Preface
In the Letters which follow, the secular 'historical' interpretation of the Holy Scriptures has no place. This 'historical' way of approaching the Scriptures has long been acceptable to 'liberal' Protestant 'theologians', indeed it is regarded by such as the only intellectually acceptable way of understanding and interpreting the Bible text. A famous Oxford scholar of the Nineteenth Century, Benjamin Jowett, insisted on his right to read the Bible as no more than an ancient document. This implied that the Bible was to be regarded as a history of religious ideas, not as a source of divine revelation. The outcome of such an attitude is entirely predictable; at the outset it imposes a philosophical embargo on anything and everything that does not come within its limited field of vision. If it is to be understood properly, the Bible must be treated for what it claims to be, a revelation granted to mankind, but often passing beyond man's limited intellect and experience. The ultimate authority of Holy Scripture (God's Word written) rests not with the text, venerable and outstandingly well-preserved as it is, but with Him whose gift it is and who alone, as the Word made Flesh, provides its true interpretation.
Introduction
In the Autumn of 2003 Father Teklehaimanot Tekeste asked me to provide a more detailed course of instruction for his fellow students in Johannesburg. It soon became clear that the best way to do this was to provide a series of Letters written, where possible, at weekly intervals. The writing of these letters provided an opportunity to demonstrate the way in which the Faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures has been clarified by the Fathers in the face of false interpretations and the intrusion of alien teachings. It seems that there is no brief and easily available presentation of this kind. Much helpful material is to be found, but only in scholarly books and articles. It was also necessary to demonstrate the need to think deeply about the Faith. Many believers assume that they can get by with just a superficial grasp of the Faith, but St. Paul insists "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds." (Romans 12:3). To know, understand, and to communicate the Faith is a duty laid on all believers. The otherwise overwhelming challenge of the times in which we live demands that we cease to be slack in this matter. For this reason the Letters demand serious thought; we are required to take leave of worldly attitudes and standards. Some important Greek terms, used and refined by the Fathers, have been introduced, explained, and are then used over again, printed in bold type. Quotations come from a variety of sources and the passages from the Scriptures have been compared with the original texts and modified where the sense of the original seemed to require it. Since we read the Fathers mostly from translations, the subtleties and linkages which are evident in the originals are passed over; I hope, however, that the fundamental force and purpose of such quotations stands clear. At the conclusion of the twenty-fourth and final letter I have written: "It is my hope that these letters provide a sufficient guide so that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments begin to come alive in the way the Fathers experienced them." This is an invitation to a fresh discovery of the spiritual riches of the Catholic Church. (The title of these Letters is taken from Father Haimanot's own surname. It is the name of a famous Ethiopian Saint and means 'The Tree of Faith.')
Letter One: Knowing God — The Holy Scriptures and Beyond
1. Some eighty years ago there lived in India a famous Christian preacher, Sahdu Sundar Singh. Sundar was converted to Christ at the age of fifteen and became a wandering 'holy man' or Sahdu. Many years later Sundar's father sought to become a Christian too and asked his son for guidance. Sundar's reply was "If you want to know about Jesus, read the Bible, if you want to know Jesus you must pray to him." In this very simple way Sundar Singh summed up the first steps in knowing God. 2. First of all, it is a matter of wanting to know God. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read: "… for whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6b). People from many different cultures have an awareness of some kind of Supreme Being. Sundar's father would already be such a person, but his son's way of life convinced him that he needed to know more. To know more the father had to want to know more. 3. Next, Sundar points out that there are two further steps to knowing God: knowing about Him and knowing Him personally. These two steps in knowing can be understood easily from our everyday experience. A friend tells me about an acquaintance of his. When I ask to meet him, the friend arranges such a meeting. Hearing about the person strengthens my belief that he exists, meeting him personally confirms that belief. But meeting is only a part of knowing; if meeting develops into friendship I can begin to say that I know the person. Commitment is the gateway to greater knowledge. 4. The Bible contains, among many other things, a record of men and women who committed their lives to God: Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and, supremely, the Virgin Mary. Others failed to follow up their initial commitment, men such as King Saul and Judas Iscariot. To know God truly and effectively, information about Him must be turned into commitment to Him. This is the message of Sundar Singh. 5. The decision to read the Bible can be understood as already a form of commitment, a commitment to seek God. We turn to the Bible because it claims to be the Word of God — meaning that it is a self-revelation initiated by God himself. This claim is confirmed by going beyond the written words of Scripture to the divine Word who is their source. This is why Sundar urged his father to do more than just read the Bible, he must pray to the Author of the Bible. The meaning of the term 'divine Word' is one which we must hold over until later in this series of letters. 6. So far we have dealt with the subject of knowing God in a very simple way. The Bible itself often conceals the profundity of its message under quite simple stories and accounts. In other places we need to work hard to understand what is being written. This is where wanting to know God becomes so important; we need the courage to press on and not be discouraged when the pathway of knowledge becomes steep. 7. One mistake above all others needs to be avoided — to rest satisfied with whatever level of knowledge of God we have already attained. To give some indication of the steepness of the path ahead I will quote a short passage from one of the greatest of the Fathers, St. Maximus the Confessor: "The scriptural Word knows of two kinds of knowledge of divine things. On the one hand, there is relative knowledge, rooted only in reason and ideas, and lacking in the kind of experiential perception of what one knows through active engagement; such relative knowledge is what we use to order our affairs in our present life. On the other hand, there is that truly authentic knowledge, gained only by actual experience, apart from reason and ideas, which provides a total perception of the known object through a participation by grace. By this latter knowledge, we attain, in the future state, the supernatural deification that remains unceasingly in effect." (Ad Thalassium 60)
Letter Two: From Uncreated to Created
1. To gain a true knowledge concerning God we begin with 'reason and ideas', recognizing, as St Maximus the Confessor reminds us, that these functions of our minds are in the realm of knowing about God and must not be mistaken for the fullness of what God intends us to know. However, such knowledge has its place and, since it is impossible to know God truly by our own unaided efforts, He has provided 'reason and ideas' as a necessary preliminary to His self-revelation in Scripture. 2. First of all we need to concentrate upon the very first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) The 'beginning' here is that of the heavens and the earth, meaning the universe in its totality. Note that there is built into these words a sense of purpose on the part of the Creator. This is the only 'beginning' there is because God has no 'beginning'. As mentioned in Letter One, the Bible often refers in a very simple way to the profoundest of thoughts and here we have an example. 3. Many people at some time in their lives ask themselves 'where does it all begin?' referring to everything they see around them and, indeed, to their own place in this world. This question was one which the ancient Greek philosophers tried to answer — they were aware that an answer was needed to provide a purpose for our existence and a guide to the way we should behave. The religions of the world also attempt to answer the same question. One of the greatest problems facing the present 'Western' culture is that it has abandoned this quest, or rather, has replaced it with a 'scientific' exploration of the universe; it is locked up in 'reason and ideas' with no way of escape. 4. The Bible, therefore, provides a challenging starting point; our beginning has its source in a Creator to whom we give the name God. Because He is the Creator, God is not part of His creation. Because He is creation's Source, His is the purpose behind everything He has created. To know God truly is to know the purpose for which we and the universe around us exist. This is the foundation for what we might call the 'Christian philosophy'. 5. The Christian Fathers, especially those with a background of classical Greek education, were able to draw out and clarify the philosophical principles embedded in the scriptural revelation. This was a necessary task because the Christian Faith was under constant attack from well-educated pagans who even went as far as using the Bible to promote an anti-Christian system of belief. The use of Greek came naturally to the Fathers. The Greek language was used widely throughout the world of the Roman Empire: Greek was the language of the New Testament and there was already a venerable Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (often known by the Latin numeral LXX) available. It was easy, therefore, to discuss doctrine and philosophy using Greek terminology. 6. The Fathers distinguished between two forms of existence, uncreated and created. God has neither beginning nor end, He is from 'everlasting to everlasting' (Psalm 90:2b), he is also the Creator. As the Creator He is not governed by the conditions of created existence. Time, space, and matter are the familiar conditions which govern us and our universe but they do not apply to the Creator. We have no means of explaining what God is. His ousia, the Greek word the Fathers used to indicate being or existence, which we translate as essence (or substance), is beyond our capacity to know. St. Basil summed the matter up in a few words: "… we say that we know our God through His activities, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His activities come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach." (Letter 234). However, the Bible, as the divine self-revelation, does provide us with a 'working knowledge' of the Creator. We can form a notion by contrast with ourselves when we say that God is eternal, limitless, and immaterial. 7. We can also make use of moral qualities, as did Our Lord: "A certain ruler asked Him, 'good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.'" (Luke 18:18.) From this the Fathers draw the necessary implication. To be truly good is to be consistently and perpetually good, good without lapse. If God is good he is unchangeably good. Here we come to another important distinction between ourselves and our Creator. God is unchangeable (cf. Malachi 3:6), He never changes, nor has He ever changed. Time is His creation; creatures, ourselves included, exist within time and are subject to change, but the Creator himself is not. 8. Bearing in mind that God, according to the biblical revelation, is the source of all else that exists, He alone truly exists, is true being, so that all other beings derive from Him and depend on him for their continuing existence. The totality of the universe (and here we include the 'invisible' world of heaven and the angelic beings) exists because God, the Uncreated, wills it to be so. Our continuing existence depends totally on our relationship to God and if that relationship is disrupted we sink back into non-being. 9. Further on in this series of letters we will be discussing the 'Fall' of Man, but St. Athanasius, when dealing with this subject, makes a clear statement on the dependence, or contingency, of mankind as created being: "… if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what is not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption." (On the Incarnation 4.5) 10. We can picture this as a flow of sustained and sustaining existence from the Creator, the only true being and source of existence, to His creation. While that flow is maintained creation is sustained in existence, once it is repudiated created existence relapses toward a state of non-being, 'of corruption and death' as St. Athanasius puts it. In the next Letter we look at what also is revealed by Scripture about the Creator himself.
Letter Three: The Holy Trinity — Uncreated Motion
1. We begin this letter by returning to the first few verses of the book of Genesis. Remembering also the principle set out by St. Basil: "… we know our God through His activities, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His activities come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.", we can rely upon the Holy Scriptures as pre-eminent among those activities. Through the Scriptures we are enabled to form reliable notions about the Creator even though His essence is always hidden from us. The Fathers were aware that a superficial reading of the Scriptures was not enough, only a truly attentive study of the Bible would suffice. Added to this the Fathers regarded the Old Testament not so much as a record of the Jewish faith as the basic and initial source of Christian revelation. 2. Here, then, are the first three verses of the Book of Genesis. We have already considered the first verse and it is time not only to add the second and third verses, but also to quote the opening verses of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said 'Let there be light and there was light.'" (Genesis 1:1-3.) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:1-5.) 3. In the passage from Genesis we are introduced not only to God as Creator, but to the Spirit of God and to His Word ("and God said"). It is St. John who develops this last point and we note the distinction made between God and His Word. This distinction occurs many times over in the Old Testament. In the prophecy of Isaiah we read: "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my Word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:10,11) Also, in Psalm 33, we find the following significant passage: "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host by the Breath of His mouth." (Psalm 33:6) 4. Others might see such passages as no more than poetic expressions, but not so St. John, his fellow Apostles and Evangelists, nor the Fathers of the Church. For them the door to the mysteries of the Scriptures had already been unlocked, they not only 'knew about', they 'knew'. They knew the 'Word made flesh' and the 'outpouring of the Spirit' (Joel 2:28). They understood the deeper meaning of the Holy Scriptures and that the very first verses of the Bible introduce a Creator who is not a solitary divine being but a Unity of Three — the Holy Trinity. 5. The term 'Word', logos in Greek, is rich in meaning. Logos carries the notion of an idea being expressed through speech. Logos, therefore, includes communication, rational self-expression, purposefulness and a range of similar concepts. 'Spirit', pneuma in Greek, is likewise rich in content. Pneuma, basically the concept of air in motion, means wind or breath. Breath in turn is linked with life because we need to breathe to survive. The meaning extends further to the spirit which gives life to our bodies or even to indicate disembodied spirits, including angels, good and evil. In Scripture the context usually shows when both Logos and Pneuma refer to the divine Word and to the divine Spirit. 6. There is a simple model which is helpful although inadequate. It is the model of the human being who uses speech to communicate and who, at the same time, uses breath to carry the speech. The model is useful because it points to the revelatory role of the divine Logos in creating, sustaining, and ultimately redeeming the whole universe, and also the cooperative role of the divine Pneuma in these undertakings. The model is, nevertheless, also inadequate because speech and voice are functions of a single being whereas believers, from the Apostles onward, recognise that the Word and the Spirit must be distinguished from one another and from the Father, while maintaining that God is One. 7. The fact that God is both One and Three was never a difficulty for St. Paul, St. John, or anyone else who has arrived at a true belief, because this belief is arrived at by means of relationship — knowing God personally. The human mind, however, works initially through sense perception and so reaches only to knowing about God. By commitment and worship we arrive at a living relationship with God, and it is then that the full meaning of Scripture is unlocked. If we allow the limitations of the human mind to dictate the rules, knowing about God blocks the way to knowing God personally. 8. Historically, the intellectual difficulty in reconciling the notion that God is both one and three led to false teaching. If God is one, how does he relate to the Word and the Spirit? Is there only One God, with the Word and the Spirit subordinate to Him — as in the human model above? Does the One God operate through different modes, sometimes as Creator and Father, sometimes as the Word and Son, sometimes as the Spirit? These are examples of false solutions, heresies, created by men who knew about God but did not know Him personally. 9. Arianism was a heresy of the first type, denying the true divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit; it was a pagan philosophy posing as Christianity. The Arians were skilful at using the Scriptures to disguise their teaching, skilful enough to deceive devout believers who were not prepared to think the Faith through. For this reason Arianism became for many years a serious threat to the true Faith. Arianism attracted those who wanted a 'religious' outlook on life but one based ultimately on the non-Christian culture of the time. At the First Council of Nicaea the assembled bishops were horrified by the Arian teaching, but many remained unhappy and hesitant about the use of the term homoousios. This term, meaning 'of one essence', countered Arianism by insisting that the Son shared the same essence as the Father. The word found a place in the Nicene Creed, the Council's official doctrinal statement. Homoousios, however, was a word which did not appear in Scripture and had been used already by heretical groups. Hesitation over the term gave the Arians a chance to recover and spread their teaching. There was a need to explain and clarify terms. 10. To St. Basil of Caesarea, his brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend, also St. Gregory, of Nazianzus, (known as the Cappadocian Fathers) fell the task of clarifying terms. First of all it was necessary to make a distinction between the two terms, ousia and hypostasis. Up to that time ousia and hypostasis were virtually interchangeable in meaning. From now on ousia was used to indicate the kind of existence (essence) shared by a class of individuals, or even represented by just one individual. Hypostasis now indicated the actual being partaking of that ousia. St. Basil, writing to his brother, Gregory, explains the difference: "My statement then is this. That which is spoken of in a special and particular manner is indicated by the name of the hypostasis." and later: "This then is the hypostasis or 'subsistence;' not the indefinite conception of the essence (ousia), which, because what is signified is general, finds no standing, but the conception which by means of the expressed particularities gives 'standing' and limitation to the general and unlimited." (Letter 38) 11. Although these two terms can be distinguished in thought, they cannot be separated in reality. As St. Basil says, ousia has no standing except when limited by hypostasis, while an hypostasis loses its identity when separated from its ousia. Both terms appear only infrequently in Scripture and then with differing shades of meaning. Nevertheless the Cappadocians provided the means to grasp the notion of Trinity. God is one because His Essence (ousia) is one. God is three because there are three divine Persons (hypostases). If we leave matters there, however, we have little more than a scheme; more needs to be said. Peter, James, and John all share the same human essence and are three individual men (i.e. three hypostases with the same ousia). If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the same divine essence how can they avoid being three Gods? 12. The solution to this question leads us to a yet more profound level of understanding. Although we use the same terms for both, divine uncreated existence is radically different from created existence. In uncreated existence the essence is undivided; in created existence the essence is divided. For us, therefore, essence, being divided, is a set of characteristics and qualities which allow us to place individuals in particular groups — plants, animals, humans, angels. For uncreated or divine existence, the essence, being undivided, is the total communion and eternal interchange of divine life. 13. The words of our Lord, as quoted by St. John in the fifth chapter of his Gospel, introduce us to this notion of communion in the divine life. The whole section from verse 17 to verse 33 carries this message and can be summed up thus: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in Himself …" (John 5:26). St. Gregory of Nazianzus in his five 'Theological Orations' picks up the quality of dynamism in the scriptural texts and presents the same teaching in terms of motion: "Therefore Unity having from all eternity arrived at Duality, found its rest in Trinity. This is what we mean by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is the 'Begetter' and 'Emitter'; without passion of course and without reference to time, and not in a bodily manner. The Son is the 'Begotten' and the Holy Spirit the 'Emission'; for I do not know how this could be expressed in terms altogether excluding visible things." (Oration 29:2) 14. St. Gregory struggles with the limitation not just of language but with the difficulty of expressing the uncreated in terms of the created. The terms that he does use are based on St. John's Gospel where the Son is called 'The Only-begotten God' (John 1:18) and the Holy Spirit is said to 'proceed' from the Father (John 15:26). So, although St. Gregory is using terms which suggest movement, this is motion which has no connection with created time or space. This movement is that of total self-giving. The Father bestows the totality of His being, His essence, upon the Son and upon the Holy Spirit. The Son and the Holy Spirit, in turn, claim no existence of their own but that which they receive truly, completely, and freely from the Father. The Son is totally and freely obedient to the will of the Father and the Spirit is totally and freely co-operative; thus both render back to the Father and to each other the totality of being which the Father has bestowed upon them. This is the total, infinite interchange or communion of divine life (perichoresis in Greek), and when St. John says, "God is love" (I John 4:16b), he is referring to the way each Person of the Holy Trinity establishes the others through a complete self-giving of personal existence. Our Lord himself defines the greatest love, on the human level, as the laying down of a man's life for his friends (John 15:13). Jesus was to demonstrate this upon the Cross and it is of one piece with the character of the divine life. God is one because He is love; God is three because He is love; God has never been anything else but Trinity because He is love. This is what is meant by uncreated motion.