Dear Theophilus, 

In our last letter we had discussed some aspects of freedom and personhood and what this means to man. We had come to the point where we were looking at two different aspects of life - biological life and life as a member of the Church.

Our biological life is what we are most conscious of and it is what directs much of our actions. However, there are certain aspects of this biological life that we should become aware of. Biological life is so deeply ingrained in the biological mechanism of genetic information that we have come to see that survival for organisms has become the primary reason for their existence. There is therefore an extreme individualism, and self-survival is raised to the level of a virtue. We see this principle operating in micro-organisms as small as bacteria and viruses and in animals all the way to humans. This principle is strong because it is so tied to the nature of beings which is to see the survival of the species. Humans have not been immune to the influence of this principle and exhibit its effects in developing a new mask, the mask of the ego. Self-affirmation, satisfaction of urges and instincts and the pursuit of everything for the satisfaction of the ego have become rights and goals which it is seen as proper to pursue and exercise. Restraint is seen as unnecessary and an inhibition leading to psychological disease. Self-affirmation, often resulting in the denial of others and denial of empathy with others, is seen as healthy and natural. Death, in this scheme of things is also a very natural and necessary thing. Individual organisms, including man, live for a while and then must vacate a spot for the available resources of food and raw materials for other individuals to have their time in the sun. In a sense, biological death is an ontological necessity.

Man finds himself in a bind in all this. The satisfaction that is gained is temporary and comes to an end and the question arises - what's the meaning of all this? This question is buried under all kinds of pursuits and busy-ness but eventually this charade falls off and the question looms once again. The point that there is something wrong is unavoidable and creates anguish which culminates in a crisis as the ego and the physical body are less and less capable of masking the physical limitations of our existence and as the prospects of annihilation in death comes more clearly into focus on the horizon of our years. At the bottom of it all we come to realize that nature fails.

Death results not from some acquired moral fault but is the result of the very constitution of our nature. There is something faulty in the wiring of our nature and this fault results in mortality. We are caught in a paralysing bind which is illustrated by our bodies. The body is an instrument of our communion with others but, at the same time, it is the bearer of individualism which results in separation and in our death. The very constitution of man has to change in order for salvation to happen.

This new change comes about when a person is baptised and becomes a member of the Church. A Church is often mistaken for physical buildings or a bureaucracy but that is not what is meant when we talk about the Church. The Church is a living organism and we are incorporated into this body through Christ. In this body we find a new mode of existence which is different from the biological one. Biological links become of secondary importance and to show this, terminology formerly used for family such as "father" or "brother" is now transferred to those who are with us in the Church. Love now is based not on biological links but expresses itself in unconstrained form to everyone.

The basis of the Church is Christ and the work that he has accomplished on our behalf. We are grounded by our nature in biology butwhat we need is to ground ourselves in someone who is free. This someone is Christ who was and is a true person and is free from our restrictions. In him, the divine and human natures are united and in the Church, our hypostasis, everything that makes us unique and personal, is united to the hypostasis of Christ.

In a sense, when we look at Christian teachings, we go about this in a reversed manner. The correct pathway is from the resurrection to the incarnation, whereas it is often the other way around. The resurrection shows us that Jesus was free from the constraints of nature. The personal was so strong in him that death lost its hold on him and he rose from the dead. Through this, he showed us he is not mere man but brings another mode of existence to us and enables us to participate in this. Throughout all this he shows us that the important characteristic of God is the personal and not the nature or essence. If God is personal, then the door is opened for us to become true persons and this enables us to love. It tells us that the goal of our existence is to become true persons, something that we only taste incompletely right now, and the person that we are becoming is not lost at the point of death. All this tempts us to discard the physical and to seek some kind of spiritual salvation away from the messiness of physical existence. However, what has to be kept in view is that our quest for personal reality is realized in history in our bodies. To escape the physical is a dead end. We are called on not so much to escape physical reality as to transform this reality.

This concern with the importance of the personal in God comes through in the historical debates over the unifying principle in God. In the Eastern branch of the Church, it hasn't been the substance which is the unifying factor but the person of the Father. This may seem like an exercise in hair-splitting but it really isn't. If the unifying principle in God is the substance or essence, then we run into the problem that the personal aspect of God is of secondary importance. To guard against this, the Eastern Church sees the unifying factor in the Father who begets the Son and sends the Spirit. In this, the personal takes precedence over nature and this paves the way for the God who loves mankind. With us the predominance of nature is also a consideration. When we live according to our nature, our instincts and self-centeredness will predominate. What we are called on is to shake off this tyranny of our instincts and drives and to become responsible persons.

At this stage, I would like to make a few comments about the significance of the concept of person as applied to God and as applied to man. Sometimes the personal is looked down in our society as something of secondary importance. But this is really a false evaluation of the matter. If we look at our world, the highest achievement is that of the personal. This is what gives humans their distinctive characteristic. What we can say about God is that He is at least personal and most likely personal to such a degree as to surpass anything that we can envisage or imagine. To say that there is nothing personal in God is to deny Him the attributes of purpose, of love, of empathy. To deny personhood in God is to elevate power at the expense of everything and there is something terribly wrong with this attitude.

There is another point that I would like to address, and that is: why do we have discussions such as these? They are very abstract and we cannot really know what God is really like. So what we are doing is just a form of intellectual gymnastics. Leave things alone and just do what is right and be loving and considerate and that will be good enough.

I think that there are several answers that are possible here. The first is that humans are naturally curious and there is a yearning within people to understand. If for example I would give you a black box and say push this button and the box will print up the exact weather forecast for the next week and you did this, and it was always exactly correct, would you leave matters at this stage? I don't think so, and you will soon be wondering how the machine works and what could be done to improve it. But there is more to the matter than even this. Temptation and knowing have a closer connection than we sometimes think. And it is this that it is important to analyze.

Just think about the stages of a temptation. A situation arises and you entertain it. There is an interior struggle that goes on and it is in this period that the pros and cons of an action are weighed. Should I do this or should I not? One of the factors that determines whether you fall to temptation or not is how strongly do you hold onto your knowledge of what you should do. (The otherfactor, it should be pointed out, is that we know what we should do but we choose to go against our knowledge). Another example was the persecution of certain groups by the Christian Church. A certain position was taught by those in authority and when one looks at the teachings of Scripture one readily sees its inconsistency with Christianity. Yet this position was adopted and held in part because of the ignorance of Scriptures on the part of the believers. Now I don't want to uphold a position which says that knowing will immediately improve a situation and we will always do what is right. Knowing is just part of a complex process but it is a part and cannot be ignored. Learning and expansion of our knowledge is important. To praise ignorance is to remain ignorant.

The other point that I want to make is how important and fundamental the concept of freedom is to the universe that we live in. Even at the most basic level, there are yearnings towards freedom, towards being free of hindrances and impositions. An example comes to mind with the concept of electrons in molecules. Electrons are tiny negatively charged particles which are important constituents in chemical bonds. What we find is that the more unrestricted electrons are in terms of their location, the more stable the molecule is. This is one of many examples even within the physical domain that show that freedom is somehow at the bottom of things. It shouldn't be surprising that this principle underlies the most basic aspects of existence. Unfortunately, Churches have neglected this and sometimes have gone opposite to this principle of life. We should never forget that it is truth that defends us and it is not for us to defend truth through zeal and persecution and force.

With this, Theophilus, I end.

Yours,

Bar-Abbas

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