When referring to atheism,
we need to be slightly careful. Because the person whom we perceive
as an atheist may, in reality, not be one. One may live quite
differently than we Orthodox do, but that cannot be labeled “atheism”.
There exists
a theoretical atheism,
and a practical
atheism;
in fact, we
can argue that there even exists a “religious atheism”. This category
pertains to those people who live within the realm of the Church, but
very superficially, without ever attaining a personal awareness of
divine Grace – a personal “knowledge” of God. The Pharisees of Christ’s
time observed such an odd kind of atheism.
They upheld and taught the
Law, and yet, they ignored the Lawgiver; in fact, not only did they
ignore Him, they even crucified Him. This is why it is so difficult for
one to draw a dividing line between faith and faithlessness: one can
appear to be faithful, and yet, end up in complete atheism and
agnosticism. On the other hand, someone else may appear to be an
atheist externally, and yet eventually end up finding the perfect faith.
Despite the difficulty
involved, I would now like to present the stages of atheism, as
described by Clement. He basically discerns three stages in atheism:
«The
first stage is
anti-theism,
the revolting against God in the name of freedom and justice. Anti-theism
is born of Christianity’s decomposition, when it has remained silently
dead and has been transformed into an ideology, and looks to
totalitarianism in order to replace the lost power of the whole».
An established religion which has been turned in to an ideology usually
disappoints people, who, influenced by other world-theory motives,
openly attack this dead and fossilized religion. Reactions are violent;
they ridicule everything that has to do with religion, and in fact, they
do so in the name of justice and freedom. In other words, they are
revolutionary and oppositional by nature.
The second stage follows
the first. After having exhausted themselves with their ridiculing and
their attacks, they arrive at another condition:
«Revolutionary
and militant atheism is weakened by its own victory, while the masses
slide away towards an indifference….or, they slide away towards an
escape and the “recreation” provided by the “society of spectacles”. The
more demanding ones among them find themselves up against something
finite and forgo every optimism, and thus develop various philosophies
of the illogical and of nausea».
Thus, we
note that indifference and despair are the things that distinguish this
second stage in atheism.
From being a religious experience, it becomes a sociological one. Weary
of his battles, Man falls into a despair that absolutely nothing can
cure. Instead of transforming this into a despair addressed to God (in
other words, repentance), he transforms it into a despair addressed to
the world. He feels disillusioned by everything, and he seeks ways of
alleviating his suffering, but he does not succeed.
When he has become
thoroughly disillusioned,
he ends up in
another particular stage of atheism:
«Already,
a third type pf atheism takes shape; one that we could name “occult”.
One looks for antidotes for the “fiery desert” of science and technique,
by striving to render them “esoterical”, but always within the bounds of
the one or the other; in other words, by persevering in the denial of
the personal God who became a Man. They discover once again the odd,
the apocryphal potentials of man, and the old symbolism of the universe».
During this third stage, they seek the «spirituality»
of the oriental religions, of philosophy, but also the illusion of
social justice from within pseudo-Messianisms. We can in fact say that
contemporary Man is possessed by this mysticism, which is a morbid
phenomenon.
From the above analysis,
certain conclusions can be drawn:
The first one is that
–unfortunately- whatever has become obsolete in the West is now being
lived in Greece. We are living through situations that the Westerners
went through 50 years ago. Unfortunately, this is what has been
happening in every area. We become influenced by the West, but
unfortunately it is the obsolete West; influenced, by the things that
the West has bypassed. We are the recipients of outdated models of
living, hence the reason one observes in many areas the phenomenon of
anti-theism – the first stage of atheism – which has now been bypassed
in the West, where they have begun to also abandon the second stage and
are in search of the third; i.e., they are in search of redemption and
deliverance from their gnawing, internal problems. We are constantly
lagging behind.
The second one is that the
Orthodox Tradition contains a healthy spirituality; one that is balanced
and lively, which we can live and thus be able to escape the hoax of
morbid occultism. We are enabled to acquire a personal “knowledge” of
God. Our God is not an abstract one - a God of philosophers and
contemplators – but a real God; the God of our Fathers. Why must we
therefore resort to an impersonal mysticism of the oriental kind, or to
sorcery and the suchlike, when in our Tradition we have a complete
teaching and life, which lead us to the experiencing of the personal
God?
The Orthodox Church
possesses an unfathomable depth, which we cannot discern with the naked
eye; we may regard the Church as an established institution, but, beyond
Her superficial aspects, there exists a living reality. Reality exists,
incarnate, in every person. The quest for this truth - and our
actually living it - can divert our course towards an atheism that sucks
out our life and our entire existence.