From Antioch Christianity spread to all parts of the known world at that time, without stopping at any ethnicity, religion or nationality. The disciples were influenced by the civilization and culture of the time, which was known as Byzantium. But Antioch provided the sublime teaching regarding the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ without separation, and from it to all parts of the world. This is in addition to the truth that shone forth that the cross alone is the greatest teacher.

In his defense of the icon, St. John of Damascus stressed “that things were revealed in Christ.” St. Theodore the Studite “stressed the revelation of man.” The teachers of the Church gave us the liturgy that transformed the thoughts of the Fathers into prayers, or rather, declared their glorified spirit in the following things:

• The relationship between Orthodoxy and modernity 
• The goal of the gospel
• Pastoral life that touches the life of the believer today and qualifies him to participate in the secret life of the Church

Minority threat

The Orthodox fear modernity. They feel it has been imposed on them from outside. They consider it a cruel assault from the West, whose spiritual life has been invaded by heresies. They see with some despair that their culture, inspired by their faith and a lived art, is collapsing before the onslaught of technology that knows no boundaries, of personal autonomy that destroys traditional cohesion, and of a philosophy of crude pleasure that hopes to make man forget his eternal destiny.

Modernity has surrendered to nihilism, to the vacuum that has been filled by images of atheism, the free market, love, sex and drugs. It has become clear that in our effort to unify the wealth of the earth, modernity has not been able to share the wealth of different civilizations and cultures and accept those different cultures, as is evident from the confrontation between the North and the South, and specifically between the West and Islam. We know that in the North the soul dies for lack of meaning, and in the South bodies die for lack of water and food, for lack of respect, while the forests are poisoned and greed deepens in the souls.

It would be a mistake to consider modernity as just the above. Modernity is complex and heterogeneous. We see its traces in the original ancient Greek and biblical sources.

The amazing cosmic discoveries were inspired by Hellenistic and philosophical thinking and the biblical teaching about creation by a wise Creator who took upon himself the care of man.

As for respect for others, freedom of thought, and the foundations of pluralistic democracy, we find their foundations in the Gospel revelation, as we also find the clear separation declared by Jesus Christ between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar.

Modernity Challenge

Modernity is not foreign to us Christians, and we are working to reorient it from within. I emphasize the word “orientation” because modernity has lost its orientation.

In the 15th century, many Byzantine humanist philosophers fled to Italy and France and gave an important impetus to the Renaissance there. But the theology and spirituality of the “energy of God” reflected in the resurrection of the Son of God from the grave to reveal the universe, remained in the monasteries of the East, where it stopped creating culture, under the pressure of the Ottomans, as is clear from the writings of Kabasila, Theophan and others. Thus, Christianity neglected modern science and technology, and they became the property of the Western world, while Eastern Christianity devoted its efforts to spirituality only.

As for the vision of the Fathers of the Creator as a partner in His humanity with us, completing His unity, in the image of the Trinity, that vision disappeared after the “Babylonian captivity” of Orthodox theology, to use the expression of Father George Florovsky. Thus, the vitality and freedom of the individual in the West became so impoverished that love itself became individualistic.
To “redirect” modernity, we Orthodox must bear courageous witness to the “divine energy” and to the person of Jesus Christ who receives communion. Then we will be able to give a theological and spiritual meaning to the World Council of Churches’ project of peace, justice, and the preservation of creation. But we will not be able to carry the torch of this witness before we are freed and convinced of our tradition, which is not a nostalgic restoration of the past, but a faithful continuity of creation.

Vladimir Lossky wrote: “True Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ and the Holy Spirit is the one Spirit of the Church.” Modern civilization, at its best, is a collection of questions, theories and dialogue. These ideas correspond to our Tradition and, if used properly, can lead to the renewal of the unguided conscience. Humanity today is at a stage where nothing happens by itself, even faith requires some knowledge. “Freedom and conscience are the characteristics of every human being,” says Kabasile.

Back to church

In our present day, man lives in a historical chaos where ethics and principles have weakened to the point where man has begun to look to the spiritual, even though he rejects the church as an organized institution, faithfully maintaining services and rituals and imposing itself as a link between God and His creation. Nietzsche said: “Don’t you know that churches are God’s graves?”

If the Western man is open to the world, the Eastern man tends to marginalize himself in his relationship with the world, burying himself in a decorated tomb. Some of us know that we are in the stage of the Holy Week of history, and the resurrection can emerge from the grave at any hour. How? Here I stop to reflect and ask myself. How can we give man the feeling and taste of the Church, and how can we give the Church the feeling and taste of today’s man?

The Church is the Body of Christ, the House of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Man must participate in its mysteries and at the same time gain (Numeen and Lumen, i.e. mystery and knowledge). The Orthodox Church emphasizes the (Numeen) of the liturgy, because the Church is “heaven on earth,” a forest of symbols from which all the senses of man receive peace and enlightenment. But can we develop anything in our present day without the participation of the Numen and Lumen?

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 14:19: “But I would rather speak five words in the assembly with my understanding, that I might instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.” If we turn the spiritual into an emotion, into a kind of art, then faith will not be explained by knowledge, knowledge will not remain the fruits of faith, and the church will find itself marginalized in all contemporary scientific, cultural, and technological relations.

These observations require a lot of pastoral attention. The Byzantine liturgy is a priceless masterpiece. Its texts are full of theological and spiritual meanings, but there are other services that we should reconsider for several reasons, the most important of which are language, time, circumstances, and environment, etc. Why did creativity in divine services stop, although they were numerous until the end of the first millennium? Why do we repeat many things mechanically and traditionally in services without stopping and reconsider them? Doesn’t every age have its rights or duties to add a foundation to the building? Shouldn’t our age, which is going through tragic stages, reconsider and cut off the dry branches, and should we enrich ourselves with new books that are in keeping with the philosophy of our age before time and our children overtake us in various heresies?

Christianity and other cultures and religions

We can say without batting an eyelid that the world has become poor. Many people can discuss the subject for days. We can also look at it from a distance or from the moon. To the visitor and tourist, all the big cities seem similar to each other. The people of Moscow and New York wear the same clothes. A person needs the same effort, and to climb the same steps to reach the top of the ladder. He also needs many years, during which he goes through pain and joy, until he reaches a culture and learns how to love and die in a certain way. Our age is dominated by two contradictory currents, each of which leads to a dead end. The first current is the movement of globalization, and the second is the desire to discover personality and meaning.

The unity of the world is achieved today through technology and an emphasis on individualism. Both are fundamentally biblical, but both, in their secular course, lead to nihilism.

In the stories of the peoples the world appears obedient to the divine or to the devil. But a secret nature has entered into man and filled him. Divine revelation deals with the truth of the universe. Paradise was given to man, and God appointed him to call “every living creature by name.” The world became a mirror of divine wisdom, despite its initial subjection to divisions and death. It is this language between humanity and God that restores to man his divine humanity through Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Ecumenical Councils defined God as unity and trinity and Christ as God and man at the same time.

Thus the councils created an intellectual form for creation, which in our time has become the driving force in the search for knowledge. The horizon of this search is forever open. The liberation of the world from magic and terror is a condition for its manifestation. On this basis the East founded a theology based on divine grace and radiating from the Resurrection of Christ, capable of illuminating everything with the divine sacrifice, or rather with a culture that has been transformed entirely into liturgy.

The West knows that its culture includes some Byzantine humanism, but its doors are still closed to the vision of divine perfection. St. Francis of Assisi wrote in “Canticle of Creature” and some followed in the footsteps of the East. But they were marginalized in the face of a rigid theology. There is no doubt that the movement of creation continues and logic bears within it the seal of the divine image and interacts with death. Therefore, intellectual, scientific and material leaderships emerged and severed all ties with the ecumenical mystery as they severed all ties with human spirituality.

Many scientists call for opening the doors of knowledge. However, the development and growth of science and technology are largely influenced by the principles of profit and power. This situation threatens nature and pushes man to ruin his future.

The second force of globalization is individualism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, that is, since the Chinese daughter began to choose to kill herself rather than be forced by her parents to marry a stranger, the emphasis on individual freedom began to take precedence over the traditional societal system in which personal individuality does not exist.

Here too we find the scriptural foundations of a spiritual Creator who builds a relationship of reciprocity with man as an individual. We also see individualism in Greek culture but it is guided by fatalism. Aristotle and Antigone died, but Christ, who died with all the dead of history, rose and raised the dead with him.

The idea of individualism has greatly influenced the cultures that emerged after the emergence of Christianity, and in most cases, they did not live in peace with each other, because the goal of different cultures is to spread the philosophy of individualism, establish order, remove secrecy from politics, respect and accept others, emphasizing the right of the individual, especially the right of individual freedom. There are many groups with different theories that are different from each other.

The weakening of Christian piety and ethics today began with the rejection of the idea of an “avenging God.”

The idea of “the death of God” ultimately leads to the death of man, who becomes an isolated person, ready to belong to any group. As for the idea of democracy, it has turned into an instinct of wealth in rich countries, while the West invests the world’s resources and works to eliminate traditional cultures.

Church of Antioch

Educated Westerners ask: By what right do you come to us bearing your religious and cultural research? Our answer has always been: We speak from the mystery of Christ manifested in the Church of which we are members, the Church of Antioch. The Church of Antioch is Christian like Christ, but it is neither Eastern nor Western.

The Antiochian Church dates back to the beginning of history, and is considered the oldest Christian church, the Apostolic Church of Antioch, founded by the apostles Peter and Paul, and there the divisions began to appear between Christianity and Judaism. The Apostolic Council in 48-50 found a solution to this, and after it the First Ecumenical Council, and the believers were called Christians first in Antioch.

Since the early years of Christianity, the Patriarchate of Antioch has become a center of rapprochement and convergence. During the Roman and Byzantine eras, Antioch gave large collections of the teachings of the Fathers to Byzantium and the West. There is Romanus the Melodist, born in Homs, John of Damascus, and Cosmas, who wrote in Greek, the language of the age. In addition to liturgical and service writings, Antioch occupied a distinguished position in scientific writings. In the 7th and 8th centuries, Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus compiled a summary of the teachings of the Fathers, which became the basis of Orthodox thought in the Middle Ages. In it, the two writers emphasized the deification of man by divine grace. Here, in the teaching of deification and freedom, East and West meet and complement each other.

Metropolitan Paul Saliba
Quoted from the Bulletin of the Diocese of Australia and New Zealand
6/20/2006, 6/27/2006 and 7/4/2006