The Wonder of Being [1 ed.]

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WORD BOOKS, PUBLISHER WACO, TEXAS

But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. -2 Corinthians 1 : 18-20

OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES H. MALIK

Christ and Crisis Man in the Struggle for Peace God and Man in Contemporary Christian Thought (ed.) God and Man in Contemporary Islamic Thought (ed.)

The Wonder of Being

Copyright © 1974 by Word Incorporated, Waco, Texas. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quota­ tions in reviews, without the written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress catalog card number: 73-85523 Grateful acknowledgment is made to Humanities Press Inc. and to George Allen & Unwin Ltd. for permission to quote from Ethics by Nicolai Hart­ mann, and to Sheed and Ward. Inc. for permission to quote from Autobiography by G. K. Chesterton, copyright, Sheed and Ward, Publishers.

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To the memory of Father Mikhail Nicolas Malik Orthodox Priest of the Church of Bitirram, Al-Koura, Lebanon under whom I served as a child for seven years as acolyte in the inner temple of the Church EvAOY'YJJ1-€V1J � BaaLA.Eta TOV ITmrpO'> Kat TOV Yiov Kat TOV 'Ayiov ITvevµaTO'>, viiv KaL ad KaL Eis TOV'> aiwva'> TWV aiwvwv

Blessed be the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.

PREFATORY NOTE This book is based on three lectures I delivered early in De­ cember 1969 at Trinity College in Toronto, Canada. The lectures inaugurated the Larkin-Stuart Lectureship which was established jointly by Trinity College and St. Thomas' Church, Toronto, to commemorate two distinguished Canadians, the Reverend Cecil Stuart and Mr. Gerald Larkin who were closely associated with both the College and the Parish for many years. I wish to thank Provost Derwyn Owen for in­ viting me to give those lectures and for the hospitality which he and the College extended to me during my stay in Toronto.

CONTENTS

I. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: the good of insufficiency 1. Elements of Christian Orthodox faith 2. I am not addressing atheists or even searchers, nor am I seeking to convert them 3. The epistemological-existential self-distortion of modern times 4. The cosmological argument and a refutation of Kant's position 5. Independent external existence 6. Critique of the theory of evolution 7. The biblical argument 8. "The work of thy fingers"

2. THE WORLD: the evil of sufficiency 1. The seductiveness of the world 2. The great deception and those who resisted it 3. Naturalism and self-sufficiency in recent philosophy 4. The self-sufficiency of man and the world in modern life 5. The rottenness of man and the world 6. The scriptural view of "the world" 7. "The end of the world"

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21 29 36 44 54 59 68 75 75 82 86 90 95 97 100

THE WONDER OF BEING

3. JESUS CHRIST: in Him all fullness dwells 1. 2. 3. 4.

The argument so far The ultimate distinction A most fateful struggle In Him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" 5. Christ's view of Himself 6. The impossibility of "changing the subject" before Christ. 7. The greatest event in history

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107 1 07 1 08 114 117 1 22 1 26 1 35

NOTES AND REFERENCES

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INDEX

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[1] Elements of Christian Orthodox faith I speak as a believing Christian, indeed as a Greek Orthodox. I do not "deduce" my faith: I presuppose it. I do not "con­ struct" my belief: I receive it, and am deeply thankful. I never arrived at it by rational-philosophical argument: I was brought up in it, and the more I cling to it, livingly and lovingly, the more I find it most satisfying, both livingly and rationally. It is from the standpoint of the Orthodox Christian Faith, then, that I see and understand man and the world. Whoever objects by saying I have no right to assume my faith, to accept it without proof, is thereby calling for a two­ fold response. First, who gave him the right to judge other people's rights? Second, where is the man who does not see and understand man and the world from the standpoint of some faith? Even he, the objector, appears to act from the faith, which he does not prove, that one has no right to assume one's' faith, and one can turn on him and object, on the grounds of his own faith, that he had no right to assume his faith. If you are not a Christian, then you are a Muslim, or a Jew, or an atheist, or a Communist-Russian or Chinese-or a nihilist, or a socialist, or a Marxist, or a nationalist, or a

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THE WONDER OF BEING

bourgeois, or a materialist, or some kind of humanist, or a pantheist, or an evolutionist, or a liberal, or these days a hippie; or of course a special combination of some of these, whether or not they cohere together. A man in the full possession of his reason always necessarily rests on some general framework of convictions on the basis of which he interprets himself and the world; be that framework clear and well articulated, or be it vague and confused; and be he conscious or unconscious of it. If he does not know his fundamental framework of con­ victions, then all it takes to bring it out and make it quite explicit is a trained philosopher who observes him closely, critically examines his statements and assertions, and deter­ mines how they tally with his actual conduct. Either he is in full possession of his reason or he is not. If he is not, then he is the inmate of some institution or somebody else is looking after him, and in either case his frame of reference with which he interprets the world is utter confusion. If he is in full com­ mand of his rational powers, then either he acts and talks or he does not. If he does not, then he must have taken some vow to retire from the world on grounds that could be per­ fectly ascertained if one knew his personal history, and these grounds obviously involve some basic faith. But if he speaks and acts, then thereby he fully betrays his ultimate convictions even if recourse must be had to some other person to articulate them for him. The difference between people, so far as the kind of faith they hold is concerned, is only in the degree of awareness of that faith and the ability to articulate it. They are all alike iri that they all have some faith. Mine is Christian and Orthodox, and I propose first to set it forth as clearly and unambiguously as possible, and in the briefest possible terms. The Church, the Bible, the tradition, the liturgy-these are the four pillars of my faith. Since the Church includes the other three elements one need mention only the Church. Everything stems from the first seven Ecumenical Councils (in addition to the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15) which were constituted by the Church universal, both East and West. The

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

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Great Schism which smoldered for several centuries and was consummated in 1054 A.D. was perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of the Church, and, considering the place of the Church in history, perhaps even the greatest tragedy in history. One can trace so many subsequent wrong turns in histor:,· to that single tragic division. The estrangement between Rome and Constantinople was not dogmatic but principally political and administrative. The human factor, especially the cultural differences between Greek and Latin, which antedated Christ, played the preponderant role. The Orthodox Church clings to every detail of the original dogmatic tradition without waver­ ing, a tradition on the basis of which "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" 1 was kept between it and its sister Western Church for a thousand years. The actual existence of these first thousand years of com­ mon history in which, no matter how much we quarreled with each other, we did not rupture our mutual relations but main­ tained our communion as one Church, is decisive in the matter of the search for grounds for unity. The difference between Rome and Protestantism is a matter of dogma, but not the difference between Constantinople and Rome. Scholarly works have been recently produced, especially by Francis Dvornik and Yves M. Congar, both Catholic priests, which elucidate the circumstances surrounding and underlying the Schism, and which have considerably helped in putting the facts in the right historical perspective. As a great Catholic prelate told me once, it appears that the blame is to be equally shared by East and West. But nobody is apportioning blame these days. Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism are sincerely trying now to seek the truth according to the will of Christ. And this blessed ecumenical spirit has already flowered in the three historic meetings between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch-in Jerusalem in 1964 and in Istanbul and Rome in 1967-in all three of which I had the honor of belonging to the entourage of the Patriarch, and in the lifting of the mutual excommunications between the two Churches at the end of Vatican Council II in December 1965. Joint commis-

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sions are keeping up the exploration of the true path of unity, or, more precisely, the path of the return to the original authentic unity which once reigned. While an estrangement that lasted nine centuries cannot be healed overnight, I am full of hope for the future. The momentum for understanding and reconciliation is definitely willed and undergirded by the Holy Ghost, and therefore it can neither be stopped nor reversed. The assurance that "the gates of hell shall not: prevail against it" 2 certainly here ap­ plies. Even the formidable question of papal infallibility, which was dogmatically formulated only a hundred years ago, is not beyond the loosening which God can certainly effect on both Churches, if regard is had to the manner in which the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was generally under­ stood in the first millennium, and is still acknowledged by the Orthodox Church. I am fully aware also of the humanly insoluble question of the growth of doctrine since the Schism, and the question, as the true Church must always have existed in history, of where the Church was as doctrine developed. But with genuine love and humble submission to the prompt­ ings of the Holy Ghost, "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God." 3 We always judge from our limited stupid human point of view, but "who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?" 4 The ecumenical spirit which flooded the hearts of Christians of all persuasions in the sixties of this century is unparalleled among Christians for many a century past. The hopes for unity engendered in all churches are of such depth and magni­ tude that they can only have as their ultimate source God Himself. In a recent number of L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Gabriel-Marie Garrone of the Curia described this veritable explosion of the Holy Ghost as follows: Et que dire de l'Oecumenisme? On ne peut plus meme se re­ presenter ce qu'etaient avant le Concile les relations de 11::glise romaine avec les Eglises separees. Protestante ou Orientales. Le retour aux sources a provoque une reflexion decisive sur ce

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

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qu'entrainait, dans la pensee et dans !'action, la participation a un meme Bapteme, voire a une meme Eucharistie. La realite des liens profonds que de douloureuses separations n'abolissent pas rend ces separations memes insupportables. Le chemin parcouru en quelques breves annees est proprement inexpliqua­ ble sans une intervention extraordinaire de la grace. Dans le profond des ames, presque partout, la haine ou !'indifference ant fait place a l'amitie, a un desir ardent d'union, a une recherche commune dont les difficultes ne peuvent decourager l'ardeur. Le danger est grave, certes, qu'on veuille bruler les etapes, mais !'inspiration est authentiquement sumaturelle. Qui pourrait le . mer.? ... Au lendemain immediat du Concile, la brusque decouverte de ces horizons apportait un veritable eblouissement, une im­ mense esperance soulevait les ames. Qui, parmi ceux qui l'ont vecu pourra jamais oublier ce sommet spirituel du 7 decembre 1965: la levee des excommunications contre l'Eglise grecque, la Messe et le Discours du Saint Pere? Ce n 'etait pas la une ivresse facile. On pouvait et on devait s'attendre pour l'Eglise a une periode d'extraordinaire renouveau grace a cette reprise en tous sens de relations et d'echanges: la vie commen