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Theological Digest & Outlook Selections from the March 2002 issue NOTE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE SIGNED ARTICLES ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT ENDORSEMENT BY CHURCH ALIVE.
(A sermon based on Isaiah 40:1-5, Luke 3:1-20 and Mark 6:14-29) by Victor Shepherd We do expect to find a family resemblance among relatives, don't we? John and Jesus were cousins. Not surprisingly, then, they were "look-alikes" in many respects.
Both were at home in the wilderness, the venue of extraordinary temptation and trial and testing, but also the venue of extraordinary intimacy with the Father. Both preached out-of-doors when they began their public ministries.
Both gave their disciples a characteristic prayer. John gave his followers a prayer that outwardly identified them as his disciples and inwardly welded them to each other. In no time, the disciples of Jesus asked him for the same kind of characteristic prayer, with the result that we shall never be without the "Lord's Prayer."
Both John and Jesus lashed hearers whenever they spoke of God's severity and the inescapability of God's judgment. Both summoned people to repent.
Both discounted the popular notion that God favoured Israel with political or national prominence.
Both were born through an uncommon act of God.
And both died through having provoked uncommon rage among men and women.
John insisted that the sole purpose of his mission was to point away from himself to his younger cousin, Jesus. Jesus, for his part, never uttered a negative word about John. Jesus even endorsed John's ministry by submitting to baptism at John's hand. Indeed Jesus said, "Among those born of women [that is, of all the people in the world], there is none greater than John." John Elizabeth and Zechariah named their long-awaited son "Yochan." "Yochan" means "gift of God." This gift, however, did not come with the pretty ribbons and bows and curlicues of fancy gift-wrapping. This gift came in a plain brown wrapper.
Think of John's appearance. He wore a camel-hide wrap-around, and it stank as only camels can stink. (Jesus, by contrast, wore a robe fine enough that soldiers gambled for it.)
Then there was John's diet: wild honey. How many bee stings did he have to endure to procure the honey? No doubt he had been stung so many times he was impervious to their toxins, bees now being no more bothersome than fruit flies. And the locusts? There's lots of protein in grasshoppers, since small creatures like grasshoppers are most efficient in converting grain protein into animal protein. Grasshoppers are good to eat, as long as you don't mind crunching their long legs and occasionally getting them stuck in your teeth.
I have already mentioned John's habitat. The wilderness, everywhere in scripture, is the symbol for a radical break with the posturing and the pretence, the falsehoods and phoniness of the big city and its inherent corruption. Jerusalem, hier shalem, describes itself as the city of salvation. But is it? Jerusalem kills the prophets and crucifies the Messiah. By living in the wilderness, John contradicted everything the city represented.
And of course there was John's manner. He had relatively few tools in his toolbox. When he saw that the truth of God had to be upheld and the sin of the powerful rebuked, he reached into his toolbox and came up with its one and only instrument: confrontation. It wasn't long before he confronted Herodias, wife of Herod the ruler. John looked her in the eye and said, "First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you 'fooled around' with the man who is currently your husband. Then you allowed your daughter, Salome, to dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You are incestuous, adulterous and a pimp all at once. What you have done is an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud." Whereupon Mrs. Herod had said, "I'll have your head for that. Watch me."
We mustn't forget John's singlemindedness. Because his camel-hide loincloth lacked pockets, John kept his one-and-only sermon in his head and his heart. It was a simple sermon: The judgment of God is so close at hand that even now you can feel God's fiery breath scorching you and withering everything about you that can't stand the conflagration. And in the face of this judgment, thundered John, there are three things that cosy, comfortable people think they can take refuge in when there is no refuge, namely, parentage, piety and prestige.
Parentage: "Abraham is our parent. We are safe because we are descendants of the grand progenitor of our people, Abraham our father." John knew that you are Abraham's son or daughter only if you have Abraham's faith. In light of the crisis that God's judgment brings on everyone, you and I are silly if we put stock in the fact that our grandmother was once a missionary in China and our father once shook hands with Billy Graham.
Piety: "We are Israelites. Only last week we had our son circumcised." "We've been members of St. Matthew's-by-the-Gas-Station for 40 years. We had all our children 'done' there; we also contributed to the repairs to the steeple." Piety, said John, is a religious inoculation. Like any inoculation, it safeguards against getting the real thing. For this reason, piety is worse than useless: It guarantees that what can save you, you will never want."
Prestige: "We are the Jerusalem aristocrats." In 18th-century England, an aristocrat was asked what she thought of John Wesley's movement. "A perfectly horrid thing," the Duchess of Buckingham had replied, turning up her nose as if someone had just taken the lid off an 18th-century chamber pot, "Imagine being told you are as vile as the wretches that crawl about on the earth."
It was little wonder that those who found John too much to take eased their discomfort by ridiculing him. Baptizein is the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk: John the dipper. "Well, Yochan, what'll it be today? Dunk your doughnuts or dip your paintbrush? Here comes the dippy dunker."
Do you think John might have been deranged? His enemies said he was crazy. But the same people who said John was crazy also said that Jesus was an alcoholic. Certainly John was crude. Jesus admitted as much when he told those whom John had shocked, "What did you expect to see? A pantywaist smelling of perfume?" John lacked the polish of the cocktail crowd. But he was sane. Jesus Despite the family resemblance between John and Jesus, they are not identical. John came to bear witness to the light. Jesus was (and is) that light. John pointed to Jesus as the coming one. Jesus pointed to himself as the Incarnate One. John reminded the people of God's centuries-old promises. Jesus was, and is, the fulfilment of all God's promises. John administered a baptism of water as an outward sign of repentance. Jesus administered a baptism of fire as the Spirit inwardly torched his people.
This lattermost point highlights the crucial difference between John and Jesus: John could only point to the kingdom of God, the all-determining reality that was to heal a creation disfigured by the fall. Jesus, on the other hand, didn't point to it: He brought it, inasmuch as he himself was the new creation, fraught with cosmic significance, the one in whom all things are restored. John's ministry prepared people for a coming kingdom that the king would bring with him. Jesus' ministry gathered people into that kingdom which was operative wherever the king himself presided— which is to say, everywhere.
It's not that Jesus contradicted John. Rather, Jesus effected within people what John had only held out to them. Because the ministry of Jesus gathered up the ministry of John, nothing about John was lost. At the same time, the ministry of Jesus contained so much more than John's— as John himself gladly admitted. In other words, the ministry of Jesus was the ministry of John, plus all that was unique to our Lord. Take, for instance, the note of repentance sounded by both men. John thundered. He threatened. There was a bad time coming, and John, entirely appropriately, had his hearers scared. Jesus agreed. There was a bad time coming. Throughout the written gospels we find on the lips of Jesus pronouncements every bit as severe as anything John said. Yet while Jesus spoke of the bad time coming, he promised a good time coming too. To be sure, Jesus could flay the hide off phonies, just as surely as John could, yet flaying didn't characterize him; mercy did. While Jesus could speak, like John, of a coming judgment that couldn't be avoided, he also spoke of an amnesty, a provision, a refuge that reflected the heart of his Father. Everything John said you and I and the whole world needs to hear. Yet we need to hear even more urgently what Jesus alone said: "There's a party underway, and at this party all who are weary and worn down, frenzied and fed up, overwhelmed and overrun— at this party they will find rest, restoration, help, healing and hope."
Jesus, like John, spoke to the defiant and self-righteous, who not only disdained entering the kingdom themselves but also, whether deliberately or left-handedly, impeded others from entering it; Jesus spoke to these people in a vocabulary that would take the varnish off a door. He also, however, had his heart broken over people who were like sheep without a shepherd, willing to cluelessly follow the next religious hireling— the religious "huckster" of every era, who exploits the unusually needy and non-critical.
Jesus' anger withered those who victimized the defenceless, but at the same time, his compassion lifted victims up and vindicated them before the world. Jesus said that the poor in spirit wouldn't merely be poised for the kingdom of God; the poor in spirit were already in that kingdom. Those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness weren't merely undergoing a colonic cleansing that prepared them for the kingdom; those hungering for righteousness were finding in him, right now, a satisfaction that never satiated, a satisfaction that left them looking nowhere else, yet left them always wanting more of him. Let us never forget that once people had responded to the message of John the Baptist, they never needed John again. But when people responded to the message of Jesus, they craved him, his person, more than ever.
Because John's message was the penultimate word of judgment, the mood surrounding John was as stark, spare and ascetic as John's world: He drank no wine and he ate survival rations. Because Jesus' message was the ultimate word of the kingdom, the mood surrounding Jesus was celebratory, like being at a party: Didn't he turn 150 gallons of water into wine? Sure: He is the wine of life, who profoundly gladdens the hearts of men and women.
With his laser vision, Jesus stared into the hearts of those who faulted him and said, "You spoil-sports with shrivelled hearts and twisted spirits and acidulated tongues, you wouldn't heed John because his asceticism left you thinking he wasn't even sane; now you won't heed me because my partying leaves you thinking I'm not even moral. Still, those people you've despised and duped and defrauded— well your victims are victors now; they are going to be vindicated. And their exuberance in the celebrations they have with me not even your sullenness can dent or diminish." Whereupon our Lord turned from the scornful snobs that religion forever breeds and welcomed yet another wounded, worn down person who wouldn't know a hymn book from a homily, yet knew as much as she needed to know: Life in the company of Jesus is indescribably better than life in the company of his detractors.
I am always moved at our Lord's simple assertion, "I am the good shepherd." What did he mean by "good"? Merely that he is a competent shepherd who can protect the flock against marauders, thieves and disease? There are two Greek words for "good": agathos and kalos. Agathos means good in the sense of upright, proper, correct, whereas kalos (the word Jesus used of himself) includes everything that agathos connotes, plus winsome, attractive, endearing, appealing, compelling, comely, inviting.
Malcolm Muggeridge accompanied a film crew to India in order to narrate a documentary on the late Mother Teresa. He already knew she was a good woman or he wouldn't have bothered going. When he met her, he found a good woman who was also so very compelling, wooing and endearing that he titled his documentary, Something Beautiful for God. When he remarked to Mother Teresa that she went to Mass every single day at 4:30 a.m., she replied, "If I didn't meet my Master every day, I'd be doing no more than social work." Do we know the difference between the Jesus who is cosmic social worker and the Jesus who is so much more winsome a saviour that the calcified hearts of scrooges like Matthew and Zacchaeus melt on the spot?
Catherine Booth, the genius behind William Booth (founder of The Salvation Army), died slowly and painfully. The physician who attended her in her final illness was an agnostic. Later he wrote of Catherine, "Her courage and her anxiety for my welfare were beautiful." Not merely exemplary, not merely commendable or noteworthy or even outstanding. Beautiful.
John was good, agathos. Many people feared him and many admired him. Jesus was good, kalos. Many people feared him, many admired him and many loved him. Paul speaks in Ephesians 6:24 of those who "love our Lord with love undying." Did anyone love John with love undying? If you have grasped the difference between agathos and kalos, between what precedes— must precede— the gospel, and the gospel itself, then you have grasped the relation of John to Jesus. There is another dimension to Jesus that carries him beyond John. It's reflected in the word he used uniquely at prayer, abba, "Father." Now the Newer Testament is written in Greek, even though Jesus often spoke Aramaic. In other words, what our Lord said day-by-day has been translated into another language. Then why wasn't the Aramaic word, abba, translated into Greek? The word was left untranslated because Jesus had first used it in a special way, and to translate it would seem to sully its specialness.
Lately, some New Testament commentators have told us that abba is a word tiny children used when speaking to their father, and that it means "daddy." I disagree: Abba isn't a word that tiny children use when speaking to their father. It doesn't mean "da da" or even "daddy." Abba was used by a Palestinian youth to speak of his or her father respectfully, obediently, confidently, securely and, of course, intimately. It wasn't as "palsy-walsy" as to be disrespectful. Neither was it so gushing as to be sentimental. It was intimate without being impertinent, confident without being smug. Using Abba was being trusting in one's father without trading on his trustworthiness, being familiar without being forward, being secure without being saccharine.
We must be sure to understand that when early-day Christians came to use the word abba in their prayers, they were not repeating the word just because they knew that Jesus had used it and they thought it cute to imitate him. Neither were they mumbling it mindlessly like a mantra, thinking that if they kept on saying it, mantra-like, whatever it was within him that had given rise to it would eventually appear within them. On they contrary, they were impelled to use the word for one reason only: As friends of Jesus, they had been admitted into such an intimacy with the Father that the word Jesus had uniquely used of his Father they were now constrained to use too, so closely did their intimacy resemble his. Paul writes in Romans 8:15, that Christians can't help uttering the cry, "Abba, Father," any more than a person in pain can help groaning, or a person bereaved can help weeping or a person tickled by a good joke can help laughing; when Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that this is normal Christian experience, "normal" means being introduced by the Son to the Father in such a way and at such a depth that the Son's intimacy with the Father induces the believer's intimacy. Abba.
We should note that the written gospels show us that Jesus used this word in Gethsemane— Gethsemane, of all places, where he was utterly alone in the most tormented hour of his life. I understand this. William Stringfellow— Harvard-educated lawyer and self-taught theologian who worked in Harlem in a store-front law practice on behalf of the impoverished people he loved, Stringfellow— ridiculed by his denomination, suspected by the Kennedys and arrested, finally, by the FBI for harbouring Daniel Berrigan (a Jesuit anti-Vietnam War protester), Stringfellow wrote in a little confirmation book he prepared for teenagers, "Prayer is being so alone that God is the only witness to your existence."
If the day hasn't come when you are so utterly alone that you couldn't be any more alone, let me assure you that that day is coming. And in your isolation and torment, you will find that God is the only witness to your existence. But he will be witness enough. And because it's the Father who is the only witness to your existence, you will find yourself crying spontaneously, "Abba." Surely Jesus had this in mind when he said, "There has never appeared anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John." We do need to be shaken up by the wild man from the wilderness, don't we? Yet as often as we need to look at John and do look at him, we find fearsome John pointing away from himself to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the lamb of God and the Saviour of the world— someone no less fearsome than John, but also so much more than John, and so very winsome, compelling, inviting. Beautiful. This sermon was preached in the chapel of Tyndale College and Seminary during the 2001 Season of Advent. A Book Review by Graham A.D. Scott The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality by Kyriacos C. Markides New York: Doubleday/Random House, 2001
I Since the 11th century, women have been barred from entering the monastic republic of Mount Athos. And yet, despite the ban, the Athonite monks hid a number of Jewish Greek women and their children on the mountain during the Nazi occupation. So we learn from sociologist Kyriacos Markides' latest book, The Mountain of Silence, though this fact is only mentioned in passing. Markides teaches at the University of Maine. As a student he absorbed the usual academic scepticism about religion and soon became an agnostic. It was not until a colleague introduced him to the yogi tradition of the Far East and Transcendental Meditation that he began to wonder if secular philosophy contained the whole of reality. Further research on clairvoyant healers in his native Cyprus brought him to the realization, with Pitirim Sorokin of Harvard, that there are three ways of knowing reality: There is the eye of the senses (empirical science), the eye of reason (philosophy, logic, mathematics) and the eye of contemplation (systematic and disciplined spiritual practice to open up the intuitive and spiritual faculties of the self) (p. 7). Gradually the interface between science and mysticism led Markides to turn away from his unbelief: "It increasingly became clear to me that the secular assumptions about reality, dominant during my university training, were in fact a grand illusion, a materialist superstition that had kept Western thought stranded and imprisoned for the last three hundred years. It was a destructive superstition that led sensitive Western intellectuals by the droves into existential despair, and in some cases, even to suicide and madness. The realization of the phoniness of scientific materialism had a tremendously liberating effect on my mind" (p. 3). Markides' own research convinced him that "mind is not confined to the brain." Nonetheless he retained the belief that "organized religion unavoidably implied the corruption of religion" (p. 4). That opinion changed when a trip to Mount Athos in 1991 brought him into contact with a young elder by the name of Father Maximos. This book is largely about Markides' encounters with Fr. Maximos, the author's probing questions and the Athonite elder's responses. Its style is accessible, and the dialogue between the American academic and Athonite monk is frank and captivating.
II The title of the book suggests that all the action takes place on Mount Athos, where the first three days of Lent are spent in total fasting and absolute silence. But most of the dialogue takes place in Cyprus, because Father Maximos was ordered by his elder, Paisios, to leave the mountain to live in Cyprus. Maximos found obedience to the directive given to him by his beloved elder very hard to accept, but eventually he obeyed. He soon became the abbot of the historic Panagia Monastery in the Troodos Mountains of his native island. His reputation as an Athonite elder and his charismatic gifts soon made his name known throughout unoccupied Cyprus, and earned him both friends and enemies. The friends of his Communist parents vilified him in their newspaper, until his widowed mother challenged them and told them that he was her son, Andrikos. It was not long before she gave up Marxism and returned to the Orthodox faith. One of the charms of this book is its stories of almost-contemporary elders on Mount Athos like Paisios, Ephraim and St. Silouan— some of these stories very hard to believe. An elder or staretz is a monk well advanced in the journey to union with God. Certainly, as far as Father Maximos is concerned, union with God is what life is all about. Markides records Father Maximos on his tape recorder, giving credence to the accuracy of the monk's statements, and it could almost be said that the book is by Father Maximos with Kyriacos Markides.
III The trouble for most people in the "modern" Western world is that we find ourselves preoccupied with material things and suffer from breakdowns in our relationships. Father Maximos squarely attributes these breakdowns to the rupture in our relationship with God: Heal this rupture and the healing of our relationships with one another is then possible. But no healing will occur without repentance and humility, faith and prayer.
Father Maximos says that it is a mistake to believe that we should exert no effort in searching for evidence of God's reality. After all, "Christ urged us to investigate the Scriptures, to investigate, that is, God" (p. 42). The problem for many people is how to investigate God. Father Maximos gives a classic answer: "Let's assume that we wish to investigate a natural phenomenon. As you very well know, in order to do so we need to employ the appropriate scientific method. If we wish, for example, to study the galaxies, we need powerful telescopes and other such instruments. If we wish to examine the physical health of our hearts, then we need a stethoscope. Everything must be explored through a method appropriate to the subject under investigation. If we, therefore, wish to explore and get to know God, it would be a gross error to do so through our senses or with telescopes, seeking Him out in outer space. That would be utterly naïve... "It would be equally foolish and naïve to seek God with our logic and intellect... Logic and reason cannot investigate and know that which is beyond logic and reason...Christ Himself revealed to us the method. He told us that not only are we capable of exploring God but we can also live with Him, become one with Him. And the organ by which we can achieve that is neither our senses nor our logic but our hearts" (p. 43). Father Maximos says that only cleanliness and purity of the heart can lead us to the contemplation and vision of God: That is the meaning of Christ's Beatitude, "Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (p. 44). Faith, of course, is involved in this. Maximos calls the Nicene Creed a prayer which "actually means…'I live in a union of love with God.' This is the path of the saints. Only then can we say that we are true Christians. This is the kind of faith that the saints possess as direct experience. Consequently they are unafraid of death, of war, of illness, or anything else of this world...Such persons transcend the idea of God and enter into the experience of God…True faith means I live with God, I am one with God. I have come to know God and therefore I know that He truly Is. God lives inside me and is victorious over death and I move forward with God. The entire methodology of the authentic Christian mystical tradition as articulated by the saints is to reach that stage where we become conscious of the reality of God within ourselves. Until we reach that point we simply remain stranded within the domain of ideas and not within the essence of Christian spirituality which is the direct communion with God" (p. 45). The vision of God in no way suggests that God has a body that can be seen, for God is "beyond all images and anthropomorphic characterizations. He does not have a physiognomy. Yet at the same time God is a Person insofar as He has the possibility and power to commune with human beings on a personal basis. After all, that is why as the Christ Logos He came down to us in the flesh, fully God and fully Human." The essence of this communing with human beings, this relationship, is "Love, which first emanates from God to humans and then from humans to God" (p. 46). And as God became man that man might become god (St Athanasius), so the aim of the Church "is to divinize the person in his or her totality. It is the whole person that strives to reach God." Hence the exercises such as fasting, prostrations, all-night vigils. Just "as we have psychic passions like egotism, jealousy, cunningness, and so forth, we also have bodily passions like gluttony, sexual avarice, addictions of all sorts such as alcohol, drugs, you name it. We need exercises to overcome these maladies" (p. 76).
In our personal relations, we "must never see our fellow human beings as anything other than the image of God. Monks are expected to see the image of God when they encounter any human being. We must never see human beings either as demons, donkeys, dogs, or anything else, regardless of what they do to us or what their behavior toward us is like" (p. 113). Father Maximos: "Most of the teachings of the elders are really forms of practical exercises to overcome pride and develop true humility and compassion. There is no spirituality without genuine humility. That is an axiom." This axiom might be illustrated by the story that Markides tells about a young, would-be monk who told the abbot of the monastery, "Holy Father! My heart burns for the spiritual life, for asceticism, for unceasing communion with God, for obedience to an elder. Instruct me, please..." The abbot went to his bookshelf and pulled down a copy of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. He said, "Read this." The young man objected: "But Father! This is heterodox Victorian sentimentality, a product of the Western captivity! This isn't spiritual; it's not even Orthodox! I need writings which will teach me spirituality!" The abbot smiled and said, "Unless you first develop normal, human, Christian feelings and learn to view life as little Davy did— with simplicity, kindness, warmth, and forgiveness— then all the Orthodox spirituality and Patristic writings will not only be of no help to you— they will turn you into a spiritual monster and destroy your soul" (pp. 195-196). A very important part of the Athonite spiritual tradition is unceasing prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17), using the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Father Maximos comments, "Embedded in the name of Jesus is the very power of God. By invoking, therefore, the sacred name repeatedly we invite the Grace of God to take possession of our hearts and minds, protecting us from harmful effects...the Prayer has its own power and energy. As you repeat it in your mind or aloud it will have a gradual impact within your psychospiritual world. Believe me, it will work like a bulldozer which opens up the road, gradually demolishing rocks and pushing the dirt away. That is how the Prayer works. It opens the road for Grace to visit the heart. And when that happens, then the heart works by itself independently of whatever else you do. It enters into an ongoing relationship with God" (p. 56). To Protestants who recall the message of Matthew 6:7, the Jesus Prayer might seem at once too simple and its repetition too vain. But of course the Lord warned against empty repetitions, something "the heathen do." There is nothing in the Jesus Prayer that is heathen, and its repetition is a way of focusing on the Lord Himself. According to Luke 11:2, Jesus said, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven..." Obviously the implication is that we will repeat the Lord's Prayer often (as well as model our prayers after it, as Matthew 6:9a suggests). Father Maximos agrees that the Jesus Prayer is simple: "It's simple in its expression but rich in its energy. It is also simple in its implementation, at least in its initial stages. I first thought that learning about the Efche, the Prayer, was some sort of a complex initiation that I had to go through, but when I first met my elder he just handed me a komboschini [prayer rope] and asked me to begin reciting the Prayer with humility and without fantasies, nothing else. 'Go and do it,' he urged me, 'and then we'll talk again'" (p. 199). One can start repeating the Prayer for as little as five minutes a day, as long as one is consistent. Eventually, at the same times each day, one can go to ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening. The beginner will be distracted, but should persevere. Some people worry about their mixed motives as they pray the Prayer. Father Maximos responds, "It does not matter what your motives are when you concentrate on the Prayer. Even if your intentions are not perfect, with time the systematic practice of praying will also perfect your motives. What happens, you see, is that the Jesus Prayer teaches you how to pray. Do the Prayer and then God will take care of the rest. He will lead you through the Prayer" (p. 200). Father Maximos emphasizes that the Prayer must be recited "with utter humility and metanoia [repentance]" and not be treated like a technique for the attainment of spiritual experiences lest it lead to delusion. He says that we can reach authentic spirituality only by having deep repentance, or metanoia, which means the radical transformation of our hearts and minds at their very foundation (p. 205).
IV Two affirmations of Father Maximos might be of particular interest, or perhaps some offence, to Protestants. The first comes in the chapter about strategies for spiritual warfare. He says, "In addition to prayer, the reading and study of holy texts, like the word of God in the Gospels, the life and work of the holy elders is of crucial importance. They help so that our mind gets nourished with spiritual meanings that can displace the meanings of anger, envy, greed, and such other base emotions." Texts like the Bible and the works of the holy elders were written under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The person who studies them partakes of this Divine Grace in a mystical way. The soul is nourished with Grace even if the person who reads such literature does not understand the meaning of what is being read. "Just by reading this material the individual becomes spiritually empowered by the Grace embedded in the words themselves" (p. 141, reviewer's italics). This belief that God's Grace is embedded in the very words of the Bible might be very much at home in the view of fundamentalists and many evangelicals, though they would not go so far as to include the writings of the Saints. The Bible is certainly more than a record of human experience. The Bible includes the Word of God, if only because the Word— who is God— chooses to approach us human beings and to speak to us through it. Even so, Orthodox theology has seen the Word in the understanding rather than in the reading of the words of the Bible. Both St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Jerome wrote that "Scripture is not in the reading, but in the understanding" (quoted in Georges Florovsky's Bible, Church, Tradition, p. 75). And yet Father Maximos' conviction that Grace is embedded in the very words of the Bible is consistent with the Orthodox view of the Sacraments and icons as mediating the reality of God's transforming love for us. The other affirmation of interest to Protestants, especially liberal Protestants, would be the Orthodox understanding of justice, a concept that dominates so much of the deliberations and policies of the mainline churches today. For Father Maximos and the Athonite tradition, Christ "was not trying to make this world better and more just. Whatever Christ offered us through the Gospel had a deeper meaning, the salvation of humanity, our eternal restoration within the Kingdom of God. Therefore, words like 'Blessed be those who are thirsty and hungry for justice, for they shall be filled' have nothing to do with worldly concerns about justice" (p. 174). Father Maximos says: "Do you know what an old saint once said? 'Never call God just because God is not just' according to human measures of justice, that is. The saint reasoned: How could God be just when He requests of us that when someone comes to grab our possessions, we do nothing but let him take them? And if He asks of us to go one mile with him, we go two? And if He gives us a slap on one cheek we turn the other also? Is this justice? He died for the sake of those who hated Him, who spat and kicked Him, for the sake of the entire World. When Christ was in human form and was about to die He did not pray for His apostles but for those who were crucifying Him. He did not tell the disciples, 'Just you wait and you shall see what I'll do to them once I get resurrected!'...So what's the meaning of all this? That the justice of God is not the justice that we entertain in our minds" (p. 176). "Real justice is for God to help us through His Grace to rectify that which truly wronged us. And what is that? Our estrangement from our Divine nature. Real justice means the attainment of Theosis, the reunification with God who created us in His own image. We are endowed with the potential of becoming gods through Grace. Our ultimate goal is reunion with our Maker, our real homeland and final destination" (p. 177). Father Maximos is by no means against us being active in the world and trying to make it as good and just as we can. But he insists that divine justice is different from what we imagine justice to be. When we are in union with God, we will experience justice as "total, absolute, and unconditional Divine love" and we will not be judgmental about people. As for the Beatitudes, including the one about hungering and thirsting for justice, they "have a single purpose, to help humans on their path to Theosis" (p. 177).
V The preceding quotations should give us a feel for Markides' book and the Athonite spirituality which Father Maximos represents. For this reviewer, reading The Mountain of Silence was a good, though challenging, experience. I recommend reading and re-reading this book, for its message is too deep and rich to take in in just one reading. As for the Orthodox doctrine of theosis or deification, I am convinced that it is the logical synonym of sanctification. If God is holy, and sanctification for us is that we are being made holy, then it makes good sense to see sanctification ultimately as deification. St. Peter alluded to deification when he wrote about believers being "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Calvin commented on the passage, "We should notice that it is the purpose of the Gospel to make us sooner or later like God; indeed, it is, so to speak, a kind of deification." Calvin further said that the apostles "were simply concerned to say that when we have put off all the vices of the flesh we shall be partakers of divine immortality and the glory of blessedness, and thus we shall be in a way one with God so far as our capacity allows." St. Paul called on the Philippians to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12b-13). Justification is God's doing in Christ; sanctification is both God's gift and our own work in receiving and appropriating the gift. The disciplines of Orthodox spirituality recommended by Father Maximos are helps to us in fulfilling St.Paul's call to sanctification and, I believe, to deification by grace. Others have found this book helpful, one of whom is Bishop Kallistos Ware who says of it: "I was most interested in the text, and I have learnt many things from it. It forms an excellent overview of traditional Orthodox ascetic and spiritual teachings, in a lively style which may reach many people who would not read a more 'ecclesiastical' presentation. May it do much good."
Wisdom According to Father Maximos: Before you speak to someone about God, you must pray for that person so that Grace may proceed ahead of you and prepare the ground (p. 54). In the spiritual arena...we aim at the transmutation or metamorphosis of our passions, not the actual storing of them into the so-called subconscious (p. 144).
A person who has not been tempted is like bread that has not been baked (p. 179).
Suffering is an integral part of the human condition (p. 183).
There are no accidents. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in the Universe without a deeper meaning to it (p. 186).
The primary aim of marriage is askesis (ascetic exercise) engaged in by two people who are asked to overcome their separateness in their common ascent towards God (p. 215).
When questioned about the need for prolonged all-night vigils and endless chanting, Father Maximos responded: "It takes time to bake bread" (p. 229). A Book Review by Gail Dolson Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived the Church by Philip Yancey New York: Doubleday, 2001 This newest offering from Philip Yancey is another gem, at least in the eyes of this reviewer. The subtitle might lead the prospective reader to think it is about self-confession or the revelation of God to a person who is hurt and damaged by the Bride of Christ. There is some revelation in this book, but not what one might expect. Yancey grew up in the southern U.S.A., where a large part of his youth was spent in a fundamentalist and racist church. Growing up and then moving away from home, he came to the realization that this church was not functional, something he has been grappling with for many years, as reflected in many of his books. In Soul Survivor, Yancey describes some of the people who have influenced his spiritual journey thus far. The thirteen individuals he describes are a fascinating and eclectic mix of names we know, while others, perhaps, are not as familiar. He begins the book with Martin Luther King Jr. and ends it with Henri Nouwen, both men of whom many Christians will know through their massive output of books and speeches. Others who have had an enormous influence on him-some Christian and some non-Christian-have provided him with hope and inspiration. They include a pioneer of leprosy treatment, Dr. Paul Brand, writers G.K. Chesterton, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Shusaku Endo, poet John Donne, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi. Quite a versatile group! Yancey tells us about the lives of each of these individuals, all of whom, except for King, are authors themselves. He had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with many of them, and provides numerous interesting details about his meetings with them. He shares with the reader how each person affected him and helped him to come to terms with his past struggles in the church. At the end of each chapter, he gives suggestions for further readings-his picks of the best works of each one. Having experienced problems in the church myself, as many others have, I can truly attest to the depth of pain a person can experience far into the future. I am not talking about minor hurts-people not getting along, personality conflicts and theology disagreements. I am talking about life-changing events that become part of the fabric of who a person is. Yancey went through a number of hurtful experiences in his most formative years, and a few years ago, I experienced a similar situation just after I accepted Jesus as my Saviour. Like him, I found that because of these experiences I have been changed. Over the years, Yancey has dealt with issues of confusion, pain and struggle by reading the works of his many mentors and by meditating on their thoughts and various reactions to their own traumas in life. He points out that the people who have inspired and helped him have often done so unknowingly. Despite their own struggles within the church, many of those profiled have had their faith strengthened, such that readers will find them to be worthy role models for their own faith journeys. One of the messages of this book is that God is bigger than "the church," though God loves the church dearly. Their continuing belief in God, and the faith and trust shown on the part of these famous and gifted people, including Yancey himself, contribute to the message of hope in this book. Many of the people profiled struggle with doubts, and several of them also suffer from depression, which seems to exacerbate their doubt and lack of trust. Yancey, thankfully, gives to those of us who have been given a faith journey bumpier-than-most the permission we long for to struggle and doubt and question. His openness and willingness to share his own journey with the reader and his own firm belief that God is always with us, help us to continue to search and thirst, even when it seems we will never be satisfied. Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived the Church is a boon for those of us who have experienced pain and disillusionment in the church. Through everything that Yancey has experienced, he has kept his faith, and he helps his readers to see that it is possible for them to survive the same kind of pain. But, you say, you haven't had such an experience. The hope expressed in this book is enough reason to read it, and who knows what possible future experience it might prepare you for? In another light, this book might help you to understand someone else who is going through a similar experience, and will help you to bring them hope, instead of looking at them quizzically and saying "just have faith."
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