NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 22, 2024

A New Pharisaism

There is a negative trend in the Church these days, with certain people criticizing everything. They adhere in an extreme way to what they believe is authentic, while attacking all that they consider innovative, calling it heresy that destroys the Faith and the Church of Christ. The adherents of this trend tend to be aggressive in their attacks and fundamentalist in their opinions, denouncing as heretics all those who disagree with their opinions, views, and citations.

They employ the interpretation of Scriptures as they see fit, for their purposes. They adhere to the letter and not to the spirit of the text, neglecting what St. Paul said: “For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6).

The Church was not born yesterday; her earthly age is 21 centuries. She has experienced all kinds of systems, situations, cultures, and heresies. The Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, has always expressed her faith and steadfastly witnessed to it—even unto martyrdom—through different circumstances and pressures, wars and persecutions, peace and freedom, on top of intellectual, cultural, and religious or atheistic trends. According to the word of the Lord, “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18).

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Faithfulness is required of all believers. You may differ with your brethren regarding matters unrelated to doctrine. We prevent fracture with continual love, humility, and dialogue. However, to monopolize Christ, appoint yourself as His spokesman, and break from His true Church to establish what you want His Church to be means that you have sunk to a level of pride that makes you a tool in the hands of Satan.

Read the entire article:
https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/1956

Please remember that our full calendar continues to be available at our parish web site. Here is a link:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Calendar/calendar.php

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Prosphora/Docs/prosphora sched 2024 web.pdf

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Altar/Docs/epistle readers for 2024.pdf

Epistle: ST. PAUL’S SECOND LETTER TO TIMOTHY 3:10-15

TIMOTHY, my son, you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch, at lconion, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Gospel: LUKE 18:10-14

The Lord said this parable, “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Deus Ex Machina
The Theology of Modern Idols

Hieromonk Gabriel

It seems that, for at least a good many people, 2023 will go down in history as the Year of AI. Almost overnight, the release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 ignited a veritable arms race between the most valuable tech companies in the world (we can only pray that such an arms race remains metaphorical — a possibility that, alas, is looking more and more unlikely). The usual suspects (most notably Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon, as well as Chinese firms like Alibaba and Baidu) have spared no expense in rushing their own AI products to market. Even Elon Musk, one of the most vocal of the handful of AI skeptics in the Silicon Valley set, has also jumped on board.

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But what I myself find extraordinarily troubling is not the apocalyptic language surrounding AI — no, it’s the religious language so often surrounding it.

“The reality is we’re creating God,” a former Google executive tells us (Google may have had its start as a search engine, but almost from the beginning co-founder Larry Page declared openly that Google’s main work is the development of artificial intelligence). Anthony Levandowski, another former Google executive who literally founded a church dedicated to the worship of AI, likewise says: “What is going to be created will effectively be a god. It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”

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This, then, is the shape of the new religion that has captured modern man. It is undeniably a religion of immense power, a religion which every second delivers signs and wonders scarcely imaginable in any past age of this world.

But then again, perhaps in our better moments we do know; perhaps, when our pride has finally begun to fail us, we can at long last hear at least a whisper of the voice of God.

And so it belongs to us Christians to obey the commandment given to us by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the Apostle Peter: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (I Pet. 3:15). When the men and women around us begin finally to weary of all the feeble trinkets and flashing toys which our false idols bring, it is absolutely imperative that they be able to see shining in each one of us the love and hope and joy that come from Christ alone.

But we cannot give away what we ourselves do not have. And so I will end my words with the words by which the Gospel always begins: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is, and will always be, the one and only answer to the false promises of the kingdom of man.

Read the entire article:
https://www.rememberingsion.com/p/deus-ex-machina-theology-modern-idols