Your comments are very welcome. This discussion, from my perspective, has basically to do with one's "default setting" with regard to the Tradition of the Church. My default setting is to believe the Tradition, from Genesis on down, in the way understood by the Church. An approach of skepticism toward this Tradition has never been a part of Orthodoxy.
Kosta writes: "I must disagree with Agrarian who stipulates that my position is that everyting in the Bible is only a metaphor or an allegory. I never said that."
I am well aware that Kosta did not say that. But the clear implication that has come across in this discussion is that it wouldn't matter *if* everything in the Bible that the Church has considered to be factually true were "disproved" by scientists and historians. I would challenge Kosta to find anyone in the New Testament or amongst the Fathers who have said or implied anything of that nature.
My reply, furthermore, is that scientists and historians *have* disproved and rendered as fables the possibility of every key event and story of Christian history, from Adam down to Christ. Since Kosta watches the History channel, he already knows this.
My question to someone who accepts with credulity the proclamations of historians that the Patriarchs and Prophets didn't exist, why don't you believe modern science and historians on those things about Christ, too? Or do you? And having accepted that science and history is correct, what meaning does Christianity have for you?
Or, on the other hand, if one believes the witness of the Church about Christ, in the face of universal scientific and historical opinion that little if any of it is true, then why would one apply a separate standard to the Old Testament that Christ and the Apostles treated as true?
The plain fact is that at the very least, the historicity of Christ and his Resurrection matters. Or at least, that is what St. Paul says in I Corinthians:
"Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."
In other words, St. Paul says that if Christ did not rise in the body from the dead, they as Apostles are lying, the faith they preach is meaningless, and those of us who follow Christianity are the most miserable of all men. Modern science and history says exactly that: Christ didn't rise from the dead, the Apostles *were* either lying or engaged in some phenomenon of mass delusion/hysteria, and that Christianity is nonsense. It would furthermore seem that St. Paul was dealing with those who thought that Christ's physical resurrection wasn't true or any importance.
St John writes in his epistle: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life..."
In other words, "we knew the Lord who was present at the creation of the world. We heard him speak, we saw him, and we touched him." Modern science and history would say that St. John was either deluded or lying when he wrote those words.
And St. Peter, writing years after Christ's ascension, says this as he remembers his experiences at the Transfiguration -- another event that modern science and history has shown to be an impossibility and a made-up story:
"For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount."
It is obvious that St. Peter was already dealing with the skeptics, who were saying that the stories that the Apostles told of Christ were just "cunningly devised fables."
When the apostles deliberated on who should replace Judas as one of the 12, they specified that the only men to be considered would be those who, like them, had been eyewitnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It was only after being convinced that the resurrected Christ had personally and directly appeared to St. Paul that he was accepted by them as a fellow-apostle.
With all due respect to Zizioulas (whom I have never read), if he is truly maintaining that the Resurrection of Christ is "an eschatological event, not a historical event", the path that he seems to be taking is very well-trodden. It is the path of modern liberal agnostic Protestantism, and the skeptical path of much of post-Vat II Catholicism. I know it well.
The events of the life of Christ are of cosmic significance. And the types and recapitulations of the Old Testament that led up to him are of eschatological magnitude. I completely agree with that. But they all start with the knowledge that God became man and walked among us. And if we are prepared to believe *that*, then I fail to see why we wouldn't have the default setting of believing the rest of the Christian revelation.
You will notice that at *no* point in this discussion have I ever tried to use historical, scientific, or logical arguments in an attempt to "prove" the historicity of the Bible. I do not believe that such a thing is possible, and I think that the fundamentalist Protestants who engage in such attempts are misguided, foolish, and setting themselves up for a fall.
I have, rather, restricted myself to what the Church has seemed always to restrict herself to in its understanding of the Scriptures and of our entire faith: the revealed Tradition of the Church. I have used the internal evidence and statements of the Church, from Christ and the Apostles to the Fathers. This is the way of patristic theology, and when combined with the prayers of the Church, it is precisely what leads us to the deep significances and understandings that are indeed beyond the mere facts of history.
And with that, I think that I will try bring my part of this to a close, asking forgiveness of all I have offended.
The fallacy is, of course, that empirical or experimental science is limited to the work of discovering and applying truths about the material world. If there is a spiritual presence in the material world, physical science will not discover it; and if we discover it, physical science will have no idea of what it means.
You certainly haven't offended me, even though we disagree about the characterization of history in a religious sense. These discussions provide an opportunity to articulate how we agree and disagree. We can develop an argument and still have respect for those with an opposite point of view.
Metropolitan John of Pergamon, representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Formerly Professor of Theology at Glasgow University and Kings College, London, he is a key figure in major ecumenical dialogues between the Orthodox Church and the other main Christian traditions. He is a leading theologian in the area of ‘Orthodoxy and Ecology’ and he has played a central role in making the Orthodox Church one of the most active religious communities involved with development and environmental issues.
I have been Orthodox all my life, and have lived a good part of my life in an Orthodox country from birth. Christianity and Orthodoxy were considered one and the same thing. Orthodoxy is a way of life and not something you do on Sundays.
It takes an Orthodox mindset to write Three Little Hermits, as narrated by Leo Tolstoy. The message is clear what is true faith and has nothing to do with the Church (for the Church does not give us faith), nor with the Bible (for we must have faith first before the Bible becomes Holy), but has everything to do with God. He is the source and cause of our faith. The rest is human.
As the Orthodox catechism puts it:
"Faith is the path along which God and the human person encounter each other. It is God who makes the first step: He fully and unconditionally believes in the human person and gives him a sign, an awareness of His presence. We hear the mysterious call of God, and our first step towards an encounter with Him is a response to this call. God may call us openly or in secret, overtly or covertly. But it is difficult for us to believe in Him if we do not first heed this call."
Once we convert, nothing earthly really matters, because this is an illusion that will end. This is travel towards a known destination. Do not make it a home. In that mindset, one can easily "not love the world." And nothing wordly takes on or comepetes with God's role in your life. If the Bible is not scientifically accurate or historically exact, or even true, it does not dimnish the message it carries because we believe it, and as one father puts it, faith "is the end of argument": we submit to God ad simply say "Thy will be done" and trust that whatever our judgment is, wherever we end up, in heaven or hell, it will be most mericful and just.
The Cathecism makes it clear that Orthodoxy sees prayer as the key to God.
"The way of negation (apophatic theology) corresponds to the spiritual ascent into the Divine abyss where words fall silent, where reason fades, where all human knowledge and comprehension cease, where God is. It is not by speculative knowledge but in the depths of prayerful silence that the soul can encounter God, Who is ‘beyond everything’ and Who reveals Himself to her as in-comprehensible, in-accessible, in-visible, yet at the same time as living and close to her - as God the Person."
What makes the Bible Holy is the fact that we recognize God's Word in it. It's the message that counts for eveything, that is at the core of that Book and our faith. It matter very little if Job really lived.