37 - Kazantzakis: Prophet of Non-Hope

Kazantzakis: Prophet of Non-Hope
By Carnegie Samuel Calian

"Kazantzakis was indeed a soul in search of himself. . . . In his search for God, he became a prophet of non-hope. For him, 'a world without God has no foundations, but a world without justice cannot be governed' . . . . His theology is both radically Christian and non-Christian. He has rightly stressed the need for freedom in our struggle to find meaning in life. He has taken a necessary look at the abuses of religiosity in the name of Christ and has shown a divine passion to keep life human."

THE following words have been engraved on Nikos Kazantzakis' tombstone in Herakleion, Crete: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." Behind this epitaph is the remarkable search for God by one of the better known writers of this century.

In a letter to a friend he wrote, "The major and almost the only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with 'God': the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called 'man' against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him. The stubbornness of the struggle, the tenacity of the little spark in its fight to penetrate the age-old, boundless night and conquer it." ¹ In his book on Saint Francis, something of the

Carnegie Samuel Calian, educated at Occidental College, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Basel, Switzerland, is currently Associate Professor of Theology at Dubuque Theological Seminary. Last year on sabbatical, he was guest lecturer at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. He is the author of Icon and Pulpit (1968), Berdyaev's Philosophy of Hope (1969), Grace, Guts and Goods (1971), and has contributed articles to numerous journals.
¹ Helen Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazantzakis, A Biography Based on His Letters, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1968, p. 507. I am grateful also for the conversations held with Mrs. Kazantzakis during our sabbatical in Switzerland. Nikos Kazantzakis was born on December 2, 1885 and died on October 26, 1957.

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intensity of his feeling is captured as Brother Leo (perhaps alias Kazantzakis) reports to Francis saying, "I had been going from monastery to monastery, from village to village, wilderness to wilderness, searching for God. I did not marry, did not have children, because I was searching for God. I would hold a slice of bread in one hand and a fistful of olives in the other, and though I was famished, I always forgot to eat, because I was searching for God." ² This unfolding pilgrimage, struggle, and outcome are the aim and substance of this study.

I

Kazantzakis' epic poem, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, provides the essential index to his pilgrimage. Within The Odyssey a host of personages make an impact on Kazantzakis' thinking, from Homer to Zorba, including Dante, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Moses, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, Lenin, Theresa of Jesus, St. Francis, Cervantes, Leonardo, El Greco, William James, Bergson, Buddha, and Christ. He at times referred to these persons as the "bodyguards of the Odyssey," a pilgrimage which began with the rising of the sun until its final setting at his death. Significantly, his epic poem begins and ends with an invocation to the sun.³ "The sun symbolizes godhead, the ultimate purified spirit, for the central theme is the unceasing struggle which rages in animate and inanimate matter to burn away and cast off more and more of its dross until the rarefied spirit is gradually liberated and ascends toward its symbolical goal."⁴ In short, the sun itself is a metaphor a lasting statement of the transmutation of all men and material into flame, light, and spirit.

Under the protection and warmth of the Grecian sun which he loved, Kazantzakis was dedicated to choosing some great human spirit, studying him for a period of time until he absorbed that spirit into his soul, and then moving on to someone else. He regarded his writings as a series of confessions on his journey to find God. In a letter, he wrote, "Once again, I'm seated before the desk of my martyrdom and my joy, holding my pen, writing. I saw very beautiful things in Italy and was very happy. I did a great deal of thinking, and in Assisi I lived once more with the great martyr and hero whom

² Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis, Ballantine Books, New York, 1962, p. 9.
³ See the opening lines in the Prologue and Epilogue.
⁴ See notes by Kimon Friar in Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958, pp. 777-778.

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I love so much, Saint Francis. And now I'm gripped by a desire to write a book about him. Will I write it? I don't know yet. I'm waiting for a sign, and then I'll begin. Always, as you know, the struggle within me between man and God, between substance and spirit, is the stable leitmotif of my life and work." ⁵ Kazantzakis' biographer, Professor Pandelis Prevelakis, comments that he knows of no non-theological text in which the word "God" recurs as often as it does in the writings of Kazantzakis. The major sources for his theological understanding and development of his concept of God are linked with Christ, Buddha, Nietzsche, and Lenin.

His intellectual and emotional struggle with each of the above figures enabled him to shape his model of God. Christ whom he greatly admired held a central fascination for him, as his two novels The Greek Passion and The Last Temptation of Christ vividly indicate. Christ for him was the tragic but heroic individual who overcame the last temptation which confronts man-the temptation to substitute a non-existent paradisiacal heaven in place of the reality of death. Christ without his resurrection is a Christ who faces up to his cross, affirms life triumphantly at death, looks fearlessly at the abyss, and takes the leap. Christ is the one man who through-out his life overcame all crises and temptations until the end and who revealed to all that death is the final liberation of man. Death is man's salvation, not to be feared or sidetracked but to be accepted as part of the human destiny. Kazantzakis sought to show that Christ is fulfilled in death; it is not necessary to look beyond it. As Jesus said to Judas in The Last Temptation:

I'm sorry, Judas, my brother, Jesus said, but it is necessary.

I've asked you before, Rabbi-is there no other way?

No, Judas, my brother. I too should have liked one; I too hoped and waited for one until now-but in vain. No, there is no other way. The end of the world is here. This world, this kingdom of the Devil, will be destroyed and the kingdom of heaven will come. I shall bring it. How? By dying. There is no other way.

. . . no, Rabbi, I won't be able to endure!

You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary-it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me.⁶

⁵ Helen Kazantzakis, op. cit., p. 514.
⁶ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, Bantam Books edition, New York, 1960, pp. 412-413.

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From Buddha, in contrast to Jesus, the most important lesson learned was to seek a savior who could "deliver mankind from salvation." The message of the Buddha is to free oneself from fear and hope by giving up desire. Kazantzakis, a man of desires, had an undying struggle with the Buddha which left its imprint as indicated on his tombstone epitaph. The intensity of his encounter with the Buddha is seen in Zorba, The Greek when he claimed that "Buddha is the last man! . . . That is his secret and terrible significance. Buddha is the 'pure soul' which has emptied itself; in him is the void, he is the Void. 'Empty your body, empty your spirit, empty your heard' he cries. Wherever he sets his foot, water no longer flows, no grass can grow, no child be born." ⁷ Later Kazantzakis confessed that his life and death struggle with the Buddha was a tremendous force of destruction within him. It was a duel with a great NO at the end. He felt that his own salvation depended on the outcome of that duel. Kazantzakis rejected the Buddha, but nevertheless felt in the latter's debt as he sharpened his perspective on reality and furthered his quest for God.

Nietzsche pointed Kazantzakis to the struggle inherent in life. The only life which is worth living, according to Nietzsche, is that which develops the strength and integrity to withstand the sufferings and circumstances of existence without fleeing into an imaginary world. "Nietzsche taught me to distrust every optimistic theory. I knew that man's womanish heart has constant need of consolation, a need to which that super-shrewd sophist, the mind, is constantly ready to minister. I began to feel that every religion which promises to fulfill human desires is simply a refuge for the timid, and unworthy of a true man."⁸ In brief Nietzsche enabled him to develop a faith without hope, an influence also on Kazantzakis' tombstone.

In Report to Greco, he wrote, "The faith most devoid of hope seemed to me not the truest, perhaps, but surely the most valorous. I considered metaphysical hope an alluring bait which true men do not condescend to nibble. I wanted whatever was most difficult, in other words most worthy of man, of the man who does not whine, entreat, or go about begging. Yes, that was what I wanted. Three cheers for Nietzsche, the murderer of God. He it was who gave me the courage to say 'That is what I want!'" ⁹ Thus with hope and

⁷ Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba, The Greek, Ballantine Books edition, New York, 1965, p. 154.
⁸ Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, Bantarm Books edition, New York, 1965, p. 324.
⁹ Ibid, p. 325.

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fear placed under surveillance, Kazantzakis made strides in his ascent toward his understanding of God.

Kazantzakis was also much infatuated with Lenin. Unlike Christ, Buddha or Nietzsche, Lenin was a contemporary whose revolution was yet young and made an indelible impression upon an idealist like Kazantzakis. While he rejected the materialistic bias of communism, he regarded Lenin as a "red Christ." His description of the Russians viewing the body of Lenin is noteworthy. He wrote, "The Russian masses stared ecstatically, with the precise gaze they had employed just a few years earlier when they viewed the rosy, blond face of Jesus upon the gilded rood screens. This man was also a Christ, a red Christ. The essence was the same: humankind's eternal essence, made of hope and fear. Nothing had changed but the names." ¹⁰ The significance of Lenin was precisely the concern of the "red Christ" for justice among men.

This emphasis upon justice is stated more explicitly in The Fratricides through the mouth of Father Yánaros, the leading figure in this novel about a Christ-like monk caught in the fratricidal struggle of the Greek Civil War of this century. Crying within himself, the monk exclaims that "the world has no need of crucified Christs any longer, it needs fighting Christs! Take a lesson from me. Enough of fears and passions, and crucifixions; get up I say, call out for the army of angels to descend; bring justice. Enough they've spit on us, beaten us, made us wear a crown of thorns, crucified us; now it's the turn of the resurrected Christ . . . . We want the Second Coming here, here on earth, before we die. Get Up, rise! And a deep sad voice came from the depths of his inner being: "I cannot . . . .' " ¹¹ Elsewhere Lenin's teachings are referred to as the Fifth Gospel, especially directed to workers of the world to unite in the cause of justice. Explaining the revolutionary shift to Father Yánaros, the village teacher says, "We haven't changed much; we only changed the word 'Christ' to 'the people' - it's the same thing. That's what God is today, anyway - the people!"^{12 Today, "the people" have risen fromthe dead.}

This brief exposition of Kazantzakis' pilgrimage shows something of the content and the intensity of his quest for God. The above mentioned names do not, of course, exhaust Kazantzakis' list of

¹⁰ Ibid., P. 384.
¹¹ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Fratricides, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1964, p. 250.
¹² Ibid, p. 180.

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heroes. It does, however, indicate the directions which his relentless quest took. He was indeed a soul in search of himself. In poetic form, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel is actually a personal theological expression of his quest, which like the sun's flame consumes and transforms the searcher.

II

To appreciate fully Kazantzakis' pilgrimage, we should more closely examine his methodology-the dialectics of struggle which preoccupied him at each stage of his theological journey. Struggle was at the essence of his life style, an essential ingredient in the model of God which he was fashioning. "Pain is not the only essence of our God," he remarked, "nor is hope in a future life or a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our minds. The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end." ¹³ Kazantzakis believed in the necessity of struggle; to battle gives meaning to the confused forces which confront man in his existence.

The nature of this struggle was dialectical---opposites clashed as new insights sought to be born. It has been said that "the greatness of man is rooted in his contrasts: being both social and antisocial, he must escape 'conformity' in order to become a creator." ¹⁴ The battle of contrasts was woven into the very tapestry of life for Kazantzakis. He sought to synthesize the contrasting figures and teachings of Christ, Nietzsche, Bergson, Buddha, Lenin, and others. The extent to which he succeeded unfolds in his book The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Instead of a synthesis, a new creation emerges a God in the image of man.

In the process of this dialectical struggle, a growing awareness struck Kazantzakis that he would not find the God whom he was seeking. Nevertheless he pushed on, hoping against hope to find him. At times he felt quite lonely and solitary in his search. God increasingly for Kazantzakis and his Odysseus became identified with the primordial force which drives man to surpass himself. Both Ka-

¹³ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Savior of God, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1960, p. 92.
¹⁴ Jules Chaix-Ruy, The Superman: From Nietzsche to Teilhard de Chardin, University of Notre Dame Press, 1968, p. 16.

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zantzakis and Odysseus are literally "hunters of God." Odysseus mocks those who seek or think they have found God and boasts that he knows the great secret:

Some crackpots search for God, thinking perhaps he lurks somewhere amid the branches of the flesh and mind; some squander precious life, chasing the empty air; some, still more pigeon-brained, think they've already found him and work on his compassion with their begging whines till their minds break from too much joy or too much pain. But others, great brain-archers, know the secret well: by God is meant to hunt God through the empty air! ¹⁵

Elsewhere in the The Saviors of God, Kazantzakis wrote that "it is not God who will save us-it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit. . . . Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free-not the Holy Sepulcher but that God buried in matter and in our souls." ¹⁶ Here we have in substance the object of his relentless pursuit to transform matter into spirit. The process of struggle itself is a form of divinization.

Kazantzakis' Eastern Orthodox background is reflected precisely at the point of divinization or theosis which is the destiny of the redeemed man. Theosis was the very thing for which his soul searched from the beginning. However, he placed the concept of theosis within a solely anthropomorphic context which made him appear unorthodox to his Greek Church. God for him was one who struggles constantly and eternally; it is the destiny of men to be enablers-"saviors of God." In a personal confession he noted, "All my life, I have tried to expand my mind to the breaking point, in order to forge a great idea, one able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind." ¹⁷ This attempt to reach beyond the boundaries of limitation was for Kazantzakis a confrontation of divine dimension.

The thirst after God for Kazantzakis was actually an agonizing ascension of the soul. "My head," he said, "is like a flame eternally consuming the body. But the night wind blows to extinguish me. I am threatened in my struggle every moment. In my struggle every solid body is a danger. I walk, stumble among the flesh like

¹⁵ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, p. 573, Book XVII, lines 1010-1017.
¹⁶ Nikos Kazantzakis, Saviors of God, p. 106, Nos. 47 and 49.
¹⁷ Pandelis Prevelakis, Nikos Kazantzakis and His Odyssey, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1961, p. 116.

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a benighted wayfarer, and I cry: 'Help!' " ¹⁸ For Kazantzakis, this battle with the "Invisible One" assumed cosmic dimensions. "The struggle of the Invisible One does not involve mankind only: it involves the whole earth, the whole universe. In the wild flower and in the star the same breath courses, storms, generates. Man 'has visions' of the Invisible One that 'treads on what is visible and ascends.' Struggle is the essence of the Invisible Power. 'What is the object of this struggle?' man asks, forgetting that the Great Breath does -not work within human time, place, or causality." ¹⁹ From this agonizing battle his model of God began to take spiritual shape.

Exactly what new face of God was shaping on the horizon for him? The new face of God must consist of our own flesh and blood. According to Kazantzakis, God is neither an abstract thought nor a pure figment of our mind. "He is man and woman, mortal and immortal, dung and spirit. God dances beyond the bounds of logic. He is not almighty, not all-holy, not all-wise. God is like an erotic wind shattering corporeal forms in order to pass through them. God battles without any certitude." ²⁰ It was clear for him that God's salvation and man's salvation are integrally one. There is no salvation for the one without the other. "We cannot be saved, unless he is saved. We are one. From the blind worm in the ocean's depth to the infinite arena of the Galaxy, there is one alone who is struggling and in peril: ourself. And within our small earthly breast there is one alone who is struggling and in peril: the Universe." ²¹ Thus we can see in outline the emerging model of Kazantzakis' God with cosmic-anthropomorpbic roots, a God whose birth takes place through the dialectic necessity of struggle.

Kazantzakis' methodology reveals that he was not only a literary philosopher but a theologian incognito. As he himself indicated in a conversation with a friend, "My aim is not Art for Art's sake, but to find and express a new sense of life . . . . In order for me to attain this aim, there are three paths: (1) the path of Christ-inaccessible; (2) the path of St. Paul-the combination of Art (the Epistles) and Action, but a Christ is needed; (3) the path of Art or Philosophy . . . . " ²² Kazantzakis chose the path of Philosophy

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 48.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Ibid.
²² Helen Kazanuakis, op. cit., p. 77.

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and therefore never regarded anything he wrote as "perfect" from the viewpoint of Art. He definitely felt that his efforts transcended the limits of Art.

Through the exercise of writing he would feel increasingly relieved from the battle raging within him. Yet, he realized that this relief was not enough. "To attain my aim," he said, "I must make a leap. As soon as this leap is accomplished (which can only be an example of life and not one of Art and writing), I shall find the expression of my soul . . . which will probably be an action and a form of teaching rather than writing." ²³ Whether man is ever capable of taking the ultimate leap is questionable. Herein lies the tragic sense of life for him. Acknowledging this, life for Kazantzakis was an expression of heroic tragedy. There is no doctrinaire end to the struggle. The courageously free man is one who can joyfully continue without hope of any final resolution to his struggle or of reaching the divine object of his pursuit. Kazantzakis' dialectical methodology dictated an unresolved tension until the end.

III

At the end of every man's pilgrimage there is death. Death is the ultimate reality behind Kazantzakis: the point at which the unresolved tension of the dialectical struggle ceases. Kazantzakis and his Odyssey having challenged philosophies and gods throughout life, realize now that human existence remains without justification and that there is no final judgment awaiting man. The outlook is a form of "Dionysiac nihilism" which stops short of total nihilism. There is a definite affirmation of life in the midst of this drive to question and destroy the inadequacies of all philosophies of life and gods which men worship. These philosophies and gods must be overturned if man is to be liberated. In the process of devastating these philosophies and gods, the deep and constructive exaltation of life is sensed to the point of lust in Kazantzakis' writings. To meet the tragic sense of life, he counters with a painful hunger for life. He captures his thirst for life in the novel Freedom or Death in a

²³ Ibid.

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conversation between the Grandfather and the young messenger Mitros:

"Grandfather," he said, seizing the old man's hands, "I hear that you have lived like a great oak tree. You have breathed storms, suffered, triumphed, struggled, labored for a hundred years. How has life seemed to you during those hundred years, Grandfather?"

"Like a glass of cool water, my child," replied the old man.

"And are you still thirsty, Grandfather?"

The graybeard raised his hand, so that the wide sleeve of his shirt fell back and revealed the bony, furrowed arm as far as the shoulder.

"Woe to him," he cried in a loud voice, as though he were pronouncing a curse, "woe to him who has slaked his thirst! "²⁴

Death, life, and God were all organically related for Kazantzakis. "Death is that point where God touches man." ²⁵ In a more complete context in The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, he wrote lyrically on the meaning of death:

My son, I too watch Death before me night and day; the proudest joy which now unites us here on earth is that we've emptied both our hearts of gods and hope, yet you sink nerveless to the ground, for loneliness has driven you wild, and freedom cleaves your head in two. But I hold Death like a black banner and march on! When I drink water my mind cools to its deep roots, for I know joy is fleeting and does not return; I munch bread and rejoice to know that I cast crumbs in my frail body's furnace that my soul may blaze; I take my joy of woman till the whole earth laughs and nestles sweetly in my arms, in haste to feel before I die, my sacred heir stir in her womb. Death is the salt that gives to life its tasty sting! ²⁶

This dynamic affirmation of death in the midst of one's lust for life took on a divine thrust for Kazantzakis. In Father Yánaros' study of the icon of St. Constantine, the firewalker (in The Fratricides), he says to himself, "God is not cool water-no, He's not cool water to be drunk for refreshment; God is fire, and you must walk upon it; not only walk, but-most difficult of all-you must dance on this fire. And the moment you are able to dance on it, the fire will become cool water; but until you reach that point, what a struggle, my Lord, what agony!" ²⁷ Kazantzakis engaged here in a theological statement of the dynamics inherent in man's life and death

²⁴ Nikos Kazantzakis, Freedom or Death, Ballantine Books, New York, 1969, p. 370.
²⁵ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Fratricides, p. 58.
²⁶ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, pp. 570-571; lines 899-912.
²⁷ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Fratricides, p. 136.

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struggle on earth. The battle for meaning is itself a divine activity. The search for God is a personification of the Divine which ultimately devours the pursuer and turns him into spirit at death.

It is from this perspective that Kazantzakis was able to attribute so many characteristics to God, for the Divine is woven into all the dynamics of living from birth to death. This is why Zorba is able to say in his colorful manner that "God enjoys himself, kills, commits injustice, makes love, works, likes impossible things, just the same as I do. He eats when he pleases; takes the woman he chooses. If you see a lovely woman going by, as fresh as clear water, your heart leaps at the sight. Suddenly the ground opens and she disappears. Where does she go? Who takes her? If she's a good woman, they say: 'The devil's carried her off.' But, boss, I've said so before, and I say it again, God and the devil are one and the same thing!" ²⁸ Zorba's "boss" also concurs: "God changes his appearance every second; blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. At one moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk." ²⁹ The many faces of God is a view of man quenching his great thirst at different stages of his relentless search for God.

To be aware of the many faces of God raises the question whether some faces are not more authentic than others. Kazantzakis was suspicious of the faces of God supported primarily by institutional Christianity. It can be seen why he was persona non grata to his own Greek Orthodox Church. Listen to the words spoken by a young, wounded guerrilla fighter to Father Yánaros in The Fratricides: "You asked me who I am; I'll tell you everything in a little while; I'm anxious to get to the point. I was deacon to a bishop; I was educated, aiming for a bishopric myself. But I saw too many things-my mind opened, I understood. The word of Christ has been degraded, His message upon earth has faded; we only follow the footprints that Satan's feet leave on the mud-Christ's words have been reversed:

Blessed are the deceivers in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the violent, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after injustice.

²⁸ Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba The Greek, p. 263.
²⁹ Ibid., p. 234.

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Blessed are the unmerciful.
Blessed are the impure in heart.
Blessed are the warmakers.

These are what we call Christians today." ³⁰ In short, the God which was real for Kazantzakis is identified with shame, disgrace, and tears rather than happiness, glory, or comfort which dull the senses to the need for justice and satisfy man too easily with a promise of hope in some non-existent realm. The last temptation to be overcome is hope according to Kazantzakis.

In his search for God Kazantzakis became a prophet of non-hope. For him, "a world without God has no foundations, but a world without justice cannot be governed." ³¹ Of course, the price of justice is high; this is why man is always in need of mercy. To seek justice and to show mercy man must exercise his freedom. Father Yánaros standing in the church's courtyard over his own grave triumphantly responds for Kazantzakis saying, " 'Death, I do not fear you,' he murmured, and suddenly he felt free. What does it mean to be free? He who does not fear death is free. Father Yánaros stroked his beard, satisfied. God, he pondered, is there a greater joy than freedom from death? 'No,' he went on, 'no!'" ³² Thus we come to the last sentence of Kazantzakis' epitaph as he accepted the fact of death in the midst of his divine struggle for justice, freedom, and life.

IV

We have seen the pilgrimage of a well-known literary figure of our day relentlessly searching for the meaning of his existence. Kazantzakis' quest for God was actually his deep and abiding commitment to the human spirit which he came so imperfectly to designate as "God." Man seen within this divine dimension is the Great Combatant in life.

The essence of God is this unceasing struggle which rages within man. God is dependent upon man. In Kazantzakis' epic poem, Odysseus "tells his troops that all adventures and all experience lead to further revelations of God, that God grows as man grows, changes with man's environment and culture, for it is man who feeds him:

³⁰ Nikos Kazantzakis. The Fratricides, p. 62.
³¹ Ibid, p. 65.
³² Ibid, p. 55.

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'God is the monstrous shadow of death-grappling man.' God needs us, not out of love, but because we are the flesh through which he lives and grows." ³³ Man is a personification of God for Kazantzakis; the Search is the arena of dialogue and struggle between the two. Man is a soul in search of himself. His pilgrimage never ceases until death.

Kazantzakis' understanding of God is both an affirmation and a denial of traditional Christian theology. His radical affirmation of the incarnation (God coming into human flesh) is at the same time also a denial of the incarnation (transforming all matter into spirit). Christian theology insists on the organic oneness of flesh and spirit as witnessed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Another emphasis of Kazantzakis which raises questions is his attempt to view all human activity within the boundaries of this life. Is it necessary to choose between life now and life hereafter? Can we not affirm both? Can we not enjoy the experience of freedom, and at the same time affirm both the reality of death and the promise of the resurrection? Christian theology rightfully points us to a life without boundaries.

Kazantzakis' theology is then both radically Christian and non-Christian. He has rightly stressed the need for freedom in our struggle to find meaning in life. He has taken a necessary look at the abuses of religiosity in the name of Christ and has shown a divine passion to keep life human. In this pursuit to humanize life, however, is it necessary for him to strip man of hope? Obviously, there are many false hopes, wishful dreams, and pretentious illusions which need to be destroyed. Possibly, Kazantzakis is critical mainly of these pious, introverted types of hope which ignore injustice and thereby misplace their love and concern. Biblical hope, however, taking its clue from the Incarnate One, seeks to further the intrinsic worth of every man without respect to his class, color, or sex. if Kazantzakis is pointing to a rejection of this kind of hope, he has weakened his own cause. Notwithstanding this reservation, his epitaph presents a challenge to any who seek God today.

³³ Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, p. 793 (notes).