WORSHIP/SERVICE: EITHER-OR/BOTH-AND

The miracle of the Incarnation is the basis for our worship and service. We believe that Christ, the eternal Son of God, became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man. He was and is not God who just appeared to be man, nor merely a man who became quite holy and god-like, nor half-god and half-man. Jesus Christ was and is fully God and fully man - two complete and unconfused Natures in one Person. What does this mean for our worship and service?

For well over a century we in the West have been wrestling with the liberal/conservative dilemma of focusing either on worship and dogmatic truth, or on social justice and concern for the poor. This has created in us a mindset that is actually a false dichotomy. It has led us to the false conclusion and belief that we must choose one or the other: we must either "preach the Gospel" and focus on personal salvation, or we should care for "the poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind."

Why does the current dominant secular mindset say we shouldn't "shove religion down other people's throats" when we offer care for downtrodden and hurting members of society? I believe it is because the secularists strive to maintain this dualistic worldview of the spiritual being utterly separate from and opposed to the material world, to society in general. Secularism is the effort to separate and isolate a religious (in the West largely Christian) worldview from the state and society.

Remember how Jesus Christ taught His disciples to pray:

Our Father in heaven:
May Your name be kept holy,
May Your kingdom come,
May Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.

Notice the three petitions to our heavenly Father: keep God the Father's name holy - sacred, honored and set apart, yet at same time not separating God's kingdom, not limiting the doing of His will from this earthly life. We are taught here not to limit God the Father's holy name, His kingdom and His will to the sweet bye-and-bye, pie-in-the-sky, heaven-when-we-die; but rather to honor His name, bring about His kingdom and do His will on earth just as it is in heaven.

This is the full meaning of the Incarnation: God so loves the world, He is vitally concerned with and involved in the struggles, the joy and the pain of our human existence, and He wants them to conform to His will and His kingdom in heaven AND to have everlasting life with Him in eternity. It's not an either-or proposition of choosing either an ordinary worldly life or a spiritual life separated from the world: it's both-and!

The goal of socialism and secular humanism is the separation of the mention of God's name, His kingdom and His will from society and the state, in other words, to shove "all that religious stuff" off into a corner, kept locked up in churches and not mentioned or practiced in the public square. Their goal is for mankind to rely on the power and authority of the all-wise, benevolent state to take care of all our needs and wants from the cradle to the grave.

Their means to that end are to keep Christians divided by playing one confession against another, and keep them confused with expressions such as "separation of church and state" and "don't shove your religion down other people's throats!" But in reality it is shoving secularism down the throats of Christians by controlling the political process and passing laws and court rulings that oppose traditional Christian morality.

Christians often feel like we can't compete against free stuff, our small sacrificial offerings and volunteer service can't match what the government doles out to the poor, maimed, lame and blind. But in Psalm 156:3 we read - "Do not trust in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation." The political princes make promises designed to win votes, but we're finding out they can't deliver.

The nanny state that promises cradle-to-grave health care and a secure retirement until we fade away into the sunset simply cannot deliver on its promises: the money just isn't there, instead they're piling up enormous mountains of national debt that must eventually come due. The real deal, real salvation, is from the Lord, He Who made heaven and earth.

The Greek word for "salvation: is sodzo, but also the very same word means "healing." Jesus Christ came to bring salvation and healing, He preached the Gospel and healed the sick and the blind, He fed the hungry. There's no separation of the "spiritual" realm from the "material" world in genuine Christianity.

Under the guise of "freedom" and "democracy" we have been fed the lie of separation of church from the state, which nowhere appears in the U.S. Constitution. It did appear, however, in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., which was swept into the dustbin of history twenty-five years ago. Now Russia is realizing the vital importance of spiritual values in the functioning of the state, but where are we in the West headed?

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 21 Nov. 2015.)

Which Is the Real Jesus?

For many people - especially in the western world - the question "Which Is the Real Jesus?" is a sort of grab-bag game, or a cafeteria-style choosing of what suits your taste. The result is often a smorgasbord serving of logically contradictory, half-baked notions. This semester I'm auditing a course on Christology, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of it with you.

Christology sets us apart from other monotheistic religions including neo-atheism. It is the lynchpin of our theology, implicit in the Old Testament and explicit in the New Testament. It includes the two natures, two energies and two wills in one Person of Christ. Orthodox Christian theology possesses an intimate link between Christology and theosis – the deification of mankind. There is not a 3-stage process of justification, salvation, and sanctification. With Orthodox Christianity there is only one process: deification/theosis. Our anthropology flows from the Incarnation and to our deification.

St. Athanasius in The Incarnation of the Word (preface by C. S. Lewis) wrote that the image of God in man was defaced by the Fall, as a face in a painting is defaced by dirt, fading and with painting over it. It is renewed by the One from Whom the image was painted to come and renew the image. The image could not be renewed without death and sinful corruption being eliminated. For this reason it was required that the Logos take on a human body, to renew the image. God can't just wave His magic wand or snap His fingers to transform mankind: if God is love, He can't arbitrarily force change on human nature. We don't believe in magic: God only acts according to His nature.

The Son of Man did not immediately come and die on the Cross: He first lived, took on human nature, healed people and taught them to forsake their idolatry, rebellion and self-will. Only then could He heal the deformed image of God in mankind by the Atonement. Death had established a permanent limit to the dominion of sin, to keep men from turning into a demon. Sin is a leprosy that eats up a human body. Christ healed lepers as a sign that He would put an end to death and the dominion of sin.

Thus the Incarnation is the center-point, the pivot of history, it is why we have B.C. and A.D. The Incarnation of Christ surpasses the creation of man – St. Gregory. He said self-emptying and pouring out define the Incarnation (Phil. 2). He wasn't an apparition, but a real skin-and-bones human. It is analogous to the perechoresis, the mutual pouring-out of the Trinity. Without the Incarnation there is no Salvation. Even after the Incarnation, He remained what He was (divine) even after taking on Himself that which He was not (human), preserving His divinity whole: consubstantial with the Father from all eternity, He became consubstantial with us in our humanity.

No change occurred with God in the Incarnation: God is unchanging (apathia) because He is infinite, so by becoming man humanity changes, it becomes deified. Everything in our essence and destiny changed at the moment of the Incarnation. Christ's divinity has no “because” since He is everlastingly begotten of the Father, just as the Holy Spirit everlastingly proceeds from the Father. Everlasting is higher than eternal: eternity is just an indefinite extension of time.

God's saving plan, our Salvation, is part of God's economia, His leniency: St. Gregory contrasts the divine nature with God's economia. He came down to us so that we humans could ascend up to Him. This is part of our pastoral responsibility to explain the apparent paradoxes of Christ's two natures: Son (of God and of man), Word, Power, Truth, Wisdom, Image, Light, Right, Atonement and Resurrection all apply to both natures. Some names only apply to His human nature: man, Son of man, Christ, the Way, the Path of righeousness, the Door, the Shepherd, Archpriest, and Melchizidek. All these names make up the ladder we must ascend to achieve deification.

St. Isaac the Syrian lived three centuries after St. Gregory the Theologian. He wrote on the nature and names of Christ, the divine economia (plan) of Salvation, which is beyond the reach of human logic. Christ became incarnate not only to redeem mankind from sin, but to bring mankind to theosis/deification - to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4), to make God's love perfectly manifest to man, to “make us captives of His love.” He “humbled himself with such humility” to become man and demonstrate God's love. Creation could not gaze upon God unless He assumed human nature, accepting a part of it (creation). St. Isaac taught that God coming to earth is of universal significance, directly related to the destiny of the cosmos.

St. Gregory Palamas wrote that the nature of the first-formed Adam did not need healing because it was not damaged. Christ had to assume Adam's fallen nature because that was what needed healing. Augustine on this point wrote that we assume Adam's guilt. But Christ assumed Adam's damaged nature that leads to death, not Adam's sinful nature. Christ sweated blood because of the fear of death. He wept. He grieved for the dead daughter of Jairus.

His birth, not from a usual mingling of a man and woman, but from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary who remained always virgin, is precisely, singularly the reason why Christ continued to have a divine nature as well as a human nature. Mary remained the Bride of God, never having children by Joseph. Only if God would have died, could Mary have children by Joseph.

It is only because Christ assumed fallen human nature that He could redeem that nature. His human nature was affected by His divine nature: communicatio idiomatum – communication or intermingling of natures, even as a zygote. He did not, however, inherit Adam's fallen predisposition to sin. He was tempted, but was able to overcome temptation by His divine nature. When we partake of this divine nature, we too can overcome temptation.

There you have it: Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, not half-god and half-man, nor God who only appeared to be man, nor merely a godly man. In Him both the divine and human natures are united without confusion in one Hypostasis, one Person. I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to Christology!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 07 Nov. 2015.)