Orthodox Reflections

The primary characteristic of modernity is Gnosticism.  Modern Gnosticism is an inversion of ancient Christian Gnosticism and that of other ancient Near Eastern religions. Those equated evil with the material world, and devised various secret doctrines and rituals designed to spiritualize the world and existence as an escape from this material hell. Valentinus was the most prominent and influential Gnostic of the early Church. His teachings were critically examined and debunked by Irenaeus, and his doctrine formally repudiated by the Church. However, his legacy continued through the teachings of others, most notably Joachim of Flora, Hegel and their epigones. Their influence has been so extensive that if you attempt a philosophical, political or theological discussion today, with virtually any person on the planet, you will quickly discover that the other person’s ideas will be entirely grounded in Gnostic mythology.  Modernity has become the most successful Gnostic myth in history.

The dominant Gnostic idea—the foundation of modernity in fact—is the belief in historical progress.  The most influential developer of this idea is Joachim of Flora, a Roman Catholic Calabrian monk in the 13^th century.  Joachim divided history into three periods or ages:  the age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and the Age of the Holy Spirit.  Not by accident, Joachim dated the beginning of the Age of the Holy Spirit with—Joachim!  It is the Age of the Holy Spirit that Joachim is primarily concerned with.  He rejected the Church’s faith in the Second Coming of Christ.  Instead, the Age of the Spirit would usher in the perfect, utopian society without sin.  Joachim’s historical progressivist Gnosticism turns Valentinus on his head, by proclaiming that the salvation of mankind comes through the spiritualization of history and not an escape from it.  Furthermore, there is a pre-determined historical process leading to the transformation of world, man, society, even the cosmos.  No longer is there a struggle by the person to follow Jesus Christ into the Promised Land.  The New Jerusalem is an historical inevitability.  Joachim has been proven wrong time and again, but the attraction to his ideas remains, only in secular form.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment, both of which are romantic movements, proclaimed victory over ancient superstition.  This being accomplished by the claim that scientific discoveries would supersede all previous human wisdom, and guide us into a world in which scientific experts would become the new class of priests and theologians.  Again, this is perceived as, and claimed to be, an inevitable and pre-determined historical process that cannot be resisted.  “You cannot stand in the way of progress!”

Modern Gnostics have immanentized Divinity.  No longer is the Divine source of all transcendent.  For the modern Gnostic, God is unnecessary. We need only history.  Modern Gnostics have divinized history and re-divinized nature.  One might call it a neo-Pagan movement, but that would be a slur against ancient high Pagans who taught that a virtuous life was the only one worth living.  There are two easy ways to spot a modern Gnostic proposition:  1) it will rely on slogans and 2) it will never mention virtues, or the virtuous life, as an ideal.

So how does the modern Gnostic account for the obvious experience that the world continues to be catastrophically messed up?  Just as modern Gnostics have immanentized divinity, they have had to invent a new, immanentized Demonology to account for the fact that their historical predictions of utopia have fallen flat.  What or who comprises these new demonic forces?  Reactionary elements conspiring to “turn back the clock.”  Especially the family, which is the most reactionary, anti-revolutionary structure the world has known.  (Hence the desire to redefine it as a means of destroying it.)  Deeply embedded societal structures that enforce economic exploitation and racism.  Poverty.  Injustice.  Religion.  Especially Christianity which, for too long, has taken a passive stance in the face of injustice, even going so far as to sanction slavery.  The solution for the modern Gnostics is to become ideologically committed, and to demonize anyone who is not.

This is juxtaposed against the traditional Orthodox Christian view of history as a time of waiting patiently for the Second Coming of Christ and the four last things:  death, judgment, Heaven and Hell.  In the meantime, we pray, we repent, we give ourselves, even our lives, in the service of others.  We practice a daily martyrdom in which we sacrifice our own, self-centered desires and desire only the one thing needful.  This view of history is best summarized by Blessed Augustine of Hippo.  Yes, as Orthodox we are critical of some of Augustine’s theological theories, but he anticipated the demonic-maniacal aspect of modern politics and the modern state of despair:

Thus the world is like an oil press: under pressure.  If you are the dregs of the oil you are carried away through the sewer; if you are the genuine oil you will remain in the vessel.  But to be under pressure is inevitable.  Observe the dregs, observe the oil.  Pressure takes place ever in the world, as for instance, famine, war, want, inflation, indigence, mortality, rape, avarice; such are the pressures on the poor and the worry of the states:  we have evidence of them….We have found men who grumble under these pressures and who say:  “How bad are these Christian times!” …thus speak the dregs of the oil which run away through the sewer; their color is black because they blaspheme:  they lack splendor.  The oil has splendor.  For here another sort of man is under the same pressure and friction which polishes him, for is it not the very same friction that refines him?

The contemporary progressive and, sadly, most Christians, would vociferously object to this “world view.”  The idea that we can be polished and refined by the pressures of this world is anathema.  We cannot acquiesce to the pressures of the world and all of the suffering it causes.  It is our moral duty to overcome them.  Man has no business suffering.  It is not right that he suffers.  We can all work together, be of like mind, and end suffering, if, and here is the kicker – if you give the right people absolute power. 

Modern Gnostics believe that God messed up when He created us.  Had we gotten there first, we would have done a much better job of it. Especially now that we have the benefit of a scientific approach to history and nature.  But it’s not too late.  We can bring about a new creation in which society and human nature are utterly transformed.  Into what?  Into our own image and likeness, or more specifically, in the image and likeness of people who know better.  All we need to do is surrender our lives, our property, our freedom, our reason, our belief, our faith to a Gnostic elite who will guide us into a future of perfection that lies just beyond the historical horizon.  In the so-called democratic societies, the process requires voting for these elites until you don’t need to vote anymore, i.e. all of the reactionary elements will have been defeated.  In case you haven’t noticed, this is the agenda of the World Economic Forum.

Modern Gnostics have also appropriated and inverted Christian apocalyptic teaching. There must always be an urgency behind the political agenda to save the world, and a judgment delivered upon us if we do not act now.  The man-made global warming myth is the most successful non-Christian, really anti-Christian, apocalyptic symbolism in history.  Like the Protestant apocalyptic cults that rose up in the 19^th Century predicting Christ’s return within a certain near-term, the global warming alarmists have been repeatedly proven wrong. But if you have been brainwashed into the global warming cult, it doesn’t matter.  It’s always the same:  in the next decade we will reach the point of no return in which global warming will be out of control and the planet, and humanity will be doomed.  But it’s not too late if we act now!  Only instead of repenting of our sins in anticipation of the imminent return of Christ, we must repent of our sins against nature before nature turns on us and destroys us.

The irony is that nothing could be less scientific.  There is no evidence that the global climate is in a more extreme state in the modern industrial period.  Again, that doesn’t matter, any more than does the fact that Christ has not returned already on a certain date as promised by the apocalyptic cults.  It’s the fixation that matters.

Which brings us to the truly catastrophic development.  Many, if not most, of our Orthodox hierarchs are historical progressives who believe that the Church must catch up with the times, and conform to the “spirit of the age.”  For many years we have been forcibly subjected to the awful annual Paschal Letter from one of our Patriarchs.  Each contains a patina of Christian symbolism, but in service to a pseudo-intellectual diatribe over the fact that there is still sin in the world!  These letters are read openly in church, and no one seems to be the wiser to the obvious Gnostic elements they contain. Our clergy have received no training in how the contemporary intellectual and cultural environment, permeated as it is with Gnostic notions of good and evil, conspires to undermine the faith of the our people.  So no one says anything.  And our clergy wonder why there is such a fall-off in active membership once our young people go off to college.

I once had an Orthodox priest tell me that most of his flock thinks like Protestants.  He said it philosophically, dispassionately, as if nothing really can be done about it.  He was only half right.  Most of us think like Gnostics.  While it is wrong to assume what lies in a person’s heart or mind while he’s in Church, it is obvious that most of us treat Church as a civics lesson in how to be a good, decent person, a productive citizen and a good parent or child, when in fact we are being reminded each liturgy that we are the worst of sinners in need of repentance, forgiveness and healing.

There is nothing more Gnostic that the belief that we are good.  Neither are we evil.  That’s just as Gnostic.  We are in between.  It is fundamental Christian doctrine that we are intermediate beings, in between the world and Heaven. At any given moment, we can be tempted to choose evil over good, by putting the desires of this world first. The Divine Liturgy transports us into the heavenly realm so that we can taste and see that God is Good. We can partake of His very essence, but only after we are healed and told to go and sin no more!  St. John Chrysostom noted that his people hardly left the narthex before they started sinning!

The problem is not, therefore, the world.  It’s not social and economic structures, although it doesn’t hurt to try to build a virtuous society with a virtuous, God-centered political order, which we do by being faithful to the commandments ourselves and by practicing the virtues in our daily life.  The biggest problem in the world today is me!

Gnosticism is always escapism.  Modern Gnosticism is an escape from the personal moral and spiritual responsibility to obey God’s commandments, out of both fear of punishment and love of Him, His precepts, and gratitude for His humility and sacrifice.  The inevitable alternative is some type of totalitarianism.

One can already see in the writings of John Locke the foundation of totalitarian movements.  Locke needed to develop a philosophical and theological justification for rebellion against monarchy.  To do so, he knew that he needed to invent a new human nature and a new theory of consciousness—the tabula rasa, in which the conscience of the individual was the only reliable authority, not the Church, not monarchs, not tradition, but the individual conscience.  Locke’s theories developed into the school of British liberalism, or the “Whig theory of history,” best summarized by Mathew Arnold’s famous dictum, “in each and every day, the world is getting better in each and every way.”

Lockean liberalism paved the way for totalitarianism.  Suppose man really is a blank slate. Man, then, is no longer created with an innate desire for God, and for the Good. He has no innate concept of good and evil requiring Church teaching to refine and direct.  If man is nothing but a blank slate, then it becomes quite easy for propagandists to write whatever they want on that slate.  Christian man has been replaced with Pavlovian robots. Man’s natural desire for God has been thwarted by the Satanic temptation to see salvation in immanent and worldly things

And so we see the modern man replacing Christian man as someone, and something, who has the right and the moral duty to redefine and re-create himself as he sees fit.  If he is miserable, then he can simply become something else.  He can transgender himself.  Or he can proclaim himself to be a furry animal, painting himself with the face of squirrel and walking around with a furry tail!  And we are commanded to respect such insanity or face an inquisition that could result in social ostracism, loss of employment, even jail time.

The essence is control.  The modern Gnostic believes that if he can take control of his own destiny, either individually or collectively, then all of his problems will be solved.  This will never happen because we are not in control. God is.  And so modern man becomes more and more miserable, more and more angry, more and more resentful, more and more frustrated, and more and more likely to resort to revolutionary violence to transform the world.

How many of our hierarchs are even capable of clearly addressing the problem of modernity in a sermon?  One American hierarch of note has recently stated that, “We must defend the autonomy of women!”  Paradoxically, when challenged, he says in effect, “How dare you be disobedient toward your spiritual father?”

Self-autonomy is exactly what’s killing us all, and not just unborn, innocent, defenseless babies.  It is moral and spiritual suicide, leading to the complete collapse of what remains of Christian civilization.  We are all slaves to something.  We are either slaves to Christ, or we are slaves to our passions, in other words – slaves of Satan.  In the modern era, that means being slaves to ideology.  There is little or no middle ground.

The most appalling failure of Orthodox hierarchical leadership is seen in their response to Covid.  Let’s just take one example: the requirement in most dioceses that each communion spoon must be sterilized before the next person receives the Holy Eucharist.  It is unimaginable that an Orthodox hierarch could issue such an edict, even more incredible that so many bishops and clergy would mindlessly carry out such a heretical dictate.  As one monk said at the peak of the Covid crisis, “even the dust in the church is holy!”  According to Orthodox tradition, I am to receive communion throughout my entire life, regardless of what sickness or illness is in the body of the person receiving communion in line in front of me, even including deadly diseases such as AIDS. But then along comes Covid. Suddenly, the “scientists” tell us that we cannot gather for worship, cannot receive communion, or confession, or any other sacrament until the scientists proclaim the crisis to be over. We are all just supposed to lie down, roll over and play dead. Especially brain dead.

Blind obedience is the antithesis of Christian doctrine.  Even the most illiterate, dull-witted peasant is expected to have a good understanding of the faith and know how to defend it.  It is also assumed that the Christian life brings with it the development of what the Desert Fathers call “discrimination.”  This is the intuitive ability to discern between those thoughts that come from God and those that are planted in the mind by the demons.  Our minds are illumined in baptism. Through participation in worship and the sacramental life, we are being transformed, through Theosis, into Christ’s image and likeness. We begin to see and perceive the world better, more accurately, as it really is, through God’s eyes, as He sees things.

This spiritual progress is actually inhibited by the acquisition of a Phd, an MD, a JD or an MBA.  Advanced degrees set apart the analytic population from the common-sense population.  The incomes derived from most advanced degrees result from analytical work—the identification and solving of problems.  People with advanced degrees are taught to analyze life, not participate in it.  The Gnostic religion of rule by experts is the most notable fact of life in modern society.  Blind obedience to their rule is the standard. The fact that very few of the people with advanced degrees are actually nefarious misses the point.  The point is not about individual persons or personalities, it’s about perversity of the spirit of the age in which we live.  And yet we think we are smarter and better!

In 1771 the Archbishop of Moscow issued an edict during an outbreak of the plague. Communion was banned, veneration of the holy icons was banned. The very un-Gnostic faithful knew an apostate when they saw one and took matters into their own hands.  They stormed the walls of the Kremlin, broke into the private quarters of the archbishop, dragged him out into the street and hanged him!  Presumably his successor got the message and restored veneration and the Holy Eucharist.  But today, we are like sheep being led to the slaughter.

There is nothing new under the sun.  Modernity is nothing but ancient Gnosticism in new skins.  The truth is that you cannot go against human nature indefinitely.  And Orthodoxy is the best expression of true human nature there is.  Historically our true nature has been exemplified the best by our monastics and ascetics.  There is a resurgence of monasticism in post-Soviet Russia.  Monasticism is even being planted in our society which worships Lockean liberalism.

There will be a spiritual revival in which 500 years of secular religion will come to an end.  But much as a drunk must become desperate and turn to God, if he truly wishes to get sober, the modern secularists must be brought to their knees by their own self-induced misery.  We see this happening on a small scale already. Accounts are here and there of an implausible conversion of a celebrity, or major influencer. Not to mention the average people, like you and me, who have been fortunate and blessed enough to be exposed to the Orthodox way.  What shape will a larger scale spiritual revival take? We don’t know.  Will it be just another iteration of New Age cultism, or will people turn to the True Faith?

In the meantime, are we prepared to receive a large number of new inquirers into Orthodoxy?  Unfortunately, not if our hierarchs and clergy continue to embrace the progressivist agenda, with all of its cultish apocalyptic nonsense, that they apparently absorbed in their theological education.  I wouldn’t be surprised if our patriarch were to issue a pastoral letter requiring us all to throw out our gas stoves.

Here are some signs to look for of the beginnings of an authentic spiritual revival:  an American president resigns to enter a monastery;  several major Hollywood celebrities give away all of their wealth and join monasteries, or build huts next to their parish churches; a major mainstream media outlet begins talking about the end of ideology; major and minor corporations close for business on Sundays; our parishes begin producing monastics in notable numbers; our wealthy donors no longer seek their names on special projects, but give most of their wealth to the poor and to found traditional Christian schools, or build new monasteries and begin living simpler lives; our patriarchs and archbishops no longer brag about their close personal friendships with corrupt presidents and secular influencers; our almsgiving substantially increases.

In pagan Rome, we made converts not only by our doctrine, but by our martyrdom.  We rescued babies who were abandoned to die of exposure.  We rescued plague victims from the streets and tried to nurse them back to health.  We refused to bend to social pressure to renounce Christ, even when faced with persecution and death.  We strove to take care of each other.  Some of us renounced the world and became ascetics, and thus attracted a large following.  We resisted the temptation to hate our enemies.  We even embraced the teachings of the Didache which says that the Christian has no enemies.  Even the worst evil is not the enemy, because God can use it for good.  In fact, God permits evil to exist so that we can make the difficult choices that separate us from lesser animals and plant life:

…choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. – Joshua 24:15

Seraphim – an Orthodox Christian