FROM CHRISTENDOM TO NIHILISM
This photo and the PDF file "From Christendom to Nihilism" linked to it are from secular sources, but they accurately describe the devolution of Western society over the past 1,500 years. The Renaissance with its turn to a more human-centered outlook provided the soil for the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment which followed shortly after.
The eight steps shown here going down from Christendom to Nihilism and the 21st Century Institutional Decay and Existential Crisis are expanded in greater detail in the 2-page PDF so that you can understand how we got from there to here, the present state of relativism, materialism, and skepticism.
Other excellent resources on this topic are the over 100 "Paradise and Utopia" podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio that cover the same 1,500 years from the establishing of Christendom to the present. If you click the "Oldest" button there, you'll be able to start lisening to each podcast from the very first to the latest.
But by clicking the "Newest" buttion you'll find the "Communist World Building III: The Great Terror" podcast, a description of the horrific results of abandoning Paradise in search of an earthly Utiopia, resulting in nihilism: Stalin murdered tens of millions of his own people during his "Great Terror" of the 1930s. Click the "Download audio" button to listen to each podcast so you can stop it when you need to and restart it later. or click on the 3 dots to download a podcast.
The podcast speaker, Fr. John Strickland, is an Orthodox priest and university professor in southern California. He's also the author of five books on these themes that go into much greater depth and detail. These books cover much more ground than all of his podcasts.
Our last issue of ARC-News, "MAY SCIENTISTS CONSIDER UNSCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS?" quoted Psalm 53:1 – "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are perverted and have committed abominable transgressions. There is no one who does good."
That Psalm continues: "God looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understood, who seek after God. Every one of them has gone back. They have become filthy together. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don't call on God?" Even if mankind says "There is no God," He doesn't cease to exist. He sees from heaven how mankind has become perverted, filthy, lacks rational understanding and true knowledge. They have filled their minds with nonsense.
To say "There is no God" is in itself a contradiction, a nonsense statement: the person saying it is making an absolute statement that there are absolutely no absolutes. This is the essential contradiction of today's relativism: making "Everything is relative, and that's the absolute truth!" You see now that the presupposition of the existence of truth vs. error is axiomatic, it's a necessary hypothesis in order to even begin to think rationally. Without it, the only reasons for existence are either pleasure-seeking or the quest for power.
If you read the PDF, you'll see that the Renaissance was a time of rediscovery of classical humanism, emphasizing human potential and beauty, drawing from Greek and Roman sources. This was because when the Muslim Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, many highly-educated Greeks fled to Rome, bringing their culture with them. Recall how the Apostle Paul, when he came to Athens and stood on the Areopagus (Mars Hill) he beheld all sorts of statues of the pagan gods and one statue "to the Unknown God." He told the crowd of "classical humanists" – pagan philosophers – "As I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I announce to you." (Acts 17:23). Paul went on to insist that there can only be one true God, one Absolute. But the Renaissance went full-circle, returning to the multiplicity of pagan gods, including one "just in case we missed" that they don't yet know about.
Read the article "Incompleteness Theorems Point to a Hidden Realm" (PDF), as a 5.5" x 8.5"- formatted 8-page booklet, or get it as a 8.5" x 11" PDF, 4 pages. The actual nature of the reality in which we live is that a “hidden realm" must exist behind the common-sense realm of "local realism." Both science and mathematics depend on axiomatic principles which are outside of these disciplines. Particle physics has led us to understand that everything in the material universe is incomplete and indeterminate – there are no fixed truths, no firm reality in the material realm. So in order for science and mathematics to be true, they must presuppose this “hidden realm" that we must accept as axiomatic, otherwise the material world makes no sense in itself.
The universe has a hidden logical structure without which it could not exist: astrophysicists call it "dark matter" or "dark energy" – something they can't see or measure but that makes up 95% of the universe. This brings to mind the phrases: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.... By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word [the Logos] of God" (Hebrews 11:1 and 3) and "By Him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him [the Logos] all things are held together" (Colossians 1:16-17).
To say there are multiple absolutes is just as nonsensical as saying there are absolutely no absolutes. There must be just one. Most people today, however, don't trouble their little minds with such thoughts, they simply live with a sense of despair that they try to mask by indulging in the pursuit of pleasure, either physical or digital – continually scrolling through endless visual stimulation. This all points to the need to stop dabbling and start fixing our minds and whole lives on the one true Absolute Whe has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-08-02.htm, and share it!
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