Death is Defeated
7
The Earth on the Waters
Some Questions (and Answers) on the Text and Canon of Scripture
A friend of mine recently forwarded an email with a few questions on the canon and the textual tradition of the Church my way, and I was happy to attempt a satisfactory answer to said questions.
These are fairly “off the cuff” and high-level responses, but hopefully they serve as a helpful starting point for anyone interested in a more Orthodox viewpoint on these matters. If I have erred within, please don’t hold it against the Orthodox Church. I am but a simpleton.
I first recommended familiarizing one’s self with the following previous articles (based on a lecture given to college students here locally):
Beyond that, the questions and answers go something like this …
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In a Foreign Land
Today is actually Palm Sunday.
If you’ve been an Orthodox Christian for less than three years, then you were probably taken by surprise when you realized that we celebrated Pascha a week later than the rest of America this year. But don’t worry, it gets even more awkward next year, when the celebrations are five weeks apart (March 31st and May 5th, respectively).
It is at times like these that Orthodox Christians living in “the west” have that realization and reminder that we are not quite “at home” here in America and that we are very much pilgrims in a foreign land.
This differentiation goes far beyond the celebration of Easter/Pascha, however. There is a completely different understanding of the most basic of ideas and experiences, such as “salvation,” prayer, worship, grace, the scriptures and much, much more. While it is certainly true that we must adapt to the culture we are living in — to a certain extent — in order to minister and be “salt” to others, we must also realize that there are times when we have to draw a line in the proverbial sand and make our differences known.
In our culture, we know that it is common to promote things like “pride” and the idea of “selling” one’s self in the workplace, while in the Church, we are called to humility, suffering, chastisement and servanthood. Our culture says that “whatever is true to you” should be one’s guide for things like morality and ethics, while Jesus Christ said I am the Way, the Truth and the Life — there are not competing, mutually exclusive claims to truth (as if truth is floating around “up there” somewhere or merely in our heads), but the reality that Truth is Incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ (and maintained in His Body, the one, true Church). Our culture says that you are free to live as you please, so long as you don’t bother or hurt anyone else. However, the Church tells us to fast for over half of the year, to do almsgiving, to help the poor and needy and to crucify our passions and desires — in other words, to emphatically not do a lot of the things that we’d “like” to do, and that our culture encourages us to do (even within the western Christian sub-culture).
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Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
You’ve probably heard it said that “time heals all wounds.” This is one of those quotes that gets repeated over and over again, but no one really knows where it came from. It is very similar to what the Greek dramatist Menander (circa 4th century BC) once said: “Time is the healer of all necessary evils” (Fragments), so perhaps it is derived from him.
Regardless, my personal feeling is that this philosophy is not only absurd but also completely incorrect. I had a stronger thing to say there, but I’ll spare my more sensitive readers. The healing of “wounds” and the healing of “evils” cannot be done in a vacuum. And yet, so many in our culture today believe this to be the case.
There are very few people willing to “own up” to their mistakes, swallow their pride, and be reconciled with one another through confession, repentance and a true restoration of fellowship/communion. In fact, “pride” is one of those things that our backwards and post-Christian culture esteems as a virtue. No, true healing is only possible through these very means – confession, repentance and communion; and this is only possible through the Church.
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Saint Justin and the Divine Origin of the Septuagint
Saint Justin the Philosopher (known also as “Justin Martyr,” given that he was martyred for besting a debater of the non-Christian empire) wrote at length on a variety of subjects that are of the utmost interest to me as a student of philosophy. His work on the Church as “the true Israel” as well as the dependency of Greek philosophers on Moses / Hebrew philosophy are crucial when trying to discern how the early Church fathers understood such things.
In one of his works, St Justin speaks about the origins of the Septuagint (LXX); that is, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (or “old testament”). I’ve written on this topic before (The Song of Simeon and the Bible; Origin of the Bible – The Old Testament), but this father especially provides a unique and detailed account of the events surrounding that translation. He writes: Continue reading
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Theology as Archaeology
When a Protestant approaches the scriptures in order to rightly interpret them and apply them to their lives, the approach is typically that of a scientist and a historian – they are attempting to abstract and be removed from the context of today’s western world and be found within the culture, language and context of the original authors of divine literature. There is rooted in this approach not only a reliance upon Nominalism (as with all things Western and/or Protestant) but also the fundamental belief that we are “separate from” both these original authors and from God Himself (He is the “Man upstairs” and Protestant worship focuses on asking God to be present or “show up”). As such, Protestant hermeneutics, if you will, is an exercise in textual archaeology.
There are various strains of Protestant thought, obviously, and they are too numerous to do every sect justice (and the number of variants grows by the hour). While there are some groups today who approach the study of scripture with less of a “scientific” lens and with more of a catholic, Orthodox approach (for example, utilizing analogy, catholicity, patristics, narrative and so forth), they are such a tremendous minority that it would serve little purpose to devote a great deal of time on their efforts. Indeed, the tragic reality is that their sects or movements will be dead before many of their adherents have returned to dust. The reality of Protestantism in America (at present) is that of fundamentalist evangelicalism, and it is to them that the Orthodox Christian in America should pay closest attention.
