Divine Suitability

Not long ago the American scientist Lawrence Krauss (often to be seen on television) gave a lecture in Australia in which he proclaimed God to be entirely unnecessary.  The universe could come into existence without a cause because subatomic particles do so all the time - if only for a mere nanosecond or so.

An eighteenth century deist would most probably have to agree, but not a Christian, of the eighteenth century or otherwise.  For the latter, God is required at all times to keep the creation in existence. Indeed, should the Divine Mind wander for an instant, that would be the end of us, and of everything else as well.

As is often the case, the real problem lies not with the reality or otherwise of God, but with his intentions.  Why would he bother to cause the fleeting existence of subatomic particles at all?  Even for Christians this sort of thing is a great problem.  They often have very firm ideas of the way God should behave even while they accept his omnipotence.

Of course the Son of God could be born of a virgin. God should be able to do that, he brought genes and chromosomes into existence in the first place after all.  But should the Son of God be born of a virgin?  What about his complete humanity - wouldn't that be fatally compromised in the process?

Our doubts often arise not from what we believe to be possible, but from what we think to be suitable, which is hardly an objective standard.

In the nineteenth century a newly appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland found a Book of Common Prayer in the Chapel of Dublin Castle (missals came later!) with all the prayers of praise blacked out.  He asked the guards officer who used it why this was so, and was told that no gentleman wished to be praised to his face.

It's not always wise to second-guess God.  I wonder if that is really what Lawrence Krauss and those who think like him are trying to do.

[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]

Now you see it ...

I have just watched on youtube the late Christopher Hitchins, not long before his death, being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. And I would have to say that I was both moved and impressed; essentially because of Hitchens' consistent honesty in the face of an all too certain future - what there was of it. And indeed even the interviewer, sometimes the barracuda of the BBC, showed a touching gentleness throughout the thirty minutes or so of the programme.

Hitchens was something of a barracuda himself when it came to religion - just about any kind of religion, but especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  According to him, they were not just untrue, they were actually extremely harmful and dangerous, and as to the latter qualities, you can see why he wasn't entirely wrong.

Paxman tempted him with Pascal's Wager: if there is no God there is no problem, but then again there might be, so wouldn't it be wiser to be religiously observant - just in case?  To his great credit Hitchens said that if indeed there was a God, and if this God was of any moral worth, he would surely prefer truth to self-serving deceit, thus reminding me at least of Christ's witness to Pilate when all the chips were down, "For truth I came into the world."
 
Hitchens was not too keen on being described as an atheist in case anyone thought there were a God in whom he could disbelieve.  But what he could believe in however, was rational thought based on a completely materialist understanding of the world, itself based upon empirical observation.  And I must say, I wonder how he or anyone could manage that.

What is there to observe?  All atoms are 99.9999% empty space.  And the infintesimally minute fraction which remains can best be described as a quantum fuzz.  Not for nothing has one Professor Sussman in California suggested that the universe is really a hologram!  Observation until the recent past was obviously an illusion.  We would have regarded what we now believe about the atom to have been mere nonsense.  99.9999% empty space indeed!

Hitchens, rather to my surprise, was not completely dismissive of the idea of God.  What he really objected to was the certainty of many people's ideas about God, and the often disastrous consequences of that certainty. Micah's injunction to walk humbly with our God surely includes a theological dimension as well, and I wonder if the new atheism is a necessary reminder of that, just as the nature of the atom should be giving Christopher Hitchens' continuing supporters pause.

[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]

Advent Warnings

On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry announces that the Lord is nigh.  So it does, and St John had another announcement to make as well: the fearful arrival of the wrath to come. Just the thing to prepare you for the onslaught of the festive season, although I doubt that that is what he intended.  But for many people God and wrath are a fairly compulsive combination made all the more certain by the guilt of our original sin or our most unoriginal sins - or both.  Either way it hardly matters: most of the human race is headed for perdition, since as Augustine observed, the fact that God has chosen to save a few shows his mercy, while the fact that has not chosen to save the majority shows his justice.
Now what is wrong with St Augustine's analysis of the situation?  See if you can spot the problem.  Is it the equation of wholesale damnation with justice?  Is it the very concept of damnation itself?  You could get good marks with either of those answers.  But the real answer, I think, has to do with God's choosing, and by that I do not mean just the choice he makes at the end of our earthly lives, but also the choice he makes at our conception when he chooses to endow each of us with an immortal soul.
Before I began to exist I do not recall being asked if I wanted to run the appalling risk of ending up among the lost.  Had the matter been explained to me, I can confidently assure you that I would have politely declined the offer.  Who could possibly do otherwise?  Oblivion trumps Auschwitz every time - especially for eternity.  And nor do I expect any enquiries as to my preferences when I depart this life.  Once again, a grateful oblivion will not be an option.
So what is all this about free-will?  God is going to make the two most vital decisions for me whether I like it or not.  He has already decided that I would exist, and he is not going to give me the option of ceasing to do so when my earthly life is over.  I rather think this puts God under an obligation to see me right in the end, but I bet you some of my most fervent co-religionists will feel cheated if there is not a substantial number of God's children burning down below.  Augustine himself rather looked forward to it since he believed that the sight of their suffering would be one of the joys of the redeemed.

O I do so hope not. 

[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]

Seeing Straight

I think I should have been rather more careful in my last posting than I was.  Despite my tendency towards universalism (a hope which I believe all christians should share) there is clearly a very important question which cannot be ignored, summed up in what for me, at least, is the most important thing Christ ever said about himself and his mission: For truth I came into the world. Without truth there can be no salvation because the latter depends entirely upon our incorporation in God, and love and lies simply do not go together.
It is important to realise that a mistake, or a misapprehension, is not the same thing as a lie.  In a way which the first two are not, a lie has a quality of determined self-will about it, even if it has become habitual and in the process no longer recognisable as untrue by the liar himself.  And the liar can face no greater threat to his happiness both temporal and eternal than that of at last coming to believe that black is white, and vice versa.  This is surely the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit - unforgivable not because forgiveness is not offered, but because it cannot be accepted by the one to whom it is offered, simply because he is now unable to recognise reality even when it (or He) stares him in the face.
When I returned to New Zealand in 1985 after sixteen years in England, I was solemnly infromed by a friend of the family that programmes in the Maori language had virtually taken over the television networks.  I suggested we had a look at the TV Times - or whatever was to hand at that time - to see if this claim was true.  It wasn't.  And not only that, but Maori broadcasting  in the nineteen-eighties was notable for its near non-existence.  I expected to hear a sigh of (politically incorrect) relief, but not a bit of it.  The friend of the family had to agree that the TV Times said what it said, but the slightly hurt little smile indicated a determination to believe otherwise - and also a certain degree of righteous martyrdom as well.  I suspect that's just how the powers of evil deal with reality too.  And only repentance can put it right, not because God loves a groveller, but because to repent is to acknowledge the facts and to renounce the lies. 

[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]

Strategy and Tactics

So the Roman Pontiff is retiring.  I must say that I admire him for his decision not to put us through a repeat of his predecessor's protracted and very public death-throes. I am also grateful to him for his determination to restore the balance of the Roman rite, even although that doesn't effect me personally.

But I'm not nearly so sure about some of the pope's statements on moral matters such as birth control.  Likewise his claim that gay marriage would bring "serious harm to justice and peace."  Would it really?  But aren't de facto relationships more harmful to society - especially to children?  And what about the soaring rate of divorce?  Surely it is divorce which has devastated the lives of thousands, perhaps even millions of actual human beings.

But I believe the pope has been absolutely right to call attention to the enormous changes which have occurred in just the last century or so in the West.  In many ways the turmoil generated by scientific inquiry, technological advance, the devasting effects of modern political ideologies (not to mention the wars which they helped to bring about) have been too much for us to digest in a mere generation or so.  And whether we like it or not, we now know more than we used to.  Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein, among many others have seen to that.  And when I say we, I don't mean a just a small privileged class of the educated -  radio, television, the paper-back book and many other forms of communication have seen to that too.  A whole lot of  different voices now want a say as to what is right and wrong, and we are all forced to listen.

Both Judaism and Islam are revelations of human behaviour.  Jews and Muslims know right down to the smallest detail what they should or shouldn't do, and when and where they should or shouldn't do it.  But in the Christian religion God took the great risk of revealing his life, rather than of setting rules for ours.  (Hence the rows about the Trinity, the incarnation, and so on for much of the first millenium.)  We have the strategy for our behaviour - unconditional love - but (by comparison with Judaism and Islam) a lot of the tactics (that is, how to put the strategy into practice) simply aren't there.  For many Christians only definite tactics make life in society safe.  We just must know exactly what is what, where and when.  We need rules, even if they don't exactly square with the strategy which is set forth in Christ.  And often these rules are really little more than the inherited prejudices of the tribe masquerading as Christian principles.

As a comparatively young academic at the University of Regensburg the present pope was greatly alarmed by the extreme radicalism of some of his students, and I have no doubt that had I been there at the time I would have been very much on his side. But the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed is about the doctrine of God, not the behaviour of his children.  In my opinion the pope has been more than justified in being very clear indeed about the former, but about the latter, well there I'm not so sure.  The expression of unconditional love to all and sundry is not easy to put into practice, and I can't help but notice that certainty in these matters has often led to the betrayal of the strategy itself on the rack and at the stake.


[Originally published on my now-defunct blog Speculations and Certainties]

Ad Orientem

It was in 1966 that I began to think that if the world didn't come to an end soon, I should try to jump off.  I was a very sensitive youth and the nice new eucharistic liturgy which the then Church of the Province of New Zealand treated us to in that year could only inspire in me the very darkest of thoughts.  Of course, being a member of the cathedral choir didn't help.  We were there for the music after all, and we (along with the organ built by Henry Willis III) were the only reason anyone came to the services, a fact plainly obvious to us, if to nobody else.  So how dare they muck about with our libretto and all the beautiful music which had been written using it.

And insult was heaped upon insult.  At Evensong we were conmanded to sing the ferial responses while Byrd, Tomkins, and Smith of Durham were forbidden.  And you know why, don't you?  Congregational Participation - that's why.  Even if the slowly vanishing inhabitants of the pews were demonstrating by their quiet departures their lack of enthusiasm for this particular turn of events, liturgical participation was becoming the fashion of the hour.  And as the years went by it took a grip upon those of a scholarly and clerical bent which entirely bemused many others who thought that the purpose of church-going was the worship of God.

But no, it would seem its purpose is not so much the worship of God as to realise and proclaim our identity as the people of God.  And liturgy's great task is to demonstrate this fashionable fact both to ourselves and to those who are cowering outside the Church in fear of hearty greetings, intense eye contact and a name tag.

When I describe it as fashionable I am being quite serious.  Fashion is as powerful a thing in the liturgical departments of theological faculties as it is among the couturiers of Paris, although the academics involved would no doubt hotly deny it.

Let us consider for a moment the Liturgical Movement.  In most of Catholic Europe in the nineteenth century worshippers had been using the Roman mass promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570 as a result of the tridentine reform and largely unaltered thereafter. However, in the intervening years historical research had marched on, patristic texts of the liturgy had been rediscovered, and the Middle Ages had come back into fashion with all things gothick trumping the baroque style of much of the liturgical practice at the time.

And then they discovered the fourth century!  The century in which the Emperor Constantine had set the Church free, and in which, in various newly-acquired imperial basilicas, the great liturgies of east and west emerged from the catacombs and flourished in the clear light of day. This became for many priests and liturgists in modern times both the golden age of liturgical development and the gold standard for the liturgy of the future - just as soon as they could get their hands on the old one.

Now, surprisingly enough, I do not deny that change was necessary.  Where Rome is concerned, a touch of the vernacular and the dropping the Last Gospel seem to me like good ideas, while the Communion Office of 1662 really needed to be put back together like Humpty Dumpty.  But it's the underlying ideology of 'The Family Meal of the People of God' which really concerns me, and the changes that have come about in its implementation.  I suspect those holy liturgists Basil the Great and John Chrysostom (to name but two) would have been horrified.

In what sense is the Eucharist a meal?  It's certainly not like any sort of meal to which we are accustomed in daily life.  At what other meal do the diners stand in rows facing one side of a table which they don't even touch, and which has behind it the host (or hostess!) got up in a variation of fourth century garb and making rather strange ritual gestures.  Although people do sometimes sing at meals - especially when drunk - it's not all that common, and there is no chance of getting drunk on a sip of vino sacro just as there is very little chance of being adequately nourished by a small round wafer.

From long before the Church emerged from the catacombs the Eucharist was understood to be a sacrifice, indeed the sacrifice of the Christian religion and the God-given form of the worship of Christians. Furthermore, at the consecration the bread and wine become Christ himself, in a manner which we cannot even begin to understand.  And as he is the victim as well as the priest of the sacrifice it is upon him that we feed.  The Last Supper may have started as the equivalent of the annual Lodge dinner, but it ended as a profound mystery which was (and is) something else altogether.  Hence the removal of the agape meal at a very early stage of the Church's liturgical history.

It is true that Aquinas says that the ultimate purpose of the Eucharist is the unity of the mystical Body of Christ.  But I am sure that he does not mean by that anything other than the fact that because we are joined to Christ, we are joined to others in him.  All too often, it seems to me, we go for the easy option, one which we can explain and justify both to ourselves and to outsiders as well - fellowship and community.  It's just the thing for looking relevant in today's world.  Everybody can see the point of fellowship and community - especially if it's not too religious.

Rugby clubs exist to play football. They don't exist for reasons of fellowship and community, or even for the excessive consumption of alcohol.   If they did they would soon cease to exist altogether.  It is in participating in something beyond ourselves that we find both fufilment and fellowship - and the desire to enjoy one another's company in the rest of life. I'm sure if you asked the All Blacks they would say the same, even if they had to think about it for a while.

So what's wrong with ad orientem then?

Behind the Bike Shed

It seems the Anglican Church in these islands is about to shoot itself in one or other of its feet of clay over the business of gay marriage.  I remember years ago as a member of the Dunedin Diocesan Synod silently (and smugly) congratulating myself and the other members on our good sense in not attempting to cross the Himalayas on a bicycle as the Methodists and the Presbyterians were trying to do.

Now however the Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia would seem to be getting up to something very untoward behind the bike shed.  Not a good idea, as I tried to point out at the meetings of synod in the last years before I was whisked off to Damascus on a magic carpet.  I am sorry to say that I regard the legislation of relations between persons of any sex whatsoever as something quite beyond the wisdom and competence of an elected synod of would-be mountain bikers, however well-intentioned (not to say athletic) its members might happen to be.

More on this arresting subject later.

Contrasts

Over the time I have been a member of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and all the East I have come to find myself in two minds about it all, both of which (rather surprisingly) have been becoming progressively clearer.

The first of these 'minds' is concerned with the Orthodox faith itself, that is to say with the understanding of the Christian Gospel which is maintained and proclaimed by the churches in communion  with the Most Holy Throne of Constantinople New Rome. I am most deeply grateful for it.  For almost forty years I have been an enthusiast, as many good Anglicans have been - even including the occasional archbishop of Canterbury.  And I find it to be a tremendous relief after such a long time to be able to take it all for granted - in the best possible sense, of course!

But as for the other 'mind' - well, that's rather different.  Here the ship of faith has acquired some rather unattractive barnacles over the centuries, mostly I believe, because living under various yokes for generations (muslim and marxist for example) experience and education have been hard to come by, and the religious and intellectual climate which the great majority of the Orthodox have had to live in has made them vunerable to the preconceptions and even the superstitions prevailing  around them. Futhermore, this Babylonian Captivity has induced in many Orthodox something of a fortress mentality, very understandable when you consider that for centuries they had to circle the waggons in order to keep their faith alive at all.

We are all tempted to sing 'Backward, Christian Soldiers' at times.  But as Christ himself said, "For truth I came into the world."  And I don't doubt that I will be in for a bit of a shock too when all is revealed!

Yet Again

Rather to my surprise, I have decided to revive this blog, having abandoned it when I became a member (and a priest) of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch in January 2012.  A little later I tried hiding behind a new blog called Speculations and Certainties which was supposed to feature the earnestness (not to mention the humourlessness) which I thought appropriate to the remarkable turn which my life had taken.

In some ways I was very intimidated by Orthodoxy, even from the safe distance of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, a distance which becomes ever greater and safer as time goes by. Like many good High Church Anglicans, I was occasionally given to talking about Holy Orthodoxy in somewhat hushed and reverential tones.  Indeed, for some forty years I was quite convinced (as I still am) that the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch had not erred (the 39 Articles notwithstanding) just so long as they were the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch which had stayed in communion with the Great Church of Constantinople, as others bearing the same names had not.

But, like most New Zealanders, I had virtually no experience of the actual Orthodox Church, and distance had made the heart grow somewhat overconfident, so that when I suddenly found myself immersed in the considerable complexities of the Byzantine rite, not to mention a completely different social and religious culture, a certain loss of confidence inevitably followed.  Not good for the writing of blogs!  But I am recovering somewhat now and so we shall see what we shall see.