biblicalia

Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
      Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
      And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.
In heaven at his manor I him sought:
      They told me there, that he was lately gone
      About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth,
      Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
      In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
      Of thieves and murderers: there I him espied
      Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

George Herbert, 1633

My apologies again, everyone. I realized that my import of the correctly formatted unicode-compliant XML backup of my blog entries, comments, etc, actually created new page addresses so that all links to my pages were broken. How rude!

So, I’ve reloaded a database copy with the right numbers (fortunately I’ve kept them), and will deal with the unicode mess later, so all the Greek and Hebrew texts are messed up at the moment, temporarily. I noticed that some early posts on the blog are now out of order, too, which is weird, and I can’t tell when that happened, but it must’ve been in one of my earlier moves.

One theme in our considerations that has run through them like a thread has been the notion of mystery, and these considerations about the fundamental place of wonder in man’s searching after truth return us to this theme. For, to the idea of the permanent place of wonder (in contrast with doubt) corresponds the notion of the essentially irreducible character of mystery. A problem can be solved, a puzzle can be unravelled; but a mystery, if it is truly a mystery, remains. Christians want to speak of the centre of their faith as being the mystery of God in Christ. By that they mean that the problem of existence, the mystery of the ultimate, is truly a mystery: it cannot be unravelled. To say that the problem of existence is the mystery of the ultimate is to say that God exists. If the problem of existence can be solved, then there is no need to think of God or bring him into the picture. But to think of Gos is not to solve the problem of existence (as Heidegger thought it did when he maintained that theism was a way of evading the ultimate metaphysical question—Why is there anything and not rather nothing?—by giving a simple ‘answer’), but to hold us before the mystery of being. Christians do not simply believe in the mystery of God, but the mystery of God in Christ: they believe that in the life and death of a man called Jesus of Nazareth, God lived among us a human life. The mystery of God is not simply the problem of transcendence, nor is it even simply the mystery of immanence—the mystery of intimations of the beyond in the here and now; rather the mystery of God is disclosed in a human life that was lived in history. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the place where we meet with the mystery of God. ‘Immensity cloister’d in thy dear womb’—the mystery of the ultimate is met with in the particular: not just in the way that the divine is there for us to discern in any particular, but present actively, seeking us out, making itself known to us. Here, more than anywhere else, we realize the true character of mystery: mystery not just as the focus for our questioning and investigating, but mystery as that which questions us, which calls us to account.

Fr Andrew Louth. Discerning the Mystery pp 144-145

In another sense (and this draws on much of the work of Metropolitan John Zizioulas, another Orthodox theologian), the true character of the mystery of God is that it is communion, communion precisely between the Divine and the human realms, a communion driven and energized and actualized by love. For it is only in love that this mystery of communion is sustained. What communion do we have with our fellow man if we have no love for him? It is no communion at all when the other is no longer mysterious, but ignored or denigrated, and personhood is reduced to bestial instinct and animal habit. What communion could we possibly have with God had it not been for His love? It was an act of His love to create us, and then to become one of us, and to die as one of us—the ultimate communion—so as to save us and to continue that communion with us for ages of ages. What communion is it when we fail to respond to precisely that signal act of love on the part of God, when we resist the transformative nature of this communion, and persist in our solitude? In this we are called to account by love. Communion is the mystery of love. And just as we must be stricken with wonder by this abyss of God’s love, this greatest of all mysteries, so should we respond with love. Just as God became man, so we need also to love both God and man, if we are to love properly. Remember to love one another as I have loved you, He said, and Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. It is a tall order, but not a command that such a One who loves us and who keeps close to us in communion is unable to help us to achieve. The help is there to draw upon, if drawn in love.

Behold, I will make My word in thy
mouth fire, and this people wood,
and it shall devour them
Jeremiah 5.14

Do you see, my brethren, how the word of the Lord differs in its effect on different people? The word of the Lord is as fire, at which the righteous rejoice, frozen in the coldness of this world. And the word of the Lord is as fire, which burns up the unrighteous, whom this material world warmed too greatly. Experienced spiritual teachers have left us testimony that the name of Jesus alone—which brings strength, joy, and refreshment to the faithful—burns evil spirits like living flame. So it is with every word of God. To one it gives comfort, to another excitement; to one it calms anger and to another it gives strength; to one it incites veneration and to another a taunt. It is honey to the whole, but to the unhealthy that honey is wormwood.

But why should the people be as wood that will be burned? Are the people at fault if godless elders and false prophets lead them onto foreign paths? The people are not at fault to as great an extent as their elders and the false prophets, but they are at fault to some extent. For God gave to the people also to know the right path, both through their conscience and through the preaching of the word of God, so the people should not blindly have followed their blind guides, who led them by false paths that alienated them from God and His Laws. My brethren, God is righteous, and He knows the measure of every fault and will not let the small and ignorant suffer as much as the learned and great.

O all-seeing Lord, save us, that we be neither blind guides nor blind followers. Strengthen our hearts that, as leaders or followers, we may ever be Thy servants, and Thy servants alone. To Thee be glory and praise for ever. Amen.

St Nikolai Velimirovich. The Prologue from Ochrid. Homily for May 6th.

Well, I think everything’s fixed now. If anyone runs into anything unusual, please let me know.

Here’s a tip for other WordPress users who are moving their blog from one site to another: backups directly from the database don’t work. They don’t import properly in Unicode again, which is very frustrating. The thing that works is the WordPress RSS Export and Import. Only it will both export and import Unicode. So now we know!

Happy blogging, all!

Because I’m in the midst of moving my domain to a new hosting service, I’ve disabled comments for the time being. I don’t want anyone’s comments to get lost in the shuffle. I’ll turn them back on as soon as everything’s moved. So, if you want to leave a comment, just keep it in mind and post it later. I expect everything to be fully back to normal by the end of this coming Monday.

Thank you all for your patience!

This blog may be in for a bumpy ride over the next couple of days, as I’m transferring to a new hosting provider. There might be some time in which it is down or acting oddly, for which I apologize. I expect everything to go smoothly, but one never knows.

So, if there are problems, please be patient.