What We Believe

[Dorothea]

I'll be adding some more some time today. I hope and pray this lecture is helpful to those who are reading this.

 

[Dorothea]

DVD #11 - The Church (cont'd.)

"It had to be a dome though. In the West, you see, they developed another image, an image that came late, within the medieval, Gothic architecture - the Spire, that points up to something outside the world under the dome. As beautiful as those Gothic spires are - who would deny their beauty? - yet, nevertheless, we have a different expression here, even in such a thing as architecture, than what is expressed in the early Church architecture of the Church being paradise on earth. We don't have to look up there for paradise - that God has come to us. God has entered His creation through the incarnation. God has taken us to Himself and made us paradise.

Chrysostom says regarding the Holy Eucharist, 'You don't have to talk to me about heaven. I have heaven within me, when I am united to Christ in His Body.' So the Church is the earthly paradise.

***'The Church is a great window through which the Son of Righteousness shines upon a world of darkness' - St. Nicholas Cabasilas (sp?) in the 14th century.

***'Christ's Church is not an institution' - institution used in the sense of the political or corporate institutions of this world. 'It is new life with Christ, and in Christ, directed by the Holy Spirit.' Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, a 20th century theologian.

***'The Church is the center of the universe. The place where its destiny is made. The place where the destiny of the whole cosmos is revealed, is in the new world of the Church.' - Vladimir Lossky, another 20th century theologian.

***'In the darkness of this fallen world, the Church is an opening in the wall made by the Triumphant Cross. The love of the Trinity never ceases to shine the light of the Resurrection.' - Olivier Clement - Fr. David shows the book from which he's reading that is written by Olivier Clement, called The Living God. Fr. David says most of these quotes come from him in his writings in his book. He is a contemporary French Orthodox theologian.

***Father Alexander Schmemann - 'The Church is the entrance into the life of Christ.' The communion with eternal life.

Now, the second mark, characteristic of the Church is that the Church is Holy. We need to refresh your memories. We spoke about holiness earlier on. The most basic meaning of something, someone that is Holy is that it is not of this world. The life that holds the Church together is not simply the life of this fallen creation. The Church is often spoken of using the image of a tree, you see, what keeps the sap of the tree flowing, what keeps the tree alive is the life of God that called the Church into existence. There would be no Church without its being called into being by Christ.

We speak of the Church coming forth from the open side of Christ as He dies on the Cross, giving His life for the life of the world. Just as there would be no visible creation without God calling it from nonexistence into being, so there would be no Church, the new creation, having been called into being by God. So the sap that flows in the life of the tree is the sap of the blood of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit.

The Church is not a human institution. The Church is indestructible. Even the sinfulness of the members - and that's very important when we speak of the holiness of the Church...what we mean is that the Church is called into existence by God. It is comprised from the very beginning of sinful people, earthen vessels, as St. Paul likes to use the expression - that in fact, Jesus in the Gospel - and this is very important because sometimes people think that the claim to the One Church and the Holy Church means that it's the Church of the perfect and the sinless, you see, or the claim to be the True Church, as the Orthodox insist that we are, means that we're the perfect Church -the Church where there can be no sinners. Jesus says quite the opposite. I know that you are probably familiar with these two parables, but it's good for us to hear them in this context.

'The Kingdom of heaven' - and the Church is the life of the Kingdom of heaven - it's from the 13th chapter of St. Matthew, ' is like a man who sowed good seed in the field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares (or weeds...the word 'tare' actually means a kind of weed that looks exactly like the wheat as its growing. See, they are the same) among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the sower came and said to him, 'sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' He said to them an enemy has does this. The servants said to him, 'do you want us to go and gather them up?' but he said, 'no, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tares in bundles to burn, but gather the wheat into my barn.' And then he goes on to say that only at the end of the world will the harvest be complete, fully revealed, and the tares separated from the wheat, but the context is found in the very beginning - the introduction of the parable - the Kingdom of Heaven is like this - the Kingdom of Heaven is the wheat and the tares growing together until the end. That the Church is comprised of all sorts of people."

 

[Dorothea]

"It's like the next story - The Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered in some of every kind which when it was full, they drew to shore. And they sat down and drew the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So will be it at the end of the age. The angels will come forth separating the wicked from among the just, and the separation of the wicked from among the just takes place within the context of the Church - within the context of the Kingdom of Heaven - See, the Kingdom of Heaven is like this. So, all sorts of things are found in the Holy Church. Just as, again, the image of the Old Covenant is very apt. What do we find in Israel - the constant betrayals of God. Well, things do not change in this world, in the New Covenant, even from the beginning. I always like to use this expression...it has kind of a good shock therapy, you know, against the temptation to see the Church as the society of the perfect where there can be no sinners and that is that in addition, it seems to me, to the marks of the Church in the Creed - One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic - as an extension of that, I think that another mark of the Church, the True Church, whether it's Old Covenant or New Covenant, is that it always has a very obviously sleazy side. The sinfulness of the people that compose of it is very evident. Just as the entire OT history is the story of so much attention given to the infidelities of the chosen people, it is not that different in the NT either. How do things begin?

Sometimes we think we have some sort of right to be shocked about quarrels taking place between Churches and among bishops. We forget that when Jesus Christ incarnate came to the Last Supper table, the night before He died, His Apostles were fighting about who was the greatest. We forget that in the very first chapters of the history of the early Church - the Acts of the Apostles, that you have all kinds of things going on. You have Ananias selling his field and bringing only part of the money and saying that it's all of it. Of course, he gets struck dead. You have the widows fighting. Heaven help us to have to content with fighting widows. I wouldn't want to. You have the Greek-speaking Hebrew widows fighting with the Hebrew-speaking widows. They're all Jewish widows. One group speaks Hebrew and the other group speaks Greek, and they're fighting because one group is claiming they are ignored in the distribution of the alms. So the Apostles have to invent the deacons from that time on to become responsible among other things for the ordering of that aspect of the Church's life. And if one reads the Acts of the Apostle and the epistles of St. Paul, you could make an immense list of all of the things that happened in the Church as a result of human evil and sin, and it's been like that ever since and will be until the end of the world.

The Church is holy because it is called into being by God and because those who comprise it - now obviously it will be revealed in the end who has been faithful and has striven to make themselves grow into the image and likeness of God by cooperating with the Grace of God that is given to us through Christ - and the end reveals who has been truly a member of the Body and who has been a withered branch, see. There can be and are withered branches that are cut off the tree. They die and are cut off the tree, but that doesn't effect the holiness of the tree. The tree is kept alive by the sap of the blood of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit. If a branch withers and falls off, it's not the tree's fault in the case of the Church. It's the branch's fault.

I mentioned St. Cyprian of Carthage. It's a good example of the wheat and the tares. That whole part of North Africa - I don't mean Egypt now, but I mean, if you look at the map what would be Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. For the early centuries of the Church was a stronghold of Christian life. It was a Latin-speaking Church - gave countless Saints and martyrs to the Church - is an example of a Church that completely died out. There is absolutely nothing left of it for about 1500 years now. What happened is that one of the controversies of the Church did such damage there, it was never healed. One has to say the desire to have it healed was not strong enough. There was a quarrel there during the time of persecutions. In the earlier persecutions by the Roman State when the Church was still relatively small, the amount of defections was also very few, but as the Church became larger and larger -sometimes we have the romantic notion that every Christian in the first 300 to 400 years during this time of persecution was faithful. It wasn't the case. During the later persecutions, especially the 3rd and 4th century, the people that lapsed, that broke down, either under fear of torture or fear of losing their lives, and actually did renounce Christ and offered the incense to the emperor - a very large number of them. A particular problem in the Church in North Africa. Then when the persecution was over, see, these people wanted to repent, a lot of them, and come back to the Church, so they were sorry. It was through weakness and fear that they did it. And there were people that said no you can't, it's impossible, that you denied Christ that way. Once a person is baptized and a member of the Body and they would quote Scripture from the Epistles to the Hebrews. I'm not going to refer to it now, but you know you do that and you crucify the Son of God fresh and there's nothing the Church can do for you in this world. And they weren't necessarily nasty people who said that, you know. They said, well, we have to pray for those who are cut off from the Church and we have to commend them to God's mercy. But they have cut themselves off and there's nothing more the Church can do for them. See, that's what they claimed.

Then there were those who, and of course, it's this another one of these things - how gentiles are to be received into the Church. The Church have to get together to decide. And the decision was no - that Christ has given to His Church the authority that He receives from the Father to bind and loose them from their sins. So, therefore, it's possible even though there might necessarily have to be a period, sometimes very extended, when somebody falls into grave sin, to be excluded from communion of the Church until they bear the fruits of repentance and are healed. Nevertheless, the Church has been given by Christ this authority to reconcile fallen, sinful people to God. The Church is not the society of the pure and perfect and the sinless. So, these people that would not accept that formed a shadow church. See, they wanted to have a perfect church. And it looked very much like the real Church. You see, they had all the same things - the bishops, the services. So you had two Churches going on in the shadow of each other - one the real Church and the other a false church divided from the communion of the real Church, by claiming it was the church of the perfect and uncompromised. So weak did this tragic situation make things there in North Africa that when all these invasions - first of the barbarians and then later of the Muslims - happened, Christianity was completely wiped out in that part of the world and never returned.

So, it can happen - a given expression of the Church dies, even the letters in the book of Revelation to the seven Churches there - there are things said about repentance. 'If you don't repent, your lamp will be taken away. If you do not cease lukewarm, I will vomit you out of My mouth,' Jesus says in the book of Revelation. But the loss of a local expression of the Church to infidelity does not mean the holiness of the Church is lost because by the promise of God, His truth will be made available in this world until the end. And because this Body that He has called into existence does not depend upon human beings for its existence even though we depend on it for eternal life, its life comes from God."

 

[Dorothea]

"The Church is the new creation of God. It is holy because it is kept alive by the life of the Holy God. That is what we mean by the holiness of the Church cannot be destroyed, and by the way, maybe this goes without saying, but surely if the Church were merely a human institution, it would long ago had ceased to exist because of the infidelity, incompetence, betrayals, hard-heartedness, compromise, heresies, and everything else of people that have come forth from it - including those in the highest places. But nevertheless, it continues no matter how hard the forces of this world try to destroy it - whether through what we've seen in this century through godless regimes or whether in secularized societies such as our own. Nevertheless, because the Church is kept alive by God, the gates of hell cannot prevail again it in this world - that is its holiness.

Catholic - The Church is catholic, and that comes from the Greek expression that means 'whole' or 'complete,' lacking nothing. Sometimes another expression, another definition is given to that word Catholic - 'universal,' but that is not the basic way to understand the word catholic, and of course, it goes without saying that we do not limit the use of the word catholic in the way it's used in the Western Church as referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

We understand ourselves as we say in the Creed, every time we say it as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that means that each expression of the Church locally, whether it be the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Ben Lomond, or a Church of a given city, the Church at a given time in a given place. Each one of those expressions of the Church provided that it is an expression of this unbroken communion of the Church that has been received from Christ and the Apostles, has everything that is needed for the eternal life that Christ has made available to us. So each local expression of the Church that has been given by God to the world. Another way of saying that is that we don't, for example, become members of a given parish of the Orthodox Church simply because we like it, we think it's a good Church, we like the people, we like the priest, we like the services, or we like the architecture. It seems to be a good place for us to go. We feel fulfilled there. All those things are all right in themselves, but simply of themselves, they can easily lead to what we'd call a kind of individualized, parochial limited expression of the Church. The local Church is complete but only because it is a manifestation of the Church that has received the eternal life that God has given it, so the desire of anyone approaching the entering in communion with the Orthodox Church is that the given local expression of the Church that they are entering - they are going to that because it brings them into a reality that exists in history and time, but transcends time and history. We become part of the life of God Himself, through the Church."

 

[Dorothea]

"Now, I think in an inquiry class, it's necessary given the complexity of the times in which we live, to - just for your information - make a list of those of the communion of the Orthodox Churches throughout the world at present, according to our doctrine, understanding, and experience of what the Church is, comprises this One, undivided, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in its fullness.

(Fr. David writing on the dry eraser board the following...)

1. Constantinople
2. Alexandria
3. Antioch
4. Jerusalem
5. Moscow (Russia)
6. Greece
7. Serbia
8. Romania
9. Bulgaria
10. Cypress

I'm leaving out some as well... Even if they're not all there, you get the idea, that this visible communion that exists between these Churches, which together, as - I'm leaving out a couple. I don't know why my memory's failing me, but these Churches are all described in the Orthodox terminology and this is a term that would be good for everybody to be familiar with as autocephalous Churches. Autocephalous means self-governing. In other words, they each have their own bishop, Patriarch, who is first among equals of their bishops and the bishops or patriarchs of all of these Churches live in a communion of faith, dogma, doctrine, life that we call the Orthodox faith and to be part of the visible Orthodox Church as it exists within this world, one belongs to a parish Church of one of these Churches. Now if someone would feel like asking why is there not in the list here the name of some city in the U.S., well, we'll talk about that later when we talk about what it means to be an Orthodox Christian in the contemporary Western world. But as it is now, an Orthodox Christian is one who is in communion, shares the same life and experience of what the revealed truth that God has given us with all of the Orthodox Christians of these Churches, by being a member of a specific Church that belongs to one of them. Because we are a Church of the Antiochian Patriarchate, that makes us a part of the communion of the Orthodox Churches that exist throughout the world. And each of these Churches, and each one of the local expressions of these Churches is regarded as catholic - having everything that is needed that has been given for the salvation of the world by Christ. Even when there is corruption and sin and lukewarmness and a kind of nominal Christianity prevailing, sometimes in any given local expression of the Church, we would not say on the grounds of that, even though we would say it's a terrible thing and if you're going to be lukewarm, nominal, or if you're going to be corrupt and sinful, it will be the death of you in the end either personally or if the whole Church is going to be that way, it's going to be the death of that Church too, but it is for God ultimately, Who sorts out the wheat from the tares, and sorts out the stuff in the dragnet, that will sort out His Church at the end.

The Church is not the society of the perfect. The Church is the means by which the truth that has been given by God to the world is made available.

Finally, the last characteristic of the Church is that it is Apostolic. The word 'Apostolic' comes from the Greek verb apostello - to send out. What we mean by that is that we could say that the first and greatest - just as we call Chrsit the One great High Priest - so also we could speak of Him as the One Apostle because He is the one who is sent forth from the Father into the world to bring the life of God to the world. Jesus says to His Apostles who are called by Him sent forth 'as the Father sent Me, even so I send you.' So, the Apostles, the 12, are sent forth to the ends of the earth, just as Christ is sent by the Father. They bring to the world what Christ gave them. Christ entrusts His entire revelation into the hands of human beings. That's how He works. So, it is the Apostles, who by in a relatively short period of time, go to the ends of the earth, establishing Churches there by doing very specific things by laying on their hands to set apart those who would be bishops, presbyters, and deacons - the act of laying on of hands signifies the transmission of the tradition - the passing on the tradition, the life and likewise, those Churches established by the Apostles, establish other Churches in which this continuity of apostolic life, faith, authority has been transmitted, passed on, again in a very visible way. That is to say that the Orthodox Church is the Church of the Apostolic succession that we trace, if you want to use the word, our life to Christ and the Apostles through a visible line of succession. The priests of our Church here have been ordained by the bishop, who in turn has been ordained by another bishop that, if you went back far enough, would take you back to one of the 12.

Now, we don't say that this ordination by the laying on of hands and the passing on of the tradition is something that takes place magically. There has to be along with this visible transmission of the faith, this whole confession of the faith. If in any group of people there is a denial of dogma, doctrines, or life of the Church, you can have all the laying on of hands that you want, then you don't have the Church. But rather, this passing on the life of something that is not - see the Christian Church - the Orthodox Church - is not a grassroots, democratic phenomena. It is not a creation of the people. It is given by God. It is a hierarchical society, and just as Christ sent the Apostles, so the Apostles established those who were set apart to guard - as Paul says to Timothy - guard the deposit of the faith. So we would say that being in communion with the Church involves - and at the core of it - is being part of this Body in which the Apostolic faith, the presence of the Apostolic tradition, visibly from the beginning has been transmitted. Of course, it is the Orthodox claim that we are the Body."

 

[Dorothea]

I'll do some more tomorrow. Just about done with typing up the last of the notes on the Church.

 

[Philothei]

Mod hat on
Just to let everyone know this thread has been stickied and it is for information sharing Please try not to debate and derail this ... If you have a specific question of an issue just open up a thead in the Main area

Thanks
Mod hat off​

 

[Dorothea]

Thanks, Philothei.


This is the last content on the Church from DVD #11, then it's on to the last part which is the last part of the Creed on the last DVD #12, which will follow this post.


"Now, I'll close by summing up, because this is always a central question for so many people. What about those who are outside the visible communion of the Orthodox Church? Whether we speak of Roman Catholics or various bodies of Protestants, or even individuals who claim to be Christians without sort of being visibly part of any sort of body of believers, we would say that, first of all, because the Grace of God does what It wills, and the Grace of God desires the salvation of all - the Grace of God does operate outside the visible boundaries of the Orthodox Church, but the Grace that is operating outside those visible boundaries is the Grace of the Church, that operates through God's mercy. For example, whether it be in the Roman Catholic church or in the various Protestant bodies, when people find truth, when people find faith, and there are many that do. In fact, it can be said probably in the case of most people in 20th century America, who came to the fullness of faith, within the communion of the Orthodox Church, it's because they've at least had an experience of the partial experience of that truth outside the Orthodox Church, whether they are RCC's or Protestants. Even though we would be very clear that in the RCC and in the Protestant churches - I'm using the term 'church' here loosely, not in the unique sense that we use it to refer to the One Church - that in the non-Orthodox churches - even though we would say in every case the reason why the non-Orthodox churches are not in communion with the One Church is because they had either added to or subtracted from the deposit of faith - something that has not been there from the beginning, not attested to by the undivided tradition of the Church. Yet, nevertheless, we would say and common sense upholds it, that in these bodies, there is a variable amount - it depends on the situation - of truth that is to be found there.

So it is not for us - just as we do not judge who in the communion of the Church is the wheat and the tares, so likewise, we do not judge people outside the communion of the Church. We would say for those through no fault of their own, have never been able to encounter the Orthodox faith, they will be judged on the basis of what they've have been given, not what they've not been given, and btw, we would say conversely, to that, that because membership in the One, True, Holy Church is no guarantee of salvation because, after all, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven is like the weeds and wheat and the dragnet and there are those who, even though they begin within the life of the Church, do fall away, so membership in the Church is no guarantee of salvation, on the one hand. On the other hand, the demands for those who claim to be part of the One, True, and only Church are very much greater, you see. The Lord says to whom much is given, much is expected. It is through Israel in the Old Covenant to whom the Lord has made Himself known. The consequences of being false to the Covenant are very great. So, likewise, how much more so within the New Covenant. It's not for us to make any kind of judgment or evaluation concerning the salvation of anyone outside or inside the communion of the Church. We would say we believe that the fullness of the truth that God has revealed to the world through Jesus Christ, His Son, the Bridegroom of the Bride is to be found within the communion of the Church when those in the communion of the Church are being faithful to what they have received.

Outside the Church, there can be partial expressions of that truth, but it is always mixed with varying amounts of error and addition, and that is to the Church of the living God, which is the Pillar and ground of truth, that we must sift through those teachings and declare through the eyes of the tradition that we have received the deposit that we have received - which is true and which is false - but in doing so, we make no kind of judgment of people, of persons."

 

[Joshua G.]

Feel free to go through and delete my posts includingthis one to clean it up and make more organized!

 

[Dorothea]

DVD #12 - The Creed

Fr. David starts by speaking of the last part of the Creed:

I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins
I expect the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.

"We have there two statements that we must examine separately. First, I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. This is a logical progression from the words we spoke about last time. I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We spoke last week of the Church as the Bride of Christ and the Body of Christ using those very physical images that the Scripture uses consistently speaking of those who belong to the communion of the Church - those called out from the world - as comprising Christ's Body, of whom He is the Head. Being His Bride of whom He is the Bridegroom and by using those images to speak of the Church, the Scripture is showing us, that the people of God are a very visible, real entity. There is nothing vague about it at all.

So, that very exact terminology - Bride, Body, Only, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic - continues on as we hear these words tonight. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. That is the fourth use of the word 'one' in the Creed. There is one God, the Father Almighty. There is one Lord, Jesus Christ. There is one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and the way one enters into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is through the one baptism which is offered for the remission of sins.

In using this expression - of course the Creed is following rather exactly St. Paul's expression in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 4th Chapter - 'There is one Body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all and through all in you all.' This use of the expression one - and referring the one to God, the body and baptism. We are to conclude from that that the baptism that is spoken from there in the Creed and in the Scripture as well because the Creed is an echo of the Scripture, is a matter of great importance. There is nothing secondary about it at all. Just as there is nothing secondary about the profession of faith in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

As we quoted from St. Cyprian last week. He says 'you cannot have God as your Father if you do not have the Church as your Mother.' Likewise, you cannot enter into the communion of the Church if you do not do it through the one baptism which is offered.

So, when we hear those words in the Creed, we have to first examine the place of baptism in the Church. Then we have to expand on it some, and speak a little bit about the sacraments of the Church in particular...this statement that the entrance into the eternal life of communion with God. The restoration of communion between God and man that has been made possible through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - it is made possible - it is provided by this baptism which is a sacramental act.

Let's talk about baptism first and then let's talk about what we mean by the expression sacrament. If we read in the Gospel of St. John - a passage I'm sure you're familiar with - when Nicodemus came to Jesus at night - incidentally, just for your interest...a lot of times people think Nicodemus came to Jesus by night because he wanted his talk with Jesus to be in secret, though nowhere does it say that in the passage...that perhaps because he was a leader among the Jews, a pharisee, he didn't want to be seen coming to speak with Jesus, but many earlier commentaries on that encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus at night - perhaps closer to the milieu out of which it comes - say that he comes by night because in the way of life of first century Judaism, the time to discuss spiritual things, the time for the disciple to go to the teacher and talk about spiritual things is in the evening, at night. Anyhow, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and says to Him, 'Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God, for no one can do those things that You did unless God is with him.' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God,' and that expression 'born again' in the original Greek in the NT uses the word 'gennathei anothen', which can also be translated perhaps more correctly as born from above. Born from on high. Born from that which is not of this world. Nicodemus said to Him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?' Jesus answered, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.'

So what's being said their, and of course, the entire Gospel of John - you'll see there is this preoccupation - and it's a preoccupation that the Church seizes upon constantly throughout the liturgical year, especially at Pascha time. There's a preoccupation in the Gospel of John with water. Water comes up in almost every chapter. In the 2nd chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus turns the water into wine. It is the first of His miracles. In the 3rd chapter, Jesus has this dialogue with Nicodemus about being born of water and the Spirit. While all of this is going on, there are frequent references to John's baptism - the water for which John baptizes. The 4th chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman about the living water. The Samaritan woman comes to the well, and Jesus says to her, 'the water that I give will be a spring of water gushing up into life eternal.' In the 5th chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus cures the paralyzed man who is at the pool. In the 6th chapter, Jesus walks on the water. In the 7th chapter, in the middle of the feast of tabernacles, He says, 'from the heart of him who believes in Me, rivers of living water shall flow. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.' And it is interesting there is it - kind of the core - the center of all of this cry of Jesus, 'if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.' The Gospel itself says that this drinking that Jesus is speaking of is about the Spirit. So when we hear about being born from above of water and Spirit, we're talking about one and the same, where the living water is that Jesus gives, there, likewise, is the Spirit, and of course, it goes on and on throughout the Gospel of St. John. In the 9th chapter, Jesus heals the man born blind by telling him to go wash in the water. Then at the climax of John's Gospel when Jesus is dead on the Cross and one of the soldiers - perhaps I have brought this up in this series, but I mention it frequently in my homilies at other times - when Jesus dies on the Cross, one of the soldiers - here, as unfortunately most English translations read says 'pierced' his side with a speer, but again, the literal meaning is opened His side with a speer, St. John says. He says that intentionally. Immediately blood and water come out. Then John, to show that he is not simply recording an incidental detail...there is nothing in the style of St. John's writing that is incidental...every last thing is full of significance. 'Immediately blood and water came out and he who has seen has testified his testimony is and he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe.' So everything that has been said about the life-giving water all through the Gospel of St. John from the beginning, leads up to this blood and water that comes forth from the side of the Lord. The Lord is dead on the Cross and from between His ribs, where the side is open, the Church, His Body that is brought to life by His Blood is born, just as when the first Adam is spoken of being put to sleep by God in Paradise, and from his rib, God makes Eve. So, likewise, from out of the open side of Christ, who is the new Adam, the Bridegroom, comes the Bride - the fountain of life-giving blood and water that nourishes."

 

[Dorothea]

While taking a break to rest my hand, arm, and neck from all the note taking (lol), I found this site. I believe you can get CD's there too, or in a different part of that website, but here's the cassettes on this lecture I'm typing up here in this thread in case people were interested. I don't really have a cassette player anymore. Needs to have those all on CDs! Anyway, here's the link:

Anderson, David :: Orthodox Christian Cassettes

 

[Dorothea]

DVD #12 - The Creed (cont'd.)


"Again, such physical imagery, our life is given not through an idea, not through something that is an operation of the brain, but through this contact with the Incarnate Person of the Son of God. That is how you become part of His Body. Of course, St. John echoes that later on in his epistle. Again, it is the blood and water - 5th chapter of the first epistle of St. John, 'Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and anyone who loves Him who begot, also loves Him Who is begotten of Him. Who is He who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not only by water, but by water and blood and it is the Spirit who bears witness because the Spirit is Truth. For there are three that bear witness on earth. The Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree as one.' So that is where the life-giving blood of and water of Jesus Christ is to him who is given the new birth in that water and blood. He is also give the new birth in the Spirit.

I say this at some detail because sometimes people, when they read the 3rd chapter of the Gospel of St. John and hear all being born again or born from above of water and the Spirit, they think that there is two separate things being spoken of there. That is simply not the case. We see that even in the descriptions in all four Gospels of the baptism of Christ Himself when the Lord goes down into the water by this act of the sinless One, the pure One associating Himself with sinners and manifesting Himself as the Lamb of God, who is going to take upon Himself the sins of the world. He comes forth from the water and the favorite word of the Gospel of St. Mark - those of you who are familiar enough with the Gospel of St. Mark know that the 'Marken' word is 'immediately.' Everything is immediately. 'Immediately, Jesus comes out of the water and the heavens are open, and the Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove and the voice of the Father is heard, 'This is my beloved Son of Whom I am well pleased.' '

So, just as for the Lord in His baptism, the water and the Spirit are there together. Likewise, in the one baptism that is offered in the Church for the remission of sins, where the living water is, there the life-giving Spirit is. In that, we see what a sacrament is. The word sacrament - sacramentum in the Latin - is the way that the early Church translated the Greek word 'mysterion' which, of course, is mystery. So the sacraments are the mysteries, and when we speak of these as mysteries, we're not using them in the contemporary sense - murder mysteries or mystery novels - something that has to be figured out. Rather the mystery is place, that means that God provides for us to contact Him. That in which God's people have their contact with what God has done in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world. The means by which that life is channeled to God's people to the members of His Body, the Church. These are the mysteries, the sacraments.

St. Leo the Great, one of the great Fathers of the Church - Western, Latin Father of the 5th century - describes very well when he says, 'All that the Lord, Jesus Christ has accomplished in His life, in His teaching, in His Passion, in His death, in His burial, in His Resurrection, in His Ascension, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, and in His Coming on the Last Day. All of that is channeled to mankind through the sacraments of the Church.' And the sacrament of the Church, the mystery of the Church which provides the God-given entrance into this new life is the sacrament of baptism in water and Spirit. Of course, in the Orthodox experience which reflects the whole experience of God's people both in the Old and New Covenants, there is never any kind of division between the physical or the material and the spiritual. Rather, the two always go together. That's at the nature of all the sacraments, whether it is baptism, whether it is chrismation - the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit - whether it is the center of the sacraments - the life-giving Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. There is always the marriage of the physical and the spiritual. Whether it is the water of baptism which is the vehicle for the new birth in the Spirit. Whether it is the oil of chrismation, which is the vehicle of the gift of the Holy Spirit - the sign of the pouring out of the Grace of God. Whether it is the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which are the vehicles of the Flesh and Blood of Christ becoming present for the people of God to feed upon for everlasting life.

The nature of the sacraments is that they always bear witness to the Incarnation. They bear witness to the first creation that God has made - the human being - a marriage of the physical and the spiritual as we said at the very beginning of these talks about creation. That man is the microcosm of the physical and spiritual worlds. That in us those two worlds intersect. Even on the level of the first creation, that is not lost, even in the Fall. Likewise, in the new creation and the means by which the new creation is accomplished is in the Incarnation of Christ, where again the physical and spiritual are married. This time it is God Himself - we would say the super ultimate spirit - the Spirit beyond the spirits - takes upon Himself, in the Person of the Son of God - the second Person of the Trinity -takes upon Himself material existence. So we see in this sacramental life of the Church the witness that John speaks of when he says he who sees this at the death of Christ on the Cross, the sign of the life is coming forth from His heart, comes the fountain of life for the world. The witness that is testified to here is the holiness of the material creation - that God created us as matter. God has saved us as matter personally by becoming Incarnate, and material, we remain until the end of time and beyond the end of time into eternity.

Our flesh and blood as it is now, it cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, as St. Paul says, without being transformed, but that's the whole point. It is transformed. It is not destroyed. The transformation of it does not include its destruction, anymore than the crucifixion and burial of Christ involve the destruction of His Fleshly Body. His Fleshly Body was not destroyed. It did not dissolve into the elements out of which it was comprised. Rather it went forward into this new eternal mode of existence which knows no corruption, which knows no death. In the sacraments, likewise, there is this marriage of the physical creation that is made by God, declared by Him to be good, is to be the means of eternal life. That eternal life is lost through the Fall. It is restored in Christ."

 

[Dorothea]

"So that is why, for example, when we consider the water of baptism - why baptism in water? Why is that the physical means that God has chosen? We need to examine for a bit, simply the nature of water itself. Water is the essential stuff of creation, even from a material viewpoint. Everything is made of it practically. Everything that is alive. How much percentage of water are we that our physical life comes from the water? So the water is the source of life. I always like to say every year on Theophany, the baptism of Christ that we celebrate on January 6 when we bless the water - before we even begin to say all those prayers that we say to bless the water, we need to remember the miracle of water simply. That a miracle that even with the sophistication of contemporary science really still defies description. How atoms of two invisible gases combine and form this substance without which there would be no life on earth.

So, this stuff of creation and life that God has made, it's the source of life, but it can also be and has been the source of death. Water is equally as much the sign of life as it is the sign of death. In the book of Genesis, the Spirit of God moves over the face of the water, and from the waters come forth all the living creatures, on the one hand. On the other hand, though, just a few chapters later, it is also the waters that drown and destroy in the Flood. Water gives life and death. Water is the sign of both. And so when we hear that essential Scriptural passage concerning baptism - read at every baptism that we do in the Church and also read on Holy Saturday on the Eve of the Paschal celebration - from the 6th chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans - 'Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death. That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life, for if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be in the likeness of His Resurrection, knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him. That the body of sin might be done away with. That we should no longer be slaves of sin freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him, for the the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise, you reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God, in Christ Jesus, our Lord.'

So the water of baptism is the sign, the means by which both the death and resurrection of Christ are revealed. To baptize - baptizo - the verb in the Greek, means to be submerged, to be immersed in the water, to go down to be covered by it. That's why, following the tradition of the early Church, the Orthodox Church insists, unless there is some sort of emergency when it's physically impossible...that the baptism be done by immersion. The sign of the baptism - what reveals the death and resurrection of Christ is that we go down and be covered by the water to die with Christ, and we come forth from the water dead - dead to this world, dead to sin. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. That whole package of evil, corruption, death, emptiness,sins that are voluntary, sins that are involuntary, the result of the Original Sin - not the inherited guilt that we do not believe in as we spoke about earlier - but the consequences of the sinfulness that has produced each one of us - the sinfulness that our parents and all of our ancestors have been infected with from the beginning of the world - that we come into the world infected creatures because we are born of infected creatures. Still good, but infected and twisted. All of that is drowned in the baptismal water, and we come forth a new creation. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. In the Epistle to the Colossians, the 3rd chapter, St. Paul talks about being dead. 'If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God,' - we are raised with Christ through the baptism - 'set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ above.' So those who come forth from the womb of baptismal font - and the baptismal font in the writings of the Fathers of the Church is very often referred to as the womb of the Church. God is my Father, the Church is my Mother. I came forth from the womb of the font - one of the most common expressions of the early Church. A lot of times, in fact, in the ancient churches, the fonts are made with 8 sides - again this love of the Christian tradition for the number 8 because it is one beyond the 7 days a week of this world, of this time. The 8 is the time of the Kingdom of God - the new age.

The baptism in water, in the Holy Spirit shows us everything that is essential to these sacraments - these mysteries - of the Church. That in them is found the marriage of the physical and the spiritual, that God uses as the channel of His new and eternal life. We would not say as we never do on any other occasion that the physical side of the mystery - of the sacrament - is a secondary aspect, and one has to be very careful, especially if one is a product of Western Christianity deeply rooted in - I'd say probably all of us in one way or another - is this idea that matter is secondary, matter is not holy. With many of us, there is the internal twisting and wrangling at such expressions as holy water, holy oil. Behind that is something that is deeply, deeply unChristian. It's more of a product of the philosophy of Plato which regarded the human body as an all-material creation. The human body as a prison for the spirit for which there could be no life worth living unless the spirit is liberated from the spirit of the body. Certainly material creation from this viewpoint cannot be any kind of vehicle of the Grace of God. That is why, at the basis of this rejection of the sacraments that we find in some non-Orthodox Christianity - not all but some - is actually what's behind that is a rejection of the Incarnation itself, (!) even though perhaps those who reject the sacraments, they claim that they do not reject the Incarnation, but the whole purpose of God becoming man is to sanctify material creation by taking to Himself flesh, matter, water, everything that comprises existence - that the material has never been the same since, and the means - as St. John of Damascus says, 'Blessed is matter that brought about my salvation. Never will you separate me from the matter that brought about my salvation.'

So, in these mysteries - those sacramental signs - we do not have any kind of understanding or experience that the material aspect of them is in any way secondary. It is married, joined to the spiritual life, the eternal life, which they channel, which they transmit. Just as our conception of what makes a human being, does not in any way put the physical aspect of our existence in the secondary place, nor would we ever say that you can chop the human being into the material side and the spiritual side - divide them into two halves. What you have then is not a full human being. In fact, the reason why, as we're going to say in a minute, that we have to say in the Creed, we await the resurrection of the dead, and we would be so bold as to say that even in - we have to be careful in how we say this and understand it correctly - even the Risen Lord Himself awaits the consummation of all things in the resurrection of all the members of His Body on the last day. That is why when we spoke of the Ascension, for example, what does the risen and glorified Lord, Jesus Christ with His Mother and all the Saints who are united to Him in Heaven, what do they do? They intercede for us together. Christ makes intercession until the end. To make intercession implies there will be in the fulfillment of all things - when time comes to an end - when all things are fulfilled - there will be a time when making intercession will stop and God will be all in all."

 

[Dorothea]

"All creation groans in travail for the revelation of the children of God. So this awaiting of the resurrection on the Last Day which is central to the whole Christian understanding and experience of what life and faith is all about is again a testimony, a witness to how essential the salvation of our whole being - physical and spiritual - without the salvation of our body, there is no salvation for us at all, but I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute. So, the baptism which we say is one - we need to speak for a minute about what we mean by there being one baptism because it's understood in two ways. First of all, what's intended there in the Creed - that there is one baptism - that baptism that Christ has given as the channel - the means by which one is jointed to His Body - can be found only within the communion of the Church. That's the first thing that's said about it. We're going to elaborate on that in a second.

The second thing that is said there, how it has always been understood since the formulation of the Creed itself is the one baptism means that the baptism is not repeated. It is something that happens once in the life of a Christian. It is the act by which one is given the new birth from above in water and the Spirit. It does not mean that it is reduced to the however many minutes or hours it takes to baptize somebody. What it does mean is what begins at baptism - that one baptism that begins when it is accomplished - is fulfilled, actualized, fleshed out throughout the rest of one's life. Orthodox Christians would say that I am being baptized. The effects of my baptism are being lived out until I breathe my last breath. I am continually dying. As in the image of the resurrection of Christ, I am continually rising. When we come to the liturgy every Sunday, what we are doing is re-confessing because it never can be done enough as we live in time. There is never one once for all over and done with action - one profession of faith that never needs to be intensified. There is no experience of that in the Orthodox Church. Rather the one baptism that begins when we go down into the water and come up in the image of the resurrection of Christ from that time on, the effects of it must be lived out until the end if it is real.

Now when we say that the one baptism can be found only in the communion of the Church, what do we mean by that because as I think we've spoken of before, you know, it is the current and prevailing discipline of the Orthodox Church in the 20th century, at least the greatest part of the Orthodox Church, that those Christians who have been baptized by water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit outside the communion of the Orthodox Church are not baptized again when they enter into the communion of the Orthodox Church. Rather what is done - and here I'll just mention it quickly because we'll talk about it in detail in the catechism class - what is done is the sacrament of chrismation - the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit - the Church's stamp upon the baptism - just as the Father's stamp upon the baptism of His Son in the Jordan is the heavens being opened and the Spirit descending. The Church does not repeat Trinitarian baptism that has been done by water. She can recognize - even though it has happened outside Her communion - She can recognize at least the presence of Her own basic faith in Who God is, what eternal life is. It's not to say that the baptism outside the communion of the Church is of itself the one baptism for the remission of sins, but it is within the authority of the Church to take that baptism that occurred outside Her communion and fulfill - to provide for it what was lacking - and She does this through the sacrament of chrismation - the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's why at present baptized non-Orthodox Christians are not given rebaptism because of this desire for the Church to not repeat something which is not meant to be repeated. Rather to fulfill it. However, this discipline of the Church has varied from age to age. There have been times, you see, because Christ has given His Church the authority to bind and loose, to - sometimes the word that's used, it's a Greek word - economia - the English version - economy - but economy here, the sense of it - the steward - the Church is the steward of the gifts of God, and the Church dispenses the gifts of God in a way that is best for those who come to Her. Throughout the history of the Church, the Church has - depending on what is going on around Her - used either stricter norms - canons, standards of behavior or sometimes has used lighter norms. In about the last century and a half, the prevailing policy of the Orthodox Church has been to recognize the Trinitarian water baptism in the non-Orthodox churches. The root of the Church's - even though there may be things lacking or in some cases, there are things added that are not part of the deposit of the faith. The Church recognizes in that something of Herself - so the Church will take that and through the sacrament of chrismation, provide what is lacking."

 

[Dorothea]

"However, you should know that in our own time, it's a matter of debate among the Orthodox - there are some Orthodox who would say, and I'm among them, btw, it's my opinion - that because the great instability of doctrine and morality that is going on now, has been going for the last several decades, but with increasing intensity, it would seem in the non-Orthodox Christian churches where even the most basic doctrines and standards of morality are flagrantly either violated or up for grabs, there are some Orthodox who would say it is becoming more and more difficult to have any kind of assurance that we can assume there is basic Trinitarian faith in those who come to the communion of the Orthodox Church from the outside. So, I think we may see in our times if this pattern continues in the non-Orthodox churches, we may see a return to a stricter use of the rule in which it may happen that more and more non-Orthodox Christian converts from outside Her communion will be received by baptism because of the Church's decision that it is difficult in these confused times that we live to have any assurance of what's going on sometimes. That's an aside.

The Creed concludes by saying that I await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world or age to come. First of all, what we are saying there is at the center of our identify as Christians - the core, the very center of the Gospel - that in the resurrection of Christ Who is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the way has been opened for eternal life as God intended it to be, as God wills for all His creation, and that the eternal is not simply a vague, kind of immortality. We spoke of that before in another way, but I want to speak specifically in this sense because again a tendency of our age is to think that one of the essential Christian teachings is this kind of immortality of the soul, but we believe in the immortality of the soul...but to think that there is some kind of afterlife, some kind of way that things go on and on.

A lot of people think that well, if I believe that there is some kind of god and I believe that there is some kind of ongoing life after death, that makes me a Christian. Well, according to the Scriptures, according to the teachings of the Church, it does not. Life going on after death as we said before when we talked about the kind of grim view the OT has of life after death in itself, immortality of itself does not equal salvation and does not equal communion with God. Simply to go on in some sort of nonphysical way as a matter of fact, to especially the great teachers of the Church, is not a very inviting prospect. The life that is subject to sin and emptiness and alienation not only from God, but from other human beings does not - simply the death of the body does not make it cease to exist. Again, to have some sort of notion that all we have to do is be rid of physical existence to be happy, to be saved - that it's this physical existence of ours that's all the problem. This is not in any sense a Christian notion. Rather it's much more derived from Greek and oriental philosophy.

Greek philosophy was based on the idea - as far as this aspect of it is concerned - that there is no intersection of time and eternity. There is no intersection of the spiritual and the physical. In fact, that is why both Greek and oriental religion is based on this idea - the reason why we are immortal according to Greek and oriental philosophy is not that we continue to exist after physical death, but also that we always have existed before physical birth. See, in order to have immortality, according to these systems of thought, you always have to have existed. You have to have pre-existed. That's why both Greek and oriental philosophy is based on these series of reincarnation of various sorts - that the life that I have now, I lived in another form before I had this one. I'll live another form after I have this one. And especially as far as oriental religions are concerned, I have to do that until I am finally set free from what? The curse of physical existence. Well, that kind of idea of immortality is completely contrary to the Judeo-Christian understanding of time and history.

We need to mention that again because it has to be really deeply rooted, I would say, in any Orthodox Christian, especially in this era of ours which is so cluttered with all kinds of stuff. That time and history for us - I used the image before - it's linear. It had a beginning. It has an end. it is not some kind of illusion as the Hindus would say - history and time are an illusion - that's why we have to be stoical, expressionless in the face of pain and sickness and death, because they don't mean anything anyway. They are unreal. Physical existence is unreal, time is unreal. For the Christian, time and history are very real. They have a point from which they began. They have a point at which they will end. They are created by God. In fact, within time, within history is the plan of God. That even though it is not from the underside, as I would put it - from our limited way of seeing it - the plan of God is not always immediately perceivable. Yet, nevertheless, the plan of God in history is being worked out.

History is coming - whenever it happens - is coming to its climax, is coming to its end, is coming to that point that the Scripture calls the day of the Lord - that point in which God makes His ultimate intervention. God intervenes throughout history. God's intervention in the Incarnation, the resurrection, makes salvation possible.

God's final intervention is when He returns in the flesh at the end of time, and according to the doctrine of the Church - and if this is not true, then, as St. Paul says, 'we are, of all people, the most to be pitied' - there is no point of our faith. Everything that is evil will be righted except for those who resist the righting of it by the misuse of their free will, which God will not violate either in time or throughout eternity. Everything that is unjust will be corrected. Every abuse, all the suffering, all the oppression, all the pain of mankind will be recompensed at the resurrection of the dead on the last day. Our basic faith, that despite the fact that we, like Job, continually see ourselves and experiences ourselves - and it is not an illusion - experience evil and see its consequence. Nevertheless, evil will not have the last word, just as evil did not have the last word in the crucifixion and death of Christ Himself, so evil will not have the last word in history in creation in time. But God Who has entered time - that's the whole point, see. God creates time, He enters time, gets into it Himself - enters history - so that He can bring it to its ultimate point of ushering in the Kingdom of God - the life of the age to come."

 

[Dorothea]

"So that when we say we believe in the resurrection of the dead, that at a certain point, every member of the human race that has lived and died in this world will come forth from their graves - that the promise that began to be given in the OT that we find in such words as the prophet Isaiah, 'the dead shall arise and those who dwell in the tombs shall rejoice. Awake and sing all who dwell in in the dust.' or that ultimate confession of faith of Job who has lost everything and whose body is rotting away in front of him and he's scraping off the puss from his sores with a piece of broken clay, and in the midst of that he says, 'I know that my Redeemer lives and in the last day, He shall stand on the earth, and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.'

That is a very crucial passage because it's one of the glimmers of the OT that there is something beyond this shadowy life, this incomplete human life that happens when the soul is unnaturally parted from the body - you can't be a complete human being without your body. And so the body must be restored by God. It must be restored without its destruction. That is why at the burial of a Christian, even when each of us whose bodies will see corruption - we will disintegrate into the elements from which we were created. The profession of faith that the Church makes at the grave is that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof because the Lord Himself has lived on earth, has entered into death. Just as He, the first fruits came forth from the grave, so also on the last day we will be reintegrated into the ultimate expression of His divine power. We will be reintegrated as human beings, soul and body, and as the Lord said, the dead who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall arise some to the resurrection of life, and some to the resurrection of condemnation. Whether it will be the resurrection of life or the resurrection of condemnation, as we know, depends on the response of our free will because everything God has done to make the eternal life possible, He has done."


ETA: Sorry, had to cut this one short. Have to go get my boy from school. be back later!

 

[Dorothea]

"Now, some - and it's an important question - some people ask how are we to understand what goes on when we die and when we rise on the last day? What kind of life do the dead have. The Scripture speaks of those who die in Christ, that they sleep in Christ. They do not have....death has never been the same after Jesus Christ entered into the state of death. Death is no longer that which alienates man from God. Death is no longer the empty, bottomless pit because God Himself in the flesh has gone to the bottom of the pit, so death has become the means by which we are united to Him. So that those who die in Christ until the time of the resurrection on the last day are - we would use the expression - are clothed with His risen Body until we as persons are given our own unique risen body on the last day. The risen Body of Christ Who is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep covers, we could say, the nakedness, the OT expression of the dead - that they are naked because they do not have their bodies - the nakedness of mankind in death has been covered by the risen Body of Christ. St. Paul says - the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, 5th chapter - 'We know that in our earthly house, this tent' - means our body - my body is my tent. That's a beloved expression of the Scriptures, even when it says in the Gospel of John, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.' The literal translation is the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us....took the Body. 'We know that in our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed,' - it is destroyed in death - 'we have a building for God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this, we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.' - If indeed having been clothed, we shall not be found naked - 'For we who are in this tent groan, and being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed by life. Now He Who has prepared us for this very thing is God. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body' - This body in this world that has to die - 'we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.'

So, it is the risen Body of Christ that clothes the nakedness of the dead. That's why in the book of Revelation, it says for henceforth, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. The most common inscription on the graves of the early Christians that is found in the catacombs - it's over and over again, you see this - is so-and-so sleeps in Christ. So-and-so name lives in Christ. We are not empty and alienated when we die. And the sleep that we have in Christ is not a kind of suspended animation. The sleep that we have in Christ is the rest that has been made possible as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, 'There is now a Sabbath rest for the people of God. In this world, we cannot rest." Christ has made the rest possible, so in Him, we rest, and what do we do until the end between our death and the resurrection on the last day? Once we are purified from all those things which are not of God in us - we spoke of that before - that there is necessity of purification after death. We don't try to define it. We don't try to say how it happens, how long it takes, but we do acknowledge its existence as essential. The spiritual journey that begins in this life continues after death. As Father Thomas Hopko likes to say, 'It's not over until it's over,' and it's not over ultimately until the end of time, the end of history on the last day. And that those who are purified and united to God, do, in Christ, covered by His own risen Body - to use that expression - as their clothing - do what He does. They join Him to make intercession before all things in the Father until the consummation of all things have come - the end of all history. So, the whole Body of Christ is together, Head and members. The Church in heaven and the Church on earth.

The Creed concludes with the words - and in these, we have the expression of that one and only reason why anyone should be an Orthodox Christian - and that is because we seek the life of the age to come. The life of the age in which God will be all in all. The life of the age in which the destiny that God in His divine purpose had when He called us from nonexistence into being intended for us. That we should share His life in a perfected existence. And existence that includes the perfection of that marriage of the physical and spiritual that is within each one of us. And existence that includes the perfection even of the material universe. That we do not have - and this is important because I think there are probably people who have this notion...maybe even some of you do...that this material creation - some people think - is going to be destroyed, is going to be annihilated. Such a notion is contrary to Scripture and the faith. Nowhere does it say....even where it says the heaven and the earth will pass away....in order to give birth to a new heaven and a new earth. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, the book of Revelation says - 'Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed and I saw the holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a Bride adored for her Husband, and I heard a loud voice from heaven saying 'behold the tabernacle of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they shall be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death nor sorrow, nor crying, and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.' Just as this existence of ours, this flesh and blood, which is fallen and cannot inherit the Kingdom of God unless it is transformed, unless it falls into the ground and dies like a grain of wheat, but what comes forth - the new life that comes forth - comes forth through the transformation of the old life, not the annihilation of the old life. That the risen Body of Christ which is the pattern of all our eternal existence comes forth from the tomb in such a way that did not include the annihilation of His physical Body of the crucifixion and the death. Likewise, this creation that we already mentioned - St. Paul describing as groaning in birth pains, in travail, for the coming into existence of the new creation. Especially in the 20th century, it's been very popular to think that because man has discovered the ability to annihilate not only himself, but to pretty much wipe out the planet, that sometimes people think that that can happen. According to the Christian Gospel, that cannot happen. The Lord at His return on the last day is going to return to this earth and there are going to be people here when He does. And no matter how great the potential that man discovers of evil and destruction, God will not permit it to come to its ultimate, greatest expression of annihilation. The human race will not pass away. The sun will not devour the solar system, whatever the laws of physics and astronomy say. All of those laws functions within a universe that is not eternal, that has a beginning and is proceeding to a purpose intended for it by God alone, and that purpose is the life of the age to come - the eternal age where there will be no more time as we know it, but only the eternity of God being all in all.

 

[Dorothea]

"Whether or not a human being shares in that life is up to him and her. That is why we have been given the Church. This is eternal life to know the true God and Jesus Christ Who He has sent. To know Him not simply in terms of intellectual knowledge. To experience His own life that He has entrusted to the Church through the channels of the sacraments. That in that life within the communion of the Church, the life of the age to come is already flowing in our veins. Those who belong to the Body of Christ are already being transformed into the age to come. We see particularly and most especially in the Saints, the great Saints that attained union with God while still in this world - and I would say that perhaps, and this is based on my own experience, that next to the Scriptures and the liturgical services of the Church themselves, for me, the greatest strength of faith comes in coming to know better as time goes on, the lives of the Saints that have been lived in this world where it was witnessed by those who were with them that all of the consequences of sin and the Fall were reversed visibly. That this is possible. It's not too good to be true. It is the universal call that God offers to everyone the life of the age to come.

And the eternal hell which does exist, exists only because there will be those - there are those - who not through any fault of God, but because they do not want God. They have made themselves into the opposites of God - reject Him for all eternity. I have a little passage here to read, except the book fell where I had it opened to, so I have to try to find it again....it's from the writings of Fr. George Florosky. 'There is no security of universal salvation,' - that means the automatic salvation of everything. There have been heretics in the Church who have taught that for the goodness of God to be true goodness, it must overcome all evil, including the evil that is a result of the misuse of our free will. 'The trouble is that there is hell already. Its existence does not depend upon divine decision. God never sends anyone to hell. Hell is made by creatures themselves. It is human creation outside, as it were, of the order of creation.'


So, it would be a good place to close. That for all of those through these talks have encountered the Orthodox doctrine, that it has focused us on those ultimate questions: Who is God? What is life? What is the human being? What has been accomplished for us in history, in time through Jesus Christ? What is the life that has been given us? What is the potential that God wills for us? The life of the age to come. Becoming by Grace, everything that God is by nature. Having realized within each one of us those great words of St. Athanasius that God became man so that man might become god.' Again, not independently or with the loss of his own creaturely personality, but it is within the Orthodox faith that the fullness of this life without any kind of loss or compromise or delusion or betrayal, despite the sinfulness of the members of the Church from the beginning. It is our confession that it is within the Orthodox Church that the fullness of the life of the age to come, and the realization of the destiny that the one true and living God that has for each of us, His creatures, is to be found. With that, I close."

 

[Dorothea]

My original post after the last closing post failed because of website issues on CF, and I lost all I wrote, so I’m writing this in my word doc to copy over when the system comes back.

There was a question I wanted to add, that an inquirer asked after Fr. David had finished talking in this session that he asked around the time when Fr. David was discussing the Incarnation of Christ, but said he’d get to it later (what he meant was in the catechumen class, but he answers him pretty well here).

Q: Why do the Orthodox say, in their services , to the Mother of God, “save us?”

A: As I recall, we did speak of it briefly when we spoke of salvation. The evening that we spoke of redemption and salvation as making that distinction between redemption which is accomplished uniquely for us by the Person of the Son of God Incarnate – in His saving work which makes possible the forgiveness of sin, the opening to reconciliation with the Father – the reconciliation between God and the human being and eternal life. We define that as redemption, and we speak of salvation as the actualization of what has been made possible in each person’s life by his or her cooperation with the Grace of God that has made it possible. So redemption is what has been made possible for us uniquely by Christ. We speak of Him and Him only as our Redeemer in that sense. But salvation, which is always worked out for everyone within the context of the Body, and so everyone in the body is involved in it, and most especially those who have attained communion with God and namely the Virgin Mother of God and all the Saints are actively involved in the salvation of each member of the Body. So when we pray, when we ask the Mother of God, when we ask the Saints and even we would say it’s not in any way, I think, a misuse of this even to ask another person – one of our Christian brothers and sisters – to pray for us is another way of saying….to say pray for me is the same as saying “save me.” The only difference between me asking you to pray for me and me asking the Mother of God to pray for me – it’s not an ontological difference. It’s a difference in intensity, because of the great effectiveness of the Mother of God’s prayer. It’s the same prayer, and it’s the same salvation worked out.

Continually the Scriptures use salvation as something we do – “If you pursue godliness,” St. Paul says to Timothy , “you will save yourself and those around you.” Now, of course, obviously it’s not saying Timothy will redeem himself by pursuing godliness, but he will save himself. And St. James says that “‘one who brings a sinner back from his mistaken ways “ – this is one of the most extreme expressions of it – “will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.”

So salvation in that sense is the actualization through cooperation with the redemptive Grace made possible by Christ alone.

 

[Dorothea]

I thank all those sincerely-seeking people who took the time to read all that has been typed up on this thread - nearly all of the lecture of "What We Believe" in the Orthodox Church. I hope and pray you found it enlightening, edifying, and a refreshing perspective of true Christianity. God bless!