Being and Becoming Human

As I have mentioned in a couple of previous Blog Series ( What Does It Mean to be Human?   And   A Quest to Know What it Means to be Human) I have had an interest for all of my adult life in questions about what it is to be human and what it means to be human.   For one thing, we humans have consciousness and can reflect on these issues.  What is it about us that makes this possible?  And does this ability make us different from all other living creatures on earth?  Other animals have brains, some seem to have emotions, show signs of being able to learn, have communication skills, and can act with intention.

We share similar genetic and anatomical structures with other animals.  We have shared a long history on earth together with other creatures, adapting to a changing world environment.  Yet, we seem to be unique in a conscious awareness of our environment which we can share in words, symbols, images and philosophical speculation.   We can imagine a God – an invisible being, with supernatural powers who lives totally outside and beyond space and time and who miraculously has an ability to communicate with us and even abide in and with us,  and us with and in Him.   We are able to communicate with one another about this God who we believe created us, rather than our creating God.

And so, as I read, and have been an avid reader for most of my life, I am always looking for thoughts about what a human is and what it means for us to be human.  Through the years I “tagged” various passages from the books I was reading with the moniker “being human.”   I recorded the page numbers from the various books in which I logged these tags and with the advent of computers and word processing, I am able now to assemble those quotes together.  They are the basis of this Blog Series.   So this series is not ‘research’ in a traditional sense of the word.  As I was reading I would mark a passage as relating to “being human” however I defined that tag in the moment I recorded it.  Through time, my understanding of that tag changed.   So all of the quotes were not gathered to prove anything, but are rather a collection of quotes that struck me through a life time of reading.   Now I intend to assemble them and share them over the next many weeks in through the format of a Blog Series, which will eventually be gathered together in a PDF.

The quotes are mostly from Orthodox Christian sources, but not all since I read other things along the way and sometimes noted an idea that caught my attention from these other sources.   My goal in this really is to share what I have encountered as the richness and depth  of the answers to the questions:

What is it to be human?

What does it mean to be human?

What makes us human?

How do we become human?

I assume there is meaning in life.  I assume humans are unique among the animals on earth in their abilities of self-conscious awareness, creatitivity, imagination, and rational expression.  I assume that being human is a process of becoming: though a human fetus is human, he/she still is potential and if allowed to live becomes more than a fetus.  There is a process of maturation and growth and development, all of which are part of being human and which help us to become human.    Thus the title of the Blog Series, “Being and Becoming Human.”  We are human and are always in the process of becoming human.   But as we look around, we can see it is possible to dehumanize others and to behave inhumanly in our relationship to others.   That of course assumes there is some ideal or idea of what a human is.  And it assumes that we can fall from that idea or ideal, and have in fact fallen from it.

Ideas of a human are presented to us in the creation narratives found in Genesis 1 and 2.   The two accounts of Creation are quite different in detail, but both have humans being created by God.  In Genesis 1:26-28 we read:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

We find in this version of the creation of humans several themes which we will frequently encounter in Orthodox writers:

Humans are created in God’s image and likeness.  The image of God in each human is indelible, though it can be covered over and become invisible through human actions, specifically through sin.

The image of God has something to do with God’s Trinitarian nature.  The image of God is related to many aspects of our being human but certainly is not limited to any physical visible aspect of ourselves.

Humans are given a special relationship to all other animals.  That relationship is hierarchical, and the humans are ‘over’ these other animals.

Humans are not merely animal but are special creatures and have among all the creatures on earth a special role with God the Creator.

Humans have a special role to play in creation as well.

In the second account of God’s creating humans in Genesis 2:7, we read:

“…then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

We find several themes in this version of the creation narrative which are emphasized a great deal in Orthodox writings:

God creates us using the already existing, inanimate dirt of the earth.  We have a physical nature.

God breathes His breath into our physical body, and thus we each have the breath/spirit of God in us naturally.  We have a relationship with God which is related to our breathing, related to our being alive.  We cannot live without also having this relationship to God.

We become “a living being” – namely, a soul.  The soul is the very place where God interacts with the human – it is the interface point between God’s spirit and the physical world.   Humanity from the moment of creation is capable of bearing God and relating to God and having God dwell within us.

Biblical authors frequently reflected on the unusual character of humans and marveled at God’s creativity and love for us.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,  

(Psalm 8:3-6, quoted in Hebrews 2:6)

 There are many objects in the universe larger than humans, seemingly more glorious and mysterious and even more powerful than us.  Yet God who forms humans with His own fingers (a touching image indeed!) is most concerned with His human creatures.   The imagery shows a tenderness in God delicately shaping us with His fingers, and a fragility in us that we must be handled with such precise, dexterous skill and care.

In the rest of this Blog series we will be exploring some of the themes about humans introduced to us in Genesis 1 and 2.   And for us, we start our discussion about humans with God.

Next:   God and Humanity (I)

Being Human: The Relationship between Mind and Brain (II)

This is the 6^th Blog in this series which began with Science and the Church:  Are the Facts In?  The previous blog is Being Human: The Relationship between Mind and Brain.  We are now considering some of the ideas and claims of James Le Fanu (Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves) that deal with the human brain and the ways in which scientific materialism in and of themselves cannot account for what it means to be human and how the brain in fact works.

Le Fanu postulates that in fact thoughts are non-material and yet have physical effects.   This goes against the grain of those scientists who are committed to atheistic materialism and who deny that the non-material can have any effect on the world and thus must deny free will which is a non-material force.

“Science holds that nothing can happen that is not governed by the natural laws of material causation. Thoughts are non-material, therefore by definition they can’t cause anything to happen. Hence, my supposition that I am free to choose one course of action over another must be an illusion generated by the physical activity of the brain to create the impression that it is my non-material ‘self, it is ‘I’, who is making the decision.”   (Kindle  Loc. 3654-57)

John 15:16

Some scientists do claim that there is no such thing as free will since all thoughts and emotions are the direct result of chemical processes in the human brain or other organs.   Le Fanu does not accept this assertion and upholds a notion that thinking is real, cannot be completely explained by chemical/electrical impulses in the brain and that these non-material thoughts do in fact effect not only ourselves but the rest of the world as well.

“But to accept the supposition that non-material thoughts (the desire to cross the road) can have physical effects (causing the legs to move) would be to introduce into our understanding of the natural world some non-material force that stands outside, and is not governed by, the principles of lawful material causation. This dilemma can be resolved only in materialist terms by supposing that the decision (for example) when to cross the road is not freely taken, but is determined by the electrical activity of our brain.”   (Kindle Loc. 3014-17)

Such determinism has been part of human thinking for centuries.  It is not the thinking in Orthodox tradition however which does accept the notion of free will.  Some Christians, especially Calvinists, completely believe in predestination – God determines everything in the universe.  Atheistic scientists reject God and accept notions of total determinism –  human thought is merely the product of electrical impulses running through the brain cells and thus follows the materialistic law of cause and effect.   Thinking is thus totally materialistically caused and thus there is no such thing as free will.  Orthodoxy has traditionally rejected such determinism and has accepted the notion that we do have the ability to make choices, for good and for ill.  There really is a thing called the “self” and the self makes real choices which shape the future.  [It is interesting to note that Einstein was a determinist as well and this is why he had such great problems with quantum mechanics which allow for uncertainty and indeterminism.]

Le Fanu says that despite the denial of a few prominent scientists the evidence shows that non-material processes (thinking for example) do have an effect in the world.   Everything does not follow a perfect cause and effect pattern set off by random events.   Rather, humans are able to make choices and influence their future.   A purely materialistically based approach to humanity does not take into full account what it is to be human.  Le Fanu says there is an existing mystery involving humanity, and conscious awareness and thought is part of that mystery and is as real as any physical property.

“Collectively the findings of these studies strongly support the view that the subjective nature of mental processes (e.g. thoughts, feelings, beliefs) significantly influence the various levels of brain functioning. Beliefs and expectations can markedly modulate neurophysiological and neurochemical activity in brain regions involved in perception, movement, pain and various aspects of emotional process.”   (Kindle  Loc. 3715-18)  

The non-material, so scientific studies have shown, thus exists and is able to influence the material world.  This is a basic assumption of believers and Le Fanu thinks the scientific evidence proves the point.  Secular scientists reduce being human to material impulses that ultimately have no true meaning.   We simply do what our bodies’ chemistry and electronic impulses tell us to do.  While that view is held by some scientists it is not the thinking of most theistic Christians who accept free will.

“‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.’”  (Kindle Loc. 3027-28)

While the above sentence might appear to be true to those who cannot accept the role of a Creator God, for believers there is something backwards in the thinking.  “I” am not created by cellular electrical impulses, rather the behavior of the nerve cells and molecules is “me” working out my will through the cells and electrical impulses.  “I” am willing my material body to behave in a certain way.   The “self” is inseparably linked to its material brain.  Both brain and mind emerge together and in their interconnectivity the self is born.   We do not have in this world a “self” apart from our corporeal existence.  The self which is non-material is based in the very material nature of the brain and the non-material self effects the brain, allowing us to do things, seeing for example.  The eye works in a most mysterious way to allow us to see colors.

 “… yet the particles of light impacting on the retina are colourless, just as the waves of sound impacting on the eardrum are silent, and scent molecules have no smell. They are all invisible, weightless, subatomic particles of matter travelling through space. It is the brain that impresses the colours, sounds and smells upon them. ‘For the [light] rays, to speak properly, are not coloured,’ wrote the great Isaac Newton.”  (Kindle Loc. 3358-61)     

The brain is interpreting the impulses the body receives.  The brain which mysteriously and even organically is linked with the self imposes meaning on the material and immaterial worlds.

“The first mystery is how the fundamentally similar neuronal circuits in Rachel Carson’s brain conjure from the barrage of colourless photons and soundless pressure waves impinging on her senses that vividly unique and unified sensation of that ‘wild night all around us’…”  (Kindle Loc. 3783-85)

Thus our brains, quite material in their existence open up to us to perceive, remember and organize both the physical and non-materials experiences we have in the world.  Le Fanu sees this as part of the great mystery which is ourselves.  We discover through science that we are not merely physical beings, but have a true non-material dimension which introduces into our study of human beings notions of the self, the soul, the mind, the heart.

Next:  The Mystery of Ourselves: A conclusion

Of Brains and Brawn: Human Evolution

Carl Zimmer writing in the 8 July 2011 DISCOVER science magazine notes that in 1758 Carolus Linnaeus in creating his taxonomy labeled humans, “Homo sapiens” which is Latin for “wise man.”  Zimmer says one might question how wise humans are but far less questionable would have been to call us Homo megalencephalus – “man with a giant brain” since compared to the body size of other animals, our brains are huge.   On the other hand, humans have far less guts/intestines than one would expect when compared to the weights of other primates.  Studies also indicate that the human and genetic codes between chimps and humans differ in that the human genetic code led to the development of “molecular pumps” that funneled sugar to our brains, whereas in chimps the sugar is more funneled to muscle.  So even if you are not sure about certain people you meet, studies would say humans tend to have more brain while chimps more brawn.

According to Zimmer an amazing 25% of the calories we eat each day are needed to fuel the brain’s functioning.  So by thinking more could we lose weight?  He doesn’t say, and so far it isn’t working for me, but I’ll keep thinking a lot about dieting and see if it helps burn calories.

The size of the human brain and the amount of calories it consumes may also be a reason not to compare humans to rats or mice in certain scientific studies.  Such studies show that these animals when kept on a diet that includes periods of too few calories tend to live longer.  It is not known whether a similar idea applies to humans, but it could be that such a diet would end up starving the human brain and not prolonging human life.

Evolutionary science theorizes that it was humans changed from eating “lower-energy diets of barks and leaves to higher-energy cuisine of seeds, tubers and meat” which fueled the growth of the brain.  The brain demands a lot of energy to grow, and in animals more reliant on their muscle than their brains to survive, there is little chance for the energy to be funneled to the brain.  This may explain why though the large brain has helped Homo sapiens adapt so well to this planet, the large brain has remained a rarity in the animal world.  The flight or fight pattern of survival may draw too much energy to the muscles to allow the brain to grow.

Now, of course, there is the issue if we have all this brain, can we use it to further reduce the need for fight or flight survival and help all humans to further develop their potential?

We do not have to compete in order to survive on planet earth.  We can cooperate with one another to solve problems and to provide for the needs of our fellow humans.

Adam’s Fall

This is the 9^th blog in this series which began with Adam & Sin, Paradise and Fasting.  The previous blog is Adam and Eve (2).

“We had become accursed through Adam’s transgression and had fallen into the trap of death, abandoned by God.”  (Cyril of Alexandria, ON THE UNITY OF CHRIST, p 105)

The effects of the sin of Adam and Eve on not only humankind but on all creatures on earth, at least in the Christian tradition since the time of St. Paul’s interpretation of the Fall,  is very profound.   The understanding of Adam through the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God, places the impact of the sin as the central event which altered humanity’s relationship with God and with all creation.  For through sin, death became part of the human condition.  While in the Old Testament Jewish tradition God provides Torah to instruct humans how to live rightly on His earth, Torah cannot overcome mortality.  So despite Torah, despite righteous adherence to the details of the Law, humans continue to die as they did before Torah was given.

The question that got much debated, especially in the Christian West, was whether the sin of Adam somehow changed human nature, leaving humans powerless in the face of sin.

“Adam is not actively responsible for the indwelling of sin in the whole world, but rather was a sort of door which opened the way for sin.  … although sin did not enter into the world by means of Adam’s deed alone, but only through it, still this deed was the cause of each man’s death.  …  Thus men are not condemned for Adam’s sin (cp Jer. 31:29 and Ezek 18:2), but for their own sinfulness, the consequence of which (death) began with Adam di enos (as through one); but all have sinned, not in Adam, not en o (in whom), but eph o (because).”  (Antony Khrapovitsky interpreting Romans 5:12, THE MORAL IDEA OF THE MAIN DOGMAS OF THE FAITH, p 185)

What is very clear in the writings of St. Paul and in Orthodox tradition is that Christ, not Torah, was the cure for what ailed humanity from the time of the Fall.

“More specifically, in the Greek tradition theosis signifies the transposition of the believer from a state of corruption and mortality to one of incorruption and immortality.  Here again the Eastern tradition has a different emphasis from that in the West.  In the Greek fathers the tragedy of Adam’s fall is not that all people inherit his guilt, as in the Augustinian tradition.  They hold, most certainly, that all people are sinful, and that the fall was an incomparable disaster.  But we all sin freely and incur our own guilt.  Rather than guilt, in Adam we have inherited death, mortality, and corruption. ‘The first man brought in universally death,’ writes Cyril of Jerusalem.  Sin originates, Basil the Great insists, in our own free wills: ‘Do not then go beyond yourself to seek the evil, and imagine that there is an original nature of wickedness… Each of us, let us acknowledge it, is the first author of his own vice.’

Panagiotes Chrestou elaborates on this important distinction: ‘The descendants of Adam inherit him in his entirety, including his nature and his weakness.  They did not inherit Adam’s guilt, as St. Augustine taught in the West; for, according to the view of the Greek fathers, sin is a personal problem.  Adam and Eve on one side, and their descendants on the other, interpenetrate each other in such a way that every man bears by birth that nature which Adam and Eve corrupted. … In this way humankind has fallen from the road to life onto the road to death, from incorruption to corruption.’  According to Anastasius of Sinai, we are heirs of Adam’s corruption, but ‘we are not punished for his disobedience to the Divine Law.  Rather, Adam being mortal, sin entered into his very seed.  We receive mortality from him…. The general punishment of Adam for his transgression is corruption and death.’” (Daniel Clendenin, EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY: A WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, pp 132-133)

Next: Adam in St. Gregory Palamas

Genetic Engineering (I)

(Originally written in 2003)

Dachau Crematorium: Genocide is Genetic Engineering

Though much attention gets focused on the work of genetic scientists and their potential impact on the human gene pool, in fact modern geneticists are not the inventors of “genetic engineering.” Ever since humans began making choices regarding mates and mating, the value of various human lives, and warfare, policy makers have been engaged in a process of genetic engineering not based in modern science but in ideologies, nationalism, and economic self interest. The question is not only should policy makers oversee genetic science and technologies, but how can all humans use the knowledge of the genetic sciences to understand, be aware of and influence the decisions of humanity’s leadership. Humans as a species have conscious self awareness, only now are we becoming consciously aware of the power of this knowledge.

Becoming Aware of the Impact of Human Consciousness

Scientists involved in various forms of genetic research and technology have become the focus of attention in the debates regarding their potential effect on the human gene pool. The reality of life however is that current geneticists are not the originators of efforts to manipulate the human gene pool. These scientists have merely helped focus our attention on the effects of human conscious choice on the gene pool. Policy makers worried that such genetic scientists need to controlled have in fact dangerously narrowed the perspective required to understand the issues involved. It is not science alone that has, is, or can change genetics, nature and humanity. Politicians, ideologues, industrialists, doctors, and military leaders have been shaping these same issues for all of human history. Geneticists by helping us understand how genetics work and by mapping the human genome have helped reveal how the genome is also a written history of the effects humans have made through time.

Humans emerged as beings with conscious self awareness. Individuals and decision makers throughout history used this consciousness to make a wide variety of policy choices. These decisions have impacted and been recorded in the human gene pool. That is the story of humanity. Intentionally influencing genetics is not the invention of science. What is new to us recently is our becoming aware of the meaning, implications and the power of this consciousness. This is what genetic science is helping us to understand. The mapping of the genome helps reveal to us how human choices enter into our hereditary nature and are recorded within each person’s genome. The policies we adopt and employ thus do have an impact on all of human history.

Humanity now becomes cognizant of how human policy decisions in so many realms of life effect humankind and our human hereditary future. The mapping of the human genome is making it possible for us to trace the history of human choices as recorded in our genes. What needs to become clear to policy makers is that these issues are not merely scientific. To understand what is at stake for the human species requires a much broader perspective than focusing on the scientific community. Human activity in the realms of politics, government, the social sciences, ideologies, economics, are all shaping human genetics, natural selection and thus nature itself.

For example issues of genetic control of the human race, predate the modern world. For at the very moment that humans began making conscious choices based in self awareness (rather than purely instinctual behavior), humans began affecting and changing the genetic makeup of humankind. This certainly predates any awareness of what was being accomplished. Humans began choosing mates for particular reasons (strength, looks, wisdom, family blood lines), rather than instinctively copulating. Tribes, villages, or nations adopted rules about who could marry whom, again forming the basis of “genetic engineering.” The same is true when tribes and hordes and nations went to war. Modern genocide is in fact a form of genetic engineering not being engaged by scientists (though as in Nazi death camps science intentionally aided the process), but in fact an engineering condoned by politicians, ideologues, armies.

As another example of how the human gene pool is altered by human decisions we can consider medical science with its many advancements in prolonging human life, in helping diseased and genetically mal-adapted people to live not only productive lives, but reproductive ones. The human desire to relieve suffering from poverty, famine, disease, and to lengthen life has in fact been another form of “genetic engineering” undoing natural selection’s tendency toward the survival of the fittest, perpetuating gene problems into future generations.

In addition, reproductive technologies of all kinds in as much as they help infertile couples have children, or help children (including premature) come to term, are in fact changing the gene pool. No longer is human reproduction guided merely by the creative chance of natural selection, for now humans are introducing into nature a conscious creative element for procreation. This can keep in the gene pool genetic forms of infertility as well as perpetuating previously inviable genes or gene combinations. We have thus by human intelligent design already altered the human gene pool and contributed an intelligent, conscious and intentional factor into human evolution and genetic makeup. Chance alone is not the sole factor now shaping human evolution.

Next:  Genetic Engineering (II)

(see also my blog series DNA: The Secret of Life)

DNA: THE SECRET OF LIFE (B)

This is the conclusion to my blog in which I am reviewing DNA: THE SECRET OF LIFE By James Watson (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2003).  I wrote the review in 2005 after reading the book, but never published the review.  The first blog is entitled, DNA: THE SECRET OF LIFE (A).

3) In this book one also encounters a scientific challenge to pro-life thinking. Secular humanistic compassion and love is embraced by the author. Though Watson is comfortable with allowing anyone to make reproductive decisions based upon their religious beliefs, he does feel that religious constraint is imposed on the free choice of secularists. For Watson, science holds a key to relieve the untold suffering in this world. Genetically modified crops can greatly increase the yield on farms and feed the world’s masses. Genetically modified crops do and will reduce dependency on insecticides and herbicides, thus reducing pollution of land and water, again benefitting everyone on earth. Such modifications by reducing our use of chemicals will improve our health, so he argues. He believes this is being pro-life. For him, suffering is the great evil which love must overcome. Suffering, so he believes, can be relieved by human ingenuity including the genetic modification of food and the through genetic therapies for humans. He points out several terribly painful and wasting diseases which we now know are genetically determined and can be avoided by the genetic screening of women. Why he asks, wouldn’t we want to spare fellow humans from short lives which are full of pain? He is OK with using abortion to attain these ends, but he also believes genetic testing of couples can help them decide whether or not to conceive children in the first place based upon using medical determinations of whether they are genetic carriers of wasting diseases. Through genetic testing of couples, they can decide not to pass along their genetic defects to their offspring. Watson appears to take a very utilitarian view of human life. The death of infants and children from wasting genetic diseases is not acceptable to him morally when we have the knowledge to prevent their conception or coming to term. His argument is that we take utmost care to help the sick and dying be comfortable and painless and we put our effort and energy into conquering diseases, so why not use the obvious science of genetics to accomplish these same goals? The book offers insight into the mind of a man who doesn’t think religious arguments ought to be forced on the rest of humanity.

Whereas Christians would argue that human life, even if shortened and diseased, is still valuable and sacred, Watson sees life as being meaningful when it is productive. An infant or child’s brief life in constant pain is of questionable value to him. Why would we wish such an existence on anyone if we have the technology to stop it? Would it not , he asks, be more humane and comforting to avoid bringing such life into existence in the first place? If we as religious people in love and compassion see our duty to help prevent others from suffering or understand our role to relieve the suffering of others (even by anaesthetizing them through their entire existence), why do we argue for bringing into existence lives which we know absolutely will be nothing but sorrow and pain for their shortened existence? How, he asks, is that more moral or compassionate or loving than using our genetic knowledge to avoid bringing them into being? These I think are the arguments that pro-lifers will face during the next decade.  For him pain and suffering are the greatest evils, and a short life of suffering is of no value whatsoever.

4) Watson stays true to his description of being a secularist and a scientist even as he considers the dark side of humanity. He describes this negative side of humans as being “selfish” which he defines as “that aspect of our nature that evolution has hardwired to promote our own survival.” An interesting definition of what we would call sin. In evolutionary terms, selfishness and sinfulness are for the survival of the species! But Watson is not convinced that humanity’s hubris really is the most powerful force in our lives. He does state that he sees humans as being first social beings with compassion for others as a natural choice and force in our lives. He believes it is this compassion which makes us uniquely human. It is our ability to love and our need for love which will save us from our darker side of evolved selfishness. And he sees this compassion as manifesting itself best when humans decide to prevent the suffering of others through knowledge such as DNA has revealed to us.

5) Watson does not believe that secularists are immoral. Rather he feels they simply “feel no need for a moral code written down in an ancient tome.” He believes in the goodness and compassion of humanity because we are social beings. Apparently for him goodness emerges naturally from humans because of our social nature. He openly says love is what is responsible for human survival on this planet (but one has to wonder how he reconciles that with the claim in the same chapter that selfishness is a human adaptation for species survival). He looks to DNA as being a new form of scripture: “Our DNA, the instruction book of human creation, may well come to rival religious scripture as the keeper of the truth.”

He sounds a challenge to believers which is why I think we need to read his text and understand the world to which we are to witness the truth of the Gospel.   If this empirical world is all there is, then for folks like Watson terminating “unsuccessful” or “unproductive” lives makes sense.  If however, as Christian Orthodoxy believes, each conceived human bears the divine likeness and experiences the divine life despite or even in suffering, then each life is meaningful and valuable, not only here but in the eternity of God.  Pro-life means that each human existence is valuable no matter how short or painful because being human is not measured purely by productivity or by freedom from pain.   Each human life reveals something about the goodness of God.  Thus we strive to defend life especially for the defenseless.

Why did God become human?

Why did God become human? 

Simple answer:  To destroy death.

 God is eternal – without beginning or end – and thus doesn’t die.  (Despite the claims that God is dead!)  He can avoid death – doesn’t really have to deal with it or wrestle with it.  He can if He chooses totally ignore it as it has nothing to do with His existence.

But His human creations are mortal and subject to death.  God feels the sting of death through the Humans He loves.

Humans are not eternal beings – we have a beginning and so cannot be eternal.  God can’t bestow eternity on beings that have a beginning and of which it must be said there was a time when humans did not exist.    

God can however bestow immortality upon His creatures.  He can overcome the limitations of death.

He could prohibit death, but humans chose death, and God doesn’t prohibit free choice or its consequences.  The God who is love does however save His creatures from sin and death and thus from human consequences.

Christmas:  the incarnation of the Word of God.  The Word become flesh is Jesus Christ, the God incarnate.   Humanity is thus lifted up by God to divinity through the union of God with humanity in Jesus Christ.

God becomes human in order to die so that He cdan destroy death and enable humans to become divine and live in life everlasting.  Only by becoming mortal can God defeat death – not prohibit it, or simply avoid it or banish it – but actually take it on and trample it down and triumph over it.

The incarnation and the death of Christ are thus necessary for the resurrection and defeat of the final enemy: death.  

God actually defeats death in the resurrection of His Son.  God destroys the power of death and frees all humanity for all eternity from the death grip of sin.

The Incarnation – God takes on not only human flesh to save it, but also takes on death to destroy it.  For in the eternal kingdom of Heaven death is destroyed not simply defeated (Revelation 20:14, 21:4).

Hebrews 2:14-15 –   Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.

Hebrews 2:9-10 –   But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.  For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.

2 Timothy 1:10 –    and now has manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Philippians 2:5-8 –     Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross

Romans 6:9-10 –    For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

1 Corinthians 15:20-26 –    But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.  Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.  For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15:54-57 –    When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 20:14-21:4   –   Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. … Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband;  and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

God Questions His Creation: An After Word

See:  God Questions His Creation:  Genesis 11:10-32 (d)

Genesis opens with words of grandeur and mystery:  “In the beginning, God…”  God creating the heavens and earth is the beginning of space and time which are necessary for our own existence.   Genesis does not begin offering insights into this God apart from His creating and His creation; despite God’s revelation of Himself, He remains a mystery to us, with His essence beyond our capability of knowing.  (Fifth Century Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus postulates that Genesis does not begin with dogmatics because the ancient Israelites were not yet ready to understand the depths of such revelation and rather needed to learn about the Creator to refute the false worship of creation the Jews were coming to accept from the Egyptians at the time of Moses who is credited with writing the story). 

The story of God for us commences not in eternity but in His self-revelation in time and space.  We in fact can know nothing about God apart from creation:  all that we can know about God is known by us (mediated) through created things (including ourselves!).   When God chose to reveal Himself, He created that which is “not God,” that to which He can reveal Himself.  God’s initial action inaugurating creation is to speak His Word, and in doing so light comes into existence.  God’s spoken work is all about illumination and revelation, making it possible for those with eyes to see.  God brings forth life, which is to say “not God” into being, and also empowers this “not God” with the ability to perpetuate itself through procreation.  That which is “not God”, creation,  shares in the life of God and the life-givingness of God.  We create and procreate because God shared Himself with His creation.

While we logically read the Genesis story as the beginning of our story as human guests on God’s earth starting with verse 1:1, experientially the story of Genesis begins for us in its last line: “So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt”  (Genesis 50:26).  This last line of Genesis causes us to stop and ask, “Why do we die?  How did we humans created to live in Paradise, ever get to this point of lying dead in a coffin in Egypt?”  We started with God creating the heavens and the earth.  We started with God breathing His breathe into dust and forming a living being.  How did humans created in God’s image and likeness, placed in a perfect garden whose landscape architect and maker is of God, created by God to have dominion over the entire world, chosen by God to be His people and doers of His will, ever end up subject to mortality and lying dead in a coffin in the foreign land of Egypt?  Why aren’t we living in a perfect world, in which God clearly reigns over all, and in which humans are clearly regents over every other form of life on earth?  Why aren’t we living in paradise or at least the Promised Land?    The answer to that question is exactly what the Book of Genesis is about. 

Genesis is our spiritual sojourn to discover how we became the beings we humans are.  More than a historical accounting, Genesis is a spiritual sojourn – the unfolding of human interaction with God and with creation.  Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, sums it up this way:  “The book (Genesis) commences with, ‘In the beginning God created…’ and ends with the words, ‘…in a coffin in Egypt.’  These first and last words of the First Book of Moses, Genesis, are in themselves a summary of man’s spiritual history, for God is ever saving and man is ever falling; God is ever delivering and man is ever becoming enslaved; God is ever giving life and man is ever choosing death.”  (TCAF, p. 3).

We read Genesis to understand our human condition, our human nature, our human plight, and our common human experience.  We read Genesis to experience God’s role in the world in order for this to be the foundation for our faith in God and our hope in the future.  We read Genesis to understand Jesus Christ.   We read the first book of the Bible to learn how to live in this world with faith and hope, and to prepare ourselves for life in the world to come.  Genesis is thus much more about our present and our hoped for future than it is about the past.  “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).  We read Genesis not so much to discover the past, which we cannot change, but to prepare for the future – for the eschaton which we change by our choices now.

I conclude with the same words with which I ended QUESTIONING GOD:  “We could say more but could never say enough; let the final word be: ‘He is the all.’” (Sirach 43:27, NAB)

God Questions His Creation: Glossary

God Questions His Creation: Bibliography

Stalin: An Unknown Terror

It is pretty amazing that more than 50 years after his death, so much still remains an enigma about Josef Stalin -he was great and yet inhuman.    As I finished reading Jonathan Brent’s  INSIDE THE STALIN ARCHIVES, I was struck by how much is still not known about a man who dominated Russia for nearly three quarters of a century – either by his presence or by his ghost.  And in being a main force in Russia, he shaped U.S. and world history as well.

Perhaps because of the uncertain economic times we live in, I found Stalin’s station in the 20^th Century to be unnerving.  Brent in his book suggests that Russia has not yet moved to fully renounce Stalin for there is still something in his vision which remains alluring to some.

Stalin did not really differentiate between himself and the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.  He envisioned these as one all encompassing entity (I wrote about this in my blog The Freedom to Write Badly).  His goal was to make all that is Russia and all that are in Russia to be part of the state, the machine, and to have no reference point outside of this state.  Once this all encompassing existence is accomplished only the machine can give meaning to anything and everything, only the machine decides what is good and evil, and it can change those meanings at will.  As Brent writes:

“No object can be seen or understood outside of its world of interconnections; no object, person or idea-whether the idea of a tree or the idea of justice-can exist outside its historically determined relationships.  This is a way of thinking that clears the path for a kind of relativism far deeper than individual subjectivism or Nietszche’s ‘perspectivism.’ … Abstract, universal concepts such as justice or truth disappear in this sausage of existence.”

This is why God was such an enemy to Stalin – an ideal, a being beyond the reach of his control, the very thought of whose existence means that a person or the machine  can be judged from a perspective beyond and outside of the machine.  In a sense, even if no God existed, the very idea, ideal or imagination that there was something beyond or outside of the machine had to be destroyed.  

Stalin was according to Brent very concerned with how he would be understood in history.  He was aware that he could not control what people in the future wrote, but he could control what they knew about him by controlling the people who recorded the events as they happened.  Stalin carefully rewrote many documents about himself when he read through them.   As Brent points out Stalin had a deep concern about a movie which portrayed Ivan the Terrible:  it was permissible to show Ivan as being cruel, but you had to portray what justified the cruelty.  

If I had to guess I would say that for Stalin the ultimate virtue was strength.  He wanted Russia to be strong, and so he incarnated strength – unquestionable and absolute power.  That is what the machine was to be.  Weakness was the enemy, and weakness had to be destroyed.  In fact all enemies had to be shown as being weak which is what made them an enemy of the machine, and their weakness was proven by the ability of the machine to destroy them.  By the very way that Stalin defined the machine as power, he needed a constant stream of enemies to destroy to show that he (= the machine) was nothing but power.  As Stalin told his adopted son Artyom at one point, “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin.  Stalin is Soviet power.”

To be human however is to be weak – “to write badly“, to make a mistake, to repent, to forgive, to show mercy.  The freedom to be weak is what Brent calls not “God” but the “godlet” which was Stalin’s absolute enemy.  Without the freedom to sin, to err, to be imperfect,

“There would be no eating of the fruit in Eden, no wandering in the desert for forty years, no forgiveness for sinners, no redemption of King David or resurrection of Christ.”

There would be no human history, no human civilization and no humanity, which for Stalin would be acceptable, for there would be nothing left but power.  

In this sense it seems to me that Stalin and Hitler which much alike.  For the Nazi philosophers saw Christianity as weakening Germany and limiting its greatness and as something to be overthrown to allow Germany to arise to fulfill its powerful destiny.  So too Stalin saw the Orthodox Church and God as bringing weakness to the all powerful Soviet state.  Both endeavored to destroy Christianity, and yet both were totally anti-Semitic. 

Both Judaism and Christianity endeavor to make us more human, by acknowledging our weakness and our errors, not by denying them.   By admitting to our sins, we stop ourselves from claims of omnipotence, accepting with humility our being brought forth from the earth by God to share life with Him, not to overthrow Him.