A frequent topic of discussion arising in the Catholic internet sphere lately has been whether Muslims (and by extension Jews, Hindus, etc.) "worship the same God" as we do, a question exacerbated by the recent prayers for peace held at the Vatican by the Holy Father, his All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch, the president of Palestine and the president of Israel. I have vehemently argued for a position in the affirmative, taking a handful of approaches to the topic, beginning with the patristic precedence (St. Gregory VII's letter to Al-Nasir, the writings of Blessed Ramon Llull and St. Gregory Palamas, the encounter of St. Francis of Assisi with Al-Kamel, etc.), continuing to theological considerations (God is sui generis and therefore we cannot meaningfully ask which member of the class of Gods the Muslims worship; God's transcendence and universal agency require that all creatures are in dialogical relation to God where the meaningful question is how they respond to His call, not whether that call exists; the position that Muslims "worship a different God" entails theistic personalism and by extension moral therapeutic deism involving a finite deity), and finishing with the authority of the Church which stated unambiguously that Muslims and Christians worship the same God in Nostra Aetate paragraph 3.
Ultimately those who hold the fundamentalist rejection of a common theism between Christianity and Islam are incapable of viewing Islam except through the lens of an epistemologically totalitarian Islamophobia, wrapped up in an overwhelming awareness of the hostility Islam has shown towards the Church, its rejection of the Christian revelation, and of the basic human evil it has brought to the world, precluding the consideration of any other facet of Islam. This point should be completely unrelated to the question as to "which God" the Muslims worship - certainly plenty of vile, evil men have worshiped the one true God - but it is also disturbing in the way in which it polarizes approaches towards Islam into simple, monolithic black and white categories, categories which stand in the way of the complexity and diversity of the situation and serve as idols replacing reality rather than icons revealing it. The historical reality of Islam seems much more diverse and mixed. The demonic evil of radical Islam and the historical oppression of religious minorities is seen alongside great tolerance and scholarly cooperation between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The barbaric savagery exhibited in legal judgments regarding rape and child abuse is seen alongside deep humanitarianism and the sublime spirituality of the Sufis. Reactionary obscurantism towards modern science comes from the same religion that enabled the formation of modern mathematics and science to begin with.
Hegel has some words which are uncannily pertinent to the situation, a state I find occurring more often the more I read Hegel. Hegel wrote an essay, possibly in 1807 or 1808, entitled "Who Thinks Abstractly?" in which he turned some common presuppositions about philosophy and his own philosophy in particular on their head. Abstract thought, Hegel argued, is not a mark of sophistication. It is rather a mark of sophomoric simplification. "Who thinks abstractly? The uneducated, not the educated. Good society does not think abstractly because it is too easy, because it is too lowly (not referring to the external status) - not from an empty affectation of nobility that would place itself above that of which it is not capable, but on account of the inward inferiority of the matter." (The essay is reproduced in Kaufmann, Hegel, on pp. 460-465)
Abstract thought, in Hegel's usage, is the process whereby we turn away from particulars and the real world and turn towards abstractions from them, simplifications of those particulars, narrow-minded ideas within those particulars. The study of particulars, of real beings in their fullness and completeness, is in fact the purpose of real knowledge. Hegel seems inconsistent on this; in the preface to the Phenomenology written at the same time, in 1807 (and reproduced in Kaufmann pp. 363-458, with the relevant discussion on p. 416) he denies that philosophy can predict historical events, which are purely contingent, "accidental, and arbitrary", and thus to be distinguished from philosophy, since "the nature of such so-called truths is different from the nature of philosophical truths". Yet in the "Essay on Abstraction", Hegel says that his purpose is not at all to "reconcile society with these things [abstract questions], to expect it to deal with something difficult", but rather "to reconcile the beautiful world with itself", to expose reality in its particularity and uniqueness, to assist the self-disclosure of Being to itself, a theme Heidegger will later adopt more explicitly.
Hegel wishes to turn us away from the superficial process of abstracting individual traits in things and blinding ourselves to the thing in its totality. This seems to be what happens when Islam is approached - it is viewed as evil, therefore one becomes incapable of viewing it as anything but evil, and any suggestion of any positive trait is dismissed as sympathy for terrorism. Hegel himself uses the example of a murderer being executed. "I have only to adduce examples for my proposition: everybody will grant that they confirm it. A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better!
This is abstract thinking: To see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality."
We would do well to heed Hegel's call to reconcile the beautiful world to itself, to see reality in its fullness and complexity, to reject the polarizing nullification of thought that comes with abstraction, and to see the whole picture of singular beings, not mental idols.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
A Sacrificial Body
As many who have been involved with ecumenical and theological discussions between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches know, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception presents an apparent divergence between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, where the sinlessness and utter purity of the Panagia is affirmed but such a dogma is absent. Much work has been done to uncover the underlying terminological divergence concerning original sin that has led to an apparent contradiction over whether the death of the Theotokos (considered dogmatic in the East, and certainly at least a sententia commune in the West, one affirmed five times in the papal document defining the Assumption) entails a fallen state for the Theotokos to live in. Much less has been said over the equally important criticism made by the East, that the Theotokos was not separated from the mass of humanity by this "singular grace", that in order for us to be redeemed she had to pass on the same human nature shared by the rest of us. A remarkable conclusion of this argument is that the human nature Christ bore and redeemed was, in fact, fallen. Christ adopted a *fallen* human nature.
Certainly this must not be taken in a blasphemous manner to imply that Christ was, as Martin Luther claimed, a sinner, or even the worst of sinners, one who must have experienced and committed murder, adultery, sacrilege, and all the depths of depravity that mankind has cast ourselves into. There may be a certain psychological cogency to such an argument, but Christ nonetheless is not Baudelaire, and the spiritual illumination sought by Rimbaud on the left-hand path of the "systematic derangement of the senses" did not bear a redemptive nature, much less a nature that could redeem the sins of the world. Christ was absolutely sinless, as was the All-Holy One, the Panagia, His mother. In an effort to ground her (and Him) fully in the human experience, many Orthodox will turn to the homily of St. Gregory Palamas on the Forefathers, and see in that homily a witness to the "progressive gracing" of the ancestors of Our Lord, of the Incarnation as the pinnacle and culmination of human history.
Nonetheless, the question remains, "how could Our Lord have become incarnate in a fallen human nature? What does this mean?"
It does not mean that Jesus Christ ever committed sin.
It does not mean that Jesus Christ was ever tempted by sin. Certainly He was tempted by sin, not only in the prototypal Lenten fast in the desert but also in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet Adam and Eve were also tempted by sin, and they were not fallen. Therefore, temptation is not what is entailed by fallenness, but rather something incidental to it.
It does not mean that the bodies of either Our Lord or the Panagia suffered corruption in the grave. The Byzantine liturgical texts on both feasts witness abundantly that they did not.
It does not mean inordinate derangement of the spiritual faculties or subjection to the passions. Both the Theotokos and her Son were tempted, and the Theotokos, as a creature not yet fully divinized in what the Latin West will call the "Beatific Vision", possessed gnomic will (the faculty of choosing among apparent goods with the concomitant ability to sin, discussed by St. Maximos the Confessor). Yet both also possessed supreme tranquility of soul and the peace which surpasses all understanding.
It does mean death. The death of the Theotokos was necessary, as was the death of Christ. The necessity of their deaths in no way impinges upon their free choice to die (as argued from St. Dimitri of Rostov, here: http://byzantinechesterton.blogspot.com/2011/08/necessity-of-dormition-of-theotokos.html). The death of the all-holy Theotokos was peaceful, painless and sinless. And yet, the death of Christ was not.
If death is what fundamentally the fallenness of their human natures entailed, then the fallenness of the human nature of Christ is something essentially marked by the Passion and Redemption. The fallenness of the human nature of Christ, therefore, is something by nature sacrificial.
Blessed Columba Marmion says the following words in Christ the Ideal of the Priest, page 22 (Glasgow: Sands & Co., 1952):
Certainly this must not be taken in a blasphemous manner to imply that Christ was, as Martin Luther claimed, a sinner, or even the worst of sinners, one who must have experienced and committed murder, adultery, sacrilege, and all the depths of depravity that mankind has cast ourselves into. There may be a certain psychological cogency to such an argument, but Christ nonetheless is not Baudelaire, and the spiritual illumination sought by Rimbaud on the left-hand path of the "systematic derangement of the senses" did not bear a redemptive nature, much less a nature that could redeem the sins of the world. Christ was absolutely sinless, as was the All-Holy One, the Panagia, His mother. In an effort to ground her (and Him) fully in the human experience, many Orthodox will turn to the homily of St. Gregory Palamas on the Forefathers, and see in that homily a witness to the "progressive gracing" of the ancestors of Our Lord, of the Incarnation as the pinnacle and culmination of human history.
Nonetheless, the question remains, "how could Our Lord have become incarnate in a fallen human nature? What does this mean?"
It does not mean that Jesus Christ ever committed sin.
It does not mean that Jesus Christ was ever tempted by sin. Certainly He was tempted by sin, not only in the prototypal Lenten fast in the desert but also in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet Adam and Eve were also tempted by sin, and they were not fallen. Therefore, temptation is not what is entailed by fallenness, but rather something incidental to it.
It does not mean that the bodies of either Our Lord or the Panagia suffered corruption in the grave. The Byzantine liturgical texts on both feasts witness abundantly that they did not.
It does not mean inordinate derangement of the spiritual faculties or subjection to the passions. Both the Theotokos and her Son were tempted, and the Theotokos, as a creature not yet fully divinized in what the Latin West will call the "Beatific Vision", possessed gnomic will (the faculty of choosing among apparent goods with the concomitant ability to sin, discussed by St. Maximos the Confessor). Yet both also possessed supreme tranquility of soul and the peace which surpasses all understanding.
It does mean death. The death of the Theotokos was necessary, as was the death of Christ. The necessity of their deaths in no way impinges upon their free choice to die (as argued from St. Dimitri of Rostov, here: http://byzantinechesterton.blogspot.com/2011/08/necessity-of-dormition-of-theotokos.html). The death of the all-holy Theotokos was peaceful, painless and sinless. And yet, the death of Christ was not.
If death is what fundamentally the fallenness of their human natures entailed, then the fallenness of the human nature of Christ is something essentially marked by the Passion and Redemption. The fallenness of the human nature of Christ, therefore, is something by nature sacrificial.
Blessed Columba Marmion says the following words in Christ the Ideal of the Priest, page 22 (Glasgow: Sands & Co., 1952):
So, coming into the world, the Son of God assumed a "sacrificial body" suited for enduring suffering and death. He was truly a member of the human race, like us, and it is in the name of His brethren that He is to offer Himself as victim to reconcile them with their Father in heaven.
Monday, June 9, 2014
St. Francis de Sales and a Newly Ordained Priest: An Anecdote
On one ordination day St. Francis de Sales noticed a young priest. When the ceremony was over, he remarked that at the door of the church the newly ordained stopped as though he were disputing with some invisible person as to who to pass first. "What is it?", the Saint asked. The young levite confessed that he had the privilege of seeing his guardian angel. "Before I was a priest," he said, "he always went in front of me, but now he will no longer pass before me." The angels are not priests, but they reverence in us that dignity which they adore in Christ.
-Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ the Ideal of the Priest, page 53 (Glasgow, Sands & Co., 1952), citing Trochu, Saint Francis de Sales, i, 25.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
The Pseudo-Clementine Writings and the Brahmans
One of the more interesting pieces of early Christian literature coming down from the apostolic period is the Clementine Romance or Kerygmata Petrou (Preaching of Peter), a long romance purportedly written by St. Clement of Rome, the fourth Pope and disciple of St. Peter (whom Tertullian tells us was first ordained by St. Peter as his immediate successor as bishop of Rome, although abdicated for unknown reasons on behalf of first Linus and then Anacletus before becoming the fourth Pope, from 92-99 A.D.)
In the story Clement, speaking in the first person, tells of the preaching and exploits of St. Peter, his dispute with Simon Magus, and his reunification of Clement's family which had been separated due to misfortune and woes. Although probably written no later than the 2nd century, the story reads like fiction and bears similarity to other romances written in many times and places - it might as well have been a Shakespearean comedy, of the ilk of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
The story is liberally dosed with homiletic exhortations and catechetical teaching put in the mouths of Peter, Clement, and the rest of Clement's family, and one of the long monologues contained an interesting look at the Patristic view of Hinduism, of especial interest to theologians today trying to engage the Christian faith with the intellectual and spiritual inheritance of the Far East.
The Clementine Recognitions, book 9 section 20, in toto:
In the story Clement, speaking in the first person, tells of the preaching and exploits of St. Peter, his dispute with Simon Magus, and his reunification of Clement's family which had been separated due to misfortune and woes. Although probably written no later than the 2nd century, the story reads like fiction and bears similarity to other romances written in many times and places - it might as well have been a Shakespearean comedy, of the ilk of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
The story is liberally dosed with homiletic exhortations and catechetical teaching put in the mouths of Peter, Clement, and the rest of Clement's family, and one of the long monologues contained an interesting look at the Patristic view of Hinduism, of especial interest to theologians today trying to engage the Christian faith with the intellectual and spiritual inheritance of the Far East.
The Clementine Recognitions, book 9 section 20, in toto:
"There are likewise amongst the Bactrians, in the Indian countries, immense multitudes of Brahmans, who also themselves, from the tradition of their ancestors, and peaceful customs and laws, neither commit murder nor adultery, nor worship idols, nor have the practice of eating animal food, are never drunk, never do anything maliciously, but always fear God. And these things indeed they do, though the rest of the Indians commit both murders and adulteries, and worship idols, and are drunken, and practise other wickednesses of this sort."Yea, in the western parts of India itself there is a certain country, where strangers, when they enter it, are taken and slaughtered and eaten; and neither have good stars prevented these men from such wickednesses and from accursed food, nor have malign stars compelled the Brahmans to do any evil. Again, there is a custom among the Persians to marry mothers, and sisters, and daughters. In all that district the Persians contract incestuous marriages."
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
St. Muirghein the Meer, with some historically dubious hagiography
One of the chief points of tension between historical critical scholarship and popular piety involves the historicity of saints. The period of upheaval after Vatican II saw the jettisoning of a number of popular saints from the Roman Catholic calendar, including such well-beloved pillars of people's devotion as St. Christopher, on the grounds that not only their hagiography but even their very existence lacks any historical evidence or certitude. The Eastern Orthodox world, less amenable to dialogue with secular scholarship, has seen less upheaval of this variety, although individual scholars have strongly questioned the legends of various saints (a chief example being the martyrdom of St. Peter the Aleut by "Jesuits" at a time when the Jesuits did not exist and when the secular authorities involved enjoyed cordial relationships with other Orthodox saints).
One generally has to be sympathetic to the complaints of the faithful when well-beloved saints are thrown out of the window. Assuredly the benefit of the doubt should rest upon the cultus that has arisen around such personalities, and it may seem unreasonable to methodologically reject the possibility of supernatural inspiration or intervention when it comes to the saints being glorified by the Church; secular scholarship may have no access to the history of St. Philomena, but as a spiritual practice it would seem strange to reject out of hand the revelations of her life and the involvement of the Cure of Ars in the promulgation of her cultus.
Nonetheless, not all saints did in fact exist, and as a cautionary tale it may be helpful to read the life of a saint whom modern sensibilities might baulk at. For this saint, St. Muirghein the Meer (pronounced Morien), was in fact according to the legend a mermaid. Even a mind reinforced by a hearty dose of naive traditionalism might find this story just a tad incredulous.
This story comes from the Lebor na h-Uidre (The Book of the Dun Cow), an Irish manuscript dating from the late 11th century, and whose compiler is said to have died in 1106. The legends and traditions recorded are undoubtedly of much older provenance; this one comes from the Aided Echach mheic Mhaireda (Destruction of Eiochaid mac Mairidh). It was translated into modern English in Silva Gadelica, II, 265-269, and again by Crowe, Proceedings of R. H. and A. A. of Ireland, 1870, 94-112, and also Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, London, 1879, 97-105. I copied it from Lucy Allen Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance, New York, 1960, pp. 9-10.
Lucy Allen Paton, in the study from which that except was copied, ties the legend of St. Liban Muirghein in with a broader tradition that gave arise to the Arthurian figure of Morgain la Fee. The Arthurian figure's connection with the sea does not appear until the romance of Floriant et Floirete in the 13th century, in which she lives in Sicily, a fact verified by other local traditions pointing to a Sicilian origin to the story of Morgain's aquatic origins. Instead of seeing a direct genealogy from the mermaid saint to Morgain la Fee, Paton suggests that Morgain is a conflation of St. Muirghein with the Irish battle-goddess Morrigan.
One generally has to be sympathetic to the complaints of the faithful when well-beloved saints are thrown out of the window. Assuredly the benefit of the doubt should rest upon the cultus that has arisen around such personalities, and it may seem unreasonable to methodologically reject the possibility of supernatural inspiration or intervention when it comes to the saints being glorified by the Church; secular scholarship may have no access to the history of St. Philomena, but as a spiritual practice it would seem strange to reject out of hand the revelations of her life and the involvement of the Cure of Ars in the promulgation of her cultus.
Nonetheless, not all saints did in fact exist, and as a cautionary tale it may be helpful to read the life of a saint whom modern sensibilities might baulk at. For this saint, St. Muirghein the Meer (pronounced Morien), was in fact according to the legend a mermaid. Even a mind reinforced by a hearty dose of naive traditionalism might find this story just a tad incredulous.
This story comes from the Lebor na h-Uidre (The Book of the Dun Cow), an Irish manuscript dating from the late 11th century, and whose compiler is said to have died in 1106. The legends and traditions recorded are undoubtedly of much older provenance; this one comes from the Aided Echach mheic Mhaireda (Destruction of Eiochaid mac Mairidh). It was translated into modern English in Silva Gadelica, II, 265-269, and again by Crowe, Proceedings of R. H. and A. A. of Ireland, 1870, 94-112, and also Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, London, 1879, 97-105. I copied it from Lucy Allen Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance, New York, 1960, pp. 9-10.
A certain well in Ulster overflowed its banks. Liban, the daughter of Ecca, king of Ulster, was the only member of her race who escaped death in the flood. She was transformed into a salmon below the waist, and with her pet dog, which had been changed into an otter, she passed three centuries in the waters of the lake (Lough Neagh) which had been formed by the overflowing of the well. At the end of this time, St. Comgall of Bennachar, or Bangor, sent Bevan mac Imle on a mission to Gregory. As Bevan sailed over the sea he heard a chanting as of angels in the waters beneath him, and when he asked whence the song came, Liban replied that she made it, and forthwith told him her story, adding that her purpose in coming had been to bid him keep tryst with her a year from that day at innbher Ollorba. At the appointed day and place the nets were made ready, and the mermaid was taken in the net of a certain Fergus. "She was brought to land, her form and her whole description being wonderful. Numbers came to view her and she in a vessel with water all about her." Soon a contest for her possession arose among Comgall, Fergus and Bevan. By fasting they won a revelation from heaven which bade them yoke to the chariot in which Liban was placed two stags, and allow them to go with her wheresoever they would. The stags bore Liban away to tech Dabheoc. Then the clergy gave her her choice of being baptized and going to heaven in the fulness of time, or of living on earth for three hundred years. "The election she made was to depart then. Comgall baptized her, and the name that he conferred on her was Muirghein or 'sea-birth' as before; or perhaps Muirgheilt, i.e. 'sea prodigy,' that is to say geilt in mhara, or 'the prodigy of the sea'." Liban Muirghein was afterwards worshipped as a saint at the town of Tec-da-Beoc.
Lucy Allen Paton, in the study from which that except was copied, ties the legend of St. Liban Muirghein in with a broader tradition that gave arise to the Arthurian figure of Morgain la Fee. The Arthurian figure's connection with the sea does not appear until the romance of Floriant et Floirete in the 13th century, in which she lives in Sicily, a fact verified by other local traditions pointing to a Sicilian origin to the story of Morgain's aquatic origins. Instead of seeing a direct genealogy from the mermaid saint to Morgain la Fee, Paton suggests that Morgain is a conflation of St. Muirghein with the Irish battle-goddess Morrigan.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Sir John Tavener has reposed
This news makes me really sad. Say a canon for his departed soul; his music has brought me many hours of joy, prayer, and contemplation of and love for God and His Mother. He has now joined Mother Thekla in the Lord.
He was a rather unorthodox, or at least unconventional, convert to Russian Orthodoxy from a Protestant background with an insufficiently imbued Roman Catholic stage. His turn from Roman Catholicism is certainly of concern to a faithful Catholic, as is his falling out with Mother Thekla (with whom he reconciled shortly thereafter and died at peace with - a fact not often publicized by those wishing to inflate the magnitude of his tension with the Church), his insufficiently mature immersion in the heterodox universalism of Frithjof Schuon (whose gnosis I have also forayed into, and whom Tavener salvages impeccably by enshrining Schuon's insights in music rather than in discursive statements which could be either true or false), and his unfortunate public comment about the "senility" of "all religions" (unfortunate not because of what he actually said over the BBC broadcast - which he immediately clarified to preclude meaning what the reporter reported him as saying - but because of the press headline misinterpreting and misquoting him). These facts are not mentioned to dishonor the recently deceased, but rather to urge prayer for his soul, which now rests under the Mercy. Since that side of his personality is quite well-known and well-publicized, a gentler picture of his character should be seen with his dedication of his final compositions to Mother Thekla, his re-turn to Roman Catholic religious forms in his music, his request for his works to be premiered in Catholic cathedrals, and his dedication of his Mass of the Immaculate Conception to Pope Benedict. Perhaps now in his repose he has achieved the synthesis and peace between his Catholic faith, his Orthodox hesychia, and his universal awareness of the presence and theophany of God.
Sir John, eternal memory and blessed repose, in a place of light and peace where the saints repose. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest - shantih, shantih, shantih. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENiwvkU5yZM
He was a rather unorthodox, or at least unconventional, convert to Russian Orthodoxy from a Protestant background with an insufficiently imbued Roman Catholic stage. His turn from Roman Catholicism is certainly of concern to a faithful Catholic, as is his falling out with Mother Thekla (with whom he reconciled shortly thereafter and died at peace with - a fact not often publicized by those wishing to inflate the magnitude of his tension with the Church), his insufficiently mature immersion in the heterodox universalism of Frithjof Schuon (whose gnosis I have also forayed into, and whom Tavener salvages impeccably by enshrining Schuon's insights in music rather than in discursive statements which could be either true or false), and his unfortunate public comment about the "senility" of "all religions" (unfortunate not because of what he actually said over the BBC broadcast - which he immediately clarified to preclude meaning what the reporter reported him as saying - but because of the press headline misinterpreting and misquoting him). These facts are not mentioned to dishonor the recently deceased, but rather to urge prayer for his soul, which now rests under the Mercy. Since that side of his personality is quite well-known and well-publicized, a gentler picture of his character should be seen with his dedication of his final compositions to Mother Thekla, his re-turn to Roman Catholic religious forms in his music, his request for his works to be premiered in Catholic cathedrals, and his dedication of his Mass of the Immaculate Conception to Pope Benedict. Perhaps now in his repose he has achieved the synthesis and peace between his Catholic faith, his Orthodox hesychia, and his universal awareness of the presence and theophany of God.
Sir John, eternal memory and blessed repose, in a place of light and peace where the saints repose. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest - shantih, shantih, shantih. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENiwvkU5yZM
Late date for introduction of absolution formula?
I was intrigued to read in Fr. Nicholas Gamvas' little book, "The Psychology of Confession and the Orthodox Church", the claim that the formula for sacramental absolution in confession was first introduced in the West around 600 A.D., with the original practice consisting of public exomologesis (confession), penance, and admission to Holy Communion without the priest ever pronouncing the words "I absolve you..."
Fr. Gamvas presents his historical survey in "Psychology of Confession and the Orthodox Church" (Light and Life, 1989), in chapter 3, pp. 17-31. Confession in the Apostolic Church was public, with mutual prayers for each others' forgiveness - "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." (James 5:16) Contrary to much Roman Catholic apologetics, the Epistle of James is not referring to faithful walking into confessional boxes (introduced at the Council of Trent), confessing sins anonymously to a judge who says as little as possible lest he appear to be speaking in his own name rather than in persona Christi, and then absolved from legal guilt. Repentance was rather a public, communal, and reciprocal process in which the Church strove together in prayer for salvation; the prayers for forgiveness were not given by an anonymous and depersonalized conduit acting in persona Christi through the suppression of individual personality, nor given by a "spiritual father" or staretz as seen in the later East, an incarnation and image of divine fatherhood working through and glorified through human personality and fatherhood, but rather presented as coming from a righteous man of God storming Heaven by his prayers.
A later apostolic document, the Shepherd of Hermas, is one of the first witnesses to attest to the long, thorough process of penance in the early Church. Taking the texts of St. Hermas and St. James together, one can see that the two key elements of the Mystery, repentance and confession, were present in apostolic times. The long, gradated process for sacramental rehabilitation through penance took the place of a sacramental absolution formula. The process rather was exomologesis (confession), penance, and then communion.
Exomologesis seems to have disappeared entirely in the post-apostolic period close to the Council of Trent. Historical evidence falls in two strains - first, the continuation of this practice as a Greek tradition during Great Lent, when the faithful receive Holy Communion without prior confession during Great Week after completing the Church's most rigorous fast; secondly, the testimony of the Fathers themselves, who do not mention exomologesis after Great Lent (St. Athanasios the Great's 19th pastoral encyclical is cited by Fr. Gamvas). Confession and penance was reserved for what the West would later classify as "mortal sins", following a distinction introduced by Tertullian, rather than for daily faults and vices ("venial sins"). Pope St. Callistus and St. Cyprian are both mentioned as having extended the discipline of penance, without any major changes to the Church's practice. The practice of personal, private confession before a priest was introduced by St. John Chrysostom, who restored the practice of confession after it had been completely suppressed by his predecessor Nektarios in 391, who had been concerned about the scandal that some of the confessions - adulterous affairs with prominent clergy! - had been causing.
In the East, the restoration of confession was mainly monastic, and is associated most notably with the name of St. Symeon the New Theologian - who confessed to a lay brother, not to a priest. Confession in the monastic form was not public like the apostolic exomologesis, absolution was not involved, and the confession was made to a spiritual father whose efficacy lay in his personal sanctity and closeness to God, not in his priestly ministry - and some have seen St. Symeon's insistence on this practice as introducing a tension between the efficacy of monastic charism versus hierarchical ordination. Although St. Symeon's name is often invoked, and his practice of confession to a non-ordained spiritual father often noted, the practice of reciprocal confession dates back to the Rule of St. Pachomius, and is also exhorted by St. Basil the Great (Letter 229) where he urges that confession be made to a spiritual father trusted for his guidance, rather than to any monk. The need to go to a separate priest for sacramental confession after confession of sins to a spiritual father emerges in Greek monasticism in the 12th century. Confession became widespread for the faithful at that same time, and became regarded as obligatory in the 15th century under the pen of St. Symeon of Thessaloniki
The "absolution formula" was first introduced in the West by St. Columban around 600 A.D. (Gamvas, p. 40). The words "I absolve you..." to this day do not appear in the Byzantine or Orthodox sacramental practice, and for a Roman Catholic coming to the East for confession for the first time, the initial reaction is to feel "unabsolved". For six hundred years confession was practiced, when it was permitted at all, without any "absolution formula", regarded by later scholastic theology as the "form" of the sacrament. The question must be raised - is a verbal "form" soteriologically necessary for repentance to be "grace-filled", or in Latinspeak, for the sacrament to be valid? A recognition and respect for the history and universal practice of the Church for more than the first quarter of its history must insist on a negative answer, and a broader understanding of the sacrament of confession.
A traditional, or at least neo-Baroque, Roman Catholic approach would be to insist on the necessity of ex opere operato sacramental absolution as the ordinary means of grace, with "true contrition" serving only as an "extraordinary" substitute in cases of emergency where confession and absolution become physically impossible, and with reception of the Most Blessed Sacrament certainly impossible to receive worthily without sacramental absolution. It would seem, from the historical consideration offered, that such a development is not a matter of necessity from Divine Law, but rather the historical manner in which the Church's practice developed. At one time, the Church offered penance as the means for healing - or for the remission of mortal sin; whether a juridical or medicinal metaphor is employed does not change the substance of the Church's teaching, and the two metaphors are complementary, not opposed - and today in the post-Patristic era man's laxity and weakness are taken into account, and the long hard process of public penance and excommunication are replaced with a quicker process of judicial absolution and re-admittance into the company of saints. In both eras, the Holy Spirit has guided the Church to offer the best means of grace for the sanctification of the faithful in Her time, but the somewhat simplistic assumption that the mystery of confession necessarily involves a formula for absolution must be discarded.
To my readers - thoughts? Is Fr. Gamvas' history correct? How would an Eastern Christian of the Catholic communion faithful to his Orthodox patrimony answer the question?
IC XC NIKA
P.S. This blog's output has been quite low - we are well into the Philipovka and this is only the third post this year, with the last post from 2012 being written in July. I've been busy. This year I've published an expanded edition of my physics textbook, which I use in the four undergraduate university physics classes I teach, and I've entered the unspeakable joy of becoming a married man. As I am writing, we are expecting a little daughter, Cecilia Rose, whom we are worried about for some rare pregnancy complications with her growth being several weeks behind and an artery in her umbilical cord missing. Prayers for her safety and health would be gratefully appreciated. She is the most precious thing to have ever entered my life.
Fr. Gamvas presents his historical survey in "Psychology of Confession and the Orthodox Church" (Light and Life, 1989), in chapter 3, pp. 17-31. Confession in the Apostolic Church was public, with mutual prayers for each others' forgiveness - "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." (James 5:16) Contrary to much Roman Catholic apologetics, the Epistle of James is not referring to faithful walking into confessional boxes (introduced at the Council of Trent), confessing sins anonymously to a judge who says as little as possible lest he appear to be speaking in his own name rather than in persona Christi, and then absolved from legal guilt. Repentance was rather a public, communal, and reciprocal process in which the Church strove together in prayer for salvation; the prayers for forgiveness were not given by an anonymous and depersonalized conduit acting in persona Christi through the suppression of individual personality, nor given by a "spiritual father" or staretz as seen in the later East, an incarnation and image of divine fatherhood working through and glorified through human personality and fatherhood, but rather presented as coming from a righteous man of God storming Heaven by his prayers.
A later apostolic document, the Shepherd of Hermas, is one of the first witnesses to attest to the long, thorough process of penance in the early Church. Taking the texts of St. Hermas and St. James together, one can see that the two key elements of the Mystery, repentance and confession, were present in apostolic times. The long, gradated process for sacramental rehabilitation through penance took the place of a sacramental absolution formula. The process rather was exomologesis (confession), penance, and then communion.
Exomologesis seems to have disappeared entirely in the post-apostolic period close to the Council of Trent. Historical evidence falls in two strains - first, the continuation of this practice as a Greek tradition during Great Lent, when the faithful receive Holy Communion without prior confession during Great Week after completing the Church's most rigorous fast; secondly, the testimony of the Fathers themselves, who do not mention exomologesis after Great Lent (St. Athanasios the Great's 19th pastoral encyclical is cited by Fr. Gamvas). Confession and penance was reserved for what the West would later classify as "mortal sins", following a distinction introduced by Tertullian, rather than for daily faults and vices ("venial sins"). Pope St. Callistus and St. Cyprian are both mentioned as having extended the discipline of penance, without any major changes to the Church's practice. The practice of personal, private confession before a priest was introduced by St. John Chrysostom, who restored the practice of confession after it had been completely suppressed by his predecessor Nektarios in 391, who had been concerned about the scandal that some of the confessions - adulterous affairs with prominent clergy! - had been causing.
In the East, the restoration of confession was mainly monastic, and is associated most notably with the name of St. Symeon the New Theologian - who confessed to a lay brother, not to a priest. Confession in the monastic form was not public like the apostolic exomologesis, absolution was not involved, and the confession was made to a spiritual father whose efficacy lay in his personal sanctity and closeness to God, not in his priestly ministry - and some have seen St. Symeon's insistence on this practice as introducing a tension between the efficacy of monastic charism versus hierarchical ordination. Although St. Symeon's name is often invoked, and his practice of confession to a non-ordained spiritual father often noted, the practice of reciprocal confession dates back to the Rule of St. Pachomius, and is also exhorted by St. Basil the Great (Letter 229) where he urges that confession be made to a spiritual father trusted for his guidance, rather than to any monk. The need to go to a separate priest for sacramental confession after confession of sins to a spiritual father emerges in Greek monasticism in the 12th century. Confession became widespread for the faithful at that same time, and became regarded as obligatory in the 15th century under the pen of St. Symeon of Thessaloniki
The "absolution formula" was first introduced in the West by St. Columban around 600 A.D. (Gamvas, p. 40). The words "I absolve you..." to this day do not appear in the Byzantine or Orthodox sacramental practice, and for a Roman Catholic coming to the East for confession for the first time, the initial reaction is to feel "unabsolved". For six hundred years confession was practiced, when it was permitted at all, without any "absolution formula", regarded by later scholastic theology as the "form" of the sacrament. The question must be raised - is a verbal "form" soteriologically necessary for repentance to be "grace-filled", or in Latinspeak, for the sacrament to be valid? A recognition and respect for the history and universal practice of the Church for more than the first quarter of its history must insist on a negative answer, and a broader understanding of the sacrament of confession.
A traditional, or at least neo-Baroque, Roman Catholic approach would be to insist on the necessity of ex opere operato sacramental absolution as the ordinary means of grace, with "true contrition" serving only as an "extraordinary" substitute in cases of emergency where confession and absolution become physically impossible, and with reception of the Most Blessed Sacrament certainly impossible to receive worthily without sacramental absolution. It would seem, from the historical consideration offered, that such a development is not a matter of necessity from Divine Law, but rather the historical manner in which the Church's practice developed. At one time, the Church offered penance as the means for healing - or for the remission of mortal sin; whether a juridical or medicinal metaphor is employed does not change the substance of the Church's teaching, and the two metaphors are complementary, not opposed - and today in the post-Patristic era man's laxity and weakness are taken into account, and the long hard process of public penance and excommunication are replaced with a quicker process of judicial absolution and re-admittance into the company of saints. In both eras, the Holy Spirit has guided the Church to offer the best means of grace for the sanctification of the faithful in Her time, but the somewhat simplistic assumption that the mystery of confession necessarily involves a formula for absolution must be discarded.
To my readers - thoughts? Is Fr. Gamvas' history correct? How would an Eastern Christian of the Catholic communion faithful to his Orthodox patrimony answer the question?
IC XC NIKA
P.S. This blog's output has been quite low - we are well into the Philipovka and this is only the third post this year, with the last post from 2012 being written in July. I've been busy. This year I've published an expanded edition of my physics textbook, which I use in the four undergraduate university physics classes I teach, and I've entered the unspeakable joy of becoming a married man. As I am writing, we are expecting a little daughter, Cecilia Rose, whom we are worried about for some rare pregnancy complications with her growth being several weeks behind and an artery in her umbilical cord missing. Prayers for her safety and health would be gratefully appreciated. She is the most precious thing to have ever entered my life.
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