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in the temple his wife st anne was unable to have children and elderly a very familiar story in the pages of scripture the child mary is a gift to them in their old age a joyful intervention in their lives the tradition goes on to tell how the couple present their young daughter for service in the temple the entrance of the theotokos into the temple this feast far more than a sentimental remembrance of a special day in the life of a young girl is a feast of dynamic irony the child who will become the true temple and ark of god when she conceives christ enters the temple which had been described as ichabod devoid of glory the temple that had once been filled with the glory of god stood empty the ark had been carried away the glory faded to memory the child who enters appears insignificant but is herself the fulfillment of the temple itself she is the true temple the true ark the glory of god that will reside in her womb is none other than god himself orthodox devotion to the mother of god and to the ancestors of god is a devotion born of divine irony the very phrase god man is the height of oxymoronic irony how can a man be god how can god be a man it is the very heart of the christian faith and a scandal to many the same irony is the true revelation of god s great love of man and the foundation of human dignity only the incarnation of christ protects humanity from destruction in the face of the absolute god when considered as a cypher for the absolute will brook no rival no diminution of his complete sovereignty in the name of such an abstraction human beings are all too easily swept away we are less than dust and without value no concept ever entertained by man is more dangerous than the concept of god the christian faith has no conception of god god is not an idea the christian faith begins with a man jesus of nazareth it confesses this man to be both fully god and fully man and that through him and through him alone is knowledge of god possible no man has seen god at any time the only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father he has made him known john 1 18 thus christianity does not know a god who is revealed apart from man it is the condescension of god his meekness and humility that we see in christ we also see his great mercy towards mankind that he should raise us up and exalt us and bless us uniquely as sons and daughters the dignity worth of human beings is guaranteed by this reality alone human rights as the world now knows them did not exist except through the foundational understanding of human persons made known in the revelation of christ the revelation of god in christ not only makes it possible for us to know god but also makes it possible for us to approach in safety the throne of his glory ideas and abstractions offer no such thing and so the orthodox church embraces the wonderful paradox and irony of god that god should become a man that a woman should be the mother of god that an older couple can be called the ancestors of god that we should be fellow heirs with christ anything less is not christianity anything less is simply a dangerous idea greetings on the feast tags mary mother of god orthodox christianity saints posted in orthodox christianity 64 comments rational sheep and the word of god july 20 2012 any parent who has raised a child has witnessed the miracle of human language even children with handicaps find ways to communicate except in the most extreme circumstance the genius of language is not something we learn it is instinctual for human beings those who study linguistics and neurobiology recognize that we have an instinct for grammar not the polite rules of a high school english class but the deep structures that make language work any language children born into situations of proto languages such as the accidental pidgin of occasional ethnic mixes take that most rudimentary speech and generate a creole a new language born of such pidgins within a single generation they are not taught this language they invent it complete with a grammatical structure they are not taught by a previous generation the scriptures tell the story of humanity with a profound sense of language the first action of god is speech let there be light god does not teach man to speak we can only assume from the biblical story that humanity and speech exist together from the beginning god brings the animals to adam to see what he would name them animals could not exist within the human world and not be named this is not because there is something inherently nameable about animals rather it is human beings who must name i say that we must name because it is an instinct theologically it belongs to our nature we do not think and then speak thought and language are common our drive to speak is more than a matter of language the grammar that is instinctual to us marks all that we do human beings have an inherent sense of structure about everything around them that structural sense is manifest in how we treat numbers how we treat art how we treat everything in the world our speech has a grammar and everything around us everything that human beings perceive has a grammar this grammatical approach to the world is far more descriptive of human behavior than words such as reasonable or rational people do with the world what they do with words for an interesting theological reflection on doctrine as the grammar of theology see george lindbeck s the nature of doctrine it is our behavior with words that perhaps best illustrates what it means to say that we are logikos even an abridged greek english dictionary will give a seemingly endless list of english words with which one might translate logos the root of logikos most commonly st john s prologue is rendered in the beginning was the word logos the root meaning of logos is certainly word lego to speak but it is within the larger context of human beings as speakers the instinctive grammarians of the universe that logos finds its greater meaning some within the tradition have said that human beings exist in the image of god inasmuch as we are rational rational being yet another way to translate logikos the result is the imagining of human beings as calculators it is more accurate to speak of rationality as the perception that things have a grammar a discernible structure that is susceptible to description and understanding human beings have a natural passion perhaps eros would be the better word to explain things we read the world and speak it in turn we speak things and want to make them when words fail we do not abandon our passion but pursue the instinct beyond the bounds of formal language we have learned and invented the grammar of numbers and science with number and symbol we describe the relationships and structure of the sub atomic universe in relationship with god we dare to speak his name and to speak of person and substance essence and energy trinity and transcendence we have found no greater or more complete statement of icons than that they do with color what the gospels do with words and so we are rightly described as logikos it is not simply that we offer words to god for words are only one manifestation of our logicity we have been told that we are created in god s image he who created heaven and earth is imaged in those who reach for the very structure of that same universe he offers the word let there be and we respond returning the praise logikos latreia with what that word has made we cannot imagine human existence without our logikos way of being we are not logical this word is a caricature of the greek but we cannot resist the urge to explain to understand to connect and see beyond and behind those things that appear even when our explanations are wrong we cannot accept no explanation as noted above there are limits to speech the church s understanding of god asserts above all else that god transcends our ability to know or speak at its heart true theology is apophatic without speech but the church does not teach that god is aphatic against speech that which is made known to us in the incarnation of christ is god the logos even when we cannot speak god we can know him and the god whom we know sounds an echo within our very being and so the church hymns believers as god s rational sheep logiki provati it is a title of honor the sheep return the honor by recognizing the logos in all he has made all things were made by him and without him not anything was made we hear the song of creation and the voice of its groaning we hear rocks sing and the harmonies of sub atomic particles and in the sound and grammar of all these things we hear the word of god and sing to him his rational sheep tags beauty creation knowledge of god posted in orthodox christianity 23 comments beauty and the face of god july 13 2012 everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward god and everything is ugly when it is turned away from god fr pavel florensky in thinking about darkness and light and their role in our apprehension of the truth i cannot but think about beauty which is a primary place in which the light of god is made manifest among us if rightly perceived the heart that is full of darkness cannot truly perceive beauty the heart which is full of light cannot help but perceive it perhaps a measure of our heart can be found in how we perceive the world around us is it primarily a place of beauty or darkness it is difficult in the fallen world to maintain a witness to beauty and yet those places where it is made manifest to us are so poignant so piercing that i think we cannot and should not remain silent about them perhaps they should be shouted from the rooftops this article is a meditation on beauty and its role in our lives within the kingdom of god the quote from pavel florensky contains a world of truth indeed from a certain perspective it contains the whole of the gospel it is both commentary on how we see the world as beautiful or ugly or how we are within ourselves the ugliness of sin is one of its most important components and the inability to distinguish between the truly beautiful and the false beauty of so much of contemporary life offers a profound diagnosis of our lives and culture to say that god is beautiful carries insights into what we mean by knowledge of god how do we know god is one question but if we ask the question how do we recognize beauty then we have also shifted the ground from questions of intellect or pure rationality and onto grounds of aethetics and relationship communion the recognition of beauty is a universal experience as is the misperception of beauty but the capacity to recognize beauty points as well to a capacity within us to know god if florensky is right i would offer that this capacity is itself a gift of grace particularly when we admit that the recognition of beauty is subject to delusion in a famous passage from the brothers karamazov dostoevsky s dmitri karamazov has this to say on beauty as well as delusion beauty is a terrible and awful thing it is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed for god sets us nothing but an enigma here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side i am not a cultivated man brother but i ve thought a lot about this it s terrible what mysteries there are too many mysteries weigh men down on earth we must solve them as we can and try to keep a dry skin in the water beauty i can t endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the theotokos madonna and ends with the ideal of sodom what s still more awful is that a man with the ideal of sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the madonna and his heart may be on fire with that ideal genuinely on fire just as in his days of youth and innocence yes man is broad too broad indeed i d have him narrower the devil only knows what to make of it what to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart is there beauty in sodom believe me that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in sodom did you know that secret the awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible god and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man dostoevsky s paradox that beauty for the mass of mankind is found in sodom is a paradox that can hold two meanings either it can mean that even the corrupted beauty of sodom can be redeemed this is not dostoevsky s own intention or that our heart can be so corrupted that we perceive the things of sodom to be beautiful closer to dostoevsky s point we can also bring in a third that of florensky quoted above that the beauty found in sodom is corrupted precisely because it is turned away from god it s repentance can also be its restoration of true beauty i prefer this third thought which is more or less the same as the first in that it carries within it the reminder that when god created the world he said it is good or beautiful both the hebrew and the greek of genesis carry this double meaning we were created to perceive the beautiful even to pursue it this is also to say that we were created to know god and to have the capacity by grace to know him consider the evangelical imperative go and make disciples what would it mean in our proclamation of the gospel were we to have within it an understanding that we are calling people to beauty the report of st vladimir s emissaries to constantinople that when they attended worship among the orthodox they did not know whether we were on earth or in heaven we only know that of a truth god is with them is history s most profound confirmation of this proclamation st paul confirms the same when he describes the progressive work of our salvation as the knowledge of god in the face of jesus christ if we would have our hearts cured of the illness that mistakes sodom for the kingdom of god then we should turn our eyes to the face of christ there the heart s battle will find its champion and beauty will find its prototype tags beauty knowledge of god orthodox christianity posted in orthodox christianity 17 comments unshakeable reality july 10 2012 in his novel the great divorce c s lewis imagines a bus load of people who travel from hell to heaven their trip takes them from a place described as gray and ghost like in its not so solid existence heaven on the other hand is quite solid the day trippers find the most immediate difficulty of their journey to be the problems of dealing with a solid world while being ghost like the grass does not bend thus becoming something like small spikes a falling apple is a most dangerous prospect lewis fictional imagery reveals a genuine metaphysical problem our popular imagination tends to equate spiritual things with the less real and imaginary lewis properly reverses the equation and suggests that the spiritual is more real more solid though the language of solid is perhaps too specific it is an apt metaphor for how things are w...