Mary's "Yes"

Be that as it may, by exalting our Lady as man’s yes to God, as the obedient servant of the Lord, as the human temple of the Logos, the Church underscores the active role that humanity plays in the drama of salvation. The Virgin is, in a very literal sense, the stand-in for all of humanity. It is she who utters, on our behalf, the fiat: “Let it be unto me according to my word.”
But, you ask, does this not impinge upon the uniqueness of Christ and his work? Only if you have a Nestorian Christology. The Virgin Mary is the one human who cooperates completely and fully with God. It is she who undoes the disobedience of Eve by her obedience. Remember, I said a couple of weeks ago that the only sense that an Orthodox Christian can speak about human progress is the progress from Eve to our Lady. The Virgin is the apex of human progress. And yet, there is a limit even to what a perfectly obedient human can do. Mary could and did say yes to God in the most perfect way possible, but that yes by itself could not save man from death. She herself died. Only God, God made flesh, a crucified God, as the Fathers put it, could destroy death from the inside and make a path for all to the resurrection from the dead.

So we see that the Orthodox veneration of the Virgin Mary is necessary to preserve both the uniqueness of Christ, that is, the God-man’s work of salvation, while at the same time preserving the absolute necessity of human cooperation with God. Christ is our one and only Savior, but Mary is our role model. More than that, Mary sums up what it means to be truly human. That is why the liturgical year begins with her birth and ends with her death and translation.

Thanks to source:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/carlton/the_marian_necessity

Nestorius' error

Nestorius’ mistake was to split our Lord up into the obedient human and the divine Logos. Ironically, in doing so, the human element actually gets swallowed up by the action of the divine in Nestorius’ thought. For those of you interested in technical historical details, Fr. John Romanides has argued that Nestorius was actually the source for the later heresies of Monophysitism and Monoenergism.




Thanks to source:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/carlton/the_marian_necessity

The Marian Necessity - Faith and Philosophy series ~ Clark Carlton

Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be as red as crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, you shall reap the good of the Lamb.

Hello, and welcome once again to Faith and Philosophy. This week’s topic is the Marian Necessity.
I still have a few more things to say in the series on The Naked Public Square, but this being the Feast of the Nativity of our Lady, I thought I would offer a few words on her significance today. Look for part six, “Put Not Your Trust in Princes,” in the coming weeks.
It is surely significant that the first major feast of the new Church year, which began on September 1, is the Nativity of our Lady on the eighth. It is equally significant that the last major feast of the Church year is the Falling Asleep of our Lady. From birth to death, the Church year liturgically recapitulates the life of the Theotokos, and in doing so, sums up the totality of our own lives. For, in a real sense, the story of Mary is the story of us all, if we would but follow her example.
Perhaps the one thing about Orthodoxy that frustrates Protestants the most is our devotion to our Lady. Needless to say, if you wanted to introduce a Protestant friend to Orthodoxy, the vigil of a Marian feast would probably not be the best place to start. And yet, the question as to why we venerate the Virgin can easily be turned around. Why do others not venerate her, especially when our Lady herself said that every generation would call her blessed?
Let’s go back to the time when Marian devotion first became controversial. Nestorius was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early part of the fifth century. One day, he invited a bishop named Proclus to give a sermon. Proclus chose to preach on the Virgin, and extolled her in such a lavish manner that Nestorius felt the need to offer rebuttal right then and there. The struggle was on.
Now, Nestorius was prepared to tolerate a certain amount of poetic license when it came to encomiums of the Virgin, but for some reason, he found Proclus’ reference to the Virgin as the temple of God to be a step too far. You see, Proclus had ascribed to Mary the title that Nestorius ascribed to Christ. To his way of thinking, Proclus’ Mariology was impinging on the doctrine of Christ himself.
Nestorius seems to have taught that one can, at least theoretically, make a distinction between the man, Jesus Christ, and the Logos of God, the second Person of the Trinity. I say “seems” because there is a small cottage industry dedicated to proving that Nestorius was not really a Nestorian. Most of this is based on a very strange book he wrote late in life called The Bazaar of Heracleides. It has always struck me as peculiar that modern scholars, who almost never take the Fathers at face value—there always has to be some secret meaning or hidden political motive for everything they say—almost always take the self-serving ravings of heretics at face value. I consider the Bazaar to be a bizarre, eleventh-hour attempt at self-rehabilitation on Nestorius’ part, and I seriously doubt that it can serve as a useful guide to understanding his earlier works, but I digress.
For Nestorius, Christ is the temple of God, that is, the human being in whom God the Logos dwells. Our salvation is accomplished as a result of this divine indwelling and the moral relationship of obedience between Christ-the-man and the Logos that this doctrine implies. When asked, “Who died on the Cross?” any honest Nestorian would answer, “The man, Jesus, suffered and died on the Cross, but the Logos is the Lord of glory.” Thus salvation is wrought, not by the power of God, but by the moral cooperation between Christ-the-man and the Logos.
Needless to say, this is completely at odds with our understanding of salvation. We are not saved because the man Jesus was obedient to the Logos unto death, thereby releasing us from the penalty of our disobedience. We are saved, because the Logos incarnate was obedient to his heavenly Father, even unto death, sharing with us the penalty of our disobedience, so that that penalty might be completely obliterated.
As Orthodox Christians, we confess what some refer to as a “single subject” Christology, that is, we believe that while Christ was fully human, possessing both a human body and mind (or soul), the subject of all of Christ’s actions, whether he is said to eat or touch or heal or die on the Cross, the subject of all of these actions is not some separate human being called Jesus Christ, but the second Person of the Trinity, who for us and for our salvation became man.
The clearest and most concise exposition of Orthodox soteriology is found in the anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil. I won’t read it all, but the climax is this:

Giving himself a ransom unto death…

Notice to whom the ransom is paid: not to God the Father, but to death.

...wherein we are held, sold unto sin, and by the Cross having descended into Hades, that he might fill all things with himself, he loosed the pains of death, and being risen again on the third day, he made a way for all flesh unto the resurrection of the dead, because it was not possible for the Author of Life to be holden of corruption.

Christ saves us, not because he has effected some sort of legal transaction—one righteous life given for a world full of sinners—but because he is God incarnate: God on the Cross, God in Hades, destroying death and the dominion of the devil, from the inside.
When Proclus proclaimed the Virgin Mary as the temple of God, Nestorius understood rightly, I think, that Proclus was ascribing things to Mary that rightly belonged to Nestorius’ conception of Christ.
A few years ago, I did an article for St. Vlad’s Quarterly in which I argued that [in] the development of Marian hymnography during the so-called “Byzantine Period,” there was a deliberate attempt to ascribe things to Mary that Nestorius would prefer we ascribe only to Christ. I used the hymnography of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple as a prime example. I think I even did a podcast on this. In a very real sense, the Church’s Mary is actually Nestorius’ Christ.
Why would the Church do this? Well, first of all, to make it clear that we do not accept Nestorius’ Christology. We believe not in an assumed man, morally conjoined with the Logos of God, but rather confess one incarnate Lord: Jesus Christ, God and man at the same time.
But there is another reason why we emphasize the role of the Virgin Mary. Heretics are never wrong about everything. As I’ve said before, heresy is usually a case of trying to reduce the faith down to something that is rationally acceptable, but in so doing, there is always an element of truth that gets distorted. In Nestorius’ case, he was certainly correct in seeing an important human role in the drama of salvation. God does not simply save us against our will. God requires that we become his co-workers.
Nestorius’ mistake was to split our Lord up into the obedient human and the divine Logos. Ironically, in doing so, the human element actually gets swallowed up by the action of the divine in Nestorius’ thought. For those of you interested in technical historical details, Fr. John Romanides has argued that Nestorius was actually the source for the later heresies of Monophysitism and Monoenergism.
Be that as it may, by exalting our Lady as man’s yes to God, as the obedient servant of the Lord, as the human temple of the Logos, the Church underscores the active role that humanity plays in the drama of salvation. The Virgin is, in a very literal sense, the stand-in for all of humanity. It is she who utters, on our behalf, the fiat: “Let it be unto me according to my word.”
But, you ask, does this not impinge upon the uniqueness of Christ and his work? Only if you have a Nestorian Christology. The Virgin Mary is the one human who cooperates completely and fully with God. It is she who undoes the disobedience of Eve by her obedience. Remember, I said a couple of weeks ago that the only sense that an Orthodox Christian can speak about human progress is the progress from Eve to our Lady. The Virgin is the apex of human progress. And yet, there is a limit even to what a perfectly obedient human can do. Mary could and did say yes to God in the most perfect way possible, but that yes by itself could not save man from death. She herself died. Only God, God made flesh, a crucified God, as the Fathers put it, could destroy death from the inside and make a path for all to the resurrection from the dead.
So we see that the Orthodox veneration of the Virgin Mary is necessary to preserve both the uniqueness of Christ, that is, the God-man’s work of salvation, while at the same time preserving the absolute necessity of human cooperation with God. Christ is our one and only Savior, but Mary is our role model. More than that, Mary sums up what it means to be truly human. That is why the liturgical year begins with her birth and ends with her death and translation.
I was reminded of this last week at the Dormition of our beloved Archbishop †Dmitri of Dallas. He died in the wee hours of August 28, which happens to be August 15 on the Old Calendar. In reading the accounts of his falling asleep, I was reminded of the words to the troparion of the Dormition:

In birthgiving, thou didst not forsake thy virginity, and in falling asleep, thou didst not forsake the world, O Theotokos. As thou art the mother of Life, thou was translated unto life, and by thy prayers, thou dost deliver our souls from death.

The archbishop was cared for around the clock by his parishioners and spiritual children. His passing was, by all accounts, painless, blameless, and peaceful, the kind of death we all entreat of the Lord for ourselves. How fitting, that he was translated unto life on the Feast of the Dormition. By the way, though he served on the New Calendar, he would have been received into the Church and ordained on the Old.
You see, Mary’s story is our story, or at least it should be and can be, if we, like her and like Archbishop †Dmitri of blessed memory, are willing to hear the word of God and keep it. That is the Marian necessity.
May our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, through the intercessions of St. Innocent of Alaska and of the Blessed Elder Sophronius Sakharov and especially, on this day, through the intercessions of our most holy Lady, the Mother of God, and ever-Virgin Mary, have mercy upon us all and grant us all a rich entrance into his eternal kingdom.

Thanks to source:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/carlton/the_marian_necessity

Quote by St. Maxinus the Confessor

 "Do not disdain the commandment of love, because by it you will be a son of God. If you  transgress it you will become a son of hell."


Maximus the Confessor (6th-7th c.)

a layman's thoughts - Is God jealous and Angry?

There is, further, one important kind of statement in Scripture--- and there are many examples of it in Genesis--- which the Holy Fathers tell us specifically not to understand in a literal way. These are anthropomorphic statements made of God as though He were a man who walks, talks, gets angry, etc. All such statements we are to understand in a "God-befitting" manner--- that is, based on our knowledge from Orthodox teaching that God is purely spiritual, has not physical organs, and that His acts are described in Scripture as they seem to us.

~ Fr. Seraphim Rose
from Genesis, Creation, And Early Man (p.123)
St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2011

The Bible, the Scriptures, are not man’s version of God. They’re God’s version of man.”
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
online source of quote:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/darwin_and_christianity_-_part_6

First and Foremost:
I would like to thank Father Photios for his Orthodoxy classes @ St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, Clark Carlton, Father Thomas Hopko and the writings of The Church Fathers and Saints.

  When talking with or listening to agnostics and atheists there is a strong opinion in them that God is jealous, angry, and genocidal. Also that God is petty and demands worship as if he covets it from man as if He has nothing better to do. My response is that words to describe God in any way are at best anthropomorphic and are a verbal condescension having no meaning in describing God whatsoever. These words like jealous and angry are didactic. They teach things to man about his role in his own salvation and to instruct the spiritually weak. First comes fear, then promise of reward, and then Love, which casts away fear. And these are spiritual realities or levels of faith in people: Fear, hope of Reward and Love... Love being the perfect spiritual state; however, the groundwork has to start at the lowest level first, this is the art of teaching or pedagogy. Fear was used in the Old Testament to get people to move toward God as a motivation since we know that fear is a great motivator. Especially people of the ancient world who thought at the level of power or fearing powerful god-men those who could crush armies and kingdoms. Kings were considered gods then by their strength in battle and those sort of words were also used to describe God, though God himself is not defined by any man-made words. Only for teaching purposes were the words used. God does not get angry and God is not jealous. God is love and does not change not matter what we do. For if man sinned and God was then angry because of sin, it would imply a change in God. You would have to say then that God is love, but then he gets angry; if a person repents, He is love again. This is more like the neurotic gods of the demonic or the many mythological gods of the old world.
   The same applies to God being jealous. God is fully complete and in need of nothing within the Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To imply that the word jealous would mean God changes and is in an unhappy state of existence needing man to love him is wrong. Again God does not change. Within the communion of love in the Godhead there is no fear, jealousy, anger, or anything evil.
   When we think of genocide and apply that to God's actions throughout history, we are only thinking from the point of our own humanity. Is God under His own laws? If he were under His own laws, then He would only be a vicar to Law, subjugate under Law or the Law-god. Law would be God and he would be subservient to it. God is not under any Law, He Is and has always been. The Law is for man for his own good and therapy, the path to virtue. However, it is not an end in itself but only points to the Redeemer Christ, which the law is but a shadow. We do not worship law but God who came to earth in Christ for our sake onto eternal life.
   So words used as teaching exercises are only an anthropomorphism (personification), or human attributes or characteristics to attempt some meaning or teaching of God to man, really, what is indescribable by any human words or anything found on earth or the cosmos. But and here is the big But, man had to put down things, concepts or ideas in words to teach, instruct, guide, and to ground people in an understanding of God, The God, The Way of God, and the coming redemption with the limited words that men had to make the grand point. And since, being inspired by God, man could not leave the pages of teaching blank, there had to be letters and words for this purpose for the generations and to eternity.
  
“The Bible gives us a vision of humanity as theomorphic. It does not give us a vision of God as anthropomorphic.”
~ Karl Stern

online source of quote:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/darwin_and_christianity_-_part_6

However, when it comes to dealings with mankind and the creation, God does in fact act in very real terms and not just words or metaphor. Man feels God's love or God's anger in real terms but in the Godhead these realities of anger and jealousy do not exist. In the world of man and creation, they are real things. We must be clear that these are not just ways of speaking. We must also not over-emphasize one point of view and error in making fairy-tales of other realities. We can be too one-sided and cling to that one side at the expense of the affirmation of other things. In other words those other affirmations need also to be affirmed so we do not fall to error as Church history has shown. Man has felt God's love as anger. It was real. But we must remember that the "wrath" of God is always for the purpose of correction, advancement in virtue and the goal of man becoming like-God unto eternal life and never for madness or purposeless vengeance. Love by definition has to guide its children to itself.

The law of non-contradiction by Aristotle does not apply to God, to Father, Son and Holy Spirit being One and three persons. It has no meaning there. God appears to the creation in what would only appear in contradiction. We must remember that God is beyond all definitions and beyond categorization.

... and the Pseudo-Areopagite, St. Dionysius, in his Mystical Theology, would even say that there is real differentiation in the Godhead itself. On the one hand, God is beyond all change and is perfectly one, but the one is perfectly plural and the plurality is perfectly one. The many is real and the one is real, and in God those contradictions in created order are overcome, because God is not a creature and He is completely different.

We have to affirm both things. On one hand, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, one of the great theologians of our time, quoting Cardinal Newman, a Roman Catholic, said, “Theology is a saying and an unsaying in a positive effect.” You say one thing, and then you negate it by saying something else, and both are true in different contexts.

It is almost like in modern science, when people ask, “Is electricity a wave, or is it a particle?” Well, it is both. Sometimes it is better to speak about it as a wave, and that is truer to what you are trying to talk about, and other times it is better to speak about it as a particle, because it is true to what you are trying to talk about. If you are trying to talk about God in God’s self, then you use all the super-duper-duper apophatic language. God is beyond everything transcendent, unknowable, inconceivable, ineffable, supra-non-knowable, and that is true. But when God acts, God speaks, God creates, God relates to creation, then you have to say that He really acts in such a away that His actions are real. God really does get angry. God really does forgive. God really does show mercy.

quoted from:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_wrath_of_god_-_part_2



moreover from Thomas Hopko on The Wrath of God part II:
Source:
radio and transcript:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_wrath_of_god_-_part_2

transcript:

We reflected upon the wrath of God, and we said that the wrath of God is a reality, that the scripture is very clear that God gets angry with us, His wrath is upon us, He is not pleased with us, and He expresses that wrath upon us for the sake of our salvation, for the sake of our good. We said that the wrath of God proceeds from His very love, that God is love, that God loves us, and when you love someone and they do stupid things and foolish things and act wickedly, then it is very appropriate to be angry.
So we have in Scripture, again and again—anyone who would read the Bible cannot fail to see—the wrath of God. In fact, there are two words for it that are used in Scripture. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, you have two Greek words, one is orgi and the other is thymos.
Orgi simply means anger, or wrath. Thymos is a word that translates as wrath or anger, but actually, in Platonic literature, that was a quality of human beings called the irascible, the zealous, the fiery, that there is a kind of fiery element, a thymos that is within human beings, and in the Scripture this is applied to God himself, that God has this kind of fiery, we might even say, impassioned, relationship to us that is expressed in wrath, or in anger, or in delight, or in pleasure. These things are spoken about in the bible and they are spoken about very realistically.
Some of the folks who have emailed me about what I had to say about the wrath of God on the radio found some objections to it, particularly in some of the Church Fathers, where you have the teaching that anger and wrath do not really belong to Divinity, as such, that God is perfect, that God is unmoved, that God is impassable, that God cannot be acted upon, and that certainly within the Divinity itself, these kind of qualities have no meaning whatsoever. In fact, they simply do not exist. There is a sense in which that is definitely true, and I think that if we took the Bible and how the Church Fathers interpret the Bible, we would see that within Divinity itself, within the Godhead, within the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is no anger, there is no wrath, there is no passion, there are no emotions in a human sense.
But we have to be very careful here, because there is one sense, where folks would say that none of these things exist in God and they are not real for God at all, and they are not even real when God seems to show them to us. They base their idea on a Platonistic or Hellenistic view that a static, impassable, unchangeable, uncaused, pure being is perfection, and is perfection even for God, so that God then, is supreme being, that God is perfectly One, that God is unmoved, that God is impassable, and that comes from the Hellenistic tradition, reflecting philosophically on things, and coming to the conclusion that the perfect being would be immutable, impassable, unchanging, perfectly one, and this led to some very bad results for Christianity.
Namely, it led some people to claim that in the Trinity itself, in the Godhead itself, there is only the one God, and even Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are somehow ways of speaking about the one God who is perfectly one in Himself, that there is only relationship in God, but that the unity of God is so perfectly one that, even St. Augustine said in his book, De Trinitate that we only speak of three persons in the Godhead conventionally. We only speak about that because of the ways revelation speaks to us, but that God, in Himself, is not Trinity at all, He is perfectly one, and that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three modal expressions of the one God who is perfectly, arithmetically one, and so on.
Another bad result of this Hellenistic tradition was to just take all the elements of creation and to take being as opposed to becoming, unity as opposed to multiplicity, unchanging as opposed to change, immutable as opposed to mutable, and then saying God is the being, the one, the unchangeable, the immutable, the impassable, and that is divine perfection.
According to Christianity, following the Bible, that is just plain not true. The Christian view, and it had to be worked out over centuries, and perhaps it was only completely worked out in the 13^th century, 1300 years after Jesus, in the great controversy of St. Gregory Palamas with the West about the reality of the divine energies and the divine actions, which St. Gregory and his confreres, and the Councils that are accepted by the Orthodox Church as true and universally received and accepted, is that the actions and the operations of God toward us are as divine and are as real as anything we can possibly say.
When the Bible speaks about God being angry or being wrathful, or being delighted in us, or grieving over us, or taking pleasure in us, those are realities, when it says that God shows and reveals His glory, His power, His wisdom, His truth, His might, His goodness, His beauty. Those are realities, those are true things. They are not just analogies, they are not just metaphors. They are saying something really true, and the saints have experienced these things. The saints have experienced the love of God, the power of God, the beauty of God. Saints have even experienced the wrath of God. They have experienced God’s chastening upon them. So the claim is that these are real, and that they are as divine as whatever God is in His own divine realm, in His own divine existence and being.
And the tradition of the Church, following the Bible, that speaks about the holiness of God, the incomparability of God, the God who is totally different from anything in heaven and on earth, they would say, and certainly St. Gregory Palamas would say this, I’ve said this on the radio before, that if you say God is, or God is being, even that is somehow not true in relationship to God in God’s self. God reveals Himself to us as existing, but existence is a category that does not, strictly speaking, apply to divinity as such. God is beyond being, He is beyond existence, He is beyond being and becoming, He is beyond change and non-change, He is beyond mutable and immutable.  You cannot say he is immutable and not mutable.  You cannot say he is being and not becoming. God is none of those things. He is completely beyond them all.
You could ask the question, “How can you say this, how do you know this?” The answer would be, “We know this because God has revealed himself to us. God has shown Himself to us. He has acted in our world, and we know His divine actions, and we know these actions are really divine.”
But when we experience these actions, for example, when we experience God’s wrath, or when we know God’s beauty, or when we come to commune in God’s wisdom, and God’s knowledge, and even God’s power, we know that our very experience makes us confess that we know that these are the ways that God reveals himself to us which are truly divine, they are accommodated to us, they are made adequate to us, but they lead us into the conclusion that God Himself, in Himself, is beyond all of these things, that He is none of those things.
Probably, in the tradition of Christianity, one of the most memorable sentences that I can think of in my readings over the last 50 years or so, is a statement of St. Maximus the Confessor. I am sure that St. Maximus would have agreed totally with St. John Chrysostom’s liturgy that we serve in church, that God is ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, but God is also ever-existing and always the same, in the sense that He is not changing, and one day becoming one way, and one day becoming another, and being fickle, but that when you notice incomprehensible, unknowable, inconceivable God, what you know is that God is beyond everything. St. Maximus said, “When it comes to divinity, the best that we can do, the ultimate that we can do is to say that God is supra-non-knowable.” He is even beyond non-knowing. He is not only beyond knowing, He is beyond non-knowing. He is supra-non-knowable, and he can only be supra-non-known. You cannot know God, but you can supra-non-know God.
In other words, you could have this contact with God, this astonishment and awe and wonder, where you say God is even beyond unknowing. He is beyond knowing and unknowing both. God is the supra-non-knowable who can be supra-non-known through an act, as Maximus said, of supra-non-knowing, supra-non-knowledge. That is a quality human beings are capable of, that is, experiencing God. This was beautifully formulated by Dr. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century. All of the fathers would say, we know these things because we experience God, and it is really God that we are experiencing. When we claim to know God by experience, by vision, by reality, for example, in Palamism, the uncreated light of God, we would say that uncreated light is really divine. It is not like human light at all, it is not like created light at all. We call it light, but it is beyond light, because we do not have the words to speak of it, but we would still insist that it is real. The Western tradition, that really was Platonistic, Hellenistic, like Anselm of Canterbury, even like Thomas Aquinas, like the Council of Trent, they said no, these things are not real, that God is uncaused, He is supreme being, He is beyond everything, He is beyond passibility, He is incomprehensible in Himself, but what we have to say about Him is that He is the unmoved mover. He is the uncaused cause. He is the pure unity. There is no plurality, there is no dynamism, there is no action at all in God that is real—you just cannot say that.
As Anselm interpreted, he said every time the bible speaks about wrath, or about anger, or about delight, or about beauty, or about glory, or about wisdom, this is only metaphor. These are just metaphors, these are just analogies, they do not really exist in reality. So, the Barlamites attack the Palamites in the 14^th century by saying, you guys are nuts. You cannot really experience God. You cannot claim that you really know the light, and the beauty, and the glory of God. That is impossible. God cannot do this because God cannot change. God cannot act in that way. He is pure act. He is actos puros, he is pure act. And all this multiplicity is just analogy, or you could possibly say, that is just different ways of speaking about what in reality is one and the same thing.
So, the immutable, impassable God is sometimes experienced by us as love, sometimes as anger, sometimes as beauty, sometimes as power. But these are only our different ways of speaking about something which in and of itself is one and exactly the same thing. They are not really different. The point would be, there is no differentiation in the Godhead at all. There is no action or movement in the Godhead at all, and when we say that there is, we are only speaking in a metaphorical or analogical way.
The Palamites, and Orthodoxy now, as the universal Church, says that is not true. We endorse Palamism and say that St. Gregory Palamas is a saint, and we endorse his interpretation of earlier church fathers, like Maximus, like Gregory the Theologian, and like Gregory of Nyssa, particularly, who was very Hellenistic. Gregory of Nyssa, whom someone who emailed quoted, speaks about God having no anger and no wrath, because He is impassable and Immutable, and anybody who knows theology, at least a little bit, would say, well sure, that is true. God in Himself is beyond all of these things.
You still have to affirm though, that when God acts toward creation and acts in creation, the creation that He made and wants to be in real communion with, He acts toward us in these ways and these ways are real, and they are really divine, and they really come from God, and they do not destroy the unity and the simplicity and the impassability of God. They do not. They are expressions of it, but real expressions of the living God, who is not a Platonistic idea, but is really an I am, is a living God, who acts and breathes and speaks, and the claim is, following the bible, the church fathers would say, ultimately, that these things are real.
A word about the Church Fathers. Not every Church Father says everything absolutely correctly. And a lot of the earlier Church Fathers had to be corrected by later church fathers. For example, when you read about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the earliest patristic literature, it sounds like they do not really believe in the Holy Trinity as being absolutely divine in exactly the same way. They speak of the Son as a lesser God, or a second God. All of that had to be corrected, and it took 400 years to correct it, and even then it was not totally corrected, because there was an argument again about how the Holy Spirit relates to the Father and the Son, and this goes on forever in some sense.
The story is never over, but at the same time, we have to know that that happens. St. Maximus the Confessor, whom we just mentioned, wrote a whole treatise called De Ambigua, On the Ambiguities. He was straightening out the ambiguities in St. Gregory the Theologian. And we know that Gregory the Theologian, himself, was straightening out the ambiguities in the teaching of Basil the Great.
So you have this mutual correction and growth and development in theology through the centuries, and there is a sense in which you could say, this issue of how God can be, on one hand, and in one aspect, in Himself, supra-non-knowable, completely beyond, absolutely transcendent, not like anything in heaven and on earth, that you can only be totally silent in front of, and only be in astonishment and wonder and you cannot speak, and if you would speak about it, as Gregory of Nyssa said, quoting Psalm 116, every man is a liar. What you are saying is just plain not true.
On the other hand, you have God in action, you have God revealing Himself, God showing Himself, God manifesting Himself, God relating to His creation, and He does so in many different forms and in many different ways, and in fact, even Gregory of Nyssa said, every day God appears different to us and in some sense, He really is. There is real multiplicity, real differentiation, and the Pseudo-Areopagite, St. Dionysius, in his Mystical Theology, would even say that there is real differentiation in the Godhead itself. On the one hand, God is beyond all change and is perfectly one, but the one is perfectly plural and the plurality is perfectly one. The many is real and the one is real, and in God those contradictions in created order are overcome, because God is not a creature and He is completely different.
We have to affirm both things. On one hand, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, one of the great theologians of our time, quoting Cardinal Newman, a Roman Catholic, said, “Theology is a saying and an unsaying in a positive effect.” You say one thing, and then you negate it by saying something else, and both are true in different contexts.
It is almost like in modern science, when people ask, “Is electricity a wave, or is it a particle?” Well, it is both. Sometimes it is better to speak about it as a wave, and that is truer to what you are trying to talk about, and other times it is better to speak about it as a particle, because it is true to what you are trying to talk about. If you are trying to talk about God in God’s self, then you use all the super-duper-duper apophatic language. God is beyond everything transcendent, unknowable, inconceivable, ineffable, supra-non-knowable, and that is true. But when God acts, God speaks, God creates, God relates to creation, then you have to say that He really acts in such a away that His actions are real. God really does get angry. God really does forgive. God really does show mercy.
On the one hand, the Bible will say, God has spoken, He will not change His mind, and on the other hand, you see God interacting with people like Hezekiah, where He told him he was going to die, and then He repents of it, and he does not die. Or Jonah, when He tells him to prophecy against the Ninevites, and then He forgives them. That is how a living God acts. We would say, in and of Himself, in Himself, none of this is contradictory.
Of course, what we would really say when we know God through Jesus Christ and in God’s revelation, is that the wrath of God and the anger of God is an anger and wrath that is appropriate to God. It is an anger and wrath that comes out of love, that comes out of truth, that comes out of care for us, and concern that we would be chastened, that we would learn, that we would grow, that we would not be fools. So we would say, yes, there is a real wrath of God and you have to say that it is really and truly real, but you can never say that it is in any way sinful. God even says in the Psalm to human beings, “Be angry, but do not sin” (Psalm 4:4).
Well, that would be a good definition of God. He is angry, but He does not sin. He does not do evil. The anger of God is never evil. God is never evil. It is real. It is chastening. It is for our salvation. It is an expression of love. It is ultimately even overcome in the crucified Christ, whose righteousness removes the wrath of God upon creation, upon humanity. Christ brings a new humanity, a purified, righteous humanity to the world, that we can believe in, and by grace we can participate in. And even if we sin against it and repent, God will forgive us every single time for the sake of Jesus. But at the same time, this wrath of God is the wrath of love, and it is never, ever evil. It is never punitive. It is never cruel. It is never vindictive. It is certainly not sadistic.
I had a friend once who said to me, “You know, Father Tom, in my opinion there are only three possibilities: One is that there is no God and all this is just total nonsense, and everybody is killing each other all over the place, and we all end up cursed and dead and rotten in the tomb, and I can’t accept that. The world is too beautiful, I have a sense of meaning, I can imagine a perfect world, and I can’t believe that all this is just for nothing.” But then he said, “But another possibility is that this world is a play-thing of God, that God is, in fact, a sadist, He is cruel. He lets Tsunamis come and smash all kinds of people. He delights in brimstoning Sodom and Gomorrah. He plays around with people. He lets their kids die.”
I just saw two very moving films. One was about an Ethiopian Christian boy who was going to be killed, but the Ethiopian Jews were being saved by the Jews and taken to Israel, so the Christian mother makes her little boy go with the Jews and he has to pretend that he is a Jew so that he does not lose his life, and it is so sad, I mean when this boy leaves his mother, and he is weeping. 
And then there is another movie about a little boy in Poland who, while hiding under the bed or somewhere, sees Nazi soldiers come in and shoot dead his father and his mother and drag off his 15-year-old sister to rape her, and he has to live with that his whole life. Some people would look at that and say, like Ivan Karamazov, said, “To hell with this world. God is God, but this world is impossible, and if God really made it this way, He is just a sadist, He is cruel, and if He is organizing everything, if He is directing everything, how can you possibly believe in that kind of a God? It looks like nothing means anything, everything is stupid and we are all just suffering for no good reason, and God is making it all happen, if there is a God.”
But then my friend said, there is a third possibility, and that is that God had no choice. If he was going to have a human world, he had to have the suffering and therefore His anger had to come into it; he had to show his wrath toward sinners, and ultimately, he had to act to save the world through Jesus Christ, who takes upon Himself the sin of the world, and assuages the wrath of God by His total righteousness, even in the most horrible situation, when He is forsaken by God and man and hanging dead on the cross.
So either there is no God, or there is a monster God, or there is Christianity. That seems to be the three choices, and unless you are just some spiritualist and say, “Well, the material world and my body means nothing anyway, I have an immortal soul, and it is going to go off into…” and that is Hellenism, that is even Hinduism. It is even, in a sense, Buddhism.
But anybody who would affirm history, and would affirm the material world and would look out the window, like I am looking out now at the beautiful fall colors of the leaves of the trees, and could weep over this Jewish boy who saw his family killed and his sister dragged off, you have to say when you are looking at that, you cannot just believe that all this can happen and, and this little boy has an immortal soul and he will be happy in his soul, and what happened physically and materially to his poor sister and his family didn’t mean anything. That would be absolutely ridiculous.
So the answer is Christ crucified, still. But if you believe in Christ crucified, and therefore you get involved with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the God of Sodom and Gomorrah, the God of the Babylonian captivity, the God of the Bible, then you have to say that this God is the real God., and He is interacting with the real world.
And then his wrath, his anger, his mercy, all these are realities—his joy, his beauty—and we would even say as the Palamites say, that there is a multiplicity of divine actions and energies, all adequately shaped and formed to each individual person on earth, and to each moment in history, each second of time—are real. The experience of God in those conditions is real, and therefore the wrath of God, the anger of God, always an expression of God’s goodness and love and beauty and truth, is never cruel, vindictive, sinful or wicked in any way.
Still, that wrath is absolutely real. So what you have to do is affirm both things. You have to affirm the supra-transcendent God, who is not simply impassable, or undifferentiated, or perfectly one and perfectly unchanging, that would be Hellenism. But you have to affirm the God who is beyond all of those things, who is really supra-non-knowable, beyond them all, and then you have to say, when that God creates a world and reveals Himself to human creatures who have a mind, and who have freedom, and who can understand, and who can see truth, and who are made in the image and likeness of God, then you have to say that when we speak about God toward us, yes, we would say, God cannot be acted upon against His own will, that you cannot harm God, you cannot make God suffer.
But on the other hand, you have to say, in His love for us, God is pained, God is angry, God is sad, and these things are really real, and they have to be accepted as real. The saints who have experienced them, they confess that this is real. When we know God, we know that these things, in fact, are real, and they are true.
We could add one more point here, thinking again about the wrath of God, and insisting, again, that it is an expression of God as good, God as loving, God as ultimately merciful. We can see the wrath as appropriate to God’s love and even as an expression of His love because He cares about us, and even as a tool in His hands to purify us, but we have to see, ultimately, that it all has to be completely and totally solved, we have to be saved from that wrath, and we are, in the crucified Christ.
We can look again at Jesus, and it is very, very important that we do so. When we look at Jesus, we remember that according to the Christian faith, Jesus is revealing God to us in human form. He really is revealing God to us in human form. And here we want to insist again, and I would like to insist on, just because of some of the emails that I have just received, that we really have to take seriously the incarnation, and I am afraid that some of us do not. We are so insistent that Jesus Christ is a divine Logos and He is absolutely divine and that He is God, that we do not believe, really at the same time, that He is really human. And here, again, following the fathers, and especially Cyril of Alexandria and all of them after, we have to say that Jesus’ humanity is as real as His divinity and we have to affirm both. And Jesus really is human.
As some person wrote to me and said, “Well, I can quote some Church Fathers who said Jesus as God was omniscient and He knew everything, so when He didn’t know, it was only kat economia, according to the economy, or for pedagogical purposes, and so on. Well, I would say, be more careful in the reading of the Church Fathers, and read all of the Church Fathers, not just some, and read those who directly, consciously address this particular issue.
For example, Cyril of Alexandria, who himself had to be corrected, was very clear. He would say that, in as much as He is God, Jesus is supra-non-knowable, beyond everything, and His divinity is exactly that of the Father and Spirit, as Nicea and the early Fathers said, those before Cyril.
But Cyril insists on the reality of the incarnation, so that when the Logos becomes flesh and really becomes a human being, then He suffers, He dies even, the famous Theopaschite formula. He hungers, He thirsts, He weeps, He grieves, and He gets angry. He has all the human qualities, and humanity is limited. So He is a Jew and not a gentile, He is a man and not a woman. He lived in the first century, not the 21^st. He knew certain things and did not know other things. He did not know Russian, for example.
You could say, well, as God he knew, as man He didn’t. Well, if you want to say that, fine, and that is the way some of the earlier Fathers spoke, but that had to be explained a lot better, and it is not even explained well enough, in my opinion, to this present day, though people have tried to do that through the centuries.
But there is a truth there. The simplistic truth is, yes, if you are God you know everything, and if you are man, you don’t. And Jesus is both. So in some sense He is omniscient, and in another sense, He is not. And the Fathers would say, in the economia, he is not.
But he really is not. He really is limited. He really is circumscribable. He really is contained. He really is in the body. He really has a human soul. Gregory the theologian fought for that against the Apollinarians. He really has a human will and human freedom. Maximus the Confessor was mutilated for holding that teaching.
So the same way that when we speak about God, when we say certain things about how God is in God’s own self, in God’s own divine realm, and how God is in acts toward us, and both are real, we have to say the same thing about Jesus, that in as much as He is divine, we affirm certain things, and in as much as He is human, we affirm certain things, and we hold together the mystery, and it is a great mystery, but nevertheless it is a truth. And the truth of the matter is, if you really believe in the incarnation, and really believe that Jesus is a real man, and the Council of Chalcedon insists on this.
By the way, speaking about the Council of Chalcedon, following St. Cyril in the Council of Ephesus, the Nestorians’ whole problem was that, they being Hellenistic, said that God is unchanging, and therefore God cannot become a man, even. They denied the reality of the incarnation on the basis of the immutability and impassability of God. So they said, the immutable, impassable, unchanging God can unite Himself to a human person, namely Jesus of Nazareth, but He cannot really become the human person, Jesus of Nazareth. That was rejected as heresy, and it really was heresy because they tried to make a Church on that basis, it wasn’t just a mistake.
And here, by the way, having been accused lately of heresy myself, I would like to say something. You have to be careful if you call someone a heretic. A heretic is a pretty great person who divides the Church and makes up a false church and opposes the true church. That is a heretic. And I would say, I’m not a heretic, that is for sure. I may be dumb. I may be stupid, I may be wrong, I may be mistaken, I may be incorrect, I may not understand things properly, but I’m certainly not a heretic. But I have to try to articulate the mystery, too. And I may not do it right in every case. And neither did any of the Church Fathers, by the way. I don’t want to put myself in their category.
Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that in some of their articulations, they were incorrect, or as my professor Verhovskoy used to say, the holy fathers are not holy spirits, they could be incorrect at times. And the professor used to say, also, that sometimes they are correct, but they are one-sided. He liked that expression, you can be one-sided. What you say may be correct, but if you just affirm it, while not affirming other things, then you deform it.
And that is what people did about God. If they just affirmed that He is one, and uncaused, and unchanging, and immutable, and impassable, and do not also affirm that He can really reveal Himself, and really show Himself, in many diverse forms, like angry, grieving, sad, merciful, then you are affirming one thing, but you are destroying the truth of it, because you are not affirming the other thing that also has to be affirmed.
When we look at Jesus and we affirm that He is both God and man, and that He is revealing divinity through His humanity, when it comes to the issue of wrath, we see that Jesus got angry. There are several places in Holy Scripture where Jesus clearly got angry.
In St. Mark’s Gospel in the third chapter, Jesus is getting angry. This is what it says in St. Mark’s gospel. It said, “He,” Jesus, “entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand, and they watched Him to see whether He, Jesus, would heal him on the Sabbath day, so that they might accuse him” (Mark 3:1-2). You see, they wanted to accuse Jesus. That is very important. They didn’t really want to understand, they just wanted to accuse.
And I am afraid we have a lot of that today in the Church. We don’t really want to understand each other, we just want to accuse each other. I don’t know, we may listen to Ancient Faith Radio to find out what mistakes are being said by the speakers, because we have a tendency and a desire to accuse, rather than to understand—“Oh, that’s not of God, that’s just of the devil.”
But it said they wanted to accuse him. “And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come here.’ And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good, or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent.” They couldn’t answer Jesus—they just remained silent.
“And He looked around at them,” and it says, “with anger.” And then it says that he, “grieved at their hardness of heart.”  (it says in Greek—grieving). So Jesus is angered, and he is grieving, at their hardness of heart. And then He says to the man, “stretch out your hand, and He heals him, and the Pharisees go out immediately, hold counsel with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy Him, how to put Him to death.” (Mark 3:3-6)
What we want to see here is that, it says He spoke with anger, met orgis, that He spoke, grieving. And we know that Jesus grieved, He wept. He wept over Jerusalem, He wept over Lazarus, He wept in the Gethsemane garden.
We will talk about that again on the radio, Jesus’ weeping. In fact, some mystical writer said once, “God became man in order to weep”—that God, in himself, is beyond weeping, but he himself, in creating a world that He loves, not only gets angry, but he weeps. And Jesus shows the weeping of God in his humanity. He shows the anger of God in His humanity.
And of course, we know how Jesus spoke against the Scribes and the Pharisees and the lawyers and the hypocrites in St. Matthew’s gospel. He says in St. Matthew, ten to twelve times, “Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you.” He calls them all kinds of names. He calls them whitewashed sepulchres and hypocrites and all kinds of terrible things and that could really mean that He was kind of hot. He had a thymos.  A thymos was a zeal, an irascible quality. The claim is that God, Himself, has that quality, vis-à-vis creation, there is nothing for God to be irascible or angry about within the three persons of the Divine Trinity, but there is plenty for Him to be angry and irascible and wrathful about relative to creation, especially because He loves us.
Then you have the quintessential example of Jesus’ anger when He takes a whip, goes into the temple, knocks over all the tables of the money-changers, and with His whip, chases them out and says, “This temple is supposed to be holy, a place of worshipping God, and you make it a place of business and commerce” (e.g. Matthew 21:12). So He got really angry.
We know that in Jesus’ anger He never sinned. He didn’t sin. He didn’t do anything wrong. And he wasn’t just beating up on people for fun. And he wasn’t doing it because he enjoyed sadistically causing them pain. And he certainly didn’t do it just to be punitive and to punish them. Why did he do it? He did it to teach. He did it to show. He did it to reveal God’s will. He did it so that we would be purified, so that we would learn, that we would change.
The wrath of God is an instrument in his hands for our salvation, for our good. That is how Christians would understand the wrath of God. And it is absolutely appropriate, it is absolutely necessary. If God did not get angry against wickedness, what kind of God would He be? We would even accuse a human being, if they saw horrible wickedness, if they saw soldiers killing a little boy’s parents and dragging off his sister to rape her, if you weren’t angry and if you weren’t sad, there would really be something wrong with you, it would just be impossible. And we feel that way in human reality, and so we understand the same thing relative to God.
But our issue for today is, is the wrath real? Is the anger real? And are the other actions of God described in holy scripture and experienced by saints, for example when Moses says that God’s anger was kindled against him—was that really real? Or was just something happening that Moses was imagining but wasn’t really coming from God? We would say, no. So what we want to affirm today is that all the actions of God, all the qualities of God that we know in His action toward us, that we know through Jesus, even through the humanity of Jesus, are applicable to God. So orgi and thymos, anger and wrath, really belong to God. They are a part of divinity.
Within the divinity they are never expressed, because there is no need for them to be expressed. What kind of anger or wrath would exist between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? But once God creates a world knowing that it would be evil and wicked, and knowing that you have all the horrible things that we have among humanity, then you can say that it is totally fitting, proper, and befitting the very nature of God, as far as we know God, that He would act this way.
So we could even say that the wrath of God is a reality and, of course, the final point always has to be, that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, who is really God, Himself, became a real, actual human being. And in his humanity, he revealed God and he expressed anger and wrath, and sadness, and all those things.
But we also want to say that Jesus of Nazareth, because of his righteousness, because he does not get God angry at him at all, because there is no reason whatsoever, for God, His father, to show any kind of wrath or anger toward Jesus in any way—just the opposite: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” it says in Scripture (Matthew 17:5). And God is well pleased in His Son, Jesus, because the Son takes upon Himself the sin of the world, and assuages divine wrath and redeems humanity and saves creation, so that in the end, in the age to come, we would definitely say the following:
The wrath of God is removed from all of humanity for the sake of Jesus, and for those who believe in that, and who love it, and who pray to God to have it be for them, they are saved and redeemed and God’s wrath is off them. And those who do not accept it, do not want it, in some sense, the wrath of God remains upon them. But even those people are forgiven and mercy is shown on them because of Jesus. And therefore, their torment, their suffering, is not from the wrath of God, as much as it is from the mercy of God, for it is from the wrath of God that God, Himself, wanted to overcome by His own mercy, you might say.
This is not contradiction within God, this is just the way reality is and the way the truth is, and God is truth. Christ is the truth. This is the truth. So what we want to affirm more than anything today, and there are plenty of things to affirm, but today we really want to affirm both things, that in Himself, in what God is we cannot even imagine, but when God reveals Himself to us, we know that what He is in Himself is beyond anything in the created order, but what we want to affirm, as well, is that when He relates to the created order, his actions toward us are real. And among those many, countless actions and operations and revelations of God toward creatures as a whole, and toward each individual human being, and even each bird, each rock, each everything in creation, each moment of time, that those actions of God are real, and among those actions, at certain times, is the expression of divine anger, and divine wrath.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and with the prayers of Saint Peter, the intercession prayers of St. Demetrios and Saint Paisios of the Mount Athos. May we all be changed by the divine love of Jesus Christ to a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ unto life everlasting. Glory to God.

For the Perfect, Evil No Longer Exists By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Whoever restrains sinful thoughts, does not think of his own sins or the sins of others, neither of anything corruptible nor of anything earthly. The mind of such a man is continually in heaven where there is no evil. Thus, in him, sin gradually ceases to be, even in his thoughts.

For the Perfect, Evil No Longer Exists

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

When a man once truly repents, he need not think any more about the sins he committed so that he will not sin again.

St. Anthony counsels: "Be careful that your mind not be defiled with the remembrance of former sins and that the remembrance of those sins not be renewed in you."

Again, in another place, St. Anthony says: "Do not establish your previously committed sins in your soul by thinking about them so that they not be repeated in you. Be assured that they are forgiven you from the time that you gave yourself to God and repentance. In that, do not doubt."

It is said of St. Ammon that he attained such perfection that from much goodness he was not aware that evil exists anymore. When they asked him what is that "narrow and difficult [sorrowful] path" (Matthew 7:14), he replied: "It is the restraining of one's thoughts and severing of one's desires in order to fulfill the will of God."

Whoever restrains sinful thoughts, does not think of his own sins or the sins of others, neither of anything corruptible nor of anything earthly. The mind of such a man is continually in heaven where there is no evil. Thus, in him, sin gradually ceases to be, even in his thoughts.

 

 

 

Source:

 

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/08/for-perfect-evil-no-longer-exists.html

 

 

 

Symbol of the Holy Trinity

The only icon of the Trinity which the Church allows is, strictly speaking, not an icon of the Trinity perse, but of the visitation of the three Angels to Abraham. One cannot make a pictorial representation of the Father because He is spirit and has no depictable form. Similarly, one can depict the Holy Spirit only symbolically, as a dove or as tongue of fire. The Angels, which were clearly seen by Abraham, provide the Church with an indirect way of depicting the All-holy Trinity.

Clark Carlton
The Faith: Understanding Orthodox Christianity,62-63.
Regina Orthodox Press, 1997.

Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 18:

"The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men/angels standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought and wash your feet. Rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate."

Primary reference for the above is The Rublev Trinity by Gabriel Bunge

Icon of the Holy Trinity

The Teachings on the Holy Trinity is the basic theological theme of Pentecost.

How can God be shown in an icon? "God is Spirit" says John. Through the incarnation God " became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14). The Father, whom none has seen, revealed himself in the Son. Jesus says, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (Jn 14.9)

Humankind is capable of apprehending a vision of the image of the invisible God because he is created in the "Image of God." The Church Fathers saw the nature of our created image not as something static but as a living relationship. Any vision of God is a personal, immediate knowledge of God between creator and creature. It is of necessity the expression of a loving inward communion that is only possible for the Son and the Father. For us this perfect vision is not possible. The Church holds that the only possible image we have of the incarnate God, is the Son. But he is invisible in his divine nature without beginning even though he came to us as a mortal, born of a virgin mother. So even the image of the Son is only a limited view of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any image or icon can only point us to what is not seen.

In the Old Testament we had prefiguations of God through the visions of the Prophets of Elias, Isaiah, and Daniel. Among these images that were given to us was the one given to Abraham and recorded by Moses. God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mambre in the form of three men. This image which has become the main icon of the Holy Trinity is no manifestation of the infinite, but a prophetic vision of this mystery which has been revealed over time though the development of iconography.

The earliest depiction of this event found in Genesis 18 is a 4th century fresco found in the Via Latina Catacomb.It shows Abraham sitting under a tree greeting three youths standing in front of him on a raised platform with his raised hand. To his right is a calf suggesting his yet to come hospitality. The youth represent angels as early depictions of angels were as beardless youths. The three are similar in size and clothed alike. There is not real distinction among them. Clearly this image in an interpretation of this scene from the Old Testament.

We have from the 5th century a magnificent mosaic from the Saint Maria Maggiore in Rome. Abraham greets three youths on his knees. They now have halos or nimbi indicating a radiant light of glory around them. The one in the center is enclosed in a mandorla. Below they sit at a table and Abraham and Sarah are providing them hospitality. There is a bowl in front of the table for washing and on the table are three loaves of bread. Abraham is offering them a whole calf. Again an interpretation of the Biblical event.

Another early mosaic is found in San Vitale, Ravenna. Here one angel is pointing to the calf that Abraham holds and the other points to the bread. The one on the left holds his hand in blessing. This shows a network of relationships. This form remained unchanged for many centuries.

In the Eastern church a new iconographic type appeared around the year 1000. The image contains Abraham and Sarah and the three angels seated at the table. The guests no longer sit side by side but are group around a semicircular table. The middle angel is distinguished from the others and carries a scroll in his left hand while blessing with his right. The nimbus about his head has a cross clearly symbolizing Christ. This type is begun to be referred to as the Holy Trinity and was Christ centered. The image to the right is from a 11th century Greek psalter.

In the 14th century we have the well known iconographer Theophanes the Greek who painted many icons in Russia. He did the iconography in the church of the Transfiguration of Christ in Novgorod. This fresco of the trinity shows the familiar arrangement. The center angel appears more prominent. He bears a cross nimbus and carries along with his staff a large scroll. clearly symbolizing Christ.

In the late Byzantine period another interpretation appeared. An example comes from the Athonite Monastery of Vatopedi. It is more elaborate . The angels sit around a richly decorated table. The central angel has his head turned to the side with the head inclined slightly. His hand is no longer raised in blessing but now makes a gesture towards the vessel in front of him. He still has the cross nimbus. Abraham and Sarah are inserted between the angels with an attitude of reverence. The two side angels have clear gestures. One on the left blesses the table and the one on the right reaches for piece of bread. We also see in the background a house and a tree from the Biblical narrative.

This form is commonly seen in current iconography in the Greek Orthodox Churches. Shown below is a recent copy of this form of icon. Here there is no cross in the nimbus of the central angel and they appear equal in size. The table is clearly a dinning table fixed with food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saint Andrew Rublev Icon of the Holy Trinity

These series of icons shown above form the background for the development of one the most famous icons of the Trinity by the Russian iconographer Saint Andrew Rublev. There was no fixed form for the Trinity at the time of Rublev in the 15th century. This left painters freedom in their interpretation. He was aware of the transition from Christ centered icons of the Trinity toward a more theologically correct trinitarian view.

Year 1411 or 1425-27
Type Tempera
Dimensions 142 cm × 114 cm (56 in × 45 in)
Location Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Saint Andrew introduced definite changes to the pattern that immediately preceded him. The central angel no longer looks at the beholder but at an angle to the left. The angel on the left and the right cross each other so the center of gravity moves from the central angel to one on the left. The angels are of equal size. He give the central angel clothing characteristic of Christ and makes the clothing of the other two unique. The hand are no longer pointing to objects on the table which is smaller and there is now room only for a chalice in its middle containing the sacrificial lamb. Their gestures do not relate to food as in earlier icons but to one another. They represent three separate distinct persons who in intimate relation with each other.

The angel on the left is clothed in a pale pink cloak with brown and blue-green highlights. The one in the center is clothed in the customary colors of Christ. A dark red robe and blue cloak. The one on the right has a green cloak. The clear and precise colors of the central angel are contrasted with the soft hues of the other two. The colors seem to blend and harmonize unifying the three figures giving them a tranquil joyfulness. Just as in so many other icons, gold indicates the value of the image and draws us into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is as if the entire scene were suffused with light. Fitting because of the subject – no less than God himself – the same God who dwells in light unapproachable, the same God who dwells in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The table no longer looks like a dinning table but is a cube clearly recognizable as an altar with an opening for the relics. The hosts Abraham and Sarah are no longer in the picture.

He uses the biblical background but relates it to the three figures. The angel on the left is coordinated with the house, the one in the middle with a tree and the one on the right with a rock. These relationships become symbolic.

Over the head of the Father who is on the left is the house of the Father. It is the goal of our journey. It is the beginning and end of our lives. Its roof is golden. Its door is always open for the traveler. It has a tower, and its window is always open so that the Father can incessantly scan the roads for a glimpse of a returning prodigal.

He is vested in a blue undergarment which depicts his divine celestial nature. His fatherly authority is seen in his entire appearance. His head is not bowed and he is looking at the other two angels. His whole demeanor - the expression on his face, the placement of his hands, the way he is sitting - all speaks of his fatherly dignity.

 

Behind the center angle who symbolizes christ is a great tree that spreads its shade in heat of the day. It is no ordinary tree. It stands above the Son in the picture, and stands above the altar-table where the lamb lies within the chalice. Because of the sacrifice this tree grows. The tree of death has been transformed into a tree of life for us.

The Son has the deepest colors; a thick heavy garment of the reddish-brown of blood earth and a cloak of the blue of heaven. In his person he unites heaven and earth, the two natures are present in him, and over his right shoulder (the Government shall be upon his shoulder) there is a band of gold shot through the earthly garment, as his divinity suffuses and transfigures his earthly being. He is inclined towards the first angel, as though deep in conversation.

 

The angel on the right symbolizes the Holy Spirit. His green mantle of the Spirit, scintillating with light, is another of Rublev’s achievements. Green belongs to the Spirit because the Spirit is the source of life. On the Feast of Pentecost, Eastern Orthodox churches are decorated with greenery, boughs and branches, and worshippers will wear green clothing. The Orthodox prayer to the Holy Spirit begins, "O Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of Life…"

This sense of the Spirit as the source of life, everywhere present, filling all things, contributes to one of the distinct feaatures of Orthodox theology. That is, it is intimately bound up with daily life. There is no such thing as theology which is purely intellectual. If theology doesn't change you, if it doesn’t flood you with light, it’s not worth your time

This icon is appreciated for its simplicity. Saint Andrew was successful at advancing the iconographic tradition of the Church adding depth and bringing greater clarity to a doctrine that is forever mystically clothed.

 

Henry Nouwen, the great spiritual writer from Notre Dame, notes:

“Andrei Rublev painted this icon not only to share the fruits of his own meditation on the mystery of the Holy Trinity but also to offer his fellow monks a way to keep their hearts centered on God while living in the midst of political unrest. The more we look at this holy image with the eyes of faith, the more we come to realize that is painted not as a lovely decoration for a convent church, nor as a helpful explanation of a difficult doctrine, but as a holy place to enter and stay within. As we place ourselves in front of the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation to participate in an intimate table conversation that is taking place between the three divine angels and to join them at the table. The movement from the Father toward the Son and the movement of both Son and Spirit toward the Father become a movement in which the one who prays is lifted up and held secure. Through the contemplation of this icon we come to see with our own inner eyes that all the engagements in this world can bear fruit only when they take place within the divine circle. We can be involved in struggles for justice and actions for peace. We can be part of the ambiguities of family and community life. We can study, teach, write, and hold a regular job. We can do all of this without ever having to leave the house of love… Rublev's icon gives us a glimpse of the house of perfect love.”

Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 18:

"The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men/angels standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought and wash your feet. Rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate."

Primary reference for the above is The Rublev Trinity by Gabriel Bunge

 

 

Source:

http://www.stgeorgegreenville.org/OurFaith/Pentecost/Icon%20Trinity.html

 

Quoet by St. John Cassian

"For a person cannot be disquieted or concerned about other people's affairs if he is satisfied with concentrating on the work of his own hands (St. John Cassian)."

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Abbot Tryphon - The Lenten Journey and the Banishment of Hell

THE BANISHMENT OF HELL
The Lenten Journey and the Banishment of Hell

One of my favorite authors as a young man, was Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk. In the introduction to his work New Seeds of Contemplation he wrote: "Hell was whe...re no one has anything in common with anyone else except the fact that they all hate one other and cannot get away from each other and from themselves."
This very much fits with the Orthodox view of hell as being in the presence of God for all eternity, and hating it. For the one who has never loved and who is consumed in his own ego and his own passions, being with God for all eternity will be to him, hell. Without love, we can not experience the Fire of God without being burned.

The Lenten journey is the perfect time to reconnect with God's love by strengthening love within our own heart. By reaching out with an ever expanding love and charity for everyone around us, be they family members, fellow believers in the parish, or strangers on the street, loving others becomes our Lenten goal. As love increases, hate and anger decrease. As Christ increases in our own heart, the power of hate and sin decreases around us, and hell is banished.

With love in Christ,
Abbot TryphonSee More

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