from the  blog, Lord I Have Cried Unto Thee. Another patristic witness of the sentiment and wisdom behind the words of Abba Xanthios.

“A Dog is better than I because he loves and does not judge.”

The dog is not gifted with a share of reason; but with him instinct has the power of reason.  The dog has learnt by nature the secret of elaborate inferences, which sages of the world, after long years of study, have hardly been able to disentangle.  When the dog is on the track of game, if he sees it divide in different directions, he examines these different paths, and speech alone fails him to announce his reasoning.  The creature, he says, is gone here or there or in another direction.  It is neither here nor there; it is therefore in the third direction.  And thus, neglecting the false tracks, he discovers the true one.  What more is done by those who, gravely occupied in demonstrating theories, trace lines upon the dust and reject two propositions to show that the third is the true one? But the dog is said to smell the first, the second, and the third.  If he started off on the third without smelling, he would reason.  As it is, there is no “syllogism.”

Does not the gratitude of the dog shame all who are ungrateful to their benefactors?  Many are said to have fallen dead by their murdered masters in lonely places.  Others, when a crime has just been committed, have led those who were searching for the murderers, and have caused the criminals to be brought to justice.  What will those say who, not content with not loving the Master who has created them and nourished them, have for their friends men whose mouth attacks the Lord, sitting at the same table with them, and, whilst partaking of their food, blaspheme Him who has given it to them?

© 2011, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

Mark 13:32 and Matthew 24:36 seem to indicate that not only are all men and angels ignorant of the time of the Second Coming of Christ, but that also Jesus is ignorant of the time of His imminent return. In fact, Jesus says that only the Father knows the day and the hour of the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, was Jesus indeed ignorant of the day and hour of His Second Coming?

Two Church Fathers, St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom, specifically addressed this issue. St. Basil’s response can be read , and St. John’s response can be read .

St. Basil’s response can be read in his letter to Amphilochius of Iconium (Letter 236), where he adamantly states that Jesus was in fact not ignorant of His Second Coming. First, he states that the opinion that Jesus was ignorant of His Second Coming has its origins from the heretics, and that the tradition he received from his youth and by all Orthodox is that Jesus was in fact not ignorant.

Second, he shows how to properly interpret these passages of Scripture. He puts forwards Mark 10:18 where Jesus says that

“there is none good but one, that is, God.”

He explains that this does not exclude that Jesus is good, but rather indicates that God the Father is the first good. Also in Matthew 11:27, where Jesus says,

“No one knoweth the Son but the Father”,

we are not to believe that the Holy Spirit is ignorant of the Son, but rather that to the Father naturally belongs the first knowledge. St. Basil also puts forward other passages of Scripture where Jesus talks about knowing when His Second Coming will be, such as Matthew 24:6. He further brings forward the fact that Jesus as man often spoke of Himself in human terms and weaknesses, but that as God He possessed the

“wisdom and power of God” (1 Corinthian 1:24).

It should also be pointed out that most Byzantine texts of the Gospels do not contain the words “nor the Son” in Matthew 24:36.

It seems that this was added to the text of the Gospel of Matthew based on the text that does contain it, in Mark 13:32. why this is so, but St. Basil refers to this fact when he shows that though Mark does seem to indicate an ignorance of the Son, Matthew does not. St. John Chrysostom, in a rare exception, adds “nor the Son” in Matthew. For Basil, this indicates that the words

“but My Father only”

are offered in contradistinction to the angels and men, but not the Son. Rather, Matthew more clearly shows that the Father has first knowledge by nature, whereas the Son has knowledge through the Father. Otherwise there would be a contradiction here with John 16:15, where Jesus says:

““All things that the Father hath are Mine.”

John 10:15 also states clearly:

“As the Father knoweth Me even so know I the Father.”

St. Basil clarifies Mark 13:32 when he says that it should be read in the following manner:

“Of that day and of that hour knoweth no man, nor the angels of God; but even the Son would not have known if the Father had not known, for the knowledge naturally His was given by the Father.”

Keeping in mind that the knowledge and divinity of the Son comes from the Father, this passage is much more clearly understood.

According to St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, the reason Jesus seems to indicate ignorance in this passage was so that the disciples may not even entertain the thought of inquiring into the matter. Though Jesus does know the time of His Second Coming, He is pointing out here a greater mystery, that the source of this knowledge comes from the Father and through the Father is given to the Son. But since the disciples do not yet understand this relationship between the Father and the Son, to them it is merely an indication to not further inquire into the matter. It appeared to them that the Son was ignorant so that they not feel scorned by Jesus or perplexed why they were not given knowledge He possessed.

Thus, by Jesus saying “nor the Son”, He was indicating to the disciples that He is indeed honoring them and has concealed nothing from them, but that knowledge of the Second Coming would be more harmful to them rather than beneficial. Meanwhile, St. John clearly indicates that the time of the Second Coming is perfectly known by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; for the Holy Trinity, Who created heaven and earth, created time as well. Mankind has no need to know neither the time of the judgment, nor how the Son will judge.

St. John Chrysostom puts the following words into the mouth of Jesus to explain this further:

“For that indeed I am not ignorant of it [the Second Coming], I have shown by many things; having mentioned intervals, and all the things that are to occur, and how short from this present time until the day itself (for this did the parable of the fig tree indicate), and I lead thee to the very vestibule; and if I do not open unto thee the doors [of knowledge], this also I do for your good.”

St. John even shows how Jesus speaks specifically of knowing the day and hour of His coming when He speaks of His coming suddenly and unexpectedly in the verses following Matthew 24:36.

We can thus conclude that according to the tradition of the Church, Jesus is not nor ever was ignorant of the time of His Second Coming.

And more patristic quotes on this subject.

- “If anyone says that the one Jesus Christ, true Son of God and true Son of Man, was ignorant of future things, or of the day of the last judgment … let him be anathema.”

— Pope Vigilius, Against Nestorians, May 14, 553

- “If anyone does not say that the Son of God is true God just as [His] Father is true God [and] He is all-powerful and omniscient and equal to the Father, he is a heretic.”

— Council of Rome, Tome of Pope Damasus, Canon 12 (A.D. 382)

- “These things being so, come let us now examine into ‘But of that day and that hour knows no man, neither the Angels of God, nor the Son ;’[Mark 13:32] for being in great ignorance as regards these words, and being stupefied about them, they think they have in them an important argument for their heresy. But I, when the heretics allege it and prepare themselves with it, see in them the giants again fighting against God. For the Lord of heaven and earth, by whom all things were made, has to litigate before them about day and hour; and the Word who knows all things is accused by them of ignorance about a day; and the Son who knows the Father is said to be ignorant of an hour of a day; now what can be spoken more contrary to sense, or what madness can be likened to this? Through the Word all things have been made, times and seasons and night and day and the whole creation; and is the Framer of all said to be ignorant of His work? And the very context of the lection shows that the Son of God knows that hour and that day, though the Arians fall headlong in their ignorance. For after saying, ‘nor the Son,’ He relates to the disciples what precedes the day, saying, ‘This and that shall be, and then the end.’ But He who speaks of what precedes the day, knows certainly the day also, which shall be manifested subsequently to the things foretold. But if He had not known the hour, He had not signified the events before it, as not knowing when it should be. And as any one, who, by way of pointing out a house or city to those who were ignorant of it, gave an account of what comes before the house or city, and having described all, said, ‘Then immediately comes the city or the house,’ would know of course where the house or the city was (for had he not known, he had not described what comes before lest from ignorance he should throw his hearers far out of the way, or in speaking he should unawares go beyond the object), so the Lord saying what precedes that day and that hour, knows exactly, nor is ignorant, when the hour and the day are at hand….Now why it was that, though He knew, He did not tell His disciples plainly at that time, no one may be curious where He has been silent; for ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor [Romans 11:34]?’ but why, though He knew, He said, ‘no, not the Son knows,’ this I think none of the faithful is ignorant, viz. that He made this as those other declarations as man by reason of the flesh. For this as before is not the Word’s deficiency , but of that human nature whose property it is to be ignorant….”

— St Athanasius, Discourse 3 Against the Arians, Chapter 28

- “Certainly when He says in the Gospel concerning Himself in His human character, ‘Father, the hour is come, glorify Your Son ,’[John 17:1] it is plain that He knows also the hour of the end of all things, as the Word, though as man He is ignorant of it, for ignorance is proper to man, and especially ignorance of these things. Moreover this is proper to the Savior’s love of man; for since He was made man, He is not ashamed, because of the flesh which is ignorant , to say ‘I know not,’ that He may show that knowing as God, He is but ignorant according to the flesh . And therefore He said not, ‘no, not the Son of God knows,’ lest the Godhead should seem ignorant, but simply, ‘no, not the Son,’[Mark 13:32] that the ignorance might be the Son’s as born from among men.”

- St Athanasius, Discourse 3 Against the Arians, Chapter 43

- “No man save Him who for our salvation has designed to put on flesh has full knowledge and a complete grasp of the truth.”

- St Jerome, Letter to Pope Damacus in reply to Genesis 27:23

- “Their tenth objection is the objection, and the statement that of the last ‘day and hour knows no man, not even the Son Himself, but the Father.’[Mark 13:32] And yet how can Wisdom be ignorant of anything? …How then can you say that all things before that hour He knows accurately, and all things that are to happen about the time of the end, but the hour itself He is ignorant? For such a thing would be like a riddle, as if one were to say that he knew accurately all that was in front of the wall, but did not know the wall itself; or that, knowing the end of the day, he did not the beginning of night–where knowledge of the one neccessarily brings in the other. Thus everyone must see He knows as God, and knows not as man,–if one may separate visible from that which discerned by thought alone.”

- St Gregory Nazianzen, On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 30:15

- “For He, as the Only-begotten Son of the Father, and the Word, both was and is omnipotent, and there is nothing that is not easy to Him.”

— St Cyril of Jerusalem Homilies On Luke, 47

- “We can now understand why He said that He knew not the day. If we believe Him to have been really ignorant, we contradict the Apostle, who says, “In Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden” [Colossians 2:3]. There is knowledge which is hidden in Him, and because it has to be hidden, it must sometimes for this purpose be professed as ignorance, for once declared, it will no longer be secret. In order, therefore, that the knowledge may remain hidden, He declares that He does not know. But if He does not know, in order that the knowledge may remain hidden, this ignorance is not due to His nature, which is omniscient, for He is ignorant solely in order that it may be hidden. Nor is it hard to see why the knowledge of the day is hidden.”

— St Hilary of Poiters, On the Trinity Book IX Chapter 67

- “The Son is ignorant, then, of nothing which the Father knows, nor does it follow because the Father alone knows, that the Son does not know. Father and Son abide in unity of nature, and the ignorance of the Son belongs to the divine Plan of silence, seeing that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This the Lord Himself testified, when He answered the question of the Apostles concerning the times, “It is not yours to know times or moments, which the Father has set within His own authority” [Acts 1:7]. The knowledge is denied them, and not only that, but the anxiety to learn is forbidden, because it is not theirs to know these times. Yet now that He is risen, they ask again, though their question on the former occasion had been met with the reply, that not even the Son knew. They cannot possibly have understood literally that the Son did not know, for they ask Him again as though He did know. They perceived in the mystery of His ignorance a divine Plan of silence, and now, after His resurrection, they renew the question, thinking that the time has come to speak. And the Son no longer denies that He knows, but tells them that it is not theirs to know, because the Father has set it within His own authority. If then, the Apostles attributed it to the divine Plan, and not to weakness, that the Son did not know the day, shall we say that the Son knew not the day for the simple reason that He was not God? Remember, God the Father set the day within His authority, that it might not come to the knowledge of man, and the Son, when asked before, replied that He did not know, but now, no longer denying His knowledge, replies that it is theirs not to know, for the Father has set the times not in His own knowledge, but in His own authority. The day and the moment are included in the word ‘times’: can it be, then, that He, Who was to restore Israel to its kingdom, did not Himself know the day and the moment of that restoration? He instructs us to see an evidence of His birth in this exclusive prerogative of the Father, yet He does not deny that He knows: and while He proclaims that the possession of this knowledge is withheld from ourselves, He asserts that it belongs to the mystery of the Father’s authority.

We must not therefore think, because He said He did not know the day and the moment, that the Son did not know. As man He wept, and slept, and sorrowed, but God is incapable of tears, or fear, or sleep. According to the weakness of His flesh He shed tears, slept, hungered, thirsted, was weary, and feared, yet without impairing the reality of His Only-begotten nature; equally so must we refer to His human nature, the words that He knew not the day or the hour [Mark 13:32].”

— St Hilary of Poiters, On the Trinity, Book IX Chapter 74

- “Those, then, who say that He is a servant divide the one Christ into two, just as Nestorius did. But we declare Him to be Master and Lord of all creation, the one Christ, at once God and man, and all-knowing. ‘For in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the hidden treasures’” [Col 2:3].

— St John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III Chapter 21

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by St. Basil the Great

“Sound the trumpet at the new moon,” says the Psalmist, “in the notable day of your feast.”2

This injunction is prophetic. The Scripture readings indicate to us more loudly than any trumpet and more distinctly than any musical instrument the Feast that precedes these days. For we have learned from Isaiah the Grace to be gained from the fasts. Isaiah rejected the Jewish way of fasting and showed us what true fasting means.

“Fast not for quarrels and strifes, but loose every bond of iniquity.”3

And the Lord says:

“Be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance, but anoint thine head, and wash thy face.”4

Let us, therefore, exhibit the demeanor that we have been taught, not being doleful about the coming days, but maintaining a joyful attitude, as befits holy people. No one who desponds is crowned; no one who sulks sets up a trophy of victory. Do not be sullen while you are being healed. It would be absurd not to rejoice over the health of your soul, but rather to be distressed over a change of diet and to give the impression of setting more store by the pleasure of your stomach than by the care of your soul. For satiety brings delight to the stomach, whereas fasting brings profit to the soul.

Be of good cheer, for the physician has given you a medicine that destroys sin. For, just as the tapeworms that breed in the intestines of children are obliterated by certain very pungent drugs, so also fasting — a remedy truly worthy of its appellation —5, when introduced into the soul, kills off the sin that lurks deep within it.

“Anoint thine head, and wash thy face.”6

This sentence summons you to mysteries. One who has been anointed has received unction; he who has been washed has been cleansed. Apply this injunction to your inner members. Wash your soul clean of sins. Have your head anointed with holy oil, so that you might become a partaker of Christ, and approach the fast in this spirit.

“Do not disfigure your face as do the hypocrites.” 7

The face is disfigured when one’s inner disposition is obscured by a sham external appearance, concealed by falsehood as if beneath a veil. An actor in a theatre is one who assumes someone else’s persona — if he is a slave, he often plays a master, and if he is a private citizen, he plays a king. Likewise, in this life, as if on some stage, the majority of people turn their existence into a theatre, entertaining one thing in their hearts, but displaying something else to men by their outward appearance. Therefore, do not disfigure your face. Whatever you may be, appear as such. Do not transform yourself into a sullen person, seeking the glory that comes from appearing to be abstemious. For there is no profit in trumpeting your good deeds, nor any gain in advertising your fasting. Things that are done for outward show do not yield any fruit in the age to come, but terminate in human praise. Run with gladness to the gift of the fast. Fasting is an ancient gift, which does not grow old or become outmoded, but is ever renewed and flourishes with vigor.

Do you think that I am resting the origin of fasting on the Law? Why, fasting is even older than the Law. If you wait a little, you will discover the truth of what I have said. Do not suppose that fasting originated with the Day of Atonement, appointed for Israel on the tenth day of the seventh month.8 No, go back through history and inquire into the ancient origins of fasting. It is not a recent invention; it is an heirloom handed down by our fathers. Everything distinguished by antiquity is venerable. Have respect for the antiquity of fasting. It is as old as humanity itself; it was prescribed in Paradise. It was the first commandment that Adam received:

“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat.”9

Through the words

“ye shall not eat”

the law of fasting and abstinence is laid down. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not now be in need of this fast.

“They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”10

We have been wounded through sin; we are healed through repentance, but repentance without fasting is fruitless.

“Cursed is the ground…. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for thee.”11

You were ordered to live in sorrow, not in luxury. Make amends to God through fasting. Yet even life in Paradise is an image of fasting, not only insofar as man, sharing the life of the Angels, attained to likeness with them through being contented with little, but also insofar as those things which human ingenuity subsequently invented had not yet been devised by those living in Paradise, be it the drinking of wine, the slaughter of animals, or whatever else befuddles the human mind.

Since we did not fast, we fell from Paradise; let us, therefore, fast in order that we might return thither. Do you not see how Lazarus entered Paradise through fasting?12 Do not emulate the disobedience of Eve; never again accept the advice of the serpent, who suggested eating out of regard for the flesh. Do not use bodily sickness and infirmity as an excuse for not fasting. You are not offering such excuses to me, but to Him Who knows all about you. Tell me, you are unable to fast, and yet you are able eat to satiety throughout your life and oppress your body with the burden of what you eat? And yet, I know of doctors who prescribe for sick people not a variety of foods, but fasting and abstinence. How is it, then, that, while you are able to carry out doctors’ orders, you allege that you are unable to keep the fasts ordained by the Church? What is easier for the stomach? To pass the night after observing a frugal diet, or to lie in bed weighed down by an abundance of foods? Or rather, not lying down, but tossing and turning, heaving and groaning — unless you are going to say that it is easier for a helmsman to save a vessel weighed down with cargo than one that is less encumbered and lighter.

The one that is laden with a multitude of goods will be submerged when any wave, no matter how low, rears up against it, whereas the one carrying a moderate quantity of freight easily rides the waves, there being nothing to prevent it from rising above the surge. Likewise, the bodies of men, when weighed down by constant surfeiting, easily become overwhelmed by illnesses, whereas, when they avail themselves of simple and easily-digested fare, they not only escape, as from the eruption of a tempest, the suffering that is to be expected from any disease, but also repel like the onslaught of a squall the sickness that is already present within them. In your view, I suppose, it is more laborious to rest than to run and to be still than to struggle — if, indeed, you assert that it is more appropriate for those who are ill to indulge in delicacies than to observe a frugal diet. For the force that governs living creatures naturally engenders moderation and frugality and adapts itself to that which is eaten; but when the body ingests sumptuous and varied foods, this force, being entirely unable to tolerate them, gives rise to a variety of diseases.

1 Translated from the Greek original in Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXXI, cols. 164A-184C.
2 Psalm 80:4, Septuaginta.
3 Isaiah 58:4, 6.
4 St. Matthew 6:16, 17.
5.  St. Basil is arguing, here, that fasting kills off sin by starving it of the aliment on which it feeds.
6 St. Matthew 6:17.
7 St. Matthew 6:16.
8 Leviticus 23:27.
9 Genesis 2:17.
10 St. Matthew 9:12.
11 Genesis 3:17-18.
12 St. Luke 16:19-31.

Source

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When, indeed, the Holy Spirit saw that the human race was guided only with difficulty toward virtue, and that, because of our inclination toward pleasure, we were neglectful of an upright life, what did He do? The delight of melody He mingled with the doctrines so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without perceiving it the benefit of the words, just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey.

Therefore, He devised for us these harmonious melodies of the psalms, that they who are children in age, or even those who are youthful in disposition, might to all appearances chant, but in reality, become trained in soul. For, never has any one of the many indifferent persons gone away easily holding in mind either an apostolic or prophetic message, but they do chant the words of the psalms, even in the home, and they spread them around in the market place, and, if perchance, someone becomes exceedingly wrathful, when he begins to be soothed by the psalm, he departs with the wrath immediately lulled to sleep by means of the melody.

A psalm implies serenity of Soul; it is the author of peace, which calms bewildering and seething thoughts. For, it softens the wrath of the soul, and what is unbridled it chastens. A psalm forms friendships, unites those separated, conciliates those at enmity. Who, indeed, can still consider as an enemy him with whom he has uttered the same prayer to God? So that psalmody, bringing about choral singing, a bond, as it were, toward unity, and joining people into a harmonious union of one choir, produces also the greatest of blessings, love.

A psalm is a city of refuge from the demons; a means of inducing help from the angels, a weapon in fears by night, a rest from the toils of the day, a safeguard for infants, an adornment for those at the height of their vigour, a consolation for the elders, a most fitting ornament for women. It peoples the solitudes; it rids the market places of excesses; it is the elementary exposition of beginners, the improvement of those advancing, the solid support of the perfect, the voice of the Church. It brightens feast days; it creates a sorrow which is in accordance with God. For, a psalm calls forth a tear even from a heart of stone.

A psalm is the work of angels, a heavenly institution, the spiritual incense.

HT: Lord I have Cried Unto Thee

From St. Basil’s homily on Psalm 1

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From the Huffington Post (!)

Common depictions of the Christian doctrine of hell, perhaps borrowing images from classic literature and Dante, portray it as a place of literal fire, where tortured souls repose in anguish, a vision much used by itinerant evangelists and manipulative preachers.

A further degradation of this cartoon vision finds human souls not only suffering extreme torture, but prodded by red devils with tiny horns, cloven hoofs for feet, spiraling tails, and pitchforks at hand, a caricature used to both trivialize the concept as well as mock the very idea of hell.

In the Revelation of John, we discover a lake of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, as an abode of punishment, as well as a bottomless abyss. Jesus himself, of course, named hell as the place where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is never quenched, but he spoke of eternal darkness as well, eternal destruction and eternal death.

Such descriptions are at best figurative, much like other parts of the Bible where, for instance, God is described as a hen brooding over her chicks (God isn’t literally a fowl.) Rather, it seems apparent that according to the teachings of the ancient Church, the non-literal descriptions of hell that appear in Scripture and elsewhere pertain to fundamental qualities of a disposition of being, not one defined primarily as punishment, but of death.

Strains of western Catholicism and Protestantism have fundamentally defined death as legal punishment, an expression of God’s wrath. Death is entrenched within a judicial context; it is a sentence for sin. God is angry, according to the western view, and Christ’s merit applied to us satisfies his anger, so He dies as a sacrifice to appease the Father.

A gross oversimplification and popular notion of the historical understanding of death in the West paints an ugly and frightening picture for those who take it seriously. Good people or redeemed people who have faith in Jesus, whom the Father punishes in our place through an expression of divine anger, overcome the punishment of death and go to heaven; unrepentant sinners suffer their just punishment and are cast howling into hell for their evil deeds. Death is the judicial sentence of all humanity; some overcome it totally through an abstract and forensic transaction, others do not.

The Greek fathers and the eastern churches historically do not share the western legal emphasis, nor the consequent view of atonement. The fathers of the church teach that humanity is the author of death, not God. St. Basil in the fourth century writes, “God did not create death, but we brought it upon ourselves.” Death is the result of sin; it is the final product that we, apart from God, create for ourselves through the power of the human will, that also ensnares and condemns us.

For the Christian Orthodox, death is much more than what happens when the lungs quit, the heart fails or the brain stops functioning; it is also the source of corruption and spiritual myopia, producing deep-rooted fear and a whole legion of consequent disorders, maladies, pathologies and suffering. The separation of the spirit and the body at the end of physical life is the culmination of a long period of smaller separations; existence is filled with estrangement. Death is embodied by division and the truncation of significance. As the late Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann writes:

When we see the world as an end in itself, everything in itself becomes a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the “sacrament” of God’s presence. Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy themselves because only in God have they any life. The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world. For one who thinks food in itself is the source of life, eating is communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.

It is possible to envision death, defined in this way, as at least tolerable, but if we posit the reality of redemption, that is, from a certain perspective, the added imposition of the presence of infinite and divine personality figuratively signified by fire, death then takes on a further dimension. Death doesn’t dissolve away into nothingness, but energized by the presence of creative, personal and divine love, it becomes a separation fixed in an eternal position. Death is transmuted into bitter torment and despair.

As St. Symeon the New Theologian writes:

God is fire and when He came into the world, and became man, He sent fire on the earth, as He Himself says; this fire turns about searching to find material — that is a disposition and an intention that is good — to fall into and to kindle; and for those in whom this fire will ignite, it becomes a great flame, which reaches Heaven. … [T]his flame at first purifies us from the pollution of passions and then it becomes in us food and drink and light and joy, and renders us light ourselves because we participate in His light. (Discourse 78)

The same fire, the love of God, that ignites in the hearts of the faithful transmutes in the experience of those who reject it into the fire of hell; it purifies the former, but burns the latter, per St. Isaac the Syrian:

It is totally false to think that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But love’s power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it. (Homily 84)

Hell in this view is understood as the presence of God experienced by a person who, through the use of free will, rejects divine love. He is tortured by the love of God, tormented by being in the eternal presence of God without being in communion with God. God’s love is the fire that is never quenched, and the disposition and suffering of the soul in the presence of God who rejects him is the worm that does not die. Whether one experiences the presence of love as heaven or hell is entirely dependent on how he has resolved his own soul to be disposed towards God, whether communion or separation, love or hatred, acceptance or rejection.

Hell, then, is not primarily a place where God sends people in his wrath, or where God displays anger, but rather, it is the love of God, experienced by one who is not in communion with him. The figurative, spiritual fire of God’s love is transcendent joy to the person purified and transfigured by it through communion in the body of Christ, but bottomless despair and suffering to the person who rejects it, and chooses to remain in communion with death.

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This sermon was apparently given at St. Vladimir Seminary sometime in the recent past, and is an excellent homily on why the three are commemorated, and their importance to the Church, students, and the clergy.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!

There is much in common among the three hierarchs and great ecumenical teachers whom we commemorate today: Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. All three lived in a time when the Christian Church, after almost three centuries of persecution, received freedom and was flourishing throughout the Byzantine ‘oikoumene‘. All the three were involved in contesting contemporary heresies, of which the most dangerous was Arianism, which rejected the Divinity of Jesus Christ. All the three combined serving the Church in episcopal rank with literary activity, and it is precisely their literary legacy which secured for them the paramount place that they occupy in Christian Tradition. All the three were victims of ecclesiastical intrigues, and suffered – in one way or another – from their fellow bishops: in fact, two of the three (Gregory and John) were deposed and died in exile. Their posthumous glory, however, exceeded any expectations their contemporaries might have had, and their significance for the entire Christian Church in East and West cannot be overestimated.

A particular common characteristic of the three holy hierarchs was their love for scholarship and learning. Gathered as we are today, in this place of Christian learning, in this chapel of which they are the holy patrons, it seems appropriate to remind ourselves of some features of their attitude toward scholarship. In what follows I will focus mostly on St Gregory the Theologian’s teaching on this subject.

Gregory was educated in the Academy of Athens, where he extensively studied Greek literature, poetry and philosophy. Apart from Greek authors, he also read the Christian Scriptures, as well as the writings of Origen, from whom he may have inherited the high respect for ancient Greek scholarship. Gregory’s closest friends, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, contributed considerably to the development of Greek scholarship on Christian soil. St Basil wrote a famous ‘Exhortation to Youths as to How They shall Best Profit by the Writings of Pagan Authors‘, where he recommends Christian youth to use the works by ancient Greek writers, poets and philosophers for educational purposes. The same approach is exhibited by Gregory of Nyssa, who allegorically interpreted the ‘jewellery of silver and of gold’, stolen by the Jews on their departure from Egypt (Ex. 12:35-6), to be the wealth of pagan learning which Christians must borrow from the Greeks. He said that this wealth included ‘natural philosophy, geometry, astronomy, dialectic, and whatever else is sought by those outside the Church’.

The fourth-century Fathers realized that they were living at a time when the scholarly and intellectual wealth inherited from ancient Greek culture needed to be appropriated by the Christian Church. While insisting on the superiority of Christian learning over Hellenistic wisdom, they at the same time thought it necessary for Christians to accumulate everything positive that had been amassed by human civilisation outside Christianity.

In accordance with these views Gregory the Theologian promoted the idea that heathen culture and Hellenistic education do not belong to the pagans: though pagan in origin, they belong to the Christians as long as Christians are able to receive them. Not only Greek scholarship, but also world civilisation in general belongs to the Christian Church, Gregory claimed. Together with Origen and Gregory of Nyssa he was convinced that the jewellery of Egypt, which symbolizes pagan learning, must not be left by the New Israel (Christians) in the hands of Egyptians (pagans).

We may note that early Christian literature at times saw human civilisation, art and culture, as being demonic in their provenance, since they result from the fall. John Chrysostom himself wrote that ‘cities, arts, clothes and many other things… were introduced by death’. In the ‘Macarian Homilies’ we read that wise men, philosophers, writers, poets, artists, sculptors, architects and archaeologists were ‘prisoners and slaves of the evil power’ and worked under the influence of the devil.

Yet many church writers pointed to the positive aspects of human civilisation and culture. Gregory the Theologian was one of them. He argued that no nation, religion, or philosophical school can monopolise culture, science and art, because these belong to the whole of humanity. For Gregory, it is God himself who is the true creator of human civilisation, and the artists are instruments in God’s hands: ‘Language belongs not to those who invented it but rather to all who use it, and so also art and every occupation which you can imagine. In music, each string has its own sound, high or low – so also in these arts the Divine Word, Artist and Creator, appointed various inventors of various occupations and arts, giving everything to those who desire to use it, in order to unite us by the bonds of common life and friendship, and to make our life more civilised’.

Gregory the Theologian respected everything which demonstrates the power of human reason, be it humanitarian and natural sciences, rhetoric, literature, poetry, music or other arts, even the art of circus trainers, about which he spoke with great admiration. Gregory’s ideal is a man of reason, of high intellectual culture, of great erudition, who combines the true faith with knowledge in various fields and with an open attitude to the world. It is reason that makes humans alike to the divine Logos. Many of Gregory’s poetic works contain praises of reason, education, and scholarship.

‘Consider reason as the lamp of your whole life’, he says.

‘Do not think that there is anything better than education’, he writes elsewhere.

At the same time Gregory underlines that education should not be considered as an aim in itself: it is necessary in order to bring one to the knowledge of God and to contribute to one’s progress in faith. One has to study in youth in order to offer the fruits of one’s learning to the divine Spirit when one reaches maturity. This was Gregory’s own aspiration from his early years. In the twilight of his life he wrote:

‘One glory was pleasing to me, to progress in literary sciences, which are collected by East and West, and by Athens, the glory of Greece. In them I toiled much for a long time. But even these I placed before Christ, having prostrated myself, in order that they should give room to the Word of great God, which eclipses any changeable and diverse invention of the human mind’.

Thus, secular letters and the fullness of non-Christian culture withdraw into shadow when a person encounters Christ. Compared with the Divine Word, every human word is nothing but myth, tale and invention. Yet the studies of Greek philosophy, mythology, poetry and other humanitarian and natural sciences are necessary in order to bring them to Christ’s feet.

Gregory the Theologian had before his eyes many living examples of true Christian scholarship. One of them was Basil the Great, his friend and classmate, of whose erudition and learning he spoke with admiration. Praising Basil’s knowledge of rhetoric, grammar, history, poetry, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, mathematics and medicine, Gregory exclaims:

‘He was a ship loaded with scholarship insofar as human nature can possibly accumulate’.

Remembering their days in the Academy of Athens, Gregory writes with nostalgia:

‘Two ways were familiar to us: the first and more precious leading us to our sacred buildings and the masters there; the second. to our secular teachers. All else-festivals, spectacles, assemblies, and banquets-we left to those with a taste for such things. Our great concern. was to be Christians and be called Christians’.

Being a defender of the Greek paideia, Gregory the Theologian was a strong opponent to any kind of ignorance and obscurantism. Resistance to learning, contempt for education and unwillingness to accumulate the richness of human culture are, according to Gregory, incompatible with Christianity. The understanding of Christianity as a semi-catacomb sect which encloses itself by thick walls of suspicion and prejudice, opposed to the outside world, is alien to Gregory. On the contrary, Christianity must be open and all-embracing enough to be able to contain within itself the achievements of human reason.

In our days there are people who say:

‘It is not necessary for a Christian to study much: the important thing is to observe the rules of the Church’. Some even claim that great learning is an obstacle to salvation and refer to the ‘ancient times’, when ‘there were bishops and priests who could neither read nor write, who were not versed in sciences, and still achieved genuine holiness’.

To this we must first of all reply that there were nevertheless other bishops and priests who could not only read and write, but who were among the most brilliantly educated people of their times: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom, together with many other great hierarchs and teachers, belonged to this group.

Secondly, even those bishops and priests of Christian antiquity who did not know how to read or write were not necessarily uneducated: many of them studied sciences orally (which was quite widespread in those days).

Thirdly, we are no longer in the fourth, the fourteenth or even the nineteenth century; we have entered the twenty-first century, where it is very unlikely that there will be any place for ignorant and half-educated clergy. Priests and lay leaders seeking to build the Church in our times, to defend it from the attacks of enemies both internal and external, must themselves be educated. Priests wishing not only to save themselves, but others as well (which is precisely the essence of priesthood), not only the ignorant and the illiterate, but also the intelligent and the educated – such priests must themselves be educated.

Our time, dear brothers and sisters, is not less challenging for the Church than the time of the fourth century, and the mission which is set before us is in no way less important than one carried out by the great hierarchs and teachers of the past. In order to face the challenges of modernity we – I now mean especially the pastors and future pastors of the Church gathered here – must be highly educated.

Dear students! Use the time which is given to you to acquire as much knowledge in different fields of scholarship as possible in order to be able to put it to Christ’s feet, when the time comes. Follow the example of the great hierarchs of the past, whose worldly erudition did not prevent them from but, on the contrary, assisted them in becoming true pillars of the Church. Follow also the example of the teachers of our times, such as Fr Alexander Schmemann and Fr John Meyendorff, whose legacy is preserved by this Seminary and who combined total dedication to serving the Church with great erudition and scholarship.

May this school be for you a true place of learning, a new Academy of Athens, in which you will know only two ways: the way to the church and the way to your teachers. May you become ‘ships loaded by scholarship’ insofar as your human capacity allows. And may the prayer of the three great hierarchs, whose memory we keep today, assist you in your studies and in your spiritual life. Amen.

Source

© 2011, admin. All rights reserved.

A lecture delivered by Fr John Behr, Dean of St Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, at the parish of St John Chrysostom Orthodox Church, House Springs, Missouri, September 29, 2007,  on the occasion of the 1600th Anniversary of St John’s repose.

In his oration of thanks to his teacher, St Gregory the Wonderworker commented:

For a mighty and energetic thing is the discourse of man, and subtle with its sophisms, and quick to find its way into the ears and mould the mind, and impress us with what it conveys; and when once it has taken possession of us, it can win us over to love it as truth; and it holds its place within us even though it be false and deceitful, overmastering us like some enchanter and retaining as its champion the very man it has persuaded (deluded).

All three—Sts Basil, Gregory and John—were highly trained rhetoricians/orators, praised even by the great pagan orators such as Libanius, and they put this talent to the service of the Christian faith. Yet among these three, it is St John who has been given the title “Chrysostom”—the golden mouthed. He is known not so much for his involvement in the dogmatic disputes of his day (though he does have important things to say), but precisely for his oratory—his preaching.

Chrysostom on Priesthood

In his work on the Priesthood, St John does occasionally speak in very high terms of the priest as the liturgical officiant, but his main concern is with the priestly ministry more generally, following the example of Christ, who came to serve rather than be served. As he puts it, while the priesthood is ranked among the heavenly ordinances, it is nevertheless is enacted on earth. And the tasks of the priest are numerous: he was the teacher and moral guide of the community; he was the liturgical leader, deciding which catechumens should be admitted to baptism, and he presided at the Eucharist; he was the spiritual guide for those who wanted to lead more ascetic lives; he received guests from other churches; he maintained an elaborate system of charity for the care of strangers, the support of widows, orphans and the poor, he cared for the women who were ranked in the order of “virgins,” ordained presbyters and deacons.

Judging from his writings, it was the concern for the widows, the virgins, and the poor which caused him the greatest anxiety: he speaks of the holiness and knowledge necessary for such work, and also the endless patience and ability to steward alms in an irreproachable manner (On the Priesthood 3.12). Elsewhere, he mentions that in Antioch there were some three thousand of widows and virgins who were looked after by the Church. One can only imagine the immense amount of work that this required!

When St John turns to speak of the tools or instruments that the priest has at his disposal, he focuses upon the priest’s words (On the Priesthood 4.2 ff). It is Christ’s own body that the priest is entrusted with, and he is responsible for training it to perfect health and incredible beauty, being vigilant to ensure that no spot or blemish mars its grace and loveliness. His whole energy must be devoted to making sure that the body is worthy of the Head to which it is subjected. But unlike a doctor who cures physical diseases and ailment by prescribing medications, rest, or surgery, the spiritual doctor only has recourse to words, to exhortations and persuasions:

In the case before us, it is impossible to use any of these things; there is but one method and way of healing appointed, after we have gone wrong, and that is the powerful application of the Word. This is the one instrument, the only diet, the finest atmosphere. This takes the place of medicine, cautery and cutting, and if it be needful to sear and amputate, this is the means which we must use, and if this is of no avail, all else is wasted; with this we both rouse the soul when it sleeps and reduce it when it is inflamed; with this we cut off excesses and fill up defects, and perform all manner of other operations which are needed for the soul’s health. (On the Priesthood 4.3)

It is only through the words that a priest uses, St John is saying, that those under his charge can be persuaded to pay attention to themselves, to orient their lives towards Christ, to willingly cooperate in the surgery being applied by the priest, for this can only be done through words and cooperation.

St John continues by asking whether or not an exemplary life of the priest is sufficient, for this may well stimulate others to emulation. He concedes that this may well be the case for the ordering of our daily lives, but when it comes to matters of doctrine, which is not simply a matter of accepting abstract items of belief, but a matter of having the mind of Christ, so that the whole outlook of the Christian is informed and shaped by a Christian perspective, In such matters, an exemplary life is not sufficient:

“Should a conflict arise on matters of doctrine and all the combatants rely on the same scriptures, what weight will his life carry then?” (On the Priesthood, 4.9)

Even if a bishop or priest were able to perform miracles, as did the apostles, even this is not sufficient:

Even in the days of miracles the Word was by no means useless, but essentially necessary. For St. Paul made use of it himself, although he was everywhere so great an object of wonder for his miracles; and another of those who belonged to the ‘glorious company of the Apostles’ exhorts us to apply ourselves to acquiring this power, when he says:

‘Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks of you a reason concerning the hope that is in you’ (1 Pet 3.15),

and they all, with one accord, committed the care of the poor widows to Stephen, for no other reason than that they themselves might have time

“for the ministry of the Word. (Acts 6.4; On the Priesthood 4.3)

Again using the example of the Apostle Paul, St John also answers those who would point out that the apostles —unlettered fishermen—had no knowledge of the finer points of oratory, that they did not have “the polish of Isocrates, the weight of Demosthenes, the dignity of Thucydides, and the sublimity of Plato.” But he points out that Paul makes a careful distinction, saying that

“even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not in knowledge” (2 Cor 11.6, so likening himself to Moses).

St John then continues:

But I pass by all such matters and the elaborate ornaments of profane oratory; and I take no account of style or of delivery; even if a man’s diction be poor and his composition simple and unadorned, let him not be unskilled in the knowledge and accurate statement of doctrine; nor in order to hide his own sloth, deprive that holy apostle of the greatest of his gifts, and the sum of his praises. (On the Priesthood 4.6)

The content of Paul’s preaching may well be folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, and it may also be expressed in unpolished terseness, but it is nevertheless a clear, concise and profound statement of the Wisdom and Power of God. Paul’s rhetoric (for rhetoric it is) matches the content.

A similar point is made by St Gregory the Theologian, when he speaks of education, as being the supreme advantage of human beings, especially the use of words:

We must not then dishonor education, because some men are pleased to do so, but rather suppose such men to be boorish and uneducated, desiring all men to be as they themselves are, in order to hide themselves in the general, and escape the detection of their want of culture. (Oration 43.11)

St Basil also makes similar comments at the beginning of his work On the Holy Spirit, pointing out that:

Those who are idle in the pursuit of righteousness count theological terminology as secondary, together with attempts to search out the hidden meaning in this phrase or that syllable, but those conscious of the goal of our calling realize that we are to become like God as far as this is possible for human beings. But we cannot become like God unless we have knowledge of Him, and without lessons there will be no knowledge. Instruction begins with the proper use of speech, and syllabus and words are the elements of speech. (On the Holy Spirit 1.2)

Word and deed go together for St John: a priest with a gift for oratory undermines what he says if he is not himself striving to live the life that he speaks about; and likewise, an exemplary life, without a good apologia for one’s faith, can easily be misunderstood by others, and will not necessarily lead them into the life of Christ. This is the ultimate aim of their teaching: to lead disciples, both by what they do and what they say, into the way of that blessed life which Christ commanded. Example alone is not sufficient.” (On the Priesthood 4.8)

If the priest is to shepherd his people into growth in life and faith and spiritual understanding, then he must devote his energy to the development of the means by which alone he can do this:

In short, to meet all these difficulties, there is no help given but that of speech, and if any be destitute of this power, the souls of those who are put under his charge (I mean of the weaker and more meddlesome kind) are no better off than ships continually storm tossed. So that the Priest should do all that in him lies, to gain this means of strength. (On the Priesthood 4.5)

Words are important; and finding the right words is indispensable, not necessarily those of worldly rhetorical beauty, but certainly those which enable the communication of the Gospel to others, the ministry of the Word. This is, for St John, the means by which the priest carries out his ministry. When we contemplate St John as “the Golden-Mouthed,” and consider how he is celebrated alongside Sts Basil and Gregory as a Great Hierarch and Universal Teacher, we should take to heart the importance of this verbal dimension of the priestly art, the art of arts.

The Pastoral Power of Theology

This appreciation of the verbal dimension of the pastoral art, in turn, helps us to appreciate better the pastoral nature of theology itself. The discipline of theology has fragmented in various unfortunate ways. During the course of the first millennium, a student of theology was formed by the discipline of reading Scripture in the context of the tradition of the Fathers and the liturgical life of the Church. But during the course of the second millennium, this unified discipline has fallen apart, for various reasons. One key factor is the systematization of theology over many centuries into handbooks of dogmatic theology which are then drawn upon to provide the categories by which the writings of the Fathers can be categorized, so that theology itself comes to be seen as an abstract discipline, a system of dogmas.

Think of how many books on Church History or Patristics divide up the theological reflection of the early Church into various periods corresponding to modern systematic categories: the “Trinitarian” debates of the fourth century (clarifying how we speak of unity and multiplicity in God, a divine arithmetic as it were), followed by the “Christological” debates of the following centuries (explaining how one of the divine Persons became incarnate). Dogmatics or systematic theology (and consequently the reading of the Fathers) has become an abstract discourse about God, only occasionally providing a quotation from Scripture.  Scriptural study, on the other hand, tends to set out on the quest to discover “the real history” behind the text, or the history of the text, uninformed by or unengaged with the theological positions of those who had been reading the Scriptures for centuries.

Theology has become an abstract, neutral discourse about God. If one looks the word up in a dictionary, one will find that the term “theology” is comprised of theos-God and logos-word/discourse and so the definition of theology is “words about God.” It is a discipline that speaks about God, his revelation and relation to the world. Theology is therefore analogous to geology or zoology, it just happens that its subject-matter is God, rather than the earth or animals.

With theology defined in this way, it is hard to see its pastoral implications. How does one, for instance, explain the pastoral dimension of the term consubstantial when it is understood as part of the language about God. And so it is not surprising that a whole field of “pastoral theology” has opened up in the past century, as a separate discipline, more often than not drawing upon what the social sciences have to offer: how to counsel people in various situations, work with addictions, look after different groups – youth, the aged etc. I’m not suggesting that these are not necessary, but I would question whether they are in fact theology.

Even to insist that prayer is also essential for true theology, following the saying of Evagrius that

“one who prays is a theologian, and a theologian is one who prays” (On Prayer 66),

is not enough: we would be giving a prayerful aspect to our current understanding of theology, rather than asking if by the high title of “theology” (or “prayer” for that matter), the fathers understood something else.

The apophatic aspect of orthodox theology should caution us against thinking that theology can simply be words about God, as if theological statements are “informative propositions” about God “out there,” as if he were subject to our investigation and scrutiny, to be described by our objective and unengaged words about him. The Fathers knew very well that God is not “out there,” at least if we are using the word “is” in any way commensurate with how we speak about creation and ourselves. As St Gregory Palamas put it, God

“is not a being, if others are beings, and if He is a being, the others are not beings”:

as the creator of all being, God is not a part of “being,” and as such, we cannot use the word “is” with respect to God in the same manner in which we use it of ourselves and created reality, even if we do so prayerfully.

For the early Christians, theology was not a matter of speaking about God. Indeed, the presumption and arrogance of such a discourse would have been shocking to them, if even comprehensible—as if we can look upon, and thereby stand over, God to describe him and his activity in neutral, uninvolved terms.  Instead of speaking about God, theology was more specifically the affirmation of the divinity of the crucified and exalted Lord, Jesus Christ.  As an anonymous writer at the end of the second century put it, in the Scriptures and the writings of many Christians “Christ is spoken of as God” (lit. “Christ is theologized”);  likewise, he continued, “all the psalms and hymns which were written by the faithful from the beginning, hymn Christ as the Word of God, speaking of him as God” (lit. “theologizing him”).  For St Athanasius the Great, it was writers of Scripture, such as David, who are “theologians”; and the apostles, such as Paul “who speaks of the Savior himself,” are also “theologians,” especially the evangelist John, “the theologian.” They are the theologians in a unique and unrepeatable manner, for it is they who spoke and wrote about Christ; those who “theologize” Christ thereafter, do so on the basis of their account.

One can perhaps be even more specific about this. From the end of the second century, the Gospel of John was widely regarded as being the most “spiritual” amongst the Gospels, and the Evangelist thereafter was known in Church tradition as “the theologian,” a title he eventually came to share with St Gregory the Theologian, and later on with St Symeon the New Theologian.  While the bestowal of this honorific upon these figures is often explained in terms of their lofty theology and their poetic and forceful writing, a more immediate and specific reason would be that they each “theologized” in a particular manner:  the Gospel of John contains the clearest affirmation that Christ is “my Lord and my God” (20.28)”; St Gregory, unlike St Basil, unabashedly affirmed that, even if the Scriptures do not speak of the Holy Spirit as “God,” nevertheless “God” the Spirit is, for that is how Scripture speaks of him, even if not using the term theos; and St Symeon reverses the biblical affirmation that

“God is light” (1 Jn 1.5)

to approach the divine Light asking

“My God, is it you?” and hearing the reply “Yes, I am God who became man for your sake and behold I have made you, as you see, and will make you into a god.”

Theology as Confession

To understand further the particular nature of theological discourse, we must look more closely at how the first “theologians” spoke about Christ.  It is a striking fact that, with one exception, the disciples are presented in the canonical Gospels as continually failing to understand who Jesus is.  The one time that Peter confesses that Jesus is

“the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Mat 16.16)

—a confession following which Jesus begins to explain how he must go to Jerusalem to suffer, die and be raised—Peter is then called “Satan” for attempting to get between Christ and his Cross (Mat 16.23).

Whatever the disciples heard about Jesus’ birth from his mother, or about his baptism from others, whatever divine teachings they themselves heard from his lips or miracles they saw him doing with their own eyes, even transfigured on Tabor in glory—they abandoned him at the time of the Passion.  Neither did the empty tomb persuade them.  When the women arrive at the tomb early in the morning, they are perplexed, not knowing what to make of it being empty; they require an angel to explain what has happened.  The Christian faith is not based on the empty tomb, for this “bare fact” requires interpretation—was the body perhaps stolen?  The same holds true for the resurrectional appearances: when he appears, not only did they not recognize him, but they start telling him about this Jesus who was put to death, and that the tomb was found empty (Lk 24.22-4). The Christian faith is not based on the appearances of the risen Lord. It is only when the crucified and risen Christ opens the Scriptures to them to show how it was necessary for him to have gone to his Passion to enter his glory, that the disciples’ hearts began to burn, so that they were prepared to recognize him in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24.28-35).

The disciples did not come to a true knowledge of the revelation of God in Christ by hearing reports about his birth, nor by accompanying him for a period of time. This simply reflects the fact that the usual methods of human knowledge—scientific analysis, historical inquiry or philosophical reflection—are inadequate when the desired object of knowledge is God, for God is not subject to human, physical or mental, perception, but shows himself as and when he wills, just as the risen Christ comes and goes at his own pleasure, and, as we have seen, disappears from sight once he is recognized, so that he does not remain as an external object for our scrutiny (we are to become his body, his tangible and perceptible presence in this world).  Neither was it merely seeing Christ on the cross that prompted the disciples, finally, to know the Lord, nor even the report about the empty tomb or the encounter with the risen Christ: the tomb is empty, but this in itself is ambiguous, and when he appears he is not immediately recognized.

Rather, the disciples came to recognize the Lord as the one whose Passion is spoken of by the Scriptures (meaning what we call “the Old Testament”) and encountered in the breaking of the bread, at which point, consuming his offering, they become his body. These two complementary ways—the engagement with the Scriptures, understanding how Christ

“died according to the Scriptures and was raised according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15.3-5),

and sharing in the Lord’s meal,

“proclaiming his death until he comes” (1 Cor 11.26)

—are what Paul has received and handed down (from the Lord himself in the case of the eucharistic meal) to later generations (cf. 1 Cor 11.23, 15.3).  They are, as it were, the matrix and the sustenance of the Christian tradition, within which theology speaks.

If this is so, then Christian theology proceeds by reflecting upon the crucified and risen Christ understood through the medium of the Scriptures (the “Old Testament”) in the context of the liturgy. This one is

“the image of the invisible God,”

“in whom the fullness of divinity dwelt bodily” (Col 1.15, 2.9)

—there is no surplus of divinity, as it were, elsewhere, to be discovered by any other means. Christian theology is intrinsically confessional and scriptural, in the sense that it does not simply affirm a mere “historical” statement, for instance, that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate,” something that anyone on hand that day could have verified. Instead, theology affirms that the one who was crucified is the Son of God; this is a confession of faith, and one, moreover, that the disciples were able to make only once the risen Christ opened the Scriptures to them.

And as a confession, it also makes demands upon those who profess their belief: the affirmation that, as St Athanasius put it,

“the one who ascended the cross is the Word of God,”

is only truly demonstrated by those who “put on the faith of the cross” and, by their death in baptism and manner of living thereafter, become the body of Christ born again in the Virgin Mother, the Church.

Transformative Word

Having considered briefly how theological language developed—what is its starting point and mode of operation—we also gain an insight into how theology speaks, and what it does.

The fourth-century assertion that the Son is “consubstantial” with the Father, for instance, should not be taken as an attempt to define how two persons relate to each other “out there,” in the articulation of a “Trinitarian theology,” but as an affirmation that what we see in Christ, as proclaimed by the apostles, is what it is to be God, yet other than the one he calls Father, and that this is known only in and through the Spirit, who is therefore also what it is to be God.

Likewise, the Chalcedonian Definition is not an attempt to articulate a better metaphysics of personhood, but the affirmation that divinity and humanity are found together with the same “face,” in the same “being”: that is, that we do not have to look to this to see what it is to be God, and to that to see what it is to be human—both are revealed to us in one and the same, as the Definition puts it,

“without confusion, change, division or separation.”

And this fact—that Christ reveals to us his Father and shows us what it is to be divine, by an action, death, which is all-too-human—is what makes all theology a transformative, and truly pastoral, discourse. The one who before the Passion was known by the disciples as human, after the Passion is recognized by them (through the opening of the Scriptures) to be divine—the very same one! This means, to express it as forcefully as I can, that it is in and through the action that expresses all the weakness, impotence and futility of our created human nature—our subjection to death—in and through this, Christ shows himself to be truly divine, voluntarily taking this upon himself.

As one tries to comprehend this, one is simply lost for words.

It is perhaps not surprising that our all-too-human response to the revelation of God in the crucified and exalted Christ, understood through the Scriptures by the power of the Spirit, is to talk about something else—to make theology into an abstract discourse, or, like Peter before the Passion, to try to separate Christ from the cross. In one way or another, all the various heresies, against which the Fathers fought, attempted to dissolve the apparent paradox of Christ showing us what it is to be God through how he lived and died as human—or rather, died and lived, for it is his death which then enables the disciples to understand what he did before.

The Docetists denied that he was truly human, claiming that he only appeared to be such. Arius denied that he was truly divine, for how can one who is as divine as the Father, suffer in such a manner? Dioodore, Theodore and Nestorius, though affirming his full humanity in a manner palatable to today’s taste, do so at the expense of separating his divinity from his humanity: Christ no longer shows us what it is to be divine in the way that he is human, and so we remain, once again, separated from God.

The clear testimony of Scripture is that

“Man shall not see God and live” (Ex 33.20).

Even in the case of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, our recognition of him coincides, as we saw, with his disappearance from sight. What we are left to contemplate is his activity, that which St Gregory of Nyssa describes as

“the transcendent power of divinity.”

And as God is the creator of all, this transcendent power can only be manifest in that which is other than he. In fact, St Gregory continues, this is the central mystery of the apostolic proclamation:

All who preach the Word point out the marvel of the mystery in this respect: that

‘God was manifested in the flesh’ (1 Tim 3.16),

that

‘the Word was made flesh’ (Jn 1.14),

that

‘the Light shone in the darkness’ ([Jn 1.5),

‘the Life tasted death’ (Heb 2.9),

and all such declarations which the heralds of the faith announce, whereby is increased the marvel of him who manifested the superabundance of his power by means external to his own nature.

What is beheld in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the transcendent power of divinity manifested in that which is not divine—in flesh, in darkness and in death. Yet this manifestation is simultaneously their transformation: the darkness no longer remains dark but is illumined; Christ’s death becomes the source of life to all who take up their cross to die to the world and sin; and human flesh is now flesh of the divine Word of God, and becomes Word, for we perceive the Incarnate Word in the apostolic proclamation of the crucified and exalted Christ, while the place where the Word becomes incarnate is now those who confess him, who are his body.

This transformative power of the Word of God is at work now in the confession of Christ. When the disciples finally come to confess Christ, they must also confess their own complicity in his death. Responding to his threefold denial of Christ, Peter must affirm three times that he loves Christ. And in both events he is standing by a charcoal fire (Jn 18.18, 21.9)—an allusion to the vision of Isaiah, who, after seeing the Lord enthroned in his heavenly temple, cried out:

“Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts,”

but then saw a seraphim place in his mouth a burning coal taken from the altar, with the words

“Behold this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sins forgiven” (Is 6.1-7).

Likewise before the persecutor Saul becomes the apostle Paul, he is confronted by the Lord asking

“Why do you persecute me?”

and is converted, recovering his sight and receiving baptism and the Holy Spirit through one of the persecuted members of the body of Christ (Acts 9.1-19). Whereas previously Paul held that while persecuting the Church he was

“blameless as to righteousness under the law” (Phil 3.6),

now persuaded that Christ is indeed the savior of all, the only conclusion he could draw was that all stood in need of salvation. Only now could he contrast Adam, through whose disobedience sin and death entered the world, with Christ, whose righteousness has become the means of life (Rom 5.12-14). The solution comes first, and then the problem is discerned.

The transforming vision that the encounter with Christ effects with respect to the comprehension of the Scriptures, brings about a similar transformation in our own lives. Before the encounter with the Christ proclaimed according to the Scriptures, we do not understand that—and how—we are sinful. We might know that we have some problems, but we usually think that we can overcome them, should we want to (through the means offered us by various therapies and counseling, should we need them). It is also clear to us that the world is beset by problems; but if we are honest, we would probably say that, if only everyone were to agree with us, most of these problems would be resolved. That we are sinful, broken and subject to death, to the very core of our being, is something that we can only begin to comprehend in the light of Christ, a light which simultaneously forgives, redeems and recreates. When we think about ourselves, we think of all the various experiences that we have had, told from the vantage point of the present, and that past acting in the present in ways of which we are largely unaware, and so to which we are subject unknowingly and involuntarily.

But the encounter with Christ provides a new, and yet eternal, vantage point from which to understand one’s own past: we are invited to see our own past retold as nothing less than our own “salvation history.” In this nothing is left aside or glossed over, as being too shameful or painful, something that we would prefer to forget, but which even as “forgotten” continues to act negatively in the present. Rather, just as it was in and through that which is all-too-human, his death, that Christ shows himself to be God, so also it is in and through our sinfulness and brokenness that we come to know the transforming and loving power of God, not that we should thereby sin some more, as Paul warns (Rom 6.1-2), but to see ever more clearly how deep our brokenness extends.

“It is,” St Isaac of Syria affirmed, “a spiritual gift of God to be able to perceive one’s own sins,”

and such a one is greater than those who see angels or raise the dead by their prayers.

To plumb the depth of our fallenness is to scale the heights of divine love. The more we are given the grace to see in this way, the more we begin to understand how everything is encompassed within the divine works of God: standing in the light of Christ, we can see him as having led us through our whole past, preparing us to encounter him. He alone knows the reason why he has led each of us on our particular path, for we walk by faith not by sight (2 Cor 5.7), but it is a faith that all things are in the hands of Christ, and that

“in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Rom 8.28).

In this way, then, such theology is not merely words about God, but a living and active word. It does not merely report what happened in the past, nor pretend to describe, objectively and in an uninvolved manner, a God who is “out there” and his dealings with creation. It is nothing less than the proclamation of the Word of God to this world, allowing it to be at work through us here and now.

Such are some of the things that are implied by St John’s attention to words as the tools of the priest, when his words convey the Word of God, such that the Word is dynamically effective even now, transforming the vision, understanding, and reality of those willing to hear.

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Any part of the Scriptures you like to choose is inspired by God. The Holy Spirit composed the Scriptures so that in them, as in a pharmacy open to all souls, we might each of us be able to find the medicine suited to our own particular illness.

Thus, the teaching of the Prophets is one thing, and that of the Historical books is another. And, again, the Law has one meaning, and the advice we read in the Book of Proverbs has a different one.

But the Book of Psalms contains everything useful that the others have. It predicts the future, it recalls the past, it gives directions for living, it suggests the right behavior to adopt. It is, in short, a jewel case in which have been collected all the valid teachings in such a way that individuals find remedies just right for their cases.

It heals the old wounds of the soul and gives relief to recent ones. It cures the illnesses and preserves the health of the soul.

Every Psalm brings peace, soothes the internal conflicts, calms the rough waves of evil thoughts, dissolves anger, corrects and moderates profligacy.

Every Psalm preserves friendship and reconciles those who are separated. Who could actually regard as an enemy the person beside whom they have raised a song to the one God?

Every Psalm anticipates the anguish of the night and gives rest after the efforts of the day. It is safety for babes, beauty for the young, comfort for the aged, adornment for women.

Every Psalm is the voice of the Church.

HT: Mystagogy

- Commentary on Psalm 1, by Saint Basil the Great, 4th century.

Translation by Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI – Spencer, MA, 1994.

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On this post, we invite and want to encourage comments. I think that few clergy would argue with the instructions given below, but how many will do them or even stand up for them? Note especially the very first injunction, and it’s relationship to preaching.

Study, O priest, to make yourself a blameless worker, rightly proclaiming the word of truth.

Never stand at the Synaxis having hatred toward anyone so as not to banish the Comforter.

On the day of the Synaxis do not judge, do not argue, but remain praying and reading in the church until the appointed hour in which you will accomplish the divine and sacred ceremonies; and thus stand with compunction and purity of heart in the holy sanctuary, not looking around here and there, but standing with shuddering and fear before the heavenly King.

Do not, because of human weakness, hasten through or cut short the prayers, neither try to please persons, but look only toward the King Who is present and the hosts of Angels that surround Him.

Make yourself worthy by the holy canons.

Do not concelebrate with whom it is forbidden.

See in Whose presence you stand, how you serve and to whom you dispense.

Do not ignore the Master’s commandment and those of the holy Apostles,

“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw pearls before swine.”

See that you do not deliver the Son of God into the hands of the unworthy.

Do not feel ashamed before those who are glorious on earth, neither before him who happens to wear the crown at the time.

To those worthy of Communion dispense the Gifts freely, as you also have received.

Do not dispense unto him who does not observe the divine canons.

See that you do not let moth, nor mouse, nor any other thing touch the Divine Mysteries out of negligence, neither allow them to be exposed to dampness or smoke or to be contaminated by the unholy or the unworthy.

These things and such things preserve in order to save yourself and those who heed you.

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Our father among the saints Basil the Great (ca. 330 – January 1, 379), was bishop of Caesarea, a leading churchman in the 4th century. The Church considers him a saint and one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, together with Saints Gregory the Theologian (Gregory Nazianzus) and John Chrysostom. Basil, Gregory the Theologian, and Basil’s brother Saint Gregory of Nyssa are called the Cappadocian Fathers.

The Roman Catholic Church also considers him a saint and calls him a Doctor of the Church.

Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us “in a mystery” by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay—no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the Church. For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the Gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more. To take the first and most general example, who is thence who has taught us in writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? What writing has taught us to turn to the East at the prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching.  [...]

… we all look to the East at our prayers, but few of us know that we are seeking our own old country, Paradise, which God planted in Eden in the East.

– St. Basil the Great (ca. A.D. 329-379), On the Holy Spirit, 27:66

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