09.30.07
Christ’s Birth Restores or Improves?; and What is ‘Passibility’ and ‘Impassibility’?
Continued from the previous post from the Ambigua,
In short if you wish to know precisely what our teacher is saying, you should investigate what is the cardinal causal principle of humany’s creaturely origin, which ever endures in its proper permanence. And you should investigate what is the mode, according to God’s disciplinary economy of Christ’s birth on account of human sin, the goal of which is the correction of disciplined humanity and humanity’s complete return to the true principle of it’s creaturely origin such that humanity might clearly learn how God in becoming man, was perfectly begotten both in terms of his creaturely origin and his birth, and that it was indeed for humanity that Christ maintained the logos of the creaturely origin while also wisely restoring humanity’s means of exisiting to its true logos.
[from the notes: Dumitru Staniloae's comment on this passage is quite circumspect, "St. Maximus here analyzes in more detail the relation between the antecedent principle (logos) of man's creation, which is his cause, and the mode (tropos) of human birth introduced because of the fall. Through God's pedagogical economy (punitive education), this mode is intended to guide man toward the principle of his creation, and toward the knowledge of this creation. Man must advance by enduring the trials that stem from sin and so too from his birth through carnal desire in order to attain to his final goal: complete restoration in the principle or cause of his creation.... Maximus thus ascribes a positive role to birth through carnal desire, contrary to platonizing originism. Man's "creation" has been effected not by a fall from an existence in primordial unity, but by a positive action of God for the sake of human beatitude. But once he has sinned, man can no longer be saved by a retreat from his terrestrial existence, but by progression from birth associated with desire, a development consisting of the work of purification from sin, so that he can attain a final goal which lies, not behind him, but before him - i.e., in accordance with the original principle of his nature, which came into existence by creation. For this reason even the Son of God accepted the mode of bodily birth, but from a body that was pure from its very beginning. Because he combined this mode of birth with the principle of his created provenance, he has thus unified the mode of human birth with the principle of human creation for the sake of the economy of salvation."]
Our original intent, logos, was restored through a different method because of the fall, and in this passage Maximus ascribes a “positive role to birth through carnal desire”. Not that this was God’s original intention, but that He made it turn out for not only good, but for better?
On Passibility and Impassibility from St. Maximus’ Ad Thalassium:
For in truth it was necessary that the Lord – who is by nature wise and just and capable- not, in his wisdom, ignore the means of curing us nor in his justice arbitrarily save humanity when it had fallen under sin by its own free will nor in his omnipotence falter in bringing the healing of humanity to completion. He manifested the plan of his wisdom then in the manner in which he cured humanity: by becoming a man without undergoing any kind of change and alteration. He exhibited the equity of his justice in the magnitude of his condescension, when he willingly submitted to the condemnation imposed on our passibility and turned that very passibility into an instrument for eradicating sin and the death which is its consequence – or in other words, for eradicating pleasure and the pain which is its consequence. For it was in human passibility that the power of sin and death, the tyranny of sin connected with pleasure and the oppression associated with pain all began. Indeed the rule of pleasure and pain over our nature clearly originated in the liability to passions. Wanting to escape the oppressive experience of pain we sought refuge in pleasure, attempting to console our nature when it was hardpressed with pain’s torrent. Striving to blunt pain’s spasms with pleasure, we merely sanctioned against ourselves a greater debt of pain powerless to disconnect pleasure from pain and its toils. But the Lord exerted manifest strength of transcendent power by inaugurating for human nature a birth unchanged by the contrary realities (of pleasure and pain) which he himself experienced. For having given our human nature impassibility through his passion, remission through his toils, and eternal life through his death, he restored that nature again, renewing the habitudes of human nature by his own deprivations in the flesh and granting to human nature through his own Incarnation the supernatural grace of deification.
I see how Christ’s being God improved our state through uniting deity to our humanity, and that this is better than what Adam had. But I’m working on how His becoming passible by post-fall birth which I’m starting to understand as being subject to fallen pleasure/pain, addiction/oppression , yet through enduring it without sin, He gave passitility to pre-fall Adam – which post-fall Adam had obtained through illicitly eating of the tree, and impassibility to post-fall Adam through His Passion. So what is the advantage of pre-fall Adam having passibility? The difference is passibility in connection with and obedience to God. Adam was supposed to eventually eat of the tree when he was ready. By prematurely eating in disobedience, we were cut off from God. Christ reconnected our nature to God and endured the pain of our nature but gave to us the benefit of having eaten of the tree in the proper time, thus enabling Christ’s Passion. This must be connected to the Wedding Supper which Adam and Eve hadn’t experienced. I need to think about that some more, or maybe Maximus will get to it soon.
09.28.07
Christ by His ignoble birth renews and improves the pre-fall Adamic state
St. Maximus explains that Christ’s creaturely original sinlessness combining with his subsequent human birth with the consequences of human sinfulness and passions “enabled his birth to save his creaturely origin, and paradoxically renewed the incorruptibility of his creaturely origin by his own suffering. On the other hand, he enabled his creaturely origin passibility (capable of feeling or suffering; sensitive-Answers.com) of that birth with his own sinlessness.” Oh I think I see, His suffering and sinlessness in His fallen body renewed incorruptibility and enabled passibility (sin, choosing pleasure over pain, blocked change and made us insensible to God?).
“He accomplished these things in order to preserve in full the creaturely origin which secured his human nature in its divinely perfect principle, and fully to liberate from [the bonds of] birth that same nature, fallen through sin, that it might no longer embrace the same means of procreation as all the rest of the animals of the earth.”
? So if sin is choosing pleasure over pain, and that is what sexual sin and over-eating, and greed for that matter are all about, then it seems he’s making a jump from Adam’s original sin of unlawful consumption to how Christ changed the human means of procreation. Unless he’s saying that waiting instead of giving in to premature impulses is what raises us above the animals. Though even dogs can learn to sit with food in front of them and wait for the master’s command before they eat. But not cats, unless just to psych you out, they are pretending they don’t want it in the first place.
09.27.07
Christ’s Condescension
I think I missed the “three general ways by which they say, for our instruction, our passions are healed” from the last section. A few sentence down which I skipped he says,
“because we are unwilling or incapable of such correction, on account of our inbred disposition toward vice – (1)we are purged of the weakness; or else (2)we reject the present and indwelling vice and learn in advance to anticipate restraining future evil; or else (3)one man sets forth an admirable example of superior perseverance and pious courage for other human beings, if indeed there were a man distinguished in intelligence and virtue, and competent in himself to uncover through unwavering engagement in formidable struggles, the truth which has meanwhile lay hidden.”
The next chapter is called, “On Jesus Christ and the ‘Three Births’”, which refers to His Incarnation, Baptism, and Resurrection. He explains a distinction in Gregory’s saying that Christ’s birth has two aspects, the Genesis prefall “inbreathing of Adam” and being Incarnated after the fall inheriting a nature subject to passions and moral liability.
Through his creaturely origin, he took it on himself to become by nature the same (as Adam) in terms of the “vital inbreathing” of man, and on that basis, receiving as man what was created in the divine image, he persevered without selling out his freedom or compromising his sinlessness. On the other hand, through his incarnational birth, when, in the form of a servant, he voluntarily assumed the likeness of corruptible humanity (Phil. 2:7), he willingly allowed himself to be made subject virtually to the same natural passions as us yet without sin (Heb. 4:35); the sinless one became morally liable, as it were.
For he is doubly identified by the two parts of which he is constituted; he has perfectly become the New Adam, while bearing in himself the first Adam, and he is both of these at once, without diminution…. He became the new Adam by assuming a sinless creaturely origin and yet submitting to a passible birth. Perfectly combining the two parts in Himself in a reciprocal relation, he effectively rectified the deficiency of the one with the extreme of the other, and vice versa, by causing his birth amid dishonor to save and renew his honorable creaturely origin and, conversely, by making his creaturely origin sustain and preserve his birth.
In the last post St. Maximus talked about leveling out inequality, as if the corrected thing has enough correction left over to inherently affect and correct it’s environment, the other thing. This is a mystery to me. Christ by being made like prefall Adam, he in his divinity and sinless obedience corrected post-fall Adam and thus corrected human nature, and by association, proximity, and dwelling in Him we are organically and holistically corrected too, it’s like an exponential increase of grace in the world. Like energy, which I’ve heard is a universal constant, neither increasing or decreasing, started increasing. But perhaps grace is a natural byproduct of correction. The innate grace of God’s image is trapped by the malalignment it encounters within our souls and bodies, so when we are realligned, we automatically radiate His likeness, His energy.
But since we have free will, not all are attracted to Him and thus run away and justify themselves as to why they do not come to the wedding feast within the physical Church, so grace doesn’t increase in the world as it could. Before the Protestants and later groups started taking over monastic/consecrated lands I would think that there were more graced places in the world inhabited by graced people. So when these places and people were divided from their Sacramental practices, persecuted and killed, grace must have decreased. So to me, either the piety of the Church members decreased to allow such a hostile takeover, or evil was allowed to increase by the will of those who did not wish to be part of the physical Church. They preferred Gnosticism without a physical participation in heavenly realities. They denied Incarnation and deification of physical man and matter. But could this takeover by Muslims, Iconoclastic Protestants, and Atheist Communists have happened if there was not a weakness, or a lapse in the Faithful? We must guard ourselves. I know this notion riles some people, but I am speaking from my current understanding, limited though it is.
09.26.07
“On How the Creator Brings Order out of the Chaos of Bodily Existence”
Carrying on with the theme of inherent vs. fallen matter and it’s union with the soul, from Ambiguum 8,
From Gregory’s same Oration, “So long as matter bears with it chaos, as in a flowing stream…” [notes say "But whether the affliction they suffer comes from God is not clear so long as matter carries with it chaos, as in a flowing stream." Maximus sees this statement, like the one under discussion in Amb. 7, as fitting into a larger explanation of how the evils associated with bodily existence have come about, not as punishment for the sins of pre-incarnate souls, but as the result of the origins of material instability and corporeal mutability within God's providential economy. In the background is the vexed question, already addressed by Gregory of Nyssa and taken up once again by Maximus of how such instability and mutability could be only an effect stemming from Adam's sin in paradise and not somehow an antecedent cause of that sin. Was Adam not a passable being before he lapsed? Did he at first dwell in a state of virtuous impassibility? (Polycarp Sherwood)]
Having devoted as much of his discourse as possible to those infatuated with matter and the body, Gregory adds these statements so that whoever examines the saint’s intention with proper piety (me: note how individual standing affects interpretation) can interpret it as follows. Man came into being adorned with the God-given beauty of incorruptibility and immortality, but having preferred the shame of the material nature around him over spiritual beauty, (me: materialism) and in addition wholly forgotten the eminent dignity of his soul-or rather the God who beautified the soul with divine form-he plucked a “fruit” which, according to the divine decree that wisely administers our salvation, was worthy of the deliberative will, thus reaping not only bodily corruption and death, and the liability and propensity to every passion, but also the instability and inequality of external and material being, and the capacity and proneness for undergoing change.
Possib(ly) from the beginning God, in his foreknowledge, formed the soul in the aforesaid way (blended our soul together with our body) because he foresaw the ocming transgression, so that by suffering and experiencing evil on its own, the soul would come to an awareness of itself and its proper dignity, and even gladly embrace detachment with respect to the body.
I suppose that “detachment” is at first necessary in our sinful state to reorder our motivations. When we are in sin, our body is in control to the detriment of our soul. So the soul, not liking to be in a sorry state, has to say ‘wait a minute’ and then tell what the body to do.
For the all-wise Provider of our life allows what we do by our own impulses to be used, quite naturally and frequently, for our correction. In the case of us who frantically deal with our impulsive acts amid the confusion and the disorder of which those acts are both an object and a cause, our Provider guides the irrational love which, in the meantime, we have directed toward present diversions, back to that which is beloved by nature. [notes: the conversion of irrational love, the soul's natural desire, to the true Good, is a familiar theme to the Cappadocian Fathers and in Maximus himself, as is the notion of the soul being converted, as it were, to its own inherent beauty, the image of God.] For there are three general ways by which, they say for our instruction, our passions are healed. Through each of the three (me: I think they will be listed in the next chapter), God renders a healing treatment of the self-directing evil vexation of the passions, as he wisely sets the chaos of matter in good order (Jacob, I’m skipping the Greek words!), according to the better plan which transcends us and leads toward the beneficial outcome that God himself knows.
Gregory is therefore advising those who think of nothing beyond this present life that they not put their confidence in bodily health and in the course of affairs that “bears” [their material life] along as in a “flowing stream”, nor exalt themselves at athe expense of those who lack these things, so long as the present life endures and they embrace its corruption, to which is related both mutability and change; and so long as there is uncertainty that something will happen to them arising from both the inequality and disordered state of their body and their external affairs. this is what Gregory means, I think, by saying “so long as matter bears with it chaos…” instead of “so long as this whole realm is subject to corruption and change.” It is his way of saying that we are clothed in the body of humiliation, and likewise we are subject to the manifold evils that arise from it because of its inherent weakness; and rather than magnifying ourselves over others in view of the inequality all around us, we should by prudent consideration even out of the disparity of our nature, which in its own right is equal in honor, by filling others’ deficiencies with our own abundances. [notes: Maximus has gleaned from Gregory Nanzianzen a corrective response (to Origen) Bodily inequality (and mutability) is rather a fact of material life, an evidence of the latent chaos of material creation out of which God is workin, in the lives of the virtuous, to bring about a blessed orderliness, a gracious equality. The virtuous must, then, actively engage in the ministry of “equalizing” both by their own internal discipline of their bodily passions, and by their extraverted acts on behalf of those who are even more severly challenged by bodily infirmity or by the “chaos” of the passions. Our “abundances”-embodied, paradoxically it seems, in our own acts of humility-help reconcile their “deficiencies.”
So his premise is that the soul has retained the divine image, though marred by sin originating in the body. But since the divine image resides in the soul, even though it permeates the body, it is the soul which must wake up and seek correction. I find it interesting how he brings out inequality – I believe in the soul’s goodness over the body’s undisciplined nature, introversion – with those around us, men and matter, and how we are to seek to regain order in ourselves as well as our environment. By the way, I started a compost pile today.
09.25.07
Reconnecting/uniting, the soul and body
I think I suffer from a soul/body detachment. This is due to universal as well as individual experience. At the fall our members where sundered, at least perceptually and thus functionally so. Perhaps some of the traumas and sins that I’ve experienced have caused me to realize this divide. By the way, I never intellectually understood how something that happens to our bodies affects our spirits or souls. I don’t think my Protestant upbringing provided enough foundational basis for why this is so. I remember a youth minister saying that we shouldn’t engage in premarital sex because we are like tape and the more we stick to something, the less sticky we are for our spouse. I wondered if he was talking about an emotional connection or what. I think St. Maximus helps clarify why this is so.
The term “portion” then was properly used by our teacher [St. Gregory Nanzianzus] in the ways we have explained, and anyone who approaches this matter with an open mind and does not try to be clever, will understand it as follows: in this passage “portion” means member. For if member is part of the body and part is the same as portion, then member is the same as portion. And if portion is the same as member, and the bringing together and compostition of the members produces an organic body, and an organic body united to an intellectual soul gives us a complete human being, then it is correct to say that the soul or the body is a part or member of a man. The body is an instrument of the intellectual soul of a man, and the whole soul permeates the whole body and gives it life and motion. At the same time the soul is not divided or enclosed in it, since the soul is simple and incorporeal by nature. It is wholly present to the entire body and to each of its members. The body is of such a nature that it can make a place for the soul by an inherent power that is receptive to the soul’s activity. The soul tightly clasps the various members that receive it in the different ways proper to each member’s way of maintaining the unity of the body. Approach then the great and ineffable mystery that is the blessed hope of Christians with these things in mind. If one does not attempt to forge images of what is great and heavenly using trivial and earthbound things, one’s thinking on these matters will be more discerning and subtle.
If the body and soul are parts of man, as we have seen, it must be granted that as parts each necessarily bears a relation to something other than itself. It is only as they are related to each other that they have the whole predicated of them. Something that is always spoken of in relation to something else must have come into existence with the other. For the parts by coming together constitute the whole, and what each is in essence can be distinguished only in thought. Therefore since they are parts of man it is impossible for either the soul or the body to exist before the other or indeed to exist after the other in time. If that were not the case the necessary relation each has to the other would be destroyed.
He’s combating Origen’s preexistence view, but I’m trying to figure out the relation between the parts and the whole so I’ll skip some parts. I accept the Orthodox understanding that to be human is to have a soul and a body and that we’re not human one without the other. Therefore the state of the departed is not ideal, and why we treasure relics, because we believe the person is still connected to their dead bodies. This is manifested by many miracles, including healings, fragrances, and oil emitted from the bodies of reposed Saints, those who have a healed relationship in Christ between their souls and their bodies. He has a wonderful explanation of why this is so, but you’ll have to get the book as I’m putting my own needs first here.
There is a simultaneous coming to be of the whole species with its parts (rather than each part developing independently by itself)…. For like the soul [the body] has the whole human being predicted of it as part of its species according to its condition…. Soul and body came into being at the same moment and their essential difference from each other in no way whatsoever impairs the logoi that inhere naturally and essentially in them. For that reason it is inconceivable to speak of the soul and body except in relation to each other. It is only as they come together to form a particular person that they exist. If either existed before the other, it would have to be understood as the soul or the body of the one to which the other belongs. The relation between them is immutable.
Our soul’s relation to our body has been compared to God’s relation to our soul, and Christ’s relation to the Church, (as well as the husband’s relationship to the wife?) For this organically Incarnated hypostasis to be fully functional, unity must be attained by purification from disease. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
09.24.07
The Incarnation
The context for the following is St. Maximus’ defense of his saying we are “portions of God”
“Hence the Creator-Word, wishing to display this mingling and to produce a single living being with both intellect and sensation, invisible and visible, made man. Taking a body from already existing matter and breathing life into it from himself, the Word fashioned an intellectual soul made in the image of God as a kind of second cosmos. He placed this marvelous creature, though weak in comparison to other animals, on the the earth, like an angel he was able to worship God with the senses as well as the intellect.” [Maximus is quoting St. Gregory's Oration on the Nativity]
The mystery hidden from the ages (Col. 1:26) and from the nations is now revealed through the true and perfect incarnation of the Son of God. For he united our nature to himself in a single hypostasis, without division and without confusion, and joined us to himself as a kind of first fruits. This holy flesh with its intellectual and rational soul came from us and is ours. He deemed us worthy to be one and the same with himself according to his humanity. For we were predestined before the ages (Eph 1:11-12) to be in him as members of his body. He adapted us to himself and knitted us together in the Spirit as a soul to a body and brought us to the measure of spiritual maturity derived from his fulness. For this we were created; this was God’s good purpose for us before the ages. But this renewal did not come about through the normal course of things, it was only realized when a wholly new way of being human appeared God had made us like himself, and allowed us to participate in the very things that are most characteristic of his goodness. Before the ages he had intended that man’s end was to live in him, and to reach this blessed end he bestowed on us the good gift of our natural powers. But by misusing our natural powers we willingly rejected the way God had provided and we became estranged from God. For this reason another way was introduced, more marvelous and more befitting of God than the first, and as different from the former as what is above nature is different from what is according to nature. And this, as we all believe, is the mystery of the mystical sojurn of God with men. For if, says the divine apostle, the first covenant had been blameless, there would have been no occasion for a second (Heb 8:7). It is clear to all that the mystery accomplished in Christ at the end of age (Heb 9:26) shows indisputably that the sin of our forefather Adam at the beginning of the age has run its course.
I believe he is saying that because of Adam’s sin, God made another way, but this way is better than the first. Yesterday during the Liturgy where we commemorated the Conception of John the Baptist, one of the hymns mentioned (I wish I could find it) how the barren women like Sarah, Hannah, Anna, and Elizabeth had their portion in the Kingdom of Heaven whereas fertile women’s kingdom was on earth, or something like that. Perhaps Adam’s sin caused a barrenness of soul that makes our salvation more wonderful, since it is above nature, than it would have been if things had proceded more in their naturally intended order. Our natural powers were sundered at the fall so that we cannot find God on our own. Christ’s union with humanity provided another way so that we can live in God through Christ’s deified humanity. Our natural way is now towards death and destruction, but in transcending this way, in Christ, we can have abundant life.
09.22.07
The Fickleness Around Us
With my delicate feminine sensibilities I sort of got off on a tangent, so I’m recopying this from the previous post,
Further on in the oration Gregory makes this clear: “But it seems to me, for this reason none of the good things of this present life can be relied on. They are shortlived. The things we see, though made by the creative Logos and the wisdom that transcends all wisdom, are always changing, now one way and now another, born upward and then downward. That is why it seems we are being played with. Before something can be laid hold of it flees and escapes our grasp. Yet there is purpose in all this, for when we reflect on the instability and fickleness of such things, we are led to seek refuge in the enduring things that are to come. For if life always went well, would we not become so attached to our present state, even though we know it will not last, and by deception become enslaved to pleasure? In the end we would think that our present life is the best and noblest, and forget that, being made in the image of God, we are destined for higher things.” [Oration]
There is a tension between the now and not yet. Since the Orthodox believe in the Second Coming, Final Resurrection, and Judgment day, there will be a time when things are different. Yet in seeking salvation, God meets us where we are with grace. We are given glimpses either in our own lives or in reading about others’. Through ascetic struggle to maintain ceaseless prayer and mutual attentiveness with God, we are made aware that God is with us here and now. And through the Eucharist at Church Christ is physically present with us – don’t want to define that too much as I can’t.
But through experience I think I know what he’s saying about this fallen world. When we receive grace through a physical vehicle (I want to develop the idea the through the Incarnation God has made it His will to reach us through the physical things of the world which He united Himself to where there is distinction but not confusion), like a sunset, timely words from others, the faces of those we love, etc, we become gravitationally pulled towards they physical source of the blessing. We can loose sight of God in the thing and can worship the created rather than the creator. I think this is because we want to own and possess and control our source of blessing. We can’t control God, we have to continually submit ourselves to Him and to do that we have to turn our eyes from the physical source of blessing. But just prior to that, He communicated grace to us through the physical thing that we had to receive. But we have to then let the thing go, give it back to God – it will only putrify if we close our hands around it. We hold God with an open hand, and the “things” that He puts in it come and go according to His good pleasure.
But perhaps as things or people get divinized, through prayer and consecration, like the things of the Church – icons, relics, the building – they become more substantial and permanent. C.S. Lewis described something similar in The Great Divorce where as the people achieved Theosis, heavenly grass no longer cut their feet. Consecrated things become ours permanently, and continuously bless through their union with God through the prayers of the people. Do we have that much power? Our cooperation is necessary for the consecration of the whole world and those in it. I think this is why monasteries radiate the grace of God. Mother Christophora of The Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration said that grounds and icons gain grace the more they are in the presence of prayer. It’s not the innate logos of a thing that saves, it’s how it is brought into comformity with God’s will through obedience, and to that extent it will become the source of salvation, grace, to others. Everything has grown according to its logos to some extent or it would cease to exist.
If we loose sight of God and seek personal pleasure, the people and things around us will suffer, if we continuously seek His face and learn His will, commandments and precepts, we will right the fallen universe around us so that it fulfills it’s telos, grow into what it was created, according to it’s implanted logos, to be permantently. Meanwhile, we and the things around us reflect their fallen, impermanent, unstable, fickle state.
09.21.07
Resolving the masculine/feminine dialectic
From The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ
Our forefather Adam, however, used his freedom to turn toward what is worse and to direct his desire away from what had been permitted to what was forbidden. It was in is power to be united to the Lord and become one spirit with God or to join himself to a prostitute and become one body with her (1 Cor 6:15-16). But Adam was deceived and chose to cut himself off voluntarily from God’s happy end for him, preferring by his own free choice to be drawn down to the earth (Gen 2:17) than to become God by grace. Out of wisdom and love for mankind, as befits his goodness, God who works out our salvation, fixed a punishment that is suitable to the irrational movement of our intellectual faculty. The punishment was death, which means that the capacity to render to God what is due God alone, to love him with all our mind, was destroyed. As a result it is only when we have been taught by suffering that we who love non-being can regain the capacity to love what is.
Well that interpretation of 1 Corinthians does not provide a very flattering description of Eve. I have heard that among monastics during St. Maximus’ time, there was a condemnation of married life and exaltation of virginity. I think that is a pretty legalistic, prejudicial view. Most Orthodox nowadays say that there isn’t much difference between monastic and married life in taking up your cross, dying to selfishness, etc. Additionally, throughout history, probably because of Eve initially being the one to give in to the instigation of the fall by Satan and then encouraging Adam to do the same, certain prejudices have been widely held. Women are not to be trusted, it’s all our fault, women are more easily deceived, thus less intelligent, and instruments of Satan to seduce men away from God. In many instances this has been a (possibly) self-fulfilling prophecy. We tend to grow in the expectations of us. But there have always been women who have overcome this stereotype and gained respect nevertheless. As this is not my focus, I wont list examples here. But I think the divisions among different groups regarding venerating Mary could tie in here.
I do not really understand Eve’s culpability in Adam’s fall as most verses point to Adam as the instigator of the fall of man. I don’t know if that’s the chivalrous thing for men to do or if he was to blame in other ways for Eve’s fall. But St. Maximus seems to present the idea that Adam should not have listened to her and let her go to the devil alone. I guess we’ll never know what would have happened if that were the case. But as a result of his joining her in sin, the whole universe fell, and it is in that context that St. Maximus continues his discussion of St. Gregory.
Further on in the oration Gregory makes this clear: “But it seems to me, for this reason none of the good things of this present life can be relied on. They are shortlived. The things we see, though made by the creative Logos and the wisdom that transcends all wisdom, are always changing, now one way and now another, born upward and then downward. That is why it seems we are being played with. Before something can be laid hold of it flees and escapes our grasp. Ye there is purpose in all this, for when we reflect on the instability and fickleness of such things, we are led to seek refuge in the enduring things that are to come. For if life always went well, would we not become so attached to our present state, even though we know it will not last, and by deception become enslaved to pleasure? In the end we would think that our present life is the best and noblest, and forget that, being made in the image of God, we are destined for higher things.” [Oration]
Further, in his Oration, Gregory says: “We are nothing in relation to the authentic and original wisdom. Yet through the irregularity and fluctuation of what is seen, God leads us to what is stable and enduring, and beckons us to seek him alone and to be illumined by the beams of light that come from him. Through the irregularity of things that are seen and shift back and forth God directs us to those that are stable and enduring.”
As I have already said, in the passage under discussion our teacher is not explaining the reason for the creation of mankind, but the reason for the misery that sin brought into our life after we were created. This should be evident to anyone who studies Gregory’s divine writings carefully and diligently. He is explaining whence this condition came to be, for what reason, by whom and for whose sake. In short his words show that the fall into sin became the occasion for God in his wisdom to work out our (me: male and female) salvation.
Whoever’s fault it was, (and I apologize if it was mine. I’ll try to repent by God’s mercy as I get more light) the cure is the same for us all, and equally accessible. I don’t know what the proper distinctions are though. The Orthodox Church does not allow female Priests, Deacons – though apparently this has not always been the case, or Altar servers – though there are occasions for special blessings for women to be able to serve in this capacity. But beyond that I don’t see notable limitations, except that some parishes require women to cover their heads and wear dresses. We all have to use discernment and be careful to avoid temptation to sin or to not tempt others to sin. Further, as I get older, I’m getting a little looser in my assignations of what is feminine and what is masculine as regarding intellectual interests and duties. However, I think gender is an innate difference that will work itself out in how one performs or relates to what they do/think about.
09.20.07
Blogroll addition
I’m adding Incendiary to my blogroll. He has some very noteworthy quotes, as well as his own work of translating writings of St. Theophan the Recluse.
Uniting Soul and Body in Christ
From The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ
Gregory [Nanzianzen] is saying that out of God’s great goodness human beings were composed of a soul and body. The rational and intellectual soul given to man is made in the image of its maker and through desire and intense love it holds fast to God and participates in the divine life. The soul becomes godlike through divinization, and because God cares for what is lower, that is the body, and has given the command to love one’s neighbor, the soul prudently makes use of the body. By practicing the virtues the body gains familiarity with God and becomes a fellow servant with the soul. God who dwells in the soul uses it as an instrument to relate to the body and through the intimate bond between body and soul makes it possible for the body to share in the gift of immortality. The result is that what God is to the soul, the soul becomes to the body, and the one God, Creator of all, is shown to reside proportionately in all beings through human nature. Things that are by nature separated from one another return to a unity as they converge together in the one human being. When this happens God will be all in all (1Cor 15:28), permeating all things and at the same time giving independent existence to all things in himself. Then no existing thing will wander aimlessly or be deprived of God’s presence. For through the presence of God we are called gods (Jn 10:35), children of God (Jn 1:12), the body (Eph 1:23) and members (Eph 5:30) of God, even “portion of God”. In God’s purpose this is the end toward which our lives are directed. For this end man was brought into the world.
St. Maximus illustrates the heirarchy of God, the soul, and the body. As God is to the divinized soul, the soul is to the body. In my mind, having a step in between, the soul, puts more distance between the body and God. Recapitulation unites things that are further down the food chain with God. There is a process and order, but all eventually can be reached. Do the things at the bottom have less? I’m trying to train my mind to say no. Protestantism, which I grew up with, resists the idea of heirarchy with the notion that the people at the bottom aren’t getting as much as the people, including Mary, the Saints, and the Church heirarchy of Bishops, Priests, etc, at the top. They are right to rebel against the middle man getting the lion’s share as far as accessibility goes. However Orthodoxy teaches that God wants to save all, and completely offers the fullness of Himself to all, not even to just a predetermined arbitrarily selected few of the totally depraved. But He has an order of salvation. Through Christ He unites Himself to humanity to enable our souls to become saved and insofar as our souls are saved, made like Christ, so our bodies will be.
He then puts another step between by including our neighbor. God reaches our neighbor through a loop involving our soul and our body. I think this is also why we venerate and petition Saints. The eye, part of the body, of the divinized person is the window to the soul which is united to God. The mouth is also the part of the body who communicates God to others and which speaks according to the state of salvation of the soul. So we look into the icons of the Saints and read or listen to their words. God does not save apart from Incarnation with creation. Even the material earth communicates Him and proclaims His glory.
I’m still trying to work out how environmentalism and poor stewardship of the earth affect the logos, presence of God, and telos of material things. I know that we are to consecrate ourselves, each other, and the whole earth to God, and that we do this most notably during Divine Liturgy. We are to clean our environment as we clean our souls and by extension our bodies. Now I’m wondering why some monks don’t take baths.
