God’s Foolish Love[1] is an invitation to rationally yet intuitively examine the consequences and dangers of a moral and spiritual collapse in a society that claims to be independent of any divine revelation.
“If it is good to make atheists less certain of God’s non-existence, it is equally good to make theologians less confident in their speculations.” This is a surprising, if not shocking, statement. However, the Russian theologian Paul Evdokimov understands that an apologetic work must be objective above all else. Thus, in 1973, one of the most lucid works on the effects of the theological, philosophical, and practical evolution of the Western world in the twentieth century appeared.
Evdokimov offers an objective analysis of the decline of Christianity in Western civilisation, which occurred for understandable historical reasons (the Crusades, persecution, and moral corruption). Consequently, Western civilisation has descended into a seemingly irreversible nihilism. In the pages of the book, which was translated from French into Romanian in 1993 by Teodor Baconschi, we find a bold proposal: “It would be genuinely fascinating to see a chair of atheism at theology faculties, one that could make theologians less gratuitous in their superficial assertions and more sensitive to real people who are suffering.”
God’s Foolish Love: structure
The work is structured into eight chapters and is not an easy read for the general public, but it is extremely useful in the context of the theological and philosophical turbulence of the era. It invites us to engage in a rational yet intuitive analysis of the consequences and dangers of the moral and spiritual collapse of a society that claims to be independent of any divine revelation. Quoting J. Lagneau, the author considers atheism to be providential, as it “is the salt that preserves faith in God”.
Although the book bears Orthodox hallmarks, it largely transcends the status of a confessional text. Readers will readily find the universal message of Christian thought. This originates from Revelation rather than the outdated dogmas of historical Christianity: “Our historical task is not to recover the forms of early Christianity, but to rediscover Maranatha – ‘Come, Lord!'”. Rediscovering Jesus Christ is essential in the current context, just as first-century Christianity “was the triumph of life amidst the graveyards of the world”.
The ideas presented here will undoubtedly invigorate readers’ spiritual lives, guiding their imagination and thought towards the realisation that the ongoing battle between good and evil, “being” and “not being” and truth and falsehood is far from over in the contemporary age.