As to the identity of Jesus, why should a critic
today have greater authority
than the earliest generations of Christians?

Your Christ IsToo Small

By Roy Abraham Varghese

In the 1950s, the Anglican author J.B. Phillips published a book entitled Your God Is Too Small. His thesis was that our childhood ideas of God (“cosmic policeman,” “grandfather,” “despot”) often remain static making it impossible for us to truly worship such a limited being in later life.

Here I apply Phillips’ thesis to common conceptions of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. The Jesus who is rejected by non-believers and half-heartedly accepted by many believers is too often a Jesus who is not the Christ. So where do we go for help? Not, I submit, to those theologians who themselves seem too confused on the salient issues to be of any assistance to anyone else. In fact, the last three decades have produced a Christological merry-go-round of bizarre peccadilloes from the Seventies debates on incarnation as mythology to the sensationalist (and short-lived) Jesus Seminar of the Nineties. Moreover, as professional academics, many theologians are disinclined to admit anything “different” about the subject of their study, anything that transcends what is natural and ordinary. Theirs is a fact-free Christianity. So miracles, exorcisms, resurrection, divinity are simply quarantined in the limbo reserved for fundamentalists and reactionaries. And anemic abstractions (“Jesus, the Symbol of God”) and comatose cliches (“the man of universal destiny”) become the measure of theological “correctness.”

In the face of such inanity, we return to the primordial insights into the historical Jesus that unveiled a new order of being: Messiah, Redeemer, Holy of Holies, Exorcizer, Divinizer, cosmic Christ and Second Person of the Trinity. These are the seven dimensions of the Christ-hood of Jesus embedded in the Christian consciousness and rooted in the historical witness of those who had seen, heard and touched the Man who was God. In the final analysis, this is the Christ we worship and glorify.

In exploring these seven dimensions, our starting-point is the Jesus who revealed himself in history.

The Jesus of history
who is the Christ of faith

Since Hermann Reimarus’s beginning of the so-called quest for the historical Jesus in the 18 th century, theologians have separated what they call the “Jesus of history” from the “Christ of faith.” The only reliable data that can be known about Jesus is what they with their specialized criteria deem acceptable. Any supernatural pronouncements about Christ belong to “faith” and lack any historical grounding; sacred history is simply fable, said D.F. Strauss. According to Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) the sayings and stories about Jesus transmitted in oral traditions were at best reflections of the faith of later Christians and we can know nothing of the life and personality of Jesus; all talk of the supernatural must be seen simply as a mythological mode of speaking. Voting among themselves, the Jesus Seminar theologians rejected the factual basis of the sayings of Jesus and saw the Gospels as imaginative creations rather than historical accounts.

But curiously enough, after well over two centuries of intense, almost obsessive study of the New Testament texts, what stands out is the absence of any new historical information about Jesus. Of course there are numerous hypotheses and volumes of speculation—but these are invariably the objects of fierce dispute and the victims of rapid demise as the attention span of academia turns to the attractions of the next season. Also, hypotheses and speculation are not the same thing as fact. About this phenomenon, the Harvard scholar Helmut Koester remarks, “The vast variety of interpretations of the historical Jesus that the current quest has proposed is bewildering.” 1 In a similar vein, another New Testament scholar James D.G. Dunn said, “The new quest of the historical Jesus which began in reaction against Bultmann’s dehistoricizing of Jesus’ significance, has itself broken down in a confused welter of unanswered methodological questions … The consequence being that many scholars in effect despair of knowing anything with confidence regarding the historical Jesus.” 2 Michael Cahill concludes that, “Since Bultmann, progress has been made in the area of the world of Jesus, but not a jot of firm knowledge of the individual historical person of Jesus has been garnered.” 3

In making a rational response to the data about Jesus, we start with four hard facts that cannot be denied by any inquirer:

(a) There are nearly two billion people today who claim that Jesus Christ is God and that his death is somehow fundamental to human salvation.

(b) There is a body of writing, called the New Testament, that presents the life and teaching of Jesus as understood by his followers. In these writings, Jesus claims to be the Messiah of Israel, the Anointed One, who is identified with Yahweh, the God of Israel.

(c) The first followers of Jesus were initially demoralized by his execution but were then totally transformed by an experience that gave them strength and courage to confront the most powerful empire of their time and to give up their lives preaching the Gospel of Jesus. These followers claimed that Jesus appeared to them physically after his death as he had promised.

(d) This experience of the Risen Jesus continued and continues to bring millions of people from unbelief to faith in Christ.

The transformation of the disciples, it seems clear, cannot be explained without accepting their story of the resurrection of Jesus. The great Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide noted, “Despite all the legendary embellishments, in the oldest records there remains a recognizable historical kernel which cannot simply be demythologized. When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation. … Such a post-Easter change, which was no less real than sudden and unexpected, certainly needed a concrete foundation which can by no means exclude the possibility of any physical resurrection.” 4

We note here that the fundamental flaw in modern New Testament studies and the numerous “searches” for the “historical Jesus”—from Reimarus to the Jesus Seminar—may be described as the “fish out of water” syndrome. There are two ways to study a fish: either as it swims around in its natural habitat or when it is taken out of the water and set on a dry surface. Both ways of studying it will yield radically different results. In the first instance, the fish is alive and acting in its natural mode. In the second, it struggles to survive, then dies and finally rots. The contention here is that the search for the historical Jesus—especially as practiced in the last two hundred years—belongs to the second category where the subject of study is a fish out of water. A historically legitimate study of the New Testament is possible only if it is carried out within the context of the community that gave it birth—and it is in this context that we should consider the Jesus of history.

So we have to find our way out of the speculation of today’s scholars and return to the primeval community of faith. To know what that community believed we must consider the ancient liturgies, the Councils, the Fathers, the Creeds. It is pointless to apply dissimilarity criteria 20 centuries later, in determining what Jesus said, while ignoring the extra-biblical testimony on this issue of those who lived in the first century. If the Passion Narratives and the Words of Institution of the Eucharist lay at the center of Christian worship from the beginning, how can a scholar who lives 2000 years later simply declare arbitrarily that there is no historical basis for these accounts?

We can vote all we want on what we think are the authentic sayings of Jesus using our own constantly changing criteria for determining what is authentic. But no one can say with any credibility that he is certain that Jesus did not make a particular statement because his or her judgment is based on a criterion that may or may not be true. If we want to ascertain what Jesus said, we should look at what his first followers believed as reflected in their writings and prayers. The writings of the early Church Fathers and the texts of the earliest liturgies give us much greater insight into the historical basis of the biblical accounts than do the imaginative re-creations of contemporary critics. As to the identity of Jesus, why would a critic today have greater authority than the earliest generations of Christians? There is no new piece of evidence or knowledge that has changed the state of play. The early Councils gave us a clear portrait of Jesus Christ after considering various alternatives. Modern theologians who reject the classical teachings about Christ have to embrace one of these ancient alternatives (a.k.a. “heresies”) packaged in contemporary jargon. In embracing such an alternative, they have no arguments that were not already advanced—and rejected—hundreds of years ago. From this reflection on the Jesus of history, we turn next to a consideration of the seven dimensions of his Christ-hood.

The Seven Dimensions
of the Christhood of Jesus

Messiah of Israel

The history of Israel, the prophecies of the holy messengers of God and the covenantal saga of God and his people suddenly enter an irrevocable new horizon with the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, Davidic King of the Jews and Messiah of Israel. In him, with him and through him, all the great prophecies, premonitions and promises of the past were fulfilled and the covenant itself came to a climax. This Jesus identified himself with the God of Israel claiming the authority to forgive sins, cleanse God’s temple and determine the eternal destiny of every human person. His words, he said, would last beyond the passing of heaven and earth and his authority was greater than that of the Old Testament. He was Lord of the Sabbath, the personal embodiment of the Torah, a king with an everlasting kingdom and the ultimate judge of all. His followers held that “in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Oxford scholar N.T. Wright has shown that Jesus saw himself as sharing the throne with Israel’s God, as being the One through whom God would achieve decisive victory. “The language was deeply coded, but the symbolic action was not. He was coming to Zion, doing what YHWH had promised to do. He explained his action with riddles all pointing in the same direction. … He believed himself called to do and be what, in the scriptures, only Israel’s God did and was.” 5

With the coming of the Christ, it became apparent that every major milestone in the odyssey of Israel had a counterpart in the world without end.

Kingdom of Israel	Kingdom of God
Covenants with God in time	Covenant with God for eternity
Physical actions instituted by divine mandate to mark the covenants (Sabbath, circumcision, Passover feast)	Physical acts instituted by divine mandate to effect changes in the soul (the sacraments)
Literal kingdom in the physical world under the Davidic dynasty	A spiritual kingdom of souls headed by the everlasting Son of David
A series of human mediators interacting with God on behalf of a specific nation (Abraham, Moses, the Levites)	An eternal mediator between God and all humanity who is both divine and human (Jesus). A hierarchy of human mediators instituted by the One Mediator (the Queen-Mother, the Prince-Regent, the Apostles, Saints, the Church).
Prohibitions on sin and in particular idolatry. Rituals and ceremonial laws act as barriers to sin.	Prohibitions on sin and the satanic with a particular focus on the internal state of the soul. The death and resurrection of the Messiah is the final victory over sin. The Mass re-presents on earth the eternal offering of the Son to the Father in Heaven (Hebrews).
Intuitive understanding of God (Elohim) as Yahweh, Torah, Shekinah	Revelation of God as Father, Logos, Spirit
Promised Land	Heaven

Redeemer of Humanity

"You are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21). From the very beginning there was no doubt as to the meaning of the mission of Jesus. “Just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so through one righteous act acquittal and life came to all.” (Romans 5:18).

The Incarnation with its culmination in the supreme Act of Redemption was the greatest event in human history. Since the eternal fate of every human person is directly related to this momentous event it is hardly something that could be expected to remain in the background. The Book of Revelation informs us that “from the foundation of the world” there is a book of life with the names of all those who are saved, a book that belongs “to the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). Not only is the heartrending and life-giving death of Jesus an Event that is mystically present in all of subsequent history but it somehow reaches back in time to the very foundation of the world. As for the future that is eternity, even here the monstrosity of the Crucifixion leaves its mark for the glorified King and Savior appears as “a Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Revelation 5:6). The slightest sin against God by the first humans erected an infinite barrier between him and his creation—a barrier that could be brought down only by the infinite Sacrifice of a divine Person united to a human nature. Likewise the pain and suffering inflicted on this Person by his creatures as he sacrificed himself is infinite in its magnitude because it was experienced in all its horror by an infinite Person. One instant of suffering for the Son of God is infinitely more intense than the suffering undergone by the totality of finite beings.

The Passion of Christ haunts history as inescapably and perennially as Original Sin. Just as every sin after Original Sin cemented and consolidated the barrier between God and humanity, every sin after the Passion and Death of Christ committed by those who accept him is another nail driven into his flesh. If we think of the agony that a parent undergoes in observing the voluntary spiritual and moral self-destruction of a son or daughter, we get a glimmer of the agony underwent by the Son of God as he experienced in human flesh—suffering in mind and spirit—the self-immolation of those who were both his creation and his brothers and sisters.

The suffering for the sins of humanity that he took on himself was for sins past, present and future—“Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear. He shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses,” Isaiah 53:11-12 (this is not to say that everyone will automatically be saved—only those who accept the divine invitation, an invitation offered to all, will benefit fully from the merits of the Passion). When he asks Saul, “why are you persecuting me?” we are given to understand that this persecution of Christians personally afflicts him. In fact, those who reject the Faith they had once accepted, apostate Christians, “are recrucifying the Son of God for themselves” (Hebrews 6:6). This does not mean, of course, that Jesus suffers in Heaven. Rather his suffering at Calvary “included” the suffering caused by all of our subsequent acts against God just as truly as the redemption acquired at Calvary was “included” in the divine Plan before “the foundation of the world.”

Through the lives we lead, we can either be persecutors inflicting the Passion or participants in the Passion uniting ourselves to Christ and his mission (“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” Colossians 1:24). We see all our thoughts and actions, our choices and intentions, in this new and somber light of the Passion. Only those who are willing to participate in the Passion by dying to themselves can enjoy its fruits in the Resurrection.

The Incarnation of the Holy

At the center of the human experience of God is the awareness of the Sacred, what the famous philosopher of religious history Rudolph Otto called “The Idea of the Holy.” The Yahweh of the Hebraic revelation is the All-Holy before whom nothing defiled can stand. And the coming of the Christ is nothing less than the incarnation of the Holy of Holies.

Beyond historical analysis, we must draw on the dimension of the Holy in our study of the New Testament texts. In his The Uninventable Glory of God as the Deepest Reason for Our Faith in Jesus Christ, the noted phenomenologist philosopher Josef Seifert points out that “The ultimate ground for our unwavering faith in Christ is our awareness that the uninventable eternal glory of God, His necessary sacred holiness, is encountered in an incarnate/visible form in Jesus Christ. The glory of God that we glimpse, if only barely, in philosophy shines most clearly through the incarnate Word of God, in His miracles and the inner holiness and glory of His words, in the divine beauty of His mercy (Prodigal Son, Mary Magdalen) as well as His horror of sin: the irreducible and unique glory of God manifests itself in the newborn Savior announced to the shepherds, the Sermon on the Mount, the forgiveness of the adulteress, the piercing of the Heart of Jesus on the cross for our sins and the gloriously risen Christ.” “This glory,” concludes Seifert, “is a spiritual splendor that can only proceed from the inner holiness of God and that presupposes the uninventable inner perfection and truth of the divine nature. The divine glory and uninventable holiness of charity that permeates the words and miracles, the life and death of Christ, not only justify faith but elevate it beyond probable opinion to an inner certainty and absolute, unconditioned Yes. … The most reliable approach to Scripture scholarship, in this context, would be to delve into the glory of God in Christ and into the inner spiritual meaning of the scriptural texts in their ‘divine form.’” 6

Exorcizer of the World

“The Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). “Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31). “The ruler of this world has been condemned” (John 16:11). “Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out” (Matthew 10:1). “These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons” (Mark 16:17). “The whole world is under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). “ Our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12).

Any honest reading of the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole tells us that both Jesus and his followers proclaimed the existence of an infernal adversary and his minions. The world as a whole was “possessed” until the coming of Jesus the great Exorcist who “casts out” the Devil through the Cross. But we are warned that, until the end of the world, our “opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8). Only by being liberated from the slavery of Satan can we enter the Kingdom of God. This means recognizing both the dangerous reality of “the other side” and taking advantage of all the protective resources offered by Christ and his Church.

Divinizer

The consummation of the divine blueprint of salvation surpassed anything that the human mind could have imagined or desired. Simply put, all humans are invited “to share in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). God took on a human nature so that humans may take on the divine nature. God “humanized” himself so humans could be divinized. This, in brief, is the Christian message. This is the central truth that makes sense of all the natural and supernatural phenomena of history.

The New Testament is, in fact, a narrative of a new divinized state of being to which the entire human race is called. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him,” said Jesus (John 14:23). If you are “born again” you will see “the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). You are “born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God” (John 1:13). “We are the offspring of God,” said St. Paul (Acts 17:39). Moreover, “whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (I Corinthians 6:17).

The Fathers of the Church—the earliest Christian thinkers—were virtually unanimous in proclaiming this great mystery of being divinized/deified. “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God,” said St. Athanasius. “He gave us divinity, we gave him humanity,” wrote the famous St. Ephraem of Syria. “The realization of the divine counsel,” proclaimed St. Maximus the Confessor, “ is the deification of our nature.” St. Augustine pointed out that “[Men] are deified by His grace not born of His substance … This is the effect of grace adopting, not nature generating.” 7

The Eucharist—which is the offering to us of the very Life of God—divinizes the rightly-inclined recipient. “He gives a sharing in the divine life by making himself food for those whom he knows and who have received from him the same sensibility and intelligence,” writes Maximus. “Thus in tasting the food they know with a true knowledge the Lord is good, he who mixes in a divine quality to deify those who eat, since he is and is clearly called bread of life and of strength.” 8

Cosmic Christ

In recognizing the Incarnation of God in Christ, we inevitably encounter the question of the world religions. If Jesus is God and man, what do we make of the hundreds of other religions and belief-systems that co-exist in the world today?

The religions of the world can be divided into pre- and post-Christian religions and our focus will be on the former. The three most ancient and influential pre-Christian religions were the revelation-centered world-vision of the people of Israel, the belief-system derived from the Vedas of India and the mystery-mythology cults of the Mediterranean. Unbelievably, all three of these major religious ensembles in different ways and degrees speak of a god who becomes man and sacrifices himself for the salvation of humanity (the Israelite prophets, for instance, spoke of the Messiah who was to be “pierced for our offenses”). Is it simply a coincidence that the dominant thought-forms of the pre-Christian world were “mentally” prepared for the historical actuality of God becoming man and dying on the Cross for the salvation of humanity? While the pre-figurations of Christ in the Old Testament and the Mediterranean mystery religions are well-known, here we will consider the same theme in the Hindu Vedas.

In the beginning only the Lord almighty and his supreme spirit existed, and from the supreme spirit of the God proceeded ‘Hiranyagarbha’ (Prajapathi) in the form of light. As soon as [he was] born, he the first born son of God, alone, was the Lord of all that is. He established the earth and the heaven. Let us offer sacrifice to that God (RigVeda X: 121:1).

After creating the sky, waters, and the earth, the supreme spirit of the Lord almighty thought, ‘I created the worlds. Now to provide for and to save these worlds I have to create a savior.’ Thinking thus he gave birth to a man from himself (Ithareya Upanishad 1:1:3).

This man is all that has been, all that is and all that has to be. He controls eternal life and it is for the redemption of mankind he surpasses his immortal sphere and descends to the mortal sphere. He comes to give everyone reward as per their deeds (RigVeda X:90:2).

This man, the first born, was tied to a yoopa [wooden sacrificial post] and the gods and the kings along with the seers performed the sacrifice. (RigVeda X:90:7). The Sacrificer is Prajapathi at his own sacrifice (Sacred Books of the East, Volume 12, 160).

Those who meditate and attain this man, believe in heart and chant with their lips, get liberated in this world itself and there is no other way for salvation. (YajurVeda XXXI:18; RigVeda X:90:16).

Prajapathi is sacrificed on a wooden stake.

1. The sacrificial victim is to be crowned with a crown made of thorny vines. (Sathapadha Brahmana).

2. His hands and legs are to be bound to a yoopa causing bloodshed. (RigVeda X: 90: 7, 15; Bruhadaranyakopanishad III: 9:28).

3. None of his bones are to be broken. (Ithareya Brahmanam 2:6).

4. Before death he should be given a drink of somarasa [sour wine made out of a herb called somalatha]. (Yajurveda XXXI).

5. After death his clothes are to be divided among the offerors (Ithareya Brahmanam).

Second Person of the Trinity

If there are good grounds to accept both the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, we are still left with the question of who Jesus was. Some modern theologians have said that Jesus did not claim to be divine. Whether or not Jesus’ claim had merit, it is nothing less than preposterous to suggest that he did not make such a claim. Set aside the Gospel of John (“Before Abraham came to be, I AM,” (John 8:58)) and look simply at the Synoptics. Why was Jesus crucified? Why did he say “I am” when his judges asked if was the Son of the Blessed One (Mark)? For this they charged him with blasphemy since he claimed to be not simply the Messiah but the Son of God (Luke). Why did he say that the Father and I are one? Why did he claim to do things that only God can do: forgive sins (a claim that incensed his critics), personally determine the eternal destiny of all peoples, utter words that will remain even when heaven and earth pass away, accept the declaration that he was the Son of the living God? If his followers did not understand Jesus to make a claim of divinity they could easily have integrated themselves within Judaism as a sub-sect. Instead they were driven out and persecuted as they persisted in making the intolerable assertion that Jesus was Lord and Savior. This faith in the divinity of Jesus is majestically presented in the Prologue to the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and the epistle to the Colossians: “In him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

The New Testament narratives go beyond these claims. If you take the teachings of Jesus seriously, then you are compelled to also consider the Father he pointed to as the one who sent him. And the Holy Spirit who he said would continue his work once he left the world. In other words, the life and teaching of Jesus makes sense only in terms of a new doctrine of the Godhead. Clearly, he thought of the Father and the Spirit as divine (“God” and “Father” are used synonymously, the sin against the Holy Spirit is called blasphemy).

This truth of three “centers” in the one God is thus present in the New Testament writings and alluded to in the Old Testament (N.T. Wright has noted that Jews of the first century A.D. and before spoke of God’s “Wisdom” as active in creating and sustaining the world, of God’s Law [“Torah”] as an entity that existed before the world was made and that then acted in history and of God’s Presence [“Shekinah”] that dwelt in the Temple at Jerusalem).

Reflection on these seven dimensions of the Christ-hood of Jesus, I hope and pray, will prepare our minds and hearts for the immeasurable riches of the Christ revealed by the mystics and saints and, above all, Sacred Scripture.

NOTES

1 Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (eds.), Studying the Historical Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 554.
2 The Parting of the Ways (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1991), 9.
3 Michael Cahill, “An Uncertain Jesus: Theological and Scholarly Ambiguities”, Irish Theological Quarterly, Volume 1, 1998, 28.
4 Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus – A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House), 1983, 129-130.
5 Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco: HarperCollins), 165-6
6 “The Uninventable Glory of God as the Deepest Reason for Our Faith in Jesus Christ” in Roy Abraham Varghese, ed., Theos, Anthropos, Christos (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), Volume VII in the series American University Studies.
7 St. Athanasius, De incarnatione, 54, 3: PG 25, 192B St. Ephraem of Syria (Hymns on Faith 5.17. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 155.17) Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, NY: Paulist Press, Mahwah – 1985 – tr. George Berthold. Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 49:2 Ml 36, 565 Patrologia Latin, J.P. Migne, ed. Paris, 1844, CC 1988.
8 Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), tr. George Berthold, 83-84.

 

Roy Abraham Varghese is the editor of various books on the interface of science, philosophy and religion, including Cosmos, Bios, Theos (Open Court, Chicago), described in Time as “the year’s most intriguing book about God” and widely reviewed in technical and popular publications, with contributions from 24 Nobel Prize-winning scientists; Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends (Open Court, Chicago), winner of a Templeton Book Prize in 1995; Great Thinkers on Great Questions (One World, Oxford and distributed by Penguin); and Theos, Anthropos, Christos (Peter Lang, New York). His most recent book is Wonder of the World. His last article for HPR appeared in October 2000.