Nothing is your fault

You may have read the headlines yesterday where the AMA (American Medical Association) labeled obesity as a disease.  That's right.  Obesity has now joined the undistinguished and now easy to get into club of diseases joining AIDS, cancer, alcoholism, the common cold, flu, chicken pox, etc..  You can read details here. 

What does this say about the AMA and society at large?  We have essentially made a lack of willpower into a disease which is therefore out of someone's hands to control and must be treated medically.  Are we saying that the deadly sin of gluttony is just a medical condition?  I hope not.  Now, before you condemn me for being insensitive, let me be clear that I do realize that there are medical conditions such as those that affect the hypothalamus or thyroid gland that can trigger overeating and also obesity is a trait in my family and something that I particularly have to guard against especially if I want to remain on the earth long enough to raise my son with my wife.

So, what is the AMA telling us?  Quite simply: it's not your fault.  Just like alcoholism: it's not your fault. You have a disease. You're powerless. You need medicine, you need doctors, you need pills, you need hospitals or rehabilitation centers.  YOU'RE NOT AT FAULT!

I doubt if the AMA was looking towards modern Protestantism when it redefined obesity as a disease, but modern Protestantism does seem often enough to emphasize that it's not your fault since God loves you anyway.  Maybe that same cultural opinion has informed the AMA.  The point is that this should not be surprising in any way.  Our culture regards sin as something that results from mitigating circumstances.  The reason he murdered that person is because he wasn't loved as a child. The reason she stole is because she grew up impoverished.  The reason he raped is because he was spurned by women.  The list goes on and on.  What are we responsible for anymore?  Nothing, it seems.  Everything can be reduced to a legal justification and now, a disease.

When Christ (and also St. John the Baptist) began his ministry, his first word was "repent!"  Now, the Greek word for "repent" is μετανοιετε.  Literally, it means to change your nous which is often mistranslated as mind.  The nous is called the window into the soul by St. John Damascene.  It is more than an intellectual sifter. I could dedicate a whole post to what the word means.  The nous, though, is something that sets us apart as human beings, created in the image of God, from the animals.  Repentance is created by change of our very self, not mere words or platitudes we say, but a  change in who we are to grow in union with Christ.   If nothing is our fault, then there can be no repentance.  Repentance demands us to see fault.  How can we change if we don't know from what we need to flee? 

Repentance also demands the use of our will oriented towards God.  St. Augustine says that the will is a medium bonum, a so-so good thing.  It can be used for good just as it can for evil.  The will also is one of the Trinity of the mind.  Will is joined with memory and reason.  All of those coexist or subsist within each other yet will is not reason and reason is not memory and memory not will. (Very Trinitarian, wouldn't you say?). If one of those is shackled then the others are affected.  God's will, reason and memory are perfect.  Ours are not.  But if God is also just, how can any of us be condemned if we were not responsible for our own actions?  Free will may be shackled, but it can still break the chains.

I wonder how many of us will plead before the dread judgment that our sins are not our fault?  Hopefully, someone will shut us up before we get that far.  Fortunately, Christ is also merciful and compassionate and loving; maybe He will overlook the fault that we should declare and simply say, "Come and sit at my right hand."

Rehabilitating Pelagius

Apparently, the Episcopal (Anglican) Diocese of Atlanta wants to rehabilitate the standing of 5th century arch-heretic, Pelagius. Here's a synopsis of what the Diocesan Convention will be asked to do:

The Diocese of Atlanta has been asked to rehabilitate Pelagius.

Delegates to the diocesan convention will be asked to reverse the condemnation of the Council of Carthage upon Pelagius, and to explore whether the Fifth century heretic may inform the theology of the Episcopal Church.

Resolution R11-7 before the convention states in part:

"Whereas the historical record of Pelagius's contribution to our theological tradition is shrouded in the political ambition of his theological antagonists who sought to discredit what they felt was a threat to the empire, and their ecclesiastical dominance, and whereas an understanding of his life and writings might bring more to bear on his good standing in our tradition;"

"And whereas his restitution as a viable theological voice within our tradition might encourage a deeper understanding of sin, grace, free will, and the goodness of God's creation, and whereas in as much as the history of Pelagius represents to some the struggle for theological exploration that is our birthright as Anglicans, Be it resolved, that this 105th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta appoint a committee of discernment overseen by our Bishop, to consider these matters as a means to honor the contributions of Pelagius and reclaim his voice in our tradition."

Now, the Episcopalians have had a great track record in recent years of abandoning basic church teaching and substituting it for what they want, yet still claiming it's all guided by the Holy Spirit. So this should come as no surprise. A couple of years ago, I saw a satirical add promoting the Episcopal Church which claims: "Don't believe in that crap (i.e. traditional Christianity)? Neither do we."

I read about this happening here and I decided to add my own two cents. Here is my reply:

There is a great tendency in modern theological circles to elevate the arch-heretics of the ancient church to the status of Fathers of the Church, though their views were repudiated by the Fathers of the Church. So, if the Episcopal Diocese of Atalanta has their way, not only Pelagius, but Origen, Severus of Antioch, Theodore of Mopsuetia, Arius, Apollinarius, Sabellius, etc. will now be added to the list of church fathers and maybe venerated as saints.

There is no doubt that many of these heretics were pious men. But before the church could effectively speak on the objective matters of the faith, they first had to turn to the subject matters of faith (e.g. grace vs. works, nature of the Godhead, how many natures Christ had) which required no wiggle room.

Dennis asks if God wants empty vessels returning to God? That’s not what Augustine had in mind. First of all, we must remember that Christ (from st. Paul’s letter to the Philippians) emptied himself of His divinity in his assumption of humanity. But in His humanity, Christ revealed His Divinity at various points in his ministry, notably Theophany and the Transfiguration. For the Christian, he must empty himself of the passions that Christ may live in him. Such cannot be attained rigid asceticism; it must be cooperative. Such synergy is what typifies the orthodox understanding of grace vs. free works. Pelagius said God’s grace was wholly unnecessary; Augustine took a 180 degree turn and insisted it was entirely grace (a thought he later clarified and retracted in this Retractations written at the end of his life in 430 A.D.). Both Pelagius and Augustine (at the time) were monoergistic. Neither system was synergistic. It is only in cooperation with God that we empty ourselves and thus become filled with the Spirit. It’s paradox, like many orthodox Christian teachings.

The Blessed Augustine erred in his insistence on grace and denying of free will. But that does not prove that Pelagius and his followers, like Julianus, were right. It is also important to note that though the eastern churches couldn’t figure out what the problem with Pelagius was, Pelagius and Julianus were still condemned by the Synod of Jerusalem in 416 (if memory serves). Pelagius was not a saint and should not be elevated to that rank nor should he be ranked as a church father. He was just as wrong (if not more so) than Augustine.

One more thing. Augustine should not condemned just because the radical reformers and Lutherans appealed to him alone as their church father, par excellence. Augustine would have been astonished to learn of what they took from his writings to be the basis for their teachings.

Now, I may be wrong with a few dates and spellings of a few names, but I'm pretty sure this is the Orthodox and orthodox view of Pelagius. Augustine, as many know, is a bogeyman for a lot of Orthodox Christians, especially those influenced by the late Fr. John Romanides and Rev. Dr. Michael Azkoul, both of whom were vehemently anti-Augustinian though, as I have said before, I don't think they ever have read Augustine. Augustine is particularly beloved of many Greek Old Calendarists.

I'm going to keep tabs on this story and see what the result is. Of course, no matter how it turns out, I sincerely doubt that any of the Orthodox churches, Oriental Orthodox churches or even the Roman Catholic Church will follow suit. The Episcopalians revel so much in making waves so let them.

Patristic Quote of the Day

We can know what God is not, but we cannot know what God is.--St. Augustine

I challenge any Orthodox person, lay or clergy, to substantiate that Augustine is not an ardent defender of the apophatic theology of the Eastern Churches. Granted, one quote is not enough to prove anything, but I believe that those among the Orthodox who have labeled him as an extreme Western cataphatic theologian (like Fr. Romanides) have never really read Augustine.

Commemoration of our St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius

Today (new calendar), June 15, the Holy Orthodox Church commemorates (at least some of it does) our father among the saints, St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius. In the west, his feast day is celebrated on August 28 and with much greater solemnity and feasting than the East. Many Eastern churches (I'm talking about individual parishes and jurisdictions) will flatly refuse to commemorate St. Augustine today. In fact, his name is not even found in the Holy Transfiguration Monastery Great Horologion which has become standard use among many Orthodox churches of various jurisdictions in this country. Other jurisdictions give him only a passing notice. Consider St. Nicholiai Velimirovich's entry from the Prologue of Ohrid:

Augustine turned from paganism to Christianity, thanks to the counsels, tears and prayers of his mother Monica. He was a great teacher of the Church and an influential writer but with certain unapproved extremes in his teaching. As bishop of Hippo, he glorified the Lord for thirty-five years and lived a total of seventy-six years on earth (354-430 A.D.).

A lot of saints have this much said about them, but mainly because there are so few details about their lives that it warrants only a few words. Other Orthodox churches will commemorate him but will give him a different honorific, preferring to call him "blessed" (Latin, beatus; Greek, makarios) which shows the apprehension that many Orthodox show to him.

For me, Augustine is a saint. I think to call him less does a great disservice to what God did through this man. Was he incorrect in some of his teachings? Absolutely, but what great father of the Church is completely free of some error? St. Isaac of Syria had a Christology that was near Nestorian; St. Gregory of Nyssa believed that even Satan would be saved, a universal salvation! That's only two notable examples, but we have no problems commemorating these two men on the calendar.

Every year, during Great Lent, I try (operative word) to get through Augustine's Confessions. Truly, it is a masterpiece of Latin literature. The reason I like this work so much (I've read it many times since I first picked it up in my junior year of college for a seminar) is that this autobiography is the story of what kind of life man must live--the life of repentance. For all his defective theology on grace and free will, show me one Church Father who writes as much, who preaches as much, who lives as much repentance as Augustine? I will bet you would be hard pressed to find one, though I'm sure there are a few.

Sainthood has never meant perfection. We venerate those men and women as saints who fought the good fight and ended their lives in fervent repentance for the sake of what Christ did. Augustine was not perfect, nor was St. John Chrysostom, nor was St. Seraphim of Sarov, nor were the Emperor saints like Constantine or Justinian. The problem is not so much about Augustine's writings as much as it is about how his writings have been used (and distorted) by the Roman Catholic Church to perpetuate dogmas and doctrines which are clearly outside of the consensus patruum and the deposit of the faith, handed down, once and for all to the saints (Jude 3). St. Augustine, in many ways, is guilty then by association.

There are some Orthodox writers such as Fr. John Romanides and Dr. Rev. Michael Azkoul who will absolutely show no quarter to Augustine, going so far as to call him an arch-heretic. But others have shown a more balanced treatment. One of the few books I would ever recommend of Fr. Seraphim (Rose) is his book The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church (There we go with "blessed" again!).

Augustine will probably be forever vilified, glossed over, ignored or paid only lip-service in the Eastern Churches, but, though I am saddened by that, I don't think he is losing sleep over it nor ceasing in his intercessions for us to come to that life of repentance. Through his intercessions, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy upon us and save us!