Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



May 25, 2025

Sunday of the Blind Man: The Clay (Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Mani)


Sunday of the Blind Man:
The Clay
 
By Metropolitan Chrysostomos III of Mani

“He made clay.” And with it Christ healed the blind man. Why did it say “clay”? What does this action of Christ mean? He could have done it with a word of His. With a touch of His. From afar. In another way. However, “He made clay.” From the dust of the earth.

*

This action of Christ is intended to commemorate the creation and shaping of man by the Creator God. It refers directly to “ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7). It is the reminder that “we are dust.” It is about the material component of man, the material nature of man with all the special idioms that come and express the perishable, the fragile, the transient, the finite. That is why the human physical element is also attributed with other terms and words, such as "earth", "dirt", "soil", "grass", "flower of the field", "shadow", "earthen house". Very enlightening, in this regard, are the words addressed by God to the fallen first-born Adam: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19), Abraham’s confession: “I am dust and ashes” (Gen. 18:27), Job’s: “All dust returns to the ground, from where it was taken” (Job 34:15). And the Prophet’s: “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are made” (Ps. 103:14). Indeed, in Isaiah God is represented as the “potter,” and man as the “clay” in the hands of the Divine Creator. Thus: “Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, 'He did not make me?' Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, 'He has no understandin?'" (Is. 29:16).

*

But into the mortal, the corruptible, and the futile, into the clay, God “breathed the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7), creating this man in the image of God and in the likeness of God. Man exists as the most perfect divine creation, the epitome of all creation. Psychosomatic unity, with value, honor, position and divine destiny.

This is why the wise Basil the Great will summarize: "That which is in man in the image of God is in the likeness of God in power, and that which is in the likeness of God is in the image of God in activity" (PG 30, 32c).

After all this, only “as children of obedience” before God can we continue the course of our life, so as to find our worthiness.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
 

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