The famous English philosopher and critic of religion, Bertrand Russell, gave a talk in London in 1927 entitled, "Why I Am Not a Christian." Following Russell's lead, I want here to outline why I have chosen to sever my ties with the Orthodox Church, after many years of participation in the church and reflection on its history and teachings.

There is some value in providing such an outline, given the current rise in popularity in Orthodoxy, as witnessed by the many defections from more liberal denominations (for example, churches that ordain women) and, on a scholarly level, the interest and deference given to the medieval Greek patristic tradition (especially such figures as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor) and to various themes and ideas in Orthodox theology and spirituality (such as theosis or deification, apophaticism and social trinitarianism).

It is important, in other words, to counter some of this almost uncritical and romantic perception of Orthodoxy with a more rounded and realistic account.

But I want to go much further than this. Like Russell, it is Christianity itself, and not merely the Orthodox part of it, that I no longer find acceptable. Although my position here is not particularly innovative, I do hope to briefly raise some crucial philosophical questions that are often neglected in historical scholarship on the central texts and claims of Christianity.

I will then turn in the final part of this article to the even more radical view at which I have arrived recently, where commitment to any institutionalised form of religion, Christian or otherwise, is regarded as incompatible with the pursuit of truth and wisdom. Again, many others - from Russell to the New Atheists - have said likewise. But unlike these secular thinkers, I am not advocating the wholesale rejection of religion. My main target, rather, is only religious traditions and communities with highly developed systems of belief and power, exemplified best (but not solely) in the "big five" religions of the world (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism) - these, I contend, threaten to undermine the philosophical life.

Against Orthodoxy

Raised in a Greek migrant family in Melbourne, I had a fairly conventional Orthodox upbringing, including the mandatory infant baptism, observance of the major feasts and customs of the Christian calendar, such as the forty day fast leading up to Easter, the occasional communion and confession, and so on.

Most members of the Greek community in Australia would be content to leave matters there, regarding the Orthodox Church primarily as a custodian of ethnicity, tradition and morality. But no thinking person could be satisfied with that, and I soon began to delve deeper, in the hope of discovering if there was any truth to the grand claims made by the church.

So I embarked upon a course of study in philosophy and theology, including a four year stint at St. Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College in Sydney. There I was introduced to some wonderful scholars, including the eloquent, softly-spoken and Oxford-trained John Chryssavgis (who connects spirituality with ecology, and currently serves as advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch on environmental issues) and the comparatively tempestuous American-educated Themistocles Adamopoulo (a specialist on the apostle Paul, now in Pauline fashion undertaking missionary work in Sierra Leone). But my attention was initially caught by the fiery and much maligned leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia, Archbishop Stylianos (Harkianakis), with whom I shared a love of poetry and of our fellow Cretan, Nikos Kazantzakis. I well remember how he shocked us in our very first class when he warned that the study of theology will either turn us to God or turn us into atheists. He was not entirely mistaken.

Strangely, however, the archbishop's words proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it was the very attitudes and teachings imbibed by us that led me and some of my fellow students (and even teachers) to suspect that something was deeply amiss in Orthodoxy. There was, for example, little freedom to genuinely question or to express doubts, at least without being deemed a "heretic."

By the time I completed my theological studies I could no longer fail to acknowledge the serious problems crippling the Orthodox faith in the modern world, though I often wavered as to whether and how these problems could be resolved. In what follows, I will outline some of these challenges faced by the Orthodox Church in the modern era (I am very much indebted to Vrasidas Karalis's withering critique of contemporary Greek Orthodoxy in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity ).

Exclusivism

To begin with, there are challenges arising from the prevalence of exclusivism among Orthodox leaders, where this involves an attitude of triumphalism and a sense of superiority towards other religious faiths, and even other Christians.

The Orthodox Church, to be sure, has been a significant member of the Ecumenical Movement. Representatives from the Ecumenical Patriarchate have attended meetings of the World Council of Churches since its establishment in 1948, and at present almost all Orthodox Churches are full members of the World Council of Churches. Nevertheless, Orthodoxy tends to be highly exclusivist, adopting a stance towards people of other faiths that ranges from missionary to polemical and apologetic.

Even if it has not always thought that only if one is Orthodox can one be saved (though there are many Orthodox who accept this), it is standard to think that the fullness of divine revelation is to be found only in the Orthodox Church. And then a conflict between dogmatism and dialogue ensues. Is genuine dialogue possible if I (as one partner in the dialogue) am already convinced that I possess the fullness of truth, and so the other does not have something to tell me which I could not in principle discover from my own tradition? Wouldn't dialogue, in such circumstances, be nothing more than a thinly disguised apologetics?

Timothy Ware, a prominent Orthodox convert, has stated: "We Orthodox are [in the World Council of Churches], not simply to bear witness to what we ourselves believe, but also to listen to what others have to say." But isn't this disingenuous? If the Orthodox already possess the truth, then in what sense could they (genuinely) listen and learn from others? Ware's response is that, by listening to (non-Orthodox) others, the Orthodox stand to better understand the truth they have been entrusted with. This is a very selective form of listening: the others enable us to better see how we are right, rather than being humbly open to correction by others.

Compare this to the words of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: "We have to appreciate that truth can be received from outside of - not only within - our own group. If we do not believe that, then entering into dialogue would be a waste of time."

Exclusivism also regularly finds expression in the vehement anti-Westernism found in much recent Orthodox theology. Christos Yannaras, one of Greece's leading Orthodox theologians and public intellectuals, has put forward a "contamination model," according to which nearly everything that has come from the West (beginning with the translation into Greek of Thomas Aquinas's Latin writings in the fourteenth century) has contaminated the purity and authenticity of Orthodox tradition. What has unfortunately emerged here and in many other segments of the Orthodox Church is a psychopathology of defensiveness and victimization (related, no doubt, to the church's struggle for survival under oppressive Ottoman and communist regimes), allied with a propensity towards traditionalism, where this often takes the form of a naive romanticism about the Byzantine past.

Hierarchicalism

There are also significant challenges relating to the ways in which the church is structured. In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington infamously stated that Europe ends where Western Christianity ends and Islam and Orthodoxy begin. (Interestingly, media attention has focused on the perceived prejudice against Islam in this statement, while neglecting the connection Huntington was making between Islam and Orthodoxy.) Like much of modern-day Islam, the Orthodox Church has yet to completely shake off its autocratic medieval inheritance and to promote democratic principles, both within the church and outside it.

It was no accident that oppressive forms of communism took hold in Eastern European countries with Orthodox backgrounds. Admittedly, there are many Orthodox leaders who champion freedom, justice, equality and pluralism in principle, but in practice they often remain wary of the open competitiveness and embrace of difference that democracy promotes - consider the reluctance of the hierarchs and clergy of Greece in supporting church-state separation.

Just as importantly, the Orthodox Church refuses to democratise itself by, for example, allowing the whole church to elect its bishops, and adopting a more inclusive approach towards the laity, especially women, who continue to be barred from ordination and even, in most cases, from the sanctuary.

(This is not to overlook the fact that the Orthodox Church lacks the powerful centralised authority structure found in, for example, the Roman Catholic Church. This, together with the traditional Orthodox emphasis on episcopal collegiality rather than monarchy, has allowed for a measure of diversity and distinctiveness across the Orthodox community, and made possible a decentralised and flexible administrative model that spreads authority out to the regional, national and local levels - by means of, for example, autocephalous and autonomous churches which have a certain degree of independence from their respective historic Patriarchates, or "mother churches." At the same time, however, the current system of administration - which has been in place since the second or third century, and was validated by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century - continues to be based around the person of the bishop.)

Ritualism

Without wishing to deny the importance of ritual, which provides a sense of order and meaning to many people today tormented by insecurities and anxieties of all sorts, there is a tendency in Orthodoxy to over-indulge in liturgical practices. This is sometimes a difficult message to get across to Western converts, for whom Orthodox rituals hold a special appeal and charm, in comparison with the aesthetically barren religious environments of their upbringing.

The problem with the Orthodox emphasis on ritual and on aesthetics more broadly is that it too-often serves as a compensatory measure for the church's neglect of the internal life of the individual (for instance, existential and moral difficulties) and the social life of the broader community (like the plight of Indigenous Australians).

I am reminded of the great medieval conflict between Russian and Greek Orthodox over whether the sign of the Cross should be done with two or with three fingers. Sadly, things have not greatly progressed since then. The language problem persists, with services usually conducted in an archaic language understood by virtually no one. Connected to this is the subordinate and restricted status of the sermon in Orthodox liturgy (where, sometimes, no sermon at all is offered): what is important is not the preaching of the Word (or the attempt to understand the Word), but the ritual of the liturgy.

In line with the hierarchical structure of the church, but in contrast to the official designation of the liturgy as "the work of the people" (laos), the liturgy has become the preserve of the clergy, with minimal or no active participation from the laity. And, further, unnecessary prominence is often accorded to expensive vestments and utensils, and ornate (even pompous) architecture and paintings, thus creating a sense of theatricality and an aura of mystique, to the exclusion of an approach that is more politically engaged or one that promotes rational understanding.

This indeed is what appealed to the otherwise irreligious Greek Alexandrine poet, Constantine Cavafy, as he acknowledged in his poem, "In Church":

I love the church - its liturgical fans, the silver of the vessels, its candlesticks, the lights, the icons, the pulpit.

When I enter there, in a church of the Greeks, with its fragrances of incense, amid the liturgical voices and harmonies, the majestic presence of the priests and the stately rhythm of their every move - most resplendent in the finery of their vestments - my mind travels to the great glories of our race, to our illustrious Byzantine past.

This might be fine for an aesthete like Cavafy and some Orthodox clergy, but what significance could these smells and bells have for metropolitan Melbournites? The question of a return to, or development of, alternative liturgies (such as Western-rite liturgies in use during the first millennium, before the East-West schism), and similarly the need for changes to, or innovations in, liturgical practice (especially in order to make room in liturgy and worship for sadness, brokenness, doubt and questioning), have yet to be squarely faced by Orthodox hierarchs and theologians.

Ethnocentrism

There is the equally recalcitrant problem of ethnocentricism - the unholy alliance between nationality (for example, "Greekness") and Orthodoxy, evident in traditionally Orthodox countries (such as Russia and Greece) as well as in the Orthodox diaspora, Australia included.

To be fair, the main priority of the Orthodox Church in Australia has been to shape and give identity to its expatriate communities, and it has done much valuable work in the areas of social welfare (such as care for the elderly), education and youth activities. But all this is generally confined to a particular ethnic group, and does not extend to the wider community.

The result has been an introverted and insular church with little or no missionary endeavour, the formation of multiple jurisdictions divided along ethnic lines (the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia, the Serbian Orthodox Church of Australia and so on), and even the refusal or reluctance to use English in services. Timothy Ware, like other enlightened Orthodox writers, bemoans this situation: "If [the Orthodox of the diaspora] really believe Orthodoxy to be the true Catholic faith, then they should not cut themselves off from the non-Orthodox majority around them, but as a duty and privilege they should share their Orthodoxy with others."

However, the limited measures taken thus far by the Orthodox community in Australia to combat this - such as the formation in 1979 of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Churches in Australia (SCCOCA) - have not overcome the sectarian mindset of the church, which continues to be divided jurisdictionally and to be perceived as a collection of ethnic clubs that rarely reach out to the problems of the society in which their faithful live (the single recent exception being its opposition to the proposed changes in marriage law).

What is to be done?

What has the response been from the Orthodox Church to this crisis? At the official level, the response not unexpectedly has been one of silence or denial, repeating the rhetoric of victimization and entrenching a defensive siege mentality.

In the meantime, a large proportion - perhaps the majority - of second-generation Greek-Australians have, for all intents and purposes, lost the faith of their parents and ancestors. Their response to the refusal or inability of the church to engage in serious self-criticism and internal reform has been to leave, drift away, be indifferent, or treat the church as a purely cultural institution. A minority, usually those with a developed religious sensibility, look elsewhere, either to other churches or to non-religious groups, perhaps preferring to identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

When there have been attempts at reform, these have nearly always taken a decidedly conservative and reactionary cast. A case in point is the influential twentieth-century push in Orthodox theological circles to "return to the Fathers" and create a "neo-patristic synthesis." Like the earlier Catholic movement of neo-Thomism, these Orthodox theologians sought to engage modern problems by means of a recovery of ancient and long-forgotten sources (ressourcement). In the Orthodox case, this took the form of a recovery of the patristic witness - the writings of the Fathers of the Church, especially those from the East during the fourth through to the fourteenth centuries.

This patristic revival was essentially a reaction against (what was perceived as) the "Babylonian captivity" of Orthodox theology at the hands of Western modes of thinking during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In an effort to "de-Westernise" Orthodox theology, a call was issued by a number of prominent theologians in the years immediately following the Second World War to release Orthodoxy from its captivity.

Initially, at least, this renewal was mainly confined to a group of Russian emigre thinkers - particularly Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) and Vladimir Lossky (1903-59), whose Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) is often regarded as a kind of "handbook" of the neo-patristic synthesis. But soon enough the impact of the patristic revival spread beyond Slavic Orthodoxy, and in Greece it took hold in the 1960s. With the journal Synoro ("Boundary") (1964-67) as its mouthpiece, a small group of theologians took the lead in promulgating a new spirit to theology in Greece. Led by Christos Yannaras and John Zizioulas, this group upturned the Western-dominated mode of theological study in Greece, replacing it with what has come to be known as "the theology of the 60s" - the distinguishing features of which were:

an understanding of the church as a eucharistic community;

a strong interest in apophatic theology;

a focus on deification (theosis) as the destiny of humans;

a rediscovery of Byzantine iconography;

a renewed interest in monasticism; and

a dialogue with contemporary philosophical currents such as existentialism and phenomenology.

(It is not unimportant to note that the present Archbishop of Australia, Stylianos, is often counted as a member of this theological movement.)

Like their Russian predecessors, the 1960s Greek theologians saw themselves as the faithful heirs of a religious tradition (specifically, the mystical and patristic tradition of the East) which needed to be purified from the unfortunate contaminations of Western theology, particularly its (perceived) legalism and scholasticism.

The originality and creativity of their contribution, and its transformative impact on Orthodox theology and beyond, is well documented. But the limitations and blind spots of their work are also becoming increasingly apparent. Indeed, over the last decade, Orthodox theologians in Greece have placed the theology of the 1960s in serious question, and have called for a more authentic and informed renewal and reformation of the Orthodox Church. This new theological movement, led by Pantelis Kalaitzides, Director of the Volos Academy of Theological Studies, has both a negative and a positive dimension.

On the negative side, it declares the neo-patristic movement an utter failure in achieving renewal. The turn to the Fathers has, instead, only mythologised patristic theology and created an unhealthy anti-Westernism that has rendered the Orthodox Church insulated and conservative to such a degree that it is now impotent against the challenges posed by the modern world. Kalaitzides has summarised the matter in the following terms:

"The famous 'return to the Fathers' principle has often been understood in such a way as actually to encourage a retreat into a fundamentalist interpretation of tradition, in that it has often contributed to the denigration of everything to do with the West, and especially Western modernity ... Indeed, Fr Florovsky's famous 'return to the Fathers' has been understood and interpreted ... in such a way, at once scholarly and defensive, as ultimately to entrench the belief in always looking to the past, to the Fathers, rather than looking with the Fathers towards the future ... Not only this, but it has left Orthodox theology tongue-tied and at a loss before the challenges of the modern, contemporary world."

On the positive side, the new movement has developed a range of proposals aimed at renewing the life of the Orthodox Church, so that it can better meet the challenges it faces at the dawn of the third millennium. The most urgent of these challenges is coming to terms with the modern world, particularly its secular and pluralistic character. As Kalaitzides states, "The Orthodox Church and its theology can no longer ignore modernity and act as if it were living in traditional or pre-modern societies."

Kalaitzides notes that there are valuable lessons that the Orthodox Church stands to gain from a creative dialogue with the modern (and also postmodern) world, such as: recognising the harm in a nationalistic understanding of Christianity; active participation of the laity in worship; espousing the values of democracy and human rights; rethinking the role of women in the church; rehabilitating the value of the body, physicality and sexuality; and engaging more closely with the theories and discoveries of science.

Simply idolising the past and demonising the West will no longer do. Contemporary Greek theologians therefore demand a radical reformation from within, a new synthesis that will not only look to the patristic witness of the past but also to the best from the postmodern secular world. This synthesis of East and West may well involve the development within Orthodoxy of a "post-patristic theology," a theology that goes beyond the patristic tradition in a way not attempted previously, but without abandoning the spirit of the patristic era. This is a call for a new theology and a new church - one that is self-critical and open to the future. But if the call is ignored, the consequences may be disastrous. As Kalaitzides warns: "If the Orthodox Church insists on renouncing all change and reform, often in the name of preserving its unity and stability, then that church may one day come crashing to the ground."

I am pessimistic about the prospects of the Orthodox hierarchy heeding this salutary warning. But this is not the only or even the chief reason why I have chosen to leave the Orthodox Church. If the only problems faced by Orthodoxy were the ones enumerated above, I might well follow Kalaitzides in seeking valiantly, even if vainly, to rehabilitate the ecclesiological beast from within. My reservations, alas, go much deeper.

Against Christianity

My doubts now extend to the creedal core of the Christian faith. These doubts, however, are not particularly unique and so I will not linger on them here. But given my philosophical background, there are two often overlooked points I think are worth highlighting.

The first of these concerns the logical and metaphysical difficulties created by the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. When a logical principal as fundamental as the principle of non-contradiction - which holds that no statement of the form "p and not-p" (for example, "James is married and James is not married") can be true - is flouted by the doctrines that God is one and three, and that Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human, some especially strong reason or evidence is required in order to accept such doctrines.

This is frequently ignored by philosophers enamoured by Kierkegaardian "leaps of faith" (where contradiction is not a sign of confusion but of revelatory insight), and also by evangelical apologists who don't realise how great a burden of proof is placed upon their shoulders by these logical problems: it is not merely a matter of overturning the evidential weight of laws of nature, but the much greater task of overturning the laws of logic.

As is well known by philosophers of religion, various proposals have been canvassed for removing the alleged incoherence at the heart of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But these proposals invariably demand the revision or rejection of other fundamental logical or metaphysical principles (such as "absolute identity," the seemingly obvious view that identical objects cannot differ in any respect), and so again we must be presented with exceedingly good reasons for giving up these principles: they cannot be renounced lightly, or simply to save a "degenerating research program" such as Nicene Christology.

The question this raises is whether such strong or overwhelmingly favourable evidence in support of the central tenets of the Christian faith is available. Given the historical nature of these tenets, and the notorious difficulties and complexities of determining the meaning and accuracy of the New Testament texts, it is at least initially unlikely that a case of the requisite compelling kind can be built. Was Jesus buried in a tomb? Was Jesus raised from the dead? Did Jesus's earliest followers believe him to be God incarnate? Did Jesus himself believe he was God?

These and many similar questions have been debated from the very beginning of the Christian movement. Finding a plausible answer, let alone one that provides sufficient reason to make significant changes to our logical framework or system of thinking, is a tall order indeed.

Without wishing to enter into these interminable debates, it might be worth adding a second underappreciated philosophical point. In considering the question of whether Jesus was (or was believed to be) God, it is not unusual for contemporary readers, and even historians, to transplant modern-day preconceptions about the relationship between God and the world to ancient societies like the Palestinian Jewish community of Jesus's day.

Standard Christian metaphysics, for example, tends to be dualist: on the one hand, there is God, the ultimate reality who brought the (physical and non-physical) world into existence from out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), while himself remaining unoriginated, (ontologically) independent (aseity) and unconditioned; on the other hand, there is the created world, consisting of immaterial or angelic beings (including both good and bad angels) and the entire physical world, ordered according to fixed laws of nature and made up of land and sea, trees and plants, animals and the pinnacle of God's creation - human beings. Moreover, there is a fundamental divide and difference, an unbridgeable gap (or diastema, in the language of the Greek Church Fathers), between the Creator and the creation: no created being can ever traverse this distance.

But - and this is the point I wish to emphasize - this is not how the ancient Israelites saw the world. Their world or metaphysics had more in common with the complicated emanationist schemes of the pagan neoplatonists than with the dualism and even deism of many contemporary Christians. As in standard Christian metaphysics, neoplatonism postulates an absolutely simple (incomposite) and singular first causal principle of all that exists in the universe, which it calls "the One." But neoplatonism also accepts degrees of being, or levels of reality, the various levels related by emanation (or a process of overflow), in which the higher orders both cause and unify the lower.

In Plotinus's system, for example, the Intellect (Mind, Nous) is the first (atemporal) "product" of the One; the third hypostasis, ontologically subordinate to both the One and Intellect, is Soul (Psuche), which generates a separate, material cosmos; and the lowest level of reality is matter, where "matter" indicates utter formlessness or unintelligibility. Divinity is diffuse rather than distant. And if reality is conceived this way, then it would not be remarkable to find those on the lower rungs of the "great chain of being" climbing their way to the top, and those at the top temporarily becoming enfleshed so as to set things straight down below. As Bart Ehrman explains:

"In this ancient way of thinking, both humanity and divinity are on a vertical continuum, and these two continuums sometimes meet at the high end of the one and low end of the other. By contrast, most modern people, at least in the West, think that God is above us all in every respect and in infinite degree. He is completely Other. And there is no continuum in God."

Ehrman provides a rare but important contrast between ancient and modern metaphysics as a way of showing how comparatively easy it was for Jesus to "become God." In a world where everything is full of gods, as Thales is reported to have remarked, it is not necessary to be "consubstantial with the Father" in order to be considered divine, to be described in exalted terms as "Son of Man" and "Son of God," or to be regarded as worthy of worship. A little bit of philosophy, and history of philosophy, goes a long way towards demystifying the divinity or divinisation of Jesus.

Against Religion

But it is not only Orthodox Christianity, or Christianity more broadly, that I have come to repudiate - it is also religion itself, or at least institutionalised forms of religion that identify themselves in part in terms of dogmas or doctrines.

There are, of course, religious individuals, churches and communities that are simply unconcerned with theologies and creeds, devoting themselves instead to the practical (philanthropic) or performative (liturgical) aspects of their faith. Typically, however, these individuals and groups remain tied, even if only administratively and marginally, to centres of power and authority, to highly organised bodies which prescribe a set of morals and doctrines as identity markers, fuelling binary oppositions that separate those who are in from those who are out.

In an attempt to offer an alternative to such institutional structures, some recent grassroots groups have sought to develop new - and in particular fluid, experimental and decentralised - ways of being a church or religious community so as to connect with contemporary, postmodern culture and especially the "unchurched."

This is the case, for example, with Brian McLaren's "emergent church" movement and Peter Rollins's Ikon assemblies, both seeking to redeem and reinvent religion rather than doing away with it altogether. Rollins's Ikon group, in particular, is modelled on Derrida's notion of "religion without religion" - this signalling a departure from dogmatic (revealed) faith so as to make room for a wider conception of faith as the quasi-transcendental condition of any meaningful interaction and communication. This is religion reconfigured as ethics and justice, as responsibility to the other (conceived as holy because absolutely singular: tout autre est tout autre) - but it is a religion without religion, without priests and dogmas, thus freeing or decontaminating religion from its violent and exclusionary past.

These are laudable initiatives to create and express more engaging and convincing forms of religious faith. How convincing they are is another matter, and the Derridean strategy of repudiating belief, or placing it in abeyance, is unlikely to appeal to those of us who don't wish to keep the worlds of reason and faith apart, and think it of great importance to try to arrive at well-argued or rationally justified positions about theological doctrines. In any case, my critique is primarily targeted at less avant-garde varieties of religion, and in particular those that have a comparatively stable and well-defined set of beliefs about such matters as God or the divine, and the nature and purpose of human life.

As a philosopher, my critique of religion predictably begins with the practice of philosophy, but it need not end there and can be generalised to any way of life infused with the love of wisdom and the search for truth. A useful starting-point here is Heidegger's objection to the very idea of "Christian philosophy." Martin Heidegger famously stated: "A 'Christian philosophy' is a round square and a misunderstanding." For many years I was quite perplexed by this statement, and found it almost absurd, if not insulting towards the many distinguished contemporary philosophers (such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne) who are Christian and have sought to construct a philosophy from a distinctly Christian perspective.

I came to see, however, that Heidegger was not exactly advocating atheism, but only a kind of methodological atheism in philosophy, which (in the guise of phenomenology) seeks to provide an analysis of being that is independent of, and prior to, the analyses of beings provided by any of the ontic, positive sciences - including theology.

I also came to appreciate the rationale motivating this methodology. Part of the reason for Heidegger's separation of philosophy and theology lies in his view that philosophy is more radical in nature than theology. Theology, on this picture, does not allow for radical or genuine questioning: if we start from a position of faith, then our questioning or seeking begins by already having found what it searches - namely, God. Dominique Janicaud, in his criticism of the recent theological turn in French phenomenology, made a similar point: "The dice are loaded and choices made; faith rises majestically in the background."

Philosophy, by contrast, must consist in honest questioning, really following inquiry or evidence wherever it leads. The kind of thinking that has traditionally been regarded as integral to philosophy demands deep and searching questioning and a restless and perhaps even endless exploring, but without knowing where such wondering and meandering will lead (so as not to prejudice the outcome). It is what Heidegger envisioned as a type of thinking that is always underway, travelling "off the beaten track" onto bypaths and even dead-ends, but with no predetermined end in sight.

If we wish to grapple with the ultimate questions of life and death in novel, interesting and fruitful ways, a creative and adventurous spirit is required, one that is prepared to occasionally depart from the conventional and familiar in order to freely roam on roads less travelled, imaginatively constructing speculative theories and experimenting with diverse myths, models and metaphors of, for example, God and world.

I would not want to say that commitment - whether it be philosophical or religious - is necessarily ruled out by such a methodology. There is no way of saying where one's intellectual travels will lead, and one may well end up (perhaps despite one's best efforts) at a "religious" destination (granting for now the fiction of a final destination).

Similarly, there is no wish to rule out the possibility of beginning one's journey from a religious standpoint, particularly if one thinks that there are no metaphysically neutral starting-points in philosophy. But there is an intimate connection between the manner in which one travels and how or where one starts and ends in one's travels - the one inevitably affecting the other. Indeed, if the journey is undertaken in a "sceptical" frame - in the etymological sense of "thought-ful" - fostering an open and questioning, creative and imaginative style of thinking, with no predetermined goal or end-point, and driven by the passion for truth and meaning rather than an inviolable ideology that can never be overturned (or even challenged) by rational considerations, then the matter of whether one starts from or ends up at a "religious" position virtually reduces to a trivial detail.

The problem, however, is that religious commitment - of the traditional sort requiring creedal fidelity or "orthodoxy" - discourages or even prohibits philosophical journeys of the kind envisioned here. I have witnessed this unfortunate tendency in my own area of specialisation, the philosophy of religion. This field is currently suffering from a "dogmatic slumber," brought on in large part by the conservative and evangelical stream of the Christian church. Christian philosophers of religion now tend to approach their work with an unquestioning and complacent attitude towards the truth of traditional (Nicene) Christianity. Even those who subject Christian beliefs to critical scrutiny give the impression at least of already having made up their minds before their "inquiry" has begun; and it is not unusual to find a high degree of confidence (smacking of triumphalism) displayed towards the case they have constructed in support of Christian theism (or an element thereof, such as bare theism).

Consider also the fact that one would be hard pressed to find in the published output of a contemporary philosopher of religion any fundamental changes or reversals, such as giving up belief in God, or relinquishing some significant religious belief. Even when some central theistic or Christian beliefs are put forward for examination (for instance, the belief in the goodness of God, when discussing the problem of evil), the results are predetermined by the general parameters or framework (in this case, the Christian worldview) within which the investigation is being carried out.

Allied to this, there is very little willingness to look beyond traditional Christianity - where by "traditional Christianity" I mean that version of Christianity developed in the writings of the Church Fathers and represented by the creeds of the first millennium, particularly the so-called "Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed" (which is now generally associated with the second ecumenical council of 381). So-called "heretical" theologies (Arianism, Nestorianism), crushed by the power of the church and state, continue to be treated by philosophers as heresies, rather than viewed as genuine or live possibilities.

Equally troubling, there is little desire to look beyond the Christian faith and explore non-Christian religions, particularly non-Abrahamic and Eastern religions, in a spirit of sincere openness - that is, with an openness to being corrected and enlightened by the other, and not simply seeking to prove a point or convert one's interlocutor (this kind of aggression being an occupational hazard of the philosopher). What is lacking is not merely an informed awareness of non-Christian religions, but also a genuine engagement and dialogue with them, where this presupposes attentive listening, an attitude of respect and humility, and above all a readiness to undergo a possibly painful and disruptive transformation in one's worldview.

But I would suspect that few Christian philosophers would view dialogue in such terms - that is, as something that holds the potential to change one's beliefs and practices in drastic ways. This is simply not a live option for so many of today's philosophers, who are therefore restricted to entering into dialogue with other religions (if they ever do so) in a predominantly one-way fashion.

For these reasons I have come to regard religious commitment as incompatible with philosophy. The lover of wisdom, the philos-sophos, is one who never ceases searching and questioning, even if they become - like Socrates, the "gadfly of Athens" - irritating and infuriating, and are ostracised or condemned by their society. The life of the mind as practiced by Socrates is not well suited to church membership, or any religious affiliation for that matter other than perhaps liberal groups like Ikon. Institutional forms of religion, at least, will sooner or later put a stop to questions and demand answers, since it is the answers that define the boundary and identity of the group. For the philosopher, however, answers are always fluid and provisional; the only constants are the questions, and therefore the path to wisdom must be a solitary one.

In my case, those who have best lighted the path have been "writers" in the broad sense, rather than "professional philosophers" (if that's not an oxymoron). And in particular, a group of brilliant but relatively unknown (to English-speaking audiences) twentieth-century Greek poets and novelists writing in the midst of violence and war, persecution and imprisonment. I will mention only two of them.

Firstly, there is the unconventional leftist Aris Alexandrou (1922-78), who spent much of his life in jail or in exile for his refusal to submit to political authority. Soon after his acclaimed and only novel, To kibotio (The Mission Box), was published in 1974, he was asked in an interview, "Which political party do you belong to?" He replied:

"I don't belong to any party, nor to any political group. I am not a member of any church. I am not a follower of any religion. As I've said before, Desmotes teide histamai tois endon remasi peithomenos."

This ancient Greek phrase - which can be translated as "Here I stand committed, abiding by the voice within" - has something of the spirit of Socrates about it. Like Socrates, Alexandrou enjoins us to listen to our inner daimon, forging our own path and thinking for ourselves rather than letting others think for us.

The second literary figure I would like to mention is Alexandrou's contemporary, Tasos Leivaditis (1922-88), one of the unacknowledged greats of Modern Greek literature. Leivaditis's early poetry is heavily influenced by a doctrinaire communist outlook, his participation in the communist resistance movement during the Second World War and the civil war, and his subsequent detention and exile in various camps across the Aegean islands.

In the aftermath of the defeat of the left in the civil war, Leivaditis gradually turned away from his previous political commitments towards a bleaker, disillusioned poetic vision permeated with existentialist concerns and quasi-religious imagery. Even as the religious tones and themes become increasingly prominent, there is never a desire for creedal or confessional allegiance, but a striving to break free from orthodoxies of all kinds, political and theological.

Leivaditis's postwar world is one of alienation and oblivion, "a world torn asunder / with a derelict God going around from door to door / begging for his existence." The journey for meaning is not a communal or comradely one, as it may have been before, but a lonely and despairing search haunted by lost causes and ideals, "broken dreams and dead music" that keep the poet up all night. There is a passionate, even erotic "hankering after God" in Leivadits's later work, often recalling the apophatic stream in Orthodox theology and spirituality, with its emphasis on the mystery and incomprehensibility of God. But the apophaticism of the Orthodox Church is circumscribed by its cataphaticism, its authoritative positive pronouncements - stumbling-blocks to a generation, like Leivaditis's, betrayed by ideologies (of left and right) which could not accommodate the complexities, vagaries and frailties of life.

If any divinity remains from these ruins it is the one disclosed in the "books" of the French-Jewish writer, Edmond Jabes, for whom "God is a questioning of God." This sacred but solitary wandering is expressed in characteristic fashion in one of Leivaditis's poems from his 1985 masterpiece Violets for a Season, and I quote it here in full:

Lonesome Steps

There exists, they say, a great adventure for each of us, but where will we find it? for now we leaf through the old calendars in case we retrieve something from the years - truly, what goes on in reality? who remembers what happened yesterday? everything hazy, confused in the morning I walk over the rubble of two wars in order to get to the kitchen for coffee vagrants watch the trains departing and their eyes are orphaned for a moment and it is not rain on the glass-enclosed waiting rooms at the stations but the unfulfilled journeys that are crying drunkards stagger under the weight of the infinite outside the orphanages the persecuted folk tales fall silent and the woman by the window so sad that she is ready to depart for the sky everything hazy, confused - others construct a face from ours for their own use who are we? unknown and only sometimes in our nightmares do we find part of our true self - hands that crumbled in awkward gestures violet-coloured compassion of the twilight which spreads a bit of regal lace on homes for the aged the divine right of the poor over the possessions of others the lonesome steps of a passer-by which remind you of your entire life and my father, dead for so many years now, comes each night and gives me advice in my sleep, "but father," I tell him, "you forget that we are the same age" oh my lost generation - we took great roads, we remained in the middle the hour of our death is written on all the clocks childhood friends, where are you? with whom will I now continue my wanderings in the infinite? the grown-ups are in the cafes the crickets in the evening are attempting to pronounce the ineffable mother would open the letters with her hairpin our life is a mystery which we cannot portion out a sorrow in the afternoons like the aroma from old books and each time we pass by a pedestrian it is as though we are saying "goodbye" to the whole of life - do you remember our erotic moments, Anna? your sex like a half-opened shell laid there by a distant tempest your breasts two small heliotropes amongst the unforgettable things of the morning - revolutionaries are concerned about the future, lovers about the past, poets have taken responsibility for both someday I will commit suicide in dramatic fashion: with hushed words from old conspiratorial days, ah, life, a handshake with the infinite before you are lost for ever children know well that the impossible is the best solution while the two musicians with the accordion play now in the depths of dusk for luck and their hats swim, shipwrecked in the music.

N.N. ("Nick") Trakakis is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Australian Catholic Philosophy. His publications include The End of Philosophy of Religion and (as editor, with Graham Oppy) The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, volumes 1-5. He also writes and translates poetry, his most recent poetry collection being Appearance and Reality. An earlier, much shorter version of this essay was published in the Greek-Australian newspaper, Neos Kosmos, on 24 October 2015. Parts of that article have been reused with permission.