Category Archives: Heresy & Schism

To Destroy Augustine

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Orthodox Icon of Saint Augustine of Hippo

“To destroy Augustine, as today’s critics are trying to do, is to help to destroy also this piety and love for Christ – these are too ‘simple’ for today’s intellectuals (even though they also claim to be ‘pious’ in their own way). Today it is Augustine; tomorrow (and it’s already begun) the attack will be on the ‘simple’ bishops and priests of our Church. The anti-Augustine movement is a step towards schism and further disorders in the Orthodox Church.”

Fr Seraphim Rose, The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church, p. 100

Book Review: “Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy”

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"Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" by Fr Andrew Stephen (Damick)I normally don’t think about this sort of thing in great detail, but since I’m presently spending time with a catechumen on a regular basis, I’m developing a “mental list” of the top 10 or so books one should recommend to an inquirer of the Orthodox Faith. This book is one of those 10, and it might even be in the top five.

Fr Andrew Stephen (Damick) is the protos of an Orthodox parish in Emmaus, PA and has a series of podcasts (available here) on various Orthodox topics – most of which are particularly helpful for those outside of the Orthodox Church or relatively new to it. His book Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (available here and here) is an expansion and codification of one of those podcast series by the same name.

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I Love Religion

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Orthodox Temple of Saint Sava

I’m glad that Fr Andrew replied to this silly video – it saves me a lot of trouble.

Regardless, a key here is that simply saying “All I need is Jesus, not religion” is the most complicated religion of all, for all it does is pose an infinite amount of follow-up questions: Which Jesus? Who is Jesus? What did he do? Why do I need him? How do I live for him? etc.

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Against “Super-Correctness”

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Blessed Seraphim Rose

“‘Traditionalism’ is not the same thing as the real traditional outlook.”
René Guénon, Crisis of the Modern World

“Fanaticism hinders a man’s understanding, but true faith gives it freedom.”
St. Macarius of Optina

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Israel as the People of God – Part Three: Israel and the Church

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Read Part One: Who is a Jew?
Read Part Two: The Land of Israel

As I come to my last entry on this subject, I must admit that this is to me the simplest and most straightforward point one could make with regards to Israel. While I grew up in a tradition that wrongly saw the Jews of today as “God’s chosen people” and in a place of favor even greater than that of the Church, I now believe the truth – and it seems to be a rather plain one in the Scriptures. I find it hard to understand how people can miss this who claim such an admiration for the Scriptures, but I digress. This isn’t about pointing fingers – I was there once. Lord, have mercy on us all.

So then, the last topic to cover with regards to Israel as the “people of God” is how Israel relates to the Church.

To put it plainly, the Church is Israel; that is, the Church replaces and takes its place as Israel or God’s “chosen people,” called out from the world and set apart as His own.

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Of Calendars and Schismatics

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Another area of pointed legalism (and even schism) within the Orthodox Church today is around the calendar – that is, the debate over whether the Church (“old”) calendar or the “New” (revised Julian) calendar is truly Orthodox and “valid.” The main issue I have – and indeed, all Orthodox Christians should have – with these contemporary debates (despite the fact that they have led to schism and an abandonment of Apostolic Succession by some) is that they are irrelevant.

That’s right – irrelevant.

How tragic and sad that a small group of otherwise Orthodox Christians have decided to separate themselves from the Church over such a meaningless issue. While the fear of Ecumenism (a heresy in the Orthodox Church) in the day the calendar was revised is a noble one, this is not an area in particular where one should split the proverbial hair. A hair that grounds the Church in the world and its constraints rather than in the transcendence of the Eucharist and the eternal kingdom of Christ.

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Israel as the People of God – Part Two: The Land of Israel

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Read Part One: Who is a Jew?

Jerusalem in the present day

So then, what promises did God make to the Hebrews regarding the land of Israel, and how does that correlate to the modern nation-state of Israel in the middle east today?

This is where things get really dicey, especially when considering present-day politics and the beliefs of evangelical Christians on this very point.

Considering that the “Christian vote” essentially determines an election in the U.S. and that evangelical Christians represent a large segment of American, Christian voters (dwarfed only by Roman Catholics), any candidate that doesn’t wholeheartedly support the nation-state of Israel has written for themselves a death sentence (as Obama has learned recently, with his less-than-stellar relationship with Benyamin Netanyahu and suggesting that Israel give back some land to the Palestinians).

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Israel as the People of God – Part One: Who is a Jew?

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Orthodox Icon of the Holy Prophet MosesMost evangelical Christians today believe that the “Jews” are the true ”children of God” and that they hold a distinct place in “God’s eyes” from that of the Church, despite their rejection of the Messiah (Jesus) and His Gospel – and subsequently, their rejection of traditional and Scriptural “Judaism” or the religion of the ancient Hebrew people (as taught by the “old testament” Scriptures). In other words, the Church is just a bump on the log of redemptive history, and the “main event” revolves around the Jewish people.

To even begin to dive into this subject (which is extremely controversial in the present day, especially among American, evangelical sects of Christianity), it is necessary to take a giant leap backwards and consider many ideas and concepts individually, in order to do this overview any justice whatsoever. While these viewpoints are a drastic minority in both present day Christianity and in Church history, they represent an extremely influential viewpoint among protestants in the United States (but this has been the case only since the mid-19th century).

For example:

Who are the Jews, and what makes one “Jewish?”

What promises did God make to the Hebrews regarding the land of Israel, and how does that correlate to the modern nation-state of Israel in the middle east today?

What do the Scriptures say regarding Israel and how the Hebrew people are to be considered in relation to the Christian Church?

It is along these three questions that I will attempt to give an extremely brief and broad-reaching analysis of Israel as the “people of God.”

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The Prophecy of Joel, Israel, the Eucharist, Hell … and the Church

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A painting of the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70

Radical “end times” fascination abounds right now in the West, and has for the last century or so.

Since many people’s interpretations of the Scriptures are focused around Israel and the happenings in and around the middle east, many are finding a new reason daily to expect the imminent return of Christ and something called the “rapture.”

This sort of “newspaper theology” as I’ve heard Gary Demar and others refer to it is not only an unnecessary cause of anxiety but also a poor reading of the Scriptures and one markedly absent from the history of the Church (until recently, at least, and only in the protestant “West”).

I was reading a blog by one such evangelical about two weeks ago on the prophecy of Joel and how it is being fulfilled today through particular world events (most of which pertaining to the modern nation-state of Israel, Russia, the United States, etc.). This person noticeably ignored the fact that Saint Peter  said that Joel was fulfilled in the first century and in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the apostles on the day of Pentecost, AD 33 (cf. Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 2). The remainder of the prophecy is easily seen fulfilled in the events following the sending of the Holy Spirit and leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 (which Christ also predicted, and in the exact time frame he predicted it! – within one generation).

Seeing this rather silly post on Joel led me to study this short prophetic work and to see what the mind of the Orthodox fathers is on these prophecies and descriptions surrounding Israel, etc. Rather than finding any references to Israel as a nation, instead I found an abundance of fascinating and helpful admonitions and insights regarding the Church - the true Israel.

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The Eucharist is Real

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Orthodox Icon of the Mystical Supper

“And as they ate, Jesus took the bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and was giving it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And He took the cup, and gave thanks (Greek: Eucharistia), and gave it to them, saying ‘Drink of it, all of you; for this is My blood, that of the new covenant, which is being poured out for many for the remission of sins.”
Gospel According to St Matthew 26:26-28

“Verily, verily, I say to you, unless ye should eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye are not having life in yourselves. The one who partaketh of My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up in the last day. For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink. The one who eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him. Even as the living Father sent Me forth, and I live because of the Father, also the one who eateth Me, even he shall live because of Me. This One is the bread, the One having come down out of the heavens – not as your fathers ate the manna, and died. The one who eateth this bread shall live forever.”
Gospel According to St John the Theologian 6:53-58

The Eucharist is real.

We are truly consuming the risen body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ every Sunday when we commune together in worship. Make no mistake about it; it is reality – it is a fact of the Scriptures and the whole received Tradition of the Orthodox Church. There is no getting around this without boldly denying the Scriptures – and therefore Christ – Himself.

While this makes a certain minority of Christians worldwide (namely, Protestant evangelicals) rather uncomfortable, we are to believe what Christ has taught us about Himself and about this ritual – not science, the skepticism of post-modernity, the rationalism of post-Enlightenment, Western civilization, and certainly not the “traditions of men” who have failed to either grasp or receive the truth of Christ.

Why does the reality of partaking of the risen body and blood of Christ bother these people so?

To be frank, such people are being influenced by the “traditions of men” instead of the Church (and Her Scriptures).

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