Antioch Abouna

For All the Saints ...

2009-06-13T19:39:00.003Z

From the Profession of Faith at Chrismation…

"I believe and confess that it is proper to reverence and invoke the saints who reign on high with Christ, according to the interpretation of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Church; and that their prayers and intercessions avail with the beneficent God unto our salvation. It is well-pleasing in the sight of God that we should do homage to their relics, glorified through incorruption, as the precious memorials of their virtues."

The saints personalise Christianity. There are versions of Christianity around which reduce Church life to a set of doctrines, good in themselves, but because they are not enfleshed in the lives of real people, such Christianity remains, abstract, dry, formal, conceptual. Think back to your time at school. I guess it's not the lessons you remember directly, rather the teachers who, for you, embodied and made accessible what they taught. So it is with saints. If you want to know who the Holy Spirit is, read the account of Motovilov's conversation with Fr. Seraphim. If you want to understand the place of monasticism in the life of the Church, read St. Athanasios' Life of St. Antony the Great. If you value the healing work of God, don't even read about it, just invoke the prayers of St. Panteleimon, St. Swithun or some other unmercenary healer. The saints make real, vivid and personal what we believe and how we live by those beliefs.

Secondly, the saints warm the fellowship of the Church. Being the friends of God, they are our friends as well. As friends, we should get to know them, develop a personal relationship with them. We can do this in ordinary tangible ways. Their icons are our portals into their fellowship. Their incorrupt remains are memorials of a faith and a life that is literally death-destroying by the power of God. Their prayers, when invoked, avail with God for our salvation. They are mighty intercessors before the Lord and many are the miracles that have been wrought by their prayers. It is right that we should develop personal attachments to those particular saints who speak to us, those to whom we feel drawn. In this way is the Church built up within one fellowship, the Communion of Saints, here and beyond the grave.

Thirdly, the saints provide us with living testimonies of a redeemed humanity. They show that Christian perfection is not an absurd or inaccessible goal. They are the ones whom God has touched and made whole. They shine with the uncreated light of the Godhead, irradiating their humanity with the new life of the Kingdom against which even death itself has no power. They are mirrors, as we behold them, of what we could be. They inspire us towards this goal, theiosis, the promise of a new humanity, a New Creation, transcending even the biological necessities and chances of evolution towards something sublime and true, the Love of God made visible, the birth pangs of a new age in which God shall be all and in all.

Who then could do without the saints? No-one truly calling themselves Christian. The saints are the keys toward the re-conversion of these islands to Christ. Let us honour them in our generation that others by their example, fellowship and prayers may also become Friends of God.

In the Name of God, go! (a message to our MP's)

2009-05-19T11:28:00.003Z

After Charles I, king of England, was executed in 1649, the Rump Parliament prevented Oliver Cromwell from convening an interim council to formulate a new constitution. Cromwell was the dominant figure in the victory over Charles I, but the Rump Parliament was a more conservative assembly than the body that had agreed to execute the king and abolish the monarchy. In 1653, after learning that Parliament was attempting to stay in session despite an agreement to dissolve, Cromwell's patience ran out. He dismissed the assembled members with this speech. The "shining bauble" referred to is the parliamentary staff, which must be present, by convention, in order for Parliament to sit.

April 20, 1653 - Oliver Cromwell, Republican usurper but in this matter a "good egg."

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? is there one vice you do not possess? ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

Frankenstein or Christ?

2009-05-02T13:39:00.003Z

The story of Frankenstein touches something deep inside us. The longing for immortality so cruelly expressed in this enlivened cadaver and in all the other failed human resurrections from Tutankhamen to Lenin persists. The tragic aspect concerns what we know of all such human attempts at immortality from cryogenic freezing to elixirs of life, from transhuman cyborgs to Frankenstein zombies: they are all doomed to fail. Yet humans still strive to make themselves immortal and each fatal setback does not seem to put them off. What they and we resist is the notion that THIS life does not bear within it any seed of immortality, either accessible by science or religious experience. This life always has limits from life spans to the distant but nonetheless finite trajectory of the universe. All turns to dust in the end. We still of course labour and exult in the wonder of this creation for all that, and rightly so. A creation with limits still has inestimable value and our place and calling within it reflects that. In Christian terms though this creation is dying and any attempt at amelioration is conditioned by that perspective. If then we attempt to build a human centred utopia from the raw materials of this world we shall only see corruption. This is the inexorable logic of the Frankenstein myth. Eternal life cannot be moulded from the stench of human corruption. Immortality is from God or it is from nowhere.

Of course this is the point where Christians part company with humanistic fellow travelling idealists of all sorts. On this we insist that the resurrection of Christ is our ONLY grounds for hope in eternal life; His, that is God’s, victory over death which He has imparted to our humanity in the Incarnation and sacramentally through Holy Baptism and the Eucharist. As we die to ourselves in His death, his resurrection life breaks through into our own. As we drown the old Adam in the waters of baptism so the Risen Christ is manifest in our members within the Church, the Body of Christ, (no Frankenstein body here!). As we eat of the Body of Christ and drink of his Blood in Holy Communion we taste of the goodness of the Lord in the Food of Immortality. As we embrace Christ in His embrace, as we drink freely of the Spirit outpoured for us we find, as it were, a fount of living water bubbling up inside of us to eternal life. As we die to ourselves we are born again (or from above) to a life in God that has smashed death and rendered it senseless. As we surrender this creation to God we receive in its stead a New Creation where the waters of God’s regenerative and healing Love remake and renew all things.
So Frankenstein or Christ? No contest.

Trouble in the Garden

2009-03-04T11:32:00.004Z

The story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden which is rehearsed in the Orthodox Church on Cheesefare Sunday just before the beginning of Great Lent raises the issue again of how we make sense in Christian terms of the Fall in the light of what we know now about hominid evolution. I believe that the Fathers can shed some useful light on these issues which may be an unusual insight for some since these teachers lived in an age that knew nothing of Darwin and microbiology!

Eden is about immortality and its loss or rather we should say that the Fathers of the Church held that the potentiality for immortality could have been fulfilled in Eden through obedience, (which in this context means loving fellowship with God, not craven submission but the responsibility of intimacy), but in fact this potential was tragically not realised. That's the post-fall point about the skins to cover the couples' nakedness and their need to hide from from God.

So the Orthodox insist, contrary to much Christian teaching elsewhere, that there WOULD have been a time when humanity matured through intimacy with God to the point when the fruit of both trees could be eaten .... which in Orthodox terms is deification. Satanic temptation always works with a TRUTH (you will be like God) upon which the lie (from the Liar - the Devil) is parasitic ... "take a short cut instead ... cut Him (that is God) out." The expulsion from Eden was actually for human protection, not imposed as a punishment, so that the curse of this alienation and loss from God would not have become embedded for all eternity in death. Christ, undoes that curse through his death and resurrection and so now, through repentance, we may obtain the blessing .... that is to EAT of both fruits .... which of course is the Eucharist. There is ample patristic evidence for all of this.

Listen to St. Irenaeus:-

"Man was a little one, and his discretion still undeveloped, wherefore also he was easily misled by the deceiver."

Listen to St. John Chrysostom:-

"Partaking of the tree, the man and woman became liable to death and subject to the future needs of the body. Adam was no longer permitted to remain in the Garden, and was bidden to leave, a move by which God showed His love for him … he had become mortal, and lest he presume to eat further from the tree which promised an endless life of continuous sinning, he was expelled from the Garden as a mark of divine solicitude, not of necessity."

[Hom. in Gen XVIII, 3 PG 53 151]

Listen to St. Cyril of Alexandria :-

"Adam had heard: ‘Earth thou art and to the earth shalt thou return,’ and from being incorruptible he became corruptible and was made subject to the bonds of death. But since he produced children after falling into this state, we his descendents are corruptible coming from a corruptible source. Thus it is that we are heirs of Adam’s curse."

[Doctrinal Questions and Answers, IX, 6 in Cyril of Alexandria, Selected Letters]

St. Irenaeus again ...

"God the Son became Man in order to regather in Himself the ancient creation, so that He might slay sin and destroy the power of death, and give life to all men."

[Against the Heresies, III, xix 6 ANF]

and finally the fruit of redemption in St. Macarius ...

"the inner being of believers who through perfect faith are born of the Spirit shall reflect as in a mirror the Glory of the Lord, and are transfigured into the same image from Glory to Glory."

The patristic witness to the truth of the Incarnation and its attestation in Scripture is clear. We were created neither to be dumb, nor infantile, not repressed by guilt, nor fearing punishment, nor oppressed by the devil or anything dark. We were created to achieve the fullness of Christ, the maturity of the Lord of Glory .... yes, knowing both good and evil and partaking in eternal life .... BUT NOT WITHOUT GOD. THAT's Hell.

Finally, how is this all compatible with what we know about the evolution of life and the human species in particular?

Let us consider how myth works:-

(1) Myth is not falsehood. It is a way of telling a truth.
(2) The myth may reference a key event or events from which this truth is itself extracted.
(3) The mythological overlay is the imaginative "wrapping" ... it has no necessary permanence as a vehicle for telling that truth.

So, in the myth of the Minotaur we probably have an historical place, (Knossos Palace, Crete) and geopolitical historicity, (the breaking of Athenian-Minoan tributary relations) ... but the mythic story itself is not historical, albeit that it references a historical events and truths.

Applying the same genre logic to Genesis in the light of hominid evolution we may legitimately and gainfully speculate that at some point in the development of our species conscious moral agency became a critical aspect of human social and spiritual relations. THAT is when the realisation dawned in the human psyche that things were not as they should have been.

This is often characterised in human mythology as the loss of a Golden Age (approximating to Augustinian Christian theodicy) or the inability of humans to ascend to the gods (approximating to the Irenaean Christian theodicy). The persistence of this sense of loss and restoration (fall and redemption) in many different religions (perhaps persisting in the Jungian collective subconscious) underscores the universal importance of the truth(s).

The difference the Incarnation makes is that God does something about it! He comes and unites the human to the divine and offers the possibility again of immortality .... but we still have to repent and we still have to grow in Him. Now, however, the curse of death is removed and by the Cross we have access to eternal life (the Resurrection).

Oh to Work for the Inland Revenue / IRS!

2009-02-07T18:31:00.003Z

Christianity is not for "good" people. Good people crucified Jesus. Good people defend God's honour by force. Good people kill the souls others with their oppressive religious duties and expectations. Good people fast twice a week and give tithes of all that they possess …. and then look down on those who don't. Good people don't eat with tax collectors, prostitutes and other heinous sinners. Good people keep themselves pure. Good people never experience any doubt …. isn't that frightening? Good people are blameless. To paraphrase an Archbishop. Good people don't dream. They sleep the sleep of the righteous. How can God save good people? Well with God, anything is possible.

Christianity is not for evil people. Evil people will use religion to suit their own ends. Evil people will put on the mantle of religion to bless bombs, to curse enemies, to demonise those who oppose them. Evil people will cast away the mantle of true religion and persecute those who hold to what they hate. Evil people do not want God. They have themselves. Cast not your pearls before such swine!

But, if a "good" person should repent, if an "evil" person should repent, then Christianity …. CHRIST! is definitely for them. Such a person will not lift his or her eyes toward heaven. Rather with a godly grief he will confess: "God be merciful to me a sinner!" And God will not disappoint in His mercy. Oh, then, to be a publican! Oh to have his grace, his self knowledge, his hope. Here are the truly great, despised by the world but magnified in the kingdom of heaven, the truly humble. Their humility is not an affectation, a pretence, a bargain with the Almighty; it is a painfully wrought true understanding of the human heart.

Who can bear such knowledge? Wouldn't we rather think a little better of ourselves? You know, the typical English disease:- "not too bad, not too good, moderation in all things, a little bit of God when you need him." To these the Son of Man says:- "I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth!" (Revelation 3:5-16)

Some people say that we don't like looking at our true selves because we are frightened what God will think of us; others that we secretly hate God and just go through the motions; others that it is too upsetting to our self esteem, others that we resist the call to change, preferring comfort instead. I don't think that there is just one answer to that question but the key is honesty. I recall, a long time ago now, an alcoholic at his wits end coming into church, (not here), and sitting alone. In a long conversation, I asked him if he could pray. His reply was disarming. "If I can't be honest with myself, how can I be honest with God?"

"Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

Happily our God is big enough for such problems, but we are not small enough to see the solution. One of history's great tyrants, Napoleon Bonaparte," is buried in a mausoleum in Paris where visitors have to bow their heads to view the body. In a monstrous parody of Christian worship, we recognise what we often neglect in our relationship with God. We have to get down in order to be raised up. We have to lose everything in this life in order to gain heaven.

This is why our Lord drew close to the poor. They were already pretty low down. This is why he drew close to children. They were already nearer the Source. This is why he drew near to the despised. There only hope could be God. Marx saw in all of this the opiate of the people. We see the glory of an eternal kingdom. Oh then to be a publican; to pray the Jesus prayer:- "God be merciful unto me a sinner." Only in this manner can we be saved. So, as we draw near to the beginning of the Fast of Great Lent with the Jesus Prayer and the Prayer of St. Ephraim ringing in our ears, let us always keep before us the great truth that these prayers can only be truly prayed with a humble and contrite heart. In this life we shall never cease to need to repent.

Metanoia - Change Your Mind

2009-01-10T23:32:00.003Z

“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17)

The Greek term for repentance, metanoia, does not mean being sorry for one’s sins. In fact it actually means “a change of mind.” It means gaining a whole new life outlook. Specifically in relation to God it means leaving everything behind that hinders our relationship with God and reaching out for all those things that will bring us closer to God. In a Christian context that means Christ Himself ... the one who is both God and Man, the One who restores that relationship through self sacrifice. That is His Mind, which if we are to be Christians, must be ours as well.

Listen to St. Paul ...

Philippians 2

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

By which we learn that repentance is the acquisition of humility and that requires both understanding and action.

"Repentance," says Basil the Great, "is salvation, but lack of understanding is the death of repentance."

First then, understanding ... we may need to relearn repentance because although a change of mind will involve sorrow for one’s sins as evidence of repentance sorrow alone is not repentance. Sorrow can become maudlin, self pitying, impassioned. Far more important is actually changing one’s mind in accordance with that presented by Christ ... and that we need to understand ... and then practise.

It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Metanoia is doing something about our alienated existence ... like the prodigal son, returning home to his non-judgemental all loving father. As it says in the gospel .... “I will ARISE and go to my father...”

There must be action ... change and it must be sincere.

Earlier in St. Matthew’s gospel Jesus confronts a group of hypocritical and conniving Pharisees and Sadducees who make a show of coming to John the Baptist for his baptism. He challenges them with the true consequences of metanoia ... “bear fruits” he says “worthy of repentance.”

That’s how it is ... is there humility, is there true change, is there a new life, a new orientation, a new mind? If there is there will be fruits in compassion born out of humility, justice flowing from mercy and righteousness and peace .... all in short supply it seems in our world today, especially, sadly in those lands where this message was first heard. But what of us?

Here’s a conundrum ... we need to change, but what if we ourselves hinder our own changing. What can be done? We may want to change but we feel impoverished in spirit ... we lack the capacity, the power to follow through on our choice for God. So many things can hold us back .... habit, addictions, poor self esteem, lack of true deep seated desire.

God can and will help us with this but he does need a little step on our part, a beginning ... a down payment on transformation ... a step of faith; but whatever we must do we must do it NOW.

The other element of the gospel extract today expresses this urgency. “The Kingdom of God is AT HAND.” We may not have another chance. We can’t prevaricate. We must act while we can; while we have the light.

Let us then choose God, choose life, choose joy, but NOW, not later. Then we shall enter the joy of our Lord. Then we shall know his Love and show that Love in the world. Then we shall have the mind of Christ. Metanoia.

St. Gregory the Theologian on the Incarnation

2008-12-26T11:39:00.001Z

"The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.

He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his coming to birth had to be treated with honour, virginity had to receive new honour. He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.

Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son. The Son arranged this for the honour of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things.

The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice. When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.

Christ, the light of all lights, follows John, the lamp that goes before him. The Word of God follows the voice in the wilderness; the bridegroom follows the bridegroom’s friend, who prepares a worthy people for the Lord by cleansing them by water in preparation for the Spirit.

We need God to take our flesh and die, that we might live. We have died with him, that we may be purified. We have risen again with him, because we have died with him. We have been glorified with him, because we have risen again with him."

I bought a grave today

2008-12-11T22:05:00.002Z

Nothing exceptional in that of course but it rarely makes it to the top 10 of conversation starters at Christmas parties. In life we are surrounded by death and now can watch it unfold on our TV screens yet still for many this is psychologically still foreign and awkward territory. It’s the winter draught whistling under the ill fitting door. We know it’s there, we feel it but we try and ignore it. So, buying a grave was salutary; it put things into perspective once more. Monks can help us with this one I think. They live in the habit in which they will be buried ... straight into the earth without a coffin. Later their bones will be disinterred and kept in the monastery ossuary for all to see. This life is just a way station on the route to eternity, pleasant or unpleasant in its final destination. Again something we would prefer to ignore, the judgement. Perhaps it’s something we actively resist ... that there is a reckoning. All of which seemed rather distant from the soothing secular soft furnishings of the funeral home. Should Christians spoil the illusion? No, I think not. Life will do that eventually. We can do two things though. We can be prepared ourselves and we can be a sign of contradiction to those who sleep. We should remember that we are the only faith that places death and its resolution in God at the centre of life. We above all should be comfortable with the grave as an ordinary piece of consumer expenditure.

The Fool in His Heart

2008-09-29T21:12:00.004Z

Why Atheism is irrational and Agnosticism is not.
Why Theism is established both with reason and beyond reason.

My definition of atheism – the categorical denial of the existence of a deity or deities.

My definition of agnosticism – the inability to be able to know one way or the other whether or not a deity or deities exist.

Under these definitions an atheism committed to positivism will regard an agnostic as a cowardly, misguided or delusional atheist. No matter, I am sticking with these definitions as the claim that positivism is a sufficient description of reality and reality talk is a self defeating position .... bound that is to undermine itself.

So why is atheism (thus defined) irrational?

What is “irrational” though? ... Irrationality is the absence of rationality. What is rationality? Rationality is the conjunction of logical thinking and evidence by the mapping of the former to the latter in a model building process.

Why then is atheism the violation of such conjunctional mapping?

Consider the supposed evidences for theism. One might be the adaptation of life to survival in a given environment. Life has tenacity. To what do we attribute this tenacity? An atheist might simply reply that genes are selfish in their programming for survival. A theist might contend that such apparent selfishness is rather indicative of a grander purpose to life and that this purpose is divinely inscribed in this tenacity.

Now there is no empirical test available to us which might either verify or falsify such a purpose upon which a Creator divinity might be based. An atheist will respond that this absence effectively renders any evidence for God either ill conceived, foolish or dangerous. On this view nothing can be relied upon which cannot be either verified (conclusively) or falsified (conclusively). An agnostic however will regard such not-knowing according to empirical testing as simply that – not-knowing. An atheist must go further and demand that not-knowing in the only truth test that counts as effectively false or nonsensical. As such it is a delusion or a lie to be unmasked and exposed. The true atheist will have an evangelical zeal to extirpate religion as an evil meme in human society. Too much is at stake to allow it to go unmolested. I use an emotive word because atheism is impaled on a dilemma that the very rationality with which it seeks to expose by religion is itself denied by the religion with which it must engage. The temptation will always be to persecute or legislate it out of existence. After all, if you cannot use “reason” what is left?

The American Constitution starts off with a startling piece of Enlightenment epistemology ... “We hold these truths to be self evident.” What it goes on to say is that Creator has endowed humans with “inalienable rights.” So we have not quite left even deism behind just yet! Now if it religion is patently irrational why is this not a “self evident” truth of reason? Why notwithstanding 70 years of evangelical atheism in the Soviet Union do so many Russians still live such delusional lives of faith? Can self evident reason applied to evidence be so obscure, so ineffective in delivering people from the monstrous lie of religion?

Maybe the agnostics have a stronger case than the atheists because their position is rationally defensible whereas the ideological fundamentalism of those who KNOW that there is no God inflates itself well beyond the reach of reason. For an agnostic to be content with not-knowing accommodates both the lack of evidence (in their perception) and a certain epistemological modesty. It is a position of integrity even if theists will be bound to differ on the significance of any evidence presented.

I recall a recent interview on British TV between Dr. Robert Winston the famous physician and Orthodox Jew and Dr. Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford and militant anti-theist. Winston professed his surprise at Dawkins’ indefatigable certainty with which professes his atheism. It is this certainty that renders, in my view, the appropriateness of the title “fundamentalist” for Dr. Dawkins and the irrationality that is the handmaiden of all fundamentalisms.

Finally, why is theism both rational and beyond reason? It is rational in the sense that certain evidences COULD be interpreted as indicative of a deity or deities. A theist, however, recognises the ambiguity that keeps an agnostic in a state of un-knowing. For example, it is often said by believers that the beauty of creation is a hymn of praise to the Creator. But is the smallpox virus part of that hymn, juvenile leukaemia, the evisceration of a zebra by a lioness? There is rationality both in the denial and acceptance of creative beauty and purposefulness. So we must conclude that is there is anything plausible to be said beyond agnosticism, one must move beyond reason without descending into irrationality.

Is such a transcendent rationality possible? Not of course if an empirically falsifiable rational modelling of reality is as much as CAN be applied to the question of truth. But there may be modes of rationality that move beyond that. Such a reasonable approach would intuit transcendent significance to natural phenomena ... NOT as causal explanations but as an infrastructure of meaning within and beyond the phenomena themselves. Music, for example can be explained rationally in its emotional impact on human music makers and hearers but a transcendent rationality will look beyond such features to an echo in the Divine Wisdom that connects us to a powerful sense of Ultimate Meaning, if you like, God. This is the source of course of the great power of transforming art. It cannot simply be enough to explain the process. The purpose or the significance of the experience must be accounted for. It is the very height of irrationality to deny even the possibility of a transcendent ground (God) in such meaning. The same argument can be applied to every field of human endeavour and experience that moves beyond itself toward something ineffable and beautiful, whether this concerns the birth of a child or the track of sub atomic particles in the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

So, I maintain that indeed atheism is irrational and agnosticism not. Further I propose that theism is a plausible option for an honest agnostic who is prepared to reconsider reality from a different and perhaps unaccustomed perspective. For a fundamentalist atheist though such a conversion (short of a miracle of God) is not possible. One’s breath should not to be wasted. Irrationality is like that. With God though, all things are possible. So, as much as it must infuriate him, we should pray for Dr. Dawkins. It’s the only rational course of action.

The Monastic Call

2008-09-12T22:12:00.008Z

Christian monasticism was born in the deserts of Egypt at a time when the way of Christ was consolidating its position in the cities. The apparent success in the gospel’s appropriation of the Empire was a blessing not unmixed with danger. The early monastics flew into the desert not to escape the city and its newly respectable churches but rather to seek salvation at a time when increasing wealth and prestige might have been the undoing of the Church through a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle!) compromise with worldliness. In this manner the Church’s integrity in both desert and city was preserved. The monastic stood for the gospel’s untameable power, in short for God and the possibilities of an entirely unheard of life in Him beyond the city gate. In the desert wastes new lives were transformed and the gospel returned in power to the cities.

Beyond the limits of ancient maps it was sometimes written:- “Here be dragons.” Indeed this was the truth that the first monks encountered in the desert, a place of combat with adversary powers, with Satan himself. Like a trained athlete the monk entered the arena and faced the ancient foe, for all mankind. The abbas and ammas (fathers and mothers) of the desert pioneered the old ways of sacrifice and martyrdom but in a new setting and circumstance.

Today we have a new setting and circumstance in the west. Orthodox Christians find themselves living in increasingly secular societies that deny the place of ANY religion in the public domain. The State requires that faith be privatised as the price of its freedom. Of course, there is an important truth in this distinction between the personal and the civic sphere. In times past Christians have sometimes been tempted to enlist the power of the State in the repression of dissent and too often the Church has transgressed into aspects of life that could and should never be constituted as ecclesial domains, whether in the sciences, the arts or politics. However, the danger now is that the State will in turn transgress and claim the right to replace God as the arbiter of all that is good and true. When such a State is Godless the fruits will be Godless. We saw this in the brutal totalitarianism of the Soviet Union but it can happen in so-called western liberal democracies as well.

In this new setting for monasticism the call of the angelic life has a profound opportunity and challenge. By its very distinctiveness and isolation from worldliness monasticism is presented with a renewed prophetic vocation by its ability to present a transformation of the common life in God. The city is now the desert where the spiritual meadow must bloom.

In short I think that monasticism will help to restore the credibility of Christianity again in the west. Familiarity with innocuous, adaptive heterodoxy, the bourgeoisification of the Christian tradition has bred a certain contempt and hardness of heart toward the gospel in our culture. Only an Orthodox Christian witness that is both radically obedient to God and warm in its love for Him will now make a difference.

How can such lights be kindled? Only by becoming such a Light oneself. Monastics are born in parishes so the Church must herself once again nurture and value those who take the All-Holy Mary’s assent with utter and complete seriousness. “Let it be unto me according to Thy Word.”

Just an Ordinary Connection

2008-08-02T11:41:00.004Z

To hear some Christians talk you would think they had a “hot-line to God.” They are so convinced that God is in daily, direct communication with them, to suggest otherwise would be to compromise on the glorious intimacy that faith and grace bestow. So overweening is this confidence that rarely do they stop to ask:- “Am I hearing right? Is this God or Satan? Is this perhaps me talking to myself? There is no room for such doubts on the hotline. Moreover, if God is speaking so clearly to me should I not like the prophets open my mouth and tell others, “thus saith the Lord”? And if my hearers reject my word are they not rejecting the very Word of God Himself? And aren’t there terrible consequences for such rejection? The logic is inexorable isn’t it? If I am the Lord’s anointed, you should take heed to what I say in his Name. If you do not you place your soul in peril. It is but a short step here from this pride, this hubris, this prelest to the Jonestown massacre and every other craziness that emerges from the cults and sects who assume an infallibility that even the Pope never claims. It even infiltrates Orthodoxy in the rush of young and inexperienced monastics to become “elders” for sycophantic devotees, (usually of the opposite sex).

Against this we must set the standards of the Church for true prophecy which are:-

(1) Counsel must be in accordance with the Scriptures in Holy Tradition as interpreted by the Church not the alleged prophet.
(2) In respect of foretelling the only test is retrospective in terms of previous utterances. Did these things come to pass? Even then, there is no guarantee that future pronouncements will be unalloyed by sin and pride.
(3) Is the speaker living what he or she prophesies? In other words is he or she a servant or a manipulator, subtle or overt?
(4) Is the prophecy received, tested and authenticated in the church? If not then flee from such a voice as from hell itself.

With this in mind we should not say that we have a “hotline to God” that rather that we have “an ordinary connection.” True, God speaks to us. He does answer our prayers, although not always in ways we would like. However, in this life our sin and laziness always generate “noise on the line.” Repentance deals with this interference progressively. We should therefore have a more measured sense of what we and others are able to hear. Sometimes it is the “Word of the Lord.” Sometimes it is not. Discernment is called for.

By Any Other Name

2008-07-08T23:15:00.004Z

Some unenlightened Orthodox folks annoy me by referring to the “English church.” They mean the Church of England and however much this might delight a beleaguered Anglican bishop right now the reference just ain’t Orthodox.

There is no “English” Church ... just in as much as there is no “Greek” Church or “Roman Church” either no matter how often these phrases are carelessly used. The Church most definitely exists but the use of a preceding adjective defines nothing at all other than location.

It is simply GPS pseudo-Orthodoxy.

Orthodox ecclesiology may rightly speak (as in New Testament terms) of the Church IN or AT such and such a place or such and such a city. The only admissible adjectives for the Church then are Catholic and Orthodox, by which we also mean, One, Holy and Apostolic. These are terms referring to the ecumenicity of the Church, (the old meaning of the whole world), her unity, her mission, her universality and her inclusiveness ... but not a mention of geography or culture as defining the Church as a local denomination or branch. We have no such concept in Orthodoxy.

So, I indeed beg to differ. The ORTHODOX Church is the “English” Church and every other nation under the sun so let’s drop “English” shall we? What we must say is that the Orthodox Church must express itself locally in the language and culture of its indigenous people. The infusion of its life SHOULD draw on the whole of humanity in God and not any one part, but, most definitely in such a way as to embed the Church WHERE IT IS respecting local traditions and whatever is good and true .... as Pope St. Gregory once counselled St. Augustine of Canterbury.

So I pray and work for the day (however many decades distant) when the Orthodox Church will once again become the Church IN England, (not OF England!)

Kepler's Eye

2008-05-09T22:24:00.003Z

The Kepler NASA Mission, due to launch in 2009, will place a telescope in solar orbit specifically to look for near earth sized planets orbiting other nearby stars. This has to be (in my book) the singularly most exciting development in our exploration of the Cosmos since our decision to send humans to Mars. Please do visit the Kepler web site here.

For all of you (including myself) who want to participate in a small but significant way, NASA is offering an unlimited opportunity for the public to place their names and short messages on a DVD that will be launched with the telescope. This is what I have said ...

Kepler will open up the possibility of detecting earth-sized extrasolar planets. The scientific, social, cultural, spiritual and (eventually) economic implications of this new Copernican endeavour cannot be underestimated.

So long as humans think of themselves and their world as unique they will remain impoverished and myopic in the Cosmos. Evidence of earth-like planets will translate a well founded supposition into reality. The resultant transformation in understanding of our place in the Cosmos could, arguably, both unite humankind and provide that necessary spur to move offworld and explore.

May we not repeat the same mistakes in the Cosmos as we have on earth but rather develop those finest and highest qualities of which our species is so eminently capable. I am a theist, so may God "make it so."

Revd. Fr. Gregory Hallam

Orthodoxy is Scary!

2008-05-03T13:29:00.006Z

“What a strange idea Father!” some might say. Well it’s not as strange as you might think. Such a huge gap has now opened up between Christianity as practised in the Orthodox Church and other Christian traditions that I regularly encounter a certain “culture shock” from those who encounter Orthodoxy for the first time. This is much more pronounced amongst those who already have some Christian background. “Why such long services?” “You don’t have any of the songs that I love in your church.” “I am just confused; there’s simply too much to absorb,” and so on and so forth.

On the one hand this distinctiveness is useful for it marks out Orthodox Christianity as something quite different from what one usually encounters and not just another rather unusual “flavour.” On the other hand if we don’t help people gently into the fullness of the truth we stand accused as those who “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. “ (Matthew 23:4)

It is instructive to observe what that great Orthodox Christian pastor and Enlightener of Japan, St. Nicholas (Kasatkin) required of his converts ... principally four things only before baptism: a familiarity with the Nicene Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and regular attendance at Church services and meetings. This was sufficient for the neophyte. Good as though it is, they didn’t have to read Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s “The Orthodox Church”, stand in the nave for three years or learn Russian.

If we have to be restrained in what we “serve up” to converts, in like manner we must insist in our dealings with enquirers that NOBODY finds out all that there is to know and understand about Orthodox Christianity, even in a lifetime. The idea that it must be all “understood” first is erroneous and heavily conditioned by western heterodox ideas about Christian truth.

It is far more important that Christian living keep pace with Christian learning and for the two to interact in a mature and spiritually guided way. For this to happen the neophyte has to “unlearn” not only what he thinks Christianity is all about but also how a living faith is acquired and deepened. Some are simply just not ready for that change in perception. Some are. The wisdom of a pastor and a catechist is to recognise this and to know the practical difference with its implications for an individual soul.

True Hope

2008-04-02T20:43:00.004Z

People often assume that Christians believe much the same thing about the death and resurrection of Christ. Of course there may be differences of emphasis but it is much the same story with much the same meaning.

Actually there is some truth in that .... IF it is only the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions that are under scrutiny. Since many people in the west are only aware of these traditions and assume that this is all that there is, the witness of Orthodoxy never shows up on the radar.

So, what is this fundamental commonality between most non-Orthodox traditions and where does Orthodoxy differ? With Pascha (Easter) approaching in the Orthodox Church it is crucial that we acquaint ourselves with these issues because they touch upon the whole meaning of the gospel, its preaching and celebration.
In the "west" the Christian story goes something like this. It doesn't matter on this score whether you are a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. The story and the meaning are much the same.

In Eden humans disobeyed God and broke their relationship with Him. For this they were cast out of Paradise as a punishment and suffered death as a consequence of their sin. This fall corrupted (more - Calvin or less - the Scholastics) human nature thereafter and made reparation with God a human impossibility on account of the gravity of sin (which includes the transmissible guilt of Adam and Eve), its disabling power and God's judgement upon man's transgression. Only God Himself could put humanity back into a right relationship with Him (justification) and impart holiness (sanctification). This He did by suffering the punishment for our transgressions - death - in the sacrifice of His Son for the salvation of the world in our place, propitiating God in respect of the offence of original and subsequent actual sin. By this means Man was restored to a right relationship with Him and was accounted worthy of eternal life made available to him in and by Christ's resurrection.

Notice here that death is both a consequence and a punishment for sin; that someone must bear the punishment justly due for our transgression and that only when Christ has appeased the Father is eternal life possible. The resurrection has no saving significance beyond that which has already been achieved on the cross. The life of the redeemed at best bears the hope of fellowship with God or perhaps (for Roman Catholics) the Beatific Vision. Any transforming union with God can only be characterised by spiritual contemplation not an ontological change in our human nature.

In Orthodoxy however we have a very different account.

In Eden humans chose a demonically inspired autonomy from God and by that choice death entered the natural order and human life specifically. God in his mercy and love removed them from Paradise into this world lest this physical death be compounded by an eternal spiritual death. Now subject to suffering and death, human alienation from the divine life becomes the raw material for Satan's attempt to subvert humanity finally from God. This corrupting influence of the fear of and flight from death makes of sin an ever present reality for the children of Adam and Eve. However they remain free to choose between God and Satan and this outworking of salvation in history eventually enables a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Spirit the Saviour who is both God and Man. This incarnation which includes the whole dispensation of Christ from his birth to his resurrection unites our human nature to God and redeems it. As we repent and live ascetically for God in the power of the Holy Spirit the resurrection victory of God over the opposing powers (which led to the death of Christ), we partake of the divine life of the Trinity, the energies of God, and are transformed in an ontological union with God from one degree of glory to the next, (the ascension of our humanity). This salvation process starts in this life and is consummated in the next.

Notice how death is not a punishment from an outraged God in Eden, nor is our banishment. Everything is done out of love. There is no divine anger to placate, no debility of our will, no meaning in the death of Christ without the resurrection (but every meaning with it!). All of the life of Christ saves us and this is by the incarnation gathering everything that is ours into God where it is transformed into the divine image and likeness. Moreover the Holy Spirit is the divine personal agent of our transformation and everything is a coordinated work of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The Ever-Virgin Mary becomes the model of what it is to be a Christian. She broke down the wall of opposition to God in her own life and womb and by her own gracious response to God. This is what it is to be saved in the Orthodox Church, to be an Easter people.

Finally let us consider the consequences of a faith lived in the first (non-Orthodox) and second (Orthodox) instance. For non-Orthodox Christians the resurrection is something of an afterthought, not in itself as such but in salvation terms. It's difficult to see how the resurrection of Christ actually saves anyone if the death alone has healed the breach between humanity and God through a vicarious (if not substitutionary) punishment. God becomes a threat to be averted in the condition of sin. Of course this is always characterised as an initiative of love but it is the wrath of God that HE HIMSELF must first avert ... which rather begs the question... "Why does God place Himself under such an exterior necessary constraint?" He literally CANNOT forgive without the shedding of blood but notice that it is not death which is addressed here but the offence of sin. In the second Orthodox account is the CAUSE of the disease (death) that first must be addressed if there to be BOTH forgiveness and an enduring change, (regeneration).

When we consider that in the first account humanity has to carry the burden of Adam and Eve's guilt as well as their actual sin it is little surprising that western culture through off this guilt ridden morbidity in the Enlightenment. However, without the saving Incarnation and Resurrection, the spiritually eviscerated remnants of Christianity in the West could offer little more than humanism with a Christian veneer. When faced with bondage to the devil and the corruption of death (the unacknowledged realities here) non-Orthodox Christians eventually either rejected God altogether as an intolerable psychological burden or settled for a truce, an uneasy peace punctuated by the occasional radiance of a religious revival in which something once lost was dimly remembered and partially recovered. for a time at least.

We are now at the end of this degenerative process in the Christian west and I doubt whether anything of the former Easter glory can be recovered. The future for all Christians in the west lies in recovering something of the grandeur and hope of the original Christian vision ... a world utterly transformed by the resurrection power of the divine love. Many have hung onto this paschal hope outside the Orthodox Church. It is now time for the Orthodox Church in the west to put her own own in order and get ready to welcome these scattered and disorientated western children of God both inside and outside the other Christian traditions.

Why do the Innocent Suffer?

2008-02-29T20:18:00.003Z

The law of "how it should be" is a God implanted sense that all humans have of life's beauty and triumph. Yet we live in a good creation where hurricanes do not discriminate, where evil befalls the good as well as the wicked, where all that is beautiful is in some sense marred. It is as if some spanner has got stuck in the works.

Atheists of course use this as argument against there being a benevolent creator God. With so much senseless waste and misery should we not rather charge this "God" with being a lousy and incompetent designer?

Let us consider this issue raised in that great novel "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Doestoevsky? Here is a short extract from Chapter 35.

Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

That is the beauty of our humanity that we rage against injustice, that we storm heaven with our protests, that we in no way ever consent to the instrumentalism of sacrificing the one for the many.

Now look what God does.

To mend creation he sacrifices himself for all. He places HIMSELF in the breach of death, the place of horror ... and he vanquishes that, closes the breach, brings resurrection to the fallen.

So, slain we live - with our death in Christ.

Somehow, somewhere in the distant past or perhaps a "time" before time or in realm beyond this something became not as it should have been through the very freedom that God imparted to it. And so it is that everyone dies.

Be thankful though that everyone dies .... yes that even the innocent die, NOT because this is itself good but because the world has to be transformed and it cannot be transformed without eternal life exploding out of this merciless death. We scream that this should not be so. Our outrage though was born in a place from which we have been excluded. To see this longing and revolt resolved we need to return to God who can do nothing other than raise the fallen ... and with them creation itself (Romans 8:18-25).

So, why does not God or the angels lift us out of this? By now it should be clear that just as Christ did not call on legions of angels to deliver him, neither can we. VERY occasionally though, the devil oversteps the mark and uses natural death to try and subvert God's plan. This is when the angels intervene. If Christ indeed had faced death before his appointed "hour" (a continual refrain of St. John's Gospel --- "my hour has not yet come") then the angels would have intervened for Him as well.

No, we all have our God appointed hour and that is when we shall taste the bliss of resurrection and when one more piece of creation will be healed. The devil's tactic though is to encourage us to doubt God's wisdom in allowing innocent suffering. He insinuates that Christ should not have died. But when we lift high the cross the devil always scuttles away howling.

Faith is kicking him in the arse/butt as he so richly deserves.

Sharia? No thanks!

2008-02-08T08:52:00.000Z

Under existing UK law Muslims are already allowed discretion in certain limited circumstances to use their own services and procedures; notably in matters of banking, stamp duty and divorce mediation. This is right and proper for primary legislation is not thereby being subverted. There is one law in Britain that covers all its people.

Sometimes laws are passed that pull against the consciences, religiously informed or otherwise, of some of its citizens. These tensions may be resolved by the democratic process and a sensitive application of derogation for certain groups ... Catholic and Orthodox medics opposed to abortion for example cannot be constrained to perform them.

What we certainly do not need though, in any shape or form, is the application of sharia law for a section of the population. This is divisive, inequitable and erosive of the common values that a singular law must uphold. Far from promoting social cohesion as the Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams believes, this would fragment and antagonise disparate social and religious groups.

Moreover, that a Christian Archbishop should call for the introduction of any element of shariah beggars belief. He knows what happens long term in societies that cow tow to Islamic pressure for shariah. We see this going on in Nigeria right now, especially in the north of the country. Dhimmitude (social repression) of a Christian minority may not be on the cards just yet, but this move would be the thin end of a very long wedge.

Mercifully, judging the reactions of all parties in Parliament, this naive and dangerous suggestion will sink without trace. More worrying though is that the most senior cleric of the Anglican Communion should entertaining such crazy ideas. Sorry Abp. Rowan, I had thought better of you than this.

Hut Burning for God

2008-01-15T23:58:00.000Z

In the Orthodox Church a fool for Christ is no jester or attention seeker, quite the reverse. Such a person feigns madness so that the curious and the flatterers will not poison the soul with self regard. The interior life of that person is far from
insanity. Radical Christian living has showered the soul with proven spiritual gifts of healing, good counsel and prophecy. Mostly these gifts remain hidden until God brings them out into the open for the benefit of others. Even so, such “fools” are disturbing people to have around. Amidst the insanity of the world one is forced to ask in the presence of such people:- “What is normal?”

Consider for example a 17 year old youth who becomes a “hut burner.” No this is not another lamentable example of anarchy and pyromania! Introducing St. Maximos Kavsokalyvia who died on the monastic holy mountain of Athos at the ripe old age of 95 in 1365 AD ... but not before he had burnt down quite a few of the rudimentary poor huts that he built, destroyed and rebuilt for himself. They thought him mad of course. “There goes that old fool the hut-burner” they would say; so much so that he became known as Maximos the Hut Burner (Kavsokalyvia, feast 13th January). Of course this was part feigned madness, part straight forward sanity only appearing as madness. It is this last aspect that interests me.

Jesus said:- "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." (Matthew 8:20) Our Lord wasn’t complaining. This was his choice, not to be encumbered by even the ordinary good things of this world, most would say basic necessities. Why? So he could single-mindedly do the Father’s will.

The minute we can become attached to anything it lays claim on us. Subtly at first and then with great momentum we let “things” come between God and us. It’s more comfortable that way of course. We like security, absence of want, the ability to plan and rely on those plans. But what, if like Job, all these are snatched away? What then? What will save us when we have lost everything?

Some people choose to lose everything to gain Christ, to throw away even the roof over their heads in order to put him first. This is madness to the world of course but radical Christians like St. Maximos remind us that the world is not saved by conventional living but only by costly personal self sacrifice.

Each Christian has quite a lot of “hut burning” to do. Ask yourself, ‘what matters to me most?’ If you can lay that aside for God you have burned a hut. You will warm yourself by its embers for a while but then there will be another hut to be consigned to the flames: and so it goes on until there is only God and a radiant life.

This is a Synchroblog where bloggers exchange links on the same topic. The current subject is “God’s call to the fools.”

Select one of these posts from the pop-up list and click “Go read it!”

Christ is born. Glorify Him!

2007-12-25T08:42:00.000Z

An old story is told about a drunk who fell into a pit. The sides of the pit were so steep and he was so inebriated that he could not get out. He cried in alarm to anyone who would hear him.

A Jew walked by, stopped, took out the Psalms and quoted:-

“I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength” (Ps 88:4)

“My son,” he said, observe God’s Law and you will not stumble.” With that he walked on by.

A Muslim walked to the edge of the pit, peered over and declaimed: “You are a drunk, an unbeliever. First submit both Allah and to his laws, then you will know Paradise.” In disgust, he also walked away hurriedly.

A Hindu approached, a sage. “Your karma is now set by this deed. There is nothing you can do. Accept death and on your next rebirth perhaps your soul will make more progress.” The sage calmly walked away.

A Buddhist monk approached and with compassion he looked down on the man and tried to teach him to meditate. “Try to extinguish your desires … for earthly freedom, even for life itself. With desire comes suffering. With the right mental attitude you too can attain nibbana.” The monk retreated from the pit with a beatific smile on his face.

The drunk man grumbled noisily to himself in the pangs of his pain that all men were the same. With much difficulty he slumped and forward and fell into a fitful sleep.

Suddenly he was rudely awoken by a rough fellow gently shaking him. This man had let himself down into the pit with a rope.

The descent was so difficult beset with sharp stones, briars and obstacles that his hands and body were bleeding.

He took a spare rope, tied it round the drunken man’s waist who fell silent in disbelief. The drunk felt himself dragged to the side of the pit whereupon his rescuer strapped them both together and raised them up on a pulley fixed into the edge of the top of the pit for that purpose.

As they both stood out of the pit into the sunshine, unshackled, the drunken man, who was now a little more sober, looked round. The stranger had gone but there was a rather odd charge that lingered on in the air. He did not feel alone.

He looked back into the pit and thought thankfully about the great sacrifice this Man had made to save him.

No Teddy Bear's Picnic

2007-12-01T22:32:00.000Z

The imprisonment of Gillian Gibbons in a Sudanese jail for allegedly insulting the prophet of Islam when she agreed to a child’s naming of teddy bear “Mohammed” is outrageous. Of course everyone has been falling over backwards in UK government this week to appease the Sudanese with weasel words such as “saddened” – “shocked” – “concerned” but all this does is indicate weakness. When the representative of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, no less, called for the expulsion of the Sudanese ambassador and all David Milliband, the Foreign Secretary can do is wait four days before calling him in for a chat; one does wonder what is going on.

Appeasement is never a pretty sight even in ‘Real Politik.’ So why do we want to keep the Sudanese sweet? Well, for the same reasons I suspect that we have dithered and made feeble gestures whilst Sudanese militia have murdered and raped their way through Darfur; for the same reason that the crucifixion of Christians and the execution of animists in Southern Sudan has barely raised an eyebrow in Whitehall … in a word, Pakistan.

“Pardon me,” you say, “Pakistan?!” For some unaccountable reason Pakistan and Sudan have made common cause with each other … and we don’t want to upset the applecart in Pakistan do we? More appeasement. Meanwhile the innocent Gillian Gibbons languishes in house arrest somewhere well away from the baying barbaric mob who are roaming the streets of Khartoum calling for her execution. Apparently it’s all a western inspired Christian anti-Islamic plot! Is that really the best we can do? Teddy bear terrorism?

Of course what should have happened was the immediate expulsion of diplomatic staff and the termination of all trading arrangements. Not doing this on the basis that it would antagonise the Sudanese and put Gillian in further peril of flogging was an extremely foolish reaction. Consider the propaganda gift to the Sudanese government … “look how merciful we are, we could have flogged her.” This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Only an administration whose first priority was to defend the western alliance with Pakistan would have been prepared to pay such a price, or of course one that lacked balls.

So is this how we keep the Taliban at bay … by allowing their equivalents space to terrorise with their fanatical barbarism elsewhere whether in Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Malaysia and protect their governments who can’t control their own mobs or hate preaching clerics? We can barely do that ourselves so what chance have we to insist on rational and humane treatment of our citizens abroad? This has been a bad week for freedom and justice and the UK government is deeply implicated in its calculating cowardice. A line has to be drawn.

The Curious Case of the Shrinking "God"

2007-11-30T18:18:00.000Z

This sounds like a lost Sherlock Holmes story doesn’t it? Instead, think of this as the unhappy story of how God has shrunk in the west, certainly in the 20th century but with roots in medieval Europe. Of course, God has not actually shrunk! He is the same, today, yesterday and forever ... but people? Ah, that’s different. That’s where God has been shrunk into nothingness. His sovereign rule, which is and should be over every aspect of human life, has been progressively cut down in extent by a secularising and atheistic mindset.

The first shrinkage took place in medieval Europe. This was the time of the ascending power of an increasingly centralised and powerful papacy. Inevitably the Pope came into conflict with the rising monarchs of increasingly powerful nation and city states. We all know what happened in England when a certain monarch wanted to dispose of an inconvenient wife! Interestingly, without the support of sympathetic German princes it is unlikely that Luther would have got very far with his revolt against Rome. Of course some of the Protestant Reformers also tried to impose a Christian theocratic state on their hapless subjects but by the time we arrive at the close of 18th century there rise up revolutionary movements right across Europe seeking to banish God entirely from the political order. In America of course this had also happened but constitutionally, peacefully and not inspired by atheism. This former colony had been established by those fleeing from religious discrimination and repression in Europe. The original intention in America, therefore, was to give no favoured position to one particular religion. Only later had God come to sit rather uncomfortably on Capitol Hill, which is why the Bush presidency has been such an exceptional anachronism to many. It look longer in Britain for the Established churches of the Union to see their influence weaken on the national scene but certainly by the 1960’s this process was also virtually complete.

The first shrinking was an understandable reaction against religious tyranny but it was based on a complete misreading of the Scriptures. Anyone who think that God as no place in national and political life should read the 8th century prophets .... Amos, Hosea, Michah and Isaiah (first part). In these books the prophets assert God’s judgement against injustice and idolatry in the corridors of power but theirs was a witness of a spiritual conscience, not, as in the west, a contest between the Church and State as two irreconcilable antagonists. What we have now in Europe is a feeble witness of Christians who have surrendered to the State almost the whole of their prophetic conscience, of God’s claim to sovereignty over ALL aspects of human life. The Byzantine ideal was a symphony of Church and State as both accountable to God in their respective jurisdictions. That ideal died with the fall of Constantinople. This balance between State and Church, between leadership and prophecy has been elusive ever since.

The second shrinkage lay in the natural sciences. Again, the root of the problem is to be found in medieval Catholic Europe and the inability of some churchmen to embrace revolutionary ideas arising from explosion of science. These battles may have started in earnest with Galileo but, distressingly they have persisted into modern times. Some Christians are still fighting over Darwin and atheism has readily used such rearguard actions as evidence that Christianity remains antithetical to truth and progress. Whereas at one time most leading scientists were believers and saw their profession as revealing God’s handiwork; now such witnesses are muted and slight. Occasionally religion merits some analysis in a science journal. Usually many of the facts presented are plain wrong, the comments predictably bizarre and prejudicial and the overall feeling is that a sewerage pipe has broken somewhere nearby. Christianity is now commonly thought to have nothing to contribute in this sphere of human activity and even when the ethical dimensions of controversial research might warrant such input. God, finally, has been banished from the Cosmos.

The third and final area of shrinkage has been in personal life. Whereas once most people looked to religion as a source of ethical inspiration, guidance and self discipline it is now regarded as an intrusive threat to personal autonomy. Inevitably, if Man is the measure of all things, God must be banished as the righteous Judge of all our actions and if there is no such thing as sin, then we need social adjustment to society not salvation from God. This last change is the most troubling of all. If the State is now the arbiter of all that is good and true then human freedom has no safe resort, no court of appeal. Personal autonomy then becomes a sham as humans acquiesce to a new slavery; that of their own passions stalking the corridors of power.

So, with God denied a place in both society and personal life where is there left for him to go? It is as if he has disappeared in the centre of a black hole. Nothing visible in human life of Him remains and people soon forget when they be distracted by the allurements and pleasures of this world. But take care, God will not be denied. He can be no more shrunk than the ocean drained by an egg cup. As human life without God collapses there will only be God left, not this time as a Saviour but as an implacable Judge. The day is not far off when this will come upon us and all will be laid waste. People will cry out but their will only be silence in return. Then Christ will come again. Happy will they be who bear not the mark of the beast but who welcome their Lord.

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 5:6-11)

Finding Our Way Home

2007-11-08T21:28:00.000Z

Our bodies are seldom in a uniform state of health, particularly as we mature. Our minds may be in good shape but perhaps that waist line is unruly. Our digestion may be good but perhaps there is a little arthritis to contend with. It is the same with any Church community. It will have its healthy strengths and its relatively infirm weaknesses.

This variable diagnosis extends all the way through to our personal lives and our walk with God. We may be reasonably informed about our faith but how is it with our prayer life? We may be faithfully present at the services but do we find it more difficult to relate our faith to our daily lives? In the same way that we need the specialist advice of a good doctor for our physical and mental health we need the counsel of an experienced spiritual father or mother to keep us on an even keel as far as our spiritual lives are concerned.

Such spiritual guides are not easy to come by. In addition to his or her spiritual maturity such a person must have some natural and personal empathy with us as persons. As Orthodox Christians, if we don’t have a spiritual father or mother, we really need to pray and work hard toward acquiring one. This person probably will not be our parish priest, (the roles can be too easily confused), but our priest may be able to help by recommending someone.

Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) has written very powerfully on this matter.

"The Spiritual Father in Orthodox Christianity"

God throws a double six!

2007-10-02T15:40:00.000Z

Albert Einstein once quipped that "God does not play with dice." He was profoundly disturbed by a new science that he himself had played a part in developing. The physics of chance or technically, quantum mechanics, is a now a well established theory that denies our ability to measure anything with perfect exactitude. We may, therefore, talk of the probability of a particle being at such and such a position and having this or the other momentum but more than this eludes us. The strangeness of quantum theory is revealed in the realm of the very small but has implications also for the inflation of such larger scales structures as galactic clusters after the Big Bang creation.

Hitherto science had been accustomed to allow for chaotic behaviours in such complex arenas as global weather systems and species population trends. Here, uncertainty and randomness affecting the ability to predict remained a problem within classical physics and was addressed by chaos theory. With the advent of quantum theory, however, indeterminacy was revealed to be part and parcel of reality itself. Theorists might still argue whether this concerned our ability to speak of nature rather than nature itself but the practical result was the same. We had to get used to a “fuzzy world”, predictably fuzzy in the maths, but practically speaking a landscape shrouded in shifting mists and ill-defined shapes.

For centuries, science and philosophy ... and religion as well for that matter, had worked on a deterministic understanding of the Cosmos. Laplace famously said (and I paraphrase) that were we able to know and measure every physical component of the Cosmos we could perfectly describe its past and reliably predict its future. If he had allowed for chaotic behaviours in his tidied system of inputs and outputs his confidence might have been well placed. So long as this view prevailed, it was thought that "God was in His heaven and all was right with the world." Now, however, in quantum theory, chance had struck at the very heart of reality itself. Einstein recoiled from such a prospect, declaiming that “the Lord God does not play dice.” Doubtless he believed, as had all the determinist philosophers and scientists before him that God had ordered all things in a uniform and predictable manner. The deity’s table manners were impeccable. But then came a new set of diners who did not obey the usual rules of etiquette. There was bound to be trouble.

The first dent in the deterministic account of creation was made by Max Planck who in 1900 realised that radiation came in little packets or quanta and not in a continuous stream. It was some 26 years later that Werner Heisenberg worked out the implications of this for measurement. Measurement means interacting with a system or object measured, but to do that one has to impart energy to that which is measured and this changes it from its initial state. A sensor fitted to a car engine to measure its fuel efficiency will given an erroneous reading if only because it has itself changed the mass of the car. The uncertainties inherent in measurement really show up in the realm of the very small. Shorter wavelengths are required for finer measurements but these come with higher energies that change that which is being measured. Heisenberg called this the “Uncertainty Principle” and it makes the exact state of the Universe in all its parts elusive NOT because our measuring instruments are inadequate but simply because no act of measurement could ever in principle achieve what it attempts. We may only speak of probabilities.

Schrödinger and Dirac then went on to describe all the uncertain aspects of a particles position and momentum in terms of a probability wave, a dynamic map of possibilities for a particle. Worse than this from an intuitive point of view, the particle is the probability wave itself. So, in this fuzzy description of matter and energy one can only talk of the probability that a particle will be at such and such a place when measured. The act of measuring itself collapses the wave function and one then has something which is classically “there.” How such observation achieves this is still a mystery. Look in the box and Schrodinger’s cat is famously dead rather than alive or alive rather than dead, but before then this thought experiment declares that it is neither dead nor alive but in a superposition of both states. If you are not disturbed by that; you are not listening!

There are other tasty morsels in this Danish quantum pastry. Particles may interact, separate and forever remain entangled such that each particle’s state changes instantaneously with that of its partner, no matter how distantly separated. Practical experiments have confirmed this effect over a few kilometres. Although the so-called “Copenhagen” interpretation of quantum mechanics remains controversial in some aspects, the fact is that the theory simply works. It describes the real world perfectly in all its delightful fuzziness. Without it we wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to build lasers, computers and a whole raft of contemporary electronic equipment. So give thanks for uncertainty and distressed felines and Einstein’s when you are next at the supermarket checkout!

Nothing of course is ever so simple so a qualification must be made at this point. The collapse of the wave function is but one interpretation of the transition to classical reality and this, as we have seen, involves observation or, more strictly, an act of measurement. There are other interpretations of quantum theory where the wave function does not collapse. Some of these involve the universe branching out into unnumbered imperfectly cloned copies of itself corresponding to differing outcomes in a classical sense. This supposed infinite number of unobservable parallel universes where all possible states can be manifested, has been criticised on the grounds that it is both inelegant and untestable. The idea that there exists an infinite number of “you’s” reading this article identical in all respects except the precise colour of the spots on your tie (or at least that particular infinite set of “you’s” wearing spotted ties rather than striped ties) stretches credulity somewhat no matter what explanatory power it might have to account for this world as we observe it. The implications of such gross redundancy in creation might comfort those who shrink from thinking of this Cosmos as in any way special but it seems to me that this raises far more issues for science and theology than it apparently solves. If anything can happen and, given enough time, actually does, (Tegmark), then the Multiverse loses all interest as a place where anything happening anywhere is actually significant. Science, in word, disinvents itself by the removal of deselection. Why observe reality when you can imagine reality however you like it? I cannot help but think that this is an explanatory dead end, so let us move on.

Returning now to our review of quantum theory let us examine some of its cosmological applications.

The Universe only becomes classically predictable at large scales where probabilistic effects either collapse or are too insignificant to impact on the system as a whole. Even in classical systems simulations only ever approximate to their corresponding realities when chaotic elements are recognised. In extreme macrocosmic conditions, such as those connected with a black hole, uncertainty prevails yet again but on a very different and larger scale.

Others had theorised about black holes long before Einstein developed his geometrical theory of gravity in his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, most notably a clergyman and scientist, John Michell in 1784. Too dense even to allow light to escape and warping space time round its event horizon, a black hole is a cosmic censor where information can leave our Universe for good. In a truly deterministic Universe you should be able in principle at least to track and measure every natural phenomenon. Black holes dismiss that confidence. It would be trying to calculate the volume of water in a tank that had sprung an inaccessible and unpredictable leak.

A black hole is also an object that shows how empty space is not so empty at all. Quantum theory predicts and both particle accelerators and black holes show that the vacuum of space is in truth a seething mass of virtual particles and antiparticles dividing and violently recombining so as to account for the presence of radiation and gravity. Near a black hole event horizon, one virtual particle partner may fall into the black hole never to be seen again, the other might escape by staying this side of the horizon and becoming a real particle in the process. Stephen Hawking predicted this behaviour which would show a black hole to be not exactly black but a radiator of energy. These effects have been seen. They are not fancies. Eventually over a very, very long time, even a large black hole will evaporate away completely in this fashion.

So what happens to all that information in the form of humans, stars, fridges, and other associated junk that fell into the black hole in the first place? Well it has gone and gone forever. The Universe has suffered a massive information loss. One simply cannot get from the Universe’s initial phase to its final condition simply by the application of classical laws to a deterministic system. Not only is there colossal information loss on the way but also huge areas of uncertainty systemic to the Universe’s behaviour itself. Goodbye Universe as Machine, hello Universe as the Missing Sock Drawer. Some things you just NEVER will be able to find, no matter how hard you try!

We live in a Universe where anything could happen, and, more controversially according to some, given enough time, probably will. We live in a Universe where only probable outcomes are truly predictive. What sense then does God make of all of this and in all of this? In what sense now could He be said to be in control, to know perfectly the outcomes of different possible trajectories of chance and choice? Of course, God can always be projected onto the back cloth of eternity, surveying with perfect wisdom and serenity the outcome of all this chaos, randomness, indeterminacy and freedom. In that sense he would be the Perfect Observer although it is difficult to see how God could interact with His Creation as that Observer without submitting himself to the Uncertainty Principle precisely in his intervention. Must omniscience simply be a matter of knowing everything beforehand? I think not if that comes at the price of compromising human and cosmic freedom. God is smarter than that.

I want to suggest a different and I believe more fruitful model of omniscience, not based on the polarities of foreknowledge and ignorance but rather upon His personal knowledge of the principle co-players (the Cosmos and Life) and His own predictive abilities. Moreover this model suggests that God is more like an Internet Author with an evolving script incorporating the input of other artists rather than a solitary master car engineer where we all have to do is "read the manual." Frankly I believe that this is a more creative view of God ... a more noble one and in greater conformity with Scripture and Tradition than that boring old predictable deity of Blake who must either leave well alone (in deist mode) or be forever tinkering with the machine (the 'bête noire' of Richard Dawkins).

We need to articulate a new theology of creation that takes seriously the New Physics and that interactive model of divine-human cooperation that we see in the biblical covenants. I suppose when the Universe was seen as a Machine theologians fell to describing that covenant in terms of law, transgression and repair. This, however impoverished the notion of covenant by emphasising predictability, cause and effect at the expense of relationality and subjectivity. It was a mechanical juridical view; elements of which are present in Scripture but hardly emphasised to this extent. The New Physics however encourages to take the more rounded view of Scripture itself more seriously. How does it do that?

A God that throws dice takes seriously the Universe’s own story. He grants creation contingent freedom to develop without external or internal constraint. This is a Universe that IS predictable once a certain course is set but that setting could just as well be chaotic and accidental as measured and purposeful. Richard Dawkins takes this undetermined and chaotic aspect to be evidence against the sightedness of the Watchmaker, against any purpose or teleology in the raw data of life’s trajectory. However it seems to me that this is merely a matter of scale, (aside from the fact that he is still seeing God as Machine-Maker). It may indeed be that the accidental demise of the dinosaurs and the fortuitous mutation in key hominid genes contributed to the rise of homo sapiens but it by no means follows that the openness of causation is a design flaw. Rather on the scale of the history of the Universe itself, such chaotic processes are a necessary aspect of fecundity itself. If laws tightly constrained genetic mutation, if wandering asteroids had “life protection protocols” built into them why not halt hominid development and save the dinosaurs? If, however, branching possibilities and destruction are given aspects of diversity and creation itself (as they clearly are in the earth’s biosphere) then God must allow his creation a truly radical and comprehensive freedom.

Many believers do not find this an entirely comforting or comfortable prospect. If humans are made in the divine image and likeness then how might we contemplate that the Universe might one day swat us out of existence as summarily as a folded newspaper crushes the back of a fly? If for example, a gamma ray burst happened within a few hundred light years of earth, immediately the radiation cone hit, half the world’s life would be erased star-side. It might be comforting to think of God personally managing such unstable stars so that they behave themselves in our vicinity but I cannot go along with that or any other version of cosmic censorship. It makes the Universe an irrational plaything of Olympean deities and that is neither my faith nor my science. Must the Universe therefore reveal itself to be an even more merciless and amoral entity than we ever allowed for when we thought it was a Machine with some operational malfunctioning? In a word, I believe, yes.

As a species, we do indeed live in a very risky and precarious situation on any reasonable long term view. Interestingly we might significantly reduce that risk by moving off world to colonise the galaxy. That way humans would always survive, somewhere at least. However there is another aspect of this risk assessment and it has to do with voluntary sacrifice. If survival is not the be all and end all of existence then submitting to great personal risk for a consequent creative and life giving potentiality is a more integrated approach to life. Moreover it most readily applies to the Christian idea of the God who lays down his life for the World. If God is an Artist rather than a Machine Maker then this truth is even clearer to see.

If God is a Creative Artist and Lover He must work with his own created materials ... you and I. He seeks to make his canvas and pigments responsive to His touch. He labours over His creation risking all as any Great Artist must to perfect His creation. He is acquainted with sacrifice. If part of his creation is lost he enters into that loss, that place of abandonment and gives it a new fecundity and possibility of regeneration. This is precisely what happened of course in the death and the resurrection of Christ. St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:18-25) even makes a connection between the redemption of human tragedy, corruption and death and the regeneration of creation itself. In this humans are a microcosm of universal possibilities where death is not seen as an end but as a beginning.

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. 23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. 24 For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

This can be the only possible credible faith response to a creation that does not follow the rigid and unbending dictates of determinism, a creation that has the freedom to fall into bondage and corruption, a creation where God has so valued the creative potential of making “mistakes” as to provide the means by He himself may enter those mistakes and in his own flesh make them good. A dice throwing God is no stranger to Orthodox Christian theology, no matter how uncomfortable that might at first appear.

(Transcript of a lecture given by Fr. Gregory to students at Manchester University, St. Anselm's Hall of Residence, courtesy of St. Peter's Chaplaincy, Tuesday 16th October 2007, (c) Fr. Gregory Hallam)

What do you seek?

2007-10-02T15:02:00.000Z

What do we say when people come looking for God in Orthodoxy? Do we hurry them into our "all singing, all dancing" catechumenates with their shiny Powerpoints © and inspirational testimonies from those who swam the Bosphorus / Orontes / Moskva before them, (delete as appropriate). Or, better, do we sit them down, or rather stand them up and invite them to "come and see." There are huge transitions to negotiate in becoming Orthodox but the first and most important is to learn how to encounter the Living God in this Church and having met Him, to repent.

I was wondering just now why so some people I have chrismated over the last 12 years haven't stayed the course. Most have but many haven't. I think that there is a tendency buried deep in the fascination with Orthodoxy to discover spiritually "the lost treasure of the Incas." This glittering prize has been dreamt of and lives spoilt in its pursuit over many generations. "The pearl of great price" .... "The best kept secret in (X)" ... "Orthodoxy - the Real Thing!" ... you know what I mean. Expectations are raised that becoming Orthodox will deliver on this great treasure. I will find my goal, my marriage will get sorted out, I will discover true peace; all this and more. Well, maybe.

Actually, becoming Orthodox is much more pedestrian than being on a treasure hunt and disillusionment lies not far behind any pedestal worship. Orthodoxy is simply being a Christian and in the most personally profound and challenging way. If you are not prepared then to change on becoming Orthodox and every day for the rest of your life then you will not find what you are looking for with us. If also you are looking for a sinless Church without any blemish then look not toward us but rather to yourself and learn first from your own heart.

Take time then to assess what you really want when you approach the Orthodox Church. There will always be a welcome for you but please, don't fool yourself. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, (Hebrews 10:31) and that's what happens when you knock on that door. You don't want to be anywhere else though believe me. The smell of sulphur is too strong. Take your medicine. Glory shines from the cross.

Scandalous!

2007-09-18T09:55:00.000Z

For the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ..... For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
(1 Corinthians 18, 22-25)

I am just half way through reading Martin Palmer’s "The Jesus Sutras." It is a fascinating read. Palmer chronicles the first exposure of China to Christianity (albeit of the Nestorian heretical type) in the 7th century when missionaries from (probably) Baghdad brought the gospel to the magnificent Tang dynasty in a newly resurgent, open and united China. By all accounts these Christian missionaries were well received and allowed to work openly and without hindrance for 200 years before a subsequent Emperor shut down all “foreign religions” (including Buddhism).

Laying aside Palmer’s own politically correct anti-Roman prejudices and dealing with the facts it becomes abundantly clear that a presentation of the gospel that freely used Buddhist and Taoist language eventually succumbed to syncretism in which the Christian elements were eventually all but eclipsed. It is clear that these Chinese missionaries tried to present the gospel in terms accessible to a highly literate and advanced religious philosophical culture, which was and is a worthy aim. However, the gospel presented was too selectively skewed towards those sophianic (wisdom based) elements congenial to Buddhism and Taoism. Eventually these Christian communities lost their way and further compromised by their geographical and spiritual isolation from Orthodox Christianity succumbed. The fundamental error they made was to downplay the cross and the resurrection, precisely the centre of gravity of the whole Christian without which there is no good news at all. The scandalous elements of God-in-the-flesh dying and rising to destroy death gradually fell away from view.

Could such a thing happen again? Of course it could. It has happened many times before. The absence of the Cross turned Islam from a heretical mish-mash of Jewish, Christian and animist elements back into an old fashioned Semitic law based faith. The absence of the Cross turned secular post Renaissance humanism into a deist, Unitarian philosophy. The absence of the Cross in postmodern Christian pietism turned this into a semi-gnostic New Age spirituality. Some would argue even that the 19th century German pantheistic idealism of Hegel (the philosophical grandfather of Marx himself) drove the Russian theologians of the pre and post Revolutionary period toward a disincarnate and esoteric sophiology.

The scandalous aspect of Christianity, so vital to it being transformative good news is centred on the death and resurrection of Christ the Incarnate God-Man. Anything short of this simply isn’t Christian nor does it have the power to change the world. During the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross let us recall precisely that ... that it is Holy and Life-Giving for us all.