Why He’s Heterodox

Sed Contra 

1) Ecclesiology

The Holy Spirit isn’t a means. He is a Divine Person. Last I checked the Church was called the Body of Christ. I suspect that might have something to do with the Incarnation. The humanity of Christ is the bond between members of the Church by the working of the Spirit, which is why the Eucharist holds center stage. To take the Spirit as the unifying principle smacks of docetism and an impoverished view of the resurrected flesh.

2) Authority of Tradition
He can’t believe that the Scriptures are “unchangeable” with respect to the canon, for on his own principles the canon is a fallible set. What Scripture is, functionally for Protestants is a more or less fluid set of books. They modified the canon in the past and I see no in principle reason why they could not do so again.

And even if Scripture were the only normative source for teaching and practice there are I’d wager lots of practices or beliefs that have no explicit support in Scripture such as the perpetual virginity of Jesus or admitting women to the Eucharist.
And even if Scripture were the only infallible rule, the question is, who is the judge that is to normatively apply the rule?

3) Static cultural adaptation

I think we should preserve the Jewish forms of worship from the synagogue and the temple, albeit transformed by Christ. Jesus seemed to like them. To be Jewish in this respect is hardly “syncretistic.” And it is to be quite relevant for it keeps the church from having to follow after silly cultural trends and aestheticism and reinvent itself every five years like our existentially sick culture. It sends a message. We are not your culture. We are about something bigger than your culture. We are not a fad and we will outlast them all. People who constructed the great Cathedrals of Europe understood this. Moreover, they also understood the relevance of the Incarnation to architecture.  With contemporary Protestant architecture, and no small amount of Puritan architecture as well, God is everywhere in general and no where in particular. So much for the Epistle to the Hebrews.

A big part of the divine liturgy is about meeting God in the life of Christ, which is why the Liturgy and the church year are centered around “doing over” the life of Christ. Historically it seems to have done a far better job at making people “holy” than the pop evangelical styles. Evangelicals have values but they lack virtue.

Law, sin, death and free-will

“For we know that the Law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.”
After having said that great evils had taken place, and that sin, taking occasion by the commandment, had grown stronger, and the opposite of what the Law mainly aimed at had been the result, and after having thrown the hearer into a great deal of perplexity, he goes on next to give the rationale of these events, after first clearing the Law of any ill suspicion. For lest — upon hearing that it was through the commandment that sin took that occasion, and that it was when it came that sin revived, and through it deceived and killed — any one should suppose the Law to be the source of these evils, he first sets forth its defense with considerable advantage, not clearing it from accusation only, but encircling it also with the utmost praise. And this he lays down, not as granting it for his own part, but as declaring a universal judgment. “For we know,” he says, “that the Law is spiritual.” As if he had said, This is an allowed thing, and self evident, that it “is spiritual,” so far is it from being the cause of sin, or to blame for the evils that have happened. And observe, that he not only clears it of accusation, but bestows exceeding great praise upon it. For by calling it spiritual, he shows it to be a teacher of virtue and hostile to vice; for this is what being spiritual means, leading off from sin of every kind’.

A Good Question

According to Jonathan Prejean, I asked good questions. Part of good philosophy is framing questions clearly to help get to the heart of the matter. You don’t have all the time in the world, so asking good questions is a way of scraping away unnecessary steps.  My question was part of a discussion at Triumphications concerning the nature of grace (and the grace of nature) and the Theotokos. I want to know, qua explanation, if the Catholic model can explain why God has Mary immaculately conceived and free from inherited albeit analogical guilt, why not just skip all of the evil in the world and do this for everyone? Or perhaps more strongly, why not create everyone in a state of confirmed grace? This kind of question is significant for lots of reasons. Currently in the literature on the problem of evil, this essential question has been a major objection to Plantinga type free will defenses. I have seen it proposed in one form or another by everyone from typical atheologians as well as process and open theists. But on to Jonathan’s reply.

Jonathan replied: “I could have prevented the possibility of either of my children committing actual sin by slaughtering them after they were baptized. Why didn’t I do that? This I think shows the inadequacy of your underlying worry about the problem of evil. There is a purpose in people being allowed to be subject to evil, even if that purpose is necessarily inscrutable to reason. I will let my children possibly be damned to Hell, not because I hate them, but because I love them. I suspect it is the same with God.”

I responded with the following: “I don’t think you have given the proper analogy. God could have prevented lots of moral evil, not by doing some evil to human agents but by doing some great good to them. If you could have given your child a proverbial pill to prevent them from not only sinning but ever dying or any serious suffering, wouldn’t you do so? Now, you may object that your ways aren’t the ways of God. Fair enough, but given the imago dei, it is also true that we have via reason, barring Calvinism and Jansenism, a genuine notion of goodness. I can’t see why it wouldn’t be good to give them the pill. Do you?”  

Reply to an Evangelical

“As Evangelicals we believe in ‘Enhypostatic Interfusion’ or Miaphytism in dealing with say John 15….

Essence and Energy are communicable - otherwise we would only be beholding christlikeness [energetic potentiality] and NOT be becoming Christlike [communicable and essential actuality].”

These are snippets of a comment posted on my blog. I have provided them to give some context to my response which I have included below. I am interested on obtaining some feed back regarding the response. Is it correct or wrong? Can it be improved? How?

I would appreciate any constructive comments and I think this matter is very much in line with the material in this blog and it underlies some of the discussions here.

The Essence of God is unknowable and incommunicable because it is uncreated and without beginning in time. The created cannot take on the nature [used interchangeably with essence for this argument] of the uncreated because it could only do so in time thus giving a beginning in time to the uncreated nature, thus contradicting the uncreated nature and it ceasing to be uncreated and without beginning. The Son of God could take on created nature in time because it can have a beginning but the reverse is not possible.

The Son of God has two natures in one person. The human nature remains created and fully human and it does not become uncreated. Nevertheless, it can be united without confusion to the Divine nature and share in the fullness of the life of the Divine nature. Christ’s human nature, although created, is no less Christ than His Divine nature. Thus, when we are united to Christ’s human nature we too share in the Divine nature in the same fullness as Christ’s human nature. We are truly Christlike. There is nothing in Christ’s humanity that we do not share in our own hypostasis. However, only the hypostasis of the Son of God can have two natures, we retain one nature, our human nature, but in Christ we participate in the divine nature in His human nature, through the energies of God in the Holy Spirit. Thus we share in omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience and most importantly the Love of God. These are all ours as they are Christ’s. We live in the fullness of life as Christ does in His human nature; His life is our life.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council rejected monophysitism because it confused the human nature of Christ and His Divine nature. This means that we cannot participate in the Divine life without ceasing to be completely human or becoming God and so denying our salvation. Miaphysitism may be acceptable terminology only if one accepts the two nature teaching of Pope Leo and the Council.

Each hypostasis contains its nature completely within itself. Thus each of the Persons of the Trinity has the fullness of the nature/essence of God within itself. The nature is not shared between them. Each human person has human nature entirely within himself. One human is no less human than another and the human nature is not something outside each person that we somehow share. Rather it is whole and complete in each person.

To have the Divine nature is to have it whole and complete within our own hypostasis. Because it is not within our hypostasis presently, it must begin to be within our hypostasis at some point, if we are truly to have this nature, and this is the reason why we cannot have the Divine nature; it cannot begin in our hypostasis. Only the three hypostases of the Trinity, which are without beginning can have the divine nature within them. We cannot speak of the Divine essence outside of the hypostases of God and neither can we talk of it outside our own hypostases, if we could share in it.

To share in the Divine essence or to know it or for it to be communicated means to have it as our nature completely within our own hypostasis. Otherwise, what is meant, by partaking or sharing the Divine nature, is to share in the energies of the Divine essence, which we can do without having the Divine essence enhypostasised.

Church and dogma

“Every alteration in the basic creed, each subsidence in the hidden foundations of the Church, ‘which the Lord founded upon the rock of faith,’ produces sooner or later cracks of division on the ’surface’ of the Church’s face. If dogma is falsified, whether intentionally or not, ecclesiology, both pastoral and administrative, is deformed, spiritual life is falsified and man suffers.

Ecclesiology and Christian anthropology have the same basis: Trinitarian and christological dogma. The Word is made flesh, and theology is ministered in the life of the faithful. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the theology of the Fathers who proclaimed Christ speaks about our life, which is Christ.

The hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ makes us partakers by grace in the unapproachable life which is in the Holy Trinity. And the mode of existence of God in Trinity forms also the mysterious structure of our own being ‘in the image’. Only when we are conformed to Christ, recognising Him by partaking in His Life, do we ‘regain our proper stature,’ our natural function and our freedom, as the Church and as persons. Ecclesiology and spirituality have the same basis: dogma. The Church is Christ, His body living in history. It is summarised in each of the faithful, who is the Church in miniature. The personal consciousness of each of the faithful has an ecclesial dimension, and every problem of the Church is the problem of the personal salvation of each of the faithful.

Consequently, when the heretic lays hands on the “traditional faith” he lays hands on the life of the faithful, their raison d’etre. Heresy is at once a blasphemy towards God and a curse for man. This is the reason why the entire organism and spiritual health and sensitivity of Orthodoxy has from the beginning reacted against the destructive infection of heresies.’

Archimandrite Vasileios in Hymn of Entry pgs 20-21.

Hell and BACK!!!

Alright guys, we’re back up and runnin’…I’ll be posting very soon on a fantastic dissertation that I read recently by a Roman Catholic regarding the question of the filioque and St. Maximus the Confessor and his letter to Marinus as understood at the Council of Florence.

It’s good to be back!

Photios

Ecumenical Patriarchate

Since January there is a drive by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to re-open the Theological Seminary of Heybeliada (Halki) in Istanbul. This seminary has been closed by the Turkish government even though it promised to permit its re-opening up till 2004. Currently under Turkish law, the Ecumenical Patriarch must be a Turkish citizen. But since the seminary is closed, and through discriminatory practices by the Turkish government which has whittled away the Orthodox population down to about 2,000 in Turkey, it is incredibily difficult to select the Patriarch.

Moreover, since 1975 the Turkish government has confiscated 75% of the Patriarchate’s properties. They have also lodged retoractive taxes of 42% on Church hospitals and other facilities since 1999. Details regarding other human rights violations and discriminatory practies by the Turkish government can be accessed at

http://www.greece.org/themis/halki2/osce.html

http://www.archons.org/pdf/yalelawstudy.pdf

Citizens in free countries of the West are urged to contact their elected representatives to influence the Turkish government to make good on its past promise to permit the re-opening of the seminary and protect the freedom of its Christian minority. American citizens are urged to contact their U.S. senators. The influence of western citizens will be especially potent at this point when Turkey is petitioning for entrance into the European Union.

http://www.senate.gov/