Resolutions for the Year of the Lord 2012

The old & the new

Some people make New Year’s Resolutions, but for many of us Christians, the resolve is one that we make related to our sacramental confessions – to do God’s will in all things.  Here are a few ideas from St. John Chrysostom for what we might commit ourselves to this year in our effort to follow Christ:

“The sources of our existence have been made common so that we all might live more securely. God has made you rich; why do you make yourself poor?   He has given you money, not to shut it away to feed your own destruction, but that you can pour it forth to the benefit of others and for your salvation.”

It is hard to convince ourselves that we can afford to tithe – or that we cannot afford not to tithe, since the tithe is the Lord’s to begin with.  Thankfulness of spirit can lead to joyful, generous giving.   Entitlement thinking – “everything I have is mine” – can lead to that poverty which Chrysostom mentions above – “you’ll never be rich because you are greedy” (as was told the baker in one of the legends explaining why he abandoned greed and began giving a baker’s dozen to his customers).  Thoughts like “I deserve wealth and prosperity” are also a form of entitlement thinking.  Entitlement thinking leads to seeing others as a threat – “they” want to take away my entitlements” – which causes us to lose love for one another.

“God has also made the possession of riches unstable so that the intensity of man’s madness for it might slacken. Let us not consider riches to be a great good.”

The instability of the economy, the stock market, investments and retirement funds – this is not merely the risks of capitalism, but Chrysostom says is part of God’s plan to teach us not to greedily trust in riches.  Obsessing over profit and prosperity is for St. John a form of insanity which possesses a great many people.   Wealth does not equal virtue.  Wealth in itself is not the greatest virtue (= good).  Love is the greatest virtue and good.

“The great good is not the possession of money, but to posses the fear of God and piety. A righteous man, even if he were the poorest of mortals, would need to but spread forth his hands toward heaven and call upon God, and the clouds would pass away! But gold, saved in abundance, is more useless than clay for delivering one from impending calamities.”  (St. John Chrysostom,The Rich in this World, pgs. 6-7)

The pursuit of happiness – a declared right for Americans.  Yet often we mistake the pursuit of wealth for this happiness.   Indeed wealth can give us a sense of power and well being, but that also can be deceptive.  Wealth is one of those things for which an appetite is never satisfied.  When is enough enough?   What are we willing to sacrifice to gain just 10% more?   Freedom or friendship or faith?  Are we willing to kill or force others into slavery and poverty so we can have 10% more wealth?

What is the relationship between loving God and neighbor and our own wealth or pursuit of happiness?   This is the moral question we must ask ourselves for our personal wealth can never be separated from the ethics taught by Christ in the Gospel.

ECOnomics

Whenever I blog on economics or statistics, I know I make some folk uneasy with my comments.  But the joy of blogging is commenting on things I read or think about for which I don’t have to be right.  That appears to be the job of the rest of the world, who lets me know where my economic thinking goes astray.

Super Committee inaction

First a comment on the failure of the “Super Committee” to come up with a budget reduction plan which supposedly now will trigger mandatory cuts in government spending, including mandatory cuts for the military (this last phrase,  I think, is always thrown in to make conservatives nervous).

In our pluralistic society, the “consent of the governed” is going to mean that those who govern have to come up with compromises so that they can form majority coalitions to approve of legislation.  But in America this also has come under criticism as “business as usual” and Americans politically are perpetually in favor of change.    So the legislators can’t compromise and they can’t get anything done (which means they can’t govern reasonably either).  So  mandatory cuts in government spending are the only kind of cuts that are going to be agreed upon.  Americans are fed up with this political gridlock as well, at least based upon polls rating Congress (I heard one commentator note that communism gets a higher approval rating in America than Congress – 11% to 9%).

Cutting both the annual deficit and the national debt seem like proper goals to me.  The deficit can be cut/eliminated by cuts in spending, but to reduce the national debt, I believe, is going to require some tax increases (even if temporary).   Since I favor a balanced budget for the government and a reduction in the national debt, I believe we have to talk both spending cuts and tax increases.     I think that means talking about how to make Medicare and Social Security solvent as well.  Apparently none of these ideas is very popular with our national legislators and so they cannot come up with a reasoned planned and only seem to be able to acquiesce to a mandated reduction in spending (and even at that some are not comfortable with the mandatory reductions and seem to want to avoid them as well).    It seems obvious enough that continuing on the current path is not going to reduce the national debt, so the legislators decided to take those decisions out of their own hands and allow mandatory cuts to do their work for them.  But it is also true if we send our elected congressional leaders to Washington and tell them not to compromise to resolve the deficit and debt we are going to get what we got: an inability to govern reasonably.   In a democracy, compromise is not always a bad word as it means bi-partisan.   We might remember that ‘partisans’ from one point of view are ‘terrorists’ from another point of view.  Governments are said not to negotiate with terrorists.

What isn’t needed is more blame, but there always seems plenty of that around; a super  abundance of blame will not reduce the national debt or deficit one penny.  We waste our money when we send to congress people who have nothing to offer but blame.

My intent in this blog is not to belabor our government (“we the people”) and our inability to reasonably solve problems because of our ideological rigidities.

Instead, I want to comment on was a graph I saw in the 14 November issue of TIME with an article by Stephen Gandel titled “The Deregulation Myth.”   The gist of the graph is that despite a popular notion in the US that government regulations are hurting economic growth, worldwide the statistics show a different picture.  For the five years ending in 2010, the US is ranked 4^th out of 183 countries as being the most business friendly (Singapore is 1^st, Hong Kong 2^nd, New Zealand 3^rd).   In that time period the US had an increase in GDP of 15%.   But in that same time period China had a GDP increase of 160%, Russia of 94%, Brazil  135%, and Indonesia 147%.   These are countries in which businesses  are more regulated than US businesses.   Being more business friendly and government deregulation of business do not automatically create jobs or economic growth.  Capitalism moves money to where capitalism believes there is money to be made.   It is an oversimplification for politicians to promise Americans significant economic growth by further reducing government regulations.  America is already one of the most business friendly nations on earth.

The reality is America cannot control all of the economic factors in the world.   Politicians have limited powers as to what they are able to do to improve the economy.

If America cannot control world economics, what is our best strategy for living with, in and as part of the family of nations (which maybe we can influence even when we can’t control them)?   If politicians really have limited power to change the American economy, what are our best domestic strategies for creating sustainable economic growth?

Things to ponder.

For me there are also ethical questions regarding the relationship between profit and greed and the balance between sustainable economic growth and environmental stewardship.  We are after all not merely consumers on earth, but stewards of the earth.   God so loved the world, we believe, and we too are to love His creation, not just greedily use it for profit but for the benefit of all.   We Americans certainly believe that no tyrant anywhere on earth should control its resources.  So too, we have to abide on earth in peace with the rest of the world sharing the earth’s resources following that same principle as well.

See also my blog America and Capitalism: Dr. Frankenstein’s Demonic Lesson

Lessons Learned on Sexual Misconduct from Penn State

In a previous blog, Taking a Page from the Old Coach’s Book, I mentioned a couple of postings from a sportscaster regarding the ongoing turmoil at Penn State involving a coach accused of sexual misconduct with some young boys.  I felt the Church can learn some lessons from that case on the risks of child sexual abuse and also a need to openly, transparently, immediately and without fail to deal with these types of allegations.  Whereas some may have anesthetized  themselves by believing that these type of problems only happen in the Roman Catholic Church, the allegations at Penn State show that they can happen anywhere and that any institution can fail to deal properly with the allegations.   Institutions can be more interested in defending the interests of the institution than in dealing with the personal crimes of rogue employees.  Institutions might assume that if they can avoid public entanglement with scandal that is better than having to deal with the crimes individual employees might commit.  That strategy in recent times has often backfired to the tenfold detriment of institutions.

I will note again that for me the issue of greatest concern is not that the allegations happened at a college or were allegedly done by a football coach.  My interest is the implication for the Church, and also parallels the Penn State situation might have with cases that have happened in other churches and could happen in the Orthodox Church.

I also mention again, I am not a great sport fan, so it is not that this issues involves a sports program that interests me.   Like in my previous blog, I had never even heard of the commentator I am going to quote below.  The significance to me is that some sportscasters are getting exactly right what a number of church leaders miss completely in dealing with sexual misconduct.

I accidentally heard Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN interviewed on the radio on Saturday afternoon and he made some very strong comments about Joe Paterno’s actions beginning with when Coach Paterno first learned of the allegations.   A lot of what he said is also in an article he wrote for ESPN (The Tragedy of Joe Paterno)  which I quote extensively below.    I quote it because in it are important lessons and reminders for Church leadership in dealing with clergy or any church sexual misconduct.

The first words I heard when I turned my car radio on (and what kept me listening) was Wojciechowski taking Paterno to task for trying to control the terms of how he (Paterno) would be dealt with by the university – Joe offered to retire at the season’s end and told the Board of Trustees not to worry about him or waste even a minute talking about him.  The Board to their credit decided Joe doesn’t get to dictate the terms of how he is handled.    Gene W. was adamant that Joe PA was in the wrong from how he handled the case on the day he learned about it, and so now he doesn’t deserve the right to dictate how he should be dealt with.  The Board of Trustees of  Penn State knew what had to be done and they did it swiftly and unapologetically.  Below is what is for me the relevant portion of Gene W’s article:

Paterno had equity at Penn State, the kind of equity that gave him the power to essentially stiff-arm the school’s efforts to coax him into retirement in 2004. He tried the same audacious tactic earlier this week when he announced his decision to retire at season’s end and added, almost as a warning it seemed, that the PSU board of trustees had more pressing matters to deal with than his job status.

It was the final, tone-deaf act of a man who failed to realize his own power base had eroded. Wednesday night the trustees informed him by phone of their decision to fire him, effective immediately.

A statement released that night from Big Ten Conference commissioner Jim Delany included a six-word sentence that was perfect in its simplicity. The entire situation is so sad.

Profoundly sad because of the victims affected by the alleged acts of Sandusky.

Sad because a great university has been kneecapped by its very own.

Sad because there are so many questions involving Paterno’s role in the chain of events that led to his forced departure.

For example:

Why didn’t Paterno contact the police when first informed in 2002 by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary of an alleged locker room incident involving Sandusky and a young boy?

Why did Paterno heir apparent Sandusky unexpectedly resign from Penn State in 1999?

Why was Sandusky granted special access to the Penn State athletic facilities even after the 2002 incident?

Why did all of this remain secret for so long?

“Joe doesn’t know why [Sandusky] resigned?” says a former athletic director at a rival institution. “Bull—-. That was the first cover-up. … In ’99, when Sandusky resigns, you think this coaching staff didn’t know what was going on?

“In 2002, this could have been a two-day story: ‘Ex-Penn State assistant coach is arrested.’ I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been a painful story, but it would have been dealt with. But there’s so much arrogance to think they can keep it a secret. And it starts with Joe … Monumental ego and arrogance.”

These are the kind of opinions and statements you had better get used to. That Paterno had better get used to.

As a promised comprehensive and exhaustive Penn State in-house investigation begins, as the Sandusky trial hearings approach, as the expected civil lawsuits are filed, there are likely to be revelations that test the faith of even Paterno’s most vocal supporters. This is what happens when more than a decade’s worth of dirt is swept under a blue and white Penn State rug.

A list of other blogs I’ve posted on church sexual misconduct with links to them can be found at Blogs on Church Sexual Misconduct.

Holding Bishops Accountable for Clergy Misconduct

This is the 2^nd blog in this series dealing with the effort of the state to hold a Roman Catholic bishop legally accountable for failing to follow church procedure in dealing with the sexual misconduct of a clergyman as reported in the NY TIMES on 14 October 2011, Bishop is Indicted; Charge is Failing to Report Abuse.  The previous blog is State Wants to Hold Bishop Accountable for Priest’s Misdeeds.

Many church denominations already have acknowledged that sexually misbehaving clergy often have troubles in many areas of their lives – their marriages, their credit, frequent moves, relational troubles with parishioners, bad driving records, etc.    There are warning signs which the courts are going to start demanding churches pay attention to in the lives of their clergy.   [Some denominational officials say they have in fact come to recognize that sexually misbehaving clergy frequently have credit problems – they run up huge porn bills on their computers, they have expensive sexual dalliances with prostitutes or have to pay off people to keep them silent or are being black mailed.   If the state comes to recognize these as legitimate warning signs of future sexual misconduct, the church is going to have to pay attention to these things in its clergy.]

There is a certain level at which the church might want to pay attention to these things anyhow – does the church not have an interest in its clergy behaving morally, above reproach and scandal, in a holy manner?   Should the church passively ignore these areas of behavior even if the state doesn’t demand it of us?

For bishops there is another issue – not only can the bishops be held responsible for the misdeeds of their clergy whom they supervise, but also these clergy are ordained by the bishops, so the bishops share some responsibility for putting these men into pastoral office in the first place.  So not only must the bishops practice vigilance regarding following Policy Standard and Procedures (PSP) regarding the behavior of clergy, but more diligence is needed by the bishops in knowing the men they choose to ordain.  If there are warning signs of problems, these should not be ignored by the bishops or they will have to give account for whom they ordained.

Going back to the NY Times article.  Three things really stuck out in my mind:

1)   “Bishop Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May. During that time, the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, is said to have continued to attend church events with children, and took lewd photographs of another young girl.”

Though the bishop did turn over the photos to the police, the bishop waited 5 months to do so.   Not only following the law, but doing so ASAP is critical.  Church officials are often slow to react to allegations, sometimes because the accused is a friend or well known and they find it hard to believe that their acquaintance could do such a thing.  This is where having a clear PSP demanding the investigation of all allegations, regardless of who the accuser or the alleged perpetrator is, is so essential.

2)  “But until May the priest attended children’s parties, spent weekends in the homes of parish families, hosted an Easter egg hunt and presided, with the bishop’s permission, at a girl’s First Communion, according to interviews with parishioners and a civil lawsuit filed by a victim’s family.”

When the church hierarchy tries to suppress knowledge of the allegations, it puts other people at risk for being hurt.  Of course the church has to have clear PSPs in how to deal publicly with those accused of misconduct, but it also must be willing to follow and enforce those PSPs and not allow exceptions no matter who the accused is or what his rank is.

3)   “That report found that the diocese did not follow its own procedures. It also found that Bishop Finn was “too willing to trust” Father Ratigan.”

Exactly what I mentioned in point 1) above.  Hierarchy tends to trust its clergy against their parishioners.   Many clergy rely on this for helping them deal with parish problems.  Some clergy do foolish and damaging things and then expect the bishop to cover their backs.   But clear PSPs can help the bishops make better pastoral decisions, if they themselves are enforcing the PSPs and ensuring compliance with the rules by their clergy, by diocesan staff, and by themselves.

Next:  In the Church, Not of the Church?

Truth and Reality

“Truth is never harmed by reality. Truth is derived from meaning, not from a collection of facts.” (Tycho Brahe in The Evidence of Things Not Seen by Lazar Puhalo, pg.39)

Christianity and/or Constantinianism

This is the 14^th and final blog in this series which began with Two Versions of Constantine the Great.   We are considering the books by Paul Stephenson  (CONSTANTINE: ROMAN EMPEROR, CHRISTIAN VICTOR ) and Peter Leithart (DEFENDING CONSTANTINE) in evaluating Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire.   The previous blog is Constantinople, Constantine’s Legacy.  Did Constantine and the Empire become Christian, or did Christianity become tamed and imperialized by Constantinianism?

Minerva: Goddess of Learning

A number of Christians in the initial centuries of Christian existence wrestled with whether Christianity had any relationship to Athens (pagan philosophy) or Rome (worldly power).  What many of them could not even imagine is what would it mean for Christianity if the emperor himself became a Christian.   So Constantine’s embrace of Christianity caught many Christian leaders – who were far more used to thinking of Rome as that beast which persecuted them –  by surprise.   No one apparently had made provision for this, they obviously did not think it inevitable since they were proclaiming a Kingdom not of this world, and Rome was the worldly power most oppressing them.

There was no precedence for the Christians to shape what it means for the emperor to tolerate let alone embrace Christianity.  What unfolded was the unplanned for and rocky marriage between the Church and the emperor/empire.  Neither side knew exactly how to work it out, and yet the event was upon them.  Some aspects of this marriage worked, and some experiments failed, and what emerged in Constantine’s lifetime was a marriage in progress, not a finished product.

We see evidence of Constantine fully embracing some of the teachings and concerns of Christianity.

Constantine “saw it as his duty as emperor, in Lactantius’s words, ‘to protect and defend orphans and widows who are destitute and stand in need of assistance.’” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p   217)

There was a new attitude even toward things at the heart of what it meant to be Roman – military might and triumphing in the mortal combat of gladiatorial games or in war.   In the early Second Century  St. Justin the Martyr  (who professed that truth was truth, even pagan truth is truth) wrote that as a result of accepting the Gospel,  “we who formerly used to murder one another do not only now refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willing die confessing Christ”  (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p  256).   In Constantine’s day we find similar sentiments expressed in the poets of the empire.   Prudentius (d. 413AD) wrote a poem:

Liberty & Peace

“Whoever would worship God

Properly with the whole burnt offerings, let him above all offer peace.

No sacrifice is sweeter to Christ; this gift alone please him with a pure Aroma when he turns his face toward the holy altar.”  (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p   251)

No longer was animal sacrifice, let alone human sacrifice in the gladiatorial games valued more than peace.   Peace became the official offering and sacrifice to God.  (Which many believe is reflected in the now awkward and uncertain phrase in the Orthodox Liturgy:  “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.”)

Constantine’s original tolerance of Christianity came in the form of a general tolerance for all religion in the empire.  But as Constantine became more committed to the values and teachings of Christianity, he also became confronted by the diversity and divisions (schismatics and heretics)  within Christianity.  Prior to Constantine, these divisions were dealt with by excommunications, after Constantine the competing factions asked the empire to intervene in their disputes.   This too was an unexpected and unplanned for affect on how Christians dealt with each other.  Constantine believed it his duty to ensure peace and tranquility in the empire and so naturally assumed he had this god-given role in the church as well.  He tried to use church methods to solve these problems – appealed to the bishops to rule on the disputes, and called forchurch councils to permanently settle the problems.  Constantine also had no precedent to learn from about how to be the Emperor and also be a member of the Church.   So his dealings with church problems show some inconsistencies, fits and starts and changing direction, failure to resolve conflicts, and mistakes.   The record doesn’t show him taking over the church, but being actively engaged in the religion whose God he believed had brought him to power.   He asked for church leaders to solve problems, and then offered to solve problems with the authority only he as emperor had.   It is also obvious in his thinking, that Christian belief had influenced him and he did desire to continue to receive the favor of the God who had brought him to power.

“Once the empire was a creedal empire, heresy could not be seen as a tolerable difference of opinion; it was subversive, an attack on the vitals of the imperial body, and had to be expelled.  Inevitably, then, the empire founded on a monotheistic creed fractured and eventually yielded to a commonwealth of Christian peoples, the Byzantine ‘empire.’

It was not long after Constantine, as Alasdair MacIntyre points out, that people of goodwill decided that maintaining justice, peace and civilized life did not require the maintenance of the Roman empire.  Some left for monasteries, while others continued in the empire but not of it.  Whatever Constantinian moment there had been was over, ironically assisted by Constantine himself, who not only failed to prevent the empire’s inevitable collapse but probably helped to hasten it.”  (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p  293)

Leitharts’ conclusion is that the very merging of the state with the church in the Roman Empire did bring about great changes in ecclesiology and authority.  Simultaneously however, the issues that were of greatest concern to the church became the problems of the state, and this in Leithart’s opinion weakened the empire’s might and power, and eventually fractured the empire itself.  Constantine’s effort to embrace the church directly contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.  This in Leithart’s final evaluation is the real legacy of Constantinianism.

The Greek Christians tried to live up to the ideals of the Christian empire that Constantine envisioned and embraced, but found Christianity fragmented by those who rejected centralized imperial power running the Church:  monastics, Monophysites, Nestorians, Latins and a host of others (all the non-Greeks of the empire).    Constantinianism thus failed to take over the church.  Eventually the Roman then Byzantine empire disappeared into the dustbin of history, while the Church continued to carry out its mission to go into all the world, even when and where Constantinianism did not and could not exist.

Constantine, the Church and War (1)

This is the 9^th blog in this series which began with Two Versions of Constantine the Great.   The previous blog is Constantine, Heretics and Schismatics (2).   This blog series is considering Constantine the Great as presented in two books:  Paul Stephenson’s  CONSTANTINE: ROMAN EMPEROR, CHRISTIAN VICTOR  and Peter Leithart’s DEFENDING CONSTANTINE.

Both Leithart and Stephenson agree that while there is a tendency in early Christianity to see military service and warfare as being inconsistent with Christ’s Gospel commandments.  However, when the reasoning behind this “pacifism” is stated it often is not so much opposition to violence and warfare as it is a rejection of the pagan ritualism that was mandatory throughout the Roman military establishment.

 “In several versions of the Apostolic Tradition (written ca 215AD), those who held public office, administered justice or were officers in the army were – like gladiators and prostitutes – expressly forbidden from receiving baptism, since their professions involved them in activities that were impermissible for Christians.” (Stephenson, CONSTANTINE: ROMAN EMPEROR, CHRISTIAN VICTOR, p  280)

Of course because our modern perspective accepts many centuries  of Christians being involved in governments and warfare, it is a little bit difficult for us to completely understand the early church’s attitude toward government let alone toward warfare.  We can look at some of the attitudes towards war and the military that we find expressed in the Post-Apostolic period.

“Indeed, Tertullian’s (d. ca 220AD) disapproval of Christian participation in military matters is not principally provoked by the potential for violence occasioned by army life.  Rather, his particular distaste is for the requirement for all soldiers in the Roman army to participate fully and regularly without fail or resistance, in state religio … Tertullian condemns Christian soldiers who do not display the courage of their convictions, but instead wear the symbols of idolaters…”   (Stephenson, CONSTANTINE: ROMAN EMPEROR, CHRISTIAN VICTOR, p 56 )

Leithart agrees with Stephenson’s assessment of Tertullian:  Tertullian expresses little about the violence involved in being in the army but is very concerned that Christians not participate in pagan sacrifice and ritual.

“His main argument against Christians in military service—not, to be sure, his only one—was that they would be required to participate in pagan rites.  He argued that the military oath, the sacramentum, was incompatible with the Christian’s commitment to Jesus …  His later treatise De corona militis… its focus was overwhelmingly on the idolatry involved in wearing the military crown, rather than on the issue of bloodshed.”  (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p  270)

Of course it is possible that the thought of Christians being involved in bloodshed seemed so appalling and remote that Tertullian didn’t even entertain that thought.   He focused on what was much more obvious to him – Roman military personnel engaged in mandatory pagan rituals.  Their service was not only to the empire but also involved loyalty to the gods their officers and emperors served.  So Tertullian may never even get as far as commenting on Christians actually participating in military killings, as for him just putting on the military uniform is a form of denying Christ.

Origen had a slightly more sophisticated appeal regarding Christian military service:  just as pagan priests were exempted from military service so that they could seek the favor of their gods on behalf of the empire, so too Christians, who all shared in the priesthood of all believers,  should be exempt from military service since all of them wrestle in prayer with the righteousness of the empire; apart from that righteousness, the empire would not be worth serving militarily.

40 Martyrs of Sebaste

“Origen’s (d. ca. 254AD) arguments, however, were often linked with conceptions of pollution.  He appealed to the pagan practice of exempting priests from military service, arguing that Christians are priests and thus fight in prayer and worship rather than with the sword.  ‘Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them, he asks Celsus, ‘keep their hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army?’  Given this, ‘how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these too should engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure.’  Christians wrestle ‘in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously is destroyed!’   But more important, ‘we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace.’  Thus, Christians ‘are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. . . .  None fight better for the king than we do.  We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army—an army of piety—by offering our prayers to God.”  (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, pp 268-269)

Thus Origen argues that Christians as priests are always engaged in a spiritual warfare on behalf of the empire – struggling to defeat those demons and gods who wish evil on the empire.

[As an interesting aside, Origen’s emphasis on Christians praying for those fighting for a righteous cause and for the righteous king very much echoes what a them found in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.  According to Richard Hays in ECHOES OF SCRIPTURE IN THE LETTERS OF PAUL, Paul uses the Old Testament not as a repository of wisdom but as a witness to the one truth, namely God’s righteousness which now includes Gentiles as the people of God.  Origen was very attuned to this same theme of God’s righteousness which the Christians have received and must use to support righteousness in the empire.  The Christians aren’t to kill others to enact this righteousness, but are to witness to it even to the point of their own deaths.]

Next:  Constantine, the Church and War (2)

Culture War vs. Spiritual Warfare

“And Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am Joseph! Can my father be still alive?  They were so dumbfounded at finding themselves face to face with Joseph that they could not answer.”   (Genesis 45:3  REB)

Patriarch Joseph

Thus came to an end one of the great deceptions of the Bible with the deceivers dumbfounded by their own deception:  they had no doubt come to believe their own lie about what had happened to Joseph and the lie regarding their own role in plotting his demise.  Ten brothers conspired together to lie to their father about Joseph’s death, and through the many years accepted their own version of the lie as truth (after all, by this time, Joseph surely must be dead).   What could they do? Once the lie had been told,  there was nothing left but to live by it.

But in Genesis 45, the lie and cover up were exposed and now the conspiring brotherhood has to go back to their father, who is at this point an old man who bore the grief of losing a son all his life, and tell him the good news  – you’ve been made to grieve for nothing all your life, your son is alive!  Which of course simultaneously exposes not only their lie but their evil deed as well.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.”  (Sir Walter Scott)

Such I think is also the dilemma the Church faces in dealing with issues of clergy sexual abuse and misconduct.  The Church not openly addressing these issues used to be justified on the basis that such truth would so scandalize the faithful and harm innocent souls that it was better to cover over and cover up such sins and deal with them internally and secretly.  All done for the supposed good of the faithful who would lose their faith and trust… in God or only in the leadership?    Would that it were the case that the institution was so worried about protecting its membership.  But in failing to deal frankly with the problem, the membership is not protected at all from the problem, but only is prevented from understanding the risk.  This ends up protecting the institution and its leaders, not the flock.   Secrets and darkness are the friends of the devil.

Once the leadership of the church is trafficking in secrets, there is a horrible price to be paid by and in the Church.  There should be no secrets about sin in the Church, for the Church exists to triumph over sin and death, not to hide its secrets: “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23 – the “all” presumably includes the clergy).   Three Scripture verses for the Church to consider in dealing with clergy sexual misconduct:

Jesus said: “For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.”  (Mark 4:22)

“Meanwhile, when the crowd gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.’”   (Luke 12:1-3)

“For it is a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.” (Ephesians 5:12-13)

Now we live in a very litigious society and people sue and threaten to sue even the Church constantly over every issue.  There is in the case of clergy sexual misconduct many factors for the Church to take into consideration in deciding how to publicly deal with such misconduct.  There are victims and their rights and needs to consider.  There may be other innocent victims – spouses and children not only of the victims but of the clergy who engage in misconduct.  There are parish communities to consider,  the law, confidentiality, human rights and innocence until guilt is proven.  Lawyers and church legal committees favor a very high degree of secrecy to avoid lawsuits.

But what the Church has to do is taking into consideration all of those factors – courts, laws, victims, victim rights, the rights of the accused, innocent victims and witnesses and confidentiality – and come up with a plan for how to deal publicly and transparently with the sins and failures of the clergy.  We should never be like the brothers of Joseph conspiring together to cover up the sins of some or one of the brothers.  That is not Christian ethics.

Today in the OCA some seem to think that current controversies are only about a culture war in which one man wants to speak boldly and others want to silence him.  A real battle  has to deal with the temptation of secrets and of covering over problems within the institutional church.  There is a need for consistent church discipline, rather than a PR campaign which mixes up what people want to be true with the truth of how things are done.  It is not a cultural war but a spiritual warfare.

(See also my blogs  Sexual Abuse in the Church,  The Meek: The Avenger of the Abused,   Christian Sexual Abuse: Apostasy of the Worst Kind,  Celibacy and Sobriety,  Allegations and Accusations,  and   Sexual Misconduct in the Church: Where Truth, Justice and Wisdom Meet)

Ancestral Sin and the Loss of Communion with God

This is the 21^st blog in this series which began with Adam & Sin, Paradise and Fasting.  The previous blog is The Effects of the Ancestral Sin.

Contemplating Justice

A trend in traditional Western Christianity interprets the Fall in a mostly juridical sense of humans breaking God’s Law.  God’s response to humans disobeying His commandments in this view follows an emphasis on keeping justice in the universe, as if the Triune God of love, like the gods of Buddhism, of necessity must adhere to the justice of Karma in the universe.   Some Eastern Christian theologians however saw sin not as the cause of the human problem, but rather as a result of it: humans in their thinking because of their free will had first separated themselves from God and then proceeded to sin.  Thus the first cause was a human choice of will – to set aside the human relationship with God, and also the role/relationship God had created for the humans in the world, and to act autonomously, separated and alienated from the source of life and from life itself.

“The Fall was precisely the perversion of the interior relationship established by God.   …  The serpent insinuated: ‘God said, ‘You must not eat from all the trees of the garden’ (Genesis 3:1).  Now God had actually said exactly the opposite: ‘You can eat from all the trees of the garden’ (Gen 2:16), but with different consequences.  If St. Paul says: ‘Everything is permitted but not everything is useful (1 Cor 6:12), the serpent would say “Everything is forbidden but everything is useful.’ God thus is transformed into a law, into a prohibition.  But God did not say, ‘Do not eat of the fruit, otherwise you will be punished.’  Rather, he said, ‘Do not eat of the fruit, otherwise you will die.’  This is not an order but the announcement of a destiny freely chosen in one meaning or in another.  It has nothing at all to do with simple disobedience but with inattention to living communion with the Father, with the drying up of the thirst for his presence, for his love and truth which is life, in the absence of which there is only death.  At the moment of temptation we see God as an authority dictating order and demanding blind obedience.  Such a suggestion comes from Satan.”  (Paul Evdokimov, IN THE WORLD, OF THE CHURCH, pp 227-228)

Humans were created as relational beings – first having a relationship with God, then with each other, and together in relationship to the rest of the created order.  The loss of the primary relationship with God – the relationship with the source of life – resulted in death becoming part of the human condition.  Humans chose to separate themselves from the Giver of Life becoming mortal beings.  Thus the ancestral sin is one of broken Communion not merely breaking the law.

“This is the famous story of the forbidden fruit, which man ate secretly apart from God, in order to become like God.  The meaning of this account is simple: man believed that from food alone, that by pure reliance on its consumption, he could receive that which is actually possible to receive only from God.  By way of food he sought liberation from God, which only led him to slavery and dependence on food; man became a slave of the world.  But this also means a slave of death, for the food which gives him his physical life cannot give him that freedom from the world and death, which can only come from God.  Food, the symbol and source of life, became the symbol of death.  For if a man does not eat he dies.  But if he eats he still dies, for food itself is a communion with that which has died and therefore with death.  And so, finally, salvation, and recreation and forgiveness, and resurrection itself are linked also in the Gospel with food.” (Alexander Schmemann, OUR FATHER, pp 58-59)

God in dealing with Fallen human beings deals not just with beings who violate rules (a justice issue), but beings who have broken relationships and have thus become something less than full human beings (an issue of love).  We have become dehumanized and inhuman.  Christ comes into the world to make us fully human again.  He descends into Hades to rescue us from the power of death and to destroy Satan who has the power of death.  Salvation is thus not fully understood when it is interpreted only in juridical terms because this thinking fails to fully appreciate what it means to be human.  Salvation is about the restoring of relationships – of reconciling God to humanity, and of restoring the relationship of the dead to their loved ones.  Resurrection is thus the needed tool of salvation to fully restore all of those relationships which have been broken by sin and by its wages, death.

Next:   Adam, Being Human and Biblical Scholarship (A)

Genetic Engineering (I)

(Originally written in 2003)

Dachau Crematorium: Genocide is Genetic Engineering

Though much attention gets focused on the work of genetic scientists and their potential impact on the human gene pool, in fact modern geneticists are not the inventors of “genetic engineering.” Ever since humans began making choices regarding mates and mating, the value of various human lives, and warfare, policy makers have been engaged in a process of genetic engineering not based in modern science but in ideologies, nationalism, and economic self interest. The question is not only should policy makers oversee genetic science and technologies, but how can all humans use the knowledge of the genetic sciences to understand, be aware of and influence the decisions of humanity’s leadership. Humans as a species have conscious self awareness, only now are we becoming consciously aware of the power of this knowledge.

Becoming Aware of the Impact of Human Consciousness

Scientists involved in various forms of genetic research and technology have become the focus of attention in the debates regarding their potential effect on the human gene pool. The reality of life however is that current geneticists are not the originators of efforts to manipulate the human gene pool. These scientists have merely helped focus our attention on the effects of human conscious choice on the gene pool. Policy makers worried that such genetic scientists need to controlled have in fact dangerously narrowed the perspective required to understand the issues involved. It is not science alone that has, is, or can change genetics, nature and humanity. Politicians, ideologues, industrialists, doctors, and military leaders have been shaping these same issues for all of human history. Geneticists by helping us understand how genetics work and by mapping the human genome have helped reveal how the genome is also a written history of the effects humans have made through time.

Humans emerged as beings with conscious self awareness. Individuals and decision makers throughout history used this consciousness to make a wide variety of policy choices. These decisions have impacted and been recorded in the human gene pool. That is the story of humanity. Intentionally influencing genetics is not the invention of science. What is new to us recently is our becoming aware of the meaning, implications and the power of this consciousness. This is what genetic science is helping us to understand. The mapping of the genome helps reveal to us how human choices enter into our hereditary nature and are recorded within each person’s genome. The policies we adopt and employ thus do have an impact on all of human history.

Humanity now becomes cognizant of how human policy decisions in so many realms of life effect humankind and our human hereditary future. The mapping of the human genome is making it possible for us to trace the history of human choices as recorded in our genes. What needs to become clear to policy makers is that these issues are not merely scientific. To understand what is at stake for the human species requires a much broader perspective than focusing on the scientific community. Human activity in the realms of politics, government, the social sciences, ideologies, economics, are all shaping human genetics, natural selection and thus nature itself.

For example issues of genetic control of the human race, predate the modern world. For at the very moment that humans began making conscious choices based in self awareness (rather than purely instinctual behavior), humans began affecting and changing the genetic makeup of humankind. This certainly predates any awareness of what was being accomplished. Humans began choosing mates for particular reasons (strength, looks, wisdom, family blood lines), rather than instinctively copulating. Tribes, villages, or nations adopted rules about who could marry whom, again forming the basis of “genetic engineering.” The same is true when tribes and hordes and nations went to war. Modern genocide is in fact a form of genetic engineering not being engaged by scientists (though as in Nazi death camps science intentionally aided the process), but in fact an engineering condoned by politicians, ideologues, armies.

As another example of how the human gene pool is altered by human decisions we can consider medical science with its many advancements in prolonging human life, in helping diseased and genetically mal-adapted people to live not only productive lives, but reproductive ones. The human desire to relieve suffering from poverty, famine, disease, and to lengthen life has in fact been another form of “genetic engineering” undoing natural selection’s tendency toward the survival of the fittest, perpetuating gene problems into future generations.

In addition, reproductive technologies of all kinds in as much as they help infertile couples have children, or help children (including premature) come to term, are in fact changing the gene pool. No longer is human reproduction guided merely by the creative chance of natural selection, for now humans are introducing into nature a conscious creative element for procreation. This can keep in the gene pool genetic forms of infertility as well as perpetuating previously inviable genes or gene combinations. We have thus by human intelligent design already altered the human gene pool and contributed an intelligent, conscious and intentional factor into human evolution and genetic makeup. Chance alone is not the sole factor now shaping human evolution.

Next:  Genetic Engineering (II)

(see also my blog series DNA: The Secret of Life)