The Christian Faith: The Only Meaning of Life

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.