Dear Theophilus,

There are many images of God that circulate in our society and some of them are not very flattering. God has been blamed for a variety of problems and maybe we could look at this point, briefly, in this letter.

One of the problems that Christians face is that a certain concept has taken hold of the imagination of much of our society. The picture of God is that of someone distant and severe, demanding obedience from man. God is immutable, which means unchangeable and therefore is isolated from humanity - God does not seem to be doing very much when we look at the mess we're in - and we are of no consequence to him. Prayer is just a form of self delusion that we use in order to cope with the very unpleasant aspects of life.

The god of our society is one to whom we applied our rules of logic in an effort to prove his existence. We want this god of ours to manipulate him and use him for various goals. Of course this is bound to fail, and it does, and the reaction to this is the growth of atheism. To combat atheism, some theologians have resorted to making Christianity compatible with the spirit of the age. But, in doing this, in claiming that Christ did not Resurrect, in claiming that there is no fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions, and so on, the Christianity that was left had no resemblance to the Christianity of the early Church. And this too, has not been accepted by most Christians.

People have seen through the sham of accepting the scientific approach as the only way of knowledge. They have seen that when it comes to suffering, love and joy, the scientific method fails in its efforts to analyze and rationalize and explain. What this shows us is that there is a depth to the world which requires a different approach in order to deal with it.

Religion and the imagination are powerful methods for dealing with things which are of profound importance to man such as suffering and love. Imagination, through literature, is a very important partner of religion and it is interesting to note that much of the Bible is written in the form of poetry.

There is a very interesting connection between literature and religion and I would like to take some time to explore some of these aspects.

The scientist looks at objects in the world and analyzes them and studies them. And this points to a weakness in this approach because what analysis does is to isolate systems so as to be able to better study them. As I said previously, this is indeed a very powerful method for manipulating the world. But there is more to the world than this and this is where religion, and literature make their contribution. A poet, for example, looks at the things of the world and he notices relationships between things. We may think that much of the poet's job is to use fancy language and say complicated things. This, of course is a caricature. When a poet, for example, uses a metaphor he is doing more than just beautifying his language or speaking in a striking manner so as to address our attention. He is saying some fundamental statements about existence and about who we are and our universe. Through the use of techniques such as metaphors, the poet says that there is a fundamental unity to existence by drawing out comparisons between things that seem to have no connection at all. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is related at some deep level of being. What I have said in a dry unimaginative way can be stated poetically in that the world, and in fact all of creation, is a wedding.

The other point that flows out of this is that one of the important aspects of creation is relatedness. It is, I think, self-evident that there are echoes of these concepts in religion where our interrelatedness and unity are foundational. I want to point out to you that even in some aspects of science, especially science which is at the frontiers of exploring the universe and the mechanism as to how the universe arose, there is also a search for unity and relatedness. There is what is referred to as the Grand Unifying Theory, GUT for short, which scientists are looking for as the foundation for all of the phenomena that we observe in creation. From this we learn that whether it is religion or science or the arts, it is important to keep an open mind and not to deal with simplified caricatures which it is so easy to knock down.

There is an additional aspect of Christianity which makes its gathering of information significantly different from that of science. Christians point out that God is above all that is created and He cannot be limited by creation. Because of this, He communicates sometimes through a special method called revelation.

The concept of revelation is sometimes criticized by scientists because it is a way of getting information which is very different from anything in science. But, if we look at the matter a little bit more deeply, and realize that God is greater than the sum total of the whole universe, we see that if God does indeed exist, then revelation would be one of the ways that He would communicate with man.

Revelation is God making Himself known to man in a special and direct manner. This can occur through visions, or through historical occurrences such as the Resurrection of Christ. The challenge that is raised to revelation is: how do you know that it is true?

You see, every time that we get information, the inevitable question arises: how do we know that it is true? In science, this question is answered in a straightforward manner. We test certain aspects of what we are saying through experimentation. If someone claims that there is such a thing as gravity, we devise an experiment and we test for gravity. If the experiment confirms what was proposed, then we can test many more times and after sufficient testing, we can either confirm what we proposed or deny it. When it comes to theological knowledge, by its very nature, the question is more difficult. And this is where the main disagreement between science and religion resides: in testing the validity of the gathered information.

But I want to make something abundantly clear. There are criteria for judging information, including revelation, and that is through the communal experience of the community of the Church. This is a safeguard put into place so as to keep people from making all kinds of unjustified claims. It is far from true, as is sometimes claimed, that religious statements are accepted without any questioning or searching.

The chief repository of revelation is of course the Bible and this is one of the reasons why the reading of scriptures is central to individual prayers and to the communal worship of the Church.

Another repository of revelation are the doctrines and dogmas of the Church. Now, as soon as one mentions dogma, some will think of a benighted attitude of ignorance and credulity. We think of someone forcing us to think in a specific manner. Unfortunately, historical evidence suggests that this was attempted in the past and we are still reaping the results of those actions. However, it is somewhat unfair to tar the whole experience of the Church with the excesses of the past. Dogmas are truths that have been tested by the community and have been found truthful with reference to the experience of the Church. They summarize and codify the fundamental revelation that has been received either through individual members or through corporate gatherings such as councils. Thus, to illustrate this point, we could look at one of the foundational teachings of the Church - the Holy Trinity. Christianity is unique with respect to other Middle Eastern religions in claiming that God is one but multipersonal at the same time. This dogma came through the experiences of the members of the Church. It became clear that it was impossible to think of God as a mere unity. The role of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as experienced in prayer and in the life of the Church, drove the believers to proclaim the dogma of the Holy Trinity. There are difficulties in rationally trying to understand this teaching but the experience of the Church was overwhelming and this teaching became accepted by all within the Church. The fact that we cannot rationally explain this dogma, as well as others, turns out to be a strength and not a weakness. It shows that this is truly a revelation and not something invented by man as some exercise of mental prowess.

I see, Theophilus, that you keep on returning to the question of the relationship between science and religion. You are still troubled here. Maybe, what I can do in the next letter is expand a little more on this point. For now, adieu.

Yours, as always,

Bar-Abbas.