The Myth of a Myth: Complete Update

Patheos presents the first of a promised four article series by James Hannam examining secularist arguments that Jesus Christ never existed. The series is entitled Is Jesus Christ a Myth? Regarding his purpose, Professor Hannahm says

In this four-part series, it is not my intention to study the minutiae of the various arguments. Instead, I will focus on three central contentions often advanced in discussions about Jesus. These are 1) the lack of secular references, which I cover in this installment; 2) the alleged similarities to paganism, which I deal with next; and 3) the silence of St. Paul. Finally, in the fourth part, I will bring all these arguments together to show how ideas similar to those that deny Jesus' existence can be used on practically any ancient historical figure. With this in mind I set out to "prove" that Hannibal never existed.

The first installment argues from a logical and rigorous common sense perspective; something too little seen or appreciated in this politically correct (i.e. Intellectually Censored) age. It's reasoning is concise, and it is not overly long - worthy of the time spent reading it. I, for one, will be looking forward to future installments.

Read it here.

UPDATE: And here is part two.

2nd UPDATE: Here is part three.

3rd UPDATE: Here is part four.

PS, Happy Christmas to all following the New Calendar.

PPS, Christ is born! Glorify Him! to those following the Old Calendar.

Do you see what I see?

Hat tip to Christopher at Orrologion for connecting us to Dan Mitsui's HORROR VACUI.

The discussion is perspective and the West's love affair with linear perspective. So ingrained in most Westerners is the identification of linear perspective with reality, that all other art tends to be judged on the basis of it. In the case of "modern art" this may be justified; but in the case of Christian art it is most assuredly not justified. Two snippets are reproduced below to arouse your interest.

We are so used to linear perspective that we unthinkingly identify it with realism; to modern eyes, a "realistic" painting is one painted in linear perspective. Some may argue that the resemblance of such a painting to a photograph is proof of its realism. But this begs the question; had we not already been accustomed to consider perspectival painting the standard of realism, we might never have accepted photography as realistic either. I can imagine an ancient Egyptian sage inventing the camera, and upon discovering that it did not always show the human figure in profile concluding that it did not work very well. ...

In the mediaeval mind, hierarchy, rhythm and number are the fundamental laws of the universe. Art was painted and drawn and woven in the same manner that literature was written and the natural world was observed; symbolism was the animating principle. The literal is only one of four senses of reality; the allegorical, tropological and anagogical senses are equally real, and equally necessary to depict....

Check out the full post here!

Then look up "Reverse Perspective" on Google or Yahoo.

Inner Purification, The Pope and the New Theologian

Rome on Constantinople: A Pope speaks on a Patriarch

GERMANUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE: DEFENDER OF HOLY IMAGES

VATICAN CITY, 29 APR 2009 (VIS) - During his general audience this morning Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to St. Germanus of Constantinople, who "played an important role in the complex history of the battle for images during the so-called iconoclastic crisis, and was able to resist the pressure of an iconoclastic emperor, ... Leo III.

"During Germanus' patriarchate (715-730)", the Pope added, "the capital of the Byzantine empire, Constantinople, was subject to a threatening siege by the Saracens. On that occasion (717-718) a solemn procession was organised and passed through the streets carrying the image of the Mother of God ... and the relic of the Holy Cross to call upon the Most High to defend the city. In fact, Constantinople was freed from the siege".

This event convinced the patriarch "that God's intervention was to be interpreted as evident approval of the reverence people showed towards holy icons. Leo III on the other hand, who came to the throne in that year of 717, ... began ever more openly to show his conviction that the consolidation of empire had to begin by reorganising expressions of faith, with particular reference to idolatry, a risk to which, in his view, the people were exposed by their excessive veneration for icons".

The Holy Father went on: "Patriarch Germanus' appeals to Church tradition and to the real effectiveness of certain images, unanimously recognised as 'miraculous', were all to no avail. The emperor became ever more intractable in implementing his policies of reform. ... Germanus had no desire to bow to the emperor's will in matters he considered vital to orthodox faith. ... As a consequence he felt obliged to resign as patriarch, condemning himself to exile in a monastery where he died in obscurity. Nonetheless his name re-emerged at the Second Nicean Council ... of 787 where his merits were recognised".

Of Germanus' works "certain homilies on Marian themes have survived, of which some have had a profound influence on the piety of entire generations of faithful, both in the East and the West", including one which Pope Pius XII "set like a pearl in the 1950 Apostolic Constitution 'Munificentissimus Deus'", dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Benedict XVI went on to recall the "great contribution" this saint made to the Byzantine tradition in which "the rhetorical forms used in preaching, and even more so in hymns and poetical compositions, ... are as important to the celebration of the liturgy as the beauty of the sacred building in which it takes place".

The Holy Father concluded by considering three aspects in which St. Germanus still has something to say to modern man. Firstly, in the need to recognise "the visibility of God in the world and in the Church", because "God created man in His image but that image was covered with dirt and sin" and the Creator "could almost no longer see it. Thus the Son of God became man and ... in Christ, the true image of God, we too can ... learn to see ourselves as His image". If, to prevent idolatry and the danger of pagan images, God prohibited the Israelites from creating His image, yet "when He became visible in Christ through the Incarnation it became legitimate to reproduce the face of Christ. ... Holy images teach us to see God in the face of Christ, ... of the saints and of all human beings".

Secondly, Germanus shows us "the beauty and dignity of the liturgy", which must be celebrated "with an awareness of the presence of God and with a beauty and dignity that enable us to glimpse His splendour".

The third aspect is that of "love for the Church", the Pope concluded. "It may be that in the Church, as in ourselves, we see sin and other negative things, yet with the help of faith ... we can always rediscover divine beauty in the Church. In the Church, God offers Himself to us in the Eucharist, He speaks to us, ... He forgives us and He teaches us to forgive. Let us pray that God may teach us to see His presence and His beauty in the Church, to see His presence in the world".

AC/GERMANUS/... VIS 090429 (710)

On True Theology

Another divorce which needs to be mentioned is that between theology and liturgy. For an Orthodox theologian, liturgical texts are not simply the works of outstanding theologians and poets, but also the fruits of the prayerful experience of those who have attained sanctity and theosis. The theological authority of liturgical texts is, in my opinion, higher than that of the works of the Fathers of the Church, for not everything in the works of the latter is of equal theological value and not everything has been accepted by the fullness of the Church. Liturgical texts, on the contrary, have been accepted by the whole Church as a “rule of faith” (kanon pisteos), for they have been read and sung everywhere in Orthodox churches over many centuries. Throughout this time, any erroneous ideas foreign to Orthodoxy that might have crept in either through misunderstanding or oversight were eliminated by church Tradition itself, leaving only pure and authoritative doctrine clothed by the poetic forms of the Church’s hymns.

“Theology is Not For Everyone” Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna.

Thanks to Fr Milovan and others for excising this wonderful quote. (See Theological education in the 21st century)

True Theology

H/T to Per Christum and Eirenikon for this inspiring piece.

“Humble and faithful witness to the undivided Church”
March 20, 2008 by eirenikon

I do not deny that there are differences between the Churches, but I say that we must change our way of approaching them. And the question of method is in the first place a psychological, or rather a spiritual problem. For centuries there have been conversations between theologians, and they have done nothing except to harden their positions. I have a whole library about it. And why? Because they spoke in fear and distrust of one another, with the desire to defend themselves and to defeat the others. Theology was no longer a pure celebration of the mystery of God. It became a weapon. God himself became a weapon!

I repeat: I do not ignore these difficulties. But I am trying to change the spiritual atmosphere. The restoration of mutual love will enable us to see the questions in a totally different light. We must express the truth which is dear to us – because it protects and celebrates the immensity of the life which is in Christ – we must express it, not so as to repulse the other, so as to force him to admit that he is beaten, but so as to share it with him; and also for its own sake, for its beauty, as a celebration of truth to which we invite our brothers. At the same time we must be ready to listen. For Christians, truth is not opposed to life or love; it expresses their fullness. First of all, we must free these words, these words which tend to collide, from the evil past, from all political, national and cultural hatreds which have nothing to do with Christ. Then we must root them in the deep life of the Church, in the experience of the Resurrection which it is their mission to serve. We must always weigh our words in the balance of life and death and Resurrection.

Those who accuse me of sacrificing Orthodoxy to a bind obsession with love, have a very poor conception of the truth. They make it into a system which they possess, which reassures them, when what it really is, is the living glorification of the living God, with all the risks involved in creative life. And we don’t possess God; it is He who holds us and fills us with His presence in proportion to our humility and love. Only by love can we glorify the God of love, only by giving and sharing and sacrificing oneself can one glorify the God who, to save us, sacrificed himself and went to death, the death of the cross.

But I would go further. Those who reproach me with sacrificing truth to love have no confidence in the truth. They shut it up, they lock it up like an unfaithful woman. But I say, if the truth is the truth, we must not be afraid for it; let us give it, let us share it, let us show it in its fullness, let us welcome all that there is of light and love in the experience of our brethren. If we continue in this attitude, then truth will become clear of itself, it will conquer all limitations and inadequacies from within, on the basis of the common mystery of the Church. Let us enlarge our hearts, “let each one of us, as the apostle says, look not to our own things, but rather to the things of others” (Phil. 2:4). We have a sure criterion – life in Christ. Faced with a partial expression of the truth, let us ask in what measure it conveys the life in Christ, or in what measure it is liable to compromise it.

Orthodoxy, if it goes back to the sources of its great tradition, will be the humble and faithful witness to the undivided Church. The Orthodox Churches, in coming together themselves in mutual respect and love, will set a movement of brotherhood going throughout the Christian world, giving the example of a free communion of sister Churches, united by the same sacraments and the same faith. As to the Orthodox faith, centered as it is on liturgical praise and worship, and on holiness, it will bring the criterion of spiritual experience to ecumenical dialogue, a criterion which will allow us to disentangle partial truths from their limitations so that they may be reconciled in a higher plenitude of truth.

But we Orthodox: are we worthy of Orthodoxy? Up till the efforts we have made in recent years, what kind of example have our Churches given? We are united in faith and united in the chalice, but we have become strangers to one another, sometimes rivals. And our great tradition, the Fathers, Palamas, the Philokalia: is it living and creative in us? If we are satisfied to repeat our formulas, hardening them against our fellow Christians, then our inheritance will become something dead. It is sharing, humility, reconciliation which makes us truly Orthodox, holding the faith not for ourselves – if we did that we should simply be affirming yet one more historic confession of faith – but for the union of all, as the selfless witnesses of the undivided Church.

– Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (1886-1972)

Archbishop Raya (of blessed memory) on the Immaculate Conception

The Byzantine Tradition celebrates the Fest of the Immaculate Conception as "the Maternity of St Anna," the mother of the Theotokos. The feast is held on 9 December. Below is Archbishop Raya's comment from Byzantine Daily Prayer.

The soul of the Virign Mary whom God had chosen from all eternity to be the Mother in the flesh of the Incarnate Word was created full of grace and free from original sin, united to a body formed according to the laws of nature through the operation of love of her parents, Joachim and Anna. This privilege, accepted throughout the centuries, was officially proclaimed as a dogma by Pope Piux IX in the year 1854. It is known in the Roman Church as the Immaculate Conception. (Byzantine Daily Worship, p. 537)

Note also the Ninth Ode of the Second Canon of Orthros for the feast from the December Menaion:

The Son of the Eternal Father, our Lord and our God, took flesh from the Virgin and appeared to us to bring light to those in darkness and to gather together those who were scattered. O Theotokos, worthy of all praise, we magnify you!

Today let the prophets, the chosen ones, rejoice, for their prophecies announcing the grace of God, have begun to be fulfilled in the venerable conception of the pure Mother of God who will bring forth the joy of the world.

The throne of glory has been prepared for the Lord; the gate of salvation has now been announced, the passage reserved for the Master and Creator alone. Through her, we shall attain eternal life.

With Anna, Joachim cries out: You alone have heard our voice in supplication, O Lord and Creator; in granting an end to our sterility You have given us the Root of immortality. We glorify you!

The ladder is now prepared: by it, the Lord and Creator will come down to lift up the human race. Heaven rejoices with the angels! The human race exults with all creation because of the grace of deification.

I sing of your unequaled good will, O Lady: you are my illumination, my glory and my pride, my source of wisdom, the cause of my joy, my expectation and my hope, my fortress, my rampart and my defense.

Our community is celebrating the Feast of the Maternity this year with a Divine Liturgy devoted to the cause of Life, from conception to natural death. Given the love of the Theotokos for all of God's children, I am happy that we are connecting the cause of life to her holy conception.