Dear Theophilus, 

I have found the questions that you raise interesting and challenging. I think a lot of our problems arise because either we do not understand or we understand incorrectly. Even if we take such an example as ourselves, we are often amazed at the depths that exist within us and that affect us even without our realizing this.

It seems somewhat ironic that religion is seen as something that fetters and takes away the liberty of people. There are of course reasons for this but at the same time, loss of freedom is totally contrary to what Christianity is about. What I propose to do in this letter is to discuss some of the popular misconceptions that color our view of Christianity and I will start our discussion by considering man and what he is. It is ironic that people will discuss God and the universe and all kinds of other complex matters without giving a second thought as to understanding themselves.

In our day and age the concept of person and individual has become almost synonymous, but, in Christianity they are different and contradictory terms. The root of the word personhood is the Greek word "prosopon" which literally means, face. A person therefore is defined by a relationship and this is very different from individual where this signifies no need for the other. If we were to dig a little deeper, we would see that existence has two important components: one is essence or nature, and the other is personhood. It is in the latter, in the personhood, that the uniqueness of each individual human being arises and not in the nature. The nature is what illustrates what is common to all humanity. Thus, we can see defined characteristics that differentiate a dog from a human being. It is these characteristics that we refer to as nature or essence. In a sense, the essence is an abstract quality which, in order for it to exist, must be expressed in a particular member. The person sums up the common characteristics of being human, but surpasses them. In other words, you represent all the characteristics of being human, but no one else is exactly like you; you are unique and therefore, you are greater than your nature. Here you can see the difference between individual and person. An individual is replaceable; a person is not.

It seems that to the modern mind, religion and guilt go in tandem. Here, again, this view is held because of some erroneous conceptions. Morality highlights the faults that exist in man, but morality is not a goal to be striven for. For a lot of people it seems that the major aim of life is to be moral, to behave in a certain manner. In order to understand this better, it would pay us to look at the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Man came into existence with a unified nature. Human beings were as one in that the pain of one was the pain of the other and the joy of one was the joy of the other. But, with the fall, human nature fragments and individuals arise who now see their main objective personal as survival with a minimum of pain. This position gives rise to conflict and this spreads fear. Self-preservation, a futile pursuit as everyone knows because one statistic that applies to everyone who is born is that they die, becomes the predominant force in much of human activity. Man is made in the image of God and God represents that unity in one essence, but at the same time, maintains the diversity in the Persons of the Trinity. This was what man was modelled on, but he strayed from this and renounced participation in true life. Man is not completely degraded and experiences that yearning for that true life but, cannot experience it and this leads to feelings of alienation and pain. Sin, therefore, at its deepest and truest is not a violation of some objective code - sin is a violation of a relationship. Sin is our refusal to live in personal communion with God and with our neighbor. Sin is a measure of our accceptance of non-existence. Even a virtuous existence cannot save us from death and would blind us by giving us a false sense of security.

In view of what was said above, why is asceticism practised? The aim of asceticism is to convert the impersonal forces of instinct and biological necessity into occasions of personal choice. Its goal is not to subjugate unruly matter so as to "spiritualize" it but to assert one's freedom. Therefore, the disagreement between the material and spiritual, which is often seen as the central idea of asceticism, is false.

Recently you expressed your fears about some of the discoveries being made in the biological sciences. You asked a very blunt question - what if scientists in the future create life? To answer your question, I have to ask another question, and please, don't consider this facetious, but what is life? This may seem as such an unnecessary question but I pose it to enable us to pursue it a little deeper than we normally do. If you start off with relatively simple compounds called amino acids, which consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sometimes sulfur, these compounds can be linked into long chains. These chains give rise to what we call proteins which are essential for biological life. In addition to these we have long chains of compounds which consist of sugar molecules, cyclic nitrogen containing compounds called bases, and groups which come from phosphoric acid called phosphates. These go to form DNA and RNA which are crucial for life because they enable proteins to form. These molecules have a wonderful capacity, on their own, without any external effort, to form other molecules which are necessary for life as we know it. It is conceivable that these molecules attain, with time to the complexity where they start to reproduce other molecules and the whole aggregate gets more and more complex resulting in a system which we call a living organism which in term may become even more complex resulting in an animal or human. But this represents only a partial picture of what it means to be living and to be human and this is the tragedy of our time - the picture that I have described above is seen as the totality.

And again, I come back to the question of what we mean by "life". The Church sees life as more than just some physical manifestation in the biological sphere. Life is seen as something personal and something that involves a relationship. This is the life that the world cannot give, nor can the world take away and it is the life that the world cannot understand. Since the world gives its "life" through chemical processes, this "life" can be taken away from us through the cessation of these processes. It is interesting that in the English language the term "life" starts to come into usage in the eighteenth century with the growth of the biological sciences. Before that other terms were used such as, for example, the quick (living) and the dead. In a sense, modern society has idolized the "life" that comes with chemical reactions. But, and I want to emphasize this point, we must not become overly spiritual and we should respect this physical life that we are given because it acts as a vehicle for us to be used for growth, to love, and to have relationships with other human beings. Martyrdom, which is so difficult for us to understand or accept, is simply an assertion of the priority of real life as opposed to the life that we experience through our biology. This other life is referred to as eternal life and does not mean, as in popular conceptions, simply a life which projects into linear time infinitely, but a totally and radically different form of life. Life eternal is life abundant.

You raise the topic of repentance in your letter saying that you find this term demeaning and reinforcing of guilt. You refer to modern man's rebellion against the tyrannical god who has man under a spotlight just waiting for man to slip up. You talk of individual sin giving birth to guilt, and this, in turn, gives rise to psychologiacl complexes. Unfortunately, I think that you describe a situation that is not that rare. But again, this arises because of a faulty understanding of the concept of sin, of morality, and of repentance. I hope that you have learned an important result from the question that you raise. You expressed concern about certain developments within the biological sciences and we could have simply ignored them or refused to consider them. However, by not ignoring them, we have deepened our knwoledge and crystallized certain concepts and thereby we have grown. This is an important lesson for all of us.

The purpose of the Law is not just to condemn man, but to show man that the universe in fact is ordered and not chaotic. For us this may seem to be a given, but for societies in the past this was a major concern. But remember, that the Law represents an agreement between two parties - God and man and it demands that both parties be true to the Law. The fact that man fails is one side of the question but, there is another. God does not fail. He obliges Himself and places Himself in a position of promise and thereby shows that God can be depended upon. The Law shows what God is like but we read the wrong message. The Law expresses God's faithfulness but we see a God who is judgemental.

What our failing to live out morality means is that it shows the reality of the fall. The fall is centered on one fact - that man thinks that he is autonomous, that man can live on his own and that man's fate is completely in his hands. Man, to his chagrin, soon learns the folly of this position as death and strife come as uninvited guests.

Repentance ushers in a change in the way we live and a change in the way we see the world. It is hard for us to change because our difficulties are very deeply ingrained within us as any psychiatrist will attest. In a sense, when we are told that we have to die to ourselves what we are being told is that we have to change to our very roots. Superficial changes are illusory. Any taming of sin, any self-improvement will inevitably lead to failure as we have seen demonstrated many times. Sin plays an important role in showing us our fallennes and calling us to repentance which tells us to give up our hope in our autonomy. Repentance ushers in a change in our relationship to creation. The world now ceases to be an arena of conflict over resources and the material now becomes a means of communion and interdependence.

We must learn to get away from seeing morality as simply something that is strictly individual and to get away from morality as something that takes away man's freedom and replaces it with obligations. In a sense, morality can blind us with a false sense of security - we have fulfilled certain obligations and we can leave it at this. But remember that morality is not a goal in itself. Morality is a means to something and if we make morality a goal, we run into the risk of pride. A French writer said that virtue would not go so far if it did not have vanity for a companion. There is an important lesson here. Our faith teaches us that the goal is not virtue but truth. What morality shows us is that we live a lie and that is our problem. We are people of the lie and this brings us a bitter harvest of death and pain.

With this I will end my letter,

Bar-Abbas

Return to Index