For those who follow Christian traditions, Christmas begins when the darkness of Christmas Eve yields to bright midnight candles and the Mass of the Angels or the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Christmas season then lasts 12 days, ending with Epiphany on Jan. 6.

But things aren’t that simple in modern America, the land of the free and the home of the malls…

“Unfortunately, most Americans — especially evangelical Protestants — have so distanced themselves from any awareness of the Christian calendar that their decisions about that kind of question have been handed over to the culture,” said the Rev. Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Keep reading…

Andrei Kuraev is professor and director of the Department of Theology and Apologetics at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute, and deacon at the Church of St. John the Forerunner in Moscow, Russia. In this article he responds to the recent influx of Young Earth creationist literature into Russia. As he notes in the article, this is not a topic on which the Church has ever seen a need for dogma, as there is considerable diversity among the early Fathers regarding the understanding of the six days of creation.

I’m posting his article, not because it is the One And Only True Interpretation Of The Six Days — far from it — but because it’s an example disproving popular media’s myth that biblical literalism must be opposed to science.

Related article: Augustine’s Origin of Species

by Deacon Andrei Kuraev

Protestant Creationism in Russia

Recently many books have appeared in Russia dedicated to the criticism of Darwinism. The majority of them are the work of American Protestant, creationist authors. The Orthodox, with a great joy of relief, have welcomed these books to their cathedrals and libraries since Darwinism was cultivated in the Soviet schools and institutes. Were we in a hurry to let this happen? Is it exclusively the position of the American fundamentalist Christian? Or, does it have a confessional justification which is not immediately obvious from the Orthodox point of view?

Creationist allegations are very absolute: they dispute not only the atheistic understanding of evolution but the possibility of any evolution as such. The world, before humans appeared, was six days old — not more than this. The Earth is not capable of evolutionary development, even as an answer to the call of the Creator.

This position is not new in the history of thought, including Christian. It was characteristic for pagan thought to reduce the notion of matter to the notion of non-existence. Only spirit can live and act. The world is inanimate, the world is material, the world is a shell for life and nothing else.

However, in Christian tradition the main opposition to the antique philosophy “matter/spirit”  was replaced by the dyad “Creator/creation”, which is of a different nature. In this wayboth the creative spirit and the created materiality happened to be put in the same parentheses, becoming relative. There is no foundation to deny a value (it may be less, but nevertheless a value) of the corporeal, if one accepts a value that stands behind the creative spirit, behind the human soul. A human’s or an angel’s spirit is able to tremble when it hears the voice of the Creator; why then cannot mountains tremble, too? A human spirit is capable of rejoicing when hearing the Word, then why cannot rivers, waters, and seas experience the same joy?

In pagan cosmogony chthonic matter opposes the spirit, puts out its impulse; that is why between them there cannot be any positive dialogue. However, in the Bible, in the book of Genesis there is no war between God and chaos. The world is obedient to the Creator. Waters and abysses answer with gladness to the Creator’s command. Hence, there is no necessity to transfer the pagan idea of the animosity of matter toward God to the world of Bible.

God, in the book of Genesis, calls each creature by name. By this He calls them out of the abyss of non-existence. Metropolitan Philaret expressed this idea beautifully: “The Word pronounces the existence all creatures”. Here we have a dialogue, a call, and an answer. St. Basil the Great explains, “Let the earth sprout, let her produce what she never had, let her acquire what she does not have, because God imparts the power to act.” The seeds of life are not in the earth, but “God’s word creates the essence” and He puts them in the ground; the earth only “sprouts them”. The earth cannot deliver life all by herself, but it is not right to minimize her role, saying, “The earth should grow things without the necessity of an outsider’s assistance.” The life comes from the earth, but the life-giving power of matter is a gift to her from the Creator.

Hence, on the one hand, there is nothing like an alchemiy of materialism which follows the recipe of the sorcerer from “Anthony and Cleopatra” by Shakespeare: “Take a little bit of dirt, a little bit of the Sun, and you will get an Egyptian crocodile.” In the story about the six days of creation, it is underlined that when life began to appear on the earth, there was no where to get “a little of the Sun,” as the Sun appeared only on the fourth day, but life, one cosmic day earlier).

On the other hand, when one reads the Gospel without prejudice, it is impossible to miss that it leaves a little bit of activity for the created world. There are no words like “And God created grass”, but ” the earth brought forth”. Later God does not just simply create life but commands the elements to reveal themselves: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures; Let the earth bring forth living creatures”.

The Appearance of Life in Genesis

The only creature that God does not entrust to creation by anyone else is man. Man is exclusively God’s creation. The independent activity of the earth is not unlimited: she cannot produce man. The decisive transition from an animal to the anthropomorphic creature is not taking place merely by God’s order but through his direct action: Bara. And even this will not be enough for the creation of man; after that, when God creates a bodily vessel by a special creative act which is able to be a vessel of consciousness and freedom, the second act of the biblical anthropogenic act will be needed: the act of birthing in the Spirit.

The appearance of life by Genesis is evolution (because the earth “produced” plants and simple organisms), and at the same time it is a “leap to life”, which took place by God’s command.

The earth is called to creativity, to the independent act by God’s word, and this is an acknowledgment of the existence of the inner motive forces, which belong to the earth. Certainly, here we do not have an indication of how and what are the limits of the earth’s answer to God’s call. Only one thing is clear: different periods in the history of genesis started from God’s call for the independent activity of “the earth”. The world, which is called to motion and growth, is becoming a co-worker with God. The theme of the creature’s cooperation with God has appeared in the Bible long before one directly starts talking about man.

The fact that the earth responds to the call of the Word and as a result she produces life in six days means that she is not a lifeless mass from which the outer force shapes something by overcoming the resistance of matter. The Bible is not the Vedanta. Hence matter is not a synonym for death and non-existence.

St. Basil describes this creative response in the following way: “Imagine this: that by a soft call, this cold and barren earth, all of a sudden, is moving closer to the time of birth. And, as if there drops down from her a sad and grievous cloth, she then vests herself in a bright robe, enjoying her attire, and brings forth thousands of plants”.

The Protestant Restoration of the Pagan Notion of Matter

Why then has a part of the Protestant world restored the pagan prejudice of identification of matter and passivity and made it an essential principal of their faith?

It seems to me there are there reasons for this:

The first one is connected with the distinctive tradition of Western Christianity. A very clear biblical picture of the gradual entrance into the world of different levels of existence, in Western Europe happened to be clouded by a lame Latin translation of the Bible. In the book of Sirach it is said that “He who lives for ever is the Creator of whole universe” (Sir. 18,1).

The Greek word koine means ‘together’, ‘joined together’, but Latin word simul means ‘simultaneously’. This particular part of Vulgate causes the resistance toward evolution in the West.

That is why even Augustine was already convinced that “God created everything simultaneously”. Protestants inherited this traditional conviction of the Western theological schools, however, they forgot that this statement is based, first of all, on the peculiarities of the Latin translation of non-canonical biblical books.

In order for this statement of a non-canonical book to be accepted by Protestants (usually non-canonical books are considered to be just apocrypha), it had to be given some kind of foundation. This foundation abides in the heart of the Protestant faith: in the doctrine of being “saved only by faith”, “only by grace”.

The word “synergy,” cooperation, co-working is not accepted by Protestant-fundamentalists ( in spite of the fact that one can find it in the Bible B 1 Cor. 3, 9). A man cannot be a participant in his own salvation. This is an exceptional gift, and man is only “being notified” of this by the Sacrifice of Golgotha, i.e., that their sins have been payed off.

Even in case a person cannot be a creator, cannot cooperate with God, how can we recognize this right of the world to exist before men? Hence, the Adventists theological textbook makes a transition to the criticism of evolution in the following way: “Even the Apostle Paul could not be virtuous by his own effort. He knew the perfect ideal of God’s Law but he could not live in accordance with it”. Then they conclude that “Golgotha denies the theory of evolution decisively”. This textbook regrets that “More and more Christians accept the atheistic theory of evolution, according to which God, while creating the world, used evolutionary process”. It is very strange that Adventists call those people who accept this theory atheists.

This doctrinal motive alone was not enough for them to simply keep their anti-evolutionist convictions in the quietness of their hearts and in their seminaries that are scandalously at odds with the opinion of science and education. In spite of this they continuously propagandize their convictions.. The reason for the persistence of the fundamentalists on this matter is already for social motives.

It became only in our situation, fin du siecle, possible for them to clash with scientific opinion. At the end of our century any anti-scientific statement can be made with impunity.

Astrologers, sorcerors, occultists are not shy about expressing the wildest ideas. It seems like the average man has became tired of the seriousness of science and responsibility and hence, is ready to listen to everything from the position of “why not?”. Now instead of argumentation people come to voluntaism: “I want it to be this way! I do not care about argumentation! It seems to me it should be this way! I like it like this!”. This mass ecstasy of irrationalism makes the Protestant’s over-literal rendering a marketable merchandise.

In Orthodoxy There is No Textual or Doctrinal Foundation Against Evolution

In Orthodoxy there is no textual or doctrinal foundation tearing away evolution. There is no sense for Orthodox people to indulge in the social fashion of irrationalism; any irrationalism in the end will work for occultism and against the Church..

Nevertheless, even among the Orthodox people, voices are heard calling for the radical tearing away of any form of evolution. First of all, one has to notice that the denial of evolution among the Orthodox is something new and cannot claim to be traditional.

First, even according to the opinion of the theologians of the very conservative Russian Church abroad, The days of creation cannot be understood literally (because “for God a thousand years is as yesterday”) but rather as periods.

Second, the idea of evolution, detached from an atheistic interpretation of evolution, was addressed in a positive manner in books by Orthodox writers. For example, the professor E. M. Andreiev who rejected the idea of the descent of man from primates, nevertheless wrote: “As for the rest of creation Darwinism is not opposed to the biblical teaching about the creation of animals because evolution does not answer the question: Who created the very first animals?”

Archbishop Michael (Mudyugin), a professor at St. Petersburg Theological Academy, writes: “There are many strikingly similar categories one can find in the Bible and on the pages of any biology textbook. The process of evolution of the organic world is one of them. The biblical terminology itself is located on the same plane. There it is said “Let the earth bring forth living creatures”, “Let the earth bring forth cattle and creeping things”.

Here the verb brings forth (“produce” in Slav. Translation) points to the connection between separate phases of the formation of the living world; moreover, it points to the connection between animate and inanimate matter”.

Professor of Moscow of Religious Academy A. E. Osipov writes, “for theology it is possible to accept the hypothesis of creationism and evolution as one condition. In both cases God is the Lawmaker and Constructor of the world, Who can create everything in this world by “days” at once in a finished form or slowly during several “days,” can “bring forth” from water and earth, from simple forms to the highest forms, by the law of nature that has been made by Him”.

Professor of St. Vladimir Seminary in New York, Protopresbyter Basil Zenkovski also underlines the biblical “independent activity” of the earth: “The biblical text is clearly telling us that God commands the earth to act by itself. This creative activity of nature, according to the expression of Bergson, élan vital, — desire to live — makes the fact of evolution of life on earth indisputable”.

One of the leading authors of the magazine Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1960′s-70′s, Protopresbyter Nickolai Ivanov agreed with the idea of evolution: “The act of the creation of the world, and the formation of its forms, for God, is an expression of His might, His will. But for nature, the fulfillment of this will is an act of formation — in other words it is a single and gradual process, that occurs over time. During the process of development it is possible for the appearance of transitional forms, which sometimes serve only as a step for the appearance of higher forms that are connected to eternity”.

Professor N. N. Pheoletov, who was a member of the 1917-1918 Sobor wrote that, “the idea of evolution itself cannot be viewed by Christians as something strange or contradictory to their consciousness.”  In 1917 the Holy Martyr, Protopresbyter Michael Meltchov, while discussing the question of the relationship between Christianity and science wrote that, ” A comprehensive and spiritual explanation and understanding of parts of the Bible contribute, at large, and destroy the misunderstanding between Christianity and science. One just has to read a little deeper into the text of Genesis then it immediately it becomes clear that the Bible does not give any foundation to consider that the day of the creation is a 24-hour period. Then the wall between biblical explanation and scientific data about the indeterminately long life of the earth before the existence of man is demolished”.

Even earlier, V.S. Solovyov clearly pointed to the way of a Christian interpretation of the idea of evolution. If I had been asked to find parallels between modern science and the worldview of Moses, I would say that his vision of the origin of life is very similar to the theory of directed evolution. The philosophical foundation of this theory which in biology was developed by L. Berg and Teilhard De Chardin, is expressed clearly by V. Solovyov: “The fact that higher forms or types of existence appear after lower ones does not mean that they are the essence of their production, or creation of these lower forms. The order of reality is not the same as the order of events. The higher, more complicated and full forms and conditions of being exist (metaphysically) before the lower though they appear and reveal themselves after them. One cannot deny evolution because of this. No one can deny it! It is a fact! To insist that evolution creates the higher orders wholly from the lower, in other words from nothing, means to replace facts by logical nonsense. The evolution of the lower orders of existence cannot create the higher by its own action, instead it produces material conditions or provides with accordance an environment so that the higher orders can reveal themselves. Hence, each appearance of a new type of existence is in a sense a new creation, but such that the least of all could be marked as a creation out of nothing, because, first of all, the previous type serves as a foundation for the appearance of a new type. Secondly, even its own positive essence of a new type does not appear new from nothing, but being in existence from the beginning of time, only enters (at a certain moment in the process) into a different sphere of existence, into the world of events. The conditions appear from the natural evolution of nature; that is revealed by God”.

The Philosopher V. N. Ilyin, the Serbian theologian Protopresbyter Stephan Lyashevski, Professor Lazar Milin, outstanding Romanian Theologian priest Dimitru Staniloe, Bishop Basil (Rodzyanko) did not consider the theory of evolution as anti-biblical or atheistic.

So, a calm attitude toward evolution is the tradition of Orthodox Academic Theology, what is new about this is the acceptance of the Protestant creationists position by Orthodox preachers.

Does Death Predate Adam?

The first argument, evolution presupposes the change of generations. The change of generations presupposes death. The essence of the problem is that if there were generations of developing animal forms before the appearance and fall of man then in this case we have to say that death was in the world before the appearance of sin! We know that death is the consequence of sin, and the sin of man. Hence, there was no sin in the world, before man than theologically it is impossible to presuppose the existence of death in it.

If death was in the world before the fall of man, then the universe became corrupted, not through man. This statement is against the biblical belief. Here, we have to stop and think hard about the meanings of the words “death” and “sin”.

The word “death” is too human; the word “death” is very rich with human tragedy. Can we apply the word “death,” that is so full, up to the brim with human meaning, to a non-human world? Death for a person is a tragedy, it is something outrageously wrong. It is not by chance that in Russian Philosophy the terrifying fear of death was taken as an experiential witness of its non-human origin. Suppose that man was a legitimate outcome of natural evolution and a struggle for survival; then he would not experience disgust towards that (death) which is so “natural.”

Undoubtedly the death of man entered into this world through sin. Death is evil and it was not created by God. This is also an axiom of Biblical Theology.

Hence, it seems to me, that only one conclusion should be drawn from this: the departure of animals is not death, and it is not the same as the departure of a man. When we say “The death of Socrates” we do not have a right to apply the same word to the phrase “The death of a dog”. The death of a star is a metaphor. We can use the same metaphor to say the “death” of an atom or a chair. Animals were disappearing from existence, they were going out of the world before the time of man. This was not death. Hence, it is impossible to talk about the phenomenon of death in a theological or philosophical meaning of the word, while applying this to a non-human world. The death of a lifeless star or atom, the splitting of a living cell or bacteria, and the discontinuance of a physiological process in monkeys: this is not the same is the death of man.

Yes, death is a consequence of sin! Sin is a violation of the will of the Creator. Can we be sure that the death of animals is also a violation of the Creative will? Did God create animals for eternal life? Did he want to create them as participants in eternity? Did he intend them to partake in the Bread of Life, and Eucharist?

If not — it means those temporary limitations of animals and their accessibility to decay is not a violation of the Plan of the Creator.

It is not a sin or distortion of the creative will. If the Eucharist is the only Bread of Life, and in our Cathedrals we do not administer communion to puppies, it means that this Bread is not for them and Eternity is not for them either. The death of animals is not a violation of the Plan of God. The Bible does not promise eternal life for our world. Only the human soul is prepared for Eternity. The Savior appeals to people, not to kittens, when he says: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mathew 25:34). The rest will be burned up.

And if upon creation (not resurrection but exactly upon the new creation of a “new earth, and a new sky”) God will choose that they be inhabited by animals, then they will appear there. Those animals are not going to be the same animals of this earth. Everything will be new there, besides us. God did not create animals for immortality and that is why their departure from existence is not a violation of God’s Plan, and there is not sin. Saint Augustine writes directly that “animals were created by mortals”. Earlier St. Methodious Patarsky’s position was the same “what kind of producer; that is the kind of product”.

God is immortal, alive, and imperishable; man is God’s creation and that’s why the creation, man, is immortal. This is the reason why God created man by himself, but the rest of the world, like animals and plants, were created by air, earth, and water. Animals received their life by the means of air animation. Man got his soul from the eternal essence itself, because God breathes, in man’s face, the breath of life.

Since it is a fact that animals cannot receive God’s saving grace, they are not immortal. They are animated by elements from which they were produced, but elements are flaming up and fading down together with their outcomes.

The death of animals is not a violation of the will of the Creator and that is why it is not an evidence of profanation of the primordial good quality of the world. The will of God is violated only when the creature which is the image of the Creator reduces himself to the level of animals, and puts himself under the law of struggle, survival and dying — the laws that existed before the human world was made. It is exactly then that the violation of the will of God is taking place. It seems that we are already used to identifying ourselves with animals. We are used to doing this so much that non-Christians seem to identify and derive justification for their passions and lawlessness from this identification, while Christians, acquiring the gifts of the Holy Spirit, then spread them to the animal world.

In any case, can we describe the behavior of animals in categories of sin and virtue? If the word “sin” cannot be applied to the description of animals, then the relative word “death” cannot be applied to animals in a strict human-existential meaning.

The holy fathers tell us directly that sin came to the world through man and only man can sin in this world (we do not touch any of the events in the area of angels). “What is another evil act, besides the events happening between people you can point at?” St. Methodious rhetorically asked; “All the rest of the creatures are obedient to God by necessity, and none of them can do anything except what it was created for.” So there is no evil among animals, and the death of animals is not evil if it is not caused by a human. Killing among animals is not evil because they do not have moral freedom.

The “struggle for survival” in God’s plan makes good pedagogical sense, St. Augustine supposes that the fight between animals is edifying for man so by seeing how animals fight for their bodily life he could understand how tensely and passionately he has to fight for his spiritual salvation.

Does the Edenic Existence Apply to Animals?

The second argument of Orthodox anti-evolutionists is built on those writings by the holy fathers who deny the existence of suffering in the Garden of Eden. According to the Holy Father’s intuition not only man, but animals were in a blessed condition. That is why any suffering and death that is connected to evolution cannot be even imagined from the theological viewpoint.

I don’t think that even this argument is unquestionable.

First of all, those who championthis argument lose from their sight the fact that Eden is not the whole world. Paradise is not a synonym for the cosmos before the fall. Eden does not include the whole world. Those rivers are flowing from it, which are washing the garden where man is placed.

Russian word rai is a Jewish word which means “garden,” and “paradise” is of Greek origin (which is, in its turn, a Hellinized Persian word pardes meaning “park”) Eden means “a world of joy”. The word Eden comes from Akkadian ediny and means “step”. This primary pronunciation was already forgotten and for the Jewish ear this word “Eden” happened to be connected with the words pleasure or sweetness. So, when Sarah heard a promise about the birth of her son, she “laughed to herself saying, : after I have grown old, and my husband is old shall I have pleasure? (Gen. 18:12) Here pleasure is edena.

But in Jewish text the word “garden” has not only joyful associations. The Russian word “garden” does not contain the meaning of Hebrew gun, which came from the verb gunnon to defend. In other languages the connection between garden and fence or defense are also present: French jardin has a connection with the verb garder (to guard), English garden as well as German garten also goes back to the same roman root. The translation of the Hebrew word gun is better translated as “fenced and protected place”.

This place is not just protected by itself, but a commandment was given to man “to keep it” (Gen. 2:15) in this sense, the Garden of Eden was a fenced and protected place. Hence, there was something that the garden had to be protected against. Either the world should be protected from man, or man should be protected from the world. Man had to protect the garden, or the garden was providing protection for man. In any case Eden — joy and garden — the fortress where the man was settled, is not one and the same place ( because “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden” Gene 2:10). Paradise was planted during the existence of Eden (paradeson en Eden — “paradise in Eden”), in this case, paradise in the sense of joy is Eden, but is not the garden.

The garden was given to the man so that it would become a subject for protection and it would also protect man; and Eden, so as to give joy to man. The man had not approached Eden, rather he was in the “Garden” part of Eden.

Hence, the Scripture does not say that the whole world lived according to the law of the Garden of Eden. Rather it was vice versa. The Bible does not describe directly the world outside of Eden, but it is quite clear that the protected zone was put in opposition to the wild uncultivated nature. This opposition was very cruel; this was the reason for having guards “to keep it”.

The fact that the created man was put into the protected place meant that he had to be protected from somebody or something. Now we already know that the fence of the Garden could not protect from Satan. Then there was something else, not spiritual but other that was a threat for the human novice on the planet Earth. In order to protect man from those threats, he was taken out of the Universal context and put into some kind of “play-pen” that had clear borders (four rivers).

It is quite possible that outside of the Garden of Eden all laws for survival already existed, whenGod warned man, “Do not eat… or you shall die” (Gen. 2, 17).

So, if God said this to them, then it means that people were familiar with the experience of death earlier (better to say they had already seen some kind of death). This tells us that death existed in non-human world, in the world of animals.

The man was protected up to a certain period of time. Once man had broken the fence of the Garden of Eden by his sin and the laws of the outer world, the laws of Darwin’s biology poured into the world of humans.

The connection between sin and death dogmatically is established by the words of the apostle Paul: “Therefore as sin came into the world through a man and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind because all men sinned”. (Rom. 5:12)

Sin came through man. Though humankind, sin spread death to all people. Judging by these words of the apostle Paul, one cannot conclude that animals were immortal before the sin of Adam. Better to conclude that death existed already in the world, but through human sin it came upon us.

One thing that cannot be argued in the biblical narration: the cosmos is in need of protection from the very beginning. Either Eden has to be protected from man (the “garden”, “paradise” is fortification by which God has protected Eden from man) or it is necessary to protect man from the outer world. In the last instance we have to admit that outer world contains something dangerous for man.

Eden is Limited in Space and Time

The second point which Orthodox anti-evolutionists do not take into consideration: Eden is not only limited in space but also in time.

The Garden of Eden is not the whole world, rather it appears after the creation of man. The history of the world does not start from Eden. Instead, it is brought forth after six days by a distinctive act of creation: “The Lord God planted garden in Eden in the East and there He put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2, 8).

Therefore, man was created before Eden and Eden was planted after the creation of the world. It was a created man who was put in a garden planted for him.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden” (Gen. 2:15). From where did God take man? (“Take” means select, the way Levites were selected from other tribes). Eden is not the place that we came from: this is the place of our destination.

Man was created outside of paradise. But where is this place: higher or lower in relation to paradise? Was man created in a higher order of being and then moved down? Or maybe he was created in a lower place and than raised up to the level of Eden? Where did man appear: in the world of the jungle, in the world where there was no reign of God’s love and then from there, from the world of anthropoids he was put into Eden?

The Biblical text inclines to the second explanation. The Biblical narration accentuates that the world from which man came cannot be the same as the world where man had to live and grow. Let us emphasize that in order to appear in Eden, man had to relocate himself: cross over the line between the wild nature and the Garden. This is not just a change of location but a change of an environment.

Man has to be protected from the world of his anthropogeny. Hence, the world where man is from (by its bodily geography) contains something destructive in itself. This is not moral evil, this is not sin (because sin did not exist before man). There is something in the law of nature, in its cycles, that is good for the cosmos and dangerous for man. There is something without which the development of the world “from the original dust of cosmos” to the world before man would have been impossible but now when the growth has reached its limit, the laws of evolution have to retreat.

The world cannot go to something without a decay of the old. Life cannot grow without constant renewal and without exceeding its limits, i.e. out of limits of life. There is no creation without destruction in the cosmos, but in the world of man. This polarity of creation and destruction, this harmony of cosmic creative-destructive cycles can be moderated, stopped and demolished at least there where man appears. He is above the cosmos and lives in the cosmos. Hence, the harmony of cosmic contradictions must not function in him. Man has to be protected from the dominant influence of cosmic laws. This protection can only come from a cosmic being from above who is the Creator of Cosmos.

Man, by denying His protection, made himself a part of this cosmos in which all pagan philosophical systems saw the inevitable unity between good and evil, birth and death. Yes, the world of man has been radically changed as a result of sin. Can we consider the world before man and without man being something different. Maybe man, by his act, simply obliterates the edge by which he was abundantly and supernaturally separated from the rest of the world?

Yes, in that world that Adam was introduced to, i.e. in the world before Eden, even the death of animals did not exist. Was it like this in the world from which Adam was “taken out”? Can we relate the starting point and the assigned point of the first Exodus? The Serbian theologian Stephan Lyashevsky supposes that there was no death only in Eden. During the time of creation of man “In Paradise a new world has been installed where blood already was not shed in the face of immortal Adam, violent death had disappeared among animals, ‘because God gave to all as food different plants and fruit in Paradise’ and all the animals were obedient to man.”

The atmosphere of heavenly abundance into which Adam was introduced, embraced Eden. What kind of world was outside of Eden that lies between the rivers, we do not know. The Bible does not say anything about the world outside or before Eden. In any case, it is incorrect to draw a conclusion about that world by what we suppose was in the Garden of Eden.

Were Animals Predatory Before the Fall?

The third argument of the anti-evolutionists is based on Gen. 2:30 “and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so”. In the eyes of the anti-evolutionists it means that before the fall of man there were no predators and there could not be. Hence, all scientific evolutionist theories are in direct contradiction with the Bible.

The main question then, is this: When exactly and where, were these words of God said? The thing is that Genesis narrates twice about the creation of man, in the first and second chapters. One of the traditionally most difficult tasks of Biblical exegesis consisted in finding an agreement between these two stories. So, did God have any relationship with man before the creation of the Garden of Eden and out of it? Did the creator pronounce those words in the Garden of Eden or out of it, before its creation? Could they be the part of His speech already in Eden, where He commanded to eat fruit from each tree and forbade eating fruit from the tree of knowledge? If God’s ascertainment related to the world around Eden, then it was not in contradiction with the opinion of science. Science cannot explore the experience of Eden. Science studies Eden’s outer world and in this it does not enter in contradiction with Biblical and the holy fathers’ witnesses about the order of co-habitation of man and animals, which was established for the Garden of Paradise.

So, the supposition of evolution and the connected disappearance of animals do not contradict neither the meaning nor the letter of Revelation. Scripture does not describe the technology of the birth of life and of its development and that is why there is no reason to enter into conflict with Science.

We can say the same about our Church Tradition. There are a number of ancient and medieval, natural and philosophical positions which can be found in Middle Age commentaries about the six days of creation that do not have faith teaching importance. St. Basil the Great used the encyclopedic knowledge of his time. For us it means, not that natural philosophy of the fourth century was enlightened by the name of the great saint forever and through this had to become a part of theology, but it means that such a daring attempt of the Church to have a dialogue with the world of secular thought and knowledge is blessed by the authority of the great Cappadocian. St. John of Damascus in his “Precise Description of the Orthodox Faith” includes a description of scientific doctrine of his time, it only means that the interest in cognition of the God created world was not foreign to Orthodox thought. Given the reality that the Fathers included in their text, facts from their contemporary science, does not mean that we have to become enemies of our contemporary science.

There are only three characteristics that could not be thought to be out of the Biblical context; life (the same way as the whole world) appears gradually; that the world is capable of answering creatively to God’s call; the evolution of the creation of the world would not have brought any results without a directive Intellect.

Matter is not immortal. It was created, and that is why it received an incentive from the outside. Only because it was created by this incentive does it preserve its creative impulse. That is why the world is capable of movement and development. Another balanced opinion is also true: though the world is able to develop itself, it gets its creative impulses from the outside.

The change from one kingdom to another in the Bible is described as unexplainable only from the inner evolution of the world: this is a breakthrough that took place by the will of the Creator. Exactly in this situation one can use the word bara: the appearance of matter from nonexistence; then the appearance of the first life — fish and at last man. However, the lack of the word bara during the step from the non-organic world to the plant world can mean that this border can be over come by nature itself.

God does not create the world the way a sculptor makes a sculpture. In the last case the material is absolutely passive and is changed only by the direct coercion of a cutter, under the direct coercion of the artist. Whereas, the earth, primitive matter and water took very active participation in its design during the creation of the world. They fulfilled the commands of the Creator and not the commands fulfilled themselves in them.

Hence, the matter is active and there is no aggression against God in its activity, the scripture does not describe how exactly the earth answered the creators call. But it is very clear that the earth responded readily without opposition.

In this way, Orthodoxy — unlike paganism that demonizes matter, or Protestantism that deprives the created world its right to participate in creation — has no foundation to reject the thesis that the Creator created matter capable of good development.

The essence of the unrolling process of the word does not depend on its speed. Those people are naïve for whom it vaguely seems that God would not have been necessary if we stretch the process of creation. Equally naïve are those people, who suppose that the creation of the world over more than six days reduces the greatness of the Creator. We have to remember that nothing withstood or limited the creative action. Everything (before the appearance of sin) was happening by the will of the Creator. Did this will involve creating the world instantly or in six days, or in six thousand years, or in myriad of centuries? We don’t know, because “who can count the days of eternity?” As far as the [“Young Earth” creationist] position of Father Seraphim Rose is concerned, I cannot say that his position was mistaken. Simply, this is not the only position which an Orthodox person can adhere to.

Orthodox Theology and Differences of Opinion

In Orthodox theology it is acceptable to have questions on which there cannot be differences in opinion, to approach it from a different angle: What does it mean “for us people and for our salvation”? In such a case, if a certain thesis does not have a soterological use, and at the same time it: a) is not condemned by the mind of the Church in Council; b) does not lead through its logical revealing to opposition with the clearly stated dogmas of Church teaching; c) differs from the opinions of some of the Fathers; d) has at least some support of some witnesses of the Church tradition; then, one can keep this opinion — with one condition” that it will not be presented as a “Church-must” dogmatic statement.

Private theological opinions can contradict each other. Besides the well-known words of the Apostle Paul about this (“for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1Cor. 11,19) one can bring the words of the Church historian V.V. Bolotov: “Nobody has the power to forbid to keep theologumen as my private theological opinion, that has been expressed at least by one of the Fathers of the Church, if it has not been proven that a competent Church council has already declared that the view as a mistaken one. On the other hand, nobody has the power to demand from me that I accept, as my theological opinion, a theologumen that has been uttered by several Church Fathers, because this theologumen does not fascinate me by its sublime theological beauty, does not win my heart by understanding, or even appeal to my mind, by its majestic power of argumentation”.

Hence, the idea of evolution could be proved unacceptable for Orthodox theological thinking if one can explain in what way allowing the change of the animal generations in and before the human world, in or out of the world of Eden can damage the conscious participation of a Christian in the Church sacraments. Direct referrals that “Bible teaches but you are saying” cannot be accepted for examination (“Proof-texting”). Orthodox Tradition knows how complicated and different the interpretation of Scripture can be. (especially the Old Testament). That is why, before one can accept this or that interpretation, he should first ask a question: “For what reason am I inclined to accept this interpretation?”  When one rejects it, again, try to find a motivation: What is it exactly that could not be accepted? When one condemns something, a question should be asked: What is so damaging for the salvation of people in this opinion?

I cannot accept the opinions and methods of argumentation of the radical creationists because they are trying to use their own scientific material and they do it very unprofessionally causing well deserved censure from the people who are professional scientists. Here there is a great danger that a biologist after reading a book could say that this is “pot-boiler” and transfer this opinion to the whole Christian world.

Once I was invited to read a lecture for the students of biological faculty of the Moscow State University. Usually I have good relationship with the students of MSU. This time I was shocked by the coldness of these students. After the first lecture I asked my colleagues who invited me: “Did I behave in a wrong way? Why is their attitude was so strange?” The answer was: “Oh, excuse us, Fr. Andrew, but the week before your lecture there were Baptists from America here. They were trying to prove to the students that there was no evolution and the world was created in six days. One student (not to even mention our professors) caught them in a manipulation of the scientific facts, in a very biased selection of one group of facts and ignoring hushing-up others. So, our students have decided that it is considered acceptable for all Christians to manipulate the facts of science. They assume that you are a person who holds the same view. This is the reason for their attitude towards you.” Only after the second lecture, when I explained to them that in Orthodoxy there is a possibility for a different interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, after that the relationship with the students was improved and the conversation about the Scripture and Orthodoxy went on with great attention and understanding.

So I have a missionary interest not to accept controversial judgments of creationists, and I try to find an evolutionist reading of the six days of creation. I do not have a personal problem believing that either God created the world in six days or instantly. There is no problem for me in expressing my opinion that is wittingly unacceptable in this particular auditory (I have to do this very often). I simply think that it is not good for a priest to burden people with something that is too heavy for them. Yes, in Christianity there are moments when one has to practice [bring] a “sacrifice of the intellect”. Nevertheless it seems to me that this sacrifice has to be brought to the dogma about the Trinitarian Unity of God, and not to “dogma” about the precise number of hours of the creation of the world.

Finally, it is useful to look closely to your own inner motives which urge you to accept this or that opinion. It is a favorite hobby for a lot of people now in our parishes, monasteries, and even seminaries to prove to each other their arch-orthodoxy. It is a very suitable reason for them to expose and condemn those “heretic-evolutionists” for these purposes. However, if a person is not preoccupied with getting a reputation for arch-orthodoxy in the circle of his witty like-minded acquaintances, but rather how to bring to the Church door those people who are still far away from it, then it is better to sacrifice the joy of the sense of your own strong objection and also the joy from the exposing and condemning the next “heretic.” After all: theology exists in order to present Christ to people and not to make stronger the authority of theologians. That is why in my opinion the question about, Do we except evolutionary interpretation of the first Old Testament pages, or Do we interpret them in the framework of strict creationism, is not a question. How do we understand the ancient pages of history? This is a question about our future. Do we want to see our Church missionary work active and open? Or, the whole life of the Church and thought narrowed down to the repetition of citations from the past centuries?

When I was in graduate school, I used to chuckle that my more theologically conservative classmates, the ones who were quietly ridiculed for taking the Bible “literally,” were the ones who understood literature more thoroughly as a symbolic artform that communicated on multiple levels. The ones who thought that the Bible was a “nice story” that shouldn’t be taken literally all tended to view literature in a way that was almost slavishly literal. In the end, they would aver “This is what the story means to me,” sort of giving their own personal testimony about the story, where they discovered an interesting version of themselves in the text. I often say that what lies at the heart of most lovers of literature is a single impulse: “Let me read a story about someone who is unique and interesting, someone just like me.” Ego-centrism, to a great extent, is the highest form of literalism.

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buynothingchristmas.org

Fads and Fixtures: Ten Deadly Trappings of Evangelism

by Joe Carter

“Virtually all the people on Time magazine’s list of ‘The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals’ share at least one glaringly significant trait,” says Phillip Johnson, “For the most part, these are the fadmakers.” Phil goes on to list a number of “cheerleaders for whatever is fashionable”, including the usual suspects such as Rick Warren and Tim LaHaye, and explains why their programs are fads:

Not one of those movements or programs even existed 35 years ago. Most of them would not have been dreamed of by evangelicals merely a generation ago. And, frankly, most of them will not last another generation. Some will last a few short months (like the Jabez phenomenon did); others may seem to dominate for several years but then die lingering deaths (like Bill Gothard’s movement is doing). But they will all eventually fade and fall from significance. And some poor wholesale distributor will be left with warehouses full of Jabez junk, Weigh-Down Workshop paraphernalia, “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets, Purpose-Driven” merchandise, and stacks and stacks of “emerging church” resources.

Like Johnson, I’m concerned about the way in which evangelicals tend to embrace whatever trends and kitsch happen to be hot sellers at “Christian” bookstores. But while Johnson laments that most of the “stuff you are currently being told you must read and implement will soon seem as hopelessly out of date” I take comfort in knowing that most of this stuff is nothing more than a passing trend. It is not the dernier cri that will soon be gone that concerns me but the faddage that becomes a fixture. Fads still receive scrutiny while fixtures remain largely unquestioned.

The following are ten fixtures of evangelism that I find particularly harmful. None of them are inherently pernicious (well, except for #10) but they have a tendency to be used in ways that are counterproductive to their intended purposes.

#1 Making Converts — I’ve always felt uneasy about the idea that Christians should be seeking to make converts. Am I wrong in thinking that the making of converts is a task associated with Islam, rather than Christianity? Perhaps I have a flawed understanding of the Gospel, but I always thought the purpose of evangelism is not to make converts but to make, as Christ commanded, disciples. Indeed, my primary complaint against each of the other nine methods on this list is that they are usually ineffective in instigating true conversion much less helping make true disciples.

#2 The Sinner’s Prayer — The gates of hell have a special entrance reserved for people who thought that they had a ticket into heaven because someone told them all they needed to do was recite the “sinner’s prayer.” I’ve searched through the entire New Testament and can’t find an example of anyone who was “saved” after reciting such a prayer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that such prayer is worthless or that it can’t be used by the Holy Spirit. But salvation is not obtained by reciting a magical incantation as many, many, “Christians” will discover after it’s far, far, too late.

#3 “Do you know Jesus as…” — In the fall of 1987 I began my freshman year of college. I was far from home, overwhelmed and lonely on a campus of 20,000 students. While sitting alone in the cafeteria one afternoon, an older student walked up, smiled and asked if he could join me. I was starved for conversation and thrilled to have the company. He sat his tray down in front of mine and took a seat as I prepared to engage him in a heady discussion of his choosing. Politics, philosophy, science. I was mentally preparing for anything he threw at me.

Glancing up from his plate of spaghetti, he asked, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”

For a few seconds I was stunned, completely at a loss for a response. “I’m, yeah, actually I have.” I finally managed in reply.

“Oh,” he said, visibly disappointed. “Okay, that’s good.” He wore a look of minor defeat. He had chosen the wrong table; no soul would be won for Christ over this lunch. We chatted politely while I finished my burger. He ate quickly and excused himself. After that lunch, I never saw him again.

This is one question that needs never be asked for it shows (a) you do not know the person well enough, (b) the answer is yes and the person is a lousy Christian, or (c) the answer is no in which case you just activated their Fundie-alert system and caused them to switch their brains into ignore mode. Instead of asking about a “personal savior” you might want to simply try to get to know the person.

#4 Tribulationism — Ask a non-believer to give a rudimentary explanation of “the Rapture” and chances are they can provide a fairly accurate description of that concept. Ask the same person to give a basic explanation of the Gospel message, though, and they are likely to be stumped. The reason for this curious state of affairs is that evangelicals have promoted what I refer to as “Tribulationism” — an overemphasis on eschatology that overshadows the Gospel. I’m sure that somewhere in the three dozen novels that comprise the Left Behind series the Gospel message is presented. But there is something horribly wrong when the greatest story ever told is buried beneath a third-rate tale of the apocalypse.

#5 Testimonies — Several years ago, during a job interview for a Christian organization, my prospective employer asked me to tell him my “testimony.” The fact that I was a Christian apparently wasn’t enough. I had to have a good conversion story to go along with my faith. Now you may have a great story about how the hound of Heaven” chased you down and gnawed on your leg until you surrendered. No doubt your story would make for a gripping movie of the week on Lifetime and lead to the making of numerous converts (see #1). But the harsh truth is that your story doesn’t much matter. You are only a bit player in the narrative thread; the main part goes to the Divine Protagonist. In fact, He already has a pretty good story so why not just tell that one instead?

#6 The Altar Call – In the 1820’s evangelist Charles Finney introduced the “anxious seat,” a front pew left vacant where at the end of the meeting “the anxious may come and be addressed particularly — and sometimes be conversed with individually.” At the end of his sermon, he would say, “There is the anxious seat; come out, and avow determination to be on the Lord’s side.” The problem with this approach, as theologian J.I. Packer, explains is that,

The gospel of God requires an immediate response from all; but it does not require the same response from all. The immediate duty of the unprepared sinner is not to try and believe on Christ, which he is not able to do, but to read, enquire, pray, use the means of grace and learn what he needs to be saved from. It is not in his power to accept Christ at any moment, as Finney supposed; and it is God’s prerogative, not the evangelist’s, to fix the time when men shall first savingly believe. For the latter to try and do so, by appealing to sinners to begin believing here and now, is for man to take to himself the sovereign right of the Holy Ghost. It is an act of presumption, however creditable the evangelists motive’s may be. Hereby he goes beyond his commission as God’s messenger; and hereby he risks doing incalculable damage to the souls of men. If he tells men they are under obligation to receive Christ on the spot, and demands in God’s name that they decide at once, some who are spiritually unprepared will try to do so; they will come forward and accept directions and “go through the motions” and go away thinking they have received Christ, when all the time they have not done so because they were not yet able to do so. So a crop of false conversions will result from making such appeals, in the nature of the case. Bullying for “decisions” thus in fact impedes and thwarts the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Man takes it on himself to try to bring that work to a precipitate conclusion, to pick the fruit before it is ripe; and the result is “false conversions,” hypocrisy and hardening. “For the appeal for immediate decision presupposes that men are free to “decide for Christ” at any time; and this presupposition is the disastrous issue of a false, un-Scriptural view of sin.

My friend Jared Bridges has pointed out another reason for me, as a Baptist, to despise the term “altar call”: We don’t believe in transubstantiation and we don’t burn offerings, so we have no need for an “altar.”

#7 Witnessing — Evangelism ain’t Amway. It is not a form of Multi-Level Marketing in which you get extra credit for the number of people in your network and you don’t get a great commission for the Great Commission. If you want to sell something door-to-door make it Amway products not the Good News.

If you want to be a more effective “witness for Christ” then start by doing what Christ did and love other people. Start by loving the “unlovable” — the smelly, unbathed men down at the mission, the annoying kids at church, the bonehead who cuts you off in traffic. Yes, you need to tell people about the Gospel. But that is evangelism, not “witnessing.” In the context of the Christian life, “witness” should be a noun more often than a verb.

#8 Protestant Prayers — Last week one of my fellow coworkers, a young Catholic man, was asked to open our meeting with a prayer. Without hesitation he began reciting the “Lord’s prayer.” Afterward I joked that, having come up with such a fine prayer, he might want to write it down for future use. What I didn’t say what how his recitation of the prayer made me uncomfortable.

First, I’m not used to hearing prayers that don’t contain the word “just” (as in “We just want to thank you Lord…”) so it had an odd ring to it. Second, it seemed to violate the accepted standards for public prayer. I had always assumed that praying in public required being able to interlace some just-want-to’s in with some Lord-thank-you-for’s and be- with-us-as-we’s in a coherent fashion before toppping it all with an Amen. Third, I thought that prayers are supposed to be spontaneous — from the heart, off the top of the head — emanations, rather than prepackaged recitations. If it ain’t original, it ain’t prayer, right? Can I get an amen?

But where did this idea come from? We have entire books to teach us how to pray yet Jesus managed to wrap up the lesson in less than forty words. Why isn’t that prayer good enough for evangelicals to use? Why do our prayers sound nothing like His example? (And if you are wondering what prayer is doing on a list of evangelistic fixtures then we are really in trouble.)

#9 The Church Growth Movement — Sadly, this has moved from fad to fixture. Think I’m wrong? Ask the next person you see to define that phrase. In fact, ask the next 100 people you see. Let me know if you find anyone that tells you they think the church growth movement is a movement in the church to grow disciples. (If you do find someone who says that then smack ‘em upside their head with a Scofield for they’re a Purpose-Driven Liar.)

#10 Chick Tracts — Chick Tracts are a tool of the devil. That fact — and yes it is a fact — is not changed just because you know a guy who knows a guy who heard testimony about a guy who said the Sinner’ Prayer after finding “The Long Trip” on the floor of a truck stop restroom.

The term evangelism derives from the Greek word evangel — “good news.” So it’s rather odd how so much evangelism appears to be about “selling” Jesus and hoping that you can convince the unsaved heathen to buy into salvation. This was the way I had been taught during Vacation Bible School classes at the First Baptist Church of Fire and Brimstone. Pass out Chick tracts, recite the canned “how to get saved” speech, get them to say the sinner’s prayer. Above all, close the deal. They may die at any time and their souls would be lost to eternal damnation if I didn’t “make the sell.” By the age of eight I was a cross between Billy Graham and Willy Loman.

Whenever I began to seriously read the Gospels, though, I noticed something strange. People constantly flocked to Jesus despite the fact that he never passed out a single tract. He would walk up to people and say “Follow me” and the next thing you know they’re giving up their lives to follow him around the countryside.

The people responded to Jesus the way they did because he is God. He is what our hearts have always been seeking. When we come face to face with him we may accept or reject him. But we can’t not know him. Calvin claimed that there is an awareness or sense of God (sensus divinitatis) implanted in all people by nature. The context of this universally distributed belief being rather minimal: there is a God, He is the Creator, and that He ought to be worshiped. The Gospel, though, fills in the essential details.

We evangelicals don’t need tools of evangelism. We don’t need fads and fixtures. We don’t need anything more than the Gospel. For that is one fixture of our faith that will never go out of style.

(Note: The last time I posted this article, I ended up caving into peer pressure and admitting that maybe this stuff ain’t all that bad. Two years later I find that I conceded too much. I’ve modified my stance a bit and clarified a few points of contention. But I really do believe that these “fixtures” have become detrimental to the making of disciples. Am I wrong? I’m open to hearing counter-claims.)

This post is written mainly for the benefit of atheists who think that the “God Hates Shrimps” retort does anything to undermine or expose the belief, held by evangelical Christians, that the Bible teaches that homosexual practice is a sin.

In the previous sentence, I used the word ‘benefit’ deliberately. Not only does an atheist holding a “God Hates Shrimps” board completely fail to trouble any evangelical Christian with half a clue, it actually portrays the atheist in a very bad light. Such a person is demonstrating that, on the one hand, they haven’t bothered to find out the first thing about why Christians believe that homosexual practice is a sin, and yet on the other, they think that they have a three-word killer argument that will bring 2000 years of Christian teaching to its knees in embarrassed confusion. In short, any evangelical Christian with half a clue will read those words as if they said “My ignorance is surpassed only by my arrogance”.

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To his excellent study of the Hebrew and Greek biblical texts, I’d only add one thing as a specifically Orthodox perspective.

Christians after the age of the apostles use the scriptural condemnations of same-sex activity to express and explain this portion of the Church’s understanding that these relations are a distortion (i.e. sin) and cause spiritual damage. The consensus of Christian practice from first century to the first half of the twentieth is itself the Tradition in this regard. Orthodox Christians don’t construct a sexual morality from scratch by tying together Bible passages. That’s not necessary when the mind of the Church already reflects millennia of consistent abhorrence of these acts — as well as stern but compassionate pastoral support for those repenting from them.

A related article: The Gay Invention: Homosexuality is a linguistic as well as a moral error. (Touchstone Magazine)

On the opening day of my class on Jesus of Nazareth, I give a standardized psychological test divided into two parts. The results are nothing short of astounding.

The first part is about Jesus. It asks students to imagine Jesus’ personality, with questions such as, “Does he prefer to go his own way rather than act by the rules?” and “Is he a worrier?” The second part asks the same questions of the students, but instead of “Is he a worrier?” it asks, “Are you a worrier?” The test is not about right or wrong answers, nor is it designed to help students understand Jesus. Instead, if given to enough people, the test will reveal that we all think Jesus is like us. Introverts think Jesus is introverted, for example, and, on the basis of the same questions, extroverts think Jesus is extroverted.

Spiritual formation experts would love to hear that students in my Jesus class are becoming like Jesus, but the test actually reveals the reverse: Students are fashioning Jesus to be more like themselves. If the test were given to a random sample of adults, the results would be measurably similar. To one degree or another, we all conform Jesus to our own image.

Since we are pushing this point, let’s not forget historical Jesus scholars, whose academic goal is to study the records, set the evidence in historical context, render judgment about the value of the evidence, and compose a portrait of “what Jesus was really like.” They, too, have ended up making Jesus in their own image…

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by Father Daniel Daly

Several years ago during the Christmas season, a religious program on television caught my attention. The program featured a discussion on the dangers of cults, especially to young people. I found myself agreeing with the panelists as they warned young people about the hazards of involvement in occult or “new age” spirituality.

During the interview, however, one participant made a statement that shocked me. “…and the Christmas tree is pagan too…,” he asserted. The Christmas Tree? Pagan? Could it be that something most of us enjoy so much might be actually pagan in origin? Despite its growing commercialization, the Christmas tree is still associated with the fondest memories of our early childhood. Who does not remember approaching the tree on Christmas morning? Today people are so captivated by it that some even put it up in November! It finds a place in the homes of believers and unbelievers alike.

Most people are aware that the Christmas tree came to America with immigrants from Germany, but just where did the Christmas tree originate? Are its origins to be found in paganism, as the speaker suggested?

The Christmas tree does not date from early Germanic times. Its origins are to be found in a tradition that has virtually disappeared from Christianity, the Liturgical Drama. In the Middle Ages liturgical plays or dramas were presented during or sometimes immediately after the services in the churches of Western Europe. The earliest of these plays were associated with the Mysteries of Holy Week and Easter. Initially they were dramatizations of the liturgical texts. The earliest recorded is the Quem quaeritis (“Whom do you seek?”) play of the Easter season. These plays later developed into the Miracle and Morality plays. Some were associated with events in the lives of well-known saints. The plays were presented on the porches of large churches. Although these liturgical dramas have now virtually disappeared, the Passion Play of Oberammergau, Germany is a recent revival of this dramatic form.

One mystery play was presented on Christmas Eve, the day which also commemorated the feast of Adam and Eve in the Western Church. The “Paradise Play” told the well-known story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise. The central “prop” in the play was the Paradise Tree, or Tree of Knowledge. During the play this tree was brought in laden with apples.

The Paradise Tree became very popular with the German people. They soon began the practice of setting up a fir tree in their homes. Originally, the trees were decorated with bread wafers commemorating the Eucharist. Later, these were replaced with various kinds of sweets. Our Christmas tree is derived, not from the pagan yule tree, but from the paradise tree adorned with apples on December 24 in honor of Adam and Eve. The Christmas tree is completely biblical in origin.

The first Christmas tree dates from 1605 in Strasbourg. By the 1700s the custom of the Christmas tree was widespread among the German people. It was brought to America by early German immigrants, and it became popular in England through the influence of Prince Albert, the German husband of Queen Victoria.

The use of evergreens at Christmas may date from St. Boniface of the eighth century, who dedicated the fir tree to the Holy Child in order to replace the sacred oak tree of Odin; but the Christmas tree as we know it today does not appear to be so ancient a custom. It appears first in the Christian Mystery play commemorating the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

How legitimate is it to use a fir tree in the celebration of Christmas? From the very earliest days of the Church, Christians brought many things of God’s material creation into their life of faith and worship, e.g., water, bread, wine, oil, candles and incense. All these things are part of God’s creation. They are part of the world that Christ came to save. Man cannot reject the material creation without rejecting his own humanity. In Genesis man was given dominion over the material world.

Christmas celebrates the great mystery of the Incarnation. In that mystery God the Word became man. In order to redeem us, God became one of us. He became part of His own creation. The Incarnation affirms the importance of both man and the whole of creation. “For God so loved the world…”

A faith which would seek to divorce itself from all elements of the material world in search for an absolutely spiritual religion overlooks this most central mystery of Christmas, the mystery of God becoming man, the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Enjoy your Christmas tree.

Originally published in “The Word” magazine, December 2002. The Very Rev. Daniel Daly is pastor of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, Grand Rapids, MI.)

It was fall when we arrived in the United States. The first weeks passed rapidly, filled with new discoveries every day, and soon we came across a beautiful feast, which we had never celebrated before: Thanksgiving Day, an exclusively American feast. With great enthusiasm we included it in the calendar of our family feasts.

Who can describe our astonishment, however, when a few days after our first Thanksgiving Day we heard from a loudspeaker in a large department store the unmistakable melody of “Silent Night”! Upon our excited inquiry, someone said, rather surprised: “What is the matter? Nothing is the matter. Time for Christmas shopping!”

It took several Christmas seasons before we understood the connection between Christmas shopping and “Silent Night” and the other carols blaring from loudspeakers in these pre-Christmas weeks. And even now that we do understand, it still disturbs us greatly. These weeks before Christmas, known as the weeks of Advent, are meant to be spent in expectation and waiting. This is the season for Advent songs–those age-old hymns of longing and waiting; “Silent Night” should be sung for the first time on Christmas Eve. We found that hardly anybody knows any Advent songs. And we were startled by something else soon after Christmas, Christmas trees and decorations vanish from the show windows to be replaced by New Year’s advertisements. On our concert trips across the country we also saw that the lighted Christmas trees disappear from homes and front yards and no one thinks to sing a carol as late as January 2nd. This was all very strange to us, for we were used to the old-world Christmas, which was altogether different but which we determined to celebrate now in our new country.

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Every year, on Hallowe’en, I sit on the front porch of my house with a bowl of candy, a box of beeswax candles, and a large icon for the Feast of All Saints.

Every child who comes to the house gets a piece of candy, and may also light a candle and place it before the icon. Very few kids (even the jaded teenagers) turn down the opportunity.

For those who ask, I tell them that the meaning of the word “Hallowe’en” is “the eve of the Feast of All Saints”.

If they press me on the point, I tell them that they can think of the true meaning of Hallowe’en as being that, because of Christ, they can dress up like ghosts and goblins and whatnot, because we do not need to fear those things any longer.

I wish I had a few photos of the kids in Satan masks, lighting a candle and placing it before the icon…

In the new humanity, them becomes us, they becomes we, and those become ours. This is why it is very dangerous when a church becomes known for being hip, cool, and trendy. The new humanity is not a trend. Or when a church is known for attracting one particular kind of demographic, like people of this particular age and education level, or that particular social class or personality type. There’s obviously nothing wrong with the powerful bonds that are shared when you meet up with your own tribe, and hear things in a language you understand, and cultural references are made that you are familiar with, but when sameness takes over, when everybody shares the same story, when there is no listening to other perspectives, no stretching and expanding and opening up – that’s when the new humanity is in trouble.

The beautiful thing is to join with a church that has gathered and find yourself looking around thinking, “What could this group of people possibly have in common?” The answer, of course, would be the new humanity. A church is where the two people groups with blue hair – young men and older women – sit together and somehow it all fits together in a Eucharistic sort of way. Try marketing that. Try branding that. The new humanity defies trends and demographics and the latest market research.

In Acts 8 some of Jesus’ first followers are healing people, and a man named Simon sees this and offers them money and says, “Give me also this ability.” Simon is seduced into thinking that the movement of the Spirit of God is a commodity to be bought and sold like any other product. The apostles chastise him for his destructive thinking, because … the Eucharist is not a product.

Glossy brochures have the potential to do great harm to the body and blood. Church is people. The Eucharist is people. People who have committed themselves to being a certain way in the world. To try to brand that is to risk commodifying something intimate, sacred, and holy.

A church is not a center for religious goods and services, where people pay a fee and receive a product in return. A church is not an organization that surveys its demographic to find out what the market is demanding at this particular moment and then adjusts its strategy to meet that consumer niche.

The way of Jesus is the path of descent. It’s about our death. It’s our willingness to join the world in its suffering, it’s our participation in the new humanity, it’s our weakness calling out to others in their weakness. To turn that into a product blasphemes the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is what happens when the question is asked, What does it look like for us to be a Eucharist for these people, here and now? What does it look like for us to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out for the healing of these people in this time in this place? The temptation is simply to duplicate the Eucharist of someone else.

— from  Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

Essay included in “The Church in the Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives,” Leonard Sweet, editor (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003). This book contains five essays on the question of the Church’s engagement with culture, and to what extent we should change, or preserve, its message and its method. This essay was my contribution.

Why is this essay written in question and answer format?

It is intended to reference the penultimate section of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” This section, called “Ithaca,” concerns a late-night conversation between Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. It is cast in the form of a series of objective, impersonal questions and answers, for example, “What seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?”

Why is “Ithaca” written in question and answer format?

Joyce’s monumental novel employed many experimental forms. While some twentieth-century artists experimented in haphazard or even deliberately destructive ways, Joyce’s work is carefully constructed and frequently beautiful.

Give an example.

When Bloom escorts Dedalus to the door, well after midnight, they see “the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.”

Give an example of an artwork deliberately destructive of aestheticism.

The “Fountain” of Marcel Duchamp, which consisted of a urinal, signed “R. Mutt.”

What did these experimenting artists share?

They shared an impulse to go beyond traditional forms of art to use new methods to express messages that, they believed, were also new.

Were these messages, in fact, new?

Probably not.

Were these methods new?

They were certainly experimental and original.

Were these methods more effective in communication than previous methods?

Probably not.

When was “Ulysses” written?

Between 1914 and 1921.

When did Duchamp present his “Fountain”?

In 1917.

Why was there an impulse to experiment with new methods and new messages?

Because the old messages and methods seemed exhausted. Previous generations’ optimistic and orderly view of the world seemed artificial and incapable of expressing the confusion and darkness artists sensed. These artists hoped that brutal realism would enable contact with something more true.

How did Joyce scholar Stuart Gilbert analyze this ferment?

Joyce scholar Stuart Gilbert wrote in 1950, “Writers and artists of that bygone age [the 1890’s] had the advantage over the present generation [1950] that there was a citadel of organized propriety on which to drop their incendiaries, and the ensuing blaze filled them and their admirers with mischievous delight.” That is, these artists challenged propriety and styled themselves revolutionary. They felt particular exhilaration when their works outraged stuffy, proper people.

What was Joyce’s own hope?

Joyce wrote, when he completed “Dubliners,” of “the special odour of corruption which, I hope, floats over all my works.”

How did Stuart Gilbert characterize this statement?

“That ‘hope’ was typically ‘ninetyish.”

And he meant by “ninetyish”?

The 1890’s.

Was this love of challenging and questioning restricted to the arts?

No. In “The Quest of the Historical Jesus”, Albert Schweitzer found that attempts to revise the view of Jesus had been going on since the middle 1700’s.

What characterized these attempts to revise the view of Jesus?

These attempts were characterized by rejection of the prevailing view, and proposal of a substitute Jesus filled with whatever virtues were most valued at the time. Schweitzer termed this “a uniquely great expression of sincerity.”

When did Schweitzer write his book?

In 1906.

What did Schweitzer conclude was the only way we could know Jesus?

He concluded that we can know Jesus only by following Him.

What did Philip Jenkins assert in “Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost its Way”?

Jenkins asserted that although Jesus-revision has been going on for centuries, revisers were for the most part ignorant of the revisers that preceded them. They believed that they were uniquely bold, and felt particular exhilaration when their works outraged stuffy, proper people. Jenkins asserted that the reviser’s self-dramatizing narrative follows the classic lines of legend: a brave rebel uncovers, or uncovers new meaning in, an ancient document, and brings about something liberating and new.

What two things do Jesus-revisers, past and present, share?

A restless desire to overthrow the past and do something new, and a conviction that Jesus is all we can admire or desire.

Is Jesus all we can admire or desire?

Yes.

How, then, do these revisers go wrong?

By failing to question the assumptions of thought-fashion, which seep in and control them unawares. By mistakenly identifying the eternally admirable and desirable with passing popular ideas of what is admirable or desirable.

Give a contemporary example.

A contemporary example is the present age’s romantic fascination with rebellion, and the Jesus Seminar’s preference to see Jesus as a political revolutionary, to the extent of rejecting as ahistorical any Gospel sayings thought inappropriate to a revolutionary.

Give a second contemporary example.

In 1999 a British ad agency produced a black-and-red Easter poster for the Anglican church depicting Jesus in the likeness of Che Guevara. Both method and message were typically ‘ninetyish.

Was this revised message and method successful?

Probably not. People under fifty did not recognize the allusion to the Guevara poster, which had been popular in the 1960’s. Nor did they know who Guevara was. A vintage copy of this poster is now a valuable semi-antique collectible, in the category of “paper ephemera.”

What happened to Duchamp’s urinal?

It was exhibited in an admiring retrospective of Duchamp’s work in 1962.

How did Duchamp react to the art establishment’s embrace of his work?

With anger and frustration. He said, “I threw the urinal…in their faces as a challenge and now they admire [it] for [its] aesthetic beauty!”

What do stuffy, proper people do with revolutionary objects?

Enjoy them. Acquire them. Turn them into collectibles.

Are they, then, not outraged by them after all?

Powerful people are exhilarated by works intended to outrage powerful people, whom they apparently think is someone else.

Why is this?

Contemporary culture honors the rebel above all other authority. The rebel enjoys highest status and greatest power. The rebel is the Establishment.

How does cultural critic Thomas Frank describe this phenomenon?

Thomas Frank wrote, in “The Conquest of Cool,” “Today there are few things more beloved of our mass media than the figure of the cultural rebel, the defiant individualist resisting the mandates of the machine civilization. Whether he is an athlete decked out in a mohawk and multiple-pierced ears, a policeman who plays by his own rules, an actor on a motorcycle, a movie fratboy wreaking havoc on the townies’ parade, a soldier of fortune with explosive bow and arrow, a long-haired alienated cowboy gunning down square cowboys, or a rock star in leather jacket and sunglasses, he has become the paramount cliche of our popular entertainment, the preeminent symbol of the system he is supposed to be subverting.”

Is the rebel figure, then, not truly subverting the status quo?

The rebel figure preserves the status quo. He possesses preeminent status. He is our culture’s authority, while so-called authority figures, if they exist, are despised and mocked.

Do authority figures no longer exist?

Frank wrote, “On the other side of the coin, of course, are the central-casting prudes and squares (police, Southerners, old folks, etc.) against whom contemporary advertising, rock stars, and artists routinely cast themselves.”

Who has power in that conflict?

Not the prudes and square. They are props controlled by the rebels, brought out when necessary for dramatic purposes.

Why does our culture adore rebel identity?

It’s complicated.

Explain.

The affluence and ease of post-World War II America pooled into a growing sense of anxiety. The fear was that the seductive appeal of abundant, attractive, affordable mass-produced goods was turning us into a nation of mere consumers. The term for this was “conformity.” Though now forgotten, the soul-deadening danger of conformity was a topic of widespread discussion, from intellectual journals to the Reader’s Digest. This dilemma is now forgotten because it was resolved.

What solution was developed, and by whom?

Advertising developed the brilliant solution of presenting the consumer as rebel. Customers could prove their independence by buying goods that demonstrated defiance of fashion. Such fashionable goods were akin to talismans, keeping the specter of conformity at bay. Especially fashionable were those products which appeared to repudiate fashion, implying that you were too cool to care whether you were cool or not. Yet because these goods could still be identically mass-produced, they remained affordable and of reassuringly familiar quality. The goods had never been the problem; anxiety about consuming them was the problem. This problem was eliminated through the magic of marketing, by invention of the consumer-as-rebel persona.

Did this rebel persona arise due to the hippie movement?

No. Frank finds the origin in Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro.” Mailer proposed that the “Hipster” combat the “squares” by living the kind of sexy, jazzy, freewheeling life that whites fantasized belonged to blacks. Frank notes that Mailer was the first to take an option previously enjoyed by the intellectual elite, that of contempt for common culture and a self-elevating image of rebellion, and to democratize it. At last, the common man could feel superior to the common man.

Who first implemented this solution?

Doyle Dane Bernbach’s brilliant Volkswagen anti-ads began appearing in 1959, and the “Pepsi Generation” in 1961. If the hippies hadn’t arrived it would have been necessary to invent them.

How many pages are in the current Birkenstock catalogue?

Seventy-seven full-color pages, offering aggressively simple, unselfconscious footwear that thumbs its nose at fashion, costing up to $259.95 per pair.

Why is this essay written in question and answer form?

Because our age reverences questioning. Questioners are thought to be rebellious, which superior status exempts them from interrogation. The mechanism is similar to the “pre-emptive irony” of advertising and television, which makes it invulnerable to ironic critique.

What, then, must we conclude about the prescription that we should subvert, rebel, question, and revise?

We must ask whether we embrace this prescription because it has been diligently marketed to us.

Why has it been marketed to us?

So we’ll buy stuff.

What must be suspected?

That we exercise this rebel persona most often, not by actually rebelling, but by purchasing status items that we have been told will make us cool.

What might real rebellion look like?

Standing outside an abortion clinic on a cold Saturday morning wearing really un-cool sneakers and an un-cool cardigan, praying.

What must we do with a reflexive conformist stance of questioning authority?

Question it.

What happened to Duchamp’s urinal?

It continues to gather authority as a prized and priceless artwork. In 1993, while it was on loan to a museum in Nimes from the Pompidou Center in Paris, the artist Pierre Pinoncelli revised its meaning, expressing a new message via a new method.

How?

He urinated in it.

What did this do to the urinal, or perhaps artwork?

Pinoncelli said that this liberated it. The museum said that this vandalized it. Courts sided with the museum, and Pinoncelli was assessed a heavy fine.

Is a sense that current methods and messages are exhausted a new phenomenon?

No. It would be possible to trace this dissatisfaction back for centuries, perhaps, depending on the criterion used. Modernism is by nature restless, always questing for the next new thing, and in rebellion against the present.

Is there such a thing as post-modernism?

There is no way to tell. Dissatisfaction with the current times is an old phenomenon. Flux is Modernism’s stasis. Yet times will eventually change, so it is possible that they are changing now. If so, however, the future would not call this period “postmodernism.” They would name it by whatever distinctive features emerge, and these are not yet perceptible.

What is new under the sun?

Nothing.

What is old under the sun?

A fear that all is vanity and striving after wind. Weariness. Frustration. Impatience. Futility. Loneliness at the deepest levels. Two friends, after a long late-night conversation, still puzzles to themselves and each other, earthbound and aging, side-by-side and miles apart, looking up at the cold blue heaventree.

Is this ridiculous or contemptible?

No.

Is it sad?

Yes.

Will some new thing alleviate it?

It has not been shown to do so.

Why is this essay written in question and answer format?

To use an unfamiliar, though not new, method to disrupt the reader’s expectations and disarm him to receive an unfamiliar, though not new, message.

Why does it appear that the questions anticipate the answers?

Because “Ithaca” is not written in the form of simple dialogue. Joyce’s format in the “Ithaca” sequence was “Catechism.” In a catechism, questions have answers. The answers unfold what is already known, rather than speculate freely or end in uncertainty. The questions presume that answers exist. The questions presume that it is possible to know these answers, or partial answers.

Do the questions presume that the answers are exhaustive?

No. The questions presume that answers are necessarily fragmentary. However, those fragments may be reliable.

Does “reliable” mean “objectively true”?

“Reliable” means that there is an objective Truth who is a Person, not a proposition. He is reliable; He is trustworthy.

Can we not know objective truths?

We can know some objective truths. Some objective truths we do not, or cannot grasp, because they are beyond our comprehension, or because we dislike them. These truths nevertheless exist. Someone knows the number of hairs on your head, though you do not. We don’t know ourselves very well, but He does. We see ourselves in a mirror dimly, but one day will know ourselves, and Him, as well as we are known by Him right now.

Why does life seem like great weariness, vanity and striving after wind?

Because although He knows us, we do not know Him very well. We are lonely and empty because we do not know Him very well. We are vacant inside, deafened by the continual wind of our emptiness, and only His presence can fill us. Yet we fail to know Him well. Sometimes this is because we don’t want to know Him, and sometimes because we don’t know how.

Why do people continually want to revise the prevailing view of Jesus?

To relieve the pain of this dilemma by changing Jesus into something we can understand.

What is Jesus’ alternative plan?

To change us into something that can understand Him.

Do we misunderstand Him because our message or methods are outdated?

Perhaps in part. But the main reason is that He is scary. Another factor is that He is deep.

How might misguided messages or methods impede, in part, our knowledge of him?

Inept responses to prevailing culture in the past may have resulted in institutionalized misunderstanding and misrepresentation. As cultures change, and efforts are made to adapt and revise, these mistakes may be compounded or over-corrected. Well-meaning attempts to keep pace with culture can result in desperate faddishness that looks lame a decade later. The doctrine of ceaseless adaptation to superficial culture must be interrogated. The dogma of suspicion must be critiqued.

Does adapting to varying cultures enable us to better know Him in some ways?

Yes, for example, by translating the Gospel into a local language. Changes to make the faith merely appealing, however, backfire. The Gospel is inherently not appealing but challenging, or as St. Paul said, an offense and stumbling block. People who are coaxed into buying it for its charming qualities are apt to feel deceived, and to quit altogether, when the going gets tough (see the Parable of the Sower). Adjustments to reflect small, local or temporary culture have a net trivializing effect. They focus attention on the superficial rather than those more difficult elements that pertain to all humans everywhere, and to the unchanging God with Whom they must deal.

How does a doctrine of cultural adaptation impede our knowledge of Him?

By not going deep enough, and halting at the superficial level of culture rather. By failing to touch the transcultural, transhistorical, and ultimately cosmic reality at the source. By failing to know Christ Himself.

How can we know Christ?

I don’t know where to begin.

Begin.

The place to begin is with the Scriptures. You must not see this book dropping leather-bound from heaven. Don’t think of it as a book at all. Picture the living words and deeds of Jesus, and the people who saw Him. Imagine how they told and retold these stories, and eventually wrote them down. The distinctive feature of this life, whether told, written, or painted, was its dynamic and transformative power.

How then shall we use this book?

See, again, the context and the listeners. This budding community heard and saw this life, and was charged and changed by it first-hand. When they heard and discussed the events that became the Scriptures they had a simple advantage over us, and rather a mundane one: the stories were told in their native language. We fall into turmoil over fine points of translation, but they used no translation; they heard the stories in the same Greek that they used in the home and the marketplace. The analogies and jokes were those of their time and common culture. Things we puzzle over were clear to them. They knew how to weight and value things that confuse us, two thousand years and half a world away.

Were these people better Christians than we are?

It seems that they held themselves to higher standards of morality and integrity than we currently expect, and they demonstrated courage under persecution that might make us quail. But God was not closer to them than He is to us. He didn’t prefer them, and they didn’t get a bigger share of Him.

Was the church of that time holier than the church today?

No.

Why not?

Because weeds and wheat grow up together till the last day. An enemy has done this.

In what, then, is their advantage?

Their advantage is that they heard the message first, in their own cultural language, and were more able to understand it clearly. When we are puzzled by bits of the message, or disagree about its meaning, we may be able to settle things by looking up what they wrote in explanation. When they are in broad agreement, across many times and cultures, it is a witness that should arrest our attention.

Do such works exist?

On the shelf behind me are two such collections, one in fifty-four volumes and one in thirty-eight.

Are all these writings from the time of the New Testament?

No. They range through the first centuries. We give precedence to those beliefs that were agreed to over the broadest geographic range, from the earliest times, and attested by the greatest number of writers. The summary test is “everywhere, always, and by all.”

Do all early writers, and early communities, agree?

No. We look for broadest consensus.

Give an example.

These Christians came to agreement on which books should be considered part of the canon of the New Testament and which should not. The question was strongly debated, and some books (the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation of St. John) required centuries to win full approval. Our older brothers and sisters in faith trusted in Jesus’ promise, “When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Whenever we open the New Testament we demonstrate, in turn, our trust in their discernment and leadership. Whenever we read the New Testament, we affirm that they had authority to make decisions like this.

Give an example of another decision.

These Christians also wrote the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.), to correct a popular idea that Jesus was a mere human and not God from all eternity. Some questions, like this one, seemed unclearly addressed in Scripture and open to the interpretation of the individual Christian. Believers met in council to decide such questions, prayerfully seeking the Spirit’s guidance. This method of discernment was in use even before the New Testament was written, as shown by the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. It became, in fact, an article of faith to believe that the community had discerned accurately when it was “in one accord” (Acts 15: 25). In the Nicene Creed we say that we believe in four things: God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Church.

May any quotation from any early church writer be taken as Gospel?

No. We look for broadest consensus. Individual writers of the early church could be as flawed as they are today. Most have occasional trouble spots. Despite this, they may be called “saints.” Even saints aren’t perfect on earth. Some whose writings are still treasured departed from the consensus at significant points—more likely to be points of theological speculation than points of devotion.

Give three examples.

Origen, most eloquent and intoxicated with the love of God, was censured for his assertion of universal salvation. Augustine, confessor of touching intimacy and humility, was criticized for his views of free will and Original Sin. Tertullian, acerbic Mark Twain of the early church, drifted from the faith community into a cult. Yet all may be read profitably today.

May we use this threefold test in looking for consensus among Christians today?

No. That would be to omit one of the three elements, the requirement that the earliest belief, the one held for the longest amount of time, take precedence. When this element is abandoned variant doctrines emerge which are held by ever-smaller numbers of believers, and continual disagreement and splintering results.

Give an example of original, then replaced and splintered, belief.

In the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus said that we must eat His body and drink His blood or we will have no life in us. He used emphatic words—not “eat My body” in the Greek but “chew My flesh.” It was a confrontational statement, and to “many of His disciples” so disgusting and distressing that they ceased following him.

What was the consensus of the early Christians on this disturbing passage?

The consensus of the early Christians was that this passage is to be taken literally. They believed that the bread and wine of the Eucharist genuinely become the Body and Blood of Christ. They did not venture to explain how this could be so, but simply believed it on Jesus’ word. The earliness of this belief is evident in the writings of St. Ignatius (about 105 AD), the Didache (perhaps 80 AD), and St. Paul (the description and warnings of I Corinthians 11:23-30). It is the plain meaning of the Scripture in John as well. This view was held in unanimity for the first millennium and a half of Christian faith.

Is this still a hard saying today?

Yes. It continues to be capable of distressing and disgusting the followers of Jesus even as during His time, and in some quarters individual interpretations of the passage arose. These interpretations may be currently widely spread, but they do not have the attestation of being held from earliest times.

Is the church an institution, or is it summed up in a single earthly leader?

No. The church is the body of Christ on earth. All members are equal. All together guard the faith. The leadership of the church does not create or impose beliefs. Instead, all believers, including those in leadership, are under the authority of the common faith.

Which denomination possesses this treasure?

The early consensus is the heritage of every Christian of any denomination. It is something that we all go back to.

May we go back to it, retrieve the things we like, disregard those we don’t, and create Christianities that suit our times and temperaments?

No. This places unwarranted confidence in one’s own wisdom and ability to discern. It underestimates how brainwashed we are by our surrounding culture, as we affirm what is currently fashionable, and recoil from, or fail even to perceive, what is not. The wisest course is to submit to the accumulated faith of our older brothers and sisters, to immerse ourselves in it, and gradually to comprehend more as we ourselves are changed.

Is this best done by reading theology and history?

No. It is best done by praying. This can include using the ancient prayers in private, and standing in the flow of corporate worship. Prayer should also be the context for reading Scripture or other works. We are transformed by the renewal of our minds. This takes time. It includes the whole self, reason, emotion, and body. It happens slowly, by immersion in the living faith.

Is nothing to be gained by choosing and implementing ancient elements we like?

Elements plucked out according to taste are like flowers in a vase. They are more lovely than no flowers at all, but they have no roots and will wither. It is like sewing an old patch on a new garment. It is a better solution than having a hole in your pants, but it is not a lasting solution. It will not bring you to the goal.

Is the goal to develop spotless doctrine?

No. The goal is to know Christ.

Do we know Christ in order to possess correct ideas?

No. The goal of knowing Christ is to be healed and transformed. It is to partake of the presence of Christ, to dwell “in Him.” It is to take on His fire like a coal in the furnace.

Is there any value to correct doctrine?

Correct doctrine is indispensable, because otherwise we will fall into delusion. This is why the guidance of older brothers and sisters in the faith is so vital. Not one of them is dead. They are alive in Christ, in continual prayer in the presence of God. They pray for us, and we can ask their prayers. They worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, where seraphim shield their faces and cry “Holy.” They invite us to join them. This is the Church we must enter, which has been formed and proved by the Spirit, and can safeguard us from delusion, and teach us how to know Christ.

How can we know Christ?

I don’t know where to begin.

Begin.

The place to begin is with the Cross. You must not picture this as a static legal transaction, whereby a debt was canceled. You must see this, as the early Christians did, as a continuing, vigorous victory.

Over whom was Christ victorious?

Over Death. The wages of sin is Death, which is more than a condition; in its personification, Death is related to the Evil One from whom we ask deliverance in the Lord’s Prayer. The desire of our ancient foe is to enslave us, by luring us through temptation into sin, and thus into his trap. Because all humans inevitably sin, all are bound over to Death.

How was Christ victorious?

By becoming human, Christ took on human nature. By dying, he brought human nature into the kingdom of Death. By rising, he demolished the gates of Death, and conquered the Evil One.

Did Christ then pay the ransom to His Father in His own blood?

No. The early Christians knew that it couldn’t be the Father who received a “ransom,” because the Father was not holding us hostage. The Evil One, who did hold us, was unworthy of such a ransom for freeing us; “this [idea] is an outrage!” said St. Gregory the Theologian (died 389 AD). What’s more, if Christ’s blood “paid” the ransom, He took back that payment when He was resurrected. No, the Evil One was not merely bought off, he was defeated.

Was Christ’s death not a ransom, but a payment, to His Father?

The early Christians would not have said so. St. Gregory continues, “Why would the blood of His Only-Begotten Son be pleasing to the Father, who would not accept even Isaac when he was offered by his father?”

Doesn’t the wrath of God demand payment for our sins?

Our actions deserve God’s wrath, but early Christians would say that instead he pours out on us compassion. Though the Prodigal Son deserved wrath, the father did not punish him. While he was yet a long way off the father ran to embrace him. The father did not ask who would pay the son’s bills. The father did not say he would pay them by killing the blameless older brother.

Doesn’t the ancient Hebrew temple sacrifice foreshadow Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross?

Early Christians considered those parallels evocative and moving, but did not press them in a literal or mechanical way. As Athanasius (died 373 AD) explained in “On the Incarnation,” the chief sacrifice was in Christ’s becoming human in the first place. The Incarnation was the great act of obedience to the will of the Father, the initial act that set all else in motion. The entire drama, from beginning to end, is what saves us, not just three hours on Friday.

If God intended to forgive us, why was it necessary for Jesus to come and die?

Because the Fall, and our continuing complicity in sin, had worked fundamental damage in human nature. Though we are not born bearing Adam’s guilt, we are still so bent that we will inevitably fall into sin and earn our own captivity by Death. This tendency is something we share, which flows among all humans.

How did the Incarnation address this problem?

Think of human nature as a corporate reality, rather than something individuals possess in little pieces. When Jesus became human he represented, or embodied, all of us, everyone who ever has lived or ever will. That is what he carried into Hades and out again; that is what he raised from the dead. This means that every human who ever has lived or ever will is going to live forever.

Will everyone spend eternity in the presence of God?

Everyone will spend eternity in the presence of God. No place exists apart from God’s presence, even now. There is no separate corner in the afterlife where demons will be allowed to torture humans forever, because that would be a reward for the Evil One. He is not rewarded, but defeated. God is love and there is no darkness in him. We will all live forever in the light of God’s love.

What, then, is Hell?

Our God is a consuming fire. Those who have turned to Christ and prepared themselves in this life will experience that river of fire as light, warmth, and life. We see a glimpse of what this is like in Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. This life is a process of turning increasingly toward Christ, learning to bear that uncreated light, getting the impurities out of our lump of coal. We must grow stronger and learn to bear his fire. Those who have not accepted Christ will experience his presence as burning and darkness and gnashing of teeth. All the misery of this life and the next is due to not knowing Christ.

How can we know Christ?

I don’t know where to begin.

Begin.

The place to begin is with repentance. You must not picture this as despair or masochism. Instead, you must see a sick person who wants to get well. We are sick, world-sick, self-sick, and even our ability to comprehend our sickness is damaged. We abandon ourselves into the hands of the Healer, who loves us, who won victory for us and freed us from bondage to Death.

Does He pronounce us cured, though we are not, by imputing to us his wholeness?

No. What he offers us is not merely legal acquittal. It is more alarmingly intimate than that. He offers Himself, His very life, He in us and we in Him. He is already there, filling all things, overflowing all creation with His breathed-in presence. In Him all things hold together. Wretched, fragmented and lonely, we can barely perceive Him, and we may not consistently want to know Him, so addicted are we to our sickness. But it is His will that a sinner not die but come to repentance, His will that we become partakers of the divine nature, His will that we increasingly receive the light of Christ. Thus we become light-bearing saints, destined to live for the praise of His glory.

What has this to do with repentance?

If we are to be transformed we must be changed. That is tautological. If we are to change, we must recognize where we need to change and begin to do so. It is not a matter of allowing a divine spark within to gently bloom. The kingdom of heaven is taken by force. You must be perfect, as your Father is perfect. The sickness is real, and will require a skilled surgeon. All things come from God in this process, even our rudimentary and vacillating desire to be healed. We cooperate with the surgeon, but do not earn healing or anything else thereby. It is a free gift. It is a gift we can refuse. Many do.

What dissuades us from embracing healing?

A powderpuff Gospel that invites people to get comfortable instead. A cupcake Gospel that invites people to like themselves just the way they are, and to stay that way. A self-pity Gospel that is afraid to reprove, though the Father will chasten every son He receives. A soft enculturated Gospel that is so dazzled by the prevailing culture’s valuing of self-affirmation and self-esteem that it cannot call it to repentance. Thinking “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,” not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

How do we cooperate with the surgeon?

A patient cooperates with a surgeon by allowing him to work. We make room for His healing; we exercise kindness toward others, curb out tongues, avoid gross sin, discipline our minds and bodies. We get to know our familiar sins, and train ourselves to defeat them. We train like athletes competing for a prize. The athlete does not work out in order to pay for past failures, but to prepare for future contests. We learn from our older brothers and sisters what exercises they have tested and found most useful, such as fasting and continual prayer. We learn from them how to do these exercises in ways that fit us personally, which will make us stronger rather than break us. As we grow in strength we can take on more.

At what point are we legally saved?

This is not a matter of legality but of health. At what point is the patient fully cured? It may be possible to tell from the end of the story, but while in process we must be humble and aware of the half-hearted, feeble quality of our discipleship. Be sober, be watchful. There is always danger of relapse. Christ always wills to save us, but we, like Judas, can reject that at any point. He who endures to the end will be saved. Yet if Christ did not move us to desire him, and give us His strength, no one could endure.

Do sins accumulate as debts that must be paid?

No. Sins are akin to drops of poison. They make us sick. We want to be full of radiance as He is, and so try to wean ourselves from these temptations. Sin is infection, not infraction.

Don’t sins offend God?

Our sins must bring God great grief, but nothing shocks Him. He needs no one to tell him what is in man, for He Himself knows what is in man. Rather, misuse of our bodies or each other will damage us and carry us far from His healing presence—He, the only Light, the only Life. To be far from Him is to be in darkness and death. This is a direct effect, rather than the result of storing up points toward punishment.

Give an example.

If a person uses tobacco, and becomes ill, we see that this illness is a direct result. This is the case even if the person did not realize that tobacco would harm him, and even if the use of it continued to feel pleasant. These negative results can even spill over and damage innocent family members and the general culture, due to second-hand effects. Yet these effects are simple and direct. We would not say that tobacco use angers God, which in turn creates a debt that must be paid, and that God receives this payment by punishing Jesus or the ill person. The concept of “merit” is wholly irrelevant, because the process is direct and simple. Sins sicken us and alienate us from God, and we fight against them, pommel our body and subdue it, because we want to be well.

Give another example.

In the case of adultery, likewise, the action damages participants and estranges them from God, even if they don’t realize that adultery will harm them and even if it continues to feel pleasant. These negative results can even spill over and damage innocent family members and the general culture, due to second-hand effects. The process is a direct one, not based on external merits or demerits. The end result is damaged souls and alienation from God—a direct result, rather than a calculated punishment.

Is homosexuality an infraction against God’s holy code?

The early Christians would not categorize any sin in such terms. However, they would identify homosexuality as sin. They would say that it, like adultery, is subtly damaging even to those who enjoy it and see no harm in it. We may be puzzled as to why they make this diagnosis, but they are consistent and emphatic on this from one generation to the next. They also saw virginity as a source of spiritual power, something we likewise find hard to grasp. We should recognize that our comprehension in the arena of sexuality has been damaged by the distortion of the prevailing culture, and admit that our ability to evaluate these things is not trustworthy. We can recognize that our older brothers and sisters were unanimous on these things, and hope to come to see what they saw so clearly as we grow in Christ and our damaged sexual understanding is healed.

Mustn’t each person test and establish his own ethical standards?

No. We have inside a conscience informed by God; we also have desires and selfish impulses that can do a very good impression of that voice. Further, we are confused by the prevailing culture’s opinions and fashions. We must learn to have humility about our limited perspective and question our reflexive prejudices. Humility, in fact, is the single most important exercise.

How does humility change us?

When we see ourselves as the chief of sinners, we no longer take offense at wrongs done to us. We forgive others as we ourselves are forgiven. We love even our enemies. We no longer judge.

How can there be justice without judgment?

There is judgment; it’s just not our job. God is the judge, and all will be judged one day. But because we have been forgiven so much, we pray that others will come to repentance and receive forgiveness as well. The best way to help someone come to repentance may not be to indulge them; it may be necessary to intervene and confront. This may be what justice requires. But we never seek vengeance. Vengeance is the Lord’s. Our hope and goal, our great commission, is directed toward bringing all to salvation and knowledge of the Lord.

With this goal in mind, how should the church relate to the culture?

Both categories are deceptive. Instead, picture the Lord filling all things. “The Church” is the company of people who know this truth, living and departed, those of us who struggle and the unseen cloud of witnesses who pray with and for us. We who persevere in this life are in the process of getting well.

What of others, who are outside, in the secular culture?

There is no outside. There is no place where God is not, even now. Even those who do not know the truth of Christ are also created, beloved, and known by Him. He is closer to them than their own breath, though they do not know Him. We work together with God so that every person can come to saving knowledge of Christ, and be healed and transformed alongside us.

What has the culture to do with this?

Christ has compassion on those who are harassed and helpless because they do not know their shepherd. The culture is the ever-changing weather conditions that these sheep must endure, which they try to respond to as best they can, though they are confused and wounded. Protection and rescue of individual sheep is our primary goal. It is less worthwhile to try to change the weather. We may occasionally have isolated success, but it appears that every weather pattern will have both good and bad elements, and weather itself is bound to be a perennial phenomenon.

How can we convert the culture?

A culture cannot be converted. Only individuals can be converted. God knows how to reach each individual; every conversion is an inside job. We cooperate by listening attentively for God’s directions and speaking the right word at the right moment, doing a kind deed, bearing Christ’s light and being His fragrance in the lives of people we know. This is the level where things change, one individual at a time, as one coal gives light to another. When enough people change, the culture follows—though, again, the hope of ever having a perfect culture is futile. Our effectiveness as witnesses is not tested on the public stage, but by our private daily conduct. If we are not being healed at those levels, all we do for public display will be garbage. But only acquire the Holy Spirit and you will save a thousand around you (St. Seraphim of Sarov, died 1833).

What kinds of questions are worthless?

Ironic, smart-aleck questions; questions designed to reinforce a self-image of being a rebel and questioner; rhetorical questions; questions designed to trap or humiliate another person.

What kinds of questions are worthwhile?

Questions that open to yourself your own vast ignorance; questions that reveal your smallness and weakness; questions that cast you down in awe; questions that raise you up in worship.

What is the most important question?

“Who do you say that I am?”

Why is this essay written in question and answer format?

Go outside after midnight and look up at the heaventree of stars.

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