ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY THEN AND NOW: Ukrainian Weekly Ranks the Most Sinful Regions

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.

August 16, 2010

Ukrainian Weekly Ranks the Most Sinful Regions

13 August 2010
RISU

Ukrainian regions that are in the pit of "deadly sins", were defined by the weekly newspaper Kontrakty. The first position was won by Odessa (142 points) for greed, followed by the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, who scored the same points -126. Thus, in the Donetsk region the "major sin" became anger, and in Luhansk - greed.

In the fourth place is Dnipropetrovsk (124 points). Here the major sins are "lust" and "extravagance”. The fifth place belongs to Sumy (123 points), which basically sinned in "despair".

To determine the most sinful region of Ukraine, the newspaper used statistics for the last year. Statistics were correlated with eight sinful passions known in Orthodoxy: gluttony (the number of overweight people), lust (the number of cases of gonorrhea and syphilis per capita), greed (number of officially registered cases of bribery), anger (number of cases of murder and intentionally causing grievous bodily harm), acedia (the percentage of happy people), despair (the number of suicides), pride (number of unique license plates on cars).