THE GLORY OF THE MATERIAL
Alexander Kalomiros
The glory of the deity is also called the glory of the Body ... Holy Body of Christ has always participated in the divine glory, for in the perfect union by hypostasis, it was perfectly filled with the glory of the Godhead invisible; the glory of the Word and of the flesh are one and the same glory.
Homily on the Transfiguration Damascene
We have not learned to be murderers of the body, but the passions. Poemen Abbas.
Men who have the habit of thinking like a philosopher, have difficulty in thinking Christians, and that because philosophical thinking is clear and orderly, logical and precise as mathematics. Religion, she speaks a different language, the language of mystery that does not seek to explain the inexplicable, nor to limit, in a stuffy word, meaning that the angels themselves sometimes do not understand.
In Sacred Scripture, we see the same word mean different things and different terms mean different aspects of the same thing. We meet contradictory phrases that hide the meanings and astonish those who understand. It was nice to search the Scripture, we are not found anywhere any systematic development of ideas.
All this displeases the human thought, which seeks only what can go in his own mold. For this reason, the men never left the Gospel as they have always wanted to systematize and thus, have filled the world with Christian systems, classified, to the extent human. They borrowed from the philosophy of systems to their liking that denied them the Gospel.
These are not the fathers or the saints who have done this, but scholars, intellectuals, the sages of this century, not holiness, have made place to be noticed in the world, the way to write and speak much, and thus the stuffed heads of men of true religious equations, so that the bushy tree of religion, full of mystery and life, eventually appear as a telegraph pole. This falsification of religion, has produced a narrow body and soul and their value in God's creation.
Philosophers have their definitions. When they speak of the body, they define what it is. Their exact definition is clear and totally understandable ; Same thing when they speak of the soul, they always know what they mean every word. And that is their weakness, for the creation or the Creator consent to be such that the philosophers would like.
Philosophers say that man is composed of two elements, body and soul. Body + Soul = Male. C + A = H, this is a very nice equation. What could be clearer than that. But if we read Scripture, we discover that it does not quite understand the math and it baffles us, as we believe have a nice well-posed equation. Where she talks about body and soul and fills us with joy for our equation C = A + H, then she starts to talk about the mind. So we are about to change our equation and put it differently: A + C + E = H, we come across a sentence like this: "AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH" and again everything is reversed, upside down. And our equation should be rested as follows: C = H.
God does not like algebra in religion and we must admit that, once and for all. God does not like the philosophical elucidation, even for its most simple creatures, but scientists believe the opposite: how he will accept the man for Himself? The more scientific formulations are clear, the more they seem to explain everything, they never disappoint least our thinking, because the world in its simplest molecule is much more mysterious than the wise men think, that never can penetrate the causes of beings.
If you had given up the algebra, you would not have been shocked by the sentence: "The Orthodox Christian is materialistic." Yes, it is materialistic and at the same time the most spiritual man. On one side he venerates the icons and receive the Body and Blood of God, on the other, he contemplates God "Face to Face." If you outlaw the ancient philosophers, you would never have written: "WE ACCEPT THE ADOPTION, WHICH WE ISSUED THE BODY." The Apostle Paul wrote, "redemption of the body" and not "BE ISSUED TO THE BODY." No, God did not make a bad building which he would then come to deliver us. creatures of God are "very good". If you were under estimated the math, you would not have sent a list of equations made the New Testament, where "the body appears against the spirit". Equations as if it were, I could, too, find much in the Holy Scripture, which prove the opposite.
The first passage of Scripture that you are indicating -maintenance of Christ with Nicodemus- reveals no contradiction between body and mind of man.
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh (that is to say the man not yet renewed by the grace of the Holy Spirit), and thus born of the Spirit (Holy Spirit) is spirit . "(Cf. Jn . 3: 6 ). This passage shows us the difference between man without Christ and man in Christ.
The Lord did say, as you write: "It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing" (cf. Jn 6 : 63 ), however before pronouncing these words, He says others are fearful " I am the living Bread which came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I give is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world. " "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him" (Jn 6 : 51.56 ).
How can we, after these words of Christ, despise the flesh?
Another example may lead us astray in our conclusions, it is a word of Scripture, taken from the first Epistle to the Corinthians you mention separated from its context: "Flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor.15 : 50 ). This quote separate context, seems to deny the Resurrection of the body, while the Apostle Paul, in this part of his epistle, speaks precisely to the Resurrection of the body, "... The body sown = animal psychic (psychic body, which expression changeable, inconstant, variable for mathematicians) raised a spiritual body ... All we shall be changed in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye ... The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Because it must mortal must put on immortality ... (I Cor . 15: 44; 51-53). The Apostle says that our corruptible flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God, if they are not immortal. So if the flesh corruptible must be clothed with immortality is that it is not contemptible nor condemned, nor bad.
The word that follows, instead of demonstrating that I am wrong in saying that evil is not the flesh but the carnal mind, proves On the contrary, I'm right. "The thought of the flesh is death, the thought of the mind that's life and peace" (Rom . 8: 6 ).
Shortly before, the Apostle writes: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not in flesh but in the Spirit" (cf. . Rom. 8: 1.4 ).
So the lifestyle of the man who is more than flesh and evil, not the flesh itself. For if it were well, how the Apostle could he write below, that Christ "condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom . 8: 3 )? If the flesh was sin, God became flesh would become a sinner! Far from us such blasphemy. If the word flesh the Apostle heard the body, how could he say lower, to men who had a body: "For you, you do not live in the flesh but in the Spirit" (Rom . 8: 9 ).
I think I still right in saying that evil is not the flesh, that is to say, body matter (which will be delivered from the bondage of corruption), but thought, carnal affection, life in the flesh, as if we were only flesh, no relation to the Spirit. For as the Apostle says again, the body is unable to sin, when Christ dwells in us. "If Christ is in you, the body, indeed, is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwell in us, He who raised Christ from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth you. "(Rom . 8, 10-11 ).
We reach the same conclusion, when we see how the Fathers have commented on the passage you quote: "the flesh has desires against those of the mind, and spirit has contrary to those of the flesh. "(Gal . 5, 17 ).
Here the Apostle calls the carnal mind flesh addicted to carnal and material things, which lead the soul with them, and he calls spirit, spiritual thought given over to spiritual things, high and divine. These two thoughts have desires contrary to fight, one resulting in lower body and soul, the other unites soul and body.
In the previous verse, the Apostle Paul explains what he meant: "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" ( Gal.5: 16).
This is therefore the desires of the flesh, affection for things carnal and material from fallen man where corruption has been enlarged, as opposed to spiritual thought addicted to higher things, spiritual and divine. The desire of the flesh was given to man by God. God made us to be hungry, thirsty, poor women, etc. ... All these things are natural and can not harm humans when they are within the limits of their assignments. They become dangerous when the soul is empty, when not filled with God's presence when she fills her empty bodily pleasures. If place for God in the heart is occupied by the pleasures of the flesh, the heart does can then accept God and have him as host. is how the flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. "O wretched man that I am! "Cried the apostle. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. "(See Rom . 7: 24-25 ). That, say the heathen triumph, that the Apostle asks to be freed from his body. The Apostle who preached the resurrection of the body, he asks to be truly free of his body? The Apostle who said: "If Christ has not raised, our preaching is vain, vain as our faith ... you are still in your sins, and therefore those who have died in Christ are lost. If it is in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are the most unhappy of all men. And we, why are we in jeopardy every hour? ... If the dead rise not, eat and drink, for tomorrow we die ... some do not know God, I say this to your shame ... "(1 Cor . 15: 14, 17-19, 32-34 ).
The Apostle does not say it does not matter if the body not raised, provided that the souls live in heaven, but he says very clearly: "If the dead rise not, those who have died in Christ are lost. "(1Cor . 15: 16, 18 ).
And what does he mean when he says: "Who shall deliver me from this body of death? "(Rom . 7: 24 ).
For Christians, death is not something natural, it is not a creation of God or a punishment from God to men, because of the disobedience of Adam but a consequence of the abyss between God and man, by the attitude of Adam before God , when Adam on the board of the Devil, would become God by his own forces. In separating Life, man as prey in the hands of the devil, was put to death. This is the body of the dead body of corruption, the body must die, in fact already dead.
"Who shall deliver me from this body of death? "
Who, except one who will conquer death, which rise from the dead, bringing the world from above, a body incorruptible and immortal? Which, if not Christ?
"So I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. "(Rom . 7: 25 )
All that Hellenic philosophers have said on the souls as entities in themselves enough and immortal by nature, has been rejected and disowned by the Church.
"Christ is risen from the dead by death he conquered death, and those in the tombs, he gave life. "
They were in the graves, but they did not have life. The life Christ gives them the Resurrection. Hellenic philosophers who believed that the body was a prison for the soul, could not accept the preaching of the Resurrection, as the Apostle Paul was heard at the Areopagus. What would they do with the Resurrection, those who believed that the soul freed from his body was happy living in another world. Why jail again in the body? -We hear you, again, another time about that!
No, death for both Hebrew for Christians, does not relieve us of the weight of the material and is a formidable and terrible disaster of God's creation! Life in hell is not better than life on earth, she can not even be called life. That is why the people of ancient Hellas, which instinctively mourned the dead who were in the Tartars of Hell, where the daylight never entered, where the sun does not warm shadows, philosophers knew more than his subtle mind.
Death has been the force of evil, which made us docile toys in his hands. Death stood up before us terrible, relentless preacher of our nothingness. It was feared the whip, which made us run like wild horses, we struggled on the road without end. She was the soul of our works, our driving force, the cause that has instilled in us the love of glory and pride. We stained in finding glory in our descendants, our works, the immortality lost. We lived in stunning, active in a dream, creating a world around us when our fugitive tragedy is forgotten. In the glory, wealth and pleasure, we sought a false sense of existence. We have cultivated the knowledge acquired prematurely, to make the foundation of our value. We have proclaimed that the man was a value in itself, it was a part of the divine essence (soul immortal by nature and not by grace) and he did not need God. We standing before us like an idol and we have served as a god. We have deified its shape and characteristics, its virtues and passions (the twelve gods of Greece). We thought he could free himself by his own strength and perfect one. We measure of all things sacred. We have deified his reason, his heart, his instincts. Classical Hellenic civilization, was mainly based on reason, religion and philosophy as the Far East on the experience and strength of man, the one and the other based solely on the man. The man had the illusion of being free, when in reality he was a slave. Slave of his passions, slave of fate, corruption, death, and through them, a slave subject to the devil. So that's the meaning of the words of the Apostle: "By one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and death s is extended to all men because all men sinned. " (Rom.5: 12)!
"By the envy of the devil, death entered the world (Sag.2: 24). Thus the men fell into sin, driven by the fear of death; "by the fear of death, they were all their lifetime subject to bondage. " (Heb.2: 15).
Christ, therefore, does not come into the world to deliver us from our bodies, to deliver us from the material, nor is he came to deliver us from his creation. Instead, He came to deliver his material creation. is why Easter is the biggest celebration of Orthodox that day with been the completion of the Mission of God on earth. That day, the devil lamented, seeing destroyed his dominion over men. That day, the Tartars of Hell saw the Enlightenment, and the souls of the righteous have been brought back to life and moved to Paradise where they await their resurrection total to be held at the Second Coming of the Lord.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, powers, principalities of darkness of this world" (Eph.6: 12) .
It is not flesh and blood we fight, but the devil. I stress this, because I believe that nothing is more important for those who struggle, knowing your enemy. All those who believe, and they are many-that the evil we must fight is the body and matter, God hit in this fight, instead of hitting the devil. Christians ignore what the Lord has come to deliver them! By analyzing the thinking of many, one discovers that they all believe that Christ came to deliver us the righteousness of God and his creation. Are there more blasphemy?
I still proclaim, and I am not a heretic, that flesh and matter are the door of salvation. Saint Athanasius the Great said that "human nature assumed by the Word made Man, was the first and before the other, to be saved and delivered, because now the body of the Word itself" .
Then we also with her, have been issued, because of the kinship of the flesh and saved concorporels like Him; " coordinated and linked together to Him by the identity of the flesh, we acquired the incorruptibility, immortality and deification " ( Against the Arians ).
The flesh is not contemptible, as willing and believe those who philosophize. The significance of the flesh in the Holy Scripture, lies a great mystery, the mystery of all human nature.
"We were all brought in his own flesh, and all we are in Him. " ( St. Cyril of Alexandria )
"It took the whole man, and he was entirely and completely united with him in order to save the whole. What is not assumed remains unhealed. " (St. John Damascene ).
Human nature is one and indivisible, as the nature of God, even if men are an immense multitude, even as they think, they are independent of each other. The fall of Adam brought death and corruption, not only himself but also to any human nature. Adam became corruptible, and with him all men became mortal because of the identity of nature. Men do not sin in Adam's nature, nor have they been punished for the guilt of a sin committed insane without their consent, but to have inherited a corrupt nature of Adam and death They were enslaved and subjected to the devil to sin. As Adam passed his own corruption to all human nature, so Christ sent his own incorruptibility to all mankind.
"Nature is one, united in itself, indivisible unit, it can increase by no addition or subtraction by any decrease. It is, even if it appears in a multitude, not fragmented, permanent total, undivided, in each of those involved ... We can say that there is only one man, although in nature they appear ... The countless gold staters are many, but gold is one, as well countless individuals are carriers of human nature, such as Pierre, and Jean Jacques, but all of them, there is that one man. " ( St. Gregory Nyssa , There are not three Gods ).
The Word became flesh and men have become participants of the divine nature (2 Peter 1: 4). Do you see the role of the flesh? That's why I say and I repeat, even if this scandal, that the Incarnation of Christ, God and creation are united without confusion, and since each stone is a part of the Body of God, because the flesh Human is earth and every element is an element of the universe. Therefore we expect not only the resurrection the dead, but also the resurrection of creation "a new earth, new heaven" (2 Peter 3: 13). And it is not, as you fear, pantheism. My words are clear: God and creation are united are confusing. Fathers are formal. As iron is kissed by fire, the man is deified "through its participation in the Divine Light and not by a transfer in the divine essence. " (St John Damascene ). God "becomes truly man, to make us gods by grace. " (St Maximus the Confessor to Thalassios )
So the body and flesh in the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, often mean the totality of human nature. "The Lord puts on flesh and became man, that through this flesh, the Word we deify, takes us and gives us eternal life" ( St Athanasius On the Incarnation of the Word ). Besides, the Church is the Body of Christ and our membership in the Body of Christ makes us worthy of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Our religion is not that of philosophers, but the religion of the Mysteries; it does not seek to explain the inexplicable, which also need not be explained . She speaks of the flesh, mind, body, mind, and without analyzing them without defining them. Only philosophers claim to know what the spirit is, what material, what flesh, what the soul. For Christians this is mystery, expressions of human nature one and indivisible, expressions necessary for the mind can grasp some states of man, for example the term "soul" means that remains after death, and the "body", which breaks down after death-that what is broken is not the living body but the body dead and these expressions become dangerous when we give them a sense absolute, when we include all the mystery of man, and understand how philosophers, soul and body. In philosophy, we can never penetrate the mystery of the Divine Revelation. How to explain the theory of the philosophers, the words of the Church: "Thou who has brought the essence of land of mortals, and as these:" You are dust and you will return to dust "or" You have honored your image, O Word, the creature of your hands, you have painted, in material form, the likeness of the spiritual essence, or the peak on which Fathers raising the flesh "the glory of the Deity is also called glory of the body ... the holy body of Christ has always participated in the divine glory, because without the sublime union, according to the hypostasis, it was perfectly filled the glory of the Godhead invisible; the glory of the Word and of the flesh are one and the same glory. " ( Damascene Homily on the Transfiguration).
You want to arrest me on a path that, according to your fears, could lead me to pantheism. What impresses me is to see you outraged by things that are, however, the very foundation upon which our Church founded the veneration of icons. That the Grace of God sanctifies the physical creation, I do not see how this could offend one Orthodox. Only Franks and Protestants do not accept that God is in direct contact with his creation. But for us Orthodox, this is the truth and the center of our spiritual life. The Fathers were not only to teach and fight to fortify these truths, the Church also ruled, conciliarly at the time of St. Gregory Palamas († 1359). The Grace of God, that waters of creation, not a creature, as taught Westerners to avoid the pantheism and think philosophers. The Grace of God is an uncreated energies of God. God reaches out his hand to his creatures and looked to him as ours tends to draw us to Him and make us his own. This is not pantheism, because it is not God's Essence which communicates with his creatures, but his energy. "Whoever loves me keep my words and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him" (Jn. 14: 23).
"Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you" (1 Cor. 6: 19).
God is not identical with his creation, nor did he stay away from her. He lives in his saints, and their exemption if its energy efficiently, even after their death, their bones and their bodies are miracles, and their icons, made of wood, are also miracles. That is the strength of the Christian God and his love for us who are ungrateful!
... I am not exaggerating when he spoke. I am just pointing out, quite simply, forgotten truths. If anyone is surprised, it is due to its Hellenistic philosophical training, not the Orthodox patristic tradition. You say that the equation C = A + H. (Body, soul, spirit = man) recalls some tripartite; she recalls very well and it is what I was thinking while writing. This is exactly the error I reported her to the rationalists, they can not formulate equations and say, simultaneously Orthodox. Philosophers are those who talk of bipartisanship and tripartism. Bipartite, tripartite, single party, synthetic, with the meaning they give to these words are not concepts patristic, but philosophical concepts. Man can be described by equations, especially that of rationalist theology. The creation of man is "dangerous, difficult to explain, a secret and a great mystery of God ... "
