Archishop Lazar Puhalo on the Visible and Invisible Church
QUESTION: In Western church tradition, there is a concept of the visible and invisible church, however we define that. Is there such a concept in Eastern Christianity?
RESPONSE: There is, but there is not such a sharp dichotomy in the East since the visible and invisible church are intimately connected. What the West would call the invisible church, the East “the noetic altar in the heavens” with a noetic projection on earth. So, the invisible permeates the visible.
QUESTION:And what constitutes the visible church?
RESPONSE: Sometimes we make the mistaken of trying to look for a physical definition rather than a spiritual definition. And sometimes we carry ‘spiritual’ a little too far and make it meaningless.
But the church on earth—“the catholic church”—is where catholic means “gathered together,” where everyone gathers or is gathered. I would call the church “the harvester of the earth,” because you make the church present and call everyone into it.
The minute you are baptized and chrismated, you become part of the royal priesthood, and you become part of THE Church—not the visible church but THE Church, visible and invisible, all united together.
It’s very important to remember that if one listens to the divine liturgy carefully, you can see this osmosis, this penetration of the heavenly into the earthly. The moment we enter the temple—we gather as a kind of visible kingdom of God. When we have what we call “the entrance,” most people miss it, but we say, “Blessed is the entrance of thy holy ones—the angels—because in the priest’s prayers, the angels are entering with us. And in the great anthem of the people of God, as I call it, “the Cherubic Hymn,” we sing,
“Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, lay aside all worldly cares, that we may receive the King of all, invisibly upborne [escorted] by angelic hosts. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
In other words, the angelic hosts are celebrating together with us—so the unseen is totally penetrating the seen and what is unseen is now seen.
And to make it more definitive, we see it in types and symbols. The types and symbols are very powerful. In the liturgy itself, inside “the gates of paradise,” when the priests start to cense the gifts, they pray,
“Having received them upon Thy holy, most heavenly, and noetic altar as an odor of spiritual fragrance, send down upon us in return the divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
We must always see the penetration of the Holy Spirit as the union of the visible and invisible church, because they are not two distinct entities. The visible is for the sake of our weakness, but the invisible is always present—as long as we understand there is no dichotomy, we can say that the church here on earth is the visible aspect of the heavenly church.
But again, as a farmer, I often think of the church as the harvester of the crop, as long as there’s a harvest to be had,… so “lift up your eyes, the fields are ripe for the harvest.”
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.
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 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."
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.
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.
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 (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.
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.
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.
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.
Note:While we recognize and respect the ethical reasons why readers avoid purchasing through Amazon, but their KDP self-publishing wing has allowed independent authors (like me) and small publishing companies (like St. Macrina Press) to earn significantly higher royalties on small-run books.
Description
Tertullian famously asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
Perhaps the title of this work will raise the question, “What hath Hermes to do with Christ?”
Quite a lot, as it turns out, by way of comparison, contrast, illustration, and prefigurement. Hermes, herein, represents far more than a particular figure in Greek mythology. Hermes functions as a placeholder, symbolizing the legacy of ancient Greek myth, poetry, and philosophy—and also the layered hermeneutics that classical Greek education contributed to both Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Scriptures, and the development of their theology, doctrine, and ethics.
Despite the unfortunate but popular assumption of a Jewish-Greek dualism among many scholars since Adolf von Harnack, the stubborn and happy fact is that the New Testament itself already demonstrates a profound integration of the Hellenized Judaism established in Alexandria. The first Christian theologians were not contaminating some imaginary pure Jewish Christianity with Greek accretions.
Rather, our authors will propose and demonstrate the confluence of both great streams in the development of the New Testament Scriptures, patristic theology, and hermeneutics. This collection of essays is but a faint echo of Simone Weil’s formidable work, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, and is certainly inspired by her insights.
Table of Contents
Preface: Bradley Jersak, “What hath Hermes to do with Christ?” / 7
FROM HERMES TO PLATO
1. Bradley Jersak, “Pushing Back: Greek Thinking vs. Jewish Thinking is a Dualistic Error” / 11
2. Simon Oliver, “The Role of Plato in the Development of Christian Theology” / 25
FROM HERMES TO JOHN
3. Bradley Jersak, “Descensus: Hermes, Hades, and Christ” / 33
4. Ron Dart, “Water to Wine, Johannine Hermeneutics, and the Alexandrian Tradition” (part 1) / 51
5. Ron Dart, “Water to Wine, Johannine Hermeneutics, and the Alexandrian Tradition” (part 2) / 63
6. Wm. Paul Young, “Fish Pi: Gospel of John (21) and Archimedes” (153)” / 75
FROM HERMES TO THE PATRISTICS
7. Ron Dart, “Heraclitus, Aeschylus, and the Jewish Zeus” / 85
8. Ron Dart, “Augustine, the Inklings, Myth, and Hermes the Trickster” / 93
9. Ron Dart, “Homerian Epic, Patristic Christian Tradition and Spiritual Formation” / 99
10. Lazar Puhalo, “Nous: The Concord of Gnosis, Theoria, and Theosis” / 109
FROM HERMES TO THE 20th CENTURY
11. Ron Dart, “C.S. Lewis and Hermes: Greek Myth and Till We Have Faces” / 119
12. Ron Dart, “Thomas Merton’s The Behavior of Titans – Sixty Year Review” / 127
13. Ron Dart, “Owls, Hegel, Castalians, Classical Myths, and T.S. Eliot” / 134
14. Bradley Jersak, “Pythagoras, Plato, and Christ: A Cruciform Cosmology of Consent” / 141
BEYOND HERMES
15. Ron Dart, “Servant Leadership in the Public Square: Four Markings” / 167
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.
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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.