Chief among these historical distortions is the over-simplification of the difference between Hellenistic and Christian conceptions of time first broached by Oscar Cullman, in his work Le Christ et le temps,^[6] in which the Hellenistic conception is defined as distinctly "circular," with the Christian conception being "linear." For Schmemann, this artificial dichotomy (which he fully accepts) presents the pseudo-problem of the origin of a "liturgy of time" that is not distinctly eschatological; for Christians believe that Christ has already come, and that His Resurrection ushered in "the eighth day"^[7] which is outside of time, and not measurable by the standards of natural, or cyclical time. It is precisely this "eighth day" in which Christians participate during the Divine Liturgy. Since this is the case, it is not only pointless but illogical to favor one calendar system over another, when the mystery of the Liturgy is connected with a supra-temporal reality unmeasured and unmastered by time.

According to Cullman, the "Greek" or Hellenistic conception of salvation involves a passage from temporal existence, understood spatially, into an eternal mode of being that is outside of time. He contrasts this with what he calls the "Christian" conception of time as a "linear ascent" to a future state of fulfillment.^[8] However, in contrast to Jewish eschatology, the Christian believes that this fulfillment has already occurred in Christ’s Resurrection. The "eighth day" is now something attainable purely from the vantage-point of temporal human existence, with no further divine intervention necessary. The savior has already come and opened the gates of salvation for all. The remainder of human life is now understood as a journey to that glorious place of (that is) the "eighth day" - the locus of eternity.

The 'Lord's Day' actualized in the Eucharist was not 'one of the ordinary sequence of days,' just as the Church herself while existing in 'this world' manifests a life which is 'not of this world,' so also the 'Lord's Day,' while it is actualized within time on a given day, manifests within this sequence that which is above time and belongs to another aeon. Just as the Church though 'not of this world' is present in this world for its salvation, so also the Sacrament of the Lord's Day, the Sacrament of the new aeon is joined with time in order that time itself might become the time of the Church, the time of salvation.^[9]

This designation of "another aeon" that is "not of this world" shows clear affinities with the Gnostic conception of a supra-cosmic pleroma or "fullness" that was understood in terms both spatial and temporal. Further, the reference to the "new aeon" being "joined with time" indicates that we are not dealing with a purely temporal process of evolution toward a higher state of existence, but rather with the spatial inter-communion of two heretofore opposed realms of existence - the divine and the human.

It follows from this interpretation, which it is the purpose of this paper to substantiate, that calendrically measured time is of no importance for the symbolic and ontological significance of the Liturgy, insofar as this Liturgy is an expression of a union between two modes of being - the human and the divine. Natural time - understood in the Platonic sense as a "moving image of eternity" - is united with or absorbed into its "model": divine eternity, the "eighth day," which is the Philonic "first day" preceding all creation.^[10]

In this paper I will argue that this distinctly Platonic, Hellenistic understanding of the foundation of the Liturgy is not only historically accurate, but also of great importance for laying to rest the futile, divisive, and most un-Christian struggle of the "Old Calendarists" and the "New Calendarists."^[11]

Hellenistic Chronology and Jewish Eschatology

Hesiod was the first Greek thinker of record to explain the history of humankind in terms of successive ages.^[12] It is true that in Homer we find allusions to heroic men of a semi-mythical past, for example the "godlike Polyphemus" [antitheon Poluphemon];^[13] yet it is only in Plato that this notion of successive ages is given a truly cosmic or cosmological basis. In the Timaeus, Plato indicates that the Greeks are but children, and their history still recent compared to the glorious past of the Egyptians.^[14] Further, in the Politicus, we encounter a cyclical notion of dual successive ages, corresponding to the rational and the irrational principles in the cosmos.^[15] While it is possible (and indeed likely) that a Babylonian influence on Plato was at work here, a definite and direct Babylonian influence was present in the Stoic Chrysippus’ conception of an eternal recurrence, in which the cosmos would regenerate itself identically, at certain fixed and measurable periods in time. These Classical Greek chronologies are surely cyclical, and fit Cullman’s description of "Greek" time more or less accurately. However, there were developments.

The third century B.C. Greek historian Demetrius apparently developed, judging from surviving fragments of his works, a systematic chronology that was ‘generational’ or developmental rather than cyclical.^[16] It is also possible that his work influenced Jewish apocalyptical speculations, especially the Book of Jubilees.^[17] Yet it is most noteworthy that even within the insular and radically conservative Qumran sect, Hellenistic notions found a syncretic home. In the Qumran fragments titled by Gaster "The Epochs of Time," we encounter the notion that history unfolds according to "preordained epochs," each being controlled by "angels whose activities were determined by God before He created them."^[18] The implication here is that these angels occupy a supra-temporal realm, from which they guide time and humanity to its ultimate conclusion: salvation, or, as the case may be, eternal punishment - "according to the lot which God has assigned to each."^[19]

Here a generational or developmental understanding of history has given way to a deterministically linear conception of human life as proceeding toward a fixed end or goal. While human actions clearly determine the outcome of the life lived, the over-arching cosmological conception is that of becoming in relation to - rather than amidst - Being. In other words, time is not something shared by both God and man, but rather something by way of which God guides man toward a supra-temporal fulfillment of his ownmost essence. But when this essence is conceived as something foisted upon the human being, as a "lot assigned" (arbitrarily) to the individual, spelling out salvation or damnation according to writ, the divinity is no longer recognized as the font of goodness; rather, the deity is seen as the source of the oppressive law of Fate, the ineluctable bond of Time that holds all life in a chain of repressive and deterministic causality. It is within this general milieu that Hermeticism and Gnosticism came to flourish and, eventually, to provide the intellectual foundation upon which Christian conceptions of time and the cosmos would develop.

Hermetic Cosmology and the Pauline Epistles: The ‘Birth of Gnosticism’

It is often assumed by scholars that whenever St. Paul refers to "the Law," he is referring to Mosaic Law and the strictures of Pharisaic Judaism. This is, however, not the case. In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul refers to a law that is clearly connected, conceptually and contextually, to certain celestial powers.

So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe.
But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. [...]
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods;
but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more?
You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years!
I am afraid I have labored over you in vain.^[20]

When we recall that the Galatians were originally a colony of Franks, i.e., Gauls, with a pagan background, we are forced to recognize that it would have made little sense for Paul to lecture them about the pitfalls of Mosaic Law.^[21] The enslavement to which Paul refers here is that associated with cosmic forces called "elemental spirits" under whose "law" Jesus Christ was born. So what are these "elemental spirits" derided by Paul, which are clearly understood as the ministers of an oppressive fate, and the stewards of a cosmic confinement stifling the human soul? The answer is to be found in the tradition associated with the venerable name of Hermes Trismegistus, ancient sage and contemporary of Moses, or so the ancients believed.

In Corpus Hermeticum XVI we encounter a brief description of demons and their cosmological and astrological significance. Foremost among these demons are those attendant upon the entrance of a soul into material existence.

The demons on duty at the exact moment of birth, arrayed under each of the stars, takes possession of each of us as we come into being and receive a soul. [...] Those that enter through the body into the two parts of the soul [i.e., the rational and the irratonal] twist the soul about, each toward its own energy. But the rational part of the soul stands unmastered by the demons, suitable as a receptacle for god.^[22]

Yet although Christ was born in the manner of all men, i.e., with a body and a soul, being the Divine Logos (the second hypostasis of the Trinity) He was not affected by the dichotomy of rational and irrational parts of the soul. For this reason, He was regarded as not subjected to the "elemental spirits of the universe," and therefore sinless. Here we have evidence that the early Christian understanding of the dynamics of salvation, at least among the Gentile converts, was based upon a cosmological foundation having affinities with the astrological theories of the era. These theories, while certainly prevalent (as we have seen) among the Qumran community, were by no means unique to Judaism.

Further evidence of the pervasiveness of Hermetic and astrological influence among Paul’s Gentile congregations is found in a passage in Colossians.

... for in him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities--all things were created through him and for him.^[23]

The Greek terms translated as "thrones" [thronoi], "dominions" [kuriotetes], and "authorities" [exousiai] are common astrological metaphors found in Hermetic writings of the late first century B.C. and early first century A.D.^[24] However, in Paul, as in certain treatises of the Hermetica, these celestial powers are viewed as hostile to and subversive of the highest goals of humanity. Rather than aiding the soul in its ascent toward God or "the One," these demons were regarded as enforcing a cosmic entrapment in which the soul is prevented from realizing its true nature. While the Bible clearly states that God created these astral powers, it also informs us that these beings "are not clean in his sight."^[25]

In an interpretive move that was to prove crucial for the elaboration and maturation of the proto-Gnosticism of Paul’s time, the fact that God created these celestial beings was understood to mean that He also has the ability to thwart and overcome their influence over His creation. When this notion became fully present to the consciousness of the early Christians (many of whom comprised Paul’s congregations) Gnosticism was born.

Gnosticism: The Originary Kerygma of Christianity

It is a commonplace among historians of early Christianity to speak of an ‘eschatological crisis’ affecting the primitive churches - i.e., the first generation of Apostles and disciples were dying off, and yet Christ had not returned as promised. What is remarkable is not that such a crisis occurred, but that it did not lead to any widespread abscension from the Christian faith. In fact, it is during this period - ca. 115-130 A.D. - that we encounter the first expressions of what would grow into a complex philosophical theology. I am speaking, of course, of the "classic" Gnosticism of the second century. What are the origins of this school, and how did it arise? The answer is to be found in a consideration of the impetus given to Hermetic and astrological speculations on the origin and end of the soul by the emerging Christian world-view.

The early Christians, especially Paul’s converts (as we have seen), were taught that salvation consists of a breaking of the bonds of temporal - i.e., cosmic - law, and the realization of our nature as "children of God" - a mode of being that is beyond time. However, this did not mean that the early Gnostic Christians ignored time or that they did not have an eschatological focus; rather, it simply means that their rituals - baptism, ‘laying on of hands,’ etc. - were understood as earthly reflections of divine realities, and therefore having no connection with cyclically, i.e., cosmically or calendrically, determined time. When St. Paul declared that "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,"^[26] he was referring, obviously, to the here and now, not to some future state of fulfillment that would be reached by a linear process of historical advancement. Of course, as St. Paul goes on to clarify in the very next verse, he is in no way denying the grace of God and His divine actions in history. The intent of the Apostle in this passage is, I posit, to stress that our mode of subsistence in God is always already supra-temporal.^[27]

As the Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostic texts makes clear,^[28] these early Christian sects relied heavily on the epistles of St. Paul for their theology. It is not my purpose here to condemn or support the interpretations of these heterodox thinkers. However, it is important for my thesis to stress that these Gnostic theologians had grasped, in an admittedly hyperbolic and eccentric manner, the radical spirit of emerging Christianity; for these Gnostics understood that Time, not legal or moral codes, is the real enslaver of humankind. Further, these Gnostics understood that when we live a life in Jesus Christ, we are already living outside of Time - even though we are, for the time being, participating in a moving image of eternity. It is for this reason that I can, with confidence, declare Gnosticism the originary kerygma of Christianity.

The Atemporal Foundation of the Liturgy

The response of Gnostic Christianity - of which sections of John’s Gospel provide an early witness - to the ‘eschatological crisis’ was, as we have seen, to formulate a theology in which the human soul was understood as subsisting already, in the material realm, in the divine life of Christ the Logos. While this doctrine certainly appealed to the intellectual members of the early congregations, the simpler folk apparently desired a more active, outward expression of their new life as a child of God. It was during this period, contemporaneous with the Gnostic schools, that the "Church Orders" came to be written down. This collection of second to fourth century documents comprises our earliest sources for the history of the Liturgy.^[29]

Many liturgical scholars, Orthodox and otherwise, tend to lay great stress on the Jewish influence on the development of the Christian Liturgy. However, as I hope to have shown in my brief historical analysis above, this approach leads to difficulties. As Marion J. Hatchett has remarked:

Many changes came in Jewish liturgy with the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. The construction of the New Testament books may have influenced the liturgy, rather than vice versa. New Testament descriptions of rites and ceremonies may have influenced the liturgical development, rather than described current liturgical practice.^[30]

I also mentioned the Qumran community and the subtle Hellenistic syncretism at work in their cosmology. Yet it is important to draw attention as well to the similiarites between the early forms of Christian liturgical practice and the initiation rites of the Mystery Religions of the era, particularly Mithraism, which contained elements remarkably similar to later established Christian practice.^[32] When we recall that the Galatian Church was comprised largely of former Roman provincial soldiers, the connection between the religion of Mithra (an especial favorite amongst Roman soldiery) and early Christian practice is almost too close to ignore.

Certainly, then, it must be recognized - or the notion at least entertained - that the unobtrusive solution to the ‘eschatological crisis’ was not the result of a radical re-thinking, on the part of Christians, of a Messiah myth inherited from Judaism, but was rather the result of a gradual rapprochement of the pagan folk religions of the era (with their diluted philosophical underpinnings) and the unique and radical witness of emerging Christianity. For the Christians, unlike the Jews, the Messiah is not understood as a grand being who will emerge in some indeterminate future; for the Christians, the Messiah is the ‘once and future king’ who is the "same yesterday and today and forever."^[33] St. John’s equation of Jesus Christ = Logos is the supreme witness for this Hellenistic-Christian identification of Christ with the ultimate - and atemporal! - principle of all existence.^[34]

Reining (not reigning) in Eternity: The Calendrical Paradox

John D. Findlay, in a playful yet penetrating essay entitled "Why Christians Should Be Platonists," argues that the tendency amongst Christians to recognize an element of the arbitrary in our Absolute belies or undermines the inherent Neo-Platonism of our religion.^[35] According to Findlay, it is important to embrace the Neo-Platonic element since it recognizes the Absolute as an utterly tanscendent intelligence of which all human beings may partake, regardless of their professed religious creed. While it is obvious that Findlay is not aware of the Orthodox theology of the personhood of Christ and how His personhood translates to all members of His body (i.e., individual human beings), he is conscious of a fundamental difficulty present in all Christian attempts to articulate our faith in philosophical terms: the seeming incommensurability of Jesus Christ’s particular biological, historical and socio-cultural existence (i.e., as a Jewish man living in Judaea during Roman occupation), and His status as the divine Logos, the second person of the Trinity, who is the tupos of all rational natures.

This ‘incommensurability’ was addressed and laid to rest by the Church Fathers writing during the period between the Fourth and Sixth Oecumenical Councils. Their answer was that although the ‘accidents’ of Christ’s incarnation (His particular physiognomy, the irrational part of His soul, etc,) were indeed unique, His hypostasis or essential nature was that of humanity as a whole, and not simply of a particular instance of human being. For this reason it was held, as St. Athanasius explained so beautifully, that although the Logos was present within a particular human body, He nevertheless continued to direct all existence in the capacity of divine Mind.^[36] It is obvious, from such a passage, that the subsistence of Christ, in which we share, is distinctly atemporal. Although Christ is in contact with the world of existents, He remains self-contained, self-posited, and therefore beyond temporal distinction. In other words, He is unmeasured and immeasurable.

So is it not then the height of paradox to approach Christ by way of an instrument designed to measure and systematize the passage of time, i.e., the calendar? Christians, and especially Orthodox, are agreed that a method for assuring the communion of the entire congregation of believers during the regular cycle of ecclesiastical celebrations is required, yet it is by no means necessary that this purely practical arrangement be given theological and dogmatic status within the Church. The subordination of liturgical worship to a calendrical cycle was a necessary, though socio-historically determined and therefore emendable, development. For time, the locus of human endeavor, is measured by and within the context of human existence, and is thereby subject to the developments and changes occurring in human existence. When we, as human beings comprising the Body of Christ, subordinate our actions - especially leitourgia - to the scientifically determined structure(s) of time, we tacitly and perhaps subconsciously affirm the faulty notion that our access to God is possible only through a utilization of images of divine models, and not through a sublimation (Aufgehoben) of these images. In other words, we must not utilize the measuring device of the moving image of eternity (the calendar) for the purposes of worship - instead, we must overcome this use-object, and train our minds toward the reality of which the calendar is only an image of an image.

Conclusion: Toward the Fluid Syncretism of a Contingent Calendar

It is a well-worn, but no less true, cliché that Christians are in the world but not of it. This means that while Christians exist within the spatio-temporal order of the universe, they are nevertheless conscious of what awaits them beyond the limits of time. Also, Christians are aware of having been reborn from above, i.e., of being born again outside the strictures of time, and in the kingdom of the Lord, through the sacrament of Baptism.^[37] Through Baptism, the human being is affirmed through faith as an adopted child of God. Theologically, time is already abandoned in favor of the great promise of eternal life.

Practically speaking, however, it was necessary for early Christians to give expression to their salvific experience within the temporality of earthly life. The adoption of the Julian calendar for the purpose of marking liturgical time was but one example of Christians’ borrowing from the prevalent pagan culture of the day. I have already briefly discussed the presence of Gnostic, Hermetic, and astrological elements in the New Testament itself, and the manner in which these elements were likely woven into a syncretistic tapestry of uniquely Christian design. And that is the key word: syncretism. Contrary to the wishes of a Schmemann or a Cullman, Christianity did not emerge from the chrysalis of Judaism devoid of the ‘taint’ of Hellenism. Far from it. And what is most characteristic of Hellenism but its vigorous and dynamic syncretism?

In our present epoch, however, syncretism - or its equivalent, ecumenism - is, at least among many Orthodox, disparaged as a sell-out to heretics and lukewarm Christians who have no real connection with the supposedly ‘living tradition’ that Orthodoxy claims to be. While I do not deny that the Orthodox Church is the sole true witness to the Tradition of St. Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Maximus, and St. John Damascene, etc., I am willing to admit that, at the present, Orthodoxy is on life support. And ironically, it is Orthodoxy’s veneration of tradition that has brought about the present state of affairs.

At the beginning of this paper I mentioned Archbishop Chrysostom’s remark that, given the dogmatic and liturgical completion of Orthodox tradition in the Byzantine era, historical investigations into Church origins is "ludicrous." As I hope to have shown, briefly, in my historical observations here, when one refuses to look back with a critical eye to the earliest days of the Church, before Orthodoxy was firmly established, one easily falls prey to all manner of purist fantasies regarding the state of the early Church and Her attitude to the sphere of influence within which She came to flourish.

In our own era, when division is rampant and intolerance is often seen as a synonym for all organized religion, we have a duty to discern carefully the difference between useless sediment and Holy Tradition. If, as we Orthodox confess, Holy Tradition proceeds directly from Christ Himself, we would do well to recall the words of Our Lord, who said "where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." The presence of the Lord is a supra-temporal presence, and one not connected in any way with the measurements gleaned from a calendar.

Let us remember, as well, Christ’s injunction to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s."^[39] What are the things of Caesar? The things of time - i.e., all those things destined to pass away. And the calendar is one of them.

Notes:

[1] Cf. Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna and Archimandrite Akakios, "The Old Calendarists: A Social Psychological Profile of a Greek Orthodox Minority," in Contemporary Traditionalist Orthodox Thought: A Second Volume (Etna: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies 1998).

[2] Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, "The Liturgical Theology of Fr. A Schmemann," in The Orthodox World, vol. VI, no. 6 (November-December 1970), p. 262. This conception, by no means wrong in itself, is problematic only in the excuse it provides for laxity in matters of historical investigation, as I will soon explain.

[3] Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna, "History and Politics of the Byzantine Church: Some Historiological Perspectives," in Contemporary Traditionalist Orthodox Thought (Etna: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies 1986), p. 30. Note that this is not Chrysostomos’ view, simply his formulation of the problem.

[4] Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1975). I am utilizing "Chapter 2" of this work, available on-line at: http://www.jbburnett.com/schmemann/schmemann-ordo.html. My references will not be to page numbers, but rather to sections of the on-line version.

[5] Ibid., Section 2.

[6] O. Cullmann, Le Christ et le temps (Neuchâtel: Paris 1947).

[7] "The Eighth Day is the day beyond the limits of the cycle outlined by the week and punctuated by the sabbath- this is the first day of the New Aeon, the figure of the time of the Messiah" (Schmemann, Section 5).

[8] O. Cullman, Le Christ et le temps, p. 36.

[9] Schmemann, Section 5 - my emphasis.

[10] Philo, De opificio mundi 15.1-5ff.

[11] For my part, I am sympathetic to the Old Calendarists, for reasons purely aesthetic. It is important to mention that the Gregorian calendar is becoming increasingly unreliable, and that a newer calendar will soon be needed. In fact, astronomers are working on versions as we speak.

[12] Hesiod, Opera et dies 110-200.

[13] Homer, Ilias 1.264; E.V. Rieu, tr., The Iliad (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1950), p. 30.

[14] Plato, Timaeus 22.b.4-22.c.3ff.

[15] Plato, Politicus 270.c.11-270.d.4ff.

[16] Demetrius, Fragmenta, ed. K. Mueller, in FHG 4 (Paris: Didot 1841-1870).

[17] Cf. Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (New York: Anchor Books 1976), p. 519.

[18] Ibid., pp. 519, 522-523.

[19] Ibid., p. 523.

[20] Gal 4:3-5, 8-11 RSV.

[21] Cf. F.F. Bruce, "The Letter of Paul to the Galatians," in Metzger and Coogan, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), p. 239. The colony of Galatia was established in the third century B.C., and by the time of St. Paul would have had a mature culture pervaded by Hellenistic influence. To think that a band of Jews could have wreaked havoc amongst Paul’s pagan converts in this region is, I posit, highly improbable, if not absurd.

[22] Corpus Hermeticum XVI. 15, tr. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (New York: Cambridge University Press 1992).

[23] Col 1:16 RSV.

[24] Cf., e.g., Stobaeus, Anthologium 1.21.9.67-69, where the language, while not quite identical to the Pauline and astrological passages cited, is sufficiently close, I posit, to warrant suspicion of influence.

[25] Job 25:5 RSV.

[26] Gal 2:20 RSV.

[27] This interpretation is supported by Philo and the early Church Fathers, who almost uniformly interpreted the Garden of Eden as a spiritual paradise existing beyond, or at the very apex of, the material cosmos.

[28] Cf. also Elaine Pagels’ valuable study, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International 1992).

[29] Chief among these "Church Orders" are the Didache, the Apostolic Tradition, the Didascalia, and the Apostolic Constitutions (Marion J. Hatchett, Sanctifying Life, Time and Space: An Introduction to Liturgical Study [New York: The Seabury Press 1976], pp. 30-31).

[30] Hatchett, Sanctifying Life, Time and Space, p. 16.

[31] The central place of the Jewish scriptures in Christianity would not have presented a problem, for the established practice of allegorical interpretation (esp. Philo) would have easily neutralized any ethnic, nationalistic, or elitist overtones in the Hebrew Bible that would have been offensive to the Hellenistic mindset. As for the frequent mentions of Jewish Law and practice in the Pauline Epistles, the question of authorial intention and propagandistic tendencies requires examination.

[32] Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (New York: Dover Publications 1956), pp. 150-74; Hatchett, Sanctifying Life, Time and Space, pp. 31-32.

[33] Heb 13:8 RSV.

[34] It should go without saying here that the Neo-Platonic "Intellect" or nous bears the same metaphysical stature as Christ the Logos in the Johannine-Gnostic tradition.

[35] John D. Findlay, "Why Christians Should Be Platonists," in Dominic J. O’Meara, ed., Neoplatonism and Christian Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press 1982), pp. 223-231.

[36] St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation §17, anon. tr. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 2000), p. 45.

[37] Jn 3:3-5.

[38] Mt 18:20 RSV.

[39] Mk 12:17 RSV.

Bibliography:

All Biblical references and quotes are from the Revised Standard Version available in e-Sword Bible Software v.5.5.0 (© Rick Meyers 2000-2001).

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, anon. tr. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 2000).

Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna, et. al., Contemporary Traditionalist Orthodox Thought (Etna: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies 1986).

_________, Contemporary Traditionalist Orthodox Thought: A Second Volume (Etna: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies 1998).

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Copenhaver, Brian P., tr., Hermetica (New York: Cambridge University Press 1992).

Cullmann, Oscar, Le Christ et le temps (Neuchâtel: Paris 1947).

Cumont, Franz, The Mysteries of Mithra (New York: Dover Publications 1956).

Demetrius, Fragmenta, ed. K. Mueller, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum 4 (Paris: Didot 1841-1870).

Gaster, Theodor H., The Dead Sea Scriptures (New York: Anchor Books 1976).

Hatchett, Marion J., Sanctifying Life, Time and Space: An Introduction to Liturgical Study (New York: The Seabury Press 1976).

Hesiod, Opera et dies, ed. F. Solmsen, in Hesiodi opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1970).

Metzger, B.M., Coogan, M.D., ed., The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press 1993).

O’Meara, Dominic J., ed., Neoplatonism and Christian Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press 1982).

Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International 1992).

Philo Judaeus, De opificio mundi, ed. L. Cohn, in Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, vol.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter 1962).

Pomazansky, Michael, "The Liturgical Theology of Fr. A Schmemann," in The Orthodox World, vol. VI, no. 6 (November-December 1970).

Rieu, E.V., tr., The Iliad (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1950).

Schmemann, Alexander, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1975).

Stobaeus, Anthologium, ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense, Ioannis Stobaei anthologium (Berlin: Weidmann 1958).