A Day of Thought and Preparation

We left our little sea side town early in the morning and headed to Mycenae. At this site the remains of an ancient fortress stood on a hill overlooking the whole valley. The stones of these walls were massive, some weighing up to 200 tons. These walls were built in the 15th century BC! The engineering power that this shows is truly amazing, in ancient times people believed that the walls of the city were built by Cyclopes.  The view from the top of this fortress was stunning. The city was known for its wealth and power. Fifteen kilograms of gold were found in one of the mass, beehive graves just outside the city walls. This city is believed to be the mother city of the colonies of the "sea people" in Biblical Palestine, the Phoenicians and Philistines. This city also had colony in Troy. The Trojan War, that we are all familiar with from the Iliad, resulted from Mycenae trying to keep its control on its colony. It was very interesting to see the power, wealth and history of this ancient city.

As we drove back to Athens, we had time to discuss some of what we have been learning the past few weeks; we discussed what we learned in the Biblical text and why it mattered that we had gone to these sites. It was good to be able to have this time to really sit and think and process what we had seen in the past couple days, and really in the past few weeks. Looking at Paul’s letters, he was writing to a specific people, in a specific time, dealing with specific problems, problems of their culture. These letters still hold truth to us today, but it is important to understand the historical context of the letters in order to get a more full understanding. Being in these Greek cities helped me see how the struggles of the early church were real and how they could apply to me. We also talked about our discussions of the Eastern Orthodox Church and why that was important to do. The unity of the church has been a reoccurring theme, that I have seen appear in various places over the past few weeks. The unity of the church is very important, and how do we as Christians actively work towards that as a goal. It has been very useful to study the Orthodox tradition, so that we can begin to understand and even appreciate our differences. Through this understanding, maybe we can see that it is Christ that unifies us not our traditions.

When we got back to Athens, we had a few lectures by Drs. Cohick and Kalantzis. First, Dr. Cohick discussed the book of Revelations. We focused on this book today because we will be visiting the churches mentioned in the beginning of the book this upcoming week as we travel around Turkey. It was a very interesting lecture, explaining the apocalyptic genre that the book is written in and the different ways of interpreting the book. It was very useful to go through the different theological ways of understanding this book. We talked about how the book of Revelation shows the Glory and Power of God. It also gives hope; hope due to the perfect judgment of God, we can place our hope in his sovereignty. Dr. Cohick then lectured on Hermeneutics, the study of the activity of interpretation. This idea, along with exegesis, is very important with what we have been doing the past few weeks; trying to understand the historical context and see how the Bible still applies to us today. We discussed Speech-Act Theory, Relevance Theory and Redemptive Movement Hermeneutics, and in all of these schools of thought, we looked at the importance of the words and the importance of how we the reader interprets the words. There is somewhat of an ambiguity when reading the text of the Bible. This is not a bad thing, it allows the text ot be fluid, to grow, to not be static; it allows the Biblical text ot be just as relevant to me as it was to those reading it two thousand years ago. This however means that how we read and interpret the text is very important. We have to be aware of the weight and importance the words of the Bible have; we need to be aware of the author’s purpose; but our own reading and understanding is also important. It is however important to remember that our interpretation is not the center aspect. The Biblical text is dynamic and pushes us to grow by the power of the Holy Spirit, but it requires humility on our part.

In preparation for our excursion to Turkey tomorrow and our meeting the Patriarch of Constantinople in two days, Dr. Kalantzis, lecture to us about Orthodoxy in general, Orthodoxy in Turkey, and the Patriarchy. It was a good discussion that fostered questions that we can ask the Patriarch when we meet with him.