Nikitas D. Alibrantis
Emeritus
Professor at the University of Strasbourg, former Professor at D.U.Th.
Man is not content with merely
being alive; he seeks the meaning of life, he is troubled by death; on the
surface, he may at times come to terms with it, yet he fears it—just as he
fears pain, misery, loneliness, emptiness—all that constitutes the tragic
element of his existence. The ancient Greek tragedians were the first in human
history to express the tragedy of man in their plays, and they had come to the
realization that the resolution of the drama cannot come from man nor from the
ancient gods. Thus, they employed as a device the “deus ex machina.” [1]
It is no coincidence that in antiquity the people looked in large part “to the
unknown God.”
The “revolution” of Christ is
silent and gentle, yet unique. He revealed in historical reality God as
Love—unbounded and unshakable toward all, “even toward the ungrateful and
wicked” (Luke 6:35). He shared in the human condition, in the burdens, the suffering
of mankind, and in death, through His voluntary crucifixion out of love for
man. [2] “He died in the flesh… so that death might be overcome by His power”
(St. Athanasius On the Incarnation, 26). Christ’s word expresses this
symbolically: “If the grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and die, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24). [3] The
liberating Resurrection of Christ, which follows the “descent into Hades,” puts
an end to the tragedy of man and ultimately to the scandal of death. This
unprecedented liberation is existential. Christ defined it by saying: “In the
world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the
world” (John 16:33). This fearsome phrase—“I have overcome the world”—could
only be spoken by Christ as the God-man.
Christ, by putting an end to the
tragic condition, gave the solution to the ultimate existential questions and
problems of man. He liberates man from every existential fear and pursuit that
leads him to fabricate imaginary deities or to deify natural forces, from every
alienation or enslavement, from intellectual worldviews, and opens the path to
a free communion of man with God—Who is Love. This communion gives meaning to
his life. The Resurrection, an event that confirms the divinity of Christ, is
described with simplicity in all the Gospels—no matter how great the
astonishment it caused among the disciples, which experientially led to the
fearless preaching of the faith and to martyrdom, among others, of the
Protomartyr Stephen and of apostles such as Peter, Andrew, and others. The
meaning of the Resurrection is powerfully expressed by John Chrysostom in the
Catechetical Homily read during the Divine Liturgy of Pascha: “…enter ye all
into the joy of your Lord… Let no one bewail transgressions; for forgiveness
hath dawned forth from the tomb. Let no one fear death; for the death of the
Savior hath set us free. He hath extinguished it, being held by it…”
In the Christian faith, the
relationship between God and man changes radically; it is not legalistic or
authoritarian, but a free relationship of love. God freely invites man to
follow Him; He does not await his subjugation, nor fear of His judgment, but
his free love, his free response to the divine call. [4] “If any man will come
after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt.
16:24)—a phrase which means: whoever wishes to follow Me, let him set aside his
attachment to earthly things and take up his cross, that is, the tragic dimension
of his existence. With discernment, Christ is depicted symbolically as standing
at the door of each one’s soul and knocking: “Behold, I stand at the door and
knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and
will sup with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20). The common “supper” of
Christ with man, the communion of love with Him, simultaneously constitutes the
universality of the Christian faith; it is also a “burning of the heart on
behalf of all creation, on behalf of men and beasts, and… on behalf of every
creature.” [5]
2. The Law, as a set of
obligatory religious rules such as those found in the Old Testament, has been
essentially surpassed. The word of Christ is clear: “The law and the prophets
were until John (the Baptist); since that time the kingdom of God is preached”
(Luke 16:16). This means that compulsory adherence to rules is abolished. The
commandments (e.g., Thou shalt not kill...) are invitations addressed to
man for the realization of the purpose of his existence—his salvation. This is
the meaning of Christ’s phrase: “I came not to destroy (the law), but to
fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). The word fulfill points to the fact that He came
to transcend the Mosaic law, which for the Christian faith is a “worn-out
wineskin.” The new wine—the invitation to love and free communion with God—must
be placed in new wineskins, because if it is put into old wineskins, “the wine
is spilled and the skins are destroyed” (Matt. 9:17). That is, if the Christian
faith is lived as law, as a set of obligatory rules entailing punishments for
their transgression, then it is fundamentally distorted. The Law, as Saint
Nektarios writes, was “powerless for salvation, because the law, as the
punisher of sin, became a cause of condemnation; and in condemnation is death,
not salvation. Salvation is given only by grace and truth, which came through
Jesus Christ.”
[6]
In general, the Orthodox
Christian faith is characterized and experienced with a new content. Thus, sin
is not a violation of “divine” obligations or prohibitions, but an act or
omission that hinders or severs communion with God—through which man becomes
subject to egotism, loses his freedom, and every orientation and meaning of
life. Saint Basil the Great defines sin or evil as the misuse of God’s good
gifts contrary to His commandment, [7] which shows that, ultimately, sin is not
treated as a breach of rules—i.e., in a deontological sense—but ontologically,
because, as Georgios Mantzaridis rightly observes, it severs man from the
source of life, God. [8] The transcendence of the legalistic spirit, of every
rule that imposes obligations and prohibitions, is proclaimed in a striking
manner by the Apostle Paul: “All things are lawful unto me, but not all things
are expedient; all things are lawful unto me, but not all things edify” (1 Cor.
10:23). That is, legally all things are permitted to me, but not all things are
spiritually beneficial, not all contribute to communion with God.
3. In the Gospels, there
are expressions which at first glance not only belong to the legal spirit but
also, more generally, are manifestations of justice as both idea and action.
They are usually found in parables, which are rendered through images that, like
every image, “both reveal and conceal at the same time.” [9]
Characteristic are the
parables of the ungrateful servant (“His lord delivered him to the tormentors,”
Matt. 18:34), of the royal wedding (“Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into
outer darkness...,” Matt. 22:13), or of the wicked husbandmen of the vineyard
(“He will miserably destroy those wicked men...,” Matt. 21:41)—parables in
which harsh retributions are symbolically emphasized for the ungrateful and the
unscrupulous. There are also words or expressions with severe content
(punishment, eternal fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth…).
For the transition to the
age to come, Christ uses the image of a trial, though He does not judge or
condemn anyone; rather, at that time—as the Fathers of the Church
emphasize—“all our deeds will be revealed and will come forth on the great
day,” [10] “we shall have no other accuser but only our sins,” [11] “at the
coming of the Lord… the light which is now hidden will be revealed...” [12]
Already from the earliest
centuries, the Fathers designated the parabolic meaning of harsh terms such as hell,
which was understood not as a place, but as a state of non-communion—primarily
with God, but also with other human beings. In the 4th century, Abba Macarius
of Egypt wrote, with inspired insight, that hell is “not being able to behold
anyone face to face...” [13] In the same spirit of non-communion, Saint John of
Damascus defines hell as amethexia—that
is, a condition of non-participation in communion with God. [14] According to
Saint Isaac the Syrian, in hell, those who are tormented are afflicted by the
love of God, [15] and Dostoevsky defines it as “the torment of not being able
to love.” [16] Florovsky calls it “an internal state of isolation and
estrangement.” [17]
“The language of the
Gospels is a language adapted to the environment in which Christ lived and
preached, to the traditional concepts with which that environment was
associated. In the Gospels, the divine light is subjected to a kind of
refraction as it sinks into the narrow—both in a local and temporal sense—human
environment, and by this it undergoes an eclipse. A literal reading of the
Gospel texts not only leads to contradictions, as revealed by biblical
criticism, but also cannot correspond to a moral consciousness of a higher
level than that of that era… and of a different nature. For this reason, there
can be only one way—a spiritual, ‘inner’ way—to read the Gospel.” [18]
It is evident that it is of
vital importance to understand the parabolic language of the Gospel and the
messages that are very often expressed through the images used by Christ. If
these are interpreted literally and taken as realities, the Christian faith is
fundamentally misunderstood. Christ draws these images from the realities of
His time—from the then prevailing practices of rulers and the manner of
exercising authority, from Jewish legal conceptions. The parabolic language
contains a large number of terms and expressions, which are found not only in
the Gospels but have also been carried over into ecclesiastical language (see,
among others, the phrase from the imagery of a “trial”: “Let us ask for a good
defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ”). It is absolutely necessary
that they be discerned as semantic metaphors, just as with the parables, it is
critical to grasp their original meaning and to understand them as parabolic
verbal reactions or symbolic punishments.
4. In the Orthodox
Christian faith, not only the Law but also justice has been transcended—in both
its forms: retributive and distributive. Retributive justice has two aspects:
the positive, in which the keeping of rules is rewarded, and the negative, in
which their violation is punished. In the first case, if the Christian keeps
the commandments and expects some reward, he is far from the Christian faith.
As St. Mark the Ascetic expresses it, Christ regards each person “not as a
trader of goods.” [19] In Christian faith, the communion of love with God—which
is the purpose and meaning of the Christian life—by definition abolishes any
notion of an “external” reward within the framework of justice. In the parable
of the prodigal son, the elder brother, who lived in communion with his father,
was not content with that communion, but expected an additional return from
him. The father’s response is revealing: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all
that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31). In the case of disregarding the
commandments, St. Isaac the Syrian restores the truth of the Christian faith by
asking: “How can a man call God just when he comes upon the chapter about the
prodigal son and sees that simply for his contrition, which he showed, the
father ran and fell upon his neck and gave him all his riches?” [20]
As for distributive
justice, it is ‘scandalously’ overturned by the philanthropy of God. The
parable of the laborers in the vineyard speaks for itself and is a ‘scandal’ to
human justice: the workers of the eleventh hour receive the same wage as those
who labored from early morning and bore “the burden and heat of the day” (Matt.
20:1–16). Saint Isaac the Syrian again asks: “How can you call God just, when
in the chapter about the wages of the laborers He says, ‘Friend, I do thee no
wrong; I will give unto this last, even as unto thee’?” [21] God—Who is
Love—“receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him of the eleventh
hour as to him who labored from the first; and to the last He is merciful, and
the first He heals” (Catechetical Homily of John Chrysostom).
For the complete
transcendence of human justice, Saint Isaac the Syrian is unparalleled: “Do not
call God just, for His justice is not manifest in His dealings with you.” [22] “Where
is the justice of God, since we were sinners and Christ died for us?... Where
is His recompense in accordance with our deeds?” [23] Saint Nicholas Cabasilas
replies: “For all the good He has done for us, He asks only our love in return;
in exchange, He releases us from every obligation.” [24] Saint Isaac continues:
“Where is Gehenna...? And where is the hell that frightens us in so many
ways...? O the wondrous mercy of God.” [25] “May we never fall into the sin of
ever thinking to say that God is without mercy; for the property of God is
unchanging... and whatever God has from the beginning, He will always have...
Fear Him because of His love and not because of the dreadful name that has been
attributed to Him.” [26] “The sins of all flesh are like a handful of sand that
falls into a great sea, when compared to the providence and mercy of the
Creator, which cannot be overcome by the evil of His creatures.” [27]
5. After the luminous
words, I shall cite a passage from the work of a simple theologian:
“How does God deal with us? If He were to reckon our sins… He ought to condemn
us to eternal punishment. But what does He do? Oh! who can describe the
goodness of God and His loving-kindness? He continually forgets our sins and
awaits our repentance in order to grant us pardon for countless faults, and He
rejoices when we take refuge in His compassion… and He surrounds us with
tenderness and love—such love, indeed, as the human mind is incapable of
grasping.” [28]
It seems that simple
theologians experience and express the wisdom of the Fathers, while well-known
authors and professors completely overlook it and, although “Orthodox,” are
“inspired” by medieval constructs of the Latins, considering that divine justice
had been offended by human sin and was satisfied through the death of Christ!
[29]
“In Christianity,
Redemption is a work of love and not a work of justice; it is the sacrifice of
infinite divine love and not a propitiatory sacrifice or a settling of
accounts.” [30]
Responses
to Deniers of the Christian Faith
a) Was Christ merely a man?
Superficially—especially
when someone has not studied the Gospel—one may deny the dual nature of Christ
and regard Him as merely a man. But if one delves deeper into the matter, one
will be faced with serious difficulties, if not outright impasses. A first
possibility is to consider Him a moral personality. The first contradiction: Is
it possible for a man with an exceptionally high moral awareness, while calling
others to repentance, to have no consciousness of sin, to feel that at no time,
in no way, did he make any moral error? Christ has no such consciousness (John
8:46). A second alternative is to consider Him either insane or a deceiver.
Only one suffering from a delusion of grandeur could claim: “I am the light of
the world” (John 8:12), “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), “I
am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Yet someone suffering from
delusions of grandeur would be the last person to wash the feet of his
disciples (!), to respond as Christ did to the three temptations in the
wilderness, or—while being crucified—to say: “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
Finally, if Christ spoke
falsely, then what moral personality can we be speaking of? The conclusion is
that Christ cannot be confined within restrictive categories; there remains an
aspect that goes beyond these—and this is the starting point of faith in His
dual divine-human nature.
b) Atheism, Science, and
Orthodox Christian Faith
The widespread rejection of
Christian faith and the rise of atheism—especially since the Enlightenment
(18th century)—is an “internal” matter of the West, because it was there, in
Roman Catholicism, that the Christian faith was fundamentally distorted. It
became a totalitarian regime (the Inquisition, massacres and persecutions of
Jews and dissenters, feudal power even of the clergy), and a pseudo-scientific
worldview. The reaction in the West against this inhumane, anti-Christian
ideology and practice was entirely justified, and the development of atheism
followed—though inevitably it brought with it permanent disorientation, lack of
a compass in life, and existential emptiness. It is telling that in wealthy
Switzerland today, assisted suicide has been legalized regardless of illness,
and five organizations are engaged in this work for a fee! In the East, the
Christian faith preserved its authenticity; it remained the liberating response
to the ultimate existential quests of man. Therefore, from its side, it has no
need to “defend” itself against atheism, since the “attack” does not, in essence,
concern it. In the West, many Orthodox Christians—when, during meetings,
intellectuals would declare themselves atheists—would respond: “I too am an
atheist in the sense that I reject the idea of God that you also reject.”
Western intellectual
thought, being unfamiliar with Orthodox Christian faith and knowing only Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism—and possessing merely general knowledge about
religions—views religion as a system of obligations and prohibitions, as well as
punishments and rewards believed to come from some god. Thus, for example,
according to Freud, religion has its roots in the insecurity of the child, in
the prohibitions and obligations imposed by parents, and in punishments and
rewards. More broadly, the central characteristic of religions is considered to
be the subjugation of man to a supposed authority—namely, the loss of his
freedom. This reveals a complete ignorance or disregard for the Orthodox
Christian faith.
Natural scientists
generally do not realize that man, in his existential search, experiences his
own tragic condition and seeks its transcendence and the meaning of his
life—elements to which no scientific knowledge can respond, nor even formulate
any discourse. If this were not the case, then—as the French philosopher Régis
Debray, professor of philosophy and former comrade-in-arms of Che Guevara,
writes—all believers would be fools, and all the wise would be unbelievers.
[31]
Characteristic is Richard
Dawkins who, in his work The God Delusion, [32] claims that man believed
(in some god) because he could not explain natural phenomena. With such
reasoning, he entirely overlooks the fact that the source of religiosity is not
the inability to explain nature, but the existential quest for meaning in life
and the liberation of man from his tragic condition. Ultimately, many
scientists not only completely ignore the existential freedom brought to man by
the Christian faith of the “East as known to us,” but are themselves often
victims of a scientism that abolishes human freedom. Notably, among others, the
physicist Stephen Hawking maintains that “…we shall continue to progress toward
the laws that govern the Universe. But if there is a complete unified theory…,
it would also determine our actions.” [33] No worse abolition of human freedom
can be conceived!
The general conclusion is
that atheist scientists suffer—though generally without being aware of it—from
existential poverty, or—as Miguel de Unamuno expresses it in his classic work The
Tragic Sense of Life—they live a life of “spiritual parasitism.” [34]
NOTES
1.
The distinguished Hellenist Jacqueline de Romilly rightly emphasizes that
“tragedy is defined more by the nature of the problems it poses than by the
answers it gives” (La tragédie grecque [1970], 6th ed., Paris, 1997, p.
173).
2.
When shortly before His crucifixion He was troubled as man, He said: “but for
this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:24).
3.
Dostoevsky characteristically places the phrase beneath the title of his work The
Brothers Karamazov.
4.
Nicolas Berdiaev, Esprit et Liberté, Paris, 1984, p. 131.
5.
Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homily 81 (PA’), On the Distinction of
Virtues and on the Perfection of Every Path, Ascetical Homilies
(Homilies 62–86), Philokalia of the Neptic and Ascetic Fathers, vol. 8Γ,
Thessaloniki, 1991, p. 174.
6
Saint Nektarios, Christology, Part A, ch. H, 4, Athens, 1992, p. 176. Cf.
John 1:17.
7.
Basil the Great, Longer Rules, Patrologia Graeca (PG), 31, 909B.
8.
G. I. Mantzaridis, Person and Institutions, Thessaloniki, 1997, pp.
49–50.
9.
D.M. Quenot, Du visible à l’invisible. Des images à l’icône, Paris,
2008, p. 97.
10.
John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, X,
3.
11.
Basil of Caesarea, Commentary on Psalm 48, 2.
12.
Symeon the New Theologian, Catecheses, XXVIII, 164–175. For references
to other Fathers, see J. Cl. Larchet, La vie après la mort selon la
Tradition orthodoxe, Paris, 2001, pp. 264–266.
13.
Gerontikon, Asteros Publications, p. 70.
14.
John of Damascus, Dialogue Against the Manichaeans. See the edition by
B. Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. IV, Liber de
Haeresibus, Berlin–New York, 1981, no. 44, p. 376.
15.
Cited by G. Florovsky in the work Byzantine Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers,
Thessaloniki, 1992, p. 393.
16.
F. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Govostis Editions, vol. II,
Athens, 1990, p. 258.
17.
G. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, Thessaloniki, 1983, p. 304.
18.
N. Berdiaeff, Vérité et Révélation, Neuchâtel, 1954, pp. 146–147 (my own
[Greek] translation).
19.
Mark the Ascetic, The 226 Chapters on Those Who Think They Are Justified by
Works, Philokalia of the Sacred Neptic Fathers, vol. I, 2nd ed.,
Thessaloniki, 1986, nos. 18, 22.
20.
Saint Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies (27–61), Homily 60 (Ξ), 9–11,
Philokalia of the Neptic and Ascetic Fathers, vol. 8B, Thessaloniki,
1991, p. 402.
21.
Ibid., p. 8
22.
Ibid., p. 9
20.
Saint Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies (27–61), Homily 60 (Ξ), 9–11,
Philokalia of the Neptic and Ascetic Fathers, vol. 8B, Thessaloniki,
1991, p. 402.
21.
Ibid., p. 8
22.
Ibid., p. 9
23.
Ibid., p. 10
24.
N. Kabasilas, The Life in Christ (cited by P. Evdokimov, L’amour fou
de Dieu, Paris, 1973, p. 31)
25.
Ibid., p. 11, p. 404
26.
Ibid., p. 10
27.
Isaac the Syrian, Homily 58 (ΝΗ), ibid., p. 372
28.
D. Kouimoutsopoulos, Homilies on the Sunday Gospels, 2nd ed., Athens,
1923, pp. 96–97.
29.
P. Trembelas, Dogmatics, vol. II, Athens, 1959, p. 168: “And sin would
cease to be sin… if divine justice ceased to demand its punishment…”; S.
Papakostas, Repentance, Athens, 1953, p. 78; E. Matthopoulou, The
Destiny of Man, Athens, 1966, p. 350.
30.
N. Berdiaev, Spirit and Freedom (translated by Metropolitan Eirenaios of
Samos), Athens, 1952, p. 194.
31.
Régis Debray, Dieu, un itinéraire, Paris, 2001.
32.
R. Dawkins, The God Delusion, Athens, 2007.
33.
S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Athens, 1997.
34.
M. de Unamuno, Le sentiment tragique de la vie (1916), Paris, 1937.
Greek source: Τιμητικός
Τόμος Διονυσίου Μ. Μπατιστάτου, Athens, 2024, pp. 205-217.
