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.

Orthodoxy and Islam

I'm sort of conflicted over how to feel about Islam. On one hand, I recognize the difficulties faced by Christians living in majority-Muslim or Islamic cultures. (As I'm using the terms, I try to dstinguish between Muslim and Islamic. A Muslim friend of mine once explained that there is a distinction. If I understand correctly, "Islamic" would refer to a government like that found in Iran, where the intent is to govern by Islamic law, while "Muslim" could refer to any nation that happens to have a majority population of Muslims, regardless of the style of government.) On the other hand, I also sympathize with the struggle of Muslim civilizations against Western imperialism. This is not to say that I have some burning desire to live under an Islamic regime. I just find Western interference in the affairs of other nations distasteful, and I respect Islam as one of a few organized forces that is able to combat it (to some degree).

When I look at Orthodoxy, I see a fairly wide range of viewpoints. On one hand, I was just introduced to the writings of Serge Trifkovic, who although reportedly Serbian Orthodox, seems to fit in very well with American Conservatism. He argues that Islam is inherently radical, inherently inclined to dominate, and can never be anything else. In what I've read by him, he seems to say nothing of Orthodoxy one way or the other, and he seems a good deal more defensive of Western Christendom than I would have expected. What happened to, "better the Turkish turban than the papal mitre?" (I'm not sure I've got the quote correctly, but it was a common sentiment among late Byzantines--that the Turks might be bad, but they were better than Western Christians.) Yes, the Serbians and other Baltic Christians suffered under Islam, but can anyone deny, especially now, that they suffered as well under Western domination? He also seems to omit from the picture what Muslims have experienced at the hands of Westerners, as if that is irrelevant to the acts of Islamist terrorists today.

On the other hand, you have the Moscow Patriarchate, which seems to work closely with Muslim leaders in Russia and to support Russia's greater cooperation with states like Iran than we typically find in the West. Although Russia allows freedom of religion, the paradigm is different from what we tend to expect in America. Orthodoxy is the dominant religion, while other traditional religions are allowed their place. There are Muslim countries as well that take a similar approach (in reverse, of course), to varying degrees. Indeed, Russia has a long history of coexistence between Christians and Muslims, not necessarily always peaceful, but they seem to have learned some important lessons that the West has not.

Perhaps a better comparison, though, as the opposite pole from Trifkovic, is Israel Adam Shamir, a Russian-Israeli Jew who converted to Orthodoxy. His writings are quite affirmative of Islam, which he views as a Christian heresy. (This is his view, I should stress, but it agrees substantially with the early Christian polemic against Islam, which I have also been reading recently.) Interestingly, there are some points on which Shamir and Trifkovic would probably agree, since they both seem to favor strong nationalism, and Shamir has sympathized with American paleo-conservatives on several points. But Shamir's main concern is to oppose the New World Order, and that includes championing those who resist Western influence, particularly if they do so on the basis of religious values rather than secular.

Something else I've been reading lately is a collection of lives of New Martyrs under Ottoman rule. The portrayal of Islam is clearly negative--a materialistic religion that alternates flattery with torture to force Christians to convert, that nominally respects personal choice in religion but takes every opportunity to force a decision, whether by offering Christians convicted of various crimes a choice between conversion and death for their offenses, or by accepting even the most spurious testimony to the effect that a Christian has chosen to convert. (In most of the lives, the choice of Islam or death is set up on the premise that the martyr is a Muslim seeking to apostasize. In some cases, this is truly the case; more often, their status as Muslim is ill-founded.) Of course, one could infer that these martyrs were the exceptional cases--that more often Christians were allowed to maintain their faith without violent consequences. Or perhaps it was more often the case that Christians in fact did convert to Islam, even if it was only to attain a better social standing, and these lives were intended at least in part to show that repentance was possible and desirable. It's hard to say, though from the contents of the lives themselves--they comment on these particular martyrs, not on the fates of others.

And then, of course, there is the present situation in Palestine (broadly speaking, to include the territory between the Med and the Jordan and parts north and south). Here, the Christians have dwindled to a small minority, and their lot often falls with that of their Muslim neighbors. I read of one Orthodox Christian who ran for office under the party of Hamas, because it was the least corrupt option. More recently, I read that in the wake of the Israeli strikes against Lebanon, approval of Hizbullah is around 80% among Christians and Sunnis, as well as Shiites. Is this because they want to live under Islamic rule, or is it just because the greater oppressor seems to be Israel, and these Islamist groups are the only ones able to stand up against it?

I'm not sure what to do with all of this, but it certainly is an interesting mix.

"William & Maggie"

Although I don't generally think much of his singing ability or musical style, one of the better writers in contemporary Evangelical music is Charlie Peacock. About his only CD that I could really say I like to listen to (and when you listen to the interview at the end, you find out that he intended it to be different from his other stuff) is Everything That's on My Mind (1994). My favorite song on the CD--perhaps of any song he's written--is "William & Maggie." I've liked it for as long as I can remember, and perhaps now more than ever. Here's a lame attempt to render a song with its lyrics only:

William, to whom the world was given,
Dared not disturb the sleep of friends.
But one time in the night,
He turned to his wife,
And he whispered, "Remember
When I was young, and you were Maggie?

"'Cause I been thinking about
You and me and everybody in between.
It seems we've suffered one too many dreams
Of things that weren't so bad; it's just,
They were never things that we could trust.
Are we still pretending they're enough?"

Maggie, by whom all hearts were measured,
Kissed William softly on the cheek and said,
"Oh, it always amazed me
How someone could come
To the edge of the world,
Drop a stone down the side,
And turn and return
To the very same life. I remember
When I was young, and you were William.

"'Cause I been thinking about
You and me and everybody in between.
It seems we've suffered one too many dreams
Of things that weren't so bad; it's just,
They were never things that we could trust.
We must stop pretending they're enough."

"But what of the interval moment,
When you feel nothing,
And I feel nothing?
Maggie, I'm trembling in this interval moment,
When you feel nothing,
And I feel nothing."

Maggie, by whom all hearts were measured,
Kissed William softly on the cheek and said,
"Sometimes William,
William sometimes,
You've got to open up the windows
And let the wind blow through.

"You've got to let it blow through
You and me and everybody in between.
It seems we've suffered one too many dreams
Of things that weren't so bad; it's just,
They were never things that we could trust.
We will release them as they turn to dust."

I realize it's probably meant to be about the Christian life in general and how we sometimes lose our enthusiasm and our perspective on what a difference it should really make. But for me right now, it seems to sum up how I feel about Orthodoxy. I can't settle anymore for a form of Christianity that stops half-way, especially when I can no longer trust its method. I'm also finding it increasingly difficult to keep my mouth shut about this stuff with the people around me. I don't want to beat them over the head with it, but I want to speak out for what our Evangelical lives are missing.

Orthodox vegetarians?

One thing I have not had much opportunity to do in my investigation of Orthodoxy up to this point is acquire any real familiarity with the various "Orthodox cultures." What I know of Orthodoxy comes largely through the theological and spiritual writings that I have read and the experience of communal worship in which I have participated. I have had some limited personal interactions with different Orthodox individuals, but it seems like for the most part they have been American converts, and conversation has rarely addressed more cultural issues. The parishes I have frequented are mission parishes--relatively recent plants, attracting a mixture of individuals from different Orthodox cultural backgrounds and a large proportion of converts. (The two exceptions are one visit to a Ukrainian cathedral and one to a Russian cathedral. But in neither case did I even have a conversation wtih anyone, much less experience any significant culture.)

Perhaps if my situation were otherwise, I would not be so confused about food stereotypes that have come up in a couple of films I've seen. One is Everything is Illuminated, which is about a young Jewish man searching for information about his grandfather, but the search takes place in Ukraine. The other is My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which I'd seen a few times before, but I don't think I'd watched since I got interested in Orthodoxy. I happened to watch it last night, mostly because I wanted to go back and observe the Orthodox customs and practices that were referenced in it, now that I'm coming from a place of greater familiarity.

In both films, there is more or less the same joke, where a Westerner (Jewish in one, white-bread American in the other) explains that he is vegetarian to his hosts from a historically Orthodox culture (apparently secular Ukrainian in one, at least semi-religious Greek in the other). In both cases, the reaction of the hosts is complete befuddlement. They can't conceive of what it might even mean to be a vegetarian, much less why anyone would choose such a lifestyle.

I must say, this surprises me. I mean, I realize that not everyone who practices Orthodoxy, and certainly not everyone who lives in a historically Orthodox culture, actually observes the fasts to a significant degree. But it seems like there would at least be a general awareness of the practice of abstaining from meat (and indeed, animal products in general)--occasionally for devout believers of all sorts, perhaps regularly for some monastics. It seems like the joke is based on a stereotype of total ignorance, like abstaining from meat is a Western invention (or at least one that bypassed the Orthodox East). I don't even know where such a stereotype would come from in Western perception, much less in a film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which seems to have enough direct Greek(-American) influence to avoid the sort of mistake a Westerner might make.

It's a mystery to me.

another polkadots service

My three-year-old son heard us using the word "Orthodox" and found a match for it in his mental lexicon--"polkadots." So I guess now the "quiet church" is going to be the "polkadots church." I asked if he wanted to become "polkadots," and he answered, "No, I'm Ian." I guess that settles that question.

Anyway, we had a chance yesterday to visit the "quiet church" (vs. the "train church," since the Evangelical church we attend has a train table for the kids to play with when they're not in class; but that might get complicated, now that he knows he can sit on the hill next to the "quiet church" and watch the light-rail train go by). It's not, by the way, that the Orthodox church is any quieter than the Evangelical. (Perhaps it is--there are no drums, at least.) It's that he goes into the service with me at the Orthodox service, instead of his own kids' class, and he has to be quiet. My wife spent the day with some friends. The instigator was the youth pastor's wife from our Evangelical church, whose husband is with several of the teens on a short-term mission trip, and kids are with Grandma and Grandpa for a while. She decided to orchestrate a sleep-over Saturday night and some follow-up activities during the day on Sunday. Since my wife was going to church with her anyway, and Ian and I would be on our own, I took the rare opportunity to visit a Sunday DL. I think this was the first time Ian attended one from start to finish (if you don't count one potty break), plus about a half-hour of Orthros.

It was also a rare opportunity to hang around afterward without any time constraints except that we had to be home by 2:00 for nap time. Normally, I feel like I need to rush home after a service, so I can see my family. It worked out well, since Ian noticed the "craymound" (his word for "playground") out the window while we were eating. I figured after enduring such a long service, he deserved something in return, so I let him do his thing until he was the only kid left. He didn't mind even then. The hope of seeing another train go by was enough for him. But the other kids were great. The older kids pushed him on the swing and talked to him. He seemed to have a great time. He also got into a pointing war with a girl in front of us during the service, but at least they were quiet about it. I guess her parents weren't too upset. They invited us to sit with them at lunch, where I somehow got dragged into a discussion about Middle East politics. I'll have to try to apologize when I see them again. Fortunately, Ian's insistence about the "craymound" gave me a good excuse to exit the conversation. Once he got comfortable enough that I could give him more space, I had a good talk with another parishoner about various aspects of my situation.

Incidentally, I think this is probably the first time I've mentioned Ian by name. I don't personally view it as a new revelation, since "abuian" (see my username) means "Ian's dad," but I suppose not everyone would have picked up on that.

Apostles and Icons

I realized today that I never reported on my most recent visit to an Orthodox service, for the Apostles' vigil at a ROCOR parish. As I mentioned in "some random updates," I had arranged to attend the service with an Evangelical friend. We got there a few minutes before the service began, about the same time that Fr. Athanasy showed up with the myrrh-streaming icon of St. Anna. We all had a chance to venerate the icon at the beginning, and then again after the matins Gospel reading. As I expected anyway, my friend just watched and chose not to venerate. I was kind of surprised to see that there were other non-Orthodox visitors--folks who apparently had no interest in becoming Orthodox either, or for that matter in learning about Orthodoxy. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, after reading that even Muslims showed up to venerate John the Baptist's hand as it toured through Russia. I'm just wondering how they knew the icon would be there. I only knew because I checked the church Web site for information about the service and noticed that they were expecting it. I suppose word about this kind of thing gets around in certain circles.

The service was perhaps the most crowded that I've attended there. It's a very small parish that meets in some converted office space. The nave is practically non-existent or at least indistinguishable from the ambo. It's about one or two steps from the entrance to the central icon and maybe about the same distance from there to the iconostasis. The choir takes up most of the space on the right. I've tried standing to that side, sort of between the central icon and the reliquary. You always feel like you're in the way. The left side isn't much better. One or two people can stand there without too much trouble. You just have to dance with the clergy. Everyone has to clear out into the narthex (which is also the fellowship hall, kitchen, and library) for anything that happens in front of the central icon. If there are more than a few people there for a service, most people have to stand out there anyway. My friend and I stood in the nave, to the left, until the first such occasion. I wanted him to get a chance to see things up-close for at least part of the service. After that, we stayed out in the narthex for the rest of vespers and the first part of matins.

At the veneration, everyone who came up was anointed with myrrh from the icon and received some of the bread offering (I don't know what the technical name is for it) and a prayer card. It's the first time I can recall being anointed with anything other than holy water. I tried to leave it alone, but it kept running down onto my nose, and it was a fairly humid evening, so I was sweating anyway. We left shortly after the veneration and anointing. (I had asked the matushka in advance when a good time might be to make our exit, if we couldn't stay for the whole service, and that's what she had suggested.) We wanted some time afterward to talk about it, and I didn't figure there would be much of that if we stayed until the end. (3:45 is early enough to get up for work, without staying up past 11:00.) I would have liked to talk with Fr. George after the service, but I'm glad we had a chance for our own conversation. We stood in the parking lot for a few minutes chatting. Fr. George came out at one point and reminded us that church was inside. I did feel kind of bad that we left when we did. I'm sure that's when the other visitors left, once they'd got what they came for.

After that, we went to Wendy's and talked for a couple of hours. I appreciated the discussion. For the most part, my conversations with Evangelicals have followed a standard pattern--they don't know much of anything about Orthodoxy, they think it sounds like a fine option for those who are into that kind of thing, and although they might not agree with everything about Orthodoxy themselves, they don't care much to debate the issues. This case was a little bit different. I kind of thought it might be. My friend has a lot of experience discussing religious differences with Mormons and other cultists, so he's not afraid to challenge what doesn't sound right to him. It never got heated or anything, but he did ask pointed questions about the areas of prominent difference. We talked quite a bit about intercession of saints, for instance, and other concepts related to Mary (perpetual virginity, sinlessness, etc.); we talked about Tradition and Scripture, and my reasons for choosing Orthodoxy; we talked about more formal aspects of the service--some things he liked, some he didn't. He brought up an interesting tension--he noted the reverence and formality (compared with Evangelical traditions), but at the same time, it seemed like there was a lot of stuff going on during the service. Of course, there are a lot of elements combined into the liturgy itself, but his point was the somewhat more incidental stuff, from disruptions caused by kids, to elements of personal piety like venerating icons and lighting candles, to people doing things that didn't seem to be part of worship per se while participating in worship at the same time (talking to each other or to visitors, coming in late or leaving early, even the priest getting distracted with something and then jumping back in when it was time for him to do something). I explained to him about the practice of taking confessions during the service, which requires the priest to keep popping in and out. Later, I followed up with some thoughts in an e-mail:

One other thing I should mention from last night. Regarding the movement and apparent distraction from the solemnity of what was going on, to one degree this can get out of hand, and that is why there is a certain amount of regulation on when it is and isn't appropriate. Much of what goes on with people moving around, venerating icons, lighting candles, is all part of worship, and so there is no problem with it. Even the elements that seem like distraction, where the priest is doing something else and breaks it off to jump in with something he's supposed to say--in part, this reflects that the priest has a lot to do during the service, some of which involves just praying quietly on his own while other things are happening; it also reflects the practical mechanics of running a service. I'm sure you know that when you're actively involved in a service, your attention does sometimes have to be given to the tasks and processes that need to keep going. There's a sense in which the ideal of Orthodox worship is for everyone to be actively involved. When you're doing that for something that lasts hours, it's just part of human existence that you can't be 100% focused on worship 100% of the time. Things like greeting people who have come in late, explaining things to visitors, watching a child, going to the bathroom, and yes, sometimes sitting down to relieve aching joints, are just part of human existence that is not altogether excluded from worship. If we could really worship 24-7, we would probably figure out ways to cook and clean during the service, since they need to get done sometime. The important thing is to keep it all balanced, and with the right attitude. It's perfectly acceptable to be comfortable with what's going on because you've been doing it for so long, but you also have to combat distraction.

As for me, I'm still not sure what I think of the whole myrrh-streaming icon thing. I honestly didn't even get a chance to see whether the icon was doing anything while I was there. I never actually thought to check when I went up to venerate it. I did look at it, but I went quickly since I knew others were waiting. I wasn't particularly expecting it to do anything to me--heal me or anything like that. (I didn't have anything to be healed of, that I knew anyway.) So it was something I just kind of did and went on with life. I never really doubted that it does in fact stream myrrh, although I don't know exactly what the reason might be.

This was the first time I invited someone to visit that particular parish with me. Normally, I invite them to the Antiochian parish, but in this case it just worked out better--my friend works closer to this one, and it was a service that I happened to go to, and he happened to be available for. As I explained some of the features of the service to him, it occurred to me that I was noting several points where the Russian tradition wasn't my preference. I thought about this later. I have a great deal of respect for Russian Orthodoxy--for its role as the first coordinating structure of Orthodoxy in America, and for that matter its missionary outreach of which the American mission was just one part, for its resistance to some of the modernizing and Westernizing trends that seem to have been advocated by Constantinople, for its preservation of Orthodoxy in general during centuries when other Orthodox cultures were oppressed, for its resistance to the atheistic forces that tried to destroy it in the last century. But when it comes to the flavor of Orthodox worship, I think I really do favor the Byzantine style--the music, the design of the iconostasis, the observance of Orthros in the morning. There were probably other things--I seem to remember it coming up a lot. I guess one thing that I'd like to see come out of an effort to create some sort of American Orthodoxy is the seriousness of the Russian tradition combined with what feels to me like the somewhat more authentic flavor of the Byzantine traditions.

from bad to worse

Tensions in the Holy Land continue to climb, as Hizbullah has joined the fray by taking two of its own Israeli POWs and firing rockets across the border from Lebanon.

Since thou art a liberator and deliverer of captives, a help and succour of the poor and needy, a healing physician of the sick, a contender and fighter for kings, O great among Martyrs, the victory-clad George; intercede with Christ God for the salvation of the souls of Palestine!

Great-martyr George is the recognized patron saint of Palestine (along with several other countries). A good place to start on information about Orthodox Christianity in Palestine is this piece by Maria Khoury.

some random updates

Regarding my earlier post, "confess your faults to one another," I finally got to meet with the chair about my dissertation. The meeting went pretty well, and I'm finally getting back into making some real progress. We talked about ways to make the job a bit more manageable, and one unforeseen blessing, he thinks he can get back some of the money I spent last year on dissertation guidance that I never actually used. I had no idea that would even be an option.

Regarding "prayer and fasting," the Apostles' Fast ends today for Old Calendar churches with the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. I'm visiting the ROCOR parish tonight for Synaxis of the Apostles Vigil. A friend who has never been to an Orthodox service--one of the elders at our Evangelical church, actually--is supposed to be joining me. There's supposed to be a myrrh-streaming icon present, which is something I've never seen in real life. I'm not sure how to feel about it right now. I tend to be kind of skeptical about miraculous manifestations. I'm not saying I have any good reason to be--just stating the truth about myself. So I really don't know how I'll react to it. I don't know how my friend will react either, but it should make for some good conversation at least. I brought it up with my wife (who's not going) as something that's decidedly not intellectual. She's convinced that such things don't happen (not in Orthodoxy at least), so I guess it's not just being too intellectual that's a problem for her. (I didn't figure she'd go for it, but I did think it would be interesting to get the contrast.) On a side-note, another less intellectual resource that I've recommended to her, which I just discovered a few days ago, is Road to Emmaus, an Orthodox publication that focuses on personal experiences of believers around the world. They have a selection of articles online, including some family- and missions-oriented interviews that I thought she might like. I don't know if she's read any of them yet.

Regarding "leading toward unity," the Joint Commissions of ROCOR and the MP met a couple of weeks ago in Moscow. As a follow-up, ROCOR has just published on its site an epistle from Bishop Evtikhii to his jurisdiction (ROCOR churches inside Russia) about the reunification. I've been wondering about the logistics involved, particularly for ROCOR parishes inside Russia and MP parishes abroad. (Otherwise, it should be a relatively simple process--ROCOR will care for Russian Orthodox outside Russia, and those inside Russia will keep doing what they've been doing.) This is the first time I can recall seeing anything in the way of an actual (if approximate) timetable. They expect to finalize the act of communion in a year or less (Lord, speed the day!), and from that point there will be about a five-year transition period for the ROCOR parishes inside Russia to place themselves under their local dioceses. It doesn't say anything about what will happen outside Russia. A similar process? Who knows. It may be a more delicate situation since, as we've seen recently with Sourozh, they have options to abandon Russia altogether.

Ilan Halevi on Russian Orthodox in Israel

I ran across an interesting quote by Ilan Halevi:

One of the most pathetic and tragic things about this country are the Christian Orthodox Russians in Israel on false pretenses. Not only do they squat in hangars and sheds to have masses in secret, they occupy abandoned Palestinian Christian Orthodox graveyards - burying their dead in existing graves and writing Russian on the tombstones.

Colonization of the dead by the dead. This is a marginal but revealing feature of this totally mad situation.

This ties in with an article I saw not long ago in Haaretz, about the strange situation of the Russian Orthodox in Israel. I remember being struck by the irony that, as the Israelis import Russians (even many who are non-Jewish) to offset the Arab population, they are actually augmenting the Orthodox Christian population of the region. Russians who might have been at best nominally Christian before they emigrated suddenly identify more actively with Orthodoxy as a familiar cultural anchor in their new homeland. Considering how difficult it can be for Christians to preach the gospel in Israel, what better way to help the Church grow? And how long before this process leads to a significant Orthodox community that spans both sides of the Israel-Palestine divide, with affinities between those of Russian and Arab background?

another visit, another reason to be frustrated

Well, my wife finally made it with me to another Orthodox service. As I mentioned earlier, I had asked her if she would visit at least once without our son, so she could focus on the service itself. He's a pretty good kid, and he's generally quite well behaved when I take him by myself, but when she's there, he gets really clingy and fidgety. I know she would have to deal with him if we were to go to an Orthodox church regularly, but I still wanted her to have at least one chance to make an independent assessment of the service itself. Besides, considering his sleep schedule, there would probably be times when we'd have to trade off going alone while the other one stayed with him. Anyway, we had a little trouble coordinating someone to watch him for the morning with the parish schedule to make sure Fr. Gregory would be there, but we finally pulled it off yesterday.

Once again, her assessment was generally negative. She still does not find herself attracted to much of anything about Orthodoxy, while she does find herself repulsed by certain things. She appreciated the lunch afterward--believers eating together has been a theme in our Evangelical church lately, and I think she liked the idea of incorporating a communal meal into the regular weekly routine. I told her--and I'm pretty sure this is correct--that it's a fairly standard practice in Orthodox parishes, at least in part because you're supposed to fast before taking communion, so if most people take communion, that means most people have not eaten for something like 18 hours.

As far as specific objections, she doesn't like the ritual, she thinks far too much attention is given to Mary in the liturgy, and she thinks that in general it's far too intellectual. She also doesn't see how an unchurched person could feel comfortable in an Orthodox service, which for her has evangelistic implications. I wasn't going to reply to these objections, but after we sat there for a while not saying anything, she asked if I wanted to say anything. I explained first that I don't think I'm the person to be responding to this stuff. So far, nothing has worked, and I think at least a significant part of the reason is because we think about things in such different ways--not just about Orthodox, but about everything. Nevertheless, I tried to respond in some fashion.

Admittedly, yesterday's service (the parish we were at is on the new calendar) was a somewhat exaggerated case, as far as the Theotokos is concerned. The main commemoration of the day was the deposit of her robe in Constantinople, so even where you would normally get something about other saints, it was all the Theotokos. I'm still growing in my own acceptance of her place in Orthodoxy. I think for anyone who's grown up in Evangelicalism it's probably a long process to get comfortable with her. The general problem is with the place of saints in general, of whom the Theotokos is simply captain and chief and gets more attention than any other. This is complicated by an almost mirror reaction of Protestantism--the saints in general are downplayed, but particular revulsion is reserved for the cult of Mary that they know from Catholicism. Now, putting aside the differences between Catholic veneration of Mary and Orthodox, there's still a lot to get over. I tried to explain Mary's role among the saints and how it is also the case that, as all saints are honored for their connnection to Christ, she is honored above the others for her unique connection to Christ. Everything that makes her worthy of honor is directly connected with her son.

I also tried to explain that her role in relation to Christ has made her not only a great saint but an emblem of the Church. She was the first human indwelt by Christ, she was the first to receive in faith the gospel of his coming, she was the first to respond in such a way that she became instrumental in the manifestation of Christ in the world and thereby contributed to the salvation of all who would believe in him. Her life parallels that of the Church, and just as she is tied by flesh and blood to his personal body, she is tied by faith and spirit to his body the Church. Also, since the saints collectively represent the Church, the Theotokos as their champion represents the Church in herself. And as the Church is Christ's body, and she is his mother, she is also our mother.

I explained that veneration of the Theotokos only appears to detract from worship of Christ, because Evangelicals don't generally make room for human cooperation in salvation. Not that human agency is unimportant in Evangelicalism. Clearly, someone must preach the gospel for a person to hear it and believe. Someone must help a new believer grow in understanding. Someone must preach to the congregation each week. In the church we attend, these relationships are even formalized. Typically, instead of the pastor baptizing a new believer, the pastor oversees the process, but the baptism is physically performed by a person who was instrumental in that new believer's spiritual growth. We establish formal discipleship relationships by pairing newcomers with someone else who is more experienced. But when it comes to understanding salvation theologically, or articulating it liturgically, we shy away from any suggestion of a human element. In Orthodoxy, on the other hand, veneration of saints is completely proper, because we recognize that God most often works through other humans. The saints are honored for the way that God used them, for the way that they became vessels of his will and action in the world. To honor them is therefore to honor him and to worship him in the diversity of his action in the Church.

As far as unchurched people feeling uncomfortable, I reminded her that worship isn't necessarily about feeling comfortable. I'm not sure she got the point. She seemed to think I was talking about the ascetic aspects of Orthodoxy in particular, but my point was simply that worship is what it is, and there's really not much about it that's meant to be comfortable for us. In fact, one could argue that worship, and religion in general, is meaningless if it doesn't make us uncomfortable. I think the idea of visitors to Orthodox services is that a person who is looking for something different, something a bit foreign, something truly uncomfortable, will come and will want what they find. A person who wants to be comfortable probably isn't ready to meet Christ anyway. One thing that helped is that at the meal after the service we happened to sit with a couple who had recently converted. I saw that the wife was wearing a white robe with a cross on the back and suspected that it had something to do with baptism, but since I had never seen anyone wearing one before, I asked what it meant. She explained that they had recently converted--she had been baptized, and her husband had been chrismated. So when we were talking about this issue of unchurched people visiting an Orthodox service, I could point out that in a church like that one, no one would ever be baptized if only people who were already Christians of one sort or another came to visit and decided to stay. I can't comment much personally on what it's like for an unchurched person to visit an Orthodox service, but clearly they do, and we had living proof of that.

What probably intrigued me most was her comment about it being too intellectual. Now, I know where she's coming from. Personally, I think Orthodoxy has the perfect blend. As I see it, Evangelicalism is mostly about the intellect--reading the Bible, praying with eyes closed and head bowed, hearing a sermon preached, even singing--all these things are done mostly with the mind and only minimally with the body. Charismatic churches probably do a better job of incorporating the body, but I don't think she would want to go to one of those, either, so I'm leaving that aside. Orthodoxy incorporates posture, motion, sight, taste, touch, and smell. It does a better job of expressing its faith through things like feasts, which everyone can relate to on some level. On the other hand, Orthodoxy does have a great deal of intellectual depth behind it. But here's an interesting juxtaposition--she called it too intellectual, but she also commented on how short the sermon was. To my mind, these are almost contradictory ideas. I would say that Evangelicalism favors the intellect too much when half the service is the sermon.

I hadn't had time to process it when we talked yesterday, but what I think is going on is that the liturgy itself--the songs and prayers--contains greater theological depth than what she is used to in Evangelical worship. Now, part of it is that there are a lot of unfamiliar concepts, but even aside from that, there is just a lot more theology. Not that Orthodox liturgy has theology, while Evangelical liturgy doesn't. They both have it. Clearly, without it, you could hardly call what's going on any form of Christian worship. But Evangelicalism simply can't stomach the kind of theological depth that is found in Orthodoxy. Evangelicalism has its theologians and its books of systematic and biblical theology. But the integration of theology with worship is sadly deficient. This goes both ways. Not only does theology not come through to the extent that it should in worship, but worship has insufficient impact on theology. For most practical purposes, Evangelicalism has accepted the Western isolation of theology from the spiritual life. This is not to say that Evangelical theologians are unspiritual or even that Evangelical theology does not articulate an importance of spirituality for the theological enterprise. But there is still a serious disconnect in the realization of the principle. When you really get at how the theological process works, it is so mechanical that the Spirit has little to do with things.

Well, this is already longer than I intended. My point here is not to solve my wife's objections, but to express my feelings on the situation. On one hand, I'm not particularly surprised that she had the same reaction she has always had. On the other hand, I'm still disappointed that there wasn't some kind of change in her feelings. I suppose the only conclusion to be drawn is that she's not going to be attracted to Orthodoxy by the worship--not initially, anyway. This leads me to think that, if it's going to happen at all, it's probably going to come through the practical testimony of changed lives, particularly of mine. This feels like a huge burden, particularly since I'm not even sure how far I can go without really being part of the Church. Still, it does provide renewed incentive to grow in my own walk before God. Maybe it will turn her heart, and maybe it won't. But the effort cannot possibly be wasted.