Making the Sign of the Cross in the 12th Century

Many Orthodox are curious to know when and how our making the sign of the cross appeared and why we do it differently than Roman Catholics.  While I know that references to making the sign of the cross appear in the early centuries of Christianity, I’m not aware of the earliest sources telling us exactly how the cross was to be made.  Tertullian who dies in 225AD describes Christians tracing the sign of the cross on their foreheads but gives no further details.  St Cyril of Jerusalem in the 4th Century describes making the cross over the brow of one’s head as well as over food and drink but again without giving specific directions as to the how.  St Ephrem the Syrian in the 4th Century proscribes making the sign of the cross as our first task before any endeavor but doesn’t tell us exactly how to do it.   None of these early references to the practice describe the mechanics of what exactly the person is doing to make the sign of the cross so we can’t know exactly what they were doing.  When I first came to Dayton as the priest, the local newspaper at that time had a religion column and the editor of that column heard I was going to be doing a house blessing in January.   She came out with camera in hand and told me she was trying to imagine what it meant to do a house blessing.  She envisioned me standing outside the home in winter with hands raised praying over a house – or she hoped more dramatically climbing up on the roof to to bless the house with hands upraised.  She was disappointed to see it consisting of sprinkling holy water in a house.  Without knowing the mechanics we can only imagine what they were doing in making the sign of the cross in the early centuries of Christianity, but we know it was a commonly accepted practice.

St. Peter Damaskos  actually describes making the sign of the cross as he knew the practice in the 12th Century.  He writes:

“Then we should also marvel how demons and various diseases are dispelled by the sign of the precious and life- giving Cross, which all can make without cost or effort. Who can number the panegyrics composed in its honor? The holy fathers have handed down to us the inner significance of this sign, so that we can refute heretics and unbelievers. The two fingers and single hand with which it is made represent the Lord Jesus Christ crucified, and He is thereby acknowledged to exist in two-natures and one hypostasis or person. The use of the right hand betokens His infinite power and the fact that He sits at the right hand of the Father. That the sign begins with a downward movement from above signifies His descent to us from heaven. Again, the movement of the hand from the right side to the left drives away our enemies and declares that by His invincible power the Lord overcame the devil, who is on the left side, dark and lacking strength.    ( THE PHILOKALIA, Kindle Loc. 30200-30214)

While one can certainly recognize the movement of the right hand, starting at the top and moving down and then from right to left is how we Orthodox currently sign ourselves with the cross (though he does not reference touching any body parts).  So we know that at least from the 12th Century we were doing it this way.  What might be surprising to some is that for St. Peter the sign of the cross is made with two fingers not three.  Using two fingers is the older known form of making the sign of the cross.  He has a symbolic explanation for the two fingers (two natures of Christ) versus the three finger symbolism of the Trinity.  The adherents of the three fingers might be disappointed to discover that their method is not the more ancient one nor the one used by earlier generations of Orthodox.  I do not know the history of when or why Orthodox changed from two to three fingers, but it was part of the Old Believers dispute with the Russian Orthodox Church beginning in the 17th Century when Patriarch Nikon and the Russian Church insisted on changing to the practice of using 3 fingers in making the sign of the cross.  [I did hear at one point that they mistakenly thought they were reverting to the more ancient practice by going to three fingers instead of two.]

Of course, some saints pointed out that it is not the mechanics that matter – whether one uses one, two, or three fingers, spiritual power is in the cross itself not in how we make it.  Other believers dispute this and think the mechanics are essential and not making the perfect cross is itself satanic.

Personally, I think it is the cross which makes demons shutter – doesn’t matter how large it is or how it is made.  There is also the fact that very early on the Christians didn’t think of themselves as signing with the cross but with the last letter of the Jewish alphabet the tau or X  which in Judaism represented the Name of God.  This conveniently was similar  to the X the first Greek letter in ‘Christ’ – Χριστός (see Jean Danielou, THE THEOLOGY OF JEWISH CHRISTIANITY, pp 154, 330).  As Danielou points out probably at baptism the earliest Christians saw themselves as being anointed in the Name of the Lord, not with the Cross of Christ but with His Name – the X not the + .   So both how Christians made the sign and what exactly they saw themselves doing (+ or X) has changed through the centuries.  This makes me think the mechanics are not as significant as what we are invoking – God’s Name, Christ or the Cross – in our spiritual struggle against evil.

That conformity in practice helps with community identity and with the unity of community is true which may also point to the mechanics of making the sign of the cross as being practical not theological.

Saintly Feminism & Martyrdom

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  (Genesis 1:27-28)

“… there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:28 )

The Martyr Julitta at Cesarea (ca 304AD) is remembered on July 31.

Julitta was a wealthy woman and because of the on going persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, secretly a Christian.  Her life and martyrdom were written by St Basil the Great who offered this account of her martyrdom:

A wealthy man trying to take advantage of the fact that she was a woman wrongfully seized a good deal of her property.  When Julitta took  him to court to regain rightful possession of her property, the man exposed to the court that Julitta was a Christian.  The judge told her if she wanted to regain her property she would have to deny Christ and offer incense to an idol.  Julitta refused and was sentenced to be burned to death.  According to St Basil the Great, the Martry offered her final words to some other women standing nearby: “We are made of the same stuff as men.  We are made in the likeness of God just as they are.  The woman is made by the Creator to be just as capable of virtue as men.  How is this so?  Are we not related in every way?  For not only was the woman made by taking flesh from the man, but also bone from his bone.  Do we not then have the same obligation to the Lord as men, to be as constant in courage and patience?”

St Basil concludes with this exhortation:  “I say to you men: Do not fall short of the example of this woman in your piety!  And women: Do not prove yourselves weaker than her example, but hold fast to your piety without excuses, through hearing her story.  Do not permit a soft nature to hinder anyone from doing good.”

(St Basil the Great, ON FASTING AND FEASTS, pp 110-111)

Finishing the Race

 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning; and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.  (Ecclesiastes 7:8)

But he who endures to the end will be saved.   (Matthew 24:13)

“Jerome said:

‘Christians will not be asked how they began but rather how they finished. St. Paul began badly but finished well. Judas’s beginning was praiseworthy but his end was despicable.”

‘Many start the climb but few reach the summit.’

Gregory said:

‘The value of good work depends on perseverance.

‘You live a good life in vain if you do not continue it until you die.’

Isadore said:
‘Our behavior is only acceptable to God if we have the strength of purpose to complete any work we have undertaken.

‘Virtue is not a matter of starting well but of carrying on to the very end.

‘The reward is not promised to the one who begins, but rather to the one who perseveres.’”

(Defensor Grammaticus, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, p. 171)

The Ascension of Humanity to Divinity

The Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ completes  cycle of salvation in which God became  human in the incarnation of the Word (John 1: ) and then the incarnate Word ascended bodily into heaven.  Thus all that divided humanity from divinity came to an end (see my post The Ascension: No Barrier to Heaven Ever Again).  God who always wished to dwell with and in us humans, whom God created in His own image and likeness, dwells with us in the incarnation and brings us to dwell with God in the ascension.  Salvation is thus by definition the elimination of all barriers to God’s unity with us and the establishment of this eternal communion between humanity and divinity. This definition of salvation was expressed in various ways from the earliest days of Christianity.  Norman Russell in his book, FELLOW WORKERS WITH GOD: ORTHODOX THINKING ON THEOSIS (pp 38-39) offers a collection of quotes from early church fathers which repeat this truth.

The Son of God ‘became what we are in order to make us what he is himself’ (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5, pref.).

‘The Word of God became man so that you too may learn from a man how it is even possible for a man to become a god’ (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 1.8.4).

‘He became human that we might become divine’ (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54).

‘He gave us divinity, we gave him humanity’ (Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 5.7).

‘Let us become as Christ is, since Christ became as we are; let us become gods for his sake, since he became man for our sake’ (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 1.5)

The Word became incarnate ‘so that by becoming as we are, he might make us as he is’ (Gregory of Nyssa, Refutations 11).

‘The Son of God became the Son of Man that he might make the sons of men sons of God’ (Augustine, Mainz sermons 13.1).

‘He became like us, a human being, that we might become like him, I mean gods and sons.  On the one hand he accepts what belongs to us, taking it to himself as his own, and on the other he gives us in exchange what belongs to him’ (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 12:1)

‘God and man are paradigms of one another, that as much as God is humanized to man through love for mankind, so much has man been able to deify himself to God through love’ (Maximus the Confessor, Amgibua, 10).

Asceticism: For the Love of God

“’Fasts and vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and everything worldly are not in themselves perfection, as we have said; they are its tools. For perfection is not to be found in them; it is acquired through them. It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God.’”   (St John Cassian, The Philokalia, Kindle Loc. 2490-94)

Renouncing the Passions

The patristic tradition, as well as contemporary psychology, has identified the restraints to perfect love. From an Orthodox perspective, if love is union with God, and the pursuit of love is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit then those things that separate us from God – sin, the passions, death, and the devil all represent restraints to perfect love.

Our own self centered, egocentric orientation, our fallen nature represent the biggest restraints to love. “When we speak of all the passions together, we call them ‘the world.’ So when Christians speak of renouncing the world, they mean renouncing the passions.”

(Philip Mamalakis, “The Spiritual Life and How to be Married in it,” Raising Lazarus, p. 223)

New Year Blessings

The Year of our Lord, 2019. 

May God bless you throughout the New Year!

From the 4th Century comes this prayer of blessing:

Now, God who alone is unbegotten, and the Maker of the whole world, unite you all through His peace, in the Holy Spirit; perfect you unto every good work, immoveable, unblameable, and unreprovable; and vouchsafe to you eternal life with us, through the mediation of His beloved Son Jesus Christ our God and Saviour; with whom glory be to You, the God over all, and the Father, in the Holy Spirit the Comforter, now and always, and for ever and ever.  Amen.    (The Apostolic Constitutions, Kindle Loc. 4903-6)

The Christian biblical commentator Origen, writing in the early 3rd Century, offered some explanation about what “blessing” means.

“’Bless and do not curse‘ (Romans 12:14).

The word “blessing” is used in different ways in the Scriptures.  God is said to bless humans or the other created things, while humans and other creatures are commanded to bless God. God’s blessing always bestows some gift on those whom God blesses. When humans are said to bless God, it means to give God praise and thanksgiving. When the Apostle says here, bless and do not curse, he is warning that when we are provoked by enemies or upset by insults, we should not return curses for curses but do what he writes about himself, when reviled, we bless (1 Cor 4:12).”  (Romans: Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators, Kindle Location 6068-71)

May the blessing of the Lord be with you always.  Remember the wisdom: “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.“

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ

On the Sunday Before the Nativity, we read Matthew’s Gospel of the Genealogy of Christ – Matthew 1:1-25.  Jacob of Serugh (d. 519AD) composed a poem giving us an interesting insight into the genealogy and incarnation of Christ our God.

Jacob accepts the teaching of many Church Fathers that Jesus is the person in whose image Adam was originally made.  Thus Adam in his own person becomes a revelation of the Word of God.  In Adam we already see the Christ.  Adam is made as the icon of the pre-Incarnate Christ.  Adam in his person prophetically reveals Christ, and Christ shows us in the incarnation Adam the first formed human.  In every succeeding generation from Adam, the icon of God was preserved in this lineage.  The genealogy of Matthew’s Gospel is helping us to trace the lineage of God’s image found in humanity.

“You were hidden in Your Father, and He revealed You in Adam

when He created him:

He depicted in him the likeness of Your bodily existence and

Your revelation

The depiction of the King traveled down all generations,

transmitted mysteriously over the lineages,

so that God Himself might be mingled amongst humanity.

He gave His image from the very beginning of Creation so that

human being might be made in it,

for He was preparing to send His Son, the Only-Begotten;

and in the same fashion He came into the open, in bodily form:

for in the likeness of the Only-Begotten of the Godhead

He depicted Adam when He fashioned him, in a great mystery.

Christ our God creating Adam

He (then) came back and took the likeness of His servant from

within the womb,

and became like him while He was delivering him from the

Rebel.

He came to His nativity, He took up His likeness, He delivered

His image.

He commenced and He completed in accordance with

His will in great love.

The upright throughout the generations held His likeness in

honour,

and for this reason the remembrance of them became

resplendent.

The fair Seth, who resembles his father, delineated

Him,

so that the world might see that the Son of God resembled him.

[According to Genesis 5:3, as God created Adam in God’s image, so Seth was in Adam’s image:  “When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”  Thus the image of God was continued in the human race.   Jesus thus could be seen in both Adam and Seth and they in Him.]

Noah the just in that Ark which performed mysteries

depicted an image for Him, in that he was rescued from the

Flood.

To Abraham the Father spoke in

revelation,

saying that all the people would be blessed in his elect seed.

And because of this the Son of God was expected,

for the world had become aware that He would come in a

mysterious way. “

(Treasure-house of Mysteries: Explorations of the Sacred Text Through Poetry in the Syriac Tradition, pp 88-89)

 

The Living Word, Not Literalism

Previous post in the series:  Reading the Word of God, Becoming Scripture.  First post in the series: Jesus Christ, The Word of God and Scriptures.

In Orthodox Tradition, one way we enter into a relationship with the living Word of God is through the Scriptures.   Jesus Christ who is the Word of God is found hidden and then revealed in these written texts.  The Word of God, Jesus Christ, then lives in us and the Word becomes written on our hearts.  Because of the living nature of the Word, the Tradition of the Church has various warnings against an overly literalist reading of the Scriptures.  In this post we will look at a few comments that we find in our Tradition which address the issue of biblical literalism.

The Jewish biblical scholar, Geza Vermes, notes:

“Neither in the inter-Testamental period, nor in earlier biblical times, was the recording of history as we understand it a strong point among the Jews. Chroniclers are concerned not with factual information about bygone events, but with their religious significance. In Scripture, the ‘secular’ past is viewed and interpreted by the prophets as revealing God’s pleasure or displeasure. Victory or defeat in war, peace or social unrest, abundance of harvest or famine, serve to demonstrate the virtue or sinfulness of the nation and to forecast its future destiny.“  (The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Kindle Loc. 1344-48)

The fact that Christians did not read the Scriptures first and foremost for historical/factual information is a hermeneutic already found in Judaism.  Scripture is less concerned about bygone events than it is about where God is to be found today and where God is leading us.  Limiting Scripture to its most basic, literal meaning, meant for the Church Fathers not comprehending the God who is outside of human history and not bound by it.  So Tertullian says in the late Second Century:

First of all, in Genesis, it says: “Adam and Eve heard the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. And Adam and his wife hid from the face of the Lord God in the midst of the trees in the garden” (Gen 3.8). To those who are unwilling to enter the treasury of the passage, who will not even knock at its door, will I put this question: can they demonstrate that the Lord God, who fills the heaven and the earth, who uses heaven as a throne (in a material sense, they must presume) and the earth as a footstool for his feet (Is 66.1), is contained by a place which, by comparison with the heaven and the earth, is so narrow, and yet that this garden (which they must suppose to be corporeal) is not filled with God but is so much greater in its size than he that it can contain him walking in it, so that the sound of his footfalls is audible?

It is yet more absurd that, on this interpretation, Adam and Eve should, out of fear of God through their transgression, hide themselves “from the face of God in the midst of the trees in the garden.” For it does not say that they simply wished to hide, but that they actually hid. How then is it, according to their view, that God speaks to Adam and asks: “Where are you?”  (On The Lord’s Prayer, Kindle Loc. 3286-96)

Tertullian says even logic tells us we cannot read the Scriptures completely literally, the anthropomorphic images of God simply are inconsistent with what we know about God.  We have to adjust our thinking and imagination in order to make sense of these passages.  The text doesn’t make literal sense, but we can make sense of the text and accept its truthfulness when we adopt the proper interpretative framework.

St. John of Damascus considering the many passages in the Bible which ascribe to God physical body parts (the hand of God or God’s eyes) writes:

Since we find many terms used symbolically in the Scriptures concerning God which are more applicable to that which has body, we should recognize that it is quite impossible for us men clothed about with this dense covering of flesh to understand or speak of the divine and lofty and immaterial energies of the Godhead, except by the use of images and types and symbols derived from our own life. So then all the statements concerning God, that imply body, are symbols, but have a higher meaning: for the Deity is simple and formless.

Hence by God’s eyes and eyelids and sight we are to understand His power of overseeing all things and His knowledge, that nothing can escape: for in the case of us this sense makes our knowledge more complete and more full of certainty. By God’s ears and hearing is meant His readiness to be propitiated and to receive our petitions: for it is this sense that renders us also kind to suppliants, inclining our ear to them more graciously. God’s mouth and speech are His means of indicating His will; for it is by the mouth and speech that we make clear the thoughts that are in the heart: God’s food and drink are our concurrence to His will, for we, too, satisfy the necessities of our natural appetite through the sense of taste. And God’s sense of smell is His appreciation of our thoughts of and good will towards Him, for it is through this sense that we appreciate sweet fragrance. . .  His anger and fury are His hatred of and aversion to all wickedness, for we, too, hate that which is contrary to our mind and become enraged thereat. His forgetfulness and sleep and slumbering are His delay in taking vengeance on His enemies and the postponement of the accustomed help to His own. And to put it shortly, all the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is above us by means of something familiar to ourselves, with the exception of any statement concerning the bodily sojourn of the God-Word. For He for our safety took upon Himself the whole nature of man, the thinking spirit, the body, and all the properties of human nature, even the natural and blameless passions.  (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Kindle Loc 464-74, 481-85)

For St. John of Damascus any anthropomorphizing of God – mentioning God’s body parts or human emotions – automatically tells us that text is to be read in some symbolic or mystical fashion.  Those texts are referring exactly to some hidden meaning about God.  The anthropomorphic images are used to help us understand God, but they in no way give us a actual portrayal of God.  To read them literally would be to misunderstand the text completely.  The only exception to this rule for St. John is when reading about Jesus Christ in the Gospel for there God is truly incarnate and that truth is expressed precisely in the Christ’s human body and human behavior.

St Maximos the Confessor in two passages offers us the same teaching.

When a man sticks to the mere letter of Scripture, his nature is governed by the senses alone, in this way proving his soul’s attachment to the flesh. For if the letter is not understood in a spiritual way, its significance is restricted to the level of the senses, which do not allow its full meaning to pass over into the intellect. When the letter is appropriated by his senses alone, he receives it Judaic-wise merely in the literal sense, and so lives according to the flesh, spiritually dying each day the death of sin on account of his forceful senses; for he cannot put his body’s pursuits to death by the Spirit in order to live the life of bliss in the Spirit. ‘For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,’ says St Paul, ‘but if through the Spirit you put to death the body’s pursuits, you will live’ (Rom. 8:13).”   (THE PHILOKALIA, Kindle Loc. 19141-51)

For St. Maximos to read the Scriptures purely literally is to live according to the flesh, not the spirit.  It is the way of death.

“Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery.”    (THE PHILOKALIA, Kindle Loc. 19567-75)

Reading the Scriptures purely literally explains for Maximos exactly why the Jews misunderstood Christ and did not recognize him as Messiah or as God.  The literal reading of Scripture fails to lead a person to Christ or the Kingdom of God.

A person who does not penetrate with his intellect towards the divine and spiritual beauty contained within the letter of the Law develops a propensity for pleasure – that is, an attachment to the world and a love of worldly things; for his knowledge derives merely from the literal expression of the Law.   (St. Maximos, THE PHILOKALIA, Kindle Loc. 19489-91)

It is not only a failure to see the incarnate Word that results from an overly literal reading of Scripture.  Such a literal reading of Scripture has an impact on daily life and behavior.  So we see in the desert fathers this story  of misreading the Scriptures because of being overly literal.

A certain brother went to Abba Poemen on the second Sunday in the Fast of Forty Days and repeated unto him his thoughts, and sighing over what the old man had told him, he said unto him, “I had almost kept myself from coming here today”; and the old man said, ” Why?” Then the brother said, ” I said in my mind, peradventure during the fast the “door will be closed against thee“; and Abba Poemen said unto him, ” We do not learn to shut a door made of wood, but to close the door of the tongue.”  (The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers, Kindle Loc. 80-83)

Next:   Literalism: The Word of God vs. Scriptures

Reading the Word of God, Becoming Scripture

Previous post in series:  Christ in the Old Testament

“When you read Holy Scripture, perceive its hidden meanings. ‘For whatever was written in past times was written for our instruction’ (Rom. 15:4).”    (St. Mark the Ascetic, The Philokalia, Kindle Loc. 2997-98)

St. Mark, writing in the 5^th Century, reflects an attitude common in the ancient Church about reading Scripture.  He calls us to look for its “hidden meanings.”   The obvious, literal meaning is there and is true, there was no question about that.  What was also believed is that because the manuscript really contained a divine meaning, there was more to the text than its most obvious reading.  God is revealing Himself to us through the Scriptures and we need to be aware of this and to look for it.  The “hidden meaning” exactly would not be immediately obvious to us, but if our hearts were pure and prepared we would recognize the revelation hidden in the obvious.  God is the Lord who reveals Himself to us in nature as well as in the Scriptures, but we have to have the heart ready to see in order to become aware of the revelation.  The Patristic writers certainly believed that is how the authors of the New Testament read the Old Testament.  They saw this, for example, in how St. Paul interprets the Jewish scriptures (see 1 Corinthians 9:9-11 or Galatians 4:21-25).   As many of the Fathers understood it, the Transfiguration of Christ (Mark 9 and parallels) is about the apostles being transfigured so that they could see Christ as He always is.  Christ’s divinity remained hidden in His humanity, but in that moment of the transfiguration, their eyes were opened and they saw the revelation of God which had been hidden from them.  The apostle’s eyes were opened, and so can ours be as we read the Bible and move beyond the literal text to the revelation contained in them.

We have to put the effort into fully understanding the Scriptures, which also means understanding how the early Church fathers read the biblical narrative, how they interpreted the text and used them in their own explanations and argumentation.  St. John of Damascus offers this:

“If we read once or twice and do not understand what we read, let us not grow weary, but let us persist, let us talk much, let us enquire. For ask thy Father, he saith, and He will shew thee: thy elders and they will tell thee (Deuteronomy 32:7). For there is not in every man that knowledge. Let us draw of the fountain of the garden perennial and purest waters springing into life eternal. Here let us luxuriate, let us revel insatiate: for the Scriptures possess inexhaustible grace. But if we are able to pluck anything profitable from outside sources, there is nothing to forbid that. Let us become tried money-dealers, heaping up the true and pure gold and discarding the spurious. Let us keep the fairest sayings but let us throw to the dogs absurd gods and strange myths: for we might prevail most mightily against them through themselves.   (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Kindle Loc. 3199-3204)

In the above quote, I first note the use of the Deuteronomy 32:7 passage.  It gives us a sense how the Fathers made use of all Scriptures sometimes very creatively using what otherwise is a text completely understandable in its original context, to further their own arguments.  They saw the Scriptures as speaking to them and not just historical texts whose meaning was limited to its original use.  St. John is putting into practice what he read in Romans 15:4 that the ancient scriptures were written for our instruction.  The Scripture is not so much history but instruction in how we should live today.  That is part of the hidden message we had to discern in the manuscript.

When we meditate wisely and: continually on the law of God, study psalms and canticles, engage-in fasting and vigils, and always bear in mind what is to come – the kingdom of heaven, the Gehenna of fire and all God’s works — our wicked thoughts diminish and find no place.  (St. John Cassian, THE PHILOKALIA, Kindle  Loc. 2530-32)

Cassian reveals another common thought in the Patristic mind – the Scriptures should not be read as ancient texts revealing past history.  They really help prepare us for what is coming – the eschaton, the Kingdom of God and the final judgment.  So to try to milk from the Scriptures ideas about how God created the world, is to read the Bible badly and for the wrong purpose.  Those old texts point to Christ and to the future Kingdom of God.  We should read them accordingly.

We read the Scriptures to come to  know our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate.   When we truly understand the Scriptures, God begins to write on our hearts.  We become His scriptures!

St. Maximos the Confessor proclaims:

“When God comes to dwell in such a heart, He honors it by engraving His own letters on it through the Holy Spirit, just as He did on the Mosaic tablets (cf. Exod. 31:18).”     (Kindle Loc. 15522-24)

As St. Paul has it:

You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  (2 Corinthians 3;2-3)

St. Maximos continues:

“A pure heart is perhaps one which has no natural propulsion towards anything in any manner whatsoever. When in its extreme simplicity such a heart has become like a writing-tablet beautifully smoothed and polished. God comes to dwell in it and writes there His own laws.”   (The Philokalia, Kindle Loc. 15528-30)

The Word of God comes to dwell in us and we become the living Scriptures bearing witness to Christ in us.  The Word becomes written on our hearts, and the printed text of the Bible is superseded by the human fulfilling the role that God always intended for us.  We are created in the image of the Word, created to bear the Word in our hearts.  In the beginning, God did not write Scriptures.  Rather God created us humans to be the living Scriptures.  It was a role in creation which lost through sin.  The written manuscripts became necessary to remind us of what we are to be.

Next:   The Living Word, Not Literalism