Book Review: The Winter Pascha
Reviewed by Bishop [now Archbishop] Chrysostomos of Etna
The Winter Pascha: Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season. By [Father]
Thomas Hopko. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984.
While re-reading Father Hopko's little volume of spiritual
texts on the Christmas (Nativity) and Epiphany (Theophany)
season—a text published almost a decade ago—, I was
simultaneously reading excerpts from a book by another instructor
at St. Vladimir's Seminary, Professor John Erickson. In this
latter book, the good professor touches on matters canonical in a
way that left me disturbed. He makes some very good and accurate
observations. On the whole, however, his thinking is too
analytical and too removed from a spiritual life in which the
Canons are not laws and rules to be manipulated and restated, but
spiritual principles that are applicable to an everyday encounter
with the Church—the kind of encounter which Sunday and Feast
Day Orthodox do not fully grasp.
It suddenly struck me that this same detachment from Orthodoxy
as a way of life taints Father Hopko's small book on the
Nativity-Theophany period. There are some inspirational insights
in the book. There are even some very profound theological
observations (see for example his comments on "Adam's
sin," p. 175). But there is often a snide tone with regard
to Orthodox tradition, as though Father Hopko were writing about
the spiritual life of the Orthodox Church from a distance,
gleaning his observations from outside the ethos of the Church.
For example, those of us who have learned of Orthodoxy from
within the Church know of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the
subject of one of Father Hopko's readings, from what we have
heard in Church services and from the life of the Saint, as well
as from what we have read in the Fathers. The image that we have
formed of this great Saint comes to us in the wholeness of our
spiritual experience, a wholeness which bears the mark of truth
and authenticity.
Father Hopko, on the other hand, understands St. Nicholas only
in a fragmented way, believing one thing from here and rejecting
another from there. Thus he calls St. Nicholas' display of
outrage at the heresy of Arius an "alleged incident."
Unless the Fathers of the Church are naive liars, this incident
did indeed occur, and it is part of our very experience of the
witness of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Father Hopko also
observes that "...the extraordinary thing about the image of
St. Nicholas in the Church is that he is not known for anything
extraordinary." Those of us who celebrate the memory of this
great Saint with long vigils are more accustomed to hearing words
such as these about him: "Let us now praise the Hierarch in
song, the shepherd and teacher of the inhabitants of Myra ...;
for behold, he hath appeared entirely pure, uncorrupt in
spirit..., as a Hierarch purified in soul and body."
Extraordinary traits, indeed! To Father Hopko's claim that St.
Nicholas "was not an ascetic and did no outstanding feats of
fasting and vigils," we must retort with incidents from the
Saint's life. As a child, he did not suck at his mother's breast
on Wednesday and Friday. On becoming a Priest, we read, St.
Nicholas "added ascetic labors to ascetic labors, keeping
vigil and remaining in unceasing prayer and fasting." So
great was his asceticism, in fact, that he is praised for leading
a life equal to that of the Angels.
Now, if we reap what we know about this Saint from the impious
scholarship of those who believe that the St. Nicholas of whom we
hear in the Church is actually another Nicholas, not the Bishop
of Myra, or that the Church has transformed a simple man into a
wonderworker, then none of what I have said has meaning. Nor does
the teaching authority of the Church have any significance. Nor
should we learn from within our Faith, but rather from the
hermeneutics of suspicion which many follow today in explicating,
but unfortunately defiling, the traditions of the Church. If we
fail to heed the witness of the wholeness of truth that reaches
us through Scripture, Holy Tradition, the Patristic witness, and
Divine Services, then we might just as well follow the Latins and
relegate St. Nicholas to the stature of a "non-saint."
Such is the ultimate end of those who touch on things spiritual
with the faulty tools of would-be academic sleuths.
In another place in this little book, Father Hopko shows an
astounding lack of familiarity with Patristic texts. Admitting
that the Orthodox Church insists that Christ was conceived
supernaturally and that the Theotokos is forever virgin,
he claims, on the other hand, that "there is no teaching of
any other sort of miracle in regard to His birth; certainly no
idea that He came forth from His mother without opening Her
womb." As early as Justin Martyr, the Fathers have always
taught that, in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (e.g.,
Ezekiel 44:2: "This gate shall be shut, it shall not be
opened, and no one shall pass through it; for the Lord God of
Israel shall enter by it, and it shall be shut" [Septuaginta]),
Christ passed through the Virgin Mother's womb without violating
it. It is this "virgin birth," along with the seedless
or virgin conception, which we Orthodox uphold as a great
miracle. Let us simply cite the words of St. John Damascus on
this matter. In his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, he
assures us that Christ "passed through" the Virgin
Mary, "keeping her womb closed," coming through this
"Gate" without injuring "her seal."
Not only is Father Hopko's claim against the inviolate nature
of the Theotokos without Patristic substantiation, but it
can be supported only by discarding the witness of the services
appointed to the Nativity and Theophany period about which he is
writing. Everywhere our Church's hymns speak of the Mother of God
bearing a Son in purity, the Redeemer having passed through her
closed womb without violating it. Let us cite three very clear
instances of this: one a stichiron from the Vespers of the
Forefeast of the Nativity (December 24) according to Slavic
usage, in which the Theotokos herself speaks; another, the
oikos appointed after the sixth ode for the Matin's Canon
of the Feast of the Synaxis of the Theotokos (December
26), composed by St. Romanos the Melodist; and a third, a verse
from the Lity of the Feast of the Nativity, in which the Virgin
Mary again speaks:
Thou hast been born without destroying my virginity, but
Thou hast kept my womb as it was before childbirth....
For the All-Perfect God is born a babe of her, and by His
birth He sets the seal upon her virginity.
Thou art my God, for seeing the seal of my virginity
unbroken, I proclaim Thee to be the immutable Word....
There is one reference used by those who support Father
Hopko's un-Orthodox notion of the Virgin birth, a verse by the
Monk John appointed for the Lity for February 2 in the Menaion
(the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord): "Nyn ho
katharos theos, hos paidion hagion, metran dianoixan agnen,
heauto hos theos syncomezetai." Bishop Kallistos, in The
Festal Menaion (London, 1969), translates this verse as
follows: "Now the God of purity as a holy child has opened a
pure womb, and as God He is brought as an offering to
Himself." However, the verb "dianoigo" is
translated too literally here. This verb also has the meaning of
"moving" or "passing" through and does not
carry with it the literal implications of the verb "anoigo,"
"to open." Thus one might better render the verse
in this way: "Now the pure God, as a holy child, has made a
way through a chaste womb, and as God is brought as an offering
to Himself." When correctly translated, this verse, the
single instance of supposed support for a notion foreign to the
Church's conscience, offers no challenge to the universal
teaching of the Orthodox Church about the miraculous way that
Christ came forth from the womb of the Virgin.*
Father Hopko's book, like others from modernist Orthodox
writers, contains some very good material. However, as I have
indicated, the spirit of such writings reflects a certain
separation from Orthodox spirituality as it is derived from
orthopraxis, or an Orthodox way of life. The danger of embracing
a Faith on the weekends and Feast Days and with a spirit of
intellectual "objectivity"—an artificial
Faith—is not only that such folly cuts one off from the
sources of genuine spirituality; it eventually leads one into
error. For if in science and scholarship a spirit of doubt leads
to discovery, in spiritual things it leads to snide arrogance,
the denigration of revelation, and a departure from that
wholeness of the spiritual experience in which truth resides.
Moreover, while writers like Father Hopko are undoubtedly
simply repeating the erroneous views of their mentors, there is a
further danger in mere intellectual approaches to Orthodoxy. One
can easily become a victim of his own psychology. Living a
superficial religious life separated from the daily miracles of
true spiritual life and lacking any direct experience with the
transformed life, one can come to resent and to revile sanctity.
Seeing his own life untransformed, an unfulfilled spiritual
aspirant will often attempt to make the miraculous something more
human. The ascetic feats by which one transforms himself he will
try to set aside, making the supernatural aspects of sanctity a
matter of naive superstition. The greater the distance between
his own mundane life and that of the Saints, the greater becomes
his need to lower the spiritual to the level of imagery and
metaphor.
There are also Orthodox ecumenists who are deeply embarrassed
by our Church's pious veneration of the Saints and its literal
belief in miracles. Rubbing elbows with Roman Catholics who
consider St. Nicholas the product of legend and with Protestants
who question the seedless conception, let alone the miraculous
physical birth, of Christ, these Orthodox set forth to show that
their Church too is "enlightened." Bereft of any real
spiritual experience and substituting Church politics for that
void, not a few Orthodox ecumenists are willing to take Father
Hopko's errors to their logical conclusion, dismissing not only
the singularity of Christian truth, but also the primacy of
Orthodoxy.
Again, then, one must exercise every caution in reading and
assessing materials which are at odds with the Church's
traditional teachings. Even the most innocent errors amidst
perhaps inspiring writings can serve ends which are dangerous to
the Faith, the Faithful, and the soul.
*See Professor Ioannes Kalogyrou’s Maria he
Aeiparthenos kata ten Orthodoxon Pisten (Thessaloniki, 1957).
From Orthodox Tradition, Vol. IX, No. 2&3.
+ + +
I read your response a
long time ago to Thomas Hopko, who says that the Orthodox church
does not teach that the Virgin Mary was physically untouched by
the birth of Christ. You say that all of the liturgical texts
support you. But how about these three items: Paschal Matins,
"He opened the Virgin’s womb" and Luke 2:23,
"Every male that openeth the womb," Exodus 13:2,
"opening every womb," the Matins reference obviously
being to Christ and the two other scriptures, I am told, being
references to Christ according to the church fathers. (S.P., MA)
In a lengthy review of
Father Thomas Hopko’s Winter Pascha: Readings for the
Christmas-Epiphany Season (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1984), Archbishop Chrysostomos has clearly demonstrated
that Father Thomas does not reflect the doctrines of the Orthodox
Church as they are expressed in the Patristic witness and in the
Church’s liturgical traditions (see Orthodox Tradition, Vol. IX, Nos. 2&3 [1992], pp. 7,
22-23). With regard to the passages which you cite, in each
instance the Greek verb "dianoigo" is translated "open." It is
taken to mean the same as the Greek verb "anoigo," "to open," when it fact it
can also be used to express something more akin to
"moving" or "passing through" something; that
is, opening a path in an abstract way.
As for your reference from
Paschal Orthros, taken from a Troparion of the Fourth Ode, this passage might be
better translated: "Christ revealed Himself to be of the
male sex when He passed through ["dianoixan"]
the Virgin’s womb...." That such a translation is
proper, and that the Virgin’s womb was not physically opened
by the birth of Christ, we see a little farther on, in the Troparion of the Sixth Ode, where Christ is
praised as having not "broken the seal ["tas kleis"] of the Virgin
by...[His]...birth...."
The Scriptural passages to
which you refer are, indeed, understood by the Fathers to be
references to Christ, the New Testamental passage ("Every
male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the
Lord") simply being a reference to the words of the Old
Testament prophecy regarding Christ ("And the Lord spoke to
Moses, saying, Sanctify to me every first-born, first produced,
opening every womb among the children of Israel both of man and
beast: it is mine" [Septuaginta]). But here, too, the Church does not
understand these passages to refer to a literal
"opening" of the Virgin’s womb at Christ’s
birth. St. Amphilochios of Iconium clearly states that, "the
words every male
opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, refer to the Lord alone." Yet he
admonishes us: "Listen intelligently: in the Virgin Birth,
the virginal gates were in no way opened." Likewise, St.
Hesychios of Jerusalem, referring to this same passage, tells us:
"This what the Law says. Christ, however..., being the
Lawgiver, was above the Law, yet He fulfilled His own Law. Nor
did He open the womb, but left the Gate of the Virgin closed. He
did not spoil the seal of nature....He preserved Her virginity
intact."
Both by translating and
understanding the verb "dianoigo" with greater care, and in studying
liturgical and Patristic references to the birth of Christ in
their whole, and not just selectively, we cannot but conclude
that the Orthodox Church, contrary to what Father Thomas Hopko
argues, has always believed that Christ was born into the world
in a supernatural way, leaving the Theotokos wholly physically unviolated. Arguments to the
contrary, as we have pointed out, are based on poor scholarship,
poor translations, and an inadequate knowledge of the pertinent
liturgical and Patristic sources.
A follow-up excerpt from "Liturgical Notes" in Orthodox
Tradition, Vol. XIV, No. 4, pp. 55-56:
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