Global Warning! (mine them, don't fear them)

There is a danger facing us on this planet perhaps even more severe in its implications for humanity than the global warming. It concerns the global depletion of resources and the impact this will have other seemingly ever increasing population.

Sustainable development has been an issue for decades and yet we do not seem to have made much progress in dealing with it. When I was a teen report was published by the Club of Rome called ' The Limits to Growth ' (1972). This has been updated at least twice since other writing is still on the wall. We cannot keep on living as we have without endangering the ecosystem upon which we depend, but if we must as a species continue to grow numerically and economically, then we cannot look to the earth as an infinite resource for us to plunder indefinitely.

I think we need to advance on two fronts. We must learn to live within our needs upon the earth so that the human family might flourish safely whilst at the same time recognising that if we are to have a long-term future there will come a point when we have to look for resources elsewhere. It is either this or we radically reduce population size through mandatory birth control or we let disease famine and war achieved the same result. Neither alternative is at all acceptable in my view. At the moment everyone is talking about sustainable development and this is right and good. It must be where we concentrate our efforts both to avoid the excesses of global warming and to be morally responsible agents of care for creation. However the other question that we must address is where our future resources are to come from if we are not to regress into a low maintenance Stone Age society. We have nearly exhausted the Earth’s treasures already, so the inescapable conclusion has to be faced. In the future our natural resources will have to be sought ' off-world '.

The solar system is the new frontier. Eventually there will be new prospectors but this time the untamed wilderness will be the asteroid belt and the sands of Mars not the wild West. Many people are curiously reluctant to face this issue but the logic of expansion is inescapable if population collapse is to be avoided. One thing is for certain. These new frontiers will not be opened up by governments. History has shown that whereas governments have often funded such ventures, (think of Columbus and the King of Spain), it has always been intrepid explorers and entrepreneurs that have broken the new ground.

We need now not only to curb our greed but to extend our reach. There is no incompatibility between these options. There seems no logical reason why the human enterprise should not continue to expand to the stars. Indeed our divine destiny might be precisely this: to be priests of the WHOLE of creation; to co-work with God in a transformation of truly cosmic proportions. Preserved by divine grace and energised by human dreams, is this not a worthy goal for our species 10,000 years hence?

God does not Explain Things; Things Explain God

Humans have always tried to understand the world around them, if only to survive, and to value their place in it in order to enjoy life as beings conscious of death. In this context the theology of primitive animist faiths can be seen as a certain science; an early attempt to explain how things are by virtue of their familiar or indwelling spirits. By explaining natural processes both predictable and unpredictable within such a rational framework the world became safer, even tameable within certain limits. Eventually the sense emerged through observation of higher organising principles at work in the world, maybe even a “Highest Principle” and so a Supreme Spirit or High God was “born” out of an existing and enduring spirit pantheon.

Monotheist religions took these developments to their logical conclusion, ONLY the High God could serve the purpose of integrating a created Cosmos as a whole, the lesser spirits being demoted into avatars, angels and other created subordinate servants or manifestations. At this stage, however, it is still the One-God-Who-Is-One who explains how things are. If the wind blows, it is his breath. If the ground trembles and swallows you up, it is his anger. If the stars shine it is because he has provided guides both navigational and astrological for his children. At some point of mature reflection, however, most if not all monotheisms wake up to the fact that there are ways of understanding how the world works that do not involve the all too easy and, frankly, rather demeaning (to God) idea that he has to be invoked to explain the unexplained. If God only exists as a stop gap explanation for our ignorance about the world then he is no God at all. For God to be God He must be the God-of-the-Whole or no-God-at-all.

So, difficult though it may be for all of us in varying degrees to accept, God does not explain anything at all. We do not believe in God to satisfy our ignorance about the world; in short to give us a nice and comforting alternative to science with its seemingly Godless explanations and “theories.” If we are thinking like that we do not truly believe in God nor do we receive the world as it truly is. We need to start the other way round. God does not explain things, things explain God. Many fathers make this approach to the Cosmos and its Creator explicit but perhaps none more so than the great St. Maximos the Confessor. In Ambigua 33 he says:-

“The Word becomes thickened […] concealing Himself mysteriously for our sakes within the logoi of creatures and thus He reveals Himself accordingly through the visible things as through some written signatures as a whole in His fullness from the whole of nature and undiminished in each part, in the varieties of natures as one who has no variation and is always the same, in composites, as One who is simple, without parts, in things which have their beginning in time, as the One without beginning, as the Invisible in the visible, the ungraspable in tangible things.”

The key idea here is the “logoi of creatures” ... what I am referring to in the shorthand of this article as “things.” These “logoi” function for St. Maximos as written signatures of God-in-creation; the disclosure of God in the being and beauty of things. So, as we discover more about the being and beauty of things through science, poetry and mystical contemplation and in so doing we discover or “explain” God. St. Maximos is clear, however, that it is Christ the Word of God, the Logos of God who is concealed and then revealed within the logoi of creatures, the self same Christ who is the Logos Incarnate. To use the theological terminology of St. Gregory Palamas, we might say that the energies of God in creation are disclosed Incarnate in the Word.

Orthodox Christians with this faith do not suppose that science or the arts are alternative truth perceptions to theology. The more we discover and know about the world the stronger and deeper in Christ revealed in the very sinews and flesh of our humanity and in the very physicality of Creation itself; its terrible and majestic glory ... signatures of God, vehicles of God indeed.

Which Christ?

This might seem a rather strange question. After all, we all know who Jesus is don’t we? Well do we? The sacrificing Christ of Catholicism is very different from the prophesying Isa of Islam. Christ the global teacher or avatar is very different from Jewish Messiah yet to come. The Christ who dies instead of me to appease God’s wrath on account of my sins is very different from Jesus the charismatic healer. From an Orthodox point of view all these “knowings” are perceived through a distorting lens. Doubtless all these traditions (some closer to Orthodoxy than others) are being sincere and indeed the depth of the piety is not in doubt. The difficult truth perhaps for many moderns to accept is that someone might be sincere .... yet wrong. But on what basis might a hypothetical impartial observer judge one account be better or more truthful than another?

All these views justify themselves in relation to a sacred text, some interpreting the same text differently, some using different texts. Catholicism perhaps is closer to Orthodoxy in one regard, but not, of course, necessarily in others. This concerns the sufficiency of any text and its susceptibility to just one interpretation. Catholicism is not “Sola Scriptura” and neither is Orthodoxy. We claim that our perception of Christ concerns the mind of the Church stretching back both to Christ Himself and the Church of the Old Covenant (Testament). We insist that the Scriptures are the authoritative core of Tradition but not its exclusive limit. It is the Church herself as the pleroma (the fullness of Christ), and that precisely in her continuity with the People of God all the way back to Genesis, which gives us the confidence to know and see Christ clearly.

The divergence between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in respect of Christ and the Church concerns Rome’s innovations which lie outside the received and ecumenical phronema (mindset) of the Church in her historical trajectory. That phronema is essentially a consensual, conciliar reality of a people gathered before the God who manifests Himself especially and definitively in Christ. No one bishop can determine that ... nor can a show of hands or the latest take on a particular biblical text. It is much more to do with the universal and inclusive prayer from the People that ascends to God and returns with the truth from the Holy Spirit. So, neither synods nor the papacy, neither a text nor a Godly opinion that has the last word but rather Christ Himself in the Church ... much less easy to define and nail down of course, but in the end both true and eternally secure.

So, outrageous though this sounds to some, it is empirically defensible to claim that true knowledge of Christ; authentic, unadulterated, undistorted actual knowledge of “He Who Is” exists fully and exclusively only in the Orthodox Church; the Church of both St. Patrick and St. Panteleimenon, (for in Christ there is neither East nor West). The ecumenical task of Orthodoxy is to call ALL peoples (Christian and non-Christian alike) into this common ground of truth concerning the Saviour. Some may choose of course to remain outside this saving grace. That is their prerogative, their choice, their call. Moving the boundaries of the Church however to include them is not a loving thing to do for it sacrifices truth to expediency and in the end loses its own integrity and, therefore, serves and saves no one. “Which Christ?” – indeed! Choose wisely, choose well.

Booo!

In recent times there have been countless headless chickens running round the courtyard under a sky that seems to have been perpetually falling in. Alarmist predictions about total economic collapse, falling asteroids, decimating pandemics and the like have far outlasted the millennial transition, usually most noted for such scare mongering.

It’s not of course that these risks do not exist. Life is and always has been beset by dangers numerous and unseen. Part of the population, however, seems stuck in the nursery where nothing bad could or should happen. Then we have the bogus experts whose careers have been built on keeping the various bogeymen at bay, real or imagined. These have a vested interest in pandering to the fears of the worried well and the various other Chicken Littles of this world. They compete for attention with some politicians for whom the fear of terrorism, disease or natural disaster can be meal ticket to electoral success and social control. Those who are really trying to help, the professionals in the field, are continually hindered in their work by the panic inducing reactions of the risk averse and their cynical manipulating guardians.

Then there are others of course who just like a good scare. They include the sociopaths and misanthropes who relish the effects of disasters and the bored for whom the excitement of danger, any kind of danger, is far preferable to the monotony of conventional modern living ... which is why peace time armies have never been short of naive young men. But what of you and me? Go on admit it! We all like a good scare from time to time! Disaster movies attest to the universal human fascination, the adrenalin pumping thrill of everything going “belly up.”

Bad religion has also sometimes cynically used this fascination with death and destruction, both the dread and the relish, in order to control its adherents. The sociopaths have rejoiced at the pains of the damned, sadists have enjoyed their torturing of heretics, preachers have used the fear of hell to convert their hearers and the profane have shocked with their blasphemies. Mercifully such things are entirely absent from Christian Orthodoxy because we are not concerned to control and unregenerate mass of reprobates but rather we would have God restore freedom and dignity to humankind in the face of the demonic forces that oppose Him and us.

Fear and anxiety are indeed extremely potent human emotions and we have a complex and ambiguous relationship to both. The gospel, however, sets quite a different standard for fear. There is a godly fear which approaches God with reverence and awe. Against this I do not speak but there is another servile fear which has no place in Christian living. It is a fear of life, a fear of the “other”, a fear associated with punishment, a dread of death. The existence of this fear betrays an attenuated or absent sense of the love of God. Such Perfect Love casts out fear, (1 John 4:17-19). It assures of what St. Paul taught from his own experience when he wrote:- “For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.” (Romans 14:8).

So whereas we can all enjoy the occasional good scare our hearts at deep level must know both the security and assurance that can only come with an abiding knowledge of both God’s love and providence, His own very Presence with us and in us. Against such there is no law, no threat, no ensnaring danger but only the perfect peace and glory of the saints. Perhaps it is this that this generation misses most of all.

For All the Saints ...

From the Profession of Faith at Chrismation…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frankenstein or Christ?

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

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