DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN, ARCHBISHOP OF SHANGHAI AND SAN
FRANCISCO
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS (USPS 412-260)
is published monthly by St. Nectarios American Orthodox Cathedral,
10300 Ashworth Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98133-9410.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
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Fr. Neketas S. Palassis, Editor Email: frneketas@stnectariospress.com
Telephone (206) 522-4471; (800) 643-4233 U.S. & Canada;
Fax: 206-523-0550
JULY, 2005, Vol. XXXIX, No. 7 (1550)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. OUR WESTERNIZED ORTHODOXY
2. NO GRAVEN IMAGES
3. DOES ATHEISM REQUIRE MORE FAITH?
4. NEW ITEMS FROM THE BOOK CENTER
We should consider, dearly beloved brethren -- we should ever and
anon reflect that we have renounced the world, and are in the meantime
living here as guests and strangers. Let us greet the day which assigns
each of us to his own home, which snatches us hence, and sets us free
from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the
Kingdom. Who that has been placed in foreign lands would not hasten to
return to his own country? Who that is hastening to return to his
friends would not eagerly desire a prosperous gale, that he might the
sooner embrace those dear to him?
St. Cyprian of Carthage
1. OUR WESTERNIZED ORTHODOXY...
By Fr. Filotheos Faros, from "Word Magazine," May 1976
It is difficult to figure out how the prevailing assumption
developed that Western cultural tradition is more refined and civilized
than is the Eastern. Nevertheless, whatever the origin of this
assumption might have been, it seems that this has been taken for
granted for a long time. In this part of the world this is especially
true, and people of both Eastern and Western cultural backgrounds seem
to accept this assumption. As a result, the Westerners have developed a
certain air of superiority and have at times demanded that those of an
Eastern cultural background renounce their cultural tradition and
conform to their prevailing superior Western cultural practices.
When in the beginning of this century, and to some extent even now, the
Anglo-Saxon city clerk told the intimidated immigrant that his name
would not be Basil or Constantine but William or Charles, he did not
have the slightest doubt that he was a missionary who was civilizing
the "barbarians." On the other hand, the immigrant Easterner often felt
embarrassed for his "barbarian" background and he was very eager to
Anglo-Saxonize himself. He would change his name from Papadopoulos to
Papson, forget his mother tongue, speak to his children in broken
English, and, finally, he would also change his religion, and become
Episcopalian, because Episcopalianism was the religion of the "high"
class. Even if he did not change his religion, he would try very hard
to protestantize Orthodoxy so that it was less "barbaric." The use of
incense was limited, as was lighting candles, kissing icons, or doing
prostrations. All these were the uncouth practices of an old
grandmother; these were dismissed with disgust by father and mother.
In everyday life many reformations were also very quickly introduced.
Those reformations had mainly to do with the ways of expressing anger,
sadness, happiness, and despair, as well as the role and value of the
human body. Expression of anger, which was so direct with Easterners,
was strongly discouraged. Screaming or yelling, a very common and
healthy way for Easterners to express anger, was characterized as
cannibalism, and composure and calmness became the definite indication
of refinement. The expression of joy was also limited to controlled
smiles and celebrations, and feasting was so much devitalized that it
became difficult to know the difference between a wake and a wedding
reception.
This mentality influenced immensely Orthodox worship in the West, since
Orthodox worship is celebrating and feasting more than anything else.
The spontaneity of the faithful was suppressed and Orthodox worship
deteriorated to an orderly bore. The expression of grief was reduced to
an ugly farce. Many non-reformed Orthodox who visited their grieving
Anglo-Saxon friends found themselves in the predicament of being
consoled by the bereaved themselves who would try to control their
visiting friends' sobbing by repeating in disgust, "Do not cry my dear,
everything is fine."
I do not think there are many things more pathetic and more barbaric
than the mother who stands dressed in a flowery dress with a glamorous
hairdo and makeup next to the casket of a young son or daughter who has
died a tragic death and asks with a smile of every newcomer, "Doesn't
he look beautiful?", and the visitor replies with the same smile, "He
definitely does; they have done a beautiful job," to which the grieving
mother responds very politely, "Oh, thank you very much."
Another strong element of Western culture is a definite dualism. For
example, there is a strong contempt for the human body which is not
expressed in the crudely open ways that some of the ascetics express
it, but in a very subtle, undetectable way which penetrates everyday
living. Most common is the strong distaste for any bodily gestures or
facial expressions, as well as touching, which implies that the body
exists only for sexual promiscuity.
Many zealous Orthodox, especially converts, are overcome with
indignation when Orthodoxy is mixed up with cultural or, as they call
it in order to make it sound more Chauvinistic, ethnic traditions.
These people are obviously still unable to get rid of their former
error, which is probably the worst of Western heresies, namely, the
separation of religion from life and its reduction either to a sterile
religious intellectualism or to some kind of quaint and exotic
mysticism. In reality, unless religion becomes a style of life that is
a culture which is continually experienced in everyday life without any
impressive pronouncements and fanfare, it is only a gimmick, a game, or
a "trip." To help in understanding this point, I would like to bring to
your attention that the Anglo-Saxon cultural characteristics I tried so
hard to ridicule have a theological origin. They were inspired by
Puritanism and pietism, those ugly monsters which were begotten out of
wedlock from the triangle of Christianity, Romanism and European
barbarism.
SPIRITUALITY: STATIC OR BECOMING?
I do not know if I can fully explain how these disastrous distortions
of Christian morality developed, but it seems that Western Christianity
very early developed the belief that people either are Christians,
which means they meet certain standards, or they are not. Western
Christian spirituality and morality is static in that sense. The
procedure of becoming a member of the body of Christ is similar to the
procedure of becoming a member of a club. That is, to become a member
of a certain club you have to meet certain requirements. Actually in
the Orthodox Church in America the procedure of becoming a member of
the Church is not similar to that of becoming a member of a club but
identical.
It is not probably an accident that the passage of the 5th chapter of
St. Matthew is translated in English as: "You must be perfect."
However, in Greek, the verb is in the future tense of indicative mood
and it is a promise which implies very clearly that perfection will be
granted through grace in the future, though in English it is in present
tense and the imperative mood which implies that man is expected to
reach perfection by himself immediately.
As I said, I cannot trace out the origin of this notion; I only know
that Augustine was already introducing it when, if I am not mistaken,
he said in his confessions that after his baptism he had no sexual
thoughts. I hate to question Augustine's honesty, but it is absolutely
impossible for me to accept his statement. I suspect that he made that
statement because he already had the notion that since he was a
Christian, he was not supposed to have any sexual thoughts. The
understanding of Eastern Christianity at the same time was entirely
different. Historically, outstanding Christians with a great reputation
for wisdom, perfection, and holiness, like St. Anthony, do not have any
difficulty talking about their sexual thoughts and temptations, even to
a very old age. The desert fathers, those giants of Christian
spirituality, report their sexual anxieties and transgressions with an
amazing simplicity and openness. I would like to mention only one of
those beautiful stories that convey so well the desert fathers'
definite conviction that a Christian is constantly in the process of
becoming; consequently, what makes somebody a Christian is that he is
moving, that is, he is growing spiritually, and not just that he is
meeting any standards at any specific time.
"A brother was goaded by lust, and rising at night be made his way to
an old man, and told him his thoughts, and the old man comforted him.
And revived by that comforting he returned to his cell. And again the
spirit of lust tempted him, and again he went to the old man. And this
happened many times. But the old man did not discountenance him, but
spoke to him to his profit, saying, 'Yield not to the devil, nor relax
thy mind; but rather as often as the devil troubles thee, come to me,
and he shall go buffeted away. For nothing so dispirits the demon of
lust as when his assaults are revealed. And nothing so heartens him as
when his imaginations are kept secret.' So the brother came to him
eleven times, confessing his imaginings. And thereafter he said to the
old man, 'Show love to me, my father, and give me some word.' The old
man said, 'Believe me, my son, if God permitted the thoughts with which
my own mind is stung to be transferred to thee, thou wouldst dash
thyself headlong.' And by the old man saying this, his great humbleness
did quiet the goading of lust in the brother."
I said before that what makes somebody a Christian is the fact that he
is moving and growing; he is not stagnant, nor has he reached a certain
level of perfection as a final point. The expectation for the person
who is on the first step of the ladder of perfection is to move to the
second; the expectation for the person who is on the tenth step is to
move to the eleventh; therefore, when the latter individual is not
moving towards the eleventh step, he can be condemned, while the first
one can be saved, although he is eight steps lower than the latter. The
parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is a good example of
that. The Pharisee is a decent man. He is not a thief, not an
adulterer; he is a temple-goer and an ardent temple supporter. But he
is satisfied with his accomplishments, and he believes that there is
nothing else he has to do; and, as a result, he had become stagnant. On
the other hand, the tax collector lives an ugly life, but he realizes
it; he is not satisfied with it, and he is resolved to move. It is the
latter, not the former, who went up to his home justified, said Christ.
The whole Eastern Christian tradition has developed on the basis of
this stand. Western Christianity seems to have missed this entirely,
and it got really caught up in its inflexible and impersonal
generalizations. It developed the either/or Christian morality which
presented very serious problems right away, and these show up very
clearly in our times. The Christian West tried to cope with the
consequences of its either/or generalized and standardized morality by
developing two highly destructive patterns: 1) the "appear to be"
pattern and 2) the "lowering of standards" pattern.
THE TWO DESTRUCTIVE PATTERNS IN THE WEST
The first, in essence, just removes the focus from trying to be a
Christian to trying to appear to be a Christian. Very early, Western
Christians realized that they would never make it if the only way they
could be Christians would be to meet all the standards; therefore they
concentrated their efforts on trying to appear to be the way they were
supposed to be. A good name for that tactic is hypocrisy, and it is
familiar to all legalistic and rigid moralities. Phariseeism was
exactly that, and Puritanism and pietism excelled in this, far beyond
Phariseeism. Southern Baptist piety is an excellent contemporary
example of this tactic.
The other pattern has been the lowering of the standards. That is, if
the only way you can be a Christian is to meet all the standards, we
can increase the number of Christians by decreasing the moral
standards. Our age has witnessed much of this tactic. It started with
Protestantism and developed to a spectacular firecracker in Roman
Catholicism which responded with an overflow of permissiveness to the
recent overwhelming exodus and indifference of its followers. I wonder
which of the two tactics has been more destructive. The first created
false people who spent their energy not to grow but to hide! The second
took the excitement out of life. All the average American expects from
himself is not to steal and not to kill, and when he accomplishes that,
he sits back doing nothing and ends up vegetating and being bored to
death. There is not any far-reaching perspective in his life;
therefore, he develops an infantile self-concern, which leads either to
depression or to breakdown. When he cannot have instant gratification
of his great needs, the world falls apart. He would never have a chance
to get depressed due to sexual frustration, if he had the far-reaching
direction in his life that a certain ascetic had, who every time he ate
food, cried because he was nurturing his corruptible body when his
incorruptible soul was starving.
That static notion of Christian morality and spirituality penetrated
the life of Western Christians and became a life style, which they live
without being aware of it. Since the Western notion of Christian
morality was the meeting of certain standards, a Christian was not
supposed to have any negative feelings like anger or hatred. That
notion was incorporated in the culture and eventually the expression of
anger became a sign of "barbarism." Refined people were not supposed to
express or feel any anger. As a result of this notion, anger was
suppressed, and it was transformed to all kinds of bad symptoms.
Repressed anger is a basic part of all mental disturbances. The
suppressed anger becomes devious and comes out well camouflaged and
over-destructive. This is exactly what Christ describes, saying, "When
the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless
places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, `I will return to
my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty,
swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other
spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the
last state of that man becomes worse than the first." (Matthew 12,
43-45)
The unclean spirit that comes out of the Easterner with uncouth
screaming and yelling, and which is repressed by the refined Westerner,
comes back bringing with him seven spirits more evil than himself like
all kinds of neurosis, schizophrenia, depression, religious fanaticism,
and many others; undoubtedly, the state of the psychotic refined
Westerner is far worse than the state of the uncouth and crude,
screaming and yelling Easterner. Repressed anger has been the cause of
many disasters in human history. Many wars, revolutions, and massacres
have been the disastrous outburst of repressed anger, and likewise many
destructive effects of religious fanaticism like the Inquisition and
the dreadful murders of the Calvinistic communities in the Middle Ages.
Also, many dictators or stern and punitive religious leaders are moved
by a repository of repressed anger which usually refers more
appropriately to parental figures and which has been repressed by
religious and cultural inhibitions. This is how religion becomes life,
and it is lived by these people without awareness. This is how Western
Christianity has influenced Western culture and this is how a distorted
Christianity has caused immeasurable harm and innumerable deplorable
cases of mental disturbance with which modern psychiatry is struggling.
The therapeutic process for a schizophrenic in essence is a process of
Easternization of the Western man; it is a process of re-orthodoxizing
the Western Christian, because Orthodox Christianity has not accepted
the "appear to be" pattern and, although it encourages the struggle for
perfection, condemns perfectionism which is intolerance of human
imperfection and which, in the language of the ascetics, is an
indication of demonic pride.
THE IMAGE OF CHRIST
Finally, it is amazing how Western Christianity distorted, in this
issue, the scriptural image of Christ; He is presented as condemning
human aggression and as a sickening, soft, and effeminate man with rosy
cheeks and blond wavy hair. It is deplorable that so many Orthodox are
offended by the strong, powerful, dynamic, scriptural Christ of the
Byzantine art although they are infatuated by this nauseating Western
Christ. It is amazing how Western Christianity managed to visualize the
fiery eyes of Christ which "looked around" at the Pharisees "with
anger," (Mark 3,5) as sweetish and wishy-washy, how it resolved to
present as soft and effeminate, the powerful Christ who made "a whip of
cords" and drove with it all the merchants "out of the temple" with
their sheep and oxen, and "poured out the coins of the money changers
and overturned their tables." (John 2, 13-16) It is amazing how Western
Christianity managed to describe as quiet and soft-spoken him who
uttered the dreadful "woes" and called the Scribes and Pharisees
"hypocrites," "blind fools," "blind guides," "white-washed tombs,"
"serpents" and "brood of vipers" (Matthew 23) and told his tempting
disciples "be gone Satan." (Matthew 16, 23) It is inconceivable how
Christ disintegrated to a eunuch prince of peace although he stated
very emphatically, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on
earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to
set a man against his father, and daughter against her mother, and
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and man's foes will be those
of his own household," (Matthew 10, 34-36) Christ did promise peace but
not a hypocritical external peace but a real inner peace. He said, "My
peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you." (John
14,27)
________________________________________________________________________
2. NO GRAVEN IMAGES
by Harold O. J. Brown
Chronicle, March 2005
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image...
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...0
-Exodus 20:4, 5
In the fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, Satan
tempts Jesus with the offer of "all the kingdoms of the world, and the
glory of them," This is the third of his temptations, and perhaps the
one that was the most difficult to resist, for he was tempting the
Savior to take a quick shortcut to possess what He would gain through
suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus answered, "It is written,
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve"
(Matthew 4:1O). Today, the Christian Church that survived war and
persecution is in an unanticipated danger, the danger of being
"surfeited with dainties," to use Calvin's colorful expression. Having
withstood the lash, She is suffocating under toys and delicacies. Idols
of the past were often cruel; today, they are sweet. It has been
centuries since those of us in what used to be called Western
Christendom have been tempted to worship graven images. Today, however,
millions of us have bowed down and served other idols of human making.
There is a hymn in the old Harvard College hymnal
with the lines, "Deep sands of time divide thy golden days from mine,
Thy voice comes strange o'er years of change, how can we follow Thee?"
The hymn concludes with the hopeful promise, "Go, Lord, we follow Thee."
Unfortunately, it seems to have become increasingly
difficult for us as children of the Enlightenment; of revolutions
violent and industrial; of materialism, both sophisticatedly
philosophical and crassly greedy, to hear that voice and discern the
footsteps of that Lord in the shifting sands of time. We no longer have
a cruel leader, at least not such as the Germans and Russians did, but
we are learning not to care, because we have so many things to divert
us. For Christians, the struggle is no longer between God and Mammon
(Matthew 6:24), but between Jesus and the Market.
German theologian Karl Heim (187O-1958), attempting
to explain what Jesus is and should be to Christians, wrote of the
common human desire for a leader. This desire is all too easily
misdirected into following a Führer (leader) into destruction.
Even we iconoclastic Americans are not immune to this sort of emotion.
Do not hearts thrill when "Hail to the Chief" announces the arrival of
the president of the United States? "Hail to the Chief" in German is
"Heil dem Führer," a thought that may reinforce in our minds the
importance of The Rockford Institute's motto, "Put not your trust in
princes" (Psalm 146:3). Inasmuch as that thrill affected even my
"red"-tinged heart when the music resounded at the entry of our last
"blue" president, Bill Clinton, it may also effect "blue" Democratic
voters today. Today, however, there is no false leader to blind us as
Hitler did the Germans. We have a different problem.
The Führerprinzip (leader principle) proclaimed
by Hitler has no real power over most Americans, whose human idols come
more from entertainment than from politics. The maximum leaders today
in Cuba, in China, in North Korea, and, until recently, in Iraq want a
certain idolatrous worship, but even they do not demand human
sacrifice-not the ripped-out, bleeding hearts required by the idols of
the Aztecs or the burned babies required by Carthaginian Moloch. The
dangerous idols of today, those that do demand human sacrifice, are not
made with hands but by human minds. The idols of the recent past sought
to ensnare us with hero worship; the new idol is drowning us in luxury
and ease.
French jurist and lay theologian Jacques Ellul did
not envisage the "principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of
this world spiritual wickedness in high places" of Ephesians 6:12 as
the devils or demons of medieval art. He saw them as the political and
ideological structures that can take on an almost personal character.
There were structures of thought, ideologies that could first
fascinate, then inspire, enslave, and finally destroy. What we confront
today is an idolatrous structure of material and intellectual
productivity that buries us alive.
The dangerous idols of the past claimed total
allegiance, professing to solve all of the problems of social life and,
ultimately, to reveal the meaning of existence. The idol today is not
"graven" like the statuary of the Nazis and the communists and,
therefore, is harder to recognize and insidiously more dangerous. The
great idols of the recent past sought to restructure society, perhaps
the whole world, and to give all of life, at least for the nations that
they shaped, a new sense of meaning and destiny. Ill-fated Italian
fascism sought to assume the heritage of Roma aeterna, the Rome of the
Caesars, not that of the popes. Although, in the eyes of his
detractors, Benito Mussolini may appear a clown, for a time he was
taken seriously. He thought, and many believed, that he really could be
a new Caesar. Mussolini took the word fascism from the fasces, the
bundle of rods around an ax that symbolized authority in ancient Rome.
Fascism did not last long enough to realize its dreams, and its future
was cut short by Mussolini's folly both in attempting the achievements
of the Romans with too few men and too little time and in choosing
Hitler as a model.
Nazism, a decade younger and crueler, sought to
restructure all of German life on the basis of race and blood. As Eric
Voegelin writes in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, those who want to
change everything and make it all new, to transform what he calls the
"Order of Being," must first of all kill God, the Author of that order.
Marxism and Nazism had in common an outright rejection of the God of
Christianity. Marxism was explicitly committed to atheistic
materialism, the other dreaming of ancient myths. Nazism did not act to
suppress Christianity but tried to supplant it with something more
Aryan and Germanic. The Christian churches were not closed; the
Protestants were transformed as far as possible into the Deutsche
Christen, and the Catholics were largely coopted. Jesus was Aryanized.
Heinrich Himmler and the SS wanted to resurrect a vision of the Nordic
gods, but it did not catch on; the total defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945
left no one ready to be a martyr for Wodin and Valhalla.
Marxism was more direct, more systematic. It sought
effectively to blot out all memory of God from public life; Christians
were still allowed to sing and to pray, as long as they did it quietly
and unobtrusively in their own quarters and made no attempt to
evangelize. Atheistic propaganda was promoted.
Nazism has been wiped from the stage of history; the
little groups of neo-Nazis that spring up from time to time are
noteworthy only for their nastiness. Their vision has nothing of the
comprehensiveness of Hitler's "New Order." They hardly rank as idols.
Marxism has been wiped from the political stage in that part of the
world that we call Western Christendom, although it survives
politically in Asia and intellectually in Western academies.
Idols are expected to give gifts; the Marxist idols
have failed. The experience of half a century of competing systems
operating adjacent to one another- the Bundesrepublik over against the
Deutsche Demokratische Republik in Europe; North and South Korea in
Asia-has revealed the total inability of communist central planning to
produce the wealth that people crave. Our markets satisfy such craving.
Satiated, no one "panteth after thee, O God" (Psalm 42:1).
Communist China after Mao has succeeded in
preserving totalitarian tyranny while creating wealth by adopting
principles of a market economy. The astonishing growth of Protestant
Christianity in communist China shows the truth of the biblical
statement, "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4). Perhaps
the Chinese have not had bread long enough, or in sufficient quantity,
to be satiated; perhaps we in the West have. With isolated exceptions,
Christianity has been effectively stifled in Europe and, increasingly,
in North America - not by the virulently secularist antifaiths of
Marxism and Nazism, but by the indifferently secular substitute of
capitalism and the abundance that it has given us.
The Epoch of Secularization (1971), Augusto Del Noce
warns against the dangers of capitalism. That great engine of economic
productivity and material wealth that reemerged from war-blasted West
Germany and Japan and has continued to flourish in the West has never
opposed Christianity or any religion in principle, but, as Del Noce
shows, it is increasingly effective in smothering it in practice. The
Nazis told the Germans, "Forget God and Jesus, believe in Wotan and
Thor!" The Marxists shouted, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
Neither Aryan dreams nor Marxist oppression, however, proved able to
blot out Christianity. Many Christians surrendered, churches faltered
and closed, but the Faith survived.
Christians have always known that they must face
opposition and oppression. Enduring to the end and waiting for the
ultimate reward in Heaven is easier to sustain against active
opposition when the opposition can offer few (if any) rewards on earth.
Faithfulness becomes increasingly difficult, however, when mammon
overwhelms us with this-woldly gratifications and rewards. Capitalism
and the free market succeed in thoroughly diverting people's attention
from the things that endure to the things that are of the world.
Christians in the West are becoming so "surfeited with dainties" in the
over-abundant free market that they are losing all appetite for the
truly nourishing meat and potatoes of faith in the God of Abraham, the
God and Father of Jesus Christ.
It is unfortunate that Del Noce's insights are
available only in Italian or in a recent French translation, L'Epoque
de la sécularization. He might wake American Christians up to
the fact that the opulence bestowed by capitalism is enticing us away
from the Faith that persecution did not crush. Already in the late
196O's, Del Noce saw what was happening as Europe emerged from World
War II. The Faith that had survived the adversities of war and poverty
began to vanish under the avalanche of goods and pleasures.
The late German-emigré economist Wilhelm
Ropke helped postwar West Germany choose the free market instead of the
planned economy recommended by American Democrats and British Labour,
and the Wirtschaftwunder (economic miracle) arose, gradually doing to
faith what Hitler could not do. In A Humane Economy, Röpke gave a
warning that has gone unheeded. The market, he says, produces goods in
quantity, but it does not produce values: It consumes them.
Del Noce explains how this happens. Even in the
Italy of 3O years ago, consumers were buried under an avalanche of
material products. The profusion of things to buy produces permanent
diversion and distraction. The expansion of credit makes it possible
not merely to desire new toys of every kind but to obtain them, after
which consumers became the prisoners of their own purchasing power.
When Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24), that false god had not yet
taken on the dimensions that he has today. Nazism and Marxism detested
Christianity but failed to destroy it, much less to bury it. Successful
free-market capitalism does not detest Christianity, but it is
defeating it nonetheless. It is not burning it in the ovens of the
Kazetts or burying it in the mass graves of the Gulag. Instead, it
smothers believers under the mass of the goods that they cannot resist
acquiring. It would be a bizarre turn of world history if the system
that produced the dangerous weapons to defeat the aggressive foes of
Christianity ends by producing the enticing goods that will smother the
surviving Christians.
Chronicles' religion editor Harold O.J. Brown is a professor of
theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Note: The original article had an illustration of an American silver
dollar, with the motto, "IN GOODS WE TRUST."
________________________________________________________________________
3. DOES ATHEISM REQUIRE MORE FAITH?
David Limbaugh
(townhall.com, April 20, 2004)
I want to tell you about an important new book
I hope will be widely disseminated. Though its subject is the truth of
Christianity, it needs to be read by far more than just "the choir."
I didn't come to faith in Christ effortlessly. I began my adult
spiritual journey as a skeptic seeking answers for life's ultimate
questions. In the process I did a great deal of reading on Christian
theology and apologetics (defense of the faith).
I discovered, to my initial surprise, that there is
an extensive body of evidence supporting Christianity's exclusive truth
claims. Knowledge of this evidence doesn't automatically lead one to
faith, but it certainly helps to remove obstacles we sometimes
unwittingly use as excuses for neglecting our spiritual "business" or
flat out rejecting the truth.
Some Christians seem threatened by the very idea of
marshaling evidence in support of their faith. But the Bible itself
tells us that we should "always be prepared to give an answer to
everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1
Peter 3:15).
It is healthy to have doubts and work through
resolving them, which only fortifies your faith and better positions
you to withstand challenges you may encounter along the way.
Christianity has nothing to fear from a thorough
investigation of the evidence. That's why I was fascinated when I
happened onto a column by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. a
few weeks ago, wherein Dionne discussed a recent article he'd enjoyed
in the New Republic by Leon Wieseltier.
In the article, Wieseltier "praises atheists for taking the question of
God's existence so seriously that they force believers to do the same
... There is no greater insult to religion than to expel strictness of
thought from it."
I certainly agree that a Christian's faith must hold
up to intellectual scrutiny. But do atheists actually take the question
of God's existence as seriously as Wieseltier and Dionne suggest? I
have my doubts.
Indeed, widely respected Christian apologists Norman
Geisler and Frank Turek dispute that notion in their new book, I Don't
Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Geisler and Turek confront the
conventional wisdom that Christians are an unthinking lot whose faith
is devoid of intellect and that atheists need no faith to sustain their
belief system.
The authors show that Christian faith and reason are
not mutually exclusive, but complementary and that there is an
abundance of evidence for the truth of Christianity. Conversely, they
show that it is impossible to be an atheist without a substantial
amount of faith.
They note, for example, that naturalistic biologists
claim "that life generated spontaneously from nonliving chemicals by
natural laws without any intelligent intervention."
These scientists believe that a "one-celled animal
known as an amoeba (or something like it) came together by spontaneous
generation..." But we now know there is incredible complexity in "the
message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba (a creature so small,
several hundred could be lined up in an inch)."
"The message found in just the cell nucleus of a
tiny amoeba is more than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica
combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as
1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica." And "we must
emphasize that these 1,000 encyclopedias do not consist of random
letters but of letters in a very specific order - just like real
encyclopedias."
You get the point: Atheists have to have enormous
faith to believe that such complex messages exist in the absence of
intelligent design.
But when you closely examine the evidence supporting
many Christian claims, you'll find that they "are certain beyond
reasonable doubt." As such, "it's not faith in Christianity that's
difficult but faith in atheism or any other religion. That is, once one
looks at the evidence, we think it takes more faith to be a
non-Christian than it does to be a Christian."
The authors admit there are obstacles to a belief in
Christianity. In the course of the book, they systematically address
the perceived intellectual objections, emotional obstacles and
volitional reasons to reject Christianity. The authors' treatment of
these issues is compelling.
I felt so strongly about the value of "I Don't Have
Enough Faith ..." that when the authors honored me with a request to
write the foreword for it I readily agreed. This is the ideal
all-in-one book for you to share with your doubting friends and to
bolster your faith in Truth. You owe yourself a read.
4.NEW ITEMS FROM THE BOOK CENTER
(TPR) ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: TEACHING ON THE PRIESTHOOD. A
series of lectures by Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas based on St.
Cyril's "De Adoratione.". A moving study on the work of Christ, Who is
the True High Priest, fulfilling the Old and granting the New
Priesthood.. 88pp Paper d$10.00
(LPM) THE LORD'S PRAYER ACCORDING TO ST. MAKARIOS OF CORINTH,
translated by fr. George Dion. Dragas. A distillation of
early patristic writings compiled by the popular 18th century
Archbishop of Corinth. 126pp. Paper d$11.00
TWELVE GREAT FEASTS FOR CHILDREN: the final 3 volumes: 24PP
Paper d$6.00 ea.
(ENT) THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
(DOR) THE DORMITON OF THE THEOTOKOS
(EXA) THE EXALTATION OF THE CROSS