Catechesis and Spiritual Formation for Christian Discipleship

In matters of morality and the faith that guides our morality, Orthodox Christians seem not overwhelmingly orthodox. We are instead rather more inclined to take guidance in matters of faith and morals from the more secular elements of American society. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a clear majority of Orthodox Christians favor legalized abortion and a plurality are supportive of homosexuality. While we can certainly debate the extent to which these questions were understood by the respondents, my own pastoral experience suggests that the views expressed in the survey accurately reflect the views I encounter in parishes. Sadly, I would have to include clergy among those who hold such opinions.

In the full report on religious beliefs and practices (the PDF of which you can download here) published by the Pew Charitable Trust, 95% of Orthodox Christians surveyed said that they believe in God or a universal spirit. 71% are absolutely certain in their belief, 19% are fair certain and 5% are not certain. Curiously 4% of all Orthodox Christians surveyed don't even believe in God. Looking a bit more closely, what do we see about the God that Orthodox Christians believe in?

When asked "Which comes closest to your view of God? God is a person with whom people can have a relationship or God is an impersonal force?" we discover that less than half of those who believe in God believe in a personal God (49%) while just over one third (34%) believe that God is an impersonal force. These numbers suggest that relative to both the general American population (60% of whom believe in a personal God) as well as Evangelical Christians (79%) and Catholics (60%), the a fair number of Orthodox are frankly less than orthodox.

One of the points made in the Pew Charitable Trust Survey is that it is "constant movement" that summarizes American religious experience. While Americans are a religious people, we are a promiscuous religious people. Creedal fidelity is not our strong suit. For example, among who join the Orthodox Church as adults, over 50% will eventually leave the Church.

Contrary to what we often say, the primary pastoral challenge facing the Church in American is not evangelization. It is (relatively) easy to "make converts." The real challenge is not conversion but retention. The regular and habitual participation of the faithful in the sacramental life of the Church (especially Holy Communion and Confession) together with a willing eagerness on the part of laity and clergy to conform one's life to Christ and the Gospel is the goal. As the number suggest, whether we are looking at the experience of "cradle" or "convert," this is simply not happening.

And it is not simply a failure in the Orthodox Church. Other Christian communities are also failing in like manner. Whether we are looking at the experience of the Orthodox or Catholic Churches, the historic Black churches, the Evangelical Christian or Mainline Protestant denominations, all are struggling to make disciples of their own members.

That said, let's return to the Orthodox Church. The numbers suggest (to me at least), that what is lacking among us, is the solid catechetical and spiritual formation of the faithful (laity and clergy) that is required to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. This work is often neglected because it is labor intensive. And how can it not be? After making disciples is a highly personal and idiosyncratic work. While catechesis can be more general, formation is always
personal because it is always vocational.

Catechesis, whether in sermons or adult religious education classes, tells me what we believe. Spiritual formation tells me—or better yet, helps me—answer questions such as "Who am I in Christ?" and "What is Christ asking of me?"

What might such an approach to the pastoral life of the Church look like?

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

“Orthodox” Moral Reasoning

There is an interesting conversation developing in response to one of my earlier posts, "Throne and Altar making A Comeback in Russian? (And not just there?)." You can read the comments either at the bottom of the post, or by clicking here (a new window will open in either case).

Thinking about this conversation as well as several others I have had in recent weeks (both online and face to face), there is in me a growing concern that most Orthodox Christians—both clergy and laity—don't seem to have a well formed conscience. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting rampant immorality here among the laity much less the clergy. What I am suggesting is that, in the main, Orthodox Christians tend to make moral and ethical decisions based not on who we are and are called to be in Christ. Rather, and this is something that is only a guess on my part and needs further study, as with most American, most Orthodox Christians implicitly subscribed to a type Consequentialism rather than an ethic based in Christian virtue. Moral reasoning then tends as well to be frankly utilitarian.

Saying this all I am saying is that, like most Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox not only hold moral positions contrary to the Gospel, they do so without a trace of concern and even justify their views by an appeal to the Gospel. This requires some explanation. Let me look, in this post at the first part and in my next post the later point.

The Pew Charitable Trust U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is helpful in demonstrating the widespread adherence among Orthodox Christians to a moral code drawn not from the Gospel but the values of the larger American society.

For example when asked by survey takers: "On another subject, do you think abortion should be (READ CATEGORIES IN ORDER TO HALF SAMPLE, IN REVERSE ORDER TO OTHER HALF OF SAMPLE) legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?" the majority of American think that abortion should be legal in all or at least most cases.

Where the findings are troublesome is that Orthodox Christians are even significantly more pro-choice than the general American population. Indeed, we are more inclined to support legalized abortion than either Evangelical Christians (33%) or Catholics (48%).

But this doesn't tell the whole story. Not only are we more inclined to be Pro-Choice than the general American population, Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics, we are also less supportive of the Pro-Life position.

While 43% of the general American population would see abortion illegal in all (27%), or at least most cases (16%), only 30% of Orthodox Christians are Pro-Life. And even here the more moderate Pro-Life position (illegal in most cases) is held by twice as many of us as the more stringent position (20% say abortion should be illegal in most cases compared to only 10% who say it should be illegal in all cases).

And again, this make us more "liberal" than not only the general American population but also Evangelical Christians (51% of whom are Pro-life, 36% saying abortion should be illegal in most cases, 25% saying it should be illegal in all cases) and Catholics (45% of whom are Pro-life, 27% saying abortion should be illegal in most cases, 18% saying it should be illegal in all cases). On abortion, Orthodox Christians hold a position more similar to mainline Protestants than our own tradition.

Tradition	% US Pop	% Evangelical	% Mainline	% Catholics	% Orthodox
Legal in all cases	18%	9%	20%	16%	24%
Legal in most cases	33%	24%	42%	32%	38%
Pro-Choice:	51%	33%	62%	48%	62%
Illegal in most cases	27%	36%	25%	27%	20%
Illegal in all cases	16%	25%	7%	18%	10%
Pro-Life:	43%	51%	32%	45%	30%
Don't Know/refused	6%	9%	7%	7%	8%

We see a similar finding on homosexuality.

When asked: "Now I'm going to read you a few pairs of statements. For each pair, tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views -- even if neither is exactly right. 1 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society, OR 2 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society," most Orthodox Christians answered in a manner not compatible with our own moral tradition.

Tradition	US Pop	Evangelical Christians	Mainline Protestants	Catholics	Orthodox
Should be accepted	65%	26%	56%	58%	48%
Should be discouraged	40%	64%	34%	30%	37%
Neither/Both equally	5%	5%	6%	5%	7%
Don't Know/refused	5%	5%	5%	7v	8%

While there is not majority support for homosexuality among the surveyed Orthodox Christians, a significant number are supportive of homosexuality (48%) rather than not (37%). Somewhat more of a concern to me is that another 15% seemed either indifferent or ignorant of the Church's teaching (7% answered "Neither/Both equally, 8% said that they "don't know" or simply refused to answer the question).

While we need to careful about reading too much into these findings, when taken with other survey data about what many Orthodox Christians believe relative to the Creed, a picture begins to come into focus.

For now though, let me simply say that the Pew Trust survey suggest to me that something needs to change in Orthodox pastoral praxis. In my next post, I will suggest a possible solution.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Worst and the Best, the Highest and the Lowest

One commentator offers an interesting thought in response to an earlier post here based on Fr Jonah's thoughts on leadership in the Church. The comments, by AMM, address what I would see as the irony that Western theological anthropologies, with what Orthodox Christians see as very negative view of the human, has given birth to democracy. AMM notes that the East, on the other hand, with a very positive theological anthropology have tended to favor (and still favor) more autocratic and even authoritarian modes of governance. You can read all of his comment here, but let me quote the writer's central point:

As I said, the church champions freedom, but usually seems most comfortable conforming itself to authority that suppresses it. One of the ironies to me are the convert oriented polemics surrounding sin and the nature of man. Specifically the idea that the Eastern view represents a paradigm of the goodness of man in the wake of the fall as counterposed against the wickedness of man in the Augustininian/western view. Absolutism and political authoritarianism (the preference of the East) of course assumes the worst in man, and is a mechanism to keep humans in check. It is in the west, the home of the dreaded doctrine of Original Sin, that true freedom (enlighten by faith as outlined by Acton) has been allowed to flourish; and it is among the western confessions that you see the greatest emphasis on the service of man that as you said seems to be lacking in Orthodoxy.

What makes this even more interesting to me is a post by Thomas Berg on the blog Mirror of Justice. Berg argues for the centrality of Augustinian model of original sin for political theory and practice. He quotes from the Christianity Today review of Jason Byasseeof Original Sin: A Cultural History, a recently published book by Wheaton College English professor Alan Jacobs. Byassee writes that

Original sin is a good word to the poor, bad news to tyrants, and a prescription for a politics more radical than any we've seen: a genuinely Christian democracy, inclusive of all the living and the dead, each equally bound up in a plight we cannot solve ourselves.

Jacobs thinks original sin does this leveling work in a way that other points of Christian anthropology do not. God's good Creation, humanity's crafting in the image of God, the charge to tend the Garden and to multiply: such prelapsarian pronouncements don't lift the luggage politically. They "should do so, but usually" do not, he writes. Somehow it works better for us to "condescend" than to try and lift up others to our level.

There is something seductive about the popular understanding of Orthodox theological anthropology. Yes, certainly, we emphasize the human as created in the image of God. And yes, we understand the Incarnation in terms of recapitulation and salvation in terms of participation in the divine nature (deification). But, to simply, as many do, appeal to these and related doctrines, is to risk heresy, both Christological and anthropological.Balancing the sunny view of the human, to address my immediate concern, is the wealth of more negative anthropological teaching embodied both in the Church's liturgical and ascetical tradition. For example, in the funeral service we sing the Canon of St John Damascene:

What pleasure in life remains without its share of sorrow? What glory stands on earth unchanged? All things are feebler than a shadow, all things are more deceptive than dreams; one instant, and death supplants them all. But, O Christ, give rest to him You have chosen in the light of your countenance and the sweetness of your beauty, as You love mankind.

As a flower withers and as a dream passes, so every human being is dissolved. But once again, at the sound of the trumpet, all the dead will arise as by an earthquake to go to meet you, Christ God. Then, Christ our Master, establish in the tents of your Saints the spirit of your servant whom you have taken over from us.

Alas, what an ordeal the soul endures once separated from the body! Alas, what tears then, and there is none to pity her! She turns towards the Angels, her entreaty is without effect; she stretches out her hands to men, she has none to help. Therefore my dear brethren, thinking on the shortness of our life, let us ask of Christ rest for him who has passed over, and for ourselves his great mercy.

Everything human which does not survive death is vanity; wealth does not last, glory does not travel with us; for at death's approach all of them disappear; and so let cry out to Christ the Immortal one: Give rest to him who has passed from us, in the dwelling of all those who rejoice.

Truly most fearful is the mystery of death, how the soul is forcibly parted from the body, from its frame, and how that most natural bond of union is cut off by the will of God. Therefore we entreat you: Give rest in the tents of your just ones, him/her who has passed over, O Giver of life, Lover of mankind.

Where is the attraction of the world? Where the delusion of the temporary? Where is gold, where silver? Where the throng and hubbub of servants? All dust, all ashes, all shadow. But come, let us cry out to the immortal King: O Lord, grant your eternal good things to him who has passed from us, giving him rest in the happiness which does not age.

I remembered how the Prophet cried out: I am earth and ashes; and I looked again into the tombs and saw the naked bones, and I said: Who then is a king or a soldier, a rich man or a beggar, a just man or a sinner? But give rest, O Lord, with the just to your servant.

Your command which fashioned me was my beginning and my substance; for wishing to compose me as a living creature from visible and invisible nature, you moulded my body from the earth, but gave me a soul by your divine and life-giving breath. Therefore, O Christ, give rest to your servant in the land of the living, in the tents of the just.

Give rest, our Saviour, to our brother/sister, whom you have taken over from transient things, as he/she cries, 'Glory to you!'

Having fashioned man in the beginning in your image and likeness, you placed him in Paradise to govern your creatures; but led astray by the envy of the devil he tasted the food and became a transgressor of your commandments; and so you condemned him, O Lord, to return again to the earth from which he had been taken, and to beg for rest.

I grieve and lament when I contemplate death, and see the beauty fashioned for us in God's image lying in the graves, without form, without glory, without shape. O the wonder! What is this mystery which has happened to us? How have we been handed over to corruption, and yoked with death? Truly it is at God's command, as it is written, God who grants rest to him who has passed over.

Lest any think these are simply words sung in grief, look at what is sung in the Canon of St Andrew during Great Lent. It begins:

Where shall I begin to lament the deeds of my wretched life? What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, for my present lamentation? But in Thy compassion grant me release from my falls.

Come, wretched soul, with your flesh, confess to the Creator of all. In future refrain from your former brutishness, and offer to God tears in repentance.

Having rivaled the first-created Adam by my transgression, I realize that I am stripped naked of God and of the everlasting kingdom and bliss through my sins. (Genesis 3)

Alas, wretched soul! Why are you like the first Eve? For you have wickedly looked and been bitterly wounded, and you have touched the tree and rashly tasted the forbidden food.

The place of bodily Eve has been taken for me by the Eve of my mind in the shape of a passionate thought in the flesh, showing me sweet things, yet ever making me taste and swallow bitter things.

Adam was rightly exiled from Eden for not keeping Thy one commandment, O Savior. But what shall I suffer who am always rejecting Thy living words? (Hebrews 12:25; Genesis 3:23)

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

Superessential Trinity, adored in Unity, take from me the heavy yoke of sin, and in Thy compassion grant me tears of compunction.

Now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Mother of God, hope and intercessor of those who sing of thee, take from me the heavy yoke of sin, and as thou art our pure Lady, accept me who repent.

Again, there is nothing particularly upbeat to be found here. It is this sober appreciation of human sinfulness that undergirds, I would suggest, the Church's ascetical tradition. The expectation of rigorous ascetical life is there not only monastic, but also clergy and lay people (You can read a brief overview of fasting in the Orthodox Church here). While Orthodox theological anthropology tends to be positive, it is not sentimental. Thinking about our vision of the human person, it is not one that is necessarily incompatible with more democratic modes of government. Indeed, at its best, Orthodox polity allows for the election of bishops and the active participation of the laity in the selection of lower clergy. Returning now to Jacobs, it seems that a noble vision of the human person is insufficient. It must be balanced by a practical awareness of human sinfulness. I wonder, and here especially I invite your thoughts, if democracy in the political realm isn't analogous to asceticism in the personal realm and a formal liturgical tradition in the Church's worship. All three seem to serve the realization of my best self by the restraint and re-direction of my worst self. Further, democracy, asceticism and liturgy, cannot be understood, much less rightly practiced, apart from the willingness of the human person to freely decide NOT to act on the passions—in all three I must be willing to be, however briefly, my better self.As always, your thoughts are appreciated and actively sought. In Christ, +Fr Gregory

More on Metropolitan Nicolae

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Thank you everyone for your comments both those on the site here and emailed to me privately regarding Metropolitan Nicolae's reception of Holy Communion at a Romanian Catholic celebration of the Divine Liturgy.

First off, let me please remind everyone whether they post comments or not, while it is one thing to disagree, even strongly, with Metropolitan Nicolae's actions, his status as an Orthodox bishop, much less the state of his soul, is NOT for me to judge. Again, I would not have done what he did—and I think Chrys has given a rather elegant and charitable explanation as to why Metropolitan Nicolae's actions are not acceptable. But until the Holy Synod tells us otherwise, Metropolitan Nicolae is an Orthodox bishop in good standing.

That said, whatever might have been His Eminence's intent or however we might characterize his actions, one thing that has come out of this is a conversation about the relationship between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. What I find distressing, however, is that the conversation (1) seems largely limited to Catholic blogs and (2) is rancorous to say the least. Mind you, the rancor is not between Catholics and Orthodox as much as it is among Catholics. Be that as it may, however, accept for this blog I have come across no conversation about what Fr Paul (the online pseudonym of a Catholic priest serving in Greece) over at the blog De unione ecclesiarum calls the "Timisoara incident."

The central point he makes is this (my emphasis in bold):

It is not my place to say whether it was in the event helpful to the cause of ecumenism for the Metropolitan to choose this course of action. It is even less my place to say whether it was right from an Orthodox point of view to infringe the discipline of his Church in view of what, as I said at the beginning, we must presume he believed to be a greater good. I have said why, as a Catholic, I believe that it was right for his request to receive communion from a Catholic altar to be granted. Some will see his gesture as a prophetical sign destined one day to bear fruit by the very reason of its provocative nature. Others will say it is well-intentioned but in reality premature and counter-productive. Others still will think it scandalous and sacrilegious. It is not given to me to know which judgement is correct. Only let those who cry "scandal" remember that scandal in its theological meaning is not, as in common parlance, the shock which an action causes to our sensibilities and our comfortable presuppositions, but that which causes us to sin. And let them ask themselves whether complacency in the face of a divided Christendom is not a sin, however much it hides behind rhetoric about not sacrificing truth to gain unity. In the end, truth and unity are the same thing; sin against unity damages our ability to see the fullness of truth.

I cannot help wondering if in fact we—Orthodox and Catholic Christians—really wish to be reconciled to one another. And given that the rancor I've seen on at least one popular Catholic blog regarding Metropolitan Nicolae's reception of Holy Communion is every bit a foul and bitter as what I hear when we as Orthodox Christians rip into each other, I can't help wonder if we even want to be reconciled with those in our tradition much less with those with whom we disagree.

Could it be we are estranged from each other because we are estranged among ourselves? And if we are estranged from those with whom we share Eucharist, how can we ever hope to reconcile the wound inflicted on us all by the Great Schism?

And since the it's come up--isn't my estrangement from my neighbor simply the symptom of my own sinfulness and my heart being divided against itself? Where does the line of schism run accept through the human heart?

Again I disagree with Metropolitan Nicolae's actions. At the same time I hope and pray that whatever else might happen as a result it encourages the faithful in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches not only to desire the reconciliation of the two Churches, but for us to actively seek and prepare for reconciliation. You see that's really what strikes me most about the "Timisoara incident." Even granted the inappropriate nature of His Eminence's actions, the character of the responses suggest to me that most of us—Catholic and Orthodox—are at best indifferent, and even actively hostile, to the reconciliation his actions imply.

Well, there you go.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

American Orthodoxy?

 An interesting post from The Ochlophobist in which he reflects on the difficulties of embodying the Orthodox faith in American culture.  He offers five comments that are worth reflecting on:

1. What authentic human culture existed in American locals in prior generations is now dead, even if it remains in caricature form. Thus Orthodoxy is not to "incarnate" into American culture, or to save or baptize American culture. There is no authentic American culture anymore. Orthodoxy in America must seek to create an American culture. There are certain local cultural "ingredients" which might be used, but what needs to be sought is a new cultural creation.

2. This can only be done by coming to terms with the secularism that rules American life and disabuses what would otherwise be authentic American cultural forms. Until we acknowledge the pervasiveness of secularism and its dreadful hold on virtually all aspects of our lives, we are simply playing the games of boutique religion.

3. The fundamental problem - if one seeks for Orthodoxy to become fully fleshed and blooded in America, completely embedded in the existential ethos of this place and people, how does one go about it in a pluralist society in which all things are sought (usually with success) to be commodified and delegated to a percentage of market share? How does one avoid, on the one hand, becoming a particularly placed fleshed and blooded micro-culture that is separationist (the Amish), or, on the other hand, how does one avoid becoming a religious movement which fully collaborates with secular materialist culture (Evangelicalism)? Assuming that we do not want to run to the hills, how do we fully confront and transform an ever morphing ethereal pluralist materialist übercommodified anti-culture?

4. Should we even be seeking the transformation of America at large? America is colossal, too big in any number of ways. Would it not be more modest, and might it not be more appropriate with regard to discernable human culture, to seek rather a Delta Orthodoxy, an Upper-Midwestern Orthodoxy, a New England Orthodoxy, an Appalachian Orthodoxy, a Pacific Northwestern Orthodoxy, a Canadian plains Orthodoxy, and so forth?

5. There must be no agenda. As soon as we have as our agenda to “win America for Christ” Orthodoxy style, we have become one agenda competing in a saturated market of agendas, and we have then condemned ourselves to petty market share. The American Orthodoxy of mission statements and evangelism strategies is simply more of the Evangelicalish-materialist banality. If there is to be a full existentially realized Orthodox culture in America, it must come to be because this is what Orthodoxy is, how she realizes herself in a place. There is a charismatic and fragile human element to this. Such will not be brought about because Orthodoxy has been marketed well. Ironically, those most concerned with religious market success doom Orthodoxy to cultural failure, precisely because they do not understand their own commitments to secularist materialism, and the fact that there can be no Orthodox-secularist culture that is truly a culture. Not to mention the pragmatically obvious – that in a pluralist-materialist setting, Orthodoxy will never rise above the fray of constant competition (a competition which assumes and implicitly teaches a fundamental relativism among competing truth claims) and the trite mechanisms associated with such an environment.

American Orthodoxy?
The Ochlophobist
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:49:00 GMT

My thoughts on the Ochlophobist's comments:

Thinking about my own experience of the Orthodox Church both in the "rust belt" and the West Coast, I think Ochlophobist is on to something in point 4.  The Orthodox Church on the West coast, and for that matter in much of the Pacific Northwest and old West, is relatively wealthy.  Unlike the midwest and middle Atlantic regions, small economically and demographically struggling parishes are relatively (though of course not absolutely) unknown on the West coast (and the Pacific Northwest and Old West).  Ethnic identity is also less intense in the western United States.

Point 5, the necessary of not having an agenda, is also on target, though I would prefer the notion of detachment to the phrase "no agenda."  For better and worse, the large number of ex-Evangelical Christians has set the tone for Orthodox witness here in America.  Again, while there has been some good from this, for exactly the reasons outlined by Ochlophobist,  I would be hard press to say that this infusion of Evangelical Christian sensibilities is a good thing. 

While yes, we must take Evangelical Christianity seriously as the religious language of American society, it often seems that it embodies a religious world view that as commodified as the wider American milieu.  And then there is the toxic convergence of  phyletism and Evangelical sectarianism that especially, though not exclusively, on the West coast takes the form of 19th century Russian peasant chic (i.e., let's all dress as we imagine the dressed and spoke in Holy Russian in the golden age of the 19th Century--think a rather distressing tendency of some converts to dress like Fundamentalist  Later Day Saints.)

Where I might disagree (and his and your comments are welcome on this point) from the Ochlophobist is with his assessment of American culture--or rather the absence of an American culture.  Here I think I would say that yes, on a popular level at least, American society is increasingly less humane--less humanistic in the best sense of the term.  But there is underneath this popular culture, a deeper, more humane, more humanistic culture grounded not simply in the Enlightenment, but also in some of the best of western culture (in is hard for me to read Thomas Jefferson and NOT hear echoes of Aquinas).  We see this deeper culture evident not simply in the classical works of American political philosophy (e.g., the Declaration of Independence and the supporting literature, but also the US Constitution and its apology in the The Federalist Papers,  and before that the writings of de Tocqueville) and contemporary thinkers in that tradition (for example, John Courtney Murray).  And then there is the range of American literature, novelists, short story writers and essays, as well as the arts, musicals and films to which we can appeal to as embodying the best of American culture as such.

All that said, I think Ochlophobist is on to something--we are not as a Church prepared to actually incarnate the faith in an American context.  This is not, I hasten to add, primary a matter of a deficient theological education.  No, it is not that we do not understand the Fathers (though there is much work that needs to be done there for sure), but that we do not understand the foundations of the very society in which we live.

As I have alluded to at other times, putting aside for the moment our interest in Orthodox theology, there is to my view of things, a very disturbing anti-Western, and really anti-intellectual, trend in the Church.  As a quick example, more often than I care to recount, I have sat with Greek immigrants and Greek-Americans who were quite proud of the Greek language, but woefully ignorant of classical Greek philosophy and literature.  More than once, I have found that I was the only one at the table who had read Aristotle or Homer.

What I'm getting at is this, to embody the faith in American means that we need to not only be well grounded in that faith, but also the deep cultural roots of America.  Sadly, and this is significantly weaker a word that I would like to use, for many Orthodox Christians the point of being in the Church (and this includes not only "converts" but also "cradle" Orthodox) is to NOT have to wrestle with the culture. 

In a word, for all our newly found evangelical enthusiasm, we remain sectarian.  We are more interested in  the "low hanging fruit" of unhappy Evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants and disappointed Catholic and Episcopalians then we are in really doing the work required to present ourselves as a credible alternative to secular culture.  To use a phrase I heard recently, we are concerned more with "nickels and noses" than in doing the hard work of transfiguring American culture.

So thanks to the Ochlophobist for his usual insightful and provocative obsevations.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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Reflections on St Isaac the Syrian, Part I

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Recently His Grace, Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of the Moscow Patriarchate delivered a paper at the World Congress on Divine Mercy, that meet at Lateran Basilica, Rome, 4 April 2008. While the paper, "St Isaac the Syrian, a theologian of love and mercy," received a good response in the media, as I mentioned to a Roman Catholic friend who emailed me, the report was less than accurate in its summary of His Grace's argument. Contrary to what the report suggests, neither Bishop Hilarion, much less the Orthodox Church as a whole holds to a universalist view of salvation.

This is not to say, I hasten to add, that we ought not to hope that all will be saved. We should devotedly hope that such is the case.

Nor do I mean it to deny that there is certainly a tendency among Orthodox Christians that lends itself to a universalist view (for example, the writings of St Isaac the Syrian that formed the substance of Bishop Hilarion's remarks). But to say this is our hope and even this our tendency, is very different from saying this we believe.

I thought that I would reflect on some of what I see as the more interesting points of Bishop Hilarion's talk. These reflections, like my blog as a whole, reflect my own admittedly eccentric interests and ought not to be taken as the dogma of the Church.

So, let us begin.

His Grace begins his talk by saying that he is presenting "the teaching of St Isaac the Syrian, one of the greatest theologians of the Orthodox tradition, on love and mercy." After a brief biographical sketch of this 7^th century hermit, Bishop Hilarion (hereafter BH), summarizes the major points of St Isaac's teaching on love and mercy. Specifically BH address the St Isaac's teaching on the created and eschatological manifestation of love and mercy. Both of these are ground is Isaac's understanding of God.

Regarding the first, he writes that "first of all immeasurable and boundless love. The idea of God as love is central and dominant in Isaac's thought: it is the main source of his theological opinions, ascetical recommendations and mystical insights. His theological system cannot be comprehended apart from this fundamental idea." BH continues with an explication on creation as a manifestation of God's "immeasurable and boundless love."

On the one hand, "Divine love is beyond human understanding and above all description in words." Nevertheless, and at "the same time it is reflected in God's actions with respect to the created world and humankind: 'Among all His actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of His dealings with us' (II/39,22). (Here and below the figure 'II' refers to Part II of Isaac's writings: Isaac of Nineveh, 'The Second Part', chapters IV-XLI, translated by Sebastian Brock, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 555, Scriptores syri 225, Louvain, 1995). Both the creation of the world and God's coming on earth in flesh had the only aim, 'to reveal His boundless love to the world' (Chapters on Knowledge IV,79)."

For St Isaac, and the main thrust of the Christian tradition East and West with him, creation (and this includes the human person, body, soul and spirit; you, me and everybody) is not morally neutral. Nor is it "good" in a narrow moral or ontological sense. No for Isaac creation is fundamentally sacramental, it makes manifest and tangible divine love. BH quotes St Isaac to the effect that it is in and through the creation of the world that "divine love revealed itself in all its fullness." And so, in the words of St Isaac:

What that invisible Being is like, who is without any beginning in His nature, unique in Himself, who is by nature beyond the knowledge, intellect and feel of created beings, who is beyond time and space, being the Creator of these, who… made a beginning of time, bringing the worlds and created beings into existence. Let us consider then, how rich in its wealth is the ocean of His creative act, and how many created things belong to God, and how in His compassion He carries everything, acting providentially as He guides creation, and how with a love that cannot be measured He arrived at the establishment of the world and the beginning of creation; and how compassionate God is, and how patient; and how He loves creation, and how He carries it, gently enduring its importunity, the various sins and wickednesses, the terrible blasphemies of demons and evil men (II/10,18-19).

To be continued…

In Christ our True God, the Physician of our souls and body, the One heals our every disease and Who forgives us our every sin,

+Fr Gregory