it's relatively easy not to acquire something in the first place, but once you've acquired it, getting rid of it is like having your arm cut off. So, so true! If you think you aren't a materialist, try cleaning out all your closets plus your attic. Lord, have mercy!

Rational Thinking v. Rationalism, Yet Again

Sunday before last (to show how long since I've posted here!) our Gospel lesson was about the boy with the demon, whose father cried out, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief!"

And a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a heterodox sermon on this same passage, wherein the minister asked, "What does this MEAN?" What could it possibly mean, to believe and not believe at the same time?

Our priest, by contrast, asked, "Who among us does not know what this means?" and everybody nodded. Sure, we all, including that minister's congregation, all know what that means. How do we know it? By having prayed the same prayer ourselves, over and over again. We may not know how to put its meaning in clear words, but we all know what that meaning is.

Demetrios says he can even put it into words. He points out that it is precisely the cogito that doubts. The rationalistic tendency in us says to us, "But we've never heard of anybody who could actually do this. How reasonable is it to suppose Jesus can?"

St. Peter had the same experience when he walked on the water. His cognitive thinking kicked in and said, "But this can't be, me, walking on water!" and he began to sink.

The truth, though, is that St. Peter was being more truly rational before that thought occurred to him. It is not irrational to acknowledge what you see, what you experience. That's simply going by the evidence before you. If you really are walking on water, what's irrational is to deny it! Similarly, it is not against reason to suppose Jesus can cast out a demon, not if you personally know Jesus. If you know Him adequately, you know He can.

In the very same way, it is not in the least irrational to say Jesus arose from the dead. At least not if you have met Him, alive and glorious, after He had died.

I know numerous people to whom Jesus has appeared. Before I became Orthodox, most of those people were Jews, interestingly enough. They mostly became "Messianic Jews" afterward.

(But as Met Kallistos has pointed out, one need not be able to point to any particular incident to be able to say, with confidence, "Yes, I know God.")

Incommunicado

For anyone who may have been wondering about my sudden week-long silence, it's because the whole upstairs of our house, every room, is being painted for the first time in 20 years. Wallpaper coming off, new paint everywhere. And all the furniture has been moved away from all the walls and clustered in the middle of each room. My computer was buried in such a cluster (and covered with a drop-cloth) until half an hour ago.

In an unrelated development, my computer is showing signs of illness and needs a doctor rather badly, so I may be off-line a while longer, don't know. Will try to post a couple of things that have been on my mind before I take it to the PC doc...

And What is the Link...

if any, between homosexuality and pedophilia? (I leave you to guess what item of news has prompted this question.) Why is it that so many homosexuals are also pedophiles? There are, of course, many pedophiles who are heterosexual, and many homosexuals who leave children alone. Yet so many of them don't...

And while we're at it, isn't it at least paradoxical that so many of the people who think homosexuality is not a disorder also think the purpose (if any) of our species or of any species is to propagate its genes as successfully as possible?

Where is the Borderline...

of superstition?

I have a good friend, a dear woman, now a nun, who once buried an icon of St. Andrew on some property she hoped her parish could acquire. She had heard that St. Andrew was a good one to help in matters of real estate. (In all fairness, that was before her parish was canonical, before she was canonically chrismated.) And now I find a Catholic website on which three people, so far, have said that when no one is looking, they hide miraculous medals or holy cards or sprinkle "Blessed Salt" in people's homes and places of work.

It just makes me wonder, and I do not know the answer: are such acts superstitious? What is superstition, and how do we identify beliefs and practices that are superstitious?

A Reply to Miss Knits

Miss Knits, advice columnist for True Knitters Daily Digest, recently advised a reader to buy a bigger house in which to store her out-of-control "stash" (unused yarns).

Today Miss Knits received this e-mail.

Sorry, it doesn't matter how much larger a place you get, it still fills up. We moved here from a 1 bedroom apt after my FIL passed away and left DH a bit of money and I thought that I'd died and gone to heaven since this is a 2 and 1/2 story old farmhouse with 5 BRs. I now have 3 rooms full of crafting things and have the treadle sewing machine in the dining room cuz there's no room in any of the other rooms.

Now that I'm getting ready to leave DH and move into my own place, it's going to have to be a large one just to hold all my stuff! And, since I'm moving cross country will have to figure out how to move it. Glad I know how to drive trucks.

So, now I need to win the lottery to just move it. Guess you can never win because there is always something new to wish for.

Sandi

_______

Anastasia's note: This is a real post to an actual Yahoo knitters' group. Except for being shortened by a phrase or two, it is here reproduced unedited.

Authority and Communion

In Orthodox Christianity, the Holy Spirit is imparted to each Christian in Holy Chrismation, thenceforth to dwell in the very core of each of us. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is our Ultimate Authority. In the faithful living of the Orthodox Christian life, He reveals to us, as promised, the Truth; that is, the very same Truth He also revealed to the Apostles and to the writers of Holy Scripture and to the Church ever since. And He does this directly, personally, as described by St. John (I John 2:27): “But the anointing which you have received of Him [that’s Chrismation] lives in you, and you do not need any man to teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and just as it has taught you, you shall live in Him.”

Two further important characteristics of this Authority are (1) that it is internal, not external, therefore carrying the weight of our own, inner convictions, far more weight, I mean, than any external authority could ever hope to bring to bear, for we can hardly disbelieve what springs forth from the within depths of ourselves; and (2) this Authority is not imposed upon us, but leaves us entirely free.

This is the ultimate legacy of the Holy Apostles: not so much a set of doctrines and practices but most of all, a sharing in the Life of Christ, that is, in His own life. “That which we have seen and heard we declare we to you,” says St. John, “that you also may have communion with us: and truly our communion [is] with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (I John 1:3) (The doctrines and practices which are part of the apostolic legacy are also important, for each of them safeguards, in one way or another, that Life.)

Now the goal of this life in Christ, the destiny we are meant to fulfill, is to become “conformed to the image of the Son.” (Romans 8:29) The whole of the Christian life consists a striving to allow God to do this work in us, until we reach full union with Him, more and more fully sharing in the very Life of the Holy Trinity, which life is heaven. (But if we suppose this means unity with God’s Essence, we commit blasphemy; we become pantheists.)

Now Christ is absolutely free, now and forever, so conformity to Him means we must also be free, and become ever more free if we are to become ever more like Him, and more than merely like Him, but incorporated into Him, all of His followers together filling up His Being. (Ephesians 1:23) We are bound together by the bonds of love, and love means free, sacrificial, unconditional giving our ourselves, without asking anything in return. Freedom is essential to the entire enterprise, and this is why a hierarchical authority dictating what we are to believe quickly ruins it all. In fact, in Orthodox circles, we simply scoff at any cleric who tries this. And we keep our distance from him.

I do not mean that we don’t need teachers. We do, and we have and heed them. But when and if we believe them, it is not merely because an authority said so. It is because the Holy Spirit wings the words and quickens our hearts so that they leap at the Truth like St. John the Baptist in his mother’s womb. We spontaneously recognize Truth; He resonates with the Spirit in ourselves, bearing witness. We believe because what we hear explains something we have encountered in our Christian life, because it fits with everything else we know and have lived in the Church, is consistent with what He has revealed in all the ages past, but most of all, because the teacher himself (or herself) is so filled with Christ that Christ’s other lovers long to to follow this teacher, who can mentor us, along the pathway. (Not that we can make ourselves like Christ; only the Holy Spirit can do that; yet mysteriously, although the work is all His, it requires our own effort as well. This, by definition. Christ said, “My Father works and I work.” Therefore, if we would share His Life, we, too, must try to work.)

I hope you can see that all of this is undercut, supplanted, if a pope comes along and says, “Believe it upon my authority, because I tell you it is so” -- with the implicit (sometimes explicit) threat of hell. If we believe on that basis, then the pope displaces (but can never, ever replace) the Holy Spirit. And then, unsurprisingly, we get people like the priest who once said to me, “We Catholics believe in the Holy Spirit, too, but we just don’t know what to DO with Him.”

The above applies equally, by the way, when someone comes along and says, “Believe it because the Bible [as I/we read it] says so.” That’s another external authority seeking to displace the Inner Voice; that’s an imposed authority, binding a person instead of leaving him free.

One cannot have an external authority, making moot the Holy Spirit in us, or an imposed authority, compromising our freedom, and still have the same kind of communion Orthodox Christians share. Just not possible.

None of this means there are no dogmas or no definitions. The Church formulates these reluctantly, and only in the face of heresies that require the Church to draw the dividing line between herself and the errors. But the reason we, the faithful, believe these dogmas is not this, not because hierarchs have decreed them or councils have defined them. We believe as the Holy Spirit teaches us, even when bishops or patriarchs are in error. In fact, even a so-called Ecumenical Council has no authority unless the people also accept it; witness the council that tried to outlaw icons, or the Council of Florence. We rejected them as “robber councils“. (No, this is not a neat or efficient process, coming to consensus; it sometimes takes centuries to settle an issue such as Arianism or Iconclasm.) We know the Shepherd’s voice and we do not follow anyone whose voice has a different sound.

Concerning excommunication and anathemas. These are not done (formally) simply for false belief, but for causing distress to the Church on that account. Arius was not cast out simply for believing the wrong things, but for publicly teaching error, and persistently, after several admonitions. And for failure even to live a Christian life, because a Christian life means we all, still in perfect freedom, submit to one another as a matter of humility, all of us, whether we be children or patriarchs. In other words, Arius should have said to himself that it was unlikely he was right and so many of the holy fathers wrong. He ought to have stopped insisting upon his own teaching and at least to have said, “Perhaps you are right; let me think and pray about this some more and meanwhile I will stop publicly teaching my doctrine.” But instead, his arrogance was such as to provoke even so holy a man as St. Nicholas to smack him across the face. The spirit in him was an alien one. He was already out of communion; the anathema but made it official.

And yes, even anathema is supposed to be an act of love. St. Paul writes, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” So it is for the person’s own good. Excommunication does not mean go to hell if you don’t toe the line.

Excommunication is also for the good of the Church; St. Paul continues: “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump…” (I Corinthians 5: 4-7)

Such acts are not meant as threats or as ways of imposing doctrine, but of protecting the integrity of the Church. We believe not on pain of excommunication, but because the Holy Spirit in our hearts illumines us.

And the Holy Spirit, by the way, teaches the same things consistently, day after day, century after century, millennium after millennium.  That's why the Church is fundamentally the same, yesterday, today, and forever - because Christ is.