Some ranting and some questions 1

We have received a very charming, interesting and important email. It is quite long, so we will post it as a separate post and then reply in the next post. Jennifer Wilders is not the author’s real name. We have edited for style and format; otherwise the content is Jennifer’s.

Subject: Some ranting and some questions

From: Jennifer Wilders

Date: 16/03/13

To: orthodox.monk.blog@gmail.com

Hi! I have a question for you if you think you can answer it. Please feel free to post any of this and please feel free to correct my English if it is out of whack. But first a little on my background to serve as an introduction:

Being born into a family of mixed Protestant/Orthodox background, none of the sides of the family in heavy practice and with a strong emphasis on science in the professions of its members, I have for a long time considered myself to be non-religious as well as non-anti-religious, yet with nostalgic memories of Christian celebrations from childhood. When I started to pursue a more hands-on religious practice as an adult, I felt drawn to Orthodoxy again mainly because of its sincerity and the way it tends to take life (and death) seriously (as I understand it, that is; I am a novice in this), in contrast to the very secular Protestantism practised in my country. Now I am considering asking to be baptized (again) if I can find an Orthodox parish to join; they don’t exactly grow on trees here.

For the last few years I have read what I can find on my own, and one of the first things that caught my attention about the Orthodox Church was its lack of aggressive missionary work. This struck me as rather sympathetic since I like the idea of a belief system that feels it has a strong enough message in itself and whose representatives (unlike the door-knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses and the like) apparently don’t feel a need to shove the message down my throat until I actually ask for it. I interpreted this (correct me if I’m wrong) as the Orthodox Church being satisfied with co-existing with other religious movements, acknowledging that other people have other beliefs, and that—even though they may not agree that their beliefs lead to salvation the way the Orthodox Church sees it, they certainly have the capacity to guide people spiritually into living more fulfilled and righteous lives. That is what I thought but now I’m no longer sure that this is the case.

It has come to my attention that quite a severe schism has been going on for quite some time between the more conservative parts of the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement (as well as that about the calendars), and one of the largest ‘counter-ecumenical’ movements is the largest Orthodox parish in my country. I am confused. Is it not the teaching of the Orthodox Church that love for another should be extended, whether or not we are of the same opinion, and that forgiveness should be given whether asked for or not? I understand why you might not want to admit their teachings to be the way of salvation, but is there a need to proclaim half the world to be heretics and blasphemers? Is there not a fundamental difference here between learning about the ways of the other and adopting them yourself? Enough strength in one’s own belief should make it possible to meet others without fear of losing oneself. I was taken aback when seeing some very harsh comments on the subject and, not having found my place in the Church yet, I fear I will discover the whole Church to be like this. Should I make inquiries here on the political opinions of the priests and of the Bishop of the parish I hope to enter, to make sure we see ‘eye-to-eye’? I had rather hoped I could avoid such a political mix into my stumbling attempts at spiritual advancement. (Wow, that sounded bitter!)

Having read some of your posts, I have a feeling you do not belong to either extremist party, but still, the schism is there in your church and thus it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on such matters, as I feel I have to reconcile myself with such issues (or at least understand them), before I can truly say I believe in one and unified [sic; is this to be taken as referring to ‘One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic’?] Church myself.

And how does the Orthodox Church really view a practising Hindu, a Catholic priest, or an atheist for that matter? Are they decent but misguided people, the Devil incarnate or something else? Will someone demand I stop talking to my fellow non-Orthodox believers?

I guess I don’t have to add that I feel rather open-minded spiritually. From my own past experiences I could mention some remarkably insightful guidance and lessons in maturity from an atheist listening to heavy-metal music, and the creature who finally made me realize that God may be there for me too was a dog (no—the four-legged kind), so... You get my drift: I believe God can choose to teach us in many a strange way.

I believe good advice is good advice wherever it comes from (now we are obviously not talking Gospel, but simple humility, aid and comfort of a purely humanitarian nature). This basic view is, I fear, rather well established in me by now (I am 33) so how can I see and believe in the wisdom of priests who seem so full of anger and are so hell-bent on their way as being the right one that they will not even talk to some fellow priest who has chosen another path? I mean, these guys are fellow Christians, granted maybe not of the same kind. But at least they’re not of some weird cult from New Guinea that wants to shrink your head. One could think they could find SOMETHING to talk about over dinner...

Problem is: am I too open-minded? Have I lived too long in a world of multiple ways of the mind to be welcome and able to stay on the road I want to follow? Does Orthodoxy imply not only that I choose to believe in the path of Orthodoxy but also that I must reject those others who for their own reasons may have chosen another path? Am I on the wrong path in searching Orthodoxy with this mind-set?

Here you might say something like ‘this fear is a test’ and that I should pursue this issue till I find the right parish priest, or that I should maybe realize that priests are mere humans and listen to their message about God not politics—or something like that. The crux is that I fear I will enter the Orthodox Church retaining the feeling that my view of the world is ‘better’ and that I need to convince these people to change, or at least to give them a new perspective. But I came to get a new perspective myself! In the secular world I have the ‘I-know-what-the-problem-here-is-and-I-am-going-to-fix-it’ mentality, and I am currently struggling to get out of that business. Changing that was (is?) one of the steps down the road to change.

This letter has become a bit longer than I expected it to be. I was going to end it with the question a few paragraphs ago (if you listen you can hear the thought-pauses between the paragraphs), and then ended up analyzing the matter further as I continued to describe the problem. So now we have arrived at the interesting conclusion that the problem is not that of Orthodox priests arguing but of me believing I know better. Ergo, solution will be to grab the first priest I come across and start listening, without concern for his political background. Great! See—you can even get good advice from a silent computer screen. Now I don’t even have to bother sending the letter. But I will anyway (tomorrow) for three, no four, reasons:

1. I already wrote it.

2. Maybe I’m wrong and you’ll draw a completely different conclusion, because:

3. In diagnosing myself I may be back to my well-known original sin again. (The reasoning is circular—will this ever end? Does this mean I have to doubt every time I think I understand something; otherwise I’m just full of pride?)

4. Most importantly—I am very curious to hear why you refer to yourself in plural.

Sorry about the ranting. I will stop now. Do whatever you want with this (as long as you answer question number 4).

Cheers,

Jennifer

Returning to God

We have received an email from Catherine (not her real name) in Johannesburg, South Africa (not her real address).  The email reads:

My children are to be baptized in a week's time.  The priest at St Mary’s Church in Johannesburg [not the actual church—OM] informed us that he would like the children to wear a cross with the crucified Christ on it. I had assumed that a cross of this type was in the Catholic tradition.  The Orthodox crosses I am familiar with and have worn do not depict the image of Jesus on them.  Please be kind enough to enlighten me.  The priest was adamant about his preference and I chose not to question him.  

Catherine

We received a positive reply from ‘Catherine’ to our request for permission to post and discuss her email publicly, and indeed we received the following further information:

I should also mention that my son is 12 years old and my daughter is 10.

I am feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for not having baptized them as infants, I fear my children will suffer due to my negligence. I will not be baptizing them at our regular church, I have chosen a church where we are not known.

If any of the following is too personal of a nature for you to respond, please, if you will, answer only my cross inquiry.

I had distanced myself from the church and only returned in the last two years.  I had read such a vast and diverse amount of information on the origins of Christianity, and St. Paul's role in particular, that I had become disillusioned.  I studied Comparative Religions and Literature at University and this was the start of the decline of my faith in favour of rationality.  It was only through a dream I had, where I saw the Lord crucified, and bleeding, that I felt I was called back.

I have a committed a grave sin in allowing my children to receive communion and attend church services and Sunday School classes.  With the assistance of a deacon friend, I tutor them on our Orthodox faith as well.  No one knows they have not been baptized.

Their father is no longer in my life and he was not Orthodox; we parted when my daughter was 2 years old.  We were not married; I chose not to.  My son was unexpected.  It was a mistake that I tried to rectify by remaining with the man and focusing on creating a family.  The pressure was intense though.  Our cultures were too different; our personal backgrounds completely opposite.  I have since then, focused on my children exclusively, abstaining from any kind of relationship with men. Not my ideal, but each way I turn I commit more sins.

In addition:

Right now my children attend public school; however the influences of the Muslim and Hindu faiths are very great in our area and in the school particularly.  I have been contemplating placing them in a Catholic school.  I was informed that as long as they were baptized they could attend; no conversion would be required.  The priest at my church, St James in Pretoria, is a monk; he is new.  He has been informing us almost every Sunday, that even if we attend a service in another church, for family or friendship obligations, we must re-affirm our Orthodox faith with either him or the assistant priest.  He is very approachable; both priests are, yet my feet remain frozen.  I realize that their response will most likely be negative.  But I ask you through the impersonal shield of the computer, I know the history between our two churches, but is not Catholicism better, than non-Christian influences?  At the present my children have almost no Christian friends.  I too am somewhat hesitant to place them in a Catholic school, but at this point I'm not sure what the right thing to do is.

I know I need to confess but I am ashamed and guilt-ridden.  You will probably say to me, ‘And who do you think  you are? Are you not just a human creature? Do you think you are immune to sin? Do you not think that God does not know what lies beyond the superficial image you present?’ Nonetheless I am petrified. I have not taken communion, nor approached the Bible when the priest holds it up for all of us to kiss, for years.

As I mentioned, if any of this is too personal for your blog, please disregard. I apologize for the length of my email. You may withhold all personal information.

Thank you.

Catherine

Now this is quite a serious email.  Let us take the issues as they come.

First of all, we contacted an Archimandrite who has been baptizing Orthodox children for 30 years.  He says that the Crucified Christ on the Cross is not an issue.  He would prefer that the Crucified Christ on the baptismal cross not be gross in its dimensions but this is a matter of personal and Orthodox taste.  It is not a reason for a cross to be rejected if it has already been given to the child in baptism.

Next, yes indeed the children should not have been receiving Communion before Baptism.  But the damage, however serious, has been done.  It’s time to move on.  However, we don’t see what the problem is in their having attended church and even Sunday school.  Merely they shouldn’t have been receiving the Mysteries (Sacraments), including antidoron.

Next, we have to look at Catherine's fear and trembling about going to Confession (if we understand her correctly).  Catherine, God is a God of love.  Somewhere in the Bible it says that God desires the repentance of the sinner, not her destruction.  Consider the following episode from the Bible, Luke 7, 36 ff. (for convenience we have used the King James Version; there’s nothing sacred about that translation from an Orthodox point of view):

And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.  And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

During Lent, St Mary of Egypt is celebrated.  She was a big sinner who repented.  She died a great saint.  Let her be a lesson to you.  Our God is a God of repentance, not of retribution.  He desires our repentance, not our destruction.

Your issues of guilt are a temptation.  It is well known in the ascetical literature that after the Devil and his demons persuade us to sin, they then try to bring us to despair (see the Ladder of St John of Sinai, for example).  You should resist these thoughts.

This is not to say that you do not need to repent and confess your sins.  But you realize that.  You need to screw up your courage and go to confession to a priest, preferably one in your jurisdiction and one that you trust.  You should do what he tells you.  If he makes a mistake God will protect you.

You would do well not to depend psychologically and spiritually on the dream of the Crucified Christ.  It may or may not have been from Christ (we don’t know such things), but depending on dreams is fraught with danger and while you should continue with your return to Christ you should leave the dream behind.  You should concentrate on the known outward forms of Orthodox Christianity, especially the Mysteries, including Baptism (for your children) and Confession (for you).  You should go to Confession and you should do what the priest says, receiving Communion only when he allows it.  This is not a matter of formalism on our part but a matter of grounding you in the reality of the Orthodox Church.

The priests you refer to in your email seem unnecessarily strict.  But the best thing to do is to listen to them.  You will see later that everything will work out.

As for the matter of sending your children to a Catholic school as you describe in your original email.  We would reject this option.  This is going to cause no end of problem for you, and for the children.  We frankly don’t have a solution to the multi-ethnic issue where the children are not being schooled in a Christian environment.  The solutions that come to mind are not feasible.  The main thing that you can do is avoid creating an atmosphere of anxiety in the home.  It would be good for you to unburden your conscience to the priest, and to listen to him; the very act of doing what the priest says is going to free you from a great deal of anxiety.

That’s all we’d like to say.  In general, in such situations, it is very useful to be able to go to regular confession and counselling with a member of the Orthodox Church whom we can trust.

Some Questions about Orthodox Anthropology

We have received a very interesting email from a person named Jean Gove’. Here is the email:

I have come across your blog and have read enough to come to respect your erudition and your broad-mindedness. I can describe myself primarily as a seeker since I still have not settled anywhere securely, although there is always an undeniable attraction pulling me towards an essential Christianity and I have become especially attracted to the Orthodox Tradition.

I have a number of theological problems some of which have surfaced upon a cursory reading of Orthodox doctrine but for now I will stick to the topic of the human soul.

The problem arises from a comparison of Gnosticism and Christianity and the realization that one of the basic differences between the two is that Gnosticism treats the human soul as eternal, and in fact as sharing completely in the essence of God from which it emerged and to which it must eventually return. Christianity on the other hand describes the human soul primarily as a creation of God with no existence prior to the human body in which the soul is embodied.

While the accusation of dualism is usually laid at the Gnostic’s doorstep, the Gnostic doctrine actually resolves itself in a monistic world-view, where everything and everyone is God. On the other hand, it is Christianity that retains the eternal dualism of Creator and created.

At this point, a number of branching problems emerge in my mind:

1. Since God is described as spirit, is the human soul something essentially different from spirit and from God?
2. If the soul has no existence prior to the human body to which it is joined, how can its eternity in the future be described? The soul continues to exist forever but has had a beginning. Isn't this a logical impossibility, in that something that has a beginning cannot be eternal? Has there been any discussion of this question in Orthodox theology?
3. How is the embodiment of the soul best explained? Gnosticism explains it by treating the body as an entrapment of the eternal divine soul, which must free itself from the body to return to the Divine. For Christianity, the case must be that God fully intended for each human being to exist as an embodied soul or ensouled body. Why then do Christians believe in an afterlife (Heaven) where the soul alone continues to exist while the body dies? Wouldn’t a more consistent belief place its hope in an eternal re-embodiment, and in fact consider death, the separation of body and soul, as the evil resulting from the Fall? I know Orthodoxy does consider death as the main result of the Fall but I don't know what its position on Heaven is, or whether there is a position on an eternal re-embodiment. Or is there another explanation to which I am blind?

Eagerly awaiting discussion.

Regards

Jean Gove’

The issues being raised are in what is called ‘anthropology’. Now of course there is a social science taught at university which is called ‘anthropology’ but there is an older philosophical and theological discipline called ‘anthropology’ which studies the nature of man as understood in Christianity or in any other religion, or even in non-religious philosophical systems. What Jean Gove’ is doing is raising issues in anthropology, or to put it another way, in the way that Christianity and non-Christian belief systems view man and his place in the universe. Needless to say there are many different anthropologies. Indeed, a clever philosopher of the social sciences would study the philosophical anthropology underlying any particular ‘scientific anthropology’. But let us turn to Mr. Gove’’s questions.

The first issue is this:

The problem arises from a comparison of Gnosticism and Christianity and the realization that one of the basic differences between the two is that Gnosticism treats the human soul as eternal, and in fact as sharing completely in the essence of God from which it emerged and to which it must eventually return.

We had to dust off our handbook of philosophy to check up on Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a label applied to a very complex family of disparate, although related, beliefs that arose in the region stretching from present-day Iran to Syria to Egypt to Greece at about the time that Christianity itself developed. These beliefs competed with Christianity until about the 4^th Century, when, we might say, Christianity won. One of the key elements of these Gnostic beliefs was that the innermost part of the human soul was a part of the highest God. Through a very complex chain of events involving demigods and similar, this bit of God has become imprisoned in the human body in an essentially evil material creation, precisely the creation that we experience in our daily lives: the sky, the sun and so on. Indeed, the demiurge which created the evil creation that we humans are imprisoned in was the God of the Old Testament, considered to be a very low god on the celestial totem-pole and an evil one at that. A very complex salvation narrative ensues that involves outwitting the God of the Old Testament to free the divine spark in the soul of man so that it might traverse the very complex celestial hierarchy until that spark of the divine in the human soul reaches the unitary divine far above the God of the Old Testament and the Creation that we know. The primary means to accomplish this return to the unitary divine is gnosis, or knowledge. This seems to have comprised both a proclamation of the truth of the matter and means to overcome the problem, including special magical formulas to pass from one degree in the hierarchy of being to a higher degree.

One of the Gnostic systems was Manichaeism, which held St Augustine before he became Christian. The founder of Manichaeism, the Iranian Manes, taught that the Buddha was one of the messengers of the unitary divine, along with Zoroaster (remember Iran), Jesus and himself. The gnosis that is the means to escape this imprisonment in this body and this creation has structural similarities to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path of Buddhism—the content is quite different, certainly, but the combination of a statement of the problem and the means to solve the problem is reminiscent of Buddhism. Of course we have no idea whether that is in fact a result of the influence of Buddha on Manes.

Moreover, for those who are up on their history of religion, there was a dualist religion in ancient Iran. This religion posited two eternal principles of good and evil in permanent conflict. Manichaeism and some other related Gnostic systems reflect their origins in Iran in showing aspects of this dualism. This is particularly true of Manes’ system, which is consciously dualist, positing eternal opposed principles of Light and Darkness.

Let us now look at Jean Gove’’s assertion:

While the accusation of dualism is usually laid at the Gnostic’s doorstep, the Gnostic doctrine actually resolves itself in a monistic world-view, where everything and everyone is God.

We are not experts but we would think that the accusation of dualism might have much, although perhaps not everything, to do with the historically dualist strains in Gnosticism that arose from Iranian influences.

Would Gnostic systems that do not show this Iranian dualistic strand be truly monistic? Since the demigods are in some fashion parts of the original divine unity, on that level yes. But these gods do wicked things, culminating in the creation of the present Creation, which is unremittingly evil. For the goal of the divine part of the human soul is to escape its imprisonment in the present evil body in the present evil Creation to return to the unitary divine. On this level, an assertion of monism seems forced.

Of course, one can see that a major philosophical problem in Gnosticism is the explanation of how the original unitary God comes to be divided up into a number of lesser gods on successively lower planes of being, which gods show a remarkable propensity to act wickedly, until we get to the God of the Old Testament who creates the world we know in order to trap the divine in us so that it cannot return to the unitary divine. For the whole Gnostic drama is understood to arise because the divine spark in man should not have separated from the original unitary God—that was the result of wickedness and deceit in high places that culminates in the creation of this world by the God of the Old Testament.

Now we strongly doubt that today Gnosticism in its various historical forms would seriously attract anyone. However, although Jean Gove’ doesn’t mention it, there is a philosophical tradition of Neo-Platonist mysticism founded by Plotinus which has much the same structure as Gnosticism but without the heavy-handed mythological apparatus. In Plotinus’ Enneads, there is a simplified hierarchy of degrees of being generated by emanations from higher degree to lower degree, starting with the One and ending with man. Man’s task is again to return to the degree of being from which his innermost self came forth. However, Plotinus, who conducted polemics against Gnosticism, treated the Creation we live in as good. In Plotinus, man’s return to his home is accomplished by what we might call meditative or contemplative practices. There is nothing Christian about Plotinus’ system; it is a development of Plato’s thought.

Let us now look at how Mr. Gove’ contrasts Christianity with Gnosticism.

Christianity on the other hand describes the human soul primarily as a creation of God with no existence prior to the human body in which the soul is embodied.

…

On the other hand, it is Christianity that retains the eternal dualism of Creator and created.

Usually when philosophers speak about theories of or beliefs in God, they divide those beliefs into two main strands of the immanence and transcendence of God. Let us first look at the immanence of God.

In theories of the immanence of God, God is somehow present in the material world, which might even be of the same substance as God. The classical expression of the immanent God is found in Hinduism in the Vedanta of Shankara , although Hinduism is an extremely broad religion that contains very many strands of belief and theological speculation, some of which are diametrically opposed: there are transcendent strands in some schools of Hindu thought. The immanence of God is one of the elements of some forms of Hindu yoga: since man is of the same substance of God, and since the material creation is an illusion (maya) it is a matter of man surpassing illusion to realize his godliness.

Another strand of belief in the immanence of God is the systems such as Taoism, where the universe is a primordial unity that resolves into two complementary principles, yin and yang. These two principles are associated with the female and male respectively, but the concepts are raised to the status of universal principles. Moreover, as this famous symbol shows

when the yin has reached its apogee it turns into the yang and vice versa. That is the explanation of the dots in the tear drops. The tear drop is yin or yang but contains the seed of the complementary principle within. The circle around the two tear drops represents the primordial unity of universe. Now it is somewhat forced to introduce a concept of God into this system since the basic Taoist system doesn’t foresee God as we might understand that concept in the West. However, since Taoism plays the role of a religion for its adherents, we can take it as a doctrine of the immanence of God.

Some aspects of this doctrine of the immanence of God and of two complementary universal principles are to be found in Buddhism. We certainly are not experts in Buddhism, which is very complex both philosophically and in its social and cultural manifestations. Moreover, Buddhism does not treat of an over-arching God. However, one of the Buddhist sutras makes the very bald assertion: “All is Void and Void is all.” This sutra is one of the doctrinal bases of Mahayana Buddhism. If the Void plays the role in Buddhism that God plays in theist religions, then after a fashion one can see an immanent God here. Moreover, in Tibetan Buddhism the theological basis of tantric yoga is the treatment of the male and female as the two basic principles in the universe.

We can see that religious systems which posit an immanent God or First Principle tend to treat ordinary Creation as we know it as impermanent, as a mask of the really real or as a door to the really real. And while we would not want to identify the immanence of God with philosophical monism, the two concepts would in the history of ideas often be found together. For example, there is one strand of Tibetan Buddhism which is a monist mentalism—everything is mind. We would infer that the Void is pure undifferentiated mind.

Let us now look at the doctrine of the transcendence of God. This doctrine is usually associated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each of these three religions has a somewhat different understanding of the transcendence of God.

The main issues with a transcendent God are the relation between God and his Creation, the relation between man and Creation, the relation between man and God and how man can know the transcendent God.

In the three religions just mentioned God created the universe that we know out of nothing. This is to be distinguished from Aristotle or even Plato, who both posited a sort of pre-existing stuff without shape or form (called by Aristotle matter) upon which the creator of the universe imposes form to make matter into the various concrete objects we discover in the universe. In the three religions this universe is not illusory. The reality of Creation is particularly strong in Judaism, which emphasizes the devout Jew’s role in doing something in this concrete world. In all three religions, the Creation is considered to be good. The key statement is that in Genesis: “And God saw all that he had created and it was good.”

Let us now continue with Christianity. Man holds a special place in the Creation. As the Greek Fathers of the Church point out, although in the case of the rest of Creation God merely spoke a word (“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”) in the case of man God himself fashioned Adam out of the dust of the earth and then breathed into Adam a “breathe of life”—which is taken by the Fathers to denote the spiritual identity of man, unique in all Creation. St Gregory the Theologian develops the theme that man was to be the connecting link between the material and angelic creations.

Further, God created man in his own image and likeness. These terms ‘image of God’ and ‘likeness to God’ play a very important role in the Greek patristic tradition. In the Greek Fathers the image of God is located in the nous or mind of man, which in the West would be taken to be the created spirit of man, the highest part of his soul. The fact that the spirit of man is in the image of God gives man his dignity as the crown of Creation and also gives him the possibility of knowing God. However, the fact that the spirit of man is finite and created makes man different from God. The Cappadocian Fathers, especially St Gregory of Nyssa, deal with these issues.

The likeness to God the Greek fathers take to refer to the virtue that man had at his creation—virtue as an adornment conferred by God as Grace, not as the mere keeping of rules. Although Fathers such as St John of Damascus teach that man was a spiritual infant at his creation, they agree that man was full of virtue at his creation. Moreover, this virtue was such that man was able to talk to God face to face. St John of Damascus asserts that Adam and Eve did not eat physical food in the Garden of Eden since they were nurtured by the contemplation of God himself.

Man was created with free will. The Fathers of the Church universally locate the explanation of evil in free will. To test man’s free will, God gave Adam and Eve a commandment, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Despite being in the image and likeness of God, Adam and Eve could obey or disobey God. They were neither robots nor the playthings of Fate. But Eve was tempted.

It is important to grasp the patristic understanding of the temptation story of the Garden of Eden. Before the visible Creation was made by God, God made the angelic creation. And all the angelic creation was good. But the angels, who also have nous, also had free will. And one angel led a rebellion in Heaven: Satan, Lucifer, the Devil. He and those angels who followed him were cast out of Heaven and became the demons which exist with one foot in the material creation and one foot out. These demons have lost all likeness to God and all connection to God except for continuance in being, for in Christian theology all that exists is maintained in being by God himself. However, the demons did not lose the intelligence which their possession of nous conferred on them. They are not stupid. It was the Devil which used the serpent to tempt Eve. The Fathers teach that the only thing the demons can do to man is tempt him: they cannot force him to do anything. (The ascetic writers do develop the theme that continued sin leads to addiction to that sin.)

So Eve is tempted and falls and leads Adam to fall. Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden. It is important to grasp how the Fathers understand this. In being cast out of the Garden, Adam and Eve lose their likeness to God—the virtues they had, including their ability to contemplate God. However, they retain the image of God although it has been distorted. This is a less radical view than either that of St. Augustine or that of his Calvinist descendants: both taught a more complete corruption of human nature by the sin of the Fall.

Thenceforth we have the whole sorry story of human history. However, although God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden, thus making them die spiritually, he did not forsake man. Over time, God reveals himself to man according to man’s now greatly diminished ability to cognize God directly. Ultimately, God reveals that he is a Trinity of Three Persons. The Greek Fathers consistently identify the God of the Old Testament with the First Person of the Trinity, the Father. They also make the Father the principle of unity of the Trinity, in distinction to the West, which following Augustine treats the substance of God as the principle of unity of the Trinity.

God’s interventions in man’s life culminate in his sending the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, to take on flesh as the son of Mary of Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph of the line of David. The Word of God made flesh is a man like us in all things but sin called Jesus who, as St John the Baptist teaches his own disciples, is the ‘lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’

To do this, Jesus dies on the Cross and is resurrected on the third day. On the 40^th day he ascends into Heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father (this is taken to refer to the humanity of Christ, since the Word of God is always united to the Father).

On the 50^th day, Jesus sends the Third Person of the Holy Trinity to his disciples. This is the Holy Spirit which proceeds from the Father (you can see that the Father is the principle of unity).

Part of the Christian message is that Jesus will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. This is an event in time but the date is unknown to all but the Father. The dead will be resurrected with their bodies and will be judged by Jesus in the Last Judgement. Those who have done good will enter into eternal life; those who have done evil will depart into eternal fire. In either case man will have resumed his natural state, which is that of an embodied soul. The saved, however, will be embodied souls that have been glorified by the Holy Spirit. For just as Jesus when he was resurrected wasn’t just an ordinary man who had come back from the dead, so the resurrected will not be just ordinary men, but like Adam and Eve were before the Fall, and even more glorified by the Grace of God.

It is important to understand the work of the Holy Spirit. When a person is baptized with an Orthodox Baptism, then the Holy Spirit cleanses the nous, the created spirit of man, from the Devil and all influences of the Devil. In Baptism, the Holy Spirit restores the image of God in man to what it was before the Fall. The Holy Spirit then adds some likeness to God to the man. However, this is not the complete likeness. The task for the baptized Christian is to work as a member of the Church in a synergy with God the Holy Spirit to restore the likeness to God in full. This is God’s test of the free will of every Christian. Not only does God give Grace but he leaves room for the Christian to express his own free will either for or against the will of God.

As St Diadochos puts it, the final stage in the restoration of the likeness is the divine love conferred on the person in a vision of light. This constitutes a mystical experience of God conferring on the person the ability to love others with a Christ-like Gospel love. This final stage has a number of names in Orthodoxy: divinization, adoption as son, resurrection before the general resurrection, theology. It is the state of great Christian saints such as St Seraphim of Sarov. In Orthodox theology, it is understood that the uncreated Grace of the Holy Spirit permeates body and soul of the divinized person in such a way that the likeness to God is attained.

We can see that although there is an essential duality between Creator and created in Orthodox theology, there is a possibility of real mystical knowledge of and communion with the Creator through the Grace of God because man is created in the image of God.

However, even the saints die. As Mr. Gove’ points out, the fact of human death is a consequence of the Fall which happens even to the baptized Christian. When a man dies, there is a personal judgement which is not final until the Last Judgement. The soul of the good man goes to Heaven (Heaven is where God is) while the soul of the bad man goes to Hell (Hell is where the demons are). However, this is incomplete. The full adoption of the good as sons and daughters of the Most High will not take place until the General Resurrection—for Mr. Gove’ is quite right: in Christianity only an embodied soul is complete. Moreover, the condemnation of the bad after death is also not complete and awaits the Last Judgement. Until then, the souls of the bad can be helped, sometimes in very dramatic ways, by the prayers of those still on earth. But a bad person is resurrected with his body just as the just are and appears before Christ, who separates the sheep from the goats. Christ’s criterion in the Last Judgement? Whether we have shown mercy.

After the General Resurrection, the saved will be as the angels in Heaven. This does not mean disembodied, but means ‘without bodily passion’. And the saved will continue eternally, as will those in Hell. There is also an expectation that Heaven and earth will be renewed at the Last Judgement.

We are left with one final issue:

If the soul has no existence prior to the human body to which it is joined, how can its eternity in the future be described? The soul continues to exist forever but has had a beginning. Isn't this a logical impossibility, in that something that has a beginning cannot be eternal? Has there been any discussion of this question in Orthodox theology?

Mr. Gove’ is bringing forward an Aristotelian argument, that something that has had a beginning must ultimately have an end. But although the Catholic Church became quite Aristotelian in the Middle Ages through the work of Thomas Aquinas, even Thomas Aquinas made some alterations to Aristotle to preserve Christian doctrine. More generally, the Orthodox Church is not as Aristotelian, although some great Orthodox saints are Aristotelians. The Orthodox Church more carefully subordinates philosophy to the data of Revelation, treating the mystical experience of God as the highest form of theology.

The main way for Mr. Gove’ to look at the problem of the eternity of the soul is to see that Aristotle posited an eternal universe subject to certain basic metaphysical principles which imply the doctrine that Mr. Gove’ is alluding to, that what begins in time must ultimately end in time. Christianity is a revealed religion which might use one or another philosophical system to assist it in understanding Revelation but without subordinating the data of Revelation to that philosophical system. It is certainly clearly revealed in the New Testament that souls continue to exist infinitely into the future after their creation, and after the General Resurrection with their resurrected bodies. It is a matter of Orthodox dogma that the soul is created at conception.

Fasting in the Orthodox Church

After our post on meat-eating in the Orthodox Church, we received a comment from ‘Melissa’:

Great post! I would like more information on the role of meat in the Orthodox Church. I know that abstaining from meat is a part of many fasts. Where does this come from historically?

This got us to thinking.  And we thought and thought.  Which is why this post is so delayed.  Those of our readers who are already celebrating the twelve days of Christmas will wonder; those who are still in Advent will understand.  However, just because we have thought about this post doesn’t mean it’s any good.

If one goes to Melissa’s profile page one finds links to a couple of blogs that Melissa runs.  It seems that Melissa follows a diet called ‘Paleo’.  This is new to us.  Briefly, without our having investigated it very much, ‘Paleo’ is a diet that orients its follower to eating the way the Palaeolithic natives ate in the region where the person lives.  Presumably, a person living on the Great Plains would eat much the same foods that a Plains Indian would have eaten before Cortez came.  This got us to thinking about discussing why the Orthodox fast, and how.

First of all, at the risk of irritating ‘Paleos’ with our ignorance of their diet, we want to make one remark.  It is all well and good within reason to eat the way a Plains Indian ate if you live on the Great Plains, but only if you live in the same conditions that the Plains Indian lived.  The energy consumption of a pre-Cortez Plains Indian in winter was completely different from the energy consumption of someone living in Indianapolis with central heating and an automobile.  (By ‘energy consumption’ we here mean the number of calories burned to keep alive, and the dietary source of those calories, not any issue with carbon footprints.)  Similarly, there was an adage on the tundra that you had to drink fresh reindeer blood to stay alive.  But who living in a centrally heated home in a town on the tundra would think that today the thing to do was to drink fresh reindeer blood?  What we are saying is that a ‘Paleo’ diet has to be adapted to the actual conditions of life today of the person who wishes to make use of the insights of the Palaeolithic natives of his region.

However, and now we are turning to the actual purpose of this post, we would like to discuss why the Orthodox fast, and how.  The origins of fasting in the Orthodox Church are to be found in the Old Testament.  There, fasting is a sign to God of, and also a means of, our repentance.  It is a sign to God of our repentance because it is a visible act that ‘God can see’ that I am sorry for what I did: I am denying myself because I am sorry.  That is why Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a strict fast.  Even Jews who are otherwise unobservant might find themselves keeping that fast.  The key to understanding this is to see that what is refused in this sort of fasting is what we normally are entitled to: normally there is nothing wrong with eating the sheep in my flock.  Indeed, as Abraham demonstrated, it is good to slaughter the sheep in your flock to feed the stranger who has come to you.  However, by denying ourselves that to which we are entitled we are showing to God we are sorry.

Similarly, fasting was historically tied to sexual abstinence.  During a fast a man was not to touch a woman.  We imagine that this is still true among more Orthodox Jews.  This is also true in the Orthodox Church today.  It is also true in Islam, for example during Ramadan.

Fasting is a means of repentance because it takes us away from the flesh to the spiritual.  The flesh withers, as it were, but in our bodily weakness, our spirit is made more pure and more able to turn to God in prayer.  In this regard, one should consider the references to fasting in the New Testament.  Jesus is clear that while the Bridegroom is with them, the disciples cannot fast, but they will fast when the Bridegroom is taken from them.  Moreover, there is the case of the demon that the disciples could not cast out, which type the Lord said could only be cast out with fasting and prayer (following the textus receptus version of the passage).

So now we can understand the role of the great fast periods in the Church, particularly Great Lent.  It is a period of repentance in preparation for the joy of Easter.  Similarly with the 40-day Advent fast before Christmas.  Similarly with the 15-day strict fast before the Dormition of the Mother of God in August, and the milder fast that extends from the Monday after All Saints (the Sunday after Pentecost) to the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Moreover, in the New Testament the Pharisee fasts twice a week.  The Orthodox Church has kept those two days of fasts—Wednesday and Friday.  Monks also fast on Mondays.

So we can see that the Holy Spirit has woven an intricate web of fasts that extend throughout the whole year.

Now how do the Orthodox fast?  This is a little difficult for us to explain theoretically but easy to explain practically.  Let us start with the practical issues.

There is a list of types of foods, as follows, from the richest foods to the poorest foods. :

1.      animal meats;

2.      dairy products (milk, cheese, eggs, butter, yogurt etc.);

3.      fish;

4.      wine and olive oil;

5.      cooked food;

6.      raw nuts, fruits and vegetables.

The principle is that if on a certain day you can eat an item on the list, you can eat all the items below it on the list but none of the items above it on the list.  If you can eat animal meat on a certain day, say Christmas, you can eat anything.  Hence the way 5 is to be interpreted is that it is food cooked over the fire without wine or oil or anything else above it on the list.  A thin vegetable soup.  But at least it’s cooked; if you’ve reached 6, you’re left with raw nuts, fruits and vegetables.

Now we have to define what an animal is for the purposes of the above list.  An animal is a land creature that has blood.  A goat is an animal.  A snail is not an animal.

Next, what is a fish?  A fish is a sea creature with blood in it.  A tuna is a fish.  An octopus or a clam is not a fish.

What happens to snails, clams and octopus?  They can be eaten on days that animal meats and fish are forbidden, for example during Lent.  However, they have to be prepared with things permitted for the day in question.  For example we do not eat meat or dairy products during Lent, so while we could eat clams, we wouldn’t be able to eat a New England clam chowder soup—it has milk, butter and pork in it.  However, we could, if we wanted to, eat a clam chowder soup on Easter.  Obviously these fast rules were not designed with Howard Johnson’s in view.

Now what we can’t tell you is why the list is structured the way it is.  First of all, it does seem to make intuitive sense: animal meat is more energizing than cheese or yoghurt, which is more energizing than fish (some people might dispute the second assertion).

The list also clearly derives from the experience of the Mediterranean Basin.  It indeed has much in common with what is known as the Mediterranean Diet.  If you follow the fast rules of the Orthodox Church, you will be eating a Mediterranean Diet.

Of course, this presents issues if you’re an Orthodox in Northern Alaska or Northern Russia.  In very different climates there is the matter of the climate itself.  Different climates have different demands in terms of the foods that a person needs.  Someone living in Egypt has different bodily demands than someone living in Siberia.  This is where ‘Paleo’ comes in again.  But while the climate plays a role for anyone living in a region, there is also an issue with how you’re living.  A reindeer herder in Lapland has different metabolic demands from the sedentary doctor living in a centrally-heated house in Lapland and driving a car to the reindeer herder’s tent.

There is also the matter of the foods which are locally available.  Olive oil is very important to the Orthodox fast regime, but olives do not grow above Romania because of the climate.  Compared to the Greek, the Russian or the Finn is going to eat more animal fat than he is going to eat vegetable oil.  But part of the problem with urbanization is that people in the city continue to eat just as their parents ate on the farm before mechanization.  Then they die early.

Moreover, the Orthodox fast regime is an issue even in the Far East, since dairy products are an important component of the Orthodox fast rules and many Far Easterners have a genetically-based intolerance to milk products.

We are not promoting one or another solution to these issues; we are merely pointing out that the issues exist.

Now how do we know what we can eat when?  This is a matter of the liturgical typikon of the Orthodox Church.  The liturgical typikon is a calendar of all the days in the year and the feasts that fall on each day, including movable feasts such as Easter.  For each day the liturgical typikon prescribes what on the list can be eaten and what can’t.  Now the liturgical typikon is very complex, being about 1000 pages long, and has to deal with such issues as ‘What happens if Good Friday falls on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation?’  This can happen.  It has to analyze what services are performed and what can be eaten.

Now let us turn to a very basic issue.  As we pointed out, the Holy Spirit has woven a very complex web of fast rules for the Orthodox, which fast rules were, we said, designed to help the member of the Orthodox Church repent and turn to God.  But there is nothing really in the theology of the Orthodox fast that discusses the health of the faster.  In other words, fasting in the Orthodox Church is not a matter of adherence to a program of bodily health or psychological well-being based on the foods we eat.  We do not fast in the Orthodox Church to feel good, to reduce our blood pressure or to overcome genetically-based health issues.  We fast to turn to God.

Well, then what about the health issues?  The Orthodox Church respects medicine, so if a medical doctor were to tell someone to stop eating animal fats because of his high blood pressure, the Church would accept that.  But the medical judgement is not the business of the priest.  The priest is telling you how to get to God, not how to lower your blood pressure.

Now, the confusion starts with dietary regimes that are philosophically based.  In ancient times, for example, the Epicureans recommended eating bread and cheese as a healthy balanced diet conducive to the state of mind that Epicureanism wished to promote in its adherents (a sort of equanimity).  The Stoics had another diet that derived from their own philosophy.  Today, there is a diet called ‘Macrobiotic’ that derives from certain Japanese philosophical principles; that diet too is what we might call a spiritual path.  Similarly for the dietary aspects of hatha yoga.  These are really philosophical systems that use diet to achieve certain philosophical goals for the adherent of the philosophical system.

So the first problem is with diets related to philosophical systems that ultimately have a completely different world-view from the Orthodox Church, making quite different claims about Man and God.

The confusion increases when the philosophical system makes scientific claims.  While it is not a diet, acupuncture comes to mind.  It seems to be empirically demonstrable that you can stop pain with acupuncture.  Western science accepts that but no one knows how it works.  The philosophical explanations given in Chinese medicine bear no real connection to Western physiology.  So is acupuncture a scientific medical treatment?  Is it an Eastern philosophical tradition in competition with Orthodoxy?  We are not proposing an answer, but there is room for serious confusion.

There are diets, for example the Macrobiotic, and perhaps even the ‘Paleo’, that occupy a similar grey area between science and philosophical system.  In such diets it is not merely that there is a philosophical system connected to the diet, but that there are also scientific claims made about the results of following the diet.  These claims might or might not make sense in the context of Western Science.  Here the Orthodox, or even the practitioners of the diet looking at Orthodoxy, have to be clear in themselves just what it is they understand to be the teaching of the Orthodox Church and whether that would be in conflict with any aspect of the diet taken as a philosophical system.  That is not to say that you should kill yourself eating things that destroy your body.  It is to say that there might be a conflict between the theology of the Orthodox Church and the philosophical principles of the diet in question.

For those of our readers who are awaiting Christmas, we wish you all a blessed and holy Christmas and Theophany.  For those who are already celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, may God bless you.

­–Orthodox Monk

‘The Name of God as Nondifferent From Himself’

We recently received the following email:

Dear Monks,

I am interested in Mount Athos and monastic life, since I heard you accept the name of god as nondifferent from himself. And also accept that chanting his name is the means to spiritual development.

Can people who are not orthodox become monks and live in Mount Athos? I myself follow the 4 regulative principles: No illicit sex, meat eating, intoxication or gambling.

Yours,

Arnold

We were struck by the phrase ‘nondifferent from himself’ since it sounded like a technical term in oriental religion. So we googled it. We saw that the phrase is associated with a branch of Hinduism that includes but does not seem to be limited to ‘Hare Krishna’.

From our vantage point here in the Arctic, here’s what we can say to Arnold:

According to law of the State of Greece, which exercises sovereignty over the peninsula of Mt Athos as an integral part of the Greek State, only members of the Orthodox Church in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch can take up permanent residence on Mt Athos. We imagine that Arnold would be able to visit Mt Athos for a few days but not to remain there.

Also, although there are similarities between the Jesus Prayer and ‘Hare Krishna’—both involve the repetition of a fixed phrase—the Orthodox Church definitely does not accept that the name of Jesus is ‘nondifferent from himself’. This is a Hindu position having to do with Hinduism in one of its manifestations, and not with the teachings of the Orthodox Church. For more information Arnold could look at our recent posts which contain the text and our commentary on the Gnostic Chapters of Diadochos of Photiki. In that work Diadochos discusses the practice of the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church. He emphasizes the connection of the Jesus Prayer to Orthodox Baptism. This is a very ancient work in the Orthodox Church, from 450 AD. We would also suggest that Arnold read our recent Commentary on the Our Father, which at times discusses the relation between prayer and God.

If Arnold has more interest in the Orthodox understanding of these matters he should address himself to the nearest Orthodox Bishop or priest.

Orthodox Monasticism 24 — Yoga and Hesychasm

Since in the last post we discussed methods of combating a logismos, we would like to speak for a minute, as it were, about the relation between method and Grace in the Orthodox Hesychast tradition.

We are not yogis.