The Catalog of Good Deeds

In the first chapter of Genesis we read that man is made in God's image and called to be like Him. The image, the Church Fathers say, is mainly our intelligence and free will. God so loved us, He sent His only begotten Son for our salvation (John 3:16).

If we put on Christ at baptism and continue to wash ourselves through repentance, then we are able to reflect the light of Christ. Our constant prayer is "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner." We are creatures. We have no independent existence. We depend on God for all and by his mercy we can have the light of Christ indwell in us. This is a spiritual reality revealed by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The value of this is unfathomable.

Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos (1994, 1998) refers to the worth human beings can have:

It is said that God has essence and energy and that this distinction does not destroy the divine simplicity. We confess and believe that 'uncreated and natural grace and illumination and energy always proceed inseparably from this divine energy' And since, according to the saints, created energy means created essence as well . . . God's energy is uncreated. Indeed the name of divinity is placed not only upon the divine essence, but 'also on thee divine energy no less'. This means that in the teachings of the holy Fathers, 'this (the essence) is completely incapable of being shared, but by divine grace the energy can be shared.

This is a reality and truth. Based on the illuminative teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, Bishop Hierotheos tells us this is available to us "through God's benevolence towards those who have purified their nous." Bishop Hierotheos (1994) calls the Church a hospital that can cure our infirmities so our nous can be purified and this life in Christ can take place in us.

Passions: The Inclinations to Sin

After the Fall we are predisposed to self-centered choices directed by the passions (lusts) rather than choices based on agape. St. Isaac of Syria tells us: ". . . pandering to the flesh, produce(s) in us shameful urges and unseemly fantasies" (Early Fathers from the Philokalia).

The passions spring from the heart of the person. Jesus told us: "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man" (Mark 7: 21-23).

St. Paul wrote "While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death" (Romans 5:7). The work of the passions can take place either before marriage or after the marital union takes place. In either case they lead to a choice of singularity or self-satisfaction over a righteous joined union.

Passions may predispose a individuals to discord from God and mankind. St. Paul's warning applies to the "demon's" attack union with God and neighbor: "Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Galatians 5:19-21). The Church Fathers attribute this to the demon of each passion that never tires of breaking union with God and mankind.

An example of how this works may aid our understanding. The demon of lust, the Church Fathers tell us, may take over our lives. Modern society facilitates this malady. Sex is broadcast everywhere for almost every use: art, fashion, music, news, pornography (especially the Internet), and the sale of almost any product from automobiles to computers. The secular world flagrantly exposes body parts, especially the genital areas.

The Church Fathers knew about such enticements a thousand years ago. St. Isaac of Syria wrote: "Passions are brought either by images or by sensations devoid of images and by memory, which at first is unaccompanied by passionate movements or thoughts, but which later produces excitation." One way to deal with these passions, continued St. Isaac: " . . . their thought must become attached to nothing except their own soul."

One has to make a choice between Christ and demon. St. Paul asked:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation . . . distress . . . persecution . . . hunger . . . nakedness . . . danger . . . the sword? For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).

Vigilance and discernment are major virtues to be acquired by those seeking Christ indwelling in them and desire to overcome the power of passions.

Ilias the Presbyter tells us: "Demons wage war against the soul primarily through thoughts . . . " (Philokalia, III). Ideally Orthodox Christians will make a "spiritual desert" for themselves removing them from the "enticements" so prevalent in modern life. Spiritual death occurs when these thoughts are self centered.

St. Maximus the Confessor knew this as well: "The self love and cleverness of men, alienating them from each other and perverting the law, have cut our single human nature into many fragments." How much more should St. Maximus' words apply to those all of us seeing union with God and our all mankind.

Sin is Disunion

Sin makes us to be out of communion or what might be called disunion with God and neighbor. St. John Chrysostom states: "Did you commit sin? Enter the Church and repent for your sin; for here is the physician, not the judge; here one is not investigated, one receives remission of sins". If the church is a "physician," then this break with God and neighbor needs healing. It is missing the mark of being centered on God and His Will. Sin is considered, therefore to be an illness or infirmity. With healing we are restored to a former condition.

We know this healing takes place in Holy Baptism, the Holy Mystery of Penance, Holy Unction and by worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist: The Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. St. John Chrysostom, in his Divine Liturgy reminds us, of all that God did for us: take on our flesh, the cross, the grave and the Resurrection. The end of which is to reconcile us to Him: "when we had fallen away didst not cease to do all things until thou hast brought us back to heaven." Need we be reminded that when Christ gave us the Eucharist he said; "Take eat: this is my Body which is broken for you for the remission of sins," and "Drink ye all of this: this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins" (emphasis added).

Forgiveness is to be reconciled with Christ and all mankind. St. Matthew tells us:

But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny" (emphasis added) (Matthew 5: 22-26).

This involves an active behavioral effort toward reconciliation.

Pride: A Barrier to Repentance; Humility: The Gate of Repentance

St. John of the Ladder (1982) points out:

Pride makes us forget our sins ... the remembrance of them leads to humility." Thus we must heed the further words of St. John: "He must not allow the memory of things that afflict him to be stamped on his intellect lest he inwardly sunders human nature by separating himself from other man although he is a man himself. When a man's will in union with the principle of nature in this way, God and nature are naturally reconciled.

St. Isaac the Syrian said that the person who has attained to knowledge of his own weakness has reached the summit of humility (Brock, 1997).

Repentance: The Condition for Forgiveness

When someone who offends God or us they must repent. God, and we in imitation of Him, should embrace the repentant sinner with God's own love, in order to forgive him. We have to pray that we or anyone who has offended us or God, be reconciled to God and to us through His Church. The foundation of this repentance is a sense of his unfaithfulness to God and offense to us, contrition of heart, and determination to amend and have a metanoia, a fundamental change of mind and heart so as not to offend again.

Repentance

God recognizes the difference between authentic and inauthentic repentance. If this knowledge is used as a justification for sin, no true repentance occurred no matter how many words might have been expended in prayer. If the fallen brother calls out to Christ like the thief on the cross however, they will find the forgiveness of God.

A wise person once said that God doesn't look where we have come from, only where we are going. If repentance is drawn from a desire for a pure heart, the repentant will find God no matter how many times they have failed. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8).

Theosis

St. Silouan has pointed out that, "those who dislike and reject their fellow-man are impoverished in their being. They do not know the true God, who is all-embracing love." St. Peter in his second epistle tells us what God has given us: "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness ... and become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:3-4). We know this is not participation or becoming God in His Being or Essence but sharing in the warmth and light of His "Divine Energy" (Staniloae, 2003).

Healing Passions Leads to Theosis

This can only happen, indicates Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos (1994, 1998),if we heal the passions of our soul. For the offender this means healing the passion that led to the offense. For the one who to forgive this means healing the passion of anger and increase in the virtues of humility and meekness. Forgiveness and repentance are a two sided coin. One cannot exist without the other.

St. Maximus the Confessor tells us the path this takes:

The first type of dispassion is abstention from the body's impulsion towards the actual committing of sin. The second ... rejection of the impassioned thoughts ..the thirds is quiescence of passionate desire. ..the fourth type of dispassion is the compete exclusion from the mind of sensible images (Philokalia II).

Psycho-spiritually this means the decision and will to stop sin, act in accordance with Our Lord's counsels, and do all we can to remove ourselves from events and images that arouse sin. This means substituting and have available the works of God, exercise and practice Godly virtuous thoughts and acts, and base all on the foundation of prayer and the Holy Mysteries.

Let Us Commend Ourselves and Each Other ... Unto Christ our God

Theosis not only means being enlivined with the fire of God's warmth and light but being in communion with one another. St. Dorotheos of Gaza (Wheeler, 1977) likens our growth in union with God, to a compass. God is the center point. Each person is like the radials going out from the center to all the 360 degrees encircling it. As each person moves toward God, the center, they also move closer to one another, as each person moves away from God, the center, they also are more distant from one another (Morelli, 2007).

Let us end reflecting on the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian (1997):

If your brother is angry with you, then the Lord is also angry with you. And if you have made peace with your brother below, then you have made peace also with the Lord on high. If you receive your brother, then you also receive your Lord.

Jesus forgives our sins through the sacramental power given to the Church, first to the Apostles, then to their successors, the bishops and priests right down to the present day, when He told them: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20: 22-23).

By Fr. George Morelli

Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-The-Orthodox-Understanding-of-Sin-A-Lenten-Reflection.php

One of the biggest challenges we face as Christians is the danger of becoming complacent or comfortable with our passions and sins, justifying or explaining them away as ‘necessary,’ logical, or ‘no big deal.’ What is behind such complacency varies: laziness, fear, lack of faith or hope that God can change us for the better or that we can muster the effort to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and learn new ways of being.

St. Paul reminds us today that we’re justified by faith. It’s faith that’s life-saving for us because it’s faith that gives us access into the deifying, life-changing, transformative grace of God, that gives us the ability to put our trust in God’s work in our lives. Through this faith, we’re called today to have hope—hope for the change God would work in us, hope to grow in our knowledge and love of God, to be furthered in faith, and deified.

In this context, he also reminds us that in our efforts to live out the Gospel, we will certainly encounter, as he puts it, “various trials.” Don’t we know it! It seems that as soon as we start praying for more patience, we’re bombarded by all sorts of problems that test that patience. As soon as we begin to plead with God for more faith, we’re hit by trials that really challenge that faith. Many, if not most, of our sins can be traced to lack of faith in God’s power, love, healing, and salvation. Pride, the mother of all vices, has its root in this lack of faith in God, which is the opposite of putting our trust in Him.

We experience and grow in faith to the extent we’re willing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in us. Sadly though, we can also choose to shut out this work of God or put God on the periphery, preferring to put our trust in ourselves, or, as Christ warns today, “in mammon,” in our material resources, reliance on one’s self. God doesn’t force Himself upon us because what He invites us into is a synergistic relationship and communion with the life that He alone is.

If your hope is in God that He will deify you and continue to make you into the man or woman of God He’s created us to be in Him, then, if this is your hope—what you desire above all else—then pray, struggle to follow through, persevere in cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit and entrusting yourself fully, 100 percent, to Him, His Church, and His use of you in the world in need around us. St. Paul assures us that if this is our hope it will “not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

But you have to ask yourself, in all honesty, is this really my aim, do I really desire salvation and eternal life with God? Do I want God and participation in His life more than anything else or am I content to give God just a portion of myself, my time, my talents, my resources? In this sense, we cannot just be resolved to give a tithe of ourselves and our possessions to God. If we are to grow in faith, we come to recognize that all we are and all we have entrusted to us comes from God and finds its meaning and proper place in God, submitted to God.

Our temptation is to worry, to think that we can procure everything we ‘need’ in life on our own, to be independent, self-sufficient, “balanced” (not giving God too much of our time or energy), but this is false, this is not Christianity. Instead, Christ admonishes us today, saying, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” As a Christian, we put our trust in God and not in the world, not in ourselves because we recognize that Christ is the life of all.

Christ reminds us today: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” When it comes to God’s Kingdom, double-mindedness will not get us into heaven.

Just as Christ does today, St. Paul also warns that we conformity to the culture, the world, and its priorities and ideas through the pursuit of our own comfort and false sense of ‘security’ is, in reality, enslavement to ‘mammon.’ The alternative is our transformation through a life lived for and in Christ, which, by necessity means being open to continued growth in faith, entrusting ourselves more and more to His mercy, and not relying on ourselves or our worldly success.

The world, the culture, will pull us in its own direction, may try to convince us we don’t need God or that in our striving after mammon, in holding onto our own will, our own desires, our passions, and all our material provisions, we are somehow ‘safe’ or ‘prudent’. This is the lie fed to us by a materialist and secular culture, by the devil himself. Christ reminds us, that “after all these things the Gentiles seek. At the same time, He assures us, admonishing us, today: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

As followers of Christ, we cannot be absorbed in, be slaves to, our desire for the things of this world and false security. Such double-mindedness, Christ reminds us, is not compatible with His eternal Kingdom: “you cannot serve God and mammon.” Instead, we’re challenged to open ourselves up to a greater generosity of spirit, of service, of giving to Christ, His Church, to those around us, knowing that He’ll give us Himself in return, that He’ll minister Himself to us through the Sacramental life of His Church and grow us in our communion with Him.

And so, here’s our choice: we can either respond to our anxieties, our problems, our lack of faith, thinking that if we hold onto our time, our gifts, our pride, our material resources more tightly, then we’re more powerful, then we’re in control, or, we can realize that such projections are just a hollow façade, that truly we need God, indeed, we’re created for life with God, that we need to put our trust, our faith and hope, in Him, who alone is eternal, who alone is worthy of our trust.

If we choose God, stepping forward in faith, we learn to submit all of ourselves, all we are and all we have to Him and His will. The choice is ours; what Christ makes clear is that we cannot serve both Him and mammon. For this reason, to save our souls, so that we worship, that is, that we rely on God and glorify Him and not our material possessions and false security, Christ concludes today’s Gospel with this admonition and promise: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

When we choose to interject faith in Christ into our struggles, our fears, our desire for financial security or personal control, then they and we can become a means for our further growth in faith and God can return to us His spiritual blessings, which are beyond anything this world can give. In the midst of our trials and tribulations, our struggles to live this life for God and not for mammon, God fills us with His promise and hope, which St. Paul assures, does not disappoint.

So choose God, put your faith into practice: serve pray, repent, entrust yourself to His loving kindness, open your hand to give back to God from what He’s entrusted and freely given you in His mercy. Step forward in faith and put your trust in Him. If we you do so, He will free you from dependence on this world, from enslavement to mammon and the world, from the despondency of trusting in yourself, from all that’s temporal and passing away, and He will grow you in the eternal life that He alone is—the well-spring of great joy, love, and peace.

By Fr. Robert Miclean

Source: https://www.orthodoxannapolis.org/3rd-sunday-after-pentecost-orthodox-homily-on-the-justification-of-faith/

Archimandrite Vassilios looks at the growth of popular interest in Gnostic writings, arguing that the Gnosticism of today is far removed from the tendency the early Church fought for so long, particularly in its view of the material world. In support of this view he examines the formation of the New Testament Canon and some of the most prominent Gnostic texts from the first few centuries AD.

Over the past few years, there has been an enormous popular interest in Gnosticism and early Christian writings. Bookshops are full of material on the subject and, on Christian holidays, the media bombards us with television productions on the topic. But the Gnosticism that is today being hailed as the ‘original Christianity’ is anything but the Gnosticism that plagued the Christian Church between the second and fourth centuries. One of the main characteristics of Gnosticism was an ethos that saw the material world as inherently evil. To the Gnostics, therefore, the idea of God made flesh (a thing evil and beyond redemption) was repugnant and ridiculous. For the Gnostics, salvation could only be achieved by an escape from the body and the material world. Christ therefore, according to the majority of the Gnostic writings, only appeared to be a man. His body was nothing more than a cloak or a mask by which He could be seen and touched, but which had no bearing on His person. As a result, many of the Gnostic writings do not contain a narrative of the Crucifixion and Resurrection (for these were not considered by the majority of Gnostics to be saving events), but are accounts of Christ’s ‘secret teachings’, often allegedly imparted to one or other of the apostles. The Gnostic writings that do contain narratives of the Passion and Resurrection are often imbued with a strong Gnostic ethos. A Christ that feels no pain on the cross is a classic example. The Gnostic writings for the most part were effectively polemical works which attempted to refute or ridicule the Christian belief that Christ was truly man as well as God, but they were also largely pseudonymous works (falsely attributed by the author to an important Christian figure, usually an Apostle). By contrast, Gnosticism is today being upheld by many as the exact opposite: a Christianity that saw Christ as a mortal prophet and not as the Son of God, and they claim that this form of Christianity, which some now claim is Christianity in its original, unadulterated form, was suppressed by the Constantinopolitan Church which portrayed Christ the mortal prophet as a divine being. How these Gnostic works can today be understood and put forward by anyone with half a brain cell as a Christianity that saw Christ as purely human and not divine is quite beyond my comprehension. In order to illustrate that the exact opposite is true, we will look at just a few of the best-known of the ‘lost gospels’ which still survive, if only in part, today. But to start with, it would be helpful to first have an idea of how the Church decided which of the many different sacred texts that were being written and circulated were authentic.

The New Testament Canon

In the early life of the Church, people who claimed to adhere to true Christian teaching believed in all kinds of strange things. Some believed in one God, but some believed in two; others believed in as many as 365! Some believed that Christ was both God and man, others believed that He was only one or the other. There were those who believed that Christ’s Death and Resurrection brought salvation to the human race, but others considered it to be irrelevant. Some even believed that Jesus never died. Today, one well may ask, ‘why did they not just read their New Testaments?’ The answer is simple: there was no such thing. The variety of Christian writings that were being circulated in the local churches created the need for the formation of a New Testament Canon: a selection of authoritative Christian texts. The formation of such a canon took some time to develop, beginning around the end of the 2nd century with Irenaeus’ Four-fold Gospel: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (which, even now – after all the recent discoveries of early Christian writings, such as those of the famous Nag Hammadi library – remain the oldest historical records of Christ’s life on earth) and ending with the famous encyclical by St Athanasius the Great in the 4th century, when for the first time we see the 27 books of our New Testament listed as the only canonical books of the New Testament. But what was the Church’s criterion for inclusion of a book in the New Testament Canon? For a book to be canonical it had to be:

1) Ancient. It had to be written near the time of Christ.

2) Apostolic. The book had to be written by an apostle or by a companion of the apostles.

3) Catholic. Different churches used different scriptures. To be included in the canon, a book had to have widespread acceptance among the local churches.

4) Orthodox. This fourth criterion was by far and away the most important. To a certain degree, the first two criteria hinged on this one criterion. If the theology of a sacred text was not Orthodox, then it could not have been apostolic or ancient.

A good example of how the Orthodoxy of a book helped determine its apostolicity can be found in Eusebius’ account of Serapion and the Gospel of Peter. Serapion, a bishop of Antioch during the late second and early third centuries, paid a visit to one of his churches in the village of Roussos, where he learned that the church there used a gospel written by the Apostle Peter in their worship. Serapion saw no problem with this, for he assumed that the gospel had indeed been written by Peter. After returning from his travels, he was informed that the so-called Gospel of Peter was infact a docetic Gospel. Serapion acquired a copy of the book and he noted that it was indeed shot through with docetic ideas. Serapion then sent an encyclical to the church in Roussos, ‘On the So-called Gospel of Peter’, instructing them to not use the Gospel in their worship. For Serapion, the fact that the Gospel of Peter contained docetic theology was evidence enough that it was not written in the time of the Apostles. Therefore, it could not have been written by St Peter, nor was it ancient. But it should not be thought that the Orthodoxy of a Christian work was the sole criterion for determining its inclusion in the New Testament Canon. The Shepherd of Hermas, a Christian text that the Church never considered to be heretical, was not included in the New Testament Canon simply because it was known to be a relatively recent work. Not all of the early Christian writings that did not find their way into the Canon were considered to be heretical. Indeed, some of those works have been integrated into Orthodox Tradition, but all of the above four criteria had to be met if they were to be included in the Canon of Sacred Scripture. The Gnostic writings however, simply did not meet a single one of the above-mentioned criteria.

In recent times, certain scholars have questioned the authorship of some of the New Testament writings, but this should not lead us to the conclusion that such books should now be omitted from our New Testament, for the Church has a fifth criterion: Tradition. As Bishop Kallistos Ware has put it:

“A book is not part of Scripture because of any particular theory about its dating and authorship. Even if it could be proved, for example, that the Fourth Gospel was not actually written by John the beloved disciple of Christ, this would not alter the fact that we Orthodox accept the Fourth Gospel as Holy Scripture. Why? Because the Gospel of John is accepted by the Church and in the Church”.

In other words, even if a work is proven today to not be written by the person to whom it is attributed, its Orthodoxy and Catholicity, its enduring position in the New Testament Canon and in the life and Tradition of the Church, means that such a book maintains its authority and so remains a part of the sacred Canon of Holy Scripture.

Ancient, Apostolic, Catholic, Orthodox: such were the criteria for determining a book’s place in the New Testament Canon, and the Gnostic writings simply did not qualify by a long shot. But if the Gnostics were to have any chance of having their views recognised as sacred scripture, they had to pass off their theological ideas as apostolic, and so many Gnostic Gospels were written by their authors in the name of one of the Apostles. We will now look at a few of these texts, beginning with the Gospel of Peter, which I briefly mentioned above.

The Gospel of Peter

Before the discovery of the surviving fragment of the Gospel of Peter in 1886, we knew of this gospel from the Christian historian Eusebius (as we saw above). It was probably written in the early 2nd century, making it the oldest surviving gospel from outside of the New Testament. This gospel, unlike many Gnostic Gospels, deals only with the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. It could perhaps be described as the first Passion Play. The fragment begins with Pontius Pilate washing his hands, an account found in the New Testament only in the Gospel of Matthew, but the Gospel of Peter slightly differs in that the Jews in Peter’s Gospel are described as refusing to wash their hands, thereby refusing to proclaim themselves innocent of Christ’s blood. This is more in line with the more anti-semitic literature of the 2nd century, something which is not found in the writings of the 1st century, to which the New Testament belongs. As the narrative progresses, we come across an account of the Crucifixion which in some ways resembles those of the New Testament, but significantly differs in other respects. Christ is crucified between two criminals, as in our New Testament Gospels, but we are told that “he was silent, as though he had no pain”. This is clearly a docetic interpretation of the Crucifixion: he was silent as if he had no pain because he had no pain. In the Gospel of Matthew, shortly before Christ dies, he exclaims: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the Gospel of Peter, we read something similar, but it has a distinctly Gnostic twist: “My power, my power, why have you left me?” Here, Jesus is mourning the departure of his divine nature from him before his death, leaving only his human ‘shell’ on the Cross – something that is very much in line with the views of many Gnostic groups.

Reading on, we come to a rather bizarre narrative of the Resurrection. The stone of the tomb rolls away of its own accord, and from within three men appear. The heads of two of them reach up to the skies, and they support the third, whose head reaches beyond the skies. Behind them appears a cross, and a voice from the heavens asks: “have you preached to those who are asleep?”, to which the cross replies: “yes”.

A Christ who feels no pain on the cross, who then resurrects in the form of a living skyscraper, accompanied by a talking cross. This is hardly a Gospel that portrays Christ as a mere mortal prophet!

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas probably dates back to the first half of the second century, and is an account of Christ’s life as a child, which is an area of Christ’s life that many Christians are still curious about. If Christ as an adult was the wonderworking Son of God, what was he like as an infant? According to the author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, he was a nasty piece of work. Imagine an ill-tempered, vengeful, badly behaved school boy with deadly magic powers, and you have the ASBO Jesus of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. In Chapter 3 for example, we read:

The son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Jesus. Taking a branch from a willow tree, he dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered. When Jesus saw what had happened, he became angry and said to him, "You godless, brainless moron, what did the ponds and waters do to you? Watch this now: you are going to dry up like a tree and you will never produce leaves or roots or fruit." And immediately, this child withered up completely. Then, Jesus departed and returned to Joseph's house. The parents of the one who had been withered up, however, wailed for their young child as they took his remains away. Then, they went to Joseph and accused him, "You are responsible for the child who did this."

And the examples of the God-child’s vengefulness continue in chapter 4:

Next, he was going through the village again and a running child bumped his shoulder. Becoming bitter, Jesus said to him, "You will not complete your journey." Immediately, he fell down and died. Then, some of the people who had seen what had happened said, "Where has this child come from so that his every word is a completed deed? And going to Joseph, the parents of the one who had died found fault with him. They said, "Because you have such a child, you are not allowed to live with us in the village, or at least teach him to bless and not curse. For our children are dead!"

In Chapter 5, Joseph expresses some concern about the behaviour of Jesus:

And taking his child aside, he warned him, saying, "Why are you doing these things? These people are suffering and they hate us and cause trouble for us. "Then, Jesus said, "I know that the words I speak are not mine. Nevertheless, I will be silent for your sake, but these people will bear their punishment." And immediately his accusers became blind. When they saw what he had done, they were extremely afraid and did not know what to do. And they talked about him, saying, "Every word he speaks, good or evil, is an event and becomes a miracle."

And in chapter 6:

When Joseph saw that Jesus had done this… he was outraged and took his ear and pulled it extremely hard. Then, the child became angry and said to him, "It is enough for you to seek and not find, but too much for you to act so unwisely. Do you not know that I am not yours? Do not trouble me."

Here we can see that the author of this Gospel is making a point that Christ is the Son of God and not the son of Joseph and focuses on Christ’s divine nature even in infancy. Again: not a Gospel that focuses on Jesus’ human qualities.

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas

Unlike the Gospels of our New Testament, which combine narrative accounts of the life of Christ with sayings, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is nothing more than a Gospel of sayings. The date of this gospel is still debated by scholars. The difficulty in dating the gospel arises from the difficulty in deciding whether or not it is in fact a gnostic gospel. But there were many forms of gnosticism. This gospel does not appear to display the docetic or dualistic ideas found in many of the other gospels, but expresses the belief that people have the capacity within themselves to perceive the Kingdom of God on earth. This might sound compatible with Orthodox theology, but it also suggests that this perception of the Kingdom on earth is achieved by a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of secret formulae indicative of that knowledge – something very much in line with Gnostic teaching. It is therefore most likely that this gospel does not go back earlier than the late second century, although some contemporary scholars do not accept this conclusion, and some even claim that this gospel is in fact older than the canonical gospels, and have even suggested that it was written by Christ Himself. But the most sensible biblical scholars and historians agree that it does not date anywhere near the time of Christ and was certainly not written by Christ or by Thomas or by any other apostle.

The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter

Like the vast majority of texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter is heavily gnostic. It was probably written around 200 A.D. The description of the Crucifixion is an example of docetism gone mad, picturing Jesus as laughing and warning against people who cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking they shall become pure; and in typically docetic fashion, it presents Christ’s flesh as nothing more than an illusion:

"'He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me.'"

The Gospel of Judas

The most recent discovery of early Christian writings is the so-called Gospel of Judas, though we already knew of this Gospel from our historical sources. Irenaeus in the 2nd Century makes mention of it:

“They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”

This gospel dates back probably no earlier than the second century since it contains theology that is not represented before the second half of the second century, and since its introduction and epilogue assume the reader is familiar with the canonical Gospels.

The Gospel of Judas, as suggested by Irenaeus’ comment on the gospel, portrays Judas in a very different perspective than do the Gospels of the New Testament. The author of the Gospel of Judas interprets Judas's act not as betrayal, but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. This conforms to a notion, current in many forms of Gnosticism, that the human body is a spiritual prison, and that Judas served Christ by helping to release Christ's spirit from his human body. Furthermore, the Gospel of Judas claims that of all the disciples, Judas alone knew the true teachings of Christ, asserting that the disciples had not learned the true Gospel, which Jesus taught only to Judas Iscariot.

One of the aspects of this Gospel, found also in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, that has drawn a great deal of attention is found at the beginning of the narrative, during the eucharistic prayer, when Christ laughs. Some have claimed that this Gospel of the ‘laughing Jesus’ portrays Christ in more human terms than those of the New Testament. But the narrative indicates that Christ’s laughter has a very different agenda:

One day he was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed. The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving? We have done what is right.” He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at you. You are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god will be praised.”

In the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, Christ’s laughter not only signifies his inability to feel pain; his laughter - as in the Gospel of Judas – is there to ridicule those who believe that their salvation will be achieved through the death of Christ’s humanity, which is commemorated in the Mystical Supper, mirrored in the Eucharistic prayer of the apostles in the Gospel of Judas: “…it is through this that your god will be praised”. For the author of the Gospel of Judas, like so many of the Gnostics, the death of Christ has nothing to do with the salvation of the human race. The Christ of the Gospel of Judas is laughing at those who believe that Christ’s death brought salvation to the world.

The Real Jesus

We have looked at just a few examples from Gnostic writings that some popular writers and even scholars today claim are older than those of our New Testament, and some even claim that these writings present Christ as a mere mortal prophet and not divine. I hope I have adequately illustrated that this is utter nonsense. Most biblical scholars and historians today still agree that these writings were far later than those of our New Testament. And yet, year after year, books are published on the topic of early Christian writings telling us the exact opposite, with titles such as “The Real Jesus”, “The Historical Jesus”, or something similar. But it remains the case that it is the Orthodox Church that has preserved the truth about Christ and it continues to preserve that truth today: fully God and fully man, of the same essence as God in divinity, of the same essence as us in humanity. The criteria for inclusion in the New Testament Canon were laid down for good reason, and of all the Gospels that we know of, only the Gospels of our New Testament fulfilled those criteria. To find out who the “real Jesus” is, one does not need to look very far. He will find what he is looking for in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

By Archimandrite Vassilios (Papavassiliou)

Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/2594410.html

"But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God"

(1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

Preaching was the work of Apostle Paul's whole life. He stated himself, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

We know from the Book of Acts that right after Apostle Paul’s conversion, he began to preach for the Hebrews in their synagogues that Jesus from Nazareth was the Son of God, the Christ that had been promised to them. Many of them were confused be that statement, while others joined the Church: Apostle Paul knew the Scripture well and could prove that the Messiah had come already, that He had to suffer, be killed and resurrect for our salvation, based on the Law of Moses, the words of the prophets and psalms. Many people were amazed when they heard him: “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem?” (Acts 9:21)

From the Holy Scripture, we know about four missionary journeys of Apostle Paul. Many of his trips lasted for several years and during that time Apostle Paul managed to establish several church communities. For his entire life, the Apostle maintained constant contact with those communities, sending them his letters, in which he explained the issues of Christian teaching and guided them in morality matters.

Apostle Paul working on one of his letters

Apostle Paul desired to turn all the people to Christ so much that he even tried to ensure that there would be no obstacles to conversion of people. That is why he did not want to burden someone and worked with his own hands to earn for living.

There was a certain strategy in the apostle’s preaching. He tried to preach in the largest cities first, such as Thessaloniki, Corinth, Ephesus and others. Those cities were the capitals of the Roman provinces, where large communities of Hebrews lived. And we know that Apostle Paul always began his preaching about Christ for Hebrews first. Then, if they did not accept his word, Paul addressed to pagans, since according to the Gospel teaching, all the peoples are called to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, to become saints and to receive what was promised by God.

Apostle Paul preaching in Athens

Athens was one of such cities, where the apostle preached for pagans. The Book of Acts tells us that Apostle Paul was preaching on the city square, when he saw the epicurean and stoic philosophers, who brought him to the well-known Areopagus. The apostle began his preaching rather wisely: he pointed out that he was preaching the same God, which they honored as well and to which they even made an altar with the inscription “To the Unknown God”. Although the Athenian wise men were ready to accept the teaching about the One God, the Last Judgement and the necessity to repent in our evil deeds, they began to scoff at the apostle when they heard about the Resurrection and Paul had to leave them.

Mount Areophagus

That was the first time when the Hellene wisdom faced the Gospel Message, the Wisdom of God, which can seem insane to people. We see that the wisdom of people was not ready to accept the Truth. However, there were several people who believed and turned to God through Paul’s word, which meant that his preaching was not useless. But it would took several ages for the Hellene wisdom to accept the Cross of Christ, this “stumbling block to the Jews”. The seed of the Good News thrown by Apostle Paul Athens, that center of ancient wisdom, would bring much fruit, which would feed many people seeking for the Truth. As for Apostle Paul, he would remain an outperformed theologian and the greatest preacher of the Cross of Christ.

What St. John Chrysostom says in his works:

“Paul was but one man, yet how many did he draw after him? If we were all such as he, how many worlds might we not have drawn to us? Behold, Christians are more numerous than Heathens. And in other arts, one man can teach a hundred boys together; but here, where there are many more teachers, and many more than the learners, no one is brought over. For those who are taught, look to the virtue of their teachers: and when they see us manifesting the same desires, pursuing the same objects, power and honor, how can they admire Christianity? They see our lives open to reproach, our souls worldly. We admire wealth equally with them, and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty, the same impatience of disease, we are equally fond of glory and of rule. We harass ourselves to death from our love of money, and serve the time. How then can they believe? From miracles? But these are no longer wrought. From our conversation? It has become corrupt. From charity? Not a trace of it is anywhere to be seen. Therefore we shall have to give an account not only of our own sins, but of the injury done by them to others. Let us then return to a sound mind; let us watch, and show forth a heavenly conversation upon earth. Let us say, "Our conversation is in heaven", and let us upon earth maintain the contest".

Reflections in the Holy Church tradition:

From Heaven, from Christ God, thou didst receive the call, thus appearing as the preacher of light, illuminating all with the teachings of grace; for having impugned the worship of the written law, thou didst cause to rise the knowledge of the Spirit for believers. Therefore, worthily thou didst ascend to the third heaven and attained paradise. Wherefore, O Apostle Paul, intercede with Christ God to grant forgiveness of iniquities to those who eagerly celebrate thy holy memorial. (2nd Kathisma)

To be continued...

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