THE UNIVERSE: A DIVINELY WRITTEN ICON by Melissa Jones (Orth) & my commentary

TOWARD AN ECOLOGY OF TRANSFIGURATION: ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON ENVIRONMENT, NATURE, AND CREATION

Edited by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz

Published by Fordham University Press, $125 hardback, $35 paperback

Every year on or around Epiphany, a group of Eastern Orthodox Christian faithful from Denver forms a carpool caravan and drives three hours to the Continental Divide at Monarch Pass, Colo. They make this trek to bless the snowpack because they know that the spring melt will flow east and west down the Rockies to feed the life-giving streams and rivers of the lands below. It's a holy feast and a community celebration for the priest and parishioners who attend. They make an altar out of snow (with a few occasional snowballs tossed), and sometimes have to shout their prayers over the January winds that blow hard and icy on these high peaks.

It is common worldwide for Orthodox Christians to bless local lakes and rivers on this feast they call Theophany. They've been doing this for centuries, long before "green" was in. They do it because it simply makes sense in their Orthodox worldview, which sees a strong, Christ-healed connection between creation and the divine. Orthodox Christian theology embraces nature as a divinely written icon, an intricately crafted window to God.

In evaluating the place of Christian theology vis-à-vis the environment, critics and apologists both have tended to focus on Western theology and traditional interpretations of the creation story in Genesis. The broadest spectrum of Western Christianity has taken the creation component of their beliefs toward a relatively negative view of human nature, a material-spiritual dualism, and a somewhat irrational terror of paganism and pantheism. This has left Western Christianity stuck in a theological rut as adherents struggle to find an ideological foundation from which to participate in global efforts to heal creation. [my emphasis - Fr David]

This is starting to change, in part due to the worldwide spiritual leader of the Orthodox churches, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, archbishop of Constantinople. He is also known as the "Green Patriarch." Since his 1991 installation, Bartholomew has spoken loudly and clearly on the matter. He has even gone so far as to call global warming a sin.

In their introduction to Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, editors John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz note that this book is the first substantial collection of essays to address environmental issues from an Orthodox Christian perspective. Inspired and supported by Bartholomew, Chryssavgis and Foltz have gathered a stellar collection of articles from Orthodox Christian scholars and philosophers.

The articles in this 508-page tome range widely from those that discuss complex theological ideas to those that share very accessible spiritual concepts. Readers who are completely unfamiliar with Eastern Christianity will want to scan the book to find the more accessible articles first.

Here's something to keep in mind when looking at environmental issues from the Orthodox Christian perspective: The concept of pantheism doesn't scare or inhibit Orthodox theologians nearly as much as it does Western religious leaders [my emphasis - Fr David]. In fact, many Orthodox thinkers heartily embrace pantheism's monotheistic cousin, panentheism.

This is explained most clearly in "Through Creation to the Creator," by noted Orthodox author Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. He writes, "I cannot accept any worldview that identifies God with the universe, and for that reason I cannot be a pantheist. But I find no difficulty in endorsing panentheism -- that is to say, the position that affirms not 'God is everything and everything is God' but 'God is in everything and everything is in God.' God, in other words, is both immanent and transcendent: present in all things." [my emphasis]

In this compilation, readers learn that Orthodox theology describes God as the transcendent essence, but asserts that every particle (alive or inert) of the material world was created and is sustained by the divine energies of this transcendent, uncreated essence. Orthodox Christian leaders don't spend much time doctrinally arming their flocks against the evils of pantheism because they don't think that creation is easily confused with God the transcendent creator. Here's a metaphor: We can enjoy the warm rays of the sun and know that it sustains life, but a reasonable person would never confuse a warm rock or tree for the sun.

The Orthodox faithful also believe that because Christ the Word, who is Creator and Logos, took on a material form to redeem creation, every material thing has a deep inner meaning (logoi) that reflects the word of God for those who seek divine wisdom. For this reason, Genesis is always read through the lens of the New Testament. The Orthodox faithful believe that when Jesus stepped into the Jordan River, all of creation was sanctified. This includes humanity.

The Orthodox view of humanity and our place in creation could leave some conservative Western theologians aghast. In "Man and Cosmos in St. Maximus the Confessor," Andrew Louth explains the concept of deification or theosis. Put simply, theosis is the process of a person participating so deeply in God that he or she unites with God. St. Maximus believed that because we were created in God's image and redeemed by Christ's human suffering, humanity now has an unlimited ability to participate in the divine.

This belief might lead to human arrogance and a true exploitation of nature if it weren't balanced by another Orthodox ideal, kenoticism, which is a self-emptying, Christ-like love. Jesus, the paradigm for kenoticism, made himself a servant for the sake of our suffering creation.

What does scare Orthodox theologians is dualism. Orthodox teachers and theologians have railed for centuries against what they believe to be the errors of Augustine, his successors and dualistic Western philosophers.

This is addressed very nicely in Jurretta Jordan Heckscher's contribution, " 'A "Tradition" That Never Existed': Orthodox Christianity and the Failure of Environmental History." She argues that traditional critiques of Christianity and environmentalism fail to take Orthodox theological perspectives into account. She notes this was especially true of Lynn White Jr.'s widely disseminated 1967 article, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," published in the journal Science.

Heckscher says White's article was most damaging because it helped convince academics of a "particular, and particularly pernicious, impact of Christian belief on the natural world." White's famous critique argued that Christianity established a dualism of humanity and nature, and set humans up as rulers and exploiters of nature. He actually noted in his analysis that the Eastern Christian view was different, but did not bother to investigate further. Heckscher laments that White's version of the Christian vision of nature is now accepted in academia and has "become the story accepted by the general public also."

Heckscher says the dualism that underlies so much of Western thought is impossible in the Eastern Orthodox worldview and suggests that revisiting our shared history could lead all of Christianity to new thinking and action about the environment. She reminds us that many Eastern theological ideas are "very much a part of the intellectual heritage of the Western world." Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration will help Christians learn to care for nature, God's divinely made icon, with a unified voice.

[Melissa Jones is an adjunct professor of religious studies at Brandman University in Irvine, Calif. Her doctoral studies examined the influence of Augustine on Russian Orthodox thought.]

MY COMMENTARY

Fr Georges Florovsky once said that Eastern Orthodox Tradition and Roman Catholic Tradition are not two tradition but two versions of the same Tradition that  have become opaque to each other.   Nevertheless, he said, they belong to each other.

For a very long time now, I have never given a western, Latin view on any theological subject without bringing in an Orthodox perspective; and, in general, I have found each point of view as shedding light on the other, as you would expect if Fr Georges Florovsky is correct.   Even when teaching young people, they have often heard Orthodox teaching, without me saying "St Gregory Palamas says this," or, "St Gregory of Nyssa says that."   It normally just fits together, and the differences between Latins and Greeks are those between theologians sharing the same faith, but who have lived different histories.   I once confessed to a Russian Orthodox archimandrite friend of mine that I believe that even where we differ most profoundly and bitterly, it has more the character of a domestic family quarrel, one that we will eventually resolve by recourse to our common Tradition, and seems to me to be different in kind from our disagreement with Protestants on the Real Presence in the Eucharist.  

In this same direction,  Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev and the Moscow Patriarch suggested to the Pope Benedict - and I am sure that Pope Francis concurs - that we shelve our differences for the time being and, leaving them unresolved for now, concentrate on winning back a secular Europe to the Faith, joining our efforts in projecting our Christian faith to a western world (including Russia) that has, quite simply, forgotten or rejected the faith that formed it.   This means looking for common ground so that we may act together; and this implies kicking the habit of sniping at each other. 

We belong to the same basic Tradition, and dualism has been a persistent heresy in both East and West, with Bogumils and Albigensians and other groups down the ages, on both sides of the frontier, which were opposed by the Catholic and Orthodox establishments.  Nevertheless, dualism influenced even orthodox Orthodox and orthodox Catholics.   Moreover, there was another kind of "dualism" in Catholic neo-thomism in the post-Tridentine Catholic Church which made "nature" and "supernature" into two mutually watertight levels of being, where massive changes at one level could take place with little or no change on the other.   This was not according to Tradition and was opposed by what has come to be called "theologie nouvelle" group that had a major influence on Vatican II and has given us two popes.

The classical position of the Catholic Church on the relationship between God and his creation is expressed in Aristotelian terms by St Thomas Aquinas:   God is  "Ipsum Esse Subsistens".   "Esse" means "act of existing" and is a verb.   "Ens" is "being"

as a noun.   Every "ens" exists because it receives its being from God:  God is the Act by which everything  exists; He is the act of being by which everything is an "ens".  Every "ens" receives its act of existing from God, who is thus the source of everything and the source of the meaning of everything.

Let me get off my high philosophical horse and listen to what R, R.Tolkien has to say.   Joseph Pearce summarizes Tolkien's thought:

Since we are made in the image of God and since we know that God is the Creator, it follows that our creativity is the expression of the imageness of God in us. As such, all myths, as the product of human creativity, contain splintered fragments of the one true light that comes from God. Far from being lies they are a means of gaining an inkling of the deep truths of metaphysical reality. God is the Creator, the only being able to make things from nothing, whereas we are sub-creators, beings made in God's creative image who are able to partake of his creative gift by making new things from other things that already exist. Put simply, we tell our stories with words, God tells his story with history. The fact that facts serve the truth is another way of saying that Providence prevails. In essence, Tolkien believed that Christianity is the "true myth," the myth that really happened. It is the archetypal myth that makes sense of all the others. It is the Myth to which all other myths are in some way a reflection, a myth that works in the same way as all the others except that it exists in the realm of fact as well as in the realm of truth.

For Tolkien the pagan myths — far from being lies — were in fact God expressing himself through the minds of poets, using the images of their "mythopoeia" to reveal fragments of his eternal truth. Most astonishing of all, Tolkien maintained that Christianity was exactly the same except for the enormous difference that the poet who invented it was God himself, and the images he used were real men and actual history.

Hence, just as Tolkien is nowhere in the Lord of the Rings, in the sense that he is not a part of that novel, yet everywhere, in the sense that it is the product of his pen; so God is nowhere in this world in that he is not part of any scientific process, and everywhere because  everything in the world, including the scientific and historical processes, is his creation and is subject to his Providence.

When it is said that God is "Ipsum Esse Subsistens", it is a precise but Aristotelian way of saying that the whole of creation is sacred because it is only kept in existence by a direct act

of God.   There is no profane area where God is absent: sacredness is at the root of everything that is, both in nature and history. That means that Divine Love is at the root of everything.  Mother Julian of Norwich put it this way:

In this Revelation, he showed me something else, a tiny thing, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of the hand, and round as a ball.   I looked at it, puzzled, and thought, "What is it?"

The answer came, "It is everything that is made."

I wondered how it could survive.   It was so small that I expected it to shrivel up and disappear.

Then I was answered, "It exists now and always because God loves it."   Thus I understood that everything exists through the love of God.

In this small thing I saw three truths: first, God made it; second, God loves it; and third, God looks after it.   But what he really means to me as Maker, Keeper and Lover, I cannot tell. (Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 5)    

 There is no sign of dualism in Mother Julian's revelation.   Everything that exists is loved by God.  

The result is that every place, every event in history, and every situation in our own lives, is filled with the presence of God.   This realisation has had an enormous influence on western Catholic spirituality.  For example, without it, the Jesuit order would never have come into existence; and there is absolutely nothing dualist about it.  It is the starting point of Jean-Pierre de Caussade's spirituality, found in "Abandonment to Divine Providence".   He writes:

 The divine activity permeates the whole universe, it pervades every creature; wherever they are it is there; it goes before them, with them, and it follows them; all they have to do is to let the waves bear them on.  

 As God's will can be discerned at every moment and God is actively present in every moment, each moment is a kind of sacrament.   The kind of life we are leading and our kind of present activity are of secondary importance: the big question is, are we doing what God wants us to do at that moment.   As Tolkien says, facts must be subjected to truth and must express it; and truth is Divine Providence working through history, even through my particular history.   Eastern Christianity puts it another way: Christian life is the product of the synergy between our will and that of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that enables  It is in this way that Mary the virgin could become Mother of God.

   This is interpreted by Jean-Pierre de Caussade to mean that we must obey the will of God revealed in every moment, wherever we are, so that the Holy Spirit can enable us to be saints.   He writes:  

The order established by God and His divine will are the life of the soul no matter in what way they work, or are obeyed. Whatever connexion the divine will has with the mind, it nourishes the soul, and continually enlarges it by giving it what is best for it at every moment. It is neither one thing nor another which produces these happy effects, but what God has willed for each moment. What was best for the moment that has passed is so no longer because it is no  longer the will of God which, becoming apparent through other circumstances, brings to light the duty of the present moment. It is this duty under whatever guise it presents itself which is precisely that which is the most sanctifying for the soul. If, by the divine will, it is a present duty to read, then reading will produce the destined effect in the soul. If it is the divine will that reading be relinquished for contemplation, then this will perform the work of God in the soul and reading would become useless and prejudicial. Should the divine will withdraw the soul from contemplation for the hearing of confessions, etc., and that even for some considerable time, this duty becomes the means of uniting the soul with Jesus Christ and all the sweetness of contemplation would only serve to destroy this union. Our moments are made fruitful by our fulfilment of the will of God. This is presented to us in countless different ways by the present duty which forms, increases, and consummates in us the new man until we attain the plenitude destined for us by the divine wisdom. This mysterious attainment of the age of Jesus Christ in our souls is the end ordained by God and the fruit of His grace and of His divine goodness.

This ability to find God fully active is every situation and to sense God's call when confronted with any problem, however secular it may seem, is the reason why Gerard Manley Hopkins could write poetry and Teilhard de Chardin study and investigate science with a sense of wonder and adoration.  It is also the reason why Father Damian went to live in a leper colony and Catholic Sisters of Mercy stunned English Anglicans and German Lutherans by their work with wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, so much so that both Anglicans and Lutherans founded their own "Sisters of Mercy" and even their foes, the Russians, were later inspired to found a community of "Sisters of Mercy", thanks to the Royal Martyr, St Elizabeth Romanov; and this tradition lives on in Minsk and the Ukraine.   It is all down to "Ipsum Esse Subsistens".   According to Josef Pieper, the German Catholic philosopher, Communism didn't take root in the West because  Christians were already trying to tackle the social problems of ignorance and poverty with various levels of success, and this because of "Ipsum Esse Subsistens" and its consequences which had entered into the collective Christian psyche of Western Europe.   He also said that Communism entered an Orthodox nation because it didn't take its non-dualism seriously enough.   It concentrated on liturgy amidst the most dreadful poverty and suffering, as though "religion" has nothing to do with children dying in the street in sub-zero temperatures.

Having said that, I am now ready to comment on the above article.   Firstly, I am totally in agreement that we must tackle the ecological problem together

and not separately.   I am also sure that Orthodox theological insights will widen and deepen our western response: they have always helped me in my own studies.   Unfortunately our western society has forgotten much of its rural past.  I am a priest in the Peruvian Church and, when I was parish priest, we followed the custom to bless the sea on the feast of SS Peter and Paul, and they probably still do.   Anglicans still have harvest festivals in England, but Catholics don't usually have them , perhaps because of a lack of a theological understanding.   The Reformation concentrated on the salvation of individuals, and, in our arguments with them, we too tended to concentrate on this aspect of Christianity, to the detriment of a wider, more cosmic view of salvation which, however, we did not deny. The idea of creation as an icon of God's presence is a very good way of putting the Catholic - Orthodox Tradition, a sacramental view of reality  which is expressed by St Thomas in Aristotelian language; but most of us are not Aristotelians any more, and  will not understand what St Thomas is saying.   Moreover, icons are becoming more and more understood and accepted.

I accept  the following passage of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware is an excellent expression of Catholic/Orthodox Tradition.   I wish I could have put it so well:

"I cannot accept any worldview that identifies God with the universe, and for that reason I cannot be a pantheist. But I find no difficulty in endorsing panentheism -- that is to say, the position that affirms not 'God is everything and everything is God' but 'God is in everything and everything is in God.' God, in other words, is both immanent and transcendent: present in all things."

This is ordinary Catholic and Orthodox teaching; and neither side will have any difficulty accepting it as a basis for discussion and collaboration. I am sure that we will learn a lot from the Orthodox; but many of them will be unable to learn from us while they look at us and our theology through spectacles constructed out of their prejudices.   All that about our theology being "stuck in a theological rut as adherents struggle to find an ideological foundation from which to participate in global efforts to heal creation." is a load of cobblers.   Our theology is in good shape, and the fears of pantheism have been expressed within a dialogue of theologians between people of opposite tendencies in our own church, but all will accept the religious sense of "Ipsum Esse Subsistens", even if they may have trouble with the philosophy..   That means there are other Catholic theologians who, just like their Orthodox colleagues, do not see any danger of pantheism. 

 It is typical of some Orthodox writing that they look for Catholic texts that they can disagree with, and then say these texts are typical of Roman Catholic theology, which shows that they don't know anything about Catholic theology except that they disagree with it.

Of course, we are only beginning our collaboration and hardly know each other yet.   Perhaps working together will help heal our prejudices.   A friend of mine spent some time working on the London buses.   Many of his comrades were members of the National Front, a racist movement.   However, although they were against "blacks" in general, they were not against the blacks that worked with them on the buses: those blacks were "good blacks".   It did not occur to them that their own personal experience was at odds with their ideology.  

The policy of the Patriarch of Moscow of putting collaboration before theological dialogue is probably right because the Church is held together by ecclesial charity, which is the outward manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the true source of Christian unity. Theological agreement without a corresponding growth in this charity would achieve nothing and could do harm.  When we really get to know each other by working together, we may stop seeing each others theology in caricature.  Eventually, we may even love each other: then will be the time for theological agreement.

To end with a thought: the above article is published in the National Catholic reorter, a Catholic newspaper; and the book under review is published by Fordham, a Catholic university.   I believe that this indicates the closeness we feel towards our Orthodox brother and sisters as we prepare to begin our campaign in favour of Mother Earth. 

ON ORTHODOX - CATHOLIC RELATIONS

ON THE EASTWARD MOVEMENT OF WESTERN THEOLOGY

A MONASTERY IN ARGENTINA, "CRISTO ORANTE", WITH A STRONG INFLUENCE OF EASTERN SPIRITUALITY

ORTHODOX SISTERS OF MERCY IN MINSK

JOSEPH PEARCE: HIS LIFE & HIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE NEW EVANGELISATION

From Skinhead Bulldog to Catholic Man of Letters

my source: The Catholic World Report

September 06, 2013

Joseph Pearce’s autobiography reveals his violent past and grace-filled conversion.

Carrie Gress

Joseph Pearce, as many who have read his work or seen him speak might testify, can give one the impression of a soft-handed, tweed-sporting, Oxford don who has spent the better part of his life among the dusty pages of a library, with his remaining hours spent drinking afternoon tea and sipping scotch in the evening. Pearce, author of many literary biographies and other books including Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, and Tolkien: Man and Myth, appears to be the consummate English gentleman. Perhaps those with the knack of identifying an Englishman’s town of birth by his accent would not be fooled, but for most of us on this side of the pond, his blood seems practically blue. It turns out, however, that his blood is really more…well, orange.

In his latest offering, an autobiography, Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love (St. Benedict’s Press), the donnish impression of Pearce quickly goes up in smoke. The book dispels almost instantly any stuffy image one may have ever entertained of the prolific author. Who knew the young Joe Pearce was a skinhead bulldog? Yes, you read those words right—a skinhead and a bulldog anxious for the fight.

His life began merrily enough in the English countryside with his parents and a younger brother, but when he moved to London for middle school, things got rough. His father’s racism and high regard for the Nazis, the chaos of an inner-city school, and his own clever pen opened the door to his early involvement—at the age of 15—with the National Front, a British-nationalist, white supremacist group. Pearce became the editor of the party’s newspaper, Bulldog, which extolled the virtues of the white race while calling for the expulsion of non-whites from Britain, as well as Catholics and Jews.

His work with the National Front eventually led to membership in the Protestant counterpart of the IRA in Northern Ireland—which heightened his own anti-Catholicism. He describes the intense experience of being an “Orangeman”:

As a loyal Orangeman, the highlight of the year was the annual Twelfth of July parade when the Orange Order celebrates the victory of the Protestant William of Orange against the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Although I had attended the English Twelfth in Southport, just north of Liverpool, the experi­ence was utterly eclipsed by my attendance at the mother of all Twelfth of July parades, held annually in Belfast, at which tens of thousands of Orangemen, accompanied by hundreds of flute and accordion bands, are cheered on by tens of thousands more who line the streets waving Union flags as the parade of Orange lodges passes by. There’s noth­ing like it and the memory still sends a primal, tribal thrill up my spine as I remember the beating of the drums and the sheer fervor and magnitude of the event. (p. 104-105)

As the book makes plain, it wasn’t just ink that was spilled during Pearce’s early days of rabble-rousing. The National Front demonstrations often became violent melees with counter demonstrators involving bricks, bottles, and any other handy projectile, and his own belligerence, fueled by alcohol, nearly got him killed on several occasions.

Pearce finally found himself in jail, although surprisingly not due directly to any violence, but on charges of publishing material in Bulldog likely to incite racial hatred. Not once, but twice. Under the unpopular Race Relations Act a jury found him guilty of “hate crimes,” which made Pearce something of a political martyr. During his incarceration, “Free Joe Pearce” was emblazoned in graffiti on walls, bridges, buildings, and overpasses around the country.

Pearce, while embroiled in the heated political battles of the 80s involving the IRA, terrorism, and racism, was also heavily engaged in the British music scene, much of which will be familiar to Americans of a certain age—Madness, The Clash, and Depeche Mode, all 80s chart toppers. His brother was the manager for the one-hit-wonder Soft Cell, known in the US mostly for “Tainted Love,” though Pearce’s own musical choices were punk and heavy metal. The book offers interesting insights into some of the politics associated with the British music scene in the 80s—much of which we Americas were oblivious to as we listened to our cassette tapes or watched videos on this new channel called MTV. Who knew there were such things as Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Communism?

I spoke with Pearce about the book a few months before reading it. My question was, why are we just hearing about his colorful past now? He explained that he wanted to wait until both of his parents had passed away out of respect for them. But he said he also needed the distance of years from the events of his youth in order to develop a mature perspective and to write truthfully and without saying simply, “See how bad I was.” People have, he explained, a balance of good in them, even when they are up to no good. He wanted that mixture to come through in the book. He is successfull, especially when he writes about his father and several friendships he developed along the way.

As the subtitle of his book suggests, Pearce did not have a dramatic conversion experience involving being knocked off any horse—though there was quite a lot of being knocked about; his was a long journey with small steps along the way. Many of the steps stand out, such as the moment he found himself in prison again at the age of 24, grasping a rosary someone had given him in court and trying to pray despite not knowing a single prayer. Or later, while making a sincere effort to be a church-goer and a good dad to his children, who lived in another village, he showed up drunk at the parish priest’s residence with nowhere to go after a long night of partying. (That must have been an awkward breakfast.) It seems he spent many years living these sorts of paradoxes—paradoxes that easily exist in lives of all of us sinners without an abundance of sacramental grace.

The spark to which Pearce gives credit for his conversion came from G.K. Chesterton. Pearce felt as though he had found a true friend in Chesterton’s writing, especially on economic issues, but simply dismissed the Catholic elements. Eventually, after having absorbed the goodness of Chesterton, Pearce began to wonder about that Catholic part, too. It didn’t take long before he was convinced of the truth of Catholicism, but living it proved to be much harder. It took years before he would finally enter the Church.

As Pearce made steps closer to the faith, he believed himself to be acting solely upon rational grounds. However, in hindsight, Pearce confesses that he can see the hand of Providence guiding him toward truth and goodness, as well as sparing his life on many occasions.

Like Pearce’s other books, Race with the Devil is a delight to read. It is also a source of great hope. Many small acts of great kindness that Pearce received during his journey left significant impressions upon the angry young man, which serves as a reminder that even the little things we do for others can have an impact beyond our wildest imaginings. As in Augustine’s Confessions, it was little moments of grace that made the difference in Pearce’s life: a generous police officer here, a thoughtful couple there. More than anything, however, Pearce’s autobiography is a testimony to the ever ancient, and yet so new, transforming power of grace.

Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love

Joseph Pearce

St. Benedict’s Press, 2013

Hardcover; 264 pages

Evangelizing With Love, Beauty and Reason |

 An Interview with Joseph Pearce | May 2005

my source: Ignatius Insight

Editor’s Note: Acclaimed biographer and author Joseph Pearce (author's page) was recently interviewed by a Romanian journalist, Robert Lazu. This is a slightly edited version of that interview, in which Pearce talks about his recent work, conversion, literature, Chesterton, Tolkien, and more.

Robert Lazu: When you look back at your life, what are the turning points that come to mind? Did you ever have a miraculous moment – like the meeting between the disciples who met Jesus Christ while on the road to Emmaus?

Joseph Pearce: I don't feel that I've had one particular "Emmaus Moment", at least not one as dramatic as that experienced by those disciples or someone like St Paul. Rather, I've experienced a number of mini-Emmaus moments on my path to Christ, each of which has healed my heart, strengthened my understanding and led me closer to Our Lord. My first introduction to the writings of G.K. Chesterton was crucial. After Chesterton came other writers, such as Hilaire Belloc, John Henry Newman, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. 

Lazu: Which are your activities and projects at the present time? I imagine that you are working on another interesting book; maybe you can tell us something about it.

Pearce: I've just finished editing a volume of political and economic writings of Belloc. I'm also working on revised editions of two of my books, Small is Still Beautiful and Flowers of Heaven, for American publishers. My major new book project is a work on Shakespeare, focusing on his Catholicism. I also write for a number of American magazines and co-edit the Saint Austin Review (StAR), a trans-Atlantic cultural journal. At Ave Maria University in Florida, I teach literature to the undergraduates and I am also editor-in-chief of the University's publishing operation, Sapientia Press and Catholic Faith Explorers. I'm also giving talks in the United States and Europe. My travels in 2005 will include England, Spain and Portugal, apart from speaking engagements in the U.S. from the east to west coast. I'm keeping very busy! 

Lazu: I know how important for you is the contact you’ve had with works written by Chesterton, Newman, Tolkien and others like them. It seems that books written by Christian authors can be at the "heart" of a conversion to Catholicism of some people (like yourself), or they can be "instruments" that are used by God to touch the reader’s soul in some way. Is it possible as a Christian be dedicated to the writing of literature meant to contribute to the re-evangelization of the contemporary world?

Pearce: I believe that evangelization can take place in three distinct ways, constituting what might be termed "a Trinity of Truth". There is the evangelizing power of Reason, the evangelizing power of Love, and the evangelizing power of Beauty. 

Ultimately, of course, these three, though distinct, are all one. The evangelizing power of Reason manifests itself in apologetics, philosophy and theology; the power of Love resides in the example of sanctity given by the saints and those trying to be saints (Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II being great examples of the evangelizing power of Love); and the power of Beauty is manifested through culture and the arts. I see my own vocation as being in the area of evangelizing the culture through Beauty, specifically the beauty of the work of great writers such as Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis and others.

It is true that Chesterton and Lewis also evangelized through Reason in their works of apologetics. I also hope that I might grow in virtue so that I can evangelize through Love!

Lazu: How do you conceive the relationship between Catholic Faith and Literature?

Pearce: Since God speaks to us, and shows Himself to us, through the Beauty of His Creation, so we can show Him to others through acts of artistic sub-creation, using the gifts He has given us, to reflect His Beauty and the Beauty of Creation through our own partaking of the creative gifts that He has bestowed upon us. In the same way that Faith is consummated in its marriage with Reason, Fides et Ratio, so Faith is ultimately inseparable from the Beauty that is its source. Catholic Faith and Catholic Art and Literature are united in the sacramental nature of Reality. They cannot be separated.

Lazu: It seems to me that the authors who have influenced your perspective are not only Newman, Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien, but others such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and John Paul II. Who are the important thinkers who have influenced your conception and what are the most important books in your intellectual formation?

Pearce: I must confess to having read very little von Balthasar and only asmattering of the writings of John Paul II. I've read some Augustine and someThomas Aquinas obviously but I think my conception about the Trinitariannature of Truth and the Trinitarian nature of creativity spring from thewritings and philosophy of literary figures such as Tolkien (On Fairy Stories/Mythopoeia/Leaf by Niggle, etc), Dorothy L. Sayers (Mind of the Maker) and T.S. Eliot, and perhaps simply through the contemplation ofsuch things, assisted by grace. 

Lazu: You’ve studied C.S. Lewis’s work quite thoroughly. What is your conclusion about Lewis’s faith? Is he a Catholic (or "catholic") writer, or a Protestant (Calvinist) one (as scholars such as Daniel Callam have tried to demonstrate)?

Pearce: I studied this whole question at considerable length in my book C.S. Lewis & the Catholic Church. By the end of his life, and indeed for most of his Christian life, Lewis embraced a sacramental approach that was predominantly Catholic and inimical to Calvinism. For instance, he went regularly to the Anglican equivalent of the Sacrament of Penance, i.e. Confession. He believed in the ordained priesthood in a pronouncedly and profoundly Catholic way, believing that the priest stood in persona Christi at the altar during Mass. For this reason he opposed the ordination of women and attacked it vehemently in his essay On Priestesses in the Church. 

He believed in Purgatory, as is evident from works such as The Great Divorce, and as he stated specifically in his last book, Letters to Malcolm. Shortly before he died, he wrote to a friend, Sister Penelope, that he expected to go to Purgatory after he died. In short, and regardless of any remaining issues that prevented Lewis from feeling able to be received into the Catholic Church, he was far closer to the Catholic position than to anything remotely Calvinist. Indeed his opposition to Calvinism was expressed satirically as Puritania in The Pilgrim's Regress.

Lazu: Any reader who has read the fairy-tales written by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien sees that Lewis tried to introduce characters rooted explicitly in the Christian tradition, while Tolkien seemed to try to cover such references. What is the explanation for this difference between these two authors?

Pearce: Tolkien's approach to mythology, and therefore to his own work, is rooted in the belief that all creative activity is based upon the cooperation between the artist and the gift he is given by God. God as Creator bestows His gift, through Grace, to the sub-creator who uses (or abuses) the gift to bring his sub-creation to fruition. As such, Tolkien believed that truths emerge more freely and fully (and deeply) if the gift is allowed to flow without the sub-creator stifling it through his desire to dominate the gift through the desire to dominate his reader. 

This was the reason for Tolkien's dislike of formal allegory. Instead of formal allegory, Tolkien pointed to the applicability of truths that emerge from the text. I believe that Lewis shared Tolkien's view but usually succumbed to the temptation towards didacticism, i.e. he allowed his desire to teach a lesson to his readers to inhibit the free flow of sub-creativity. His late work, Till We Have Faces, was the closest that Lewis came to achieving the sub-creative subtlety of The Lord of the Rings which is why he thought it his best book.

Lazu: One of the most used descriptions of Tolkien’s work is that it is a form of "Christian mythology". How do you understand this concept? What was Tolkien’s conception of classical mythology? Did he have a theological perspective about mythology?

Pearce: I do not use the phrase "Christian mythology" even though it is anadequate and accurate description of his work. The trouble with the termis that it is somewhat vague and might lead people to erroneous conclusions, e.g. it might imply that Christianity is only a "mere myth" and not the "True Myth" that Tolkien insisted that it is. 

Alternatively it might imply that Tolkien intended to make his work more formallyallegorical than is the case. I agree with what I call Tolkien's "Philosophy of Myth". In essence, Tolkien believed that all "making",including the making of myth, is the product of the maker's cooperation,knowingly or unknowingly, with the gift of creativity poured forth asgrace by the supreme Maker, i.e. God. This gift of creativity is givenby the Creator to the sub-creator who uses it to make his myth. Inconsequence, all myths contain what Tolkien described as "splintered fragments" of the one true light that comes from God.

Lazu: We know from Tolkien’s son, Christopher, that in the last years of his life "mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations". Reflecting on this line, do you think we talk about a theology or a philosophy of Tolkien? 

Pearce: I'm not happy with the suggestion that Tolkien was ever anything other than preoccupied with theological and philosophical issues. It is clear from his work and from his letters that he was always a good and practicing Catholic whose Christian faith was at the heart and centre of all that he did. The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are underpinned by theological and philosophical concepts. If Tolkien became preoccupied with such issues at the end of his life to a greater degree than ever we should not be surprised. It is appropriate that a man should ponder these things more deeply as he approaches the end of his life. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the "mythology and poetry" were always integrated with "philosophy and theology" inTolkien's work. They cannot and should not be separated.

Lazu: So, we should never forget that Tolkien was, essentially, a writer and a poet who founded his works on a spiritual vision based on specific theological and philosophical concepts. What is Tolkien’s contribution to twentieth-century literature? How might we characterize his literature?

Pearce: Tolkien is responsible for the whole genre of modern fantasy literature, for better or worse. How many writers can claim to have instituted a whole new (and hugely popular) genre? He is, however, head and shoulders above those who have followed in his wake and The Lord of the Rings remains as the greatest work of prose literature of the twentieth century. I'm also happy to assert that it will eventually earn the status of being considered a "classic" of the literary canon. 

Lazu: In many of your articles you have discussed the issues resulting from the Tolkien’s major work, The Lord of the Rings, being made into a series of major films. Does this movie help popularize Tolkien’s works? (I ask because I have met people who don’t want to read Tolkien’s books on account of the fact that they consider the movies to be "horror" movies). 

Pearce: Over the past three years I have spoken all over the United States, and in Canada, Germany, Portugal and South Africa, on the subject of The Lord of the Rings. This experience has left me in no doubt that Jackson's film-version has contributed to an enormous increase in interest in Tolkien's work. A whole new generation of young people have started to read The Lord of the Rings because their interest was originally kindled by watching the film. I would estimate that for every person who is deterred from reading Tolkien by the films there are many, many more that are inspired to read him having seen the films.

Lazu: Gilbert Keith Chesterton is the other author you have written much about. What is Chesterton’s place in the literature of the twentieth century? How can the specific features of his works be summarized? 

Pearce: Without doubt, Chesterton is a major figure in several areas. As a popular Catholic apologist he is perhaps without equal; as an essayist he is one of the finest prose stylists of the century; as a poet his work is very uneven but his finest verse deserves a place in any reputable anthology of twentieth century poetry, e.g. Lepanto, The Donkey, The Rolling English Road, A Second Childhood, The Skeleton, The Fish etc. As a novelist his work is also uneven and of variable quality, but his finest novel, The Man who was Thursday, ranks as one of the most important novels of the last century.

Lazu: It is hard to imagine that Catholic writers are well received by non-Christian literary critics in Central Europe. What is the situation in Great Britain and the United States as far as non-Catholic criticism authors such as Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, etc.? 

Pearce: I am pleasantly surprised at the number of times that Chesterton is quoted in the secular press in Britain and America; Tolkien is now taken more seriously than ever before, partly because of the huge success of Jackson's films but also because The Lord of the Rings has passed the test of time and has forced itself into the canon in spite of the hostility of many critics and academics to its resolutely Christian and conservative ethos; Lewis remains hugely influential in Christian circles, both Protestant and Catholic, and the forthcoming film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might catapult him back into the popular mainstream; Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is widely accepted as one of the great novels of the twentieth century even amongst liberal critics hostile to its Catholic traditionalism.

Lazu: Are there writers comparable to Chesterton, Bernanos, Green, etc. writing today? 

Pearce: I'm not sure that there are writers of that caliber but, if there were, they would find it more difficult to break into the popular culture in the secularized twenty-first century. This is why we need to engage the culture and evangelize it. The challenge is to work collectively to become a catalyst for a new Christian cultural revival.

Lazu: Hans Urs von Baltasar claimed that Catholic modern literature seemed to offer a more lively way of thinking than does modern Catholic theology. What do you think about this statement? 

Pearce: Von Balthasar believed, as do I, that the power of beauty can illuminate the truth as potently as can the power of reason. The fact is that there was much bad, i.e. modernist, theology in the last century, whereas there was much good, i.e. traditionalist, literature. In this sense I agree with him. I believe, however, that good literature should always be duly deferential to good theology.

Lazu: In concluding, please tell us what is your essential message as a critic, writer and Catholic professor? In other words, what is your personal credo? 

Pearce: My personal credo genuflects before the perennial Creed of Catholic Christianity. I have no credo distinct from my adherence to the teachings of the Church. The truth manifests itself in the triune splendour of Love, Beauty and Reason. It is only through our apprehension of this Primal Reality that we can be set free from our subservience to lesser gods.

RELATED IGNATIUSINSIGHT.COM LINKS:

• Author Page for Joseph Pearce
• "A Truly Wilde Story": An Interview with Joseph Pearce About the Life and Death of Oscar Wilde | July 2004


 NEW! British author Joseph Pearce has firmly established himself as the premier literary biographer of our time, especially in interpreting the spiritual depths of the Catholic literary tradition. In this new book, Pearce examines a plethora of authors, taking the reader through a dazzling tour of the creative landscape of Catholic prose and poetry. Literary Giants, Literary Catholics covers the vast terrain from Dante to Tolkien, from Shakespeare to Waugh.

Focusing on the literary revival of the 20th century, Joseph Pearce touches on well-known authors like G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien, but also introduces readers to lesser-known writers like Roy Campell, Maurice Baring, and Owen Barfield. Anyone who appreciates English literature will be entranced by the wealth and depth of this new masterpiece.


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C.S. LEWIS AND ORTHODOXY
(a favourite with Catholics and Orthodox)

SEPTEMBER 14th, 2013: THE FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE CROSS

The fact that the jewelled cross at the centre of the apse of Sant'Apollinare en Clase in Ravenna is an icon of the Transfiguration of Our Lord indicates the close connection between the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and that of the Transfiguration forty days earlier. In the Gospels, the Transfiguration scene is linked with St Peter's profession of faith, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God", and Christ foretelling his crucifixion and resurrection; and there are similarities between the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.   The mosaic in Sant'Apollinare en Clase of a jewelled cross with Christ's face at the centre is telling us that the "glory" that Peter, James and John witnessed is both the glory of the Son of the living God, and the Glory of the Cross: they are one and the same.   In our present life, the revelation of divine Light and the revelation of Christ's obedience unto death must be viewed separately, so that our minds can grasp the fact that God is Love, total self-giving.  That  is the life of the Blessed Trinity that, when translated into a human reality in the circumstances in which Christ lived as a human being on earth, it revealed itself in Christ crucified.   Only in the life of the resurrection will we see that the glory of Christ and the total self giving of Christ are one and the same thing.   It is a theme in St John that God the Father and Christ himself were most highly glorified on earth by Christ willingly suffering the most humiliating of deaths   Thus the Cross, an instrument of ritual humiliation and death became the throne of glory and the instrument of life. As St Irenaeus wrote: "The glory of God is man fully alive," alive with the very life of God,"   For this reason, we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Why on September 14th?   As I have to go to hospital today, I will rely on Scott P. Richert of AboutCatholicism:

History of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross:

After the death and resurrection of Christ, both the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem made efforts to obscure the Holy Sepulchre, Christ's tomb in the garden near the site of His crucifixion. The earth had been mounded up over the site, and pagan temples had been built on top of it. The Cross on which Christ had died had been hidden (tradition said) by the Jewish authorities somewhere in the vicinity.

According to tradition, first mentioned by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in 348, Saint Helena, nearing the end of her life, decided under divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to excavate the Holy Sepulchre and attempt to locate the True Cross. A Jew by the name of Judas, aware of the tradition concerning the hiding of the Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre to the spot in which it was hidden.

Three crosses were found on the spot. According to one tradition, the inscription Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews") remained attached to the True Cross. According to a more common tradition, however, the inscription was missing, and Saint Helena and Saint Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, assuming that one was the True Cross and the other two belonged to the thieves crucified alongside Christ, devised an experiment to determine which was the True Cross.

In one version of the latter tradition, the three crosses were taken to a woman who was near death; when she touched the True Cross, she was healed. In another, the body of a dead man was brought to the place where the three crosses were found, and laid upon each cross. The True Cross restored the dead man to life.

In celebration of the discovery of the Holy Cross, Constantine ordered the construction of churches at the site of the Holy Sepulchre and on Mount Calvary. Those churches were dedicated on September 13 and 14, 335, and shortly thereafter the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross began to be celebrated on the latter date. The feast slowly spread from Jerusalem to other churches, until, by the year 720, the celebration was universal.

In the early seventh century, the Persians conquered Jerusalem, and the Persian king Khosrau II captured the True Cross and took it back to Persia. After Khosrau's defeat by Emperor Heraclius II, Khosrau's own son had him assassinated in 628 and returned the True Cross to Heraclius. In 629, Heraclius, having initially taken the True Cross to Constantinople, decided to restore it to Jerusalem. Tradition says that he carried the Cross on his own back, but when he attempted to enter the church on Mount Calvary, a strange force stopped him. Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem, seeing the emperor struggling, advised him to take off his royal robes and crown and to dress in a penitential robe instead. As soon as Heraclius took Zacharias' advice, he was able to carry the True Cross into the church.

For some centuries, a second feast, the Invention of the Cross, was celebrated on May 3 in the Roman and Gallican churches, following a tradition that marked that date as the day on which Saint Helena discovered the True Cross. In Jerusalem, however, the finding of the Cross was celebrated from the beginning on September 14.

I suggest you look up the collection of posts and videos on the Transfiguration

here.  

In the same place, I advise you to look at the eleven videos from Italian Catholic television on the Creed, illustrated by the mosaics in the wonderful cathedral of Monreale in Sicily .   There are also posts on the Jesus Prayer, on icons etc.

All you have to do is to click "here" above.   It will take you to the home page of Ecclesial Peace.   Scroll down to the lists of posts, all clearly marked according to subject.   Click on the title of any post you like.   I shall be back at the end of next week.   Please say a little prayer.

Another post I recommend is by Father Stephen Freeman, an Orthodox American priest whose blog "Glory To God For All Things" is always worth reading.   This post is about why Christ had to die for us, and has been written to coincide with the Feast of the Holy Cross.  Please click here