During this period of Great Lent, the question of fasting with the eyes arose during our weekly Pilgrimage Society spiritual evenings. In initiating a discussion on the subject, my mind was drawn to a working paper by philosopher Ivan Illich, "Guarding the Eye in the Age of Show."1
Illich examines the changes in the concept of the gaze and convincingly argues that even the concept of what we do with the eyes has changed in often dramatic ways over the past few centuries. Consequently, when we use such terms, familiar to Orthodox Christians, as "guarding the eyes," "fasting with the eyes" and "the asceticism of the eyes," we must realize that the concepts which originally traveled with these expressions have changed. In some cases, whole concepts and understandings of various aspects of vision, seeing, gazing, looking, have vanished altogether. Indeed, more than 100 words dealing with the quality and meaning of seeing have vanished from our vocabulary over the past four centuries! This makes the task of the asceticism of the eye more difficult to grasp and to practice. The task is even more complicated by the carelessness in rendering translations of Orthodox prayers and terminology, a problem we will discuss later.
Abp. Lazar: "I'm afraid that Evangelicalism itself can ultimately lead a thinking person away from Christ altogether. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that fundamentalism and the right-wing can do this, and most certainly does. When hate is interpreted as love there is little chance for trusting Jesus Christ to take root."
Brad: Agreed.
Some people who believe in penal substitution say that they know how much God loves him BECAUSE he killed his Son instead of them. To sacrifice one's own beloved child instead of me shows how much he values me. BUT the problem with such a disturbing vision of "love" is exposed by the way it fractures the human heart in its call to respond to such perverted love. The questions arise:
If I don't respond, what will he do? He will burn me forever. I'd better respond then. What sort of faith is that? It is nothing more than terrorism. The sinner's prayer becomes a contrived hostage video.
If I respond, did I respond well enough that I can truly believe he won't turn on me as well? What sort of moralistic striving does this generate, with the constant fear of abandonment ever lurking at every failure to perform well enough?
Even if I respond, what does this say about the nature of a child-sacrificing Father? If my neighbor's child breaks my window, and in my fury, demand my pound of flesh, if I take out my wrath on my own child instead of the neighbor, will the neighbor be inclined to run to my house when they've broken another window? Or will they run and hide? Will they see me as their benevolent benefactor? Or will they perceive in me a monster to be avoided at all costs?
This is not the Abba revealed through the life and passion of Jesus Christ. What it is, such a god may only be held, as George MacDonald said, in bitter loathing.
When we wish to speak about the Trinity, we are touching upon a great holy mystery that is truly beyond all human comprehension.
When I was a teenager, we spoke about the Trinity is being “one God in three hypostases," not “three persons.” We did not use the word "persons." I remember asking Father Ananiadis the meaning of this word "hypostasis." He did not think that it meant quite the same as "person," or rather, I should say he did not believe that the word "person" actually reflected the meaning of hypostasis.
Hypostasis is an interesting word. It comes from the clarification of wine. When you set wine to clarify, it becomes dense at the bottom of the container, and this density is called the hypostasis. If the density formed at the top of the wine, it could be called a hyper-stasis.
When the word is used to refer to the mystery of the Trinity, we can see it signifying an aspect of the Essence which has become uniquely visible without ceasing to be part of the essence. Christ, that is, God the Word, was uniquely visible in the Old Testament. That is because all of the theophanies in the Old Testament were God the Word and never God the Father, who has “never been seen by any man at any time.” God the Word was always of one Essence with the Father, but was visibly manifested on Mount Sinai, to Abraham at the Oak, to Jacob and as the 4th figure seen in the fiery furnace as the “Angel of Great Counsel.”
Why do we refer to Mary as the Theotokos? We remember that the heretic Nestorius, like the Protestant sectarians after him, refused to acknowledge that, since Christ is God, Mary is the “birth giver of God.” Christ took flesh from the Virgin, otherwise He would not truly be fully human as well as truly God.
Perhaps when we use the traditional expression “one essence in three hypostases” it is easier to understand, since the word “person” is too limiting, too narrow in its concept and meaning, and the word hypostasis much more clearly expresses the mystery.
In the Incarnation, God the Word assumed human personhood, since he was fully human as well as fully God. Since he never ceased to be of one Essence with the Father and the Spirit, He was one hypostasis of that Divine Essence.
Mary did not give birth simply to a human person but was the vehicle and vessel of the Incarnation of the Living God. In my mind, this cannot be properly expressed by the word “person”, but only by the concept of hypostasis.
Realizing that this could be misinterpreted as a kind of “modalism,” I should add the adjective “distinct hypostasis.” Of course, if one wished to misinterpret it, no amount of qualifications would prevent that.
~~~
Hypostasis is being used metaphorically, so to translate literally into Latin or English – or German for that matter – would literalize the metaphor, and literalizing a metaphor always results in an idolatry.
From an Orthodox point of view, all human beings are part of the common human nature (ousia) – a nature that is fallen, susceptible to nature and to the laws of nature. Our hypostasis is what we can do with our own being – a personal being – and through which we have free will, etc.
I speak more about this in my book Freedom to Believe. The term "person" itself can lead to the same kind of idolatry if we see "three persons” as three radical individuals. Whichever word we may use, we have to understand precisely how it is being used and what, theologically, it actually means.
We speak of the three hypostases, not one hypostasis. But clearly, it describes – but does not define – an aspect of the one essence, and three hypostases of one essence is a description of the Holy Trinity.
And actually, this is what the conversation about the Theotokos was about. There are those who deny of the title Theotokos to the Virgin Mary because she was not the mother of God the Father and not the mother of the Holy Spirit, but rather of Jesus Christ. But what we are saying is that if you believe in Jesus Christ is God, “that in him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” then Mary is the mother of God. If you deny that Jesus Christ is God, one hypostasis of the essence of God, then you will deny that Mary is the mother of God. The whole question is Christologocial--about whether Jesus Christ is God or not God. If one wishes to literalize and then misinterpret the use of the word hypostasis, that is their own affair.
One thing that is not appreciated enough is the difference between faith and an addiction to religion. Religious addiction follows the same vector lines as any other addiction. Religious addiction is certainly not the same thing as normal faith. It is learned behaviour for the most part, and often culturally imposed, or at the least has a cultural formation. However, as with all addictions, there is a certain predisposition toward addiction itself often accompanied by, or even a manifestation of OCD.
Religious addiction is generally characterized by rigidity and a need for absolutes, for black and white solutions or attitudes toward any given problem and toward morality in general. The need for absolutes impels addicts to seek to impose their own “orthodoxies” on others, even if it means by force and threats, using the law and contravening documents such as the Constitution of the United States or the Canadian Charter. Religious addicts are somewhat like florid schizophrenics. They sound very high and mighty and even convincing with what passes for a spiritual presence and position, but is, in fact, a manifestation of rigidity and a real lack of spiritual content – a spiritual content which has been replaced by a juridical mindset. In place of spirituality, they have only some concept of law or their version of law. They tend also to see our relationship with God strictly as one of imposed legal norms rather than any kind of spiritual transformation. Religious addiction should be treated like all addictions. There needs to be a sort of 12-step program to liberate people from religious addictions.
However, since their addictions are religious, they will inevitably think they are being guided by God or a god – by whatever name they know Him. There is scant difference between Christian fundamentalists – including those in the Orthodox Christian Church – and fundamentalist Muslims or Hindus. Their addictions can be dangerous for the rest of society, and particularly so since they deprive them of any serious access to realities. In general, they have a utopian nostalgia for a time and world that never actually existed except in nationalist mythologies and fantasies. We must bear in mind that religiosity is completely inimical to democracy, and it will always try to undermine basic principles of democracy and tend toward some degree of theocracy and autocracy.
The ideology, call it theology if you will, of sanctified male domination over women, must be examined in the light of reality rather than mythology. It must be examined in the light of evolutionary biology, evolutionary neurobiology and social evolution. There is no other way to examine it with truth and integrity.
The impetus to breed and pass on one’s genes is an evolutionary construct which began to develop many millions of years ago. The creation narrative in Genesis is a meaningful allegory, but it is not history and it is not a true story. This much must be realised at the beginning. Women are not a spare rib from a man. The female gender existed before the male gender and the evolution of the male gender has far more to do with genetic variation in offspring than any other factor. In many instances in nature, the male of the species is a little more than a parasite which serves only to add genetic variation to the female eggs. We can trace such developments all the way back to primitive, single-celled eukaryotes – the precursors of all living things.
This is why all human zygotes begin life as female, and XY chromosome foetuses only develop into males through a rather complex procedure, which we will not discuss here.
Excerpts from Sunday of the Blind Man – Homily by Abp. Lazar Puhalo
(See video for the full homily below)
Some people are blind in spirit. They cannot see our Lord Jesus Christ. Or if they see him, they see him as an image of themselves, not of themselves as ones who should become an image of him, but out of the fullness of their own hearts but still spiritually blind…
In a word, Christ closed up the false teaching of ‘original sin’: “This man was not born blind because of his parents’ sin. In fact, he was not born blind because of any sin of his own.
Here also, he healed the false teaching that God punishes people through natural disasters or through the conditions of their lives.
For God never harms his creature, neither in this world nor the world to come.
Do you see how much darkness there was on the people who were supposed to be the custodians of the promise given to Abraham? … not realizing that the whole law of God is comprehended in the love of God and the love of neighbor.
They could no longer see the Light of Jesus Christ but could only see the darkness of law, of rules, of regulations. And they could not perceive mercy, forgiveness, compassion.
They could only perceive the image of their own selves, which they had superimposed between them and God.
They could not see God because they only saw a reflection of their own predilections, their own passions, their own hatreds, their own anger, their own selfness, their own desire for vengeance, their own lust for power.
And even when Christ enthroned himself on the Cross, they could not see the awesome truth that God is meek and lowly of heart and filled only with compassion, even twisting the things that had been revealed before times to make God look like a heavenly terrorist.
Brothers and sisters, hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,
“I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Go and learn what that means.”
The God who shaped man from the dust of the earth from the beginning is the God who so loved mankind that he came down and endured all the difficulties of our life, to co-suffer with all of our suffering, to endure together with us all the things we have to endure, and to raise us up one by one by opening the eyes of our hearts.
If the eyes of our hearts can be opened … we can see our Lord Jesus Christ, not as a reflection of ourselves—we can see God, not as a reflection of our own passions, our own prejudices, our own hatreds, our own malice—but we can see the loving Father, who sent to find the lost sheep, even at the price of the life and the suffering of his only begotten Son.
Brothers and sisters, when we desire to see God, let us not look in a mirror, for if God is consumed by passions, he cannot be God. If he desires vengeance, if he even desires justice, if consumed by human passions, how is he God? But justice, as St. Isaac tells us, is like a grain of sand cast into the vast sea of God’s mercy.
Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice in the risen Christ. Let us rejoice as we celebrate the Ascension into the heavens where our Lord Jesus Christ takes our redeemed human nature, the body of our humanity into the heavens together with him and sits that humanity at the right hand of the glory of the living God.
We hear the Gospel so often, we hear the Apostles so often and yet we wonder so many times, “What does that actually mean? What is the revelation given to us?” Do we understand it out of the fullness of our own hearts?
If you understand it as heavy, as legalistic, as juridical, as full of judgment and condemnation, then you need to purify your own hearts with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you see a God who would punish mankind for every, even smallest, transgression; if you see a God who needs vengeance, compelled by some immutable law of the universe which God himself has no power over, that he must demand justice, and what kind of justice… but it is not even justice that people are talking about. For is it just to condemn a person for something over which they have no power? Is it just to condemn a person for something they are compelled to do, whether by passions, whether by political structures, whether by thoughtfulness or forgetfulness? How is it just to punish people for these things? That is not justice. That is vindictiveness.
Brothers and sisters, let us lift up our eyes to the heavens and see our Lord Jesus Christ and see the fullness of his divinity, not swallowing up our humanity but raising up our humanity, for he remained God and man that man might become god—that man might share in the divine nature, for he desired that we should be one with him, he desired that we should be his brethren, and he was not ashamed to call us brethren.
If only, brothers and sisters, in all our relations toward other human beings, in all our prayers and all of our worship of God and all of our hymns, and all of our seeing miracles of God, should be consumed in the love and compassion of God, and not fear him but love him, as St Antony the Great say in the scroll of his icon says, “I used to fear him but now I love him.” Because we fear the unknown. When we do not know God, we fear him. When we know God we only have love for him, knowing that he has nothing but love and compassion for us, knowing that he does not seek vengeance, knowing that he does not count the sins of an ancestor upon the children who are born later, knowing that he does not need a substitutionary sacrifice to ease his own lusts and passions. This is not Molech. This is not Baal. This is the living God.
Let us also not demand vengeance and justice of one another, because justice is best expressed in forgiveness.
Today, Apostle Paul is cast into prison, as everyone is in a prison of darkness, as everyone is blind—soul and spirit. Today, Jesus Christ will heal that blindness. Today, he will open the prison and allow his followers out of the prison. He calls upon us to leave our prison, to leave the prison of the bitterness of our own hearts, to leave the prison of our own ignorance, to leave the prison of our own judgments and condemnation of one another. Brothers, let us learn what it means, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.”And from the depths of our hearts, seek to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ through forgiveness and mercy.
Brothers and sisters, if the fullness of our heart seeks darkness sees darkness in God, if the fullness of our hearts sees a God who needs vengeance, who needs the sacrifice of a human being before he can forgive, then our hearts are darkness indeed. Let us see the Light of the Living God who was not averse to come down in humility and meekness, and enthrone himself on the Cross and suffer in so many things to reveal to us the power of his love.
Why was he nailed to the Cross but that we might see with our own eyes the sacrifice that he was willing to make for us; so that we might see with our own eyes the victory over death; so that we might be embraced by his great and powerful co-suffering love, and that our hearts might be lifted out of the darkness of the passions and that we might not ascribe such passions to God.
SAILING IN THE WINTER SUN: JOURNAL OF AN OLD MAN AT THE END OF LIFE
A reliance on propositional falsehood is far more dangerous than propositional truth. Theology is, ultimately, a philosophy about one’s religion. All that is essential proceeds from the Symbol of Faith [the Nicene Creed] and all essential theology is an expansion on the elements of the Symbol of Faith. Alas, much theology is based on the social conventions and ideologies of a given era of time, with the reality tunnels that exist in every era.
Orthodoxy, from our point of view, does not mean reactionary, ultraconservative or right-wing: it means proper glorification, true worship, and sometimes that is not particularly conservative. The truth is not harmed by reality and reality is not the enemy of truth. Ossified minds are the enemy of truth and reality, and ultimately, the enemy of sincere faith. Honest faith in God, in Jesus Christ, does not consist in trying to preserve obsolete concepts of reality and the ideologies of former eras, but in the encounter with unfolding knowledge in a graceful and steadfast manner, without fear, with integrity and a sure faith that God is true and so is not in conflict with reality, however much our encounter with that reality and that knowledge that unfolds might unnerve us and shake our blind ideologies. If one stubbornly holds to late iron age ideologies as if they constituted the basis of one’s faith, then one is essentially an atheist and does not have a sincere faith, or perhaps has a faith in their ideologies but not in God Himself.
The reason that we need a theology about the Scripture Itself is because there are so many often radical differences in how it is understood. This is particularly true of the Old Testament. In the East, the Orthodox Churches use the version of the Old Testament that Christ Himself quoted from, whereas in the West they seem not to trust Christ and so they use a different version of the Old Testament than the one He himself was familiar with and quoted from, as if they thought that Christ Himself did not know which version was correct.
Secondly, some of the narratives simply do not make sense without the application of theology, the creation narrative being primary amongst them. We can see that there are radical differences in the understanding of the meaning of ransom and redemption and of the word Gehenna in the New Testament, and often interpreters do not relate Christ words about Gehenna back to the prophecies and times of Jeremy the prophet and the Babylonian invasion. Since neither the word nor the concept of “Hell” exists at all in the Old Testament, they have to be read into the text by people who have a pre-existing ideology about it – even though it is simply not there and there was not even the concept of it in the era of the Old Testament.
The metaphors “ransom” and “redemption” are also understood in various ways by various sects. Many of them have no relationship with the apostolic understanding at all. Some, perhaps most, of the sects in the West – and there are more than 4000 of them, understand these metaphors literally, even though metaphor contains an internal dissonance that warns us not to literalise; and the fact is, when we literalize a metaphor we automatically create an idolatry.
Much of the West believes in salvation by human sacrifice, even though it is only one human sacrifice, and believe that God was constrained by some immutable law of the cosmos over which He had no power, so that he had to have the human sacrifice of his own Son in order to overlook our transgressions – we cannot say “forgive” our sins, because if Christ was punished and took on some kind of “just death penalty” for us then it is impossible for us to be forgiven because punishment and forgiveness are mutually exclusive. If Christ was punished on our behalf then punishment has been had, vengeance has been fulfilled, and in that case there is no such thing as forgiveness, there is only the acceptance of the punishment of one for many – punishment and forgiveness are mutually exclusive: you cannot have both, you can only have one or the other. So this idea, the Western doctrine of atonement, is simply a legal fiction and nothing else – well it is something else, it is placing God Himself on the same level with Molech and Baal, both of whom required human sacrifice in order to assuage their vengeance and anger, and the doctrine of atonement places God on exactly the same level with these two pagan idolatries.
As far as the creation narrative goes, there is absolutely no possibility that it is a true story, but it is rather an allegory which needs a theological explanation, and we do have one. But since the earth is 3.5 billion years old, give or take a mere million, and since the female was the first to appear, and male appeared somewhat later, we require a theological explanation for this allegory.
We also need some explanation for the fact that, according to biblical chronology, Adam would have died during the reign of King Narmar of Egypt, and the so-called “flood of Noah” would have taken place a full 200 years after the building of the great pyramid of Giza, and the story of the Tower of Bab’El [nothing to do with the Hebrew word babbel] occurred will after the foundations of Tamil society, the fact that there was no “Ur of the Chaldees” and the time of Abraham – the Chaldees did not even exist as an organized tribe in Abraham’s time, and did not appear in Sumeria until about 900 BC. So theology is necessary in that sense, but it still remains that all truly essential theology flows from the Symbol of Faith and is an expansion upon it.
"If you will contemplate who and what kind of people you judge the most harshly, you will uncover the deepest secrets of your own heart. We condemn most in others what we fear most in ourselves."
From SAILING IN THE WINTER SUN: JOURNAL OF AN OLD MAN.
1. We should take the love of everyone seriously as genuine love, even if it is different than our own; and we should accept that every human and even every creature needs love as they need blood in order to live.
2. We must validate in our hearts the humanity of every other person, even those who seem to be "enemies," are outcast and disenfranchised, otherwise we cannot validate our own humanity.
3. The Orthodox faith must be seperated in our minds from nationality, and we must come to understand that for each one of us who believe, Orthodoxy is our nationality and Paradise is our homeland.
4. We must be careful that we shed the true light of Orthodoxy upon the world, and not some re-cycled scholasticism.
5. The "models of reality" from the past are not all valid, and we must see the creative power of the faith to help us shape new models of reality based upon genuine advances in knowledge about the universe and about mankind. To demand obedience to disproved models of reality is simply to demand that people accept and try to live a lie.
6. The faith is dynamic, not static. We cannot just "ritualise" our way through life and into Paradise. The faith is a dynamic transformation of the human conscience and person, not just a series of rituals to be done correctly and nothing else, and not just a series of catchism "facts."
7. Neither priest nor bishop is "above the people," rather we are "of the people," and if we are to be true to our calling, then we must have an open-hearted co-suffering love for the people and find a way to embrace everyone with that love. Otherwise we cannot truly proclaim Jesus Christ and the heavenly kingdom. We must accept into our hearts every person just as they are and trust in the grace of the Holy Spirit to express Itself in each of them if we minister to them with co-suffering love, without judgment or condemnation, without condescension or contempt. We must not look down to anyone, but look directly across at them, eye to eye.
This is the only way that we can minister to the world we live in, and to the people around us - everyone of them beloved by Jesus Christ.
We have had some correspondence expressing dismay of the growth of atheism, and even militant atheism. It is evident that people are not only departing from religion, but that among some of them, there is a visceral hatred of religion.
An acquaintance in Ireland wrote to me that he had voted "yes" on both of the recent controversial referenda in that country, although he did not completely agree with either one. He said, “I did not so much vote for the two referendums as I did vote against the Catholic Church.”
It may be that that is why the two referenda carried. Not only is the memory of the Magdalene Sisters still very much alive, but an inordinate number of the men in Ireland were sexually abused by priests when they were children. Also, when it came to light that there is a slush fund of the mistresses and children of higher-ranking clergy, all of that added to a cynicism about Christianity in general, although it only involved one denomination.
The response from some of the hierarchy when these two referenda passed was that they had failed in the task of educating the people in the faith. It is precisely the wrong response. The response should have been, “How have our actions and attitudes destroyed the faith of so many people?”
And in fact, many of the people who voted yes on these two referenda are deeply believing Catholic Christians. Rather than lamenting the rise of atheism around the world, and blaming demons or science or something else, it would be more reasonable for every religious body to examine itself in a very harsh light and ask what it has done to drive people away from Faith.
In North America, a right-wing fundamentalist approach to Christianity has had a great deal to do with the advancement of modern atheism. Telling people that they must believe something which they know of a certainty is not true in order to be Christian is certainly not going to solve anything! Trying to turn back the tide of atheism through advocating things that are demonstrably untrue, and through threats of wrath and other types of fear, is certainly not going to solve the problem! For religious bodies to demonstrate an amorality, for the sake of a political agenda is no way to turn back the tide of atheism; it is a recipe for turning it into a tidal wave!
It is very difficult for any ideological system to deeply analyse itself and find its own error, its own drift away from its original raison d’être, and turn itself back toward its original mandate. The hypocrisy, bigotry, amorality and even immorality of many of our religious bodies is certainly a serious problem.
With blatant falsehoods such as creationism--especially when it tries to pass itself off as a science and when religious bodies try to force it into the school system--or when some religious bodies seek to undermine democracy and accept immorality in the name of this agenda, then one can hardly wonder about why there is a growth in atheism, and why there is a visceral hatred of Christianity growing, not only in America, and elsewhere.
But even this is not the whole problem. When a dominant Christian body essentially advocates social injustice and denounces efforts at alleviating the suffering of poverty and instead, lobbies for the enrichment of the already extremely wealthy at the expense of the poor, this is a total abandonment of Christianity. It turns its back on Christ Himself and marks the devolution away from Christianity into a new religion of Christianism. This ideological “-ism” tied to a political and financial system has replaced the true worship of Christ and rendered Christ only a “frontman” for a religio/political cult.
What is necessary, but unlikely, is for every religious body to undergo a deep and unremitting examination of itself to see if it has any real relationship with its Founder, or whether it has just become a political movement with religious trappings and an ideological political agenda.
"Biblical scholars are well aware of the fact that Jesus celebrated the Passover and that his celebration of this Mosaic festival must shape our understanding of the Lord’s Supper. But while these scholars stress the salvific significance of Passover, they virtually ignore its important eschatological background."—Noel Rabinowitz
While Orthodox Christian theology is keenly aware of this connection, it is forgotten more and more by priests, bishops and laity alike. The liturgy is clearly eschatological.
Its connection with “Passover – Pascha” is clear in our theology, and yet the Greek church in particular seems dedicated to abolishing the concept of “Pascha” (replacing even the name with “Easter” in place of Pascha – the Passover of Christ) and paying only elitist theological attention to the eschatological reality of the liturgy.
The liturgy directly connects the creation narrative with the idea of the second coming of Christ and Transfiguration. The liturgy is the wedding banquet of the heavenly bridegroom with the earthly bride. The altar is a type of paradise in which the tree of life is to be found.
This is why we should not succumb to the convenience of are trying to Holy Pascha as “Easter”. Pascha is a dogmatic expression which unveils the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice and the very life of the church. Death has “passed over – Pascha” us through Jesus Christ, just as through Moses, death passed over the Hebrews in Egypt.
Salvation consists in this: Christ ransomed us from the fear of death, and thus redeemed us from the power of Satan. Since He was our “Paschal Lamb,” He was not a substitutionary sacrifice, but something much higher.
It really is important to maintain the concept of Pascha, and to grasp that the Divine liturgy presents us with the fruit of the tree of life that grew in paradise – a prophecy about the cross, and the Revelation that Christ himself is the fruit of the tree of life, just as the cross is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The liturgy is a heavenly banquet. Notice that not once in the liturgy do we mention any concept of “Hell”, damnation or punishment, but only resurrection, life, a victory over death, hope and expectation of paradise.
This is why I hold that it is a sin to close the doors of the altar during the liturgy, except perhaps for the priest’s communion. For Christ has risen from the dead, opening the gates of Paradise, which shall never be closed again. The altar is a visible Revelation of paradise. We are led out of bondage to the spiritual Pharaoh, through the Red Sea of baptism into the glorious freedom of God’s children. We are children of the promise, not of the law.
The life and actions, and the way Christ treated the outcast and "sinner" is the greater part of the Gospel.
It seems that far too many people see a set of laws and rules in the Gospel, and do not see the light and life in which often, social conventions and rules are simply overturned. Not only is the Parable of the Prodigal at the heart of the Gospel, but something too often overlooked: Under the law, a leper is not only nb outcast who cannot enter the temple precinct, but it is forbidden even to touch a leper.
Christ, however, heals the leper precisely by touching him. Touching the leper is as much a part of the Gospel and any word recorded in it. Indeed, the Gospel of our salvation consists far more in what Christ did than in what He said. The healing of the fallen human nature by taking it upon Himself; calling us out of our alienation by His Incarnation and fellowship with us, delivering us from the bondage to the fear of death; embracing sinners, touching lepers, conversing with a Samaritan woman and making here an Apostle; healing the child of a Canaanite "sinner."
And why did Christ make a habit of eating and drinking with sinners and publicans except to demonstrate to them that He does not leave them in their alienation, but rather, God has come down to them, to find these lost sheep and heal their alienation. Since they could not make it back to God on their own, He comes and takes them by their spiritual hands and leads them out of their alienation: all this is the Gospel. And our salvation appears to rest on our understanding that Matthew 25 is a keystone in that Gospel by demonstrating to us by what means we may know that we have assimilated His Gospel and are ourselves no longer in alienation from God.
A video conversation with Ron Dart and Lazar Puhalo (from July 11, 2011) and reflections by Ron Dart today.
Anglicans and Orthodox: An Ancient Tale
Archbishop Lazar and Ron Dart in Conversation
The Bible tends to end the Christian journey with the spread of Christianity in the Mediterranean and an end of times scenario in Revelation. Needless to say Christianity spread eastward and northward to India, Eastern Europe and Russia. This is not recorded in the Bible.
Christianity also spread north and northwest to what was then called Albion and a heartland of the Celts. Neither is this recorded in the Bible.
The form Christianity took eastward and to the north became, for the most part, Orthodoxy. The form Christianity took in Albion became a form of Celtic Christianity that, in time, became the church of the English (Anglicane Ecclesiae). The Anglican and Orthodox traditions, although emerging and maturing in different parts of the world, have much affinity.
There is, in the earliest records of the church, traffic between the growing Occidental form of Christianity and the Oriental form of Christianity. The history between these two historic forms of classical Christianity, at its best, is irenical and deeply rooted in the wisdom and contemplative theology of the Patristic Fathers and Mothers of the historic Church, major Creeds and Councils. There is, in short, no need for these classical Christian heritages to butt horns and indulge in the one up man ship game and melodrama that often dominates in some quarters. We have far greater challenges before us in the 21st century then persisting in historic internal clashes and fragmentation. The close relationship between leading Anglican contemplative theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries such as Evelyn Underhill, Donald Allchin and Rowan Williams and such Orthodox theologians as Anthony Bloom, Timothy Ware and Andrew Louth does need to be duly noted. The formation of The Society of St. Alban and St. Sergius reflects and embodies such an affinity between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy.
I mention the above for the simple reason that Archbishop Lazar (obviously Orthodox) and I (Anglican) have had a fond and gracious working relationship for many a decade at a variety of significant levels. We founded the Canadian branch of St. Alban and Sergius and our many video collaborations on the Philokalia, Desert Tradition, High Tory Canadian politics, ecology and literature spanned a wide spectrum. I thought it apt and fitting, given the fact that Archbishop Lazar has suffered a stroke (hopefully, the mending will ever improve) that an earlier conversation between he and I on Orthodoxy and Anglicanism be reposted--comments welcome.
The joyful photo of Archbishop Lazar and I, glass tilted high in celebration, is its own sacred text and icon of sorts.
“Then the LORD spoke his word to Zechariah. He said, ‘This is what the LORD of Armies says: Administer real justice, and be compassionate and kind to each other. Don't oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and poor people. And don't even think of doing evil to each other.” (Zechariah 7:8-10)
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.” (Matthew 12:18-20 – NIV)
Retributive justice is no justice at all. It is merely revenge.
No concept of retributive justice can possibly be compatible with forgiveness. Where there is punishment, there is no forgiveness. Where there is forgiveness, there can be no punishment.
Justice, in order to be just, must always take into account every mitigation and extenuation: “He remembers that we are but dust,” the Psalmist says.
Moreover, “justice” includes giving rewards and restoring things to rightful owners. Justice with mercy includes giving what a person actually needs rather than only what they merit. There is a reason why Paul, referring to “sin,” uses the concept την αμαρτία, rather than την ενοχή, την ανομία, or το σπάσιμο του νόμου. Sin means to miss the mark, fall short of the goal, and the goal is unity with God. Alienation, not “breaking laws,” is our real problem. Even a virtue can be a sin (`αμαρτία) if it causes an alienation between us and God. Not only the idea of retributive justice, but the idea of redemption through “substitutionary sacrfice” negates every concept of forgiveness. Nevertheless, salvation comes through forgiveness.
Truth is a river in which the water is constantly renewed. Every new discovery, every new level of understanding, every unfolding of knowledge adds new water, deepens the channel, and broadens the perspective as the old water flows away and new water flows in. The supreme foolishness is to think that we possess any absolute or final truth. Each epoch proves such an idea wanting. Ironically, "truth" consists primarily in searching for it and understanding that when you find it, it will change with the next step in unfolding knowledge. The knowledge and understanding of reality proceeds in the same manner. We engage models of reality that to be truthful, must be replaced with new models of reality when the former ones are found to be only transitions from one level of knowledge to another. Those who think they have concrete and absolute truth or reality are truly deluded and frozen in a time that recedes into the past and becomes more and more disconnected, more and more episodes in cognitive dissonance, and those who hold such faded models and wilted truths generally only become more bitter and dogmatic the further they are left in the shadow of the past and the more their minds become irrelevant. Absolute truth exists only in the Heavenly Kingdom, and we frail and fallen humans know of that only in shadows and intimations. We cannot know it in fact until we experience it in the age to come.
(Vladika Lazar Puhalo, from "SAILING IN THE WINTER SUN: The Journal of an Old Man")
Fr. John Romanides said, "We know where grace is; we do not know where it is not."
Fine, we have a revelation, but also have some fairly lugubrious superstitions and fantasies. The notion that someone will "go to hell" for having been born in the wrong place and not having correct theology is particularly unattractive. We may have an obligation to preserve Orthodoxy of faith, but that in and of itself is no guarantee of our salvation. And preserving Orthodoxy in a triumphalist manner really does indicate that we may have correct theology, but are without the Gospel that it is based on, that we hold a faith which we have no understanding.
(Vladika Lazar Puhalo, personal correspondance, June 29, 2017)
BRIEF INVITED PAPER FOR CONFERENCE "ENVIRONMENT OF EDUCATION OF CHILDREN" (PRE-SCHOOL-GRADE 1). MAGNETOGORSK, RUSSIA.
One dynamic area of childhood learning that needs to be discussed in detail is the way in which poverty can lower cognitive skills and interfere with learning ability; I would like to focus a bit on this dynamic.
There has been a tendency in some elements of society, notably right wing conservatives, to almost moralise poverty and the lower levels of cognitive and learning ability in people who grow up in poverty and suffering from malnutrition. While this is particularly true in America, such destructive attitudes exist elsewhere.
Poverty begets poverty. Low income families, those confined to minimum wage incomes and other forms of poverty, tend to remain at poverty levels for some generations. During the dark era of the Eugenics theory, it was posited that families that lived below or near the poverty level were mentally deficient due to some hereditary abnormality. The so-called "prosperity gospel" of some religious sects transferred this eugenics theory into a morality theory. The basic idea was that people lived in poverty because they merited God's disfavour. The theories are reflected in efforts by certain political wings striving to terminate school nutrition programmes that provide for what is often the only nutritious meal that poor children receive each day for the five days a week that they are in school. Even this does nothing to help create a successful learning environment for preschool children who live at or near the poverty level. In some nations, including in North America, this affects millions of children.