On waging “buzz saw” politics
The Obama Administration’s abruptly forced re-think this past week – although the jump kick was providential, putting a sudden, swift end to America’s pet indoor sport of gambling in political roulette, which has gone on for a full half-century, now (plus one year), during which the well honed tactics of determining policy by calculating the political odds have come to displace any semblance of responsibility in the (non)governing of the polis (in the Greek sense), the political community – this abruptly forced gearshift was summed up by one Ed Henry, CNN Senior White House Correspondent, who after an uncommonly insightful and succinct wrap-up of the end-of-the-week events, sagely concluded, having acknowledged that the sharp and decisive shift of focus was in no way at odds with Obama’s planning up to now:
“But the message is more direct: Obama is ready to stand up for the little guy against the barons on Wall Street.
"If these folks want a fight," Obama said defiantly, "this is a fight I'm ready to have."
Obama also railed against the "binge of irresponsibility" and declared: "We simply can't return to business as usual."
It's a new crisp message from a president vowing to shake up Wall Street. He's talking about jobs on Main Street, while putting the muddled health care debate a bit on the back burner.
Some of Obama's supporters may be wondering: What took him so long?”
I was not among those of Obama's supporters who wondered.
The OCA, which is the closest thing we have at present to an even minimally functional Church in this so-called land of the free and home of the brave, has more and more every day come to resemble the OCA of Bobby Kondratrick’s wildest glory-days. I was early-on concerned that the disastrous, totally diabolical, politicization of the Church, the very Body of Christ, would simply be covered up as heinously and effectively as it in fact has been, by the financial mismanagement, which was no worse than par for the course at the time, and remains so now, indeed, with its reach vastly expanded and powerfully strengthened, thanks to another of the past history-making week’s happenings, and through the good offices of the same Court mix which, a scant decade ago, provided us with our first president to be seated by 5 Supreme Court justices, rather than elected according to our Constitution, by the American people. Mark Stokoe & Co. ended on a witch hunt targeted on virtually penniless innocents, and some events and people that didn’t even exist, since the principle perpetrators had themselves covered, and their hanky panky with the sleaziest of sleazy pols went unnoticed. I was wondering when we would be getting all the photo ops with the likes of Pat Robertson, when, true to his form of old, he pulled his latest. I would have thought that for you, your Beatitude, a bear embrace with some promise keeper would have been more in line both with today’s politically correct upgrade, and with your personal style.
But, instead, you signed the Manhattan Declaration.
And then we have the totally weird and hind-side-before – so far as anything remotely pretending in any way, shape, or form, to be Christian – tactic of +Basil, Bishop of Wichita and the Diocese of Mid-America, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Judging from orthodoxnews.org, the web site of Orthodox Christian Laity, on whose Board Directors I served, back in the Kondratick days, it seems nothing has really changed, because +Basil has this fancy schmancy invitation, with all the fancy schmancy ecclesiastical formalities, which reads (although minus the fancy schmancy type-sets): “FRIDAY, JANUARY 22nd will mark the 37th anniversary of the infamous decision given by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case known as Roe v. Wade. Please find below two links about how Orthodox Christians will observe that day”
Back when Met. Herman was presiding, the National March for Life was precisely that – a dignified March in the manner of our solemn and dignified festal processions, like that for Pascha, for instance, not something akin to a gay march, announced in the tones of a gambling shill. Moreover, any Supreme Court decision, any finite, human, statement at all, in fact, is inherently, of its very finite nature, fallible and subject to varied understandings and acceptations - New Martyr St. Hilarion discusses this at some length in the article I am going to quote from below. Therefore, alteration of any legal, illegal, or whatever other similar statement is not going to alter – well, anything at all except what was but a merely probable expression at best to begin with.
I don’t see why it is impossible for adult college graduates, some with advanced degrees, to understand the obvious causality: Abortions are performed because there are babies whom no one is willing or able to nurture and care for. The principal cause of such babies are pregnancies on the part of people who are unwilling or unable to accept the consequences of sexual encounter. So it is not laws, but the behavior of those people which must be addressed.
In this light, consider the behavior of Scott Brown, whose win over the Democratic nominee in Massachusetts those who think like yourself and Bp. Basil are now no doubt very pleased with. This newly elected Sen. Brown in accepting his win pimped for his 2 daughters.
Can you honestly think of any attitude and concomitant behavior more calculated to GENERATE UNWANTED PREGNANCIES + RESULTANT ABORTIONS!?!?!?!?
Photos of Scott Brown posing nude, photos leaving nothing to anyone’s imagination, are, moreover, now out there for the viewing by whomever, on the internet. The parade of political porn is led by precisely those in positions of political leadership, state governors, city mayors, congressmen, and the like, at the head of the pack. Or, oh yes, the high flying financial types are playing catch-up. Just today the following story broke:
Software executive admits affair after mistress’ billboard campaign
By Mythili Rao, CNN January 23, 2010 3:00 a.m. EST
Software executive admits affair after mistress’ billboard campaign
By Mythili Rao, CNN
January 23, 2010 3:00 a.m. EST
New York
(CNN) -- The former mistress of a married man has taken their relationship public in a big way -- a series of giant billboards of the happy couple erected in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta.
New Yorkers passing through midtown Manhattan this week saw the smiling faces of "Charles and YaVaughnie" beaming down upon them from one of two billboards in the city with the caption reading, "You are my soulmate forever! - cep."
A URL on the billboards led curious visitors to a Web site containing personal photo albums featuring the couple at public and private events with friends and family. It also contained love notes from Charles E. Phillips to YaVaughnie Wilkins.
Phillips, 50, the co-president of Oracle Corp., admitted the affair with Wilkins, 42, in a statement released by his spokeswoman Friday.
Phillips, who has served on President Obama's economic recovery advisory board since February, joined Oracle in 2003. Prior to that, he worked as a tech industry analyst at Morgan Stanley and served as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Often talked of as a potential successor to Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison, Phillips is one of the software company's most senior and highly paid executives. On top of an $800,000 salary for 2009, he took home stock options and other compensation valued by Oracle at more than $18 million.
Such are the sexually titillating frolics available to the very, very, very rich and famous (as of now, at least) in a culture in which those ordained to succour the faithful within the Church, the Body of Christ, are occupied, instead, with finding their niche in the political establishment fundamentally dedicated to the lifestyle most diametrically opposed to Christ and His Church.
No, your Beatitude, sound, sane, and virtuous actions can be expected from those who are – in the most literal sense of the terms, in-corporated into Christ, within His Church. I and my family were for 16 years, reborn and regenerated through the spiritual paternity of a New York Jew of Russian extraction, Dr. Herbert Schwartz, who, I have become convinced of late, was able to dig essential Christianity out from the mess western Christianity has made of it, principally because the cultural climate of New York in his day was so radically Russian Jewish that he never had the misfortune to know any Christians and had to find the truth on his own with no human agent as a teacher. Against this background, what St. Hilarion wrote simply states what is unmistakably obvious, as it is also obvious that this and not political games with others inside or outside the Church is what America needs at this time. Whether my readers will find it so or not is up to the readers, but I am praying for my own deeper understanding as also theirs.
The document I excerpt from can be found at: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/33327.htm
I begin quoting St. Hilarion as he is rejecting the foundational necessity of the Bible for the regeneration of mankind. Note how frequently and on the most essential fundamentals he quotes St. Irenaeus, who wrote:
God became man so that man would become God.
Was the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son of God necessary only in order to write a book and entrust it to mankind? Was it absolutely essential for Him to be the Only-begotten Son of God just to write a book? If the Church insisted with such determination on the Divine dignity of her Founder, then obviously she did not regard writing to be the essence of His work. It was the Incarnation of the Son of God that was necessary for the salvation of mankind, and not a book. No book is able, nor could it ever have been able to save mankind. Christ is not the Teacher but precisely the Savior of mankind. It was necessary to regenerate human nature, which had become decayed through sin, and the beginning of this regeneration was laid by the very Incarnation of the Son of God—not by His teaching, not by the books of the New Testament. This truth was expressed with the utmost resolve by Church theologians as early as the second century, [when] Marcion … even taught that the two Testaments originate from different gods,…that the New Testament contains in itself a new teaching which is directly opposed to the teaching of the Old Testament and therefore abolishes it. … In the dispute with Marcion, the theologians of the second century showed … [that] on the contrary, the whole of the New Testament is already foretold in the Old. The new covenant was “known and preached by the prophets,” writes St. Irenaeus of Lyons. “Read with earnest care that Gospel which has been conveyed to us by the Apostles, and read with earnest care the prophets, and you will find that the whole conduct, and all the doctrine, and all the sufferings of our Lord, were predicted through them.” Thus, with regard to teachings, the New Testament does not in essence offer anything completely new.
Those inclined to look upon Christ primarily as a Teacher would of course be somewhat confused by such arguments and the logical conclusions drawn from them. Nonetheless, the greatest theologian of the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, who according to the words of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, was “anointed with the heavenly favors of the true faith and knowledge,” dispels this confusion. He points out that the purpose and the essence of Christ's coming is not in a new teaching. He writes: “If a thought of this kind should then suggest itself to you, to say, ‘What new thing then did the Lord bring to us by His advent?'—know ye that He brought all [possible] novelty, by bringing Himself Who had been announced. For this very thing was proclaimed beforehand, that a novelty should come to renew and quicken mankind.” The renewal of humanity is therefore the fruit of the very advent, the very Incarnation of the Son of God.… Thus the perfection of our humanity, according to the teaching of St. Irenaeus, must be brought to pass by the dispensation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, not by any kind of doctrine, not by the writing of any book. By taking flesh and becoming man, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, made men partakers of the Divine nature.
Assuming human nature in the unity of His Hypostasis [PERSON-HOOD], the Son of God by taking flesh became the New Adam, the Progenitor of the new humanity. “Beholding him that was in God's image and likeness fallen through the transgression, Jesus bowed the heavens and came down, and without changing He took up His dwelling in a Virgin womb: that thereby He might fashion corrupt Adam anew.” St. Irenaeus says that the Son of the Most High became the Son of man in order to make man a son of God. In the new humanity, built upon the foundation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, the unity of our human nature, broken by sin, is restored. Christ Himself named this new humanity the Church. In Chapter 16 of the Gospel of St. Matthew, we read how the Apostle Peter on behalf of all the Apostles confessed the truth of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son of God. And Christ responded to him: Upon this rock (obviously meaning, upon the Incarnation, upon the fact that He is the Son of the Living God) I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:16–18). When Christ parted with and said farewell to His disciples, He promised to send them another Comforter, the Holy Spirit, Who would instruct them, would guide (ὁδηγήσει) them into all truth, and Who would abide with them forever (cf. John 14:16–17; 15:26; 16:13). This Holy Spirit is continually spoken about in Holy Scripture: that He gives life to the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The Spirit of God lives in the members of the Church (cf. Rom. 8:9, 11, 23, 26; II Tim. 1:14; I Pet. 4:14) and guides them (cf. Rom. 8:14). The Holy Spirit is the single source of all the spiritual gifts which are bestowed upon the members of the Church (cf. I Cor. 12:4–11). The Church as a whole, as well as in her individual members, lives, thinks and progresses unto perfection through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is solely through each man's bond with the Church that he receives all the means necessary for his moral regeneration.
Both Holy Scripture and the mind of the Church compel us to conceive of the meaning and essence of the work of Christ in this way: it is the creating of the Church, the new humanity…. The essence of the work of Christ is not in His teaching; thus it is obvious nonsense and even blasphemy to place Christ in the category of teachers and wise men along with the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and others. Christ brought about man's participation in the Divine nature; He infused into human nature new powers of grace; He established the Church; He sent down the Holy Spirit. None of this could have been done by any wise man, no matter how lofty the truths he preached, no matter how intelligent and great the books he wrote….
Tolstoy … wrote in his Brief Exposition of the Gospel: “I consider Christianity to be a teaching that gives meaning to life … and thus it makes absolutely no difference to me whether Jesus Christ was God or not.” But the Church has understood that to look at Christianity in this way [or in terms of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life] is to bring it completely to nothing. It is not enough to show man the meaning of life. He must be given strength for life. Man himself must be re-created. Mankind is saved only through the Incarnation of the Son of God and through His creation—the Church.
Then what is Holy Scripture?
Christ founded the Church. The Church existed even when there was not yet a single book of New Testament Scripture. The books of the New Testament were written by the Apostles later, over the course of more than half a century after the beginning of the historical existence of the Church…. They wrote for a Church already in existence, and entrusted their books to the Church to serve as perpetual edification. It is evident that the books of Holy Scripture do not constitute the essence of Christianity, since Christianity itself is not a teaching but a new life, established in mankind by the Holy Spirit on the basis of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Thus, it would not be impertinent to say that it is not by Holy Scripture, as a book, that man is saved, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit, Who lives in the Church. The Church guides people to perfection. In the Church there are also other ways, other means to that effect, besides the books of Holy Scripture. St. Irenaeus of Lyons writes: ”Many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ” have ”salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, carefully preserving the ancient tradition…. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed; and they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom.”
[???SO WHAT ABOUT FOLLOWERS OF ISLAM???]
In order to become a follower of a particular philosophical school it is necessary to assimilate the philosophical works by the father of that school. But is it sufficient to know the New Testament in order to become a Christian? Would this knowledge be enough for salvation? Certainly not. It is possible to know the entire New Testament by heart, it is possible to know perfectly the entire teaching of the New Testament, and still be very, very far from salvation.
For salvation it is necessary to be added to the Church, just as it is said in the Book of Acts that those who were being saved were added to the Church (cf. Acts 2:47; 5:13–14). This was when there were no Scriptures, but there was the Church, and there were those who were being saved. Why was it essential to be added to the Church? It is because special grace-bearing power is needed for salvation, and this power can only be possessed by those who participate in the life of the Church, in the life of the single and indivisible Body of Christ. The grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit acts in the Church in many different ways: in the Mysteries and rites of the Church, in common prayer and mutual love, in church services; and, as the divinely inspired Word of God, it also operates through the books of Holy Scripture. Here we are coming close to the definition of Holy Scripture. The books of Holy Scripture are one of the means in the Church through which the grace-filled power of God acts upon people. The Spirit of God gives life only to the body of the Church, and therefore Holy Scripture can have meaning and significance only within the Church. “Flee to the Church, and be brought up in her bosom, and be nourished with the Lord's Scriptures. For the Church has been planted [like a Paradise] in this world; therefore says the Spirit of God, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat (Gen. 2:16), that is, Eat ye from every Scripture of the Lord.”…
It would be indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second best course.
For that the former was better, God hath made manifest, both by His words and by His doings, since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.
And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the Apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for He, saith our Lord, shall bring all things to your remembrance (John 14:26). And that thou mayest learn that this was far better, hear what He saith by the Prophet: I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them, and, they shall be all taught of God (cf. Jer. 31:33 LXX; John 6:45). And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said that they had received a law not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (II Cor. 3:3)….
St. John Chrysostom defends the necessity of studying Holy Scripture, but at the same time he says that if things were the way they should be, we would not need Holy Scripture; that with a pure life, instead of books, grace would serve the soul, and that this path of spiritual enlightenment is higher. God spoke with the patriarchs and the apostles without the assistance of Scripture. The need for Holy Scripture arose when some turned aside from true doctrine and others from purity of life. Scripture is then a second remedy. We even deserve reproach for being in need of Scripture. It is clear first of all that St. John Chrysostom does not identify Holy Scripture with Christianity. He calls Scripture an aid, a remedy. It is evident that religious life can exist apart from Holy Scripture and without Holy Scripture, which is only one of the aids to that life. The life of the soul being saved is nourished by the Divine Spirit, within the Church, of course. It is by the will of the Divine Spirit that, for the instruction of men, He allowed the instrument of Scripture, of books, especially after the soul stopped being able to perceive the direct action of the Spirit.
Perhaps the saddest thing in our times is the distortion of Christ and the Church. Christianity is seen not as the new life of saved humanity, united in the Church, but as the sum of certain theoretical and moral positions. They have begun now to talk too much and too often about Christian teachings and have begun to forget about Church life. …
Abba Isaac the Syrian: “Until man has received the Comforter, he requires the Divine Scriptures to imprint the memory of good in his heart, to keep his striving for good constantly renewed by continual reading, and to preserve his soul from the subtleties of the ways of sin; for he has not yet acquired the power of the Spirit that drives away that delusion which takes soul-profiting recollections captive and makes a man cold through the distraction of his intellect. When the power of the Spirit has penetrated the [noetic] powers of the active soul, then in place of the law of the Scriptures, the commandments of the Spirit take root in his heart, and a man is secretly taught by the Spirit and needs no help from sensory matter. For, so long as it is from matter that the heart has its teaching, error and forgetfulness straightway follow the lesson; but when teaching comes from the Spirit, its memory is kept inviolate.” These words could be spoken only by people living completely within the Church, who have fully assimilated the religious ideal of the Church, which consists not in a new academic teaching, but in a new life of saved humanity, built by the Holy Spirit upon the foundation of the Incarnation of the Son of God. The religious ideal of the Church, the ideal of deification, of which our divine services are full, is, in the contemporary consciousness, the realm of very few.
Bishop Theophan the Recluse says: ”It is remarkable how Wisdom calls to herself the foolish: Whoso is foolish, let him turn aside to me (Prov. 9:4). Accordingly, the clever are barred from entering into the House of Wisdom, or the Holy Church. One must lay aside every kind of cleverness at the very entrance of this House. On the other hand, if all wisdom and knowledge are to be found within the House of Wisdom, then outside this House, outside the Holy Church, only foolishness, ignorance and blindness prevail. How wondrous is that which God has established! When you enter the Church, put aside your own mind,and you will become truly wise; cast away your self-centered activity, and you will become truly active; renounce your own self, and you will truly become master over yourself. Ah, if only the world could grasp this wisdom! But this is hidden from it. Not understanding the wisdom of God, the world clamors against it, and the world keeps these senseless sensible ones in their blindness.”
St. Irenaeus of Lyons calls Scripture the Tree of Paradise planted in the midst of the Church. For those expelled from Paradise, however, this tree can only be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and after partaking of it, they can be convinced only of the sad truth that they are naked. Thus, the truth of the indissoluble bond between the Church and Holy Scripture is also affirmed in a negative way. A relationship with Scripture from outside the Church inevitably leads to absurdity and loss of Holy Scripture itself.
