Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love - 2nd edition

 

Andrew Sopko, For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love: the Theo-anthropology of Archbishop Lazar Puhalo (2nd edition), with a new foreword by Brad Jersak and historical biography by David Goa. 206 pages. $14.95

Available now: 

https://www.createspace.com/5314130

One of the most original thinkers in the Orthodox Church today, Archbishop Lazar is also one of the most thoroughly patristic in his theology. Known primarily as a "theologian of culture," his writings cover a vast array of subjects, from Patristic theology to neurobiology, from existentialism to feminism, and on to eschatology. Dr. Andrew Sopko has given us a concise overview and analysis of the Archbishop's under the label 'Theo-anthropology.' Archbishop Lazar is a hesychastic theologian and his works are of immense value as we begin our journey through the 21st century. 
 
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo is, without doubt, the most prolific Orthodox theologian in Canada, and he is certainly one of the most prolific Orthodox theologians in North America. It is about time that Archbishop Lazar was given his due, and For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love does such a deed well.  
 
The book is divided into eight sections: 1) Introduction: Orthodox Christianity and Culture 2) Christian Existentialism, 3)Gender as Prophecy, 4) Beyond Morality and Ethics, 5) Science and Theology as Empirical Quest, 6) The Aesthetics of Reality, 7) Last Things and 8) Epilogue: Church and/or World. In each of these probing chapters, Sopko carefully examines and explores how Lazar has engaged the world he lives in on a variety of key cultural issues. 
 
The strength of For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love is the way Andrew Sopko has highlighted for the interested reader how and why Archbishop Lazar, as an Orthodox theologian, has engaged the culture he has lived in rather than retreating into an idealized past, an ethnic subculture or a reactionary and right of centre political theology.

 

 

 

 

The Last Testament of a Beheaded Christian - by Brian Zahnd

Christian de Chergé was a French Catholic monk and the Trappist prior of the Tibhirine monastery in Algeria. With the rise of radical Islam in 1993, Father Chergé knew that his life was in danger. But instead of leaving Algeria, Father Chergé chose to stay and continue his witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. On May 24, 1996 Father Chergé was beheaded by Muslim radicals. Anticipating his death, Father Chergé had left a testament with his family to be read upon the event of his murder. The testament in part reads:

“If it should happen one day — and it could be today — that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity..."

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Who Would Jesus Behead? - by Boyd Barrett

The recent shoreline scene of orange-clad followers of Jesus kneeling before the severing power of metal still haunts me.The pure horror of that line of sword-wielding terrorists rips at the fabric of my faith. Where is justice? There must be vengeance! But as I think those thoughts, a question comes as if out of nowhere and at the same time as if out of everywhere. These are followers of Jesus. Who would Jesus behead if He had the chance?

But then I pause long enough to realize how absurd the picture becomes when the terrorists are replaced in my imagination with a vengeful Jesus grabbing one of their swords. As my emotions are still demanding “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and “hate your enemy”, Jesus dramatically drops the sword and speaks, “That’s what you’ve always heard. That’s what you’ve always thought. But I say to you…”

Then I hear His next words…

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Massacres in the Name of Religion - Monte Wolverton

It had been some twenty years since I visited France, so when I was invited to the 33rd annual St. Just le Martel Cartoon Festival, I had to find a way to go. St. Just le Martel is a village east of Limoges, about four hours south of Paris by train. I traveled with four other American editorial cartoonists, plus spouses and significant others. Every year the village hosts hundreds of cartoonists, most from France, many from around the world. The entire town volunteers, with a sense of community that I have rarely seen elsewhere. A troop of chefs (French, of course) prepare amazing meals, served in a big tent by the village teenagers (with astonishingly cheerful, cooperative attitudes).

Many residents house cartoonists in their homes. My friend Steve Sack was hosted by one such retired couple, Irene and Michele. We spent hours in their living room one day, enjoying a delicious lunch and eroding the language barrier with a translation app on my iPhone.

The next day Michele asked if some of the Americans would like to visit the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, where, in 1944, a company of German Waffen SS had massacred 642 inhabitants, because they had allegedly captured an SS officer. SS soldiers rounded up the residents, shot and burned the men, and burned the women and children alive in a church. Later, the SS discovered they had the wrong village. The grim details of this event can be found on the Internet at Wikipedia. Today, the preserved ruins of the village cover many acres, including a cemetery, an interpretive center and an underground memorial where the names of victims are etched in granite. Personal effects are displayed in glass cases. SPRING 2015 23 This was a neck-wrenching change from the high spirits of the cartoon festival. We walked the abandoned streets of the village in a daze. Crumbling buildings still display signs for dentists, bakeries, cafés and grocery stores. Burned-out hulks of 1930s and 40s cars sit exactly where they had in 1944. In the church, the rusty steel frame of a baby buggy melts into the stone floor.

My first thought was—how could God allow this to happen? Of course this was only a tiny sample of the atrocities and suffering that took place in World War II—and atrocities that continue today all around the world. My second thought was—what were the men of the Waffen SS thinking and feeling as they shot and incinerated the villagers?

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Book Review of Brad Jersak's 'Her Gates Will Never Be Shut' - by Rob Grayson

Today I’m delighted to be reviewing Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem by Brad Jersak, published in 2009 by Wipf & Stock.

Hell is a subject which, in my experience at least, is not often openly spoken about in churches and among believers, but which nevertheless plays a vitally important role in the doctrinal apparatus of many Christians.

If I speak of a “hellfire and damnation” preacher, most people will immediately have a good idea of what I’m talking about and be able to form an associated mental picture. The thought of such a preacher might make many Christians squirm, but in the majority of cases, if those same Christians would stop and consider their most fundamental beliefs, they would have to admit that they and the hellfire preacher have much in common. The way they express those beliefs might differ drastically, but the basic message is the same: give your life to Jesus or burn in hell forever.

In fact, the belief in a hell of eternal, conscious torment for unbelievers is so deeply ingrained in the contemporary Christian psyche that to question its necessity is to run the risk of being seen as a doubter at best and a renegade or a heretic at worst. But is such a belief actually necessary to authentic Christian faith?

For those keen to explore the subject, there’s no shortage of books on hell, both old and more recent. Most either present and defend a clear pro- or anti-hell stance, while the occasional volume includes a range of differing views, usually set out by different scholars, and leaves the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Her Gates Will Never Be Shut doesn’t really fall into either of those categories.

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Blessed are Those Who Mourn - Steve Stewart

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

I have been thinking about this second beatitude a lot over the past couple of months. It is about both identification and promise. Jesus, after all, mourned¬¬-––He mourned over Jerusalem that rejected Him; He sighed over the suffering of the deaf man; famously, He wept over the pain that Lazarus’ death caused his family and friends.

Significantly, Jesus promised that a time of comfort was coming. It seems to me that He was speaking both of the temporal and eternal. Paul declared that the Lord is “the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Cor 1:3-4). The Psalms repeatedly assert that when we turn to the Lord in our troubles, He comforts and sustains us. But I believe there is a deeper promise in the second beatitude that points our hearts to an ultimate resolution, an eternal solace, contentment and satisfaction.

I need this beatitude because, increasingly, I am aware that, at a deep and quiet level, I am mourning. 

At the core of this mourning is the reality that as a follower of Christ and His Kingdom, I am now an alien and stranger in this world. In the famous “faith chapter”, the writer to the Hebrews said that the Old Testament heroes realized this and lived accordingly (Heb 11:13). Repeatedly, Peter addressed the church as “strangers in the world”, even reminding them to embrace this (1 Pe 1:17; 2:11). If we are going to truly follow Jesus’ steps as His disciples, then alienation will mark our lives. The great 19th C preacher, Charles Spurgeon, wrote: “How settled soever their condition be, yet this is the temper of the saints upon earth––to count themselves but strangers.” 

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"It was evil" - Reflections on the Dresden bombings - Victor Gregg

A MUST SEE: "The most powerful interview I've witnessed" "The best television I have ever seen," "Incredibly moving story. What a hero," "The moments of silence were the loudest,"

Some of the reaction to an interview with Victor Gregg on BBC Breakfast. The 95 year old told us how he survived the raids while he was a prisoner of war in the #Dresdenbombings. Victor said it was evil and it took him 40 years to get over it. He didn't laugh once during those 40 years.

 

Post by BBC Breakfast.

Radical Hospitality in Ordinary Churches - Elizabeth Turman-Bryant.

Elizabeth Turman-Bryant asks, "What does it look like for ordinary churches to live out radical hospitality?" This video introduces her findings on what is common to all such works.

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The Last Battle and Emeth: Adieu - Ron Dart

There are few who are not aware of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

Many have read the delightful and charming seven missives a few times, others but once and many more, probably, have seen the first three books turned films: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader—the finale of the series is, of course, The Last Battle.

The Last Battle can be read at a variety of levels, but throughout many of the books in the series, the Narnians are often pitted against the dark skinned Calormenes. There are, of course, Narnians that are not to be trusted and seeming enemies of the Narnians that might be trusted-the ethos created by Lewis is not a simple and enchanted good versus evil realm and reality. But, there are tendencies to see the Narnians as, at their best, the nobler types and the Calormenes as the lesser breed.

Some have seen this as a form of English racism and a confirmation of Edward Said’s “Orientalist thesis”—the same trajectory can be found in Tolkien.

The Last Battle pits the Narnians against the Calormenes in a rather explicit and not to be denied way—Aslan (and the Nanians) stand for that which is good, beautiful and noble and the Calormenes (who heed the leadership of Shift the Ape and Puzzle the donkey) threaten the very existence of Aslan and the Narnians. The battle is waged with much ferocity and by war’s end, the Narnians emerge victorious. The problem, then, becomes what to do with the defeated Calormenes (and those who opposed Aslan). The ending of the book has a strange twist to it. A simpler ending would be to see the Calormenes as defeated evil people and in need of punishment. The more complex ending highlights the fact that there were many who opposed Aslan, but who did so thinking they were doing what was right and good—Emeth is one such character in the book. 

Emeth is a Hebrew word that means true, truth, good of character and worthy of admiration. Emeth assumed in obeying Tash (the false god) he was being true and faithful to reality. Emeth had been taught many caricatures of Aslan and the Narnians, hence his distrust of them if true.

In short, Emeth was a faithful servant of the limited light offered him. When Aslan confronts Emeth (chapter 25) he says, “all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me”. Did Lewis have a model for Emeth in his life?

Mahmoud Manzalaoui (1924-2015) was a student at Oxford in the late 1940s and C.S. Lewis was his tutor. Manzalaoui was a Muslim from Egypt and came to study Literature at Oxford—he focussed on Medieval Literature (Lewis’ area of specialty) and, upon completing his PHD in 1954, eventually moved to British Columbia where he spent most of his teaching days in the English department at University of British Columbia. Manzalaoui was also active when at Oxford in the Socratic Club that Lewis guided and shaped until he left for Cambridge in 1954.

I was quite fortunate in December 2014 to spend a couple of hours with Mahmoud Manzalaoui at his flat in Vancouver. We talked about many things, but the focus of the discussion was on C.S. Lewis. Ross Labrie (who also taught at UBC with Manzalaoui), Mahmoud and I made for an animated and informed threesome. I had been informed, before meeting Mahmoud, that he had been the model for Emeth in The Last Battle. I asked Mahmoud about this, and he confirmed that this was probably the case. The dark skinned Mahmoud had made much the same journey as Emeth—for Lewis, of course, this had little or nothering to do with skin colour—Lewis was never so shallow or so silly—it had everything to do with being open to the overtures of reality as embodied in Aslan—many were the Narnians who lacked the attentiveness of Emeth. Lewis realized that the last battle, in the depths of the human soul and spirit, was more about an inner alertness and attentiveness to the Divine than whether someone was Narnian or Calormene—even the cynical dwarves and Puzzle the Donkey had a private audience with Aslan in a way few Narnians did.

Mahmoud Manzalaoui (Emeth) died January 21 2015. I was fortunate in December 2014 to have a couple of hours to hear his story, his read of The Chronicles of Narnia (of which he did a thoughtful review) and his time, when doing a BA, as a student of C.S. Lewis. I could easily understand why Lewis might see Mahmoud as a model for Emeth.

Ron Dart                         

      

Bear Arms or Bared Arm - Bob Ekblad

Acts of vengeance to vindicate honor have been in the press on a near daily basis this past month, causing me to think seriously about how Jesus exposes and deals with human violence and reveals God’s radical, shame-disarming power.

In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Hebdo’s most recent depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, crowds of Muslims torched Christian churches in Niger, stormed a Christian school in Pakistan, and expressed their outrage toward France and the West in many other places.

The beheadings of two Japanese hostages and the burning alive of a captured Jordanian Air Force pilot by ISIS were followed immediately by Jordan’s execution of two militants and the death of 55 ISIS jihadists in Mosul through airstrikes.

"We are upping the ante. We're going after them wherever they are, with everything that we have. But it's not the beginning, and it's certainly not the end," Jordanian foreign minister Judeh said. 

The US coalition continues to show its power by bombarding ISIS troops, and the cycle of violence will only get worse. How are we to proclaim Jesus as the answer in these dark and violent times?

Isaiah 53 begins with a question posed by people who have heard news that is counter intuitive to the logic of redemptive violence. “Whohas believed our report?” they ask, seeming to suggest that not everyone has or will. A second question prepares the reader for a description of God’s saving servant: “Upon whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

The arm of the Lord in the Old Testament is synonymous with God’s power (Isaiah 40:10; 48:14; 51:5) and is the means by which God intervenes in history.  The verb gālâ (translated“ reveal”) means to uncover, expose, or make naked; this verb invites the translation “upon whom has God’s power been uncovered (or bared)?”

The next verses of Isaiah 53 describe God’s naked power visible in a figure who has no form or majesty or attractive appearance, who is despised, forsaken—a man of sorrows who grieves and is not valued.

Unlike the armed forces of this world (the US coalition, Jordan, ISIS, the Israelis and many others), God’s servant bears our grief and carries our sorrows. The servant is even perceived as punished by God (v. 4). Speaking as the exiled prophetic community in the heart of an oppressive empire (Babylon), Isaiah describes God’s servant in ways that prefigure Jesus and show us a way to think about redemptive suffering and shame-bearing:

“But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” (Isaiah 53:6–7).

The first Christians saw Jesus as fulfilling this description of the Lord’s servant. Jesus reveals God’s power by letting humans strip him naked and nail him to a cross—exposing our violence and neutralizing it. He achieves his victory over shame, dishonor and death through submitting to it as innocent victim alongside us and on our behalf.

Before his enemies arrest him, Jesus freely offers his broken body and blood to the disciples around the table, inviting them and us to continue feeding on his vulnerable flesh and lifeblood “in remembrance of me.” He is raised to life by the Father, embodying victory over death and guaranteeing us his abiding presence with us now and forever.

Paul recognizes the offense of Jesus’ way of being Savior when he writes of Jesus’ cross as “foolishness to those who are perishing.”  But, he continues, “to us who are being saved, it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).  He goes on to describe how this very different power of God, which he calls “the foolishness of the cross”, is a weapon against the world’s wisdom:  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside” (1 Corinthians 1:19).

Jesus reveals God’s embodied wisdom that destroys the conventional wisdom behind ISIS executions, Jordan’s retaliation, the US coalition’s strategy to annihilate ISIS and vengeance in all the forms and the logic of shame that we’re seeing played out throughout our world. 

Those in power in Jesus’ day did not believe in Jesus or his way of saving the world—and we can expect similar resistance today. Jesus identifies himself as the “stone which the builders rejected” (Luke 20:17–18), and all of the Gospel writers take note of this (see John1:10–11). Believing Jesus is the “cornerstone” of the Kingdom of God requires faith, which is a gift from God that we can choose to receive. 

As I witness the escalation of counter-terrorism efforts in Europe, mob reactions to dishonor and increasing violence and suffering in the Middle East, I find myself feeling drawn to contemplate and talk about the crucified one afresh, rediscovering the effective practice of Paul’s proclamation:

“But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:24–25).

Us Versus Them: The Myth that Underlies Our Violence Against the Other — Andrew Klager

This is the myth that underlies our violence against the Other—our so-called “enemies”:

One of the motivations of violence against the Other is portraying oneself—or “our side”—as completely “good” and one’s enemies—or “their side”—as completely “evil.” We do it all the time—as individuals, as cultures, as races, as religions, as nations. This dual portrayal gives “our side” the permission to kill, incarcerate, torture, and oppress since our actions will automatically be deemed righteous, commendable, and sensible, as we are the “good” guys and therefore any actions we take—however objectively deplorable—are automatically considered “good.” And our enemies can be killed, eliminated, incarcerate, oppressed, and tortured as inanimate objects to be eliminated in the implementation of our ideologies and interests because they have no good in them and are therefore completely evil and thus worthy and deserving of their death, torture, incarceration, and oppression. Since there is nothing good in them (i.e., our completely evil “enemies”), no good will be destroyed when our enemies are killed, tortured, or otherwise oppressed.

The antidote to this crude, unthinking, facile, and toxic bifurcation is the prerequisite transfiguration for loving our enemies and building peace intuitively and (super)naturally. The resolution is therefore ontological rather than a forced and contrived imitation—good or bad. And part of what this transfiguration looks like is recognizing the good in our enemies and the evil in ourselves—that, as the gulag surviver, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, remarked, the dividing line between good and evil doesn’t run between separate human beings or identity groups, but down the middle of every human heart; this requires stillness (hesychesis) and attentiveness (nepsis) to the vices and passions in ourselves and a commensurate life of repentance, all of which induces our transfiguration—the partaking of the divine nature (2 Pt. 1:4), the same “stuff” as the Prince of Peace—that capacitates us for treating the Other in the same way that the Transfigured One treated the Other—i.e., the prostitutes, the Samaritans, the publicans, the Roman occupiers.

A desire for retribution is the response to our perception of complete evil in the Other; a desire for restoration is the response to our recognition of at least some good in all human beings—“the true light, which enlightens everyone” (Jn. 1:9)—that can still yet be unearthed, prioritized, and cultivated.

'Why share the gospel if there is no hell?' Brad Jersak

I am frequently asked why anyone (including Jesus, the apostles and countless martyrs throughout the ages) would bother sharing the gospel if there is no hell. Before we even go there, I would hasten to ask, "Who told you there's no hell?" Of course there is.

Now as for the nature of hell, that's another matter. The idea of hell as 'eternal conscious torment' in an everlasting lake of fire is abhorrent to many who've experienced the fathomless depths of God's love, or have at least thought through the irrationality of its contradictions, or studied the competing images of divine judgment within Scripture. But that doesn't mean there is no hell. Have you been inside Burma's borders? Or experienced the front lines of a Middle East war zone? Or visited a sex-trafficking brothel? I know those who have and they assure me absolutely: hell exists. 

I'm not a universalist, but I do believe in hopeful inclusivism. That is, we cannot presume that all will be saved, or that any would be lost, but love obligates us to hope and pray that the mercy of Christ would have the last word on the Day of Judgment. If so, what is the point of evangelism?

I think the difficulty in perceiving the point of evangelism if there is a hope that one day, every knee will bow and every tongue confess and glorify Christ as Lord exposes something awful about our perception of the Gospel and what Evangelism is.

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DARE WE HOPE for the SALVATION of ALL? - Kallistos Ware

DARE WE HOPE for the SALVATION of ALL?

Origen, St Gregory of Nyssa and St Isaac the Syrian Bishop

Kallistos Ware

The Collected Works Volume I The Inner Kingdom, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press Crestwood, New York 2001, 193-215. Prev. publ. in Theology Digest 45:4 (1998), 303-17.

“God is not one who requites evil, but He sets aright evil”. St Isaac the Syrian

1. “Love could not bear that”

There are some questions which, at any rate in our present state of knowledge, we cannot answer; and yet, unanswerable though these questions may be, we cannot avoid raising them. Looking beyond the threshold of death, we ask: How can the soul exist without the body? What is the nature of our disembodied consciousness between death and the final resurrection? What is the precise relationship between our present body and the “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44) which the righteous will receive in the Age to come? Last, but not least, we ask: Dare we hope for the salvation of all? It is upon this final question that I wish to concentrate. Unanswerable or not, it is a question that decisively affects our entire understanding of God’s relationship to the world. At the ultimate conclusion of salvation history, will there be an all-embracing reconciliation? Will every created being eventually find a place within the Trinitarian perichoresis, within the movement of mutual love that passes eternally among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Sin is Behovely, but All shall be well, and All manner of thing shall be well.

Have we the right to endorse that confident affirmation of Julian of Norwich, as T. S. Eliot does in the last of his Four Quartets?

Let us pose the question more sharply by appealing first to the words of a twentieth-century Russian Orthodox monk and then to the opening chapter of Genesis. The dilemma that disturbs us is well summed up in a conversation recorded by Archimandrite Sophrony, the disciple of St Silouan of Mount Athos:

It was particularly characteristic of Staretz Silouan to pray for the dead suffering in the hell of separation from God... He could not bear to think that anyone would languish in “outer darkness.”

I remember a conversation between him and a certain hermit, who declared with evident satisfaction, “God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.”

Obviously upset, the Staretz said, “Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire—would you feel happy?”

“It can’t be helped. It would be their own fault,” said the hermit. The Staretz answered him with a sorrowful countenance.

“Love could not bear that,” he said. “We must pray for all.”

Here exactly the basic problem is set before us. St Silouan appeals to divine compassion: “Love could not bear that.” The hermit emphasizes human responsibility: “It would be their own fault.” We are confronted by twο principles that are apparently conflicting: first, God is love; second, human beings are free.

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The Unfathomable Openness of the Trinity in Christ: The Hopeful Inclusivism of Fr. Gustave Martelet

The following excerpt is from the Jesuit theologian, Gustave Martelet, in his article on 'Hell' in The Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, Vol. 1 (ed. Jean-Yves Lacoste).

Our creation in Christ has made us, by vocation, into beings to whom the Father is as essential as he is, by paternity, to the Son himself. But we should not forget the other face of this mystery, whereby we appear, in Christ, as eternally irreplaceable to the Father as the Son is to him. Confronted with the suicidal decision to reverse into hatred the love for which we have all been created and which makes us, in the Father’s eyes, inseparable from the person of his Son, could God, even out of respect for our freedom, abandon forever the person who destroys himself in the self-torture of his aberration? How could he do so, this God who, in Christ wishes to raise us by pure grace to his likeness, and promises to share with us the life of his uncreated Son? Such is the choice of the unfathomable depth of his love for us. Henceforth there is no human rule, no safeguard of morality that can prohibit God from loving madly the madman who believes that in order to exist he must refrain from loving him who is love itself!God’s remedy for madness consists then in bringing into play all the resources of his love to help the rebel overcome his insane refusal to love. For what kind of God would he be who, despite being declared all-powerful, was forever incapable of releasing from his mortal spell a freedom that was received without being requested, and that could become a snare of pain and hatred to its recipient, for all eternity?

Faced with the lights of the Kingdom of heaven in the night (in itself hopeless) of hell, we are therefore empowered by faith to throw ourselves naked into the love of God. As worthy descendants of Abraham—“In hope he believed against hope” (Rom 4:18)—we hope that the bottomless depths of God’s fatherhood, of Christ’s Passion, and of the resources of the Holy Spirit will allow us to escape from the fiery prison that is hell. We can say nothing of how this might be; but we must trust absolutely in the reserves of love, grace, and glory, whose only measure is God’s love for the Son in the Holy Spirit, a love in which we are forever included. Moreover, since God has revealed to us in his Son that we are saved and saveable by pure grace, and never by our works (Rom 1–4), how could it be otherwise when the eschatology of every creature is decided, at the crowning moment when the mystery of grace, in which we have been established for all time by God himself, will be fulfilled? In this light, hell becomes, with regard to a boundless faith, the location of choice for God’s victory over the most incomprehensible rejection—victory that could be called humanly unexpected and that is for the prayer of the spiritual and for the thought of the theologian “able to be hoped for.”[1]

---

[1] Gustave Martelet “Hell,” Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, Vol. 1, edited by Jean-Yves Lacoste, (New York: Routledge, 2005), 693.

Two Ways of Knowing God - Maximus the Confessor

This excerpt is from Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 60: On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (CCSG 22:73-81). It is a minor paraphrase (for readability only) of the translation by Paul Blowers and Robert Wilken (St. Vlad's Press, 2003).

Scripture teaches us two ways of knowing God, two kinds of knowledge of divine things.

First, there is what we might call 'relative knowledge,' which is rooted in human reason, ideas and conceptions. Relative knowledge lacks the kind of direct, experiential perception that we get by active engagement or a living encounter. This relative knowledge is what we typically use to order our affairs in our present daily lives. 

On the other hand, there is a second kind of knowledge--a truly authentic knowledge--gained only by actual experience, apart from and beyond human reason and ideas. This authentic, experiential knowledge gives us a direct perception of God through participation in his life by grace. 

We will ultimately attain this second way of knowing in the next life by participation in God's nature ('theosis'), as he transforms us from glory to glory into the image of Christ. This will be a supernatural and unceasing process. 

Scripture shows us how the relative knowledge based on reason and ideas can be a useful motivator, increasing our desire for the participative knowledge acquired by active engagement.

Further, they teach us that this active, experiential knowledge through participation, which gives us direct perception of God, can supplant (replace, displace) the relative knowledge based in reason and ideas.

The great sages go so far as to say that it's impossible for rational knowledge of God coexist with the direct experience of God. Or for human conceptions of God to coexist with the immediate perception of God. 

'Rational knowledge of God' uses analogies from created beings in the intellectual contemplation of God. Similarly, 'conceptual knowledge' means all the simple knowledge of God drawn from created beings. But 'immediate perception' involves actual experience, through participation, in the supernatural life of God. 

We use this kind of distinction with every other kind of knowledge as well, since our direct experience of something suspends our rational knowledge about it. And our direct perception of things makes our conceptual knowledge useless. This kind of 'experiential knowledge' refers to is based in firsthand, active engagement, which surpasses all reason. 

So when we speak of 'immediate perception,' we are referring to our participation in whatever (or whomever) manifests itself to us beyond all our human-based analogies and conceptions.

This may very well be what the Apostle Paul is secretly teaching when he says,  'As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will disappear (1 Cor. 13:8). Clearly he is referring here to that knowledge which is found in reason and ideas, which disappears in light of the direct experience of intimate encounter.