Fr. J.J., Luther taught that no “law” has the power to “save”(restore humanity to communion with God), that salvation does not come without reliance on God’s “grace” (Divine energies). What Luther stumbled over in Holy Writ was references to “works” not “law”, by which he failed to comprehend the Ascetic Ideal of the New Testament as expressed by St. Paul, something that seems to also be “missed” in the moral POV.

Luther’s idea that works are opposed to faith understood the the term “works” to mean moral works. He juxtaposed moral effort against faith. That’s why he had trouble with the book of James which posits the exact opposite: faith is expressed through works.

St. Paul wrote that faith supersedes the “works of the law”, but Luther read this reference to law to mean a cosmic moral law, and not solely the Mosaic Law. It is on this basis Luther regarded James as the “epistle of straw.”

So, yes, Luther, although reading Paul correctly in that no law could save man, still misunderstood the nature and character of the law to which Paul referred, that is, the Mosaic law and not a cosmic moral law.

Looked at your bio and realized your logic only makes sense if I look at it in terms of “Lutheranized” Orthodoxy. It is why you (erroneously) concluded that Paul’s reference to the law referred to “Roman and pagan” law that I called you on upstream (note #47). Frankly, when I first I read your conclusion I saw it could arise only after first being filtered through a pre-existing (and still operative) category. Your conclusion could not, in other words, be lifted off the pages of the text without something else first being read into it — in this case the faith vs. works moral dichotomy of Luther. When I read you were raised Lutheran, the puzzle fit together.

So I can’t help but wonder if, despite all your protestations of Western corruption, that you aren’t the one still bound to the Western categories?

In any case, you get the last word and then this thread is closed. Feel free to post your website address and invite others to continue the debate there if you wish.

Why do you ask?

As the old saying goes, you can take the boy out from the Manchees (or Papists-Protestants), but you can’t take the Manichees (or P-P) out of the boy.

So how were you raised?

The moral POV seems to makes an idol of “law”, and “rates” sin (non-compliance with the law) as not so bad, bad, worse, worst, etc. something evident in Papism’s heirarchy of transgressions for which “atonement” must be made by way of penance. Such heirarchy of sin must be from whence comes the notion (from the moral POV) about abortion being untouchable and the “greatest” of “sins”, by which no other lack of communion with God (“sin”) can compare. Yet Holy Writ proclaims that All have “sinned” and fallen short of the Glory of God, not that some have sinned more than others. The Parable of the Vineyard also makes this clear, that someone who repents (be it from abortion or theft) and is saved just short of death will be saved alongside those that have spent an entire lifetime in spiritual warfare, struggling to maintain communion with God, who have refrained from abortion (among other transgressions).

The moral POV seems to see any equivalence between “sins” as an affront to its sacrosanctity of the human person which is considered “life” absolutely; in which no other Created form of life qualifies or need apply. Hence, murder (a synonym for abortion) is far greater than adultery, much less is theft, abuse of livestock, etc. etc. The moral POV worships what is “right” (“good”) and “wrong” (“bad”), a duality the moral POV sets up between two “opposing principles”. The moral POV then uses accusations of “moral relativism” and “moral equivalence” in rationalistic political debate in its exercise for will to power, to condemn those with whom it disagrees (such as Bishop Sava).

Power and judging are really the hidden (occult) objectives of the moral POV, often hidden even from those who indulge in it, but unfortunately, such is not power that “saves”, and such judging of others distracts those with moral POV from repentance over their own sin (which Met. Jonah makes clear in Spiritual Maturity is a sign of immaturity). Repentance is the basis for theosis (vision of God; “Blessed are the pure in heart (repentant) for they shall “see” God). Only vision of God (communion with God) saves. Only Divine energies that come by way of repentance (Path of Salvation, Ascetic Ideal) give a human the ability to “keep” the law. A thousand or more years of proclaiming moral law in the agora has not prevented the “progress” of Liberal Enlightenment (English or French) from proceeding to logical conclusions inherent in the philosophies on which such movement is based. Sentimentality for an earlier time in the history of Liberal Enlightenment culture when things were considered “christian” (not so “immoral”) may not be Oprahism, but certainly can be said to be Beaverism (as in Leave it to Beaver).

For example, you reference to Vlachos’ work are a muddle of misunderstandings (and before you ask, I used Vlachos extensively in my doctoral dissertation and it was on the strength of my work that, I was ordained to the holy priesthood in the GOA without having to attend seminary): that the modern concept of person developed (partly) within the context the Christological and Trinitarian debates of the first centuries is true; that Vlachos criticize some aspects of western culture is also true. But he does not deny the personhood of non-Christians–nor would he, since he knows that all human being are created in the image of the Tri-Personal God and to do so would be an anthropological heresy.

Nor, I should add, does Vlachos reject (as you seem to do) the whole of western culture and science. For example in one of his works (Orthodox Psychotherapy?) he clearly states that he works closely with clinical psychologists because he values their scientific expertise.

The ability to cut and paste sources from the internet does not mean that you understand the material that you are quoting–in fact given the speed with which you respond, I am rather confident that you are simply parroting what others have said.

Regarding critical responses to Romanides , the best sources for this is to read Augustine and Aquinas–neither of whom I suspect you’ve read. For the record, the most that can be said of Romanides critic of scholasticism is that it represents a rejection of one, very narrow, very contemporary school of neo-scholasticism. To the best of my knowledge Romanides does not engage directly with the text of any seminal scholastic thinkers or even that matter with Aquinas in any substantive fashion; nor have you here. Nor does he (or you) seem aware of the VAST amount of material written by the non-scholastic by contemporaries of Aquinas (for example, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, and Bernard of Clairvaux to name but three).

As for the development of science, or the lack of development in Byzantine culture, I am not certain where to begin so deep is your misunderstanding. You might want to read Stanley Jaki and his careful, well documented, historical work in tracing the development of science over several centuries and cultures beginning with the OT, continuing through the NT and the patristic era.

As for you claim that Byzantine culture was a deified culture, well, no sir that simply ain’t so. PERSONS are deified, cultures are not, nor can they be, since they have no real existence and (to the degree they can be identified at all) are merely intellectual abstractions.

What you have offered us here DStall is simply prejudice and ideology. Your criticisms of all things Western boarders on the Manichean (East, all good, West all bad) and (for the record) is NO WAY reflects anything that Metropolitan JONAH has said or written.

What value your criticism might have is undermined by your use of the technological fruits of a culture you condemn as poisoned. But I will leave that aside.

To be clear, I am not angry with you, but I am saddened by the things you say. You misconceptions reflect poorly not on you but on the pastoral and catechetic work of the Church. We have for too many years simply accepted a mindless and uncharitable criticism of all things Western. Shame not on DStall, but on us for our lack of discernment.

Brothers and Sisters, we have be content for too long to be satisfied with mere negation of the West and been dependent not on prayerful scholarship but slogans. Doing this is not only unworthy of our great calling but is an injustice to our Catholic and Protestant brothers and sisters and our fellow citizens. Worst of all, however, is that it sets the stages for our offering inquirers a stone instead of bread, a serpent when they ask for a fish.

My involvement here is my small attempt to do penance in my life for my own participation in our shared folly.

In Christ,

+FrG

I most certainly grasp that any discussion of the care of Creation must preserve the sanctity and freedom of the human person. I will still believe that if/when an Orthodox leader says or doesn’t say it and have not said otherwise as you insist.

Do you really? There’s lots of talk in your writing about the corrupt “West”, a tendency to relegate all those who don’t agree with you into that category, and the bantering of terms (theosis, personhood, communion, dualism) in ways that are poorly explained and even misunderstood on occasion.

I’m not so sure you really understand the things you are saying; For example:

To the Romans he communicates in terms of law, and bashes any pagan Roman ideas that the law leads to divine communion.

Presumably you are referring to the Book of Romans, correct? If so, your analysis is all wrong. To the Romans St. Paul writes to the Jews of his Roman Church how faith in Christ supersedes the Mosaic (Levitical) law.

For all your talk about the “West,” you are making the classic “Western” mistake in your ostensible defense of “Eastern” Orthodoxy: You (like Luther), read all references to the law in the Book of Romans as pertaining to a cosmic moral law, rather than the Mosaic Law. The law wasn’t pagan and it wasn’t Roman. In fact, the Law was good because it revealed the need for Christ, as St. Paul says.

Lots of sound in your words, lots of fury, but…

Another troubling sentence:

Most will respond positively to the understanding of God as love, not as moral arbitrator of justice; it’s the paradigm that the world is ready and has been waiting for, and one that only Orthodoxy is capable of communicating eloquently.

Sounds dangerously close to the Oprahization of Orthodoxy to my ears. There is no doubt that the religion of Calvin is spiritually exhausted. There is no doubt the West is ready for Orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, I think you demonize the West in order to elevate the East, when in fact you don’t understand some critical points of both.