THE TIME OF THE KINGDOM:
AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF
HISTORY
by David J. Goa
PROLOGUE.............................................................................................................
1
1.
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................
3
2. THE ORTHODOX
UNDERSTANDING
OF
HISTORY............................................................................................................
5
3. COSMIC CHRISTIANITY:
Ritual and
Meaning..................................................................... 7
4. CHRIST, ICON OF THE
HUMAN
NATURE................................…......................................
12
5. THE CHURCH'S ROLE IN
HISTORY...............................................................................
14
6. LITURGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.....................................……………………………………..................
15
7. THE INCARNATE LIFE OF
THE
FAITHFUL.......................................................................
18
8. THE CHURCH AS THE
PRESENCE OF THE KINGDOM.....................................................................................……....................
20
9. THE CHURCH AND THE
FULLNESS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD…............................................. 23
10. PARADIGMS OF
FAITHFULNESS.................................................................................
25
11. CHURCH, SOCIETY AND
HISTORY..............................................................................
35
PROLOGUE
|
H |
ow does the Orthodox Christian community and tradition
view history? This is a cosmic form of Christianity, distinct in emphasis and development
from its Latin counterpart. In Orthodox Christianity, history and human
experience exist within the larger context of creation; and it is the concept
and understanding of creation that are highly articulated. The Orthodox
tradition understands history within an eschatological framework which on the
surface appears to be shared with the Christian traditions of the West. I will
argue, however, that the Orthodox understanding of history does not speak of a
linear progress of history in the fashion of the West. Rather its theology is
concerned with a change in the vision of the human being; it is a call to
freedom exercised in the faithful relationship to all that is encountered in
history. Individuals are not to be under the dominance and terrors of history
understood and mediated by personal perception and cultural interpretation;
history does not define the human context. In a sense, the tradition proclaims
that the Kingdom of God was as present at the beginning of history as it is now
and will be at the end of time. Tradition also teaches that the faithful
live in the eighth day of creation, the day of the presence of the Kingdom of
God.
How does the Orthodox community view its own role in
history? The Church is model, icon and archetype of the Kingdom of God.
It is not a sacred community standing in opposition to the world, rather, it
shows the world C which has forgotten its reality C the divine
energy, a place where co-suffering love sanctifies all that is. Rather than
rejecting creation the Church challenges the "spirit of the age."
Essentially a liturgical tradition, Orthodoxy understands its role as unveiling
the Kingdom of God, which for human beings is the mystery of life. The Church
as archetype of creation is the presence of that kingdom in history and calls
all creation to the present fullness of the Kingdom of God.
How faithful is the religious community to its view of
history in interpreting its own history? This is an exceedingly complex
question which I can only begin to address by examining a range of paradigms of
interpretation that operate within Orthodox communities. There are a
combination of these paradigms present in various jurisdictions
in the contemporary Church. For the purpose of this study I will attempt to map
the central elements in what I have chosen to call conservative,
modernist and traditionalist paradigms. How each jurisdiction, or various
movements within a jurisdiction, understands the possibilities of and responses
to the historical moment will depend on how it interprets sacred tradition and
the role of the Church C the institution of sacred tradition C in the face of
history.
1
INTRODUCTION
|
H |
istory
and a historical consciousness have been central features of the way modern
culture, emerging in the last three hundred years in Western Europe, understands
human life. Many have argued that historical consciousness has deep roots in
biblical faith, that it is the central contribution of Christianity to modern
consciousness. The rise of Marxism, with its notion of society evolving and
culminating in an eschatological paradise, and more currently the rise of
Liberation theology, have brought this matter home in a fresh and powerful way.
God's plan of salvation, we are told, is being worked out in the vagaries of
human history and the people of God participate in the unfolding of this
historical process. Some argue that those who participate in the historical
process of the liberation of peoples are by definition the people of God. What
has characterized a good deal of modern theology, and is clearly articulated in
recent Liberation theology, is that a divine process unfolds in time precisely
as peoples are liberated from the oppressive authorities of the past even if
that authority was, or was supported by, a church.
This
understanding is a deep part of the Western view of history shared by the
Western Church but not at all by the Church of the Christian East. To
understand the place and process of time in Orthodox Christianity, the ground
on which this tradition is built must be examined. In the East there is a
tradition of understanding creation, time, and the events and struggles of
human life as rooted in the eternal present, in sacred time. The Liturgy is
thus the place where the meaning of historical time is most clearly
apprehended. History is a subset of creation; history is not in and of itself
the making of the meaning of creation.
2
THE ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING OF
HISTORY
|
T |
ime
is a fundamental problem for human beings.[1]
The past informs our existence, and prejudices our way of being and our
understanding of the future. Hopes and dreams are at work in every decision.
Human beings are given to nostalgia and to utopianism. For many, the great task
of life is actually to be present, to have memory and imagination serve our
presence in the world and not impede our ability to live the time that is at
hand in a full and responsible way.
The
philosophical and theological aspects of time and history have been studies by
a number of scholars in a satisfyingly complex way. They have traced the roots
of the Patristic thinkers and of Orthodox Christian theology and its rich
synthesis of Greek and Hebrew ways of thinking about this matter.[2]
Since the primary language of the Orthodox[3]
tradition is liturgy, I am going to show how the common worship of the Divine
Liturgy cultivates, in the faithful, a vision of time and history that is
deeply rooted in a vision of the world of time as essentially a world in the
Kingdom of God.[4]
In this vision, time is not a linear unfolding of a pre-ordained plan of
salvation. Rather, the Orthodox Christian tradition leaves open to all the
possibilities humans can imagine; sees all of them as potential places of the
Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of darkness.[5]
This tradition speaks about cosmic sacrality and sees time within that
sacrality. In the West, the unfolding of the history of salvation has been seen
as a path to the Eternal through faithfulness to the divine commandment about
what is right and good about the incidents of time. In the East, the incidents
of time are understood from the perspective of the Eternal.
3
COSMIC
CHRISTIANITY:
Ritual and Meaning[6]
|
C |
hristian
theology and ritual resulted from the crises that shook the fledgling Church in
the second century. It was through the debate with the Gnostic
"heresies" that the Church Fathers gradually developed Orthodox
theology. Their response was grounded in the theology and ritual of biblical
Judaism. The key insights of Hebrew thought simply could not countenance the
Gnostic ideas of the pre-existence of the soul in the bosom of the Original
One, the accidental character of Creation, or the soul's fall into matter. The
theology, cosmogony and anthropology of the Jewish Scripture understood
creation was the result of God's energy. His work was completed in creating man
("male and female created He them" as the Genesis text puts it)
"corporeal, sexual and free, in the image and likeness of his
Creator:"
Man was created with the powerful potencies of a god.
"History" is the temporal span during which man learns to practice
his freedom and to sanctify himself C in short to serve his
apprenticeship to his calling as god. For the end of creation is a sanctified
humanity. This explains the importance of temporality and history and the
decisive role of human freedom; for a man cannot be made a god despite himself.[7]
Saint
Paul laid the groundwork for this idea of a "sanctified humanity" in
his initial discussion of the meaning of the Christ. As he put it, "For
everyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17).
"What matters," for human salvation, "is to become an altogether
new creation" (Gal.6:15). It is through Christ's life and through
identification with Him that the faithful enter into the kingdom, into the
fullness of human experience.
Where
the Gnostic myths call for a return to a primordial purity or unity, the
Christian revelation begins by declaring that all human beings, from Adam and
Eve to the end of time, have fallen short of what was intended by the Creator.
The garden of innocence is lost, the angel stands guard at the gate, and there
is no return to a primordial innocence. The Gnostic and neo-Platonic doctrine
of return was countered with a doctrine of creation. And this new
creation is sanctified in its totality through the saving acts of the Christ.[8]
Perhaps
the clearest expression of this is in the Orthodox idea that with the
resurrection of Christ, creation entered the eighth and final day of creation.
This time-bound symbol of plenitude suggests that the Christian lives in the
Kingdom of God and is open to the fulness of that kingdom coming from the
future. Consequently, the Christian is living what Veselin Kesich calls the
first day of the new creation, the resurrected life of Christian faith.[9]
Flowing from this early Christian formulation are the theology and ritual
system which "glorifies the Creation, blesses life, accepts history, even
when history becomes nothing but terror."[10]
The
emergence of the Cosmic Christ in the theological world of the fourth century
took shape through the identification of Jesus as the Logos. This highly
developed idea in Greek philosophy was understood as "reason,"
"structure" or "purpose," and has been written about
suggestively:
For by applying this title to Jesus, the Christian philosophers of the
fourth and fifth centuries who were trying to give an account of Who He was and
what He had done were able to interpret Him as the divine clue to the structure
of reality (metaphysics) and, within metaphysics, to the riddle of being
(ontology) C in a word, as the Cosmic Christ.[11]
Pelikan
points out that the Church Fathers (largely the Greek Fathers) built on the
Gospel of John, which paraphrased the words of Genesis, "In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth," with, "In the beginning was
the Word." The very speaking of God, which is one way to translate Logos,
made the world possible, intelligible and meaningful: "Jesus Christ as
Logos was the Word of God revealing the way and will of God to the
world...He was also the agent of divine revelation, specifically of revelation
about the cosmos and its creation."[12]
Clearly
this is not a "personal" or "historical" faith. The
Christian revelation has been understood by the West, and particularly by
Protestant culture, as a set of beliefs and moral practices that provide a
pathway for the salvation of the individual soul. The West values the
historical, indeed biographical, aspects of the life of Jesus as matters of
belief upon which the individual's salvation in the afterlife is dependent.
This concern and focus on the historical details of Jesus's life and of the
record of salvation history in scripture is not at all the concern of the
Orthodox Christian Church. Its perspective is of a:
"cosmic Christianity" since, on the one hand, the
Christological mystery is projected upon the whole of nature and, on the other
hand, the historical elements of Christianity are neglected; on the contrary,
there is emphasis on the liturgical dimension of existence in the world. The
conception of a cosmos redeemed by the death and resurrection of the Saviour
and sanctified by the footsteps of God, of Jesus, of the Virgin, and of the
Saints permitted the recovery, if only sporadically and symbolically, of a
world teeming with the virtues and beauties that wars and their terrors have
stripped from the world of history.[13]
It
is with the early Church writer Origen (Origenes Adamantius c.185 - c.254) that
the understanding of the essentially cosmic work of Christ takes a critical
turn. He argued that God the Father and Creator of all is transcendent and
incomprehensible. Christ, as the manifestation of the Trinity in human form, is
the image of God. He shares in the mystery of the Divine and is the fullness of
the human nature: "Through the Logos, God created a multitude of pure
spirits (logikoi) and favours them with life and knowledge. But with the
exception of Jesus, all the pure spirits estranged themselves from God."[14]
In this process they become "souls" (psychai; cf. De
principes 2.8.3), and are provided with corporal bodies and free
choice. It is in this condition that they begin to work out their salvation
through the pilgrimage which will end in a return to God: "The universal
drama might be defined as the passage from innocence to experience, through the
tests of the soul during its pilgrimage toward God."[15]
This is quite a different return to the original perfection of Creation from
that which the Gnostics propounded. Origen understood the apokatastasis
(restoration of all things) as superior to the original state of perfection the
Gnostics idealized, since through the encounter with history and the combat
with evil, human beings acquired the body of the resurrection, the body of
Christ. It is in the world of historical experience that the faithful acquire
the love of God and come to the sanctified life. This teaching was condemned by
the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, for some theologians took it to mean that all,
including Satan, would finally be saved. It was, as many historians of theology
have since argued, a preliminary synthesis taken up later by the Cappadocian
Fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa. The
developed tradition of apokatastasis, "integrates the work of
Christ into a cosmic type of process."[16]
It is through the Divine Liturgy that this process is actualized on the
popular level in the lives of the Orthodox faithful.
4
CHRIST, ICON OF THE HUMAN NATURE[17]
|
T |
he
Christian revelation speaks of God's love for the world and of the possibility
of human beings living in the Eternal presence. To live in the Eternal presence,
however, is not a personal mystical state which removes one from the turbulence
of history. It does not free one from the mundane aspects of life, personal
tragedy, the terrors of history or the peculiarities of culture. The Eternal is
present in the life of the world.
Jesus
Christ lived the anointed life. In Him the Christian tradition sees the
incarnation of the Divine and the fullness of the human nature. Christ is
called the second Adam in scripture. Christ is, as Fr Michael Azkoul has pointed
out, the Adam of the "second beginning." The human nature is God's
creation, not an accident, an experiment gone wrong, or something to be
overcome so that the pristine part of the person, the disembodied soul, can
flourish in heaven. All of these ideas are attractive temptations, as they were
for the Gnostics, to a life-denying vision of human existence. All of them were
condemned by the early Church Fathers[18]
because they suggested that life C the historical existence of men and women
throughout time C was not part of the sacred character of creation. The incarnation of
God in Christ was precisely to unveil the mystery of creation and the human nature:
that creation is God's and that the plenitude of the human nature is found when
people recognize they are children of the Divine. This vision of human nature
is centred on theosis,[19]
the deification of the human being in God.
Adam
and Eve were created into time. Jesus was born in time. Christ redeemed time,
even the time of his death. The Christian is called to the restoration of life
in God. This is done in time, in the midst of history, because it is precisely
about the sanctification of the reality of a person's life. Yet this life of
sanctification and growth in theosis is not understood by the Orthodox
tradition to be about history. Rather, the living of a sanctified life, a life
in God, is to live in the eighth day of creation, open to all that is in time,
but from the perspective of the Eternal.
5
THE CHURCH'S ROLE IN HISTORY
"The Church is the icon of the age to come."
St John Chrysostom.
|
H |
ow
does the Orthodox community view its own role in history?[20]
The Church is an icon of the Kingdom of God. It is not a sacred community
standing in opposition to the world. It is not charged with redeeming or
reforming a profane world. It does not show something new to the world, but
rather, what is, has been and will be. The Church prays for the life of the
world to reveal its proper nature, its nature as creation. To be a
creature is to participate in time. A movement from recognition, confession,
forgiveness to the fullness of adoration of God and an apprehension of the
mystery of creation is necessary for each generation throughout time.
Essentially a liturgical tradition, Orthodoxy understands its role as unveiling
the Kingdom of God, which for human beings is the very mystery of life. The
Church itself is the presence of that kingdom in history and calls all creation
to the fullness of the kingdom.
6
LITURGICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS[21]
|
B |
oth
time[22]
and space[23]
are a rich mosaic of historical images in the life of Orthodox Christians. Each
day is appointed for the veneration of particular men and women who were the
occasion for the sanctification of life. This may have been in the arena of
martyrdom, as a leader in the life of the Church, or as a contributor to the
understanding of divine revelation and spiritual discipline. These men and
women embody the proper pattern of existence. As sons or daughters of the
Divine, they are part of the sacred memory of the Church, for their sanctity
has made the meaning of God's creation clearer and enabled the faithful to
taste more deeply of life in a way the tradition deems archetypal.
The
liturgical year moves from day to day with each day rooted in the life of
Christ, the Holy Theotokos and the saints. Time, sacred time, is an icon of the
range of human experiences and of the way these experiences have been
transformed into occasions of the restoration of life by actual human beings,
occasions of apokatastasis. The great cycle of the liturgical year
incorporates iconic moments of historical time into the circle of liturgical
time. In this sense the Orthodox Christian tradition denies there is a sacred
and a profane time. There is only the time of the Kingdom, the eighth day of
creation, and it is the present time.
Time
exists in the Eternal. As such it shares in the Divine energy and is of God.[24]
This did not change with the fall of man. What did change is that human beings
began to see time and their historical existence as a profane matter and it is
to this understanding (more precisely, to this misunderstanding) that the
liturgical tradition speaks. It is to the healing of this profanation of time
that the actions of the liturgy are directed. What the liturgy does is heal the
way human beings understand time and history by teaching that each moment of
life is offered in grace to be claimed by the faithful as that moment's
reality. Each moment is grace filled. To lay claim to the grace-filled gift of
each moment as God's gift is the reality of life.[25]
The
life of Christ, the Holy Theotokos and the saints are icons, not of the
presence of God in a time unworthy of the Divine, but of the reality of
creation as the play of the Divine energy when the grace that is the reality of
all things is appropriated.[26]
From
a liturgical point of view each day begins in the darkness of the night and
moves into the light. Vespers, consequently, is the first liturgical service of
the day. This understanding builds on the biblical image of God creating out of
nothing. This suggests that all that is lifegiving is apprehended by human
beings as a movement from the unknown to the known, from the misunderstood and
confused to that which is grace filled and full of life. So the liturgical day,[27]
as well, is structured as an icon of time moving from darkness to light. Each
liturgical service throughout the day builds on this typology and the faithful
come to see the form of existence more clearly as they participate in creation.
This iconic vision of time present in the liturgical seasons is also central to
the sanctification of the person.
7
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF THE
FAITHFUL
|
H |
ow
can the faithful live so as to sanctify the reality of the moments of their days?
How is the temporal sanctified? For the Orthodox tradition this is what it
means to speak about the redemption of the cosmos and the person. Again the
tradition turns to Jesus Christ. Christ is the icon of the human nature,
"the image and likeness of God," and the sanctification of the human
nature, in his being and in his acts of blessing and healing.[28]
Jesus blessed the creation, pointing out its sanctity. He healed the shattered
hearts, minds, and bodies of people, opening up for them the fullness of human
life. So for Orthodox Christians to bless creation, water, the fields in
springtime and at harvest, food, children, the leper and queen is an act of
recognizing the sacred character of the being of the world. All human beings
are sacred because they exist in the world and not because of their physical,
social or cultural condition. To bless is a simple elemental act of recognition
that all that is given is, in its being, sacred.
Jesus
healed many of the people whose lives he touched. To the woman taken in
adultery he spoke the word of recognition to her person, freeing her from the
condemnation of the law; to the tax collector in whose house Jesus ate came the
recognition of his life as a child of the Divine, freeing him from
understanding himself simply as a servant of an oppressive state; and the
disciples, after the death and resurrection of Jesus at the end of the journey
to Emmaus, were finally freed of their utopian dream of a saviour bound by time
and opened to seeing in the stranger "at the breaking of bread" the
communion which is of God. The life of blessing and healing is a life in time,
a life concerned with the ultimate meaning of each individual's experience. It
is to see in the vagaries of history the place of redemption. The faithful are,
through their baptism into Christ's death, called to the life of blessing and
healing. This is not a kind of moral code which is to be adopted. Rather, the
tradition in its sanctifying actions sees the human nature free of nostalgia,
desire, fear, self-interest, social propriety and cultural conditioning, so
that the faithful quite naturally respond to those they meet in life with
blessing and healing. Having been baptized into Christ's death, the faithful no
longer have a vested interest in the fears and desires, the social and cultural
conditioning that normally characterize historical experience. Their
relationship to the world is rooted in the Creator of life, Who loves life
because it exists. They, the faithful, are called to respond with that loving
communion first glimpsed in the Garden of Eden and that solidarity glimpsed so
sharply on Calvary. In their initiation in baptism they have the fullness of
the human nature.[29]
Now they are called to bless and heal life. That is the human vocation. That is
the priestly centre of the being of all people and the form of their
relationship to God's sacred creation.
8
THE CHURCH AS THE PRESENCE
OF THE KINGDOM[30]
|
T |
he
icon of the Church is the Holy Theotokos. It is in this image that Orthodox
tradition provides the Church's self-definition. The Church's particular vocation
is to be the "birth-giver" of the divine in the world. What does this
mean and how is it accomplished? As always we are turned back onto liturgical
ground to understand the salient features of the Orthodox tradition's
understanding of its place in the historical order.
The
Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was attentive and open to the presence
of divine life, even under what could be seen as scandalous circumstances. She
gave birth to Christ the presence of God and the fullness of the human nature,
and she did this in time, in history. It is the Church's vocation to "give
birth" to Divine love in history.[31]
How is this vocation expressed? The liturgical life of the Church C the sanctifying of space, time and
the person C shows forth the presence of the Kingdom of God. The Church as temple
(microcosm of the Kingdom of God), is a theophany of the sacred
creation, unveils the mystery of creation. The actions characteristic of the
liturgical life C a movement from recognition, confession, forgiveness to the fullness of
adoration of the Creator and communion with the creation C are the unveiling of the Kingdom of
God.
So
what does the Church do with historical experience and what does this tell us
of its understanding of its role within history? The Church's vocation is to
serve the liturgy. The liturgy is the Church's showing forth the creation in
its form as the creator made it. So the liturgy is not about private prayer or
the saving of the individual souls of the faithful. Rather, it is a public work
of the community for the life of the world.[32]
In the liturgy we have all the fundamental characteristics of human experience,
society and culture presented in the pattern of the kingdom of God. This
culminates in communion, but how do we get to that communion?
Liturgy
begins with a dramatic movement, a metanoia. Called into consciousness
is the experience of estrangement, called sin, that so characterizes the life
of the world. For the individual, the point of departure in the liturgical
journey is the recognition of the darkness which shrouds the fullness of the
faithful's life in God. All experience of estrangement C whether out of ignorance,
deliberate deceit, a failure of mind, will, or response C is called forth to the light of
consciousness. The mercy of God is petitioned so that the faithful can confess
their failure to live the fullness of life. The issue here is not some moral
impropriety, although that may be at issue in particular circumstances. The
issue is that fear and desire, the failure of mind, heart and will, separate
the faithful from life itself. They have failed to live what the Lord of Life
has created and given to them. The recognition and the confession of this is
the road to the light which is the "light of life." Since God is the
lover of humankind, forgiveness is axiomatic. Grace is the central feature of
the creation. With recognition and confession comes forgiveness, even the grace
to accept that one is forgiven. Flooding out of this is the adoration of the
Divine Who has created life and placed the faithful within it. Adoration of the
Divine, which itself corrects the relationship between human beings and the
Creator, culminates in communion. This communion is not a private sacramental
act taking place in a "cultic" environment. Rather, it is beginning
to live in communion with the Lord of Life, in communion with life itself.
"The liturgy after the Liturgy", as one Orthodox theologian[33]
has called it, is nothing more than communion and co-suffering love in the
world of everyday life.
It
is in this everydayness that "time is redeemed." Whatever challenges
history may offer, the Church is, from the point of view of sacred tradition,
to serve the life of the world through giving birth to the divine presence in
those who are its faithful.
9
THE CHURCH AND THE FULLNESS OF
THE KINGDOM
OF GOD
|
W |
hat
is the ultimate destiny of the cosmos as understood by Orthodox Christian
tradition? The eschatological vision of this tradition which is focused on the
presence of the Kingdom of God suggests that the apprehension of this presence
is not complete. It is one thing to talk about the possibility of communion and
the fullness of life, and quite another to claim that this is the normal
condition of the world. Orthodoxy recognizes the grip suffering, estrangement
and death have on the human condition and how difficult it is for the most
faithful to maintain a clear-sighted view of the presence of the Divine in the
midst of sorrow. Orthodoxy builds on the biblical, apocalyptic imagery, and
speaks of the coming of the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Periodically in the
history of the Orthodox Church, movements had risen up which took the biblical
imagery quite literally and claimed to see the demonic presence bringing about
the imminent demise of this world.[34]
The
image of the coming fullness of the kingdom for Orthodox tradition, however,
suggests that the full apprehension of the meaning of experience is finally and
only in God. This aspect of the Orthodox iconic vision of history encourages
the faithful to be attentive to new and deeper understandings of the divine
meaning unfolding around the particular experiences which characterize
historical life. This is illustrated beautifully in the Orthodox service for
burial when the deceased is placed at the front of the temple and faced toward
the royal doors. (The royal doors are the central opening in the iconostasis
and mark the bridge between the presence of the Kingdom of God symbolized by
the nave of the church and the fullness of the Kingdom of God symbolized by the
sanctuary with its holy table surrounded by the icon of the Mystical Supper.)
The liturgy for burial "sends" the deceased into the sanctuary of the
cosmos. In God, where ultimately all life rests in the fulness of being, the deceased
is gathered into the fullness of the kingdom which has no end.
10
PARADIGMS OF
FAITHFULNESS
|
H |
ow
faithful is the Orthodox community to its view of history in interpreting its
own history? I can only begin to address this exceedingly complex question by
suggesting a range of paradigms of interpretation that operate within Orthodox
communities as they work to understand their place in each historical epoch.
How each jurisdiction within the Orthodox world, indeed, how various groups of
faithful within any one of these jurisdictions, bring their understanding of
the church's role in history to bear on a self-definition of their own history
will depend to a large extent on the operative ecclesiology which informs the
community's understanding.
ORTHODOXY AND MODERNITY[35]
The
study of Orthodox Church history in the modern world is in its infancy for a
variety of reasons, not the least being that much of the Orthodox world has only
in this century begun to grapple with modernity. Orthodox communities have
historically developed in a largely homogeneous cultural context. Consequently,
language, local custom and cultural forms have been either wedded to sacred
tradition or parallel to it. Modern society, often characterized by pluralism,
challenges the community's normative self-understanding. Not only does the
community have to consider its place within a pluralistic context, it may also
have to accommodate the pluralistic expression of Orthodoxy within the
community itself. This has certainly happened with the development of
pan-Orthodox parishes in various jurisdictions. Questions of which language to
use in the liturgy, the place of local custom and folk tradition, and the episcopal
authority must be addressed.
The
liturgical tradition of Orthodoxy challenges modern historical consciousness in
a variety of ways. One of these has been expressed in the fierce debate over
whether to retain the liturgical calendar shaped with reference to the Julian
calendar or to adopt the Gregorian calendar used by the societies in which many
Western European and North American Orthodox communities live. The liturgical
calendar is built on a biblical, liturgical tradition. The secular calendar, central
to civil society, stands on its own. Adjusting the liturgical calendar to fit a
new civil calendar means forcing a liturgical pattern to fit a secular pattern.
This can seem problematic.
A
variety of other considerations on liturgical reform[36]
have been opened by the increasing Western influence on Orthodox communities.
Are there aspects of the liturgy that are simply redundant? Is it necessary to
serve Vespers prior to the serving of Divine Liturgy, and if so, can it
be done as a preamble to the Divine Liturgy in the morning? How seriously does
the community abide by the highly structured symbolic shape given to space,
time and the initiation of persons? How do Orthodox communities, informed by a
catholic tradition that has had a national and folk ethos, come to terms with a
world that has increasingly become a global village? With the possibility of
entering into ecumenical and social justice organizations which express a variety
of international concerns, and with the pressure to be relevant and involved on
behalf of the needy of the world, how does the community open its rather
exclusive cultural definition of "the people of God"?
Modern
history has also placed the question of the Orthodox Church's
self-understanding in the face of secular culture squarely on the agenda. The
Orthodox pattern of the symphonia which has influenced the Church's
understanding of its relationship to the state for centuries is problematic in
secular, democratic cultures. Classically, the relationship between Church and
state was established on a pattern that recognized:
"the mutual harmony and independence of the two parts. The state
recognized the ecclesiastical law as an interior guide for its activity; the
Church considered itself as under the state. This was not a Caesaro-papism in
which the ecclesiastical supremacy belonged to the Emperor. Caesaro-papism was
always an abuse; never was it recognized, dogmatically or canonically. The
"symphonic" relationship between Church and state ended in the
Emperor's directing all the domain of ecclesiastical life and legislation
within the limits of his administration of the state. But, if that
"symphony" became troubled by discord, if the Emperors attempted to
impose on the Church dogmatic directions...then the Church thought itself
persecuted, and the real nature of its connection with the state became
manifest. Still the Church attached much importance to its alliance with the
state, insofar as state was of use to Church and as the existence of a crowned
head for the entire Orthodox world C the Orthodox Empire C was considered one of the Church's
essential attributes. The Emperor was the sign of the conquest of the world by
the Cross; he was the "architect" of the Kingdom of God on earth.[37]
Obviously
the symbolic image of the imperial crown is all but forgotten in democratic
societies, and hierarchical imagery which forms so large a part of the Orthodox
Church's tradition no longer has a resonance within the society. The
relationship of secular, democratic societies to the Church has yet to be
worked out.
1. The Conservative Historical Paradigm
How
faithful is the Orthodox community to its view of history in interpreting its
own history? First I would like to examine that sector of the Orthodox
community which has what I term a conservative historical paradigm. This
conservatism is born of a deep concern that the rapid changes and historical
traumas so characteristic of the modern world will destroy the identity of the
community. For many of these jurisdictions the terrors of history have
justified their concern.[38]
Most of the East European communities have suffered greatly in the twentieth
century from the attack on their society and culture that has accompanied their
entry into the modern world. Under the rubric of "preserving
tradition" they marshall their resources to maintain everything that is a
sign of their identity as a people faithful to the past. At the same time, the
education and formation in Orthodoxy for many of the leaders in these
communities has been thin indeed. Leadership was often wiped out in the
revolutions of this century. In some notable cases, the Ukrainians being
perhaps the most extreme, the Roman Catholic church worked for its own
particular agenda with little or no regard for the Orthodox Christian tradition
which was central to the people it wanted under its jurisdiction.
These
traumas, and the conservative understanding of them as potentially fatal to the
identity of the community, resulted in the elevation of folk and national
tradition and a merging of folk and national tradition into sacred tradition.
Quickly the church became more vulnerable to being used as an instrument for
national aspiration. In such circumstances, the ritual forms of folk and
national tradition take on a central importance because they speak of
"peoplehood," not because they reveal the Kingdom of God, the glory
of creation. Judgments about the value of liturgical and ritual acts, about the
shaping of liturgical time, sacred space, and the language of worship, are
largely in service to expressing the identity of a people on a nationalistic,
ideological and historical basis.[39]
It becomes paramount that the "purity" of the tradition be protected
against reforms, even if modern scholarship shows that the particular
"tradition" in question was imported from the Latin Rite in the
nineteenth century.
Those
who have commandeered the universe of discourse within this context have forced
the community to look inward for the validity of the tradition. The tradition
becomes a way of preserving the identity of the community, and the community
becomes a remnant of the people of God living in a deeply troubled world
without power. Nostalgia for a golden age or another land and leadership
defines the Church's understanding of its own history under the conservative
paradigm.
2. The Modernist Historical Paradigm
There
have been movements in this century which have developed a critique of the
conservative paradigm. The impetus for this is manifold and includes a return
to liturgical and ecclesiastic sources as a reference point for introducing
changes in liturgy and jurisdictional relationships, a desire to enter into a
host culture, and participation in the ecumenical movement.[40]
What seems to operate here is a sense that the scrutiny of modern knowledge can
refine a sacred tradition, purging it of folk religious forms that have accrued
over the centuries. Gradually, there emerges the sense that if a religious form
is not clearly and verifiably part of "canonical tradition" it is
suspect and ought to be cast out.
The
modernist paradigm is open to modern questions and methodologies. It gives
value and weight to these and requires that the tradition find a way to justify
its practice in the light of these questions and methodologies. Within this
paradigm, sacred tradition is far less rooted in the cultural forms of the past
and more able to engage the cultural forms of the current age. The Church is
required to be faithful to its mission to enculturate, and this can be carried
out with as much ease in the modern world as it was in Islamic contexts or in
the great Byzantine period. The Church has a responsibility to engage the
society in which it lives and to adopt models of association and participation
offered to it. The ecumenical movement, for example, is an opportunity to
participate in the speaking of the one, holy, catholic church, an opportunity
to lobby on behalf of the bereft of the world and participate in social justice
projects throughout the world. The modernist paradigm is critical of the
church's "folk" past, and open to the opportunities offered by modern
culture. Sacred tradition is a touchstone but the Church's sphere includes
participation in the institutions of the world. Participation of Church in
society is institutionalized, and committees and responsible parties are
encouraged to make the necessary links on behalf of the Church so that its
voice can be heard clearly and its influence felt in the seat of power.
Under
the modernist paradigm the symbolic aspects of the tradition are subject to a
model of change that is quite distinct from that found in other Orthodox
perspectives.[41]
For example, the Liturgical Calendar was an object of considerable controversy
in various jurisdictions in this century. For Orthodox tradition, time has a
sacred movement to it, and for that reason the tradition continued in an
unbroken way to set its feasts and seasons by the Liturgical Calendar. Since
this shaping of each day is rooted in biblical practice, its Christian form
developed when the Julian calendar was common in the ancient world. From the
modernist perspective, the need to use the Gregorian calendar (although
developed by Gregory XII in 1582, it was only slowly recognized in Western
Europe and was finally adopted in England in 1752) overrides the particular liturgical
confusions that arise through adopting it. The function of sacred tradition is
secondary to being able to participate in the modern cultural context in a
reasonable, straightforward manner.
The
modernist paradigm calls for bringing the best of modern learning to bear on
the study of the church and its traditions. It has strong critical tools for
the evaluation of tradition and is concerned to purify it in the light of
modern learning. This paradigm is also critical, in principle, of the folk and national
traditions and ethos within parish life. It calls for a shedding of cultural
forms not deemed appropriate to contemporary life. Perhaps the most significant
aspect of this paradigm is its understanding of the Church's role in society.
The Church must enter into the social order and work through the forms provided
by society. Joining ecumenical organizations in order to work for social
justice is a formal part of Church life. Indeed, by some it is considered part
of the Orthodox mission to other Christian churches and to the world at large.
This ecclesiology understands the Church to have a mandate beyond its
liturgical work. It is, as an institution, to speak on behalf of Christ and
work through the political structures of the day for a more just world.
3. The Traditionalist Historical Paradigm
There
are jurisdictions within the Orthodox world which claim to be
"traditionalist." Many of them certainly have elements of the
conservative paradigm, but a few are informed by what I wish to highlight as
the traditionalist paradigm.[42]
It is a paradigm we are unfamiliar with in Western European Church history and
it must be considered carefully.
This
paradigm is rooted in a singular regard for "holy tradition." While
not immune to the influences of history and culture, the traditionalist is
primarily concerned to live within and through the forms of spiritual discipline
and worship which make up holy tradition.[43]
The Church's role is simply faithfulness to holy tradition. It is the Church's
responsibility to gather the community of the faithful together for worship
following the pristine pattern which structures the liturgical life. The
structure of the liturgical life is paramount because it is an icon of the
presence of the Kingdom of God. The pattern of the sanctification of time C the fasts and feasts of the Church C unveils the divinely created being
of the world C the sacred character of time, space and human experience. The
disciplines provided by this life cultivate within the faithful a recognition
of their being as the place of divine incarnation, as theosis.
The
Church calls the faithful together in the temple as the place of the presence
of the Kingdom of God. The symbolic form Orthodox temples embody are part of
the revelation, the unveiling of the meaning and form of the divinely created
life. The temple and the liturgy served in it are an archetype of creation, the
kingdom of God. The place of the Church in this paradigm is not within the
historical life of the world. Rather, it is the sole and essential role of the
Church to live holy tradition because holy tradition is an icon of the
sanctified cosmos in which human beings experience the fulness of life. This
the Church does to show the world that creation is a place of communion with
the Divine, a place of self-giving love which redeems time.
It's
noteworthy that in this paradigm the Church is not an instrument for
intervention on behalf of righteousness in the historical process.
Consequently, the Church neither encourages the collapsing of ecclesial power
into civil power C an issue for the Roman Catholic tradition until it was directly
prohibited in the documents of the Second Vatican Council C nor does it take a direct
institutional role in the marshalling of resources around a social or
historical issue within the society. The cardinal issue is that through the
sanctification of the person the Church clearly offers the faithful a life of
action in the world, which calls the faithful to transform the pain and sorrow
of history through acts of love. The Church is an icon of the kingdom of
communion. While having no expectations of the world, the Church (holy
tradition) cultivates a regard for and apprehension of the sacred character of
creation's self-recovery. While having no expectations of the historical
process C no latent theory of optimism about the evolution of history C it calls the faithful to live a
truly mortal life with all the gifts and terrors of history. It is this
paradigm which is faithful to the Orthodox tradition's view of history in
interpreting its own history.
11
CHURCH, SOCIETY AND HISTORY
|
F |
or
the Orthodox community, life in the world is life in the Kingdom of God. This
is the eighth day of creation, the time of the presence of the kingdom. This is
not a private or communal mysticism. Rather, it is a regard for and a
treasuring of the creation which God has made. The vision of that divine
creation, and the ability of the human being to apprehend it properly, are the
goal of the liturgical life. Yet, it is clear from even the briefest knowledge
of the institutional life of Orthodox communities that there is a struggle to
be clear about the full range of human commitment, aspirations and values. For
those with a conservative paradigm for understanding the meaning of history,
the life of the cultural community has taken on a singular value. Within the
modernist paradigm, society and the possibilities of social relationship have
become the proper concerns of the Church. For the traditionalist, history
itself, and the society in which the faithful live, must be of concern to them
but these are not the issues of the Church. Rather, the Church is the servant
of creation, and on that ground alone it serves society and culture; to that
extent it faithfully worships the Creator and cultivates in the faithful a
regard for reality as the Creator made it C a world of communion in
co-suffering love.
No
jurisdiction or Orthodox community, perhaps even none of the faithful, can be
finally understood by one of these paradigms alone. The religious imagination is
too rich for such a reduction. But it is also the case that when examining a
particular period in the history of the Orthodox Church and in the life of
particular Orthodox jurisdictions, one or the other of these paradigms will
hold the centre. Which ever it is, conservative, modernist, or traditionalist,
the other two will not be far off. This is a world view shaped by sacred
tradition in which creation is understood as a divine gift and the act of
living a consciously mortal life C living in time C is central to the human vocation.
The three paradigms which inform the Orthodox view of history are born of this
remarkable understanding of tradition, creation, and the human beings place in
history.
