skinny St. Nicholas and the flying camera man

My wife is out of town this weekend, so Ian and I are on our own. Tonight and tomorrow are easy--we'll actually get to attend vespers and DL for the same day! We have the car, so we can actually get out to the Antiochian church. This morning they had a float in the town parade, so Ian and I went to watch. His favorite parts were the horses and the candy (and probably more than those, the fact that we got to see a light rail train go by on the way back to the car). Mine were the skinny St. Nicholas pushing the boat and the camera man who went dashing by ahead of the group--I guess looking for a good spot to get some shots. Hi, Jim! I told "St. Nicholas" when I saw him later that I was disappointed. The Presbyterians had a steel drum, the Baptists had singing puppets, and there we were with one of our best chanters in the parade, and all he did was push a boat ;-) He informed me that they were playing recorded chant, but I couldn't hear it. I guess the Shriners on their three-wheelers must have drowned it out. Anyway, Ian had a good time, and the rain held off until we were leaving. We even got to be part of the parade for a while. Since we staked out a place near the beginning, we overtook them and walked alongside. The sidewalks were mostly filled with spectators, so we ended up walking in the street.

My wife has agreed to meet with Fr. Gregory, if we can find a time to do it. I met with him a couple of days ago, and he said he wants to get a better sense of where she's at, so he can figure out what to do with me. I also got some holy water for the first time. Weird, when you think about it too much--to be carrying around water that's really water, as it should be, and in a used jelly jar no less.

United States, United Church?

In this week's edition of Orthodox Christian News, there's a link to the .pdf version of Again magazine's Summer 2006 issue on Orthodox Unity in North America. Since I don't subscribe to the magazine, this was my first opportunity to read this issue. Frankly, I'm humbled by the whole question and the associated challenges. I think unity is important. Personally, a significant piece of what attracts me to Orthodoxy in the first place is the ideal of unity. I recognize that the Orthodox Church here in North America is far from that ideal, but at least Orthodoxy offers a vision to strive for. Protestantism, and Evangelicalism in particular, has long given up on the kind of tangible unity that Orthodoxy teaches. Its ecclesiology of invisible unity in an invisible Church, defined by an abstraction of those who are "saved," i.e., spiritually baptized, can never produce real-life cohesion. Yes, the idea of Christian unity can and often does work at the level of a local congregation, but that congregation must always be a voluntary grouping of individual believers. If the cohesion breaks down, it is sustained by reshuffling the deck. Those who don't fit in can go off and join or start something else, until equilibrium is re-established. The Orthodox notion of catholicity defies this approach, and I love that about Orthodoxy.

So it pains me to see Orthodoxy here in America divided by ethnic jurisdiction. On that point, I don't see much room for dispute, and I don't apologize for taking a position. The problem is when it comes to fixing the situation. Generally speaking, the Again issue seems to represent one viewpoint on how to achieve Orthodox unity. Perhaps it can be argued that it is the only viable approach, at least for North America. But the fact is, such things must be argued. There are alternatives. I don't feel like I'm in a place to settle these issues, or even to give a well-founded opinion, so I'm going to try to stay out of the discussion for now. There are just a couple of points that I want to make here. First, I thought it interesting that almost nowhere in the various articles on Orthodox unity (there are some other topics covered in the issue) was monasticism brought up as a significant factor. It seems to me like it should at least make the list. Second, I found somewhat disturbing Fr. John Behr's article, "One in Christ." The general thrust of his argument seems to be that, since there seems to have been a multiplicity of bishops in at least one or two large cities in the earliest centuries of the Church, we might be barking up the wrong tree to look for one bishop in each city. Maybe all that's necessary is to get the bishops in a city all on the same page--part of a synod or some such thing, and all affirming each other's Orthodoxy and belonging to the same local church.

Now, I don't think that as an intermediate step this would necessarily be a bad thing, and it seems like I've read elsewhere the suggestion that this might be a step in the progression toward canonical unity. What disturbs me is his suggestion (as I understand it) that this could be the final form of Orthodox unity in America--that perhaps the whole idea of one bishop in one city pertains only to an Orthodox nation or empire. I don't want to criticize too much on the basis of what little he says here--I realize it's not exactly the best medium for articulating a full defense of such things. Still, as I say, I find it somewhat disturbing. In particular, I'm skeptical of his suggestion:

This new situation also reflects an undeniable change in our contemporary experience of space—with the advent of mass private transport and greater communications, our sense of space, the world in which we now live, is not so much geographically defined as it is defined by culture, friendships, family. But if this is the case, what has become of the Church in any given region, as described above? Who, what, or where is the Church of New York, or any other metropolitan area?

I think there is "an undeniable change in our contemporary experience of space," but I'm not sure that he analyzes it properly. For instance, I'm not sure how significant family is in the contemporary (Western) experience, particularly on the scale of world cultures and our own past history. What I think we are finding today is a virtual space of our own choosing. The people who live near me are irrelevant (as such). I choose where and with whom I will work, and there too I have control over how far I carry my relationships with coworkers. I choose my activities, so that the people I interact with at the gym, or on a sports team, or as part of a club, have common ground with me because of our shared interests, but there too, I can choose how intimate things get. This choice is carried even further in the formation of online communities, where I can be still more selective about whom I converse with or even date. And I'm not particularly constrained by family, since I can choose to live as far from or as close to them geographically as I want, and I can choose how much I will put into my relationship with them. Ours is a culture of choice, which I don't think is entirely unrelated to the Protestant culture of the voluntary church. I can choose the type of church that I want to attend, so that it places less demand on my time or energy, so that I'm around people I feel comfortable with, so that the preaching agrees with what I already think, etc. In fact, my faith is all about what I as an individual choose to believe, and the most any church can do about it is disagree, so that we choose to go our separate ways.

So I'm a bit disturbed at the thought that Orthodoxy in America would simply accept this outlook as a given reality, because I'm not sure how it fails to lead to the same approach to Christianity that we find in Protestantism today. Granted, the idea that the bishops must all be in agreement at least doctrinally would provide some kind of curb on excesses in this area, but it still opens things up (it seems to me) for a great deal of Protestantization in the Church. And maybe this speaks to my biggest misgiving about the whole idea of a uniquely American Orthodox Church. Is it possible that American culture is so permeated with American religion (indeed, which has been shaped more by the other?), that a too-American Orthodoxy would thereby become less Orthodox than it should be? American Orthodoxy in the sense of Orthodoxy based and administered within America is one thing--with that I have no argument--but American Orthodoxy in the sense of Orthodoxy shaped by American culture is something requiring a bit more discernment. That's where I worry.

less than ideal

I might have mentioned before the geography of my situation. Right now, we live within walking distance of one Orthodox parish (OCA), which is currently building a new facility that will still make it the closest parish to us, but will pretty much require driving to get there. The next closest Orthodox parish that I know of is a Ukrainian cathedral. I've been there once for a Christmas service--wasn't terribly impressed, but maybe I should give it another try for something normal. For big holidays, I guess they do one combined service where normally they would have one in English and one in Ukrainian. That's about a 20 min. drive, but one advantage is that it's not too far from the Evangelical church we attend. Expanding to 25-30 min., there are two other options in basically opposite directions--one a small ROCOR mission parish, the other an Antiochian parish, where I attend most of the time.

My wife has agreed to teach preschool once a month at our Evangelical church, which means that week she attends both services (works with kids during one, attends worship with adults during the other). Since our son would be in the class she's teaching (which always complicates things), and in any case he and I would have to hang around for an extra service, I offered to take him to the OCA parish those weeks. The service is longer, and he likes to play on the nearby playground afterward, so schedule-wise it works out pretty well. Yesterday was our first time trying the arrangement. I'd visited there a few times before--once when I first got interested in Orthodoxy, again during Lent 2005, then all three of us went right after Katrina hit last year--we'd planned on visiting the Antiochian parish, but with fuel shortages that weekend, we decided to stay close to home. There might be one or two other visits I'm not remembering. In any case, it had been quite a while since my last visit there, and in the meantime I've begun to feel like the Antiochian parish is really my home.

Given our transportation constraints (only one car), it's the only serious option we have for Sunday a.m. services, but it still feels less than ideal. One reason that I haven't gone there more regularly to begin with is because they only have services on Sunday mornings. I tend to be a big proponent of keeping things local, especially when it comes to church. Part of what attracts me to Orthodoxy is the ideal of one city-one church, where the local parish is the parish you go to. It may rarely work out that way in America, given the multiplicity of jurisdictions and insufficient coverage of territory, but at least the ideal is there. (With Protestantism, particularly in America, it's not even a justifiable goal.) But given my circumstances, local is not enough. Right now, I need a parish that has services other than Sunday a.m. I also haven't got much of a response from either priest when I've expressed interest in talking about Orthodoxy. Maybe they'll have more services once they're in the new building, but for now it can't be the only parish in my life. On the other hand, it's the only parish close enough to do Sunday a.m. with any kind of regularity.

So I'm pretty much stuck having to attend at least two different parishes. The overall frequency with which I can attend Orthodox services is bad enough without splitting it. I don't have much expectation of building serious relationships at the OCA parish by attending once a month. Yesterday, I had the usual feeling of sorrowful joy--joy that I could take part in the service if only to a limited degree, sorrow that I could not participate fully. But it felt lonelier than usual, since I really didn't feel like I had much of a connection with anyone there. I was glad to have Ian with me, so at least we could keep each other company. I don't think I've ever felt closer to him than I did in that service. It's hard to explain--maybe just the contrast. I suppose expectations might play a role here, because I don't remember feeling so lonely when I've visited cathedrals where I knew no one but didn't expect to attend with any regularity anyway.

So now I'm thinking that maybe if things move seriously in the direction of attending separate churches, it's probably inevitable that we'll have to get another car. I hate to do it, because it would add financial strain on top of everything else, but it may be the only realistic option.

Velvet Elvis

Today, I read Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell, founding pastor of Mars Hill, which according to the back of his book is one of the fastest growing churches in American history. It was suggested to me by the pastor of the Evangelical church we attend when I was explaing to him and the other elders how I ended up attracted to Orthodoxy. My initial thought when I saw the book was--weird format. My second thought was--someone wants this to look postmodern. I don't know if it normally comes with a dust jacket--the library copy doesn't have one. The cover is plain white, with the title rotated 90 degrees (clockwise) and written in Orange. The subtitle is under/next to it in faint gray--the same color as the author's name. Inside, the book is three-color--mostly black and white print, but with a lot of orange highlighting, including fully orange pages between the chapters. The page numbers are also written sideways, and for some reason the chapters are called "movements." It doesn't seem very musical beyond that. There are a lot of one-line or even one-word paragraphs throughout the book, so between the white space and the extra orange pages between chapters, it's actually a much faster read than its nearly 200 pp. (including endnotes) would suggest. Since I brought up the endnotes, I should mention that I find them off-putting. Mostly, the notes are Scripture references, which could easily have been handled in-line. I suppose someone doesn't want the book to look too religious by putting them out there where the casual reader might see them. I tried not to let these elements prejudice my reaction to the book, since it's entirely possible that the publisher had a lot more say in them than the author.

I'm reasonably confident that I know why the book was recommended to me. Early on, it has some positive things to say about tradition and about reading the Bible in community. The author is clearly quite enthusiastic about Jewish tradition in particular, which would seem relevant to my own experience. There are other elements that might have had something to do with the recommendation, but I'm less certain that they were specifically considered. In short, it was probably meant to show that some of the key things I was looking for when I found Orthodoxy can be found in certain types of Evangelicalism that exist right now. It does that, and I'm grateful for it in its way, but as I hope to explain here, it didn't change much about my outlook on much of anything.

I've known for quite some time that there is a subset of Evangelicalism--generally categorized as postmodern or labeled "the emerging Church"--that likes to talk about tradition and reading as part of a community. Personally, I got to those ideas through the literary critic Stanley Fish (among others); I'm not sure these people are coming at it from quite the same angle, but the result is more or less the same. One significant difference, I suspect, is that my hermeneutical journey took me through some more radical methods, many of which are grounded in a completely secularist outlook, so by the time I realized where it was all leading, the picture looked quite a bit more bleak. No, bleak probably isn't the word I want here. What I think I really want to say is that I was more jaded about the whole process of reading for objective meaning. I will freely admit that some of this feeling probably came from the degree to which I had been trained in and accepted the more modernist Evangelical program of mechanistic Bible reading. Although I grew up in a time when I should have been more comfortably postmodern, my friends were adults and conservative Christians, and my favorite reading material was somewhat outdated apologetics (Geisler, McDowell, Lewis, et al.). It was more of a shock to my system when I realized that the approach didn't work, and I quickly progressed through some of the darker levels of postmodern reading.

So in many ways, I would say this book is a sunnier version of my own experience over the past few years. I, too, rediscovered the importance of community in reading the Bible and the inevitable flow of tradition. I, too, was drawn first to Jewish tradition. In my own experience, this attraction had a lot to do with a long-standing affinity for Judaism and a simultaneous intensive study of Semitic languages, mostly Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic. Jewish tradition was also, for me, safer territory than deep Christian traditions. I had no baggage of a Reformation against Judaism, and there was a sense in which Judaism felt like Christianity with some stuff stripped away (as opposed to a lot of extra stuff added that didn't belong). This outlook was willfully simplistic--I knew then, as I know now, that Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament or the parent of Christianity. They are better understood as sister faiths--both picking up where the faith of the Old Testament left off and progressing along their own developmental lines.

I don't know if Bell had any of these feelings that led to his interest in Jewish tradition, but one factor that I suspect we shared in common was the view of Jewish tradition as a free-floating collection of voices--a big, postmodern soup of readings where everyone's comments are valued. Postmodernists love to hold up the Talmud, with its many marginal commentaries, as a prime example of how reading is supposed to work. The only problem is that it never really worked that way. The discussion is meant to have some kind of resolution--some of the voices are meant to be wrong. There is an authoritative structure that has nailed down to a great extent the boundaries of Jewish practice, and the living out of this vision today consists mostly of rabbis quibbling over the pickiest details that somehow their people still need to be told how to think about. Bell might like the postmodern idea of Jewish tradition, but he would not actually want to live by it or by a Christian equivalent. I say this with relative confidence, because he still thinks like a Western Evangelical. He talks about tradition, but he still handles it like a Protestant--at best, he picks out of various traditions what he finds appealing in them and throws the rest away. In my opinion, this misses the point entirely.

The strongest connection I see between Bell's views and my own journey is with what I would call the first of my two options. Once I realized how reading works, I knew there were only two ways I could go--either to find a community that was willing to read with freedom and mutual acceptance and few boundaries, and to somehow muddle along toward a consensus of how we would live, or to plug myself into a community that already had an established and honest tradition. The first option, I decided, could only proceed honestly with a bunch of people who thought like I did. (Even then, I wasn't sure it could be sustained.) Most people feel a need to take seriously their beliefs and balk at constantly changing them. With too many of that kind in the group, it would soon fragment over things that people considered too important to leave fuzzy. And a community that only works for academically minded people just doesn't sound like a good idea for a church. Aside from the contradiction that it appears to be very open-minded but only so long as those who join conform to the type of open-mindedness we want, it would inevitably have problems with children who grew up in the community and ended up rejecting their parents' open-mindedness. Like most forms of Western "liberalism," it would ultimately show itself truly closed to anyone who couldn't adopt the same mindset.

I gave up on the first option before ever trying it in real life, but it looks to me like what Bell is advocating is something like it. He freely admits, however, his superpastor mode in the early days of Mars Hill, and I suspect that the same thing happened here that happens so often in Evangelical churches (particularly megachurches)--people were attracted to him and to his vision, and they signed up because they thought according to similar patterns anyway and willingly conformed their thinking to his. Not that they all thought alike on every detail--I'm talking about the larger framework here, which can often include certain types of openness and flexibility (within boundaries). As he says, the community will keep individuals from going off the deep end in their own understanding (or at least find ways to make them leave if they do), but that presumes that the community has some kind of consensus to begin with. Where a church was started by a charismatic adrenaline junkie, I would be truly surprised if that consensus didn't come mostly from his own thinking and style. And at this point, it's worth bringing up the whole notion of leadership and authority within the community, which probably exists at Mars Hill in some form but is clearly avoided in the book.

And authority is a key, I think, because it means the difference between a postmodern Evangelical who picks and chooses old ideas and practices that he likes, and an Orthodox Jew (or Orthodox Christian) who lives in submission to the Tradition handed down over countless generations. As a glaring example of this point, a quick scan through the endnotes in the book (those that aren't Scripture references) shows that he's consulting a good deal more with Jewish tradition--which in its developed, Rabbinic form has virtually nothing to do with the development of Christianity and therefore can't possibly hold any authority over Christians today--than with Catholic tradition, whether Western or Eastern, or for that matter with Reformed tradition. Authority also means the difference between a free-form gathering of ideas about a text and a received meaning of the text that produces agreement not only within a local congregation but throughout the world. If simply having a tradition is enough, what has prevented the Protestant world from coming together? I would submit that there is no authority in Protestant traditions, so there can never be common thinking across the board. Another thing I would add about authority. He talks about the structure of Jewish discipleship to make his points about Jesus--well taken, I would say--but how does it end there? Where in Christian tradition does this kind of radical submission continue? It is nowhere to be found in his model of community, but it has been central to Orthodoxy.

Having said that, I think he does make a lot of good points in the book. Early on, he makes a good case for negative theology and preserving mystery. Much of what he says in the later chapters (where Tradition seems noticeably absent in the content and the approach) does align pretty well with Orthodox teaching. Salvation is not just about a legal transaction--it is about relationship, about restoring us to the image of God. What's most important is not Scripture--it's God; not what we think, but what we do. We're involved in something bigger than me and Jesus--it's about changed lives that mean a better world for everyone and everything. Nature itself is redeemed in the process, as Christ lives through us. Heaven and hell don't just happen then and there--they start here and now, and we create our own outcome. Evangelism should be primarily about living and welcoming others to live with us, not about looking for just some one-time decision. Amen! I will always rejoice to see Evangelicals coming to such conclusions. And to the extent that this kind of thing gets people thinking in the direction of community and tradition, I'm all for it. May it bring at least some who follow it to where they can see the Church as it was meant to be.

But I'm not convinced that it will. It's still a big leap from recognizing value in tradition to following tradition. It's a desire to have one's cake and eat it too. Let me benefit from tradition, but let me still be the authority. Let me ascribe value to the past, but let me still favor the future. As much as postmodernism seeks to refute modernism, at its root the chronological bias is still the same. Bell's first chapter in the book shows this--it's moving forward, it's creating something new, it's reinventing, it's exploring. Yes, he acknowledges that this often consists of dusting off something old, but the outlook hasn't really changed. Yes, he is comfortable appealing to creeds and councils (in support of Protestant theology), but he still disagrees fundamentally with their mindset--that what is new is suspect, that changing the Tradition is bad, not good. This is not to say that there is no place for creativity in Orthodoxy, or that nothing ever changes. But good change and good creativity is always understood as an outworking of what was already there. There is still an opposition between Bell's approach and the traditional approach of the Church, and the outcome could very well be that this whole movement will be just one more passing fad as Evangelicalism tries to keep up with the secular world.

baptism of tears

As I brought up last month, Fr. Thomas Hopko refers in his lecture series on the Apocalypse to St. Gregory the Theologian on a baptism of fire and a baptism of desire. Fr. Thomas says the first is martyrdom and the second is where someone dies to self in their heart, as though they've been baptized but without the sacrament. His point is to show that a person who was not sacramentally baptized (i.e., not formally part of the Orthodox Church) in life can still go to heaven. Now, I thought a month ago that I'd found the right spot in St. Gregory, even though it didn't seem quite right. Now I'm a bit more certain that I've found the right passage. It's not in his "Homily on Holy Baptism," but in the one that he preached the day before, on the feast of Theophany, "On the Holy Lights." (Of course, if Fr. Thomas had thought to include better footnotes in his recorded lecture, I wouldn't have this problem.)

Toward the end of the homily (par. 18), he actually discusses five types of baptism: the baptism of Moses, the baptism of John, the baptism of the Spirit (the one that Jesus performs), the baptism of martyrdom (which he calls a baptism of blood, not fire--Fr. Thomas might have changed the terminology so the two would rhyme), and a baptism of tears, which I think is Fr. Thomas's baptism of desire:

Yes, and I know of a Fifth also, which is that of tears, and is much more laborious, received by him who washes his bed every night and his couch with tears (Ps 6:6); whose bruises stink through his wickedness (Job 38:5); and who goeth mourning and of a sad countenance; who imitates the repentance of Manasseh (2 Chr 38:12) and the humiliation of the Ninevites (Jonah 3:7-10) upon which God had mercy; who utters the words of the Publican in the Temple, and is justified rather than the stiff-necked Pharisee (Luke 18:13); who like the Canaanite woman bends down and asks for mercy and crumbs, the food of a dog that is very hungry (Matt 15:27).

Now, if I understand correctly from Schaff's translation (I don't have the source text right now), he goes on to make a point about this last type:

I, however, for I confess myself to be a man,—that is to say, an animal shifty and of a changeable nature,—both eagerly receive this Baptism, and worship Him Who has given it me, and impart it to others; and by shewing mercy make provision for mercy. For I know that I too am compassed with infirmity (Heb 5:2), and that with what measure I mete it shall be measured to me again (Matt 7:2).

This then feeds into his argument against the Novatians, a group that had gone into schism because they felt some bishops had been too lax in allowing lapsed Christians back into the Church. He's using this idea to chastise them for being so unforgiving, when all humans are so much in need of forgiveness.

Of course, now I'm really in trouble, since I can't remember having shed tears in at least 15 years . . . unless really spicy chicken wings count :-)

shut up and listen

There's a lot of good stuff in Letters from the Desert (answers by Barsanuphius and John to questions from their spiritual children), but two excerpts really hit me yesterday. The first is part of a rather lengthy response that doesn't actually answer a direct question but addresses a monk who refused his abbot's instruction that he should ask forgiveness in a conflict. Barsanuphius writes in part:

For, a submissive person submits in everything; and such a person is carefree about one's salvation, since someone else will give account for him, namely the one to whom one has submitted and to whom one has confided oneself. So, if you want to be saved and to live in heaven and on earth, keep these things and I shall give account for you to God, brother. But if you are neglectful, then you are on your own. . . . And the Father and Son and Holy Spirit bear witness to me, that I bear all of your care before God; and he will seek your blood from me, if you do not disobey my words.

Kind of scary for the spiritual father, I would imagine, but what a relief for the child! In my situation, where I can't find a priest to convert me (at least on my timetable), it's encouraging to think this way. My Evangelical impulse to view salvation as something between me and God says that I could get hit by a bus on the way home and go to hell, all because this silly priest was puttering around instead of dunking me in the nearest cup of water. But if I understand properly what the Old Man is saying here, my responsibility is just to obey what I'm told to do. If I get hit by a bus, it's the priest's problem, not mine! More specifically, if he said, no, it's not time to convert, but do this and this for now, I'm only accountable for doing what he said. I suppose, though, before I sit back too comfortably, I'd better make sure I have that kind of relationship with a priest :-)

The second excerpt is about staying out of theological debates. It's part of a series of questions and responses that run along similar lines, and John encourages this monk to keep quiet whenever possible. In this particular letter, the man asks:

If the heretic is arguing better than the Orthodox brother during this discussion, is it then good perhaps for me to support the latter as much as I can, lest he be harmed in the Orthodox faith by losing the debate?

John replies:

If you enter into the conversation, and speak before God and people, then you are seen to be as one who is teaching. And, if one teaches without having the authority to do so, then one's words are not inspired by God but remain fruitless. So, if there is no benefit in your speaking, why is it necessary to speak at all?

He goes on to advise that if the monk feels he must say something, he should speak in his heart to God, since God can do more in response to his prayers than he can do in his own strength to resolve the situation. I realize these letters are written to specific individuals for specific situations, but keeping silent in theological discussions is clearly something that I need to work on. I usually can't keep my mouth shut (or my fingers still) for very long. It doesn't necessarily speak to the situation with my wife, where I do have a responsibility for our family, but even there, I still might need to shut up more than I do. Generally speaking, my attempts to explain Orthodoxy just make things worse.

justifying a partial conversion

I think I understand as well as anyone the reason that conversion is approached the way it is in Orthodoxy. I understand that it is preferred to convert spouses together, because Christianity (or any faith) is best practiced with unity in the home, because the children in a family are spared the difficult choice between mom and dad's religion. I understand that a convert is expected to be active in and committed to a local parish before and after conversion, because joining the Church is joining a community, and doing things otherwise creates a disconnect between the ritual and the reality.

On the other hand, it's frustrating to think that conversion must be so contingent on factors over which I have no control. I suppose in theory I could force my wife to attend an Orthodox church. But I could not force her to convert; she would have to choose for herself to embrace Orthodoxy, and short of lying her way through the ceremonies, there's no way to make that happen. In theory, I could also simply choose a path for myself (and our children), with or without her, and hope that eventually someone would give in on the part about converting with one's spouse. But if doing that clearly damaged our marriage and, more than anything else I could possibly do, drove my wife even further away from Orthodoxy, I don't think I would want anyone to convert me under such circumstances. So it seems like the only way out of the double bind is for my wife to change--either to embrace Orthodoxy (which would solve everything) or at least to make peace with my participation in it (which would at least open up the remote possibility that I might convert on my own). Of course, the other side of this issue is that I could change--drop the whole business and go back to being a contented Evangelical. But at that point we're not talking about Orthodox conversion anymore.

The other question, then, is can I justify another way? In short, can I bend the rules enough (I'm talking letter, here, rather than spirit) to get in without a significant change on my wife's part? One option I've explored (which so far has turned out to be a dead-end) is the negative argument--don't look at the ideal of what conversion should be; look at the reality of actual Orthodox individuals. How many have been baptized in the Orthodox Church but have not set foot in a service in years? Or perhaps they only show up for Christmas and Easter. Or maybe they go sporadically because a spouse drags them along, but their heart isn't in it. Who wouldn't prefer a convert who loves the Church, loves its teachings, loves its worship, who can't attend regularly because of a mixed marriage situation but shows up whenever possible? And indeed, how much tangible difference is there between that and someone who was born Orthodox, chose to marry a non-Orthodox, and ends up doing the same thing? The only difference is that at some point in that person's life, they chose a relationship that made it harder to be faithful in their Orthodoxy. The convert who came over already yoked made no such choice.

Well, that argument didn't convince anyone. Sure, you can always find humans to compare yourself with, but the standard still needs to be upheld. A priest can't always prevent a person from wandering away from the standard, but at least he can enforce it on the front end. I understand. Believe me, I do. It still doesn't make the situation any less frustrating. So here's my second attempt--the positive argument.

There are probably other good examples, but I'm going to focus here on St. Mary of Egypt. From what we know of her, it seems that she took communion only twice in her adult life--once right before she entered the desert, and once right before she died. Not only did she not interact with other Christians during her many years of isolation, she apparently never set foot in a corporate worship service of any kind. Now, it doesn't seem like we know much about her childhood. If she was given communion immediately after her experience in Jerusalem, presumably her parents had her baptized before her life of sin. But whatever happened in those early years, there was a decisive return to the Church when she reached Palestine. So even though it wasn't properly a conversion in the sense that she needed to be baptized, it was still a restoration of communion. Immediately after that, however, she entered the desert and lived the rest of her life in isolation. Was it planned? Did she know that things would work out that way? Did the priest who gave her communion? Perhaps not. But she was following God's leading, and God knew.

The argument can be generalized beyond the specific instance of St. Mary. How many other countless hermits throughout the history of the Church have spent most of their time in the desert, in a sense cut off from the community of believers, attached to the Church in a spiritual sense but far removed physically? I chose St. Mary as my example, because in her case at least it clearly can't be argued that she spent time first getting fully integrated and maturing within a community. You can't say about her that her isolation came only after she was well-grounded in the life of the Church. Also, because she took communion before she entered the desert, it can't be argued that all her struggles alone in the wilderness were her preparation and repentance, her necessary prerequisites before restoration to the Church. She was restored first--converted first, if you will--then she spent years in repentance to repair the damage of her sinful life. And while she lived without earthly human contact, without access to Scripture or other spiritual writings, she communed with the saints, her prayers were heard, the words of Scripture were planted in her heart, and she matured to become a saint herself.

If this is possible, is it not also possible for a much lesser isolation to fit within God's plan? For someone in my situation, who cannot find a path to both love his wife and enter the Church as a fully participating member, to still spend daily time in prayer and Scripture, reading from the wealth of spiritual writings in the Church's tradition, living according to the teachings of Orthodoxy, fasting, confessing, communing when possible, and attending services and interacting with other Orthodox believers at every opportunity. Living in a marriage with two very different religious perspectives is difficult enough--loving one's wife as Christ loved the Church in such circumstances is an ascetic practice in itself--doesn't someone in this situation, of all people, need the grace of the sacraments? Doesn't such a person need the strength that comes from even a partial relationship with the community of Orthodox believers? And wouldn't the assurance that one's own spiritual standing before God is firm and secure, that one's spouse is free to make an independent choice, only help to diffuse the tension in the marriage?

I'm not saying that I'm anywhere near a St. Mary of Egypt. I'm about as far from it as you can get. But it still seems like there's a significant parallel here. If so many ascetics have been such an important part of the Church while living in relative isolation, and if the life of a married believer is not supposed to differ significantly from that of a celibate in anything except that they are married, and if indeed marriage is an ascetic struggle in itself, why should a degree of isolation so much less than theirs be considered an insurmountable obstacle to conversion?

Why the Rest Hates the West

I mentioned earlier that I was reading Why the Rest Hates the West, by Meic Pearse. All I know about the author is what it says on the back of the book--he's a trained church historian from Wales with some kind of missionary background. He appears to be Evangelical, but with a very critical eye toward all things Western, including the its take on church. In fact, I think I'm going to have to buy this book, because more than just about anything I've read, it tracks with what I've been thinking over the past couple of years. Not that I just like to surround myself with books I agree with :-) Partly, I'm thinking it would be good to have something to recommend if anyone wants to know more about what I think, and partly he actually does contribute some ideas that I hadn't already come up with.

I should say first of all that he doesn't have much sympathy for Western liberal self-loathing. So this isn't just about bashing Western government or policies. Instead, he's trying to look at deeper issues--the fundamental characteristics of Western culture that not only tend to offend the rest of the world by making us appear barbaric, but that even Western Christians should have some cause to oppose. Along the way, he also points out the positives to be found in the same trends, so for instance one of the first issues he looks at is Western truth to self. He sees a gain in the Protestant emphasis on internal integrity over external conformity to rules, but a loss in the subsequent abandonment of objective morality that has left us with only being true to ourselves, as in being honestly and openly whatever we happen to be. We are honest about ourselves and all of our moral flaws, but then we stop there without any motivation to change.

Other issues he considers include the shifts from duties to rights, from tradition to progress, from personal to impersonal government, from intermediate-level communities to the nationalist/classist dichotomy, and the prolongation of adolescence into perpetual immaturity. He also looks at the unsustainability of Western culture--how these features have added up to birthrates lower than necessary to maintain the population.

Except for the last point, I not only agree with almost everything he has to say about the problems, but have at one point or another fixated on them as major reasons for my own distaste for Western culture. On the demographic issue, I haven't thought much about it, but he's probably right--Western anticulture is gradually killing itself off. Our lack of duty, our rejection of traditional family structures, our expectation that some impersonal system will support us in old age, and our selfish desire for eternal youth all serve to diminish the desire for children. The one European country that exceeds a sufficient birthrate to maintain its population is Muslim Albania, and the one Western nation that reaches a sufficient rate is America, where arguably the decay of religious values has not proceeded quite as far as it has elsewhere. But even in America, the gross statistics hide the fact that immigrant groups inflate the numbers, since they generally have more children than indigenous Westerners. In fact, Pearse predicts that the only way to stem the tide will be increased immigration--not just any immigrants, because those who assimilate to Western culture will adjust to Western birthrates. The vacuum will only be filled by non-assimilating immigrants, who hold onto their own cultures, values, religions, and associated birthrates. Since the alternative is for Westerners themselves to radically change their own priorities, the outcome will be the same. One way or another, in the not-too-distant future, Western countries will be run by people who embrace traditional values.

It's a grim outlook, and he does well to caution against racist nationalism as a reaction. Pearse entertains no rosy notions about how we will solve our conflicts with the non-Western world; clearly, he views Western culture as an aberration that needs to be corrected--that in fact will be corrected whether by our intention or not. But his recommendations are not easy to carry out. Essentially, he calls for a return to personal duty and responsibility--repentance, to put it simply, from our current course. He also advocates cooperation between traditionally-minded Westerners and non-Westerners. One important point he makes in the book is about tolerance. Where in Western thought it has come to mean an intolerant rejection of conviction, it was and still is for most of the world an agreement to let differences of conviction stand. Perhaps his most important point is this--that a return to conviction, to traditional adherence to particular religious and ethical norms, is not something to be feared, not something that will inevitably produce conflict with the world around us. If anything, the opposite is true--that our militant rejection of traditional convictions in any form puts us at enmity with the rest of the world.

All in all, it was an excellent read.

reunified, for all practical purposes

The ROCOR synod has approved the "Act on Canonical Communion" with Moscow! They are expecting one more meeting of the joint committees to work out the details of the signing event, which should then be approved by the end of the year. Their letter to the flock is worth reading.

back in business

We're back from our 1000-mile trek--started with a visit to my aunt last Thursday and Friday, my wife's best friend on Saturday, my grandpa's 80th birthday party on Sunday, a small-town Labor Day parade and fireworks on Monday (my wife's hometown), and finally a little bit of a break on Tuesday before the eight-hour drive back home on Wednesday. At least it was a short work week, but honestly work seemed like something of a break after all that driving! Ian had a blast with the Labor Day festivities. It was probably the biggest parade I've ever seen, and since we were sitting close to the beginning, we walked away with probably three pounds of candy flung at us from the various floats. The fireworks display may not have been as well choreographed as some, but we were sitting within home-run distance of the launch site and got as good a view as you could ever want. I think Ian would have been excited anyway about getting up in the dark to go sit in lawn chairs and watch a fire truck or two drive by; he couldn't resist commenting on just about every blast. Circle! Colors! Worms! Fireworks!

I was hoping and praying for an opportunity to bring up Orthodoxy with the parents, but it didn't happen. I really don't want to do this by phone or e-mail, but I'm not sure I'll ever find the right moment in person. I brought along a couple of books to read--one on the Jesus Prayer that was kind of disappointing for being too academic, and a collection of letters by Barsanuphius and John. That one's shaping up to be quite a bit better. I'm also pretty excited that waiting for me when I returned was the Psalter According to the Seventy. After reading St. Theophan's advice about prayer, I wanted to start spending more time in the psalms. I've had an electronic version for a while, but I need something to keep more handy. On top of all that, today I got Why the Rest Hates the West from the library. I've just started it, but it looks really good so far.

more from St. Theophan

I'm almost done reading St. Theophan's The Spiritual Life. In these final letters, his correspondent has chosen a life of virginity, and he is responding to her desire. In #74, he writes:

No, no. It is quite impossible to rush. When there is haste and zeal like this to hurry things along, it is not of God. Confused desires are well-meaning, but they are not good and do not lead to the good. Godly things move along slowly and imperceptibly, but steadfastly.

Pray and wait with patience, looking to see whether a door will open. The Lord will arrange things in such a way as you cannot guess.

Encouraging words for someone in my position. By this point he has already counseled her to wait for her parents' blessing. He goes on to explain how it is possible to live as a monastic in her home until the time is right to enter a monastery. I'm not sure exactly the same thing can be said about my situation, but I do need to be more trusting that God will bring things along in his own time.

sobering thoughts for a born-again liberal

I grew up politically conservative but somehow found myself leaning more liberal in the past few years. Right now, it's actually kind of hard to know where to put myself in terms of political categories. I tend to prefer a deconstruction of the American left-right paradigm as mostly a false dichotomy designed to marginalize the masses. (Does that make me sound like a Communist?) Maybe my outlook is just a product of the current political landscape, where all mainstream politicians seem to agree on the issues that are important to me. Maybe I just like being on the fringe, where it's more fun to debate. But there must be some significance to the fact that Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan can be found on the same side, over against the President and his chief opponents in Congress.

Anyway, I was excited a couple of years ago to discover left-wing Evangelicalism. I had been feeling pretty depressed about how difficult it was to find Evangelicals who weren't rabid supporters of Bush. That's when I came across folks like Ron Sider and Jim Wallis, who seemed to preserve a more liberal strand that had always been part of Evangelicalism but had been drowned out by other forces. Remember that early in its history American Evangelicalism was actually a progressive movement that pushed through morality and social justice agendas. It seems like the rise of secular socialism caused a lot of Evangelicals to recoil into a more conservative outlook, for fear of guilt by association. Well, it wasn't too long after this discovery that I found my way out of Evangelicalism altogether and into Orthodoxy (at least in heart, if not all the way just yet). But I still sympathize with a lot of left-wing views. Here, then, are some excerpts from letter #16 in St. Theophan the Recluse's The Spiritual Life:

I would guess that among your friends are progressive thinkers, or that you have joined a society having such people in it, and they have scattered your good sense. Such people usually rave in this manner. Phrases such as "the good of mankind" and "the good of the people" are always on their tongues. . . .

Do whatever falls to your hands, in your circle and in your situation--and believe that this is and will be your true work; nothing more from you is required. It is a great error to think that you must undertake important and great labors, whether for heaven, or, as the progressives think, in order to make one's contribution to humanity. . . . The purpose is the blessed life beyond the grave; the means are the works according to the commandments, the execution of which is required by each instance of life. It seems to me that all of this is clear and simple; there is no reason to torture yourself with difficult problems. You need to put out of your mind any plans about "multi-beneficial, all-embracing, common-to-all mankind" activity such as the progressives rant about. Then your life will be regarded as enclosed within peaceful boundaries, and leading toward the final goal without hindrance. Remember, the Lord does not forget even a glass of cold water given to someone tormented by thirst.

Well . . . hmm . . . I guess I have some thinking to do.

more on the abomination of iTunes

If you caught in the comments to my post Seven Bowels of the Apocalypse my frustration with both iTunes and Rhapsody, I thought you might appreciate an update. I finally carved out some time to get Rhapsody out of my life for good. It turned out to be a much easier transition than I would have imagined, for which I am grateful. I looked around online for other options. The major players seem to be iTunes, WMP, and WinAmp. Normally, it's hard for me to say which I despise more--Macintosh, Microsoft, or AOL. I somehow ended up using AIM, I guess because the people I knew were using it, but I recently switched to Gaim for my interface, which at least helps me sleep at night. But generally speaking, my inclination is to avoid all three.

In this case, I decided that, since I'm pretty much stuck with iTunes and WMP on my computer so I can handle their proprietary formats, I may as well see if I can make one of them work for me. I recall there being issues with Rhapsody where the fix involved updating WMP, so I suspect that it's one of those cases where MS forces everything to tie in with its own buggy software--the price you pay for using Windows, I guess. Besides, I was still pretty sore about iTunes's goofy music file format, so I wasn't feeling very generous toward it. WMP was able to pick up everything out of my music library and ended up being much easier and more reliable than Rhapsody to use with my mp3 player. So far, it's doing everything I want it to do.

Meanwhile, Mac continues to outperform MS in the my-way-or-the-highway category. Not only does buying music from iTunes stick you with a worthless proprietary format that forever confines you to iTunes and iPod (aside from the fix of burning a CD, which I guess they haven't figured out how to corrupt yet, and ripping the songs back off into a form you can actually use), now I discover that you can't even use iTunes to put music on a non-iPod mp3 player. So even though podcasts are plain, lovable mp3s (the free ones, anyway), the only way to get them onto my player is to import them into some software that's actually designed to be useful. That's where I'm glad that WMP automatically imports new music files that it spots. I might live to regret my current alliance with MS, but for now, the enemies of my enemies are my friends.

known by sight

It's become something of a cliche, but I think we really do learn some profound lessons from children. Without any intentional instruction or prompting, Ian quickly learned to recognize Jesus in icons and other pictures. (As an adult, anyway. I did have to explain little Jesus to him.) He also made an intuitive connection between Orthodox icons and church, even though by far his experience has been in relatively bare-walled Evangelical churches. I was once reading Fr. Michael Pomazansky's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, which in the paperback edition has a rendition of the icon of Christ not made by human hands on the cover. He saw the cover and called it a "church book." Yesterday, I was working on the computer, and he got up to see what I was doing. He saw an icon of Christ healing the blind man and said, "I like pictures of Jesus." (I don't think I convinced him that the blind man was sick, rather than hiding.) Today, my copy of Hymns of Paradise, by Fr. Apostolos Hill, arrived in the mail. There was a fragment of an icon inside the cover, and again, he identified it with church. "Remember when we went to the quiet church?" he asked. Yeah, it's been too long since he went along with me.

This recognition is all the more remarkable, since the only icons we keep in the house are either part of book or CD designs, or a small diptych that I get out when I pray on my own or on the rare occasions that I pray with him before bed. He expects it whenever I put him to bed and always looks for Jesus if I don't get it out right away. Like most Evangelicals, my wife doesn't particularly care for icons, so we don't hang any on the walls. I settle for using them to decorate my computer desktop and recently put up a little icon corner at work. I'm glad that, in spite of their sparse presence in his life, he knows Orthodoxy by sight. I can't recall him ever making such visual associations with anything Evangelical. Not exactly surprising, but meaningful nonetheless.

Apocalypse and salvation

Now that I've finished Fr. Thomas's series on the Apocalypse, I can confirm Jim's comment in response to my post on salvation. (Actually, I finished it yesterday morning, but I wanted to go over some of it again.) Hopko does address several of the issues I raised in the last half of his last lecture. In particular, he responds to the question of whether only baptized members of the (Orthodox) Church will go to heaven. His answer is affirmative, but with qualifications. Baptism only saves a person if it is real baptism, meaning that it has to be followed up with a changed life. On the other hand, he refers to Gregory the Theologian's homily on baptism, which discusses a baptism of desire (parr. 22-23?), and goes on to talk about how a person who is not part of the Church, who doesn't even want anything to do with being a Christian perhaps, because of the bad testimony of Christians he has encountered, may respond with faith and love when he finally meets Christ face-to-face. He considers the last judgment to be the last chance for repentance and suggests that many who never had a real opportunity to respond to Christ in this life will embrace him at the end, just as many who claimed to be Christians will ultimately reject him. He talks about a lot of associated ideas, for instance the silliness of fixating on what is the minimal standard for getting into heaven, and how our judgment will be based on how we have lived, not whether we went to church or recited a creed.

Naturally, I was interested to find the specific section of St. Gregory's homily that he was talking about. I think I've found the right spot, although it's not as encouraging as Fr. Thomas seems to make it. I suspect the reason is that St. Greogry is mostly interested in persuading those who are inclined to put off getting baptized to get on with it. He talks a lot about various excuses people might make, and it is actually in this context that he brings up the baptism of desire. His argument seems to be, yes--the desire to be baptized is worth something--just as there are different states prior to baptism, some of which are better than others, there are different states apart from baptism, some of which are better than others--but that is not the end of the story. He suggests that a person could be in a situation where they are not subject to punishment but not worthy of glorification either. But it's much better to go all the way. If you want the desire to be baptized to stand in for actual baptism, are you also prepared to accept the desire for glory as a substitute for actual glory? Since his audience is presumably in a place where they have the real option of getting baptized, there is no encouragement here to stay as they are. Nevertheless, there is some hope that a person who lacks the opportunity can be saved. The resulting message is something like the Khomiakov quote that I posted at the beginning of this blog.

Fr. Thomas also mentions that at least two saints of the Church were not themselves members of the Church--Constantine (who famously waited to be baptized on his death bed), and perhaps more significantly, Isaac of Syria. St. Isaac was part of the Nestorian Church of the East, which never fell within the bounds of the Roman Empire and therefore did not participate in the councils. After the condemnation of Nestorianism, many of the heretics fled eastward to avoid imperial persecution. Their ideas took hold in the Church of the East and persist to this day. (This group is distinct from the so-called Monophysite churches, which include the Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian churches. These groups were generally more involved with the earlier councils and were fully Orthodox until Chalcedon. When they split from the Orthodox churches, the doctrinal division tended to run along political fault lines, with the Orthodox favoring allegiance to the empire and use of the Greek language, while the others preserved a more local identity and language. They seem to have been responding at least in part to pressure from foreign occupation, as the empire receded and they came first under Persian then under Arab domination.) Isaac served a short time as bishop of Nineveh but preferred the life of a simple monk. There is some suggestion that he left his see at least in part over his distaste for Nestorianism. In any case, he lived and died in the East and was never part of the Orthodox Church.

I find St. Isaac's canonization particularly interesting, because it shows not only a recognition that Christians can exist outside the true Church, but an affirmation that at least one who was undeniably a Christian and undeniably went to heaven (which is only 100% assured where saints are concerned) spent his life in a heterodox community. Like most American Protestants, he had little if any contact with the Orthodox Church and lived by what he knew. We might assume that he would have been part of the Orthodox Church if he had had the chance, but there is no way to know. I find that encouraging, because it leaves open the possibility that American Protestants, many of whom I dearly love, are not ultimately lost just because they have never found the Orthodox Church.

shedding some light on politics

I expressed a few days ago some of my struggles over faith and politics. Something I ran across today might be useful for sorting things out. St. Sergius of Radonezh blessed the Russian revolt against the Tatars, prophesied their victory, and prayed with other monks to that end during the battle. Now, on one hand, you might argue that the Russian princes never really gave up their position as God-appointed authorities over their own people, and so they were simply acting as national defenders to throw off the yoke of oppression by a foreign power. On the other hand, they had been subject to Tatar rule for centuries and were themselves as Christians obligated to obey their overlords, at least as much as any Christian is obligated to submit in such cases. If we argue that way, St. Sergius's blessing of the effort shows that armed revolt is acceptable--even desirable--before God, at least in some situations.

Perhaps we would have to limit the allowance by saying that it only works in cases where an established ruler is rebelling against a foreign authority, but then we get into the sticky questions of how we define a legitimate ruler and what constitutes a foreign authority. I'm also not sure how we could really drive home the limitation except by advising caution. Another qualification might be that it has to be a Christian force rebelling against non-Christian oppression. But how does that follow? If anything, these circumstances should evoke the notion of martyrdom, where it is an honor to suffer and die for one's faith rather than fight back. I'm not saying that the blessing on the Russian forces in this case was unrelated to the religious persuasions of the combatants, but as far as the moral justification goes, it seems like you would have to extend it to include other situations where Christians languished under illegitimate rule. For that matter, there's no necessity that either side would have to be Christian at all. Not that it's going to matter to non-Christian combatants whether or not their behavior conforms with Christian standards, but for those of us who are part of an imperialistic nation, it is still relevant. May I, or for that matter, do I ever have a moral obligation to side with those who are legitimately fighting for their own freedom from American invasion? It doesn't seem like a double standard should be necessary, based on whether the fighters are Serbian Christians or Lebanese Muslims.

The experience of St. Sergius doesn't answer all questions by any means, but it does hint at an interpretation of St. Paul's instructions--that what he's really talking about is the day-to-day submission of the individual to civil laws, not the general legitimacy (or otherwise) of rebellion against oppression of various forms. The problem then becomes knowing where to draw the line. Arguably, if it is appropriate to rebel against oppression, it is therefore appropriate to break the law anytime it is seen as oppressive, or even if it is simply that the government enforcing the law is oppressive. Taking it to that extent would virtually eliminate any distinction between the two issues, so it's probably not right. But where then do we draw the line?

seven bowels of the apocalypse

Sorry, I couldn't resist. It really is the best way to bind things up this morning (there I go again). I finally got my hands on Fr. Thomas Hopko's series on Revelation. (Thanks, Jim!) After a little difficulty last night getting it loaded onto my mp3 player, I spent most of the bus ride this morning listening to the first lecture. (Problem 1: it wasn't making the jump very well directly from a CD to the mp3 player, so I had to put the files on the hard drive first. Problem 2: the track titles have to be distinct, and each lecture was broken into a few segments with the same title--I just had to add numbers to separate them. The latter problem, and maybe the former, was probably just a quirk in Rhapsody--I really need to switch to some different software, now that I'm no longer subscribed to their service anyway.) I like it so far. I'd read some stuff by Fr. Thomas before but never heard his voice. He's pretty interesting to listen to. The approach is about what I expected from what I've gleaned about Orthodox eschatology. It's good to hear it all put together in a coherent fashion, though, even if it's not authoritative doctrine. As a recovering Dispensationalist, it's going to take me a while to adjust to a different way of looking at things.

Toward the end of the bus ride, I started to feel some discomfort, and shortly after I got to work, I definitely had to get to the bathroom. I'm not sure if it was the meat I had after the service last night, for the first time in two weeks, or the kung pao shrimp I had with my wife beforehand. (Yes, I ate before Divine Liturgy--I normally try to follow the practice of fasting from midnight or noon, which for an evening DL on a fast day means no eating until after the service, but in this case I made an exception. I can't actually take communion anyway, so I don't think I'm technically required to wait, and I really hate making my wife eat alone.) I'm betting on the shrimp, since returning to meat after a fast doesn't normally do this to me; besides, it contributes nicely to my anti-Chinese-food bias. My wife just reported that she had some stomach issues last night, so that helps. It also diminishes the likelihood that God is punishing me for not waiting to eat :-)

Anyway, the service was good. I had read a collection of Dormition sermons from various Church Fathers over the past week or so, so it was nice to just soak it all in, without having to focus too much on the words. (Not that I zoned out--I just find that it's an easier experience when I'm well-prepared on the content of the service.) I finally met the Khouria at the meal afterward. I started to introduce myself as someone exploring Orthodoxy, when Fr. Gregory said I was really a catechumen. I was quick to interject, "not really," and he of course agreed. As usually happens when I try to explain why I've been exploring for so long without taking the next step, the subject of my wife's reluctance came up. I got the usual affirmation that it's very common for men to find Orthodoxy first and for their wives to resist. Fr. Gregory suggested, although he was careful to say that it's probably not a useful apologetic, that this trend indicates something right about Orthodoxy, in contrast with the struggle of so many Western churches to get men involved. I like to think that he's right, but I agree--it's probably not going to convince anyone.

weird diets

My son is eating falafel on pita for breakfast. Sure, he's drinking milk, but you've still got to love it. I'm the only one in my house who fasts, which certainly has its drawbacks. That's part of the reason that I try to attend services associated with the different feasts and fasts. It's the only chance I have to make this a communal experience. It's still a pain, though, to spend more time thinking about food rather than less, since I have to prepare my own meals. It's a pain that we can't quite share meals as a family during fasting periods. (We try at least to sit together for supper.) Ian doesn't fast, but at least he gets into the food I eat. It's kind of hard to be a vegetable-hating vegan, so I've had to come up with a menu that works for me. Falafel is one of my staples, which he likes and usually wants when I'm eating it. He doesn't do the tahini sauce or lettuce (the only vegetable I can tolerate in with it), but he has to have it in a pita. He also sometimes gets interested in beans that I might be eating. I guess this morning he saw the leftover falafel in the refrigerator and just had to have some. My favorite is the time when we were all eating together, and my wife was having egg rolls. Ian had a pita with an egg roll and falafel, covered in sour cream.

Maybe he'll be the one to bridge our differences. We can't agree on Asian cuisine any more than we can agree on religion. She likes Chinese, which I can hardly stand; I like Indian and Mediterranean, which she avoids. If falafel and eggrolls can co-exist in one pita, maybe there's hope . . .

salvation

It's become more and more evident to me that I need some kind of response prepared for Evangelicals who ask about Orthodoxy and salvation. This issue in some respects tends to be a higher priority for Evangelicals than for Orthodox themselves. As evidence, consider the results when you google eastern orthodox salvation--almost everything that comes up (in the first seven pages or so, which is as far as I got) is either general interest (ask.com, about.com, wikipedia, etc.) or some kind of Evangelical polemic (something written by Evangelicals for Evangelicals about Orthodoxy, mostly to point out what's wrong with it). These results contrast with several other topical searches that I've done online over the past couple of years--normally, if it's an issue that Orthodox writers address, you'll find it on an Orthodox site without too much searching.

The reason for this outcome, I submit, is not that Orthodox adherents are unconcerned with salvation per se; rather, their approach to salvation is different in several respects that affect the way they talk about it. A question like, "Are you saved?" makes sense in an Evangelical context (although those who are sensitive about evangelism would advise against using it, since it's not terribly meaningful to outsiders--presumably the target audience of the question). It makes a good deal less sense in an Orthodox setting, as I hope to explain. This is partly a matter of convention--different groups use different terminology, sometimes to refer to the same things. It goes beyond that, though. In this case, as is so often true of convention, terminology is driven largely by the underlying ideas that need to be expressed in the group. A question like, "Are you saved?" never really needs to be answered--for that matter, cannot be answered--in Orthodox circles; therefore, a convention never developed for asking it.

You see, Orthodoxy takes the long view of salvation. Salvation is something we experience in process now and ultimately in the future. Salvation in Orthodoxy does not stop with a declaration of someone's status or an abstract spiritual turning point. From an Orthodox perspective, the wisdom in avoiding terms like "saved" when speaking to those outside the fold is found precisely in the fact that their meanings are non-intuitive as used by Evangelicals. They carry a great deal of symbolic meaning for Evangelicals themselves, but for anyone else, they don't seem to mean much of anything, or at least don't mean what one might naturally think they would mean. "Are you saved?" for instance, is a question almost exclusive to (Evangelical) religious discussion. In normal life, one might say, "Were you saved?" referring to deliverance that occurred at a specific time in relation to a specific threat; but "saved" does not describe a definable state for most people (aside from something like a "saved seat," but that is not talking about a person).

In this case, Orthodoxy would agree with standard intuition--salvation is something that goes on in process while a threat persists and is completed only when the threat in question is gone or has been effectively overcome. In terms of the Christian life, we are being saved out of our fallen condition and the dangerous consequences that lie ahead, and at the final judgment those who belong to Christ will be saved from eternal punishment. But going beyond this quibble over language, the differences get even more significant. Because Orthodoxy does not tend to focus on the act or process of salvation as defining in itself, you're not as likely to hear or see it discussed. Instead, they talk about things like theosis--the process of being conformed to the image of God--or sainthood, which is the end-goal of the process.

Another critical difference is the role of the Church. Whereas in Evangelicalism, the Church is understood to be the collection of all saved individuals, in Orthodoxy, the Church is the ark of salvation, where we are all saved together. This is not to say that personal faith is unimportant; rather, it is a different way of understanding what "personal" means. In Western terminology, "personal" and "individual" tend to be interchangeable on a certain level, and particularly when used to describe faith. In Orthodoxy, "personal" is understood in Trinitarian terms. For us to be persons is meaningful as an aspect of our creation in God's image. The nature of God defines personhood for us. The three persons of the Trinity are always understood in their relationship to each other, and likewise we are persons as we relate to others. There is still an element of the individual here, because for two persons to be in relationship there has to be some differentiation between them. So each person is marked off as distinct from every other, but this is only in the context of a relationship. Individuality, on the other hand, looks at the defined entity in isolation. An individual can be in relationship, but they are unassociated factors. In fact, to put an individual into relationship involves making that individual into a person.

So, in Orthodoxy, personal faith and personal salvation have to do with community. Yes, I believe, but I believe as part of a believing community, and my faith is defined by the faith of the community. Yes, I am being saved, but I am being saved as part of a community of salvation. There is no need to choose between individual and collective salvation, individual and collective faith. They are integrally linked, and their sequence is not fixed. In Orthodoxy, you might have one person who is baptized as an infant in the faith of the Church and later embraces that faith as an individual, while another person embraces the faith first and is baptized into the Church later. Salvation in Orthodoxy is truly synergistic--with both divine and human elements in the process--and things that happen outside of God's own nature do not happen all at once. Evangelicals like to pick apart the material and spiritual components of sacraments and ask whether regeneration precedes or follows the ritual of water baptism, for instance. Orthodox simply accept that it all goes together--that we experience it as separate elements in time, but in the divine mystery it is one act.

Inevitably, discussion with Evangelicals about Orthodoxy will come to issues considered critical to the Evangelical concept of salvation. How do you know whether someone is going to heaven or hell? How can you be sure of your salvation? Is it possible to lose your salvation? And wrapped up in this line of questioning is usually the further inquiry, what is the fate of non-Orthodox Christians? I don't claim to have great answers for any of them, but I'll offer what I can:

How do you know whether someone is going to heaven or hell? Simply put, you don't. There are some exceptions, of course, but in general, Orthodox are not encouraged to judge the eternal fate of anyone. Recognized saints are known to go to heaven, but many saints of the Church are unknown. Also, there is a distinction to be made between what one can know about one's own situation and what can be known about others. I'll come back to one's own situation when we get to some of the other key questions. Where others are concerned, we generally don't know. We might have a pretty good idea, but we don't know for sure. We are all engaged in a process of growing and striving (or at least we should be), and continuing the journey is the most important thing. God will take care of getting us there in his own way and time.

How can you be sure of your salvation? In one sense, you can't. This will relate directly to the next question, but the point here is humility. We always recognize our sinfulness before God. We always look for ways that we still need to grow. The struggle in this life never stops. This is not as bad as it might sound. Martin Luther agonized over never knowing if he'd thought to confess everything or if he'd adequately paid for his offenses. In this respect, Protestantism started from a legalistic system in Catholicism and didn't substantially change the legalistic framework. They preserved the primary image of God as judge--they simply found a way to separate our specific sins as believers from the implications of negative judgment. Orthodoxy accepts the idea of God as judge and the forensic metaphors used in Scripture, but its fundamental understanding of salvation has to do more with relationship and spiritual health. Yes, our sins against God damage our relationship. Yes, they hurt us spiritually. But the answer to spiritual injury is healing, and the answer to a broken relationship is reconciliation. God is our loving father, who waits and watches for his prodigals to return home. He's not looking for us to mess up, so he can strike us dead and then sentence us to hell because we didn't have time to repent.

Is it possible to lose your salvation? Well, again, we have to begin from the idea that salvation is something you don't really have in this life anyway. Is it possible to stall the process and walk away? God has given us freedom as humans, and Scripture contains severe warnings for apostasy. He respects our choice, if we decide to turn back. More to the point, there is a sense in which God's action is the same regardless of how we end up. There is a common notion in Orthodoxy that the same divine glory is experienced in one of two ways. If we arrive in a sound relationship with God, we come into the light of his glory as something for which we were already created. If we arrive in a state of enmity with God, his glory burns us as the fires of hell. So God has done everything for us that is necessary to make relationship possible. The rest is our choice.

What is the fate of non-Orthodox Christians? This is a question I have asked myself on various occasions from various Orthodox individuals, including more than one priest. It is also a question I have heard from several Evangelical friends. The standard Orthodox answer is agnostic. God's grace works both inside and outside the Church, and we cannot judge the fate of any individual. We certainly don't limit God's grace from working in unexpected ways. There are Orthodox who will say definitively that non-Orthodox Christians are as lost as anyone else outside the Church. They will appeal to unequivocal statements like, "There is no salvation outside the Church." This kind of statement is truly part of Orthodox tradition, but for most Orthodox, it doesn't seem to be the end of the story. As one concrete example, there are Orthodox churches where memorial services for the dead can be performed for non-Orthodox Christians. If they were known to be in hell, or if their status were equated with that of any non-believer, there would be no point offering such a service, and certainly no point in making a distinction between them and non-believers.

Saying that there is no salvation outside the Church may be taken in dfferent ways. Perhaps it was appropriate to a certain time and set of circumstances, but now that millions of people spend their lives ignorant of Orthodoxy yet striving to follow Christ, it is not quite so directly applicable. Perhaps it means we don't know of any salvation outside the Church. Perhaps there is some sense in which those who are outside the Church but who love Christ are striving to get in, if they could only find the way, and God honors this desire. I don't have a fully satisfying answer, even for myself. But even if it is written off as a contradiction, the contradiction must still be allowed to stand on its own two feet. Maybe it doesn't make any sense, but the widespread belief among Orthodox that God is somehow working with those outside the Church has to be acknowledged.

There is more that could be said, but I suppose this has gone on long enough. I welcome suggestions, questions, comments, etc.

reconciling faith and politics

I'm trying to maintain a general policy of avoiding politics as such on this blog. What does seem more appropriate, however, is to air out my personal struggles over how my own political views need to conform better with my faith. Unfortunately, I have not run across much in the way of Orthodox writing on this subject, particularly that would speak to Western circumstances today. At this point, therefore, I have a lot of questions, but not too many answers. I'm not sure I can put all of this into a coherent form, but I'm going to try to get it all down anyway.

Things used to be much simpler for me. Back in high school, I started listening to Rush Limbaugh, and I accepted pretty readily that the views he articulated on his program went hand-in-glove with Evangelical Christianity. Once I got into college, I started to lose interest in politics, along with just about everything else that had to do with the outside world. That didn't change much throughout seminary either. Toward the end of seminary, as I started exploring other hermeneutical approaches, I came in contact with the ideological criticism of literary theory from about a generation ago (which of course means it's more current in biblical studies, since there's always a lag). This was my first real introduction to radical political views, and I found myself drawn to some of the ideas. Later, I got interested in poverty from an ethical and religious perspective, which also contributed to my left-leaning outlook. Along with that, I was by this point searching for a different faith, and for at least a while my political and faith journeys ran together.

Our Evangelical church decided to organize a discussion of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and since I was interested in Judaism at the time, I offered to work on the anti-semitism question. (Interesting timing that I should bring this up now--I didn't notice the connection until a moment ago, as I was writing the words.) The best Jewish critique of the film that I encountered was written by an American Sephardic Jew who also happened to be a liberal (in the American political spectrum) and critical of Zionism in Israel. Looking for more information about his views led me to an Israeli writer who was an anti-Zionist activist and Stalinist in his politics. I spent a lot of time reading his work and associated materials from an online discussion list. What he advocated was an interesting blend (from the American perspective at least) of far-right, paleoconservative nationalism and far-left, radical socialism. It was at this point that I realized the left-right dichotomy in American politics is not the only paradigm with which to categorize positions. (More to the point, I came to believe that it was a false dichotomy that served those in power.) I started to see things more in terms of class struggle, where the marginalized right and left fringes really need to come together in opposition to the so-called moderate middle.

Along the way, I went looking for a form of Evangelicalism that would fit better with what I was thinking. I discovered the Evangelical left--groups like Sojourners, led by Jim Wallis, and Evangelicals for Social Action, led by Ron Sider. I read a lot of their stuff, which is more mainstream American liberal on economic and foreign policy issues but tries to incorporate more conservative views on issues of personal morality like abortion. Their views never posed much of a problem for me when it came to biblical mandates, but I also never thought their approach went far enough. As an example of where I would differ, I have never participated in an anti-war demonstration, because I suspect that those who do would not want someone like me on their side. You see, I would not be there because I was a pacifist or even simply because I thought America should stay out of other countries' business. I would be there because I actively supported the insurgencies that fought against American occupation.

I've never felt an overwhelming inclination to take up arms against my own government, but philosophically I think it's an important idea. I see in the second amendment an attempt to preserve this option--not that government is ever obligated to lie down and let rebels walk all over it, but that people should have the means available to stage another revolution, if such a thing became necessary. I don't think I would join a militia myself, but on at least one level I support what they're about. Not only is this sort of outlook something that would probably not sit well in a peace demonstration; it's probably not acceptable to most American Christians, and for good reason, it would seem, in light of Romans 13. I'll come back to that in a bit.

As I started to get interested in Orthodoxy (which happened not long after my interest in Zionism), I explored other political views--essentially Russian nationalist and czarist views in opposition to Western dominance of the so-called New World Order. I've come to have a lot of historical respect for the political system under czarist Russia (what I know if it anyway), and I tend to sympathize with the nationalism of Russia today under Putin, particularly as it displays a renewed partnership between Church and state. It also appeals to me, because Russia is one of the few nations in the world today that is able to resist American dominance. I imagine that if I lived in Russia, I could easily support my nation and be content that I was fulfilling my Christian obligations (assuming that I wouldn't transfer my rebellious feelings to the nation I lived in). But living in America, I have no respect for what my government is doing around the world, and I find it difficult not to sympathize with our enemies.

So with all that as background, we come to my present dilemma. I've been trying to follow the lectionary in my personal devotions, and yesterday's epistle reading was from Romans 13. Yikes! As a mainstream liberal, this passage would pose no real problem for me, since I would affirm the value of government as a protector against corporate power and associated evils. I might question some of our foreign policy, but I would not support our enemies. But given my present outlook, there's a lot here to think about:

• Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. I don't break laws myself, but I would sympathize with a movement to rebel against oppressive government, including if that oppressive government happens to be or be controlled by my own.
• For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. What does this even mean in a democracy? We have no divine right of kings. Does this mean that we are allowed to oppose political candidates all we want, but as soon as they're elected, we should roll over and submit? What if the election was illegal? What about our laws of impeachment?
• For rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Surely Paul knew that government could terrorize those who did good as well. Generally speaking, this passage is understood with at least one big exception--that government does not have to be obeyed when it's a directly opposed alternative to following God. But how far does the exception go? If in fact a ruler does terrorize those who do good, what then? Our founding fathers' answer was, the citizens should be able to take up arms against their government in such cases. But is this a Christian idea?

I could go on. St. John Chrysostom, in commenting on this passage, calls subjection for conscience's sake the flip side of submission due to fear. Since government is there to restrain evil, we should support its endeavors in that area. But what if government seems also to promote evil? What if the institutions that are supposed to protect us from foreign invasion are invading other countries without just cause and actually making us more susceptible to attack by increasing our enemies? What if our government is actually sacrificing the good of its people to the interests of corporate lobbies or foreign allies? What if our government's supposed advocacy for religious freedom includes compelling Orthodox nations to move toward Western-style separation of Church and state on the one hand, and looking the other way when dictatorial allies allow or support persection of Christians on the other?

Perhaps Paul's point is simply this--we're going to get enough grief from government over our faith; let's not make things any worse by violating the law or acting seditiously when we don't have to. Whatever its methods, whatever its abuses, we can at least respect that government is interested in preserving some degree of order and peace. If it fails in this, those who govern will soon find themselves without jobs, either because they are overwhelmed by their enemies or because they are overthrown or worse by angry mobs. Then again, if Christians are commanded not to rebel, then theoretically a government whose citizens are Christians could do anything it wanted without fear of reprisal, at least from within (assuming everyone acted like a Christian is supposed to act).

But what about prophetic confrontation? Clearly, there were prophets in the Old Testament who were sent to speak against the immoral actions of kings and people. So does the choice between government and Christ include speaking out against immoral actions of governments? To what degree is it permissible? These prophets were imprisoned and put to death for their messages, so apparently they were breaking the law to obey God in this matter. Does this allow for civil disobedience? What about use of violent force? The judges of Israel led various types of armed uprisings. There were also prophetically sanctioned assassinations and coups. Granted, they also encouraged submission at times, as when Jeremiah preached about the invasion of Judah by Babylon. How do these different elements fit together?

In Orthodox history, there have been many different conditions under which Christians have lived. There were the early persecutions under Rome, the Christianization of the empire, the periods when rulers supported various heresies, the dominance in some Orthodox areas of foreign invaders--Persians, Arabs, Turks, Tatars, Latins--and the rise of Communism. Was it right for the White Russians to fight the Reds? Was it right for Greece or Serbia to fight for independence from Ottoman rule? What about the civil wars in Yugoslavia? And today, when so many Orthodox live in regions that were never historically Orthodox, where should their allegiance lie? If the U. S. went to war with Russia, what should be the reaction of Orthodox Americans? What about when the U. S. or its allies carry out operations in the Middle East that lead to death or greater oppression for Orthodox Christians in that part of the world (even if our primary enemies are Muslims)?

Like I said, I don't have many answers. Interestingly, in the few hours since I started writing this, Fr. Andrew has posted a short piece on his site about the war in Lebanon that has some relevance:

How can Orthodox living in the West and citizens of Western countries remain silent in the face of the present outrages?

Orthodox have had to answer such questions in all ages, from the Roman Empire to the American Empire. Their answers are inevitably shaped by the belief that our Faith is more important than loyalty to any earthly State, for eternity is more important than time and space. Orthodox will always put their Faith above their temporal nationality and natural feelings of patriotism. As the West has for nearly a thousand years ideologically opposed the Gospel, incorporating secularism into its very ideology. Orthodox who are devoted to the Truth of Christ are inevitably ambivalent towards the West. We can never integrate the worldliness of the West. We may, and indeed should, love our countries, the USA, England, France or any other, but this is in spite of the actions of particular Western governments, let alone minority regimes, like that of Mr Blair.

For conscious Orthodox, Orthodoxy is in itself a nationality, the ‘nationality’ of Christ, which is above all nationalities and governments. As bombs fall on Orthodox in the Lebanon, we Orthodox feel solidarity with all other Orthodox. As bombs rain down on Roman Catholics and Muslims and rockets fall on Jews, we Orthodox also feel solidarity with all suffering mankind, which is abused and deceived by powerbrokers and their machines of war. All men are created in the image and likeness of God, whatever the religious label, Muslim, Jew, Roman Catholic or any other, which manmade misinterpretation of revelation, conditioned by race, history and politics, have attached to them.

I like what he says here. I wish I could flesh it out with more specifics.

not quite confession, but . . .

I wrote a month and a half ago about my desire for a human confessor. I realized, of course, that as a sacramental non-Orthodox I could not participate in confession sacramentally. (It all goes together in a sort of package. Until you're legitimately baptized, none of the other sacraments apply either.) Still, there's something of a paradox here. Although I'm excluded from the formal sacraments of the Church, I live in a sacramental world. Whether inside or outside the Church, the Spirit of God works through our material experiences to infuse our lives with grace. There is a sacramental logic, if you will, that has little or nothing to do with the formalities of Church membership. (Church membership fits integrally into this logic--my point, though, is that the logic still operates while someone like me muddles his way toward communion. For that matter, the logic operates in the lives of Western Christians and even non-Christians of all sorts--even those who don't recognize sacraments as reality.) So sacramental confession, no; but there is still a meaningful dimension to confession given before another human that goes beyond the experience of private confession to God alone.

The Evangelical shadow of sacramental confession is a simple accountability relationship between two individuals or a small group, who mutually choose to open up to each other about their struggles with sin. Often, this type of thing happens without any particular chain of authority. They are brothers or sisters in Christ who take responsibility for each other. I think this kind of arrangement feels more comfortable to Evangelicals, who tend to suffer from a mild paranoia about human authority. Unfortunately, it also tends to diminish the weight of spiritual guidance that could take place in the exchange.

I'm happy to report that Fr. Gregory was willing to hear my confession and offer guidance. We had our first such session last night. Again, it was not an Orthodox sacramental confession. Aside from the advice he gave throughout, we simply ended with a few repetitions of the Jesus prayer, and he invoked the prayers of the saints on my behalf. But it was still a very valuable experience that I hope to repeat in the future. Not only was it a relief to open up to someone about my sins and to get advice about how to overcome them in the future, but even the couple of weeks leading up to our meeting provided an opportunity not only for reflection but for more active resistance to sin, since I knew that I was going to have to talk about it.

I also had the opportunity to stay for the Paraklesis afterward, which I enjoyed. It would be nice if I could go every day during the fast, but at least it was a taste. God willing, I'll be back for the Dormition liturgy in a little over a week.