Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazine, and archpriest of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, Fr. Patrick is, perhaps, the most erudite writer in the Orthodox Church in North America today. This article, one of his Pastoral Ponderings, was published by Orthodoxtoday.org.

One of the stories that have proved troubling to students of Holy Scripture over the years is the account of Uzzah, who stretched forth his hand to steady the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, we recall, was being carried by ox cart in order to be installed at David’s projected new shrine at Jerusalem. Some obstacle, however, perhaps a bump in the road, caused the oxen to lurch, nearly upsetting the cart and putting the Ark in danger. The Bible describes the scene:

“Uzzah put out his hand to the Ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by the Ark of God” (2 Samuel 6:6-7).

The shock of readers is surely understandable. Wasn’t Uzzah’s sudden reaction, after all, simply an instinctive response to save the dignity of the Ark? To the extent that we can even describe his deed as intentional, wasn’t that intention good and honorable? How is it, then, that the all-seeing Lord, the God who searches hearts, did not look favorably on what Uzzah did? Shouldn’t he have been rewarded rather than punished

The problem is not a recent one, and readers of the Bible have pondered it for centuries. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus, writing about the same time as some New Testament authors, explained that Uzzah was struck dead for touching the Ark,

“since he was not a priest” (me on hierus — Antiquities of the Jews 7.4.2.81).

This explanation of Josephus is based on prescriptions in Numbers 4, which lists the duties of priests and Levites in regard to the treatment and transportation of the Ark.

This interpretation of the event, which does not necessarily imply a conscious moral failing on the part of Uzzah, is essentially sound, I believe. The Ark of God was very holy, and holiness is dangerous. Uzzah was hurt when he touched something holy.

In this respect it is important to reflect how little we know about the divina, the things of God. The little we do know will prompt us, surely, to be cautious in how we handle them, even in our minds.

The things of God are not what we want or imagine them to be. God Himself determines what they are, and God has not the slightest concern for our own interpretations of them. Their holiness is real, objective, and even physical.

Holiness is likewise not dependent on man’s recognition of it. It resembles electricity in this respect. The trespasser who is electrocuted when climbing too high on a high voltage tower perishes without regard to his own understanding of what he is about, or his innocent intentions, or his personal theories concerning electricity.

David learned this lesson about holiness from the death of Uzzah. Consequently, when the Ark was later returned to Jerusalem, it was borne, not by ox cart, but on the shoulders of the Levites, as it was supposed to be and as God had prescribed (1 Chronicles 15:2,15; Deuteronomy 10:8; 31:25; 1 Samuel 6:15).

David perceived what must be perceived by any who would approach the living God in worship–God decides the nature, structure, and spirit of the worship. Our religious feelings—whether by private or corporate preference–do not determine how we worship. The content and form of our worship has been established, rather, by the inherited, authoritative transmission of the worship itself. We hand it on as we have received it. We do not take it upon ourselves to give form to the worship. If we are faithful, the worship gives form to us, and the example of Uzzah instructs us on the peril of acting otherwise.

Correct (“orthodox”) worship is not the uninformed, spontaneous outpouring of human activity, and the worshipper must be on guard against identifying his personal impulses with the agency of the Holy Spirit.

Undisciplined, off-the-cuff people are far more likely to act under the impulse of suspect and impure spirits than under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, mere spontaneity and a “sense of fulfillment” in worship are not adequate nor reliable indications of the agency of the Holy Spirit.

David perceived that correct worship is not chiefly concerned with meeting the religious needs and aspirations of human beings, but with the glory of God, which is inseparable from His holiness. The fundamental ground of true worship is not the religious nature of man, but the glorious manifestation of God. Indeed, any worship that is not a response to God’s Self-revelation must of necessity be idolatrous, the worship of something that man himself creates from the resources of his own religious nature.

For worship to be authentic and true, therefore, God Himself takes the initiative.

God must be revealed in order for man to worship correctly, and God determines how He is to be worshipped.

Otherwise, man is simply worshipping the works of his own hands, the thoughts of his own mind. Orthodox worship does not consist in the attempt to express man’s religious aspirations, but in meeting, in faith, the manifestation of God in His truth. If man thinks to worship God without rules and rubrics, heaven only knows what he is up to.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

What to Do When One’s “Truth” Does Not Match the “Others’” Truth

““Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.””  (Jn 18: 37)

“If silence is more necessary even during conversation about good matters, how much more so in matters that are indifferent?” –St. John of Gaza

How many times have we found ourselves confronting someone who has a completely different viewpoint about something than ours? The different perception can be about a variety of matters, from the sacred to the mundane. Different perceptions of what is true can occur between spouses, parents, children, friends, parishioners, Christians and non-Christians.

The Truth

Christians are especially prone to fall into being prosecutors for the truth because of the emphasis on Christ Himself as truth and the understanding of His teaching by the Holy Spirit-inspired Church. St. John starts his Gospel, proclaiming the Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus, as Truth:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” (Jn 1:14).

Furthermore, St. John proclaims this same Jesus brought truth to us:

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Jn 1:17).

Only in truth can God be worshipped:

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:24).

Moreover, if one is a true Christian one must act in truth:

“Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” (Jn 8:31–32).

Falsity equated with evil

In fact Jesus and subsequently those who followed Him equated lack of truth with evil and the evil one. St. John conveys the words of Jesus on this matter:

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Jn 8:44).

The need for truth expressed by the Church Fathers

The importance of truth is expressed well by St. Maximus the Confessor:

“Truth is Divine Knowledge, and virtue the struggles for truth on the part of those who desire it.” (Philokalia II, p 188).

St. Maximus goes on to tell us:

“When goodness and truth are attained, nothing can afflict the soul’s capacity for practicing the virtues …” (p. 215).

St. Ilias the Presbyter points out:

“Mercy and truth precede all the other virtues.” (Philokakia III p 34).

The truth in the name of the Church and her Divine Liturgy

The word orthodox, as in the name Orthodox Church, can be defined as right or true. During the Divine Liturgy we pray for our hierarch, that the Lord grant His Churches grace that they may continue

“rightly dividing [dispensing] the word of thy truth.”

The hymn sung immediately after reception of the Eucharist, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ during the Divine Liturgy unequivocally centers on truth: “We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity: for He hath saved us.”

Personal interpretation versus Jesus’ response

Some Christians apply the words of Christ to themselves, however giving these words a very un-Christ-like personal interpretation. They ask the same question Christ asked to those who did not believe in Him. But the Christian asks this question to those who hold a different view about something they hold:

“If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” (Jn 8:46)

But unlike Jesus they have an irrational “demanding expectation” that if it is true, the other must acquiesce to the truth. At times this cognitive distortion even incites anger (Morelli, 2005). The problem is Jesus did not have a demanding expectation that others accede.

As God, the Second Person the Holy Trinity created mankind with free will, and Jesus continued to respect that free will during His public life on earth (as He told us He would honor our free will for all eternity as well). Jesus asks the question to challenge the thinking of His detractors and offer them a chance to affirm Him as God. But through their own faulty reasoning they came to the opposite conclusion that He was not God, but rather was a demon. Jesus response to this falsity was of great consequence. After His affirmation of Himself as God:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (Jn 8: 59). He did not fight or argue with those who would stone Him. St. John records: “… but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.” (Jn 8:59).

“Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?” So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews seized Jesus and bound him.”  (Jn 18: 11-12).

“And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.”  And the chief priests accused him of many things.  And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.”  But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate wondered.”  (Mk 15: 2-5).

Avoiding confrontation while modeling Jesus: The disarming technique

Jesus did speak the truth, and then left it up to His hearers to accept or not accept what He had to say. If what He had to say was accepted, then these listeners became His disciples. If what He said was not accepted, Jesus avoided confrontation. In clinical or pastoral situations I have attempted to follow this same model incorporating a non-confrontational practice called the Disarming Technique.

After expressing your view to a person and it is rejected, disarming becomes a powerful way to deflect conflict. Basically it makes a neutral statement about the other individual’s response. One does not have to agree to what was said and what you consider false, so truth as you see does not have to be compromised. This is especially important if the truth you expressed and that was rejected by another individual reflects the orthodox teaching of Christ and His Church.

Some representative Disarming Responses:

“Hum! That’s an idea;”

“That is one way of looking at it;”

“That’s a possibility;”

“That’s a point to consider.”

If the person you are communicating with is a friend and you want to maintain the friendship and they keep pursuing the point a last effort communication might be:

“Well if we want to keep our friendship, we will just have to agree to disagree on this point.”

A personal non-pastoral example

Over the years I have had parishioners and patients tell me what car to buy, where to go on vacation, what movie to go to see, and where to dine out. When some suggestions fit my personality and interests, I thank the individual and the discussion goes no further. Some suggestions are far away from any interest I have. So I usually respond first by saying truthfully:

“Thanks, but that is not something that interests me.”

Some people are very persistent; they continue trying to convince me. So I usually respond:

“Ok thanks! I’ll look into it.”

Sometimes a person tells me about something they really enjoy and strongly recommends I would also enjoy and insist that I try it. I once had a patient who loved golf and played almost every day. Now personally (no offense intended to golfers), ‘for me’ to run around hills and dales hitting and chasing a little white ball is incomprehensible, a complete waste of time, meaningless and pure psychological torture. But I can genuinely, or rather truthfully, appreciate others’ joy and delight in something that does not fit my interests, but fits theirs. So a typical response on my part would be:

“Boy, I see you really enjoy the game, that is great, who knows, someday I might find myself golfing too.”

Even though I hold a strong opinion now, I do not know the future, only God does, thus I cannot rule out anything. Another example: a patient came to my office and insisted I see her new car. It was a shocking pink color. For me the color pink is on the same level as golf. But I was genuinely happy at her happiness. I told her sincerely how great it was to see her so excited about her car and the way it looked. At times I have had to elevate disarming one notch by being assertive (Morelli, 2006). If she had persisted and wanted to know if I liked the color, I would have to tell her in truth:

“Well, it is not my taste; but you have no idea how happy I am you like it so much.”

The first part of the sentence about it not being my taste would be said softly, the second part of the sentence about my happiness for her would be intoned with enthusiasm. I have used such responses many times, thank God, with great success.

A pastoral example

At times I have had a parishioner or a member of another church community try to convince me of something that is contrary to the teaching of Christ and His Church. Of course I try to state the point in the spirit of the Synodicon of the Orthodox Faith as recited in Eastern Churches on the Sunday of Orthodoxy:

“… as Wisdom has presented, as Christ has awarded … as the Apostles have taught, as the Church has received …”.

If still not accepted, I then merely say, ‘Well, that’s one viewpoint, I am simply expressing what the teaching of the Orthodox Church is on this matter.’ For example, I have had some secularist nominal Christians tell me that same sex marriage can be blessed, or some feminist nominal Christians say woman can be ordained to the priesthood. I point out in charity the truth of the impossibility of such practices and the reasons why. If not accepted, I end with the response said in charitable tone:

“Well that is your personal view, I am simply echoing the Mind of Christ and His Church.” (Morelli, 2009, 2010)

By using the disarming technique in this way I pray I am interiorizing the Mind of Christ who accepted the free will of his human creatures. It is also important to point out that I try  not to be  judgmental of the person as an individual and start out only by discussing the Church’s view on the issue. Speaking the truth and then disarming is done in the spirit of St. Paul who tells us:

“speak evil of no one …avoid quarreling …be gentle” (Titus 3:2)

and keeping in mind the words of Jesus about the acts of a group who had left the Church as recorded by St. John

“… you hate the deeds … which I also hate” (Rev. 2: 6).

Especially for those opposing us on matters of Christ’s teaching, we can apply to ourselves the instruction given by Jesus to his Apostles as how to go out into the world and teach His words. St. Matthew (10:13–14) records:

“And if the house is worthy, let our peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

On trivial matters, those matters that are indifferent, we can follow the advice of St. John of Gaza: Silence is golden.

“Truth without humility is blind. That is why it becomes contentious: it tries to support itself on something, and find nothing except rancour.” St. Ilias the Presbyter (Philolalia III p 39)

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!

St. John was the Archbishop of Constantinople during the fourth century. He was fearless when denouncing sin in high places, and was a prolific writer, and bold preacher, unafraid to hit the topical issues of the day squarely between the eyes with all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer.

His last words were “Glory to God for all things!”

How does one prove that Christ is God?

We should not try to answer this question by using the argument of the creation of heaven and earth, because the unbeliever will not accept it. If we tell him that He raised the dead, healed the blind, expelled demons, he still will not agree. If we tell him that He promised us resurrection from the dead, the kingdom of heaven, and ineffable goods, not only he will not agree, but also he will laugh at us.

How then shall we lead him to the faith, especially when he is not spiritually developed? Surely, we shall do this by resting on truths which are acceptable both to us and to him without any dispute or shadow of doubt.

We shall start from the fact that Christ planted the Church in the world

What is the point then that we absolutely agree upon? It is the fact that Christ planted the Church. It is by this means that we shall reveal the power and prove the divinity of Christ. We shall see that it is impossible to regard the dissemination of Christianity in the whole wide world in such a short period of time as a human work. And indeed, when Christian ethics invites people who have bad habits and are slaves to sin to a higher life. And yet, the Lord managed to liberate from such things not only us, but the entire human species.

Christ’s superbly wondrous achievement is the Church

He achieved this without using arms, without spending money, without mobilizing armies, without causing wars. He achieved it by starting only with twelve disciples, who were insignificant, uneducated, poor, naked, unarmed… It was with such human resource that He succeeded in persuading the nations to think correctly, not only in the present life, but also in the life which is to come.

He managed to nullify the ancestral laws, to uproot ancient customs, and to plant new ones. He managed to detach man from an easy way of life and to lead him to a difficult one. He managed all these things, although all fought against Him, and He had to endure a degrading crucifixion and an ignominious death!

This superbly wondrous achievement is not human

Surely, such things do not occur to human beings. What occurs is the exact opposite. In other words, as long as they are alive and prosper their work progresses. When, however, they die, what they created is destroyed along with them.

This is endured not only by the rich or the leading ones, but also by the chief governors. This is so, because their laws are abolished, their memory is obliterated, and their names are forgotten, while their intimate associates are pushed aside. These things occur to those who originally governed the nations by a mere nod, and led to war grand armies; to those who condemned to death and recalled the exiled. To the Lord, however, it was the exact opposite that occurred.

It is superbly wondrous because it was achieved by the Crucified Christ

Before the crucifixion the state of his work looked pitiful. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied Him. The rest of the Disciples fled in order to save their lives, while many believers abandoned Him. He was left alone among enemies.

And yet, after the slaughter and the death, so that you may learn that the Crucified Christ was not a mere man, all things became brighter, jollier, and glorious. Peter, the head Apostle, who before the crucifixion did not bear the threat of a maidservant, but after so many heavenly teachings and his participation in the divine mysteries said that he does not know the Lord, the same one after the crucifixion preached Him to the ends of the world.

Innumerable martyrs were sacrificed, because they preferred to be put to death than to deny Christ, as the head Apostle had denied Him after being intimidated by a young maiden.

The amazing submission of the world to the Crucified Christ and His Apostles

Now, all the lands, all the cities, the deserted and the inhabited places, confess the Crucified Lord. On Him faith is placed by kings and generals, archons and consuls, slaves and freemen, unlettered and educated, the barbarians and the various nations of humanity. Even that small and insignificant tomb that received the blood stained and tortured body of the Lord is more valued than a thousand royal palaces and more venerable even to kings. What is even a greater paradox is the fact that what happened to the Lord also happened to His disciples.

Because, those who were despised and imprisoned, those who were atrociously tortured and underwent innumerable martyrdoms, the very same ones, after their death, were more honored than the kings.

Where do we see this? In Rome, the emperors, the consuls and the generals put aside all things and run to venerate the tombs of Peter the fisherman and Paul the tent maker.

In Constantinople, those who bear diadems on their heads, wish to be buried next not close to the tombs of the Apostles but at the entrance of their temples.

And so the kings become the doormen of the fishermen! Indeed, they are not ashamed for this, but boast about it, not only themselves but also their descendants.

Christ’s prophesy about the Church and its speedy fulfillment.

When Christ’s disciples were only twelve and the Church was not in any one’s thought, when the Jewish synagogue was still flourishing and the impious idolatry dominated almost the entire world, the Lord had prophesied:

“On this stone (i.e. on Peter’s confession of faith) I will build my Church, and the powers of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Do you realize the truth of this prophesy? Do you see its fulfillment? Think how important a fact is the spreading of the Church almost to the entire earth in a very brief span of time.

Think how the life of so many nations changed and led to the faith so many peoples, how it abolished ancestral customs, how it liberated from age-long habits, how it scattered like dust the domination of pleasure and the power of sin, how it extinguished like smoke the foul smell of the sacrifices, the idolatrous ceremonies, the abominable feasts, the idols, the pagan altars and temples, how it erected sacred altars everywhere, in our land and in the lands of the Persians, the Scythians, the Africans and the Indians.

What I say? Even in the British Isles, which are beyond the Mediterranean, in the ocean, the Church was spread and erected altars.

The superbly wondrous liberation and change that the Church induced in the world

The work of liberation of so many peoples from age-long shameful habits, as well as the change in the manner of life from an easier to a more difficult one, is indeed wondrous, or rather superbly wondrous. It is a proof of divine operation (energy), even if no one had opposed it, even if peace had prevailed and many had assisted.

Because this spreading of the Church did not only come into collision with ancient habit, but also with pleasure, the happy manner of life. In other words, it had two powerful opponents, which tyrannized humanity: habit and pleasure. Whatsoever people had received, from centuries ago, from their fathers, their grandfathers and their ancient ancestors, even what they had received from the philosophers and the rhetoricians, all these things they agreed to despise, an attitude extremely difficult.

Besides, they had to accept a new manner of life, which was indeed much more difficult; because she removed them from luxury and attached them to fasting.

She removed them from avarice and led them to lack of property. She removed them from profanity and led them to chastity. She removed them from aggressiveness and led them to gentleness. She removed them from envy and led them to friendship.

She removed them from an easygoing and pleasurable life and led them to a life of difficulties, hardships, and full of sorrows. Indeed she led to this life those who had been accustomed to the life of luxuries. Surely, those who became Christians were not people who lived in some other worlds and did not have sinful habits, but were those who had rotted in them and had become more flexible than clay. It was them that she called to follow the hard and ragged road.

And it persuaded them to follow it!

The superbly wondrous work of the Twelve Apostles in the spreading of the Church.

How many were persuaded? Not two, not ten, not twenty, not a hundred, but an innumerable crowd. And how many did she use to persuade them? She used two men, uneducated, uncultured, unknown, poor, without property, without bodily strength, without glory, without illustrious ancestry, without rhetorical eloquence. She used twelve men who were fishermen, tent makers, whose mother tongue was foreign; because, they did not speak the same tongue with the idolaters.

They spoke Hebrew, which was different from all other languages. It was with them that the Church was built up and spread to the ends of the world. This is not the only wondrous fact, but there is also the fact that these few, these poor, these uneducated and despised men, who set out to change humanity, did not pursue their work without disturbance. They were confronted with innumerable wars from every side.

They were opposed by every nation and in every city. But why do I speak of nations and cities? War was raised against them even on every house. Their teaching separated on many occasions the child from the father, the daughter in law from the mother in law, the brother from the brother, the servant from the master, the citizen from the ruler, the man from the woman, and the woman from the man.

In every family not all believed simultaneously,, and so the Christians suffered daily harassments, ceaseless enmities, a myriad of deaths. All fought them as common opponents and enemies. They were pursued by kings, governors, citizens, freemen, slaves, crowds, cities. They did not pursue only them, but –how terrible– even the neophyte catechumens, i.e. those who just believed.

The victory of the Apostles and the Church is due to the power of the Crucified but also Risen Lord.

It caused horror and wrath to the idolaters the thought of abandoning their pagan altars, of despising their bloody sacrifices, which all their fathers and ancestors practiced, and of believing in the Lord; of believing in Him who took flesh from the Virgin Mary, and stood trial before Pilate, and suffered numberless tribulations and degradations, underwent a dishonorable death, was buried and rose again.

It is indeed a paradox, that, while the sufferings of the Lord were indisputable, -inasmuch as many had seen the lashings, the biting, the spitting, the slapping, the cross, the mocking, the entombment– it was not the same with the resurrection.

The Lord, after his resurrection, manifested Himself only to the disciples. In spite of this fact, they spoke about the resurrection and persuaded the peoples and built up the Church. How did they do it? They did it with the power of the Lord, who sent them to preach his Gospel to the nations.

It was He who opened to them the way. It was He who facilitated their difficult task. Had they not been assisted by the divine power, the spreading of Christianity would not have even begun.

The persecutions against the Church did not inhibit its expansion

The reason was that while the tyrants were forearmed against the Church, while the soldiers interposed their arms, while the mobs raged like a wild fire, while the bad habit was lined up in opposition, while orators, sophists, the rich people, ordinary citizens and leaders were aroused in enmity, the word of God, being stronger than the flame, turned the thistles into ashes, cleansed the fields and sowed the word of the preaching.

Some of the believers were thrown into the prisons, others were exiled, others had their property confiscated, others were assassinated, and others were torn to pieces.

In spite of the fact that Christians were treated as common criminals, suffering patiently every kind of punishment, humiliation and persecution, more and more people joined the Church. Indeed, the new believers not only were not discouraged by the tortures which they saw the older believers undergoing, but became more eager! They run by themselves, without constraint, showing gratitude to their torturers.

They became more fervent in the faith, seeing the torrents of the blood of the believers.

The expansion of the Church in spite of the persecutions proves the incomparable and unconquerable power of Christ

Did you see the incomparable power of Him who achieved all these wonders? How is it possible that people who are undergoing such horrid martyrdoms feel no sorrow? And yet, they rejoiced, and were elated! This is what St. Luke the Evangelist adduces as an example, when he says about the Apostles that

“they left from the council rejoicing, because they were proved worthy to be ill-treated for the shake of Christ” (Acts 5:41).

While no one can build even a wall with stones and plaster when is persecuted, the Apostles built up the Church throughout the world while sufferings persecutions, imprisonments, exiles and deaths as martyrs. They did not build her up with stones, but with souls –which is much more difficult; since it is not the same to build a wall as to persuade perverted souls to change their manner of life, to abandon their demonic madness and to follow the life of virtue. They achieved this, because they had with them the unconquerable power of the Lord, who had prophesied; “I will build up my Church, and the powers of Hell will not prevail against her” (Matthew 16:18).

Consider how many tyrants fought the Church and how many persecutions they raised against it… Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus and their successors right down to Constantine, were all idolaters. All of them –some more moderately, and some more harshly– fought the Church.

Even if some of them did not raise persecutions, nevertheless, their attachment to idolatry motivated those who wanted to flatter them to oppose the Church. In spite of all this, the evil schemes and attacks of the idolaters were dissolved as cobwebs, scattered like dust, vanished like smoke. Besides, what were planned against the Church became the occasion of great benefits for the Christians. The reason was that such plans created choruses of martyrs, who constitute the treasure, the pillars, and towers of the Church.

The wondrous fulfillment of what Christ prophesied about the Church reveals most clearly his true Godhead

Do you see the wondrous fulfillment of this prophesy? Indeed,

“the powers of Hell cannot prevail against her.”

Looking at what came to pass, believe what is to come.

No one in the future will be able to prevail against the Church.

If they did not manage to crush her when she numbered but a few members, when her teaching seemed novel and strange, when so many terrible wars and so many persecutions were raised against her from everywhere, much more they will not manage to injure her today, when she has spread in the whole world, and increased her dominion among all nations, abolishing their pagan altars and idols, their festivals and celebrations, the smoke and the smell of their abominable sacrifices. How did the Apostles achieve such a great, such an important task, after so many obstacles?

Surely, it was by the divine and unconquerable power of Him, who prophesied about the creation and triumph of His Church. No one can deny this, unless he is mindless and completely unable to think.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

As a little change up from the normal Lenten fare, we thought was time for something completely different!

It was reported in November 2009 that the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church. The Director of the Vatican Observatory commented that the discovery of possible alien life would have “many philosophical and theological implications” for Catholics.

In 1965 Fr. John Romanides offered a valuable resource on this topic for a series run by the Boston Globe in which he gives the unique Orthodox perspective. Originally printed in the Boston Globe on April 8, 1965 (page 18), the full text of this reprinted article is below.

All Planets the Same: Religion’s Response to Space Life V

I can foresee no way in which the teachings of the Orthodox Christian tradition could be affected by the discovery of intelligent beings on another planet. Some of my colleagues feel that even a discussion of the consequences of such a possibility is in itself a waste of time for serious theology and borders on the fringes of foolishness.

I am tempted to agree with them for several reasons.

As I understand the problem, the discovery of intelligent life on another planet would raise questions concerning traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant teachings regarding creation, the fall, man as the image of God, redemption and Biblical inerrancy.

First one should point out that in contrast to the traditions deriving from Latin Christianity, Greek Christianity never had a fundamentalist or literalist understanding of Biblical inspiration and was never committed to the inerrancy of scripture in matters concerning the structure of the universe and life in it. In this regard some modern attempts at de-mything the Bible are interesting and at times amusing.

Since the very first centuries of Christianity, theologians of the Greek tradition did not believe, as did the Latins, that humanity was created in a state of perfection from which it fell. Rather the Orthodox always believed that man [was] created imperfect, or at a low level of perfection, with the destiny of evolving to higher levels of perfection.

The fall of each man, therefore, entails a failure to reach perfection, rather than any collective fall from perfection.

Also spiritual ‘evolution’ does not end in a static beatific vision. It is a never ending process which will go on even into eternity.

Also Orthodox Christianity, like Judaism, never knew the Latin and Protestant doctrine of original sin as an inherited Adamic guilt putting all humanity under a divine wrath which was supposedly satisfied by the death of Christ.

Thus the solidarity of the human race in Adamic guilt and the need for satisfaction of divine justice in order to avoid hell are unknown in the Greek Fathers.

This means that the interdependence and solidarity of creation and its need for redemption and perfection are seen in a different light.

The Orthodox believe that all creation is destined to share in the glory of God. Both damned and glorified will be saved. In other words both will have vision of God in his uncreated glory, with the difference that for the unjust this same uncreated glory of God will be the eternal fires of hell.

God is light for those who learn to love Him and a consuming fire for those who will not. God has no positive intent to punish.

For those not properly prepared, to see God is a cleansing experience, but one which does not move eternally toward higher reaches of perfection.

In contrast, hell is a static state of perfection somewhat similar to Platonic bliss.

In view of this the Orthodox never saw in the Bible any three story universe with a hell of created fire underneath the earth and a heaven beyond the stars.

For the Orthodox discovery of intelligent life on another planet would raise the question of how far advanced these beings are in their love and preparation for divine glory.

As on this planet, so on any other, the fact that one may have not as yet learned about the Lord of Glory of the Old and New Testament, does not mean that he is automatically condemned to hell, just as one who believes in Christ is not automatically destined to be involved in the eternal movement toward perfection.

It is also important to bear in mind that the Greek Fathers of the Church maintain that the soul of man is part of material creation, although a high form of it, and by nature mortal.

Only God is purely immaterial.

Life beyond death is not due to the nature of man but to the will of God. Thus man is not strictly speaking the image of God. Only the Lord of Glory, or the Angel of the Lord of Old and New Testament revelation is the image of God.

Man was created according to the image of God, which means that his destiny is to become like Christ who is the Incarnate Image of God.

Thus the possibility of intelligent beings on another planet being images of God as men on earth are supposed to be is not even a valid question from an Orthodox point of view.

Finally, one could point out that the Orthodox Fathers rejected the Platonic belief in immutable archetypes of which this world of change is a poor copy.

This universe and the forms in it are unique and change is of the very essence of creation and not a product of the fall.

Furthermore the categories of change, motion and history belong to the eternal dimensions of salvation-history and are not to be discarded in some kind of eternal bliss.

Thus the existence of intelligent life on another planet behind or way ahead of us in intellectual and spiritual attainment will change little in the traditional beliefs of Orthodox Christianity.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazine, and archpriest of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, Fr. Patrick is, perhaps, the most erudite writer in the Orthodox Church in North America today. This article, one of his Pastoral Ponderings, was published by Orthodoxtoday.org.

Among the biblical concepts supporting St. Paul’s theology of atonement, one of the most important, surely, is that of expiation. What does the Apostle mean when he writes,

“God set forth [Jesus Christ] as the expiatory in His blood” (Romans 3:25)?

Although this is the only time St. Paul uses the noun hilasterion, I believe that the full context of his epistles, along with the Old Testament substratum on which they depend, provides the correct and adequate meaning of that term.

If I seem to belabor an obvious point–that we should go to the Bible for enlightenment on the subject of expiation– let me say that I do so from a sense that some readers of Holy Scripture in recent centuries either have not done so, or have done so inconsistently. They have borrowed misleading ideas from elsewhere.

In classical and Hellenistic Greek, the verb “to propitiate” (hilaskomai), when used with a personal object, normally signified the placating of some irate god or hero. It is a curious fact that since the rediscovery of ancient Greek literature in the West, beginning from the Renaissance, there has grown a strong tendency to impose this pagan meaning of “expiation” on the teaching of the Bible.

Understood in this way, Paul is presumed to teach that Jesus, in His self-sacrifice on the Cross, placated God’s wrath against sinful humanity. That is to say, the purpose of the shedding of Christ’s blood was to propitiate, to assuage an angry Father.

Let me say that this interpretation of the Apostle Paul is very erroneous and should be rejected for three reasons.

First, this picture is difficult to reconcile with Paul’s conviction that God Himself is the One who made the sacrifice. How easily we forget that the Cross did cost God something. He is the One that gave up His only-begotten Son out of love for us. It was Jesus’ Father

“who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

Sacrificial victims are expensive, and in this sacrifice the Father Himself bore the price. He gave up, unto death, that which was dearest and most precious to Him. In the death of Jesus, everything about God is love, more love, infinite love. There is not the faintest trace of divine anger in the death of Christ.

Second, in those places where Holy Scripture does speak of propitiating the anger of God, this propitiation is never linked to blood sacrifice. When biblical men are said to soften the divine wrath, it is done with prayer, as in the case of Moses on Mount Sinai, or by the offering of incense, which symbolizes prayer. Because blood sacrifice and the wrath of God are two things the Bible never joins together, I submit that authentic Christian theology should also endeavor to keep them apart.

Moreover, when the Apostle Paul does write of God’s anger, it is never in terms of appeasement but of deliverance. At the final judgment, when that divine anger, far from being placated, will consume the realm and servants of sin, Christ will deliver us from it, recognizing us as His faithful servants (1 Thessalonians 1:10; Romans 5:9). There will be not the slightest hint of appeasement at that point.

Third, the word hilasterion, which I have translated as the substantive “expiatory,” seems to have in Paul’s mind a more technical significance. In Hebrews 9:5, the only other place where the word appears in the New Testament, hilasterion designates the top, the cover, of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Almighty is said to throne between and above the Cherubim. In this context, the term is often translated as “mercy seat,” and it seems reasonable to think that this is the image that Paul too has in mind.

On Yom Kippur, the annual Atonement Day, the high priest sprinkled sacrificial blood on that hilasterion,

“because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions of all their sins” (Leviticus 16:16).

Therefore, by saying that God “set forth” (proetheto) Jesus as the expiatory, or “instrument of expiation,” for our sins, Paul asserts that the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the Cross fulfilled the prophetic meaning and promise of that ancient liturgical institution of Israel, reconciling mankind by the removal of the uncleanness,

“their transgressions of all their sins.”

The Cross was the supreme altar, and Good Friday was preeminently the Day of the Atonement. The removal of sins was not accomplished by a juridical act, but a liturgical act performed in great love:

“Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:2).

Loving both the Father and ourselves, Jesus brought the Father and ourselves together by what

He accomplished in His own body, reconciling us through the blood of His Cross.

In the Bible,

“the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11).

The victim slain in sacrifice was not the vicarious recipient of a punishment, but the symbol of the loving dedication of the life of the person making the sacrifice.

This sacrificial dedication of life is the means by which the sinner is made “at one” with God.

Such is the biblical meaning of expiation and the proper context in which to interpret Paul’s teaching on the sacrifice of Christ.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

As the award winning host of the radio program “The Illumined Heart,” Kevin Allen is also convert to the Orthodox Christian faith from Hinduism, and an eloquent speaker and apologist for his Christian faith. His podcast can be heard on Ancient Faith Radio.  This first article appeared on Orthodoxytoday.org, and carefully explains the importance not only of reaching those in Eastern religions for Christ, but also how not to do it.

I recently had a conversation with a dear Eastern Orthodox priest, whose twenty six year old son had left home the day before to live indefinitely at a Buddhist monastery. He was heart broken. His son was not a stranger to Eastern Orthodoxy or to its monastic tradition, having even spent two months on the holy mountain of Mt. Athos.

His son’s journey is not an isolated event. Eastern religious traditions are a growing and competing force in American religious life. Buddhism is now the fourth-largest religious group in the United States, with 2.5 – 3 million adherents, approximately 800,000 of whom are American western “converts”? There are actually more Buddhists in America today than Eastern Orthodox Christians! The Dalai Lama (the leader of one of the Tibetan Buddhist sects) is one of the most recognized and admired people in the world and far better recognized than any Eastern Orthodox hierarch? Have you looked in the magazine section of Borders or Barnes and Noble lately? There are more publications with names like “Shambala Sun”, “Buddhadharma”, and “What is enlightenment?” on the shelves than Christian publications!

In addition to losing seekers to eastern spiritual traditions (many of them youth), eastern metaphysics has also seeped into our western cultural worldview without much notice. They are doing a better job (sadly) “evangelizing” our culture than we Eastern Orthodox Christians are!

The Lord Himself commands us clearly

“that repentance and remission of sins (baptism) should be preached in His name to all nations” (Luke 24:47).

Buddhists (of which there are many sects) and Hindus live among us in America in ever-growing numbers, in our college classrooms, on our soccer fields, and in our “health foods” stores – they are right in our own backyards! They are a rich, potential “mission field” for the Eastern Orthodox Church in the United States.

Unfortunately with few exceptions, like the writings of Monk Damascene [Christensen] and Kyriakos S. Markides, we are not talking to this group at all.

As a former Hindu and disciple of a well-known guru, or spiritual teacher, I can tell you Orthodox Christianity shares more “common ground” with seekers of non-Christian spiritual traditions of the east than any other Christian confession!

The truth is when Evangelical Protestants attempt to evangelize the eastern seeker they often do more harm than good, because their approach is western, rational, and doctrinal, with (generally) little understanding of the paradigms and spiritual language (or yearnings) of the seekers of these eastern faiths.

There are three “fundamental principles” that Buddhists and Hindus generally share in common:

1. A common “supra-natural” reality underlies and pervades the phenomenal world. This Supreme Reality isn’t Personal, but Trans-personal. God or Ultimate Reality in these traditions is ultimately a pure consciousness without attributes.
2. The human soul is of the same essence with this divine reality. All human nature is divine at its core. Accordingly, Christ or Buddha isn’t a savior, but becomes a paradigm of self-realization, the goal of all individuals.
3. Existence is in fundamental unity (monism). Creation isn’t what it appears to the naked eye. It is in essence “illusion” and “unreal”. There is one underlying ground of being (think “quantum field” in physics!) which unifies all beings and out of which and into which everything can be reduced.

What do these metaphysics have in common with our Eastern Orthodox Faith? Not much, on the surface. But in the eastern non-Christian spiritual traditions, knowledge is not primarily about the development of metaphysical doctrine or theology. This is one of the problems western Christians have communicating with them. Eastern religion is never theoretical or doctrinal. It’s about the struggle for liberation from death and suffering through spiritual experience.

This “existential-therapeutic-transformational” ethos is the first connection Eastern Orthodoxy has with these traditions, because Orthodoxy is essentially therapeutic and transformative in emphasis!

The second thing we agree on with Buddhists and Hindus is the fallen state of humanity. The goal of the Christian life according to the Church Fathers is to move from the “sub-natural” or “fallen state”, to the “natural” or the “according to nature state” after the Image (of God), and ultimately to the “supra-natural” or “beyond nature” state, after the Likeness. According to the teaching of the holy Fathers the stages of the spiritual life are purification, illumination and deification. While we don’t agree with Buddhists or Hindus on what “illumination” or “deification” means (because our metaphysics are different) we agree on the basic diagnosis of the fallen human condition. As I once said to a practicing Tibetan Buddhist:

“We agree on the sickness (of the human condition). Where we disagree is on the cure”.

Eastern Orthodoxy – especially the hesychasm (contemplative) tradition – teaches that true “spiritual knowledge” presupposes a “purified” and “awakened” nous (Greek), which is the “Inner ‘I’” of the soul. The true Eastern Orthodox theologian isn’t one who simply knows doctrine, but one

“who knows God, or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception. “

As a well-known Orthodox theologian explains,

“When the nous is illuminated, it means that it is receiving the energy of God which illuminates it…”

This idea resonates with eastern seekers who struggle to experience – through non-Christian ascesis and/or through occult methods – spiritual illumination. They just don’t know this opportunity exists within a Christian context.

As part of their spiritual ascesis, Buddhist and Hindu dhamma (practice) emphasizes cessation of desire, which is necessary to quench the passions. Holy Tradition teaches apatheia, or detachment as a means of combating the fallen passions. Hindu and Buddhist meditation methods teach “stillness”. The word hesychia in Holy Tradition – the root of the word for hesychasm – means “stillness”! We don’t meditate using a mantra, but we pray the “Jesus Prayer”.

Buddhism, especially, teaches “mindfulness”. Holy Tradition teaches “watchfulness” so we do not fall into temptation!

Hindus and Buddhists understand it is not wise to live for the present life, but to struggle for the future one. We Orthodox agree! Americans who become Buddhist or Hindu are often fervent spiritual seekers, used to struggling with foreign languages (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Japanese) and cultures and pushing themselves outside of their “comfort zones”. We converts to the Eastern Orthodox Church can relate! Some Buddhist and Hindu sects even have complex forms of “liturgy”, including chant, prostration and veneration of icons! Tibetan Buddhism especially places high value on the lives of (their) ascetics, relics and “saints”.

The main difference in spiritual experience is that what the eastern seeker recognizes as “spiritual illumination”, achieved through deep contemplation, Holy Tradition calls “self contemplation”.  Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), who was experienced in yoga (which means ‘union’) before becoming a hesychast – monk and disciple of St. Silouan of the holy mountain wrote from personal experience,

“All contemplation arrived at by this means is self-contemplation, not contemplation of God. In these circumstances we open up for ourselves created beauty, not First Being. And in all this there is no salvation for man.”

Clement of Alexandria, two thousand years ago wrote that pre-Christian philosophers were often inspired by God, but he cautioned one to be careful what one took from them!

So we acknowledge the eastern seeker through his ascesis or contemplative methodologies may experience deep levels of created beauty, or created being (through self-contemplation), para-normal dimensions, or even the “quantum field” that modern physics has revealed! However, it is only in the Eastern Orthodox Church and through its deifying mysteries that the seeker will be introduced to the province of Uncreated Divine Life.

It is only in the Orthodox Church that the eastern seeker will hear there is more to “salvation” than simply forgiveness of sins and justification before God. He will be led to participate in the Uncreated Energies of God, so that they

“may be partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4).

As a member of the Body of Christ he will join in the deifying process, and be increasingly transformed after the Likeness! Thankfully, deification is available to all who enter the Holy Orthodox Church, are baptized (which begins the deifying process) and partake of the holy mysteries. Deification is not just for monks, ascetics and the spiritual athletes on Mount Athos!

Eastern Orthodoxy has much to share with eastern spiritual seekers. Life and death hangs in the balance in this life, not the millions of lives eastern seekers think they have! As the Apostle Paul soberly reminds us,

” it is appointed for men to die once but after this the judgment.” (Heb. 9:27)

May God give us the vision to begin to share the “true light” of the Holy Orthodox Faith with seekers of the eastern spiritual traditions.

References

1. Makarian Homilies; Glossary of The Philokalia
2. Hierotheos Vlachos, Life after death; 1995; Birth of the Theotokos Monastery
3. On Prayer; Sophrony; pages 168-170

© 2007 Kevin Allen. Kevin Allen is a former Hindu practitioner before becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and is also the co-host of the Internet radio program “The Illumined Heart” which is broadcast weekly on Ancient Faith Radio (www.ancientfaithradio.com).

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

by Fr. George Morelli

In this essay, Fr. Morelli masterfully expresses the depth of Incarnational theology – the teaching of Orthodox Christianity about God, man, and spiritual reality – and the dangers of departing, even apparently,  from its foundational truth. We are approaching the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the feast of the Incarnation, making this essay essential reading, in my opinion, among preachers in this day and age.

This essay was taken, and reprinted with permission, from Orthodoxytoday.org.

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pt 5:8).

The names we use for ourselves, for others, and for God shape our thought and influence our understanding of God’s revelation to us. A fundamental link between God and mankind “is concentrated in the use of the Name, in the ‘invocation of the Name.’ The Name is the preeminent word, the proper, exclusive word which is much more than a concept: it carries something of the presence, of the person” (Bobrinskoy, 1999). Paul Evdokimov (1998) makes this meaning even clearer. In recounting Jesus’ visit to the country of the Gerasenes where He met a man with an unclean spirit, St. Mark records Jesus’ words:

“What is your name?” (Mk 5:9).

Evdokimov goes on to explain:

“To the Jewish mind the name of an object or a being expresses its essence, and the old adage nomen est omen sees in the name both the expression and destiny of a person. Christ’s question meant therefore: “Who are you; what is your destiny, your secret being?”

God’s Revelation of Himself

Let us recall the words of Moses:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one God…” (Dt 6:4).ⁱ

Bobrinskoy (1999) remarks about what is known about Yahweh in the Old Testament:

“Even before God is called Father, the fact He is called ‘God of the Fathers’ links Him to paternity…”

The same principle can be seen in Moses’ account of the Covenant of God with His people:

“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves” (Gen 28: 13–14).

While in flight from the Egyptians, we read Moses words:

“And he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex 3:6).

However, it is only in the New Testament that a personalized name, “Father” will be given to Yahweh. As Bobrinskoy (1999) notes:

“When the Bible [Old Testament] speaks of the word of Yahweh, this word does not have the quality, the resonance of a proper name …”

Sex and Gender in God and the Church

God and His Triune Life

God reveals Himself to us as Father. No matter how strongly the tenets of postmodern secularism are promoted, unless we dare to rewrite Tradition and Scripture in a totally radical way, the teaching regarding God as Father cannot be denied without compromising the essence of the Christian faith. It is prima facie, evident both humanly and by divine revelation.

Consequently, attempts to rewrite history by downgrading, denying or ignoring the truth that Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is “Son,” and His Father is “Father” historically negate God’s Self-revelation. As is pointed out in a recent article,

“Perpetrators of such attempts to distort the historical record often use the term [historical revisionism] because it allows them to cloak their illegitimate activities with a phrase which has a legitimate meaning” (Historical Revisionism negationism, 2006. See www.macedoniaontheweb.com/forum/archive/t-1240.html).

The term negationism, as used in this article, describes the process that attempts to rewrite history, including Scripture, by minimizing, denying or simply ignoring recorded facts. This wrongdoing of distorting the historical record often uses anachronisms based on the biases or values of the contemporary culture. Only the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit and one with the Apostles, can interpret Holy Scripture.ⁱⁱ

Evidence: Scripture and the Writings of the Early Church Fathers

St. John (1:14) tells us:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Jesus Himself tells us how to pray:

“Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:9–10).

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, the second-century Christian apologist, tells us:

“No man has seen God at any time except the Only-Begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father. He has declared [Him]…For He, the Son who is in His bosom, declares to everyone the Father who is invisible. For that reason they know Him to whom the Son reveals Him.”

In another place St. Irenaeus also writes:

“He whom the law proclaimed as God, the same did Christ point out as the Father” (Bercot, 1998).

The teachings of Origen of Alexandria (third-century) fell afoul of Orthodoxy in some areas. Yet his understanding of God as Father is Orthodox:

“Although no one is able to speak with certainty about God the Father, it is nevertheless possible for some knowledge of Him to be gained by means of the visible creation and the natural feelings of the human mind. Moreover, it is possible for such knowledge to be confirmed from the Sacred Scriptures” (Bercot, 1998).

An important champion of God’s revelation of God as Father is the fourth-century St. Gregory of Nyssa. In his book, Against Eunomius, St. Gregory of Nyssa states:

I say, we have learned to what we ought to look with the eyes of our understanding, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We say that it is a terrible and soul-destroying thing to misinterpret these Divine utterances and to devise in their stead assertions to subvert them, assertions pretending to correct God the Word…For each of these titles understood in its natural sense becomes for Christians a rule of truth and a law of piety.

For while there are many other names by which Deity is indicated in the Historical Books, in the Prophets and in the Law, our Master Christ passes by all these and commits to us these titles as better able to bring us to the faith about the Self-Existent, declaring that it suffices us to cling to the title, ‘Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ in order to attain to the apprehension of Him Who is absolutely Existent…

For when we hear the title ‘Father’ we apprehend the meaning to be this, that the name is not understood with reference to itself alone, but also by its special signification indicates the relation to the Son. For the term ‘Father’ would have no meaning apart by itself, if ‘Son’ were not connoted by the utterance of the word ‘Father.’ When, then, we learnt the name ‘Father’ we were taught at the same time, by the selfsame title, faith also in the Son.

Now since Deity by its very nature is permanently and immutably the same in all that pertains to its essence…Since then He is named Father by the very Word, He assuredly always was Father, and is and will be even as He was. For surely it is not lawful in speaking of the Divine and unimpaired Essence to deny that what is excellent always belonged to lt. For if He was not always what He now is, He certainly changed either from the better to the worse or from the worse to the better, and of these assertions the impiety is equal either way, whichever statement is made concerning the Divine nature.

The essential revelation of God to us is that He is called “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” He uses the language of sex and gender to communicate to us the name of His persons.

Trinitarian Ontology

Belonick (2004), in commenting on the importance of the name of Father and Son in the teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa, explains:

The name “Father,” said Gregory, leads us to contemplate (1) a Being who is the source and cause of all and (2) the fact that this Being has a relationship with another person—one can only be “Father” if there is a son involved. Thus, the human term “Father” leads one naturally to think of another member of the Trinity, to contemplate more than is suggested by a term such as “Creator” or “Maker.” By calling God “Father,” Gregory notes, one understands that there exists with God a Son from all eternity, a second Person who rules with him, is equal and eternal with Him.

“Father” also connotes the initiator of a generation, the one who begets life rather than conceiving it, and bringing it to fruition in birth. This is the mode of existence, the way of origin and being, of the First Person of the Trinity. He acts in Trinitarian life in a mode of existence akin to that of a father in the earthly realm. Before time, within the mystery of the Holy Trinity, God generated another Person, the Son, as human fathers generate seed.

As Father of the created world, God creates from without. In other words, creation exists apart from Him. Creation is not equivalent to Him. God as Father is transcendent to what He creates. There is no room for pantheism. As Joseph Campbell (1988) has noted, by giving God a feminine definition and name, God, as mother, creates from within. God’s transcendence is lost. The cosmos becomes one with God. Pantheism abounds.

Ontological-Existential Understanding

The Eastern Church prefers not to use philosophy in understanding the revelation God has given to His Church. The Church takes what it are God’s words to us as reflecting the essential or genuine character of what they refer too.

The Reality of the Eucharist

For example, the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ; it is His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. The terms of scholastic philosophy such as ‘substance’ and ‘accident’ are not found in Eastern theology. The Eastern Church simply accepts the ontological-existentialⁱⁱⁱ reality of Jesus’ words. St. Matthew (26:26–28) tells us:

Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The Reality of the Holy Trinity

The meaning of the words of St. Paul are to be understood as ontological-existential reality. St. Paul connects the Son-ship of Jesus with the Fatherhood of God, telling us:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:5–11).

St. Paul tells the Ephesians (3:15);

“I kneel before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name.”

Bobrinskoy (2003) has an interesting way of expressing the basic understanding of the teachings of Christ regarding the “Holy Trinity” It is summed up in his chapter titled “The theology of language and the language of theology.”He states:

“Thus, the incarnation of the eternal Word means that the eternal mystery of God can express itself forever in human words…”

Later Bobrinskoy cites the view of St. Hilary of Poitiers who radically opposed any speculation, even theological, regarding the holy mysteries of the Trinity.

“The guilt of the heretics and blasphemers compels us to undertake what is unlawful, to scale arduous heights, to speak of the ineffable, and to trespass upon forbidden places. And by faith alone we should fulfill what is commanded, namely, to adore the Father, to venerate the Son with Him and to abound in the Holy Spirit …”

The Deconstruction of the Christian Vocabulary

Stealth: The Weapon of Choice of the Evil One in the Modern Age

In a recent article (Morelli, 2009) I noted C. S. Lewis as a modern philosopher-theologian, who alerts us to the secularist-postmodernist threat. Secularists attempt to change the world and the church to conform to their worldview. Lewis, like the Church Fathers of old, identifies heresy not in ideological terms, but within the classical framework of spiritual warfare. Ideas matter to Lewis because they have consequences that affect the souls of men. How man’s mind is shaped has bearing on the light the soul receives. Indeed, we can heed the pre-eminent teaching of St. Paul who exhorted us to

“be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

C. S. Lewis, recognizing that heretical challenges ultimately seek to undermine and eventually vanquish the Christian faith, argued that secularism is more pernicious than many of the transparent ancient errors. (see for example: The Abolition of Man). Secularism conceals itself in the concepts and terminology of Tradition while seeking to undermine and eventually supplant it (Morelli, 2009). Lewis wrote in 1959:

“He (the evil one) pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion. But even if He (God) defeats your (the demons) first attempt at misdirection, we have a much subtler weapon…Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so.”

For Lewis, the Evil One is cunning and often comes in disguise. In his famous work The Screwtape Letters (1961), the senior supervising devil tells the novice devil:

“Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.”

Call the novice devil in this passage the demon of correctness.

Repeating this “strong, or stark, or courageous” message eventually moves correctness from suggestion to fact. In psychological terms this means the listener gives up his cognitive skills. Instead of applying a reality test to the content of the message that is conveyed, the listener allows the deliverer of the message to usurp his cognitive potential.

The Secularist Appeal: Human Justice and Sentiment

In this case, the jargon of the secular post-modernists includes the following appeals: human justice and fairness, equality in all things, liberty, and non-discrimination. To these I might add doing things the ‘American way’: overcome insensitivity by making judgments based on emotion and sentiment. In human society these characteristics have value. In the Kingdom of God, these values are ultimately evaluated in terms of Divine Justice.

The Kingdom of God has a value system based on Divine Justice, not human justice. Insofar as human and Divine Justice are opposed to each other, a clash is inevitable. In Scripture, the parable of the workers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1–16) is an example of Divine Justice over what is considered human justice, as the same wage or reward is given to workers regardless of how long they worked (Morelli, 2009).

In another example, we learn that claiming rights and equality in strictly human terms does not work in God’s Kingdom. In St. Mark’s Gospel (10:36, 37, 40), Jesus exhorts the apostles:

“And he said to them [James and John], ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory…’” Jesus replies “‘… to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’”

The kingdom of heaven and His Church are based on God’s standards, and not human standards. Negationists, secularists, post-modernists and feminists, beware.

Affirmation of God as Father

The straightforward, ontological-existential understanding of words and names in Scripture is thoroughly Orthodox. Meyendorff (1998), in his study of St. Gregory of Palamas and the filioque controversy, writes:

“So when Photius was faced by the Latins who, on the basis of their own theology, arbitrarily modified the wording of the common Creed, the reproach of heresy came readily to his pen. He clearly saw the weak point of his adversary; if one admits the doctrine of Procession ab utroque, he wrote, ‘the name of the Father is deprived of its meaning and sense.’”

Affirmation of the Uniqueness of the Feminine Charism

In a similar straightforward, existential context, Orthodox theologians discern the essential revelation and Tradition of the Church. Paul Evdokimov (2001) beautifully describes the feminine vocation and charism:

“The ontological relationship of mother and child makes woman like Eve, ‘the source of life.’ She watches over every being, protects life and the world. Her interiorized and universalized charism of ‘motherhood’ bears every woman toward the famished and the needy and makes admirably precise her feminine essence: married or not, every woman is mother in aeternum. This is the sacramental character inscribed in her very being.”

Affirmation of Christ Incarnate as Male and Son of God

Evdokimov also captures the essential Church teaching and Tradition regarding the male character of the priesthood:

“The ordained ministry, that of the priesthood and episcopacy, is a masculine function of witness. The bishop attests to the saving validity of the sacraments and has the power of celebrating them. He has the charism of watching over the purity of the deposit of faith and exercising the pastoral authority. The ministry of woman belongs to that of the royal priesthood, and not that of attributed functions, as with the ordained episcopacy and priesthood, but that of her very nature. The ordained ministry is not to be found in such charisms.”

For Evdokimov an authentic Orthodox Christian anthropology demands a rediscovery of male and female are equal with but with distinct vocations.

Affirmation by St. John of Damascus

St. John of Damascus, writing in the eighth century, teaches the importance of icons in the Church as representative of what they image. He writes:

“An image is of like character with its prototype…”

St. John’s description of the relationship of the persons of the Godhead is also telling:

“The Son is the living, essential, and precisely similar Image of the invisible God, bearing the entire Father within Himself, equal to Him in all things, except that He is the Begetter. It is the nature of the Father to cause; the Son is the effect. The Father does not proceed from the Son, but the Son from the Father. The Father who begets is what He is because of His Son, though not in second place after Him.”

St. John describes the icon of the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the carrier and nurturer of her Son, as an image appropriate for the container and bearer of ‘The Word:’

The ark of the covenant is an image of the Holy Virgin and Theotokos.” For St. John, as “words edify the ear, so also the image stimulates the eye… as words speak to the ear, so the image speaks to the sight; it brings understanding.” For St. John, an apologist for icons during the influence of iconoclastic Islam, it would be inappropriate for Christ to be depicted as a female, or the Theotokos to be depicted as a male. He writes: “Let us receive the tradition of the Church in simplicity of heart, without vain questioning, since God created man to be straightforward, but he has entangled himself with an infinity of questions. Let us not allow ourselves to learn a new faith, in opposition to the tradition of the fathers.

The complementary nature of male-female, father-mother, husband-wife, father as begetter of children and mother as bearer of children is essential to Orthodoxy. Evdokimov (1985) interprets the biblical account of the creation of Eve from Adam as the foundation of the “consubstantiality of the complementary principle.” After the fall, brokenness occurs and distorted masculinity and femininity ensues. Two possible outcomes can take place:

1) without God’s grace “discord and fruitless contention” occur; and

2) with Christ at the center, masculinity and femininity are the “prophetic figure of the Kingdom of God, the ultimate unity, the communion of the Masculine and Feminine in their totality in God.”

Paul Evdokimov echoes the teaching of the Church Fathers. He writes:

“St. Clement of Alexandria states very clearly that ‘the Son only confirms what the Father has instituted…God created man male and female. The male is Christ, the female is the Church …’”

The complementarity of the sexes is an icon of the love of the Holy Trinity, the way the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to each another. The male and female sexes making up mankind reflects the essence of God Himself (Morelli, 2005a). St. John the Evangelist tells us

“… for love is of God…God is love” (1 Jn 4:7–8).

The love of Christ for the Church becomes the archetype of marriage, the union of male and female who become one flesh and create offspring, flesh of their flesh, in imitation of God, who created us (Morelli, 2005a, 2008b)

In the Orthodox Church, sacred Scripture is rooted in Tradition (Breck, 2001). No individual on their own can interpret scripture.^iv Any passage has to be viewed in terms of the “mind of the Church.” For example, attempts to interpret St. Paul’s saying in Galatians (3:28) that there are no differences before God between male and female, are not viewed by the Church Fathers as grounds for the female priesthood. Rather, as St. John Chrysostom interpreted, the phrase is meant to underscore the equality of spirituality or divine illumination that can be attained by both male and female. In Eastern spirituality, only in following God’s do we attain this illumination. For example, a bishop is of a higher ecclesial rank, endowed with the fullness and completeness of the ordained priesthood given to the apostles and their successors by Christ. If a male desires to be a bishop and God’s will is for him to serve only as a priest, his desire is to his personal damnation. As Our Lord told the apostles:

“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Mt. 7:21)

The Fullness of Time

St. Paul told the Ephesians:

“For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:9–10). St. Paul’s teaching on the fullness of time is also found in his words to the Galatians: “So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons”(4:3–5).

The fullness of time encompasses the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, who would be born of the people of the Covenant, God’s chosen people. He would be born of the house of David. As Isaiah prophesized:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good” (Is 7:14–15):

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased its joy; they rejoice before thee as with joy at the harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, thou hast broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore (Is 9:2–7).

There is no coincidence in God’s providential care for the world. The era in which the ultimate Divine Intervention among mankind took place, with its distinctive character, is part of the fullness of time in which the birth and lifetime of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ was Divinely ordained to happen.

This includes the place, people, culture and state of the world in which this momentous event occurred. Historical negationists would like us to believe that the patriarchal Judaism of the people of the first Covenant was accidental and overthrown by Jesus in His establishment of the people of the New Covenant. However, this conclusion is not consistent the mind of Christ or His Church.

A Protestant Church Sees Through the Negationists’ Argument

In a significant rebuttal to negationist theory that echoes the “mind of the Church,” the Lutheran Protestant denomination issued the following statement:

Today the claim is frequently advanced that this masculine rendering of God in the Bible is a function of the patriarchal culture in which the Scriptures were written. Biblical language, it is said, reflects cultural realities and biases which we, given the new realities of our own cultural egalitarianism, are free to replace through the use of ‘gender neutral’ language.

Such an analysis of the biblical language, however, does not take with adequate seriousness the uniqueness of Israel in the midst of the nations. The peoples surrounding ancient Israel and the believers of the New Testament commonly possessed female as well as male deities. Rather than reflect the religious language of the broader culture, the language of the Bible was in considerable contrast to the language and understanding of surrounding peoples. Had the biblical authors thought of God in feminine terms (as in surrounding cultures), we would expect that there would be some equilibrium of use between masculine and feminine language concerning God. In fact, however, that is not the case ().

Jesus Distinguished the Essential from Non-essential: Unseating Culture

Many of Jesus’ words and actions, as understood by the ancient Church and recorded in the Gospels, taught those around Him what was essential versus unessential in the Jewish way of life at the fullness of time. Jesus was no stranger to challenging the ‘establishment’ and customs of the culture of his day. A few examples follow.

• Our Lord’s first miracle was performed at the direction of a woman, his mother, the Theotokos. The gospel account of changing water into wine at the Cana wedding feast reads: “When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you’” (Jn 2:3–5).
• To the Jewish leaders, Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith” (Mt. 23:23).
• In St. John’s Gospel Jesus was found talking alone with a woman, and what’s more, a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were a community of mixed ancestry not worshipping at the Jerusalem temple and thus eschewed by the Jews. In St. John’s account: “The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans… Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman.” (Jn 4:9, 27)

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is an outcast Samaritan who shows the mercy of God, rather than a Levite or priest, that is, the elite of the chosen people. St. Luke (10:33–37) tells us:

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he [the beaten man]; was and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. ‘Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed mercy on him.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’” There is no hesitation on the part of Jesus to break with tradition and point out that Godliness (mercy) is not inherent in title or bloodline, but is shown by the deeds and actions which come from the heart. Godliness is open to any one.

The Romans were the pagan occupiers of the Holy Land in Jesus’ time. They were hated by the Jews for their denial of God, worship of idols, oppressive taxes and brutal occupation. But this did not influence Jesus who read the heart and humility of the Roman Centurion who came to Him.

As he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion answered him, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth” (Mt 8:5–12).

Jesus, the Son of God, became incarnate in the male sex. Jesus, who was not afraid to go against the establishment and cultural tradition, appointed apostles—the twelve and the seventy—who were of the male sex. The apostles, at the last supper in which he took bread and wine and made it into His Body and Blood, and ordained those around Him to “do this in Remembrance of me,” were of the male sex. As St. Luke (22:13–19) records:

And they went, and found it as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

So, Jesus, the Son of God, who was not afraid of depart from the conventions of His day, was not only of the male sex, but appointed male apostles to carry out His priestly ministry.

Another example of the distinct priestly ministry, given by Jesus to the apostles who were male, is the holy ministry of confession:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn 20:21–23).

The Regard Jesus Gave Women

Jesus’ choice of male apostles was not a sign the He disparaged women. As previously mentioned Jesus began His public life at the marriage feast at Cana doing what His mother, Mary, the Theotokos asked of Him. As told by St. John (2:1–11):

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” So they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it to him. When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

The holy women of the Gospels were those who loved Him and served Jesus in His ministry. Jesus had great love for Martha, Mary and Lazarus their brother. It was Martha who served Jesus, and Mary who sat, listening to His every word and anointing His feet (cf. Lk 10:38–42; Jn 11:1). Who cannot recall the action of Jesus upon hearing Lazarus had “fallen asleep” (Jn 11:12)? The response of the Master was: “Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead…’” (Jn 11:14). The gospel narrative continues:

…and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him” (Jn 11:19–29).

St. Matthew (27:55–56) records that at the crucifixion of Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ:

“There were also many women there, looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.”The holy evangelist Mark (15:41) describes these women as follows: “… who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.” The women, including the Theotokos, the Mother of God, now steadfast and faithful even unto Christ’s death at the foot of the cross, are described by the beloved disciple and apostle John with words impossible to emulate: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (Jn 19:25–27)

After the death and burial of Jesus, the Myrrhbearing women tended to His Body. Recall St. Luke’s account of the holy women’s actions.

“And the women that were come with him from Galilee, following after, saw the sepulcher and how his body was laid. And returning, they prepared spices and ointments: and on the sabbath day they rested, according to the commandment. And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared” (Lk 23:55–56, 24:1)

First Covenant Justice

Jesus not only freely went beyond the conventions of the era; he also surpassed the economy of justice of the first covenant. Regarding the economy of justice in the Old Testament, Moses in Exodus (21:23–25) tells us:

“If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

In the book of Leviticus (24:19–20) he tells us:

“When a man causes a disfigurement in his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has disfigured a man, he shall be disfigured.”

And again in Deuteronomy (21:21) Moses teaches:

“Your eye shall not pity; it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

In the prayers of the Psalms (92; 9) King David utters:

For, lo, thy enemies, O Lord, for, lo, thy enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.” And then the harsh call for vengeance accompanying the lamentation of the Jewish people during the Babylonian exile: “O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” (Ps 136:8–9)!

Contravening the Culture of Vengeance

Consider St. Matthew’s (5:38–44) account of some of the most radical words Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

The Early Church Distinguished Essential from Non-essential Culture

The Church did not hesitate to discern and discard what was not of Christ and to retain what was of Christ. St. Matthew (28:18–20) records the last instruction Jesus gave to His apostles:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

It is the Church’s mission given to her by Christ to “teach all I have commanded you.” The Church is commanded by Christ to teach the essentials of His message.

The Judaising Controversy

Some did not adhere to Jesus’ words, as told to us by St. Luke:

“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1).

There was a controversy among the Apostles on circumcision of the Gentiles. St. Paul wrote about this to the Galatians (cf. Gal 2:1–21) and even confronted St. Peter whom he called wrong on this matter:

But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned… he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And with him the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews (Gal 2:11–14)?

This issue was settled by the first council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem. St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, addressed this first Church Council and said:

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood. Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to [the Gentiles]” (Acts 15:19–20, 22).

Early Church Authority: Counciliar, not Individual

Interestingly, the apostles considered their decision to be a synodal act, not one promulgated by one individual, either St. James, the president of the Council, or St. Peter, later considered (by the Western Church) that he and his successors, would have personal infallibility in matters of faith or morals. This is shown in the attribution of the spiritual act of this Apostolic Council:

“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” [emphasis mine] (Acts 15: 28).

Although a general church council did not occur until the fourth century, this Conciliar consensus, guided by the Holy Spirit, was considered by the Eastern Church to be the model of authority in Christ’s Body, the Church. As noted by McGuckin (2004),

“The council was always given precedence in authority over the bishop or patriarch.”

And, may I add, the Pope of Rome. From the beginning, the synod of bishops were expected to manifest a “common mind.”

Implications for Psychology and the Church

In the present secular culture the distinction between the essential and non-essential are blurred and confused by political correctness. (Morelli, 2009). Political correctness has no place in science or in the Church. The use of the term gender for sex among those who consider themselves scientists but are not , such as psychoanalysts (Morelli, 2006a) or those who write in the media is one such confusion. As I stated elsewhere (Morelli 2005b):

• • Sex: What a person is biologically.
  • Gender Identity: The sexual characteristics a person perceives himself as having that are socially defined, irrespective of his biological sex.

The political correctness agenda has implications for how we understand God’s revelation of Himself to us, Christ’s teachings, and the Holy Spirit guiding the understanding of the Church, and shapes our own attitudes and behavior. If sex is now called gender, then it is merely a social definition which can be modified, changed and re-defined by social consensus. Thus, this has implications for how we understand ourselves, that is to say: how we name ourselves.

Androgeny Research

Sandra Bem’s (1974) research on androgyny initiated the popular use of the term gender to replace sex. On the basis of her research, the ideal personality, the one most fully mentally healthy, would be considered to be one that has a mixture of androgynous traits which could be applied to social and occupational functioning. In actuality, however, behavioral research found that masculine traits of independence and competence were actually related to the psychologically functional characteristics (Lamke, 1982a,b; Massad, 1981).

Androgyny in Popular Culture

Bem’s redefinition of the ideal self spilled over into popular culture. In the 1970’s and 1980’s ‘fashionable androgyny’ became a widespread medium and model for youth. This redefinition was led by the entertainment industry. Dress fashions and other life style imitations followed. A music album, interestingly called “Sinner” (Joan Jett), is but one example. New names for how such individuals perceived themselves entered into popular vocabulary, such as androgynes and ambigender. Using such words defines the self as being genderless or in-between male and female.

Other movements, often started in the entertainment industry, to rename male and female became popular. ‘Heavy metal’ musicians often use satanic lyrics and imagery in their material. An example would be the upside down pentagram (a symbol of Satan). Those representing this so-called ‘left hand path’ have names such as Black Sabbath, Venom and Slayer. ‘Glam’ or ‘glitter rock’ had performers and their followers wearing ostentatious blended unisex apparel, jewelry, hairstyles and makeup.

‘Punk rock’ and ‘new wave’ glamorized a sex-drug lifestyle. Groups such as Sex Pistols and Sniff’n Glue not only made a sex-drug lifestyle normative, but projected an image of who they were as persons. ‘Gothic rock’ glamorized not only ‘the dark side’—death, evil, sex, suicide and the occult—, but also produced a subculture in society celebrating these ideas.

Lyrics contain crude, rude overt references to these themes. Furthermore, bodily gestures during performances depict these motifs and leave little to the imagination. As pointed out in Morelli, 2006b,

“language is in part a broadcast of our psychosocial definition. It shapes how other people see us and how they think we see ourselves.”

Modeling Influences Learning and Performance

There is copious child development research pointing to the crucial role of modeling in influencing child behavior (Bandura, 1986; Morelli, 2007,2008a). In another article I point out the efficacy of the various models children are exposed to which significantly influence their behavior: “If a parent capitulates to the culture, then the culture will assume the teaching authority of the parent. Several decades ago research psychologists demonstrated that there was no real difference between real life and mediated models (cartoons, movies, books) in terms of their effect on a child’s perceptions about sexuality and other important moral issues” (Morelli, 2007).

As indicated above, “the name of an object or a being expresses its essence.” In asking the name of the demon (Mk 5:9; Lk 8:31), Christ was asking: “Who are you; what is you destiny, your secret being?” This sheds a completely different light on the names we are describing, male and female (the modes of mankind) in this post-modern secular and negationist world. The sexes created by God are ‘out,’ the genders created by those committed to Satanism, secularism, or just plain misguided Christianity are ‘in.’

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: Prayer as a Spiritual Model

A common rendition of this Latin phrase is: the law of prayer is the law of belief. Under the guise of emotion-based “human justice and fairness,” the rule of prayer, that is to say, what God has revealed to us about Himself and our relationship with Him, is under attack. As usual, the movement is subtle. C. S. Lewis paved the way for understanding how the evil one, Satan, (the divider, separator, adversary, tempter) does his work.

As St. John tells us:

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 Jn 2:22–24).

Looking back at Church history, we see that secularists, post-modernists and those who espouse political correctness, and those who promote inclusive language in Scripture and prayer affect the Church in the same way that the heresies of old did. Secularism, while not formally recognized as a heresy, functions in many of the same ways the ancient heresies did in that it overthrows the understanding of man and God (Christian anthropology) received through Tradition.

Inclusive Language and the Deconstruction of Orthodox Tradition

Some Translations of Scripture: The Work of the Evil One

A confession: I am not a Scripture or language scholar. I read sacred Scripture in English. It has always been the tradition of the Orthodox Church to translate scripture and prayer into the “language of the people.” Thus, the importance of the ‘correct’ translation and the danger of using standards of secularism (negationist, post-modernist, promotion of inclusive language and political correctness). Why? Because language communicates what we assert or confirm about our understanding of God’s revelation to us.

Inclusive language, with its blurring and confusion of names and meanings, can change theology if it differs from the word of God given to us in the fullness of time. Consider the link between Christ, the New Adam, and the first Adam, as told to us by St. Paul:

Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.

Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned—sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many” (Rom 5:9–15).

Examples of Heresy (change in Orthodox Theology) by Inclusive Language

As mentioned at the start of this essay: ” The names we use for ourselves, for others, and for God shape our thought, and influence our understanding of God’s revelation to us. A fundamental link between God and mankind “is concentrated in the use of the Name, in the ‘invocation of the Name.’ Take for example what we know about God, by His revelation of Himself to us: He is Father-He begets the Son. An “Orthodox” scripture English translation, true to the original words of the ancient scriptures would keep the exact meaning given to us His creatures on earth at the fullness of time, and held by the Church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit from its conception at Pentecost to the current day. For example consider St. Matthews words (3: 17) :

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Now consider the inclusive language text: “This is my beloved Child [emphasis mine], with whom I am well pleased.” (An Inclusive Language Lectionary, 1986).

Now consider one other Orthodox scripture English translation of a passage from St. John’s Gospel (3: 16-17)

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

The feminist, secularist influenced inclusive language text reads: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Child, that whoever believes in that Child should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent that Child into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through that Child the world might be saved.” [Bold text emphasis mine] (An Inclusive Language Lectionary, 1986).

Recall the key points of God’s revelation to us as understood by the Church in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa as quoted above:

… the title “Father” [is understood] also by its special signification indicates the relation to the Son. For the term “Father” would have no meaning apart by itself, if “Son” were not connoted by the utterance of the word “Father.” … [the] Deity by its very nature is permanently and immutably the same in all that pertains to its essence … it is not lawful in speaking of the Divine and unimpaired Essence to deny that what is excellent always belonged to lt. For if He was not always what He now is, He certainly changed either from the better to the worse or from the worse to the better, and of these assertions the impiety is equal either way, whichever statement is made concerning the Divine nature.

St. Gregory describes any change in scripture wording as impious. Heresy is defined as a rejection of “orthodox understanding.”

The Lesson for Christians

The purpose of this essay has been to show the hidden danger of the values inherent in a Godless society and of human values detached from God and His apostolic Church, both of which can inwardly destroy both society itself and surreptitiously undermine His Church. Who should take note of this? All individuals who are committed to Christ. It should be noted by husbands and wives who also are parents, the leaders of their domestic churches, whose divine vocation is to lead each other and their offspring to the kingdom of Heaven. It should be noted by priests, the pastors of their local Churches in leading their flock to Christ. It should be noted by our hierarchs, the arch-pastors, who have the ultimate responsibility before God to account for the flock they shepherd. It is easy to look the other way and take what is going on in society for granted. It is also dangerous for each soul and for the Church, the Body of Christ given to us, not to discern the evil-inspired values of the world that are craftily disguised as virtue in today’s world.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves (Mt 7:15).

REFERENCES

An Inclusive–Language Lectionary: Readings for Year A, rev. ed. (1986). NY: The Pilgrim Press.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Belonick, D. (2004, December). Father, Son, and Spirit–So What’s In Name? www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/dbelonick_name1_dec04.asp
Bem, Sandra L. (1974). “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42, 155–62.
Bercot, D. W. (1998). A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Bobrinskoy, B. (1999). The Mystery of the Trinity. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Bobrinskoy, B. (2003). The Compassion of the Father. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Breck, J. (2001). Scripture in Tradition. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Campbell, J. (1988) The Power of Myth. NY: Doubleday.
Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod (1998) Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language. www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/CTCR/biblrev.pdf.
Engelhardt, H. T. (1996). The Foundations of Bioethics. NY: Oxford.
Evdokimov, P. (1998). Ages of the Spiritual Life. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Evdokimov, P. (1985). The Sacrament of Love. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Evdokimov, P. (2001). In the World of the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Harvey, S. A. (1997). “An Interview with Susan Ashbrook Harvey,” St. Nina’s Quarterly 1,4.
Lamke, L. K. (1982a). “Adjustment and Sex-Role Orientation,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 11, 247–259.
Lamke, L. K. (1982b). “The Impact of Sex-Role Orientation on Self-Esteem in Early Adolescence,” Child Development 53, 1530–1535.
Lewis, C. S. (1961). The Screwtape Letters. NY: Macmillan.
Maslow, A. H (1970). Motivation and Personality. NY: Harper and Rowe.
Massad, C. M. (1981). “Sex Role Identity and Adjustment During Adolescence,” Child Development 52, 1290–1298.
McGuckin, J. A. (2004). The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology. Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press.
Meyendorff, J. (1998). A Study of St. Gregory Palamas. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Morelli, G. (2005a, July 19). Sex is Holy: Psycho-Spiritual Reflections in a Secular World. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliSexIsHoly.php.
Morelli, G. (2005b, August 11). Homosexuality: Some Psycho-Theological Reflections and Pastoral Implications. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliHomosexuality.php.
Morelli, G. (2005c, September 17). Smart Parenting Part I. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliParenting.php.
Morelli, G. (2005d, September 22). What Do You Know: The Score or The Saint? .
Morelli, G (2006a May 06). Orthodoxy and the Science of Psychology. .
Morelli, G. (2006b, September 24). Smart Parenting IV: Cuss Control. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliParenting4.php.
Morelli, G. (2007). Smart Parenting VI: Talking to Children About Sex. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliSmartParentingVI.php.
Morelli, G. (2008a, February 12). Smart Parenting X: Combating Secularism’s Most Serious Sin: Indifference. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-Smart-PartentingX.php.
Morelli, G. (2008b, July 8). Smart Marriage XIII: The Theology of Marriage and Sexuality. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-Smart%20Marriage-XIII-The-Theology-of-Marriage-and-Sexuality.php.
Morelli, G. (2009, September 26). Secularism and the Mind of Christ and the Church: Some Psycho-Spiritual Reflections. www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles-2009/Morelli-Secularism-And-The-Mind of Christ-And-The-Church-Some-Psycho-Spiritual-Reflections.php.
McDowell, M. G. (2004). “Newness of Spirit: The Ordination of Men and Women,” The Word 48, 5.
Oftedal, S. E. (2004). “The Genesis of an Orthodox Christian Maternity Home,” OCAMPR EJournal II, 1. www.ocampr.org/loving.asp.
St. Gregory of Nyssa. Against Eunomius www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-05/Npnf2-05-09.htm#P481_155189.
Schmemann, A. (1973). “Concening Woman’s Ordination: A Letter to an Episcopal Friend,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 17, 3, 239–243.
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Vlachos, Bishop Hierotheos (1998). The Mind of the Orthodox Church. Lavadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery.

Fr. George Morelli Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Marriage and Family Therapist, Coordinator of the Chaplaincy and Pastoral Counseling Ministry of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, (www.antiochian.org/counseling-ministries) and Religion Coordinator (and Antiochian Archdiocesan Liaison) of the Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine, Psychology and Religion. Fr. George is Assistant Pastor of St. George’s Antiochian Orthodox Church, San Diego, California.

Fr. Morelli is the author of Healing: Orthodox Christianity and Scientific Psychology (available from Eastern Christian Publications, $15.00).

© 2009, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

The Orthodox Church suffers from an abysmal lack of cogent apologetic material. Interestingly, thanks to blogging, I believe this will change soon. Someone like you or me will get so tired of not having the kind of printed material we need, that we’ll just make it ourselves, and in the day of print-on-demand publishers (see here for examples of my own books, published at Lulu.com), well – it won’t be long.

In the meantime, we stand at a wonderful threshold. Blogging makes it possible for us to address apologetic points one at a time, and at any pace, or any depth, we wish to.

Let me give you a simple example, one that I’m sure you have used yourself from time to time.

As clergy/preachers/evangelists, we regularly encounter the person who loves to make the clergyman/preacher/evangelist stupid. Often, they precede their ‘zinger’ with a question or two, but sometimes they just parrot things they have heard from someone else, without even bothering to think about it, let alone check on it.

One such example, especially as we head into the Nativity Fast is the Virgin Birth (leaving off the Ever-Virginity of Mary for the moment).

“Well, you know, the Hebrew word in Isaiah (7:14, but they usually don’t even know it’s from Isaiah), is not virgin, but young girl. And the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. So you see, it could be that Mary wasn’t a Virgin at all!”

It is at this point that, if my head doesn’t explode, I consider what I have just heard.

First of all, the word in the Septuagint Old Testament is parthenos, which in Greek only means virgin. The Septuagint is 1,000 to 1,300 years older than the Masoretic text, which is the Hebrew text most heterodox Bibles are translated from. The Masoretic text didn’t even exist during the time of Christ and the Apostles! The Septuagint translation was clearly from an older, more accurate version of the Old Testament written before anti-Christian sentiment appeared among  Jewish Biblical translators (after all, Christians had been using the Septuagint Old Testament for 700-1,000 years to prove that Jesus was the Christ! I guess they got tired of that). After all, the translators of the Septuagint were all Jews, and they had no bone to pick about the Messiah.

Secondly, the word in Hebrew in the Masoretic is almah. It doesn’t just mean ‘young girl.’ It means ‘maiden,’ with all the baggage that comes from that age-old English word. A maiden is, by direct implication, a virgin. Only a maiden could, in popular European myth, capture a unicorn, due to her virginal purity.

Finally, the entire prophecy from Isaiah reads as follows;

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14

Now, young women conceive and bear sons thousands of times a week. What kind of a sign would that be? None. That would be no sign at all. Such a prophecy or prophetic statement would be literally meaningless.

No, in fact, if you are reading the prophecy of Isaiah, you can’t come to any other conclusion that the prophecy refers to virgin conceiving a son. Period.

I’m in support of apologetic snippets in blogs, and I believe you will find that these will become your readers’ favorites.

Why?

Because you are adding to their own apologetic and evangelist arsenal. You’d be surprised how many Christians have to defend their faith every day, in various circumstances. Hey, it gets tiring! Give them some ammo. Give them some armor.

Give them some of what has helped and enlightened your own walk, your own study, and your own faith. It’s not complicated, but very pastoral.

Pick a topic with which you have had some experience. Begin your blog essay and write for as much or as little as you like.

But whatever you do, blog it.

© 2009, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

I have suggested that the discipline of apologetics, the reasoned defense of the Christian faith, is sometimes troublesome to the pursuit of theology. It seems to me that the history of soteriology, the theology of salvation, manifests a singular case in point.

When it starts from apologetics, soteriology is somewhat compelled to commence outside itself, to begin with the state of not-being-saved. Apologetics obliges soteriology to inquire, “From what are we saved?” The answer, of course, is “sin.”

Now if we inquire about sin from the perspective of apologetics—particularly if we ask what sin is—the conditions of the inquiry force us to think about it without the light of revelation. The contractual terms of his craft oblige the apologist to abandon the single adequate foundation for interpreting sin: the life in Christ.

In other words, the nature of apologetic discourse limits the assessment of sin to what philosophy, psychology, and other non-theological disciplines are qualified to pronounce on the subject. In short, in order to speak coherently about sin to those outside the Christian faith, the apologist is prohibited from speaking of sin as a properly theological dilemma.

I believe a major difference between St. Paul and many of his interpreters is related to this problem. Paul approaches sin—as all human experiences—from within the light of revelation. He writes of fallen man from the perspective of man in Christ.

Thus, when he contrasts Christ and Adam, Paul starts with Christ. Because of what God accomplished in Christ, Paul deeply understands the bondage imposed through Adam’s sin. For Paul, the Cross alone takes the full measure of the Fall, as only the Resurrection illumines the ultimate meaning of death.

My problem with the history of soteriology is an impression that much of it begins, rather, with Adam. In order to defend the doctrine of our redemption on the Cross—to demonstrate to the unbeliever how the death of God’s Son was “both reasonable and necessary” (rationabilis et necessaria)—apologetics has felt compelled to define sin in a way intelligible and convincing to the unbeliever. The apologist has been obliged to speak of the Fall, not from within an adequate theological understanding of sin (that is, relying on the light of revelation), but along lines persuasive to those outside the faith. Unbelievers determined the theological task!

Near the end of the eleventh century, a very significant theological effort was based on such an apologetic approach, when St. Anselm (whose Latin I quoted above) described sin as an offense against the honor due to God.

Now this was an easily understood way to speak of sin: On the hypothesis that God really exists—Anselm elsewhere offered an intriguing way to prove this hypothesis!—God deserves the full loyalty and devotion of men. Hence, disobedience to God’s will is an affront to His honor, and this affront requires adequate satisfaction.

Anselm placed this very inadequate understanding of sin at the base of his “satisfaction theory,” which became widespread, and sometimes dominant, in the history of soteriology.

Now, not for a minute do I challenge Anselm’s reasoning here. Much less do I think it heretical. Indeed, Anselm’s theory was not repugnant to better theologians—among them St. Nicholas Cabasilas—whose soteriology was much richer and more clearly biblical.

My problem with Anselm’s theory is not his reasoning, but his starting point in apologetics, his resolve to begin the study of salvation, as he says, remoto Christo, quasi numquam aliquid fuerat de Illo—”apart from Christ, as though there had been nothing of Him.” This quasi—”as though”—is bothersome, because it does not embrace a truly theological assessment of sin.

To think of sin as an offense to God’s honor makes perfect sense without an ounce of faith, but that, I think, is exactly the problem. Unbelievers, in particular, can hardly begin to understand what is meant by sin. Remoto Christo, how is there an adequate assessment of sin? Even in the full light of divine revelation, after all, sin is deeply mysterious. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “It remains a mystery of darkness, of night.”

Anselm’s “satisfaction theory,” then, though surely comprehensible, is scarcely comprehensive.

Indeed, salva ei reverentia, is it really theological?

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon is the pastor of All Saints Church in Chicago, IL.

You can purchase his many books in the PI Bookstore.

© 2009, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.