R: [SEELANGS] Coredemptrix

[Luciano Di Cocco]

I had decided to continue this discussion (for me very interesting) only
off-line. But I find that a couple of points are worth a specification. If
the moderator decides to end the thread for me it's OK. And I suggest
uninterested SEELANGers to use the "Delete" on my mail at this point.
Anyway...

Dear Olga,
I really appreciate your sincere point of view, but I disagree on your
generalizations. I am an atheist. If I am an apostate is open to question. I
used to be a practicing Catholic from 8 to 12. Due to (intellectual)
disagreements with my parson, I went on a pause. With years I've become an
atheist.

While I agree that "God became a Jew" is very different from "A Jew became
God", as an atheist I disagree on your conclusions. I cannot speak for Dan
and at times strongly disagree with him. And I disagree with his conclusion
that " God became a Jew " is deification. It's a Divine Incarnation as you
say. But "A Jew became God " is a different matter. I wouldn't have used it
in this context, but it's a common comment in the context of the historical
Jesus. It refers to the true beginning of Christianity, when the Religion of
Jesus became the Religion about Jesus. The problem is not this passage. Even
a believer agree. The disagreement can be on the relationship between the
two. For a believer the two coincide. For a non believer there can be (but
not necessarily) big differences.

I really appreciate your assertion about Orthodox Christians being less
subject to apostasy than Catholic, but I stay unconvinced. Are there
statistics? Anyway, and this can have a (very stretched) relationship with
the theme of the list, there are significant social differences. In Europe,
for historical reasons, the relationship between ethnicity and religious
adherence is very different from nation to nation. If we should take the
most striking case, in my impression is Nederlands. Previously a maily
protestant nation, now the majority is catholic due to "apostasy" of many
protestants.

My ancestors by mother were Orthodox immigrated in Italy a couple of
centuries ago from Greece. Del Greco, meaning that some ancestor of mine was
known as "the son of the Greek". Mainly they loaded and unloaded ships by
hand. In the second half of '800 they became socialist and not atheists but
generically Christians, strongly anti clerical. This is a comparative point
with Russia. In Italy there was a strong anti clerical socialist Christian
movement. My favorite is Davide Lazzaretti, who preached not far from my
town. For those who can read Italian here there is a basic introduction:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davide_Lazzaretti
I don't know if a comparative analysis of Lazzaretti, Tolstoy and others
have been made.

On the point of Mary. Catholic Church come very close to defining her a
deity. She is defined (Lumen gentium, one of the key documents of Vatican
II) as superior to all _other_ creatures (but a creature anyway), even to
angels. She, like only Jesus, is dispensed from sin. Like Enoch and Elijah
she is dispensed from death. This make her unique among creatures but not a
deity in the post-Nicea conception. By the way, how could an Orthodox react
to these specific affirmation about Mary?
Some commentators tell that in the draft of Lumen gentium Mary was
explicitly defined as "coredemprix", but to avoid problems with Orthodoxy
the almost equivalent but less explicit definition of cooperato in Redempton
was preferred.

Thanks Olga for your sincerity.

Regards to all.

Luciano Di Cocco 


> Dear Dan,
> God became a Jew is not deification but Divine Incarnation. A Jew
> became God would be deification. Herein lies the difference between the
> view of a believer in Christ (the former) and an atheist, or an
> apostate (i.e., once a believer but no longer--subscribing to the
> latter sentence).

> As to the vast literature on Mary as Co-redemptrix, I agree. But it all
> has appeared since you stopped being Roman Catholic, I believe: the
> concept is so new and so much against the Trident notion of Jesus as
> the sole Redemptor. Again, contradicting the Trident is a problem only
> insofar as every apt and even piercing "poetic trifle" (what a stab in
> the body of liturgical poetics, an immensely effective and important
> aspect of true theology!) is understood as dogmatically "obliging"--
> i.e., necessary to codify as either a dogma or a heresy. It is your
> refutation against the stubborn post-Kantian contemporary Catholic
> compulsive "multiplication of dogmas" that is the stumbling block here.
> Not a problem for an Orthodox mind, which prefers tropes in liturgical
> poetics to speculative dogmatic categories. This means that the
> Orthodox, in their primarily liturgical theological predication, prefer
> a correspondence between the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor in
> ONLY ONE feature, e!
>  .g!
> ., the function for Salvation, to that of a near-complete identity
> between the signifier and the signified, typical for a dogmatic
> discourse discarding tropes. With that claim, I did open the Pandora's
> Box of the whole discussion on SEELANGS. I still think this difference
> in mentality is important to bear in mind when considering your topic.
> I believe that many fewer people lapse from the Orthodox faith than
> from Roman Catholicism for that precise reason: the Orthodox do not
> feel obliged to turn every theologumena (-on) (Serge Bulgakov's term)
> into a dogma.
> But back to the beginning: theosis (obozhenie) is a form of
> Transfiguration (as in Mount Tabor, with Moses and Elijah, not with
> Jesus Himself, Who transcended even their degree of transfiguration,
> even there and then). That is, theosis is somethig EVERY person can
> have if they strive to it and lead a saintly life that reflects God's
> light. Deification in the sense of turning INTO a specific deity--
> rather than partaking of God's energy by reflecting it (Palamas), is
> something pagan, to a Christian mind. And yes, the direction in any
> maxim matters, from the point of view of formal logic: man (e.g., a
> Jew) becoming God is deification (an abomination in the eyes of anyone
> who does not believe in Jesus as Christ, e.g., for any sincere Jew),
> but God becoming a Jew is Incarnation (NOT deification)--something we
> OK, Vitalii, I personally, but as an Orthodox Christian and like all of
> them/us) believe freely and completely. Turning man into a god is not
> the same as turning God into a !
>  ma!
> n/Man. Just as turning joy into pain is not the same as turning pain
> into joy.
> I am rather moved by your admission that you once considered all these
> points of view from within Catholicism, Dan. It is movingly personal.
> It is, however, also symptomatic for the Catholic constant production
> of ever new dogmas--and subsequently pretending they have always been
> there!--that causes many besides you to lapse. But in the original
> church (e.g., before the division between the East and the West, or
> around Trident, say, not even speaking of the Nicene Creed), these
> things were produced sparingly and with great internal battles, by
> sincere believers, not ex cathedra, as something the dumb flock had
> merely to obey. Sorry, here comes my basic disagreement with people
> Like John Paul the Second, whom PERSONALLY I respect immensely,
> objecting only to his infallibility. In that matter, it is not merely a
> point about dogma that differs between the Catholics and the Orthodox,
> but something in the attitude to formulating and maintaining truths AS
> dogma. There is a lot of !
>  We!
> stern Mariology rejected by the Orthodox. There is even more of the
> Orthodox Mariology (e.g., some of Bulgakov's beautiful insights) that
> would have been rejected by the Orthodox, had it been a matter of
> obligatory dogma rather than someone's personal insights, or
> theologumena (as Bugakov himself called that).
> Again, Dan, I am detecting a serious and sincere misunderstanding here
> (e.g., of the vectors of transformation, or better, transfiguration,
> between the human and the divine), rather than any stubborn rejection
> of all (organized religion"'s dogma as "bullshitting". My respects. But
> also, please try to understand my (very lame!) attempt at
> clarification.
> Very truly yours,
> Olga

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