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Pope Francis prays for ‘full unity’ with Coptic Church

Here is an interesting moment in modern ecumenism. Pope Francis was recently visited in Rome by the 118th Coptic Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, Tawadros II. There's about 15,000,000 Coptic Christians, approximately 12,000,000 of them in Egypt, their traditional home.

Pope Francis...prayed for “full unity” with the Coptic Orthodox Church as he received Patriarch of Alexandria Tawadros II for an historic visit in the latest sign of closer ties between the Catholic and Orthodox (sic) worlds.

“We long for the day when, in fulfilment of the Lord’s desire, we will be able to communicate from the one chalice,” he said, acknowledging that there had been “centuries of mutual distrust” between their two Christian churches.

This was the first such meeting in 40 years.

via www.gulf-times.com

To understand the division between the Coptic Church and Roman Catholicism, one has to look to the split between the Oriental Orthodox churches--of which the Coptic Church is one--and the dominant churches of the West and East, which occured as a result of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the Fourth Ecumenical Council, due to what the modern mind almost certainly sees as a technicality.

Chalcedon confirmed that Jesus Christ's humanity and divinity are exemplified as two natures in one hypostasis. More specifically, that Christ is one prosopon (πρόσωπον, often translated into English as "person" though perhaps "identity" could be used) with two natures, fully God and fully man, that are not mixed but in a single and perfect hypóstasis (ὑπόστασις, also often translated into English as "person" though "substance" or "subsistence" could be used).

However, some at the council refused to accept the majority ruling. These non-Chalcedonian Christians insisted on a different Christology: that Christ's natures were not two per se but one, albeit a hybrid, a divine-human nature. Among them were many of the leaders of Egyptian Christians.

Of course, politics was involved in the council's decisions, too, as was the case to varying extents with all of the Ecumenical Councils of the ancient Church.

The majority termed the dissenters Monophysites (monophysite meaning "one nature") and deemed their views dangerously close to Apollanarianism, a heretical Christology that Christ's body was human but His mind was divine, or Eutychianism, that Christ's human nature was dominated by His divine nature--His humanity being "dissolved like a drop of honey into the sea" of His divinity.

However, the non-Chalcedonian Christians term their Christology as miaphysite (meaning "one unified nature") and insist that what the council approved is too close to Nestorianism, which was deemed a hersey twenty years before Chalcedon at the First Council of Ephesus, the Third Ecumenical Council. Nestorianism insists that the human and the divine natures of Jesus are completely separate. It also insists that due to that separation the Virgin Mary cannot be deemed the Theotokos ("Bringer forth of God") but rather the Christotokos ("Bringer forth of Christ").

Non-Chalcedonians are better referred to as the Oriental Orthodox or Miaphysite churches; they are sometimes called the "Old Oriental" churches and their Christology "Alexandrian." They include the Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Syriac (or "Jacobite") Orthodox, and various churches of Oriental Orthodoxy in Indian, such as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church.

In the linked-to article instead of "Orthodox" used alone as a name, "Coptic" or "Oriental Orthodox" would have been better in my opinion, to avoid confusion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the dominant church in Easter Europe and the Middle East. 

Images: Francis and Tawadros II; a Coptic cross.

Behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed

"Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen." - The Book of Common Prayer (1979), The Episcopal Church.

A radical definition of family for a radical definition of sacrifice.

An atheist friend of mine always attends Good Friday services at his local Episcopal Church, the one time each year he crosses the threshold of a house of worship. Once, I asked him why. "Because the f#$*ing bastards killed Christ." The resurrection he rejects in its literal sense. But, there is for him still the crucifixion, which he recognizes as a distressingly human event, and deeply political, and very significant: the enormity of the betrayal, the abuse of might against right, the exploitation of the mob by cynical figures of authority, the baying for blood, the rejection of meekness, the will to power against a new order offered by an unlooked-for messenger, the process of positive change through sacrifice, the despair that may later be revealed as the tragic beginning of a new dispensation, if not a metaphysical dispensation, then a new way of doing things, a new way of being. First the money-changers' tables were overturned. And now this. This! There is violence in the story, and it is not for the faint of heart.

Photo: St. Mark's Church (Episcopal), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Good Friday, 2013.

Plaque with the Crucifixion and the Defeat of Hades, mid-10th century Byzantine; probably made in Constantinople.
Ivory 5 x 3 1/2 in. (12.7 x 8.9 cm)
Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.44)

Click to view an enlarged version.

More here.

Hat-tip to Medievalists.net.

Renuntiatio! It's not a Harry Potter spell, it's what the Pope's doing

My former Christian History professor at Yale, The Rev. R. Guy Erwin (ELCA; photo at right), admits that the stunning news of the Pope's resignation makes this week for a church historian like himself "like the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and Wimbledon rolled into one! (But unfortunately, the best parts are not played in the open.)"

He provides some perspective on the resignation news:

The canon law says "renuntiatio" or to "give up" or "resign" in the one sentence that governs this possibility (Can. 332 sec. 2). It says he can do so, and resignation is valid if he does it freely and publicly, and--here's the old theological question--it doesn't have to be recognized by all to be valid. That is, even if some go on believing that he is still pope, in the canon law he is not.

Presumably, on the day the pope has indicated (28 February) the See of Peter becomes vacant just as if he had died, and the College of Cardinals take over their "sede vacante" role until a new Conclave is called and a new pope elected.

It seems crazy to me that the conclave might actually be meeting right up to Holy Week. But all the steps are determined by laws, and once the office is vacant, the church goes on autopilot. But all the rest is terra incognita; there's never been an ex-pope in good standing with the church (the schismatic popes deposed were later declared antipopes).* He will have at least the status of a retired bishop. My guess is that he will want to be thought of as a "simple priest" and go into semi-monastic seclusion within the walls of the Vatican (ongoing legal immunity) and not be seen again in public until his funeral. Seems strange, perhaps, but what else could he do? There's no place in the basilica to seat an ex-pope when the new pope says Mass.

Though I am not a fan, I say this all with some sympathy for him--whatever is on his heart or conscience, he is in a very lonely place, and will have left a really mixed legacy made more complicated by this way of leaving it. And he is far too intelligent a man not to understand all that and be troubled by it. So if resigning is his "I can do no other," then it's for very weighty reasons.

*There is one correction I'd make: I said there had never been an ex-pope in good standing with the church. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the only one who wasn't either a simonist or a schismatic, (Celestine V, who was, in fact, a saint) was imprisoned by...and possibly killed by his successor, who feared the ex-pope would be a magnet for rivals.

Lawrence Krauss: Stop Validating Ignorance | Big Think

The last thing we want to do is water down the teaching of biology because some people don’t recognize that evolution happened. Evolution is the basis of modern biology and, in fact, if a lot of people don’t believe it, it only means we have to do a better job teaching it. So once again, I repeat, the purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it. And to overcome a situation where a United States Senator can speak such manifest nonsense with impunity is vitally important to the healthy future of our society.  

via bigthink.com

Thank you, Lawrence Krauss. I think rejection of evolutionary realities--in effect, the rejection of most of biology, genetics, geology, and more--is a singular disqualification for public office. If someone can be so conspiracy-minded and willfully ignorant as to not "believe" in evolution as the only scientific explanation for the origin of species, what other realities will he or she fail to see or understand, a consequence of their epistemological and psychological contortions?

Every time a fossil is found it proves evolution all over again, every time a geneticist observes genetic recombination it proves evolution all over again. Relative to the latter point: That's why genetics in and of itself is the ultimate proof for evolution. Darwin didn't know how heredity worked, not that it had to be part of the larger picture of evolution: no heredity, no evolution through natural selection. That mechanism of heredity was, eventually, discovered: heredity works through units we call genes. It was the great discovery of biology after evolution itself.

This is why the emergence of genetics brought about what is called the new synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis. Genetics + Darwinian Evolution = a wondrous foundation for our understanding of life, an understanding that is an exciting adventure for 100,000's of scientists who investigate, challenge, confirm, refute, validate, invalidate, observe, expand, refine, enhance, reform and predict about biological evolution on a daily basis, as well as about other realms of science that the theory of evolution incorporates--geology, population genetics, chemistry, ecology, etc.

The theory of evolution isn't "just" a theory. In formal scientific nomenclature, theory doesn't mean a guess, but means an overarching concept that synthesizes myriad laws and observations. It's the same notion of theory at work in the germ theory of disease, the theory of general relativity, or the theory of plate tectonics. Because plate techtonics is a theory, do you doubt that the earth has continental plates and instead believe that earthquakes are caused by gnomes burrowing underground? No, you don't. Relative to plate tectonics, no one asserts that it's "just a theory." No, that is reserved for evolution, and it is one of the oldest and most misguided of evolution-denial's canards.

Here are a few of this blog's blasts from the past about evolution:
Defending Science Education,
"Root and Branch",
Big Picture on Evolution,
Happy Darwin Day (2011),
On the Origin of Species.
.

Margin of victory

The Economist looks at the remaking of the president:

Mr Romney won the white vote by 59% to 39%—an improvement over John McCain’s showing in 2008. But in Midwestern swing states, that margin was narrower: just four points in Wisconsin, for example, and 15 in Ohio.
.....
Over the course of his presidency, [Obama] has pointedly unveiled policies designed to appeal to each element of this coalition.
.....
Perhaps the best illustration of Mr Obama’s campaign-by-niches is his wooing of gay voters. The 5% of voters who identified themselves as gay in exit polls opted for Mr Obama by 76% to 22%—enough to account for his entire margin of victory.

via www.gorevidalpages.com

Image.

Helen at Ephesus, ep 03 of Troy - "The gods are no more to me than a figure of speech."

From the final episode of the three-part 1998 BBC Radio 3 drama,Troy (Jeremy Mortimer, prod./dir., Andrew Rissik, writer) now available for a limited time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the words of Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra) portrayed by Lindsay Duncan CBE:

Power or the lack of power; there is nothing else....When you live beside a brutal man, you are frightened all the time. The fear never leaves you completely even when you know you're in favor.... Oh, you gods, revenge means that the weak, the innocent, do not suffer for nothing; the wheel goes on turning; the dead rise up against the living; those who commit crimes pay for them at the end, however powerful they think they are.
.....
Sometimes I think it is better not to forgive.... It is easy...to be mastered by rage or lust, to hate without restraint.

The cast also includes the late Academy-award winner Paul Scofield CH CBE, Julian Glover, Michael Sheen OBE, and Geraldine Somerville.

Words of Helen:

I knew that my husband loved me, yet the more he desired me the colder I became. Something inside of us, to which you give the name God, strives to ruin us. It...seems often to possess a force stronger than our own strength. It haunts us with dreams beyond our scope to fulfill them, and engenders in us lusts and longings which, if we enact them, turn our spirits to vain or evil ends. We call this unquietness of soul by many names.... I say that what divides us against ourselves, what speaks to us in our visions and dreams, is only our own mortal nature.... For everything that we do, we bear the responsibility alone.

Image: Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos Watches for the Beacon Fires, (1876). Frederic Leighton (1830 - 1896). Oil on canvas. Leighton House Museum and Art Gallery, London. 35.4" x 54.2".

Unicorns

On BBC Radio 4's In Our Time (IOT) episode about St. Anselm's ontological argument, John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, noted that Parmenides of Elea (fl. early 5th century BC) argued that "only what is can be thought." (In Parmenides' sole and fragmentary surviving work, On Nature, is this related claim: "For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are.")

Anselm's and Parmenides' arguments concern proving things about the nature of reality by logic alone, and it was the philosopher Kant who more than 2,000 years later came up with the term ontological.

However, Professor Haldane's statement,"only what is can be thought," prompted me to think "all that is thought is that which is." Compared to what Professor Haldane said, my thought was similar sounding but really concerns epistemology (or at least I think so...my formal education in philosophy is extremely limited!), that is, the nature of knowledge, i.e., what we can know and how we know it. Haldane's "is" means existence itself, and my "is" merely means conceivable. In other words, not being a philosopher in the slightest, I was listening to Haldane make an interesting point about existence and was driven to make for my own amusement a circular argument about something else entirely. Specifically, I was considering a belief--one I share, I imagine, with pretty much everyone (I don't think remarkable thoughts)--that no idea can exist in an intellectual or experiential vacuum. Every idea is, as it were, grounded in antecedents or hanging on related ideas (grounded and hanging being metaphors, obviously....philosophers surely have technical terms for all of this business).

Consider the idea of the unicorn. Someone thought the idea up first. But the idea even the first time was grounded in experience or previous ideas, such as the idea of horn and of horse, whether those concepts had been learned about indirectly (having seen an image of a horn or horse or been told about them by ones wife's obnoxious oaf of a brother) or directly through physical experience (having seen a horn or horse itself or having been caught by ones wife while having sensual pleasures with one...or both).

I should point out that as the episode of IOT unfolded it became clear that I'm not an ontological sort of guy, I'm pretty empirical in my view of reality. Also, two things amused me later in the program after my above-described brianstorm (okay, a brainfizzle). Another of the guests on the program, Clare Carlisle, Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at King's College London, in making a point cited the concept of...a unicorn, and all the guests kept coming back to it, too. I'm crap at philosophy, but, boy, maybe I've got a knack for classroom examples. Second, there was short discussion towards the program's end about Alvin Plantinga. He is a philosopher of the Reformed epistemology movement--"Reformed" as in the Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Protestant traditions--and I attended a Reformed college where I was given a small introductory dose of Plantinga at some point. You can enjoy some, too. Here's an article, van The New York Times, "Philosopher Sticks Up For God." Coincidentally, Mark de Silva in The Grey Lady's online commentary feature, The Stone, which concerns contemporary philosophy, just this week considered the Dutch love of philosophy.

Photo: star-forming region NGC 6729; ESO (European Southern Observatory)

Microsoft asleep for the Assumption

My Outlook calendar says that August 21, 2012, is the "Assumption Day - Eastern." Well, Microsoft's wrong. The Roman Catholic Church's Feast of the Assumption and the Eastern Church's The Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God (Theotokos, "God-bearer," officially since the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431), are both celebrated on August 15.

The day of the death of the Mother of God is called the Dormition (or falling asleep) in the Orthodox church, for her body did not know corruption after death, but together with her soul was taken up into heaven; hence, another name for the feast is “the Assumption”. We have no historical data to indicate how long the Mother of God remained on earth after the ascension of Christ into heaven, nor when, where, or how she died, for the Gospels say nothing of this. The foundation for the feast of the Dormition is to be found in a sacred tradition of the Church dating from apostolic times, apocryphal writings, the constant faith of the People of God, and the unanimous opinion of the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church of the first thousand years of Christianity.

via www.newsfinder.org

(The Anglican tradition does not have a doctrine of the Assumption and is more circumspect about Marian theology in general. Most Anglican prayer books have August 15 as a feast day in honor of Saint Mary the Virgin.)

Helen C. Whitney: The Mormon Moment -- Postponed

Helen C. Whitney and Gregory A. Prince, Ph.D. invite Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to seize the opportunity to inform Americans about Mormonism from his perspective by answering nine questions they propose:

1. How have your early experiences within the Mormon Church -- particularly your two-year proselytizing mission to France and your service as Bishop and Stake President -- shaped your character and your worldview?

2. How does Mormonism's boundless optimism, which transcends even death in a manner unlike any other religion, shape your vision of America's present and future?

3. All religions have fabulous foundational stories. The Mormons are no exception. The difference is that their theology is younger and famously literal. It tells us that God has a body, that there is a plurality of Gods who eat and drink and mate as we do, that the golden plates were real, and that when we die there is a concrete and specific heaven where families are reunited. How has the singular physicality of your faith shaped your view of the world, not only as a private citizen but as a national leader?

4. When Mormons are asked about Joseph Smith's powerful final vision about man becoming God, "God-like" is almost always substituted for becoming God. But Mormonism's oft-quoted tenet is unambiguous: "As God is, man may become." Can you explain this core belief in a way that addresses the charge of blasphemy made by other religions?

5. Why do your new positions on immigration, social welfare, gay rights and abortion differ from official positions of the Mormon Church? Can you place these differences in a context that reassures Americans that Mormonism is not a philosophical monolith -- that indeed there is ample room within the label of "devout Mormon" for people as diverse as you and Senator Harry Reid?

6. What your church labels "sacred" is frequently termed by others "secret" or even "sinister," leading many to conclude that Mormons may not always be telling us what they truly believe. How can you assuage these suspicions by articulating your beliefs?

7. Given that your church's highest leadership councils consist entirely of white males, that it denies its lay priesthood to women and that it played the decisive role in the passage of California's Proposition 8, how can you assure the American public that the composition of your administration and the policies that you would pursue would be reflective of, and responsive to, the diversity that is the foundation of this nation's strength?

8. When asked about the part of his Baptist faith that meant most to him personally and as the nation's leader, President Clinton spoke movingly -- and in his words --a bout "the God of second chances." Human fallibility and the possibility of divine redemption -- these were Clinton's themes. What element of Mormon history or theology has had special resonance for you and has shaped your view of human nature, and of God?

9. Of all the misconceptions surrounding your religion, which one has offended you the most? Or, to interject a lighter note, what misinformation or stereotype has caused you to roll your eyes and even laugh when you are with your Mormon friends?

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

In Memoriam

Left: Warrant Officer Junior Grade Gore Vidal circa 1944, the Gore Vidal Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; right: Gore Vidal in 2006 © Stathis Orphanos

October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012

Writer and provocateur of America's mid-century political and literary circles, Gore Vidal was raised in a prominent Washington D.C. Democratic family but describes himself as a conservative. He was the son of airline pioneer Eugene Vidal, grandson of Oklahoma Sen. T. P. Gore, stepbrother of Jackie Kennedy, and friend of writers and actors including Tennessee Williams, Anaïs Nin, Christopher Isherwood, Tim Robbins, and Paul Newman. A man of contradictions, he has been described as controversial, playful, acerbic, arrogant, and warm; as a gadfly, a conspiracy junkie, a paleo-isolationist, an America-hater, and a patriot; but also "the master essayist of our age" by the Washington Post and America's "greatest living man of letters" by The Boston Globe. He explored history, religion, sex, politics, and power in 25 novels--including his "Narratives of Empire" series about American history--several plays, movie scripts, and more than 200 essays.

PHOTO GALLERY, The New York Times: Gore Vidal 1925-2012

The New York Times: Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer

San Francisco Chronicle: Gore Vidal, Celebrated Author, Playwright, Dies

BBC News: US Author Gore Vidal Dies Aged 86

The Guardian: Gore Vidal, US writer and contrarian, dies aged 86

CNN: Chronicler of American life and politics, dies (and CNN "This Just In" blog: A dozen thoughts from Gore Vidal)

The Atlantic: Gore Vidal - A Salute to Self-Absorbed yet Selfless Genius

Word & Film: Remembering Gore Vidal - Cultural Polymath, Political Gadfly, and Social Butterfly

AntiWar.com: Gore Vidal - the Last Jeffersonian

HuffingtonPost: The Legacy of Gore Vidal

 

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