Sin, chastisement, punishment and suffering

[Ray Kaliss]

New thread grafted from the thread "Gay Love"


Regarding your above statement, I would refer you to Genesis 3:21 which is immediately after the fall of man:

One of the consequences of the fall is God clothing us with 'tunics of skin', This is better than a sudden and complete death which could have been the consequence for Adam and Eve and is the first biblical evidence of God's mercy. But why did God fashion us this way due to the fall? The answer lies in the next sentence of Scripture (Genesis 3:22):

Now, we see the second early evidence of God's divine mercy. How? Because had Adam and Eve stayed in the Garden of Eden and also tasted of the Tree of Life (which is not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), then our separation from God, that is, our death, would be eternal. God saved us from eternal estrangement by allowing the introduction of decay and physical death to these 'tunics of skin'.

With all due respect to the fathers of the church ...

only a few of them knew how to read the cosmogony of Moses (the narrations of Genesis) .. these narrations are certainly not a historical record as we today would expect them to be. And as the knowledge of biblical antiquities ebbed away ... the Greek fathers lent to the narrations of Genesis a Greek tendency to read them literally as a historical record.

I say again ... these narrations are a cosmogony... the 'cosmogony of Moses' is exactly what the very early Council called these narrations. The book of Genesis is the epic of the nation of Israel just as the stories of Homer are the epic of Greece and the Ennead of Virgil is the epic of Rome and the story of Gilgamesh is the epic of the Chaldeans. A cosmogony. A cosmogony.


"One of the consequences of the fall is God clothing us with 'tunics of skin',"

think about this my friend. What you are saying .. is that Adam had no skin before the fall. He had no flesh. How then did he walk in the garden? how then did he eat the fruit? Perhaps he was just bones at the time? but bones are part of the flesh body .. so then what do you imagine Adam to be without flesh and bones??

There has always been two ways to interpret the narrations of Genesis .. one way is literally (as a historical record) and the other way is metaphorically (which is how a cosmogony is read). The allegorical reading of Genesis when done by the fathers - is called the spiritual meaning.

One should read a book of history (chronicles) as history, a book of psalms as poetry and songs for worship, a book of prophecy as allegorical, an epistle as a letter, and a cosmogony as a cosmogony.

Think about it .. God (who can do all things) needed six days to make the world?? What he can do in one instant - he needed six days to accomplish? And the sun (that by which we measure a day as the earth rotates) was not created till the fourth day. How then were there three days (measured by the sun) before the sun even existed?

Adam is not even a name ... it is a description which is roughly equivalent to the word 'human' or 'man-kind' ... it can mean one single human, a group of humans, or all humanity in total. Eve is not a name either .. it too is a description and the woman received it only after the fall. No one else in the history of all Israel up to the time of Christ had a 'name' of Adam or a name of Eve .. why?? because these are not Jewish names. What father would name his son 'Mankind' ?? when he knows the word designates the entire species.

The tunics of flesh you speak of is a misunderstanding of the words ... the Hebrew means something similar to 'a covering over the flesh' and has often been portrayed in art as a fig leaf (a symbol of the laws of Israel) placed over the genitals. A clear symbol that our powers of generation are to be restrined by the social laws.

Eden means something similar to 'paradise' and our Lord refers to it while on the cross "Today you will be with me in paradise." it is not a physical place with a geographical location - it is rather and orientation of the mind. The garden represents all-Providence ... a condition (of the mind and heart) where we are aware that God's is providing for us all we need. A man who lives by Providence - lives in the this 'garden'. A man who does his own self-providence lives outside the garden.

The Old Testament (a lessor understanding of God) believed in a God who chastises (punishes) the sins of Israel ... but the New Testament did away with that older and lessor understanding of God. The chastisement of Jesus (punished for our sins) was the *end* of chastisement. This is one of the major themes of the gospels ... any Jew reading the gospels would immediatly see that the chastisements so enumerated in the Old Testement ... culminated in the crucifixtion ... takem off of humanity and put upon Jesus.

We are to understand that God loves us unconditionally - yet through our feedom we can chose to live by Providence or not. We can follow conscience or we can follow our lower animal nature (which has no capacity to know God). WE can be filled with knowing God or we can select to be without God.

Let me appeal to your reason. If you punish your own son ... the reason you punish him is that you know that your son is more capable in some matter but has willingly chosen not to live up to his capability.

A visitor to you house lays a pack of ciggetes on your kitchen table. If your son (a baby of 2 years old) reaches out his little hand and takes a ciggerette - do you punish him? Do you punish someone who does not have the capability of knowing what a ciggerette is and how harmful they can be?? Do you punish the bay for 'sealing' when the 2 year old has no concept of property ownership??

Yet if your son at 17 takes a ciggerete out of the visitors pack - you KNOW he knows better than to do that. You know he has willfully disregarded what you taught him. While you can not change his heart through punishment - you can modify his social behavior through chastisement.

Punishment and chastisements has never ever once in all recorded time and history .. changed a man's heart. It may change his physical behavior ... but it can not change his heart. The person punished may just as well hate you for causing him pain. He may just as well (as any other choice) resent you from then on.

This is why Isaahs has God say about Israel ...


4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

With the New Testament gospels we are to understand that any idea that God punishes or chastises - is gone. Ended. We are not to think of God as a king anymore - but now we are to think of him as as a father.Jesus (who understand the unchanging God so much better than Moses did) raises our understanding with his own intimate knowledge of God - his father and our father.

You must undestand the bible as a progression in understanding the nature of God. God never 'wanted' blood scrafices of anmials (as if that pleased him in some way) but - Israel as a people need that step in understanding God. There was no need (on God's part) to sacrifice his son - it was WE who needed that in the progression of humanity in understanding the nature of God.

God has built into us humans a 'homeing' devise .. it is .. happiness. We have no rest untill we rest in God. This is not because God punishes us for not resting in him - but rather it is simply the condition of the lack of God. WE rise to God by way of glory to glory ... innner peace and happiness ... this is the compass which guides us to God.

We are Chritians of the New witness (testament) and the gospels. Jesus showed us our father .. there is no need to return to the erlier uderstanding (Old Testament) of God as some type of emotional Greek god with human emotions and gets angry or jelous etc...

Shall we say that fear of pujishment and pain - is equal to - love??

God does not want conscripts - he wants volunteers.

Peace to you and to your holy church.
-ray

[Ray Kaliss]

Forgive all the typos - I was called in to work and had to leave quickly.

-ray

[Antonios]

Dear Mr. Kaliss,

Since this new thread is a response to my last post in another thread, I will paste below my post to keep things in order.



Originally Posted by Ray Kaliss http://www.monachos.net/forum/images/misc/quote_magn.gif (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?p=68263#post68263)
http://www.monachos.net/forum/images/misc/quote_magn.gif (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?p=68263#post68263)

I don't know where the idea that pain is a chastisement came from ...Dear Mr. Kaliss,

Welcome to monachos!

Regarding your above statement, I would refer you to Genesis 3:21 (http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NKJV&passage=Genesis+3%3A21) which is immediately after the fall of man:



Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.
One of the consequences of the fall is God clothing us with 'tunics of skin', This is better than a sudden and complete death which could have been the consequence for Adam and Eve and is the first biblical evidence of God's mercy. But why did God fashion us this way due to the fall? The answer lies in the next sentence of Scripture (Genesis 3:22 (http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NKJV&passage=Genesis+3%3A22)):



Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
Now, we see the second early evidence of God's divine mercy. How? Because had Adam and Eve stayed in the Garden of Eden and also tasted of the Tree of Life (which is not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), then our separation from God, that is, our death, would be eternal. God saved us from eternal estrangement by allowing the introduction of decay and physical death to these 'tunics of skin'.

So, we die daily with the assurance that eventually, our physical bodies will die. Part of this very experience of death is pain. And this is most easily demonstrated by the aging and deterioration of the 'tunics of skin' we have been clothed with due to the fall.

Is this chastisement? Well, I would say yes and no. Yes because the response from God allows for the introduction of pain and death. No because from His Divine Wisdom, this is how He will eventually redeem us. Remember, the prodigal son never knew what true life was nor how much his father loved and cared and provided for him until his father let him learn it for himself.

In Christ,
Antonios

Just to quickly add, this does not mean our bodies are 'bad', which is consistent with early Christian heresies, but rather they are a gift and a means to return to Him and become son of His by grace. The Incarnate Word of God is the ultimate divine revelation of the sanctification of these 'tunics of skin' and the ultimate proof of the promise of our salvation and our reconciliation with the our Father and Creator.''

In your post, you make many assertive statements which I find foreign and inaccurate. Unfortunately, I do not have the time today to answer your post as well as I would like to (work calls!), but I hope others can perhaps try to shed some understanding.

In Christ,
Antonios

[Antonios]

I would also add before I go that there are many threads in this forum which have discussed these topics quite extensively, and I would recommend if you have the time to search and read through them. Be fore warned, however, that you will find pages and pages of these discussions! :)

[Herman Blaydoe]

think about this my friend. What you are saying .. is that Adam had no skin before the fall. He had no flesh. How then did he walk in the garden? how then did he eat the fruit? Perhaps he was just bones at the time? but bones are part of the flesh body .. so then what do you imagine Adam to be without flesh and bones??

Whatever is being said, it is certainly different than what you think. How was the Resurrected Christ able to enter the locked room, appear and disappear at will, and be raised bodily into Heaven? He was also able to eat (fish and honeycomb, the breaking of bread at Emmaus), and yet His body was something different than our bodies. I don't think He looked like a skeleton. I don't think that Christ's body was totally identical after His Resurrection than before it save in appearances only. I don't think that I have to think very hard to believe that perhaps the pre-lapsarian bodies of Adam and Eve could well have been different than when they were given the "tunics of flesh" after the fall.

Do you think our resurrected bodies will be exactly like the bodies we have now? Think about that.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

A few thoughts come to mind as I read the first few posts in this new thread. I write them here in no particular order, and with no connecting comments -- just as first-go responses to various interesting points:

First, for the discussion of the basic question of 'literal' / 'metaphorical' (or 'historical' / 'symbolical', or whichever other terms one wishes), please see the many, many threads that already exist on this matter. It is best that they not simply be repeated and re-hashed here.

Second, a narrative being cosmological or cosmogonic doesn't itself insist on it being either metaphorical/symbolic or historical/literal in method. Cosmology is the engagement with beginnings, and the significance of beginnings and archetypes for present reality. (As I have said often before, Genesis is fundamentally a book about the present, not the past; it is, like all Christological literature - which is how the Church understands the book - centred principally in the now, rather than the then.) (As a second aside, 'cosmogony' refers to the specific narrative of the coming-into-being of creation; 'cosmology' is the slightly - importantly - different practice of engaging with the whole meaning of beginnings writ large. Genesis is a cosmology that contains a cosmogony, if we wish to get technical.)

Third, the notion that the in the fathers' reading of Genesis there is a 'Greek tendency' to read them 'literally as a historical record', is false on both counts. This is neither a Greek tendency in cosmological reading (past and concurrent Pagan and philosophical readings of cosmology tended to be radically symbolical and hyperbolic); nor is it the tendency of the fathers in any unqualified way.

Fifth, on the identification of 'garments of skin': the claim that this is equatable to a fig-leaf garment is quite inaccurate. The narrative in the text holds these as quite distinct: Adam fashions for himself the tunic of fig-leaves; God in response replaces this with a tunic of animal skins. In just one patristic reading (that of St Irenaeus), this indicates Adam's immature over-repentance (since fig leaves are, in his understanding, prickly and uncomfortable) and God's solace and mercy in providing something more comfortable, more suitable to true repentance and transformation.

Fifth, and also on the garments of skin: this is a classic case of scriptural testimony revealing multiple layers of meaning to the fathers. It at times is interpreted as an aspect of material existence; at others as an indication of the passions, and sometimes particularly the fallen embrace of the passions; at others, it is an indication of Adam's repentance and God's mercy.

Sixth, on the term 'Adam', it is incorrect to claim that it is not a proper name. It is clearly used as such in the ancient world - including by Christ's closest followers. But it is true that it is a name built on textual revelation. It doesn't quite mean 'man' or 'man-kind', as has been suggested; it is a derivative of the Hebrew adama, which means earth, or dust. Thus, according to Genesis 2.7, the Lord God forms Adam out of the adama. There is no elegant way to translate 'Adam', which really amounts to 'earth-creature'. But this does not mean it is not a name; and the Gospel testimony of the Church is clear in its personal usage.

Seventh, language of Genesis as a 'narrative of the epic of Israel' is lovely.

Eighth, it is incorrect to suggest that the New Testament reveals an end to God's chastisement of Israel, or his people as a whole. Chastisement is perfected, not abolished.

Ninth, it is not in the heritage of the Church to claim that the Old Testament represents 'a lesser understanding of God'. It is indeed God's own self-revelation, not some unadvanced intellectual project. The New Testament does not disclose a new or higher revelation of God: it discloses the fulfilment of the Covenant of the Old Testament.

I think that's more than enough for now!

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Owen Jones]

Mr. Kallis is following the views expressed by Rene Gerard post conversion. Gerard started out as a literary critic, looking at the common theme of sacrifice in literature, until his conversion to Catholic Christianity, at which time he began to speak in terms of Christ's sacrifice as the end of the need for sacrifice to God.

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear Ray,

I sure hope you stay around a bit.

I'm sure that Father Deacon Matthew and Owen did not mean to offend you. You may find discussing these matters more interesting and good.

In Christ,

Matthew Panchisin

[Antonios]

I do not know who Gerad is. You are wrong to assume of me that I am following his views as I do not know him nor his views to follow them.

Most of my views come from saints, theologians, and mystics in the history of the church (I favor the Alexandrian fathers) and I am shocked that the previous posted (I assume he is an administrator) has no clue to that. I could quote Eastern fathers who call Genesis the "cosmogony of Moses" and I can make the difference between a cosmogony and a cosmology (my critic has confused the two as similar). Plus I can quote St. Paul's letter where he tells us that the revelation to Israel (the Old Testament) was inferior compared to the FULL revelation of God through his son Jesus Christ. And I can quote fathers of the church (and Orthodox theologians) who express that God does not punish us and that this view is an Old Testement view ... superseeded by the gospels were we now undestand that God is our father who longs for our return (like the Prodical son) ... but he does NOT not go out to chastise and punish us. God invites us to his table - he does not beat us untill we decide to love him.

If you people like a Chritianity where you feel 'right' by way of misunderstanding and pre-judgements of others as 'wrong' - you can have it. That is not for me. That is the way to divide Chritianity - which I understand was something the Lord asked us - NOT to do.

Love one another - means to make great efforts to understand your brother. I have been misunderstood and labeled and pre-judge here .. but I see no reason to try and defend myself nor prove what my views really are or where (which fathers in the church) they are founded.

I now leave.

A short stay.

You all seem to be much better Chritians than I.

Peace be to you and to your Holy Church.
-ray

Dear Mr. Kaliss,

I am sad to read your post above. I cannot speak for either Owen or Father Deacon Matthew (who can both do a very good job speaking on their own), but I fear you may be over-reacting to their posts. My impression is that Owen was pointing out the similarities between your initial post on this thread with those views as proposed by Rene Gerard. I don't understand why you would take such offense to this, especially since you don't even know who Rene Gerard is or what he has written. Perhaps you would agree with Owen if you did the research on this particular person.

As for Father Deacon Matthew, you should know that he is the Head of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds Trinity and All Saints and Fellow and former head of theology at Greyfriars Hall, University of Oxford. Perhaps he has a bit more understanding of the early Christian Church than you do and you might actually learn from him. Lord knows many of us have learned from him here on this blessed forum which he has developed.

If you came to learn, than you must be prepared to learn. Calling others prejudice and implying that they are poor Christians which cause division within the Church simply because they disagree with you or pointed out perceived errors or inaccuracies in your belief system does nothing more than leave you in your ignorance and false pride.

I sincerely pray you do not leave here in this manner since no one here wishes you ill will, but rather that you open your mind and your heart to what precious things you might find within the Church.

In Christ,
Antonios

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

If others will permit, there is another point that has been returned, which I think could bear fruit in further discussion. In my earlier post, I wrote:



Eighth, it is incorrect to suggest that the New Testament reveals an end to God's chastisement of Israel, or his people as a whole. Chastisement is perfected, not abolished.


To which this has been offered in reply:


I can quote fathers of the church (and Orthodox theologians) who express that God does not punish us and that this view is an Old Testement view ... superseeded by the gospels were we now undestand that God is our father who longs for our return (like the Prodical son) ... but he does NOT not go out to chastise and punish us. God invites us to his table - he does not beat us untill we decide to love him.

The issues at stake in this discussion cannot be understood properly if 'chastisement' and 'punishment' are used interchangeably. We need to be very careful with such terms, and how we use them, since they in fact mean quite different things and can lead to problematic theological positions if they are conflated.

'Chastisement' is from the Greek word paideuo, 'to teach', and fundamentally means to correct through instruction. 'Punishment' is a retributive act, which fundamentally means to inflict a certain suffering (even if earned) in response to an act.

Given this, it is incorrect to say that the Gospel reveals a view, different from the Old Testament view, in which God no longer punishes man; for in the proper definition of punishment in this manner, God has never been a God who punishes man. God does not inflict harm for harm's sake.

It would be equally wrong to say that, in the Christian life of the Gospel, God does not chastise man - for he clearly does. Much of Christ's words in the Gospels speak to the manner in which God is chastising his people -- since chastisement is part of loving redemption. The book of the Apocalypse (Revelation), shows the fulfilment and perfection of this chastisement as the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, the truest and fullest communion of the creature with his creator.

When the fathers speak of a changed relationship of chastisement and wrath from the old covenant to the new, they are almost always speaking in terms of a movement away from chastisement based in simplistic categories of whether one has abrogated a simple legal prohibition or not (which chastisement is done away with, since the relationship of creation to God in the incarnation no longer operates on such terms), to a chastisement based in deliberately rejecting the relation of experience by which the Spirit transforms the heart in Christ.

This is precisely the kind of chastisement witnessed in the parable of the prodigal son. In the strictures of the legal code, a son who had behaved in such a manner to his family and father would have been outcast, or stoned. Consequence is met in simple terms, based on infracting simple laws. But in the new covenant, it is not the infracting of the legal code that is the real source of the chastisement, it is the son's condition of heart. And so his exile is the chastisement the father offers him.

It is on the cross that Christ offers the full chastisement of humanity, for it is the cross that calls the hardened heart to him, crucifies and kills it, and welcomes it into the resurrection.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Jonathan Golding]

I have to say I am finding this an absorbing discussion so far. I particularly appreciate your explanation, Prof. Steenberg, regarding chastisement and punishment and find it very illuminating. Do you see all suffering we undergo in this life as chastisement? Or would you make a similar distinction between various other kinds of suffering and that suffering which is educative in the sense of Paideia?

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Mr Golding, you wrote:


I have to say I am finding this an absorbing discussion so far. [...] Do you see all suffering we undergo in this life as chastisement? Or would you make a similar distinction between various other kinds of suffering and that suffering which is educative in the sense of Paideia?

Thank you for the comments and question. You raise (wittingly or unwittingly!) an interesting distinction, which is that between the chastisement offered by God, and the experiences we undergo as human recipients of God's love.

As to the first, the scriptures are very clear: God acts only in love, only in goodness. This is so much a part of his nature, that the prayers of the Church refer to it as 'thy customary goodness', or 'thy usual loving-kindness'. All God's acts are good, because acts are the fruit of the will, and God's will is ever and always for the good of his creature. For this reason we can - we must - say that God's acts towards humankind are always grounded in that goodness and love, and thus are consoling and uplifting when this is most beneficial to man, and chastising when this instead (or as well) is needed. Chastisement is, after all, an aspect of love, rather than a thing opposed to it.

However, the experiences man undergoes are effected not only by what is done to and for him, but also the condition of his heart. With a hardened heart, a word of love can be a terrible torment (this the torture of hell). The condition of humankind, mired in its sin, is to be broken off of the genuine experience of love, of God himself; and in this condition, one sees the world debased and experiences the whole of life in a fallen, corrupted manner. So love easily becomes lust; righteous anger becomes wicked hatred; solitude is experienced as loneliness; and - here we get directly to the matter at hand - chastisement is experienced as punishment. That which is done for the building up of love can be experienced as the infliction of anger, wrath and pain, not because this is what is actually being offered, but because our division from God conforms our experiences to the nature of our sin.

A classic example of this is from the same parable of the Prodigal Son that has been discussed above. However, it does not come from the portion of the parable that is most often quoted and remembered: that of the younger son who lives as a profligate, goes into his own exile, repents, and returns. It is from the parable's second half, which is one of the most insightful passages in the whole of the Gospel, despite the fact that it is all too often ignored. Following the prodigal son's repentance, Christ carries on with this:

Luke 15.25-28: "Now the father's older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And the servant said to him, 'Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf'. But he was angry and would not go in."
The father has acted out of love (later the famous phrase: 'for your brother was once lost, but now is found'), and it is a love that should bring joy also to the eldest son. This the father clearly wishes - 'therefore the father came out, and pleaded with him'. But the son will not receive the love the father offers; he rejects it. 'He was angry, and would not go in'. So the eldest son experiences his father's love in anger, and so is cut off from the feast - from communion with his father and family - by the broken manner in which he has received his father's compassion.

In this same manner, the chastisement offered by God to his creation can be experienced for the love that it is, or in a manner that transforms it into punitive, vengeful, angry wrath - never because this is what God offers, but because this is what we experience through our wanton sin.

Those are a few initial reactions to your question. Your own thoughts are, of course, very welcome indeed - as are those of others.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Owen Jones]

Origen wrote:

God is a consuming fire and according to our inner disposition He either illuminates or burns.

I see the New Testament as exploring every possible means of making this point, in terms of the transfiguration of the Hebraic law on the one hand, using Hebraic analogies to explore this new experience, to experimenting with Greek neologisms that we might lump under the broad term mystical -- to be able to come to grips with the new experience. The purpose of this is so that everyone can find something to latch on to. The same is true for the Fathers. Their sermons explore broad estuaries in which every cove, inlet and spit of land is explored in order to find the words necessary, to find the link or the hook that is necessary to catch the fish. Hey, not unlike a fly fisherman! And the problem in our reading is that we find our hook, and we assume that's everyone's hook, to exclusion of all else.

There is a kind of holy terror in the writings of many of the Fathers and great ascetics in which they explore their own fear of God's punishment of their pridefulness or potential for pridefulness in thinking that they somehow have got it. If we miss this in our reading, it is not the end of the world for us, precisely because there are many other hooks there for us. But we should be careful not to make our hook the definitive one for everyone else. Christianity is not just one thing. It's everything.

St. Maximos writes that it is possible to "relapse into a state of non-existence." So the implication is that without constant diligence the believer is doomed to think that somehow he has got it. Now where does punishment and chastisement come in? It is not that there is no punishment for sin any longer, as some think. It is that we are no longer stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Many people are going nuts and seeking out psychologists because they believe they are in an intolerable situation spiritually because they cannot possibly succeed in obeying God's commandments. So one alternative is to simply say that there is no longer any punishment or chastisement. Another alternative is to simply avoid the issue of perfection altogether, and define salvation very crudely in terms of a personal faith commitment that guarantees salvation. Many simply argue that God does not have the power over suffering that people once believed. Suffering becomes just stuff that happens, has nothing to do with God.

So the issue is really what to make of our suffering and that of the world, in this in-between time. The answer to that question makes us what we are.


As for Gerard, he offers what I think is a somewhat truncated view, valuable as it is, of a change in the nature of sacrifice. It is valuable, but it is not the whole picture. That one may be unfamiliar with his work does not change the fact that Gerard represents a certain psychological response that is not unique to him.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Fr Dn Matthew wrote:




In this same manner, the chastisement offered by God to his creation can be experienced for the love that it is, or in a manner that transforms it into punitive, vengeful, angry wrath - never because this is what God offers, but because this is what we experience through our wanton sin.

Just to add something from reading Fr Dn Matthew's post & that relates very much to pastoral experience. Pain and distress come directly from our own sin. That is, the pain and distress of various trials is the direct consequence first of human sin. Left as such this consequence would result only in pain & distress that ultimately would end in death.

However in Christ what is the consequence of sin is transformed into that which gives life; ie from destructive pain and distress it becomes chastisement unto life. Here what is meant as chastisement unto life by God is finally seen as such by our own willing recognition and active participation in what Christ has made out of death & sin.

I only wanted to point that this out so that chastisement is also seen as the effects of sin as providentially transformed through Christ as the path to life. Pastorally as we face different trials we are taught that these are to our benefit. But such are often seen outwardly as if God sends them just so that we learn patience.

Such however misses something essential and transformative as God intends such trials. The risk is that we see God as the cause of pain & distress when it actually is He it is Who transforms such into doorways unto life. In other words in terms of what we are discussing here in Christ the brute effect of sin is transformed into the chastement which if willingly undergone becomes the means of finding life.

I have to add that chastisement also refers to the providential and mysterious manner of such trials so that they accord exactly to what is personally needed by us unto our salvation at a given time. Again learning to recognize and accept seems to be so central to being either the prodigal or hard hearted son.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Prof. Steenberger,

Thank you for your kind response. While I appreciate what you are saying, the distinction you are making is not precisely what I had in mind. I probably should have been more clear. It seems to me that in any discussion of the suffering of mankind after the fall great care must be taken not to portray God as the author of evil, and to affirm that we do indeed have free will.

Let me explain what I mean. A few years ago, I was quite shocked in reading St. Augustine's explanation of the rape of the virgins in Rome. He says, in effect, that these women were raped either because they had sinned, because they were going to sin, or to teach them humility. Setting aside for a moment the utterly loathsome notion that women can be taught humility by means of sexual assault, I found St. Augustine's assertions quite monochromatic and more reminiscent of Job's commpanions than of a true Christian. It seems to me that this view would make God out to be a kind of hideous cosmic puppet master pulling the strings to perpetrate acts of cruelty and violence in order to chastise.

It would seem to me that we do indeed suffer as the result of human evil freely perpetrated by beings who choose to commit these acts, and that God is in no way responsible for these evil actions. In his infinite wisdom and care for mankind he can certainly use such sufferings to educate the human soul. I am, however, somewhat chary of making a causal link between this type of suffering and the good that God can bring out of it. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this matter and hope I have not wandered to far afield from the original topic of this thread.

Best Regards,

Jonathan

[Aristibule]

Thank God for Antioch - the 'literal' view still stands alongside and complementary to the Alexandrian view in the Church (and the Antiochians know it well.) Our 'Hellenism' is really a Hellenic-Semitic synthesis.

What interests me is that the Fathers of Israel, just like their descendants in New Israel, knew that Adam (the person) rested in Zion. His skull was kept in the Foundation Stone, and it was believed his grave was below the place where Christ was crucified (the Church has always represented the Crucifixion with the bones of Adam down below - still there today on the crosses we venerate.)

[Owen Jones]

Just to quibble a bit, but I don't see the distinction as so much between the literal and the symbolic or whatever the opposite pole is of literal, but between the concrete and the abstract. Not using abstract in a pejorative sense at all here, but in the sense that Greek theologians draw out meaning through a process of intellectual abstraction. They were even ridiculed by many of the desert fathers as being "intellectuals!" And, yes, indeed, they compliment one another.

How do I respond to suffering? And where does it come from? Yes, it comes from within me. This is one of the purposes of ascetic discipline, to relativize the suffering that occurs through some outside event beyond my control. But that suffering that comes from outside causes comes from other human beings. It is compounded by me if I see myself as somehow victimized by it, or as simply a punishment for my sins. As we know from the encounter with the man born blind.

So what about the suffering caused by "natural" disasters. Our theology says that nature has also been corrupted as a result of man's disobedience.

However, one cautionary note. While we might want to say that God does not cause suffering, on the other hand, He did create us knowing in advance that we were going to suffer. So does that mean that He wants us to suffer, or that he even delights in our suffering? Heaven forbid! What it means precisely is that we don't know what God knows, only in tiny fragments from what He wants us to know.

The best modern book on suffering I have read is by Etty Hillesum called "An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum." I believe it is entirely Orthodox, although her journey to faith is very unorthodox. Also people might want to take a look at Solzhenitsyn's personal conversion account, approximate mid-point in the 3-volume Gulag Archipelago. It's in Vol 2.

So, does God punish us? I hope so. While my father over did it a bit, I am probably better off than had I never been punished (or chastised). The difference is that God is always just.

[Father David Moser]

Just to quibble a bit, ...
So, does God punish us? I hope so. While my father over did it a bit, I am probably better off than had I never been punished (or chastised). The difference is that God is always just.

Just to quibble a bit: God is not so much just as He is merciful. If He were simply just, there would be no hope for any of us (well at least for me.

Fr David Moser

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Mr. Jones,

You may be right. I certainly never fail to consider the possibility that I may not understand this matter as I ought. An acquaintance of mine once said to me "I am so committed to being right that I am even willing...I am even willing to change my mind." I have attempted to adopt this attitude in all such discussions and it has proved a good friend to me.

But I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that in Saint Augustine's argument we hear the rhetorician speaking more loudly than the pious and humble servant of God. It seems to me a strange and pagan fatalism to assign responsibility for the criminal acts of men to a holy and righteous God.

I certainly would not deny that God chastises us. I certainly would not deny that God is able to bring good out evil. And I certainly would not deny that God has foreknowledge of all that we will undergo. I am simply not certain that all suffering is visited upon us because of our specific sins. Nor am I convinced that God's foreknowledge is the same as causality.

It seemed that in Professor Steenberger's earlier post he was equating God's chastisement with the Father allowing the prodical to exile himself. In this view, if understand correctly, our chastisement is free will itself, or rather the result of our wrong use of this gift. But do we not also suffer things in this life which are not the result of our particular sins, or hardness of heart?

I hope you will forgive me if resort to an analogy to further explore my position.

Let us suppose a wise master woodcarver lives in a village by a forest. He knows that certain reckless young men in the village plan to cut down a valuable tree on his neighbors property and allow it to rot. Perhaps the woodcarver even attempts to dissuade the youths from their evil act. But in the end the tree is hewn down, and the neighbor grieves its loss. Yet in the night of sorrow the woodcarver takes what was cast aside, and by his art makes from it all manner of useful and beautiful objects which he then presents to his neighbor.

It seems to me that this is how our lives often are. Christ says to us in this life you will have trials, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world. And just as in my story the woodcarver did not cause the tree to be cut down. So too God does not cause the evil that men commit. Yet in his infinite goodness he takes the result of men's evil actions and fashions these into our instruction, and our edification.

This is how I am inclined to think on this matter, but I look forward to hearing how others view this topic.

In Peace,

Jonathan

[Fabio Lins]

Just to share a couple of personal thoughts on these issues.

As for the literal or alegorical aspects of the narration of the fall and of course the scientific evolutionary view that underpins today's "modern" christians preference for the second.

I believe the three of them. The literal reading of the Creation, the many allegories that can be drawn from it and that the scientific theories are sound. How is that possible?

There is a certain debate in science and philosophy of science nowadays that is not very much in the spotlights, overshadowed by "creationist" vs "evolutionist" talks. This debate is based on the question: "Are the laws of physics that we see today constant over time or would they be able to change?"

From what I understand from the teachings of the Church, when we learn that things much more fundamental than the laws of physics *have* changed (such as the Incarnation allowing the created to be in union with the Uncreated), and that the Fall encompassed *all* creation (which must include the laws of physics), I must adopt the opinion that the laws did change.

In that case, the evolutionary and other theories about the beginning would be entirely true *if* the Universe had always been like it is today. It is a projection into the zero moment as if creation had always been like this. But what the Scriptures say, and there is scientific evidence towards that ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1991223.stm ), is that the Universe has not always been like this. Of course, if the laws did change, then it would be impossible for science to figure out how it was before they change in case this change was radical. That is precisely the stand adopted by the Scriptures as I understand it. As a matter of fact, the assumption that the constants of the universe are, were and will always be constant, is just that, an assumption. Not even from a materialistic point of view it holds as self-evident.

To sum up this part, I believe that what is described in Genesis is factual, physical truth. What happened there, though, changed men and creation to something similar to what it is now - but not entirely, for we see that people lived much longer and there are many other things that although we consider miracles are seen by the people in the text as natural (giants, direct relations with spiritual beings). These too, I believe, are true both in their simbolic and physical meanings. Just like us, the universe, after the fall, is dying and sick, so right after that first sin, it still had more life which it has been loosing steadily which would have taken us to final death had not Christ saved us by His merciful outpouring of life, burning death's fuse with His Ressurrection by giving it something much greater than itself.

----

As for the suffering discussion, my present opinion is that not all suffering has a meaning.

I've seen somewhere else a distinction between the primary will of God (what He actually intends for us but does not force us into) and the secondary will of God (what He allows for His love and respect of our free will). Everything happens according to God's will *only* if we consider the secondary will, not the first. We see this in Lazaru's ressurrection very clearly. Our Lord Jesus Christ let Lazarus die despite He could heal him even from afar because that event had a role in his theophany, but He cries for that - and that we must always remember when we think God is silent toward our suffering: He *may* be silent but He is there next to us crying with us for our suffering (hence the many miraculous crying icons around). His primary will is always that we do not suffer, or die. But since we did choose this by choosing sin His will that we are free allows the consequences to come too. This secondary will is *so* important that even the devil must request it to act as we seen both in event when the demons ask permission to enter pigs and in the book of Job. Surely, the devil could not ask for God's blessing (the support of his primary intentions) as we do, but he *must* act in submission to God's secondary will and dares not even try to do anything without the permission of God.

That brings me to my first statement. What happens by permission of God, many times in direct opposition for His wishes for us, is deprived of Truth and Meaning. Verily, Victor Frankl ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl ) by inaugurating "Logotherapy" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning ) the "third" Vianese school of psychoanalisys based on the tenets that what drives men is "meaning" shows that "meaning" is something that must be found, searched. Although he does not say this directly, if one must search for meaning, one may be temporarily in a state of absence of meaning, or better saying, in a state in which the existing meaning is not seen. Going back to the theological aspects, when we are dettached from what God wishes for us, acting against Him out of His love for us as maturable beings, we are in a "meaningless" state where things without meaning may and do occur against us. This lack of meaning is precisely what makes them particularly painful.

Of course, if suffering always had a meaning, that would be perfect justice always and we wouldn't have a fallen unperfect world. A fallen world is precisely one where some things happen that God did not wish for, where bad, undeserved things happen to good people for no reason at all and good things happen to bad people (and I'm not talking about money and health only here), where ungodly things happen both to nations and individuals. That is part of what the "mystery of ungodliness" (2 Thess 2:7) is. That thing in evil that we cannot fully grasp, the mockery of the mystery of God.

Now, of course, this lacking of meaning in part of the suffering in this world, unlike the mysteries of God, is not impossible to be overcome. With humility, contrition, obedience, faith and prayer we can come out of this dark area of what God allows to what He wishes, thus recovering our way in life. That may not represent the end of the suffering in itself but its filling with meaning, meaning which, for us Orthodox Christians is our Way of dealing with things: Christ Himself, who said "I am the Way", which can, in this case, be analogous to "I am the Meaning you search for", not what is in suffering, because He is not there as such, but what can go there as into the Cross and the Tomb, and rise from there with us into the Glory of God.

[Owen Jones]

In response to Mr. Golding, I hope I did not say that all suffering is God visiting punishment on us for our sins. Heaven forbid! We know that is unBiblical, and untheological in the extreme. But there is a paradox at the heart of all suffering.

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Mr. Jones,

I was delighted to read your response. Perhaps I was misunderstanding what you were saying. Could you expand on what you mean by paradox?

Peace to you,

Jonathan Golding

[Owen Jones]

I'm not very good at quoting Scripture to demonstrate a point, partly because I am a Biblical ignoramous -- I tend to rely on certain texts that are significant to me that I keep going back to -- and I tend not to study it as a whole like a should -- I'm spiritually lazy -- but also because I think it is more important to draw from the Bible in its totality the spiritual point of it.

With that said, my sense of the entirety of the New Testament is that everything is there in the Old Testament necessary for our salvation, were it not for our hard heartedness. Had we the eyes to see and the ears to hear, then we would know exactly what we need to know. I think of Deut. 30 as a passage that is complete in every sense as to what we need to know and do. Another significantly revealing passage is 1 kings 19.

So God sent his Son in the flesh as a recapitulation of all that had come before and been revealed before, so there would be no excuse whatsoever that we could fall back on that somehow we can't see or hear exactly what God's will is for us, and to be able to fuse our minds and our wills with His.

As for paradox, reality is paradoxical. God created a world that He knew he would have to save. There is no explanation or analysis that can dissect that. It is something that we accept and know by faith.

Every attempt to overcome the paradoxical nature of reality is a form of idolatry that is doomed to failure. Among them, extreme literalism or fundamentalism, forms of superstition that try to bribe God into expiating our guilt, rationalizations designed to get God off the hook by saying that he really doesn't care about us or can't really do anything to help us, substitutes, like the ideological mass movements that claim that they can save us, etc.

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Mr. Jones,

I certainly would agree that life, and particularly our life in Christ, is indeed paradoxical in the sense that you are using the word, though I would prefer the term mysterious. We live in the Shadowlands, as C. S. Lewis once put it, where much is unclear and we have only candle of our faith to guide us on our journey home. We must go on with the knowledge that certain things lie forever beyond our knowledge.


And perhaps I was guilty of reading too much into what you said regarding the fact that God knows ahead of time all that we will suffer. It seemed to me in context that you were arguing for St. Augustine's view of the rape of the nuns at Rome, and I see that this was in error. Perhaps we are merely examining opposites sides of the same theological coin.

For when we speak of the sufferings of this life that are the result of the fall in quite a general way, and the fact that God chastises us I think an implication can often creep in that is, as you say, contrary to scripture. Many of the things we undergo in the world are the result of human evil in general.

When someone is genuinely victimized by another person, say in the case of a rape, or a some other brutal assault, the most common question asked by the survivor is "Why did God allow that to happen to me?" I think the question is really unanswerable. Or perhaps it can only be answered by saying that God has allowed men free will, and that we live in a fallen world. Which is no answer at all.

It seems to me that suffering in itself is really quite meaningless. I am speaking here in particular of the kind of suffering I mentioned above, that perpetrated by our fellow human beings, but I suppose the same might apply in a broader range of circumstances. I have an acquaintance who fell asleep at the wheel of his car driving home from a family vacation. The accident killed his wife who was pregnant with their third child and their thirteen year old son. I have since lost contact with this man, but I can only imagine that the guilt and sorrow of that event will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Such horrific things happen, and the resulting trauma could only be excacerbated by language about the chastisement of God.

People in such circumstances seek for meaning, they seek to construct a narrative that will explain what has happened. But it seems to me that pain is meaninglessness. It evades our reason, cuts through all our assumptions, and defies our hope. At such moments, as the Psalmist says, darkness is our closest friend, and all we can do is cry out brokenly, "I hurt!"

But as you said, Our Lord has "given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that
hath called us to glory and virtue."(2 Pet. 1:3) And because he is good and loving, he is able, by means of a mystery, to fashion that which is meaningless of itself, into meaning. He is able to bring good out of the evil that we endure, and use the sorrows of this life to educate the soul that seeks hard after him. And perhaps also in a mystery when the human will is set to do the will of God and participates in the energies of God the suffering one may be said in some sense to fill up the sufferings of Christ.

It may be that the ascetic is correct who asserts that what he suffers at the hands of other men is the chastisement visited on him for his hardness of heart. Such men by their holy lives and prayers see much farther than I. I can only say that this does not seem the proper "hook" (to use your term) for me, and I think it would confuse most people.

To me there is a great difference in saying that God can use such painful events and saying that God is chastizing us by means of them.

I said earlier that to answer someone in anguish with an argument regarding free will was no answer at all. What I meant was that in the moment of distress a person needs comfort rather than explanations which may wind up sounding like platitudes. We are to weep with those who weep as the scriptures says.

But I think in another sense this is the only real answer. And it the answer which gives me the most hope. I feel we often fail to consider the truly radical implications of free will. God so desires beings that will freely choose the good, freely choose to be in a relationship to him, that he has gambled the entire universe on this.

God does not cause evil, but he permits it, and takes responsibility for permitting it. I believe many of the statements in the Old Testament that Mr. Kaliss was referring to, which seem to imply that God is the author of evil, are merely expressing that he takes to himself accountability for constructing a world in which beings are truly free to make moral choices. Moreover in Christ's passion he has, in a mystery, taken sin upon himself.

We live in a time which is ever more dominated by a kind of scientific determinism which seeks to explain the human person in terms of material causes. We are told we act a certain way because of genetics, or heritage or chemical changes within the brain. While there may be a certain limited truth in such explanations it seems to me that the ability to choose good over evil is being written out of the equation. Human beings are much more than the sum of their pasts, or a collection of biochemical circuits. We are made in the image of the one true Holy and infinite God. And he has given us the unique and astonishing ability to make choices. And since we are truly free we may also choose the good.

There is a scene in a popular movie that I like very much. The hero has been beaten to the ground and his foe stands over him and says, "Why do you persist?" Rising the hero replies quietly, "Because I choose to." To me this simple exchange typifies the Christian life. Ground down by sorrows, afflicted by disease, perplexed by innumerable obstacles, we may still rise and with God's grace reply to our great foe that we choose to persist in our foolish attempts to act toward the good. And if we do persist someday we may stand with that vast company pictured in the vision of St. John and sing the praises of the one who brought us into being and allowed us to choose him freely.

So hidden within the question of why we suffer, I have found a treasure of great value. Perhaps this is not an explanation for everyone, but I felt obliged to share it since some may hear and find hope.

In Christ,
Jonathan

[Owen Jones]

The whole point of Christianity is that suffering is not meaningless and pointless. We don't have the right to pick and choose either, to say that this suffering is meaningless and pointless, but that suffering isn't. It sounds much more like Buddhist doctrine to say it is meaningless and pointless. There are too many examples from our Orthodox saints and others that refute this idea. One example, which is non-Orthodox, is to be found in The Diaries of Etty Hillesum. Another example, which is Orthodox, is the description found in Gulag Archipeligo, of Solzhenitsyn's conversion experience. Another non-Orthodox example is The Power of the Powerless, by Christopher de Vinck. The issue is not how we analyze the meaning of suffering, but how we respond to it.

[Owen Jones]

There are only two explanations for why we experience the world as messed up. Either God messed up (the implication being that had we gotten there first we would have done a much better job) or that we have messed up. This is the great breakthrough in theological understanding provided by Genesis -- that God did not mess up. Prior to that, gods were portrayed as whimsical and unreliable, subject to manipulation by human sacrifice. Later, much later, in the Greek world, you have a much greater noetic differentiation of the Creator in the Timeaus with essentially the same theme: there is one God who has created a harmonious cosmos and that discord is the result of a disharmony and disorder -- a sickness -- in our souls which is our responsibility. Which is why the Timeaus is the most often quoted book by the Fathers, other than Scripture of course.

Of course, there is the bogus new age solution: everything is just as it ought to be at this moment.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

There are two quite distinct discussions that have emerged out of this initial thread: one on suffering, etc., arising out of the narrative of sin; and another on revelation old and new. As they are distinct topics, and to allow them to progress more easily, I'll be moving posts around later today, to place them into their own threads.


NOTE: The above has now been done. Members will find the two threads as follows:

The present thread has been renamed Sin, chastisement, punishment and suffering (was: 'The narration of the fall') (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?p=68576#post68576), and contains posts relating to the themes of punishment and chastisement, and questions of suffering;
Posts on the relationship of the revelation of God in the Old Testament to that in Christ / in the New Testament, have been moved to a new thread entitled Is the revelation of God in the Old Testament 'inferior' to the New? (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5331)
If you're having trouble finding a post that was formerly in the 'narration of the fall' thread, you should find it in one of the above.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Owen Jones]

Just as a sidebar, it is not so bad a thing to be a fool for Christ. I could be wrong in many ways, and often am. Also, I could appear to be wrong to my peers and to the world around me. I could be the subject of ridicule. So what? I can wear my bohemianism proudly on my sleeve. Or I can be humble.

There is a story about St. John Maximovitch who, when eating a meal of soup with some of his flock, was subjected to the rantings of a woman who was indulging in gossip. His response was not to shut her up but to pour the soup down his beard back into his bowl and continue doing same. Everyone there got the point but the woman.

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Mr. Jones,

I think you are misreading me. There is nothing particularly “Buddhist” in what I am saying. Actually I am following and somewhat extending the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory's writing's are often fairly philosophical in character, and in a certain place he writes that evil is non-existence.

Since God is the ultimate ground of all being, he reasons, and since God is good, then only the good can be said to truly exist. While evil is permitted at this time in the world, its existence is transitory and contingent. It is a phantasm without substance. As St. John says in his epistle "the world is passing away and the lusts of it, but one who does the will of God abides forever." Many of the fathers and doctors of the church have spoken in this way, and I think this is probably the basis of St. Maximos' statement regarding non-being to which you referred earlier. Viewed in this way man is set in the world between an abyss of nothingness on the one hand, and eternal reality on the other. By his own free choice, in Christ, he may either move away from or toward being.

I would further argue such a position implies that evil actions are, in and of themselves, senseless. For how can something be said to have significance which is unreal. Only that which tends toward the good, tends toward actuality, can be said to have meaning. And therefore our experience of the evil actions of others which we call suffering must in its essence be void of any real content. Perhaps it is this sense of emptiness that underlies much of human experience that caused the preacher to cry out so often “Vanity! Vanity!” in the book of Ecclesiastes.

To speak as I have been doing in no way implies that saints and even average Christians have not gained immeasurable and everlasting benefits when they have suffered patiently at the hands of evil men. It is only to say that the benefit is not in the suffering itself but rather in God the Father of Lights. The significance that the suffering takes on in the mind of the believer comes from his relationship to his creator rather than some inherent quality in the experience of pain.

I see Christianity as simply a description of the way things actually are, therefore I am not sure that it has one single "point" in the sense you are attributing to it. My relationship with my creator and fellow men seem much more complex and multivalenced than that. But if I had to focus on one particular thing that is the "point" of Christianity I would affirm it to be the Worship of God. Worship which is coerced is not true worship, and goodness which is compelled is not true goodness. Only that which is offered freely is that which delights the heart of our creator.

When I spoke of choice in my previous post I was not asserting that we choose which kind of suffering is to have meaning. I was actually exploring what seem to me the radical implications of our ability to choose good over evil.

Perhaps a fuller account of my thinking may clarify what I am saying. In pondering the reasons for the things which distress us in this life, I have to conclude that a good number of them are caused by the evil actions of others, as in the example of the rape of the virgins in Rome. St. Augustine's answer as to why such things happen was that the victims must have brought these sorrows upon themselves. I found this explanation to be dangerously close to ascribing evil to God, and reminiscent of Job's comforters. I believe it more helpful, and indeed more wholesome, to consider the matter from the perspective of free will. God does not coerce men to evil actions in order to fulfill his plan and chastise his saints. But the opposite is also true. He does not compel us to the good. He has allowed us liberty to choose the good for ourselves. And if we may freely choose evil, we may also freely choose the good.

I think it all too easy for us as human beings to feel that our actions are the result of forces beyond our control. But in reality we make the choice as to what we do and who we are. I think the problem with St. Augustine's view is that it leads to a kind of determinism in which God is controlling our actions. But in reality we have the gift, the dignity, and the responsibilty to choose the good.

If my previous post was unclear I apologize. Perhaps my enthusiasm led me to say things in a manner which was cryptic or easily misinterpreted. I hope this clarifies my position somewhat.

Peace,

Jonathan

[Jonathan Golding]

Postscript. I wasn't quite sure what to make of your comments regarding being a fool for Christ in the context of our discussion, but I found the anecdote delightful. Keep postin'. You say good stuff.

[Owen Jones]

Thanks for the further explication by Jonathan. It's very helpful. And I agree that Christianity is not just one thing. On the other hand, how Christians respond to suffering -- our own and others, is strikingly unique and it is this that really sets us apart. And yes, it is inextricably linked to glorification.

I think what St. Gregory means is that we cannot speak of existence as a fact. Nothing just exists. But this is particularly, especially true for evil. Something exists only in relation to something, or in a contingent sense. Something only exists only insofar as it points to something beyond it. And what could evil possibly point toward beyond itself? Especially now that Christ has demonstrated the victory of -- yes, suffering and powerlessness over evil. He chose not to resist evil and he counsels that we should also follow this course.

But I think we should always be careful then not to absolutize this into suggesting that somehow pain and suffering are illusory. That was what I was concerned about. Christ suffered, physically and psychically. On our behalf, for us, as a demonstration of how we are to suffer -- not because we are being punished for a particular sin, or those of others, but to demonstrate God's glory, His victory. And so a Christianity that promises the end of suffering is a false god. Christ promised just the opposite.

So suffering is quite real, and so is the evil behind it, but it has no enduring substance, if you will, whereas Christ was, is and ever shall be.

Regarding being foolish, a recently departed member seemed offended that he was being treated like a fool, as if we did not appreciate his intellectual powers. How dare we?

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Jonathan, Owen and others,

While I've not really contributed anything save a few thoughts at the beginning, I just wanted to say that I've very much enjoyed reading this thread as it's been unfolding. I very much appreciate the thoughts both of you are sharing - there's a great deal of food-for-thought for many.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Alice]

Regarding being foolish, a recently departed member seemed offended that he was being treated like a fool, as if we did not appreciate his intellectual powers. How dare we?

Forgive me for saying this, but I don't think that this is very charitable. As Christians we are called to respect each other, are we not? Again forgive me, but such attitudes disturb me, and as Orthodox, the way we treat others and the openness of our hearts will determine the essence of our faith more than intellectual discourse.

Alice, a sinner

[Owen Jones]

Perhaps I went too far with the sarcasm. But I am more interested in the principle at stake than the personality. Being thought of as a fool is not necessarily a bad thing...If I am more interested in my reputation, then I am in trouble.

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Mr. Steenberg et al,

Thank you for your kind words and for providing a place where Orthodox Christians can meet and discuss such issues. I am enjoying the conversation and have some other thoughts on this topic, but am having a rather busy week. I will hopefully have some time over the weekend to respond to you, Mr. Jones.

Blessings,

Jonathan

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Jonathan, Owen, and others,

I've spent a little time reading back through this thread this evening, and have again enjoyed the content. I thought I might contribute a few thoughts along these lines:

One of the issues that enters into this topic is the relationship of suffering to evil, which is a recurring question all throughout history. Is suffering evil? If so, it poses an essentially impossible problem to theology. Either God creates or directly permits suffering and so wants evil; or God is powerless to thwart evil, since suffering clearly exists. This dilemma, in a specifically Christian context, goes back at least as far as the early second century - exemplified in the ornate cosmologies of the 'Gnostics' (such as Valentinus), as well as the radical theological dualists (such as Marcion).

An issue that I see recurring in this thread (sometimes explicit, at other times seeming to be a subtext to other comments), is the relationship of the suffering and response to suffering that comes from our own sins, to that which is not 'visited upon us because of our specific sins' (if I may quote you, Jonathan). Regularly, this latter kind is seen as more problematic: a 'punishment' wrought not in immediate response to a misuse of free will - which, while it may at times seem harsh, is at least understandable. And so it has a tendency to 'throw a spanner into the works' of a view of freedom and suffering, as well as God's responses to both.

This was hinted at recently in the course of discussion of a thread in the Casual Discussions area (see 'Consoling Platitudes' (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5253)). There, I wrote (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=67709&postcount=29):

"Perhaps what troubles us most is the suffering of innocents - and rightly so. My own sin is well known to me, even if I may every day, every minute, delude myself into thinking it less than it truly is. Still, I know at least that I sin, despite my lies and self-deception as to extent. I can see that suffering has an origin in my own actions. But what of those whose suffering comes not from themselves, but from elsewhere. The example that often most touches us [...] is of a child, innocent, suffering even unto death. Clearly, it is not the transgression of this child that has brought on this pain; it is, rather, the sin of the world, of each person, of me. Our sins, in the words of the fathers, 'spread out' beyond ourselves: let this be a lesson for our repentance.

"If we pit suffering against God, divide and divorce them in our mind, such a tragedy becomes hopeless. We can try to explain it, but our explanations become feeble excuses: did God back away? Was he absent? Was the child being punished on behalf of someone else?

"This death is part of the fallen life of the world. The specific 'whys' may not be known, but the person for whom least sadness should be shown is the child herself. Death is not the end of life: it is its renewal in resurrection - and God will care for this innocent, just as he cared for the child-innocents in Egypt in the days of Moses, and in Palestine in the days of Herod. The struggle with suffering comes, instead, to those who remain in this life, who are confronted with the age-old mystery of suffering itself. It is we who must look at this event, this experience, feel anguish in our hearts at the sight of sin, rearing its head as death, and attempt to see it in the true nature of the Gospel. The suffering is real, it is painful; but the proclamation of the Gospel is that 'a light shone in the darkness - and the darkness could not overcome it'. Indeed, the light transforms it. We cannot escape from suffering; but the mystery of the life in Christ is that we ought not even wish to. Christ has reclaimed suffering for good. The road to paradise is the road that leads through Golgotha."
There is a complex mystery to suffering. Owen has called it (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=68516&postcount=21) a paradox: 'There is no explanation or analysis that can dissect that. It is something that we accept and know by faith.' This mystery enters into its most ineffable dimensions in its cosmic scope. Owen also alluded to this (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=68392&postcount=17): 'Our theology says that nature has also been corrupted as a result of man's disobedience.' It is the dimension of suffering beyond the self, beyond me and my acts, that is the most bound up in mystery. Our desire is often to find a science of suffering: some system that explains the ins-and-outs of freedom, will, deception, disobedience and response that can give an almost mathematical apparatus to suffering. But reality is a mystery of living engagement with God, including the ruptures of that engagement. The Christian faith does not give us, nor attempt to give us, a science for explaining the structures of suffering and pain. What it does give are the essential contours that prevent false explanations of it: that it is related to freedom, even if freedom is at times cosmic, beyond the self; that it is not the creation of God, who longs only for good; that it has a beginning, an origin, a cause, and thus that it has an end, etc. And above all else, the life in Christ gives us that which gives these observations meaning: the experience of suffering's transformation precisely there: in Christ, in the conqueror of death.

The challenge of the life in Christ is not to 'overcome' this mystery, to do away with it, but to live within it in the experience of Christ. Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia is fond (as have I become, largely through his influence) of pointing out the problem with the common phrase, 'the problem of suffering': a 'problem' implies a 'solution'. It is something with an 'answer' that eliminates it. But suffering is a dimension of a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. This Owen summed up in a perceptive comment:


Every attempt to overcome the paradoxical nature of reality is a form of idolatry that is doomed to failure. Among them, extreme literalism or fundamentalism, forms of superstition that try to bribe God into expiating our guilt, rationalizations designed to get God off the hook by saying that he really doesn't care about us or can't really do anything to help us, substitutes, like the ideological mass movements that claim that they can save us, etc.

Getting back to the question earlier in the thread, of a distinction between 'punishment' and 'chastisement', I do think this needs to be connected to the matter of our vision of suffering. One of the challenges that often faces people is the question I see summed up in one of your comments (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=68563&postcount=24), Jonathan:


To me there is a great difference in saying that God can use such painful events and saying that God is chastizing us by means of them.

There is something absolutely right in this. Surely, it would be utterly incorrect to state, for example, that someone is murdered or raped so that God 'could teach them a lesson'. This is not so much a flawed distinction between 'punishment' and 'chastisement' as it is a very basic failure to understand the nature of true freedom -- the age-old attempt to 'blame everything on God'.

We know with certainty that evil comes from human transgression. Disobedience yields death. The full dimensions of this are a mystery, yes; but the basic concept is simple and straightforward. What is important is that it clarifies rather than confuses the nature of all God's activities towards man as chastising rather than punitive. This is not to say that God causes all acts of suffering - far, far from it (God forbid!). Rather, that in the face of all manner of suffering, rebellion, death, disobedience and pain, God acts always in a life-creating manner. His aim is always chastisement: the correction unto life of the wayward sinner.

When the full Paschal dimension of the life in Christ is experienced, it adds the full nuance to this vision. The passion and resurrection of the Lord are the essential testimony that suffering is not trapped in the realm of evil. It may arise out of our sin, but it is not forced to be a thing of death. Christ has transformed suffering into life. So the chastisement God offers can - and does - take full account of what suffering can bring, as well as what its absence may bring. Nothing is outside God's arsenal of 'tools' for redemption.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Jonathan Golding]

Dear Fr. Deacon Steenberg,

I am in wholehearted agreement with you when you say that we cannot approach these matters as though they were a science or something that may be proven or disproven by means of human arguments. The nature of suffering and the character of our interactions with the One True God is not the same as a proposition in Euclidean Geometry, and it seems to me that the Orthodox Church wisely sets limits on what may be acheived by human reason. Nevertheless, I find great joy in continuing to discuss these things with you, not only from the pleasure of hearing what you have to say, but also because the scriptures enjoin us to think on those things which are noble. And what could be more noble a subject for our thoughts than the dealings of our wonderful gracious Lord with the human heart in the midst of all its tribulations?

Let me say as well how much I appreciated the content of what you have said. It seems a very balanced view. And I have been slow to respond in part because I have been very busy, but also because you have given me a great deal to think about. I am not sure that I am disagreeing with you at this point, so much as I am laying the emphasis in a slightly different place.

I hope it is clear by now that my purpose in this conversation has been guard against thinking of God as the author of evil. For if we call all the hardships that we endure the Chastisement of the Lord I think an error can very naturally arise in our thinking about God. Namely that he causes all the things which bring us misery.

I have also been concerned that we not think of our salvation in overly juridical terms or as some form of operant conditioning. I take it that this is also the motivation behind your distinction between chastisement and punishment. And while it may be in the economy of God that he permits some things and not others for our benefit it seems to me not entirely healthy for us to spend a great deal of time thinking about this. It is I think enough for us in the moment of our trial to believe that God is good.

There are many passages in scripture which if read in a cursory or over literal way might give the impression that God grows angry or indignant over our sins. The Fathers of the Church in defending the impassability of God have wisely explained these as referring to our experience of the Goodness of our Lord at such times. In other words if a man has committed an evil act, the Love of God at that moment seems to him a hateful thing, he experiences it as wrath. But just as the sun does not cease to shine when we close our eyes, so God does not change toward us when we sin, but continues in steadfast lovingkindness.

When I consider the words of scripture where it says "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him," I wonder whether a similar interpretation might not apply. After all when a Father chastises his son he acts in a certain way toward him. Yet it seems from what we have been saying that the chastisement of God has more to do with the fact that he permits evil. And although I do not think it would be correct to think of this as a kind of passivity on the part of our creator I am equally convinced that we must not think of God as acting through the agency of evil men.

The question for me then becomes what does it mean not to despise the chastening of the Lord. I think that the answer lies in our attitude toward God when we suffer.

Sometime ago I decided to read through St. Cyprian's Treatise On the Advantage of Patience. As it is a short work I thought I would take my time with it and attempt to reflect on his words. But I found myself confused after a only a little while. I had presumed that patience had to do with waiting, but I found the saint had very little to say on this subject. Rather the treatise deals with various men of renown in holy history who suffered hardship. I have little Latin and less Greek, as the poet once said, but after much head scratching and some trips to various scholarly resources I came to the conclusion that what is meant by this virtue is something wholly other than I had at first supposed. For St. Cyprian and doubtless for the writers of the New Testament "patience" meant the ability to suffer without undue agitation, and perhaps even with peace and tranquility. How may we do this? I think that in the midst of horrors we must affirm that God is good.

What is it that commends Job to us? Certainly he laments his distress loudly and vehemently. Yet in all this he does not charge God with wrong. To me this is the essence of what it means not to despise the chastening of the Lord. Job sees through the changeability of his circumstances to the unchanging Goodness of God, and affirms this even in the midst of his great anguish.

And I think that when we suffer and are found to be stronger and more devout afterwards it is not due some inherent virtue in the experience of pain. For all men, the virtuous and the vicious alike, undergo hardship and tribulation in this life, and few are made better by it. In fact I think many are made more bitter, grasping, and angry when they live through privation. But when the good things of this life are removed from us we are in a unique position. We are able to see how transient such things are and forced to look beyond the mutability of time and circumstance. We may at such times see that there is a person behind all things who is eternal, changeless, and good beyond all that we count goodness, a person who has made all things yet considers our sorrows and has compassion for us in them.

If we endure deep distress with this attitude in our hearts we find we have been immeasurably improved. But it is not, I think, the suffering that has improved us. It is rather our experience of God.

Peace,

Jonathan

[Paul C.]

Dear Fr. Deacon Steenberg,

I am in wholehearted agreement with you when you say that we cannot approach these matters as though they were a science or something that may be proven or disproven by means of human arguments. The nature of suffering and the character of our interactions with the One True God is not the same as a proposition in Euclidean Geometry, and it seems to me that the Orthodox Church wisely sets limits on what may be acheived by human reason. Nevertheless, I find great joy in continuing to discuss these things with you, not only from the pleasure of hearing what you have to say, but also because the scriptures enjoin us to think on those things which are noble. And what could be more noble a subject for our thoughts than the dealings of our wonderful gracious Lord with the human heart in the midst of all its tribulations?

Let me say as well how much I appreciated the content of what you have said. It seems a very balanced view. And I have been slow to respond in part because I have been very busy, but also because you have given me a great deal to think about. I am not sure that I am disagreeing with you at this point, so much as I am laying the emphasis in a slightly different place.

I hope it is clear by now that my purpose in this conversation has been guard against thinking of God as the author of evil. For if we call all the hardships that we endure the Chastisement of the Lord I think an error can very naturally arise in our thinking about God. Namely that he causes all the things which bring us misery.

I have also been concerned that we not think of our salvation in overly juridical terms or as some form of operant conditioning. I take it that this is also the motivation behind your distinction between chastisement and punishment. And while it may be in the economy of God that he permits some things and not others for our benefit it seems to me not entirely healthy for us to spend a great deal of time thinking about this. It is I think enough for us in the moment of our trial to believe that God is good.

There are many passages in scripture which if read in a cursory or over literal way might give the impression that God grows angry or indignant over our sins. The Fathers of the Church in defending the impassability of God have wisely explained these as referring to our experience of the Goodness of our Lord at such times. In other words if a man has committed an evil act, the Love of God at that moment seems to him a hateful thing, he experiences it as wrath. But just as the sun does not cease to shine when we close our eyes, so God does not change toward us when we sin, but continues in steadfast lovingkindness.

When I consider the words of scripture where it says "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him," I wonder whether a similar interpretation might not apply. After all when a Father chastises his son he acts in a certain way toward him. Yet it seems from what we have been saying that the chastisement of God has more to do with the fact that he permits evil. And although I do not think it would be correct to think of this as a kind of passivity on the part of our creator I am equally convinced that we must not think of God as acting through the agency of evil men.

The question for me then becomes what does it mean not to despise the chastening of the Lord. I think that the answer lies in our attitude toward God when we suffer.

Sometime ago I decided to read through St. Cyprian's Treatise On the Advantage of Patience. As it is a short work I thought I would take my time with it and attempt to reflect on his words. But I found myself confused after a only a little while. I had presumed that patience had to do with waiting, but I found the saint had very little to say on this subject. Rather the treatise deals with various men of renown in holy history who suffered hardship. I have little Latin and less Greek, as the poet once said, but after much head scratching and some trips to various scholarly resources I came to the conclusion that what is meant by this virtue is something wholly other than I had at first supposed. For St. Cyprian and doubtless for the writers of the New Testament "patience" meant the ability to suffer without undue agitation, and perhaps even with peace and tranquility. How may we do this? I think that in the midst of horrors we must affirm that God is good.

What is it that commends Job to us? Certainly he laments his distress loudly and vehemently. Yet in all this he does not charge God with wrong. To me this is the essence of what it means not to despise the chastening of the Lord. Job sees through the changeability of his circumstances to the unchanging Goodness of God, and affirms this even in the midst of his great anguish.

And I think that when we suffer and are found to be stronger and more devout afterwards it is not due some inherent virtue in the experience of pain. For all men, the virtuous and the vicious alike, undergo hardship and tribulation in this life, and few are made better by it. In fact I think many are made more bitter, grasping, and angry when they live through privation. But when the good things of this life are removed from us we are in a unique position. We are able to see how transient such things are and forced to look beyond the mutability of time and circumstance. We may at such times see that there is a person behind all things who is eternal, changeless, and good beyond all that we count goodness, a person who has made all things yet considers our sorrows and has compassion for us in them.

If we endure deep distress with this attitude in our hearts we find we have been immeasurably improved. But it is not, I think, the suffering that has improved us. It is rather our experience of God.

Peace,

JonathanJonathan, I agree with you wholeheartedly!

And just to add my two bits to this - We suffer not from God's punishing us but from our love, desire and attention for what is not God. Basically from idolatry, tangible idols or intangible. Only those people who are striving to unite with God suffer most when they stray away from God. Many saints endured great undeserved chastisement and persecution for Christ's sake, yet they showed no outward sign of suffering in the modern sense of the word (for in the NT, suffering simply meant tolerating or allowing). So the saints "suffer" by gladly enduring chastisement for the sake of Christ, not through painful and unwanted punishment.

Unbelievers suffer too, but their form of suffering has changed the meaning of the word to what it is today, namely "to undergo (something painful or unpleasant, an injury, grief, a loss, etc.)." They suffer for what they desire of this world and not for unity with Christ. Some of them are so far removed from Christ that they have chosen in their hearts to defer their suffering to the next life in hell (Matthew 8:12), because they do not believe in the Word of God and think it foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). They laugh at the suffering of others who are believers and even cause them more suffering still.

If we can learn to suffer (patiently and willingly endure undeserved chastisement for Christ's sake) like Christ suffered on the cross for us, we can become like Christ. We can become His children by adoption. This is one reason why we should love our enemies - they assist us in the process of becoming Christ-like. Remember - (Matthew 5:11-12) and love our enemies. They are doing us a big favor.

For what it's worth.
Paul

[Peter S.]

If we can learn to suffer (patiently and willingly endure undeserved chastisement for Christ's sake) like Christ suffered on the cross for us, we can become like Christ. We can become His children by adoption. This is one reason why we should love our enemies - they assist us in the process of becoming Christ-like. Remember - (Matthew 5:11-12) and love our enemies. They are doing us a big favor.

For what it's worth.
Paul

It doesnt seem as they are doing us a favor but maybe it is so.

Peter

[Jonathan Hayward]

For what it's worth, How to Survive an Economic Depression (http://jonathanscorner.com/survive/) was something written to explain the Orthodox theology of suffering, and offer a glimpse of its riches, to economic worries now in the air.

Christos Jonathan