Father Joseph on theological sound bites...

Fr. Joseph Huneycutt of Orthodoxie has posted an amusing article. Just how do you cope when you are invited onto a Protestant Evangelical radio show and find out you are being bushwhacked? Find out here...

The "Immortality" of the soul (part 3)

“I am the Resurrection,

and the Life.”

The Incarnation of the Word was an absolute manifestation of God. And above all it was a revelation of Life. Christ is the Word of Life, o Logos tis zois (1 John 1:1). The Incarnation itself was, in a sense, the quickening of man, as it were the resurrection of human nature. In the Incarnation human nature was not merely anointed with a superabundant overflowing of Grace, but was assumed into an intimate and "hypostatical" unity with Divinity itself. In that lifting up of human nature into an everlasting communion with the Divine Life, the Fathers of the early Church unanimously saw the very essence of salvation. "That is saved which is united with God," says St. Gregory of Nazianzus. And what was not so united could not be saved at all (Epist. 101, ad Cledonium). This was the fundamental motive in the whole of early theology, in St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Maximus the Confessor. Yet, the climax of the Incarnate Life was the Cross, the death of the Incarnate Lord. Life has been revealed in full through death. This is the paradoxical mystery of the Christian faith: life through death, life from the grave and out of the grave, the Mystery of the life-bearing grave. And Christians are born again to real and everlasting life only through their baptismal death and burial in Christ; they are regenerated with Christ in the baptismal font (cf. Rom. 6:3-5).

Such is the invariable law of true life. "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die" (1 Cor. 15:36). Salvation was completed on Golgotha, not on Tabor, and the Cross of Jesus was spoken of even on Tabor (cf. Luke 9:31). Christ had to die, in order to bestow an abundant life upon the whole of mankind. It was not the necessity of this world. This was, as it were, the necessity of Love Divine, a necessity of a Divine order. And we fail to comprehend the mystery. Why had the true life to be revealed through the death of One, Who was Himself "the Resurrection and the Life"? The only answer is that Salvation had to be a victory over death and man's mortality. The ultimate enemy of man was precisely death. Redemption was not just the forgiveness of sins, nor was it man's reconciliation with God. It was the deliverance from sin and death. "Penitence does not deliver from the state of nature (into which man has relapsed through sin), it only discontinues the sin," says St. Athanasius. For man not only sinned but "fell into corruption." Now, the mercy of God could not permit "that creatures once made rational, and having partaken of the Word, should go to ruin and turn again to non-existence by the way of corruption." Consequently the Word of God descended and became man, assumed our body, "that, whereas man turned towards corruption, He might turn them again towards incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like a straw from the fire." (De incarnatione, 6-8).

Thus, according to St. Athanasius, the Word became flesh in order to abolish "corruption" in human nature. However, death is vanquished, not by the appearance of Life in the mortal body, but rather by the voluntary death of the Incarnate Life. The Word became incarnate on account of death in flesh, St. Athanasius emphasizes. "In order to accept death He had a body" (c. 44). Or, to quote Tertullian, forma moriendi causa nascendi est (De carne Christi, 6). The ultimate reason for Christ's death must be seen in the mortality of Man. Christ suffered death, but passed through it and overcame mortality and corruption. He quickened death itself. "By death He destroyed death." The death of Christ is therefore, as it were, an extension of the Incarnation. The death on the Cross was effective, not as the death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. "We needed an Incarnate God, God put to death, that we might live," to use a bold and startling phrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 45, in S. Pascha, 28; edeithimen Theu sarkomenu ke nekrumenu). It was not a man that died on the Cross. In Christ there is no human hypostasis. His personality was Divine, yet incarnate. "For He who suffered was not common man, but God made man, and fighting the contest of endurance," says St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. 13, 6). It may be properly said that God died on the Cross, but in His own humanity (which was, however, "consubstantial" with ours). This was the voluntary death of One Who was Himself Life Eternal.

A human death indeed, death "according to humanity," and yet death within the hypostasis of the Word, of the Incarnate Word. And thence a resurrecting death. "I have a baptism to be baptized with" (Luke 12:50). It was the death on the Cross, and the shedding of blood, — "the baptism of martyrdom and blood, with which Christ Himself also was baptized," as St. Gregory of Nazianzus suggested (Orat. 37, 17). The death on the Cross as a baptism of blood, this is the very essence of the redeeming mystery of the Cross. Baptism is a cleansing. And the Baptism of the Cross was, as it were, the cleansing of the human nature, which was travelling the path of restoration in the Hypostasis of the Incarnate Word. This was, as it were, a washing of human nature in the outpoured sacrificial blood of the Divine Lamb, and first of all a washing of the body: not only a washing away of sins, but a washing away of human infirmities and of mortality itself. It was the cleansing in preparation for the coming resurrection: a cleansing of all human nature, a cleansing of all humanity in the person of its new and mystical First-born, in the "Last Adam." This was the baptism by blood of the whole Church, and indeed of the whole world. "A purification not for a small part of man's world, not for a short time, but for the whole Universe and through eternity," to quote St. Gregory of Nazianzus once more (Orat. 45, 13). The Lord died on the Cross. This was a true death. Yet not wholly like ours, simply because this was the death of the Incarnate Word, death within the indivisible Hypostasis of the Word made man, the death of the "enhypostatized" humanity. This does not alter the ontological character of death, but changes its meaning. The "Hypostatic Union" was not broken or destroyed by death, and therefore the soul and the body, though separated from each other, remained still united through the Divinity of the Word, from which neither was ever estranged. This was an "incorrupt death," and therefore "corruption" and "mortality" were overcome in it, and in it begins the resurrection.

The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature (St. John of Damascus, De fide orth., 3.27; cf. homil. in Magn. Saиbat., 29). "Today we keep the feast, for our Lord is nailed upon the Cross," in the sharp phrase of St. John Chrysostom (In crucem et latronem, hom. 1). The death on the Cross is a Victory over death not only because it was followed by the Resurrection. It is itself the victory. The Resurrection only reveals and sets forth the victory achieved on the Cross. It is already accomplished in the very falling asleep of the God-man. "Thou diest and quickenest me." As St. Gregory of Nazianzus puts it: "He lays down His life, but He has the power to take it again; and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again. He goes down into Hades, but He brings up the souls" (Orat. 41). This mystery of the resurrecting Cross is commemorated especially on Good Saturday. It is the day of the Descent into-Hell (Hades). And the Descent into Hades is already the Resurrection of the dead. By the very fact of His death Christ joins the company of the departed. It is the new extension of the Incarnation. Hades is just the darkness and shadow of death, rather a place of mortal anguish than a place of penal torments, a dark "sheol," a place of hopeless disembodiment and disincarnation, which was only scantily and dimly fore-illuminated by the slanting rays of the not-yet-risen Sun, by the hope and expectation yet unfulfilled. It was, as it were, a kind of ontological infirmity of the soul, which, in the separation of death, had lost the faculty of being the true entelechia of its own body, the helplessness of fallen and wounded nature. Not a "place" at all, but rather a spiritual state: "the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19).

It was into this prison, into this "Hell," that the Lord and Savior descended. Amid the darkness of pale death shone the unquenchable light of Life, the Life Divine. The "Descent into Hell" is the manifestation of Life amid the hopelessness of mortal dissolution, it is victory over death. "It was not from any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it that the body had died, but in order that in it death might be done away by the power of the Savior," says St. Athanasius (De inc. 26). Good Saturday is more than Easter-Eve. It is the "Blessed Sabbath," "Sanctum Sabbatum," — requies Sabbati magni, in the phrase of St. Ambrose. "This is the Blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, whereon the Only-Begotten Son of God has rested from all His deeds" (Anthem, Vespers of Good Saturday, according to the Eastern rite). "I am the first and the last: I Am He that liveth, and was dead: and behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen. And I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev. 1:17-18).

The Christian "hope of immortality" is rooted in and secured by this victory of Christ, and not by any "natural" endowment. And it means also that this hope is rooted in a historical event, i.e., in a historical self-revelation of God, and not in any static disposition or constitution of human nature.

The Last Adam.

The reality of death is not yet abolished, but its powerlessness has been revealed. "It is true, we still die as before," says St. John Chrysostom, "but we do not remain in death, and this is not to die. The power and very reality of death is just this, that a dead man has no possibility of returning to life; but if after death he is to be quickened and moreover to be given a better life, then this is no longer death, but a falling sleep" (In Hebr., hom. 17, 2; u thanatos tuto estin, alla kimisis). Or in the phrase of St. Athanasius, "like seed cast on the earth, we do not perish when we die, but having been sown, we rise" (De inc., 21). This was a healing and renewal of human "nature," and therefore all will rise, all will be raised and restored to the fullness of their natural being, yet transformed. From henceforth every disembodiment is but temporary. The dark vale of Hades is abolished by the power of the life-giving Cross. In the first Adam the inherent potentiality of death by disobedience was disclosed and actualized. In the second Adam the potentiality of immortality by purity and obedience was sublimated and actualized into the impossibility of death. This parallel was drawn already by St. Irenaeus. Apart from the hope of the General Resurrection, belief in Christ would be vain and to no purpose. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruit of them that slept" (1 Cor. 15:20). The Resurrection of Christ is a new beginning. It is a "new creation," i keni krisis. One may say even, an eschatological beginning, an ultimate step in the history of Salvation.

And yet, we have to make a dear distinction between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. "Nature" is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God's omnipotent and invincible grace. The wholeness is as it were, "forced" upon human nature. For in Christ all human nature (the "seed of Adam") is fully and completely cured from unwholeness and mortality. This restoration will be actualized and revealed to its full extent in due time, in the General Resurrection, in the resurrection of all, both of the righteous and the wicked. And no one, so far as nature is concerned, can escape Christ's kingly rule, or alienate himself from the invincible power of the resurrection. But the will of man cannot be cured in the same invincible manner. The will of man must turn itself to God. There must be a free and spontaneous response of love and adoration, a "free conversion." The will of man can be cured only in the "mystery of freedom." Only by this free effort does man enter into that new and eternal life which is revealed in Christ Jesus.

A spiritual regeneration can be wrought only in perfect freedom, in an obedience of love, by a self-consecration and self-dedication to God, in Christ. This distinction was made with great insistence by Nicolas Cabasilas in his remarkable treatise on The Life in Christ. Resurrection is a "rectification of nature" (i anastasis physeos estin epanorthosis) and this God grants freely. But the Kingdom of Heaven, and the beatific vision, and union with Christ, presuppose the desire (trofi estin tis theliseos), and therefore are available only for those who have longed for them, and loved, and desired. And immortality will be given to all, just as all can enjoy Divine providence. It does not depend upon our will whether we shall rise after death or not, just as it is not by our will that we are born. The death and resurrection of Christ bring immortality and incorruption to all in the same manner, because all have the same nature as the Man Christ Jesus. But nobody can be compelled to desire. Thus Resurrection is a gift common to all, but the blessedness will be given only to some (De vita in Christo II, 86-96). And again, the path of life is the path of renunciation, of mortification, of self-sacrifice and self-oblation. One has to die to oneself in order to live in Christ. Each one must personally and freely associate himself with Christ, the Lord, the Savior, and the Redeemer, in the confession of faith, in the choice of love, in the mystical oath of allegiance. He who does not die with Christ cannot live with Him. "Unless of our own free choice we accept to die unto His passion, His life is not in us" (St. Ignatius, Magnes, 5; the phraseology is Pauline).

This is no mere ascetical or moral rule, no mere discipline. This is the ontological law of spiritual existence, even the law of life itself. For only in communion with God and through life in Christ does the restoration of human wholeness gain meaning. To those in total darkness, who have deliberately confined themselves "outside God," the Resurrection itself must seem rather unnecessary and unmotivated. But it will come, as a "resurrection to judgment" (John 5:29 (anastasis tis kriseos). And in this will be completed the tragedy of human freedom. Here indeed we are on the threshold of the inconceivable and incomprehensible. The apokatastasis of nature does not abolish free will, and the will must be moved from within by love.

St. Gregory of Nyssa had not a clear understanding of this. He anticipated a kind of universal conversion of souls in the after-life, when the Truth of God will be revealed and manifested with some ultimate and compelling evidence. Just at this point the limitations of the Hellenistic mind are obvious. Evidence seemed to it to be the decisive reason or motive for the will, as if "sin" were merely "ignorance." The Hellenistic mind had to pass through its long and hard experience of asceticism, of ascetical self-examination and self-control, in order to free itself from this intellectualistic naiveté and illusion, and discover a dark abyss in the fallen soul. Only in St. Maximus, after some centuries of ascetic preparation, do we find a new, remodeled and deepened interpretation of the apokatastasis.

St. Maximus did not believe in the inevitable conversion of obstinate souls. He taught an apokatastasis of nature, i.e., a restitution of all beings to an integrity of nature, of a universal manifestation of the Divine Life, which will be evident to every one. But those who have deliberately spent their lives on earth in fleshly desires, "against nature," will be unable to enjoy this eternal bliss. The Light is the Word, that illuminates the natural minds of the faithful; but as a burning fire of the judgment (ti kavsi tis kriseos), He punishes those who, through love of the flesh, cling to the nocturnal darkness of this life. The distinction is between an epignosis, and a methesis. "Acknowledgment" is not the same as "Participation." God will be in all indeed, but only in the Saints will He be present "with grace" (dia tin harin) ; in the reprobate He will be present "without grace" (para tin harin). And the wicked will be estranged from God by their lack of a resolute purpose of good." We have here the same duality of nature and will. In the resurrection the whole of creation will be restored, i.e., brought to perfection and ultimate stability. But sin and evil are rooted in the will. The Hellenistic mind concluded therefrom that evil is unstable and by itself must disappear inevitably. For nothing can be perpetual, unless it be rooted in a Divine decree.

The Christian inference is exactly the opposite. There is the inertia and obstinacy of the will, and this obstinacy may remain uncured even in the "universal Restoration." God never does any violence to man, and communion with God cannot be forced upon the obstinate. In the phrase of St. Maximus, "the Spirit does not produce an undesired resolve but it transforms a chosen purpose into theosis" (Quaest. ad Thalass., 6). We live in a changed world: it has been changed by Christ's redeeming Resurrection. Life has been given, and it will prevail. The Incarnate Lord is in very truth the Second Adam and in Him the new humanity has been inaugurated. Not only an ultimate "survival" is assured, but also the fulfillment of God's creative purpose. Man is made "immortal." He cannot commit an ultimate "metaphysical suicide" and strike himself out of existence. Yet even the victory of Christ does not force "Eternal Life" upon the "closed" beings. As St. Augustine says, for the creature "being is not the same thing as living" (De Genesi ad litt. I, 5). Cont...

- Archpriest G. Florovsky

Why does this not surprise me?

From MSNBC and the AP

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Barry Bonds thinks Mark McGwire and Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame.

Read the rest here.

The “Immortality” of the soul (part 2)

Man is Mortal.

In current thinking nowadays, the "immortality of the soul" is usually overemphasized to such an extent that the basic "mortality of man" is almost overlooked. Only in the recent "existentialist" philosophies are we again strongly reminded that man's existence stands intrinsically sub specie mortis. Death is a catastrophe for man. It is his "last (or rather, ultimate) enemy," eshatos ehthros (1 Cor. 15:26). "Immortality" is obviously a negative term; it is correlative with the term "death." And here again we find Christianity in an open and radical conflict with "Hellenism," with Platonism first of all. W. H. V. Reade, in his recent book, The Christian Challenge to Philosophy, very aptly confronts two quotations: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) and "Plotinus, the philosopher of our time, was like one ashamed of being in the flesh" (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, I). Reade then proceeds: "When the message of Christmas Day and Porphyry's brief summary of his master's creed are thus brought into direct comparison, it should be plain enough that they are totally incompatible: that no Christian can possibly be a Platonist, nor any Platonist a Christian; and of this elementary fact the Platonists, to do them justice, were perfectly aware." I would only add that, unfortunately, Christians did not seem to be aware "of this elementary fact."

Through centuries, down to our own age, Platonism has been the favorite philosophy of Christian wise men. It is not our purpose now to explain how it could and did happen. But this unfortunate misunderstanding (not to say more) has resulted in an utter confusion in modern thinking about death and immortality. We may still use the old definition of death: it is a separation of soul from body, psyhi horismos apo thomatos (Nemesius, De natura hominis, 2; he quotes Chrysippus). For a Greek it was a liberation, a "return" to the native sphere of spirits. For a Christian it was the catastrophe, a frustration of human existence. The Greek doctrine of Immortality could never solve the Christian problem. The only adequate solution has been offered by the message of Christ's Resurrection and by the promise of the General Resurrection of the dead. If we turn again to Christian antiquity, we find this point clearly made at an early date. St. Justin was quite emphatic on the point. People "who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven are not Christian at all" (Dial. 80).

The unknown author of the treatise On Resurrection (traditionally ascribed to St. Justin) states the problem very accurately. "For what is man but a reasonable animal composed of body and soul? Is the soul by itself man? No, but the soul of man. Would the body be called man? No, but it is called the body of man. If neither of these is by itself man, but that which is made up of the two together is called man, and God has called man to life and resurrection, He has called not a part, but the whole, which is the soul and the body" (De resurr. 8). Athenagoras of Athens develops the same argument in his admirable treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead. Man was created by God for a definite purpose, for perpetual existence. Now, "God gave independent being and life neither to the nature of the soul by itself, nor to the nature of the body separately, but rather to men, composed of soul and body, so that with these same parts of which they are composed, when they are born and live, they should attain after the termination of this life their common end; soul and body compose in man one living entity." There would no longer be a man, Athenagoras argues, if the completeness of this structure were broken, for then the identity of the individual would be broken also. The stability of the body, its continuity in its proper nature, must correspond to the immortality of the soul. "The entity which receives intellect and reason is man, and not the soul alone. Consequently man must for ever remain composed of soul and body." Otherwise there would be no man, but only parts of man. "And this is impossible, if there is no resurrection. For if there is no resurrection, the nature of men as men would not continue" (15).

The basic presupposition of the whole argument is that the body intrinsically belongs to the fullness of human existence. And therefore man, as man, would cease to exist, if the soul had to remain for ever "disembodied." It is precisely the opposite of what the Platonists contended. The Greeks dreamt rather of a complete and ultimate disincarnation. An embodiment was just the bondage of the soul. For Christians, on the other hand, death was not a normal end of human existence. Man's death is abnormal, is a failure. The death of man is "the wages of sin" (Rom. 6:23). It is a loss and corruption. And since the Fall the mystery of life is displaced by the mystery of death. Mysterious as the "union" of soul and body indeed is, the immediate consciousness of man witnesses to the organic wholeness of his psycho-physical structure. Anima autem et spiritus pars hominis esse possunt, homo autem nequaquam, said St. Irenaeus (Adv. haereses V, 6.1). A body without a soul is but a corpse, and a soul without body is a ghost. Man is not a ghost without body, and corpse is not a part of man. Man is not a "bodiless demon," simply confined in the prison of the body. That is why the "separation" of soul and body is the death of man himself, the discontinuation of his existence, of his existence as a man. Consequently death and the corruption of the body are a sort of fading away of the "image of God" in man. A dead man is not fully human.

St. John of Damascus, in one of his glorious anthems in the Burial Service, says of this: "I weep and I lament, when I contemplate death, and see our beauty, fashioned after the image of God, lying in the grave disfigured, dishonored, bereft of form." St. John speaks not of man's body, but of man himself. "Our beauty in the image of God" is not the body, but man. He is indeed an "image of the unfathomable glory of God," even when "wounded by sin." And in death it is disclosed that man, this "reasonable statue" fashioned by God, to use the phrase of St. Methodius (De resurrectione I, 34.4: to agalma to logikon), is but a corpse. "Man is but dry bones, a stench and the food of worms." One may speak of man as being "one hypostasis in two natures," and not only of, but precisely in two natures. And in death this one human hypostasis is broken up. And there is no man any more. And therefore man longs for "the redemption of his body" (Rom. 8:23; tin apolitrosin tu somatos imon). As St. Paul says elsewhere, "not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. 5:4). The sting of death is precisely in that it is "the wages of sin," i.e., the consequence of a distorted relationship with God. It is not only a natural imperfection, nor is it just a metaphysical deadlock. Man's mortality reflects man's estrangement from God, Who is the only Giver of Life. And, in this estrangement from God, Man simply cannot "endure" as man, cannot stay fully human.

The status of mortality is essentially "subhuman." To stress human mortality does not mean to offer a "naturalistic" interpretation of human tragedy, but, on the contrary, it means to trace the human predicament to its ultimate religious root. The strength of Patristic theology was precisely in its interest in human mortality, and accordingly in the message of the Resurrection. The misery of sinful existence was by no means underestimated, but it was interpreted not only in ethical or moralistic categories, but in theological ones. The burden of sin consisted not only in self-accusations of human conscience, not only in the consciousness of guilt, but in an utter disintegration of the whole fabric of human nature. The fallen man was no man any more, he was existentially "degraded." And the sign of this "degradation" was Man's mortality, Man's death. In separation from God human nature becomes unsettled, goes out of tune, as it were. The very structure of man becomes unstable. The "union" of the soul and the body becomes insecure. The soul loses its vital power, is no more able to quicken the body. The body is turned into the tomb and prison of the soul. And physical death becomes inevitable. The body and the soul are no longer, as it were, secured or adjusted to each other.

The transgression of the Divine commandment "reinstated man in the state of nature," as St. Athanasius puts it, — is to kata fysin epestrepsen. "That as he was made out of nothing, so also in his very existence he suffered in due time corruption, according to all justice." For, being made out of nothing, the creature also exists over an abyss of nothingness, ever ready to fall into it (De incarnatione, 4 and 5). "For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again" (2 Samuel 14:14). "The state of nature," of which St. Athanasius speaks, is the cyclical motion of Cosmos, in which fallen man is hopelessly entangled, and this entanglement signifies man's degradation. He loses his privileged position in the order of Creation. But this metaphysical catastrophe is just a manifestation of the broken relationship with God.

- Archpriest G. Florovsky

The “Immortality” of the soul (part 1)

Introduction.

Are Christians, as Christians, necessarily committed to the belief in the Immortality of the human soul? And what does Immortality actually mean in the Christian universe of discourse? These questions are by no means just rhetorical ones. Etienne Gilson, in his Gifford lectures, felt himself compelled to make the following startling statement: "On the whole," he said, "Christianity without an Immortality of the soul is not altogether inconceivable, the proof is that it has been so conceived. What is, on the contrary, absolutely inconceivable, is Christianity without a Resurrection of Man." The striking feature of the early history of the Christian doctrine of Man was that many of the leading writers of the second century seem to have emphatically denied the (natural) immortality of the soul. And this does not seem to be an exceptional or extravagant opinion of certain writers only, but rather the common teaching of the age. Nor was this conviction completely abandoned in a later age. Bishop Anders Nygren, in his famous book, Den kristna karlekstanken genom tiderna, praises the Apologists of the second century precisely for this courageous statement and sees in it an expression of the true Evangelical spirit. The main emphasis was then, as in Nygren's opinion it should ever be, rather on the "Resurrection of the body" than on the "Immortality of the soul." An Anglican erudite of the 17th century, Henry Dodwell (1641-1711, one-time Camden "Praelector" of History in the University of Oxford), published in London a curious book, under a rather bewildering title:

An Epistolary Discourse, proving, from the Scriptures and the First Fathers, that the Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal; but immortalized actually by the Pleasure of God, to Punishment; or to Reward, by its Union with the Divine Baptismal Spirit. Wherein is proved, that None have the Power of giving this Divine Immortalizing Spirit, since the Apostles, but only the Bishops (1706).

Dodwell's argument was often confused and involved. The main value of the book, however, was in its immense erudition. Dodwell, probably for the first time, collected an enormous mass of information on the early Christian doctrine of Man, even if he could not use it properly himself. And he was quite right in his contention that Christianity was not concerned with a natural "Immortality," but rather with the soul's supernatural Communion with God, "Who only hath immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16). No wonder that Dodwell's book provoked a violent controversy. A formal charge of heresy was brought against the author. Yet, he found some fervent supporters. And an anonymous writer, "a Presbyter of the Church of England," published two books on the subject, presenting a careful study of the Patristic evidence that "the Holy Spirit (was) the Author of Immortality, or Immortality (was) a Peculiar Grace of the Gospel, (and) no Natural Ingredient of the soul," and that "Immortality (was) preternatural to Human Souls, the Gift of Jesus Christ, collated by the Holy Spirit in Baptism." What was of special interest in that controversy was that Dodwell's thesis was opposed chiefly by the "liberals" of that day, and his greatest literary opponent was the famous Samuel Clarke, of St. James, Westminster, a follower of Newton and a correspondent of Leibniz, notorious for his unorthodox beliefs and ideas, a typical man of the age of Latitudinarianism and Enlightenment. It was an unusual sight: "Immortality" contested by an "Orthodox" and defended by a Latitudinarian. In fact, it was rather what one should have expected. The belief in a natural Immortality was one of the few basic "dogmas" of the enlightened Deism of that time. A man of the Enlightenment could easily dismiss the doctrines of Revelation, but could not afford any doubt on the "truth" of Reason. Gilson suggested that "what is known under the name of the "Moralist" doctrine of the 17th century was originally a return to the position of the Early Fathers and not, as seems to be usually believed, a manifestation of a libertine spirit." As a general statement, it is untenable. The whole situation in the 17th century was much more complex and mixed up than Gilson apparently surmised. Yet, in the case of Dodwell (and some others) Gilson's guess is fully vindicated. There was an obvious "return to the positions of the First Fathers."

The Soul as “Creature.”

St. Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, tells the story of his conversion. In his quest for truth he went first to Philosophers, and for a time was fully satisfied with the teaching of Platonists. "The perception of incorporeal things quite overwhelmed me, and the Platonic theory of ideas added wing to my mind." Then he met a Christian teacher, an elderly and respectable man. Among the questions raised in the course of their conversation was that of the nature of the soul. We should not call the soul immortal, contended the Christian. "For, if it were, we would certainly have to call it unbegotten also," i athanatos esti ke agennitos. This was, of course, the thesis of the Platonists. Now, God alone is "unbegotten" and immortal, and it is for that very reason that He is Divine. The world, on the other hand, is "begotten," and the souls make part of it. "Perhaps, there was a time when they were not in existence." And therefore they are not immortal, "since the world has appeared to us to be begotten." The soul is not life by itself, but only "partakes" of life. God alone is life, the soul can but have life. "For the power to live is not an attribute of the soul, as it is of God." Moreover, God gives life to souls, "as He pleases." All created things "have the nature of decay, and are such as may be blotted out and cease to exist." Creatures as such are "corruptible" (Dial. 5 and 6).

The main classical proofs of immortality, derived from Phaedo and Phaedrus, are disavowed and declined, and their basic presuppositions openly rejected. As Professor A. E. Taylor pointed out, "to the Greek mind athanasia or aftharsia regularly signified much the same things as "divinity" and included the conception of ingenerability as well as of indestructibility. To say "the soul is immortal" would be for a Greek the same as to say "it is uncreated," i.e., eternal and "divine." Everything that had a beginning was bound to have an end. In other words, for a Greek, "immortality" of the soul would immediately imply its "eternity," i.e., an eternal "pre-existence." Only that which had no beginning could last for ever. Christians could not comply with this "philosophical" assumption, as they believed in Creation, and therefore they had to deny "immortality" (in the Greek meaning of the word). The soul is not an independent or self-governing being, but precisely a creature, and its very existence it owes to God, the Creator. Accordingly, it cannot be "immortal" by nature, i.e., by itself, but only by "God's pleasure," i.e., by grace. The "philosophical" argument for (natural) "immortality" was based on the "necessity" of existence.

On the contrary, to say that the world is created is to emphasize, first of all, its radical contingency, and precisely — contingency in the order of existence. In other words, a created world is a world which might not have existed at all. That is to say that the world is, utterly and entirely, ab alio, and in no sense a se." As Gilson puts it, "there are some beings that are radically different from God at least in this that, unlike Him, they might not have existed, and still may, at a certain time, cease to exist." "May cease," however, does not mean necessarily "will [actually] cease." St. Justin was not a "conditionalist," and his name has been invoked by the defenders of a "conditional immortality" quite in vain. "I do not say, indeed, that all souls die." The whole argument was polemical, and its purpose was to stress belief in Creation. We find the same reasoning in other writings of the second century. St. Theophilus of Antioch insisted on the "neutral" character of Man. "By nature," Man is neither "immortal" nor "mortal," but rather "capable of both," dektikon amfoteron. "For if God had made him immortal from the beginning, He would have made him God." If Man from the beginning had chosen things immortal, in obedience to God's commandments, he would have been rewarded with immortality and have become God, "an adoptive God," deus assumptus, Theos anadihthis (Ad Autolycum II, 24 and 27).

Tatian went even further. "The soul is not in itself immortal, O Greeks, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die" (Oratio ad Graecos, 13). The thought of the early Apologists was not free from contradictions, nor was it always accurately expressed. But the main contention was always clear: the problem of human immortality had to be faced in the context of the doctrine of Creation. One may say also: not as a metaphysical problem only, but as a religious one, first of all. "Immortality" is not an attribute of the soul, but something that ultimately depends upon man's actual relationship with God, his Master and Creator. Not only the ultimate destiny of Man can be achieved only in Communion with God, but even Man's existence itself and his "survival" or endurance depend upon God's will. St. Irenaeus continued the same tradition. In his struggle against the Gnostics he had a special motive to emphasize the creaturely character of the soul. It does not come from "another world," exempt from corruption; it belongs precisely to this created world.

It has been contended, says St. Irenaeus, that in order to stay in existence souls had to be "unbegotten" (sed oportere eas aut innascibiles esse ut sint immortales), for otherwise they would have to die with the body (vel si generationis initium acceperint, cum corpore mori). He declines this argument. As creatures, the souls "endure as long as God wills them to endure" (perseverant autem quoadusque eas Deus et esse, et perseverare voluerit). Perseverantia here obviously corresponds to the Greek: diamoni. St. Irenaeus uses almost the same phrases as St. Justin. The soul is not life by itself; it partakes of life, by the grant of God (sic et anima quidem non est vita, participatur autem a Deo sibi praestitam vitam). God alone is Life and the only Giver of Life (Adversus haereses II, 34.). Even Clement of Alexandria, in spite of his Platonism, would occasionally recall that the soul was not immortal "by nature" (Adumbrationes in I Petri 1:9: hinc apparet quoniam non est naturaliter anima incorruptibilis, sed gartia Dei ... perficitur incorruptibilis).

St. Athanasius would demonstrate the immortality of the soul by arguments which can be traced back to Plato (Adv. Gentes, 33), and yet he insisted very strongly that everything created is "by nature" unstable and exposed to destruction (ibidem, 41; fysin revstin usan ke dialyomeni). Even St. Augustine was aware of the necessity to qualify the immortality of the soul: Anima hominis immortalis est secundum quendam modum suum; non enim omni modo sicut Deus (Epist. VFF, ad Hieronymum). "According to the mutability of this life, it may be said to be mortal." (In Jo., tr. 23, 9; cf. De Trinitate, 19.15, and De Civ. Dei, 19.3: mortalis in quantum mutabilis). St. John of Damascus says that even Angels are immortal not by nature, but only by grace (De fide orth. II, 3; u fysi alla hariti), and proves it more or less in the same way as the Apologists (Dial. c. Manich., 21). We find the same emphatic statement in the "synodical" letter of St. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem (634), which was read and favorably received at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (681). In the latter part of his letter Sophronius condemns the errors of the Origenists, the pre-existence of the soul and apokatastasis, and states plainly that "intellectual beings" (ta noita), though they do not die (thniski de udemos), nevertheless "are not immortal by nature," but only by the grace of God (Mansi, XI, 490-492; Migne, 87.3, 3181). It may be added that even in the 17th century this early tradition was not forgotten in the East, and we have an interesting contemporary record of a dispute between two Greek bishops of Crete exactly on this question: whether the soul was immortal "by nature" or "by grace."

We may conclude: When we discuss the problem of Immortality from a Christian point of view, we must keep in mind the creaturely nature of the soul. The very existence of the soul is contingent, i.e., as it were, "conditional." It is conditioned by the creative fiat of God. Yet, a given existence, i.e., an existence which is not necessarily implied in the "essence," is not necessarily a transient one. The creative fiat is a free but ultimate act of God. God has created the world simply for existence: ektise gar is to ine ta panda (Wis. 1: 14). There is no provision for revoking this creative decree. The sting of the antinomy is exactly here: the world has a contingent beginning, yet no end. It stands by the immutable will of God.

- Archpriest George Florovsky

Modern day persecution of the Orthodox Church

LOS ANGELES – The government of Eritrea wrested financial and personnel control away from the Eritrean Orthodox Church last week, the day after security police jailed nine staff of a Christian aid agency.

In an ultimatum delivered to the church’s Asmara headquarters on December 5, the state demanded that all offerings and tithes collected through the Orthodox Church be deposited directly into a government account.

According to the unilateral order, effective immediately the monthly salaries of all Orthodox priests are to be paid out from this government-controlled fund of church income.

In a related policy, the government also announced new limits for the number of priests to be allowed to serve in each parish throughout the country.

The order specified that any “extra” priests beyond this quota who are now serving in any given parish would be required to report to the Wi’a Military Training Center, to perform their required military service.

The leadership of the Eritrean Orthodox Church has reportedly accepted the government demands, forwarding formal notice of the new regulations to every Orthodox parish in the country.

Ignoring church canons, the regime of President Isaias Afwerki removed the church’s ordained Patriarch Abune Antonios from office in August 2005 and placed him under house arrest. After installing a lay administrator, the government then put forward Abune Dioscoros as Antonios’ unofficial successor.

The Catholic Church of Eritrea reportedly continues to reject government demands to curtail their staff of priests or send them to military service.

Read the rest here...

Orthodoxy and Women's Ordination

Controversy over the ordination of woman has plagued many denominations, but it hasn’t raised similar furor in the Orthodox Church. This is thanks to our way of approaching such issues: if the early church kept unbroken consensus on a matter, we will continue it. Consensus is not obvious in every issue, but it is here. For 20 centuries stretching backward, there have been no women priests.

There were plenty of women preachers, however. I’ve preached at worship services in Orthodox churches, myself.

We have some semantic confusion here, because many things Protestants consider restricted to clergy are done by Orthodox laity. We have women saints who were missionary evangelists, church-planters, teachers, healers, preachers, apologists, spiritual mothers, counselors, miracle-workers, martyrs, iconographers, hymnographers, and theologians. Holy women do virtually everything men do, except stand at the altar. That leaves them rest of the world, which is where most of God’s work gets done.

St. Theodora the Empress exercised authority over both men and women, and brought a triumphant end to the destruction of icons. St. Nina, a 14-year-old slave, evangelized the entire nation of Georgia. St. Mary Magdalene, St. Helen, and others are called “Equal to the Apostles.” St. Catherine and St. Perpetua were brilliant debaters. So I don’t mind if Protestant denominations want to ordain women. Many times, this just means allowing them to do things Orthodox women have always done.

But even if we know our Church’s destination on this question, we still don’t know how they got there. Strangely enough, in the writings of the early church the question never comes up. It seems it just was never controversial. Throughout the ages, Orthodox women and men found the all-male priesthood a satisfactory, maybe even a positive, thing. How can we see what they saw?

I don’t think we’ll get much help from the usual arguments. Opponents of women’s ordination often start by citing St. Paul’s requirement that women be submissive and silent in church (I Tim 2:11-15 and I Cor 14:34-35). Yet this can’t mean utter silence, because Paul honors many women in active ministry, like the deaconess Phoebe (Romans 16:1), and he hails Euodia, Synteche (I Cor 4:2-3) and Prisca (Rom 16:3) as synergoi (fellow-workers) in the gospel. Vocal prophetesses span the bible, from Moses’ sister Miriam (Ex 15:20) to the four daughters of St. Philip (Acts 21:9). The prophetess Anna spoke out in the temple, telling everyone about the child Christ (Lk 2:36-38).

When read in context, it sounds like St. Paul is concerned about disorder in worship. In I Timothy, he admonishes men to pray “without anger or quarrelling” and tells women to be “in hesychia,” a state of prayerful stillness. In I Corinthians, Paul says it is “disgraceful” when women talk in church, and equally “disgraceful” when they pray without wearing a veil. Yet few who stand on the former text insist that women wear veils in church.

Here’s another argument: a priest must be male because he represents Christ. When I was attending a mainline seminary and aiming toward ordination myself, I would say, sure, Christ was male, and he was also Jewish, and a certain height and hair color. Why is only his maleness indispensable? Surely the fact that he was Jewish is even more significant, but we don’t exclude from ordination people who don’t have Jewish genes.

We don’t find this argument used in the early church; in fact, early Christians reflected very little on why Christ was male. Instead, they emphasized the fact that he was human. As Bp. Kallistos Ware points out, Christ’s maleness isn’t even mentioned in the hymns appointed for the Feast of the Circumcision, which would seem the likeliest spot. There might be good practical and theological reasons why Jesus was born male, but the early church did not explore them.

Another familiar line goes, “But we’re not putting women down. Women and men are equal. They just have different roles.” Okay, but this still doesn’t answer the question. Sure, every person has a unique calling, and every role is “different” from every other. What is it about the priesthood that requires maleness?

In 1988 an Orthodox consultation met in Rhodes and considered some aspects of women’s ministries. They recommended resuming the lapsed practice of ordaining women deacons, and they suggested that in the all-male priesthood there was a correspondence between the priest and Christ, and between the Virgin Mary Theotokos and the Church.

But they were reluctant to explain too much: “We are in a sphere of profound, almost indescribable experience of the inner ethos of the world-saving and cosmic dimensions of Christian truth.”

Not everyone is satisfied with ineffability. When you wonder why there’s this pattern of all-male ordination, some people have a ready answer: it’s because the early Christians were dumb. We know better now. Somehow the concept of evolution leaks over from biology to theology, and it’s presumed that our generation is what the Holy Spirit was aiming at when he came out with flawed prototypes like St. Macrina and St. John Chrysostom.

I suspect the reverse is true, and that we’re blind to some spiritual realities that were obvious to earlier Christians. Take the value of male and female virginity, for example. I once spent a year reading intensively about saints, and at the end I was convinced that earlier generations knew something we don’t. They knew that virginity is a source of great spiritual power.

(Christianity isn’t alone in valuing virginity; other great world religions also consecrate male and female monastics. I like the line in the film “Keeping the Faith” where, after a series of nosy questions about celibacy, a Catholic priest mutters, “They sure don’t ask the Dalai Lama those questions.”)

When it comes to understanding the power of virginity or gender differences or anything else related to sex, there’s a good chance we just won’t get it. We live under the bombardment of continual targeted, intoxicating messages about sex, which present it in a radically anti-wholistic way, as if it’s something that happens to an empty body. Consumer-culture sex is an isolated mechanical act with no relation to a person’s past, future, emotions, relationships, or health. But in reality, sex always occurs in a complete embodied life, one humming with ceaseless spiritual and emotional activity. In this windstorm of messages, two significant truths are being suppressed: that the underlying urge is still to reproduce; and that sex requires a lot of vulnerability, so the most desired quality in a partner is trust.

Since we can’t understand sex in the instinctive, body-deep ways our ancestors did, it’s natural that we won’t understand sex differences. We don’t see any more how savory and good these differences are. While you could sort humans in many ways–by height or shoe size or age–the all-time favorite is by sex. We just get a kick out of gender differences, even though most of the human body plan is shared by men and women alike. It’s the distinctives that we highlight: women’s clothes suggest an hourglass figure no matter what shape the lady inside, while men’s jackets are enhanced by brawny padded shoulders. After a birth the first thing we want to know is “Boy or girl?,” and lumpy, indistinguishable newborns are stuffed into baseball costumes or palest pink. We pass along gender-based jokes, because clumsy stereotypes point toward something that fascinates and delights us. The difference between the sexes is the most cheerful and exhilarating thing we know: it’s where babies come from. The difference between the sexes is how we partner with God in the creation of life.

If we can’t understand the difference between male and female, we sure can’t understand what previous generations knew about the value of an all-male priesthood. I can only hope that some future generation will regain the peace and clarity we’ve lost, and be able once again recognize and enunciate this mystery.

- Frederica Mathewes-Green
Originally posted on Belief Net and reposted with permission.

Brief hiatus

I will be out of town this weekend and thus expect no new posts before Monday barring something really important happening. I will however have access to the internet so I will be checking comments etc. For those celebrating the Feast of the Nativity this Sunday on the old calendar may you have a blessed and joyous Christmas.

Christ is born!
Glorify Him!

Some thoughts on the death penalty

In recent days the death penalty has been brought back into the news through a series of events both here and abroad. Most prominently in Iraq Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity. Here in the United States both California and Florida have suspended executions following botched lethal injections and scandalous stories in the press. New York last year effectively abolished the death penalty after ten years and over a hundred million dollars spent in capital prosecutions without a single execution. The state’s highest court invalidated a part of the death penalty law and the state legislature decided it was not worth trying to reinstate it. And just this week New Jersey’s bi-partisan commission on capital punishment returned an almost unanimous (with one dissent) recommendation to the state legislature that NJ abolish the death penalty. There are nine people on death row there and no one has been electrocuted since 1963 in the garden state.

Over at Sacramentum Vitae Mike Liccione has posted an article on the death penalty that is definitely worth reading. I still think that Avery Cardinal Dulles wrote the best short essay on the DP from a Catholic point of view though. The lead comment on Mike's article posted by Deacon Bresnahan asks how many guards have been killed by lifers over the years, this being the crux of his argument in favor of capital punishment. In our Hollywood oriented society it’s easy to confuse movies for reality. But in reality that sort of thing is unbelievably rare.

In answer to his query I can state that homicide in general has one of the lowest rates of recidivism of any crime. And although the rare exceptions always make for sensational (and tragic) headlines, the fact is that intentional murder by life sentenced inmates is so rare that its frequency of occurrence is statistically insignificant. For those inmates who are determined to be a threat there are places they can be kept with relative safety. So called super max prisons are the best option for dealing with the violent inmate.

My own feeling on this subject have evolved in recent years. Up until probably about five years ago I was a strong supporter of capital punishment. However the more I have read on the subject the less I like it. Today I am generally opposed to capital punishment in this country for the following reasons…

1. It has no deterrent value. This has been unanimously established by so many exhaustive studies that I feel safe in stating it is not a matter of opinion but rather of fact. I am not aware of a single serious study which has produced any credible evidence supporting a deterrent effect for executions.

2. The danger of miscarriage of justice has been established in recent years to be so great that in all but those very rare cases where there is absolutely zero doubt of guilt, the use of the DP is too risky.

3.. What passes for due process in those states which regularly carry out executions is extremely questionable with few or no standards for competent criminal defense and appellate rights. By contrast in those states where strict standards exist for competent legal council and effective appellant review few or no executions have occurred.

4. It has also been shown repeatedly that there is a direct relationship between the race, class and resources of defendants and the likelihood of facing a death sentence. The electric chair should not be reserved for those who can’t afford the best lawyers or who were not fortunate in choosing their parents or ethnicity.

5. The cost of capital punishment vastly exceeds the cost of incarceration for life. This can not be altered without reducing access to the appellate system which further increases the already unacceptable likelihood of a miscarriage of justice.

6. Adjudication of capital cases has been tying our legal and court system in knots for far too long. Even in those states where executions are common it is rare for an inmate to be killed in less then five years from the date of his sentence, and it is not uncommon for these cases to drag on for decades.

7. In this country the availability of life without parole (LWOP) and super maximum security facilities renders the death penalty unnecessary as a means for neutralizing dangerous offenders.

8. Although one may not dismiss the need for just punishment as one of the moral ends of the legal system it can not outweigh the preceding factors. Retributive justice by itself can not justify endangering innocent lives or the tremendous cost to society both in its moral values and also its public treasure by attempting to sustain this system solely for the benefit of exacting “proportionate justice.”

Given the aforementioned points, I think that it is time to relegate the death penalty to the history books and move forward with more enlightened and effective sanctions for offenders. In some countries there may not yet exist the conditions that permit the safe and long term incarceration of dangerous criminals. In those situations capital punishment may still be a rare necessity. However, here that is no longer the case. Although I am not aware of Orthodoxy having ever spoken on the matter with one voice, I feel comfortable in saying that there seems to be a broad consensus in the Church today that the death penalty is generally not compatible with Christian ethics. Although the Roman Catholic Church has dissected the issue with its customary precise and legal approach, its view is essentially the same as that of most Orthodox including myself. The basic thrust is this. Deliberate killing is not moral except (possibly) in those rare cases of self defense where lesser means are not available to end the threat. This is not the case in the United States and thus the death penalty is no longer moral.

Fr. Stephen reflects on living in difficult times...

This essay is really must reading. I strongly encourage everyone to go check it out.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing all a joyous and healthy new year...

The Dissing of an ex-President

Gerald Ford arrived in Washington yesterday for the last time. Amid all of the pomp and pageantry (toned down a bit at Ford’s request) some things made an impression. It was moving to see the flag draped coffin carried by the military honor guard while cannons boomed in salute, and the band played Hail to the Chief. But other things stood out too. Like the mourners on hand. The Vice President was at Andrews Air Force Base to lead the delegation. The outgoing speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate were on hand when the body arrived at the Capital Building to lie in state. But the gaps were shocking.

The incoming Speaker and Majority Leader were absent, as also most of the cabinet, the Supreme Court and almost 500 (of 535) members of Congress from both parties! But probably the most glaring absence was the current President of the United States, George W. Bush. Mr. Bush did not attend the arrival ceremonies for former President Reagan’s body either, although then he had an excuse. He was hosting the G-8 summit. This time it appears he just could not be bothered to interrupt his vacation. As a matter of protocol last night’s ceremony in the Capital Building was the actual “State Funeral.” The funeral on Tuesday morning is the religious service. There were so many absentees from the State Funeral in the capital rotunda that congressional staffers had to be rounded up to fill all the seats left vacant by their bosses. That this many important people would fail to show a modicum of respect for the passing of a head of state is a sad reflection on how bad things are in Washington.

Politics aside Gerald Ford was an incredibly descent man who had very few true enemies (if any). When he was told about Nixon’s famous “enemies list” Ford responded rather acidly that anyone who can not keep a list of his enemies in his head has too many. Other than his pardon of President Nixon for which history has almost unanimously vindicated him, he was as close to a non-controversial president as we have had since Eisenhower. He was a staunch Republican, but not a partisan one. He was conservative in finances, crime and foreign policy, while being moderate on social policy. He enjoyed remarkably cordial relations with just about everyone from both parties during his presidency. And he restored honor and trust to the office, after it was so badly tarnished by his predecessor. Yet, all of this seems to have counted for naught in today’s Washington. Jerry (and Betty) Ford deserved better than this.

(Side Note: I want to say a quick thank you to the people at St. Athanasius Church in Sacramento for their warm welcome to a visitor this morning. I hope to be able to attend again the next time I am in Sacramento over a weekend.)

Feast of the Holy Innocents

Today is the commemoration of the 14000 infants and small children massacred by King Herod's soldiers. They were killed in an effort to murder Jesus Christ whose birth the Holy Magi had announced to Herod. This is also a feast on which I feel a strong sense of empathy for those in our society who are the victims violence, abuse, or neglect and who are the most defenseless, namely children. I particularly would call to mind the victims of abortion and infanticide so common in our world. But children are also victims in so many other ways. Some are impressed into service as soldiers in bloody civil wars, others are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. How many go to bed hungry every night in all corners of the world? This is a day on which Christians should resolve to do all in our power to protect children from the horrors of the modern world.

Is the end near?

Two legal dramas appear to be winding their way towards a conclusion. The first is the trial of Iraqi dictator and tyrant Saddam Hussein. The genocidal monster who once kept a bust of Joseph Stalin on his desk and was said to be a student of his method of governance was convicted and sentenced to death in early November. His case has since been appealed to a special court with power to review all capitol sentences. A couple days go that court affirmed the death sentence and ordered it carried out within thirty days. Reports now coming out of Iraq strongly suggest that Hussein may be hanged before the new year.

For the record I am not a fan of capitol punishment. It's something which I think we as a country could live without. However we have never had to deal with anyone in Saddam's class of criminality before either. This is a man whose crimes put him in a league quite apart from even your more oppressive dictators. To say that he was an evil tyrant would be a gross understatement. In this case I think his execution may be necessary for the welfare of Iraqi society and also to once and for all crush any hopes on the part of Baathists for some sort of restoration. There can be no serious doubt except on the part of moral abolitionists that Saddam deserves the gallows. Though I will not celebrate any hanging, neither in this case will I shed tears. Rather I will commend his soul to the mercy of God.

The second drama is in Durham North Carolina. The ongoing railroading of three Duke University lacrosse players appears to be falling apart. Last week District Attorney Mike Nifong was forced to drop rape charges after the alleged victim changed her story yet again. However his evidence has not increased. The remaining charges are still based almost exclusively on the word of the alleged victim whose testimony is likely to be subject to a crushing cross examination if she ever takes the stand. Then there is the issue of a highly improper identification by photo lineup that violates all manner of police procedures and is likely to be suppressed. If that goes she will likely be barred from identifying any of the defendants in court. The next item is DA Nifong's attempt to withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense. This is such an egregious matter that the judge could impose sanctions on the DA and maybe even dismiss the case out of hand at a hearing scheduled for February.

However it might not make it to February. The North Carolina State Bar Association has now entered the fray by opening an investigation into Nifong for professional misconduct. My guess is that this is just the opening salvo of what could become a serious probe into his conduct of this case. There are serious hints that the Feds are looking at a civil rights investigation of the prosecution. Given these developments its very possible Nifong may be forced to recuse himself from the case due to an obvious conflict of interest. I can not imagine anyone else going forward with a case that is taking on water faster than the Titanic. My best guess is that this case will be dropped before the scheduled hearing in February.

However that is not likely to be the end of this matter. I suspect (and hope) that the three defendants will pursue whatever remedies they have in civil court for the injury they have suffered from this out of control DA.

Prayers requested

Dear all,

The mother of my brother in law, a very dear woman is gravely ill and believed to be near death. Mary Ann Young suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas eve while preparing dinner for the family. She nearly died then but the EMS people were able to revive her. Since then she has been in critical condition with virtually no sign of brain activity. The family has made the extremely difficult decision to end the extraordinary medical treatment which has been keeping her physically alive. The ventilator has been removed and a Do Not Resuscitate order has been signed. She received Holy Unction according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church to which she belonged. Your prayers are coveted and deeply appreciated in this difficult time.

Under the mercy,

John

Memory Eternal

Gerald R. Ford
1913-2006

Christ is born!

Wishing each of you a joyous Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Merry Christmas to all !!!

Some pre-Christmas odds and ends

The rape charges against the three Duke lacrosse players were dropped yesterday after the alleged victim changed her story (again). You can read the details here. On a side note this article places a degree of emphasis on the criticism Mike Nifong is getting, that is unusual for the mainstream media. The New York Times was among the convict them first and try them later crowd when this story originally broke. This whole case is finally starting to die the death it should have experienced about six months ago.

(Late night update: The NY Times has posted another article with a devastating review of the DA's case. Read it here)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There will be a two day Colloquium for Anglicans on Orthodoxy hosted by St. Andrews House in Detroit Michigan. The list of speakers is pretty impressive. Among the notables are two of my favorite Orthodox former Anglicans, Frederica Mathewes-Green and Fr. Stephen Freeman. The preceding link will take you to the article with all of the information.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am honored, deeply honored to have been named Time Magazine’s man of the year. However, at the risk of sounding ungrateful I think the honor would have meant more if it did not involve sharing it with several hundred million other people. Not only am obliged to share the distinction with others, but I am also required to share it with some people that I confess to no strong affinity for. The idea of sharing the acceptance speech with Fr. Jake was almost enough to make me send a polite note to Time’s editors declining their award. But then I was afraid that they would have chosen someone like Iranian strongman Ahmadinejad, or worse they would have just let Fr. Jake keep it for himself.

On which note, I will close with a rather revealing quote from a recent article over at Fr. Jakes site. When commenting on why the bishop elect of South Carolina (a conservative by Episcopalian standards) should not be given consent as opposed to V. Gene Robinson who was the author says…

We consider the consent question to be an ecclesiological, not a theological, question. Neither Father Lawrence’s nor Canon Robinson’s theology is relevant to the consent process.

Translation: Heresy should not be an impediment to being elected a bishop in TEC. Refusal to hang out with heretics should be.

Yes Virginia, there are nut cases...

(Anti)Pope Pius XIII

Michael Liccione has posted a good essay on those who subscribe to the hermeneutic of rupture regarding Vatican II. I strongly agree with Mike's position on this. I am also saying this as one who has been sharply critical of the fruits of Vatican II and who was briefly affiliated with the SSPX (mea culpa mea culpa...) a number of years ago on my journey to Orthodoxy. It seems like lately that the trads have been coming out of the woodwork. I suspect it has something to do with the much anticipated indult that is expected to grant very broad freedom for Roman Catholic clergy to use the pre-Vatican II rite of the mass. Traditionalists in the Roman Church probably can be divided into two or three groups.

Moderate Traditionalists: Those who have a pronounced preference for the classical Roman Rite (Tridentine) and who to varying degrees are not happy with the results of Vatican II, but who nonetheless remain in full communion with Rome and who accept as both valid and licit (if perhaps distasteful) the various post conciliar reforms. There's no law that says Roman Catholics have to agree with everything the Pope says or does in matters pertaining to church discipline.

Schismatic Traditionalists: These come in all kinds of flavors, the largest being the Society of St. Pius X. They are people who have to varying degrees set themselves up in judgment over the Pope and their bishops and concluded that they need to do their own thing until Rome realizes how wrong it has been, and restores the church to the way things were no later than the reign of Pius XII. They believe (and have a strong argument from a purely legalistic position) that the Rite of Pius V was never lawfully abrogated or suppressed. Unfortunately they therefor claim that their priests (they range from organized groups like the SSPX to individual vegantes) can licitly and validly offer mass and the other sacraments the old way independent of the local bishop or the Pope. The SSPX has advanced the argument of extraordinary necessity as a justification for their actions. These traditionalists are not in communion with or submission to the Pope or local bishops although most recognize the Pope as such and profess their loyalty to him, but only on matters where they believe the Pope remains orthodox (small "o"). These traditionalists also tend to buy into many of the conspiracy theories that right wing sects like to promote and are often moderately to extremely anti-semitic.

Radical Traditionalists: Or as I like to call them, the tin foil hat crowd. These are you certifiable nut cases. They are almost always sede vecantists and many adhere to one or another of the various anti-popes now floating around. They regard Vatican II as heretical and generally deny the validity of the sacraments including Holy Orders using the reformed rites. Thus they sneeringly refer to Pope Benedict XVI as Fr. Ratzinger. They are often rabid anti-semites and expound to anyone they can make listen to their dark fantasies that Vatican II was a masonic plot hatched by the secret Free Mason John XXIII who was never really elected Pope by the way. I could go on but I am sure you get the point.

Also many Schismatic and Radical Traditionalists are active supporters of far right political movements. This includes support or veneration of various right wing dictators (Franco and Pinochet come to mind). Archbishop Lefebvre (founder of the SSPX) was a staunch monarchist.

Lest anyone think I am beating up on the Catholics let me assure you that we Orthodox have our share of wing nuts as well. Radical Old Calendarists although small in numbers are extremely noisy. Just in the last few days monks from the Esphigmenou monastery on Mt. Athos were involved in a violent clash with another group of monks trying to drive them out of the historic monastery where they have been holed up. They reject the usual things that radical fringe groups get bent over... Ecumenism especially with Roman Catholics, the reformed calendar (a crypto papist / masonic conspiracy to destroy the Orthodox Church) and all the other clap trap. They have been refusing to commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch for some time and are now in open revolt against the authority of the church. Of course they are right and everyone else is wrong. Sigh. Most radical Old Calendarists share many of the characteristics of the more extreme Roman Catholic traditionalists in their bigotry and affinity for right wing politics and xenophobia.

One comment posted over at Free Republic summed them up rather nicely. He referred to them as Orthodoxy's equivalent to sede vecantists.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Some Orthodox think there is a strong affinity among Roman Catholic Traditionalists for us. With the likely exception of the moderate trads they are mistaken. The more extreme ones admire Orthodoxy because our liturgy is so old and largely unchanged. But their respect stops there. They have no further use for Orthodoxy until we kneel and kiss the Pope's ring.

Speech to the electors of Bristol

I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.

He tells you that "the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city;" and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour of the coercive authority of such instructions.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.

- Edmund Burke November 3rd 1774