IV. Ruin or Renewal
So
it is not just the might to withstand and triumph over the gates of Hell that
flows from the Orthodox Church but the ability to raise all the world to a
higher plane of being, filling it with new content from Heaven (which is to
say, the fulfillment of man’s calling by God to be the priest of His
creation). And no man-made ideologies -
whether capitalism or scientism or constitutionalism - nor man-made Christian
denominations will bring this new life into the world. Only union with God through the grace found
within the Orthodox Church: ‘Baptism is
the personal Pentecost of each person who enters the Church, and through
baptism each can begin a new road and has become a “new creature” in a movement
of continuous growth: “After Pentecost
the time of the Church is oriented towards the novissima, the new things of the Kingdom . . . Christianity, in the
radiant witness of its confessors, martyrs and saints is messianic,
revolutionary, explosive. The Gospel
calls for the violence which seizes the Kingdom, tears open the heavens and
transforms the old image of the world into the new creation . . . The salt of
the earth and the light of the world, the saints appear as the obvious and
hidden leaders of humanity, those who will assume responsibility for history
and accomplish it . . . The saints take the torch from the martyrs and continue
to illumine the world.”
‘With
Pentecost a new era has begun in the collective life of the world. The members of the Church in general concern
themselves with the forgiveness of sins, the elimination of divisions and
differences among people, and the increasing of love, and they press forward
toward the Kingdom of Heaven’ (Staniloae, The
Church, p. 77)
‘In
regard to grace, we should equally emphasize its quality as inexhaustible power
that comes to us from the infinite Godhead that dwells in Christ’s humanity, as
well as from the luminous perspective that grace opens to us in the infinity of
communion with the Person of Christ or with the Holy Trinity—a perspective that
was opened for us in Christ out of love.
Grace is the open window toward the infinity of God as Person, or as a
Triune communion of Persons, once God has placed us in relationship with Him
through grace. Grace removes life’s
limitations from our existence and thereby satisfies in a real way its thirst
for the transcendent personal infinitude.
As such grace gives us the possibility for our fulfillment as the “image
of God,” or helps us to advance in the likeness of Him, in the infinity of our
loving relationship with Him’ (p. 96).
‘The
incarnate Son’s Sitting “at the Right Hand of the Father” shows that the Father
gives Him the first place in leading the world to deification, in the work of
bringing it into union with God, to its filling with divine infinity in a relationship
of unending love with God. . . . The
ultimate goal of Christ’s work is to destroy the universal death, that is, to
raise creation from the extreme state of weakness produced by its separation
from the source of life, which is God; this means the strengthening of our
spirit from the divine Spirit irradiating from Him to such an extent that it
might overcome the supremacy of the automatism of a hardened nature that leads
to death. And this is accomplished by
raising human beings into the perfect communion with the personal God, who is
infinite in His spiritual might.
‘God
wants the world to be brought to Him through a man, through the human body
become a medium fully transparent of His infinite power of life and love; He
wants to bring it through His most beloved Son whom He made man for this
purpose, so that through Him His infinite love for Him may be extended to all
human beings and to the world with which they are in solidarity through
creation’ (The Person of Jesus Christ,
p. 151).
Or,
to use Tolkien’s image from The
Silmarillion of the building of Menegroth, the South must be fellow-workers
with Christ, using the new content pouring forth from Him in the Orthodox Church out of Heaven if she
wishes to join the great work of renewing the face of the earth in the beauty
of holiness that the Orthodox peoples of the world have been engaged in for
2,000 years, from pre-Schism Ireland and England and Gaul to Egypt and Syria, to
Greece, Romania, Georgia, and the rest:
‘Therefore the Naugrim laboured long and gladly for Thingol, and devised
for him mansions after the fashion of their people, delved deep in the
earth. Where the Esgalduin flowed down,
and parted Neldoreth from Region, there rose in the midst of the forest a rocky
hill, and the river ran at its feet.
There they made the gates of the hall of Thingol, and they built a
bridge of stone over the river, by which alone the gates could be entered. Beyond the gates wide passages ran down to
high halls and chambers far below that were hewn in the living stone, so many
and so great that that dwelling was named Menegroth, the Thousand Caves.
‘But
the Elves also had part in that labour, and Elves and Dwarves together, each
with their own skill, there wrought out the visions of Melian, images of the wonder
and beauty of Valinor beyond the Sea.
The pillars of Menegroth were hewn in the likeness of the beeches of
Oromë, stock, bough, and leaf, and they were lit with lanterns of gold. The nightingales sang there as in the gardens
of Lórien; and there were fountains of silver, and basins of marble, and floors
of many-coloured stones. Carven figures
of beasts and birds there ran upon the walls, or climbed upon the pillars, or
peered among the branches entwined with many flowers. And as the years passed Melian and her
maidens filled the halls with woven hangings wherein could be read the deeds of
the Valar, and many things that had befallen in Arda since its beginning, and
shadows of things that were yet to be.
That was the fairest dwelling of any king that has ever been east of the
Sea’ (pgs. 102-3).
But
if the South remains stiff-necked and rejects the Orthodox Faith, she will continue
down the path of the modern, post-Schism Western Europeans and join them in bringing
the ugliness and torment of Hell upon the world: ‘In the north of the world Melkor had in the
ages past reared Ered Engrin, the Iron Mountains, as a fence to his citadel of
Utumno; . . . Beneath Ered Engrin he made a great tunnel, which issued south of
the mountains; and there he made a mighty gate.
But above this gate, and behind it even to the mountains, he piled the
thunderous towers of Thangorodrim, that were made of the ash and slag of his
subterranean furnaces, and the vast refuse of his tunnellings. They were black and desolate and exceedingly
lofty; and smoke issued from their tops, dark and foul upon the northern
sky. Before the gates of Angband filth
and desolation spread southward for many miles over the wide plain of
Ard-galen; but after the coming of the Sun rich grass arose there, and while
Angband was besieged and its gates shut there were green things even among the
pits and broken rocks before the doors of hell (pgs. 135-6).
‘
. . .
‘Then
suddenly Morgoth sent forth great rivers of flame that ran down swifter than
Balrogs from Thangorodrim, and poured over all the plain; and the Mountains of
Iron belched forth fires of many poisonous hues, and the fume of them stank
upon the air, and was deadly. Thus
Ard-galen perished, and fire devoured its grasses; and it became a burned and
desolate waste, full of a choking dust, barren and lifeless. Thereafter, its name was changed, and it was
called Anfauglith, the Gasping Dust.
Many charred bones had there their roofless grave; for many of the
Noldor perished in that burning, who were caught by the running flame and could
not fly to the hills. The heights of
Dorthonion and Ered Wethrin held back the fiery torrents, but their woods upon
the slopes that looked towards Angband were all kindled, and the smoke wrought
confusion among the defenders. . . .
‘In
the front of that fire came Glaurung the golden, father of dragons, in his full
might; and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of
the Orcs in multitudes such as the Noldor had never before seen or imagined. And they assaulted the fortresses of the
Noldor, and broke the leaguer about Angband, and slew wherever they found them
the Noldor and their allies, Grey-elves and Men’ (pgs. 176-7).
* * * * *
‘The
Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light. In that hour was made a Darkness that seemed
not lack but a thing with being of its own:
for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to
pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will’ (Silmarillion, p. 81). This is the kind of darkness that has
devoured Western Europe, the New England States, and their kindred the world
over, and which threatens to engulf the South.
The light of the distant, distorted Christ of the Protestant and Roman
Catholic churches has indeed failed; it is too weak to overcome the ‘Unlight’
(p. 78), for it has not the full radiance of the Godhead within it. Only the rays of Light of the True Christ
shining forth in love from the Orthodox Church are bright enough to pierce
through and burn away the choking darkness sent forth by Satan, whether by his
own hand or through his servants, be they demons, Silicon Valley transhumanists,
nihilistic artists and entertainers, power-mad politicians, war-mongering banksters,
gene-mutilating scientists, social engineering educators, or some other
sort. The Old Time Religion, for all its
good achievements, can take the South no further; it has done all it can for
her. From now on, if Dixie
wishes to defend her life as a Christian people and all her good traditions,
she will have to do so from within the only safe haven of the world, the Holy
Orthodox Church.
‘Wherefore
he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall
give thee light’ (Ephesians 5:14 KJV).
‘Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live’ (John 5:25
KJV).
‘And
the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And
let him that heareth say, Come. And let
him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely’ (Revelation 22:17 KJV).
Works Cited
The Holy
Bible. King James Version. Nashville,
Tn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1972.
Staniloae, Dumitru.
The Experience of God, Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 3: The Person of Jesus Christ as God and Savior. Ioan Ionita, trans. and ed. Brookline,
Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
2011.
--. The Experience of God, Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology, Vol. 4: The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit. Ioan Ionita, trans. and ed. Brookline,
Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
2012.
Tolkien, J. R. R.
The Silmarillion, 2nd
edition. Christopher Tolkien,
ed. Ny.: Ballantine Books, 1999.
