Orthodoxy by Paul Evdokimov

Orthodoxy by Paul Evdokimov is a fantastic synthesis of the Orthodox tradition. What Lossky's Mystical Theology is to doctrine this book is to life or how that doctrine is applied. Rather than review the book I am going to leave some choice quotes from its pages. 

The ultimate reason for the Incarnation is not to be found in humanity, but in God, it is rooted in his pre-eternal unutterable desire to become human and make his humanity into a Theophany, his dwelling place.  -pg. 69

'God created the world so that in it he might become human and that humans by grace might in it become god, and share the conditions of divine existence...God's purpose in uniting himself with the human being was to deify it,' which is an entirely different mater from forgiveness and salvation only. -pg. 69

If the Incarnation was brought about by the Fall, it was Satan, the evil one, who would condition it. -pg. 70

Orthodox anthropology is therefore not moral but ontological, it is the ontology of deification. pg. 101

The dialectic of the elect, and the salvation of these elect alone, has never found a place in the thought of the  Fathers: Christ died for all, so salvation is possible universally. The problem of predestination is deliberately ignored, as a problem is it is insoluble and remains apophatic.  -pg. 109 

Perpetual prayer becomes a constant state; the human being feels light, detached from earthly weight, stripped of its ego. The world in which the ascetic dwells is the world of God, astonishingly alive, for it is the world of those who have been crucified and raised to life. By the light of the flame burnin in the depth of a 'poor' person's heart, we can wee what the Gospel calls 'richness in God.' From 'having' and all it entails, the person proceeds to being. The person becomes prayer incarnate. -pg. 114

In its mystical nature Orthodoxy is highly resistant to all imagination, to all figurative representation, whether visual or auditory, but at the same time it has invented devotion to icons, surrounding itself with images using them to construct the visible Church. The icon 'sanctifies the eyes of the beholders, and lifts their minds to the mystical knowledge of God.' -pg. 114

The icon is a representation which paradoxically denies all representation, banishing all images by means of the beauty seen in it. It leads us from the invisible-in-the-visible towards the purely invisible. -pg. 117-118

The Holy Spirit brings the human spirit back to its ontological center, showing it to be the image of God, open on one hand to divine transcendence, and on the other to the subjective life of all fellow members of the divine community.  -pg. 121

The Kingdom of God of the Gospels is the 'giving of the Holy Spirit.' -pg. 121

The goal of mystical love, 'that two should be one,' is above all an authoritative statement of Christological doctrine. After the incarnation, every analogy of faith is Christology. The formation of Christ in a person, his Christification, is neither unachievable  imitation nor the application to a human being of the merits of the Incarnation, but the extension into the person of the Incarnation itself, operated and perpetuated by the eucharistic mystery. St. Simeon the New Theologian shows the summit of the mystical life to be the personal meeting with Christ who speaks in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. -pg. 122 

The Trinitarian mystery cannot be explained by reason, but must be 'honored in silence,' the silence of apophaticism.  -pg. 146

In answer to the question Cur Deus Homo? St. Irenaus set out his famous doctrine of recapitulation, the summing up of the whole world-order in Christ, the second Adam. St. Athanasius took up the doctrine and made ti the very heart of Patristic thought: Christ, sure God and true Man - consubstantial with the Father in his divinity, consubstantial with human beings in his humanity - became what we are so that we might become what he is. 

The emphasis was not on reconciliation, the remission of sins, or the propitiation of divine justice, but on the restoration of the image, the rebirth of the new creature in Christ. 'Through Him the integrity of our nature is reconstituted' (St. Gregory of Nazianzus). Christ resumes what the Fall interrupted - deifying communion - and brilliantly illuminates true human nature.  -pg. 148

The Word of God is never addressed to isolated individuals, but to the chosen people leading a common life, the Judaeo-Christian society is opened to the Gentiles and forms a new race, tertium genus, spiritually transcending any biological notions of 'race.' From the beginning Christianity was the Eucharist, the assembling for worship, the community, the Body, the Church. Becoming a Christian meant joining oneself there and then to the fellowship of the brethren. Personal conviction was less important than the need to be incorporated in the Apostolic family, in communion with the Twelve (Acts 2:42) - Apostolic koinonia was established as a 'Note of the Church' at Jerusalem. -pg. 151

Nevertheless, while from the beginning Augustinian Trinitarian theology gained ground in the West, with the greatest confidence in human intelligence, Greek thought, by contrast, was plunged into he silence of apophysis in the presence of the Mystery. -pg. 179

St. John Chrysostom said that it is because of our weakness that we have the written Gospels, the coming of Christ should have been enough to capture the attention of all people and change them for ever.  -pg. 180

So doctrines are not 'human words', the law of identity and contradiction is not merely relaxed, it does not even apply. Thus, God is One and Threefold at the same time, and he is 'neither triad nor monad as we know them in numbers.' -pg. 181

Orthodoxy does not posses any 'symbolic books' or texts accorded a quasi-credal authority. The Professio Fidei Tridentainae, the '39 Articles" of the Anglicans, the Forumla Concordiae of the Lutherans, the Confession of the Reformed Churches, are the fruit of the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the West. They witness to the frequent confusion between doctrine and its purely theological, academic interpretation, and are evidence of the dangerous tendency to impose a uniform theological system (Augustinianism, nominalism, Thomas, integrationism, fundamentalism). Orthodoxy guards and encourages the greatest freedom of theological opinions within the framework of the one Tradition. -pg. 184

As we look back over the Councils, we see that together they make up a doctrinal icon of revelation. -pg. 187

The logical human mind always prefers Jewish monotheism, the theism of Aristotle, even Stoic pantheism or Plotinian immanentism. The Trinitarian doctrine, that God is one and threefold at the same time, crucifies reason, reason; it pushes its truth in like a splinter, and will always be the perfect example of the 'stumbling-block' to the Greeks and 'foolishness' to the jews; truly, 'Christ crucified is the judgement of judgements.' -pg. 187

Western  theology, from the eastern point of view, is not sufficiently reticent before the mystery of the divine ineffablity and, lacking the doctrine of theosis, can give no clear account of the nature of communion. COmmunion is neither substantial not hypostatic , nor in created grace (three impossible cases); to be effective it can only be energizing (Palamisim). God communicates himself and deifies by means of the deifying energies; humanity 'participates in the divine nature' without being mixed with the essence of God.  - pg. 191

So the Lord 'opened the Scriptures' and revealed that the Bible is the verbal icon of Christ. -pg. 195

But the heavenly body is in no way beneath, with, or in the bread (consubstantiation), nor does it take the place of the bread (transubstantiantion), but it is the bread. ‘This verily is my flesh.’ According to St. Irenaeus, the eucharsitc bread doe snot conceal or replace another reality, but, through the epiclesis, unites heavenly and earthly food in one identitiy, and that is the miracle. When the priest plunges the Lamb in its blood, it is the living body and not a sign of illusion of accidents. It is not a reincarnation of Christ in the species but the total metabloe of both substance and accidents into heavenly flesh. It is not the accidents of the bread that are maintaines, but the state of our eyes, which are incapable of contemplating the heavenly flesh while keeping the illusion of the appearances. The doctrine is at fault in being concerned with the object and not the subject, with the bread and not the person. There is no need to analyse the miriacle quasi-cehimically according to our senses; we should rather accuse our sense of not percieving the real miracle, the heavenly reality. -pg. 252 

...the sacraments of the Church now occupy a place equivalent to that of the miracles in the time of the Incarnation... -pg. 269

Every sacrament affects the Body of all believers. -pg. 270

As the extension of Pentecost, continuing the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit, the Church is constantly revealing itself as identical with Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, so that the Church is itself a sacrament of the Truth and the Life.  -pg. 271

As a consequence of the Fall, the action of the Spirit became external to nature (so that in the Old Testament times, the Spirit, like a tangent that does not penetrate the circle, spoke through the prophets, but was not within them.) But at the anointing in the Jordan he came down upon Christ's humanity and filled it, and on the day of Pentecost he became active within human nature.  -pg. 274

In eastern theology God is never the first cause, but the Creator. -pg. 275

Because humanity is made in God’s image, the human mind is inherently drawn towards him, but the content of its thinking about God is no longer the product of its own thought. In all thinking about God, it is God himself who is thinking within the human mind and thereby bringing about the religious experience of his immediate presence. The human being cannot yet say anything about God, but it can say God, it already knows the nearness of God which entirely surrounds it.  -pg. 318

‘Seek the Kingdom of God;’ culture is essentially that search in history for what cannot be found in history, for what overflows it and leads it beyond its limits. In this way, culture becomes the sign and expression of the Kingdom through the medium of this world. -pg. 320

While every human being in the image of God is his living icon, culture is the  icon of the Kingdom of Heaven. At the moment of the great passing-over, the Holy Spirit will gently touch that icon, and something of it will last forever. -pg. 320

In eastern thought, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Parousia are not simply irruptions of the heavenly, but interior events which mark the passing (Pasch) of nature into a different state, and which are mysteriously present and working in history. The Fathers are interested not only in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, but in the Christ who by his coming effects and ontological change in the earthly existence. The historical, phenomenological narrative conceals the noumenal reality. The Parousia has already begun; it is present, directing the course of history, and only by it can history be truly interpreted. -pg. 322

Non-Orthodox are ,by definition and by choice, not in the Orthodox Church, but the Church is greater than human divisions, wherever there is faith and the desire for salvation the Church is present and at work. We know where the Church is , but we should not presume to say where the Church is not.  -pg. 350

This book is a wonderful synthesis of the Orthodox tradition. It is not exactly a beginners introduction text but could serve as one to someone who is theologically attuned to the traditions of the Church both East and West. "Orthodoxy" is like a combination of Lossky's "Mystical Theology" and Kallistos Ware's "The Orthodox Way" in that Evdokimov deftly weaves together history and theology to produce a text that is essential to anyone inquiring about the Orthodox Church or for any Orthodox who wants to better understand their tradition.

David Patrick Harry Completely Misrepresents Eastern Orthodoxy and Christianity

I have been listening to David Patrick Harry, aka Church of the Eternal Logos, for a few years now and I am getting sick and tired of this guy. His backstory is that he used to be a psychonaut tripping balls and peering into the fabric of the universe. It's the same old psychedelic nonsense one can get from Ken Kesey or Timothy Leary or any other acid head. However in David's case he followed the White Rabbit into Eastern Orthodoxy.

Why did he became Eastern Orthodox? Did Jesus convict him of his sins? Did he feel the need to repent and put his faith in the blood of Christ which was shed for our sins? No. To put it bluntly he became Eastern Orthodox not because of his existential need for Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins, he became Eastern Orthodox because Eastern Orthodoxy is basically one long sober acid trip.

You can listen to him rant here:

1:05:32 Okay, the next one that I want the attribute of psychedelic worldview that I think is actually really useful and potentially another bridge into orthodoxy is the sacred sacred structures. Things like pi, phi, fibonacci, sacred geometry, cymatics, fractals. I loved this stuff when I was interested into psychedelics and I, again I had a big psychedelic channel, made a lot of graphics for that stuff and this was a huge turn on for me when I found Orthodoxy was that I didn't have to give up any of this stuff. I didn't have to give up all the sacred geometry. I didn't have to give up, uh, sacred space, sacred architecture, sacred symbols. I didn't have to give up archetypes. Because it's all rooted in the Logos. You see, Platonic solids themselves, Platonic solids for Plato, again, was rooted in the in the ideal. It was part of, it was in the Logos. The psychedelics though have no real metaphysical frame why, how, where do the fractals come from? Where is the sacred geometry? How do those exist and why are they predominant and existing in reality? It's, it's difficult for them to answer that and you're going to get different answers based on different people coming from different traditions. And so I think it's a real major appeal for us Orthodox bridging into the New Age that hey you don't have to give up your the idea that fractals are somehow approaching divinity. Right? That fractals are are insinuating that there is sort of layers of repeatability of pattern in reality. Orthodoxy teaches that. 

That's why Christ taught in parables, right? Because at the metaphoric level through the story he's actually telling you a truth that resonates on all levels of reality. At the abstract, at the theological, at the ethical, at the metaphorical, at the archetypal all these levels of reality he's teaching you through the parables. That's what the Logos, that's what the Word of God did to for people. And so you don't have to give up. In fact what you do is you get to embrace it even more. You get to embrace it even more because now you have a philosophical, a theological foundation for why fractals and sacred structures and Platonic solids and pi, phi well you have an understanding for why they exist and why they're useful and why we actually should build things in those patterns.

What a solid gold load of crap. Jesus taught in parables because he was telling us truths that resonate on all levels of reality? No! He taught in obscure parables publicly while in private he explained their meaning to his disciples because he was hiding his teaching from the masses. 

Matthew 4:10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

It's interesting how David says psychonauts converting to Orthodoxy don't have to give up their woo-woo because in Orthodoxy you can ground it in the Logos who is Jesus Christ. So where in the scriptures does Jesus or Paul or Moses talk about Platonic solids or fractals? They don't!  They do talk a lot about sin and turning from sin by trusting in Jesus Christ. But you won't hear a word about that from David Patrick Harry or the rest of the Orthobros.

Our Life in Christ is not a sober acid or shroom trip. Not even according to Eastern Orthodoxy. Our Life in Christ is a lifelong journey of purifying our hearts and minds in a continual act of metanoia so that we might be united to Him. There is no room for fractals or Platonic Solids or any of that woo-woo. Not even St. Justin would agree with David Patrick Harry and the Church of the Eternal Logos.