LETTERS TO REFORMED CHRISTIANS
Dear . . .
It's rare enough to find an Evangelical that mentions the Trinity. A local Evangelical clergyman refused to demand that converts call Jesus "God"--just Lord and Savior (like a Roman demigod); and some Evangelicals are said to baptize in the name of Jesus only. So it’s refreshing to find a real Trinitarian--even should you accept the Latins’ Filioque,--which the Orthodox have always viewed as cacodox (for reasons given on the Filioque page of this website).
My only slightly negative comment would refer to one expression in your statement of belief, which I admittedly read in a hurry--where you say "God" created all that has been made. Not that that is false, but isn't it important to say Who--Which Person? Let me back up my question with the following. While the Father is the font and source of all being, uncreated as well as created, the New Testament specifically states (John 1:1,3 and a few Pauline passages) that it was the LOGOS "Reason of God" Who created all that has been created. (We Orthodox equate the LOGOS with YHWH, as in Luke 1:43: "Mother of YHWH." We inscribe on icons of the Savior o ON [Ex. 3:14 in the LXX, whose MSS are centuries older than any dated Hebrew MSS].) I would think that there is an ontological reason for saying that one and the same Person is both Creator and the incarnate Savior. (I realize that the Incarnation and Resurrection do not in Reformed thinking have the ontological role they have in Orthodoxy,* and that we place greater onus on the religious consequences of the Incarnation, viz. on the roles/functions of materiality [Mysteries (sacraments)] and time [tradition] in worship and piety than others do.) The Orthodox link the LOGOS to creation AND Incarnation in such a way that the potential (dýnamis) of pre-fallen Creation is energized by the Incarnation for a "new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17, Gal. 6:15; we call the week following holy Pascha the fast-free "Week of [the New] Creation")-- especially with reference to human natures. Note that in Greek in the last centuries before Christ's Birth and afterwards, a dýnamis is a potential that gets actuated or actualized (realized, i.e. made real) by an energy. The Incarnation restored human nature (and the Old Testament individuals who were faithful to YHWH) to a potential for Salvation--which for us is Divinization (partaking of the divine Energies; not Deification, that is, a partaking of the imparticipable Divine Essence). The way that this potential gets energized or realized in a faithful Christian is through that believer’s unity with Christ, partaking of His Life--the uncreated Energy of Grace. Divinization or partaking of the Energies of the divine Nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and, as a member of Christ, letting Christ (in accord with Philp. 2:13) perform good works in His members that are pleasing to God leads to the reception of more Grace for Grace (John 1:26). The resurrection of the bodies of the faithful is also a material factor in Salvation, just as are the water of Baptism, the oil of Chrismation, and the bread and wine of the holy Eucharist--not to speak of icons, relics, etc. Time is the essence of the holy tradition, which over time (for 2000 years) has been, according to John 16:13, under the guidance of the all-holy Spirit, sifting a collectively arrived at consensus on truth out of the melee of opinions on each mooted point of belief and practice.
This rôle of matter and time as vehicles of spiritual Energy (Grace) contrasts with the Gnosticism that rejected religious rôles for created matter and time and, if it admitted Incarnation and Resurrection at all, interpreted their role “morally” or in some other non-ontological way. Of the Incarnation, St. John of Damaskos said, "I do not worship matter, but I worship the Creator of matter, Who became matter and through matter saved me" (I'm quoting from memory), thus addressing Gnostic repudiators of matter and especially the (Islamic-influenced) political authorities' iconoclastic views prior to the sixth ecumenical Synod. This may be a long-winded way of defending a position holding that one should go a step beyond saying God created the world to saying that God the Son created the cosmos--and also beyond allocating to the Incarnation simply a moral or teaching role or making it no more than a stepping stone to Christ's Resurrection--which is also understood ontologically, as well as soterially, in the East. (I'm glad our calendar calls this the 2000th year "of the Incarnation”--which I like better than the Western annus humanae salvationis. What did surprise me in your site’s statement of belief was (I haven't measured it literally) that approximately half of it is juridically oriented--on ecclesiastical government, civil politics, even private property, and so on!
Well, if your patience has endured thus far, I come to my other main point now, viz. your very nice site’s reference to the 1611 Bible (or some later recension of it). I would advert to the KJV's Greek-language error of calling the Creator a "Word." (Old Latin sermo "saying" selected the most basic of the twenty-odd meanings of lógos (with a small "l") in place of the meaning for LOGOS (with capital "l") common to all philosophers in the first centuries before and after the Birth of Christ. It was Jerome, I think, that changed sermo to verbum in the Vulgate--hardly an improvement. But the idea that a word made the world is wholly untenable and betrays ignorance of the meaning prevalent among philosophers at the time of Jesus--specifically the influential usage of Philo the Jew, whose life overlapped that of OLGS Jesus Christ. I should add that logoscould mean “word” in the marked sense of a promise, command, or the like; cf. English “Give ’em the word” [signal, command], “She kept her word” [promise].) But that aside, my real point involves the Greek Bible's words for "energy" & "energize."
This is where we get a paradigm difference between East and West. On dýnamis and enéryeia as the actuator/actualizer of a dýnamis in the New Testament, see, for example, Abbot-Smith's Manual Greek lexicon of the New Testament; this relationship had come into the Greek language and conceptuology from Aristotle’s Metaphysics the way our use of space and many other everyday words have in recent times come into English from scientific thinking. Energy even defines a nature and characterizes an essence. The absence of the Biblical energy concept that sets Western theology apart from the paradigm of early Christianity is due to a framework totally different from the Greek-language framework of the Apostolic writers. If Grace is uncreated Energy (the Life of Christ) in Orthodoxy, the Western Christians hold that Grace is either a created habitus non-operativus or form of the soul (in Latin theology) or a virtual (imputed) reality (in the Reformation paradigm). Each of these meanings is dictated by the three paradigms or conceptual frameworks--a subject treated in various contributions to this website. The explanation for the innovative Western paradigms lies in acknowledging that the West got cut off from its early-Christian Hebrew-influenced Hellenic framework by 750 years of barbaric and illiterate Latin-Teutonic Dark Ages, and that the cognitive framework that followed that hiatus (the two late-Mediaeval paradigms) were taken from a third-hand Aristotle--Latin translations of Arabic translations, themselves renderings of Greek (mostly done at the institute established in Damaskos for translating Greek philosophers, physicians, astronomers, etc., etc. into Arabic, though earlier work had been done on Aristotle by Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians).
To make what I say concrete, I will just take two or three New Testament passages to illustrate what I view as the error of mistranslating the energy words; they are used many times by St. Paul (these are listed on file:///D:/WWROOT%20ONLINE/ORLAPUBS-R/R75.html). (It is true of languages in general that, while a given language can say "the same thing" as another language--if it lies in the common experience of their speakers--it often has to say that "same thing" in a different manner. People do their thinking according to the categories of their native language[s]. (In what follows--I'm quoting from memory--as I lack the time to make everything superprecise:)
--Philp. 2:13: "For it is God energizing you all both to will and to energize for the sake of pleasing Him." In the energy paradigm of Biblical and Patristic Greek, Grace is the uncreated Life of Christ, and membership in Christ is thus ontological--participating in the uncreated Life of Christ--His Energies. It is of course more than an imputative/juridical/foederal-covenantal participation, But since willing is an energy, the Reformation paradigm and the outlook of recent Latin theologians differ slightly less from that of the early Christians than does the Thomistic view of Grace as a created habit or form/quality of the soul. But conversely, both the Thomist view and the East consider will to be dependent on reason (knowing the choices and their consequences) if willing is to be free, whereas the via moderna that Luther claimed allegiance to unabashedly put will first--and Luther re-defined fides “faith” as will-based fiducia “trust, loyalty.” (No one can deny that both the Thomistic and Scotist-Ockhamist [Nominalist, via moderna] paradigms were invented over a dozen centuries after the Apostles.) If one sets out from the Biblical-Greek paradigms, however, we see in Philp. 2:13 that if good works pleasing to God are those that Christ's members agree to allow their Head to perform through them, there can be no conflict between Grace (as energy) and the good works of Christ's members, which result in Grace for Grace (John 1:16).** The trick, of course, is to be able to think across paradigms; the Orthodox think the energetic paradigm more in accord with current scientific thinking, though of course energy in this or that science paradigm cannot (by definition) be identical with our energy.
--Gal. 2:20 is ontological in the Greek-language framework--members sharing Christ’s life really and truly--not virtually. (Before the Latins got their culture from Islamic Cordova, after having lost all lineal connection with Greek culture during the 750-year-long barbaric and illiterate Dark Ages, the juridical framework had already long existed in the West; all four founders of Western theology had been lawyers--Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine--of whom three were from Semitic [Phoenician] Carthage. And the German groups that dominated Latin Europe during the Dark Ages also had a will-based, juridical outlook.)
--Gal. 5:6 speaks of "faith being energized by love," that is, faith's potential coming alive, being made real, or actuated by love--an energy.. (The West has always treated love as a matter of the will, just as Luther redefined fides "belief" volitionally as fiducia "trust, loyalty." But then Luther also deuterocanonized the books of the NT that disagreed with his views; his German Bible has them in an Appendix at the end--a manoeuvre that made it easy for him to claim his views as “Biblical.” Luther’s exegesis is said to have been highly influenced by Nicholas of Lyra, who in turn was quite indebted to Avicebron, an a Jewish thinker of Cordova who wrote in Arabic.)
One can argue whether God's plan to embed and propagate the holy Gospel in the Greek language (at a time when Greek and Hebrew culture crossed--in Galilee [Tiberias] no less than in Tarsos) had a cognitive goal above and beyond a fortuitous time and place. But insofar as one sees the Greek language (and the Hebrew-influenced early Christian culture embedded in that language) as formative, one has got to take seriously the "words" used. If you contrast this with Luther's virtual reality (simul justus simul peccator) and his "Believe, and you've eaten" (probably Crede et manducavisti),*** not to speak of his re-defining "faith" and Calvin's virtual-reality Lord's Supper, you find yourself in a wholly different thought world (conceptual framework or paradigm) from what existed in the Greek Christianity of the authors of the New Testament books. (Assuming the Church was infallible, the result of her final selection in the later fourth century of which books to include and which to exclude was infallible; otherwise, not. The Apocalypse barely made it and is not found in the Church’s rites.)
So whether I can or cannot imagine a Hebrew or Greek in the Apostolic age thinking in the Reformation manner is not worth discussing from one point of view, since one could argue that virtual reality is implicit in Hebraic convenantalism. I can think of no example of that. One would have to come up with examples to prove otherwise.
The use of paradigms (in most disciplines today) represents an acknowledgement that a given X (e.g. "Grace" above) is understood paradigmwise--and in such a manner that that understanding "is unaffected by additional knowledge." So one is not just speaking of a list of items but advocating a retiform outlook in which each item is related to each other item. Anyhow, how this is related to the correctness of the KJV or other translations can only be understood and analysed in terms of paradigms. Note, e.g., that sárx "flesh" is often rendered as "sinful nature" in the NIV--a purely Gnostic rendering since natures cannot sin--only people can. The Orthodox do not of course believe in inherited or transferable guilt (guilt is wholly personal.) All of this comes down to saying that if energize is mistranslated (in Philp. 2:13, Gal. 5:6, and the many other places where the energy words occur), one has already stepped out of the early-Christian paradigm into a different thought world--one invented no less than a dozen centuries after the Apostles. You may well disagree, but one would be hard pressed to defend the hypothesis that "worketh in” means to a native-speaker of English what "energizes" meant to first-century Paul or to a native-speaker of English; to an Orthodox, “energ[ize]” still means what it has always meant.
When the Latins got their conceptual framework from Cordova, it was the Franciscans and Augustinians especially that emphasized will--vocally and explicitly. (While the Thomists took the earlier view that knowing is presupposed in truly willing, they ontologized knowing to the extent of saying that really knowing God is to become ontologically (entitatively) a partaker of His uncreated essence [2 Pet. 1:4 says "nature," which is functional or energetic], where the Orthodox just simply speak in terms of real being in the form of real energy. (An Orthodox person does not believe that God's Essence is unknowable or that the divine uncreated Essence is participable.) Scotus and Ockham changed foreknowing into fore-willing, since in their will-based framework, one cannot foreknow what one doesn't fore-cause. But other Islamic influences (beyond the idea of predestination) are seen in the emphasis on the word/the book, in Calvin's anti-iconism and juridicalism (he permitted only the Ten Commandments to be inscribed on the walls of his meeting houses), and so on. These Arabic-Semitic focuses were easy to justify with Old Testament passages.
So the concluding thought is: Is the KJV Bible (as it stands) really a proper translation in the passages under scrutiny? This question cannot be answered just by looking at certain terms in isolation; one has got to ask if the orientation or paradigm of the seventeenth-century translators was like that of ancient Jewish-influenced Hellenism or not. Clearly the twenty-century translation of sárx as sinful nature is Gnostic--impossible to defend in any other framework, since natures cannot sin--sin and guilty being personal. (Of course, one can inherit the ill effects of another’s sin--the way a child born with AIDS does--but not that person’s guilt or virtue. Merit is not transferable unless two persons are one.)
If you have got any thoughts in re, I'd like to hear them. Why? I find it's best to go to those of a very different outlook to detect the holes in my own thinking patterns--which manoeuvre works (energizes?) only if I maintain an open mind.
in Christ God,
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*Speaking of paradigms: From the Hebrew framework, the Orthodox got a high respect for created matter and time--and the rôle of the body in worship and, in Salvation, the indispensable rôle of the resurrection of the body, not to mention the rôle we attribute to time and tradition in Christianity. The Gnostics rejected created matter and time in their religious thinking; they accepted the very Hellenic (but un-Christian) view that dispensed with any rôle for time and matter in religion. The Incarnation, they claimed, had only a moral value--if they even accepted it in the first place--which they usually did not. But the Orthodox avoid the will-first outlook of the Hebrew paradigm and embrace the more tenable Hellenic conceptual paradigm--following the pattern set by St. John, the author of the fourth Gospel, and St. Paul; both called Jesus the (theoretical) Reason of God, and St. Paul thought of him also as the Wisdom (practical reason) of God. The Great Temple in Constantinople is dedicated to Christ the Holy Wisdom (Áyia Sophía) of God. This Eastern Christian point of view rejects the primacy of will over intellect as well as its accompanying juridical focus. The early Christians accepted the Hellenic idea that will is subordinate to reason (lógos), since without knowing what choices are available and the consequences of each are, the will is not really free. This didn’t matter in the Reformation paradigm, where the will in not free at all events, and the Image of God (reason and freewill) were lost in the Fall. It’s strange but very interesting that one gets such different emphases among Christians: being in Orthodoxy; intellect in Aquinas and the later Latins; and will in the via moderna that Luther embraced (following the Franciscans and Augustinians; he was a monk of the latter order).
**Our Liturgy makes it clear that Christ is both Offerer and Offered. One speaks, of course, of the essential elements (Anaphora, Oblatio) of Sacrifice, not the non-repeatable Immolation (Mactation) of a living victim in the subset of sacrifices that are propitiatory. This is clear in the Orthodox eucharistic concept of the “bloodless Sacrifice of the Altar.”
***I need not remind us that both Greek and Latin had literal and literal-figurative words for "eat." Both Greek words are found in John 6:48-58--the literal term more than the other. This explains why "many" of Jesus's disciples, Jews whose kosher law forbade consuming blood, "went away." It is an example of how many different things hang together in a holistic outlook.
xiv
Dear . . .
There is so much misinformation in the public press (Associated Press seems to be vastly more off course than local newspaper articles) about holy Orthodoxy. We should welcome the attention--but do something to discourage the misinformation. May I comment on three recent items (the last two of which--I would in fairness like to point out--come from a very sympathetic and overall accurate report)? 1. We are told that that Orthodoxy and Rome "split in 1054 over the issue of papal authority." I personally think we should first concentrate on HOW they split, then deal with the WHYs, and only afterwards get to our *list* of WHATs (on which see point 2). --(a) The Latin-Teutonic Dark Ages began ca. 476 and lasted about 750 years: It was a time of barbaric living in which even the highest authorities were illiterate, food was very deficient in necessary vitamins, and life expectancy averaged in the lower thirty-years-of-age; it was also a time of prevailing terror. Rome lost lineal connection with the original Greek-language early Christianity at the level of paradigms--thinkers' premises and assumptions about reality and, in this instance, Christianity.
--(b) How did this period end? It ended when a NEW CONCEPTUAL PARADIGM developed WITH NO LINEAL CONNECTION to the early Greek-language paradigm and the Eastern manner of conceptualizing reality--particularly with respect to enéryeia "energy." (This word and the corresponding verb occur frequently in the Pauline epistles of the New Testament, but are mistranslated in Latin, German, and English Bibles; cf. Philp. 2:13, Gal. 5:6, etc. (I pass over the Gnostic rendering of sárx "flesh" as "sinful nature" in various passages of the NIV Bible and the rendering of the LOGOS-Creator as a "Word.") When speaking with Latins, one can say that the "matter" or content (words) of the Bible, common to East and West, was "formed" or given different meanings by differing paradigms.
--(c) Where did the new paradigms come from? They came from third-hand Latin translations of Arabic translations of Greek philosophers (primarily Aristotle), physicians, astronomers, mathematicians (the Arabs invented al-gebra), and from commentaries on these made at the peak of Arabic-Muslim scholarship in Cordova (Spain)--a city even larger, with its 700 mosques, than Byzantion. The translations of Greek into Arabic, begun by Syriac-speaking Nestorians, were promoted by a special translation institute in Damaskos (where St. John of Damaskos was grand vizier to the great Umayyad Caliph). The Greek Aristotle was interpreted by the Arabs in a juridical framework, and the greatest Muslim and Jewish scholars of Cordova were--like Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine, the founders of Latin theology--also jurists. Incidentally, the Cordovan scholars were forced into exile when the Moors conquered southern Spain; Ibn Rushd (Averroes, a Muslim) and Ben Maimon (Maimonides, a Jew), who are counted among history's greatest scholars, fled to universities in Morocco, and the latter ended up as court physician in Cairo to the (even by Christians) universally admired Saladdin.
--(d) Two new paradigms developed from this source, embracing contrasting focuses of Cordovan Aristotelianism. Both constituted radical contrasts with the early Christian Greek-language paradigm--which focused on ontology, or being, in an energy-based framework or conceptuology.
==(i) The first Cordovan-derived paradigm arose in Paris among the Dominican friars: This Thomism emphasized intellect and even held that truly knowing something makes it part of the knower; unity with God's Essence (!) was and is held to be granted through an "intellectual" Vision of God. (The Orthodox think of a miraculous Transfiguration on Mt. Thavor, etc., in terms of uncreated energy; God's Essence is unknowable and imparticipable for the Orthodox.)
==(ii) The other paradigm might just as well be mentioned for purposes of comparison and completeness; it arose at Oxford and later in Paris among Franciscan friars and finally among the Augustinians (Luther's order): It put will ahead of being and knowledge. This Nominalism, or via moderna, was the paradigm in which the Reformers did their thinking. It accepts that the divine will supplants reality with virtual realities like Luther's simul justum et peccator "at the same time righteous [by imputation] and sinner [in reality]" and Calvin's Lord Supper. I emphasize that these three paradigms mould and impose vastly different imports on assertions that happen to be common to any two or all three. The basic gulf in Christianity is between East and West, not between the two Western paradigms of similar origin. I will confine myself here to (a) pointing out that paradigm effects are recognized in most other disciplines than theology; and (b) asking readers to consider Grace as an illustration: Saving Grace is uncreated energy in Orthodoxy; sanctifying Grace is, for Thomists, a non-operative (non-energetic) and created habit or form of the soul; for the Reformers, it is divine imputation--a virtual reality. Every other crucial term is similarly moulded by the premises or assumptions of the paradigm that a thinker sets out from and takes for granted. Incidentally, Luther's Biblical exegesis is reported to have been highly influenced by Nicholas of Lyra, who relied on the (Arabic-writing) Cordovan Jew--Avicebron. In order to be "Biblical," Luther relegated the New Testament books that disagreed with his theology to a kind of appendix at the end of his famous translation of the Bible into German.
==(iii) Reformation predestination, anti-iconism, focus on "the word" or "the book," and much of its will-based scheme of Salvation can be traced to Islamic Cordova (but the earlier Anselm was Germanic--a Lombard who became Archbishop of Canterbury). It was easy to justify such views when one read the Old Testament through the lens of the Scotist-Ockhamist (Franciscan) paradigm.
- We read that, "Orthodoxy and Catholicism are very close in belief and practice, . . . " when in fact there are 25 differences in belief alone--and most are logically (and paradigmatically) irreconcilable. The common misconception just quoted can be explained by noting how Orthodox and Latin (or Lutheran) delegates can agree on common words, words that have always been repudiated after the negotiators have returned home--i.e. to their own paradigms. The Orthodox have alwayslostin inter-faith encounters because they have consented (or been forced, as at Ferarra-Florence) to accept Western templates to frame the questions and answers--in the premises and assumptions of paradigms invented 12 or 13 centuries after the Apostles--paradigms radically different from the Orthodox conceptual framework, as just illustrated with "Grace."
- We read, in connection with a Latin priest's converting to holy Orthodoxy, that a "Holy Synod agreed to recognize his Roman Catholic ordination with the stipulation, etc.," when in reality Mysteries outside of Orthodoxy cannot be recognized as authentic. The Orthodox can recognize only their having a formal potential (ordýnamis) that can be energized and thus made real when they are brought within the Orthodox fold. For Latins, this (what the Orthodox call dýnamis) is enough for "validity"; the Orthodox require energization by authentic Grace in the Church if Mysteries are to be afthentiká "real, genuine, authentic."
I hope that various Orthodox parties can somehow make these realities known to the various media that come to their attention, since I think the media mostly have a sincere wish to portray us properly and only through ignorance (for which we are responsible) distort Orthodoxy without any intention of doing so. While this ignorance may have been inevitable when most Orthodox leaders were not native-speakers of English, the situation is different now: Native-speakers of English, who know the difference between Divinization (théosis by uncreated Energy) and Deification (apothéosis in Essence), are a majority in North American Orthodoxy, and the Orthodox now outnumber Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined--as well as Jews--who in turn are now outnumbered by Muslims. A politely written letter to the editor of a newspaper or TV station--in which it is clear that one is writing not just to complain but because one assumes that the leader of the news organization or publication would like to know of any reporting that has erred--carries the potential of setting the facts straight even if in only one of the numerous publications that comment on Orthodox happenings. Each step in the right direction is a plus for Orthodoxy.
in Christ God,
xv
Dear Sir:Thanks you for all your material on the web!
REPLY: Thank you for saying so.
In "WHAT DOES TODAY'S CHRISTIAN NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GNOSTICISM?" you make a remark that perhaps is mostly true... I was wondering if you would rejoice that it seems not as entirely true--that some Protestants are making some moves in a good direction regarding the soteriological role of the Resurrection
REPLY: If I knew where you are coming from, I could probably understand your comments a bit better. My own comments apply mainly to the Reformers. I know very little about current Protestantism except that the mainline groups have dropped many doctrines (including the all-holy Trinity) and the Evangelicals have reduced belief to four points or so--and a local Evangelical pastor didn't even demand that converts say "Jesus is God"--only that He is "Lord and Savior" (like a Roman demigod). Billy Graham's foundation does say that all three Persons are co-eternal but not what is essential--that They are co-essential and co-equal. I state the foregoing out of no desire to bemean anyone but just to explain my limited acquaintanceship with today's Protestantism--or rather, since some reject that term, Denominationism. I certainly don't rejoice in any retreat from the Orthodox Trinity, Incarnation, Resurrection, and Mysteries.
I also don't remember the details of the page on this site that you refer to; it was edited long ago. I will state that Luther adopted the two modernisms of his day--via moderna (Nominalist will-is-superior-to-intellect, as though a will could be free if it didn't know what the choices are and what the consequences of each choice are likely to be) and devotio moderna (a fairly Gnostic proto-Pietism that allowed him to say, "Believe, and you have received [the Body and Blood of Christ]" and to affirm that by willing it he could have the Lord's Supper any time at any place (both in one of his most famous treatises). Of the two paradigms invented in the Middle Ages, both derived from Islamic Aristotelianism in Cordova (a city even bigger and with more amenities than Vyzantion, at a time when all Latin-Teutonic cities had been reduced to villages), the Reformers' was the more Islamic--predestination, anti-iconism, emphasis on the word and the book--all of which were confirmed in the OT. Calvin added Sabbatarianism and made the walls of his church house like those of a mosque, the only decor allowed being words of the Law. (The Orthodox do not permit xerophagia [major fasting] on Sabbaths (except the day before Pascha) or on Lordsdays--called Resurrectiondays in Slav[on]ic.)YOU SAID: The Internet is full of Denominationist accounts of how to be
saved; but I have yet to see the Incarnation mentioned in connection with any
ontological import--i.e. it was simply a step toward Crucifixion put to use
by Jesus for His teachings--; I have yet to see the Resurrection mentioned
as a soterial event, and I have yet to see the resurrection of the body
mentioned as the event that culminates the Salvation of the faithful.)
REPLY: See the latest Barna Report online for what "born again" lay leaders don't believe in--the percentage that don't believe in the Holy Spirit, the necessity of Grace, etc. Gnosticism rejects an essential role for matter (Incarnation, bodily resurrection, Mysteries [sacraments]) and time (tradition; creation and Salvation were now taken to be instantaneous, not timeful [developmental]). All of this would have been unbelievable to a Greek-language Christian, including those at Rome, who continued speaking Greek into the third century. Luther's virtual sin (imputed sin and guilt) and virtual (imputed) righteousness and Calvin's virtual Body and Blood would have been unintelligible to an ancient; only the Gnosticism would have been recognized.
[CONTD.] The Resurrection is sort of an appendix that "tops off" the Crucifixion and reverses it. But it is noteworthy that Immolation is not essential to all Sacrifices (only propitiatory ones) and that the essence of Sacrifice is the Offering (Anaphora, Oblation); so for us, Pascha (the Resurrection) is the real victory of sin and satan, over death and decay. Of course, the Orthodox don't believe in inherited guilt (a moral inheritance) but only in inherited bad genes, viruses, and death (physical inheritances).
[CONTD.] The Reformers may have rejected the import of the Incarnation because of its association with the all-holy Theotokos, though Luke 1:43 has St. Elizabeth calling Jesus's Mother "the mother of YHWH." But I think it was their Gnosticism that bemeaned materiality and time in religion. Western Bibles are very misleading. Besides its absurdity, one could give at least five good reasons not to call the Creator a "Word" (John 1:1,3, etc.). They change the (h)omoisis "Assimilation to God" of Genesis into a static "Likeness"--the result of assimilation--and so miss the fact that the Icon of God was not lost (without reason and freewill, humans would become beasts), but rather the Assimilating Energy of God--Grace--that enables the potential of the Icon's reason and freewill to please God (Philp. 2:13)--that's what got lost. Then, there is 2 Pet. 1:4; when not ignored, it is thought of in the West as "Deification" (apotheosis, like that of Roman emperors) rather than the theosis or Divinization (partaking of the uncreated Energies of God--his Life) that it is.
[CONTD.] The root of all of these distortions of the Greek lies in the mistranslating of the energy words in the New Testament so as to obliterate any sense of "energy, energization, energetic." Cf. Philp. 2:13 in Greek. One awaits with great hope a new Orthodox NT in English that will be faithful to the original text. Seven-plus centuries of Teutonic Dark Ages broke the link with the ancient Eastern paradigm of early Christianity; when in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Cordovan (Islamic, Jewish) scholarship came to the West in Latin--and created a real sensation--, new paradigms were invented. The Latins' paradigm was different enough; invented a dozen centuries after the Resurrection, it hardly resembled early Christianity--but at least it did not put will first the way early Oxford scholars like Ben Marston affirmed--as of course Scotus and Ockham did after him. This was Luther's explicit framework and the implicit framework of the other Reformers. But when the devotio moderna was amalgamated with it, this form of Christianity was at opposite poles from early Greek-language Christianity on its inheritances from Semitic and Hellenistic fonts. Orthodoxy took its "matter" from the Hebrews and its intellectual "form" from the Greeks; but the Reformation took Gnosticism from the Greek (and Zoroastrian) heritage of Christianity and its juridical "form" from will-based Semitic thinking. While I urge you to look at the latest Barna Report about "born-again" lay leaders, I will look at two (at least) of the sites you recommend. I don't currently have time for more, and of course I cannot fail to see the tremendous errors made by Luther in inventing Protestantism in terms of his two modernisms, though Gnosticism wasn't really modern. It's too bad the Reformers didn't take St. Clement's (Philp. 4:3) Letter more seriously, as it was written prior to the later parts of the New Testament--as also no doubt Ignatios's letters. (Both were disciples of the Apostles, and both became bishops of two of the most important dioceses--later patriarchates.)
IF YOU WISH TO TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK . . . I INVITE IT.Thanks,
REPLY: I will be happy to discuss this with you, as I have time, but think you should give me an idea of where you are coming from.
Yours in Christ God,
ix
Dear . . .
Luther said that the Christian is "always a sinner, always repenting, always justified." Is that sheer heresy to an Orthodox? Unintelligible nonsense? Or something you also believe but express in different terminology? It's the other way around--or would be if we used the terminology. (Orthodox soteriology makes little use that juridical terminology-- satisfaction, atonement, redemption, justification, legal adoption, etc.) or the penal view of Christ's work. If we used the word justification, it's sense would be different:Luther: God attributes Adam's virtual sins to newborns, gets wrathful at them for insulting His Majesty by being sinful, and then dis-imputes
from such as have been predestinated the sins He had imputed to them while replacing them with virtual righteousness imputed from Christ('s Crucifixion; one doesn't often hear that Christ rose for our Salvation).
Luther called a justified person "simul justus et peccator"--at once virtually righteous but really an (ontologically unchanged) sinner.
Orthodoxy soteriology: At Baptism (in--if one is an adult--true Faith and repentance), one is illuminated with Grace (the uncreated Energies of Christ's Life) by the all-holy Spirit and (ontologically) made a new creation--a partaker of Christ's Life as one of His members sharing (partaking of) His energizations--His dying and rising--not as a punishment but as perfect Worship--a Sacrifice for our Salvation. It was the first Offering of a perfect creature to God as an acknowledgement of God's ownership and sovereignty over all things that has ever been made. (That Offering can be repeated by Christ in His members, as we say, though the prior Immolation on the Life-giving Cross is ephápax ("once for all") and unrepeatable--as the book of Hebrews states). When we believingly and repentingly partake of Christ in the holy Mysteries, John 6:53-54 is realized. As Heaven comes down to earth at the awesome Mysteries--something we are reminded of by the surrounding icons of the Saints--we rise with Christ, Who rose for our Salvation to defeat satan (we write it with a small "s') and sin--justified, if you insist on that term. Omoíosis Theõ "Assimilation to God" is regained at our Baptismal Illumination; through a life of Catharsis (Purification see Philp. 2:12-13 in Greek!) and Illumination, we arrive at Théosis (Divinization through Grace--i.e. with the uncreated Energies of God's Being--not the Deification of Aquinas; that's partaking of God's imparticipable Essence) as 2 Pet. 1:4 promises. The contrast is between a will-based, juridical virtual reality and a giant courtroom in which punishments are handed out versus the ontological reality of participation in the Divine Energies. So our Salvation is obviously not the same idea in different terminology, as you tentatively ask; its a not much similar terminology and a wholly different thought world in the sense it invites and imposes on what is said. That "what is said" by Luther could not have been understood by any speaker of Greek living before the Middle Ages, when the Nominalist axiomatic (and juridical) framework was borrowed from Islamic Cordova. Outside of that framework, none of that makes a bit of sense. Why should God get insulted by one's sins if God lays them on (imputes them to) every newborn? And why did He do that? Why did he decide to take revenge on sinners whose sinful existence insults His divine Majesty? It's a world of imputated virtual reality and real punishment vs. a world of loving union between creature and the one incarnate theandric Person--an ontological union of uncreated Energies and everlasting Life in the victory of the Resurrection--the defeat of satan (always written with small "s") and sin. "Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has everlasting [not eternal] Life" (John 6:53). What could be more obvious than that the Reformers and the Orthodox think and live in mutually untranslatable thought worlds. To answer your question, your justification IS unintelligible till we step out of the Greek-language energy thought world of the New Testament into your thought world, where it all makes some kind of real sense. It makes no sense in the now two-milleniums-old Greek-language thought-world of the Apostles and early Christians. We can respect where one another is coming from. I presume your framework is embraced sincerely and honestly. Instead of just saying you are wrong, it is more polite and true to say, "You are right in your framework, but you make no sense whatever in our framework."Yours in Christ God
