BOOK REVIEWS

1. The Struggle Against Ecumenism from the periodical The Sword.
2. A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain (Mia Vradia stin Erimo tou Agiou Orous.)
3. Raising Them Right: A saint's advice on raising children by Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894)
4. Reflections on Children in the Orthodox Church today by Sister Magdalen.
5. Orthodox Spirituality: A Brief Introduction.  (Original title: Mikra Isodos stin Orthodoxi Pnevmatikotita) by Archimandrite Hierotheos Vlachos.
6.  Letters to Father Aristotle by Frank Schaeffer.
7. Once Delivered to the Saints by Fr. Michael Azkoul, Review from Patriarch of Alexandria.
8. Once Delivered to the Saints by Fr. Michael Azkoul, Review from Fountain of Theology Site.
9. Once Delivered to the Saints by Fr. Michael Azkoul, Review from Doxa.  DOXA is published  by
    an OCA skete in Canones, New Mexico.
10. The Non-Orthodox: The Orthodox Teaching on Christians Outside the Church
      Patrick Barnes, Regina Orthodox Press, Salisbury, MA, 1999, 173 pp.
 

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1. The Struggle Against Ecumenism
is a "must read" book for Orthodox

(From the New Calendar periodical "The Sword," Sept., 1998)

    Most Orthodox Christians in the United states have no idea when the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople scrapped the Old Julian Calendar for the Gregorian Calendar. Nor do they know the tragic and byzantine circumstances surrounding this significant event.

    Now there is a book available to Orthodox Christians that sheds great light on the Old Calendar-New Calendar dispute and the indignities, pain, suffering, and even death incurred by the Old Calendarists in Greece at the hands of the New Calendar clerics, police, government, etc.

    The book is called The Struggle Against Ecumenism, which purports to accurately portray the history of the "True Orthodox Church of Greece" from 1924 to 1994.

    The book was published this year by the Holy Orthodox Church in North America, of Boston, Massachusetts, headed by Metropolitan Ephraim.

    It offers some riveting reading and is highly recommended by this reviewer. It contains nuggets of useful information and can be purchased by writing to the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 278 Warren Street, Brookline, Mass., 02445.

    Officially the change from the Old Calendar to the New Calendar took place on March 10, 1924. But before that occurred, many other events unfolded, involving not only Orthodox clerical leaders, but government leaders of Greece as well, according to the gripping book, The Struggle Against Ecumenism. Meletios Metaxakis, a close ally of Venizelos, a political leader in Greece, was a key character in the plot that brought about the Calendar change. Metaxakis was enthroned as Ecumenical Patriarch on January 24, 1922, under some dubious circumstances.

    Earlier, in 1921, Metropolitan Germanos had been elected Ecumenical Patriarch by a vote of 16-1. However, one of his lay friends offered him money if he would forfeit his election in favor of Meletios Metaxakis. Members of the National Defense League told the metropolitan that Meletios Metaxakis could bring $100,000 to the Patriarchate, since Meletios had very friendly relations with the Protestant bishops in England and America, and could be useful in Greece's international causes.

    "I thought over this proposal all night," Metropolitan Germanos is quoted as saying in the book. ''Economic chaos reigned in the Patriarchate. The government in Athens had stopped sending subsidies, and there were no other sources of income. For these reasons and for the good of the people, I accepted the offer." It was a decision he came to regret.

    Ecumenical Patriarch Metaxakis presided over the Pan-Orthodox Congress of 1923, which voted to adopt the New Calendar, in disregard of the Pan-Orthodox Councils of 1583, 1587, and 1593, which condemned the use of the Gregorian Calendar. His reign as Ecumenical Patriarch was short-lived. He fled Constantinople and resigned as Patriarch on September 20, 1923.

    When the New Calendar was first introduced in Greece in 1924, virtually all the clergy submitted. Only the fathers on Mount Athos and some pious lay people refused to comply, the book notes. "From the very beginning (the Orthodox faithful who continued to follow the Old calendar) were violently persecuted by the police authorities at the behest of Archbishop Chrysostom Papadopoulos."

    We're told in this book that when the calendar change was first implemented in the early 1920s, the New Calendar bishops "unleashed a terrible persecution against clergy and faithful who refused to follow'' the New Calendar. The bishops ordered police to break up any Old Calendar church service. Police, swinging clubs, smashed heads, killed people, pulled priests out of the sanctuary, spilled Holy communion, broke Chalices in half, stripped priests of their rasa, and ripped the habits off nuns. One woman, Catherine Routis, a young mother of two children, was killed by police in November 1927, while trying to protect a priest following church services at a church in Mandra of Attica.

    The Struggle Against Ecumenism noted that on September 14, 1925, Old Calendar faithful attending the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross services at St. John the Theologian Church in Athens, witnessed a miraculous vision of a bright white cross appearing directly above the church. Over 2,000 persons, including police sent to disband the service, saw the cross, which hovered directly above the church for thirty minutes.

    One of the most interesting parts of this book was the listing of a chronology of events, which clearly spelled out the dangerous drift many Orthodox leaders have followed in their unending pursuit of ecumenism and their abject willingness to water down and dilute our True Orthodox Faith, handed down to us by Christ and the Apostles.

    Some key events cited:

    1582 -- Pope Gregory XII changes the Julian Calendar and replaces it with the New Gregorian Calendar.

    1986 -- Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant leaders in Boston signed an agreement ''to manifest more clearly the oneness of the Body of Christ." One of the signers was a Unitarian minister. The book reported that only 15% of the Unitarian membership consider themselves Christians. One Unitarian minister told a newspaper his work as a minister was not impeded by the fact that he is an atheist!

    1989 -- Patriarch Parthenios of Alexandria affirms that "Mohammed is a prophet and an apostle and man of God," and that "those who speak against Islam and Buddhism are not in agreement with God." Not one Orthodox bishop of the New Calendar churches speaks out to demand a retraction.

    1990 -- Metropolitan Bartholomew (future Ecumenical Patriarch), during a visit to San Francisco, expresses views tolerant of abortion.

    1990-- Orthodox representatives at a World Council of Churches meeting sign an agreement that confesses "we find ourselves recognizing the need to move beyond a theology which confines salvation to the explicit personal commitment to Jesus Christ."

    1991 -- At the World Council of Churches Assembly in Canberra, Protestant and Orthodox delegates participate in pagan purification rites.

    1993 -- Representatives of Orthodox Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Russia, Romania, Cyprus, Poland, Albania, and Finland, accept the Roman Catholic denomination as a "Sister Church'' with fully valid sacraments

    In conclusion, this review heartily recommends The Struggle Against Ecumenism. It is one of the most compelling books on Orthodoxy we've run across, and the first book to give a graphic account of the events leading up to the adoption of the New Calendar by the Ecumenical Patriarch.

 Top of page 2.  A NIGHT IN THE DESERT OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
 (MIA VRADIA STIN ERIMO TOU AGIOU OROUS)
 BY ARCHIMANDRITE HIEROTHEOS VLACHOS
 TRANSLATED BY EFFIE MAVROMICHALI
 Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1991
Reviewed by Fr. John Bockman in the periodical "The Struggler", September, 1994.

    This book is a practical guide to the Jesus Prayer.

    Wonderfully practical, A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain “brings to light the quintessence of Orthodox spiritual life: the Jesus prayer or prayer of the heart and how it can be practiced” by lay people as well as monastics (p 9). It is written in the form of an extended dialogue between Archimandrite Hierotheos and an unidentified hermit of Mt. Athos.

    Intended to serve for everyone, lay and monastic alike, it guides entry into the “divine darkness” of the Jesus prayer which is “Mt. Sinai and Mt. Tabor,” where “we will meet God” (p. 13). Especially, however, the book is intended to show how saying the Jesus prayer under appropriate guidance can be the principal means of authentic psychotherapy or the cure of the illness of the soul. It is one of a series of four volumes which Archimandrite Hierotheos has written on the larger subject of Orthodox psychotherapy. While the term “Orthodox psychotherapy” is modern, it identifies an authentic patristic concept as old as the Church. It emphasizes the author’s conviction that true Orthodoxy is not a philosophy, nor an ideology, nor even a “religion,” as the latter term is understood today, but a therapeutic science and treatment “which cures the innermost aspect of man’s personality.”

   Our salvation rests upon our union with Christ and calling upon His holy Name.

    Cure of spiritual illness depends upon our use of the means which unite us to the Saviour: asceticism, watchfulness, and crying out the Name of Jesus (pp. 37–38). We have but to cry out earnestly to Him, and He will come, defeating the devil and cleansing the impurities which the devil has created in our heart. In all this we must do our part — the human part — to invite God into our heart, and God will unfailingly do His part — the divine part — to gain victory over the evil one.  Our task is to begin seriously to do our essential human part, and to continue to do it faithfully and with attention (p. 38).

    The Jesus prayer is a Trinitarian prayer that unifies our entire fragmented person through incarnating Jesus Christ within us.

    This very simple method of the Jesus prayer purifies the soul. While called the Jesus prayer, it is founded on the Holy Trinity. St. Paul observes that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Thus, when we say “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” we acknowledge the Father and give obedience to Him through the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity created the world and made man, and then, through the Incarnation of the Son of God, re-created man and the world. And as the Son of God, in being incarnated, became the “forerunner of His spiritual presence,” so must He also be incarnate in all those who would see His glory in heaven (p. 41, citing St. Maximos).

    The basic purpose — the therapeutic “value” — of the Jesus prayer is to unify our entire fragmented person (p. 47). Our personality became fragmented when, opening a door to the passions, our nous — the eye, the purest part, of the soul —  moved away from God, became scattered, and turned idolatrously to other creatures, wandering ceaselessly over carnal and worldly thoughts and images. Our scattered nous in turn led our desire astray, and our desire also became scattered in fornication and foolishness. When, finally, our will was submitted to the passions, our whole person was brutalized.
Because the Jesus prayer promotes humility and awareness of our own sinfulness, it gradually restores conditions under which our scattered nous can be returned to wholeness through the grace of God. The Jesus prayer comes to “hold” the nous, to focus its attention, and to cause it to pray without fantasy (p. 45).

    The book offers a suggestion on how to use the Jesus prayer safely on behalf of ourselves and others.

    But Father Hierotheos does not mislead us. In no way does he propose that any one of us, acting alone, can penetrate deeply into the practice of the Jesus prayer. For that an experienced director is essential (p. 164). The initial limit recommended for the average one of us, therefore, is to say the Jesus prayer reverently, without fail, for perhaps ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes again in the evening of every day. For a married couple, this can appropriately be done by husband and wife together; for a family, one person can recite the prayer calmly and peacefully while the others listen attentively. But in addition to saying the Jesus prayer faithfully, we must keep all the commandments of God just as faithfully. “The person of Christ is connected with His work and His teaching.” Therefore, we cannot receive God’s grace, cannot maintain the life in Christ, cannot receive the Holy Trinity, without keeping the commandments. If we succeed in struggling toward purification of soul through praying the Jesus prayer and coordinating our life with the commandments of Christ (p. 164), our soul will be enlightened and we will be cured of our spiritual illnesses. In the beginning of this struggle, however, we will find it necessary to force ourselves to practice the Jesus prayer even for a few agreedupon minutes a day. The world, the devil, and our own passions will contravene. But we must be determined and persistent and enforce this small demand upon ourselves. “Little by little the Jesus prayer will increase and will sweeten our heart and we shall long for it” (p. 135). Nothing, not even the doing of a good work, should be allowed to distract us from those moments we have set aside for the Jesus prayer. We must guard them as the most precious time of our day.

    The Jesus prayer may also be used as our prayer on behalf of our brethren and neighbors. When we use it for others, we should exclude all imagination and thinking about them and their problems. God knows those for whom we pray, and also what their needs are. Therefore, we should simply say at first, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on Thy servant(s),” remembering each by name. Then we should continue to pray with full concentration of attention on the Jesus prayer itself (p. 141).

    Without the God-man Christ, there is only alienation, dehumanization, and unhappiness. Our goal in devoting ourselves to the Jesus prayer should be to become god-men through the God-man, Jesus Christ. As He became man by way of the condescension of the Father, so we too can become God through grace.

 Commentary on “Psychotherapy”

    The care of souls (“psychotherapy”) is a charism of the Church, found only within the Church. Orthodox Christians should approach any other “psychotherapy” very carefully. While modern methods of psychotherapy may help one deal more effectively with some of the problem of modern life, they cannot restore health to the sick soul.

    From the earliest days of the Church, the care of souls (the older term for psychotherapy) was a very special charism, a gift of the Holy Spirit. A spiritual father endowed with this charism was able to “see,” as it were, to the very bottom of the penitent’s soul, and to discern what passions held dominion there. With this discernment and the power to bind and loose, the spiritual father was able to help free the soul of the spiritual child and bring it back to spiritual health. This power was the function of priesthood, and was not shared by laymen. As originally established, it continues to be practiced today in the Orthodox Church’s Mystery of Confession.
Yet there was no illusion that the Orthodox spiritual father himself was the “good shepherd” of the souls committed to him. It was always understood that God forgives, God heals, God restores wholeness, but that He acts through those who have been given the power to loose and to bind.

    Before 1054 AD, what we may correctly call “Orthodox Christian Psychotherapy” was the common inheritance of both Eastern and Western Christians. After the West decided to go its separate, self-dynamic way under the Roman Papacy, pastoral care throughout Western Christendom was gradually transformed into legalistic application of moral principles to determine right and wrong. Eventually in the high Middle Ages, the introduction of “indulgences” and monetary substitutes for “works of satisfaction for sin” — which the Papacy declared to be equivalents of the rigorous penances of ancient times — gradually destroyed the original spiritual purpose of Western pastoral care or psychotherapy. Confession became a formalized rite in which sins were enumerated by an often unknown penitent to an often unknown priest under conditions which frequently did not promote effective pastoral care. The expectations for growth in spiritual life by the average man were seldom very high.

    The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century in fighting against what they perceived as abuses in the Roman Catholic system of indulgences, denied the entire sacramental nature of Confession. This caused pastoral psychotherapy to decline and finally disappear as a recognized and valued ecclesiastical function. In some Protestant churches, although rare charismatic ministers continued to exercise pastoral care from time to time, the function of pastoral care was replaced by the supervision and control of the faith by church officials who often acted as extensions of the Protestant State.

    The dominant model for thinking  about psychological problems derives from Freud’s classic theory of psychoanalysis. However, a growing number of reputable critics is now  challenging the validity of Freud’s theories.

    As Protestantism continued to evolve, the function once occupied by pastoral care was taken over by written works of moralistic devotion, such as The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan and the works of John Wesley in England. For many years their books were the only material read aloud in the circle of the Protestant family in English-speaking countries before the arrival of modern mass media. In this century, the media have turned people’s attention decisively away from religion and toward entertainment, diversion and educational information. The mass media have effectively put an end to what remained of religious psychotherapy outside Orthodoxy.

    In recent times there has been a proliferation of unsuccessful, fraudulent, secular substitutes for the charism of the Church. Meanwhile, the serious problems of spiritual illness, which make pastoral care of souls critical, have not only not declined, but have markedly increased in our spiritually sick society. Unfortunately, the salutary function of psychotherapy performed for souls by the ancient Church goes unrecognized by the world and is not readily available to most people. Some individuals have turned to the gurus of non-Christian Eastern religions. Others have turned to practitioners of psychoanalysis and various forms of behavior and group therapy which have been concocted by such men as Sigmund Freud and his followers.

    At bottom, the twentieth century’s dominant model for thinking about human behavior and psychological problems — a model which has penetrated the public mind and discourse — derives from Freud’s classic theory of psychoanalysis. According to this theory, a thing called “the unconscious” dominates man’s life and behavior. Man is essentially powerless to act against the unconscious except with the help of a trained healer, a psychoanalyst, who will listen as the patient opens himself up through talk (at a cost of about $125 an hour). However, a growing number of reputable critics is now challenging the validity of Freud’s theories. (A summary of this growing rejection of Freud may be found in “The Assault on Freud,” Time, November 29, 1993.)

    Americans are now persuaded that spiritual illness is nothing more than disease for which the individual is not responsible. Social psychologist Stanton Peele authored Diseasing of America: Addiction Treatment Out of Control, which challenges the most dominant of the current theories accepted by average Americans, namely that addictive behavior, such as that associated with alcoholism and drug abuse, is the result of disease for which the addict cannot and should not be held responsible.

    Dr. Peele carefully documents what he maintains are the irrationality and the scientific fallacy of this new addiction-as-disease movement. He says that multitudes of people have been forced into cultlike addiction treatments served by a growing addiction treatment industry. Such treatments have now been worked out for a multitude of new “diseases,” such as “stealing, overwork, worrying, sadness, fear, incompetence, procrastination, anger, child abuse, forgetfulness, murder, premenstrual tension, television viewing, gambling, shopping,” etc. (p. 117)

    According to Dr. Peele’s analysis, even having an alcoholic spouse, or being the child of an alcoholic mother or father, is now considered to be a “disease” — the disease of codependency, for which one must seek continuing professional help. He estimates that one in three Americans is the victim of one of the new “diseases” associated with alcoholism. These unfortunate people appear to be viewed as requiring the treatment of what he calls a vast “social movement” (p. 123) which has turned America into one huge hospital of people condemned to unending therapy!

    If one can overlook the hyperbole of Dr. Peele’s conclusions, his thesis appears to have some measure of validity. For example, the legal acceptance of assumptions inherent in this “social movement” (Dr. Peele’s term) is having dramatic repercussions in the justice system. Defendants who admit to murder and mayhem are found innocent or their trials end in hung juries because, rightly or wrongly, they are characterized as victims of their own or others’ “diseases.”

    The Orthodox Christian must keep in mind, however, that the principal objective of psychotherapy is to make the recipient a functioning member of a secular society. This is not to deny that some benefits might accrue to the soul through the healing of the “psyche,” if indeed the “psyche” is healed. The important point for Orthodox Christians is that secular therapies are not intended to, nor do they, cure illness of the soul.

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3. RAISING THEM RIGHT:
A SAINT’S ADVICE ON RAISING CHILDREN
BY
THEOPHAN THE RECLUSE (1815–1894)
Mount Hermon, California: Conciliar Press, 1989

    Education should be the sustained effort of parents and teachers to form children’s powers to struggle against the passions.

    The author of this book, Hieromonk Theophan, born in 1815, was formally recognized as a saint on June 6, 1988 by the Patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church. He had long before acquired the sobriquet “the Recluse” as a result of confining himself strictly to a cell in a remote monastery in the forests of Vyshen for the duration of the last third of his life.
In the first third he had laid a solid foundation of academic and personal skills for his future life as teacher, spiritual father, and bishop. Following his seminary years, he studied at the Theological Academy of Kiev for four years, was ordained priest, and in 1841 became headmaster of the Kiev Theological School. Later he served as professor in the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy, as rector of Olenetz Seminary, and St. Petersburg Academy.

    The middle third of his life was spent in active ecclesiastical service as priest, bishop, administrator, and preacher in the Ukraine, Russia, Palestine, Constantinople, and the Near East. He learned Greek and, through reading books which he found in the Near East, deepened his knowledge of patristic thought.

    In the final third of his life, after resigning from active pursuits in 1866 he gave himself up to a rigorous prayer life and asceticism in seclusion. Simultaneously he devoted himself to the task of serving innumerable individual spiritual children by correspondence. It is reported that he received from twenty to forty letters every day and answered all of them. His correspondence, much of which has been preserved, fills almost ten volumes. In addition to this demanding and time-consuming activity, he also translated patristic literature and wrote ascetical works on a simple level for the spiritual benefit of the less well educated Russian people.

    An edifying example of his spiritual guidance through correspondence addressed to one young woman can be examined in The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It (Forestville, California: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995). His writings show him to have been a teacher of the highest order.

    The thesis of Bishop Theophan’s book is that beginning with Baptism, everyone who desires to become fully re-created and endowed with new powers and the new life in Christ must begin the sweat and the labor of educating one’s whole life and all one’s faculties according to Orthodox Christian principles.

    Since carnal man is unsubmissive to the yoke of Christ, no one is immediately adapted to new life in Christ, and no one automatically acquires the fullness of this divine life. While God implants the seed in the soul through Baptism, the labor to actualize it takes place in each one’s never-ending inward warfare to bring the indwelling passions under control with the help of God’s grace.

    Orthodox parents, who should first of all be conducting this inward warfare on their own behalf, have the additional obligation to cause their children to prepare themselves well for the same warfare in themselves. They must assist in the formation of their children’s own powers, because their children are as yet incapable of developing their powers unaided and of conducting this warfare for themselves. Education, therefore, is (or should be) the sustained effort of parents and teachers to form children’s powers in the struggle against the passions.

    Having carefully laid this conceptual foundation, the author devotes the remainder of the book to detailing how the process of education or reeducation in Christ should take place, first in the case of each adult on his own behalf as natural man reborn in Christ, and then in the case of each child as natural child reborn in Christ and subsequently developing under the tutelage of parents and teachers.

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4. REFLECTIONS ON CHILDREN IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH TODAY
BY
SISTER MAGDALEN
Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press

    This Orthodox booklet from England offers very practical and timely advice to Orthodox parents of our day on how to meet the challenges of modernity as they conscientiously strive to guide the education of their children and teenagers. It does not pretend to examine every aspect of Christian pedagogy or the complete philosophy of Orthodox education. (This is better accomplished by Theophan the Recluse’s work.) But it certainly deals well with all the highlights of a child’s life, both actual and potential, which parents must respond to.

    The thesis of this book may perhaps be found toward the end: “We wish [our children and teenagers] to enter adulthood prepared, as free persons, to love Christ. The biggest difference between our Orthodox children and the average teenager today should be that they pray. . . . We must have in mind that our children are finding their way surrounded by the apostasy [predicted about a time when those who simply preserve their faith will be greater than the ascetics and miracle-workers of the past]. We must not ‘strain out gnats’ and forget mercy and justice and faith.” This realistic “common sense” approach, informed by Scripture and Tradition, permeates the entire work.

    What may be unique and most helpful about this work is the sympathetic attitude it adopts toward those who are tempted to go astray. The Church is a hospital for those who are sick. That being the case, it makes no sense for anyone to be surprised, shocked, or offended that sick people are found in the Church and in the bosom of their respective families. One doesn’t get angry with and attack sick young people, beating them up verbally, humiliating them and demanding that they become well in an instant and on “our” terms. To do so will simply drive them into the arms of false “physicians.”

    Today American children and teenagers will be found among the most seriously ill anywhere, because the spiritual diseases of the world are epidemic, affecting or infecting almost everyone, young and old. Therefore the therapy of the Church, supported by the home, must be offered to them, both the well and the sick, with kindness, love, patience, understanding, mercy, justice, and faith. A good positive Orthodox relationship of mutual respect, affection, and support between parents and children, and between spiritual fathers and spiritual children, is found to be the best prevention against all the ills afflicting children surrounded by trouble.

    The stress today on reinstating moral education and “family values” in society, while perhaps welcome as preferable to the moral anarchy which prevails today, is an unsatisfactory palliative from the Orthodox point of view:
In general, moral issues should not be understood by Christians as an end in themselves. . . . Teenagers often rebel against moral laws because their spiritual instinct makes them yearn to be guided by love in a free personal relationship with the Truth. Moral issues must always be treated in such a way as to foster, and not stifle, this spiritual instinct (p. 48).

    The acceptance by parents of a narrow heterodox understanding of morality simply will not do. Morality must be understood, not in terms of a comfortable conscience or a decent reputation, but in terms of salvation, for the aim of our life is that we acquire the Holy Spirit (St. Seraphim of Sarov)

    Children need to exercise their freedom of choice while we are there to guide them. We must loosen the reins gradually as our children grow up. We should be prepared for moments when our children’s freedom causes us anguish — this anguish is akin to the compassionate suffering of God, Who undertook the ‘risk’ of creation. Restraint of almost grownup children is a cheap solution; it is easier but less effective than understanding and prayer. If a child has been brought up in the spirit of Christ, it will hardly ever be necessary (p. 42).

    When the child does fall into serious sin, parents must be able to understand sin in a truly Orthodox way and guide their children accordingly. “Sin is judged by the loss of grace we suffer when we fall away from the stream of God’s grace” (p. 48). The applicable criterion when judging how to treat any violation of a commandment or a canon is this: “Will the treatment lead to a better relationship with Christ, or a worse one?” Even when it is obvious that a child’s given course of action is sinful, its gravity and the loss of grace will vary considerably with the circumstances and the environment (knowledge, disposition, and motive) in which the child has committed himself to it.

    A spiritual father has the duty of weighing all of these factors, not by following a book of rules, but by prayer and fasting. The result of the application of the canons cannot be understood outside the confessional relationship, nor should anyone attempt to do so. Parents cannot know everything, but they can be understanding and they also can pray and fast.
The most profound “family value” that can be conceived of is this: From the birth of their first child, the lives of parents are conformed to the lives of their children, for the absolutely essential and sacred act of parenting their children is their “kenosis,” their voluntary emptying of themselves by God’s grace. This essential element of Orthodox parenthood serves as the model of kenosis which children can and will follow in their own time if encouraged.

    Finally, it will do no good for parents or anyone else to react unwisely to children’s apparent rejection of the practice of the faith. “Our teenagers have to reach on their own the stage of adult conviction about the faith” (p. 46). And it will do much harm to ignore St. Paul’s sage counsel: Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). The word used here for “provoke” is paragizo, “to anger beyond measure.” Parents’ fruitless anger-beyond-measure begets children’s recalcitrant-anger-beyond-measure, and does nothing to help them turn from death to life. Whenever children are faced with moral dilemmas and temptations to doubt, rather than being blamed they “should be encouraged to pray and to keep praying, and to seek as early as possible the advice of a spiritual father. The parents should also pray and follow the spiritual father’s word” (p. 49).

    All of the above observations only skim the surface of what you will find in this quite remarkable little book. Read it! and read it yet again!

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5.  ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
 (Original title: Mikra Isodos stin Orthodoxi Pnevmatikotita)
 BY ARCHIMANDRITE HIEROTHEOS VLACHOS,
 TRANSLATED BY EFFIE MAVROMICHALI
 Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1994

     I need this book, and I am convinced that you need this book, too! Everyone needs it! Its message is vital to the only life really worth living, that is,  the life of the spirit which the Son-of-God-made-man purchased for us with His precious blood. It can shake us up and perhaps even help eject us out of the limited life that presently engrosses us. But, of course, just reading this book will not suffice. Information and knowledge alone cannot and never will impart to us what is needful.

    What is truly needful is our surrender to the faith by which God reveals Himself to us. It is needful that we open ourselves up to that faith, and make ourselves available to God, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in the purification and healing of the powers of our soul. Only through God’s grace, through the energy of the Holy Spirit Who becomes active within us, will we begin actually to live the “life-in-Christ.” But this work can help us ask for the grace to initiate our necessary cooperation.

    One of the helpful insights toward that end which this work offers us is this: We all have two known memory systems. Of the first we are completely unconscious, though it defines everything in our constitution. It is the genetic code, called DNA, which determines our development and growth in relation to our self. It works quite independent of our knowledge, will, and intellection. The second memory is what we recognize as our conscious memory — the brain cell function which defines our relations with our fellowman and imprints recollection of past events and the knowledge acquired through study and empiricism. There is, however, another, also unrecognized memory, that within the heart, which functions poorly or not at all. If it can be activated through prayer it will yield perpetual memory of God, which memory normalizes all our relations. Obviously, normalization would render us the completely healthy, integrated personalities which we all long to become (38–39).

    However, unless we are somehow made aware of the truths which this book attempts to communicate, we who are overly preoccupied with the things of this wicked and adulterous generation may never take the time or make the effort to submit ourselves to the purifying and healing process which must precede our capability to live the life-in-Christ.
This work is but one of a growing series of works appearing mainly in Greek by an Orthodox priest, now a bishop, concerned with explicating the Orthodox spiritual life under the concept “psychotherapy” for the benefit of  the “restless and disturbed man of our time.” His effort focuses on the fundamentals of Orthodox spiritual life by reorienting “our mind and thus our life to the authentic word and empirical judgment of the Fathers.”

    The author’s assumption is that Orthodoxy cannot be correctly understood as a religion in the contemporary sense, but is best classified as psychotherapy. Thus the pursuit of the authentic spiritual life necessarily requires constant resort and obedience to an authentic spiritual psychotherapist, normally an Orthodox priest, but one who is himself at least an initiate in the proper means for achieving it.

    In delimiting the boundaries of Orthodox spiritual life, Archimandrite Hierotheos redefines those terms which have become confused and misinterpreted by Orthodox Christians under the influence of the heterodox theology of the West (which he labels Barlaamism after St. Gregory Palamas’s well known theological adversary), including praxis, theoria, nous, reason, cure of the soul, etc. Barlaamism, he says, is being expelled from Orthodoxy by a contemporary search to rediscover the distinctive authentic “spirituality” of Orthodoxy.

    Another memory, that within the heart, functions poorly or not at all. If it can be activated through prayer it will yield perpetual memory of God, which memory normalizes all our relations, rendering us completely healthy, integrated personalities.

    Yet Father Hierotheos uses the Western term “spirituality” advisedly, acknowledging its weakness and general unacceptability in defining the Orthodox concept: “the energy of the Holy Spirit with(in) the person.” (12). For a better designation he prefers the term “spiritual life.” But because modern man is more familiar with the term “spirituality,” he injects it into his title and analysis to give it a place in the Orthodox tradition. Thus Orthodox spiritual life may be distinguished from and contrasted with other “non-hypostatic” spiritual traditions.

    The author asserts that truth pertaining to God and salvation is not discoverable by individuals, but is revealed by God only to those individuals who are prepared to receive it. The preparation lies inevitably in the healing process. Thus the Apostles who received the revelation of this truth had first to be “healed.” And their disciples to whom they then transmitted this truth had also first to be “healed” before they could receive it. Faith is God’s revelation to those purified and healed, and it is also the right path to follow to reach theoria. If we are ever to receive God’s revelation and illumination, we too must be prepared for it through purification and healing.

    Orthodox “spirituality” differs from other spiritualities in that it is empirical rather than abstract. It is centered in God, not in man. It is not an emotional or psychological state of being. It is a real life in union with God, not a theoretical one led solely within the intellect, the mind, or the emotions. To lead this real life one must necessarily possess the energy of the Holy Spirit within, Who alone gives this life to the soul.

    Orthodox “spirituality” is epitomized in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Christ is the Samaritan who cures the wounded man and leads him to the inn. The wine and the oil represent the mingling of Christ’s blood and the Holy Spirit to treat the man’s wounds and bring him back to life. The inn is the Church which is now most properly thought of as a hospital. The parable presents Christ as the Healer, the Physician who heals the soul and brings it to the care of the inn of the Church for convalescence and restoration (23).

    The heart and the nous are the center of Orthodox “spirituality,” and it is this center which needs to be treated for the cure of man’s total psychosomatic constitution. We must understand, therefore, what the Fathers mean by the heart and the nous. To simplify patristic teaching, we may say that beginning with the idea that the soul is the spiritual element of man’s existence, the heart is recognized as its essence, and the nous is recognized as its energy. If the nous can be brought to enter the heart and act in it, the soul, the heart, and the nous become a unity and the personality is restored to wholeness. This unity of the person restored by the grace of God must precede the unity of God and person. Sin is but the scattering of the soul’s energy, that is, the energy of the nous is dissipated outward to things and separated from the heart.

    Carnal man is unconscious of the potential centering role of his heart in his being. This role of the heart can only be discovered through a purifying asceticism practiced in grace. Rationalism, speculation, and emotionalism, so prized by the West, have nothing to offer toward the realization of this feat. Only ascetic practice has the power of returning the nous from its dissipation in the world to its rightful place in the heart. Only then can man experience the grace of God. Only then can man become conscious of the existence of his center, his heart. Only then can he truly repent of sin, enabling God to reveal Himself and be made manifest in his life through continuous remembrance (anamnesis) of His presence.
The three stages of spiritual development — purification, illumination, and deification — are not activities centered in man and performed by man. Rather they are products, as it were, of the uncreated energy or grace of God. “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Man’s salvation is clearly an energy of the Holy Trinity, but in the person of Jesus Christ, since Christ was incarnate “by the condescension of the Father and the synergy of the Holy Spirit” (45). But these stages of spiritual growth develop only in those who cooperate and respond to the energy of divine grace (47).

    These stages and the theoria and praxis through which they are implemented, as it were, through cooperation with the divine energy, are not intended for an elite, but for all men. Therefore, the Orthodox can not be divided into married and single, monastics and lay people who by state of life are either capable of or relatively incapable of a deep and profound spiritual life.

    Excellent chapters teaching about praxis and theoria, how participation in the uncreated grace of God is affected through the sacraments and asceticism, the meaning of nepsis and the oneness of Orthodox neptic and social theology which is superior in healing results to the social activism of the West, the problem presented by thoughts-logismoi, and the place of spiritual life in monasticism and marriage, round out the contents of this most valuable little book. a

February–March 1997

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6.  LETTERS TO FATHER ARISTOTLE
 by
 FRANK SCHAEFFER
 Salisbury, Massachusetts: Regina Press, 1995
 (213 pages)

    Frank Schaeffer is a journalist, a novelist, and a film director coming out of a prestigious family background in Protestantism who is now making a name for himself among conservative new calendar Orthodox converts and their supportive bishops. Contrasted with Dancing Alone, copyrighted in 1994, this present book seems to show that Schaeffer has experienced positive growth in understanding and appreciating the nature and spirit of Eastern Orthodoxy.

    Schaeffer’s opposition to ecumenism would be far more consistent and credible if he were not an apparently willing communicant in one of the jurisdictions supporting the World and National Councils of Churches.

    In both these books, Schaeffer acknowledges the limitations of his knowledge and of his skill in writing about Orthodoxy. He claims no special competence as historian, theologian, or scholar. Yet he nevertheless makes bold not only to write forthright and challenging works concerning contemporary Orthodoxy but also to edit The Christian Activist, “a Journal of Orthodox Opinion,” in which similarly-minded converts join him in supporting the message which his works proclaim.

    This reviewer observes that in his writings, Schaeffer is courageously acting the gadfly toward bishops, priests, and theologians who support ecumenism. He is generally careful not to name names of contemporary individuals who are following in the footsteps of such misguided leaders earlier this century as Patriarchal locum tenens Dorotheos of Brusa and eleven other metropolitans (1920), the politician Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936), the freemasonic Patriarch of Constantinople Meletios Metaxakis (1870–1935), and others who sought revolutionary Church reforms to support their concept of a newly liberated Greek state in the modern Western world.

    Schaeffer seems to be aware of this history. He observes specifically that it was the earlier alliance of politically powerful Orthodox Greeks with the Ottoman Turkish state which initiated the modern corruption of the Orthodox Church, leading to the infiltration of Western influences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (See Letter VI, p. 32).

    Schaeffer knows that this trend is ongoing current history as well. It seems to him, he says, that “some ambitious and politically well-connected Orthodox laymen, priests, bishops, and hierarchs in our midst . . . seem to be much better suited to Vatican-style politics, business, and Western philosophies than to the Orthodox way of living” (p. 34).

    At the beginning of the twentieth century, he writes, a vibrant Orthodox solidarity of faith had arrived in the modern world much more intact than it is today after surviving two-thousand years of heresies which aimed to divide and destroy. However, from the 1920s, he continues, some Patriarchs of Constantinople have pretended to speak for the Church. This has led to a confusion of the political with the spiritual, with disastrous consequences for the Orthodox.
Schaeffer writes tellingly:

    Orthodox hierarchs, bishops, and priests have no authority in themselves outside of Holy Tradition. If their faithfulness to that Tradition waivers, or is corrupted, their authority evaporates, no matter how much pomp and circumstance they are surrounded with, or what titles they have, or how ancient the see they serve (p. 154).

    How long, we wonder, will he be permitted to oppose uncensured the long-standing policies of the present leading bishops of the mainline Orthodox jurisdictions in such “strong language characteristic of a zealous style which is not universally appreciated”? (quoting Bishop Methodios of the Greek Archdiocese, (xi), emphasis provided). It is true that Bishop Methodios endorses Schaeffer’s books, but do we hear perhaps a tinge of embarrassed concern in the above statement? Bishop Methodios is known to have officiated at a Great Vespers service on August 15, 1996 in which Bishop Leo O’Neil, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Manchester, N.H., “also participated.” Bishop O’Neil is pictured in The Hellenic Chronicle (September 5, 1996) standing immediately to the right of Bishop Methodios. It is a strange place for a mere observer — if that is what he was — to be standing, namely in the midst of concelebrating clergy, for three or four Orthodox clergymen are pictured standing to the right of Bishop O’Neil. In what sense is this not concelebration? St. Basil commands the priest: “Do not concelebrate with whom it is forbidden.”

    It seems to this reviewer that Schaeffer in his “journey through contemporary American Orthodoxy” recognizes and severely criticizes many things that are in fact wrong and questionable in the faith and practice of American Orthodoxy today, and not just wrong and questionable in his opinion.

    From the 1920s, some Patriarchs of Constantinople have pretended to speak for the Church. This has led to a confusion of the political with the spiritual, with disastrous consequences for the Orthodox.

    Most importantly of all, with respect to ecumenism, the heresy of heresies, Schaeffer takes a strong and forthright position opposed to the long-standing policies of powerful figures in the mainline jurisdictions. Secondly, he registers a strong opposition to proposed changes in liturgical language which misguided Orthodox leaders are now attempting to foist upon their congregations. (Bishop Isaiah of Denver points out in The Christian Activist, Vol. 9, Fall–Winter 1996, that mistranslation has introduced heretical words and phrases into Orthodox worship.) In the case of each of these issues, Schaeffer stands on the side of Tradition. These issues are not inconsequential matters of custom and usage which may be modified by cultural changes from age to age. These are unchangeable matters directly pertaining to the unchangeable faith once delivered to the saints: “If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:9).

    Schaeffer’s opposition to ecumenism would be far more consistent and credible, however, if he were not an apparently willing communicant in one of the jurisdictions supporting the World and National Councils of Churches. The chief hierarch of his jurisdiction, a former president of the World Council of Churches, was applauded nationally a few years ago as “the dean of ecumenism” (The Atlanta Journal/Constitution, February 18, 1995).

Schaeffer’s opposition to ecumenism would also be more meaningful if he understood ecumenism in relation to the proscriptions of the Holy Canons of the Church and objected to it on those grounds. Unfortunately, he ignores the very existence of the Canons. Perhaps he has not heard of them from his Orthodox mentors, or perhaps what he has heard has suggested that they are not relevant to the modern age.

    While he manifests strong objection to heterodox ecumenism, Schaeffer’s primary and overarching concern in this book seems to be the erosion of a sense and conviction of Orthodox Christian community among the contemporary Orthodox in America. This erosion shows up in all manner of modern paganism: self-centeredness, moral laxity, hedonism, and loss of the sense of the sacred.

    To vent his concerns Schaeffer employs the device of twenty-five letters averaging about seven pages each written by himself and addressed to a fictional priest whose Orthodox ministry is plagued by practical problems stemming from the influence of the “secularizing, desacralized spirit of this age.”

    Schaeffer recognizes that real, vital, unconditional, Christian community is the essential context within which contemporary Orthodoxy must be changed by deliberate self-forgetfulness and sincere love of neighbor in Christ, not a social structure which they should seek to change to meet the presuppositions of a vapid and fleeting American present.

    To complete the book, Schaeffer appends an essay entitled “The Newest Liturgical Monstrosity,” by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, an Antiochian Orthodox priest. This appendix supports Letters XV, XVI, and XVII in condemning the disruptive work being done by the Orthodox Joint Liturgical Commission of the Standing Committee of Canonical Orthodox Bishops to change the language of the Church to conform to contemporary “political correctness.”

    It will be interesting to see where Schaeffer goes from here.

     Father John Bockman

Back to top _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. REVIEWS OF "ONCE DELIVERED TO THE FAITH" BY
FR. MICHAEL AZKOUL

GREEK ORTHODOX PATRIARCHATE OF ALEXANDRIA AND ALL AFRICA
    http://www.greece.org/gopatalex, e-mail:goptalex@tecmina.com

Mailing address: P.O. Box 2006, Alexandria - EGYPT
Tel: +203-4868595, Fax: +203-4875684

Ref. No. 137

To:  Saint Nectarios Press
10300 Ashworth Avenue North
Seattle, Washington 98133-9410

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

    We would like to thank you for the copy of the recent published book with the title "One Delivered to the Saints", which is going to enrich the library of our Patriarchate.

    This book is not only useful for the Orthodox faithful Christians but for other people was well who would like to learn more about the faith of the Orthodox Church. Because of its interesting content We believe that is going to be a bery fruitful book.

    We would like also to ask you to extend Our Patriarchal blessing and congratulations to its editor Fr. Michael Azkoul.

                                                With Patriarchal blessing,

                                                  (Signed) + PETROS VII

                                     Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa

In the Great City
of Alexandria
February 20th, 2001

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____________________________________________________________________________________

8. A REVIEW FROM "FOUNTAIN OF THEOLOGY SITE"
http://home.att.net/~kguin/

Once Delivered to the Saints
An Orthodox Apology for the New Millenium
Father Michael Azkoul

$23.00 (Seattle: Saint Nectarios Press, 2000)

dimensions: 7" x 9 7/8" x 1" (18 cm by 25 cm x 2 1/2 cm), 356 pages

    If you don't like theology and you hate philosophy and you don't like your feathers ruffled, don't read this book!  But if the contrary should be true in your case and you are ready for a challenge, this is the book for you. Fr. Azkoul has given us a small "summa" with his Once Delivered to the Saints. This book requires a certain level of application and perseverance; it might be a rather tedious read for some, but it will be worth the effort.

    What is this book about anyway? Fr. Azkoul seeks to demonstrate where, when and how Christianity went astray in the West and why it continues adrift. Investigating the historical, philosophical and religious roots of Christianity, the result is an historical but blunt apologetic for Orthodoxy for the new millenium.

    Fr. Azkoul boldly sums up his thesis in the book's conclusion: "The idea of a "doctrinal minimum," an evolving standard of Faith, an amalgamation of the divine Mystery with human theories has no support in the Fathers or the divine Scriptures. Salvific Faith is the Faith of the one Church. There is no Church without the Faith, no Faith without "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of Truth" (I Tim. 3:15). Only the Orthodox may claim to have kept the Apostolic Faith without addition or subtraction."

    Quoting with approval the late Metropolitan Philaret of the Russian Church Abroad, Fr. Azkoul appraises the present ecumenical movement: "It is the belief in the renewal of the whole of mankind within the new and universal Church that lends to ecumenism the nature of a chiliastic heresy, which becomes more and more evident in the ecumenistic attempts to unite everyone, disregarding truth and error, and in their tendency to create not only a new Church, but a new world". The entire book is designed to lead the reader slowly, inexorably and irresistibly to an appreciation of the conclusions cited above.

    Augustine's ideas on grace, being, the Trinity; Anselm's teaching about salvation (soteriology), the West's acceptance of the idea of the "development of doctrine," the Filioque, eschatology (end times), etc., make this book a very useful book of theology and Christian philosophy. This reviewer does not know of another Orthodox book of theology as complete as this one. Someone may ask how Azkoul's book compares with Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Fr. Pomazansky? In our opinion, the latter book can be understood easily enough by high school students, whereas Once Delivered to the Saints is written for a more mature audience: teachers, priests, ecumenists. It is appropriate for the seminary classroom. Pomazansky's book defends Augustine, calling him "blessed," but Azkoul's work traces most of the West's woes to "the bishop of Hippo."

    We do not agree with Fr. Azkoul's appraisal of the toll-houses and we are not sure of the need to have spent so much time on Jacob Boehme (pp. 106-110), but surely his treatment of philosophy will be helpful to all. There are a number of Latin quotations and many Greek words and phrases used throughout the book, so some acquaintance with these languages would be useful to the reader. This reviewer noticed a fair number of errors missed by the proofreaders, but there are not that many for a book of this size and depth. Hopefully, they will be corrected in a second printing. We owe a debt of gratitude to the publishers for taking on such a serious tome. Our hat is off to Fr. Azkoul for laying down the gauntlet to the Church today. Young scholars will have to deal with this book as they firm up their own theological positions and we can hope that this book will receive their diligent study.

email : orders@orthodoxpress.org

(Reviewed by M.G., February 6, 2001)

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9. A REVIEW FROM "DOXA," GREAT LENT, 2001

Once Delivered to the Saints
An Orthodox Apology for the New Millenium
Father Michael Azkoul

        This is a thought provoking book by a very erudite Old Calendarist. It needs to be read with an open mind by all seminarians, clergy, and other Orthodox thinkers. The section on the Ecumenical Movement is particularly challenging. A weakness in the book is that Fr. Michael seems to be quite unaware of the many very traditionalist clergy  who have in recent years come into Orthodoxy from Protestantism. He critiques Fr. Georges Florovsky's distinction between the "charismatic boundaries" and the "canonical boundaries" of the Church (about which we wrote in the last DOXA, before we received this book.) This reviewer still thinks that Fr. Georges' distinction is valid. With the ancient Fathers he attests that truth exists, and he sees that Grace (i.e., God) operates outside canonical Orthodoxy. Mindful of the passages like Luke 9:50, he believes that the closer a person or group is to Orthodoxy and Orthodox life, the more they experience, to some extent, the embrace of the Church. As to Christian practices outside the visible Church, the only judgments we can make are: 1) This is not visibly Orthodox, 2) This is close to, or far from, Orthodoxy, and 3) We have no way to know for sure which sacraments outside the visible Church totally lack efficacy. We only can be sure that in the Church is found the fullness of Grace and Truth.

    DOXA is published  by an OCA skete in Canones, New Mexico.