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.

Meat-Eating in the Orthodox Church

We have received a request for a post and we would like to respond. This turns out to be our Thanksgiving post. But the question is about the Orthodox attitude to meat-eating. We think the timing is coincidental. But here you have our 2010 Thanksgiving post, those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving today.

The request goes like this, (slightly edited, see the comment on our post New Look for the original text):

I would be interested in reading a post that addresses compassionate diet and its relation to Orthodoxy. To elaborate, over time I have become increasingly concerned with unnecessary animal suffering as a component of human dietary patterns. Of course, this concern presupposes:

that animals are capable of suffering; as may be evident from:

(1a) scientific evidence wherein we can observe biological prerequisites for pain;

(1b) psychological evidence wherein we can observe stress, pain avoidance patterns, etc;

(1c) human-commonality wherein God-image differentiated sentience does not seem to confer an entirely unique mode of suffering (i.e. when I suffer, there is a strong existential analogy to how animals suffer, and as such I should be able to empathize in a real way);

that there is a standard of necessity; ostensibly that:

(2a) necessary suffering either has some teleological good in view (i.e. if I choose to suffer breaking my attachment to meat as a way to reduce animal suffering) or it is unavoidable in the course of mitigating or preventing an even greater suffering;

(2b) pleasure (at least impassioned) is not a teleological good if it is acquired in a manner which causes suffering (sadism?). If the basis of this concern is well-founded, then it seems that there is a good warrant to examine one's own dietary practices.

In addition to the above, I wonder whether a diet which minimizes death and suffering is:

1. prophetic insofar that it points to an eschatological reality where death and suffering are no more (perhaps akin to how celibacy may be prophetic);

2. a way to be more consistently pro-life;

3. part of a compassionate Christianity which is not surpassed by Buddhism's regard for animal life;

4. consistent with a eremitic/monastic precedent (which would seem related to the prophetic aspect at least).

What has to be discussed is Orthodox anthropology in relation to animal suffering and in relation to Buddhist anthropology.

Let us state the obvious. Christianity arises out of the Old Testament and can only be understood in that framework. This is not to say that both the Lord and the Church did not look at the Old Testament in certain ways that are now normative. It is to say that ‘Salvation is from the Jews’, as Our Lord said; that he was a Jew according to the flesh; and that he followed the Mosaic Law.

The basic element of Orthodox anthropology that concerns us is the creation of Man, and the relation of Man to the animals. Man is different from the animals in that God himself fashioned Man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him a breath of life, later taking a rib from Adam from which to fashion Eve. In the case of the animals, God merely gave a command and they were created.

Man was created in the image and likeness of God. The animals were not. There is a disjunction between the nature of Man and the nature of animals.

This is different from Buddhism in that Buddhism treats all sentient beings (‘sentient’ means ‘having sensation’) as being the same sort of thing. In Buddhism there is a continuity between Man and the animals. Indeed Buddhism treats all animals as ‘mothers’ to Man because of the doctrine of reincarnation: all animals were once men and all men were once animals. So there is a very big difference between Orthodox Christian anthropology and Buddhist anthropology.

St Gregory of Nyssa addresses the creation of Man in a work called On the Making of Man. This work was written to finish his brother St Basil the Great’s own work On the Six Days of Creation, interrupted at the creation of Man by Basil’s death.

The interesting thing that St Gregory does in On the Making of Man is combine Aristotelian psychology with the Genesis creation narrative in a way which really seems to foresee the Theory of Evolution. In Aristotelian psychology, there are a number of souls—the plant, the animal and the human—which coexist in Man. We might look at these various souls as functionalities in man. The Vegetative functionality is mere cellular nutrition; the Animal functionality is the sentient experience of one’s environment; the Human functionality is the image of God in Man. Man as the union of body and soul has all these functionalities.

Moreover, according to St Gregory these different souls or functionalities were created by God in stages (the days of creation). The Vegetative soul or functionality was created when the Lord created the plants. The Animal soul or functionality was created when the Lord created the animals. So in On the Making of Man we have the outline of a theory of evolution which treats of the gradual development of vegetative and animal functionalities in the world; and when man is created and given human functionalities, it is on the foundation of these lesser vegetative and animal functionalities which already exist in Creation.

Now the issue that ‘Memory of Death’ is raising revolves around the nature of suffering. Is it merely something that Man has because he has the Human functionality (soul) of the Image of God, or is it something Man shares with the animals as part of his animal functionality?

Clearly, all animals, by definition sentient, can feel pain. No one ever suggested that only Man can feel pain. Moreover, we do not think that anyone would want to insist that animals cannot suffer.

However, in the Old Testament, despite the fact that they can suffer, animals are eaten and sacrificed to God. When Our Lord cleansed the Temple, he did not suggest that sacrificing animals to God was wrong; he was reacting to the avarice of the men buying and selling in the Temple. At no time did Our Lord ever say that we should not eat meat. While he himself is recorded in the Gospel of John only as eating fish (after his resurrection), he attended various meals during his ministry and meat would have been served at those meals. At no time is he recorded as objecting to the meat.

Moreover, Our Lord at no time taught that sacrificing animals was wrong. Indeed, he directed at least one person he healed to show himself to the priest and to make the prescribed sacrifice so as to demonstrate that he was now clean.

Our Lord’s mother and Joseph the Guardian offered the prescribed sacrifice of two young birds when Our Lord was presented in the Temple on the 40^th day after his birth.

Moreover, Our Lord, as a devout Jew, would have eaten the Passover lamb every year.  The Mosaic Law is clear that anyone who does not eat the Passover lamb is to be cut off from the Jewish people.  Clearly, if Jesus was not keeping the Passover, that would have been one of the charges against him in his trial.

(We are referring to the sacrifice of animals not in relation to Thanksgiving but to discuss Our Lord’s attitude to animals. Thanksgiving is a secular feast having its roots in Puritan culture in early America; it has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.)

In the New Testament, it is evident that some Christians (including, we believe, St James the Brother of the Lord) ate only vegetables. In the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem where St James was present, the Gentile converts to Christianity were exempted from the ritual provisions of the Mosaic law except that they were not to eat blood or animals that had been strangled (both things forbidden in the Mosaic law). Clearly, meat-eating was permitted.

In Acts St Peter was shown a vision of a sheet held up by its four corners that was full of all the animals of the earth and told to eat of all of them. He at first refused, saying that he had never eaten anything unclean, but God insisted. Hence, God explicitly allowed the eating not only of animals but of animals that Jews had previously considered unclean.

In his Epistles St Paul legislates that meat-eating is acceptable. He makes some points: we should not eat meat that we know is sacrificed to idols (although we can eat meat sold in the market without raising questions on the grounds of conscience if we do not know if the meat was sacrificed to an idol); we should not have disputes between those who eat only vegetables and those who eat meat: St Paul would rather not ever eat meat than cause scandal to a brother who eats only vegetables. Hence, St Paul has no problem with meat-eating but he also has no problem with people who are vegetarian. He thinks that the issues are elsewhere.

It should be clear from the above that there can be no dogmatic basis in Christianity for a ban on meat-eating.

Some points.

1. From the beginning, being vegetarian was acceptable—but as a personal choice, not as a dogmatic position.
2. Monks in the Orthodox Church do not normally eat meat. This derives from 4^th Century Egypt. We don’t really recall a long explanation of why. If there is a prophetic or eschatological element in this, it is not emphasized. Moreover, in cases of serious illness monks are served meat.
3. If an Orthodox Christian follows the fast rules of the Church, he will not eat that much meat. This is good from the point of view of the person’s health since a high-meat diet is dangerous from a medical point of view. The fast rules of the Church are based on the Mediterranean Diet, which is considered beneficial.

(The situation among the religious in the Roman Catholic Church is somewhat more ambiguous: the older orders with deeper roots in Egyptian monasticism do not ordinarily eat meat. The Cistercians come to mind. However newer orders which are not really monastic, such as the Jesuits, do eat meat.)

Now given that animals do suffer, should a Christian take this into account? We would imagine that a Christian would want to slaughter an animal with the least suffering simply on the basis of being a human being with a conscience. But we have never heard of the Bishops of the Church occupying themselves with slaughter-house practices.

It is true that industrial meat-raising—such as of pigs or chickens in sheds—is terrible from two points of view. First the animals are treated as commodities or machines, so they presumably suffer. Second, they are filled with all kinds of drugs and chemicals and whatever to get them ready as fast as possible for slaughter at a good price, and the food these animals are provided is an unnatural concoction. Apart from any issue of compassion for sentient beings, this makes the meat potentially dangerous for human consumption. But it is a long way to go from finding these practices distasteful to reaching a dogmatic position on meat-eating.

It should also be pointed out that although Buddhist anthropology makes the human nature continuous with the animal nature, Buddhist norms on meat-eating are by no means consistent across all forms of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, for example eats meat, by all accounts with a good appetite. Only some schools of Mahayana Buddhism absolutely forbid the eating of meat. Hence, trying to accommodate Orthodox Christianity to Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings is to follow a will-o’-the-wisp.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers!

–Orthodox Monk

Questions about Orthodox Monasticism

We have just received an interesting email (slightly edited):

I am an undergraduate student taking a class on World Religions. While I am not Greek Orthodox, I have become very interested after watching a “60 Minutes” interview with His All Holiness Bartholomew. I have chosen as a topic for my research paper, aspects of the Greek Orthodox religion. If possible, could you answer the following questions?

(This web site provides excellent information, and I would like to ask a few questions in order to add an interview reference for my paper.)

1. What is the origin of the order of Monks?

2. What is the role of Monks in hierarchy of the Church?

3. Do Monks have a role in the spiritual development of lay persons?

4. Do you see any similarities between the orders of Monks in the Orthodox Church and in the Buddhist religion?

Thank You,

Let us take the questions one by one.

1. What is the origin of the order of Monks?

First of all, the student of religion must understand something of the relations of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Until the schism of 1054 ad, they were one church, in communion with one another. However, although the Roman Church originally spoke Greek, it soon changed to Latin, whereas the Greek Church centred in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) continued to speak Greek. Moreover, the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople were both centred on capitals of the Roman Empire: there were two capitals of the Roman Empire (whence the two-headed eagle, one head looking West and one East). However, although the two churches were in communion, they evolved in somewhat different directions and with a somewhat different mentality. This is evident when one reads St Augustine in parallel with contemporary Greek Fathers of the Church: there is already a clear difference in mentality. Moreover, partly because St Augustine was writing in Latin, although the Roman Church (and the Protestant Reformers) took him very seriously indeed, he was ignored in the Greek East. This is important even in the question in hand because St Augustine founded an order of monks, with a rule that has a completely different character from Greek-based rules. The two churches split in the 11^th Century.

Let us now turn to the actual question. First of all, let us note that there are two basic types of Christian monk: the coenobitical monk, who lives with other monks in an organized monastery, and the eremitical monk, who lives alone. Traditionally, the Greeks trace the origins of the coenobitical Christian monk to the Acts of the Apostles, to the Christian community in Jerusalem. See Acts 4, 32 – 37:

The heart and soul of the crowd of believers was one and no one said that any thing of his possessions was his own but everything was common to them. And the Apostles rendered the witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power for great grace was on all of them. For there was no one in want among them; for as many as were owners of fields or houses sold them and brought the prices of those things which had been sold, placing them at the feet of the Apostles. And they gave to each according to the need he had. And Joses, called Barnabas by the Apostles, which translated means ‘Son of Consolation’, a Levite, from a Cypriot family, there being a field he owned, sold that field and brought the money and placed it at the feet of the Apostles.

Now there is no indication that the believers in the original Jerusalem community were obliged to be celibate. Since the Apostle Peter was married, this seems unlikely.

The relevant passages of the Bible concerning celibacy are these: First, Elias (Elijah) the Prophet who was clearly celibate, as it seems his disciple and successor Elisha was. In the description of the Prophet Elias’ life, the Bible refers to the ‘Brotherhoods of the Prophets’, which seem to have been celibate, although the Bible does not say much at all.

In the New Testament, St John the Baptist is clearly celibate, as was Our Lord himself. Our Lord says this about celibacy in Matthew 19, 9 – 12:

I say then to you that whoever dismisses his wife, if not for fornication, and marries another commits adultery and she who is dismissed commits adultery if she marries. His disciples said to him: If this is the basis of legal action for a man with the wife, it is not profitable to marry. He then said to them. Not all can receive this word, but those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God; let he who is able to receive this word, receive it.

The Church has never accepted any interpretation of this passage that would suggest that self-castration is acceptable; the Church has always understood this passage to be a provision for voluntary celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Note that there is no indication that celibacy can be undertaken for any other reason.

Here is what St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 – 11:

Concerning, then, those things which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. On account, however, of [the danger of] fornication let each [man] have his own wife, and each [woman] have her own husband. Let the man render to the wife the favour which is owed and likewise the wife to the husband. For the woman does not have authority over her own body but the husband; likewise the man does not have authority over his own body but the wife. Do not deny each other, unless it is by mutual agreement for a time so as to dedicate yourselves to fasting and to prayer and then to come together again, so that Satan not tempt you on account of your incontinence. I say this by way of concession not by way of command. For I wish that all men were as myself. But everyone has his own gift from God, one this way and one that way. I say then to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them to remain even as I am but if they do not keep continent then let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. I command those who are married, however, not I but the Lord, that the woman must not separate from her husband. But if she separates, let her remain unmarried or else let her be reconciled to her husband; and let the husband not leave his wife.

As we can see here, it is better not to marry but marriage is not a sin. Moreover, celibacy within marriage is by mutual consent for a time for the sake of fasting and prayer. Of course, the canons of the Church have regulated this with regard to the fixed fasts of the Church. However, more important for an understanding of Christian monasticism, celibacy is better than marriage. Here is what St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, 25 – 40:

Concerning maidens, I do not have a command of the Lord but I give my opinion as one who has been shown mercy by the Lord to be faithful. I think then that this is good on account of the present necessity, that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Have you been given to a wife? Do not seek to loose the bonds. Have you been loosed by a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned. And if the maiden marries, she has not sinned. But such persons [i.e. those who marry] will have affliction in the flesh; I [would] spare you [that]. I say this then, brothers, that the remaining time has been shortened, so that those who have wives should be as not having, and those who are weeping as not weeping, and those who are rejoicing as not rejoicing, and those who are buying as not possessing, and those who make use of this world as not making use, for the form of this world is passing. I want you to be without cares. He who is unmarried takes care for the things of the Lord, how he will please the Lord. But he who marries takes care for the things of the world, how he will please his wife. For the married woman and the maiden have been divided. She who is unmarried takes care for the things of the Lord so that she be holy in body and spirit. She who has been married takes care for the things of the world, how she will please her husband. I say this to you towards your own profit: not so that I put a noose around you but towards seemliness and so that you might constantly wait for the Lord without distraction. If someone thinks he is behaving badly towards his maiden, if he is of surpassing sexual vigour and thus it must happen, let him do what he wants; he does not sin; let them marry. However, if anyone has stood stably in his heart, not having necessity, and has authority over his own will, and has judged this in his heart, to keep himself a virgin, he does well. So that he who marries does well but he who does not marry does better. A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband is alive. If her husband passes away, she is free to marry whom she wants, only in the Lord. But in my opinion she is more blessed if she remains thus [i.e. an unmarried widow], and I think that I have the Spirit of God.

We can see that in the New Testament celibacy is clearly foreseen for the sake of the Kingdom of God and for no other reason. Marriage is not a sin but the higher state is celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom. Moreover the Bible is clear that celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom is not for everyone but only for those who can sustain it and who want to. It is a free choice for those who are able to live such a life.

Now in terms of the actual historical evolution of monasticism, we have already mentioned the coenobitical model of the original Jerusalem community. There are also passages both in Acts (concerning for example Dorcas who was raised from the dead by Peter) and in the Epistles of Paul which refer to the widows. These appear originally to have been genuine widows who devoted themselves to good works in celibacy with the support of the Church. These widows seem very similar to orders of nuns and most likely played a historical role in the evolution of Christian monasticism. St Paul even regulates concerning them. However, we will leave the reader to research this on his or her own.

In the same era as the New Testament the Jewish theologian or philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes a community of ‘Therapeutae’ near Alexandria in his work ‘On the Contemplative Life’. The work has sometimes been interpreted as describing an early Christian monastic community but there is certainly room for other interpretations.

Next, until the Edict of Milan in 313 ad, which permitted Christianity without establishing it (that happened under Theodosius the Great in 380 ad), there were periodic persecutions of Christians. The norm was for the Christian to flee persecution, not to remain and be subject to martyrdom (since it was not clear that you would withstand the torture, and it was more humble to flee than to stand your ground). A number of these early Christian fugitives remained in the wilderness. A number of these saints’ lives are briefly recorded in the collections of Lives of the Saints. We have examples of such saints already from the middle of the 3^rd Century, if not earlier (there probably is a problem with the sourcing, not with the existence of earlier saints of this type).

Moreover, when St Anthony the Great went to the desert sometime before 300 ad, at that time, as his biographer, St Athanasios the Great of Alexandria, who knew him personally, remarks, there were monks who lived on the outskirts of towns and villages, but St Anthony was the first to go to the desert. Actually, St Anthony wasn’t the first to go to the desert, since there were others who had gone to the desert to escape martyrdom and had remained. But he certainly had a dramatic effect on the nature of Christian monasticism.

By the end of the 4^th Century, Egypt was full of monks, as was Palestine and Syria. Indeed, there were developments in Palestine and Syria parallel to the early growth of monasticism in Egypt and it would be a mistake to think that the source of all Christian monasticism was Egypt, although it did indeed produce the form dominant in the Orthodox Church. There were some differences between Syrian and Egyptian monasticism. A characteristic example of a contemporary Syrian saint is St Symeon the Stylite (fl. 5^th C.), who is well-attested and the ruins of whose pillar have been found and whose fame spread all the way to Rome.

2. What is the role of Monks in hierarchy of the Church?

The monk becomes a member of the ‘choir of those who live alone’ within the Church. He renounces the world, becomes celibate, but as a member of the Church. He is a member of the Church who has opted for a celibate role within the Church. Fairly early the canons (laws) of the Church regulated concerning monks. A monk is forbidden to seek the priesthood. If he is offered the priesthood he may accept (and indeed may be required to accept because of his vow of obedience). But as is clear from the Scriptural passages quoted above, the monk is dedicated to serving the Lord without distraction in repentance and prayer; his is not the vocation of the teacher. Hence, it is considered unseemly and even dangerous for a monk to seek the priesthood, which is really a ministry of teaching in the Church. Moreover, monks were also regulated by the canons of the Church to remain in their hermitages and/or monasteries: they were not to spend their time in the cities making trouble. However, fairly soon, bishops were selected exclusively from the monks. Hence, although the monk could not seek the priesthood, let alone a bishopric, he could be selected for either. Historically, monks have functioned as a kind of ginger group in the Orthodox Church. That is, the monks often supported sound doctrine.

3. Do Monks have a role in the spiritual development of lay persons?

Yes, if they themselves have any spiritual development. The best thing to do here is to quote St John of Sinai, the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent. We don’t have the text handy, but he says that the angel is the light of (model for) the monk, whereas the monk is the light of (model for) the layperson. This aspect of monasticism developed over the years. In 19^th Century Russia, Dostoevsky himself used to go to Optina monastery where he used to confess to one of the Elders there, St Ambrose. St Ambrose said of Dostoevsky: ‘That is a man who repents.’ The same Elder said of Tolstoy, with whom he spoke for eight hours straight: ‘He has much pride.’ So, yes, this is a very important aspect of Orthodox monasticism. Needless to say, conflicts can arise with Section 2, above, if the monk who is playing a role in the spiritual development of lay persons doesn’t see eye to eye on certain matters with the local bishop. With regard to nuns, spiritually developed nuns do also counsel lay persons, mostly females. The Orthodox Church has always paid attention to the stricture of St Paul that he did not permit women to have authority over men in the Church, so while there are roles that women play in the Church, nuns generally do not offer spiritual direction except to other women.

4. Do you see any similarities between the orders of Monks in the Orthodox Church and in the Buddhist religion?

Yes and no. Obviously, on the most superficial level monks of both religions are ostensibly celibate, or at least unmarried. However, the earliest references to Buddhism in Christian letters we ourselves have seen are first in Clement of Alexandria (2^nd to early 3^rd C.), who makes a passing reference to Buddha in one of his works, and then in the catechisms of St Hesychios of Jerusalem about 370 ad, who states that through a chain of disciples the Buddha was one of the sources of Manes, the founder of Manichaeism. It is interesting that St Hesychios explicitly states that he is taking his information from converts to Christianity from Manichaeism with whom he has spoken personally.

Now, some differences. First of all, Christian monasticism is an optional way of life within the Christian Church that arises out of the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition whereas Buddhism was originally a strictly monastic religion that arose out of Hinduism, in fact Hindu asceticism. The first Buddhist scriptures were the rules of the order of Buddhist monks; lay persons are a sort of later add-on. We cannot overemphasize this fundamental difference between Orthodox and Buddhist monasticism.

Next, in Christian monasticism, a monk gives his vows to God and these are considered irrevocable. The same sense of the irrevocable nature of a vow to God is also to be found in Judaism and Islam. The Roman Catholic Church finds a way to laicize monks who so wish by construing their vows to be to the monastic community and not to God. We once had a conversation with a wayward Jesuit who had left his order without authorization and cast off the habit, and who remarked that his conscience told him that his vows were to God, not to the Jesuit community, and that the only option open to him within Roman Catholic canon law was to go to the Cistercians unless he returned to the Jesuits. Hence, sometimes this approach doesn’t even work for the Roman Catholic Church. In the Orthodox Church, vows of the monk or nun are to God and are irrevocable. Historical exceptions exist but are so exceedingly rare as to prove the canon. However, in Buddhism, monastic vows can be undone. There is a standard procedure for doing this. Evidently, this is how it is that we see in Theravada Buddhism (say, in Thailand) that young boys become monks for a year or two and then return to the world in an expected and accepted fashion. Moreover, we have known persons who were Tibetan Buddhist monks who have given their vows back and returned to the world without any stigma being attached to them by their Tibetan Buddhist gurus.

Next, although a Buddhist monk is celibate, there is a strand of esoteric Buddhism that foresees that the monk will engage in actual tantric yoga with a nun or laywoman. This strand is usually associated with Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism but the strand, which arises out of Hindu tantric yoga associated with the worship of Siva, extends all the way to Japan. Before anyone jumps on us, we are confident of our sources. This is inconceivable in Orthodox monasticism. It would be considered a grave, demonic sin. (It should be noted that in Japan there is the historical anomaly of married Buddhist monks. This arose because of the insistence of the state in a fairly recent period that the monks be married. This can be quite confusing because these monks are usually called Buddhist priests, even though there is no priesthood in Buddhism. We do not know how these married monks live with their wives. Moreover, it should be understood that although Tibetan Buddhist lamas are also often called priests and on occasion even get married, there is really no priesthood in Buddhism, at least not in any sense that someone in the Judeo-Christian tradition, or even the Greek pagan tradition, would understand the priesthood.)

Next, there is a number of degrees in Buddhist monasticism and there is an incredible number of vows in some of the degrees. We seem to recall that in some cases there are over two hundred and fifty vows. We do not know what these vows are all about. Moreover, Buddhist monastic vows are apparently secret, so that it would be difficult to establish what they are all about with any certainty.

In Orthodox monasticism, the full tonsure to the monastic state requires these vows (see our translation of the tonsure to the Great Schema here):

Then the Priest inquires of him, saying:

Question: Why have you come, Brother, falling down before the Holy Altar, and before this holy Brotherhood?

Answer: I desire the life of asceticism, Reverend Father.

Question: Do you desire to be worthy of the Angelic Habit and to be enrolled in the choir of the Monastics?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

The Priest:

Truly, you have chosen a good and blessed work, but only if you complete it. Good things are acquired with toil and achieved with pain.

Question: Do you come to the Lord of your free will?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

Question: Not from any necessity or violence?

Answer: No, Reverend Father.

Question: Do you renounce the world and the things which are in the world, according to the commandment of the Lord?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

Question: Will you remain in the Monastery and in the ascesis up to your last breath?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

Question: Will you preserve unto death obedience to the Superior, and to the whole Brotherhood in Christ?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

Question: Will you endure every affliction and deprivation entailed by the Monastic life for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

Question: Will you preserve yourself in virginity and chastity and piety?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

And the Catechism is immediately begun by the Priest, as follows:

See, child, what agreements you have given to the Master Christ. Angels are here invisibly present recording this your profession, which is going to be required of you in the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am now narrating, therefore, the most perfect life, in which the way of life of the Lord is shown forth, bearing witness what things it is necessary for you to embrace and what things you must avoid. This renunciation, then, for him who has made it is nothing other than a profession of the cross and death.

Know, then, that from this present day you have been crucified and put to death to the world through the most perfect renunciation. For you have renounced parents, brothers, wife, children, forefathers, relatives, associations, friends, habits, the tumults in the world, cares, possessions, goods, empty and vain pleasure and glory; and you are renouncing not only those things which have just been said, but even your own life, according to the voice of the Lord which says: ‘Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ If therefore you truly seek to follow him, and if without lies you ardently desire to be called his disciple, from the present moment prepare yourself not towards ease, not towards freedom from care, not towards sensual pleasures, not towards anything else of those pleasures and enjoyments which are on the earth, but towards spiritual struggles, towards temperance of the flesh, towards purification of the soul, towards mean poverty, towards the good grief, towards all the sorrowful and painful things of that life according to God which brings joy. For you have to hunger and to thirst and to go naked and to be reviled and ridiculed, to be reproached and persecuted and to be tempted in many sorrowful things, in which things the life according to God is characterized. And when you suffer all of these things, ‘Rejoice,’ it is said, ‘for great is your wage in the Heavens.’

Rejoice therefore with joy and exult with exultation, for today the Lord God has selected you and set you apart from life in the world, and has set you, as before his face, in the post of the Monastic order, in the service of the angelic life, in the height of the life which imitates Heaven, to worship him angelically, to serve him wholly and completely, to seek those things which are above. ‘For our way of life,’ according to the Apostle, ‘is in the Heavens.’

Oh the new call! Oh the gift of the Mystery! You are receiving a second Baptism today, Brother, in the wealth of the gifts of God who loves mankind, and you shall be cleansed of your sins, and you shall become a son of Light, and Christ himself our God rejoices together with his holy Angels over your repentance, slaughtering for you the fattened calf. Walk worthily therefore of your call; rid yourself of the attachment to vain things; hate the desire that draws you towards those things which are below; turn your own ardent desire towards Heavenly things; by no means whatsoever turn back, so that you not become a pillar of salt like the wife of Lot or like a dog returning to its own vomit, and the word of the Lord be fulfilled in you: ‘No one putting his hand to the plough and having turned towards the rear is fit for the Kingdom of the Heavens.’ For the danger for you is not little, having now professed that you will guard all the aforesaid things, afterwards to make little of the profession or even to run back to the previous way of life, or to separate yourself from the Father and the Brothers who are engaged with you in ascesis, or, remaining, to live your days contemptuously. For you will have weightier responsibilities than previously before the unerring tribunal of Christ, as much as you now enjoy more grace. And it would be better for you, as the saying goes, not to vow than to vow and not to render your vows. And, again, do not at all think that in the previous time of your sojourn in this place you have adequately struggled against the invisible powers of the Enemy, but know rather that from now there will succeed to you greater struggles in the battle against him, but that he will in no way prevail against you if he finds you fenced about by a strong faith and love for him who is guiding you and by sincerity in your obedience and humility.

For this reason, put away from yourself refusal to listen, contradiction, pride, strife, jealousy, envy, anger, clamour, blasphemy, secret eating, boldness of manner, special friendship, talkativeness, wrangling, grumbling, whispering, personal acquisition of any miserable thing, and all the other sorts of vice through which the wrath of God comes on those who practice them and the Destroyer of souls begins to take root in those who practise them. Rather, then, instead of those things, acquire these things which are fitting to Saints: friendship, stillness, leniency, piety, meditation on the divine words, reading, keeping of the heart from filthy thoughts, labour according to strength, temperance, patient endurance up to death, and perfect confession of those things which are in your heart to the Father to whom you previously gave your vows, as the divine testaments relate: ‘They were baptized,’ it says, ‘confessing their sins.’

Question: Do you thus profess all these things in the hope of the strength of God and do you agree to persevere in these promises until the end of life, by the grace of Christ?

Answer: Yes, God helping me, Reverend Father.

One can see that there is not really a vow of poverty for monks in the Orthodox Church, but a vow of endurance in the face of the difficulties and afflictions entailed by the monastic life. However, the catechism, which is sealed by a separate vow of acceptance, does refer to monastic poverty.

Note also that the monk is crucified to the world. This is not something that a Buddhist monk would conceptualize, since Buddhism has different theological bases than Christianity.

Note also that, in a chain going all the way back to the New and Old Testaments, the goal of the monk is ascesis. As St Paul said, the celibate is he or she who is dedicated to pleasing the Lord. This ‘pleasing the Lord’ is understood in monasticism as a process of asceticism to overcome the passions so as to become more Christ-like.

There are really these degrees of monasticism in the Orthodox Church:

Novice (No formal, standardized service. The novice may wear lay clothes, a special uniform or some elements of the monastic habit, although certainly not the veil or the schema—in the West, the schema is called the scapular. This is a period of testing to see whether the person can live as a monk or nun. It can normally be terminated by either side for any reason. It is usually regulated by the Church.)

Rasophore (This is a set of prayers over the beginning monk with a tonsure but without formal vows. See here for the complete service. The habit will ordinarily include the veil but does not include the schema or scapular. While historically the rasophore has been treated as a monk, the Church of Greece takes the position that since there are no vows, it is really a novitiate.)

Small Schema (This is a moderate version of the Great Schema which lacks the vow of renunciation of the world that the Great Schema has, but has all the other vows. It also has a more moderate catechism and milder prayers over the monk. It is based on the service of tonsure to the Great Schema and has exactly the same structure. The readings from the Apostle and the Gospel are different. The actual schema or scapular is smaller than the schema or scapular of the Great Schema and among the Russians is worn inside the habit where it is not ordinarily visible. A priest, who would also be a monk of at the least the Small Schema, ordinarily performs this service. This service is binding for life. We have not translated this service.)

Great Schema (See here. Among the Greeks the actual schema or scapular covers the front of the body from the neck to the knees but among the Russians includes a hood and falls much lower, to the floor. In each case, the schema or scapular is embroidered with a very large cross and a number of letters which are the initial letters of the words in a number of sentences, the more so in the Russian case. The schema or scapular is not always worn. Among the Greeks a priest, who would also be a monk of the Great Schema, ordinarily performs this service, but among the Russians a bishop ordinarily performs it. This service is binding for life.)

The monk or nun may advance from any degree to any higher degree depending on the wishes of his or her spiritual guide (for example, the Abbot). There are differences in time and place and jurisdiction concerning which degrees are conferred when, and even whether a particular degree is conferred at all.

Finally, it should be noted that the services of tonsure in the Orthodox Church are the same everywhere, and the same for men and women: only the gender is changed where appropriate. There has been a historical evolution of the services but the current monastic services are standard throughout the Church.