Orthodox Christianity Reasonable Faith

Orthodox Christianity

A Reasonable Faith

Father Peter Farrington

© 2018 Father Peter Farrington

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United Kingdom

First Printing, 2018

ISBN 978-0-244-40405-5

Father Peter Farrington

w: www.stgeorgeministry.com

e: [email protected]

Contents

Introduction

There must be more to life than this

The Evidence for God

The Evidence for Jesus

Can we trust the Gospels?

What do the Gospels say?

What did Jesus say about himself?

What sort of person was Jesus?

How can there be Evil and Suffering?

What is Faith?

Why consider the Orthodox Church?

Beginning to Believe

Introduction

I am writing this book as a priest of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the ancient Church of Egypt which was established by the preaching of St Mark almost 2000 years ago. I am not an Egyptian. I am British, and I was brought up in a devout and committed Evangelical Protestant home. For the first 25 years of my life that was the sort of Christianity I knew and lived. I would have felt entirely at home in a Baptist, Methodist or Evangelical church, and I trained for three years to be a pastor, or church leader, in these sorts of congregations.

Throughout my life, I have been seeking to know more about the God I was introduced to as a child. I never wanted to be the sort of person who went to Church on a Sunday and found that it had no effect on the way I lived for the other six days. If there was a God, and I believed there was from a very young age, then I wanted to know him more and more.

While I was training to become a church leader I found myself introduced to the ancient Christian teachings and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. It seemed that for the first time many of the questions I had about knowing God were now being answered. The Orthodox Church traces its beginnings to the first century, and to the Apostles, or disciples of Jesus Christ himself. The teachings which it has faithfully preserved represent the authentic Christian message which turned the world upside down.

I became a member of the Orthodox Church over 24 years ago, and 9 years ago, I was ordained a priest and pastor. I am no longer seeking for a spiritual way that works, I have found it. But it continues to demand commitment from me every day, and I have found that in following this Orthodox Christian way of life, this original and authentic Christian spirituality, my life makes sense and has purpose. After becoming Orthodox in 1994, and a priest of the Coptic Orthodox Church in 2009, I now serve in the Diocese of the Midlands in the UK, under the Coptic Orthodox Bishop Misael.

But I don’t believe that Christianity is a matter of abandoning reason and sense, as if it demanded that I simply make a leap into irrationality. On the contrary, as I have come to experience Orthodox Christianity as a spiritual path that transforms my life, so I have also come to understand that there is a sound and reasonable basis for adopting the Orthodox Christian faith, and for believing that Christianity is true. This book will consider some of the most important aspects of life, some of the big questions, which often seem to prevent people considering Christianity in a serious manner. I hope to show that in each of these cases the evidence for the Christian viewpoint is substantial and credible. Not everyone need accept the arguments and evidence I present here. But it does seem to me that it is of such a nature and quality that it is justifiable to insist that Christianity is rooted in real evidence and is therefore a reasonable choice for millions of thoughtful people in the 21st century.

It is easy to grow up in a Christian environment, even an Orthodox one, and to fit in with everything that happens in the community we belong to, so that it seems we know exactly what we believe. But for many people, especially young people, the fitting in is easier than the understanding and accepting what it believed. We face many challenges in the modern world, and it is necessary that we have a reasoned and rational basis for believing in the transforming spiritual life which Orthodoxy represents.

I hope that the arguments and materials presented in this volume help even a few, within and without the Church, to understand our faith better, and embrace it more completely.

Father Peter Farrington

There must be more to life than this?

Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen, once wrote a song which says…

There must be more to life than living,

There must be more than meets the eye,

What good is life, if in the end we all must die,

There must be more to life than this.

Here is a man who had every possibility of enjoying life to the full. A man who had wealth and fame and access to anything he wanted. Yet when he considered his life he found that it was missing something. It wasn’t missing something he could buy or own. It was missing a sense that there was a purpose to life itself. How can there be any purpose, what good is life, he says, if in the end we all die and there is nothing else.

This is a question that most people have to address for themselves, if they take any time at all to reflect on the big issues of life. Those who hold to an entirely materialistic view of the universe have no answer for Freddie Mercury. They would insist that the universe came into being by some unknown process, and that all that we see today, from the great galaxies in the night sky, to the smallest organisms visible only with a microscope, are the inexorable outcome of billions of years of purposeless, aimless, chance interactions of matter and energy set in motion by the initial, equally random, status of the universe.

Such a view, which entirely and deliberately excludes any intelligence or purpose in the universe, cannot in turn provide a purpose or meaning for our own lives. What is a human in such an understanding of the universe? We are no more than animals. We are a collection of atoms and molecules and energy, held together for a very short period of time, and then dissolved in death.

If that is all we are then there can be no such thing as beauty, no such thing as good or evil, no such thing as love. We are only experiencing chemical reactions to various stimuli, in the same way that a rat can be trained to press a button to receive a reward. Beauty is no more than just a ‘thing I like’ in such a view. It requires some external standard by which to measure, and the materialist worldview insists that there is no external standard. When we stand on a hill side looking out over distant fields as the sun sets, the materialist will not allow us to say that it is beautiful. Rather, he will want to say that we are experiencing the physiological effects of chemical reactions in the brain that have nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with our animal nature. He will suggest that we are responding in exactly the same way as we salivate when we are hungry and smell food. It is out of our control, it is nothing more than atoms, molecules and energy.

In the same way, if there is only matter and energy without meaning, then there can be no good or evil. Of course, there can be things we wish that other people would not do, and things we really don’t like them doing at all. But what is the measure for saying something is good or evil if there is nothing else to the universe but matter and energy. If we say that it is evil to kill someone then it is proper to ask, why is it evil to kill someone? Who says so? The universe does not say so. It does not care whether we live or die. We are, according to the materialistic view, an insignificant species of animal on a tiny speck of dust at the edge of an unimportant galaxy, and we have hardly existed and will, in relation to the age of the universe, cease to exist soon enough. So, the universe cannot teach us that anything is good or evil. Why do we help a poor person, or a sick person, or an elderly person? The natural world around us teaches that those who are weak are quickly removed, either consumed by stronger animals, or succumbing to illness. Why do we think it is good to provide support and care for such people? It is not the universe, as matter and energy, which causes most people around us in the Western world to think in such a way. We are picking up such moral absolutes from somewhere else, and a materialistic view of the universe, one in which there is no purpose or meaning, cannot provide such attitudes.

Of course, it is possible for anyone to adopt a moral code to live by. But if there is only matter and energy then any personal moral code has no authority at all. It is only what you want to do. In a materialistic universe if someone wants to get drunk every night, there is no absolute moral reason why he should not. The universe does not care. If he wants to abuse and assault people, there is also no absolute moral reason why he should not, because the universe doesn’t care about that either.

Other people might care. And might well resist the exercise of his own moral code, which allows him to do these things. But we then come down to the application of a moral code by force, not because it is good or evil. If enough of us want people who are violent to be restrained, then that becomes something which is good and those who are violent are considered evil. But the universe does not teach us this. Materialism does not teach us this. The universe does not care, and in such a view there can never be good or evil. Only things that I myself think should happen or should not happen. But this is a morality without authority. It is not a representation of an absolute standard. Materialists would insist it is a way of animal communities, which is all that they would want to say that mankind is, to enforce behaviours that suit the majority or those with power.

And love? What can love represent in a world without purpose? What is love if we are only atoms and energy? Many scientists, adopting such a view, state clearly that love is also only a chemical and neurological response to stimuli. It is the same as feeling hungry. They would tell us that being only animals we want companionship to ensure our safety and well-being. We want to reproduce and ensure that our genetic code is passed on. We want to be part of a group that helps to feed us. So, we experience feelings we call love caused by chemicals in the brain. But they will insist that there is no such thing as love, if it means more than a simply physical response in the brain and body. The reason we look after other people, it is proposed, is because of what we think subconsciously we can get out of the arrangement as mere animals.

It is no wonder that Freddie Mercury asked the questions he did. If there is only a material universe of atoms and energy, then there is no meaning or purpose in any human life or activity. There is no beauty, no good or evil, or love. These are all chemical reactions, nothing more, and they serve strictly animal goals for food, shelter, protection and reproduction. The universe does not care. Everything that happens just happens.

If we respond saying that we will just enjoy life while we have it, then this also is meaningless. The universe does not care, and will recycle the atoms that make us up, along with everything we have ever done. If we respond with a sense of despair, then this also is meaningless. The universe could still not care less. Perhaps we could decide that we will spend our lives in helping others. This is commendable, but not from a materialistic viewpoint. Helping others is also meaningless if all we are is counted in atoms held together for a time by an energy that will soon run out, and if every thought we have is merely the working out of chemical reactions and the discharge of energy in the brain. In such a view, if we really hold it, there is no more value or meaning in helping others than in helping a rock or a rabbit. These are also made of atoms and energy, just as it is suggested that we are. We are nothing more, just slightly more complicated collections of the same materials.

It is hard to live with such a view of the world, but it is what is required if we really and honestly believe that the universe has come into existence and remains in existence until its end, without intelligence or purpose.

The majority of people in the West do not hold such a firm view that there is no intelligence and purpose behind the universe. And many more act as if they did not really believe such a horrifying vision of life. Indeed, it seems impossible for most of us to live without purpose in life, and we have to create one if we have not found one. Human beings seem to need some sense that there is meaning in our existence.

In Britain, a recent survey found that two thirds of British people either believed in God, or in some creative being, or were open-minded about the question. Only a third reported that they had decided that there was no such intelligent purpose behind the universe. Interestingly, the majority of those holding such views were young, but even among this group most likely to reject any idea of an intelligent creative force, only 46% did so. The majority still believed in something or were open-minded. Those who had more experience of life, and more time to reflect on the big questions and indeed to consider their own mortality, were less likely to be certain that the universe was only materialistic, atoms and energy without purpose or intelligence.

It’s not unusual to believe that there is something, or someone, beyond the universe who brought it into being. Most people in Britain who believe exactly this probably do not have the clearest of ideas what that might mean. But it gives some purpose to life, because it suggests that beauty, good and evil, and love itself, might be rooted in this creative being, and therefore have a reality beyond the merely material.

Around the world and throughout time, the belief in some external creative being or force has always been the majority opinion, and it remains so. Albania declared itself the world’s first atheist state and violently persecuted anyone who disagreed. But as soon as atheistic communism collapsed the underlying popular sense that there must be someone or something who gives meaning to life was resurrected, and various religious movements re-established themselves. Likewise, in Russia. Even after seventy years of repressive and oppressive anti-religious violence and propaganda, religious ideas are back in the mainstream and hundreds of millions of Russians have chosen to identify themselves with those who believe that there is more to life than simply the material.

Nor is it only the uneducated who express a belief in some sort of creative being or force. A recent survey conducted in the US found that about half of the scientific population had a belief in an external intelligence or force beyond the material universe. It might seem that only a tiny minority of Western, educated, sophisticated people have any residual belief that there is or could be someone or something outside the world we see, but in fact a significant proportion, a majority indeed, believe just that.

I was watching a TV programme recently called Only Fools and Horses. It is one of those old fashioned harmless and inoffensive, amusing, family comedies depicting life in the part of London where I was born. What is taken for granted is that as an entirely ordinary, working class man, the hero has a complete faith that his dear mother is somewhere safe and watches over them. His grasp of the details of Christianity, let alone any other religion, is vague indeed. But he is sure of this. There is more to life than this.

The intention of this book is not to convince someone that there is a God, if they are firmly of the opinion that there is not. In these chapters I want to address that majority which believes that there is some God or force outside the universe, and who brought it into existence, or are at least open to such ideas. It is reasonable to act in such a way. We cannot know for sure that there is no God of some sort. Those scientists who insist in a bare materialism are stepping outside the bounds of science, since science can say nothing at all about a being, who, if he existed, is not part of the created order which science studies.

It is reasonable to ask ourselves how our lives would be changed if there was such an intelligent and creative being or force. The majority, even in Britain, think that one exists, but most have not thought very hard or seriously about what that might mean. In this book, we will examine in particular what the Orthodox Church, the oldest Christian community in the world, says about these questions. The Orthodox Church finds its origins in the Apostles or Disciples of Jesus Christ himself, and they have left us with explanations of the earliest and original Christianity. The Orthodox Church has continued to the present day, seeking to faithfully preserve these teachings and this ancient explanation of the Christian Faith.

We can call this being or force, God, without saying much more about what that might mean. We do not