The Ascetics of Karoulia on Mount Athos

The most isolated area on Mount Athos is an area known as Karoulia. Karoulia is located at the southernmost shore of Mount Athos on a rocky and very steep site. The hermit monks have built their huts inside caves, holes and rock protrusions. The name "karoulia" (pulleys) derives from the fact that in the old days supplies were delivered to the monks with pulleys. To move around they need to climb down with chains that are nailed to the cliffs. Only those who truly desire with their whole hearts to imitate Christ can endure this harsh and dreaded lifestyle.

The ascetics are principally occupied with prayer. They have diminished their corporal needs to the absolute minimum. They drink rain water which they collect and eat just enough to stay alive; they support themselves by weaving baskets and making prayer ropes, which they sell or exchange for food in Daphne.






















Father Stefan, Serb by origin, cooking in 1982. He spent over 40 years on Karoulia. A great ascetic, his kelli was burnt so he had to go back to Serbia, where he spent last days of his life in the monastery Slanci near Belgrade (capital of Serbia). He is buried there, returned to rest in peace in his homeland after 40 years of asceticism in the most cruel part of Mount Athos - Karoulia.

Below is a one-hour documentary in Greek about the modern day ascetics of Karoulia, most of whom have passed on and left their cells empty. It begins in the cell of Fr. Stephan (pictured above) and the guide, who knew many of these ascetics while they were alive, moves on from cell to cell telling stories of the various holy personalities of these great ascetics who lived so strictly their Orthodox ascetic calling. It is said that the ascetics of Karoulia live like the birds of the air, only receiving and being sustained with that which God provides for them. This documentary reveals how true this is as if one were there.

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The Root Issues of Western Scholasticism

by Jay Dyer

A friend asked a good question, and it was something I began to wonder a few years ago. What exactly constitutes "scholasticism." Varying dates, personages, movements and scholarly opinions could be listed. The Orthodox person usually thinks (wrongly - as I did 4 years ago) that the Eastern criticism is that the west was using logic and philosophy and this is what the issue was/is. That's not exactly right and any Roman Catholic would be right in pointing out a hypocritical double standard on the Orthodox part.

But it's really simpler than that once you get the system down. It's a system trying to be consistent. It isn't, but many of it's doctrines are inter-connected and fit together. Thomas doesn't posit something in his eschatology, say, that doesn't line up with his doctrine of absolute divine simplicity. So what really is scholasticism? I replied as follows:

Good questions. The problems with scholasticism aren't so much the use of philosophy and logic, since ALL the Eastern Doctors do this, as well as the ecumenical councils, but rather certain assumptions and beliefs.

It really begins with Augustine, who imports a very Neo-Platonic doctrine of God (very candidly), and Augustine then tries to mold this into Christianity. In the West, he became the dominate force and authority even into Aquinas' works. The works of Aristotle were discovered in the 13th century and brought to the west. Aquinas attempted a great synthesis of neo-platonic, Augustinian and Aristotelian ideas. The Summa makes this clear throughout.

The problems are these:

1. That religious knowledge is divided into two categories - "natural" theology and revealed theology.

2. That God's essence bears a resemblance to creatures.

3. That we reason up from creatures via "analogia entis" to know something of God's essence.

4. God created things in the world after archetypes of things pre-existing in His essence.

5. That nature and Person are identical in God.

6. That essence and energy/action are the same in God, as well as all attributes being the same. This "god" is actus purus - pure act.

7. That the meaning if theosis or salvation is being raised to a higher level of created grace.

8. That the eschaton is an intellectual vision of the essence of God, as well as being a bizarre lake of lava where demons throw you in and out and evil and sin continue in eternal opposition to God (dualism).

These are the awful ideas of scholasticism. It's NOT bad because it uses philosophy and logic. If that were true, then Nyssa, Maximus, Basil, Theodore, Athanasius, the two Cyrils, John of Damascus, and all Eastern Fathers are all "scholastics." And I've read every one of them at length. They were classically educated. But that's not what the criticism is. That's what unknowing Orthodox think the criticism is (as I thought for a long time and it partly kept me out of Orthodoxy, since it was hypocritical).

Scholasticism is the train of schoolmen who follow in the footsteps of Augustine and his philosophical assumptions - it's the three "A's" - Anselm, Aquinas and Augustine. It's Duns Scotus and Peter Lombard - all of whom are in varying degrees using the above assumptions.

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Nine Righteous Children Martyrs of Kola

Nine Martyred Brothers of Kola (Feast Day - February 22)

Many centuries ago, the village of Kola was located at the source of the Mtkvari River. There Christians and pagans dwelt together as neighbors. Christian and pagan children would play together, but when the Christian children heard church bells ringing, they recognized the call to prayer and dropped their games. Nine pagan children—Guram, Adarnerse, Baqar, Vache, Bardzim, Dachi, Juansher, Ramaz, and Parsman—would follow the Christian children to church.

But the Christians always stopped them near the gates of the church and reprimanded them, saying, “You are children of pagans. You cannot enter God’s holy house.” They would return sorry and dejected.

One day the nine pagan children tried to enter the church forcibly, but they were cast out and scolded. “If you want to enter the church, you must believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” they were told. “You must receive Holy Communion and join the community of Christian believers.”

With great joy the youths promised the Christians that they would receive Holy Baptism. When the Christians of Kola related to their priest the good news of the pagan boys’ desire, he recalled the words of the Gospel: He that loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that takes not his cross, and follows after Me, is not worthy of Me. (Matt. 10:37–38).

He was not afraid of the anger that would follow from the pagan community, but rather took the boys on a cold winter night and baptized them in the icy river. A miracle occurred while the Holy Sacrament was being celebrated: the water became warm and angelic hosts appeared to the youths. Greatly encouraged in their faith, the children decided to remain in the Christian community rather than return to their parents.

When their parents learned that they had been baptized in the Christian Faith, they dragged their children away from the church, abusing and beating them into submission all the way home. The heroic children endured the abuses and, though they went hungry and thirsty for seven days, repeated again and again, “We are Christians and will not eat or drink anything that was prepared for idols!”

Neither gentle flattery, nor costly clothing, nor promises of good things to come could tempt the God-fearing youths. Rather they asserted, “We are Christians and want nothing from you but to leave us alone and allow us to join the Christian community!”

The enraged parents went and reported to the prince everything that had happened. But the prince was of no help—he simply told them, “They are your children, do with them as you wish.” The obstinate pagans asked the prince permission to stone the children. So a large pit was dug where the youths had been baptized, and the children were thrown inside.

“We are Christians, and we will die for Him into Whom we have been baptized!” proclaimed the holy martyrs, the Nine Children of Kola, before offering up their souls to God.

Their godless parents took up stones, and then others joined in, until the entire pit had been filled. They beat the priest to death, robbed him, and divided the spoils among themselves.

The martyric contest of the Nine Righteous Children of Kola occurred in the 6th century, in the historical region of Tao in southern Georgia.

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Finding of the Relics of Apostles and Martyrs at Evgenios of Constantinople

Finding of the Relics of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs of Evgenios (Feast Day - February 22)

During the persecutions against Christians the relics of the holy martyrs were usually buried by believers in hidden places. So at Constantinople, near the gates and tower in the Evgenios quarter, the bodies of several martyrs were found. Their names remain unknown by the Church.

When miracles of healing began to occur at this spot, the relics of the saints were discovered after an investigation and transferred to a church with great honor. The discovery took place during the reign of Emperor Thomas I (607-610). It was revealed to a certain pious clergyman, Nicholas the Calligrapher, that among the relics discovered at Evgenios were the relics of the holy Apostle Andronicus of the Seventy and his helper Junia (May 17), whom the Apostle Paul mentions in the Epistle to the Romans: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me" (Rom 16:7). In the twelfth century, a great domed church was built on the spot where the relics of the holy martyrs were discovered. This work was undertaken by the emperor Andronicus (1183-1185), whose patron saint was the holy Apostle Andronicus.

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
Thy Martyrs, O Lord, in their courageous contest for Thee received as the prize the crowns of incorruption and life from Thee, our immortal God. For since they possessed Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and wholly destroyed the demons' strengthless presumption. O Christ God, by their prayers, save our souls, since Thou art merciful.

Kontakion in the Fourth Tone
When ye shone forth from the earth like luminaries, ye dispersed the gloomy mist of all impiety, O Saints, and ye enlightened believing souls, O godly Martyrs who championed the Trinity.

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Metropolitan Nicholas Responds to Elton John

Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv, from the Bulgarian Patriarchate, has voiced his displeasure with musician Elton John over his remarks published last week in Parade magazine.

Elton John made the following remark in that article: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."

Metropolitan Nicholas responded, saying: "The statement of Elton John is blasphemous. This is a provocation and a great temptation to Christians around the world, especially today where we contemplate the first week of Great Lent, when all faithful Christians repent and are cleansed of their sins."

"In opposition to this man, who flaunts his sins and who does not refer to any other man but the actual Jesus Christ, of whom the Gospels relate: 'And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin' (1 Jn. 3:5)", continued the Metropolitan.

Further, the Metropolitan said: "The fact that the media worldwide report such distorted opinions reveals how deeply the contemporary world has plunged into sin, and how much it has neglected in their life authentic truth. Pre-marital habitation is a sin, but a more serious sin is homosexuality."

In conclusion, he reminds Christians: "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9-10).

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There Was No "Byzantine" Empire

The preface of J. B. Bury’s A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene begins as follows:

There is no period of history which has been so much obscured by incorrect and misleading titles as the period of the later Roman Empire. It is, I believe, more due to improper names than one might at first be disposed to admit, that the import of that period is so constantly misunderstood and its character so often misrepresented. For the first step towards grasping the history of those centuries through which the ancient evolved into the modern world is the comprehension of the fact that the old Roman Empire did not cease to exist until the year 1453. The line of Roman Emperors continued in unbroken succession from Octavius Augustus to Constantine Palaeologus.

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About Fasting and Prayer

"This kind can come out by nothing, but prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29).

This is the saving prescription of the greatest Physician of human souls. This is the remedy tried and proved. Another remedy for lunacy, there is not. What kind of sickness is that? That is the presence and dominance of an evil spirit in a man, a dangerous evil spirit who labors to eventually destroy the body and soul of man. The boy whom our Lord freed from an evil spirit; this evil spirit that had hurled him at times in the fire, at times in the water just in order to destroy him.

As long as a man only philosophizes about God he is weak and completely helpless against the evil spirit. The evil spirit ridicules the feeble sophistry of the world. But, as soon as a man begins to fast and to pray to God, the evil spirit becomes filled with indescribable fear. In no way can the evil spirit tolerate the aroma of prayer and fasting. The sweet-smelling aroma chokes him and weakens him to utter exhaustion. In a man who only philosophizes about faith, there is spacious room in him for the demons. But in a man who sincerely begins to pray to God and to fast with patience and hope, for the demon it becomes narrow and constricted and he must flee from such a man. Against certain bodily ills there exists only one remedy. Against the greatest ill of the soul, demonism, there exists two remedies, which must be utilized at one and the same time: fasting and prayer. The apostles and saints fasted and prayed to God. That is why they were so powerful against evil spirits.

O gracious Jesus, our Physician and Helper in all miseries, strengthen us by the power of Your Holy Spirit that we may be able to adhere to Your saving precepts concerning fasting and prayer for the sake of our salvation and the salvation of our fellow men.

- St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Prologue

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Fasting Reduces Bad Cholesterol

Diet Religiously - Goodnews - Fasting Diet of Greek Orthodox Christians Found to Reduce Cholesterol Levels

Better Nutrition
Sept, 2003

It doesn't matter whether you're religious or not--even atheists can benefit from the "fasting" regime followed in the Greek Orthodox Church, according to a new study.

Strict Greek Orthodox Christians avoid specified foods three times a year: 40 days before Christmas, 48 days at Easter and 15 days in August for Assumption.

Each fast is associated with a different holiday. For example, at Christmas, the faithful are advised to avoid meat, eggs and dairy products, and eating fish is not allowed on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Since all other foods are permitted, this is not a fast in the traditional sense of avoiding all food. "The Orthodox Christians' diet, which is based on vegetables, legumes, fruit, cereals, bread and olive oil, is a Mediterranean-type diet with periodic abstinence from meat and other products during the fasting periods," the study states, as published in the May 16, 2003 issue of BMC Public Health, published by BioMedCentral.

University of Crete scientists discovered that those who followed the regimen to the letter had lower levels of total cholesterol and lower levels of the cholesterol-binding proteins called low-density lipoproteins (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol, in their blood after fasting.

Other Christians who did not follow the fasting regimen did not exhibit this lowering of "bad" cholesterol. Those who stuck to the temporary diet experienced no change in the blood levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good" cholesterol.

There is a clear, known link between high levels of cholesterol and LDL in the blood and heart disease, whereas HDL appears to be protective against heart disease. Greek Orthodox fasting reduced the levels of total cholesterol in the blood by 9 percent and the levels of LDL by 12 percent.

While the levels of HDL did not change significantly, the HDL/LDL ratio increased, which is considered healthy for the heart. Unfortunately, these levels rose again after the people who fasted resumed their normal diet--but not to the original levels. This suggests that regular fasting may give some long-term protection against heart disease.

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Presidents and the Paranormal

The paranormal has even surrounded the highest office in the U.S. - the presidency. From Washington to Lincoln to Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton, the unexplained has taken its place in the lives and fates of these powerful men.

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Lincoln's Ghost

The ghost of Abraham Lincoln is probably the most well-known paranormal phenomenon related to a U.S. president. Assassinated in 1865, Lincoln lives on in the White House, according to a variety of witnesses who claim to have heard and even seen the 16th president at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

* Lincoln's ghost seems to have been most active during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps because they were both in power at times of great war for the United States. During their 13-year occupancy of the White House, the Roosevelts used the former Lincoln bedroom as a study for Eleanor, the first lady. Although she never claimed to have seen Lincoln's spirit, Eleanor spoke of the sense of someone watching her as she worked in the room. She believed Lincoln was there with her.
* A young clerk in the Roosevelt White House claimed to have actually seen the ghost of Lincoln sitting on a bed and pulling off his boots.
While spending a night at the White House during the Roosevelt presidency, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was awakened by a knock on the bedroom door. Answering it, she was confronted with the ghost of Abe Lincoln staring at her from the hallway.
* Ever the gentleman, it seems, Lincoln knocked often. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman all reported hearing unexplained rappings on their bedroom doors. What made them think it was Lincoln is unknown.
* It's well known how Lincoln anguished over the horrors of the Civil War. His spirit may have continued worrying long after his death. Calvin Coolidge's wife reported seeing on several occasions the ghost of Lincoln standing with his hands clasped behind his back, at a window in the Oval Office, staring out in deep contemplation toward the bloody battlefields across the Pototmac.
* During one of Winston Churchill's visits to the United States during WW2, he spent the night in the White House. Churchill loved to retire late, take a long, hot bath while drinking a Scotch, and smoke a cigar and relax. On this occasion, he climbed out of the bath and naked, but for his cigar, walked into the adjoining bedroom. He was startled to see Abraham Lincoln standing by the fireplace in the room, leaning on the mantle. Churchill, always quick on the uptake, blinked and said "Good evening, Mr. President. You seem to have me at a disadvantage." Lincoln smiled softly and disappeared. (Thanks to Mark McCarthy)

There haven't been any sightings of Lincoln since the Truman administration because, some believe, of the many renovations to the presidential home. Lincoln's ghost was not confined to the White House however. His spirit is said to have been seen walking near his gravesite in Springfield, Ill. Some also claim to have seen his ghostly funeral train many years after it carried his body back to Springfield. There are two trains, according to some witnesses, seen on the anniversary of that journey. The first train pulls a line of black-draped cars, and the second pulls just one flatbed car on which is the slain president's casket.

Lincoln's Premonition

That Lincoln had a precognitive dream about his own untimely death is well documented. He related the dream to his close friend, Ward Hill Lamon:

"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds met me as I passed alone. I was puzzled and alarmed. Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room. Before me was a catafalque on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng or people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 'The president,' was his answer. 'He was killed by an assassin.'"

The Lincoln-Kennedy Connection

Besides being beloved (and despised) presidents who were both assassinated, the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy share a number of other astounding parallels and coincidences:

* Lincoln was elected on November 6, 1860; Kennedy was elected on November 8, 1960.
* Both had previously been members of Congress. Lincoln was first elected to Congress in 1846; Kennedy in 1946.
* After their assassinations, both men were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson - and both Johnsons were born 100 years apart: Andrew Johnson in 1808; Lyndon Johnson in 1908.
* Both men were killed on a Friday by shots to the head as their wives sat beside them.
* John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to barn; Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused killer, shot from a schoolbook warehouse and then fled to a movie theatre. Both assassins were killed before they could be brought to trial.
* Both assassinations were the result of conspiracies (even though the conspiracy surrounding Kennedy's death is still disputed by some).
* Lincoln was shot inside Ford's Theater; Kennedy was killed in a Lincoln limousine, made by the Ford Motor Company.
* Just as Lincoln foresaw his own death, Kennedy seemed to have a premonition of his death as well. Just a few hours before he was murdered in Dallas, John Kennedy told Jackie and Ken O'Donnell, his personal advisor: "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it."

Kennedy also received other psychic warnings about his death. Psychic Jeanne Dixon advised the president that she foresaw his assassination as he traveled through the South. He also received a warning from his secretary that his trip to Dallas could have tragic consequences and urged him not to go. Her name was Evelyn Lincoln.

Washington's Vision of the Future

As the first president of the United States, the entire future of the nation lay before him. Washington, in fact, had a prophetic vision of America's fate during the harsh winter of 1777 after retreating to Valley Forge. The prophecy was eventually written down by writer Wesley Bradshaw and is said to foretell of three great perils that would befall the republic. Here are excerpts from that published vision as Washington related it:

"I do not know whether it is owing to the anxiety of my mind, but this afternoon, as I was sitting at this table engaged in preparing a dispatch, something in the apartment seemed to disturb me. Looking up, I beheld standing opposite me a singularly beautiful being. So astonished was I... that it was some moments before I found language to inquire the cause of the visit. A second, third, and even a fourth time did I repeat my question, but received no answer from my mysterious visitor except a slight raising of the eyes.

"Gradually, the surrounding atmosphere seemed to fill with sensations and grew luminous. Everything about me seemed to rarify, the mysterious visitor also becoming more airy and yet more distinct to my sight than before.

[The First Peril]
"Presently, I heard a voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn,' while at the same time my visitor extended an arm eastward. I beheld a dark, shadowy being, like an angel, standing, or rather floating in mid-air between Europe and America. Dipping water out of the ocean in the hollow of each hand, he sprinkled some upon America with his right hand, while with his left he cast some over Europe. Immediately, a cloud arose from these countries and joined in mid-ocean... then it moved slowly westward until it enveloped America in its murky folds. Sharp flashes of lightning gleamed through... and I heard the smothered groans and cries of the American people. [Some have interpreted this as a vision of the Revolutionary War, then taking place.]

[The Second Peril]
"A second time the angel dipped water from the ocean and sprinkled it out as before. I cast my eyes upon America and beheld villages and towns and cities springing up one after another until the whole land from the Atlantic to the Pacific was dotted with them. From Africa I saw an ill-omened specter approach our land. The inhabitants presently set themselves in battle array against each other. I saw a bright angel on whose brow rested a crown of light on which was traced the word 'UNION.' He was bearing the American flag. He placed the flag between the divided nation and said, 'Remember, ye are brethren.' [This could obviously be interpreted as The Civil War.]

[The Third Peril]
"The dark, shadowy angel placed a trumpet to his mouth, and blew three distinct blasts; and taking water from the ocean, he sprinkled it upon Europe, Asia and Africa. Then my eyes beheld a fearful scene. From each of these continents arose thick black clouds that were soon joined into one. And throughout this mass there gleamed a dark red light by which I saw hordes of armed men. These men, moving with the cloud, marched by land and sailed by sea to America, which country was enveloped in the volume of cloud. And I dimly saw these vast armies devastate the whole country and burn the villages, towns and cities which I had seen springing up. As my ears listened to the thundering of the cannon, clashing of the swords, and the shouts and cries of millions in mortal combat, I again heard the mysterious voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.' Where the voice had ceased, the dark shadowy angel placed his trumpet once more to his mouth, and blew a long and fearful blast. Instantly a light as of a thousand suns shone down from above me, and pierced and broke into fragments the dark cloud which enveloped America. At the same moment the angel upon whose head still shown the word UNION, and who bore our national flag in one hand, and a sword in the other, descended from the heavens attended by, legions of white spirits. These immediately joined the inhabitants of America, who I perceived were well-nigh overcome, but who immediately taking courage again, closed up their broken ranks and renewed the battle. Again, amid the fearful noise of the conflict I heard the mysterious voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.' As the voice ceased, the shadowy angel for the last time dipped water from the ocean and sprinkled it upon America. Instantly the dark cloud rolled back, together with the armies it had brought, leaving the inhabitants of the land victorious." [Is this a prophecy of things yet to come for the U.S.?]

The Reagans and the Astrologer

Many regard the presidency of Ronald Reagan as one of the strongest of the 20th century. Yet it wasn't widely circulated until after he left office that the most powerful man on Earth and his influential wife, sought the advice of an astrologer on many occasions - even on matters of world importance.

Joan Quigley became Nancy Reagan's astrologer after the two met on "The Merv Griffin Show" in the 1970s and reportedly provided astrological advice during Reagan's bid for the Republican nomination in 1976. After reaching the White House, the Reagans sought Quigley's horoscope readings even more. Some of her alleged influences include:

* She devised elaborate horoscope charts that showed dates and times - down to the last minute - that were both good and bad for the president. Nancy would provide Quigley with the president's itinerary, she would calculate the times most advantageous for success, and then Nancy would pass along the scheduling requirements to the White House staff.
* She contributed to the timing of international summits, presidential announcements and even the flight schedule of Air Force One.
* Shortly after Reagan was shot by John Wayne Hinckley, Nancy learned through Merv Griffin that Quigley had told him that Reagan's chart showed that this would be a bad day for him. She could have warned him that his life was in danger. Of course, this was after the fact of the shooting.
* Nancy Reagan had special private phone lines installed in the White House and at Camp David expressly for talking to Quigley.
* "I was the Teflon in what came to be known as the Teflon presidency," Quigley later wrote, taking credit for the timing of his actions that would deflect criticism.

Hillary Goes into a Trance

In the book The Choice, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame describes how Hillary Rodham Clinton attended some mystical sessions with a New Age guru when Bill was first running for the presidency.

Mrs. Clinton, according to Woodward, had been friends with a psychic researcher named Jean Houston, who often wrote and lectured about the existence of unseen spirits of the dead. In 1995, during a séance in the White House solarium, the book says, Hillary sank into a trance and channeled the spirits of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi.

After Woodward's book broke this story, and fearing comparisons to Nancy Reagan and her astrologer, both Hillary and Houston downplayed the event. They said they were just imagined conversations and idea sessions.

No doubt, this is not the last that we'll see of a paranormal connection to the President of the United States.

A Few Other White House-Related Spooks

• A worker who was killed during construction of the rotunda of the Capital building has been seen floating around carrying a tray.
• President Harrison is said to be heard in the attic of the White House.
• President Andrew Jackson is thought to haunt his White House bedroom.
• The ghost of First Lady Abigail Adams was seen floating through one of the White House hallways, as if carrying something.

The Phantom Cats of Forewarning

A phantom black cat is said to be seen in the basement of the White House at the advent of some great national tragedy. A guard claimed to have seen it a week before the great stock market crash of the 1920s. It was also seen right before JFK died.

This "ghost of Lincoln" photo was created by William Mumler by an accidental double exposure, but started a series of fake "spirit photographs."

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TV's Scary Turn

For Good or Bad, Channeling the Paranormal Has Become the Medium of Choice

By Joanne Ostrow
Denver Post
02/21/2010

Between-world spirits, reincarnated beings and plain old dead folks are casting shadows all over the network schedules. It's a good time to be a ghost on TV.

Some are old-fashioned spooky phantoms, others are figments of quantum physics, having fallen out of their places on the space-time continuum. That can be pretty spooky, too.

Psychics, mediums and other ghost whisperers have found a place in the public imagination. So have ethereal beings like plane-crash survivors on a particular island in the Pacific, unstuck in time.

Procedural dramas, as well as ABC's famously mysterious "Lost," increasingly rely on that extra dimension for a plot boost. These days, it's not enough to bring good detective skills to the table. Clever crime solvers need a direct line to the great beyond, too.

What does this say about the cultural moment? Why, from the new and truly awful "Past Life" on Fox to the long-standing "Medium," reborn on CBS after being killed by NBC, is the medium overrun with mediums?

"It's in our DNA," according to Stuart Fischoff, professor of psychology at California State University and Los Angeles bureau chief for Psychology Today. "The questioning of the unknown, it's what the ideas of God and Mother Nature are all about. To help explain the unexplainable. These (paranormal ideas) are being exploited by entertainment, not created by entertainment."

Peter Buirski, dean of the graduate school of professional psychology at the University of Denver, points to "the existential idea of death anxiety" as a drive for our fascination.

Even if we can't explain that very natural anxiety, we bring it with us to the TV couch as we would to the analyst's couch.

But it doesn't take a shrink to spot the trend.

"The Mentalist" on CBS has the cutest player of mind games in Simon Baker. "Psych" on USA has the goofiest, with James Roday as a fake psychic who relies on a photographic memory, and Dule Hill bantering comically (the season finale is March 10). "Ghost Whisperer" on CBS has perhaps the most earnest in Jennifer Love Hewitt.

In some cases the claim to special psychic powers is muted — both "The Mentalist" and "Psych" boast leading players with finely honed observational skills, more Sherlock Holmes than sixth sense.

In the case of "Medium," Patricia Arquette's character, Allison Dubois, is based on a real person, a self-proclaimed psychic who has worked with the police.

The idea of detectives using ESP or profiler vibes to solve cases has been around for years. And the appeal of the televised seance is clear: It's been more than a decade since John Edward launched "Crossing Over," a talk show in which guests unquestioningly accept the idea that their dead relatives communicate via a psychic on TV.

Unreal but engaging

But these are mature efforts, with bigger stars and better production values. No matter how skeptical you are regarding communication with the spiritual world, it's a sign of a good television show when Simon Baker or Patricia Arquette can make you believe for a moment that they are going deep on a hunch or picking up hints from their highly trained observational skills.

Similarly, it's a sign of bad writing when the dramaturgical holes in the "Past Life" story are more distracting than the series' central ideas of re- incarnation and past-life regression. Suspension of disbelief is one thing; suspension of critical viewing skills is asking too much.

Scientific theory matters more than mere DNA evidence on the best puzzler on television: We're routinely running into ghostly presences on "Lost," a series that operates on a higher astral and television plane. The deep mythology of that serial drama includes the reappearances of characters shown to have died, the ability to "move" its giant island and time travel, among other supernatural elements.

The here/not-here presences on "Lost" are calculated to evoke deep metaphysical questions. They're not hanging around to solve crimes, they're popping up to spur serious thought: People are dead and not dead, here and not here simultaneously in "Lost," as alternate timelines appear and diverge. A billowing, silly- looking smoke monster occasionally takes on the form of dead people. (A good thing, too, because audiences want to see more of those killed-off actors on retainer.)

The parallel universes or multiple realities of "Lost" don't produce the "boo!" ghosts, in the way the more routine crime shows do. But the "Lost" universe does contain people living different versions of themselves.

That's why some "Lost" characters have the funny feeling they've met before — they bump into each other in different time frames with a vague sensation of deju vu. They have met but in another slice of time, once upon a dream.

In the same way that murder victims in "Medium" and other psychic crime shows crave a reset (they seek a solution to a murder and punishment of the murderer), the characters on "Lost" hope for a reset in their life stories.

Is it possible writers on these shows have tapped into viewers' desire for a reset in their lives or in current history? Stop the world, I want to request a redo.

Psychologists say there are good reasons the escapism offered by these TV dramas fills a human need.

Embracing a hero with the power to chat with ghosts is "a way to maintain emotional connection to lost people in one's life, a belief that one is not alone in the world," DU's Buirski said.

"The less control you seem to have over reality, the more you move toward a supernatural reality," says professor and Psychology Today's L.A. bureau chief Fischoff. "Our economic-political-military problems are astounding and, in those circumstances, people turn to the supernatural for escape or even for inspiration."

Fischoff knows lots of people in the Hollywood Hills who've had their past lives "read" in the manner of "Past Life." He's not a believer. "In order for a clinical psychologist to believe in past-life regression therapy, you can't believe in psychotherapy. If you're being affected by what happened to you when you were Mary Queen of Scots, it's hard for the therapy to do a lot."

A need to know

The popularity of these TV series suggests we want answers and, finding none, are content to seek them in other dimensions.

"It's a hunger for something to tap into the metaphysical," said Atlanta psychologist Robert Simmermon, a specialist in film and media issues and a fan of "Psych." This fascination is "nothing new but a return to dealing with the mystical or unknown."

Simmermon sees an about-face from the 1990s cultural emphasis on the concrete and dogmatic to something more abstract.

"There's something in the zeitgeist, a transformation. The more optimistic of us say it's time to reappreciate the intuitive. A metaphysical way of looking at death is the underlying theme: There's more in this world than meets the eye."

He cites evidence in the popular culture from "Wicked" and "Avatar" to the psychic TV crime stoppers. "We've reintroduced the mystery. Maybe we're ready to delve into inner space."

It's all about faith, as followers of "Lost" know well. Do you believe in things you cannot see?

No doubt the fan base of "Lost" has little in common with the fans of, say, "Ghost Whisperer." But both know there's more out there than they can put their fingers on.

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Save the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s College London!!!

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

“Save the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s College London” hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/sdbmgs10/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.

Best wishes,

John Sanidopoulos

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Top 5 Science Conspiracies, Theories and Hoaxes

Discovery-News.com: James Williams uncovers five spooky scientific mysteries you may never have heard of.

Though there are far worse science conspiracies, theories and hoaxes (Darwinism, Nazi eugenics, Man-made global warming, Piltdown man, Haeckel's embryos, etc, etc), but this list was made by people that likely endorse these things. Nonetheless, the list is interesting and worth viewing.

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Is Your Bod Flawed by God?

Are your body’s imperfections reasons for you to reject intelligent design and embrace evolution? Professor John Avise (UC Irvine) thinks so. His new book Inside the Human Genome was given good press by PhysOrg: “Distinguished Professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UC Irvine, Avise also makes the case that overwhelming scientific evidence of genomic defects provides a compelling counterargument to intelligent design,” the article said. “Here, Avise discusses human imperfection, the importance of understanding our flaws, and why he believes theologians should embrace evolutionary science.” This article was well timed. It appeared just before “Evolution Sunday” when some evolutionists encourage churches to embrace Darwinism in their sermons. No ID proponent or theologian was allowed to respond to Avise’s claims.

The article said that evolutionary theory provides religious people a way out of theodicy – the need to explain natural evil. Avise said that while both theology and natural selection can explain the appearance of design, theology has trouble explaining design flaws. “Serious biological imperfections, on the other hand, can only logically be expected of nonsentient evolutionary processes that are inherently sloppy and error-prone,” Avise claimed. “They’re more troublesome to rationalize as overt mistakes by a fallible God.” Presumably, shuffling off the mistakes to a natural process exonerates the Designer. Asked why theologians should welcome evolutionary theory, Avise took off his white lab coat and put on a backward collar:

"Theodicy is the age-old conundrum of how to reconcile a just God with a world containing evils and flaws. With respect to biological imperfections, evolution can emancipate religion from the shackles of theodicy. No longer need we feel tempted to blaspheme an omnipotent deity by making him directly responsible for human frailties and physical shortcomings, including those we now know to be commonplace at the molecular and biochemical levels. No longer need we be apologists for God in regard to the details of biology. Instead, we can put the blame for biological flaws squarely on the shoulders of evolutionary processes. In this way, evolutionary science can help return religion to its rightful realm – not as a secular interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence, but rather as a respectable counselor on grander philosophical issues that have always been of ultimate concern to theologians."

He hoped that readers of his book would see evolutionary theory as a helpful philosophical partner of theology, rather than a nemesis. He extended Dobzhansky’s oft-quoted proverb that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” to suggest that nothing in religion, medicine or environmental issues makes sense except in evolution’s light either.

Is it because there is no theologian worth his salt within calling distance that PhysOrg printed one side of the story? Do they really think a modestly equipped seminary student would be tongue-tied with a theodicy question? This illustrates common practice for the scientific journals and secular science reporters: like Pravda before them, they deliver one predigested view, and tell the populace how to think. At least this article took the daring step of mentioning that a dissident belief system (intelligent design) exists. Most mention evolutionary theory as the only answer to everything.

Theodicy might be a problem for 19th-century deism and simplistic natural theology, but not for Biblical theology. It was not a problem for Jesus Christ, who was certainly not oblivious to the blind, the deaf, the lepers and the lame around him. It was not a problem for Paul, who spoke of the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain till the coming redemption of all things (Romans 8). It is not even a problem for intelligent design – why? Because I.D. does not delve into matters of theology, like Avise does. Intelligent design restricts its explanatory domain to design detection. Avise is taking off on a tangent (red herring) by claiming that if one argues intelligent design, one is duty bound to explain natural evil. That is a non-sequitur.

We see here a pattern that was noticed decades ago in the creation-evolution debates: it is the evolutionists who argue theology, and the creationists who argue scientific evidence. Notice how counter-intuitive that pattern is. If Darwinism is the great scientific theory, and creationism the religiously-motivated pseudoscience, one would predict the opposite. But this pattern holds up all the time. Hunter speaks at length about theodicy, Darwin, Dobzhansky, Ken Miller, and theistic evolution to establish his argument that evolution relies on religious premises rather than scientific evidence.

Understanding this explains why evolutionists are quick to talk theology in debate but bankrupt at explaining the origin of complex specified information observed everywhere in biology. “We are told that complexity and even consciousness just bubbled up out of an inorganic world,” Hunter wrote. “These are extraordinary claims and therefore they require extraordinary evidence. Instead we have a series of unsubstantiated speculations. These speculations are made compelling, however, by evolution’s negative theology” (Hunter, Darwin’s God, p. 174). By negative theology, Hunter is speaking of the argument presented often by Darwin and his disciples: “God wouldn’t have done it that way.” (Notice that is a theological argument, not a scientific argument.)

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On the Rarity of Brave People Today

by Elder Paisios the Athonite

"Brave people are rare in our times. People today are lukewarm. That's why if - God forbid - a war breaks out, some will die out of fear. Others will fall on the street from some minor hardship, because they are so used to comforts."

"In the past, people were so brave! In the Monastery of the Flavians in Asia Minor, the Turks had captured a man and slaughtered him. Then they told his wife, 'Either you deny Christ, or we will kill your children too.' And she replied, 'My husband is now with Christ, and I entrust my children to Christ and I will not renounce Christ.' What bravery! If Christ is not in us, how can there be such bravery? Today, people without Christ are building their home on rubble."

"If one does not start sacrificing something now, like giving up some desire or selfishness, how will he ever be able to sacrifice his life at a given time? If, even now, he thinks of the labor, and tries to avoid working a little harder than the next person, how will he ever attain the state of risking his own life to save another's? ... When there is no spirit of sacrifice, everyone looks only to save himself."

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What Difference Does God Make Today?

by Simon Barrow
July 2007
Ekklesia

Abstract

In a society which is publicly sceptical of Christianity and which often assumes that all 'God talk' is superstituous or merely subjective, this paper suggests how the basic grammar of Christian belief can make sense today, and how it can be mapped in relation to key issues like globalisation, responding to human suffering, and the crisis of communication within mixed-conviction societies. Unlike many of Ekklesia's research papers, it is not directly tackling public policy issues, but instead is an extended essay exploring (especially through the work of Nicholas Lash, and others) some fundamental questions about how Christian convictions are shaped and articulated in the public realm. This is important, because much of our work and commentary employs explicitly theological language - although usually at a more popular level. The paper seeks to show that the meaning of 'God' is widely misunderstood, both by believers and sceptics, and that Christian theology offers some distinctive and robust resources for coming to terms with the demands of daily life, politics, culture, economics and society - but not in the easy, prescriptive way that is usually supposed. It includes a brief historical look at how and why talk of God became meaningless for so many in Western culture - before moving on to show how Christian thought becomes intelligible and effective once more when it is embodied in relationships, passionate conversation, shared living and action for change, rather than in abstract metaphysical categories. The essay does not presuppose wide theological reading, but it is a fairly dense exploration of some foundational issues.

1. Christian Belief After Christendom?

We live in an era and in a part of the world where the received institutions, rituals and ideas of historic Christianity are being severely questioned, bypassed, mocked, superced or rejected. Some call it post-Christendom, the demise of an era when Christian convictions held sway over governance and public life. The temptation for many Christians in response to this situation is to head in one of two opposite directions: aggressive reassertion of a Christendom mindset (the attempt to 'regain control'), or passive accommodation to the cultural zeitgeist of sceptical detatchment.[1]

The former approach involves suppressing or denying the validity of the challenge, both politically and theologically. The latter assumes that the Christian tradition lacks the resources necessary for a rigorous and fruitful encounter with the contemporary. In this sense they are both counsels of despair. But for those of us who find in the Christian community (with all it many failings) a continued source of nourishment for positively critical thought, radical social commitment, characterful living, and open-hearted spiritual development, a different approach is needed. The purpose of this paper is to show how a reasoned, hopeful and substantial account can be given of Christian conviction in the confused, divided, multi-perspectival world we inhabit daily. [2]

In particular, What difference does God make today? draws heavily on the thought of Nicholas Lash, an ecumenical Catholic thinker who has been an important catalyst in recent British theology – influencing not only public figures like Rowan Williams, but also Christians engaged critically with secular thought, with questions arising from post-modernity, with religion and politics, with the psychology and sociality of belief, and with the relationship between inherited and emergent features of church life. [3] His importance lies in the fact that, unusually in today’s climate, he is both well-attuned to contemporary intellectual demands, and fully committed to showing how Christianity can both respond to and transform some of the most important debates about its vitality or validity. For this reason his work offers a very helpful starting point for examining belief in (better – ‘explorations into’) God today. [4]

In an elegant but demanding little book published in 2005, [5] Lash draws reflectively upon a lifetime of theological and philosophical exploration to show both believers and sceptics how the core Christian grammar concerning ‘the question of God’ can be rendered intelligible and effective in relation to some huge contemporary challenges. Those challenges he sees embodied in globalization (the construction of the world as a single economic fact), human suffering (both natural and inflicted), and communications (“the crisis of language”). He chooses the motifs of ‘holiness’, ‘speech’ and ‘silence’ to explain how Christian thought relates to these demanding concerns. His categories correspond broadly with “one known as Holy Spirit, and as Word, and as the originating stillness in which that Word is spoken.” [6]

The starting point for the intellectual task of wrestling with God, both within the churches and in wider society, is very tough indeed, Nicholas Lash contends. [7] As he says, “[w]e underestimate at our peril the comprehensiveness of the ignorance of Christianity in contemporary Western cultures.” This ignorance is rendered intractable by the common supposition that ‘everybody knows’ what Christianity is: either a relatively un-engaging fairytale, or a child’s comforter for the feeble-minded. The way we are accustomed to ‘see the world’, according to now-dominant modes of engagement, is increasingly resistant to Christian categories.

What is required from Christians in this difficult situation is not more volume, greater self-assertion or the quest for some reassuringly simple ‘answer’. On the contrary it is tough thought, shared pain and patient reasoning in making the story the Gospel recounts our own once more; that is, the “unceasing, strenuous, vulnerable attempt to make some Christian sense of things” which is known as “doing theology”. But the churches in Britain and Ireland seem largely to have abandoned the task, seeking comfort or vindication instead.

This woeful situation needs to be challenged. And while erudition is certainly not necessary to authentic Christian living, observes Nicholas Lash, “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that devout and educated Christians who refuse to acquire a theological competence cognate to the general level of their education simply do not care about the truth of Christianity.” In which case, why on earth should anyone else take it seriously?

2. The question of God re-assessed

In examining the erosion of Christian meaning since the seventeenth century, Lash invites us to contemplate a revolution in our ‘modern’ understanding of (or, rather, false presumptions about) God.[8] He does this not by abandoning what the Christian tradition has to say as outmoded, but by seeking a thoroughly contemporary recovery of Aquinas’ tendency (and that of others, not all of whom are Aquinas’ followers) to sustain the word ‘God’ as verb rather than as noun – a point to return to later.

But we need to start somewhere nearer the genesis of the contemporary problem. During the past four hundred years ‘God’ has been rendered practically and imaginatively almost irrecoverable for many people, suggests Lash. This process began when the early-modern search for human mastery (through the practical ‘ends’ produced by ‘cause and effect’ as the way the world came to be understood) led to the word ‘god’ being used, “for the first time, to name the ultimate explanation of the system of the world.” But natural science soon saw that the world as such did not require any single, overarching, independent, explanatory principle. So the word ‘god’ could be dispensed with, and modern atheism was born.[9] However this understanding of the word ‘god’, which has been perpetuated by naïve believers and misinformed non-believers ever since, is profoundly misleading in a whole host of ways.

Before modernity, the term ‘gods’ was understood, correctly, as a relational one, designating whatever it was people worshipped – gave ultimate worth to. It resided in occurrences, activities and patterns of behaviour – not concepts. Explains Lash: “The word ‘god’ worked rather like the word ‘treasure’ still does. A treasure is what someone... highly values. And I can only find out what you value by asking you and by observing your behaviour… There is no class of object known as ‘treasures’… valuing is a relationship.”

However, with the dominance of instrumental reason, ‘gods’ became, correspondingly, things (objects, entities, individuals) of a certain kind, a ‘divine’ one. Analogously, the ‘home territory’ of God-understanding shifted from worship (the assignment of worth-ship) to description (the assignment of properties). It became a metaphysical enterprise rather than a matter of appropriate relationship. The difference is that the former has to make claims about essence or ‘being’ (of a person, a thing, or ‘god’) in order to find it meaningful. The latter does not, though it needs a good idea of what it speaks.

This double shift of meaning and affection fundamentally corrupted and disabled the modern comprehension of ‘God’ – because God is, logically and necessarily, beyond definition (delimiting) and categorisation. God is most definitely not a ‘thing’ belonging to a class of things called ‘gods’.[10] “Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists all have this, at least, in common: that none of them believe in gods”, says Lash. Therefore religions are best considered ‘schools’ in which people learn properly to relate to God precisely by not worshipping any thing – not the world nor any part, person, dream, event or memory of it.

God is rendered ‘unbelievable’ for many today because we have forgotten this. People “simply take for granted that the word ‘god’ names a natural kind, a class of entity. There are bananas, traffic lights, human beings, and gods. Or perhaps not: on this account… ‘theists’ are people who suppose the class of gods to have at least one member… ‘atheists’ are those who think that, in the real world, the class of ‘gods’ is, like the class of ‘unicorns’, empty.” This is a basic category mistake with lethal consequences. As Denys Turner says, commenting on Aquinas: “In showing God to ‘exist’ reason shows that we no longer know what ‘exists’ means.” [11]

Similarly, the modern mind readily submits to the notion that technical and abstract language (‘ineffability’, ‘transcendence’ and so on) is inherently superior to the ‘concrete anthropomorphic imagery’ of biblical thought, attributing the latter to the simple-minded. This is, in fact, nonsense. It ignores the reality that all language is humanly generated. Everything we say of God, in whatever register, is metaphorically said, because God is not and cannot be some version of us writ large – and speech or writing that is conscious of this is less likely to deceive itself by attempting a ‘fix’ on ‘what God is’. [12]

God-talk is therefore immensely difficult. It requires resourceful imagination funded by scripture, liturgy, art, prayer, literature and poetry. It also requires and enables the rational disciplining of imagination that we call theology; an unending dialogue between these two, in fact.

Another ubiquitous modern misunderstanding is the idea that God is ‘a supernatural being’. This is a misapplication of a word (‘supernatural’) originally used adjectively or adverbially to designate a creature acting beyond the categories of its nature, supported by the grace of God. (A rabbit playing a violin, say, or, more realistically, a person behaving truly selflessly!) In these terms “God, alone, cannot be supernatural, cannot ‘act supernaturally’, for what would graciously elevate or heal God’s nature?” [13]

What, then, does it truly mean ‘to believe in God’? Developing Augustine’s thought about this, Nicholas Lash distinguishes three possibilities based on the Latin ascriptions: Credere Deo (to believe what God declares), Credere Deum (to believe God to be truly God, and nothing less); and the creedal formula Credere in Deum (to believe ‘godwardly’ or ‘into God’, as a matter of incorporation into an evidential body and by learning ‘godly behaviour’).

To cut a long discourse short, it is the third sense that best expresses what is offered and required in Christian believing – the language of Holy Mystery embodied in appropriate relationship, by which we non-idolatrously and wholeheartedly give ourselves to the truth, flourishing and freedom to which we are summoned – but which (at one level) wholly exceeds what we are able to think, see or do. The ‘journey into God’ involves developing good habits and skills of mind, heart and disposition. It is neither a matter of blind faith nor narrow-sighted certainty, but continual exploration and growth in understanding using all of our embodied faculties.

3. The spirit of globalisation

“We all make up one world,” says Christian humanist thinker Nicholas Boyle, “even if we are only gradually coming to recognise it.” [14] The discovery of the interconnectedness of everything and the primacy of relations is a major scientific, cultural and social feature of modern life. This becomes ‘globalisation’ with the realisation, mediated by technology and cyberspace, that the world is now a single economic fact – so far making a minority very rich, allowing many to remain poor, and posing challenges to people and planet beyond our parochial patriotisms.

Relationship is, as we have seen, central to the meaning of that awkward word ‘God’, without which Christians would render unintelligible the narratives that give them their identity. God thereby names the destiny of the world as the realisation of the purposes of love – dispossessive affection which creates genuine, freely-given and life enhancing relationship.

Globalisation demands imagination to fund political action based on a ‘global identity’ – the idea that who ‘we’ are is, in a sense, everyone. The language of church (ecclesia) is one that denotes this possibility of a common peoplehood. Observes Lash: “The notorious slogan ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ has always had two senses: that only Christians may be saved is false; that salvation is the healing of relations, the gathering of humankind into ‘ecclesia’, communion, in [the unlimitedness that is] God, is true.”

The discernable oneness of the world requires such a ‘common story’, by which is meant ‘a true account’, not an attempt to impose one narrative. But many people object to this, claiming that ‘narrative is fiction’ and that ‘grand narratives are inherently imperialist’. Nicholas Lash counters that we have good reason for seeing the world as ‘story-shaped’. He goes on to show why reason should not be confused with necessity, how contingency can and does bear meaning for us, how persons prove unassimilable to their component parts, and how the particularities and fallibilities of local narratives do not preclude their imagination as global realities too.

It is important to recognise that no story says everything, not even a story about everything. It is in the encounter with the ‘other’ through different narrated accounts that the world is continually enlarged for us. Truth is a gift and a right relation, never a commodity, a possession or a certainty – as instinctive positivists of a ‘believing’ or ‘non-believing’ kind are constantly tempted to think. That is why materialisms, idealisms and nihilisms, as totalising systems, will always fail eventually. But at enormous human cost.

Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s corresponding confession of the mystery of God as ‘gift’, Nicholas Lash argues that to understand all things as an expression of the giving that is God’s own self (so to speak) is to comprehend what is meant in the naming of the divine as ‘Holy Spirit’. It means, as the Eastern Orthodox suggest, that God is known through the energies of the divine resonating within the natural, not in essence or by unmediated encounter.

What impact does this conviction about all-that-is being a gift of God have upon our reception of, and interaction with, the world? The difference it makes is not that of substance dualism, which sees ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’ in metaphysical contention. Rather, as ‘mind’ is not a ‘thing’ stuck in your brain, but the ability to act consciously, so ‘soul’ is not distinct from the human life, but may be thought of as its total ‘shape’ – towards life and love rather than bondage and death.

The biblical distinction between ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh’ is, similarly, not that between living systems and their capacities. It is between things crumbling and things coming alive; life-gone-wrong (or ‘not-life’) and ‘life-in-its-fullness’, breathed by God. The Spirit “blows where it wills”, as the Gospel puts it.

So “[t]o confess God as Spirit is to tell the story of the world as something, from its beginning to its end, given to come alive.” God is not ‘a spirit’, because God is not any kind of thing. Rather, God is limitless donation, and with Thomas Aquinas, John of Damascus and (latterly) Fergus Kerr, may therefore be identified (fruitfully, if inadequately) as “more like an event than an entity”, a verb more than a noun. Aquinas did not quite reach this point on his own, but it is the direction of his thought, among other things, that re-raises it in the contemporary.

What of the holiness produced in and for us by relation to God as Spirit? It is neither synonymous with the world’s various ‘spiritualities’, nor with ego-dependent piety, nor with a religious system. It is not primarily a moral quality, either.

“Etymologically, ‘holy’ is the whole, the healed”, Lash says. To worship is to acknowledge in God all the completeness we lack, and to be opened to being transformed by it without needing to seize it. The holy is beyond our manipulation. The sacred invites us, but refuses our possession. When we seek to own God there is hell to pay, as we see when we look around the world.

What then of ‘religion’? If ‘gods’ are whatever we worship, then these days people do not name as ‘gods’ the things they actually worship (give ultimate worth to). The same is true of religious beliefs and practices, of what people treat as ‘sacred’. “Whatever a social group takes really seriously, finds too hot to handle, believes to be beyond control… is the character of its religion”. Under the influence of Enlightenment hostility to religion, people use the world very differently these days. But that does not change the reality.

Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that ‘you can’t buck the market’ was, in this understanding of religion, truly a confession, a statement of faith (of where we put our trust). In the United States, the national flag is, similarly, a religious symbol. Religion is the “binding principle of society” says John Henry Newman, in a way not dissimilar to Hegel and Durkheim. And most of it, Christian theologians have recognised, is idolatrous – treating as sacred that which is not God, to the serious damage of human beings.

This is why, at their best, the world’s religious traditions are schools teaching people that no feature of the world – no nation, institution, person, text, idea, place or ambition – is straightforwardly sacred. The Holy calls us beyond worship of the creature to a process of discernment about how lovingly to bear the “gift and burden of contingent freedom” in all the world. To give ultimacy to anything short of God is to imprison ourselves, and likewise to cut ourselves off from the finality of love declared in and as God.

Within the human conflicts and contradictions that constitute Christianity lies the Christian vision that everything we are and have (and will be) is gift. But “[i]n a world so comprehensively disfigured… the ‘giftedness’ of reality is not, to put it mildly, self-evident.” To perceive it we have to act with reciprocity and thus experience the rectification of relations that alone comes from forgiveness, the dispossession to go on giving beyond measure, merit or calculation.

In the cross inflicted upon him by the vengeance of state and religion against one who exposed their lies, Jesus takes the violence of another upon himself in a costly way that is gift beyond measure and explanation (‘miraculous’, as Christoph Theobald puts it). And when the church community makes a genuine ‘option for the poor’ it too tells “the Christian story of the world as gift and action of God’s liveliness”, with and from the viewpoint of those subjected to that same world’s avarice. This is the shape of ‘belief’ as life lived beyond our means ('resurrection life'), rather than as propositional theory.

In summary, “God looks like the action of the ‘holy spirit’ that God is said to be: like forgiveness and non-violence, solidarity with victims, the achievement of communion in the one world to which we all belong.” … “God also looks like a young man tortured, strung up on a Roman gibbet. The next question to be considered is, what does that death say?”

4. Cacophony, conversation and shared learning

Is conversation possible in a cacophonous world? Nicholas Lash examines this question in relation to the Word (the reason, or wisdom) of God in the shape of Jesus the Christ – one in whom we encounter, in the particular, in narrated flesh rather than generalised theory, the utterance that God is (metaphorically, but truthfully) said to be, and through which all that is exists.

Conversation across the globe is made difficult right now not just by cultural gulfs but by devastating political and economic unevenness, and also (some argue) by incommensurable conceptual frameworks embodied in untranslatable languages. But ‘conversation’ is not just a mental act, it is a bodily one, a cultural embodiment through which we discern common humanity in mutual vulnerability. We can’t sort it out in our heads alone.

To be human is to be able to speak. But speech is held within the trust and responsibility of relationship, in which we are all ‘speaking parts’. Our capacity to speak and listen reflects what we have become over time, our form and nature. We can “say what we like”, but this liberty is best understood as the burden of our responsibility to speak the truth in a dark, complex, often illegible and unutterable world.

Modern speech has mostly forgotten conversation, which it has swapped for monologues and “kitsch ideologies” (George Steiner). Speech, like all things in time, takes time. We are tempted to evasion and despair – silence about things that matter, and chattering into the void. Something better can only emerge from “an immensity of waiting”, the “long day’s journey” of the Saturday that lies suspended between Good Friday, the time of waste, and Easter Sunday, the dawn of hope.[15] This is where we in the West live, for the most part.

As Augustine reminds us, everyone learns to speak by hearing our language spoken. Together we work out where we and others are, how we got there and where we are going. In this sense, Lash reminds us, “[t]ruth is tradition-dependent” and “learning how to speak the truth takes time.” Social thought is about what we discover before we acquire the capacity to choose, an unfashionable but inescapable reality. In fast-paced, technological post/modernity we want to control what we know. We are impatient with debate, difficulty, ambivalence, elusiveness and paradox – which Rowan Williams suggests “is at heart an impatience with learning, and with learning about our learning.”

The world’s darkness is beyond human explication. What gives us hope is the strangeness of evil encountered by the greater strangeness (mystery) of grace, gift. The Cross can be seen as the ‘rendezvous’ for this encounter, the essence of which is defined by the Stranger on the Emmaus Road. [16] Reviewing the past as part of an uncertain future, he enables the travellers “to speak a quite new language, to glimpse a world quite different from the world they thought they knew.”

It is in the context of gratuitous hospitality that the Emmaus walkers discover, surprisingly, that they are guests and that the Stranger who appears alongside them is host. In this divine reversal they recognise Jesus as he ‘vanishes’ (appears differently) to become “the kind of man you meet along the road… the figure of a human being bounded, as all human beings are, by mortality.”

So “[w]hat they recognised, as they began to see the point, was [Jesus’] new presence as the bread he broke, the life he shared, at the beginning of this new conversation which is, for all eternity, uninterruptible.” Nicholas Lash does not spell it out like this here, but this (humanity transfigured) is the Gospel’s abolition of religion as a separate sphere of life controlled by ‘the religious’. [17]

5. Attending to silence, turning to action

The paradoxical, poetic and paradigmatic truth of the Garden of Gethsemane, the place of agonizing and unanswered darkness, is that we cannot speak unless we are spoken to (addressed) – “all speech is, in the last resort, response, and we are responsible for what we say. Yet what we hear, as we attempt to speak, is silence.” Jesus expected no reply from God, but gave himself over to the Eternal Silence. In him is God’s Word, There is no word beyond “the Father’s silence” (Christoph Theobald) [18]. Therefore the more we know of God in seeking to refract the character of the Word in action, the greater the depths of our unknowing.

To acknowledge God as Creator, the donative mystery of all things, is to see ourselves not merely as facts but as creatures, those who attend creatively to originating silence. [19] The universe we observe is unimaginable in scope. Pascal recognised the terrifying empty stillness of the sky and of human solitude. We may seek to fill the void with extraterrestrial life, with spirits or deities, but these are “speculative strategies of evasion” which betray the wonder we rightly feel at being here. (This, not the answers of ‘natural theology’, with its a priori or empirical postulations, is where we appropriately discern “the question of creation”.)

The biblical notion of ‘creation’, according to the popular modern imagination, is “an explanation of the establishment of the initial conditions of the world”. This is not so. Textually, it is an argument against fatalistic and dualistic ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies which were used to divide and command.

The temporal image of ‘beginning’ in the Hebrew Scriptures is about matters more basic than chronology and sequence – it concerns the absolute dependence of everything on God, the world ex nihilo. It says that all-that-is need not have been. It is sheer gift – and needs to be appreciated as such in the way we receive and handle it. God does not ‘manufacture’ this gift, but donates it beyond manipulation, ‘speaks’ it into being.

As scientists have long recognised, the universe (or, perhaps, the multiverse) requires no causa mundi. The world is not a puzzling fact in contrast to other straightforward facts: it is all the facts there are. To confess its ‘creation’ is not to contradict that with an appeal to ‘special agency’ thwarting or competing with natural processes. Rather it is to acknowledge that all the facts there are depend upon the mystery we call God - whose relation to them, when recognised and repsonded to, brings about deep transformation: signs of new possibility. [20] God is the ‘cause’ of ‘all this’ by virtue of what and who God is, not by being an additional or final cause in a chain of events.

Concludes Nicholas Lash, with hopeful realism: “To speak appropriately of the holy mystery that makes and heals the world, but is not the world nor any item in it, is quite beyond the [analytic] resources of language.” God-talk is therefore, he repeats, inescapably metaphorical - that is the way its aspiration to truth is necessarily formed. “It is the tragedy of Western culture to have fallen prey to the illusion (widely shared by believer and non-believer alike) that it is perfectly easy to talk about God.” [21]

Serious religious activity (worship and action that refuses the dominating claims of 'deities', both religious and non-religious in form) involves disciplining ourselves to avoid pinning down and labelling the Holy One - "the unfamiliar Name" (T. S. Eliot). It involves learning how to recognise that we, and all things, are, in the flow of the Christian story at least, lovingly created (gifted) into peace – and that at the end of the day, this is all we ‘know’ – for we are contingent.

To know God in this way is not to know a scientifically or philosophically determinable ‘fact’, or to be able to describe ‘frameworks of cosmic order’, but to enter a personal, communal and narrative relationship, embodied in social practice. Above all, this takes time, patience and cooperation. And it assumes the surprising conclusion of traditional Christian thought, which is that God is disclosed as God within the conditions of the material world, rightly apprehended, and not anywhere else. Esoteric knowledge of ‘another world’ is not presupposed.

To live before God, in a dignified way, is also to acknowledge our radical dependence (the condition of our mortality) without pathology. [22] God is no tyrant, but the life-giver. To be humanly free in the presence of God – a deeper freedom than mere ‘autonomy’ – is to learn how appropriately to handle contingency and brokenness (alongside the abundant joys of life) through mutuality, belonging, listening, forgiving and attentiveness.

The outcome of this is not ‘spirituality’ – a privatised zone of consolation or esoteric ‘knowledge’ – but radical personal, social and political engagement with the pain and noise of the world in the direction of healing (holiness), conditioned by the hopefulness embodied for and with us in the liberating Word that resonates in Jesus Christ and originates in the eternally inviting silence of God.

NOTES

[1] For an account of the continuing transition from Christendom to post-Christendom, see the After Christendom series of books published by Paternoster Press. The issues examined in this paper are part of a larger project which may lead to a book for this series on ‘God after Christendom’. I should also offer some apology to Nicholas Lash for the title of this essay. He rightly eschews the instrumentality implied by the "what difference does God make?" question - as if God is there to 'do' something for us. I hope it will become clear as I proceed, however, that "the difference God makes" is no more and no less than the reality God is, as we think, sense and experience that unconditioned, unlimited reality turning our very limited 'reality' upside down.

[2] What follows is primarily related to developments in Britain and Western Europe. But it also has global resonance. See also: (eds.) Simon Barrow & Graeme Smith, Christian Mission in Western Society Precedents, Perspectives, Prospects (CTBI, 2001). A further account of faith in the contemporary world, focussing more on the content of the Gospels, is given here: What is radical about Christianity?

[3] I would like to add the Anabaptist tradition, but that does not yet seem to be true. Among Lash’s works which are of abiding significance in the areas I have mentioned are Change in Focus (1973), Theology on Dover Beach (1979), A Matter of Hope (1981), Easter in Ordinary (1988), Theology on the Road to Emmaus (1989), The Beginning and the End of ‘Religion’ (1996) and Seeing in the Dark (2005).

[4] In following, elaborating and improvising upon Nicholas Lash’s basic arguments, I hope I have done justice to his work. But please take this exposition as my own – and if it engages you, read the book itself. The sections in this paper are based upon the chapters of Professor Lash's Holiness, Speech and Silence [see 5] - to which, as anyone who has studied it will realise, I am considerably over-indebted in what follows.

[5] Nicholas Lash, Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God (Ashgate, 2005). This paper started life as a summary and exposition of Lash's "mini summa" for a study group in Exeter. It was subsequently developed for teaching purposes to introduce central Christian convictions in relation to philosophical considerations and global challenges.

[6] To many modern minds the Christian doctrine (grammar) of the Trinity is utterly baffling, if not nonsensical. But Nicholas Lash continues to believe that it is of fundamental importance. In the present book he explores the metaphors by which it ‘makes sense of us’. For a thoughtfully direct unpacking of the underlying ‘grammar’ of Trinitarian understanding, however, see his excellent Believing Three Ways in One God (SCM Press, 1997).

[7] The sensitive reader may ask ‘why Christianity, specifically?’ The answer is that the question of God, like the question of humanity, does not come to us in the abstract, but in the particularities of communities of conviction. The conversation between different belief systems is an important one, and in no way secondary. But it cannot be embarked upon until we have really grasped what it means to speak of and live toward God in a specific context. Moreover, I have reasons for being and remaining Christian, whatever my debts and loves towards those of other faith – which are considerable.

[8] On the basic questions about the meaning of God and relating to God, see also the excellent work of John Bowker, The Sense of God: Sociological, anthropological and psychological approaches to the origin of the sense of God (One World, Oxford, 1995) and Licensed insanities: Religions and belief in God in the contemporary world (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987). Also Keith Ward, God: A guide for the perplexed (One World, 2003) and John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A theology of the event (Indiana University Press, 2006).

[9] This thesis is developed at greater length by Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (Yale University Press, 1987). It is epitomised by Laplace’s supposed comment about God: “I have no need of that hypothesis.” The point, of course, is that God is not a hypothesis in or about the world. That is the key misunderstanding. God is the mystery in which the world lives and moves and has it being.

[10] This is a point that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and other philosophically ill-equipped critics of ‘God’ seem quite unable or unwilling to grasp. They work on caricatures which bear as much relation to mature Christian theology as the average person’s account of electricity would to the finer points of electromagnetism.

[11] See Denys Turner, ‘On Denying the Right God: Aquinas on Atheism and Idolatry’, Modern Theology, volume 20 number 1 (January 2004).

[12] The amusing example Lash cites in the opening pages of Holiness, Speech and Silence is of a teacher who chides a child for painting a swan when asked to draw a picture of God. What the child instinctively grasps, but the teacher intellectually does not understand, is that an image of gracefulness infused with something that speaks of the divine is a better way of communicating than a presumption that we can have some clear image or word with which to ‘capture’ God. As Stanley Hauerwas and Nicholas Adams are often saying, we know less than we think at one level, and think less than we know at another.

[13] This is an important illustration of the fact that thinking about God, who is no 'thing', is not the same as thinking about the world of objects. It requires more. ‘What is’ or (in the case of God) ‘what shall be’ shapes the language, tools and methods we use to apprehend, reason about, or come to terms with them.

[14] See Nicholas Boyle, Who Are We Now? Christian humanism and the global market from Hegel to Heaney (T&T Clark, 1998).

[15] See George Steiner, Real Presences: Is there anything in what we say? (Faber and Faber, 1989).

[16] Luke 24. 13-31.

[17] See for example, The Beginning and the End of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1996), the Teape Lectures.

[18] The metaphor of ‘fatherhood’ applied to God is about generative, participative, guiding affection. It has, of course, been abused in patriarchy. But there is at least a reasonable argument for saying that by taking fatherhood into God, it redeems it from the control of men – a point made within parts of feminist discourse, which also urge a range of images to express our experience of the divine.

[19] In one of his recent books, Alasdair McIntyre has written of ‘creatureliness’ in terms of our human capacity to see ourselves as Dependent Rational Animals (Duckworth, 2004). This has implications for recognising, morally and relationally, both the deep affinity and the mysterious dissimilarity between humans and other animals.

[20] See: Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Blackwell, 2001), passim.

[21] Since Holiness, Speech and Silence is a short book, I have not referenced every quotation, but have verified all of them.

[22] This point has been superbly communicated by David E. Jenkins in an important but overlooked foreword (Liberating ‘God’) to Jurgen Moltmann’s book on the respective claims of ethics and aesthetics, Theology and Joy (SCM, 1980). He says that Freudian dependence is pathological, that final independence (from each other, the world and the divine) is an illusion, and that inter-dependence with God overestimates our capacities. Therefore the question the Gospel poses is: “is there a liberating form of dependence?” – one which enables us to grow rather than shrink. The Christian message says ‘yes’, and adds that it is the most hopeful thing imaginable, because of the endless creativeness and love of God.

Also highly recommended: Rupert Shortt, God's Advocates: Christian thinkers in conversation (DLT, 2006) and the various works of James Alison, which are enormously subtle and illuminating.

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