Not For Everyone

 

A video discussion between Austin Suggs, a student at the Moody Bible Institute, and Fr. Anthony Mourad of the Coptic Orthodox Church.  Good for a Sunday. 

Suggs, for such a young man and having grown up in a seeker-type church (fog machines, etc.), has a tremendous knowledge of the Christian traditions and history.  And because he is a young man, he doesn’t carry the baggage of “everyone else is a heretic,” as he is able to have heartfelt discussions with Christians of all traditions and denominations.

To set the playing field, the Coptic Church is one of the handful of Orthodox Churches that parted ways after the Council of Chalcedon with what was until then a unified, Universal and Orthodox Church.  This discussion, about one hour long, explores the split behind Chalcedon, the hope for a unification again of the Orthodox Churches, what the Coptic Church can teach the broader Christian community, and many other topics.

I will only note one statement, by Fr. Anthony, a statement which touches on the Chalcedonian split:

Every single liturgy before the distribution of the Holy Eucharist, the priest, in front of the entire congregants, all those who are there to participate in the Mysteries, says the following prayer:

Amen, amen, amen; I believe, I believe, I believe.  And I confess to the last breath that this is the lifegiving flesh that your only begotten Son our Lord, God, and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, took from Our Lady, the Lady of us all, the Holy Theotokos, St. Mary.

He made it one with His divinity, without mingling, without confusion, and without alteration.  He confessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate.  He gave it up for us upon the Holy wood of the Cross of His own will for us all.  Truly I believe that His Divinity parted not from His humanity for a single moment nor a twinkling of an eye.  It was given to us for salvation and remission of sins, and eternal life for those who partake of Him.

I believe, I believe, I believe that this is true.  Amen.

This prayer is said every single divine liturgy.  When you hear that, there is absolutely no room for the accusation of the Coptic Church’s Monophysitism. 

From this discussion, I have come away with the following resources:

·         An English translation, taken from both the Greek and Latin, of The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (the book is too expensive; a google books preview is here).

·         A video discussion on the Council, with the author of the aforementioned book, Dr. Richard Price (which I have yet to watch, but will).

·         The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined, by V.C. Samuel (which I will purchase).

·         A YouTube channel, Coptic Orthodox Answers (to which I will now pay some attention).

The Eastern Church, Aquinas, and Morality

 

Matt Fradd, of Pints with Aquinas, had a conversation with Dr. Matthew Minerd.  From Minerd’s profile page:

We all have many identities, arranged in a kind of hierarchy. For my part, I am a Ruthenian Catholic, raised Roman Catholic in a mixed American-Slavic and Appalachian cultural context in Southwestern PA, a husband and father, a seminary professor, a translator.

Professor of Philosophy and Moral Theology, Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius

The Byzantine Catholics are an Eastern Church under the authority of the pope.  To make a long story short – and such things are, to put it simply, complicated: at the time of the schism in 1054, this was an Eastern Orthodox Church.  Several hundred years later, in the mid-seventeenth century, about five dozen clergy from this tradition were accepted into the Catholic Church.  They continue to utilize the Byzantine rite.

A few of the questions raised and answers offered in this discussion are worth exploring.

Why no Aquinas in the East?

Minerd, despite belonging to a church within the Eastern tradition, has a love for Thomas Aquinas.  Fradd asks: why does the East have such a problem with Aquinas?

There are two things: first, a fundamentally different idea of what theology is.  The West tends to use the word theology to refer to something like theological science – an academic theology.  It has much to do with the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century – a huge sea-change, from a monastic idea to this scholastic model.

While there is also some of this in the East, it is not nearly as pronounced.  In the East, the coin of the realm is mystical theology.  Minerd sees this as an outgrowth of the university culture in the West – the West has become wealthy and urbanized by this point.

I recall something from Jonathan Pageau, citing an Orthodox deacon, who said something along the lines of: Catholics view the elements as real; Protestants view the elements as a symbol.  The Orthodox view the elements as real because they are a symbol.

It is clear that, on the whole, the Orthodox Church is more comfortable with mystery than is the Catholic Church (to say nothing of most Protestant denominations).

If you ever read the later scholastics, it is so technical.  This can only exist in a high-level society.

Continuing, and after saying, under his breath: “you’re going to get me in trouble”:

There is a kind of insecurity [in the Eastern Church] that you are going to get swallowed up if you start talking in a Western way.  So, you have to push against Aquinas totally, or against scholasticism totally.

There is a fear of getting lost in scholastic precision, although, in his view, this is not at all a problem regarding Aquinas so much as it is a problem with later scholastics. 

What neither of them mention – and this has been true of most people who I see engaged in this discussion – is the move to nominalism in the scholastics that came after Thomas.  This continues to strike me as having a profound impact, but I am wondering if I am the only one who believes this…which maybe means I am wrong.  But I don’t think so – many non-Catholics certainly have noted this as a significant change.

He made an interesting point – that the Eastern Church sees the Western Church as doing little more than “let’s look at what Aquinas has said.”  I say interesting, because it brings to mind my recent post of Fr. Michael Butler, an Orthodox priest, speaking of the lost history of natural law in the Eastern patristics.

Jordan Peterson Interviews a Warmonger

 

Jordan Peterson decided to get educated on the situation in Ukraine.

I reached out to some of my contacts who have some intellectual credibility and political expertise to find out who could be contacted to provide an update for everyone, me included, on the unfolding situation in Russia and Ukraine and Dr. Frederick Kagan’s name popped up instantly.

I made it through about 15 minutes of this garbage.  I could have heard the same thing in about two minutes on CNN.  If the guest’s last name hasn’t provided a clue as to why, let me fill you in.

Frederick Kagan is Robert’s brother.  Robert is Victoria Nuland’s husband.  Frederick is married to Kimberly, president of the Institute for the Study of War.  Donald is the father of Frederick and Robert; the two of them wrote a book together: While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (2000).  I’d say, fortuitous timing on the book.

Frederick, Robert, and Donald were all signatories to the Project for the New American Century.

As to the fifteen minutes I heard?  Russia bad, Ukraine good; Russia bad, America good; Russia bad, NATO good.  Oh…and Putin bad, Putin bad, Putin bad.

Peterson, meanwhile, asked some of the most ignorant questions – which meant he was ripe for being fed bullshit.  But the one question that got me to quit watching was when he asked Kagan if the Russian Orthodox Church is under the authority of the pope.

While the discussion was horrendous, as you can imagine and for the few minutes I watched it, the comment section was encouraging – a clear majority (maybe overwhelming majority) pillorying Peterson and Kagan.  Some examples:

·         This interview was garbage from beginning to end.

·         NATO is not only a defensive alliance, it bombed Yugoslavia with no attacks from it on NATO members

·         I miss Prof Cohen.  And listening to this guy, who seems to be a typical Putin-hater, reminded me

·         Kagan is way off base. No mention of the Nazi brigades, no mention of bloated militarization of Ukraine, the illegal Maidan coup, etc. Everything is Putin, Putin, Putin. Donbas is mostly Russian speaking and they are a cancelled abused people. Kagan should take his academic ego and crawl back under his know it all rock. Bad choice JP! You can do better!

·         Kagan's failure to mention Ukraine's state sponsored neonazi forces shows his hand. I don't trust or believe him.

·         Frederick Kagan is schilling for the Neocons.

There were several suggestions that Peterson speak to John Mearsheimer.  This, instead of providing almost two hours of free air time to CNN and Fox News, would at least offer an alternative view.

Conclusion

With Peterson, it always seems to be one step forward, two steps back.

Most Definitely NOT Wars of Religion

 

Emperors, kings, and princes were expected to use their power to defend the vulnerable, legislate morality, protect the clergy, build churches, and support missions.

The Age of Utopia: Christendom from the Renaissance to the Russian Revolution, by John Strickland

This was an expression of the early Church’s unitary cosmology, the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven on earth.  Rulers would be granted broad latitude in ecclesiastical affairs, with the responsibility to align their policies with those of the bishops.

As you can imagine, it often didn’t work out that way:

In fact, such symphony often degenerated into a condition of caesaropapism, whereby strident emperors imposed detrimental and at times even heretical policies on the faithful.

More often than not, the worst get on top.  Which comes back to why I find the entire governance structure promoted in the East to be flawed.  It is fine if it is Christ as head; anyone less saintly can almost never be trusted.

Strickland offers that this Symphony was also the model in the West, until the Papal Reformation, “when the papacy suddenly asserted political supremacy over ‘secular’ rulers.”

This doesn’t sit right with me.  Sure, the papacy can “assert” all it wants, but, as Joseph Stalin may or may not have asked: how many divisions does the pope have?  Ultimately, the pope could not assert political supremacy, as he had no military that could stand against the king – unless a military offered to him by a rival king.  Ultimately, the pope’s “supremacy” was based on his power to excommunicate.  Really nothing more.

The support received by Luther was a sign that the secular rulers wanted to break free from the mixed and decentralized authority of the time – and why wouldn’t they?  The chance was finally offered, where one could remain Christian without the burden of having to be under any risk of excommunication.  Even those rulers who remained in the Catholic Church happily accepted this newfound level of authority.

There was also the push for a complete secularization of government.  There is the story of France, Europe’s most powerful and influential state by the time of Louis XIV. 

Preceding his reign, and having suffered significant civil wars that took the lives of three million people, including the massacre of Protestant Huguenots in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, these civil wars came to an end only when the Huguenot King Henry IV agreed to accept Roman Catholicism for the sake of the crown.  He also issued the edict of Nantes, granting the Huguenots toleration.  Eventually, this act brought on his assassination.

Then there was Cardinal Richelieu. Placed in charge of the administration of the French state.  During the Thirty Years War and despite being, obviously, Catholic, he formed an alliance with Protestants to fight against the Roman Catholic Hapsburg Empire – the main rival to French national power.  (We really need to stop considering these as wars of religion.)

The Tragedy of Ukraine

 

This won’t be a post about the current status of the war.  By the time I write it, the status will change.  And, in reality, I don’t know the status.  The one thing that has served me well is to not believe anything from the legacy media or any government mouthpiece.

It also won’t be a regurgitation of why Russia took the action it did earlier this week.  Those who care to know already know; those who pretend they know, don’t.  I don’t write this because I glory in war and death, however Russia’s actions are clearly understandable. 

Let’s just call it a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis, and consider how desperately one will fight if doing nothing is viewed as the equivalent of suicide by cop.  When Putin says all options are on the table (my paraphrase), I believe it.  As long as he feels the situation is existential…why not?

I have good friends from Ukraine.  They live here now, and have for many years.  But they have family still there.  I have been speaking with them regularly during these days.  The sadness, bitterness, desperation – it is all on display in the voice.

They, of course, see the situation as very one-sided – just as the legacy press and the US government present it.  I don’t spend any effort to convince them otherwise.  This is not the time for this.  They see their home country attacked; they see their family at risk.  Now is just time to listen.

I am reminded of a book by Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.  Ukraine figures prominently in this story.  I have written several posts based on this book, but the one that will never leave me is regarding the famine.  The scene that will never leave me is the silence:

In Soviet Ukraine in early 1933, the communist party activists who collected the grain left a deathly quiet behind them…Ukraine had gone mute.

All life stripped – human, livestock, birds, cats, dogs…all dead and gone.  When I got to this part of the book, I just had to stop reading it for several days.

All of this is just a reminder – those pulling the strings, making the decisions, initiating action, they don’t pay any consequences.  They push the consequences onto others, people with no political power, people with little means to fight back, people who are less than pawns.  Because, to be a pawn implies that you have utility in the game – something useful to those moving the pieces. 

These people, and the same is true for most of us, are just collateral damage.  Consider them the plastic wrapper that the chess game came in when new – irrelevant to the game, trash to be thrown out.

Conclusion

When I get off the phone with my friend, I pour myself a nice scotch with a little ice.  I’ve got to wind down.  It is his turn to be the one crushed by unaccountable madmen, helpless.  It has been my turn before; it will be again.  It sucks.  He is ready to go fight.  I know the feeling, as I have had it.  Emotional?  Sure.  Will he?  Would I?  I doubt it.  But the feeling is real. 

Blame Russia, blame NATO, blame whoever you want.  It is irrelevant, in reality, to those on the receiving end.