A New Russian Martyr

 

 Russian Priest Gunned Down in Church

Orthodox Priest Known For Missionary Work Shot in Moscow

A Russian Orthodox priest known for his missionary work among Muslims was gunned down in his Moscow church, Russian officials said Friday. 

Thirty-four-year-old Daniil Sysoyev was shot at least four times at in the head and chest in the Church of St. Thomas by a masked gunman Thursday night, according to the Prosecutor General’s Investigative Committee. The assailant also wounded the church’s choirmaster, Vladimir Strelbitsky.

Sysoyev died on the way to the hospital. Strelbitsky is in critical condition.

“The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime,” a prosecutor’s office spokesman told reporters.

Sysoyev routinely denounced Islam and actively reached out to Muslims and various religious sects to convert them. In a recent interview with a Russian newspaper, Sysoyev boasted that he had baptized 80 Muslims.

Apostolic Succession (1): Presbyter = Bishop?

The common view among many of the Reformers and biblical scholars ancient and modern is that the titles of office “presbyter” and “bishop” have identical referents in Scripture. Put simply, every presbyter is a bishop, and every bishop is a presbyter. Calvin asserts this in his commentary on Acts:

Concerning the word overseer or bishop, we must briefly note this, that Paul calleth all the elders of Ephesus by this name, as well one as other. Whence we gather, that according to the use of the Scripture bishops differ nothing from elders. But that it came to pass through vice and corruption, that those who were chief in every city began to be called bishops. I call it corruption, not because it is evil that some one man should be chief in every college or company; but because this boldness is intolerable, when men, by wresting the names of the Scripture unto their custom, doubt not to change the tongue of the Holy Ghost.

Commentary on Acts 20:28-32

Similarly, in his “Essay on the Christian Ministry” Joseph Lightfoot states that “It has been shown that in the apostolic writings the two [titles, presbyter and bishop] are only different designations of one and the same office.” (pg. 192)

In Chapter XIX of Apostolic Succesion: Is It True? Felix Cirlot offers arguments against the standard view that the titles of office “presbyter” and “bishop” are words exclusively both designating the second order of ministry in the New Testament and early post-Apostolic Church. The implications of this for debates between Presbyterians and Episcopalians are significant, undercutting a main argument for the non-existence of a third and highest order of ministry in the Church through which alone office can be transmitted.

THE PRIMITIVE MEANING AND USAGE OF THE TERM “PRESBYTER”

342. One of the most perplexing questions hindering a solution of the history of the origin of the monarchical Episcopate is the relation of the terms “bishop” and “presbyter” in pre-Ignatian sources.

Feast of St. Gregory Palamas

November 14

Apolytikion in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone

You are a guide of Orthodoxy, a teacher of piety and modesty, a luminary of the world, the God inspired pride of monastics. O wise Gregory, you have enlightened everyone by your teachings. You are the harp of the Spirit. Intercede to Christ our God for the salvation of our souls.

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut: Francis Turretin On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

The perpetual virginity of Mary often comes up in Protestant and Catholic arguments. When I was Reformed, I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t think it ought to be a church dividing issue since plenty of the Reformers and post-Reformation theologians adhered to it and defended it. And I didn’t at the time see its significance one way or the other, though no I think reflection on the perpetual virginity of Jesus will show that it is.) It was also a teaching that was held and judged to be correct or at least permissible, by plenty of “secondary” authorities. If Sola Scriptura entails following secondary authorities and eschewing the supposedly more Anabaptist take of solo Scriptura, this seemed like such a case.  And of course, plenty of Protestants hold to it today, not the least of which are the Lutherans.

An Impermissible god

“From other passages, in which God is said to draw or bend Satan himself, and all the reprobate, to his will, a more difficult question arises. For the carnal mind can scarcely comprehend how, when acting by their means, he contracts no taint from their impurity, nay, how, in a common operation, he is exempt from all guilt, and can justly condemn his own ministers. Hence a distinction has been invented between doing and permitting because to many it seemed altogether inexplicable how Satan and all the wicked are so under the hand and authority of God, that he directs their malice to whatever end he pleases, and employs their iniquities to execute his Judgments. The modesty of those who are thus alarmed at the appearance of absurdity might perhaps be excused, did they not endeavour to vindicate the justice of God from every semblance of stigma by defending an untruth. It seems absurd that man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and yet be forthwith punished for his blindness. Hence, recourse is had to the evasion that this is done only by the permission, and not also by the will of God. He himself, however, openly declaring that he does this, repudiates the evasion. That men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction, is proved by numberless clear passages of Scripture. What we formerly quoted from the Psalms, to the effect that he does whatever pleases him, certainly extends to all the actions of men. If God is the arbiter of peace and war, as is there said, and that without any exception, who will venture to say that men are borne along at random with a blind impulse, while He is unconscious or quiescent?…And hence it appears that they are impelled by the sure appointment of God. I admit, indeed, that God often acts in the reprobate by interposing the agency of Satan; but in such a manner, that Satan himself performs his part, just as he is impelled, and succeeds only in so far as he is permitted…The sum of the whole is this,—since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence; so that he not only exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, but also forces the reprobate to do him service.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religon 1.18. 1-2

Things That Make You Go, Hhmmm…

“The absurdity of the whole situation is clear: the Seventh Ecumenical Council forbids the adoration of icons, and the Council of Frankfurt is indignant because it decrees such adoration. But what is most absurd is that the legates of the same Pope Hadrian I, who had signed the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, also signed the decisions of the Council of Frankfurt.”

Leonid Ouspensky, The Theology of the Icon, Vol. 1, 143.

Contra Mundum: Athanasius and the LDS on Deification

For some time, the Mormons have been availing themselves of material in the Fathers of the Church regarding theosis in order to render their own doctrines more plausible. There is no shortage of LDS blogs and websites that exclaim with glee that the LDS doctrine of exaltation is within the bounds of Christian teaching on the basis of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. They routinely pelt Protestants as well as Catholics with patristic material maintaining that not only is their view within the corral of Christian orthodoxy, but that they alone possess the true teaching with respect to deification. They then put such claims in the service of motivating their claims of an apostasy after the apostolic age. Of course, such claims are, so far as I have seen not only false and supported by fallacious reasoning, but in many cases the use of Patristic material would make the cut and pasters over at the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society blush. Here I leave an examination of these specific claims by LDS apologists for another time.

What I wish to look at here is one of the principle texts brought out by LDS apologists and its argument that Athanasius’ doctrine of theosis is inconsistent with his doctrine of creation ex nihilo. This claim has become quite common among Mormon apologists and it is well suited to demonstrate the coherence and strength of the Orthodox position.

The specific text is a doctoral dissertation by Keith E. Norman entitled, Deification: The Context of Athanasian Soteriology. It is available in both print and electronic form. The dilemma so far as I can tell from Norman’s text is that if we are to be deified, then we cannot be created ex nihilo and vice versa. And this is so because things created ex nihilo can’t become deified since by essence, God enjoys a kind of underived existence or aseity.  Humans are therefore radically different or “wholly other”  than God, so much so that it is impossible to become what God is by essence. Something cannot both be beginingless and have a begining. Deification would entail a natural and therefore essential change in humanity which is precluded by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Without such a change, humans can’t be deified and are left in a mutable metaphysical state apart from salvation. The implication is that the LDS can affirm theosis consistently because they reject the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Therefore LDS theology stands in superior position to the Athanasian and by extension, the Orthodox teaching on deification.

I Do the Works of Him Who Sent Me

I had an interesting catechism class today. We were discussing an overview of the 7 Councils and the nature of the Christological heresies they dealt with. One of the class members said, “So, when I was taught that I was saved by grace alone and that NOTHING I do that is good is of “me” but solely of God, and MY works were all evil…is that like Eutychianism? (Which teaches that Christ’s human nature was absorbed by His divine nature.)” I thought about the Scripture where Jesus says, “I came to do the works of Him Who sent Me”. If we affirm the Christology of the Councils, it seems there is a big question that poses to an evangelical: If Jesus was fully God and fully man, which “Jesus” did the works? If His full humanity participated in doing “the works of Him (God)” freely and with a full human will as affirmed by the 6th Council, doesn’t that impact the doctrine of “grace alone”? Does the doctrine indeed smack of Eutychianism?

Thank Heaven for Little Girls?

A while ago, I was reading the Papal encyclical, Allatae Sunt, by Pope Benedict 14th in 1755. The encyclical has much to say regarding Rome’s relations to the East and so it is a worthwhile read, though I don’t think it is always accurate. That is just to say that I am not Catholic. But then I ran across a series of statements that I desired to get clear on regarding women servers at the altar.

Pope Gelasius in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: “Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry.” We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21.

Allatae Sunt, sec. 29.

Now I am not clear on a few points and so I wish to invite informed Catholics to help get clear on them. What is the standing of this statement? Is it revisable or has it been revised? Is this a moral issue or a prudential one? And if the latter, how are we to understand the Pope’s terms of “evil practice?” How does this statement relate to the current practice in the Catholic Church of permitting female altar servers and lay eucharistic ministers? What does Vatican II have to say on the matter or is there some other sourece in the code of canon law that explains the history and reasoning behind the apparent moral revision here?

To be clear, I do not wish to make a claim or argument regarding current practice. I only wish to get clear on what exactly is going on here in relation to contemporary Catholic practice.

Divine Simplicity in Aetius’ Neo-Arianism

 ”4.  If God remains endlessly in ungenerated essence and the generate is endlessly generate, then the perverse doctrine of the homoousion and the homoiousion will be destroyed. And incomparability in essence is established when each of the two natures remains unceasingly in its proper rank of nature.

5. If God is ungenerated with respect to essence, what was generated was not generated by partition of essence, but he has made it to exist as a hypostasis by his power. For no pious reasoning permits the same essence to be generated and ungenerated.

6.  If the ungenerated has been generated, what prevents the genrerated from having become generated? For every nature shuns what is improper to it for what is proper to it.

7. If God is not entirely ungenerated, nothing hinders him from having generated essentially. But if he is entirely ungenerated, he was not partioned essentially in generation, but he made the generate to exist as a hypostasis by his power.

8. If the ungenerated God is entirely generative, what was generated was not generated essentially, since his entire essence is able to generate but not to be generated.  If the essence of God, having been transformed, is said to be generate, his essence is not unchangeable, since the change effected the formation of the Son. If the essence of God be unchangeableand superior to generation, relationship with the Son will be confessed to be a mere mode of address.”

10. If the generate was complete within the ungenerated,it is generate as a result of the things from which the ungenerrated generated it. This is false, for it is not possible that a generated nature be within an ungenerated essence.  For the same thing is not able both to be an not to be. For a generate thing is not able to be ungenerated, and being ungenerated could not have been a generate thing, since to say that God consists of unlike parts presents to him the height of blasphemy of hybris.

The Syntagmation

“We have seen from our discussion of syllogisms #5 and #6 that Aetius based at least part of his argument against homoousion on the expectation that his opponents would agree to the axiom of God’s essential unity or simplicity. Certainly syllogisms #7 and #8 depend on this axiom.  If God is admitted to be essentially compound, argued #7, then part of God’s essence could remin ungenerated while the other part  would be able to become generated-or, as syllogism #8b put it ‘transformed’ into that which is generated. But since God is admitted not to be compound, if he is ungenerated, he must be entirely ungenerated (#7).  On the other hand, the Christian tradiiton was unanimous in believing that he in some way caused the Son to exist as a separate entity. With partition ruled out, the only alternative left, reiterated Aetius, is that God’s essence created the Son, that ‘he made the generate to exist as a hypostasis by his power.’ (#7). Moreover, given God’s simplicity, the entire essence of God must have been involved in the creation of the son and, in that sense, to have been ‘entirely generative” (#8). The implicaiton was that God’s essence could have been generated in no sense whatsoever. Homoousion of the entirely generative one with the generated one is impossible. We see how crucial the assumption of God’s unity or simplicity was to Aetius arguments; this will become apparent once again when we consider syllogism #10.”

Thomas A. Kopecek, A History of Neo-Arianism, vol. 1, 231-232, 236.