Antioch Abouna

The Search for Unity with the Holy Trinity

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 15:12:00 +0000

This Month's Book Review

The revised and expanded edition of Andrew Stephen Damick’s Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape (Ancient Faith Publishing) offers a comprehensive summary of both Orthodox doctrine and the many heresies that deviate from Orthodoxy. The Very Reverend Father Andrew is pastor of St Paul’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania USA.

He begins his study with the words of 1 Corinthians 1:10:

Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement.

Then, he sets out both the truth of Orthodoxy and how and why deviations from that truth have come to pass over the centuries.

In a helpful forward, The Most Reverend Dr. Father Michael G. Dahulich, Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA) Diocese of New York and New Jersey, notes that:

We live in a society that is influenced by a myriad of different Christian denominations and non-Christian faith traditions. Such an array of religions often leaves us confused and perplexed. Unlike the majority of [the 250 million] Orthodox Christians around the globe, who live in traditionally Orthodox countries, we [who are] living in the Western lands are faced with an experience that compares to none, except perhaps the experience of the early Christians. Those first followers of “the Way” found themselves in a Greco-Roman world full of numerous sects and religions. And like us, many Romans explored religions and practices that were not traditional—not held by their forebears. And just as in our world today, religious syncretism [that is, the merging or attempted reconciling of the beliefs and practices of different religions or philosophies] was common.[1]

Archbishop Dahulich shares the conviction of Father Andrew that: “As Orthodox Christians, we need to familiarise ourselves with the beliefs and practices of others so that we can better share our own [Orthodox] Faith.”[2]

As Father Andrew stated in the Preface to the First Edition:

The foundational affirmation behind this work is that the Orthodox Christian faith is uniquely true, that it alone is the fullness of the revelation of God to man, and that the Orthodox Church is the same Church community founded by Jesus Christ through His apostles.[3]

While retaining this focus on the truth of Orthodoxy, in the Preface to the Second Edition Father Andrew signals a change to a

now-larger purpose for this work—instead of focusing solely on helping Orthodox Christians to understand and address other theologies, I am now explicitly intending this work also to be used by the non-Orthodox to help them learn about the Orthodox Church.[4]

Because of this additional purpose, the Revised Edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy offers an excellent course both for both catechumens to Orthodoxy and those who are already Orthodox but now seek a deeper and complete experience of the Christian faith and the Church of Christ. However, it should be noted that the purpose of the First Edition is now even better fulfilled in the Revised Edition: “For those who want a ‘handbook’ to what separates other major faiths from Orthodox Christianity, this (I hope) is the book for you.”[5]

The opening pages set out why it is essential to understand that “doctrine matters.”[6]In the Western world today, there is a great danger of relativism, that is, the philosophy that what may be true in one situation may not be so in another. The danger is that “we judge religious expectations by what we want, by whether a religion fits into our lifestyle[7]…. This fundamental problem is compounded by the prevailing lack of familiarity with the traditional tools of spiritual knowledge.”[8]Father Andrew offers both an incisive analysis and a prescription for change:

From the Christian point of view, the tool that is lacking for spiritual knowledge is purity of heart, as Jesus said: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ (Matthew 5.8). Purity of heart begins with humility. What is also lacking is proper guidance on how to attain that purity from those who have seen God and [seek to pass] on this experience to the next generation.[9]

This analysis of the importance of purity of heart that begins with humility leads Father Andrew to a bold and rather unexpected conclusion: “I would like to suggest that the great spiritual battle of our time is not a struggle between believers and atheists. Rather it is a struggle between pride and humility.”[10]On the one hand, this conflict between pride and humility is fought on a universal scale, because “for the Orthodox Christian, Jesus Christ is the Truth [with a capital ‘T’] (John 14.6), and because the Truth is a Person, truth cannot be relativized.”[11]Yet it should also be noted that the conflict between pride and humility is also fought within each of us, as we decide how to relate to others and seek to find God’s purpose for each of our lives. Thus, precisely because

Truth is not relative, we should be willing to set aside whatever we would prefer to be true and embrace only what really is true, changing ourselves, our attitudes, and our beliefs whenever necessary. If we come upon some truth we disagree with, yet we can see that it must be true, we should say not ‘I don’t believe it’ but rather ‘I don’t believe it yet.’[12]

Both the conflict between pride and humility, as well as the confrontation of Truth with relativity, have profound implications for our personal behaviour as Orthodox Christians:

Today, to come to the conclusion that some doctrines are true and others are false, and especially to speak publicly about it, is often regarded as not being ‘loving,’ a word usually used to mean ‘nice’ …. Yet we as a culture are ignoring a basic yet obvious truth: If there really is a God, then who He is and what He might want from us are more important than anything else in the universe.… As believers, we are not in the ‘niceness’ business. We are in the Truth business.[13]

Therefore, it is important to understand “that the differences between Orthodoxy and other faiths are real and that they are important.”[14]

In considering “the nature of Truth,” Father Andrew sets out “the larger picture [of] our purpose in life”:

That picture, ultimately, is of communion with the Holy Trinity. An Orthodox Christian’s whole life has one goal: union with the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one God who created all things. The path to that union is Jesus Christ, the God-man, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. Salvation is the attainment of eternal life.[15]

As set out in the Gospel of John (17.3,22-23):

In the Orthodox Christian faith, being saved—having eternal life—means knowing God in Jesus Christ. It also means receiving from Jesus the glory which, as the Son of God, He has from His Father. And finally, it means doing so in oneness with other believers….[16]

It is precisely because we can “know God as He has actually revealed Himself … [that] doctrine matters.”[17]

Building on this careful statement about why doctrine matters, Father Andrew then sets out how the Orthodox Church views the Non-Orthodox, the essentials of Orthodox Christian doctrine and the major historical heresies.[18]Chapters follow on Roman Catholicism, the various waves of the Reformation, evangelicalism and revivalism, Pentecostalism, non-mainstream Christians and Non-Christian religions.

An important and at times profound epilogue considers relations with the Non-Orthodox. The tone of this epilogue is captured by the opening quotation from St. Mark of Ephesus, who is sometimes known as “the conscience of Orthodoxy,” because of his brave and solitary defense of Orthodox doctrine at the Council of Florence in 1439:

We need investigations and conversation in matters of theological disputation so that compelling and conspicuous arguments may be considered. Profound benefit is gained from such conversation, if the objective is not altercation but truth, and if the motive is not solely to triumph over others. Inspired by grace and bound by love, our goal is to discover the truth, and we should never lose sight of this, even when the pursuit is prolonged. Let us listen amicably so that our loving exchange might contribute to consensus.[19]

Father Andrew reflects that: “Conversion is always an act of human will and also always a miracle. The truth of the Gospel is made apparent through divine intervention.”[20]The appendices include a statement on how and why Father Andrew became an Orthodox Christian.[21]May this book review encourage you to delve further into this beautiful book. Father Emmanuel Kahn

[1] Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, p. 13

[2] p. 13.

[3] p. 24.

[4] p. 22.

[5] p. 24.

[6] pp. 27-38.

[7] All underlining in this book review is in italics in the original text.

[8] p. 27.

[9] p. 28. See also “The Fire Is Upon Us” on this website, reviewing Presbytera Constantina R. Palmer’s The Sweetness of Grace: Stories of Christian Trial and Victory(Ancient Faith Publishing).

[10] p. 28.

[11] p. 28.

[12] p. 29.

[13] pp. 29-30.

[14] p. 31.

[15] p. 33.

[16] p. 33.

[17] p. 35.

[18] pp. 39-51.

[19] p. 358 with citation of Patrologia Orientalis XV [Brepols, 1990], 108-109. See also the entry on St. Mark at: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Mark_of_Ephesus [accessed 4 April 2019].

[20] p. 361.

[21] pp. 373-384.

The Liberation of the Will for Love and the Service of God

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:21:00 +0000

St Paul is disarmingly frank when he speaks of his own spiritual struggles in relation to his own conflicted will. In Romans 7 he laments his condition in these words:

"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:14-25a)

Further clarity in these matters may be attained by consulting St Maximos the Confessor. In his teaching the human will has its own true nature, its logos, which has kinship with the Divine Logos by virtue of our creation in the image and likeness of God. Additionally, humans have a tropos of their will, a mode of appropriation of the logos specific to each person. As a result of the disobedience of our First Parents, our perception of our true nature has been corrupted, but this is not a corruption of human nature itself, but rather of its faculties leading to a conflicted or gnomic will. Bishop Irenei Steenberg has commented on this as follows:

The elaboration of this notion of tropos led Maximos to a term with which he is now often associated: gnomi, or inclination. Each personal hypostasis, in freely choosing from the apparent goods before it as an expression of its own tropos, suffers from certain inclinations as to which choice it might make. Ideally, the personal tropos would always freely choose that which was in actuality the proper good, that which is in alignment with the logos and thus with the will of God. But the result of the Fall has been an effective corruption of the perception of this good: humanity is not always able to truly see its own logos, and thus the true good which it ought to choose. The result is the gnomi, or the personal approximation to the good that an individual makes via his or her inclinations. (Bishop Irenei Steenberg)

In Christ there is no gnomic conflicted will. His human will was entirely at the disposal of his divine will, a reciprocity unimpaired on account of his sinlessness. His struggles to do the Father's will in the desert temptations and Gethsemane were genuine struggles but not arising from a compromised will but rather showing the human cost of a direct engagement with the devil, manifest in the natural and human needs of hunger and the feelings of loss and even abandonment in his Passion and Death.

"The importance of this concept in the Christological understanding of [Maximos] the Confessor cannot be overstated. Christ, as fully human, did fully possess the natural human will. Yet the uniqueness of His personal hypostasis-that of the incarnate Word by which He was also fully divine-allowed Him to overcome the human disposition (gnomi) toward sin. The 'deprivation of knowledge of the good,' inherent in the fallen human condition, was overcome in the person of Christ. In other words, Christ possessed the full logos of human will, but not the gnomi that is the result of the misused and misguided tropos." (Bishop Irenei Steenberg)

How then can our wills be set free to serve God and for salvation? Here again we echo in our own lives and experience the cry of St Paul:

"O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25)

The precise means by which we may be delivered is an urgent daily question for all of us. We need a perfect example of this liberation process so that we might learn from it. We also need practical instruction on how we can ready our wills to be capable of that harmonisation with God's will-that great synergy of wills, human and divine that brings salvation to us and to many in the mission of the Church. Our search for this purification both begins and ends with the Theotokos herself.

St Irenaeus of Lyon explains how the Virgin's obedience has undone the effects of Eve's disobedience:

That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was unhappily misled — was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man. For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man receives amendment by the correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death. (Against the Heresies 19:1)

This virginal obedience of the Theotokos enables our salvation at the Annunciation, but here there arises a great dividing issue between the now heterodox Christian West and the Orthodox Catholic Church. Simply stated this question is: HOW did the Virgin become full of grace? …. Only by answering that question can we learn how we also might become full of grace, learning how to consecrate our wills wholly to God as she did.

In other words, how did the Virgin deal with her conflicted, gnomic will to become pure and immaculate, totally obedient to God and upon her death to be the first to attain theosis in her crowning as the Queen of Heaven?

The answer of the heterodox Christian West focuses on their handling of original sin and its impact on human will. Those following St Augustine's teaching in his controversy with the heretic Pelagius could not accept the possibility that anything other than grace miraculously supplanting human faculties could ready the Theotokos for her role in our salvation and, additionally, the appropriation of her own salvation.

After the Franciscans Duns Scotus and William of Ware first brought this issue into sharper focus in the west, and notwithstanding strong initial opposition of the Dominicans, the late western Latin tradition embarked on a centuries long progression towards the formal promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in 1854 by Pope Pius IX in this definition:

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."

Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854.

According therefore to the late Christian West, the Theotokos could not have freely assented to the will of God at the Annunciation without having been conceived free from original sin and subsequently BORN a spotless, immaculate, pure and sinless woman, entirely without a gnomically compromised will.

In this understanding, the Virgin can offer humanity nothing by way of example, consolation and hope in the exercise of our will since her humanity is from the beginning fundamentally different to that of our own. Her preparation and ascetic struggles in the Temple at Jerusalem turn out to be entirely unnecessary and have no impact on her purification which is already intact.

Roman Catholics sometimes defend their dogma by claiming that St Gregory the Theologian taught that the Virgin was prokathartheisa (pre-purified) before the Annunciation. However, at no point does St Gregory identify precisely when this happened, so it is an unacceptable jump of logic to insist that this only happened at her Conception when quite clearly it is St Augustine's understanding of original or ancestral sin which is driving these deformations of Christian anthropology.

For most Protestants of course, Mary can never be pure and immaculate. Her obedience is simply that of a sinner (and always a sinner), enabled only by divine and prevenient grace without, necessarily, any inward transformation. This, we Orthodox reject as well, since purification is indeed required of those seeking to do God's will wholeheartedly and with increasing degrees of freedom and joy. Here then is the very trajectory of salvation and theosis.

Our wills then are not insignificant or necessarily contrarily disposed to God's will. The gnomic impairment of our wills is not the final word in the scheme of salvation. We can change. We can be set free. The tragic and despairing attitude of the late and heterodox Christian West to the role of our sanctified wills leaves humanity without anything more than necessary miraculous deliverance from the corrupted ego (applicable only to Mary in her exceptional humanity) or a joyless submission to the will of God, in which we cannot take any true and free delight, bogged down as we always will be by the internal conflicts of a fallen nature. Where is the victory and deliverance of which St Paul speaks in any of this? I cannot find it.

Finally, we need briefly to consider how we ourselves might be purified to do God's will with a free and joyful heart, following in the grace-full steps of our Lady. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8)

Everything that God has provided for us in his divine solicitude and love is orientated towards making this necessary purification possible. Fasting, noetic prayer, alms giving, loving our enemies and pursuing justice are for us a daily crucifixion leading to resurrection joy and hope, not only for us but also and selflessly for the whole world. By following in this path in the Church, as Our Lady did in the Temple in her youth and subsequently in the service of her Son, we also can, potentially at least, achieve that purification that will lead to our crowning in heaven with her and, thereby, the redemption of the Cosmos itself. In the chapter of Romans that follows his autobiographical lament, St Paul moves on to the glorious hope of what a perfected humanity can achieve, which is no less than a new creation, a new birth for all, beyond the sufferings and struggles of those who through the synergy of their wills and God's will are called to bring this about. This must always be the vision and hope of the Church as she seeks to bring the whole created order freely and joyfully into the Kingdom of God.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." (Romans 8:18-25)

Let us persevere together then toward the glory that God wishes to reveal to each one of us.

Fr Gregory Hallam

9th March 2019

Cheesefare Saturday

Book Review: "The Sweetness of Grace"

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:11:00 +0000

BOOK REVIEW

St. John the Baptist told us that Jesus Christ would “baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3.11). St. Luke confirmed that reality (Luke 3.16) and told of “tongues as of fire . . . resting on each one” who had gathered in the house in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2.3).

Of course, throughout the Old Testament. fire had long been a sign of the divine presence, especially with Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3.2), “the pillar of fire by night” that guided the Israelites in the desert (Exodus 13.21) and the “consuming fire on the mountain top” when Moses received the Ten Commandments from God (Exodus 24.17). But what precisely does this fire have to do with us today as Orthodox Christians?

A recent book from Ancient Faith Publishing by Presbytera Constantina R. Palmer, The Sweetness of Grace: Stories of Christian Trial and Victory, reflects on how we might each experience this fire, not only in baptism, but throughout our lives. The author is the wife of Father John Palmer, serving at St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada. Her frontispiece starts us on our journey of faith and fire:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can I say my Little Office. I fast a little. I pray. I meditate. I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Then Abba Joseph stood up, stretched his hands towards heaven and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, ‘If you wish, you can become all flame.[1]

Presbytera Constantina dedicates her book “to all the struggling and holy monastics, priests, and lay people who, like Abba Joseph, showed me by means of their own bright and brilliant example, that if only I wish, I too can become all flame.” That possibility is open to any of us Orthodox Christians who wish to “become all flame.”

The author’s approach to faith and fire and living our lives in complete unity with Christ and His Church is set out in eight stories, each linked to one of the Beatitudes. She structures the book on the words of St. John Chrysostom that “in the Beatitudes Christ not only gives us a perfect guide to the Christian way of life, but He forges a gold chain, demonstrating that each virtue, each beatitude, has a foundation in the one preceding it:”

Thus, first, he that is humble, will surely also mourn for his own sins: he that so mourns, will be both meek, and righteous, and merciful; he that is merciful, and righteous, and contrite will of course be also pure in heart: and such a one will be a peacemaker too: and he that has attained unto all these, will be moreover arrayed against dangers, and will not be troubled when evil is spoken of him, and he is enduring grievous trials innumerable.[2]

Reflecting on the beatitudes, Presbytera Constantina adopts a consistent approach in all of her eight stories: “It is through clinging to Christ in all we do that we sow genuine seeds, in our relationships and in the world around us. Sowing is all we can do, all that is asked of us. God reaps.”[3]

Despite having a Masters Degree in Theology and being married to a Greek Orthodox priest, Presbytera Constantina sees herself not as a theologian, but as a storyteller. She calls her book The Sweetness of Grace

. . . because I feel this title captures the one element of Orthodoxy that does not change, whether one lives in Asia, Europe, or on a Canadian island. Whether one is a priest, monastic, or layperson, the sweetness of grace is offered to us all: through the trials, through the victories, we struggle to acquire and hold onto it, and when we taste it, we want to share that sweetness with others. By sharing these stories I hope to share the sweetness I was blessed to taste.[4]

My own experience is that she succeeds in her quest. However, she confronts every reader with a considerable personal challenge:

These stories are meant to remind us that the rewards for fighting ‘the good fight’ (1 Tim. 6.12) are very great. We are given the means to become saints; the sweetness of grace is offered to each one of us. But I also hope these stories highlight that the onus is on us. The medicine is there for the taking; the question is, will we swallow it? Will we do what is necessary to become receptive to His grace? Will we become poor in spirit, meek, pure of heart, peacemakers? Will we not only read the Gospel but live it and allow the light of Christ to shine through us?[5]

In other words, we each have a choice: face the challenges of life that come our way in the different seasons of life with the Lord, our families, our work and our friends (or even enemies) or avoid and deny any problems that arise.

The limited space available for this book review allows for only one example: “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.” Presbytera Constantina stresses that we must each “watch and pray lest we encounter temptations and unwittingly welcome them into our heart.”[6]Her stories about this sixth beatitude focus on her time at the monastery in Athens founded by St. Porphyrios, but she links her experience there to earlier insights she and her husband had gained in their travels, reading and prayer. A few minutes after entering the monastery, she was introduced to Sister Gerontissa who looked at her, and with the gift of clairvoyance and prophecy informed Presbytera Constantina: “Don’t worry, everything will work out, and you [have chosen] a good [husband], too.” And Sister Gerontissa was right with both insights.[7]

Presbytera Constantina was not overwhelmed by being with someone with the gift of clairvoyance and prophecy. Rather, she cites the advice of Elder Epiphanios of Athens, who was asked “Elder, have you ever seen a vision?” The elder replied: “No, my child, neither have I seen a vision, nor do I ever want to see one. All that I want to see are my own sins.”[8]Presbytera Constantina reflects: “The pure of heart see God; those of us with impure hearts should seek only to see our sins, since it is this sure path that will lead us to gift of true clairvoyance.”[9]This “ability to see spiritual realities [is] something truly only the pure of heart have the ability to do.”[10]A good example of Presbytera Constantina’s insight would be the ability of Jesus Christ to see Nathaniel approaching Him, and say, “Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom [there is] is no guile” (John 1.47).

The goal is clear, but the personal path for each of us toward the goal of being fully united with Christ is unique. Presbytera Constantina reflects that:

We were all created in the image of God, but since the Fall, it is only through the grace of God—combined with man’s ascetic struggle—that we can become ‘in His likeness,’ as we were meant to be, and as the first-created man was fashioned. Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos wrote, ‘When, through personal struggle and mainly by the grace of God, he attains the likeness [of God], then he is an actual person.’[11]Namely, when a person has become transformed by grace, then he becomes a true person in both the image and the likeness of God.[12]

As always, God’s grace and our own efforts work together. Both are necessary to become pure of heart.

Not only in considering this sixth beatitude, but throughout the book Presbytera Constantina remembers the words of a professor of theology who explained that “a person will [seldom] make a mistake in theology if they do not first make a mistake in their moral life.” She reminds us that: “It is not enough for us to hold intellectually to the true Faith; we must live well morally in order to safeguard our faith. We must avoid being led astray in our personal lives so we won’t be led astray in our spiritual lives.”[13]

It is Sister Gerontissa who informs Presbytera Constantina of an important sin: she was judging others too much and had become “a judgmental person.”[14]This was an important insight which Presbytera Constantina came to accept, but only after experiencing a deeply wounded ego which stung for three days. It was another nun, Sister Sarah, who helped her to see that “sometimes it’s difficult when God reveals who we are . . . [so] that’s why God slowly lets us see who we really are.”[15]Presbytera Constantina concludes her reflections on the sixth beatitude with the goal that “I hope and pray that through Gerontissa’s prayers I may begin the process of rooting out the passions in me that cause so much harm to myself, not to mention the harm they cause others.”[16]So may it be for all of us, whatever the different sins and passions that need to be rooted out of each of us. Amen. Father Emmanuel Kahn

[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), p. 103.

[2] Homily on Matthew 15, on the web at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200115.htm ; and The Sweetness of Grace, pp. 10-11.

[3] The Sweetness of Grace, pp. 7.

[4] p. 11.

[5] pp.11- 12. The underlining is not in the original text.

[6] p. 177.

[7] p. 180.

[8] p. 198.

[9] p. 198.

[10] p. 204.

[11] Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science of the Fathers, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1994), p. 162. Cited in The Sweetness of Grace, p. 193.

[12] p. 193. Here, as in many other places, her stories include numerous miracles which limited space does not permit to be included in this book review.

[13] pp. 183-184.

[14] p. 204.

[15] p. 205.

[16] p. 207.

Into the Now

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 16:09:00 +0000

2019 is nearly upon us and inevitably we become more conscious of the passage of time and with this, questions about time, being human and living a full life in our relationships with God and each other become more prominent.

Three key questions arise: -

1. What is time and how is it measured?

2. Are there "special times"?

3. Is God "in time" or "outside time" or both?

Let us start with St Augustine and his relative ignorance - and ours!

“And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is. And again I confess to thee, O Lord, that I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have already spoken of time a long time, and that "very long" is not long except when measured by the duration of time. How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is? Or, is it possible that I do not know how I can express what I do know? Alas for me! I do not even know the extent of my own ignorance. Behold, O my God, in thy presence I do not lie. As my heart is, so I speak. Thou shalt light my candle; thou, O Lord my God, wilt enlighten my darkness.” (Confessions Book 11; Chapter 25; Verse 32)

So, let us see how God has enlightened our ignorance with reference to the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the Liturgy of the Church. Let us consider our three questions in order.

What is time and how is it measured?

That’s the big one! Is it time simply as we experience it, so-called subjective time? In part yes, but there’s a bit more involved here! So we can start with two simple truths.

· Time is experienced as a sequence of events both passively and actively.

· The passage of time is heavily influenced by our mental state. So, time passes more quickly when we are enjoying ourselves or as we get older and we get more used to the seasonal cycles of time. Time travels more slowly when we are bored or anxious about some event in the future, waiting for the results of a test or an exam for example.

So, how does God help us deal with subjective time? When time passes quickly we need to slow the pace by being mindful of how we are, who we are and how the world is IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. We only ever live in the ‘now’, but if we spend our ‘now’ moments straining forward towards an unknown future or backwards into the cage of the past then we shall not live fully with the Lord who comes to us in the NOW. We shall miss Him if we fail to do that and we shall also miss both ourselves and each other. We shall not be fully present in life and, therefore, not able to enjoy it.

To quote St Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:2:

"For He [God] says: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

NOW is indeed the day of salvation. The feasts of the Church and the Liturgy proclaims this with gusto. We do not shout ‘Christ was born’ but rather ‘Christ IS born’; we do not raise the rafters with ‘Christ has risen’ but with ‘Christ IS risen.’ This is also reflected in the hymns of the feasts.

Liturgical time and prayer time is always in the ‘now’ moment of God … presently realised in our lives today. This even applies to future events. Christ, we know will come again, but in the Liturgy we not only yearn for that and anticipate that, we also give thanks for that as a transformative experience in our lives; in other words being in a continual state of readiness for the “Bridegroom that comes in the middle of the night.” (Troparion of Bridegroom Matins in Holy Week). He comes of course to serve the Messianic Banquet of the Kingdom and in the Eucharist he continually comes with the Kingdom. In that sense even our daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer is His provision for our needs from the future and into the present moment. Meet God therefore and be saved in all the NOW’s of your life.

Following on from this: are there special times?

Of course, on the human side of this question, of course, there are … falling in love, the birth of a child, a family celebration, an outstanding achievement in your life or in the timeline of humanity. However, I am not really thinking about these times but rather a special aspect of time when God is involved in our lives.

The key aspect of Christ’s work here on earth up to and including his death, resurrection and ascension was the kingdom of God breaking into the present from the future. This is the special time of which the Scriptures and the Fathers bear witness, not simply linear measured time, chronological time, from the Greek word “chronos” – but time as the stage for a transforming encounter with the God who breaks into our spacetime making all things new. St Paul talks of this when he refers to the Incarnation:

“ … when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.” (Galatians 4:4).

This “fullness of time” is kairos not chronos, God’s time, not our reckoning of time.

The first words of Christ Himself as recorded in the gospel of St Mark after His baptism makes all this clear:

“Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.'”(Mark 1:14-15)

Let us be clear then that the measurement of time for each one of us is not simply a matter of a clock, it is a question of quality of our lives in time, how we spend time, the decisions we make for time in the present, the redemption of times past and our trust of God into the future. The most accurate of atomic clocks cannot deal with these issues of time! These special times of God, renewing the spacetime of the Cosmos and our own lives when open to the Holy Spirit in the present moment are the most special times of all.

Finally let us finally consider our third question:

Is God "in time" or "outside time" or both?

The answer of course is both. God in Himself is beyond time (as St Augustine knew, He created time along with space and everything in it) but also and for our sakes in the Incarnation he entered into time to redeem the world, past, present and future. We do not pray, therefore, as orphans bereft of God. In the Spirit we cry: “Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6). The kingdom of God, God Himself that is, is always happens, closer than breathing, within us and between us, “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27b).

As the civil calendar then marks the advent of the New Year in a few days and as the Church calendar marks the advent of the New Liturgical Year on 1^stSeptember, let us remember as children of the resurrection that we have a much richer experience of life in time with God than those whose affairs are governed by the tyranny of the clock. We, even in this world, move in eternity, in the Kingdom of God, in a richness of loving grace unsurpassed by anything human yet remaking our humanity radiant and complete.

Orthodoxy - God and Mammon - a Present Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 18:00:00 +0000

The Orthodox Church has a big problem with money ... and there are few signs that any lessons are being learned, errors corrected and abuses rooted out.

There are the big scandals many of us know about: the OCA from 2005 to 2008, (https://oca.org/reflections/fr.-steven-kostoff/a-sign-of-ecclesial-maturity)
and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in 2017,
(http://www.pappaspost.com/financial-crisis-grips-greek-orthodox-archdiocese-america-millions-st-nicholas-fund-used-fund-deficits/).

Usually these concern accountability and transparency issues in relation to alleged malpractice by senior church officials, but it would be a grave mistake to think that the problems about money in Orthodoxy are confined to "high places." The seeds of this corruption, abuse and just plain financial mismanagement are sown in many parishes, day by day, week by week and year by year. Here is a just a short list of outrageous and unsafe practices that many Orthodox have come to think of as normal. I will then go on to identify causative factors and necessary solutions.

1) Paying the clergy for "services rendered."

Because many clergy (especially outside Orthodox countries) are not paid a living wage, they often have to resort, either to back breaking secular work which leaves them with precious little time for ministry and eventual burn out, or they have to augment meagre incomes with fees or charges (not donations) for "services rendered." So, in some places (including I am reliably told, in Orthodox countries) a priest will not bless your house, offer memorial prayers at a grave or administer Holy Communion to a sick relative unless you pay them, and sometimes upfront, a fee!

There is a fine line, but an important one, to be drawn here. If a parishioner donates, even to a priest personally, a sum of money for prayers, services or other such spiritual benefits; that is perfectly acceptable. What is NOT acceptable, and which comes under the heading of canonically condemned simony, is for the priest to solicit payments or make such payments a condition of, or even an expectation of, delivering such spiritual benefits. If anyone gives me money, for example, for blessing their house, I always put the donation in the church bank account and tell the donor that this is what I shall be doing. I am able to do this because the parish pays me a living wage - which is what all clergy and people should be striving to achieve.

2) Charging for sacraments, especially but not limited to baptism.

This is the most outrageous example of simony present in the Orthodox Church today. It is often justified as a reimbursement to the Church for the administration of baptismal rolls or the provision of such things as oil and candles for the service. Really?!!! Does it really cost £150 (170 euro, $200), the going rate in one archdiocese in the UK, to send a copy of a baptism certificate to the Metropolis or to top up the olive oil (50 ml at the most) for a baptism? Pull the other one! This is just a money-making scam, a betrayal of the gospel and an exploitation of the poor.

3) Charging for membership of the Church.

If charging for baptisms wasn't bad enough, to go on and charge for church membership, once baptised, is just as bad, if not worse. The ONLY criterion for Church membership should be baptism. Annual subscriptions? You must be joking; just another money-making scam! Do not try and justify this either as a means of deterring people who don't come to church from voting at annual meetings. Such votes can still be "bought" of course by paying the appropriate fee. This is simply an undermining of the significance of baptism AND an escape from personal financial responsibility for the Church's work. Because such payments do not arise out of faith and thanksgiving but rather (again) from a consumerist mentality; because such payments do not distinguish between rich and poor; as far as I am concerned, they are anathema!

4) Funding the Church by getting other people to pay for it.

Now, I recognise that fundraising (which involves soliciting donations from sympathetic but non-members of the Church) is often necessary, especially for expensive capital projects. However, when a parish derives most of its ORDINARY income from such fundraising; then huge problems arise for the parish. I know of one Christian community, for example, where 77% of their annual income comes from one annual fundraising event! Even from a commercial rather than a spiritual point of view this is sheer lunacy. If that fundraising source dries up, then you have nothing else left to fall back on. However, while this over-reliance on fundraising does exists, it depresses the willingness of the Church people themselves to give personally from their own income in faith and thanksgiving to God, which is the only secure and future proof means of funding the Church's ministry and mission. This is often observed to be a problem in wealthier parishes, let the reader understand!

So, if these are some of the more outrageous examples of simony in the Orthodox Church today, can we identify the causative factors and suggest possible solutions? Yes we can. The point is though: is anyone willing to do anything about this mess rather than just mouth platitudes? On that, I am not so sure, but we must hope, work and pray.

The most significant causative factor concerns the secularisation of money in the Church.

We do well to remember that the Holy Apostle St Paul teaches that it is "the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10), not money itself. No less than 16 of the 38 parables of Christ are concerned with how to handle money and possessions! In the Gospels about 1 in 10 verses (288) deal directly with the subject of money; and guess what? - not one verse deals with fundraising!

Bearing this in mind, why do some clergy say, often quite openly: "this is nothing to do with me … that's the people's responsibility." On the contrary dear Father. It is your responsibility just as much as it is theirs, but in a different way. Do not (please!) collude with the secularisation of money and the attendant materialism in our churches! Money has everything to do with the gospel, and to refuse to teach about it biblically and patristically is a gross dereliction of priestly calling. Do not use the money grubbing of some priests, and the materialistic concerns of some parishioners, as justifications for walling off the subject of money as somehow "unclean." By doing this you keep it unclean; you (unintentionally of course) entrench Mammon in the mentality of the Church.

If you want to be bold in your teaching about sexuality, be as equally bold in your teaching about Christian giving and obeying the Lord in all things. As to God ... "All things come from You and of your own we have given You." (1 Chronicles 29:14). Yes, you may be scared that you have to confront some quite powerful people in the Church but take courage and apply the Gospel. It is, after all, for the salvation of their souls! If they walk out; they walk out ... but you will sleep more soundly and keep your conscience before God.

A close second causative factor is a reluctance to move beyond pious platitudes and generalised aspirations in the teaching about Christian giving.

A refusal to be intensely practical about implementing spiritual principles will always lead to failure. Eventually, in varying degrees of despair, preachers will resort to hectoring people about "giving more" and trying to use both guilt and shame as motivators to "dig a little deeper." Such utterly horrendous tactics harden people's hearts because they sense and know that you are not being honest about what the gospel requires, practically speaking that is. You, preacher, cannot get them to give more ... ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN! BUT, you have to be intensely practical about this also. Listen to St Paul: "On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper ..." (1 Corinthians 16:2). That's being practical! EVERY week, not now and again when you feel like it. If you cannot get to church one week, you still put your offering aside. It is a promise made to God (spiritual) not "helping out St Agatha's" (secular).

Being practical does not stop there if you - as a priest with a responsibility not only for teaching Christian giving but also for setting up community behaviours - are to reinforce and implement that teaching. So, how are you going to be practical about implementing Christian giving in the whole community of your parish? Writing noble articles in your parish magazine is not enough. Preaching about money when it comes up (as so often it does) in the lectionary is not enough. It's what you will do together in the community that will count. If you look to the Scriptures (as you must) then it becomes quite clear that covenant renewal is a communal not an individualistic event in Israel (Joshua 24:1-28). The people gather and reaffirm their faith and commitment to the Lord and His work in thanksgiving for His mighty acts and in obedience to His Word. Just like fasting, which is a community response, so is giving. It is not just a question of generous spiritual individuals doing the right thing, (although that it always necessary): it is a behaviour (Christian giving) that the whole community must renew, and at least annually.

Faithful Stewards

So, Christian giving is operating fairly smoothly in the parish with the people "getting it" more and more as the years go by. Is that it? Is everything OK now? No, not quite. With gifts from God there comes great responsibility. There is accountability to Him always for what we receive. The Church leadership (priest and Council) need to respond to needs outside the parish by communicating such needs to the parish and seeing what the consensus is for action. Church accounts, published in accordance with law, must show with great transparency how money is being spent and to what effect. The people themselves must play their proper roles in the parish's Christian stewardship outwards to the world in mission.

Practical Challenges

Let us now examine these first steps towards a practical implementation of Christian giving in the parish.

This, O preacher and priest, is what you and responsible spiritual lay leaders must make as practical provision for in your parish ... communal and annual covenanted renewal in relation to personal Christian giving. There are many schemes around, at once both intensely spiritual and practical, which can help you achieve this if you do not have a head for such things. That is why we need each other in the Church: to help each other out with matters in which we may not feel so confident. So, if you need help with personal Christian giving, Christian leaders, ASK FOR IT. Don't settle for an eventually corrupting fearful mediocrity. Don't hand Mammon the reigns of your church. As the Lord declared to the Church in Laodicea:

"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say -'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'- and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked- I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and I chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne." (Revelation 3:15-21)

So let us all together and by God's grace deal with this mess that is money in the Orthodox Church today. Let us liberate with faith and thanksgiving the necessary resources to have quality full time ministries. Let us open up the floodgates of our generosity in the generosity of God Himself and let us see the Church transformed and more effective for the Gospel in the world! Simply, let us be obedient to God's call and not "hide our talent."

No Entry for Narcissus

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 13:26:00 +0000

A Sermon preached by Fr Emmanuel Kahn at St Aidan's Orthodox Church, Manchester on Sunday 2nd September 2018.

The Gospel referenced is Matthew 22:2-14.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

The Gospel reading for today from the 21st chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew is about a marriage feast, to which many people are invited, but few choose to attend. St Gregory the Great points out that this "marriage feast represents the Church of the present time" [that is, in the first century] …. The Father made a marriage feast for His Son," preached St Gregory [Forty Gospel Homilies 38.1, 3-4], "by joining the Church to [His Son] through the mystery of His Incarnation." St Gregory cites Psalm 18 (19), verse 5, in which King David declares that God is "like a bridegroom coming forth from the bridal chamber." St Gregory explains that Christ, and I quote, "truly came forth like a bridegroom from his bridal chamber [and], as God incarnate, left the … womb of the Virgin to unite the Church to Himself."

That is a powerful interpretation of this Gospel from St Gregory the Great. The sixth century saint stresses that through the Incarnation, through Christ becoming a human person from the womb of the Theotokos, the Mother of God, Christ united the Church to Himself. So it is that we, as Orthodox Christians, have been united to Christ through the Church. However, there is a problem, both for the Jews of the first century and for us. The last line of this Gospel states the problem clearly: "Many are called, but few are chosen." So today I'd like to consider the question: How can each and every one of us, however old or young we are, be among the chosen ones-be among those to whom God brings eternal life?

Note that in this Gospel the king provides wedding garments, beautiful clothes, for everyone that's invited. But one person, who does actually turn up, chooses not to wear the wedding garment that has been provided by the king. What happens? The king sees him and throws him out of the wedding feast. In other words, this person was not permitted to enter eternal life, because he was not prepared for the happiness and glory of being forever with the Lord. St Augustine poses the question [in Sermon 90.6]: "What is [this] wedding garment, then?" His answer is easy to understand; and I quote: the wedding garment is the "charity [the love of God and of other people] which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith [in God]. This is the wedding garment," concluded St Augustine. So, if we wish to be chosen, we each need to wear the wedding garment of living a life of charity. How can we do this?

In answering this question of how to wear wedding garments, I found helpful a recent programme on BBC Radio 4 about reading. It was suggested that when we read, we seek both empathy and critical awareness. Empathy is the ability to identify with the feelings and thoughts of others, and to appreciate experiences and emotions outside of ourselves. I find when I prepare these sermons and read the Church Fathers I have considerable empathy with their thoughts and feelings. However, they lived in different centuries and in different cultures than we do today. Therefore, we also need a critical awareness of how to bring the insights and understanding of the Church Fathers into our own lives. As we read, whatever we read, we can follow the paths and stories that the authors have set out before us with empathy, with awareness of these stories and characters. At the same time, we can ask ourselves: Is this person, is this story, that I am reading of value for me?

Seeking empathy and critical awareness applies not only to reading, but to how we see ourselves and other people. It is good that we should love ourselves, even as we see our faults and seek to tackle particular and often private problems in our lives. However, it is important that our love does not become narcissism, excessive love for oneself, in which a person is insecure and vulnerable but acts superior to others to compensate for their own inadequacies. In Greek mythology the young man Narcissus who pined away in love with his own image in a pool of water was turned into the flower that bears his name. Anyone can be a narcissist, young or old, male or female. However, there are in fact two types of narcissist, extrovert and introvert.

The extrovert type we all recognise, arrogant, self-obsessed, manipulative, often ruthless. The introvert type is no less self-regarding but hides his true feelings from others. He cannot connect or relate, except to further his own goals. Hidden or "introvert narcissists" are often unaware of and unconcerned about others. They are the types who abuse social media by recruiting flatterers and presenting themselves as the focus of attention. These are they that tick "like" on the posts of their followers on Facebook to encourage others to like them in return. Unfortunately, such narcissists are often unaware of their inability to relate to and serve others. They can be quite charming, but underneath they are egotists. Lacking empathy and critical awareness, they are naked of that wedding garment without which they will not enter to feast with the King.

To avoid these and many other deformations in the soul we need to develop critical awareness of our own soul state, whether purification is happening or contamination, just like the dust that can accumulate in our homes. As we move through life, this dust of sin and sinful attitudes gathers within us, just as it gathers over time in the carpets in our homes. There are two ways to deal with that dust, we can deny its presence and sweep it under the carpet, or we can take a vacuum cleaner or a dustpan and brush and clean it up. We can choose to face a challenge in our lives or to treat problems with the dust of denial, pretending the problem is not there, even when we know it is there. Introvert narcissists live a life of denial in which they pretend to themselves and others that there is no dust hidden within their personalities. Yet, with deep repentance and faithful prayer, change is always possible for all of us.

The same seeking of empathy and critical awareness that we apply to reading and ourselves also applies to how we relate to other people and to the Lord. We love other people; and we love the Lord. Yet we are also critically aware of the faults of other people and our own faults. We seek to relate to the Lord in prayer and in action, wearing the wedding garments that the King, the Lord, has given each of us.

I close with a beautiful interpretation of this Gospel reading, again from St Gregory the Great. He preached, and I quote: "Since you have already come into the house of the marriage feast, our Holy Church, as a result of God's generosity, be careful, my friends. Lest when the King [who is the Lord] enters He [will] find fault with some aspect of your heart's clothing…. The king came in to look at the guests and saw there a person not clothed in a wedding garment. What do we think is meant by the wedding garment, dearly beloved? For if we say it is baptism or faith [everyone] has entered this marriage feast [with] them. [Those who are] outside [are outside] because [they have] not yet come to believe. What then must we understand by the wedding garment but love? [Those people who] enter the marriage feast … without wearing a wedding garment … [are indeed] present in the Holy Church. [They] may have faith, but [they] do not have love. We are correct when we say that love is the wedding garment," continues St Gregory, "because this [love] is what our Creator Himself possessed when He came to the marriage feast to join the Church to Himself. Only God's love brought it about that His Only Begotten Son united the hearts of His chosen to Himself. John says that 'God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son for us" [John 3.16], concludes St Gregory.

So it is. The Lord believes in us; and He chooses us before we then choose to believe in Him. Once we believe in the Lord and have faith and are baptised and become members of His Holy Church, then we learn to wear the wedding garment of love-love of others and love of God. However, if we permit the dust of denial of any problems in the Church or in our relationships with others to dominate our lives, we do not wear any wedding garments whatsoever. We are then in trouble, because we all face challenges in our lives and in the Church. Let us all wear together the wedding garments of love and face any challenges that come to us in our lives or in the Church. Then we can live with joy with King David as we sing out Psalm 32(33), verse 21: "Our heart shall rejoice in Him because we have trusted in His Holy Name."

So be it, as we ascribe as is justly due, all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Father Emmanuel Kahn

God does not Explain Things; Things Explain God

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 13:19:00 +0000

Humans have always tried to understand the world around them, if only to survive, and to value their place in it in order to enjoy life as beings conscious of death. In this context the theology of primitive animist faiths can be seen as a certain science; an early attempt to explain how things are by virtue of their familiar or indwelling spirits. By explaining natural processes both predictable and unpredictable within such a rational framework the world became safer, even tameable within certain limits. Eventually the sense emerged through observation of higher organising principles at work in the world, maybe even a “Highest Principle” and so a Supreme Spirit or High God was “born” out of an existing and enduring spirit pantheon.

Monotheist religions took these developments to their logical conclusion, ONLY the High God could serve the purpose of integrating a created Cosmos as a whole, the lesser spirits being demoted into avatars, angels and other created subordinate servants or manifestations. At this stage, however, it is still the One-God-Who-Is-One who explains how things are. If the wind blows, it is his breath. If the ground trembles and swallows you up, it is his anger. If the stars shine it is because he has provided guides both navigational and astrological for his children. At some point of mature reflection, however, most if not all monotheisms wake up to the fact that there are ways of understanding how the world works that do not involve the all too easy and, frankly, rather demeaning (to God) idea that he has to be invoked to explain the unexplained. If God only exists as a stop gap explanation for our ignorance about the world then he is no God at all. For God to be God He must be the God-of-the-Whole or no-God-at-all.

So, difficult though it may be for all of us in varying degrees to accept, God does not explain anything at all. We do not believe in God to satisfy our ignorance about the world; in short to give us a nice and comforting alternative to science with its seemingly Godless explanations and “theories.” If we are thinking like that we do not truly believe in God nor do we receive the world as it truly is. We need to start the other way round. God does not explain things, things explain God. Many fathers make this approach to the Cosmos and its Creator explicit but perhaps none more so than the great St. Maximos the Confessor. In Ambigua 33 he says:-

“The Word becomes thickened […] concealing Himself mysteriously for our sakes within the logoi of creatures and thus He reveals Himself accordingly through the visible things as through some written signatures as a whole in His fullness from the whole of nature and undiminished in each part, in the varieties of natures as one who has no variation and is always the same, in composites, as One who is simple, without parts, in things which have their beginning in time, as the One without beginning, as the Invisible in the visible, the ungraspable in tangible things.”

The key idea here is the “logoi of creatures” ... what I am referring to in the shorthand of this article as “things.” These “logoi” function for St. Maximos as written signatures of God-in-creation; the disclosure of God in the being and beauty of things. So, as we discover more about the being and beauty of things through science, poetry and mystical contemplation and in so doing we discover or “explain” God. St. Maximos is clear, however, that it is Christ the Word of God, the Logos of God who is concealed and then revealed within the logoi of creatures, the self same Christ who is the Logos Incarnate. To use the theological terminology of St. Gregory Palamas, we might say that the energies of God in creation are disclosed Incarnate in the Word.

Orthodox Christians with this faith do not suppose that science or the arts are alternative truth perceptions to theology. The more we discover and know about the world the stronger and deeper in Christ revealed in the very sinews and flesh of our humanity and in the very physicality of Creation itself; its terrible and majestic glory ... signatures of God, vehicles of God indeed.

Christianity - Not Reformed but Deformed!

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 16:55:00 +0000

Feminism is such a difficult thing to define and feminists are by no means agreed on what feminism is. For some, feminism is merely an attempt to redress inequality of opportunity between the sexes in employment and gender roles in the family and community. For others feminism is a battle against the alleged repression of all things feminine by men, the only solution for which is all out gender war until the ground is recovered. There are religious variants of feminism based on the first view which are content to secure interchangeability of function between men and women at all levels of Church life. For these, working towards the first (legitimate) female Pope is a sacred task. Other more militant religious feminists, basing their views on the second model of gender war, regard Christianity as inescapably patriarchal and oppressive. These seek a new religion with some ties to Jesus but essentially rehabilitating the goddess cult of former times.

This talk is not seeking to address every variant of feminism both moderate and radical, secular and faith based. I fear we should then get entangled in a morasse of social comment, half-baked theories and contentious subjectivity. Rather, here, I shall attempt to consider the Person of the Father in relation to feminism as a whole for there are some common themes in the general feminist reaction to this basic tenet of Christianity that God is our Father.

The first person in the modern era to address this issue from a psychoanalytic perspective was, of course, Sigmund Freud. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Freud grappled with the tortured neuroses and psychoses of his repressed Viennese patients. Modern psychiatry no longer doffs its cap to the "Great Master" as once before. Nonetheless, Freud's assessment of Christian belief in God the Father is pivotal in trying to understand feminism's varying reactions against it.

Freud argued that "Father" was a projection by us humans onto the nature of God. We, some of us that is, have had such lousy fathers on earth, that, it is argued, we seek by way of compensation, an ideal Father in Heaven. This projection is a reaction to a neurosis. Deal with the neurosis, namely our half-concealed hatred for our human fathers, and the need to call God "Father" will vanish away. In fact, for Freud, Jew that he was, much of religion was really a projection of our disappointment and pain onto the canvass of Heaven. Now the reason why Freud's view was so popular was its plausibility at first hearing. Clearly God is not male, (or female). Did not Christ himself teach that:- "God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and Truth?" Freud would not even admit that God was LIKE a father. God was the ILLUSION of an ideal Father, made necessary by our anxieties and hurts. The plausibility of this approach then lead many to suggest that since our experience of human fatherhood was sometimes cruel and corrupting we should hesitate before calling God Father for fear of making eternal and immeasurable the pain of knowing the divine in the hearts and lives of those abused by their own fathers. It goes without saying of course that this made Jesus the archetypal neurotic in the eyes of Freud. It was he who started the whole "Father-thing" off!

At this point, along come the religious feminists, who then claim that whereas "Mother" would also be a projection, since all God-talk is symbolic and derived from our human experience, we should offer "Mother" instead as an alternative. "Mother" is warm and kind, deeply imbued with the dark warmth and comfort of the earth, the breast and the womb. These are much the same feminists of course who have no compunction in ripping human life from the womb in abortion and parading their sexuality in the media, (and goading men to do the same), on the grounds that this is empowering! Earth Mother apparently, like the wolf in Little Red Hiding Hood has sharp teeth and claws. We Christians know this of course since it was the matriarchal dominance of paganism which was so besotted with abortion, child abuse and child sacrifice. Not much has changed, has it?

We all shrink of course from such perversions of fatherhood and motherhood and yet the logic of Freud's analysis is inexorable. If paganism is to be resisted, (as a moderate feminist might argue), then God must become "Parent" or perhaps "It", a very unsatisfactory situation, and in Orthodox terms, of course, downright heresy. So, as Orthodox Christians we need to force our culture to be much more radical on this issue than it has hitherto been. We need to reach back behind the feminists' agenda at Freud's basic premise that God as Father is a projection for our pain, ever seeking to recover our ideal Father, eternally beyond our grasp.

Notice how Freud starts. He takes something which is so obviously true, namely, that God is not literally a male person and then proceeds to deny the truth that God is Father, as if one followed the other. God, of course, can be Father without being male but only by recognising that all religious language is refined by the conviction that God is so utterly UNLIKE anything created. Therefore, God is not like a father, He is, in the First Person, the Father, the Source, the Fount of all that is; the Son eternally begotten from Him and the Spirit proceeding forth. There is an "outgoingness in Love" in God which makes "Father" the most singular and apt expression. True there is an analogy in respect of human fatherhood, but it is an analogy to human fatherhood, not from it. This truth lies at the very heart of the absurdity of feminism's attack on God the Father. The Father is not imaged from our human fathers, (for that would be to make God in our own image, an idol); human fatherhood in its highest expression is imaged or derived from God the Father, (in other words, we are made in the image of God). As St. Paul says in Ephesians 3:14-15:-

"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named."

Now, there is one gaping hole in this presentation. If Genesis teaches, (which it does), that the image of God in manifest in men and women as created, then why cannot motherhood as well as fatherhood be derived from God in such a manner as to legitimise God as Mother as well as Father? The answer to this one lies in the nature of God's creative power. God creates without dependency on another for he is sovereign and free and acts in the first instance alone. "Let it be" as He says, and it is. This is not the action of a divine Mother. Mothers, in a human sense, act co-operatively and in a receptive manner. Motherhood is derived from the earth, not from the Godhead. This does not make motherhood any less holy. Orthodox venerate matter as the creative and fecund principle of life, but this life comes in the first instance from the "outside" as it were, from the Father. To derive motherhood from the Godhead rather than the earth would be to give God a womb and to make the Universe "her" Body. This is the very essence of paganism and it has resurfaced again recently in the works of such heretical theologians as Rosemary Radford Ruether. For Orthodox Christians, motherhood is derived from the Theotokos, the Mother of God, the first and highest sanctified creature of the Lord who, being without form, took humanity upon Himself from her. In so doing, the Word and the Spirit worked but never ceased to depart from the Father who remained the Father. When God becomes Mother, however, "she" is revealed a vicious harridan bent upon destruction as well as life, a sort of sub-Christian Durga or Kali, the one who must be appeased at all costs. The Mother of God is such an affront to feminists because her sanctity protests at this abuse of motherhood and the abominable fruit it has generated, sour and bitter to the taste; the infanticide of abortion, the trivialisation and degradation of sex, the rape of the earth.

The only remedy for all these ills is to renounce Freud and his perversion of the Christian gospel and to return to a true biblical notion of God the Father and human fatherhood; the Theotokos, the created earth and human motherhood.

Finally, can this agenda be pursued whilst yet embracing a moderate feminism which would pursue equality of opportunity in all realms of human life and work ... a feminism which is, shall we say, religiously neutral? I'm not sure we can even do that. Consider equality of opportunity. This is a good thing and to be promoted. But what do we make of these opportunities? Do we send women as battle hardened troops into the front line? Do we ask men, similarly, to emasculate themselves by posing as women in Cosmopolitan and other such magazines? Do we promote the idea that gender is irrelevant to function when all the evidence cries out that there are distinctively male and female aspects of our humanity which, if to be honoured, must remain non-interchangeable? Do we rob a woman of her motherhood by making her a "priest?" Do we rob a man of his fatherhood by making him feel guilty of his strength? I think not. Many have fed from the poisoned wells of Freud and his feminist great grandchildren for long enough and have suffered for it.

Isn't it about time then that we embraced life rather than death? Isn't it about time we worshipped the Father again and implored the Mother? Isn't it about time that we become co-heirs of the Son as children of God? Isn't it about time that the Spirit ruled rather than the bankrupt false prophets of atheism? Feminism is dead and death dealing. The Father remains, and waits for the return of His errant children.

The Human Icon

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 15:01:00 +0000

The Human Icon: A Comparative Study of Hindu and Orthodox Christian Beliefs by Christine Mangala Frost

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dr Frost has capably achieved a gargantuan task in shining a light on the spirituality of Orthodox Christianity for a Hindu audience and likewise illuminating the richness and depth of Hinduism for her own Orthodox Christian community. This has been achieved precisely because she has a foot in both worlds with insights that transcend the possible disjunctions of language, concepts and practice that exist on the surface between the two faiths. Raised as a Hindu but becoming an Orthodox Christian in later life, she speaks from within both religious traditions with an authenticity that is personally tested and encyclopaedic in scope.
In this book, Dr Frost has not simply described the major themes of each religion, comparatively and in parallel. That would have presented a relatively straight forward task. She has gone further and much deeper by identifying possible points of contact, even overlap and congruence, between corresponding themes and insights from both faiths. This has been achieved while at the same time identifying with clear sightedness possible irreducible differences that need to be acknowledged in inter-faith dialogue.
Her realism in addressing these elements of both convergence and divergence is never compromised by any personal intrusive commitments, yet her own blessings in both faiths clearly shine through. She is a critical observer who strives to be fair to both religions both on their own grounds and in dialogue. A reader of this book will be enlightened and encouraged by the possibilities that lie ahead for mutual enhancement and understanding between Orthodox Christians and Hindus alike.

View all my reviews

Rolling Back the Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 23 May 2017 16:37:00 +0000

It is with a sad and heavy heart that I must comment on those terrible events that unfolded last night in the great city of Manchester, when the terrorists struck again on our soil.

This time they targeted defenceless and innocent young people, some with friends and some in family groups, attending a pop concert in the Manchester Arena in the centre of the city. As I speak to you on the day after, there are currently 22 fatalities and 59 people injured, many of them critically. One of the children killed was merely eight years old. Our prayers go out to the grieving families of those who have lost loved ones and also to those who are suffering from grievous wounds in various hospitals around the city.

IS/Daesh has claimed responsibility for this despicable and cowardly action but that cult of death often tries to promote itself on the back of such attacks for propaganda purposes, so we must resist jumping to conclusions before the evidence is assembled and assessed. Nonetheless, the authorities have confirmed this was indeed a terrorist attack, an improvised explosive device being detonated by a suicide bomber in the foyer of the Arena; timed to inflict maximum casualties at the end of the concert when thousands of young people would be leaving. The police know the identity of this mass murderer but are not releasing it for the time being. This is in part due to the ongoing local and national investigation which looks likely to reveal co-conspirators and terrorist cells. The attack took place just 8 miles from the church that I serve in the suburbs. This morning, just 3 miles away from St Aidan’s, the police raided two houses and there was a controlled explosion at one of them. No further details are available as of this time, but this story is unfolding so rapidly, so by the time you hear this I am sure that much more will be known.

As an Orthodox Christian priest, and together with my parish community in this great city of Manchester, I am trying to think and pray through an appropriate and balanced Christian response to such a tragedy, including how we should handle such terrorist threats and realities into the future. First and in this regard, all of us here in Manchester have already been inspired by the flawless response of the emergency services and the spirit of Manchester people who have rallied round to support those directly affected by this terrorist outrage. The solidarity of the people of Manchester, and indeed of other communities similarly affected in Britain and elsewhere, is an outstanding inspiration and example to all those peoples of any religion and background who are threatened by this evil culture of death, right across the world.

Second, as individual Orthodox Christians, the Gospel of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ calls us to embrace the cross and forgive those who would do us harm. Loving our enemies doesn’t just mean dealing with obnoxious people in daily life it means praying for, and indeed loving those who would do us actual harm. There can be no room for hate or revenge when confronting such an evil as this. Only the love of a God who justly judges and graciously saves can turn the most hardened and bitter heart toward peace, human dignity and compassion. He usually expects though to do this through our witness, so this then is our responsibility as Christians. However, this is not the whole story.

Third, we need to make a clear distinction between personal morality and social responsibility, while seeing both as being subject to God’s sovereign will and purpose. Individual Christians, according to the Gospel, may choose martyrdom in extreme situations rather than retaliate or seek revenge. They may choose to forgive their persecutors and pray for them. However, none of us can forgive on behalf of those who have suffered at the hands of others. Only those directly affected by such atrocities, and indeed by sins generally, have both the right and the capacity to forgive their own particular enemies. As a nation, our social responsibility is to uphold the law and play our part in the democratic process through which, of course, such laws are enacted, which is why, I believe, voting in elections, notwithstanding its flaws is better than suffering a dictatorship allowed elbow room through cynicism, despair or apathy. The first duty of the State itself, however, but not of course the only one, is to protect its citizens and to ensure the defence of the realm. Passive martyrdom and forgiveness is a choice exercised by individual persons but it can never simply be translated directly into social policy and law; particularly when endangerment of life is current and critical, as it is now.

As I said, the duty of the State is to protect us all and especially the vulnerable and the weak, and to this end we need excellent and ethical intelligence services and a robust and effective police force and military. Such forces of law and order can only function optimally when they are supported by all citizens themselves. The failure to support the forces of law and order in such atrocities is a danger as reprehensible as the actual attacks themselves. The first duty of all citizens, therefore, must be to support the police and the security services in their work. With sufficient safeguards as to personal liberty, if this also involves the deepening of the surveillance trawl through electronic media, then this is something, I believe, that we should support, while at the same time denying to the authorities the opportunity to use these “all-seeing eyes” to interfere with our valued freedoms. It would be a tragedy if terrorism won by encouraging us to adopt measures that undermine the very freedoms that we are defending in opposing it.

However, the battle we are waging here against terrorism is not simply and only to be fought with intelligence and smart policing. That will be like cutting off the heads of weeds while leaving deep-seated roots untouched. There is an ideological, and indeed propaganda, war going on here for the hearts and minds of those who are especially most vulnerable to recruitment by terrorists, both homegrown and otherwise.

How then is such a war to be waged? A number of weapons are at our disposal. Always useful is a good and intelligent use of the disciplines of psychology and criminology, both in dealing with those who are recruited into terrorism (caught alive) and in the messages we promote and adopt in our society through mass media and the pulpit, not only to inform public opinion and form the Christian mind, but also to act as a counter insurgency tactic against the terrorists themselves; a counter insurgency of the heart and the mind.

Here is where religion generally has much to offer, precisely because it is religion that is being perverted and corrupted here. I say “religion” rather than simply Christianity because it is a task that can and should be embraced by peoples of all faiths, those, that is, whose basic tenets are goodness, righteousness and truth. A cult of death such as IS / Daesh may only finally be beaten through active forces of goodness in education and a re-orientation toward the light, especially at the hands of knowledgeable and skilled believers generally and co-religionists especially. Governments need to invest as much time, effort, personnel and money in these methods as in the more traditional aspects of police enforcement, intelligence gathering and military intervention. States in the West which have been accustomed to a secularism which has progressively banished religion from the public square need to develop both a more open mind and an active commitment towards cooperating with faith communities and skilled individuals in this process of rolling back the darkness of hatred and death.

None of these reflections are irrelevant to the practical situation and plight in which we now find ourselves with grieving relatives and bloodied bodies in the city of Manchester and elsewhere. Orthodox Christians need to play their part together with other men and women of goodwill who are prepared to rise up and collaborate in a generous and positive manner, fighting with the weapons of the Spirit, not only for the values and freedoms that are so cherished by us all, but also for the entrenchment of those values in the minds and hearts of those vulnerable persons for whom Daesh/IS and the devil continue to contend. This is a spiritual as well as physical battle that we shall have to face with faith, hope and love - perhaps of the next two or three generations. May the Lord be our very present help, strength and guide as we all do our part to uphold his Kingdom here on earth as in heaven.

Does Orthodoxy Matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 17:42:00 +0000

Orthodoxy means "true glory" or "true faith." We Orthodox think very highly of the word. Or do we? When it comes down to it, does Orthodoxy actually matter all that much to us (as it should)? Orthodox Christians in the west find themselves living among many different Christianities and it can sometimes be tempting to think that notwithstanding some of the more obvious differences, (icons, the Theotokos, fasting, worship, for example), all these Christian traditions share much the same faith as us. If you are of this opinion, then I am sorry to have to disappoint you, but it just isn't true at all. How so?

I am going to consider this issue by looking at a case study which reveals the damage that heresy can do in our personal lives, our relationships and even to the society and world that we live in. It is a fictional story, but quite typical.

John and Mary go to an Evangelical Anglican Church. John is Orthodox (Greek tradition). Mary is Anglican. This is her second marriage, being a young widow with one teenage son (Ian, 15) still living at home. She now has two children with John, daughters, aged 5 and 7. John would prefer to go to his local Greek Church but his wife is a committed Anglican, and their children, although baptised in the Orthodox Church (with the exception of Ian), prefer the "lively worship songs", as they put it, which are included in the church's family service. Ian is very involved in the local youth group and is thinking eventually of becoming an Anglican minister. Does Orthodoxy then matter to John? Well, yes, but only in a remote nostalgic sort of way. It is some years now since he has attended Divine Liturgy, the last time was at Pascha in 2008. His stepson, Ian, will have nothing to do with what he considers to be the "stuffy incomprehensible worship" at his stepdad's church which he has visited once, just after his stepfather's marriage.

Ten years later ....

Neither John nor Mary now regularly attend the Anglican Church. John still hasn't been back to the Orthodox Church since Pascha 2008 and Mary doesn't like the new Vicar who is a woman. Mary is quite a conservative evangelical believer who maintains that a woman should not be in a place of authority within the Church over men. (This is the evangelical doctrine of the"headship of the male.") Her two daughters, now 15 and 17 still attend on their own and are very active in the youth group. Ian, who shares his mother's conservative outlook, has also left the church, disagreeing with what he believes to be the Anglican Church's tolerance of homosexual partnerships. He has started attending a very conservative Baptist church that teaches pure Calvinism, in particular, the doctrines known as TULIP (from the first letter of each doctrine), namely:-

Total Depravity - As a result of Adam’s fall, all humanity, is dead in sins and therefore damned. Humanity's nature is corrupt and utterly incapable of godliness.

Unconditional Election - Because man is dead in sin, he is unable to initiate a response to God; therefore, from eternity God elected certain people to salvation and others to damnation. Election and predestination are unconditional; they are not based on man’s response because man is unable to respond to God, nor does he want to.

Limited Atonement - Because God determined that certain people should be saved as a result of His unconditional election, He determined that Christ should die for the elect alone. All whom God has elected, and for whom Christ died, will be saved but the rest will be damned to hell for all eternity; again as determined by God's sovereign will.

Irresistible Grace - Those whom God elected He draws to Himself through irresistible grace. God makes man willing to come to Him. When God calls, man responds. Man cannot choose to love God by his own choice and freedom.

Perseverance of the Saints - The precise people God has elected and drawn to Himself through the Holy Spirit will persevere in faith to the end. None whom God has elected will ever be lost; they are eternally secure even though they may sin grievously after election.

Although Ian is a pious and committed believer these doctrines trouble him. He begins to doubt that he is one of the elect, chosen by God for salvation. His sinful life (he occasionally resorts to prostitutes) troubles him greatly but his church tells him that he is unable to make any right choice and save himself. Ian enters a very dark period of depression, made much worse by the impact of these heresies on his mental health. His fragile relationship with his atheist girlfriend disintegrates. He seeks medical help for a latent depression which has now become the full blown clinical variety.

Five years further on, the two daughters are now at the same university, one just about to graduate but they have been unable to find an evangelical church they like nearby, so they have stopped attending church on the grounds that they believe in Christ and are saved, so what's the point? Back home John and Mary now lead thoroughly secular lives. John sometimes thinks wistfully of his childhood back in Cyprus when he used to attend church with his Nana but this seems to him a very distant idealised time now. He hopes, nonetheless, that his wife or children will respect his wish for an Orthodox funeral if he dies first.

So, did Orthodoxy matter to John? Well yes, particularly earlier on, but for most of his adult life only in a nominal sort of way. He had certainly not been catechised in his youth and his grasp of the faith, therefore, had always been somewhat tenuous. Did Anglican evangelicalism then strike him as being similar to Orthodoxy? Well yes, mostly. He only saw differences in the worship style which often set his teeth on edge. Let's face it. He attended the evangelical Anglican Church for the sake of his wife and family. When they stopped going, so did he. There is only one God after all and this was just a different way of being a Christian, it seemed to him. He did lament his stepson's involvement in the Calvinist church because he could see how its refusal of human freedom and choice, its dark doctrines of divine election to salvation or damnation, did not feel right to him, but he couldn't really say why.

Did Mary his wife ever consider Orthodoxy when the lady Vicar arrived? Well, no, why should she? Her husband rarely spoke of his childhood faith and she concluded that it could not have meant much to him in that case, so why should she consider it? John and Mary now spend a conventional Sunday together as most couples do in their street, getting up late, going to the gym occasionally, shopping at B&Q, taking a drive into the countryside; just the usual and normal things everyone does nowadays. Both still consider themselves as Christians, but obviously not of the fanatical sort whom they blame, quite rightly, for destroying Ian's piece of mind. As for the two girls, well they eventually graduated and now have families of their own. Churchgoing, however, has become completely alien to all their families with the rest.

So, does Orthodox Christianity matter to you?
Does it matter enough for you to find out about it in more depth?
Does it matter enough for you to practice it as faithfully as you can, notwithstanding the distractions of modern life?
Does it matter enough for you to stay loyal to this faith no matter what challenges are presented to it by both family life and society as a whole?

And here's the challenging question ...

In the absence of an Orthodox church nearby would you be prepared to pray at home rather than pray with the heterodox?

What will become of my children?

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 17:46:00 +0000

A challenge to all Orthodox Christians who are concerned about the young

What will become of my children? Every responsible parent asks this question at some point as their children grow older. We want our children to grow up safe and free, as healthy as possible in body, mind and spirit and to make the best use of their God-given gifts. If we are Orthodox Christians we also want our children to come to know Christ personally and in the Church. We know that the Church is the ark of salvation and that the spiritual safety of our children therefore depends on their remaining in the Church through all the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. What we may not know as Orthodox Christians is that here and there, but not everywhere, we are failing our children.

That seems quite shocking, and it is, but it is nonetheless true. A whole generation or more is being lost to the Church and the root of this problem can be traced way back to infancy in churchgoing families. Going back further than one generation reveals a longer term and growing problem, a problem of unchurched adults whose children will show little prospect of finding salvation because they see in their parents a lack of concern for their own. Some of these issues faced by the Orthodox Church are shared with other Christian churches and mainly concern the secularising forces of our post-Christian culture. In this article I do not intend to deal with these issues but rather with those special matters of concern in the Orthodox Church with reference to the younger children of churchgoing parents. When these children grow into their teens, and certainly when they leave home, they are being lost to the Church. Why is this so?

Growing up as a Christian in the British Isles and Ireland in the 21st century is a testing time for many young people. Until 2007 I taught Religious Education to 11 to 16-year-olds in both Church schools (Roman Catholic and Anglican) and State schools. In the Church schools, and even in predominantly Christian areas, the average number of young people with any contact with any church rarely exceeded 6 out of a class of 30. Of those, perhaps only two or three would have any commitment to Christ and that commitment would be quite fragile. Among their school friends, attitudes to Christianity would vary from puzzlement through derision to outright hostility. A young Christian person's faith needed to be quite strong and reasonably well-informed. Their character had also to be quite robust and independent to withstand the mocking of their friends.

If you are reading this and you are an Orthodox Christian parent having settled here in the British Isles and Ireland over the last 20 years or more, you may be quite shocked by my account. You may be aware of the hostility to Christianity, or at best the incomprehension of it among your adult non-religious friends but for your children, well-being and happiness at school will probably involve a desperate desire to keep their churchgoing secret from their friends. The long-term effect of this social pressure and the relentless attacks on Christianity in society eventually take their toll spiritually on young lives.

Imagine now that as Orthodox Christian parents you are insisting that your children catch your own faith in Church in a language other than English. Of course, many children of Orthodox Christian families recently settled here are bilingual and so you may think that there is no harm in using a language other than English in the services or in Christian teaching. Your children understand, as you do, so where's the harm? Well, I suppose there is no harm if you are only going to live here for a few years and that you then intend as a family to move back to your country of origin. However, many Orthodox Christian families do not find themselves in this position or indeed do not intend to leave this country. They anticipate that they will be living here for the long term or maybe their short-term goals of return are unrealistic. What then? What message does a refusal to use English in church give to young people, particularly as they enter their teenage years?

Difficult and painful though this might be to accept, the message you are giving to your children is that this Christian faith, this Orthodox Christian faith, is indelibly linked to the country in which you grew up. This robs your children of the possibility of connecting to Christ through Orthodoxy directly in and through the indigenous culture and language of these Isles. Your children's Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic friends, with whom they socialise on a daily basis at school if nowhere else, will share similar backgrounds, situations and challenges. Religious sentiments, insofar as they are respected at all in this wider youth subculture, will be identified as what mum and dad do when they seek in their religious practice to revert to forms familiar from their own youth in the 'homeland'. As such this faith will seem increasingly very distant to them as their social environment and personal identity draws them away from their childhood experience in the Church. Into adulthood they are much less likely to go to Church on a regular basis and by the time they have children of their own a second generation will be well on its way to being lost. Of course, some will be picked up by Protestant and evangelical sects and I suppose that this is better than falling off the spiritual map entirely; but what do we really think we are doing when, as Orthodox Christians, we not only accept this situation but also consciously decide to do things that make it more likely to happen? Mistakenly, perhaps, we think that if only our children can be kept in a sort of Orthodox "bubble" where the language, culture and expression of faith is so far removed from that outside the walls of the church, then all will be well. It is precisely this attitude, however, that causes the problem in the first place and yet we do not see it! Why do we not see it? I believe that there are two main reasons.

The first reason has more apparent religious respectability to it as an argument, but actually it is heretical. This is the idea that Britain, lacking a decent Orthodox Christian culture, (which certainly cannot be contested), is actually a danger zone from which our children must, at all costs, be protected. The argument goes that the only way of protecting them is to keep them in the Orthodox Bubble with its self-contained language and culture from the homeland. In some jurisdictions, even communities with predominantly indigenous converts are pressured by hierarchs to create their own ersatz Orthodox bubble and this has the extraordinary effect of some UK born citizens adopting an alternative pretend persona as pseudo-Greeks, Russians, Romanians, Arabs etc. However, this reason for creating an Orthodox bubble is heretical not only because it is a betrayal of the equality of all nations as God's creation but it is also a betrayal of hope that the gospel is indeed for all nations and all cultures. As Orthodox Christians we are obliged - it is not a choice, it is a command of the gospel itself - we are obliged to communicate and live out the gospel in the society, culture and indigenous language in which we live. To imply that this is not possible is to reduce the Church to being a museum or protectorate of certain privileged cultures and languages deemed to be safely Orthodox in contrast and opposition to others deemed to be incapable of becoming Orthodox Christian. If that were true, St Paul would have never taken the gospel to the Gentiles and the Church would have remained a Jewish sect, initially confined to the Middle East and then dispersed as the Jews have been throughout the centuries to this day. When speaking of my own jurisdiction (Antioch), if anyone in this Church subscribed to such horrendous views then this would constitute a gross betrayal of the foundation of the Antiochian Church in apostolic times when this Church became the first base 'par excellence' of that mission to the Gentiles commanded by God himself.

The second reason for the inability of some Orthodox to understand their own complicity in losing generations of young people to the heterodox or secularity concerns something pastoral and psychological. This often exists alongside the first reason as a disguised primary motivation and it concerns a bereavement. Now this might strike you as somewhat strange, since we normally associate grief with the loss of a loved one, the breakup of a relationship or the loss of a job. There is however another grief, a cultural one and an aspect of one's personal identity and nationality. This grief occurs often in the first generation of immigrant families and because the clergy who minister to these families often share the same sense of dislocation and bereavement in the loss of a homeland, the grieving process becomes stuck and people find it very difficult to adapt and to feel at home in their new country of residence. In these circumstances, the Church can provide a little relief from this distress when, for a time every week, the community can suppose (inside the Orthodox Bubble) that it is still in the homeland with its accustomed culture, language and customs. This dysfunctional response can be reinforced by the more negative aspects of multiculturalism which suppose that the best way to ensure diversity is to encourage the maintenance of lots of little bubbles of culture and language, religious and non-religious, whereas in fact, diversity only works well when those languages and culture are shared and fed into national life. However, as far as the life of the Church is concerned, this unresolved bereavement, this dislocation of cultural identity, explains the fierce resistance exhibited by some Orthodox communities, to any process of indigenisation within Church life. The most disastrous aspect of this is the refusal to use the English language in worship and teaching which is the only guarantee that our young people will be sufficiently equipped through understanding the faith in order to practice it and witness to Christ through it.

At this point in the article is it important to refer back to my earlier comments about why it is that Orthodox teens so easily fall away from Church. It is not, of course, the case that an overnight switch to the use of English in our services will somehow 'magic' these teens and young adults back into the Church and prevent the long-term decline that we are now seeing. However, it might just help to prevent a third generation going the same way if we take prompt action now. We may not see the benefit for at least 10 years but within that same period and without this prompt action the losses to our membership among the young will only continue to accelerate.

This article, therefore, is a no holds barred, blunt warning and call to action to those Orthodox Christian communities who think that keeping things as they are in the Orthodox Bubble is in any way a viable option for the Church into the future. It is not. Failure to act now, before it is too late, will leave our children outside the Church as they grow up and condemn Orthodoxy in the West to a slow and lingering death. Any Orthodox happy to stay in their comfort zones on this basis are complicit through their inaction and unwillingness to adapt with a betrayal of the very gospel itself and as such they will be judged. When therefore we ask: "what will become of our children?" let us be sure that we respond with positive strategies aimed at keeping them in the Church so that through their witness and ours this nation may be won again for Christ. Since the Ascension of our Lord this call to teach, baptise and make disciples among all nations has been and always will remain our joyful duty until Christ comes again. If we don't start by discharging our duty to our own children, what chance is there that we will come anywhere close to fulfilling the Great Commission?

Orthodox Great and Holy Week Services: The Need for Reform

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 15:36:00 +0000

Every year I am asked by some faithful Orthodox why it is that we change the "traditional" times of some of our Great and Holy Week services. Actually, the reason is that what happens elsewhere is not traditional at all and suffers from some grave defects. Why then do we have the service times as we do in Great and Holy Week? In our parish in Manchester we do something quite extraordinary. We celebrate Vesperal services in the evening!

(1) We serve the Holy Thursday Vesperal Liturgy of the Last Supper (as its title suggests!) on Holy Thursday EVENING, not in the morning.

(2) We serve the Holy Saturday Vesperal Liturgy (as its title suggests!) on Holy Saturday EVENING, not in the morning.

The only other change is the placing of the 12 Gospel Matins of Holy Friday on Friday morning rather than on the Thursday evening.

The original Greek word is "Orthros" meaning "dawn" or "daybreak." In monasteries this ends the Night Vigil and is served to conclude with the rising of the sun. In parishes, since few people would attend at 4am-5am in the morning, it is either served in the evening after Vespers (Slav tradition) or in the morning before the Liturgy (Greek tradition). Each option in the parishes is either earlier or later than it should be out of practical and pastoral necessity.

In Great and Holy Week it is perfectly acceptable to serve the various Matins Services either in the late evening of the day before or in the early morning of the correct day. Usually the evening before is the pattern adopted in most places. This then is the usual schedule for Matins:

Holy Monday Bridegroom Matins is served on Sunday evening.

Holy Tuesday Bridegroom Matins is served on Monday evening

Holy Wednesday Bridegroom Matins is served on Tuesday evening.

Holy Thursday Matins of Divine Healing and the Blessing of the Oils is served on Wednesday evening.

Holy Friday Matins of the 12 Passion Gospels is served on Thursday evening.

Holy Saturday (Lamentation) Matins is served on Friday evening.

The one Matins service we do change at St. Aidan's is the timing of the Holy Friday Matins of the 12 Passion Gospels which is served here on Holy Friday morning.... which, as I have shown, is entirely acceptable since Matins can be served either in the evening or in the morning. But why, you may say, do we change that? The explanation for this lies in the need to adjust the Vesperal Liturgies - to which I referred at the beginning of this explanation.

We therefore now consider the two vesperal services.

Clearly if the Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Thursday is to be served on Thursday EVENING the 12 Gospel Matins of Holy Friday has to be moved to its alternative position on Holy Friday morning. But why do we serve the Vesperal Liturgies in the evening not the morning?

Well the first and most important reason is that they were written as VESPERAL Liturgies, that is, evening Liturgies based on Vespers. Nowhere else in the Church's year has it been considered correct to move Vespers to the morning! Everyone can get to Church in the evening after all and prayers that refer to the sun going down and the night are clearly not designed to be used in broad daylight!

The second reason for not serving these Liturgies in the morning is historical.

The Last Supper (Holy Thursday's Liturgy) was celebrated by Christ with His disciples in the evening. The Eucharist is NOT simply a repetition of the Last Supper so we usually have Liturgies in the morning to celebrate the resurrection of Christ … after that is the rising of the sun with its attendant symbolism. However the Institution of the Last Supper in Holy Week is different. The context is the evening..... which is why the Church assigns a Vesperal Liturgy with its associated prayers of the evening.

With reference to the Holy Saturday Liturgy the reason is historical also. Originally this Vesperal Liturgy was the actual Liturgy of Pascha. This is difficult to believe I know, but it is true. The clue is in the 15 Old Testament readings which were designed to be read throughout the night BEFORE THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES!

Sometime in the Middle Ages, perhaps because some people were too lazy or indifferent to come to Church late on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday, this Liturgy was moved onto the morning of the same day, (the same happened to the Holy Thursday Liturgy). This really was a nonsense since it destroyed the integrity and completeness of the Paschal Vigil. Of course the Church did not abandon the Vigil, but the removal of the Vespers part meant that it started with the Acts of the Apostles reading before the Midnight Vigil which precedes both Paschal Matins and the Paschal Liturgy. So, here you can see that two Liturgies were unnecessarily and confusingly created out of the original one.

Well, we could just accept what happened and leave this orphaned Vesperal Liturgy hanging there out of place in the morning OR we could at least restore it to the early evening, especially since in parish practice the 15 readings have often been shortened to 3. This is what we do at St. Aidan's. It has the merit of being a conservative change in the timing and not the content of the service. This, however, can only be a transitional temporary change on the way to restoring the integrity of the original single complete Paschal Vigil. That would require the removal of the Eucharistic content of the present Vesperal Liturgy thereby allowing Vespers to rejoin the EXISTING Paschal Vigil. The Old Testament readings would then immediately precede the reading of the Acts of the Apostles before the Night Office and Matins followed on. This is the true liturgical reform that we actually need from our bishops and it is long, long overdue. In the meantime we do what we can at St. Aidan's to respect the original integrity of the Paschal celebration.

For more information about the historical development of the services of Great and Holy Week and Pascha please consult this by the late great Orthodox liturgical scholar, Fr. Gregory Woolfenden, especially his final paragraph entitled: "An Afterthought" which contains this amusing reference:

"I do not think that it might be heresy to suggest that Matins be served in the morning and Vespers in the evening." Quite so!

http://www.antiochian-orthodox.co.uk/lectures/holy-week-pascha-gw.pdf

Why the Arabs themselves must resist Islamic Fundamentalism

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 07:59:00 +0000

Well, we are now on the brink of a third Gulf War with no end in sight. Political and military commentators will be working overtime and acres of print will be written contesting the question: “will Western intervention work or not?” Important though this is for the West and global security there are other issues here of primary importance which are rarely discussed.

The West will no doubt face acts of terrorism on an ongoing basis but these will not destroy our culture and civilisation. However, unchecked ISIS will destroy Arab civilisation. Arab peoples and other ethnicities in the Middle East now need to ask some deep and searching questions of themselves. Do they want to preserve and defend the legacy of medieval Islamic culture in the arts and sciences through the turbulence of this era and into the third millennium or are they going to surrender passively, or indeed actively to religious barbarism?

The high point of Islam in global terms was not the bloody expansion of the Arab tribes into the Eastern Roman Empire in the seventh century but rather what the descendants of those tribes achieved in more peaceful times in subsequent centuries. If once again Arab, and specifically Islamic Arab culture, is to become a blessing rather than a curse for humankind then its leaders and peoples have some hard choices to make, which initially will lead to severe internal conflicts.

These choices are severely practical in nature. They involve Muslims fighting against Muslims, sadly, not only and necessarily in tanks and bombers and with guns and grenades, but also at some point with councils and dialogue, with open hands and peaceful hearts, a more costly jihad In this cultural “war” between resurgent Islamic fundamentalism and the more cultured, peaceful expressions of Islam, (which the world would rightly welcome), the West needs to gain new friends and new partners.

At the moment we have a more immediate problem, “who is fighting whom?” We hear much of the new coalition of the willing but decent, peaceful Arab Islamic peoples need now to stand up and be counted. The West cannot allow a situation to develop whereby it fights their war against barbarism, not only for them but also instead of them. Yes, this will draw the snipers crosshairs onto the House of Saud and the Gulf States themselves, but this will happen soon enough anyway.

We need to see in the West that these countries are indeed pulling their weight in the military war and in the cultural war. If not, we should pull out while there is still time. What is at stake here is the survival of Arab civilisation and culture and in the end only Arabs can both address and defend that for themselves.

My Guilty Little Secret

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:37:00 +0000

I grew up at a time when anything to do with Russia was inherently suspect and dangerous. Anyone who read the "Morning Star" (a Marxist newspaper) was suspected of treachery. Covert surveillance of the hard left in Britain was (and probably still is) commonplace. If you were Labour then you read the Mirror; Tory? the Times or the Telegraph for you; Liberal? the Guardian of course. This was a time when there were just 3 TV channels ... BBC 1, BBC2 and ITV. Then there were "D" notices ... the State denying publication under the Official Secrets Act (a sort of Wikileaks before Wikileaks). Public opinion was sustained by very limited media input and options. All that changed with Cable TV and the Internet.

There were of course losses as well as gains. The reliability of news on line was and is questionable. In some ways opportunities for propaganda distortion and just plain dotty fancifulness have grown exponentially. However, the real game changers have been choice and access. Today mostly everyone (except perhaps in China and Iran) can read whatever they want to read by way of news content and comment.

Shall I share with you my guilty secret? It amuses me that today I tend to trust RT (Russia Today) more than I trust SKY and even the BBC. Of course there is spin on RT just as much as there is spin anywhere else. It's just that their take on the news is a healthy corrective to what would otherwise be a very unbalanced monochrome western perspective on home and world events.

Interestingly, when I talk to my friends I discover that they also watch RT. It hugely amuses me that what the Politburo in Moscow could never achieve through Pravda after the War is now much more easily achieved (influence in the west that is) through the application of a little modern technology. No wonder totaliltarian regimes everywhere try and control and even throttle information exchange on the internet. The satellite dish has become the great democratic leveller. The people really are in charge now. It's just the politicians that need to catch up.

A lesson from history ....

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:56:00 +0000

The Peace of Westphalia ended the 30 Years War, a sectarian religious conflict that ravaged Europe in the mid seventeenth century. It established a principle of international law persisting to this day that Mr. Hague would do well to revisit. A sovereign state may not suffer military intervention from another state on account of internal domestic conflicts. It was the lack of such a tempering principle that spread sectarian violence throughout Europe at the time.

So, no matter how horrific the events inside Syria, proxy wars on behalf of combatants always spill over into regional conflicts (don't feed the terrorists) and can even lead to wider international conflicts. Remember that we declared war on Germany only when it invaded Poland. However, I am NOT saying that we shouldn't have done so if Nazism had confined itself to internal German affairs rather than try to build the Third Empire. Systematic mass killing and genocide must always be resisted BUT (and we should take lessons from Iraq and WMD) only with due authority (one of the priniciples of a "just war.")

Once again the US and the UK are beginning to act alone. Short of a UN declaration, the Syrian government is the legitimate authority in Syria. If there is a credible alternative to the present regime, colluding with armed insurrection and risking military hardware falling into the hands of jihadists is not the way to provide it.

Yes, it's horrible to see so much suffering in Syria but the choice is whether we want to see yet more suffering by external as well as internal escalation. The west needs to work with Russia in bringing the combatants to the peace table. If Russia is arming the government rather than the militias, however unpalatable that might be to some, it has international law on its side. This is not about sentiment but rather a hard nosed assessment of what will lead to a cessation of the violence and, thereafter, contribute to the long and hard business of healing wounds and building peace.

Sleep Walking toward the Abyss

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:25:00 +0000

A fire is raging. What do you do? Well, you get some petrol (gasoline) and you simply chuck it onto the flames. Absurd isn't it? And yet that is what many non-Syrian nations with their own agendas have been doing for the last 3 years. America is simply late to the infernal party.

Desperate to see the "rebels" prevail with the Syrian government now pushing back into the "rebel" held north there are some in Washington and London who think that Assad can be eased out by threats and pea shooters. Maybe it's just for show; who knows. What I do know is that "rebels" linked to Al Quaeda were apprehended at the end of May by Turkey in possession of a 2 Kg cannister of the sarin nerve agent that the west is now saying has been deployed by Syrian government forces, (WMD anyone?). The Al Nusra linked faction was apparently planning to export its terror campaign into southern Turkey. Oh yes, and then there was that park in Istanbul.

Shouldn't we be more alert to what is going on here? Terrorists always try and use violence to radicalise and divide otherwise peaceful movements so that the poison of their terror can spread by fear and loathing. It matters little what the antagonists believe or what the colour of their politics or religion happens to be ... just exploit it. Terrorism is always both parasitic and manipulative. That's what they always want ... war; war on the streets, war between the nations ... war so they might prevail.

The Syrian conflict, aided and abetted by these demonic forces now has all the essential ingredients of an international conflict, seeded by a self righteous proxy war between the "not-so-great" world powers. We may yet see a Third World War breaking out from this orchestrated nesting of evil. The First World War started from an arguably much less contentious situation. And what does the west do? Divide the world up into goodies (the "rebels") and the baddies (the Syrian government). In this the hawks can always rely on the impressionable consciences of the liberal left. Some American politicians are now actually talking about a "fair fight." How on earth is this at all helpful in reducing tension, brokering peace and bringing the amenable to the table? Arming one side against the other is just going to exacerbate and spread the conflict. Israel is getting nervous, as is Turkey and Lebanon is already being dragged into the dark vortex of sectarian violence.

What we need now is less propaganda, less pulling at heart strings to justify violent intervention and more hard nosed, even handed diplomacy, eschewing self interest, intimidation and threats. But who now has clean hands? Everyone (just about) whiffs of petrol and most are standing far, far too close to the fire. It does not look good. It does not look good at all but there may as yet be enough time to stop this one spinning out of control.

Wake up! Stop sleep walking toward the abyss! Shut up ... stop performing to the media and your electorate and work hard, damned hard, for peace. You know whom I'm talking to!

What to do about Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Tue, 28 May 2013 16:14:00 +0000

Western politicians mean well ... they are just naive.
Western politicians are duplicitous. They manipulate events to their own advantage.

I have heard both comments from Christians in and from the Middle East. The recent expiry of the arms embargo in the European Union means that the UK Government will soon be arming the anti-Government forces ... but WHICH anti-Government forces? How will our Government ensure that its arms do not fall into the hands of jihadists? Is there such a thing as a "good rebel" .... committed to freedom, democracy and a truly pluralistic Syria after Assad?

I personally believe that any military intervention by the west in Syria is at best unwise and potentially, disastrous. This is rapidly becoming a proxy war between Arab States in the Middle East and their oil hungry western backers and a Russian-Iranian axis concerned to protect its own interests in the region. It may may be a civil war at the moment but it has all the ingredients and precedents from history to become a regional then international conflict, even, God forbid, a Third World War.

Bashar in Damascus is not going to back down and his control of the south and readiness to retake the north is building momentum. Iran is not going to walk away from the Middle East and Hezbollah will continue to mobilise with fellow Shiites and derivative sects against Sunni insurgencies in traditionally Shiite controlled areas from Baghdad to Beirut. Western involvement in this mess is only going to make things worse ... and certainly for religious minorities such as Christians in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

It is very easy of course to get people emoting on 24/7 western news channels about the truly terrible suffering in Syria and then use that as a mandate for military intervention. But, the "cure" must not be worse than the disease. The so called rebels will never take Damascus and with the regime digging in and pushing back north to recoup their losses the straight choice is between the Balkanisation of Syria and attempting to foster its evolution towards an inclusive political settlement.

Only those with "clean hands" will be able to play a role in the second option, (the first is too terrible to contemplate). Today the UK stands at the crossroads. Will it genuinely become even handed and work with a coalition of the willing in Syria or will it tragically take sides - even more starkly than it has already done - and arguably make both the local and international situation much worse?

Credibility?

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 22:57:00 +0000

The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury (outgoing), Dr. Rowan Williams commented recently that the Church of England had "lost a measure of credibility" by rejecting women bishops. It is not for me to comment on the internal affairs of another Christian body. However, the issue of "credibility" is a good deal more complex than might be suggested by a rather superficial test of "acceptability" in the eyes of secular society.

The Church (and by that reference here I mean the ORTHODOX Church - western and eastern) prevailed over a persecuting Roman class in the 4th century not by being credible in this sense of "acceptable" but by the blood of the martyrs - as Tertullian characterised this, "the seed of the Church." "Credibility" has much more to do with faithfulness even unto death than with being acceptable to the mores of unbelievers.

If the Orthodox Church was ever to have women bishops it would not be because it felt that it needed to conform to a secular world view, perhaps that shared by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, who later opined in the House of Commons that the Church of England needed to "get with the programme." No, it would do so because quite independently it believed it to be God's will to do so in conformity with Scripture and Tradition and in the unity of the Church. There are many in the Anglican Communion who honestly hold to that position (albeit that Orthodoxy respectfully disagrees with their conclusions).

The lesson I take away with me from this sad affair is that Christians generally should seek credibility from the gospel rather than court respectability and acceptance in the eyes of the world. I don't expect that position to be popular or to make it easier for people in the short term to receive the gospel. But, will I sacrifice the gospel for a substitute secular standard of belief and witness? No, I will not.

So my argument is not with those who support women bishops on theological grounds (however much I might disagree with that position, and I do) but with those who believe that such issues should be addressed from outside the Church and according to contrary, extrinsic principles. Therein lies the authentic question of "credibility."

The Prince of Peace, the Dogs of War and the "Fox" on the side ...

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:04:00 +0000

The devastating blasts in both Damascus and Baghdad remind us that whatever is happening in the Middle East, it is certainly not simply a matter of human rights being defended by noble rebels. Of course in Syria, the rebels have been quick to point the finger at the government for an alleged black op. aimed at discrediting their own cause.

Since 9/11 most of the conspiracy theories peddled by Islamists have centred around similar accusations; namely that the destruction of the Twin Towers was orchestrated by the US Government in order to justify a "crusade against Islam." At the time and since the western media have not given any credence to such ridiculous and immoral accusations yet now when the same accusations are being made by destabilising elements in Syria all we get from the BBC is that "we have been unable to investigate such accusations." One has to ask whether or not the BBC has made any corresponding attempt to investigate the claims of US complicity in 9/11? Of course not! No democracy would do such a thing. I don't believe so either ... but neither do I believe such a thing of the Syrian government.

The key to understanding all of this is in the fracture in Islam between extreme Sunni and Shia elements ... Christians being caught in the Middle from Egypt to Baghdad. This is fairly good coverage of this ... here.

Everybody mostly now forgets that before the Gulf Wars there was a long and bloody conflict between Iraq (at that time largely Sunni led by a secular Baathist regime which persecuted its Shia and Kurdish citizens) and Iran (Shia ... with a long grudge match against the Sunni). It is no accident, therefore, that we are now witnessing the return of Al Quaeda (Sunni) backed insurgencies in BOTH Syria and Iraq simultaneously.... the Americans now having left Iraq and about to leave Afghanistan. In Egypt the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood are mobilising to Islamicise one of the few secular, democratic multicultural states left in the Middle East.

Why does the west get this so, so wrong, time after time? I have referred before on this Blog to two possible answers to this question. Western leaders ... stupid or cunning? In the Telegraph article linked above Fraser Nelson refers to the lack of concern in the UK Foreign Office about the plight of Christians being caught in the middle of this terrible internecine strife. It's hardly surprising if the naive liberal narrative of the so called "Arab Spring" is to believed. It leaves the sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia extremists out of the picture altogether. So, I must reluctantly conclude, "cunning, not stupid." That being the case, WHO is the "fox on the side" and what is his game? I genuinely don't know the answer to that question ... but it is the only question worth asking right now.

In the meantime Christians in the Middle and Near East are preparing to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, God Himself who became Incarnate in order to bring an end to sin and death. The real danger now is that we shall be pushed out by the Salafists who want a "pure" Egypt and Sunni insurgents in Syria and Iraq for whom Christians are simply seen as an alien element ... even though the Church predates Islam there by several centuries. Will the west lift a finger to protect us? I think not. The land of our Lord's birth and its environs may well become a "Christian free zone" within a generation ... something that not even the Ottomans achieved.

It's Just Not Fair!

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:42:00 +0000

The national strike by public sector workers might not have been a "damp squib" (David Cameron) but a minority vote call out was reflected in the numbers marching on our streets yesterday. It is extremely unlikely that the Coalition Government will improve on its offer to moderate the impact of pension reform, if only because the public piggy bank is empty. The government, in my view, has the economic argument with many years ahead of us of privation in the face of a global financial meltdown. It has, however, lost the political argument because the reforms are seen by many, including myself, to be unfair.

At the same time that low paid public sector workers are having their pay capped to 1% increases and are expected to pay more and work longer for the same benefit, the rich are largely untouched by these financial severities. Indeed with bonuses and salary increases approaching 50% in some sectors of City financial institutions, the claim that "we are all in it together" is manifestly absurd. If there is one thing you do not do in Britain it is to compromise our sense of "fair play" and if any government thinks that it can get away with squeezing the public sector and not at the same time discipline and reform the contemptuous fat cat scams that characterise parts of the private sector, it had better guard its electoral back.

For sure, we all know that sacrifices have to be made but when a highly privileged class of bailed out failures in the banking industry keep lining their own nests in the belief that they can sail through the present crises unscathed, then "It's Just Not Fair!" becomes a warning rather than a lament. The warning is in fact spiritual as well as temporal and political. Our Lord warned that it was exceedingly difficult for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven ... difficult but not impossible. The "difficulty" lies in the false worship of attachments to possessions and materialism as an ideology. As a down to earth Cheshire baboushka once remarked to me many years ago:- "Eh Father, there are no pockets in a shroud." There will be an accounting ... but at that time it won't be on a balance sheet.

Syria is not Libya

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:55:00 +0000

The west is making preparations for military involvement in both Syria and Iran. Superficially some may think that such action, particularly in relation to Syria is comparable to the intervention and overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. It is not. Libya was and is a uniformly Sunni Islamic country. Syria is not. Gaddafi had no friends in the Arab world. Assad may have few such friends now as well but Iran (also threatened) is a different matter. The Iranians are neither Arab nor Sunni and they are aligned with Syria.

If (God forbid) Syria should descend into civil war can the west be sure that Iran will not intervene if Syria is threatened? Maybe Hezbollah (Iran backed) will start agitating again in the Lebanon. How will Israel feel then? If Iran is herself attacked it will be a gift to Shiite propaganda that the Arab League is pro-western in this matter. Such sentiments are already being expressed by pro-Government demonstrations in Damascus (hardly insignificant in size and passion). We know that Al-Quaeda has no time for what it sees as quizling Sunni regimes whom it excoriates as doing anything to protect western oil revenues and the wealthy lifestyles that minority Sunni political classes enjoy in the modern, technocratic yet still feudal Gulf states. So, with Syria imploding, Iran exploding and yet more oil being poured on Islamist propaganda fires am I still to believe that the west is only concerned with human rights issues? As usual with Blairite interventionism one has to ask quite seriously whether western politicians in realpolitik terms are stupid or cunning. Straightforward they certainly are not. And this is in my name? More from the invariably reliable Robert Fisk ... Independent article.

Are Science and Religion Compatible?

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:03:00 +0000

I was invited to speak in favour of this motion at Manchester University tonight. This is the transcript of my initial contribution:-

I address you as an Orthodox Christian priest ... by which I mean I belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church as found today in Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but now also in the west. This is important because not all Christians take the same approach to theology; and in this regard we Orthodox Christians do not get involved in so called “proofs for the existence of God.” Tonight, however, I am addressing something quite different than proving the existence of God, but rather the question: Are science and religion compatible?

1. Let me begin by pointing out firmly that bad religion and bad science are not compatible. But what do I mean by “bad religion” and “bad science”?

2. Bad religion seeks to challenge science in part or in whole as an alternative explanation for how the world works. Religion, however, has no competence to explain why the wind blows, why my eyes are blue or what happened at the moment of creation. These questions, these explanations, belong to science and science alone. The world is full of bad religion transgressing its limits, quite aside from the terror and violence of which it is sometimes capable. In creationist museums in the southern states of North America, for example, humans walk with dinosaurs in 6000 BC, whilst elsewhere some religious leaders, influenced by both “bad science” and “bad religion” continue their relentless efforts to infiltrate secular institutions in order to suppress scientific freedom. Unfortunately, fundamentalism is on the rise again, particularly in the west; and this is not good either for religion or for science.

3. Bad science, however, commits its own errors in turn. Bad science seeks to characterise all religion as “bad” - that is - superstitious, redundant, lazy, fundamentalist, obscurantist, unconcerned with evidence and meaningless in its information content. Now if ALL religion were like that then I would readily join forces with the atheists. Happily, however, not all religion is like this.

4. Bad science goes on to declare anything that cannot be measured and theorised as infantile thumb sucking or incomprehensible gobble-dee-gook. Emboldened, it then breaches the limits of the scientific method by asserting its own faith statements, namely, that the Cosmos is without purpose and that human morality has little if no transcendent, universal grounding. Therefore, with bad science masquerading as religion, the most one can hope for in a pointless universe is merely the chance of an excess of happiness over misery; and if intractable misery is to be our lot then stoicism is the best option in the face of such suffering and unhappiness. One cannot and should not hope for anything more.

5. Now, let’s get more positive. What about good science and good religion? Good science does not trespass the boundary of its own sphere of operation - which is to account for the world as it is. With the understanding that good science brings, as it is constantly revised and refined in the face of new data and discoveries, human society becomes better adapted to its environment and the blessings of scientific progress become clear. There is, therefore, a certain evolutionary relevance of science in the remarkable development of the human species. Without good science we would all still be stuck in the proverbial cave, sacrificing our first born to appease the rain gods. Once we understand the importance of good science for all of humanity, perhaps some will not feel so threatened by science as a whole.

6. Good religion produces holiness, compassion and justice through a relationship with the divine. Now I am definitely NOT saying that such transparent goodness ONLY comes from an explicit faith in God ... far from it. According to Judaeo-Christian-Islamic teaching we are ALL made in the image and likeness of God; and we should expect to see the goodness of God in ALL human life, irrespective of religion. But some of us, perhaps many of us, can only be transformed by goodness through a personal, loving relationship with God. Science can describe this search for goodness and this relationship with God in its evolutionary aspects in terms of human psychology and personal and community behaviour, including the striving for altruism and self-sacrifice. Good science can even explain goodness in naturalistic terms through neuro-chemical processes in our brains and the emergence of consciousness, but good science cannot judge one way or the other whether the God at the other end of this putative relationship exists or not. Neither can religion “prove” such a God or its insights into how to live in the world and relate to others as being eminently sound. However, what good religion can do is offer an invitation and an example, as the psalmist says, to:- “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

7. Now all of this has nothing to do with the disastrous attempt of bad religion to explain the world and its natural operations with revealed faith rather than scientific enquiry. Orthodox Christianity say against this:- “God does not explain anything. Things explain God.” What do I mean by this statement?

Orthodox Christians do not believe in God in order to satisfy their ignorance about the world; in short, to give them a comforting bogus alternative to the operations of science. We need to start the other way round, with the operations of science and seek to understand how thereby creation reveals God. One of our 7th century saints, Maximos the Confessor, put it like this:

“The Word conceals Himself mysteriously for our sakes within the rational principles of creatures and thus He reveals Himself accordingly through the visible things as through some written signatures as a whole in His fullness from the whole of nature .... the Invisible in the visible, the ungraspable in tangible things.” (Ambigua 33)

So whenever science discovers something about the natural world, that itself is a hymn of praise to the Creator, even if science itself must not put it in those terms.

8. With the aphorism:- “God does not explain anything, things explain God” clearly understood, religion and science can then walk side by side and contribute each other’s truths (with a small “t”) to the one Truth of humanity (with a capital “T”) in all its diverse forms. That unifying Truth affirms the reality and the relevance of both good science and good religion. We can all be empowered to seek that fullness of Truth in our different paths without attacking each other but by listening and learning with humility and grace.

9. Believers will say that the one composite Truth has its ultimate source in God. However, accepting that this ultimate source is in God is not necessary in order to discover some important aspects of the Truth by using all those diverse and complementary means that we have developed whether scientific, artistic, humanistic or religious. Truth is one and it must not be allowed in human terms to destroy itself from within through futile competition between its several parts. Good science and good religion, therefore, are indeed compatible. We each have personal responsibilities to advance that harmonious interaction by the way we live our lives. We each make our own personal choices, but I deeply believe that humans together can choose to advance both good science and good religion for the benefit of us all.

A Very Old Fashioned Atheist

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:48:00 +0000

I attended a disappointing debate tonight at Manchester University ... a face off between the atheist Professor Peter Atkins and the Christian apologist and philosopher, Dr. William Craig. I say disappointing because Atkins proved to a very old fashioned atheist, not in any way a match for the erudition and sparkling brilliance of Craig.

Atkins is one of the last of a dwindling breed of positivist atheists of the old school in whose company we might number Bertrand Russell and Freddie Ayer. Atkins is a chemist so we should not be surprised that, without quoting him, he should venerate the great Laplace who famously declared concerning God: "I have no need of that hypothesis."

For Atkins "God" is simply a ridiculous competing explanatory principle for the world that science and science alone must decode. On this ground he was as equally excoriating of philosophy as theology. So "God sneezes and the east wind doth blow." This is very old hat "God-of-the-gaps-stuff." Apart from a "Christians eat babies" type horror story at the end of the debate about a fundamentalist pastor instructing his faithful to throw away their pill bottles he had only one theme, and that belonged to Laplace. Of course we also had some extraordinarily blind asides. Consider Voltaire's "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities." So, who exactly were the architects of the "Reign of Terror" then? Be careful of that old lady who believes in faeries .... she may be prove to be an axe murdress!

Anyway my main point is that there seems to be an intellectual deterioration in these atheists. They have become irrational angry old men, somewhat disoriented by the fact that religion has not withered on the vine as they had once hoped. Reduced to emotive rhetoric and unsubstantiated declarations on the folly of religion and the impossibility of miracles Atkins failed even to evoke sympathy in his hearers (judged by the length of the applause; unaccountably the floor was not allowed to speak). No wonder that Dawkins would not debate with Craig. I doubt whether any of these popularising atheists (old or new) would have proved his match. Bring it on!

A Future for British Orthodoxy

noreply@blogger.com (Father Gregory) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:09:00 +0000

This blog has been inactive for a long time. I apologise to those readers who have come here occasionally expecting to see something vaguely interesting. The truth is that the three years until the summer I had been writing, albeit with much help, a series of 100 lectures forming part of our E-quip Diploma Orthodox Christian education program. This, combined with other teaching duties in the church dragged me away from the blogosphere. With E-quip now in place and the assistance of a deacon, Father Christopher and Subdeacon Emmanuel, I am now able to return to this blog and perhaps offer you something interesting to ponder from time to time.

British culture is strange and I speak as an Englishman. We have a reputation for being anti-intellectual yet our history has contributed some of the best minds on the planet. We were on the ground floor of the Industrial Revolution and yet we seem strangely ambivalent about its fruits, especially in the modern era. We have no written constitution and seem strangely deferential to the ruling class rather to the right or to the left. However, our radical tradition from religion through politics to humour is as strong as ever. Of course we could be simply conflicted and messed up, not really sure what path we should follow, continually vacillating between different traditions and options. Personally I take a more positive position. Putting this all together I think we treasure personal freedom and are suspicious by nature of absolutism and fanaticism. We are not without passion and commitment but this is rarely clothed with rigid ideology or unquestioned dogma. We are only slowly roused to action yet when crises present themselves, we rise to our best.

I present this little vignette of our culture because I want to make a point about Christianity here in these islands. With the possible exception of Celtic sectarianism (which arguably has roots in disagreeable English attitudes and actions) imposed religious conformity simply does not work in Great Britain. We do not believe things because someone of great importance has told us that we should. We make our own mind up. Yet, for all this, we have a deep and strong feeling for traditional expressions of faith and life which are nonetheless open and in dialogue with contemporary culture. For centuries (perhaps since the 14^th) the British have known that something has gone radically wrong with the Christian Church. Many at the Reformation thought that they had found the answer. Protestantism particularly appealed to that idiosyncratic and rebel streak in our national psyche. Many who still think about these things have concluded in more recent times that these reformed traditions have not proven durable. From the melancholic abandoned Welsh chapels of the revival to the steady post-war decline in all the denominations it can be clearly seen that Christianity in its more usual variants lays flat out and unconscious, unable to stir itself and stand against a new, aggressive secularism and atheism. Notwithstanding the fact that our historic antipathy towards Rome remains intact only by virtue of lingering national prejudices, few seriously expect Christian renewal to come from that direction. The two cultures, national and religious remain too disparate.

Orthodox Christianity from which we might and should expect much has not yet woken up to the parlous spiritual state of this nation. However, there are hopeful signs that some Orthodox with a different national, cultural and linguistic heritage are indeed waking up to the fact that this is not a nation whose way of life and mores is any longer informed, influenced and guided by its historic heterodox confessions. Now is the time, therefore, when we, as the Catholic and Apostolic Church of these Isles need to rise to the occasion and present Christianity as it truly is; not a dead and failing institution but a vibrant, compassionate, historical and fresh expression of the God who for our sake took flesh and the humanity of every culture and place in order to redeem it. At its generous best, Orthodox Christianity has a character which is supremely fitted to the best of our own British culture and although this applies to every nation under heaven the Orthodox Church must not be slow in recognising the possibilities presented to it by God in order to connect with that right here and right now.