I finally found a transcript of Israeli FM Liberman’s important and precedent-shattering UN address, so I present it here, having edited out what was beside the point - the “point” being that the Jews’ right to live in Israel as their ancestral homeland lies, not in their mistreatment by the Nazis or whomever else (on this score Ahmadinejad is right: Europeans handed the Jews over to be eliminated by Hitler, so they owe them a state in Europe; why should Palestinians have to ante up?) – rather, the Jews’ right to a homeland on their native soil in Israel rests in their role in the Creator’s pre-eternal plan that “the creation wait in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was made subject to corruption, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Rm 8:19-21
I’m not sure I know where true religion is to be found in North America! Certainly not in the so-called religious so-called conservatives with their hideous anti-abortion posters – and their hideously grimacing faces as they shout ----- whatever it is they shout, I get the news on my computer and keep the sound turned off so my ears will not be assaulted by such hatred. The prevalence of such types in our culture has virtually eliminated genuine love – which, however, is, as Freud clinically observed, the central drive of our very being! It is our drive for God and for everything rightly ordered to Him, so these people are left with nothing but one or another satirically ersatz caricature of love and the resulting pregnancy. No amount of punitive legislation is going to counter the onslaught of unwanted fetuses generated by precisely those individuals with their so-called anti-abortion rage.
So prior to any effort to read God’s Word in the Holy Bible, I think we will have to set aside the mentality that infamously passes for “christian” among us. Just as a current example: commentary on the Romans text I have quoted centered on whether or not “my dog is going to heaven”!!!! I mean, does your dog fall into the category “creation”? It says “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God”. If you don’t like the result re your dog – blame the Boss, I just work here.
Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens – who presents (to the types who are unable to envision their dogs in heaven with them – no further comment on that from me or I’ll be in trouble for sure!) so Dionysius presents a problem for such types. It is a problem also presented by the Jewish prophet Isaiah, whom the Foreign Minister quotes: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more“ – and Dionysius, like Isaiah, was so great a prophet that an entire “school” formed around him and over generations continued his teaching as also the holy manner of life which is based upon and fed by such sacred teachings. In fact, our hope as the spiritual progeny of Herbert Schwartz was that we would in this manner carry on his teaching so that the Church would be fed and healed by it, and such wise heal the society the Church informs – but, sadly, this has not happened. Those who absorbed and lived Herbert’s teaching have – as best I can see, I earnestly desire to be proven wrong on this – gone to their eternal rest. I truly do not know who, outside my own family, really knows what Herbert, in God’s providential plan, was all about.
And the Church and our nation, all the whole world, desperately need what Herbert taught us and bred into us, into the fibre of our very lives, he was as much God’s prophet in our own times as was St. Seraphim Sarov in his – or Isaiah in his, St. Dionysius in his, God has never left His creation without prophets to guide us in our struggle to be liberated from our bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Yet in our times “biblical scholars”, trained as “christians” by the likes of the afore-mentioned anti-abortionists, have taken matters into their own hands as regards biblical authorship, so that if you mention “Isaiah” to young priests freshly minted in our leading seminaries, they are likely to manipulate the discussion so as to be able to show off their scholarly awareness of whether the passage under discussion is from “Second Isaiah” or – come to think of it, if there is a second, there must be a first, but I don’t think I have heard mention of this – uh, second individual who would be First Isaiah!!! But my point is that such pseudo-scholars did even more of a job on St. Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, who is known among them as Pseudo-Dionysius!!! Such are the ways of such pseudo-christiansl
The result, and the point of our inquiry here being that virtually nobody, not even the Jews themselves – Herbert Schwartz being probably the only one in our times – are capable of understanding how the Jews’ right to a homeland on their native soil in Israel rests upon their role in the Creator’s pre-eternal plan that “the creation wait in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, in the hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
It was Dionysius the Areopagite who understood and taught how the whole process rests upon the axiom: BONUM DIFFUSUM EST SUI – Good is diffusive of itself. I discovered Dionysius and his teaching in the studies I did on my own after college for some 3 years or so, before I decided I needed a “devil’s advocate” to provide more stimulus, and accordingly matriculated at Georgetown – where the “smarties” were! Attending summer school at Catholic Univ., even in graduate classes I had been embarrassed for the students, they were not simply ignorant but just plain intellectually inept altogether - almost all seminarians.
Wikipedia Definition of “axiom”: “In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths.”
Ergo: You will not understand this axiom by heeding animal rights opponents’ opinion of “heaven” or biblical scholars’ notions of anything at all – you can only let it ‘sink into your ears’ as our Lord so often recommended. Like the axiom “a straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points”: you can only just accept it as obvious. Incidentally, they are now teaching math this way, it’s called Singapore math – because Singaporeans have demonstrated exceptional skill at math, and when they checked them out to find out why, this is what they discovered. It is a matter of – instead of relying on memorization – just giving the number-concepts themselves time and opportunities to sink into the students’ consciousness and inform it mathematically.
I think, therefore, that that UK scientist, I think Dawkins is his name, who said there is no need for a “God” to explain creation, and I read he said also that the Big Bang is “obvious” (presumably in the sense of being axiomatic), definitely may have something going for him, in that God is not to be understood as having created a “creation” somehow outside Himself. Or in “time”!!! Since “time” is only relevant to creation, God the uncreated creator abides in eternity – it’s sort of silly, don’t you think, to quibble, write PhD theses and all the rest on “when” and “how” the world was created??? I mean, without the created order, there is no “before” and no “after”!!! The same is true, mutatis mutandi, of all “place/space” concepts.
An indication that God’s creative plan is an axiomatic truth is Paul’s address to the Athenians. Some of the PhD quibblers opine that Paul, who upon his arrival in Athenians, “was deeply distressed to see the city full of idols” Ac 17:16, spoke with disapproving irony or sarcasm when he addressed the Athenians formally at the Areopagus. This seems improbable, however, because I think Paul was not, like Obama, so naïve as to start right off scolding his supporters! (Not that Obama shouldn’t have done that – its ABOUT TIME!!!)
I feel further confidence that I am on the right track re the Apostle Paul (who, incidentally, is called “Christ’s Mouthpiece” by St. Gregory Palamas, a 14th century spiritual re-incarnation of St. Dionysius) because I know from checking myriad Pauline passages as I have been working on these issues for 30 years now, ever since I got Herbert’s blessing on continuing my doctoral studies, just before his repose, Nov. 1,1980 – from this research I know that nothing is more mistranslated in English Bibles than Pauline texts!!! I use my Russian Bible, translated by the Russian Church from the Leningrad Codex, recognized as the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day, and I compare this with the Greek – the languages being linguistically almost identical, I think I could not find more accurate source texts.
Here is the passage, Ac 17:22-34
Paul, standing in front of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He himselfgives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And He made from one ancestor [rendered “of one blood” in some translations; I am at present away from home and without my reference books to check further] every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place [i.e., the categories of time and space!!!], that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.
“Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In Him we live and move and have our being' - as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed His offspring.'
[Read the foregoing in the light of Paul’s confession:
Young's Literal Translation – Gal 2:20
”with Christ I have been crucified, and live no more do I, Christ doth live in me; and that which I now live in the flesh -- I live in the faith of the Son of God, who did love me and did give himself for me”]
“Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. God overlooked the times of ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which He will judge the worldin righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
…Some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
Foreign Minister Liberman: This Man Whom God has appointed, giving assurance to all by raising Him from the dead – is, of course, the Jewish Messiah, foreseen and attested by no prophet who preceded or succeeded Him with more vivid spiritual discernment than we see in Isaiah, the great Jewish prophet whom you quote, especially in the “Suffering Servant” passages (of which Is 53 is the fourth – you can google the rest on your own, I lack the patience to navigate through all the “Isaiah’s” – especially as I see there are actually 3 Isaiah’s - !!! - and of course the teaching is hacked up by the exegetes accordingly.)
I myself came to experience how “in Him we live and move and have our being“ principally in connection with my mother – my Mama, although it was after she fell asleep in the Lord on the feast of Theophany. I was blessed to have in my memory the experience of a mother whose entire life was devoted to my well-being, the gift our Lord gave me that I might through her behold His Mother, as He commanded all of us from the Cross through St. John, Jn 19:26f. And so I experienced in my own person and at every moment what Herbert (like Paul) constantly emphasized – as is also very strongly the Orthodox tradition – that we live our lives IN MARY’S SACRED WOMB! When I first saw someone’s demise announced in French as his “jour de naissance” I was surprised, but I caught on quick!
And this gave me an insight into how Good/God is diffusive of Himself. See Phil 2:5-12:
Have this mind [“mind” as the dynamic force driving all our highest motivations and aspirations] in you which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled [Slavonic: lowered] Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
This is the ingeniously clever manner which God the Creator -- the good which of its very essence is diffusive of itself – devised for actually entering into the created order AS A CREATURE – in order to raise His creature to participation even in the divinity itself of the uncreated-Creator!!! See: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” 2Pet 1:4 (King James trans.)
And so He needs must have all the appurtenances of humankind! A people, its land, its history, its language, etc. A MOTHER to beget Him in human flesh – conceiving by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit:
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you…. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Lk 1:26-35
Mary’s virginity is thus the guarantor that her child is in very truth the SON OF GOD, conceived without human seed (her sinlessness is not the issue here), but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the seal of her maidenhead remaining intact. A major theme of the services between Easter and Pentecost is how Christ came from His Mother’s womb leaving her seal unbroken just as, after His crucifixion, He rose from the sealed tomb, the seal remaining unbroken. She is thus identified with that “sealed gate” of Ezekiel: “And the LORD said to me, ‘This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it. Therefore it shall remain shut.’” Ez 44:2 This is the rationale of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
Thus Christ makes known His divinity: being God, He is not subject to creaturely constraints. Yet, being a creature, taking His human, fleshly nature from His Mother, He is of our race, able to divinize us, through our participation through Him in the divine nature. As St. Paul so often repeats, the theme being taken up by our services: God the Word has clothed Himself in ME!!!
BONUM DIFFUSUM EST SUI
And being found in human form He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Phil 2:5-15
Speech at the UN General Assembly September 28 2010 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman
At the outset, I want to emphasize that contrary to what is often shown in the international media, the political arena in Israel is not divided between those who seek peace and those who seek war. Everyone wants peace and the controversy in Israel centers on the specific question of how to achieve this peace; how to reach security and stability in the region.
Contrary to the prevalent view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the heart of the instability in the Middle East or is the main reason for the region's numerous conflicts, the reality is entirely different…
The second flawed explanation for the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians which has gained popularity is that the root of the problem is the so-called "occupation", the settlements in Judea and Samaria and the settlers themselves….
The other misguided argument is the claim that the Palestinian issue prevents a determined international front against Iran. …This argument is not only flawed, it is completely irresponsible…. Just as the Khomeini Revolution had nothing to do with the Palestinian issue, so too is the Iranian decision to develop nuclear weapons unrelated.
In truth, the connection between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is precisely reversed. Iran can exist without Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, but the terrorist organizations cannot exist without Iran. Relying on these proxies, Iran can at any given time foil any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians or with Lebanon. Thus, in searching for a durable agreement with the Palestinians, one which will deal with the true roots of the conflict and which will endure for many years, one must understand that first, the Iranian issue must be resolved.
One must deal first with the root of the problem and not its symptoms…. In trying to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, we are dealing with two types of problems: emotional problems and practical problems. This is why the solution must also be a two-staged one.
The emotional problems are first and foremost the utter lack of confidence between the sides…
[I do not agree with his contention that this could “take a few decades” - or that time in the temporal sense is, as such, part of the issue. “Raising an entire new generation will not as such ensure mutual trust which will not be influenced by incitement and extremist messages.
Temporal considerations do not have any necessary bearing, however, on Liberman’s very sound conclusion:]
To achieve a final status agreement, we must understand that the primary practical obstacle is the friction between the two nations.
As is true everywhere, where there are two nations, two religions and two languages with competing claims to the same land, there is friction and conflict. Countless examples of ethnic conflict around the world confirm this, whether in the Balkans, the Caucuses, Africa, the Far East or the Middle East.
Where effective separation has been achieved, conflict has either been avoided, or has been dramatically reduced or resolved. Consider the cases of the former Yugoslav republics, the split-up of Czechoslovakia and the independence of East Timor, as cases in point.
Thus, the guiding principle for a final status agreement must not be land-for-peace but rather, exchange of populated territory. Let me be very clear: I am not speaking about moving populations, but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an extraordinary insight, and is far less controversial than some may seek to claim. In fact, precisely this notion – that a mismatch between borders and nationalities is a recipe for conflict – has long been accepted as a virtual truism in the academic community.
But beyond empirical truth, there is historical truth: almost 4000 years during which the Jewish People were born in the Land of Israel, while developing the corpus of ethical and intellectual treasures that have been instrumental in giving rise to Western Civilization. [The succeeding] 2000 years of forced exile, and interim conquest by Byzantines, Arabs, Mamelukes, Ottomans and others, cannot, and never will, impair the unbreakable bonds of the Jewish People to its homeland. Israel is not only where we are. It is who we are.
In closing, let me remind everyone in this hall about the quote that adorns the United Nations plaza outside, spoken in Jerusalem almost 3000 years ago by the Jewish prophet Isaiah: וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים, וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת--לֹא-יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל-גּוֹי חֶרֶב, וְלֹא-יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. “
Inspired by the deep wisdom embodied in these words, let us hope that the path to true peace prophesied by Isaiah, will guide our two peoples, in two nation-states, living in peace and security.
Thank You.
I’m not sure I know where true religion is to be found in North America! Certainly not in the so-called religious so-called conservatives with their hideous anti-abortion posters – and their hideously grimacing faces as they shout ----- whatever it is they shout, I get the news on my computer and keep the sound turned off so my ears will not be assaulted by such hatred. The prevalence of such types in our culture has virtually eliminated genuine love – which, however, is, as Freud clinically observed, the central drive of our very being! It is our drive for God and for everything rightly ordered to Him, so these people are left with nothing but one or another satirically ersatz caricature of love and the resulting pregnancy. No amount of punitive legislation is going to counter the onslaught of unwanted fetuses generated by precisely those individuals with their so-called anti-abortion rage.
So prior to any effort to read God’s Word in the Holy Bible, I think we will have to set aside the mentality that infamously passes for “christian” among us. Just as a current example: commentary on the Romans text I have quoted centered on whether or not “my dog is going to heaven”!!!! I mean, does your dog fall into the category “creation”? It says “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God”. If you don’t like the result re your dog – blame the Boss, I just work here.
Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens – who presents (to the types who are unable to envision their dogs in heaven with them – no further comment on that from me or I’ll be in trouble for sure!) so Dionysius presents a problem for such types. It is a problem also presented by the Jewish prophet Isaiah, whom the Foreign Minister quotes: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more“ – and Dionysius, like Isaiah, was so great a prophet that an entire “school” formed around him and over generations continued his teaching as also the holy manner of life which is based upon and fed by such sacred teachings. In fact, our hope as the spiritual progeny of Herbert Schwartz was that we would in this manner carry on his teaching so that the Church would be fed and healed by it, and such wise heal the society the Church informs – but, sadly, this has not happened. Those who absorbed and lived Herbert’s teaching have – as best I can see, I earnestly desire to be proven wrong on this – gone to their eternal rest. I truly do not know who, outside my own family, really knows what Herbert, in God’s providential plan, was all about.
And the Church and our nation, all the whole world, desperately need what Herbert taught us and bred into us, into the fibre of our very lives, he was as much God’s prophet in our own times as was St. Seraphim Sarov in his – or Isaiah in his, St. Dionysius in his, God has never left His creation without prophets to guide us in our struggle to be liberated from our bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Yet in our times “biblical scholars”, trained as “christians” by the likes of the afore-mentioned anti-abortionists, have taken matters into their own hands as regards biblical authorship, so that if you mention “Isaiah” to young priests freshly minted in our leading seminaries, they are likely to manipulate the discussion so as to be able to show off their scholarly awareness of whether the passage under discussion is from “Second Isaiah” or – come to think of it, if there is a second, there must be a first, but I don’t think I have heard mention of this – uh, second individual who would be First Isaiah!!! But my point is that such pseudo-scholars did even more of a job on St. Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, who is known among them as Pseudo-Dionysius!!! Such are the ways of such pseudo-christiansl
The result, and the point of our inquiry here being that virtually nobody, not even the Jews themselves – Herbert Schwartz being probably the only one in our times – are capable of understanding how the Jews’ right to a homeland on their native soil in Israel rests upon their role in the Creator’s pre-eternal plan that “the creation wait in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, in the hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
It was Dionysius the Areopagite who understood and taught how the whole process rests upon the axiom: BONUM DIFFUSUM EST SUI – Good is diffusive of itself. I discovered Dionysius and his teaching in the studies I did on my own after college for some 3 years or so, before I decided I needed a “devil’s advocate” to provide more stimulus, and accordingly matriculated at Georgetown – where the “smarties” were! Attending summer school at Catholic Univ., even in graduate classes I had been embarrassed for the students, they were not simply ignorant but just plain intellectually inept altogether - almost all seminarians.
Wikipedia Definition of “axiom”: “In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths.”
Ergo: You will not understand this axiom by heeding animal rights opponents’ opinion of “heaven” or biblical scholars’ notions of anything at all – you can only let it ‘sink into your ears’ as our Lord so often recommended. Like the axiom “a straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points”: you can only just accept it as obvious. Incidentally, they are now teaching math this way, it’s called Singapore math – because Singaporeans have demonstrated exceptional skill at math, and when they checked them out to find out why, this is what they discovered. It is a matter of – instead of relying on memorization – just giving the number-concepts themselves time and opportunities to sink into the students’ consciousness and inform it mathematically.
I think, therefore, that that UK scientist, I think Dawkins is his name, who said there is no need for a “God” to explain creation, and I read he said also that the Big Bang is “obvious” (presumably in the sense of being axiomatic), definitely may have something going for him, in that God is not to be understood as having created a “creation” somehow outside Himself. Or in “time”!!! Since “time” is only relevant to creation, God the uncreated creator abides in eternity – it’s sort of silly, don’t you think, to quibble, write PhD theses and all the rest on “when” and “how” the world was created??? I mean, without the created order, there is no “before” and no “after”!!! The same is true, mutatis mutandi, of all “place/space” concepts.
An indication that God’s creative plan is an axiomatic truth is Paul’s address to the Athenians. Some of the PhD quibblers opine that Paul, who upon his arrival in Athenians, “was deeply distressed to see the city full of idols” Ac 17:16, spoke with disapproving irony or sarcasm when he addressed the Athenians formally at the Areopagus. This seems improbable, however, because I think Paul was not, like Obama, so naïve as to start right off scolding his supporters! (Not that Obama shouldn’t have done that – its ABOUT TIME!!!)
I feel further confidence that I am on the right track re the Apostle Paul (who, incidentally, is called “Christ’s Mouthpiece” by St. Gregory Palamas, a 14th century spiritual re-incarnation of St. Dionysius) because I know from checking myriad Pauline passages as I have been working on these issues for 30 years now, ever since I got Herbert’s blessing on continuing my doctoral studies, just before his repose, Nov. 1,1980 – from this research I know that nothing is more mistranslated in English Bibles than Pauline texts!!! I use my Russian Bible, translated by the Russian Church from the Leningrad Codex, recognized as the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day, and I compare this with the Greek – the languages being linguistically almost identical, I think I could not find more accurate source texts.
Here is the passage, Ac 17:22-34
Paul, standing in front of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He himselfgives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And He made from one ancestor [rendered “of one blood” in some translations; I am at present away from home and without my reference books to check further] every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place [i.e., the categories of time and space!!!], that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.
“Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In Him we live and move and have our being' - as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed His offspring.'
[Read the foregoing in the light of Paul’s confession:
Young's Literal Translation – Gal 2:20
”with Christ I have been crucified, and live no more do I, Christ doth live in me; and that which I now live in the flesh -- I live in the faith of the Son of God, who did love me and did give himself for me”]
“Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. God overlooked the times of ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which He will judge the worldin righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
…Some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
Foreign Minister Liberman: This Man Whom God has appointed, giving assurance to all by raising Him from the dead – is, of course, the Jewish Messiah, foreseen and attested by no prophet who preceded or succeeded Him with more vivid spiritual discernment than we see in Isaiah, the great Jewish prophet whom you quote, especially in the “Suffering Servant” passages (of which Is 53 is the fourth – you can google the rest on your own, I lack the patience to navigate through all the “Isaiah’s” – especially as I see there are actually 3 Isaiah’s - !!! - and of course the teaching is hacked up by the exegetes accordingly.)
I myself came to experience how “in Him we live and move and have our being“ principally in connection with my mother – my Mama, although it was after she fell asleep in the Lord on the feast of Theophany. I was blessed to have in my memory the experience of a mother whose entire life was devoted to my well-being, the gift our Lord gave me that I might through her behold His Mother, as He commanded all of us from the Cross through St. John, Jn 19:26f. And so I experienced in my own person and at every moment what Herbert (like Paul) constantly emphasized – as is also very strongly the Orthodox tradition – that we live our lives IN MARY’S SACRED WOMB! When I first saw someone’s demise announced in French as his “jour de naissance” I was surprised, but I caught on quick!
And this gave me an insight into how Good/God is diffusive of Himself. See Phil 2:5-12:
Have this mind [“mind” as the dynamic force driving all our highest motivations and aspirations] in you which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled [Slavonic: lowered] Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
This is the ingeniously clever manner which God the Creator -- the good which of its very essence is diffusive of itself – devised for actually entering into the created order AS A CREATURE – in order to raise His creature to participation even in the divinity itself of the uncreated-Creator!!! See: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” 2Pet 1:4 (King James trans.)
And so He needs must have all the appurtenances of humankind! A people, its land, its history, its language, etc. A MOTHER to beget Him in human flesh – conceiving by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit:
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you…. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Lk 1:26-35
Mary’s virginity is thus the guarantor that her child is in very truth the SON OF GOD, conceived without human seed (her sinlessness is not the issue here), but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the seal of her maidenhead remaining intact. A major theme of the services between Easter and Pentecost is how Christ came from His Mother’s womb leaving her seal unbroken just as, after His crucifixion, He rose from the sealed tomb, the seal remaining unbroken. She is thus identified with that “sealed gate” of Ezekiel: “And the LORD said to me, ‘This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it. Therefore it shall remain shut.’” Ez 44:2 This is the rationale of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
Thus Christ makes known His divinity: being God, He is not subject to creaturely constraints. Yet, being a creature, taking His human, fleshly nature from His Mother, He is of our race, able to divinize us, through our participation through Him in the divine nature. As St. Paul so often repeats, the theme being taken up by our services: God the Word has clothed Himself in ME!!!
BONUM DIFFUSUM EST SUI
And being found in human form He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Phil 2:5-15
Speech at the UN General Assembly September 28 2010 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman
At the outset, I want to emphasize that contrary to what is often shown in the international media, the political arena in Israel is not divided between those who seek peace and those who seek war. Everyone wants peace and the controversy in Israel centers on the specific question of how to achieve this peace; how to reach security and stability in the region.
Contrary to the prevalent view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the heart of the instability in the Middle East or is the main reason for the region's numerous conflicts, the reality is entirely different…
The second flawed explanation for the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians which has gained popularity is that the root of the problem is the so-called "occupation", the settlements in Judea and Samaria and the settlers themselves….
The other misguided argument is the claim that the Palestinian issue prevents a determined international front against Iran. …This argument is not only flawed, it is completely irresponsible…. Just as the Khomeini Revolution had nothing to do with the Palestinian issue, so too is the Iranian decision to develop nuclear weapons unrelated.
In truth, the connection between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is precisely reversed. Iran can exist without Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, but the terrorist organizations cannot exist without Iran. Relying on these proxies, Iran can at any given time foil any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians or with Lebanon. Thus, in searching for a durable agreement with the Palestinians, one which will deal with the true roots of the conflict and which will endure for many years, one must understand that first, the Iranian issue must be resolved.
One must deal first with the root of the problem and not its symptoms…. In trying to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, we are dealing with two types of problems: emotional problems and practical problems. This is why the solution must also be a two-staged one.
The emotional problems are first and foremost the utter lack of confidence between the sides…
[I do not agree with his contention that this could “take a few decades” - or that time in the temporal sense is, as such, part of the issue. “Raising an entire new generation will not as such ensure mutual trust which will not be influenced by incitement and extremist messages.
Temporal considerations do not have any necessary bearing, however, on Liberman’s very sound conclusion:]
To achieve a final status agreement, we must understand that the primary practical obstacle is the friction between the two nations.
As is true everywhere, where there are two nations, two religions and two languages with competing claims to the same land, there is friction and conflict. Countless examples of ethnic conflict around the world confirm this, whether in the Balkans, the Caucuses, Africa, the Far East or the Middle East.
Where effective separation has been achieved, conflict has either been avoided, or has been dramatically reduced or resolved. Consider the cases of the former Yugoslav republics, the split-up of Czechoslovakia and the independence of East Timor, as cases in point.
Thus, the guiding principle for a final status agreement must not be land-for-peace but rather, exchange of populated territory. Let me be very clear: I am not speaking about moving populations, but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an extraordinary insight, and is far less controversial than some may seek to claim. In fact, precisely this notion – that a mismatch between borders and nationalities is a recipe for conflict – has long been accepted as a virtual truism in the academic community.
But beyond empirical truth, there is historical truth: almost 4000 years during which the Jewish People were born in the Land of Israel, while developing the corpus of ethical and intellectual treasures that have been instrumental in giving rise to Western Civilization. [The succeeding] 2000 years of forced exile, and interim conquest by Byzantines, Arabs, Mamelukes, Ottomans and others, cannot, and never will, impair the unbreakable bonds of the Jewish People to its homeland. Israel is not only where we are. It is who we are.
In closing, let me remind everyone in this hall about the quote that adorns the United Nations plaza outside, spoken in Jerusalem almost 3000 years ago by the Jewish prophet Isaiah: וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים, וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת--לֹא-יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל-גּוֹי חֶרֶב, וְלֹא-יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. “
Inspired by the deep wisdom embodied in these words, let us hope that the path to true peace prophesied by Isaiah, will guide our two peoples, in two nation-states, living in peace and security.
Thank You.