More Scenes from Beautiful Iznik (Nicea)

In this post I am simply trying to give you a feel for the modern city of Iznik (population 20,000). The major industry here today is not tourism, as one might expect, since Iznik is off the beaten path. If you look carefully at the map here, and look at the left side near the top you will see the name Iznik right beside a small body of water, and not too far from the Bosphorus and Istanbul. This city however is well off the regular tourist run which sticks much closer to the west coast of Turkey, only venturing in land to go to Pammukale (Hierapolis), or perhaps Cappadocia. This northwest corner of Turkey has been neglected by tourists, and it is a pity.

The second shot here shows just how intact the Roman walls, enhanced by the Byzantines, and then the Ottomans, are. Recent excavations have unearthed more of Hadrian's gates, and also his aqueduct.

You'll see one of the gates and the Roman pavement in the next picture. Adjacent is the picture of the Turkish bath, from the entrance and then from the side, which is now the Iznik tile museum and craftsman shop, a definite place to visit.

I have included a couple of street scenes to give you the flavor of the center of town, which has gorgeous tree lines but narrow streets. Notice the vendor selling hot steamed corn on the cob on a stick, a Turkish favorite.

The three pictures that follow show the recent excavations at Hadrian's gates.


There is then a picture taken from the graveyard which overlooks the whole city, giving you a panorama of the city and its lake.

This is followed, sadly by a shot of most of what is left of Constantine's Senate house on the lake where the first council of Nicea in 325 was held, and this in turn is followed by a shot of a scene that all the early Romans and Christians must have admired many times-- dawn, over the placid waters of lake Nicea.

Holy Blogging Batman!

This cartoon appeared in a Turkish newpaper....enjoy.

Historic Nicea (Iznik)

Nestled in the hills which surround Iznik lake is the beautiful small town (about 22,000) of Iznik. The unassuming tourist might well mistake it for just another little Turkish town, but in fact it is a city of great historical importance to the Christian faith, and also to the development of high art in the form of decorative tiles, bowels, and plates (known as Iznik tiles). But let us start with the ancient history. The town of Iznik was of great strategic importance to the Romans, so much so that they built huge walls around the town, had large plantations near by, and both Trajan and Hadrian had gates erected for this city. I have included a couple of shots of these gates which are still being excavated as we speak. The city derives its Greek name from the fact that two generals of Alexander, after his death fought in 301 B.C. over control of this city, and Lysimakos won, with the result that he named the town after his beautiful wife, Nicea. Unlike some cities which had to be captured by the Romans, and be subjected to seige, one of the last of the Greek kings of Asia, Nikomedes III ceded the town to the rising power, Rome, in 74 B.C. and it suffered no damage.

Nicea was often in competition with its neighboring cities to be the chief city, or 'capital' of the region, and it is a measure of its importance that Trajan and the governor of Bithynia, the famous Pliny the younger both undertook construction projects here, the later making a start on building a theater, which was unfortunately not finished due to earthquake, apparently. In fact, the whole city had been recovering for almost two centuries from a devastating earthquake in 123 B.C. and it was Hadrian who in fact gave the order that the city must be rebuilt. We see both gates and city walls still today from Hadrian's construction. And clearly enough important Romans lived there during the NT era as well, for we find a remarkable triangular obelisk that serves as a burial memorial to a Roman noble who owned a plantation just outside the city in the middle of the first century A.D. The many burial sarcophagi which are marble and highly ornate, attest to the considerable presence of socially elite Romans in the city during and after the NT era.

The archaeological museum in Iznik is well worth the visit, and it chronicles for us in detail the extensive Roman population in the region during the early Christian era. That Roman presence continued all the way through the whole era of the Roman Empire, and so not surprisingly Constantine, as the first Christian emperor saw this as a crucial city as well, and a good meeting place for the first major Christian council, after Christianity had been removed from the list of illicit religions, or 'superstitio', by Constantine. The first council of Nicea held in 325 A.D. brought together bishops from all over the Empire, including of course Bishop Arius from Alexandria who wished to maintain that Christ, while he had a nature like that of God's, nevertheless it was not the same divine nature or essence as God had.

Students of church history will remember the debate over the two words homousios (of the same substance) and homoiousos (of like substance), which Arius supporting the latter reading. This debate was heated, and is well chronicled in Ramsay MacMillan's recent slender but fascinating entitled Voting on God. The end result of the council of 325 was that it was declared that the Son shared the same substance or nature or 'ousia' as the Father, and at the same time shared the same substance or nature as a human being-- both fully divine and fully human. Among other things, the Nicean creed was the result of this council. It is important to bear in mind that Christological orthodoxy in regard to this matter was established before the closing of the NT canon in the latter part of the fourth century A.D. Orthodoxy in regard to Christology was seen as a more crucial issue than the limits of the NT Scriptures, though the two issues are intertwined.

Unfortunately for this city, earthquakes struck inA.D. 358, 362, and 368, ruining many of the monumental buildings and structures. Nevertheless, the seventh ecumenical council was held here in 787 A.D. a church which I have provided pictures of in this blog entry. The name of the church was Hagia Sophia, just like the much larger one in Istanbul. That council voted against iconclasm-- the destruction of icons and so-called 'images'.

During the Byzantine period, Nicea had briefly been the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and during the the 4th Crusade in 1204, after Emperor Theodoros had been expelled from Constantinople, he made his capital in Nicea.

Much later in its history, Nicea became famous for something else. During the Golden era of the Ottoman period, and especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, the city became prosperous due to the patronage of the Grand Vizier, and we find the origins of the famous Iznik tile and pottery in this period. I have provided one picture of some of this beautiful tile, which seems to have been the art which was to inspire the later European potters, including those who made the famous blue Delft pottery and tile. If you visit the famous Ottoman palace, the Topkapi palace in Istanbul, you will find whole rooms plastered with this beautiful tile. There is so much more I could say about this gorgeous city, and its hospitable people, but this must be enough for now.

The Underwater Archaeology Museum at Bodrum

Nestled on the southwest coast of Turkey is the beautiful resort town of Bodrum, which is actually an ancient Roman (and before that Greek) harbor town. Not surprisingly, there are many shipwrecked boats not far from this harbor, which as you can see, is still a safe haven for boats. And so there could hardly be a more appropriate spot for an underwater archaeology museum (no the museum is not underwater, its in a Crusader castle actually). The pictures below show you a boat, full of amphora that went to the bottom of the drink, loaded with drink (more specifically wine. Now that wine had been chilled for 2,000 years before it was brought up).

The first picture is the schematic of what the original boat looked like, the second shows the boat from the side. On the left side of the fourth slide (underwater slide) you will notice the large slabs of gold plate. Gold was used for many things, but before money was the basis of any economy, precious metals, and especially gold were molded into large plates of a specific weight (the ancient equivalent of gold bricks), and became the basis for trade and purchase.
There is a further picture of the boat from a different angle, and then some of the actual gold salvaged from the boat itself. In stark contrast is the last picture, of a stone anchor. We tend to think of anchors as made of metal, but the ancients saw that as a waste of good metal, causing it to rust, so they tended to use stones like the one pictured below. Recently, there have been spectacular underwater finds in the Bosphorus near Istanbul as well. My friend Meltem has kindly provided me with links to the National Geographic sites where one can learn more about such excavations.

National Geographic has just made a series of documentaries about the new construction under the Bosphorus and the excavations under the water

The links are ;

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/3106/Overview#tab-Videos/05397_00

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/player.html?channel=1803&category=5566&title=5397

Recently, on one of my many flights I watched a movie entitled Fool's Gold with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey and Donald Sutherland. It wasn't a very good movie, but it did deal a bit with the hard tasks and dangers involved in underwater archaeology. A good deal of progress has been made in this field, and I am happy to report that before long there should be much to say about what has been found in the Alexandrian harbor as well in Egypt. Stay tuned. As it turns out, some archaeologists are all wet :)

Russian Cake Baking Contest

O.K. so first of all, the Russians love their sweets, both cakes and candies. You should see the sweet shops. So they had a cake baking contest, with
the most creative representation of something real winning. I'll let you vote for your favorite of these 12 cakes. They were allowed to use a
little supporting structure, but basically it had to be all cake and frosting. Bon appetit! Me personally, I like the night club and the Pepsis.

Euromos-- The Growth of Paganism in the Christian Era

We will begin our tour of places I visited this summer in Turkey. The first is in some ways one of the oldest and most well preserved of the Greek cities visited. It is also today one of the most obscure and difficult to find, as it is not on the beaten track that any tour bus would go on, and yet it is clearly visible from the road. This was a critically important city of the Greek league in Asia Minor, and it has clear connections with the famous Hellenistic ruler Mauselos, whose mammoth and grandiose tomb gave us the term 'mausoleum'.

The distinction of this second century temple built to the honor of Zeus (see the honorific inscription in the picture below) is that it is one of the 3-4 best preserved Greek temples from the first or second century A.D. and it shows beyond cavil that paganism was still alive and being supported by massive building projects such as this one. What is interesting about this one is that the city was no longer a major and crucial city north of the port at Bodrum and yet the building projects went on. What this temple also shows is that it was not only the Emperor cult that was being supported by the propaganda of
erecting religious buildings. One needs of course a tour guide to find such important but obscure sites, and you will find him depicted above :). Enjoy.

A Three D Jesus in a High Def World

One of the things you find at the Moscow Flea Market is products made by the new laser technologies. Naturally enough someone was going to try and capture Jesus in glass through this technology and with some considerable success. Here are two images, one front one from the side, which show the the 3 D Jesus. On either side of his halo are the proper nomina sacra, the abbreviations for Insous Christos, and in the halo itself you can see the abbreviation indicating he is the alpha and omega. Over his head is a small flame (flame on Jesus). The most interesting feature here is Jesus is holding a Russian Bible in old Slavonic. Who knew that an Aramaic speaking Jesus read old Slavonic? As they say in Russia Slava Boga (Praise God).

In any case, we need a 3 D Jesus in this High Def world. Most of the Jesus' we offer the world are far too monochrome, one dimensional, and frankly just fall flat (as in flat screen). I am finally safely home, so you may prepare your self for a multitude of posts from materials from the trip, including some archaeology reports from Turkey.

The Freedom of God and the Free Will of Human Beings

One of the more interesting subjects to discuss is the freedom of God. What exactly is God free to do or not to do? Is God's will the primary and controlling divine attribute such that even God's knowledge is dependent on God's will in the first place? Are there things that a sovereign God cannot do? For example, is God free to sin? Or is God's behavior determined by the unalterable divine nature? That is, is God subject to the same sort of determinism some Christians believe applies to human beings? These sorts of questions and their answers all have a bearing on how we ask and answer the question about human freedom and its nature.

A few preliminary points are in order. Firstly, I take it that the primary attribute of God is not God's will but rather God's love, which is a holy love. Not holiness without love, and not love without holiness. I say this because God's will has primarily to do with his doing, but what is prior to that is God's being or character, and in my view God's willing is dependent on his character. There are certain things which, while theoretically God might be able to do, God would never do because it would be 'out of character'. For example God is light, and in God is no darkness at all. This I take to mean that God would never do evil nor commit sin. Of course there have been theologians who have argued that the terms good or evil are simply defined by what God does or does not do and sanction. I think there is a problem with this whole approach. The moral order of the universe and more specifically the image of God in human beings is meant to tend in a particular direction, namely conformity to the character of God. God says "be ye holy as I am holy". There is supposed to be a reflection of the divine character in us, and indeed in all of creation. This in turn means that God, having set up the universe in a particular way, is not free to be capricious and redefine the meaning of holy in the middle of the game. God has chosen to express the divine nature in a particular way and has chosen to limit himself such that God as well as all of his creation is subject to certain standards of truth, holiness, love, and so on. This is a complicated matter, but the bottom line is that once God set up a universe with other free agents other than himself, God is not free to do just anything without violating his revealed character and will. This is not an absolute limitation. I am assume God could set up a definition of sin and could violate it, but if God did, he would cease to be the good God of the Bible. It is the last refuge of a scoundrel to say that God who has already defined darkness and light, can change the definition along the way so that "whatever is, is right, because God has done and said it". This is one of the reasons why it is terribly false to predicate of God sins that he prohibits us from doing, say for example destroying innocent human lives for no good or appropriate reason. But I digress.

I assume that when human beings were created in the image of God this meant, among other things that Adam had libertarian freedom to either obey God or not. It is not appropriate to judge this matter on the basis of the attributes of fallen human beings who indeed in various ways can be said to be in bondage to sin or addicted to sinful behaviors. No the question is, how did God make us in the first place, and how in Christ does God restore us in Christ as we are renewed in the image of Christ? Does grace restore the power of contrary choice in redemption or not? Of course much depends on one's view of grace. Some people think grace works rather like an escalator-- it does all the heavy lifting and we are just along for the ride. I disagree with this. Grace is not irresistible, it is rather a form of enablement from a gracious God which gives us a further chance to freely love and obey God. In other words, we must indeed work out our salvation with fear and trembling, God's grace does not do it all for us and in spite of us.

Another of the major issues which affects this discussion is the nature of love. Now I understand love to be something that is the most personal act of either God or human beings. And furthermore it is the most free and freeing act of all beings. It must be freely given and freely received. It cannot be coerced, co-opted, manipulated, and it most certainly does not work in an impersonal manner, like say the way iron filings are attracted to a magnet. God is not a magnet, and he does not treat his creatures in an impersonal way that makes their behavior inevitable, and if he did, it would cease to be personal and loving behavior on our part for sure.

This leads me to a further point. Ethics in the Bible are largely what are called virtue ethics. They are not intended to be exercises in futility or frustration. Nor is the function of ethical enjoinders to simply give us a clear picture of our impotence compared to God, though it must be said it often has such an effect. Now virtue ethics require that a person has the capacity to be virtuous, by which I mean, the person has the capacity to either freely behave in this way or not. Otherwise there is nothing virtuous about the behavior. The fight or flight pure instinct of a deer, for example, is not an example of making a conscious choice to "do the right thing". I am utterly convinced that the Bible calls us to be virtuous beings, or as Paul suggests in Phil. 4 to be creatures who can not merely reflect on what is noble and excellent, but seek and attempt to do it. The commands to love as we are loved, to forgive as we are forgiven, and so on, presuppose that grace actually enables us to freely attempt to imitate Christ and do what he commands us to do, at least approximately. God is an ethical being and he wants Christians to reflect the highest and best behavior a human being can muster. Indeed, he commands us to do it, but as Augustine says, God gives what he commands, he enables us to believe and behave as we ought to do.

In short, the discussion of the freedom of human beings should never be undertaken in isolation from the discussion of the freedom of God, and the ways God has chosen to limit himself in order to allow us to be beings with a limited measure of freedom, and so a small reflection of the divine character. Here we must return at the end of this discussion to the matter of God's will and knowledge. Notice how in Rom. 9-11 God foreknows things that he did not will, for example the apostasy of Israel and the rejection of its savior by most early Jews. God not only did not will this, it breaks his heart in the same way it breaks Paul's. What this tells me is that Calvin was wrong about the relationship between God's will and God's knowledge. God does not merely know it because he wills it. There is some other relationship between knowing and willing in God and they are not inexorably linked. At the end of the day I believe whole heartedly in what John 3.16-17 says, God loves the whole fallen world, and Jesus died for the sins of all human beings as 1 Tim. 2 also says. This in turn means there are other agents in play in the matter of redemption, human agents who can either positively or negatively respond to the Gospel, and the eternal lostness of some is in no way willed or destined by God. Were the matter otherwise, our God ceases to be a good God, by God's own definition of goodness. One final reminder-- as the prophets told us God requires of us that we reflect the divine character-- to do justice to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. What God requires of us, he enables us to do, so that in small measure we may reflect the virtuous and free character of our God.

From Russia With Love

Here are a series of pictures from my time in Russia the land of golden domes and beautiful icons of Christ and the saints.

Above you will see the picture of Moscow Evangelical Seminary where I teach from time to time, and a picture of Natasha and Sasha Tsutserov the latter being the head of the seminary, and my former student and a graduate of St. Andrews University doctoral program. I have been teaching a course all week on Christology, hence the image of Sasha's favorite icon of Christ-- Christ the Golden Hair which I like as well. On Sunday we will travel to the historic city of Vladimir to see the beautiful old churches and icons including the very famous Our Lady of Vladimir.

The students here are both engaging and fully engaged with many good questions about Christology. What is especially of note is that they are overwhelmingly Arminian not Calvinist in character as is true all over Russia's Protestant Churches as also is the case with the Orthodox Church. Having lived so long under 'determinism' of a Communist sort, they like their freedom both in society and in their theology as well. For them if Christ has set us free, part of what he set us free from is things being pre-determined by anyone, including God. God's Son did not come to announce that God had pre-determined all things from before the creation of the world, instead he came to set the captives free and "if the Son has set you free, you are truly free indeed". It is an odd paradox indeed that in the land of liberty (America) Calvinism plays better than in a land of limited freedom like Russia. Think on these things.

'Back in the USSR'--err Russia

Well I am in my fifth country on the world tour and will be teaching Christology here all week at Moscow Evangelical Seminary. Its currently light until almost 11 p.m. and its also light by 3:30 in the morning, so there is nothing dark about Moscow at this time of year... it is however in the 50s. This year Moscow Seminary graduated 17 students just in youth ministry never mind those with the other degrees. It is a thriving and interesting place. Christianity is alive and well here. Thanks for all those who keep praying for me on my Odyssey. I have lots of archaeological news from Turkey and hope to begin doing more posts soon. For now I will say that my predicted reaction to the Indiana Jones movie was right on target--- the officials here were upset.