1. After God, man is, without a doubt, the most mysterious and enigmatic
entity in all the realms of human thought. At the bottomless depth of
human existence there whirl contradictions which defy reconciliation:
life and death, virtue and evil, God and devil, and all that exists in
and around them. Through all its religions, philosophies, sciences,
spiritual and materialistic civilizations, the human race has been
trying to solve essentially one problem, one all-encompassing problem:
the problem of man.
And from all these
exertions and struggles it has fashioned for itself one supreme godhead,
to be worshipped as the highest value and the foremost criterion. That
ultimate godhead is “Man is the measure of everything.” That is to say,
man is the measure of all being and of all things. However, through
this method-his own Divine majesty-man has failed to solve the problem
of man. In measuring himself by himself he has failed to understand
either himself or the world around him (cf. 2 Cor.10: 12). He has
labored in vain. He has mirrored a reflection in a looking-glass. And
he has summed up everything in the agonized cry and the trembling
confession: “By myself I know nothing” (1 Cor. 4: 4). “I know nothing by
myself. I don’t know what is man, nor what is God, nor what is death,
nor what is life. And I feel with all my being that I am a slave to
death, a slave to evil, and through my sins a slave to the devil.” The
yield of all this human exertion has been to weave a body out of all the
human race: “the body of death,” of which every man has become a part.
And what is hidden within this body of death?-stench, putrefaction,
maggots. ”Wretch that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this
death?” (Rom. 7: 24).
No one, no one save the God-man because
the God-man Christ triumphed over death by His Resurrection. He
destroyed “the body of death” as an ontological reality (ct. Rev. 20:
14, 10). He redeemed the human race from death and granted the gift of
eternal Life, eternal Truth, eternal Love, eternal Justice, eternal Joy,
and all the other eternal Divine Virtues which can only be granted by
the God of Love, the Lover of Mankind. And so He solved the problem of
man, the entire problem of mankind. When God became man, he appeared as
the God-man, and through his body-the Church-he has remained as God-man
in this terrestrial world. He has become the ultimate value and the
supreme criterion of the human race forever-the only True God and the
only True Man, the only Perfect God and the only Perfect Man. As such
He is the only supreme value and the only ultimate criterion of man’s
spiritual and physical being, of his theanthropic potential, and of all
that is human and of man. Only in the God-man has man seen himself
complete and eternal for the first time. He has recognized himself in
all his dimensions. As a result a new general principal of value and
knowledge applies to the human race: “The Godman is the measure of
everything.” Nevertheless, “man is the measure of everything” continues
to reign, to dominate for the most part, in the idolatrous and
polytheistic non-Christian world ferro ignique. This led the
Apostle Paul, the divinely enlightened student of man, and the God-man
to summarize all the philosophies of the human race in two: the
philosophy according to man, and the philosophy according to the
Godman (Col. 2: 8).
2. Only the God-man is perfect, truly
perfect Man, and simultaneously perfect God and perfect Man. Here the
Hypostasis of God’s Logos is the critical consideration. It was
clearly interpreted and proclaimed by the divinely-inspired, saintly,
God-bearing Fathers of the Fourth Oecumenical Synod at Chalcedon. In the
Godman Christ, man has reached his ultimate perfection. Through God
his soul has been perfected and made complete, along with his
conscience, his will, his mind, his heart, and his body; in a word, his
entire being. And the most important of all miracles, truly worthy of
our love, occurred: the God-man remained in this terrestrial world and
in the entire universe as his Church, as His Body, so that every
individual can join the fellowship of the body of the God-man and in
this way achieve his full and complete perfection (cf. Eph. 3: 6). Only
in the God-man and through the God-man can each human individual become
truly human, completely human. Only with the God-man and his Church,
and through his Church “with all the Saints,” is it possible to achieve
“complete personhood, as measured by the stature and fullness of Christ”
(Eph. 3: 18,4: 11-16). In the God-man Christ “there dwells bodily the
entire fullness of the Godhead,” so that, in the Church and through the
Church, the fullness of the Godhead can be bestowed on each one of us
(Col. 2: 9-10). This, however, can be realized in each of us only “with
all the saints,” through the holy mysteries and the Holy Virtues, and
based on Holy Faith and Holy Love (Eph. 3: 17-20).
Without the God-man, man is in fact
without a head, indeed without a self, without an eternal self, without
an immortal God-like self. Without the God-man, man does not exist;
there is only less-than-man, half-man, or no man at all. And at this
point we must add the following truth: without the God-man, man is
always a slave to death, a slave to sin, a slave to the devil. Only
through the God-man does man realize his God-ordained potential. He
becomes “God by grace” and in this way achieves the full potential of
his existence and his personhood. He reaches his Divine eternity through
God’s humanity. Living in the theanthropic body of the Church “with all
the Saints” man achieves theosis by degrees, through the holy mysteries
and the Holy Virtues. And he is filled with the joy of the holy
message and the heavenly commandment of Saint Basil the Great: “A
creature of God comes into existence and God is called.’1
Created with the potential to become Godman, man strives, within the
theanthropic body of the Church, to make his mind resemble that of God,
to achieve transformation into God-mind. ”We have the mind of Christ”
(1 Cor. 2: 16). He even strives to resemble the will of God, to
transform his will to God-will, and to make his body similar to the body
of the Godman, to transform it to God-body. “The body is for the Lord
and the Lord is for the body” (1 Cor. 6: 13). Theanthropized through
the Church and in the Church, man reestablishes himself in his original
God-like state, achieving this in ever-increasing measure through the
Divine virtue of excellent Christ-like ideas (Gal. 4: 19,3: 27;Rom. 8:
29).
But without the God-man and
independently of Him, man always risks the danger of becoming like the
devil, since sin is simultaneously the strength and the icon of the
devil. Functioning independently of the God-man, man voluntarily
reduces himself to a devil-like state of sin. He becomes a relative of
the devil. “He that commits sin is of the devil” (1 John 3: 8). We must
not forget that the principal objective of the devil is to deprive man
of his God-like potential, to de-theanthropize him, to delete his
Divinity, and to thus transform him into a being similar to himself.
Humanistic anthropocentricity is in essence devilcenteredness. They
both wish one thing: to belong only to themselves, to be only in
themselves and for themselves. However, in this way, they actually bring
themselves to the kingdom of the “second death” where there is neither
God nor anything of God’s (Rev. 21: 8,20: 14). That which has been
discussed to this point is nothing other than the evangelical,
apostolic, patristic, Orthodox humanism of God (Theohumanism,
Theohominism).
3. All the European humanisms, from the
most primitive to the most sophisticated, from the fetishistic to the
papal, are based on a belief in man as he finds himself in the midst of
his given spiritual and physical empirical situation and his historical
context. In this view the entire essence of every humanism is man
(homo), and encapsulated in the ontology of every humanism is nothing
other than humanism (homo hominis). Man is the highest value, the
supreme value. Man is the principal criterion, the ultimate criterion.
“Man is the measure of everything.” That, at its core (in nuce), is
every humanism, every homanism. Therefore, all humanisms, all hominisms
are, in the final analysis, idolatrous and polytheistic in origin.
Pre-Renaissance, Renaissance, and post-Renaissance-Protestant,
philosophical, religious, social, scientific, cultural, or political
-all the European humanisms strive consciously or subconsciously, but
they strive unceasingly, for one result: to replace faith in the God-man
with a belief in man, to replace the Gospel of the God-man with a
gospel according to man, to replace the philosophy of the God-man with a
philosophy according to man, to replace the culture of the God-man with
a culture according to man. In brief, they seek to replace life
according to the God-man with life according to man.
This has been developing for centuries
until in the last century, in 1870 at the First Vatican Council, all
these efforts achieved their pinnacle in the dogma of the infallibility
of the Pope. This dogma subsequently became the central dogma of the
papacy. In our own times, during the Second Vatican Council, this
doctrine was discussed so persistently and so skilfully that the notion
of its inviolability and inalterability was strongly reinforced. This
doctrine has an overwhelming significance for the fate of European
civilization, and for the apocalyptic times into which it has brought
itself Through this dogma all European humanisms have built their ideals
and their idol: man has been declared the supreme godhead, the ultimate
godhead. The European humanistic pantheon has established its Zeus.
Honesty is the language of Truth: the
dogma concerning the infallibility of the 20th century pope is nothing
other than the rebirth of idolatry and polytheism, the rebirth of
idolatrous value judgments and criteria. Horrible dictu, but this also
has to be said: the dogma concerning the infallibility of the pope was
introduced in the dogma of idolatrous humanism which, in the first
instance, was Hellenic humanism. The value of everything was introduced
as dogma. All characteristics of Hellenic culture and Hellenic
civilization, their values, their philosophies, their crafts, their
politics, their science were all introduced as dogma: ”The measure of
everything is man.” And what does this amount to? It is a recitation
of the dogma of idolatry. In this manner the point in time arrived when
the self-sufficiency of European man became dogma, an objective for
which European humanisms have longed for nostalgically for centuries.
The dogma regarding the infallibility of the pope is the Nietzschean assertion-Ja-Sagung-extended
to the entire conception of European humanism. Ja-Sagung is part of
European culture and civilization, both of which are effectively
idolatrous and polytheistic in their objectives and their methods. The
Gospel and the Commandment of the God-man are “Seek first thekingdom
ofGod and His righteousness, and all (other things) shall be added to
you” (Matth. 6: 33). But note what has been omitted from the
proclamation of European humanistic culture and its civilization. There
is no mention of the purpose of human existence or of the means by
which man functions. The God-man is the Only Savior of man from his
sins, from his death, and from the devil, the Only One who renews and
immortalizes, who resurrects and elevates, who makes eternal and
Divine, who theanthropizes man in all his worlds, and who categorically
and clearly defines as the supreme purpose of the existence and the
life of man that he should become perfect as God is perfect (Matth. 5:
48).
However, what did the European humanist
not place, and what did he not dedicate as the purpose of human
existence, in opposition to Him! The evangelical truth that “the entire
world lies under the sway of the evil one,” requiring the efforts of
the God-man on this earth, cannot be refuted (1 John 5: 19-21). Or, as
stated by the holy apostle Paul, the devil is “the god of this age” (2
Cor. 4: 4). Between such a world which voluntarily “lies under the sway
of the evil one” and the person who follows the God-man there is no
common ground. He who follows the God-man is not allowed by the firm
direction of Evangelic Truth to coexist with the humanist who justifies
all of those things and declares them to be dogma. At this point it is
always necessary to make a decisive, value-oriented determination and
selection: either the God-man or man. The humanist in all his efforts
represents himself as acting with self-sufficiency as the supreme value
and highest criterion. There is no place here for the God-man. In the
kingdom of humanism the place of the God-man had been usurped by the Vicarius
Christi, and the God-man has thus been exiled to Heaven. This surely
results in a peculiar deincarnation of Christ the God-man, does it not?
Through the dogma of infallibility the
pope usurped for himself, that is for man, the entire jurisdiction and
all the prerogatives which belong only to the Lord God-man. He
effectively proclaimed himself as the Church, the papal church, and he
has become in her the be-all and end-all, the self-proclaimed ruler of
everything. In this way the dogma of the infallibility of the pope has
been elevated to the central dogma (svedogmat) of the papacy. And the pope cannot deny this in any way as long as he remains pope of a humanistic papacy.
4. Inthe history of the human race there
have been three principal falls: that of Adam, that of Judas, and that
of the pope. The principal characteristic of falling into sin is always
the same: wanting to be good for one’s own sake; wanting to be perfect
for one’s own sake; wanting to be God for one’s own sake. In this
manner, however, man unconsciously equates himself to the devil, because
the devil also wanted to become God for his own sake, to put himself in
the place of God. And in this self-elevation he instantly became devil,
completely separated from God, and always in opposition to Him.
Therefore, the essence of sin, of every sin (svegreha),
consists of this arrogant self-aggrandizement. This is the very essence
of the devil himself, of Satan. It is nothing other than one’s wanting
to remain within one’s own being, wanting nothing within one’s self
other than oneself. The entire devil is found here: in the desire to
exclude God, in the desire to always be by himself, to always belong
only to himself, to be entirely within himself and always for himself,
to be forever hermetically sealed in opposition to God and everything
that belongs to God.
And what is this? It is egotism and
self-love embraced in all eternity, that is to say: it is hell. For that
is essentially what the humanist is-entirely within himself, by
himself, for himself, always spitefully closed in opposition to God.
Here lies every humanism, every hominism. The culmination of such
satanically oriented humanism is the desire to become good for the sake
of evil, to become God for the sake of the devil. It proceeds from the
promise of the devil to our forefathers in Paradise-that with his help,
“they would become as gods” (Gen. 3: 5). Man was created with
theanthropic potential by God who loves mankind, so that he might
voluntarily direct himself, through God, toward becoming God-man, based
on the divinity of his nature. Man, however, with his free will sought
sinlessness through sin, sought God through the devil. And assuredly,
following this road he would have become identical with the devil had
not God interceded in His immeasurable love of mankind and in His great
mercy. By becoming man, that is to say God-man, he redirected man
toward the God-man. He introduced him to the Church which is his body,
to the reward (podvig) of theosis through the holy mysteries
and the blessed virtues. And in this manner he gave man the strength to
become “a perfect man, in the measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph.
4: 13), to achieve, that is, the Divine destiny, to voluntarily become
God-man by grace. The fall of the pope is a consequence of the desire to
substitute man for the God-man.
Patrologia Graeca, 35, 506.
Source: Justin Popovic, Orthodox faith and life in Christ,Belmont: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, c1994.
Source-Pemptousia.com
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