Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160124

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image269Having completed a presentation on the actual chronological order of the New Testament (NT), that is the order in which the books of the NT were actually written, I would now share some information about the NT in general. The first information I would share is called the Synoptic Problem.

The first three Gospels, because of the extensive agreement of their material, can be put in parallel columns for the sake of comparison. The presentation of the Gospel material in this fashion is called a synopsis. Therefore Mark, Matthew and Luke have become known as the Synoptic Gospels; their authors are accordingly known as the Synoptists.

The similarity of material which is evidenced when the Gospels are arranged in this manner, coupled with notable dissimilarities within the first three Gospels, give rise to the so-called Synoptic Problem. How is this remarkable mixture of similar and dissimilar material within these three Gospels to be explained?

Let us first look at the similarities.

On the whole, the content of the first three Gospels report the same words and deeds of Jesus. The miracles, parables, discussions and principal events in his life are the same. The passages that are common to the three Gospels are called the “Threefold Tradition.” The “Twofold Tradition” designates passages found in two Gospels. The “Unique Tradition” are those events or words contained in a single Gospel, whether it be Mark, Matthew or Luke. Traditions employed twice in the same Gospel are called “doublets.”

The shortest of the three Gospels is Mark. Almost the whole of its material occurs also in Matthew or in Luke or both. Only very little material is peculiar to Mark. The few that are unique to Mark, that   is 7:33-36, 8:22-26, seem to be stories that Matthew and Luke must have found embarrassing for some reason. (Why not look these up?) For instance Matthew contains the substance of approximately 600 verses of Mark, or about 90 percent. Luke contains more than half of Mark’s material and substitutes for half of what remains by parallel material. On the other hand, the material peculiar to Matthew constitutes about 30 percent of the total Matthew and in Luke the peculiar material constitutes almost half the total Gospel.

There are discrepancies in the figures presented by different scholars because of text-critical disagreements about the genuine of certain verses in each Gospel.

More to follow!

Further Thoughts About the WAY of Jesus — 20160124

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Holy-NapkinMost people discover how to listen to God through a practical question or a pressing personal experience. People want to know how to pray for healing, or they need some specific guidance in their lives, or they become tired of personal, formal prayer in which they do all the talking and never seem to receive a response. Each of these situations brings up the topic of spiritual growth through listening to God, for listening to God is the only answer to these questions and the only solution to these problems.

Take as an example a situation in which we want to know for what we should pray when we are praying for healing for ourselves. How do we know what should be the focus of our prayer? There is only one answer: We must ask God what He wants done and then listen for His answer; then we pray for that which He suggests. For, if we want our prayers to succeed, we cannot merely pray for whatever seems best to us. Daily, Christians pray the words, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But if we are really praying for our will to be done, we have in our own minds deposed God and taken His place.   Also, if we pray for our will to be done, we are not sure our prayer can or even ought to be answered; for only what God wants will be done. Only He sees the total picture and knows exactly the best thing to do at any moment.

We must pray, then, for God’s will to be done; and to find out what He wants, we must ask Him. But another question quickly arises: When we ask God to reveal His will and we hear an answer within us, how do we know whether we have heard God’s voice? Could this not be our own thought?

Yes, it could. And that is the reason that we must learn how to listen for God’s voice. It is most important for us to be able to distinguish God’s voice from the many other voices of self within, especially if we want to learn how to pray for our own spiritual growth and inner healing.

The ancient teaching of Christianity is that, through the Holy Spirit and His gifts of faith, hope and love, Jesus Christ lives within us. Paul taught this truth many times.

If Jesus is living within each of us, He is there purposefully. One reason He lives within us is so that we can be close to Him and He to us. Our closeness is not a purely emotional thing – although it does have many strong emotions involved in it – but it is also practical.

More to follow about Listening To God and then about the Prayer of Quiet.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20160124

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Picture1In trying to understand the differences between our Greek-Catholicism and Roman Catholicism, I suggested that we first look at the Reformation in order to understand why Western Christianity, and Roman Catholicism, have the approaches to religion that they do. The displacement of our Church to this country meant that for some time it was influenced not by Eastern Christianity but, rather Christianity that underwent the difficult Reformation.

Most historians agree that the Reformation had at least two sources: (1) a very “comprehensive dissatisfaction” with the conditions in the church, and (2) the social and political frustrations which then existed in Europe. One   author states:

Throughout the Reformation Era, from the Peasant’s Revolt to the Puritan Revolution, the most radical political theories did not evolve from the necessity of logic, but grew out of the demands of the dissatisfied minorities. In most cases, their religious and political view coincided.

It cannot be denied that one of the most religious periods of European history occurred before and around the time of the Reformation. The real ravaging of the bubonic plague (The Black Death), which, depending on the region, destroyed from one-eighth to two-thirds of the population and the continuous warfare of the period which left the people in mortal famine, moral devastation and despairing poverty.

Given the toll of these tragedies, people naturally pursued an escape by seeking healing and salvation.     Instead of encountering the true comfort of God, desperation led many of the people to accept a view of God inspired by their own terror and hysterical fanaticism.

The temperament of medieval piety was one of great superstition and simple-minded acceptance. People had a tendency to see almost anything as sacramental. In hopes of attaining a blessing or healing, for example, they would consume dust from saints’ tombs or pay homage to a bizarre array of fraudulent relics. Numbers of them would go to church to receive sacraments in order to get their wishes granted. Astrology and pagan customs were freely incorporated within Christian ceremonies in the hopes of averting natural disasters. Undoubtedly, these abuses repulsed the Reformers. More importantly, they significantly influenced their attitudes towards the sacraments.

Hopefully you are beginning to see the influences that the Reformation Era had on Western Christianity.

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for This Weekend — 20160117

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icon-publican-pharisee-3-smThe readings for this weekend, which begins a four-week period which leads up to the Great Fast, are taken from the second Letter to Timothy and the Gospel of Luke. This weekend and next draw their names from the Gospel   parables which are read. This weekend shares the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee and next weekend the parable of the Prodigal Son.

But let me start with the reading we use as our Epistle. In the second Letter to Timothy, the author states that the readers of the letter have known the sacred Scriptures – that is the Old Testament (OT) – which is the source of the wisdom which, through faith in Jesus Christ, leads to your   salvation.

What in the OT, when coupled with the belief in Jesus, can lead us to salvation? As I think about the OT, I realize that its overwhelming theme is TRUST IN GOD. The Jewish people were called to place their trust in     Yahweh. Although they repeatedly lost their trust, Yahweh always found a way to bring them back and to help them. I think that the author of Timothy was suggesting that this is the wisdom, if we apply it to Jesus Christ, that is the source of our salvation.

The Gospel reading shares this rather interesting parable. I believe that the basic theme of this Parable is that HUMILITY is the key to spiritual growth and one’s ability to truly TRUST IN GOD.

The parable pictures a man, that is the Pharisee, who is quite pleased with himself and who thinks that he complies with all the requirements of his religion. In reality he has falsified the true meaning of religion. He has reduced religion to just externals and measured his piety by the amount of money he contributed to the temple.

The Publican, on the other hand, humbles himself and his humility justifies him before God.

When a person is   truly humble, that is knows herself as she truly is, she is open to experiencing God and understanding a very important truth: without God a person is nothing. A humble person knows that he is created by God; that whatever talents and abilities he has are from God. They can help him to spiritually grow and become, in a real way, one of God’s children.

To grow in our likeness of God means that we must have a real sense of our true selves.

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160117

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St Gregory Palamas

St Gregory Palamas

In the last issue I began sharing some thoughts about our Father among the Saints, Gregory Palamas. He is, above all, the first and foremost theologian of the Transfiguration: that great New Testament (NT) theophany, which gives us, in a graphic and concrete manner, the vision of God’s purpose in creating man. In Christ’s resplendent form, as it appeared before the three chosen disciples on Mount Tabor not long before His crucifixion, we see our future hope: Human nature filled with divine glory; human nature suffused with the grace of God, the very Life of the Most Holy Trinity.

But in the glorious vision of Christ Transfigured, Peter, James and John, first and foremost, beheld Christ as God, consubstantial and equal in every respect with God the Father, Whose exact image He is.

“No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him” (John 1:18).

Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ teaches us that He is the image of the Father: “He that has seen me has seen the Father”, and that “no man comes to the Father but by me”. This has tremendous consequences for our understanding of the divine economy, and for our reading of Holy Scripture.

For example, we note the profound significance of the Apostolic greeting in Second Corinthians, which in earliest times marked the beginning of the Liturgy: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” The fact that Christ is mentioned first, before the Father, testifies to the Son’s equality with the Father in His divine status. Christ is thus homoousios or, in another word, consubstantial with the Father, and in no way inferior to Him in His divinity.

But that is not all that this Apostolic greeting tells us. For in addition to witnessing to the divine equality of the Son and Word of God with His divine Father, it also gives us the shape of the divine economy. That is to say, it bears witness to the fact that in God’s revelation, in His self-disclosure, to the world, Christ is the chief protagonist, the central figure. So every manifestation of God, every revelation of God, comes in and through Christ, the Son and Word of God the Father. Hence Christ is at the heart of all the great revelations of God to humankind.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20160117

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allsaintsWhat is important to know about the Call to Holiness is that God wants free-will partners. He created us to be His sons and daughters not His blind slaves. Once we come to know Him, however, we do become His servants, but we do it willingly, out of love. We must remember that the Man Jesus was a servant of God. The will of man is an essential condition, said St. Macarius of Egypt, for without it God does nothing. James says in his letter this: Draw near unto God and He will draw near unto you. Indeed, faith begins with obedience. Obedience is what we mean when we say, draw near to God.

The Call to Holiness requires that a certain “synergy” with God be established. Synergy does not mean that God does one-half of the saving work and I do the other half. For God always takes the crucial initiative. He alone provides the saving grace. God does all of the saving work; we merely respond. He stands knocking and calling at the door of our souls and hearts. Yet, He will not break down the door. We have to open it freely. That effort on our part of opening the door and then taking up our cross to follow Jesus is our part in God’s plan of salvation. If we were to use percentages here, we would say that God does 99.9% of the work of salvation. Our response to God in accepting the   gift would amount to one-tenth of one percent. Yet that one-tenth of one percent is crucial. It represents our free response, our acceptance of His great gift.

Before salvation and union with God can take place, two things must happen. First, God must reach out to us. This is the divine initiative and it is called Grace. Grace is God’s hand stretched out to us in Baptism. Then, there must be our response to God’s reaching out, and the name of the response is Faith. Faith is our hand reaching out to clasp God’s hand which is already extended to us. Paul brought these two words – grace and faith – together when he described salvation in Ephesians 2:8. (Look this up)

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160117

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Ladder of Divine AccentIn the last two issues I presented two of the three fundamental causes of Talkativeness, a bad/relaxed Lifestyle and Vainglory. The third cause that St. John enumerates is Gluttony.

This may seem a more surprising cause of talkativeness. But the reason for it is fairly straightforward. The more lax we are in disciplining our bodies, the less restrained our words. It is no coincidence that food and drink almost always are included in social interaction. Talking and consumption nearly always go hand in hand, at least according to John. Sometimes this rather natural combination, while most frequently innocent, can become a more serious problem as in the case with people who find it extremely difficult to socialize if they are not at least slightly inebriated. It seems to be a common wives’ tale that drinking can make us more sociable. While drunkenness is not usually considered gluttony, in reality it is a common form of it. Drunkenness seems to be closely connected to talkativeness and/or   arguments, being determined by the person’s response to alcohol. When gluttony leads to inebriation, we often lose complete control of our tongue. Therefore, we must guard ourselves against excess if we are to keep our tongues disciplined. (One wonders how St. John came to this conclusion living in a monastery).

It would be a mistake to limit our understanding of talkativeness to the tongue. One can do as much harm with the written word as he can with the spoken word. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our modern forms of digital communication, such as Twitter and Facebook. Just consider how these social media are being used in our modern world. Cyber bullying is a real phenomenon in our modern world.

Further Thoughts About the WAY of Jesus — 20160117

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pantocratorThe first disciples of Jesus were said to be practicing the way, that is pursuing a life that was deeply soulful. Jesus of Nazareth demonstrated and taught a revolutionary way of love that is actually possible and alive with healing and hope, We, however, need a path for experiencing that revolution in the details of our daily lives. In order to do this we need to rediscover a sense of immediacy and action in our spiritual practices. They must be practices that help us to make the main focus of our daily lives     our union with God. This fact seems to frighten many people because they realize at some deep level that it means that they have to change the way they think, their general attitudes about God, life and others, and, of course, to embrace all the various challenges of life as the means given to them to accomplish this goal of personal transformation.

I have discovered that the big fear than many have is contained in this question: What will life be like if I truly give myself to spiritual growth? I think that there is a great fear among some that they will be taken advantage of if they commit themselves to this personal transformation or that they will not have any control over their lives. (What I find interesting is the fact that so many people have the delusion that they have control over their lives. The fact of the matter is that we don’t have control over our lives).

If we think about it, the innermost center and the whole substance of the Christian “Good News” is the inrush of God into the world, the concrete, historical, supreme and unique revelation of God’s infinite love, the Son of God having descended to become one of us and ascended, thus enabling us to ascend with Him. The core of God’s revelation is all about helping us to see that this earthly life is given to us to help us grow into the people that God intended when He created us. Jesus showed us by His very life that ATTITUDES play a significant role in our understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. Our Attitudes, which we mainly develop during childhood, intimately influence our behaviors. Our behaviors, it should be noted, radically influence our lives.

At the core of the Jesus WAY is the ability to unconditionally love others, regardless of how they respond to us. Seldom to we humans learn how to unconditionally love others early in life. It is something that most of us have to deliberately work at learning. The most interesting thing is that when we begin to unconditionally love others, life completely changes for the good!

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20160117

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St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

In the last issue of this article I began a series of thoughts about the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity by first looking at one of the major influences on Western Christianity, the Reformation. The Reformation did not directly influence Eastern Christianity. It did, however, indirectly influence our Greek Catholic faith when our Church reestablished union with Rome. Further our Church, when its people came to the United States, was influenced by Western theology for two reasons: (1) the desire of our people to be seen as Catholic instead of Orthodox and (2) our clergy were all educated in Roman Catholic seminaries.

Perhaps the one most profound theological thought that influenced the Western Church was that of Original Sin. Religious thoughts about mankind’s imperfections were clearly reinforced in the Reformation. Luther, of course, was an Augustinian monk. Perhaps one of St. Augustine’s main theological ideas was that of Original sin. This one idea influenced not only Church ritual (e.g., Baptism, Penance) but impacted Christianity’s whole idea of salvation. This caused our Church to forget for some time the important theological idea of Theosis.

In order to honestly assess the contribution of the Reformation, we must clearly address the events and conditions surrounding that period. Only after acknowledging these factors can we correctly understand the Reformers and their positions. This analysis is not only significant for our interpretation of the doctrine of the Reformation which has greatly shaped Western Christianity and Catholicism.

The teaching of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, although it differs in a number of ways from Reformation doctrine, the theological and psychological “seeds” sown in that period are still present within these Christian bodies today. Catholicism, the predominant religion of the Western world, had to defend itself against Reformation doctrine.

The Reformation cannot be rightly evaluated if one removes it from its human-historical context. This event was not just a forum for differing theological positions, it reflected the sociological, economic, political, religious and philosophical climate of an entire era. The people of that period shared a philosophical frame of reference different from the Biblical one, affecting their understanding of the world and, of course, religion.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160117

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Saint Peter

Saint Peter

There is a strong scholarly consensus that 2 Peter is the last New Testament (NT) document to be written. Some date it as late as 150 CE, and most date it between 120 and 150 CE. Among the reasons for dating it this late are its reference to 1 Peter, its mention of the letters of Paul, and its use of phrases from the letter of Jude. In addition, it offers an explanation for the delay of the second coming of Jesus (3:3-10). It should be remembered that most of the early disciples and apostles, including Paul, believed that Jesus would return in their lifetime.

As in 1 Peter, the author identifies himself as “Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ”. He refers to Peter’s   impending death. He refers to himself as an eyewitness to the transfiguration of Jesus. As narrated in Marks (9:2-8) and in Matthew and Luke, only Peter, James and John were witnesses. But the letter is much too late to have been written by Peter or the author of 1 Peter.

We know nothing about the location of the author or the letter’s recipients. There are no geographical clues at all. The letter is not addressed to a specific Christ-community or even a region of communities. Thus it is classified as one of the “general” or “catholic” (meaning universal) letters.

The final chapter of the letter explains why the second coming of Jesus had not yet happened. The author refers to “scoffers” who will ask, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Already their ancestors had died (again suggesting a late date for the letter), but still the world continued as it was.

The author of the letter offers a twofold explanation for the delay. First, God’s time is not like our sense of time: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day”. Second, because of God’s patience, God is providing more time for “all to come to repentance.”

The more general theme of the letter is separation from the ways of the world and warnings about false prophets who seek to lure the recipients back into the ways of the world. The corruption of the world includes lust, deception, injustice, slander, adultery and greed. The words “lust” and “adultery” may refer to sexual desire and behavior, but often in the Bible they are metaphors for greed and idolatry. Those who entice them into the ways of the world are described as “bold and willful”, “irrational animals” who are “creatures of instinct”, “waterless springs and mists,” who speak “bombastic nonsense” and promise “freedom” even as they “are slaves of corruption.”

The antidote – the way of escaping the “corruption that is in the world” – is the power and promises of God, who has given them “everything needed for life and godliness” through Jesus.

Thus, like the NT as a whole, its last letter emphasizes love as the climatic Christian virtue. It is a very short letter and a worthwhile read. Why not take some time and read it.