Bible Study Gospel of John Pt. 16

Tags

Bridegroom, Gospel of John, Trinity

Thank you to all who send questions. There were some really excellent ones this week. Please keep them coming!

Beginning this week, our normal Bible Study time will usurped by the Presanctified Liturgies of Great Lent. In truth, however, people are not showing up in person to the study, but rather prefer to listen on their own time and send questions via email. Thus, I can record in part or in whole at various times during the week, knitting together recordings as necessary. In other words, we will continue to study the Gospel of John throughout Lent and I will encourage people to continue to send in questions.

The text for next session will be John 4:1-13.

The audio for this session can be found here.

Music: http://www.bensound.com

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Bible Study Gospel of John Pt. 15

Tags

Gospel of John, St. Athanasius, Trinity

This session is actually a meditation on the Holy Trinities a way of introduction to the reading of John 3:22-36, which we will tackle this coming week.

The audio can be found here.

Music: http://www.bensound.com

Economy vs. Theology

Tags

Christmas, Essence and Energy, Oration 38, St. Gregory the Theologian, Trinity

Having left his discussion of theology (which Orthodox Christians today might call a discussion about the essence of God), St. Gregory begins a meditation upon the economy of God (which corresponds to the activity, energy, hypostatic reality and grace of God). While we can never comprehend the essence of God, we can fully participate in this economy of God.

This distinction made by St. Gregory is important because it allows us to at least acknowledge and to try and work within the limitations of the mind and language to talk about the experience of the Church and what God has revealed Himself to be. The reality that God is One and Three at the same time can be appreciated. The oneness of God is communicated by the essence of God and the fact that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is communicated by the hypostatic reality (the personhood) of God.

Note that when St. Gregory begins to talk about how God shares His goodness with His creation that he begins to talk about the persons of God: “accomplished by the Word and perfected by the Spirit.” Our ability (and therefore the means through which all of creation is able) to participate in the reality of God occurs in what we call the personhood of God. We experience and have a relationship with the persons of the Trinity: through the descent of the Holy Spirit we are able to partake of the Son and become children of the Father.

In his second universal letter, Peter states that

he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.

If this partaking of the divine nature happened at an essential level (we partake of the essence of God), then creation would necessarily be eternal. God does not change. Therefore there never was a time when He wasn’t Father. It follows that there was never a time when He wasn’t Creator, either. Thus, creation is eternal.

This logic, however, is rejected by the Church (it is found in the musings of Origen and was declared heresy at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in A.D. 553) because it denies the experience of the Church. Creation has a beginning, and therefore, by nature (essence), has an end. In essence, we are changeable (we become and then cease to be). Even the most holy of all creation — the angels — are changeable (movable). St. Gregory:

I am persuaded to consider and say that they are not immovable but only difficult to move on account of the one who was called Lucifer

The distinction between the ousia (aka essence, nature, “theology”) and hypostases (aka activities, persons, “economy”) of God allow us to break the logic of Origen and express the experience of the Church in language that makes the ineffable communicable.

In other words, while we can never know the essence of God, we can partake of the hypostatic reality of God. This linguistic distinction, while not wholly comprehensible, does allow us to begin to understand how it is possible how the Church has experienced the revelation that God is One in essence and in Three hypostases. We can see how He is both unknowable and knowable, that He is both Father and Creator and that the Nativity of Christ is not only possible, but one of the greatest moments in all of history.

Humility

Tags

Christmas, Essence and Energy, humility, language, Oration 38, St. Gregory the Theologian, Trinity

In Section 8 of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration38, he continues to discuss how mediocre the mind is for the task of understanding the nature of God. Despite the fact that we are capable of knowing that God is without limit, even the way we understand limitlessness is inadequate. Not only are we limited by our minds and our experiences, but language itself is incapable of describing the totality of our experience, let alone the nature of God.

This last admonition is extremely important. Allowing ourselves to admit that language, while an incredibly useful tool, is not capable of adequately describing the world in which we live and our experience of the world removes the temptation that modern man has so enthusiastically embraced: if language is so limited, how can we possibly be masters of our world? This allows us to begin a path towards humility, which is the only way we can begin to comprehend all that God does for us.

Part of this humility is the admission that the Gospel not only should be preached in as many languages as possible, but needs to be. Every language is used by God to reveal Himself to humanity. Every language has its own unique ways that it communicates the reality of God. If we insist upon one translation, one language or even two or three, we severely limit not only ourselves, but who we believe God can be.

Just a quick example: Malachai 4:2 gives Christ the title Sun of Righteousness. In English (not the traditional “Scriptural” languages of Greek and Hebrew) Sun is a homophone with Son, revealing that the title properly belongs to Christ, the Son of God — the Son of Righteousness.

Having, then, the humility that even language is incapable of describing the nature of God, we can begin to make a critical distinction about the way we talk about God. In Section 8 of Oration 38, St. Gregory uses the words “theology” and “economy” to describe this distinction.

In other words, while it is impossible for us to understand the nature of God, we can begin to discuss the activities of God. This, then, is the proper way to approach God — not through philosophy, mental exercises or a rational preconception, but, rather, the collective experience of the Church.

For example, in the Church’s experience, God is One and is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There really is no rational way to explain this reality. It just is (another reason why God revealed His name to be O ΩΝ — “the one who is”). One can begin to see why insisting that God is a Divine Simplicity leads to heresy — it denies the Church’s experience of God.

Thus, if we humbly accept the reality that we cannot comprehend the nature of God but that we can experience the activities of God and that the record of this experience exists in His Church, we can begin to understand the magnitude of what happened in a cave in Bethlehem two millennia ago. We can begin to understand why it is we cry aloud: Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

No Mere Ethical System

Tags

Psalm 1, St. Hilary, Trinity

St. Hilary, having defined the ungodly, sinners and the seat of pestilence now moves on to meditate upon the blessed:

But the fact that he has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence, does not constitute the perfection of the man’s happiness. For the belief that one God is the Creator of the world, the avoidance of sin by the pursuit of unassuming goodness, the preference of the tranquil leisure of private life to the grandeur of public position—all this may be found even in a pagan. But here the Prophet, in portraying in the likeness of God the man that is perfect—one who may serve as a noble example of eternal happiness—points to the exercise by him of no commonplace virtues, and to the words, But his will hath been in the Law of the Lord, for the attainment of perfect happiness. To refrain from what has gone before is useless unless his mind be set on what follows, But his will hath been in the Law of the Lord. The Prophet does not look for fear. The majority of men are kept within the bounds of Law by fear; the few are brought under the Law by will: for it is the mark of fear not to dare to omit what it is afraid of, but of perfect piety to be ready to obey commands. This is why that man is happy whose will, not whose fear, is in the Law of God.

Note that being an ethical person is not enough — Christianity is more than an ethical system. The blessed man meditates upon the Law and follows that Law, but not out of fear. It is necessary at this point to remember the purpose of the Law — revelation. Take a look at the Ten Commandments:

• You shall have no other gods before Me.
• You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
• You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
• Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
• Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
• You shall not murder.
• You shall not commit adultery.
• You shall not steal.
• You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Note that these are all about relationships. The first four are about how we should relate to God and the last six are about how we should relate to our fellow human beings. This reveals several things about God:

• He is a relational being.
• Since His commandments are relational with both God and humanity, He has relationships with both Himself and humanity.
• This suggests that He is a Trinity of persons.
• It also reveals a desire to have the second person of that Trinity become a human being. As St. John famously says, God so loved the world that He gave His Only-begotten Son (3:16).

In other words, obedience to God is not about fear, but about a relationship based on love. The ultimate goal of this love is a union between God and humanity where human beings fulfill their potential by becoming like God. No mere ethical system will ever accomplish that.

Creator

Tags

Christmas, St. Ambrose, Trinity

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

One thing I would like to emphasize on this Great and Holy Feast is a title that St. Ambrose shows is attributed to all three persons of the Trinity (from the fifth chapter of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit:

But who can doubt that the Holy Spirit gives life to all things; since both He, as the Father and the Son, is the Creator of all things; and the Almighty Father is understood to have done nothing without the Holy Spirit; and since also in the beginning of the creation the Spirit moved upon the water.

Thus, our Creator becomes incarnate today, as we sing in the Stichera of Vespers for the Nativity:

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Creator of all. Eden offers a cave, and a star reveals Christ, the Sun, unto those in darkness. The Magi, enlightened by faith, worshipped with gifts; and shepherds beheld the wonder, while Angels sang praises, saying: Glory to God in the highest.

What, then, shall we offer to our Creator who today is willingly seen as a babe born in a cave?

Life

Tags

Ascension, Christmas, Cross, Holy Spirit, Resurrection, St. Ambrose, Trinity, Worship

Yesterday, I spent time meditating on the title Life as it pertains to Christ the Tree of Life; however, St. Ambrose highlights the title in order to show how it applies to the Holy Spirit. In chapter three of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit he observes:

So, then, the world had not eternal life, because it had not received the Spirit; for where the Spirit is, there is eternal life

Again, because today we are on the Eve of Christmas, let me try to bring this idea to bear upon the Nativity. Yesterday, I noted how the hymnody equated the Incarnation with salvation due to the reality of God becoming a human being and therefore shattering that which separates us from God, as we sing in the Stichera of Vespers for the Nativity:

Come, let us rejoice in the Lord as we declare this present mystery. The middle wall of partition is broken asunder; the flaming sword is turned back, the Cherubim withdraw from the Tree of Life, and I partake of the Paradise of Delight, whence I was cast out before through disobedience.

However, the Tree of Life is also the Cross, therefore more is yet to be done. Note all of the things accomplished by Christ in this prayer from the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom:

Remembering, therefore, this command of the Savior, and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

All of this is necessary in order for what happens next in the Divine Liturgy:

Once again we offer to You this spiritual worship without the shedding of blood, and we ask, pray, and entreat You: send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here presented.

And make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ.

And that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Your Christ.

Changing them by Your Holy Spirit.

In other words, our access to Christ, the Tree of Life, is through the descent of the Holy Spirit. Without that descent, there is no Incarnaton, no cross, no tomb, no resurrection, no ascension, no enthronement and no second coming. And without any of these, that descent is not accomplished in us.

Remember this the next time we pray Psalm 50(51):

Do not cast me out of your presence: do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Amen.

Counsel

Tags

Christmas, Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose, Trinity

The main means by which St. Ambrose sets about demonstrating the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the first several chapters of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit is to show how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. To do this, he shows that titles given to the Father and/or the Son are also given to the Holy Spirit. This from chapter two:

For the Spirit Himself is Power, as you read: ‘The Spirit of Counsel and of Power (or might)’ (Isa. 11:2). And as the Son is the Angel of great counsel, so, too, is the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Counsel, that you may know that the Counsel of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is One.

One of the connotations of the Greek word βουλή (counsel) is the process or deliberation by which a decision is made or a problem is resolved. In terms of a royal court, this process would include a small, trusted inner group of counsellors that the king would turn to in order to get advice.

Thus, the implication of giving the title Counsel to God is that He wishes us to be part of that inner group — part of that process. It is not His will to rule from on high and arbitrarily judge His creation. Rather, He willingly descends into the mire and muck that is the fallen world in order to raise us up into that heavenly court. As we sing in the Kontakion of the Forefeast of Christmas:

On this day the Virgin comes to a cave to give birth to God the Word ineffable, Who was before all the ages. Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.

How awesome is the mystery that God so loves us — that God so desires us to be part of his inner and trusted circle — that He would send us His Son to become a babe.

Power

Tags

Holy Spirit, Samson, St. Ambrose, temptation, Trinity

In the first chapter of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose continues his discussion of Samson’s strength. Since the source of this power is the Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose begins to compare how the word power is used in context of the Trinity:

Of the Son you have read that Christ is ‘the Power of God and the Wisdom of God’ (1 Cor. 1:24). We read, too, that the Father is Power, as it is written: ‘Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power of God’ (Matt. 26:64). He certainly named the Father Power, at Whose right hand the Son sits, as you read: ‘The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand’ (Ps. 110 [109]:1). And the Lord Himself named the Holy Spirit Power, when He said: ‘Ye shall receive Power when the Holy Spirit cometh upon you’ (Acts 1:8).

This adds another layer of meaning to the point I made yesterday. The same power that descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost is the same power that is Christ, the Wisdom of God; it is the same power that Christ sits next to at the right hand of the Father. In other words, when Orthodox Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit, the power they have access to through the Spirit is the same power of the Father and of the Son.

This puts an interesting spin on those of us who wish to excuse our own weaknesses with those four little words, “I can’t do it.” Yes, that may be true, but if we allow the power of the Holy Spirit to wash over us and allow Him to work in and through us, so, too, do we allow Christ and the Father to work in and through us. We should remember this the next time we are faced with temptation or with something that seems just too hard.

Hospitality of Abraham

Tags

Holy Spirit, Icons, Old Testament, St. Ambrose, Theophany, Trinity

Modern Orthodox Christians will recognize this icon as an icon of the Trinity:

More properly called The Hospitality of Abraham, it depicts the three angels sent to Abraham to inform him and his wife Sarah that they were to have a son. Abraham, personifying hospitality, provides the best meal he is able to offer.

Ancient witness usually only sees Christ in these three angels, as represented by this witness of Eusebios of Caesaria (Evangelic proof 5,19 LGF 27, 208):

The visitors who were hosted by Abraham are leaning on a table; the two of them are on each side of it, while the one seated in the middle surpasses them in authority; may he be the Lord that was foretold us; our Saviour, to whom even the ignorant show respect, by hearkening to the divine words

Note how the central angel is dressed in the same colors normally found on Christ and how the central angel is blessing a chalice. This, therefore, is understood to be a prefigurement of the Divine Liturgy, where Christ is the High Priest.

A more proper (and a New Testament) icon of the Trinity is this one:

More readily known as the icon of Epiphany, the feast is also called by Orthodox Christians Theophany — which means the appearance of God. It is the first time in Scripture where God explicitly reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Note the first verse of the apolytikion of Theophany:

Lord, when You were baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest.

Intriguingly, however, St. Ambrose makes this observation in the Introduction to the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit:

But neither was Abraham ignorant of the Holy Spirit; he saw Three and worshipped One, for there is one God, one Lord, and one Spirit. And so there is a oneness of honour, because there is a oneness of power.

Thus, St. Ambrose gives witness to a similar Trinitarian interpretation of the Hospitality of Abraham that modern Orthodox Christians do. I would have to do more research, but this is the oldest such witness that I am aware of.