The rougher, tougher side of C.S. Lewis

"CS Lewis in no way should be considered a soft, evangelical theologian, but a hard-edged thinker whose thought lends towards distributism, Orthodoxy, and monarchy." - From a great new post on C.S. Lewis at "I am the King's Man."

Exposure of infant girls in ancient Athens

When a baby was born in Attica (in the home, and sometimes with a midwife in attendance), the father decided whether to raise or expose it. He doubtless evaluated the newborn's health as well as the financial impact of raising another child. Most sons were raised, because male heirs were the normal means of perpetuating the lineage, and it was of great importance that families not die out. ... Parents placed less value on girls, who lacked earning power and whose children would belong to a different family. Though the eldest child was normally raised regardless of its sex, some historians have conjectured that as many as 20 percent of newborn Athenian girls were abandoned in places like the local garbage dump. Slave dealers collected a few of the exposed infants and turned them over to wet nurses to be raised and sold as slaves. Most exposed infants, however, died, and exposure quickly became infanticide.

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Ancient Greece: A Political, Social and Cultural History, pg. 255

Women, slaves, and the image of God

Christianity seems to have been especially successful among women. It was often through the wives that it penetrated the upper classes of society in the first instance. Christians believed in the equality of men and women before God, and found in the New Testament commands that husbands should treat their wives with such consideration and love as Christ manifested for his church. Christian teaching about the sanctity of marriage offered a powerful safeguard to married women. The Christian sex ethic differed from the conventional standards of pagan society in that it regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife. The apostle's doctrine that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Gal. iii, 28) was not taken to mean a programme of political emancipation, which in antiquity would have been unthinkable. The social role of women remained that of the home-maker and wife. At the same time, Christianity cut across ordinary social patterns more deeply than any other religion, and encouraged the notion of the responsibility of individual moral choice in a way that was quite exceptional.

Christianity did not give political emancipation to either women or slaves, but it did much to elevate their domestic status by its doctrine that all men are created in God's image and all alike redeemed in Christ; and they must therefore be treated with sovereign respect. (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, pp. 58-9)

www.piousfabrications.com

Well, I've moved on up in the world. The web address to my blog (yes, this blog) is now www.piousfabrications.com. Please update your links (though piousfabrications.blogspot.com will continue to forward you to the new blog address).

Jews, the Septuagint, and Byzantine Bible fragments from Egypt

From PsyOrg.com:

New research has uncovered a forgotten chapter in the history of the Bible, offering a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture.

The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.

The key to the new discovery lay in manuscripts, some of them mere fragments, discovered in an old synagogue in Egypt and brought to Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. The so-called Cairo Genizah manuscripts have been housed ever since in Cambridge University Library.

Now, a fully searchable online corpus has gathered these manuscripts together, making the texts and analysis of them available to other scholars for the first time.

"The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE is said to be one of the most lasting achievements of the Jewish civilization - without it, Christianity might not have spread as quickly and as successfully as it did," explained Nicholas de Lange, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the Faculties of Divinity and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, who led the three-year study to re-evaluate the story of the Greek Bible fragments.

"It was thought that the Jews, for some reason, gave up using Greek translations and chose to use the original Hebrew for public reading in synagogue and for private study, until modern times when pressure to use the vernacular led to its introduction in many synagogues."

Close study of the Cairo Genizah fragments by Professor de Lange led to the discovery that some contained passages from the Bible in Greek written in Hebrew letters. Others contained parts of a lost Greek translation made by a convert to Judaism named Akylas in the 2nd century CE. Remarkably, the fragments date from 1,000 years after the original translation into Greek, showing use of the Greek text was still alive in Greek-speaking synagogues in the Byzantine Empire and elsewhere.

Manuscripts in other libraries confirmed the evidence of the Cambridge fragments, and added many new details. It became clear that a variety of Greek translations were in use among Jews in the Middle Ages.

Not only does the new research offer us a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture, but it also illustrates the cross-fertilisation between Jewish and Christian biblical scholars in the Middle Ages. "This is a very exciting discovery for me because it confirms a hunch I had when studying Genizah fragments 30 years ago," said Professor de Lange.

The online resource enables comparison of each word of the Hebrew text, the Greek translation - knows as the Septuagint after the 70 Jewish scholars said to have translated it - and the fragments of Akylas' and other Jewish translations from antiquity.

The resource was created following collaboration between research teams at Cambridge University, including Dr Cameron Boyd-Taylor and Dr Julia Krivoruchko, and King's College London. "This ambitious piece of collaborative digital scholarship required challenging technical difficulties to be solved," explained Paul Spence, who led the team at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's. "It draws together a wide variety of materials under a standards-based framework which provides multiple entry points into the material."

Novus Ordo Missae disaster

[The] intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy… there was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass… (Jean Guitton on Dec. 19, 1993 in Apropos (17))

Evangelizing the western diaspora

The newest issue (January/February 2011, Vol 37 No 1) of Biblical Archaeology Review arrived at my house today. Within is a very interesting article by Doron Mendels entitled "Why Paul Went West." Without giving away too much about the article itself, I would like to offer a couple of my own thoughts on the subject.

Within the article, Mendels discusses and offers supporting evidence for his thesis that the Jewish Diaspora was in fact two diasporas, an eastern diaspora in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and a western diaspora, in Asia Minor, southern Europe, and North Africa. According to Mendels, the eastern diaspora, primarily Aramaic-speaking, developed and possessed the institutions, rituals, etc. that would eventually come to define rabbinical/orthodox Judaism, such as the Talmud, the rabbinical hierarchy, and more elaborate rituals. The western diaspora, however, consisted primarily of Greek and Latin speakers and lacked the oral traditions, hierarchical religious authorities, and religious ritualism of their eastern brethren. As a result, St. Paul and the other early Christian missionaries primarily evangelized among the Jews of the western diaspora. Although I think that Mendels is correct in all of this and he certainly offers some excellent evidence to support his position, I don't think that he carries his own thoughts through to completion. He ends his article with the assertion that eventually, near the end of the Early Middle Ages, knowledge of the Hebrew language increased among Jews in the West and, consequently, they absorbed the traditions of the eastern Jews and Judaism itself was once again united.

I do not believe that this was the case, however, for a great many, probably even a majority of western Jews. On the contrary, basing my opinion especially upon the evidence that Rodney Stark presents in his abundantly-named The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, which I unfortunately do not have handy to cite right now, I think that it is far more likely that the missionary efforts of St. Paul and other Christian evangelists among the Jews of the western diaspora were far more effective than is commonly assumed. In fact, I believe that it is a very credible possibility that a majority of Hellenized Jews, which group made up the western diaspora, converted to Christianity by the fifth century. Christianity filled the gaping void in the Judaism of the western diaspora: the New Testament writings and traditions acted in the same manner as the Talmud, compensating for the lack of an interpretative context for the Torah; the trifold Christian religious hierarchy of bishops-priests-deacons filled the gap of religious authority; and the Christian rituals revolving around the sacraments met the need for religious rituals which the western diaspora lacked. In sum, the Hellenized Judaism of the ancient world didn't disappear; it was assumed into Christianity.

I recommend checking out both Doron Mendels' article and Rodney Stark's book; both are great reads and both are excellent challenges to the common view of early Judaism, early Christianity, and the dynamics surrounding their relationship with each other, which, though outdated, unfortunately remains the popular view. A change in our understanding of these subjects is way past due.

The Effect of Hellenism on Christianity

Question:
Did the “Hellenization” of Christianity have a positive or negative effect on the religion?

Response:
I think that the Hellenization of Christianity had a largely positive effect on Christianity as it gave Christianity a suitable language and idiom through which to express its ideas while not changing the ideas themselves.

One of features of the earliest Christian writings, including both those that were later included in the New Testament and others, is what seems to be the struggle within them to precisely define what Christians believe and to convey that belief without confusion or equivocation. One very poignant example is that of the Trinity.

There is clearly a recognition within the earliest Christian writings that each of the Three Divine Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is, in some sense, God. Each of them is referred to as “God” in the earliest Christian writings. And yet, Christians simultaneously affirmed, there is only one God. How there could be Three Divine Persons but only one God was one of the many questions that plagued early Christians in their attempts to sort out their theology.

Even well after the first known use of the word “Trinity” (itself an interesting example of the Hellenization of Christian expression) by Theophilus of Antioch in 180 CE,¹ the discussion within the Christian Church on the nature of the Trinity continued. Various solutions were proposed, each emphasizing some aspects or others of both the Christian message and Jewish and Hellenic influence. A very small minority of Christians, mostly from the Antiochene school of thought, abandoned any attempt at reconciling the Trinity with monotheism and instead embraced outright tritheism, positing that there were in fact three gods.² More popular was the solution proposed by Sabellius, a third century Roman priest.³ Sabellius introduced the idea that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three masks or “modes” (hence, the name of the heresy as “modalism”) of the one God. Both of these solutions, as well as others, were rejected by the early Christians as incompatible with the whole of the Christian tradition.

The solution that came to be adopted at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 CE and the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381 CE simultaneously was compatible with the fullness of the Christian tradition and yet drew heavily upon Hellenic influences. The word that was used in the Creed drawn up by the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, for instance, to describe the relationship of the Father to the Son, homoousios, had a long history of usage in the Greek philosophical tradition.⁴ In fact, it was for this reason that some of the bishops present at least initially opposed its use. They found, however, that only this word would adequately express the beliefs of Christianity while placing the interpretation of the expression of those beliefs outside of the bounds of Arianism. Essentially, only the word homoousios was adequate as a rejection of the Arian heresy.⁵

The final Creed and theological position formulated by the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 CE finally settled the Trinitarian controversies that had plagued the Church since its earliest days; unfortunately, the era of the Christological controversies was to be initiated soon afterward. The solutions to both the Trinitarian and Christological problems would come to be viewed and expressed through the lens of the philosophical tradition inherited from Hellenism and incorporated into Christianity; just as the Trinitarian controversies had been resolved by the introduction of the Greek philosophical word homoousios, the Christological controversies would revolve around and eventually be settled by the use of the Greek philosophical word hypostasis. However, it can also be seen that the orthodox Church was careful in its application of those Hellenic principles; while it allowed and even sponsored the expression of Christian belief and practice through Hellenic idiom, it simultaneously vigorously fought against those, such as Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, who would have changed the principles of Christianity to better fit those of Hellenism.

This certainly was a balancing act, and one that I can't help but marvel at as I read the history of the Christian Church throughout the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. The Church accomplished an amazing task in its ability to use Hellenic ideas and idioms to better define and express itself, while disallowing the ontological alteration of the Christian tradition.


Notes

¹ Theophilus of Antioch, "To Autolychus," in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 89-121.

² Harold O.J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy And Orthodoxy In The History Of The Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 127.

³ Justo L. González and Catherine Gunsalus González, Heretics for Armchair Theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 80-2.

⁴ Pier Franco Beatrice, "The Word 'Homoousios' from Hellenism to Christianity," Church History 71, no. 2 (June 2002): 243-272.

⁵ John Norman Davidson Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines: Revised Edition (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978), 34-40.

Marcion and Scripture: The Impact of a Second Century Heretic on the New Testament

Nearly all Christians today hold a special reverence for the books collectively referred to as the “Holy Bible.” Eastern Orthodox Christians venerate a gold-encrusted and jewel-bedecked book of the gospels by crossing themselves, bowing or even prostrating in front of it, and finally kissing it. Roman Catholic Christians begin the ritual of the Mass on Sunday mornings with a procession which includes the gospel book being held high by the priest and brought to the altar, where he ceremoniously and reverently lays it. Protestant Christians have made the scriptures their central, and sometimes only, rule of faith with their unique doctrine of Sola Scriptura, or “Scripture Alone.” Christians all over the world read the books of the Bible with love and reverence, seeking to follow the words contained therein with submissive obedience. There can be little doubt that for nearly all of the world's two billion Christians, the Holy Scriptures, especially the portion of them called the “New Testament,” are at the heart and center of their faith.

Most Christians, however, are not familiar with the history of the book, actually a collection of books, which holds such importance to their worship and their lives. Few Christians are familiar with the men and events that shaped the contents of the scriptures they adore. Few even realize that had it not been for the beliefs and actions of certain individuals in the early Christian church, there would not even be a New Testament or a Bible as they are known today, if at all. This paper will discuss one of the most significant of these individuals, a man who acted as the catalyst for the early church's textual soul-searching and eventual development of the canon of the New Testament.

Marcion of Sinope was from the modern-day city of Sinop, Turkey, on the southern coast of the Black Sea. He was born to wealthy parents, the son of the city's bishop, in about 100 CE.¹ According to Epiphanius of Salamis, “early in life” Marcion “practiced celibacy, for he was a hermit.”² At some point later, however, he was “excommunicated by his own father” for having seduced a consecrated virgin and “degraded both her and himself.”³ Most modern historians think that the story of Marcion's seduction of a virgin may be a symbolic tale in which the virgin represents the church and Marcion's seduction represents his introduction of heretical teaching;⁴ such an interpretation is plausible but, given its conjectural nature, uncertain.

Marcion was unable to obtain a blessing of penance from his father and, as a result, moved to Rome in about 139 CE to seek his penitential blessing from the bishop and elders of the church in that city.⁵ To this end, he attempted to bribe them by giving large gifts of money to the churches there. When they discovered what he was teaching, however, the bishop of Rome also excommunicated him and returned all of the money he had donated to the church.⁶ In about 144 CE, Marcion abandoned his hopes of convincing the bishops and elders of the orthodox church of his teachings or having himself appointed to such a position and instead decided to found his own alternative Christian sect; Epiphanius wrote that Marcion told the unconvinced elders of the orthodox church that he would “tear your church, and make a rent in it forever.”⁷

The teachings for which Marcion was excommunicated produced an entirely new brand of Christianity, stripped entirely of its Jewish inheritance; this paper will focus on but a single aspect of Marcionism, the system of Christian thought named after Marcion, namely, its views of the scriptures and the influence of those views upon normative Christian belief and practice. Marcion claimed that the “creator, demiurge and visible God is the God of the Jews, and he is a judge,”⁸ but that there was another God who sent Jesus of Nazareth to save mankind from this God of judgment. As a result, Marcion rejected the entirety of the Old Testament, which up until that point had been the primary scriptures used by Christians, claiming that the writings contained therein were all the product of the lesser, Jewish God.⁹ Marcion also taught that the only apostle who had fully understood Jesus' real message was Paul, but that even his writings had become corrupted by the, according to him, Judaizing orthodox catholic church.¹⁰ He therefore accepted ten of Paul's letters, listing them in this order: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians.¹¹ He only accepted even these after some significant editing to rid those letters of what he considered to be Judaizing corruptions and accretions. From amongst the gospels, he accepted only the Gospel of Luke as scriptural,¹² as it was a belief common amongst early Christians that Luke had written his gospel based upon Paul's testimony,¹³ but he edited this as well, deleting references to the Old Testament writings and Jewish God, removing the account of Jesus' miraculous birth and baptism by John, and other elements Marcion found objectionable.¹⁴

The orthodox catholic church saw Marcion's new sect as a major threat. Books were written by a variety of individuals throughout the Christian world to refute Marcion's teachings.¹⁵ Polycarp, the famous and saintly bishop of Smyrna and disciple of the apostle John, upon meeting Marcion in person declared him to be “the firstborn of Satan.”¹⁶

The orthodox church saw in Marcion a very dangerous competitor. Marcion's new theology was of particular appeal to converts to Christianity from paganism.¹⁷ Roman pagans viewed Judaism, with its strange dietary laws and requirement of male genital mutilation in the form of circumcision, as a bizarre and backwards religion.¹⁸ A new Christianity stripped not only of these odd Jewish practices but of anything Jewish whatsoever was an attractive alternative to gentile Christians and potential converts.

Of particular concern to orthodox Christians, as Tertullian of Carthage wrote, was that Marcion had “used the knife” to perform “an excision of the Scriptures as suited his own subject-matter.”¹⁹ Marcion's redaction of the Gospel of Luke and Paul's letters “forced more orthodox Christians to examine their own presuppositions and to state more clearly what they already believed.”²⁰ Marcion was also the first Christian to “construct a closed, that is, finalized, canon of Scripture.”²¹ In a significant way, Marcion's mutilations of some and outright rejections of others of the writings that would come to make up the collection of books called the “New Testament” spurred the orthodox church to enunciate its views of the status and authority of those books and eventually to compile them into a single collection with an attribution of divine inspiration and authority.²²

Before Marcion compiled and edited his canon, it was rare for Christian writers to refer to any writings but those of the Old Testament as scriptural. It is clear from the writings of early Christians such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna that Paul's letter's were viewed as possessing some measure of authority, as these later authors quote from Paul's letters with the evident supposition that their Christian readers will recognize the quotes and render obedience to the words. In one instance, Polycarp even referred to Paul's letter to the Ephesians as “scripture;” this is, however, an example of the exception proving the rule as its very rarity is what draws attention to this instance. What is unclear from the quotations of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, however, is whether Paul's letters and the letters of the other apostles were viewed as possessing the same status and authority as the Old Testament writings; the case seems doubtful due to lack of evidence in favor of such a notion.

It is also clear from the writings of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and other early Christian writers that the words of Jesus of Nazareth were viewed as possessing divine authority, as he was, so Christians believed, God in human flesh. What is unclear, however, is whether the books of the gospels themselves were viewed as possessing any measure of authority and/or divine inspiration; it is often even unclear which of the gospels is being quoted by a given author. Many of the quotes of the words of Jesus from the writings of early Christians are probably quotes from memory via oral tradition rather than from any written source. Bruce Metzger says of Clement of Rome, for instance:

Clement's Bible is the Old Testament, to which he refers repeatedly as Scripture (graphe), quoting it with more or less exactness. Clement also makes occasional reference to certain words of Jesus; though they are authoritative for him, he does not appear to enquire how their authenticity is ensured. In two of the three instances that he speaks of remembering 'the words' of Christ or of the Lord Jesus, it seems that he has a written record in mind, but he does not call it a 'gospel'. He knows several of Paul's epistles, and values them highly for their content; the same can be said of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with which he is well acquainted. Although these writings obviously possess for Clement considerable significance, he never refers to them as authoritative 'Scripture'.²³

In fact, some of the quotes attributed to Jesus by early Christian authors undoubtedly did not come from the written gospels currently contained in the New Testament as there is no equivalent to these sayings in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. For instance, Papias of Hierapolis, writing in about 125 CE, recorded several sayings of Jesus which are not found in the canonical gospels.²⁴

Papias also wrote that Mark and Matthew had each written a gospel. He does not, however, quote from either of these gospels and some modern scholars have averred that the gospels Papias refers to are not the gospels attributed to Mark and Matthew in the New Testament, as his descriptions of the origins and contents of those gospels differs from those of the current canonical gospels.²⁵ Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, he does not attribute to either of those gospels any inherent authority and/or divine inspiration.

Even as late as 150 CE, Justin Martyr, a contemporary of Marcion in Rome, refers only to “the memoirs of the apostles” which are read during Christian worship services.²⁶ He does not name the apostles to which these “memoirs” are attributed nor does he attribute to them any inherent authority and/or inspiration. However, he does mention that they are read alongside “the writings of the prophets,” by which he means the Old Testament writings, indicating that at least some of the gospels had come to be viewed by Christians as in some way equivalent to, even if not quite equal with, the Old Testament scriptures.

The earliest mention by any Christian author of a fourfold gospel consisting exclusively of the Gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is in 180 CE in Irenaeus of Lyons' books Against Heresies.²⁷ Irenaeus wrote insisting that there could be no more than four gospels and, probably in conscious contradiction to Marcion, no less than four as well. Irenaeus wrote:

It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the “pillar and ground” of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, the Artificer of all, He that sitteth upon the cherubim, and contains all things, He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit.

It is clear from Irenaeus' vehemence on the matter that he considers not only the words of Jesus within the gospels but the very gospel writings themselves to be both authoritative and divinely inspired.

Comparing Irenaeus' views with those of his forebears in the faith, it can be seen that there had been a significant clarification in Christian thought concerning the New Testament writings from the opening of the second century to its close. There is no doubt that Marcion's redaction of those writings had played a major role in spurring that clarification of Christian thought. In disclaiming some of the New Testament writings, he had forced Christians to consider whether it was possible to reject some of the apostolic writings and, upon the realization that it was not, had forced them to answer the question of why it was illegitimate to do so. In editing some of those writings, he had again forced the Christians to consider their position. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, writings were not considered the sacrosanct, self-contained wholes they are in the modern Western world; in fact, this modern view is largely the product of the early and medieval Christian development of thought on the Bible.²⁸ Rather, for ancient peoples, writings were considered as relying upon and being informed by an oral tradition that stood behind them; writings could, necessarily, be edited to conform to this oral tradition.²⁹ Why, then, early Christians were forced by Marcion to ask themselves, was Marcion wrong in modifying the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul? The only answer that could be arrived at was to place these writings on the same level as the Old Testament writings, that is, to view them as authoritative, inerrant, and divinely inspired.

The next problem that the orthodox church had to confront was the problem of exactly which writings fit into this new authoritative, inerrant, and divinely inspired category. This was a question that would take the church many centuries to finally settle.

Before Marcion, the catholic church was willing to allow for a great amount of diversity in the scriptures used within each local church. “Some Christians might have used more scriptures, others less; it varied from community to community and region to region.”³⁰ What was important was that one shared in the catholic, or “universal,” faith, not which books an individual or local church chose to recognize as scripture. After Marcion, this somewhat lax approach to the canon was no longer possible amongst Christians. If Marcion had been wrong for using only the Gospel of Luke from amongst the gospels, then any church which did not recognize and use all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, must also necessarily be wrong. If Marcion had been wrong in using only ten letters of Paul from amongst the apostolic writings, then any individual or church which did not use all of the apostolic writings must also be wrong. As with a great many issues of controversy in early Christian thought and practice, “the Church would have liked to keep things simple, but it was the heretics who forced the issue.”³¹

Eusebius of Ceasarea, in his famous and invaluable Ecclesiastical History, recorded the status of the development of the canon of the New Testament in 324 CE, approximately 175 years after the death of Marcion of Sinope.³² He listed as universally accepted by all or nearly all Christians as scripture (homologoumena) the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, “the epistles of Paul” (of which he gives no number), “the epistle of John” (1 John), and “the epistle of Peter” (1 Peter). He listed as accepted by a majority of Christians, but disputed by many (antilegomena) the epistles of James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. Among the books rejected by a majority of Christians, he listed the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse of John, both of which are in the New Testament today, as well as a number of apocryphal and sub-apostolic works.

The first time in history that an author listed all 27 books of the modern New Testament with neither subtractions nor additions was 367 CE.³³ Athanasius of Alexandria, the bishop of Alexandria, wrote a letter for Easter of that year to all of the churches of Egypt, listing the 27 books of the New Testament and informing his readers that,

These are the fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.³⁴

Clearly, for Athanasius and the churches of Egypt under his oversight, the case of the canon was closed.

In other regions of the church, however, the debate over the contents of the New Testament canon would continue to be argued for much longer. Even as late as the ninth century, Nicephorus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, did not list the Apocalypse of John in his New Testament canon.³⁵

Eventually, however, through a very gradual process, a consensus was reached and today nearly all Christians use the same New Testament.³⁶ The process that began with Marcion of Sinope in the middle of the second century took the church nearly a millennium to finally settle once and for all.

In my opinion, Marcionism is one of the most under-appreciated but important movements of early Christianity. If Marcion had not formulated his own theology and eventually founded his own rival church, the Christianity we know today would be very different. I believe that, in spite of the fact that Marcion was excommunicated from the church and is rightfully remembered as a dangerous heretic, modern Christians owe him a measure of gratitude for his lasting impact on Christian faith and practice.

It is difficult to picture a version of Christianity that does not include the Holy Bible. The New Testament especially is at the heart of the Christian faith. In churches all over the world, its words are read, chanted, sung, and even screamed. Those words have served as an inspiration to countless numbers of people, no matter what faith they personally profess, throughout the world. Passages such as Jesus' Beatitudes found in the Gospels of Luke 6:20-26 and Matthew 5:2-10, Paul's poetic discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 13, and the short, famous statement from 1 John 4:8 that “God is love” have been and continue to be readily recognizable sources of inspiration for billions of people around the world throughout history and today.

But it seems likely that had it not been for a single second century heretic named Marcion of Sinope these various passages would still be floating around in individual manuscripts rather than in a compiled whole called “the Bible” and they would be recognized as scriptural by one church but not another. Each time that a Christian lovingly lifts his copy of the scriptures and reverently opens and begins to read, he has many men to thank who made that moment possible, but the individual owed perhaps the greatest portion of that gratefulness and certainly the person most unlikely to be thanked, is Marcion of Sinope.

Notes

¹ Bart D. Ehrman. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 104.

² Epiphanius, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, trans. Frank Williams. 2nd ed. Book 1 (Sects 1-46), (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 294.

³ Epiphanius, 294.

⁴ Ehrman, 104.

⁵ Epiphanius, 295.

⁶ Ehrman, 108.

⁷ Epiphanius, 296.

⁸ Epiphanius, 296.

⁹ Justo L. González and Catherine Gunsalus González, Heretics for Armchair Theologians (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 47.

¹⁰ L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith (New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 409.

¹¹ Glenn Davis. "The Development of the Canon of the New Testament – Marcion" (2010), http://www.ntcanon.org/Marcion.shtml (accessed 26 September 2010).

¹² Davis.

¹³ "Muratorian Fragment,” trans. Bruce Metzger, in Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1987), 191-201.

¹⁴ Ehrman, 108.

¹⁵ For instance, Tertullian of Carthage's “Five Books Against Marcion” in North Africa, Irenaeus of Lyons' “Against Heresies” in Gaul, Epiphanius of Salamis' “Panarion” in Cyprus, and Hippolytus of Rome's “Refutation of All Heresies” in Rome. The widely spread geographic locations of these orthodox Christian would be refuters of Marcion exhibits that Marcion's sect was itself large and widespread, rather than a small, local heresy as were most early Christian sectarians.

¹⁶ Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies,” III. 3. 4., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1: Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 416.

¹⁷ Ehrman, 103.

¹⁸ Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, (New York, New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 367.

¹⁹ Tertullian of Carthage, “The Prescription Against the Heretics,” 38, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 262.

²⁰ Robert M. Grant, The Formation of the New Testament, (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 126.

²¹ Ehrman, 107.

²² González, 53.

²³ Metzger, 43.

²⁴ Peter Kirby, "Papias (Roberts-Donaldson)," (2001), http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html (accessed 26 September 2010).

²⁵ Craig Evans and Bart D. Ehrman. "YouTube - Part 4 - Craig Evans vs. Bart Ehrman Debate: Does the New Testament Misquote Jesus?" (7 April 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KhEi9xGG8 (accessed 26 September 2010).

²⁶ Justin Martyr, “First Apology,” 67, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1: Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 186.

²⁷ Irenaeus, III. 11. 8, 428.

²⁸ Ehrman, 248-9.

²⁹ Greg Boyd, "How Do You Respond to Bart Ehrman’s Book, “Misquoting Jesus”? » Bible » New Testament » Questions By Skeptics » The Bible » Greg Boyd (Christus Victor Ministries)" (2008), http://www.gregboyd.org/qa/bible/how-do-you-respond-to-ehrmans-book-misquoting-jesus/ (accessed 26 September 2010).

³⁰ White, 411.

³¹ Laurent Cleenwerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism Between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches (Washington, D.C.: Euclid University Press, 2007), 43-4.

³² Eusebius of Ceasarea, The History of the Church, 3.25, trans. G.A. Williamson (New York, New York: Penguin, 1989), 88-9.

³³ William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 1: A Source-Book of Theological and Historical Passages from the Christian Writings of the Pre-Nicene and Nicene Eras (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1970), 341.

³⁴ Athanasius of Alexandria, “Letter XXXIX,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4: Athanasius: Selected Works and Letters, ed. Philip Schaff, (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 552.

³⁵ Glenn Davis, "The Development of the Canon of the New Testament - The Stichometery of Nicephorus" (2010) http://www.ntcanon.org/Stichometry_of_Nicephorus.shtml (accessed 27 September 2010).

³⁶ There are only two exceptions: 1. The Assyrian Church of the East (or so-called “Nestorian Church”), based in modern-day Iraq, uses an ancient translation from the original Greek into Syriac, called the Peshitta. The Peshitta lacks 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse. 2. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church uses an extended canon which includes all 27 books of the New Testament used by most Christians as well as the Didascalia, Epistle to Clement, two Books of the Covenant, and four Books of Sinodos; most of these are church disciple manuals developed at a later date and attached to the Ethiopian New Testament in the early Middle Ages.

Bibliography

Athanasius of Alexandria. “Letter XXXIX.” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4: Athanasius: Selected Works and Letters. Edited by Philip Schaff. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 551-2.

Boyd, Greg. "How Do You Respond to Bart Ehrman’s Book, “Misquoting Jesus”? » Bible » New Testament » Questions By Skeptics » The Bible » Greg Boyd (Christus Victor Ministries)." 2008. http://www.gregboyd.org/qa/bible/how-do-you-respond-to-ehrmans-book-misquoting-jesus/ (accessed 26 September 2010).

Cleenwerck, Laurent. His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism Between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Washington, D.C.: Euclid University Press, 2007.

Davis, Glenn. "The Development of the Canon of the New Testament" 2010. http://www.ntcanon.org/ (accessed 27 September 2010).

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Epiphanius. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Translated by Frank Williams. 2nd ed. Book 1 (Sects 1-46). Leiden: Brill, 2009.

Eusebius. The History of the Church. Translated by G.A. Williamson. New York, New York: Penguin, 1989.

Evans, Craig, and Bart D. Ehrman. "YouTube - Part 4 - Craig Evans vs. Bart Ehrman Debate: Does the New Testament Misquote Jesus?" 7 April 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KhEi9xGG8 (accessed 26 September 2010).

Goodman, Martin. Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

González, Justo L. and Catherine Gunsalus González. Heretics for Armchair Theologians. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

Grant, Robert M. The Formation of the New Testament. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Hippolytus of Rome. “Refutation of All Heresies.” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 9-162.

Irenaeus of Lyons. “Against Heresies.” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1: Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 315-567.

Jurgens, William A. The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 1: A Source-book of Theological and Historical Passages from the Christian Writings of the Pre-Nicene and Nicene Eras. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1970.

Justin Martyr, “First Apology,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1: Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 163-187.

Kirby, Peter. "Papias (Roberts-Donaldson)." 2001. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html (accessed 26 September 2010).

Metzger, Bruce. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1987.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. Whose Bible Is It? A Short History of the Scriptures. New York, New York: Penguin, 2005.

Tertullian of Carthage. “The Five Books Against Marcion.” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 269-475.

Tertullian of Carthage. “The Prescription Against the Heretics.” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. 243-265.

White, L. Michael. From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith. New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Personality and foreign policy

We have a story in India about two men, one high-minded and generous, the other very selfish, who were sent to foreign lands and asked to tell what kind of people they found there. The first reported that he found people basically good at heart, not very different from those at home. The second man felt envious hearing this, for in the place he visited everyone was selfish, scheming, and cruel. Both, of course, were describing the same land. "We see as we are," and our foreign policy follows what we see. Those who see themselves surrounded by a hostile world preparing for war tend to make that vision reality.
Eknath Easwaran, The Dhammapada, pg. 66

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Inexpressible,
and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable;
angels and shepherds together give glory,
and the Magi are guided by a star,
when for our sakes was born, as a new babe,
the One who from eternity is God.

(This short hymn, still sung by Orthodox Christians in celebration of the Nativity of Christ, was written by St. Romanos the Melodist in 520 CE)

The Nativity of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ

How to celebrate Christmas like a Christian

This is our festival, this is the feast we celebrate today, in which God comes to live with human beings, that we may journey toward God, or return—for to speak thus is more exact—that laying aside the old human being we may be clothed with the new, and that as in Adam we have died so we may live in Christ, born with Christ and crucified with Him, buried with Him, and rising with Him. For it is necessary for me to undergo the good turnaround, and as painful things came from more pleasant things, so out of painful things more pleasant things must return. “For where sin abounded, grace superabounded,” and if the taste of forbidden fruit condemned, how much more does the Passion of Christ justify? Therefore we celebrate the feast not like a pagan festival but in a godly manner, not in a worldly way but in a manner above the world. We celebrate not our own concerns but the One who is ours, or rather what concerns our Master, things pertaining not to sickness but to healing, not to the first shaping, but to the reshaping.

And how will this be? Let us not put wreaths on our front doors, or assemble troupes of dancers, or decorate the streets. Let us not feast the eyes, or mesmerize the sense of hearing, or pamper the sense of smell, or prostitute the sense of taste, or gratify the sense of touch. These are ready paths to evil, and entrances of sin. Let us not be softened by delicate and extravagant clothing, whose beauty is its inutility, or by the transparency of stones, or the brilliance of gold, or the artificiality of colors that falsify natural beauty and are invented in opposition to the divine image; nor by “revelries and drunkenness,” to which I know “debauchery and licentiousness” are linked, since from bad teachers come bad teachings, or rather from evil seeds come evil harvests. Let us not build high beds of straw, making shelters for the debauchery of the stomach. Let us not assess the bouquet of wines, the concoctions of chefs, the great cost of perfumes. Let earth and sea not bring us as gifts the valued dung, for this is how I know to evaluate luxury. Let us not strive to conquer each other in dissoluteness. For to me all that is superfluous and beyond need is dissoluteness, particularly when others are hungry and in want, who are of the same clay and the same composition as ourselves.

But let us leave these things to the pagan Greeks and to Greek pomps and festivals. They name as gods those who enjoy the steam rising from the fat of sacrificial animals and correspondingly serve the divine with their stomachs, and they become evil fashioners and initiators and initiates of evil demons. But if we, for whom the Word is an object of worship, must somehow have luxury, let us have as our luxury the word and the divine law and narratives, especially those that form the basis of the present feast, that our luxury may be akin and not foreign to the One who has called us.

St. Gregory the Theologian, Festal Oration 38

(h/t: Biblicalia)

Ignoring the glory of crucifixion

Within the last generation the Church of Russia has brought forth thousands of martyrs and confessors who will bear comparison with those of the first centuries. In every place where the faith has been put to the test there have been abundant outpourings of grace, the most astonishing miracles -- icons renewing themselves beneath the eyes of the astonished spectators; the cupolas of churches shining with a light not of this world. And -- greatest miracle of all -- the Church has been enabled to triumph over all difficulties, and to emerge renewed and strengthened from her fiery trial. Nevertheless, all this was scarcely noticed. The glorious aspect of what had taken place in Russia remained almost without interest for the generality of mankind. There were protests at the persecution; there were regrets that the Russian Church did not act like a temporal or a political power; excuses were put forward on behalf of this 'human frailty'. The crucified and buried Christ will always be judged in similar fashion by those who are blind to the light of His resurrection. We must, in the words of St. Paul, receive, 'not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God,' that we may be enabled to recognize victory beneath the outward appearance of failure, to discern the power of God fulfilling itself in weakness, the true Church within the historic reality. (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pp. 245-6)

Inanity of Gnosticism

The French Egyptologist Jean Doresse was one of the first scholars to examine the trove of Gnostic literature found near the Nile village of Nag Hammadi in 1945. In The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics (1958), Doresse writes that these Gnostic works had been previously known only through excerpts quoted by their opponents. It was assumed that defenders of orthodoxy, like St. Irenaeus, had chosen the most ridiculous passages for critique. But "it is as though Fate had been trying to poke fun at the learned," because the intact works, now that they've been recovered, turn out to be "the most complicated and surely the most incoherent that Gnosticism ever produced." The ancient orthodox critics of these works now "look almost eulogistic, almost benevolent" in taking them "so kindly and seriously as to do them the honor of refutation."

Frederica Matthewes-Green, The Lost Gospel of Mary: The Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts, pp. 6-7

Hell and God's love

"Those who find themselves in gehenna will be chastized with the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo greater sufferings than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God. ... But love acts in two different ways, as suffering in the reproved, and as joy in the blessed." - St. Isaac of Syria

A conversation 8500 miles apart

The priest and people of St. John the Forerunner Orthodox Church (my old parish, where my family and I were all received into Holy Orthodoxy) in Cedar Park, TX, talk to Katherine Wilcoxon and Father Spyridon in Tanzania via Skype. Technology is amazing: bringing together Orthodox Christians 8500 miles apart!

Ecclesiological heresies

The Church, in its Christological aspect, appears as an organism having two natures, two operations and two wills. In the history of Christian dogma all the Christological heresies come to life anew and reappear with reference to the Church. Thus, there arises a Nestorian ecclesiology, the error of those who would divide the Church into distinct beings: on the one hand the heavenly and invisible Church, alone true and absolute; on the other, the earthly Church (or rather 'the churches') imperfect and relative, wandering in the shadows, human societies seeking to draw near, so far as is possible for them, to that transcendent perfection. A monophysite ecclesiology, on the contrary, manifests itself in a desire to see the Church as essentially a divine being whose every detail is sacred, wherein everything is imposed with a character of divine necessity, wherein nothing can be changed or modified, because human freedom, synergy, the co-operation of man with God, have no place within this hieratic organism from which the human side is excluded; this is a magic of salvation operative through sacraments and rites faithfully carried out. These two ecclesiological heresies of opposite tendency appeared, almost at the same time, during the course of the seventeenth century. The first (the Eastern protestantism of Cyril Loukaris) arose within the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Constantinople; the second developed in Russia, in the form of the schism (raskol) known as that of the 'Old Believers'. The two ecclesiological errors were crushed by the great councils of Jerusalem and of Moscow. Monothelitism in ecclesiology is expressed above all in a negation of the economy of the CHurch in regard to the external world, for the salvation of which the Church was founded. The contrary error (which could not have a precedent in the Christological heresies, unless it be in a semi-Nestorianism) consists in an attitude of compromise which is ready to sacrifice the truth to the exigencies of ecclesiastical economy in relation to the world. This is the ecclesiological relativism, a danger proper to the 'oecumenical' movement and to other similar trends. The Appollinarian heresy, which denied the human understanding in the manhood of Christ, shows itself in the realm of ecclesiology in the refusal to acknowledge the full human consciousness -- as, for example, in the doctrinal ministry of the Church, when the truth is regarded as being revealed to the councils like a deus ex machina, independently of those who were present. (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pp. 186-7)

We women are the most unfortunate creatures

We women are the most unfortunate creatures.
First, with an excess of wealth it is required
For us to buy a husband, and take for our bodies
A master; for not to take one is even worse.
And now the question is serious whether we take
A good or bad one; for there is no easy escape
For a woman, nor can she say no to her marriage.

Euripides, Medea 231-238 (431 BCE)

Christian theology and scientific theory

The cosmology of the Greek Fathers is necessarily expressed in terms of the conception of the universe which prevailed in their own age; a fact which takes nothing whatever away from the properly theological basis of their commentaries upon the Biblical narrative of the creation. The theology of the Orthodox Church, constantly soteriological in its emphasis, has never entered into alliance with philosophy in any attempt at a doctrinal synthesis: despite all its richness, the religious thought of the East has never had a scholasticism. If it does contain certain elements of Christian gnosis, as in the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus, or in the Physical and theological chapters of St. Gregory Palamas, the speculation is always dominated by the central idea of union with God and never acquires the character of a system. Having no philosophical preferences, the Church always freely makes use of philosophy and the sciences for apologetic purposes, but she never has any cause to defend these relative and changing truths as she defends the unchangeable truth of her doctrines. This is why ancient or more modern cosmological theories cannot affect in any way the more fundamental truth which is revealed to the Church: 'the truth of Holy Scripture is far deeper than the limits of our understanding,' as Philaret of Moscow says. In the face of the vision of the universe which the human race has gained since the period of the renaissance, in which the earth is represented as an atom lost in infinite space amid innumerable other worlds, there is no need for theology to change anything whatever in the narrative of Genesis; any more than it is its business to be concerned over the question of the salvation of the inhabitants of Mars. Revelation remains for theology essentially geocentric, for it is addressed to men and confers upon them the truth as it is relative to their salvation under the conditions which belong to the reality of life on earth. The Fathers saw in the parable of the Good Shepherd, coming down to seek one erring sheep from the mountains where he has left the remaining ninety-nine of his flock, an allusion to the smallness of the fallen world compared with the cosmos as a whole, and with the angelic aeons in particular.

It is the mystery of our salvation that is revealed to us by the Church, and not the secrets of the universe in general which, quite possibly, does not stand in need of salvation; this is the reason why the cosmology of revelation is necessarily geocentric. It also enables us to see why copernican cosmology, from a psychological or rather spiritual point of view, corresponds to a state of religious dispersion or off-centredness, a relaxation of the soteriological attitude, such as is found in the gnostics or the occult religions. The spirit of the insatiable thirst for knowledge, the restless spirit of Faust, turning to the cosmos breaks through the constricting limits of the heavenly spheres to launch out into infinite space; where it becomes lost in the search for some synthetic understanding of the universe, for its own understanding, external and limited to the domain of becoming, can only grasp the whole under the aspect of disintegration which corresponds to the condition of our nature since the fall. The Christian mystic, on the other hand, entering into himself, and enclosing himself in the 'inner chamber' of his heart, finds there, deeper even than sin, the beginning of an ascent in the course of which the universe appears more and more unified, more and more coherent, penetrated with spiritual forces and forming one whole within the hand of God. One may quote, by way of interest, the suggestion of a modern Russian theologian, who was also a great mathematician, Fr. Paul Florensky, that it would be possible to return to a geocentric cosmology on the basis of the scientific theories of our own time. It is hardly necessary to add that such a bold and, possibly, scientifically defensible synthesis has no real value for Christian theology, which is able to accommodate itself very easily to any scientific theory of the universe, provided that this does not attempt to go beyond its own boundaries and begin impertinently to deny things which are outside its own field of vision. (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pp. 104-6)

Differences between Orthodoxy and other confessions

Faith and theology are on the one hand the fruit of cure; while on the other hand they are a way for one to attain cure and vision of God - which, being communion with God, is simultaneously knowledge of God. And this constitutes man's salvation. Dogmatic differences reflect corresponding differences in cure. There are cases in which the so called Uniates appear as Orthodox, even concerning the dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit. They do not add the filioque to the Symbol of faith and yet they differ in their therapeutic treatment. I think there are two criteria by means of which we distinguish that a person who has passed away is an Orthodox and a Saint: the first one is the way and method of cure he applied and the second is his holy relics. We believe that Orthodoxy obtains both of these. In other words, we have both an Orthodox method of cure and the relics of deified Saints. This difference is certainly manifested in the dogmatic teaching, since, as we mentioned formerly, theology is an expression of life, it is a formulation of a person's mode of life.

Within this perspective, if we examine Orthodoxy in relation to the Latin and Protestant denomination, we shall immediately locate the difference. The Protestants do not have at all a therapeutic treatment. They think that as long as they believe in God, they can be saved. But as we have already pointed out, perfect faith which saves man is faith based on theoria, the presupposition of which is the purification of the heart. And this is achieved by accepting the introductory faith, which is expressed in works of repentance; and works of repentance are whatever contributes to man's therapy. Thus, the Protestants do not obtain a therapeutic treatment. The Latins' therapeutic method is not as complete as the Orthodox one. The fact that they reached the point of speaking about the filioque is a fruit of their weakness to combine the relation existing between the person and society. Thus they confuse the personal properties, which are the unbegotten of the Father, the begotten of the Son and the proceeding of the Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Holy Spirit. This weakness and the failure in expressing the Trinitarian dogma indicates the nonexistence of experience and revelation. Because where there is vision of God, there exists a clear dogmatic formulation.

For example the disciples of Christ upon Mount Tabor saw the glory of Christ. They simultaneously heard inaudibly the voice of the Father -"this is my Beloved Son"- and they saw the coming of the Holy Spirit in the cloud. As St.Gregory Palamas says, the cloud is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Thus the disciples of Christ obtained knowledge of the Triune God in theoria and revelation. It was revealed to them that God is one essence and three hypostases. This is what St. Symeon the New Theologian also teaches. In his poems many times he maintains that during the vision of the uncreated Light the deified person receives the Revelation of the Triune God. The Saints in theoria do not confuse the hypostatic properties.

The fact that the Latin Tradition came to confuse these hypostatic properties and teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds in essence from the Son as well shows the nonexistence of empirical theology. Also the fact that it reached the point of speaking about created grace, signifies that it does not have experience of the grace of God. For, when a man attains the experience of God, he then realizes well that this grace is uncreated. Since they did not reach this experience, it is obvious that there is no correct therapeutic method there. And, indeed, in the Latin tradition this therapeutic method -which we find in Orthodoxy- does not exist. There is no reference to the nous; reason is not distinguished from the nous; the darkening of the nous is not taught to be an illness and illumination to be its restoration. Many Latin texts, widely spoken of, are sentimental and exhaust themselves in a barren ethicology, whereas in the Orthodox Church there is a great tradition regarding these issues, and this shows its true therapeutic method.

It is through its therapeutic effects that a faith demonstrates its truthfulness. If it cures it is a true faith, if it does not it is not a true faith. This applies to medical science also. A true scientist doctor is he who knows how to cure and has therapeutic effects, whereas a quack doctor does not have any therapeutic results. The same holds true on matters of the soul. For this reason I believe that the difference of the Orthodox from both the Latin tradition and the protestant confessions is seen primarily, in the way of cure. The difference in cure is a result of dogmatic differences. The dogmas are not philosophy, nor is theology philosophy.

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition, 36-9

City of God and City of Man in Augustine and the Holy Roman Empire

The relationship between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire in the eleventh century not only did not reflect Augustine of Hippo’s ideals of the City of God and City of Man but was very nearly the opposite of these ideals. The primary point of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei was the difference and separation between the Church and the state, that the two should never be identified but should cooperate when possible, whereas the relationship between Church and state in the Middle Ages in Western Europe tended to be a constant competition between the two for supremacy and the two often came to be intertwined and far more closely associated than Augustine would have been comfortable with.¹

According to Augustine, the City of Man, by which name he designated the various kingdoms of the world, is inherently flawed and temporal. In his De Civitate Dei he wrote,

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? What are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? … Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”²

The Church, on the other hand, is perfect and eternal. He explicitly did not identify the Church with any temporal institution or individual, such as the medieval popes of Rome did, but, rather, he held, in continuity with Church tradition, that the Church consisted of not only the community of Christians living on earth but also the saints and angels in heaven.³

In this refusal to identify Church and state while holding the Church to be superior to the state, Augustine was following in a Christian tradition that had existed since Christianity’s earliest days. For instance, in about 130 CE the pseudonymous Christian author “Mathetes” wrote in his “Epistle to Diognetus,”

They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. … What the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible. … The soul is imprisoned in the body, yet preserves that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are the preservers of the world.⁴

The relationship that was to develop between the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages was a stark departure from these early Christian and later Augustinian views of the proper relationship between Church and state.

According to Lord Bryce, “it is hardly too much to say that the Holy Roman Empire is built upon the foundations of De Civitate Dei.”⁵ However, in spite of the influence that Augustine’s views ostensibly had upon the medieval papacy and the government of the Holy Roman Empire, it is difficult to discern how the relationship between Church and state in Western Europe in the eleventh century reflects anything but a terrible misunderstanding and misuse of De Civitate Dei. As Etienne Gilson wrote, “it is a mistake to take the City of God as a charter for an earthly kingdom. This was a mistake made by Charlemagne and his associates, who thought to realize the Heavenly City in the Holy Roman Empire.”⁶ In the end, attempts of both the medieval papacy and of the Holy Roman emperors to identify the City of God with their own temporal institutions and political power have much more to do with the pagan attitudes which Augustine of Hippo wrote De Civitate Dei to refute than with any ideas that Augustine himself actually held or taught.


Notes
¹ John Neville Figgis, The Political Aspects of S. Augustine's 'City of God', Volume 4 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921), 84-5.
² Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, IV. 4.
³ Robert B. Downs, Books That Changed the World (New York: Signet Classic, 1983), 166-7.
⁴ Mathetes, “Epistle to Diognetus,” V-VI.
⁵ James Bryce Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (New York: General Books LLC, 2010), 18.


Bibliography

Augustine of Hippo. City of God. Edited by Vernon J. Bourke. New York: Doubleday, 1958.

Bryce, James Bryce. The Holy Roman Empire. New York: General Books LLC, 2010.

Downs, Robert B. Books That Changed the World. New York: Signet Classic, 1983.

Figgis, John Neville. The Political Aspects of S. Augustine's 'City of God', Volume 4. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921.

Mathetes. “Epistle to Diognetus.”

Fact and fiction in the Inquisitions

Contrary to the widespread belief in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Inquisitors were, with few exceptions, not psychotic sadists who were insatiably seeking vengeance upon heretics through death penalties. The Inquisitors were normally well-trained canon lawyers and frequently Dominican friars or members of another religious order. Recent research has shown that they were sufficiently astute to be skeptical of the witchcraft craze of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and to find the vast majority of the accusations against old women and similar marginal people who were alleged to be witches to be without substance.

Therefore, the courts of the papal mandated Inquisition should never be considered in the same category as the Nazi holocaust or Stalinist purges. Surviving Inquisitorial records are sparse. But it is a good guess that even including the Spanish Inquisition of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which in more Draconian fashion operated directly under the aegis of the Spanish crown rather than the papacy, the total number of people who died at the hands of all Catholic Inquisitions did not exceed five figures and probably did not total more than ten thousand people.

Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 425-6.

Meaning of human suffering

In the Christian worldview ... all human suffering has meaning. The meaning of suffering is found in the Mystery of the Cross, where the sacrifice and suffering of Christ, the Man-befriending God, opened the way to Paradise for erring mankind. He Who was without sin took on our sin, and suffered out of His great love for us. ("Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).) Christ's Sacrifice sheds upon all human suffering an unearthly beauty for those with eyes to see. Through the Cross, suffering has the ability to purify the soul and bring redemption. In Christ, all suffering borne with patience and prayer gives us spiritual wings, and we taste from time to time the consolations of Heaven.

Sarah Elizabeth Cowie, More Spirited Than Lions: Orthodox Response to Feminism and a Practical Guide to the Spiritual Life of Women (Salisbury: Regina Orthodox Press, 2001), 219.

Equality of man and woman: another revolutionary Christian idea

In respect of chastity, I see that the majority of men are ill disposed, and that their laws are unequal and irregular. For what was the reason why they restrained the woman, but indulged the man, and that a woman who practices evil against her husband's bed is an adulteress, and the penalties of the law for this are very severe; but if the husband commits fornication against his wife, he has no account to give? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom. Those who made the law were men, and therefore their legislation is hard on women, since they have placed children also under the authority of their fathers, while leaving the weaker sex uncared for. God does not do so, but says Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise. ... See the equality of [God's] legislation. There is one Maker of man and woman; one debt is owed by children to both parents.

How then do you demand chastity, while you do not yourself observe it? ... How, though you are equally a body, do you legislate unequally? If you inquire into the worse -- The Woman sinned, and so did Adam. The serpent deceived them both; and one was not found to be the stronger and the other weaker. But do you consider the better? Christ saves both by His Passion. Was He made flesh for the man? So He was also for the woman. Did He die for the man? The woman also is saved by His death. He is called of the seed of David; and so perhaps you think the man is honored; but He is born of a Virgin, and this is on the woman's side. The two, He says, shall be one flesh; so let the one flesh have equal honor. (St. Gregory the Theologian, "Oration XXXVII," 6-7)

Women in the Roman Empire in the first century AD

Freeborn women continued to scratch out a living as laundresses, weavers, butchers, and fishsellers, or in one of the occupations that are recorded on inscriptions at Pompeii: bean-dealer, nail-seller, brick-maker, even stonecutter. A number of poor women worked as waitresses in taverns, where they were probably expected, or obliged, to engage in prostitution on the side. In fact, for a lot of unskilled working-class women, prostitution was the only way to make a living, however inadequate. Many worked out-of-doors in the public archways (fornices). Slave women were employed mostly in the homes of the wealthy, cooking, cleaning, weaving -- in short, doing whatever they were told to do, which sometimes meant submitting to the sexual demands of their owners.

It has been suggested that it was also mainly among the poorer classes that newborn children were abandoned (in the Roman term, "exposed"), left in public places -- either because their parents were unable to care for them or because they were unwanted -- usually, it seems, with the expectation (or hope) that they would be found and raised as slaves. Many undoubtedly died. Apologists for the Romans have sometimes minimized the extent of the practice, but the evidence is conclusive: it was both widespread and widely accepted. It is reasonably clear also that daughters were abandoned more often than sons, perhaps because they might some day need a dowry, and could therefore be seen to be a potential drain on the family's financial resources. It is a cruel and often unremarked irony that the very institution of dowry, which served as the means by which some women acquired a measure of independence within marriage, may have condemned others to slavery. (Marcel Le Glay, A History of Rome, 4^th Ed., pp. 179-180)