Papal Reformation and the Great Schism: II

Welcome back to this episode on papal reformation and the Great Schism. It comes after a break of a couple of weeks in the podcast, for which I apologize. Here at St. Katherine College we are launching into our accreditation process, and that has been taking up a good deal of our time. But listeners will recall that in the previous segment of this episode, I introduced the papacy of Leo IX. He reigned as pope from 1049 to 1054, the very year of the Great Schism. And I noted how he came to power as pope in a time when Western Christendom appeared to many in a troubled state.
In response to the problems of that time, some Church leaders had introduced a policy of reformatio or reformation. I spoke about monks who led this reformation and also about emperors, especially Emperor Henry III, who was the one at the Synod of Sutri in 1046 who wrestled control of papal elections away from the Roman nobility and placed it in his own hands. And it was Henry III who saw Pope Leo IX elevated to the papacy in 1049. That papacy was remarkable because it ended with Leo as a prisoner of war, and in this segment of the episode, I would like to review the papacy of Leo IX and explain why it had such a remarkable outcome, and not just due to the fact that it resulted in Leo’s imprisonment, but, more significantly, because with its reforming agenda it resulted in the Great Schism.
Upon assuming office in 1049, Leo fulfilled those earlier efforts, first by monks such as those at Cluny and then by emperors such as Henry III, to reform the Church, and under Leo we can begin speaking about an actual papal reformation. The word “reformatio,” and “correctio,” had both a venerable history in the Western Church and related to efforts to correct the Church, to reform the Church, in a conservative direction rather than an innovative one. This fact is brought out by a modern historian of the papacy named Roger Collins, who wrote a book called Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, and this is what he wrote about the reformation undertaken by Leo IX.

We may speak of Leo IX (Collins writes), his supporters and successors as reformers, but this was not how they saw themselves. They wanted to return the Church to a ‘golden age’ they thought had once existed. They saw themselves correcting errors and evil customs that had been allowed to develop unchallenged in recent centuries. The past they wished to recover was largely imaginary, being derived from such spurious texts such as the Pseudo-Isidoran Decretals (and I’ll talk more about those later) which provided seemingly authoritative evidence of papal supremacy.

So those are the words of Collins, writing about the papal reformation undertaken by Pope Leo IX.
To advance this reformation, Leo knew that he needed supporters and advisors in Rome, and thus he assembled a team of reformers, a very remarkable one. Virtually all of them had very strong monastic background. Peter Damian, for instance, played his own role. It was Peter Damian, listeners will recall, who had written that fiery letter to the wives of clergy in the West, attacking the continued existence on a very large scale of a married priesthood up into the eleventh century. These monks for the most part—Peter Damian would be an exception here—came from beyond Italy, from the north, from centers like Cluny and Burgundy or Lorraine. One member of Leo’s team was Frederick of Lorraine. He would be the future Pope Stephen IX who was such a monk. And Humbert of Moyenmoutier: he had been recruited to serve in Rome in 1049, the very year Leo arrived.
And it wasn’t just personalities that assembled in Rome to support Leo in his reformation, but also we see the use now of documents asserting papal leadership that had never been used before but now will be used in what is often described as the medieval papacy and its claims of papal supremacy. These documents were often forgeries—we know that now, although they weren’t known at the time by those who used them—such as the donation of Constantine. This had possibly been composed at the papal court in the eighth century in connection with the papacy’s alliance with the Frankish King Pepin III, and its effect had been to assert papal authority over royal but also Eastern patriarchal leadership in the Church: the donation of Constantine.
The Isidoran Decretals I mentioned earlier, or rather Collins mentioned them in the quote I gave earlier, were another such document. Their origin was possibly from Frankish bishops in the ninth century who were asserting papal authority over episcopal authority.
So documents like the Donation of Constantine, in addition to personalities like Humbert and Peter Damian, strengthened Leo’s resolve to advance reform, and the result was something like a revolution in papal authority that took place under Leo IX. The papacy was now elevated as the most important institution within the Western Church. The biographer of Peter Damian, who supported this movement, says the following about Peter:

If Damian, while working alone, had been an effective reformer of monastic, sacerdotal, and episcopal morals, his program became doubly effective when linked with the efforts of the papacy. He was fighting for a spiritual renaissance so badly needed in the eleventh century, and in his eyes the pope, possessing the highest spiritual authority, was the logical leader in restoring Christian morality.

The momentum that the Cluny reforms and the imperial reforms provided Leo enabled him to expand significantly the horizons of papal authority. I can quote here Christopher Dawson, to whose book, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, I referred last time. This is what Dawson writes about the impact of Leo’s advisors, especially those who came from beyond Italy and their ability to open up the horizons of papal authority throughout the West.

The introduction (Dawson writes) of this foreign element into the Curia (the papal court) had a revolutionary effect on the papacy, which became the hierarchical center and organ of leadership for the reforming movement. The reform of the Church was no longer the aim of scattered groups of ascetics and idealists. It became the official policy of the Roman Church. In his brief pontificate of less than five years, St. Leo devoted himself to the work of reform with super-human energy, crossing the Alps again and again to hold reforming councils in Germany and France as well as in Italy and establish direct, personal control over the churches of Western Christendom.

So now the horizons of the papacy were much broader than they had ever been before, and we can even speak about attendancy now, a transition in the papacy’s status, from patriarch of the West to supreme pontiff of the universal Church. Here we can refer to the Orthodox historian, Andrew Louth, who wrote a book called Greek East and Latin West: The Church AD 681-1071. And this is what Andrew Louth writes about Leo IX’s reforms and their effect not so much of elevating the papacy but of fundamentally redefining it. This is what Louth writes:

The movement initiated by Leo IX created the very notion of the papacy. To speak of the papacy before the eleventh century is an anachronism, for the term “papatus” in Latin was coined only then, apparently used for the first time by Clement II in 1047 (that is, two years, only two years, before Leo came to power). Formed on the analogy of episcopatus, it suggests that the papacy, papatus, is a further order of ministry in the Church, transcending the episcopate. There seem to be two notions entailed here.
The first makes explicit something that had a long history, namely, that the Church of Rome exercised a primacy, primatus, over the other churches, a primacy that was not shared by any other church. This was defined more precisely: it meant that the Church of Rome was the mother of the churches, mater ecclesiarum, their head and hinge, all claims made by Nicholas I in the ninth century.

Listeners will recall that Nicholas I is that pope that is responsible for the Nicolaitan Schism, also called the Photian Schism, in his controversy with Patriarch Photius. Louth continues here:

Peter Damian (who of course was one of the leading advocates for papal authority at the time) advanced the idea that while all other churches have founders, Rome alone was founded by Christ. Damian may have taken this to mean that St. Peter had himself appointed the patriarchs in the East and the bishops in the West.
The other notion entailed focuses these claims not so much as traditionally on the See of Rome as on the pope in person. The title “universalis episcopus,” universal bishop, once rejected by Gregory the Great, is resurrected. The pope is not just a bishop with universal jurisdiction, but is personally the ruler of the whole Church. Universal jurisdiction might simply mean that Rome was a final court of appeal in the Church, as Nicholas I had claimed. The notion of universalis episcopus, universal bishop, going beyond universal jurisdiction, went further. The pope has become a pope for all Christians, with immediate, not just appelate, jurisdiction. He is more than a bishop; he is the pope.

So Andrew Louth [is] here now tracing the origin of what was considered to be a new understanding of the pope of Rome, personal head of the entire universal Church, and the coining of the very term “papatus,” or “papacy,” in connection with this development. And, as a matter of fact, statements made under Leo IX did assert this kind of universal authority. At a council in Rheims in 1049, the very year Leo came to power, the declaration was made that the bishop of Rome is the primate of the universal Church.
So with this self-confidence, this not just revived papacy but transformed papacy, Leo set about reforming the Western Church. He organized annual Easter synods at Rome. Every year, bishops would assemble in Rome under his leadership to advance the reforms that had long been demanded by people like Peter Damian and the abbots of Cluny and even emperors like Henry III. He also traveled beyond Italy throughout western Europe to the lands of France and Spain and Germany, organizing synods in which he likewise advanced the reformation.
And a noteworthy tendency that Leo IX showed was one toward confrontation with his opponents and with those who resisted this papal reformation. This can be seen in the case of Berengar, a theologian whose teaching about the Eucharist resulted in his excommunication in absentia by Leo IX; and also at that very council at Rheims to which I just referred, held in 1049, where a group of bishops who did not appear because they resisted the reforms Leo was advancing were summarily excommunicated from the Church. So Leo IX, inspired as he was by a new definition of the person of the pope inspired by the new conception of what the papacy was, as a matter of fact, the very coining of the term “papacy,” “papatus,” being used at this time, pursued a papal reformation of the West.
Then there came the case of southern Italy. Southern Italy represented in the eleventh century the jurisdictional nexus of the universal Church, that is to say, the connection between Rome and Constantinople, in a way very comparable to the Balkans in the ninth century, where a collision occurred between Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photius over the question of the ecclesiastical and jurisdictional allegiance of the newly converted Bulgarians and the missionary activities of Cyril and Methodius among the Moravians.
Southern Italy, of course, was contiguous with Rome, which was now firmly under the authority of the papacy, but it had been taken from Roman jurisdiction centuries earlier by Emperor Leo III of Byzantium as punishment to papal resistance to the iconoclastic movement. Southern Italy was constituted by a large number of Greek-affiliated churches. The liturgies were in Greek and followed the pattern in Constantinople; the piety and the experience of Church life was largely Greek in character, but in the eleventh century now, southern Italy is conquered by a new presence in Europe: the Normans. And a group of Norman adventurers come to southern Italy and conquer it.
These Normans were under Roman jurisdiction, and they favored a policy there of Latinization, and in fact Leo now decides to introduce a policy of Latinization in southern Italy as part of his overall reformation of the Church. He imposed a Roman standard on the Greek churches there, and I can quote what is probably the best book on the whole history of the Great Schism. It’s by Steven Runciman; he’s a Western scholar and writes from a Western point of view, so you get that. The book is entitled The Eastern Schism, which shows his Western point of view. The subtitle is: “A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches During the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.” Written quite a long time ago, it remains just an excellent, excellent account of the Great Schism. Let me quote here Runciman’s account of the effort to Latinize the southern Italian churches, Greek-speaking churches. This is what he writes:

The Normans were, after all, Latins, and the districts that they occupied were thereby brought under Latin ecclesiastical domination. The pope had no intention of letting them revert to Byzantine rule, and he wished also to be sure that all the churches there should conform to Roman usages. Hitherto, the great churches of Christendom had not been greatly troubled over divergencies of usage. The Byzantines, devoted though they were to their own liturgy, recognized that other churches might follow other customs. There had been in the past many varied practices within the great patriarchate of the West, but the reformed papacy was anxious, in the interest of discipline and order, to introduce uniformity of usage.

So Leo now advances with Norman support the Latinization of southern Italy. He even goes so far as to organize a synod at the town of Bari in which he advocates the adoption among those Greek churches of the filioque, which, as listeners know now, was a tremendous issue by the eleventh century as a result of Frankish Christendom and the estrangement of East and West, the topic of an earlier episode of this podcast.
So by Latinizing these Greek churches, churches which had a very close connection with the patriarchate of Constantinople, Leo inevitably aggravated this legacy of East-West estrangement. But what is remarkable is that at the very moment he decided to take this provocative course, his very pontificate and the reformation it was designed to advance was thrown into crisis. He suddenly found himself a prisoner of war. How did such a thing occur? Well, one will need to recall that ever since before the time of Pope Stephen II in the eighth century, the papacy had been in possession of an actual state, the territory surrounding Rome. This had been obtained from the king of the Franks, Pepin, who, listeners will recall, had forged a close alliance with the papacy.
Pope Leo IX, though he had actually condemned the Western clergy’s participation in military affairs at the Council of Rheims, now decided in 1053 to raise an army and, as head of the papal states, to invade southern Italy. The campaign that resulted was a disaster. At the battle of Civitate in June 1053, the entire papal army, bearing the papal banner itself, was destroyed by the Normans. Pope Leo had remained in the city of Civitate to observe the battle, and when it was over, he was forced to surrender. He was subsequently imprisoned at Benevento from June of 1053 all the way until March of 1054. Those dates are rather significant, as we’ll see as we go forward here.
He was given honorable treatment at the hands of the Normans who were, for the most part, embarrassed by having such an illustrious prisoner in their midst, the pope of Rome, their ecclesiastical superior, but he was nevertheless a prisoner of war, and that meant that the papal reformation that he had been overseeing for four years now was in question. Would reform have to be suspended while he was a prisoner in southern Italy?
And it was under these circumstances that the ambitious and reform-minded and sometimes confrontational and now languishing in prison, deeply frustrated Pope Leo IX decided to confront the patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius. The year was 1054.
Join me next time when I complete this episode on papal reformation and the Great Schism by describing the long-term background to conflicts between Rome and Constantinople and the way in which they culminated in this, perhaps the most tragic event in Church history.

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Papal Reformation and the Great Schism: I

It was the year 1053, and the pope of Rome was a prisoner of war. Leo IX, the most active and energetic and ambitious and self-confident pope in nearly two centuries, was languishing in prison exactly at the time when Western Christendom needed him most. In the middle of the eleventh century, Western Christendom was in great need of reform, of reformation, reformatio in Latin. For many in the West, the past two centuries had brought about the degradation of Western Christendom, this due in part to the impact of the Viking invasions which had begun in the ninth century, and the simultaneous dissolution of the Carolingian empire, the empire of Charlemagne.
Everywhere throughout Western Christendom, there were problems in Church life. For instance, the laity in the form of the nobility were in many places in control of the monasteries and parish churches, a condition called by German historians the Eigenkirche, the proprietary church under the control of local nobility. An expression of despair in the face of this lay control of monasteries and parish churches was given by a group of bishops early in the tenth century, the 900s, in the following statement:

The cities are depopulated (they wrote), the monasteries ruined and burned. The land is reduced to a solitude. As the first men lived without law or constraint, abandoned to their passions, so now every man does what pleases him, despising the laws of God and man and the ordinances of the Church. The powerful oppress the weak, the land is full of violence against the poor and the plunder of the goods of the Church. Men devour one another like the fishes in the sea. In the case of the monasteries, some have been destroyed by the heathen; others have been deprived of their property and reduced to nothing. In those that remain, there is no longer any observance of the rule. They no longer have legitimate superiors, owing to the abuse of submitting to secular domination. We see in the monasteries lay abbots with their wives and their children, their soldiers, and their dogs.

This is a statement by bishops in the West in the early tenth century, but in addition to lay control of monasteries and parish churches, there was also a phenomenon called simony, after Simon Magus in the book of the apostles, who seeks a church appointment in order to make money. What this meant in the vocabulary of the eleventh century was the practice of buying clerical office, often by noblemen, in order to make money. They would pay for a given office, expecting a return through their clerical office, usually as a bishop or an abbot.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a phenomenon called lay investiture. What this was was the control over the appointment of bishops by the ruler, especially the Holy Roman Emperor. Lay investiture: the emperor would control what bishops would serve in what diocese, according, usually, to his own political interests and needs. The result was to take the appointment of bishops out of the hands of fellow bishops and even out of the hands of the laity who, according to the canons of traditional Christianity, were supposed to participate in the election of bishops.
Another example of spiritual degradation in the West, at least one perceived by contemporaries, was what was something called Nicolaitanism. Nicolaitanism was the practice of Western clergy, especially parish priests, of keeping a wife or a concubine. From the earliest times, traditional Christianity had supported a married priesthood. Even Peter himself was said, in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, to have a wife; his mother-in-law is referenced there. But in the West, at a relatively early date—the early fourth century—there began to be a record of an effort to establish a celibate standard for priests.
In the 33rd canon of the Council of Elvira, which was a local Western council in about the year 305 or so—we don’t really know exactly when it took place, but about that time—there was a ban on priests who were already married—clearly most priests, or many of them, were married when they were ordained—there was a ban on them continuing to have conjugal relations with their wives after their ordination. In other words, if a priest was to be married, he was to be celibate in his marriage.
This presented, as can be imagined, all sorts of burdens on the priesthood in the West, a problem that was identified by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. Gregory the Great warned against ordaining men who were already married to the priesthood if they were expected to live by a rule of celibacy within that marriage, and therefore at about this time there began to be an effort to assure that no married priests existed in the West, that all men would live by a celibate standard of life.
But by all accounts there continued to be a mixture: some celibate, some non-celibate, of the priests serving in the West, especially in the countryside. All of this is striking from an Orthodox point of view, obviously, for in the Eastern tradition a married priesthood was always the norm, and furthermore one in which the priest was expected, assumed, to be living in a non-celibate relationship with his wife. As a matter of fact, the Council in Trullo, from the seventh century, contained a canon, canon 13 of that council, which emphatically defended the existence of a married priesthood, one in which the priests were not required or obligated to be celibate at all times.
So in a variety of ways, the Western Church was perceived by contemporaries to have gone into decline, spiritual decline, and there was no one to rescue it. Even the papacy itself was in paralysis during these centuries. In Rome, the aristocracy, the local aristocracy, had long controlled papal elections, since the time of the vigorous Pope Nicholas I, who in his controversy with Patriarch Photios of Constantinople caused the Nicolaitan schism, about which I spoke in an earlier episode. Since the time of Nicholas I in the middle of the ninth century, the papacy had largely fallen into spiritual obscurity under the shadow of Roman politics.
The most notorious example of the degradation brought to the papacy by these economic and political forces in Rome was the case of Pope John XII, who reigned from 955 to 964. Elected pope at the ripe old age of 18 years old, he was the product of Roman power politics. It was his father, a Roman magnate, who had assured with his political and economic influence that his son would be elected pope. John had scarcely assumed papal throne when his reputation became tarnished by all sorts of allegations of sexual immorality. In fact, according to many accounts of the time, he died in the act of an adulterous relationship with the wife of a Roman magnate.
Things didn’t get better after that. In the early eleventh century, a series of popes were elected on the basis of nothing more than that they came from an important part of Italy, Tusculum, and they were the counts of that region. So these counts from Tusculum who one after another managed to be elected pope, became known as the Tusculan popes, who dominated the entire first half of the eleventh century all the way until 1048.
So to summarize, the Western Church was facing huge difficulties in the middle of the eleventh century. Lay control of monasteries, monetary acquisition of clerical office known as simony, royal control of episcopal appointments known as lay investiture, deviation by the clergy from Western canons about morality especially those regarding marriage, and finally the papacy itself in a condition of paralysis. For some, there was only one response to make to this situation, and that was contained in the Latin word reformatio. Reformatio, reformation.
The term “reformatio” had been used by Latin Fathers of the early Church and always with emphasis on restoration rather than innovation in Church life. An effort to restore that which is pure and which finds expression in the earliest records of Christianity, dating back to the time of the apostles, and not innovation: changes to the faith. The emphasis was on traditional Christianity, the Tradition of the Church. And this tendency to reform the Church, to seek a reformation of it from time to time, had gained momentum during the reign of Charlemagne who, as listeners will remember, enacted a policy of correction, or in the Latin, “correctio,” during his reign, to assure that Church life would reform itself to a correct rather than incorrect pattern.
But perhaps the most powerful resource that would-be reformers of Western Christendom in the middle of the eleventh century might draw upon would be the legacy of St. Augustine. In his famous book, The City of God, which almost every leading theologian of the Western Church was familiar with over the course of centuries in the West, Augustine had put forward a vision of a sort of social dualism within the Church. For Augustine, Christendom was inevitably entangled by what he called the city of man, the earthly city, and therefore it was corrupted by that primeval force of evil in the history of man, and that was concupiscence, an inordinate love for that which is not God himself. But Augustine had said in The City of God that the city of God itself has a power to inspire and dynamically to transform the city of man.
Here I can quote one of the most impressive historians of Western Christendom, Christopher Dawson. I discussed him briefly in the introduction to this podcast, which I realized this week was launched just about a year ago now, and I’m just now getting to the Great Schism, but such is the experience of telling the history of such a vast and fascinating civilization as Christendom. Well, Christopher Dawson wrote a lot. He was a graphomaniac; he just wrote and wrote and wrote his whole life—a really amazing scholar—on a lot of things, but especially on the history of Christendom. Some of his essays were collected in a very nice little book—a rather big book, actually: it’s about 500 pages long—called The Dynamics of World History.
It’s got a lot of stuff in it, but among them are essays, articles, on history, on the study of history and especially the Christian study of history. Dawson can be called—one of his biographers recently called him an Augustinian when it came to his study of history, especially the history of the Church in the West. In one of those articles, entitled, “The Christian View of History,” Dawson argued that Augustine’s thought in The City of God, when drawn upon by Church leaders, became a kind of resource of reform. It possessed a kind of dynamic power insofar as it understood the city of God, as it were, standing transcendently over this world and offering it inspiration to transform it spiritually. So let me quote here, Dawson, from that essay.

This view of history (he wrote) found its classical expression in St. Augustine’s work, On the City of God, which interprets the course of universal history as an unceasing conflict between two dynamic principles embodied in two societies and social orders: the city of man and the city of God, Babylon and Jerusalem, which run their course side by side, intermingling with one another and sharing the same temporal goods and the same temporal evils, but separated from one another by an infinite spiritual gulf.

So for Dawson, Augustine’s theology of history, found within the city of God, offered an understanding of the cosmos and the place of Christendom within it as one in which there were two societies, two orders: the city of God and the city of man, and they were in conflict with one another, and through this conflict, the city of God could transform, could inspire and transform the city of man, raising it to higher and higher and more spiritual levels.
This is something that was inherited by the would-be reformers of eleventh-century Western Christendom, and those reformers were not slow to appear. As early as the tenth century, a new movement within monasticism in the West began to appear, and it was a movement specifically for reformation, a movement we can call a monastic reformation. It was inspired by the legacy of the Western Frankish monastic reformer, Benedict of Aniane, who died in 821 and who played an important role in the rise of Frankish Christendom. But it was centered in the monastery known as Cluny, which is located in modern France, a part of Burgundy.
At Cluny, a new form of monastic life appeared in the early tenth century. The monastery was placed when it was founded under the direct administration of the pope in Rome, according to the monastery’s charter of 910, and this precluded any noble domination of it of the kind that was described earlier in that document lamenting the noble and lay control of monasteries in the tenth century. Furthermore, Cluny attracted some very visionary and ambitious reforming abbots. One of these was named Odo, who was abbot there from 927 to 942, and Abbot Odo wrote works of moral exhortation that drew upon the Augustinian inheritance of Western Christendom and the social dualism that I described earlier. Let me quote here, again, Christopher Dawson, but this time from another work, a book called, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, about the Augustinian influence and inspiration of the monastic reformation at Cluny, led by Abbot Odo.

No doubt the monk was concerned primarily during this time with the salvation of his own soul rather than with any program of ecclesiastical reform. (These are Dawson’s words.) But Western monasticism always possessed a strong consciousness of its social responsibility and its missionary functions.

Perhaps at another time I can bring attention to Dawson’s fascinating distinction between what he considers Eastern monasticism and Western monasticism, the latter for him being much more dynamic in its relationship with surrounding society historically. Dawson continues here:

If on the one hand it was based on the tradition of the Fathers of the desert (he’s talking about Western monasticism here), it was inspired still more by the ideals of St. Augustine and St. Gregory (the pope of Rome). The Augustinian theology and philosophy of history, with their intense realization of the burden of inherited evil under which the human race labored and their conception of divine grace as a continually renewed source of supernatural energy which transformed human nature and changes the course of history—all this had become part of the spiritual patrimony of the Western Church and above all of Western monasticism, and Christendom had only to return to this tradition to recover its dynamic energy.
Thus, although the efforts of the reformers of the tenth century were primarily devoted to the cause of monastic reform, they involved far wider issues. These men were not mere self-centered ascetics, but prophets of righteousness who defended the weak and the oppressed and spoke boldly against evil in high places. We see this above all in the writings of St. Odo, the second abbot of Cluny who was one of the greatest of the early leaders in the reforming movement. His chief work is based on the Augustinian conception of the two cities, or rather of the two races: the children of Abel and the children of Cain, whose warfare must endure to the end of time. But while St. Augustine conceives this opposition primarily as a conflict between the Christian Church and the heathen world (after all, Augustine had been writing in the early fifth century, before the whole conversion of the empire had been accomplished), St. Odo was concerned above all with the forces of evil that flourish within the Church.

So for Odo of Cluny and other monastic reformers like him, inspired by Augustine’s City of God, the Church was facing a struggle against worldly, material, and sinful forces that could be overcome only through divine grace, only through contact with and the experience of the city of God, the transcendent city of God. And it can be said that this Augustinian inheritance of Western Christendom ranks—at least I would say it does—as the most theologically sophisticated expression of traditional Christianity’s transformational imperative. I spoke about this transformational imperative in the first episodes of the podcast, when traditional Christianity as a subculture was confronting the surrounding pagan world in the first centuries of the Church.
But in the case of Augustine, so different really than the case of Eusebius and other theologians of the Eastern Church, who saw through a principle that I called heavenly immanence, the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven in the existing, worldly order in a variety of ways, but especially in the experience of the statecraft, the Christian statecraft of Byzantium—well, so different from that is Augustine’s conception of a struggle even, in Dawson’s words, of a warfare that takes place between these two cities, these two forces within this world, within Christendom itself.
So armed with this conception, both of Christendom and of its place historically over time with the potential to be changed and transformed spiritually, monastic reformers like Odo developed a growing optimism, at least ambition, in confronting the degraded state of the Church of their time. Many of these reformers came from Cluny or one of its many daughter-houses that were established over the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
As a matter of fact, by the end of the eleventh century, there were hundreds of monasteries planted by Cluny, and all of them incorporated within a very centralized and hierarchical network that traced its way back to the very abbot of Cluny himself, who represented a kind of monarch over the entire network of the Cluny monasteries. Some have even spoken about a Cluny empire throughout Western Europe, where all the lands of Western Europe, more or less, were penetrated by Cluny monasteries who themselves, living within Western Christendom, had a very separate identity from it, tracing their authority structure back to the abbot of Cluny himself, all of this offering a model to the papacy later on in its monarchical sense of supreme authority over Western Christendom, but we’ll talk about that development a little bit later.
For the time being, let me bring attention to one other leader of the monastic reformation of the eleventh century, and that’s Peter Damian. He was actually an Italian monk. He lived at a monastery called Fonte Avellana in northern Italy. He had come from Ravenna where he had early in his life been a teacher of rhetoric, and then he kind of repented of this worldly practice, of this worldly experience, quite successful at rhetoric, actually. As one reads his writings, they’re just incredibly powerful to read. Well, he entered a monastery, and he became a real proponent of a return to hermetic monasticism, monasticism emphasizing the individual experience of ascetical struggle. He was inspired by the Desert Fathers, for instance, of the early Church, very much in contrast with the Benedictine legacy in Western Christendom, which had emphasized the community experience of monastic life, as well as the monastic life described by St. Basil the Great in the East.
He introduced, Peter did, very severe standards of ascetical life, and propagated them, advanced them, promoted them, not only in his own monastery where he was abbot, but in other monasteries throughout the West. Among his practices were very strict fasting, fasting throughout the week, bread and water only on certain days of the week, fasting even during the Pentecost season, fasting, fasting at a level that was really uncommon in the typical monastic life of the West, certainly that following the Benedictine tradition which dominated there. So much so, actually, that when he came to Cluny itself one day and advised, I think, without being asked to, the abbot there, Abbot Hugh at that time—his name was Hugh—[Peter Damian] advised him to introduce stricter standards of fasting for his monks at Cluny, Abbot Hugh kind of reprimanded him and told him to mind his own business and asked him how can he possibly know what’s best for the monks at Cluny without having actually experienced life there and just stepping in from his own monastic background and proposing that that be adopted by another monastery.
So he sometimes ran into trouble because of his severity and intensity, and that severity and intensity really comes out in the writings that he produced. He produced a lot, all of them advancing monastic reform, and not just reform of monasteries, but the monk being the reformer of Christendom itself. Peter took it on himself to travel to different parts of Western Christendom and to confront what he considered to be the degraded state of Church life there.
For him, one of the most important problems was what I called earlier Nicolaitanism, that is, the practice of priests being married. Now in the East, of course, this was, and still is, the common practice. Most parish priests have a wife with whom they have a normal, conjugal relationship and with whom, if God blesses them, they produce children. For Peter, the severe monastic that he was, this was outrageous. This was nothing short of outrageous, an abomination before God, because in his Western context the practice of a married priesthood had been challenged for so many centuries. But the fact was, it was still being practiced in his time.
So on one particular case he came to a community in which the priests were largely married, and he confronted them. He kind of shook them up by proposing that they leave their wives, and their wives their husbands. What is interesting is that he actually addressed in a very eloquent—obnoxious from an Orthodox point of view, for sure, but in a very eloquent and powerful way, rhetorically speaking—he addressed the clergy wives, what we call in the Orthodox Church today the [presvyteres], the matushki, and the khouriyes, and so forth, the popadije. This is what he had to say to the married priests of the eleventh century West, writing to them.

And now, let me speak to you, you charmers of clerics, tasty tidbits of the devil, expulsion from paradise, venom of the mind, sword that kills souls, poison in the drink, toxin in the food, source of sinning, and occasion of damnation. I am talking to you, you female branch of the ancient enemy, hoopoes, screech-owls, night-hawks, she-wolves, leeches, nymphs, sirens, witches, vile tigresses whose cruel jaws can be sated only on human blood, harpies flying about the sacrifice of the Lord to snatch those who are offered to God and cruelly devour them, lionesses, sirens, furious vipers who by the ardor of your impatient lust dismember your lovers by cutting them off from Christ who is the head of the clergy.

So very, very powerful words by Peter Damian who, by the way, is a canonized Roman Catholic saint. Very powerful words against the wives of clergy in his program to reform Western Christendom from his monastic point of view.
Well, it wasn’t just monks who undertook the reformation of Western Christendom in the middle of the eleventh century. It was also, interestingly, the imperial authorities themselves, specifically the person of the emperor. And we can speak also of an imperial reformation, reformatio, that was underway in the early eleventh century. The Holy Roman Empire, as we traced its development from the time after the dissolution of Charlemagne’s empire through the actions of Otto the Great and then culminating by the end of the tenth century, the 900s, in the Emperor Otto III, whose vision of a Western empire had been inspired by Byzantium itself.
In fact, I called Otto III’s Holy Roman Empire a kind of New Byzantium insofar as it clearly was modeled upon the Byzantine state. Otto III was, after all, the son of a Byzantine empress, and because it was modeled on the Byzantine state, there was the principle of symphony at work, namely, that the emperor would take it upon himself to advance the interests of the Church, the Church leadership, working closely with and harmoniously with the bishops of the Church for the benefit of the Church. Symphony, a principle I described in an earlier episode on the rise of Christian statecraft in Byzantium, in part one of this podcast.
Well, Otto III had a very illustrious successor in the person of Emperor Henry II, who reigned from 1014 to 1024. Henry II lived his life in celibacy with his wife Cunigunde and therefore earned the reputation of being a very pious emperor, and it was partly for this reason that he was actually canonized a saint. He’s a Roman Catholic saint as well, Henry II, Emperor Henry II. He is noteworthy for having renewed the papal alliance that had been forged between, at its earliest stage Pope Stephen II and the Frankish King Pepin, and then, more dramatically demonstrated in the crowning on Christmas Day in the year 800 of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III.
Henry II likewise was crowned in St. Peter’s Basilica by the pope, but what’s significant is that, because of his influence in Church life, even with the pope himself, Henry II was able, finally, after a couple of centuries of struggle, finally able to achieve that long-term Frankish and German goal of having the pope in Rome adopt formally the filioque in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. That happened in 1014 at Henry II’s coronation. Henry II also distinguished himself in the leadership and reform of the Church by convening a reforming synod at Rome in that year, where he demanded clerical celibacy and an end to simony.
Henry II had left an important legacy that was taken up, fulfilled, in the person of Henry III, Emperor Henry III, who plays a very important and direct role in what we’re discussing in this episode, namely, the papal reformation and the Great Schism. Henry III reigned from 1039 to 1056. He had a very pious character, like Henry II. In fact, he married a descendant of the very founder of the monastery of Cluny, the founder having been William of Aquitaine, Duke of Aquitaine, in the early tenth century, while by the middle of the eleventh century a descendant of William was chosen as the wife of Henry III. And Henry III maintained a very close relationship with this monastic center of reformation.
Henry III practiced a very strict asceticism that earned the approval of monastic reformers like Peter Damian. He also had the practice of wearing monastic garments. He also, interestingly, discontinued, suspended to some degree, the imperial policy of using bishops for administration, a sign that he was willing to consider, at least to some degree, the demands being made for an end to lay investiture. He defended the practice of establishing independent ecclesiastical courts, and he campaigned vigorously against clerical simony, the sale of Church offices. It was actually this very issue which led him to convene a council at Sutri in 1046.
In 1046, the pious Emperor Henry III convened a synod of bishops in Sutri to address what he considered to be one of the chief problems of the degraded Christianity of Western Christendom: the paralyzed papacy. A recent pope had been accused of simony, so at Sutri Henry intervened and deposed three contending popes and established an imperial right of electing popes. So with this right he now was able to intervene in papal affairs and assure that popes of higher caliber could be elected free of the influence of local Roman magnates. This provided a definitive solution to the problem of the paralyzed papacy. Now the papacy would be liberated and freed to begin leading the reformation itself. Henry elected no fewer than four popes of Rome in sequence: Clement II, Damasus II, Leo IX with whom I’m mainly interested in this episode, and after Leo IX Victor II. The election of these popes played a very important role in the coming papal reformation. Let me quote again Christopher Dawson in his book, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture.

The action of Henry III (he writes) had a far-reaching effect on the course of the reforming movement. At first sight it might seem that it would reduce the papacy to complete dependence on the imperial power, for the three popes whom he nominated in rapid succession—Clement II, Damasus II, and Leo IX—were loyal prelates of the empire from Germany and Lorraine, who had no Italian connections and were consequently forced to rely on the material support of the emperor. Nevertheless, the mere fact that the papacy was taken out of the control of the Roman nobles and their factions and brought into intimate relations with northern and central Europe, where the monastic reformation was occurring, had an immediate effect on its international influence.

The most important of these popes, by far, was Leo IX, and what an ironic thing, really, that Leo IX, who had launched nothing short of a papal reformation, would be chosen by Henry III, because it was the successors to Leo IX, in the later eleventh century, that would become the archenemies of Henry III’s very successor and son, Henry IV, in an epic conflict known as the Investiture Controversy. But for the time being, Leo IX was now Pope of Rome, and set about to reform not only the papacy but all of Western Christendom, and not only all of Western Christendom, but the entire universal Church herself.
Join me next time when we explore the papacy of Leo IX and the reasons why, by 1053, just four years into the most energetic and ambitious and self-confident pontificate in two centuries, Leo found himself a prisoner of war.


Thanks to Source:

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/paradiseutopia/papal_reformation_and_the_great_schism_I

Lewis and Tolkien Debate Myths and Lies

Here's part one of the transcript for this scene, by request. Written by Joseph Pearce, based on accounts by Lewis & Tolkien.

Tolkien: The magic of fairy stories or myths is not an end in itself, it exists to serve virtue. It satisfies certain primordial human desires.

Lewis: But myths are lies, and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver. They are just beautiful lies. You can’t actually believe in fairy stories.
Tolkien: Why not? I can. In fact, I do.

Lewis: But this is preposterous. How can you seriously believe a lie?

Tolkien: Myths are not lies. In fact they are the opposite of a lie. They convey the essential truth, the primal reality, of life itself.
Lewis: Go on.
Tolkien: We have been duped into using the word “myth” as being synonymous with a “lie” because we have been duped into believing the first real lie of materialism. That first lie, that real lie, is that there is no supernatural order to the universe. The materialists have imprisoned us in a world of mere matter, a world of physical facts divorced from, and devoid of, metaphysical truth. Well I say that they are lying; that their world doesn’t exist; that it is merely a figment of their imagination. The problem is that they have made us believe that it is real. They have made us think that this is all there is. Three dimensions. Five senses. Four walls. But this is not all there is. The four walls of materialism are the four walls of a prison. And the materialists are our jailers. They don’t want us to see what’s beyond the walls. They don’t want us to discover what lies outside their narrow philosophy. They see any attempt to escape as an act of treason. Well how can it be wrong for a prisoner to think of things other than walls and jailers? Doesn’t the fact that he is able to think of things that exist outside the walls suggest that things do exist beyond the walls? If the prison is all there is, how are we able to picture things that exist outside the prison? And this is where myths come in. They exist outside the prison. They allow us to escape from the prison – or, if we cannot escape, they allow us to catch a fleeting but oh so powerful glimpse of the beauty that exists beyond the walls.
Lewis: But what is it that we are meant to be glimpsing?

Tolkien: The truth, Jack. The truth. Don’t you see? Myths show us a fleeting glimpse of the truth itself.

Lewis: Truth? Truth! What on earth is this truth that you are talking about?

Tolkien: Ah! Quid est veritas. Pilate’s own words. You seem to be entering into the spirit of the myth, Jack! You have cast yourself in the role of Pilate.

Lewis: Pilate! [laughs] Oh, I see! You are able to believe in the lesser myths because you have already swallowed the Big One. Once you believe the Big Lie, the Myth of Christ, it is easier to believe the smaller ones. All right, Tollers; I’ll play the role of Pilate. I’ll wash my hands of the whole nonsense!

Tolkien: But Jack, you’re getting things the wrong way round. We make things by the law in which we’re made. We create because we are created. Creativity, the imagination, is the imageness of God in us! We tell stories because God is a story teller. He is the Story Teller. We tell our stories with words, He tells His Story with History. The facts of history are his words, and providence is His storyline. We are all part of His Story. This very conversation is part of His Story.

Lewis: But how can you know that your story, the story that you believe, the Christian story, is any more real than the other stories.

Tolkien: But it isn’t my story, it’s His Story. Christianity is the True Myth. It’s the myth that really happened. Jesus really existed, so did Pilate. And yet it is this True Story that makes sense of all the other stories. It is the Archetype. The Story in which all the other stories have their source, and the Story to which all the other stories point. It has everything. It has catastrophe and its opposite, what we might call eucatastrophe, the joy of the happy ending, the sudden joyous turn in the story that is essential to all myths. It has to a sublime degree this joy of deliverance, this evangelium, this fleeting glimpse of the real Joy to which all other joys are but a distant echo. It has the catastrophe of the Fall and the eucatastrophe of the Redemption; it has the catastrophe of the Crucifixion and the eucatastrophe of the Resurrection. It has everything that man’s heart desires because it is being told by the One who is the fulfillment of desire itself. It is a story that begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the inner consistency of reality. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to darkness or to wrath.

Lewis: [after a pregnant pause] Astonishing! Tollers, you astonish me. You absolutely astonish me.

Thanks to source:

http://twinc-tv.blogspot.com/2012/06/lewis-and-tolkien-debate-myths-and-lies.html

Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzBT39gx-TE

St. Basil on Evil

Evil, according to Saint Basil the Great, 'is not a living and animated substance, but a condition of the soul which is opposed to virtue and which springs up in the slothful because of their falling away from Good. Do not, therefore, contemplate evil from without; and do not imagine some original nature of wickedness, but let each one recognize himself as the first author of the vice that is in him'.


Saint Basil the Great

posted by Abbot Tryphon: Facebook

Elder (Geron) Epiphanios Theodoropoulos converses with an Atheist

One morning, the Elder (Geron) Epiphanios Theodoropoulos was in a conversation with 2-3 visitors at his home. One of them was an ideological atheist and a communist.  Suddenly, someone from outside came rushing in, and informed them that the city of Athens had been flooded with photographs of Mao Tse Tung, with the inscription “Glory to the great Mao”. It was the day that the Chinese dictator had died.

Geron: That’s the way things are, my child.  Atheists do not exist.  Only idolaters exist, who take down Christ from His throne and in His place they enthrone their own idols.  We say: “Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”.  They say: “Glory to the great Mao”.  You pick and choose which one you prefer. Atheist:  You also choose your drug, grandpa. The only difference is, that you call it Christ, others call it Allah, or Buddha, etc. etc…  Geron: My child, Christ is not a drug. Christ is the Creator of the entire universe. He is the one Who governs everything wisely, from the multitudes of infinite galaxies, down to the minutest particles of the microcosm. He has given life to all of us.  He is the One Who brought you into this world and has bestowed you with so much freedom, that you can actually doubt Him, and even deny Him. Atheist: Grandpa, its your right to believe in all of those things.  But that doesn’t mean they are true.  Do you have any proofs? Geron: You think all of this is just a fairy tale, don’t you? Atheist: Naturally. Geron: Do you have any proof that it is a fairy tale? Can you prove that what I believe is false? Atheist: …………….... Geron: You didn’t reply, because you don’t have any proof either.  Which means, you believe they are fairy tales.  I spoke to you of believing, when I referred to God; you, however, although rejecting my belief, essentially believe in your faithlessness, since you cannot back it up with proofs either. However, I must tell you that my belief is not something “out of the blue”; There are certain supernatural events, upon which it is founded. Atheist: Just a minute! Since we are talking about believing, what would you say to Muslims or Buddhists for example?  Because they also talk about believing. And they too have high moral standards.  Why is your belief better than theirs? Geron: So! The criterion of the truth is supposedly judged by this question of yours?  Because the truth is most certainly one; truths cannot be many in number. The thing is, who is the possessor of the truth? That is the major question. Hence, it is not a matter of a better or worse belief! It is a matter of the only true belief! I agree, that other beliefs also have moral teachings. Naturally, Christianity’s moral teachings are incomparably superior. But, we do not believe in Christ because of His moral teachings. Or for His prompting to “Love one another”, or for His sermons on peace and justice, freedom and equality. We believe in Christ, because His presence on earth was accompanied by supernatural events, which was a sign that He is God. Atheist:  Look, I also admit that Christ was an important philosopher and a great revolutionary, but let’s not make Him a God now…… Geron: My dear child!  All the great disbelievers in history were snagged by that detail.  The fishbone that stuck in their throat, which they just couldn’t swallow, was exactly that:  That Christ is also God. Many of them were willing to say to God: “Don’t tell anyone that You are God incarnate; Just say that You’re an ordinary human, and we shall be more than ready to deify you. Why do You want to be an incarnate God, and not a deified human?  We are willing to glorify You, to proclaim You as the greatest among men, the holiest, the most ethical, the noblest, the unsurpassable, the one and only, the unprecedented…  Isn’t that enough for You ? Ernest Renan –he was the head of the chorus of deniers- thunders out the following, with regard to Christ: “For tens of thousands of years, the world shall be uplifted through You”, and “You are the cornerstone of mankind; if one were to wrench Your name away from this world, it would be like shattering its foundations” and “the aeons shall proclaim that amongst the sons of men, never was there born anyone that could surpass You”.  But this is where Renan and his likes stop. Their very next phrase is: “But a God, You are not!” And those poor wretches cannot perceive that all of these things constitute an indescribable tragedy!  Their dilemma is inevitably relentless: Either Christ is an incarnate God, in which case, He is indeed, only then, the most ethical, the holiest and noblest personage of mankind, or, He is not an incarnate God, in which case, He cannot possibly be any of these. In fact, if Christ is not God, then we are talking about the most horrible, the most atrocious and the most despicable existence in the history of mankind. Atheist: What did you just say ? Geron: Exactly what you heard!  It may be a weighty statement, but it is absolutely true. And I will tell you why.  Let me ask: What did all the truly great men say about themselves, or what opinion did they have of themselves ? The “wisest of all men”, Socrates, proclaimed that “I came to know one thing: that I know nothing”. All the important men in the Old and New Testament, from Abraham and Moses, through to John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul, characterized themselves as “earth and ashes”, “wretches”, “monstrosities”, etc…. [1] But, strangely enough, Jesus’ attitude is quite the opposite!  And I say strangely enough, because it would have been natural and logical for Him to have a similar attitude. In fact, being far superior and surpassing all others, He should have had an even lower and humbler opinion of Himself [2].  Ethically more perfect than any other, He should have surpassed everyone and anyone in self-reproach and humility, from the moment of the world’s Creation to the end of Time. But, the exact opposite is observed!  First of all, He proclaims that He is sinless: “Who among you shall check Me for sin?” (John, 8:46). “The lord of this world is coming, and he can find nothing in Me.”  (John, 14: 30) He also pronounces very high ideas of Himself: “I am the light of the world” (John, 8, 12);  “I am the path and the truth and the life”  (John, 14: 6) But, apart from these, He also projects demands of absolute dedication to His Person.  He even penetrates the holiest of man’s relationships, and says: “Whomsoever loves their father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me. and whomsoever loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. (Matthew, 10: 37).  “I came to turn man away, against his father, and the daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew, 10: 35).  He even demands a life and a death of martyrdom from His disciples: “They shall deliver you to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you shall be dragged before leaders and kings for My sake…. And brother shall deliver his brother to death and the father his son, and the children shall revolt against their parents and shall put them to death…. And you shall be hated by everyone, for my namesake…. And he that shall endure to the end, he shall be saved…. Do not fear those who destroy the body….. Whomsoever shall deny Me before mankind, I too shall deny him…. Whomsoever has forfeited his soul for My sake, shall recover it.” (Matthew, 10: 17 onward) And now I ask you:  Has anyone ever dared to demand for himself the love of mankind, forsaking their very life? Has anyone ever dared to proclaim his absolute sinlessness?  Has anyone ever dared to utter the words: “I am the truth”? (John, 14: 6)  No-one, and nowhere!  Only a God can do that. Can you imagine your Marx uttering things like that?  They would take him for a lunatic and nobody would be willing to follow him! Now, just consider, how many people sacrificed everything for Christ’s sake, even their very life, having believed in the veracity of His words regarding Himself!  If His proclamations about Himself were false, Jesus would have been the most despicable character in history, for having led so many people to such a huge sacrifice!  What ordinary man – no matter how great, how important, how wise he may be – would deserve such a tremendous offer and sacrifice?  Well?  No-one!  Not unless he were God! In other words: Any ordinary man that would demand such a sacrifice from his followers would have been the most loathsome person in history.  Christ, however, both demanded it, and achieved it. Yet, despite this ‘achievement’, He was proclaimed by the very deniers of His divinity as the noblest and holiest figure in history.  So, either the deniers are being illogical when they proclaim this most loathsome figure as “holiest”, or, in order to avoid any illogicality, and to rationalize the co-existence of Christ’s demands and His holiness, they must concede to accepting that Christ continues to remain the noblest and holiest figure in mankind, but, only under the condition that He is also God!  Otherwise, as we said, He would be, not the holiest, but the most loathsome figure in history, being the cause of the greatest sacrifice of all ages, and in the name of a lie!  Thus, Christ’s divinity is proved by His very deniers, on the basis of those very characterizations of His person! Atheist: What you just said is really very impressive, but it is nothing but speculation. Do you have any historical facts that would confirm His Divinity? Geron: I told you at the beginning, that the proofs of His Divinity are the supernatural events that took place while He was here on earth.  Christ did not rest on the proclamation of the above truths alone; He certified His statements with miracles as well.  He made blind people see and cripples walk; He satisfied the hunger of five thousand men and manifold numbers of women and children with only two fish and five loaves of bread; He commanded the elements of nature and they obeyed; He resurrected the dead, amongst which was Lazarus, four days after his death. But the most astounding of all his miracles was His own Resurrection. The entire edifice of Christianity is supported on the event of the Resurrection.  This is not my speculation. The Apostle Paul said it: “If Christ had not risen (from the dead), our faith would be futile”. (Corinthians I, 15: 17).  If Christ is not resurrected, then everything collapses. But Christ was resurrected, which means He is the Lord of life and death, therefore God. Atheist: Did you see all of this?  How can you believe it? Geron: No, I didn’t see any of it, but others did: the Apostles. They in turn made this known to others, and they actually “signed” their testimony with their own blood. And, as everyone acknowledges, a testimony of one’s life is the supreme form of testimony. Why don’t you likewise bring me someone, who will tell me that Marx died and was resurrected, and that he is willing to sacrifice his life in order to testify it?  I, as an honest man, will believe him. Atheist: I will tell you. Thousands of communists were tortured and died for their ideology.  Why don’t you embrace communism in the same way? Geron: You said it yourself.  Communists died for their ideology. They didn’t die for real events.  In an ideology, it is very easy for deception to seep through; and because it is a characteristic of the human soul to sacrifice itself for something it believes in, this explains why so many communists died for their ideology. But that doesn’t compel us to accept this ideology as something true. It is one thing to die for ideas, and another to die for events.  The Apostles didn’t die for any ideas.  Not even for the “Love one another”, or any of the other moral teachings of Christianity. The Apostles died for their testimony of supernatural events. And when we say ‘event’, we mean that which is captured by our physical senses, and is comprehended through them. The Apostles suffered martyrdom for “that which they heard”, “that which they saw with their own eyes”, “that which they observed and their hands touched”  (John I, 1) [3] Just like the clever speculation by Pascal, we say that one of the three following things happened to the Apostles: either they were deceived, or, they deceived us, or, they told us the truth. Let’s take the first case.  It is not possible for the Apostles to have been deceived, because everything that they reported, was not reported to them by others. They themselves were eye and ear witnesses of all those things.  Besides, none of them were imaginative characters, nor did they have any psychological inclination that made them accept the event of the Resurrection.  Quite the contrary - they were terribly distrustful.  The Gospels are extremely revealing, in their narrations of their spiritual dispositions: they even disbelieved the reassurances that some people had actually seen Him, resurrected. [4]. And one other thing. What were the Apostles, before Christ called them?  Were they perhaps ambitious politicians or visionaries of philosophical and social systems, who were longing to conquer mankind and thus satisfy their fantasies?  Not at all.  They were illiterate fishermen. The only thing that interested them was to catch a few fish to feed their families.  That is why, even after the Lord’s Crucifixion, and despite everything that they had heard and seen, they returned to their fishing boats and their nets. In other words, there was not a single trace of disposition in these men for the things that were to follow.  It was only after the day of the Pentecost, “when they received strength from on high”, that they became the teachers of the universe. The second case:  Did they deceive us?  Did they lie to us?  But then, why would they deceive us?  What would they gain by lying?  Was it money? Was it status?  Was it glory?  For someone to tell a lie, he must be expecting some sort of gain.  The Apostles though, by preaching Christ - and in fact Christ crucified and resurrected – the only things that they secured for themselves were: hardships, labours, lashings, stonings, shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, nakedness, attacks from robbers, beatings, incarcerations and finally, death.  And all this, for a lie?  It would be undoubtedly foolish for anyone to even consider it. Consequently, the Apostles were neither deceived, nor did they deceive us. This leaves us with the third choice: that they told us the truth. I should also stress something else here:  The Evangelists are the only ones who recorded true historical events. They describe the events, and only the events. They do not resort to any personal judgments.  They praise no-one, and they criticize no-one.  They make no attempt to exaggerate an event, nor eliminate or underestimate another.  They let the events speak for themselves. Atheist:  Are you excluding the possibility that in Christ’s case, it was just an incident of apparent death?  The other day, the newspapers had written about someone in India whom they buried and three days later they exhumed him and he was still alive. Geron: My poor child!  I will recall the words of the blessed Augustine again:  “O faithless ones, you are not actually mistrustful; indeed, you are the most gullible of all.  You accept the most improbable things, and the most irrational, the most contradictory, in order to deny a miracle!” No, my child. It was not a case of apparent death with Christ. First of all, we have the testimony of the Roman centurion, who reassured Pilate that Christ’s death was a certainty. Then, our Gospel informs us that on the same day of His Resurrection, the Lord was seen talking with two of His disciples, walking towards Emmaus, which was more than ten kilometers away from Jerusalem. Can you imagine someone, who could go through all the tortures that Christ underwent, and three days after His “apparent death”, spring back again?  If anything, he would have to be fed chicken soup for forty days, in order to be able to open his eyes, let alone walk and talk as though nothing had happened! As for the Hindu, bring him here to be flogged with a scourge – do you know what a scourge is? It is a whip, whose lashes each have a lead chunk or a piece of broken bone or sharp nails attached to their end – bring him here, so we can flog him, then force a crown of thorns on his head, crucify him, give him bile and vinegar to drink, then pierce his side with a spear, put him in a tomb, and then, if he comes back from the dead, then we can talk.   Atheist: Even so, but all the testimonies that you have invoked belong to Christ’s Disciples.  Is there any testimony on this matter, that doesn’t come from the circle of His Disciples?  Are there any historians for example, who can certify Christ’s Resurrection?  If so, then I will also believe what you say. Geron: You poor child!  You don’t know what you’re saying now!  If there had been such historians who had witnessed Christ resurrected, they would have been compelled to believe in His Resurrection and would have recorded it as believers, in which case, you would again have rejected their testimony, just like you rejected Peter’s testimony, John’s testimony, etc.  How can it be possible, for someone to actually witness the Resurrection and yet, NOT become a Christian?  You are asking for a roasted fowl, on a waxen skewer, that also sings!  It just can’t be done ! I will remind you though – because you are asking for historians – of what I said earlier: that the only true historians are the Apostles. Nevertheless, we do have testimony of the kind that you want; and it is by someone who didn’t belong to the circle of His Disciples: it was Paul.  Paul not only wasn’t a Disciple of Christ, he actually persecuted Christ’s Church relentlessly. Atheist: They say that Paul suffered from sunstroke and that it was the cause of his hallucination. Geron: My child, if Paul was hallucinating, the thing that would have come to the surface, would have been his subconscious.  And in Paul’s subconscious, the Patriarchs and the Prophets would have been top ranking.  He would have hallucinated about Abraham, and Jacob and Moses, and not Jesus, whom he considered a rabble-rouser and a fraud! Can you imagine a faithful old granny seeing Buddha or Jupiter in her dream or delirium?  She would most probably see Saint Nicholas or Saint Barbara, because she believes in them. One more thing. With Paul, we have –as Papini notes- the following miraculous phenomena:  First of all, the abruptness of his conversion. Straight from faithlessness to faith. With no intermediate preparatory stage.  Secondly, the steadfastness of his faith. No wavering, no doubts.  And thirdly, his faith lasted for a whole lifetime.  Do you believe that all these things can occur after a case of sunstroke?  They can in no way be attributed to such a cause.  If you can explain how, then explain it.  If you can’t, then you must admit the miracle.  And you must know that for a man of his time, Paul was exceptionally well-educated. He was not your average little person, who was totally clueless. I will also add something else.  We today, my child, are living in an exceptional era. We are living the miracle of Christ’s Church. When Christ said of His Church that “the gates of Hades shall not overpower Her” (Matthew 16:18), His followers were very few in number. Almost two thousand years have passed, since that day. Empires vanished, philosophical systems were forgotten, world theories collapsed. But Christ’s Church remains indestructible, despite the continuous and dramatic persecutions it has undergone. Isn’t that a miracle? And one final thing.  In Luke’s Gospel it says that when the Holy Mother visited Elizabeth (the Baptist’s mother) after the Annunciation, she was greeted with the words: “blessed are you amongst women”.  And the Holy Mother replied as follows: “My heart magnifies the Lord. Behold, from this moment on, all generations shall call me blessed” (a’ 48). What was the Holy Mother at that time?  She was just an obscure daughter of Nazareth. How many knew her?  And yet, since that day, empresses have been forgotten, distinguished women’s names have been extinguished, the mothers and wives of great generals went into oblivion. Who remembers, or even knows, Napoleon’s mother or Alexander the Great’s mother? Almost no-one.  But, millions of lips across every length and breadth of the world, throughout the ages, venerate that humble daughter of Nazareth, the “more precious than the Cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim”.  Are we, or aren’t we –the people of the twentieth century– living in this day and age the verification of those words of the Holy Mother? The exact same things are observed in a “secondary” prophecy of Christ:  While He was staying at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him and poured her expensive fragrant oil over His head. Christ commented: “Amen, verily I say to you, that wherever this gospel will be preached in the world, it will also mention what this woman did, in her memory” (Matthew, 26: 13).  Now, how large was His circle of followers at the time, so that one could say that they outdid themselves in order that their Master’s prophecy be fulfilled?  Especially a prophecy such as this one, which, by today’s world standards, is of no importance to most people. Are they or aren’t they miracles?  If you can, explain them.   But if you can’t, then admit them as such. Atheist: I have to admit that your arguments are pretty solid. But I would like to ask you one more thing:  Don’t you think that Christ left His work unfinished?  That is, unless He deserted us.  I can’t imagine a God that would remain indifferent to mankind’s suffering.  We are down here toiling, while He, up there, remains apathetic. Geron: No, my child.  You aren’t right. Christ did not leave His work unfinished.  On the contrary, He is the one unique case in history where a person has the certainty that His mission was accomplished, and had nothing further to do or to say. Even the greatest of philosophers, Socrates, who discussed and taught during his whole lifetime, and towards the end composed an intricate “Apology”, would have even more to say, if he had lived. Only Christ – in the time bracket of three years – taught what He had to teach, did what He had to do, and finally said (on the Cross): “It is finished”.  Another sample of His divine perfection and authority. As for the abandonment that you mentioned, I can understand your concern.  Without Christ, the world would be a theatre of insanity.  Without Christ, you cannot explain anything: why are there sorrows, why injustices, why failures, why sicknesses, why, why, why…. Thousands of monumental “why”s. Try to understand!  Man cannot approach all of these “why”s with his finite logic.  It is only through Christ that everything can be explained. All these trials merely precondition us for eternity. Perhaps then, we might be honored by the Lord with a reply to some of those “why”s. It might be worthwhile, if I read you a beautiful poem (*) from Constantine Kallinikos’ collection “Laurels and Myrtles”, with the title “Questions”: I asked a desert father of seventy years, whose silver strands were blown by the wind: Tell me o father, why, on this earth, do the light and the dark inseparably move ? And why must they - like twins - together sprout: the thorn and the rose, the tear and the smile? Why, in the loveliest part of the woodland green have scorpions and vipers concealed their nests? Why must it be, that the tender bud, before unfolding its fragrant bloom, be struck by a worm in the heart of its stem, And left to die, like a shrivelled rag ? Why are the plow, the seed and the hands a must for the wheat, to become our bread? Why must everything useful, noble, divine always be purchased with tears and our blood, while selfishness ever  rampantly reigns, and lewdness is swallowing up the world? And why, amongst such harmony around, must tumult and disorder find their way?   The hermit replied, with his somber voice and right arm pointing to the sky, that there, beyond those clouds of gold, the Almighty weaves a tapestry divine. But since we are wanderers of the lower plane We see nothing but the knots and strings below, It is no wonder, why the mind sees wrong, when it should always be thankful and give praise: for the day will come, when Christians all, with souls that ride the skies with wings, will gaze atop God’s tapestry and see how careful and orderly everything was!   My child, Christ never abandoned us.  He is forever with us, as a helper and a supporter, until the end of time.  But you will realize this, only when you become a conscientious member of His Church and be joined by Her Sacraments.   [Re-published, from the book of the Holy Recluse Monastery of the Theotokos “FROM THE LIFE AND THE TEACHING OF FATHER EPIPHANIOS”]   (*) The poem has been loosely translated, for its message only. R E F E R E N C E S  [1] From within sacred history, we observe how Abraham considers himself “earth and ashes” (Genesis 18: 27). Similarly Job (42: 6). The great Moses hesitates to undertake the mission of liberating the Israelites from Egypt, believing himself to be too small and inadequate for such a job: “And Moses said to God : ‘Who am I, that can go to the Pharaoh, king of Egypt,…… I am not capable……. weak voiced and stuttering, I am.” (Exodus 3: 11, 4: 10). The same is said at a later date by the Judge Gideon: “My Lord, how can I save Israel?…. for I am the youngest of my father’s house…” (Judges 6: 15). David calls himself “a dead dog, and a louse” (Kings I, 24: 15), a worm and not a man, the disgrace of mankind and the derogation of the people” (Psalms 21:27).  Isaiah cries out: “woe is me, the wretched one, for I am deeply troubled, because, being a man and having impure lips, I reside amongst the people with impure lips, and yet I have looked upon the king, Lord Shabuoth with my very eyes”  (Isaiah 6:5).  Jeremiah laments: “O Sovereign Lord, behold, I cannot speak, for I am the younger…. Cure me my Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. For You are my boasting.” (Jeremiah 1:6,  17:14).  The three Young Men utter a confession about themselves and all of the population: “….for we have sinned and broken the law, by distancing ourselves from You, and we are sinners in everything and we did not obey Your commandments….. with a crushed soul and a humbled mind, may we be received by You…”  (Daniel, Azarias’ prayer, 56 and 16). John the Baptist, the “greatest amongst those born of woman”, confessed : “I am not the Christ. And they asked him: Who then are you? Are you Elijah?  I am not. Are you the Prophet? And he replied: No. …… I am just a voice in the wilderness, crying out “straighten the path of the Lord……. I am not worthy enough, to even loosen the strap of His (Christ’s) sandal…” (John I, 20).  Finally, the one and only and unprecedented Paul, considers himself a “monstrosity” and unworthy “to be called an apostle”, a “wretched person”, and “the first amongst all sinners” ( Corinthians I, 15:89, Romans 7:24, Timothy I, 1:15).  But, we won’t take up any more time here… [2] by applying the standard of:  “the greater you are, the more you should humble yourself”. (Sirah, 3:18) [3] This is precisely what is stressed in John’s Gospel:  “the one who witnessed, testified” (19: 35); In other words, the one who wrote those things was the one who actually saw the soldier pierce Christ’s side with the spear, and he saw blood and water coming out of the wound.   [4] “They hesitated to prostrate themselves to Him” (Matthew 28:17). “And they (=the apostles), upon hearing that He was alive and was seen by her (=Mary Magdalene), disbelieved”. (Mark 16:13).  “He derided them for their disbelief and their hard-heartedness, because they did not believe those who had seen Him risen”  (Mark 16:14). “It appeared to them (=the Apostles) that their (=the myrrh-bearers’) words were like ravings (=foolishness, delirium), and they disbelieved them” (Luke 24:11). “We had hoped that He was the one who was destined to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). “If I do not see the imprint of the nails on His hands and place my finger on the imprint of the nails, and place my hand on (the wound of) His side, I shall not believe." (=words of Doubting Thomas, John 20:25), etc.    Transcript: Thomas Dritsas Translation by K.N.   Source:   http://www.oodegr.com/english/atheismos/gerwn1.htm also   posted on: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2014/04/dialogue-between-elder-and-atheist.html