OPEN LETTER

Knowing the preoccupations of the readers interested in the field of religions, I decided to address them this epistle which contains 15 questions which are a DILLEMA, almost insurmountable. The first lemma would be: Is God Total, Fundamental and Absolute? And the second is: If YES, then why His creation is not as perfect as He is?

I understand, too, the figurative message presented in the Philocalia, with the explanations and the overwhelming commentaries of Pr. Prof. Dr. Dumitru Stăniloaie, by presenting the biunivocal rapport between guru and apprentice, position which saves the latter from pride. By continuous prayer toward God Whom I asked in the name of the Redeemer, for all my life, only two attributes: mind and wisdom, He conferred me, in His limitless love, even some ability to get to know how proud lack of pride manifests itself. With sadness I remember that I knew along my life men of the Church (with predilection, some of the isihasts of the Mount Athos), whose proud lack of pride and strident humbleness were masking, by hypocrisy and double-faced-ness, a violent pride. The spiteful largeness which they met me, the sinner, as coming from the darkness of the apostate world, it proved well enough the sufficiency of their Pharisaism.

Of course, there is the possibility that a superficial observer, situated outside the communication frequency, confuses with arrogance or with the humbleness of pride the behavior of a person aware of his own value and which presents fluently, coherently and with due ground the perspective of an assertion, postulate, or even value judgment. In relation to this aspect, I understood the motivating observation of Proverbs 12:23 and Matthew 7:6.

I listened with hightened attention the expositions pertaining to faithfulness of many servants of God and I share this with you in all openness, that I could not gather the signification of some ideas which they abstract from situations, facts or states which happened in our world. In their discourses they operate, in quite many cases, with extremely particularized functors which led me astray. I noticed with surprise that I am surpassed in the thinking of the emotional by the emotional of the thinking. A presentation of a spiritual experience which has such a subliminal suggestion power it cannot be only heard; it needs being read, studied, this obliging me to analyze and synthesize the value of semantic use of each word, and, then, their functional value in topics. Many of the speeches (preachings) listened are structured in a language for being understood by everyone having an average culture, but they are formatted as contents on an emotional frequency which creates by the plastic forms of the expose, an overwhelming mystical pathos. It is exactly the style and the way of approaching and polarizing the attention of a person towards the field of energy capable to direct its soul towards transcendent, removing from his mind all adversity that could be there.

Coming back to the idea that reason is in opposition with the revelation, as many believe it to be so, this formulation engenders a question from my behalf as listener, which I try to mediate it by comprehending the idea, me starting from the semantics of the word to reason = the faculty of knowing, to think logically, to judge. To judge, means to formulate in thoughts or words a logical reasoning. Below I will show what revelation means: uncovering, finding. By continuity in the semantic link between words, we find out that uncovering means to make known, to snitch. And snitching it can be realized only through words, expressed or written. And in this way we reach the book of the Gospel writer John 1:1, wherein we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. We refer again to reason, which we know that it also means the faculty to think logically. Here we have a broader parenthesis on logics which is not only the formal one, which operates with the functors offered by the five senses, which were exclusively credited by the Cartesian thinking and by the Kantian logic, but intuitive logic is one of the logics, too.

The reasonings of intuitive logic differ fundamentally from those of the logic of formal reasonings by the fact that intuition means: the capacity to look, to immediately reach in the essence of things, facts, states, etc., without appealing to the help of the five senses, as the formal reasoning does. The fact that even from the beginning it was the Word means, according to the topics of the Gospel author, that in such moment he starts from LOGOS, so from revelation → uncovering→ reason. “The Word was with God” shows us a duality, since the very first moment they were there both God and the Logos, which means that Divine reason revealed itself, it uncovered itself, it acted, after which it follows the mention: “The Word was God”, which in the thinking expressed by the same author the two terms are one and the same ENTITY.

In this accept we may rehabilitate the personality of the REASON, because REVELATION itself implies the faculty of reasoning about a deed which did not follow the way: reception → perception → thesis → antithesis → conclusion (speculation), on the input of the five senses, specific to the physical body, but it entered directly through the spirit in the soul, wherein it stimulates the three types of energy which animate the soul (sensation, sentiment, wish), producing thus emotion. Then, in its turn, awareness could make the phenomenon found in the soul also pass in the physical body by starting the phenomenon of self-suggestion, this being able to produce in its turn important biotic modifications. Without reason, revelation is not possible because, lacking reason, revelation is not perceived, so it is as good as inexistent. The pathology of the rational knows in detail that oligophrens cannot have revelations but, at most, nightmares, visions and phantasms.

There also are manifest in certain people typical forms of pathologic reason, willing at any time to arrogate the supreme position in the material world, which they think it is the only form of existence, this being due to their incapacity to make distinction between the physiological and the psychological reactions. This state led to the formulation of some pseudo-postulates which asserted that the evolution of material structures from the inferior stage to the superior one is the only evident possibility through which they reached the actual form. In reality there is no evolution but a morphology of matter which rather proves its involution process, because the entropy of structured energies, physically quantified, it surpasses their negentropy.

In the large majority of people, the spiritual hunger makes terrible ravages. Because of this, they wander astray on Devil’s paths, searching for all kind of palliatives which they consider able to solve difficult problems. We reached the situation wherein persons who are mentally retarded, they amass fabulous fortunes by practicing of garbage-bin witchcraft. But no kind of religious surrogate is able to fulfill the spiritual hunger. By religious surrogate I mean forms of behavioral ritual as well as forms of ritual of speech. Formal stereotypes may create the illusion of an apparently religious behavior but, in reality, all these composite forms are lacking substance. I do not discuss the Eastern Orthodox religion, which situates itself at the periphery of the religions. I mean the Neo-Protestant religions which reformed themselves initially by splitting form the mother churches, because of desiring to eliminate the passé deposed strata of routine, imposed though the typical ceremonial. It was a consequence of reason being concerned with the revelation of the state of spiritual nakedness.

Many exegetes of the Word put themselves questions and sought answers (see Martin Luther), fact which attracted upon them the sticker of being a heretic. This is ultimately the same reason for which I got expelled from a Protestant church, being actually excluded from the administrative records by persons somewhat bigot, somewhat pharisaized, somewhat proud, somewhat arrogant and somewhat unable to answer some questions as:

1. Why do a lot people preach the fear (fright) of God, affirming that He is always ready to punish and terrorize, from the perspective of the absolute destruction of the rebelled ones, since we know that in Proverbs 8:13 it writes: “The fear of God is hating evil”?

2. God created all that there is, not only in the Material Universe but also in the Spiritual Universe. How was it possible then that a part of His creation escaped from His control by rebelling itself, giving this way birth to EVIL? What kind of God is He Who cannot wholly control His own creation? And, did He not control it indeed? Or did He allow for rebellion? Why?

3. How could a God loving the world up to sacrificing His Son, dispose at the end of times the destruction of His own creation, which rebelled against Him? Wouldn’t this procedure reveal that God is left with no solution other than making perish all those (see Revelation 21:1) who He could no longer control? How can this perishing be understood from the perspective of the Creator? Isn’t it that all descriptions of God’s fight with His rebelled creation are only a conceptual perspective which sprang from merely human thinking?

4. Admitting that God, since the blueprint of His creation, decided to allow full personality to the created beings, giving them the possibility to choose for themselves the way they follow, didn’t He knew that these beings which He created were not perfect, therefore it is possible that rebellion may take place in their heart? Exemplary being the case of Lucifer. If He did not knew it, it means He is not all-knowing, and if He knew it or only guessed it coming, then either He did not love enough His creation, for He decided its perishing due to a failed experiment, or He did not have any other choice.

5. The idea that God rewards His own creatures according to their own deeds, who are, evidently, imperfect and incapable to oppose evil (at least a part of this Creation), means to apply to the Creator an “insufficient” quality score for His creation. In the second epistle of Peter, second chapter with verse 4 we read: “For if God did not spare the angels which sinned, but He threw them into Abyss, wherein they stay surrounded by darkness, chained with chains, and kept for judgment;” Is it possible such a reasoning in respect to a God completely differently described in the book of John 3:16? Yes! It is possible, since God defines Himself as being Total, Fundamental and Absolute. In His totality, the whole creation is formatted in two hypostases: Potential and Dynamics. It follows that the whole character of Divine creation is found in a dual ubiquity, fact which is evident from all which means observable universe. God’s character of being Total shows us the fact that both Good and Evil have to exist here, otherwise God would be partial or, rather, unilateral. 

6. If God did not create evil, but He only accepted it, it means that there is something above God, which decided for Him. Is that possbile? Our firm conviction is: NO! How could we argument this conviction so that we may rationally cancel the contents of such question? Does God admits us to put ourselves such questions? Yes, categorically, because He created us with the capacity to reason. Do we have to ask Him what answer such question has? In no way may this answer be given with great fervor by some pseudo-exegetes of the Bible, and it may never be circumstantial or approximated by advancing an opinion.

7. Why did God create weak beings, imperfect and incapable to oppose evil and avoid corruption? I mean even Lucifer and the angels who followed him, let aside mentioning the Human being.

8. What is the use of (profit from) the whole Universe, considering the fact that God allowed (apparently without being able to do anything to prevent it) that evil become manifest? At universal level, may we consider the problem of such use? Or is it that at this very level we should no longer consider asking such a question?

9. Ultimately, what Good and Evil are? How could we justify their cohabitation from the perspective of perfection?

10. An incontestable fact is evident, i.e. that not all of God’s creation is perfect like Him. In respect to the information which we have, it is enough the perspective of imperfection, starting with Lucifer, which found himself close to the throne of God, as the scene is described by Isaiah in chapter 14 with verses 12-15. Is this “evidence” real? How else would the reality be then?

11. Why a Total, Fundamental and Absolute God, Creator of all there is, why created He the Heavens and the Hell? Heavens as eternal place of happiness for those faithful and obedient, and Hell, eternal place of sufferance for those unfaithful and disobedient (Revelation 20:10). How can it be peace between God’s perfection and the perpetual existence of a place of sufferance for beings created with a potential infinitely lower to God’s potential? Is this the only solution which God had as available?

12. Why did God give free choice (will and possibility to choose and decide) to the human being, who was created by Him as a weak and imperfect being? The proof of this imperfection consists in the very blueprint of salvation made since the foundation of the world, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, since the human could not redeem himself through his own effort.

13. How can we understand verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis, referring to the fact that we are created in the image and resemblance of God’s male part and female part? Is God androgyny? What does androgyny mean in respect to God, knowing that at this level we may no longer consider the problem of anatomic composition, since only the principle of dual ubiquity is there of application. The question remains beyond puerile answers and its expects its answer, which has to be placed not in physical plane but in metaphysical plane.

14. It is evident the disproportion, at least qualitative, between the Creator and His creation? If Yes, then what the meaning is of a creation much more insignificant than its creator? If No, then the creation, which is, at least partly, imperfect, whom or what does it represent? And what sense does such a creation have?

15. In many biblical records we read: “God get angered” or “God’s anger” (see Romans 1:18). Does God get angry? Anger is a human feeling and God is no Human being but He is God. Why then the verb “to get angry”?

Admitting the variant supported by those who cannot answer such questions and who state that we cannot know the blueprints of God’s plan and the will of God, there remain, though, all the questions listed above, which keep their whole content be it only for the reason that being created in the image and likeness to God, we also have the capacity of knowledge in antithesis with lack of knowledge, also trough the capacity of having knowledge.

From this capacity it follows the semantic rethinking of the Bible, which was commented by its writers in human words, owing to emotional reactions. God’s revelation to these people contained the principle, but gnosis it was only possible by its transposition in the limits of the power to express something, which, when it is felt but not thought, it rests formulated in images, not in concepts. This is the reason for which the Redeemer propagated His ideas through examples and stories. In real world, only philosophers, mathematicians and physicists are able to think abstractly. And even they employ symbols. All the rest, the immense majority of people, they format their thoughts through imagistic projection in the mental plane. For the exegetes of the concept of existence, thinking in images is wholly insufficient, and those who operate in such manner even when then seek representations for principles and axioms they should only be content with the position of dilettantes in this field. Pathetic formulations and behavior appealing to pity, they are liked precisely because they have a sweetish taste, but this owes to the tongue, not to the mind. The formula is correct when a mass has to be controlled or even an individual whose soul belongs to the mass, with whose collective thinking he confuses himself.

I may be accused that I, through publishing my questions, I would bring offense to Divinity or I would be blaspheming, only by those alike me who, when we are incapable of comprehending something, which would oblige us to a clear and categorical answer, we counterattack by invoking the Law of Silence; silence in thinking, silence in expression, stating that the rational is unable to comprehend the irrational. Here become manifest confusion and incapacity to comprehend a phenomenon, considering the incapacity as irrational projection of a phenomenon which is rational by its own very name. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, we are suggested to “research all things and stick to the good ones”, fact which confirms beyond any doubt that we possess the capacity to distinguish between good and evil and that these two states coexist. Why? What for? Untill when?

God cannot be insulted or offended by His own Creation, being thus a reason for His anger, precisely the same way as no human being may consider himself offended by a low quality product which he himself produced it. God could only be offended by someone who is equal in rank with Him.
Lucian Iordănescu
- psychologist & sociologist -