Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Road to Theocratic Authoritarianism - Lazar Puhalo

We are in a transitional stage in which much of the popular certainty of the postwar era is slowly fading. In such an era, and when politics is no longer an elitist enterprise but a more populist one, the politician who can rouse the passions of the crowd will gain a larger following than the politician who appeals to reason. Once a person becomes a member of the crowd which is being mesmerized by a populist politician, that person ceases to think completely for himself and absorbs the passion of the mesmerized crowd. Cognitive dissonance easily becomes epidemic.

Mussolini

This was certainly true of Mussolini, the father of fascism. It was an example that every dictator, no matter how immoral and irrational he may be, has followed with some success. In such a transitional era, reason is easily abandoned to the passion of the moment.

In many ways, Mussolini was an idiot, but one who understood crowd mentality and how to manipulate a crowd through its fear and passions and the abandonment of reason and even deeply cherished ideals. This can also happen in the politics of religion, and religion is easily contorted into a fear-based moralistic political ideology. This has happened in our midst in the most recent time.
Once such a populist dictator gains power, it is almost impossible to remove him without assassination. A populist dictator is narcissistic and sociopathic. He can be concerned only with his own power and can thrive on crowd-power as long as he can keep a substantial portion of the populace mesmerized by fear and immune to reason and reality. He will instinctively manipulate the sense of abandonment that traumatises a significant segment of the population in social/cultural transition periods.

On the Nature of Sin - Abp Lazar Puhalo

Faith is an orientation of the soul, not an accord with a collection of facts. If sin ultimately means alienation from God, then its cure, true repentance, must consist in a re-orientation of one's mind, soul and life toward Jesus Christ and His great moral imperatives.

WHAT DOES "SIN" MEAN?

The term in Greek ('amartia) means "to fall short of the goal, miss the mark, fall short of one's proper vocation.”

This term is rendered in Latin as "sons," "sontis," which means "guilt; guilty," and has a forensic significance. We can see already that there is an important difference here. The terms used in Holy Scripture ('amartia, etc.) refer to something far greater than the Latin term used to translate them. The Latin term (and the understanding usually given to the word in English) is legalistic and juridical and understood in a forensic sense.

Perhaps, also, the absence of an awareness of the meaning of the concept of “energies,” both as Paul uses the word, as the holy fathers have expressed the word, and as we understand it in a more “human” context. Sin is the misuse of our energies, and vice or addiction is a habitual misuse of our energies. Repentance is the re-orientation of the soul toward God through Jesus Christ. It has to do with the struggle to discover and use our energies in a proper manner our energies. “Energy” concerns relationships. We know God through His uncreated energy, which we call Grace. Our relationships with other human beings involve the proper use of our created energies. Perhaps this is the underlying meaning of Christ's two great commandments, which, He said, are the foundation of all the law and the prophets, “love the Lord your God with your whole being, and your neighbour as yourself.”

This can be accomplished only through the proper use of our energies. Ironically, the juridical concept of sin also lowers and degrades the concept of morality. If sin is only a violation of the law, then morality consists only in obeying the law. Such morality could not contribute to one's salvation but could only render one as hypocritical as the Pharisees and as alienated from Christ as the rich young ruler (Mt.16:19- 12).

It was, and is, in fact, perfectly lawful for righteous and moral “pharisees” to throw a poverty-stricken widow out of her house if she owed them money or they held a lien on the house (see Mt.23:14). In the same way modern "prosperity gospel" moral evangelicals could foreclose on a poor widow's mortgage or lien without violating a law so that it would be a perfectly moral act from a juridical, forensic point of view.

"Sin" does not refer simply to a "violation of the law" which is "punished by God's justice." “Sin” can be any act, physical or mental, that creates an alienation of one from God. God is not alienated from us; we become estranged from Him.

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The Feast of the Conscience – Abp Lazar Puhalo

The Feast of the Conscience – Lazar Puhalo

Let us think of today as the feast of the conscience, because our conscience is our judge.

The holy fathers tell us that even on Judgment Day when the Lord is present, our conscience will be our judge. When we behold the glory and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, healing all things, our conscience will tell us whether we’re sheep or goats, to the right or to the left. Our conscience stands forth, either excusing or accusing us, on the day when the secrets of man's heart are revealed.

If you think a little bit about it—how often our conscience challenges our thoughts and our actions, and how often we, with our free will decide to override our conscience—or how often we’re tempted to do something, and our conscience tells us that one we dearly love is going to be hurt if we take that action. So, both our love and the work of conscience turns us back, and we do not commit that sin.

We know that if we override our conscience too often—when it warns us about a certain deed— we can develop an addiction. For an addiction is really when our will and desire overrules our conscience. Once we do it a few times, then we will do it continuously so that becomes an addiction. In this life and through the great fast, the Great Lent, this is when we struggle to give our conscience the highest voice, the loudest voice. We’re struggling through Great Lent toward the purification of our conscience—to bring the heart and our conscience and the community in accord with one another.

Remember that your conscience is your judge when you depart this life.

Sometimes we call it "the partial judgment." It simply means that your conscience informs you of how you stand in the face of the love and glory of Jesus Christ.

The minute you depart this life, your conscience rehearses before you all the negative things all the positive things and lets you know what judgment you face on the day of the Resurrection. And on that day, when there's nothing to be seen except the love and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, like a river of fire that flows in our midst, your conscience will tell you, “You are on the left side of the river of fire or over on the right side of the river of fire.”

Will the river of fire be joy, light, and rejoicing in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or will the river of fire burn your conscience like everlasting flames, that the passions you try to retain in this life will be like the worm and that never dies, that nags at your conscience forever,…until the suffering of your conscience becomes a redeeming suffering and moves us from one side of the river across to the other.

Just use this time of Lent to struggle, to strengthen your will, to abide by your conscience and strengthen yourself so you can hear your conscience more loudly, so you can hear it more clearly.

And we cannot fear because God never harms his creatures, he never harms his creation, and he not going to harm you either, neither in this life nor the life to come. He has nothing but mercy and love for his poor, benighted creatures.

Our conscience will be the scourge, so let us try to live in peace and harmony with our own conscience. Don’t make it an adversary and don't be an adversary to our conscience. But listen to the words of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ and try your best to abide by it, knowing that however you fall short, our Lord Jesus Christ picks you up and he makes up the difference for you.

If we believe God, it will be accounted to us for righteousness from generation to generation, as Abraham believed God and it was accounted for him for righteousness.

Brothers and sisters, try to make this fast meaningful. Try to grow spiritually through it and you’ll notice the benefits of the peace and reconciliation that come with striving. Let the fast help you to purify your conscience, purify your will, purify your soul. Make it pure for the heavenly Kingdom. The gates of the Heavenly Kingdom will open before you and our Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit will receive you.

The Mystic & the Lawyer - the Nature of Redemption - Lazar Puhalo

The Orthodox concept of redemption may be briefly epitomized as follows: the meaning of "atonement" is really "to remove (or overcome) the cause of separation." In other words, man is alienated from God by sin (by his constant "missing of the mark"), and so he is in bondage to death.

Since man sins continually due to the power of death (which is held by Satan), sin alienates man from God, and death perpetuates the separation (and vice versa). By death, we fall short (again, by "missing the mark"—sin) of our original destiny, which is to live through unity with the Creator. We are ransomed by Christ from the power of death so that we can become partakers of the divine essence and share in immortality, which belongs to God alone. Being ransomed from the power and fear of death, we are thus redeemed from bondage to the Evil One, a bondage that has been affected and strengthened by our own sinful passions. Christ did not die to save us from God, as the neo-pagan doctrine of “substitutionary sacrifice atonement” teaches.

The following summary of the Orthodox teaching about redemption is drawn from various works by Fr John Romanides:

Christ saves men who have fallen through their own fault into the power of the devil by breaking that power. He became Man for this purpose; He lived and died and rose again so that He might break the chains by which men were bound. It is not His death alone but the entire Incarnation, of which His death was a necessary part, that freed men from their captivity to Satan.

By becoming Man, living a sinless life, and rising from the dead (which He could not have done unless He had first died), He introduced a new power into human nature. This power is bestowed on all men who are willing to receive it, through the Holy Spirit. Those who receive it are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church; the corrupted human nature (the bad habits and evil desires, which St Paul calls "the old man": Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) is driven out by degrees until at last it is expelled altogether, and the redeemed person becomes entirely obedient to the will of God, as our Lord Himself was when on earth. The prisoner is set free from the inside; both his mind and body are changed; he comes to know what freedom is, to desire it, and, by the Holy Spirit working within him, to break his chains, turn the key and leave the dungeon.

Thus he is freed from the power of sin. God forgives him as an act of pure love, but the condition of his forgiveness is that he must sin no more. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8-9). but if we wilfully continue to be sinners, Christ's death for us will have been in vain. We are made capable of ceasing to be sinners by the power of Christ's Resurrection, which has given us the power to struggle against sinfulness toward moral perfection.

The advantage of this Orthodox teaching is that it is firmly based on the New Testament. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19); the act of reconciliation is effected by God in the Person of His Son, for it is man that needs to be reconciled to God, not God that needs to be reconciled to man.

Throughout the New Testament, we find the proclamation that Christ has broken the power of the devil, to which mankind was subject (see Lk. 10:17-18); 11:22; 1 Cor. 15:25; Gal.1:4; Col. 2:15; 2 Tm.1:10; Hb.2:14; Jn.10:11; 12:31; 16:11; 1Jn.3:8; and frequently in Revelation).

Moreover, this teaching of the atonement requires no "legal fiction" and attributes no immoral or unrighteous action to God. Man is not made suddenly good or treated as good when he is not good; he is forgiven not because he deserves to be forgiven but because God loves him, and he is made fit for union with God by God's own power, his own will cooperating. He is saved from the power of sin by the risen life of Christ within him, and from the guilt of sin by God's forgiveness, of which his own repentance is a condition.

Thus, salvation consists in the union of the faithful with the life of God in the Body of Christ (the Holy Church), where the Evil One is being progressively and really destroyed in the life of co-suffering love. This union is effected by Baptism (the Grace of regeneration) and fulfilled in the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ and in the mutual, cooperative struggle of Orthodox Christians against the power and influence of the Evil- One. This is precisely why the last words of the "Lord's Prayer" are, "deliver us from the Evil-One," and not "deliver us from evil."

 

 

Corporatism, Commonweal, and Just Society - Lazar Puhalo

INTENT AND CONCEPT

Since we are going to be discussing corporatism and commonweal in various contexts, we should say something about these two concepts. Corporatism is a basic principle of fascism. It seeks to curtail individualism, not in the context of commonweal – the common good – but in the sense of top-down control and order in society. It seeks to organise society into a hierarchy of corporate [not to be confused with capitalist corporations] structures that require conformity, severely limiting or even curtailing altogether individualistic liberties and actions.

This structured hierarchy corporatises behavioural norms according to a given ideology. Every aspect of society can be corporatised in order to produce a culture conforming to a given ideology. Education, religion, morality, and every external form of behaviour must be regulated in order to impose this ideological concept in a matrix interpretation of the "norm." This corporate structure is imposed and enforced by an arbitrary system of law.

Such a system falls under a general ideology known as “fascism.” It can be a secular civil construct or a heavily moralistic religious arbitrary “theocratic” construct.

There are other understandings and levels of corporatism, but we are using the ideological concept outlined above, which is the general form used to create a fascist society, usually with a deformed and corrupted variation of crony capitalism which curtails individualism and individual creativity of a new form which might interfere with the centrally controlled structure of social order and economic structures.

While Canada was originally shaped with the "Red Tory" idea of commonweal as opposed to a radical, self-centred individualism, commonweal is understood as "the common good expressed within a political system of democracy and individual liberties." In this system, capitalism is regulated only to the degree that is necessary for stability, justice, and fairness. Civil society is also regulated as little as possible while ensuring such things as equal healthcare for everyone and a regulated social safety net that provides for the commonweal, the common good, for the whole of society without impinging upon civil liberties but ensuring the greatest scope of civil liberties that are permitted in a peaceful and cohesive society. This presupposes freedom in such realms as religion and reasonable concepts of morality, a variety of political parties within a cohesive and democratic nationhood. The operational ideology in such a society is "democracy and the greatest scope of civil liberties as can be afforded in a united and orderly culture." In Canada, this is well expressed in The Canadian Charter. We will be mainly interested in discussing the idolatry of corporatising religion and morality, the idolatry and blasphemy of an ideological, arbitrary authoritarian “theocracy.”

Within these concepts, there are variations, of course, but these are the concept within which we are writing. Having established this framework, let us continue.

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Abp Lazar Puhalo - Social & Economic Trinity, Essence & Energies

Supplement by Abp. Lazar

Perhaps at the root of the problem is a misunderstanding about ekonomia.

The concept is that when "akrivia" [the strict application of a canon or doctrine] might actually hinder someone's salvation–or even emotional and mental health– we apply economy, which is really the opposite of akrivia [strictness].

Allowing remarriage after a divorce is a clear example, and is especially necessary for young people who are not able to tightly control their sex drive.

Another example is when we receive people and to the Orthodox Church through chrismation if they have been baptized in a trinitarian church. Reception by chrismation does not become the "principle" but rather is an exercise in economy. The Chrismation would be seen as a form of ordination into the Royal priesthood. We do not thereby declare that the baptism was complete, but we exercise economy for the sake of someone's salvation.

I am not clear about what some people are trying to make of ekonomia.

The economy of our Saviour is really this: we could not on our own recover paradise, in the alienation between man and God, so strictness was set aside, and Christ, in himself, abolished the alienation. Men could not rise up to heaven, so Heaven descended to men.

I don't know what convoluted twist some people are trying to make of this. Our Christian social programme should be the Beatitudes and the moral imperatives given by Jesus Christ.

We are far off the track when we understand "justice" in a juridical sense and do not understand it as "balancing matters," restoring the balance in nature and the balance in the relationship between God and Man.

Ekonomia simply means "relinquishing strictness in order to facilitate salvation."

We also have to extend that to matters where strictness would mentally and emotionally damage a person. That has to be the only real definition of "social economy." Ekonomia can only be understood in the context of soteriology.

"Jesus Christ is going to touch you today" - Abp. Lazar Puhalo

"Jesus Christ is going to touch you today"
A Pre-Communion Exhortation by Abp. Lazar Puhalo
All Saints of North America Monastery - October 23, 2022

Transcript below video

Luke 7:11-16

At that time, Jesus went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother.

Fear seized them all; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!"

Preparation for Communion

Brothers and sisters, today, as we approach communion, it is well that you believe in Jesus Christ. But do you believe Jesus Christ? Do you understand what the Law was about? Today, Jesus Christ gave us a revelation about what the Law was truly about. In the Old Testament, a dead body was unclean. If you would touch that body, you couldn't even enter the Temple because you were rendered unclean.

But how did God define the Law? If you were the High Priest and you were heading for the Temple to serve the liturgy—even to enter the Holy of Holies—according to the Law of Moses, you were unclean if you touched a dead body and entered the Temple.

But according to the explanation of the Law that was given, if you were the High Priest, vested to go to the Temple to serve, and you came upon a dead body but there was no one to bury them, then you should take the body yourself, carry it, and bury it properly. because the law of Mercy is greater than the law of cleanliness [or purity].

But today as we approach Holy Communion, we come near to the body of Jesus Christ. And we understand that this time, it is a life-giving body—that this time, the touch of Jesus Christ raises our souls from spiritual deadness and fills us with life again. When we approach Holy Communion, the only thing that should be in our mind is that our Lord Jesus Christ is offering himself to us—that he is actually reaching out to touch what is considered unclean. To touch our dead souls—to touch the deadness in our hearts and give us life—to quicken our spirits and raise us up from the dead works of the world around us

The Law came from Moses but grace and peace through Jesus Christ, who manifested God in his true nature to us. He is the very Image of the Creator, the very image and likeness of the Godhead, bodily. And he reveals the true nature of God to us, whereas before, we had only an idolatrous idea about God.

So today, as you approach for Holy Communion, bear it in your mind that Jesus Christ is reaching out and touching us, who might be, according to the Law, unclean—and raising us to life—to new life—to spiritual life—to everlasting life. Today, we receive that grace and peace of Jesus Christ in the Holy Mysteries of the communion of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And why did he establish this ritual to give us his body and blood at every liturgy, except to call us back out of the deadness of the world into the life of the kingdom of God. When we receive Holy Communion, we manifest the fact that we're citizens of the kingdom of God, that we a royal priesthood, that we are a kingdom of priests.

So today, as you approach Holy Communion, contemplate in your mind as you prepare what it actually means—what it means that Jesus Christ is going to touch you today and enter into your being today and raise you from the deadness of the world around you, and the dead works of the world around you, and the vanities of the world around us.  And for this moment, to raise you, as it were, from spiritual death and bestow upon you that life that comes only from God and only from union with God. For God is life, and to be separated from God is death. To be United with God Is life.

Today, Jesus Christ will unite us with God through his own precious body and blood, and remind us again that what the world might consider unclean in its own folly, Jesus Christ considers clean and makes clean through his touch.

The only thing that can render you unclean, according to Saint John Chrysostom, is an evil disposition or a heart turned against God and turned against neighbour. Today, Jesus Christ invites us to turn toward God and toward neighbour—to receive him, to receive his touch, to receive the touch of life that makes us worthy, no matter how unclean, to enter into the Temple and receive the things of the altar—to receive the things from the Holy of Holies, because the Law of Mercy is greater than the Law of purity.

The Law of love and mercy is greater than every kind of Law because love is greater than law. As you prepare yourself to approach for Holy Communion in these few minutes, try to contemplate what it means that you're about to do—to partake of the Holy Mysteries. So you can truly rejoice in heart, having been touched with the gift of life from our Lord and God.

For the Unity of One Church - David Goa, Abp Lazar Puhalo, Dr. Petros Vassiliados

In launching the new book, For the Unity of One Church, David Goa hosts a conversation with the editors, Abp Lazar Puhalo and Dr. Petros Vassiliados. They discuss key issues around church unity, the female diaconate, and the impact of the war in Ukraine. The video conversation is sponsored by Saint Macrina Orthodox Centre, based at the All Saints of North America Monastery in Dewdney, BC Canada. 

The book is an anthology of theology papers composed by theologians, clerics, and professors from across North America and Europe.  

For the Unity of One Church can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle:

https://www.amazon.ca/UNITY-ONE-CHURCH-CHRIST/dp/B0B7QRGXCP

https://www.amazon.com/UNITY-ONE-CHURCH-CHRIST/dp/B0B7QRGXCP

 

Mystical Theology - Lazar Puhalo

Mystical theology deals with the inner person, with his spiritual development and growth toward the ultimate goal of theosis. It cannot deal with the natural world. The natural world is its own mystery, but the spiritual development and transformation of the "inner person," must ultimately be dealt with and mystical theology, in the meaning of spiritual struggle and the chosen will to make this inner evolution take place, toward a transformation of the spiritual man, without ever making a sharp divide between the spiritual and the physical in mankind. Being religious in itself will not accomplish this. We see highly religious people doing incredibly wicked things and justifying them on the basis of their religion.

Orthodox Christian mystical theology deals precisely with that problem, and it deals with it in a personal, person-by-person, manner. At the same time, it calls upon Orthodox Christians as a community, nor its collections of communities, to strive toward that inner transformation. The inner transformation of communities is powered by the liturgical cycle, preeminently the Divine Liturgy, but matins, Vespers, and all the other liturgical services. First and foremost, it calls upon us to strive to acquire unselfish love and to move from there to Co-suffering love. We must be led away from the common and sometimes meaningless use of the word "love." Sometimes we use the word "love" as an excuse for hating people or declaring them outcasts and subhuman.

When we talk about the transformation of the inner human person, we are not talking about mystified moralism. Rather they struggle to become truly moral persons by nature. This does not mean becoming "as miserable as possible" as is often presented. This takes place in the spiritual realm but should be directly manifested in our outer relations with the humanity around us and the world in general.

Other forms of theology, our anthropology and understanding of the way culture and society actually work, and our understanding of the natural world must be on a different plane and cannot always be informed directly by our mystical theology. A theology of anthropology and of the natural world that does not take the principle of evolution into account is really not worth very much, but rather serves only to obfuscate reality. The evolution of the species is a fact which, in the words of the late Archbishop Vitaly (Ustinov) "can be denied, but not successfully."

Any cosmological or anthropological theology which denies evolution is simply false and likely ideological. A theology that does not recognise the creation narrative in the Book of Genesis as allegorical and revealing about the human nature but not the origins of the cosmos, cannot be taken seriously any longer. Perhaps 1500 years ago, it could be seen as historical, but now a presentation of it as factual and historical is simply mythological, and those who try to perpetuate it as literal are simply the ones who are mythologising it.

We need to approach our theology of the cosmos and our anthropology free of ideology – and religious doctrines can quite easily become ideology – and in the context of what is not known for certain through science, otherwise, we are doing the Faith itself a great disservice and doing a great disservice to the faithful.

Any cosmological or anthropological theology which denies evolution is simply false and likely ideological. A theology that does not recognise the creation narrative in the Book of Genesis as allegorical and revealing about the human nature but not its origins, cannot be taken seriously any longer. Perhaps 1500 years ago, it could be seen as historical, but now a presentation of it as factual and historical is simply mythological, and those who try to perpetuate it as literal are simply the ones who are mythologising it.

We need to approach our theology of the cosmos and our anthropology free of ideology – and religious doctrines can quite easily become ideology – and in the context of what is not known for certain through science, otherwise, we are doing the Faith itself a great disservice and doing a great disservice to the faithful.

Homily on The Feast of the Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos - Apb. Lazar Puhalo

Symposium I: Morality vs. Moralism - Lazar Puhalo with David Goa & Bradley Jersak

Overcoming Alienation through Narcotics Anonymous - Abp. Lazar Puhalo

Lazar Puhalo

Overcoming Alienation through Narcotics Anonymous

 

One thing I look forward to during the week is our Narcotics Anonymous meeting at the monastery.

 

The longer I participate in it, the more I realise that sin is not our problem – alienation is the problem and sins are only some symptoms of it. That we are alienated from God – that is the correct understanding of the story of Adam and Eve and of the fall. This is so essential to understand, and we must put away from our hearts all thoughts of the juridical heresy of “Original Sin.”

 

Because of our alienation from God, we can also become alienated from each other, and from our own selves. Understanding this latter fact – alienation from one's own self – is of the utmost importance if one wishes to actually help anyone or support them in their struggle.

We may have 50 people in our Narcotics Anonymous group at any one time, but when we are gathered together, no one is alienated from the rest of the group. Everyone there is gathered with a people who understand them and know the meaning of their pain and suffering, of their trauma. No one is being made to feel that they are in alienation because of their race, past, colour, or sexual orientation. This is starkly unlike most religions –from so much of Christianity and Islam in particular. Everyone at N.A. is open to each other, to support them in their struggle, and to assure them that they are not alienated from those around them. That is one of the main healing features, and it is also one of the reasons why religion fails so often when it tries to help people who are addicted: our moralisation. Our penchant for trying to moralise everything often makes it impossible for us to help people who are truly traumatized, suffering, and in need.

 

One thing we are trying to do in our N.A. group is to help people discover an inner strength that they themselves have but did not know that they had. So far, I have never met anyone in the group who was truly an atheist.

 

We too often look for some "hypothetical moral issue" when dealing with people who have these traumas, when we should be looking at understanding their inner suffering and the source of their various alienations. Instead of "convicting them of their sin" (as the sectarians like to say), we help them to overcome their alienations.

This is the greatest value that I see in the Narcotics Anonymous movement.

Lazar Puhalo - "Born of Water and Spirit" - Baptism in the Womb of the Virgin Bride

"Testing the Spirit" - Lazar Puhalo

QUESTION: Vladika, can you say something about the meaning of "testing the Spirit." What does that mean and can you give an example?

 

REPLY: One of the surest ways in our regular experience to "test the Spirit" is in the Divine liturgy. Ask yourself if, when the priest exclaims "let us depart in peace," has he left you in a condition where you can do that? The Divine Liturgy will always bring you to a spirit of peace, hope and joy. If you find yourself driven into an unpeacefulness during the liturgy it will be because of the sermon that the priest has given.

 

We have priests who would try to imitate the fanaticism of certain Evangelicals, raving, shouting preaching in an agitated and very unpeaceful manner, often gesticulating, waving their arms about and pacing back and forth like a man possessed or with some kind of mental illness.

 

But even without all the theatrics, if a priest is regularly preaching sermons that agitate your soul and agitate you against other people, then he is not preaching the gospel, rather he is preaching from his own passions, out of the fullness of his own heart, out of his own agitation of soul and unpeaceful spirit.

 

Too often, some of our priests who have forgotten for the moment that they are Orthodox rather than fundamentalist sectarians, will preach "culture wars," and secular politics rather than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Did Christ preach the "sermon on the Mount" with agitated unpeaceful shouting, waving of arms and pacing about in an agitated manner?

 

The Divine liturgy brings us to the threshold of that "peace that passes all understanding," and while the priest may preach in a strong and firm manner, if he is truly Orthodox he will not be preaching in a raving, hysterical, gesticulating and unpeaceful manner. He will remember that the sermon is a part of the liturgy and is, therefore, liturgical in itself.

The Nature of Redemption - Lazar Puhalo

The mystery of redemption is co-suffering love, not divine revenge in the form of a substitutionary sacrifice.

The Orthodox concept of redemption may be briefly epitomized as follows. While “atonement” is not a usual Orthodox Christian term or expression, we may look at its actual meaning. "Atonement" is really "to remove (or overcome) the cause of separation." In other words, man is alienated from God by sin (that is, by his constant "missing of the mark"), and so he is in bondage to death. Since man sins continually because of the power of death, sin alienates man from God, and death perpetuates the alienation (and vice versa). By death, we fall short (again, by "missing the mark" — sin) of our original destiny, which is to live through unity with the Creator.

The following summary of the Orthodox teaching about redemption is drawn from various works by Fr John Romanides.

Christ saves men, who have fallen into the power of the devil, by breaking that power. He became Man for this purpose; He lived and died and rose again that He might break the chains by which men were bound. It is not His death alone, but the entire Incarnation, of which His death was a necessary part, that freed men from their captivity to Satan. By becoming Man, living a sinless life, and rising from the dead (which He could not have done unless He had first died), He introduced a new power into human nature. This power is bestowed on all men who are willing to receive it, through the Holy Spirit. Those who receive it are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church; the corrupted human nature (the bad habits and evil desires, which St Paul calls "the old man" - Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) is driven out by degrees until at last it is expelled altogether, and the redeemed person becomes entirely obedient to the will! of God, as our Lord Himself was when on earth. The prisoner is set free from the inside; his mind and body are both changed; he comes to know what freedom is, to desire it, and by the Holy Spirit working within him, to break his chains, turn the key and leave the dungeon. Thus, he is freed from the power of sin. God forgives him, as an act of pure love; but the condition of his forgiveness is that he must sin no more. "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8-9) and we are made capable of ceasing to be sinners by the power of Christ's Resurrection, which has given us the power to struggle against sinfulness, toward moral perfection. We must not ignore the word “struggle.”

The advantage of this Orthodox teaching is that it is firmly based on the New Testament. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' (2 Cor. 5:19); the act of reconciliation is effected by God in the Person of His Son, for it is man that needs to be reconciled to God, not God that needs to be reconciled to man... Throughout the New Testament, we find the proclamation that Christ has broken the power of the devil, to which mankind was subject (see Lk.10:17-18; 11:22; 1Cor. 15:25; Ga1. 1:4; Co1. 2:15; 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb.2:14; Jn.10:11; 12:31; 16:11; 1 Jn. 3:8; and frequently in Revelation). Moreover, the Orthodox Christian teaching of the atonement requires no "legal fiction," and attributes no immoral or unrighteous action to God (as the neo-Christian Atonement doctrine does).

Man is not made suddenly good or treated as good when he is not good; he is forgiven not because he deserves to be forgiven, but because God loves him, and he is made fit for union with God by God's own power, with man’s own will co-operating... He is saved from the power of sin by the life of the risen Christ within him, and from the guilt of sin by God's forgiveness, for which his own repentance is a condition. Thus, salvation consists in the union of the faithful with the life of God in the Body of Christ (the Holy Church) where the Evil-One is being progressively and really destroyed in the life of co-suffering love. This union is effected by Baptism (the Grace of regeneration) and fulfilled in the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and in the mutual, cooperative struggle of Orthodox Christians against the power and influence of the Evil-One. This is precisely why the last words of the "Lord's Prayer" are, "deliver us from the Evil-One," and not "deliver us from evil."

The Messianic Delusion of the 'Ruskii Mir' Heresy: The Kyrill-Putin Construct - by Lazar Puhalo

This is Part I of Archbishop Lazar's presentation to the CEMES symposium in Thessaloniki, Greece (29 March, 2022).

INTENT

The intent of this paper is to explore the general background of the present invasion of Ukraine and then focus on the problem of the ecclesiastical support for the invasion given by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow of the Russian Orthodox Church and others of his hierarchs. Finally, we wish to make a response to the reasons given by the Patriarch and do some hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting the military invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND TO RUSSIA'S INVASION

With regard to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, I will not discount the ideas that the rapid and radical expansion of NATO had something to do with influencing this. The idea that NATO wished to create a massive naval base on the Crimean Peninsula certainly helped to provoke the Russian seizure of Crimea. However, there is absolutely nothing that will excuse the invasion of the independent republic of Ukraine and the massive war crimes that are taking place with the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities. I will examine the ideological factors, including the religious justification for this horrendous action, even if only briefly.

In addressing the current conflict in the Republic of Ukraine and the roots of this conflict we do have to briefly look back in history. Our national foundational mythologies often explain some of our later tragedies. The idea of the city of Kiev in the beginnings of what would eventually become Russian history should be briefly examined. The city itself was created by Vikings from Scandinavia, and the first principality which existed there was a Norse principality. The idea that there was a nation-state in ancient Kiev is not entirely correct. At the time the Viking colonialists and the local tribes which were gathering around them ultimately formed a series of appanage principalities that were largely entities governed by local warlords. The principality of Kiev, ruled by the Norse Rurik dynasty until it collapsed in the 1100s, was a "city-state" from which the surrounding area was ruled. Both Russia and Ukraine make a claim for their foundation story, and both mythologize it. Presently, this foundation story and the mythos that accompanies it figures into the justification for the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Notwithstanding, both countries are fully constituted independent nations that happened to share a similar foundation story and mythos. This shared origin story and mythos figures into the creation of the mentality and doctrine behind the present invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

A certain segment of both the political and religious elite and Russia has not been able to reconcile itself to the fact that Ukraine is a fully constituted republic, a nation self-contained and independent. This has led to peculiar both political and religious concepts, even novel doctrines about the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. These concepts and doctrines are perverse, but this is not the first time such unstable and catastrophic results have arisen from such foundation mythos. A "mystical" vision of this foundation mythos can prevent the acceptance of present realities and can often cause real tragedies.

In this particular case, this common foundational mythos appears to be being used as one of the perverted pretexts for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Certain leaders simply cannot come to grasp the reality that Ukraine has developed its own culture and language, some aspects of which it shares with, not only other Slavic peoples but other Eastern Europeans.

THE PROBLEM OF IRREDENTISM

Before I touch on the actually heretical doctrine put forth by religious authorities in Russia to try to help justify the invasion, I want to speak of another disturbing political motion that certainly figures into this matter, and we have heard it voiced by Mr. Putin, and in some ways endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church. This ideological problem is the concept of irredentism.

Basically, irredentism is a doctrine or concept whereby areas of a country outside your own in which a majority of your particular nationality lives should be united to your country, by force if necessary. The doctrine was first annunciated in Italy in the 19th century. The most famous use of this doctrine was in the Third Reich, Nazi Germany, which is the doctrine of irredentism as a pretext to seize the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia – a military action that later led to the full invasion of Czechoslovakia by the German army. The same doctrine has been used by Mr. Putin’s government with regard to Luhansk and Donbas in Ukraine, followed by the full invasion of that nation.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL ISSUE

We must begin this discussion by examining a new messianic religio/political doctrine put forth by the Russian Orthodox Church in support of the military invasion of Ukraine--a doctrine that is clearly heresy and that goes well beyond the heresy of phyletism¹ the new doctrine of "Russkii Mir."

The heretical doctrine called "Russkii Mir," in essence conceives of the Russian state as having a messianic calling to invade and purify other countries, beginning with Ukraine, a former subservient republic in the Soviet Union. The roots of this new doctrine are found in previous manifestations of Russian mysticism and religious thought. This doctrine reflects back on the two older concepts of "Holy Rus'" and the idea of Moscow as the "Third Rome." These two phyletistic1 doctrines are summed up in the heresy of "Russki Mir," a messianic delusion that accords a special Messiahship to the State and thus makes the State an idolatry. That the Russian Orthodox Church fully endorses the doctrine makes it a genuine heresy.

What has been formed is a straightforward "cult of the State" into which the Russian Orthodox Church has been incorporated. This delusional doctrine accords to the Russian State, and to Mister Putin in particular, a "Mandate of Heaven" to act as a "purifier of nations." This is an extremely dangerous doctrine, and it is shocking that Russian Church officials would accept and advance this idea, surely knowing that it is a heresy and a betrayal of the concept of the Church itself.

It is notable that in the justification for this horrendous invasion of the Republic of Ukraine, reference is being made to the time of Ivan the Terrible. Ivan was a bloodthirsty tyrant who invaded surrounding principalities and territories and incorporated them into the Muscovite State, which was the centre of the future Russian Empire. His deeds are among the most unspeakable in history. However, he is now one of the heroes of the current Russian regime which is invading Ukraine.

Aside from this doctrine, it is one of the most peculiar and devious scapegoating excuses that the Moscow Patriarch and Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian State Church have given for and hoping to support this war. The justifications given by the Patriarch of Moscow and other senior hierarchy for their support for this immoral and illegal invasion of a sovereign nation by their own nation. A scapegoat refers to the Hebrew practice of ritually placing the sins of the nation on the back of a goat which would then be driven into the wilderness bearing away the guilt for the sins and wickedness of the tribe. Among the peculiarities of this religious practice was the fact that it also took away the responsibility of the people for their sins and wickedness. This is the nature of "scapegoating," it puts the blame for your own actions onto someone else so that you are no longer responsible for your deeds and actions. Simply, it is a way of denying your responsibility and guilt by pointing to someone else. That is what I would like to discuss here.

Patriarch Kyrill and Metropolitan Hilarion Have chosen a small marginalized and, quite frankly, persecuted group of human beings as a scapegoat. They have suggested that the existence of an LGBT community and the possibility of "pride parades" in Ukraine are among the justifications for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens of all ages and the destruction of ancient Ukrainian cities. The staggering immorality of this conclusion is self-evident.

Russian Orthodox hierarchs are thus giving this horrendous invasion an aura of more complete messianic ideology by adding a weak theological or spiritual motivation, simply a deadly prelest (spiritual delusion).

The fact that the thousands of people being wantonly and ruthlessly killed are fellow Orthodox Christians only compounds the wickedness of the actions.

The idea of using a remote "moral" issue in order to justify the gross immorality and criminality of the mass murder and the destruction of the cities of the Ukrainian people must make the demons tremble.

[CLICK HERE for the entire paper, which includes Part 2].

SUMMARY

In summarizing the paper which I have presented, I have the following considerations in mind.

I want to focus on something that I consider to be a very dangerous religious/political delusion – delusion as well as ideology. I keep coming to the Chinese expression, "mandate of heaven." I am using the expression, but I feel that I am also expressing a psychological condition which can involve, not just one person or group of people, but even a whole national self-identity. I suppose one should begin with the "temptation on the Mount" as a revelation. We can say that it is a revelation about Antichrist, who would accept all the things which Christ rejected, and perhaps that is its primary revelation.

Perhaps all of the manifestations of hyper-religiosity and a Messiah complex are actually manifestations of a type of antichrist. When people come to think that they have a "mandate of heaven" to be either the "Scourge of God" or the "sword of Allah" for the purification of a nation, mankind, etc., and when that Messiah complex extends to a nations image of itself, or even a particular religion's image of itself, giving either that nation or that religion – or a national religion combination – a sense of righteous privilege or even obligation to dominate others, other nations, other people and enforce what they perceive to be the will of God, the will of Allah, there is a dangerous extremism which that entity can actually perceive as God’s special ministry for them. I certainly feel that there is something coarser and pragmatic behind Mister Putin's actions, but the "mystical andspiritual" justifications of them is especially disturbing. That these justifications are being given even a tacit blessing by the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy only adds gravity to the matter.

To some degree we did see it in the doctrine of "manifest destiny," and some shade of it in a "British-Israel complex." We certainly saw it in the person of Ivan the Terrible, who slaughtered by day and prayed by night, alternating between his warrior persona and his ascetic persona.

We have seen episodes of this national messiah-ism in Russian history and expansionism before. There are all manner of psychiatric designations which refer to such a condition. I prefer to refer to it as those who are obsessed with having the mandate of heaven and a Messiah complex. I see that at work to one degree or another in this doctrine of "Russkii Mir" and the preoccupation of the Moscow patriarchate with LGBT community, merging it with this doctrine of "Russkii Mir."

In summary, I wish to work out a way of expressing this. When a nation with such a doctrine is intent on the obliteration of another nation and the ruthless massacre of its population, it would be hard to exaggerate the intensity of this demonic messianic complex. It is quite evident that the Putin/Kyril Construct is a, to lesser or greater degree, something that considers itself to have this mandate of heaven, and also to be possessed of a delusional messianic complex. Not only a heresy but a major blasphemy. And possibly a grave danger to the world.

NOTES

1. Phylitism Is a heresy which blends the Church with the State in a way that actually identifies the Church and the state as one. In actual practice, it renders the Church subservient to the State.

John the Baptist vs. Herod - The Rest of the Story - Lazar Puhalo

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HEROD: THE REST OF THE STORY

St. John the Baptist was preaching across the Jordan River at Bethany of Peraea, that little strip of land east of the Jordan that belonged to a Galilee. Only later did he came across into Judea and began preaching at Ai. This may have been because of the controversy between him and Herod.

This conflict was somewhat more complicated than the brief summary that is given to us in the Gospels. You will recall that Herod wanted to marry his sister-in-law Herodias, who was the wife of his half-brother Philip. The first part of the problem was that Herodias was not only his half-brother’s wife, but she was also Herod’s half-sister. In fact, she was also Phillip’s half-sister, so neither one of them should have been married to her. This was a double violation of the law, marrying your half-sister and also your brother's wife. This was a real scandal to pious, believing Jewish people and certainly a scandal to someone like Saint John the Baptist who was, after all, preaching repentance.

The other part of the story is something that might have caused far more serious consequences. King Aretas of Nabataea had been in conflict with Galilee which he had invaded a little earlier and burned the city of Sepphoris which was the old capital of the province before Herod named a city after himself and made it the capital. They were rebuilding the city and had made the peace treaty with the daughter of King Aretas, who was a treaty bride married to Herod. At that time women were not accorded full humanity and were used for barter and for treaties. Women were married off to help seal a treaty or in order to gain social status, to step up a notch.

Herod was married to King Aretas's daughter at a time when men only had one wife at a time. Naturally, when Herod wanted to marry Herodias, Aretas's daughter became a bit frightened because she thought “if he wants to marry somebody else, am I going to meet with an accident and die so he can get me out of the way?” After all, Herod’s father, Herod the Great had murdered more than one of his wives. So she fled back to Nabataea to her father’s house.

This was not only a great offense to his daughter and a violation of their treaty, but it shamed the king as well and he was furious. Aretas wanted to invade Galilee again, only the intervention of the Roman governor of Syria stopped him from being able to do this. Otherwise, he would have invaded and certainly John the Baptist was surely aware of this dangerous situation. The matter was very politically delicate and thousands of people could have lost their lives in such an invasion of war.

This must surely have been also on John the Baptist’s mind as he protested this consanguineous marriage which was not only against Jewish law but fraught with other dangers. Thus the whole incident with John the Baptist was much more serious than what we read in Scripture. Herod gets off too easily in the part of this that is recorded by the evangelist. You may very well have respected John the Baptist, even feared him a little as a holy man, but in fact, he may also have been looking for an excuse to dispose of him.

As a footnote, it seems that Herodias actually did love Herod because when he was later sent into exile she voluntarily accompanied him.

Reflection on Modes of Future Thought - paper by Lazar Puhalo

REFLECTION ON MODES OF FUTURE THOUGHT
(an invited paper for the Big History Congress, 2011)

Lazar Puhalo

Modes of Future Thought: Can strategic concepts move beyond ideology? Political Ideologies and “GlobalThought”: Can there be a Synthesis of Scientific Theories and Spiritual Traditions?

Big History encounters a universe’s movement into greater complexity rather than its entropy. We are engaged in studying the great difficulty and limitedness with which such an apparent anomaly occurs. Our own biosphere, which, following the thought of Panov and others, includes human civilisations and technologies, is one island of this increasing complexity. Such complexity brings with it fragility and vulnerability, and this is a theme that should be of special interest to us, as our own biosphere is at the point of a singularity which must be examined in all earnestness.

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We ARE the bowls of wrath - Lazar Puhalo

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”
--Revelation 16:1

It is simply a fact – a difficult reality – that some parts of the world which are now inhabited are becoming uninhabitable, and global warming is the source of this destruction of habitable land. The dangerous heat waves that we are expressing this year are now becoming a regular part of our reality, and many areas with arable land which produces food crops are becoming dried out and dead. These areas are also becoming slowly uninhabitable for human beings and other mammals. The refugees from these areas must go somewhere, and so the still viable human habitats are going to become so overcrowded that those areas will become rapidly degraded also.

We will hear fundamentalists, as usual, blaming God for this. Some of them will surely say this is God’s punishment on mankind for such and such or so and so.

However, as we have mentioned in an editorial back in 1975, the plagues listed in the Book of Revelation will come to pass, not by God’s action against man but because of man’s own avarice and callousness.

There is no doubt that we are seeing the beginning of an extremely tragic era and man’s history – or rather another stage in a tragic era that began decades ago. All the talk about the moral failings in sins of mankind pales to insignificance in the face of the great societal sin against God’s creation, against our own biosphere. There is no greater immorality than the denial of climate change and the refusal to engage in the problem.

The gross indifference and depravity of climate change deniers, of those who deny the human element and global warming, is mirrored in their self-absorbed indifference to the fate of their children and grandchildren. In discussing this matter, one idea that is important to refute is the idea that the results of this callousness and indifference toward our environment are in any way “God’s judgment or punishment.”

This is really a matter of societal suicide by means of self-indulgence and sheer arrogance. Human beings are themselves the living Bowls of Wrath mentioned in the Apocalypse – the Book of Revelation.

 

 

Haiti's history and fate is entwined with America - Wayne North America

Wayne Northey: Haiti is a made-in-France-and-America tragedy . . . Please see Egberto Willies on this:

My wife Esther and I visited there in 1991, after attending a United Nations Restorative Justice Conference in San José, Costa Rica. We said in response that if we ever complained again about our circumstances, it was already too much . . . We felt similarly upon in 2018 visiting Rwanda–though its economic recovery since the 1994 genocide is miraculous.

David Cayley’s masterful and massive 2021 Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey explicates Illich’s critique of Western development philosophy (and heuristically all things Illich!) of which Haiti is prime exhibit. The author of the highlighted article writes:

Haiti has provided an anthology of cautionary tales of how 20th-century foreign aid and development assistance can go wrong, including a mess of failed projects that followed the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake in the country, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

See too Ryan C. Berg’s July 8, 2021: Moïse’s assassination is a tragic reminder of Haiti’s unraveling democracy. We read:

Haiti’s constitutional crisis has failed to register with many Washington policymakers as well as those in the international community for far too long — in part, thanks to the plethora of challenges already present in the Western Hemisphere. Notwithstanding the Biden administration’s claims to the contrary, the inattention of US policymakers in recent years has contributed to the country’s rapid unraveling.

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