Day 89 – Ken here (W)
(DEF v.2, ch.17, pp.580-590)

Finally! We begin Chapter 17, begin the Second Volume, and begin reviewing the age of Constantine. Constantine began as the un-noteworthy son of one of the lesser powers in the multi-emperor world of Diocletian (285-305). By dogged determination, skillful political maneuvering, unprovoked retreats and attacks, and conversion to a new religion, Constantine became the sole Roman emperor and the consolidator of Diocletian’s reforms, creating and solidifying the new Roman Empire: the Autocracy or the Dominate.

One of his biggest projects was founding and building the new capital in the East – Constantinople (now Istanbul, capital of Turkey) (although Constantine himself named it New Rome). Gibbon loves this stuff – and spends almost 20 pages describing the city (See 3D Reconstruction of Constantinople). Many of the statues, monuments, etc that Constantine (to his shame) sacked from all the ancient cities in Asia and Greece still remain in Turkish Istanbul.

So… we begin a 2 day excursion into ancient, ancient Constantinople – a brand-new frontier city, constructed almost from scratch (on the site of the old small Greek town of Byzantium – thus the incorrect name for the eastern empire – Byzantine Empire) much in the late 19th century American style – a booster town, a Chicago of its times that attracted industry and politicians to its shores. Of course, that was all 1700 years ago, and so the Constantinople of that time is lost, buried under centuries of human occupation, and even buried under a new name (when it was conquered in 1453 – now Istanbul – a Turkish transliteration of the Greek “into the City – eis tein polin).

Maps and views of Constantinople and Environs

From North to South – the journey from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean

Euxine Sea (modern: Black Sea) (Euxine Sea – in Greek it means Hospitable -or good host Sea – the exact opposite of what you get when you get to the Black Sea (it’s a vicious sea) – an example of Greeks naming something to “charm”/compliment its deity into being peaceful and human-friendly)

Bosporus (modern: Turkish Strait or Bosphorus) – narrow straits connecting the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea – Constantinople lies at the southern end – historic crossroads of Asia and Europe – the smallest distance between Asia and Europe on the sea (narrowest point = 1500 feet, 500 paces)

Propontis (modern: Sea of Marmara) – small sea between the Aegean (Mediterranean) and the Black Sea -Constantinople lies at the northern tip of the Sea

Hellespont (modern: Dardanelles) (narrow strait leading from Sea of Marmara into the Aegean Sea) – on one side lies the famous Gallipoli peninsula of WWI, Australia, and New Zealand fame (see ANZAC day)
 
 
 
Maps and Pictures
 
 
 
Constantinople

Map - Constantinople, Geography

Map - German Map of Constantinople - detailled, exceedingly accurate, and user-friendly, of course

Golden Horn – Port of Constantinople

Golden Horn - painting - Boats on the Golden Horn - 18th century view

Golden Horn - Port of Istanbul - modern panoramic view - from Galata, looking into Istanbul (Constantinople) - the Hagia Sophia is the great domed structure on the left

Black Sea (Euxine Sea)

Map of the Black Sea (Euxine) - Constantinople is the black dot nearly at the center, at the bottom of the Black Sea (but actually south 16 miles from the Black Sea, down a narrow salt water strait - the Bosporus)

Bosporus (tiny straits that connect the huge Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and the Mediterranean)

Modern Panoramic view of the Bosporus - from the European Side

Map of Bosporus (Turkish Strait)

Bosporus from space (pink areas are Istanbul (Constantinople)) - look how narrow the gap is - as narrow as 1500 feet in places - Darius I invaded Europe over a pontoon bridge over this strait - Xerxes used the wider (and calmer) Hellespont to the south

Propontis (modern: Sea of Marmara)

Sea of Marmara from space - it is the turquoise water in the center of the picture - Constantinople (Istanbul) is at the far right of the turquoise

Map of Propontis (modern: Sea of Marmara) - Constantinople is the orange dot at the top - Black Sea (Euxine) is the water at the very top of the map - that tine line you see between the two is the tiny Bosporus

Hellespont (modern: Dardanelles) and Gallipoli Peninsula

Gallipoli peninsula from space - it is the long finger extending along the narrow strait of water (the strait = Hellespont or Dardanelles)

Map of Hellespont (Dardanelles) - connects Sea of Marmara with the Mediterannean (Aegean Sea) and Greece and all her islands - site of famous WWI battle that helped to form the national identity of Australia and New Zealand

Heroic Greece – Mycenae, Homeric Greece, and the environs of Constantinople

Homeric Greece - Constantinople is up at far upper right

C Michael Patton over at Parchment & Pen, like a good coach, has come alongside us to provide several lists of essentials and non-essentials—to help us choose our battles carefully:

Essential for salvation: These are the most essential doctrines of all essentials. This includes what every Christian should always be willing to die for. In essence, if someone does not believe the doctrines that are “essential for salvation,” they are not saved.

What I include:

• Belief in God (there is no such thing as an atheistic Christian)
  All issues pertaining to the person and work of Christ:
• Belief in Christ’s deity and humanity (1 John 4:2-3; Rom. 10:9)
• Belief that you are a sinner in need of God’s mercy (1 John 1:10)
• Belief that Christ died on the cross and rose bodily from the grave (1 Cor 15:3-4)
• Belief that faith in Christ is necessary (John 3:16)

Essential for historic Christian orthodoxy: These include beliefs “essential for salvation” but are broader in that they express what has been believed by the historic Christian church for the last two thousand years, no matter what tradition. This is expressed by the Vincentian Canon, “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.” (The exception of fringe movements does not count). Not only must the church have belief in it, but it must also explicitly have confessed its centrality (e.g., belief that Matthew wrote the book of Matthew does not, I believe, qualify here).

Some of what I include:

• The doctrine of the Trinity as expressed at Nicea
• The doctrine of the Hypostatic Union (Christ is fully man and fully God) as expressed at Chalcedon
• The belief in the future second coming of Christ
• A belief in the inspiration and authority of Scripture
• A belief in eternal punishment for the wicked
• A belief in God’s timeless existence
• Christ is the only way to salvation

I suppose no well-read or learned believer dare to challenge the first list, Essential for Salvation.  But I’m not too certain about the second list, Essential for historic Christian orthodoxy, for I have in mind “A belief in eternal punishment for the wicked.”

At any rate, these two lists were drawn up by Mr. C Michael Patton (read more…).

I’m kind of new to book reviews, and it’s late, but I can’t sleep, so I’m writing this anyway.

Leo the Great by Bronwen Neil is the latest in Routledge’s series The Early Church Fathers.  This series is the sort of thing I like to see scholars producing.  Each volume deals with a different Church Father, giving an introduction to his life, works, and context, along with important selections from his works.  The goal of the series as a whole is to make the Church Fathers more accessible to a wider readership.

Apart from a few occasions when Neil slips and writes things that may be hard to understand for those uninitiated in the worlds of Classics/Late Antiquity and theology/Patristics (usually jargon or allusions; something no doubt inevitable in a book of this sort), this tome fulfills the goal of the series admirably.

Leo the Great was Bishop of Rome from 440-461.  This turbulent time included the Council of Chalcedon, as well as the Second Council of Ephesus, which gained its more common name from this man — latrocinium, or “den of robbers”, because of the heavy-handed tactics used by the Eutychian/Monophysite party at the Council, including the refusal to read his carefully-crafted letter, the so-called “Tome of Leo” or “Tome to Flavian.”

Neil provides us with an introduction to Leo’s life and times, followed by introductions to Leo as pastoral caregiver, theologian and opponent of heresy, heir of St. Peter, and administrator of the wider church.  She then provides a selection of his letters and homilies on those same four themes, each with an individual introduction, some in English for the first time.  The translations are readable and clear, the style appropriate to the genre of each writing, enabling the reader to enter into the thought of Leo the Great, which is what I look for in a translation.

Leo the Great was appropriately called “great” within a hundred years of his death in both East and West.  This stems primarily from his “Tome,” a letter he wrote to Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, condemning Eutyches’ teachings and setting forth his doctrine of the twofold nature of Christ, stating that Christ has two natures in one person, one nature being wholly divine, the other being wholly human.  In section 3 of the Tome, Leo writes:

Therefore, with the characteristic of each nature maintained and joined in one person, majesty took up humility, power took up weakness, eternity assumed mortality, and in order to pay off the debt of our condition the inviolable nature was joined to a passible nature, so that, as was fitting for our healing, one and the same mediator of God and humankind, the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2: 5), was both mortal in respect to one and immortal in respect to the other. (p. 98)

Although spurned by the Second Council of Ephesus, this letter was acknowledged at Chalcedon as being the official teaching of the Church and as standard orthodoxy, along with certain of Cyril of Alexandria’s letters.  This letter was the entire reason I read this book.

However, I found other reasons for Leo to have gained the appellation “Great” as I read this volume.  He was, first and foremost, a pastor, the shepherd of the church in Rome.  Writes Neil, “Leo was not writing for his own amusement (or ours!) but for the spiritual edification of his readers.” (16)  His homilies reveal this strongly pastoral character, when exhorting his congregation not to worship the Sun (Homily 27) or encouraging them to fast:

Let us spend on virtue what we take away from luxury; let the abstinence of the faster be the refreshment of the poor. (Homily 13)

In his letters, we see Leo the Administrator.  He sometimes pushes his agenda as “Heir of St. Peter,” being one of the first popes to begin an articulation of the primacy of the Roman see, but tends to be pastoral in these as well.  Priests and bishops would write to him with questions, or he would see the occurrences of abuses in the churches, and he would write to those involved, explaining to them and reinforcing the existing canons of the Church, and, where no canon existed, using the spirit of the canons to give guidance.

Much could be said about Leo, Petrine succession, and Roman primacy in light of this book, both in terms of Leo’s writings and in terms of the attitudes of his contemporaries as laid out in the introduction.  It shall go unsaid, however, in the interests of time and clear thinking.  Suffice it to say that though Leo had a clear notion of the primacy of his see, he also had a strong feeling of the collegiality of all the bishops of the Church, and these two facets played off one another in his administration of the Church and dealings with other clergy.

He also increased the role of the Bishop of Rome in civic and cultural life, a role that would only increase in the coming centuries.  This was the result of the unrest of the times following Alaric’s sack in 410 and the political vacuum caused by the residence of the Western Roman Emperor in Milan or Ravenna.  He missed the Council of Chalcedon because he was too busy going to a meeting with Attila the Hun to convince the barbarian not to sack Rome!

I came to this book seeking great theology.  This I found, especially in Letter 15 about Priscillianism, Letter 28 which is the “Tome to Flavian,” and Letter 124 to the Cyrillian/Eutychian monks of Palestine who’d been causing some violent ruckus following Chalcedon.  I also found much about the order of the church and the life of the average Christian alongside Neil’s information about this great Father of the Church.

Leo the Great is a great book about a great theologian.

Today, November 10, is the Feast of Leo the Great (Bishop of Rome 440-461). He was involved in one of the great Christological controversies. The question dealt with the relationship of divinity and humanity in Christ. Eutyches argued a form of monophysitism, the idea the Christ has only one nature. He conflated the two natures in Christ arguing that there was only one nature “after the union” in the one person of Christ. Further he denied that Christ’s humanity is consubstantial with ours. In 449 Leo wrote a letter, known as the Tome of Leo to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople, in which he affirmed that Christ has two natures, one human and one divine, that the two natures exist in one person, and that Christ’s human nature is consubstantial with our humanity. The letter was read in 451 by the Council of Chalcedon and judged by them to be sound doctrine. It contributed much to the creedal statements of that council.

Here is an excerpt from Leo’s tome:

So without leaving his Father’s glory behind, the Son of God comes down from his heavenly throne and enters the depths of our world, born in an unprecedented order by an unprecedented kind of birth. In an unprecedented order, because one who is invisible at his own level was made visible at ours. The ungraspable willed to be grasped. Whilst remaining pre-existent, he begins to exist in time. The Lord of the universe veiled his measureless majesty and took on a servant’s form. The God who knew no suffering did not despise becoming a suffering man, and, deathless as he is, to be subject to the laws of death. By an unprecedented kind of birth, because it was inviolable virginity which supplied the material flesh without experiencing sexual desire. What was taken from the mother of the Lord was the nature without the guilt [of original sin]. And the fact that the birth was miraculous does not imply that in the Lord Jesus Christ, born from the virgin’s womb, the nature is different from ours. The same one is true God and true man.

Collect from the Book of Common Prayer

O Lord our God, grant that your Church, following the teaching of your servant Leo of Rome, may hold fast the great mystery of our redemption, and adore the one Christ, true God and true Man, neither divided from our human nature nor separate from your divine Being; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

1.Thạch anh vàng

Công thức : SiO2- Độ cứng theo thang Mohs : 7.0- Khối lượng riêng : 2.6 g/cm3 – Hệ tinh thể ba phương- Ánh thủy tinh- Thuật ngữ ” xitrin ” được Valerius đưa vào tài liệu khoáng vật học tự năm 1747 . Tên gọi của đá xuất phát từ Latinh citreus – “chanh”, nhằm ám sắc vàng của biến thể thạch anh này, màu của nó là do tạp chất của sắt hóa trị ba(Fe3+) tạo nên. Màu của chúng giống như màu của topa. Không phải ngẫu nhiên mà xitrin vàng ánh kim đôi khi được gọi là” topa vàng ánh kim”, còn xitrin vàng phớt nâu – gọi là”topa Tây Ban Nha”. Nói chung sắc thái thay đổi từ màu vàng sáng tới vàng hổ phách. Mỏ xitrin được phát hiện trên lãnh thổ Braxin, Tây Ban Nha, Pháp, Nga ( dãy núi Ural), Kazăcxtan, Hoa Kỳ (bang Colorado) và trên đảo Mađagaxca.Đặc biệt quý hiếm là loại xitrin bên trong có sợi tóc mầu vàng .Nhưng khoáng vật này làm đồ trang sức rất đẹp .

TÍNH CHẤT CHỮA BỆNH
Trong thực hành Yoga chữa bệnh, xitrin được coi là loại đá kích thích đám rối dương và hoạt động của ống tiêu hóa. Thời cổ đại người ta tin rằng, xitrin giúp bảo vệ tránh bị rắn độc cắn. Xitrin có tác dụng trong điều trị bệnh viêm dạ dày, viêm thận – bể thận, viêm bàng quang. Xitrin kích thích hoạt động của não bộ và tích lũy trong cơ thể năng lượng sống. Ngoài ra, với các rung động của mình, Xitrin tạo xung quanh cơ thể aura (linh giác) bảo vệ có khả năng che chở cho con người khỏi các tác động bất lợi từ bên ngoài.

TÍNH CHẤT MÀU NHIỆM
Xitrin từ lâu đã được coi là đá của sự thông thái và yên bình, có khả năng cứu cong người ra khỏi tình trạng trầm uất. Ở La Mã cổ đại, các vị nguyên lão thường đeo bên mình những tinh thể xitrin, ví họ cho rằng những viên đá này giúp phát triển tài hùng biện và củng cố trí nhớ. Người ta cũng tin rằng, xitrin giúp con người hiểu nhau hơn và giúp củng cố những liên hệ tâm lí giữa con người với nhau. Đồ trang sức bằng xitrin nên dành cho các nghệ nhân chạm khắc, nhà kim hoàn, thợ đồng hồ – những người thực hiện những công việc thủ công tinh xảo. Xitrin giúp các nhân viên môi giới và chào hàng thu nhận được lợi ích từ những hợp đồng có được. Đối với những kẻ trộm, kẻ cờ bạc gian bịp bợm và kẻ gian lận, xitrin cũng phục vụ giống như với những người trung thực.

ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI LUÂN XA
Đối với luân xa vùng rốn: kiểm soát ruột, thận và hệ tiết niệu – sinh dục; luân xa này tương ứng với tình yêu khác giới và sự thảo mãn trong tình cảm, tình dục; dự trữ năng lượng tình dục tập trung ở luân xa này
Đối với luân xa vùng đám rối dương: có ảnh hưởng tới gan, lá lách và các cơ quan khác vủa hệ tiêu hóa; luân xa này liên quan tới ý chí, điều khiển cám xúc và trí tưởng tượng.
Năng lượng cảm thụ của Âm.

CUNG HOÀNG ĐẠO
Cung Song Tử

TÊN KHÁC VÀ BIẾN THỂ
Topa Tây Ban Nha – tên đồng nghĩa của xitrin
Topa vàng ánh kim – tên gọi khác của xitrin.

Tên gọi : Chalcedon là tên gọi nhóm khoáng vật gồm các biến thể của thạch anh nửa trong suốt, thạch anh vi tinh, ẩn tinh, thường có kiến trúc sferolit vì vậy những người am hiểu về bùa hộ mệnh gọi Chancedon cùng với agat và onix là ” mẹ pha le ” .Tên goị của loại đá này có lẽ là theo tên một địa phương ở tiểu Á – Chankeđon. Tên gọi khác biến thể : Đá của Mehico – tên gọi cũ của chanxedon mầu xanh da trời

- Đá mặt trăng màu xanh da trời – Chancedon mầu da trời
- Đá mặt trăng California – Chancedon mầu xanh da trời .
- Đá thánh Stephan – Chancedon màu xanh da trời

Những đặc điểm chính : Chancedon có những mầu sắc đặc biệt đẹp , đẹp được coi là đá nửa quý . Trong tự nhiên tạo thành những tập hợp có dạng rất khác nhau , có ánh mỡ đến ánh sáp , thường bị nhuộm mầu do bụi hematit tạo mầu đỏ , limolit tạo mầu vàng , clorit tạo mầu xanh …Những biến thể Chalcedon được chia thành : heliotrop , cacneon , xacđe , crizopra , và onix . Nói đúng ra Chalcedon thường được dùng để gọi những viên đá có tông mầu nhạt ( màu xanh da trời sữa , xanh da trời phớt xanh lá cây, phớt vàng ).

Tính chất vật lý :

- Độ cứng : 6.5 đến 7.0 – Tinh hệ : Ba phương
- Tỷ trọng : 2.6 g/Cm3 – Ánh : Mỡ

Tính chất chữa bệnh : Người ta cho rằng , Chacedon trước hết là biến thể mầu xanh da tròi có khả năng giải thoát người chủ khỏi cơn giận giữ và nỗi sầu muộn . Theo quan niệm cổ xưa , Chalcedon chứa trong mình các nhiên tố không khí và ete , vì vậy có tác dụng làm an bình tâm lý tình cảm của con người . Khuyên đeo đồ trang sức bằng Chalcedon đối với những người dễ bị kích động , ngoài ra nó còn giúp điều trị bệnh loạn thần kinh và chức năng trầm uất .

Tính chất khác : Theo các văn bản viết tay cổ , Chalcedon cũng giống như agat là bùa hộ mệnh của những người đi biển . chalcedon cũng được coi là viên đá của tình yêu , nó thu hút trái tim của đàn ông về phía phụ nữ . Chalcedon mang trong nó tính nữ vừa ban tặng cuộc sống và đồng thòi đầy mâu thuẫn . Người mông cổ gọi những viên Chalcedon mầu xanh da trời được tìm thấy trong hoang mạc Gobi là ” đá niềm vui ” và tin rằng chúng có khả năng xua đuổi nỗi buồn và tạo ra tâm trạng hứng khởi . Trong một văn bản cổ của Ấn Độ nói rằng loại đá này có ánh sáng của ý thức tinh khiết . Đồ trang sức bằng Chalcedon mầu xanh da trời có khả năng loại trừ nỗi sợ hãi , đem đến cho người chủ niềm tin vào sức mạnh của chính mình . Chalcedon là biểu tượng của chòm sao Nhân Mã trong cung hoàng đạo , năng lượng cảm xạ có tác dụng tới các luân xa tùy thuộc vào mầu sắc của đá .

Công dụng khác : Làm đồ trang sức , trang trí ,mỹ nghệ …

Nguồn gốc sinh thành : Chalcedon tạo thành các ổ trong basal , melaphyr , hạnh nhân và cả trong đá vôi , là khoáng vật thứ sinh nhiệt độ thấp .

Originally published 8/10/2009.

1. True: (A) Being human (having human nature) entails being a person, i.e., all persons that are human beings must have a human nature. This is what Dr. Michael Liccione says.

Christ Is A Human Person → Nestorianism
2. Christ is not a human person, because if Christ as man is a person, then we have the Nestorian blasphemy of two persons: God the Word and the man Jesus of Nazareth [Summa Theologica I, q. 28, art. 12, corp.]. Instead we confess that Jesus of Nazareth is an uncreated divine person with a human nature, and so He is a human being. For the divine “person subsisting in His human nature is” eternal and “not caused by the principles of the human nature” [ad 1].

3. False: (B) Being human (having human nature) entails being a human person. Pace Daniel Photios Jones, Dr. Liccione does not affirm (B).

Ordo Theologiae
4. (B) is false because then positing two natures in Christ (Dyophysitism) would entail two persons in Christ (Nestorianism). The ordo theologiae of the Nestorians is two natures → two persons, while the ordo theologiae of the Monophysites is one person → one nature.

Originally posted 11/26/2008.

MYTH Severos of Antioch, a true representative of Cyrillian teaching, was Christologically orthodox

Partisans of Severos Would Have the Church Err
1. Patriarch Severos of Antioch (r. 512-518, d. 538), in whom Bishop Peter Nabarnugios the Iberian inculcated a hatred of Chalcedonian Christology,{1} was a heretic and it goes without saying that the Ecumenical Councils were right to condemn him. The Church does not err, for she is the pillar and ground of truth [1 Tim 3:15].

Acceptance of Henotikon and Departure from St. Cyril
2. Severos accepted the Henotikon of Emperor Zeno and rejected the Creed of Union signed by Patriarch St. Cyril I of Alexandria, whom he pretended to follow in all matters Christological [PG 89:103D].

One Theandric Energy
3. Severos affirmed μία θεανδρική ένέργεία, by which Christ acts in all things. Divine actions exercised in and through the human nature (raising the dead by a word and healing the sick by a touch) are formally theandric (divino-human). This is the theandric energy to which the great hieromartyr St. Dionysios the Areopagite (10/9) refers [Letter 4 to Caius in PG 3:1072C]. Purely human actions exercised in response to the divine will (walking and eating) are materially theandric (humano-divine). But there are purely divine actions (creating souls and conserving the universe) that are not theandric, and so, pace Severos, not all of the activities of Christ are theandric.

Compound Theandric Nature
4. Severos also posited μία φύσις θεανδρική (one theandric nature) of Christ. This is impossible, because if Christ had a single συνθετος (compound) divine-human φύσις, He would not be consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Who subsist only in the divine nature, nor would he be consubstantial with us, because we do not have a divine-human nature. The great Doctor of the Incarnation St. Cyril (1/28), when he explained μία φύσις Θeoυ Λόγου σεσαρκωμένη, taught something altogether different than the Severian myth that the two natures became one nature.

Denial That Christ Exists in Two Natures After the Union
5. Severos wrongly denied that Christ is in two natures after the union [PG 86:908]. Since St. Paul, inspired of the Holy Spirit, says that Christ exists in human form (and being found in human form [Phil 2:7]), Christ is not merely from two natures (εκ δύο φύσεων), but subsists in two natures (εν δύο φύσεσιν) after the union.

Condemnation by Sixth Ecumenical Council
6. In 681 the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III) condemned Severos as a Monophysite, since he taught the following absurd doctrine in his Epistle 2 to Count Oecumenis [Mansi xi:443BC], “Yet one Incarnate Word wrought one and the other–neither was this from one nature, and that from another; nor can we justly affirm that because there are distinct things operated there are therefore two operating natures and forms.”

Condemnation by Seventh Ecumenical Council
7. Furthermore, the Decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 (Nicaea II) condemned Severos as a Monophysite [Mansi xiii:377B].

The Doctors Know Best
8. As to the heretical tenets and results of Severian Christology, we can trust the testimony of the great Church Doctor Hieromonk St. John of Damascus (3/27), who says in An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3:3 [PG 94:993AB], “we hold that there has been a union of two perfect natures, one divine and one human; not with disorder or confusion, or intermixture, or commingling, as is said by the God-accursed Dioscoros and by Eutyches and Severos, and all that impious company.”

Reliable Vision of the Unhappy Fate of the Heretic Severus
9. The Syrian monk and ascetical writer St. John Moschos (550-619) relates of the pilgrim brother Theophan or Theophanes in Chapter 26 of The Spiritual Meadow:{2}

About the ninth hour of the next day the brother saw someone of truly awesome appearance standing next to him.
“Come, and see the truth,” he said, and led him to a dark and stinking place throwing up flames of fire, and in the flames he saw Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, Dioscorus, Severus, Arius, Origen and others like them.
“This is the place prepared for the heretics, blasphemers, and those who follow their teachings,” he said to the brother. “So then, if you like the look of this place persist in your teachings, but if you would prefer to avoid this punishment return to the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, as the old man told you. For I tell you, even if a person practices all the virtues there are, unless he believes rightly he will be crucified in this place.

Severian Christology vs. Catholic Christology: Apples to Oranges
10. Catholicism: two natures, two energies (operations), two wills
11. Severian Monophysitism: one theandric nature, one theandric energy (the faculty of all of Christ’s actions), one theandric will

Notes & References
{1} Patriarch Severus of Antioch records that Peter the Iberian made him realize the “evil” and “the impiety” of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. He says, “This communion I so hold, I so draw near, as I drew near in it with the highest assurance and a fixed mind, when our holy father Peter of Iberia was offering and performing the ritual sacrifice.”
{2} http://www.vitae-patrum.org.uk/page142.html.

Originally posted 8/9/2009.

In his winter 1964-1965 journal article, “St. Cyril’s ‘One Physis or Hypostasis of God the Logos Incarnate’ and Chalcedon,” the Eastern Orthodox Fr. John S. Romanides († 2001) wrongly infers Cyrillian primacy at the Council of Chalcedon, when the truth is Leonine primacy; i.e., Fr. John wrongly declared that the Tome of Leo was subordinate to the Cyrillian writings, i.e., was of lesser authority.

The bishops intended to stress, against the Eutychians, that their acceptance of the Leonine definition did not put them at odds with the Christology of the most holy Cyril, and they would not have thought it possible that Leo could err in his ex cathedra definition and contradict the earlier ecumenically-approved writings (which derived their authority from the sanction of the Pope in the first place) of that soldier of Christ, St. Cyril the Great [Rivington 411]. The Council did not judge as a superior the two pillars of orthodoxy when it said that the two saints agree Christologically, just as I do not act superior to the great-martyrs Sts. James and Paul the Apostles when I truthfully proclaim that they agree soteriologically [411]. The Council did not, by mentioning the Roman and Alexandrian bulwarks together, put them on the same official level, just as no one puts St. Paul the Apostle and a Greek poet on the same level when he says that they are in accord [411]. Just because someone notices my agreement with my master St. Thomas Aquinas and says that we believe alike, that does not mean that he puts me on the same level as that great wonderworking doctor, for it is manifest that I am but a shadow while he is brilliant light invincibly defending, better than anyone else, the truths our Lord handed down through the Apostles. The bishops assumed from the outset the agreement between Leo and Cyril [414]. It was not that they could dissent from the Leonine definition and modify it, but that they wanted to see the agreement between the two illustrious Doctors and adhere to the definition with an enlightened faith, and not a blind faith [416].

Works Cited
Rivington, Rev. Luke, M.A. The Primitive Church and the See of Peter. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://books.google.com/books?id=uiqOs8cftDcC>.

to listen to this show click here

“Servetus the Evangelical” is the pseudonym for an evangelical scholar who recently published a book called The Restitution of Jesus Christ in which he describes who God and Jesus are from a biblical unitarian perspective including exegesis of several texts typically used to teach that Jesus is God (i.e. John 1.1; 20.28; etc.). Though he has been a Bible-believing evangelical all his adult life he began to question the doctrine of the Trinity when he couldn’t make sense of certain Scriptures within a trinitarian mindset. In particular Matthew 24.36 (also Mark 13.32) convinced him that Jesus was not omniscient since he confessed that he did not know when he would return. Texts like this began “Servetus” on a quest for truth which ended in his confession of the historic creed of the people of God that Yahweh alone is God (Deut. 6.4; Mark 12.29) and that Jesus is the human Messiah divinely begotten by God via the Holy Spirit.

“Servetus” has a website at which many articles are free for download including this tract which describes in a couple of pages what his research on God and Jesus has revealed. Furthermore, there is a contest on www.servetustheevangelical.com to guess his identity. Since 2008 he has revealed a clue each month. He will continue to do this until 2011 (the 500th birthday of Michael Servetus) when he will reveal his identity and publish a new book about his personal journey. Listen in to this conversation to hear the mysterious “Servetus the Evangelical” describe why he changed his views on these critical matters. (Thanks to JP Smajda–audio engineer extraordinaire–for his help in disguising Servetus’ voice).

In Chapter 4 of Scripture and Metaphysics, Matthew Levering takes on N.T. Wright who argues that traditional Western Trinitarian theology bypasses the narrative account of Scripture especially regarding the historical Jesus, and instead presents a fundamental non-narrative Trinitarian theology which “approache[es] the Christological question by assuming this [ontological] view of god and then fitting Jesus into it” (Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 54).

Wright begins his essay with a personal anecdote of talking to students who claim to not believe in god. Wright probes them to explain “which god they don’t believe in” and determines that when students say this, what they mean is that they do not believe in a god who sits on high, looking down and casting out judgment, what Wright calls the “spy-in-the-sky.” To these students, Wright responds that he does not believe in such a god either, but rather, believes in the God that is revealed in the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Wright’s point is that we need historical studies of Jesus because it is all too easy to create an idol of Jesus, a heavenly, perfect, sinless, and non-Jewish Jesus “who wanders round with a faraway look, listening to the music of the angels, remembering the time when he was sitting up in heaven with the other members of Trinity, having angels bring him bananas on golden dishes.” Rather than starting off with the Orthodox, post-Nicaean and post-Chalcedonian Jesus as the second person of the Trinity (what Wright calls the kyriarchal portrait of God), Wright argues that we need to start with the historical Jesus who reveals to us not a creedal formula, but rather, the Old Testament God of Israel:

In Jesus himself, I suggest we see the biblical portrait of YHWH come to life: the loving God, rolling up his sleeves (Isa 52:10) to do in person the job that no one else could do, the creator God giving new life the God who works through his created world and supremely through his human creatures, the faithful God dwelling in the midst of his people, the stern and tender God relentlessly opposed to all that destroys or distorts the good creation, and especially human beings, but recklessly loving all those in need and distress. “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall carry the lambs in his arms; and gently lead those that are with young” (Isa 40:11). It is the OT portrait of YHWH, but it fits Jesus like a glove.

In this chapter, Levering wants to save Aquinas from the implicit criticism of people like Wright, namely, that his conception of Jesus is sterile and formulaic, and completely detached from the Jesus as revealed in Scripture. Instead, Levering claims that Aquinas rejects the kyriarchal portrait of God just as strongly as Wright does. He cites the Tertia Pars, QQ. 46, art. 3. where Aquinas asks whether there was a more suitable way of delivering the human race than by Christ’s passion. In the first objection, alluding to St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, Aquinas states that God could have liberated humankind solely by His Divine Will! This could have not only spared the life of the incarnate son of God but would have more suitably revealed God’s superior power.

But Aquinas rejects the mighty display of God’s power as more suitable than the Passion (as does Wright) on the grounds that Christ’s passion teaches us about the God who saves us: “In the first place, man knows thereby how much god loves him, and is thereby stirred to love him in return, and therein lies the perfection of human salvation” (IIIa, Q. 46, art. 3). As Levering writes:

Christ’s Paschal mystery reveals to human kind the extraordinary depth of God’s love. Without Christ’s passion, humankind would not have known the superabundance of God’s love. The Paschal mystery reveals the Trinity (God-in-himself) in terms of a wisdom of wondrous love,, to the point of the Son of God giving his own life for the salvation of sinners, that is, for the salvation of those who by pride had cut themselves off from God” (Levering 134).

Aquinas does not give us the “disembodied theological cipher” which Wright wants to counter with the historical Jesus, but rather, to use Wright’s own words, “the Jesus whose body was killed as the revelation of the love of God and raised to new life.”

Aquinas gives another reason that Christ’s bloody passion was more fitting than a mighty display of God’s power neatly accomplishing the same task. That is, by his passion, Christ “set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (I Peter 2:21): ‘Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps” (IIIa, Q. 46, art. 3). Levering’s point is this, that like Wright, Aquinas appeals to the cross and the scriptural account of Jesus to dispel what Wright calls the “kyriarchal” or aloof, uncaring and philosophically formulaic God. But unlike Wright wants to argue that his scriptural and historical account of Jesus reveals a God of superabundant love, of humility, and of personified wisdom, as opposed to the philosophical accounts of God that his students reject, Aquinas uses philosophy to probe the depths of this mystery further. Namely, Aquinas draws a Trinitarian conclusion.

Jesus, Aquinas argues, was able to endure such suffering (which we have already established is intended to suitably reveal the intimate love of God that God is willing to suffer with and for God’s people) because of intimate knowledge of the Father. In suffering, and suffering without sin, for the sins of others, Jesus had full knowledge of Father, which gave Jesus the ability to suffer the most profound sorrow for sin out of the love which is manifest in the Father. As Levering writes, “the Father inspired Christ’s human will with this perfect charity by infusing Christ’s humanity with the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In Christ’s passion, one thus sees manifested the incarnate Son’s obedience to the Father through the Holy Spirit. The Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ reveals God’s wisdom and love in Trinitrarian form” (136).

For Aquinas, the scriptural Jesus, and especially the scriptural account of Jesus’ death reveals the Father as the one who sends the Son as the Father’s Word of love for the world, reveals the incarnate Son who is God’s perfect Word in the world, and reveals the Holy Spirit who enables the incarnate Son to suffer with supernaturally-inspired love. That is, for Aquinas, it is not the study of metaphysics, though metaphysics certainly helps, and not the study of creeds, though creeds are important, but precisely the study of Scripture and especially the Passion which reveals the Trinity.

We see the central and foundational importance of scripture in Aquinas’ Trinitarian formulas elsewhere, specifically in his commentary on John. Commenting on John 5:20, Aquinas writes that “because the Father perfectly loves the Son, this is a sign that the Father has shown him everything and has communicated to him his very own power and nature” (Super Ioan. 5, lect. 3, no. 753). Because the Father gives the Son everything he has, the Son is the perfect image of the Father (Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:15) or as Aquinas reflects using metaphysical language “since likeness is a cause of love (for every animal loves its like), wherever a perfect likeness of God is found, there also is found a perfect love of God” (Super Ioan 5, lect. 3, no. 753). Just as the Father bets the Son by absolute self-gift, so too the Son, in order to reveal the Father, must give himself completely.” Hence, we get the Passion.

This is not a way of ignoring the God of Israel which Jesus reveals perfectly through his earthly life (as Wright wants to argue); it is, however, a fuller revelation of the God of Israel. Levering writes, “Before Christ’s coming, the people of Israel knew God the father, but they only knew him as father in the sense of Creator, and as the one and only God. Christ’s disciples, on the other hand, are able to know Father by faith (by the grace of the Holy Spirit) as the Father of the only-begotten son” (139). Aquinas cites John 5:36 on this point: “The very works which m Father has given me to perform—those works that I myself perform—they bear witness to me that the Father sent me.” According to Aquinas, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, by revealing himself through his works, also reveals the Father. This is the basis of Trinitarian formulas—the works of Jesus as related by Scripture.

Wright wants to say that if we really study the Jesus as revealed in Scripture, we will not get at a creedal Trinitarian formula. The real Jesus and the Second Person of the Trinity have nothing to do with each other. He writes,

After fifteen years of serious historical Jesus study, I still say the creed ex animo; but I now mean something very different by it, not least by the word “god” itself. The portrait has been redrawn. At its heart we discover a human face, surrounded by a crown of thorns. God’s purpose for Israel has been completed. Salvation is of the Jews, and from the King of the Jews it has come. God’s covenant faithfulness has been revealed in the good news of Jesus, bringing salvation for the whole cosmos.

But for Aquinas, as Levering points out, it is precisely by studying this historical, earthly Jesus that we are taught, as Jesus taught his friends, about the Trinity. Jesus teaches us through his words and actions. On this, Aquinas would agree with Wright. But whereas Wright uses only historical and literary methods to understand this Jesus, Aquinas also integrates metaphysical methods to not only exegete the historical Jesus, but also to be conformed to true knowledge of the living God revealed in scripture. Metaphysical speculation does not, as Wright criticizes, lead to the construction of an aloof kyriarchal idol, but rather, seeks to illuminate the true meaning of scriptural narrative of the transcendent and immanent God revealed to Israel as YHWH. In short, metaphysical speculation, in addition to historical and literary methods of understanding, complement one another by instilling within the believer greater contemplative understanding of the mystery of the Trinity. Or as A.F. Gunten, O.P. remarks,

“The texts of Scripture invited [Aquinas] to undertake a philosophical study that bears its fruits. It then permits him to give a more precise interpretation of Scripture.”

]]> http://schmuckengel.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/gluckssteine-fur-den-schutzen-23-november-21-dezember/ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:10:54 +0000 schmuckengel http://schmuckengel.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/gluckssteine-fur-den-schutzen-23-november-21-dezember/

Für alle Schützen gelten folgende Monatssteine als Glückssteine:

Chalcedon
Lapislazuli
Saphir
Sodalith

Beim Klick auf den Namen kommt Ihr direkt zum Store!

Mit einem so sprühendem Optimismus eröffnen Sie für sich und andere neue Wege!

]]> http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/the-holy-great-female-martyr-euphemia-july-11/ Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:17:58 +0000 VatopaidiFriend http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/the-holy-great-female-martyr-euphemia-july-11/ http://schmuckengel.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/nachwuchs-bei-den-engeln/ Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:32:08 +0000 schmuckengel http://schmuckengel.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/nachwuchs-bei-den-engeln/

Unsere Engel haben Nachwuchs bekommen

ob betende kleine Engelkinder, tolle Flügel oder erhabene Engel – Ladys, es ist einiges los!

Zudem sind 117 neue Heilstein – Trommelsteine und wundervolle Einzelstücke eingeflogen

Hier finden Sie alle Neuheiten der letzten Tage

]]> http://iccucc.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/pentecost-sunday-may-31-2009/ Mon, 25 May 2009 13:00:02 +0000 Immanuel Congregational Church http://iccucc.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/pentecost-sunday-may-31-2009/

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 2: 1-21,
Psalm 104: 25-34, 35b, Romans 8: 22-27, John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15

Pentecost, of course, remembers the birthday of the Church. The dramatic rendering Luke offers in this week’s lection from Acts speaks of the “rush of violent wind” filling the house where the disciples had gathered. “Tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and…rested on each of them.” While Genesis 11 depicts the confusion of tongues created by the arrogance of Babel, the opposite is evidenced among these early followers of Jesus. The sudden ability to speak and understand many other languages is meant to demonstrate to us all the power and energy of that new beginning.

Yet is seems the challenges presented to first century Christians have continued unabated to confront even those of us who live twenty centuries later. Witness Phyllis Tickle in her recent book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why. She describes both the large and small changes that have changed and challenge us today. Attention is called to the dramatic changes that occur about every five hundred years. In 451 CE there was Chalcedon, an ecumenical council that shaped our definition of Jesus’ nature in the incarnation and created all kinds of turmoil and division in the process. About five hundred years later in 1054 CE the Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy in Constantinople hurled his anathemas at Leo IX in Rome who responded with his bulls of excommunication so dividing Christianity into East and West. Five hundred years after that in 1517 CE there was Luther and those who followed him. Once again both church and world were changed by the Protestant Reformation. Tickle points out in her book that every five hundred years or so the church has undergone dramatic change! And, interestingly enough, now another five hundred years has nearly passed, and it seems certain that the whole church, including our small element within it named the United Church of Christ will either adjust to the huge change that is taking place in our world or at best face the danger of fading into obscurity.

Tickle sees a large part of the problem as a nibbling away of our credibility. Galileo or Darwin, for example, didn’t have anything against the church, but their new insights threatened some within the church and divided it. Freud and Einstein did the same. Our credibility suffered in our different interpretations of sacred scriptures on questions of slavery, women’s rights, prohibition and homosexuality. A proud and contemporary atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and others like him blame religion for about everything that’s gone wrong in the world. And just as profoundly, we’re in danger of further marginalization by the i-pod or the Sony Walkman. When I see young people, their ears soundly plugged, walking down the street with their fingers clicking, their feet jazzing and their eyes half closed, I wonder about the hymnody that’s served us so well during my lifetime.

I, who love tradition, now access my information through reading newspapers on line. Recently I bought an amazing device called a Kindle. It allows me to access books in less than two or three minutes at half the price and no need for more bookcases. All of these realities are changing us. They’re shaping the future whether we like it or not.

Which brings me to another lection assigned for this week: Paul’s letter to the Romans offers us that magnificent verse, “all things work together for good” which the best translations now tell us should be read as a demand that people find the good in everything — which must mean even all the change that continually shapes our world.

I believe that the future is exciting and can evoke the energy and power of the church in exciting ways. For example, Stanley Fish in a recent New York Times article quoted an English critic, Terry Eagleton, who wrote this: “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can every be properly raised.” These are questions of meaning, questions like “why is there anything in the first place?” And questions like that can best be asked and struggled with in a setting very much like the local congregation, like Immanuel Church.

Someone has said that the church is like an anvil that’s outworn many a hammer. I believe that’s because as human beings we need the encouragement of a questioning, dialogical faith, the depth of human experience that we find in covenant communities, having the privilege of listening to music of quality, and the very human and healthy satisfaction of serving others through various programs of mission and benevolence.

So while Pentecost marks the power and energy of a new beginning, there’s no reason why that energy and power cannot be released again and again as we tap into the source of that energy and power through our participation in Christ Jesus as his twenty-first century followers.

Ralph Ahlberg

]]> http://readingchurchhistory.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/turning-points-03-doctrine-politics-and-life-in-the-word-the-council-of-chalcedon-451/ Sat, 23 May 2009 23:13:38 +0000 halakti http://readingchurchhistory.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/turning-points-03-doctrine-politics-and-life-in-the-word-the-council-of-chalcedon-451/

The Theological Importance of Chalcedon

• 80: “For the history of Christian doctrine, Chalcedon was … vitally important in two ways. It represented a wise, careful, and balanced restatement of scriptural revelation. And it also represented successfully the translation of biblical revelation into another conceptual language. Chalcedon was not Pentecost, but because its work faithfully synthesized scriptural history, the Hellenistic world could now hear “the wonders of God” in its own tongue. Because the work of Chalcedon faithfully translated scriptural teaching, the Hellenistic world could now express the wonders of God in its own conceptual language. Both synthesis and translation would need to happen again and again and again.”

The Intellectual and Cultural Importance of Chalcedon

• 80-81: Chalcedon helped to balance two general extremes in the early church (which have also reappeared with some frequency since):
  • Alexandrian, Word-flesh Christology —which tended to devalue the full humanity of Christ;
  • Anitochene, Word-man Christology —which tended to subvert the organic connection between the divine and the human.
• 81: “…the definition demands both serious attention to worldly existence (the Anitiochene stress on the full humanity of Christ) as well as a full spirituality as believers enter the world (the Alexandrian stress on the integrity of Christ’s person). The genius of Chalcedon was to draw these perspectives together and to insist that neither tendency outweigh the other.”

]]> http://agyapw.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/is-a-sinless-jesus-truly-human/ Wed, 13 May 2009 12:04:53 +0000 agyapw http://agyapw.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/is-a-sinless-jesus-truly-human/

In 451 the Council of Chalcedon declared that:

“We confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; “like us in all things but sin.”…”

The quote “like us in all things but sin” is a direct allusion to Hebrews 4:15 = “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” The Bible repeatedly affirms that Jesus, being fully human, was without sin – he “committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1Peter 2:22); “in him is no sin” (1John 3:5) and he “had no sin” (2Cor 5:21) – and Jesus himself claimed that he always did what pleased the Father (John 8:29).

But is this a contradiction of Jesus’ humanity? It is sometimes claimed that, if Jesus is truly human, he could not have been sinless (or vice-versa). “To err is human…” and Jesus can be no exception – or, if he is, he is not really human. The implication is sometimes that those who affirm the sinlessness of Jesus don’t really believe in the incarantion; they don’t really believe in his true humanity and are in fact closet Docetists.

The same principle of sin (moral error) is sometimes also charged to Jesus in respect of his teachings – might he not also be fallible in some of his views and opinions (intellectual error)? For example, in his ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses, or his teaching about hell. Is an inerrant Jesus truly human? “To err is human…”

But this is, in fact, not the case. To claim that a person who does not sin is not truly human is in fact to claim that sinfulness is an inalienable part of human nature. But then, we must logically deny that humanity in the new creation is not going to be true humanity. There will be no sin in heaven… does that mean that we will not be entirely human in heaven? No – in fact, we will be more human in the new creation. Sin is not an essential part of human nature; and in fact, to assert that it is is to measure Jesus by our humanity rather than measuring our humanity by Jesus’.

The question shouldn’t be “is Jesus as human as we are?” but rather “are we as human as Jesus is?” (Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, p.737) The upshot of all of this is that we are right to read the Bible as affirming both the full humanity and the full sinlessness of Jesus – and that imitating Christ makes us more authentically human, not less. Ultimately, when we are no longer troubled by the presence of sin in the new creation, we will be human in the way God always intended for us to be. Jesus’ sinless life is an foretaste of what that is going to be like – amazing!

]]> http://masteringthemind.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/rushdoony-on-getting-the-leaders-we-deserve/ Sun, 03 May 2009 15:40:45 +0000 Bruce Townsend http://masteringthemind.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/rushdoony-on-getting-the-leaders-we-deserve/

“That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. (Isa. 30:9-10)”

In brief, God says that a people will get the kind of leaders they want. They will demand and only approve of men who speak smooth things and prophesy and promise lies. In fact, says Micah 2:11, if an evil-spirited man declares that salvation lies in drunkenness, “He shall even be the prophet of this people.” The authority and leadership people demand is in conformity to their character. The authority exercised by our presidents reflects the weaknesses of American character, and the same is true of every country in the world.

Read the full blog

From The Chalcedon Foundation

]]> http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/metropolitan-gerasimos-of-san-francisco-blasts-met-jonah-for-persecuting-the-ecumenical-patriarchate-of-constantinople/ Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:45:33 +0000 VatopaidiFriend http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/metropolitan-gerasimos-of-san-francisco-blasts-met-jonah-for-persecuting-the-ecumenical-patriarchate-of-constantinople/ http://christiantheology.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/meredith-kline-on-covenants-cow-and-cog/ Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:48:30 +0000 Neiswonger http://christiantheology.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/meredith-kline-on-covenants-cow-and-cog/

Meredith Kline On Theonomy in Reformed Theology (Covenants, Cow, and Cog. 1 of 3.)

Meredith Kline is another big name in the in-house Evangelical discussion about the relationship between the Covenant of Works (Cow) and the Covenant of Grace (Cog).

Kline was a brilliant theologian that taught at both Gordon-Conwell and Westminster Seminary (East). Please don’t take any of these comments as intending disrespect for a recently departed brother. That we continue to think about his ideas and wrestle with his thought is testimony to the vast depth and intellectual force of his work.

I’ve had mixed feelings on Kline as it’s hard to find Christians that choose to write on the things that I’m interested in, and so I appreciate his scholarship, but he also had a peculiar talent for making reasonably clear things unduly complicated. Needless complexity is often a mask for unclear thought.

On his defenses of the Cow against those in the last century that were prone to blend the Covenants, I applaud his resolve. He was fighting with no mean theologians, but titans. The Blenders had a few different options for attacking traditional Covenantal interpretations of theology. First by saying that all Covenants are really Cogs, so that even those that seem to be Cows are really gracious. And those that say that there really are no Cogs, because even those that seem to be gracious include some measure of works so that though grace is necessary, it is not sufficient.

(Trying to keep track of the players and the spiraling opinions can get very messy. It’s enough to say at this point that some of the key modern players are N.T. Wright, John Murray, Ray Sutton, Michael Horton, Douglas Wilson, R.C. Sproul, Daniel Fuller, Mark Karlberg, and O. Palmer Robertson. Even the present Pope has found his way clear to weigh in on this one in “Many religions-One Covenant”, Pope Benedict XVI. The reason that we might not understand what the argument is about even though the buzz is near constant is that some of the writers have an amazing talent for not communicating their positions in any way that is intelligible.)

Kline’s willingness to press his own personal views to the exclusion of Confessional adherence is viewed today as cheeky and bold but for my taste it’s a bit too spicy. There was an ongoing battle between he and Greg Bahnsen over the issue of “Theonomy”, which could be defined as the view that the Moral law of God is the proper basis for human ethics.

We could take the point of discussion as being whether or not God’s moral law is the continuing basis for our personal ethics, our social behavior, and by extension, for our good Civil law. That issue and Kline’s work in regard to the Westminster Confession will fill in the remainder of this article.

I’m not a Chalcedon fan (Reconstructionist), for many reasons, but the way Kline decided to handle the discussion lacked both respect for the long standing tradition of a specifically Christian Civics and an obvious lack of Christian charity for Bahnsen and the others he was writing about. He took a conversation that was necessary for Christians to have in every generation, the conversation about how we should frame our ethical and legal conduct, and for the most part labeled the discussion either irrelevant or misguided.

We should notice first that he is clear in saying that the Westminster Confession, the most commonly used Evangelical Confession of faith, held the view that Kline disagrees with (Chapters 19 and 23 included below). He thinks that the revision that changed the section on “Magistracy” did not remove all of the traditional legal thought necessary bring a complete correction. He then has the boldness to imply that those that hold to what the Confession teaches might be charged with heresy in the very churches that have sworn to uphold the theology of the Confession. Kline himself swore that same oath. It’s confusing, at least.

“At the same time it must be said that Chalcedon {a group that held to a version of a theonomic ethic} is not without roots in respectable ecclesiastical tradition. It is in fact a revival of certain teachings contained in the Westminster Confession of Faith – at least in the Confession’s original formulations. These particular elements in the Confession, long since rejected as manifestly unbiblical by the mass of those who stand in that confessional tradition (as well as by virtually all other students of the Scriptures), have been subjected to official revision. The revision, however, has left us with standards whose proper legal interpretation is perplexed by ambiguities, and the claim of Chalcedon is that it is the true champion of confessional orthodoxy. Ecclesiastical courts operating under the Westminster Confession of Faith are going to have their problems, therefore, if they should be of a mind to bring the Chalcedon aberration under their judicial scrutiny.” Meredith Kline “Comments on an Old New Error” 1

Reading these things changed my views on Kline’s work. Having a great respect for history and for the Christians that came before us is part and parcel of the Reformed tradition. To be as bold as to threaten other Christians with censure for holding a position that he admits is in accord with the doctrinal formulations within the Westminster standards shows an unhealthy disrespect for those same standards. Of course, people that disrespect the tradition should not be thought to be trustworthy advocates of that tradition, but instead, should be carefully measured as they think of themselves as innovative instead of protective of a previously established orthodoxy.

Kline not only admitted that the Confession that he swore to uphold was at least Theonomic in its scope, he said that the Confession should be changed to an even greater extent to remove the remaining elements that he found offensive.

“If, providentially, anything good is to come of the Chalcedon disturbance, perhaps, paradoxically, it will come from the very embarrassment given to churches committed to the Westminster standards by the relationship that can be traced, as noted above, between the Chalcedon position and certain ideas expressed in the Westminster Confession. Perhaps the shock of seeing where those ideas lead in Chalcedon’s vigorous development of them may make the church face up to the problem posed by the relevant formulations and reconsider the Confession’s position on these points (and on interlocking issues, like the Sabbath). From such a constructively critical effort there might ensue, if not actual amendment of the faulty formulations themselves, at least a sorely needed clarification of the use of the Confession as an instrument in the judicial process.” Kline 1.

Never the shy one, Kline even went as far as saying that the writers of the Confession managed to misinterpret the Bible on “a massive scale”. One might say (and some have) that Kline might be attributing the massive misinterpretation here to the Chalcedon group and not to the writers of the Confession, but in the context above it would need to be both, not either/or since he uses the confessional framework as the basis for his attack on Chalcedon.

“Whatever support may be found in the Westminster standards for the Chalcedon theory of Theonomic politics, when it comes to assessing it in terms of the church’s only infallible standard, that theory must be repudiated as a misreading of the Bible on a massive scale.” Kline 1.

What Kline is saying here is that the only infallible authority is not the Westminster Standards, but the Bible, which is obviously true, but also betrays his doubts about the position that the Confession actually teaches. Rather than give an argument for what the Bible actually does teach on the subject so that it can be vetted for orthodoxy, the subject is left with an awkward void in the place of hundreds of years of classical orthodoxy.

A point of interest here is that Kline’s own innovative interpretation of these things has never been adopted by any Christian body, least of all in the Reformed tradition (though he might have some co-belligerents in the Ana-Baptist tradition). As far as I know, nothing quite like Kline’s interpretation has ever been heard of before in the Christian churches. But I think his arguments tend to be persuasive only if you might already be looking for something to justify like positions. Either way, Kline’s duty was to the defense and not the refutation of the Confession of his Church.

There should be a thick measure of respect for our past that protects us from needless and possibly harmful innovation, and that coupled with a heavy burden of proof upon anything that looks suspiciously like wanton disregard for the historic formulations of Christian dogma. Things are not sacred because they are old, but they are often old because wiser men than we established a worthy foundation that has stood the test of time, and the zeal for newness is often thoughtless of consequence.

Either way, Kline’s analysis is a presentation of an alternative view and I think it an unsuccessful refutation of the Confession’s position.

Here are links to Kline’s article and Bahnsen’s response. It’s good to remember that understanding Bahnsen’s position as the defender of confessional orthodoxy in this regard does not entail either embracing Christian Reconstruction as a system nor any of the specific applications favored by the Chalcedon group. The method we might see as the best way to apply God’s moral law to historical conditions is debatable, as are the specific laws that one might think would be good to use as a means to that end, but it’s hard to see the principal of drawing our norms from the Moral law of God as itself being up for debate.

Christopher Neiswonger

Kline’s accusation.
1 http://www.covopc.org/Kline/Kline_on_Theonomy.html

Bahnsen’s Response.
2 http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pe043.htm

The Westminster Confession of Faith

Chapter 19 Of the Law of God.

I. God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience; promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it: and endued him with power and ability to keep it.

II. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness, and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the four first commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six our duty to man.

III. Beside this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits;(d) and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament.

IV. To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

V. The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it: neither doth Christ, in the Gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.

VI. Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs, and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin; together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin: and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God’s approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof; although not as due to them by the law, as a covenant of works.(t) So as, a man’s doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law; and not under grace.

VII. Neither are the forementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that, freely and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.

WCF Chapters XVI-XIX

Chapter XXIII.
Of the Civil Magistrate.

I. God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates, to be, under Him, over the people, for His own glory, and the public good: and, to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defence and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil doers.

II. It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto; in the managing whereof, as they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth; so for that end, they may lawfully now, under the New Testament, wage war, upon just and necessary occasion.

III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be. preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.

IV. It is the duty of people to pray for magistrates, to honour their persons, to pay them tribute or other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and to be subject to their authority, for conscience’ sake. Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrates’ just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to them: from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted, much less hath the Pope any power and jurisdiction over them in their dominions, or over any of their people; and, least of all, to deprive them of their dominions, or lives, if he shall judge them to be heretics, or upon any other pretence whatsoever.

WCF Chapters XXIII-XXVII

]]> http://utopaedia.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/a-thought-on-the-core-problem-for-utopia/ Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:54:17 +0000 HAT http://utopaedia.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/a-thought-on-the-core-problem-for-utopia/

One problem with utopia and utopian thinking is precisely the problem of relationship to what is different. Some people might be tempted to say “transcendent,” but it’s enough to say “different.”

The thinkers who figure in my dissertation — Adorno, Irigaray, Agamben — all deal with this problem and work at finding some intellectual solution to it in their work. For Adorno it takes the form of difference itself, “non-identity thinking,” and how to approach it, where the problem arises for thought in the experience of a gap between the concepts in which the philosopher thinks and the reality the philosopher tries to think about, which differs unspeakably from those concepts — and that difference arising even when we think the concepts have been drawn directly from the empirical world, but especially acutely when we begin to think the concepts have been drawn from any other source.

For Irigaray, the problem takes the form of some reality escaping language, feminine reality, barred from language, barred even from the language of the unconscious through psychoanalysis, escaping all categories of thought and unthought and language, hence completely inarticulate. But real. So how does that reality come to awareness, begin to articulate itself, and even more problematically, begin to articulate itself to the non-feminine or masculine that commands language and thought (in her textual world, here).

For Agamben, from Possibilities, the problem sounds like that of “the truth beyond language,” once again, something that language itself fails to grasp, embody — but because of that, then how articulate, reach, discern that truth beyond language (which he casts as the problem of language itself as language — that is, not problems that reside within language, but the problem for thought of thinking about language itself, the phenomenon — I don’t say this very well here, as “phenomenon” seems like the wrong word, and to already presuppose a lot that ought not to be presupposed — of language). The problem of how to be in some kind of relationship with something that really differs from what one can already talk about, say, understand, know . . . And then, for him, this comes to look like — anyone else, any other particular person or other.

This is a theological problem, the problem that makes Barth’s notion of the ganz anderes so poignant — wanting to make God so different from humanity that there’s no meeting place, no interface for communication — emphasis on the ganz in ganz anderes — and once that happens, then there being no even intuition, inkling, thought, notion, point of contact, entry for God into the reality of humanity.

The problem Christianity aims to solve at Chalcedon, and whether that’s a solution, or not, there’s a mystic formula that sums the problem up: two realities, but in communion, in communication, in relationship: without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation. ?? No one really understands that.

The problem of the relationship, the possibility of relationship, the nature of the relationship, of A and B, where B is really different from A, which is also the problem of change, how one thing/state changes into another thing/state, which is also the problem of creativity, how one stands in one place and time and uses available materials and explodes something hitherto unknown into it, (leaving aside all the discussions of just exactly how unknown, just exactly how different, just exactly how unimaginable, or how nonexistant this newly created creation might possibly be able to be . . .) — this problem surfaces at the core of the utopian thought.

Because in the end the problem isn’t one of quantity/magnitude of difference at all, but of quality — we’re already in over our heads when the difference is the one Benjamin talks about, quoting the rabbis: the world to come will be just like this one — only a little bit different.

]]> http://wherethewind.com/2009/03/28/a-woefully-abridged-timeline/ Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:42:18 +0000 WtW http://wherethewind.com/2009/03/28/a-woefully-abridged-timeline/

We’re in the fifth week of a confirmation class at church, and I (unwisely) decided to teach a class on the first 1500 years of Christian history. I never thought I’d forget just how much happened in those 1500 years, but apparently, I did. So, I grabbed my church history books and a timeline I xeroxed once, and I ended up compiling this woefully abridged list of important stuff. What are the odds we can talk about all of this in an hour?

64 Rome burns down. The crazy Roman Emperor Nero begins a longstanding habit of blaming Christians for every bad thing that happens to the Roman Empire. Around this time, tradition holds that the Apostles Peter and Paul executed in Rome.

c. 155 Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, is martyred under the Emperor Trajan’s guidelines for dealing with “atheists.” Christians were considered “atheists” because they didn’t worship the Roman Gods. Persecutions were sporadic over the first few centuries of Christian history.

270 Antony decided to become a hermit and runs off to the desert so he won’t be disturbed in prayer. His example becomes quite trendy, leading to the development of monasticism.

313 The soon-to-be Emperor Constantine has a vision to put the first two letters of “Christ” on his shield before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. He wins the battle, becomes Emperor, and promulgates the “Edict of Milan,” which ends the persecution of Christians.

325 The Council of Nicea convenes, the first “ecumenical” council of bishops from near and far. Among other things, the council rejects Arianism and affirms the Trinitarian doctrine that Christ is “begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”

387 Augustine of Hippo (after many years of disappointing his mother, Monica) converts to Christianity. His writing becomes the basis for the Western presentation of theology.

405 Jerome finishes the “Vulgate,” the Latin translation of the Bible, which becomes the industry standard until those Protestants started reading in their own languages a thousand years later.

432 Patrick, once taken captive by Irish marauders, returns to Ireland as a missionary and leads many to the Christian faith, including several local kings. Nowadays, people get pinched if they don’t wear green on his feast day.

451 The Fourth Ecumenical Council convenes in Chalcedon and affirms the doctrine that Christ is both fully God and fully human. The Council is wisely silent on how the heck this works.

529 Benedict of Nursia founds his monastic order (the “Benedictines”) and writes the “Rule” that becomes the standard for Western monasticism. Unlike those pirates, his rule is more than just “guidelines.”

590 Gregory the Great becomes pope. He earns his nickname by advancing the power of the papacy. Tradition says that a little bird taught him some music called “Gregorian chant.”

732 Charles Martel leads the winning side of the Battle of Tours, which halted the Muslim invasion of Europe. The Muslims retreat to Spain and hang out there for a long time.

800 Charlemagne crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III, a sign of the power of the papacy, which rose and fell over the years. Charlemagne is the forerunner of the “Holy Roman Empire,” which existed in one form or another for about a 1000 years beginning in the mid-900s.

1054 The Great East-West Schism, centuries in the making, finally happens. The Catholic church develops in the Latin-speaking West, the Orthodox church in the Greek-speaking East.

1095 Pope Urban II proclaims the First Crusade to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the Muslims. Over several hundred years, the crusades caused a lot of senseless death and achieved no lasting objective.

c. 1150 The universities of Paris and Oxford are formed, leading to renewed scholarship, theological inquiry, and fledgling scientific enterprise.

1206 Francis of Assisi renounces his wealth and, to punctuate his point, removes all his fancy clothes in front of the bishop. His early followers embrace a simple life of poverty. Francis had a love for nature, which is why so many Christians have his statue in their gardens.

1215 The Fourth Lateran Council affirms the doctrine of “Transubstantiation,” that the bread and wine mysteriously become the actual Body and Blood of Christ during the Eucharist.

c. 1380 John Wycliffe is exiled from Oxford for such strange positions as (1) the Bible should be translated into the vernacular and (2) Christ is present in the Eucharist, but it’s still bread. Basically, Wycliffe showed up for the Reformation 150 years early.

1456 Johann Gutenberg’s printing press produces the first printed Bible. All the monks copying the Bible by hand in scriptoriums across Europe cheer. (Okay, I made that last sentence up.)

1478 The Spanish Inquisition begins under Ferdinand and Isabella. The Inquisition uses brutal tactics to root out heretics and force the conversion of people of other religions. 500 years later, Monty Python spoofs the Inquisition. (“Our chief weapon is fear! Fear and surprise!”)

1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 theses (points of contention with church practice) to the church door in Wittenberg, inadvertently sparking the Protestant Reformation.

So, my questions are these: what do you think I left out that I shouldn’t have and what did I put in that I shouldn’t have?

]]> http://digitalawe.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/trinitarian-difficulties/ Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:50:37 +0000 digitalawe http://digitalawe.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/trinitarian-difficulties/ http://masteringthemind.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/war-is-impotence/ Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:40:50 +0000 Bruce Townsend http://masteringthemind.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/war-is-impotence/

“War is a sign of impotence. A system or philosophy of life which has no power to convert becomes imperialistic. For the zeal and faith of peaceful missionary work it substitutes brutal terror. A failing faith resorts to war, because it lacks the contagion of faith and conviction and can only force men into its own system. War is the resort of those who lack true power and are declining.”
~ R. J. Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction, p.17

posted by Chris Ortiz at 6:22 AM  

http://www.chalcedon.edu/blog/2008/10/war-is-impotence.php

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