| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf FLOROVSKY, GEORGES V FLOROVSKY, GEORGES V., priest, theologian, church historian, educator, ecumenist (28 August 1893–11 August 1979). Son of a priest and educator, as a theologian and church historian he was primarily an autodidact, since his studies at the University of Odessa were in philosophy and science. In 1919 to 1920 he was philosophy lecturer at that university, and from 1922 to 1926-after he and his family had fled from Russia to Sofia, Bulgaria, then to Czechoslovakia-he taught philosophy of law in the Russian Faculty of Law at Prague and in 1923 received a Phil. Mag. degree there. From 1926 to 1948 he was a professor of patristics and systematic theology at St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute (q.v.). He opposed the sophiological (theological) orientations of both Frs. Bulgakov and Florensky (qq.v.), considering the position unjustifiable in terms of iconography and liturgical texts (qq.v.). In 1932 he was ordained a priest under the canonical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (q.v.), and for the rest of his life remained affiliated with it. In 1948 he settled in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1954. From 1948 to 1955 he was a professor of divinity at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (q.v.) and its dean from 1950 to 1955. Concurrent to his deanship he was adjunct professor of history and theology of Eastern Orthodoxy at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and adjunct professor of religion at Columbia University. In 1955 he left St. Vladimir’s to become associate professor of Orthodox church history and dogma at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School (qq.v.), Brookline, Massachusetts, where he remained until 1959, returning from 1963 to 1965 to be professor of patristic theology and the philosophy of religion. From 1956 to 1964 he was professor of Eastern church history at the Harvard Divinity School, and professor emeritus there from 1964 until his death. From 1964 to 1972 he was visiting professor of religion and Slavic studies at Princeton University, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1972 until his death. Profoundly committed to the concept of the Orthodox Church as the universal Church, he was very active in ecumenical (q.v.) encounter. A founding member of the World Council of Churches, serving on provisional committees until 1948, he was a member of the Central and Executive Committees from 1948 to 1961. He had a decisive influence on the pro-Orthodox outcome of the WCC Toronto Statement of 1950. From 1954 to 1957 he served as vice president of the National Council of Churches in the United States. |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf OLD, BELIEF (RASKOL)-OLD BELIEVERS OLD, BELIEF ( RASKOL)-OLD BELIEVERS. The Old Belief arose in 17th c. Russia in direct response to the liturgical-translational reforms of Patriarch Nikon (q.v.). The origins of the need for translation reform in the Russian Church in the 17th c. is most usually attributed to mistakes and translation errors from Greek to Church Slavic, which had affected Muscovite liturgy (q.v.) over an extended time span, a situation confirmed by Tsar Michael’s commission for an investigation of such and by visiting Greek clergy. When Patriarch Nikon initiated the process of translation reform in 1652, he encountered tremendous resistance. Only in about the last century has the premise been taken seriously that some of the resistance might have been justified. From a scholarly point of view, the Greek liturgical books (q.v.) themselves had evolved in content and expression since the time the Church Slavic translations had been made from them. Examples of the rubrical practices reformed included the singing of a threefold Alleluia (q.v.) instead of two and the making of the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two. Nikon mustered support for his reforms from various quarters: Church councils (1654, 1656), the patriarch of Constantinople, Mt. Athos, the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch (qq.v.), scholarly Greek and Ukrainian monks, etc. After hopes were raised of defeating the movement among the opposition when Nikon fell into disfavor with Tsar Alexis (1658), two subsequent Moscow church councils upheld the reforms but deposed Nikon (1666–67). This set the stage for the raskol, the schism (q.v.) of the starovery or staroobriadtsy, of the Old Believers or Old Ritualists. The reforms had the full backing of Church and state, and opposition to them was falsely interpreted as rejection of both-punishable by death. Those who opposed the reforms appealed to the faith of Novgorodian and Muscovite (qq.v.) Christian forbears, as well as to the Council of One Hundred Chapters (1551; Stoglav), which was quite explicit on how many times Alleluia was to be sung and how many fingers were to be used in making the sign of the cross-two! (This fact was so distressing to later Russian historians through the mid-19th c. that it was considered an Old Believer forgery.) Old Believers perished at the stake, whole monasteries were besieged and captured, and the twenty-five years following the Council of Moscow saw new apocalyptic Old Belief expectations as self-fulfilling prophecies, when dozens of their communities destroyed themselves in mass suicides. The most curious aspect of the schism was that both sides thought the disputed matters were of life and death importance, although nothing of a dogmatic nature was discussed-only ritual. |
| Once upon a time the pseudo-science of Marxism used to proclaim that its claims, like death and taxes, were inevitable. In a similar way the supporters of the theory of evolution used to proclaim that it too was the only ‘truth’ that counted, until real scientists pointed out that it was only a theory among many. Similarly, the EU used to proclaim that its aim of a United States of Europe was also inevitable, ‘like a man riding a bicycle you have to carry on towards it, otherwise you will fall off’. Actually if you are cycling (especially towards a cliff edge), you can easily stop without falling off and turn back, which is exactly what the pragmatists of Brexit have done. Modernists also use the same pseudo-scientific argument of inevitability to justify themselves. In a post-modernist world, their argument is particularly absurd and old-fashioned. Thus, forty years ago I remember a priest of a modernist Western diocese of the old Patriarchate of Moscow (who later defrocked himself, ran away from his wife and then committed suicide) using exactly the same argument. ‘The Catholics had Vatican II, and we will follow them. It is inevitable. We will get rid of the iconostasis, have women around the altar table, have deaconesses, do away with clerical clothing and be modern like the Protestants and then the Catholics. It is just that we Orthodox are behind the others’. I have been reminded of his words recently, as a member of the Paris Archdiocese has said that since one of their priests in Belgium already accepts homosexual ‘marriage’ and that a priest under Constantinople in Finland actually does such ‘weddings’, ‘the rest of the Church will follow’. Inevitability? As in Crete? A member of the Constantinople Archdiocese in North America has also recently questioned why New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was recently given the ‘Patriarch Athenagoras Human Rights Award’. After all, Cuomo is well known for his outspoken advocate of the pro-death (erroneously called pro-choice) movement. On 17 July 2014, Governor Cuomo referred to the defenders of the pre-born child as: “these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life … they have no place in the state of New York.” It seems a strange criticism when two years ago Vice-President Biden, who so lavishly praises the present Patriarch of Constantinople and has also tried hard to further the Church schism in the Ukraine and is another politician who is openly supportive of abortion, also received the same dubious masonic award. |
| Niketas is an important but neglected Byzantine writer who composed treatises on mystical prayer, as well as being involved with the troubled relations between Patriarch Michael Caerularios and the papal legates leading up the rupture of communion between Rome and Constantinople in 1054. Niketas entered the Stoudios monastery as a young man and eventually became its higumen (after 1076). In his youth he met St. Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022). After the latter’s death in exile, he became a dedicated follower, attributing the change to a vision he had of the saint (ca. 1035). He zealously defended Symeon’s memory and teaching, publishing and editing his Discourses and Hymns, as well as composing a Life of the Saint, and arranging for the return of the saint’s relics to the capital. In his own spiritual teachings (Three Centuries of Practical and Gnostic Chapters) Niketas largely follows Symeon in laying stress on the importance of the gift of tears, and on the role of the spiritual father. He also composed apologetic works against the Latins, the Armenians, and the Jews. In his minor works he often discusses the nature of the soul and the afterlife, and is thought to be part of the wider reaction to controversies initiated by Michael Psellos. Niketas’ theology is very aware of the concept of hierarchy as mediated by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and in this sense (emphasizing the parallels between heavenly and earthly hierarchy) he moderated Symeon’s public hostility to the patriarchate and court. He is influenced by the spiritual tradition of Evagrios Pontike and St. Maximos the Confessor, mixing metaphors of divine union as brilliant illumination, with references to the Dionysian darkness of unknowing. He also has resonances from some of the teaching of Isaac the Syrian. Some think that he gained his nickname Stethatos (“big-heart” or “courageous one”) because of his criticism in ca. 1040 of the relations between Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and his mistress Skliraina. |
| St. Athanasius the Great the Patriarch of Alexandria Commemorated on May 2 Saint Athanasius the Great, Archbishop of Alexandria, was a great Father of the Church and a pillar of Orthodoxy. He was born around the year 297 in the city of Alexandria into a family of pious Christians. He received a fine secular education, but he acquired more knowledge by diligent study of the Holy Scripture. In his childhood, the future hierarch Athanasius became known to Saint Alexander the Patriarch of Alexandria (May 29). A group of children, which included Athanasius, were playing at the seashore. The Christian children decided to baptize their pagan playmates. The young Athanasius, whom the children designated as “bishop”, performed the Baptism, precisely repeating the words he heard in church during this sacrament. Patriarch Alexander observed all this from a window. He then commanded that the children and their parents be brought to him. He conversed with them for a long while, and determined that the Baptism performed by the children was done according to the Church order. He acknowledged the Baptism as real and sealed it with the sacrament of Chrismation. From this moment, the Patriarch looked after the spiritual upbringing of Athanasius and in time brought him into the clergy, at first as a reader, and then he ordained him as a deacon. It was as a deacon that Saint Athanasius accompanied Patriarch Alexander to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in the year 325. At the Council, Saint Athanasius refuted of the heresy of Arius. His speech met with the approval of the Orthodox Fathers of the Council, but the Arians, those openly and those secretly so, came to hate Athanasius and persecuted him for the rest of his life. After the death of holy Patriarch Alexander, Saint Athanasius was unanimously chosen as his successor in the See of Alexandria. He refused, accounting himself unworthy, but at the insistence of all the Orthodox populace that it was in agreement, he was consecrated bishop when he was twenty-eight, and installed as the archpastor of the Alexandrian Church. Saint Athanasius guided the Church for forty-seven years, and during this time he endured persecution and grief from his antagonists. Several times he was expelled from Alexandria and hid himself from the Arians in desolate places, since they repeatedly tried to kill him. Saint Athanasius spent more than twenty years in exile, returned to his flock, and then was banished again. |
| There are few opportunities like Holy Week to gain empirical knowledge and partake in the Philokalic (love of beauty) Hellenic tradition that masterfully comes to life each year in Greek Orthodox churches and homes all over the world. The Orthodox Christian mentality is expressed in our persistent focus on the Resurrection. While various creeds follow the Passion, and even honor it, they view it within the narrow prism of “The satisfaction of God's divine anger,” and their churches remain silent after Good Friday. In the Orthodox Church, the Holy Passion is venerated, because it illuminates what is to come; because the faithful know that after the Cross comes the Resurrection! This was and will remain the good news that Orthodoxy preaches to the world. It’s this very “good news” that Greek tradition has sought to identify itself with. Since ancient times, Hellenism has stood out for its ability to “organically digest” new elements and incorporate them into its existence. It is no surprise that it lends its full passion and grace and abilities towards glorifying the greatest of all such elements: the voluntary self-sacrifice of the Incarnate God and His subsequent Resurrection, to save mortals from death. Famous Greek author Alexandros Papadiamantis (widely known as the Dostoevsky of Greece) – whose 100-year memorial anniversary is being widely commemorated this year – describes Holy Week most eloquently in so many of his short stories and articles: “… the incense drifts in blue fragrant wreaths and forms a fleeting surround for the girls, in their embroidered aprons and white sleeveless jackets, come bearing armfuls of roses and violets and sheaves of rosemary and proceed to heap mountains of flowers on the humble Epitaphios, which needs no further embellishment.” In her blog This Side of Glory, the author Grace discusses this beautiful short story (A Village Easter), noting, “Who doesn’t know what he means? The liturgical worship we have looks so serious to our Protestant friends that they never guess how very human it can be — laughter and tears and all the rest that are forever tinged in my memory with the most sacred and eternal aspects of worship.” |
| Euthanasia Quickly Becoming Top ‘Medical Solution’ in Belgium for Non-Terminal Patients Source: Faithwire Image source: Flickr BRUSSELS – Belgium has long been famous for food, like waffles and chocolate. But it’s becoming famous for death. Belgium has the most liberal euthanasia laws in the world. You can end your life here by simply telling a doctor that you have unbearable physical or mental suffering. Terminally ill children of any age can receive a lethal injection if their parents agree with the child’s wishes. Woman Euthanized for Being ‘Incurably Depressed’ The mother of Belgian university professor Tom Mortier was euthanized in 2012 because, even though she was physically healthy, she was said to be “incurably depressed.” “My mother, who was physically healthy, because of her mental problems, received a lethal injection from an oncologist,” Mortier said. It was done without his or the family’s knowledge. He was contacted by the hospital the day after his mother was killed. “My mother had a severe mental problem,” Mortier explained, “She had to cope with depression throughout her life. She was treated for years by psychiatrists, and the contact between us was broken. A year later, she received a lethal injection.” Mortier filed a complaint with the medical board and then with a Belgian prosecutor but was turned away. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom , Mortier appealed his case to the European Court of Human Rights, which has agreed to hear it. “How can someone like that be euthanized in a democratic western country without the family members even being aware that it was happening?” asks Mortier’s legal counsel Robert Clarke, Director of European Advocacy at ADF International. Clarke says something that makes the Mortier case even more disturbing is that the doctor who euthanized the woman sits on the very government body that is supposed to oversee the euthanasia law. The doctor, Wims Distelmans, who some have compared to the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, once led a euthanasia tour of Auschwitz under the theme “death with dignity.” |
| John Anthony McGuckin Staniloae, Dumitru (1903–1993) ARISTOTLE PAPANIKOLAOU Dumitru Staniloae was born in Vladeni in the Romanian province of Transylvania. After studying in Romania, Athens, and Germany, Staniloae began teaching in 1929 at the Theological Institute in Sibiu. Between 1946 and 1973 he taught at the Theological Institute in Bucharest, though between 1958 and 1962 he was incarcerated as a political prisoner at Aiud Prison. Early in his theological career, Staniloae rejected the Orthodox dogmatic manuals, which he felt, together with his Russian emigre counterparts in Paris, Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky, were under a “western captivity.” In his initial theological studies he noticed that the spirituality of hesychasm and the thought of St. Gregory Palamas were offering a different theological vision than that presented in the manuals. His life work is a labor of attempting to articulate an Orthodox dogmatic theology that is existentially relevant and not simply a set of propositional truths. The fruit of this work began with the publication of his study on Palamas, The Life and Teaching of Gregory Palamas (1938), and culminated with his three-volume Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (1978). Staniloae was also responsible for translating the Philokalia into Romanian (a larger edition by far than that of St. Nikodemos; nine volumes between 1946 and 1980). Up until his death, Staniloae published numerous books and articles, achieved a national reputation as a public intellectual commenting on the political and cultural issues of Romania, and acquired an internationally recognized ecumenical stature, with his work continuing to exercise influence in both Orthodox and non-Orthodox circles alike. He is one of the best-known, respected, and influential Orthodox theologians of the 20th century. Among the many theological insights contained within Staniloae’s corpus, two stand out as distinctive. First, Staniloae insisted that trinitarian theology must articulate more explicitly the proper relation of the Son to the Spirit. |
| His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry. Photo: screen from Inter TV channel His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry said that a Christian should always strive for truth, since the truth is eternal, while the lie is temporary. On June 8, 2019, the 34 th production of the weekly program “Word of the Primate” was broadcasted by Inter TV channel. It is reported by the Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). In this program, the Primate of the UOC, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, noted, “the Lord created the Church, which is a spiritual ship, leading a man through the stormy sea of earthly life to the eternal goal of salvation. But the devil, knowing that the Church was a ship of salvation, began to fight against the Church.” According to His Beatitude, at first people tried to destroy the Church through the physical extermination of Christians. However, says His Beatitude, “as the early Christian writer Tertullian wrote, the blood of the martyrs became the seed of Christianity. One Christian died – ten appeared instead. As early as the beginning of the 4th century, the Edict of Milan was adopted and the Church began to exist officially and legally.” It was at that time, as the Archpastor noted, that the devil “began to stir up heresies and schisms” in order to destroy Christianity in an alternative way. In addition, Metropolitan Onuphry spoke about the First Ecumenical Council, which took place in 325 in Nicea with the participation of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and St. Spyridon of Trimythous, at which the heresy of Arianism was condemned and the first seven lines of the Creed were composed. Recalling the “Disgrace of Arius” by St. Nicholas, His Beatitude stressed that the hierarch did this “not for himself, but for the glory of God”. The Primate of the UOC also noted, “At the Nicene Council, the Holy Fathers defended the purity of the concepts of God. But the heresy of Arianism did not cease to exist and almost embraced all civilized humanity. The leader of the Christians was St. Athanasius and after his death – Basil the Great. There were few Orthodox but they won, because truth always triumphs over lies.” |
| John Anthony McGuckin Repentance ANDREI PSAREV In Orthodox thought repentance is the blessed mourning of a person and longing for God (penthos) following after a sense of having moved away from him. It is a conversion to God and, as a result, is what scripture describes as radical change of mind or heart (metanoia, see Mk. 1.15 ). Christ came to save sinners having called them to repentance and belief in his gospel ( Mt. 9.13 ). The parable of the prodigal son ( Lk. 15.11 ) outlines the stages of how Orthodox understand the process of repentance: contrition, aversion from sin, repudiation of evil, confession, reconciliation with God and one’s neighbor. The words from the apostle about the impossibility of repentance for those who, by sinning, crucify Christ again (Heb. 6.4–6) reflect a dilemma of the early church; for in the 3rd and 4th centuries the Novatianists and Donatists permanently excluded from Eucharistic communion those who were guilty of serious sins. The greater church would not accept this rigorist approach, having prescribed in its canons various terms of abstinence from the Eucharist on account of grave sins; but no transgressor was ever to be deprived of the Eucharist at the time of their death (Nicea 1. Canon 13). There are no sins that may prevent a person from entering into the dedicated life of repentance which is monasticism (Quinisext Council. Canon 43). Repentance has been called in Orthodoxy the “second baptism.” Canon 12 of St. Gregory the Wonderworker (3rd century) defines how the church classifed penitents. In early times certain classes of sinners were debarred from full Eucharistic membership and had to stand apart from the community, in the narthex or outside the church building, sometimes for many years. St. Basil the Great (4th century) was not just occupied with the impact of sin on an individual, but also with the spiritual health of the entire congregation (St. Basil. Canon 88). In the same way as sin injures the body of the whole ecclesiastical community, through the healing of each member the entire church body acquires reconciliation with God ( 1Cor. 12.26 ). |
|
|
