Thoughts

Harakas pp225-258; Patitsas: “The Marriage of Priests”; R.B. Hays: “Divorce and Remarriage”; R. Dreher “Orthodoxy and Me”; Advertisement

“Marriage can never be seen as ephemeral; rather, it figures forth the ultimate redemptive intention of God.”[1]

If there is one thing that can be said of marriage and sexual purity, it is that the meaning and significance thereof go far, far deeper than it would at first seem[2]. Harakas compares modern faithlessness with the unfaithfulness of ancient Israel (p225ff): the prophet Hosea is even instructed by God to marry a prostitute to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness to her God (Hos. 1:2-3). Sexual purity is an important preparation for marriage according to Harakas (p235). This, along with the ascetical self-sacrificial love required in marriage, implies the offering of oneself to one’s spouse as an unblemished sacrifice (and the collective offering of the married couple as an unblemished sacrifice for their children). Not only society, but even epistemology itself is related to the issue as knowing-as-communion in a pre-fall sense becomes knowing as objectified knowledge after the fruit is taken for its own sake (Patitsas p82).

Harakas points out that along with the most common path, marriage, the church also blesses the path of virginity in monasticism, and that there will also be those who live celibate lives outside of monasteries. The difference here is a looser bond of community – in marriage, spouses are bound together by sacrificial love and mutual submission; in monasticism, monastics are bound together in mutual submission and obedience to their abbot; even in Jon Chrysostom’s church community in Constantinople, widows and virgins were perhaps organized into their own communities (or at least, their care was specifically considered by the church). Yet today, those who are living celibate lives ‘in the world’ are generally left without any particular support. This could be one reason for the cataclysmic events in the Roman Catholic Church as described by Rod Dreher[3]. The Church hierarchy’s response was shame: to cover up rather than to confess and repent.

The abuse scandal is just one aspect of the systemic collapse of all understandings of both meaning and virtue in matters relating to sexuality, gender and marriage. Even the advertising industry plays its role here – both in living out the collapse and also in highlighting it: the advertising messages which “make us feel as if we have an intimate, even passionate relationship with a product”[4] note the brokenness of most intimate relationships and attempt to salve that wound with materialism and consumerism.

Matters of sexual purity, ‘gender’ and marriage were mostly taken for granted in the past, so that while Scripture and Tradition address issues of virtue in these areas, more basic concepts are often taken for granted, or built on foundations which are themselves challenged today. Hence “The Marriage of Priests” article attempts to express a basic hermeneutic for understanding the meaning of ‘gender’[5]. Evdokimov[6] uses the Theotokos and John the Baptist as archetypes for woman and man, but somewhat unconvincingly, especially because of the way the Theotokos is a model not only for women but also for men in both her humble, self-sacrificial submission to God and her designation as ‘invincible General’. Soloviev[7] is concerned to point out the feminine aspects in man and the masculine aspects in woman, which somehow answer each other in the coming together of man and woman as well as the more instinctively felt masculine in man meeting the feminine in woman. However his attempt to resolve this through an overly romantic vision of sexless love is also ultimately unconvincing. This article, with the beautiful method of maintaining proper distinction without setting up abrupt separation between man and woman through the use of the sequence of priest and prophet/king or king/prophet, makes a far more compelling case for the archetypal nature of these two saints.

The way in which Christ is the salvation of all mankind, male and female, is also better described through seeing the ‘new Eve’ as completed not primarily in the Theotokos, but in Christ – and in the Theotokos inasmuch as she is the bearer of Christ. Uniting the vocation of men and women in the priestly vocation is also a clear fulfilment of the image of God in all people, as well as showing the mutual self-sacrifice required in marriage. Seeing the fall as a break in the communion (an act of infidelity) with God that communion between people depends on also relates closely the fall to the unfaithfulness of Israel which is overcome in the perfect marriage of Christ with his Church. And the break in this communion seen as objectification brings us back to the modern condition of broken communion when intimacy is sought in materialism and commercialism (even as it pertains to sexual relationships, where the ‘knowing’ in a pre-fall sense of communion is lost in an unconnected sexual act).

Christian marriage as an icon of the union of Christ with his Church (which is his very body) is beautifully illustrated by the summary of Christ-like masculinity in the words of St Silouan “All these will be saved, only I shall be lost” and Christ-like (Church-like) femininity as “I don’t know anything – that I might know Someone”[8].

[1] “Divorce and Remarriage” p304

[2] Note the connection between marriage and society in terms of faithfulness and relations of self-sacrifice; Rod Dreher notes that “the sex-abuse scandal can’t be easily separated from the wider crisis in the American Catholic Church”; Harakas notes the negative effects both of society on the family and of the debasement of family on society (pp226-229).

[3] There is also the issue of ‘filioquist’ ecclesiology and mediaeval hierarchical understandings: the church dispenses the sacraments to the people and the people are responsible to the church which rules over them. Hence Rod Dreher is criticized for not giving unquestioning trust and obedience to the hierarchy, and the hierarchy protects the clergy rather than the innocent victims. (Though it is not for non-Catholics to be complacent, since this kind of self-justification and desire for self-preservation goes with power in any human institution; and in any case where proper humility and self-sacrifice is lost, the church becomes a human institution.)

[4] Blurb for Jean Kilbourne’s book on advertising

[5] I can’t bring myself to remove the inverted commas: I know ‘gender’ is now almost universally used as synonymous with (or at least instead of) the more traditional ‘sex’ – the revisionist agenda supported by the squeamishness of so-called ‘conservatives’, but the topic of vocabulary alone here is huge in terms of the validity or not of ‘gender identity’ as separate from biological sex, the significance of biology, a gestalt concept of self-construction versus a Christian concept of theosis or some kind of demonic ‘ungrowth’, etc, etc.

[6] Woman and the Salvation of the World

[7] The Meaning of Love

[8] “Marriage of Priests” p96.

By the way, I also like the way this defuses the critique of some of the revisionist writers on sexuality such as Elizabeth Stuart and Michael Vasey by speaking of the “inner as well as mutual integration” and the

“gender-reversing calling” showing how to escape the ‘ersatz masculine/feminine’ (which Leanne Payne speaks of) without needing the ‘social critique’ of the so-called ‘queer’ sexualities.

Also, the idea of the Eucharistic priestly ministry as being too well-suited to the feminine might explain St Paul’s requirement of head coverings for women.

(Chryssavgis: Soul Mending, pp35-48; Fr Arseny pp30-96)

Again the depth of weakness and height of glory of the priesthood are evident in these readings: from the weakness of a freezing cell, Fr Arseny enjoys the glory of serving with angels; from the weakness of death, he enjoys the glory of serving with other saints in a heavenly Liturgy.

It is important to note that in these two events, the two points of greatest weakness for Fr Arseny are transformed by God into the two experiences of greatest glory. Chryssavgis notes that the idea of the priest being “aware of his own personal weakness as being the very occasion of divine strength through him deepens and broadens the notion of the authority of ministry as service (diakonia)” (p37). Indeed for Fr Arseny, living in a place where his priestly dignity and authority has been totally stripped from him, it is apparent that the authority he comes to hold through service grows precisely out of his weakness. In such a place, where most people were desperate to hold on to what little they could of themselves and for themselves, a career criminal said to Fr Arseny, “you do not live for yourself, but for others” (p61) and submitted to his priestly dignity in a life confession.

“God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise” (1 Cor 1:23, as quoted by Chryssavgis p35) and all God’s priests must accept that they are some of those foolish things. The foolish ‘things’ should not be ashamed of their foolishness: it is the wise who are put to shame by the foolishness. If our shame in our foolishness causes us to cover our weakness, it becomes a block to our weakness being used to manifest divine strength (cf Chryssavgis p35,38). Like Fr Arseny, all who minister must be “kneeling internally” as Chryssavgis puts it, admitting our weakness and woundedness (p35) like St Paul, the “chief of sinners”, so that our weakness can be an opportunity for the divine strength which is “made perfect in weakness” (p38). Out of the weakness of fear of interrogation, Fr Arseny was given intense prayer (p81). He responded to being cast into a freezing, metal punishment cell as an opportunity: “God has allowed us to pray aloud”! And out of this weakness came the divine strength which allowed him not only to pray aloud, but to serve with angels for two whole days, surviving the freezing temperatures along with his cellmate (p34-7).

This intensity of prayer which brings strength out of weakness should be a characteristic of the priestly vocation which “arises precisely from and leads precisely to the Cross” (Chryssavgis p36) – and beyond the cross to the resurrection-communion: out of death comes life, but a life which is continually broken and distributed, poured out and distributed in communion for the benefit of all. The weakness manifest as service Fr Arseny’s life describes is properly symbolised in the fact that he is given his old, tattered prison jacket as the vestment in which to serve the heavenly Liturgy among the angels, saints and martyrs.

Because of his authority gained from service in the camp, when Fr Arseny lay sick, the other prisoners, to whom death was an everyday occurrence, cared about him, feeling his impending death “in a special way” (p43) and in prayer, he felt their support. Seeing their souls and understanding the way they had shared suffering together, he understood he could not leave them. In this moment of clarity he also understood that among people he had previously seen as ordinary prisoners, there were great saints and “true ascetics in the faith” (p45). He prayed, “O Lord! Where was I? Pardon me and have mercy on me. I only saw myself. I was deluded, I did not have enough faith in people.” Chryssavgis points out that it is in the communion (koinonia) of the Church, in our common work (leitourgia) that we can fully face and overcome our weaknesses. In speaking of our failings and hard-heartedness, the gospel speaks to “communion and love, the love that is true and costly” (p40-41) in which we can face our weaknesses together in order to allow divine strength to be manifest in our body. “Each person contributes to this divine-human community, not simply by the service that each renders but by the sacred mystery that each one is” (Chryssavgis p40).

May we, through the cross of our own weakness, through the communion of persons in the one body of Christ, through the manifestation of divine strength in our personal weaknesses, come to know that heavenly Liturgy in which all our wounds will be glorified and our imperfections “changed from glory into glory”.

St Nicholas Cabasilas: The Life in Christ, Book VI; Hauerwas: “Christian Ethics as Informed Prayer”; Wittgenstein: “A Lecture on Ethics” and Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.4-7

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”[1]

Scruton, in “Thoroughly Modern Mill” from last week’s readings, wrote about a wisdom that is “deeper and rarer than rational thought”. This week’s readings go even further, discussing ethics and epistemology in terms beyond rational/intellectual language. Cabasilas discusses holding on to grace in order to know and perform “the duties to God which we all have in common” (p160) through clinging “to that [Christ’s] Heart and that Head, for we obtain life from no other source” (p161). Hauerwas considers a way to discover the “form and content of Christian ethics” in worship and liturgy. Wittgenstein shows how language and propositional thought is not equal to the task of discovering ethics, which must be transcendent of these forms, and can be discovered perhaps in poetry (it is certainly one with aesthetics), perhaps in paradox, but ultimately only in the inexpressible.

Cabasilas shows that while the commandments of Christ are “binding on all the faithful” and as propositional statements permitting intellectual comprehension are important guides on the spiritual path, nevertheless, it is ordering “his life according to Christ’s heart” that provides ‘the way’. It is notable that it is the heart that must be “filled with good thoughts” – not the mind. It is not through thinking about God, but through contemplation, musing, and meditation on God and the revelation of God that the ‘good’ is known (p172). It is the heart of love that suffers – the “proof of friendship” (p163) and the aesthetics of the immortal body are not weakened but rather strengthened by its bearing of those wounds (p164) – and in this aesthetic we discover our ethic of sacrificial love (as Wittgenstein says, “ethics and aesthetics are one”) and this ethic is lived through being united with our Saviour. Through spiritual means our ethic – the life we live – is built up, and through spiritual means it can also be destroyed by temptations to presumption and shame/despair (p168). Through purification it is built up (p175) and the pure life is lived in the Beatitudes (the “true philosophy”, p181) – which describe the ethic of life through approaching it from many sides (cf Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics”) and through describing the life of Christ in whose life we can find life, since “it was for the new man that human nature was created in the beginning” (p190) and he has become the “food of our thoughts” (p191).

Cabasilas ends Book VI by saying, “if we are thus with Christ by sacred rite, prayer, meditation, and reflection, we shall train the soul for every virtue” (p194). Hauerwas has discovered this same principle (six centuries later he writes with the expectation that it will be seen as a “novelty” – after Kant, the immanent world of ethics and the transcendent world to which worship aspires are irreconcilable). Hauerwas points out that “life is in fact a rehearsal for worship” and while Wittgenstein comments on the unity of ethics and aesthetics, Hauerwas points out, against all modernist assumptions, that in fact good, beauty and truth are a unity. Worship also forms the ethical life since its vision is greater than the modernist division of public and private, seeing society’s “politics” as being about the best use of all the gifts of God rather than just a materialistic economy; and finally, a rediscovery of the active and eschatological direction of worship overcomes the modern’s perceived divide between words and action. After all, in Christ we have the Incarnate Word. Hauerwas describes the experience of a tribe newly converted to Christianity: they experienced (rather than read about) the fact that the Eucharist constituted the church, they required peace between brothers sharing in communion, and they experienced the liturgy as judgement on their social mores: in other words, one aspect of the Liturgy was “a corporate practice for discerning the good”.

Wittgenstein does not oppose language and reality, seeing that poetic language can sometimes contain what is inexpressible in logical language (p167). Hence when he comes to consider ethics, he wishes to go beyond the idea that “ethics is the general enquiry into what is good” by considering at least also aesthetics (so we have good and beauty in a search for truth), but also making several other statements, intended to increase understanding – illustrating the “background” against which language receives meaning (cf p166). He illustrates that it is not possible to reach judgements of absolute value from facts: i.e. one cannot get to what ought to be from what is. He goes so far as to say that ethics is “supernatural”. In attempting to express absolute value in words, the logical, factual content of the linguistic expression is discovered to be nonsense in each case: the language can only attempt to reach at a world inaccessible to it. From this he infers that all religious terms are used “allegorically” or as “similes” (although perhaps ‘symbol’ would be a more appropriate expression as in the symbol of faith, the creed – does the language participate in what it is attempting to express, rather than just standing for it?). In fact, there are no facts behind the similes. He suggests that to see the world in this way is to see it as miracle, as contrasted with a scientific way of looking at the world, which is able to see only facts. It is just the same with language, which is technically able to see only facts – hence to describe the transcendent in words is to “run against the boundaries of language” (p176) – hence the need for a practical apophaticism.

We speak only to show the inadequacy of language to these matters; “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. But language and reasoning are given to us as gifts and they can aid our beginning, even if as we move further along the path we may reach a point where we see, like Aquinas, that all our intellectual struggle and reasoning is just straw. Out of pride, I could have left the paper blank after the Wittgenstein quotation, but it is better not to eschew the humble things, since everything that has been created can speak of God, even if only in muted or distorted tones (cf 1 Cor 13:12).

[1] Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.7

(St John of Kronstadt pp81-127; Inner Kingdom ch3,9)

Again the depth of responsibility and heights of glory of the priesthood are evident in St John of Kronstadt’s description of priest as Pastor, Teacher, Confessor and Intercessor. He speaks of how the priest has to answer to God for his people – including for those things they “might have done had it not been for us” (p84). On the other hand, he speaks of how wonderful is the priest’s witness at the Judgement for those he has confessed: he is able to witness to the reality of their repentance (p105).

The work of being a confessor is hard. St John of Kronstadt speaks of the temptation to be irritated at the number of penitents waiting for their confessions to be heard (p83). His words on teaching in general no doubt apply also to speaking to a penitent in the context of confession. He says that every word should be valued (since it is through ‘word’ that God creates and sustains the universe) and the words must be words of spirit and life, not dead letters (p96-7). Met Kallistos in speaking of the starets notes the ability of the starets to “use words with power” (p135). This ability is undoubtedly related to the emphasis the spiritual father has on intercessory prayer for his spiritual children (the “constant intercession” is more important that any words of counsel – p138-9). Intercession has the potential to bring one close to him about whom one prays as illustrated in the story about St John Maximovitch, who, having prayed for four friends of a monk was able to tell the monk the following year which had died and which recovered (IK p151).

Met Kallistos speaks of the great significance of repentance in the Christian life, quoting St Isaac the Syrian (“This life has been given you for repentance. Do not waste it on other things.” – p43) and noting that the preaching of both St John the Baptist and Christ himself began with a call to repent. The significance of repentance in terms of true conversion (p45) and viewed positively as an eschatological illumination (p46) should also be a constant reminder to the priest-confessor and the spiritual father of the seriousness of their task. Hence St John of Kronstadt enjoins the priest-confessor to be a patient lover of souls, never hurrying, never sparing oneself, never being agitated nor irritated (p106): hearing confessions is a cross, but since it is a cross it is not only a school of self-denial for the priest, but also the “touchstone of a priest’s love for his parishioners” (p108) – and the priest needs to take care not to focus on the sin in a penitent but on the image of God he or she bears (p112), enabling him to constantly intercede for his people with his heart as well as his lips (p124) knowing that he can take no credit himself for his prayers since it is only openness to the Spirit who prays through him (p125). St John of Kronstadt speaks of the transformative power of confession (p112) and Met Kallistos emphasises that the role of the confessor is not that of judge (Christ is the judge) nor even that of physician (Christ the physician being the central meaning of confession as a sacrament of healing) but only that of “God’s usher” (IK p49-51) – witnessing the transformation and healing brought through repentance, and using his discernment given through constant intercessory prayer for the penitent and specific prayer of preparation for the sacrament (CPP p109) in order to exercise the priest’s discretion whether and how to impose a penance and his greater responsibility in exercising his power to bind or loose.

Finally, Met Kallistos emphasizes the distinction between true spiritual fatherhood and the role of a priest-confessor. They may be united in one person, but frequently they are not. The priest-confessor is a role conferred by the Church institutionally, and the spiritual father is a role conferred charismatically, being “recognized as such by the people” in a process parallel to that of the acceptance of Church Councils (IK pp129-130). The priest-confessor is appointed and understands his role, whereas the spiritual father never claims his role for himself, but is always revealed by the initiative of those who seek him out (often involving a “movement of flight and return” seen in many great saints who sought a hermitic life before being sought out as spiritual fathers – IK pp131-4). Thus while a priest-confessor is easy to find, it may not be possible to find a spiritual father, in which case we have to do our best with the resources available to us: the Scriptures, other writings, and the informed advice of other travellers on the spiritual path, our spiritual brothers and sisters.

The key to all spiritual advice, whether given by a priest-confessor or a spiritual father, is the personal relationship between the confessor and the penitent, the father and the child. This is why books and rules are inadequate. Each human being is unique, and every relationship is therefore also unique. “Personal encounter” (IK p146) is the only way to learn many things where words (which on the page can be ‘dead letters’) are inadequate. Only the living word, through which we meet the Living Word, is adequate to this task.

Harakas pp36-81; Cloud: “Happiness isn’t Normal”; “Avoiding Ethical Rationalizations”; “Thoroughly Modern Mill”

“Wisdom is deeper and rarer than rational thought”[1]

Scruton shows how Mill failed to go deep enough in his moral philosophy, since relying on the intellect is to mistake the form for the content. He shows how the focus on a negotiation of ‘rights’ is an inadequate guide to ethics, whether the ‘right’ is decided by the majority (utilitarianism) or by the ‘sovereignty of the individual’ when no account is taken of the shared culture of the ‘individuals’ living together. Mill himself suffered from his early utilitarianism which left him “bereft of all emotional succour” being a “philosophy of the head which seemed to make no room for the heart.” Similarly, in “Happiness isn’t Normal”, Hayes’s criticism of cognitive therapy is that it wrongly assumes the intellect is totally in control. Like some of the advice from Orthodox Elders, he advises that focusing on negative thoughts, rather than correcting them, can intensify them. However his narrow concept of what ‘thoughts’ are, as being wholly the product of intellect interpreting emotion, and how to deal with them seems to involve a dangerous abstraction from one’s own mind – “Thank your mind for that thought.” Also, like the problems with Mill’s negotiation of moral norms, this “third wave” of psychological therapy has no basis outside the purely subjective to account for morality, although interestingly Hayes argues that he has never met a patient with “pathological values” (whatever he means by that) and that even in the case of rapists they are “being pushed around by their urges even when it’s deeply against their values.” Anyone who has wrestled with temptation will understand this (e.g. Rom. 7:19), and it is a support for the critique of cognitive therapy which suggests that a concentration on the problem in an attempt to fight it will succeed – all too often, the concentration gives the problem or temptation more power. Hayes suggests rather focusing on the positive values that one wishes to rule one’s life and accepting that there will be problems and suffering along the way – rather like taking up one’s cross and pursuing the narrow path that leads to salvation.

The dangers of trusting the intellect are also clear in “Avoiding Ethical Rationalizations.” Without wisdom, without a deeper and more expansive vision, trusting only in the rational, it is easy to get caught in the trap of justifications for one’s own unethical behaviour. This also shows how difficult it is to properly manage a system of morality which includes the concept of ekonomia. Without the proper spiritual and ecclesial context, this flexibility can always go astray, and the more the broader, shared ethos of morality is lost in a society, the more that society has no choice but to move towards greater legalism.

The “deeper” than the intellect that is missing in the above is found in the chapter from Harakas “The Ethical Relationship with God”. He shows how good and right are tied to God’s intrinsic goodness, and how they both the knowledge of good and right (in more than an intellectual sense) and the ability to live them out in practice are tied to communion with God. Morality is not just a rational, intellectual construct, but according to Harakas it is a spiritual choice – the renunciation of Satan (as is explicit in the baptismal service but is a continuing practice, not a once-for-all achievement). As a spiritual choice it is tied to faith. While belief is not a virtue, faith is – something not only held as dogma, but lived out in hope, in love, in prayer and in worship. Hope provides the eschatological context which is missing from the intellectual systems limited to this world, and thereby provides a freedom from anxiety. Love broadens out when it is seen that love for God and for neighbour are intrinsically linked, that the communion of love in the Trinity is infinitely expanded through the energies or grace of God to include all creation. Prayer, according to St John Chrysostom, is essential for virtue. It enables communion with God and the overcoming of temptation. The awe of worship casts the intellectual understanding of morality into a proper perspective, and provides the appropriate ecclesial context for its working out in practice, centred in Eucharistic communion with God.

If we are able to immerse ourselves in this ‘ethical relationship with God’ we find ourselves on the narrow path towards the wisdom that is “deeper and rarer than rational thought”.

[1] Scruton: “Thoroughly Modern Mill”