timeimmortal

In reading through an excellent tome by James Stuart Bell, which is comprised of excerpts from the various books that were found in the personal library of one Clive Staples Lewis — yes, of Narnia fame. From the Library of C. S. Lewis is an amazing book full of all kinds of spiritual reflections, principally from Christian thinkers, theologians, and authors who shaped and guided Lewis along his journey into, and then through, the Christian faith.

This morning, on the bus to work, I came across this passage, an excerpt from a writing by C. F. D. Moule, an Anglican priest and theologian who passed away last year at the age of 98.

In Rev 7:14 there is mention of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. This, of course, is applicable to all Christians as such: we all owe our cleansing to that blood. But if, as is sometimes held, this passage refers specially to martyrs, then I suggest — though this is only a guess — that it is possible that we are confronted with a striking example of the way in which Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice might be, in certain circumstances, spoken of as repeated in each act of human obedience joined with his.

The martyr’s own blood, shed in faithfulness to the Lord, turns out to be the blood of the Lamb. When their blood flowed, behold it was the blood of the Lamb. Their sacrifice was united with his — not as though theirs were independently redemptive or added anything to his, but in the sense that, being united, believer and Lord are, in that sense, one: his blood is their blood, their blood his. The blood whith is the sacrament of obedience is the Lord’s blood: the wine which is the sacrament of obedience is, in that sense, the Lord’s blood.

Now, Moule was (again), an Anglican, and so did not entirely share the Catholic view of the bread and wine. And yet, I think he grasped that there was more to them than just a symbolic remembrance of The Last Supper as well, and I think this moved him to postulate a reason as to how it might be possible that in partaking of the bread and wine, we might still be able to eat and drink the bread and wine whilst discerning in them the body of Jesus (c.f. 1 Corinthians 11:27-29).

In reading his conclusion, or rather his conjecture, I got the sense that he was correct about the link between the blood of the martyrs and the blood of Christ, but initially I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what that link might be. However, when Moule notes, of martyrs, that “[Christ's] blood is their blood, their blood his,” and then goes on to note that “in that sense” the wine from the altar is the blood of the Lord, I think he’s on to something…and that he doesn’t quite go far enough.

It is probably impossible to fully convey, in writing, the magnitude and meaning of what we receive in the Eucharistic meal; in the breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine, we remember Christ, and in the consecration of same we participate — both again and anew — in the one true sacrifice that Christ made for the salvation of all. In receiving Christ, we are thus not merely remembering Him, but committing ourselves to Him, uniting ourselves with Him, and in some sense even becoming as He was.

In essence, then, what Moule notes above about the blood of martyrs must happen in the Eucharist — in taking the wine which now is blood, we surrender our own blood, and our blood becomes Christ’s blood (and His ours).

Which should mean, if we are honest about our beliefs, that in receiving Christ, we boldly declare that we are fully ready — even willing — to perish as He did, not for our own glory, but for the glory of God and for our love of others (c.f. John 15:13)

In essence then, our participation in the Eucharist — in the feast of the body and blood of the Lord — becomes a preparation for martyrdom. In receiving that most blessed meal, we pledge that we stand ready — prepared, as it were, in heart, mind, and soul — to offer up everything, even our life, for the glory of God. And perhaps we should thus reflect that if we are not able — in heart, mind, and soul — to confess our willingness to put the Lord even before our own life, we should perhaps abstain from reception of the most blessed of the Sacraments.

And when we do receive the most blessed sacrament, perhaps we should reflect on the fact that at times, the Christian call includes the call to martyrdom. Perhaps we should make it a part of our prayers, that day and whenever the moment comes upon us, to ask the Lord for the strength and courage we may one day need to face, boldly, those who would do us harm for our confession unto Christ.

Wayne writes in with some kind words.

In your answers from a catholic, you referenced the group you were part of. You would know, of course that they have eliminated your posts as if they never existed.

I only caught a hint from a person responding to your intro post quoted it including the WtFdragon and your scouts involvement.

I used to be a “reformed baptist” type and knew that only the KJV Baptists were more anti-catholic than me, so when I saw the nature of those involved, I wasn’t surprised that you were summarily ‘disappeared’.

Did you ever address your bannishment from that group, and how long did you last after you posted?

btw, I am now a catholic after 42+ years of being an anti-Catholic, so God does rescue some enemies of the church just to keep them stirred up…. “did ya hear??!! Wayne went apostate!…. Catholic!”

I was married on Dec 8th, 2006 and we are still hoping for babies, congratulations to you and your wife.

Wayne

Well, thank you very kindly, Wayne.

Yes, O Reader, there is little trace of me left in the Gamespot group that calls itself the “Bible Believers Union”. And while the group’s name is not exactly a misnomer — everyone within it is some flavour of Christian, and then mostly of a strict-literalist bent — I am nevertheless reminded of a Star Wars quote. Pace Ben Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of narrowness and bigotry.

Actually, that’s not entirely true — the BBU is hardly e.g. Stormfront. But it’s not a nice place to be, especially if you’re any other sort of Christian besides the Jack Chick reading, “Bible thumping”, “Jesus jumping” sort. And even then…seriously, the union is so hardcore that

The whole story of my joining, and then subsequently resigning from, the BBU involved me having a falling out, some years back, with some people on another Gamespot union, the Christian Union. Disgusted at some rather rabid anti-Catholic bigotry on display therein, I gravitated toward the BBU in the hope that it would prove to be a decent forum to continue talking about Christ online. As it turned out, I was leaving the frying pan for the fire…but in the interim, the leader of the Christian Union did a bit of house-cleaning and welcomed me back with open arms.

So the situation was resolved very well, I have to say, and fortunately the whole experience didn’t sour the Gamespot community for me any at all. Which is a good thing, as I rather like Gamespot as a resource — it is quite a good trove of information.

At any rate, many congratulations to Wayne on his conversion — the Church welcomes warmly, and is greatly enriched by, adult converts! May he persevere in faith! Congratulations are also due him over his marriage (such a blessed sacrament!), and it is my prayer that he and his wife be rewarded with the many fruits of the marital union, including (in God’s good time) children.

And yes, O Reader, more Answers will be forthcoming in due time.

The Anchoress raises a good point: many people fear exploring Religion — Christianity especially — too closely, for fear that in so doing they might encounter something which would force them to change their thinking, and perhaps even require them to acknowledge that something exists “beyond” them. The human illusions of permanence and control are difficult ways of thinking to overcome, even when one comes face to face with the Creator God who is above all other things; for many, it is too frightening a concept to dwell on.

This is, perhaps, especially true both of the Incarnation of Christ and of the Eucharist, which is a direct revelation and experience of Him.

[The human being, in all ages of history,] resists the consequence of the mystery made flesh, for if this Event is true, then all aspects of life, including the sensible and the social, must revolve around it. And it is precisely man’s perception of being undermined, no longer being the measure of his own self, that places him in the position of refusal.

The Anchoress notes a strange thing: doubt is almost sacrosanct to the skeptic and the agnostic, and yet doubt itself must not be cast into doubt. It is perhaps fortunate, then, that Christ will patiently grant people many chances to overcome their fear of certainity.

I got into something of a dust-up with some non-denominational types over the issue of the Old Covenant and the Church’s teaching that the Old Covenant between God and the Jewish people is fixed and irrevocable, and that the Jewish people who live in that covenant offer up a response to God as well.

Essentially, it’s a teaching that the salvation Christ brings extends also to the Jews, the first to hear the Word of God, by means of the Old Covenant and the law of Moses. I’m sure the good Reader can see why such an idea would trigger a good dust-up with those who take a rather simpler view of the Christian faith.

Now, the Reader can relax a bit: I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of the Catholic position today. But I wanted to remark on something I tripped over on my stroll through the blogs this morning, which I think is relevant.

At the end of a post that begins with a discussion of the tripartite division of the Temple, and how this relates to Mount Sinai, Michael Barber notes that there is a certain parallelism in the words Moses uses in bestowing the Old Covenant on the people, and the words that Christ uses in giving the New Covenant in His blood:

Key to all of this is the covenant ratification ceremony of Exodus 24–a passage Jesus’ likely alludes to at the Last Supper:

Mark 14:23: “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. [24] And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (cf. Matt 26:28).

Exod 24:8: “And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” [Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on this verse reads, "This is the blood of the covenant"].

Much could be said here [wait for my dissertation!], but suffice it to say, if Jesus is linking the Eucharist with Exodus 24 the implications are huge.

If the Sinai experience was a Temple experience in which God’s presence came to be with His people, how much more real is God’s presence with His people in the Eucharistic celebration?

The short answer would be: very real, perhaps even terrifyingly real. I previously discussed the institution of the Eucharist by Christ, and His revelation in the breaking of the bread, from a purely Scriptural point of view, and would suggest to the Reader that it is beyond doubt that Christ does literally become present in the bread and wine in the Mass. It’s still a bold declaration of faith to say so, but Scripture supports the conjecture.

Some Catholics probably also understand the Eucharist as a re-participation in the New Covenant that Christ instituted at The Last Supper. But perhaps there is a deeper significance, one that relates the New Covenant back to the old, and thus makes the Eucharist a re-participation in that older promise between God and man as well.

I’m going to take a day’s break from all the brouhaha that normally percolates through the blog here. It’s Friday, and it’s a good time to turn my thoughts away from the matters that trouble the world which I inhabit, and the orbits I find myself in. It would be nice to start preparing myself for Sunday, for Mass, and for yet another encounter with the Lord.

I’m talking, of course, about Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian faith. And also, both inside and outside of Catholicism, one of the most misunderstood aspects of the faith.

Catholicism makes what seems, initially, to be a very bold claim: that Christ Jesus literally becomes present in the breaking of the bread at each and every Mass, that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, retaining only the “accidental” (to use the Aristotelean term) of qualities of each — the bread and wine still look like bread and wine, and still taste like it. But, contrary to the “if it quacks like a duck” thinking of the rest of the world around us, Catholics nevertheless boldly assert that despite the fact that the bread and wine seem, by all appearances, to still be bread and wine, they are in fact anything but.

It’s a bold declaration of complete faith…faith not in the Church (as an institution), nor faith in the priest, nor faith in the wafer itself. No, it is a declaration of faith in Christ, an affirmation of the Catholic belief that Christ really is Lord and King of all creation, and the He does so love the world — and everyone in it — that He desires to draw to Him those who profess their need for Him.

Equally, it is a declaration of faith in a Christ whose love and desire to be in communion with those who profess their need for His promise of salvation and forgiveness of sin that He will make Himself present to them, in keeping with His promise that He would be in the midst of any number who gather in His name. We all must die in due course and will, in so doing, end up before the Lord. But prior to that, Christ — out of love — elects to come into our presence too. His love for humanity is so great, and His desire to be in communion with us so powerful, that He will step down, but for a moment, to be with us in our present-tense reality, appearing before us in a guise at once hidden and yet obvious, as surely as He appeared to the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus.

It’s a powerful belief. But then, Christ is Lord and King of all creation — it is proper that a teaching pertaining to the direct intersection of Christ and the world is powerful.

Within Scripture, the first hints of the Eucharist are presented in the Gospel of John, in chapter 6. The close association between the Eucharistic revelation and the Paschal Meal is at once obvious.

[4] Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.
[5] Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”
[6] This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
[7] Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”
[8] One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him,
[9] “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”
[10] Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
[11] Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
[12] And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.”
[13] So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.
[14] When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
[15]Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

These are not usually the verses cited in any apologetic concerning the Eucharist, but I would like to preface my analysis by noting the significance of the event within them. A large multitude has gathered to see and hear the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus — deeply moved — worries after the need of the people to eat. There is precious little food available to achieve that end, of course — to feed five thousand, two loaves and five fishes would amount to mere crumbs per person.

And so Jesus effects a miracle, both as a sign to the people and as a test of faith for the disciples. I’ve always thought the scene’s portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth captured the mood of the disciples perfectly, and I am still struck by the image of the apostle John holding forth an empty basket, apologizing that what little is in it is all he has. And yet, when the camera pans back to the basket, it is overflowing.
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I’m not a convert to Catholicism, so I don’t get deluged with emails urging me to revert to the “true”, “Biblical” faith that I abandoned by becoming Catholic. So in that way, I can’t relate to what Mark Shea is talking about in this article.

But in the web forums I post to, I am unapologetic and open concerning my Catholicism, and I find that on a cycle almost as predictable as the cycle of atheistic commentators here at Time Immortal, I am periodically deluged by well-meaning, if misinformed, fundamentalists urging me to abandon the false, man-made teachings of Rome in favour of true, “Biblical” Christianity and the inerrant, preserved Word of God that is the King James Version of the Bible.

And in such matters, I take Mark Shea’s response as my own:

Almost every other day, it seems, I will open my e-mail and find something like this specimen (culled from my “deleted” file):

Dear Mark, just came from your Web site and have some questions. It sounds like you were a “Protestant” before becoming a Catholic? I don’t know which church you were in but I have to question whether you were ever taught the Word of God there? If you had been in a church which taught the truth concerning Baptism according to the Word of GOD and not the “traditions of men” you would have learned that not only does baptism NOT save nor “grant justification” but it is ONLY for those who ARE BORN-AGAIN by the SPIRIT of GOD by placing their faith in the LORD JESUS CHRIST! It is to be symbolic of the new birth ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED by GOD as Romans 6 clearly teaches! PLEASE READ the Gospel of John and pray asking GOD to show you HIS TRUTH — HE LOVES THE WORLD and DESIRES TO SAVE the LOST — which we all are apart from the New Birth which IS FREELY offered to ALL! Please read and be saved! I will be praying for you in JESUS Name. Carolyn

You have to wonder what is going through the minds of people who write such stuff. What do they think they are accomplishing?

One is terribly tempted to reply: “The Word of God? What’s that? Never heard of such a thing. Is that, like, the Bible? We used to read something called a ‘Bible,’ I think, at our old Church. But that was an awfully long time ago.

“Boy, thanks for setting me straight. I have never ever ever heard before that Jesus Christ loves me and desires to save the lost with His free gift of grace! I always thought that I had to perform magical rituals to make God love me. But now that you have so thoughtfully set me straight, I see clearly that when that big black book we used to read in my old church-that-never-taught-me-the-Bible says ‘Baptism now saves you’ (1 Pet 3:21) what it means is ‘Baptism does not save you.’

“And thanks also for explaining that when Romans 6 says, ‘All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death,’ and ‘We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life,’ this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with Baptism. I really appreciate your setting me straight on that as well.

“And finally, thanks for making me see that all that stuff in John 3 about being born again of water and the Spirit really means water and the Spirit are complete opposites.

“Golly. It is so good to finally — after all these years — have somebody who really teaches the Word of God clue me in. Who would have thought that all those years of studying . . . what’s that big black book called again? Ah yes! ‘The Bible.’ Anyway, who would have thought that all those years of studying the Bible could have left me so totally ignorant of what Scripture really means? Thanks ever so much for enlightening me.”

Yes, kind of facetious and tongue-in-cheek. But sometimes, that’s all one can do to respond to the misguidedly overzealous persons one encounters on this big, wide internet.

A friend of mine once put to me an example concerning the orientation of hypothetical magnetic dipoles in a hypothetical box. From within the box, it appeared that the orientation of the dipoles was randomly shifting; from the outside of the box, it was apparent that no such thing was transpiring, as one could plainly see the small toddler with the magnetic toy playing on and near the box.

I tend to think of this example when people talk of evolutionary developments as being unpredictable products of mere chance. I do not contest that such things are unpredictable; I contest, very sharply, the notion that pure chance alone had a hand in the developments. We are inside the box; we cannot see if anyone is playing with a magnet outside of it. Perhaps, on that basis, we can be forgiven for reaching the wrong conclusion. Nevertheless, it’s still the wrong conclusion.

I say this to preface a mention of this rather fortunate discovery of direct evidence of evolution in action, because while I lament the attribution of the event to purely random chance, I nevertheless acknowledge that it’s an exciting discovery, and a bit of a shot in the arm for those who oppose the theory of evolution on some principle (especially my fellow Christians who do so):

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

…

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.

…sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations – the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.

Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.

…Lenski turned to his freezer, where he had saved samples of each population every 500 generations. These allowed him to replay history from any starting point he chose, by reviving the bacteria and letting evolution “replay” again.

…The replays showed that even when he looked at trillions of cells, only the original population re-evolved Cit+ – and only when he started the replay from generation 20,000 or greater. Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve.

Lenski and his colleagues are now working to identify just what that earlier change was, and how it made the Cit+ mutation possible more than 10,000 generations later.

In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.

Discoveries like this affirm my faith in God, I find, because they carry with them a profound sense of wonder and amazement at the subtle, yet profound, intricacies upon which all of creation is constructed. In a sense, I pity those who assert that God must have made things in the exact manner suggested in the Book of Genesis, because the God of such a literalist interpretation of the Bible is so much smaller, so less magnificent. The God who knows each created thing down to its tiniest detail, and (moreover) who envisioned and breathed into being each such detail is so much larger, and so much more personal as well.

And it is staggering, to me, to think that God still so loves the world that He is willing to again make the processes of His creation apparent in even the tiny bacteria of the lab; indeed, His love is poured out on them too, and they respond in magnificent ways to it.

Discoveries like this, to me, don’t speak of chance; they speak of revelation — natural revelation, to be specific. They speak of a God who continues to desire to reveal His ways and mysteries to an inquiring, open human mind. As David Warren and others have pointed out, the whole ideal of science — that rational inquiry will be rewarded by way of evidence and discovery — has at its core a very Christian sensibility, echoed in the words of Christ: “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

One of the things that constantly floors me is that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, one arguably stands at the holiest place in all of Catholicism, even if one is just visiting one’s local parish church.

That is because the Eucharist is Christ Himself, of course; there can be no holier place than to stand before the Lord. And we must approach such a reality with humility — the only fitting response by which a lowly, and then sinful, creation should ever hope to approach his or her creator.

Singing in the Reign has an interesting analysis of the similarities between Christ’s commission to His disciples — the Apostles and all of us who are, today, called His disciples — and the priesthood of the Levites.

The Levites are priests but only at the cost of kin and property.

Indeed, the similarities are striking. The Levites have had to renounce (”he did not acknowledge”) their own family members — father, mother, brother. Likewise, Jesus explains that his disciples must renounce “father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters”.

His disciples therefore are called to be spiritual priests. In this his disciples fulfill the original vocation of Israel, described in Exodus 19:6: “you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” However, because of their idolatry the priesthood went only to the Levites.

1 Peter explains that this vocation now belongs to believers: “?But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

Believers are called to be priests. But what does it mean to be a priest? Hebrews 8:3 helps here: “every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices.” A priest offers sacrifices.

If believers are called to be priests they are called to offer a sacrifice — themselves.

This is interesting, especially when considered in parallel with the Catholic doctrine that stipulates a celibate priesthood.

Romans 12 explains: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).

Believers fulfill their vocation through offering up their own lives as sacrifices–especially by suffering. 1 Peter goes on to make this clear:

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, ?2? so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer by human passions but by the will of God… ?12? Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. ?13? But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet 4:1-2, 12-13).

A few days ago I wrote a post on the Church as the Heavenly Temple. I cited Peter’s words about the Church as a spiritual temple. I believe this post is related to that theme. Discipleship means priesthood — it means self-sacrifice.

Or in Jesus’ words: “Take up your cross and follow me.”

And we come again to the issue of suffering. It’s astounding to think that modern atheist thought still holds forth with the tired old yarn that the existence of suffering is somehow antithetical to the Judeo-Christian concept of God. Time and again, Scripture demonstrates that suffering is not set apart from the human experience in the design of God, but an integral part of it.

In a way, it’s rather an extension of the observation that death gives meaning to life; life is precious because it ends. So too is suffering a necessary opposite within God’s plan; joy is meaningless in its absence.

Humanity is a religious species — in all ages of our existence, we have sought after the supernatural and sought to believe. Atheism, ostensibly a simple state of non-belief that more practically seems to take the form of a belief in a universal not, creates something of a vacuum in the human heart that both the design of the human person and millions of years of human experience desires to fill.

The question, then, is what the void gets filled with.

…atheistic fads tend to wane and latch on to some form of “spirituality.” Sometimes that can mean reversion to the Faith. Sometimes it means the embrace of the occult or some form of paganism. Sometime it means embracing one of the Great Religions, such as Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism. But the only way a society remains “atheist” once the fad is past is by force of arms, as in the Soviet Union. And the moment the state cannot enforce it, the culture inhales whatever “spirituality” it can find. That’s why Russia has not only seen a big return to the Faith, but a huge growth of fascination in all manner of National Enquirer twaddle about UFOs, New Age twaddle, horoscopes, divination, and all the rest. atheism tends to achieve not a shiny rationalist society, but a spiritually ignorant (and deeply hungry) population that will latch on to anything in its desperation to fill the God-shaped hole in the heart.

…

Atheistic societies tend to be extremely bloody ones, it’s true. So a step toward theism is better than nothing, and the waning atheist fad is cause for a small celebration. But do remember that nobody involved in the Crucifixion, the persecution of the apostles, and the ancient pagan persecutions of the Church was an atheist. A culture that turns from being strictly materialistic to being a culture of Materialist Magicians is not a culture that is automatically re-Christianizing. Such a turn may be a first step toward Christ, but it can just as easily be a first step toward Moloch. For a materialist who comes to worship the reality of “spirit” is not necessarily worshipping the Lord our God, and Him only. In the words of Lewis’s Ransom, “There’s nothing specially fine about being a Spirit. The Devil is a Spirit.

Atheism will endure, as it has for many ages now. But it will never dominate a free people, and in due course gives way to the spiritual. Falsehood must necessarily give way to truth in the end, or at least to a less severe falsehood.

One wonders, then, just how much darker the woods will have to get before the light from the other side begins to shine in? These are the interesting times of the Chinese curse, methinks — Christians would do well to keep on their toes and, in a manner akin to Scouts, “be prepared.”

Update: Welcome, Steynians!