How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West: from Ecclesiastical Enculturation to Theological Competence

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 58 (2017) Nos. 1–4, pp. 251–279

How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West: From Ecclesiastical Enculturation to Theological Competence

Augustine Cassidy

The Eastern churches have much to offer the West. By way of examples, I might list dignified and solemn worship, fidelity to the apostles and their successors, a living witness of saints, rich piety, exuberant joy, irreproachable theology, mys- ticism grounded in a holistic view of this good creation, time- honoured disciplines for spiritual development, aesthetics that make present the holiness of God, ancient principles that lead to union with God, a profound sense of communal identity, compassionate understanding of sins coupled with the recognition that sin is not central to human life, courage and perseve- rance in the face of oppression even unto martyrdom, unflinching opposition to heresy, and access to a wealth of theology not otherwise available. These blessings are not necessarily all equally available, nor are they presented as such by Eastern Christians, nor indeed are they all mutually consistent. Some are probably aspirations rather than realities. This is, in effect, to admit that my list is synthetic, uncritical, and indicative of what people have claimed to find in the Eastern churches. And a similar list could assuredly be populated with problems en- demic to the Eastern churches that no Westerner would find appealing or attractive in the least. But I begin with a register of the blessings that, having freely received, Eastern Christians freely give, since my purpose in this paper is to analyse some aspects of Western conversions to Eastern Christianity. To be Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 252 Augustine Cassidy

very specific, I will focus on aspects of conversions from western Christian backgrounds to parishes in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in North America and to the Orthodox Church in America. I am specifying my sources in this way not to ex- clude other experiences, but rather because I am working from sources that emerge from that precise setting and because the population of converts into Orthodoxy in North America is sufficiently large as to generate interesting phenomena. I offer the paper with some hope, based on anecdotes and limited first-hand observations, that my analysis and provisional findings will not be limited to the communities that provide the evidence. To the contrary, I think the complex negotiations by which Western Christians become Orthodox are an important part of the broad-based interactions that make up Eastern Christian life in twenty-first century Europe. In the following pages, I will give a specific example, taken from contemporary American Orthodoxy and chosen as a representative specimen of convert literature from the late- twentieth century, that offers (amongst very many other things) plentiful and uncompromising advice about how to acquire and to maintain an Orthodox mindset and manner of living – the “Orthodox phronêma” of my title – in the West. This section I am calling “The neophyte and his fictional priest.” Despite its distinctive features, I claim that the text is representative and I justify that claim in the second part of my paper, entitled “Opting for Orthodoxy.” In this section, I will identify findings from a recent publication of fieldwork amongst converts to Orthodox Christianity in North America. That publication, along with the one central to my first section, both bear witness to important and, I think, instantly recog- nisable patterns of behaviour that are frequently ignored. In concluding, I will comment on problems that I have identified in the first part of this paper, and indicate how they may well impede the flourishing of Eastern Christianity in the West. My contention is that the attitudes surveyed in this paper foster a profoundly distorted sense of theology and advocate precisely this distorted theology as the consummation of Orthodox life. Such a distortion is deeply problematical, not least because when it is compounded over time it inhibits the possibility of Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 253

witnessing to God’s abiding presence and reduces Orthodox Christianity to an ethnic perspective, worthy only of passing cultural commentary.

The Neophyte and His Fictional Priest

Frank Schaeffer, son of noted Presbyterian evangelist and philosopher Francis Schaeffer (a significant figure in the Ame- rica Religious Right), was already acclimatized to public attention when, in December 1990, he was received into Orthodoxy at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in New- buryport, MA. The evolution of Schaeffer’s public persona is an interesting story in its own right. For decades, he has cour- ted controversy, not least by revising his public allegiances – as when he famously, or notoriously, turned on his father, or more recently, when he reversed his staunch support for the Republican Party and began supporting Democrats instead. For our purposes, it suffices to say that Schaeffer had a public pro- file before his conversion; for that very reason, his entry into the Orthodox Church was noted with interest and comment by many religious communities in the United States. Schaeffer wasted no time before putting forward his vision of what was wrong with America and what Orthodox Christianity offered to heal those ills. Although Schaeffer made heaviest use of political and social terms for his analysis, the bracing diagnosis he offered can be paraphrased by borrowing the title of an earlier publication that came to similar conclusions about the malaise of the West and prescribed comparable measures to deal with it: “Religion Is a Neurobiological Sickness, but Orthodoxy Is Its Cure,” a phrase so memorable that its author, the Greek-American scholar, Fr. John S Romanides, used it several times in the 1990s.1

1 John S. Romanides, “Η θρησκεία είναι νευροβιολογική ασθένεια, η δε Ορθοδοξία η θεραπεία της,” Ορθοδοξία, Ελληνισμός, πορεία στην 3η χιλιετ- ηρίδα (Mt Athos: Koutloumousiou Monastery, 1966), 67–87; idem., “Church Synods and Civilisation,” Theologia 63 (1992): 424–450; idem., “The Sick- ness of Religion and Its Cure. A Medical Key to Church Reunion,” http:// www.romanity.org/htm/rom.20.en.the_sickness_of_religion_and_its_cure.01 .htm#1 (accessed November 19, 2015); and idem., “The Cure of the Neuro- biological Sickness of Religion. The Hellenic Civilization of the Roman Em- Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 254 Augustine Cassidy

What united Romanides and Schaeffer in common cause was not only an unflinching conviction that Western civilisation had been corrupted through its estrangement from the ancient practices and teachings of Christianity preserved and promoted within the Orthodox Church; it was also their urgent insistence that Orthodox Christianity is not merely another form of Christianity. The title of Romanides’ piece makes that point more clearly than Schaeffer managed to do. Orthodoxy is not only not one religion amongst many, it is the cure to the di- sease for which mainstream Christian religion is in fact a vec- tor of transmission. Romanides’ signature reconstruction of history might or might not have appealed to Schaeffer,2 but his fearless denunciations of Western Christianity for doing more harm than good – and indeed the ringing, emotive lists of fi- gures whom he would have any right-minded Orthodox Chris- tian similarly denounce – would find a natural place in the pages of Schaeffer’s Letters to Father Aristotle.3 That book and its immediate predecessor, Schaeffer’s Dancing Alone,4 both passionately address the state of Orthodox Christianity in America, but the later of the two – a collection of letters that Schaeffer wrote to a fictional priest, discussing the Orthodox Church, American society, and the interface between them – is much the more interesting of them. Unlike Romanides, poor Fr. Aristotle lacked clear vision and confidence, though he seemed a rather decent man who had a sound grasp of basic practicalities. Happily for him, Fr. Aristotle also had access to Schaeffer for wise counsel and forthright encouragement in cases of uncertainty – as when he

pire, Charlemagne’s Lie of 794, and His Lie Today,” published online at http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.02.en.the_cure_of_the_neurobiological_si ckness_of_rel.01.htm (accessed November 19, 2015). 2 The two major statements of Romanides’ synthesis of historico-cultural analysis and theology are in John S. Romanides, Ρωμηοσύνη-Ρωμανία-Ρού- μελη (Thessaloniki: Pournaras, 2002) and idem., Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine: An Interplay between Theology and Society (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981). 3 Frank Schaeffer, Letters to Father Aristotle: A Journey through Contem- porary American Orthodoxy (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 1995). 4 Frank Schaeffer, Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994). Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 255

faced insurrection led by the president of the parish council, who hoped to use the church facilities to host a fundraiser for a Greek-American presidential candidate (a thinly-veiled reference to Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massa- chusetts and Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1988). Not only does Schaeffer steel Fr. Aristotle’s resolve, he also takes the opportunity to warn against allying the church with secular powers, to denounce several policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and to endorse a reading of Sir Steven Run- ciman’s The Great Church in Captivity which, according to Schaeffer, “has a direct application to our present-day situation in North America. In many ways, we, too, are in “captivity” in an alien land and risk being corrupted by Western, intellectual folly and Westernized “Orthodox” who see their church as a useful political tool.”5 Schaeffer’s stark warning about the Amerikokratia of Orthodoxy pulses throughout the book. Schaeffer uses the adjective American with a vehemence that most Anglophone Orthodox Christians reserve for use with another adjective starting with the letter A: Augustinian. For Schaeffer, the la- mentable state of America is an ineluctable expression of Augustine’s departure from Orthodoxy, duly compounded by several other well-known persons and movements whom Schaeffer recites like a diabolical litany.6 In a passage as indicative of Schaeffer’s rhetorical style as it is of his perspective, he contrasts American society to Orthodox Christianity in these terms:

America touts itself as an egalitarian society. We Or- thodox believe in hierarchy that begins on earth and stretches to the throne of God. America is profoundly materialistic and consumeristic. We Orthodox believe that self-denial and ascetic struggle is essential for salvation. In stark contrast to the Orthodox idea of moral absolutes, the only absolute in modern America is that there are no moral absolutes, let alone absolute

5 Schaeffer, Letters to Father Aristotle, 35. 6 In the matter of Augustine’s influence, Romanides provides a similar ge- nealogy of woe in the writings cited in n. 1, above. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 256 Augustine Cassidy

non-negotiable truths. One is free to believe anything personally, as long as one does not commit the faux pas of saying it is true in an absolute or binding way that excludes falsehood or that would brand another philosophy as wrong. The very word orthodox is un- American. There are no orthodoxies in America, no right ways of doing things or believing. This relativis- tic worldview places the Orthodox, whether we acknowledge it or not, on a collision course with secular and most “religious” American society.7

In keeping with this clear vision, Schaeffer urges Fr. Aris- totle to acknowledge that American society lacks the traditional values that life in traditionally Orthodox societies (he frequently mentions Greek, Slavic, Arabic and, unexpectedly, Ethiopian societies) instils in the Orthodox faithful. It is therefore all the more urgent, according to Schaeffer, for Orthodox Christians in the West to redouble their efforts to conserve and promote the practices and teachings that lead to salvation. To this end, he quotes from the Philokalia, often at length. His en- thusiasm for monasticism recurs across the book, as he en- courages Fr. Aristotle to promote ways of Orthodox living that sanctify those who undertake them. Another extract features this advice, along with Schaeffer’s biting references to popular religion in America:

… I pray for the day when we have as many Orthodox monasteries, sketes and hermitages in North America as Orthodox churches. Then the Church will truly be established here. Then it will evangelize by example. And then, and only then, will an authentic revival of Orthodox life be possible within the North American Orthodox Church. (This is not to say that we want just any kind of monastery. It must be an authentic Ortho- dox monastery, deeply rooted in the highly disciplined tradition of Sinai and Athos and under the guidance of

7 Schaeffer, Letters to Father Aristotle, 63. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 257

a true Holy Father or Holy Mother of many years experience and from a well-established monastery).

… While we wait for the Holy Spirit to bring us holy monastics, we must begin to practice the monastic rule in our own lives. For instance, we should all seek out the traditional relationship with a spiritual father and confessor. […] Above all, we must learn about the Or- thodox ideal of divinization through ascetic struggle, prayer, reading of the desert Fathers, fasting, and con- fession and stop acting as if we can make ourselves Orthodox by merely involving ourselves in secular social activities like dances, theological studies, church politics, basketball leagues, and foot festivals. Spiritual cancer is not cured with basketball! The gushing wounds of sin are not closed with donuts and coffee! Western-style theological studies are not to be con- fused with the prayer of the heart that saves.8

It is sometimes difficult to discern where the enculturation within Orthodox worship stops and the cultural critique of American society starts. Indeed, Schaeffer’s rhetoric integrates the two. The emotive language acts to guide the reader across a terrain of regularly deployed and value-laden terms and bring the reader to Schaeffer’s conclusions, assimilating Schaeffer’s incidental views along the way. Or perhaps they only seem incidental, for as Schaeffer cautions Fr. Aristotle, “I have found that the ‘small’ differences between the East and West turn out to be not small at all. The mystical, nondogmatic, nontheologi- cal, apophatic, nonphilosophical Eastern approach to the Truth is one of being, doing, and becoming, not one of reason or dogmatic theology. Orthodoxy addresses the whole person as no Western church does.”9 Schaeffer concludes that letter with a list of down-home syllogisms that begin with the Trinity and move through the Incarnation into a series of propositions about how people ought to live. This section is no masterpiece of philosophy or

theology, but it makes unmistakable theological claims and does so in a philosophical format. Schaeffer has a mechanism for dealing with the glaring inconsistency of his position: he invokes paradox. For example, those

who do not understand how very consistent the Ortho- dox Church is in spite of the Orthodox embrace of paradox fail to see that even if we Orthodox have no juri- dical, dogmatic theology, as the West understands these things, nevertheless we have a very complete theology in our own way. Our theology is our liturgical tradition. It is non-negotiable, even though it is “poetic” rather than “Germanic,” so to speak.10

The bracing contrast between the final two adjectives indicates the superficiality of Schaeffer’s cultural criticism and suggests his ignorance of a vast and variegated legacy, cultivated by Angelus Silesius, Goethe, Novalis, Rilke, Celan, and many, many others. I already noted Schaeffer’s contempt for Ameri- can culture; in the same way, his cheap contrast between the poetic and the “Germanic” demonstrates an arrogant and crass distaste for European culture, which serves to intensify Schaeffer’s allegiance to Orthodoxy as a counter-culture. Although Schaeffer fails to elaborate on what he thinks the term “Germanic” means, his usage is consistent with Fr. John Romanides’s publications and their signature endorsement of a Romantic myth in which the term “Germanic” means evil, from Charlemagne to Hitler and beyond.11 The adjective seems chiefly to indicate humanistic Enlightenment, which Schaeffer vigorously opposed, with results that are seen in his blistering polemic against theology. He regards Western theology as philosophy in disguise. By contrast, the Orthodox “have a very complete theology in our own way. Our theology is our liturgical tradition.” On this line, theology is an epiphenome- non generated by Byzantine rituals of prayer. Given this view of theology, Schaeffer has no patience for theological education. Schaeffer dedicates one letter to explain

why Fr. Aristotle should discourage an anonymous married woman from pursuing a doctorate in “theological studies,” contrasting his emerging vision of Orthodoxy-as-a-way-of- holy-living against “the Western vanity of the mind.”12 Else- where, he quotes the contents of a letter he received in June 1995 from an anonymous Australian Greek Orthodox, who identified four generic areas of concern within Orthodox Christianity: theological renewal, liturgical renewal, ministe- rial renewal, and monastic renewal. The anonymous concerns and the suggestions for responding to them are all sensible, moderate, and thoughtful. In fact, I am aware that at least three of his suggestions have been implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom. The Australian refers to having studied “at the Orthodox Theological College,” which (assuming that he is not another fictional device, like Fr. Aristotle) would be St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College in Syd- ney, New South Wales. Schaeffer uses the letter to exemplify the infiltration of secularism into Orthodox Christianity: “In the light of the letter quoted above, perhaps Orthodox prodi- gals need to be reminded that they are not God’s gift to the Church. The Church does not need saving through moderni- zation. In fact, the Church does not need any of us. We need Her.”13 By appending that paragraph immediately after the extracts from the letter, Schaeffer indicates that his anonymous correspondent is no better than an “Orthodox prodigal” and demonstrates a shocking contempt for theological education. In place of formal theological education, Schaeffer asserts that theology comes from participating in the worship of the Orthodox Church. This identification of liturgical tradition and Orthodox theology, coupled with the ready availability of paradox as a deus ex machina, makes it possible for any Ortho- dox who participates in the cycle of worship to claim theological value for any opinion they happen to hold. Membership in the liturgical community – consummated by sharing in the

12 Ibid., 95. That the would-be student is a married woman might be evidence of misogyny, but it is equally compatible with Schaeffer’s enraged polemic that it instead indicate he is misanthropic toward men and women in equal measure. 13 Ibid., 85. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 260 Augustine Cassidy

Eucharist – is what legitimates the assertion of paradoxical beliefs precisely as a species of theology (perhaps a prophetic mode of theology).14 Likewise, his round condemnation of philosophy notwith- standing, Schaeffer boldly asserted “the truth claims of our faith.”15 Because he does not himself explain what validates these truth claims, I can only conjecture as to what might legitimate the claim of truth for Orthodox Christianity. My conjecture starts from noting that Schaeffer’s vision of evangelisation (in Letter IX) aims chiefly to convince other Christians that they are wrong and that Orthodoxy is right. He convicts them of sins too numerous to mention. Only through repenting from these sins and entering the Orthodox Church can Westerners appreciate the depth of their wrongdoings and understand the fullness of salvation that the Orthodox Church offers to sin- ners, acting as God’s agent. Since Schaeffer’s evangelisation promotes membership in an Orthodox parish as the gateway to all the fullness of history, liturgy, human society, and salvation, his claim that Orthodox membership entails certain truth claims is sociologically interesting. What it means is that the social setting of Orthodox Christianity in itself is what authenticates the claims about reality that Schaeffer is making. Orthodoxy, as defined and defended by Schaeffer, generates a “symbolic universe” (to borrow a term from the sociologists Peter L. Berger and Tho- mas Luckmann)16 that organises and justifies Schaeffer’s assertions. For that reason, he expects insiders to accept his claims as a matter of necessity. The faithful, in as much as they are faithful, are obliged to accept them; obliged, that is, by the moral authority of the community to which they owe their allegiance and on whose behalf Schaeffer speaks. Schaeffer’s voice cries out to be acknowledged as prophetic. The device of offering letters of instruction to a priest puts Schaeffer in an odd position, as he knew: he spontaneously

14 Cf. the endorsement by Archbishop Dmitri at ibid., viii–ix. 15 Ibid., 71. 16 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reali- ty: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Allen Lane, 1967), 110–146. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 261

defends himself in the introduction against a hypothetical objection that his “‘tone’ [might] lack the deference to which the calling and person of a priest, even a fictional one, is entitled.”17 I think, however, he misjudges what is worrisome about his fictional device. Speaking as an old acquaintance to a fictional recipient is not a problem, but for a convert of five years standing to presume to explain to a priest the significance of Orthodox Christianity in America is more than plucky. Many male converts want to become priests; Schaeffer wanted to tell priests what to do. In one revealing passage, Schaeffer is charismatically fearless enough to encourage his (fictional) priest to be resolute against his (equally fictional) bishop.18 Throughout the book, Schaeffer exemplifies a stra- tegy identified by Pierre Bourdieu: “To appropriate the ‘sayings of the tribe’ is to appropriate the power to act on the group by appropriating the power the group exerts over itself through its official language.”19 Schaeffer makes typically Orthodox terminology his own and, in doing so, asserts his own authority within the community that uses that terminology. Schaeffer’s presumption to offer an authoritative interpre- tation is also evident in his willingness to pass judgement against the vast and undefined West. “It seems to me that we in the West have lost our ability to see with our spiritual intel- lects because we trust in our reason and our emotions.”20 This sweeping pronouncement invites serious questions: what legitimates Schaeffer’s presumption to speak on behalf of all Westerners, and what legitimates his presumption to level such a far-reaching claim about Western civilisation? It is assuredly not his knowledge of science, philosophy of science, philosophy or – bearing in mind his earlier contrast of the poetic to the Germanic – literature or history. His polemic indicates, at best, a level of familiarity with those topics that could be gained by semi-regular attendance in an undergraduate course on Wes- tern Civilisation at a reasonably good university.

17 Schaeffer, Letters to Father Aristotle, xii. 18 Ibid., 37. 19 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 110. 20 Ibid., 27. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 262 Augustine Cassidy

All the same, he boldly contrasts the West with Ortho- doxy. “Indeed, it is ironic that some of the most highly regarded saints of the Western, Latin Church, like Francis of Assisi, were more Orthodox in spirit than they were Western. This is true of some modern Protestant ‘saints’ as well. The late writer C.S. Lewis was certainly more Orthodox in many of his views and attitudes than he was Protestant. (If you doubt this read his book, The Great Divorce).”21 Schaeffer fails to provide any criteria that could be used to verify how Francis of Assisi and C.S. Lewis were Orthodox. This lack of independently veri- fiable traits is attributable (at least in part) to the fact that Schaeffer wants his readers to regard Orthodoxy as something logically equivalent to, and opposed to, the amorphous cultural designator “Western.” What legitimates Schaeffer’s presumption to be able to recognise Orthodoxy? One begins to suspect that he used the term orthodoxy simply to convey his approval of this, that, or the other thing. But, at a formal level, the process seems to be that whatever he approves can be harmonised with the ill-defined Orthodoxy that he advocates, and succes- sful harmonisation is then taken as evidence for underlying commonality. And again, what legitimates Schaeffer’s presumption to speak prophetically in behalf of Orthodox Chris- tianity and authoritatively to Orthodox Christians? For the answer to that question, I want to return to Schaeffer’s attitude toward theology. “Our theology is our liturgical tradition,” Schaeffer wrote, with his own emphasis in italics. Earlier, I conjectured that this affirmation confers theological significance to the opinions of liturgical participants – an all-too-common perversion of Evagrius Ponticus’ celebrated lines, “If you pray truly, you will be a theologian; and if you are a theologian, you will pray truly.” But if the relationship of prayer to theology is something other than a supporting configuration that authenticates assertions, Schaeffer’s claim looks less wholesome. If we dissent from the affect-laden denunciations of dogmatic theology, instead of a prophet speaking to the community called forth, what Letters to Father Aristotle presents is a cultural

critic developing themes from Orthodoxy into an idiolect that will enable him to 1) denounce political and social phenomena he dislikes; 2) disavow any criticisms that charge him with inconsistency (by invoking paradox); 3) lay claim to expertise by speaking in behalf of a social structure whose status is margi- nal to, and thus insulated from, the political and social land- scape he is criticising; and 4) do all of these things from the shelter of that social structure, whose position is defended by appeals to claims that are internally self-authenticating (since fidelity to Christ and Christ’s teachings is presented here as a matter of community across time, and per Schaeffer’s earlier polemic, manoeuvres cannot be established by reference to any objective criteria). These comments may seem harsh. If so, I am no harsher here than Schaeffer himself has been in his most recent book, a kind of post-scriptum to Fr. Aristotle entitled Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God. With the same breathless pacing and stirring disregard for consistency, Schaeffer opines on theological and cultural matters (“maybe we need a new cate- gory other than theism, atheism or agnosticism that takes paradox and unknowing into account.”).22 He still rates his theological acumen, recalling how in the wake of his conversion to Orthodox Christianity “I argued the finer points of theology and church history with my long-suffering evangelical mother and sisters. (Dad was spared, having died in 1984).” In the nearly twenty years that have passed, Schaeffer has grown in self-awareness, if not in the self-discipline that he so passionately advocated in Letters to Father Aristotle.

Eventually, I had to admit that I didn’t join the Ortho- dox Church for theological or even religious reasons. I joined it for a psychological reason. My new church wasn’t my childhood faith and I needed a change. […] To the extent that I was becoming Orthodox, it was mostly for aesthetic reasons. I couldn’t stand the Ame- rican evangelical experience any longer for the same

22 Frank Schaeffer, Why I Am an Atheist who Believes in God (self-published, 2014), 15. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 264 Augustine Cassidy

sort of reasons that I prefer swimming in the ocean to a swimming pool.23

The section of the book just quoted has been abbreviated, omitting some vague musings about the spiritual significance of becoming that are secured with references to Orthodox Christianity. Even though Schaeffer now acknowledges, with a candour that would be alarming from anyone less than a desen- sitized exhibitionist, that his conversion to Orthodox Chris- tianity was motivated by factors less noble than an embrace of the Truth, he still presumes to invoke Orthodoxy to further the work he finds at hand at the moment. The cultural warrior has moved on, but taken along a few weapons labelled “Ortho- doxy.”

Opting for Orthodoxy

Schaeffer’s comments are sometimes so lurid that one could dismiss them as idiosyncratic. For purposes of compari- son, we can turn to a sociological study of Orthodoxy in Ame- rica. From 2005 to 2006, Amy Slagle conducted interviews with priests and parishioners at several Orthodox parishes in the greater Pittsburgh area. She undertook this fieldwork in order to document and to study the experiences of converting to Orthodox Christianity within those parishes. In 2008, she earned her doctorate, based in part on this research, and in 2011, she published an edited and expanded version of her dissertation as The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Market- place.24 In the book, she reports findings from fieldwork in Jackson, MS, and contrasts her earlier findings (generated in an area with numerous, long standing Orthodox communities) with the results of her interviews at a recently established parish in the American Bible Belt. Slagle’s informants were united only by worshipping at the parishes that were her field- sites. Their ages, professional status, and educational back-

23 Ibid., 89–90. 24 Amy Slagle, The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Univer- sity Press, 2011). Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 265

grounds differed. They came into Orthodox Christianity from different backgrounds, by different routes (sometimes after “serial conversions”), and at different times. Some of her informants had over twenty years’ experience at the time of the interviews, which means that Schaeffer’s conversion occurred toward the mid-range of Slagle’s participants’ conversions. And, as we shall see, the expectations, beliefs, aspirations, and practices that Slagle reports are on the whole consistent with Orthodox Christianity as advocated by Schaeffer. Like Schaeffer, Slagle’s informants have a rich sense that Orthodoxy is distinct from their typical experience of daily life, including any past experiences they may have had of Christianity (or even other religions: one informant had previously been Baha’i). Thus, Slagle reports, “converts must learn and acquire the skills and beliefs of Orthodox Chris- tianity, a religious system known for its doctrinal and ritual intricacies that are often quite foreign to the assumptions and sensibilities that converts unconsciously wielded before and after their respective entries to the church.”25 Slagle sounds a warning that this otherness could be extended into the problems associated with regarding Orthodox Christianity as “ro- mantically exotic” (a phrase she borrows from Fr. John Antho- ny McGuckin), as an orientalist construct.26 However, she does not indicate any systematic or thorough-going measures taken to offset the possibility that such constructions might persist after conversion. That gap in the reporting is, I suspect, con- nected to another feature in her informants’ experience, one that strikes me as deeply important. Whilst remarking on the lack of uniform procedures across North American Orthodox Christianity, Slagle identifies the following initiatory rites: “baptism and/or chrismation or con- fession.”27 Even though a whole chapter in her book is dedica- ted to catechesis as a mechanism of conversion, rather than

25 Ibid., 12. 26 Ibid., 17. On orientalism in the study of Eastern Christianity, see Christo- pher D.L. Johnson, “‘He Has Made the Dry Bones Live’: Orientalism’s At- tempted Resuscitation of Eastern Christianity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82 (2014): 811–840. 27 Slagle, Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace, 14. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 266 Augustine Cassidy

discussing the cognitive, theoretical, or reflective knowledge that catechesis promotes in converts, throughout the work Slagle’s emphasis falls on habitus and practical knowledge.28 These emphases she takes from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who describes habitus as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”29 Bourdieu used these concepts to elicit the larger intellectual systems that related and structured the practices he studied. He was chiefly attempting to articulate something that was previously inarticulate in observed behaviour, aiming to do so from the disciplined vantage of a self- aware observer.30 Slagle’s attempt to draw out the understandings of her informants justifies the use of Bourdieu’s concepts: they provided the objective distance that enables her to competently analyse their behaviour and experiences, without being unduly swayed by the informants’ own understanding of their behaviour and experiences. In this way, she uses concepts from Bourdieu’s research in order to account more fully for the American experience of conversion to Or- thodoxy. But Bourdieu’s emphasis on structural stability sheds more light on continuity than on transformation. This approach is designed to work up an account of the symbolic network within which various practices make sense. That Slagle finds it useful for her work is significant, for what is notable by its absence from The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace is a direct statement of the larger system or systems of theory and belief into which her converts were being integrated. Slagle’s informants tend to talk about Orthodox Christianity as a way of living within a community, whilst (as we shall see) their knowledge of Orthodoxy was often idiosyncratic and sometimes remarkably superficial. The good fit between Bour- dieu’s theoretical constructs and the self-reporting by Slagle’s informants suggests that the informants were moved chiefly by a desire to enculturate into an Orthodox parish, and that their knowledge of Orthodoxy (including their modes of talking about Orthodoxy) appeared secondary to their enculturation.

28 Ibid., 12. 29 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), 53. 30 Ibid., 1–21. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 267

This conjecture finds support in the fact that, instead of an integral account of Orthodox Christianity, Slagle describes her informants adhering to an unexceptional overview of the social history of Orthodox Christians. After a summary invocation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the overview settles on the political entities that were historical bearers of Orthodoxy: Byzantium, the Byzantine Commonwealth, and Moscow as Third Rome.31 This rapid shift between membership in an Or- thodox parish and the recounting of social history from an Orthodox perspective goes without comment, and implies that assimilation to historical modes of Orthodox identity is a necessary component of becoming Orthodox. Such an implica- tion is in line with Berger and Luckmann’s generic formula- tion of the “symbolic universe”: “The symbolic universe also orders history. […] With regard to the past, it establishes a “memory” that is shared by all the individuals socialized within the collectivity.”32 As applied to Slagle’s research, in- ternalizing this “order” of Orthodox history is a significant component of converts’ socialization into Orthodoxy. And theology is subsumed into Orthodox history, as converts learn unfamiliar technical language and modes of thinking that puta- tively derive from ancient Christianity to express the theology characteristic of Orthodoxy. Within this symbolic universe, Slagle’s informants’ attitudes toward theology in general are comparable to what we have seen already in Schaeffer’s book. Theology is exempted from traditional western categories, recoded as the privileged expression of living experience and encounter with God, and simultaneously moved beyond the realms of the personal into the realms of the social and historical:

According to this view, individual Christians do not assume the role of atomized interpreters of dogma and liturgy but are members of a corporate body, called upon to be as mindful of the experience and teachings of the past as the present. In this way, Orthodox Chris- tians today claim a far greater affinity with the ideas,

31 Slagle, Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace, 18–19. 32 Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality, 120. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 268 Augustine Cassidy

images, and vocabularies of the earliest apostolic and church fathers than with contemporary Roman Catho- lics and Protestants.33

Perhaps it is a mark of overriding attention to sociology, or perhaps it is simply an accurate reflection of her informants’ concerns, but God and Christ are conspicuously absent in the overview worked up by Slagle. Though theological debates about God or Christ are sometimes acknowledged, these debates seem to be relevant because their outcomes serve to define the boundaries of Orthodox thought and worship. The following claim exemplifies this emphasis on the social at the ex- pense of the properly theological:

Consisting of leavened bread tinctured with wine and fed to the faithful on a spoon, the Eucharist is endowed with great mystical importance as the food of immor- tality, the actual Body and Blood of Christ that, when consumed, mystically knits Orthodox believers with one another. The fact that only baptized and chrisma- ted Orthodox Christians may partake of “the heavenly gifts” further heightens the mysterious, exclusive, and communally binding nature of the ritual.34

Given that the “Body of Christ” in the context of liturgy is in- eluctably bound up with the church as a corporate entity, even the reference here to Christ is, significantly, more about the community of His followers than about the Saviour Himself. By opting “to situate themselves within a wide narrative frame stretching back through history to the first apostles via the splendors of imperial Byzantium and reaching towards heaven in the sensory gravitas of its liturgical performances”35

33 Ibid., 22. 34 Ibid., 23. 35 Ibid., 24: “In addition to its strong adherence to the fundamentals of Chris- tian doctrine, the Orthodox Church presents would-be converts an opportunity to situate themselves within a wide narrative frame stretching back through history to the first apostles via the splendors of imperial Byzantium and reaching towards heaven in the sensory gravitas of its liturgical performances. In a contemporary American context so often thrust forward by the Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 269

as part of their conversion, Slagle’s converts are simultaneously opting not to take up other “classic Christian models of conversion in their narratives, especially those derived from sacred scripture often historically evoked in other Christian contexts […] Even the more general contours of Christian conversion as a movement from sin through repentance to salvation were largely absent from the narratives.”36 One might argue that, in doing so, her informants were simply freeing themselves from typically Western preoccupations that have had a long tendency to distort Orthodox Christianity; but, on the contrary, as Slagle indicates in an understated way, sin as separation from God is a concept deeply rooted in sacred scriptures and by no means absent from the Christian East, as anyone who has experienced the liturgical recitation of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete during Lent will bear witness. Furthermore, Slagle connects this lack of sin and, by ex- tension, salvation from her informants’ narratives to a far- reaching finding: “In this regard, the language and themes of “searching” and “journeying” appeared in informants’ narratives in theologically vague or secularized ways that high- lighted conversion as a personally orchestrated choice rather than a response to divine intervention.”37 The privileging of personal choice over responding to divine initiative is so per- vasive that it explains why she mentioned the “spiritual marketplace” in the title of her book; moreover, that shift in emphasis is something that she found the clergy were acknow- ledging and were adapting so that they could accommodate or challenge it, as seemed best from case to case. Because her converts were “shopping around” for a church that would sustain them in their spiritual journeys, Slagle draws attention to two changes that occur with respect to catechism, which need closer attention. The first is that many would-be converts “read themselves into” their first actual

sheer adrenaline of novelty, Eastern Orthodoxy can appear as something of a haven, a last bastion of conservative Christianity, shielding its adherents from the ennui and angst of later modern life. Certainly, many American converts express this view, as we shall see.” 36 Ibid., 38. 37 Ibid., 39. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 270 Augustine Cassidy

encounter with Orthodox Christianity; the typical curriculum for these seekers as Slagle relates it consists of publications by Kallistos Ware, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Vladimir Lossky.38 Slagle discovered that, in most situations, the clergy responded to these autodidacts by accrediting their background reading on a case-by-case basis, focusing their energies instead on practical matters. As a direct consequence, Slagle encountered “uneven and wildly divergent” base knowledge of Orthodox Christianity amongst her informants.

While converts appreciated receiving the sustained time and attention of the parish priest and the amplifi- cation of their personal queries and interests in regard to Orthodox Christianity or their lives more generally, this case-by-case, nearly episodic approach to cate- chizing inquirers practically ensured that the base knowledge converts possessed of Orthodoxy was uneven and wildly divergent from one person to the next. Furthermore, priests relied heavily on catechumens’ own motivations and abilities to read and study the faith and, in many cases, expected that converts dis- covering Orthodoxy over the course of their searches had engaged in some amount of prior reading. As one priest asserted: “You know, most folks start having read two or three introductory books before I’ve ever even met them.” Not only did clerics assume catechumens to be at least minimally self-directed in their ex- plorations of Orthodox Christianity, they also in some cases took into positive account the religious educa- tions that catechumens had received in other Christian settings. In fact, a few converts commented that clerics and other lifelong Orthodox parishioners recognized them as experts in religious matters, based on their prior studies (especially former Protestants in familiarity with the Bible), and they were occasionally drafted to teach Sunday school or serve other educational

functions within the parish before officially converting to the church.39

This accreditation of prior learning occurred ad hoc, without any overarching system in place to ensure the consistency or quality of the converts’ learning. Rather than instructing the catechumens in the tenants of the faith, catechesis, Slagle found, had become a social process that served to enculturate the converts. “For most clerics, however, the type and amount of discursive knowledge conveyed during official catechesis was less important than that converts, in the words of one priest, simply be “willing to do it” and demonstrate a genuine commitment to the Orthodox Church.”40 That element of commitment is particularly salient when would-be converts demonstrate a willingness to “shop around” to satisfy their spiritual needs. “Although Fr. Timothy held an ongoing “Inquirer’s Class” every Wednesday evening, he flatly declared that he cared far less about what catechumens learned than that they were developing the necessary spiritual disciplines to stay the course within the Orthodox faith.”41 Instead of converting from their sins, the catechumens were being trained to convert from their status as seekers. But this leads to another problem, as Slagle elaborates:

In emphasizing commitment, priests were left with the thorny dilemma of ensuring that autonomous, self- taught seekers who had picked and chosen their way to Orthodox Christianity remained compliant church members and held their substantial, often valorized, choice-making skills in firm check. People endowed with the all-encompassing task of choosing a religious worldview in the first place may feel entitled to choose specific tenets and practices by which to abide.42

Note that the dynamic Slagle describes here is one in which authority of a blunt kind has to be exercised to curtail the capricious decision-making of new converts; this can be contrasted to authority based in superior knowledge which is conveyed in an asymmetrical relationship, whilst again cur- tailing capricious decision-making. In other words, the dynamic she is describing is one in which inscrutable exercises of spiritual power would flourish, in the absence of a standard discipline of catechism that serves as an external point of reference for orientation and for corroboration.43 It is surely no ac- cident, therefore, that many of her informants tended to identify the priest who catechised them as a “spiritual father” – something, I hasten to add, that most of the priests disavowed entirely. Like Schaeffer, Slagle’s converts regarded spiritual fatherhood as an essential part of Eastern Christian life, drawing the supporting structures of this practice from the Apop- thegmata Patrum, the fictional Elder Zosima of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Fr. Sophrony Sakharov, and The Way of the Pilgrim.44 “Spiritual fatherhood” as Slagle’s informants understood it was being transposed from monasticism into secular Christian parishes with no obvious recognition that the obedience it entails is a distinctive feature of monastic life. Thus, Slagle’s converts were able to integrate into their narratives the eventuality of encountering arbitrary expressions of power by clergy, one that in fact enhanced the experience:

In a cultural context in which Christian denomina- tional boundaries appear rather fluid and individuals can with little preparation of serious intent easily at- tach themselves to a telephone book’s listing of different, competing Christian churches at will, this emphasis on spiritual and intellectual readiness coupled with

43 Cf. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philo- sophy, corrected edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), 378: “A dialogue can be sustained only if both participants belong to a community accepting on the whole the same teaching and tradition for judging their own affirmations. A responsible encounter presupposes a common fir- mament of superior knowledge.” 44 Slagle, Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace, 76–83, here at 79. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 273

the fact that conversion is not granted on demand heightens the “spiritual capital” of the Orthodox Church. With an already well-developed ecclesial self- perception of theological and historical singularity conveyed to the convert through books and conversa- tions, the Orthodox Church appears much more serious and distinct among the array of religious options clamoring for attention. Furthermore, a glimmer always remained, however faint, that despite the cate- chumen’s best efforts the conversion may in the end be denied at pastoral discretion. Orthodoxy is presented in these accounts as something rare and hard-won, a treasure to be cherished and savored once one has been officially admitted into its membership ranks.45

As Slagle encountered it, the process of catechesis was only incidentally a matter of teaching and learning the rudi- ments of theology. Instead, it has evolved chiefly into proces- ses that integrate catechumens into the community of the faithful and, so far as practical, test their resolve to remain within that community. “When asked how he recognized this moment of readiness concluding the process of catechesis, Fr. Joseph, again, framed it within the context of wider social integration into the parish…”.46 Further confirmation that catechesis had become a broadly social process, unreliable from an educational perspective, comes from Slagle’s observation that catechesis is perfunctory in cases where marriage to an Orthodox fiancé(e) is the factor motivating the conversion. “Quite simply, intermarriage converts had ready-made familial networks and supports that seeker converts largely lacked.”47 This ex- pectation is echoed memorably in a line from a comic film which presents American Orthodox Christianity with accuracy and tenderness as well as humour, My Big Fat Greek Wed- ding.48 When the Greek American protagonist’s fiancé, Ian, is

45 Ibid., 71–72. 46 Ibid., 72, emphasis added. 47 Ibid., 73–76, here at 74. 48 My Big Fat Greek Wedding, directed by Joel Zwick (Equinoxe Films, 2002), DVD (Maple Pictures, 2002). Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 274 Augustine Cassidy

baptised into the Orthodox Church to facilitate their relationship, his first words to her after baptism are “I’m Greek now.”

Conclusions

The practical re-orientation of catechesis that Slagle describes has several important implications and documents several significant factors, which she notes and upon which I will now make some comments. Even though the practices of cate- chetical socialisation intend to integrate converts into Ortho- dox Christianity, the absence of a standard catechism and persistence of “uneven and wildly divergent” understandings of theology among converts have a profound impact upon the cohesiveness of Orthodox Christianity. The personalised ap- proaches to catechesis Slagle documents can and do reinforce a profound individualism, which is antithetical to the commu- nitarian ethos by which Orthodox Christianity commends itself to would-be converts. This bespoken delivery of spiritual instruction is validated by the assumption that any priest is and should be a spiritual father, an assumption that is regularly voiced but seldom explained, and typically justified with reference to the sanctity of the parish priest rather than to any other qualification that might enable the priest to promote education. It will be recalled, too, that many of the priests interviewed by Slagle resist being identified as spiritual fathers. Instead, they habitually present themselves as pastors who are preoccupied with tending their flocks. Without in any way wishing to devalue the pursuit of that worthy goal through enculturation, I would direct attention to another problem that arises from the practice of accrediting prior study without a controlling frame of an Orthodox catechism. What Slagle reports, and what personal experience and anecdotes indicate to me can be found well beyond Pittsburgh and Jackson, MS, is that idiosyncratic perspectives on Ortho- dox Christianity pass without question or correction. Here, I would recall the extraordinary posture assumed by Frank Schaeffer, who has propagated theological terms with no dis- cernible evidence that he has understood them, and who presents himself in the letters to Fr. Aristotle as if his own Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 275

integration into and participation in Orthodox life authorises him to prescribe directions for Orthodox Christianity as a whole, to scorn formal theology, and to claim exclusive and normative status for his own position. Schaeffer’s published statements and Slagle’s observations about the lack of theological education within Orthodox parishes, taken together, go a great distance to explain why some converts to Orthodox Christianity go on to become eccentric Orthodox theologians, even if they disavow the term (chiefly, I suspect, because – like Schaeffer – they do not want to be held to any particular objective standard qua theology). But there is even evidence that professional theologians who are Orthodox Christians assume that liturgical participation validates their theological claims. I think this assumption can be seen at work in the comments of a prominent Orthodox scholar and cultural critic, David Bentley Hart, who has elsewhere described the trajectory of becoming Orthodox in terms that fit comfortably within the parameters described in Slagle’s research.49 Bentley Hart has attained formal academic qualifications in theology, published numerous monographs and essays, and garnered widespread recognition as an important voice speaking to Ra- dical Orthodoxy from, well, actual Orthodoxy. To date, Hart’s major publication is The Beauty of the Infinite. Following its publication, the Scottish Journal of Theology invited reviews from Francesca Murphy and John Anthony McGuckin and

49 In a moderated debate for a popular radio programme, Hart was asked by the host, Justin Brierley, “What took you in the direction of the Eastern Or- thodox Church?” Hart responded that his training in classics exposed him to the Greek Fathers, building on the patristics scholarship of his traditional Anglicanism; that he was “something of a Russophile”; that the “emphasis on the mystical and the spiritual […] has a centrality in eastern tradition that appealed to me. And I just naturally gravitated in that direction. It wasn’t some sort of great existential crisis. I didn’t break with Anglicanism so much as I seemed simply to move in a direction that made sense to me at every level of my experience.” Justin Brierley, “Unbelievable? The Experience of God – David Bentley Hart & Richard Norman,” 17 January 2014, timestamp 4m52 – 5m48; available on-line at http://www.premierchristianradio.com/ Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/The-Experience-of-God-David- Bentley-Hart-Richard-Norman-Unbelievable (accessed November 22, 2015). Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved 276 Augustine Cassidy

gave Hart the opportunity to respond.50 McGuckin, a leading Orthodox theologian in the English-speaking world, identified the book’s theological problematic as “largely drawn from the dreary agenda of post-Enlightenment Christianity” and failed to recognise the book as a work of Orthodox theology, concluding that “though the book is written by an Orthodox theologian, it is not Orthodox theology; rather one of the best examples to date of Euro-American neo-orthodoxy redivi- vus.”51 Hart responded to this criticism with tart indignation: “I do, I confess, take exception to the claim that the book ‘is not Orthodox theology.’ Of course it is.”52 He does not explain why, or how, but immediately launches upon a rote rehearsal of “many forms over the centuries” taken by Orthodox theology, “all of which have been perfectly legitimate expressions of the Eastern Church’s mind.”53 Hart appends to this list a par- ting comment: “And frankly, I think that the theological idiom to which Orthodox theology has been confined for the last fifty years or so has largely exhausted itself and has become te- diously repetitive. It has also, to a very great extent, done much to distort the Orthodox understanding of the traditions of both East and West.”54 A good case could be made that the neo-patristic “theological idiom” is a spent force, though Hart’s verdict of tedious repetition is more important in the matter at hand: in a few short lines, Hart has asserted without elaboration that his book is a work of Orthodox theology and implied that his level of interest in a theological discourse is publicly meaningful. His summary contradiction of McGuckin’s criticism stands in contrast to the spirited defence he mounts over several pages against Murphy’s review. Hart evidently considered such brief comments all the response that McGuckin’s criticisms re- quired. And yet, citing the many forms of Orthodox theology

50 F. Murphy, “David Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: A Response,” SJT 60 (2007): 80–89; J. McGuckin, “David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the In- finite,” SJT 60 (2007): 90–94; D. Hart, “Response from David Bentley Hart to McGuckin and Murphy,” SJT 60 (2007): 95–101. 51 McGuckin, “David Bentley Hart,” 93. 52 Hart, “Response from David Bentley Hart to McGuckin and Murphy,” 96. 53 Ibid., 96–97. 54 Ibid., 97. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 277

is simple misdirection, for McGuckin specifically criticised Hart’s book for lacking, amongst other things, “a grace-filled intuition of the divine presence.”55 If McGuckin criticised it, for example, for not appearing as a volume of Oxford Early Christian Studies, then Hart’s defence may have been merito- rious. As it stands, however, Hart’s rejoinder strongly suggests that his membership in an Orthodox parish is enough to allow him to express the Eastern Church’s mind and bestows orthodoxy upon his book, pace McGuckin. McGuckin’s remarks, on the other hand, appealed to external standards by which the Orthodoxy of a theological claim could be evaluated. That appeal distinguishes McGuckin’s mode of theology from Schaeffer’s, whose truth claims are validated by their situation within an Orthodox community (rather than by reference to truth). Commitment to theology, not as the representation of a faith community’s beliefs to itself but as a committed statement bearing witness to the truth of things, is by no means inconsistent with the lived experience of Chris- tianity that is advocated so vigorously by Frank Schaeffer and others. By downplaying the theological content of catechesis, the Orthodox Churches run the risk of losing sight of the fidelity to God that attracts so many seekers to it. Disavowing theology that is intellectually-sound, objectively-orientated, communally-accredited, and systematically-articulated can result – indeed, in the case of Schaeffer and others, demon- strably has resulted – in theology that is the assertion of idiosyncratic perspectives on God, the universe, and everything else, founded on nothing more reliable than the would-be theologian’s participation in Orthodox worship. And, thanks to Slagle’s sociological research, it is clear that theological formation is often absent from the process of conversion (which is to say nothing about catechising those who have been members of Orthodox parishes from their youth – another urgent desideratum). The lack of basic, sound theological instruction evident in these two examples of contemporary Orthodoxy is a problem. Such education would provide a powerful check to the flouri-

shing of crass, religiously-themed ideology promulgated by dilettante spiritual guides and self-anointed prophets, by pro- viding a common standard accredited by the faithful. The systematic expression of theology in this mode is by no means the arid, cerebral construct recurrent in crude disavowals of the Western “other.” On the contrary, it can be constantly renewed by living contact with the practice of Christian living. Though it is tempting at this point to resort to that familiar tagline from Evagrius Ponticus, it would perhaps be helpful, in conclusion, to see how this connection is made by someone else. In a fascinating section of his study of personal knowledge, Michael Polanyi took theology as an example of how reflective practice generates systematic knowledge. Thus, con- cerning the origins of systematic theology, Polanyi observes: “The extensive dogmatic framework of Christianity arose from ingenious efforts, sustained through many centuries, to axio- matize the faith already practiced by Christians.”56 Polanyi also identifies the value that theology, thus understood, has for Christians whose faith it expresses: “theology pursued as an axiomatization of the Christian faith has an important analytic task. Though its results can be understood only by practising Christians, it can greatly help them to understand what they are practicing.”57 Fully engaged participation in Christian life be- nefits from reflective practice, which includes (though is not limited to) theological reflection. Polanyi adduces theology as a specific example of the general practice that is central to his book, namely, the accumulation over many lifetimes of sys- tematised knowledge that is grounded in personal commitment to objective truth. For that reason, Polanyi’s generalised statements about personal knowledge ought to accord with theology no less than with chemistry or mechanics. And indeed his characterisation of competent personal knowledge corresponds to the maturation of theological knowledge: “Personal participation changes from an impetuous pouring out of oneself into channels of untried assumptions, into a confident holding of certain conclusions as part of one’s interpretive framework.”58

56 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 286. 57 Ibid., 282. 58 Ibid., 172. Copyright © 2019 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. All Rights Reserved How to Acquire an Orthodox Phronêma in the West 279

Understood in this way, theology is no mere by-product of community membership; drawing from the experiences of membership within that community and from personal commitment to truth, it is an integral component of Christian living and Christian understanding. It is not least by promoting the full involvement of every human faculty that sound theological education plays a vital part in the formation of an Orthodox phronêma.