The Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2

Dan Perez said:

And I means that. I would explain. what I. see what 1 Cor 10:2 means and you can see how I see that verse , is what

I mean and. nothing more ??

dan p

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The Liturgist said:

Within Orthodoxy the most common theolougoumemnon is that it gives us the ability to communicate with those who have something important to tell us, but we lack a common language - it is a sacred gift to overcome the limitations imposed by the confusion of Babel.

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retired firefighter said:

talking to God

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The Liturgist said:

Not at all. Rather, there are many Scriptural texts the precise meaning of which is not agreed upon. The Orthodox Church works primarily by means of apophatic theology, the way of negation, so the Ecumenical Councils and Church Tradition tell us which doctrines are obviously contradicted by Scripture (and indeed the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils such as St. Athanasius the Great at Nicaea and St. Cyril the Great at Ephesus, and other ancient Church Fathers such as St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom (“the Golden-mouthed”), St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John of Damascus, St. Severus of Antioch, St. Jacob of Sarugh, St. Gregory Palamas, and others, provided very extensive Scriptural backing for all dogmatic positions assumed by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. This has the effect of forming what I like to call “the Pale of Orthodoxy” in that the councils and Church Fathers define what we must believe and in particular what we must not believe, but within this pale, a surprising amount of freedom is available.

Theolougoumena range from beliefs which are so prevalent among the Orthodox and enjoy such strong scriptural support that they are almost doctrine, to beliefs which are not common or singular, but what distinguishes a theologoumenon is that addresses an area where we lack a clear dogmatic definition. The theolougoumemnon does not contradict the interpretation of Scripture we have received as the deposit of faith we believe was handed down once from the Apostles - our faith in God, the Father Almighty, who is unoriginate and whose divine essence, shared with His uncreated Son and Holy Spirit, is love, and who represents all qualities perfected in the fullest and most absolute degree - a boundless sea of being, as St. Gregory the Theologian called Him, our faith in Christ as our Savior, his status as God incarnate having put on our human nature in order to restore and glorify it, our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Paraclete, who is everywhere present, and our belief in other important doctrines such as the Resurrection of Christ and our own future resurrection and the life of the world to come, and that God is unbounded, ineffable and immutable, and knowable only through His uncreated Energies, and in the incarnation of Christ.

Additionally the theologoumemnon, since is is not part of the essential doctrine, should not become the subject of intense debates, as did once happen under the rule of Emperor Justinian between the Theopaschites and the Apthartodocetae (with the Emperor apparently having embraced both positions; since that time the former view has become refined and the latter view has become largely forgotten, to the point where on hearing it most people would incorrectly think one was speaking of the Docetist heresy propagated by the likes of Cerinthus, which so outraged St. John the Beloved Disciple.

Thus the interpretation of tongues that I am, based on personal experience and my analysis of relevant scripture and Patristic texts, inclined to support, that described so eloquently by my dear and pious friend @FenderTL5 who is both more generous and more pious than I am, a man with a true Orthodox phronema, is as far as I am aware extremely widespread and probably the most common understanding of what speaking in tongues means among the Orthodox. In the 1970s there were a number of Orthodox who leaned into what was basically a Charismatic interpretation of tongues, however, the works of Fr. Seraphim Rose, who will probably, I dare say hopefully, be declared a glorified saint, in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, a very prescient work which predicted many of the issues the church is experiencing at present particularly in terms of its relationship with popular society,

On the other hand a much less common theologoumemnon would be my privately held view, which I’m not sure if it is widely held or not, that the Apostles were with a few exceptions relatively young at the time of their discipleship with Christ our True God as the eleven successful members of the Twelve Disciples, with Judas being one of the few older ones, along with St. Levi and possibly St. Matthew, and of course Judas due to his self-destructive behavior which led him away from Christ and towards the Field of Blood, a warning lesson for us all, was replaced by St. Matthias before the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the first instance of the Holy Apostles performing an ordination (but not the last - the ordination of the Seven Deacons was particularly important, for St. Philip the Deacon would go on to do great things, but St. Stephen, the glorious Protomartyr, would be the first to voluntarily give his life for Christ, earning him the crown of martyrdom, an event which the Armenians celebrate in a particularly beautiful way on his feast day on December 26th (they do not celebrate Christmas until January 6th on the Gregorian Calendar, or January 18th for those in Jerusalem on the Julian calendar, for they ar the last church who celebrates the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ on the same day, whereas the rest, in the fourth and fifth century, adopted the practice of celebrating the Nativity 9 months from the ancient feast of the Annunciation on March 25th (and not, as some argue, based on some desire to paganize the Nativity by fusing it with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, although the fact that Nativity being rescheduled made it impossible for Christians to participate in the rapidly dying Roman civic religion decades before Emperor Theodosius smashed the Altar of Victory and pushed through legislation to ban it outright; likewise the scheduling of the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, known in the West as Candelmas, did have the happy side effect of interfering with Lupercalia, although some ostensible Christians continued to celebrate it into the fifth century for which they were verbally chastised by a Christian leader, who questioned why they should want to “run naked through the streets like their forfathers” rather than celebrate the incarnation of their Savior.

At any rate my uncommon theologoumemnon, derived from the fairly commonly held theolougoumemnon that the Apostles were relatively young, is that in the specific case of St. John the Beloved Disciple, that he was probably a young teenager, no older than 16 nor younger than 13 at the time of our Lord’s passion, which would explain his very long life, into the 90s AD, and why our Lord held him (to comfort him) and spared him martyrdom, and why our Lord had him be adopted by the Theotokos - it was not just for her benefit but for his as well, the kind of mutual synergy that characterizes love in the Christian family.

But I also readily admit I could be completely wrong on this point, since it is, as far as I am aware, both outside of formal Orthodox dogmatic definitions (and by extension those Scriptural verses of which we have a thorough understanding) and also does not contradict them, or any scripture, but rather addresses what might be implied by scripture (although as I learn more all the time my position may change - we do believe St. John was very elderly at the time of his repose, but as far as I am aware we do not believe he was a specific age). Assuming I am correct, that we do not have a more specific doctrine on the age of St. John the Theologian and Beloved Disciple, since my view is merely a theologoumemnon, I would never get in an argument, even with someone outside the Orthodox Church, to try to defend it, and if an Orthodox Christian such as my friend @FenderTL5 said that my view did contradict our doctrine and was erroneous or even heretical, I would listen very closely to what they had to say, because I would rather be wrong than inadvertently promulgate an error.

Whether I am right or wrong, what I do know is the importance to the Church of our most blessed and glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, and of St. John, both worthy of veneration, and that they pray for us, and we seek their intercessions, that they might join us in our prayer to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, who are alone worthy of worship, week those churches on the Julian calendar celebrated one of the feasts of St. John the Theologian, and I watched a splendid ordination liturgy in Church Slavonic, in which the Holy Spirit was definitely active, for in the course of the ordination God the Holy Spirit is called upon to bless and consecrate those who have made of themselves a sacrifice, setting aside secular ambitions for service to the Church, which does not pay as well, but it is still a suitable occupation for a husband with a family in most cases, although for those mission churches, small parishes and certain other special cases where there are insufficient funds to pay for a married priest we rely greatly on hieromonks - monastic priests, and archimandrites, who are somewhat like monastic protopresbyters, and in turn those monastics who endure being out of their monastery to serve in this way prepare themselves and form the talent pool from which our church might select the next generation of bishops.

It is within a monastery where my own post poignant experience of speaking in Tongues occurred, and it was an exchange of specific information between myself and the hegumen of the monastery, who did not speak English, for the glory of God. Indeed I did not at at first realize who the monk was I was speaking with and asked him a question in English, which he answered, but not in English. Thus my experience was very much in line with what my excellent friend @FenderTL5 described.

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theologoumenon​