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Tradition and Liturgy: Theological, Historical, and Spiritual Dimensions

Rev. Dr. Deacon John Chryssavgis


An Ecumenical Foreword

Due to the prevailing cultural and religious pluralism, society is today witnessing a remarkable revival of traditionalism. There is a widespread search for roots, to be seen, for example, in the claiming of rights by indigenous peoples and the self-assertion of distinctive cultures by various ethnic groups. Any collective identity is inseparable from tradition, and this is especially evident in the life of the church. A person is a Christian because he or she identifies with the historical person of Jesus Christ and with Christians of former ages. Yet in the history of Christian life, confusion inevitably arises because of competing or conflicting interpretations of who Christ was and what He preached. Thus in modern times the communities of the Reformation, in undermining any authority other than scripture, tend to understand the test of Christian tradition as a purely human and therefore necessarily relative element in Christianity. The Catholic Churches, on the other hand, interpret tradition as the authentic expression of the central reality of the existence of the Church. Yet, whereas the East believed that this could authoritatively be expressed only through consensus or conciliarity, the more “realistic” West gradually concentrated all authority in the papacy, whose judgments became the ultimate criterion of true tradition.

The Orthodox Church is of course known for its devotion to tradition. This renders an authenticated history decisive for the consciousness of its faithful, who are thus oriented towards the ecclesial past with profound reverence. This statement of itself elicits a critical response. The current reaction to the word “tradition” assumes that it means a backward-looking, retrograde bulwark against the present, guaranteed by the hierarchy of ecclesiastical institutions and documented in the archaic manuscript literature of museums. Yet for the Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Basil the Great, tradition is the living “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and it is closely connected to the life of the Church and the communion of the saints. There is, in this context, a virtual identity between Christ and Tradition, between Christ, who is not only past but present and future (Rev. 4:8), and His continuing presence in the world. In the New Testament and in the Church Fathers, the presence of Christ in the Church provides a saving liberation from any historical determinism and theological relativism. Tradition, therefore, is seen as consistent throughout the ages, though never fully stated or exhausted in words and formulas, and never reduced to external authoritative standards, whether material or human. The “ecumenical” conclusion that arises for Orthodox theology is the claim that the entire church, and not some particular “authority” alone, is responsible for the manifestation of tradition. Holy tradition should be defined not by means of Scriptural proof-texts, nor in relation to papal, patriarchal and even conciliar approval, but always in terms of that which is received by the entire church.


Tradition and the Orthodox Church

In practice, the absence of formal criteria or authorities has led the Orthodox Church to adopt a very conservative attitude. Changes do occur, but the process of reception and its recognition is slow, even imperceptible. In fact, refusal of change is frequently equated with traditionalism. Yet in Christian revelation, as already noted, the alpha and the omega coincide in the person of Christ. So, without reference to the present and future, traditionalism is turned into antiquarianism. This, however, has not always been the case.

From as early as the time of Tertullian, Western theology has been characterized by its deep sense of the history of the Church. As a result, there is a preoccupation with the institutional and the moral aspects of Christianity. On the other hand, Eastern theological thought has instead been concerned with the meta-historical and with the spiritual dimensions of the Christian life seen in light of eschatology. It took a long time for theologians to cease treating eschatology as being a last, unnecessary chapter of dogmatics. Gradually, the Omega was seen as giving meaning to the Alpha, the eschatological vision of the present as the way of liberation from the evils of provincialism and confessionalism, and the sacrament of the Eucharist – as the fullest communion with the body of Christ – was accepted as the only way of truly appreciating the world. This was the way of the early church, reflected in liturgy, art and theology.

To recover the eschatological content of Christian tradition, one must first of all understand the variety of dimensions within eschatology:

(a) Eschatology may be seen as apocalyptic. Here, no mission or responsibility for society and culture is possible or even desirable. In response to this overemphasis on the last times, an authentic Christian theology should underline the cooperation (“synergy”) between God and creation in history.

(b) The opposite extreme to this “millenialist” attitude is the rationalistic view of eschatology. Here, humanity is seen as controlling the historical process. In response to this misinterpretation of the temporal process, Christian theology should underline the supremacy of the freedom of human beings created “in the image and likeness” of God (Gen. 1:26).

(c) The third type of eschatology is a conditional eschatology, wherein sacred tradition is seen as the history of correct choices made by free human beings confronted with the prophetic word of God.

This duality, which should not, despite the temptation, be transferred simply into a dichotomy, of the traditional/historical on the one hand, and the eschatological/meta-historical/theophanic elements on the other hand, was somewhat obscured during the fourth century with the establishment of Christianity in the Roman empire and more recently with the establishment of national or autocephalous churches in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it is very evident in the writings of the pre-Nicene Fathers. [6]


Tradition and “Eastern” Orthodoxy in a “Western” World

It is, therefore, important to have the courage to pose the various questions confronting Christian Churches in this country in the light of a tradition conditioned by such finality. This, however, requires a realism very often lacking in our Churches, which are frequently characterized by a certain romanticism. In the Orthodox Church for instance, it is easy for people to be forever hiding behind something, instead of looking beyond clericalistic prerogatives, jurisdictional privileges, anachronistic titles, liturgical rubrics, canonical prescriptions, and patristic quotations. Yet these are not the essence of tradition. What is required is a reception of tradition, namely a process of critical reflection, neither slavish credulity nor outright rejection. Nor is it simply a matter of revision; this is perhaps an inadequate term. For one continually lives within tradition, never pronouncing judgment upon it from the outside. Furthermore, one is called to interiorize the whole of tradition, not just a part of it. Tradition must be impartial; partiality is always identified with heresy. This is precisely where the genuine Orthodox phronema is able to remind other Churches that the temptation continually facing Christians of all denominations is that of fragmenting tradition. Some may, for instance, show preference for social consciousness alone, or to individual ascetico-mysticism, or else to doctrinal relativism. Yet the assimilation of tradition exacts an embracing vision of all elements of the catholic tradition.

One example will suffice in this respect. The Orthodox emphasis on doctrinal maximalism is a reminder that the Creed is not a relic of the past, and that the impact of dogma on the course of human history and the present recognition of human dignity and social justice is immense. To quote Fr. Georges Florovsky:

I have often a strange feeling. When I read the ancient classics of Christian theology … I find them more relevant to the troubles and problems of my own time than the production of modern theologians. [7]

I am not sure whether Fr. Florovsky wanted to raise the Church Fathers in our estimation or to erase from it certain modern theologians, but I would suggest that he recognized the significance of doctrinal depth and of theological perspective, both of which are integrally preserved in the Orthodox Church and its tradition. Following on from this point, the Orthodox world-view uncovers two false alternatives that must be avoided: pietism on the one hand, and secularism on the other. The first separates off a narrow area of human experience or society, treating it as “sacred” and all else as “secular” – such a distinction is unknown in traditional Orthodoxy. The second accepts the fallen world on its own terms – perhaps in reaction to a rigid traditionalism.

Other Churches too should be ready to learn from the age-old character of the Orthodox tradition and from its continuity with the early Christian community, an identity immediately apparent in doctrine but particularly in liturgy. As for the Orthodox themselves, conformity and consistency with the “Church of our Fathers” should not be the primary or rather the sole concern; for, the powerful impact and influence of the entire living trunk of the tradition is sufficient to guarantee this identity. It is not we who protect the continuity of this dimension in the Church, but rather the Church which embraces us all within this breadth of tradition. Instead, Orthodox need to turn their attention to the more pressing issues of today, which they must address from the rich and enriching deposit of this very tradition.

In the North American context, the Orthodox Church needs to come to terms with and to encounter the modern world and its contemporary problems. Previously it was easy to seek assistance from or to find refuge in the “old world” overseas, and even to possess a false sense of security or complacency. What is required at this time is a process of “demythologization” of the past, though not its condemnation, and this can occur through the perspective of the liturgy and the ecclesial experience. A liturgy that does not relate to and transform the entire surrounding world is no liturgy at all.

The demand, then, upon the Orthodox Church in this country is to evaluate former achievements and successes, while recognizing historical mistakes and failures. Instead of clinging to the glory of the distant past (the “golden age” of Byzantium) or of the speculative future (the “age to come”), Orthodox theologians must recognize their vocation to the authenticity of Christ also in the here and now. They must find the courage and accept the responsibility to understand tradition not as some fossilized hierarchical structure, but as a living force residing dynamically within the entire Body of Christ. There is no normative period of time to which one must seek to return; nor is there an ideal geographical place (“we have no lasting city” [Heb. 13:14]), from which traditions are dispersed (the diaspora) into “foreign lands” (the xeniteia [cf. LXX Ps. 136:5]). It always remains a great temptation to seek to be elsewhere, or to be in another period; and sin is precisely the absence from the present. Our mission and vocation is to examine and not to escape responsibility; to transform and not to transfer our problems or predicaments.

The voice of tradition calls for the full realization of implications arising from the arrival of Orthodox Christians to this country - an act, for the believer at least, by no means fortuitous but deeply providential. Pressing matters to which Orthodox must turn their attention are to proclaim: that Christ also shed His blood for the African Americans; that the “medicine of immortality” must be related to the drug addict, the suffering love and “abundant life” of the crucified Christ to the AIDS victim, the hope of the risen Christ to the problems of contemporary medical science and bioethics. Much “closer to home,” Orthodoxy must forge links with its young people and communicate in their language; it should seek greater unity among its faithful, jurisdictional and local; it needs to expand theological education.


Tradition as Liturgy and Liturgy as Tradition

Nevertheless, tradition is more than the mere remembrance of certain acts of Christ and of some of His words. It is the continual life with Him and in Him through “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” which renders us apt for such a life. By analogy, the Divine Liturgy is more than a mere remembrance of the acts and words of our Lord. Rather it is the act par excellence of the Word, namely the act of self-sacrifice and love. [9] Here again, it is the Holy Spirit “that celebrates the liturgy with us all the days of our life.” The liturgy is our way of appropriating salvation by entering into communion with Christ Himself. This is precisely what tradition signifies.

All the liturgical hymns and prayers are but confessions of the content of our faith, sung as proclamation and recognition of our salvation through Christ. For the liturgy is the fundamental expression of tradition, which is not merely the relative content but the revelation of this content to the faithful from generation to generation. It is a mutual act of love between God and the world: the rendering of God to us and the surrendering of ourselves to God. And it is precisely during the Divine Liturgy that Christ is handed down to us: this is the meaning of the Latin word trado and of the Greek word paradido alike. At the same time we are in turn handed over to Christ: “Thine own from thine own […].” Although the sacrificial act of Christ was accomplished once for all, for us it entails a continual assimilation of tradition in its entirety. Our whole life ought to conform to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist should confirm our whole life. [10]


Tradition as the Living Christ

We have already observed that there is, in the context of the liturgy, a virtual identity between Christ and Tradition. And the Church is the place where this Christ-centered tradition is confessed and celebrated liturgically. It is in the Church that tradition is rendered dense with symbolic meaning. In the liturgy, it is Christ who is handed down and who is being received. It is He who is the content of tradition, not so much as the who is handed down to us from the past, but as He to whom we hand ourselves over in the living present of the Church. For behold He is “with us always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20). Paul tells us to stand fast, and hold these traditions (2 Thess. 2:15). And we hold on to such traditions that point to Christ as the circumference and center of the world, as the life of the world which endows the world with meaning. Nevertheless, holding on to tradition does not mean that we preserve it as if we were in complete possession of it, as if our Lord were something to be conserved in a glass case in a museum. Rather, one is possessed by tradition, and is at every moment free to accept or to reject it.

The Divine Liturgy is not a religious ritual, but a mutual act of God and the faithful, based on historical facts, or rather on an historical person, namely Jesus Christ, God become human. However, these facts and this person must be witnessed by someone, and so Christianity is based on the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus. For Christ did not found a philosophical school or a religious sect whose ideas or ideology to which one must adhere. Nor was it a “mistake” that He chose to come at a time when there were no cameras or recorders. He came not to be recorded, but to be received and reflected in the hearts of people and of the world, in each person and in each relationship throughout the ages.

In the liturgy, everything proclaims this same Christ; and the liturgy “recapitulates the entire salvation of the world.” [11] Such is part of the meaning of tradition. It is personal: the liturgy offers us salvation through the person of Jesus Christ. Yet, at the same time, the liturgy signifies sharing, a loving opening up in faith and love to our past, our present, and our future. It is an act of solidarity not only with God, but also with humanity - both with those who have gone before and with those around us. We receive in thanksgiving what our forefathers give in love. As an act of faith and love, the Divine Liturgy transcends death and the limits of this world. And when faith becomes trust in God, love towards God and humanity, then it conquers death itself (Songs of Songs 8:6), filling us with life and joy. Then everything is endowed with new light and new life; everything bears the seal of God. Then we are able to see material things immaterially, divided things indivisibly, human beings as the image of Christ and the entire world as the creation of God.

In the Church, it is the saint or communion of saints that witness to tradition as the lived and living experience centered in Christ’s death and resurrection. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms the human community into the Church of God, realizing the presence of Christ above all through the Eucharist. The early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2:42). In this breaking of bread the immortal God is united with and known to mortals, [12] “the holy things (made available) to those who are holy.”

Faith in the communion of saints, therefore, is a loving act of trust towards our Fathers, an identification with “the faith that was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The saint in the Church is not a slave to tradition, but the very image of the living Christ on this earth, a striking – even if during his/her lifetime inconspicuous – embodiment of tradition whose authority is contained in living, not in professing or decreeing. The saint’s loyalty to tradition is a creative way of life, a path of sanctity leading to God. And as the saint has received Christ, so also does the saint walk in Him (cf. Col. 2:6). In our own relationship with the saint, we are always in a stage of discipleship: spiritual master and disciple are to tread the same way, which is Christ (John 14:6). For our salvation is to be found in the continual giving and receiving with the communion of saints in the Church. Naturally, in this giving and receiving there is no one who appropriates tradition completely. No one is master of the Word, for the Master always remains God.

The saints are gathered around the heavenly altar and are therefore always contemporary, forever present with us. They are not idols; if they were, they should be smashed. They are the living liturgy of our Church. And our purpose is to celebrate with them. For each of us is also Eucharistic by nature: “I will sing praises to my God as long as I live” (Ps. 104:33). Our entire life, according to the patristic tradition, is a liturgy or a “consumption of the Word of God sacramentally broken for us.” [13] And worship is not one separate segment of our life. Rather, it is our entire life offered to God in thanksgiving. The hours and services of prayer are but starting points and signposts along the way to unceasing communion with God.


The Universality of Tradition and the Eucharist

This communal dimension of the liturgy is both vertical and horizontal. It is a cross that is experienced in an act of sacrificial love for both creator and creation – for the entire creation, beyond every level (human, animal, plant) and beyond all time. There is a mosaic in Ravenna which portrays saints, martyrs, hierarchs, and other faithful, each holding a crown which they will place at the feet of our Lord. The same image is represented at the prothesis before each Divine Liturgy. The priest places the Eucharistic bread, the Lamb, at the center of the diskos, and surrounding this Lamb of God are the distributed fragments of bread to symbolize the Virgin, the angels, the prophets, the saints, the dead, and the living. The heavenly and the earthly all offer but one hymn, one prayer, one feast, and one doxology. Hence the prayer of the Small Entrance: "O Master and Lord our God […] grant that the holy angels may enter with our entrance, to minister with us, and with us to glorify the goodness.”

The liturgy is the joy of life in Christ “everywhere and at all times,” “in all places of His dominion” (Ps. 103:22). The whole world is the space within which the liturgy functions. This is why we pray for people in all situations and circumstances: "... for the sick, the suffering, the needy, for those traveling, for those in captivity, for the whole world, for every city and land and the faithful that dwell therein.” It seems as if everyone is present at each Divine Liturgy, as if the entire creation were there, crowding around about the altar table. Thus:

We give thanks unto thee also for this ministry which thou dost deign to receive at our hands, ‘though hosts of archangels and tens of thousands of angels wait upon thee, the many-eyed cherubim and the six-winged seraphim […] singing, exclaiming, crying aloud, and saying: Holy, Holy, Holy […].

Yet there is no feeling of being stifled here. In the liturgy one is not an individual in an anonymous multitude, but an organic part of a living mystery. [14] One learns to love, to deny oneself, to diminish in humility, to accept, to enjoy, to share, to thank, to glorify, to become a Eucharistic being.


At this point, I would like to make a parenthetical remark. The liturgy is heaven on earth. It brings heaven down to earth and raises us to heaven. It is an act of heaven carried out on earth. In this respect, the liturgy differs from any other function; it transcends human words and worldly teachings. It is the “Word of God made flesh” and blood at each celebration. Therefore, while each of us may belong to a particular nation, a particular culture, a particular social class or political party, the liturgy rises above these structures. Yet at the same time, it manifests itself through these. To oppose them would be to oppose the fullness, richness, and variety of life itself. The liturgy, as indeed the Church, does not promote or prescribe to any such particular characteristics. Yet it is preserved through them. It is in the world and for the world, while not of the world (John 17: 16-18 and 6: 51). Unfortunately, among us Orthodox there is sometimes a lack of courage to dive into tradition, and often there is a tendency either to hide behind (i.e., supposed fundamentalism) or else to reject entirely (i.e., supposed reformism) titles, rubrics, canonical prescriptions, or Byzantine reminiscence.


The Orthodox liturgy, however, envisages the entire world, God and humanity, in their correct perspective. Everything in tradition therefore has a liturgical character. To quote Fr. Vasileios of Iveron [formerly of Stavroniketa] monastery on Mt. Athos:


Theology does not have a philosophy of its own, nor spirituality a mentality of its own, nor church administration a system of its own, nor hagiography its own artistic school. All these emerge from the same font of liturgical experience […] singing the thrice-holy hymn in their own languages. [15]

It is only when we direct every detail of our life toward the divine, that we may fully appreciate the living tradition of Orthodoxy. "For every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17). Only when we continually look outward to our neighbor and upward to our God will our life become a liturgy. Only when we have realized the words “Let us lift up our hearts to the Lord” will the way in which we move, speak, and act be liturgical. Only when our life is placed inside the chalice of communion will it also acquire a likeness to God, the ‘color’ of godliness. [16] For, as Gregory the Theologian would phrase it: “what is not assumed is not healed.” [17] This is why the saint is the person who properly and fully appreciates this life, precisely because the saint has partaken of the life of eternity. The saint is the person in whom the divinity is reflected, “on whom God finds rest” (Isaiah 57:15).


Dimensions of Tradition and Liturgy

Openness:

Liturgical worship has as its natural result an open love for the entire world. The liturgy is the luminous prism of Christ’s love in the hearts of the faithful, of the saints, in the heart of life itself. For who can love genuinely without first being loved by God, and without burning with God’s love? And its flame is the same now as in apostolic times, in the age of persecution, in the golden age of Byzantium, just as in other less glorious times.

Of course, in the Orthodox tradition, we admit a certain “ladder” in the degree of spirituality. Not all persons are on the same level in terms of appropriating and appreciating tradition: “Bestow on us, therefore, O Lord these thy gifts, giving to each according to his need.” At the same time, we recognize an epectasis, an unending progress in the ascent towards perfection. Communion between God and humanity is an escalating, dynamic process. It is a living, daily, moment-by-moment liturgy within our lives. Perhaps we cannot but have a restricted circle of communion at the beginning. Yet we must at all times aim to enlarge this circle continually, and from this moment. This is surely part of the openness in our liturgical tradition.


Transfiguration

Through the liturgy, through our self-sacrifice, and through the universal offering to God, the world is sanctified, undergoing fundamental transformation. In the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, we pray: “Lord, in return for things corruptible, grant […] things incorruptible.” As in baptism, our entire life - human nature, time, and space - is immersed within the liturgy and emerges transfigured, regenerated, and resurrected. This experience gives us the assurance that “we have found the true faith.” “We,” in this case, signifies those who are able to see, [18] those who have “tasted and seen.”

All our joys and sorrows, our successes and, above all, our failures, our talents and, especially, weaknesses are brought forward and offered with the bread and wine, the oil and the candle, together with our very life, in order that they may be accepted and sanctified by God, in order that God might become our natural life, our own bread and wine. Indeed, we may say that we offer what we have best, namely Christ, who is “both the one who offers and the one who is offered,” the one who receives and who is given. It is through Him that we offer our world and ourselves. For, “I seek not what is yours, but you,” says Paul (2 Cor. 12:14). The material offered to each of us by God, and which must in return be returned in thanks to God, is none other than our very being: “Thine own of thine own we offer unto thee.”


Mission

The Divine Liturgy, as we have already noted, is not mere words but witness, not contradiction but confession. It is the Word of God which is both word and action (cf. Ps. 148:5). The liturgy is the source of the Church, just as Christ is the source of our life. [19]

At the end of the liturgy, we move out once more to our daily routine, to our respective work in the world. Yet we now work differently; we are now a dynamic presence in the world, whose ways we are able to change and conform to the ways of God (Is. 55:8). We are witnesses of the kingdom of God. It is this kingdom that the communion of saints has realized “by force” (Matt. 11:12): “for thou hast granted us thy future kingdom.” And it is for this kingdom that we continually “entreat the Lord.” We pray “thy kingdom come.” And it is with the exclamation “Blessed be the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” that we begin each Eucharistic celebration. Such is the mystery of liturgy and tradition.


An Afterword of Warning

For Hippolytus, what is handed down “according to tradition” (paradoitos) may even appear, in its actual application, to be “paradoxical” (paradoixos). [20] The authentic experience of tradition, which embraces the evangelical, the liturgical, and the ascetical dimensions of the Church, may at times present certain features difficult to accept. Christ, who is “the Lord of peace” (II Thess. 3:16) and “in whom there is peace” (John 16:33), comes “not to bring peace, but the sword” (Matt. 1034). And just as the very content of tradition is “the word [of God that] assumed flesh” (John 1:14), so also the method of discerning what is truly traditional is “the living and active Word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow” (Heb. 4:12). Otherwise, paravdosis (= tradition) may very easily degenerate into prodosia (= betrayal). [21]

The role, then, of the Orthodox tradition in this country is both one of giving and one of receiving. This mutual enrichment is a tacit but crucial dimension of tradition which suggests both presence and receptiveness. For the depth of tradition is not ultimately something that invites our questioning, but something that questions us.

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See Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis VII, PG 9:552C; Origen, Homily VI, 6 in Jeremiah PG 13:328A; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis VI, 3 and Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 35 PG 32:132A.
Cf. Theodoret of Cyrus, Eranistes 1 (in PG Migne 83:28f), who links tradition with the Eucharist. For other Church Fathers, Tradition includes scripture and its interpretation, the unwritten tradition, the practices and norms of the faithful, reminiscences and miracles of elders, liturgical (baptismal) formulas and customs.
Indeed, Orthodox thinkers would always point out that some councils, such as the Robber Council of Ephesus (431), have been convened as “ecumenical” but were eventually rejected by the Church.
For Clement of Alexandria, an alternative term for paraidosis (= tradition) is precisely paradochi (= reception). See his Stromateis I, 1, PG 8:704C.
For an illuminating analysis of the concept of tradition in light of eschatology, see J. Meyendorff, “Does Christian Tradition Have a Future?”, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly XXVI, 3 (1982), pp. 139-154.
[6] Particularly in Ignatius of Antioch (d.c. 107) and Irenaeus of Lyons (d.c. 202), both of whom lived at a time when no New Testament canon had as yet been universally accepted and no defined “magisterium” existed in the Church. Cf. J. Zizioulas, “Apostolic Continuity and Orthodox Theology: Towards a Synthesis of Two Perspectives”, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly XIX, 2 (1975), pp. 75-108.
[7] See his Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Nordland: Belmont, 1972), p. 16.
See D, Staniloae, “L’accueil de la tradition dans le monde d’aujourd’hui,” in Irénikon 4 (1974), pp. 452 f.
[9] Cf. Nicholas Cabasilas, Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (London, 1960), p. 81: “The rite is not a mere figure or symbol, but a true sacrifice.”
[10] See Irenaeus in PG 7: 1028.
[11] Theodore of Studium in PG 99: 340C. See also Theodore of Andida in PG 104: 417.
[12] Cf. Gregory Nazianzus in PG 36: 317.
[13] Cf. Origen in PG 13: 1734.
[14] See Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry (New York, 1984), pp. 76 f.
[15] Op. Cit., p. 11.
[16] Cf. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians vi, 2; and Letter to the Ephesians IV, 2.
[17] See also P. Evdokimov, Le buisson ardent (Paris, 1981), p. 105.
[18] Cf. Maximus the Confessor in PG 91: 669.
[19] Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians ix, 2.
[20] Fragment 22 In Psalmis PG 10:613A
[21] Gregory Nazianzus, Oration XXX, 16, PG 36:124D and John Chrysostom, Homily XXXIII, On Genesis and Homily LXXXIV, 1 on Matthew.

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