the quest for unity in American Orthodoxy

" http://ocl.org/boycotting-the-boston-clergy-laity-congress/?utm_content=2011-11-11%2013%3A40%3A50&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Read%20more%20here&utm_campaign=%7EJoin%20the%20Call%20for%20a%20Self-Governing%20American%20Orthodox%20Church%21%7E

the situation described in the article below is one of the reasons I OPPOSE a self governing American ORthodox Church. as for canonical problems, the Roman Empire had more than one Metropolitan or Patriarch in its borders and the rule was one bishop per city not per region. I think the USA can manage the same way."

 

This is what I sent to the Orthodox Christian Laity group that sent me an email

seems their 11th get together called for a united Orthodox Church in America.

 

the history of this sort of thing is complicated, and generally such scream about canonical impropriety of the setup now, ignoring more important canonical improprieties that go on all the time regarding morals, finances, etc. some jurisdictions are better than others.

 

The Russians were the first in North America as per Orthodox Christianity. Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and part of San Francisco, Ft. Ross (the Bear in the California flag refers to the Russian part of California history, limited in scope and eclipsed by the Spanish.) When the Arab Christians and the Greeks arrived, the Russians provided clergy then they got their own from their home patriarchates.

 

The Orthodox Church in America, heavily Slavic in origin with connections to the dubious segment of the Russian expatriate community, two or three times declared themselves THE Orthodox Church in America, the last time getting a tomos of autocephaly from the Russian ORthodox Church in Moscow, the so called living church, which Stalin had reestablished as a patriarchate. The ROC had been disestablished as a patriarchate and made a department of the government by Tsar Peter the Great. reestablishing the patriarchate had been discussed during the interim between the Tsar Nicholas II's abdication and the Bolshevik revolution itself, but the church was put on the run with the rest of the "white Russians."

 

Meanwhile as per canon 28 of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon of AD 451 at a city in Asia Minor aka Anatolia now called Turkey, the Ecumenical Patriarchate or Greek Orthodox Church headquartered in a backwater of Constantinople now called Istanbul claims authority over all the barbarians including us, that didn't already have a Patriarch at the time. (since then various nations acquired their own patriarchate status so there are now 15 autocephalous churches which are canonical and in communion with each other, except for the spat between the Antiochian Patriarchate, which has operated out of Damascus for the past 500 or 600 years I forget why and the Jerusalem Patriarchate over Qatar's ORthodox Christians.)

 

 

 

Evil and human depravity – and then there’s Hamas too

http://www.melaniephillips.com/evil-human-depravity-hamas/

by Melanie Phillips

When confronted with absolute evil or the depths of human depravity, some of us experience a very particular kind of depression. It’s as if we just can’t cope with such a repudiation of humanity.
Some experience it when exposed to the details of child sexual abuse. And some feel it over the libelous falsehoods hurled at Israel whenever it’s forced to defend itself against genocidal fanatics, as happened this week in the Hamas onslaught on the Gaza border fence.
There is actually a strong thematic connection between these twin evils.
Two awful features are associated with child sexual abuse over and above the assaults themselves.
The first is the way the perpetrator projects all blame onto his victim. She led him on, he tells himself, she dressed like a tart, she was asking for it and so on. In his mind, he must rob his victim of her innocence in order to deny that she is a victim and thus justify himself.
There’s something very similar about the West’s systematic abuse of Israel. There’s a refusal to acknowledge that Israel is the victim of Arab and Muslim exterminatory violence.
Instead, Israel-abusers project that violence onto Israel. It is Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian Arabs that is said to have driven them in despair to act as they do. So Israel deserves its punishment.
We’ve been watching this sickening spectacle again this week from the usual suspects: the United Nations and European Union, NGOs, politicians, and above all, the media.
With the riots in Gaza, they fell over themselves to mouth the murderous script Hamas had given them—that these were spontaneous, peaceful protests against the hellish conditions imposed upon Gaza by Israel, whose soldiers proceeded to kill around 60 unarmed Arabs out of sheer trigger-happy brutality.
These were all incendiary lies. The riots that reached a crescendo this week weren’t a protest but, in the words of Hamas itself, an attempted invasion intended to slaughter Jews and destroy Israel.
A report published this week by the High Level Military Group of distinguished military figures around the world describes these onslaughts over the past six weeks as “carefully planned and orchestrated military operations intended to break through the border of a sovereign state and commit mass murder in the communities beyond, using their own civilians as cover. The purpose: to criminalise and isolate the State of Israel.”
The BBC and other journalists in the United States, Canada and elsewhere howled down those who said this was organized by Hamas and accused Israel instead of using live fire against unarmed demonstrators.
Israel said it had so far identified 24 of the dead as Hamas terrorists. On Wednesday, however, a senior Hamas official declared that no fewer than 50 of the 62 said to have been killed were its own operatives.
In other words, the Israel Defense Forces had been remarkably careful not to kill the civilians whom Hamas had pushed to the front as cannon fodder. No other army in the world would have been so scrupulous in the face of a murderous mob 40,000-strong trying to storm its border. Yet the media has vilified the IDF instead.
The rioters were armed with IEDs, petrol bombs and guns. They dispatched burning kites to set fire to Israeli farmland. On Facebook they were urged to “bring a knife, dagger or handgun” in order to kidnap Israeli civilians and murder Israeli soldiers. The Western media ignored all this.
The IDF leafletted Gazans, warning them not to assemble at the fence; then they used tear gas and foul-smelling “Skunk” sprays; then they fired warning shots; then they shot at legs. They only used lethal force when facing a direct threat posed through weapons or explosives. The Western media ignored all this.
Hamas blew up its own fuel terminals three times; it wrecked conveyor belts used to bring in construction materials and animal feed; when Israel opened the border crossing for humanitarian relief, Hamas sent back trucks of medical aid, food and other supplies.
The Western media ignored all this, blaming Israel for Gaza’s “hellish” conditions. Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned Israel’s “slaughter” of “dozens of unarmed protesters.” British Prime Minister Theresa May called for an inquiry into the “deeply troubling” loss of life and Israel’s use of live fire.
Grotesquely singling out Israel as an endemic abuser of human rights is now the default position in the West. Israel is therefore in effect the abused child of the world.
Its abusers aren’t just the Arabs and Muslims who continuously try to murder Jews and steal their country; they are also the BBC, Britain’s Channel Four News, America’s NBC, Canada’s CBC and numerous newspapers throughout the West.
But there’s a second awful feature that these two forms of abuse share. Tragically, the sexually abused child believes the reason she was abused must be something really bad she herself has done. Otherwise, why else would she have been attacked?
In exactly the same way, Jews over the centuries have asked why the world hates them with such unique ferocity—and the answer reached by a distressing number is that it must be because of something uniquely hateful in them.
Today, such Jews turn against Israel, swallowing and regurgitating the disgusting falsehoods and distortions perpetrated by the enemies of the Jewish people. And some of those Jews, in both the Diaspora and Israel, shamefully took part in this week’s anti-Israel verbal auto-da-fé.
The unanswerable question, though, is why Israel is abused like this. Plausible factors such as anti-colonialist ideology or plain ignorance don’t begin to explain the unique virulence of this hatred, and its obsessional and paranoid nature.
The essence of it is the refusal to view Israel as victimized. And the essence of that is the unhinged belief that the Jews are all-powerful. So if Israel exercises its undoubted military power—even though it only ever does so to defend its citizens’ lives—this gives traction to the ancient anti-Semitic trope.
Hence the obscene outrage voiced by some that no Israelis were killed at the Gaza border—imbecilically offered as proof of Israeli aggression. The fact that the Jews can now defend themselves is considered unacceptable.
So these Israel-abusers champion instead those who send flaming kites decorated with swastikas to incinerate Israel and its people, while describing the Jews defending their country as latter-day Nazis.
It isn’t just the Hamas who are evil. There’s a profound moral and spiritual sickness in the West, too.
Jewish News Syndicate https://www.jns.org/opinion/at-the-israel-border-pointing-fingers-at-the-wrong-abuser/

A classic double misunderstanding about Israel

" a talk, given by Rabbi David Hartman, in 1990. He was discussing Christian attitudes towards Israel in relation to the Holocaust. The excerpts are as reported in the Nov. 2, 1990 issue of the Long Island Jewish World.

"Christianity sees itself as the New Israel, God's newest revelation, that is to replace Judaism. Why do you think the Pope refuses to recognize Jerusalem as the capital? Because if it is, then the Jewish exile has ended. And if the Jewish exile has ended, then Christianity cannot explain its own tradition. Because its own tradition is parasitic on God's rejection of Israel."

"Do you know what's at stake? What do you think; just some sort of argument going on? The fundamental vision of Christianity was parasitic on the idea that God's initial revelation... the [Jewish] experiment ... did not work." Hartman said that Christianity viewed the suffering and exile of the Jewish people as punishment from God for not accepting the new message.

"As long as we were weak, as long as we were homeless, then Christian theology had a living witness to their claim to be the New Israel. Jews in exile confirmed the claim of a new revelation of Jesus. This is central to Christian thology."

Hartman stressed that suffering is a symbol Christians can deal with. "That is why Christians could handle the Holocaust. Because the Holocaust deals with Jewish suffering, and also because Jews are a suffering people, a crucified people. Crucifixion is a symbol Christians can deal with."
"They *cannot* deal with a living rebirth of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. And that is why I claim that the most important struggle in human history today is not the Holocaust - we should not be a Holocaust people - but a people reborn in Jerusalem." "

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11772087&postID=4837957544872158938 posted during one of the squabbles that break out and back in 2009.

misunderstanding one: replacement theology, which might indeed feel challenged by Jewish control of the land of Israel. But Romans chapter 11 and the Prophets rule this out anyway. The Jews are not totally cast off but are the root that bears the branches the church, and will be restored eventually. Though Christians are spiritual Israel, physical Israel is not irrelevant.

misunderstanding two: that Christianity is parasitic on Judaism, and rendered irrelevant and a failure by restoration of Jews to the Land of Israel. No, in fact this is in line with Paul and the Prophets, for the Jews would be restored to the land in an unclean condition and cleansed later (Ezekiel) and will be practicing Orthodox Jewish worship sex separatist when Jesus comes back (Zechariah), and God will make Jerusalem a burden for all nations (ongoing and maybe getting more so I forget which Prophet's book that is in), and that eventually all Israel incl. physical will be saved.

the restoration of Jewish control in the land of Israel, then, is not in any way contradictory to Christianity. And membership in the Kingdom of Heaven is not the same thing as title to real estate.

Catherine Austin Fitts – Enormous Level of Ignorance & Lawlessness in America

dangers of libertarianism privatization is how Russia was destroyed for a while and
several million died.

stop gentrirication

https://newrepublic.com/article/144260/stop-gentrification

this article of course blames Trump and quotes a Marxist, but ignore all that.

Key Christological error

All the Christological heresies partake of confusion between nature and person.

When you read the Bible and don't ignore anything, the only view of Christ that
accounts for everything is that He is BOTH God AND man.

God is both a person (someone who is God) and a nature (the divine nature).
a Person is a WHO. a Nature is a WHAT.

Jesus is God the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son, God the Logos,
from all eternity, begotten by The Father without a mother, of His essence, and is
divine. Jesus then BECAME MAN so now has the second nature of a creature
more specifically a human nature.

(The term "trinity" is not in the Bible, it is a short way of saying what IS in the Bible,
various hints and explicit statements, that give the same titles to all The Persons.
"God" is often used to refer to The Father, from Whom the other Two come, but
they come outside of time and are therefore always existing, never a time when the
Son or The Holy Spirit was not.  At Jesus' baptism, all three are present as distinct beings.
modalism is thus refuted.)

This human nature is held by Christ at the level of person not by merging it with
the divine at the level of nature. He is permanently human without losing any of His
divinity, and without the humanity being something other than human. This is a great
Mystery, don't try to fathom it.

Nestorianism separates the two natures so much that they become like two persons.
This is one confusion of person and nature. Monophysitism unites and confuses them
into one, another confusion of person and nature. miaphysitism and monotheletism
do something similar though milder enough to be close to Orthodoxy (technically
Orthodox because Trinitarian, Orthodox being the term developed in reaction to Arianism
which denied Jesus' full divinity).

Docetism (which monophysitism resembles) denies Jesus is truly physical, that this
is only an appearance not a reality. monophysitism would have His human nature
swallowed up in the ocean of His divinity so much that it might as well not exist. This
is a bit backwards, almost, because although His divinity was not swallowed up in
His humanity, it was HIDDEN in His humanity except at The Transfiguration.

the importance of the Council of Chalcedon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon

https://www.gci.org/history/chalcedon

https://orthodoxwiki.org/Fourth_Ecumenical_Council

Essentially, the Council of Chalcedon rejected Eutychianism, a variant of
Apollinarianism (which has NOTHING to do with traducianism except
inasmuch as it may misinterpret or misapply it, unlike the rash statements
of a proabortion video that pretends that anti abortionism partakes of the
Apollinarian heresy). Both in slightly different ways claimed that Jesus
Christ was essentially divine only, and that His humanity was swallowed
up in the ocean of His divinity so irrelevant at best (Eutychianism).

Like most if not all heresies, the origin was either clerical or monastic, the
latter in Eutyche's case, so much for fasting and prayer automatically
making you a good theologian.

The tendency semiconsciously to view Christ as divine only and lacking
much if not all humanity, is the sole reason that alledged proofs of His
having been married and maybe had children (false) are treated as
in some way disproving His divinity, the assumption being that anything
that showed He is human disproves His divinity. (ignored of course is the
issue of His dying on the Cross or suffering from flogging and nailing
or mention of His being hungry or tired or sleeping.)

The fact is, that since Jesus is both 100% divine AND 100% human,
IF He had married and had children such events would be totally
irrelevant. (There is no reason to believe they are true and always hail
from weird agendas and fraudulent "gospels" of much later origin than
the eyewitness Four Gospel of the New Testament. Indeed, knowing He
would not remain on earth long enough to be a good husband and father
He might well have deemed it unfair to use this option. It could also
interfere with His mission when it would start, so His wife and children
would effectively have to be abandoned if they didn't trail along with Him.
And maintaining celibacy was a good example anyway of self control
not only of bodily desires but of emotional needs.)

Chacedon is rejected by the monophysites, who range from really
monophysite similar to Eutychianism to miaphysite which is monophysitism
lite and tends to claim it is misunderstood. Both sides accept the Nicene
Creed, that He became flesh, but seem to understand it somewhat
differently. Using what he thought was from Athanasius but actually from
Apollinaris, St. Cyril of Alexandria had used the formula one divine nature
incarnate to answer Nestorius who divided the two natures too much.
But the interpretation that this means there is one emulsified combined
nature after the Incarnation that involves modification of both the divine
and human so that it is not really either anymore, is hardly what St. Cyril
was driving at and makes contrary statements here and there, but his focus was
on the excessive dividing of the natures so often sounded monophysite.

Chalcedon made sure its dogma matched that of St. Cyril who the monophysites
also claim. Monophysitism was also fuelled in part by politics, wanting to
use this religious variation to escape the control of the Byzantine emperor.

the Monophysites rejected Eutyches ALSO before long. so the end result is
closer to Orthodoxy.

Often their supporters quote St. John of Damascus who said they are Orthodox
in all ways but leave out that he said "EXCEPT" in this matter of their ideas
about the human and divine natures of Christ.

Also a problem is that the Greek language was evolving, so that physis and
hypostasis and so forth had more than one meaning. Likely many miaphysites
hold an Orthodox view but think they don't others don't and pretend they do.
Miracles and so forth are reported among them. One Orthodox writer considered
their Eucharist is valid, but because they partake of it in a state of sin (heresy)
it causes their souls harm or stores up wrath for them in the Judgement, rather
than being salvific.

The importance of Chalcedon is precisely that it declares that Christ is both
fully human and fully divine, refuting ahead of time some new agey notions
about Christ, and ruling out the use of either evidences of humanity or evidences
of divinity as proof against the Orthodox (or Roman Catholic or original
mainline protestant) Christology.

A subclinical Marcionism (denial of the Father being good and drawing a distinction
between "the God of the Old Testament" dismissed as petty and tribal and "the God
of the New Testament") and a subclinical monophysitism seems to exist in the
mentality of many protestants in America at least for many generations.