she will carry to her rambling race that bright and living fire

God’s Mother was born today, the first of the twelve great feasts in the church year. These poor thoughts rattled around in my mind over the last few days, so I set them down. Those familiar with the feasts connected to Mary’s life will see that my words are just clumsy responses to three of the most common images in the church’s hymns about Mary: Moses’s burning bush, Jacob’s heavenly ladder and Ezekiel’s closed gate.

Today a green bud came out upon a once dead branch from deep within the heart of our own tree. Unwitting, song birds and myriad wild creatures chorused, flitted and chattered amid the many wide-reaching boughs of this great tree. Around its heart, tangled branches have rubbed raw their brothers, bruised and sometimes barren. This spray of life from within the thicket will receive sap and sun and all—when, lighted at her core by divine flame, she will carry to her rambling race that bright and living fire.

Today a ladder was set down by the Creator that would extend with her humble prayers and attentive heart to span from earth to heaven—saying yes to God’s desire that He might descend to make a throne upon the earth and a paradise with us.

Today, the Architect set upon its hinges the one gate within our rebellious city that stood ready for its Maker’s voice—ready to open only for our God that He might come forth to live with us, sharing our homes and our full humanity.

And here is a favorite passage from Fr. Thomas Hopko of Blessed Memory that summarizes, as succinctly as I’ve found, the entire history of those differences over Mary that developed between the Greeks and Latins:

As Father Alexander Schmemann used to say, ‘Mary is not the great exception.’ You know, exceptionally conceived, exceptionally ending her human life, bypassing original sin, bypassing death. No, no, that is not the teaching at all. It’s just the opposite. She’s the great example. She exemplifies and patterns the Christian life.

I contemplate the eternal rabbithood of God

“Darwin and Christianity – Part 13: God and Creation” by Father Thomas Hopko.

You could contemplate a tree and know the glory of God himself in that tree. Now, the tree is not God. The sun is not God; the moon is not God. That’s what Genesis wants to say. But that they declare the glory of God, and that they even express ideas in the mind of God who is the Logos from before all eternity. So there’s a sense in which all creatures and every single creature, from the highest seraph to the lowest grain of sand and everything in between, so to speak, are showing forth in creaturely form what God is.

Fr. Bulgakov, a Russian theologian who was very dissatisfied with how Christian theology formulated the issue of the relationship of God and the world, and he brought forth his own theory of the divine chokmah, the premudros, the sophia of God, the divine wisdom as a way of trying to understand it—I think rather unsuccessfully, but nevertheless very interestingly and worth studying, but probably, ultimately, not acceptable—but he tried. He tried his best. But in any case, it’s probably better simply to follow the Church Fathers and Palamas in what they actually do, what they actually say.

But they affirm the mystery negatively, as Fr. Bulgakov pointed out. They said that divinity and creation, the uncreated and the created, or speaking, taking the cue from the divinity and the humanity, the one Person of Jesus Christ, are united in a perfect union, and then they use four negative adverbs: achoristos, adiairetos, atreptos, and asynchytos, in Greek, which means without separation and without division, but without fusion and without changing. So God is always God, creatures are always creatures, but there is a real union that is effected by the grace of God through his divine energies, where humanity really can become co-worker with God and can really be deified. Human beings can really know God through his divine actions and energies.

Ultimately these actions and energies of God, they all proceed from the Father, through the Son, and are accomplished in us by the Holy Spirit. And that means that all the divine energies and actions and operations of God, from creation to redemption to salvation to deification to transfiguration to glorification are all enacted by agency of the Logos who is incarnate as Jesus Christ—in other words, by the agency of Christ himself, as the Creed says, following St. Paul, “through whom all things were made”—and by the accomplishing action of the power of the divine breath, the divine wind, the divine Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the all-holy, good, and life-creating spirit.

So you have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acting in the world from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, the Spirit in us through the Son, taking us into communion with Father, and there really is a union without separation or division, but without fusion and mingling. God doesn’t become a creature; creatures don’t become God. God doesn’t stop being God; creatures don’t stop being creatures. God is always God, and he can’t stop being God, and creatures are always creatures and can’t stop being creatures.

Nevertheless, the union exists without a separation and a division. We abide in God; God abides in us. We in him, he in us—what the process theologians would call panentheism: God is in everything, and everything is in God.

…Bulgakov, when he tried to solve the problem of how uncreated relates to created, he said a sentence once which is unacceptable. He said the creation, wisdom in its created form—he [spoke] about the uncreated wisdom and the created wisdom—he said is God in created form, that the cosmos is God in created form. Well, that comes close to process theology. However, I think the classical patristic Orthodox theology, following the Bible, would say God doesn’t have a created form—God is God—but that creatures in the forms that they have show forth and manifest that which exists in an incomprehensible manner within the Godhead—that would be the truth, that there are the divine ideas, the divine logoi of all creation that exist in God and are somehow even actualized in the divine manner within the divinity.

As the Roman Catholic great monk, Thomas Merton, a writer, a thinker, a philosopher, a spiritual writer said, “When I go out to feed the rabbits, I contemplate the eternal rabbithood of God.” Now, he wasn’t a Platonist who said, “I go out and contemplate the perfect rabbit in the divine idea of rabbit that exists in the Platonic world of ideas.” What he meant by “the eternal rabbithood of God” was that God himself actualizes within divinity something somehow someway that we can’t even imagine that has its created form in that little rabbit or in that tree or in that lion. Here the holy Fathers would speak about all of these elements in creation being symbolic of God, and by the way, they are. Everything that exists in the created order can somehow symbolize and manifest God, can give us an idea of God.

Analogies are right, but the Christian theology goes beyond analogies. We not only can contemplate an idea of God through trees or through animals or what-all exists that there must be God, he must cause it, he must be beautiful, it must have a purpose—but in experiencing those very realities themselves, within them we actually touch God, because the claim would be God indwells everything, and if he didn’t, as the book of Job says, if God withdrew his breath, everything would disappear.

But there are the presence of God and the Logos of God in all things. The holy early Fathers spoke about the logoi in plural that are spread in through creation and have their created forms. So we could say there is a necessary connection between God and the world for sure, but it’s a world that God created and in some sense that God does not need to actualize everything that could possibly be actualized. God actualizes everything that can possibly be actualized, we would say philosophically, within the Godhead itself.

But then I think we could take the next step and say: Since God has decided to create, God has also decided to actualize in created form as creaturely expressions of what exists in an incomprehensible way within divinity in all the things that exist, and that all proclaim his glory and his wisdom and his power and his beauty and his strength; and that our groaning and in travail, as St. Paul says, until the revelation of the children of God when anything ultimately will be transfigured and deified, and everything will be filled with all the fullness of God and therefore creation will ultimately reach the omega point that it was created to be from the alpha point, the arche and the telos, what it was supposed to be from the beginning and ultimately will only reach and become and more perfectly become forever and ever in the coming kingdom of God when Christ comes in his glory at the end to bring to completion God’s plan which was there from the beginning which according to St. Paul was hidden even from the angels from before the foundation of the world. This is how Christians look at it, I believe.

the human vocation to make the hundred thousand billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars into paradise

This is from “Darwin and Christianity – Part 8: The Genesis Account (part 2)” recorded as a podcast on “Speaking the Truth in Love” for Ancient Faith Ministries by Fr. Tom Hopko. Here he is talking about the first chapters of Genesis and describing how God made the Garden of Eden:

So there’s a real question here whether the entire creation was paradise from the beginning. In this narrative, it doesn’t seem so. It seems that paradise is only where man is, and it’s only where man is in communion with God, where man is adoring God, obeying God, keeping God’s commandments, and his job is to make all of creation into paradise. I’m even tempted to say nowadays maybe it’s the human vocation to make the hundred thousand billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars into paradise and to do so in the power of the risen Lord and the Holy Spirit in the age to come. That might be it. Who knows? But in the beginning you just have this little garden of Eden, this little paradise spot.

Orthodox Positions on Sin within the Life of Mary the Mother of God

This is a topic that I’ve read about over several years now (primarily online, not having come across it much within books), and I have wanted to collect together a few comments from various online sources into one place for myself as a simple reference in conversations (particularly when I am asked about this topic from time to time). As these passages indicate, Orthodox theology leaves a few options open on this topic while also differing from Roman Catholic and Protestant theology on this issue in a few straightforward ways.

Father Thomas Hopko in this podcast on The Dormition of the Theotokos (August 10, 2010):

In other words, as Father Alexander Schmemann used to say, “Mary is not the great exception.” You know, exceptionally conceived, exceptionally ending her human life, bypassing original sin, bypassing death. No, no, that is not the teaching at all. It’s just the opposite. She’s the great example. She exemplifies and patterns the Christian life.

Father Thomas Hopko in this podcast on Lent (April 9, 2013):

And some of their Western Latin teachers don’t say clearly whether or not she really died. And there were some that held that she really died, and there were others who said no. If there was this Immaculate Conception where the ancestral sin and stain was washed away, some people claim that she would not have died.

Now, our Eastern Orthodox and ancient Church says this: No matter how holy you are in this world, you’re going to die. Even if it could be by God’s grace and faith that you never sinned at all, you’re still a mortal, and you’re going to die. We’re all caught in this together, and the whole human race has to be raised and glorified. It can’t be done individually one by one.

It’s so wonderful! First you’re looking at this icon surrounded by flowers, with the Mother of God in it, who’s virtually sinless. I mean, many people even think she was without any, even the smallest sin, although most Church Fathers think she may have had thoughts coming from humanity, but she certainly never broke her communion with God, the Theotokos; she never committed any sin unto death. She was constantly graced by God and prepared to be Christ’s mother. We celebrate her in this grand Akathistos hymn. And then in the very same frame—we have the repentant and saved and deified and radiant Mary of Egypt, who herself becomes full of grace, just like Mary the Theotokos. But, boy, oh boy, if there was ever an opposite to Mary the Mother of God, it was Mary of Egypt!

On March 16, 2005 at 1:12 p.m., Father Thomas Dowd responded to this  post of Patriach Bartholomew on the ‘Immaculate Conception’ from March 8, 2005:

I once heard Fr. Thomas Hopko say that the jury was out in the Orthodox church regarding the sinlessness of Mary, but that most authorities would acknowledge that Mary never committed any sins, mortal or venial. Perhaps I am asking a question that cannot be answered in the Orthodox Church at present.

On October 8, 2017 at 6:24 a.m., Fr. Stephen Freeman commented in response to his own blog Why the Orthodox Honor Mary from August 1, 2016:

Randall,

The hymns of the Church clearly articulate that Mary did not sin. It is worth noting that there are some who hold this to be true of John the Baptist as well. First, you have to step outside of the “Western” concept of sin, its origin and meaning. First, both Mary and John died – they were mortal. For the Orthodox, sin is death. It is not so much a moral category. Our behaviors that are termed “sins” are the consequence of our mortality, a bad response to corruption and death. But we do not die because we “sin.” We sin because we are dying. Christ willingly submitted Himself to the consequence of humanity’s mortality (“He became sin” in the words of St. Paul, 2 Cor. 5). But there was no “sin” in Christ, no moral failing – only righteousness.

That someone might live in constant union with God in this life is amazing to the Orthodox, but not inconceivable.

Having said all that, it is correct that there are a variety of opinions on the matter of specific moral choices (sins) on the part of the Mother of God. The variety of opinions is possible because there is nothing that hangs on it, no particular dogmatic understanding is affected one way of another. A way to say this is that the Orthodox do not think that Mary “had to be” free from sin (unlike the RC doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, rooted in a false notion of Original Sin – at least that’s what I’ve been given to understand). The larger part of the Orthodox tradition simply believes that Mary was free from sin, as a matter of fact (even if it’s a pious fact).

The understanding is rooted in expressions within some of the Fathers and the liturgical tradition of the Church that always speaks of her as “most pure, most holy.” It holds that in the Annunciation, the Incarnation of Christ is much, much more than a mere borrowing of flesh and inhabiting of her womb. It is a personal union with God, in the same sense that we long for such union. In that moment, she becomes Theotokos – not just “tokos.” It is for this reason that the statement “A sword will pierce your own soul also,” is understood to be ontologically true, and not a mere statement about the grief of a mother.

Mary is in no way “exempted” from venial sins – but she does not break her union with God or with her son – that is – she does not consent to them. She has consented to God alone. Met. Maximos cites Chrysostom’s opinion that Mary was guilty of vanity at the wedding in Cana. I think Chrysostom was wrong and guilty of bad exegesis, failing to understand the mystery within that text. The fathers are not infallible and must not be used as such. It simply says that great preachers get carried away sometimes. Chrysostom, for what it’s worth, is not a dogmatic theologian. He was a great preacher. His work was never part of the dogmatic tradition surrounding the councils. Indeed, I would say of Chrysostom that he is among the most “human” of fathers, clearly showing his own brokenness. He gets himself in trouble with certain excessive actions and statements. He is faithful and he is a giant. But he’s not a great source of theological understanding, except when he is. 🙂

But – don’t trouble yourself in the matter. It is not a dogmatic concern. The truth of it is something that can be known, I think, on the level of the heart and long experience with prayer and the communion of the saints. But it is not a “theologumenon” to be figured out and believed one way or the other. Just let it sit there.

the silent depth of the cross

The word of the cross is ultimately silent. When Jesus hangs on the cross, crucified, he’s already dead, and therefore he is totally quiet. …We’re not talking today about the words from the cross. We’re talking about the word of the cross itself. And the word of the cross itself is enacted and spoken when he gives up his spirit and he dies. And that according to the church tradition, certainly some of the homilies of the church fathers, is the most eloquent word ever spoken. The most eloquent word ever spoken is spoken in silence. You just look at him hanging there. Because you can’t say it. There is nothing that could be said. In fact, one western saint, Saint Hugo I think it was or Saint Victor, he said: “God wants to speak to us, to reveal himself to us, and he gives us the scriptures, he give us the book. But when Christ is coming, the incarnate book, the incarnate word, then you know longer have words, you have the living thing and the real thing present in life. And when he hangs on the cross, and his arms are open, the book is open. The book is totally open. …The word of God is fully and totally revealed for what it is.” And what we have to do is to stand before it also in silence in order to hear. And that’s a very important point. Because no one who cannot shut up is going to hear the word of the cross. No one who cannot be quiet is going to going to penetrate the deepest mystery. And that ultimate word, even Saint Maximums, Saint Isaac, he said, “The language of God is ultimately silence. And in the silent depth of the cross, the silence of God, which is more eloquent than any word, speaks to our silence, the silence within us, in order that we can then understand and grasp and live the deepest mysteries of God.” And that’s why talk about God is only some much blah blah. Even too much spiritual talk is nothing but vain babbling. …Saint Ambrose … in his first chapter on the book of the priesthood he said, “You must first teach the priests first how to be silence.” And then he quoted the Desert Tradition which said, “For who cannot be silent must never speak because they’ll have nothing to say.” …We’re so busy minding everybody else’s businesses, who should do what … that the whole thing just becomes crazy. It becomes just the opposite of the word of the cross. The word of the cross that ultimately says, “Just look. Look. Shut up. Look. And then maybe you’ll hear something.” …What is it that we should hear? The simple answer to that according to Christian theology would be “everything” because the cross says everything, …because Christ is all and in all and nothing goes beyond that.

…If the cross is the ultimate act and word of God, and we are made in God’s image and likeness, then the cross is the ultimate word about us too. It can’t be any other way. And that’s even a basic axiom of the Christian worldview. Whatever we say about God, we say about us. …In fact, the church fathers even defined human life in this way. What does it mean to be a human being? It means … to be by God’s grace, power, energy, good will, pleasure …everything that God is by nature. So we are really called to be divine. Now if we are called to be divine, we can skip over a whole bunch of stuff and end up by saying: “Therefore we are called to be crucified.” Because if God ultimately reveals Himself in this world on the cross, that’s where we reveal our self too.

From “The Word of the Cross” (a two disc lecture delivered in April 1989 by Fr. Thomas Hopko at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary). Transcription available here.

accomplished when you are in fact abandoned by God

Fr. Thomas Hopko speaking in a ten-part lecture series about the Lord’s Prayer. Here he speaks of praying “thy will be done” as a commitment to love like Christ loved:

Therefore the most terrifying part all this has to be accomplished when you are in fact abandoned by God himself. …The ultimate act of love is when you are really getting nothing from it, even from God. …The myrrh-bearing women are used as an example of this. Because they go out to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body when he is dead, thinking that it’s all over. …The point that we have to make today is, if we are going to pray “thy will be done,” then that means we love and obey when we feel in total darkness, when we feel that there is nothing in it for us, when we feel that even God is absent.

We like to think … that Jesus crushed death by His divine power (“…By the splendor of His Godhead hast thou crushed death”). But how did He crush death by the splendor of His Godhead? The answer is by perfect and complete and total unconditional love as a crucified slave. That’s the power of the Godhead. It’s not brute force. It’s love from the inside.

the battle cry of that revolution is the Magnificat of Mary

There is this identification of the kingship of God with the indwelling and the presence of the Holy Spirit. …So we have this foretaste of the kingdom in the church. That’s why many of our church fathers would simply say that the church is the kingdom of god, by faith and grace and the sacraments. Not the members or the Holy Synod or the Patriarchates or stuff like that, not the institutions but the content of church as a mystical reality is the presence of God’s kingdom in this age through the Holy Spirit where Christ is reigning.

…You have a much greater revolution going on here! And here the battle cry of that revolution is the Magnificat of Mary. …This kingdom is going to come on earth through the slave of God … who is Mary’s child. It’s a very political statement. …This whole thing has got to be on this earth, but it’s got to be the kingdom that is not of this earth that is of the God who is love.

Fr. Thomas Hopko speaking in a ten-part lecture series about the Lord’s Prayer (two paragraphs from separate lectures and in reverse order).