My line on Notre Dame was a gently pointed reference to Judas' objection that the woman was wasting her money on ointment for Jesus' feet. Any great cathedral would do to serve my point that beauty is its own offering to God and an end in itself. Money spent in the service of creating something beautiful to His glory shouldn't be viewed as money wasted.
We should also consider that enterprises undertaken for less than perfectly pious reasons can nevertheless still bring glory to God. The Anglican Church comes to mind.
"A decision made in fear is bound in fear". I do think our intention as creators matters for the outcome. And a "good vs bad" intention may be more of a spectrum than a binary, but supposing it was built for "the glory of me" entirely, I don't know that the same structure has the same Godliness that one built "for the glory of God".
I don't disagree with the initial point, Bethel. Yet, I imagine there are natural boundaries where it becomes too much. Maybe not?
I'm inclined to think that when it comes to creative works specifically, or any kind of art (a song, a painting, a beautiful building) there's a profound sense in which the work doesn't actually belong to us. It takes on its own life and breath. Even wood and stone and canvas cry out.
Hm. Well. We can talk of offering 'glory to God', but how do we know what kind of 'glory' He wants from us? Again, we return to the Gospels and ask: where do we find Christ instructing us that God wants us to build vast golden temples to His glory? To which the answer is: nowhere. But we do read a lot about self-emptying, giving everything to the poor, feeding the sick and loving our enemies. It seems that this is the way he wants us to 'give glory' to him.
I'm all for beauty. But in my view there is more of it in a (God-created) forest than in a (human-created) cathedral - much of it built, by the way, with forced labour. Maybe we could start by feeding the poor and not hacking the forests down. Building some modest-sized parish churches at the same time and filling them with beautiful icons would be a good fit with that same goal. But another St Peter's? Please, no!
What do you think about the instructions to the artisans on building the Ark of the Covenant? Not meant as an exact analogy of course but just thinking along the lines of human-made creations. God gives an awful lot of detailed directions on how to craft it and various "extra" things to add that were no doubt quite costly.
Well, I suppose if I heard God giving me any detailed instructions to build something, I would get building! I might be less keen to build for King Louis though ...
I’m speaking from a position of ignorance and curiosity. I’m not a Christian. It seems to me that the logic of the First Things lecture would lead at least to a Bruderhof-style community, in which a lot of potential hypocrisy is avoided because a radically different lifestyle has been chosen, explicitly informed by (some of) Christ’s teachings. Anything more superficially ‘normal’ than that, a life where most people who meet you wouldn’t know what you believed in unless you told them, looks like having your cake and eating it.
Being Orthodox, I have obvious disagreements with the Bruderhof and their like over theology, but I admire the way they live. As you say, they are putting their money where their mouth is. They are, of course, attempting to live in a manner similar to that of the first Christians.
I see a very interesting convergence between your essay and this video by SpeakLife. He frames this dynamic you speak of through the lens of the Carnal and Grace. I can even see comparisons of Iain McGilChrists Left (Carnal, Civilisational power) and Right (Grace) hemisphere.
The Great Divorce. We orphaned ones get thrown back and forth between the disintegrated family folk who are themselves reeling from the lack of mooring.
"Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?1 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,2 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!"
so, let's all quit work. With ravens to feed us, who needs more?
Well, firstly that's not poetry. And secondly, the moral of it is not that ravens will feed us. It is a story being told to illustrate why we should trust God rather than ourselves.
In the meantime, most of Jesus's instructions about how to live are quite clear. Painfully so.
If it is not poetry, rather it is Jesus being literal, then how does that work? I agree that Jesus is often clear about how to live. But if the above is not poetry, then I would observe that he is quite obviously not always clear about how to live. And definitely less so about how we collectively govern.
I've heard the "Jesus was a Socialist" trope my whole life. It does make him seem more hip. And the idea that our material needs can be provided if we just become more passive is huge. Who wouldn't want to believe that?
I also grew up in the world of the "faith is magic" trope. It's got long, powerful tentacles.
> If it is not poetry, rather it is Jesus being literal, then how does that work?
Not everything non-literal is poetry.
It works as a parable: don't put your faith and strive in material things. Don't consider toil the metric of your life. You aren't adding "a single hour" to the span of your life "by being anxious". God's creation can provide if you don't ever enlarge your "needs" and don't come at it as an anxious demanding consumer.
> And the idea that our material needs can be provided if we just become more passive is huge. Who wouldn't want to believe that?
Well, who doesn't appear to want to believe that?
Apparently people working themselves to death in bullshit jobs, struggling to expand the field of busywork and mindless consumption ever more, alienating themselves from their family and children (or increasingly, not having those at all), and compensating by buying things they don't need, and consuming mind numbing "entertainment".
They might individually be OK to not do that, but their actions don't follow, and the civilization they co-built glorifies and pushes towards that.
"poetry" has long been considered a literary category in Bible interpretation. There has always been debate over certain sections -- whether the fit the category. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes have long been considered poetry. Theologians argue over the categorization of the early chapters of Genesis.
This discussion became particularly relevant when 20th century fundamentalism responded to modernism by declaring that it regarded the Bible as "literal". 20th century liberal Christianity went the other way (largely in what it saw as self protecting embarrassment brought on by scientific discovery that seemed to shatter much of the Bible as reliable. "Myth" became the word of the day.
Work is inevitable. Some embrace it. Some hope others will do it for them.
I guess that's the central question, isn't it? In a conversation about material provision,you're suggesting that Jesus is saying we should trust in God, not ourselves. And I'm wondering how that works exactly?
The prosperity gospel I think we can agree is an abomination. But asceticism is equally heretical, isn't it?
Asceticism is present in Christianity from the very beginning. What was John the Baptist if not an ascetic? Anna the prophetess? Jesus, who often retreated to the wilderness to fast and pray?
Paul , I will be eternally grateful to God for letting me find your work a number of years ago. I am also grateful that an anarchist green went completely against the cultural norm and delved into Orthodoxy, and shared its immense value and depth to the world. I'm also grateful that now that you're a part of the faith that you are once again going against the grain and remind us that all the values we regard as western do not nessicarily promote a Christian life.
Too much to take in at the moment, but I do think it’s relevant and important that this Sunday, the beginning of Triodion, is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. I will search my own heart and see the bits of rot that still hide within. Lord, have mercy.
You've put yourself right at the tip of the spear with this one; so many echoes I want to share.
your unblinking look at Christ's actual life and teachings (you nubie!), remind me of Søren Kierkegaard's observation that:
the purpose of all the bible commentaries we get on the hard sayings in the scriptures,
are to dull and dilute Christ's own words and message, to tell us he doesn't mean what he clearly just said he meant, that which in our hard hearts we are unwilling to accept.
(Jesus explains this principle, and the way the church's economia heals it, when he explains why Moses in the law permitted a divorce... but seeing, many still will not see.)
the Orthodox offer the only way out in this, in our spirituality of oikonomia. But who wants to hear this? Who want to hear that they have to admit humbly they are not able to follow Jesus, they are falling short...
And the scandal is that in Orthodoxy that's not only "okay", it's *necessary*. For to apply any cannon rigidly, without taking pastoral care for the specific circumstances and soul involved- this is to mis-apply the cannon (so said Saint Basil the Great anyway).
But Orthodoxy is an offence to so many mighty academic 'theologians' of Wetern confessions...
Oikonomia? Something they need for their souls, they have to convert to get it?! How dare you!
Ecumenism, not this 'one church' business.
And yes, brothers. calm. Yes. Orthodoxy is not the only place to get saved (she teaches that herself). But all are only saved through her- there is a scandal here; the scandal of particularity as it applies to Christ's very real, enfleshed Body His Church.
No one wants to change. As St. Siloun taught, if you *know* the grace in your conversion, in your confession; you have *tasted* Christ, then never betray that, brothers outside the Church!
And among you holy Christians, sincere in heart, especially you should not! Not the holy Catholics, nor the Holy Protestants. I mean this sincerely; it's not tongue in cheek: If you have found Christ, if you are not turning away from his impossible and hardest teachings,
you dont have to change anything! He is feeding you right where you are, and it is only Christ and Him Crucified that the Orthodox Church professes in our Tradition.
But the rest of us, the rest of us who find no rest in our confessions, who have found no way to hold to the "ideal" of Christ's Way, and the failure of my own life and the mess that this world is, I am begger myself who found bread. It is in the Orthodox Way. Not in the walls, that's your business if you enter or dont. God sees your heart and loves you.
But living this Way is everything:
You are not going to enter the kingdom because you understood Jesus correctly, and then did what he taught.
He showed over and over (and over!), those types, they dont enter. They are the righteous big brothers, the teachers, the lawyers; the ones who *know* that they see aright... and then make their followers, their spiritual children twice the sons of hell by robbing these little ones of the Holy Spirit!
No.
But it's not any good trying to argue about this stuff. And that's where I have your back Paul when you choose silence.
The times themselves, these are our teacher now. we dont have to do much; we're with "last prophet". The Earth Herself, she is the Last Prophet. the trees and the stones themselves will be crying out.
I dont need to convince anyone of anything, because seeing they do not see. Even if I could send them some man risen from the dead to tell them the wages of their ongoing willing blindness, still they would not repent!
No,
the dye is cast. God sees the heart and all will be sifted.
So take rest in this, my brother Paul:
You are right in the "pure stream" running through the brackish water of the whole Church Body when you tether yourself to these teachings herein. Still with Saints Silouan and Sophrony; they will not lead you astray. St. Nektarios, he will shield you from the wolves in bishops robes (I know of none in particular- that is for God to judge. but he promised they'd be among us, and Nektarios knew some rather personally).
Do not hedge, do not budge. Still with the naked gospel. Its the gospel Jesus stuck with afterall!
Have you said some things imperfectly? Need there be refining? Is there anything at all to nitpick at?
well sure but who cares?!
You wont win hearts by refining the words and polishing the argument to perfection. There are those want to hear, they will be sympathetic and asking questions. there are those who are greater than us- they too ask questions, but to heal and guide and teach us.
the critics- they are at the front of the temple telling God how they've got it all just right.
God always keep me at the back, beating my won breast with the other losers who preach nonviolent love of enemies and selling all our possessions with no thought for tomorrow, yet knowing what a hypocrite I am because I fail at this measure I preach, daily.
But It's Christ's measure. so that's it, then.
Else,
Christ wouldn't have died after telling Pilot straight up the ways things ARE!
Stay with the prophets.
Stay with the off-scourge of the earth.
Forget the noise (except to pray for them, and to know that I am worse than any of them and more blind my own self, God save me!).
And know that out here, you have brothers:
One of the most venerable Christian writings outside the New Testament canon (dated circa 130 to 150), is The Epistle to Diognetus. The entire text merits reading. It’s a defense of the Christian faith vis-à-vis the context of its Greco-Roman provenance, but its perspective of who or what Christians are supposed to be in this world is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. We would do well to read and re-read, in particular, its fifth and sixth chapters. Here is a sampling from those chapters:
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe… They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven…
To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world… God has assigned them this illustrious position, which it were unlawful for them to forsake.
As always, the most important question comes at the end:
"Do we want to be stuck on a provincial road, myopically waving our swords around? Or do we want - in silence, in stillness - to keep walking until we reach the end?
What destination does this road lead to?"
For me the destination of that silent, still road is - home, the meaning of that 'home' being implied in Ps 90 : 1 .
I'm curious, Paul. In what light does your Orthodox faith consider the Old Testament, and Christ as a Jewish prophet, teacher, and healer ?
Is the connexion to Judaism maintained in the Orthodox faith ?
...
When I see the word "carnal" my hackles go up now, if for no other reason than the necessity of incarnation in order for us to be fully human. And I see to much machine disincarnation around me, which leads to a frenetic search to be living, breathing bodies.
...
A while ago, I noticed that you were criticizing the people who were attempting to revalorize ? Christianity in our fallen world, and it came to me that when your namesake decided ? that the Gentiles would no longer be required to be circumcized to become Christian, that was a very accommodating decision, that made it easier for a lot of people to convert. So... how can we be sure that God is not working in ways that we don't and can't understand ?
...
For everything that I hear about the political, or politically spiritual dimension of Jesus's preaching, about the rich and the poor, etc etc, I hear rarely about Jesus's tremendous compassion, which seems to be something new in the "old" world. The fact that he could not stop himself from healing the suffering. This speaks to me particularly when I see so much suffering now, and so little vocation to be healing it outside of the DOCTOR PRIESTS who are definitely of the world.
The old testament prophets are experts in honing in on sin and corruption, but you don't hear much compassion there, and I think that this dimension is particularly Christian.
But this morning at mass, I heard a reading from the book of Hebrews with the Old Testament ? ideas about fathers being called upon to correct their sons from time to time, a little bit like how it is necessary to prune fruit trees in order for them to bear good fruit. This vision of the world speaks to me so I believe in the necessity of balancing compassion and correction, which is a very tricky act to perform, since we are all imperfect in a fallen world, and we don't really know what we're doing when we do it.
I can't help wondering, though, Paul, if you wouldn't be better off letting the hot air blow over you, and going on the path that you feel that you are called to follow, in order to be able to stand still in the tempest, and sing while it is raging around you.
Nobody likes a good fight as much as I do. And for grappling over the words and what they mean, too. This morning I didn't get into a fight with a woman over her choice of words talking about her NETWORK of friends, and I told her that was not a word that I would use to talk about my friends...
Hi Debra. Forgive me answering for Paul... re your first question, you'll find a direct explanation in this book by Fr Stephen De Young "The Religion of the Apostles" - which presents the Orthodox Christian Church of today as a continuation of the religious life of the apostles, which in turn was a continuation of the life of the people of God since the beginning of creation. I hope this might be of benefit.
You raise some thoughtful questions. I'll pick up on circumcision as a way to see how Scripture interprets Scripture. Circumcision was originally given to the Hebrews as an outward sign of their unique relationship to God. They were his people and He was their God. There was nothing special in the practice itself; some other symbol could have been used, but wasn't. Later, we learn that the physical symbol was not the point at all, it was a metaphor of what a real relationship with God was, circumcision of the heart, a true, personal and intimate relationship, not merely an outward appearance.
In Christ, all of the outward symbols were fulfilled in his perfect keeping of all the Law, something no other man has or could do.
Through Christ this relationship with God was opened to all people on earth through faith in Jesus. This reality is no longer dependent on an outward sign but has become truly a "circumcision of the heart" through the gift of the Spirit which Jesus promised to send, and did.
Thank you for your answer. I have been thinking a lot about the paradigm shift from circumcision to circumcision of the heart, as in the Psalm where the Psalmist remarks that God is more attentive to a contrite heart than to smoking sacrifices. This idea marks a shift in Judaïsm itself, a very important one. A while ago in Paul's saloon, I mentioned that maybe God didn't want just a contrite heart, for example, he wanted those sacrifices conjugated with a contrite heart, and we have once again fallen into the trap ? of EITHER/OR and not "both". Signs... can be good, after all.
Just recently, I have started to wonder if in Western civilisation we are not suffering particularly from the effect of overemphasizing ? the figure over matter, since Paul's post is about how matter matters. Where I'm living, I'm afraid that many people around me are suffering from the lack of being PHYSICALLY TOUCHED and TOUCHING, for example, as they get older, often in a context where they are isolated. If I bring this up, it is because I have friends, acquaintances, whose souls ? are sapped, but almost no-one seems to connect ? to the idea that they are not physically touching or being touched, and there is no social context for them to be. If we are matter infused with spirit, we can't neglect ourselves as matter. And to get back to your statement about "a TRUE, PERSONAL AND INTIMATE relationship, not merely an outward appearance", I will add that maybe we could think ? this in terms of "both/and" and not "either/or". What's... wrong with an outward appearance too ?
Interestingly enough, I think that this "either/or" way of thinking has led us right now into a crisis where many of us believe that ANY KIND of conventional expression of feeling is not only suspicious, but fake, untrue. And that kind of thinking takes your society down as a society. We don't need that at all right now. While I am very guilty of unconventional behavior, I nevertheless firmly believe in saying "please, thank you", even "you're welcome" as the least common denominators of social peace.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. So many poignant and important points. Matter does matter! God combined a body and a spirit (His breath) to form a living soul. Those two do not live apart from one another and will never be separated (the discussion about the state of the dead aside). The implications are many as you note.
I see the apparent changes in Old Testament Judaism as a progeession rather than as changes. It is the building story of Redemption as it moves from the Fall to the Atonement and on, one day, to final redemption. All the Law and images point to Christ; Himself and his Bride. As the Apostle tells us, the Law was meant to lead us to Christ. The despair in keeping the commandments showed our utterly hopeless condition before God. All the activity, images, symbols prepared the understanding of the people to recognize the Messiah when he came. Sadly, many still refused.
We are still given symbols in our time to lead us until the end. Baptism is the identifier of an individual Believer. Communion is the celebration and remembrance of Redemption. Marriage and the Church is a picture of the coming intimacy wirh Christ, and each other, in the New World. We shouldn't get lost in the symbols, they are merely guideposts; but we should not ignore them.
She was at some literary event and the subject of conversation came around to religion. One of the participants brought up the Eucharist, and noted that it was a symbol, and as such was a "pretty good one at that." O'Connor's response was, "Well, if it's just a symbol, to hell with it!"
If there is such a thing as transcendence, the only way we can approach it is through symbols. A symbol is a picture of something we do understand giving us a glimpse into something we cannot comprehend.
Since I like to nitpick, Rob G, I realized a while ago that baptism when it's infant baptism, for example, as it often is, (maybe not in Orthodoxy ?) is putting a future believer ? in front of the community in order to engage said community in its role of fostering belief. It is not (necessarily) about the individual's beliefs. Of course that changes in the case of adult baptism.
Yes, but recall that it wasn't only babies who were circumcised -- adult converts to Judaism were also. The "sign" didn't change based on the fact that adults could believe on their own and babies couldn't.
I'm having fun, Rob. Why not ? It's interesting that you're talking about baptism, because my now dead mother decided way back when not to baptize us chillens. She was baptized as an adult and thought that we should have the choice. She didn't really understand how important it was to present the child in front of the congregation, not so much for the child as for the congregation... there's that aspect of it, too.
John the Baptist started the gospels by saying ‘repent….the Kingdom of God is upon you’
And the Kingdom of God bears no resemblance to any civilisation or culture we have built over the years. The Kingdom of God is completely radical, requires completely different thinking and starts in the human heart. As we are also very weak, it requires a lot of supernatural assistance from the Holy Spirit.
You remind me a bit of John the Baptist ‘A Voice. crying out in the wilderness’…
And not all who use the name of Jesus and profess to know him will be known by Jesus at the end of things. You are on that narrow path, where we are required to be……also in the world but not of it…..and the culture we live in is absolutely ‘of this world’ for the exact reasons you point out. Jesus said that the world hated Him and that they would hate his followers as well!! Not easy for Christians to navigate this world especially when you are a Christian who is speaking out in the public Square……but you are not alone. God Bless.
We are at the end of a 1700 year long experiment of trying to make this world into a Christian civilization, beginning with Constantine. Various versions have been attempted, Eastern Orthodox in Byzantium, even the western Roman Empire was headed by “Christian” emperors in its last years, Ethiopia, Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages and later through continuing efforts in the empires of Spain, France, Austria, Orthodox Holy Russia, the Anglican version in England and the British empire, Lutheran in Germany and Scandinavia, Quakerism in Pennsylvania, Calvinist in Holland, Scotland and Switzerland, the City on the Hill effort in New England by the Puritans, the generic in God We Trust American effort, hey, even the king of Tonga took a stab at in Tonga in the 1800’s influenced by Protestant missionaries. Now we can point to partial successes in this effort, but in the end it was shipwrecked by human weakness. After all Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, and when we pray “thy kingdom come” we tend to forget the only explicit definition in the NT of the kingdom states it is a “kingdom of rightwiseness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.
“rightwiseness” is an older English version of “righteousness” which I prefer.
Like it or not Jesus and other predictions in the rest of the NT say it will get real ugly worldwide and that it would need to be cut short otherwise all life would be destroyed. Cut short by his return where as it says “the kingdoms of this world have now become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” Such foolishness this is in the eyes of the world’s wisdom.
Jesus in this world “went about doing good” and so are we also as we grow in the knowing of the interior kingdom of “rightwiseness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” and imperfectly experience this also in the gathered church awaiting the final fullness we will know either through death or the return of our Lord.
I think of the quite Christian funeral service of Queen Elizabeth 2 as the symbolic funeral service of Christian civilization or Christendom. It’s over.
Coming up to my 65th year and post cancer treatment Paul, I have been following your substack and get a lot from it- you have a wide and varied community following. If there is one thing I have learnt from years of: faith, work, children, grandchildren and surviving this multifaceted world of ours, it is this. Speak your truth. Allow reactions to come back to you without you always needing to respond. Find your inner silence to counteract negativity. It helps me to believe that that anger and negativity are all secondary emotions- with fear always at the base. People need to be prayed for. In these turbulent times we all need our voices, but we also need to find- with the help of God- deep peace to help with resilience against outside forces. Deep peace to you and your family.
Thanks Paul. I've been a Christian all my life (46 years), and Orthodox for nearly half of that. What you say doesn't sound newcomerish to me at all. It resonates with what I've been learning for a long time. And while I've appreciated some of the insights made by some of these new not quite Christian champions of "cultural Christianity" I've had a growing discomfort with the whole conversation and find your voice and contribution to be such a relief. You speak my mind and heart and I feel less voiceless in my concerns. Thank you for talking about Christianity and power. About St Olga, St Nektarios, and St Porphyrios. That today's civilisation valorizes the seven deadly sins is so overlooked. I appreciate your distinction between "Christian cultures" and Christian civilization. I'm not sure I quite agree that they are totally passing. In the Apocalypse we see "nations, tribes, and languages" represented around the throne. Perhaps cultures that are baptized acquire an eternal reality just as persons do. I was taught by someone who believes that. But certainly not in terms of earthly perseverance. This heaven and earth will pass away. And there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Not that I understand what that means, but I think it's missing from this current wave of thought you are pushing back against. Have you read "Christ and Culture" by Richard Niebuhr? Great overview of the different theological conceptualizations in Western Christian thought of how Christianity and culture/civilization ought to intersect. Not sure Orthodoxy fits in any one of his five categories. Which I think is also significant. Thanks again.
He got me on to this Orthodox thing back at the Community House for adults with disabilities some decades ago now. I remember you were into philosophy then...
I have something I want to share about this imagery of 'city stuff' in the new heaven (after this age is passed away).
I'll get to it in time here. But for now,
what is the continuity between Christ's soulish body, and the spirit-body he has when he is resurrected?
Hi Mark, yep, that's me. I don't have the background to respond to your question about the soulish and spirit body. Not sure I understand the question. I haven't been actively engaging in philosophy and theology for many years--too busy with our kids! It's a blessed season. But I'm back in school, though in a different field , and questions about soul, spirit, and body are still things i think wonderingly about. I'm intrigued by the conversation about city imagery as well.
I look forward to sharing my thoughts and see what you think.
... but really all of that immediately fades to the background, with way more interest in how you guys are all doing? I'd love to hear about your kids, your lives, etc.? Last I recall you moved East....
Anyway, drop me a line if you would. Matt and Willie (of blessed memory) were the two greatest personal influences that made my unlikely entry into the Orthodox Church possible, those many moons ago!
I sometimes think the art of the faith is to learn to embrace the lesser evil without ever denying that it remains an evil. "civilisation" is an evil in this sense - and yet we are still called to embrace it, and defend it...
Praying for the city and its leaders is a good thing indeed! That's not quite the same as 'defending' it though, let alone imagining it can be made 'Christian.'
I don't think it can be made Christian, not in the sense you're criticising. I'm just wary of quietism - I'm more of an Augustinian than you! There's a lot in Paul about this sort of question, and it ties in to issues around violence and pacifism. So, to give a concrete example, pacifism is a distinct Christian vocation, which represents the holy path - and yet (the Augustinian position) there is still such a thing as a just war. I don't see war as ever anything but an evil, but as my undergrad ethics tutor exclaimed to me when I was advocating pacifism, "Hitler had to be stopped!" In the same way 'civilisation' is always an out-of-Eden experience, and undoubtedly we are dependent on specific monastic vocations to show us what we were actually intended for, and yet we are still called to uphold the rule of law, with all that is entailed by that. We can say 'this civilisation is better than that civilisation' without insisting that the first is 'Christian'. I'm with you on rejecting the lunatics, especially in the US, that would identify 'Christian' with any particular worldly pattern (that's ultimately Satanic). Yet it is still, in my view, a Christian duty to argue against the passing of the "Assisted Dying" legislation. Make sense? I feel the end of The Mission dramatises this division - I'm with de Niro and getting my musket ready, but it is Jeremy Irons who shows the fully Christian path.
Ha, I often think about the end of The Mission too. I am with Jeremy Irons - in theory. But I write that from the comfort of my laptop. I wonder what I would actually do in the moment?
I do agree that some things have to be done in the political realm. I wouldn't argue for 'doing nothing.' I voted in the recent referendum here to remove 'family' and 'mother' from our constitution (we won!) So maybe I'm a hypocrite, but I prefer to see it as intervening when absolutely necessary.
The Orthodox have a word for this: oikonomia. It comes from the same root as 'economy' and it has been described thus: 'the concept that God's loving husbandry or stewardship of the covenant he has established with his people sometimes requires an act of mercy that dispenses from the strict laws he himself established.'
This can be a cop-out if you use it sloppily, but used well it allows for, for example, a pacifist to resist someone like Hitler out of extreme necessity whilst also not going so far as to imagine that God wants or even excuses war. An example: St Paisios, a modern saint from Mount Athos, acted as a radio operator in the Greek civil war, before he became a monk. As such, he never killed anyone, and he considered it 'oikonomia' to do what he did. However, because he had been in the army, and may have facilitated killing others, he refused ever to become a priest, considering himself unworthy in God's eyes.
Summary: sometimes, in extremis, it is acceptable in God's eyes (we hope!) to do what must be done outside of his laws. But we have to always remember it's an exception, and ring it around with prayer and repentance. It seems like a sane approach to reality.
Thank you Sam. My head hurts reading all this waffle. Some men decided to stand for Christianity but they’re not Christian enough for Paul. I just want my son to grow up in a half decent world not an islamified one. No mention of Islam which is seeking global domination. And that is why for centuries we’ve wound up in civilisational battles. Did Jesus have to contend with Islam?
No need to read all the waffle if it's too much for you, of course.
'Some men' did not decide to 'stand for Christianity.' They decided to stand for politics and culture. That was my point. I am a Christian. It's not a tool for blow-hards to use as they try to protect globalised modernity from itself.
Christianity is about following Christ. That's all. If that doesn't lead to the result you want ... well, then you're after the wrong result.
If you're concerned about Islam in the West, what do you think should be done? And if you want your son to grow up in a 'half decent world', how do you think you should actually get one? Because I have a son, and I do too.
We have a problem with Islam because we are rootless and empty. We have walked away from God and culture and nature, and our leaders have too. Islam will fill the void unless we become something else. That is a spiritual question, not a political one.
But if you think Trump and Jordan Peterson are going to solve it for you, leave it to them. I hope that goes well for you.
I am that critic, and I reply here. :)
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vagabond-king/comment/91255219
My line on Notre Dame was a gently pointed reference to Judas' objection that the woman was wasting her money on ointment for Jesus' feet. Any great cathedral would do to serve my point that beauty is its own offering to God and an end in itself. Money spent in the service of creating something beautiful to His glory shouldn't be viewed as money wasted.
The question is, and always must be, was it built for the glory of God or the glory of me?
We should also consider that enterprises undertaken for less than perfectly pious reasons can nevertheless still bring glory to God. The Anglican Church comes to mind.
"A decision made in fear is bound in fear". I do think our intention as creators matters for the outcome. And a "good vs bad" intention may be more of a spectrum than a binary, but supposing it was built for "the glory of me" entirely, I don't know that the same structure has the same Godliness that one built "for the glory of God".
I don't disagree with the initial point, Bethel. Yet, I imagine there are natural boundaries where it becomes too much. Maybe not?
I'm inclined to think that when it comes to creative works specifically, or any kind of art (a song, a painting, a beautiful building) there's a profound sense in which the work doesn't actually belong to us. It takes on its own life and breath. Even wood and stone and canvas cry out.
Absolutely! God has never relied on perfect people or perfect intentions, thankfully.
Hm. Well. We can talk of offering 'glory to God', but how do we know what kind of 'glory' He wants from us? Again, we return to the Gospels and ask: where do we find Christ instructing us that God wants us to build vast golden temples to His glory? To which the answer is: nowhere. But we do read a lot about self-emptying, giving everything to the poor, feeding the sick and loving our enemies. It seems that this is the way he wants us to 'give glory' to him.
I'm all for beauty. But in my view there is more of it in a (God-created) forest than in a (human-created) cathedral - much of it built, by the way, with forced labour. Maybe we could start by feeding the poor and not hacking the forests down. Building some modest-sized parish churches at the same time and filling them with beautiful icons would be a good fit with that same goal. But another St Peter's? Please, no!
What do you think about the instructions to the artisans on building the Ark of the Covenant? Not meant as an exact analogy of course but just thinking along the lines of human-made creations. God gives an awful lot of detailed directions on how to craft it and various "extra" things to add that were no doubt quite costly.
Well, I suppose if I heard God giving me any detailed instructions to build something, I would get building! I might be less keen to build for King Louis though ...
Fair enough!
I’m speaking from a position of ignorance and curiosity. I’m not a Christian. It seems to me that the logic of the First Things lecture would lead at least to a Bruderhof-style community, in which a lot of potential hypocrisy is avoided because a radically different lifestyle has been chosen, explicitly informed by (some of) Christ’s teachings. Anything more superficially ‘normal’ than that, a life where most people who meet you wouldn’t know what you believed in unless you told them, looks like having your cake and eating it.
Being Orthodox, I have obvious disagreements with the Bruderhof and their like over theology, but I admire the way they live. As you say, they are putting their money where their mouth is. They are, of course, attempting to live in a manner similar to that of the first Christians.
There's definitely value to intentional communities. Scaling them is another problem, though.
I see a very interesting convergence between your essay and this video by SpeakLife. He frames this dynamic you speak of through the lens of the Carnal and Grace. I can even see comparisons of Iain McGilChrists Left (Carnal, Civilisational power) and Right (Grace) hemisphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDbyAU8RC5s
Wonderful essay Paul!
The Great Divorce. We orphaned ones get thrown back and forth between the disintegrated family folk who are themselves reeling from the lack of mooring.
Thank you Paul for opening my eyes to St Olga of Alaska. It's stories like hers I find most illuminating and inspiring.
Yes, I agree. When we come across verses such as I Tim 2:15 we are reminded that normal, everyday life, done faithfully, will bring salvation.
Take a watch of the documentary type film, “Sacred Alaska.” I think you’ll enjoy it.
Olga is amazing. A model for us all.
Someone once said "matter matters".
Matter does, politics doesn't. The world and the earth are not the same thing.
Yes, and poetry isn't literal.
"Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?1 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,2 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!"
so, let's all quit work. With ravens to feed us, who needs more?
Signed,
Living naked in Indiana
Well, firstly that's not poetry. And secondly, the moral of it is not that ravens will feed us. It is a story being told to illustrate why we should trust God rather than ourselves.
In the meantime, most of Jesus's instructions about how to live are quite clear. Painfully so.
If it is not poetry, rather it is Jesus being literal, then how does that work? I agree that Jesus is often clear about how to live. But if the above is not poetry, then I would observe that he is quite obviously not always clear about how to live. And definitely less so about how we collectively govern.
I've heard the "Jesus was a Socialist" trope my whole life. It does make him seem more hip. And the idea that our material needs can be provided if we just become more passive is huge. Who wouldn't want to believe that?
I also grew up in the world of the "faith is magic" trope. It's got long, powerful tentacles.
> If it is not poetry, rather it is Jesus being literal, then how does that work?
Not everything non-literal is poetry.
It works as a parable: don't put your faith and strive in material things. Don't consider toil the metric of your life. You aren't adding "a single hour" to the span of your life "by being anxious". God's creation can provide if you don't ever enlarge your "needs" and don't come at it as an anxious demanding consumer.
> And the idea that our material needs can be provided if we just become more passive is huge. Who wouldn't want to believe that?
Well, who doesn't appear to want to believe that?
Apparently people working themselves to death in bullshit jobs, struggling to expand the field of busywork and mindless consumption ever more, alienating themselves from their family and children (or increasingly, not having those at all), and compensating by buying things they don't need, and consuming mind numbing "entertainment".
They might individually be OK to not do that, but their actions don't follow, and the civilization they co-built glorifies and pushes towards that.
"poetry" has long been considered a literary category in Bible interpretation. There has always been debate over certain sections -- whether the fit the category. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes have long been considered poetry. Theologians argue over the categorization of the early chapters of Genesis.
This discussion became particularly relevant when 20th century fundamentalism responded to modernism by declaring that it regarded the Bible as "literal". 20th century liberal Christianity went the other way (largely in what it saw as self protecting embarrassment brought on by scientific discovery that seemed to shatter much of the Bible as reliable. "Myth" became the word of the day.
Work is inevitable. Some embrace it. Some hope others will do it for them.
Incidentally, I don't disagree with you exactly. I just think it's important how we get there.
I guess that's the central question, isn't it? In a conversation about material provision,you're suggesting that Jesus is saying we should trust in God, not ourselves. And I'm wondering how that works exactly?
The prosperity gospel I think we can agree is an abomination. But asceticism is equally heretical, isn't it?
Asceticism is present in Christianity from the very beginning. What was John the Baptist if not an ascetic? Anna the prophetess? Jesus, who often retreated to the wilderness to fast and pray?
Heretical? C'mon man!
"What was John the Baptist if not an ascetic?"
A Nazarite Jew. : ^ )
So is from every other word that comes out from the mouth of God
Paul , I will be eternally grateful to God for letting me find your work a number of years ago. I am also grateful that an anarchist green went completely against the cultural norm and delved into Orthodoxy, and shared its immense value and depth to the world. I'm also grateful that now that you're a part of the faith that you are once again going against the grain and remind us that all the values we regard as western do not nessicarily promote a Christian life.
Too much to take in at the moment, but I do think it’s relevant and important that this Sunday, the beginning of Triodion, is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. I will search my own heart and see the bits of rot that still hide within. Lord, have mercy.
O, God help you brother. Man I love you.
You just dont like to duck and run, do you? ;-)
You've put yourself right at the tip of the spear with this one; so many echoes I want to share.
your unblinking look at Christ's actual life and teachings (you nubie!), remind me of Søren Kierkegaard's observation that:
the purpose of all the bible commentaries we get on the hard sayings in the scriptures,
are to dull and dilute Christ's own words and message, to tell us he doesn't mean what he clearly just said he meant, that which in our hard hearts we are unwilling to accept.
(Jesus explains this principle, and the way the church's economia heals it, when he explains why Moses in the law permitted a divorce... but seeing, many still will not see.)
the Orthodox offer the only way out in this, in our spirituality of oikonomia. But who wants to hear this? Who want to hear that they have to admit humbly they are not able to follow Jesus, they are falling short...
And the scandal is that in Orthodoxy that's not only "okay", it's *necessary*. For to apply any cannon rigidly, without taking pastoral care for the specific circumstances and soul involved- this is to mis-apply the cannon (so said Saint Basil the Great anyway).
But Orthodoxy is an offence to so many mighty academic 'theologians' of Wetern confessions...
Oikonomia? Something they need for their souls, they have to convert to get it?! How dare you!
Ecumenism, not this 'one church' business.
And yes, brothers. calm. Yes. Orthodoxy is not the only place to get saved (she teaches that herself). But all are only saved through her- there is a scandal here; the scandal of particularity as it applies to Christ's very real, enfleshed Body His Church.
No one wants to change. As St. Siloun taught, if you *know* the grace in your conversion, in your confession; you have *tasted* Christ, then never betray that, brothers outside the Church!
And among you holy Christians, sincere in heart, especially you should not! Not the holy Catholics, nor the Holy Protestants. I mean this sincerely; it's not tongue in cheek: If you have found Christ, if you are not turning away from his impossible and hardest teachings,
you dont have to change anything! He is feeding you right where you are, and it is only Christ and Him Crucified that the Orthodox Church professes in our Tradition.
But the rest of us, the rest of us who find no rest in our confessions, who have found no way to hold to the "ideal" of Christ's Way, and the failure of my own life and the mess that this world is, I am begger myself who found bread. It is in the Orthodox Way. Not in the walls, that's your business if you enter or dont. God sees your heart and loves you.
But living this Way is everything:
You are not going to enter the kingdom because you understood Jesus correctly, and then did what he taught.
He showed over and over (and over!), those types, they dont enter. They are the righteous big brothers, the teachers, the lawyers; the ones who *know* that they see aright... and then make their followers, their spiritual children twice the sons of hell by robbing these little ones of the Holy Spirit!
No.
But it's not any good trying to argue about this stuff. And that's where I have your back Paul when you choose silence.
The times themselves, these are our teacher now. we dont have to do much; we're with "last prophet". The Earth Herself, she is the Last Prophet. the trees and the stones themselves will be crying out.
I dont need to convince anyone of anything, because seeing they do not see. Even if I could send them some man risen from the dead to tell them the wages of their ongoing willing blindness, still they would not repent!
No,
the dye is cast. God sees the heart and all will be sifted.
So take rest in this, my brother Paul:
You are right in the "pure stream" running through the brackish water of the whole Church Body when you tether yourself to these teachings herein. Still with Saints Silouan and Sophrony; they will not lead you astray. St. Nektarios, he will shield you from the wolves in bishops robes (I know of none in particular- that is for God to judge. but he promised they'd be among us, and Nektarios knew some rather personally).
Do not hedge, do not budge. Still with the naked gospel. Its the gospel Jesus stuck with afterall!
Have you said some things imperfectly? Need there be refining? Is there anything at all to nitpick at?
well sure but who cares?!
You wont win hearts by refining the words and polishing the argument to perfection. There are those want to hear, they will be sympathetic and asking questions. there are those who are greater than us- they too ask questions, but to heal and guide and teach us.
the critics- they are at the front of the temple telling God how they've got it all just right.
God always keep me at the back, beating my won breast with the other losers who preach nonviolent love of enemies and selling all our possessions with no thought for tomorrow, yet knowing what a hypocrite I am because I fail at this measure I preach, daily.
But It's Christ's measure. so that's it, then.
Else,
Christ wouldn't have died after telling Pilot straight up the ways things ARE!
Stay with the prophets.
Stay with the off-scourge of the earth.
Forget the noise (except to pray for them, and to know that I am worse than any of them and more blind my own self, God save me!).
And know that out here, you have brothers:
One of the most venerable Christian writings outside the New Testament canon (dated circa 130 to 150), is The Epistle to Diognetus. The entire text merits reading. It’s a defense of the Christian faith vis-à-vis the context of its Greco-Roman provenance, but its perspective of who or what Christians are supposed to be in this world is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. We would do well to read and re-read, in particular, its fifth and sixth chapters. Here is a sampling from those chapters:
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe… They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven…
To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world… God has assigned them this illustrious position, which it were unlawful for them to forsake.
Source Addison Hart, "The Pragmatic Mystic"
I appreciate this, Mark!
God bless you Mark
As always, the most important question comes at the end:
"Do we want to be stuck on a provincial road, myopically waving our swords around? Or do we want - in silence, in stillness - to keep walking until we reach the end?
What destination does this road lead to?"
For me the destination of that silent, still road is - home, the meaning of that 'home' being implied in Ps 90 : 1 .
I'm curious, Paul. In what light does your Orthodox faith consider the Old Testament, and Christ as a Jewish prophet, teacher, and healer ?
Is the connexion to Judaism maintained in the Orthodox faith ?
...
When I see the word "carnal" my hackles go up now, if for no other reason than the necessity of incarnation in order for us to be fully human. And I see to much machine disincarnation around me, which leads to a frenetic search to be living, breathing bodies.
...
A while ago, I noticed that you were criticizing the people who were attempting to revalorize ? Christianity in our fallen world, and it came to me that when your namesake decided ? that the Gentiles would no longer be required to be circumcized to become Christian, that was a very accommodating decision, that made it easier for a lot of people to convert. So... how can we be sure that God is not working in ways that we don't and can't understand ?
...
For everything that I hear about the political, or politically spiritual dimension of Jesus's preaching, about the rich and the poor, etc etc, I hear rarely about Jesus's tremendous compassion, which seems to be something new in the "old" world. The fact that he could not stop himself from healing the suffering. This speaks to me particularly when I see so much suffering now, and so little vocation to be healing it outside of the DOCTOR PRIESTS who are definitely of the world.
The old testament prophets are experts in honing in on sin and corruption, but you don't hear much compassion there, and I think that this dimension is particularly Christian.
But this morning at mass, I heard a reading from the book of Hebrews with the Old Testament ? ideas about fathers being called upon to correct their sons from time to time, a little bit like how it is necessary to prune fruit trees in order for them to bear good fruit. This vision of the world speaks to me so I believe in the necessity of balancing compassion and correction, which is a very tricky act to perform, since we are all imperfect in a fallen world, and we don't really know what we're doing when we do it.
I can't help wondering, though, Paul, if you wouldn't be better off letting the hot air blow over you, and going on the path that you feel that you are called to follow, in order to be able to stand still in the tempest, and sing while it is raging around you.
Forget a lot of what I said here, Paul.
Nobody likes a good fight as much as I do. And for grappling over the words and what they mean, too. This morning I didn't get into a fight with a woman over her choice of words talking about her NETWORK of friends, and I told her that was not a word that I would use to talk about my friends...
Hi Debra. Forgive me answering for Paul... re your first question, you'll find a direct explanation in this book by Fr Stephen De Young "The Religion of the Apostles" - which presents the Orthodox Christian Church of today as a continuation of the religious life of the apostles, which in turn was a continuation of the life of the people of God since the beginning of creation. I hope this might be of benefit.
Thank you for your answer, Manuel. Cordially.
You raise some thoughtful questions. I'll pick up on circumcision as a way to see how Scripture interprets Scripture. Circumcision was originally given to the Hebrews as an outward sign of their unique relationship to God. They were his people and He was their God. There was nothing special in the practice itself; some other symbol could have been used, but wasn't. Later, we learn that the physical symbol was not the point at all, it was a metaphor of what a real relationship with God was, circumcision of the heart, a true, personal and intimate relationship, not merely an outward appearance.
In Christ, all of the outward symbols were fulfilled in his perfect keeping of all the Law, something no other man has or could do.
Through Christ this relationship with God was opened to all people on earth through faith in Jesus. This reality is no longer dependent on an outward sign but has become truly a "circumcision of the heart" through the gift of the Spirit which Jesus promised to send, and did.
I wish you much blessing.
Thank you for your answer. I have been thinking a lot about the paradigm shift from circumcision to circumcision of the heart, as in the Psalm where the Psalmist remarks that God is more attentive to a contrite heart than to smoking sacrifices. This idea marks a shift in Judaïsm itself, a very important one. A while ago in Paul's saloon, I mentioned that maybe God didn't want just a contrite heart, for example, he wanted those sacrifices conjugated with a contrite heart, and we have once again fallen into the trap ? of EITHER/OR and not "both". Signs... can be good, after all.
Just recently, I have started to wonder if in Western civilisation we are not suffering particularly from the effect of overemphasizing ? the figure over matter, since Paul's post is about how matter matters. Where I'm living, I'm afraid that many people around me are suffering from the lack of being PHYSICALLY TOUCHED and TOUCHING, for example, as they get older, often in a context where they are isolated. If I bring this up, it is because I have friends, acquaintances, whose souls ? are sapped, but almost no-one seems to connect ? to the idea that they are not physically touching or being touched, and there is no social context for them to be. If we are matter infused with spirit, we can't neglect ourselves as matter. And to get back to your statement about "a TRUE, PERSONAL AND INTIMATE relationship, not merely an outward appearance", I will add that maybe we could think ? this in terms of "both/and" and not "either/or". What's... wrong with an outward appearance too ?
Interestingly enough, I think that this "either/or" way of thinking has led us right now into a crisis where many of us believe that ANY KIND of conventional expression of feeling is not only suspicious, but fake, untrue. And that kind of thinking takes your society down as a society. We don't need that at all right now. While I am very guilty of unconventional behavior, I nevertheless firmly believe in saying "please, thank you", even "you're welcome" as the least common denominators of social peace.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. So many poignant and important points. Matter does matter! God combined a body and a spirit (His breath) to form a living soul. Those two do not live apart from one another and will never be separated (the discussion about the state of the dead aside). The implications are many as you note.
I see the apparent changes in Old Testament Judaism as a progeession rather than as changes. It is the building story of Redemption as it moves from the Fall to the Atonement and on, one day, to final redemption. All the Law and images point to Christ; Himself and his Bride. As the Apostle tells us, the Law was meant to lead us to Christ. The despair in keeping the commandments showed our utterly hopeless condition before God. All the activity, images, symbols prepared the understanding of the people to recognize the Messiah when he came. Sadly, many still refused.
We are still given symbols in our time to lead us until the end. Baptism is the identifier of an individual Believer. Communion is the celebration and remembrance of Redemption. Marriage and the Church is a picture of the coming intimacy wirh Christ, and each other, in the New World. We shouldn't get lost in the symbols, they are merely guideposts; but we should not ignore them.
Blessings
To paraphrase a famous Southern American lady, "Well, if they're just symbols, to hell with them."
Which southern American lady ? I'm curious...
That would be Flannery O'Connor.
She was at some literary event and the subject of conversation came around to religion. One of the participants brought up the Eucharist, and noted that it was a symbol, and as such was a "pretty good one at that." O'Connor's response was, "Well, if it's just a symbol, to hell with it!"
If there is such a thing as transcendence, the only way we can approach it is through symbols. A symbol is a picture of something we do understand giving us a glimpse into something we cannot comprehend.
True, but that does not mean that some of these things are therefore symbols, merely. That's what separated Luther from Zwingli, right?
Something tells me that I am outside this way of thinking about things, but that's o.k. I appreciate your taking the time and consideration to answer.
Keep asking questions. Keep seeking answers. Use you Bible, that is why we have it.
Blessings.
It IS dependent on an outward sign but that sign is no longer circumcision -- it's baptism.
Since I like to nitpick, Rob G, I realized a while ago that baptism when it's infant baptism, for example, as it often is, (maybe not in Orthodoxy ?) is putting a future believer ? in front of the community in order to engage said community in its role of fostering belief. It is not (necessarily) about the individual's beliefs. Of course that changes in the case of adult baptism.
Yes, but recall that it wasn't only babies who were circumcised -- adult converts to Judaism were also. The "sign" didn't change based on the fact that adults could believe on their own and babies couldn't.
I'm having fun, Rob. Why not ? It's interesting that you're talking about baptism, because my now dead mother decided way back when not to baptize us chillens. She was baptized as an adult and thought that we should have the choice. She didn't really understand how important it was to present the child in front of the congregation, not so much for the child as for the congregation... there's that aspect of it, too.
We perhaps disagree on the dependent part.
John the Baptist started the gospels by saying ‘repent….the Kingdom of God is upon you’
And the Kingdom of God bears no resemblance to any civilisation or culture we have built over the years. The Kingdom of God is completely radical, requires completely different thinking and starts in the human heart. As we are also very weak, it requires a lot of supernatural assistance from the Holy Spirit.
You remind me a bit of John the Baptist ‘A Voice. crying out in the wilderness’…
And not all who use the name of Jesus and profess to know him will be known by Jesus at the end of things. You are on that narrow path, where we are required to be……also in the world but not of it…..and the culture we live in is absolutely ‘of this world’ for the exact reasons you point out. Jesus said that the world hated Him and that they would hate his followers as well!! Not easy for Christians to navigate this world especially when you are a Christian who is speaking out in the public Square……but you are not alone. God Bless.
We are at the end of a 1700 year long experiment of trying to make this world into a Christian civilization, beginning with Constantine. Various versions have been attempted, Eastern Orthodox in Byzantium, even the western Roman Empire was headed by “Christian” emperors in its last years, Ethiopia, Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages and later through continuing efforts in the empires of Spain, France, Austria, Orthodox Holy Russia, the Anglican version in England and the British empire, Lutheran in Germany and Scandinavia, Quakerism in Pennsylvania, Calvinist in Holland, Scotland and Switzerland, the City on the Hill effort in New England by the Puritans, the generic in God We Trust American effort, hey, even the king of Tonga took a stab at in Tonga in the 1800’s influenced by Protestant missionaries. Now we can point to partial successes in this effort, but in the end it was shipwrecked by human weakness. After all Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, and when we pray “thy kingdom come” we tend to forget the only explicit definition in the NT of the kingdom states it is a “kingdom of rightwiseness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.
“rightwiseness” is an older English version of “righteousness” which I prefer.
Like it or not Jesus and other predictions in the rest of the NT say it will get real ugly worldwide and that it would need to be cut short otherwise all life would be destroyed. Cut short by his return where as it says “the kingdoms of this world have now become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” Such foolishness this is in the eyes of the world’s wisdom.
Jesus in this world “went about doing good” and so are we also as we grow in the knowing of the interior kingdom of “rightwiseness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” and imperfectly experience this also in the gathered church awaiting the final fullness we will know either through death or the return of our Lord.
I think of the quite Christian funeral service of Queen Elizabeth 2 as the symbolic funeral service of Christian civilization or Christendom. It’s over.
I thought that when I was watching it. I even wrote a piece about it at the time.
Coming up to my 65th year and post cancer treatment Paul, I have been following your substack and get a lot from it- you have a wide and varied community following. If there is one thing I have learnt from years of: faith, work, children, grandchildren and surviving this multifaceted world of ours, it is this. Speak your truth. Allow reactions to come back to you without you always needing to respond. Find your inner silence to counteract negativity. It helps me to believe that that anger and negativity are all secondary emotions- with fear always at the base. People need to be prayed for. In these turbulent times we all need our voices, but we also need to find- with the help of God- deep peace to help with resilience against outside forces. Deep peace to you and your family.
Useful advice - thank you Julie!
I rarely respond to critiques a a rule, but on this occasion I thought myabe I could add something useful. We'll see!
Thanks Paul. I've been a Christian all my life (46 years), and Orthodox for nearly half of that. What you say doesn't sound newcomerish to me at all. It resonates with what I've been learning for a long time. And while I've appreciated some of the insights made by some of these new not quite Christian champions of "cultural Christianity" I've had a growing discomfort with the whole conversation and find your voice and contribution to be such a relief. You speak my mind and heart and I feel less voiceless in my concerns. Thank you for talking about Christianity and power. About St Olga, St Nektarios, and St Porphyrios. That today's civilisation valorizes the seven deadly sins is so overlooked. I appreciate your distinction between "Christian cultures" and Christian civilization. I'm not sure I quite agree that they are totally passing. In the Apocalypse we see "nations, tribes, and languages" represented around the throne. Perhaps cultures that are baptized acquire an eternal reality just as persons do. I was taught by someone who believes that. But certainly not in terms of earthly perseverance. This heaven and earth will pass away. And there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Not that I understand what that means, but I think it's missing from this current wave of thought you are pushing back against. Have you read "Christ and Culture" by Richard Niebuhr? Great overview of the different theological conceptualizations in Western Christian thought of how Christianity and culture/civilization ought to intersect. Not sure Orthodoxy fits in any one of his five categories. Which I think is also significant. Thanks again.
Good morning Cheryl;
are you Matt's wife?
He got me on to this Orthodox thing back at the Community House for adults with disabilities some decades ago now. I remember you were into philosophy then...
I have something I want to share about this imagery of 'city stuff' in the new heaven (after this age is passed away).
I'll get to it in time here. But for now,
what is the continuity between Christ's soulish body, and the spirit-body he has when he is resurrected?
warmly;
-mark basil
Hi Mark, yep, that's me. I don't have the background to respond to your question about the soulish and spirit body. Not sure I understand the question. I haven't been actively engaging in philosophy and theology for many years--too busy with our kids! It's a blessed season. But I'm back in school, though in a different field , and questions about soul, spirit, and body are still things i think wonderingly about. I'm intrigued by the conversation about city imagery as well.
haha yes, I get it Cheryl!
I look forward to sharing my thoughts and see what you think.
... but really all of that immediately fades to the background, with way more interest in how you guys are all doing? I'd love to hear about your kids, your lives, etc.? Last I recall you moved East....
Anyway, drop me a line if you would. Matt and Willie (of blessed memory) were the two greatest personal influences that made my unlikely entry into the Orthodox Church possible, those many moons ago!
I owe a great debt to Matt.
warmly;
-Mark Northey
man or they [all one word] at gmail dot com
Hi Mark, feel free to email me, it's still the same. I got your blog updates. Can't guarantee when I'll get back to you though!
Willie is still in our prayers. Memory Eternal!
I sometimes think the art of the faith is to learn to embrace the lesser evil without ever denying that it remains an evil. "civilisation" is an evil in this sense - and yet we are still called to embrace it, and defend it...
Are we? Where?
"Seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its peace you will have peace." Jer 29.7
Praying for the city and its leaders is a good thing indeed! That's not quite the same as 'defending' it though, let alone imagining it can be made 'Christian.'
I don't think it can be made Christian, not in the sense you're criticising. I'm just wary of quietism - I'm more of an Augustinian than you! There's a lot in Paul about this sort of question, and it ties in to issues around violence and pacifism. So, to give a concrete example, pacifism is a distinct Christian vocation, which represents the holy path - and yet (the Augustinian position) there is still such a thing as a just war. I don't see war as ever anything but an evil, but as my undergrad ethics tutor exclaimed to me when I was advocating pacifism, "Hitler had to be stopped!" In the same way 'civilisation' is always an out-of-Eden experience, and undoubtedly we are dependent on specific monastic vocations to show us what we were actually intended for, and yet we are still called to uphold the rule of law, with all that is entailed by that. We can say 'this civilisation is better than that civilisation' without insisting that the first is 'Christian'. I'm with you on rejecting the lunatics, especially in the US, that would identify 'Christian' with any particular worldly pattern (that's ultimately Satanic). Yet it is still, in my view, a Christian duty to argue against the passing of the "Assisted Dying" legislation. Make sense? I feel the end of The Mission dramatises this division - I'm with de Niro and getting my musket ready, but it is Jeremy Irons who shows the fully Christian path.
Ha, I often think about the end of The Mission too. I am with Jeremy Irons - in theory. But I write that from the comfort of my laptop. I wonder what I would actually do in the moment?
I do agree that some things have to be done in the political realm. I wouldn't argue for 'doing nothing.' I voted in the recent referendum here to remove 'family' and 'mother' from our constitution (we won!) So maybe I'm a hypocrite, but I prefer to see it as intervening when absolutely necessary.
The Orthodox have a word for this: oikonomia. It comes from the same root as 'economy' and it has been described thus: 'the concept that God's loving husbandry or stewardship of the covenant he has established with his people sometimes requires an act of mercy that dispenses from the strict laws he himself established.'
This can be a cop-out if you use it sloppily, but used well it allows for, for example, a pacifist to resist someone like Hitler out of extreme necessity whilst also not going so far as to imagine that God wants or even excuses war. An example: St Paisios, a modern saint from Mount Athos, acted as a radio operator in the Greek civil war, before he became a monk. As such, he never killed anyone, and he considered it 'oikonomia' to do what he did. However, because he had been in the army, and may have facilitated killing others, he refused ever to become a priest, considering himself unworthy in God's eyes.
Summary: sometimes, in extremis, it is acceptable in God's eyes (we hope!) to do what must be done outside of his laws. But we have to always remember it's an exception, and ring it around with prayer and repentance. It seems like a sane approach to reality.
Yes - "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner" ;)
Thank you Sam. My head hurts reading all this waffle. Some men decided to stand for Christianity but they’re not Christian enough for Paul. I just want my son to grow up in a half decent world not an islamified one. No mention of Islam which is seeking global domination. And that is why for centuries we’ve wound up in civilisational battles. Did Jesus have to contend with Islam?
You might like my substack....
Ok. I see you’re close. I’m in Gloucestershire
No need to read all the waffle if it's too much for you, of course.
'Some men' did not decide to 'stand for Christianity.' They decided to stand for politics and culture. That was my point. I am a Christian. It's not a tool for blow-hards to use as they try to protect globalised modernity from itself.
Christianity is about following Christ. That's all. If that doesn't lead to the result you want ... well, then you're after the wrong result.
If you're concerned about Islam in the West, what do you think should be done? And if you want your son to grow up in a 'half decent world', how do you think you should actually get one? Because I have a son, and I do too.
We have a problem with Islam because we are rootless and empty. We have walked away from God and culture and nature, and our leaders have too. Islam will fill the void unless we become something else. That is a spiritual question, not a political one.
But if you think Trump and Jordan Peterson are going to solve it for you, leave it to them. I hope that goes well for you.
In Genesis, everything God created is good. Is, is everlasting.
"Memento, homo ... quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris" (cf. Gn 3:19). "Remember, man, you are dust and to dust you will return."