The Reformers and the Orthodox

I had been familiar with the correspondence between Patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople and the early Reformers of Tübingen, but still found this paper on the subject fascinating. Check it out. I hadn't known, for instance, that the Reformers actually sent a kind of "embassy" to Constantinople, or that they drew up a Greek version of the Augsburg Confession that was not just a translation, but an earnest attempt to communicate Reformation concepts to the Greek and Orthodox mind.

Coptic Prayers- The Prayer of Thanksgiving

I thought I would do a few posts on the prayers used in the Coptic daily office and other services. I'm going to be highly selective, but you can read all the prayers of the daily office online here and hear some of them being chanted (by readers from our parish!). Most other Coptic services can also be found online in English.

The following is the prayer of thanksgiving that begins every prayer of the hours and is also prayed at many services like the betrothal and wedding. In the hours it's preceded by the Lord's Prayer and you follow it with Psalm 50 LXX (Psalm 51 in Protestant Bibles), expressing penitence for sin.

Let us give thanks to the beneficent and merciful God, the Father of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, for He has covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto Him, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour. Let us also ask Him, the Lord our God, the Almighty, to guard us in all peace this holy day and all the days of our life.

O Master, Lord, God the Almighty, the Father of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, we thank You for every condition, concerning every condition, and in every condition, for You have covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto You, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour.

Therefore, we ask and entreat Your goodness, O Lover of mankind, to grant us to complete this holy day, and all the days of our life, in all peace with Your fear. All envy, all temptation, all the work of Satan, the counsel of wicked men, and the rising up of enemies, hidden and manifest, take them away from us, and from all Your people, and from this holy place that is Yours.

But those things which are good and profitable do provide for us; for it is You Who have given us the authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, by the grace, compassion and love of mankind, of Your Only-Begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, through Whom the glory, the honor, the dominion, and the adoration are due unto You, with Him, and the Holy Spirit, the Life-Giver, Who is of one essence with You, now and at all times, and unto the ages of all ages. Amen.

[Image from touregypt.net]

Not Being able to leave well enough alone.....

I made some of my own "What they said/what they meant" items:

What they say:
"We don't subscribe to tradition. We look to the Bible only."

What they mean:
"We subscribe to the tradition of Sola Scriptura, and many other unlabelled traditions, but we will avoid recognizing it at all costs." (And make sure you have a Ham on Easter!)


What they say:
"We beleive in the priesthood of ALL beleivers."

What they Mean:
"We don't believe in 'preisthood' at all."


What they Say:
"The celebration of fasts and feasts is of pagan origin, and violates a Pauline prohibition on observing days and months and seasons and years."

What they mean:
"Except of course for Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Mother's Day and the '4th of July'."


What they say:
"We understand the Bible literally."

What they mean:
"except that part of eating and drinking Jesus' body and blood....He meant that figuratively."


What they say:
"All you have to do is accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and thats it."

What they mean:
"And don't drink, smoke, swear ("shit" is out, "Crap" is OK) go to R movies and get erections until your married." (Something else may have been implied to females....I wouldn;t know.....)


What they say:
"God loves you and only wants you to be succesful and prosper in all that you do."

What they mean:
"Except when you aren't succesful....next time you'll pray more and have more faith."

I better stop now......

Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: The life in the body and epilogue

This is part three and the conclusion of a review. See here for part one and here for part two.

In his final chapter, Fr. John Behr applies the method of seeing all things through the perspective (the hypothesis or starting point) of the Passion of Christ on to the life of the individual believer in the body. In the church's classic teaching, Christ recapitulated- assumed, took into Himself- all of humanity in His Incarnation and Passion, and we in turn are to recapitulate His life. Living the life of Christ in our body is to live the perfect human life. What does this look like?

Fr. John points to St. Athanasius' On The Incarnation as a key source for theoretical understanding on this, but then to St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony as this theory shown in practice. St. Antony (icon above) is presented as an example of one who has so assumed Christ, that he can be seen to be the continuation of Christ's life in a "normal" human existence. The text emphasizes that Antony was not a superhuman, that the presence of Christ was not felt in him as something other than human, but as a human being as he ought to be. Particularly notable is that he was neither insensible to natural human emotions and bodily needs or motions, nor was he controlled by them- his was a life of perfect balance, the vision of God ruling the life on earth rather than vice versa: "He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by the logos and steadfast in that which accords with nature."

In discussing the way we capitulate the life of Christ in our bodies, Fr. Behr pays particular attention to the confusion over the Christian attitude towards the human body and the material world in general. In both the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, the body or flesh is portrayed in seemingly contradictory terms: On the one hand as a glorious creation and helper in our salvation, on the other hand as unruly and an enemy to be subjugated. Fr. Behr explains that what is spoken of when the body is called an enemy is the body as regarded by a diseased mind, the body made an idol. The problem is not the body in itself, which was created by God and is good, but an "evil husbandry of the mind" over the body. He emphasizes, "If one does not recognize that the struggle is ultimately with one's own perceptions, then one is left waging war on one's own nature." That is in fact what some outside observers and even some Christians who haven't been rightly taught perceive in these Scriptures and early Christian teaching. Fr. Behr underlines that Christ came to fight in and on behalf of the human body, and it is in our body that we seek to put on Christ. The body participates in the soul's salvation and vice versa; it is not just coming along for the ride or awaiting destruction while we continue on as disembodied creatures.

Fr. Behr then provides brief examples of contrasts between "good husbandry" and "evil husbandry" of the mind over the body. While eating and enjoyment of it is natural, gluttony can pervert this: "Gluttony is a false opinion about the way things are: 'Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach. Filled, it moans about scarcity...' " (Here quoting St. John Climacus.) Sex is given to us primarily for procreation, but can also be a ground for sanctification. Again quoting St. John Climacus: "I have watched impure souls mad for physical love but turning what they know of such love into a reason for repentance and transferring that same capacity for love to the Lord..."

This ordering of the body's impulses has been described in Orthodox spirituality as apatheia or detachment. Fr. John explains that "it connotes not repression but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom; having overcome the passions, we are free to be our true selves, free to love others, free to love God." (+Kallistos Ware) Such ordering is not accomplished with severity or austerity, still less with judgmentalism, but by remaining "open and pliable" to the activity of God within oneself. It is ultimately not we who form Christ in ourselves but Christ who does so. Lest it be said that Orthodoxy does not preach grace!

Finally, Fr. Behr brings the book back around to its starting place, to his main goal, which was to strip back some of modernity's constraints around our understanding of the gospel and the Christian life. The picture he paints- in this epilogue literally offering diagrams which I found helpful even though as a former Campus Crusader they initially made me nervous!- is that the Cross is literally the starting point of the whole universe. It is in the Cross that we see the history of humanity not in parallel terms to God's part in "salvation history," with arrows going back and forth between parallel lines (reminiscent to me of both dispensationalism and Calvinism), but as a single trajectory beginning at the Cross. The Cross is not only the restoration of creation, it in fact can be seen as its starting point.

I am reminded of St. Ephrem the Syrian's poem The Pearl, where he warns against the soul's wish to plumb the depths of the Trinity, as it is more than enough to content oneself with contemplation of God the Son. This seems to me precisely what Fr. John is calling us to: To regain the perspective the early church had when they considered Christ's Passion in light of the Scriptures. We have been taught to preoccupy ourselves with historical-critical and rationalistic questions and approaches, and to "what if's." They were caught up in a vision of Christ that filled their whole consciousness. Christ the complete image of God, the Alpha and Omega, through Whom we know all that we can know of God and humanity, in Whose Life we become the full human we were created to be, in Whom we, as St. Athanasius taught, become gods.

Light from the Christian East

Frederica Matthewes-Green gives a hearty recommendation for this new book by a Reformed professor, James Payton. Here's Khouria Frederica's blurb about the book on its jacket:

"James Payton has combined his thorough familiarity with Eastern Orthodoxy with a gracious and respectful sensibility, and produced a book that is inviting, accessible, and more content-rich than an introductory work is expected to be. 'Light from the Christian East' is an excellent book."

You can also see her review of it on amazon.com.

What they SAY. What they MEAN.

Drew Costen posted THIS over on TheOoze (Originally from Jeff Priddy)

What They Say:"There's nothing you must do to be saved..
"What They Mean:"Here's what you must do to be saved:"

What They Say:"You are absolutely, totally helpless to save yourself."
What They Mean:"You must make a wise decision in order to be saved."

What They Say:"God controls all things."
What They Mean:"God doesn't control man's free will."

What They Say:"We can't boast about going to heaven."
What They Mean:"If we go to hell, it's our own fault."

What They Say:"Love never fails!"
What They Mean:"Love can't overcome human stubborness."

What They Say:"Men are in bondage to sin."
What They Mean:"Men are free to choose Christ."

What They Say:"Grace is unmerited favor..."
What They Mean:"... given only to those who merit it with faith and obedience."

What They Say:"GOD IS THE SAVIOR OF ALL MANKIND (1 Tim. 4:10)..."
What They Mean:"... except for about ninety percent of them."

What They Say:"GOD'S LOVE IN UNCONDITIONAL..."
What They Mean:"... as long as you meet certain conditions."

What They Say:"GOD'S WILL IS UNOPPOSABLE..."
What They Mean:"... except by the sinner."

What They Say:"Salvation is not a thing of chance."
What They Mean:"There is no second chance to be saved."

What They Say:"WE HAVE GOOD NEWS FOR YOU!"
What They Mean:"Most of mankind will perish forever."

What They Say:"GOD LOVES YOU!"
What They Mean:"... as long as you love Him."

What They Say:"Christ died for all sin..."
What They Mean:"... except the sin of not believing that He died for all sin."

What They Say:"The Good Shepherd seeks the lost sheep until he finds it!"
What They Mean:"The Good Shepherd seeks until it's too late."

What They Say:"God's justice was satisfied in the cross of Christ."
What They Mean:"God's justice demands eternal torment or annihilation."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I largely agree with it? I think some Orthodox repsonses would be appropriate.

Sinners and Funerals

There is a big controversy in Dallas right now, over an Evangelical church's refusal to bury a gay man. Story HERE. As I understand it, it is really not a matter of refusing to bury him, but an issue with the powerpoint presentation (which has evidently become the new burial tradition) that would have shown him hugging and kissing his lover.

As I see it, the problem here is not his sinfulness.....and yes, I believe, as Christians always have, that homosexuality is sinful. The problem is that the funeral service has come to be seen as a "celebration of the person's life" instead of a prayer to God for mercy on a departed sinner.

This is the advantage of adhering to a liturgical tradition. We don't have to "create" a burial service. We are given one. And it has nothing to do with "celebrating the life" of the individual. What if Osama Bin Laden was your parishioner? How would you bury him? How do you bury an infant that died when there is not much material for a powerpoint production? What about the guy who cheated on his wife and beat his kids. HOW do you bury him?

Evangelicals and canon

One thing which the Orthodox and many Oozers have in common is a questioning of the biblicism in the evangelical approach to Scripture. So our readers may be interested in this article at bible.org, reviewing the history of evangelicalism's wrestling with canonicity. Props to Energetic Procession for the link.

As I said in my earlier post on the history of anti-Catholicism, it's eye-opening to see where ideas that are taken for granted and stated as revealed truths actually developed at certain points in time, by certain individuals asserting them. Naturally this doesn't necessarily mean the ideas themselves are wrong, but as the article points out it can lead us to read these back in to the early church in anachronistic ways. An example discussed in the article is the widely-held assumption that there even was such a thing as a "closed canon" prior to the Reformation, whereas this simply isn't true. A careful study of history is really essential to a fully-informed faith, in my view.

In any case, this article is a good read and good historical overview, whatever your take on the subject.

Patron Saint? Father George Memory Eternal!

Awhile back Raph (Our own Father Deacon Raphael) asked some of us about a Patron Saint for this 'oozerdoxie' venture.

I'd like to submit Fr. George Calciu...

what follows is a little about him:

---

Fr. Deacon Raphael gave me the sad news from November 21st today.

"The Archpriest George (Calciu), confessor of Christ Jesus, reposed a few moments ago in Fairfax Hospital. Fr George was Pastor of Holy Cross Romanian Orthodox Church in Alexandria and father confessor to many. He had been imprisoned twice in communist Romania (in Pitesti, the most notorious of prison-camps) for preaching the Word of Salvation. (The dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had declared Fr George his “personal enemy”.) He preached at Holy Cross in Linthicum a couple of years ago as we celebrated our Patronal Feast together and we will always remember his deep commitment to the Holy Church, devotion to the Fathers, and sheer joy in the life in Jesus Christ. As you pray for the repose of the soul of Fr George, please also remember his wife, Adriana, their son and grandson, and as well as all of Fr George’s spiritual children."

(from Neepeople)

Fr. George was very, very special to me. I met him on more than one occasion and he personally counseled me in my journey. He encouraged me to become Orthodox.

"Christ is calling you Seraphim. He loves you"

Here is the photo from the last time I saw him, in his parish in Fairfax:



"O Master, Lord our God, Who in Thy wisdom hast created man, and didst honor him with Thy Divine image, and place in him the spirit of life, and lead him into this world, bestowing on him the hope of resurrection and life everlasting; and after he had violated Thy commandments, Thou O Gracious lover of mankind, didst descend to the earth that Thou mightest renew again the creation of Thy hands. Therefore we pray Thee, O All-Holy Master give rest to the souls of Thy servants Fr. George, in a place of brightness, a place of green pasture, a place of repose, and, in that they have sinned in word, or deed or thought forgive them: For Thou art a good God and lovest mankind and unto Thee do we ascribe Glory, together with Thy Father, Who is from everlasting and Thine All-Holy and good, and ever giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen."

We have lost a living saint.

Memory Eternal. Fr. George, pray for us!

---

Any other candidates? Votes?

Anti-Catholicism, some history

Recently on The Ooze we experienced a wave of trolling some call VV-Gate, others The Recent Unpleasantness. I think of it as The Troubles. It was a technicolor reminder of the vitriol that exists out there against anything related to the Vatican. Like the bile that comes out against George Bush from other corners, the scale and heat of it, seeming all out of proportion to reason, really puzzled me.

Recently I've been listening to a CD course on Science and Religion that mentions some 19th-century pseudo-academic anti-Catholicism, like John William Draper. This made me curious to learn more about the historical roots of anti-Catholic prejudice. I'm always intrigued by the web that history weaves, the roots of present currents of thought that may be hidden in time. After all, even though Draper and his more respected contemporary Andrew White were terrible historians whose ideas don't even make common sense, these ideas (e.g. that the Catholic Church opposed scientific progress) have rooted themselves in the popular mind as fact.

Straight off I should mention that there certainly exists Orthodox polemics against Catholicism and the papacy. It seems to be of a different character than others, however. After all, it is not the presence of a bishop or patriarch that the Orthodox take issue with, but the particular role of the bishop of Rome.

That said, it struck me as really curious to read the statements in the Westminster Confession and Book of Concord affirming as an article of faith that the Pope is the Anti-Christ. The statements declare that the Holy Spirit has revealed this to the church as a firm truth. These are statements that all conservative Lutheran synods, to my knowledge, have affirmed. It seems strange to me to assert something so particular with, dare I say, magisterial firmness, which seems rather based on historical events than careful exegesis. For instance, among the few times Scripture mentions antichrists (yes, plural!) it says they will deny that Jesus has come in the flesh; this can hardly apply to the Pope? Reading this, I was reminded that dispensationalism has earlier roots in this historicist view.

The "magisterial" Reformation lent to the popular imagination visions that soon became more apocalyptic. The only woodcuts in Luther's Bible occur in Revelation, a book he didn't even consider proper Scripture, but which allowed him to illustrate his anti-papal message. For instance, in one of them the seven-headed beast wears the papal crown. (The Counter-Reformation had apocalyptic beasts and woodcut propaganda of their own.) Thus even the illiterate got the message, and ran with it. Once the peasant rebellions and the Thirty Years' War got going in earnest, the apocalyptic visions became more grotesque and urgent. People believed it was the end times, and the Whore of Babylon was trying to usher in hell on earth.

This rather gothic element to anti-Catholicism carried on into later centuries. In the 19th century, besides Draper's novel account of the history of science, several sordid "expose's" from supposed ex-priests and nuns became wildly popular. Though these have been largely discredited as hoaxes, you still see Maria Monk or Chiniquy pop up on anti-Catholic websites as supposed "historical texts." Some commentators attribute their reception to the popularity of gothic fiction. Catholicism is still seen in horror films and movies-of-the-week as the best place to go for real evil. During The Troubles on TheOoze, some people noted the black background of the trolls' home website, in addition to their tabloid-style posting. Visit a well-known anti-Catholic website, Jesus-Is-Lord (to which I will not link, so as not to increase their search engine profile) and you'll be treated not only to black backgrounds and pronouncements of hellfire, but creepy music to boot. Then of course there is Jack Chick's cheerful macabre.

In both the 16th century and 19th century versions of anti-Catholic polemics, the papacy competed for black honors with the Jews, Muslims and the Masons or other secretive societies. Often they were seen to be in cahoots with each other, all to deceive the true faithful remnant. Some even speculated that Islam was a plot by the Vatican to deceive true Christians. This, too, is a feature you'll see in present-day anti-Catholicism, as we saw on TheOoze. The Vatican is either a front or is behind such strange bedfellows as Mormonism, the Illuminati, Unitarians, and the Emergent Church, whose anti-institutional leanings don't keep them from suspicion. In all this the Orthodox either get a strange pass (as with Draper), or are seen as a footnote to the Catholics.

To end on a positive note, we can say that if so much opposition has been cause of purification and humbling for the papacy, it is ultimately to the good. The same might be said of TheOoze, where Christians of diverse opinion were nevertheless able to recognize a kind of faith-promotion to which we do not subscribe and to unite in opposing it. God has a way of working like this.

Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ Part 2: Creation, the Church and Mary

Recapping where we are, Fr. John Behr is exploring the Incarnation and Passion of Christ as a lens, as a hypothesis or first principle, for how to view all things. Doing so tends to turn things on their heads: Darkness becomes light, death becomes a birth, the womb becomes a tomb. This approach is nothing new; in fact, the book is a small trove of the richness available in the early fathers' writings as they reflected on Scripture. Fr. John is also offering nothing other than classic Orthodox doctrine. However, for those of us schooled in the modern historical-critical method and in systematic theology, his book represents a shift of perspective, and it also presents the Orthodox doctrine in the form of a story based on the typology and imagery of the early church. No long list of bullet points here. In fact, I find it difficult in reviewing the book to not make it all more complicated than he does.

In chapter three we consider what the Passion teaches us about creation, the Fall, and our own death. Drawing especially on St. Irenaeus, Behr reminds us that the teachers of the church, when looking back on creation in light of what the Passion revealed to them, were able to see even this event as a part of God's economy of salvation and not its precipitator. God did not cause their disobedience, but in His wisdom foresaw it as the means by which His creatures would learn their weakness and come to a mature humanity. This paradox is reflected in an early icon of the creation which shows Christ blessing Adam and Eve as they flee the Garden, and in a hymn of St. Ambrose which calls the Fall "felix culpa," the happy guilt. The very disobedience of humanity, offered to God, is transformed into His blessing. Creation and salvation are not two distinct processes, but one and the same. The Fall is not some cataclysmic event that necessitated Christ's death, but a pre-figuring of that very death, all with the goal of lifting humanity to knowledge of God.

This understanding of creation parallels how the early Christians viewed physical death. In light of the Resurrection, human death is always an unnatural tragedy, particularly violent death. Yet the Passion teaches us that this utmost expression of our need is paradoxically where Christ's victory is realized and declared. Death is seen in Eucharistic terms, an offering, a change of matter into something greater. It is true birth. As St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote of his impending martyrdom, "I go to become anthropos", a human being; this recalling the words of God in Genesis, "let us make anthropos after our image."

As the Passion reveals the meaning of sin and death, it is also our lens for how to understand the church. In chapter four, we are reminded first of St. Paul's imagery of believers as those who receive the Word and are birthed as young babies, nourished also by its milk. Fr. John then moves on to the multiple examples of early Christian writing which depicted the church as Virgin Mother, pre-existing creation as the womb in which the Logos would be received and birthed in humanity. For instance, Tertullian compares the Passion to Adam's slumber, when he was wounded in order to form Eve, the mother of all. In the same way Christ slept in the tomb, and from His side, the church was taken and formed in flesh as His body.

It is in this context that the early church meditated on the significance of St. Mary not only in historical terms, but also in theological ones, as symbol of the church. In St. John's gospel, for instance, Mary is presented to John as his mother, a fact which has larger significance than only as historical footnote to the fate of Jesus' human family. The womb of Mary is connected in the mind of early Christians to the tomb of Christ. The icon of the Nativity shows Christ wrapped in swaddling burial clothes; in the West, the feast of the Nativity is dated nine months after the Resurrection, a curious but intentional reversal of the usual order of birth and death. We are reminded in this chapter of why the Orthodox fathers insisted that "Theotokos" was a christological term, as St. John of Damascus said: "It is proper and true that we call the holy Mary the Theotokos ['God bearer'], for this name expresses the entire mystery of the economy."

As a footnote to chapter four, while re-reading it I reflected on why from a substitutionary atonement point of view, veneration of Mary can be seen to be beside the point or even idolatrous, why insistence on a physical and visible church is rejected, and why from such a perspective the Fall is viewed in more negative and absolute terms. Fr. Behr's book may offer insights to those outside the Orthodox thought world as to how doctrines like Mariology and sacrament are not extraneous to, but central to, our understanding of God's work of salvation.

Next we will consider the final chapter of the book which explores what the Passion means to the individual's life of faith, and its epilogue, titled "A Premodern Faith for the Postmodern Era."