ORLAPUBS P. R158: CONTD. LETTERS TO NON-ORTHODOX

RESPONSE TO ONLINE POSTINGS
FROM NON-ORTHODOX
ON THE INCARNATION, PARADIGMS,
ET AL.

Note that the correspondents on this page are not the same as in the preceding.

       Your response about your own Faith is beautiful. But I wasn't trying to change your outlook. I was simply seeking information about the validity of B's characterization of Evangelicals as individuals that have been born again, whose "faith is very important in their life today," who "believe they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians," who "believe that Satan exists," who "believe that eternal [he means "everlasting"] salvation is possible only through grace, not works," who "believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth," and who "describe God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today."
     My qualms were over the absence of any reference to Jesus' Deity--that is, to the Trinity, Incarnation, Transfiguration, Crucifixion, and Resurrection."   To me, it makes a lot of difference as to whether i have a relationship with a demigod or with GOD--whether the Creator LOGOS (Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father) or the Paraclete (the all-holy Spirit). It makes a lot of difference as to what Jesus or the Spirit can do. So i will venture a few comments so that what i have said may not look arbitrary. It's a question of what is true, not what is comfortable.
      When the communists shot 600 (?) priests, nuns, and monks in the
middle of Kiev, even the communists were allowed by the all-holy Spirit to see the uncreated Light glowing on all of the orthodox temples of the city. When the first native-American martyr, Peter the Aleut, died for the Faith, he died for a God, not just a Lord and Savior (a demigod).   How does one know that the miracles and the Faith and perseverance of the Saints and any miracles worked through prayer and their relics are the work of devils or the Holy Spirit? It certainly cannot be decided by a fallible individual sinner.   Luther rejected certain books of the New Testament and Old Testament; how does one know that he was right?   It's easy to claim that one's Faith is right if one eliminates the books that disagree with one.
     So if it's a limited individual's conviction versus something more
objective, I would go for the collective test of time. I could never accept
a Faith that changes every forty years; that could never (for me) compete with beliefs established in complete continuity over the whole span of time since the Apostles.   If it cannot last forty years, it cannot compete with what holds water for 2000 years. That's just another way of saying that trusting my own impulses could be trusting the impulses of a fallible, limited person--one perhaps deluded by the devil.   Devils can perform miracles; so the real test is time. Things that endure for two millenniums have greater truth than those that change from one generation to the next. To say that is to place objectivity over my own limited subjectivity. The argument could go to a higher level by speaking of what is consistent vs. what is inconsistent--the example of Luther I mentioned above: He claimed inerrancy for a Bible he himself defined (minus a number of the books in the real Bible). To bolster his claim, he had to say, contrary to John 16:13 in his own Bible, that the Holy Spirit had not guided the Church into all truth (according to Christ's promise) for 1425 years. I find that inconsistent, in addition to relying on a finite individual's authority. Luther even re-defined faith (belief) as fiducia--trust, loyalty. That puts feelings and wishing above reality; in fact the virtual reality of Grace and justification in Luther's theology in effect say that will supplants reality:   If God says you are righteous, even though in reality you are not righteous, then you are righteous. Luther did not hold that God was lying in stating the untruth; Luther gloried in the way will erased what is.
     Emotions are important but of course misleading, as they abound in every religion; I could not rely on my personal finite, possibly demon-influenced, emotions or will; for truth depends on what is real. This statement is neutral as to which religion is true, since it's just a guideline I think holds water. What happened in Kiev was part of a long and consistent history from the conversion of Waldemar the Viking (St. Vladimir) to the Christian faith. What happened in Alaska to Peter the Aleutian Martyr was simply the continuation of a chain going back to St. Vladimir, just as he accepted in toto a Faith going back to the Apostles and early Martyrs--and he convinced all of those Vikings to march to the river and be immersed three times in the name of the all-holy Trinity--which, with the Resurrection, has always been the center of traditional Christian Faith. What disturbed me about B's characterization was it's shallowness: Not once did he say that one has got to say Jesus is God--just Lord and Savior. Of course, B, like any other individual, is finite and fallible; he can no more know which Bible is true or which Faith is true than I or any limited individual can. But my question was whether he did know what an Evangelical is--where the question of truth has to do with a finite fact, not infinite Being. He is a leading Evangelical and researcher of information about Evangelicals. I was inquiring how widespread that novel view of Christianity (so different from Evangelicalism forty years ago) might be.   When I listen to preachers on the channel they use here, and hear them speak of prayer cloths and embracing Jesus (evidently not fully divine) as Lord and Savior, I can scarcely doubt that B is right, while at the same time being astounded at such a view of Christianity that leaves the Trinity and Resurrection out of a definition of it. I of course don't have access to all of the facts and wondered how that could be true. It certainly was true of a self-proclaimed Evangelical at the church Protestant church I once attended near where I live.
     When I discussed this on the telephone with another Evangelical, he said he was unaware of various things I mentioned that get called Evangelical. So I thought you might be knowledgeable. I wasn't trying to pin down what you yourself believed, but just what Evangelicals believe about the Trinity and Resurrection (and the resurrection of the bodies of the faithful). A person's private Faith is none of my business, unless for some reason a person makes it my business by trying to take over public school systems or by trying to legislate a body's morals for the whole society. Otherwise, I leave everyone his or her space.
     I grew up believing in truth and to try to put that ahead of personal feelings. St. john of Damaskos said that it is better to die for the truth than to live without it. What feels right or good, or what I want to be right or good, does not (for me) mean more than that is what feels good or what i would like to be good. I hope i never delude myself into thinking some private propensity or wish is therefore true. The only real test is time--another word for the collective pious tradition that sifts out short-lived error from sustainable truth. So someone comes along and says, Buddhism and Judaism are older than Christianity and they endure. I would say that Buddhism, which is atheistic and believes that in the end everyone is absorbed into an impersonal ALL, has inconsistencies, just as happened with Judaism until it got transformed into Christianity. Members of those Faiths have the reciprocal right to say likewise about my beliefs. One can have a "personal relationship" with Shiva or any Hindu god--and millions do, putting flowers on the images every morning when they bathe in the river--but how that makes Shiva true is beyond me. Any any sort of polytheism is (almost by definition) inconsistent. Even a personal relationship with an individual's mental image of Jesus does not make Him true any more than a personal relationship with Satan makes him true. What makes them true is the enduring and (when rightly viewed) consistent evidence for them, the miracles their respective saints accomplish--the sheer staying power of a consistent Faith (belief, not fiducia). I'm suspicious of individual's private convictions--self-proclaimed prophets are on street-corners everywhere.
     If I find holes in Luther's or others' beliefs--Calvin's Islamic-derived
predestination, rejection of images, exaltation of words and "the
book"--it's to no little degree because any individual's finite, limited judgments lack staying power: What one says now, another contradicts later, generation after generation. Only one consistent body of belief survives without constant additions (e.g. those of the papal Christians) or subtractions (e.g. those of the followers of Luther, Calvin, and later prophets like Joseph Smith.

well, they expect to get it to the printers in late summer. i haven't yet received the first version, so i don't even know the real title. however, the sisters will, for the most part, translate the energy words of the Greek Bible (and Orthodox theology) as literally as they can, given the aim of readable English, and LOGOS will (I hope) not call the Creator of all that has been made a "Word"--about as silly and foreign to ancient thinking as one can get. the Creator of all that is (but of course not the font of all being, which the creed indicates the Father is) is the Reason (LOGOS) and Wisdom (SOPHIA) of God. the great Temple in Constantinople is called the Great Temple of Christ the Holy Wisdom of God.

i am happy that the sisters are doing everything as literally as possible, and their research on early Greek Fathers' understandings is amazing. i am less happy that they are using a type of KJV english instead of totally modern english; but, given their aim, i have made suggestions to keep the style right where they would have used something too modern to fit. i asked them to keep my name anonymous, as i have no desire to be listed in their table of advisors; after all, they are old-calendar greeks and do not think the Greek Orthodox Archidiocese is really very orthodox. so i can help better by not having to be named. ditto with the LXX, being produced as a pan-orthodox project under the omophorion of the antiochian orthodox--also "liberal" by old-calendar standards. their ORTHODOX STUDY New Testament produced by Nelson (using the NKJV text) with notes, icons, Psalms, etc. (all of which have been criticized by the stricter Orthodox) have had a huge sale among Denominationists, according to Nelson; even Sunday-School teachers are buying it! now that Orthodoxy has doubled from 3 to 6 million in four years or so, its size (and therefore potential sales) is greater than that of Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined.

(hayia sophia) i have persuaded the sisters (or rather, the committee they refer problems to) that theosis "participating in the uncreated Energies of GOD" ]2 Pet. 1:4] is "Divinization" for Greek theosis, not "Deification" (apotheosis)--the Latin heresy of partaking of the divine Essence. they will do anthropos as "human being," etc. i have also persuaded influential orthodox people online that the name of the creed in Greek is not "symbol" (Greek symvolon) of faith but "standard of belief"--"belief" is important because the reformers re-defined faith as fiducia according to their semitic will-based paradigm--and that means "loyalty, trust"--not belief. my view is that the Middle Ages got Christianity all wrong by having been cut off from the eastern Greek-language roots for seven or eight centuries (much longer in some places). that is the equivalent of from 1245 to 1995. the whole feeling and framework got lost during so many centuries of illiteracy and barbarism. if you go through the new testament--all of the energ- words (and synerg- words), you'll see how little the renderings reflect the greek-language idea: dynamis was a potential force, unrealized till energized : eneryeia is energy (the -sis nouns).

someone put the editor of the LXX (Greek OT) in Calif. with me, and, while i have declined to take part in the work, i agreed (when he asked me) to comment on items over which there were two sides of a debate over this or that on an issue. i did suggest not mistranslating (h)omoiosis in Gen. 1:26 as "likeness" when the -sis ending indicates the energetic translation of "assimilation." one reason why i think God selected Greek for the propagation of the Gospel was its pairing of deverbative nouns as energetic feminines in -sis (older -tis after -s- as in pistis) and non-energetic neuters in -ma. no other language i know does it this way. this is the energetic view of reality that Orthodox theology has always upheld. it solves ten paradoxes that cannot be solved in western theology, since both western paradigms (a dozen centuries newer than the Greek-language paradigm of early Xy.) lack the energy concept and mistranslate the New Testament and Fathers.

since both Aquinas's and Luther's paradigms were derived from Islamic Cordova after a hiatus with the East lasting the greater part of a millennium, there are many flaws (false axioms or assumptions) in the Western approaches to reality and religion. this can be proved. Aside from the Western juridicalism and the error of elevating the Crucifixion over the Resurrection, Luther embraced two "modernisms":

(ii) the devotio moderna (a pre-Pietist Gnosticism that rejected the role of matter and time in religion). Hence, Luther said (in contrast with John 6:48-58 and Paul in 1 Cor.), "Believe and you've eaten" and "I can have the "body" and "blood" of Christ any time I WILL by faith." Time and tradition fell away; so creation and Salvation became timeless or instantaneous, when the Fathers clearly accepted the biblical treatment of these as developmental and energetic. Materiality (Incarnation, resurrection of the Body, and theosis through the sharing Christ's life-giving energies) were not part of the Muslim scheme that the West inherited from Cordova. Of course, the "Muslim Aristotle" caused a sensation when it came to the West, as historians tell us; but it was a Semiticized will-first, juridicalized framework foreign to anything a Greek-speaking Christian could've imagined in the first centuries. The only ancient thing in Luther was his Gnostic antimateriality and antitemporality. Luther's virtual reality (Grace and Justification are God's bestowing virtual righteousness on those who are, and remain, really sinners--virtual "saints"--with all of the juridical stuff absent in the East--satisfaction, atonement, ransoming, justification, substitution, adoption, etc., etc.) and Calvin's "virtualist Lord's Supper" are unthininkable in the mind of an early Christian speaking Greek.