On Women's Ordination - Fr. Alexander Schmemann

On Women's Ordination

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

 

A letter written by Orthodox priest Fr. Alexander Schmemann
Dear Friend:
When you asked me to outline the Orthodox reaction to the idea of women's ordination to the priesthood, I thought at first that to do so would not be too difficult. It is not difficult, indeed, simply to state that the Orthodox Church is against women's priesthood and to enumerate as fully as possible the dogmatical, canonical, and spiritual reasons for that opposition.
On second thought, however, I became convinced that such an answer would be not only useless, but even harmful. Useless, because all such "formal reasons" - scriptural, traditional, canonical - are well known to the advocates of women's ordination, as is also well known our general ecclesiological stand which, depending on their mood and current priorities, our Western Brothers either hail as Orthodoxy's "main" ecumenical contribution or dismiss as archaic, narrow-minded, and irrelevant. Harmful, because true formally, this answer would still vitiate the real Orthodox position by reducing it to a theological context and perspective, alien to the Orthodox mind. For the Orthodox Church has never faced this question, it is for us totally extrinsic, a casus irrealis for which we find no basis, no terms of reference in our Tradition, in the very experience of the Church, and for the discussion of which we are therefore simply not prepared.
Such is then my difficulty. I cannot discuss the problem itself because to do so would necessitate the elucidation of our approach - not to women and to priesthood only - but, above all to God in his Triune Life, to Creation, Fall and Redemption, to the Church and the mystery of her life, to the deification of man and the consummation of all things in Christ. Short of all this it would remain incomprehensible, I am sure, why the ordination of women to priesthood is tantamount for us to a radical and irreparable mutilation of the entire faith, the rejection of the whole Scripture, and, needless to say, the end of all "dialogues." Short of all this my answer will sound like another "conservative" and "traditional" defense of the status quo, of precisely that which many Christians today, having heard it too many times, reject as hypocrisy, lack of openness to God's will, blindness to the world, etc. Obviously enough those who reject Tradition would not listen once more to an argument ex traditione....
But to what will they listen? Our amazement - and the Orthodox reaction is above all that of amazement - is precisely about the change and, to us, incomprehensible hastiness with which the question of women's ordination was, first, accepted as an issue, then quickly reduced to the level of a disciplinary "matter" and finally identified as an issue of policy to be dealt with by a vote! In this strange situation all I can do is to try to convey to you this amazement by briefly enumerating its main "components" as I see and understand them.
The first dimension of our amazement can be termed "ecumenical." The debate on women's ordination reveals something which we have suspected for a long time but which now is confirmed beyond any doubt: the total truly built-in indifference of the Christian West to anything beyond the sphere of its own problematics, of its own experience. I can only repeat here what I have said before: even the so-called "ecumenical movement," notwithstanding its claims to the contrary, has always been, and still is, a purely Western phenomenon, based on Western presuppositions and determined by a specifically Western agenda. This is not "pride" or "arrogance." On the contrary, the Christian West is almost obsessed with a guilt complex and enjoys nothing better than self-criticism and self condemnation. It is rather a total inability to transcend itself, to accept the simple idea that its own experience, problems, thought forms and priorities may not be universal, that they themselves may need to be evaluated and judged in the light of a truly universal, truly "Catholic" experience. Western Christians would almost enthusiastically judge and condemn themselves, but on their own terms, within their own hopelessly "Western" perspective. Thus when they decide -- on the basis of their own possibly limited and fragmented, specifically Western, "cultural situation" -- that they must "repair" injustices made to women, they plan to do it immediately without even asking what the "others" may think about it, and are sincerely amazed and even saddened by lack, on the part of these "others" of ecumenical spirit, sympathy and comprehension.
Personally, I have often enough criticized the historical limitations of the Orthodox mentality not to have the right to say in all sincerity that to me the debate on women's ordination seems to be provincial, deeply marked, and even determined by Western self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, by a naive, almost childish, conviction that every "trend" in the Western culture justifies a radical rethinking of the entire Christian tradition. How many such "trends" we have witnessed during the last decades of our troubled century! How many corresponding "theologies"! The difference this time, however, is that one deals in this particular debate not with a passing intellectual and academic "fad" like "death of God," "secular city," "celebration of life," etc.-- which, after it has produced a couple of ephemeral best-sellers, simply disappears, but with the threat of an irreversible and irreparable act which, if it becomes reality, will produce a new, and this time, I am convinced, final division among Christians, and will signify, at least for the Orthodox, the end of all dialogues.
It is well known that the advocates of women's ordination explain the Scriptural and the traditional exclusion of women from ministry by "cultural conditioning." If Christ did not include women into the Twelve, if the Church for centuries did not include them into priesthood, it is because of "culture" which would have made it impossible and unthinkable then. It is not my purpose to discuss here the theological and exegetical implications of this view as well as its purely historical basis, which incidentally seems to me extremely weak and shaky; what is truly amazing is that while absolutely convinced that they understand past "cultures," the advocates of women's ordination seem to be totally unaware of their own cultural "conditioning" of their own surrender to culture.
How else can one explain their readiness to accept what may prove to be a passing phenomenon and what, at any rate, is a phenomenon barely at its beginning (not to speak of the women's liberation movement, which at present is nothing but search and experimentation) as a sufficient justification for a radical change in the very structure of the Church?
How else, furthermore, are we to explain that this movement is accepted on its own terms, within the perspective of "rights", "justice," "equality," Etc. -- all categories whose ability adequately to express the Christian faith and to be applied as such within the Church is, to say the least, questionable?
The sad truth is that the very idea of women's ordination, as it is presented and discussed today, is the result of too many confusions and reductions. If its root is surrender to "culture", its pattern of development is shaped by a surrender to "clericalism." It is indeed almost entirely dominated by the old "clerical" view of the Church and the double "reduction" interest in it. The reduction on the one hand, of the Church to a "power structure," the reduction on the other hand, of that power structure to clergy. To the alleged "inferiority" of women within the secular power structure, corresponds their "inferiority," i.e., their exclusion from clergy, within the ecclesiastical power structure. To their "liberation" in the secular society must therefore correspond their "liberation," i.e., ordination, in the Church.
But the Church simply cannot be reduced to these categories. As long as we try to measure the ineffable mystery of her life by concepts and ideas a priori alien to her very essence, we entirely mutilate her, and her real power, her glory and beauty, and her transcendent truth simply escape us.
That is why in conclusion of this letter I can only confess, without explaining and justifying this confession by my "proofs." I can confess that the non-ordination of women to priesthood has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with whatever "inferiority" we can invent or imagine. In the essential reality which alone constitutes the content of our faith and shapes the entire life of the Church, in the reality of the Kingdom of God which is perfect communion, perfect knowledge, perfect love, and ultimately the "deification" of man, there is truly "neither male nor female." More than that, in this reality, of which we are made partakers here and now, we all, men and women, without any distinction, are "Kings and priests," for it is the essential priesthood of the human nature and vocation that Christ has restored to us.
It is of this priestly life, it is of this ultimate reality, that the Church is both gift and acceptance. And that she may be this, that she may always and everywhere be the gift of the Spirit without any measure or limitations, the Son of God offered himself in a unique sacrifice, and made this unique sacrifice and this unique priesthood the very foundation, indeed the very "form" of the Church.
This priesthood is Christ's, not ours. None of us, man or woman, has any "right" to it; it is emphatically not one of human vocations, analogous, even if superior, to all others. The priest in the Church is not "another" priest, and the sacrifice he offers is not "another" sacrifice. It is forever and only Christ's priesthood and Christ's sacrifice -- for, in the words of our Prayers of Offertory, it is "Thou who offerest and Thou who art offered, it is Thou who receivest and Thou who distributest...." And thus the "institutional" priest in the Church has no "ontology" of his own. It exists only to make Christ himself present, to make this unique Priesthood and this unique Sacrifice the source of the Church's life and the "acquisition" by men of the Holy Spirit. And if the bearer, the icon and the fulfiller of that unique priesthood, is man and not woman, it is because Christ is man and not woman...
Why? This of course is the only important, the only relevant question. The one precisely that no "culture," no "sociology," no "history," and even no "exegesis" can answer. For it can be answered only by theology in the primordial and essential meaning of that word in the Church; as the contemplation and vision of the Truth itself, as communion with the uncreated Divine Light. It is only here, in this purified and restored vision that we might begin to understand why the ineffable mystery of the relationship between God and His Creation, between God and His chosen people, between God and His Church, are "essentially" revealed to us as a nuptial mystery, as fulfillment of a mystical marriage. Why in other terms, Creation itself, the Church herself, man and the world themselves, when contemplated in their ultimate truth and destiny, are revealed to us as Bride, as Woman clothed in sun; why in the very depth of her love and knowledge, of her joy and communion, the Church identifies herself with one Woman, whom she exalts as "more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim."
Is it this mystery that has to be "understood" by means of our broken and fallen world, which knows and experiences itself only in its brokenness and fragmentation, its tensions and dichotomies and which, as such, is incapable of the ultimate vision? Or is it this vision and this unique experience that must again become to us the "means" of our understanding of the world, the starting point and the very possibility of a truly Divine victory over all that in this world is but human, historical and cultural?
(Bold is mine)

About the Author
The late Rt. Rev. Dr. Alexander Schmemann, S.T.D., LL.D, D.D., was Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestweed, New York, where he also occupied the chair of Liturgical and Pastoral Theology.
Born in Estonia, he received his education in Paris. After completing his Baccalaureate in Philosophy, he graduated from the St. Sergius Theological Institute in 1945 and in the same year was appointed to the Institute's Faculty as Lecturer in Church History.
In 1951 he joined St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary as Professor of Liturgical Theology. In 1962 he was appointed Dean of the Seminary. In 1959 he was granted the degree of Doctor of Theology. Since 1958 he has been Adjunct Professor at the Graduate Faculty of Columbia University and was Lecturer in Eastern Orthodoxy at Union Theological Seminary.
He was a former member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and attended the assemblies of Amsterdam, Lune, Evanston, Oberlin and Montreal. He was a member of the Study and Planning Committee of the Standing Conference of the Orthodox Bishops in America, of the Metropolitan Council of the Orthodox Church in America, and of the American Theological Society.
His publications in English included: The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (1963), Sacraments and Orthodoxy (1965), The Ultimate Questions (1965), Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966), and Great Lent (1969).
He was also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and Worship.
Because of his learning, wit, and personal warmth, he had been a very popular lecturer at the General Theological Seminary, which awarded him an honorary degree.


Thanks to Source:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/SchmemannOrdination.php

Women and the Priesthood Orthodoxy and the World

Women and the Priesthood Orthodoxy and the World Feb 9, 2009, 10:00

Why does the Orthodox Church not ordain women as priests? What is the Orthodox Church's stance on the idea of ordaining women to priesthood? Is it possible that one day there are women priests in the Orthodox Church? These are the questions which are being discussed today both by some Orthodox people and by people from other confessions who are interested in Orthodoxy or are on the way to accepting it.

Though there are many articles on this topic to be found on the Internet, it might be difficult for someone to find a consensus or a strong final answer. Someone might feel like writers are merely guessing at why our practice is such, and that women may in fact be allowed into the priesthood in the distant future.

The editors of 'Orthodoxy and the World' addressed these questions to several Orthodox theologians. Here we present their answers and hope that they can help those who are confronted by all sorts of different opinions.

 

Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna and Austria

The Orthodox Church follows the order established by the Apostles themselves. Christ chose only men to be His Apostles, who themselves never ordained female priests. Throughout centuries sacramental functions in the church have been performed exclusively by men. Some people explain this fact by cultural traditions. We know, however, that in Ancient Greece there were priestesses and, apart from Judaism, the very idea of women priests was not alien to the ancient culture.

Christianity expanded quickly in the Greek and Roman worlds. I think that if priesthood for women had been possible it would have been introduced at the earliest stage of the Church’s existence. But this did not happen. Up to the present day the Church has maintained the same order as was set by the Apostles.

The fact that women became equal to men in many spheres of human life, including politics, has nothing to do with the church order. In order to introduce female priesthood we need a new Revelation as powerful as the Revelation of the New Testament, and the creation of a New Testament Church. Since such a Revelation has not happened, we cannot make any radical changes to the established church order.

Having said all that, we should admit that there is no clear theological argument against a woman being a priest. I mean an argument that would be convincing not only for Orthodox Christians, but also for members of other Christian confessions where the female priesthood has already been introduced or is about to be. At an Orthodox Liturgy a priest represents Christ. The question why a woman cannot represent Christ is yet to be answered in theological terms.

 

Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo)

We specify the "liturgical priesthood" because all baptised Orthodox believers are part of the "royal priesthood" (1Pet.2:9). All are members of the "royal priesthood" because only the priesthood can partake of the things of the altar, and all are called to receive the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ the "things of the altar" in Holy Communion. Nevertheless, only men are called to the liturgical or "ordained" priesthood.

To understand the reason why women are not enrolled in the priesthood, we must first of all put away one treacherous presupposition: that it has to do with relative value. It does have to do with roles, but here again, there is a destructive presupposition. Many people have, for centuries, equated roles with value, and they have extended the roles of men and women in the liturgical life of the Church (which deals with prophecy and revelation) to society, politics and industry which have nothing to do with the faith or the salvation of humanity.

The roles we are speaking of have nothing to do with caste, personal value or human worthiness. The roles of men and women in the Church are prophetic and deal with prophecy and revelation. Thus, throughout Scriptural history, women have held the prophetic role of revealing the Church: the nature and mission of the Church on earth (which is why in heaven, there is neither male nor female: because the Church on earth will have fulfilled her mission, and the revelation and prophecy about her will no longer be needed; likewise, the visible presence of Christ will bring to an end the prophetic role of the male). The prophecy about Christ has been proclaimed through the male prophets, with one exception: Eve. The promise to Eve that her offspring would wound Satan's head was a clear prophecy, not about the Church but about Christ. That offspring was Christ, Who came forth from the Virgin as a fulfilment of this prophecy given through Eve. This is why we call Mary "the second Eve."

The role of priest in the Church belongs only to Christ. He is the priesthood of the Church. He is also the spouse and husband of the Church. Christ's visible priesthood in the Church is fulfilled through the ordained priests, more precisely, through the bishops of the Church (who delegate this to parish presbyters since the bishop cannot be everywhere).

Thus, the prophetic role of men is in revelation about Christ, and the prophetic role of women is in revelation about the Church. There is no relative value in these roles, since the mystery of redemption is the mystery of Christ and the Church. It should be clear, however, that while women fulfil a ministry in the Church (first of all, the prophetic ministry) they do not enter into the priesthood, which is a revelation about Christ, not about the Church. A woman in the priesthood would have to be presenting a revelation about the husband of the Church, the spouse of the "spotless, pure bride of Christ." Do you not see how perverted and corrupt such a "revelation and prophecy" would be?

Men are worth no more than women, women no more than men. But if we allowed the prophetic role of either or both to be corrupted, then we destroy the ultimate worth of both, and pervert the Gospel of Christ, corrupting our families and yielding to the wiles of Satan.

This is the extract from Archbishop Lazar's article "GENDER AS PROPHECY AND REVELATION" which you can read here.

Fr. Alexander Tefft. Chaplain, Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge

The question of women in the priesthood depends upon defining a priest. A priest is not the same as a Protestant minister. A woman may be a minister. A priest offers sacrifice. A Christian priest offers the sacrifice of Christ. Christ is the one who both offers (as High Priest) and is offered (as sacrificial victim). This is an unchangeable dogma of the Church, found in the Divine Liturgy. Therefore, the one who offers (the priest) must correspond to the one offered (the victim).

Christ is the Incarnate Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. Christ was incarnate as a man. Why? The Holy Trinity is inherently neither male nor female. The Trinity is spirit. However, God the Father has revealed Himself as male. Why? The Father creates all things visible and invisible. The male is the source of creation. The female must be impregnated by the male. As the male is the natural source of creation, the supernatural source is revealed as Father. Christ, the Son, is eternally begotten of the Father. He is the image of the Father. When He is begotten in time, He reveals himself as a male.

Therefore, to correspond to Christ as He reveals himself, the priest must be male. This is the economy of salvation, as revealed in the Bible. This is the economy of salvation, as defined in the dogmas of the Universal Councils. If the priest were female, this would destroy the economy of salvation. Only those who do not accept the Revelation, can argue for ordaining women as priests.

If the priest is the type of Christ, women are the type of the Mother of God. The Mother of God is the most powerful intercessor among mortals. The ministry of women is maternal: intercession, loving service, education, and so forth. Mothers are not inferior to fathers. But mothers are not fathers. Men and women are created absolutely equal but different. To confuse one with the other is to deny the creative intention of God. Therefore, the movement to ordain women to the priesthood is fundamentally anti-Christian.

 

 

thanks to source:

 

http://www.pravmir.com/article_503.html

 

From Abbot Tryphon about Non-Orthodox Christians and other religions

THE NON-ORTHODOX
What about people who are not Orthodox?
It is always a pity when people who claim to be Orthodox make judgements against fellow Christians. In the tradition of Orthodoxy, wherever we find beauty and truth, it is of God, and it is our calling, as Orthodox Christians, to rejoice when we see others have at least some portion of the Truth. Slamming others for what they do not have, does nothing to further their journey into Orthodoxy, and in fact may delay or sideline their journey towards the fullness of Truth.
There is the wonderful true story of Saint Silouan the Athonite who was traveling by train with an archimandrite, a zealot who was quick to correct others about the True Faith. Coming upon a group of traveling Roman Catholics, Saint Silouan's traveling companion proceeded to tell them that they must become Orthodox because their faith was without grace. The saint asked him if it were indeed a fact that the Roman Catholics believed that Christ was true God, and that He was present in the Eucharist. The saint asked was it not true that these Catholics believed in the Trinity, and venerated the Holy Virgin and the relics of the saints. The archimandrite answered yes to all the questions. Saint Silouan responded that of all humility's faiths we must know that we have perhaps more, but not to judge those who are not Orthodox. We must rejoice in the knowledge of what they do have. The saint told him that we should not be filled with such pride as to think we have the right to judge, correct or teach others.
This does not mean that we see the Church as divided, or that the Orthodox Church is anything less than the Church Christ founded. What it does mean is that we do not allow ourselves to think we have the right to correct or teach anyone. We must honor other peoples beliefs and not give in to the prideful stand that we have the right to teach or correct them. The truth that is found within Orthodoxy must be shared by living our faith in love, not in judging or correcting others. Truth, where ever it is found, is Orthodox Truth. If other religions embrace some of these truths that are Orthodox, we must rejoice and give thanks for what they do have.
People who love God and are trying to live holy lives pleasing to Him, according to the knowledge they have been given, are to be respected. They may not have the fullness of Apostolic Truth, but if they are believers in God and are trying to live a life pleasing to God, we must give thanks to Christ for what they do have. They have God as their Father, just as do we. They can have the Church as their Mother only if they see in us the difference Orthodoxy has made in our lives. Being arrogant in our evangelism does nothing to express the truth of Orthodoxy, and makes us no different than the pushy salesman at the door.
That arrogant archimandrite would better have shared the beauty of Orthodoxy had he embraced those Roman Catholics as fellow disciples of Christ. Then they would have seen Christ in him and known that Orthodoxy was indeed a faith centered in Christ. They would have known the truth of Orthodoxy by seeing in him, the love of Christ.
All this having been said, it is important that we remember Our Lord Himself has charged us to speak the truth. We must never fail to share the truth of our Orthodox faith for fear we might offend someone, for by "Speaking the truth in love, let us grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head (of the Church), even Christ (Ephesians 4:15)."
Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Thanks to Source:

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a layman's thoughts on Christianity, Theistic Creationism and Neo-Darwinism are they mixable?

Glory to God!

 

  The combination of Christianity, the mixing, with Neo Darwinism (evolutionism – without Deity) to make Evolutionary (Theistic) Creationism is a curious thing. It is a bit of the Hegelian fallacy where we take bits of both and come to some agreement in the middle way. We agree or, often, forced to agree with Scientism, which is a religion of its own, because we fear the fallacy of ad hominem (a personal attack on those who disagree with the established institution of facts as “idiots” who disagree with reality and obvious things). But then fear is its own master is it not:

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

 

Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC)

 

So we reach or endeavor to meet in the middle. We do not give up all our ground, but concede to some things in order to sound more scientific minded or to not sound so “naïve.” However, what are we really giving up in order to enter this contest which is weighed heavily in the favor of the Neo Darwinist? Are we giving up on Christianity and Divine revelation completely or modernizing the ancient book to better fit-in with our modern age and isms?

 

   If human nature is not really human nature but animal nature evolved into a higher form that we see today in mankind, then man is still in “animal nature” and the idea of the common ancestor from Adam and Eve is really a common ancestor from animal or animal nature. But what about Christ, in His Incarnation, being of Divine and human nature? His human nature restores the one “human nature” that all men share and therefore raises all men up to their original standing before the fall. The common nature fell once and was restored once and for all. If we are animal nature as posited, we can profit in no way from this act and must remain fallen.

 

   And what of the Divine Image given to man with his human nature as opposed from animal nature? If Christ’s humanity comes from the animals then there is no existential difference between human nature and animal nature, they are one and the same. One would simply be a greater animal in this sense as a lion is from a mouse, but both are animal. And it is the same difference between man and ape, man is a higher animal and human nature is blurred and lost altogether.

 

   This animal or let’s say mammalian nature of man, in its philosophical sense, is no greater or lesser than animal, he is just a smarter animal with language, abstract and conceptual thinking, and moral law. Man has no existential distinction over animal; he is simply more intelligent and adaptable or evolved, evolving. And thus, his being is in a process of flux or transition. The form we are now is changing as we speak, evolving and not static. So this animal nature is changing and so with it would our laws, morals, and “absolutes” be changing with it. We could not use the word absolute because an absolute does not change; so therefore, an absolute becomes meaningless, for an absolute by definition is unchanging and set as a standard. In this sense the god of evolution is changing as well and so the theory that it begets is in flux. Philosophically to define something in flux is not possible as it has nothing to take hold of it.

 

No man ever steps in the same river twice

 

Heraclitus (535BC – 475BC)

 

Therefore how do you define the river you are standing in as it is in constant change, movement? This is a philosophical question and it does have vast breadth for our lives today in the westernizing of the world. How do we define truth if it is subjective? If we are in an evolving mode, then there is no such absolute to govern or measure oneself, no absolute moral law, but only change. It makes sense in the age we live today for this philosophy has flooded our world. Even Neo Darwinism is a theory in transition and will not be the same theory it is today and neither is “mammalian man” the same creature he was, is and will be in the future. For no definition can stand of him.

 

  The Patristics of the Church of Christ did not merge the created with the Uncreated. They clearly kept them separate, distinct things in themselves. As the Incarnation of Christ is defined as fully God and fully man, never confused or mixed, we see in the Fathers of the Church the same idea of creation by God as separate and distinct from Himself (Uncreated). One is Divine and incomprehensible “Uncreated” and the other is discerned by reason as is discoverable by men and “created”, but fallen it remains. These two ideas of created and Uncreated are the two points of distinct separation, never mixed or confused. We have science and what science can discover by reason and then there is the Uber-reason (mystical, mysterious) or the realm of the Divine, which is not discernable by the same tools and methods of the created world. In Christ and His Incarnation, by the Glory of God, is the schema to understanding good science as opposed to Scientism, which resembles a type of fundamental, legalistic religiosity. Science and Christianity are distinct things and separated for a reason.

    

In mixing Science and Christianity we beget a hybrid of both and confuse mankind and the Divine Image given to him by God as distinct from the animal world. This hybrid blend is Evolutionary (Theistic) Creationism. And as all Isms go, we should we wise to not trust them as they are too enmeshed with fallen human philosophy, conjecture and imagination.

 

   The Church Fathers saw Genesis as a non-anthropocentric history. That is a sense of history or pre-history. For history can be defined by men only when men are present. In the first few days of creation there was no mankind to observe and therefore record “history”. His early sense of pre-history or shall we say non-history, in the sense that it was before mankind, is and was written in this sense, in this style, a poetic-prose but not in the least sense false or untrue. The early Church Fathers saw the first 6 days as literal days but unlike any day we would experience today. Man was between the corruptible and the incorruptible, he was in paradise as a distinct place from earth and Heaven. Paradise was like nothing we can experience today in the fallen earth. Man ate of incorruptible food and was called to become God-like or Divine by participation in the Uncreated energies of God. Man did not eat corruptible food and therefore need to secrete waste material. He did not die so he could not drown, suffocate, get burned by fire or smothered by earth. He was immortal by the ever growing and participation in the Eternal God. He was not mammalian that he needed to copulate or have fear of starving or thirst. These mammalian ways were a potential in that God foresaw man’s error, but they were not God’s end for man. Man was to move forward in the Divine and participate in the Eternal God. The potential for the fall was seen by God and when man lost his divine covering, his participation in God, he became naked and covered with coats of skin. Thusly, all of mankind fell and so did all of the material created world, which man was supposed to raise up to God and offer it back to Him. Animal life fell as well and became corrupt to death. Man of course did not die right away, physically. However, spiritually, he died instantly and the body was soon to follow as it did not have life on its own.

 

   Time and space were different then as well and not to be measured in the same way that we measure time today or understand time. There is a deeply theological sense to these writings not understood by modern science nor could they be understood. We measure things now in the fallen sense. How could our understanding of radio decay today be assumed into studying and measuring a cosmos that was very existentially different than today. We assume the same fallen laws will work in an unfallen universe and there is, exactly, the disconnection, there is the grandiose of errors. Eternity when applied to time and space changes the laws of time/space if there was such a law of time or a law of space. Time becomes meaningless in eternity or not applicable. How much so for space as well? This is a glaring incoherence forced in by a grand assumption of our meaning and knowledge from a fallen time/space continuum. And it is from this fallen view that we look back on time and assume all is as it is today, radioactive decay is at the same rate, time flows the same, matter is the same, and the natural laws are the same, etc. Really, how do we know this is true and not a grand assumption? “Because Science says!” Regardless, the Patristic writings are clear that the early creation was something that we cannot conjecture or imagine, it was other worldly and unknowable, unimaginable.

 

   With man becoming corruptible to death and decay of his body, he had to eat of corruptible foods and now was under bondage to the elements, the spirits of the air (false gods), and was now feared by the animals, which he once was on friendly terms. He now as “mammalian” was able to drown, starve, and die. This was not the plan of God, but became the way of man. His body made up of spirit and lighter materials unknown became heavier and denser. He now resigned himself to toil the earth and become a slave to the little gods and his passions. Man, however, retained his Divine image and has in his soul two compartments: the higher soul or “nous” and the lower soul, the rational mind. Animals do not have this higher and lower soul in the same way (they have some sense of the lower soul only) and that is why we must keep man and animal in their natures distinct. For if we come from animals, then there is no human nature only animal nature. With this comes the loss of the Divine Image and a mess of philosophical problems as described above. And should this theory win out, that we are just animal, then it will be truly the abolition of man as C.S. Lewis has written a book about this very thing. For it is this Divine Image that makes us distinct and foreshadows our ascent into the Divine by participation.

 

   Jesus Christ by God the Father united mankind and God in one person. In Jesus Christ human nature and The Divine, never mixing or confusing them, fully God and fully man become one. This restoration of “Human Nature” and its place at the Right Hand of God makes our participation in the Divine life through theosis a reality. We too can become God-like as the Saints of Christ’s Church have shown throughout time and space. It was not animal nature that was restored but human nature, and this potentiality raises man first and foremost, not his mammalian/animal or fallen status, but his humanity which can now partake of the Divine. Until this realization, the fallen nature of humanity could not partake of God in this way, but only in the Old Testament sense via participation in the Law. Where we were once servants, we are now sons, adopted by God’s good cheer and love for us.

 

   We again must make the distinction between animal nature and “human nature”. It is human nature that has been received into God as restored and complete at His Right Hand by Christ the Incarnate God. Human nature is one and when Adam transgressed, human nature was stained. It is not that because of one man all are guilty of his sin, but since we all share “one” human nature, we all share in this stain since we all share the “one” nature. Hence the life, death and resurrection of Christ, who shares with us that one human nature and restores it for all. And because of this man may now share in the restoration to life, life eternal, blessing eternal. As opposed to temporal and eternal death, mankind is either realizing this state of eternal life or he chooses to remain as he is now. He either is moving into theosis in the now or he is remaining in the mammalian state of existence, which is death. The animal nature cannot mix with the human nature as to think of Christ as coming from animals is blasphemy as Elder and now Saint Paisios has exclaimed. Animal nature was not restored by the Incarnation of Christ only Human Nature. And truly it was not animal nature that was stained and needed redemption, but the human one by which all things fell including the beasts and the earth. That is not to say that the animals will not receive immortality by man’s restoration to His original state of becoming God-like. This was the original purpose of man to be immortal by and through God, Who is Life and Eternity, and then so too where the animals to participate in this incorruptibility through man’s obedience. Fallen human nature can only be restored by a “new” human nature that is traced to one man, one descendant and not an animal or common animal ancestor. Christ was not fully God and fully animal.

 

    It is well known in the Eastern Church that God created the world and man through the Logos who is the same Logos who had to redeem the creation He made by coming into the world. In making man, we see the plural in Scripture where God the Father, the Logos (Pre-Incarnate Christ), and the Holy Spirit made man in God’s image. “Let Us make man in our image.” The Godhead: The Mind (The Father), The Logos (The Word), The Holy Spirit (The Life or Breath). He who made the world had to come into the world to restore it to Himself. This is great news. And it is far removed from the idea of constant evolving or change and the philosophical problem it hatches which eliminates absolutes for moral relativism.

 

  To conclude and as a model for our faith as Orthodox Christians, in one Holy, catholic, and apostolic church, we must remember as we do not mix or confuse Christ’s humanity and Divinity, we must remember not to do the same with the Divine “Uncreated” and man’s science “created”. The Uncreated and the created are distinct and not to be confused. What is a materialistic philosophy must not be fused with what has been revealed by God. Neo-Darwinism and its kin Evolutionary (Theistic) Creationism through evolutionary mechanics are materialistic at their root. This system seeks to explain creation with no Creator but instead through time plus matter plus chance. That somehow, nothingness could plan, engineer and build a universe and life and have the intelligence and the multi-dimensional thinking (to be able to think far ahead) to create food for these beings to eat, air to breath, water to drink, and elements to build and create, as well as recycling dead things for new life, etc. And also to create one place among billions of hostile planets for life to take root.

   The question is asked that why could not God make the world and life through the evolutionary model over billions of years? Could not God use evolution as a tool? In Christian theology there is no “tool” that God needs. He creates and sustains through His Word (Christ) and does not need a tool or any man made idea or theory to create. We error in mixing God in with his creation rather than being wholly, and Holy, outside of it. In Evolutionary Creationism, we are simply blending man’s theories into God’s wonder, interjecting it so as not to seem “dumb” by those “illumined” by scientism. And so the answer is why would a Divine omnipotent Being create the world in this most miserable, long-suffered, excruciatingly slow and barbaric way? It’s as if this theory sees God as handicapped and weak, using some foreign mechanism or imagined machine to build his universe and life. Even the Big Bang speaks of a beginning and instantaneous explosion, wondrous and in an instant. God does not need matter to create, he can create without matter already in existence. As the early materialists did not know (Anaximander, Thales)...(later moving forward to Rene Descartes, Marx, Freud, Darwin, Richard Dawkins, etc) and we now do know, that matter is not eternal and neither is it wise or conscious. God is not the Great Mover as, Aristotle thought, who assembles existing matter, He is, simply, the Creator of matter and all things; the creation is not Him. We would be wise to retain a certain mystery about creation, a certain riddle and awe since truly no one was there to see it, and come to terms that our theories will remain tiny and fallen. And the more we think we know is the less we know as Socrates was humble enough to understand. The Fathers of the Church were clear on understanding Genesis as theological and not in the sense we understand our current creation which we can study and see. Genesis before mankind is to be understood in the theological sense and not the scientific sense. The earth that was is not the earth of today and neither was Adam the same man that is fallen today. If we mix the Divine Image with the created world and make into it something utterly different, we in essence create a new religion or way. This is not what the apostles, saints and church fathers where here to do. They instead have shown us the way upward, to transcend, from the dead life and into the new life in Christ, eternal, incorruptible, forever in peace, joy and love. God is love and does not change unlike theories and conceptions of men.

 

 

Much thanks to Fr. Pat Reardon, Fr. Seraphim Rose and The Fathers of Christ’s Church for inspiring.

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/orthodoxylive/september_7_2014

Genesis, Creation, And Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision. Fr. Seraphim Rose.

 

 

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And with the intercession prayers of the Theotokos, Saint Peter, St. Demetrios Myrrh streaming, St. Paisios of the Holy Mountain and all the Saints. And may we receive a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ.

 

Christopher Hitchens question illumined from the view of the Early Eastern Christian Church

Christopher Hitchens once asked in a debate against Christianity what was it that he could not do that a Christian can. Or more precisely: Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.

No one in the crowd or the debater could answer him. So he asked it again. Still no answer.

 

If Christianity is another ideology or moral code, then the answer is most likely nothing since anyone can be moral or a good person even outside the Church. But the Early Church would have answered this question from a different (mystical) understanding and not scholastically or rational cause/effect: What you can’t do, dear brother, is that you cannot love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and become a Saint. And thusly, have the experience of real peace, joy, and love from the source of all true love and life, God: to commune with the Divine and receive the foretaste of the kingdom-come right in the here and now; and by God’s Uncreated energies receive gifts like clairvoyance, bi-location, read thoughts, fear nothing, want nothing, need nothing and be full. This is not the way the world understands fullness, peace, joy, and love which comes and goes never lasting and always offering its contraries, its dualities of good and bad, happiness and despair, peace and war, and life and death, etc. This is true fullness that is eternal because God shares Himself with those who strive and open their heart to receive His fullness and not the fullness of the “ego” or the “goodness of moral man.”

 

-Anonymous

*
(However, we are not aiming at any earthly system to make it king. We are looking to commune with God through His mysteries. God can reach any man at any time: atheists and agnostics. Though a person may not follow the way of Christ through the Church militant, God may still be present in this person. It is hard to qualify this from mere teaching alone, but anything is possible with God. We humans make statements about this Way or that Way, but God is not limited by anything, reduced by anything... "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." This is a riddle for us and we will leave it at that. At the same time it is dangerous to say that all ways lead to God, because there are various/many ways that are very difficult to reach a humble spiritual state and dangerous to pursue. So we would be wise to again leave it at that. And when we see a path that has produced countless saints, we can be assured that there is something holy and good there.)

P>S>
May Christopher Hitchen's memory be eternal.

   We always can not be sure why some men decide to be anti-theists. But it is definitely within possibility that the strange religiosity that affects people, and they as representatives of "Christianity", make the church of Christ a caricature and travesty. And it is such that those who would become Christians do not do so because of these foolish "faiths". Such men, who have wisdom, would then look at these so called Christians or so called churches and reject them, not because the message of Christ is bad, but because these teachings are so bad that the life of Christ is not even lived in them at all, not in the doctrines, not in the theology, and not, certainly, in the life of the people. Christ came to remove man from religion and towards the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
 

Orthodoxy is not a religion. Orthodoxy is the cure for religion.

~ Alexander Schmemann
(1921-1983)

St. Joachim and St. Anna

The holy and righteous Joachim and Anna are the parents of the Theotokos, the grandparents of Jesus Christ. Their feast day is celebrated on September 9, following the Nativity of the Theotokos; the dormition of St. Anna is commemorated on July 25.

Lives
St. Joachim was of the tribe of Judah, and a descendant of King David. St. Anna was the daughter of Matthan the priest, of the tribe of Levi as was Aaron the High Priest. Matthan had three daughters: Mary, Zoia, and Anna. Mary was married in Bethlehem and bore Salome; Zoia was also married in Bethlehem and bore Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Forerunner; and Anna was married in Nazareth to Joachim, and in old age gave birth to the Theotokos.
Sts. Joachim and Anna had been married for fifty years, and were barren. They lived devoutly and quietly, using only a third of their income for themselves and giving a third to the poor and a third to the Temple. Joachim had done this since he was 15-years-old, and God multiplied his flocks, so the couple was well provided for. They longed for a child but remained childless into their old age. When they were in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice to God, the High Priest, Issachar, upbraided Joachim, "You are not worthy to offer sacrifice with those childless hands." Others who had children jostled Joachim, thrusting him back as unworthy. In despair, he consulted the geneological records of the tribes of Israel and discovered every righteous man in the nation had been blessed with children, except him. This caused the aged saint great grief, and he and his wife left with heavy hearts. Then the two of them gave themselves to prayer to God that He would work in them the wonder that He had worked in Abraham and Sarah, and give them a child to comfort their old age.
St. Joachim took his flocks and went to a high mountain, refusing to return home in shame. Meanwhile, St. Anna prayed in her garden. God sent the Archangel Gabriel to each of them, who gave them tidings of the birth of "a daughter most blessed, by whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed, and through whom will come the salvation of the world." Each promised to have their child raised in the Temple as a holy vessel of God. The archangel told St. Joachim to return home, where he would find his wife waiting for him in the city gate. St. Anna he told to wait at the gate. When they saw one another, they embraced, and this image is the traditional icon of their feast.
St. Anna conceived shortly thereafter, and in the ninth month gave birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This Conception of the Most Holy Mother of God is celebrated by the Church on December 9 and the Nativity of the Theotokos is celebrated on September 8.
Sts. Joachim and Anna took Mary, at the age of three, to the temple to be dedicated to the service of the Lord, and presented her to the priest Zechariahs. The parents then, after offering up her sacrifice (according to the custom of the time), left the Virgin with other maidens in the apartments of the temple to be brought up therein. The Church commemorates the Presentation of the Theotokos on November 21.

Dormition of the Righteous Anna

During the next seven years, Righteous Anna and Joachim visited Mary often at the temple until they died, leaving her an orphan at age ten. St. Joachim lived for 80 years and Anna for 79, and they both entered into the kingdom of God before the Annunciation to the Most Holy Theotokos. The Dormition feast day of St. Anna is celebrated on July 25.
The holy Ancestor-of-God Joachim had himself reposed at 80 years of age, several years after the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple (November 21). St Anna, having been left a widow, moved from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and lived near the Temple. At Jerusalem she bought two pieces of property: the first at the gates of Gethsemane, and the second in the valley of Josaphat. At the second locale she built a tomb for the members of her family, and where also she herself was buried with Joachim. It was there in the Garden of Gethsemane that the Savior often prayed with His disciples.
The most-pure body of the Mother of God was buried in the family tomb. Christians honored the sepulchre of the Mother of God, and they built a church on this spot. Within the church was preserved the precious funeral cloth, which covered Her all-pure and fragrant body.
The holy Patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem (420-458) testified before the emperor Marcian (450-457) as to the authenticity of the tradition about the miraculous ascent of the Mother of God to Heaven, and he sent to the empress, St Pulcheria (September 10), the grave wrappings of the Mother of God from Her tomb. St Pulcheria then placed these grave-wrappings within the Blachernae church.

Relics

During the reign of St Justinian the Emperor (527-565), a church was built in honor of St Anna at Deutera. And since St Anna had appeared to his pregnant wife, Emperor Justinian II (685-695; 705-711) restored her church. It was at this time that her body and maphorion (veil) were transferred to Constantinople.

Hymns

Troparion (Tone 5)

Let us sing praises to Joachim and Anna,

the couple honored by God

(and they are His kinsmen).

They have borne for us the Maiden

who in a manner beyond understanding

gave birth to Him Who though fleshless,

became the incarnate to save the world.

With her they intercede for our souls.

Kontakion (Tone 2)

Anna rejoices, released from her barrenness,

and nurses her most pure child.

She calls all people to glorify Him

Who gave the Virgin Mother to mankind from her womb.

Dormition of the Righteous Anna hymns

Troparion - Tone 4

Divinely-wise Anna, you carried in your womb the pure Mother of God, who gave life to our Life.

Therefore, you are now carried joyfully to the inheritance of heaven,

To the abode of those who rejoice in glory,

Where you seek forgiveness of sins for those who faithfully honor you, ever blessed one.

Kontakion - Tone 2

We celebrate the memory of the progenitors of Christ,

And with faith we ask their help,

That deliverance from every affliction be granted to those who cry out:

"Be with us, O God, who in Your good pleasure glorified them.

thanks to Source:

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Joachim_and_Anna

St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria

Our father among the saints Athanasius of Alexandria (also spelled "Athanasios"; from Greek, "immortal") was a bishop of Alexandria and major theological writer in the fourth century. He is also called Athanasius the Great and (by the Coptic church) Athanasius the Apostolic. He was born in 298 and died on May 2, 373. His feast day in the Orthodox Church is January 18.

He was born to pagan parents. When he was in school he saw a group of Christians acting out services and when he asked to join them, they refused. From then on he declared himself Christian. The patriarch at that time, Pope Alexander, predicted that he would eventually hold a great position.
Before reaching the age of 20, Athanasius wrote a treatise entitled On the Incarnation, affirming and explaining that Jesus Christ was both God and Man. In about 319, when Athanasius was a deacon, a presbyter named Arius began teaching that there was a time before God the Father begat Jesus when the latter did not exist. Athanasius responded that the Father's begetting of the Son, or uttering of the Word, was an eternal relationship between them, not an event that took place within time. Thus began catholic Christianity's fight against the heresy of Arianism.
Athanasius fought consistently against Arianism all his life. As a deacon, he accompanied Alexander of Alexandria to the First Council of Nicea in 325, which produced the Nicene Creed and anathematized Arius and his followers. The Coptic church maintains a tradition that Athanasius was the main author of the Nicene Creed, and has therefore given him the title of Defender of the Faith.
On May 9, 328, he succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria, becoming the 20th Patriarch of the Church of Alexandria, a position which he held for 45 years, 16 of which he spent in exile. As a result of rises and falls in Arianism's influence, he was banished from Alexandria only to be later restored on at least five separate occasions, perhaps as many as seven. This gave rise to the expression Athanasius contra mundus, et mundum contra Athanasium or "While the world is set against Athanasius, Athanasius is equally set against the world." During some of his exiles, he spent time with the Desert Fathers, monks and hermits who lived in remote areas of Egypt.
Athanasius is also the first person to identify the same 27 books of the New Testament that are in use today; up until his Easter letter, various similar lists were in use. However, his list was the one that was eventually ratified by a series of synods and came to be universally recognized as the New Testament canon.
He also wrote a biography of Anthony the Great that later served as an inspiration to Christian monastics in both the East and the West. The Athanasian Creed is traditionally ascribed to him, though it is likely not his work.
Athansius was also the first to introduce the forty-day Lent to the Greek Churches in Egypt through his writing of Festal Letter XII around 337.

St. Athanasius Shrine (where the saint's relics are preserved) under St. Mark's Cathedral, Cairo

The saint was originally buried in Alexandria. His holy body was later transferred to Italy. Pope Shenouda III restored the relics of St. Athanasius to Egypt on 15 May 1973,^[1] after his historical visit to the Vatican and meeting with Pope Paul VI. The relics of St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria are currently preserved under the new St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Deir El-Anba Rowais, Abbassiya, Cairo, Egypt.
The following is a troparion (hymn) to St. Athanasius sung in some Orthodox churches:

O holy father Athanasius,

like a pillar of orthodoxy

you refuted the heretical nonsense of Arius

by insisting that the Father and the Son are equal in essence.

O venerable father, beg Christ our God to save our souls.

thanks to source:

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Athanasius_of_Alexandria

Quote by Demosthenes

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

 

Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC)

 

This quote reminded me of the appeasing of Germany before Word War II. Peace for the sake of peace lead many into the darkest of nightmares.

 

 

Source:

 

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Demosthenes/