Ecclesiasticus I: Introducing Eastern Orthodoxy
Ecclesiasticus II: Orthodox Icons, Saints, Feasts and Prayer
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The
National Broadcasting Company presents FAITH IN ACTION, a program designed
to bring the viewpoints of those of many beliefs. In the first two programs
concerned with Eastern Orthodoxy, the Very Reverend Alexander Schmemann,
Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York,
and author of "The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy," delivered
the following talk:
PART I.
The Western Man, and in particular the Western Christian, doesn't know much
about the world of Eastern Orthodoxy, that is, the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The final separation between the East and West took place in the 11th century,
in 1054; and since then the Western history was so rich in events, so complex
and tragical, that not many people in the West kept the memory of the great
Eastern Church which at the same time was going through its very dark period.
Therefore, it's good if we begin by certain historical facts, by a general
historical presentation.
It is certainly not an accident that the world into which the Church entered
after it left its Jewish childhood in Palestine was called the Greek-Roman
world; not only Greek, not only Roman, but Greek-Roman. It was a world in
which that synthesis between the Latin West and the Greek East was already
accomplished within one culture, which we call usually Hellenistic culture.
It is within this world that Christianity developed at first when it had
its formative age. And there can be no doubt-I think all historians will
agree-that in this formative age it was the Eastern part of the Christian
world, usually known as the Byzantine world, that had the leading role.
It was in the East that Christianity took its historical form, acquired
its shape, its canon, as a theologian would say.
And I think the best way to present this canon or shape of historical Christianity
is to mention the three main dimensions of the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox
Church.
It begins, certainly, with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in
312, the Roman Emperor who, at the famous battle at Ponte Milveo near Rome,
became a Christian. From that moment on, the historical home of the Church
was the Roman Empire as it developed primarily in the West when Constantine
transferred the capital city of the empire from Rome, first to the city
of Nicomedia, and then later on to the newly founded capital of Constantinople.
Constantinople is the center of that Byzantine world, and it was around
Constantinople, in Asia Minor, in Syria and in Egypt that those dimensions
of Eastern Orthodoxy, which still are shaping and forming it, developed.
The first of these dimensions we may call the intellectual.
Eastern Orthodoxy means that the dogma, the doctrinal, the intellectual
content of religion is given a very important priority. This theological
content was developed not in academic work, but in a series of great theological
disputes, controversies, in which basically what happened was the interpretation
or the formulation of the content of Christian faith in terms of Greek philosophy.
This is the real achievement, the first great intellectual achievement of
Eastern Orthodoxy: the kerygma, or sermon, the proclamation of the Gospel
given its intellectual consistency within the terminology of Greek mind
and Greek thought.
This resulted in those great dogmas of Trinity, Christology, the person
of Christ, His Divinity, His Humanity, the Holy Spirit, the Mother of God,
and even a doctrine known as the Doctrine of Icons.
Eastern Orthodoxy historically is primarily a body of doctrine which formulates
a certain vision of God, man, history, time, et cetera.
But this intellectual vision-I am now coming to the second dimension--found
its true expression in an artistic language, primarily the language of architecture,
worship, and liturgy.
Iconography also should be mentioned here. It was within this great Byzantine
Rite, or Byzantine Liturgy, that Orthodoxy found its real heart. And even
if today it's still called the Liturgical Church par excellence, it's not
only because our worship has presented certain colorful archaic forms attractive
to Western man, but because it is in worship, in the Doxology, in the glorification
of God, that an Orthodox finds the real center, the heart of his religious
life.
Now, St. Sophia in Constantinople, the pattern, the prototype of all Orthodox
Churches, is more than the place where people worship. It is in itself a
vision of the new creation. The great dome covers not only the Church but
potentially the whole world. St. Sophia exemplifies the great mysterion,
the mystery of the Liturgy in its rich symbolism, and that great hymnography
which is being sung in church. All this is not only an art of prayer; it
is a manifestation, the revelation, the communication of that ultimate reality
which, according to Eastern Orthodoxy, has been revealed to us, communicated
to us in Christ and by Christ-the reality which, according to another Orthodox
saying, makes the life of the Christian the heavenly life on earth.
This is the second dimension of historical Byzantinism.
And then finally the third dimension, after the intellectual and the liturgical,
is that great world of spirituality which developed primarily in the monastic
movement. It was in the fourth century after the Roman Empire became Christian
that thousands and thousands of men left, if I can say so, the world and
went into the desert in order not to betray, not to give up this ideal of
absolute perfection which comes from the Gospel-to be perfect, as your Father
in Heaven is perfect.
Now, this monasticism which developed in Egypt with St. Anthony and St.
Pacomios, then in Palestine, finally in Asia Minor with St. Basil of Cicarene
Cappadocia, was not only one of the possible ways of Christian life according
to the Orthodox understanding of it, but it was first of all a sort of laboratory
where this whole ideal of human existence as communion with God, as appropriation
of the grace and slow transfiguration of man, were put into practice.
Now this great monastic or spiritual tradition, therefore, became the real
doctrine of man in Eastern Orthodoxy. And this doctrine of man is centered
primarily on the idea of mans' transformation or transfiguration. He is
to become the temple of the Holy Spirit. He is to anticipate eternal life
in his life here in this world.
Now, the doctrine of that spirituality has been codified more or less in
the body of writings known as the Philokalia, the great spiritual writings
of the Fathers, the Fathers of the desert, or some of the great teachers
of Latin Byzantium.
Thus, we have in Byzantium the foundation of the Eastern Orthodox world.
Today there are many Orthodox Churches, many national Orthodox Churches.
But they are still a part of this Byzantine synthesis, encompassing a body
of doctrine, the dogma of the Church, the doctrine of the seven ecumenical
councils and of the Greek Fathers, the Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite, the
Liturgy connected with the names of John Chrysostom and Basil the Great.
And it is finally the ideal of life that comes to us from men like Isaac
of Syria, or Maximus the Confessor, that constitutes still the main inspiration
of life.
This is what all Orthodox Churches and what all Orthodox people have in
common, their foundation, the source, the Byzantine pattern of Orthodoxy.
Now, all this lasted for many centuries, and yet ended in an historical
catastrophe.
In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the Byzantine Empire
came to an end. Within the next hundred years all independent Orthodox Churches
in Syria, in Egypt, and elsewhere, were under the cloak of Islam, and this
brilliant millennium came to an end.
However, this was not the end of Eastern Orthodox history. It continued.
Byzantium as an historical reality came to an end. Byzantium as a spiritual
reality gave birth to many new developments, and those developments will
later on lead us to the 20th century and to cities like New York, Chicago,
or San Francisco.
Therefore, in the end of one historical era, the beginning of the dark age
of Orthodoxy in fact provoked new developments, new beginnings, and these
involve, first of all, the geographical expansion of Orthodoxy, the Byzantine
mission. There is the birth, for example, of the great Slavic Christianity,
Russian Christianity, et cetera.
Second, there was a new encounter with the West. First, a negative one during
the Holy Wars of all kinds which unfortunately provoked a world of great
misunderstanding.
And finally came the influence, the progress, the growth of modern Orthodoxy,
the Orthodoxy of the Diaspora: the presence of the Orthodox Churches today
virtually in every land, in every geographical area of the world.
Thus, summing up, we can say that what began in the Greco-Roman world, what
followed its first fullness, its first expression in the world of Byzantium,
then went into a sort of dark age, but continues today in new forms and
with the same loyalty to its foundation.
PART II.
1453 marks a tragical date in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In that year the city of Constantinople, which for more than a thousand
years was the center of the Byzantine Orthodox culture, was taken by the
Turks and for many centuries after that the whole Eastern world, the world
of Eastern Orthodoxy, rather, which included the flourishing provinces of
Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, ceased to be in the hands of Orthodox rulers.
And yet, it did not stop the growth and the progress of Orthodoxy.
On the one hand, of course, these centuries between the 15th and the 20th
were centuries of a great tragedy. Orthodoxy survived, but survived in the
climate of constant persecution, A Patriarch of Constantinople died a martyr
in the year 1821, killed in his own Patriarchate. And even today what we
hear from the See of Orthodox Primacy of Constantinople in Istanbul is always
a source of tragedy for all Orthodox hearts in the world.
But, as I said, if this great Byzantine world entered its dark age it gave
birth prior to this historical tragedy to new Orthodox Churches. And the
first one to be mentioned here in this very glorious missionary development
is the birth of the great Slavic Orthodox world.
In the 9th century two Greek brothers by the name of Cyril and Methodius
were sent from Constantinople to the Western Slavs, and there translated
the whole body of Scripture, Liturgy, and doctrine into the Slavic language.
Their own mission ended rather tragically. They were both expelled from
what is today Czechoslovakia, and Latinism triumphed there. But in the translations
the whole spirit of that Byzantine mission was picked up, if one can say
so, by the other Slavic countries, first by Bulgaria, then by Serbia, and
last but not least, at the end of the 10th century, by the young kingdom
of Russia, centered in Kiev. And thus began a new chapter in the history
of Eastern Orthodoxy which gave not only to the Orthodox world, but one
can say to universal culture, great treasures of thought, holiness, and
in general, various great examples of what Christian culture is.
At the end of the 10th century the Prince of Kiev, Vladimir, invited bishops
and priests from Constantinople and baptized his whole people in the river
Dnieper.
From this Christian beginning there developed the great Church of Russia
which, in the 19th century, primarily because it was at that time practically
the only free Church in a free Orthodox country, gave to the world great
theologians, great writers. The names of Dostoyevsky, and closer to us the
names like that of Pasternak, for example, whose Doctor Zhivago, which created
so much interest a few years ago, showed the depth and the quality and the
message of that Orthodox Christian literature of Russia.
If one adds to this the names of many saints produced by the Slavic world
again one name may be mentioned here, that of St. Serafim of Zarov, who
was canonized only at the beginning of this century, and who yet is a sort
of flower grown on the soil of Orthodoxy, reflecting the deep joy of its
Liturgy, its spiritual expectation of the kingdom. If one but mentions all
this one can see that in 1453 the history of Orthodoxy did not come to an
end.
In addition to the great Byzantine tradition, and inside this Byzantine
tradition, new material traditions developed. For it belonged to the nature
of Orthodoxy to identify itself with the total life of the community in
which it lives.
Even today Greeks or Russians do not call themselves Greek or Russian, but
simply Christian. And such is the degree of their identification with their
faith. And so when one speaks of national Orthodox cultures one touches
upon what maybe is the great particularity, the great uniqueness of Orthodoxy.
It is this combination of a tradition which is not national in its essence,
which is universal dogma, Liturgy, spirituality, and at the same time its
complete identification with the soul of the people which it baptizes.
One can really speak as all Orthodox nations spoke of the Holy Greece, the
Holy Russia, the Holy Serbia, not meaning moral holiness - for we are quite
aware of the many sins and shortcomings of those peoples, individual and
social - but of the ideal of national existence. And the ideal of national
existence is rooted in the Church, which is not only an agency for prayer
or for religious action, but which becomes in a very real sense the central,
the pshi, the soul of the nation to which it belongs. Now such was the development
of Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople.
Little by little the nations which were under Islam were liberated. At the
beginning of the 19th century came freedom for Greece. It became a free
Orthodox country. Then Bulgaria, then Serbia, then Romania became free.
Then another set of tragedies began. Today a great part of the Orthodox
world is again behind the Iron Curtain, and if one limits the analysis of
that situation only to Soviet Russia, one can see again how in some 48 years
of Soviet atheistic domination in Russia, the great monopoly of the state
father could not bring to an end the Church's existence. The Church reacted,
first by thousands of martyrs, of people who went to concentration camps,
and then, little by little, by attracting to itself people who could not
be poisoned by the atheistic propaganda or by ideologies alien to the Orthodox
world.
So all this is the history of achievements and also of tragedies.
But the last thing which must be mentioned in this very brief historical
analysis of Eastern Orthodoxy is the new phenomenon, the expansion of Orthodoxy
beyond the Christian East.
I began by comparing the Christian East to the Christian West. Orthodoxy
is the Eastern form of Christianity, though it has always claimed to have
preserved the fullness of faith, to be the true Church, not to be just a
geographical expression of Christianity. In fact, its history was an Eastern
history.
Yet the tragedy which I mentioned resulted in a great geographical expansion
of Orthodoxy: the Greeks expelled from Turkey in the twenties of this century,
the Russian refugees, people who were leaving the various non-Orthodox countries
of Central Europe.
All these different sources fed what today is the great Orthodox Diaspora.
It is almost a strange feeling when driving through Los Angeles to see an
Eastern Orthodox Church all of a sudden. This is the East coming to the
West, and again without speaking of what happens in Australia or in South
America, where there are Orthodox Churches. If one just limits it to the
United States one should say that today Orthodoxy is here not only as a
sort of Eastern ghetto, but very quickly develops into a real factor in
the American religious and cultural scene.
There are some five to six million Eastern Orthodox in America. There are
several thousand parishes in practically every area, and little by little
a new generation of Orthodox born in this country, educated within the American
culture, yet faithful to this whole Byzantine and Orthodox heritage, doctrine,
Liturgy and spirituality, are making their entrance not only as refugees,
not only as those who remember the past, but who want to make Orthodoxy
a real part, if not the moving force, of their life and existence in the
West.
We are living through this chapter now and therefore it doesn't belong yet
to history, but there can be no doubt that the critical moment is behind.
This transition from what .American sociology knows as the immigrants' Church
to the native Church is on its way, and although of course it provokes many
difficulties, many misunderstandings between generations, between various
groups, et cetera, the last events, the creation of a Standing Conference
of Orthodox Bishops uniting all the Orthodox traditions into one, the practical
cooperation, the Pan-Orthodox Schools and Seminaries: all of these things
show that we are on our way, the way which before us the Lutherans and the
Catholics knew to become not simply one of the American groups, but to make
the presence of Orthodoxy felt in the shaping which never ends, the shaping
of this great country.
Certainly there's a great hope that this integration of Orthodoxy into America
is something which will mean much, not only for Orthodoxy, for those Orthodox
who are here, but for Orthodoxy universal, and also, one may hope, for the
West itself.
From Word
Magazine
Publication of the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America
February 1966
pp. 8-9
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