WHY DOES SUFFERING EXIST IN HE WORLD???

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George Australia
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Post by George Australia »

Forgive me for this, but I think these images should be removed from an Orthodox Forum.
Firstly, it is forbidden in the Orthodox Church to show realistic representations of the Crucifixion. In our traditional Icons of the Crucifixion and the Bridegroom ("Nymphios"), Christ is depycted as relatively serene despite his humiliation, and there is a noted absence of blood and gore.
Secondly, despite Mel Gibson's claim that his movie is "as close to the Gospel as possible", the Gospels also lack the details of the "blood and gore" of the suffering of Christ.
Thirdly, for us Orthodox, it is the fact that Christ died and despoiled Hades and rose from the dead which is important. For the heterodox, the amount of pain and suffering He endured is important because of their view of Redemption- that Christ's pain somehow "paid a price" because of their judicial view of sin and forgiveness.

St. Gregory the Theologian wrote:

"To whom was that Blood offered and why was it shed?...We were detained in bondage by the evil one, sold under sin, and received pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask, to whom was this offered and for what cause? If to the evil one, fie upon the outrage! The robber recieves ransom not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself!....For it was not by God that we were being oppressed and next; on what principle did the Blood of His Only-Begotten Son delight the Father Who would not even receive Isaac when he was being offered by his father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him; but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him, but on account of the Incarnation, and because humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things?"
- St Gregory the Theologian- Second Oration on Pascha.

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

Justin Kissel

FWIW

Post by Justin Kissel »

"When a man has fallen it is not possible for him to be raised by human power, nor can human evil be destroyed by human righteousness. The commission of sin involves injury to God Himself, for it says, 'you dishonour God by breaking the law' (Rom. 2:23). There is need of virtue greater than is found in man to be able to cancel the indictment.

For the lowest it is particularly easy to commit an injury against Him who is greatest. Yet it is impossible for him to compensate for this insolence by any honour, particularly when he is in many ways indebted to Him whom he has injured, and He who is injured is so far superior that the distance between them cannot even be measured. He, then, who seeks to cancel the indictment against himself must restore the honour to Him who has been insulted and repay more than he owes, partly by way of restitution, partly by adding a compensation for the wrong which he has done. yet how can he who is unable even to attain to the measure of his debts succeed in surpassing it?

It was therefore impossible for any man to reconcile himself to God by introducing his own righteousness. Accordingly neither could the old law overcome enmity, nor would the unaided efforts of those who live under the new be capable of achieving this peace, since both the former and the latter are works of men's own power and of human righteousness. The very law itself Paul calls human righteousness, for in speaking of the old law he says, 'they did not submit to God's righteousness, seeking to establish their own' (Rom. 10:3). Its effectiveness against our evil condition was limited to this alone, to prepare us for health, and to make us fit for the Physician's hand. So he says, 'the law was our custodian until Christ came' (Gal. 3:24). Similarly blessed John [the Baptist] baptized in anticipation of Him who was to come; and all the philosophy of men and all their labour for true righteousness are no more than preliminaries and preperations.

Wherefore, since we by our own means and of ourselves were unable to disply righteousness, Christ Himself became for us 'righteousness from God and consecration and redemption' (1 Cor. 1:30). he destroys the enmity in His flesh and reconciles us to God (cf. Eph. 2:15-16). This He accomplishes not merely by sharing our nature, nor was it only when He died for us, but at all times and for every man. he was cruficied then; now He hospitably entertains us whenever we in penitence ask forgiveness.

He alone, then, was able to render all the honour that is due to the Father and make satisfaction for that which had been taken away. The former He achieved by His life, the latter by His death. The death which He died upon the cross to the Father's glory He brought in to outweigh the injury which we had committed; in addition, He most abundantly made amends for the debt of honour, both that which it befitted Him to pay and also that by which the Father ought to be honoured." - St. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, Book 4 (§ 4)

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George Australia
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Re: FWIW

Post by George Australia »

Justin Kissel wrote:

The death which He died upon the cross to the Father's glory He brought in to outweigh the injury which we had committed; in addition, He most abundantly made amends for the debt of honour, both that which it befitted Him to pay and also that by which the Father ought to be honoured." - St. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, Book 4 (§ 4)

Dear in Christ, Justin,
Here is where I see a problem, and maybe it's just my problem. Yes, as both St. Nicholas Cabasilas and St. Gregory the Theologian say that Christ's Sacrifice honours the Father. But is God the Father to be likened to the blood thirsty 'gods' of the pagans- which demand blood in order to be appeased? Is our God incapable of forgiving sins through Mercy alone? St. Gregory seems to be saying that The Father neither required nor demanded Christ's Sacrifice in order to forgive sins.
Christ's death and descent into Hades- (His second condescension- since He had already descended to the living) is what we chant about in the Great and Holy Friday Services- not the "Stations of the Cross" of the Latins. Nor do we indulge in sentimentalism nor emotionalism like the heterodox Christians on Great and Holy Friday.

The cult of the human body cultivated by the Greeks, the pagan anthropocentricism reflects inevitably upon the painted representations of Christ. It is against this fact that the fathers of the Fifth-Sixth Ecumenical Council (692) rise and interdict categorically all images which “…put spells upon the eyes, corrupt the mind and create explosions of devilish pleasures”. That is why, the Byzantine style of canonical representation has been established to represent the Saviour, His Mother and all the Saints and is present even today in Orthodox churches. Serious and essential, the Byzantine style catches the state of the deified, spiritual body- this is the new body about which Apostle Paul speaks. Therefore we do not have statues in the grego-roman pagan style, and nor we do we have crucifixes covered in blood with the face and body of Christ contorted in pain.
I'm not sure that "meditations" on the quantity and quality of Christ's pain are are that helpful. We worship the Risen Christ.
My wife tells me that childbirth smarts a bit too- and yet she's been through it six times- because the pain is forgotten when the child is born.
George
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"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

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George Australia
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Re: FWIW

Post by George Australia »

Getting back to the original question, we Orthodox believe that suffering exists because sin exists.
Our First Parents, in disobeying God's commandment to fast from one type of fruit, managed to bring disease, toil, inclination to sin, old age, death etc into the world.

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

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Post by gphadraig »

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 26 December last has raised in many perhaps the question, why does God allow such suffering in the world?

I found today the following article in a leading British newspaper, The Times. It is written by a prominent conservative rabbi. In posting this I will no doubt raise the ire of some, but that is neither my purpose nor my intent. His article does contain a thought which I feel might merit some though.


WHY DOES GOD ALLOW TERRIBLE THINGS TO HAPPEN TO HIS PEOPLE?

Jonathan Sacks, The Times, London, January 1, 20005

It is the question of questions for religious belief. How does God permit a tragedy such as the Indian Ocean tidal wave? How does he allow the innocent to suffer and the guiltless to die? It was just such a disaster -- the Lisbon tragedy of All Souls Day 1755, in which 60,000 people died as a result of tsunamis produced by an earthquake -- that led Voltaire to write 'Candide', satirising religious faith. The butt of his irony, Dr Pangloss, is generally thought to be modelled on Leibniz, the German philosopher, who held that 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'.

What incensed Voltaire was that there were religious believers at the time who thought that the earthquake represented God's anger at Libon's "sinful" ways. After all, didn't the Old Testament speak of divine anger? Were catastrophes not interpreted as punishment against sinful nations? Os there not justice in history? Yet in the end the interpretation was unsustainable. Why Lisbon and not other cities? Why were the young, the frail, the saintly among the caualties? Even mody dogmatic found it hard to answer these questions. It blames the victims for their fate. After the Holocaust, such thoughts ought to be unthinkable.

Jews read the Bible differently. One of its most challenging questions about fate come not from unbelievers, but from the heroes of faith themselves. Abraham asked: "Why have You done evil to this people?" The entire book of Job is dedicated to this question, and in the end it is not Job's comforters, who blamed his misfortunes on his sins, who were vindicated by heaven, but Job himself, who consistently challenged God. In Judaism, faith lies in the question, not the answer.

Earthquakes and tidal waves were known to the ancients. They spoke of them in awe. Job himself said: "The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke, by His power he churned up the sea." David used them as a metaphor for fear itself: "The waves of death swirled about me.... The Earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the heavens shook,... The valleys of the sea were exposed, and the foundations of the Earth laid bare." In the midst of a storm at sea, Jonah prayed: "Your wrath lie heavily upon me; You have overwhelmed me with all Your waves." Yet God taught Elijah that He was not in the earthquake or the wirlwind that destroys, but in the still, small voice that heals.

What distinguished the biblical phrophets from their pagan predecessors was their refusal to see natural catastrophe as an independent force of evil, proof that at least some of the gods are hostile to mankind. In the ancient Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, for example, the goddess of the oceans Tiamat declares war on the rest of creation and is only defeated after prolonged struggle by the younger God, Marduk. Essential to monotheism is that conflict is not written into the fabric of the Universe. That is what redeems tragedy and creates hope.

The simplest explanation is that of the 12th-century sage, Moses Maimonides. Natural disasters, he said, have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement freedom, virtue, creativity, vunerability, and love. We would be angels -- God's computers, programmed to sing His praise.

The religious question is, therefore, no: "Why did this happen?" But "What shall we do?" That is why, is synagogues, churches, mosques and temples throughout the world this weekend, along with our prayers for the injured and the bereaved, we will be asking people to donate money to assist the work of relief. The religious response is not to seek to understand, thereby to accept. We are not God. Instead we are the people He has called on to be his 'partners in the work of creation'. The only adequate religious response is to say: "God, I do not know why this terrifying disaster has happened, but I do know what You want of us; to help the afflicted, comfort the bereaved, send healing to the injured, and aid those who have lost their livelihoods and homes." We cannot understand God, but we can strive to imitate His love and care.

That, and perhaps one more thing. For it was after an earlier flood, in the days of Noah, that God made His first covenant with mankind. The Bible says that God had seen "a world filled with violence" and asked Noah to institute a social order that would honour human life as the image of God. Not as as an explanation of suffering, but as a response to it. I for one will pray that in our collective grief we renew the convenant of human solidarity. Having seen how small and vunerable humanity is in the face of nature, might we not also see how small are the things that divide us, and how tragic to grief to grief.

Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth of Nations


For me the article was very interesting and the explanation of suffering and why God 'allows' it struck a deep cord. I perhaps depart when we might consider any social engineering or any attempt in a world which largely either does not know Christ, and/or rejects Him to build heaven here upon the earth.

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George Australia
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Post by George Australia »

a prominent conservative rabbi whose article does contain a thought which gphadraig feels might merit some wrote:

The simplest explanation is that of the 12th-century sage, Moses Maimonides. Natural disasters, he said, have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement freedom, virtue, creativity, vunerability, and love. We would be angels -- God's computers, programmed to sing His praise.

Doesn't this make God the "Watchmaker" of the Deists? According to the Deists, God is the "First Cause" of creation, but His influence stops there- like a Watchmakaer who creates a watch then sets it in motion and has nothing further to do with it. The mistake is clear when the rabbi refers to angels as "God's computers, programmed to sing His praise...." because the Angels are far from robotic computers- they too have the gift of free will, and have exercised this, as we see from the fallen angels.
I'd say this was a cowardly attempt to explain the tsunami- in effect saying "God had nothing to do with it".
The Christian understanding is a little scarier- the tsunami was not a message for them, but for us.

There were present at that season some who told Him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, "Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay; but unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all other men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay; but unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."Luke 13:1-5

Edited (rather toungue-in-cheekly) by George Australia at the request of gphadraig. :lol:

Last edited by George Australia on Sat 1 January 2005 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

gphadraig
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Post by gphadraig »

No, George Australia, I must protest. Your post infers I wrote something you wished to dispute immediately followed by a lengthy quote from the article Jonathan Sacks, I had posted; but attributed a lengthy quote from the Sacks article to me? That you might take issue with any number of points in the article I have no problem with, but please do not attribute to me the writings of another. (I am no fan whatsoever of Maimonides, let it be said).

I do believe God has created and put us in this physical world. And our living in that physical world carries with it consequences; as does our fallen nature. A fallen nature, since the expulsion from Paradise. I too believe in miracles enacted by a personal God, far removed from that imagined by the Deists. Likewise that some saintly men and women draw close to Him in the manner ably described by Saint Gregory Palamas, and illustrated by Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

Nevertheless I found Jonathan Sacks article both interesting but here and there a reservation or point of departure occured to me.

Now a couple of choices await. To ignore the post and the article. To debate one or both here or, if anyone is so minded, to write a letter to The Times challenging this or that aspect of 'his' article. I cannot answer for Dr Sacks, of course............

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