Archbishop Demetrios on the new ecclesiastical year

Copied from the American Orthodox Institute blog

Encyclical for the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical New Year

Aug 24, 2009 | Protocol 63/09 | September 1, 2009

Day for the Protection of our Natural Environment

To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America.

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We give thanks to God for the beginning of this Ecclesiastical New Year and for His abundant blessings, which fill our hearts with gratitude, deepen our faith, and strengthen our souls. The date of September 1 on our calendars marks the beginning of many things in our lives. For some, it presents the beginning of another academic year filled with worthy goals and challenges. For others, it is the return from summer vacation with refreshed bodies and minds, and renewed commitment to vocation and responsibilities. For those who work in agriculture, this date marks the beginning of the agrarian year and the tasks of planting, nurturing, and harvesting.

For Orthodox Christians, September 1 begins a new liturgical year in which we participate in the life of the Holy Church through Her divine services. September 1 is also the date that has been designated by our Holy Ecumenical Patriarchate as the Day for the Protection of our Natural Environment. For more than one reason, the joining of our observance of this Day with the beginning of the Ecclesiastical New Year, is significant, as it guides us in understanding the important relationship between our world created by God and our Orthodox Christian faith.

First, as human beings, it is within our world that we experience communion with God through our worship in the divine services of the Church. Our natural environment calls us to be in communion with God and with others. God brought the natural world into existence out of nothingness and He then created humankind within the natural environment for a harmonious coexistence and fellowship. While this harmony was interrupted through the sin and disobedience of man, our God, out of His great love for us, entered into His creation as flesh and blood in order to redeem us and all that is under the bondage of sin and death, restoring the harmonious fellowhip.

Second, through the liturgical life of the Church we are not only strenghthened in our journey of life but we also become aware of the great spiritual significance of our natural environment. This happens through the usage of purely material elements, as the bread and the wine, in the most holy Mystery of the Divine Eucharist which as the Body and Blood of Christ unites us with God Himself. Here, the spiritual and physical relationship is significant. We are both physical and spiritual beings, created for life, and blessed with the ability, unique only to human beings, to worship our Creator within a natural environment that not only provides for our basic physical needs, but also enables us to exprerience perfect communion with God.

Finally, our liturgical life and our life in the world cannot be considered as separate spheres of existence, but as one realm of living and relationship. In the services of the Church, we are called to liturgy, to a collective work as a people that will be our vocation for eternity. Within the Church, we strive for deeper communion with God, and we nurture our relationships of faith and love with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our natural environment is also dependent upon our faith inspired work as a people, specifically as stewards of what God has created. We have been called to oversee and protect the natural environment. This requires cooperation with others in a spirit of love and fellowhsip. It also requires that we appreciate the impact of our actions and inactions, and that we cherish the beauty, function, and purpose of all that God has created, consistent with the manner by which we invoke His holy name in our worship of Him.

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is on this day of the inauguration of this Ecclesiastical New Year, it is at this time, that all of us are called to think seriously about what St. Paul said to the Corinthians: behold, now is the happily acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Let us then, hear this apostolic saying as a call to an enhanced participation in the liturgical life of our Church, to a renewed relationship to our natural environment, and to a deeper understanding of the preciousness of the time given to us by our God and Creator.

With paternal love in Christ,

† D E M E T R I O S
Archbishop of America

A trip to Ohio

I returned this past weekend from a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, where I had gone to look into a teaching position at a place called the Lyceum School. It was perhaps not the best time of year to go there; classes are not in session, and I was unable to talk with any of the current teachers. But I spent many hours talking with the new headmaster, Luke Macik, whom I know from the Transfiguration College project, and for whom I have a deep respect; he is a very good man, the father of nine children, and I must think that the school has been placed in good hands. Luke and I agreed that I should come back there later in the year, when there are more people around; he suggested that I give a lecture there this fall on the subject of the Filioque debate.

I took fairly good records of expenditures on this trip. I traveled a total of 976 miles, spent $134.27 on gas and tolls, $7 on parking, $70.42 on food, and $37.53 on books; with other miscellaneous expenses, the total for the whole trip came to $300.98. The exact breakdown of expenses is as follows:

17.viii.09  gas, NJ: 337.5m/12.483g [86341m]           $      31.20
            gas, PA: 317.2m/11.492g [86658m]                  31.02
            toll, PA                                            .75
            toll, Ohio                                         1.25
            supper, Cleveland                                 11.00
18.viii.09  breakfast                                          3.50
            dinner                                            17.06
19.viii.09  tea, soup, 30¢ tip                                 5.25
            admission to Cleveland Botanical Garden            7.00
            2 used books                                       2.08
            book                                              13.95
            parking                                            6.00
            Ohio map book                                     21.50
            dinner                                            19.00
20.viii.09  breakfast, bread, tip                              5.75
            lunch, with tip                                    4.00
            gas, Cleveland Heights: 138.1m/6.791g [86796m]    17.38
            admission, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage         7.00
            postcards, poster                                  5.39
            highway tolls (approximate)                        8.25
            parking, Pittsburgh, PA                            1.00
21.viii.09  AA batteries (for camera)                          4.23
            tea (Somerset, PA)                                 1.69
            juice, pretzels (Plainfield, PA)                   3.17
            toll, PA Turnpike, Harrisburg                     13.75
            loose tea, Bird-in-Hand, PA                        4.25
            jam, Bird-in-Hand                                  3.99
            salami (present for Eddie)                        12.90
            shoo-fly pie (present for Eddie)                   7.00
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            mileage on return home  [87317m]
            total miles traveled       976
            total expenditures                               300.98

Note that, in calculating the costs of food, I do not include the $19.90 spent on a salami and a shoo-fly pie, purchased for my brother for his 60th birthday; nor the $8.24 spent on loose tea and jam, since these things were not consumed in the course of the trip, but were purchased for future use. I would, thus, not burden the American taxpayer by reporting these things to the government as business expenses; nor would I do so for the postcards etc. purchased at the Maltz Museum, nor for most of the books purchased on the trip, although I might do so for the Ohio map.

I would also call the readers’ attention to the exorbitant toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (Route 76) from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. If you plan to drive through Pennsylvania, use Route 80 if at all possible.

I had hoped to spend some time in Lancaster County on my way back; but, because I had gotten little sleep the night before and was tired, I chose to take a nap while stopped at the travelers’ plaza in Plainfield, Pennsylvania; for this reason, although the traffic was not bad, I did not arrive at Bird-in-Hand, PA until late in the afternoon, and had little time to do anything but a bit of grocery shopping.

If I were to advise people where to go when visiting the United States of America, I would certainly tell them that, alongside cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., they ought to visit the Amish country. The Amish are Anabaptists; that is, they do not accept infant baptism, but consider baptism to be properly a choice to be made when a person has attained the age of reason, and they consider baptisms not so made to be invalid. As to how the Amish arrived at their peculiar attitude towards technology, so that, in strict observance, they reject the automobile, although they are willing to travel by train and, indeed, on any long-distance train ride through the northern and central parts of the country one is likely to encounter an Amish family, keeping close together and speaking English more as a second language than as a first one — of all this I am ignorant. Nor is it entirely clear to me how the Amish differentiate themselves from the Mennonites. There is a translation of the complete works of Menno Simons in my home town’s public library, but I confess that I have not read it closely. I did, on the other hand, years ago, read a work by Johann Denck on the subject of the love of God, translated in the Library of Christian Classics volume titled Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, and found it impressive. I don’t at present have that work at hand, but it seemed to me at the time that much of what Denck was saying about the goodness of God and about the necessity for faith to be expressed in active works was in agreement with what I believed, as an Orthodox Christian.

It is likely that, if I made a close inventory of the things the Amish believe, I would find things to disagree with (e.g., the invalidity of infant baptism; also, I have no clear idea what they teach on the person of Christ and on the Trinity). But I think it is worth acknowledging that the Amish have got some things profoundly right. Undoubtedly sin is a universal human condition, and Amish families and souls must have their internal problems and stresses, as do any families and souls; and perhaps these problems and stresses are compounded by having to live, in the eyes of the rest of the population, as a kind of living tourist attraction. Yet the Amish way of life, with its emphasis on faith and community and working the land, is, I think, both beautiful and reasonable. I can think of no group of people who are in a better position to face some of the looming crises of the twenty-first century, in particular the end of cheap oil and the consequential end of cheap food, than are the Amish. They are a people from whom the rest of us ought to be learning, and they are part of what keeps the United States from descending completely into the abyss of commercialism and amnesia of God.

As a fiftieth-birthday present, I was given a gift card, with which I recently purchased a small computer at Best Buy; yesterday, after much anxious experimentation, I finally got it to work booting Windows Vista on one partition and Ubuntu Linux on another; if I can get Linux to connect to the internet, that will be my preferred operating system. Tonight there is a meeting of the New Jersey Linux Users Group in Hackensack; I plan to go to it, and to see if someone there can help me to set up a wireless connection and a dialup modem. This is, in any case, my first post to the blog from the new machine.

Apologies

This has been an unusually hectic week for me, and next week promises to be even more so. I have been on the road most of the past week, shuttling back and forth between New Jersey and Long Island, singing at various church services and attending a burial service in Pennsylvania on Wednesday (a very pious Greek lady who attended my parish in New Jersey died last weekend and was buried at a monastery); tonight I drive back to Long Island, to attend two liturgies over the weekend and to sing at a concert Sunday afternoon. On Monday I will drive to Cleveland, Ohio to look into a possible teaching position at a private school; at the same time, I have just been informed that I need to get the final proofs of my article for Communio back to them by Wednesday. Aggravating this frenetic hurrying about, I have pretended to be a computer geek, and attempted to set up a double-booting system on a laptop I purchased the other day; the results have been pretty horrendous, and, as I write this, I am waiting for the hard drive to finish reformatting before I leave for Long Island, hoping that there will be at least one working operating system on the machine before the procedure is all through.

All of this is offered in extenuation for my continuing, long-term neglect of this blog, and to give notice that that neglect will probably be prolonged for at least the next week or two. Wishing readers of this blog a blessed feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

Transfiguration canon

The following verses are translated from the fifth canon for the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ. The Greek text is taken from Joseph Schirò, ed., Analecta Hymnica Graeca e codicibus eruta Italiae inferioris, vol. xii, Canones Augusti (ed. Alcestis Proiou) (Rome 1980), pp. 60-62, 68-69. In one of the manuscripts, the poem is ascribed to one “Andrew”; perhaps this is St. Andrew of Crete, the hymnographer.

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Ode 1
Δεῦτε συνανέλθωμεν τῷ σωτῆρι ἐπὶ τὸ ὄρος τὸ Θαβὼρ κἀκεῖ θεασώμεθα τὸ κάλλος τὸ ἄφραστον ἐκλάμπον τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ.	Come let us go up with the Savior upon the Mount of Tabor and there let us behold the inexpressible beauty that shines forth from his face.
Φυρμὸν ἢ ἀνάχυσιν οὐχ ὑπέστης τῇ ἐξ ἡμῶν οὐσιωθεὶς μορφῇ, ἀναλλοίωτε, ἐν ᾗ μεταμορφούμενος παρέδειξας τὴν δόξαν σου.	Neither blending nor mixture did you suffer when you took on our reality, assuming the form that is ours, O changeless one, in which, being transfigured, you exhibited your glory.
Τὴν δόξαν μὴ φέροντες τοῦ προσώπου τοῦ ἀναλάμψαντος ὡς φῶς πρηνεῖς κατεφέροντο τῆς πίστεως οἱ πρόβολοι· Θεὸν γὰρ εἶδεν ὅλως οὐδείς.	When they could not bear the glory of your face shining like a light, the ones who stood foremost in faith were brought to the ground and lay prone: for no one at all has seen God.*
Τῷ πόθῳ ἑλκόμενος τῆς ἐν ὄρει θεοφανείας, Ἰησοῦ, ὁ Πέτρος ἐβόα σοι· «ποιήσωμεν τρεῖς σκηνάς· καλὸν γὰρ ᾧδε εἶναι ἡμᾶς.»	Drawn by desire for your theophany on the mountain, O Christ, Peter cried to you: “Let us make three tents; for it is good for us to be here.”
Ἕνα σε δοξάζομεν τῆς τριάδος, μονογενῆ υἱὲ Θεοῦ, κἂν σάρκα προσέλαβες, καὶ μάρτυς ὁ καλέσας σε υἱὸν ἀγαπητὸν ἐν Θαβώρ.	We worship you, one of the Trinity, God’s only-begotten Son, even if you did take on flesh; and a witness is he who called you on Tabor his beloved Son.
Ὡς μέθην τὴν ἔκστασιν ὑποστάντες οἱ μαθηταὶ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ Θαβώριον, πρηνεῖς κατεφέροντο· Θεὸν γὰρ εἶδεν ὅλως οὐδείς.	Experiencing ecstasy like drunkenness, Jesus’ disciples upon Tabor’s height were brought to the ground and lay prone: for no one at all has seen God.*
Ode 3
Καταλείψαντες τὸν χοῦν, συνεπαρθῶμεν τοῖς Χριστοῦ μαθηταῖς καὶ ἴδωμεν τὴν δόξαν τῆν θεαθεῖσαν ἐν τῷ ὄρει Θαβώρ.	Leaving the dust behind us let us go up with Christ’s disciples and let us see upon Mount Tabor the glory that deifies.
Τῷ Χριστῷ συγκαλοῦντι ἐπὶ τὸ ὄρος τὸ Θαβώριον, πιστοί, συναναβάντες, έκεῖ ὀψόμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ.	Ascending, O faithful, together with Christ who summons us to Tabor mountain, there we shall see his glory.
Οἱ τοῦ ὄντως ἐραστοῦ ἐπιθυμοῦντες τῆς λαμπρότητος δεῦτε προσκολληθῶμεν τοῖς περὶ Πέτρον καὶ Ἰάκωβον.	Those of us who desire the brilliancy of the truly beloved, come, let us be joined with those who are about Peter and James.
Οἱ τὸ κάλλος ἐκεῖνο ἰδεῖν ποθοῦντες τὸ ἀμήχανον κτησώμεθα καρδίας, ἐν αἷς δεξόμεθα τὴν τούτου αὐγήν.	Those of us who long to see that inexplicable beauty, let us acquire hearts in which we shall receive its shining.
Τὸ μὲν ὄρος τὸ Σινᾶ καπνῷ καὶ γνόφῳ καὶ θυέλλῃ ποτέ, τὸ ὄρος τὸ Θαβὼρ δὲ μαρμαρυγὰς ἡμῖν ἀστράπτει φωτός.	Once it was, Mount Sinai was hidden with smoke and darkness and storm, but Mount Tabor illuminates us with bright flashings of light.
Ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῷ Θαβὼρ μεταμορφούμενος, Χριστὲ ὁ Θεός, παρέδειξας τὴν δόξαν τοῖς μαθηταῖς τῆς σῆς θεότητος.	When you were transfigured on Mount Tabor, O Christ God, you showed to your disciples the glory of your divinity.
Προσκυνοῦμέν σε, Χριστέ, σὺν τῷ πατρί σου καὶ τῷ πνεύματι, τριάδα ἐν μονάδι καὶ ἐν τριάδι μονάδα, Θεόν.	We worship you, O Christ, with your Father and the Spirit, the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, God.
Χαῖρε, νέα κιβωτὲ τῆς διαθήκης, ἧς διέθετο Θεὸς μετὰ ἀνθρώπων τῇ μεσιτείᾳ σου, παρθένε ἁγνή.	Hail, new ark of the covenant, that covenant which God made with mankind by your mediation, O pure Virgin.
Ode 8
Τῆς θεϊκῆς σου μορφῆς αὔραν ἐξέλαμψας Πέτρῳ καὶ Ἰακώβῳ καὶ Ἰωάννῃ, κύριε, ἐν ὄρει τῷ Θαβώρ, ἧς τὴν ἀκτῖνα μηδόλως ἐνεγκεῖν ἰσχύσαντες, εἰς γῆν κατεβαροῦντο.	When you had radiated the aura of your divine form on Peter, James, and John, O Lord, upon Mount Tabor, then, being utterly unable to bear its ray, they were weighed down to the earth.
Τὸν Μωυσῆν ἐν Θαβὼρ νόμου τὸν πρόμαχον συνεκάλεσας, Λόγε, καὶ προφητῶν τὸ ἄνθος, τὸν Θεσβίτην Ἠλιού, ὃν πυρὸς ἁρματηλάτην ὡς εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἀναγαγὼν ἐξῆρας πάλαι.	You called to Tabor Moses, the champion of the Law, O Word, and the flower of the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, whom once you took away, leading him heavenwards, borne in a chariot of fire.
Τὸ ὑπερούσιον φῶς δεῦτε ὀψόμεθα καθαρᾷ τῇ καρδίᾳ μαρμαρυγὰς ἀστράπτον τοῖς θεόπταις μαθηταῖς, ὅπως καὶ τῆς οὐρανόθεν πατρικῆς ἀκούσωμεν φωνῆς προσμαρτυρούσης.	O come let us behold with a pure heart the supersubstantial light flashing its shimmerings upon the disciples, who behold God, so that we too may hear the fatherly voice from heaven bearing witness.
Ὦ φωτοφόρου αὐγλῆς, ὦ θείας χάριτος, ὦ ἀκτῖνος ἡλίου, ἢν οἱ πηλώδεις εἶδον ἐξαστράπτουσαν αὐτοῖς! τίς ἂν τὴν δόξαν ἐκείνην ἐξειπεῖν δυνήσεται βροτῶν ἢ ἑρμηνεῦσαι;	O the lightbearing brilliance! O the divine grace! O the beam of the sun which men of clay beheld flashing out upon them! Who among mortals shall be able to describe that glory fully, or interpret it?
Ὦ παναγία τριάς, ἡ ὁμοούσιος καὶ ὁμότιμος δόξα, πάτερ, υἱὲ καὶ πνεῦμα, σὲ δοξάζω καὶ ὑμνῶ ἕνα Θεὸν ἀσυγχύτως ἐν τρισὶν ὑμνούμενον προσώποις ἀμερίστως.	O Most Holy Trinity, glory consubstantial, and co-honored, Father, Son, and Spirit, I glorify and hymn you, one God hymned indivisibly in three persons.
Ὥσπερ ἐν τόμῳ καινῷ, ἐν τῇ νηδύι σου ἐγγραφείς, θεοτόκε, ὁ σὺν πατρὶ καὶ πνεύματι ὑμνούμενος υἱὸς ἔδειξεν ἀπαραλλάκτως καὶ μετὰ τὴν σάρκωσιν τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν χαρακτῆρα.	Inscribed in your womb as on a new stone tablet, O Mother of God, the Son, who is hymned with the Father and the Spirit, exhibited unchangingly, even after being made flesh, the character of the Father.

* Or: for no one has seen God entirely.

News from New Jersey

The following article has been copied from the website of the BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8165607.stm.

See also http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html.

US corruption probe nets dozens

More than 40 people, including politicians, officials and several rabbis have been arrested in a major FBI operation in the US.

Three hundred agents raided dozens of locations in New Jersey and New York as part of a 10-year probe into corruption and money laundering.

Three mayors from the state of New Jersey and two members of the state legislature were among those held.

One man is accused of kidney trafficking involving Israeli donors.

Prosecutors say the arrests were part of a “dual-tracked” investigation.

Acting US Attorney Ralph Marra told reporters there were 29 suspects on what he termed the “public corruption” side of the investigation, including the politicians.

On the other side, he said, there were 15 suspects in connection with alleged international money-laundering, including the rabbis and their “associates”.

Prosecutors accuse one man of dealing in human kidneys from Israeli donors for transplant for a decade.

It is alleged that “vulnerable people” would give up a kidney for $10,000 (£6,000) and these would then be sold on for $160,000 (£97,000).

Informant

Officials say investigations originally focused on a network they allege laundered tens of millions of dollars through charities controlled by rabbis in New Jersey and neighbouring New York.

Investigators used an informant to approach a group of rabbis from the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and the New Jersey borough of Deal for help hiding his assets.

The rabbis cashed cheques he made out to charities they oversaw and paid the money back to him, minus a cut, investigators say.

The probe then widened to include alleged official corruption with links to a New Jersey construction boom.

The informant was introduced to a series of politicians and powerful local officials. Posing as a developer, he offered bribes in return for favourable treatment.

State legislators Harvey Smith and Daniel Van Pelt were arrested, as well as the mayors of some of the state’s major cities and boroughs.

A number of city building, planning and fire inspectors were also held.

Mr Marra said: “It seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the action. The corruption was widespread and pervasive. Corruption was a way of life for the accused.”

He said politicians had “willingly put themselves up for sale” and clergymen had “cloaked their extensive criminal activity behind a facade of rectitude”.

‘Misunderstanding’

The BBC’s Jane O’Brien says the money laundering ring reportedly spanned the US, Israel and Switzerland.

Jon Corzine, the Governor of New Jersey, said: “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”

Ed Kahrer, an FBI agent who has worked on the investigation from the start, said: “New Jersey’s corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation.

“It has become ingrained in New Jersey’s political culture,” he said.

Another FBI agent said: “The list of people we arrested sounds like it should be the roster for a meeting of community leaders, but sadly they weren’t meeting in a boardroom this morning, they were in the FBI booking room.”

Most of those arrested have been released on bail.

Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano was accused of taking a bribe. His lawyer said he intended to fight the charge “with all his strength until he proves his innocence”.

A lawyer for 87-year-old Rabbi Saul Kassin of Brooklyn said it was a shame his client had been “caught up in this misunderstanding”.

Correspondents say the number of people arrested is large even by New Jersey standards, where more than 130 public officials have either admitted to corruption or been found guilty of it since 2001.

A brief notice

I just today received word from Communio concerning the essay I sent them in April; they want me to revise it, and they want the revision by next week. I think the criticisms that were made — essentially, that the essay, as it stands, is a bit too technical for the journal’s audience, and that I need to do more to explain to readers both who Bekkos is and why the underlying theological issues are important — are entirely well-taken. Because I will be completely preoccupied with this job until early next week, I would ask readers’ forbearance if I do not reply to comments for the time being, and if the discussion on divine simplicity that has recently emerged in the comments to my last post is temporarily put on hold.

A postscript

I wish to acknowledge publicly that my language towards Photios Jones in the exchange over my last post was intemperate and uncalled-for. I do not presume to know who is saved and who is damned; that is a judgment which belongs only to the Lord Jesus Christ to make. If I in fact believed that Mr. Jones were eternally reprobate, I would not pray for him, as I have done and shall continue to do. I do strongly reject his ecclesiastical position; but it may well be that the Lord will account him a more righteous man than myself. If he is in schism, it is possible that I am as well, and with less justification.

For some time now, I have come to think that Rome’s claims to Petrine authority are essentially legitimate. I also think that the Orthodox Church is a true Church, and in many ways preserves more of genuine Christian life and piety than I am able to perceive elsewhere. It has nurtured my life in Christ, and I am unwilling to leave it for something that I would only perceive as a pale substitute and that might leave me feeling spiritually lost. Such a position might be condemned as cowardly and hypocritical and inconsistent, and in fact is condemned as such by Photios Jones, and probably by others; but I hope that, at least, I have been up-front about it. I would like to see a union between the Churches, in truth and peace; I do not want to see a union that results in reducing the Orthodox Church to something it is not. I have thought that the approach John Bekkos took to this issue centuries ago deserves, at least, to be understood, and perhaps to be emulated.

Last year, around this time, I discontinued this blog for a period of several months; the thought has occurred now to do the same, or to hang it up altogether. I need to get a real job, and to finish this book on Bekkos; the discussions which I have had with Photios Jones, although they make for good spectator sport, are soul-destroying, and are largely a distraction from my real work. I will probably take some time off from the blog during the coming weeks; there is much sorting out of things I need to do. I ask the readers’ prayers.

St. Cyril on divine simplicity

In the discussion to a recent post (The debate on Bekkos’s Epigraphs), some skepticism has been expressed concerning an identification, made by theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Bessarion of Nicaea, between God’s will and God’s being. For this reason, I thought I would present here a couple of passages which show St. Cyril of Alexandria asserting this very identification; i.e., he explicitly states that God is whatever he has, and that will and being in God are the same. A strong view of divine simplicity is traditional Christian theology, not a medieval, Latin invention or a Platonizing corruption.

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St. Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogues on the Trinity (Ad Hermiam), book V; SC 237 (de Durand, ed.), p. 290; PG 75, 945 C.

Hermias. And how, they say, is the divine simple if, in existence on the one hand and in will on the other, it is conceived of separately? For then it would be composite and as though it existed, in a way, out of parts that had come together into a closer unity.	Β. Καὶ πῶς ἂν εἴη τὸ θεῖον ἁπλοῦν εἰ καὶ ἐν ὑπάρξει νοοῖτο, φησί, καὶ ἐν θελήσει διωρισμένους; Σύνθετον γὰρ ἤδη καὶ οἱονεί πως ἐκ μερῶν εἱς ἓν τὸ ἀρτίως ἔχον συνδεδραμηκότοιν.
Cyril. Therefore, since, in your view, the divine is simple and exists above all composition (and this view of yours is correct), his will is nothing other than he himself. And if someone says “will,” he indicates the nature of God the Father.	Α. Οὐκοῦν, ἐπειδήπερ ἁπλοῦν τὸ θεῖον καὶ ἄμεινον ἢ κατὰ σύνθεσιν εἶναί σοι δοκεῖ (δοκεῖ δὲ ὀρθῶς), οὐχ ἑτέρα παρ᾽ αὐτὸ εἴη ἂν ἡ βούλησις αὐτοῦ. Θέλησιν δέ τις εἰπών, τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς κατεσήμηνε φύσιν.
Hermias. So it would appear.	Β. Ἔοικεν.

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St. Cyril, Dialogues on the Trinity, book VII; SC 246 (de Durand, ed.), pp. 200-202; PG 75, 1109 B-C.

Cyril. How then can that by which and in which God accomplishes his operations with regard to the creation and makes himself known as Creator of all things be a creature, subject to becoming? For perhaps it is already time for us to make this claim. If they pretend that such is the state of things, they will be obliged, even unwillingly, to confess the created character of the divine energy. And what is the consequence? An odious blasphemy, opinions opposed to good sense, good for bringing an accusation of the height of stupidity. For if one is not too poorly endowed with the decency which befits wise men, one will say that the divine being is properly and primarily simple and incomposite; one will not, dear friend, venture to think that it is composed out of nature and energy, as though, in the case of the divine, these are naturally other; one will believe that it exists as entirely one thing with all that it substantially possesses. Thus, if anyone says that his energy, that is, his Spirit, is something created and made, even while it belongs to him in a proper sense, then the Deity, surely, will be a creature, given that his operation is no other thing than he himself. Isn’t the claim abominable and hateful, and one which has a great tendency towards practical impiety?

Α. Πῶς οὖν ἄρα τὸ δι᾽ οὗ καὶ ἐν ῷ Θεὸς ἐνεργὸς περὶ τὴν κτίσιν καὶ τῶν ὅλων ὁρᾶται δημιουργὸς γενητὸν ἂν εἴη καὶ ἐκτισμένον; Ὥρα γὰρ ἤδη πως ἡμᾶς εἰπεῖν ὡς, εἴπερ ὧδε ἔχειν ἐροῦσι τὸ χρῆμα, κτιστὴν εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ τὴν ἐνέργειαν καὶ οὐχ ἑκόντες ὁμολογήσουσι. Καὶ τί τὸ ἐντεῦθεν; Θεομισὴς δυσφημία, παλίμφημοι δόξαι, καὶ τῆς εἰς ἄκρον ἡκούσης ἀμαθίας ἐγκλήματα. Ἐρεῖ γάρ, οἶμαι, τὶς τῆς ἀνδράσι πρεπούσης σοφοῖς εὐκοσμίας ἠφειδηκὼς ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀσύνθετον κυρίως τε καὶ πρώτως τὸ Θεῖον, ὦ τᾶν, οὐκ ἐκ φύσεως καὶ ἐνεργείας ὡς παρ᾽ αὐτὸ φυσικῶς ἑτέρας συντεθεῖσθαι νοούμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἕν τι τὸ σύμπαν ὑπάρχειν μεθ᾽ ὧν ἂν οὐσιωδῶς ἔχοι πεπιστευμένον. Οὐκοῦν εἰ λέγοιτο κτιστὴν καὶ πεποιημένην τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχειν, ἰδίαν οὖσαν αὐτοῦ, τουτέστι τὸ Πνεῦμα, καὶ αὐτό που πάντως ἔσται κτιστόν, ἐπεὶ μὴ ἕτερόν τι παρ᾽ αὐτὸ τὸ ἐνεργὲς αὐτοῦ. Ἆρ᾽ οὐ στυγητὸς καὶ ἀπεχθὴς ὁ λόγος, καὶ πολὺ διανενευκὼς εἰς τὸ πεποιῆσθαι δυσσεβῶς;

A visit to Brooklyn

Near Prospect Park in Brooklyn is a place I have often visited, and which I visited again some weeks ago on my way back to New Jersey at the end of a brief trip to Long Island: the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Since my return to the Northeast in 2005 after seven years of teaching in New Mexico, I have probably spent more time at this garden than at any other place in New York City, with the possible exception of the New York Public Library; at one point I contemplated moving to Brooklyn and taking a job there, which I have not done and probably shall not do, chiefly because my horticultural skills are nonexistent. But this has not prevented me from enjoying the garden; and since it was a bright spring day, and my birthday was approaching, and I had not been to the garden in some time, I made a point of stopping there.

The scriptures, of course, speak of the first man as a gardener, someone whose original task was “to dress and keep” the garden in which he had been put (Gen 2:15) — more literally, “to work it and to keep it,” לעבדה ולשמרה, le-ovdha ve-le-shomrha, LXX ἐργάζεσθαι αὐτὸν καὶ φυλάσσειν. The same verb עבד occurs, for the first time in the Bible, at v. 5 of the same chapter, where it says that “there was not a man to till [to work, le-avod] the ground”; man is there presented as a being whose essential activity, as his name adam suggests, is to work the ground, ha-adamah, to get it to do the thing it is meant to do, i.e., produce beautiful and healthful plants. From the verb עבד is derived the feminine abstract noun עבודה avodah, “service,” which, in the Septuagint, usually gets translated by the Greek word λειτουργία, from which we get the English word “liturgy.” So it might be inferred that liturgical prayer is itself a form of gardening, a working of the ground of the heart, although, admittedly, such an inference would not hold up in a book of logic.

St. Gregory the Theologian, in his poem On the Soul, interprets man’s original employment as a gardener in a particular way. The poem speaks of God having created man to be a being partaking in both the material and the spiritual worlds, a being of a mixed constitution who, because of this dual nature, exhibits a longing directed towards both heaven and earth. Having given man this evenly balanced nature, God also gave him an internal law, and placed him “in the vales of an ever-verdant paradise, … observing which direction he’d incline” (Poem 1.1.8, De anima, vv. 101-103; PG 37, 454). As for the paradisiacal garden, Gregory says, “it is the heavenly life, it seems to me. So this is where he placed him, to be a farmer, cultivating his words,” λόγων δρηστῆρα γεωργόν (ibid., vv. 105-106). The word δρηστῆρα, in one sense, implies that Adam was placed in the garden to be a doer of God’s words, to live a life of practical virtue. But I have translated it as “cultivating” God’s words, his λόγοι, in keeping with what St. Gregory states in his Oration 38.12 (PG 36, 324B): Adam was placed in paradise “to till the immortal plants, by which is perhaps meant the Divine Conceptions (θείων ἐννοιῶν), both the simpler and the more perfect.” Man’s original, Edenic activity was, on St. Gregory’s view, to contemplate the divine reasons of things, and, by perceiving them, to catch a reflection of the glory of God.

Perhaps it was this original Adamic task that drew me to the garden in Brooklyn on that bright afternoon some weeks ago, although I confess that, in recent months, my ability to perceive the divine reasons of things has been very sporadic and limited. Perhaps I have had too many other things on my mind to fulfill that Adamic task in the proper way.

I stayed at the garden only about an hour and a half, having arrived there in the middle of the afternoon and not wanting to get caught in rush-hour traffic. In driving there, I passed by various examples of New York life and death: vast marble cemeteries; some Hispanic men playing baseball; a car with a bumper-sticker that read “Islam is the answer”; a Torah scholar, gaunt, black-clad, with a long black beard, looking strangely other-worldly, sitting on a park bench in front of a yeshiva.

At the garden, I bought three cheap books (two on recycling and one on composting), had lunch (a bowl of split-pea soup), and then walked around, observing the plants and the people. The boughs of a dark Canadian hemlock hung down over the walkway: a beautiful tree, but poisonous (remember Socrates). Two women in the rose garden wore hats that reminded me of those seen in photographs from my grandmother’s day. Mothers pushed their baby-carriages and talked on their cellphones. I stopped for awhile at the Japanese pond, one of the most beautiful spots in the garden, a place where people invariably take pictures and have their picture taken; a wooden, covered shelter there extends over the water, from which one can gaze down upon the goldfish swimming below, which gather when they see a tourist, knowing from experience that tourists frequently ignore the sign that tells them not to feed the fish. Some visitors there were speaking Modern Greek; a Spanish woman, who pronounced her “c”s as “th”s, was telling her young daughter, in Spanish, to behave.

I also took a walk through the “Shakespeare Garden,” a small enclosure that apparently contains specimens of all the flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. It was in that garden, some two decades ago, that I bumped into the elder sister of a friend of mine from college. Elaine Gluckman always impressed me as a kind and gentle person, a sort of Leah to her sister’s Rachel. She told me there, with evident joy, about her upcoming marriage. About a year later I learned that she had died in childbirth; her son survived, and has been raised by his father. Perhaps she was actually the Rachel (cf. Gen. 35:16-20).

There are many things I do not understand. Perhaps the greatest attraction of a botanical garden is that plants do not say anything. They challenge one’s assumption that all of life is susceptible to analysis and explanation. If one is to perceive the λόγοι of plants, their speech, in which they declare their nature and show the divine glory, one clearly has to go about it in a different way than is usually done in this world of instant information and constant self-assertion. One has to learn great patience, something I still lack.

God willing, at some point I will attain that necessary patience and humility, so as to perceive God’s reasons, and God’s glory, in plants and people. For the present, much of what I ought to understand seems strange and inexplicable.

The debate on Bekkos’s Epigraphs

Gregory Palamas, Antepigraphae, with rebuttals by Bessarion of Nicaea

Translated from the text in Hugo Laemmer, ed., Scriptorum Graeciae Orthodoxae Bibliotheca Selecta, tomus primus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1866), pp. 445-483.

The following comments by Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) and Bessarion of Nicaea (1403-1472) on John Bekkos’s first Epigraph were written something like a hundred years apart; Palamas wrote his criticism of Bekkos in the 1340s; Bessarion, most likely, wrote his defense of him in the 1440s, sometime after the Council of Florence. Bekkos put together his patristic dossier, the Epigraphs, in the mid-1270s. The three texts are often printed together; I have tried to do something like that here with the present translations, by providing a hypertext link. Note that I have only provided a translation here for the first of Bekkos’s thirteen Epigraphs, and the discussion connected with it; there are twelve more. But these three documents will, I hope, suffice as a brief introduction to the debate.

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Palamas: Refutation of Bekkos’s first Epigraph

When, in theology, “from” and “through” are equivalent with each other, they indicate neither division nor difference in the Holy Trinity, but rather the Trinity’s unity and invariability which is according to nature and oneness of will; for from this it is shown that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same nature, and power, and energy, and will. But he who has here copied down the sayings of the saints, and thus prefaces them, attempts to demonstrate, wickedly and impiously, the difference of the divine hypostases through the equivalence of such prepositions and because the Holy Spirit, one of the three hypostases worthy of worship, has existence from two hypostases, and from each of them in a different way. Plainly, therefore, the statements of the saints are, in themselves, pious and good; but they are taken in a wicked and impious manner by the man who has collected them and introduced them here.

But that this preposition “through,” when it has the same force as “from,” indicates the union and inalterableness in everything, the divine Maximus shows clearly concerning certain people who were saying that the Spirit is from the Son, when, writing to Marinus, he demonstrated that they were not making the Son out to be a cause: “for they know one cause of the Son and Spirit, the Father; but so that they might show the coming forth through him, and might make clear by this the coherence and the inalterableness of the substance.” Therefore it is clear from this that this Bekkos takes such statements in an impious way; for he attempts to infer from these things, not the coherence and inalterableness of the hypostases, but their difference. Nor does he believe Basil the Great. For, in one of the chapters of his book to Amphilochius, he says, “The fact that the Father creates through the Son neither constitutes the Father’s creating as imperfect, nor does it signify the Son’s activity as inefficacious; but it shows forth the united character of their will. Thus, the expression ‘through the Son’ involves an acknowledgment of the primary cause; it is not assumed as an accusation against the creative cause.” He, therefore, who says that the Spirit comes forth from the Son and through the Son according to the bestowal and common counsel of the Father and the Son shows this rightly; for it is the good pleasure of the Father and the Son, and, with the common good pleasure of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is supplied to those who are worthy. But these Latinophrones, inferring in their drunkenmindedness that “through the Son” and “from the Son” indicate existence, impiously construe the Holy Spirit to exist necessarily as a work and creature of good pleasure and of will, but not as the fruit of the divine nature; for, according to the holy Damascene, the creation is a work of the divine will, but the Godhead is not, God forbid. For neither, again, are the preeternal and everlasting begetting and procession, according to him, of the divine will, but of the divine nature.

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Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, against Palamas’s arguments against Bekkos

This fine gentleman is completely unable to look square in the face of these texts which affirm the Holy Spirit to be from the Son and to proceed from the Father through the Son, nor at what has been inferred from them. How could he, given that they are so many and of such clear truth? Wrongly and without any reason he gets stuck on the equivalence of “through” and “from”; and by constructing his refutation out of insults, he thinks that he has done something to the purpose, when all he has done is to give a “wicked and impious” interpretation of the mind of the saints, and to malign the wise man who collected these sayings and affixed to them their inscriptions. But, as for rendering a reason for what he says, of this he is incapable.

But, although he recognizes that, when the word “through” is equivalent to “from” in matters of theology, it makes known the union and invariableness and unanimity which are found in the Holy Trinity, he supposes that this word “through” cannot apply, in this sense, to the procession from the Father through the Son. Or else he presumes that we think the word does apply in this sense, but not for aforesaid reason, but, instead, to introduce discrimination and division and opposition and disharmony. From the things he says, it is pretty clear that that is what he thinks; or rather, he plainly states that he shows us, in this way, to hold the view that the Spirit has existence from the two hypostases, Father and Son, in different ways. I don’t know where and when he has heard this thing said, “in different ways.” (This is how he thinks he can attack us in theology.) But perhaps he thinks this thing himself, when he says that the world exists from the Father through the Son. For I fail to see the reason why, in the case of the creation, the word “through,” which carries the same force as “from,” exhibits the persons’ identity while at the same time manifesting their distinction — for this is something he himself will not deny — yet in the case of the Spirit the term indicates otherness and distinction, purely and simply.

And he lacks all shame when, in opposition to himself, he produces Basil the Great testifying that the expression “through the Son” involves an acknowledgment of the initial cause. But as for us, we most definitely affirm that the Holy Spirit possesses existence from these two hypostases, the Father and the Son. For nothing operates, except insofar as it is particular and individual; and, in respect of this, the Father and the Son are two. But that the Holy Spirit comes forth from them in different ways, this we will not admit, so long as we hear the saints calling the Spirit the “natural energy” of the Son, just as he is the energy of the Father. And by all means we believe that there is one energy of the Father and the Son; otherwise, he who says that the world exists from the Father and the Son and the Spirit — or, from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit — would not say that it has been created from the three hypostases in a single way; rather, he might well say that it has been created [in different] manners by each of the three.

But if he wonders why, if the term “through” makes known their identity and oneness of will, we wish to show through this term that the Son is cause of the Holy Spirit’s existence, let him first wonder at himself, why, when he says that the world has come to be through the Son, he then supposes the Son to be the cause of the world’s production, in view of the meaning of this word “through” — or else let him say that the Son is not cause of the things that are, and let one bad error cure another.

But then he brings in the testimony of the divine Maximus, a testimony without any bearing upon the subject at hand. For we, too, might say that the term “through” makes known the unity and the invariableness of the substance of the Father and the Son. For we know that a certain order and relationship is shown, and rightly shown, through the term “through,” which is the grounds for which the term is spoken, in addition to the grounds for which we use the term “from.” Now this very thing, the identity and invariableness, is the cause, both of the Son’s sharing this ability with the Father, and of the Spirit’s coming-forth through him. For according to the divine Cyril it is from both, i.e., from the Father through the Son — and according to this same Maximus, it is from the Father and the Son, and so accordingly from the Father through the Son — that the Spirit proceeds, that is, has existence [huparxis]. For he himself would say that “to proceed” means “to have existence,” and especially according to those who choose to apply this word for the existence of the Spirit. But if the teacher [i.e., Maximus] says he does not make the Son, but the Father, to be the Spirit’s cause, you would not be surprised if you would bear in mind the Greek language, and what it is that this language customarily means when it employs this word “cause.” For, plainly, it is the initial and primary cause and fountain and root of each thing which is chiefly called its “cause”; and that only the Father exists as such a cause, who would dispute? And this is clear from the following consideration: no mature Christian would deny that both the Son and the Spirit exist as cause of the creation. But Gregory the Theologian says:

“God subsists in three who are Supreme: in the Cause and the Creator and the Perfecter — I mean, in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.”

But when you hear that the Father is the primary cause, do not then suppose that even those who do not wish to do so say that the Son puts forth the Spirit differently, because he is not the primary cause: for this is something that applies also in the case of the creation, and, absolutely, of all things which the Son possesses. For, although the Son is not the primary cause of the creation, nevertheless — if in fact all things that the Father possesses in a paternal, uncaused way the Son possesses in a caused way and filially— he himself is cause, and, together with the Father, one cause of the things that are; and the term “through” makes known his sameness and oneness of will, no less than it shows the distinction of the persons.

But as to what he says, that we say that the Spirit is a work of divine will and therefore a creature, because we present to the mind the identity of will, I cannot tell if anyone other than himself would be persuaded by this. For if he thinks that, because the word “through” indicates will, the Spirit will be inferred to be a creature, why will the Spirit not be rather a divine nature, and glorified by us, because the word “through” presents to the mind the identity of substance? And indeed, the expression, which he has taken from the great Maximus, teaches us to show rather their substantial identity; for he says, “so that they may exhibit before the mind the coherence and the invariability of the substance.” And even if “through” only showed the identity of their will, even in this case nothing absurd would follow, when it is understood that, in God, will and substance are the same. For no one would not agree that this power is more simple and higher than all others. And who does not know that every power so far is accounted the greater, by the degree to which it is simpler and higher? And from this, also, it follows that the will of God, in relation to the Son and the Spirit, has the character of nature, while, in relation to the creation, it has the character of will. For it is evident that every will, and the divine will itself, stands, as nature, in relation to an end, willing it in a definite way, just as nature also tends towards a single, definite thing which is proper to it. But the end of the willing of God the Father is the Son and the Spirit: towards these, as nature, it is necessarily directed. But, in the case of those things which exist in relation to the end, and especially those things without which the end can be reached, such as are the creatures (for these contribute nothing either to the being of God or to God’s being better), towards these the will is directed, not in a defined way, and for this reason it has, in this case, the status of will: for it can both will these things and not will them. Thus, both the things said by Damascene are preserved, and we are free from all accusation, and the argument against us states nothing necessary. Thus, in thinking that he says something, he ends up speaking against himself.