ALL SAINTS in the Octave

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

I recall my very first solar eclipse, probably in 1962, when I could not have been more than four years old. I remember it well. My mother was very careful to tell me not to look directly at the sun, because it was very possible that I could go blind if I did. During a solar eclipse, we can look at the sun, not realizing that the infrared rays are every bit as destructive to the optic nerve as ever. Our eyes cannot take those rays in their full strength. So, I was told not to look up when the sky would darken, but to look down and so preserve my eyesight.

A cousin, who lived across the street, came over with a cardboard box, that, if worn like a helmet over the head, due to a hole cut in the back and a white sheet of paper as a viewing screen placed in front, could be used to see the reflection of the eclipse. It was a partial eclipse, and I recall that on the white screen I saw the sun with a dark round shadow in front of it, causing the reflection of the sun to appear like the moon, when it is only partly visible. The sun appeared shaped like a quarter moon, reflected inside the box-helmet. Even more strange, when I removed the box from my head, on the ground many such reflections appeared like a pattern, little quarter-moon images of the sun. We could not look directly at the brightness of the sun with any safety, but we could look at the endless reflections all over the ground. I have never seen that particular effect from an eclipse on any other occasion in more than sixty years since that day. But I cannot forget what it looked like. On an exceptionally dark day, the many bright reflections of sunlight could not be extinguished.

That is an illustration for us. In our condition as fallen creatures, subject in this world to sin and death, we cannot not look upon the undiluted glory of God in its fullness. It is not a danger, because it cannot happen; for if it happened we would be unable to endure it. It is true that Christ said, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” But, this was accomplished by His coming to us as a man. Even on the Mount of Transfiguration it was His glorified humanity that shined with the  brightness of the sun in its strength. He made known His divine presence by everything He said and did, especially by defeating death when in His resurrection He ushered in immortality. But never did He unleash on anyone a perfect glimpse of His divine nature, for to do so would not have been merciful, but rather terrifying. So He took human nature in its fullness, and this became a part of Him forever by a loving and gracious act of His will. Human nature served as His icon, a perfect image of the Father for us to see. Similarly, His Presence today is very real, but made food for us under “these shadows mean” of bread and wine.

We do hope to see God some day, and not only in the human nature taken by the Son, though never will it be set aside; And whenever we see God we cannot do so without seeing Christ Jesus, for the Trinity cannot be divided or dissected. The goal and hope of Christians is to see God as our Lord Jesus said: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” This one little line is the reason why this passage that opens the Sermon on the Mount is the Gospel for the Feast of all Saints. The Church long has used the word “saints” to speak of those we believe to have entered already into the perfect state that allows them to be granted the Beatific Vision. That is, to see God as God, the final perfect destiny of the human creature by grace.

Because we are not ready in this life for the Beatific Vision, we must, for now, see God the way I saw the sun during the solar eclipse in my childhood. What we see, that is the sight of God in Jesus Christ, is real. And real also is what you see when one of us holds the Sacrament up and tells you to Behold the Lamb of God. We see that reality in a way that is given to us by God’s love, because He saves us by showing Himself. Jesus said to Nicodemus:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the  world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17).

We see Him in His human nature, lifted up on the cross. We see Him as the Lamb of God, ourselves not worthy that He should come under our roof, but asking that He speak the word only, and our souls shall be healed. Yes, what we see is real. And what we see is granted to us in a way that saves us rather than destroying us, for He came to save us. Our sinfulness, our weakness and our foolishness is all taken into account by the Father, and what we cannot see in this transitory life is due to His mercy. The fullness of Godhead dwells in Christ bodily, and the Holy Spirit is really and truly present within the Church- within us with all His gifts. But our destiny is to behold the sun in its strength when our eyes are made able to endure the brightness, able to endure seeing God as God. We are meant to know Him as He is, to behold throughout eternity the Beatific Vision, a vision not stagnant because He is infinite, and our knowledge of Him once made perfect will be ever perfected more and more, endless knowledge, joy and love. Yet, we must never presume on God’s grace. Hell is the denial of this joy; not that God denies it to us, but that we deny it to ourselves as long as we resist His love and grace.

 

Think of the words we call the Summary of the Law. The first and great commandment is the impossible call to be saints, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and then to love your neighbor as yourself. When you look at the Epistles of Saint Paul, in the opening of the Epistle to the Romans and the first Epistle to the Corinthians, you see that all of the  people who belong to the Church are “called to be saints.”

I like the King James Bible, with that accurate translation “called to be saints.” That “called to be” part is missing from the understanding of a good many Protestant revivalists, fundamentalists and Pentecostals. They teach that every Christian is a saint just by, as they like to say, “accepting Jesus.” Meanwhile, the opposite error belongs to those who seem to think of saints as if they were comic book superheroes, people with special abilities like Superman born on Krypton, or Spiderman with his radioactive bug bite that enables him to do amazing things. We mere mortals, some people believe, cannot ever be like them, and it’s best just to be “normal.” But the truth is simply that a saint is a holy person. That is what the word means. And the truth is that everyone who belongs to Christ has the vocation to be a saint. We have not yet arrived at being perfected as saints, but neither are we supposed to leave that to a special class of superheroes. The scripture commands us to “follow on to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3).” 

The most important thing that we can focus on during the Feast of All Saints is not the issue of devotions to the saints. Sure, it is possible, I suppose, to slip into idolatry and to worship saints and angels- and some people have. But that is not a likely error for many. I think we all know that only God is to be worshiped as God. The ancient practice of asking the saints to pray for us is not idolatry and should not be condemned as if it were. I can make no guarantee that they have a more than merely human capacity to hear everyone, for that would indicate that they somehow shared the Divine attribute of omnipresence (which they simply cannot). I cannot place my faith in any one of them that way. But I know that they must be praying for the Church militant if only because they have been made perfect in charity.

To keep this in balance, let us consider the words of Origen:

For we indeed acknowledge that angels are ministering spirits, . . . and that they ascend, bearing the supplications of men, to the purest of  supercelestial regions purer still; and that they come down from these, conveying to each one, according to his deserts, something enjoined by God to be conferred by them upon those who are to be the recipients of his benefits. . . . For every prayer, and supplication, and intercession, and thanksgiving, is to be sent up to the Supreme God through the High Priest, who is above all the angels, the living Word and God. And to the Word Himself shall we also pray and make intercessions, and offer thanksgivings and supplications to Him, if we have the capacity of distinguishing between the proper use and abuse of prayer. . . .

And it is enough to secure that the holy angels of God be propitious to us, and that they do all things on our behalf, that our disposition of mind towards God should imitate as far as it is within the power of human nature the example of these holy angels, who again follow the example of their God. (Contra Celsum, V, 4-5)

And he wrote in another place:

When we have the favor of God, we have also the good-will of all angels and spirits who are friends of God. For they know who are worthy of the divine approval, and they are not only well disposed to them, but they co-operate with them in their endeavors to please God: they seek his favor on their behalf; with their prayers they join their own prayers and intercessions for them.

We may indeed boldly say, that men who aspire after better things have, when they pray to God, tens of thousands of sacred powers upon their side. These, even when not asked, pray with them, they bring succor to our mortal race. (Contra Celsum, Book VIII, 64)

The subject of devotions to saints is not our focus on the feast of All Saints. Our focus has always been the call that God has given to all of us, the call to become, by grace, saints ourselves. That is, we are called to be holy, to be faithful in every area of our lives, to press on to know the Lord, to confess the sins we fall into and repent of them in order to be forgiven, and also to be cleansed and delivered from the power of sin. We are called to develop the virtues, faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, prudence and temperance. Above all of the others charity, the bond of perfection.

A Paradox

Looking back again at the Epistles of Saint Paul we see a paradox.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy (ἅγιος, hagios) and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Colossians 3:12-17)

The word translated “holy” at the beginning of that passage is ἅγιος, (hagios), which Saint Jerome translated into Latin with the word Sancti. In effect, in this passage Saint Paul is telling us that, because we are already saints due to God’s love and election, we must become saints. It may indeed seem odd to be told to become what you are. It becomes more reasonable in context, because it means to become what you are in Christ. In terms of nature, it is not so strange to be told that you must become what you are by creation; for indeed, you can choose to sin against God by trying to be something other, and therefore much less than what He made you to be. And now, by baptism, you have born again, born from above, to be a new creation in Christ Himself. Both by the nature of creation and then by the new nature of grace in Christ risen from the dead - risen from mortality itself - become holy, that is sanctified in your daily life. That is the life of a saint, and that is the life you have both been given  as one set apart to God, and it as well your calling to be made perfect in living out that sainthood.

When you look to the front of a church building, you see the altar. I recall many years ago that a man, a church warden by title, took it upon himself to check out the altar before a service. I am not sure why he thought it was necessary. As he did so he was carrying a cup of coffee, and he placed his coffee on the altar, while undertaking his inspection or whatever it was. I immediately asked him to remove his cup of coffee from the altar. It is not that coffee, something I enjoy every day, is evil; it is not that he had committed some terrible sin for which the ground beneath would open while he was swallowed up. It is just that the altar is set apart for a holy purpose. Serving as a coffee table is not that purpose. It is set apart, sanctified and consecrated to be the holy table upon which the Eucharist is celebrated, upon which blessed bread and wine become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Like that altar, you have been set apart for the Lord’s purpose. It is His will that you love Him and that you love your neighbor. It is His will that your entire life be lived as a joyful offering up of worship (Romans 12:1, 2). Theoretically, an altar can be set apart but never fulfill its purpose. A bishop may indeed bless it; but unless a priest uses it to offer up the Good Thanksgiving (Eucharist) with the assembled Body of Christ in corporate worship, it never fulfills its calling, so to speak. Look again at those words by the Apostle, and by God’s grace, fulfill your calling. You are holy because you are set apart; be holy in how you live every day of your life. It is the calling of every person to become a saint; it is the calling of every saint to be that saint.

In order to begin to answer the call to holiness, we must be thankful. And, that is the best reason to look at the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, lifted up on the cross as Moses lifted the serpent on the pole in the wilderness. It is in thanksgiving that our hearts respond to Christ’s great act of love in that our souls are healed, not treating us as our sins deserve, but rather dying as our atonement. In that love we begin to see the reflection of Divine glory. Like that reflection I saw as a child, wearing a box as a helmet on my head, we see the glory of God the way I saw a projection of the sun. And like the innumerable moon-shaped reflections of the sun that I saw in a pattern across the ground in those dark few minutes, we see radiant glory in the great company of saints who have gone before, and who now, with hearts made pure by grace, behold the glory of God.

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A Full Perfect and Sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation, and Satisfaction

From my archives, first posted in 2008

Article XXXI. Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross. 

The Offering of Christ once made in that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

From The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse, in the first Book of Common Prayer, 1549:

O God heavenly father, which of thy tender mercie diddest geve thine only sonne Jesu Christ to suffre death upon the crosse for our redempcion, who made there (by his one oblacion once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifyce, oblacion, and satysfaccyon, for the sinnes of the whole worlde, and did institute, and in his holy Gospell commaund us, to celebrate a perpetuall memory of that his precious death, untyll his comming again: Heare us (O merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe. Who in the same nyght that he was betrayed: tooke breade, and when he had blessed, and geven thankes: he brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saiyng: Take, eate, this is my bodye which is geven for you, do this in remembraunce of me.
Likewyse after supper he toke the cuppe, and when he had geven thankes, he gave it to them, saiyng: drynk ye all of this, for this is my bloude of the newe Testament, whyche is shed for you and for many, for remission of synnes: do this as oft as you shall drinke it, in remembraunce of me.

Hebrews 9:24-28:

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
___

It was assumed by the Roman Magisterium, in 1896, that the Church of England had rejected Eucharistic Sacrifice, on the basis of Article XXXI, quoted above in its entirety. But, is the meaning of the phrase "sacrifices of Masses" the same as Eucharistic Sacrifice? Note the plurality of that phrase in the Article. Was it an attempt to reject the Tradition of the Church, or to correct the popular mis-perception of the common man in that time and place?

The average layman needed to be taught two things about the Supper of the Lord. First, the specific sacramental act of the Church in each individual Mass was not, itself, an isolated sacrifice on behalf of the living and of the dead. In the "nun theology" of that time and place, each Mass was viewed just this way: And, so it seemed good for Christ to be offered quite often, over and over again, in as many sacrifices as the priests could reasonably perform.

What needed to be taught, in order to correct this popular error, was best summarized in those words that remind us of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world..." Christ was once offered, and his offering is sufficient. No other sacrifice for sin can be made.

It was this essential truth of the Gospel that motivated the English Reformers to write the Article, and to give us so clear a teaching within the service of Holy Communion. This was the reason for their emphasis on his once for all sacrifice. In no way did this emphasis repudiate Eucharistic Sacrifice. Instead it helped to clarify the true meaning of Eucharistic Sacrifice, in terms that are true to the Tradition of the Holy Catholic Church, in perfect accord with the Scripture. The Anglican emphasis was not a mistake, not an error, and not a rejection of Catholic Faith.

There is one Sacrifice, and every Eucharist is mystically joined to that one event, that offering by Christ of himself as "priest and victim, in the Eucharistic feast." There is one Supper of the Lord, and every Eucharist is the same supper that Christ held in the night in which he was betrayed. When the Church gathers for this highest and most important time of worship, we are taken to the same table with Christ and his apostles, and we are also taken to the cross at Calvary.

"And although we be unworthy (through our manyfolde synnes) to offre unto thee any Sacryfice: Yet we beseche thee to accepte thys our bounden duetie and service..." If we are unworthy to offer a sacrifice, how can we nonetheless offer it? By asking the Lord, of his mercy, the request as it follows: "not waiyng our merites, but pardonyng our offences, through Christe our Lorde..."

Writing in 1624, speaking for the Anglican position, a Church of England priest named William Bedell wrote about Eucharistic Sacrifice:

"[If by it you mean] a memory and representation of the true Sacrifice and holy immolation made on the altar of the cross...we do offer the sacrifice for the quick and the dead, by which all their sins are meritoriously expiated, and desiring that by the same, we and all the Church may obtain remission of sins, and all other benefits of Christ's Passion."

The Eucharistic sacrifice is the complete sacrifice. It takes us to Calvary. It is our bounden duty and service, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and of ourselves as living sacrifices (following Romans 12:1,2); as the English Mass also says: "And here wee offre and present unto thee (O Lorde) oure selfe, oure soules, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee..." Nothing is omitted, nothing neglected, in this highest act of Christian worship.

The second thing they wanted to teach is that the people were supposed to receive the sacrament. For this reason they came up with yet another name for this ancient service, one taken directly from St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: Holy Communion. It was not enough to "hear the Mass" of a priest. This offering of the whole Church (led by a priest) made the sacrament available so that each Christian could feed on the bread of life. "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."(John 6:54, 55) And, about this we have already written.

Once again, we see that the English Reformers did not attack the Catholic Faith. They defended it, and they restored it.

PRAYER The Mystery

This is part of an answer that I gave to a specific inquiry regarding prayer in the life of a believer. It is indeed a reasonable question, that many people have asked, why it is that we pray. Some may reasonably ask, why would God need for us to pray in order to accomplish

what He knows to be best? It was my intention to answer this in a way that is most helpful on a pastoral level. If this somewhat brief answer brings up more questions, all the better. 

To read it click here or on the icon.

SCIENCE AND HUMILITY

And the Tyson's Pocket Fallacy.

(from The Beauty of Holiness, my Substack periodical)

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” Psalm 8:3,4

Having lived both with dogs and with cats, I find myself unable to resolve this problem: If, upon a rainy day, I open the door for a cat, he is unlikely to step outside, but he will walk to another door. It appears that the cat is not satisfied that just because it is raining in the front yard, it might not be sunny in the backyard, with a suitably dry ground to hunt on. I have opened as many as three doors to satisfy the inquisitive nature of a cat before he simply gave up and decided to remain comfortably indoors. But a dog is satisfied that he knows if it is raining anywhere just beyond one door, that it is raining all over. Is the dog to be commended for his knowledge, perhaps even for being smarter than the cat? Or is the cat to be rather commended because he remains inquisitive, curious enough to investigate? I say, that is a head scratcher. Of course, I do not mean to imply that the cat possesses more humility than the dog. Dogs, after all, have masters, whereas cats have a domestic staff, often rewarded as occasion may render opportune with the beneficial provision of a slaughtered mouse laid at a loyal servant’s feet.

Nonetheless, as much as I do indeed credit the knowledge of the learned, including the owner of a nose that knows much beyond what I can imagine, I also must give credit to curiosity. Perhaps, before Albert Einstein came along, there had been many a perpetual sophomore who learned the wrong lesson from the advances of modern science. It has been said that a man of the late nineteenth century, or the early twentieth century, may have believed that we had reached an era in which one educated man might know all that there is to know. In those days we even knew the limits of the entire universe, and that it was all this one galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Then along came Einstein, and Hubble, and other troublemakers who reduced our egos by broadening our horizons. Suddenly the universe was larger and more complex, so that our ignorance outweighs our knowledge of it, each new discovery exponentially and ironically increasing our experience of ignorance with every new bit of knowledge, because each newly discovered fact opens new and many questions; questions we had not previously known to ask. The more we know, the more we do not know. We once knew the limits of the universe, but now we do not know those limits, and that is because with learning and discovery our ignorance has increased - well, rather, our appreciation of our ignorance. Humility is the price of knowledge.

However, I find that we, nonetheless, come across the occasional evolutionary throwback: Sometimes we come across someone for whom more knowledge means not only that we have learned more than our ancestors, but that we are inherently more intelligent. This comes across, if you have ever conversed with New Atheists (a specific breed), by the certainty with which they employ standard mantras. One such mantra is “God of the gaps.” Friedrich Nietzsche and Henry Drummond in the 1880s discussed how people rely on religion to address the unknown. Later in 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned against using "God as a stop-gap" while imprisoned during World War II. It would indeed be a fallacy to use gaps in our scientific knowledge as an argument for the existence of God. However, I am not aware of anyone using the “God of the gaps” as an argument for the existence of God. I am not saying that no one has ever engaged in that fallacy; I mean only that after living to somewhat of an advanced age, I have never heard or read any argument to the effect that, “Since we do not have the answer, it proves that there must be a God.” If ever I had heard such “reasoning” I would have immediately regarded it as not only a bad argument, but as an embarrassment. Nonetheless, it is a matter of dogmatic faith to many atheists these days, that the “God of the gaps” is not only prevalent as the number one argument for God, but is the entire reason why there is or ever has been any religion, any notion of any God or gods, ever at all. To deny the “God of the gaps” as the major fallacy of theism, described in the New Atheist Creed, is heresy to the truly devout members of their cult.

So, along comes celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson to declare Ex cathedra that “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.” That I call the “Tyson’s Pocket Fallacy.” To be fair, Dr. Tyson is excellent in his field of Astrophysics and is also a very entertaining personality. He has said, “I’m not an atheist,” explaining that he is an agnostic who leans more toward atheism than theism. But he qualified that by saying (and I do appreciate this) that what he rejects is the behavior of people who use the label “atheist” and “who call people idiots.” The problem is that his celebrity status often entices him to comment beyond his area of expertise. For example, he has, as Carl Sagan before him, repeated many false historical narratives. Take my advice: When your source for a piece of historical knowledge is Neil deGrasse Tyson, verify before repeating; his history always needs to be fact-checked.

A categorical error all too common to atheists is to conflate the one God of monotheism with the created gods of polytheism. Christians (and other monotheists) do not believe in contingent gods, mere super-beings for whom the universe must first exist in order to provide a home, a place in which to be born. We do not believe in gods. We believe in the First and Uncaused Cause, the Creator and Sustainer of all, Wholly Other from every created nature and being. And, as far beyond our comprehension as the creation is, so much beyond our comprehension is the Creator who understands and sustains it all simply by His will.

But it is also true that other religious systems appear to have predated our monotheistic beliefs. This is further proof that “God of the gaps,” or “gods of the gaps,” does not explain the religious nature of humanity at all. From History, psychology, and anthropology, we learn something completely different. The same atheists who regard the “Tyson’s Pocket Fallacy” as gospel, love to repeat the mantra: “To explain thunder.” The problem with their whole concept is, as we have seen, that none of the gods of the known pantheons of history (Greek or Norse, etc.) was ever believed to be the Creator of all things. Their gods were contingent, as I stated above. They were all beings among beings, each with a beginning of life, with parents and a venue for existence in this Earth, even if above or below it. Even Zeus was believed to be the son of Kronos. Yes, there is evidence that even the Greek pantheon evolved from there unofficially, to Zeus as the only real god in a somewhat quiet sort of - wink, wink -manner among the elite thinkers in Aristotelian circles. Even so, the history of religions seems always to begin with polytheism, pagan systems that do not seek to account for the existence of the universe. This coincides with psychology and with anthropology; it points to a human impulse to worship something higher and greater than we mere mortals.

The other flaw with Tyson’s Pocket is that faith has not stifled, but rather has propelled, science. Yes, Galileo had his run-in with the pope; but not for what he wrote. Galileo was both a genius and a jerk, and what got him in trouble was his attitude in a time and place where one either rendered expected deference to the authorities or suffered the consequences. Nonetheless, even Galileo was a believing Catholic. The historical fact is that the fathers of modern science, of which Sir Isaac Newton (Tyson’s hero by the way) is the most important name, pursued knowledge because they believed that the universe, having been created by an almighty Mind, can be rationally understood. Therefore, scientific research is not only possible, but certain to yield results. That is why most of the major universities, including the ones we call “Ivy League,” have been connected to churches. For example, Newton’s work depended on the Church of England. The idea that some undefined thing called “Religion” has tried to impede science because it fights to retain “gaps” without which God has no place to reside, is not only absurd, but very much the opposite from reality.

That does not mean that we do not have the Fundamentalist problem; of course, Fundamentalism will continue to provide a source of embarrassment to the majority of believers; and without them, the average New Atheist would have no one to pick on (and no low hanging fruit to pick); but for the majority of us, advances in science can never cause God to “recede.” And here is why I say that the most appropriate response to our ever-expanding cause to appreciate our vast ignorance of God’s greatness, that is the new bits of knowledge by which we become ever more humble and ever more filled with awe and wonder, is humility and worship. Praise be ever more and more to God for the wisdom, the power, and the knowledge, He has put into creation. His infinite glory is revealed by His works. To the believer, God’s glory increases with every detail of new knowledge that we learn about His creation. To our understanding His glory does not recede; it increases.

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