Festal Orations - Saint Gregory Of Nazianzus

For those who don't know me well, for me to be immersing myself fully into more "traditional" Christian literature is nothing short of a miracle. I've never been one to take anything as a given and have always sought to challenge beliefs, my own as well as the beliefs of others. 

I've always pursued my own interests in music, movies, adventures, people. Call it the "what else is out there" syndrome. Much of it had to do with my formative years of rebellion where I was defined not by what I believed, as such, but by what I was against. I was against most anything that appeared traditional, rote, expected. 

Yet here I am, years later, finally pursuing not rebellion (though the questioning spirit remains) but what it is I believe. I question not to tear down; I question to understand. My questions are more focused, my interest in "everything else" has quieted down and the focus becomes more singular. 

Which leads me, at this juncture, immersed in a series of books from the St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, most recently (today) Saint Gregory's Festal Orations. I was led here, as with many of these, through The Roots Of Christian Mysticism. Troubled by the 'common' understanding of the atonement - I am a worthless hell deserving sinner who deserves to die so Jesus took on what I had coming to appease a pissed off Father - I began to read up on the various 'theories' of the atonement, of which there are many.

There is no singular theory. It is, as far as a I can ascertain, something that has happened as cultures change, and the theology within it, over time. Many books have been written on the subject and I simply do not know the material well enough to present it other than point out a few books which have been especially beneficial in guiding my understanding to a larger fullness.

But it was this that caught my eye:

"Why was the blood that was shed for us, God's most precious and glorious blood, the blood of the Sacrificer and the Sacrifice, what was it poured out, and to whom was it offered?...If it was a ransom offered to the Father, the question arises, for what reason? It was not the Father that held us captive...

It is not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice, not because he demands it or feels some need for it..." (p.44-45)

A resounding yes.

On a side note, apparently I am potentially an apostate:

On The Necessity Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Anyhow, I sought the original from whence the words above came and was led to Festal Orations. Here is the full text from which it came:

"Now then, we will examine an issue and doctrine overlooked by many but in my view very much to be examined. To whom was the blood poured out for us, and why was it poured out, that great and renowned blood of God, who is both high priest and victim?

For we were held in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and received pleasure in exchange for evil. But if the ransom is not given to anyone except the one holding us in bondage, I ask to whom this was paid, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, what an outrage! For the robber would receive not only a ransom from God, but God himself as a ransom and a reward so greatly surpassing his own tyranny that for its sake he would rightly have spared us altogether.

But if was give to the Father, in the first place how? For we were not conquered by him. And secondly, on what principle would the blood of the Only-begotten delight the Father, who would not receive Isaac when he was offered by his father but switched the sacrifice, giving a ram in place of the reason-endowed victim?

It is clear that the Father accepts him, though he neither asked for this nor needed it, because of the divine plan, and because the human being must be sanctified by the humanity of God, that God might himself set us free and conquer the tyrant by force and lead us back to himself by the mediation of the Son, who also planned this to the honor of the Father, to whom it is manifest that he yields all things.

This much we have said of Christ, and the greater part will be revered in silence." (Festal Orations, 45.22)

We - and I am as guilty of this as anybody - go too far sometimes in our explanations and make idols of them, oftentimes becoming as or more dogmatic than those we have accused of the same. I prefer the mystery and I prefer to allow God to be God without imposing my will on Him. The mystery yields more than could a million textbooks on theology; these serve a purpose but only as a guide, a gate, into the mystery.

The Dao. Again.

"The deeper you go, the deeper you go." (my translation)

Septuagint - Random Thoughts And Questions

I am reading the Septuagint in a year and am thoroughly enjoying it as it is opening up my eyes. In trying to explain it to my wife this morning I realized that I do not know the history and significance of it well enough to, as Richard Feynman is quoted as having said, "prepare a freshman lecture on it."

That being said it does open up a line of questioning worth pursuing. I'm sure the answers, or opinions anyhow, are out there.

If NT writer(s) wrote in Greek and the quotes as we have them match the LXX, did they quote from the same? Did Jesus speak in Greek? Did Jesus use the LXX or did the writers of the NT put those words into His mouth from the LXX?

In other words, did He speak Hebrew? If He did and use a Bible written in Hebrew, how is it that the quotes in the NT attributed to Him match the LXX? Was the LXX redacted or edited at some point by Christians to match what the Gospels say He said? 

Or did He speak Aramaic as many believe? Did He understand Latin a la going before Pilate? Or did Pilate know Hebrew? Or Aramaic? Or even Greek? Or is there an implied translator in the story?

If the original Gospels, or at least the oral stories underlying them, were written in Hebrew, at what point did they 'become' Greek? Did the original authors actually write in Hebrew and do the translating into Greek? Or did someone translate or write them in the Greek language and draw from the LXX when so doing?

These are all questions for which there are no easy answers and there may never be a definitive answer and it ultimately comes down to a reasoned, or unreasoned, belief.

The bigger question is how it impact one's faith. Protestants, especially of the more fundamentalist, especially from the King James Only camp, often accuse Catholic and Orthodox churches of 'needing' them for their doctrines. Catholic and Orthodox will (most likely, I am imaginging; I am deficient in this depth of knowledge) claim these go back to the origins of the Church.

Also a significant factor is the paradox that those who created the Creeds, the foundational elements of the faith that sustained it for thousands of years, were the Church Fathers and their "Old Testament" text was the Septuagint. The classic texts from Athanasius, Basil and the Gregories quote from it. Wisdom, absent from Protestant Bibles, also played a significant role in their understanding.

Which of course heads into the Sola Scriptura debate and the role of the Creeds in contrast to it. Do we chuck the creeds? Are they subservient to sola scriptura and, if so, does our understanding of the Bible today somehow render them different or otherwise contrary? Do we believe the creeds to be too 'Catholic' and the freedom of the 'Spirit' means we only pay lip service to them?

After all, the Church Fathers developed these creeds not on their own volition but with Scripture backing them. We may debate the interpretation (and the influence of the Septuagint may play a part in this) but we cannot just discard the creeds. It is a bit presumptuous to do this as it leads to the further questions of whether or not the Church would have survived, or become Arian or some other doctrine, without them.

In this day and age when anything deemed absolute is considered dogmatic and intolerant have we resorted to a Church in which it is up to the individual to determine what is and is not the faith? This goes a long way toward explaining why so many churches claim little to no allegiance to a denomination and far too often rise and fall on the founder of the church.

It's All About You...

If it's all about Jesus, as the worship song says, what does that even mean? Does that mean we worship Jesus along as God? What of the Father? The Spirit? Is Jesus the Father, the Son and the Spirit? 

I can't quite put a finger on it but there is something 'missing' in a song such as this. Jesus is the focus, certainly, but the "all" we are to focus on? I'm not convinced that is the point of the Biblical revelation. Granted, it is a worship song and not a theological treatise and we could make the case that the 'all' being sung is really a reference to Jesus as the pivot, the focal point through Whom we enter into the worship of the Father, Son and Spirit.

Is Jesus the pre-existent Son? Or is that the Word speaking in and through, even as, Jesus? These questions matter for without clarity of understanding we know not what we worship and risk being moved by feelings, by emotions, by every wind of doctrine. 

It to me that as long as we are a people who use our minds, who reason, who question, who seek knowledge, we will find our way into theology. Rather than shun it we should embrace it because in the pursuit of understanding we may just find that we build a firm foundation even when it becomes more and more mysterious the more we know.

I've traveled the path of subordinationist theology from Irenaeus to Origen and the bifurcation of his thought via Arius and Athanasius and its apparent revival in evangelical circles. This tells me that the evangelical church has lots its historical moorings and is on the path of discovery; the danger is that in so doing they are thinking that somehow this is fresh terrain and a sign of the Holy Spirit working something objectively new.

Also covered some Christomonist/Christocentric theology and its connection to the Trinity. The danger here is that these becomes two 'poles' of thought (i.e. Trinity vs. Jesus) rather than understanding Jesus' role in taking us 'beyond Jesus' and into the perichoresis of the Trinity.

We cannot see God in His essence; but we see Jesus.

I am thoroughly fascinated, intoxicated, by this pursuit of trying to know but what has changed is that my life is not on hold until I know. In fact, it is the intertwining of life with this pursuit of knowledge that fuels one another. To be a true contemplative can be just as dangerous as living without knowledge.

Hide and seek, lost and found, the three in one, the yin and yang. Intoxicating, Maddening. But nothing else matters in the end. 

On The Incarnation (Cont)

So how did I end up at On The Incarnation? To some extent I got tired for the 'instant salvation' based on the 'I am a worthless sinner in need of hell' as the call.  While there may be truth in this it is ultimately a formula extracted to its essence which, like modern medicine, focuses so strongly on one disease that it leads to a need for more medication(s) to treat the symptoms caused by the singular extraction.

In other words, it is not an organic whole and as such is sorely lacking.

The "penal substitution" focus, that Jesus bore God's wrath, made God sound like a pissed off dictator who can't control His people. I failed to see the love of God in the way this was presented.

Accept Jesus or burn in Hell where a pissed off God will leave you in the hand of a co-equal though subservient Devil who will torture you for eternity. What kind of theology is that? 

Athanasius' work was omnipresent throughout the readings of Clement and Lossky but it was the moment I read this statement when trying to understanding what the Atonement meant, with the anti-penal substitution view lurking in the background:

"Why was the blood that was shed for us...poured out...and to whom was it offered?...It was not the Father that held us captive." (Clement, p. 45)

I began to enter the mystery as mystery and not as a problem to solve. As opposed to my approach toward theology up to this point, that need to know concretely, I began to accept that there is a greater mystery toward which we are drawn. Never one to believe just to believe or believe because someone says I should or tells me what is expected, I come to this on my own volition.

The more I focus on the mystery, the less important do things "worldly" come to occupy my time.  This is not a dualist anti-world view, not at all. Things "worldly" are nothing more than things that have not been imbued with the power of the resurrection, that "flame" which re-creates things anew and refines them to their purest essence revealing the illusion previously held as idolatrous.

On The Incarnation

I work in the quality field professionally so 'root cause analysis' is a huge part of what I do. I'm also a systemic, process oriented thinker, something I have only really discovered by being in te quality field. This is not something that others naturally gravitate toward so it makes me something of an oddball in the way I look at things. This includes things religious, including theology. Just don't do 'root cause analysis' when you're spouse wants to go to the hospital or you may get a response such as this one: 'you hate me and want me to die.' Root cause solved.

In my resistance to, repulsion of, frustration with and, ultimately, gravitation toward the Trinity I have found my way back to the Church Fathers. I have been headed down this path for quite some time after having picked up Olivier Clement's The Roots Of Christian Mysticism and Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology Of The Eastern Church. These books crossed my path years ago after going through one of the periodic, though more frequent, frustrations with the modern "evangelical" church in America. Though certainly more my style than the Pentecostal Oneness church in which I entered the stream, something was missing.

As strange as it may sound, there was too much focus on Jesus. Don't get me wrong. It's His Church. I fully understand that. But the Christocentric view started as it still often does to feel like the Oneness church doctrine I just left. "It's all about you Jesus" started to feel like bad theology. Or maybe the church I left was right.

I left that church due to the cult of the leader and the fact that it became ritualistic and predictable even in the midst of 'spontaneous' praise and worship. Something was missing. So we stumbled across a non-denominational church which exuded love. Not the Disneyfied version but something tangible, something real that I did not know could be found in and through church. It changed everything. Weirded me out at first but I began to understand that life is about relationship and life is about others. I am still trying to live out this lesson.

A change in leadership led to us leaving that church as well as it headed back in the direction of legalism and there was criticism of the previous leadership as overly permissive. We called it freedom and could not walk back from that.

We ultimately ended up at a church I had attended roughly ten years prior for one single Bible study with an ex-girlfriend. After going weeks without attending any church one morning it dropped into my head (spirit?) to visit. We walked in and were home and have been there for at least fifteen years now.

However, as someone who is always questioning, never satisfied with being static in my pursuit of the infinite, fissures began to appear. It is mostly mental, though it could also be a rebellious spirit within me. Mostly it was the 'if I hear one more Chris Tomlin song I'm going to scream' variety. The theology in many worship songs is bad. I can't say it is 'wrong' as such but it is certainly fuzzy and mushy and leaves me wondering how the Father, Son and Spirit work together as the line from Jesus to God leaves no room for the others. Oneness theology has infused these songs and for a church that claims allegiance, loosely, to Trinitarian doctrine, it has entered unaware. 

We are either Trinitarian or we are not. I say this not to say theology must reach a point where it is static but in my reading of church history and the writings of the church fathers this terrain has already been covered. We are either reverting to those times of turmoil, often violent and in need of intervention, or we are returning to the 'original' church a la the mythical "Acts church." But we are not in new territory. 

I take the long road to get to my point: we must understand how the church evolved and acknowledge the trail blazed by these early fathers to get us where we are now. The church was, by and large, united around the Father, Son and Spirit but the lack of theological concreteness led to a splintered church across the world. Perhaps this is ok and should be accepted. But can the church stand without a common theological vision? Or does it fade into the landscape as Christianity has been doing over the past several hundred years?

The Journey Continues...

Have been relatively quiet here but highly active in the my real life both with the pen and in activity.

Have progressed further and further into the Eastern Orthodox stream. Much like the Dao was my entry into the Way and was a 'natural' fit I have found that the struggles I have found fitting within modern day non-denominational, Western (i.e. American) Christianity pushed me ever further not away from Christianity but more toward what is 'natural' in my spiritual life which happens to align, in many ways, with Orthodox thought. At least in terms of the written word.

I've not participated in the actual service of anything Eastern Orthodox but with some modern day theologians of the Orthodox church, most notably Vladimir Lossky and Olivier Clement's magnum opus The Roots Of Christian Mysticism, I have found more peace and, paradoxically, more 'divine' restlessness in pursuit of this truth.

If you saw my book shelf and how it has thinned over the years with a more specialized focus you'd understand. The pivotal guides of my journey still remain, heavily penciled and rabbit-eared, but the current lot is ever more specific. 

In the dance I do in seeking meaning I - finally! - stumbled across a one year reading plan for the Septuagint. I have the Orthodox Study Bible and the EOB: New Testament as my text. The OSB is good for its translation of the Hebrew Bible though it is basically the KJV in the New Testament and quite patronizing and irritatingly like my first Bible which was the NIV which I grew to detest over the years in its obviousness approach not to truth but to indoctrination.

The EOB, on the other hand, is refreshing as it does not shun textual criticism. With a lexicon in hand and my NASB on the side I feel quite enriched in getting a deeper understanding of the Word. My pursuit of knowledge is never static. Never. I question, and question, and question any and all things I read both questioning my understanding but also questioning the deeper history of what is often lost in the 'static' pages of the written word. Call this the Holy Spirit if you will.

The pursuit is not to discredit, though in my early days this was my motive, but to get understanding. If God is truly a mystery, this questioning should never end. The quest is not to conform to a particular theology or doctrine or to fully understand with my mind. 

The quest is to further open my mind to the mystery. The words of the Dao, my translation, resonate: "the deeper you go, the deeper you go." 

Tolerance Is Not A Christian Virture

“We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty — these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square — peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.” – Archbishop Charles Chaput