An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics
The Real Holy Grail: An Orthodox Response to Dan Brown's Deceptions in Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code
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distinctiveness of the Holy Spirit is absent among many, because they
only know Him through His role and deeds. They know Him as a "Power
of sanctification"; but rarely did they know Him, as Holy or King
(as we call upon Him in our prominent prayer: "O Heavenly King, O
comforter…"). All this could be because, popularly, Christians
were attracted to the persona of Christ from the point of His incarnation
and did not pay attention to Christ's continuation within and through
the Holy Spirit in the times of humanity.
They read the Master's promise: "Lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world." (Matt 28:20) but never did they
questioned themselves how? How is it that the ascended and "hidden"
Master is among and within us? This is what the evangelists have premeditated
upon, and then clarified, that the everyday coming of Christ unto us is
possible through His Spirit.
Jesus the Nazarene did not leave us a book. He left us love, death
and victory over this death. He used to express His love in words, some
of which were documented. His followers depicted His image in some books
containing a magnitude of His words and also many of their own words.
And when the followers of the followers received these books they discerned
that the Holy Spirit enabled His apostles to write these "divine"
words—the same way as the Master's words were divine—because
it was the same Holy Spirit who spoke through Him and through them. And
if it said in the current translations that: "this Book is entirely
inspired by God", what originally appeared in the Greek original
was: "this Book contains inspirations of God."—
In a way that this relation becomes organic — between the Word that
precipitated in the text, and the Spirit that inspired it to the writer.
The Spirit instructs the author — not in the understanding of dictating
— but in the meaning that He abides in the writer. And the reader,
if he was filled with the Spirit, will discover that that what he read
is coming from above. The Word will not abide in the heart, unless transported
by the Spirit.
We never abandoned the interpretation, which we have filled with,
thousands and thousands of tomes. We analysed the ancient languages, employed
the explication in the preaching, elaborated upon the "first-words"
thousands of letters of theology, and we came up with dictionaries containing
every single idiom of the Book analysed and conjugated. We believed that
some interpretations were within the straightness of faith, or what we
call in Greek the Orthodoxy of faith, and some other interpretations were
off the point. Also, that within the Orthodoxy we have distinctiveness
but never convergence. We preached that the interpretation is never a
strict linguistic effort, but that in addition to it, is a continuation
of the Tradition that the Spirit had pronounced throughout the ages giving
witness to Himself through numerous mouths or pens, which He Himself contrasted
to enrich the variety of gifts. The great interpreter is him whom the
Spirit of God had descended upon and, on the other hand, the purified
reader is him who was filled with the Spirit of God.
The interpreters are not the prime important keys for they may
be indulged with this world's spirit. Only the Church—as a whole—
in that which it decides upon in conjunction with its transmitted heritage
of "ancient Words" [i.e. Holy Tradition], is the standard
of Orthodoxy. The Church looks for the Spirit of God in the words that
were said after Christ, the Spirit that guides her towards Himself, enables
her to accept one interpretation and reject another and builds upon the
good words through the process of inspection and purification at the same
time. This is why we tend to accept those interpreters whom we knew through
their pure conduct. Still, this isn't a blind trail, because we always
put to work together the spirits of assessment and obedience. You might
feel yourself—after getting armed with the modern techniques of critique
and historical study—on a level of understanding that might be more
precise, in some of its aspects, than the understanding of the ancient
fathers. But we are still unified with them through the one Spirit. This
diversified union is what happened on Pentecost upon the descent of the
Holy Spirit, on each of the disciples, in the form of fiery tongues. The
fire is one, but one apostle's way of expression is different from the
other apostle's. Christianity is a group of voices and not a single voice.
Christianity is the harmony of the united diversity.
If the Spirit is one in the different texts of the gospels, then
these gospels are one epistle. Here's Matthew—the Spirit upon him—coming
with a book that reveals that Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited Messiah.
Matthew directs his gospel to the Jews of Palestine and to those who were
Christianised of them. Then comes Luke the Antiochian, with his Greek
heritage, to demonstrate that Him who appeared in Palestine is the Saviour
of the world, as John similarly proclaims that this same Man is the Word
eternally proceeding from the Father.
Each of the evangelists was charismatic in his human nature because
each preached to peoples from their own cultural frame. Their gospel comes
from God and man together, on the type of Christ who was from God and
man together. This is the foundation of the canonical authority for the
historical-background study of these books' origination. The humanity
of the Bible doesn't counteract its divinity, and its divinity respects
its humanity exactly how it happened in the person of Christ. The Christian
God, incarnates His Son, incarnates His Words in such a way that, you
always need to connect to a co-ordinate of history and geography in order
to comprehend it.
God's language, in its expressionism, is not different from the
language of humans. God adopted the human language in order to reach unto
us. You can only attain His reason, through expressions that the humans
understood once it was said unto them. It is the human language in itself
but inspired. The words of God had their rationale both in Him and in
the humans: as they were in a respective era. The epochs are the result
of the human expression of feelings and beliefs. Yes, the divine reason
descends upon the author but it never violates him. From the era of the
author, you ascend to the divine reason. From the age of the author you
attain the eternity of God.
Not that you might add a single letter as cautioned by the author
of the book of Revelation when talking about his book: "If anyone
adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written
in this book."(22:18). You don't come up with something new,
but you are renewed through the eternal and stable past, which you assimilate
through the Spirit. You then appear to those who were sanctified as a
new book transcribed by the Spirit.
The whole issue lies in two principles: First, Christ is "the
Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."
(Rev 22:13). Second, you may never enter the kingdom of God unless you
were born from the Spirit. The great importance of the Holy Spirit is
that He takes from the living and victorious Christ who sits at the right-hand
of the Father and lays Him today as a personal food for you. The question
is that, how God becomes your God today, in the distinctiveness of your
personality in such a way that you will not vanish in His all-global Word
(when this Word truly abides within you: in your human formulation, your
character and language, in a way that the gospel will not remain a book,
but that you will become a gospel)? You can't put the Book aside, otherwise
you will become a prey of your own delusions, which may inspire you your
own religion. This is the necessity of the established word. But the necessity
of the Spirit is that the word starts originating through you.
There are then two concerns: The caution of that you may worship
the Holy Bible as an idol and therefore become frozen spiritually. Or
that you may surrender to an emotional approximation of God without any
reasoning or understanding. Surely the greatest danger is that you abandon
the Holy Bible and, instead of referring to it you start coming up with
your own words, from your flesh, blood and the traditions of humans. The
first danger transforms you to a playback tape because you avoid your
personality and become strangled with the divine words because you live
outside your time and outside its problems and consequently you do not
testify. The second danger is that you worship your own words and tastes,
and become your own self-idol.
If you did not receive your freedom from God to be able to say
your word, God becomes then your defiant. And if God did not receive from
you your freedom to be contented with it, He will never be your Father.
If you did not realise that God converses with you through His eternal
words, you will feel that He abandoned you and if you did not converse
with Him through the words of your heart you will fail to see His Fatherhood.
The secret of His Fatherhood is that He sets you a son of His using His
words for you to live by them.
His Spirit then, will embrace your human
spirit, as you both were one. God acquired a human face to enable you
to understand how great His love is for you.
Published Saturday
May 29, 1999 in the © An-Nahar, Lebanese news paper (http://www.annahar.com.lb/htd/pdfed2.html)—Translated from Arabic.
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