Well, this is a fun start to the New Year! I published my last piece on Dr. Larry Chapp and Traditionalists and boy! did I ever get a lot of heat from it, including this comment:
Gregory DiPippo to Edward A. Hara “Only a deliberate will to pervert Justinian’s intent could turn what he says about apokatastasis into “Or, in other words, disobedient to Justinian and his desires.” And what he says about the heresy of universal apokatastasis is as obviously true as the observation that the sun is hot and water is wet.”
“After the new creation and the burial in water and the table that is full of fire, even the wisest men are so weak in virtue that they stand in constant need of the holy table and the cleansing Blood, and the helping hand from above, if they are not to be carried away into the utmost wickedness.” (Cabasilas)
Edward A. Hara to Gregory DiPippo “Do some studying of Justinian, his character, and the issues facing the Roman Empire. Then come back and we can have an intelligent conversation.”
Gregory DiPippo to Edward A. Hara “I am versed in this matter far more than well enough to know that the author of this article which you linked is an historical and theological illiterate, barely above the level of writing for Jack Chick.”
Now that is, I must say, a world-class piece of insult, to be compared to the likes of Jack Chick * and his nasty little pieces of paper diatribe against the Early Church and the apostolic faith! Nicely done, sir, considering you know absolutely nothing about me and have probably, at least up until this point, never read anything I have written. But this sort of thing is pretty typical of the kind of pearl-clutching indignation and horror I encounter whenever the subject of God’s universal love and his will to save all mankind is brought up. Writing anything which questions the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church is a sure way to line yourself up for a nice round of Traddy insults and guarantees from them that you will be first in line for Christ to throw you in to hell so you can justly burn forever while Tertullian and St. Thomas Aquinas grin from ear to ear. **
And just to be fair, there are a number of Orthodox priests who begin to foam at the mouth when they hear of Apokatastasis. So far, the ones I have encountered are converts from Protestantism, which means that they brought a steamer trunk of Western baggage to the Orthodox faith. Western converts are viewed by some cradle Orthodox as something of a nuisance for doing this. I’ve read a couple of priests who lament that the Western converts are ruining Orthodoxy in America. Culture can do a lot to shape our view of God and how we worship. I have no doubt this is true. A culture that has been warped by Evangelical Protestantism for centuries is not easily overcome in the mind of a new convert.
As I say, without apology, in my book, A LAYMAN INVESTIGATES UNIVERSAL SALVATION, the idea of eternal, burning torment in a pit of fire was birthed in the Roman West. The culture of the West was hardly sacrosanct from the influence of the Roman mindset. That mindset was LAW!!!! The law to the average Roman citizen meant everything to him. Roman law gave him rights and privileges that were unknown in pagan societies. When he was arrested, St. Paul regarded the Roman law as both his deliverance and an opportunity to get to Rome to evangelize. He made it clear during his interrogation that he was a Roman citizen and the moment he did that, his whole treatment by the authorities changed.
Thus, when a Roman Christian looked at the judgment passages in the scriptures, he couldn’t help himself. His immediate thought would have been the law courts of Rome, the stern judge, crime and punishment. That was the thinking in Rome, and it easily lent itself to thinking of God in the same way the pagans did – angry and ready to condemn to punishment. In my study of Christian history, it appears that the thinking of Western Christianity followed along those same lines.
This is not how the East thinks. I was reading a post on Facebook by a Roman Catholic lady who visited and experienced her first Eastern Liturgy, our beautiful Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom:
I don’t want to read too much into one, uneducated experience and say “this is what Byzantine liturgy is like” after a single visit, but I got the impression they kind of started with the idea that God loves them and went from there. It’s just kind of inescapable. Everything about the liturgy is saturated with the assurance of the closeness and tenderness of God. It wasn’t necessarily an emotional experience, either. It’s just that everything they said and did proceeded from an assumption that God is close. At least that is how it seemed to me.
And this is weird, because one thing you’ll notice is that the congregation is constantly begging for mercy. Dozens of times: Lord have mercy . . . Lord have mercy!” all throughout the liturgy. It was explained to me that this mercy is less “I’m a disgusting sinner, so please don’t punish me like you probably want to” but more “give us some more of that sweet kindness that you love to give to us.” There was mention of being harshly punished by God, but I think I recall it was in the context of a kind of Slavic shrug, as if we all agreed that life is just like this. I guess you can tell that culturally, what I saw and heard made instinctual sense to me, even if I didn’t catch every theological detail.
The one part I can remember that was spoken, and not chanted, was the prayer before communion, and it really got me. I looked it up:
O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ,
The Son of the living God, who came into the world
To save sinners of whom I am the first.Accept me today as a partaker of your mystical supper, O Son of God,
For I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies,
Nor will I give you a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief I profess to you:Remember me, O Lord, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Master, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Holy One, when you come in your kingdom.May the partaking of your Holy mysteries, O Lord,
Be not for my judgment or condemnation,
But for the healing of my soul and body.O Lord, I also believe and profess, that this,
Which I am about to receive,
Is truly your most precious Body, and your life-giving Blood,
Which, I pray, make me worthy to receive
For the remission of all my sins and for life everlasting. AmenO God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me.
O Lord, forgive me for I have sinned without number.As I understand it, this is the equivalent of the “Great Amen” that we say in the Latin Rite. I may print this out and bring it with me to Mass, because it really resonated.
The bread they consecrate for the Eucharist is leavened bread. Little cubes of the bread are added to the chalice, and when you approach the priest with your arms folded across your chest, he places a tiny portion into your mouth with a spoon (post-covid, everyone gets their own spoon!). Children and even babies also receive.
And then everybody wanders back to their spot singing, with quite a lot of gusto, as they should:
We have seen the true light
We have received the heavenly Spirit
We have found the true faith
and we worship the undivided Trinity
for the Trinity has saved us.My friend pointed out that a lot of the liturgy speaks from the point of view of the already-risen Lord, from whose point of view our salvation has already been accomplished. Here we are, stuck in linear time, still trying to work out the details of how we make it through our life; but in truth, the end of the story has already been worked out, and it’s kind of only a matter of whether we want to be there or not. The doors are wide open.
The dismissal prayer got me, too. The priest says:
“May Christ our true God have mercy on us and save us, for Christ is good and loves us all.”
Is it not fascinating that this dear woman, who has been in the West all her life, sees and senses a real difference between the East and West and how we view God and His relationship to us? Quite frankly, living under the law as I did in the West, I got damn tired of all the condemnation that makes Traddies seem to go orgasmic. Guiltily wondering if one more bite of my favorite ice cream – Hagen-Daz Coffee – will send me from a state of mere enjoyment of a good meal to the sin of gluttony and a spot in line in hell to receive the hot lead enema. ENOUGH!
She senses both the love and the balance between that love and realizing our sinfulness before God. Too many Protestant churches are either Fundamentalist nutjobs of the worst kind, or they are full of love of all the wrong kind; the kind in which God loves us therefore every sin, especially the sexual ones, is condoned. There seems to be few that have a proper balance between our sins and the immense and all-redeeming love of God that Orthodoxy has.
And that’s why I am unapologetically Orthodox today.
* When I was a Fundamentalist Bible thumper as a young man (and God forgive me, was I ever an annoying PEST!) I LOVED Chick tracts and could wait for the next one to come out. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxi culpa!
** Both Tertullian and Aquinas made statements to the effect that seeing the torments of sinners in hell would increase the joy of the saved. Nice guys.
Muddling Through Life 