EngineeredTheology

A little over a year ago I made a database to contain some of my bible notes and began transferring a lot of what was in my bible into that database. This had three problems. The first was that a lot of the notes I had in my bible were pretty old, and my viewpoint has changed quite a bit since then. Secondly, I have a lot of notes, and transferring them all over was taking forever. Thirdly, the page I wrote made it difficult because it separated the adding of a note from the verses and there was no real way to edit them.

I decided to add all the notes I had because there still might be something in those old notes that is interesting. Unfortunately I didn’t even get through the Pentateuch because of problem #2, which is making the determination that the database will just have new notes. For the last problem, I spent some time improving things. Wanted something a little more dynamic, so I taught myself AJAX (which really just meant improving my JavaScript). Now, the interface to the database is much better and significantly easier to use – so adding a note to a verse just involves clicking on the verse and selecting the right menu, editing the note is done with a double click.

I was expecting this book to be funnier than it was. It does have its funny parts, but it is much more of a proper novel than a joke book. If we take the obvious jokes out (Jesus probably did not meet a Yeti and invent Judo), is the story that unrealistic? It certainly is possible that Jesus stayed in Galilee for until his ministry, but things may make more sense if he spent much of those years somewhere else.
I was seriously impressed with the book that pokes a little bit of fun at the biblical stories, but doesn’t seem to make a joke of Jesus himself. In fact, the story brings some humanity to Jesus and begins to answer the question of what it must have been like to be so alike, but again so different from everyone else and how lonely and isolating that could be. I was also impressed in the way the author pulls out where eastern religions match up with Jesus’ teachings, and how (from a Christian perspective) he pulls out what would be true, and separate it from what misses the mark.
Certainly this book is not for everyone (unfortunately most Christians wouldn’t get much past Jesus bringing lizards back to life as a child) – but looking through some of the humor it is well researched and thought out and pushes what we might think of Jesus.

What’s All This About Rethinking Paul is much like teaching someone that the earth revolves around the sun. It is going against tradition, and also against what we have learned to see at first glance with our eyes. It also is against the idea that we are at the center of it all. Christianity is not about me and my salvation, but about the work that God is doing. As we are piecing the puzzle together of how to interpret the bible, we need to be aware of the pieces we are leaving out. Much of the current ideas of Paul are made with puzzle pieces poorly fit together that are mearly echos of what he is really trying to say. The Protestant tradition was built on a framework of reading the bible fresh, despite tradition. We dishonor the reformers if we take what they said as a static truth.

Rules of Engagement We must be reading the scripture in its first century context, to understand what the words ment at the time. We also must read Paul as a whole, and interpret the passages as a piece of a whole continuous argument and train of thought. We are in trouble if our finished exegesis only relates tangentially to what Paul actually wrote.

First-Century Judiasm When Paul was writing Romans, Jews in general were not discussing how they might get into heaven. They saw themselves still in exile because God was righteous, and they had broken their covenant. They were awaiting the day (reading Danial 9 to try to figure out when it would be) when God would finally return and restore them. Righteous is “conformity within a norm” (64), and for God these are the norms in which “he himself has set up, in other words, the covenant” (64). The lawcourt implication of righteousness is important. If someone was deemed righteous in court, he would be in the right (innocent if the defendant, or in favor of the plantiff). The judgement is justification, and the result is now the person is righteous. Neither of these terms has anything to do with virtue specifically. For God an Israel, “the point of the covenant always was that God would bless the whole world through Abraham’s family” (67). God will be faithfull to that covenant (righteous) and save his people from their exile (which was again a righteous move as spelled out in the conditions of the covenant). What was discussed in first century Judiasm is how to keep the law in order to keep Israel’s end of the covenant (how Israel can be righteous).

Justification The meanings of words can grow beyond their original intent, but for words like justification, this can cause problems. It has grown into a word that encompasses the entirety of Christianity. The problem is that when people read back through the bible, it mixes up what the author was actually trying to say. Justice and righteousness are the same Greek and Hebrew word. They “denote the status that someone has when the court has found in their favor” (90). It is the status of a person that changes when the decree is made (in the right). “Justification makes someone righteous, just as the officiant at a wedding service might be said to make the couple husband and wife – a change of status” (91). It says nothing of their character; one could be righteous and immoral, or even guilty.
All of this, for Paul is wrapped up in “covenant”. The covenant is a shorthand for why God called Abraham, or really His plan to bring all of humanity back together and repair what was done in Eden. Paul’s soteriology is looking at God’s plan, which we can call the “covenant”. The problem with the “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” (covenant) is the Israel part – who had not been faithful to the covenant and needed a faithful Israelite through whom the single plan can proceed (the Messiah who is faithful). Because he represents the people, he can take upon himself the death they deserved. “The messiah is able to be the substitute because he is the representative” (106).

The rest of the book is working out these ideas in specific through the exegesis of the Pauline epistles – and are far too dense to summarize.

I couldn’t resist a book that begins the first chapter with Jesus sitting in a vegan restaurant, listening to his iPod, being approached by the Apostle Paul who promptly punches him in the face.

I can’t remember another book I’ve read that takes a satirical approach on discussing how we follow Jesus. After reading it really makes me wish this form of writing wasn’t so rare in current literature. The humor and absurdity brings us to question who it is we really think Jesus is. We are confronted with the Magic 8 Ball Jesus, Political Jesus, Peacenik Jesus, Televangelist Jesus, King James Jesus, etc. We have all these ideas of who Jesus is, but they all come down to ways we have reduced the real live Jesus into something we can contain and deal comfortably with. The fictional tale is about how we must give up these imaginary Jesuses if we want to ever come in contact with the true living Jesus, and how easy it is to deceive ourselves all over again.

The book, while not exactly short is an extremely quick read and pretty entertaining. In the realm of the Screwtape Letters, talks a lot about what Jesus is not, but has a difficult time when it gets to what Jesus is. Amusingly, this is exactly how we end up with imaginary Jesuses instead of apophatic statements. It points to how we need to reckon the Jesus in our minds, to the Jesus found in the Gospels. The true Jesus is found in the Gospels making the people around Him uncomfortable, challenging social norms, and encouraging others to freely give of themselves; can we expect the true Jesus who lives with us now to be any different with us?

God as a Mystery
We experience the Divine as two opposites, both farther from us, and closer to us than anything else. It is the very center of who we are, and also more foreign than what we could imagine. “Well known to the smallest child, incomprehensible to the most brilliant theologian “(12). Following God is like Abraham’s journey from a familiar country to an unknown, from light to darkness. We move from the “light of partial knowledge into a greater knowledge which is so much more profound that it can only be described as the ‘darkness of unknowing’”(14).
The faith we have is a faith in God not a faith that God is. “God is not the conclusion to a process of reasoning, the solution to a mathematical problem” (16). We believe in God like we believe in a person – it is personal not logical. Therefore, faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive (Mark 9:24). While there are no logical demonstrations of God, there are pointers towards a belief in a personal God (order and beauty, our personal conscience and a sense of the infinite, and relationships with other people).

God as Trinity
If we can affirm that God is personal and that God is love – we imply sharing and reciprocity. A person is not the same as an individual because relationships are how we become real people. This relationship is not static, but dynamic like all relationships. An analogy for this trinity is that of three torches burning with a single flame. It is three persons with one essence. This is unlike how we can say that three different people are still classified as “man” because each of these three people have an individual will. In the Trinity there is distinction, but not separation – one cannot act separately from the other two. The trinity is paradoxical and not something demonstrated by our reason, but revealed to us by God. It is from this personal relation within God that we find our own being and purpose in living that trinitarian unity on earth with communion between each other.
The Father is the source and the origin of the Godhead. The other two are defined in their relationship to the Father. The Son is the order and purpose that is in all things, making the universe into an integrated whole. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God that is within us where the Son is with us and the Father above or beyond us. With these neat categories we must remember “It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God’s ineffable greatness with the human mind” (34).

God as Creator
All was created not our of obligation, but by the free will of God – out of his love, which is to share and have others outside of himself to participate in this love. We have always existed in the mind of God, and our creation is the point where we began to exist for ourselves. Creation was not a one time event, but continues by the continual will of God (He did not make the world, but is making the world). Our creation is dependent on God, and without him we would cease to exist. “As Christians we affirm not pantheism but ‘panentheism’. God is in all things, but yet also beyond and above all things” (46). All things are created good, so sin and evil is not a “thing”, it is not a substance. Evil is the absence of good, it is the result of a free will twisting and perverting what is good.
Man is created as three distinct, but inseparable parts: body, soul, and spirit. Our body is our physical aspect (a rock has a body). The soul is what animates us and gives us life (trees and birds have bodies and soul). The spirit is what separates us from the animals. It is our ability to know good and evil, to act independently from our instincts. God has created two levels, the first inhabits the angels who have no physical body. The second level He formed the universe with various types of mineral, vegetable, and animal life. Man is the only thing that exists on both levels. We are more complex than the angles, and therefore created higher than they. Man is to be the mediator to unite the world to offer it back to God. The body is a piece of our true self, and without it we could not perform our mediating role. Separation of the body and soul at death is unnatural, contrary to God’s original plan, to be resolved at the resurrection.
Man is created in the image of God. This is the thing that distinguishes him from the animals, which includes his free will. In this freedom, each human realizes his divine image uniquely, which makes each human unrepeatable, irreplaceable, and therefore infinitely valuable. Though created in God’s image, each one of us can grow by the correct use of our free will to become perfect in God (in his “likeness”) – so our image is a dynamic thing. We were made for communion with God, and in a rejection of this communion we cease to properly be a man.
Man is the priest of creation, able to praise God for the world, seeing the world as a gift. He is able to reshape the world to create new meaning into it – so it is both a gift and a task, making man a logical, eucharistic, and creative animal.
The reason for evil and suffering in the creation has no easy answer. We have signposts that there was a fall in the heavenly realm, where angels chose self-will over God, and the second fall where man has chosen the same. Through our fall, we chose not to see the world as a gift to be offered back to God, but as his own possession to be exploited for his own pleasure. This begins to cut man off from God, creating a vicious circle. Therefore, evil and suffering comes from a deliberate choice from the created world to reject God’s love, and to turn from God to self. Love requires the ability to reciprocate. Without this free choice, there could be no love – and so evil has been a direct result of our reaction to the love of God.
The Augustinian view of the guilt of Adam’s sin being passed on to future generations is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The result of Adam’s sin is the formation world where it “is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust” (62). We are born into this world, that is further compounded by the wrong actions of those before us, and our own deliberate acts of sin. The actions we do effect not just ourselves, but everyone around us. We are not islands, but interdependent on everyone else, including the actions and mistakes of those who came before us.

God as Man
With man now separating himself from God through rebellion, we are unable to heal himself. This is where God comes to man to restore the opposing points between divine glory and human sinfulness. “The incarnation, then, is God’s supreme act of deliverance, restoring us to communion with himself” (70). The incarnation brings man to a new level, and shows the true possibilities of our nature. He was perfect in that he completely reflected the likeness of God.
Jesus is both fully God and completely man. He has two natures, both divine and human – but is not divided. He has two wills, but they are not opposed as the human will is at all times freely obedient to the divine. He solves the problem that must be solved by mankind, but is only God is capable to accomplish. For the Christ to bring total salvation, he must assume the entirety of humanness.
The virgin birth points to three things. First, that Jesus was a true man, but he was not just a man. Second, that it the birth was the result of a divine initiative. Finally, that a new person was not coming into existence (child born of two parents is a new person in creation, but the incarnate Christ is pre-existent).
As the incarnation is the act of God identifying Himself with us, and sharing the human experience, the cross shows the utmost limits of that sharing. His suffering was not just that of the Passion, but in His sense of failure, isolation, and loneliness (even to the extent of losing awareness of the divine presence). He is under no compulsion to die, but freely chooses to, identifying with all the human pain and despair. The result is His victory; the victory of love over hate.

God as Spirit
The spirit is elusive. We are conscience of His presence, feel His power, but he cannot be described verbally yet experienced directly. It is through the spirit that the divine becomes personal to us. At Pentecost, the Spirit was a gift to fill all those baptized in Christ and brings unity to the church, but also a gift of diversity based on the distinctions of our personalities.

God as Prayer
Stages of Christianity can be thought of as the practice of virtues and repentance, then the contemplation of God’s existence in all things, then the direct vision of God. These stages are not necessarily consecutive, and it is expected that repentance is practiced all through life. This spiritual way is ecclesial, done in a community through the Church (active life). It is also sacramental; though God is not bound by the sacraments, we are. Finally it is scriptural; reading the bible is communion and prayer with God, and as our Christian journey is not solely individual, our interpretation should be made using the entire whole of Church thought. These last two are known as the contemplative life.
The active life requires struggle and continuous effort of our will. “We are to hold in balance two complementary truths: without God’s grace we can do nothing; but without our voluntary co-operation God will do nothing” (112). Each day we renew our relationship with God through prayer and with others through practical compassion and cutting off our own self will. This active life requires “repentance, watchfulness, discrimination, and the guarding of the heart” (113).
The second stage is natural contemplation; contemplating the things that God has made. This is not possible without nepis or watchfulness and learning to be present where I am. Without the virtue of the active life, the natural contemplation becomes romantic and fails to reach the level of spiritual. All things are sacred, but have been distorted by sin (both original and personal). Searching for God in creation leads to the third step, realizing that God is also above and beyond nature. This leads to an acknowledgement that words cannot express God, and prayer turns to an inward stillness and silence.

God as Eternity
We await a second coming of Christ to bring a kingdom without end. Humanity does not increasingly advance and improve (evolutionary optimism), but is increasingly destructive. At this time the root of all our actions become clear and we will enter either eternal life or death. “The lost in hell are self-condemned, self-enslaved; it has been rightly said that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (135). We will not be saved from our bodies and from the world, but in them and with the world. The resurrection kingdom is eternal and therefore has an inexhaustible variety. It is not a return to Eden, but a continual progression forward, greater than the first.

First off, the book can be freely downloaded from the book’s website

I will admit that I started this book expecting the worst. Having moved quite far from the viewpoint that Christianity is all about saving people from hell, I expecting a book explaining exactly which people needed to be saved from hell.

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The book contrasts the traditional evangelical view of Christianity (that Jesus came to die to save us from our sins so we can go to heaven), with finally freeing God’s people to actually be God’s people.

our salvation addresses the problem God faced throughout the entire Old Testament: How can I have a faithful people with a heart for Me? rather than the nowhere-mentioned problem How can I get people into heaven?(61)

The book is a little difficult to summarize because the chapters don’t entirely build on each other to a climatic point. With the main aim to raise questions about current Christian dogma, so much material needs to be covered in order to cover enough bases to make a point. Instead, topics are somewhat eclectic to cover what the author feels are the most important to help his point to be taken seriously. It is in no way the final word, but instead tries to open a window to let in a fresh breath on scripture.

The writing style was not entirely to my liking, but the tone of the book was very appropriately delicately confrontational. In addressing current modern beliefs, I believe that so much of the current understanding comes from haphazard quoting of the bible without its due context. It may be due to a desire of brevity, but much of the copious scripture quoting in the book is somewhat absent of the context in which it was originally written in. I also suspect that I am obviously not the target audience for the book who may be more interested in this type of point and shoot proof texting. I would be very interested in how this book would strike someone who is new to this mode of thought.

There is an effort to bring continuity of Jewish thought into the NT – showing the dissimilarity between current Christian believes and what would have made sense in first century Judaism. When we say we are saved, we must ask what they thought they would be saved from. When we say righteous, what would that have meant. In this mode of thinking, I was not at all surprised to find a few direct quotes and some heavy borrowing from N.T. Wright.

The book is published by Biblical Heresy Press, and I suspect there will be many who think it an apt name for this book. I think we fear heresy so much that we never truly engage the bible and God himself. If we vow to follow God wherever he would lead, does that also mean that we would allow Him to lead us to those murky grey waters, or are there boundaries that we would stop and say we will follow no further. Would we stand and defend “heresy” if that is where God would want us to be?

Last month there were two conferences taking place. The first was in Wheaton, and was a large group to discuss the impacts of N.T. Wright on modern Christian theology. The second was Together for the Gospel (T4G) which is a “bi-annual conference that encourages pastors to take their stand together for the gospel” (from their FAQ). Fortunately for me, both are available on line: T4G and Wheaton.

To me, it is quite fitting to have two conferences occurring at the same time. One focusing on how N.T. Wright’s reading of Paul has changed the landscape of the discussion about justification, and the other focusing on protecting the gospel from just such changes. In listening to both, I’ve tried to be as neutral as possible (which is quite impossible because I already have strong agreements with Wright). Without getting into anything actually said, this has been my overall impression.

Lexicon and Presentation
From the start, there is a large difference in how the lectures were prepared. The Wheaton conference was highly technical, focusing on very academic debates. For those not already well versed in their “ologies”, there would have been only one speaker that would have been largely understandable. While there were jokes (and some quite funny ones), they would really only be understandable to people really following along. Otherwise the presentations were basically dry and like a collegiate lecture. On the other hand, the lectures at T4G were on the level of a Sunday sermon. No expectations of terminology and dramatic swings in tone and volume at important points.

Criticism
The Wheaton conference was conducted as a scholarly debate. While all the speakers generally agreed with Wright, each one brought forth the main point they think he has missed, overlooked, or completely gotten wrong. There was criticism within the people in the room, but stressed unity for the church as a whole. T4G is a conference to defend a certain idea. Because of this, there was unity within the room, and criticism for the church as a whole.

A priori
Even coming out of the gate of their talks, there were certain things that were explicitly stated as assumed. At Wheaton, it was assumed that to understand Jesus, you need to understand a historical Jesus. He was a real man who walked on the earth in a certain time. It is foundationally important to understand Jesus in this context, and to read the gospels in such a way that they would have made sense in that setting. At T4G, most explicitly stated by John Piper, the assumption is that understanding Jesus does not require, and is in fact hindered by, historical research. Jesus is completely found by what is contained in the bible, and it is complete in its portrayal of him.

In all these things, there were certainly good points in each. I suspect that the average attender of the T4G conference (mainly pastors and some laypeople) had logged more hours in seminary than at Wheaton (current students, some pastors, and laypeople). The main drawback to the Wheaton conference is the high barrier of theological entry. Without a strong foundation in the topics, many people will be lost in the talks. It isn’t that the concepts are too difficult, but I don’t think the speakers have reached the ability to state things simply (with the exception of N.T. Wright).

It is the comparison in criticism that worries me. At the Wheaton conference there seamed to be a stronger desire to look for what is true vs. the T4G conference protecting what they know is true. Personally, I get concerned when we speak of absolute truths. It isn’t that they don’t exist, but we need to be extremely careful when we presume to have them. I can not in good conscience turn off my mind to search for god in new ways and assume that where I am is the culmination of Christianity.

The a priori assumptions then comes down to personal belief, but is obviously one of the key differences in the content of the conferences.

G.K. Chesterton followed himself into heresy only to find he ended up discovering Orthodoxy. This book discovers the reformation. The main difference is Chesterton realized the irony of “discovering” something like Orthodoxy.

With a warning on the first page like “You might throw this book down in disgust; you might pick it back up again in curiosity; you might shake your head in frustration as you wonder, ‘How could I have missed this before?’ or ‘Is this guy crazy?’” (15), I was expecting something different than what I found. I have been to my share of churches around the world, and I suspect there would be very few reformed churches who would have any issue with the foundational theology of this book.

Following deeply in current reformed theology, the book is a cheerleader for total depravity and perseverance of the saints. Unfortunately, by the end of the book we end up with a good reason why Jesus died, but no real reason for why he lived. We need to seriously work through why the gospel writers thought it so important to document all those events between Christmas and Easter. We can not just short circuit it all and have our Christology consist totally of a virgin birth and a sacrificial death. We would then be missing Christianity at the point where it is so important. We dishonor the memories of the early Christian martyrs when we say that they must have died because people didn’t like them going around preaching that humanity needed to relax and stop trying so hard. Just coast it out because Jesus has done it all is not a particularly dangerous message. This is where the inaugurated eschatology needs to step; this is where the Kingdom of God really meets Rome.

Ok, writing a summary of this book didn’t really work out. The writing style is so dense that it is impossible to summarize concisely. I ended up just quoting most things because I couldn’t really say them better or more precisely than they were written.

I usually find books of this period somewhat lacking in logic, and was very surprised to find a logical critique on “modern” thought. It is amazing how appropriate much of this critique is on current Christian critics. His arguments were still quite solid that pure logic thought cannot bring us out of insanity. There were still sections of the book that I largely left out of the summary because either I didn’t understand the logic, or I didn’t see where it was leading (possibly because I didn’t understand).

If nothing else, the book is interesting, extremely quotable, and a valuable defense of the faith.

The Maniac
It cannot be taken for granted anymore that there is a universal agreement that sin exists. Instead of judging an argument by if it would make a man loose his soul, we now ask if it would make him loose his mind. We think of the insane person as someone who is not grounded in logic, but this is not true.

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.” (5)

What we find is “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” (7) The maniac condenses the world into a smaller, self referencing circle. For one who accuses everyone of conspiring against him, his logic follows a complete (but small) path. Logic cannot be used to bring him out of madness, since it was logic that brought him in. What his logic doesn’t see is that there is a world outside of himself – he is imprisoned by his one idea.

If we look at the materialist, we see the same sort of simplistic argument (without arguing about the trueness of the argument – but their relation to health), both covering everything and leaving everything out. The theist knows the world is complex and even miscellaneous. The materialist must believe that all things are deterministic (a solid chain of causation) and is a slave to that one idea. “The materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.” (10)

The same is true not just for the man who says there is only what he sees, but also for the man who believes nothing that he sees. All the world is a dream in his head. He has the same perfectly circular logic in that all he believes in is himself. No logic can bring him out of this, as they are all arguments that could be presented in a dream.

What we find is that it is mysticism that keeps men sane. It is finding two truths bound by a contradiction and taking them all together. “The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious and everything else becomes lucid.” (12)

The Suicide of Thought
The Christian faith was shattered at the reformation and the virtues and vices it held together are now floating free with no structure. We still have the virtues, but they are misguided. Humility, which had a man doubting in himself but never doubting truth has turned to doubting truth, but never doubting himself.

“For old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful of his aims, which will make him stop working altogether” (14)

There is one thought that will stop all thought, and that is the evil that all religious authority is aimed to prevent. With the shattering of religion, we have removed those guards. The questioning now is the questioning of reason, the doubting of existence. “Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws of limits” (19) – but art IS limitation. We cannot free a triangle of its three sides and still have a triangle. We cannot free a camel of its hump or a giraffe from its neck. “For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it” (21)

The Ethics of Elfland
In the real world we say that things are causal, this is not so in fairy tales. There is still reason in fairy tales (if Cinderella’s sisters are older, then Cinderella must be younger). You can imagine trees not growing fruit (but instead a tiger), but not that 2+2 doesn’t equal three. “We believe in bodily miracles, but not mental impossibilities” (26). In real life, we assume that there is some causal relationship between a chicken and an egg – but we are trying to explain something we do not understand.

“When we are asked why eggs turn into birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a “law”, for we do not understand its general formula.” (26)

Because of familiarity, we forget the magic of things. We assume (like the sun rising), if it continues to happen it must be a dead system – but we know that variation (as in our daily routines) is because of inaction not action. Children never bore because of their fullness of life and always want us to “do it again”. We have gotten old, and lose some of this life. What if God has the overflowing life of the child? The sun rises because He never tires of it and every morning says “do it again”?

The Flag of the World
We say that the world is made of pessimists and optimists – as if we could rate it like we would if shopping for a house. Unlike house hunting, we have no option; instead we are patriots. “The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and sadness a reason for loving it more” (35). The pessimist is the anti-patriot who does not love what he chastises. The optimist whitewashes everything and so he can never make things better.

Suicide is the ultimate evil because it destroys all things. It rejects absolutely everything as being unworthy. “A suicide is a man who cares to little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything” (39). A martyr is the exact opposite. “..this is the ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live” (40).

We find that Christianity is the answer to the optimist and pessimist. God didn’t create the world to enslave it, but to set it free. Christian optimism is the answer of how we can love the world, but not be worldly – and based on the fact that we don’t fit in the world. Because of the fall, we are in the wrong place.

The Paradoxes of Christianity
The trouble with the world is that it is almost logical. When we think we have things figured out is where we find that the world is no longer logical. Christianity explains the world when it is logical, but also when it turns illogical.

Christianity is accused of being two pessimistic, then in the same breath too optimistic. It is accused of stopping men from finding joy because of rules, and then painting an unrealistically pretty a picture of reality. It is a nightmare and a fools paradise. It is hated for its resistance to fighting, and also for the cause of many wars. “Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad – in various ways” (51). “The modern man found the church too simple where modern life is too complicated; he found the church to gorgeous exactly where modern life to too dingy” (51)

We see sanity in some sort of equilibrium. Paganism solves this by taking the black and white and making grey. Christianity takes both extremes at the same time. Courage is “a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his life, the same shall save it’.” (52). Christianity separates the crime from the criminal so we can absolutely hate one and absolutely love the other. Christianity has held white and red side by side, but “it has always hated pink” (55). “Anyone might say, ‘Neither swagger nor grovel’; and it would have been a limit. But to say, “Here you can swagger and there you can grovel’ – that was an emancipation” (56).

It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is–Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved. (55)

The Eternal Revolution
Up to this point it has been argued that 1)Some faith in our life is required to improve it 2)Some disatisfaction with the way things are is necessary to be satisfied 3) To have the necessary discontentment, we cannot have a Stoic equilibrium. We then need to define what “better” is. We cannot look to nature because nature has no plan or princaples, no equality or inequality. The only reasonable idea of “better” is whatever we happen to want. In order for that, we must have a vision. Progress is about changing the world to suit this vision, so that vision must stay fixed. The surest way to ensure that nothing changes is to have a real vision, but an ever changing one. Things have progressed “..because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative” (60). Wild free thought then prohibits freedom (the freedom to act). “If I am mearly to float or fade or evolve, it may be towards something anarchic; but if I am to riot, it must be for something respectable” (61). This ideal, this respectable thing, is exactly what Christianity provides in Eden.

Darwinism provides two mad moralities, but not a sane one. “The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals” (63). It can have us train the tiger to be like us, or have us like the tiger, but not to treat the tiger reasonably (admire the stripes and respect the claws). The root of all of this is treating nature as our mother. “Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate” (63). Something to be laughed at as well as love.

Progress must first be fixed, then be composite. It is not one thing swallowing up all others (love, pride, peace, adventure), but a picture of all things in relation. As things tend to progressively get worse without action, progress must always be on the lookout for privlidges being abused (freedom turning to slavery). Christianity says that men backslide and human nature tends to not get better, but to rot. Modern men believe that a rich man, or a man of stature, is more worthy and less corrputable than a poor man. Why should the rich rule? The rich man is rich because he takes a bribe, not because he doesn’t. Christianity says that any man is capable of any fall. The man who should rule is not the one who wants it most, but precicely the one who feels he is unfit for the task. In the west, with a Christian background, we treat aristocracy as a bit of a weekness, an allowed weekness. Compare this to the casts of India, where the butcher is better than the baker in an concieved real sense. Socialism is no better, as there should always be dreams that are not attainable. “That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a fream that may or may not be attained. But that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare” (70). In order to make sport worth playing, we must have a real chance of loss.

The Romance of Orthodoxy
Most modern innovations are labor-saving, which allows people to be more lazy. The same is true with modern language, with long words requiring less and less actual thought. If you just use one syllabal words, you will find that you are obliged to think. “The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard” (71). We confuse words like when we say an idea “liberal”. We have this fixed notion that instead of being free to think and come to conclustions, it means that we are only free to conclude certain things. “It always means a man who is free to disbelieve that Christ came out of His grave; it never means a man who is free to believe that his own aunt came out of her grave” (72) It is not because “miracles don’t happen” as many miracles are asserted today, that would have been rejected by older science – but because of the dogma of materalism. You may call it impossible, but not illiberal as it is the liberty of God (and therefore less restrictive and more liberal).

Modern liberals will tell us that all religions are the same in what they teach, and it is just the packaging that is different. The exact opposite is true. Most religions have priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They all agree in how to teach, but differ on what to teach. “It is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps a man’s shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all similar for the man” (75). For people who say religions are the same, it is strange they never notice the difference in art. The buddhist in peace with his eyes asleep, the christian in derision with his eyes alive.

Modern Panthiesm (and Buddhism) tells us that we are all one and therefore need to love ourselves. Christianity says we are different and love eachother. We can loosely love ourselves, but not fall in love. “Love desires personality; therefore love desires division” (76). Only when we are seperate from the world can we love it, and therefore reform it.

Christanity is not a fixed sum of events, but a story. A story gives what theology calls free will. “You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like”(79). “If we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right things are, of course we shall only say that they must go right. But if we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist that they may go wrong” (79).

Authority and the Adventurer
Orthodoxy then guards order, but also guards liberty. Why then can’t we take the truths of Christanity and leave the dogmas? The answer is that we should have a reason for those truths, and the arguments against christianity are weak. The three common arguments are 1)all men are much like beasts 2)early religion is based on ignorance and fear 3)preists have brough bitterness and gloom. For these, if you think men are like beasts you need to stop reading about them and go look at them. Animals do not create, they do not draw, they do not celebrate the great ones of their society. “So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins” (84). Secondly, science knows nothing about pre-historic man. “History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time” (84). As for the last, it also disagrees with reality. Those countries still influenced by priests is where art and dancing flourish. The case for Christianity is rational, but it is not simple.

People reject Christianity because of disbelief in miracles. “The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them” (87). They do not believe in stories of miracles because they are not credible, and what makes them not credible is that they believe in miracles. Creations of scientific conditions for mircales are pedantic. “It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse” (88).

This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. (91)