We must realize that our practical atheism is only that; while there are some philosophical and theological justifications used for it, its existence for the majority of people is only on the level of praxis. Such praxis is deadly, as can be seen in the world situation we find ourselves living in today. The world is falling apart. Humanity has been shown how great it can be; but it has not shown itself to be great enough to fix its own problems. Our scientific progress, while it has solved some problems, has created far more and far worse problems for us to solve. The parable of the sorcerer’s apprentice has been made into reality (of course, this should be expected; what caused the Church to reject magic was its desire to dominate the world through power, which is exactly what we get with modern machines).[1]
We cannot continue in the world as we now do. Just as in the story of the Tower of Babel, something will give, and the whole present system will collapse. The modernistic base which we have used to build up our present culture cannot sustain that culture much longer. If the Enlightenment was, in part, a rejection of the Christian religion because it had become warring factions destroying the earthly landscape, fighting over creeds which seemed to have no practical, real-world value, the post-modern situation must understand that Enlightenment was incapable of finding a solution to the world’s problems through reason alone. Christians must not be afraid of the post-moderns when they note this. Even if many of the post-modern philosophers are not religious, they are leaving a way out for us to find out religion was right: humanity must be open to something greater than itself. We should not neglect what was good and even needed to be addressed that came out of the Enlightenment. We must, however, limit the positivists and not radicalize human reason as they do. The two, religion and reason, can work together, and indeed must. One cannot work without the other.
Post-modernism, far from being antithetical to us, points out for us the way forward. It helps us to deconstruct the past, including and especially the recent past. In doing so, it can help us find the truth contained in the Enlightenment, the practical atheism which came out of it, and even the militant anti-theistic atheism of the twentieth century. Christians need to come to terms with that truth, not because there is no God, but because we have turned a false conception of God into God, creating a lifeless idol which can never satisfy the human heart.[2] A false God died through atheism, and we Christians must thank the atheists for it. “The anti-Christian virulence of this atheism cannot be answered by a corresponding ‘anti’ of the Christians. The Christian answer must know how to hold up the blind, hostile stroke in the depth, and to change it into something that brings light and unity.“[3] The more the atheist fights against a lifeless God constructed by the human mind, the more God is able to reveal himself. For every time God dies in society, so God is free to come back, revived, better than ever. “The idea of God within us is perpetually menaced with extinction, but is always reborn. Everything threatens it with ruin, for everything is a scandal to us, when lo and behold! the very threat that menaced it with death gives it fresh life. Each day brings a new witness of it. For man will never finish wrestling with God. The mysterious struggle between Jacob and the Angel, so foolhardy and yet so necessary, so necessary yet so un-equal, lasts through the night – throughout the night of our somber history.“[4]Post-modernism is just another step in this ongoing relationship, and contest, between God and man. There will be a dark night ahead. One day humanity will free itself from God’s grasp, for an instant, to experience, to its greatest horror, the fullness of its being, as it produces the anti-Christ. But the end will reveal the ever-greater goodness of God. And indeed, we must realize, as with Vladimir Solovyov, the only real end of history is that of the God-man, Jesus Christ, in whom God and humanity are joined together as one. “The old traditional form of religion has issued forth from the faith in God, but has failed to carry out this faith to the end. The modern extra-religious civilization proceeds from the faith in man, but it, too, remains inconsistent – does not carry its faith to its [logical] end. But when both of these faiths, the faith in God and the faith in man are carried out consistently and realized in full, they meet in the unique, complete and integral truth of Godmanhood.“[5]
Footnotes
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien understood this insight all too well. “It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as ‘its own’, the sub-creator wishing to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, — and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent inner powers of talents – or even use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognized,” J.R.R. Tolkien. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 145-6 (Letter 131).
[2]To be sure, the God of the philosophers can be seen as such a God. It is not because the philosophical conception of God is not useful for meditation, but because, when taken to its extreme, it leads to a God which is not God, and even to notions which, while useful philosophically, are questionable spiritually. The God of the philosophers, if taken literally, is no God at all. In this way St Gregory Palamas can criticize one such “God of the philosophers,” popular in the West, as leading to atheism: “Those who say that in God the activity is not different from His essence content that He does not have essence and activity but only activity or only essence. For if there is no difference whatsoever between those things, why do they say that God not only has this but that as well unless they say that those things belong to God as empty names which have nothing to do with real things?
[…]
“Hence, by taking away the divine activity and by fusing it with essence by saying that the activity does not differ from that essence, they have made God an essence without activity. And not only that, but they have completely annihilated God’s being itself and they have become atheists in the universe [a world without god]; for the same Maximus says: ‘When the divine and human activity is taken away, there is no God, nor man.’ For it is absolutely necessary that the person says that the activity of God Is not different from his essence falls into the trap of atheism. For we know that God is only from His proper activities. Hence, for him who destroys God’s activities and does not admit that they differ from His essence, the necessary consequence is that he does not know that God is,” Saint Gregory Palamas. Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite. trans. Rein Ferwerda (Binghamton, NY: Binghamton University, 1999), 70-1.
[3]Hans Urs von Balthasar. The God Question and Modern Man.Trans. Hilda Graef (Eugene: OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 97.
[4]Henri de Lubac. The Discovery of God. Trans. Alexander Dru (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1996), 197.
[5]Valdimir Solovyov. Lectures on Godmanhood. Trans. Peter Zouboff (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd, 1948), 85.
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