Bright Week or No-longer-Lent?

Christ is risen!

My friend, Sherry Weddell, over at the Intentional Disciples blog asked this question. She went on to say:

Here we are at the 4th day of the Easter season or Bright Wednesday as it is known in the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic traditions.  The whole week after Easter Sunday to the following Saturday is called Bright Week and is considered to be a single continuous day.

But are we living this week as Bright Week or just No-Longer-Lent?

According to the Council of Trullo: “from the holy day of the Resurrection of Christ our God until New Sunday (i.e. Thomas Sunday) for a whole week the faithful in the holy churches should continually be repeating psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, rejoicing and celebrating Christ, and attending to the reading of the Divine Scriptures and delighting in the Holy Mysteries. For in this way shall we be exalted with Christ; raised up together with Him. For this reason on the aforesaid days that by no means there be any horse races or any other public spectacle”.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, the taverns used to be closed during Bright Week, and no alcoholic beverages were sold.  Hmmm, that would cramp the average Catholic’s No-Longer-Lent style.

OK.  Singing.  Rejoicing and celebrating Christ.  Delighting in the Holy Mysteries.  No horse races.  Got it.

Ouch. Sherry’s got it, and she’s Catholic; I’m wonder how many of the people I hang with can say they’ve got it.

Look, for one week out of the year the altar in the church stands with all the doors wide open and the curtain drawn back, showing the empty tomb of Christ and the fact that “middle wall of partition,” as St Paul has it, has been broken down, that the cherub’s “flaming sword no longer guards the gates of Paradise,” that the new life in Christ is flooding into the world. Who among our faithful know that the altar stands open like that for all of Bright Week? Or what it means? Or cares?

As a Priest, I freely admit that I’ve scarcely got steam left in me for Agape Vespers, much less Liturgy on Bright Monday, and Bright Tuesday, though I always celebrate Liturgy on Wednesdays, so Bright Wednesday isn’t a problem. But it’s the only day in Bright Week I celebrate Liturgy. And Great Lent plus Holy Week is a long time to go without three square meals, adequate sleep, and … other things.

Still.

After Communion at the Divine Liturgy do we Priests not say, “O great and holiest Pascha, Christ; O Wisdom, Word and Power of God, grant that we may truly partake of You in day without evening of your Kingdom.” Well, dear hearts, Bright Week is The Day Without Evening Of His Kingdom that we pray about. If we don’t honor it here in the type, will be be able to honor it there in reality?

Is Bright Week the time to forget about church until next Sunday, forget about weekday services until next year, eat the leftover lamb, and relax? If we “forget about church,” then surely how much more have we forgotten about Christ? I’m afraid we’re far from “repeating psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, rejoicing and celebrating Christ, and attending to the reading of the Divine Scriptures and delighting in the Holy Mysteries.”

Alas, I don’t think it’s Bright Week for many of us. Rather, Sherry is right: it’s just no-longer-Lent.

I confess I miss the rigors of Great Lent and the daily services of Great & Holy Week. I’ve no place to put the pent up energy I’ve got, nothing much with which to channel it. I think I’ll quit sitting at my desk for a while and sneak back over to my quiet, empty church, where the doors of the altar stand wide open and inviting, where cor ad cor loquitur, and where, just maybe, my own heart, hearing the call, will open up a little bit in response.

Indeed He is risen!

Paradise and the oikoumene

One of the more intriguing passages in St Maximus the Confessor is found in Ambiguum 41, in which the Confessor lays out humanity’s role in sanctifying the world by mediating five pairs of distinctions inherent in the created order. Because of the fall, mankind was not able to effect these mediations, but Christ, through His Incarnation, was. The five distinctions are:

1. Between the uncreated and the created;
2. Among created things, between the intelligible and the sensible;
3. Among sensible things, between heaven and earth;
4. On Earth, between paradise and the inhabited world (the oikoumene);
5. In humanity, between man and woman, or the masculine and the feminine.

Now, the distinctions are given here in order from top to bottom, but in the order in which they are mediated, they are made from the bottom up; that is to say, the first mediation is between male and female, the second between Paradise and the inhabited world, etc.

What interests us here, in a discussion of environmentalism, is the fourth distinction, the second one to be mediated, that which takes place on earth between paradise and the inhabited world. Please note that for St. Maximus, paradise is an earthly reality, not a transcendent one. Questions naturally arise: where then does paradise lie? (Is it really just outside of Austin, as all Texans are convinced?) How can paradise and the inhabited world be reconciled or mediated? Once they are mediated, what effect does paradise have on the inhabited world?

The Confessor himself, in other places in his writings, suggests some answers to these questions. (Those who are really desperate to know can read Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, pp. 83-85).

If we can avoid “reaping wholesale returns of speculation on a trifling investment of fact,” to quote Mark Twain, I’d like to suggest that this notion in St. Maximus might be a fruitful one to explore for persons interested in the application of patristic ideas to environmental concerns.

Relics of St Maximus the Confessor found in Georgia.

A post on Fr Oliver Herbel’s blog, Frontier Orthodoxy, is the only reference I’ve found about the news.

Living in God’s Creation, 4

Thoughts on reading Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009).

Chapter 1 of Theokritoff’s book, running to almost 60 pages, is entitled “Themes in the Church Fathers.” I think the author has done an exceptionally fine job in summarizing the teaching of the Fathers on a variety of subjects that lend themselves to application to environmental issues. Among other of the Fathers, she cites SS. John Chrysostom (vairous of his homilies), Ephrem and Isaac of Syria, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the great (particularly the Hexaemeron, On the Six Days of Creation), Gregory of Nyssa (On the Making of Man), and John of Damascus (On the Orthodox Faith). Pride of place, however, goes to St. Maximus the Confessor, whom she cites extensively on a variety of topics.

Now, St. Maximus is dear to my heart, ever since I was acquainted with his writings in the early 80s and wrote my dissertation on him in the late 80s, and I have always thought that St. Maximus had something significant to say on environmental issues. Theokritoff has found exactly the same thing in the Confessor.

The themes which Theokritoff derives from the Fathers are these:

1. “The body and matter,” which discusses the importance of the Incarnation, the bodily resurrection, and eschatology in defining Christian attitudes towards the material world.

2. “Matter and the mystery of salvation,” which refutes the “low view of matter” among the Gnostics and affirms the sacramental view of matter, which the church holds.

3. “Seeing God in creation: wonder, Word and wisdom.” Here, the author treats the sense of awe toward the world, the “depth” of created things, the intelligibility of the world, and the embodiment of the Logos in creation.

4. “The glory of God hidden in his creatures,” which deals with the presence of God in creation, the notion of creation as a theophany, and the spiritual reality of material things.

5. “God in the universe and the universe in God,” deals with the transcendence and immanence of God.

6. “St. Maximus and the ‘word’ of things.” Here, Theokritoff gives an overview of the Confessor’s notion of the logoi of creatures, that principle which defines what a thing is and is it’s cause of being, and how each of the logoi is related to the one Logos. Books have been written on this subject. And, if I may speculate off the top of my head, I think the notion of the logoi as St. Maximus defines them may be an Orthodox equivalent to the medieval scholastic notion of natural law.

7. “Spelling out God in creation,” continues the discussion of St. Maximus and deals with his notion that God the Word is embodied three ways: in creation, in Scripture, and finally in the flesh. From the embodiment of the Word in creation, Theokritoff finds a basis for reverencing the “book” of creation, and in this I think she’s right. She goes on to summarize St. Maximus’s view of how the fall affected creation. Here, she might have gone a little further in spelling out St. Maximus’s distinction between the logos physeos and the tropos hyparxeos, that is, what a thing is vis-a-vis the way it exists, but that is a large subject, and perhaps beyond what she needed to say in this context.

8. “God, properly speaking, is everything,” deals with the idea of participation in St. Maximus.

9. “The divine energies in the world,” again deals with the idea of creatures’ participation in God.

10. “Man’s place in creation” looks at man’s place in creation, and his role as a microcosm.

11. “Images of man’s place in creation,” points out what Theokritoff believes is the classic statement of man’s place in creation, which is found in a homily by St. Gregory the Theologian, which points out that man is a microcosm and a worshiper of God, whose oversight of creation is bound up with discerning God’s wisdom in the depths of created things.

12. “Divine image and dominion,” looks at reason, free will, human freedom, and dominion over creation.

13. “Dominion and use,” deals with the notion that creation exists “for man,” and here Theokritoff abandons the more objective presentation she has been making throughout this chapter to counter the “disturbingly utilitarian, as well as distinctly simplistic” (p. 75) statements the Fathers make on this subject. She reaffirms that the goodness of creation is axiomatic in the fathers, the interdependence rather than self-sufficiency of all created things, and notes that, “the responsibility that goes with our dominant position is not primarily administrative but doxological” (p. 79).

14. “The world of the fall,” makes a nice distinction between the common phrase, “the fallen world,” and a more accurate Orthodox phrase, “the world of the fall.” The section also points out the eschatological view, of seeing the world for what it was created, not simply for what it is.

15. “The Commandments in paradise and use of the world” presents a rather spiritualized reading of the Commandments given to Adam and Eve in paradise.

16. “Cursed is the Earth”? This is a very interesting section in which the author looks at the effect of the fall, not only on man, but also on the rest of creation. She presents various opinions of the Fathers about the use of animals for food, the extent of the corruptibility of nature as a result of the fall, the original immortality of man, and an eschatological reading of Paradise. I found the discussion and dissection fascinating.

17. “The fall and the abuse of creation,” looks at the way the fallen world no longer refers to God, but becomes an end in itself, an idol.

Again, an excellent summary of the fathers on these topics. The whole of more could be said about any one of them, of course, but as a summary, this one works very well.

Living in God’s creation, 3

Thoughts on reading Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009).

After having talked in my last post about some of the problems I see in the introduction to this book, I had promised to look at some of the positive things I find. I’ll do so in this post.

In the first place, I am very encouraged to see an Orthodox writer bringing the wisdom of the Fathers to bear on a contemporary issue. As a student of the Fathers myself, I appreciate not only the great treasures available in the patristic tradition, but also the difficulty one has in translating their wisdom into a contemporary milieu and bringing it to bear on a new context which the Fathers themselves never addressed directly. To be sure, issues of Christian life, theosis, and morality don’t change, and patristic teaching on these issues is easily fungible across the centuries. But issues like environmentalism, which the Fathers never addressed directly, are not so easy. I think Theokritoff gets major kudos for undertaking her study and a contributing something Orthodox to the discussion.

Secondly, she frankly acknowledges this difficulty and speaks to the limits of theology. She says,

It is vital to come to a deeper theological understanding of God’s creation and our own place in it; but this on its own will not show us how to address specific social and environmental problems. It is not the task of theology to come up with such solutions, and there will sometimes be genuine differences among Christians about the practicalities of remedying various ills. (pp. 29-30)

Thirdly, I was happy to see her make a simple but helpful distinction between the “environment” and the “creation” (p. 26). As she points out, the “environment” means something around us, and is defined in relation and in contradistinction to humans, whereas “creation” is defined in contradistinction to the Creator alone. I think it helpful to distinguish humans vis-à-vis the environment who are nevertheless creatures in creation vis-à-vis their Creator.

Living in God’s creation, 2

Thoughts on reading Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009).

I want to make a few comments about the Introduction to Theokritoff’s book in this post. I need to preface my remarks by saying that I am not an economist, and that I don’t intend to play one on WordPress. Nevertheless, the author makes a number of statements in her Introduction that I find simply astonishing, and so I feel compelled to wade into the shallows of economics and fish for a response there.

The author herself raises the question of “why we need to concern ourselves with practical measures to address environmental problems” (p. 20), and quickly passes to “the question of remedies” (p. 21). She says,

Now, there is no doubt that technology in various forms has played an important part in solving human problems since the dawn of civilization. But when we look at the true potentials of various technologies (whether we are talking about improving crop yields, producing cleaner energy, energy efficiency or other areas), it quickly becomes apparent that few are without their drawbacks; almost none will produce a net benefit if they are not combined with difficult decisions to give up some of the things we have grown accustomed to doing. We need to entertain the possibility that “technical fixes” will not be sufficient. (p. 21)

I agree with the author that technology has its drawbacks. I don’t think that’s really the question, however. Lack of technology has very real drawbacks, as well. The question is rather whether the benefits of the technology outweigh its drawbacks. Take for example the new Chevy Volt. Running a car on electricity is cleaner, and it would cost about $1.47 in electricity to go the same distance as a gallon of gas would take you, so the operating cost is lower; however, it has a range of only 40 miles and a price tag of $41,000. For most people, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, and I expect few Volts will be sold. The only way for new technology to become widely adopted is for “technical fixes” (in which the author seems to have little faith) to continue apace and make emerging technologies economically viable.

She goes on to say,

It is hard to escape the conclusion that with an ever-growing human population, it is not enough for humanity as a whole to do more with less; individually, we must also learn to do less with less (p. 21).

This statement is astonishing. It is a call to reduce our quality of life, and I find it hard to square with her concern for the poor and the weak, for whom learning “to do less with less” is a recipe for catastrophe. She says, on p. 19, “most environmental problems take their toll on the poor and weak long before they affect those who can afford to live far from the landfills, upwind of the factories or power plants, and well above sea level”. If the poor and the weak suffer in our current economy, their suffering in a reduced economy will be unspeakable. A vibrant economy helps everyone; poverty in the United States, for example, is incomparable with poverty found elsewhere in the world. The poor and weak will not be helped by making everyone else poorer and weaker.

The author spends some time describing a “culture of control,” which is “a way for us to arrange the world for our own convenience, with no reference to some higher will for the world or for us” (p. 22). She goes on,

Many people regarded it as quite normal, for instance, to have strawberries to eat in mid-winter, relax and a cool house in mid-summer in a subtropical climate, or sit on a well-watered lawn beside the swimming pool in a semi-desert. (p. 23)

I freely disclose that I eat strawberries in midwinter. My winter strawberries come from Mexico and Chile. What is for me an “indulgence” (Theokritoff’s term) is probably not an indulgence for the Latin American farmers who grow the strawberries and depend upon their sale for their livelihood. Taking to task people who live in the South for air-conditioning their homes strikes me simply as mean-spirited. She might as well take northerners to task for presuming to heat their homes in the winter. I don’t have a swimming pool, so I won’t comment on that part.

She says further,

[Such indulgences] reflect an expectation that nature should not be allowed to restrict us. That if I happen to feel like doing something, then neither season, nor climate, nor distance should be allowed to stand in my way (p. 23).

But, in fact, season, climate, and distance, do stand in the way. We see that they do in the higher prices we pay for some goods and services. The Latin American strawberries which I eat in winter cost a lot more than the local strawberries I buy from my neighbor’s fruit stand in the summer. Some people will choose not to pay the higher price for winter strawberries, and will wait for summer to eat them. Where there is a high demand for electricity to air-condition homes, the price of electricity goes up. In the face of higher prices for electricity, some people will choose to open their windows rather than run the air conditioner. This is how season, climate, and distance stand in our way and affect our decisions.

These are enough examples for one post. Next time, I’ll look at some of the more positive things that Theokritoff says in her Introduction.

Living in God’s Creation, 1

Thoughts on reading Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009).

In the Foreword, Peter Bouteneff says, “… if you want to live a truly Christian life, you must inhabit the earth in a way that is mindful of the whole of creation… This is the utterly convincing argument of this book” (p. 9). If Dr Bouteneff is correct, then Living in God’s Creation is going to be an interesting read. I say that because I have assumed, until now, that living a truly Christian life meant being mindful of God, not His creation. I am curious to see how Theokritoff handles her theme, because there isn’t much on the market about Orthodox takes on ecological subjects. I’ll be commenting as I read.

Belated reflection on Acton University

I was privileged to attend Acton University, the 4-day conference sponsored each June by Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, MI. Illness and vacation have kept me from posting some thoughts about my experiences there. Per their own website,

Acton University is a unique, four-day exploration of the intellectual foundations of a free society. Guided by a distinguished, international faculty, Acton University is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate rigorous philosophy, Christian theology and sound economics.

There were over 400 in attendance, faculty, students, clergy, seminarians, from over 50 countries, most all of them Roman Catholic and Evangelical, but with a small sprinkling of Orthodox (may our number increase!).

A first-timer, like myself, attends four foundational lectures on Christian anthropology, Christianity and the idea of limited government, the economic way of thinking, and foundations of a free and virtuous society. Subsequently, I was free to attend lectures on environmental issues that interested me (and which contributed to my starting this blog).

Listening to the lectures, I was repeatedly struck by the breadth of learning and the familiarity with the whole fabric of Western culture that the presenters and participants had at their command. I have not participated in a discussion like this since my days at the University of Dallas. My admiration for Acton and the quality of the people it brings together is unbounded.

At any rate, as I listened to the presentations, I began to wonder what I, as an Orthodox Christian, had to bring to the table. Certainly, with regard to a Christian response to environmental issues, I do think that Orthodoxy has a number of themes and/or perspectives which I heard no mention of by the Evangelical presenters. These I will save for later posts on this blog, because they form the substance of what I want to present here on this subject.

I think, too, that on foundational issues, like Christian anthropology and fundamental ideas of a virtuous (if not a free) society, the Orthodox familiarity with–and respect for–the patrimony of the Fathers’ teaching is something we can certainly offer. (During informal discussions, I found people not merely tolerant of my Orthodox views, but positively eager to hear what I had to say.)

On the other hand, I don’t think there is much that is distinctively Orthodox that we can contribute to discussions of a free society, limited government, or to economic freedom. (Please correct me if I am wrong, but) until recent times, the broad political situation of Orthodoxy has been imperial (Roman & Byzantine), tsarist, dhimmitude under the caliph or Turkish millet, and Communist. If there have been significant Orthodox contributions to economic thought, I am unaware of them.

In view of my experience at Acton, I think that Orthodox Christians have much to offer theologically to non-Orthodox forums–and we should be willing to offer what we can–, but that we have much to learn from others about in which we are weak. In this respect, a real humility and willingness to “step out of our comfort zone” and acknowledge the expertise which others — and other disciplines — can provide can be enormously enriching, not only personally, but to the Church as well.

Now, up to this point,  all of this is rather academic (literally and metaphorically).  However, the recent Episcopal Assembly gives me pause. Some of the discussion generated on other forums about the role of the OCA’s autocephaly and lay participation in the OCA’s governance leads me to think that the Anglo-American tradition of limited government and understanding of human freedom — such as what Acton upholds — are valuable to the Church, precisely because they promote human dignity, freedom and personal responsibility.  They are ideals that need to be understood well, and articulated well, so that the Church can consider them well.  In this respect, Acton Institute is an excellent resource.

On stewardship, particularly the environmental kind

I was privileged to attend Acton University 2010 in Grand Rapids, MI, last month, thanks to the kindness and generosity of the good folk at The Acton Institute. It was a 4-day intellectual feast, the likes of which I had not participated in, in a very long time. While there, I took a series of 3 lectures on environmental issues. I chose those lectures for a few reasons: one, because I am interested in the subject; two, the more I read Orthodox statements on environmental issues the less my heart is at peace about them; and three, I am invited to participate in a conference this coming September in Montana, sponsored by the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, which will present free market ideas on environmentalism to religious leaders. I felt it would be good preparation for the FREE conference to attend the environmental lectures at Acton. My time was very well spent.

There are many particulars from my time at Acton University on which I could comment, but in this post I want to think out loud about one recurring impression I got from the lectures, from one of the after-dinner speakers, and from a variety of casual conversations. I was struck, repeatedly, by how often it was said that God owns the world.

Now, I don’t dispute that God owns the world. Ben Phillips, whose lectures on “Biblical Theology and Environmental Ethics” and “Evangelicals and the Green Movement” I attended, laid out very clearly the Biblical basis for God’s ownership of all of creation, and I believe both Dr Phillips and the Scriptures.

At the same time, I kept remembering a distinction which I recollect from SS Diadochus of Photike and Basil the Great (it’s probably a patristic commonplace drawn on a verse of Scripture, but I can’t remember other references off the top of my head). The distinction is this:

There are 3 relationships we can have with God:

• that of slaves, in which we are motivated by fear of punishment/hell;
• that of servants, in which we are motivated by desire of reward/heaven; and
• that of sons, in which we are motivated solely by love of the Father.

It is this distinction in relationships that gives me pause about the idea of stewardship, for stewardship is a function of a master-servant relationship. Therefore, it seems to fall short of the more perfect relationship, that of sons.

(Perhaps stewardship is precisely “economic” in both senses of economics and oikonomia and it can’t be expected to function in a Father-son relationship.)

I am less at ease when I think of environmental stewardship, for the presumption of the stewardship model is that the earth, and everything in it (and everybody in it?), belong to God as a possession or a property. On the other hand, I can’t help remembering that the end of the Apocalypse is not a Master calling in His chattel (slaves) or his property (servant/stewards), but rather it is the marriage feast of the Lamb.

And here I don’t know where to go. My sense is that the emphasis on God’s ownership of creation shows a lack of imagination, a failure to take into account other metaphors that describe the relationship between God and his creation.

Perhaps it is a simplification that, to my mind, isn’t adequate precisely because it over-simplifies what is, in fact, a complex reality.

Perhaps stewardship is the governing idea and Scripture has been made to serve that idea via a sort of “proof-texting.”

Again, I don’t know where to go. I hope my dis-ease makes sense. I invite your comments.

Fr.M.+

Howdy.

My first foray into the blogosphere begins here.

I plan to use this site as a place to gather thoughts and discuss subjects that interest me, among which will be

• theology and the spiritual tradition of the Orthodox Church;
• questions of human freedom, free-market economics and environmentalism;
• the works of St Maximus the Confessor and other patristic authors;
• the transformative power of ritual; and
• anything else that strikes my fancy.

The title of the blog, Ambiguorum Blogis, is Latin for “Blog of ambiguities,” and is a small word-play on one of the major works of St Maximus the Confessor, his Ambiguorum Liber, a speculative work in which he resolves ambiguous passages from earlier Fathers. Whether or not I resolve anything here remains to be seen.

You are welcome to participate in the discussions if they interest you. Usual rules of civility are the bare minimum. I have neither time nor tolerance for anything other than serious and respectful exchanges.

Since I am new to blogging, it will doubtless take me a while to get up to speed with the technical side of things. Still, I look forward to posting regularly.

May Paradise consume us.

Fr.M.+