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ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS (USPS 412-260)
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AUGUST, 2005, VOLUME XXXIX, No. 8 (1551)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. CONTEMPORARY IDOLATRY
2. BOOK REVIEW: Holy War
3. FUNCTIONAL AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CHRISTIANITY
4. NEW ITEMS FROM THE BOOK CENTER
The devil, with all his powers, "walks about like a roaring lion,
seeking whom he may devour" (I Pet. 5:8). So you must never relax your
attentiveness of hear, your watchfulness, your power of rebuttal or
your prayer to Jesus Christ our God. You will not find a greater help
than Jesus in all your life, for He alone, as God, knows the deceitful
ways of the demons, their subtlety and their guile.
St. Hesychius the Priest
1. CONTEMPORARY IDOLATRY
(An excerpt from Against False Union by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros)
And now let us see who are those Europeans with whom they want us
to be united as a state and as a Church?
A frightening antinomy characterizes the Europeans: it is the
antithesis between the inward and outward man. The European appears to
be one thing, but is really something else. He lives and moves in the
falsehood of compromises. His entire culture is a collection of
conventional lies to which he has adapted himself. He is extremely
egocentric, but he conducts himself with absolute and almost
exaggerated courtesy.
In the "underdeveloped" countries where the people still lack the
finesse of European culture, everyone more or less expresses his inner
world with some freedom and simplicity which you cannot find in Europe.
Their manners are coarse, but the people are more genuine. In Europe
this is considered a lack of culture and spiritual development.
In this way, the constant game of hypocrisy has come to be regarded as
culture, where the white-washed tombs are full of stench, and the
outside of the cup always cleaned for the sake of the appearance to the
people.
But as it happens with Pharisees, that constant lie in which they live
does not humble them. On the contrary, their outward perfection makes
them certain of their superiority. The most characteristic mark of the
Europeans is their conceit. They look down upon all the people whom
they consider uncultured or underdeveloped.
A few of them might have a great concern for the needs of others, of
persons, of groups, or even of nations, and especially the under
developed ones, towards whom they nurture compassionate sentiments, but
deep down they are concerned for others the way an entomologist is
concerned for insects. The sentiments they nurture for people are
inferior to the love they have for their dogs.
They have the same high idea of their civilization as they have of
themselves. Having critical minds, 'they do not accept anything
unquestioned, and are proud of it. They consider all values relative,
even those which= they accept; and they discuss with apparent
profundity all that humanity has ever believed.
Their customary position is that of well-disposed agnostics who are
willing to agree with whatever you tell them, but let you understand
that, of course, there is no way of proving anything you say, and
therefore, it leaves them neither hot nor cold.
One thing, though, which these agnostics never think of doubting is the
value of their own civilization. For them there never arose a higher
civilization than their own. There might be sharp criticism about
particular cultural problems and great disagreements over details, but
the soundness of their culture's general direction has never been
questioned.
The civilization of Europe is based upon a religion, but upon a
religion which no one wishes to name as such, because this religion is
not the worship of one or many gods, but the worship of man.
The religion of the ancient Greeks and their civilization was nothing
else than the worship of man. If the civilization of ancient Greece
found such a good reception in the hearts of Europeans, one can
attribute it exactly to this inward kinship.
Like the ancient Greeks, the Europeans deified man's reason, his
passions, the powers and weaknesses of his soul; in a word, they made
man the center, measure, and purpose of all things. The culture of
Europe proceeds from man; it exists for man; and it receives its
justification from man.
There might be disagreements about the ways in which the improvement of
man's life may be attained; there might be differences in the manner of
worshipping man; there might be different conclusions drawn from man's
measurement; but for all and always, man is the center around which
they revolve, the source of their inspiration and purpose of their
actions.
This is the European. Whatever religion he thinks he might have, deep
down his religion is the worship of the idol "man." The European has
ceased to see the image of God in man; he sees only the image of
himself.
In other words, the religion of Europe is the old religion of humanity,
the one which separated man from God. God's purpose is to deify man.
But man, deceived by the devil, thought that he could become god
without the grace of his Creator, on his own initiative and with only
his own powers. He rushed to eat of the tree of knowledge before he was
mature enough for such food.
The result was that his eyes were opened to know good and evil, to see
his bodily and spiritual nakedness, and he was shocked. He could no
longer bear to face his Lord and God, and he ran to hide from His face.
He realized that a great chasm had been opened between him and his
Creator. Then his merciful Father cursed the first cause of his
destruction, the devil - "that old serpent" - and in His infinite love
even promised salvation: "And I will put enmity between thee [the
serpent] and the woman [the all-holy Virgin], and between thy seed and
her seed [Christ]; and he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel" (Gen. 3:15). And in order that man should not live eternally
in that condition of spiritual death, He cast him out of Paradise,
"that he should not extend his hand and take from the tree of life and
eat and live unto the ages" (Gen. 3:22). Thus out of His compassion and
love, God permitted bodily death and corruption, which, like spiritual
death, was the result of the broken communion with the Source of life,
so that man would not carry about through the ages his spiritual death,
misfortune, and nakedness. And man, being separated from God and living
in the constant reality of death, became a slave to the devil.
It was, therefore, as a reaction to the experience of his own
nothingness that man worshipped man, proclaiming him god. In fact, the
ancients taught that the human soul is a part of the divine nature, in
other words, that it is divine in essence and therefore has no need of
God.
This inward will of man to believe in his own divinity, together with
the fact of his submission to the demonic powers, is the basis of every
form of idolatry.
The religion of Europe, then, is none other than that primordial
idolatry in modern form. Papacy, Protestantism, humanism, atheism,
democracy, fascism, capitalism, communism, and anything else European,
are expressions of the same humanistic spirit.
The civilization of Europe is nothing but the result of man's agonized
and persistent effort to place his throne above the throne of God. It
is nothing but the erection of a new tower of Babel; confusion about
the method of erection may prevail, but the goal remains common for all
concerned.
The ideal of the European is identical with the ideal of Lucifer. Deep
down, it is the same contempt for the goodness of God, the same insult
against His love, the same revolt and estrangement from His providence,
the same ingratitude, the same desolate path which, instead of leading
upward as man thinks he is going, leads to the abyss of death.
AGAINST FALSE UNION is available in English or Greek from St. .
Nectarios Press
2. REVIEW: Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World,
by Karen Armstrong
(Second Anchor Books Edition, December 2001, with new preface; first
published 1988 by Macmillan, London)
This book is very well written and easy to read. The author
is knowledgeable about many subjects, both historical and those in
today's headlines. The structure of the book is interesting, in
that she presents the history of the Crusades up to a certain point and
then devotes a chapter or two to the current situation in the Middle
East, reverting to the Crusades again, and so on. I found this
approach helpful to my understanding of the flow of history from the
end of the eleventh century to the end of the twentieth. However,
her basic thesis is that the present situation in the Holy Land is
directly and solely attributable to the Crusades. She cites
numerous books and articles written in the 19th and 20th centuries that
are critical of Islam and Islamic culture, and reiterates constantly
that each is nothing more than a resurfacing of the crusader mentality,
aggravated by the ignorance and prejudices of people in the West vis a
vis Islam. I have no quarrel with her assessment of the damage
the Crusades did, but cannot accept her view that all evils in the
Middle East began with them, nor can I accept her idealization of
Islam. If you read this book, I suggest following it up
immediately with The Sword of the Prophet, by Serge Trifkovic and The
Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude,
by Bat Ye'or, both of which paint a very different picture from this
book. I believe that a lengthy review of Holy War is justified by
the popularity of this author's books and by the fact that it is just
this sort of mushy and muddled journalism that is presenting Islam
today as a peaceful religion that is far superior to
Christianity. She states that her book does not address weapons
or economics, but the "myths, emotions and religious passions" (pg xvi)
of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In the same way, I will take
issue only with Ms. Armstrong's view of these three religions and not
with her historical sections.
In describing her background, she says "My own training has been in
theology and in literature" and says that this is an advantage over a
professional historian, since "theology and literature both teach one
to connect the like with the unlike and to see that this can make a new
truth . . . both disciplines provide an alternative to a purely
rational view of the world and both are concerned with mythology: they
take fiction very seriously indeed." (pg xvi). Ms. Armstrong's
book is devoted to making this "new truth." In this pursuit, she
claims to have mastered what she terms "triple vision," or the ability
to "consider the position and point of view of Jews, Christians, and
Muslims" (pg xv). At the end of her introduction, however, she states
"It is particularly difficult to enter into another culture - it might
even be impossible to do so" (pg xvi). Is she then saying that
she herself has mastered the impossible or that her quest for triple
vision has failed? Considering the many times she displays
confusion and contradicts her own highly subjective assertions
throughout the book, I would say the latter is the case.
It would seem that Ms. Armstrong must have minored in psychology, since
she continually refers to such concepts as the Jungian archetypal
pattern of violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (which was not
an atavistic blood lust, however, she is careful to point out); the
effects of trauma, insecurity, and envy of more advanced societies on
the development of the philosophy of holy war; and the desperate search
for identity of peoples who perceived themselves as inferior to the
other cultures they encountered. As these peoples became more
confident, they were able to put aside religious animosity towards
others and learn to get along in the world of reality; i.e., they
became secularized and more concerned about such "real" things as trade
agreements. It would seem that she has not read about what happened in
Smyrna in 1922, a massacre of some 300,000 Christians perpetrated by
the "secular" Turks.
Ms. Armstrong states clearly that she is no longer "a believing or
practicing Christian" (pg xiii) and that she has tried, through "triple
vision," to "come to a greater understanding of Judaism and Islam" (pg
xvi). Her ability to be impartial, however, is suspect when she
says "I was moved to see the passion and fervor with which Jewish
pilgrims kissed the stones of the Wailing Wall and astonished to see
tough young Israeli soldiers, carrying heavy submachine guns, binding
their tefillin to their foreheads and swaying devoutly in prayer" (pg
xiii). She remarks that she "could not quite imagine a British
soldier praying so devoutly and openly" (pg xiv). In the epilogue
(subtitled "Triple Vision"), she ridicules gullible Christians who
venerate the Holy Land shrines. "The people who make these
pilgrimages are educated men and women who do not believe in Father
Christmas but who are prepared to kiss the gold star in the Church of
the Nativity in Bethlehem which marks the spot of Christ's birth" (pg
532). She also says, "The Holy Land is still a mythical land to
many of them, who show a ready willingness to suspend their disbelief
as they tour the country in their air-conditioned buses, insulated from
the troubling contemporary realities." (pg 531). Well, excuse me,
but this reviewer toured the Holy Land in an air-conditioned bus last
October - that bus had windows and our hotel was in the Arab
Quarter. I came away with a very troubled mind about those
contemporary realities.
Ms. Armstrong "visited the mosques and again was struck by the fervor
of the Muslims praying there." When looking above the Wailing
Wall and seeing "the great mosques of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa"
she became aware that Jerusalem is sacred to the Muslims. In
relating why this is so, she refers to Mohammad's "Night Journey" as
mystical, although in speaking of the Jews' exodus from Egypt, the word
used is mythical. She is "deeply drawn to the peace and
spirituality of al-Aqsa, with its great space and silences" (pg
xiv). By contrast, in the epilogue she says that she always
experiences "a strong sense of evil in the Holy Sepulchre, probably
because I am so conscious of the blood that has been shed for the sake
of this building"; when leaving the Holy Sepulchre (after spending a
night there filming a documentary), it is "an immense relief to see the
outside world again: the dark square, the starry sky with the
crescent moon-and the Mosque of Omar opposite" (pg 535).
Her description of these experiences sets the tone for the balance of
the book, as she continually reiterates the purity, peace, and beauty
of Islam and the grossness, incredulity, and intolerance of the
Christian crusaders. She seldom mentions the Byzantines except in
their role as hosts and, later, as victims of the crusaders, but she
does relate their intellectual attainments and artistic abilities, and
their compassionate and humane hospitality to the crusaders prior to
1204 and mentions that the Greeks did not condone warfare, denying
communion to soldiers engaged in battles (pg 25). The West, on
the other hand, developed the ideology of the just war, drawing on the
authority of Augustine of Hippo who believed that war was justified as
long as the Christians fought their non-Christian enemies with love and
as a form of medicine to teach them the error of their ways. She
believes this to be rooted in Christ's driving the moneylenders out of
the temple and blinding Saul on the way to Damascus (pg 26). She
has no understanding that two entirely different perspectives on
Christianity were at work in the East and in the West - one based on
the Gospels and the other on secular empire-building. Her
treatment of Judaism is rather neutral, though basically
non-condemnatory; it lies somewhere between the beauties of Islam and
the crudity of the Western crusaders. Ms. Armstrong's treatment
of each of these religions is out of balance (despite her claims of
"triple vision"). The innumerable contradictions throughout the
book exhibit her confusion and lack of clarity.
In the vein of trauma over being enslaved in Egypt and envy of the
superior cultures encountered in Palestine, she describes the Jews'
holy war of conquest, resulting in the long-drawn out destruction of
the indigenous peoples of Palestine and the many injunctions against
taking on pagan ways. Solomon, however, "was a confident monarch"
who "did not feel threatened by the surrounding paganism and felt that
a degree of assimilation was acceptable in Yahwism" (pg 10-11).
She goes on to describe the later trauma of exile in Babylon, which led
to the new religious truth that the Temple really wasn't that important
after all (the people had been "herded along to the Temple for
compulsory worship" pg 13). Only a fringe group were unable to
accept its loss and wrote the psalm, "By the waters of Babylon," which
expresses a "new hatred of the goyim" (pgs 13-14), and an "amoral
vengeance," which "springs from a desperate insecurity" (pg 15). This
is one of her examples of the "archetypal pattern of violence":
those who become fanatic about their religion are forced to become
violent toward others.
When discussing the rise of Christianity, her thinking is even more
muddled. She has quite unusual (one might say weird) ideas about
the beginnings of Christianity, which I won't go into since they are so
obviously off-base. The "archetypal pattern of violence,"
according to Ms. Armstrong, is exemplified in the Book of Revelation
and in the rush to voluntary martyrdom during the persecutions.
"At an early date the insecurity of Western Christians brought an
aggressive element into the peaceful religion of Christianity" (pg
25). In this case, insecurity was brought on by fear that the
surrounding pagan society would overwhelm and destroy the new Christian
faith. As proof of this assertion, she cites I John 2:14-19, but
a reading of this passage, in this reviewer's opinion, contradicts her
opinion rather than substantiating it. As full acceptance of
Christianity brought the period of persecution to an end, a fringe
group of Christians fled to the desert to proclaim themselves to be the
only true Christians, fighting a holy war against secular evil.
"The aggression of Christianity surfaced quite early in the history of
the Church in the two movements of martyrdom and monasticism, which
would later be very important in the ideology of the holy war" (pg
23-24). In other words, martyrdom and monasticism were a living out of
the "archetypal pattern of violence." One little historical
detail, however, has apparently escaped her notice: the holy war
of the martyrs and monks was entirely spiritual and never resulted in
any sort of violence toward any other people. The First Crusade,
preached in 1095 (some 700 years after the beginnings of monasticism)
by Pope Urban II, was a phenomenon of the Western view of Christianity,
which while having pious overtones, was essentially an empire-building
enterprise having the expressed goal of keeping the knights and
nobility of Europe from killing each other. Later Crusades were
even less pious and more directed toward occupation and personal
enrichment through trade.
She goes on at great length about the beginnings of Islam, describing
Mohammad as a peace-loving man who was mainly concerned about the
plight of the poor (pg 31). He saw the confusion of the Arab
people as they tried to develop a new identity in the midst of changing
times and sought to give them this new identity through faith in
Allah. One of his revelations was that wars of self defense were
justified: since Mecca rejected the new faith, Mecca had in
effect declared war against Allah. Attacking Meccan caravans,
even in the month of Ramadan, was therefore self-defense. She
describes how Mohammad conquered Mecca by means of a peaceful
pilgrimage (following the attack on the caravans, that is). A
treaty was signed, which the Meccans foolishly broke. However,
not a drop of blood was shed in making Mohammad the absolute
ruler. No one was forced to convert. She states frequently
that the Koran prohibits coercion in religion, but she never
acknowledges or quotes the violent passages, such as 2:191, which
commands all believers to slay infidels wherever they are found.
On page 34 she states that "Muslims were forbidden to open hostilities"
and cites 2:191: "Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against
you, but do not attack them first. Allah does not love the
aggressors." I found the correct quote, however, to be:
"2.190 And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and
do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed
the limits. 2.191 And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them
out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than
slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they
fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is
the recompense of the unbelievers" (from website:
http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/). Following Trifkovic's line of
reasoning, "drive them out from whence they drove you out," would refer
to the belief that the world belongs to Allah and that all unbelievers
have, in effect, denied their illegally gained lands and possessions to
the rightful owners, the Moslems. Therefore, Moslems are
justified in taking what is rightfully theirs anyway.
She states that razzias (raids on neighboring peoples), as time-honored
Arab tradition, were normal and accepted, often a necessity. The
raiders didn't kill people, though (!!) (pg 34). The immediate
successors of Mohammad realized that the Muslims were restless and
needed new battles to expend their aggressive instincts (despite the
peaceloving proclivities of Mohammad and Allah). Jurists began to
develop a theology of jihad, or perpetual war, which, however, was to
be conducted in a humane manner. "It is this early doctrine of
the jihad which has given Islam its reputation of being the religion of
the sword and, had Muslims remained committed to this warlike theory,
Islam would indeed have become a militaristic and imperialistic
religion. But this did not happen." (pg 41). Holy war
had entered into Islam: "Islam had reverted to the archetype. Yet
this still did not make Islam the religion of the sword" (pg 35),
apparently because the word Islam comes from the same Arabic root as
the word for peace. The jihad, though it became a "dead letter" (pg 41)
in the lands of Islam, remained a bogey in the West for
centuries. In citing the Battle of Poitiers (southern France, 711
A.D.), she contends that the Muslims had been invited in and had no
thought of trying to conquer Europe, which they thought a very
unhealthy and ugly place. She believes that this misunderstanding
of the intentions of the Muslims at Poitiers has become a buried phobia
in Christendom, leading to the Crusades and thus to the present
situation in the Middle East (pg 42).
In Ms. Armstrong's view, people conquered by the Muslims saw it as the
start of a new and exciting phase in their history. Many thought
Islam extremely attractive, especially because Christianity was such a
"baffling" religion. There was no attempt to convert those
conquered peoples who desired to remain Christian or Jewish, and full
religious liberty was granted to all. She does acknowledge that
there were, of course, a few rules of behavior for the conquered
peoples, but these were not rigidly enforced and sound more humiliating
than they really were. Occasionally there was a massacre, but
always because the Jews or Christians had revolted (against what were
they revolting, if Islam was so peaceful and tolerant?).
Everybody was accustomed to being taxed, so that was nothing new under
the Muslim conquerers (see pgs 43-44). Converts wanted to review their
own rich traditions in the light of their new religion; they wanted to
see how their past fitted into their present. At the same time the
Arabs were seeking to learn from the ancient cultures that had preceded
them. The result was a dynamic rise of a unique and distinctive
Muslim culture (pgs 42-46). The great mosque in Cordova, "with
its fortress like exterior and contemplative interior, shows the great
spirituality that was possible within this apparently warlike new
religion" (pg 41). On the other hand, "The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa
. . . are a symbol of a dominant, victorious Islam rising out of the
ruins of a super ceded faith" (pg 46).
From the author's viewpoint, holy war was a response to trauma -
slavery in Egypt in the Jewish instance and culture shock in the
Muslim. But "there were other people in the way," so they fought
wars out of insecurity and envy of superior cultures. However,
Jews in the diaspora were more secure and didn't feel so threatened, so
they were able to become friends with the goyim (really? was this
before or after the massacres that attended every Crusade?). The
Muslims achieved this confidence far more quickly than the Hebrews
because of their early success (in those humane razzias, I guess) and
they could afford to be tolerant (pg 47). When Jewish or Muslim
identity has been gravely threatened, as it has in our own day, Jews
and Muslims are very likely to turn to the archetypal holy war in their
search for a solution (pg 47).
If you will pardon me, I feel compelled to indulge in a little
psychoanalysis myself. It is apparent that Karen Armstrong is
deeply prejudiced and in many ways very confused. In the process
of researching and writing this and other books and articles (she is
very prolific), she states that her old prejudices have been shattered
and she is distressed by the examination of the sins of one's own
culture (pg xvi). I submit that her themes of insecurity, envy,
and the search for identity are, in reality, her personal bete noire,
projected onto the screen of the Middle East. I suspect that she
herself is in search of a new identity, having experienced what to her
was the trauma of being a Catholic nun at the time of Vatican Council
II (this is related at
http://www.islamfortoday.com/karenarmstrong.htm). It might be
that her only way to exonerate herself and not see herself as a failure
in leaving the convent is to reject the institution in which she
failed. The Crusades are seemingly her own phantom image of what
is most distasteful to herself, perhaps within herself, her shadow
self. She is obviously enamored of Islam, so it is perfect; she
has rejected Christianity, so it is detestable. She is ambiguous
toward Judaism. Secularization is her answer. On the other
hand, perhaps she secretly thinks a return to paganism is the answer -
after all, in her view, pagans created religions of "great beauty"
because they accepted everyone else's religion. This is perhaps
an unfair generalization or oversimplification, but no more so than her
insistence that all the woes of the Middle East are traceable directly
to the European Crusades.
HOLY WAR is not available from St. Nectarios Press.
________________________________________________________________________
3. FUNCTIONAL AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CHRISTIANITY
by Philotheos Faros
(excerpts from the chapter "The Distorted God")
Modern man . . . seems to hate God with a passion and fights him
with fierceness. He seems to desire God's obliteration, to vanquish
him, to kill him. But . . . it is modern man's latest attitude of
indifference or of emasculating God and making him an instrument for
his diabolical, egotistical, antihuman and antidivine pursuits that
clearly shows his hatred for God.
It is not a wonder that modern Western man hates God so passionately
because the God he has known is detestable. The God whom Western man
knows is horrific, capricious, atrocious, furious, and a hard and
merciless tyrant, who torments and punishes harshly, even for the
pettiest misdeed. He does not tolerate any objection or any opposition.
He considers man's refusal to subject himself to his commandments as
such a horrible insult against him that He demands an equally horrible
revenge. This is why he is not satisfied even if he destroys the entire
human race for man's disobedience. God wants to kill a god so that His
revenge equals the insult. Therefore he kills his own Son to satisfy
his vengeance. There was no other way for man to expiate God for his
awful crime. Even if God wanted to release man of the punishment, He
could not because he is compelled to satisfy his justice. The justice
of God is the god of God, as destiny formerly was the god of the gods
of the Greek pantheon. As those gods were prey to destiny, God is a
prey to His justice. Western theology has presented God to modern man
as such a detestable and monstrous being that He reminds him of the
hideous and atrocious wooden statues with bloodstained teeth of the
primitive gods.
Man was tyrannized for centuries by that monster. He endured without
daring to show the slightest displeasure for the inhuman terrorism. How
could he, a weak creature, stand up to an uncontested and omnipotent
ruler, not only of earth but even of heaven, not only of this life, but
even of life hereafter? The only thing man could do was to succumb, to
yield, to conform to every wish of the tyrant and to pay unfailingly
the tax of prayer. If he failed in this, the tyrant would send his
heavenly guards with their swords of flame to torture him in this life
with every kind of tribulation and, finally, to take him to eternal
hell. . . .
But is that horrible monster of the scholasticism* of the West and of
the pietism of the East, the God that Jesus Christ revealed to man?
Definitely not! Therefore those who are really Orthodox do not regret
the assassination of this monster, they do not try to save him and keep
him on his throne, nor do they detest his assassins. In reality,
they should feel sympathy for them and see the torments and harassment
behind their rage.
The God that Jesus Christ revealed is not just. "Do not ever say that
God is just. Because if he was just, you would have been in hell. Only
reckon on his . . . injustice, which is mercy, love and forgiveness,"
says Isaak the Syrian. He continues: "How can you call God just if you
see the chapter which refers to the wage of the workers . . . How can
man call God just when he sees the chapter referring to the Prodigal
Son, who living a life of debauchery wasted his wealth and when he
repented and went to his father with just the contrition he showed, he
gave him a right on all his estate: Where is the Justice of God?
Because we were sinners and Christ died for us?"
In the parable of the vineyard, Christ states emphatically that God is
not the pawn of his justice. "I choose to pay the last man the same as
you," he says to him who worked from the beginning and he adds, "am I
not free to do what I want with my own possessions? Or are you
responding to the fact that I am good by being wicked?" (Mt 20:14-15).
John Chrysostom responds to this with the memorable expression, "The
master being generous receives the last like the first. He gives rest
unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has
worked from the first hour. And he shows mercy upon the last and cares
for the first and to the one he gives and upon the other he bestows
gifts."
Jesus Christ said that his father does not judge the world and that he
sent him not to judge the world but to save it (Jn 3:17). He also said
that he is going to come again in glory to judge the world (Mt
25:31-46). But his judgment is not going to be like human judgment,
that is, based on the human notion of justice and which does not know
another way of defense against evil than revenge and retribution.
. . . If neither the Father nor the Son judges the world then "who is
going to judge the world?" asks John Chrysostom. And he answers with
the words of Jesus Christ, "the word that I spoke will be his judge"
(Jn 12:48).
*Editor's note: "Scholastic" refers to school or university.
Therefore, "scholastisicm" refers to the philosophy and theology
developed in medieval universities. They were largely influenced by
Aristotle. Although philosophy used theology and theology depended on
philosophy, each discipline had its own principles and methods. Their
arguments took the form and strictness of laws. Theology and philosophy
were taught by questions and answers ("the Socratic method). Logic was
master.
FUNCTIONAL AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CHRISTIANITY is temporarily out of print,
but will be carried by St. Nectarios Press when available.
_______________________________________________________________________
4. NEW ITEMS FROM THE BOOK CENTER
(EA) ELDER ARSENIOS THE CAVE-DWELLER: Fellow Ascetic of Elder Joseph
the Hesychast by Monk Joseph Dionysiates. The life and struggles
of the companion of the Elder Joseph, with much information about the
whole brotherhood and their ascetic homes. On Mt. Athos. Many
illustrations. 208pp. Paper e$15.00
(MAN) MANNA: The Homilies of Father John F. Bockman, Archpriest. An
engaging collection of homilies on the Sunday Gospels of the Church
year, plus some additional homilies on selected saints and various
topics. Clear and insightful words will enlighten all.
318pp. Paper a$20.00
(DTD) DUST TO DUST OR ASHES TO ASHES?: A Biblical and Christian
Examination of Cremation by Alvin J. Schmidt. A small but valuable
book examining thoroughly from a scholarly, historical and theological
vantage the widely-practiced non-Christian custom of cremation of the
dead. 134pp Paper d$15.00
Two new CDs from Simonopetra Monastery on Mt. Athos. Beautiful,
compunctionate chanting by the monks., each d$18.00
(TM65) GREAT VESPERS.
(TM66) ORTHROS (MATINS)