Father Alexander Men (1935-1990) was a great leader, and one may say architect, of religious renewal in Russia at the end of the Soviet period. He was a pastor, who found the time to write a great number of books including a seven volume study of world religions, ranging in style from the academic to the popular, he lectured widely, at the end gaining access to radio and television and becoming a nationally known figure. He founded the first Sunday school after the communist persecution, established a university, made a film strip, started volunteer work at a children's hospital. He baptized thousands into the faith, was at home with simple people but was also called “the apostle to the intellectuals.”
His life and person and writings speak powerfully to a wide range of people, not only in Russia and not only Eastern Orthodox. It seems that he is one of the very few who can touch and speak to and for all Christians and indeed, through his broadness of learning and heart, not only to Christians.
He was assassinated in 1990 but through his writings and through his memory and his spiritual heritage he still speaks and it may be is an increasing presence in the world and his work becomes better known.
ping.
Who got the Eastern Orthodox ping?
It is a caucus thread, as I don’t want it to lose focus, but your questions are welcome.
Forest Keeper, you asked me once to ping you to whatever Orthodox writings I translate, and this is the first time I undertook such a task since then.
This is posted in Russian as a part of Fr. Men’s “talks”. The writing at times looks a bit unfinished. The translation is mine.
Thanks. Absorbing read.
That works for me.
bump on the rest of it.
A breathing exercise for you. I don’t know how to say that in dialect.
He is a martyr?
Anyway. Lovely. Thanks.
“Eight years later, Orthodox Russians would burn Men’s works and forbid their reading; among their complaints: “(Men had spoken favorably of Savonarola and Hus)”
The implication here appear to be that Men himself wrote books. Do you know if any of his works are available in the US, translated or not?
I remember hearing people talking about him, when I lived in Russia between 95-96, but I wasn’t Orthodox at the time, and didn’t pick up on it. Sorry I missed out on that part! Sounds like an extraordinary man!
The author says,
do we not read in the Letter of Paul that the Lord endured the Cross instead of having joy set before Him (Heb. 12:2).But it's my understanding that St. Paul tells us that Jesus endured the cross precisely for the joy set before him, not instead of it.
Then the author says...
We have to decline the thought that is very popular in poetry and even among old theologians, the thought laconically and brilliantly expressed by the Blessed Augustine, about the “felica culpa” – the “happy fault”, that is the fault of man which gave us this Savior. The mind of the Church as a whole left the view point that the appearance of Christ was necessitated by the catastrophe and if the catastrophe had not been there, He would not have come to us. Rather, the situation is completely different.He seems to be advising us to dispense with the teachings of St. Augustine which would be, I believe, tantamount to dismissing the teachings of the Church. He assures us that, while "the mind of the Church" sees it one way, it is time for us to see that "the situation is completely different."
Fault me, if you wish, for thinking that a thread by a "Father So and So" about the Eucharist would be in agreement with the teachings of the Church. But this might just be heresy, at least from a Roman Catholic standpoint.