#patristics

[antiochianorthodoxcumberlandmd]

[thepatristictradition]

Orthodoxy is Catholic

Orthodox people (converts especially) often hear, see, and read; even think, say, and believe, that to be Orthodox, you must adopt the clothing, practices, and language of some culture that is foreign to your own.

This is not something a priest will ever tell you, Thanks be to God, but it is an overall impression that people can gather online, at coffee hour, or at Bible study. It always happens the coolest guy there is studying koine Greek.

Evangelists online, with only the best of intentions (probably a recent seminary student) will recommend converts brush up on their Greek or Church Slavonic. Female ortho-personalities will recommend women not just veil, but wear a pavlovo posad. Be sure to use the liturgical calendar to plan all events, religious or otherwise! The more niche evangelists (Antiochians) will make you learn classical Arabic and grow a beard.

All of these things are well and Good. It is good to learn the liturgical languages. Women should veil and the pavlovo posad is as fine a way as any, and I love the Julian calendar as much as the next girl. I too am studying classical Arabic and beards have my stamp of approval. But none of these are necessary to be Orthodox.

No one needs to make themselves into a Russian, Syrian, or Greek to be Orthodox. I find the accusation that you do to be particularly gross because our whole Liturgical theology goes against this-- our whole evangelistic history goes against this. We have our liturgy in the vernacular for a reason! Saint Herman of Alaska evangelized the way he did for a reason!

Our Church is Catholic. It is Universal. You ought to love the people that God allowed you to be born into.

[guelphicreaction]

What are the gifts of the faithful and true? Gold to our King, frankincense to our God, and myrrh to Him Who died for us. The first is that whereof are made the royal honours of kings, the second is that mystic offering which is used in the worship of the Divine Power, and the third is that wherewith we pay respect to the dead, whose bodies it keepeth from corruption. My brethren, let us who hear and read these things, make offering out of what treasures we have albeit we have it in earthen vessels. If we confess that all that we have, we have, not from ourselves, but from Christ, how much more should we confess that whatever we have is not our own, but Christ's?

St. Ambrose, sermon on the Epiphany

[orthodoxadventure]

The Fathers

The definitions of the Councils must be studied in the wider context of the Fathers. but as with Local Councils, so with the Fathers, the judgement of the Church is selective: individual writers have at times fallen into error and at times contradict one another. Patristic wheat needs to be distinguished from Patristic chaff. An Orthodox must not simply know and quote the Fathers, he must enter into the spirit of the Fathers and acquire a 'Patristic mind'. He must treat the Fathers not merely as relics from the past, but as living witnesses and contemporaries.

The Orthodox Church has never attempted to define exactly who the Fathers are, still less to classify them in order of importance. But it has a particular reverence for the writers of the fourth century, and especially for those whom it terms 'the Three Great Hierarchs', Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, and John Chrysostom. In the eyes of Orthodoxy the 'Age of the Fathers' did not come to an end in the fifth century, for many later writers are also 'Fathers' - Maximus, John of Damascus, Theodore of Studium, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas, Mark of Ephesus. Indeed, it is dangerous to look on 'the Fathers' as a closed cycle of writings belonging wholly to the past, for might not our own age produce a new Basil or Athansius? To say that there can be no more Fathers is to suggest that the Holy Spirit has deserted the Church.

-- Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church

[azspot]

But, really, it is the most shameful episode in the history of Christian doctrine. For one thing, to have declared any man a heretic three centuries after dying in the peace of the Church, in respect of doctrinal determinations not reached during his life, was a gross violation of all legitimate canonical order; but in Origen’s case it was especially loathsome. After Paul, there is no single Christian figure to whom the whole tradition is more indebted. It was ­Origen who taught the Church how to read Scripture as a living mirror of Christ, who evolved the principles of later trinitarian theology and Christology, who majestically set the standard for Christian apologetics, who produced the first and richest expositions of contemplative ­spirituality, and who—simply said—laid the foundation of the whole edifice of developed Christian thought. Moreover, he was not only a man of extraordinary personal holiness, ­piety, and charity, but a martyr as well: Brutally tortured during the Decian persecution at the age of sixty-six, he never recovered, but slowly withered away over a period of three years. He was, in short, among the greatest of the Church Fathers and the most illustrious of the saints, and yet, disgracefully, official church tradition—East and West—commemorates him as neither.

Saint Origen

[byzantine-nectarine]

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)

What Matthew publishes in order of kingly succession, Luke has set forth in order of priestly origin. While accounting for each order, both indicate the relationship of the Lord to each ancestral lineage. The order of his lineage is thus duly presented, because the association of the priestly and royal tribes that was begun through David from marriage is now confirmed out of the descent from Shealtiel to Zerubbabel. And so, while Matthew recounts his paternal origin that began in Judah, Luke teaches that his ancestry was taken from the tribe of Levi. Each in his own way demonstrates the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the eternal king and priest, as seen even in the fleshly origin of both of his ancestries. It does not matter that the origin of Joseph instead of Mary is recounted, for indeed there is one and the same blood relationship for the whole tribe. Moreover, both Matthew and Luke provide precedents. They name fathers in order not so much by their lineage as by their clan, since the tribe began from one individual and continues under a family of one succession and origin. Indeed, Christ has to be shown as the son of David and Abraham, so Matthew began in this way: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” It does not matter who is placed in a given order as long as the whole family is understood to derive from a single source. Joseph and Mary belonged to the same kinship line. Joseph is shown to have sprung from the line of Abraham. It is revealed that Mary came from this line, too. This system is codified in law so that, if the oldest of a family should die without sons, the next oldest brother of the same family would take the dead man’s wife in marriage. He would consider his sons as received into the family of the one who had died, and thus the order of succession remains with the firstborn, since they are considered to be the fathers of those born after them in either name or birth.      - Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Matthew wrote for the Jews, and in Hebrew; to them it was unnecessary to explain the divinity which they recognized; but necessary to unfold the mystery of the Incarnation. John wrote in Greek for the Gentiles who knew nothing of a Son of God. They required therefore to be told first, that the Son of God was God, then that this Deity was incarnate. And do not consider this genealogy a small thing to hear: for truly it is a marvellous thing that God should descend to be born of a woman, and to have as His ancestors David and Abraham. But why would it not have been enough to name one of them, David alone, or Abraham alone? Because the promise had been made to both of Christ to be born of their seed. To Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” David was king and prophet, but not priest. Thus He is expressly called the son of both, that the threefold dignity of His forefathers might be recognized by hereditary right in Christ. Another reason is that royal dignity is above natural, though Abraham was first in time, yet David is honour.      - Saint John Chrysostom

Book of Kells. Folio 8r: Breves causae of Matthew I-III

[thestudyofkats]

11 June 2020 | These pictures are from a few days ago when I was still finishing up my patristics paper. Now, I’m entirely finished for the semester and looking forward to finally having time to do some reading with no practical application to research! I’ll likely go back to that paper soon to make a few changes and maybe submit it for publication, but for now I’m just enjoying not having any more deadlines hanging over my head. 

[marcella-delaney]

To believe in this one God was, therefore, to believe at the same time in a common Father of all... The prayer taught us by Christ makes clear in its very first phrase that monotheism postulates the brotherhood of all men. It implied that he assumed the original unity of all men and that he was effectively to reunite them all in one same worship...

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, pg. 31