Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bear?

You got to give it to The Donald. The collective freak-outs by the Establishment began back in June of 2015 and only accelerated after his election.

Once elected, the paroxysms of agony have only gotten worse. First there were riots, then recounts, then insipid, pathetic PSAs. Golden Showers, “Hamilton electors”, “fake news.” You get the story. Now it’s Russian hacking. It’s a done deal, why everybody agrees. Throw anything at all and see if it sticks. It can’t be because Trump won fair and square against a horribly flawed candidate running in the crappiest recovery presided over by her party. Nah, can’t be that. It’s gotta be the Russians.

Everybody believes it now. It’s “true.” Everybody except Julian Assange, but he knows better. Truth be told, so does the Intel community. They know better but they’re no less politicized than every other Federal agency. They’ll keep the story propped up as long as they have to because that’s their bread and butter. Can’t risk it, otherwise they’ll have to get real jobs.

Or something worse can happen to some agent who doesn’t toe the party line. Make no mistake: serious strings are being pulled here.

In any desperate negotiation, you find out pretty quick what’s really —really–important to the losing side. (And Trump is a really good negotiator, why, he even wrote a book about it, it’s called The Art of the Deal.) All that being said, we are seeing what it is that the Deep State is willing to throw overboard in face of the Trump juggernaut. Open borders, cheap labor, gun control, Obamacare and NATO are all of a sudden open to negotiation. At this pace, they may throw sodomite nuptials, climate change and who knows what else under the bus.

Political capital and political victories are sort of like the chicken-and-egg conundrum. You can’t have one without the other but which comes first? Trump’s electoral victory has resulted in serious victories and he’s not even President. On the home front he’s saved thousands of jobs; on the foreign front, he’s put China on notice when the first phone call he took was from Taiwan’s President. He’s a wild card. That makes negotiations easier.

The Deep State doesn’t like it one bit but they can be flexible if they have to. Like most humans, they can adjust to a new equilibrium. They can adjust and they will wherever they have to. Except on one item: detente with Russia.

The question is why?

We’ll get to that in a moment but first it’s important to see the blunder the Deep State has made. By coming out so vocally they’ve exposed their hand too early in the game. This shows a position of weakness, especially when you look at who they are sending out to trumpet the evilness of Russia. That would be Lindsey Graham. By trotting out this “conservative” on various venues, they’re trying to put Trump on notice that even the Republicans aren’t with him on Russia.

Now, if you happened to see Sen Graham on The O’Reilly Factor last week, you couldn’t help but notice that maybe he’s bat-shit crazy. The guy was frothing at the mouth about how evil Putin is. When Bill O’Reilly tried to gingerly ask him questions he kept up his diatribe. Graham even “corrected” O’Reilly who merely asked if we wanted another cold war with Russia; he replied that we are already in a “hot war” with Russia.

Excuse me? Last I checked Los Angeles and St Petersburg weren’t in smoldering ruins. The radioactivity levels here in Oklahoma were normal. And anyway, I didn’t see any two-headed mutants living in hovels eating dead armadillos as I drove to work yesterday. The situation may be different in South Carolina or more likely, in Graham’s buggered brain but if I had to guess, I’d say we are not now in a “hot war” with Russia.

So why does the Oligarchy push this insane meme, when even James Clapper admits that there is “no evidence” that Russia affected the votes back in November one way or the other? Why do they risk making fools of themselves by trotting out this sniveling little pansy whose credibility was long since shattered in the sands of Iraq? (And theirs as well?)

Because a resurgent Russia presents an existential threat to McCivilization –at least in their eyes. America, that is to say end-state America and our present hegemony over the world is based on increasing consumption. That our economy is fueled by increasing and eternal debt is unfortunate but like a man on a treadmill who can’t stop running otherwise he won’t get his drugs and porn, we have no choice. It’s an eternal rat-race and if the beta-males drop out in sufficient numbers then their will be rioting in the streets.

This is what we in the Dissident Right mean when we say McCivilization. Cheap prole food, two-click porn, broken families and opioids for those whose bodies are too worn out with pain to work. It’s not wealth but it is consumption and as long as we are able to consume drugs, Twinkies and The Kardashians, then we’ll be able to continue to kick the can down the road.

Now, it’s not that Russia is not without her own problems. No country is. But the fact that she has chosen to reconstitute herself in a Christian fashion and not succumb to the inane pieties of feminism and faggotry is an affront to the secular priesthood. Worse, Russia has chosen to retake its banking system off of the present usurious banking grid. That is nothing less than a stunning rebuke to the banking cartels. For the Deep State, this is where the rubber meets the road.

Interestingly, this was all foreseen over a hundred years ago. Even before the Bolsheviks sank their fangs into Holy Russia. Recently, I came across this perceptive essay in Vanity Fair (of all places!). It’s called “The Secret Source of Putin’s Evil.” (I’m not sure about the title, it appears rather ironic given its sympathetic tone but you can read it and judge for yourself.) From my perspective, it encapsulates what it is about Orthodox Russia that has so petrified post-Christian America, gripped as we are in nihilism:

“Dostoevsky, who traveled widely in Europe but was suspicious of it, despised passionately the revolutionaries and their desired revolution. He spent the 1860s and 1870s obsessing over Russia’s looming confrontation with itself. His most important works (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils and The Brothers Karamazov) are not simply novels, but rather dystopian warnings about what would happen if Russia did not return to its pre-Petrine origns.

“Dostoevsky foresaw Russia destroying itself with the clandestine, or not so clandestine, support of the West. The clearest illustration of this self-destruction comes in The Brothers Karamazov. The novel, the longest whodunit ever written, revolves around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. One of Karamazov’s three legitimate sons, Mitya, is accused and found guilty of the murder. But the real murderer is Karamazov’s mentally challenged, bastard son, Smerdyakov –and the real murderer behind Smerdyakov (the zakashik, or orderer) is Ivan, the most successful and Westernized of the Karamazov brothers. It is Ivan, full of newfangled Western ideas, who tears apart his family (and metaphorically, Russia), and it is the last remaining legitimate Karamazov son, Lyosha, who is left to rebuild it. Not incidentally, Lyosha is the youngest, most religious, and self-effacing of the Karamazov clan. The way forward is actually the way backward –all the way to the ancient, Russian sobornost, the spiritual community that, in the Slavophile mind, used to bind Russia together. This, all these years later, is Putin’s Russia.”

It is astounding to me how prophetic Dostoevsky was. Replace Ivan with Peter the Great and Smerdyakov with Lenin (who had no Russian blood and murdered Holy Russia). Mitya is Aleksandr Kerensky and other pro-Western dupes, while Ivan is Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn (or perhaps Vladimir Putin).

The fact that Russia regressed –almost reflexively–to it’s pre-Bolshevik ways is most fascinating to me. The question now before us will America likewise regress to its Constitutional ways? I certainly hope so. Will globalism and the nihilistic hedonism which sustains it be replaced by the intrinsic civic nationalism of the original Thirteen Colonies?

On the domestic level it depends on the desire of the various States to recapture their legitimate prerogatives. On the international level, I’m not sure how successful President Trump will be in holding back the dogs of war which are already baying at the Russian bear. His instincts are good; he clearly has no reason to trust the intelligence agencies but their hatred of Orthodox Russia is unyielding. Trotting out Graham, Little Marco and John Lewis shows how tenacious their manichean worldview is.

Even a resolute leader like Trump cannot hold back every possible false flag that the Deep State will throw in his way. Nor is he personally invulnerable. If the Deep State has to, it will find some way to take him out, whether through some trumped-up impeachment charge or worse.

Many prophecies in both the Orthodox East and the Catholic West point to the years 2017-18 as being cataclysmic. I choose to see things in a more secular fashion but I am not ignorant or dismissive of the spiritual dimension. Far from it. For me it’s simple: it’s all in God’s hands. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pray for peace in the world. For the time being, God has granted us a reprieve and temporarily silenced the drums of war. For this we should be thankful.

That doesn’t mean that He doesn’t allow us free will. I for one, am deeply concerned that the god of this world and his globalist minions will do whatever they have to reject the Lord’s grace. Time will tell.

Still, maranatha.

Comments

  1. I think Western Christians are subconsciously tormented by a shadow of their own version or Christianity that they are projecting on Holy Orthodoxy. They assume our soteriology is like theirs and it is actually different. Allow me to explain.

    If you think that Putin is Russian Orthodox and that he is winning and you don’t understand the Orthodox faith and think it is as exclusivist in its soteriology as Roman Catholicism was or Fundamentalist Protestantism still is, that would give you some cause for concern. In the back of your mind the possibility might be lurking that if “Russian” Orthodoxy is right and God favors it, all Western Christians could be headed for a crispy afterlife.

    This is not the case, however. But it takes some explaining.

    There is a distinction between salvation and deliverance-from-hell. They are related, but they are not exactly the same thing. This has to do with the Particular Judgment and the Last Judgment. But before getting into that again, I want to say something about the Name of Jesus.

    It is true that the Holy Name of Jesus has particular power if spoken with sincere intention. And this power will lead one to salvation if one maintains the phronema of bearing in ones soul the Identity of the Savior. The devil is powerless against the following Absolute Truth: Yeshua, the son of Mary, the Son of God, is YHVH in the flesh. He is Very God of Very God, who was Bodily Resurrected from the dead for our sakes. That is to say, Jesus is LORD (YHVH). That simple truth actually does function as a sort of talisman, a truly holy talisman, because of the theological understanding that it reflects. The entire Creed and the substance of the Seven [or Nine, if you will] Councils are really a commentary on that simple proposition and the work of the Holy Spirit.

    That is why God blesses some Catholics and Protestants, for the sake of His Holy Name.

    Deliverance from hellfire is a matter of how one has treated “the least of these”, who bear the image and likeness of God, in this life. How we treat those less fortunate than ourselves, and how we forgive debts and those who sin against us, determines our eternal destiny. On that account, God is not particularly focused on doctrinal theology. He can afford not to be because of what happens at the Particular Judgment, the Judgment that occurs directly after our death but before the Last Judgment.

    When one has died, the time for repentance has past. Accounts have to be reckoned. This is the teaching regarding the Particular Judgment and the aerial toll houses. We can only approach this realm by analogy, by comparison.

    Essentially, we carry baggage with us, serious and not so serious sins, that twist our souls and psyches in this life. They are like neuroses or psychoses in the effect they have on us. But it is worse than that. They really are the devil’ playground and the devil really exists, though evil has no ontological substance.

    That is to say, evil is really a glitch, a twisting of reality into unreality, a lie, if you will. It sort of feeds on itself. And it is terrible.

    So these glitches have to be resolved in the souls of the departed if they are to have a chance at Paradise. Because there is no sin in Paradise or the world to come. Thus, the work of angels and demons and the toll houses.

    I suppose one could look at it as a forty day triage after passing. God and the angels work, the devil and his minions work, accounts are opened and settled, and a determination is made of ones temporary repose: Paradise or Hades.

    This process may be unpleasant, depending on the volume and degree of ones sins. Prayer of the faithful for those who remain in Hades is commended to us and we assume it to be of some effect, even though the time for the personal repentance of the departed has passed.

    And then souls await the General Resurrection and the Last Judgment.

    My point is that all theological questions are really questions of heresies and are a form of sin/glitch that gets worked out for better or worse in the Particular Judgment. God has His own bottom line standards which are not available for review.

    • Misha you say, “It is true that the Holy Name of Jesus, has particular power if spoken with sincere intention. And this power will lead one to salvation….”

      So one question Misha. In your opinion, are all outside of Orthodoxy, who profess their love for Jesus, held to a lower standard, than hopefully us learned Orthodox, in regards to their salvation, and judgment?

      • Dino,

        There is one standard, the Law of God. Apart from rare occurrences where a person happens to set the right heresies aside, no one attains to theosis in this life outside the Orthodox church. Even if those outside the Church happen to attain some measure of theosis, it cannot possibly be completed except in communion with the Church. And theosis itself is limited in this life since the fuller theosis of the next life includes and upgrade to our physical hardware.

        Again, the standard is the same for Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike regarding escape from hellfire, which is a distinguishable question. That standard has to do with you we have treated “the least of these” in this world, those less fortunate than ourselves. For we are to be our brothers’ keeper.

        It’s not rocket science and it has precious little to do with learning. A theologian is not one who is well read. A theologian is one who prays and whom God has thus drawn close to Himself.

        • Well spoken Misha, completely agree. Regrettably every church has those who believe theirs is the only way to salvation. I believe God’s mercy will be given to all who do not reject his love, in the next existence. I can’t imagine a loving creator, reject a good soul never given the opportunity to know his church and plan for his children.

          • The Orthodox Church of Christ is the only way to salvation. But salvation is theosis. When it comes to avoiding hellfire, Christ is concerned with how one has treated the least of these. That is the problem that homosexuals have, homosexuality is by definition the abuse of the lesser. One is turned homosexual by being raped by an adult male homosexual who was also thus raped. “As you have done to the least of these, so have you done to Me.”

            Or to put it another way, it is not possible to escape eternal hellfire if one continues to practice homosexual sodomy – period.

            • Is there a difference between avoiding “Hellfire”, and receiving /achieving , salvation/theosis?

              • George Michalopulos says

                Dino, speaking for myself, I hope so.

                • George and Misha, so are you saying/hoping that there are different levels of Heaven . I know the Mormons believe in three. Personally I have accepted that we really don’t know.

                  • “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.” – 2 Corinthians 12:2

                    Which part of the verse are you having trouble understanding? Ever read St. Dionysios?

                    • I have not read St. Dionysios. So far as numbers of heavens, and levels of paradise, not the same. Similar to my opinion,in regards to our Lord’s second coming, I am at peace that I don’t know. Lest I fall in to sin with speculation, I will trust, and hope in his mercy.

                      Sooner or later we will all know. I’m in no rush.

            • M. Stankovich says

              One is turned homosexual by being raped by an adult male homosexual who was also thus raped. “As you have done to the least of these, so have you done to Me.”

              You are an imbecile. Simply put.

  2. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/01/17/reagan_and_trump_american_nationalists__132809.html

    Buchanan’s latest. He asks the question, “How long can America stay together given its internal divisions?” in light of our place among nations. It’s an interesting question.

    Americans seem to be at a loss as to how to proceed apart from that little contingent of Americans known as Orthodox Christians and those whose moral/religious, social and political vision most closely resembles ours.

    America is now, and will increasingly be, in need of Orthodox Christian counsel as to how to proceed. The Western political philosophies and religious traditions are at a dead end.

  3. The height of America’s greatness, socially, and militarily was from 1945-1965. Our culture was a sane Judeo/Christian society. Men and women new their place. The middle class was at it’s peak, all who wanted to work, would be able to feed their family, and mother could stay home and tend the children. Socially it was as close to utopia that our human history has ever known. The only pitfall was civil rights for black America, was not so civil, but that too would have worked out, if not for LBJ’s Great Society destroying the spirit of half of our black citizens. This was the beginning of the end. JFK killed, LBJ starts his social programs, and draws us into Vietnam. RFK killed, MLK killed, Riots, drugs, hippie movement, woman’s and the black movements and our near utopia only lasts twenty years. From then to now, all we do is feed our war pigs, and our dead end social programs, while our middle class shrinks, and Americans polarized to the point where those in the media, and Deep State have us where they want us, at each us throats, while they are off feeding the world’s war pigs, and their pockets.

    Trump is now a road block to the oligarchy. We might come near full circle, to a time, I’m sure Trump remembers fondly in his youth, when Americans were proud, to be American. My greatest fear is Trump might go the way of JFK, if he begins to succeed in his plans to turn our nation around.

    In regards to Putin’s Russia, I see him as patriot of all things mother Russia, and a villain at the same time. He comes from the old Soviet department of fear, and now is loved, and respected in Russia, in fear of his wrath upon those who might object his views. He is Stalin, and Tsar Nicholas combined. Thankfully he supports our Orthodox Church, so long as she supports him, at what cost only time will tell. Make no mistake he is NOT our friend. BUT, he need not be our enemy. In my opinion, so long as Putin keeps Russia stable, and does not attack our interests in the world, leave him alone. I think of Putin as a Saddam Hussein, he is not a nice guy, but the alternative could be much worse. Russians, like Arabs, and Muslims, only respect and conform to fear. Take away the fear, and all hell will break loose in Russia, just like it did in Iraq. The only difference is Russia DOES have weapons of mass destruction. Fyodor knew the Russian mind set well. Timeless indeed!

    “Men do not accept their prophets, and slay them, but they love their martyrs, and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”-Fyodor Dostoevsky

    • Yeah, but folks in the `1945 to 1965, were spoil compared to earlier generations. There was no indoor plumbing, crowded streets and so forth in the past. Read Dickens and people inthe 20th century and the 21st century see how bless they are. Also, philosophy Christianity in the west has been challenge at least back to the 18th century. Read Paul Johnson’s the Birth of the Modern.

    • Dino, how well do you know Putin, personally?

      • PdnNPJ! Yes! Very well! Our mothers were members of International Orthodox Red Hat ladies Bingo Club, my mum told me he enjoyed going shirtless at home during the coldest winter months, and your point is?

    • Estonian Slovak says

      Whoa, sorry, Stalin and Tsar Nicholas combined? Can’t accept that. I rejoice that Orthodox Russia is reviving, but I can’t abide the new found praise for Stalin. I’m not saying you’re doing this, Dino, but far too many Russians are. One can only hope Putin experiences a change of heart and breaks completely with his KGB past.

      • Estonian Slovak, trust me I have no love or respect for Stalin. My grandfather nearly died in one of his Gulags. I meant Stalin in the negative and Tsar Nicholas in the positive. I see a little of both in Putin, evil, paranoid ,and selfish, yet also patriotic and kind, so long as everyone sees things his way.

        • It is hard to understand Putin from an American perspective. We are reflexively attached to freedom and liberty as fundamental values and thus when we see anyone who does not share that ideological perspective, we tend to demonize them.

          In doing so, we demonize most humans who have ever lived since most of the world has always lived under some type of authoritarian regime. Democracy is the exception, not the rule. And our two party system has not served us very well lately. Frankly, the upper classes have used it to soak the middle and lower classes. By placing the locus of traditional morality in the Republican Party but the locus of welfare/redistribution in the Democratic Party, they created a schizophrenic state engineered to grow less virtuous and ever more dependent on federal largesse while expanding its influence either as spreading democracy (Republicans and neo-conservatives) or spreading human rights (Progressive Democrats, the Samantha Powers contingent).

          They probably did not start out consciously to do so, but the evil one took over at some point and that was the result.

          Better to have traditional morality and redistribution together in the same party and cease the diabolical disco dance. Let other parties act as corrective sentinels to keep the governing party honest. Leave a relatively free press and that can materialize. The problem should solve itself if everyone can just keep their heads and not go bonkers.

  4. Caroline Humphrey says

    Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? Psalm 2 As I have read about the various threats and etc since the election, I slowly began to wonder if those taking part are really rebelling against God, though they may not know it.

    a question for someone. Why are some people calling the recent vote a populous uprising?
    What makes this election different from others, except that the vote went against the heiress apparent? I can remember when Truman beat Dewey. Why wasn’t the election of Obama considered a populous vote?

    • Michael Bauman says

      Caroline, the energy of populism in the US has largely been from rural, blue-collar areas although not so much the leaders. The leaders respond to the populace rather than to a center of power or an ideology. There is no purity of ideology.

      Obama is an intellectual, urban, ideolog who knows better following in succession to other such folk. He holds the populace in distain.

      Big difference.

  5. Gail Sheppard says

    We have NO idea what’s happening or coming. We have to hold close what we know and wait because at some point we will be called and we will have to act as the Holy Spirit guides us.

  6. This is absolutely hilarious:

    http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/america%E2%80%99s-moment-truth-about-russia

    He’s begging Trump to save the DNC from big bad Vlad. Priceless.

    Analysis of the unstable nature of the “Women’s March”:

    http://nypost.com/2017/01/16/the-very-mixed-messages-of-the-womens-march-against-trump/

    Utterly priceless.

  7. People do understand it at a visceral level, I think:

    http://www.prri.org/spotlight/america-christian-nation-trump-inauguration/

    . . . but their minds can’t process the truth behind it.

    After all, what could go wrong?:

    http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2017/january/womens-march-sets-out-to-exclude-40-percent-of-american-wom.html

    “Though the term remains divisive among evangelicals, they have grown more likely to embrace the word feminism. Egalitarians and complementarians alike see the importance of asserting women’s equal value in Creation, Laura Turner wrote for CT Women in 2013, as Sarah Bessey released her popular book Jesus Feminist.

    So does feminism really come down to a single issue, as march organizers and advocates seem to suggest? Critics of the move to pull the pro-life partnership point out that relying on a woman’s position on abortion as a marker of feminism complicates things.

    ‘What I dislike about this is it upholds the false pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy. Lots of people are anti-abortion but don’t want it banned,’ said Elizabeth Nolan Brown, associate editor of Reason, in response to the statement. More than half of adults do not take an absolutist view for or against the legality of abortion, Pew found.”

    It is tragic, in a way. Until you get the idea of equality completely out of your head, it will continue to confuse you. Women were created to serve men. That is the sole reason for their existence because God saw that it was better that Adam was not alone and so He created a “worthy assistant” for him – not a partner, not an equal in any way shape or form – an assistant – period.

    Feminism will die a loud death. It will go kicking and scratching. But it will go. Because feminism is nothing more than the devil’s playground.

    • Fr. John McCuen says

      If you are going to assert that women are not equal to men – in God’s eyes, if not in secular law – you create the necessity to explain what St. Paul means when he writes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28) The same is true for the statement, ” God created man in His own image. In God’s image He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen. 1:27) To say that woman was created to “serve” man conflicts with the declaration, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.'” It seems to me that man and woman are meant to be partners, not a master and an “worthy assistant.” But perhaps you can point me to the teaching of the Fathers which supports your assertions?

      This is not in any way support for “feminism,” which seizes upon the notion of equality and twists it to give it a political stance intended to divide men and women by a false teaching based, ultimately, on the denial of the roles for which men and women were endowed by their Creator, and this on the basis of the ‘accident”of one’s external plumbing. Feminism flies in the face of science, which has demonstrated that the distinction between male and female exists in the subcellular structure of every cell in our bodies, except for the gametes (although it may be detectable there as well; I have not kept up with the most recent literature in that field). The antifeminism which is inherent in the position that women exist “merely” to be man’s assistant is the basis for the oppression of women which is exhibited in Islam; and is antithetical to the Christian faith.

      • My goodness a priest actually speaks on this subject matter.

        Why is it so hard for clerics to address rogue thought? They seem so eager to throw pearls and capture applause.

        Congratulations and thank you.

    • M. Stankovich says

      The fact that “God made man, according to the image of God he made him, male and female he made them.” (Gen. 1:27) [καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, κατ᾿ εἰκόνα Θεοῦ ἐποίησεν αὐτόν, ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς.] is foolishly, myopically, and incorrectly presented as “Women were created to serve men. That is the sole reason for their existence because God saw that it was better that Adam was not alone and so He created a “worthy assistant” for him – not a partner, not an equal in any way shape or form – an assistant – period.” While I encourage anyone to read the Homily of St. Gregory of Nyssa in its entirety – and I have previously paralleled the exact teachings according to Sts. Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas – consider two consecutive sections of St. Gregory’s On the Creation of Man that summarize the Patristic Tradition of the Church:

      St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man [ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΝ], PG 44

      XVI. A contemplation of the Divine utterance which said— “Let us make man after our image and likeness”; wherein is examined what is the definition of the image, and how the passible and mortal is like to the Blessed and Impassible, and how in the image there are male and female, seeing these are not in the prototype.

      5. We must, then, take up once more the Holy Scripture itself, if we may perhaps find some guidance in the question by means of what is written. After saying, “Let us make man in our image,” and for what purposes it was said “Let us make him,” it adds this saying:— “and God created man; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (Genesis 1:27) .” We have already said in what precedes, that this saying was uttered for the destruction of heretical impiety, in order that being instructed that the Only-begotten God made man in the image of God, we should in no wise distinguish the Godhead of the Father and the Son, since Holy Scripture gives to each equally the name of God—to Him Who made man, and to Him in Whose image he was made.

      7. We must, then, examine the words carefully: for we find, if we do so, that that which was made “in the image” is one thing, and that which is now manifested in wretchedness is another. “God created man,” it says; “in the image of God created He him (Genesis 1:27) .” There is an end of the creation of that which was made “in the image”: then it makes a resumption of the account of creation, and says, “male and female created He them.” I presume that every one knows that this is a departure from the Prototype: for “in Christ Jesus,” as the apostle says, “there is neither male nor female. “ Yet the phrase declares that man is thus divided.

      8. Thus the creation of our nature is in a sense twofold: one made like to God, one divided according to this distinction: for something like this the passage darkly conveys by its arrangement, where it first says, “God created man, in the image of God created He him (Genesis 1:27),” and then, adding to what has been said, “male and female created He them (Genesis 1:27.)”— a thing which is alien from our conceptions of God.

      9. I think that by these words Holy Scripture conveys to us a great and lofty doctrine; and the doctrine is this. While two natures— the Divine and incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes— are separated from each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them: for in the compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have mentioned—of the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female: for each of these elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life. That the intellectual element, however, precedes the other, we learn as from one who gives in order an account of the making of man; and we learn also that his community and kindred with the irrational is for man a provision for reproduction. For he says first that “God created man in the image of God” (showing by these words, as the Apostle says, that in such a being there is no male or female): then he adds the peculiar attributes of human nature, “male and female created He them (Genesis 1:27) .”

      18. For this reason the whole race was spoken of as one man, namely, that to God’s power nothing is either past or future, but even that which we expect is comprehended, equally with what is at present existing, by the all-sustaining energy. Our whole nature, then, extending from the first to the last, is, so to say, one image of Him Who is; but the distinction of kind in male and female was added to His work last, as I suppose, for the reason which follows.

      XVII. What we must answer to those who raise the question—”If procreation is after sin, how would souls have come into being if the first of mankind had remained sinless?”

      2. …When the Sadducees once argued against the doctrine of the resurrection, and brought forward, to establish their own opinion, that woman of many marriages, who had been wife to seven brethren, and thereupon inquired whose wife she will be after the resurrection, our Lord answered their argument so as not only to instruct the Sadducees, but also to reveal to all that come after them the mystery of the resurrection-life: “for in the resurrection,” He says, “they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more, for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection (Lk. 20:35-36) .” Now the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state; for the grace we look for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again to Paradise him who was cast out from it. If then the life of those restored is closely related to that of the angels, it is clear that the life before the transgression was a kind of angelic life, and hence also our return to the ancient condition of our life is compared to the angels. Yet while, as has been said, there is no marriage among them, the armies of the angels are in countless myriads; for so Daniel declared in his visions: so, in the same way, if there had not come upon us as the result of sin a change for the worse, and removal from equality with the angels, neither should we have needed marriage that we might multiply; but whatever the mode of increase in the angelic nature is (unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures, except that it assuredly exists), it would have operated also in the case of men, who were “made a little lower than the angels ,” to increase mankind to the measure determined by its Maker.

      3. But if any one finds a difficulty in an inquiry as to the manner of the generation of souls, had man not needed the assistance of marriage, we shall ask him in turn, what is the mode of the angelic existence, how they exist in countless myriads, being one essence, and at the same time numerically many; for we shall be giving a fit answer to one who raises the question how man would have been without marriage, if we say, “as the angels are without marriage;” for the fact that man was in a like condition with them before the transgression is shown by the restoration to that state.

      4. Now that we have thus cleared up these matters, let us return to our former point—how it was that after the making of His image God contrived for His work the distinction of male and female. I say that the preliminary speculation we have completed is of service for determining this question; for He Who brought all things into being and fashioned Man as a whole by His own will to the Divine image, did not wait to see the number of souls made up to its proper fullness by the gradual additions of those coming after; but while looking upon the nature of man in its entirety and fullness by the exercise of His foreknowledge, and bestowing upon it a lot exalted and equal to the angels, since He saw beforehand by His all-seeing power the failure of their will to keep a direct course to what is good, and its consequent declension from the angelic life, in order that the multitude of human souls might not be cut short by its fall from that mode by which the angels were increased and multiplied—for this reason, I say, He formed for our nature that contrivance for increase which befits those who had fallen into sin, implanting in mankind, instead of the angelic majesty of nature, that animal and irrational mode by which they now succeed one another.

      In this short summation is the reason “male and female created He them.” (Gen. 1:27), despite any picking through random Scriptural quotations that are empty outside the context of the Patristric Tradition, and attempt to deny what women are by creation and nature [τὰ περὶ γένεσιν φυσικός]. And I conclude by repeating the thought of St. Ephrem the Syrian:

      Then [Moses] said, male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27) to make known that Eve was inside Adam, in the rib that was drawn out from him. Although she was not in his mind she was in his body, and she was not only in his body with him, but she was also in soul and spirit with him, for God added nothing to that rib that He took out except the structure and the adornment. If everything that was suitable for Eve, who came to be from the rib. was complete in and from that rib, it is rightly said that “male and female He created them.” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis, I, 9)

  8. N. Calibey says

    “…while Ivan is Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn (or perhaps Vladimir Putin).”

    I think you meant to say that Alyosha is Solzhenitsyn (or Putin). Either way, it’s an interesting take on the novel and Dostoevsky.

  9. Mark E. Fisus says

    You don’t think there’s a deep state in Russia too?

    Grass is always greener on the other side.

    • George Michalopulos says

      I’m sure they have deep state in Russia. It just seems that their deep state is more nationalistic, Christian and traditionalist than ours.