The Blackberry Walk

I'm not pilfering the title of C. S. Lewis' autobiography for any vain reason; rather, I'd like to start with one of my favourite quotes, from Screwtape's eighth letter:

He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.

These moments of Joy, or Grace, come seldom, but once experienced they cannot be forgotten. A couple days ago I had such an experience. It is not as if the worries of the world nor the passions of the flesh disappeared - in such a state one still feels hunger, and experiences that naggling anxiety in the back of the head - but these feelings didn't control me. At work, my eyes were wide open, I was more personable, and it felt as if the tasks I typically would struggle with or ignore in everyday life were made simple. Those suggestions of kindness which pass across the mind, I would often ignore, or against resistance fulfil; these were made easy in such a state. It's as if it were an altered state of consciousness. The phrase altered state has a lot of baggage, and rightfully so. Drug users love to list the drugs they've taken, and give vague descriptions of the flavour of how their mind acted. But in those descriptions, there's always a hardness of heart. Numbing drugs, like opiates, have little in common and can be ignored. Stimulating drugs like cocaine and amphetamines are fuel for pride, and have little in common also. The psychedelics make people emotionally delicate and brittle, which is a very different sensation from the firm yet pliant experience of mine. These drugs communicate with other Devils/Devas (Human Instrumentality), not God. And finally there's Ecstasy, which many would draw parallels, but is a very different feeling, since that love is of a heavy oppressive nature. Why do I list drugs as such - it is after all rather crude. My point is only that science can be wielded like a kitchen knife in a murder case: the kitchen knife was never intended to be used that way, and something important is now lost. Screwtape himself claims to use scientific materialism and textual criticism as a way of weakening faith. Such models of this hormone or that hormone, or of this neurotransmitter or that neurotransmitter, miss the wood for the trees when it comes to mystical experiences. God may well work via hormones and neurotransmitters, insofar as prayers can heal via the work of the talent of doctors, but it doesn't affect where the ultimate origin lies. Many have become supremely distrustful of sensation and feeling and all things empirical, for science - once the empirical investigation par excellence - has back-flipped into a rationalist worldview through which all else must be seen. I have dealt with the issues of this model elsewhere, but would also like to point out how this scientific reduction can make us disbelieve in anything we experience, as if we were being gaslighted - including the gifts of Grace. Returning to Lewis' quote, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in man can, like in my own experience be but fleeting. But it is only fleeting because man must stand on his own two legs; the passage vividly paints for me a father with a child who can only crawl, with the father holding the baby up-right by the arms letting him pretend to walk. I feel as if I have faint memories and vague feelings of that very thing in childhood. Due to the sin of Adam, the eating from the tree too soon, man is spiritually like a child, unripe, never given time in Eden to mature. Hence, we fall for the sins of the flesh, the garments of skin we were clothed in, upon our expulsion from Paradise. The spiritual life then, I believe, involves becoming an adult in spirit. And these moments of Grace are when your father puts you on his shoulders as a child, and you can see over so many of the walls which previously blocked your gaze. I've come to realise that the Reformation was correct, despite the trends and allures of Eastern Orthodoxy today. I've realised that many of those who call themselves Orthodox convert to Orthodoxy for purely Protestant reasons. Whilst many arrive there via the rituals, many are convinced by the apologetics and beliefs. The very picking and choosing based on belief against your own tradition, is a very Protestant mindset; yet somehow many find themselves adopting a foreign tradition - the least traditional of actions - for the sake of tradition! Tradition is valuable, granted, but history is even more valuable. I've been listening to some of the work of N. T. Wright lately, and he emphasises how the reformation didn't go far enough; Luther and Calvin wanted to save the theology of St. Augustine and the early fathers from the Scholastics and over-philosophising of the High Mediaeval church, but Wright argues that the theology of Paul and of Christ should be found against even the early church fathers. Granted, 'the return to scripture' is a rallying call hollered far and wide. But when that call was projected in the past, there wasn't the historical knowledge of the period to contextualise the Bible. Context is everything; for a text can be interpreted in a number of incorrect ways. And the Bible, being a text written over millennia, cannot be understood without historical context to give shape to the cosmology these peoples of different eras saw the world through, let alone their words used. And the New Testament is told through the tradition of Herodotus and Thucydides, with St Luke's Gospel beginning with a preface explaining how he sought sources to piece together the account. Tradition is a good means of preserving history; but history can aid us in making further discoveries with regards to the Bible. Given history can be used alongside tradition to understand the Bible, I'll return to the discussion at hand. In 1 Corinthians 6, we have the famous line from St Paul that 'the body is a temple' - but to the Judeans, there were no temples: just the temple. The plurality of temples are for pagan idol worship, which is certainly not what St Paul would've wanted to be thought saying. In the Second Temple period, the temple was the meeting place of Heaven and Earth - God's presence was within the Holy of Holies. And at the time of Jesus' birth, all of Judean worship revolved around the temple, and so did it too in the first temple period. God resides in the temple; look at Nabab and Abihu, for instance. The two sons of Aaron incorrectly made a sacrifice to God at the temple, and were engulfed in flames. Many traditional interpretations see this as God's wrath in action; but more recent scholarly analysis creates a new picture. The Hebrew of the Old Testament is a strange language. For one, being a Semitic language, it uses an abjad instead of a alphabet, so many of the vowels are simply implied, making room for mistranslation. Another issue, from what I've read, is a confusion between active and passive tenses, for the grammar doesn't correspond to our Indo-European grammar that fluidly. The interpretation I've heard recently, is that God's wrath is not a active thing, but rather an passive thing, meaning that Nabab and Abihu weren't simply shot down by God out of anger - for God being angry doesn't make much sense - but were burnt because they were dealing with the fires of God improperly. Being fallen beings, we can no longer walk with God, and have to protect ourselves. God can only descend into the temple and live with his creation because of the purifying rituals performed upon the temple. And, to wind back to Grace, and to finally write out the impetus for this article, the passage from 1 Corinthians says that we are the temple, and means that we must purify ourselves in order to accept the Holy Spirit into us. God gives us Grace to show us what the world looks like sat upon our Father's shoulders. And that Grace is to spur us on to commit as little sin as possible and make our bodies vessels into which the Holy Spirit can indwell conferring further Grace. Some of the points argued I heard from an Orthodox scholar, Father Stephen de Young, whose work I recommend. Somehow the Orthodox return to tradition, and the new evaluation of scripture through the works of history a la N. T. Wright loop around to a similar location. Whether we travel rightwards or leftwards we come to a similar destination, to open the window, and waft out a staleness in thought. Just as at the end first millennium since Christ's death there were great movements in theology, perhaps the same will be seen come the end of the second. Perhaps a new reformatio just as did Pope Gregory VII revolutionise the Catholic church just under 1000 years ago, or as did Martin Luther just over 500 years ago. I believe there to be interesting movements in the future, but what form it will take I'm not sure.