BILLTESKA

Timothy Ware was born in 1934, which makes him a vigorous 74, regal in the long white hair and beard of an Orthodox monk and flowing black ryassa and golden panaghia (pectoral icon of the BVM) of a bishop. The young Ware took a double first in classics at Oxford. Raised an Anglican, he became Orthodox in 1958. While still a layman, he wrote The Orthodox Church, which is the best introduction to the subject in English. He has revised it frequently, to stay up to date.

Metropolitan Kallistos on pilgrimage at Lindisfarne

In 1966 he was ordained and tonsured with the name KALLISTOS. Later he became the titular Bishop of Diokleia, remaining in Oxford, where he held an academic appointment in Eastern Orthodox Studies, until his recent retirement. At that time, his imaginary diocese was made a metropolitanate, and he a metropolitan. He has written widely and made the definitive translation of the Philokalia.

The title of his lecture at Ascension Greek Orthodox Cathedral was My Lord and My God: Personal Faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior. It turned out to be a rehearsal of the basics of Nicene Orthodoxy. Who? How? and Why? He set out to answer.

WHO: Theandros, the Godman. Only God can save us. A prophet or spiritual teacher cannot. Jesus can because He is not only human but also divine. Therefore to say that Jesus I My Savior is to proclaim that He is God. As Thomas said: My Lord and my God. Metr. Kallistos made a point of reiterating several times that this is not a fifty-fifty proposition. Jesus is “100% human and 100% divine.” But he is not two persons, only one.

HOW: ++K related that having said this once, a gentlelady observed that he was “dangerously close to talking nonsense”. And he readily admits it. Her we have to admit that we confront the deepest possible Mystery. Everyting about the Incarnation is sheer paradox. I was reminded of one of my favorite hymns, the medieval carol I have quoted before, Gabriel’s Message:

He that comes despis’d shall reign,

He that cannot die be slain

From His death, Death’s death shall gain.

So behold, all the gates of heav’n unfold.

The how will have to remain a Mystery to be adored, not understood. I think this is quite accurate.

WHY: The purpose, however, can be spoken of. Cur Deus homo? Why the Godman? What was the Incarnation for. This is the subject of a previous post, and I am happy to say that ++K more or less confirmed what I said in it. We all say we believe it was for us humans and for our salvation. Salvation means health and wholeness. He outlined various theories of the Redemption by associating them with five words: Teacher, Sacrifice, Substitute, Victor, and what he called Jacob’s Ladder.

TEACHER: Rabbi, Didaskalos. What His disciples called Jesus, and what Greek Cypriots call their priests. Yes ~ certainly a Teacher. But much more as well. ++K kept emphasizing the necessity of not reducing Him to any one of these roles, but taking them all together.

SACRIFICE: Paschal lamb. Sin offering. Somehow, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross is a benefit to us.

SUBSTITUTION: Christ dies not just on our behalf, but in our place. This he interpreted more in the ancient Ransom sense than in the later, Anselmian sense. Christ paid the price we could not pay. But to whom? I am happy to say that ++K rejected out of hand the notion that something had to be paid to the Father. He very gently related hearing Billy Graham as a youth. He was quite moved with the whole event except for one phrase, which left him uncomfortable: when Jesus died on the Cross, He was struck with the thunderbolt from God that was meant for us. This horrible idea is actually heretical, ++K implied (though not using the word), because it separates the Son from the Father. It won’t do. Neither will saying that the ransom was paid to the devil. That raises the impossible question of how the devil got rights to keep us as slaves. “Better not toask to whom it is paid,” advised ++K.

VICTOR: Clearly, ++K likes this one (as I do): the cosmic conflict between Love and death, the Godman winning the day by the paradoxical trampling down death by death of the Orthodox Paschal liturgy. Where the Victory is experienced as nearly as it can be here and now. ++K told a charming story about Soviet Russia, in which an atheist lecturer came to a little village to explain that belief in God is preposterous and impossible. After an hour of this, he asked for questions. The priest in the back raised his hand and asked if he might speak in reply. The Bolshevik said he might, but only for a minute. “Oh, it won’t take nearly that long,” said the priest, who came up in front and faced the crowd. “Christ is risen!” he said. “He is risen indeed!” they all replied. And the priest sat down. “That was all I wanted to say,” he said to the apparatchik.

LADDER: Jacob’s Ladder refers to the Patriarch’s dream in which angels ascend and descend, and to Jesus reference to that movement in relation to Himself. ++K relates this to the doctrine of theosis, or divinization. As St. Irenæus said God became what we are so that we might bewhat He is. ++K related also St. Athanasius somewhat sharper repetition of the same doctrine: God became Man that Man might become God. “Not God by nature, of course. We are not to be additional Members of the Trinity. But we are to participate in the Life of the Trinity.” (He did not explain the difference.)

And THAT is the meaning of salvation. Not only justification (which does not interest the Orthodox very much, although they recognize it as a biblical category), and certainly not only rescue from punishment, but sanctification. “Justification, salvation, sanctification, theosis ~ they are all pretty much one in the same.”

So, when the lady on the underground asked him (in clerical dress) “Are you saved?” He had to think for a bit. To say “yes” would seem overconfident. To say “no” would seem untrue. To say “I don’t know” would be pathetic for a priest. So ++K said to her “I trust that I am being saved, and that – by God’s grace – I shall be in the end.” Salvation is a process, not an event. And it’s not over until it’s over. This is a very Anglican-sounding answer. In fact, most of what ++K had to say is what I find in classic Anglicanism.

# posted by billteska : 7:49 PM