Let there be Light

 I cannot recall a time when I didn't believe that the material world was caused, and indeed kept in existence, by a mysterious and much greater reality than we can normally perceive.  I remember walking during my primary school years down Rattray Street beside a green corrugated-iron fence and feeling that if you just scratched its surface you might see the glory beneath which enabled the fence to exist in the first place.

This kind of insight was not a feature of my Sunday School education.  Fences green, corrugated or otherwise, had no part to play in that.  Instead, there was a picture on the wall of a blond blue-eyed Jesus sitting in a well-tended garden in the midst of a group of well-brought up children.  But I'm afraid that I didn't trust the central character.  

Jesus was the Saviour, of course, but he apparently had conditions, and it seemed that not everyone was likely to meet them. Not Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, nor unbelievers, nor anyone who had never heard of him.  They had not been washed in the Blood of the Lamb, an so they were all going to spend eternity burning merrily down below.

It was a fate which I found impossible to reconcile with the wonders of nature, let alone the nature of God.  I was sure that if even one conscious being was destined for everlasting agony, God should have called the whole thing off before it began.  How could eternal agony, even for a mere earthworm (let alone a human being) be a part of the divine dispensation? 

Some years later I received a most unexpected answer.  The room in which I was standing suddenly disappeared, and all I could see was a great golden light which surrounded and enveloped me. As I remember it this light was present only for a split second.  There were no greetings, no profound revelations, no messages for me or for  anyone else.  The Light did not even identify itself. But this almost instantaneous event was, and has remained, the most important experience of my life. 

I spent the next thirty minutes or so in a kind of bliss, slowly becoming aware the the Light I had experienced so briefly was the Ultimate Reality, unchanging and eternal.  It was the source of all life, wisdom, power, beauty and love.  And it was entirely free from anger and wrath - righteous or otherwise.

I surmised then that the purpose of death and the meaning of life belong together.  Death is the gateway to an eternal and wonderful life with God and his creatures, probably including (as John Wesley had hoped, and as many Orthodox believe) the Lesser Brethren of the animal kingdom, raised to a higher level than they had known in this life - just as many human beings hope and believe that we shall be.

Here the crucifixion of God seemed to make sense. You cannot defeat evil by evil means without sharing in the evil yourself.  The sacrifice of the cross showed the infernal powers that they could not corrupt the Incarnate God even although he had deliberately made himself defenceless.  They could not make Christ embittered, vengeful and despairing like themselves.  Thus they were defeated - and thus we are saved.

If our human evil could not be overcome without our destruction there would be no hope for us.  Hence the unconditional love of God can be our only assurance.  Only such a love can turn us around and remake us, however long it takes, either in this world or the next.  This seems to me to be the only faith worth having.

By Any Other Name

Today is Quinquagesima Sunday.  Or perhaps you don't agree.  Perhaps you think of it simply as the last Sunday after the Epiphany.  Or perhaps (heaven help you!) you think it should be 'The Eighth Sunday of the Year' as the Roman Rite followed by the great majority of Catholics in the western world call it - and as does the Anglican Church in these islands, I'm sorry to say.  

The more recent liturgical revisions of other Anglican Churches such as the Church of England fudge the issue with terms such as 'The Third Sunday before Lent.'  

None of this is particularly offensive - except perhaps for the remarkably banal and bleak 'Sundays of the Year' - but it is in my opinion still altogether wrong-headed. Not surprisingly it makes things sound matter-of-fact, simple and easily comprehensible - in other words just plain ordinary! 

But is Christianity ordinary?  Is is comprehensible?  I rather doubt it.  There has been no merely ordinary (let alone comprehensible) time since the birth, life, death and resurrection of God. Truly!   

We sometimes talk about the 'Mystery of Christ' but I wonder if we really begin to comprehend what that means.  I think it was Archbishop William Temple who claimed that we could only be saved by one thing: Worship.  But I believe we can only truly worship what we cannot control, let alone fully understand.

To my mind this is where somewhat elevated and perhaps unfamiliar language is both helpful and appropriate.  Its oddness and specialised use can be effective in speaking of the holiness and mystery of God.  But at least it doesn't have to be banal - and you can't say that 'Quinquagesima' is banal!   

Sacred and Profane

The recent obliteration of HRH the Duke of York has not exactly been a surprise.  Ever since Randy Andy made the carelessness of his enthusiasms clear in his youth, I imagine the Lolita Express had just been waiting to bear him on plastic wings to the private islands of rich public figures such as (the late) Jeffrey Epstein.  The royal Icarus should have known better than to do what he did, and then get photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell - not to mention with the girl concerned as well.  But times have changed.  Not even the prime minister of the United Kingdom can have rowdy parties in the back garden of No.10 Downing Street during lockdowns, not to mention on the day just before Prince Philip's funeral as well.  

I have always thought that the monarchy was a specifically religious, indeed Christian, institution.  The colour film of the Coronation left a remarkable impression on me after I had seen it as a small boy, and a good deal of that impression remains with me still all these years later.  I also presume to think that the Queen herself would agree.  The anointing of the Sovereign is a sacramental act which imparts grace to the one anointed.  It is, in fact, much the same in that respect as the ordination of a bishop, priest, or deacon.
How strange that sounds now!  This is the age of Happy Holidays! it seems.  The sacred has been banished from much of our public life - or perhaps worse (if the various fundamentalisms of our time are anything to go by).  The Christian religion is about a transcendent reality from which the reality we know here and now derives its meaning and even its very existence.  An anointed sovereign should remind of this, and thus remind us that our secular life should be sacred too.  But don't hold your breath.  Jerusalem wasn't built in a day.

 

Full Circle

When I became an Antiochian Orthodox some nine and a half years ago I rather lost my nerve when it came to continuing with this blog, and eventually ceased publishing my views about anything altogether 

But now - as you can see - I have started again, and that is because the Bishop of Dunedin received me back into the Anglican Church in the middle of last month.  

By then the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese had been able to appoint a new priest, born and bred in Eastern Orthodoxy, who could also stand and walk, and even run: things which I had been becoming increasing unable to do for some time as the effects of my post-polio syndrome had become ever more debilitating.

I became the priest at St Michael's Orthodox Church in Fingal Street because the parish asked me to do so in the continuing absence of the the Real Thing after the death of Fr Ilian some years before.  Orthodox priests are not easy to find or support in New Zealand, because the congregations are often very small and do not have the resources to deal with the situation. I had no difficulty with a second ordination service because I knew that the archbishop had no choice - and that therefore neither did I.

As an Anglican High Churchman of the Lancelot Andrewes, William Laud, Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Ken (look them up!) variety, and an enthusiast for the writings of  such as Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorf, Antony Bloom, and Kallistos Ware (look them up too!) I had few difficulties in carrying out what I firmly believed was God's will. But I never managed to believe that there is a One True Church under heaven, and I neither did overcame my love for the Anglican Church or the hope that I might be able to return to it one day - in accordance with the will of God.

I am now almost entirely house-bound, but that is much better than falling over much of the time - often with humiliating and physically painful results.

But the view from my study, through the trees and over the city and the harbour, is a great delight.  Better than yet more cracked ribs and black eyes any day! 

I go to the Sung Eucharist on Sunday mornings - at least for the present - but I would be quite incapable of taking services there (or anywhere else) even if I wanted to - which is just as well, I think.

I have received a wonderfully warm welcome since my return to St Peter's Caversham as a parishioner, and I am most grateful (not to say relieved) for that.  My twenty-five years as the their vicar seem not to have prejudiced the parishioners against me.

My Eastern Orthodox years have been a most remarkable journey for me and one which my life would be much poorer without. I am grateful to the priest and people of St Michael's Church in Fingal Street and to God for my time there.

Crossing Over

In last Saturday's Otago Daily Times the column by Civis caught my attention.  It was entitled 'Reluctance to accept death a normal part of life.'   He was writing about the death of a German tourist, aged seventy-five, while he was walking the Tongariro Crossing with his son.  As one of those who were with him when he died said, "This man had the most beautiful death he could wish: doing what he loves with his son in a place of breath-taking beauty and without suffering."  I could not agree more, especially as the man himself was already suffering from cancer, and according to his son, "very, very sick".

Civis took to task those who subsequently called for emergency defibrillators to  be installed on the Tongariro Crossing at vast expense, believing that it would be virtually impossible to make use of any one of them before it was far too late to help anybody in the same dire straights  as the German tourist.  He also questioned the use of such phrases as 'passed away' instead of 'died' as being merely cosmetic, rather like the funeral home proprietor who took the bereaved into his viewing suite with the words, 'Mother will see you now.'

Although I would claim that I had become a believer in Orthodox teaching about death long before I became a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I must nevertheless confess that the Orthodox tradition concerning death and burial did come as something of a shock as soon as I experienced it being put into practice.

You are not spared the realities.  The body lies in an open coffin.  When I asked someone how this went down in a hot Greek summer,  I was told that this was where the use of incense could bring a certain relief to the mourners, since embalming is not always possible! At the end of the funeral, after olive oil from the church lamps, along with ashes from the censer, are poured over the body, the mourners are invited to come forward for one last kiss before the actual burial.  And burial it will be.  Cremation is most definitely not thought appropriate or even permissible except in exceptional circumstances.

And then there is the text of the service itself which is almost like a little play in which the body speaks on behalf of all humankind: 'O thou who of old didst honour me with thy divine image, but because I transgressed thy commandments hast returned me to the earth from which I was taken; bring me back to that likeness to be reshaped in that pristine beauty.'  And this: 'I am an image of thine ineffable glory, though I bear the wounds of my sins.  Show thy compassion on thy creature, O Lord, and purify me by thy loving-kindness; and grant unto me the home-country of my heart's desire, making me again a citizen of paradise.'

This rather strange appeal (to western ears) goes to the heart of the matter for the Orthodox.  The loss of the body has come about because in some sense the Creation has fallen away from God (who is the source of life and of existence itself) but it can be, and will be, reversed when God so decides.  And this applies to the whole of creation from galaxies to blades of grass, and especially to conscious beings, all of which survive into the world to come, and all of which will be completely and gloriously restored in God's good time.  One can only hope that female praying mantises will have improved their dining habits by then!

St Gregory of Nyssa (the Father of Fathers, a General Council called him) claimed that eternity is in reality a time of constant growth, change, and improvement without end.  God, he said, is infinite, and therefore there is no end to his wisdom, beauty, knowledge, goodness etc. etc.  And what that means for his creatures is increasing happiness and joy for ever and ever.  Not to mention a total absence of boredom!

And this involves the complete restoration of us all.  Nobody is claiming that your old arthritic knees will be returned to you in all their agonising glory, and anyway our bodies get a make-over about every seven years in any case.  But our identity will be restored in new and shining (and lasting!) form.  My knees are looking forward very much to that.  Me too.
    

Pans Plus

Although we don’t particularly want to admit it, the Church in the Western part of the world is not in a particularly healthy condition. There are are number of reasons for this, as you might expect, not all of them under our control. But there is at least one which I believe we could and should do something about. We seem, to me at least, to have lost our sense of direction.

I say this because it has become very clear that in the last half-century or so the Church has changed enormously, to the extent that it is in some ways almost unrecognisable. Much of this change has supposedly come about in order to enable our mission to the modern world, and here at least it has clearly not been a success. Parishes in most denominations which were flourishing even twenty years ago are now on their last legs, many have already passed into oblivion, and more will be following soon.

Numbers may not be everything, but without them there is nothing – certainly no viable parishes. People and money are essential to the life and work of the Church, and both are now in critically short supply. No doubt the rural downturn has contributed to the decline; the same with the movement of population – and especially the young – to the north, not to mention across the Tasman and further afield. Likewise the changes in our culture and in the way we live have been both very great and very fast. Television, different working hours, Sunday sport, consumerism, the debt economy, computers and the internet have created a world which could hardly have been imagined a generation ago.

And there is the intellectual climate in which we all live and breathe – for good and ill. I have thought for years that we have become quite hopeless at justifying, let alone recommending, the Christian faith to those who do not share it. For all our endless talk about mission, not to mention a ‘mission-shaped Church,’ we clearly haven’t a clue how to go about it. Indeed, it is obvious that often we have no real interest in mission at all – just in survival. We want to perpetuate the life of the institution, but what the purpose of the institution is in the first place, about that we have conflicting and not very clear ideas. Not only do we not know what we are selling – we have no real knowledge of the market either. Thus Professors Geering and Dawkins (to mention but two) can walk all over us, and when we dare to speak up at all, it is usually only to concede that they are making some good points, and that the free expression of opinions is a very good thing.

While acknowledging the importance of our changed circumstances, we have not really understood them. Most of all, we have not grasped a number of very important points:

1. Most people need meaning in their lives. They need to believe that the universe – and their place in it – make sense. Christianity provided this in the western world until the last couple of centuries or so. And it did so because it was believed to be in harmony with human experience. But once experience was thought to be at odds with theology, not surprisingly, problems arose. It became a question of one or the other, either Galileo or the Inquisition, either Darwin or Genesis. And when Galileo and Darwin turned out to be a lot kinder (i.e. Christian) than those who opposed them, then the damage was done. Furthermore, the sacredness of human life appeared to be badly undermined by Darwin, Marx and Freud and their disciples. Darwin desacralised the world, Marx desacralised the community, and Freud desacralised the human personality. Instead of being planned and inspired by God, all three became the products of blind and impersonal forces. Not a lot of meaning and significance was left to human existence after that!

2. Much of religion is often nothing more noble than magic, that is to say, a means of controlling life, of being useful. Christianity has been largely ousted from this role by science, and it is in the latter that most of our contemporaries in the west now put their faith. They have not lost faith as such, on the contrary their faith is flourishing, it’s just been transferred to another system of belief – witness their unquestioning acceptance of such things as quantum theory or general relativity, neither of which the vast majority of them can know anything about. It’s just that the ability to control life (such as it is) is now supplied by another set of presuppositions. Where some vestige of the magic is believed to linger – as in the healing activities (or otherwise) of people like Oral Roberts or Benny Hinn – then popular enthusiasm is more likely to follow. The same goes for the Crystal Cathedral and even Joyce Meyer, whose take on Christianity people clearly find useful in running their own lives.

3. And it’s not just that we have allowed God to be little more than a ghost of himself. We have done the same to ourselves. We are embarrassed by our immortality. We are hesitant to proclaim that we were designed and made for a glorious eternity beyond the grave. So the the very reason for the Gospel – the abolition of death by an Incarnate God who died and rose again – is no longer at the very heart of our proclamation and our public faith. As the Orthodox Liturgy says, Christ has died trampling down death by death. Before everything else, that is what Christianity is all about. I wonder if you agree?

(Written in 2011)

Our Lesser Brethren

I have a remarkably intimate relationship with my cat.  He is a sixteen-year old chocolate burmese called Claudio.  If the name sounds a little pretentious it is only because his immediate predecessor was called Claud, and no matter how hard I tried to remember to call the present incumbent Eddy (after HRH the late Duke of Clarence and Avondale, of course) I still called him Claud.  The io is meant to make the difference, but has no reference to any deity (polynesian or otherwise) since Claudio himself is an object of enthusiastic worship.

We sleep together, or rather, he sleeps and I do the best to follow his example.  The purring can be rather loud, and the claws (if not recently trimmed) can come as a bit of a shock at four o'clock in the morning (or at any other time, for that matter).  But our intimacy over the years has been very educational - perhaps for both of us.  For as far as I am concerned, Claudio is a person.  Not a human being, of course, but still a person.

A few years ago a friend gave me a book about the animal creation from a Christian perspective.  The thing that most got my attention was the emphasis that many seemed to place on The Fall with reference to our Lesser Brethren.  They can have no place in The Kingdom because they can't repent and be saved, and furthermore, they don't (we are assured) have a living faith in the Lord.

Well, I can't say I agree with that.  Much of it depends on Augustine of Hippo's faulty Greek which led him to believe that Adam's sin and its dire consequence of damnation has been inherited by all human beings - and (it would seem) cats.

Our holy Eastern Fathers (some of whom were very good at Greek) simply would not have agreed that the fall had such dire consequences even for cats.  Furthermore, like the Eastern Churches today they confidently looked forward to the Last Day when everything would be restored in glory, and God would be all in all. 

So when I think of the millions of sentient beings dying in agony in the Australian bushfires at the present time, I have some hope.  Thomas Aquinas held and taught dire Augustinian doctrines concerning the afterlife, even although he also said God loves all existing things.  I'm counting on the latter opinion - and so is Claudio.

The Noticeboards of two Churches in America, facing one another across the same street on nine consecutive Days.

  

Catholic.      All dogs go to heaven.

Protestant.   Only humans go to heaven.  Read your bible.

Catholic.      God loves all his creations, dogs included.

Protestant.   Dogs don’t have souls.  This is not open for debate.

Catholic.      Catholic dogs go to heaven.  Protestant dogs should talk to their pastor.

Protestant.   Converting to Catholicism does not grant your dog a soul.

Catholic.      Free dog souls with conversion.

Protestant.   Dogs are animals.  There aren’t any rocks in heaven either.

Catholic.      All rocks go to heaven.

Hello again

I'm back, I'm afraid.  I need something to do to keep myself either in or out of trouble.  As a two-year old I was careless enough to catch polio just because a good number of my little contemporaries were doing it.  And I'm afraid that even after seventy years it can come back to bite you, as it has me.  And it's no use telling me to exercise my leg muscles because infantile paralysis attacks (in my case) the nerves which operate my legs and feet - and not the muscles themselves.  The body does it best to grow new nerves, but they are fairly pathetic compared to the originals, and in time they can just give up the struggle and collapse altogether.
  Hence I am learning anew the meaning and value of things like crutches, and walkers on wheels with handy little trays on which to put food and drink in the hope of getting from one room to the next without falling flat on my face and throwing them all over the floor.  Thank heaven for polished wooden floors, at least in terms of clean-ups - if not of bruises.
  Getting about and doing things is a bit of a problem, so I have seized on blogging as something to keep my hand in.

Rebranded (again)

So I have changed the name of this Blog (yet) again.  So what? Whose business is it anyway?

The fact is that the recently deceased title (Gallican Anglican Orthodox) was insufficiently geographical (in the last third) and far too theologically ambitious (in the same third).  What do I know about proskenesis for example - not to mention apokatastasis?  Just spelling the words is hard enough.

But Eastern is just the ticket.  If it had to, it could refer to Eastern Otago (where I live) and thus be safely geographical like Anglican and Gallican and thus largely devoid of any potentially embarrassing theological content.  Heaven forbid that there should be any theological content at all in these progressive and enlightened times.

The sound of the trump

I must say I enjoy politics on television.  One of the most enjoyable aspects being (of course) that you can always turn it off.  But who would want to turn it off when none other than Donald Trump is having a little spat with the Roman Pontiff?  Not me.  And I'm afraid I have gone and taken sides. God bless the Holy Father!

However, we should feel a certain sympathy for The Donald.  (As an aside, I think that Lord Macdonald, High Chief of the Clan, should perhaps threaten The Donald with legal action under the Trades Descriptions Act.  Who does Mr Trump think he is - the equivalent of The Chisholm, or even of his fellow American The McBain of McBain?  Clan Donald is equipped with no less than three fully fledged chiefs already, not counting the High Chief himself who surely is The Donald.  Any more chiefs would be mere ostentation.)

But to return.  We can have a certain sympathy for Donald Trump if only because so many others have thought like him, both in the past and in the present, and I imagine that original thought has never been his strong suit. However, Mr Trump has certainly been living up to his name. He has provided a terrific fanfare for the religious instincts of his tribe, and tribal religion is all too often the only kind of religion that many people can understand.  And strangely enough, this is just what Christianity is most definitely not about.

Take the experience of Christ himself.  Did he or his views appeal to the Tribes of Israel speaking at his trial through the High Priest and his Council?  Not to mention previous conflicts with the Pharisees and the Sadducees?  From the biblical record it doesn't look much like it.  Kierkegaard said that Christ died for one man, and that every man is that one man.  There is a certain contrast here with the declaration  of the High Priest that it was expedient that one man (Christ) should die for the people  - and for the people, read the tribe.

Christianity is often taken for a sort of magic.  It has had its uses from winning wars to curing warts, and I would guess that very many, perhaps most, people have thought of it in such terms.  For them, Christianity is about making life (both here and hereafter) safe for God's people - but not perhaps for anyone else.  It's an understanding of the matter which has a very good pedigree - one which can even be found in the pages of the Old Testament itself.

But divine revelation - indeed divine self-revelation - did not come to an end before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had picked up their pens.  Indeed, it can be seen to have reached its climax in the pages of their Gospels in the person of Jesus Christ.  And he most certainly did not just rubber-stamp all that had gone before.  From now on you would have to make do with just one wife.  But at least ham sandwiches could be enjoyed by all - except for their recently deceased ingredients, of course.

But religion became completely impractical from the point of view of someone like Mr Trump's friend and supporter, Sarah Palin. Even sparrows are of concern to their Creator - so no assassinating helpless moose from a helicopter, even if you can see Russia from your kitchen window.  Now you have to love your enemies and do them good. Violence is out - especially from helicopters whether in Alaska or Vietnam.   National greatness is of little significance in eternity,  and Christianity is not particularly useful either in curing toothache or in making America great (yet) again.

Christ himself refused to be made an earthly king, despite being the King of Heaven, and he refused, despite all those legions of angels, to defend himself against the mob which came to the Garden of Gethsemane with Judas to take him prisoner. Riches are no longer to be seen as an indication of God's favour but as a means of doing good.  They are to be given away - preferably to the despised poor, and especially to those in need of a decent system of healthcare.

And the Great Wall of America is not even to be thought of, let alone paid for in pesos.

On the fence

I realise that renaming this blog Gallican Anglican Orthodox probably doesn't help to make it look any more sensible (let alone intelligible) than it did before, but I have not done so without reason. The three adjectives are in an ascending order of significance (as you might well expect) and to my mind the most significant does not obliterate those which are less so.  But then, neither are they are all equally significant.

It seems to me that holding together two or more separate things without making them equal to one another can be a very difficult thing to do.

The temptation to ignore differences altogether and to give First Prize to everyone is as great as the temptation to throw something (or even someone) overboard.  In my opinion neither of these options is satisfactory.  At the present time in the West it seems that Prizes for All are obligatory among the bien pensant, and no more so than in matters to do with the distinction between male and female and its attendant consequences.

Do we have to pretend that nothing has changed even when Bruce becomes Caitlin (if only more or less)?  Are designer babies and wombs-for-hire as ho-hum as all that?  And must we refer to David Furnish and Elton John as husband and husband?  I am not in any way aligning myself with those who are still a little teary over the cruel abduction of gay - that lovely, happy word straight out of Swallows and Amazons, but then neither do I intend to go to prison in Kentucky with any county clerks.

Perhaps we would do well to reaffirm the difference between the sexes and then recognise that this difference can and does include ambiguities - without either rejecting them or canonising them.

So let's just sit on the fence for a bit and have a think, shall we?

How big is God?

I have just read for the second time God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by Dr John C Lennox and I am more impressed by it than I was the first time, probably because greater familiarity led to greater understanding.  He writes very clearly about semiotics and the human genome (among other things) and what I manage to grasp of it I find most impressive.

Like the formerly enthusiastic atheist Professor Antony Flew in There is a God, he establishes very convincingly  from scientific evidence the  overwhelming likelihood - indeed necessity - of what two scientists Guilliermo Gonzalez and Jay W Richards in their book The Privileged Planet call 'an extra-terrestrial intelligence immeasurably more vast, more ancient, and more magnificent than anything we have been willing to expect or imagine.'

So far so good.  Encouraged by his book  I looked Dr Lennox up on Youtube and found him debating these matters with Professor Richard Dawkins before an audience in the American Bible Belt. Naturally I cheered for Dr Lennox, or at least I did until we came to his closing statement.  Until then he had more or less stuck to the science with excellent effect.  But then he became an enthusiastic spokesman for evangelical Christianity, and in my opinion he did the cause no favours.

That's because preaching the Gospel these days requires an approach in two stages, not one.

Firstly, it should be recognised that theism is not the given that it was two thousand years ago - and for a long time afterwards as well.  Now you have to show that there could indeed be a vast, ancient and magnificent extra-terrestrial intelligence behind reality as we presently experience and understand it.   The title of J B Phillip's book Your God is too Small should be borne in mind here.

The second stage consists of building on the first.  Any suggestion that the Creator is a small-minded chooser of favourites - to give but one example - makes God little better than Woden or Zeus, and to my mind at least, makes atheism seem almost like a moral duty.

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.