On Old Testament Violence and Orthodox Interpretation of Scripture
On the Intrinsic Value of a Human Being
On Science, Galileo and Church Persecution
On the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition and the Crusades
Some Q & A the day after the debate
by
Comments
98 responses to “Some Q & A the day after the debate”
-
A while back, I saw a post on Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog regarding the wrath of God that sought to rationalize Old Testament violence in certain ways. Not exactly as Fr. Johannes does, but in a similar spirit.
Now, I have nothing against interpreting the Old Testament allegorically or in ways not dependent on its literal meaning. However, I think a point is missed in Fr. Johannes’ answer that really does indict modern secular morality and modern Christian morality.
The God that Fr. Johannes describes does not seem very powerful to me. In fact, what Fr. Johannes seems to be saying is that the pagan gods were projections of man’s perceptions of how the universe worked and the Israelite God, and subsequently the Christian God, are just more merciful projections worthy of endorsement. If he is not saying this, then he didn’t really answer the question regarding Old Testament violence. I don’t think it surprises anyone that ancient people were violent. What surprises and offends some is that God ordered what to us seems utterly barbaric. The real question is about the character of God, not the worldview of His people. It seems like Fr. Johannes’ answer is really just an account of the evolution of human morality in light of religious development, independent of the objective truth of the religion; i.e., whether God actually exists and what He is like.
There is actually a Being called God. He exists regardless of whether even one human being exists. He is not a projection of a worldview and He acts in history. So when the athiest criticizes the violence in the Old Testament (and the New Testament as well) which God ordered, he is criticizing God.
God could have ordered the Israelites to be semi-pacifistic and kept them under His divine protection, or opened the hearts of their adversaries. God could have done any number of things to avoid ordering, for example, the genocidal extermination of the Amalekites.
But He didn’t. And there is no change in Him.
It really is not a question of what people could understand in their worldview at the time. God could and did change the worldview of a small group of Israelites through the Resurrection.
There is no way to sidestep the fact that the same God who lay as a baby in a manger also killed the firstborn of the Egyptians. Wrath and the capacity and will to destroy enemies, either directly or through the agency of His people, is a characteristic of our God. Context and timing are everything.
Now, I’m not suggesting what God “feels”. I’m not suggesting He is subject to addictive emotional rants. When we use the word “wrath” in conjunction with “God” we are describing how His actions appear in human terms. But they are His actions.
There is a troubling semi-Marcionite streak that has reared its head at times in Christian history and seems to be gaining popularity in some circles now. It picks and chooses the parts of God’s character it likes according to modern sensibilities and denies the rest. It was Moses, inspired by God, who said “love your neighbor as yourself” and it was the God of the New Testament who struck down Ananias and Sapphira. St. Paul wrote that the sword was given to the government by God to punish evil and establish order. Same God. Same character.
Marcionism, and semi-Marcionism, should be avoided since if we deny the God of Israel, directly or indirectly, we are denying Christ. His entire identity and relevance depends on His being the same God Whom those with tender sensibilities seek to rationalize away.
-
Scott –
Was it God that killed the first born of Eqypt, or was it the Egyptians?
-
-
εἶπεν δὲ κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν ἔτι μίαν πληγὴν ἐπάξω ἐπὶ Φαραω καὶ ἐπ’ Αἴγυπτον καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐξαποστελεῖ ὑμᾶς ἐντεῦθεν ὅταν δὲ ἐξαποστέλλῃ ὑμᾶς σὺν παντὶ ἐκβαλεῖ ὑμᾶς ἐκβολῇ
The LORD said to Moses, “Yet one plague more will I bring on Pharaoh, and on Egypt; afterwards he will let you go. When he lets you go, he will surely thrust you out altogether.
καὶ εἶπεν Μωυσῆς τάδε λέγει κύριος περὶ μέσας νύκτας ἐγὼ εἰσπορεύομαι εἰς μέσον Αἰγύπτου καὶ τελευτήσει πᾶν πρωτότοκον ἐν γῇ Αἰγύπτῳ ἀπὸ πρωτοτόκου Φαραω ὃς κάθηται ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ ἕως πρωτοτόκου τῆς θεραπαίνης τῆς παρὰ τὸν μύλον καὶ ἕως πρωτοτόκου παντὸς κτήνους
Moses said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘About midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt,and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of livestock.
It is crystal clear. God killed them.
-
How does this translate into having a God that is “All Loving” and “All Just” ? We tend to speak a lot about the Perfect Love, but perhaps downplay the Perfectly Just?
-
Chris,
I suppose you could put it that way. The thing is that discipline is a function of love. This life in this world is not the end all be all. There is also a heavenly or infernal repose and an ultimate state, post-resurrection, of bliss or perdition. Human experience, especially in more liberal cultures, should serve as persuasive testimony that without a fear of consequences, people surrender to their passions. Object lessons serve as a reminder of consequences.
I do not suggest that we ever need to be as harsh as God was with some of the tribes and peoples of the Old Testament. That was right in its context but we are not likely to face a situation like the Hebrews did during the 40 years in the wilderness or like Israel did under Kings Samuel and David when certain tribes were a real existential threat to God’s people.
I do, however take issue with those who do not believe in God’s wrath and that the Yahweh of the Old Testament was a God of wrath and the Christ of the New Testament is a God of Love. That is only half true. The God of the Old Testament was also a God of Love and the God of the New Testament is also a God of wrath.
Leviticus 19:18
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.Proverbs 25:21-22
If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee.Lamentations 3:25-31
The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach. For the LORD will not cast off for ever.Someplace I have a bible that has a whole page of passages in it which you would swear are things that Christ said for the first time in the New Testament but which are really quotes from the Old Testament. In fact, much of His moral teaching reads like a “Best of the Old Testament” summary.
Now, as to the God of wrath in the New Testament:
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.Romans 2:8
But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.Ephesians 5:6
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.Hebrews 10:26-31
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.The following is just my personal theory, but I think it’s pretty sound:
In the twentieth century, because of World Wars I and II, the advent of nuclear weapons and the growing tendency to see religion as antiquated mythology, there developed a tendency to downplay God’s wrath and focus as exclusively as possible on His love since the Great Project of religion was increasingly seen to be to pacify mankind (physically). It was seen as too dangerous to continue with the old ways of looking at God.
I’m 43. I recall the religious atmosphere to some extent during the 1970’s and have read and seen enough footage of the decades prior to that to know that even ostensibly religious people had lost a great deal of their faith (even those who seemed relatively conservative) and acquiesced to the New Mission of the churches to be forces for progress. That is one reason I think some of our Orthodox jurisdictions stress ethnicity so much. If you see religion as an artifact – – a beautiful artifact worth preserving “in spirit”, to be sure, but an artifact nonetheless – – then the question becomes, “Whose artifact is it?”
But God is bigger than all that and He will prevail. He just takes His own sweet time.
-
I do, however take issue with those who do not believe in God’s wrath and that the Yahweh of the Old Testament was a God of wrath and the Christ of the New Testament is a God of Love. That is only half true. The God of the Old Testament was also a God of Love and the God of the New Testament is also a God of wrath
I agree completely. And you make a important point.
I should let Father Hans defend this. My apologies for jumping into what was his question.
-
Chris,
I did not mean to saddle Fr. Johannes with the entirety of the view you quoted immediately above. I do not want to misrepresent what he said in his talk above. I just have seen aspects and degrees of this view emerge in different contexts in Orthodox discussions and thought it would be a good idea to address the tendency rather than any specific person’s views.
-
-
-
-
-
I agree with Soctt, even Byzantines unlike some modern Orthodox did take those passage literally, and didn’t see an inconsistently with God’s character. I read a translation of Theophanes’s history and yes, he excepted those passages. Granted, I don’t think that punishing people for hersay like Catholic Europe or some of the Orthodox Emperors did is validate today. And its true that Marcion who wanted to cut out most of the bible except Paul’s letters because he didn’t like the old testment was condemm by several church. It also true that some church fathers like Origen thought those passages more alleogical.
-
Also, the anicent Jews lived in a land which had many very hostile people who were pretty violent which explains some of the passages of the old testment. Personality, I read Theophaens and found passages about Byzantine emprors and generals that had the head of their emeny brought to them. This also seems extreme to me as well.
-
“It is crystal clear. God killed them.”
In a sense, God “kills” everyone in the sense that He defines the time and place of death for all. That He might have defined a set time for the deaths of the firstborn of Egypt also has no bearing on whether those firstborn were condemned or not. There is no reason to believe they were from Scripture.
I wouldn’t be so glib.
-
Exodus 12:12-13
“For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”
He killed them. I did not suggest he found all of the firstborn guilty of anything, only that he cut their lives short. He had a purpose in doing so which is described in more detail elsewhere.
-
He took their lives as a consequence of being All Just.
-
-
-
We are forgetting one important aspect of the OT narrative and that is that the various peoples that the Israelites came into contact with brought judgment upon themselves because of their actions. The genocide that Joshua unleashed on the Canaanites was warranted becaause of their evil ways. And the Lord was actually merciful to the Egyptians in only killing their firstborn rather than completely wiping out their entire population. I know this sounds harsh but the inevitable fall of nations necessarily entails entails atrocities that were brought on their heads because of their own actions. This applies even to peoples we consider to be “victims” in the world. At base, all Christianity has tried to do was give a theological gloss for what is essentially an evolutionary struggle between races, tribes, classes, etc. That’s what we’re stuck with in the end: are we living in a world created by a transcendent God or mere matter? If the latter, then genocide, slavery, and mass-murder are of no consequence, no matter how much Christopher Hitchens says to the contrary.
-
Now the Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants that these signs may come upon them.
Did God truly harden these hearts? St. John of Demascus teaches that it is tradition for Scripture to liken permission to action. It goes with what we believe to be true that God is All loving: He gives us free will (or permission)for we are characters in His narrative/story, BUT He is also All Just. We cannot believe that with our choice there will not be consequences otherwise, God is not All Just. The clincher being – that throughout the OT and the NT He has shown us mercy. As George as pointed out.
-
As for the Q&A subject of Inquisition…
It’s good to defend Western Christendom against atheist abuses of history; however, I don’t see the need to defend any aspect of the Spanish or any other Inquisition. Father clearly does a good job dispelling common myths, but some papal-sponsored events of history should be attacked.
As for the Crusader sack of Constantinople.. yes, the Pope did condemn it initially, but he had no qualms in recognizing a pretender Latin Patriarch on the throne of Constantinople just months later.
While this crusader party of 1204 was technically in schism with Rome, the papal armies did plenty of “Inquisition-like” things against the Orthodox throughout the entirety of the Crusades (i.e.- Latin takeover of Cyprus and many Greek islands with resident bishops forced from their sees to be replaced by Cardinals; forced taking of throne of Antioch and exile of John the Oxite; subjugation of Syrian and Jerusalem Orthodox Christians and monks; widescale theft of relics and other holy things…).
While there were a few moral outrages committed against the Latins as well, I would argue that one underlying unspoken mission of the Crusades was the ecclesiastical takeover of the East by the Pope. Granted it started in a cooperative spirit, but on the whole from an Orthodox perspective the Crusaders themselves were also attempting an Inquisition of the Christian East. While I enjoy authors like David Bentley Hart, I think he goes a little too far in defending the West.
One could argue that the high middle ages triumphalist political papacy helped to create (in a non-immediate way) much of the atheism that would later overtake the modern West.
We should, in a gentle spirit, not be afraid to point his out. This is not Orthodox ultra-zealotry, this is simple history as even historians like Runciman would attest. -
Well, personality, I don’t think that events that happen centruies ago have to do with modern Roman Catholics. As mention previously Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was pretty brutal but how many modern French spend time writing about how bad Italians are because of what JC did in 50 b.c. Yes, Orthodox can talk about the crusades and westeners siding with Turkey against Greece-which is a better complain against the west since its something that happen more recent.
-
I’d like to respond to Scott’s comment that: “The God that Fr. Johannes describes does not seem very powerful to me. In fact, what Fr. Johannes seems to be saying is that the pagan gods were projections of man’s perceptions of how the universe worked and the Israelite God, and subsequently the Christian God, are just more merciful projections worthy of endorsement. If he is not saying this, then he didn’t really answer the question regarding Old Testament violence.”
Fr. Johannes’ placement of the OT narratives in their context doesn’t seem to me to equal saying that the OT authors’ concept of the Israelite God was *merely* a projection of their perceptions (nor even that the Pagan gods were, since we know from Apostolic teaching that there were/are real demonic entities behind the pagan deities). Rather istm that he is explaining that the *narratives* they used to explain and describe their interactions with these gods and with the God of Israel *were,* however, impacted by their human perceptions and predominating world view. There is an important distinction to be made here. In understanding the narratives of the Scriptures as necessarily reflecting the real human limitations of its human authors and not equally and at every point being the direct revelation of God as He knows Himself to be (i.e., as a kind of “Christian” Qur’an), but rather the product of God’s synergy with His people/prophets and reflecting their real interactions in history with Him (and their, accordingly, expanding, yet still-imperfect vision of Him)–that is to say “inspired,” istm, Fr. Johannes’ approach here reflects a truly Orthodox understanding of the meaning and place of the Scriptures in the life of the Church. They are not comprehensible apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit and are only made clear through the fullness of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ.
Our understanding of the Scriptures’ real meaning and import has more to do, therefore, with the depth of our own real Communion with God, than it has with a word-for-word analysis of the text. As a former Evangelical, this understanding of the inspiration of Scripture has been extremely helpful to me, and renders discussions like the above initiated by Scott’s comments about God’s wrath vs. love as, for the most part, moot. I think the modern movement emphasizing God’s mercy, and reflected in Fr. Stephen’s writings on this subject, is a welcome corrective to those of us raised with the “God” of penal substitutionary atonement theories.
-
Karen:
Our understanding of the Scriptures’ real meaning and import has more to do, therefore, with the depth of our own real Communion with God, than it has with a word-for-word analysis of the text.
True, many “have drowned in the fathomless ocean that is the wisdom of God”.
From The Truth of Our Faith – by Elder Cleopa of Romania
EC: Holy Scripture contains within it unanswerable passages or, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa puts it, strong bones. Some would like to break these bones of Scripture with their wisdom teeth as of yet still only suitable for sucking milk. However, such a thing they would never be able to manage. All who have desired to plunge into the depths of Scripture have drowned in the fathomless ocean that is the wisdom of God. Such was the portion shared by Origen, Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, Sabellius, Dioscorus, Eutyches and all the other chiefs of the ancient heresies who have been swallowed up in the unfathomable sea of Holy Scripture. The profundity and depth of Scripture was not the cause of their fall and drowning, but rather they themselves were the cause, due to their own insufficiencies, of being drowned in the depths of the mysteries of the Scriptures.
Holy Scripture is like a fountain or an endless spring, of the wisdom of God in which we must be steeped and partake in accordance with our level of wisdom and spiritual maturity. Just as we take water from the well with a bucket, empty it into our pitcher and then into our glass in order to quench our bodys thirst, so must we also do with our spiritual thirst when we are urged to drink of the deepest ocean of wisdom, the Holy Scriptures. Thus, spiritually speaking, if we draw more water from the well of Scripture than is drinkable (out of desire for the purity of our intellect (νούς) and heart), due to our pride and inquisitiveness we will be destroyed in our attempt to grasp the incomprehensible with our limited human faculties. If, for example, we were to see a child from the first grade trying to learn and to teach others that which is taught at the university, how much laughter and amusement would it provoke in us! The same and worse happens to those who desire to scrutinize and unravel the incomprehensible mysteries of the Scriptures with an intellect inexperienced and unenlightened by the Holy Spirit.
The divine Prophets and Apostles, as well as the holy Fathers of the Church, while by the purity of their lives attaining to the simplicity and innocence of infants, at the same time also, on account of their wisdom, became as perfect spiritual men (Eph. 4:13). Nevertheless, they were never so bold as to delve into the impenetrable mysteries of the wisdom of God. Before these elevated notions and expressions they remained as if enraptured saying, How great are Thy works, O Lord, exceeding deep are Thy thoughts, (Ps. 91:6) and Great is our Lord, and great is His strength, and of His understanding there is no measure (Ps. 146:5). Still further, in another place, it is said: Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding (Is. 40:28). Listen also to the vessel of election, the Apostle Paul, as he says with wonderment; O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? (Rom. 11: 33-34).You understand, therefore, my friend, that this fathomless depth of the wisdom of God cannot be approached by any intellect among His creatures, neither those found in the heavens, nor those on earth. Much more difficult is it for those who, without purifying their intellect (νούς) and heart from the passions, and being bereft also of divine enlightenment, presume on their own to penetrate the unbounded abyss of the Scriptures.
My dearest to Christ, earlier you referred me to certain passages that appeared to you to underscore a type of absolute predestination for man, however, the truth of things is entirely otherwise.
-
“I’m talking about terms in the narrative. Whether or not this happened historically, we don’t really know. But it doesn’t matter. Because if the foundation of reality is narrative, is story, is word – – like I contend it is – – then the only thing that is important is the narrative.”
5:18 – 5:37 – from Fr. Johannes’ remarksI wrote Fr. Johannes a personal e-mail regarding his answer regarding Old Testament violence; however, briefly, the crux of it was that his notion about God behaving in line with the expectations of the ancient Hebrews, including their appetite for a “total warfare” that makes jihad look like a picnic, only makes sense if you don’t actually believe there is an objective entity called God. Otherwise, what you’re saying is that God behaved atrociously because he was not powerful enough to change the expectations of the people of that age. He certainly changed the expectations of the people of Christ’s age who were looking for a military messiah.
Either it was good and right for the Hebrews to follow His ultra-violent orders or He is not good and just.
The tacit understanding behind accepting Fr. Johannes explanation of the Hebrews expectations is that they really did not have any direct knowledge of God until His revelation in Christ. It was they who were seeking for God and projecting their worldview and expectations onto Him. This actually negates all those places in Scripture where prophets communicated the words of God to the Hebrews. In effect, it is Marcionite.
It is further problematic because the New Testament takes great pains to portray Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. If OT prophecy was just a projection of the aspirations of the Hebrews, then it undermines the credibility of the Gospel. The whole idea is very unsettling.
Furthermore, in the end, Fr. Johannes gives God credit for developing us (religious and secular alike) such that we can see what an sob he was 3000 years ago. That’s very odd. God raises our level of moral discernment to the point where we can see the evil of His actions.
It would be better to make a theistically reasonable explanation.
-
I haven’t had a chance to get to the email yet.
No, I am not saying God “behaves” in line with the “expectations” of the ancient Hebrews. I am saying that given the culture of the time, the self-revelation of God was bound to conditions that would take centuries to change, indeed could only be overthrown when Christ conquered death.
In fact, the “expectations” were continually thwarted, especially when the Hebrews insisted that their God was solely a warrior God. When this happened — when self-justification for sin dominated the order of the day (usually described as not taking care of the poor, a neglect that would lead to the worship of false gods), the God of Abraham would turn his judgment against them. It took many years for the stiff-necked and rebellious people to turn their gaze inward, to see that restoration begins on the inside and works outward. Some saw clearly, such as the writers of the Psalms or the prophets. Others did not. All told, it was a messy business.
The tacit understanding behind accepting Fr. Johannes explanation of the Hebrews expectations is that they really did not have any direct knowledge of God until His revelation in Christ. It was they who were seeking for God and projecting their worldview and expectations onto Him. This actually negates all those places in Scripture where prophets communicated the words of God to the Hebrews. In effect, it is Marcionite.
Not sure what you mean by “knowledge of God.” The knowledge possessed came through the word of the prophet. And no, this was not a God who protected their “world-view” but continually challenged it even as He was bound to it in other ways. How else to explain the Babylonian Exile and the repentance that it finally engendered?.
Nevertheless, the bonds of paganism could not be overthrown until Christ destroyed death. Not even the apostles comprehended the mission until He rose on the third day and even then they needed some tutoring (the road to Emmaus for example).
I think though that your objection is really that God was a violent God at times.
-
“I am saying that given the culture of the time, the self-revelation of God was bound to conditions that would take centuries to change, indeed could only be overthrown when Christ conquered death.”
Yes, but I still don’t see why you make that assumption. If God could and did overturn the worldview of those who were contemporaries of Christ in His earthly existence, why could he not through miraculous and ominous means bring an ancient people in line with a more tame ethic regarding violence?
“I think though that your objection is really that God was a violent God at times.”
Just the opposite. I believe that an objectively real, changeless God did in fact order the violence in the Old Testament. My objection is that explaining it away as something He had to do in order to reach the ancient Hebrews is not reasonably consistent. If you look at my very first post on this subject, I wrote:
“However, I think a point is missed in Fr. Johannes’ answer that really does indict modern secular morality and modern Christian morality.”
What I’m saying is that the concerns about the violence in the Old Testament expressed by modern secularists and modern Christians alike are missplaced because the violence was justified – – even directly ordered by the same God we purport to worship. The concerns arise from a false idea of what God is like. It is true that, “God is love”, but love is not God, and God is more than love. So, although a deeper and fuller understanding of God was indeed revealed in the New Testament, His Old Testament character remains. The boundless love expressed in the New Testament was also indicated in the Old and the sharper focus on love in the New is a facet of His character in addition to all that was revealed about Him in the Old. Not either/or, both/and.
That is why, when I see someone say, in effect, God could not have behaved any differently because of the limitations of the people of the times, I have to respond, “Yes he could have. And the fact that He didn’t should tell us that, although he is/was certainly more than a “Warrior”, He was, and is, at least that.
-
That is why, when I see someone say, in effect, God could not have behaved any differently because of the limitations of the people of the times, I have to respond, “Yes he could have. And the fact that He didn’t should tell us that, although he is/was certainly more than a “Warrior”, He was, and is, at least that.
Maybe, maybe not. The text does not say. The only thing it tells us is what God did (what he ordered his people to do). The “could have” presumes philosophical principles that are not contained anywhere inside the narrative itself.
My starting point is why did God command the death of enemies? IOW, I take the secular/atheist challenge seriously, although not their conclusion. It’s a legitimate question in my estimation because the commands of God in the Old Testament versus the New reveals a moral tension that exists within the narrative itself (eg: killing the Amalekites vs. loving your enemy).
I’m not sure either about your assertion that God is “changeless.” I’m not arguing that God is “changeable,” only that this notion has no real revelatory power. It strikes me as a static construct dependent on a subset of ideas drawn from places other than the narrative itself. Too much eisogesis, IOW.
Now is you want to say that God is steadfast, we would be having a different discussion.
One more thing:
Yes, but I still don’t see why you make that assumption. If God could and did overturn the worldview of those who were contemporaries of Christ in His earthly existence, why could he not through miraculous and ominous means bring an ancient people in line with a more tame ethic regarding violence?
Because death reigned until Christ. The fear of death enslaved the souls of men. This changed with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the communion with Him who defeated death — a change so profound that it shifted how man saw the universe. Even the atheist benefits from it. (Don’t forget that the disciples did not really understand the purpose and work of Christ until He appeared to them after the resurrection.)
-
Fr. Johannes, I think we’re descending into word games, so I’ll let this go. However, I would like to ask you, if this statement is true:
“I’m talking about terms in the narrative. Whether or not this happened historically, we don’t really know. But it doesn’t matter. Because if the foundation of reality is narrative, is story, is word – – like I contend it is – – then the only thing that is important is the narrative.”
Then why do we need to believe in the bodily Resurrection of Christ? After all, it’s the narrative isn’t it? I think you’re confusing “narrative” with “Word” in the sense of “Logos”.
-
Scott, I wanted to clarify that I agree with you that the God of the OT is the same as the God of the NT and that the God of the OT is also revealed as a God of love. Properly understood, I don’t believe that the teachings of St. Silouan, St. Isaac the Syrian, and others on whom Fr. Stephen Freeman builds his reflections about the meaning of God’s wrath are Marcionite at all. I don’t believe that God’s love is incompatible with His acts of wrath/judgment, but I will contend that His wrath/judgment is rather a facet of his love, not something “more” or added to his love, still less in opposition to it. (The Apostle John says that God IS love, but nowhere do the Scriptures state that God IS wrath, for example). I see God’s love as describing *Him*, his wrath describing only how His Presence is *experienced* by those actively opposing Him. From St. Isaac’s perspective God’s wrath IS his mercy *as experienced by the ungodly!* (From an Orthodox perspective, God’s energies, experienced as mercy and as wrath depending upon our disposition toward HIm, are not something apart from God Himself (i.e., His Presence). That is undoubtedly a more correct way to understand it.
Your concern that God as He is described by Fr. Johannes doesn’t seem very “powerful” just reminded me of a statement made by Bp. Kallistos (Ware) talking about the western critique of Abelard’s Exemplar Theory that the Orthodox believe that God’s love has real power. From any Christian perspective, there is surely no more powerful revelation of God’s love than Christ’s death on the Cross (from a human political perspective his weakest moment!), and no act of God more powerful than Christ’s Resurrection. The comments of Bp. Kallistos are in a video of him speaking at Fuller Seminary about the nature of the Atonement from an Orthodox perspective (there’s a link at Fr. Stephen’s site–though it’s about 1 1/2 hours long, it’s worth listening to for those who haven’t heard it.)
God is a warrior, sure, but the gospel shows us that the only real enemies He desires to *ultimately* defeat are sin and death.
-
Karen,
The underlying assumption in Fr. Stephen’s view of God is that wrath is evil. Thus God has to be “protected” from exercising active wrath. Thus the notion that the ungodly experience His love as wrath because of their impiety.
There are two problems with this, first:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”Or, stated differently, wrath/hate is not wrong.
Secondly, and more pointedly, how did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah experience God’s love as wrath? Would it have rained flowers if they had been righteous? Of course not. God judged and destroyed them because of their evil, not by loving them into non-existence.
It just doesn’t work. It’s a beautiful rationalization designed to protect God from the responsibility for His own actions which we cannot stomach. This is because we have a false idea of what God is really like.
Much has been made of contrasting, “Love thy neighbor” and “Bless those who curse you.” with the actions of God in the Old Testament. However, “Love your neighbor” comes from the Old Testament. Let me suggest that Christ’s recorded ethical statements are geared to civilians in a civil society at relative peace (or under subjection and not sovereign).
How would you govern a state by all officials and officers of the state always loving their enemies and turning the other cheek? Answer: For only a very brief period of time. Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum of force created by this pacifism would cause the state to be conquered in a very short time.
Paul wrote that the sword was given to the government to establish order and punish evil. It all depends on context and perspective and we shouldn’t prooftext a universally applicable morality based on the Sermon on the Mount which in effect makes God schizophrenic or which renders Christians unfit for government.
There is no such thing as “necessary evil”. If it is evil, don’t do it. If it’s not, it’s permissible.
-
-
-
-
-
Good words Karen. Yes, I do believe that the narratives are subject to the human capacity to understand, and that the God of Abraham, through the narrative of the Old Testament scripture, reveals Himself as God above all Gods in a way appropriate to the time, which also was the start of the break with paganism that was completed by the resurrection of his Son.
The “genius” of the Old Testament is this: The Judgment of the One God (the God of Abraham, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One God”) is just. Meaning, order, harmony, purpose, enters the world that exists apart from and above the vicissitudes of nature (He the “voice” in the whirlwind, He, when Incarnated, even walks on water). The Old Testament, properly understood, is the beginning of God’s self-revelation to the entire world and His ultimate promise of the salvation of the world, but that self-revelation occurs in terms that the people of the age could grasp.
And imagine the quantum leap in moral understanding that occurred when, say, the Priest and Levite, who in obeying the Law by passed by the robber on the road (Levitical Law forbids contact with blood), were deemed “lower” in judgment of God than the Samaritan who had betrayed the traditions of the Patriarchs, or the woman who was forgiven of adultery (“You have heard it written in your Law…”).
The God that Fr. Johannes describes does not seem very powerful to me. In fact, what Fr. Johannes seems to be saying is that the pagan gods were projections of man’s perceptions of how the universe worked and the Israelite God, and subsequently the Christian God, are just more merciful projections worthy of endorsement.
Genesis does not allow this conclusion since the world does not proceed out of the stuff and substance of the gods. Genesis reveals that time and space are created, not eternal, and that the God of Abraham exists outside of them. This is a conceptual impossibility in the pagan world view. The pagan simply cannot “see” it because he cannot think it. Put another way, the pagan, in projecting his notion of the gods into the universe (notions drawn from the energy of nature — the “elemental spirits” as St. Paul called them) was a prisoner of those perceptions since space and time were perceived as eternal, there is no end to them so there is no end to the power of his thoughts and the gods they ostensibly revealed.
The Hebrew, even if he erroneously did such a thing (his obligation was to listen to the prophet — the word of scripture and obey the God revealed in it), would still hit the “ceiling” above which the God above all Gods dwelt in an impenetrable silence. His thoughts were necessarily contained by the limits of time and space imposed by God when He “spoke” them into existence (according to the narrative). (You can see here the theological ground that gives rise to the study and application of the virtues developed by the Fathers in early Christianity. You can also see here how the philosophical ground was laid that gave rise to science.)
-
Fr. Johannes, I think we’re descending into word games, so I’ll let this go. However, I would like to ask you, if this statement is true:
“I’m talking about terms in the narrative. Whether or not this happened historically, we don’t really know. But it doesn’t matter. Because if the foundation of reality is narrative, is story, is word – – like I contend it is – – then the only thing that is important is the narrative.”
Then why do we need to believe in the bodily Resurrection of Christ? After all, it’s the narrative isn’t it? I think you’re confusing “narrative” with “Word” in the sense of “Logos”.
No, it is not “word games” at all. It actually is about the primacy of the scriptural narrative vs. philosophical ideas we bring into our interpretation of it.
The truth of the resurrection is revealed through encounter with the Risen Christ (like Paul encountering Christ on the road to Damascus). Who that Christ is that you encountered is revealed through the scriptural narrative. That’s also why Paul, when confronting the Athenians, never referenced the pantheon of Greek gods (no philosophical juxtapositions there) but spoke only of the God of Abraham revealed in the scriptural narrative.
Narrative does not mean “not real.” Even history is narrative — it is preserved as story, as word. It is simply that narrative, words, penetrates reality — organizes it, reveals purpose, meaning, and so forth. And, if the word of the narrative is true, that is, touches and references Him who is the Truth, then He who is Truth is revealed.
-
Fr. Johannes,
When you bring in the idea that God had to fulfill the moral worldview of the Israelites, this idea is from a philosophy outside the narrative. When you suggest God had to do this and I suggest that God could have done this, it is also outside the narrative. But to understand what God was doing we have to be able to understand why He did this as opposed to that. We cannot step back into the shoes of those who lived 3000 years ago.
You stated, flat out, that the actual historical events are irrelevant. If you’re backing away from that, good. But those were your words quoted above.
“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”
I suppose you could say that the Old Testament could be taken as a teaching fable, anchored only very loosely, if at all to reality, and that the New Testament is real since St. Paul insists on a bodily resurrection. However, of course, the Old Testament prophets insisted that they were conveying the word of the Lord also.
I chimed in on this because I thought your reasoning behind your defense of Old Testament violence was weak in the sense it gave a great opportunity to the other side to blow you out of the water. It is decidedly non-theistic. When you suggest that God catered to the expectations of the Israelites as a way of explaining the violence, but then go on to say that He suddenly had a change of heart in the New Testament period and, all along presumably, was interested in bringing us all to the point that we could appreciate how disturbing and wrong this type of violence is, your reasoning falls apart. You have at least two gods there or, alternatively, you have the evolving projections of a growing humanity.
-
Be careful with the “God had to…” language. We don’t know what God had to do. What we have is the text and the text doesn’t say what God had to do, it records what God did. Once you get into “God had to do…” we reference a larger grid of ideas outside of the text rather than judging our ideas by the text.
So, when you conclude that “We cannot step back into the shoes of those who lived 3000 years ago” I disagree. I think that is exactly what you have to do. You cannot, for example, understand the parable of the Good Samaritan unless you know what a Samaritan is, that the Mosaic Law required the priest and Levite to move to the other side of the road, etc. We have to “hear” the words in the culture and time in which they were first spoken (as best as we can) or else we will contextualize them with a foreign tradition that changes its meaning. Only then can an application be properly made that fits a contemporary context. (Just think about how “Judge not lest you be judged” is used today. The meaning is completely inverted to allow everything except criticism of sin.)
You stated, flat out, that the actual historical events are irrelevant. If you’re backing away from that, good. But those were your words quoted above.
No, what I am saying that the truth of the narrative is not dependent on its historicity. That is not saying that history is irrelevant, rather, the the truth of scripture depends more on the fact it comes from God (through the words of the prophet and apostle) than on any claim of historicity. Remember history itself depends on narrative. A history must be written and told before it becomes history. Apart from the historical narrative, apart from hearing the story, history does not yet exist. The narrative is what brings history into being.
Think about literature, something good, say, The Brothers Kamarazov. Did Alyosha exist in concrete space and time? No. Is it “history”? No. Is the novel true? Yes. See what is at work here?
Here is how C.S. Lewis describes it:
What had been holding me back [from a conversion to Christianity] has not been so much a difficulty in believing as a difficulty in knowing what the doctrine meant: you can’t believe a thing while you are ignorant what the thing is. My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense has the life and death of Christ ‘saved’ or ‘opened salvation to’ the world…
Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me … was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in the Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even though I could not say in cold prose “what it meant”.
Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the other are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things”.
Therefore, it is true, not in the sense of being a description of God (that no finite mind would take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to appear to our faculties. The “doctrines” we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
I am with Lewis here. I see the death and resurrection of Christ as the “brute fact” of all existence, the cosmic event (one that incorporates and transcends “history”) around and through which all past and future events derive their concrete meaning; a meaning the pre-Christian ancients yearned to understand and could only express in their myths (that’s why we find parallels in many mythologies, ie: Virgin Birth, Incarnate gods, etc.).
IOW, only when the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us did the light turn on, which is to say the conceptual constraints imposed by death could be overthrown (sacraments come into being, for example). Man could see in Christ the person of the God to which all the yearnings pointed. Remember what Christ did with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus? “[B]eginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” For us, that Christ reasoned only from the Hebrew scripture (just as Paul did at Athens) shows us that these texts, ultimately, came from God (again, through the mouth of the prophet and apostle). How could they reveal Jesus as Christ otherwise? Here too is where the authority of scripture is grounded, which is different than notions of historical verifiability.
This also places preaching in its proper context, BTW. All preaching has a prophetic dimension (that which does not is not preaching), a breaking in on present reality of the Word of God through the word of the preacher which is necessarily derived from the prophet and apostle, which is to say scripture. Preaching is always a re-creative act (it replicates in some measure the very act of the creation when God spoke the world into existence) because it creates faith in the hearer (if the hearer has ears to hear) through which Christ is revealed. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. But how will they hear without a preacher?”
When you suggest that God catered to the expectations of the Israelites as a way of explaining the violence, but then go on to say that He suddenly had a change of heart in the New Testament period and, all along presumably, was interested in bringing us all to the point that we could appreciate how disturbing and wrong this type of violence is, your reasoning falls apart.
I’m not saying that at all. I am saying that the narrative shows God commanding the killing of the infidels in the Old Testament and exhorting His followers to love their enemies in the New Testament. This is what the text says. This tension exists in the narrative. It is real. Thus, how to resolve it?
I don’t go for “God could do this or God could do that” kind of explanations. There is no end to that kind of philosophical speculation. Having said that, however, I reject it not because it is ultimately fruitless (which it is; you always have to end with some majestic caveat like Calvin’s notion of “sovereignty” or so forth just to put an end to it all), but that it violates the constraints of the narrative itself.
Rather, I think the restrictions rest in man himself, particularly the restrictions imposed by the death that reigned in the world before Christ entered death and destroyed it. Again, this cosmic event redefines all things past and future (it rewrites history) and enables the Light to be perceived with more clarity.
The way we think today is not the way the ancients thought. It was something completely different (which is why some parts of the Old Testament seem incomprehensible). Nor is the way we think today is not the way future generations will think. Hopefully they will be more enlightened but there is no guarantee of that either.
-
“Be careful with the ‘God had to…’ language. We don’t know what God had to do. What we have is the text and the text doesn’t say what God had to do, it records what God did. Once you get into ‘God had to do…’ we reference a larger grid of ideas outside of the text rather than judging our ideas by the text.”
Yes, my point precisely. But that is why I suggested that you be careful in suggesting what God had to do in the context of a pagan environment. He didn’t have to do anything. Physician, heal thyself.
“So, when you conclude that ‘We cannot step back into the shoes of those who lived 3000 years ago’ I disagree.”
Then you simply don’t understand that neither you nor I could ever think like a person who lived 3000 years ago because we have never lived in their environment and cannot forget our own presuppositions.
“No, what I am saying that the truth of the narrative is not dependent on its historicity. That is not saying that history is irrelevant . . .”
But you stated in your answer:
“I’m talking about terms in the narrative. Whether or not this happened historically, we don’t really know. But it doesn’t matter. Because if the foundation of reality is narrative, is story, is word – – like I contend it is – – then the only thing that is important is the narrative.”
Fr. Johannes, please don’t be disingenous. When you specifically state that it does not matter whether it happened or not, you are saying that the actual physical facts as they played out are irrelevant. It couldn’t mean anything else. Furthermore, you seemed to actually want to call the historicity of the narrative into question as a kind of passing defense of the violence described, as if to say: “Don’t get too bent out of shape about it, it may just be a story that never actually took place.”
If you’re backing away from that, good.
“When you suggest that God catered to the expectations of the Israelites as a way of explaining the violence, but then go on to say that He suddenly had a change of heart in the New Testament period and, all along presumably, was interested in bringing us all to the point that we could appreciate how disturbing and wrong this type of violence is, your reasoning falls apart.
‘I’m not saying that at all.’”
You really ought to listen to your own answer to the question above again because that is precisely what you said. I just boiled down the explanation as short, sweet and obviously internally unstable.
If you want to maintain the answer you gave above in defense of God’s violence in the Old Testament, be my guest. In a debate, however, your opponent, if he were intelligent, would make mince meat out of you.
But that is up to you.
“This also places preaching in its proper context, BTW. All preaching has a prophetic dimension (that which does not is not preaching), a breaking in on present reality of the Word of God through the word of the preacher which is necessarily derived from the prophet and apostle, which is to say scripture. Preaching is always a re-creative act (it replicates in some measure the very act of the creation when God spoke the world into existence) because it creates faith in the hearer (if the hearer has ears to hear) through which Christ is revealed. ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. But how will they hear without a preacher?’”
Are these long prosaic glosses supposed to address a point in the discussion? Otherwise they aren’t too useful. There are those who wax prosaic when the seek to cloud the substance of the discussion in flowers.
I had a religion professor like that in undergraduate school. Last name was “Points”. He prayed beautifully. However half of what he said was incomprehensible drivel lacking any substance or relevance. Hence his nickname “pointless Points”. He was a straight A student though. Go figure.
-
Well, I don’t really believe it is “drivel” but…
If you want to maintain the answer you gave above in defense of God’s violence in the Old Testament, be my guest. In a debate, however, your opponent, if he were intelligent, would make mince meat out of you.
How so? Play the opponent here to help me grasp what your real objection is.
-
Fr. Johannes,
“Drivel” is perhaps too harsh a description (which you’ll notice I didn’t apply to your prose, only that of the professor I mentioned). Let us say that you tend to wax prosaically with comments that do not seem too closely related to the discussion.
As to playing the opponent, I did so in the e-mail I sent you. I just attempted to paste it in here but the notice “preview error” comes up because the comment is too long to post.
To boil it all down, when you make an apologetic for God’s violence in the Old Testament as a concession to pagan sensibilities, you make God into a god, not God Almighty. He did exactly what He wanted to do regardless of how humanity would or could deal with it. After all, He created humanity. You inevitably end up with two Gods, a schizophrenic God, or no God but evolving human projections of divinity.
A better defense is that God does not disapprove of violence across the board. In fact, He has ordered violence under certain circumstances not as a concession to the worldview of His people but as a necessity given certain circumstances. The violence is still occasioned by human sin (that of the enemy), but it is not a concession to a limited worldview.
The problem is that you project a all-good, all-holy God whose internal morality evolves. What He once did is now evil. That’s a fatal flaw.
-
-
-
-
-
Scott, I’m not a Hebrew scholar or linguist, but I heard someone who was explain that the passage from Ecclesiastes you quoted from was not prescriptive (as you seem to be employing it), but rather the author’s poetic emphasis on the monotony/repetitiveness (the vanity) of temporal life. It does not refer explicitly to the works of God, so I don’t follow really with your use of it here. It seems a bit out of context. All of God’s acts in history istm are forms of “oeconomia” (concessions to humanity’s weakness), and His timing is a mystery to me (in terms of why wasn’t the fullness of grace revealed until Christ’s Incarnation?) I don’t expect to understand it.
I only trust the witness of the NT writers that Christ came in the fullness of time and that there had been a long preparation for His advent. We can ask why did He elect to show His power more than His love (seemingly) in the conquest of the Holy Land by the Israelites, for example? Perhaps because His love in its fullness could not be fully understood or appreciated by humans without also such an awareness of His power. My background is in Psychology and, in particular, I find human neurological development fascinating and instructive about spiritual development. In human learning, you can set up all the external environmental stimuli you want to help a baby/child learn, but the child cannot grasp certain concepts until his brain has reached a certain capacity of development and each developmental stage builds on the previous one. For whatever reasons, God has not elected to override this natural developmental process in human beings. I can only speculate that there is an analogous cultural developmental process that is organic and God has not elected to overstep His Self-limitations, but nurtures our development by incremental Self-revelation in a kind of synergy with our human decision-making (free will). Similarly, He rarely intervenes as we in our human logic feel He should (if He is truly loving) in the natural consequences of our fallenness–the injustice, sickness, violence and poverty of the world–except in synergy with human beings who elect to cooperate with His will to bring help and healing to others. Can I believe He desires, therefore, that people perpetrate violence upon each other, that they defraud each other, and fail to assist one another when disease or disaster befalls? Obviously, I don’t. I only understand because of Christ, that in a mystery He is working despite all this for the world’s salvation.
Certainly God sanctions the temporal use of governmental political power to restrain evil and maintain social order. I am not trying to argue that this is evil or wrong, or that God was wrong to do so where this sort of activity is attributed to Him in the OT. But it would be wrong, istm, to speak about these actions of God as if they were integral and necessary to God’s eternal nature, rather than concessions in His activities in time/history because of mankind’s sin. Nor would it be correct to see these as the means of our spiritual transformation from death to life. All you have to do is be familiar with our prison system and its effect on inmates to realize that! Fr. Stephen’s writings are concerned with spiritual and eternal transcendent realities, that vision of God which transfigures the human heart to be in communion with Him. I think his statements about God’s wrath cannot be understood apart from this context.
-
Karen,
If scripture mentions “a time to kill” and “a time to hate” in a long list of other permissible human activities, I don’t see any reason to interpret it away. Especially in light of the fact that God ordered intentional murderers to be executed and either killed or ordered to be killed many other persons.
We’re arguing about nothing, really.
I don’t disagree with you when you suggest that God’s wrath or His violence is a reaction to human sin. It is certainly a capacity in His eternal nature though. Of course, it would never be exercised within His own being. However, He did exercise it in directing St. Michael to drive Satan from heaven.
I think we’re spinning our wheels here. Nice conversation though.
-
Karen,
“We can ask why did He elect to show His power more than His love (seemingly) in the conquest of the Holy Land by the Israelites, for example? Perhaps because His love in its fullness could not be fully understood or appreciated by humans without also such an awareness of His power.”
In a way, you have hit on the point that animates why I think this discussion is important. I do not believe that God elicits respect in the vast majority of His creatures except through the exercise of His power, and I don’t mean the power of the Spirit or of love. If ignoring Him has no other consequence than “disappointing” an all-loving God, then most people will not follow His direction. Might is necessary to elicit respect. Unconditional love is perceived as impotence by most people and they will naturally take advantage of the vacuum of power. Anyone who has children or who is involved with them knows this to be a certainty. The specter of eternal perdition is not enough to move such people since they simply choose not to believe in it. The curse and sting of death still remain, despite Christ’s death and resurrection, for those who do not have faith in Him and follow Him. They believe that death is the end, period, and it affects everything they do.
This is why many Orthodox ignore the teachings of the Church and do all sorts of vile things. Not only do they not follow a Christian lifestyle, but they even flaunt their freedom to support abortion, gay rights, etc. The God preached in many modern Orthodox churches is a pansy. He doesn’t care whether people confess regularly. He doesn’t care whether they maintain a patriarchal houselhold, He doesn’t care whether they practice modesty in church and outside of it. He doesn’t care if they run for office on a pro-choice platform.
How do I know that He doesn’t care? Because His servants in the clergy do not convey to their flocks that He does care by exercising discipline. If the laity can commune over their lives without ever once confessing, that communicates that confession is unnecessary and sin is not a serious matter. If they are allowed to publicly support abortion without suffering excommunication, that conveys that it’s ok with God to abort unborn babies. Words like those written in the Manhattan Declaration are absolutely irrelevant. Who reads such things? It’s preaching to the choir.
But, of course, I do believe that God cares about all of the above. And I do believe that in time His wrath will fall upon those of His servants who do not communicate through action to the laity that these are serious matters. But the God preached by Fr. Stephen as not engaging in active wrath – – apart from the fact that such a depiction does injustice to the biblical account – – need not be feared or respected by anyone. He is a bright, shining, inspiring, beautiful doormat.
-
The passages of the Old Testament are either factual or symbolic. No one can single out a passage and say “this is crystal clear”. The rationalists are doing it, ofcourse; they split the hair in forty and waste themselves completely by following their own mind.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” – Gen. 6:5-6
God was close to destroy what He created but He “changed” His mind. In order to preserve mankind He decided to let Noah and his family live. We shudder at the thought that “God changed His mind”. To the rationalist, this “change” in mind implies weakness.
The faithful, who is able to appreciate His infinite magnificence, remembers that much of the language of the OT was intended to be anthropomorphic. We are able to understand God in a limited way- only in the light of our own experience of the emotions.-
Eliot,
As far as “changing his mind”, let us not lose sight of the fact that He eradicated all of humanity except for one family.
-
Sxott:
In Noah’s time mankind was out of control, full of sin and corruption. Man would have died of natural death anyway. We are not in this world to stay.Down here is a ceaseless passing-by; we come by birth and leave by death.
God hates sin. The sin would have remained. Sin gets passed down from one generation to the next. The righteous Noah and his family turned out to be worth saving. It is not that God suddenly discovered Noah’s righteousness. He knew all along what the result would be, and He allowed humanity to choose their fate.
God provided a way for them to be saved: He commanded Noah to build the Ark and to preach to others to take refuge from the flood. Should they have put their trust in God, they would not have perished in the flood.
Our own world is growing in sin and corruption. The Church of Christ is the new Noah’s Ark, the Ark of Salvation.Christ entered into His dominion and bound the Devil, that is, by the redemption of humanity by His Blood He bound and restrained his power over mankind.
Christ is the Ark for those who find salvation of the soul today.
Today most people are like those outside the ark during Noah’s time. They put their trust in something other than God’s divine plan.
-
-
-
Thanks, Scott. “A time to kill” and “a time to hate” refers in my mind only to what is, not what ought to be. It is descriptive of the human reality in the fallen world, not prescriptive. It may be “permissible” in God’s economy, but I hesitate to even use that term because I think too often our rationalistic human imagination takes the same leaps of logic with that idea that the Pharisees did when they queried Jesus about the Mosaic divorce laws. They said “Moses commanded . . .” as if divorce was a “requirement” of the law. Jesus corrected them by saying that God “permitted” divorce because of people’s hardness of heart and pointed them back to God’s will of in the creation of marriage (the only real “requirement” for marital relationships). I wouldn’t use that term (permissible), anyway, in light of what is revealed in the gospel. In any case, the NT witness is that the Law (the OT) was “imperfect” and “incomplete.” It is not able to save. It is there as a “tutor” to “lead us to Christ.” I’m sure you would not take issue with that. As Eliot points out in #17 for God to “change His mind,” and also as Fr. Stephen has made the point God’s “wrath” and even His “hatred” are also anthropomorphisms. We can’t draw too direct a connection to what a human being is doing and feeling when he expresses and acts on those emotions and what the Scriptures mean by God’s wrath, etc. God’s “wrathful” acts come as a concession because of man’s sin and hardness of heart. They are not an expression of His perfect will in the same way that Christ’s demonstration of sacrificial love at the Cross and that His Resurrection are. Scriptures that come to mind are: “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” “God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” And also where they say something to the effect that “God’s anger is but for a moment, but His love endures forever.” That is really the point I wish to make.
Eliot, thanks for both your comments above!
-
Karen,
“God’s ‘wrathful’ acts come as a concession because of man’s sin and hardness of heart. They are not an expression of His perfect will in the same way that Christ’s demonstration of sacrificial love at the Cross and that His Resurrection are.”
Both His wrath and the outpouring of love in the death and Resurrection of Christ are responses to the fact of human sin. Absent human sin, there is still the wrath of God (against, as I reference above, Satan through St. Michael), but there is no wrath directed against wicked humans. But absent human sin there is no need for an Incarnation and Resurrection. In a way, both the Resurrection and wrath are concessions to human sin.
It is true, if eternity were composed of only inanimate matter, non-human animates, loyal angels and the Triune God, there would be no need for wrath, for the Incarnation, for the Resurrection, etc. Just God loving God.
-
P.S.,
Karen,
“Thanks, Scott. ‘A time to kill’ and ‘a time to hate’ refers in my mind only to what is, not what ought to be. It is descriptive of the human reality in the fallen world, not prescriptive.”
It seems to me that in Ecclesiastes when it says, “To everything there is a season . . .” that the Preacher is stating that there is an appropriate time for each of the activities mentioned. Thus, he talks about building up and breaking down, dancing and mourning, sewing and gathering. He is describing the cycles of everyday (or every year life). Within these modes of being, he places killing and hatred.
It is perhaps shocking to hear an inspired prophet state, “There is an appropriate time to hate and an appropriate time to kill.” But wrath is mentioned copiously in both the Old and New Testaments and God Himself not only killed in abundance but mandated that the Hebrews kill under certain circumstances. I don’t think ancients in the time of David, or of Christ, would be having this discussion.
I do believe, however, that His mercy greatly exceeds His wrath and that, for us, 99.99 percent of the time hatred, wrath and violence should be avoided like the plague. But that other .01 percent of the time it is appropriate and may even be necessary.
-
Karen:
Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of God. I Corinthians 10:31
-
-
13.1.1.1.1
Scott Pennington says:
December 1, 2010 at 5:13 PM (Edit)
Fr. Johannes,“Drivel” is perhaps too harsh a description (which you’ll notice I didn’t apply to your prose, only that of the professor I mentioned). Let us say that you tend to wax prosaically with comments that do not seem too closely related to the discussion.
As to playing the opponent, I did so in the e-mail I sent you. I just attempted to paste it in here but the notice “preview error” comes up because the comment is too long to post.
To boil it all down, when you make an apologetic for God’s violence in the Old Testament as a concession to pagan sensibilities, you make God into a god, not God Almighty. He did exactly what He wanted to do regardless of how humanity would or could deal with it. After all, He created humanity. You inevitably end up with two Gods, a schizophrenic God, or no God but evolving human projections of divinity.
A better defense is that God does not disapprove of violence across the board. In fact, He has ordered violence under certain circumstances not as a concession to the worldview of His people but as a necessity given certain circumstances. The violence is still occasioned by human sin (that of the enemy), but it is not a concession to a limited worldview.
The problem is that you project a all-good, all-holy God whose internal morality evolves. What He once did is now evil. That’s a fatal flaw.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A better defense is that God does not disapprove of violence across the board. In fact, He has ordered violence under certain circumstances not as a concession to the worldview of His people but as a necessity given certain circumstances. The violence is still occasioned by human sin (that of the enemy), but it is not a concession to a limited worldview.
Why would that be a better defense? Clearly the Hebrews were commanded to kill infidels. Does the same hold true today? In the Islamic world surely, but when the Christians got carried away with this (some did), they got into a boatload of trouble and rightfully so.
I’m still unclear though why you take such umbrage at the idea that the ancients were unable to see things we do today. All I can glean from the discussion is that it violates some notion of unchangeability. I’m not quite sure what that notion is and how it ostensibly works, but then I don’t have have much interest in it either since I don’t think we can glean principles from scripture and then build a self-referencing structure that purportedly shows us who God is. Put another way, I think systematic theology is a dead end.
Also, I am ver leery of applying these extracted principles to concrete situations. I prefer moral exhortations instead, and I hold that the only way to deeper knowledge of God is through the cultivation of the virtues — something that can never be forced on others, BTW.
-
“Clearly the Hebrews were commanded to kill infidels.”
That’s not true and you know it. God commanded the Israelites to kill certain non-Israelites at certain times. There was never any general war against the “infidel” as there is in Islam. You slander the ancient Israelites by suggesting there was.
Exodus 12:49
There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”Leviticus 16:29
“And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves[1] and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.“I hold that the only way to deeper knowledge of God is through the cultivation of the virtues — something that can never be forced on others, BTW.”
Matthew 18:15 – 17
“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”
Fine Fr. Johannes, have it your own way. We’ll dispense with excommunication and the criminal justice system and see how far voluntary morality gets us. Really, it’s like talking to a stump. I explain what I mean in several different ways from different angles and you still fein that you don’t understand. You’re not that thick and I’m not that inarticulate. If you disagree with me, just say so.
-
That’s not true and you know it. God commanded the Israelites to kill certain non-Israelites at certain times. There was never any general war against the “infidel” as there is in Islam. You slander the ancient Israelites by suggesting there was.
Well, OK call them “non-Israelites” if you want, but given tribal thinking, that category didn’t really exist. “Infidel” is a loaded term though (I didn’t intend it that way) so objection noted. Still, it doesn’t solve the problem that they were still directed to kill.
Fine Fr. Johannes, have it your own way. We’ll dispense with excommunication and the criminal justice system and see how far voluntary morality gets us. Really, it’s like talking to a stump. I explain what I mean in several different ways from different angles and you still fein that you don’t understand. You’re not that thick and I’m not that inarticulate. If you disagree with me, just say so.
Scott slow down a bit. No one is saying discipline isn’t necessary (let alone firing the police force or getting disbanding the army). There’s a strong almost Germanic disciplinary strain in your tone though that implies that virtue can be instilled somehow. Virtue is not instilled unless a person is willing to follow that path. I’ll grant obedience to the law is a whole lot better than disobedience. But that is not the same thing as instilling virtue.
-
Fr. Johannes,
There was never in Israel’s history a command given by God to make war on all the “infidels” until they were all subjugated. The Hebrews fought battles with other tribes, conquered the land of Canaan and, on a rare occasion or two, were commanded to wage genocidal war on a specific tribe. There is no comparison with Islam. Classical Islam recognized only two political spheres, the House of Islam and the House of War. Later, a House of Treaty was postulated based on a temporary truce Muhammad entered into at one time. However, Islam’s “divine imperative” is to conquer the world. Incidentally, even in Islam, the charge is not to kill every last infidel. It is to conquer the world and subjugate all infidels. Idolators would, however, face the choice of conversion or death.
The Israelites had no such grand designs.
Regarding discipline, if you create a culture where discipline is enforced (a Christian legal code, Christianity is taught in the schools, etc.) you will have some resistance, some insincere cooperators, etc. However, as each generation passes, it will be clear that Christianity is predominant and the chances of any particular person being seduced away will diminish. It will never be one hundred percent; however, creating the outer environment profoundly affects how people feel and what they choose to believe. What if all the people who “go along just to get along” believed that the prevailing thing they needed to go along with was Christianity? Given a Christian educational system, would it not be more likely that their children would turn out as believing Christians. Of course it would.
Let us not forget that the largest Orthodox Church in the world was founded by a prince imposing baptism on his people under threat of becoming an enemy of the state. I’m not suggesting anyone go that far. Just that intra-church discipline should be much tighter than it is now.
I’m sure you see my point. Now, whether doing this is moral in your eyes is another question. But it would be effective.
P.S.: Forgive my tone above. I was a bit exasperated.
-
Easy Scott. I am not comparing Ancient Israel to modern Islam, only saying that killing “infidels” (loose definition) in the name of God is only heard today in Islam. Nothing more.
-
“Easy Scott. I am not comparing Ancient Israel to modern Islam”
“Clearly the Hebrews were commanded to kill infidels. Does the same hold true today? In the Islamic world surely . . .”
You were making a moral equivalence between the two in terms of their violent actions. In reality, they are very different even regarding violence. Islam sees itself as a universal faith that should be propagated both by dawa (similar to evangelism) and by jihad. But jihad is meant to subjugate non-Muslims to Islamic rule. Only idolators would necessarily face the choice of accepting Islam or death.
The Israelites killed for different reasons. Mainly self defense or self preservation. Also in order to occupy and maintain a particular piece of land. Neither the universalism is there nor the violent hostility to all “infidels”.
But to someone who believes that “a kill is a kill is a kill”, what you said makes sense. I notice you didn’t bother to draw a distinction between killing ordered by the true God and killing in the name of the god of Islam.
“Still, it doesn’t solve the problem that they were still directed to kill.”
And why is that a problem?
-
-
-
-
Fr. Johannes wrote,
“I’m still unclear though why you take such umbrage at the idea that the ancients were unable to see things we do today.”
I think you forgot our little exchange at 13.1.1 above:
You wrote:
“So, when you conclude that ‘We cannot step back into the shoes of those who lived 3000 years ago’ I disagree.”
I responded:
“Then you simply don’t understand that neither you nor I could ever think like a person who lived 3000 years ago because we have never lived in their environment and cannot forget our own presuppositions.”
I think you’re chasing your tail. You fein that you don’t “understand” and disingenously attribute a position to me. This type of thing also happened earlier in our conversation regarding freedom and democracy.
I think we’ve pretty well exhausted this. I believe you know what I mean but just don’t agree for some reason you can’t or won’t articulate.
-
-
A couple last responses and then I’ll have to just say thanks for indulging me, Scott! 🙂
Scott said: “It seems to me that in Ecclesiastes when it says, “To everything there is a season . . .” that the Preacher is stating that there is an appropriate time for each of the activities mentioned.”
He is, but the context I think doesn’t allow this to be extrapolated to claiming this is how God wills a priori to order the world. I’m not sure you intended to say that, but that just what some of your apology for a “God of both violence and love” (for want of a better phrase) suggested to me. As I’ve said before, and I think you agreed, it is a concession to sin–it is simply how the world must at times be ordered after the fall into sin in order to prevent the complete destruction of the Creation (and the Israelites and their counter-culture) in order to bring to fruition God’s plan for our salvation (Christ’s Incarnation).
Scott said: “Both His wrath and the outpouring of love in the death and Resurrection of Christ are responses to the fact of human sin.”
Yes, but there is a crucial difference. God’s acts of wrath in the temporal sphere merely limit the extent of sin’s influence and damage: they do not, in themselves, bring life out of death, nor do they save (though they may selectively prolong the physical life of some). Christ’s death and resurrection do both (and not, I would contend, because God’s wrath is “satisfied” in the sense of having an innocent Victim to penalize and exhaust His retributive anger on!).
Eliot, good reminders in 17.1.1. Glory to God for all things!
-
Karen,
This passage follows shortly after the “time to be kill” “time to hate” passage:
Ecclesiastes 3:11, et seq.:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end . . . I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.”
Afraid I have to disagree with you about the Preacher’s meaning.
“Yes, but there is a crucial difference. God’s acts of wrath in the temporal sphere merely limit the extent of sin’s influence and damage: they do not, in themselves, bring life out of death, nor do they save (though they may selectively prolong the physical life of some). Christ’s death and resurrection do both (and not, I would contend, because God’s wrath is “satisfied” in the sense of having an innocent Victim to penalize and exhaust His retributive anger on!).”
They bring life out of death for those who believe and work to the condemnation of those who reject Him. “And He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom shall have no end.”
Moreover, His acts of wrath were necessary to nurture Israel to the point that the Savior could become Incarnate. Otherwise it’s just gratuitous carnage.
-
“Afraid I have to disagree with you about the Preacher’s meaning.”
As you wish.
I think his meaning is quite clear when he states that God has put eternity in men’s hearts, yet they cannot fathom what He has done the beginning to the end. IOW God’s thoughts are infinitely higher than ours. 🙂
Backing up a bit to your context of observing lax discipline in the Church being justified by use of the Fathers’ teaching about the meaning and nature of God’s mercy and your fear that God is being viewed as a “pansy.” Worldly abuse and misapplication of a teaching of the Church does not make that teaching wrong. It has been observed and noted at Fr. Stephen’s site that there tends to be a direct correlation between a Father’s depth of asceticism and the depth of his insight and emphasis on the merciful nature of God! Clearly, moral laxity and lack of discipline and an understanding of God as love and His wrath as that very same love as experienced by the unjust do not automatically go hand in hand (even in the present day). St. Paul’s emphasis on salvation by grace in the NT was similarly abused by antinomians, and St. Paul was accordingly slandered by the legalists as teaching antinomian heresy. He denied he taught antinomianism, but he refused to back away from his stance on grace vs. law in any way that would have satisfied the legalists. At this point, though, I think I will follow the Preacher’s advice in Ecc. 5:1-2!
-
Karen,
When bishops and priests abdicate their responsibility to bind and loose and maintain discipline, they dishonor God and lead their congregations down the road to perdition. Many bishops today are agents of evil rather than of good because the god they preach is all love and no consequences.
I’m really not willing to argue that point anymore.
-
“When bishops and priests abdicate their responsibility to bind and loose and maintain discipline, they dishonor God and lead their congregations down the road to perdition. Many bishops today are agents of evil rather than of good . . . ”
Scott, so far, so good. You will find absolutely no argument with me on this. I completely agree.
” . . . because the god they preach is all love and no consequences.”
Okay, I understand where you are coming from, but the definition of “love” in this context and “mercy” as preached by the rigorously ascetic Fathers are two very different things. Context is everything, as they say. As I stated above, preaching the mercy of St. Isaac as the goal toward which we are ascetically struggling for transformation in our own hearts and the vision of God by which we are thus transformed on the one hand, and, on the other, abusing St. Isaac’s teaching to justify what is at heart really a licentiousness that has nothing whatsoever to do with God’s love in truth are two very different things.
All the foregoing just further illustrates why, as Fr. Johannes’ says below, there is reason to be wary of abstract philosophical justifications. Take away the concrete situation and pastoral context, and words–even Scriptural ones–can mean just about anything.
-
Karen,
If you are saying that true love is not unconditional, or at least that discipline is a function of love, then I agree wholeheartedly with you. God’s love is certainly not unconditional in that sense: “and He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”.
As to philisophical justifications, I don’t think that what I’ve been saying here rises to the complexity or level of a philosophical explication. What I’m saying is very basic, not scholastic. It is not systematic or elaborate:
1. In the New Testament, although love is stressed as paramount, violence is assumed to be appropriate in some circumnstances.
2. Because of the political status of the Hebrews in the New Testament, there is no elaboration of when violence is appropriate to guide us.
3. There is such an elaboration in the Old Testament including acts and orders of God Himself.
That seems much more like an approach that the Fathers would take than one of scholastic theology. They read scripture as a whole and discerned what they could, not interpreting scripture as repugnant to scripture. They would not state the idea in the same way. Nor would the question come up in the same way as in the present context. But, you may recall that St. Basil said that we do not consider killing in warfare to be murder. Fr. Alexander Webster coauthored a book on this subject called, “The Virtue of War”. As a former pacifist, or quasi-pacifist, his insights and those of his co-author are interesting.
-
Discipline is absolutely not inconsistent with God’s love. On the contrary, in the face of sin it is a requirement of it. I think it is misleading, however, to say God’s love is thus “conditional,” because many would infer from this (especially in the wake of “Penal Substitutionary Theory” and other systematic theologies adopted in Christian circles that stray from the fullness of the Tradition) that God ceases to pour Himself out in love and blessing on the unjust and that He, in some sense, ceases to bestow full human dignity and value on the erring person (as opposed to what they are doing). Sometimes God blessing takes the form of chastisement. I do not cease to love my children when I have to allow them to reap the natural consequences of their bad decisions or correct them in some other way when those natural consequences are not immediate enough to motivate a course correction on their own. On the contrary, it is precisely because I love them deeply and desire their good, that I seek to correct them when they go astray.
Chastisement is thus simply the form God’s love must take when a person or a people set their will against the perfectly good will of their Creator. Physical death because of sin must in some way come to us all. Istm, among the other things that can be truthfully said about this fact, it is a perfectly good God’s way of placing limits on certain of sin’s effects on humanity to this present life. Certainly God’s taking of a life, or His direction to take a life comes because repeated opportunities for repentance have been ignored and God won’t strive against our rebellious will forever (i.e., He honors our freedom). It is an occasion for grief, however, and not for joy when this happens. We are told there’s a party in heaven when even one sinner repents, but I hardly think there will be a party going on when even God himself is not taking pleasure in a event, i.e., “the death of the wicked.” I don’t think the righteous will be standing around in heaven gushing, “Beautiful! Thank God, they got what’s coming to them!”
-
Karen,
I agree completely.
-
-
-
-
-
Psalm 137:9 “Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!”
We have a meaannn God, right?
-
Chris,
That psalm really just expresses the hatred the Hebrews felt in the Babylonian captivity. It made its way into the Bible so I guess you could say it is justified hatred. “A time to love a time to hate.” God only knows how awful the oppression they suffered was that caused them to feel that way. You’ll notice it does not say, “Smash their children’s heads against rocks.”; i.e., it’s not an order or a duty but more of an exclamation like, “Happy is the womb that bore you!”
However, in the violence God ordered against Amalek, no one was spared.
-
Now, that is funny! Trying to justify smashing pagan babies on rocks…That should be read spiritually. Smash the babies means to rid yourself of thoughts and passions or to crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires before they master you.
You understand, therefore, my friend, that this fathomless depth of the wisdom of God cannot be approached by any intellect among His creatures, neither those found in the heavens, nor those on earth. Much more difficult is it for those who, without purifying their intellect (νούς) and heart from the passions, and being bereft also of divine enlightenment, presume on their own to penetrate the unbounded abyss of the Scriptures.
-
Eliot,
I have nothing against reading scripture as analogy and using it in a non-literal way. It is a serious point though, not facetious. I would suggest to you that the interpretation you put forth, while fine for Christians of later ages as reinforcing our own resolve to overcome our sins, was foreign to those who originally heard it. Do you seriously believe that the Hebrews of the time could possibly have looked at it that way?
Of course not.
-
They had their “wise” Pharisees to guide them. Having their intellect and heart enslaved by passions (they loved their status and power), they took the Scripture to be literally true and they were in error thinking that salvation could be gained through their keeping the letter of the law while not having the spirit; they were only interested in the formality of the law. That was their own shortcoming: missed being right with God in their hearts.
The Pharisees were always looking for fault in Jesus and his disciples. They asked Jesus many questions and His answers never pleased them. He often answered questions with a parable. When they demanded an exact answer based on Scriptures Jesus typically had a somewhat different interpretation than they had.
Among Pharisees, Nicodemus and Paul are two notable converts. When Paul became a Christian he was in all kinds of perils for his faith: persecuted, stoned, beaten with whips and rods. In 2 Corinthians 11:22-33 describes some of these. Yet, in Philippians 3 he says he lost nothing when He gained Christ.
We have the Scripture and the Holy Tradition which is in harmony with the greatest portion of the fathers and has an uninterrupted continuity until today.
Stay away form so called “freethinkers” (unless engaged in a debate :)), atheists or “christians”, for they will only waste your time and lead you into a bottomless pit.
On Holy Tradition Ch. 3 from The Truth of Our Faith
by Elder Cleopa of RomaniaWe must uphold with great reverence and godliness Holy Tradition since all that is needful to effect our salvation is not found within Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture instructs us to do many things; however, it does not make manifest to us the light. For example, it instructs us to be baptized, but it doesn’t explain to us the method. Likewise, it guides us to confess our sins, receive communion, be crowned (married) – but nowhere does it specify the rite of carrying-out these mysterion (sacraments). Furthermore, it instructs us to pray, but doesn’t tell us how, where and when. It tells us to make the sign of the Holy Cross in front of our chest according to the psalmist Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us, but it doesn’t show us how. Who teaches us in writing to worship facing east? Where in Scripture are we told the words of the epiclesis (invocation) of the Holy Spirit for the sanctification of the all-holy Mysteries? Which teaching from Holy Scripture instructs us to bless the water of Baptism and the holy Unction of Holy Chrismation? Which passage in Scripture teaches us about the threefold denunciation and the renunciations of Satan before Holy Baptism? The prayer of glorification toward the Holy Trinity – Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit – from which passage did it come to us?
Posing these questions to the slanderer of Tradition, Saint Basil the Great says: If we consent to abandon the unwritten traditions on the pretext that they don’t have great worth, we err in great and elevated matters, rejecting the Gospel.
The ordering, therefore, by which the Church upholds the unwritten is: whatever is of apostolic descent and is practiced by the Fathers receives the validity of tradition and has the power of law in the Church of Christ (The Rudder, Neamts Monastery, 1844, Canons 87, 91). Accordingly therefore, it must safeguarded since its importance and benefit springs from the relationship that exists between it and Holy Scripture. It is true that both have remained within a reciprocal unity and intimate relationship – a relationship based on the fact that both comprise the holy revelation of God and for us are the fount and source of Revelation. Hence, it is not possible for there to exist an inner contradiction between the two or for us to exclude one from the other. Holy Scripture possesses its unique witness of the scriptural canon and its dogmatic character (its divine inspiration) only in and with Holy Tradition, while Holy Tradition is able to prove the authenticity of its truth only together with Holy Scripture.
-
“They had their “wise” Pharisees to guide them. Having their intellect and heart enslaved by passions (they loved their status and power), they took the Scripture to be literally true and they were in error thinking that salvation could be gained through their keeping the letter of the law while not having the spirit.”
Eliot,
Do you have a cite for the above statement or is it something you cooked up “on your own authority”?
As to the literal truth of scripture; i.e., did God act and order all of the actions that are recorded in scripture, I would suggest that if you don’t believe that, then you have no basis for believing in the actual events recorded in the New Testament. You are simply being capricious, “I like this but I reject that because it pleases me to do so.”
It is actually shocking in a way to read someone who claims to be a Christian dismissing the historicity of events recorded in the Old Testament. I’m not talking about a literal, creationist interpretation of Genesis (the Fathers themselves understood that “days” can refer to a set period of time, not necessarily 24 hours), but rather the acts recorded in scripture wherein God is recorded to have interacted with the Hebrews and their contemporaries in certain ways. If you will kindly show me where any of the Fathers stated, “This did not actually happen” it would help me to understand your comments.
I have never advocated Pharisaism, keeping the letter of the law while not having its spirit. First of all, there is no question about any necessity to keep the Law of Moses anymore, so the analogy fails miserably from the get-go.
Also, nothing I’m saying contradicts the Fathers. I have nothing against interpreting scripture as analogy and I defy you to show me where I have suggested otherwise. I will even grant that today, in a society at relative peace, interpreting these passages as analogy is the more generally useful approach since most people in their daily lives have no need to struggle with the broader questions of when violence is appropriate.
I do, however, believe that if you deny the literal meaning of those difficult passages in the Old Testament where we have a clear view of God’s capacity for wrath then you are siding, in spirit, with Marcion, the heretic.
Nor do I see the point of your using the term, “freethinker”. I don’t know of any regular on this site who fits that description. Everything that I have suggested is utterly in keeping with Orthodox Christianity. A freethinker is someone who does not observe or respect the constraints of religion but rather chooses to invent their own worldview on the fly.
-
PS:
Eliot,
The Pharisees were not the contemporaries of those who wrote and first heard Psalm 137:9.
-
-
-
-
-
On Holy Scripture Ch. 2 from The Truth of Our Faith
by Elder Cleopa of Romania[…]
EC: Each Christian has the need to read Holy Scripture, yet each Christian does not also have the authority or ability to teach and interpret the words of Scripture. This privileged authority is reserved for the Church via its holy clergy and theologians, men who are instructed in and knowledgeable of the true faith.
[…]
Holy Scripture, according to the Fathers, is bone and no one will venture with teeth fit for milk to break the strong bones of Holy Scripture – for those teeth will be crushed.You’ve read in Scripture about the eunuch of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians? He was reading the Prophet Isaiah when the Apostle Philip asked him if he understood that which he read, to which he replied: How can I, except some man should guide me? (Acts 8:31).
You realize also that the word unction, or anointing (χρίσμα) that you mentioned above means the effusion of the Holy Spirit in the Mystery of Holy Chrism, directly after Baptism (Acts 8:17).
The phrase you know all things signifies everything that contains Christian truth and salvation, as well as everything that is related to the antichrist and his adherents, to whom the subsequent verse of the epistle of the holy John the Theologian refers. One must not, therefore, teach according to ones own understanding and perception, for one will be deceived.
Inq.: All the same, it is said that each Christian has the right and obligation to read Holy Scripture on his own, as the Saviour admonishes us: You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness of me (Jn. 5:39).
EC: Be careful, because many heretics of earlier eras made bold to immerse themselves in the fathomless sea of Scripture and drowned spiritually, thus perishing together with as many as followed them. They dont have all the same spiritual maturity. They are not all able to understand the mystery of Holy Scripture.
Holy Scripture is understood and explained in three ways: 1) according to its literal meaning, namely the nominal, grammatical, verbal and historical, 2) allegorically or metaphorically, which is superior to the former, and 3) spiritually. According to the Fathers, the simplest of senses to alight upon is the first meaning, according to the letter of Scripture; to penetrate with discretion to the nature of Scripture requires modest learning, while to explain the depth of the meanings of Scripture is of the highest spiritual advancement and in need of the most divine grace. The perfect wisdom of Scripture belongs, according to Saint Paul, to the perfect: Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory (1 Cor. 2: 6-7).
Inq.: There are those who contend that it is not necessary for someone to have much learning to be able to understand the teachings of Scripture, since to the unlearned He revealed the wisdom of these teachings, just as the Saviour says: I thank Thee, O Father, … because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes (Mat. 11:25).
EC: Yes, God revealed His wisdom to those that were known to be babes in wickedness but not in mind [1] and judgement. In other words, He revealed His wisdom to those who, with respect to good works, were perfect and had attained to the innocence of infants. Thats why Paul counsels the Corinthians as follows: Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be ye men (1 Cor. 14:20).
Inq.: Yet, God rebuked the wisdom and knowledge of men, as this passage indicates: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent (Is. 29:14). Saint Paul also says: Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? (1 Cor. 1:19). Might it not be that God is not able to give the wisdom of understanding the Scriptures to certain people who are worldly-wise, as the Orthodox maintain?
EC: You should know that God does not condemn just any wisdom and knowledge, but that which kills man spiritually. If He were to censure every wisdom, He would have to reject also the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of Joshua, son of Sirac, the wisdom of Christ the Saviour, of the Prophets and Apostles, to those whom He gave the commandment to be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves (Mat. 10:16). Yet, it isnt like this in the least. Hence, take care not to resemble those to whom the Saviour said: Your do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God (Mat. 22:29).
-
You were making a moral equivalence between the two in terms of their violent actions.
Uh, no, I was saying that what was known in the Old Word is practiced in the New by no one except Muslims, at least in the terms we are discussing.
But to someone who believes that “a kill is a kill is a kill”, what you said makes sense. I notice you didn’t bother to draw a distinction between killing ordered by the true God and killing in the name of the god of Islam.
Well, to the person being killed, a kill is a kill. The thing is, the argument about which god is the true God works both ways, think of the suicide bombers for example.
Now before you challenge me on that let me say I am not making an argument for moral relativism here. I am only arguing that the philosophical distinctions we draw to justify either this or that is as bound to the present culture as the Hebrew’s idea that the True God was a God mighty in battle was to their culture. (Hang on…I am not saying that a soldier or army cannot find the help of God — clearly they can. I’m only saying that preeminence in battle no longer exists as a necessary dimension of the self-revelation of God [think Constantine here]).
I actually think that some killing can be justified (I am not a pacifist) but I am very leery of justifying it based on concepts on which God is true and which one isn’t. The approach has some psychological appeal of course because it can quell the stirrings of the conscience and quiet troubled hearts. However, I just don’t think it really penetrates much deeper than this. Instead of requiring God’s prowess in the battle field, we just demand God’s prowess for our justifications. Its moved from exterior to interior.
Hang on… I am not a pacifist. I am not a moral relativist. In fact, I have almost a native disgust with both coercion and appeasement (opposite sides of the same coin usually — if one coerces, he will also appease). You won’t see me bending the knee to Mohammed’s Allah either.
I also think killing can be justified to protect the neighbor (it’s an existential calculation), and this too can be dicey but at least you don’t lose sight of the human face at the other end of the pistol. Every person has value (even the “infidel”) but this does not translate into pacifism (or disbanding the police force). It just ensures that the human calculation is never lost.
What it comes down to is that I am very wary of abstract justifications of most everything. I think rather that we have to develop more fully an ethic based on the inviolable dignity of the human person.
About five years ago I was in Barnes and Noble and heard a guy coughing with a deep bronchial cough. He need to be treated. I talked to him, he had just moved down here and found out he could not start working for two weeks. He was out of money.
Now this guy was a “tattoo artist.” I knew what that meant. It meant that he saw his body as extrinsic to being, not intrinsic, to use the words of Robert P. George. He lived in a completely different thought world than mine, we had nothing in common at all, and if it were not for the cough we probably would not have had anything to say to each other.
In any case, I told him he needed to treat his cough, he told me his story, and a link was forged – a real human one in fact. Long story short I got him to a doctor and gave him money for a prescription and food. My point is this (and I will probably lose my reward for talking about it): this guy was suffering, God brought him into my path (yes, God did), I did what I had to do but I did it simply because this was another human being. But our link was based on my knowledge of the suffering he was enduring because I too have had to endure it on occasion. This is the raw existential stuff where ethics begins these are places where you find God — at least I do.
I just have no time anymore for discussions of God’s “wrath,” “perfect will,” and so forth. To me it seems pretty easy: Take care of the neighbor, do what God wants you do do, don’t think about it too much, just do it. If this is established, we might be able to figure our way out the other stuff too.
-
“What it comes down to is that I am very wary of abstract justifications of most everything. I think rather that we have to develop more fully an ethic based on the inviolable dignity of the human person.”
Amen to that, Father! I have appreciated the perspective and wisdom you have brought here. Thank you.
-
Fr. Johannes,
You were making a moral equivalency between the violence of the ancient Hebrews and the modern Muslims. At times, you are simply not very candid.
Now, admitting that violence is sometimes necessary and justified, we come to the obvious question of “When?”.
I will set aside your exasperation with “God’s wrath” for the moment. Fr. Stephen on his website wrote almost the identical words. It is sad to see an Orthodox priest “tired” of a concept so obviously prominent in both the Old and New Testaments. But enough about that.
In the New Testament, Christ drives the moneychangers out of the temple (with non-lethal force, for course), His apostles (at least some of them) carried swords and in the Gospel of Luke after the Mystical Supper He tells His Apostles to take their swords with them and, if they don’t have any, to sell scrip and clothing to buy them. St. Paul certainly believed and taught that the government had the authority, from God, to engage in violence. And when Christ or St. John the Forerunner came across military men, they did not tell them to give up military life. In numerous places the Apostles quote favorably the examples of Moses, David, Abraham, etc. All prophets, kings or patriarchs who engaged in or ordered violence.
So the question is not if violence is acceptable, the question is “When?”
Now, since the Hebrews in the New Testament period were not a sovereign nation; i.e., they were subject to the Romans, and since Christ did not come to cast of the political yoke born by the Hebrews but to cast of the yoke of sin and death born by all mankind, there is no real guide in the New Testament for when exactly violence is ok or even necessary.
If we take Christ’s words regarding “turn the other cheek” (a phrase which occors in the Old Testament as well, by the way), and “love your enemies, and bless those who curse you” as being universal and absolute, then Christians cannot possibly engage in violence or be public servants or members of the miliatary.
But as we can see above, that meaning is precluded by other parts of the New Testament.
So where do we look to find a paradigm for the proper use of violence when it is acceptable or necessary?
To the Old Testament.
That’s all I’m really saying. I do not think that most Orthodox over the centuries, especially from the time of Constantine to the beginning of the twentieth century, would have had any problem whatsoever with this attitude. They certainly did not behave as if they did.
-
So the question is not if violence is acceptable, the question is “When?”
Chasing money changers out of the temple qualifies as violence? That aside, I think violence is permissible, even necessary sometimes especially when it is used to stop a cycle of greater violence (I don’t relativize violence either).
I am arguing that justification for violence on the basis that the God of Abraham is the one true God is not sufficient ground for much more than self-justification (not saying here that self-justification is inherently bad either). It’s not that I believe that there are other gods. I don’t. Nor do I believe Christians are obligated to be passive in the face of violence. I just don’t believe rock hard “principles” that you say exist in the OT text are really there. So when you write:
So where do we look to find a paradigm for the proper use of violence when it is acceptable or necessary?
To the Old Testament.
…I can see why you don’t like the idea that the self-revelation of the God of Abraham to the Hebrews was in some measure dependent on their ability to perceive it. That precludes philosophical absolutism, or at least a kind of confident certainty, because it denies that philosophical paradigms even exist in the scripture.
(BTW, if those paradigms do indeed exist, why didn’t Paul write his epistles using that logic? Instead, we see not a shred of systematic theology in any of Paul’s writing.)
This is not saying that the OT scriptures are bereft of truth — clearly that assertion is false too. We talked about that upstream.
For that reason I think your reading of the OT is anachronistic. It reads into the text thought structures that were not in anyway a part of the Hebrew’s world view at the time, kind of like a creationist failing to see that Genesis is a pre-scientific text (which is not the same thing as saying that Genesis is not true).
Hang on…I am not saying your are a creationist, only that the notion that that we can distill paradigms from the OT text in order to create meta-structures is a modern assumption.
How is that truth uncovered and applied? Through the Great Commandment, especially the second part. For me truth is existentially appropriated, through encounter with God and neighbor, which is not the same thing as saying that Truth is relative or situationally determined. Truth is a person, ultimate (absolute?) truth is appropriated only in encounter with the Truth and neighbor, and sometimes our cultural presuppositions limit what we might otherwise see.
Further, because it is appropriated through encounter with God and neighbor, we can discipline ourselves to conform to Him who is truth, through the cultivation of the virtues primarily. This also helps us discern and determine when an act is unjust and needs action — such as when to go to war, what level of force is appropriate to stop a criminal, and so forth.
Now I know (or at least I think I know) how you are hearing this. If the paradigm is undermined, then certainty goes out the door with it. Certainty is replaced by anarchy, and anarchy portends the loss of valuable things that need to be preserved.
Well, I agree that the uncertainty is frightening, and I agree that anarchy is a lion seeking whatever it can devour. But I return back to the prophet and apostle, who changed the world through preaching, who recognized and understood that the strongest agent of change in the world is a word spoken in truth and then had the courage to speak it. Many Christians understood it, that’s how the West came into being, how the people that heard the Gospel were able to slip from the shackles of paganism. I’m with the great moralists on this one, Lewis, Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn, and others. In fact, here is one of my favorite essays by Solzhenitsyn that I return to for moral courage now and then: Live not by Lies.
-
“Chasing money changers out of the temple qualifies as violence?”
John2:15
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables.Right, Fr. Johannes, He merely waved the scourge in the air and cried, “bugga, bugga” and they all fled in terror.
-
“…I can see why you don’t like the idea that the self-revelation of the God of Abraham to the Hebrews was in some measure dependent on their ability to perceive it.”
It’s just that I believe that God is the author of “their ability to perceive it” as well as the revelation itslf so I do not tie His hands by saying He was limited in what He could express to them. He was not. It’s a convenient way to explain away the violence as God’s concession to people of a barbaric mindset, but it fails to explain why He Himself condescended to barbarism in His actions and the actions He ordered rather than raise their awareness of the value of human life and mercy. Suggesting He could not impinges on His omnipotence. He chose not to do so.
Or, more simply put, in context it was the right thing for God and the Israelites to do, regardless of the limitations of the Israelite worldview. In that physical context, surrounded by hostile, pagan tribes that might have harrassed them out of existence or cohesion, the extraordinary violence was justified. In fact, if the situation were repeated in the present with a small remnant of Christians being in the same place as the Hebrews were at that time, Christians would be justified in similar acts (unless, of course, God chose to intervene supernaturally).
-
-
-
Fr. Johannes wrote,
“Well, to the person being killed, a kill is a kill.” Yes, but the question of whether a particular killing is justified depends on the moral activity of those involved. Christ was killed. A serial murderer and rapist who is caught, tried and executed is killed. Both underwent the subjective experience of death. We can, however, distinguish between the two (I hope).
“The thing is, the argument about which god is the true God works both ways, think of the suicide bombers for example.”
That is a classic example of moral relativism. Either their god is really God, our God is really God, or neither of us are correct. You are placing modern Western religious tolerance on too high a pedestal. Unfortunately, as Christians, we have to make a choice as to whether to believe in our God or the god of Islam. You cannot stand above that responsibility and be a Christian. The argument only “works both ways” if you give similar credulity to the claims of each religion. I do not.
You seem to want to lob out these zingers about “killing the infidel” and “suicide bombers” and comparisons to radical Islam for some reason. I think it is to imply that there is a danger of Christians who believe that violence is sometimes justified of sinking to the level of “kill all the infidels” or of engaging in suicide bombing. I’m not sure what to say to that other than it seems kind of silly to me.
-
-
That is a classic example of moral relativism. Either their god is really God, our God is really God, or neither of us are correct.
No, it is merely an example of how the argument serves anyone who claims their authority is derived from G/god. That’s why I argue it really doesn’t go any deeper than self-justification.
“Their” god is not God. Nevertheless, wage violent conflict on these grounds alone and our morality will get even more muddled especially if the body count rises higher than anyone expected.
You seem to want to lob out these zingers about “killing the infidel” and “suicide bombers” and comparisons to radical Islam for some reason. I think it is to imply that there is a danger of Christians who believe that violence is sometimes justified of sinking to the level of “kill all the infidels” or of engaging in suicide bombing. I’m not sure what to say to that other than it seems kind of silly to me.
Not to me. Think of Germany and Russia in the last century. We’ve reached a point where our (parts of Christendom) devolution can sink pretty low too.
-
I never suggested that we wage war on “these grounds alone”.
As to Germany or Russia in the last century, neither claimed to be doing anything in the name of the Christian God. Russia was atheistic, (at least in its leadership) and German was quasi-pagan, stressing the “god of the German people”. Neither is relevant.
This actually does go to prove my point from far above where I remarked that I thought that the present quasi-pacifistic attitude in modern Christianity is a product of the aftermath of the WWI and WWII. It may be time to rethink that in light of radical Islam.
I’m just tired of seeing these whiny bumper stickers asking, “Who would Jesus bomb”? Since He is the Yahweh of the Old Testament, I am tempted to answer, “The same people He ordered the Hebrews to make war on in the Old Testament”. Of course, if He is not the same God, I don’t know why we should pay attention to what He has to say anyway.
-
As to Germany or Russia in the last century, neither claimed to be doing anything in the name of the Christian God. Russia was atheistic, (at least in its leadership) and German was quasi-pagan, stressing the “god of the German people”. Neither is relevant.
So then the only rationale is, what, that when war is waged in the name of the Christian God, it is justified? How does this logic differ from the Muslim? The answer is not clear from the rationale alone. All that really drives it is an appeal to authority by him who claims it. There really is no functional difference between Christian or Muslim here; both claim supremacy by virtue of their private belief.
Now this worked in Old Testament times, before the eras of nations and ideologies. It worked too when the fear of death restricted the knowledge of what constituted the nature of reality to the workings of the gods and the best one could hope for was a release from the apparent capriciousness that guided their actions. Times are different now however because the chains of death have been overthrown. The resurrection was an event of incalculable cosmic significance that all mankind benefits from it. Man would never be the same after it.
But, war still exists and I am not saying that war can never be justified (I think it can). I am very leery of justifying it in the name of one God vs. another god alone, however. As I said this never rises above self-justification. Even if an entire nation buys into it, it still remains collectivized self-justification, nothing more.
Further, if the West can sink into the barbarism of Nazism and Communism, it can just as easily self-justify in the name of the God of Abraham if the circumstances warrant it (my real point above). But calling it so does not make it so and I see nothing in your reasoning that would refute such logic if it were to happen.
In fact, I see your logic fitting in perfectly with a culturalized Christianity, a kind of politicized civil religion that has a Christian veneer, even perhaps the vestiges of Christian moral character. All we need to do is decide who the Amalekite du-jour happens to be and off we go marching. Nothing in your argument precludes this.
You are stuck I think on the idea that not reading the Old Testament in terms of hard literalism inevitably leads to the de-Christianized Christianity of the religious left. I don’t think that is true. I think that what afflicts the religious left is a lack of courage (which is not the same thing as saying they don’t have a will to power, BTW — that’s another thing entirely).
I think the throwing off of hard literalism actually frees one to comprehend the Gospel. The power is not in the purported transcendence of philosophical ideas, in the requirement that the moral thinking of past generations must be congruent with ours or vice-versa, or that the experience of past epochs mirrors ours, whatever.
Rather, power is in the word that is preached. Again, I refer back to one of the great moralists of our era: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel lecture. Look at how he defines how truth enters the world. (Then look at his life. Literature — words that were drawn from Truth — decimated a regime.)
-
Fr. Johannes,
I wrote:
“I think it is to imply that there is a danger of Christians who believe that violence is sometimes justified of sinking to the level of “kill all the infidels” or of engaging in suicide bombing. I’m not sure what to say to that other than it seems kind of silly to me.”
You replied:
“Not to me. Think of Germany and Russia in the last century. We’ve reached a point where our (parts of Christendom) devolution can sink pretty low too.”
The question is whether these acts were committed in the name of Christ or Christianity. Clearly they were not.
“So then the only rationale is, what, that when war is waged in the name of the Christian God, it is justified? How does this logic differ from the Muslim?”
You’re not paying attention. Neither Hitler nor Stalin waged war in the name of any god. Hitler payed lip service to god at times, the god of the German people. Muslims wage war, jihad, by right of a divine imperative to make war on the infidel until all the world is controlled by Islam. Christianity contains within it no such imperative, not even arguably.
Again, I don’t know what you mean by rejecting “hard literalism”. If you mean that the events described in the Old Testament did not occur or that it is irrelavant whether they occured, then I do not think that that is Christianity at all.
“All we need to do is decide who the Amalekite du-jour happens to be and off we go marching. Nothing in your argument precludes this.”
I don’t see how a reasonable person gets that from what I wrote above. I wrote that if a small remnant of Christians (i.e., that was all that was left of Christianity) found themselves in the same place as the ancient Israelites, they would be justified in taking similar action. To get from that to all we need to do is designate a group as the Amalekites du-jour is truly twisting my words into something profoundly different than what they mean.
“You are stuck I think on the idea that not reading the Old Testament in terms of hard literalism inevitably leads to the de-Christianized Christianity of the religious left.”
Nothing that I have said could possibly give you that idea. I have affirmed very often that interpretation by analogy is perfectly valid way of interpreting the Old Testament. If you mean by hard literalism that I also believe that the actual events described in the OT occured, then I confess to being a hard literalist which I take as being synonymous with “Christian”.
“In fact, I see your logic fitting in perfectly with a culturalized Christianity, a kind of politicized civil religion that has a Christian veneer, even perhaps the vestiges of Christian moral character.”
Funny, that is generally how I perceive modernist Orthodoxy and smarmy evangelicalism, gutless and impotent. Gutless in that it does not challenge its adherents to live a traditional Christian lifestyle or challenge the culture at large (and I’m not talking about silly blather like the Manhattan Declaration, start excommunicating pro-choice advocates and politicians, words are meaningless), and impotent in that it has almost no effect on the culture at large and precious little on those Christians in the pews.
“Rather, power is in the word that is preached.”
Not at all. Power is only in the word that is preached which falls on ears that choose to act. The rest is the bleating of goats.
BTW: Although I admire Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his words in no way decimated the Soviet regime. Ronald Reagan did that. They could not compete with us in the arms build up (that many Christians opposed, I might add) and still feed their people. In the end they filed Chapter 11 and changed their form of government.
-
“Times are different now however because the chains of death have been overthrown. The resurrection was an event of incalculable cosmic significance that all mankind benefits from it. Man would never be the same after it.”
Here is the problem with that. The chains of death have only been overthrown for those who believe in Christ. Others are still chained by the sting of death and still act and react in the same way as the ancient Amalekites. They are indistingushable. Tell me Stalin was more merciful than the chiefs of Amalek. For the unbelievers, nothing has changed or, if it has in some very meager way, it is a by product of contact with Christians.
Thus, while Christians are freed from the chains of death, we still have to live in a world where there are those still bound and rabid, every bit as much as before Christ’s Resurrection. The enemy is the same, it is only we who are different. So, given a similar context, we have the freedom to act as the ancient Israelites did at God’s direction. To hold otherwise is really to challenge the holiness of God.
-
Nope. Christ died for the entire human race, not just those who believe. What you mean to say is that the concrete experience of being raised in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection is available only to those who are baptized. On this I would agree.
It does not follow though that the unbeliever does not benefit from the work of Christ. It rains on the just and the unjust. Even in simple terms, say, hope becoming a concrete category of existence, affects the non-believer. Whether or not he is made aware of it through contact with Christians, which it probably is, has no bearing here, he still is affected. On the other hand, the cultural ramifications of the Light entering the world (rise of science, equitibility of laws, establishment of humanitarian institutions such as hospitals, colleges, etc.) would not require this contact at all; the culture itself began to reflect it.
Now it does not follow that all men hope of course. But the possibility for hope (for a reconciliation of some sort) still has enormous psychological and cultural benefit to believer and non-believer alike. Hope as a existential category of existence was not possible before Christ (except to those who heeded the word of the prophet, although they all died not receiving the promise). The world was simply closed to it. (You must understand that I see the crucifixion and resurrection at the recapitulation of all creation, of which the reorientation of the believer is only part, albeit a very significant part.)
Further, your definition sets up a bifurcation between the believer and everyone else. Nations go to war, but the new Israel (the people called out of the nations – ekklesia) does not. We have our foot in both and sometimes Christians go to war and are justified in doing so. But what, in the end, is this new nation? — the Church or the state?
Since you insist on a literal correspondence (an absolute moral congruency, a paradigmatic philosophical continuity) between the Old Testament and the New (tied together with a philosophical notion of the unchangeability of God), all I can conclude that the New Israel has national boundaries, with the state as the agent of enforcement.
How can a literal correspondence be maintained otherwise? How else would your claim that violence under the rubric of the God of Abraham is justified but under the god of Mohammed it is not, make any real sense?
Of course the New Israel according to St. Paul is not a nation-state at all. It’s the Church. But like I said, the Church does not declare war. I don’t really see much difference between Church and state in your apologetic. The closest historical approximation I can see that fits your definiton is Calvin’s Geneva.
-
Yep,
What I meant to say is what I did say. It is true that Christ died for the sins of all humanity. It is also true that those who do not have faith in him still subjectively feel the sting of death and it affects everything they do.
Also, your remarks regarding some correspondence that you see between the Old Israel and the New necessarily implying that the New Israel is a political entity is unfounded. There are states where Christians are in the majority and some where, either de jure or defacto, Christianity is the established religion. In any of these states, politics, including the decision of when and how to go to war, would be informed by what Christians have done in the past snd what the Old Israel did as well. So this postulate of yours that what I’m saying would necessitate a supranational Christian political entity is perhaps what you would like me to mean, but nothing more.
“How else would your claim that violence under the rubric of the God of Abraham is justified but under the god of Mohammed it is not, make any real sense?”
Because, Fr. Johannes, I believe that this whole religion business has an objective reality behind it while you often write as though you do not.
-
Also, we should not overplay the situation regarding the contrast between sin and death in the Old Testament as opposed to the New. The Israelites believed in an afterlife, whether we call that Sheol or Hades. You can see this in the story of Saul conjuring the ghost of Samuel from the dead (against God’s wishes). The Pharisees of Christ’s time already believed in a resurrection from the dead. The Saduccees did not however and Paul used this to raise contention between them at times. So the contrast between the Old and New Testament views on this subject are not black and white. In Christ’s time, there were already Jews who believed, based on Old Testament scripture, that they would be resurrected into the “world to come”.
-
“Christ died for the entire human race, not just those who believe.”
If by this you mean that Christ “opened the door”, so to speak, to salvation for all those who decide to pass through (working out their salvation “with fear and trembling”, so to speak), then I would agree with you. If you literally mean that Christ died for the sins of all, regardless of their reaction to this fact, such that all the sins are forgiven from the time of the Crucifixion/Resurrection and thus all will be admitted to paradise (such that not only rain, but salvation itself come upon the just and unjust alike), then I would suggest that it makes perfect sense considering your view (or myopia rather) reagarding God’s wrath, and it fits in with not only Marcion but Origen as well; however, that is not Orthodox Christianity.
“What a prevaricator of truth is such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that to be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, ye sinners; and ye who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offense, is never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! He is purely and simply good. He indeed forbids all delinquency, but only in word. He is in you, if you are willing to pay him homage, for the sake of appearances, that you may seem to honour God; for your fear he does not want. And so satisfied are the Marcionites with such pretences, that they have no fear of their god at all.” – Tertullian, “Against Marcion” 1.27
-
-
-
-
-
Scott: Re: 21.1.1.1.2
Do you have a cite for the above statement or is it something you cooked up “on your own authority”?
This idea can be found in various sources, many yet to be translated into English. I can give you one example (I can search for more): ASK FATHER ANDREW
Sometimes we keep the spirit, without always keeping the letter. This is better than keeping the letter but not to have the spirit, like the Pharisees. Of course, ideally, we should keep both the spirit and the letter.
I am not dismissing the historicity of events recorded in the Old Testament.
Holy Scripture is understood and explained in three ways: 1) according to its literal meaning, namely the nominal, grammatical, verbal and historical, 2) allegorically or metaphorically, which is superior to the former, and 3) spiritually. According to the Fathers, the simplest of senses to alight upon is the first meaning, according to the letter of Scripture; to penetrate with discretion to the nature of Scripture requires modest learning, while to explain the depth of the meanings of Scripture is of the highest spiritual advancement and in need of the most divine grace. The perfect wisdom of Scripture belongs, according to Saint Paul, to the perfect: Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory (1 Cor. 2: 6-7).
The term “freethinker” is a loaded term, indeed. I didn’t intend it that way. I had in mind mostly the recent debate with the atheist, Matt Dillahunty, “who started to asking questions about the reasons for his belief”, ie. he started to think (!). The atheist often bring the “God’s violence” argument as a reason for their unbelief, while their understanding of the spiritual world is so very poor. I also mentioned previously “Origen, Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, Sabellius, Dioscorus, Eutyches and all the other chiefs of the ancient heresies who have been swallowed up in the unfathomable sea of Holy Scripture”.
-
Eliot,
Forgive me if I misunderstood your comments. I was not questioning the idea that Pharasaic attitude can still exist, just that I think that believing in a literal interpretation of scripture, alongside allowing for interpretations through analogy, is not pharisaism. It is apparent to me now that you do not either.
-
-
“I will set aside your exasperation with “God’s wrath” for the moment. Fr. Stephen on his website wrote almost the identical words. It is sad to see an Orthodox priest “tired” of a concept so obviously prominent in both the Old and New Testaments.”
Scott, I submit that we get tired of these discussions of God’s “wrath,” not because we don’t appreciate the contextual significance of OT events or the truth therein expressed, but because of how that biblical term and related ones have become conceptually distorted through western systematic theological traditions, and how this has become a powerful obstacle for many (deeply loved people in this group) to the true experiential knowledge of God. I could tell you stories, all involving me or people very close to me, where there were the most egregious abuses of spiritual authority resulting from and/or exacerbated by this distorted view of God’s wrath and a distorted understanding of the place of the “fear of God” in a Christian’s life. Seriously, they would make your hair stand on end. I believe Fr. Stephen (and likely Fr. Johannes as well) are speaking into this chaos when they make statements of that kind.
-
Karen,
That may be quite true. However, one can travel right out of Egypt through the promised land and into Lebanon or even Turkey. One can overreact to one phenomenon and as a result fall victim to an equally powerful demon on the other side. What you have stated explains Fr. Stephen and Fr. Johannes’ being tired of God’s wrath. That, however, is no excuse to excise it from Christian dialogue, preaching or doctrine because abuses have been committed using the concept.
It may be necessary to handle the subject with care, especially in the pastoral setting. But this is not a pastoral setting. We are discussing theology at arms length, not in confession or counseling. I do not see the danger of exploring these ideas here and why the concept is so painful, in the abstract, to these priests. It is as if they do not want to be bothered by a reality that is not only mentioned quite often in the Old Testament but is dealt with prominently in places in the New Testament as well.
Well, I suppose there’s no understanding some things.
-
PS:
I started out in an OCA parish. The rector at the time I was there was ex-EOC. I heard him distort Orthodox teaching in any number of ways including misrepresenting the real presense, the relation of husbands and wives, the origin of death and evil, etc. His motto was, “tell me about the God you disbelieve in and I will tell you why that is not the God of Orthodoxy.”, or something like that. He catered to all the phobias and turnoffs and created little teraphim for each person to carry around (not literally, but I mean a false idol of God as an idea).
So I’m sure that in reacting to Western style penal, substitutionary atonement that it is possible to emasculate our concept of God.
-
Scott, here is one last observation for what it’s worth (add about $2.00 to it and it will get you a cup of coffee–but not at Starbucks!). I am responding to your statement here:
“It may be necessary to handle the subject with care, especially in the pastoral setting. But this is not a pastoral setting. We are discussing theology at arms length, not in confession or counseling. I do not see the danger of exploring these ideas here and why the concept is so painful, in the abstract, to these priests. It is as if they do not want to be bothered by a reality that is not only mentioned quite often in the Old Testament but is dealt with prominently in places in the New Testament as well.”
Fr. Stephen and Fr. Johannes are pastors and likely come to every issue with the hearts of pastors and hours in the Confessional dealing with the hearts of their parishioners. They may very well have their finger on the pulse of something you as a layman are insensitive to.
I’m more familiar with Fr. Stephen’s blog and have followed it and his interactions in the comments with various people for a few years now. He does not purport to be offering any kind of systematic theology nor does he engage in debate for its own sake. He offers devotional reflections on the part of the Tradition that is within the reach of his own admittedly limited experience. They are aimed appropriately, istm, at encouraging certain others (those whom God directs his way, perhaps?) toward communion with God and to cultivate the virtues. Judging from the popularity of his blog, the number of people who become Orthodox and attribute that in no small part to his witness, and the rather diverse group of readers reflected in comments, istm, he has touched on a nerve in more than one religious subculture and is an agent of healing for many. For me, his reflections have been more effective at pointing me back to what is truly important and opening my heart to God in a way that is similar to the homilies where I worship. It is pastoral direction from afar, perhaps, but it is pastoral direction, not mere theological “discussion.” On the other hand, blog forums “discussing theologies at arm’s length” are often just a distraction from what is spiritually real. I think perhaps even this type of discussion (it has its place) is one more profitably engaged in, in one’s circle of Christian friends (where our heart and personal context can be known a little and our comments and questions thus hopefully better understood), in a seminary or adult religious ed. classroom, and with one’s pastor.
-
-
Quite possible I’m sure, but creating false substitutes is also a danger of overreacting to the abuse of the meaning of God’s love.
-
Karen,
Here’s the thing though: As Orthodox Christians, we claim that Orthodoxy contains the fulness of Christian truth. The fact of God’s existence and that He gives us moral direction also means that there are consequences for bad behavior. If this were not so, He wouldn’t really love us. Is a parent really showing a child love by indulging their every impulse or by establishing clear (and sometimes severe) consequences for bad or atrocious behavior. Which type of parenting results in a well adjusted responsible adult?
The fear of the Lord and His wrath is a prominent theme of scripture. Neglecting it because we have some mental block against it is simply to diminish the “fulness” of Orthodoxy. By all means handle the subject with care, but do not misrepresent that fact that God is no doormat.
-
Scott, of course, we are completely agreed on the place of discipline as a necessary expression of real love. I think the issue here is not diminishment of the genuinely biblical meaning of God’s wrath and the fear of the Lord, but disentangling them from modern misconceptions and theologies that alienate the people Christ came to save from God. I believe it is in keeping with the Tradition and the Fathers to seek new ways to express the same biblical truths in view of present heresies, ways that rescue biblical language from being held hostage to human ideologies, conceptions and philosophical frameworks in which it does not rightfully belong. It is not outside the Tradition, to borrow terminology from pagan philosophy and culture and reframe it within the Tradition to more effectively communicate that Tradition. One modern approach that I think has done this fairly well at least in its application on the personal and relational plane is the language of biblical “boundaries” dealing with personal responsibility and self-control. Though the literature on this subject with which I am familiar is primarily put out by Evangelicals, it has a lot to commend it. There are doubtless other examples.
Though I’m sure it has been obvious for quite some time on this thread, using a cut and paste approach of citing biblical passages that use the language you seek to defend as part of the fullness of the Tradition to prove a point just doesn’t pass muster with me. It isn’t a given, in our modern age and culture, that even those raised Orthodox will readily properly understand that language in its own context, still less those coming into the Church with baggage from the western theological traditions that have in varying degrees removed the biblical language of salvation and judgment, etc., from their rightful context in the fullness of the Tradition. Even in just considering the prayers in my Orthodox prayer book and those in the Liturgy of the Church, this wrathful imagery and language of the fear of God isn’t very prominent. My morning prayer reads “I thank You, O most Holy Trinity, that in your goodness and long-suffering, You were *not* angry with me in my negligence and sinfulness, neither have you destroyed me in my transgressions. . . ” This is not to say that the real possibility and the risk of incurring God’s righteous judgment is not also and at the same time everywhere in view in those prayers. The risk of being judged by partaking in the Eucharist (being consumed) as well as being healed is there. Even so, that the difference between being healed and being consumed is clearly in *us*, not in the actual nature of that in which we partake (Christ’s Body and Blood) is very clear and fits in with the imagery and understanding of St. Isaac the Syrian about the origin of the suffering of the unrighteous. And still, the focus in those prayers is overwhelmingly on God’s unspeakable goodness, forgiveness, generosity, and mercy. I, for one, am tremendously grateful for that reality, and I’m sure you are as well. God is no doormat, no, but neither is He (passionately and capriciously) “angry,” nor does He dispense the kind of (“vengeful” in the human sense, and punitive for its own sake) “judgment” that most without a considerable amount of Orthodox formation would associate with that language today.
-
“Though I’m sure it has been obvious for quite some time on this thread, using a cut and paste approach of citing biblical passages that use the language you seek to defend as part of the fullness of the Tradition to prove a point just doesn’t pass muster with me.”
That’s ok. I’ve never suggested that you have to be persuaded by anything I’ve written. Usually, people hear those things that reinforce their preconceived notions and dismiss the rest.
“It isn’t a given, in our modern age and culture, that even those raised Orthodox will readily properly understand that language in its own context, still less those coming into the Church with baggage from the western theological traditions that have in varying degrees removed the biblical language of salvation and judgment, etc., from their rightful context in the fullness of the Tradition.”
No one can quote Tradition in context. You would have to quote it all and that would take too long. When I list a chain of quotations, my purpose is not to prooftext this or that point. Usually my purpose is to show how something suggested cannot stand up to the biblical narrative. For example, when you only consider passages where Christ states things like, “Turn the other cheek” and “Love your enemies”, one could, on the basis of these passages only, project a pacifistic ethic upon Him. I don’t quote contrary passages to project a militant or violent ethic. I quote them to show that projecting a pacifistic ethic renders scripture repugnant to scripture. This is not prooftexting but rather drowning bad ideas in reality.
-
By the way, Karen, what do you think we pray to be delivered from in the ode below from the canon of preparation for communion?:
“ODE 9
Eirmos: God the Word, Who came forth from God, and Who by ineffable wisdom came to renew Adam after his grievous fail to corruption through eating, and Who ineffably took flesh from the holy Virgin for our sake, Him do we the faithful with one accord magnify with hymns.
O sweetest Jesus, save us.
I have surpassed, O my Jesus, Manasseh and the publican, the harlot and the prodigal, O compassionate Jesus, and the robber, O my Jesus, through all my shameful and unseemly deeds, O Jesus; but do Thou forestall me, O my Jesus, and save me.
O sweetest Jesus, save us.
By my passions, O my Jesus, have I, the wretched one, surpassed all those from Adam who have sinned both before the Law and in the Law, O Jesus, and after the Law and Grace, O my Jesus. but by Thy judgments save me, O my Jesus.
O sweetest Jesus, save us.
May I not be parted from Thine ineffable glory, my Jesus, nor may the portion on the left fall to me, O sweetest Jesus; but set me on the right hand with Thy sheep and give me rest, O Christ my Jesus, since Thou art compassionate.
O sweetest Jesus, save us.
O Theotokos, who didst carry Jesus, O only unwedded Virgin Mary who knewest not wedlock, O pure one invoke Him, thy Son and Creator, to be gracious unto us that we who have recourse to thee may be delivered from temptations and perils, and from the fire that is to come.”
Sounds like we’re praying to be delivered from sin and the consequent wrath of God, wouldn’t you say? Yes, I know, it’s just cutting and pasting and cutting and pasting . . .
-
Scott, with regard to your comment at 27.1.2.1.3:
“This is not to say that the real possibility and the risk of incurring God’s righteous judgment is not also and at the same time everywhere in view in those prayers. The risk of being judged by partaking in the Eucharist (being consumed) as well as being healed is there.”
I think I was making the same point here.
-
-
-
-
-
Again, About Judging by Fr. Arsenie BocaThere is this vicious circle in which the souls of many get tangled: the circle of confusion. For some “reasons”, these persons do not want to listen to the Priests of the Church. Hence, by not listening to the Orthodox teachings and their advice on how to lead a life in God, they damage their mind with their own thoughts. This causes them to get deeper and deeper into a sinful life, as a result of their disobedience. Hence, man’s mind grows darker before the Truth and takes his errancy for the right thing.
Some do wake up and realize that they have lived in error. The enemy – to whom they have listened by deception – does not want to lose his grasp on them and starts presenting them people’s faults and shortcomings, as well as those of the legal servants of the Church, whilst obscuring their gifts and grace. And this is how he leads them on, to build their own “faith”, which ignores the mystery of repentance – exclusively and validly administered by priests and bishops, regardless of their human shortcomings.
-
Scott: Re: 25.1.2.1.3 I think you are wasting yourself …
Christ came (and died and resurrected) to teach mankind the way of salvation. His words were so plain that even a little child can understand them; they are accessible to all … unlike those fantastic theories understood by extremely few people.
Your birth, O Christ our God, dawned the light of knowledge upon the earth. For by Your birth those who adored stars, were taught by a star, to worship You, the Sun of Justice and to know You, Orient from on High. O Lord, glory to You.
-
Eliot,
I have no idea what you meant by the above. If His words are so simple that a little child could understand them, then why all the Christological controversies of the first millenium? He Himself chided His own apostles for being thick and not taking His meaning.
I don’t know what “wasting yourself . . .” means either. I was merely distinguishing the proposition that Christ came so that all men might be saved from the proposition that Christ came and thus all men shall be saved. The first is Orthodox, the second is not.
-
-
Scott writes: “The fear of the Lord and His wrath is a prominent theme of scripture. Neglecting it because we have some mental block against it is simply to diminish the “fulness” of Orthodoxy.”
It seems to me that generally – not always, but frequently – those who seem to like to preach endlessly about the wrath of God are themselves angry and wrathful people. Perhaps they are envious that others are engaging in things they secretly wish to do themselves.
You could say it is “righteous” anger, but I don’t think that any Christian with any self-awareness has cause to be angry with other people because they know their own darkness and need for redemption. (Luke 18:9-14).
As with all things, it’s a matter of perspective. Many have recommended the sermon known as “River of Fire“. You might check it out.
-
“It seems to me that generally – not always, but frequently – those who seem to like to preach endlessly about the wrath of God are themselves angry and wrathful people.”
I’ve yet to meet anyone in Orthodoxy who likes to “preach endlessly about the wrath of God”. If I ever do, I will pass on your comments to these unfortunate souls.
There is a wide gulf between “preach endlessly” and “attempt to rationalize away entirely”.
Leave a Reply to Scott Pennington Cancel reply