An engaging study of Revelation is going on at my home church, every Wednesday night. Our pastor, a New Testament scholar, who wrote his dissertation on Revelation 19, is providing for us an in-depth analysis of the context of Revelation, including educating us on the genres it’s comprised of, as well as the cultural meaning of the imagery described. Suffice it to say, this ain’t no Left Behind series!

Last Wednesday, we began Revelation 5. Here is the text, per ESV,

5:1 Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, 4 and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

6 And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. 8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the
twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying,

11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” 13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the
throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” 14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Note that the scroll, referred to in verse 1, was being held by God the Father (ref. chapter 4), who was given his due worship. He is seated on the throne and is holding the scroll in his right hand. While it appears that no one is found worthy to open the scroll, one of the elders states that the Lion has conquered, so that he can open the scroll. Yet we see a sort of juxtaposition taking place when John sees not a Lion appear, but a Lamb – that had been slain.

Lion / Lamb, conquered / slain.

The Lamb then approaches God, on the throne, and does not ask to be given the scroll, but he takes “the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne”! The elders and all creatures then confirm that Jesus is worthy to receive worship.

The Lion who has conquered is the Lamb who was slain, and he is worthy of that which is only allowed to be given to God – worship.

Duality is a mathematical property linking structures through transformations. One of the simplest duality transformations for illustration are the Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron). The simple transformation one performs on these solids is to “exchange” corners and faces.  A cube transforms into an octahedron … which is simple enough to imagine in one’s head. The icosahedron and dodecahedron also exchange through this transform. The tetrahedron, mathematically speaking, is special as it is “self-dual” and under the same transformation is unchanged.

Similarly in emotional contexts, various emotions and other notions are thought dual. The yin-yang of Taoist Chinese thought brings up a host of dual concepts and emotions: good/evil, love/hate, strong/weak, male/female and so on. The eight(seven) cardinal sins and virtues of Evagrius (Pope Gregory) also have a parallel structure.

Tonight, in as part of the Compline service after the second night of reading the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete we said the (famous) “Great Lenten” prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency, lust for power and idle talk.
(Prostration)

But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love.
(Prostration)

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brothers and sisters. For blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.
(Prostration)

O God, cleanse Thou me a sinner (12 times, with as many bows, and then again the whole prayer from the beginning throughout, and after that one great prostration)

This prayer also has a duality construct as noted above, but the pairings are not traditional to our ways of thinking. Sloth/chastity, despondency/humility, patience/lust for power, and love/idle talk. One has two options when considering this pairing. One is that the pairing is mistaken that the author, St. Ephrem, did not mean for the connection to be made. However the monastic and meditative life that was much more common in the times in which St. Ephrem lived and for that reason I think that it is more likely than not that the connection was intended.

So with that in mind, consider that one might need to counter those sins of sloth with chastity, despondency with humility, lust for power with patience, and idle talk with love.

From the book on Father Arseny, a Russian priest who suffered decades of inhumane treatment in the Stalinist gulags and “special camps” for being an active member of a subversive organization (the Christian church).

I remember the visit of Bishop N. in 1962. He was a serious theologian, a philosopher, and many said, a good confessor. He came to have Father Arseny hear his confession. Many spiritual children of Father Arseny were going to the church where Bishop N. served.

He stayed for two days, during which time he confessed to Father Arseny and also heard his confession. They talked about the fate and the future of the Church in the Soviet Union and about what was important for the believers. Looking at Father Arseny’s library he pronounced, “The faithful one needs only the Gospel, the Bible, and the works of the Holy Fathers. All the rest isn’t worthy of attention.”

Father Arseny remained silent for a few moments and answered, “You are right, Your Holiness, the most important things are in those books, but we must remember that man as he develops nowadays is very different from man in the fourth century. The horizon of knowledge has become wider and science can now explain what couldn’t be understood then. The priests today must know a great deal in order to be able to help believers make sense of the contradictions he sees. A priest has to understand the theory of relativity, passionate atheism, the newest discoveries in biology, medicine and most of all modern philosophy. He gets visited by students of medicine, chemistry, physics, as well as by blue collar workers, and each one of them has to be given an answer to his or her questions such that religion doesn’t sound anachronistic or just a half-answer.”

Last year for Lent, I had an (inspired?) somewhat strange idea for Lent. There is a age-old wedding tradition in the form of a little ditty aimed at guiding the bride when she prepares her garment for the feast. That tradition goes in the manner of a ditty, she is to wear,

Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed, and
Something blue.

I read. If I had time and less concerns I’d read a lot more, but I really enjoy study and reading. As a result, my Lenten tradition, now all of two years old, is to read 4 from books during the Lenten journey. And … the strange part is, I select these books based for good reason on that marriage ditty. I don’t have my borrowed book as yet, but the other three are the following:

1. The old book is a book I’ve read and am going to re-read. For this book, I’m going to re-read The Brothers Karamazov. I finished this about a year ago but just before completing it I read in this little book on theodicy The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Bentley Hart that a important theme in the Brothers K is the posing and the Christian answer to the theodicy problem.
2. The new book is a book newly acquired. Two books have vied for this as both seem really good. But I’ve selected God, Man and the Church by Vladamir Solovyev. Mr Solovyev was a late 19th century religious philosopher who influenced both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, judging by his wiki page and the introduction which I’ve glanced through, this will be an interesting read.
3. And the blue book, is likely going to recur as the blue book for quite some time to come, Saint Silouan, the Athonite by the Archimandrite Sophrony has a blue cover … and is full of the teaching and example of an exemplary saint. Mount Athos is the holy mountain in Greece, a treasured and holy place for the Eastern Orthodox churches. Twenty monasteries dot the hillside and many, if not most, have been there for more than a millenia.

Soccer and ashes. Fat or Shrove Tuesday is celebrated by liturgical Western Christians tonight. Tomorrow with less sackcloth but still with ashes they begin their Lenten journey. The Eastern half of Christianity begins Lent at sundown (or after Vespers) Sunday night this weekend as the Julian calendrical calculation this year puts Lent a week later than the Gregorian.

For those who do partake of the Lent tradition, I’d like to offer an invitation from the East. This Monday through Thursday many of the Eastern churches will be offering the The Great Canon: The Work of Saint Andrew of Crete as an evening Lenten meditation and prayer. I’d invite any who are interested in a meditative liturgical very repentant service to search out and find an Orthodox parish near them (for Americans this may serve as one place to look but other ethnic Orthodox churches may be closer, their web site should give a time when the Canon is being offered and directions.) and this coming Monday to partake of the Canon. For those Western visitors, please be aware the Orthodox perform prostrations during this service. It serves to heighten the sense of repentance for those taking part. As a note to visitors, there is no stigma in not taking part. If you do not feel this movement is part of your worship vocabulary … that is perfectly fine. Depending on where you go, the music (a capella voice) might be a little, uhm, shaky. But the Canon is primarily not a musical experience, listen to the words and think on their meaning and connection to you. This is an extended walk through Scripture connecting events through repentance to your life. A microcosm of Lent in four days. A jumping off point for the rest of the journey to Pascha (Easter).

Failing that invitation, two books might be of interest. Orthodox liturgist Alexander Schmeman’s Great Lent: Journey to Pascha and Khouria Frederica Matthews Green’s First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey Through the Canon of St. Andrew both are books which can provide background and perhaps a gentler introduction to the Great Canon and are both well recommended reading for the season.

One book, which is treasured today by the modern Orthodox community derives from the experiences of an extraordinary man who survived the gulag experience in Russia. This book, Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father : Being the Narratives Compiled by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father, I recently acquired. I’ve read about half of it, and I’d like to share a little from what I’ve read. The first part of the book are stories and fragments collected from prisoners who remembered Fr Arseny during their imprisonment. From a fragment entitled, O Mother of God! Do not Abandon Them! we find a recounting of a time in which Fr Arseny became very very ill. He was expected by all around him to die. During this time he recalled having out of body experience. At the first part of this, he recalled viewing the following:

As he prayed, he cried, begging God, the Mother of God, and all the Saints to have mercy on them all. But his prayer was wordless. And now the barracks and the entire camp appeared before his spiritual eyes in a very different way. He saw the whole camp with all its prisoners and its prison guards as if from inside. Each person carried within himself a soul which was now directly visible to Father Arseny. The souls of some were afire with faith which kindled the people around them; the souls of others, like Szikov and Avsenkov, burned with a smaller yet ever growing flame; others had only small sparks of faith and only needed the arrival of a shepherd to fan these sparks into a real flame. There were also people whose souls were dark and sad, without even a spark of Light. Now, looking into the souls of the people which God had allowed him to see, Father Arseny was extremely moved. “O, Lord! I lived among these people and did not even notice them. How much beauty they carry within them. So many are true ascetics in the faith. Although they are surrounded by such spiritual darkness and unbearable human suffering, they not only save themselves, but give their life and their love to the people around them, helping others by word and by dead.

“Lord! Where was I? I was blinded by pride and mistook my own small deeds for something grand.”

Father Arseny saw that the Light burned not only in the prisoners, but also in some of the guards and administrators, who, within the limits of what they could do, performed good deeds. For them this was extremely difficult, because it was very dangerous.

This image, of those around us, burning with varied lights some stronger some weaker and the need for us to encourage the sparks and growing or lessening flames of faith in those around us. This is a powerful metaphor, one which could spur us to find a way to put our faith in action. To listen, to love and to encourage that spark in our neighbor, in our family, and in all those with whom we come in contact. Even, or perhaps especially, those to whom, like the guards in Fr Arseny’s camp, we would normally see as those who are working against us.

A few weeks ago, I took issue with a quote offered on a particularly bad notion of how Christianity and culture have interacted through the ages. The quote is below, but I’m going to concentrate here on that part regarding Greece:

“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”

But as I noted this, quote was was incorrect in just about every single idea it tries to convey. It may be a popular conception, that the Greek influence transformed Christianity through perhaps neo-Platonism popular in the first through 4th centuries in the Roman Empire, but this is a misconception and has little to do with the actual intellectual, historical, and practical actual evolution of the Christian faith through the ages.

During my plane ride back on Friday from the West Coast, I read through about the first third of The Vision of God by Vladimir Lossky. Mr Lossky in this book traces the development of the idea of how we as humans might see (perceive) God through the ages. Specifically he is also in the process of countering the idea developed by a certain Protestant theologian/historian that the Greek neo-Platonism was a lasting influence on the Christian understanding of theophany. I’m a little short on time tonight, but at some point during this week I plan to trace the development that Mr Lossky traces in this book. But, on the notion of “where it became a philosophy” I’ll offer a quick remark.

In the 2nd century Clement (150-211/216) and Origen where both very influential theologians in the period and they were both very much influenced by new-Platonism. In fact, well Plotinus, author of the Enneads, another Alexadrian is regarded as the founder of neo-Platonism for late antiquity it might be noted shared with Origen a high regard, each for the other. They were colleagues, in not unrelated spheres and their work influenced each other. However, the neo-Platonic influences guiding the nature of the understanding of the mystical experience and Theophany as a super-intellectual meditative activity was very short lived. It even might be argued that Origen himself was of two minds on this. In many of his writings theophany (or the perception of God) was seen as a meditative act, but in other writings on prayer and in some of his exigesis of Scripture he takes a different tack, seeing the act of exegesis and prayer in a non-intellectual experiential emotive manner.

Furthermore, by the 4th century with the Cappadocians (St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil the Great) and St. John Chrysostom it became clear that the idea of theophany as a super-intellectual activity carried out by philosophers and those combining apatheia and intellect to find God had disappeared. Another current that served to erode this idea was the culture of the Desert, as exemplified by St. Athanasius Life of St. Antony and John Cassian’s carrying of the desert culture and learning to Gaul.

The point is that if one was to take seriously the idea that Christianity “became a philosophy” that statement would only have held true for a few short centuries and at the same time that idea was only held by a few theologians and this idea was most definitely not a notion held by average or any substantial fraction of the Church membership, be they elite or “ordinary”.

Many early Christians enjoyed number coincidences and used them in their prayers and writings. In that vein I offer some coincidences between our understanding of nature and Christian theology.

God in the Christian understanding is Three and One in Trinity. As Christ as well is both Man and God expressing two natures in one person.

Matter displaying wave and particle behavior having two natures in one. Furthermore, fundamental particles are deployed in three lepton and quark families respectively. With SU(3) of color (strong forces) and Gell-Mann’s eightfold way also the eight cardinal virtues and sins. Examine the forces in nature and we find there are three massless (gluon/strong, photon/electric, and graviton/gravity) and one with massive (weak/W&Z) … again the three and the one.

St. Augustine in his Confessions wrote that Nature worships God via our deepening understanding of it. Little did he know how well nature recapitulates theological ontology as the Standard Model post-dated St. Augustine by just a few years.

Then again, why does space have 10 dimensions? 😀

Preaching through the Ten Commandments, our pastor came to the 6th.  One of things I found fascinating is that there are quite a number of words for "kill" in Hebrew, and the King James translation doesn’t do much to get across this particular word.

Lo ratzach; don’t murder.

There is a word in Hebrew for killing an animal.  This is not that word.  You can be a vegetarian or vegan if you like, but you can’t use this verse as Biblical backup for your position.  (Actually, the Bible has a number of references showing that God’s OK with meat-eating.)

There is a word in Hebrew for killing in battle.  This is not that word.  You can be a pacifist if you like, but you can’t use this verse as Biblical backup for your position.  (Actually, the Bible has a number of references where God commands his people to make war on those God wishes to punish.)

There is a word in Hebrew for killing in self-defense or defense of another.  This is not that word.  You can be a police officer and kill someone in the line of duty while protecting yourself or others and you will not have broken this commandment.  You can protect an intruder with deadly force, and not be guilty of breaking this commandment. 

There is a word in Hebrew for the purposeful taking of an innocent life.  This is that word. 

Read the rest of this entry

Pro-choice, the Madison avenue euphemization for by the pro-abortion crowd is on some reflection an odd choice of terminology. The word “heresy” comes from the Greek hairesis (haireomai, “choose”), and means either a choice of beliefs or a faction of dissident believers. Pro-heresy might be an interesting alternative phrasing. Relabeling is in vogue these days, where it is common for those with the bully pulpit to recast the opponents and terms to favor their cause, which perhaps is why Mr Obama is trying to identify Mr Limbaugh as a conservative leader. If turnabout is fair play, perhaps recasting pro-choice as pro-heresy might help the pro-life cause within the liberal Christian community.

When making arguments one must consider one’s audience. When convincing a secular audience that one should rely on secular arguments, which is the primary place in which these arguments are taking place these days. If on the other hand, one is speaking to a Christian community, then Christian argument and theology should be used. Rarely however it seems to me does the pro-heresy community attempt to cast their arguments for abortion in the light of Christian tradition and theology. And for good reason … because Christian tradition and theology has stood against abortion for almost 2 millenia. Read the rest of this entry

Why St. Ephraim. Today is his feast day. Today, centuries ago, St. Ephrem fell asleep with the Lord. For me, just under two years ago, on the Saturday before Pascha I was chrismated and became an Orthodox Christian. Part of the process also entailed choosing a patron Saint, who for native Orthodox persons was chosen at your birth and that is normally also your given name. I had spent some months considering and reading about various Saints. Some of whom I had read somewhat extensively prior even witnessing an Orthodox liturgy. The choice of which Saint I might select was difficult. St. Mark was one choice, gospel author and witness to the Coptic peoples … and my first name is Mark (the patron Saint is sometimes called your “name” Saint as that is the name by which you are referred to at Eucharist).

Some of those I considered were:

• St. John Cassian’s writings powerful and thought provoking.
• St. John Chysostom’s homilies are also were accessible to modern sensibilities.
• Metropolitan John Zizioulas wrote powerfully about the cosmic ontological theology of St. Maximus the Confessor echoed many centuries later by secular philosopher Sartre.
• and St. Theophan the Recluse a Russian monastic and Bishop of the 19th century.

But … throughout Lent, through the poetic piercing stanzas of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete and in the presanctified liturgies and Vespers services always ending every service was the Lenten prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian:

O Lord and Master of my life!

Take from me the spirit of sloth,
faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity,
humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors
and not to judge my brother,
for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.

Many have talked and written about this prayer. Fr Schmeman wrote a little book, Great Lent, which talks about it at some length. But remembering that prayer, I looked at St. Ephrem’s body of work and found it extensive … and almost all of it Psalmody. St. Ephrem is referred to by some as the Psalmodist of the New Testament, where King David was the Psalmist of the Old Covenant. And psalm and psalmody connects with me through music. I am not a poet. But music, harmony and polyphony, chant and song connect. My harmony teacher in college often remarked that those in math and physics often did the best in music because of connections between music and mathematics. Between the prayer above, the music connection, and St. Ephrem’s life of asceticism, prayer, and example … my choice was made.

This book, Spiritual Psalter or Reflections on God, has a collection of prayers penned by St. Ephrem, translated and collated after the manner of the Psalms of David by St. Theophan the Recluse. This latter book is something of an scandal in my opinion. It is virtually unknown in the West … but should be in every Christian home and in every pew or prayer corner. The crime is that it is not a Christian best-seller only superseded by the Bible. Those prayers in that book, some of which you can find excerpted and remarked upon by me here … read like they were written about me, to me, for me by St. Ephrem. And I found this book months after having chosen St. Ephrem (or perhaps being chosen by St. Ephrem).

Ed Darrell quoted this the other day, and I disparaged it. Mr Darrell gets exasperated when history is misquoted, misused or ignored. Which is ironic because this quote, ignores, misuses and offers a mistaken interpretation of history. The quote:

“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”

Shall we consider just a few ways in which this was wrong?

• There was no “church” when Jesus was performing his ministry prior to the resurrection. The church thing followed immediately after His Resurrection.
• Then the church moved to Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Rome, India and throughout the Mediterranean.
• The church was well established in Rome, recall Saints Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome well before Origen (a Alexandrian Copt) turned the tools of philosophy to the service of theology.
• Examine the early “Greek” church, and their early founders. St. Cyril and St. Athanasius … of Alexandria (Copts). The three Ecumenical Heirarchs, Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom … all Cappadocian, i.e., modern day Turkey (hint: not Greece). In fact, I have trouble identifying right off any prominent Greek Saints from Early Antiquity.
• Next actually examine the Eastern church which came out of “Greece”. It is known for its mysticism not its Aquinan/Aristotelian philosophical logic.
• The Christian church’s movement to Rome didn’t make it an institution. It made it a persecuted cult. Three centuries later, when “Rome” was supplanted by Constantinople as the capitol it became a state religion. It is dogma among modern political philosophers, who are amazingly ignorant of the next 1000 years of the Roman state, that state and religion don’t mix. They look at the Reformation and English history for their ideas on that. Conveniently ignoring any historical trends which don’t fit their preconceptions.

And that’s just a start.

With this warning echoing on the web against amateur philosophizing. But that being noted, I will forge ahead nonetheless. Meta-ethics is that branch of ethics not describing normative ethics (how we act) but instead the means by which we do ethics. Two popular branches of ethical methodologies are deontology and consequentialism (of the latter, utilitiarianism is a particular example). It is my sense that virtue ethics via Aristotle and later supporters, while put forth some ancient Greeks, is less in favor today. Deontology, roughly speaking, is rule based ethics. Some time ago, I suggested that Christian ethics are neither of these. Christian ethics, described meta-ethically, I suggest are pneumatological.

Christian ethics is not deontological. Jesus time and time again speaks out against deontological Phariseeism, rejecting rigid, or perhaps even non-so-rigid, following of laws described and set down by man.

Christian ethics is not consequentialist. We don’t do our actions in order to “store up pennies in heaven” as it were. Salvation is not garnered via works of men.

What does this mean? In theology, pneumatology relates to the Holy Spirit. That is the Spirit, in the Trinitarian sense, is the center of Christian ethics. Why might we think of ethics for the Christian as pneumatological. As a Christian, to borrow a phrase from R.R. Reno, we are called to be “transparent” to Christ, that is to perform his will through us as if we were transparent. This is effected in the world, via the Spirit to inspire us as to how to do His will.

How might Pneumatological ethics work in practice? How does one discern the will of the Spirit. What has been said and laid out in Scripture and in our Tradition is one source for seeking guidance in this matter. But, for example, bio-ethics today is consistently throwing up questions and issues which are new to this age. How does one act in those cases. I’d suggest, prayer, fasting, being open to inspiration, and seeking advice from those who have more spiritual insight seem all likely possibilities.

Thoughts?

I was recently reading about some protesters fasting in order to raise awareness for one cause or another.

It struck me that the secular left and the religious right have very different notions about fasting and its means and purpose. Read the rest of this entry

Fr Richard John Neuhaus died today, which is something you already know if you read more than half a dozen blogs in the Christian blogosphere. I think 30 or 40 blogs in my RSS feed mentioned his passing today. What I found odd, was that nobody seemed especially joyous over the occasion. After all he succumbed to a second bout with cancer, which typically involves a lot of pain and discomfort. While we are enjoined to celebrate our suffering, that is specifically not to be our attitude toward the suffering of others.

So many of the posts are talk about what his writing meant to various people, how he touched their life, what he did for me. This seems to me getting the hindpart foremost. Read the rest of this entry