Stromata Blog

Lenten Weblog, Day 41: Lazarus Saturday

Today is the Feast of the Raising of Lazarus, which along with Palm Sunday tomorrow, forms a joyous interlude before the somber tragedy of Holy Week, as well as a prelude to the triumph of Christ’s Resurrection.

Bringing Lazarus back to life after four days in the tomb stands out among Our Lord’s miracles. Cures and exorcisms are unspectacular fare by comparison. The question naturally arises: If Jesus performed this miracle, if all of Lazarus’ family and friends could testify to it, how could there have been any doubt about His divinity? Wouldn’t all unbelief be instantly silenced?

Extending that thought, why, if God is real, doesn’t He show Himself to us with wonders that no atheist could deny? Instead His power skulks in the shadows, revealed, so it seems, only to those who are predisposed to believe in Him without tangible proof.

The answer is that belief in supernatural forces is not good in and of itself. Magicians and Satanists believe in them, too. Those who saw the raising of Lazarus knew only that a man who claimed to be a prophet had performed a miracle. How they reacted to that news depended less on what Jesus did than on their own characters. If they already loved God, they were drawn nearer to Him by this sign of His love for a stricken friend. If they loved only the things of this world, they saw a possible benefactor, a bestower of health, wealth and pleasures, to be approached in the same manner as any earthly despot. The Gospels forbear to record it, but we may be sure that Our Lord was surrounded by flatterers and schemers, by men who desired to use Him for their own purposes. Some of those purposes may have been idealistic: to free Israel from its Roman masters or relieve poverty through perpetual manna from Heaven. Others were less creditable. All were distortions, for they treated God as a means rather that as the supreme end.

Cheap miracles, dispensed to all and sundry, would alter most people’s conception of how the world operates, but not of what its purpose is. The supernatural would be just another tool, which wicked men would seek to use wickedly. It is only a man who is already moving toward union with God who can profit when God touches his life in a manner outside the ordinary course of nature. The rest are better left in the shadows until they are ready to receive the true light.

Troparion - Tone 1

By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your passion,
You did confirm the universal Resurrection, O Christ God!
Like the children with the palms of victory,
We cry out to You, O Vanquisher of death;
Hosanna in the Highest!
Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Kontakion - Tone 2

Christ the Joy, the Truth and the Light of all,
The Life of the World and the Resurrection
Has appeared in His goodness, to those on earth.
He has become the Image of our Resurrection,
Granting divine forgiveness to all!

And now, after 41 consecutive days, I’m going to bring the Lenten Weblog to a close. Lent isn’t over, but there are plenty of church services to occupy my time between Palm Sunday and Easter. Attending to them will be more profitable to my soul than writing these foolish and inadequate words. May Holy Week be blessed to all, as we await the glory of Pascha.

Lenten Weblog, Day 40: Readings

Being a bit weary this evening, I think that I’ll forgo trying to write creatively. Here instead are a trio of excerpts from essays worth reading:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), “Biblical Aspects of the Question of Faith and Politics” (homily delivered in 1981):

The state is not the whole of human existence and does not embrace the whole of human hope. Men and women and their hopes extend beyond the thing that is the state and beyond the sphere of political activity. This does not only apply to a state that is Babylon but to any and every state. . . .

But when Christian faith, faith in man’s greater hope, decays and falls away, then the myth of the divine state rises up once again, because men and women cannot renounce the totality of hope. Even when such promises . . . proclaim as their goal the complete liberation of mankind and the elimination of all domination, they stand in contradiction to the truth of man and in contradiction to his or her freedom, because they force people into what they can achieve themselves. This kind of politics that declares the kingdom of God to be the result politics and distorts faith into universal primacy of the political is by its nature the politics of enslavement; it is mythological politics. . . .

It is of course always difficult to adopt the sober approach that does what is possible and does not cry enthusiastically after the impossible; the voice of reason is not as loud as the cry of unreason. The cry for the large-scale has the whiff of morality; in contrast limiting oneself to what is possible seems to be renouncing the passion of morality and adopting the pragmatism of the faint-hearted. But in truth political morality consists precisely of resisting the seductive temptation of the big words by which humanity and its opportunities are gambled away. It is not the adventurous moralism that wants itself to do God’s work that is moral, but the honesty that accepts the standards of man and in them does the work of man. It is not refusal to compromise but compromise that in political things is the true morality. . . .

Christian faith has destroyed the myth of the divine state, the myth of the state as paradise and a society without domination. In its place it has put the objectivity of reason. But this does not mean that it has produced a value-free objectivity, the objectivity of statistics and a certain kind of sociology. To the true objectivity of men and women belongs humanity, and to humanity belongs God. To genuine human reason belongs the morality that is fed by God’s commandments. This morality is not some private affair; it has public significance. Without the good of being and doing good there can be no good politics. What the persecuted Church laid down for the Christian as the core of its political ethos must also be the core of any active Christian politics; it is only when good is done and recognized as good that a good human social existence can thrive. To bring to public acceptance as valid the standing of morality, the standing of God’s commandments, must be the core of responsible political activity.

Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, “Habemus Papam!”:

What do I, as an Orthodox bishop living and serving in Europe, expect from the new pontificate?

First of all, that the Catholic Church continues to preserve its traditional doctrinal and moral teaching without surrendering to pressures from the ‘progressive’ groups that demand the ordination of women, the approval of the so-called ‘same-sex marriages’, abortion, contraception, euthanasia etc. There is no doubt that Benedict XVI, who has already made his positions on these issues clear, will continue to oppose such groups, which exist both within the Catholic Church and outside it. . . .

I hope, next, that there will be a general amelioration in the relations between the Catholic Church and the world Orthodoxy. . . . My fear, however, is that by concentrating exclusively on the dividing issues we are likely to lose precious time that could be used for a common witness to the secularized world. Europe, in particular, has so rapidly dechristianized that urgent action is needed in order to save it from losing its centuries-old Christian identity. I strongly believe that the time has come for Catholics and Orthodox to unite their efforts and to defend traditional Christianity, which is being attacked from all sides. In twenty, thirty of forty years it may simply be too late.

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, “Biblical Repentance”:

Repentance is the arche, the foundational principle, of the life in Christ; it functions in the life of grace as the number “one” functions in arithmetic. It is not simply the “first” step of the Christian life. Repentance, rather, provides the abiding and formative structure of the whole life in Christ. Repentance is not a first step that we take with a view to getting past it. We are called to remain forever repentant. Although there is certainly progress to be made in the life of grace, all genuine progress is indicated by a renewal of repentance. A Christian does not “grow” in Christ by diminishing in repentance. True growth and authentic progress in Christ always imply growth and progress in repentance. . . .

[T]he Bible indicates that the conversion of repentance is not just an act of God; it is also an act of man’s free will under the accepted influence of God’s grace. Man’s heart, his interior, is altered by repentance. . . .

[B]ecause repentance is the free decision of man as well as the free gift of God, the grace of repentance, if not properly safeguarded, can also be lost. . . . [T]he blessed assurance given us in Christ (cf. Romans 8:31-39) is no substitute for humility and vigilance. At no point in our Christian lives can we afford to forget that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), with discipline lest we fall away (1 Corinthians 9:27). “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (10:12). . . .

Repentance is the non-negotiable, foundational constant of the life in Christ. However much God’s saints differ from one another in style, tone, and emphasis, repentance is a grace and discipline – a principle – shared by them all.

Lenten Weblog, Day 39: Too Many Years?

Rand Simberg, one of my favorite writers on space policy, uses the papal election as a hook for an essay, “Habemus Papam...Ad Perpetuitatem?”, wondering what the Church thinks about the prospect of “extreme life extension and indefinitely-long healthy human life spans”. From his tone I suspect that he believes traditional Christianity to be basically hostile to the idea, even if “there wouldn’t seem to be any existing ecclesiastically doctrinal reason” for that attitude. He foresees that the current Pope or a successor might “draw a line, and declare certain life-extending, life-enhancing therapies to be un-Catholic”, even if they didn’t “require killing embryos, or some other means that is morally problematic”.

To be fair and balanced, that suspicion only lurks in the background. The essay’s principal theme is that Christians haven’t thought a great deal about the moral implications of increasing longevity.

In a world of conventional life spans, we can always console ourselves with the thought that, if we’re stuck with a dud pope, or a particularly nasty and competent dictator, or an overactivist judge, no one lasts forever.

But what if they do? What are the implications of this for the future of the Church? Or of dictators (who are usually the first in their own nations to take advantage of new medical techniques)? Or the Supreme Court? Or indeed, any position which, in our current finite-lived reality, is defined as a term for life? And what will be the response of the Church in particular, which like most churches, partly grew in response to the innate human fear of death, in a world in which death was commonplace, to a world in which it becomes a rarity, only resulting from severe injuries occurring too far from medical facilities?

Questions like that aren’t really answerable, because, despite the great medical advances of the past century, a world in which death is rare is still a long way off. One needs a more precise scenario – How long do men live? What medical technology is needed to sustain them? How healthy are they? – to speculate about its practical consequences. On the other hand, there are a few broad principles that, it seems to, must be taken into account in any Christian view of the issue.

Christianity has always affirmed that life on Earth is a blessing and death a curse. In the Orthodox Church, “God grant you many years!” is a frequent acclamation, not “God take you to Heaven swiftly”. Earthly life is not the whole of life; neither is it a trivial prologue to be rushed through on the way to the real performance. Although each of us will live forever, these years of mortality are, to the best of our knowledge, the decisive period of our existence, during which we will either gain eternal glory or cut ourselves off forever from God. From a purely utilitarian point of view, we ought not to be in a hurry.

Still, the blessing of life is not the foremost blessing. No one, including non-Christians, thinks that it is. Were youthful, healthy life always preferable to death, we would praise soldiers who run away from battle. It is possible to make oneself miserable through excessive love of life, just as through excessive love of wealth or food or sex or any other natural good. At the same time, the expectation of many, many years can be an inducement to sloth and ennui. There may be other bitterness in the blessing, too, as I wrote a few years ago:

That the nearness of death repels laziness is no surprise. There are other, subtler psychological effects. Those who have the most potential life to lose are likely to be the least willing to risk it, and aversion to risk, once it gains a foothold in men’s habits, can little by little come to dominate their doings.

In the Age of Exploration, a majority of those who boarded ships for the New World died on the voyage. In our faltering Age of Space Exploration, a handful of deaths traumatize opinion. When the Mir got into trouble, commentators averred that, if the single American on board died, it would be politically impossible to go forward with the International Space Station – and they were probably right.

It was not just that people did not want to risk their own lives. They did not want to see even willing volunteers in jeopardy. Risk aversion, it seems, has become deeply ingrained in the national psyche. The most straightforward explanation is that, just as rich men dread robbers and tremble when others than themselves are robbed, those who feel that they have a natural right to fourscore-and-ten years easily pass from a normal fear of death to a morbid phobia. Eventually, the joy of life is stultified by precautions against losing it.

For our ancestors, so far as one can now discern, the relative shortness of life did surprisingly little to diminish human happiness. Probing the psychology of the past is treacherous, but it is surely noteworthy that depression, suicide and despair did not become visible literary themes until the 18th century nor obsessive ones until the 20th. The melancholy that accompanies the demise of a young Dickensian heroine is tinged with sweetness and hope. Nowadays, except in overtly camp performances like Love Story, the typical novelistic or dramatic response to dying, at almost any age, is rage against man and the universe. Angels in America has displaced David Copperfield and Marion Fay.

That longer life is not a prescription for unalloyed happiness is one of the reasons why we should be cautious about taking morally questionable steps obtain it. In no moral calculus does a mediocre end justify extreme means. Almost everyone, Peter Singer excepted, I suppose, would shrink from killing a healthy newborn infant in order to gain several centuries of personal happiness. Isn’t it then prudent to refrain from killing unborn children when the prospective reward is nothing more than a few decades of life that may not be particularly pleasant or happy?

A quick summary of what I believe to be the Christian answer to Mr. Simberg’s question amounts to this: Prolonging the span of healthy human life would be a great good, but it is not a good to be pursued at all costs, and it will not add as much as many imagine to the sum of human happiness. Ultimately, life in this world, however long it lasts, is of no length at all compared to eternity. Whether we survive for a hundred years or ten thousand, it behooves us to direct our thoughts to the life of the age to come, for that is where our future lies.

Lenten Weblog, Day 38: Zacchaeus the Tax Collector

Today is the feast day of St. Zakkai, the undersized architelones (a unique word but transparently synonymous with telonarches, “chief collector of customs”) of the city of Jericho, who climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus and was summoned to be His host at dinner. Delighted rather than offended by such presumptuousness, Zakkai announced his intention to give half his wealth to the poor and to repay fourfold any taxes that he had taken unjustly. In return, Jesus says, “Today has salvation come to this house.”

This anecdote, related only by Luke (19:1-10), includes no miracles or prophecies. It does make the point that Our Lord, as part of his mission to save sinners, was willing to consort with them, but that lesson sounds as if it has been tacked on. One wonders to what extent it really fits. Zakkai seems like an eminently respectable figure. The crowd grumbles that he is a sinner, but he does not confess to sinful conduct, nor does Jesus accuse him. The almsgiving and proffered restitution proceed prima facie from Zakkai’s joy at being recognized and honored by One whom he admires intensely.

Commentators twist their pens into knots searching out reasons why this sin-and-repentance or proclamation-to-the-outcast story should be so different from others in Luke. The simple answer is the most obvious: Zakkai’s encounter with the great rabbi was one of his treasured memories, and he recounted it to Luke or Luke’s source. Luke put it into his history because it was amusing and edifying. If, as modernist critics tend to assume of the entire Gospel narrative, it was a heavily redacted “tradition” or an invention with a theological purpose, it somehow never lost its concreteness or absorbed extraneous moralization. Why not follow Ockham’s advice and posit that it really happened and that we have a record not far from the literal facts?

In those mere facts a moral does reside, one that, so far as I know, is rarely brought out in sermons. Zakkai was a wealthy and important man, presumably a dignified figure and perhaps, if he was like many short-statured people, a bit touchy about his dignity. Nonetheless, when Jesus came to Jericho and a crowd gathered to see Him, this architelones did not have his servants clear a way to the front rank. He did not exert his power to seize a place near the Lord. Instead, he humbly climbed a tree, an act that cannot be done with much dignity. He would have been sitting there, clinging to the boughs like a schoolboy at play, when suddenly Jesus turned toward him, making him conspicuous to the throng, and said, “Zacchaeus, come down. Hurry, because I must stay at your house today.” (Luke 19:5 [Jerusalem Bible]) And the rich tax collector, heedless of appearances, unembarrassed by being made to look comical in front of his fellow citizens, clambered down from his perch, his heart overflowing with joy.

According to tradition, Zakkai followed Christ after His Resurrection and was appointed by St. Peter to lead the Christian community in Caesarea. That is not certain, however, and we know nothing about what else he did or when or how he died. He has one moment in history, when he subordinated fear of ridicule to love of the Lord and found salvation in that moment of humility.

Apolytikion – Tone 3

Having justly hated unjust riches, thou didst lay up treasures of salvation; for, receiving the Saviour within thy house, thou, O Zacchaeus, wast truly made marvelous with all the fruits of repentance thou broughtest forth: deeds of mercy, the correction of wrongs, and godly life, because of which we honour thee and call thee blest.

Kontakion – Tone 4

When He that bowed the Heavens came to save sinners, Zacchaeus, great in zeal, but little of stature, beheld the Tree of Life from in the sycamore; lifted above the earth, he saw Jesus, Who called him: coming down in lowliness, he repenting, received Him; and so salvation came into his house, and he was shown forth a true son of Abraham.

Lenten Weblog, Day 37: Quid Timent?

For the enemies that he has already made, Pope Benedict XVI merits the admiration of Christians everywhere. Rarely has bile been so refreshing. My only regret is that our Orthodox Patriarchs are not hated so shrilly and with so much reason.

Quid timent? What are they afraid of? Andrew Sullivan comically pretends to tremble for freedom itself:

It would be hard to over-state the radicalism of this decision. It’s not simply a continuation of John Paul II. It’s a full-scale attack on the reformist wing of the church. The swiftness of the decision and the polarizing nature of this selection foretell a coming civil war within Catholicism. The space for dissidence, previously tiny, is now extinct. And the attack on individual political freedom is just beginning.

Sullivan’s insinuation that the new Pope is hostile to political freedom is easy to debunk. Amusing is his notion of the ogre’s modus operandi:

He is a creature of theological discourse, a man of books and treatises and arguments. He proclaims his version of the truth as God-given and therefore unalterable and undebatable. His theology is indeed distinguished, if somewhat esoteric and at times a little odd. But his response to dialogue within the church is to silence those who disagree with him. He has no experience dealing with people en masse, no hands-on experience of the challenges of the church in the developing world, and complete contempt for dissent in the West.

So “a man of books and treatises and arguments” refuses to debate “his version of the truth”? The man whom Sullivan slanders as a “Grand Inquisitor” has been as vigorous a debater as any prelate of the past century. How many bishops or theologians give book-length interviews to mainstream journalists or have huge bibliographies?

What the instantaneous anti-Benedictines fear is not that the Vatican will suddenly devise tools to suppress freedom of thought – how many policemen has the Pope? – but that a vigorous, intellectual Pope will argue effectively for a Faith that is far more reasonable than its contemporary challengers.

In his pre-election homily, the then-Cardinal highlighted the central weakness of modernist concepts of religion and morality: their abandonment of natural reason in favor of “truths” founded on private feelings. That sort of self-created doctrine can give no account of itself. At its roots, it is irrational and unsustainable.

We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery” (Eph 4, 14). This description is very relevant today!

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, Saint Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like “a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal” (1 Cor 13,1).

There can be no attitude more egotistical and unloving than the insistence that our personal convenience and desire be validated by the Church, regardless of whether it conforms to what Scripture, Tradition and Natural Law teach. If a man believes that the Church is the Body of Christ, his reaction to disagreeable-seeming teachings ought to not to be, “Jettison them!” but “What can I learn from them? Am I so certain that my impulses are right and the voice of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church wrong?”

A Pontiff who hammers home the theme that moral relativism is a form of tyranny, in which we make ourselves slaves to desire and refuse liberation by reason, is a threat to the ascendancy of comfortable irrationality. The call to become adult children of the Father is disturbing to those who, as C. S. Lewis put it in The Problem of Pain, “want in fact not so much a father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven – a senile benevolence who as they say ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves.’” The post-Enlightenment Left has quickly grasped that Benedict XVI is a more dangerous enemy than even John Paul the Great. May their fears prove justified.

Lenten Weblog, Day 36: Varieties of the Secular

Bishop Hilarion, the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to “the European Institutions” (a paraphrasical way to refer to a European Union of which the Russian Church is not a huge admirer), has written a new essay on “Traditional and Liberal Values in the Debate Between Christianity and Secularism”, in which he attempts to identify the nub of the conflict between religious and secular world views. His analysis has much in it that is worthwhile. Unfortunately, with all due respect to His Grace, it goes seriously astray, because its image of secularism is drawn almost wholly from the Enlightenment. To the bishop, “secular liberalism” is still the philosophy of John Locke, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. That kind of liberalism still exists, in a semi-pure “libertarian” form, in elements of modern, dirigiste liberalism and in present day conservatism, but the most powerful and conspicuous form of contemporary secular liberalism is proudly post-Enlightenment. It does not worship Robespierre’s goddess of Reason or deduce the right form of polity from the “state of nature”. Reason has been dethroned along with the other archaic deities, while reasoning is scorned as a tool of patriarchy and oppression. Today’s secular liberals lack even the old bigotry against the numinous. “New age” mysticism tempts them, and exotic religions without the taint of Western tradition (Buddhism, for example) or with the virtue of intense anti-Western animus (such as Wahhabi Islam) are deemed worthy of a condescending tolerance. To place these secularists in the same camp as the Enlightenment is an error that can breed only confusion, as Bishop Hilarion demonstrates.

His crucial mistake is to see secular liberalism as the driving force behind “globalization” and traditional religion as the heart of resistance to it.

Today only religion is systematically resisting the desperate attack of globalization, entering into an unequal battle for the defence of those values which it considers fundamental and which are being challenged by globalization. Only religion is able to counter the ideology of globalization with its own system of spiritual and moral orientation based on the centuries-long experience of generations acquired during the pre-globalization age.

In the modern battle for values people find themselves more often than not on opposite sides of the barricades, with those inspired by religious ideals on the one side and those whose world-view is formed by secular humanism on the other. At the core of the modern globalization ideology is the humanistic idea of the absolute dignity of man and of the existence of universal, “common human” values, which should serve as the foundation of a single world civilization. By “common human” values, however, are understood not only those spiritual and moral tenets which are common to all religions or which are equally obligatory for both religious and non-religious people (“thou shall not kill”, “thou shall not steal”, “thou shall not bear false witness” etc.), but also many ideas that are questionable from the religious point of view and which are rooted in liberal-humanistic morality.

That account is almost diametrically opposed to the true state of affairs. How does it square with the fierce anti-globalization rhetoric of the secular Left or with the leading role of the United States, the world’s most pious major nation, in promoting closer economic relations among the various regions of the world? A more accurate description of the forces on “opposite sides of the barricades” would be conservatives and libertarians facing post-Enlightenment secularists and modernist Christians. The inspiration for globalization is not zeal for “a single world civilization” but ordinary economic self-interest. Nor is there much in the resistance that can reasonably be characterized as a “spiritual and moral orientation based on the centuries-long experience of generations acquired during the pre-globalization age”. The most active anti-globalists hold traditional values in contempt. Their multiculturalism stems from its usefulness as a weapon against the hated West, not from genuine respect for ancestral mores.

From faulty premises, the essay reaches the seriously faulty conclusion that Islamic extremism is a religious reaction, deplorable to be sure, to the likewise deplorable phenomenon of globalization:

There exist several variations of the religious answer to the challenge of totalitarian liberalism and militant secularism. The most radical answer is given by Islamic extremists, who have declared jihad against the “post-Christian” Western civilization with all its so-called common human values. The phenomenon of Islamic terrorism cannot be understood without comprehending the reaction brought forth in the contemporary Islamic world by the attempts of the West to impose its world-view and behavioural standards on it. We are used to hearing statements on how terrorism has neither nationality nor denomination, and nobody doubts that unsolved problems of an ethnic or political nature are the main causes of terrorist acts. But it is impossible to deny the fact that the most aggressive perpetrators of modern Islamic terrorism are inspired by a religious paradigm, viewing their acts as an answer to the total hegemony of Western secular thinking. And as long as the West continues to lay claim to a world-wide monopoly on world-views, propagating its standards as being without alternative and obligatory for all nations, the sword of Damocles of terrorism will continue to hang above the entire Western civilization.

But the “religious paradigm” of Islamofascism, the Wahhabi sect, originated in opposition to traditional Islam. Mohammed ibn ‛Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), who spent his entire life in Arabia, Iraq and Iran, probably never heard a whisper about “Western secular thinking”. According to their own propaganda, Wahhabi-influenced terrorists still see non-Wahhabi Moslems as enemies, along with the “crusaders” from the West. While it may be obvious to an Orthodox bishop that terrorism directed toward the modern Western world must be conceived as “an answer to the total hegemony of Western secular thinking”, the terrorists themselves believe that they are attacking Christianity. Among Western secularists, they find many who join with them in decrying American policies (as when Osama bin-Laden quoted Michael Moore). Meanwhile, as we have seen in Iraq, the one element of America’s behavior and world view that we have any interest in “imposing” on anyone, namely, democratic and constitutional government, appears to be quite popular with ordinary Moslems.

If Christians are to address secularism intelligently and effectively, we must avoid seeing it only as it was a century ago. There exists an Enlightenment secularism, with which we can discuss issues of common interest, because we have reason in common with it, though not revelation. There is also a post-Enlightenment secularism that denies the authority of reason. It “argues” by expressing feelings and is outraged when those feelings don’t move others to act as it wants them to.

Bishop Hilarion closes with hopes that the Church will be able to “to enter into a peaceful, non-aggressive, though obviously unequal, dialogue with [secularism], with the aim of achieving a balance between the liberal-democratic model of Western societal structure and the religious way of life”. With the old kind of secularism, that was a possibility. With the new, the dialogue will be extremely “unequal”. Its own presuppositions prevent it from engaging in rational dialogue. Since its advocates remain in possession of their reasoning faculties, little though they may wish to exercise them, Christians can try to reason with them. In return, however, we can anticipate nothing but a succession of whines and tantrums. It will be an unsatisfying exercise, and I find it difficult to share His Grace’s optimism about the prospects for any degree of success.

Lenten Weblog, Day 35: The Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt

The fifth Sunday of Lent is a unique commemoration in the calendar of the Orthodox Church. We have many celebrations of saints and some of holy icons; today we honor an “icon in words”, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt. This work, attributed to St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (c. 550-c. 639), is a narrative gem. Whether the events that it recounts literally took place (though there is no strong reason to doubt the basic facts) is no more important than whether an icon offers a literal portrait of the saint whom it represents.

Commentary on this tale can only flatten it and drain away a portion of its meaning. That most Orthodox know it only second hand, through the sermons that we have heard year after year, is our misfortune. We should read and reflect on it today, learning from Father Zosimus, a man who studied holiness all his life, how far short of the divine our striving falls, and from Mary the sinner how great is the power of repentance and prayer.

It is profitable, too, to reflect on the background against which St. Sophronius wrote: the Persian invasions that Emperor Heraclius repelled with desperate fighting, the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies within the Church, and the Moslem assault that placed the birthplace of Christianity under alien rule. Sophronius himself held the office of Patriarch of Jerusalem when the city was besieged by Caliph Omar, negotiated the terms of its surrender and died shortly afterwards. (His year of death is uncertain: between 638 and 644; his feast day is March 11th.) Yet his masterpiece brushes aside kings and conquests. Empires are mortal and transient. It is human souls that live forever, Zosimus and Mary who, from the perspective of eternity, matter more than Heraclius and Omar.

Troparion – Tone 8

The image of God was truly preserved in you, mother,
for you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh, for it passes away,
but to care instead for the soul, since it is immortal.
Therefore your spirit, holy mother Mary, Rejoices with the angels!

Kontakion – Tone 3

Having been a sinful woman,
you became through repentance a Bride of Christ.
Having attained angelic life,
you defeated demons with the weapon of the Cross.
Therefore, most glorious Mary, you are a Bride of the Kingdom!

Lenten Weblog, Day 34: The Religious Left at Work

While the “Religious Right” is routinely reviled for extremism and lack of Christian charity, the media take less notice of those qualities on the other end of the politico-religious spectrum. Worthy of attention is statement on the Terri Schiavo case bearing the irenic headline, “Have They No Decency? Religious Leaders Call for an End to Selective Morality in Washington”. The 100-plus “leaders” are described by Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy thus:

Signers of the statement included Roman Catholic lesbian activist Mary Hunt of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, Alliance for Baptists pastor Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, United Methodist pastor James Lawson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Disciples of Christ pastor Ken Brooker Langston of the Disciples Justice Action Network, Unitarian Universalist Association President William Sinkford, Quaker Joe Volk of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Chicago Theological Seminary President Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Disciples of Christ feminist theologian Rita Nakashima Brock of the Faith Voices for the Common Good, and American Baptist pastor James Forbes of Riverside Church in New York City.

This group was assembled by the left-wing Center for American Progress, Angry Clintonite John Podesta’s think tank. The most remarkable feature of its declaration is refusal to grant that politicians who attempted to save Terri Schiavo’s life could have been acting in good faith.

How does it come to pass that elected leaders who are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution now refuse to accept any court’s decision until they find a court that agrees with their position? How does it come to pass that expert medical opinion, along with expert legal opinion, is being cast aside and trodden underfoot in a crass use of piety to usurp judicial prerogatives? . . .

Sadly, we understand all too well how this can come to pass. We see clearly how an excruciating family drama—involving the understandable grief of the parents as well—is being manipulated for narrow political advantage.

In other words, the President and the majority of Congress didn’t really care about what happened to Mrs. Schiavo and didn’t believe their own words about the sanctity of life; they were just making “a crass use of piety . . . narrow political advantage”.

As proof of their hypocrisy, the statement then presents a laundry list of liberal spending and policy initiatives. Any failure to support these nostrums will, we are informed, demonstrate a lack of “true respect and concern for human dignity and the right of every child, woman, and man to the fullness of life”.

If one wished to play turnabout in this “Question Your Bona Fides” game, it would be easy to ask whether indifference to a concrete case of killing by dehydration doesn’t cast a cloud over the signers’ advocacy of measures to help disabled people in the abstract. Aren’t they a bit like the man who urges his neighbors to write checks to charitable causes but won’t help the cripple who shows up on his own doorstep?

Ultimately, though, casting aspersions on motives back and forth is a profitless contest. The clergypersons and modernist theologians assembled by Mr. Podesta have every right to make religious arguments in favor of denying food and water to helpless women. I’m willing to believe that they write in defense of that view with sincerity, not simply in hopes of gaining narrow political advantage by tarring their political enemies. I would believe it more firmly if “Have They No Decency?” breathed any spirit beyond hatred of those enemies and unreflective scorn for their point of view.

But let me end on a more pleasant note. Mr. Tooley also summarizes a praiseworthy statement, by a minister of one of the most liberal and modernist Protestant denominations, that goes beyond the rights and wrongs of a particular case:

Florida United Methodist Bishop Timothy Whitaker spoke more forthrightly in defense of traditional Christian teachings regarding human life. “A fundamental moral principle consistent with faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ is to always care rather than to kill.”

Whitaker observed that “there are many disabled persons who live by means of a feeding tube,” and that she was more accurately described as “severely disabled” rather than terminally ill.

Placing too much value on mental consciousness to define life’s value would imply a “spiritualistic view” of humans and would threaten the lives of the mentally incompetent, Whitaker warned, and would go against Christian and Jewish beliefs about the importance of the body.

Likewise, Whitaker urged not viewing life as making moral claims by itself, when it is rather God’s “purposes for human beings that make the ultimate moral claims upon us.” He said opposition to abortion should not be based upon a “right to life” but upon God’s call to “care for the most vulnerable.”

A person who is in a “persistent vegetative state” is not a vegetable to her loves ones, Whitaker observed. The love that Mrs. Schiavo’s parents and siblings showed her was of “immense value” and no expert could judge the effect of that love upon even the severely disabled woman, he said. For Christians, this kind of love is a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ.

“Moral reflection should include consideration of the value of the love of caregivers as well as the condition of the one receiving care,” Whitaker wrote. “I believe it would be better to let her live because she is the beneficiary of abundant love.” He questioned the wisdom of a law that would allow a spouse, especially one “compromised by conflict of interest” like Mr. Schiavo, to be the sole witness to her intentions, without considering the moral claims of other family members.

Whitaker criticized the “individualistic perspective” that believes a person may decide for himself whether or not to live or die, without considering the ability of others to love and care. Such “absolute individual autonomy” could lead to physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia,” he worried. Christians should introduce “communitarian values” into society that guard against extreme self-determination.

“The church’s mission is not to be the chaplain to a culture of death,” Whitaker concluded, “But to be a witness to the love of God in the world.”

Lenten Weblog, Day 33: Rendering to Caesar and God

Today being the deadline that it is, there springs to mind Our Lord’s famous saying, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17 and parallels [KJV]) This verse dramatically contradicts certain naive inferences that seem to follow naturally from God’s sovereignty over all of His creation, yet we are so accustomed to it that we do not recognize how strange an injunction it is.

God created Heaven and Earth and all things visible and invisible. Caesar created nothing; whatever the state has, God made. The logical consequence is that only God has a claim on men’s labors and lives. That is the response that the inquirers expected from Jesus and the one given by his contemporaries, the Zealots who not long after rose in revolt against Rome. That Jesus gave the unexpected answer, teaching that some things do belong to Caesar, had profound implications for moral philosophy and the shape of Christian society.

Within the Christian world, there is no divine monopoly. States legitimately exist without regard to religion, and religious law does not preempt the entirety of life. Hence, secular states are not only conceivable but the norm. Their rulers, even if sincere Christians obedient to Christ’s teachings in every respect, are not, in their role as rulers, agents of the Church. There are, in the classic formulation, “two swords”, each supreme in its own realm.

But how can we allow the temporal sword to be wielded without reference to Christianity? Doesn’t that mean that Caesar will be free to act without moral restraint, that, except by happy whim or accident, he will be a tyrant?

That would certainly be the case if “good” and “evil” were categories dependent solely on God’s arbitrary decree; that is, if “good” were no more than a synonym for “what God approves”. The only way to ascertain the moral quality of an action would then be to find out what God thought of it, and that could not be known except through revelation.

The Christian view, inherited from Judaism (which perhaps expresses it more forcefully; “arguing with God” seems to be a peculiarly Jewish penchant), is the opposite: that good and evil are knowable to all rational beings, whether or not they have ever heard of Christ. Moral reasoning is very difficult, and men frequently make mistakes (if there were great short-term pleasure to be gained by believing that 2+2=7, we would make plenty of mistakes in arithmetic, too), but it is within the reach of Caesar. What cannot be accomplished by natural reason, the Church teaches, is release from the bondage of sin and death. That gift, which is not the business of Caesar, proceeds from God alone. In matters pertaining to our salvation, we dare render nothing to any being or power except God.

Natural law is the foundation of the secular state and therefore is a necessary implication of Our Lord’s endorsement of rendering unto Caesar. On this point, Christians and atheists used to concur. Their disagreement was over whether anything beyond natural law had reality. The most remarkable alteration in secularist thinking over the past century has been its abandonment of natural law in favor of dismissing “reason” as a human construct. It is ironic that the Gospels furnish stronger reasons to reject theocracy and greater reassurance about the potential virtues of a non-religious polity than does most of what passes nowadays for secularist discourse.

Lenten Weblog, Day 32: Dialogue With Mecca?

Not long after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, George Amiroutzes, an eminent theologian and last Grand Logothete of the Empire of Trebizond, offered proposals for merging Christianity and Islam.

He presented to the Sultan a study which showed that they had much in common. It might be possible to devise a synthesis; or at least each faith could recognize the other as a sister. The difference between the Bible and the Koran has always been exaggerated by bad translations, he maintained; and the Jews were to blamed for having deliberately encouraged misunderstandings. [Sir Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, p. 183]

In many respects hopeful views of relations between the Church and Mecca have not advanced much since Amiroutzes’ day. John Paul the Great was a strong proponent of Christian-Moslem dialogue, and the New York Times reports that it is a controversial topic within the College of Cardinals as it meets to elect a new Pope. Many of the prelates are not too enthusiastic about the project, while others see Islam as a useful special purpose ally.

Like John Paul, [Francis Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria] has often spoken of one specific rationale for reaching out to other faiths, Islam included: that believers, of whatever faith, have a duty to fight against a secularism that he says has sapped Christians of their spiritual strength.

“God can speak to us through other believers,” he told an interviewer several years ago. “From sincere Muslims, Christians can learn, for example, the courage of sincere prayer. They pray five times a day, and no matter where they are – be it the railway station or the airport – they will do it.

“Whereas many Christians are ashamed of making the sign of the cross in a restaurant or pulling out a rosary on a train,” he said.

Very much in the opposite camp is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Today’s Daily Telegraph quotes from her just published official biography:

We are being challenged by Islam these years – globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.

We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance.

And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.

Somewhere in the middle is Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who, according to the Times “has spoken of the need for the Muslim world to undergo the same political and religious changes that reshaped Europe, in particular the separation of church and state, and therefore become more secular”.

In contrast to his colleagues who would like to ally with Islam against secularism, Cardinal Danneels sees secularism as an ally against Islam. He and Queen Margrethe have, I think, more sensible approach. We should never be impolite the followers of other religions, but it is not rude to recognize that there is an immense gulf between our Faith and that of the Moslems. The seeming points of agreement are coincidences, not corollaries of concord on deeper matters.

Moslems are monotheists, but their religion is in all other significant ways a form of paganism. Like the gods of the polytheists, their One God is essentially indifferent to mankind. He demands obedience instead of offering love. John Ashcroft made an astute though much berated comparison: “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.” Moslems universally deny that God could or would give a son as a sacrifice to save sinners. They almost as universally (a handful of modernizers excepted) honor those who die making war on the infidel. In the words of a leading expert,

The notion of martyrdom is common to Christianity and Islam. Indeed, the same word is used – “martyr” is from a Greek word meaning “witness”, and the Arabic shahid has the same meaning. But in Sunni Islam, the shahid is one who is killed in battle; he achieves martyrdom by dying in the holy war. This is very different from the Jewish and later also Christian notion of martyrs as those who voluntarily endure torture and death rather than renounce their beliefs. [Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 163]

Despite the fact that Moslems recognize the Old Testament as a sacred text and invoke blessings on a figure whom they call “Jesus” (but who is utterly unlike the Christ of the New Testament), there is no genuine common ground for religious dialogue. There might be if Islam underwent a reformation. Some of its suppressed mystical strains may have a concept of God that is nearer to the Judaeo-Christian “Father in Heaven”, which could be the starting point for useful dialogue. As Islam is now, however, the honest course of action is Her Majesty of Denmark’s: “to show our opposition” – with rational argument, of course, not with distortion or persecution – to doctrines that we believe to be radically false.

Update (4/15/05): In the comments KK takes me to task for “ compar[ing] Christianity with the media-image of Islam” rather than with its actual theology. He is disappointed that I wrote a “polemic” when it would have been better to “discuss the real theological differences of two religions both purporting to be a sort of advancement upon the original religion of Abraham”.

In fact, discussion of “the real theological differences” was my intention. I wished to say to my fellow Christians that Islam and Christianity are more alien to one another than is usually recognized and that dialogue that adopts George Amiroutzes’ vision of two fundamentally compatible faiths is founded on a false premise. That does not mean that relations cannot or should not be more cordial than they are, only that cordiality won’t be achieved by pretending to agree on irreconcilable doctrines.

KK unwittingly illustrates my point when he writes,

Islam does indeed revere Jesus, as the author notes, but not in a disingenuous way as is suggested. Although not considered the son of God, he was considered by the Prophet Muhammad to be the most perfect human being to have lived – an example for all mankind.

The most important Christian belief about Jesus is that He is the Son of God, “begotten of the Father before all ages”, not “an example for all mankind”. I do not think it polemical, but simply accurate, to write that the Moslem image of Him, as summarized by KK, is “is utterly unlike the Christ of the New Testament”. Similarly, the Christian and Moslem conceptions of God’s relationship with mankind and of man’s salvation differ toto caelo. Though I don’t fancy myself a peritus in Islamic theology, I have never seen so much as a hint in any Moslem writer that man has been redeemed from enslavement to sin and death through a sacrifice on the part of God. My strong impression is that Moslem theologians regard the Christian doctrine of atonement, in any of its forms, as impossible and absurd.

I agree with KK that the Moslem use of the term “martyr” for soldiers who die while fighting for Islam (a usage with no parallel in Christian terminology) does not entail sympathy for terrorism. I also agree that Islam places heavy stress on the duty of charity. Nothing that I wrote suggested otherwise.