MONOTHEISM, PART 3: ISLAM, by Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)

The religion of the Law, which for 15 centuries prepared the chosen people for the coming into the world of the its Savior, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, preceded New Testament religion. According to the Holy Apostle Paul, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3:24)... When the Savior came into the world, Old Testament religion had fulfilled its purpose. 

Islam, having arisen in Arabia in the seventh century, appeared as the religion of the law six centuries after the God of the chosen people of the religion of the Law fulfilled its purpose. 

The difference between the Old Testament religion of the Law and Islam is not only that the latter emerged more than two thousand years after God gave on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments and other precepts that governed life for the chosen people. The most important difference is that the Law of Moses has a Divine source... The founder of Islam, however, did not have a Divine revelation.

This theological study by Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) is a very helpful discussion of several fundamental problems with Islam's claim to be the true religion, correcting the supposed errors of Judaism and Christianity.


MONOTHEISM, PART 3: ISLAM
by Hieromonk Job (Gumerov), Pravoslavie � July 23, 2014

Part 1: Christianity

Part 2: Judaism

Jibril (the angel Gabriel) appears before Muhammad, drawing.

Islam: Origins

The religion of the Law, which for 15 centuries prepared the chosen people for the coming into the world of the its Savior, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, preceded New Testament religion. According to the Holy Apostle Paul, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3:24). It was all in all only "a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. 10:1). When the Savior came into the world, Old Testament religion had fulfilled its purpose. Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us the mystery of the Heavenly Kingdom and established the New Covenant, which was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:31-33).

Man was redeemed from original sin and its consequences by the voluntary death on the Cross of Jesus Christ as Savior of the World. He entered into an entirely new period in terms of his relationship with God in comparison with the Old Testament: instead of the law, there was a free condition of sonship and grace. Man received new means for achieving the ideal set for him of moral perfection as a necessary condition for salvation.

Islam, having arisen in Arabia in the seventh century, appeared as the religion of the law six centuries after the God of the chosen people of the religion of the Law fulfilled its purpose.

The difference between the Old Testament religion of the Law and Islam is not only that the latter emerged more than two thousand years after God gave on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments and other precepts that governed life for the chosen people. The most important difference is that the Law of Moses has a Divine source. The book of Exodus gives a narrative of the majestic Epiphany. "And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up" (Exod. 19:17-20).

The founder of Islam, however, did not have a Divine revelation.

How did Islam arise? We read about this in the Hadith �Al-Jamii al-Sahih�. A mysterious being began to visit Mohammed. He slept in a cave on the slope of Mount Hira. On the night of the 24th of the month of Ramadan in year 610 someone appeared to him in human form. This event is considered the beginning of Islam. This story about it is from the Sunnah: �[A]n angel appeared to him and bade him 'READ!' 'I am no reader!' Mohammed replied in great trepidation, whereon the angel shook him violently and again bade him read. This was repeated three times, when the angel uttered the five verses that commence the 96th chapter: 'READ! in the name of thy Lord, who did create�who did create man from congealed blood. READ! for thy Lord is the most generous.�� Mohammed puzzled over whether a demon or angel visited him. He confided his experiences in his wife Khadijah. I will introduce more of the story of Mohammed's biography, generally accepted by Muslims: �She said to the messenger of God, �O son of my uncle, are you able to tell me about your visitant, when he comes to you?� He replied that he could, and she asked him to tell her when he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont the apostle said to Khadija, �This is Gabriel who has just come to me.� �Get up, O son of my uncle,� she said, �and sit by my left thigh.� The apostle did so, and she said, �Can you see him?� �Yes,� he said. She said, �Then turn round and sit on my right thigh.� He did so, and she said, �Can you see him?� When he said that he could she asked him to move and sit in her lap. When he had done this she again asked if he could see him, and when he said yes, she disclosed her form and cast aside her veil while the apostle was sitting in her lap. Then she said, �Can you see him?� And he replied, �No.� She said, �O son of my uncle, rejoice and be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan�� (Ibn Hisham, Biography of the Prophet Muhammad).

It is surprising how easily and, gently speaking, naively this question, which in the spiritual realm is a question of life or death, had been answered with the help of a woman. Before all else, an Angel is a bodiless being, and for his sight there are no actual barriers: one can see through even clothes. Clothes hide nudity only from the eyes of man. Even so, the body of man in and of itself is not something perverse or shameful. It is a creation of God. The lust of man is sinful as well as is carnal desire, but not the body. In paradise the progenitors were naked and were not ashamed (see Gen. 2:25). The nature of an Angel is inviolate. They are alien to passions of man. But if this was a demon, then he could easily resort to trickery. Knowing how they tested him, he especially would be able to take leave of himself, so that they would take him for an Angel.

In the Quran many people and events from biblical history are mentioned. However, these stories are presented completely arbitrarily and inaccurately.

The attitude of Islam towards the Bible

Islam emerged as something syncretic out of several sources: ancient Arabic cults, Judaism, Christianity, Hanifism (a pre-Islamic monotheistic movement in Arabia) and Mazdaism (an ancient Iranian religion). There is no doubt that the Old Testament holy books and the Gospel had an influence on the formation of Islam. In the Quran many people and events from biblical history are mentioned. However, these stories are presented completely arbitrarily and inaccurately.

According to the Quran, man was created from water. "It is He Who has created man from water: Then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things)" (25:54). In another surah, it says: "Proclaim! (or read!) in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood" (96:1-2). In another part it speaks about clay, "He created man from sounding clay like unto pottery" (55:14).

In contrast to the Bible, the Quran does not say that man was created in the image and likeness of God. This discrepancy is most profound. With God's image and likeness, man is summoned to commune directly with his Creator. He can become one with the Lord. This is not so in Islam.

The book of Genesis tells the story of how the entire family of the patriarch Noah (in Arabic, Nuh) was saved in the Ark. The Quran speaks about the death of Noah's son: "So the Ark floated with them on the waves (towering) like mountains, and Noah called out to his son, who had separated himself (from the rest): �O my son! Embark with us, and be not with the unbelievers!� The son replied: �I will betake myself to some mountain: it will save me from the water.� Noah said: �This day nothing can save, from the command of Allah, any but those on whom He hath mercy!� And the waves came between them, and the son was among those overwhelmed in the Flood" (11:42-43). Another surah tells it somewhat differently: "(Remember) Noah, when he cried (to Us) aforetime: We listened to his (prayer) and delivered him and his family from great distress" (21:76).

 In the Quran, things are especially distorted when discussing New Testament events.

There is no need to provide more examples. In the Quran, things are especially distorted when discussing New Testament events. Here the differences are purely fundamental. The Incarnation, the Crucifixion on Golgotha, and the Resurrection are all denied. Even the event of the Nativity of Christ, known to the whole world, is described very strangely. It is alleged that Maryam retreated to a faraway place and gave birth to a Son under palms (19:23). In this surah, called Maryam, She is called the "sister of Harun," i.e. Aaron. He indeed had a sister named Miriam, but she lived 15 centuries before the Nativity of Christ.

Probably due to so great a number of errors and distortions, many representatives of Islam, in order to escape from this quandary, allege that the modern Holy Scripture of Christians has been distorted (a circumstance known as tahrif). Immediately, the question arises: what evidence do they provide? There is no evidence. Characteristically, the view of Muslims toward the Bible has undergone significant change over the course of several centuries. Early Islamic writers such as al-Tabari and ar-Razi believed that the distortion comes down to tahrif bi'al ma'ni, i.e. the corruption of the meaning without changing the text. However, later authors such as Ibn Hazm and Al-Biruni introduced the idea of tahrif bi�al-lafz, i.e. the corruption of the text itself. At that, both of these positions have been preserved to the present day. Thus, the level of acceptance among Muslims of the Bible depends on one's understanding of tahrif. The very existence of these fundamentally different positions indicates that there is no concrete evidence.

It is impossible to ignore one interesting feature of the attitude that representatives of Islam have toward the Biblical text. In that they do not have their own "undistorted" biblical text, they cite our canonical text as undistorted. However, when they need to support a point, for example, negative examples from the life of Banu Isra'il (the children of Israel) with a reference to parts that do not conform to Islam, they proclaim the text to be distorted.

Muslims allege that the New Testament (Injil), which the Quran refers to positively, is not in fact the current four Gospels. We have already said that they do not provide any evidence. The falsehood of the accusation that Christians distorted the Scriptures stems from the internal inconsistencies of the very Islamic authors who wrote on this theme. According to the Quran, the New Testament was originally a true, sacred text. "And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah" (5:46). In another section: "Say: �O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.� It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy" (5:68). This excerpt clearly demonstrates that the Quran itself does not speak of the distorted Scripture, but about "rebellion and blasphemy" related to misunderstanding.

�The learned doctors of Islam are sadly embarrassed by this verse, referring the prophet as it does to the people of the Book who would solve his doubts...�

There is one part of the Quran (10:94) which is very problematic for Islamic commentators: "If thou wert in doubt as to what We have revealed unto thee, then ask those who have been reading the Book from before thee: the Truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord: so be in no wise of those in doubt." This ayat refers the Muslim "in doubt" to the authority of the biblical Holy Scripture. Abdul-Haqq writes: �The learned doctors of Islam are sadly embarrassed by this verse, referring the prophet as it does to the people of the Book who would solve his doubts� (Abdul-Haqq, A. A. (1980). Sharing Your Faith With A Muslim. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers. As cited in Geisler, N.L. (1999). Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group). According to the logic of this verse, the biblical Scripture was undistorted in the 7th century at the time of the Quran's creation. Then one must recognize that the current text is also correct, since we use manuscripts written over several centuries prior to the Quran.

Textual criticism of the New Testament has achieved outstanding breakthroughs in the 20th century. Currently, there are over 2,328 manuscripts and manuscript fragments in Greek, coming to us from the first three centuries of Christianity. The most ancient New Testament manuscript, a part of the Gospel of John 18:31-33, 37-38, is the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, dated 117-138 in the era of the reign of emperor Hadrian. Adolf Deissmann acknowledges the possibility of the emergence of this papyrus even under the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117). It is preserved in Manchester. Another ancient New Testament manuscript is the Papyrus Bodmer, P75. The 102 surviving pages contain the texts of the Gospels of Luke and John. "The editors, Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, date this copy to between 175 and 225 A.D. It is thus the earliest surviving known copy of the Gospel according to Luke available today and one of the earliest of the Gospel according to John" (Bruce M. Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. p. 58). This precious manuscript is located in Geneva.

Uncial script on parchment: leather codices with uncial script, (in Latin uncia means inch) letters without sharp corners and broken lines. This script is distinguished by its great refinement and precision. Each letter is disconnected. There are 362 uncial manuscripts of the New Testament. The most ancient of these codices (Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus) have already been mentioned.

Scholars complemented this impressive collection of ancient New Testament manuscripts with the New Testament text, which consisted of 36,286 excerpts of the Holy Scripture of the New Testament found in the works of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church from the first through fourth centuries. This text is lacking only 11 verses.

Scholars of textual criticism in the 20th century did a tremendous job on the collation of all�several thousands of�New Testament manuscripts and identified all textual discrepancies caused by scribal error. An evaluation and typologization was performed. Precise criteria for determining a correct variant were established. For those familiar with this rigorous scientific work, it is obvious that allegations of the distortion of the current holy text of the New Testament are unfounded. In terms of the number of ancient manuscripts and the brevity of time separating the earliest surviving text from the original, no one work of antiquity can be compared with the New Testament.

Accusations that the Bible's text is distorted are puzzling. How could it actually have been done? How could Christians and Hebrews have come together to do this? Everyone knows the degree of their mutual [doctrinal�Ed.] alienation. And yet both Christians and Jews use one and the same canonical text of the Old Testament. Furthermore, the entire New Testament was preserved in the Chester Beatty Papyri, composed in approximately 250 A.D.

It is inconceivable to accept that under the conditions that existed in Christian society, hundreds of exemplars of the New Testament text were miscopied for the purpose of distortion.

On the Monotheism of Islam

Historians and religious scholars regard the three "Abrahamic" religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as monotheistic religions. For the researcher, the doctrinal principles that representatives of each of these three religions formulate are sufficient. However, on a theological level, the insufficiency of such a formal approach becomes clear. Monotheism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for true religion. Only a religion that has Divine revelation as a source has the true and spiritually accurate doctrine concerning God. Christianity not only maintains that God is the living, absolute source, "the only true God" (John 17:3; 1 Thes. 1:9; cf. John 5:20), but also teaches thoroughly and in depth of the nature of God as without beginning, without end, and of a perfect Spirit. The chief characteristic of the Divine nature is love. "God is love" (1 John 4:16). These words of the apostle contain the principal idea of the New Testament as the good news of salvation. The ineffable goodness of God created the world. The Lord housed man in paradise. Even after the Fall, God continued to love mankind. The greatness of God's love was revealed when the incarnate God died a most agonizing death for us. Christians know from not only the Holy Scripture, but also through the power of spiritual experience, that God is all-knowing and all-wise. The apostle says: "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13).

God knows not only all that has happened, and all that is, but he has also perfect knowledge of the future. The mirror of the supreme Wisdom of God is the universe which He created, astounding man with its extraordinary complexity, beauty, and harmony. God demonstrates his ineffable Wisdom also in the dispensation of our salvation. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out" (Rom. 11:33).

�True religion is not limited by the demand of worship for the Creator. Its ultimate goal is the spiritual unity of man with God.�

True religion is not limited by the demand of worship for the Creator. Its ultimate goal is the spiritual unity of man with God. The Savior speaks about this in a prayer to his Father before his suffering on the cross: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" (John 17:21).

From the aforementioned characteristics of the Divine follows the concept of true, Christian monotheism. There can be only one all-powerful and all-just God.

The concept of God in Islam does not have a source of divine revelation. It developed on the basis of ancient Arabic religion. The word �Allah� was used in the polytheistic pantheon of Arabs to denote �God�: Allah (al - the definite article; ilah - god). Among the pagan Arabs, prior to their adoption of Islam, Allah was the supreme lunar deity, worshipped in north and central Arabia. The father of Muhammed, who was a pagan, was named Abdullah ("Servant of Allah").

In pre-Islamic times, the crescent moon was the symbol of the worship of the moon-god among the Arabs. This is confirmed by archeological evidence. The crescent moon was carried over as the main symbol of Islam.

Arabs of the Syrian desert called the wife of Allah as Al-lat, and in the south of central Arabia, Al-�Uzz�. In other areas of Arabia, they, along with Manat, were worshipped as the daughters of Allah. This genetic trail was preserved in the Quran. There is mention of this in the 53rd surah: "Have ye seen Lat, and �Uzza, and another, the third (goddess), Manat? What! For you the male sex, and for Him, the female? Behold, such would be indeed a division most unfair!" (53:19-22).

In Islam, Allah is a created religious image by the human consciousness. He does not express the real almighty divine personhood. Consequently, monotheism in Islam is imagined. In a number of places in the Quran, he is endowed with intrinsically human characteristics and traits. Allah says:

• "Those who reject Our signs, We shall soon cast into the fire: as often as their skins are roasted through, We shall change them for fresh skins, that they may taste the penalty" (4:56);
• "...There is no help Except from God, the Exalted, the Wise: that He might cut off a fringe of the Unbelievers or expose them to infamy, and they should then be turned back, frustrated of their purpose: (3: 126�127);
• "The Hypocrites�they think they are over-reaching God, but He will over-reach them" (4:142);
• "And (the unbelievers) plotted and planned, and God too planned, and the best of planners is God" (3:54);
• �Many are the Jinns and men we have made for Hell: they have hearts wherewith they understand not, eyes wherewith they see not, and ears wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle,�nay more misguided: for they are heedless (of warning)� (7:179).

What a great difference! Christianity teaches that God "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4), while Islam maintains that Allah created many people for Gehenna.

The idea of monotheism, (tawhid, from the verb wahhada�to reckon something as one) was formulated in the Quran in several surahs. For example, in the 16th surah, "The Bee": "For We assuredly sent amongst every people an apostle, (with the Command), "serve God, and eschew evil" (16:36). In the terminology of the sharia, anything people worship except for Allah is "taghut". Since Islam does not know of direct revelation, nor the holy Manifestation of God to the world, nor the unification of man with God on the foundation of love, its monotheism is imagined, formalistic and abstract, requiring not that man change himself or his way of life, but only worship and daily prayer.

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Translation by Tatiana Ozerova

St Paisios of Mount Athos: 'There's a war on today, a holy war. I must be on the front lines.'

"Today's situation can be resisted only spiritually, not by worldly means..."

St. Paisios of Mt Athos (commemorated July 12)

From an Orthodox Church Bulletin comes this 'word' (scroll to bottom) from the newly glorified St. Paisios the Athonite, which is directly applicable not only to the assault on the Faith, the Family and the Church by secularism, but also to the challenge and threat of Islam.

How many Orthodox Christians are so poorly grounded in their faith as to believe Islam is wholly compatible with Christianity? One of the reasons I wrote my book was to warn those like the young woman in my former parish (whom I write about in my Epilogue), who sincerely believed that because Muslims venerate Jesus, therefore they are virtually one with us. When she began dating a Muslim man, she was scandalized by our priest warning her that if she married a Muslim, she would be denying Jesus Christ and committing apostasy. She could not be dissuaded, and soon turned away from Christ and became a Muslim.

I recall another case of an Orthodox woman of Lebanese descent (whom I have known for many years) with whom I had a shocking discussion following the Divine Liturgy one Sunday. She was relating her views on the historical procession of the monotheistic religions, from Judaism to Christianity to Islam, and asserted that this sequential ordering reflected progressively higher forms of knowledge, with Islam representing the highest and most sublime form of knowledge! This due to Muhammad receiving supposedly divine revelations of the literal words of God.

Apparently this woman failed to be touched by the great mystery of the ultimate revelation: the very Word and Logos of God becoming incarnate, or by our divine calling to be children of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, acquiring the Mind of Christ, the Mind of God Himself. This poor woman, through listening to ideas "in the air" and assenting with her fallen reasoning had given herself over to an anti-Christ false "gnosis" which leads straight to apostasy.

The bizarre cognitive dissonance alone of an Orthodox Christian putting forth such a view was bad enough, but to hear someone say such a brazen and blasphemous heresy immediately after receiving Holy Communion � the very Body and Blood of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ � was one of the most disturbing moments of my Christian life.

Truly the enemy of souls is hard at work, striving however he can to lead people into spiritual delusion. As the Lord teaches us, Satan is the "father of lies" (JN 8:44) and the multifaceted heresy of Islam and our modern world's affirmation of it and all other religions as equally valid paths to God are among his most successful deceptions.

Satan seeks to increase his harvest of souls, drawing as many into perdition as he can. He uses governments, culture, comfort, affluence, political correctness, the desire to be "nice", to get along, and to be liked, to make us timid and ashamed to proclaim and live our faith. He is quite happy and content with Christians who remain silent and do nothing, for, as St Gregory the Theologian warned, "By your silence you can betray God."


But our calling, our task, is to become fully Christian, to become in reality � "ontologically" � what we already are by grace through Baptism and Chrismation. In the words of Fr Seraphim Rose:

Christian compromise in thought and word and negligence in deed have opened the way to the triumph of the forces of the absurd, of Satan, of Antichrist. The present age of absurdity is the just reward of Christians who have failed to be Christians.

It is futile, in fact it is precisely absurd, to speak of reforming society, of changing the path of history, of emerging into an age beyond absurdity, if we have not Christ in our hearts; and if we do have Christ in our hearts, nothing else matters.

Now one cannot be a half-hearted Christian, but only entirely or not at all.

Let us all respond to Fr Seraphim's stirring challenge, and the following words from the newly glorified St Paisios of Mt Athos. Let us do what we can, with God's help.


Elder Paisios: Defend the Christian Faith, the Family, the Church
OrthodoxNet.com

"Today there are many who strive to corrupt everything: the family, the youth, the Church. In our day it's a true witness to speak up for one's people, for the state is waging war against divine law. Its laws are directed against the Law of God.

"Today they're trying to destroy faith, and for the edifice of faith to fall they quietly pull out one stone, then another. But we're all responsible for the destruction; not just those who destroy, but we who see how faith is being undermined and make no effort to strengthen it. As a result the seducers are emboldened to create even greater difficulties for us, and their rage against the Church and monastic life increases.

"Today's situation can be resisted only spiritually, not by worldly means. The storm will continue to rage a bit, will throw all the flotsam, everything unnecessary, onto the shore, and then the situation will become clearer. Some will receive their reward, while others will have to pay their debts.

There's a war on today, a holy war.

I must be on the front lines.

"Today there are many who strive to corrupt everything: the family, the youth, the Church. In our day it's a true witness to speak up for one's people, for the state is waging war against divine law. Its laws are directed against the Law of God.

"But we are responsible for not letting the enemies of the Church corrupt everything. Though I've heard even priests say, "Don't get involved in that. It's none of your business!" If they had reached such a non-striving condition through prayer I would kiss their feet. But no! They're indifferent because they want to please everyone and live in comfort.

"Indifference is unacceptable even for laymen, and all the more so for the clergy. An honest, spiritual man doesn't do anything with indifference. "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully," says the Prophet Jeremiah (Jer 48:10). There's a war on today, a holy war. I must be on the front lines. There are so many Marxists, so many Masons, so many Satanists and assorted others! So many possessed, anarchists and seduced ones! I see what awaits us, and it's painful for me. The bitter taste of human pain is in my mouth."

HT: The Holy War

Elder Paisios was a monastic of Mount Athos. An ascetic, he was known by his visitors for his gentle manner and acceptance of those who came to receive his advice, counsel, and blessing. His words of counsel continue to be published.

(Originally posted at Facing Islam on July 6, 2014) 

On the Sunday of All Saints of North America

The Second Sunday after Pentecost (which is the Sunday after All Saints) each local Orthodox Church celebrates the Synaxis of All Saints of their particular land. This humble sermon presents a compelling case for a uniquely American saint, the beloved struggler, writer and ascetic, Hieromonk Seraphim Rose.

by Jesse Dominick, St Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary
Pravoslavie � June 14, 2015

Synaxis of All Saints of North America

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Last week the Church celebrated the great feast of All Saints�in which every Saint, known and unknown is commemorated�and this Sunday we commemorate specifically all the Saints of Russia, while especially in America are celebrated the Feast of All Saints of North America.

We have been blessed with several great Saints in our land�St. Herman who first brought Holy Orthodoxy to this continent from Russia in the 1700's, St. Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow who founded our St. Tikhon's Monastery, St. Nikolai Velimirovich, who taught and reposed at our Seminary, and St. John Maximovitch, the wonderworking bishop of San Francisco, among several others. But there is one person in particular that I would like to talk about today�the monk and priest Fr. Seraphim Rose.

Although he is not officially canonized, Fr. Seraphim is the first truly American saint. Our other great saints came to us as Apostles from Orthodox lands or were born in America into Orthodox families, but Fr. Seraphim rose up from America's own womb and religious and cultural heritage to blaze for us a trail to the very heart of Orthodox Christianity�and that heart is Christ Himself. The Saints are those who unite themselves to Christ and reveal Him to the world. Fr. Seraphim opened for us the door to American sanctity�he proved that the American soul, even as it is molded in a wholly un-Orthodox and increasingly un-Christian atmosphere, can be refashioned after the image and likeness of Christ; and it is this image that we can see in Fr. Seraphim. And he is especially relevant to us because he lived quite near to our own times: he was born in 1934, and reposed in 1982. Our struggles of modern American life were also his struggles, and in him we see one who turned only to Christ for rest from these labors.

Fr. Seraphim's family was not particularly religious, but in middle school he was baptized and confirmed in the Methodist Church of his own accord. However, he also possessed a great mind and his interest in science and philosophy soon replaced his interest in Christianity. He came to reject the notion of God because he could not prove the existence of God through science or philosophy�he had fallen prey to the lie of the western world. He later explained it this way: �Our age has been taught to believe in nothing higher than the human mind, and in the ideas of that mind; that is why the conflicts of our day are �ideological�, and why Truth is not in them. For Truth is only in living communion with living Truth, Christ; apart from Him there is no life, no Truth.� But he had not yet found this Living Truth. 

I'm sure we all know this struggle�we are surrounded by people who proudly proclaim themselves atheists because they claim there is no evidence of the existence of God! Using their own reasoning they cannot make sense of the claims of Christianity�that God became man and was crucified and rose again for us�that we are united to this death and resurrection in baptism, and that we receive the very Body and Blood of Christ Himself in Communion. The spirit of the air tells us that if our minds cannot comprehend such claims then we must reject them�and even those of us in the Orthodox Church are not immune to this danger.

And in his youth, Fr. Seraphim was one of these people. Under the influence of science and philosophy he rejected Christianity, and he turned his attention to eastern philosophies and religions, which were so fashionable in his times and still are today. He lived in San Francisco in the time of the beatniks and the hippies and for a time he engaged fully in these lifestyles. Although these are no longer prominent movements, their influence is certainly still strongly with us. We know, for instance, that the sexual revolution set in motion at that time has rolled steadily ahead, ever gaining more steam; and before finding Holy Orthodoxy, Fr. Seraphim engaged in a rather hedonistic lifestyle. But he had a great desire for truth, and so he also studied Zen Buddhism and Taoism, but there he did not find the truth. Because of this he knew great suffering. He was able to see through the lie of modern American society, but his mind could not see the answer. He had no idea what his life was about. In his despair he indulged in drink and licentious behavior, and whatever he did, he did to the extreme. One night, in a drunken rage he began screaming at God and daring Him to kill him, just so he could know whether or not God was real�so great was His desire for truth, and the suffering he experienced for not yet knowing it.

Eventually his search led him into the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco. Through his long search and his great suffering his heart had become supple and in his heart he knew that he was home. In the grandeur of our Orthodox worship his heart found what his head had been unable to discover�the ultimate Truth. In his Buddhist and Taoist days he believed that the idea of a personal God was unsophisticated, but now he knew the Truth precisely as a Person�Jesus Christ. Orthodoxy is a supremely Personal faith�this is why we adorn our churches with icons�these are persons who show forth to the world the Person of Jesus Christ, according to whose image we are all created. The Saints are those who know this truth and fulfill the human potential to become like our Lord Jesus Christ.

Whereas once he trusted wholly in his mind, now he could say: �When I became Christian I voluntarily crucified my mind,� that is, he willingly submitted his mind to the wisdom of the Church. He no longer demanded that the logic of his mind be satisfied, but rather, in his heart he accepted the timeless truths of the Orthodox Church. He further stated: �And all the crosses that I bear have been only a source of joy for me. I have lost nothing and gained everything.� This word, of crucifying his mind, and taking up his crosses can be a great lesson and inspiration for us. Fr. Seraphim is a saint�precisely because he learned to live through his heart. He also spoke of this as suffering Orthodoxy, and he taught that God revealed Himself to man through a suffering heart. This is how Fr. Seraphim had come to know Christ in that Russian cathedral�his heart had been prepared and was open to the Truth.

What we see in Fr. Seraphim is dedicated and earnest repentance. Upon turning to Christ he immediately gave up his life of drunkenness and debauchery and false philosophies. He put it down and never once looked back. I find this quite simply amazing�he turned from the pleasures of the flesh with steadfast resolve. Fr. Seraphim accepted without questioning the teachings of the Church and his heart burned with great desire for Christ. Because of this He drew ever nearer to Him. Once he had suffered by not knowing the truth, and now he suffered in the service of the truth. He strove with all his heart to destroy the old man�the sinful man�and to live again to Christ. We heard of this in the Gospel today�blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. This is not talking about moping around and being depressed, but rather a blessed mourning for our sins. When our sins cause us pain of heart then we can truly turn from them and be open to Christ. If we do not know this pain of heart, as did Fr. Seraphim, then we must begin now to beg God for this blessed mourning, for this suffering Orthodoxy of the heart.

There is much I could have said about Fr. Seraphim, but I think it is important to focus on his struggles that so closely mirror ours. He shows us that modern American life can be safely navigated in the saving enclosure of the Orthodox Church, with the guidance of our Lord Jesus and Christ and His All-Holy Spirit. Our struggle is not futile�our minds do not have to keep us from knowing the Truth and from knowing joy and repentance. It is still possible to be led by our hearts, and Fr. Seraphim is the proof of this. And the whole Orthodox world joins us in glorifying him. 

In Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, on Mt. Athos, and elsewhere, Fr. Seraphim is a well-known and well-loved modern holy elder. His books and icons are sold and he is revered as a true guide for modern man. Fr. Seraphim is a great light shining from America to the rest of the world, especially shining on his own America. He is a beautiful jewel in the crown of American Orthodoxy, and he shows us the path to attaining our own crown�the crown of victory in Christ.

Through the prayers of our holy Father Seraphim and all the Saints of North America may our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon us and save us. Amen.

Christians in the Middle East: Martyred by Muslims in their Homeland, Disdained by Christians in America

In an early 2014 article by Michael Brendan Dougherty titled, 'The World�s Most Ancient Christian Communities are being Destroyed � and No One Cares', I was struck in particular by this brief quote, which sums up the problem in a memorable manner:

�The victims are �too Christian� to excite the Left, and �too foreign� to excite the Right.� �French philosopher Regis Debray

Quite so. I might amend Debray's observation to read that the Christian victims are "too Eastern" to excite American Protestant/Evangelical Christians to action. Though, as an Orthodox Christian myself, I am tempted to charge that the Christian victims of Islamic jihad are actually "too Christian" altogether.

Rod Dreher recently offered some reflections on this phenomenon following an encounter he had with a Bible-believer, which I hope American Baptists, Evangelicals and assorted others of the 33,000-or-so Protestant denominations (World Christian Encyclopedia by Barrett, Kurian, Johnson; Oxford Univ Press, 2nd edition, 2001) will ponder:

Over the weekend, I got into a brief Twitter exchange with a pastor of a nondenominational �Bible church� (as if all churches aren�t Bible churches) in Texas who said that I am not a Christian, because Orthodox and Catholics are not Christian. I pointed out to him that Christianity did not begin with the Reformation, but then decided to block the guy on Twitter, because the last thing I wanted to do was get into an exchange with a guy like that. 

An hour later, I was standing in our Orthodox vespers service, thinking about that guy and smiling. There we were, praying in a church that can trace itself in an unbroken line back to the apostles. We chanted Psalms and read passages aloud from the Old Testament. We sang hymns commemorating the Council of Nicaea (325), and its victory over the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Jesus. As in every vespers service, we sang the hymn �O Joyful Light,� which is the oldest surviving hymn from antiquity, having been composed in the late third or early fourth century; tradition says it was written by a bishop on his way to martyrdom. He didn�t write it for a praise band. 

And I thought about all the Christians of the Middle East being exiled and martyred today for their faith in Jesus Christ. These Christians are almost entirely Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic, or members of one of the Nestorian churches. Whatever their communion, their ancestors were worshiping Jesus Christ as God when the ancestors of nearly all of us northern Europeans were praying to pagan gods. 

And yet, to this fundamentalist Protestant in Texas, these people are not Christian.

Rod's musings on the Orthodox Vespers service hit some of the myriad highlights as to why Orthodoxy deserves to recognized as authentic Christianity. While there are some Nestorian groups to be sure, it is illuminating to consider two recent articles by Dr. Anton Vrame of the Greek Archdiocese on the Assyrians and the Armenians, as well as an affirming "Amen" to the canonization by the Coptic Orthodox Church of the 21 Coptic Christian Martyrs of Libya, written by Fr. Lawrence Farley, as hopeful signs. Out of the darkness of Islamic persecution of Christians is shining the light of true Christian faith, showing there is far more uniting many of the Eastern Christian communions than the often circumstantial historical anomalies which have separated us for centuries.


Perhaps Rod Dreher's Bible-believing Twitter correspondent would concede the points raised by Rod in his reflection above (though perhaps not, as he seemed to be possessed of a priori certainty that we Orthodox are "not Christian"). But somehow I suspect the fundamentalist's objections to us may focus more on such "non-Biblical" practices as the veneration of icons, church ecclesiology and hierarchy, calling priests "Father" (and bishops "Master!"), our veneration of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and so forth.

Though Rod makes several more essential points (read the whole post, by all means), he ultimately declined to take up the gauntlet in his post ("I have no interest in engaging in theological disputation here, and won�t.").

I have addressed some of these issues in an article of mine from 2013, and feel it is well worth re-posting here in its entirety, especially as it points out several fundamental theological deviations of Western Christians, and how that cripples their response to Muslim persecution of Orthodox, Copts and others today, actually predisposing them to implicitly side with the Muslim persecutors on theological grounds, and turn a blind eye to the plight of Eastern Christians.

_______

Islam's Hatred of Holy Icons � and what that means for Persecuted Eastern Christians

Orthodox Church Iconostasis in the West Bank desecrated by Muslims

Introduction

One of the great sorrows � after the church attacks, murders, abductions, rapes and forced conversions � caused by Islamic persecution of Christians, whether in our own day or in centuries past, must be the defilement of holy icons by Muslims. Indeed, it is highly probable that the iconoclast heresy which rocked Christianity in the seventh and eighth centuries was triggered or accelerated by the brutal and sudden rise of Islam after the death of Muhammad in 632A.D.

Islam and Iconoclasm

Islamic 'icon' of Muhammad
and archangel Gabriel.

Islam is strongly set against images of any kind, although one may encounter in rare Islamic books depictions of Muhammad and his earliest companions, or Muhammad being visited by the spirit-being supposed to be the archangel Gabriel. But when it comes to Christian images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints, Islam is the "icon smasher" extraordinaire. ("Icon smasher" is a literal translation of "iconoclast.")

In all the Christian lands conquered by Muslims from the seventh century onwards, when churches were not completely destroyed, they were converted into mosques and the holy images painted over, or, if they were panel icons, simply hacked into pieces and/or burned.

Islam's innate hatred of Christianity's holy images helps account for the recent push to re-convert all the Hagia Sophia churches of Turkey into mosques, including and especially the great Hagia Sophia of Constantinople (Istanbul) built by Justinian in 537A.D. In converting the Great Church into a museum, the original frescoes and mosaics began to be restored, revealing once again the holy images of Christ, His Most Pure Mother, and the Saints. This is a serious affront to the Islamic mind, thus with the re-Islamicization of Turkey, we see special emphasis on once again covering (or perhaps destroying) all Christian images, most perfectly accomplished in converting all the Hagia Sophia churches into mosques.

Protestantism and Iconoclasm

There is no small irony in the fact that Protestant Christians also tend to be iconoclastic, rejecting the holy images which the Christian Church had created, embraced and sanctified from the first century onwards. Though perhaps a justifiable reaction against Roman Catholic use of statues, the Protestant rejection of holy icons is in fact a theological error which limits and impoverishes Protestant theology and its grasp of the Incarnation, as well as its actual worship. 

(Orthodoxy does not accept the use of statues in its churches as they are too realistic, too much of this world. Icons, in contrast, are deliberately "other-worldly," and are often called "windows into heaven." Even when they depict historical events in the life of the Savior or the Saints, these events are "transfigured" with the uncreated light from beyond this world.)

Venerating an Icon

Orthodox converts from Protestantism are familiar with this issue, and are quick in grasping the essentials of proper icon use. �Worship is due to God alone,� the Church Fathers consistently affirm, whereas our veneration of an icon is imputed not to the wood and paint, but to the prototype in heaven. 

The Eastern Christian practice of making the sign of the Cross and bowing to kiss (venerate) icons is an essential physical aspect of Christian worship. Orthodox and Coptic Christians preserve intact the timeless certainty that worship to God must be performed by the entire person. Not with the mind alone, but with the body also do we show our love, adoration and worship of the Holy Trinity. 

Thus not only icons (which are visual and tactile), but incense (smell), prostrations and bows, and theologically rich hymnography (aural) according to the ancient rule of �Lex orandi, lex credendi� (St Vincent of Lerins) characterize traditional Christian worship.  

The pinnacle of Orthodox Christian worship is of course the receiving of the Holy Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Christ, which sanctifies our entire being through the apparently mundane sense of taste. Thus the psalmist exclaims,

Taste and see that the Lord is good! �(Psalm 33:8, LXX)

And the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us,

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. �(John 6:53-57)

The Greek word used for "eat" in these verses means literally to "gnaw" or "chew." No mere memorial or symbol here! Christ means that we are to literally eat His flesh and drink His blood.

Thus all the senses, �All one�s strength,� as well as the mind and heart are to be fully engaged in worshipping the God of All. This is the first and greatest commandment:

�You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.� �(Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37)

It was St John of Damascus in the eighth century who not merely defended the use of icons, but convincingly showed their necessity for Christian praxis, piety and worship. Because God the Word became Man and took on human form (literally becoming "enfleshed," which is what "incarnation" means), therefore He may be depicted in human form, as may His Most Holy Mother, the saints, and events in the life of Christ and His Church. The veneration of holy icons is thus a necessary and true aspect of authentic, timeless Christian worship.

This is so pure and simple a truth, that a child can grasp it. "Unless ye turn and become as little children..."  And children in the Orthodox Church naturally love and venerate the holy icons.

Just as the average home typically has many family photographs, so the Christian home should have holy images of the Family of God, the Church. Just as images are used in the secular world to teach, instruct, and depict historical events and heroes, so in the Church the holy icons present the Mystery of Faith in visual manner, yet, as stated above, in an other-worldly perspective, shining with an inner, transfigured light.

Tragically, by rejecting and denigrating Orthodox Christian iconography, Protestants are unwittingly siding with Islam, and implicitly denying the full meaning of the Incarnation.

The Islamification of the Bible

Protestantism commits a similar error in what Fr Stephen Freeman terms its "Islamification of Christianity." Protestantism has morphed the Bible into a sort of Christian Koran, as if God sent down the literal words of the Bible in direct revelation.

It is not the words of God which have been revealed to us. Rather it is Jesus Christ Himself, the Incarnate Logos, the Living Word of God, who is the most full and perfect revelation of God, "the image" � literally, in Greek, "icon" � "of the invisible God," as the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1:15.

All of sacred scripture testifies to Him, and was written by numerous different people, the Old Testament over a couple of thousand years, the New Testament over only a few decades after the Crucified, Risen and Glorified Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father.

NEWS FLASH: The Bible did not come down out of heaven fully formed.

In the same way, the Gospel is not properly a "book," nor is it even "four books." St Paul speaks of the gospel in his letters, which were written well before the four gospels were written or known to the Church at large. (It is thought likely that Mark wrote his gospel � generally accepted to be the first of the four � around 70AD, nearly twenty years after 1 Thessalonians, the earliest of Paul's letters, written ca. 50-51AD. However, some scholars suggest that when Paul writes of "my gospel" in Romans 2:16, that he may be referring to the Gospel according to Luke, who traveled with Paul on his later missionary journeys, likely compiling and composing his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles during this time.)

The Gospel is the saving good news of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, in the flesh, bringing salvation and new life to mankind, enabling us to become "children of God" through Him (1 John 3:1), even to the point of becoming "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).  In the theological language of the Church, this is termed theosis, or divinization. As St Athanasius of Alexandria boldly put it: "God became man so that man might become god."

The four gospels are thus the God-inspired accounts embraced by the Church within her Canon of Faith which properly testify to the Truth of The Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Living Word brings us the words of eternal life (John 6:68, 17:8), and it is the Word made flesh Himself  Who brings everything to us. Nothing is sent through an intermediary. Furthermore, by uniting us to Himself, he transforms us in an ontological manner. If we abide in Him, we are no longer of this world, just as He is not of this world (John 17:6, 14-18).

Jesus Christ is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" (John 14:6).  He is "the Light that was to come into the world" (John 1:9, 8:12), not the Bible. The Logos did not become incarnate to bring us a book � although we certainly rely on this Holy Book for the record of His life-giving words. And truly, all scripture is inspired by God and "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). However, we must recall that when St Paul speaks of "the scriptures," he is referring to what we call the Old Testament. The New Testament did not yet exist.

The Scriptures are indeed God-inspired, and the Scriptures come from out of the womb of the Church. It is the Church which formed the New Testament, led and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is part of the great synergia between God and Man. Thus we are not merely "People of the Book" (as Islam condescendingly calls Christians and Jews), but rather members of the Church, members of the theanthropic Body of Christ. And the Church is the Bride of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul even calls the Church "the Pillar and Ground of the Truth" (1 Timothy 3:15).

The Logos became incarnate to bring Himself  to us, to unite us to Himself, and to usher us into Eternal Life in unending communion with the Holy Trinity, as Jesus prayed to His Father:

...That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. �(John 17:21-23)

Islam distorts the meaning of the word "Gospel," positing that Jesus delivered the Injil (the Koranic term for the Gospel) as a book of God's words to his disciples (in a manner similar to how Muhammad supposedly delivered the Koran).

(Interestingly, Islam teaches that Jesus' disciples subsequently distorted his message in the Injil, which is why Allah sent Muhammad to correct everything, which is eerily similar to what Protestants teach happened between 100A.D. and the Reformation, that true Christianity disappeared, only to be recovered by the Protestant Reformation.  This is an alarming parallel indeed...)

Therefore, muddled Protestant theology, cut off from the sources of traditional Christianity, can be seen to be Islamified both in its distorted view of the Bible and the Gospel, as well as in its rejection of the holy icons.

Eastern Christians are 'True' Christians

The sad result is that Western Protestant Christians, though well-intentioned and sincere in so many ways in their faith, tend to have a very difficult time seeing Eastern Christians as "true" Christians. (I am deliberately leaving aside here any discussion of Chalcedonian vs. non-Chalcedonian communions...)

I remember ten years ago or so, being very saddened at meeting a young woman who was zealous to do missionary work in Russia because, as she put it, "All they have over there is the Orthodox Church."

Another young woman returning from a mission trip to Romania expressed her confusion to me as to why the impoverished Romanians she had met were so zealous to donate what little resources they had for the building and beautification of Orthodox churches there. She wanted desperately to liberate them from what she saw as false piety, and help them "know Jesus." I know she meant well, and is very faithful in her own way, but the Lord's lesson of the Widow's Mites was lost on her, and the Jesus she wanted to introduce the Romanians to was the American Jesus, the one who hates the holy icons, beauty, "high church" services, and everything Orthodox.

This unfortunate ignorance is a persistent affliction blinding American Protestants to the fullness of the Christian Faith and to their own destiny and calling in Christ. The Lord loves His Bride, the Orthodox Church, which is why He calls her to suffer for His sake, and why He is blessing the Russian Church to flourish in our own time, in accordance with the mysterious prophecy of St Seraphim of Sarov.

The Effect of Iconoclasm on Eastern Christians

With this background, I would like to express my concern that the innate rejection of Holy Orthodoxy and Eastern Christianity by Protestants may be a major factor in suppressing outcry in the United States against Muslim persecution of Christians in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and throughout the Islamic world.

In extreme cases, Protestants even condemn Eastern Christians (and Roman Catholics) as idolators because of their use of holy images, and therefore may secretly consider them as deserving of the "scourge of Islam" being visited upon them.  (As an historical aside, from the time of St Sophronius of Jerusalem in 637A.D., who called Christians to repent over their sins which had brought the Muslim attackers upon them, Eastern Christians have retained this sense of the rise of Islam as being allowed by God as a chastisement.)

With a double irony, the false "Prosperity Gospel" so popular in the United States actually fosters a sense within Evangelical circles that material prosperity (and lack of being persecuted) is proof of validation by God. This too is an Islamification of Christianity, being analogous to how the early Muslims interpreted Muhammad's battlefield successes, and after his death their own rapid expansion, as proof of God's favor and the truth of their religion. The Prosperity Gospel can ultimately lead to a condescending attitude towards Eastern Christians, and as with Protestant iconoclasm, suppresses U.S. support for Christians suffering under Muslim persecution.  In any case, Jesus clearly told us we would be persecuted if we follow Him, and he never promised earthly prosperity or glory.

We are seeing signs now that this unintentional suppression of concern and intervention for Eastern Christians suffering under Muslim persecution is beginning to change, as excellent organizations like International Christian Concern, Morning Star News, and others, offer broad reporting and support inclusive of Orthodox, Coptic, Assyrian, Chaldean and Catholic Christians. Important texts like Raymond Ibrahim's new book, Crucified Again - Exposing Islam's New War On Christians,  Mark Durie's The Third Choice, and others, help convey the causes, breadth and continuity of Islamic persecution of all Christians, and foster an informed concern especially for Eastern Christians in their fourteen-century long endurance of Islamic jihad and domination.

We may even hope that God may work through this wave of Islamic persecution of Eastern Christians to awaken and draw many souls into the fold of the timeless, unchanging Orthodox Christian Faith.

Gone is the Glory of Constantinople�

"... but the glory of the Christians shall not end so long as they hold fast to faith in Jesus Christ and carry Him with them wherever they wander, wherever they are taken, wherever they settle. Jesus alone is their glory."

by Fr Georges Massouh, Notes on Arab Orthodoxy � May 2015

OCP Media � May 19, 2015

Jesus announced that the worship of God is not tied to a specific place as God is not contained by space and He cannot be bound in an exclusive place toward which those who want to be in His presence must pray or make pilgrimage. Thus when the Samaritan woman asked Him, �Our fathers worshiped on this mountain (Gerezim in Samaria), and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship,� Jesus answered her, �Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father� the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth� (John 4:20-23).

God is present in every place and there is no place on the face of this earth from which God is absent. God is present where His people gathers in His name. The Apostle Paul affirms this when he says, �I shall dwell in them and walk among them. I shall be their God and they shall be My people� (2 Corinthians 6:16). God is a wanderer who does not settle in one place. He does not require people to come to Him in a specific place. He comes to them whenever they call upon Him and seek Him.

In this context, Saint Basil the Great (d. 379) comments on Jesus� words to the Samaritan woman and says that worship is no longer tied to a specific geographical location since the Holy Spirit has become the �place of worship�. Christ also is the place of worship and the Gospel of Saint John clearly speaks of the end of worship in the temple of Jerusalem since Jesus Himself is the new �temple� and there is no need for a temple built in a city or on a mountain.

When the Jews asked Jesus for a sign, He answered them, ��Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up� � But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them� (John 2:18-22). Jesus came. He became man. He destroyed death. He fulfilled the prophecies. He abrogated Judaism. He ended exclusivity. He rejected being closed off. He fought racism. He established a new covenant. He made everything new.

Therefore Christianity does not believe in holy lands as opposed to non-holy lands. All the earth is called to holiness through the effort of those living upon it to sanctify themselves. Holiness belongs to humans, not to land. Man, not dust, is holy. Man � not mountains, not lakes, not rivers, not plains � is called to eternal life. Man � and not any other created thing � is the image of God, called to be His likeness. Man is the highest value, for the sake of which God created everything, not vice versa.

However, Christianity is a religion that believes in the incarnation and thus in the connection between faith and bearing witness and the local church which exists in a specific geographic space. The Epistle to Diognetus affirms the connection between these two things. This epistle was composed in the late 2nd century by an unknown Christian author for a pagan named Diognetus who held an important position in the Roman Empire and had asked the writer for a letter to explain Christianity and Christians and especially to explain the God of the Christians, how they glorify Him, and why Christians do not fear dying for their faith. The style of the Epistle shows that its author was a cultured person skilled in the Greek language and rhetoric in addition to theology.

The Epistle says, 

For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life�  

But while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast, and follow the native customs in dress and food and the other arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvelous, and confessedly contradicts expectation. 

They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners; they bear their share in all things as citizens, and they endure all hardships as strangers. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is foreign.

Gone is the glory of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians. Gone is the glory of Constantinople, the great capital of Orthodoxy. Gone is the glory of Cappadocia, Nicea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Smyrna, Rusafa and Palmyra� but the glory of the Christians shall not end so long as they hold fast to faith in Jesus Christ and carry Him with them wherever they wander, wherever they are taken, wherever they settle. Jesus alone is their glory.

Source:

Freedom, Provocation and Targets

The Muslim predisposition towards jihad means �no cartoons required.�

by Ralph H. Sidway

The ultimate provocation:

A Coptic Orthodox monk makes the Sign of the Cross.

The recent Muslim jihad attack at a Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland Texas has generated strong reactions across the political spectrum. Four of us in my church recently had a fairly rigorous discussion of some of the issues involved, with two believing the cartoon contest needlessly provoked Muslim anger, and myself and one other siding with a strong commitment to freedom of speech/expression. You can�t escape this debate. It is literally everywhere, and will likely grow in significance in the days ahead.

Although there are many expected responses along partisan lines, there have been some surprises on both the conservative and liberal ends of the teeter-totter. For example, some Fox News personalities have openly blamed Pamela Geller, the �Draw Muhammad� event coordinator, for provoking the jihad attack. (Ms. Geller has written an articulate defense, which has been published as an op-ed by TIME, Inc.)

On the flip side, MSNBC�s �All In� host Chris Hayes, in a somewhat torturous apologetic, advocated for being provocative when it flushes out extremist would-be murderers:

My feeling, though, in the wake of this, is that there�s some part of me that feels that if the thing you�re worried about is doing an event that will provoke two people rolling up in body armor and automatic weapons trying to murder people, then it actually weirdly is important that you do that� I don�t care if it was a provocation, if what it�s provoking is attempted murder, because I want to live in a society that that is essentially not okay and not tolerated.

Ryan Mauro of The Clarion Project ably cuts through the fog of words surrounding the Garland Texas jihad attack:

The media's focus on the Mohammed drawings contest misses the mark. Whether or not one agrees with holding the event is irrelevant as to why this attack happened. It happened because of the desire to find a target; not because of the target itself.

Mauro is absolutely correct: when you�re a Muslim striving to follow as perfectly as possible the Koran and the example of Muhammad, the dar-al-Harb is filled with targets. With ISIS commanding Muslims in America to wage jihad against non-Muslims, there will be some takers who will do just that.

For Americans and Western Europeans, cartoons of Muhammad seem to have become the flashpoint of the �clash of civilizations.� But for Christians living in the Islamic world, their very being is all the provocation Muslims need. Witness:

• �Arab Spring� Muslim gangs go through buses in Cairo, Egypt checking the wrists of the passengers. Those with the cross tattooed on their wrists � a Coptic tradition � are summarily killed;

• 21 Coptic Christians in Libya are beheaded because they refuse to deny Jesus Christ and convert to Islam, or to pay the jizya;

• 30 Ethiopian Christians are shot or beheaded for refusing to deny Jesus Christ;

• The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia declares that all Christians must be expelled from the Arabian peninsula and all churches destroyed;

• 100 years after the Armenian Genocide (which taken in the larger context of Ottoman persecution saw 4 million Christians killed by their Muslim overlords and neighbors between 1894 and 1922) we are witnessing yet another Muslim genocide against Christians.

Christians themselves in the Islamic world are � by their very being, by their very presence � all the provocation Muslims need to slaughter them. No cartoons required.

Christians in the Islamic world cannot openly wear or make the Sign of the Cross without it provoking Muslims.  They don�t even have to do that much, they just have to be breathing. And now with Muslim desecration of Christian grave sites, they don�t even have to be doing that. 

When one has studied the phenomenon of Muslim attacks against non-Muslims for a while, one gets the sense that the term �provocation� is completely inaccurate and inappropriate. There is a better word which describes the Muslim pathology: �predisposition.�

The extent to which a Muslim grows in devout observance of Islam is the extent to which he/she is likely to follow more and more literally the commands in the Koran and the example of Muhammad. Devout observance leads to the predisposition to take action against non-Muslim targets which the Muslim believes offends his religion. 

In Muslim majority nations, this predisposition becomes so intense that the mere presence of Christians or other non-Muslims cannot be tolerated at all. This very principle is clearly expressed in the Koran:

And fight them until there is no more fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone. � Sura 8.39

Spirituality is often mixed with paradox. Most Westerners cannot understand that, and therefore cannot accept that the more devout a Muslim becomes, the more likely he is to become a jihadi. 

It would seem that God is not without a sense of irony, for in the Islamic world, as we have seen this tsunami of Muslim genocidal persecution of Christians, we have also seen immensely powerful examples of heightened Christian faith. 

Rather than leading Christians to fear, hatred and retaliation (though one can find some examples of those humanly understandable reactions also), the Muslim slaughter of Christians has provoked (there�s that word again) responses of absolutely divine, Christ-like behavior, with Coptic, Iraqi, Nigerian and Niger Christians forgiving and praying for the Muslims who are killing their families. These examples are the very definition of true freedom: freedom from hatred, fear, and even death itself. 

Whereas the Muslim jihadis are slaves. Slaves of rage, bloodlust, and the example of their warlord prophet. Slaves of Allah, who commands them to kill.

For those who can slow down their own reactive thought processes and ponder this dichotomy between the evil, murderous behavior of devout Muslims, and the prayerful, sacrificial and forgiving response of the Christians they are persecuting, it should be clear that one of these two paths is patently false, and the other is amazingly, shiningly true.

With this in mind, it then becomes sadly clear that the future will only bring more proofs of the falsehood of Islam, in the form of more murderous Muslim jihad attacks against all manner of �provocations.�  (May the future also bring more proofs of true Christian witness as well.)

For the devout jihadi, the entire world is filled with targets. As with the Muslim persecution of Christians, no cartoons are needed.

May Christians Kill?

Questions on War and Defense from an Orthodox Christian Perspective

A significant study for our dark age of global Islamic jihad and mass martyrdom of Christians, abridged from Fr. LeMaster's book, The Goodness of God�s Creation.

by Priest Philip LeMasters, Pravmir � May 5, 2015

 In light of the human vocation for growth in holiness and communion with God, how should Christians respond to the prospect of warfare?

Eastern Christianity does not view morality in fundamentally legal terms or within the context of abstract philosophy, but as part of the holistic vocation of humanity for theosis: participation by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity. Hence, the Orthodox vision must be considered on its own terms, and not distorted by the imposition of Western categories. The question for the Orthodox is not, �What approach to warfare is most persuasive rationally or incumbent upon all Christians as a matter of moral law?� Instead, the East asks, �In light of the human vocation for growth in holiness and communion with God, how should Christians respond to the prospect of warfare?�

The prominence of petitions for peace in the Liturgy sheds light on the Orthodox response to war. Since the Church believes that the Liturgy is a participation in the worship of heaven, and grounds the knowledge of God in worship and mystical experience, it is fitting to place the issue of war and peace within the context of the liturgical life of Eastern Christianity, for it is in worship that the Church participates most fully in communion with the Holy Trinity.

In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the first petitions of the Great Ektenia are for �the peace from above, and for the salvation of our souls� and �the peace of the whole world; for the good estate of the churches of God, and for the union of all.� At every Liturgy we pray for our parish, the clergy and laity, for government officials and all those in public service, for the place we live and for all towns and cities, for peaceful times, for travelers, the sick, the suffering, for captives and their salvation, and for our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and need. �Help us; save us; have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by Your grace,� we beg, finally commending �ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God.�

These are not simply decorative words. Neither are they prayers which refer merely to the inner tranquility of worshipers, nor to an entirely future Kingdom of Heaven. Instead, they embody an Orthodox vision of salvation and call upon the Lord to enable us to experience his heavenly peace right now in every dimension of life: personal, public, religious, temporal, and political. Whoever prays these prayers is asking already to participate in the Kingdom of God on earth, to find the healing and blessing of salvation in every dimension of one�s life indeed, in every aspect of God�s creation.

The entire Liturgy is an epiphany of God�s Kingdom on earth. The priest begins the service with a proclamation, �Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever and unto ages of ages,� which declares that the assembly is now participating in the worship of Heaven. The Church is raised to the life of the Kingdom as her members gather to glorify and commune with the Holy Trinity.

Because we believe in the Incarnation and the goodness of God�s physical creation, we pray for peace and salvation upon people in �real life� situations of peril and suffering, for deliverance from the kinds of calamities and hardships that beset our mortal bodies in this life.

The peace for which we pray includes every dimension of our existence before the Lord. God created us for communion with Himself in all aspects of our personhood: body, soul, and spirit. Christian salvation entails the resurrection of the complete, embodied self in the blessed communion of Heaven and the transformation of the entire creation in subjection to the Holy Trinity.

The peace for which we pray is our participation in that all-inclusive salvation. There is no true peace other than that found in the healing and transformation brought to human beings by the God-Man in whom our humanity is united with divinity. Since God intends to save us in every dimension of our existence, his healing concerns the full range of human life. Even as bread and wine become the means of our communion with the Lord, we are to offer every bit of ourselves and of this world to the Father in union with the sacrifice of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. We will then find life-giving communion with the Holy Trinity in everything we say and do; our life will become a eucharistic offering as we grow in holiness and union with God.

If the Liturgy is a participation in the eschatological peace of the Kingdom of God, it is fair to ask whether the members of the Church recognize and live out this vision of heavenly peace. An immediate note of realism comes to mind, as the members of the Church are sinners who have not manifested fully the new life of Christ. Nonetheless, the presence of the Holy Spirit enables the Church to embody a foretaste of the eschatological peace of the Kingdom of Heaven, and there is much in the history and ongoing life of the Church which witnesses to the saving peace of God here and now.

�The Church has accepted warfare sorrowfully as a sometimes necessary evil, but without concealing that it is an evil which must be avoided or limited as much as possible.� � Olivier Cl�ment 

Though there is some ambiguity in the Church�s teaching on Christian participation in war, the Orthodox vision of peace prizes selfless love and forgiveness over violence, viewing war, in some situations, as a lesser evil with damaging spiritual consequences for all involved.

In contrast with Orthodoxy, it is easier to describe the traditional Western Christian justifications of war, which have included both the granting of plenary indulgences to those who fought in the crusades and the affirmation of a just-war theory. The former envisioned the killing of infidels as such a righteous act that the crusaders were released from all temporal punishments for their sins, including exemption from purgatory. The latter, which has been widely influential in Western culture, provides moral sanction to wars which meet certain philosophical criteria.

Orthodoxy has never embraced the crusade ethic. Orthodoxy has viewed war always as an evil, even if, as the theologian Olivier Cl�ment expressed it, �The Church has accepted warfare sorrowfully as a sometimes necessary evil, but without concealing that it is an evil which must be avoided or limited as much as possible.� Elsewhere he notes, �The only normative ideal is that of peace, and hence the Orthodox Church has never made rules on the subject of ius belli and of ius in bello.�

Canon 13 of St. Basil�s 92 Canonical Epistles states:

Our fathers did not consider killings committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all, on the score, it seems to me, of allowing a pardon to men fighting in defense of sobriety and piety. Perhaps, though, it might be advisable to refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that their hands are not clean.

Father John McGuckin observes that St. Basil refers to St. Athanasius as the father who wrote, in his �Letter to Amun,� that killing the enemy was legitimate in wartime. McGuckin argues, however, that St. Athanasius was advising Amun on the question of the sinfulness of nocturnal emissions. �In fact the original letter had nothing whatsoever to do with war� The military image is entirely incidental, and Athanasius in context merely uses it to illustrate his chief point in the letter,� which is to show that the moral significance of actions may not be discerned without reference to the contexts in which they occurred.

Against any simplistic readings of the letter as a blanket justification of killing in war, St. Basil places the issue in a specific context. As McGuckin writes on St. Basil in �War and Repentance,� �what he speaks about is the canonical regulation of war in which a Christian can engage and find canonical forgiveness for a canonically prohibited act��

St. Basil recommends three years of exclusion from the chalice [for soldiers who have killed enemy combatants], thus providing a public sign that the Gospel standard is violated by war.

Killing in war had been forbidden completely in earlier canons, such as Canon 14 of Hippolytus in the fourth century, which states:

A Christian is not to become a soldier. A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.

St. Basil distinguishes between outright murder and killing �for the defense of Christian borders from the ravages of pagan marauders.� By limiting fighting to such circumstances, he sought to �restrict the bloodshed to a necessary minimum.� In contrast to the lifelong exclusion from the sacraments imposed on murderers, St. Basil recommends three years of exclusion from the chalice, thus providing a public sign that the Gospel standard is violated by war.

The Christian soldier who has killed in war is to �undergo the cathartic experience of temporary return to the lifestyle of penance� Basil�s restriction of the time of penance to three years, seemingly harsh to us moderns, was actually a commonly recognized sign of merciful leniency in the ancient rule book of the early Church.� (It is not uncommon to meet veterans who are tormented for the rest of their lives by the horrors of war. I recall the father of a childhood friend who suffered from nightmares thirty years after the conclusion of his military service during World War II. Those who are trained to kill sometimes have difficulty returning to the mores of civilian life, not to mention the life of theosis.)

McGuckin concludes that this canon of St. Basil excludes the development of just war theory in Orthodoxy. Though particular wars may be necessary or unavoidable, they are never justified, as shedding the blood of other human beings is contradictory to the way of the Kingdom of God.

In his book, The Price of Prophecy, Fr. Alexander Webster agrees that a theory of justified war �has never been systematically elucidated in Orthodox moral theology.� He describes participation in such a war as �a lesser moral option than absolute pacifism, for those unwilling or unable to pay the full price of prophecy.� He suggests that Orthodox criteria for a just war include a �proper political ethos,� meaning that the nation going to war should follow �the natural-law ethic and have positive relations with the Orthodox community.� The war should also take place for the �defense of the People of God� from injustice, invasion, or oppression �by those hostile to the free exercise of the Orthodox faith.� A proper �spiritual intent� should also lead to �forgiveness and rehabilitation� of enemies as persons who bear the image of God, and not �mere revenge, self-righteousness, or conquest.� Webster states that:

Whereas the pacifist seeks to emulate Jesus as the Good Shepherd who allowed Himself to be slain unjustly by and for sinners, the just warrior perceives a higher duty: to defend the relatively innocent from unjust aggression. If the Orthodox pacifist can never do anything evil even for a reasonably just end, the Orthodox warrior cannot preserve his personal holiness by allowing evil to triumph through his own inaction.

It is curious for Webster to suggest that the just warrior follows a �higher duty� than that of the pacifist, especially when the clear norm for the Church is the selfless, forgiving, nonresistant way of Christ. Likewise, the enumeration of moral categories for a justified war and the reference to governments which follow an ethic of natural law raise the question of whether this interpretation places questions of war and peace more within the context of human moral reasoning than in that of the journey to theosis. It is fair to ask whether Webster�s formulation gives sufficient attention to the spiritual vision of Orthodoxy, as opposed to the greater reliance on an ethics of human reason in Western Christianity.

Though Christlike response of �turning the other cheek� to assaults is the ideal, the Orthodox Church does not prescribe pacifism or nonviolence as an absolute requirement of the Christian life. The Church�s moral guidance serves the goal of theosis, of guiding the members of Christ�s Body to growth in holiness and union with the Trinity. The canons of the Church are applied pastorally in order to help particular people find salvation as they seek to be faithful in the given set of challenges and weaknesses which they face. The Church�s experience is that temporal authority and the use of force are necessary to restrain evil and promote good in our fallen world.

Though the witness of the early Church was largely, but not exclusively, pacifist, the Byzantine vision was of symphonia, or harmony, between God�s Kingdom and earthly realms. Hence, Christian emperors and armies fought wars and sustained a social order that sought to embody faithfulness to the Lord in all areas of life. Church and empire were to be united, in Webster�s words, �even as the divine and human natures of Christ are united in the One Person of the Incarnate Son of God.� In practice, however, that vision was never fully realized in Byzantium; human sinfulness corrupted its political and ecclesiastical leaders in many ways.

There have remained in Orthodoxy, however, indications of the ideal of peace. Monks and clergy, for example, may not bear arms and are forbidden to use deadly violence even in cases of self-defense. Canon V of St. Gregory of Nyssa �states that should a priest �fall into the defilement of murder even involuntarily (i.e., in self-defense), he will be deprived of the grace of the priesthood, which he will have profaned by this sacrilegious crime.��

Those whose hands have shed blood are no longer the icons of Christ which priests are called to be, and are not suited to serve at the altar. As Webster writes in The Pacifist Option, �An Orthodox priest is supposed to be an exemplar for the Christian community, a man with a personal history free from all serious or grievous offenses including the taking of a human life for any reason.�

Even as the sacramental priesthood is a special vocation to which not all are called, the straightforward embodiment of Christlike, nonviolent love incumbent upon priests is not canonically required of all believers. In keeping with the practice of economia, the norm of nonresistant love may not be directly applicable to those whose vocations in our broken world require the defense of the innocent. These may grow in holiness by fighting as justly as possible, even as they mourn the harm done to themselves and others by their use of violence.

Orthodox countries' "defensive wars against Islamic invaders, though not Western-style crusades, have been described as 'a difficult and painful defense of the Cross'."

Whatever choices we make in our efforts to defend the innocent from attack and abuse, none are perfect. In a fallen world populated by sinful people, every Christian�s journey to the Kingdom will be marked by a measure of spiritual brokenness, and repentance is the only road to healing.

Particular countries and peoples have been so closely identified with the Orthodox faith that their defensive wars against Islamic invaders, though not Western-style crusades, have been described as �a difficult and painful defense of the Cross.� The appeal for �victory over their enemies� at the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and other instances of martial imagery in the liturgies, has at times been corrupted into a �national Messianism� in which a soldier who dies in battle is regarded as a martyr and the evil of war is forgotten.

St. Sergius blesses Grand Prince Dimitri to defend Holy Rus against the Muslim Tatars

It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that Orthodoxy has enthusiastically endorsed war. Even in cases of the defense of a Christian people from Islamic invasion, the spiritual gravity of warfare has not been forgotten. For example, St. Sergius of Radonezh in the fourteenth century gave his blessing to Grand Prince Dimitri to fight a defensive war against the Tatar Khan only after he received assurances that the prince had already exhausted every possible means of reconciliation.

Kutuzov�s strategy in response to Napoleon�s invasion was similar, abandoning Moscow to the French and merely harassing Napoleon�s forces during their withdrawal, having no other aim than to drive the invader back to the frontier.

Far from being examples of unbridled militarism, these are instances which reflect the reluctant acceptance of war at times as a necessary evil.

These notes of realism should not be allowed to obscure the Church�s insistence that �non-retribution, the avoidance of violence, the returning of good for evil � and the harmony of peoples� are a holistic �normative good which Christians must seek with God�s help,� in the words of Olivier Cl�ment.

Fr. Stanley Harakas observes that �the Eastern Patristic tradition rarely praised war, and to my knowledge, almost never called it �just� or a moral good�. The peace ideal continued to remain normative and no theoretical efforts were made to make conduct of war into a positive norm.�

The evidence for widespread pacifism in the Church is strongest before St. Constantine, when the Empire was pagan and Christians, including converts within the army, were persecuted for refusing to participate in the worship of false gods. Even after the Christianization of the Empire, with the eventual requirement that only Christians could be in the army, there remained teachers of pacifism in the Church, such as Pope St. Damasus, Prudentius, and St. Paulinus of Nola. Webster remarks that St. Paulinus, in the fifth century, was the last Church Father who explicitly addressed the moral issue of war from a pacifist perspective. From then on, pacifist sensibilities would manifest themselves in other contexts, such as the requirement of clerical and monastic nonresistance.

The clergy are �expected to demonstrate the attainment of an advanced spiritual and moral state to which all Orthodox Christians are [ultimately] called.� � Fr. Alexander Webster

The contrast between the canonical requirement of pacifism for the clergy and the acceptance of military service by the laity requires further comment. Webster notes that the identification of clergy with the nonviolent norm and the allowance of participation in war on the part of the laity implies a two-tier ethic with a higher and a lower class of Christians, which could be taken to imply that the clergy are necessarily holier than the laity.

More faithful to Orthodox ecclesiology would be the affirmation that the norm now embodied by the clergy will at some future point become normative for all Orthodox. Here we are dealing with a point of eschatological tension that will be resolved in the Kingdom of Heaven, when all will be pacifists, for violence and other evils will be destroyed. In the present, as Webster writes in The Pacifist Option, the clergy are �expected to demonstrate the attainment of an advanced spiritual and moral state to which all Orthodox Christians are [ultimately] called.�

The recognition of pacifism as an ultimate norm or goal for all Christians should not be surprising. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ calls His followers to theosis, to growth in holiness and perfection in union with God. �Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.� (Matt. 5:48) This teaching is the conclusion of a section focusing on the love of enemies, which is immediately preceded by the Lord�s repudiation of resistance against evil. �Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.� (5:39)

These passages indicate that the repudiation of violence in self-defense is a sign of growth in holiness. Our Lord�s example of offering Himself on the cross for our salvation is the paradigmatic epiphany of the selfless love in which human beings are to participate as they come to share by grace in the life of the Trinity.

_______

Fr. Philip LeMasters is professor of Religion and director of the Honors Program at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. A priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, he serves at St. Luke Orthodox Church in Abilene. This is an abridged version of a chapter in his book, The Goodness of God�s Creation (Regina Orthodox Press). 

The Patristic texts cited here and many others, plus essays by a number of Orthodox theologians, can be found in For the Peace from Above: An Orthodox Resource Book on War, Peace and Nationalism, Hildo Bos and Jim Forest, editors, Syndesmos, 1999. The full text of the book is posted on the OPF web site:http://incommunion.org/articles/for-the-peace-from-above/first-page