It is Easter season again, as I write this on Easter Monday, what would be a holiday in Europe. We don't celebrate it in the US, partly because in getting rid of the state religion, we also threw out some nice holidays, and partly because we're rational Protestants. That is, since we don't celebrate Lent, we don't really celebrate Easter either, so there is nothing to recover from on Easter Monday. Hey, we don't even celebrate Boxing Day like our Canadian neighbors!

But it is a pity we don't celebrate Lent. This came home to me on Sunday as the singing included rousing Easter favorites along with dolorous Lenten hymns. What, singing sad songs on Easter, it's sacrilege! As the service presented a full-blown apologetic for the Resurrection, I realized how little Protestants understood of either Lent or Easter. For the Protestants stand at the rational end of the Enlightenment revolution, so defending the resurrection against atheist denials was the greatest and highest point of Easter.  But "even the demons believe--and shudder!"  What if Easter was not directed against atheists, but polytheists; what if Easter was a necessary defense against demons? But I am getting ahead of my story, let's begin with the perceived threat, the challenge of Atheism.

One of the most peculiar things about our world today, is how respectable Atheism remains. For thousands of years, going back at least to the book of Job circa 1500 BC, or Homer ca 800 BC, Atheism was seen as the despicable refuge of the cruel, the wicked, and the evil. After all, if one is willing to give tribute to a king, or taxes to a ruler, what was one more gift to a god? The only reason for not giving gifts, would be either a self-destructive mental derangement, or a position so desperate that gifts were of no value. Perhaps a leader in a rebellion would not be capable or expected to give tribute to a king, since only his head would atone for his behavior. Thus the man who gave no honor to the gods, no respect to the divine, was either crazy or a rebel, doomed and damned, a dead man walking. Who knows what retribution might befall such a man, it would be prudent not even to associate with him, lest his sure judgment singe even his acquaintances!

We see this attitude not only in Job's friends, who are afraid that Job has become an atheist, but we find it even in Titus Lucretius Carus' ode to atheism "De Rerum Natura". Lucretius spends a considerable amount of time arguing for the respectability of atheism, for the bravery of the godless, for the need to rebel against the gods (who are in any case impotent). It is a peculiar argument, since nearly everyone has a story about a narrow escape that hinged on a unusual or supernatural set of events. But Lucretius tries to soothe our conscience by denying the existence of all supernatural events, insisting that it is merely our ignorance that causes us to think so. It is the hoary conceit of all monomaniacs that their perception of reality is the only one, and all evidence to the contrary must be suppressed.

A clever argument, but only for those who have never needed a miracle of deliverance. And as the fall of Rome led into the dark ages of barbarian invasions, it became most unpersuasive for 1700 years. Not until the relative prosperity of the 18th century (as revealed in the mortality statistics) did it make a comeback in the 19th, winning a surprising victory in the 20th. The consequences were both predictable and beyond expectations. Entire countries engaged in war so devastating, in a fashion so despicable, no godless Mongol horde could have done worse. Who would have believed that the "Terror" of the French Revolution that opened the 19th century would spread throughout all of Europe in the 20th? Yet all this is the consequence, the direct result of atheism, "for without God," said Ivan Karamazov, "all things are permissible."

(And this, incidently, is what is holding back the 1.2 billion Chinese from taking over the world. Without fear of God, business ethics consist of what one can get away with, resulting in antifreeze toothpaste, lead-painted baby toys, melanine-laced pet food, and now poisonous human anti-coagulants. We have Chinese friends who don't trust any packaged food that was "made in China", which accounts for the majority of things bought at the dollar store. Why, I wondered, is a country that had the largest economy in the world for fifteen centuries, surpassed by Europe only in the last three, incapable of quality control? Could it be attributed to the widespread atheism of Mao, which destroyed business ethics? )

Now we sit at the end of a most tumultuous century, with Christian capitalism expanding over the Atheist communal hordes, looking forward to a 21st century of Theism. The only problem is determining what type of Theism. PoMo polytheism competes with Islamic monotheism for the allegiance of the world. Perhaps at no time since the fourth century has the Church had to fight a two front war, against monotheist Islam and Materialism on one side and polytheist PoMo and native paganism on the other.

That is, when the 19th century missionaries donned their pith helmets and mosquito nets to evangelize the jungles, they did not expect to encounter atheism, and the Islamic monotheists they may have encountered were obvious enemies of the slave-trading sort. Likewise, when the Church was battling the Enlightenment wars against atheism, Kirkegaard did not have to address post-modern paganism. But today, one not only must prove the Resurrection true, but also unique. One not only must prove Jesus to be the Son of God, but also the Only Begotten. One not only must demonstrate why Logic and Math and Physics are conditional on the Eternal Word, but why the Eternal Word is conditional on Logic and Math and Physics. For perhaps the second time in history, we stand at the nexus between the one and the many, between monomaniacal ideologies and pragmatic pagan polytheisms.

This is why I find the First Things article by Michael Heller so disturbing. Not just because he is happy to receive the Templeton Prize (which is akin to getting an award from The Skeptics Club), nor even that he disparages Intelligent Design (a prerequisite for receiving said award), but that he attempts to pollute the Trinity with Chance, and so demean the Holy Spirit.

Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories that ascribe a great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old Manichean error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God, what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.

In calling ID "Manichean" or dualist, which error is Heller accusing ID of, the error of turning a Trinity into a Duality, or the error of turning a Unity into a Duality? Heller explains it is the latter, a Unity problem, and in so doing inadvertently exposes his hand. For the opposite of chance is purpose, the opposite of random is planned, and Heller wants a voice for purposeless, unplanned events in his symphony, as if it is possible for any event in creation to escape the purpose and plan of the Creator. Such a Creator could not then be omniscient, not to mention omnipotent, but more importantly, such a Creator would be without Spirit, without Intelligence, without Meaning. Such a Creator cannot be the Christian Trinity, nor even a Duality, but some sort of Platonic Demiurge manipulating things that he himself cannot make or unmake. This is the god of Whitehead and Bergson, the Process god of Open Theology, the PoMo deity of the Templeton Foundation, but not the Trinitarian God of the Church Fathers.

Notice also how Heller holds up the scientific enterprise as being the one holy way, the blessed activity of the human mind, the most positive expression of the human spirit. All such attributes are religious, and yet Heller claims that like the Templeton Foundation he refuses the hubris of Atheism, taking on the Uriah Heep mantle of humility.

To place ourselves in this double entanglement is to experience that we are a part of the Great Mystery. Another name for this Mystery is the Humble Approach to reality—the motto of all John Templeton Foundation activities. True humility does not consist in pretending that we are feeble and insignificant, but in the audacious acknowledgement that we are an essential part of the Greatest Mystery of all—of the entanglement of the Human Mind with the Mind of God.

Heller apparently thinks humility is pretending to be something he's not, which is better a definition of hypocrisy. But since he tells us, like Lucretius before him, how proud he is to not be a hypocrite, let us try to educate him on humility. Humility is knowing you are not God, and fearing Him. It is the beginning of wisdom, which no amount of learning can replace.  And as for that bit about being "an essential part...of...the Mind of God", wasn't that the Serpent's claim in the Garden, and didn't it turn out a bit badly for those who believed it?

If Heller is any gauge for the future, we seem to flop from one extreme to the other, from a monomaniacal denial of God, to believing that "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;". What then should be our response to such blasphemy? Each error requires its own corrective, yet all correctives have been given us in scripture. For the monomaniac, as Chesterton would say, there is a need to demonstrate the failure of rationalism, the utter despair of atheism. Many examples, including the entire 20th century, exist, and very fine apologetic works by authors like John Stott, Lee Strobel, Tom Wright, CS Lewis are still in print and cover the waterfront.

However, the response to PoMo polytheism is not so well known. The 19th century missionaries countered polytheism by demonstrating the superiority of Western medicine and science over the pagan gods, but such approaches do not work well when science becomes merely one more member of the pantheon. Instead we look back to the early church, in its victory over Greco-Roman and Persian polytheism. The Church recognized that the gods they worshipped were supplanters, pretenders, idols, and demons. So the weapons of choice are spiritual: the armor of God, the sword of the spirit. They include prayer, fasting, confrontation, and conflict (as I remarked in an earlier post).

The victory of the Roman Legions over the barbarian hordes had little to do with superior tactics or weaponry, and a lot to do with discipline. Hours were spent each day in training with the short sword. Gallons of blood were spilt upholding the Legion standard, without which the battle would dissolve into a mayhem of disorganized hand-to-hand combat. When the Romans did encounter superior tactics and weaponry in actual combat, near annihilation resulted from such discipline. But despite occasional setbacks, the empire was established and flourished through such trials and hardships.

This then is the need for Lent, the need for purification, the need for holiness, for when we are surrounded by such a cloud of demons, we no longer have the luxury of debating in rational discourse, but must wage total warfare with every weapon given us by God, upholding the banner of holiness by being as wary of tainted food, drink, and spirit as a virgin in a frat house party. Holiness is our rallying point, righteousness our breastplate, salvation our helmet, faith our shield, and the spirit our sword. The good news of the gospel is not just that the Resurrection is a fact, but that it is a Reality that fills our every waking moment with hope, with meaning, with power; with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.