Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Colossians 3:11
These words of the Apostle Paul are a concise Christian rule, and they truly sum up the true value of man, that is, they show the ideal and true man, and they also depict the desired Christian society. Here, Paul quickly reads all the data and conflicts of his time about the meanings, ways, and reasons for man’s existence. We see him throw them away (despite their value) to replace them all with the true Christian standard of human value. Paul was an apostle and a man of true suffering, because he loved everyone and was not a slave to any bond, because man is higher and more precious to him than all bonds. This ecumenical love of his led him to confront all the worldly bonds, ideals, and characteristics in order to make them all a vessel for his preaching of Jesus. Therefore, everything that was an obstacle to the preaching is invalid, and vice versa. Each of the previous bonds represented a complete world in the time of the Apostle Paul, which we see repeated today in our societies and religious life, even if its external names have changed.
“Neither Greek nor Jew,” these are the two basic worlds, the world of atheists (the Greeks) and the world of the religious (the Jews). Paul was writing as a Jew. The Jew considered himself a son of the chosen and faithful people, while the Greeks were for him the nations that had no god but worshipped idols. The Jew sought in his life to learn religion and apply its commandments literally. The ideal for him was the pious person. Exaggerations often reached the point of making this “pious” person not ask for, know, or accept anything outside religion in all aspects of life. Therefore, the most beautiful thing for him was the “wonder” that expressed his health and God’s pleasure and blessing. Therefore, in another place Paul cried out, “The Jews seek a wonder, but the Greeks wisdom.”
While the Greeks represented the world founded on non-religious foundations, and built their development and ideals on logical and scientific foundations. First, this world is repeated today in most of our societies, some of which are atheists and deny the existence of God, and some of which are not directly atheists but consider “God” a matter of faith that perhaps concerns personal hobbies, or consider religions merely a psychological method specific to each individual in society, but he (God) can never be the basis for development and the course of life, even if we can accept him as a type of spiritual exercises or personal hobbies. “Science” is the god of development and it saves us from our needs and leads us to our goals. Here, God cannot take up more space than the space of free time and psychological exercises; at best.
“Neither Greek nor Jew” from the Christian perspective, because the value of man is not in his “knowledge” nor is his value in his “religion”! Because knowledge is not a characteristic of man, but rather one of his faculties. So if man is evil and possesses this faculty, he makes it evil, and if man is good and has many sciences, he makes them good sciences. Likewise, religion is a “belief”, and if its bearer is not good, his religion will not benefit him at all, but rather condemns him instead of saving him. So human value does not come exclusively from religion or from science.”
“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision,” and here Paul enters into the two parts of the same religious world. The circumcised represent the religiously “conservatives,” and the uncircumcised represent the “liberated” believers. Those who entered Christianity in Paul’s time were divided into two groups. The first group were Jews who wanted to “preserve” the laws of the fathers (circumcision), and for Christianity to continue with its entire previous Jewish heritage. The second group were those who accepted Christianity without finding any meaning in some of the old commandments. These appeared to be renewing and liberating themselves from many of the old religious commandments and axioms, which they speak of today as restrictions that do not benefit faith in its essence. They considered that they had the right to believe in the essence of religion by renewing its forms and external connections. Today, Christians themselves are divided between conservatives, some of whom go to the extreme of being rigid in their adherence to the old traditions, mistakenly calling them the noble tradition. While others are liberated from this “noble tradition,” which in their view is nothing but traditions that have been outdated, belong to the past, and are unacceptable today. These people may go to extremes when they are liberated from traditions to the point that they often reject something of the true tradition and the essence of religion under the workshop of liberation from the old, also stripping religion of its authenticity and foundations that were from the old (temporally).
So, neither conservatism nor liberation, neither traditions nor creativity, neither stagnation nor renewal, these are all criteria perhaps in religions, but they are not the Christian criterion in evaluating man and social movements. The believer is not saved by his loyalty to his traditions, nor is his renewal saved by them either!
“Neither barbarian nor Scythian”! Yes, it does not matter whether a person is of noble or barbaric origin, whether he is civilized or nomadic! Neither the city is enough nor the nomadic life prevents, neither guarantees nor hinders a person from having his true dignity from the Christian perspective! The barbarians were the uncivilized peoples. As for the Scythians, they were mighty, warlike peoples.
How similar is the world of great powers that depend for their greatness not on spiritual civilization but on economic and military power, which enables them to wipe out any other people and subject them to it. But human value in Christianity is built on kindness and mercy, not on brutality!
In another place, the Apostle Paul adds to his statement today, that “there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), and thus Paul’s faith in Jesus actually freed him from the remnants of centuries and long eras that did not, and perhaps still do not, give women their rights like men! Nothing frees us except faith in Jesus, while all religions and philosophies have not yet balanced their view of women.
If there are many conflicts between religion and atheism from the outside, between conservatives and liberals from within religion, between men and women in life, between the civilized and the barbarians, between the weak and the strong, and other conflicts, all of which seek to claim that they give man his true value through religiosity, education, civilization, domination, masculinity, or... then all of them, in the view of the Apostle Paul alone, are false.
So where is the value of man, whether he is religious or atheist, whether he is a man or a woman… His value is in Paul’s last word “But Christ is all”! The more each person carries the image of Christ in him, the greater his value, and the more the image of Christ is absent in him, the more he loses his human dignity. The ideal man is not the religious, nor the educated, nor… only, but he who is all like Christ! All of us, Christians too, are like the Jews in religiosity, the Greeks in logic, and the Scythians in power… and at the same time Christians! We believe in Jesus, but we also carry the colors and paganisms of this age, and we are not all Christ! We believe in Jesus and at the same time we deify with Him many ties such as knowledge, lineage, family, power, money, and others… These are all standards that do not give man his true value, which actually comes from the extent to which he is conceived in the image of Christ.
If science does not make us like Christ, it is false, and if religion does not portray us as Jesus, it is also false, and all the connections in the world are invalidated when they invalidate the image of Jesus and are useful when they make Jesus everything in us. Jesus is the true “man,” and we oscillate, because of the connections we have, between truth and falsehood!
This is the image of the true society, when “Christ is in everyone,” that is, when Christ is everything, not in some people but in everyone, when the whole society becomes the Lord’s anointed ones!
This is Christian eschatology, and this is the true image and dignity of the Christian human being, when every human being is a Christ and there is nothing foreign to Christianity in him, and when Christ is imagined in everyone and not in some.
Neither Greek science nor Jewish religiosity, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither lineage nor barbarism, neither Scythian weakness nor strength, neither male nor female, but the true dignity of man is that Christ be all that is in him and that Christ be in all (in everyone). Amen.
About the message of the Aleppo parish
Quoted from the old website of the Archdiocese
