Posted on 06/28/2008 9:38:51 AM PDT by annalex
The title for this post sounds like an oxymoron, and, of course, it is. How can one be both an atheist and a Christian? Again, I am wanting to push the understanding of the one-versus-two-storey universe. In the history of religious thought, one of the closest versions to what I am describing as a “two-storey” world-view, is that espoused by classical Deism (the philosophy espoused by a number of the American founding fathers).
They had an almost pure, two-storey worldview. God, “the Deity,” had created the universe in the beginning, setting it in motion. He had done so in such a way that the world could be described as directed by His Providence, but not in any sense interfered with after its creation. Thomas Jefferson produced a New Testament, wholly in tune with this philosophy. He expunged all reference to miracle and kept only those things he considered to have a purpose in “moral teaching.” The creator had accomplished His work: it was up to us to conform ourselves to His purposes and morality - which were pretty indistinguishable from natural law. If you read the writings of the period it’s much more common to read Providence where a Christian might put God. Many modern evangelicals mistakenly read such statements as Christian.
Functionally, other than having some notion of an original Creator, Deists were practical atheists. The God Who created had completed His work. Ethics were as much a matter of scientific discovery as any other principle of physics. They believed in something they called “God” or “Providence” but only in a very divorced sense. It would be hard to distinguish their thought from that of an atheist except that they clung to an idea of God at least as the initiator of all things.
I have here introduced the notion of “practical atheism,” meaning by it, that although a person may espouse a belief in God, it is quite possible for that belief to be so removed from everyday life, that God’s non-existence would make little difference.
Surprisingly, I would place some forms of Christian fundamentalism within this category (as I have defined it). I recall a group affiliated with some particular Church of Christ, who regularly evangelized our apartment complex when I lived in Columbia, S.C. They were also a constant presence on the campus of the local university. They were absolute inerrantists on the subject of the Holy Scriptures. They were equally adamant that all miracles had ceased with the completion of the canon of the New Testament. Christians today only relate to God through the Bible.
Such a group can be called “Biblicists,” or something, but, in the terminology I am using here, I would describe them as “practical atheists.” Though they had great, even absolutist, faith in the Holy Scriptures, they had no relationship with a God who is living and active and directly involved in their world. Had their notion of a God died, and left somebody else in charge of His heaven, it would not have made much difference so long as the rules did not change.
I realize that this is strong criticism, but it is important for us to understand what is at stake. The more the secular world is exalted as secular, that is, having an existence somehow independent of God, the more we will live as practical atheists - perhaps practical atheists who pray (but for what do we pray?). I would also suggest that the more secular the world becomes for Christians, the more political Christians will become. We will necessarily resort to the same tools and weapons as those who do not believe.
Christianity that has purged the Church of the sacraments, and of the sacramental, have only ideas which can be substituted - the result being the eradication of God from the world in all ways other than theoretical. Of course, since much of modern Christianity functions on this ideological level rather than the level of the God-Who-is among-us, much of Christianity functions in a mode of practical atheism. The more ideological the faith, the more likely its proponents are to expouse what amounts to a practical atheism.
Orthodox Christianity, with its wealth of dogma and Tradition, could easily be translated into this model - and I have encountered it in such a form. But it is a falsification of Orthodoxy. Sacraments must not be quasi-magical moments in which a carefully defined grace is transmitted to us - they must, instead, threaten to swallow up the whole world. The medieval limitation of sacraments to the number 7 comes far too close to removing sacraments from the world itself. Orthodoxy seems to have declared that there are 7 sacraments solely as a response to Western Reform and Catholic arguments. In some sense, everything is a sacrament - the whole world is a sacrament.
However, if we only say that the whole world is a sacrament, soon nothing will be a sacrament. Thus the sacraments recognized as such by the Church, should serve not just for pointing to themselves, but also pointing to God and to everything around us. Holy Baptism should change all water. The Cross should change all trees, etc. But Baptism gives the definition: water does not define Baptism. Neither do trees define the Cross. Nor does man define Christ. Christ defines what it is to be human, etc.
The more truly sacramental becomes the Christian life, the more thoroughly grounded it is in the God-Who-is-among-us. Such a God is indeed, “everywhere present and filling all things.” Our options are between such a God - as proclaimed in the New Testament - or a God who need be no God at all for He is removed from us anyway.
At the Divine Liturgy, before approaching the Communion Cup, Orthodox Christians pray together:
I believe, O Lord, and I confess that Thou art truly the Christ the Son of the living God who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. I believe also that this is truly Thine own most pure Body, and that this is truly Thine own precious Blood. Therefore, I pray Thee: have mercy upon me and forgive my transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, committed in knowledge or in ignorance. And make me worthy to partake without condemnation of Thy most pure Mysteries, for the remission of my sins, and unto life everlasting. Amen.
There is not a single hint of a distance between us and God. At this point, having prepared for communion, having confessed our sins, we stand at the very center of the universe, before the God Who Is, before the God with Whom Moses conversed on Mt. Sinai, and we receive His true Body and Blood.
Such realism of a first-storey character makes bold claims about the nature of the God whom we worship and how it is that we relate to Him. It’s removal from the “end of miracles” deism of some Biblicists could not be more complete.
There is a dialog that may take place between Christians and atheists. But there is, prior to that, an even more important dialog to be had, and that is with the practical atheism of Christians who have exiled God from the world around us. Such practical atheism is a severe distortion of the Christian faith and an extremely poor substitute for the real thing.
Richard John Neuhaus has written frequently of returning the Church to the public square. I think the problem is far deeper. In many cases we have to speak about returning God to the Church. In cases where practical atheism is the faith of a goup of “believers,” their presence in the public square makes no difference. Who cares?
But within the Orthodox faith, God cannot be exiled from our world no matter how men try. He has come among us, and not at our invitation. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He is already in the Public Square as the Crucified God who is reconciling the world to Himself, whether we like it or not. The opposite of practical atheism is to do the only thing the Christianity of the first-storey can do: keep His commandments and fall down and worship - for God is with us.
then appling the term “anti American” is not hyperbole?
Christ said His Kingdom was not of this world.
That denial of incarnate miracle-working God is not Christian albeit Deism can be dressed up a bit to look so to an Evangelical eye.
I believe it is a very interesting piece and the part that annalex highlighted speaks volumes about current iconoclast tendencies and the limits put on the Holy Trinity by many Christians who rebel against the Church.
With a strong dose of Atheistic Historical Revisionism.
To me the author sounds like Nietszche lamenting how Christians “killed” God by removing him from nature.
It is slanderous. Bin Laden is anti-American. First, I don’t know anyone who I’d consider an authentic Christian who would not want the America of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution back. Second, it is for the good of any nation to examine its roots every once in a while; such exercise cannot be considered anti- that nation.
His position is however, anti-secularist and anti-protestnat, yes. Good for him.
Exactly. So where does it leave Christians?
in the world, not of the world; John 17; “I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world,but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.” BTW , I actually meant no slander by “”anti-American.” I suppose the separatist Amish, whom I love,are “anti-American “ also in the way I meant it, though certainly you are right in that it’s better to reserve the term to OBL- like enemies.
You said: God works miracles through providence, not through icons, bleeding statues or priests is the Protestant point of view, I would say.
Your statement shows part of the problem I see with protestant beliefs. They always put limits on what God can and can’t do. Such a being is therefore limited vice infinite. Ultimately they put themselves in the place of God to decide what he can or can’t do.
bookmark
You are making Fr. Stephen's point.
“in the world not of the world” better applies to a medieval monk than to a middle class American whose faith is reduced to a Wednesday Bible study and a Sunday sermon.
I am fond of this painting.
I see two major flaws in the father’s writing. One, he uses the term “practical atheist.” The definition of atheist by its very nature means a person who does not believe in God or any supreme being in any form. The individuals he is critiquing may be many things, but atheists they are not. If a person believes there is a God but that this God does, or does not, do thus and such, that in no way means they do not believe in God, only that they do not believe in God in the way orthodox Christians (and when I say orthodox I include Catholics and Protestants)believe. We can call them pagans or many other terms, but atheist is the improper term.
Two, he states that the more secular the world becomes for Christians, the more political Christians will become. Scripture tells us, “When the foundations crumble, what will the righteous do?” God wants us to keep our foundations strong and I believe with all my heart that the United States was brought about by divine, yes, providence; meaning that we would not be without God’s hand in this; and the only reason we are even what we are is because God has allowed it towards His good purposes. Just as He allowed the Holocaust to work towards His good purposes; one of which was the establishment of Israel as a nation.
There is a host of problems that go with being either only political or only religious. I would not want our political system to be run by ecclesiastical law for the simple reason that men are corrupt, whether secular or not.
I watched so many so-called Christians and Catholics do awful things over the years, the only reason it DOES NOT shake my faith is that it is not God who does these things and I know that. My husband’s sister threatened to sue him for some trivial matter(of course this was after her husband just graduated from law school this past year). In fact, we joked the other day that they have threatened to sue so many people, we have compiled a list of those they have NOT threatened to sue. So far, the list comprises the Pope and Casper. She has criticised me in the past because I am not a Catholic, yet she does not even know what the Catholic church teaches. She is, in fact, what I call a “cultural Catholic.” There are cultural Lutherans, cultural Jews and so on. They practice it only insofar as it occupies a certain realm in their life but they have no real understanding of the God who is living and active, the “God-Who-is-among-us” as this author states. These people occupy every denomination that ever existed.
Furthermore, after watching the debacle that occurred within the Catholic Church, wherein the Church moved priests they knew were practicing debauchery to unsuspecting parishes where these evil men could damage forever the souls of children, some of whom will NEVER go back to the Catholic church or any other church.
The deeper my faith, the more political I become. When I see what the 5 of the 9 judges on the SCOTUS are doing, I am going to be working very hard to stop more of these people from getting a lifetime appointment to destroy all that is good and sacred in this country. Of course, I pray, but like that one quote says, “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good.”
I think the father has it all wrong here. I think the deeper your faith becomes in God, the more you care and the more you see what is going on - how families are turning on each other; the natural affections they have are no longer there and so on. Yes, I am political and it is BECAUSE I love my Lord. It is no different than why I care for the hungry, those in prison, widows and orphans, and all other things Christ taught us to care about.
Hi Annalex - I posted you on this topic but had to tell you that I love this painting also. What is the deal with the hand wounds and the wound on the right side of the chest?
I don’t read German or Hungarian so I don’t know what it says.
Also, the one thing I don’t like about this painting is the way their hands have been done - too creepy - reminds me of “Nosferatu.”
This is what Fr. Stephen said:
I have here introduced the notion of “practical atheism,” meaning by it, that although a person may espouse a belief in God, it is quite possible for that belief to be so removed from everyday life, that God’s non-existence would make little difference.
It seems, he acknowledges that this "practical atheism" is not the same as internalized atheism of conviction. He simply says that it has the same effect to an outside observer.
On the second point, I think you object to what he did not propose. Of course Christians should be engaged in the political world. We've always have been. But he gives us a forgotten model of doing so, with personal witness, rather than relying on the modernistic model of democratic politics, or on military force. See his comments reproduced here at #10:
When Christians have become a serious political force in the various states they have inhabited they have as often been coopted by the state as they have had an influence on the behavior of the state. As my Archbishop says, “On the whole, in Church State relations, we have not done so well when we were the state Church.” But much that is political action or action by political bodies is only secular action, use of the power of the state for the ends of the state. Caesar will always be Caesar, I believe. We should care deeply about the things that matter, so deeply we do something and the something very likely should be more than vote. Though I do not advocate not voting. But voting and the Kingdom of God are not the same thing. When I think about these matters, I think about Christians becoming the answer rather than using the coercive power of the state to make someone else be the answer. Interestingly, one of the things I always liked best about St. Francis, was that during one of the Crusades, he simply took passage to the mideast and went to the court of the Sultan and witnessed to him about Christ. The Sultan listened and dismissed him, but did not kill him. It would be like looking for Osama Bin Laden in order to forgive him and tell him about Jesus. I can’t help but like such people and think there is more there than we allow.
I respected your implication not to be pejorative regarding Fr. Stephen’s anti-americanism; now you be equally as respectful of the spiritual life of those whom you caricature
According to several scholars, Friedrich Pacher was the famous Michael Pacher's relative and collaborator. His style developed under the influence of Michael. This panel is one half of a predella which consisted of two parts for the representation of the most highly revered saints of the Franciscan order. The other side also depicts Franciscan saints. This panel adorned the lower, not very clearly visible, subordinate addition to a major altarpiece, hence the modest colour scheme content to forgo variety. Gaunt faces with strong cheek-bones, receding chins and thin lips are frequent in the master's oeuvre. The minutely elaborate broken folds, particularly at the elbows of sleeves, reveal the important part of sculpture in the activities of Michael Pacher, the most outstanding member of the studio, and also the deep absorption of sculptural forms in his style of far-reaching influence. The text giving the names of the donors and the date in fine Gothic minuscules occupies an outstanding place in the lower image field.The wounds are "stigmata", wounds of Christ miraculously appearing on some saints, most recently Padre Pio. The artist did not know it, but St. Francis received very unusual stigmata, -- they were protuberances of flesh in the shape resembling nails, rather than wounds as depicted.
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