Volume 50, Nos. 3–4 (2009)

Logos

A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Revue des études de l’Orient chrétien Журнал східньохристиянських студій

This periodical is indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals, the Index to Book Reviews in Religion, Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBRR 1975– on CD- ROM, and in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 300 Wacker Drive, Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606, E-mail: [email protected], WWW: http://www.atla.com

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Revue des études de l’Orient chrétien Журнал східньохристиянських студій

A continuation of Logos: Periodicum Theologiae Trimestre (1950–1983) ISSN 0024–5895 Published by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies and the Yorkton Province of the Ukrainian Redemptorists © 2009 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies

Editor-in-Chief: Andriy Chirovsky (Sheptytsky Institute) Managing Editor: Stephen Wojcichowsky (Sheptytsky Institute) Editor: Adam DeVille Distribution: Lorraine Manley Layout & Design: Key-Co. Enterprises Tel. 613-824-3878 Fax 613-824-9799

Editorial Board Peter Galadza (Sheptytsky Institute), Borys Gudziak (Ukrainian Catholic University), Metropolitan Lawrence Huculak, OSBM (Archeparchy of Winnipeg), John A. Jillions (Sheptytsky Institute), Andrew T. Onuferko (Sheptytsky Institute), Larry Kondra, CSsR (Yorkton Province of the Ukrainian Redemptorists).

International Advisory Board Charles Kannengiesser (retired, Concordia of Montreal), Johannes Madey (retired, Paderborn), Ihor Ševčenko (retired, Harvard), Robert Taft, SJ (retired, Pontifical Oriental Institute), Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (retired, Oxford).

The editors and publishers assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion made by contributors to this journal.

Editorial and subscription offices: Saint Paul University 223 Main Street Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1S 1C4 Tel. 613-236-1393 (ext. 2332) Fax 613-782-3026 Toll-free in North America 1-800-637-6859 (ext. 2332) [email protected] www.ustpaul.ca/sheptytsky

Subscription rate: Canada CDN $45.00 GST included; outside Canada US $40.00 If airmail add US $15.00 Contact [email protected] for airmail and shipping rates

Cover design: Gilles Lepine Logo: Jacques Hnizdovsky

Logos A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Revue des études de l’Orient chrétien Журнал східньохристиянських студій

Volume 50 2009 Nos. 3–4

Table of Contents

Editorial

Without Vision the People Perish: An Appreciation of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Foundation on its Twentieth Anniversary Andriy Chirovsky...... 263

Articles

The Language Of Enemies John A. Jillions...... 271

La théologie des énergies divines: l’enjeu, les dificultés et les perspectives du dialogue entre catholiques et orthodoxes Jean-Claude Larchet...... 369

Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic Stephen P. Scherer ...... 387

Notes, Essays, Lectures

Elements of a Vision for the Effective Synthesis of Universal Primacy and Conciliarity Peter Galadza ...... 413

Logos: Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4 Table of Contents

An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy Adam A.J. DeVille...... 419

“The World as Sacrament” in Alexander Schmemann’s Vision Michael Plekon ...... 429

Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church William C. Mills...... 441

Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” Basilio Petrà ...... 459

Metaphysics and its Role in Christian Division: A Review Essay Discussing David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom David Fleischacker...... 481

Evagrius: Still Confounding, Still Profound Andriy Chirovsky ...... 495

Book Reviews

Ken Parry, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity (Ron Roberson) ...... 509

David N. Bell, Orthodoxy: Evolving Tradition (Adam A.J. DeVille) ...... 514

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) (Edith M. Humphrey)...... 518

Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider eds., Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World Through the Word (Michael Plekon)...... 522

Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine (J. Kevin Coyle) ...... 526

iv Logos: Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4 Table of Contents

Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (Jennifer Spock)...... 530

Kenneth F. Yossa, Common Heritage, Divided Communion: Advances of Inter-Orthodox Relations from Chalcedon to Chambésy (Adam A.J. DeVille)...... 533

Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age, trans Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell (Brandon Gallaher)...... 537

Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Brandon Gallaher)...... 543

Sergius Bulgakov, Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year, trans. Boris Jakim (Marta Samokishyn) ...... 549

Paul Laverdure, Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America 1906–2006 (Jars Balan)...... 552

Roman Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness (William C. Mills) ...... 558

William Riordan, The Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite (Sarah Klitenic Wear)...... 561

Serhii Plokhy, Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past (Myroslaw Tataryn)...... 564

Lorenzo DiTommaso and Lucian Turcescu, eds. The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006 (François Beyrouti)...... 567

v Logos: Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4 Table of Contents

Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Vigen Guroian) ...... 570

Briefly Noted...... 575

Books Received ...... 593

Contributors ...... 597

The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies

Academic Programs, Resources, Books

vi Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 263–270

Without Vision the People Perish: An Appreciation of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Foundation on its Twentieth Anniversary

Twenty years ago, during the Labour Day weekend of 1989, a group of visionaries met in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to found the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Founda- tion (MASIF). They were determined to set a course for the future of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the western world. Each of the five Ukrainian Catholic eparchies of Canada would send a representative:

• Eparchy of New Westminster, British Columbia: Orest Smysniuk • Eparchy of Edmonton, Alberta: Peter Kule • Eparchy of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Mary Cherneskey • Archeparchy of Winnipeg, Manitoba: Eugene Cherwick and Fr. Jaroslav Radkewycz • Eparchy of Toronto: Luba Zaraska and Ihor Bardyn

In addition, there would be representatives from the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Catholics and the St. Sophia Socie- ty. These two organizations, however, did not continue to attend the meetings of the foundation. As founder and first director of the Sheptytsky Institute, I was also present. The meeting was opened by its convener, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk, the archbishop of Winnipeg, who explained that the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy of Canada had accepted the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of East- ern Christian Studies under its aegis and was proceeding with 264 Andriy Chirovsky

negotiations to relocate the Institute from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago (where it had been founded in 1986) to Saint Paul University in Ottawa. This effort was proclaimed the official project of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada to mark the centennial of Ukrainian settlement in Canada, which was rapidly approaching. The singularly amazing fact is that this Church decided not to build a monument or dedicate a building somewhere to the commemoration of the great courage and determination of those Ukrainian pioneers who were so responsible for the settling of the Canadian prairies. This is what was expected. A bricks-and-mortar approach to things had long established itself as the preferred modus operandi. Instead, recognizing the challenges that the Church faced and the needs of their people, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops of Canada decided to invest in the intellectual and spiritual formation of human beings. Let us remember some of the context. In September 1989, the Soviet Union was still in existence. The Ukrainian Greco- Catholic Church in Ukraine was still a completely illegal entity. There was no theological faculty anywhere in the world that was sponsored and directed by Ukrainian Catholics, whose candidates for the priesthood had to do their theological education in Roman Catholic institutions, which may have been friendly and supportive, but were not offering a genuine theological immersion in the Eastern Christian tradition. To strike out into this field was risky business. Perhaps the un- daunted pioneers who had left everything familiar and comfortable in order to venture out into the “last, best west” of Canada had prayed up a storm. They had arrived in the wilder- ness of western Canada with nary a roof over their heads, and they had made a go of it. Now, perhaps, they were egging on their descendants to venture out into similarly unfamiliar territory with the Sheptytsky Institute. In September of 1989, the Sheptytsky Institute was a tiny undertaking with big dreams. Three rather successful summer programs at Holy Transfiguration (Mount Tabor) Monastery in Redwood Valley, California, had demonstrated that there was indeed demand for accredited, university-level education in Eastern Christian studies. Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk had Editorial 265

been watching the developments with keen interest. He kept in touch with me as the institute’s founder, in order to remain well-informed. In fact, in those early years, it seems, Metropo- litan Maxim was the only hierarch in the Ukrainian Catholic Church who took the Sheptytsky Institute seriously. This was unfortunate but not surprising because the institute was at best a fledgling enterprise. That is why Metropolitan Maxim’s ability to see the potential of the Sheptytsky Institute is something that deserves mention and gratitude. But the story of the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation goes far beyond the vision of Metropolitan Maxim and his brother bishops. It is the story, first of all, of great generosity and dedication on the part of the laypeople who have always made up the majority of its members. The bishops never chose to become members of the foundation or to have any guaranteed seats for themselves on its board of directors. They decided instead to entrust this work to a group of very gifted and very giving individuals. All the members of the board have received the blessing of their own bishop to participate in this important undertaking. The story of Peter and Doris Kule and their deep philanthropic engagement with the Sheptytsky Institute and its Foundation have moved into the realm of both legend and history.1 Their funding of two endowed chairs (with no government matching programs or anything of the like to lessen the load) was an integral part of the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation’s overall achievement. There can be no doubt that it fostered trust in the Institute from both Saint Paul University and the general public, who were called upon to further fund the Institute’s development. The Kules, however, were not simply passive donors who made an incredibly generous donation and let others sweat out the details. Since the very beginning, Peter and Doris Kule have attended all meetings of the board, except when impeded

1 A recently published book gives a broad picture of the educational endowments created by Peter and Doris Kule, starting from the Sheptytsky In- stitute, but continuing throughout a number of post-secondary institutions across Canada. See Serge Cipko and Natalie Kononenko, eds., Champions of Philanthropy: Peter and Doris Kule and their Endowments (Edmonton and Ottawa: Kule Endowment Group, 2009), 27–39.

266 Andriy Chirovsky

by a hospital stay. Peter Kule, a gifted accountant, would meti- culously peruse every financial statement and look through the numbers regarding past performance or future expectation from the investment committee. Working out sums, percenta- ges, and other formulae in his head, he could outdo the occasional calculator brought to the table by others. And then came his own work in the Edmonton Eparchy, where he tirelessly approached both individuals and organizations to have them invest in the enterprise of forming leaders for the future. A special place in the history of the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation will always be reserved for its founding president, Eugene Cherwick. At the helm of the organization for all but three of its first twenty years, the representative of the Winnipeg archeparchy was always a key figure in the growth of MASIF and its relationship with Saint Paul University. Painstakingly attentive to the need for good lines of communication with the hierarchy and especially with the three metropolitans under whom he served, Eugene Cherwick donated untold hours of his expertise and his negotiating skills to ensure that the Sheptytsky Institute would have the best possible situation in the ever-developing arrangement with Saint Paul University. A fixture in the advisory committee that oversees the smooth working of this relationship, Eugene Cherwick has always brought his business savvy and his passion for the institute’s mission to bear on each negotiation, large or small. It is no wonder that Eugene is welcomed by the university administration both as a friend of the university and a knowledgeable advocate for the institute. Eugene Cherwick also served on numerous occasions as an advisor and confidante to the Directors of the Sheptytsky Institute. The level of his dedication to the Institute can hardly be described. Eugene has dedicated himself to many cultural, educational and fraternal and religious causes over the more than two decades since he sold his own profitable business and became a “professional volunteer.” They all have benefited from his leadership. But the Sheptytsky Institute would hardly be where it is at today without Eugene Cherwick so faithfully and so enduringly at the helm of its Foundation. Certainly, his long-suffering wife Lillian would have seen more of him in the last two decades! To them both the Sheptytsky Institute owes a deep debt of gratitude. Editorial 267

One of the greatest achievements of the Sheptytsky Insti- tute Foundation was the working out of a fruitful funding relationship with Saint Paul University. A carefully negotiated agreement between the parties spells out who is responsible for funding which parts of the institute’s programs. MASIF holds the endowments of the Sheptytsky Institute and makes periodic donations to Saint Paul University to assist with the budget of the institute. To date some eleven million dollars have flowed to the foundation with nearly five million having been donated to Saint Paul University. The balance is invested by the foundation to produce income out of which will come future donations to the university to support the institute. In order to accomplish its goal of supporting the operation and development of the Sheptytsky Institute, immediately after its establishment, MASIF sought and received registration as a federally recognized charitable organization, from both the Ca- nadian and United States governments. This status brings with it clear benefits for donors and for the management of the foundation’s assets. It also brings with it strict reporting and accounting requirements. The officers of the foundation have done an outstanding job in this regard over two decades. In 1996 a parallel group, American Friends of the Sheptytsky In- stitute, based in Chicago, and headed by Dr. Andrew Browar, merged with the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation. Much of the legal work involved in the incorporation of the foundation, its charitable registration and the agreements with Saint Paul Uni- versity were worked out by Toronto attorney Ihor Bardyn, whose efforts were so appreciated by the university that he was appointed to their council of administration by then-rector Dale Schlitt. This was an important sign of recognition both for the foundation and for Mr. Bardyn personally. MASIF rightly concentrates its efforts on issues of the development and management of the institute’s endowments. It has never been the case, however, that the board of directors limited itself to these matters. Intensely interested in the concrete activity of the institute, the board members tirelessly engage themselves in understanding every aspect of the institute’s work. Detailed reports on both the academic and ad- 268 Andriy Chirovsky

ministrative sides of the institute are received and actively discussed at each board meeting. The director of the institute has always been present for each meeting of the foundation. When I, as institute founder, stepped down from the position of director for reasons of health in 2002, I was graciously given a permanent seat on the board. From that point on the acting director, Fr. Andrew Onuferko and then the current director, Fr. Stephen Wojcichowsky took over the role of reporting to the foundation (and through them to the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy of Canada). These reports offer a broad picture of the institute’s work and will remain a critical resource for historians. At MASIF meetings they serve to assist the Board in understanding at some depth the mission and the breadth of activities of the Sheptytsky Institute. Each eparchial representative is the focal point of communication between the community at large and the institute and foundation. Various eparchial representatives have made their mark in many ways, dedicating extensive time and energy to the effort. Whether it is organizing local events in the various provinces of Canada and venues in the United States, contac- ting and assisting donors with various questions, helping to find the best avenue for donation in particular cases, or performing such mundane tasks as tracking down addresses, the eparchial representatives have expended incredible efforts in some cases. One might call to mind such labours as that of Mrs. Mary Cherneskey, who single-handedly pulled together the address lists of all of the Ukrainian Catholic parishes of Saskatchewan for the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation, and as a fruit of her labours presented her own bishop with the first full mailing list of his eparchy. She thus enabled her own bishop to communicate effectively with his faithful, while providing the Sheptytsky Institute Foundation with a list of potential donors. Because the Sheptytsky Institute foundation has never had so much as a single collection in the churches of the various eparchies, mail communication was extremely important to inform the faithful of the Ukrainian Catholic Church across Canada about this official project of their Church. Of course, such mailing lists (more complete for some eparchies than others) have always been zealously protected from any untoward ex- Editorial 269

ploitation and in more recent years the Canadian government’s privacy guidelines were adopted in order to further protect such mailing lists and all donor information. No address lists have ever been rented or sold to outside agencies. The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Foundation is more than just an organization doing business on behalf of the Sheptytsky Institute: it has become a family. When MASIF veterans gather, they see in each other’s faces a deep affection that has grown out of facing enormous challenges and meeting them together, year after year. New members are continually added to the roster. Some are there for a year or two, but others have dedicated themselves tirelessly for a decade or more. Luba Zaraska of Toronto has found ingenious ways to support the mission of the institute from the beginning right up to the present. Ed Hladunewich of Edmonton served as president for three years and has been on the board for many more. Walter Bilous dedicated himself to bringing the archives into top- notch condition, and Susanna Letwin continues. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the many professional ac- countants who have produced MASIF financial statements and filed our charitable returns over two decades. Several bishops, including Stefan Soroka (now metropolitan of Philadelphia) and David Motiuk, have been elected to the board of directors. Recently, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops of Canada have decided to have an official liaison in the person of Bishop Stephen Chmilar. Whenever possible over the years, the board has tried to meet with the entire Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy of Canada. Metropolitans Maxim and Michael attended the meetings regularly, even though they chose not to be elected members. Every Ukrainian Catholic bishop is heartily welcomed to any meeting. Moreover, on many occasions the rector of Saint Paul University has made the effort to attend personally and offer greetings and thanks from the university administration. Additionally, the rector of Holy Spirit Seminary is always invited to board meetings given the important “feeder” relationship of seminary students into the institute. Both institutions, though clearly distinct, are the only two national projects of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. 270 Andriy Chirovsky

The foundation has a tradition of holding a festive dinner on the occasion of the annual general meeting. Since meetings, in recent years have most often been held in Ottawa, this af- fords the opportunity to foster excellent relations with top offi- cials of the university, the chancellor (who is always the current archbishop of Ottawa), and the teaching and support staff of the Sheptytsky Institute. This is an occasion for the foundation to thank the indefatigable staff of the institute for all the work they do behind the scenes. These labours make possible not only the educational efforts of the institute, but also the development work of the foundation. The foundation has also created a Friends of MASI/ MASIF association whose purpose is to assist the eparchial directors at the parish level in promotion and development work. In the last few years the creation of an alumni association has become a priority. Such a group will be invaluable in encouraging future religious vocations and promoting post-graduate studies at the institute. This is but the beginning of the story of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Foundation. There are many more individual names without whom the chronicles of this entirely volunteer organization would be incomplete. Let this first attempt at telling their tale be accepted as the tip of the iceberg. To the president, the founding members, and to all who have given selflessly of themselves to further the aims of the Metro- politan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute Foundation, including all the donors who have entrusted their generosity to the guidance of the board of directors, God grant life, health, visitation of the Holy Spirit, and keep and protect them for many blessed years: Многая літа!

Andriy Chirovsky Founder of the Sheptytsky Institute Editor-in-Chief

® ® ® ® Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 271–367

The Language Of Enemies

John A. Jillions

Abstract (Українське резюме на ст. 366)

Love of enemies is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Yet, the Scriptures and liturgy of the Orthodox Church, and the patristic literature on which they draw, are striking in their use of hostile and uncompromising language when speaking of enemies – both spiritual and actual or personal. This article reviews such language in the Bible; the writings of Justin Martyr, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysos- tom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia; and in liturgical services, Baptism especially. All of this has spawned a legacy of anathemas that the author seeks to analyze and understand through the work of Jaroslav Pelikan and Elaine Pagels. Having done that, the author, in part 2, informally surveys numerous Eastern Christians today to gauge their attitudes toward this language of enemies, and then gives special attention to those who see ecumenists as the most dangerous enemies of the Orthodox Church today. The author then introduces the work of conflict theorist Vern Redekop as a useful framework to understand this process and how “structures of blessing” can be created to overcome entrenched conflicts and “structures of violence.” The author argues that Redekop’s approach not only seems more congruent with the boundary- crossing and peacemaking characteristic of Jesus, but also challenges today’s Orthodox to re-think their language and positions vis-à-vis their contemporary “enemies,” especially those ecumenists devoted to Christian unity.

®®®®®®®®

272 John A. Jillions

Part 1: “Enemies” in Orthodox Scriptural, Patristic and Liturgical Traditions1

1.1 Introduction

In the 1980’s a friend of mine was a student at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. Going into the chapel one day, he noticed that someone – he suspected a Serbian student – had inserted a penciled letter “r” into the sign “Please Hang Coats Downstairs.” It now read, “Please Hang Croats Down- stairs.” This was taken as a little black humour at the time, but it arguably reminds one of an all-too-prevalent attitude towards enemies widely attested in the Eastern Orthodox world. This often has to do with phyletism, the nationalism which infects and takes over ecclesial life in many parts of the Orthodox world and depicts ecclesial life as the preserve of “our kind” at best, and at worst views outsiders as enemies. Such an outlook is what makes it possible for Russian Orthodox zealots, for example, to make common cause with Russian atheists and former communists against foreigners. Or as an Arabic saying puts it, “I and my brother are against my cousin. But I and my cousin are against the outsider.” This tendency to demonize outsiders was a key observation made by Victoria Clark in Why Angels Fall: A Journey Through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo. There was much in Orthodoxy she found attractive and arresting – to her surprise – but its enemy-mongering remains a pervasive and ugly feature.

That heinous religious nationalism, with its persecution and martyr complexes and longing for death and suffering, that targeting of enemies and dangerously emotive habit of spinning pretty patterns from the past – mythologies instead of histories – will have to go.2

1 I am grateful Dr. Paul Meyendorff and Dr. Albert Rossi, of Saint Vla- dimir’s Seminary, and also to my wife, Denise Jillions, for their comments and advice that went into writing this article. 2 Victoria Clark, Why Angels Fall: A Journey Through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), The Language Of Enemies 273

“Outsiders” like Clark are not the only ones to observe this phenomenon. In reflecting on the start of the third millennium of Christianity, Metropolitan John Zizioulas hopes we can get beyond the tragic polemics of the second millennium:

Especially the second millennium has witnessed a polemic and hatred among Christians previously unheard of in history. There is little point in trying to prove who is to be blamed for that. Our Desert Fathers have always taught us that we should always blame ourselves for the sins of all the others. Today there is a tendency among the Orthodox to stress the responsibility of the western Christians for the evil of division and for the wrongs done to the Orthodox Church by our Western brothers. History is, of course, clear in witnessing to the fact of a great deal of aggressiveness against the Orthodox on the part of the West. Deep however in the tragic reality of Christian division lies also an inability of the Orthodox to overcome and rise above the psychology of polemic in a true spirit of forgiveness and love. Confessional zeal has often proved stronger than forgiveness and love. The second millennium has been in this respect almost an unfortunate period of the Church’s history.3

While I agree with these observations, I believe that before entrenched Orthodox hostility towards others can be dismissed as passé, more needs to be understood about the pervasive enemies language in the tradition of the Church and today. I am particularly concerned here with how Orthodox view what might be called “theological enemies” – people and groups perceived as threats to the Church. This is of special interest because ecumenism is the single most volatile issue in

414. Similar observations are found in William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (London: Flamingo, 1998). 3 Metropolitan John (Zizioulas), “The Orthodox Church and the Third Millennium,” (Balamand Monastery, Dec 9, 1999): http://www.balamand. edu.lb/theology/ZizioulasLecture.htm. 274 John A. Jillions

the Orthodox Church today. Although opponents of ecumenism are often painted as unreasonable, sectarian fanatics, I believe both they and their opponents share the same framework of enemies that can be traced in an unbroken line from the Scriptures to the present.

1.2 Enemies in Scripture

1.2.1 The Old Testament

Scriptural references to enemies and violence are abun- dant, but it is God-commanded violence against enemies in the Old Testament that causes the most consternation to many faithful. This is especially troubling in the post-9/11 era. This reaction to the violence of the Old Testament is not new, and is what led Marcion in the second century to postu- late that the bloody God of the Old Testament (“the God of Creation”) could not possibly be the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. His complete discarding of the Old Testament (and the most Jewish elements of the New Testament) was attacked by Fathers of the Church (e.g., Origen, Clement, Irenaeus, Chry- sostom) even long after he passed from the scene. They all insisted on the unity of the two covenants and the need to interpret the Old Testament revelation in the light of the full revelation in Christ. This could mean re-interpretation as typology or allegory, but it was clear to them that old teaching gave way to the new. Their continuing concern about Marcio- nism in their writings is testimony to the seductiveness of his argument. Here are some of his “Antitheses” related to enemies.4

3. Joshua conquered the land with violence and terror; but Christ forbade all violence and preached mercy and peace.

4. The prophet of the God of Creation, when the people were engaged in battle, climbed to the moun-

4 Marcion (c.140), as reconstructed by A. von Harnack, in Wayne Meeks, ed. The Writings of St Paul (New York: Norton, 1972), 188–90. The Language Of Enemies 275

tain peak and extended his hands to God, imploring that he kill as many as possible in the battle [cf. Exod. 17:8ff] but our Lord, the good, extended his hands [on the cross] not to kill men, but to save them.

10. The prophet of the God of creation, in order to kill as many as possible in battle, kept the sun from going down until he finished annihilating those who made war on the people [Josh. 10:12ff]. But the Lord, being good, says: ‘Let not the sun go down on your anger’ [Eph. 4:26].

12. The creator, at the request of Elijah, sent the plague of fire [2 Kings 1:9–12]; Christ however for- bids the disciples to beseech fire from heaven [Luke 9:51ff].

24. In the Law God says, “Love him who loves you and hate your enemy [cf. Lev. 19:18 and Matt. 5:43]; our Lord, the good, says ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (cf. Luke 6:1ff].

Enemies language bothers many Christians, and there are churches (including Orthodox parishes), which now edit their use of the Bible – the Psalms mainly – when encountering texts that are too brutal for modern sensibilities. This includes verses such as “blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” (Ps. 136/137:9), sung so prominently in the Orthodox tradition in the pre-Lenten season. Some churches add helpful comments to problematic verses like this one from sext: “Let death come upon them, and let them fall into Hades alive” (Ps. 54/55:15). At this point The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship adds a footnote: “the Church has traditionally interpreted such statements alle- gorically to refer not to human enemies but to the ultimate enemy, the devil, as well as our own destructive thoughts and passions.”5

5 Peter Galadza, ed., The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship (Ottawa: Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute, 2004), 77. 276 John A. Jillions

In the Bible the word “enemy” is most often is used to translate ἐχθρὸς (echthros) in its various forms, though “foe” and “adversary” are also used occasionally (the RSV translation of Ps. 109/110:1–2 uses “enemy” and then “foe”). It occurs 487 times in the Bible, of which the vast majority are in the Old Testament, with only 32 occurrences in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, almost a quarter of all the occurrences (104) are in the Psalms alone. As for ἀντίδικος (antidikos, “adversary, accuser”), it is much more rare (9 times in LXX, and 6 in New Testament). This word has a legal connotation and is used of an opponent in a suit, either a de- fendant or plaintiff (Matt. 5:25 and parallel in Luke 12:58 and 18:3). It is also used of the devil as the Adversary (1 Pet. 5:8). However, Σατανάς (satanas), literally “the Adversary,” is more prominent than either of these other terms for enemy in the New Testament and occurs 36 times.6 This should underline the argument that spiritual warfare is at the heart of the New Testament concept of enemies. This is not the place for a full analysis of the Old Testa- ment use of this language but it should be noted that treatment of enemies is not without a degree of compassion (Ex. 23:4–5), a warning against triumphalism (Prov. 24:17–18), and a plea to respond to enemies with good (Prov. 25:21). This, however, is not the main theme. The dominant Old Testament concern is to protect at all costs the national and religious integrity of mono- theistic Israel against its enemies, and the greatest threat was idolatry. Nothing was more important, as the first two commandments insisted:7

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall

6 Matt. 4:10, 12:26, 16:23; Mark 1:13, 3:23, 3:26, 4:15, 8:3; Luke 10:18, 11:18, 13:16, 22:3, 22:3; John 13:27; Acts 5:3, 26:18; Rom. 16:20; 1Cor. 5:5, 7:5; 2Cor. 2:11, 11:14, 12:7; 1Thes. 2:18; 2Thes. 2:9; 1Tim. 1:20, 5:15; Rev. 2:9, 2:13, 2:24, 3:9, 12:9, 20:2, 20:7. 7 There is some variety in the numbering of these commandments. Exo- dus 20:1–6 is 3 commandments (Jewish), 2 commandments (Philo, Josephus, Greek Fathers, most Protestants) or 1 commandment (Roman Catholics and Lutherans). The Language Of Enemies 277

have no other gods before me…. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments (Ex. 20:2–3,6).8

Tolerance and compassion toward enemies does not extend to those who are perceived to threaten the existence of Israel and of these core values. Thus, for example, the story of Phinehas becomes important in every generation as a parable about zealously combating threats from domestic enemies (Numb. 25:10–13); cf. Ps. 105/106:30; 1 Macc. 2:26, 2:54; 4 Macc. 18:12; Sir. 45:23–24). It is worthwhile at this point to see how the story of Phinehas treats the enemies of Israel.

1. The people of Israel become too comfortable with the idolatry of their Moabite neighbours.

25:1 While Israel dwelt in Shittim the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. 25:2 These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate, and bowed down to their gods. 25:3 So Israel yoked himself to Ba’al of Pe’or.

2. The Lord is angry and orders Moses to punish the leaders who have allowed this to happen.

And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel; 25:4 and the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them in the sun before the LORD, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.”

8 Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations are taken from the RSV text of Bible Windows (Silver Mountain Software, 2001) and Psalm numbering follows the Hebrew text. 278 John A. Jillions

3. Moses orders that all the offending men be put to death.

25:5 And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you slay his men who have yoked themselves to Ba’al of Pe’or.”

4. One of the men (named in 25:14 as Zimri) bra- zenly defies Moses publicly even while everyone else is weeping penitently.

And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Mid’ianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting.

5. Phinehas is stunned by this defiance, grabs a spear, marches into the tent and kills both of them with one thrust.

25:7 When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his hand 25:8 and went after the man of Israel into the inner room, and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body. Thus the plague was stayed from the people of Israel. 25:9 Nevertheless those that died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.

6. And behold God blesses Phinehas, whose action has saved Israel from God’s wrath.

25:10 And the LORD said to Moses, 25:11 ‘“Phin’ehas the son of Elea’zar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people The Language Of Enemies 279

of Israel in my jealousy. 25:12 Therefore say, – Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace; 25:13 and it shall be to him, and to his descendants after him, the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God, and made atone- ment for the people of Israel.’”

This example was taken throughout later Jewish history as a model of zeal for maintaining the fidelity of Israel to their God and His commandments. Indeed, Sirach places Phinehas as “the third in glory” after Moses and Aaron, “for he was zea- lous in the fear of the Lord, and stood fast, when the people turned away, and in the goodness of his soul, and made atone- ment for Israel” (Sir. 45:23).

1.2.2 The New Testament

As can be seen in Paul’s early life as a persecutor, the Phinehas model was very much alive in first century Judaism. But Christians resisted this approach. Had not Jesus prayed from the cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”? Indeed, Jesus had gone so far as to teach love of enemies (Matt. 5:43), to insist that his disciples “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39). Hadn’t Judas, the arch-betrayer, been a member of Christ’s inner band of apostles? Had not Jesus implied that faithful and unfaithful would live together, and God would sort them one from another at the Last Judgment? (Matt. 13:24–30; 36–43). Had He not resisted the demand from His disciples to “bid fire come down from heaven and consume” the Samari- tans who rejected Him? (Luke 9:51–55). “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the son of man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them” (Luke 9:56). They had seen Jesus in Gethsemane refusing to fight his enemies. They had seen him before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate offering no resistance. And Stephen, the first Christian martyr, following His example as the crowd stoned him to death while Saul looked on approvingly, says, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). 280 John A. Jillions

But how was this tolerance and love of enemies to be understood in a rising tide of external and internal threats to the existence and welfare of the infant Church? It became increasingly clear that, while doing away with physical violence toward enemies, this did not mean that enemies should be welcomed into the Christian community or allowed to remain. This raised two essential questions. First, who are the enemies? Second what must be done with them? While most enemies could be given the benefit of Christ’s teaching on forgiveness and non-resistance to evil, the same could not be said of those perceived to be a threat to the self-understanding of the nascent Church. Of these, the most dangerous were the internal enemies, the “false brethren,” and for these there could be no quarter: they could expect nothing but the full onslaught of Phinehas’s metaphorical spear. Naturally, mistakes would be made as the new Church began to sort out those who were enemies from those who were not. The Corinthians had splintered by over-zealously aligning themselves too narrowly with various nuances Paul regarded as trivial (1 Cor. 1:10ff; 3:3ff).9 As far as he is concerned these are not real enemies. If there is any enemy here it is their inclination to absolutize their claims. Without bother- ing to unravel these competing claims he just tells them to stop this bickering. On the other hand, Paul rebukes them sharply for the public immorality they have tolerated in their midst. This was a real threat and Paul demands that they take strong action to “Drive out the wicked person from among you” (1 Cor. 5:13, citing a constant theme in Deut. [17:7, 19:19, 22:21, 22, 24; 24:7]). He might not have labelled the miscreant as an enemy (cf. 2 Thes. 3:15), but he certainly acted swiftly to protect the community from the perceived threat. Likewise in Galatia, there had been major confusion over who the real enemy was. The Galatians were treating Paul as the enemy (Gal. 4:16), when Paul insists they should open their eyes and see

9 See John Jillions, “Love and Curses: Searching Saint Paul for a Vision of Ecumenism,” Sobornost 20 (1998): 49–63, where it is argued that Paul, while fully capable of excluding people he regards as threats to the community, is essentially inclusive and sets the boundaries of Christianity very wide. The Language Of Enemies 281

the threat of the Judaizers they so admire. In fact, this was the most severe test the early Church faced. But deciding who was the enemy at that early stage was not easy. Was it the tradition of the Jewish Christians, with their links to James and the original apostles? Or was it the innovations of Paul and his gospel? I would like to look more closely now at the New Testa- ment language of enemies, because this is the primary background for the liturgical texts of baptism and their patristic interpretation. The first use of enemies language in the New Testament (in the canonical order we have now) is Matt. 5:43– 44: “You have heard that it was said, – ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This verse combines both awareness of enemies as a fact of life (cf. Luke 19:43), with the maximal teaching of how the follower of Christ is to treat them. Indeed, Sophrony Sakharov (following Saint Silouan of Athos) labelled this as the central teaching of Jesus in the New Testament. St. Silouan understood “enemies” to be anyone who is different and therefore presents a challenge to our way of thinking, including those who are openly opposed to Christ and the Church.10 Jesus consistently pushed the disciples to think beyond the conventional boundaries of “neighbour,” which then – as now – was commonly understood as a “member of one’s group or fellowship, one’s village or town, one’s religion or nation, one’s tribe or race.”11 It is striking that Jesus most often points to people outside the boundaries of Israel when he wants to give an example of faith: the centurion, the Syrophoenecian woman, the good Samaritan. Most offensively for Jews accustomed to being the only chosen people, Jesus summarizes this teaching in Matt. 8:11 (Luke 13:29): “I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be

10 See for example Archimandrite Sophrony, Wisdom from Mount Athos: the Writings of Staretz Silouan 1866–1938, trans. Rosemary Edmonds (London/Oxford: Mowbrays, 1974), 33–36. 11 R.E. Brown et al., eds., The Jerome Biblical Commentary (JBC) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968), 43:41. 282 John A. Jillions

thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” Luke adds: “And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (13:30). It was precisely this teaching that there is a wider community of neighbours – or more sharply, that the truly faithful are outside the boundaries of Israel – which led to his first brush with death at the very start of his public ministry:

And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Eli’jah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and Eli’jah was sent to none of them but only to Zar’ephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Eli’sha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Na’aman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. But passing through the midst of them he went away (4:24–30).

In due course I will return to Matt. 5:43 to look at how the word “hate” is used, but for now we continue with examining the enemies language of the New Testament. Two primary questions need to be asked. First, who are the enemies? And second, how are they to be treated?

1.2.2.a Who are the Enemies?

The most frequent New Testament use of the word “enemies” is the seven times it is quoted from Psalm 109/110:1, which in turn is the most frequently quoted Old Testament verse (Matt. 22:44; see also Mark 12:36, Luke 20:43, Acts 12:35, 1 Cor. 15:25, Heb. 1:13, 10:13). For this reason alone it merits closer examination. The Language Of Enemies 283

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet’? If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did any one dare to ask him any more questions (Matt. 22:41–46).

These verses from the Psalm were the leading messianic co- nundrum, and Jesus and the early Christians understood them as pointing to the divine sonship of the Christ. This messianic interpretation is thus the main focus of this text in the New Testament, although Paul gives some attention to the “enemies” in this verse, saying that “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” and that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25–26; cf. Heb. 2:14–15). Jus- tin Martyr likewise quotes this verse and emphasizes that it prophesies that Christ would subdue “his enemies the devils.”12 Elsewhere in the New Testament this latter interpretation predominates, but there are others. Below is a list of the various enemies to be found in the New Testament.

1. The Devil and his human offspring • But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away…. He said to them, – ‘An enemy has done this…’ and the enemy who sowed them is the devil (Matt. 13:25–28; 13:39) • Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you (Luke 10:19)

12 Justin, First Apology 45, in A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, eds., Ante- Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867), II:45. 284 John A. Jillions

• So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, rule their households, and give the enemy no occasion to revile us (1Tim. 5:14) • Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary (¢ντίδικος, antidikos) the devil prowls around like a roaring lion (1 Pet. 5:8) • You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? (Acts 13:10) 2. Those who hate us (see also below 1.2.2.b, hate speech) • Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people … as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us; … to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear (Luke 1:68–71, 1:74) • A man’s foes will be those of his own household (Matt. 10:36) 3. Death • The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1Cor. 15:26) 4. Those who tell us the truth • Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? (Gal. 4:16) 5. A “friend of the world” is an “enemy of God” • Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friend- ship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (Jas. 4:4) 6. We were all enemies of God, but Christ has reconciled us to God • For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life (Rom. 5:10). The Language Of Enemies 285

7. The Jews are now enemies of the gospel, but they remain God’s elect • As regards the gospel they are enemies of God, for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers (Rom. 11:28)13 8. Those Christians who live in a manner contrary to Paul’s example as a follower of the crucified Christ • Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us [Paul and Timothy]. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil. 3:18) 9. Paul makes it clear that mere sinfulness does not turn a brother into an enemy. Indeed, in even his fiercest letter – to the Galatians – he continues to call his recipients “brothers” (Gal. 6:18) • Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother (2 Thes. 3:15)

1.2.2.b Hate Speech

To return again to Matt. 5:43, Jesus refers to what might be called “hate speech” today. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’” However, one looks in vain in the Old Testament for a statement about hating one’s enemy. The Jerome Biblical Com- mentary notes that Jesus was most likely representing “the popular understanding of the love of one’s neighbour: no one

13 The “woe to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites” and “brood of vipers” passages in Matt. 23 should be noted here, although they do not speak of Jews as enemies. This vitriolic language was misused in Christian history but its alleged anti-semitism must be seen in its first-century context as no more harsh than earlier prophets (e.g., Ezek. 34). Louis Feldman, a prominent Jewish scholar of the New Testament, also notes that this must be understood in the context of a fragile minority Christian community fighting for its life against a much more powerful first-century Judaism. Such passages become much darker when applied later against an embattled Jewish minority fighting for its life. See Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). For more on Byzantine attitudes towards Jews see below at 1.7. 286 John A. Jillions

needs to be instructed to hate his enemies.”14 Nevertheless, there is plenty about “hate” in the Bible. The word “hate” (μισέω, miseo) in its various forms occurs 182 times in the Old Testament and 40 times in the New Testament. In the Psalms it is often used as a synonym of “enemy” as “those who hate you” (e.g. Ps. 21:8, 25:19, 44:7). Since the Psalms have the highest concentration of such language they can provide a useful survey of how “hate” is understood.

1. Most often hate is in the passive: it is something others inflict upon the psalmist unjustly (Ps. 9:13, 18:17, 25:19, 35:19, 38:19, 41:7, 69:4, 109:3). There are also instances where the Psalms picture God as punishing His own people by bringing the hate of others upon them (Ps. 105:25, 106:41). 2. The righteous will find out who hate them (Ps. 21:8), but it is God who requites the enemies (Ps. 34:21), puts them to shame and confusion (Ps. 44:7, 83:2, 86:17, 129:5) and destroys them (Ps. 18:40, 68:1, 85:1, 89:23, 118:7). 3. God and His faithful servants hate evil, evildoers, ido- laters, the violent, “double-minded men” and all who hate God and his commandments (Ps. 5:5, 11:5, 31:6, 36:2, 45:7, 97:10, 101:3, 119:104, 119:113, 119:128, 119:163, 120:6) and hate any association with these people (Ps. 26:5).

For the most part, the psalmist is not speaking of offensive hatred: he is on the receiving end of unjust hatred as a result of his desire to follow God. He identifies totally with God and with what God desires, and this makes him an implacable foe of all that is opposed to God and His commandments. It is impossible for him to be indifferent to these enemies of God. “Do I not hate them that hate thee, O LORD? And do I not loathe them that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies” (Ps. 139:21–22). It is easy to

14 JBC: 43:41. The Language Of Enemies 287

see how seductive this could be and how easily this language could transform “my” enemy into God’s enemy deserving of execration. In the gospels, hate language is much less prominent and is mostly associated with the unjust hatred experienced by Jesus and his disciples. Matt. 10:22 and John 15 are typical, in which Jesus warns his disciples of the fierce hatred that they – like He – will have to endure: “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22 cf. Mark 13:13; see also Matt. 24:9, Luke 6:22, 21:17; John 15:18, 15:19, 17:14). Nowhere in the gospels is this theme of being hated more developed than in John. The disciples are to anticipate this hatred and know that it is proof of their own faithfulness to Christ and of the world’s evil works. John acknowledges that:

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil (7:7).

He who hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It is to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause’ [Ps. 39:19; 69:4] (15:23–25).

This implacable hatred of Christ and His disciples is because “every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (3:20; cf. 1 John 3:11–12). Here, it is understood that hatred of Christ and his disciples is by definition hatred of God, goodness and light. Less prominently, the New Testament uses “hate” in two other related senses:

1. In the face of this persecution the disciples will not fare well. Indeed, they will turn on each other: “And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another” (Matt. 24:10). 288 John A. Jillions

2. The absolute allegiance of the gospel (just as to the Torah in the past) means that everything and everyone else must be hated in comparison.

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (Matt. 6:24, cf. Luke 16:13).

If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26; cf. John 12:25).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, “hate” language follows the patterns found in the gospels. We have haters of God and of good (Rom. 1:31, 2 Tim. 3:3), exhortations to “hate what is evil” (Rom. 12:9) just as God himself hates lawlessness (Heb. 1:9). Followers of Christ can expect to be hated, because “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived” (2 Tim. 3:12–13; cf. 1 John 3:13). The letter to Titus depicts Christians as having escaped from a pagan world where everyone hates everyone else (3:3). John is especially forceful in asserting that hate of one’s brother and love of God cannot be held together at the same time.

• He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still (2:9) • He who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes (2:11) • Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (3:15) • If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he The Language Of Enemies 289

has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (4:20)

But these passages and others (e.g., 2 Thes. 3:15, discussed above) force the question, who is my brother? Is it only those who are part of the “fellowship” (1 John 1:3), who have become “children of God” (1 John 3:1–2) by believing that “Jesus is the Christ” (1 John 5:1)? Most scholars would accept the view that for John “brother” is a “fellow Christian.”15 But even this is subject to a much narrower interpretation, as those Christians we recognize. In fact, those outside this fellowship could not be called “Christian.” The term brother would certainly not apply to the many antichrists who “went out from us, but … were not of us” (1 John 2:18). This concern for protecting the purity of the fellowship and its boundaries becomes increasingly important as diverse versions of Christianity start sprouting. As in the Old Testa- ment, the attitude toward such groups cannot be a matter of indifference if it is perceived that they pose a threat to the community. Hence, in Revelation, John reports that although the risen Lord finds the church in Ephesus to be loveless, it deserves praise for vigilance over its boundaries, rejecting evil men and false apostles, and for joining with Him in hating “the works of the Nicolaitans”:

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: – The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil and your patient endu- rance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and

15 E.g., see the note on 1 John 2:9–11 in H.G. May and B.M. Metzger, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (RSV) (New York: OUP, 1977), 1485. 290 John A. Jillions

do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicola’itans, which I also hate (2:1–6).

It is uncertain exactly what the teaching of the Nicolaitans was, but on the basis of Rev. 2:14 it is thought that they could have given Christianity a gnostic, libertine spin, by advocating the eating of food offered to idols. But whatever their precise teaching, it is clear there can be no tolerance.16 Is it possible to hate their works without hating them as people? Again, judging from the polemics of later Christian history, this text could tempt Christians to label every difference as a church-dividing issue and every dissenter as someone to be hated.

1.2.2.c. How Are Enemies to Be Treated?

The New Testament’s views on behaviour toward enemies further complicates the picture. The language of the NT seems at first to be quite unambiguous about forgiving, loving and treating enemies well in return for the hatred and abuse received at their hands.

• But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:44) • But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you (Luke 6:27) • But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expec- ting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish (Luke 6:35) • Repay no one evil for evil (Rom. 12:17, cf. 1 Pet. 3:9, 1 Thes. 5:15) • No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” (Rom. 12:20; cf. Prov. 25: 21–22)

16 JBC 64:24. The Language Of Enemies 291

It is also clear that there has been a major shift in emphasis from the Old Testament to the New Testament, where the “enemies” are now understood primarily in terms of spiritual warfare. Peter speaks of abstaining from “the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). Paul is insistent that

we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds (logismous). We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete (2 Cor. 10:3–6).

The letter to the Ephesians speaks of putting on God’s armour and standing against “the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (6:11–12; cf. Rom. 8:38, Rev. 12:7–17). But this spiritual warfare is also highly personal. There are a number of NT passages that show just how personal this spiritual warfare can get, starting with Corinth, where Paul battles with the “super apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5) over the church’s fundamental direction and over who has the true claim to apostolic authority. There are other “false brethren” (11:26), there is an immoral man with whom they should not even eat (1 Cor. 5:11), who should be cast out of the community (1 Cor. 5:9–13). And Paul is very clear that shunning is meant not for the world at large, but for those in the Christian community (1 Cor. 5:9–10).

I wrote to you not to associate with any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality, or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber – not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? God judges those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you.” 292 John A. Jillions

All this in a church community with perhaps fifty members! There are immoral people as well in Ephesus: “do not associate with them” (Eph. 5:7). In Philippi they are to watch out for the “dogs … evil workers” (Phil. 3:2). In Galatia it is the circumcision party (“I wish they would mutilate themselves”: Gal. 5:12). In Thessalonica there are “wicked and evil men” (2 Thes. 3:1). There are “false prophets” (2 Pet. 2:1–22) and “ungodly persons” (Jude 3ff) to be wary of. 1 and 2 Timo- thy name names: Alexander and Hymenaeus, whom Paul has “delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20; cf. 1 Cor. 5:5). Alexander was especially troubling: “Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will requite him for his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message” (2 Tim. 4:14–15). In Rome as well, which Paul had not yet even visited, he instructs them to “take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to the doctrine you have been taught; avoid them” (Rom. 16:17). There is trouble as well in Crete, where there are “many insubordinate men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially the circumcision party; they must be silenced, since they are upset- ting whole families” (Tit. 1:10, 11). If such a person persists in being factious “have nothing more to do with him” (3:10). Paul lists a terrifying range of immoral people one can expect to see in churches during the last days, “holding the form of religion but denying the power of it” and tells Timothy to “avoid such people” (2 Tim. 3:1–5). These are “men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith; but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all” (2 Tim. 3:8–9). For his part, John also warns the faithful to be on the lookout for the “many anti-Christs” who have gone into the world (1 John 2:18–19; 2 John 7). He cautions Gaius about “Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first,” who does not acknowledge John’s authority and blocks the church from being hospitable to other Christians (3 John 9–10). However intolerant this language may seem today, these apostolic pastors understood it in therapeutic terms, for the good of persons and above all for the health of the communities. In 2 Corinthians, e.g., Paul urges compassion toward the The Language Of Enemies 293

one who was shunned (2:5–11), and likewise in 2 Thes.: “If any one refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother” (3:14–15). Paul and John are pastoral realists. Those who preach a different gospel or have no love for the Lord are anathema (1 Cor. 1:9, 16:22; Gal. 1:8–9; cf. 1 John 2:22–23), they are “self-condemned” (Tit. 3:10) and are to be cut off from the community – for their own good possibly, but certainly for the good of the community.

1.3 From the New Testament to the Early Church: Enemies and Justin Martyr

The scriptural tradition on enemies is picked up immediately in the post-apostolic age and Justin Martyr is a good example because he includes baptism in his Apology. Unlike some of the later Fathers, Justin was completely open with non-Christians concerning the “mysteries” of Baptism and the Eucharist. So many calumnies had been spread around concerning Christian life that he felt it best to give a complete account.

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us to where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we ourselves were regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except you be born again, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven…. And for this [rite] 294 John A. Jillions

we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our birth we were born without our knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge … And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings.17

Note here the emphasis on illumination, understanding, and the fact that believers are persuaded of the truth of what is taught. Justin stressed the reasonableness of the Christian way, its freedom, and how different this was from the mad cults of the pagans, which even the philosophers ridiculed. Justin had as his primary aim of this defence that the Roman authorities would give Christianity a fair, unprejudiced hearing. He urges his readers (Emperor Antoninus Pius, his sons and the senate of Rome), as men who understand themselves to be philosophers, to search out the truth and not act as “the foolish, [who] prefer custom to truth.”18 Even if they should in the end dismiss Christianity as nonsense, the authorities should at least recognize that Christians had done nothing deserving persecution, torture, or death. The Roman authorities were actively persecuting Chris- tians, but Justin makes it clear that this would not diminish Christian love for the persecutors. Indeed, one of the features of Christian life most stressed by Justin is the requirement to love one’s enemies. The Christians, he says, are remarkable for their inclusivity in a world torn apart by tribalism.

We who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live [lit. “would not use the same hearth or fire”] with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly to

17 Justin, First Apology, 61, see also 65. 18 Ibid.,12. The Language Of Enemies 295

live conformably to the good precepts of Christ, to the end that they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.19

Justin repeatedly emphasizes that this all-embracing love is the distinguishing feature of the Christians (e.g., First Apology, 15, quoting Matt. 5:46, 44, Luke 6:28; a First Apology 16, quoting Luke 6:29, Matt. 5:41, 16).

For we ought not to strive; neither has he desired us to be imitators of wicked men, but He has exhorted us to lead all men, by patience and gentleness, from shame and the love of evil. And this is indeed proved in the case of many who were once of your way of thinking, but have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition, being overcome either by the constancy they have witnessed in the [Christian] neighbour’s lives or by the extraordinary forbearance they have observed in their fellow-travellers when defrauded, or by the honesty of those with whom they have transacted business.20

Justin extends this generosity of spirit to any aspect of pagan thought that exhibits evidence of the indwelling Word of God. All who have taught truly not only reflect something of Christ in their teaching, but invariably reflect also His suffering for truth. For Justin the most prominent examples are Socrates and the Stoics.

19 Ibid., 14. Athenagoras stresses that it is good deeds that most mark the Christian, in contrast to philosophical debaters “who [make] the art of words and not the exhibition of deeds their business and profession. But among us you will find uneducated persons, the artisans, and old women, who, if unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those who ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves” (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, 11), trans. B.P. Pratten: http://www.earlychristianwritings. com/text/athenagoras-plea.html. 20 First Apology, 16. 296 John A. Jillions

So far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men… [These teachers] were, we know, hated and put to death … for as we intimated, the devils have always effected, that all those who anyhow live a reasonable and earnest life, and shun vice, be hated.21

Justin does not see the Roman state as the main enemy. The persecutions are terrible, but the real enemies are the demons who instigate the violence. Here it should also be noted that while Justin could appreciate pagan philosophical thought, pagan religion was inspired not by the Logos but by demons (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14–18). Justin believes that Christians are engaged in a brutal spiritual warfare against the demons who provoke not only persecutions but also spawn sorcerers like Simon Magus and heretics like Marcion who masquerade as Christians.22 He admits that this is confusing to outsiders who take at face value the claims of these counterfeits to be Chris- tians. But in any city there will be those who are falsely called Christians. And these, together with sorcerers, Marcionites, and other heretics will be punished by God in the last judgment. In the meantime he demands, incredibly, that they be targeted for punishment by the Roman authorities.23

And let those who are not found living as [Christ] taught, be understood to not be Christians, even though they profess with the lips the precepts of Christ; for not those who make profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, according to His word: Not every one who says to me “Lord, Lord” shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father who is in heaven [Matt. 7:21; then Justin quotes a string of texts supporting this: Luke 13:26, Matt. 13:42, 7:15, 16, 19]…. And

21 Second Apology, 8; see also 10, 13. 22 First Apology 26, 56–58; cf. Athenagoras Plea, 26–27. 23 This was the same argument used to disbar Christians from Roman laws protecting Jews: they are not real Jews. The Language Of Enemies 297

every tree that does not bring forth good fruit, is hewn down and thrown into the fire.. And as to those who are not living pursuant to His teachings, and are Christian only in name, we demand that all such be punished by you.24

Justin is repelled by the teachings of the heretics, although he admits to being unsure of precisely what “shameful deeds” they practice (he suggests that their rites may be the source of false accusation against Christians of “promiscuous intercourse and eating human flesh”). So far as he knows these groups have not been “persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.” To help rectify this oversight Justin adds: “But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.”25 The consequences of Justin’s willingness to join hands with the state to suppress the heretics – however abhorrent their teaching – can be seen later in the legal marginalization and mistreatment of Jews, pagans, and heretics in the post-Constantinian era.26

1.4 Enemies in Liturgy

1.4.1 Eastern Orthodox Liturgical Life

Before turning to the baptismal tradition, where language of enemies and violence is expressed most vividly, I would like to look at a few examples taken from elsewhere in the

24 First Apology, 16 (my emphasis). One presumes that Justin, like Athenagoras, would be against all cruelty (Plea, 34–35). 25 First Apology, 26. 26 On treatment of Jews and pagans, see, e.g., Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1986), 671–73. On heretics, see, e.g., John Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: 1982), 44, where he says that Justinian (527–565), who shaped much of the Byzantine ethos, pursued a religious policy that was “directed, on the one hand, toward the final liquidation of dissident groups – pagans, Samaritans, Christian heretics – which were small enough to be dealt with by simple administrative measures, and on the other toward severe limitation in the civil rights of those whose simple annihilation was either impossible or undesirable.” 298 John A. Jillions

Orthodox liturgical tradition. These examples could be multi- plied ten-fold, but they should suffice to show that such language is scattered everywhere throughout the services, often very prominently.

1. From Bright Week:

Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered, let those who hate him flee from before his face.

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish, as wax melts before the fire.

So the sinners will perish before the face of God, but let the righteous be glad (Ps. 67/68, sung repeatedly and so- lemnly during the week).

2. From Matins:

Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds! Let the high praises of God be in their throats, and two-edged swords in their hands, to wreak vengeance on the nations and chastisement on the peoples. To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron (“The Praises”: Ps. 149)

3. From Vespers:

Guard [thy servants] at all times, both during this present evening and in the approaching night, from every enemy, from all adverse powers of the Devil, and from vain thoughts and from evil imaginations (prayer at evening litany).

4. From the Divine Liturgy:

Lead me O Lord in Thy righteousness because of my enemies; make my way straight before Thee. For there is no truth in their mouth; their heart is destruction, their throat The Language Of Enemies 299

is an open sepulcher, they flatter with their tongue. Judge them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of their many transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against thee. But let all who take refuge in thee rejoice, let them always sing for joy … for thou blessest the righteous O Lord, thou coverest us with good will as with a shield (Ps. 5: Entrance Prayers).

Thy right hand, O Lord, has been glorified in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, has shattered the enemies. In the greatness of thy majesty thou hast overthrown thine adversaries (Ps. 25/26: Priest’s vesting prayers).

Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty One, in thy comeliness and in thy beauty. Go forth and prosper and reign because of truth and meekness and righteousness (Ps. 44/45: Priest’s vesting prayers).

I wash my hands in innocence and go about Thy altar, O Lord, singing aloud a song of praise, and telling all thy miracles…. Do not sweep my soul away with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men, men in whose hands are evil devices and whose right hands are full of bribes. But as for me, I walk in my integrity; deliver me and have mercy on me. My foot stands on level ground; in the churches I will bless the Lord (Ps. 25/26: Priest’s vesting and washing of hands).

Cover us with the shelter of thy wings, and drive away from us every foe and adversary (Prothesis: covering of the holy gifts).

The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12) are sung as the third anti- phon of the liturgy (in the Slavic tradition) and would appear on first glance to strengthen peace: blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. But the ending verses also reinforce the remembrance of enemies: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Blessed are you when 300 John A. Jillions

men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.”

5. The troparion of the cross, sung on Wednesdays, Fri- days and feasts of the Cross, is used throughout the year and was the Byzantine “national anthem”:

O Lord save thy people and bless thine inheritance, grant victories to the Orthodox people [some say “faithful Christians”: in Greek it is literally “to the emperor” – tois vasileusi] over their enemies [kata varvaron, over the barbarians, i.e. those outside the borders of the Empire], and by virtue of thy cross, preserve thy habitation [your commonwealth: politeuma, i.e., the Byzantine Empire].

Modern translations spiritualize this hymn to wrest it away from Byzantium, but already in the fourth century John Chrysostom was doing something similar. He gives a spiritual interpretation to kingship and barbarians, interpreting this as an image of baptismal victory by Christ the King over the barbarian demons.

Our King has now conquered in the war against the barbarians. And all the demons are barbarians, and more sa- vage than barbarians. Now he has destroyed sin, now he has put down death and has subjected the devil, He has taken his captives.27

This comes from Chrysostom’s Baptismal Instructions, so this is an appropriate point to turn to the language of enemies in the text of the Orthodox rite of baptism.

1.4.2 Baptism

Christian life begins with baptism, but it is a violent beginning: one finds the language of enemies, warfare and violence

27 John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Hawkins (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1963), 10.5 The Language Of Enemies 301

used extensively.28 The context almost invariably links it with spiritual warfare, as can be seen from the very start of the rite, as the priest “seals” the candidate with the sign of the Cross to mark him or her as now belonging to Christ as a “newly enlisted warrior” in the spiritual battle with demonic forces: “drive far from him (her) every adverse power through sealing with the sign of thy cross, for thou dost protect infants, O Lord.”29 This theme of spiritual warfare is developed at great length in the exorcism prayers, and so the text of each is given in full followed by a few comments.30

1.4.2.1 First Exorcism

The Lord puts you under ban (epitima), O Devil: He who came into the world, and made his abode among men, that he might overthrow your tyranny and deliver men; who also upon the Tree did triumph over the adverse powers, when the sun was darkened and the earth did quake, and the graves were opened, and the bodies of the saints arose; who also by death annihi- lated Death, and overthrew him who exercised the dominion of Death, that is you, the Devil. I charge you by God, who revealed the Tree of Life, and arrayed in ranks the Cherubim and the flaming sword which turns all ways to guard it: be under ban. For I charge you by him who walked upon the surface of the sea as if it were dry land, and laid under ban the tempests of the winds; whose glance dries up the deep, and whose interdict makes the mountains melt away. The same now, through us, puts you under ban. Fear, begone and depart from this creature, and return not again, neither hide yourself in him (her) neither seek to meet him (her), nor to influence him (her), either by night or by

28 For a full discussion of baptism see Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit (hereafter: OWS) (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974). 29 Prayers at the fortieth day after birth: Baptism, trans. Paul Lazor (New York: Orthodox Church in America, 1972), 29. 30 See OWS, 20–30. 302 John A. Jillions

day; either in the morning or at noonday; but depart hence to your own infernal abyss until the great Day of Judgment which is ordained. Fear God who sits upon the Cherubim and looks upon the deeps; before whom tremble Angels and Archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities Powers, the many-eyed Che- rubim and the six-winged Seraphim; before whom, likewise, heaven and earth do quake, the seas and all that they contain. Begone, and depart from this sealed (sphragisthentos), newly-enlisted warrior (neolekton stratioton) of Christ our God. For I charge you by him who rides upon the wings of the wind, and makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire: begone, and depart from this creature, with all your powers and your angels. For glorified is the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.31

Several points can be made about this prayer.

• It is a direct confrontation with the Devil, who is the adversary (the translation of “Satan”), who seeks to meet, hide in and influence the person to be baptized • Christ’s aim is to overthrow the tyranny of the “adverse powers,” namely death (cf. Hebrews 2:14–15) • The priest, and the person to be baptized, are both warriors in this spiritual battle

1.4.2.2 Second Exorcism32

God, holy, awesome and glorious, who is unsearchable and inscrutable in all his works and might, has foreordained for you the penalty of eternal punishment, O Devil: the same, through us, his unworthy servant, commands you, with all your hosts, to depart hence, from him (her) who has been newly sealed in

31 Baptism, 33–34. 32 Ibid., 35–37. The Language Of Enemies 303

the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God. Wherefore I charge you, most crafty, impure, vile, loathsome and alien spirit, by the might of Jesus Christ, who has all power, both in heaven and on earth, who said unto the deaf and dumb demon, “come out of the man, and in nowise enter a second time into him”: Depart! Acknowledge the vainness of your might, which has no power even over swine. Call to mind him who, at your request, commanded you to enter into the herd of swine. Fear God, by whose decree the earth is established upon the waters. Who has made the heavens, and has set the mountains with a line, and the valleys with a measure; and has fixed bounds to the sands of the sea, and a firm path upon the stormy waters; who touches the mountains and they smoke; who clothes himself with light as with a garment; who spreads out the heavens like a curtain; who covers his exceeding high places with the waters; who has made the earth so sure upon its foundations, that it shall never be moved; who gathers the waters of the sea and pours it out upon the face of the whole earth: Begone, and depart from him (her) who has made himself (herself) ready for Holy Illumination. I charge you by the redeeming Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his precious Body and Blood, and by his awesome coming-again; for he shall come, and shall not tarry, to judge the whole earth; and he shall chastise you and all your host with burning Gehenna, committing you to outer darkness, where the worm does not cease and the fire is not quenched. For of Christ our God is the dominion, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

• The invective, sarcasm and “burning Gehenna” are saved for spiritual adversaries, not for any earthly enemies • The battle is already ultimately won by God who has disarmed the devil of his power through the Passion of Christ 304 John A. Jillions

1.4.2.3 Third Exorcism33

O Lord of Sabbaoth, the God of Israel, who healest every malady and every infirmity: look upon thy servant; prove him (her) and search him (her) and root out of him (her) every operation of the Devil. Rebuke the unclean spirits and expel them, and purify the works of thy hands; and exerting thy trenchant might, speedily crush down Satan under his (her) feet; and give him (her) victory over the same, and over his unclean spirits; that, having obtained mercy from thee, he (she) may be made worthy to partake of thy heavenly mysteries; and may ascribe unto thee glory, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

• Prayer turns now to God, asking him to heal the spiritual infirmities of the person being baptized • The devil – not the person – is the source of evil thoughts and behaviour • Healing may be painful as God searches out and destroys every operation of the devil in the person’s life • The violent, military language is reserved for this spiritual enemy

1.4.2.4 Fourth Prayer34

O Lord and Master; who created man in thine own likeness, and bestowed upon him the power of life eternal; who also despisest not those who have fallen away through sin, but providest salvation for the world through the incarnation of Thy Christ; Do thou, the same Lord, delivering also this thy creature from the bondage of the enemy, receive him (her) into thy heavenly kingdom. Open the eyes of his (her) understanding, that the illumination of thy gospel may shine

33 Ibid., 37–38. 34 Ibid., 38–39. The Language Of Enemies 305

brightly in him (her). Assign to his (her) life an Angel of light who shall deliver him (her) from every snare of the adversary, from every encounter with evil, from the demon of the noonday and from evil thoughts. The priest then breathes gently in the form of a cross over the mouth, brow and breast of the child saying: Expel from him (her) every evil and unclean spirit which hides and makes its lair in his (her) heart (three times): the spirit of deceit, the spirit of evil, the spirit of idolatry and of every uncleanness which operates through the prompting of the Devil. And make him (her) a reason-endowed sheep in the holy flock of thy Christ, an honorable member of thy Church, a consecrated vessel, a child of the light and an heir of thy kingdom, that having lived in accordance with thy commandments, and preserved inviolate the seal, and kept his (her) garment undefiled, he (she) may receive the blessedness of the Saints in thy kingdom.

• The aim of the service is deliverance from bondage to Satan who is the enemy who prompts evil behaviour • The candidate has a protective angel alongside him who engages in the battle with Satan • The presence of evil spirits is discerned from evil actions: deceit, idolatry, falsehood • The beginning of personal victory in this spiritual warfare is signaled by liberation from the irrational and demonic as the candidate becomes a “reason-endowed sheep” in Christ’s flock • The warfare is life-long, presupposes living in accordance with the commandments of Christ, and aims to share the blessedness of saints in the kingdom of God

Having heard these prayers, the candidate (or sponsor in case of a child) now needs to accept this state of spiritual warfare as a pre-condition for being baptized. Turning the candidate to face the West (the ancient symbolic dwelling place of Satan), the priest asks the following questions three times:

306 John A. Jillions

Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his service and all his angels, and all his service and all his pride? And the candidate or sponsor replies each time: I do renounce him!

The priest asks the next question, likewise three times: Have you renounced Satan? And the candidate or sponsor replies each time: I have renounced him! Then the priest says: Breathe and spit upon him!

In North America, the candidate or sponsor usually then makes a slight symbolic gesture of spitting on the devil. Elsewhere in the Orthodox world this can be quite robust, but even here I know of a parish where the priest sends people out into the street at this point so they can well and truly spit! From this point forward the emphasis turns from exorcism and spiritual warfare to the candidate’s acceptance of Christian faith. But as the service moves to the anointing, the blessing of the baptismal water, Chrismation, and the final rites of ablution and tonsure, the references to enemies and warfare continue.

• The Litany of Peace, remarkable for the number of petitions asking for peace (“for the peace from above, for the peace of the whole world, for the union of all”), includes this petition as well: “That this water may prove effectual unto the averting of every snare of enemies, both visible and invisible, let us pray to the Lord.” • The blessing of the baptismal water:

Thou couldst not endure to behold mankind oppressed by the Devil.

Thou didst hallow the streams of Jordan, sending down upon them from heaven thy Holy Spirit and didst crush the heads of the dragons who lurked there.

The Language Of Enemies 307

Come thou now and sanctify this water by the indwelling of thy Holy Spirit … make it … the final destruction of demons, unassailable by hostile powers, filled with angelic might. Let those who would ensnare thy creature flee far from it. For we have called upon thy Name, O Lord, and it is wonderful and glorious and awesome unto adversaries.

As he blesses the water with his right hand, making the sign of the cross, the priest says:

Let all adverse powers be crushed beneath the sign of the image of thy Cross (three times).

We pray thee, O God, that every aerial and obscure phantom may withdraw itself from us; and that no demon of darkness may conceal himself in this water; and that no evil spirit which instills darkening of intentions and rebelliousness of thought may descend into it with him (her) who is about to be baptized.

• Before being baptized the candidate is first anointed with oil. The prayer over the oil also recalls spiritual warfare: “that it may be an armor of righteousness … the averting of every assault of the devil, to deliverance from all evil of those who shall be anointed with it in faith.” • The psalm verse before the scripture readings stresses the deliverance from fear of enemies: “The Lord is my light and my savior: whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the upholder of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1). • The epistle reading (Rom. 6:3–11) emphasizes the identification of the person being baptized with Christ who died, and through his death ultimately destroyed death. “For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him”(Rom. 6:10; cf. 1 Cor. 15:26). 308 John A. Jillions

• The ablution prayers following Chrismation: “maintain the shield of his (her) faith unassailed by the enemy … keep him (her) ever a warrior invincible in every attack of those who assail him (her) and us; and make us all victors, even unto the end, through thy crown incorruptible.”

The overwhelming and striking emphasis of the baptism rite, which liberally uses the language of enemies, war and violence, is on spiritual warfare. The purpose of this was (and is) surely to strengthen the resolve and confidence of the new Christian to fight a spiritual battle in the face of certain opposition from invisible – but also visible – enemies. This would have been especially true in the ancient world when fear of demonic forces was pervasive. Most people, especially pagan converts, were extremely aware and terrified of the power of such forces. To stand up against such forces would take great courage. “When this rite of renunciation came into existence,” says Alexander Schmemann,

its meaning was self evident to the catechumen as well as to the entire Christian community. They lived within a pagan world whose life was permeated with the pompa diaboli, i.e., the worship of idols, participation in the cult of the Emperor, adoration of matter, etc. He not only knew what he was renouncing; he was fully aware to what a “narrow way,” to what a difficult life – truly “non-conformist” and radically opposed to the “way of life” of the people around him – this renunciation obliged him.35

Having looked at the text of baptism itself, we need to ask how this language of enemies was understood and explained in the ancient church. In particular, what was the attitude shown there toward visible enemies? To answer this question we will look at the four leading Eastern baptismal commentators of the

35 OWS, 28. The Language Of Enemies 309

fourth century: Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

1.5 Patristic Commentators on Baptism

1.5.1 Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315–386)

For the most part, Cyril’s interpretation of warfare follows the same spiritual sense as seen in the texts of the service. Baptism is a “chariot to heaven” but there is “a serpent by the wayside watching the passengers; beware lest he bite thee with unbelief; he sees so many receiving salvation, and seeks to devour some of them” (Procatechesis 16).36 He expounds on 1 Peter 5:8 and warns that “our adversary the devil … roaring as a lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (Mysta- gogical Catechesis I. 10). He speaks of Baptism and Chrisma- tion as the “whole armour of the Holy Spirit” which enables the believer to stand against the power of the devil and van- quish it saying, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13) (Myst. Cat. III.4). Commenting on the words, “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer he, along with all the Eastern Fathers, understands this to be more accurately the evil one: “Now the evil is the Wicked Spirit who is our adversary, from whom we pray to be delivered” (Myst. Cat. V. 18). There is more than a hint, however, that these neophytes also have visible enemies with names: Greeks, Jews, and Sa- maritans.

Abide thou in the Catechizings: though our discussion be long, let not thy mind be wearied out. For thou art receiving thine armor against the antagonist’s power; against heresies, against Jews, and Samaritans, and Gentiles. Thou hast many enemies: take to thee many darts; thou hast many to hurl them at. And thou hast need to learn how to hurl them at the Greek; how to do battle against heretic, against Jew and Samaritan. The

36 Cyril of Jerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, ed. F.L. Cross (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1977). 310 John A. Jillions

armor indeed is ready, and most ready is the sword of the Spirit; but thou also must stretch forth thy hands with good resolve, that thou mayest war the Lord’s warfare, mayest overcome the powers that oppose thee, mayest escape defeat from every heretical attempt (Procat. 10; my emphasis).

The newly baptized are called to a defensive, apologetic war against those who attack the Church’s teaching. The weapons and armour are the teachings they receive in these catechetical lectures, together with the Word of God which is “the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). Cyril urges that it is best if they attend carefully to what they are being taught. Their teachers can train them, but the day will come when these new Christians will need to fight on their own.

1.5.2 Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395)

Gregory of Nyssa’s Catechetical Oration37 was meant as a training manual for catechists preparing well-educated in- quirers and converts who had deep philosophical questions. Here as well the ultimate enemy is Satan. While fighting un- believers and heretics may be needed too, Gregory, in contrast to Cyril, takes a much less polemical stand. There is less on warfare and more on sound instruction. The presuppositions of each person must first be considered before plunging headlong into theological battle. He prefers to advocate healing words based on correct diagnosis.

The same method of teaching will not be suitable in the case of all who come to hear the word, but as the forms of religion vary, so also the instruction must be adapted to meet them, the same object in teaching being kept in view, but different arguments being used in each case. For he who follows the Jewish religion starts from one set of preconceptions, and he who is born and bred in Hellenism starts from another; while

37 Gregory of Nyssa, The Catechetical Oration, trans. J.H. Srawley (London, SPCK: 1917). The Language Of Enemies 311

the Anomean, the Manichean and the followers of Marcion, Valentinus and Basilides, and the rest of who are astray in heresy, each have their own preconceptions, and make it necessary to combat their opinions; for the character of the malady must determine also the method of treatment to be applied.

We must look to men’s preconceptions, and adapt our discussion to suit the error in which each is involved, propounding in each discussion certain principles and reasonable propositions, in order that by means of what is admitted on both sides the truth may be un- folded in logical sequence (Cat. Or., Prologue).

Here Gregory mixes military and medical metaphors but on the whole he takes a more respectful, pedagogical approach to the questions and objections raised by newcomers, heretics, and outsiders. Later, in speaking more directly of baptism he returns to the military metaphor. The new Christians are to be like new recruits who imitate their drill sergeants.

Those who are trained through what they see unto rhythmical and orderly movement are led on to skill in arms by men well versed in military exercises, while he who fails to do what is shown to him remains devoid of such skill (Cat. Or. 35).

But Gregory does not push the analogy of military obedience too far because he places a very high value on freedom. Human beings are free to weigh the evidence and choose. Nothing in matters of faith is to be forced through blind submission. Rational freedom is the distinguishing feature of human life, he argues, and must not be violated. It is precisely for this reason that the almighty God does not force people to believe in Him.

For it is only inanimate or irrational creatures whose characteristic is to be led by the will of another to do what he wants. But the rational and intelligent nature, 312 John A. Jillions

if it lay aside its free will, loses at the same time its privilege of belonging to the intellectual order. For what use will he make of his faculty of mind, if his power of choosing anything according to his inclination is placed at the disposal of another (Cat. Or. 31)?

Significantly, although he fully accepts that we are engaged in spiritual warfare, Gregory is unwilling to place the whole blame for man’s condition on Satan. That would be unjust – even Satan has rights – since human beings have misused their freedom and sold themselves into spiritual slavery voluntarily. But such is the persuasiveness of divine love that Gregory believes everyone will eventually be reconciled with God. All will pass through the refining fire of God’s presence, which will be painful but will purge away all that is “un- natural” to effect a cure: “the divine power, acting like fire, effects the disappearance of the element which was contrary to nature, and, by thus purging it, benefits that nature, even though the sifting process proves painful” (Cat. Or. 26). In this way even the enemies of God will eventually come to acknowledge Him when they are healed of all evil and are restored to their pristine state.

when those who are now plunged in vice are restored to their original state, a chorus of thanksgiving will arise from all creation, not only from the lips of those who have endured the chastening of this purification, but also from those who never needed the purification at all (Cat. Or. 26).

Even Satan, “the very author of vice,” will be healed.38

For by mingling with humanity, and sharing all the characteristics of our nature, birth, nurture, growth, going even so far as to experience death, He effected all the results that we have previously described, de-

38 On the controversial subject of universal salvation (apocatastasis), see Kallistos Ware, “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?” in Idem., The Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2002), 193–216. The Language Of Enemies 313

livering man from vice and healing the very author of vice (Cat. Or. 26).

1.5.3 John Chrysostom (c. 344–407)

John Chrysostom also uses a military analogy in his long series of baptismal instructions (Baptismal Instructions, 1.1, 1.8, 18, 1.20, 1.40, 2.1, 3.9, 4.6, etc).39 The battle is ultimately against Satan (1.1, 2.23–24, 3.8, 12.33, etc), but there are also apologetic skirmishes that the new Christian must be prepared to fight, against Arians and Sabellians for example (1.22). His advice to new recruits, however, is to keep away from this kind of battle for the time being. Better to avoid these confron- tations and wait until later, “when you will know how to curb their impudent tongues … after you have fortified yourself with the weapons of the Spirit” (1.24).40 Chrysostom emphasizes that the “new recruit” is engaged in “a new kind of combat,” with a “new kind of armour” (3.9, 11). This kind of battle involves women as well as men, “for the army of Christ knows no distinction of sex” (1.40). It is a spiritual warfare that first requires the meekness of Christ. “For he who imitates the Master’s meekness will not lose his temper nor be roused against his neighbour. Even if someone shall strike him, he will say, ‘If I have spoken ill, bear witness to the evil; but if not, why do you strike me’ (1.30)?” Like- wise, if someone has an enemy, “let him be reconciled … let him forgive his neighbour’s offences against him … To put it simply, let him take the lead in showing his own generosity,

39 John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Harkins (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1963). He actually prefers to think of baptism in terms of a marriage metaphor, and develops this idea at greater length in his first instruction. 40 Chrysostom also recognizes that even heretics have not fully oblitera- ted the image of Christ in their preaching. “Do not make an issue of the various heretics of different hue and color. They all proclaim Christ even if they lack something of orthodoxy. They all reverence the One who was crucified under Pontius Pilate in Palestine.” John Chrysostom, trans. Thomas Halton, In Praise of Paul (Boston: Saint Paul Editions, 1963), Sermon IV, 58. 314 John A. Jillions

that he may receive generosity from the Master in great abundance” (1.41). In this respect Chrysostom sees the apostle Paul as the best example for the neophytes. Paul went from being a raging, furious persecutor, sowing chaos and discord (4.7), to an ambassador of reconciliation and inner spiritual warfare. “Did you see him raging like a lion and rushing everywhere? See him again all at once changed into a gentle lamb” (4. 10). Not everyone was stirred by this call to arms. By the sixth session many of Chrysostom’s hearers had stopped coming, enticed away by the action at the hippodrome.

Again there are chariot races and satanic spectacles in the hippodrome, and our own congregation is shrink- ing…. See how some who heard my previous instruction have today rushed away. They gave up the chance to hear this spiritual discourse and have run off to the hippodrome. They have cast off altogether the memory of the holy season of Lent, the feast of salvation on the day of the Resurrection (6.1).

For the seventh instruction he meets with them at the tombs of the martyrs, where they have a vivid example of what spiritual combat means. And they will receive help from the martyrs’ prayers when they fight their own spiritual battles.

It was for the Master’s sake and to confess their faith in Him that the martyrs endured all their torments. It was for Him that they stripped themselves for the combat. It was for Him that they fought against sin to the shedding of blood (6.7).

In his final instruction he shows the neophytes that we are our own worst enemy. Or rather, we – and not even the devil – are our only true enemy because only we can hurt ourselves (12.25–26).

Indeed, I wish, above all things, that you understand that no one has the power to do harm to the soul of the The Language Of Enemies 315

faithful Christian, not even the devil himself. Not only is it a wonderful thing that God has made us incapable of being overcome by any treachery, but that he has fitted us for the practice of virtue. If we be willing, there is nothing to stop us, even if we be poor, weak in body, outcasts, nameless, or slaves. For neither poverty, nor weakness, nor bodily disability, nor slavery, nor any such thing could be a hindrance to virtue (12.26).

1.5.4 Theodore of Mopsuestia (350–428)

Like the other writers considered here, Theodore of Mop- suestia sees Satan as the great enemy, the tyrant to whom humanity is enslaved and he uses the same similar military imagery (Baptismal Homily 2.2).41 The newly baptized is “sealed,” marked out as a “soldier of the King of heaven” (though he is also a “sheep of Christ”) (2.17; see also 2.19, 2.20, 3.1). Later, in commenting on the Eucharist, he stresses that among the Christians there are to be no personal enemies since they share one loaf, one cup and “the kiss of peace.”

It would certainly not be right for those who form a single body to entertain hatred towards a brother in the faith (4.41). Likewise the washing of the hands before communion (the lavabo) signifies that they “profess that we have laid aside all hatred and bitterness against our brothers in the faith and washed away the memory of grudges (4.42).

The Christian communities are not perfect, of course, and the Church must keep a close eye on its own health, correcting when necessary. In extreme cases, if a “brother” refuses correction then in accordance with the apostolic rule, says Theodore, “drive out the wicked person from among you” (1 Cor. 5.13; Bapt. Hom. 5.43). Even here, Theodore remains

41 In Edward Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origin of the RCIA, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 165–250. 316 John A. Jillions

merciful and urges priests to treat sinners “with the greatest care and compassion and charity” (5.44). But Theodore is on guard against the Church’s enemies, and personalizes them more than any other fourth-century commentator. Satan does not work alone Theodore argues. Explaining the renunciation of “Satan, and all his works, and all his service and all his angels,” Theodore says that Satan works “by means of men whom he has conquered and made instruments of his malice to harm others. That is why you add ‘and all his angels’”(2.7), who are “men who have contracted from him some ill-will which leads them to harm others” (2.8). He goes on to personalize this in the most concrete manner (2.9). “Satan’s angels” include:

• All those who carry out his purpose of ruining and de- ceiving the human race • All those who devote themselves to profane wisdom and spread the error of paganism • Leaders of the ancient heresies (Mani, Marcion, Va- lentinus, Paul of Samosata, Arius, Eunomius, Apol- linarius) • “Leaders and teachers of error in any heresy, honored though they may be with the name of bishop or priest; they all serve Satan’s purposes, and in the name of their position in the Church fall headlong into error” • “Those who give men any wicked, shameful advice against the divine laws, so as to lead them into the service of evil”

The new Christian also renounces all service to Satan, including such things as:

• Pagan practices • Astrology • Divination • Jewish observances • Heretical worship

The Language Of Enemies 317

Of heretical worship Theodore says:

the worship found among heretics in the name of religion is a service of Satan. It may bear a superficial resemblance to the worship of the Church, but it lacks the gift of grace of the Holy Spirit, and it is wicked to perform it…. [The] rites that heretics perform in the name of religion … are play acting and the service of Satan (2.10).

It is ironic that Theodore, having died peacefully and full of honor as a bishop and teacher, was, more than a hundred years later, metaphorically exhumed and condemned as a heretic himself at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in 553, accused – not entirely fairly – of being Nestorius’s main inspiration.

1.6 Peacemakers

It would be wrong to leave the impression that the dominant activity of Christians in this period was the flushing out of enemies by a powerful Church that had the full backing of the state – though this is often the perspective in recent treatments of the post-Constantinian Church. On the contrary, in the fourth century vast swaths of the Empire were overwhelmingly dominated by Arians who abused and persecuted the small bands of faithful clinging to their orthodoxy under the leadership of people like Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzus. Following the gospel of non-resistance to evil is the standard response urged in these circumstances by these and other leading bishops of the age. Gregory Nazianzus, for example, exhorts his oppressed flock to bear meekly the outrageous disruption of their Holy Saturday and baptismal services by “riotous monks and hoodlums” who hurled abuse at them and pelted them with stones during the service and desecrated the altar.42

42 Gregory Nazianzus, Letter 77, to Theodoros (Holy Week 379 or 380), in Georges Barrois, ed., The Fathers Speak (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1986), 151–52. 318 John A. Jillions

Yes, these events are atrocious, more than atrocious; who would contest this? Virgins have given up on mo- desty, monks have renounced decency, street-beggars have forsaken their lowly station in life. Anger has deprived them of all pity. Yet in what we suffer, it is better to be patient and give to many an example of longanimity. Words do not persuade a crowd, but acts do, being a silent exhortation. We believe strongly in punishing evildoers: strongly, I say, because it is useful for the correction of others, but it is still better and more godly to endure stoically. Punishment bridles wickedness; but firmness under misfortune per- suades people to be good, and this is much better than simply not being wicked.

Not everyone who experienced this affront agreed with Grego- ry. One of the newly baptized (a certain Theoteknos) wanted to take the hooligans to court, but Gregory counsels patience, especially in light of his fresh baptism. Seeking vengeance would turn him into an enemy of his own soul.

We know that it is difficult to accept reasoning when injury is recent and when anger is still boiling. Anger and grief are blind, especially when irritation is justified…. Consider that yesterday you were made worthy of grace and that through baptism you were purified of your sins; now there is a temptation which is not to be taken lightly: spoiling by a bloody vengeance the gift received and thus being in need of a second purification. Let us stop conspiring against ourselves, let us not reject our trust in God by a display of violence and of immoderate indignation against those who have mistreated us. The man [whom Theoteknos wanted to bring before the law], let us deliver him to God and to yonder chastisement. As for us, we should render the Judge indulgent toward us by showing ourselves indulgent and, by forgiving, be forgiven.43

43 Ibid. The Language Of Enemies 319

Forgiveness is not limitless, he says, and in some cases there are legitimate reasons to go to court; but for the faithful, the safest path is to follow the gentle laws of Christ.

Let not some captious reasoning deceive you. Some- one may have legitimate reasons for calling another man to justice, and then he is without reproach. So also is one who delivers a law-breaker to the Law. There are the laws of Rome, but there are also our Christian laws. The former are inflexible, harsh and bloody. Our laws are useful, humane and they do not let us abuse angrily the guilty party. We ought to abide by the latter and observe them, so that by doing small favors – and since life is short and of no value – we may receive from God big favors, His love and our hope for the beyond.44

Numerous such pastoral exhortations can be found in the writings of the Fathers and saints down to the present, and these help put the enemies language used elsewhere in perspective.45

1.7 Byzantium: At Home with Enemies

Although the language of enemies was mainly understood in a spiritual sense, and although there are important examples of Byzantine peacemakers, there is plenty of evidence from the Scriptures, early Christian tradition, and the fourth-century baptismal commentaries to show that Christian teaching was very conscious of the human enemies of the Church. This becomes of immediate contemporary concern when we consider Byzantium’s explicit treatment of Jews as enemies. Elizabeth Theokritoff has recently studied the anti-Jewish texts in the Byzantine services of Holy Week, for example, and concludes that they do indeed “contain some phrases that can

44 Ibid. 45 The website of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (www.incommunion. org) includes a section of advice on peacemaking from the early Church, with numerous patristic texts. 320 John A. Jillions

only be described as gratuitous invective against the Jewish people … insulting epithets.”46 The number of such passages are relatively few, she says, and “are not true to the central message of the Holy Week services,” “but they strike a particularly discordant note nonetheless.” Nor is this the only place one finds such suspicions about the Jews.47 Sometimes it comes right out of the blue, as in the Life of Onnophrius, one of the celebrated Desert Fathers. Just before his death, as he commissions his disciple Paphnutius, he says:

My son, may God not cause you to grieve about anything and may he strengthen you in his love, so that your eyes may see the light of his divinity, that you neither turn away nor fall but succeed in the work which you have undertaken. May the angels shelter you and deliver you from the plottings of the Jews, and may no accusation fall on you when you come to meet God.48

This reference to Jews comes suddenly, with no other mention of Jews anywhere in the text, before or after. Nor, as far as we know, were there any Jews for miles around. The translator is also baffled by this eruption and footnotes this reference with a puzzled question: “Meant symbolically?” But blanket warnings about Jews were a commonplace in Byzantine tradition. Indeed, a number of canons explicitly forbid any familiarity with Jews.

46 Elizabeth Theokritoff, “The Orthodox Services of Holy Week: The Jews and the New Sion,” Sobornost 25 (2003): 25, 45–46. 47 There is anecdotal evidence that in many Ukrainian Orthodox churches the Song of Saint Symeon, sung at vespers, is edited to omit the last word: “and the glory of thy people [Israel].” Similarly, in many churches of Middle Eastern background, I was told that the reading of the Samaritan Woman pericope (John 4), especially when read in Arabic, is edited to omit Jesus’ saying “for salvation is from the Jews.” 48 Paphnutius, History of the Monks of Upper Egypt and the Life of Onnophrius, trans. Tim Vivian (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993), Life of Onnophrius 22 (159); my emphasis. I am grateful to Symeon Rodger for this reference. The Language Of Enemies 321

Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar conversation with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off (Trullo, 11).

If any clergyman or layman shall enter into a synagogue of the Jews or heretics to pray, let the former be deposed and let the latter be excommunicated (Aposto- lic Canons, 64).49

It must be admitted that such language is not unusual in the Byzantine context. As Theokritoff says,

In style, such invective represented something of a literary commonplace in addressing one’s opponents, whoever they may be. While this style of discourse is in itself shocking to most modern Western ears, we can safely say that the Byzantine worshipper would have found it not only less exceptionable, but also less exceptional.50

As we have seen, this sort of enemies language could be applied to any person, group, religion or ideology viewed as a threat. All sides in ecclesiastical disputes accepted these terms of reference, so it is not surprising that in modern times such language continues to be used by the Orthodox heirs of Byzan-

49 Adapted from H.R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977 [1899]). For an overview of this evidence, a remarkably candid assessment, and a refreshing approach to relations between Judaism and Christianity (even sixty years after its first publication), see Lev Gillet, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity (London: Lutterworth, 1942). 50 Theokritoff, “The Orthodox Services of Holy Week,” 26. Many other examples of such language and conflicts could be cited throughout Christian history. For a notorious Slavic case, see Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual and Reform: the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1991), chs. 1–2. 322 John A. Jillions

tium. A striking example of this is found in the work of Saint Raphael Hawaweeny (1860–1915). As a young archimandrite he protested vigorously and publicly in the late 1800’s on behalf of Palestinian Orthodox Christians against abuses by the Greek “Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre” which controlled the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. They kept the local Palestinian Orthodox in subjection and were clearly “the enemy” in his view, bent on eradication of the indigenous Orthodox Chris- tians. Keep in mind that this was internecine warfare between fellow Orthodox Christians. In a polemical booklet published in 1893 (and republished in 1996 since the situation remains unchanged), Archimandrite Raphael issued this call to rebellion:

Now I say to you my fellow-citizens and fellow- believers: Why did you turn your face away from the church of your fathers and forefathers, leaving a group of foreign monks striving to destroy you to be a yoke over your necks?… Are your hearts petrified and your spirits frightened? Don’t you see how the wolves entered your churches, and your schools were on the verge of eradication? Don’t you feel the ignominy and disgrace that your churches were sold, or rather, you were sold to a sly person who shackled your hands and your feet with the chains of spiritual slavery and made you taste bitter fruit through his misdeeds and tyranny?

Arise, arise, O Orthodox indigenous people, arise from your sleep and hasten to lift the yoke of the Brother- hood from your shoulders and from the shoulders of your brothers. Do not be afraid or fearful, put on the armor of love of your religion and country, do not be branded with the stigma of dishonor and disgrace, for you are citizens in a free Ottoman Empire. The one who does not embrace this Grace is undoubtedly a The Language Of Enemies 323

vicious and traitorous person and does not have devout ancestors.51

Even the Ottoman Turks are freedom-loving benefactors in comparison with the oppressors of the Brotherhood! Ecclesias- tical authorities in Jerusalem were not pleased with this insubordination, and Archimandrite Raphael was only rescued from excommunication by the intervention of the Russian Orthodox Church.52

1.8 Contemporary Reflections on Enemies in Christian Tradition: Jaroslav Pelikan and Elaine Pagels

Archimandrite Raphael and his enemies in the Brother- hood of the Holy Sepulchre were on opposites sides of the fence, but they shared the same outlook when it came to thinking about enemies. There is no doubt that both sides thought of themselves as defending the true interests of the Church against intruders, “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and “false prophets.” As we have seen, this was not something new. The devotion of the early Church to the proclamation and defence of the truth, of the “apostolic tradition,” is an early stage of this tra- jectory. Indeed, this is the main point of Jaroslav Pelikan’s

51 Raphael Hawaweeny, An Historical Glance at the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, trans. M. Najim (Torrance, CA: Oakwood, 1996 [1893]), 68. On the current situation see page xiv. 52 Saint Raphael was a graduate of the famous patriarchal theological academy on the island of Halki. Although it was closed to students by the Turkish government in 1970 its library continues in operation and includes in its collection Raphael Hawaweeny’s Greek dissertation. A Greek Ortho- dox monk in Britain who had spent some time working there told me that he had seen the exquisitely hand-written manuscript. He also said he was not surprised that the commission investigating the canonization of Hawaweeny had some difficulty getting access to the work, since the Greeks, he said, were still smarting over his criticism of the Brotherhood a hundred years earlier (this was in the 1990s). After teaching Arabic and Islam at a Russian theological academy, he was sent to North America to serve Arabic-speaking immigrants and had a remarkably fruitful ministry as an indefatigable missionary. He was eventually consecrated as bishop of Brooklyn, NY. He died in 1915 and was recently canonized in 2000. 324 John A. Jillions

monumental study of the Christian creeds, Credo.53 He is positive about this development and defence of tradition, but is also critical of its potential for ugly enemy-mongering. Elaine Pagels, on the other hand, has been a persistent critic of tradition, but is not unsympathetic to some of the features that make tradition attractive in a fragmented, rootless society searching for transcendence, authenticity, warmth and community. This comes out especially in one of her recent books, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas. While her claim that the Gnostics were legitimate early interpreters of Jesus who were unfairly suppressed by early traditionalists has been sharply criticized,54she raises a number of important questions about tradition, heresy, and the demonization of enemies, all of which come down to the question of “discernment of spirits.”

This act of choice – which the term heresy originally meant – leads us back to the problem that orthodoxy was invented to solve: How can we tell truth from lies? What is genuine, and thus connects us with one another and with reality, and what is shallow, self- serving, or evil? Anyone who has seen foolishness, sentimentality, delusion, and murderous rage disguised as God’s truth knows there is no easy answer to the problem that the ancients called discernment of spirits.55

Boundary-setting, deciding on friends and enemies, and “fleeing novelty”56 became major preoccupations of Christia- nity. Irenaeus, for example, has no room for the language of tolerance. Neither Jews nor heretics offer a “pure sacrifice,”

53 Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven /London: Yale, 2003). See also Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven/London: Yale, 2003). 54 See Raymond Brown’s stinging review of her earlier book, The Gnostic Gospels, in The New York Times, January 20, 1980. 55 Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003), 184 (henceforth: BB). 56 Pelikan, Credo, 398. The Language Of Enemies 325

and salvation depends on correct discernment of genuine priests from “heretics, schismatics and hypocrites.”57 Constan- tine, while having made a genuine conversion to Christianity, also felt at home with this outlook and with the support of bishops (newly liberated from persecution) introduced laws restricting schismatics, heretics, and Jews.58 Constantine still thought that Christians should be able to allow for a degree of diversity,59 but as Jaroslav Pelikan points out, the laws gover- ning the non-Orthodox became increasingly restrictive. Gra- dually it became wrong “not only to go against the Creed but to go beyond it.”60 By the time of Theodosius, diversity itself was proof of error, and the Theodosian Code used language that “precluded the very idea of any diversity of confessions.”61 This outlook, says Pelikan, found its way into every creed and confession of East and West. Quoting Alfred North Whitehead, he says, “Where there is a creed, there is a heretic

57Pagels, Beyond Belief, 141. However, C.P. Bammel sees Irenaeus primarily as a peacemaker. In reviewing her Tradition and Exegesis in Early Christian Writers, R.M. Grant says that in her chapter on “Peacemaking and Religious Tolerance” she “rightly concludes that a great deal of passive tolerance plus the active tolerance of Irenaeus and Dionysius of Alexandria was needed to hold the churches together” (Anglican Theological Review, 1997: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_199710/ai_n8761987). On the other hand, Gregory of Nazianzus in his old age considered his own tolerance of the Apollinarians to have been an error in judgment. “Even a white head has to be taught, for old age it seems to me is no proof of wisdom. At any rate I know better than anyone else the intrigues and the impiety of the Apollinarists; I have seen that their folly is unbearable, but I thought that with patience it might still be possible to tame them and to soften them little by little. It appears that I had unwittingly made them worse and that I had harmed the Church by my untimely philosophy of moderation, for it has failed to put the wicked to shame.” Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 125, to the Prefect Olympios (382) in Georges Barrois, ed., The Fathers Speak (Crest- wood, NY: SVS Press, 1986), 120. Saint Basil is less patient and urges the churches to denounce by name those apparently gentle Arians “who inflict easy damage to simple souls” and “foment disorder among us,” even though this sharpness can be misinterpreted, “as if we were assuming an attitude of meanness on account of personal differences” (Basil, Letter 263, to the Westerners, 377 in Barrois, The Fathers Speak, 116. 58 Pagels, BB, 169, 170, 174. 59 Ibid., 174 60 Pelikan, Credo, 415. 61 Ibid., 242; see also 225–26. 326 John A. Jillions

round the corner or in his grave.”62 In this sense, creeds often became “formulas of discord.”63 Indeed, as we have seen above, the baptismal renunciations were linked with renouncing heresies and with the missionary task of the newly baptized.64 Every ecumenical council repeated the anathemati- zing of every heresy.

And so the refrain of anathema continues – from one council to another, from one creed to the next, in the East and in the West, before the Reformation and after it, in Protestantism no less than in Roman Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodoxy. Even those moderns who object to the use of anathemas can sometimes end up sounding stridently polemical in voicing their objections to any polemics.65

The framework that emerged to protect the Church’s integrity – canon, creed and ecclesiastical hierarchy – focused on maintaining a supposedly unchanging Tradition in which “innovation” was a four-letter word. Nevertheless, Pagels and Pelikan, from two very different points of view, note that there was still surprising room for creativity, which Pagels calls “disguised innovation.”66 It was innovation by stealth, as suc- ceeding generations of Fathers and ecumenical councils kept repeating the mantra of tradition while at the same time actually introducing striking changes. Pelikan cites as examples I Nicea’s introduction of the non-scriptural term homoousios to describe the union of Father and Son67 and the term Theotokos proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus.68 My favourite example, however, is the Quinisext Council (692) which banned what had heretofore been a perfectly acceptable depiction of Christ as the victorious Lamb. Under the growing

62 Ibid., 187. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 192–93, 384 ff. 65 Ibid., 190. 66 Pagels, BB, 183; see also Pelikan, Credo, 18–19, 189. 67 Pelikan, Credo, 330 ff. 68 Ibid., 18, 346 ff. The Language Of Enemies 327

pressure of iconoclasm, with its emphasis on the symbolic and metaphorical, new emphasis was needed on the historical and incarnational. Hence, the traditional symbolic image of the Lamb was inadequate and had to go.69 Each time such an innovation was introduced, past texts were re-read to find the “implicit” new doctrine. This, of course, was the basic hermeneutical method in the New Testament use of the Old Testament. It was also fundamental to rabbinic interpretation because it allowed the biblical text to remain sacredly unchanging while introducing new interpretations adapted to new contexts (the Messianic and eschatological re-reading of prophecy being an obvious case in point). Among the Byzantines, a good example of this process is found in the emergence of a wide range of interpretations of the eucharistic liturgy which nevertheless rely on a text that was relatively unchanging. It was this ability of the Church to adapt that often resulted in schism with the most conservative groups, who were gradually left behind. This was the case of those who opposed the new Trinitarian formulation (homoousios) or objected to calling Mary Theotokos, but it was also true of the Novatio- nists and Donatists, who broke communion with the Church for being too lax. Their moral rigorism and impeccable orthodoxy were not enough to resist the tide of mercy that swept the Church as it sought to deal with those who had compromised or lapsed during times of persecution. The discipline of the church, says Pelikan, was obliged to deal with “violations of unity and love” as well as with “violations of faith and doctrine.”70 This example is especially relevant today in the debate over ecumenism. Pelikan clearly appreciates the continuity represented by the Christian creeds, something he finds striking in spite of their vast differences and their convoluted – sometimes bloody

69 Trullo, canon 82. A church where I once served as pastor had a large icon stand (tetrapod) in the center of the church with just such a carved image of the victorious lamb. On seeing this, a fellow priest told me (only half-jokingly) that he would not concelebrate again in this church until the offending uncanonical carving was removed. 70 Pelikan, Credo, 290–292. 328 John A. Jillions

– histories. But he is also committed to the “continuing and increasingly urgent quest for Christian unity.”71 He cites Geoffrey Wainright’s assessment that there are a number of movements worldwide in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have “affected wide areas of Christendom over confessional boundaries: the biblical theology movement, the liturgical movement, the ecumenical movement in its more technical sense, the movement to discover our common patristic roots and even to recover the controversial figures of later history in their originality and authenticity.”72 Pelikan writes approvingly of Vatican II, which was able to admit the mistakes of the past and “reject ways of action hardly in tune with the spirit of the gospel, indeed contrary to it.”73 He sees that council as especially prophetic in terms of ecumenical and inter-faith understanding. The Orthodox churches have also been affected by these developments, but on the whole it seems to me that fidelity to the past and its culture of enemies and anathemas continues to make it difficult for the Orthodox to be open to the “new ways of looking at and even formulating, creeds and confessions” that Pelikan is hoping for.74 Can the Orthodox churches begin to see others, and especially other Christians, no longer as enemies, or as mere recipients of our true witness, but as those in whom the Holy Spirit is indeed active and from whom we have something to learn, without feeling that this is a threat to Orthodoxy? One of my parishioners is not yet a catechumen, but has been participating very faithfully in the services of the Ortho- dox Church and in all aspects of parish life for the last year and a half. She has gradually felt more and more at home in the Orthodox Church and less and less at home in the Anglica- nism of her upbringing. She is attracted to Orthodoxy precisely because it is different, because it has held on to the Christian tradition in important ways other churches have not. She wants the Orthodox Church to stay this way, to be itself: “that’s what

71 Ibid., 510, 514. 72 In Ibid., 501. 73 Ibid., 243–244; 273. 74 Ibid., 501. The Language Of Enemies 329

is attractive to people like me.” Yet she also observes that the Orthodox are often isolated and do not see, or refuse to see, God at work beyond their canonical boundaries: “they need to know that God is bigger than Orthodoxy; God is alive and working in the lives of people outside Orthodoxy.” “Orthodox people,” she says, “need to consider the possibility that they could learn something from others.” Pelikan’s learned scholarship dovetails nicely with the insights of this thoughtful middle-aged woman on her way to joining the Orthodox Church. If Pelikan is right about the force of popular faith in shaping Christian history then we can be optimistic about the emergence of a generous Orthodoxy that remains faithful to itself, but is less fearful and more open to all that is good, beautiful, and true.

330 John A. Jillions

Part 2: Contemporary Attitudes, Ecumenism and Insights from Conflict Studies

2.1 Hearing the language of enemies today

Ancient religious texts, written and used at a time when the imaginative capacity of readers to spiritualize, allegorize, and re-interpret could be presumed, become dangerous in a society where literalism prevails. This is a special danger for the Orthodox Church which places a premium on preserving the ancient tradition, because it is easy to see how words taken from polemical contexts in the fourth century might be transplanted without modification to personal, national and ecclesiastical battles in the twenty-first. We’ve looked at how fourth-century Orthodox Christians heard “enemies language.” How is this language being heard today? I informally interviewed a number of Orthodox and Eastern Catholic clergy and laypeople in Ottawa parishes (individually and in small groups) to ask them what or who comes to mind when they hear enemies language being used in church services or when they read it in Scripture. The raw responses are compiled below. This informal methodology cannot give a definitive answer to this question, but it does hint at the range of possible responses. Strikingly, even in this small sample, the range of views is not unlike those seen in the historical survey in Part I. A spiritual approach to enemies do- minates, but there are clearly personal elements as well. In general, based on these responses, I think there is wide scope for “qualitative research” that elicits how people hear, respond to and appropriate (or not) various aspects of the Orthodox Tradition.

2.1.1 Who Are “the Enemies?”

1. People who lead me into temptation and cause me to sin 2. In most services, I take “enemies” in a spiritual sense, referring to the enemy of Christian life, Satan. But on other occasions I do put a face to it. These are not The Language Of Enemies 331

personal enemies who have done me harm, but people with whom I’ve had a falling out over issues of Chris- tian faith [he mentioned former friends who were Evangelical Christians]. 3. Passages like this used to give me lots of trouble until I started thinking of them in a spiritual sense. But many people in my family and church (she comes from a Middle-Eastern Christian background) think of Jews, especially, and also Muslims, as the enemy. But my parents are very religious and they never talk like this. 4. I always understand this in a spiritual sense: our passions are the enemies. Until I understood this I had a lot of trouble with verses like the end of Psalm 137: “Blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” 5. I take it in a spiritual sense, but the older generation [in Ukraine] might think of the Communists, and perhaps some would think of the Orthodox [she is Ukrainian Catholic] 6. It is spiritual only: the historical enemies in the Psalms are of no interest or value. Those times are in the past. Now we need to think of the spiritual meaning. 7. I don’t think of particular people but of abstract forces and events that stand in the way of Christian living. 8. Depends on the context: sometimes I think of specific people but in baptism I think of it in a spiritual way. 9. Demons. 10. Those who dislike me. 11. Anyone who gets between God and me. 12. Sins, things that cause temptation and distraction. 13. The enemies’ language of the Old Testament? Throw it away: it no longer applies. We live in the New Testament: “Love your enemies.” 14. Enemies meant something in the Old Testament; now we take it in a spiritual sense. 15. The enemies are “the sinners,” but this means their schemes, not them personally. 332 John A. Jillions

16. No, it’s not personal now. David wrote about concrete enemies in his time. That may be historically interesting but it’s spiritually irrelevant now. As people of the New Testament we must see the enemy as anything that stands between God and me. I myself can be my own enemy. 17. We have no enemies: we don’t hate anyone. 18. The enemies of the Church, those who want to kill us. 19. Depends where you are: as a Christian in Soviet Rus- sia I would have known who my enemies are. 20. Harmful people and harmful philosophies. 21. I often think of certain people who have caused me harm: my sister, who is a hateful person; my brother (he is mentally disturbed and is suing my step- mother); my ex-husband. 22. I think of real people, including long-time friends who can move in and out of the “enemies” category depending on the issue. My neighbour, who is an alcoholic and very disruptive to the neighbourhood (I may have to take him to court since he has caused a lot of trouble over last few years). There are group enemies, too, after 9/11: terrorists. I also think of internal enemies: anger, pride, my need to control and be right. 23. [A priest from the Middle East argued passionately for a personal and concrete view of enemies when I suggested that there is a traditional spiritual interpretation of enemies]. No, historically we had a real King – the Byzantine Emperor – and we have real enemies. The hymn of the cross asks God to give victory to the emperor over the barbarians. These were the non- Christians, especially the anti-Christians. For the early Christians, these were the Romans and the Jews. Later it was the Crusaders. Now it is the Americans in the Middle East. The Christians of the Middle East are under real threat. The Americans did not help us. We are under attack from Muslims, from Jews, Israel. Enemies continue today. And we have no hope except in God.

The Language Of Enemies 333

2.1.2 How Should Enemies Be Treated?

All the people I spoke with thought that there is a clear distinction, for Christians, between naming enemies and how one behaves toward them. Some offered ways to deal with enemies:

1. If there is someone harmful or irritating – an enemy – then instead of wishing them hellfire we should pray “Lord have mercy” a thousand times; that’s the advice I was given. 2. We should be gentle toward enemies. I was struck by Acts and how mild the apostles are in their preaching to those who crucified Jesus. “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:17). 3. I think of prayers from two of the services: • we pray for “those who hate us and those who love us” (Compline) • we ask God to “make the evil be good by Thy goodness” (Liturgy of Saint Basil) 4. A French-Canadian monk who spent many years on Mt. Athos was especially careful to distinguish between being aware of enemies and how they are to be treated. There are enemies who devise schemes to undermine Christian faith and teaching. Then there are personal enemies, people who wish you harm or can’t be trusted. But never return evil for evil. With such persons the monastic elders advised being careful, always being on guard (vigilance, nepsis) and learning how to “outsmart” them. But another part of the teaching acknowledged that if someone has such deep feelings against you, then there must be something, even unconsciously, that you might have done to offend them. So on Mt Athos it was not unusual to seek out the “enemy,” make a prostration before him and ask forgiveness. This often had the effect of disar- ming them and restoring peace. As for the “enemies” language in the services such as at Pascha (“so the 334 John A. Jillions

sinners will perish before the face of God”: Ps. 67), he never heard of it being understood other than spiritually, or as a reference to those who devise schemes against Christians. It would be ironic if it were otherwise, since Christ does not exercise vengeance. He silently endures. “Jesus said, ‘put your sword back’” (Matt. 26:52), and the monk says “forgive them” (Luke 23:34); repaying evil for evil is at odds with Christ’s forgiveness of enemies.

This evidence is of course anecdotal and informal, and the group was hardly scientifically constituted. But it gives some flavour for the range of attitudes toward the notion of enemies. These answers are also quite moderate. It was evident to most people I spoke with that one crucial factor in how people perceive this language is whether or not they have themselves experienced hostility, persecution, bad will, or aggression from others, especially in relation to their Orthodox faith. This is a function of culture, experience, and age. Most of the younger Canadians with whom I spoke had no direct personal experience of enemies at all, and so the concept was something of an abstraction. Some could not think of anyone who might wish them ill. One doctoral student in theology admitted that the concept is a difficult one for him and he takes it on faith: “There must be enemies if Christ says ‘love your enemies’.” In general, the more personal the experience of enemies, the more vivid was the sense of enemies in the services. But this was not universal: some were so overwhelmingly conscious of the spiritual sense of enemies that they found it hard, even perplexing, to transpose their concrete experience of enemies onto the language of liturgy.

2.2 Ecumenism as the Enemy

In the sample of responses above there are only a few hints of the most controversial battle in Orthodoxy today: the role of ecumenism. That “ecumenists” were not named here among the enemies may reflect the limited number of people who were interviewed and the fact that they belong to churches that The Language Of Enemies 335

are involved in ecumenical activities. But no discussion of enemies in the Orthodox world could be complete without some attention to this issue. All the autocephalous Orthodox Churches are involved officially, at some level, in ecumenical activities. How involved they are, to what extent this activity is pursued at various levels of ecclesial life (international, national, local) and the degree of enthusiasm for ecumenism vary tremendously across the Orthodox world, but officially there is participation. There is, however, vocal criticism of ecumenism from Orthodox rigorists. Often, the language of enemies from the past has been applied with little or no modification to other Christians today and especially to “ecumenists,” as the most dangerous enemies of Orthodoxy. The celebrated lifting of the anathemas of 1054 by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965 was condemned by Orthodox traditionalists as capitulation to the “papists.” In one bookstore in Thessalonica, I saw a large book on display book with a photo of the Pope and Patriarch embracing on the cover, but the title of the book was splashed in red across the photo: “The Kiss of Judas.” For more than thirty years, the monastery of Esphigmenou on Mount Athos has been leading the protest against the patriarch of Constantinople’s ecumenical stance and has broken communion with him and the other Athonite monasteries over this issue. Until recently, a huge banner outside the monastery (and on their website) proclaimed “Orthodoxy or Death!” Mean- while, the Patriarchate is pressing for the eviction of the 100 or so monks, presumably with the help of the Greek authorities. The Monastery is fighting back with appeals to the European Union and the United States that its religious rights are being trampled. I saw some flashes of this attitude when I was in Volos, Greece several years ago teaching a summer course. One of the students was distributing an “icon” of the Orthodox Church and I’ve kept it as a valuable souvenir.75 It depicts the “Holy Orthodox Church” as a Byzantine ship on the waters, with

75 Adapted from a fresco painted in 1817 in the Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos. The copy came with the blessing of the Flamourion Mo- nastery in Volos. 336 John A. Jillions

Christ manning the rudder, the Mother of God in the center praying, the apostles rowing, and the holy fathers of the Church on board in the bow. Shown below this scene, on land, are the various enemies of the Church who are ferociously attacking the ship with bows and arrows, spears, swords, and hooks. The “three greatest enemies of Orthodoxy” – the pope, the Monophysites, and an ecumenical bishop – are pulling at the ship with huge hooks, trying to steer it off course or to make it crash into the shore. The other enemies, as helpfully explained on the reverse, include:

• The beast of hell, i.e., the Muslim religion • Luther (aiming a blunderbuss at the ship) • Emperor Julian the Apostate, who preached idolatry • Other persecuting emperors (Nero, Diocletian, Decius) • The beast of the apocalypse of the new age • The Crusaders, understood today as the armies of the new age and the anti-Christ • Evil church leaders (symbolized by a Greek bishop embracing a prostitute and holding a bag of money labeled with a US dollar sign) • The anti-Christ, who leads them all

The organizers of the summer school were mortified to see this (there were a number of non-Orthodox students who had come from abroad for the course) and quickly collected all these pictures. But I managed to keep mine as a vivid illustration of enemies language. Similar statements exist in An Anti-Heretical Manual I found being distributed and sold through an Orthodox book service in Canada. While it is mostly devoted to refuting the errors of Jehovah’s Witnesses, in an epilogue it adds Free- masons and “the Ecumenistic Movement.” Ecumenism is dangerous because it “embraces in the name of ‘love’ all denominations that have something good to offer and thus diminishes the truth of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” This poses a threat to the integrity of the “unadul- terated teachings of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic The Language Of Enemies 337

Church.” The ecumenical movement “has become the world altar upon which the Truth has been sacrificed.”76 Another popular anti-ecumenical tract by Alexander Kalo- miros develops the idea that the ecumenical movement is an especially pernicious pan-heresy because its goals of unity and brotherly love seem so admirable. However, those who are involved “while wearing the mask of the friends of God, are actually his enemies.” In fact, “they are the Church’s most dangerous enemies, the false prophets of the Gospel.”77

The enemies who appear without any mask – the atheists, the materialists, the communists – cannot fool anyone. They are the ones who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But the others – “Orthodox” patriarchs, bishops and archbishops, leaders of Christian organizations, theologians and professors of theology – all who speak with hypocritical Christian love for our “brothers” the heretics and spread the message of union, all of these mask-wearers may not be killing the body, but they are surely killing the soul. That is why the battle against them must be relentless.78

Constantine Cavarnos underlines this message, but insists that he is not motivated by “hatred towards the heterodox.” Dialogue is dangerous, and the orthodox must simply avoid contact with persistent heretics (he cites Titus 3:10). The message of the heterodox is spiritually damaging, it is poison – the venom of snakes – and there is “clearly the danger of being

76 (No author given), A Guide for Every Orthodox Christian: An Anti- Heretical Manual (Melbourne, Australia: Greek Orthodox Youth Associa- tion of Oakleigh, 1997), 68. 77 Alexander Kalomiros, Against False Union: Humble thoughts of an Orthodox Christian concerning the attempts for union of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church with the so-called Churches of the West tr. George Gabriel (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1967), 28. 78 Ibid., 28. 338 John A. Jillions

infected spiritually by heretical ideas” which lead inexorably to “spiritual death.”79 He cites various fathers on this subject:

Guard yourself from dialogues (dialegesthai) with heretics [on matters of the Faith] in which you endeavor to uphold the Faith, lest the venom (ios) of their dis- graceful words smite you (Abba Isaiah the Solitary).

Do not associate with heretical men, for their words wound the heart like poisonous arrows (bele pharma- kera) (Saint Ephraim the Syrian).

He also says that Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis (1846–1920) endorsed the anti-dialogue approach expressed by Evgenios Voulgaris (1716–1806):

Do not run after the heterodox and invite them to doctrinal dialogues and discussions, which provoke irrita- tions, disputations and contentions, and no benefit…. The pious Orthodox Christian must step forth in the struggle for the Faith only when this is called for by necessity. And he must be careful, protecting himself as much as he can from the poison of the heterodox, and avoiding having discussions with them on the faith, when he knows they are lying in wait for him like snakes.80

Although I profoundly disagree with these views, it would be a mistake to dismiss them too quickly. There are people of intelligence, sincerity and deep Orthodox faith who are opposed to ecumenical contacts of any kind. For example, I received the following email from a highly educated pari- shioner, deeply distressed that I had announced a forthcoming tour of the Ottawa’s Roman Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame

79 Constantine Cavarnos, Ecumenism Examined: A Concise Analytical Discussion of the Contemporary Ecumenical Movement (Belmont, MA: In- stitute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1996), 52. 80 Ibid., 48–50. The Language Of Enemies 339

(as a newcomer to Ottawa, I had been invited to bring parishioners for a tour by their ecumenical officer).

It is a great sadness which I feel in my heart when I see how you throw away Orthodoxy for the love of the world, for the heretical nonsense of ecumenism…. Every time you cross the threshold of ecumenical adventure, your actions not only violate the Holy Canons, but also violate Christ. The Roman Church is neither Orthodox nor Catholic. If they wish to pray with us, Glory to God – if we on the other hand go to their places of worship, then we do not witness the truth to them, and we take shelter in their lie of love…

The above does not mean that I do not hold profound love for you; it means clearly, whether you understand it or not, that these man-pleasing actions are indeed heretical. Anathema to all ecumenists and to those with them. Anathema because they love their minds and their worldly wisdom and vanity, and not the humility of Christ. Anathema to them because no other power than Christ our God can save them.

The rest of the parishioners (as far as I know) do not share this extreme outlook, but there are some who are definitely sympathetic. But even the most progressive official Orthodox church pronouncements tend to view ecumenism as a one way street, with the Orthodox using the opportunity to draw everyone else closer to Orthodox truth. Take for example the Orthodox Church in America’s Encyclical On Christian Unity and Ecumenism (1973).81 It is impossible to find any reference to listening to others, to learning from others, to considering alternative points of view or looking for new approaches to new common issues that we face. Nor does it raise the possibility that the Spirit of God may be moving in unexpected ways outside the familiar precedents of Orthodox Tradition. In

81 The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, Encyclical On Christian Unity and Ecumenism (1973). 340 John A. Jillions

this document, any positive regard for the other is based entirely upon what remnants in other churches can still be recognized as Orthodox. There is no positive evaluation of the non-Orthodox tradition on its own or any acknowledgement that – regardless of the origins of the group – the Spirit of God may be working in it as part of the divine plan. The emphasis throughout is that Orthodox participation with non-Orthodox in ecumenical settings is for the sole purpose of making an effective witness that could eventually lead to the incorporation of the other into the Orthodox Church. Some Orthodox theologians have raised questions about this approach to ecumenism since at least the 1930’s, and wonder if the current official line is altogether too cautious. Is there more that can be said to overcome the old polemics applied to other Christian churches? I will return to this later. It think it important now to look at some of the insights from the new discipline of conflict studies in order to help explain how the language of enemies has taken such firm hold of Christian history, and how we might be able to move from these “structures of violence” to “structures of blessing.”

2.3 Insights from Conflict Studies

The way people hear the enemies language of the Ortho- dox tradition depends on their own experience of enemies and conflict. The burgeoning field of conflict studies may open new ways understanding this process and this in turn could lead to ways to get beyond current impasses. This is what will be explored in this section.82

82 The scope of conflict studies, as described, e.g., by the journal Peace and Conflict Studies, is “academic research on conflict analysis and resolution, peace building, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and other mechanisms that seek to prevent and control violence.” Other academic journals include The Journal of Conflict Studies, The International Journal for Peace Studies and The On-line Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution. In Ottawa the field is represented by the conflict studies program at Saint Paul Univer- sity (which also houses offices of Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution) and the Centre for Conflict Education and Research at Carleton University, which jointly sponsor an annual conference. In addition to the Ottawa programs, there are programs and centres at the Universities of Toronto, New The Language Of Enemies 341

Terminology is an immediate problem. Conflict studies speaks of dialogue, tolerance and reconciliation. But these terms are full of ambiguity, because it is by no means certain for everyone that any of these steps is necessarily good. For example, what does it mean to be “reconciled” with National Socialism, Stalinism, apartheid or radical Islam? Can an Orthodox Christian ever be “reconciled” with heresy? For those opposed to ecumenism, dialogue can only lead to infec- tion, and any steps toward “reconciliation” are merely proof that the Orthodox have been deceived. On the other hand, are there some who are now “enemies” with whom we might be able to have dialogue, whose presence we may come to accept and tolerate and with whom we might eventually be reconciled? History is also full of such examples. The re-integration of Japan and Germany into the world community after WWII for instance (although both were first defeated as enemies before such reconciliation became possible). Vietnam defeated the US but reconciliation is now almost complete. Parts of the former Soviet bloc and the West still treat each other cautiously but are well on the way to

Brunswick, Waterloo, and York University. In the U.S., leading programs are found at UC Berkeley; George Mason University; the Universities of Idaho, Wisconsin Institute, and Notre Dame; and at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, American Univer- sity, Syracuse University, and Harvard University. Eastern Mennonite Uni- versity has a good list of resources for conflict study: www.emu.edu/library/ peace.html. The University of Colorado’s Conflict Research Consortium website (http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/) is another comprehensive gate- way. It is curiously blank on conflict research from a religious or theological viewpoint. In fact there has been a lot of interest in the role of religion in conflict. London’s University of Westminster held a major conference on “Diplomacy and Divinity” in 1999. The American Academy of Religion has held consultations on “Religion, Social Conflict and Peace” at its annual meetings in recent years. The section on Religion in Central and Eastern Europe also had as its theme in 2004 “From Traumatic Memory and Vio- lence to the Quest for Peace and Tolerance.” Its 2003 meeting included a special forum on “Women, Religion and Global Conflict.” Quakers and Mennonites have long been at the forefront of conflict and peace studies, along with dozens of other Christian groups dedicated to promoting peace. The Orthodox Peace Fellowship, directed by Jim Forest, has been very active and has an excellent website with many resources and useful links: www.incommunion.org. 342 John A. Jillions

reconciliation; some countries of the Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO and the European Union. Cuba and the US remain enemies, officially, but there is increasing impatience with this stance from many US allies and US citizens. If progress toward reconciliation is possible in these secular situations, if lines can be drawn under the past, is this not possible for people of religious faith? This would seem to be essential especially for Christians, who understand that God has entrusted them with the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). If God, in Christ “was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their tres- passes against them” (2 Cor. 5:19), are not Christians to do the same with each other, moving beyond the impasses of the past?

2.4 “Structures of Violence”

One of the most helpful approaches I have found to understanding the dynamics of conflict is Vern Neufeld Redekop’s From Violence to Blessing: How an Understanding of Deep-Rooted Conflict Can Open Paths to Reconciliation.83 Redekop is a leading scholar in the field of conflict studies.84 He builds on the conflict studies of John W. Burton (deep- rooted conflict and identity) and René Girard (mimetic desire), but takes them further by proposing that it is possible to build “structures of blessing” to take the place of the “structures of violence” that provoke, promote and maintain enemy-based cultures in families, communities, churches, institutions, and nations. This emphasis on transformation makes his analysis unique and especially useful for Christians as they reflect on conflict.

83 (Ottawa: Novalis, 2002). 84 He directs and teaches in the Conflict Studies programs at Saint Paul University in Ottawa and is former director of the Canadian Institute of Conflict Resolution CICR), through which he had direct experience of conflict and processes of dialogue in hundreds of contexts, including some of the most intractable international trouble spots (Rwanda, Somalia, Belfast, Afghanistan). CICR continues its work of training and consultation today under the direction of Brian Strom, who was a consultant to the Orthodox Church in America during a period of recent internal conflict. The Language Of Enemies 343

Deep-rooted conflict is ultimately about “interiority,” because it depends on how people inwardly interpret events and the actions of others. An enemy is some person, group, situation or force perceived as a threat to core aspects of one’s identity, what Redekop calls “satisfiers of identity needs.”85 When a conflict is identified and someone is labelled the “enemy,” this means that we need to ask what aspects of identity are perceived to be under threat. These identity factors – and the importance of the group in shaping their identity – will vary in relative importance between members of the same group. Most people belong to more than one social group, and “various groups may play different roles in a person’s life.”86 This means that in an Ortho- dox congregation, for example, a middle-aged white male convert whose primary identity is as a traditionalist Orthodox Christian could be standing next to a woman whose primary identity is as a mother of young children. She is nominally Roman Catholic, but comes to church with her Romanian husband. Meanwhile, his primary identity may be as a father and breadwinner; but he values his Romanian Orthodox upbringing and the comfort it gives him as an immigrant. Yet on occasion he might go to the Catholic Church with his family and perhaps even receive communion. They may have a teenage daughter who has grown up in Canada, likes the parish community well enough but finds the services boring and is increasingly attracted to the large evangelical church she has visited with some of her friends. The “Orthodox” identity of each of these parishioners is far from identical. And therefore, they each will react differently to perceived threats to Ortho- doxy. “Ecumenism,” “Catholics,” “evangelicals”: all these words would have a different ring for each of them. This is a very typical example.87 The Orthodox Church in this example acts as an “identity group” but it functions differently in each case. An identity

85 Vern Neufeld Redekop, From Violence to Blessing: How an Under- standing of Deep-Rooted Conflict Can Open Paths to Reconciliation (Ottawa: Novalis, 2002), 14 (henceforth: FVB). 86 Ibid. 87 See Ibid., 134–37 for the role of religion in identity. 344 John A. Jillions

group “is any group with a capacity to impart a sense of identity to its members, even though not all members of the group relate to it in a primary way.”88 As can be seen from the example above this could become a problem for group cohe- sion. Indeed, such diversity can threaten a group’s uniqueness and ultimately its survival. For this reason, “identity groups struggle over who is in the group and who is not.”89 Should those who do not identify enough with the group be given less of a role? Should they – among Christians, for example – be refused communion? Should they not be allowed to vote at meetings? Should they be barred from leadership positions? If they are clergy, should they be given a leave-of-absence, suspended, or deposed? When the unique identity of the group is threatened, “people will fight.”90

Deep-rooted conflict is about identity: the beliefs, values, culture, spirituality, meaning systems, relationships, history, imagination, and capacity to act that form the core of an individual or group.91

Conflict occurs when an individual or group feels increasingly under pressure (threat) to make changes in their behaviour that would damage or kill some key aspect of their identity, to adapt themselves to someone else’s view of who they should be. “Individuals cannot be socialized into behaviours that destroy their identity and other goals, and therefore must react against social environments that do this.”92 For example, consider Christian martyrs for whom the primary “identity need satisfier” is to be single-mindedly faithful to Christ. They refused, therefore, to accept the social pressure to pour out liba- tions to the emperor’s statue. As Jesus said, “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own

88 Ibid., 14. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 23. 91 Ibid., 23. 92 John W. Burton, in Ibid., 23. The Language Of Enemies 345

soul?” (Matt. 16:26).93 This attempt by Christians to preserve their identity was regarded by the Romans as an incomprehensible act of defiance because it seemed to them so trivial. Everyone in the Roman Empire had to declare by a simple, conventional act of sacrifice that their identity included submission to Rome (whether they believed it or not was immaterial). Since the identity needs of both groups could not be met at the same time, the one in power had the upper hand. The Romans made Christians the enemy. The question for each party in a conflict is whether the particular demand being placed on them is seriously threatening or not. Redekop thus distinguishes a simple dispute – which can be negotiated and involves acceptable compro- mise – from a genuine conflict, which is “behaviour that is, or has the potential of being, destructive of persons, properties and systems.”94 Conflict is equally related to “mimetic desire” that evolves into “mimetic structures of violence.” In biblical terms this is expressed clearly by the Epistle of James: “What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war”(Jas. 4:1–2). How “mimetic structures of violence” work in practice is best explained by going through an example. I am hired by a good company to do a job I enjoy. I like my boss. In fact I admire him and would like to be like him: he is the model. I admire him because he has reached an important goal (he is vice- president of a division: the object) and I would like to have that myself someday (“mimetic desire”). He takes me under his wing, he likes my work, we become friends, go out together with our families. But he is the boss. As time goes by I start to resent his demands and begin to see his faults. I think that I could be a much better VP (competition for the object).

93 Once, when faced with a particularly intractable pastoral conflict that required the bishop’s intervention, a senior church leader advised me to tell the bishop “that you are losing your soul.” He would be obliged to act, since no priest is required to commit spiritual suicide! 94 FVB, 24. 346 John A. Jillions

Our former closeness, far from mitigating the brewing conflict, intensifies it (“the intensity of mimetic desire increases as rivals become closer to one another”95). But it is clear that there is no higher post open to him in this firm at the moment. He is staying put and now blocks my way to the VP spot (the object). The model has become the obstacle. As the obstacle, he is a threat to the fulfillment of my career satisfaction (“identity need”) so I increasingly see him as the enemy. If only he weren’t there, then everything would be all right. A competition is now set in motion and I look for ways to undermine his position (this may be one-sided and completely in my head; I may even be unaware of what is going on). If he sees me as a threat to his hold on his “identity need” (his job) then I become his enemy. The back and forth skirmishing escalates as we each imitate the other’s tactics to obtain or hold on to the object (“mimetic doubling”). We become more and more obsessed with each other, until desire is no longer for the “object” (the job) as much as for the elimination of the other. The conflict continues until the person with the most power wins and the other quits or gets fired. If the conflict is deep enough, even the removal of the enemy is not enough: his reputation must be completely destroyed with the aim that no one else will employ him.96 This is an example of a “mimetic structure of violence,” “a relationship that builds up in such a way that the parties in the relationship say and do things to harm one another.”97 Of course, this model requires a good deal of nuance in practice. As written, this example sounds inexorably deterministic – these cycles of violence always escalate until one party always destroys the other. It must be said that not every instance of conflict follows this fatalistic script. Still, it is a fairly typical example, although it is banal alongside the truly horrific conflicts such as in Rwanda. Often, of course, the

95 Ibid., 69. 96 I recall a theologian who had been hired by his bishop as an advisor. When they had a falling out, the bishop fired him and the man had to settle in another country because no one would employ him in his home country. The bishop then wrote letters to every theological college in the new country to warn them not to hire this theologian (he did eventually find a job, thanks in part to the intriguing letter!) 97 FVB, 161. The Language Of Enemies 347

violence is such that nothing will end the conflict except the literal destruction of the other person, group, or idea. That, in turn, can lead to cycles of revenge over generations and centuries. But the dynamics are the same regardless of the object: land, inheritance, leadership, “being right.” Often, the “object” can appear trivial to outsiders (the filioque, making the sign of the cross with two or three fingers) but be freighted with enormous and even “eternal” weight by the parties involved. Or, as shown above, the actual object recedes in importance or is lost sight of entirely as the conflict intensifies. Obsession with the enemy, winning, destroying the other become the new objects, and this is always justified by the rightness of the cause. Hence religious fights can be some of the most vicious because they involve basic claims to ultimate truth and whose side God is on. In such cases losing may even be interpreted as proof of rightness. This demonstrates what Redekop calls “inverted mimetic desire.” “On the surface it appears that one is renouncing the desire to be first. But the real rivalry is about controlling the situation.”98 For Christians there can be competition over who has suffered most, lives most simply, is most humble, and – for Orthodox especially – who is preserving the true apostolic faith most traditionally. This is a poisonous system, for “unless the sequence is halted, escalating reciprocal violence can destroy a community.”99 This is because “people feel so passionately about something that they will do anything in their power to acquire it.”100 As Redekop points out, there is a mysterious quality that takes over, a kind of madness that propels people to behave in ways they would normally find abhorrent. This is the “mystery of lawlessness” that Paul speaks about (2 Thes. 2:7). To illustrate this, I recall a priest in London once told me that he and the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom at one time had a bitter falling out for many months but were eventually reconciled. Years later, looking back at this period of conflict Metropolitan Anthony said, “we were both insane.”

98 Ibid., 81–82. 99 Ibid., 73. 100 Ibid., 83. 348 John A. Jillions

“Doubling” is an especially important concept here. “Everything that one of the partners to violence experiences, thinks about, or carries into action at a given moment, will sooner or later become observable in the other partner.”101 This accounts for the disconcerting abuse that is perpetuated by those who have been abused (and so it is not surprising that the persecuted Church, once given its freedom, then turns on its enemies). The actors in this drama are blind to mimetic doubling. “For the doubles, the feelings of hatred are so strong that people would never admit to being ‘like’ their adversary. They cling to their differences and distinct identity when they are actually becoming mirror images of the Other.”102 Indeed, one of the most important features of conflict is each side’s desire to hold on to what they regard as their unique identity. “They have either suffered in unique ways or have made distinctive contributions to humankind. When this uniqueness is questioned, they may have increased mimetic desire for defining characteristics of other individuals or groups.”103 Hypocrisy and deceit play key roles in the mimetic process because “adults in modern society have learned to fear and repress rivalry, at least in its crudest, most obvious and most immediately recognizable forms.”104 This may be one reason that ancient battles and those in more traditional societies look more fierce because they are fought in the open. It may also be why modern Western sensibilities are shocked by violent Byzantine rhetoric, as Elizabeth Theokritoff pointed out. But the process is still violent, as anyone who has suffered this process can testify. The potential for conflict and the intensity of the conflict depend in part on how close the relationships are and how open or closed the relational system is. “An open relational system is one where those involved have significant interaction with a variety of others. In a closed relational system, most significant interaction takes place with the people or

101 Girard, in Ibid., 69. 102 Ibid., 71. 103 Ibid., 77. 104 Girard, in Ibid., 76. The Language Of Enemies 349

organizations within the relational system.”105 A person who is well connected to a number of different communities (family, work, school, church, clubs, etc.) is less likely to become involved in conflict caused by mimetic rivalry “because there is enough relational change to divert attention from any one Model with whom they might be obsessed.”106 Conversely, we can expect the potential for intense conflict to dramatically increase “in closed communities in which people live, work, and worship with the same people,” or where people have fewer significant connections outside their primary community. One of the standard ways that competing individuals or groups use to bring the system back from the brink of self- destruction is to find a scapegoat. “Often whole communities turn on a single victim or one community projects all its violence onto an ‘enemy’.”107 Scapegoating, says Girard, is

that strange process through which two or more people are reconciled at the expense of a third party who appears guilty or responsible for whatever ails, dis- turbs, or frightens the scapegoaters. They feel relieved of their tensions and they coalesce into a more harmonious group. They now have a single purpose, which is to prevent the scapegoat from harming them, by expelling and destroying him.108

A key desire of any person or group is to preserve their unique identity, as noted earlier. “No culture exists within which everyone does not feel ‘different from others’ and does not consider such ‘differences’ legitimate and necessary.”109 To question this uniqueness is to threaten a core aspect of identity, and this can provoke not only deep conflict, but scapegoating, since “victims are chosen because they call into

105 Ibid., 74–75. 106 Ibid., 75. 107 Ibid., 83. 108 Girard, in Ibid., 85. 109 Girard, in Ibid., 90. 350 John A. Jillions

question a group’s sense of distinctiveness.”110 At other times scapegoats are “people who excel and are stigmatized as ‘thinking they are better than others’.”111 By expelling the scapegoat, the one they believe is the cause of the disruption, the group can preserve its identity and restore the peace it had before the identity was questioned. “For the surrogate victim to effectively distract individuals and groups from their internal violence, they have to believe fully that the surrogate victim is guilty. This belief is confirmed when peace is restored after the scapegoat event.”112 “The crisis is seen as a mysterious illness introduced into the community by an outsider. The cure lies in ridding the community of the sole malignant element.”113 The community’s sense of identity is linked to its “root metaphors,” those images and concepts which help the community understand itself and “the criteria for ideas accepted as legitimate.”114 Whoever controls this has tremendous power, says Redekop. “Ultimately, this is control of the world of meaning for a civilization, society, community or tribe.”115 Often, the controlling power becomes entrenched as a hegemo- nic structure that enables the dominant to control what happens as all sides accept a framework that operates instinctively: “they internalize the reality either as controllers, in which case they are accustomed to people accepting their authority, or as people being controlled who feel they have no choice but to comply.”116 When those who are subjected “become aware of their situation and work to change the structures” then change can occur. (Recall Raphael Hawaweeny’s dramatic appeal to the Orthodox Palestinians to rise up against the Greek Brother- hood of the Holy Sepulchre.) When this does not happen, and the subjected people either remain unaware or resigned to their condition, then one has the ideal environment for the emergence of an authoritarian cult.

110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 119 112 Ibid., 91. 113 Girard, in Ibid., 91. 114 Ibid., 114. 115 Ibid., 114. 116 Ibid., 115. The Language Of Enemies 351

Religious conflicts can be some of the most bitter, violent and intractable. Samuel Huntington famously drew the fault lines of future conflict along ethno-religious lines, with Ortho- doxy featuring prominently.117 According to Redekop, ethnic and religious identities are shaped by key concepts around the reading of the past: chosen trauma, chosen glory and collapse of time. Certain nodal events of the past emerge to define identity. “As these chosen traumas and glories are recounted, time collapses, making it seem as though they happened yesterday – even though they may have occurred centuries ago”118 (e.g., the Crusaders’ destruction of Constantinople in 1204 remains for many a defining moment in shaping an anti-Latin Orthodox identity). Identity – this could also be called Tradition – coalesces around revelations, events, books, ideas and persons from the past who can be considered heroes (Saint Athanasius) or villains (Arius). So also every ecumenical council has its “glory” (e.g., the Nicene Creed) and its corresponding “trauma” (Arianism). Icons are the “glory of Byzantium,” but they pass through the trauma of iconoclasm. Together, these glories and traumas form “boundary markers” that define who we are (and are not), who is in (and who is out).

Rules of exclusion and inclusion go along with boundary markers. These rules ensure that group members are true to the non-negotiable identity characteristics and quickly identify those not included in the group.119

Each boundary-marker can give a hint as to the group’s identity, but by definition it is just a marker and cannot define the identity or even a single aspect of the identity. Those on the “inside” know this and will elaborate for themselves and others the full implications of the boundary-marker and what it means from the point of view of the insider. Hence, baptism as a rite could be understood as a boundary-marker for entrance

117 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996). 118 FVB, 134, based on work of Vamik Voltan. 119 FVB, 134. 352 John A. Jillions

into the Church, but is accompanied by instruction to explain and interpret what this means. It is more difficult to explain (as an insider) what the person on the other side of the boundary marker thinks. There is a certain amount of guesswork about the outsider’s point of view. The more secure the boundaries, the less contact there is with outsiders, and the less verifiable is the guesswork. The result of this is a stereotype: an agreed image the insiders have of the outsider. “As the ‘us-them’ syndrome develops, the number of stereotypes increases.”120 The full truth about the other is suppressed, the person is dehumanized and, if a conflict erupts, the other person or group is demonized. This is “an extreme form of stereotyping” that plays an important role in maintaining group identity because it teaches “its members to maintain the enemy in his enemy role.”121 By turning the other into an enemy, dehumanizing him, and then turning him into a demon the group can justify whatever violence it inflicts on him.

First, we are dealing with a demon and with someone who is less than human. Secondly, this subhuman demon threatens us in such a mortally dangerous way that we must perforce defend ourselves.122

This dehumanizing of the enemy is captured nicely in a piece of folk wisdom from a tribe of cannibals in New Guinea: “You can’t eat the face of someone you know.” Dehumanization is accelerated and exacerbated in systems characterized by what Emmanuel Levinas calls “totality.”123 “This is an approach to life in which the core of one’s being – one’s inner life, one’s identity – can be grasped and controlled.”124 Totality begins with control of the self, but it quickly leads to control of the other. “Totality is all about controlling, grasping, and buying into the fiction that all there is to

120 Ibid., 143. He refers to the work of Donald Horowitz. 121 Ibid., 159. 122 Rafael Moses, in Ibid., 159. 123 Ibid., 148–149. 124 Ibid., 148. The Language Of Enemies 353

know about the other can be known.”125 Levinas contrasts totality’s urge to close-off and shut-down with “infinity.” Totality is “an assault on the infinite,” as it boxes in “a vast, infinite universe of thought, feeling, spirit, memory, aspiration, and a host of other factors” that are not meant to be confined.126 Thus, the stereotypes of the other are believed to be the true and complete picture. This concept of totality, says Levinas, is especially dominant in Western philosophy. Chris- tianity, as we have seen, is not immune to this, but its emphasis on mystery and the apophatic allows room for an “infinite” approach. Indeed, Saint Paul himself admits that full knowledge must wait for the infinite life of the eschaton:

for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away…. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I see in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor. 13:9–10, 12).

The foregoing has been an admittedly cursory treatment of the main points in Redekop’s analysis of conflict. He elabo- rates many other subtle permutations, but I think this description suffices for a basic understanding of the processes go- verning structures of violence.

2.5 “Structures of Blessing”

The reconciliation process, which – like conflict – includes a mysterious dimension bigger than the parties involved, can be extremely complex when two sides come together, and depending on the level of violence, there are issues about protection of victims from being re-victimized by the presence of their abuser/captor/rapist/torturer. As Redekop underlines, issues of justice are also an essential part of the reconciliation.127 But reconciliation, like conflict itself, begins with

125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., 278. 354 John A. Jillions

interiority, with reshaping the interior life and one’s perception of the other, just as in the enemy-making process. The first step is not to bring the combatants together, but to get them to reflect on their own, initiating an internal dialogue that moves away from violence toward dialogue and blessing. In this sense, reconciliation does not require both parties. And, regardless of the action taken by the other, one is free to be inwardly reconciled. Redekop proposes that there are “mimetic structures of blessing” that can reverse the downward spiral of violence and bring well-being to both the other and oneself. Mimetic desire does not have to lead to conflict and violence. Instead one can desire what is best for the other, and this in turn can become the basis for an upward spiral of mimetic desire. This, in Saint Paul’s terms, is to “be imitators (mimitai) of me, as I am of Christ”: 1 Cor. 11:1; cf. 1 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 5:1, 1 Thes. 1:6, 2:14). Building on the insights of Rebecca Adams, Redekop argues that there is a form of mimetic desire that does not lead to violence. “Human beings might be understood as deeply mimetic and thus profoundly relational (as Girard and many postmodernist thinkers have stressed), yet this would not pre- clude the possibility of authenticity, defined not as absolute autonomy of action and consciousness, but as the capacity to participate fully in a loving dynamic of giving and receiving in relation to others.”128 Mimetic desire “need not entail enslave- ment, rivalry or violence, but could actually open up into regard for and freedom for another.”129 As Adams says,

I could now see that real love automatically confers autonomy and dignity, in the sense of precluding mere imitation of the Model’s desire in any small, dimi- nishing sense. So it became easier now to clarify that

128 Rebecca Adams, in Redekop, FVB,263. The notion of the freedom and mutual submission of persons in a communion where each person allows the other to be himself is emphasized by John Zizioulas in Being as Com- munion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1985). 129 Rebecca Adams, in Redekop, FVB, 262. The Language Of Enemies 355

anything which diminishes others or turns them into mere copies of the Model cannot be real love (even if the Model is God).130

God’s desire for us, as human beings, she concludes, is for us to be ourselves, as we are uniquely meant to be. “God desired my Subjectivity.”131

Theologically, I saw that mimetic desire could now be understood as the desire of God for the subjectivity of everything. And if God desired the subjectivity of everything, and his desire was creative and contagious, it meant that Love was … the heart of the universe.

And this paradigm of Love had real power: it could confront and overcome political and social injustice informed by projection and scapegoating, because it could not only describe and unmask the mechanisms of violence, but show what their alternative looked like.

The new model simply says that human beings can enter into this ongoing, unfolding creation of a loving universe by desiring the subjectivity of others, and ultimately, of everything that is, because someone else has first desired that for us.132

130 Ibid., 267. 131 Here the interplay between submission and becoming an authentic person becomes somewhat confused in Adams’ thinking. “God did not desire that I negate my own will, my own desires, or myself, even for ‘my own good’, as I had been taught.” It is possible to see submission to God, the negation of self-will and the discovery of the true self as deeply linked, as in the teaching of Jesus: “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Indeed, the great variety of personalities among the saints is demon- stration that common following of the Way produces uncommon persons. See also John Jillions, “Self-Love” in Sourozh 65 (1996): 1–13, where this idea is developed in relation to the imitation of Christ. 132 Rebecca Adams, in Redekop, FVB, 268, 269. Cf. Rom. 15:7, “Wel- come one another … as Christ has welcomed you.” 356 John A. Jillions

This discovery of personhood through mutual submission in a communion of love where each allows the other to be himself or herself could also be called “being as communion,” as Metropolitan John Zizioulas has expressed it. He states as a fundamental patristic principle that “the person cannot exist without communion; but every form of communion which denies or suppresses the person, is inadmissible.”133 Finally, maximizing his human potential is part of the human vocation as priest of creation. “The eucharistic or priestly function of man reconnects created nature to infinite existence, and thus liberates it from slavery to necessity by letting it develop its potentialities to the maximum.”134 If this is what God desires for each of us, then this is precisely what we are called to give in turn to each other, to the one who is different from me, even the enemy.

2.6 Re-thinking Orthodox Boundaries

Redekop’s framework helps us to conceptualize the role of enemies and boundaries in the Orthodox tradition and to see how deeply tied these are to identity. The inherited tradition of demonizing enemies through “structures of violence” has played a major role in how Orthodox relate to those who are outside the boundaries or who threaten the boundaries. Is it possible for us to transcend this history and create “structures of blessing” for others and for ourselves, without losing our own identity? Redekop’s language may require some “translation” for Orthodox to accept, but I believe the processes he outlines are accurate descriptions of experience, both personal and ecclesial. We, as Orthodox, have become stuck in a “closed system” that makes us prone to stereotype, dehuma- nize, and demonize the other. Against its instincts for catholi- city, Orthodoxy has become, whether it likes it or not, one confession among many, and this has only reinforced its sense of isolation, embattlement, and exclusivity as it tries to re- assure itself of its own total uniqueness.

133 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 18. 134 Ibid.,119. The Language Of Enemies 357

Where in the Tradition can we look for support for a more open approach? First, we can look to Jesus and then to the early Church. We can look also to a few contemporary voices who are challenging the Orthodox to open their borders.

1. Was there anyone with whom Jesus refused to speak, associate, or eat? Indeed, the fact that He associated with all levels of society provoked religious leaders against Him. He did not fear “contamination” or “in- fection” or “guilt by association.” He did not accept the argument (used by anti-ecumenists today as well) that His mere presence with these outsiders could allow them to think that they are acceptable. Jesus refuses to rein in His generosity: in this sense He knows no boundaries, and even His betrayer Judas is knowingly given a seat at the Last Supper.

With the Samaritan Woman (John 4) Jesus crosses various boundaries, is in dialogue with Samaritan theology and can re-frame a potentially polemical discussion to speak instead of “worship in Spirit and in truth.” Although He still insists that “salvation is from the Jews,” Jesus is able to engage fully in dialogue without losing His bearings or giving up His conviction about where the fullness of revelation is to be found. This self-possession is expressed in the balance of Greek autarkeia (2 Cor. 9:8; Phil. 4:11;1 Tim. 6:6). In the language of psychology, Jesus is fully “self-differentiated” and is able to maintain His connection with others without threatening or feeling threatened.135

2. The central church-dividing issue in the first-century was the incorporation (or not) of Gentiles into what had been a Jewish-Christian sect. Paul’s Judaizing opponents in Galatia and elsewhere would certainly have seen him as a radical innovator, bent on destroying the

135 See Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford Press, 1985). 358 John A. Jillions

Church by watering it down for Gentiles. Paul’s famous debate with Peter over this matter shows how sensitive and central the issue was (Gal. 2:11–14).136 Yet Paul and the Jerusalem community ultimately resolved their differences over this question and agreed that they were being called to a new and unexpected stage in the Church’s life, a stage for which they had not received any advance instruction from the Lord. Significantly, it is Peter’s observation that Cornelius and his Gentile household had already received the Spirit – while unbaptized and formally outside the Christian community – that pushed him to overcome his own conservative hesitations and declare that they too should be recognized as brothers and sisters in Christ and admitted immediately to baptism and life in the Church.

While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days (Acts 10:44–48).

In reporting this incident to the rest of “the apostles and brethren” (Acts 11:1ff), Peter emphasizes the unexpectedness of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit, identifying it as precisely the same Spirit they themselves had experienced on the first day of Pentecost. This he takes as a sign that God was doing something new and he – Peter – should not stand in the way.

136 However, John Chrysostom in his commentary on this incident refuses to acknowledge any dispute: the apparent fight is merely a ruse cooked-up by the two apostles to bring hesitant Judaizers into line (Hom. on Galatians II: 18). The Language Of Enemies 359

The rest of the Church took some time to take this in, but in the end recognized that this was no delusion, but rather the generous and unexpected gift of God and the opening of new horizons for the Church. “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.”

As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard this they were silenced. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life” (11:15–18).

Both of these examples of embracing the other – Jesus and the early Church – raise questions for the closed confessional ecclesiology of the sort espoused especially by Orthodox rigorists. Metropolitan John Zizioulas wonders whether such a closed model is really adequate today.137

The concept of the Church as a confessional entity (Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran etc.) is historically a late phenomenon and has come to complicate the situation to an alarming degree…. Can we say that as the eucharist brings together Jew and Greek, male and female, black and white, it should also bring together Anglican and Lutheran and Orthodox etc. in a certain local area?

He acknowledges the well-known Orthodox objections to this, but insists on raising two questions. First, can a confessional body (which he implies is what the Orthodox are today) be legitimately regarded as Church? His answer is no: “A Church must incarnate people, not ideas or beliefs. A confessional

137 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 259–260. 360 John A. Jillions

Church is the most disincarnate entity there is.”138 He insists that a Church, to be truly the local church, must embrace all cultures of the locality, including, he implies, the ecclesial cultures. This is precisely what a confessional church is unable to do, by definition. Secondly, he asks if “a local Church can be regarded as truly local and truly Church if it is in a state of confessional division?” He admits that this is difficult to think about, but insists that “we must begin to question the ecclesial status of confessional churches as such, and begin to work on the basis of the nature of the local Church.” This would leave all churches re-examining their ecclesial status, and this he admits will not be easy because “confessionalism is rooted deeply in our history.” Finally, if we truly desire the unity of the local church, “we must be ready to admit that as long as confessionalism prevails no real progress towards ecclesial unity can be made.” This is a radical suggestion that, in my opinion, has not yet been taken up by the Orthodox churches, but may prove, as he concludes, “to be of extreme importance in the ecumenical movement.”139 Metropolitan John is one of a number of respected Ortho- dox voices today and from the recent past calling for a rethinking of Orthodox relations with others. This is not the place for a full exposition of this trend in modern Orthodox thought, but I would like to give some sense of the range and texture of views represented by this “cloud of witnesses.” Some of those who have expressed themselves most sharply on this question include Lev Gillet, Paul Evdokimov, Kallistos Ware, Anastasios Yannoulatos and Christos Yannaras. Father Lev Gillet (1893–1981) spent a lifetime involved in ecumenical and inter-faith collaboration while remaining firmly committed to the Orthodox faith. He recounts many meetings with Christians from various Churches, but also with Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and Bahaists. And in all these encounters he says he recognized in his mind and adored “the hidden and implicit Christ.” “I see the Logos in everything. It

138 Ibid., 260. 139 Ibid. The Language Of Enemies 361

is Christ – I dare to say this – who is the unity of my life in its multiplicity.”140 He was especially far-sighted in his approach to Judaism, and as early as 1942 urged that Christians should substitute dialogue for “one-sided mission to the Jews.”141 Indeed, he hoped that Christians could participate in and learn from the inner life of Judaism, as part of a wider ecumenical movement of shared prayer. Speaking more generally, we dare to advocate here a kind of communio in sacris between Christians and Jews. We do not give to the term the technical sense which it assumes in Roman Canon Law, but we mean by it a sincere sharing in the sacred things of prayer and worship. A capital feature of the present movement towards Church unity (“ecumenical movement”) is the understanding participation of members of certain confessions in the worship of other confessions. The deep feeling of unity created by such participation is perhaps a greater ecumenical result than the theological agreements so strenuously obtained in discussions and conferences.

The Christian should feel at home in a Jewish sanc- tuary: everything there is also his heritage. Like Jesus and His disciples when they attended the Temple or the synagogues, he should feel that he is “in the House of the Father.”142

Paul Evdokimov (1900–1970) was also deeply involved in ecumenical settings, particularly as director of a hostel for refugees, students, immigrants and troubled youth after the Second World War. The broken condition of the world deman- ded, he said, a “social ecclesiology” and a unified Christian

140 Letter to Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, 6 April 1961, in Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church, trans. Helen Wright (Oxford: Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, 1999 [1993]), 379. See also John A. Jillions, “Communion in the Messiah: Lev Gillet and Jewish- Christian Relations,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 47 (2006): 111–29. 141 Gillet, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity (London: Lutterworth, 1942). 142 Ibid., 133, 134. 362 John A. Jillions

witness to an “ecumenical epiclesis.” He particularly insisted that Orthodox should define themselves less by their differences with others than by what they have in common.

The human person is not decisively defined by differ- rences from others but mostly by the ability to identify with them, to create an “intersubjectivity” in Christ which is communal and ecclesial. Society (or the world) is more desired by God than the Church for it is the ethical task of a social ecclesiology to transform the world into its proper reality…. The world’s destiny depends on the Church’s creativity, her ability to welcome, her charism of being a servant and poor in the service of the poor and little ones of this world.143

If the effort of political people has along with it the deep unity of believers and if together all of these effect an ecumenical epiclesis, a common calling down of the Spirit of God, then God Himself would place the world very clearly and visibly before the ultimate option: “Look, I place before you life and death. Choose life, so that you may live” (Deut. 30:15–20). And since God has become human, he himself, perfect man, would bring all the weight of his crucified love to bear upon the decisive choice we make.144

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has likewise insisted that while he regards the Orthodox Church as having preserved the “fullness” of life in Christ, he would not want this misinterpreted in an exclusivist sense. In telling the story of his personal journey of faith to the Orthodox Church (he was received in 1958) he writes:

Orthodoxy has the plenitude of life in Christ, but it does not have an exclusive monopoly on the truth. I

143 Paul Evdokimov, “The Social Dimension of Orthodox Ecclesiolo- gy,” in Michael Plekon and Alexis Vinogradov, eds., In the World, Of the Church, (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2001), 78. 144 Ibid., 94. The Language Of Enemies 363

did not believe then, nor do I believe now, that there is a stark and unmitigated contrast between Orthodox “light” and non-Orthodox “darkness.” … I have never been convinced by the rigorist claim that sacramental life and the grace of the Holy Spirit can exist only within the visible limits of the Orthodox Church.145

Archbishop Anastasios of Albania also envisions an Orthodoxy that is able to move beyond the stalemates of the past and engage in an atmosphere of openness, respect, and dialogue rather than frightened or self-righteous polemics.

We must remain open and constructive regarding dialogue with people who have other religious convic- tions or philosophical positions, ‘speaking the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15). The Orthodox ethos compels us to respect, with complete sincerity, the individuality and freedom of others, regardless of what they believe or even whether they believe. Fanaticism, xenophobia, and the transformation of ecclesiastical belief into some ideological construction are all out of keeping with the free spirit of Orthodoxy. What is needed most is sober understanding, a calm and critical approach, consistency, and cooperation with all human beings of good will, so that peace and brotherhood will prevail among all the peoples of the world.146

The ethos of dialogue is to be welcomed, says Christos Yannaras, but there must be more to dialogue and ecumenism than the official conversations of specialists. As a veteran of many such dialogues, he is skeptical about their ability to nurture deeper communion between people on a broader scale. We need, he says, a new kind of ecumenism that seeks a genuine and inspired encounter between people “who share a thirst for the life which can conquer death.” This kind of

145 Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom, 8. 146 Archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos), Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essays on Global Concerns, trans. Paul Gottfried (Geneva/Crest- wood, NY: WCC Publications/SVS Press, 2003), 203. 364 John A. Jillions

encounter begins with confession of sin and weakness and is willing to go outside the walls of psychological illusion and ecclesial self-sufficiency.

Today we need a new ecumenism, an ecumenism which will not have as its goal a “dialogue” between traditions and confessions, but rather will manifest a new “coming together” through the encounter of people of any and every tradition and confession. It would be the ecumenism of concrete encounter between those who share a thirst for the life which can conquer death, people who are looking for real answers to the “dead ends” of the civilization in which we live today…

I dream of an ecumenism which will begin with a confession of sins on the part of each Church. If we begin with this confession of our historic sins, perhaps we can manage to give ourselves to each other in the end. We are full of faults, full of weaknesses which distort our human nature. But Saint Paul says that from our weakness can be born a life which will triumph over death. I dream of an ecumenism that begins with the voluntary acceptance of that weakness.147

One could call this approach kenotic ecumenism. It requires the Church to empty itself of its glory just as Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:6,7). This, it seems to me, is a fitting prescription that every Orthodox Church and every Orthodox Christian could apply to creating the “structures of blessing” our families, our churches and the world so desperately needs.148

147 Christos Yannaras, “Towards a New Ecumenism,” Sourozh, 70 (1997): www.orthodoxytoday.org/articlesprint/YannarasEcumenismP.shtml. 148 For further reflection on Orthodoxy and ecumenism see John A. Jillions “Orthodox Christianity in the West: the Challenge of Ecumenism,” in Mary Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, eds. The Cambridge Com- The Language Of Enemies 365

2.7 Conclusion

The primary aim of this article has been to suggest a new approach that the Orthodox could take in rethinking relationships and boundaries with other Christians, who too often have been thought of as enemies. Without abandoning faithfulness to divinely revealed Tradition, can the Orthodox churches begin to see others, and especially other Christians, no longer as enemies, or – at best – mere recipients of our true witness, but as those in whom the Holy Spirit is indeed active and from whom we have something to learn, without feeling that this is a threat to Orthodoxy? Can we move away from inherited “structures of violence,” even rhetorical structures, and instead consider the possibilities of “structures of blessings”? The first part of this article looked at the long scriptural, patristic and liturgical history of enemies language and how this has continually reinforced exclusivist conceptions of the Church. Despite a tendency to spiritualize this language, the Orthodox have continued to preserve a keen sense of watch- fulness that keeps them on guard against flesh-and-blood enemies who might threaten the community’s identity and integrity. On the one had this has helped preserve faithfulness to the inherited tradition, but it has also spawned a legacy of anathemas and suspicions that is especially obvious in some of the popular attitudes toward modern ecumenism, as the second part of the article shows. This legacy is not limited to popular opinion, however. Even respectful theological dialogue can reinforce a hardening of positions as each side – and the Orthodox are not alone here – attempts to justify its own faith and practice.149 While theological dialogue may be essential to Christian reconciliation, it often raises the barriers rather than lowering them. As Jaroslav Pelikan pointed it, creedal state-

panion to Christian Orthodox Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and also Id., “Ecumenism and the Paris School of Orthodox Theology,” Theoforum 39 (2008): 141–74. 149 For more on this role of enemies language and its impact on ecumenical dialogue, see the new book by Kenneth F. Yossa, Common Heri- tage, Divided Communion: Advances of Inter-Orthodox Relations from Chalcedon to Chambésy (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009). 366 John A. Jillions

ments can become “formulas of discord.” He argued that we need “new ways of looking at and even formulating, creeds and confessions.”150 In the end, it may be more promising to bracket the truth/falsehood paradigm of creeds and instead examine Chris- tian division through the lens of conflict studies. Perhaps we will discover that the divisions we thought were about truth and falsehood have more to do with identity. In any case, seeking to make “structures of blessing” seems more in keeping with the boundary-crossing and peacemaking characteristic of Jesus, and surely that is an ancient tradition worth reviving. If the Orthodox fear losing something of their “glory” in this new process, is that not exactly what God risked in entering this world?

®®®®®®®®

Резюме

Любов до ворогів знаходиться в самому центрі вчення Ісуса. Водночас, Святе Письмо і літургія Православної Церкви, а також і базовані на них творіння отців Церкви послуговуються доволі різкою і навіть ворожою лексикою висловлюючись про ворогів – як духовних так і особистих. Ця стаття звертається до таких висловлювань у Біблії, творіннях Юстиніяна Мученика, Кирила Єрусалимського, Григорія Нисського, Іоанна Златоустого і Теодора Моп- суетського а також богослужбових текстах, особливо таїн- ства Хрещення. Усі ці висловлювання породили цілий ряд анатем, які автор намагається проаналізувати і зрозуміти за допомогою праць Ярослава Пелікана (Jaroslav Pelikan) та Елейн Пейджелс (Elaine Pagels). У другій частині статті автор проводить неформальні опитування численних схід- них християн з метою оцінки їхнього ставлення до цієї “мови ворогів” а потім звертає особливу увагу на тих, що вважають екуменістів найбільш небезпечними ворогами Православної Церкви сьогодні. Після цього автор звер- тається до наукового доробку теоретика конфліктології

150 Pelikan, Credo, 501. The Language Of Enemies 367

Верна Редекопа (Vern Redekop) щоб зрозуміти динаміку конфлікту і проаналізувати можливість створення і засто- сування “структур благословення” які б подолали застарілі конфлікти і наявні “структури ворожості”. Автор арґумен- товано стверджує, що позиція Редекопа не лише виглядає більш адекватною по відношенню до миротворчого ім- перативу Ісуса але й кидає виклик Православним хрис- тиянам сьогодення переглянути свої висловлювання і позиції щодо їхніх теперішніх “ворогів” і особливо екуме- ністів, відданих справі Християнської єдності.

® ® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 369–385

La théologie des énergies divines: l’enjeu, les dificultés et les perspectives du dialogue entre catholiques et orthodoxes1

Jean-Claude Larchet

Abstract (Українське резюме на ст. 384)

Distinguishing between God’s “essence” and His “energies” was most famously done by Gregory Palamas, who would be opposed not only by Western theologians but also by Byzantine humanism. Palamite theology was polemically attacked by such modern Catholic patrologists as L. Allatius, D. Pétau, M. De Rubeis, M. Jugie, and S. Guichardon, and even today this theology is often dismissed as “heretical” even though more recent studies, such as those of G. Pelland, P. de Renczes, A. de Halleux, and E. Durand have demonstrated that “Palamism” has very ancient roots in patristic literature well before the fourteenth century. Orthodox patrologists (D. Staniloae, C. Kern, G. Florovsky, V. Lossky, and especially J. Meyendorff) have been just as polemical in their defence of Palamas as an integral part of Orthodox “identity.” The author suggests Catholic (and Protestant) hostility to Palamas may be explained by three factors (ignorance, excessive Augustinianism, or certain strands of Thomism), though the recent work of David Bradshaw has attempted to show that a fourth factor may be at work: different metaphysical systems in East and West. The debate about essence and energy touches on other Orthodox-Catholic debates, especially that of the filioque, which the author reviews by briefly sur- veying recent discussions as well as its treatment in Maximus

1 Texte d’une conférence donnée le 3 avril 2008 à l’Institut Andrey Sheptytsky pour l’Étude du Christianisme Oriental, Université Saint-Paul, Ottawa, ON, Canada. 370 Jean-Claude Larchet

the Confessor, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Gregory of Cyprus. The author concludes that much work remains to be done to clarify the terms of the essence-energy debate, and absent such clarification “Palamism” may continue to be (or at least perceived to be) an impedimentum dirimens to Orthodox-Catholic unity.

®®®®®®®®

La question de la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines et de la nature de celles-ci apparaît comme une question cruciale pour les relations entre l’Orient et l’Occident chrétiens. La querelle qui est née à ce sujet dans le monde byzantin au XIVe siècle et qui, de ce fait, apparaît à certains historiens comme «une controverse purement intérieure à Byzance»2 a en vérité cessé de l’être depuis longtemps. En effet, plusieurs conciles de la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle ont rapidement mis fin à la controverse dans le monde byzantin même (les opposants devenant de plus en plus minoritaires et marginaux, jusqu’à disparaître), et c’est entre les théologiens latins et les théologiens byzantins qu’elle s’est déplacée. Un tel déplace- ment était du reste prévisible, puisque dans la théologie de Grégoire Palamas – qui formalisa la distinction essence – éner- gies et lui donna son maximum de précision – la théologie orthodoxe ne s’opposait pas seulement à un courant de pensée lié à l’humanisme byzantin,3 mais également à un courant de pen- sée augustinien4 qui venait de trouver dans le thomisme une confirmation et un prolongement.

2 G. Podskalsky, «Gregorios Palamas», Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 4, 1995, col. 1010. 3 Thèse qui a été soutenue par J. Meyendorff dans ses diverses études sur Grégoire Palamas et en particulier dans sa thèse: Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas, Paris, 1959. 4 Thèse soutenue par J. Romanidis dans un volumineux article où il critique la thèse de J. Meyendorff: «Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics», The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 6, 1960–1961, pp. 186–205; 9, 1963–1964, pp. 225–270. La théologie des énergies divines 371

En Occident, la théologie palamite allait faire l’objet d’attaques virulentes de la part de patrologues catholiques, en particulier au XVIIe siècle (L. Allatius, D. Pétau), au XVIIIe siècle (M. De Rubeis) et au début du XXe siècle (M. Jugie, S. Gui- chardon). Dans les dernières décennies mêmes du XXe siècle, une approche plus scientifique de la théologie byzantine n’a pas empêché la plupart des historiens et patrologues occidentaux, de formation catholique ou protestante, qui ont traité de la théologie palamite de manifester à son encontre une hostilité plus ou moins marquée (M. Candal, E. von Ivanka, H.G. Beck, B. Schultze, G. Podskalsky, D. Wendebourg, J. Nadal), con- centrée en particulier sur la distinction de l’essence et des éner- gies divines. De nos jours encore la simple évocation de la notion d’ «énergies divines» suscite de la part de bon nombre de théologiens catholiques des réactions négatives et, lorsqu’elle est utilisée à propos de Pères antérieurs à Palamas,5 amène les mêmes théologiens à qualifier de «palamiste» l’in- terprétation de ces Pères, comme si cette appellation suffisait à la disqualifier et les dispensait de tout autre argument.6 Il n’est pas rare que, à notre époque encore, les accusations d’hérésie proférées contre Palamas par ses adversaires du XIVe siècle, continuent à être portées, et que, en particulier, les qualificatifs de «messalien» ou de «bogomile», continuent à lui être appli- qués bien qu’ils soient théologiquement intenables7. Certains patrologues catholiques qui ont tenté une approche positive et sympathique de la théologie palamite (notamment A. de Halleux) ont été fortement critiqués, faisant même parfois l’objet d’une campagne orchestrée par des con- frères se prétendant par ailleurs ouverts à la pensée de l’Orient

5 Voir encore récemment: G. Pelland, dans Gregorianum, 78, 1997, pp. 189–90; P. de Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur, Paris, 2003, pp. 18–19, 38; E. Durand, La Périchorèse des personnes divines (Paris, 2005), p.104. 6 Voir par exemple E. Durand, La Périchorèse des personnes divines, Paris, 2005, p.104. 7 Voir notre article «Messalianisme», dans P. Sbalchiero (éd.), Diction- naire des miracles et de l’extraordinaire chrétiens, Paris, 2002, pp. 524–527. 372 Jean-Claude Larchet

chrétien et au dialogue avec elle (J.-M. Le Guillou8); d’autres ont été quasiment ignorés malgré la place importante qu’ils occupaient au sein de la hiérarchie (le cardinal C. Journet) ou/et de l’université (Mgr. G. Philips) ; d’autres encore sem- blent avoir été très rapidement «rectifiés» (J. Lison9). L’hostilité vis-à-vis de la théologie palamite se manifeste jusque chez des théologiens très engagés dans les relations œcuméniques avec l’Église orthodoxe et qui développent par ailleurs certaines positions qui se veulent proches de celle-ci (J.M.R. Tillard10). Cette attitude a malheureusement causé un grave préjudice aux études patristiques – qui auraient pu et dû constituer la base d’une compréhension mutuelle, d’un authentique dialogue et d’un rapprochement – puisque bon nombre d’historiens ou de patrologues catholiques qui sont amenés, dans leurs tra- vaux, à rencontrer la question des énergies divines, en écartent l’examen11 ou lui consacrent une note insignifiante pour affir-

8 Le dossier violemment anti-palamite réalisé par le P. Le Guillou dans Istina, 19, 1974, vise, de manière presque explicite, les positions du P. De Halleux (voir la Préface de Le Guillou, p.259). La pensée du P. Le Guillou est surtout relayée, dans ce dossier et dans quelques autres articles, par son principal disciple, le P.J.-M. Garrigues. Dans le même dossier, on trouve, comme autre contribution principale, celle d’un antipalamite fanatique, le P.J. Nadal. 9 Voir l’étonnante préface de J.M.R. Tillard à la thèse de J. Lison, L’Esprit répandu. La pneumatologie de Grégoire Palamas, Paris, 1994. Tillard, par ailleurs militant œcuménique, y fait preuve d’une hostilité mar- quée à l’encontre de la théologie palamite et détruit en quelques formules (notamment en répétant l’ancienne et injuste accusation de messalianisme) les efforts de rapprochement entrepris par Lison dans la continuité de son directeur de thèse, le P. André de Halleux. Voir notre recension de cet ouvrage dans la Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 74, 1994, pp. 449– 451. 10 Voir sa préface à J. Lison, L’Esprit répandu, p.VI. D’un autre côté, Tillard a beaucoup œuvré pour rapprocher l’ecclésiologie catholique de l’ec- clésiologie orthodoxe pour laquelle il éprouvait une réelle sympathie. Sa postion témoinge d’un œcuménisme parfaitement compartimenté. 11 Voir par exemple l’étude d’Y. de Andia, L’Union à Dieu chez Denys l’Aréopagite, Leiden, New York et Cologne, 1996, et cela bien que des études sérieuses et connues, notamment celles de V. Lossky, ait attiré l’attention sur la présence d’une doctrine des énergies divines dans l’œuvre du Pseudo-Denys. Voir notre recension de cet ouvrage dans la Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 80, 2000, pp. 433–435. La théologie des énergies divines 373

mer que la notion d’énergie, est chez l’auteur qu’ils étudient, sans rapport avec la conception palamite.12 De volonté délibé- rée ou par ignorance, le mot grec energeia est même souvent, comme nous avons pu le constater lors de la consultation des sources de diverses époques, oublié par les traducteurs ou ren- du par des termes inadéquats – comme «acte», «action», «force», «puissance» – qui soit le font passer inaperçu, soit diluent sa signification, soit infléchissent et défigurent son sens. Quel- ques auteurs catholiques ou protestants, percevant bien l’importance de la notion d’ «énergie» dans la pensée patristique, lui ont cependant accordé l’étude philologique et historique qu’elle méritait, mais en orientant malheureusement leur travail dans une perspective antipalamite clairement affichée a priori (J.-M. Garrigues,13 D. Wendebourg,14 P. Renczes15), certains poussant même la phobie à l’égard du palamisme jusqu’au refus sytématique de traduire le mot grec energeia par «énergie16». Ainsi P. Renczes avoue ingénument sa répul- sion à utiliser ce mot pour le motif que «rendre en français le mot energeiai par “énergies” facilite[rait] une lecture palamite des énergies divines mieux que ne le ferait la traduction par le mot «opérations»!17 Corrélativement, de nombreux patrologues et théologiens orthodoxes de renom (D. Staniloae, C. Kern, B. Krivochéine, G. Florovsky, V. Lossky, J. Meyendorff), forts du fait que la théologie palamite avait été officiellement approuvée et inté-

12. Voir par exemple les études de B. Pottier, Dieu et le Christ selon Grégoire de Nysse, Namur, 1994 et de B. Sesboüe, Saint Basile et la Trinité, Paris, 1998. Voir notre recension de ce dernier ouvrage dans la Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 80, 2000, pp. 425–426. 13 «L’énergie divine et la grâce chez Maxime le Confesseur», Istina, 19, 1974, pp. 272–296. 14 Geist oder Energie. Zur Frage der innergöttlichen Verankerung des christichen Lebens in der byzantinisten Theologie, Munich, 1980. 15 Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur, Paris, 2003. Voir notre recension de cet ouvrage dans la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 100, 2005, pp. 185–87. 16 Voir l’étude précédemment citée de P. Renczes. 17 P. de Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur, Paris, 2003, p.38. 374 Jean-Claude Larchet

grée au corpus dogmatique de l’Église orthodoxe par les conciles du XIVe siècle, considèrent la théologie palamite comme un acquis inaliénable de la théologie orthodoxe et ten- dent parfois à en faire une expression de l’identité orthodoxe, constituant un courant souvent qualifié non seulement de néo- patristique, mais aussi de «néo-palamite.»18 Trois colloques internationaux ont récemment réaffirmé dans ce sens l’importance essentielle de la théologie palamite pour la théologie orthodoxe et le fait qu’elle est indissociable de celle-ci.19 Il n’est pas impossible que cette position corres- ponde à une affirmation ou à une réaffimation de l’identité orthodoxe, face à la théologie latine, à partir de la fin de la pre- mière moitié du XXe siècle, alors que certains théologiens orthodoxes, émigrés en Europe occidentale à la suite de la révo- lution russe, présentaient la théologie orthodoxe dans sa spé- cificité en même temps qu’ils répondaient aux attaques dont la théologie palamite était l’objet à un niveau qui méritait d’être pris en considération.20 Car il faut remarquer qu’auparavant la théologie palamite tenait, dans le cadre de la théologie orthodoxe, une place moins prépondérante, quand elle ne se trouvait pas totalement en retrait.21 Ce renouveau de la théologie pala-

18 Voir par exemple J.-M. Le Guillou, «Grégoire Palamas», Istina, 19, 1974, p.257; 258. 19 Voir G. Mantzaridis (éd.), Ὁ Ἅγιος Γρηγόριος ο Παλαμᾶς στὴν ἱστορία καὶ τὸ παρόν, Actes des colloques scientifiques internationaux d’Athènes (13–15 novembre 1998) et de Limassol (5–7 novembre 1999), Monastère de Vatopaidi, Mont-Athos, 2000; «650 година сљборског То- чоса (1351–2001) – Свети Григорије Палама у историjи и садашњости», Actes du colloque international de Srbinje – Ostrog – Trebinje, 19–21 octobre 2001, numéro spécial de la revue Bogoslovlje, no. 1–2, 2001. 20 Les critiques d’un M. Jugie par exemple, étaient celle d’un historien latin reconnu et s’exprimaient notamment dans le prestigieux Dictionnaire de théologie catholique («Palamas, Grégoire», t. 11, 1932, col. 1735–1776; «Palamite (controverse)», Ibid., col. 1777–1818) ainsi que dans un ouovrage de référence au titre significatif: Theologia dogmatica christianorum orien- talium ab ecclesia catholica dissidentium, t. II, Paris, 1933, pp. 47–183. La même année paraissait également une étude critique importante, celle de S. Guichardin, Le problème de la simplicité divine en Orient et en Occident aux XIVe et XVe siècles: Grégoire Palamas, Duns Scot, Georges Scholarios, Lyon, 1933. 21 Il est par exemple caractéristique que la Dogmatique du Père Justin Popovitch (traduction française: Philosophie orthodoxe de la Vérité. Dogma- La théologie des énergies divines 375

mite ne pouvait qu’exacerber les critiques occidentales, de même que l’utilisation souvent intempérante, pas toujours rigoureuse ni judicieuse, de la notion d’ «énergies» dans les discours d’orthodoxes semi-cultivés, formés plus à un palamisme vulgarisé qu’aux sources même de la théologie palamite et à ses fondements patristiques. Dans beaucoup de ces discours, la notion d’énergie qui, nous le verrons, possède presque toujours, dans ses usages patristiques, une connotation d’activité, se trouve souvent rigidifiée voir chosifiée et risque même parfois de perdre son identité chrétienne, ce qui pourrait justifier la question provocatrice (et polémique) donnée par D. Wendebourg à son importante étude critique: Geist oder Energie? (Esprit [Saint] ou énergie22?). L’hostilité profonde et, aujourd’hui encore, quasiment vis- cérale d’un grand nombre de théologiens et d’historiens catholiques ou protestants vis-à-vis de la théologie palamite s’ex- plique par différents facteurs:

• la reproduction «de génération en génération» des mêmes arguments anti-palamites sans qu’ils soient remis en question, même lorsqu’ils relèvent d’une in- compréhension manifeste de la pensée de Palamas et contredisent ses textes mêmes (par exemple le re- proche fait à la théologie palamite des énergies de por- ter atteinte à l’unité et à la simplicité divines); tique de l’Église orthodoxe, 5 vol., Lausanne, 1992–1997), qui constitue une référence dans le monde orthodoxe et dont la partie proprement théologique a été publiée en 1932 et 1935, ne mentionne jamais saint Grégoire Palamas ni la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines, bien qu’elle s’appuie sur une large base patristique. 22 Le titre est polémique et un peu malhonnête, car 1) il présente sous la forme d’une alternative deux termes qui, chez les théologiens byzantins étudiés par l’auteur, ne s’excluent pas mutuellement; 2) la notion d’énergie est présentée a priori dans son sens courant ou, au mieux, dans un sens spiritualiste (on peut pensées à certaines théories du courant New Age plus ou moins inspirées des religions extrême-orientales), si bien que le titre semble poser une alternative entre une position chrétienne et une position qui ne l’est pas. Nous n’avons pratiquement pas cité cette étude dans le cours de notre travail, car elle concerne des auteurs byzantins appartenant à une période postérieure à celle que nous étudions et vise essentiellement le «palamisme». 376 Jean-Claude Larchet

• l’adhésion (consciente ou inconsciente) des théolo- giens en question à la théologie augustinienne qui, par sa théorie des théophanies (intermédiaires créés), inau- gure la conception occidentale de la grâce créée, laquelle apparaît comme incompatible avec la conception orientale de la grâce (ou de l’énergie) incréée; • la formation ou/et l’adhésion de certains de ces théolo- giens à la doctrine thomiste qui d’une part confirme et renforce la théorie de la grâce créée et surtout, sur la base de la philosophie aristotélicienne: 1) identifie l’energie divine à l’essence divine (Dieu étant actus purus), refusant ainsi a priori, en vertu de ce principe, la possibilité même d’une distinction réelle de l’essence et de l’énergie en Dieu; 2) conçoit, sur la base du sens principalement donné à cette notion par Aristote, l’energeia exclusivement comme actualisation d’une puissance et tend à interpréter dans ce sens la notion d’energeia dans la pensée des Pères grecs.23 Ils com- mettent ainsi un grave contresens et sont conduits à rejeter une pensée qui n’est pas celle de ceux auxquels il l’attribuent.

Comme l’a récemment montré de manière approfondie le philosophe orthodoxe américain David Bradshaw, un véritable fossé s’est creusé au cours de siècles – et cela dès le Ve siècle – et continue à se creuser entre les conceptions divergentes qu’ont la théologie occidentale et la théologie occidentale de la notion même d’energeia ou de son équivalent latin.24 Et le même constat a été fait, il y a peu de temps, par le théologien catholique Antoine Lévy, à propos des notions de créé et d’incréé,25 qui leur sont liées.

23 Voir récemment encore l’étude de P. de Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur, Paris, 2003 (voir notre recension dans la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 100, 2005, pp. 185–187). 24 Aristotle East and West. Metaphysics of the Division of Christendom, Cambridge, 2004. 25 Le créé et l’incréé. Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d’Aquin, Paris, 2007. La théologie des énergies divines 377

La prise de conscience des excès qui ont pu être commis de part et d’autre dans l’évaluation des expressions de la théo- logie palamite et de ses concepts fondamentaux peut sans au- cun doute contribuer à améliorer les conditions du dialogue mais ne peut suffire à le faire aboutir. Depuis plusieurs décennies, un débat «fort» s’est instauré, dont les enjeux sont particulièrement importants. Il ressort de ce débat que la question de la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines implique la plupart des questions de dogme et de spiritualité sur lesquelles l’Occident et l’Orient chrétien s’opposent depuis longtemps : la question du Filioque, la question de la nature de la grâce (créée ou/et incréée), la question de la connaissance de Dieu et la question de la divinisation de l’homme. En ce qui concerne le premier sujet, l’Occident latin justi- fie l’insertion du «Filioque» dans le Symbole de foi en affir- mant que le Saint-Esprit procède du Père et du Fils (ou par le Fils) sinon selon l’hypostase, du moins selon l’essence, tandis que l’Orient orthodoxe affirme que le Saint-Esprit procède du Père seul tant selon Son essence que selon Son hypostase, et que, tant dans le domaine théologique que dans le domaine économique, c’est seulement «selon l’énergie» que l’on peut considérer que le Saint-Esprit procède du Père par le Fils ou même du Père et du Fils. En ce qui concerne les autres points, l’Occident latin affirme que Dieu est connaissable selon l’essence (la vision de Dieu promise aux bienheureux étant une vision directe de l’essence), tandis que l’Orient orthodoxe considère qu’Il n’est connaissable que selon Ses énergies. Dans le même temps, l’Occident latin, dans la mesure où il se situe dans la postérité de l’augustinisme et du thomisme, considère que la grâce com- muniquée à l’homme est une grâce créée, tandis que l’Orient orthodoxe considère que la grâce (qu’il identifie à l’énergie divine) est incréée. Cela a des répercussions sur la doctrine de la déification, laquelle est, pour la théologie, l’anthropologie et la spiritualité orthodoxes, la fin de la vie chrétienne: les théolo- giens orthodoxes ont été nombreux à souligner que la théolo- gie latine ne peut concevoir une véritable déification de l’homme (puisque celui-ci ne peut dépasser, même par grâce, le 378 Jean-Claude Larchet

niveau du créé); la théologie latine, en particulier telle qu’elle a été formalisée et précisée dans le thomisme, conçoit en effet la déification sous le mode d’une union morale des volontés, autrement dit sur un plan intentionnel,26 tandis que la théologie orthodoxe la conçoit comme une union ontologique où, dans Son énergie incréée, Dieu Se communique pleinement à l’homme et le rend véritablement Dieu par grâce. Les débats théologiques du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle ont fait apparaître que le premier thème (celui du Filioque) et les trois autres (concernant la grâce) n’étaient pas, contrairement aux apparences, sans relation: les Byzantins orthodoxes considé- raient que l’affirmation de la procession du Saint-Esprit per Filium (par le Fils) voire même Filioque (et du Fils) était acceptable à condition d’être entendue comme se référant non à la venue de l’Esprit à l’existence, mais à Sa manifestation tant éternelle que temporelle comme énergie ou comme grâce in- créée. La controverse palamite concernant la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines s’est d’ailleurs développée à partir d’une controverse concernant le Filioque.27 Ce différend, qui s’est manifesté avec une force parti- culière au XIVe siècle et qui se prolonge jusqu’à nos jours, a en fait des origines très anciennes. Premièrement, la question de la connaissance de Dieu (celle de savoir notamment s’Il est connaissable ou non en Son essence) fut au centre du combat des Cappadociens contre Eu- nome et ses disciples, et la notion d’ «énergie» fut l’un des élé- ments de leur controverse (de même qu’elle fut un élément significatif de la controverse de saint Athanase d’Alexandrie contre les Ariens prédécesseurs d’Eunome), fait qui a jusqu’à

26 Voir en particulier le récent exposé de A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union. Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, New York et Oxford, 1999. C’est dans cette perspective que le P. Le Guillou et ses disciples A. Riou, C. von Schönborn F. Heinzer et F.-M. Léthel et surtout J.-M. Garrigues avaient développé leur interprétation de la doctrine de la déification chez Maxime le Confesseur; voir notre étude La Divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur, Paris, 1996, passim. 27 Voir notre Introduction à Grégoire Palamas, Traités apodictiques sur la procession du Saint-Esprit, Paris-Suresnes, 1995, pp. 14–22. La théologie des énergies divines 379

présent été sous-estimé par les patrologues occidentaux,28 mais dont les patrologues orientaux ont en revanche perçu et souli- gné l’importance.29 Deuxièmement, la divergence sur la nature de la grâce fut initiée par saint Augustin, celui-ci finissant par imposer à l’Oc- cident, par sa théorie des «théophanies», l’idée d’une grâce créée que le thomisme allait plus tard confirmer et prolonger. On a ainsi récemment souligné que les adversaires de Palamas, quels que fussent par ailleurs leurs liens avec l’humanisme byzantin, étaient au fond des disciples d’Augustin.30 Troisièmement, la doctrine latine du Filioque prend égale- ment sa source chez Augustin. La question de savoir en quel sens on pouvait admettre l’affirmation de la procession de l’Esprit du Père par le Fils, voire du Père et du Fils fut à plusieurs reprises débattue par les Orientaux – entre Cyrille d’Alexandrie et Théodoret de Cyr (Ve siècle), entre Maxime le Confesseur et des théologiens byzantins de son temps (VIIe siècle31), entre Photius et les théologiens latins de son époque (IXe siècle), entre le patriarche Grégoire II de Chypre (1283– 1289) et les théologiens latins et lationophrones de son époque. Les Orientaux orthodoxes cependant n’acceptèrent pas d’y voir comme les Occidentaux la production de l’Esprit Lui- même à l’existence et l’admirent seulement comme une expression soit de la consubstantialité trinitaire, soit dans l’ordre (économique) de la dispensation de la grâce, soit dans l’ordre (théologique) de la manifestation ou du resplendissement éter- nel des énergies divines. La première de ces trois explications

28 Voir encore récemment les études de B. Pottier (Dieu et le Christ selon Grégoire de Nysse. Étude systématique du Contre Eunome avec traduction inédite des extraits d’Eunome, Namur, 1994) et de B. Sesboüe (Saint Basile et la Trinité, Paris, 1998). 29 Voir entre autres B. Krivochéine, «Simplicité de la nature divine et les distinctions en Dieu selon saint Grégoire de Nysse», Messager de l’exar- chat du patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, 91–92, 1975, pp. 133–158; G. Marzelos, Οὐσία καὶ ἐνέργειαι τοῦ Θεοῦ κατὰ τὸν Μέγαν Βασί‐ λειον, Thessalonique, 1993. 30 Voir J. Romanidis, «Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics.» 31 Sur ce dernier point, voir le chapitre 1 de notre livre Maxime le Con- fesseur, médiateur entre l’Orient et l’Occident, Paris, 1998. 380 Jean-Claude Larchet

apparut très tôt;32 la deuxième fut mise en valeur par Photius et sa postérité; la troisième fut développée au XIIIe siècle – ébau- chée, non sans ambiguïté, par Nicéphore Blemmydès, puis clarifiée et précisée par Grégoire II de Chypre – en relation avec le désir de voir progresser le dialogue avec les Latins,33 mais aussi afin de s’opposer à une interprétation strictement filioquiste du per Filium,34 ses protagonistes lui trouvant cependant des fondements nombreux chez les Pères anciens, en particulier Athanase d’Alexandrie, Grégoire de Nysse et Maxime le Confesseur. Cette dernière explication est aujour- d’hui toujours mise en avant par les Orthodoxes dans le dialogue œcuménique comme étant le seul terrain où, sur le plan proprement théologique où se situe la théologie filioquiste, ils peuvent donner leur accord à l’affirmation de la procession du Saint-Esprit du Père par le Fils.35 Le rejet, par la théologie latine, de la distinction de l’essence et des énergies, attribuée au «palamisme», l’empêche cependant d’accéder à un tel terrain d’entente. De même le rejet, par les théologiens Latins se situant dans la postérité de l’augustinisme et du thomisme, de la notion de grâce incréée attribuée au «palamisme», maintient-il une distance entre l’Occident et l’Orient chrétiens quant à la façon de concevoir la déification de l’homme, notion largement sous- évaluée par l’Occident mais que l’Orient place au centre de sa conception de la vie spirituelle puisqu’il considère, dans la li- gne des Pères grecs, qu’elle est la fin de celle-ci et le but

32 Voir la Lettre à Marinos de Maxime le Confesseur, que nous com- mentons dans le livre cité supra. 33 Chez Nicéphore Blemmydès. 34 Chez Grégoire II de Chypre, contre Jean Bekkos. 35 Voir J.-Cl. Larchet, «La question du Filioque. À propos de la récente “Clarification” du Conseil pontifical pour la promotion de l’unité des chré- tiens», Le Messager orthodoxe, 129, 1997, pp. 3–58; repris dans Θεολογία, t. 70, no. 4, 1999, pp. 761–812. Voir aussi, dans une perspective plus proche des positions latines: M. Stavrou, «L’Esprit Saint procède du Père par le Fils. L’actualité de la pneumatologie de Nicéphore Blemmydès», Freiburger Zeit- schrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 52, 2005, pp. 115–144; «Le théolo- gien Nicéphore Blemmydès, figure de contradiction entre Orthodoxes et Latinophrones», Communication au 21e congrès international d’études byzantines, Londres, 2006; Introduction à Nicéphore Blemmydès, Œuvres théologiques, tome 1, Paris, 2007 («Sources chrétiennes» no. 517). La théologie des énergies divines 381

ultime de l’économie du Verbe incarné, le Christ n’ayant sauvé les hommes que pour leur permettre d’accéder à la déifica- tion.36 Pour l’Occident latin, dans la mesure où il accepte la notion de divinisation, celle-ci ne s’accomplit qu’au moyen d’une grâce créée. Pour l’Orient chrétien, une grâce créée ne peut permettre une déification véritable, notamment parce qu’elle ne peut pas faire sortir la créature de son statut ou de son mode d’existence d’être créé; seule la participation à la grâce incréée, autrement dit à l’énergie incréée de Dieu, permet à l’homme de devenir véritablement dieu par grâce. C’est pourquoi, comme le notait le P. Le Guillou (pour le déplorer), tant pour les orthodoxes que pour les représentants d’autres confessions chrétiennes qui ont approché avec sympathie la notion de déification, «la thèse selon laquelle la doctrine patristique de la divinisation du chrétien implique la distinction palamite de l’essence et des énergies divines s’impose […] comme une évidence37». La référence aux énergies divines permet en outre une compréhension immédiate de beaucoup d’autres aspects de la spiritualité orthodoxe auxquels l’Occident latin est resté ou devenu étranger mais qui restent très familiers au monde orthodoxe, comme l’importance centrale accordée à la Trans- figuration, la mystique de la Lumière, la valorisation spirituelle du corps ou la vénération des icônes et des reliques. Notons enfin que la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines ne correspond pas, dans la conscience de l’Orthodoxie, à un moment historique de l’expression dogmatique de sa foi, mais est devenue, en raison de sa dogmatisation par les conciles du XIVe siècle entérinés par les conciles et les Actes dogmatiques officiels ultérieurs, inhérente à celle-ci. On voit donc que les enjeux de cette question sont es- sentiels et que l’issue du dialogue entre l’Orient et l’Occident chrétiens en dépend pour une grande part. Le P. Le Guillou écrivait il y a quelques années: «On peut dire aujourd’hui que, pour une grande majorité de théologiens orthodoxes de la diaspora européenne et américaine, le cœur de la doctrine

36 Sur ce point, voir par exemple V. Lossky, «Rédemption et déifica- tion», dans À l’image et à la ressemblance de Dieu, Paris, 1967, pp. 95–108. 37 «Grégoire Palamas», Istina, 19, 1974, p.259. 382 Jean-Claude Larchet

palamite, à savoir la distinction réelle en Dieu de l’essence et des énergies, est devenue la pierre de touche de l’Orthodoxie par rapport au Catholicisme et qu’elle a remplacé pour eux la question du Filioque comme impedimentum dirimens à une éventuelle union des Églises.»38 Ce jugement est exact, sauf que: 1) cette question ne remplace pas celle du Filioque mais s’ajoute à elle et va d’ailleurs de pair avec elle, comme nous l’avons noté; 2) cela n’est pas vrai seulement pour les théolo- giens de la diaspora attachés à la Tradition orthodoxe, mais aussi, et plus encore, pour ceux des pays orthodoxes, comme le montre par exemple le large consensus qui est apparu lors des récents colloques internationaux consacrés à la place de saint Grégoire Palamas dans l’histoire et aujourd’hui.39 Il faut avoir bien conscience que la divergence de conception entre la théologie orthodoxe et la théologie catholique sur la question des énergies divines, tant en raison de sa nature que de ses enjeux dans les domaines de la théologie et de la spiri- tualité, constitue un impedimentum dirimens à la réalisation de l’union entre les deux Églises, et que le refus, souvent a priori, d’un certain nombre de théologiens catholiques actuels d’exa- miner ce sujet sinon avec la sympathie, du moins avec le sérieux et l’attention qu’il requiert, constitue – de même d’ailleurs que la minimisation de cette question par certains théologiens orthodoxes occidentaux – une attitude proprement anti-œcuménique en ce qu’elle empêche le dialogue de progresser. Sur un plan purement historique, il importe de déterminer le statut exact de la théologie de Grégoire Palamas. Alors que ce dernier est considéré par l’Église orthodoxe comme l’un de ses Pères majeurs et l’un de ses principaux docteurs,40 et aussi comme un témoin fidèle de la Tradition, certains de ses con- temporains puis bon nombre de théologiens et de patrologues

38 Ibid., p.257. 39 Voir note 18. 40 Voir l’introduction et la conclusion de G. Mantzaridis aux Actes des colloques scientifiques internationaux d’Athènes (13–15 novembre 1998) et de Limassol (5–7 novembre 1999): Ὁ Ἅγιος Γρηγόριος ο Παλαμᾶς στὴν ἱστορία καὶ τὸ παρόν, Monastère de Vatopaidi, Mont-Athos, 2000, pp. 45–59, 791–793. La théologie des énergies divines 383

ou historiens occidentaux l’ont accusé d’innovation et même d’hérésie.41 Il paraît donc important à plusieurs égards de se demander si la distinction de l’essence et des énergies divines, qui est au centre du débat, est une invention de Palamas, ou si elle a des antécédents et sous quelles formes. Si de tels antécédents peuvent être déterminés et exposés, il conviendra de se demander ensuite dans quelle mesure la théologie de Grégoire Pala- mas leur est fidèle et peut se réclamer légitimement de la Tradition. Il serait utile aussi de rechercher si les Pères latins n’ont pas développé, parallèlement aux Pères grecs ou en corrélation avec eux, une théologie des énergies divines, fût-ce avec d’autres mots et sous une autre forme et, dans la mesure où des points de rupture ont existé (nous pensons en particulier à l’augustinisme), il conviendrait d’en préciser les raisons et la nature. Il conviendrait également de s’interroger sur les raisons pour lesquelles l’Occident chrétien, à partir du Ve siècle surtout, est resté si éloigné de la perspective de l’Orient chrétien non seulement sur la question des énergies divines, mais égale- ment sur les questions connexes de la distinction créé/incréé,42 de la grâce et de l’apophatisme. Il nous semble que la confrontation entre les deux théolo- gies antagonistes que sont le palamisme et le thomisme risque de se prolonger indéfiniment et n’est pas une voie fructueuse de dialogue, comme le prouvent un certain nombre de tenta- tives non seulement anciennes mais récentes. Il nous semble également que la recherche de compromis n’a guère de chance d’aboutir à satisfaire les deux parties,

41 Voir le récapitulatif que nous avons établi dans «Ὁ Ἅγιος Γρηγό‐ ριος ὁ Παλαμᾶς καὶ ἡ πατερικὴ παράδοση», dans G. Mantzaridis (éd.), Ὁ Ἅγιος Γρηγόριος ο Παλαμᾶς στὴν ἱστορία καὶ τὸ παρόν, Actes des colloques scientifiques internationaux d’Athènes (13–15 novembre 1998) et de Limassol (5–7 novembre 1999), Monastère de Vatopaidi, Mont-Athos, 2000, pp. 331–332. 42 Sur ce point, voir Lévy, Le créé et l’incréé. Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d’Aquin. 384 Jean-Claude Larchet

notamment parce qu’elle évite d’aborder ou minimise artifi- ciellement les points de divergence.43 Seul un retour aux sources exempt de tout a priori, fondé sur une analyse ouverte autant que scientifiquement rigoureuse et honnête, peut permettre de trouver un terrain d’entente et de progresser véritablement dans le dialogue sur la voie de l’uni- té.

®®®®®®®®

Резюме

Найбільш відомим богословом, що описав різницю між Божественною “природою” та Її “енергіями” був Гри- горій Палама, в опозицію до якого виступили не лише західні богослови але й візантійська гуманістична тра- диція. Проти поглядів Григорія Палами полемічно висту- пили такі сучасні католицькі патрологи як L. Allatius, D. Pétau, M. De Rubeis, M. Jugie та S. Guichardon. Навіть сьо- годні його богословіє часто відкидають як “єретицьке” навіть на зважаючи на те, що недавні дослідження таких авторів як G. Pelland, P. de Renczes, A. de Halleux та E. Du- rand продемонстрували, що “Паламізм” має дуже давні корені в патристичній літературі ще задовго до 14 сто- ліття. Відповідь православних патристів (Д. Станілое, К.

43 Comme exemple de compromis récent, voir A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union. Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, et pour sa critique, voir la recension de J. van Rossum, dans Contacts, 56, 2004, pp. 100–04. Voir également A. Lévy qui, prétendant à la fois que «la théologie de Gré- goire Palamas s’enracine dans celle de Maxime» et que «la théologie de Thomas d’Aquin ne diverge pas dogmatiquement de celle de Maxime le Confesseur», en déduit une convergence fondamentale entre Thomas d’Aquin et Grégoire Palamas pour la raison logique que «si A=B et si B=C, alors A=C», la différence étant seulement de perspective et de formulation (Le créé et l’incréé. Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d’Aquin, Paris, 2007). L’auteur aura d’autant plus de mal à convaincre les deux parties que les deux prémisses sont mal établies par lui et que le seconde n’est guère recevable. La conclusion quant à elle, tirée au prix d’une virtuosité analytique qui évite la rencontre frontale des thèses majeures du «docteur hésychaste» et du «docteur angélique», aura encore plus de mal à se faire admettre. La théologie des énergies divines 385

Керн, Г. Флоровський, В. Лосський і особливо І. Майен- дорф) на захист богословія Григорія Палами була настіль- ки ж полемічною бо захищалася невід’ємна частина пра- вославної “тотожності”. Автор пропонує розрізняти три джерела ворожості до Палами з боку католицьких (і проте- стантських) богословів: невігластво, надмірне августи- ніянство або (певні течії) томізму. Водночас, у нещодавній праці Дейвида Бредшав (David Bradshaw) робиться спроба запропонувати четверте джерело: відмінні метафізичні системи на Сході і на Заході. Дебати навколо сутності та енергій торкаються також інших дебатів між Право- славною та Католицькими Церквами зокрема стосовно “філіокве”. Автор звертається до нещодавніх публікацій на цю тему а також до творів Максима Сповідника, Кири- ла Олександрійського, Блаженного Августина, Атанасія Олександрійського та Григорія Кипрського. Автор дохо- дить висновку, що необхідно ще багато попрацювати для того щоб конкретизувати терміни, якими користуються сторони дебатів щодо Божественної сутності та енергій бо в протилежному разі “Паламізм” може залишатися уявним або реальним impedimentum dirimens у справі Православ- но-Католицької єдності.

® ® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 387–411

Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic

Stephen P. Scherer

Abstract (Українське резюме на ст. 411)

The author demonstrates the connections between social criticism and mystical experience in the life of Skovoroda, who lived during the turbulent years when control over Ukraine passed from Poland to the Russian Empire, which, by 1780 under Catherine II, destroyed the last vestiges of Ukrai- nian independence. Following the ennoblement of the Cos- sack officer class and enserfment of the Ukrainian peasantry, Skovoroda reacted with oblique censure often expressed in poems whose texts the author analyzes not only for their social critique but also for their personal context and theological and spiritual underpinnings. Skovoroda was also a critic of the Orthodox Church and the corruption of monastic institutions, including the famous Kievan Caves Monastery. The peripatetic Skovoroda preferred always to guard his freedom and solitude in a life that could in some measure be called “monastic” but was unattached to any formal community. The central discovery of Skovoroda was that each one must discover for oneself what one’s nature is, and act in accordance with it. In so doing, one will at the same time discover not only a connection with universal human nature but also human happiness and ultimately divine communion mystically experienced. To understand this mystical communion with the divine energies, the author draws on Pseudo-Dionysius and others, and analyzes two central events treated by Skovoroda, viz., Christ’s transfiguration and resurrection.

®®®®®®®®

388 Stephen P. Scherer

Introduction

This essay seeks to consider the compatibility of social criticism and religious mysticism. At first glance, social criticism and religious mysticism do not appear compatible at all. The first depends on a rational calculation of the social forces at work in society and the injustices which result from the operation of those forces. The second represents a non-rational departure from society’s here and now and a yearning to identify with the infinite and eternal power which underpins the material world. How then do criticism and mysticism complement one another? Though generalizing about this possibility is difficult, the consideration of a specific example can help. The case of the Ukrainian thinker, Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722– 94), is instructive in this regard. Skovoroda lived during a socially chaotic time in Ukraine and, though he was not a militant social reformer, he did recognize the social and spiritual ills of his time. As a solution to these ills he advocated that each individual should live in accord with the divine economy or nature which was immanent in the material world. But he also practiced the mystical contemplation which facilitated the recognition of this divine economy and so made possible a life lived in accord with nature.

Criticism

When one considers Skovoroda’s social criticism one must remember that Skovoroda aimed that criticism specifically at the eighteenth-century Ukraine in which he spent the vast majority of his life. It is also imperative to keep in mind the social and political developments which culminated in Ukraine by the latter years of the eighteenth century. Starting in 1648 with the Khmelnytsky rebellion, Poland began to lose control of Ukraine, which from that time onward fell gradually under the sway of the Russian Empire. The Russian control, which began to develop in 1648, was completed in the early 1780s when Catherine II destroyed the last independent political institutions in Ukraine. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 389

Skovoroda, therefore, witnessed the Russian diminution and final abolition of Ukrainian independence. He referred indirectly, though adversely, to this development in his poem, “De Libertate.”

What is freedom? Is it any good? Some say it is like unto gold. But freedom is not like gold at all, For freedom to gold is like wine to gall. No matter how one embroiders it, My freedom I shall never forfeit. Glory forever, oh chosen one, Freedom’s father, heroic Bohdan.1

Skovoroda’s criticism of Russia’s advance into Ukraine was articulated further by the following passage:

The hunter does not sleep. Be alert. Carelessness is the mother of misfortune. In fact, Great Russia considers all of Little Russia [Ukraine] as so many grouse. But why be ashamed? The grouse is a stupid bird, but not an evil one.2

1 Skovoroda, “De Libertate,” in V.I. Shynkaruk et al. (eds.), Hryhoriy Skovoroda: Povne Zibrannya Tvoriv, 2 vols. (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1973), I, 91. This collection of Skovoroda’s works will be cited hereafter as PZT. All translations of Skovoroda’s works in this essay are the author’s. For a different interpretation of this poem see: Natalia Pylypiuk, “In Search of Hryhorii Skovoroda: A Review Article,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies (1990): 131–32. While Pylypiuk grants that “De Libertate” was Skovoroda’s only “political” work, she contends that it was not so much an adverse criticism of Russia as a commonly accepted rhetorical device used by Skovoroda to express a desire to preserve his own freedom. 2 Skovoroda, “Ubohiy Zhayvoronok,” PZT, II, 119. Skovoroda’s attach- ment to Ukraine was profound, as witness his reference to Little Russia as “my mother” and Ukraine as “my aunt.” Skovoroda, “Lysty do M. Kova- lyns’ koho,” PZT, II, 356. Skovoroda considered Little Russia as his mother because he was born in Little Russia or Hetman Ukraine. Ukraine was his aunt because he spent the greater part of his adult life directly east of Little Russia, in Sloboda, Ukraine, which he called Ukraine. M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 457. 390 Stephen P. Scherer

While this passage was only an aside in the dedication to a larger work, Skovoroda’s characterization of the Russo-Ukrai- nian relationship as analogous to that which obtained between a hunter and his prey demonstrates how acutely Skovoroda perceived the contemporary political situation. Skovoroda also reacted critically to the social transformations which accompanied the Russian domination of Ukraine. The most important of these were the ennoblement of the Cos- sack officer class and the enserfment of the Ukrainian peasantry. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Cossack officers were becoming the landed mag- nates of Ukraine. In the 1730s, they petitioned the Hetman for the abolition of the free movement of the peasantry in order to ensure themselves the labour necessary to work their estates.3 Later in the eighteenth century these petitions were addressed to the Russian ruler and they did not go unheard. By the decrees of December 1763 and May 1783, Catherine II first restricted the free movement of the Ukrainian peasants and then abolished it completely.4 The Cossack officers, therefore, impelled by both the pressure and encouragement of Russia, traded Ukrainian autonomy and the socio-economic position of the Ukrainian peasants for their own social and economic advantage. Skovoroda’s response to these socio-economic developments was – much like his reaction to Ukraine’s lost political autonomy – oblique rather than direct, as witness his remark that “you profane when you introduce the slave yoke and hard labour into a country of perfect peace and freedom.”5 This same indirect criticism of the social changes was evident in Skovoroda’s censure of gold in “De Libertate” and his frequently articulated disdain for the desire for wealth as nonsense.6

3 V.I. Semevskiy, Krest’yanskiy vopros v Rossii v XVIII i pervoy polo- vine XIX veka, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1888), I, 148. 4 Polnoe Sobranie zakonov Rossiyskoy imperii, Ser. I, XVI, no. 11987; XXI, no. 15724. 5 Skovoroda, “Zhena Lotova,” PZT, II, 47. 6 Skovoroda, “Razhovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 324–25. As a further example of Skovoroda’s view concerning the accumulation of wealth consider the following verse: Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 391

Another target of Skovoroda’s criticism was the Orthodox Church and, in particular, the monasteries which had always been its spiritual center. By the eighteenth century, the monastic institutions of the Orthodox Church were in an unusually weak state. Reform was begun under the influence of Paissius Velichkovsky (1722–94) and Tychon Zadonsky (1724–83).7 Though Skovoroda played no role in this reform movement, his criticism of both the Orthodox Church and its monasteries was acerbic and direct:

The divine law exists eternally, but human tradition [i.e., the institutional church] is neither universal nor eternal. The divine law is the tree of paradise, but human tradition is only its shadow. The law of God is the fruit of life, but tradition is only its leaves. The law of God is God in the human heart, while tradition is the fig leaf that conceals a viper.8

Skovoroda wrote this in 1768 as the basis for a series of lectures on morality to be delivered in Kharkiv. The anti-church

I’ll not enter wealthy cities, I prefer the simple life, Spending time in contemplation rather than in urban strife. Shady forests! Verdant meadows! Motherland of mine! Life with you is pleasant, life with you is kind.

I’ll survive on very little, bread and water are enough, Poverty’s a good companion, like a diamond in the rough. Shady forests! Verdant Meadows! Motherland of mine! Life with you is pleasant, life with you is kind.

Skovoroda, “Sad bozhestvennykh pesney: Pesn’ 12-ya” PZT, I, 69–70. As a still sharper rebuke to those who were profiting from Ukraine’s social transformation Skovoroda wrote:

Let the brains of those burst Who strive to be first.

Skovoroda, “Sad bozhestvennykh pesney: Pesn’ 18-ya,” PZT, I, 76. 7 James H. Billington, The Icon And The Axe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 200–02. 8 Skovoroda, “Nachal’naya dver’ ko khrystianskomu dobronraviyu,” PZT, I, 152–53. 392 Stephen P. Scherer

content of these lectures was so biting that they were given under the aegis of the governor of Kharkiv rather than under that of the bishop.9 His criticism of the monasteries was equally bitter. In 1760 the bishop of Kharkiv approached Skovoroda with an offer to join the monastic life. Further, the bishop promised him that if he should become a monk he would be assured of elevation to the ranks of the higher clergy in the future. The bishop’s assistant, at the same time, counselled Skovoroda concerning the honours and glory which awaited him in the clerical life. Having listened to these offers, Skovoroda responded as follows:

Do you really wish that I should increase the number of the Pharisees? Eat richly, drink sweetly, dress softly, and monasticize! But I believe monasticism to consist of a non-acquisitive life, little satisfaction, abstinence, the deprivation of the unnecessary in order to acquire the most necessary, the renunciation of all whims in order to protect one’s own integrity, the brid- ling of self-love in order to fulfill more conveniently the commandment of love for our neighbor, and the searching for divine rather than human glory.10

In another place Skovoroda referred to the monastic life as a “monkish masquerade.”11 His excoriation of the monastic

9 N.I. Petrov, “K biografii ukrainskago filosofa Grigoriya Savvicha Skovorody,” Kievskaya Starina, no. 4 (1903), II, 14–16; Vasyl’ Kuk,” Do 250-richchya vid narodzhennya H.S. Skovorody,” Literaturna Ukraina, 16 July 1971: 2. 10 M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 447–48. A similar outburst occurred several years later, in 1764, when Skovoroda was asked by the monks of the famous Kievan Caves Monastery to join them. They told him in the course of this invitation that he would be “a pillar of the Church and the adornment of the cloister.” Skovoroda, in rejecting their offer, responded heatedly, “Reverend Fathers, I myself do not want to add to the number of pillars, there are enough of you, pillars in God’s temple.” M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 456– 57. 11 Skovoroda, “Beseda, narechennaya dvoe, o tom, chto blazhennym byt’ legko,” PZT, I, 277. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 393

life, therefore, was especially germane given that his own invitation to it was marked by promises of future honours and glory rather than by a discussion of the spiritual growth made possible by the monastic experience. Finally, Skovoroda’s indictment of both the Orthodox Church and its monasteries included the view that the members of these institutions were unreflective and superstitious. Skovoroda inveighed against the problem of superstition on numerous occasions, because he considered it to be a focus on the accidental and external at the expense of the essential and eternal. With regard to this superstition in liturgical practice, he complained that “we adore the substance of incense, candles, images and the liturgy, having forgotten that except for God nothing is blessed and every externality is corruption.”12 Skovoroda took a similar view of Christianity’s excessive concern with historicity as a way to justify its teachings:

Why do we need historical genealogies? What is the use of them? Why do we need to know the exact location of the Garden of Eden? What is the use to our souls of the form and dimensions of the ark? For what is the healing of the flesh? What is the use of turning the resurrection of corruption into corruption again?13

He concluded concerning the danger of superstition that, “No- thing is more lethal for the ulcer of society than superstition…. And it was not in vain that Plutarch calls superstition worse than atheism.”14 This brief catalogue of Skovoroda’s critical views demonstrates his concern for the social and spiritual ills which beset contemporary society, from the loss of Ukraine’s political autonomy and the social transformation of Ukraine during the

12 Skovoroda, “Zhena Lotova,” PZT, II, 36. 13 Ibid., 58. In a confirmation of his disdain for this useless historicity, Skovoroda wrote concerning Orthodoxy’s fixation on the physical details of Christ’s life and death that “many seek Him in the absolutism of Caesar Augustus, in the times of Tiberius, in the reigns of Pilate and so on. All the same they search. Where? Here! In this world! Among the dead.” Skovoro- da, “Potop Zmiyn,” PZT, II, 165. 14 Skovoroda, “Izraylskiy Zmiy,” PZT, II, 8–9. 394 Stephen P. Scherer

course of the eighteenth century to the low level of spirituality which he found in the Orthodox Church and its monasteries. Three things, however, should be noted about Skovoroda’s criticism of the “official” society and the “official” Church. First, his critical attitudes did not result in a call for social activism of any sort; he did not agitate for a social movement directed at the regeneration of either the society or the Church. It is worth noting with regard to Skovoroda’s aversion to social activism that nowhere in his work did he remark on the most important social movements of his time and place, the Puga- chev uprising (1773–75) and the Haydamak rebellions (1734, 1750, 1768). Second, Skovoroda exhibited a cavalier attitude about landownership generally and, by extension, a more equitable distribution of the land. In this regard he argued that, “If someone who owns land is happy, he is not happy because he owns it: happiness is not attached to landownership.”15 Third, Skovoroda maintained friendly relations with many individual members of officialdom, the nobility and the clergy, which demonstrates that he did not consider any of these social groups as the enemy per se.16 If Skovoroda identified and bemoaned the social and spiritual evils of his time, but did not seek to energize a reform movement, agitate for equitable landownership, or censure the leading social groups as such, then what did he propose as a way to ameliorate the dire situation before him? The most important thing to understand about his solution is that it was based on the insight and behaviour of each individual. In this regard it is instructive that Skovoroda encouraged his audience

15 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 421. Another example of this attitude about landownership can be found in the following verse:

Peace and freedom do not inhere in having land, however vernal, So I seek celestial riches in the form of life eternal.

Skovoroda, “Sad bozhestvennykh pesney: Pesn’ 12-ya,” PZT, I, 70. 16 M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 457–58, 462–65, 472–73; G.P. Danilevskiy, Sochinenie (St. Petersburg, 1901), XXI, 80; N.A. Batalin, “Anekdot o G.S. Skovorode,” Moskvityanin (1849), XXIV, ch. 3, 68. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 395

frequently to “know thyself.”17 In fact, Skovoroda’s first two longer treatises, “Narkiss” (1769) and “Askhan” (1769) included admonitions about self-knowledge in their respective sub-titles. Skovoroda wrote about this need for self-knowledge often, but nowhere more directly than in the following passage:

You see yourself, but you do not comprehend or understand yourself. And not understanding yourself is precisely the same as losing yourself. If a treasure is buried in your home, but you do not know about it, then it is the same as if it did not exist.18

It is clear from this statement that Skovoroda saw in most individuals a failure to come to grips with their true selves, which led them in turn to act out of complete disregard for their true needs. Social chaos and spiritual decline were the only possible outcomes when large numbers of people were sunk in ignorance concerning their true selves. The second feature of Skovoroda’s solution was nature or the concept of naturalness (srodnost’). Confidence in nature typified Skovoroda’s philosophy, generally, and so one finds it articulated, not surprisingly, in his view of the natural world:

Why does the little fish which the Romans call remora have the ability to slow the speed of the ship to which it clings? Why does the dolphin’s nature dearly love man, but hate the snake?… Nature and innate power signify the inborn Divine good will and His secret law which rules all creation.19

Another example of this outlook is as follows:

Do not teach the apple tree to bear apples: nature herself has already done this. Simply protect the tree from

17 Skovoroda, “Narkiss,” PZT, I, 154. 18 Ibid., 159. 19 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 433. 396 Stephen P. Scherer

the swine, cut away the weeds, chase away the geese, and ward off the impure water which descends on the tree’s roots.20

But if Skovoroda saw universal nature beneficently at work in the external world of nature, he also recognized the problems created by its absence in human society:

The infant sitting in its mother’s arms often reaches for a knife or flame, but our most merciful mother, nature, knows better what is good for us. Although we cry and howl, she, as is proper, feeds us at her own breasts and clothes us; while the good child is satisfied with this, the bad seed torments himself and stirs up others.21

The unhappy infant in the above passage was characterized, in Skovoroda’s view, by those who troubled themselves and their society as they jostled with one another to achieve some rank, status, or wealth which they imagined would bring them happiness.

One is unhappy because he is not of noble birth, handsome face or good education; another frets because, although he leads a blameless life, many people … heap vituperation upon him…; a third is tormented because he has achieved the rank and place which permit him to serve only six-course rather than ten-course meals.22

The antidote for social disharmony, therefore, was for each individual “to know himself, or his own nature, to accept his place and to abide with the portion natural to himself in accord

20 Skovoroda, “Blahodarniy Erodiy,” PZT, II, 104. In this same spirit Skovoroda wrote that, “Whoever tries without God to teach or to learn recalls the proverb, ‘You cannot teach a wolf to plough.’ “Skovoroda, “Bla- hodarniy Erodiy,” PZT, II, 104. 21 Skovoroda, “Razhovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 325. 22 Ibid., 351. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 397

with the universal order.”23 In short, Skovoroda contended that self-knowledge consisted of understanding one’s own nature and acting in concert with that nature as it dovetailed with the larger or universal nature. That Skovoroda conceived of living in accord with universal nature in the most practical terms is made clear by this passage: “Do not consider what is higher or lower, what is more visible or less, what is richer or poorer, but consider what is natural to you. It has already been said that without naturalness everything is nothing.”24 Skovoroda’s admonition to live in accord with one’s individual nature as it fit with the larger or universal nature was nowhere more evident than in his own life. A young contemporary wrote about him that:

He owned almost nothing, his only possessions being the clothes that he wore. He had no permanent residence…. It was his passion to travel from settlement to settlement, from village to village, from farm to farm…. The people of the settlements, villages and farms loved him like a member of the family.25

23 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 417. 24 Ibid., 421. Skovoroda remarked further on this need for a natural occupation when he wrote concerning an inept student that, “I looked with pity and wonder on his lack of ability. But as soon as he decided to be a mechanic, he amazed everyone with his understanding and all without any outside guidance.” Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 420. 25 F.P. Lubyanovskiy, “Vospominaniya Fyodora Petrovicha Lubyanov- skago,” Russkiy Arkhiv (1872), no. 1, cols. 106–07. See also, Gustav Hess de Kalve and Ivan Vernet “Skovoroda: Ukrainskiy filosof” Ukrainskiy Vest’nik (1817), part 6, 111–12. Though Skovoroda lived a life of poverty he meant by poverty not extreme deprivation, but a mean between want and over- abundance. In this regard he contended that “poverty, achieving the necessary, but recognizing the superfluous, is true wealth; it is the blessed mean, like a bridge between two swamps, between scarcity and superfluity.” Skovoroda, “Ubohiy Zhayvoronok,” PZT, II, 128. In connection with this, M.I. Kovalins’kij, Skovoroda’s student and friend, wrote that he “dressed decently but simply,” ate fruits and vegetables, and avoided meat and fish “not from some superstition but because of his own inner disposition.” M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 446–47. 398 Stephen P. Scherer

While this description correctly identified the poverty and peripatetic quality of Skovoroda’s life, it omitted any discussion of the solitary aspect of his existence. Skovoroda’s student, friend, and biographer, M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, alluded to this feature of his life when he noted that, “wherever he lived, he always chose a solitary corner and lived simply, without any ado.”26 Skovoroda’s inclination for solitude was so marked that he even had to defend himself against the charge of mis- anthropy.27 His sense of social responsibility, however, prevented any inordinate pursuit of solitude and he argued concerning this issue, “Do you flee from the crowd? Be moderate in this for is not the man who so avoids others that he will not speak with anyone stupid? Such a man is not holy but insane.”28 As for Skovoroda’s vocation, it is evident that a man of his talents had many occupational avenues available to him. He had by the age of forty received a fine education at the Kievan Academy, sung with the court choir in St. Petersburg, traveled abroad with an official delegation for five years, and taught at a noble estate – as well as at the Pereyaslav Seminary and the Kharkiv Academy. He was therefore well-connected and well- known for his unusual abilities. His opportunities were numerous, but he refused any offers for “official” employment, including his rejection of an offer to join the monastic life from the bishop of Belgorod.29 His inability or refusal to take advantage of his employment opportunities did not spring from disinterest in the question of his life’s work. Quite the contrary, because Skovoroda had thought deeply about his future and the work he would do, as witness these words:

26 M.I. Kovyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 465. It is worth observing with regard to Skovoroda’s life-style that he did not marry; in connection with this there is a story that he fell in love during the course of his travels, but left his bride at the altar on their wedding day. Gustav Hess de Kalve and Ivan Vernet, “Skovoroda: Ukrainskiy filosof,” Ukrainskiy Vestnik (1817), part 6, 113; I.I. Sreznevskiy, “Mayor, mayor! Rasskaz,” Moskovskiy nablyudatel’ (1836), part 6, 205–238, 435–68, 721–36. 27 Ibid., PZT, II, 460. 28 Skovoroda, “Lysty do M. Kovalyns’koho,” PZT, II, 281. 29 M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 440–48. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 399

What is more sorrowful than to swim in abundance, but be mortally tormented without a natural occupation? There is nothing more tortuous than to be mentally ill and one is mentally ill when he lacks a natural occupation. And nothing is happier than to live in agreement with one’s own nature.30

Having thought about his past experiences and what might be his future work, Skovoroda chose, from the age of forty- seven, to live the peripatetic and poverty-stricken life of a wanderer. Writing about this choice, Skovoroda explained things as follows:

Understand that I would be a hundred times happier if I were making clay pans in accord with God, than if I were writing and teaching in opposition to nature. But I feel, until now, that the incorruptible hand of the Eternal supports me in my occupation.31

In keeping with his ideas about each individual living and working in accord with his own and universal nature, Skovo- roda in the above passage recognized that no occupation was better or worse than any other in itself. Making clay pans or writing and teaching were, in his view, equally important and dignified. One only had to do what was suitable for his own nature. He remarked on this feature of his own life in another place with the following analogy from the theatre:

The world is like a theater; in order to stage a play successfully one must cast the roles according to the actors. The actors on the stage are praised not by the distinction of their roles, but by their success in playing them. I determined this long ago and I have seen by many experiences that I cannot successfully play on the world’s stage any role other than a low,

30 Skovoroda, “Basny Khar’kovskiya: Pchela i Shershen,’ “ PZT, I, 126. 31 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, II, 420. Skovoroda made an interesting pun in this passage because the word, pan, Skovoroda, was his own surname. 400 Stephen P. Scherer

simple, care-free and solitary one. I have chosen this role, I have taken it and I am satisfied.32

Skovoroda was well aware that if people chose their vocations to fit their respective natures, the issue of social inequa- lity would certainly arise. This question did not vex him in the least and, in fact, he responded to it in the most simple and clear way.

God is like a marvellous fountain which fills various containers surrounding it. Above the fountain is written: “Unequal equality for all”: Various streams pour from different pipes into containers standing around the fountain. Small containers hold smaller amounts, but are equal to the large containers insofar as all of them are equally full. And what is more foolish than an equal equality which the ignorant have tried in vain to introduce into the world.33

Mysticism

Skovoroda’s criticism of society and the Church issued from his recognition that individuals in both the society and the Church did not recognize their true selves and so based their life activities on false principles such as the accumulation of power, wealth, land, social rank, honour, and glory. In his view, this behaviour, based as it was on the pursuit of worldly

32 M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 457. Skovoroda’s choice of a “low and simple” life did not man that he expected all to make the same choice. In concurrence with his argument that one should choose the life and work which suited his true self or nature, he recognized that for some a life of high social status and wealth might be the most natural. Consider the following verse in which Skovoroda argued that a life of wealth might be the best choice.

But if you should acquire wealth and sin still fail to fetter, Then, perhaps, this happy state for you is all the better.

Skovoroda, “Sad bozhestvennykh pesney: Pesn’ 12-ya,” PZT, I, 70. 33 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 435. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 401

and materialistic goals, amounted to a kind of superstition. In fact, in his criticism of the Church, Skovoroda used the term superstition precisely. But it is clear from the following statement that he saw superstition, i.e., the focus on worldly and materialistic affairs, as a social cancer, generally:

From superstition were born nonsense, disputes, sects, personal and foreign hostilities, armed and verbal conflicts, infantile fears and so on…. It [superstition] in- flamed the charitable womb of Titus, levelled Jerusa- lem, destroyed Constantinople, disfigured the Parisian streets with blood and armed sons against their fathers.34

Skovoroda’s solution for all of these social evils was not social revolution or reform, but the individual recognition of one’s true self and the living and working in accord with one’s own nature. In his view, this was not a matter of logically cataloguing one’s talents, but rather of undertaking a spiritual quest which would result in individual self-discovery, working and living in accord with one’s own and universal nature and, ultimately, social harmony. Skovoroda also argued that finding one’s true self and then acting in accord with one’s own nature meant finding God within oneself. Here is how Skovoroda articulates this set of connections:

Are you really trying to find paradise outside of God and God outside of your own soul? Your happiness and your peace and your paradise and your God are within you…. He will be with you if you will be with Him. And, of course, you will be with Him if, having reconciled yourself, you will be friends with this most sweet and blessed spirit…. To live with nature and to be with God are one and the same; life and work are the same thing.35

34 Skovoroda, “Izraylskiy Zmiy,” PZT, II, 7–9. 35 Skovoroda, “Razhovor, nazyvaemiy alfavyt, ili bukvar’ myra,” PZT, I, 421. The mystical outlook which characterizes this passage is a principal feature of Skovoroda’s thought. Dmytro Chyzhevs’kij (1894–1977) was one 402 Stephen P. Scherer

Skovoroda’s persistent effort to connect God and nature is evidently the foundation for his argument about the efficacy of living and working in agreement with nature because if you live with nature, you live with God. He made this connection between God and nature frequently, but nowhere more clearly than in this passage:

In the Bible God is called fire, water, wind, iron, stone and other names without number; why not call Him nature (natura)? In my opinion, it is impossible to find a more important and fitting name for God than nature. Natura, of course, is the Latin word for which our equivalent is nature or substance.36

From all of this it is clear that one had to have some close connection to or encounter with God if he were to know nature or his own nature. With this experience as a guide individuals could then begin to live and work in accord with nature and social harmony would ensue. While it is evident that Skovo- roda’s terminology is often imprecise or blurred, one must still grant his main point, namely, that it is impossible for the individual to live properly without recognizing God and nature in himself and living in accord with this knowledge. With this in mind it is necessary to consider Skovoroda’s own most intense spiritual experiences, those mystical encounters with the divine which enlightened him and made

of the first scholars to emphasize sufficiently the central place of mysticism in Skovoroda’s thought, as well as the inextricable link between his mysticism and his moral teaching. See Chyzhevs’kiy, “G.S. Skovoroda i nemetskaya mistika,” Nauchnye Trudy Russkago Narodnago Universiteta v Prage (Prague: 1929), II, 283–301; “Filosofiya G.S. Skovorody,” Put’ 19 (1929): 23–56; “Skovoroda-Studien: Skovoroda und Angelus Silesius,” Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 7 (1930): 1–33; “Skovoroda-Studien: Skovoroda und Valentin Weigel,” Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 12 (1935): 308–32; Filosofiya H.S. Skovorody (Warsaw: Pratsi Ukrains’kogo Naukovogo Institutu) 24 (1934): 181–204. 36 Skovoroda, “Razhovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 329. Skovoroda argued in this same spirit when he wrote concerning God that, “He is the true tree in the tree, the grass in the grass…. He is everything in all.” Skovoroda, “Narkiss,” PZT, I, 165. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 403

possible his own life choices. The most important of these was an experience he had in 1770, at age forty-seven:

Having various thoughts and sensations of soul with reverence and gratitude to God and having arisen early, I went out into the garden to take a walk. The first sensation that I felt with my heart was a certain familiarity, freedom, cheerfulness, and hope with fulfillment. Bringing to this disposition of soul all my will and desire, I felt within myself an extreme movement that filled me with incomprehensible strength. Momentarily a certain sweet outpouring filled my soul, from which my whole insides burned with fire, and it seemed that a fiery current circulated throughout my surroundings. I began not to walk but to run, for I was carried by some kind of delight, not feeling in myself either hands or feet, but as if I consisted entirely of a fiery substance that was carried into the space of the surroundings. The whole world disappeared before me; a singular feeling of love, tranquility, and eternity animated my existence. Tears streamed from my eyes, and poured a certain tender harmony into my whole being. I penetrated into myself, and experience a still more filial assurance than love, and from that hour I consecrated myself in filial service to the divine spirit.37

37 M.I. Kovalyns’kiy, “Zhyzn’ Hryhoriya Skovorody,” PZT, II, 463. Later in his life Skovoroda described the inner or true man discovered in such mystical experience as one who

flies without limit into the heights, the depths and the expanses. Neither mountains, rivers, seas, nor deserts impede him. He sees into the distance, begins to view what is hidden, sees the past, pe- netrates into the future, moves over the face of the deep and enters through closed doors. He has the eyes of a dove, the wings of an eagle, the speed of a stag, the daring of a lion, the fidelity of a turtle dove, the quickness of a falcon and the good cheer of a crane.

Skovoroda, “Zhena Lotova,” PZT, II, 44. 404 Stephen P. Scherer

There are a number of features about this description which bear discussion with regard to the connection between criticism and mysticism. First, Skovoroda’s account emphasized his own role in the experience of this ecstatic moment. He was in a mood of “reverence and gratitude to God” and then strengthened this disposition with his own “will and desire.” In other words, this encounter was facilitated by his own inclinations rather than occurring without any of his input. Second, his mystical experience connected him with “the space of his surroundings” and allowed him to penetrate “into myself.” Therefore, he, through his mysticism, linked the larger or universal nature and his inner or essential self. Third, the outcome of all of this was that he consecrated himself “in filial service to the divine spirit.” This means that he resolved to live and work in conjunction with God or nature, i.e., in the spirit of naturalness or his own deeply felt nature. Finally and not surprisingly, this episode took place when Skovoroda was forty-seven years old, precisely the age at which he finished his formal studying, traveling, and teaching and embarked on the non-possessive and peripatetic life which he believed was “natural” for him. The simultaneity of his decision to live in accord with his nature and the mystical event which he described above was not random or serendipitous. Though Skovoroda already had profound doubts about participating in official society or the Church which he found so full of corruption and vanity, it is logical to posit that his mystical experience tipped the balance finally and confirmed him in his decision to abandon any conventional life and to opt for a mendicant, solitary and, for him, natural existence. Skovoroda’s mysticism and the way it enlightened him about God, nature and his own natural and inner self raise important questions about his conception of God and how one apprehends the divine. Skovoroda was always in wonderment about the problem of knowing God or whether one could know God, mystically or otherwise.38 Though this essay has argued that Skovoroda thought the term “nature” was an appropriate

38 Concerning this, Skovoroda wrote, “Really, have you never heard that the highest essence has no name peculiar to himself?” Skovoroda, “Raz- hovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 328. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 405

one for God, it is necessary to understand more fully how he arrived at the use of this terminology and how mysticism facilitated this development. Skovoroda did not believe that man could define God in human terms. All words, being of human origin, were imperfect and, therefore, incapable of expressing the ineffable quality of God. In this Skovoroda concurred with the view of Pseudo-Dionysius, whose works became known at the beginning of the sixth century. Pseudo-Dionysius, whatever his identity and whenever he wrote, argued that “the One which is beyond thought surpasses the apprehension of thought, and the Good which is beyond utterance surpasses the reach of words.”39 Though Skovoroda agreed with this apophatic approach, he felt constrained to pursue a cataphatic path, as well. His argument in this regard began with his contention that “nature means not only everything which is born and transformed, but also the hidden economy of that eternal power which has its center or central and most principal point everywhere and its surroundings nowhere.”40 This explanation, with its emphasis on the divine economy, drew the distinction between the Divine essence, which was unknowable and impossible to put into words, and the divine economy, which manifested itself in creation. In trying to identify God on another occasion, Skovoroda, quoting Saint John the Theologian, wrote that, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).”41 But love, Skovoroda wrote, “is the eternal union between God and man. It is the invisible fire with which the heart is fused to the divine word or will.”42 In this discussion of God as love, with its emphasis on the divine energy, Skovoroda, as in his earlier account of God as nature, distinguished between the divine essence which was beyond human comprehension and a divine manifestation, in this case,

39 C.E. Rolt, Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 53. 40 Skovoroda, “Razhovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 329. 41 Skovoroda, “Zhena Lotova,” PZT, II, 55; cf. “Razhovor pyaty putnykov o istynnom shchastiyi v zhyzni,” PZT, I, 330. 42 Skovoroda, “Nachal’ naya dver’ ko khrystianskom dobronraviyu,” PZT, I, 152. 406 Stephen P. Scherer

energy, which was accessible to man.43 Given this distinction, both his view of God as nature and his confidence in connecting mystically with the divine energy become more understandable. It was his view of God as nature and his mystical connection with the divine energy that served as the foundation for his idea that each individual could learn to live according to his own nature and, as a result, contribute to his own happiness and the harmony of society. The detailed description of Skovoroda’s mystical experience above is the only such description extant. But he has left several, more oblique, references to mystical encounters in his writings and they deserve some attention. The first of these was part of Skovoroda’s first long treatise, “Narkiss” (1769), and was a parable about two recently freed slaves who found themselves in the mountains, tormented by hunger and sadness. Having stumbled for awhile in a dark cavern they found some simple folk who gave them shelter and food for a few days. Finally, they asked these simpletons, who were celebrating the birthday of their master, how they could meet this master? The leader of these people showed them the way. Sko- voroda finished the parable as follows: “At dawn they heard a chorus singing: ‘He trampled down death by death…’ After the singing, the door suddenly opened. They entered a cham- ber which was illuminated by the morning light.”44 Skovoroda wrote this parable in 1769, at age forty-six, i.e., at the same time, roughly, of both the mystical experience described above and his decision to abandon any official occupation and begin his itinerant lifestyle. Everything about this parable suggests in

43 Skovoroda’s theological argument is in accord with the Orthodox view of the distinction between God’s essence, on the one hand, and His economy and energy, on the other. This argument is associated, in particular, with the work of Saint Gregory Palamas (1296–1359). Though Skovoroda made no reference to Palamas in his work, he was evidently aware of the Orthodox belief on this important question. For a larger discussion of Pala- mas and his contributions to Orthodox theology see John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, trans. Adele Fiske (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974). 44 Skovoroda, “Narkiss,” PZT, I, 195. Here, Skovoroda reproduced part of the paschal troparion: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 407

symbolic form the spiritual journey of one who is tortured by the difficulties and uncertainties of life, but who, after many struggles, achieves enlightenment in an encounter with God. The second such account occurred in his last long dialogue, “Potop Zmiin” (1790–91), which was written several years before his death. The passages in question were titled “Transfiguration” and “Resurrection,” respectively. These concluding portions of “Potop Zmiin” were preceded by an expression of the greatest despair:

This blackness vomits the bitter waters of the abyss Darkness! Now the evening cloud has covered me! Alas, it is upon me! I am alone! It and its progeny pursue me hellishly. There is no peace for me.45

But this despair was followed by Skovoroda’s discussion of transfiguration in which he exulted:

O God, pour heavenly dew on my head, And I will bring you fruit, rose-red. An apple from Eden From the transfiguration garden

He, then, in quick succession, quoted Luke’s account of the transfiguration (“When they awakened, they saw his glory” [9:32]), argued that, “you will not be transfigured until you see Christ,” and cited Saint Paul: “when Christ, your life, the true living man, appears, then you will appear in glory” (Col.3:4).46 Skovoroda’s treatment of resurrection was similar to his discussion of transfiguration. He introduced the discussion with a short verse:

O God, pour heavenly dew on my head, And I will bring you some grapes, rose-red. Some grapes from Eden From the resurrection garden.

45 Skovoroda, “Potop Zmiyn,” PZT, II, 160. 46 Ibid., 162–64. 408 Stephen P. Scherer

He then added a biblical verse, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (Song of Songs 1:2) and followed this with his admonition to “Raise yourself audaciously to him whose face you could only look on with terror on Mount Tabor.”47 After this he offered two series of biblical citations which he connected with individual resurrection. The first of these had to do with bones: “This is now bone of my bones! (Gen. 2:23); “My bones will not be hidden from you, you created them in secret” (Ps. 139:15); “Healing is for your bones” (Prov. 16:24). The second group came from the Book of Joel and included the following verses: “Like the morning spread upon the mountains, a great and strong people” (2:2); “like the noise of chariots, they shall leap on the tops of mountains” (2:5); “they will run like champions and will climb the walls like brave warriors” (2:7).48 Skovoroda finished his discussion of transfiguration and resurrection, and, in fact, the entire work, “Potop Zmiin,” with a verse of his own which, despite its brevity, recapitulates his experience of a personal encounter with God:

Begone, begone! Sorrowful night! The sun arises, Bringing light, The light suffuses, Joy is born, Deluging night! Begone, begone!49

Unlike the parable of the two slaves, which was a narrative symbolically depicting the spiritual journey of a mystic, the discussion of transfiguration and resurrection represented mystical experience by means of its rhapsodic language and exalted phraseology. Skovoroda described the despair which preceded his experience using language like “blackness,” “vomit,” “abyss” and “hellishly.” The principal topics for dis-

47 Ibid., 165. 48 Ibid., 169–70. 49 Ibid., 171. Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 409

cussion were “transfiguration” and “resurrection,” two words which conjure up images of the most divine brilliance ever to occur on earth. Further, in writing about these two themes, Skovoroda referenced “heavenly dew,” “Eden” and “rose-red,” all of which were meant to elicit the sensations of harmony, well-being and happiness associated with a mystical experience. With regard to phraseology, Skovoroda sought to recall mystical exaltation with phrases such as “they saw his glory,” “until you see Christ,” “you will appear in glory” and “kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” All of these phrases suggested Christ’s visible glory and the mystical union to be had with Christ. The biblical citations concerning bones were for Skovoroda suggestions of the intimate union between God and man realized in a mystical encounter, while the citations from Joel recognized the stupendous power of God which both humbled and elevated one in a mystical union with the divine. Finally, the concluding poem captured, in the most brief compass, the emotional intensity and despair of the “dark night of the soul” as well as the brilliance, ecstasy and enlightenment of a mystical encounter. However one considers Skovo- roda’s mystical encounters, it is evident that these experiences were important factors in his view that the divine economy or nature could be experienced by the individual and, further, that these experiences enlightened one concerning the life and occupation most natural and, therefore, most harmonious for both the individual and society.

Conclusion

The above discussion suggests several things. First, as both a philosopher and a religious thinker, Skovoroda was keenly interested in the society around him and found many things to criticize in that society. He was aware of the gradual decline of Ukrainian autonomy and the social developments which accompanied that decline, the ennoblement of the Cos- sack officer class and the enserfment of the Ukrainian peasantry. Along with this, he was also sharply critical of the Ortho- dox Church and its monastic life, finding in both of these institutions a serious spiritual decline. Despite his criticism of 410 Stephen P. Scherer

society and the Church, Skovoroda did not support the notion of any large scale social militancy or reform movement. He accepted certain inequities in land holding and wealth, did not identify any privileged group in society as the enemy per se, and made no comment on the most important social rebellions of his time. Second, because he recognized the problems connected with society and the Church, but eschewed any larger social reform, Skovoroda sought social improvement by way of individual reform. The only way to effect this individual reform was for each individual to discover his own nature and how it meshed with the Divine economy or universal nature. With this insight, Skovoroda argued, each individual would be able to live and work naturally, and both individual and social harmony would result. Third, the way to know one’s own and universal nature, according to Skovoroda, was to encounter God’s economy or energy, which Skovoroda called nature. Skovoroda accomplished this in his own life through three mystical experiences. One of these was carefully described and occurred simultaneously with his final decision to embark on an itinerant and solitary life. The other two were presented indirectly, but were equally enlightening. It is significant that the first of these two also took place at nearly the same time as Skovoroda’s decision to adopt his wandering life-style. Nowhere did he directly instruct his audience to seek mystical experiences. However, his equating of God’s economy and energy with nature and his constant encouragement to know oneself and discover one’s own nature, as well as his own experience in doing so mystically, all strongly suggest that Skovoroda believed in mystical experience as the path to the individual self-knowledge whose result was social harmony. Finally, this essay does not mean to contend that Skovo- roda was as much social critic as religious thinker, for his reputation properly rests on his religious insights. Nor does it assert that a highly developed spiritual consciousness can emerge only during a time of social and spiritual tumult such as Ukraine experienced during the eighteenth century. Rather it argues that a mystic appears in a given time and place and Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–94): Critic as Mystic 411

can employ his critical understanding of that time and place in connection with the formulation and articulation of his religious insights in order to suggest a solution for society’s ills.

®®®®®®®®

Резюме

Автор демонструє зв’язок між соціяльною критикою та містичним досвідом у житті Сковороди, яке припало на буремні роки переходу України з-під влади Польщі під владу Російської імперії, яка вже до 1780 року (за Катери- ни ІІ) знищила самі залишки незалежності України. На- дання дворянства козацькій старшині та закріпачення ук- раїнського селянства було піддане завуальованій критиці у текстах Сковороди. Автор аналізує ці статті не лише на предмет соціяльної критики, але й на предмет особистого контексту, богословської та духовної тематики. Сковорода критикував також і Православну Церкву і корупцію мо- настирських інституцій включно із славетною Києво- Печерською Лаврою. Мандрівний філософ над усе цінив свою свободу і хоч в якомусь сенсі ми можемо назвати його монахом, він був вільним від будь-яких зобов’язань пов’язаних із формальною приналежністю до монастир- ської громади. Головною знахідкою Сковороди було те, що кожен повинен пізнати свою природу (себе) і діяти згідно з нею. Обравши такий шлях, людина не лише відчує зв’язок із універсальною людською природою але й здобу- де щастя і врешті решт зрозуміє і пізнає таємницю єднан- ня з Богом. Щоб зрозуміти це містичне єднання, автор посилається на Псевдо-Діонисія а також аналізує два цен- тральних аспекти віри: Христове Переображення і Воскре- сіння.

® ® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 413–418

Elements of a Vision for the Effective Synthesis of Universal Primacy and Conciliarity

Peter Galadza

Introductory Note

Since 2005, the North-American Orthodox/Catholic Theo- logical Consultation has been discussing the question of primacy. In 2007 the decision was taken to ask each of the more than twenty members of the consultation to present a very brief statement of how they would envisage the organic synthesis of a universal primacy on the one hand and effective conciliarity (synodality) on the other. In essence, the statement should summarize how Catholics and Orthodox might visibly express and maintain full communion. The following text was presented at the consultation’s bi-annual meeting in October 2008. I have been a member of the consultation, representing the Ca- nadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, since 1997. The consultation is the oldest extant body of its kind in the world, having met regularly since 1965.

A Note on Method

Conditioned by the nature of the task assigned us, the following reflections are very selective in their focus. None- theless, I believe they go to the heart of several areas of ecclesial life that would have to be reformed for Catholic and Orthodox hierarchs to restore eucharistic communion. As I proceed, it should become apparent that my method is

414 Peter Galadza

1) to seek inspiration in the Scriptures and Tradition for 2) a vision of how a re-united Church should “be” and act, 3) noting the impediments to such being and acting, and 4) suggesting how these impediments might be removed.

Obviously there is nothing original here, but I note the aforementioned to make clear that my concerns and approach are of a very practical nature. In fact, my approach might be dubbed “ecclesial problem solving” as I am most concerned to highlight the concrete goals of a re-united Church and the issues that prevent Catholics and Orthodox from realizing that unity.

Koinonia and Convocation: Who Has the Right to Effectively Call Everyone to “Dinner”

Certainly there is no substitute for face-to-face encounter. Such encounters curb the demonization of opponents. No wonder that table fellowship is so prominent in descriptions of the Kingdom. But who in a re-united household of God should have the right to mandate such encounters? Who should have the right to call the world’s bishops to the eucharistic table for fellowship followed by the kind of practical sharing that naturally flows from a non-cultic approach to liturgy? In other words, who should have the right to convoke a council (preceded by the Eucharist)? I fantasize – and I stress “fantasize” – that visionary Church leaders would restore such a role to a bishop of Jerusalem (duly elected for such a purpose). As this is “dreaming in Technicolor” I will only note the reasons for my continued fantasizing. If Rome has always been recognized as the primatial see owing, in part, to its status as the sight of the witness of Peter and Paul, it seems that Jerusalem, the “mother of Churches” according to Tradition, might be an even more appropriate primatial see as it is the sight of the witness of the Witness Himself (Rev. 1:5). Such fantasizing is conditioned by the “baggage” that Rome carries in the consciousness of non- Elements of a Vision 415

Catholics and my desire to see not only Orthodox “elites” support such re-union, but the Orthodox masses as well. Let me now return to “reality.” Certainly the bishop of Rome would have to have the right to convoke gatherings of bishops, Eastern and Western. (Du- ring the first millennium, the emperor exercised this role. Of course, once the Byzantines lost Italy, he could no longer do so effectively. But how ironic that ecclesial gatherings should require the strong arm of the state.) These gatherings would not only consist of universal and regional synods, but also regular meetings of a permanent synod, comprised of the heads (or delegated representatives) of autocephalous Churches and appropriate representatives of regional Catholic hierarchies (a problem of its own, but not insurmountable). Naturally, the Eastern Catholic Churches would be re-integrated into their Orthodox counterparts, and the various Roman dicasteries would no longer have responsibility for any Churches except those of the Roman Rite. Thus, the pope’s title, “patriarch of the West” would have to be restored as “the West” would be the only “area” where he would exercise the kind of jurisdiction foreseen by Pastor aeternus. (More on this below.) As is evident, this structure of pope/permanent synod would reflect a universalization and institutionalization of the directive of Apostolic Canon 34:

The bishops of every nation ought to know who is the first one among them, and to esteem him as their head, and not to do any great thing without his consent; but every one to manage the affairs that belong to his own diocese and the territory subject to it. But let him (i.e. the first one) not do anything without the consent of all the other (bishops); for it is by this means that there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Incidentally, in order to avoid the impression that Ortho- dox hierarchs consistently meeting with the pope have thereby somehow becomes members of the Roman Church, the perma- 416 Peter Galadza

nent synod could devise a rotation of meeting venues among the other four historic (Eastern) patriarchates and at centers in North and South America, Asia, and Oceania.

The Burden – and Blessing – of Vatican I

Before turning to the challenge posed by the maximalist formulations of Vatican I regarding the pope’s universal, immediate, and ordinary jurisdiction, let me say that part of the task of overcoming the doctrinal divide between Orthodox and Catholics would have to be an admission by the Orthodox that “the spirit” and intent of Pastor aeternus are consonant with sound ecclesiology, even if “the letter” contains very dubious historical interpretations. In any case, there is simply no doubt that it is Pastor aeternus that has prevented the modern Catho- lic Church from splintering into scores of “national” “Catholic Churches” – and, just as importantly, has enabled Catholics worldwide to get on with the task of being Church rather than having to waste time debating jurisdictional questions of “canonicity.” (As an Eastern Catholic I should add that without communion with Rome, by now there would certainly be at least three “Ukrainian Catholic Churches” rather than just one.) Turning to the “burden” of Vatican I, it is obvious that a universalization of Apostolic Canon 34 would place restrict- tions on the pope’s jurisdiction, thereby “contravening” the letter of Pastor aeternus. However, the experience of the first millennium, not to mention Orthodox ecclesiology – and the cause of unity – demands such restrictions. Rome’s “transcending” the letter of Pastor aeternus would be analogous in some ways to the evolution that took place between 431AD and 451AD regarding mia physis. As the Catholic Church has always insisted that the Orthodox have retained apostolic succession and valid sacraments, and after Vatican II has unequivocally insisted that the Orthodox are Church, it seems that the controverted elements of Pastor aeternus might be viewed as entirely valid developments of the Latin Church, which formulated these elements after a period of prolonged alienation from her sister Churches and Elements of a Vision 417

thus would want to adjust these elements after having been led into all truth by the Spirit (John 16: 12). (The verb “to lead” and the adjective “all” presume a progression without which living in history is unimaginable. I note this in order to avoid accusations of “relativism” or “indifferentism.” In any case, I presume that it was just such “adjustments” that Joseph Ratzinger must have had in mind when in 1976 he published his opinion about what Catholic formulations the Orthodox might be expected to accept in the case of restored communion with Rome.)

Explicating Certain Other Details

Among the difficult questions that would have to be resolved are:

1) Can the bishop of Rome be judged, and by whom? This is an ambiguity in Catholic canon law, and would require clarity for the Orthodox.1 2) Considering that the pope’s most important preroga- tive would be to call protohierarchs together for regular and extraordinary synods, what would be the consequences (and the means for enforcing the consequences) in those cases when a hierarch or hierarchs refuse to accept the invitation to gather and/or the results of the gathering’s deliberations. In the past – or even today – where civil authority has the right to

1 Canon 1404 in the 1983 Code of Canon Law claims “The First See is judged by no one,” but canonists and commentators agree that this pertains only to the administrative and juridical powers of the pope, and not to his own personal impeccability or his doctrinal teaching authority. In other words, it denies the possibility of the pope (not least because he is also head of a sovereign country) being tried by a “lower” court – whether secular or religious – but whether he could be tried and judged (e.g., in cases where he fell into heresy) by an ecumenical council (or, perhaps, a “council of peers” composed of fellow patriarchs) is less clear according to the current law. See the very apt reflections in the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, eds. John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green (New York: Paulist Press, 2000 ), 1618. 418 Peter Galadza

intervene, the answer is simple. However, there certainly will be no such world-wide civil body.

Finally, it would seem that on the Eastern Christian side, there can be no hope for a renewed “universalization” of Church structures and authority as long as the Orthodox Chur- ches continue to institutionalize local Church ecclesiology via the categories of the nation-state. In preparation for such a renewal, these Churches may want to consider officially returning to “civic” rather than national nomenclature, e.g., “The Church of Athens” rather than “The Church of Greece,” etc. I would stress this, for as I have noted elsewhere (in my critique of Eastern Catholic phyletism),2 even worldwide jurisdictional unity does not guarantee an operative universal ecclesiology reflective of the Church’s ontology as “the new humanity” and “God’s ‘nation’.”

® ® ® ®

2 Peter Galadza, “The Structure of the Eastern Churches: Bonded with Human Blood or Baptismal Water,” Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 373–86. Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 419–427

An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy1

Adam A.J. DeVille

Introduction

To speak, as an Eastern Catholic2, on the papacy is to experience the tensions of Eastern Catholicism at their most acute.3 My presentation tonight takes the tensions of Eastern Catholicism and uses them as the basis for trying to understand the papacy from a Catholic perspective that is also, I hope, acceptable to Orthodoxy – but that remains, of course, for my honorable friend and partner in dialogue to discern. To speak of the papacy, then, and to do so in a way that is honest, compels one at the outset to recognize the papacy as both a source of great good in the Church and also the source

1 This essay was revised after public delivery at the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana, in February 2009. It was part of a “Faiths in Dialogue” series, and brought together the author, a subdeacon of the Ukrai- nian Greco-Catholic Church, with Fr. David Meinzen, a priest of the Ortho- dox Church of America who at the time was pastor of St. Nicholas Church, Ft. Wayne, but who has since been called into active service as a chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, which has prevented him from submitting his paper to Logos in time for publication. 2 On whom see generally such recent introductions as Edward Faulk, 101 Questions and Answers on Eastern Catholic Churches (Paulist, 2007); Fred Saato, American Eastern Catholics (Paulist, 2006); and Joan Rocca- salvo, The Eastern Catholic Churches: An Introduction to Their Worship and Spirituality (Liturgical Press, 1992). 3 A Ukrainian Catholic priest and mentor of mine, Fr. Peter Galadza, likes to say that “Eastern Catholics have no natural allies” because we are generally scorned by Eastern Orthodox (as traitors or sell-outs) and generally ignored by Roman Catholics, or scorned by them also (as insufficiently Roman and therefore suspect as Catholics). 420 Adam A.J. DeVille

of great scandal – scandal understood here not in the modern “moral” sense4 but in the Pauline sense of σκάνδαλον (cf. I Cor. 1:23), that is, a stumbling block which prevents one from seeing or attaining something important – in this case, the unity of the Church. Let us deal with the skandalon of the papacy first.

The Papacy as Skandalon

It needs to be plainly admitted, by any Catholic who hopes to be taken seriously when discussing the papacy, just how much of a stumbling block this office is. In saying that, I have in mind not so much the insufficiently virtuous incumbents of the office as the office itself. The very existence of a single figure having global and powerful responsibilities within the Church, which responsibilities he can always exercise “freely”5 and in a manner he alone determines,6 whose decisions must be obeyed, tends to grate on the democratic or re- publican sensibilities of many of us today. The papacy grates on the sensibilities of Christians who rightly recognize that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and who wonder, given that ontological equality, how it is possible for one man to be exalted as the “Holy Father” and “Supreme Pontiff” who tells others what to do.7

4 Cf. uses of “scandal” in such recent events as the senate-seat-for-hire “scandal” involving the now-impeached Rod Blagojevich, ex-governor of Illinois. 5 Code of Canon Law (CIC) (1983) c. 331. 6 Cf. CIC c. 333s.2. 7 It is precisely because of the offensiveness of the very concept of the papacy, as well as its lapses into infelicitous behavior, that not one but two recent popes have apologized to other Christians for the office and the conduct of their predecessors: Pope Paul VI, “Address to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity,” 28 April 1967, in Thomas F. Stransky and John B. Sheerin, eds., Doing the Truth in Charity: Statements of Pope Paul VI, Popes John Paul I, John Paul II, and the Secretariat for Promoting Chris- tian Unity 1964–1980 (Paulist, 1982), 273. (French original: AAS 59[1967]: 493–98.) Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no.88:

as I acknowledged on the important occasion of a visit to the World Council of Churches in Geneva on 12 June 1984, the Catho- An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy 421

The papacy, then, has often appeared to be overwhelmingly powerful and therefore suspicious.8 And the papacy9 both sometimes appears to be, and actually is guilty of, micromanaging or meddling unhelpfully, sometimes even destructively, in the life of local Churches around the world – as Eastern Catholics can certainly testify.10 There can be, and have been, abuses of its authority; and there can be, and have been, examples where the papacy has developed in ways that put it at odds with early Christian history and practices. The papacy, in sum, poses the gravest of challenges to non-Catholic Chris- tians in seeking the unity of the Church of Christ.

The Papacy as Gift and Blessing

And yet, one must – as a Catholic at least – be equally honest in admitting that the papacy serves as a blessing to God’s Church. The papacy, at its best, is a vehicle for keeping the Church united throughout the world by proclaiming the

lic Church’s conviction that in the ministry of the Bishop of Rome she has preserved, in fidelity to the Apostolic Tradition and the faith of the Fathers, the visible sign and guarantor of unity, constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections. To the extent that we are responsible for these, I join my Predecessor Paul VI in asking forgiveness. 8 In the memorable words of the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, in looking at the papacy, “many Orthodox see in this merely the advance embassy of an omnivorous ecclesial empire.” Id., “The Future of the Papacy: A Symposium,” First Things (March 2001): 34 9 It is often times not so much the popes themselves who are the problem as his curial “helpers,” about which see the next note. Nonetheless, because the Curia exists for his service and exercises authority by “participating” in papal authority, the pope is ultimately responsible. 10 One Ukrainian Catholic priest I know has referred to the Congrega- tion for the Eastern Churches as the “Congregation for the Destruction of the Eastern Churches,” given Roman Curial attempts to, inter alia, interfere with the synodal governance of Eastern Catholic Churches, impose or encourage Latinizations on them, etc. Given this track-record, the Orthodox are rightly wary of entering into communion with the pope. As one Orthodox wag has put it, “It’s not the pope we fear – it’s the pope’s helpers!” The Roman Curia, in other words, is often a bigger problem than the Roman bishop himself. 422 Adam A.J. DeVille

“orthodox catholic faith that comes to us from the apostles.”11 In the face of the temptation – too often indulged by too many Christians today – to water down the gospel so that those with “itching ears” who “will not endure sound teaching” are not presented with the full demands of Christian living, the papacy is desperately needed to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”12 The papacy, moreover, is a means to prevent Christians from succumbing to the narrowness of nationalism – which, in my judgment, is the besetting sin of Eastern Christianity – because the pope “is the citizen of no country, the subject of no earthly ruler.”13 He is able to avoid entanglement with czars, communists, and other earthly princes in whom, as the psalmist rightly reminds us, we are to place no trust (Ps. 145:3)14; and he is able to assist Christians around the world from becoming too closely entangled with their states or other ethno- nationalist polities and exclusive particularities. The papacy is a gift and blessing in its knack for organization. One feature of West-Roman culture has been a propensity for practical organization and problem-solving. To the “Greeks” belonged generally the subtle speculations of philosophy; but to the “Romans” belonged generally the ability to build roads and aqueducts, and to promulgate laws in the service of order and good government (the pax Romana and tran- quillitas ordinis). The papacy, as a West-Roman institution, has inherited that cultural “charism” for practical efficiency and organization, gifts which, I would note, are not so easily identified within my own Eastern Christian family. For these reasons (inter alia) one can speak of the papacy as a gift.15

11 Thus the Roman Canon (“Eucharistic Prayer 1”). 12 II Timothy 4:2–4. 13 Andriy Chirovsky, “Letter from Ukraine,” First Things (October 2001). 14 LXX numbering. 15 Those who know the realities of Eastern Christianity will know that it is, organizationally at least, a complete mess. An Eastern Catholic priest I know likes to quip, in response to those who blithely say “I don’t believe in organized religion,” that they should try Eastern Christianity, because it is most certainly not organized well at all! North America is the clearest An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy 423

How to Speak of the Papacy

Let us plainly admit that it is not common for many to speak of the papacy as a gift. In attempting to speak of the papacy, one is confronted with certain methodological issues that often trap one and hinder the dialogue; two in particular come to mind. Some Catholics may be inclined towards polemical or sanctimonious triumphalism. Some non-Catholics may also be inclined towards polemical dismissals of the papacy or a certain fatuous sloganeering about how it should be exercised.16 If these ways of speaking of the papacy are unhelpful, so too are the usual methods one encounters for “solving” the problem of the papacy, or “proving” or disproving the truth of its claims. It has, e.g., become a tiresome habit to resort to Scripture17 and a select list of quotations from the Fathers (always beginning with the same ambiguous passages from Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, whose Greek originals are lost to us and whose extant Latin texts may well be corrupt) in order to demonstrate not just the antiquity but especially (it is claimed, anachronistically) the authority of the papacy as it is today exercised and understood. This approach of proof-texting has failed and will only continue to fail.18 example of disarray, leading such distinguished hierarchs as the recently deceased Ukrainian Orthodox Archbishop Vsevelod of Chicago to admit that the Roman papacy comes as a great “gift” to Orthodoxy in her struggles with jurisdictional chaos. 16 I have in mind here that especially vexatious line that one is forever encountering by those ignorant of history: viz., that the pope should exercise merely a “primacy of honor.” Those who resort to that phrase should be refused further permission to speak on the topic until such time as they have read and thoroughly digested Brian Daley’s landmark article “Position and Patronage in the Early Church: the Original Meaning of ‘Primacy of Honour,’” Journal of Theological Studies 44 (1993): 529–53. Daly makes patently clear that “honour” has always entailed very real and substantial responsibility and authority, and a “primacy of honour,” therefore, is not one exercised by some toothless titular. 17 Always beginning, of course, with Matthew 16:13–20, about which debates have raged endlessly. 18 The problem with the usual presentation of this evidence by Catholic apologists is that their approach is intolerably anachronistic. They seem to think that merely because Peter was in Rome, itself the most important city 424 Adam A.J. DeVille

What we need, as the greatest Greek Orthodox theologian alive today, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas), has said is to recognize that “the primacy of the Bishop of Rome has to be theologically justified or else be ignored altogether.”19 What would a theological justification of the papacy look like?

Towards a Theological Justification of the Papacy

The singular doctrinal claim of Christianity is that God is revealed as Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three Persons are equal in majesty and undivided in splendor, yet one Lord and one God. The Persons are all equally God, and yet equally distinct; the Persons are united in their divinity, and diverse in their “personhood.” At risk of a Pseudo-Dionysian20 kind of over-identification between divine realities, on the one hand, and ecclesial ones, on the other, let me nonetheless come to my central thesis: the papacy’s theological justification is Trinitarian in nature, that is, the papacy must be capable of witnessing to and upholding the unity and diversity of the Churches as part of the one

(primarily because it was the imperial capital) and the bishop of Rome recognized as having a special place in the patriarchal ταξις, that Peter et. seq. somehow functioned as the popes of our own day do by exercising, or at least claiming the right to exercise, “supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church” (thus CIC c. 331). Nothing of the sort happened, and the papacy as it exists and is structured today is so profoundly different from what was known for the first four hundred years (and indeed much more) as to make these comparisons dangerously deceptive and ten- dentiously anachronistic. On the early history of the papacy, there are many sources which could be mentioned but see, at least, Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy: From its Origins to the Present (Liturgical Press, 1996); Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale U. Press, 1997, 2006); and for the modern transformations in papal claims, one must see at least Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830–1914 (Oxford, 1998) and John Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy (Cambridge, 2005). 19 Id., “Primacy in the Church: An Orthodox Approach,” in Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: Toward a Patient and Fraternal Dia- logue, ed. James F.. Puglisi (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 123. 20 On this see the very apt reflections of the Orthodox theologian John Jillions: “In the Shadow of Pseudo-Dionysius,” at http://www.ocanews.org/ JillionsDionysius.html. An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy 425

Church of Christ.21 The tasks of the papacy include preserving the unity of the faith in its doctrinal essence (as expressed in, e.g., the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol [creed]), but also preserving the diversity of expressions of apostolic Chris- tianity in the different liturgical, canonical, and spiritual “systems” as they have developed in different parts of the world from the very beginning. The papacy can and should ensure that this diversity of approaches to the one mystery of God never harms the overall unity of the Church. In more concrete terms, as I have elsewhere argued at great length,22 the papacy can live its “Trinitarian” tasks of holding the one and many together – unity in diversity, to use an old but still valuable expression – by bringing the diversity of Orthodox and Catholic Churches together through an ecumenical synod consisting of all the patriarchs together with the patriarch of Rome, the pope. Synodality, in the Christian East, is a marvelous combination of the one and the many held together in tension.23 The synod – composed of many bishops – normally cannot act without its one head, the patriarch, but the patriarch normally cannot act without the cooperation and

21 For a fuller treatment of a Trinitarian ecclesiology relevant here, see, inter alia, the statement of the Joint Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, “The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity,” http://www.vatican.edu/roman_curia/pontifical_coun- cils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19820706_munich_en.h tml. See also D. Stãniloae, “Trinitarian Relations and the Life of the Church,” in Id., Theology and the Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1980), 11–44; and John Behr, “The Trinitarian Being of the Church,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48 (2003): 67–88. 22 See my “Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity” (doctoral dissertation, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, 2008), which will be published in 2010. 23 For more on synodality, see John Zizioulas, “Recent Discussions on Primacy in Orthodox Theology” in The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Or- thodox in Dialogue, ed., Walter Cardinal Kasper (New York: Newman Press, 2006), 231–48. See also the various articles by Christians of all traditions in Synod and Synodality: Theology, History, Canon Law and Ecumenism in New Contact, eds., Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni (New Bruns- wick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005). Finally, see my own “A Diversity of Polities: Patriarchal Leadership in the Orthodox Churches,” The Jurist 68 (2008): 460–496. 426 Adam A.J. DeVille

consent of the synod. The synod proposes legislation, but the patriarch promulgates it and generally supervises its imple- mentation. This new “ecumenical synod” that I have proposed would act along these lines, and thus the “Eastern” patriarchs would work with the “Western” patriarch of Rome in exercising pastoral solicitude for the universal Church. The pope, however, would – and, in my judgment, must – have additional responsibilities which he could exercise on his own initiative when circumstances warranted it. Thus, e.g., the pope would be able to act to deal with, inter alia:24

• Serious entanglements with or persecution by states • A breakdown of communion between two local churches • Major canonical violations • Major misconduct of a moral or financial nature • Major lapses into heresy • Electoral deadlocks in patriarchal or episcopal elec- tions.25

Papal responsibilities here would come into play only when the patriarch of the church concerned was unable or unwilling to act, or when one of the problems in the above list involved a patriarch himself. Such a proposal for such an exercise of the papacy would, I hope, combine the strengths of Catholicism and of Ortho-

24 In the work noted above in footnote 22, I specify in much greater detail than I can here how exactly the pope could possibly act in a reunited Church. 25 The temptation in talking about what the papacy would “do” is often a maximalist or legalistic one, that is, there is a frequent tendency to expand these lists not only in the number of responsibilities, but also by trying to envisage the precise circumstances under which the pope might act or be prevented from acting. The temptation, in other words, is towards legalistic micromanaging. This is a temptation to be resisted, for reasons Olivier Clément makes clear in his “The Pope, the Council and the Emperor During the Period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.” Sourozh: A Journal of Ortho- dox Life and Thought 42 (November 1990): 1–15. He makes the argument that the “dynamism” of this period was such that nobody – neither emperor, nor pope, nor other figures – had final control in the direction of the Church, and therefore the Holy Spirit had greater freedom to work. An Eastern Catholic Approach to the Papacy 427

doxy, and meet, so far as possible, the concerns of both, allowing them to unite again under the leadership of what everyone recognizes as the senior see in the Church. But would such a proposal in fact be acceptable to Orthodoxy? On this, I am keen to hear the words of my interlocutor, and welcome his wisdom.

® ® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 429–439

“The World as Sacrament” in Alexander Schmemann’s Vision1

Michael Plekon

Christ never spoke of the natural and supernatural. He spoke rather of the old and the new, and especially of the reno- vation of the old. Sacrament is movement, transition, passage, Pascha: Christ knows the way and guides us, going before. The world, condemned in its old nature, revealed as life eternal in its new nature, is still the same world, God’s good work. Christ came to save it, not to allow us means of thankful escape before it was discarded as rubbish. Thoughts of the “life to come” can be misleading. In a sense, we have no other world to live in but this, although the mode of our occupying it, our whole relationship to space and time (tota ac simul possessio) will be very different when we are risen again in Christ. If then our attention is to be given more seriously – and even, in a carefully defined sense, wholly – to this world, that does not mean we are committed to “worldliness”…. We have a simple task, and a happy one. Some say that we should concentrate upon this world as though God did not exist. We say rather that we should concentrate upon this world lovingly because it is full of God, because by way of the Eucharist we find Him everywhere – in hideous disasters as well as in little flowers … it is not supernatural at all; we return to our original nature, to the garden where Adam met God in the cool of the evening. No, we do not meet Him wholly and unconsciously: we are still fallen, still estranged, and our fallen nature could

1 This paper was given at an international conference, “The Legacy of Father Alexander Schmemann 1921–1983,” held in Paris, December 11–14, 2008, St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute. 430 Michael Plekon

not at present survive that. A sacramental correspondence … always points beyond. But it creates also a present unity, making us contemporary witnesses of Christ’s death but also of His coming again, and of the fulfillment of all things in Him. Thankfully we accept from God’s hands His lovely garden, the world. We eat its fruits, transform its substance into life, offer that life to God on Christ’s cross and our daily altars, and look forward to the possession of it, as a risen body, in the Kingdom. But it will be the same world, the same life. “Behold, I make all things new.” These were God’s last words to us, and they only say at the end, and eternally, what was in his mind at the very beginning, when he looked on the sacramental world of his creation and saw that it was good.2

Alexander Schmemann and his Vision

Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote those words almost forty-five years ago, in a paper delivered in June, 1964 and published a year later. Of course, the “world” is to be found throughout his writings, not to mention his Radio Liberty talks, his lectures and the journals kept during the last decade of his life. The “world” figures importantly in the title of two of his best known books: For the Life of the World and Church, World, Mission. While he modified his perspectives on a number of issues over the years, it is also the case that on the question of the relationship of Christian faith, the liturgy, and the church to the world, there was a remarkable consistency in his vision.3 The very title of this 1964 paper, “The World as Sacrament,” is a particularly apt statement of his thinking, and despite other views which would seem to contradict it – Schmemann’s critical perspectives on politics, poverty, and

2 “The World as Sacrament,” in Alexander Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 226– 227. 3 The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973–1983, trans. Juliana Schmemann (Crestwood NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 310. In an entry from February 1, 1982, Schmemann notes his dismissal as theological advisor to the OCA synod and his mixed feelings about this event. Even in so partial a selection as the English version of the journals, the instances of his noting change in his thinking are remarkably numerous. “The World as Sacrament” in Schmemann’s Vision 431

feminism among other issues – this was his essential point of view, even with some qualifications. On many dimensions, Schmemann remains hard to describe with precision. He was neither a progressive nor a reac- tionary. Sometimes he was ruthless in his criticism of traditionalist resistance to change, of the “reduction” of liturgical rites or piety to mystical symbolism and custom. Yet he would then stop short of changes one might expect from his vision. He also liberally dismissed other efforts to reform or change – social policy, cultural patterns, liturgical forms. While he may have not always cited them and surely disagreed with some, he was the student of the “Paris School” of St. Sergius Institute, of such figures as Bulgakov, Afanasiev, Kern, Zenkovsky and Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov), as well as Kartashev, Sové, and Zander, among others.4 Given his most complex history, Schmemann’s usually very positive evalua- tions of George Florovsky have always been puzzling to me. We have John Meyendorff’s witness to the influence of these St. Sergius faculty members, not to mention Schmemann’s own.5 For all the harsh criticisms of Bulgakov in his journals, there is Schmemann’s reverential essay about him on the latter’s centenary.6 There are the notes in The Eucharist as well as his obituary devoted to Afanasiev. There are other items such as the replication at St. Vladimir’s Seminary of les semaines liturgiques begun in 1952 at St. Serge by his mentors Kern and Afanasiev; and Schmemann’s own books and essays in which he sought to describe the theologia prima or “litur-

4 All of these were contributors to Zhivoe predanie/Living Tradition, the anthology published in 1937 by YMCA Press in Paris as a statement of a more progressive theological perspective that joined these thinkers, despite their differences. Many though not all of the essays in this anthology have been translated and gathered in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time, ed. Michael Plekon (New York: Sheed & Ward/ Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). For a presentation of the “Paris” or “Russian” School, see Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). 5 “A Life Worth Living,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 28 (1984): 3–10. 6 “Trois images,” Le Messager Orthodoxe I (1972): 2–20. 432 Michael Plekon

gical theology,” as David Fagerberg has described it.7 There are as well some profound anecdotal accounts such as Vigen Guroian’s reminiscence that Bulgakov was named by Schme- mann as the single most important shaper of his thinking.

God, the World and Ourselves

Schmemann refused to separate the sacred and the profane but saw the world as full of God’s presence: “we should concentrate upon this world lovingly because it is full of God.” God made all things out of love, and when he looked on the world He saw that it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). God was not above or beyond the world, but as the entire Hebrew Bible witnesses very powerfully, seemed compelled to constantly interact with human beings, sometimes punishing them, telling them His wishes, His “words” through men and women who were His voice, His prophets. As often as His children turned away from Him to love other gods, God was always waiting to forgive and reconcile them with Himself, pursuing them as a lover, as a parent, as a shepherd. In the fullness of time, God went further. All relationships were changed by the Incarnation. Fr. Alexander’s vision is one he shared with Sergius Bulgakov and Paul Florensky, and before them, Soloviev and Bukharev.8 The “humanity of God,” God’s entering time and space, becoming part of His creation, forever changed not only the world and human beings but God as well.9 Schmemann could not see Christianity as an escape from or an outright condemnation of the world. The concluding passage from “World as Sacrament,” cited at length above, makes this clear. God came into the world not to condemn it but to save it. And as the rest of this same essay makes clear, the

7 Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2004). 8 Again, see Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology. 9 See Valliere once more for the centrality of Bogochelovechestvo, “The humanity of God,” the focus of Sergius Bulgakov’s “great trilogy”: The Comforter, The Lamb of God, The Bride of the Lamb. All three have been translated by Boris Jakim and published by Eerdmans in 2004, 2008, 2002 respectively. “The World as Sacrament” in Schmemann’s Vision 433

biblical view always sees encounter – interaction – as a relationship between the world and the Kingdom of God, the material and the spiritual, as in the bread, wine, water, oil of the sacraments. As the Johannine gospel and letters teach, we do not simply love the world but at the same time neither do we hate or flee it. There was throughout his writing and teaching a kind of three-part assessment: “All is created good; all is fallen and finally – this is our third ‘fundamental ac- clamation’ – all is redeemed.” 10 Thus it is that at the Eucha- rist, after the Lord’s words indicating the bread as His body and the cup of wine as His blood, all of Christ’s saving actions are remembered: “the cross, the tomb, the resurrection of the third day, the ascension and his second and glorious coming.” For Fr. Alexander, the world, created as good, fallen by our actions, is redeemed, re-created or made new by Christ in the Spirit. As he surveys the history of both the Church and the world, he sees all sorts of responses, including the Byzantine fusion of symphonia as well as the opposition of secularism. All too often the Church condemned or ignored the world only to find that the world is precisely where God came and continues to work. The liturgy, the “first theology,” knows only the biblical account of God’s dealing with, in, and through the world. Further, the liturgy seeks to return to the original beauty and holiness of creation. It is not so much that water is “blessed” on Theophany and in the baptismal service, or that bread and wine are “consecrated” in the liturgy and chrism “mixed” and blessed by the presiding bishop. Rather, all these material pieces of creation are recovered and returned to their proper use, to feed and cleanse and heal us. Such was and remains God’s intention for the world, for us human beings. But never is dealing with the world so neat and simple as theology might indicate. History is messy, human beings puzzling, and the world a complex mix of so many things.

10 “Liturgy and Eschatology,” in Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections of Alexander Schmemann, ed. Thomas Fisch (Crestwood NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 98–99. 434 Michael Plekon

Schmemann and the “Real World”

Read through the hundreds of entries in the journals that Schmemann kept in the last decade of his life. He was in every sense a man of the world while at the same time able to discern and criticize many aspects of it. He took great delight in his wife, children, grandchildren, as well as other relatives, students, colleagues and friends. The journals make clear how much joy he experienced, despite the frustrations and sadness. Yet like those who live in and then reflect upon the world, Schmemann was no different in having a distinctive vision of it, even within the theological framework just mentioned. He was not shy about his likes and dislikes, and it is a shame that we do not have the entirety of his journals in English – the published Russian version is far more extensive though also not complete. It is sad that some seem to feel they must somehow “protect” his figure and memory by keeping from sight what he really thought about other people and various issues. Perhaps the journals should have been embargoed for twenty-five years or longer till there might have been more freedom, which was so precious to Fr. Alexander, as his friend and colleague Veselin Kesich said at his funeral. Even now, twenty-five years after his death, hushed and kept from public hearing and view, there are very negative appraisals of him, as a personality, as priest and dean, as theologian. As with all criticism, some is objective, but some very much ad hominem; he is demonized and thereby discredited in what he said, wrote, and did. As a man of the Church and the world, Fr. Alexander would not, I imagine be shocked or greatly troubled. Many entries in the journals are ruthlessly honest self- appraisals, criticisms, and confessions. He is particularly stringent in his attack upon the clericalism he saw around him and growing, a clericalism that used confession and the priestly/episcopal “blessing” – to receive communion, to speak, to do anything – as the naked exercise of power over others.11 The separation between the clergy and laity, between bishops and the rest of

11 The Journals, 310–311. “The World as Sacrament” in Schmemann’s Vision 435

the church he saw as destructive. Now, twenty-five years later we see the disastrous consequences of such power-seeking not only in his own OCA but in many other churches. A few years earlier, reflecting on lectures at the Chicago Theological Union and the now secular dress of Jesuit priests and seminarians, while critical of this change, he nevertheless recognized the truth in shedding clerical trappings: “Maybe their fear has to be understood, has to be heard. No, it is not simply liberalism, it is also the knowledge of sin inherent in a certain type of churchliness.”12 As with other remarkable people of faith in our time such as Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr., we should not be surprised to find in Fr. Alexander weaknesses, prejudices, imperfections of all sorts, contradictions as well as inconsistencies. Holiness is a gift of God, and is the opposite of evil, not virtue. Holiness or whole- ness is not the same as perfection. Human beings – I take it no one disputes that Fr. Alexander was human – have their political, cultural and social perspectives, some of which we find most attractive and admirable, others less so. Schmemann came to understand American society and culture not unlike a DeToqueville or, more recently, Alastair Cook. He had, as I have noted elsewhere, a real ear and eye for the details of everyday life here – the lighted windows of homes he saw from a passing train in the night, the panhandler who approached him on a Manhattan sidewalk, the loud language of American TV shows, commercials, the nuances of French no- velists and memoirists, the music of Russian poets and writers. Not everything he liked or disliked will please us. He found fault with the women’s movement and the anti-(Viet- nam) war and anti-poverty movements, and was critical of other social action projects.13 After watching a papal visit to the U.S. on television, some of his remarks on the Roman Catholic Church, the papacy and on Western churches are without historical or theological justification. These are

12 Ibid. 233. 13 Ibid., 113, 121, 132 171, 271–272. 436 Michael Plekon

Schmemann’s opinions, but judgments that ought not to go unchallenged.14

People, Christians too, do not see [that love is giving freely] because they see in everything a problem that must be solved. God, when creating the world, did not solve problems or pose them. He created what he could call “very good.” God created the world, but the devil transformed the world and man and life into a “problem,” And a legion of specialists solves it. That is why in the world it is so dark, so cold, so joyless.15

It pains me to read such entries as well as others. I cannot agree with such assessments, and I suspect many of us could not. On the other hand, this is my reaction. And what Schme- mann thought, said and wrote remains his take, his stance. To be sure, we must hear Schmemann and take him as he was. (This remains the folly, the tragedy of not publishing all his journal entries.) Was this an emotional reaction on his part, maybe even a “reduction” of American concern to do something politically, economically, socially about poverty. And is it right to say “the devil did it” as far as the world’s suffering, poverty, persecution, killing? The devil? How about us as human beings? And yes, perhaps it is too arrogant to think as some state bureaucrat that we can “solve” the “problems” of addiction, or lack of medical care, education, the murder of those defined as “enemies.” No doubt, giving the cup of cold water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothes to the naked is primary. But even Mother Maria Skobtsova used government funds and donations of food she collected from Les Halles, funds she and Ilya Fundaminsky raised from those with resources. Could it not also be reduction to write this all off as “problem-solving”? Had he lived longer and seen how the anti-poverty and other movements developed might he have qualified his judgments? Perhaps we might find certain of his critical, inelegant dismissals hard to take. His approach even to his beloved

14 Ibid., 232–233, 279–280, 291–292. 15 Ibid., 133. “The World as Sacrament” in Schmemann’s Vision 437

liturgical theology could be frustrating at times. As Robert Hutcheon notes in a dissertation devoted to the Orthodox funeral rites, Schmemann was able to identify layers of material in these services that clashed with faith in the Resurrection.16 As with other liturgical issues such as the celebration of baptism, he would proceed and then often inexplicably halt at partial renewal, sometimes even rejecting the need for concrete, practical changes in the rite or its celebration. In the case of the funeral rites, he appears to reject any changes in the texts except the most minor, essentially leaving the problematic rite as is and appealing to further education or more thorough understanding … of what? Did he think it better to endure contradictory texts or hymnography inferior to the scriptural selections it replaced? He might appear to critique the pseudo- piety or even superstition behind multiple memorial services, yet in practice do them anyway. Liturgical specialists otherwise indebted to him find themselves disappointed at his reluctance to propose specific reforms while going ahead in other areas such as the reading aloud of the anaphora, the encouragement of regular, frequent communion, a published “open letter” to his bishop on the imposition of liturgical pro- cedures that had no relationship to actual practice or conditions. His ruthless honesty, especially about the Church and those in official positions in it, is there to read even in the fairly limited selections in the English-language version of the journals. His abrasive dismissals of religious extremists and fanatics, particularly Eastern Church traditionalists, are matched by his criticisms of the Western churches, including such developments as the ordination of women and what he perceived to be sell-outs to secularism by well-meaning but inept theologians. Along with the complete texts of his journals, we really need a thorough intellectual biography of Schmemann and more probing studies of his work.

16 “From Lamentation to Alleluia: An Interpretation of the Theology of the Present-Day Byzantine Rite Funeral Service Analyzed through its Prac- tical Relationship to Bereaved Persons,” Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, 2003. 438 Michael Plekon

So for him, there was a worldly dimension in every aspect of the Church’s life as well as an eschatological wrinkle to all details of the world. He possessed a wealth of experience first in the Russian émigré community and in Paris, then in Ame- rica and more internationally. But as for others, for example, Pope Benedict XVI and before him John Paul II – perhaps this experience was not sufficient to enable him to be open to the rapid changes of the 60s and the unbelievable diversity of lifestyles and perspectives thereafter. Some of his contempora- ries, for example Olivier Clément and Paul Evdokimov, were able to see the admirable and not so admirable elements in the cultural upheaval of 1968 and offer some radical ideas about social justice from the example of John Chrysostom and Basil the Great.17 We do not have journal entries for those years from Fr. Alexander: anecdotal material and memories have to suffice. Perhaps there are letters from him that may surface, other talks, lectures, or course material. What would he have thought had he lived longer – he was but sixty-two when he died? He did not live to see the end of the Soviet era, the rise of terrorism, the hardening of ecumenical relationships, and yes, even more radical developments not only in politics but in the churches, radical in both liberal and conservative extremes. What would he have said about the restoration of communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR, about the ever-volatile relations between Moscow and Constantinople, about the Russian resumption of its status as a state church? Would he oppose the EU and its understanding of human rights as did the recent Russian bishops’ sobor? Would he reject Western religious diversity, freedom of religion, cultural toleration and democracy as did the Basic Social Concept of the ROC (2000), or affirm the idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” positions variously voiced by various official and unofficial spokespersons for the patriarchate?

17 Paul Evdokimov, “Réaction à la crise de mai: Discerner les esprits,” Contacts 64 (1968): 300–322 and “The Church and Society,” in In the World, of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov Reader, Michael Plekon & Alexis Vinogradov, eds. & trans. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 61–94. “The World as Sacrament” in Schmemann’s Vision 439

You see, it becomes quickly rather dangerous to start talking about “the world” theologically, even in the view of a writer dead for a quarter of a century. As an academic, I can well imagine what I have mentioned in the last couple minutes being asked of a doctoral candidate who wrote about Fr. Alexander in a dissertation at its defence. One probing reviewer of the selected journals in translation, theologian Bruce Morrill, has put some of this criticism into print.18 Michael Aune is one of several liturgical scholars who have posed questions about Schmemann’s work in liturgical theology.19 Peter Galadza combines both genuine appreciation for Fr. Alexander’s liturgical theology and renewal with the much needed criticism of his interpretations and self-imposed limitations.20 Doubtless there will be others, and in fact it will be good to see his legacy seriously encountered, warts, wrinkles, imperfections and prejudices – all of it. In the end, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who made us think about ein mündige welt, a “world come of age,” Fr. Alexander Schmemann will be appreciated for an even more constructive perspective.21 I find it impossible to imagine that he would hide or deny social injustice or, more insidiously, ecclesiastical wrongdoing just “for the good of the church.” His vision, though critical, nevertheless affirmed God’s love for the world, and thus our own living and dying, with Christ, “for the life of the world.”

® ® ® ®

18 Review of The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973– 1983 in Worship 76 (2002): 187–189. 19 “Liturgy and Theology: Rethinking the Relationship, “ Worship 81/1 (2007): 46–68; and 81/2: 141–169. 20 Peter Galadza, “Schmemann between Fagerberg and Reality: To- wards an Agenda for Byzantine Christian Pastoral Liturgy,” Bollenttino della Badia Greca 4 (2007): 7–32. 21 Michael Plekon, Living Icons (Notre Dame IN: UND Press, 2002), 178–202 and Hidden Holiness (UND Press, 2009).

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 441–457

Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church1

William C. Mills

Clericalism suffocates; it makes part of itself into the whole sacred character of the Church; it makes its power a sacred power to control, to lead, to administer, a power to perform sacraments, and in general, it makes any power a “power given to me.” Clericalism separates all “sacredness” from the lay people: the iconostasis, communion (only by permission), theology. In short, clericalism is de facto denial of the Church as the Body of Christ, for in the body, all organs are related and different only in their functions, but not in their essence. And the more clericalism “cle- ricalizes” (the traditional image of the bishop or the priest-emphasized by his clothes, hair, e.g., the bishop in full regalia!), the more the Church itself becomes more worldly; spiritually submits itself to this world. In the New Testament, the priest is presented as an ideal layman. But almost immediately there begins his increasingly radical separation from lay people; and not only separation, but opposition to lay people, contrast to them. Again, the most obvious form of separation in the exclusion of lay people from the communion as the fulfillment of their membership in the body of Christ. Instead of a “faithful image” there appears

1 This is a revised version of a paper given at an international conference, “The Legacy of Father Alexander Schmemann 1921–1983,” held in Paris, 11–14 December 2008, at the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological In- stitute. 442 William C. Mills

the image of “master of sacrality” separated from the faithful, dispensing grace as he sees fit.2

This selection from Alexander Schmemann’s journals from 2 February 1982 is but one of his many stinging comments about clericalism and abuse of power in ecclesial life, themes that we find throughout his writings, not just in his journals, but in his essays and talks as well. Schmemann identified clericalism as a problem that not only pertained to the Eastern Church, but was experienced in the West as well.3 In short, clericalism creates an ideological and theological separation among the people of God, the laos tou theou, into two separate and seemingly unequal classes or castes: the clergy and the laity, two groups that are seemingly pitted against one another. This term “caste” is actually mentioned in the earlier writings of Schmemann’s mentor Archmandrite Kyprian Kern, a faculty member at St. Sergius Institute in Paris, under whom Schmemann served at St. Constantine and Helen’s parish in nearby Clamart. In his essay, “Two Models of the Pastorate: Levitical and Prophetic,” Kern outlines two major thematic visions of the pastoral life in the Bible: the Levitical and the Prophetic. While speaking about the prophetic priesthood, Kern writes,

2 Julianna Schmemann, trans. The Journals of Father Alexander Schme- mann 1973–1983 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 210. 3 Most noteworthy are Donald Cozzens’ two books The Changing Face of the Priesthood (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000) and Sacred Silence: Denial and Crisis in the Church (Liturgical Press, 2002). See also George Wilson, Clericalism: The Death of Priesthood (Liturgical Press, 2008); Geoffrey Robinson, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus (Liturgical Press, 2009); George Dennis O’Brien, Finding the Voice of the Church (South Bend, IN: Univer- sity of Notre Dame Press, 2008); Michael L. Papesh, Clerical Culture: Con- tradictions and Transformation (Liturgical Press, 2004); Russell B. Shaw, To Hunt, to Shoot, to Entertain: Clericalism and the Catholic Laity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993); Robert McClory As It Was in the Begin- ning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church (New York: Crossroad, 2007). Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 443

a Levitical type, in this spiritual meaning, is one from a priestly caste, one who is conventional, formal, narrowly nationalistic, inert, and uncreative. In Old Testa- ment times the Mosaic Law priesthood was hereditary and exclusive…. Thus to presume the need for some kind of narrowly conventional state as essential for priestly service is to sin against the very essence of the evangelical concept of the pastoral office. It is an attempt to confuse the living pastoral vocation with Levitical formalism.4

It is also important to note that Kern’s essay originally appeared in Living Tradition (Zhivoe predanie), a collection of essays by noteworthy Orthodox theologians and thinkers such as Fathers Sergius Bulgakov, Kyprian Kern, and Nicholas Afa- nasiev, as well as lay theologians Anton Kartashev and Lev Zander. This collection of essays put forward a creative and forceful attempt to bring the joy and beauty of Orthodoxy to a Western culture, leaving behind the rigid formalism and reductionism of what was often considered “school theology.” Many of the themes in Living Tradition – freedom, openness, ecumenism, pastoral ministry – are incorporated throughout Schme- mann’s corpus of writings as well as his own life and pastoral work. In this top-down model of ecclesial life, power and authority, roles in decision making – especially regarding ecclesiastical administration and the organizing of ministries – as well as fiduciary responsibility, are divided between the clergy and laity. Unfortunately laity wrongly assume that the clergy conduct the “real business of the Church,” namely, leading the liturgical services, managing Church administration and functions, and overseeing the daily work of the Church; while the laity, on the other hand, are only to “pray, pay, and obey” (the bishops and priests of course!). One could call this a type of ministerial reductionism, akin to the many types of reduc-

4 Kyprian Kern “Two Models of the Pastorate” in Michael Plekon, ed. Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time: Read- ings From the Eastern Church (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2003), 110–11. 444 William C. Mills

tionisms that Schmemann identified, viz., spiritual, liturgical, and ecclesiological.5 Is there a viable alternative to this current situation? Is the Church going to be restricted to this singular, albeit skewed, vision of ecclesial life that many of us experience? If we look to the writings of Father Alexander we might find an answer in his thoughts on conciliarism, or what is more commonly known as sobornost’ or eucharistic ecclesiology, which is the teaching that the Church is fully the Church and Christ is fully present at each and every eucharistic gathering where the entire people of God is gathered together to hear the Word of God, offer common thanksgiving or eucharistia, and share in communion (koinonia) and fellowship. A conciliar or “sobornal” approach was also based on the eucharistic ecclesiology of Alexander Schmemann mentors and teachers in Paris, Fathers Nicholas Afanasiev and Sergius Bulgakov whose writings rediscovered the eucharistic ecclesiology of the church’s early years. Their work deeply inspired Schmemann. A conciliar Church is based on the sharing of the mutual gifts, talents, and abilities of the members of the entire Church. The Church is not comprised of the clergy or the laity alone, but both clergy and laity working together for the building up of the Body of Christ. A clerical model of ecclesial life is one that is not fulfilling this Pentecostal vision of a Spirit-filled Church, very much alive and robust, where everyone, men and women, parents and children, single and married, are fulfilling their common vocations as Christians. This essay will look at the problem of clericalism and how the Church can struggle to combat clericalism based on a real and practical conciliar and sobornal framework of Church life. I use the terms “real” and “practical” because, so often as Orthodox, we offer lip service to conciliarism and sobornost in theory, but we fail in praxis. How many bishops actually sit

5 See, e.g., Schmemann’s three articles on ecclesial problems in the Church: “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical Problem” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 8 (1964): 67–85; “Problems of Orthodoxy in America 2: The Liturgical Problem,” SVTQ 8 (1964): 164–85; and “Prob- lems of Orthodoxy in America 3: The Spiritual Problem,” SVTQ 9 (1965): 171–93. Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 445

down and have open and honest conversations and sharing sessions with their respective priests, deacons, and lay members? How many parish priests actually help foster and encourage lay participation in ecclesial life other than liturgical worship? How many lay leaders have real and important administrative positions on the diocesan or national level?

A Clerical Culture

Clericalism is a result of a theological reduction of ministry where clergy often live in physical, social, spiritual and psychological isolation from other clergy and also from their respective parishioners, and sometimes in isolation from the culture and society around them. Schmemann’s own journals reflect a sense of despair when he comments on the lack of social awareness of former seminarians, their lack of continuing education and reading. At one point in the journals he mentions that he in fact knew more about the local community of a parish priest than the priest when he went to visit his parish for a retreat! Schmemann certainly was a man of the world so to speak and was not cut off from the world around him. Likewise, he was well versed not only in theology, but in Russian and French literature as well as in current events and popular culture and society, often mentioning political and social issues of the day. Clericalism is especially acute in many living situations, for example in the Roman Catholic Church where clergy often live in a rectory or parsonage together in community and share a common clerical way of life. Their time is primarily devoted to serving Mass and performing sacraments, prayers, and blessings, with little time for socializing and sharing with their parishioners. However, this social isolation also infects Ortho- dox clergy who, in some cases have families, but still choose not to socialize or identify with the laity of their respective parishes. This separation usually does not occur consciously, but is a result of many factors, including isolation in seminary formation and in parish life. Clericalism is also seen in the overt controlling attitudes of priests. Those of a clericalist mindset may expect special atten- 446 William C. Mills

tion when in the presence of others (kissing of the hand, offering of priestly blessings, and so forth), as well as seating at separate seats or tables at church banquets. The laity sometimes project or reinforce a clerical culture by assigning clergy to a “clergy only” table at banquets or seeking the advice of the parish priest for routine matters of life – in other words, allowing clergy to have more power than they need or should have. Here I think of laity who turn over their decision-making to their parish priest in terms of family, home, or work, always seeking what I call “spiritual advice” about getting a new job, relocating to a new area, or having additional children. Commenting on what he calls the “clerical culture,” the North American Roman Catholic theologian Donald Cozzens identifies clericalism in the following way,

Although clericalism finds its roots in clerical culture, and is intimately linked to it, the distinction should be maintained. Clericalism, as we shall see, is always dysfunctional and haughty, crippling the spiritual and emotional maturity of the priest, bishop, or deacon caught in its web. The laity instinctively resists the patronizing and dominating tendencies in priests who have succumbed to it.6

Cozzens, as did Schmemann before him, identifies the em- bryonic stages of clericalism in the seminaries, when young seminarians, who are themselves in an educational, social, and spiritual formation process, begin to see themselves as “different” and as “other” than the laity. Schmemann notes that clericalism turns into a type of special “clerical piety or spirituality” as he noted on several occasions: “looking at some of our priests, walking around the seminary on Education Day, one can physically feel their worship of cassocks, clerical hats, all that constitutes this visible piety. And then one hears that almost all of them are condemning others for lack of spirituality, lack of piety.”7 Schme- mann had keen insights into clericalism because he spent most

6 Cozzens, Sacred Silence, 112–23. 7 The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 231. Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 447

of his adult life teaching, preaching, and pastoring at a theological seminary, first at St. Serge in Paris, and then at St. Vladimir’s in New York. He saw that clerical culture was fostered by seminary community life as we see in the following journal entry and portion from his private lecture notes:

The tragedy of theological education lies in the fact that young people who seek priesthood are – consciously or unconsciously – seeking this separation, power, this rising above the laity. Their thirst is strengthened and generated by the whole system of theological education, of clericalism. How can they be made to understand, not only with their minds, but their whole being, that one must run away from power, any power, that it is always a temptation, always from the devil? Christ freed us from that power – “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18) – by revealing the Light of power as power of love, of sacrificial self-offering. Christ gave the Church not “power,” but the Holy Spirit: “receive the Holy Spirit….” In Christ, power returned to God, and man was cured from ruling and commanding.8 In the sixty-first year of my life, I suddenly ask myself: How has it all become so perverted? And I become afraid!9

A first year seminarian has already a tendency to think that he is to learn to acquire something “specifically priestly,” a way to walk and to speak, a way to behave which will make him “soon like a priest,” and this feeling of belonging to a different and superior “cast” may obscure in him the very simple idea that to be a priest one must first of all be a Christian in the full meaning of this word. And to be a Christian, means, above everything else, to take seriously, directly and

8 Ibid, 311. 9 Ibid., 231. 448 William C. Mills

literally the commandments of Christ and to live by them.10

The second quotation, taken from his personal lecture notes, reveals Schmemann’s thoughts about this false notion of a priest being apart or separate from the rest of the people of God. Students, in the very early stages of their spiritual, theological, and pastoral formation, are already overly identifying with their role in the Church, and associating with that role power, control, domination, and authority. Yet Schmemann suggests that real pastoral education and formation require a much simpler and probably healthier approach, and consists in following Christ and His commandments. If one does this, everything else will fall into place. I guess we are slow lear- ners since clericalism is still rather strong in our Church, at least in the Orthodox Church in North America. Unfortunately however, clergy are often viewed either by themselves or by others, sometimes even both, as being merely cultic leaders who have special power and authority to perform the sacraments, absolve sins, change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, to conduct liturgical service from womb to tomb. In other words, the clergy are seen as the gate- keepers in the Church who have the control and power over the laity. Here, e.g., we can recall those who attend church on Christmas or Easter to have food blessed, to light a candle in the church, or to purchase a few religious books in the bookstore. Every year, at my parish, there is a lady who comes at the end of Vespers on Easter Sunday, buys a few candles, and leaves, never to return until the following Easter. I’m sure many clergy have experienced similar things in pastoral life. The late liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh once remarked that the job of the priest is not to do everything in the parish, which is most often the case. When the priest is not acting as he should the entire Body of Christ is negatively affected, “He (the priest) is the main facilitator in the local church, not a living clot of surrogates for everything it must do for itself as

10 Ibid. Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 449

the Body of Christ.”11 Kavanagh is right: the priest is not the beginning and the end of parochial life, nor should he be, but he often is reduced to the general practitioner who is the only person in the parish who performs ministry. Likewise, Schmemann says that the laity are reduced to seeking the power and authority of the clergy. The laity often can become emblazoned by the democratic ideals of society and attempt to bring such ideals of freedom, liberty, rights, and duties, into the Church. Furthermore, some of the laity may seek to become little priests by trying to gain some of the sacramental power and authority of the clergy and by having an abundance of “lay ministries” as somehow different or distinct from “clerical ministry.”12 In other words, their reaction is to obtain the so-called power from the priest so that they have a type of ministry too, without realizing their prophetic and priestly role in baptism. Both visions are wrong. Towards the end of his essay on clergy and lay relations Schmemann says:

The conclusion is clear: there is no opposition between clergy and laity in the Church. Both are essential. The Church as a totality is Laity and the Church as a totality is the inheritance of God, the Clergy of God. And in order to be this, there must exist within the Church the distinction of functions, of ministries that complete one another. The clergy are ordained to make the Church the gift of God, the manifestation and communication of His truth, grace and salvation to men. It is their sacred function, and they fulfill it only in complete obedience to God. The laity are ordained to make the Church the acceptance of that gift, the “Amen” of mankind to God. They equally can fulfill their function only in complete obedience to God. It is the same obedience: to God and to the Church that establishes the harmony between clergy and laity,

11 Aidan Kavanagh On Liturgical Theology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1986), 187. 12 Ibid, 329. 450 William C. Mills

makes them one body, growing into the fullness of Christ.13

Towards a Conciliar Church: Clergy and Laity Working Together

Schmemann’s unique contribution to pastoral theology and ministry is based on his understanding of the conciliar nature of the Church. As noted, this perspective was not original with him but is a hallmark of the Eastern Christian theological tradition. The conciliar understanding of the Church was emphasized by the “Paris School” theologians, most of whom taught at the St. Serge Orthodox Theological Institute.14 While these theologians often disagreed, one common theme which runs throughout their writings is that the Church is not just composed of the clergy who are seen apart from the rest of the Church, nor is it a Church of laity only, which is very much congregational, but it is the entire people of God, both clergy and laity who are gathered together at the one altar offering their prayers and praise to God and who are united in the Eu- charist. This vision of the conciliar nature of the Church, also described as “eucharistic ecclesiology,” is to be found throughout the writings of the Paris school theologians such as Paul Evdokimov, Nicholas Afanasiev and Sergius Bulgakov and in the West in Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, and Henri de Lubac. Each of these theologians, in some way, had a deep impact on Schmemann’s theological vision of the Church and therefore it is not by accident that their understanding of the Church as conciliar would be a prevalent theme in his own writings as well. Schmemann’s understanding of the Church is sacramental, rather than legal or institutional. The Eucharist unites all of us

13 Clergy and Laity, 13. 14 “In modern Russian theology [sobornost’] denotes a unity of persons within the organic fellowship of the Church, each person maintaining his full freedom and personal integrity.” Elizabeth A. Livingstone, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 470. Also see my study, Church, World, Kingdom: The Sacra- mental Foundations of Alexander Schmemann’s Pastoral Theology (Chica- go: Hillenbrand Press, 2010). Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 451

together in the one bread and one cup and thus also unites the earthly and the heavenly. “The institution is sacramental because its whole purpose is constantly to transcend itself as an institution, to fulfill and actualize itself as the New Being; and it can be sacramental because as institution it corresponds to the reality it fulfills, is its real image.”15 Therefore it is the sacramental dimension of the community which underlies his approach to an overt clericalism. The priest is not merely reduced to the person who dispenses grace but one who unites a congregation who all together make the eucharistic sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. A sacramental image of the Church mirrors the Trinity. The three persons of the Trinity are a council of divine persons who are in relation to one another; they all have different functions but exist in a perfect bond of love. While the Trinity is bound together in love, so too are the clergy bound to the rest of the Church, which is thus conciliar. Likewise, the laity are also bound to the clergy, and everyone together is bound to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The clergy cannot be outside or apart from their congregations. The Trinity also contains a hierarchy of persons who do not have the same function; neither do the members of the Church. In a lengthy passage worth citing, Schmemann outlines the hierarchical nature of the Trinity and its ecclesial implications:

The principle of hierarchy implies the idea of obedience but not that of subordination, for obedience is based on personal relationship whereas subordination is, in its very essence, an impersonal one. The Son is fully obedient to the Father, but He is not subordinated to Him. He is perfectly obedient because He perfectly and fully knows the Father as Father. But He is not subordinated to Him because subordination implies imperfect knowledge and relationship and, therefore, the necessity of “enforcement”…. Hierarchy, thus, is not a relationship of “power” and “submission” but of a perfect obedience of all to all in Christ, obedience

15 Alexander Schmemann, “Towards a Theology of Councils” in SVTQ 6 (1962): 163. 452 William C. Mills

being the recognition and knowledge of the personal gifts and charisms of each by all. Whatever is truly conciliar is truly personal and, therefore, truly hierarchical. And the Church is hierarchical simply because she is the restored life, the perfect society, the true council. To ordain someone to a hierarchical function does not mean his elevation “above” the others, his opposition to them as “power” and “submission.” It means the recognition by the Church of his personal vocation within the ecclesia, of his appointment by God, who knows the hearts of men and is, therefore, the source of all vocations and gifts. It is, thus, a truly conciliar act, for it reveals the obedience of all: the obedience of the one who is ordained, the obedience of those who ordain him, that is, recognize in him the divine call to the ministry of government, the obedience of the whole Church to the will of God.16

The Church maintains a hierarchical structure, but as Schmemann rightly states, it is not a hierarchy of power but an ordered structure. Interestingly enough this notion of an ordered structure which is based on relationship and association is also a theme which is being developed and reflected on by several contemporary Roman Catholic theologians in the United States – Susan Wood, David Power, Kevin Seasoltz, and Terence Nichols.17 According to the conciliar model, the Church is a community of the baptized saints who work together building up the Body of Christ one person at a time through the exercising of the variety of gifts and charisms that are distributed to each by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Body only exists because it is Christ’s Body and is held together by a continual outpouring of love. Schmemann also notes that the gifts that grant the full participation of the laity in the Church are clearly enumerated

16 Ibid, 166. 17 Susan K. Wood Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood: Theologies of Ordained and Lay Ministry (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003) and Terence L. Nichols That All May Be One: Hierarchy and Participation in the Church (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997). Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 453

in the Orthodox baptismal service. There we find the following prayer for the newly baptized person to be – “an honourable member of God’s Church, a consecrated vessel, a child of light, and heir of God’s kingdom.” Quoting the Apostle Paul, Schmemann reminds us that the newly baptized are, “fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God” (Ephe- sians 2:1). The importance of baptism, as entrance into the Church and into the royal priesthood, is seen in the liturgical prayers, which are written in the plural and reflect the common work of the clergy and laity – of the entire assembly or community – during the liturgical celebrations: “we offer, we pray, we give thanks, we pray, we receive, we lift up our hearts.” Even the Lord’s Prayer is in the plural: “Our Father.” Jaroslav Pelikan notes that in its original form the Nicene Creed was also in the plural (“we believe in one God”) since it was the common faith of the Fathers gathered at Nicea and not just the personal or individual faith of one person. Although there are a few prayers in the liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil the Great where the prayers are specifically for the priest, even these are within the larger context of the communal gathering and the emphasis remains on the entire worshipping community.18 Taking this a step further, Schmemann notes that the laity together with the clergy celebrate the liturgy. In making his argument, Schmemann discusses the recitation of the liturgical word “amen,” which is used as a common response in the liturgy. “And ‘amen’ is indeed the word of the laity in the Church, expressing the function of the laity as the People of God, which freely and joyfully accepts the divine offer, seals it with its consent. There is really no service and no liturgy, without the Amen of those who have been ordained to serve God as community, as Church.”19 The word “amen” is a sign that the entire ecclesial community is responsible for the common prayer of the Church, that both clergy and laity offer the one prayer to God in behalf of all and for all.

18 The Divine Liturgy According to St. John Chrysostom with Appen- dices (NY: Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America, 1967). 19 Ibid., 11. 454 William C. Mills

When Schmemann speaks of the common work and prayer of the laity, he is referring to the liturgical practice of concelebration, a practice which most commonly refers to more than one priest serving at the altar.20 Schmemann, however, makes the point that in actuality, while the presiding priest may be leading the people in prayer, the entire congregation is concelebrating along with him, “Who is serving, in other words, is not the clergy, and not even the clergy with the laity, but the Church, which is constituted and made manifest in all fullness by everyone together.”21 Schmemann’s comments regarding the understanding of the term concelebration can be traced back to his mentor and teacher Nicholas Afanasiev who proposed that the term “concelebration” refers to the entire gathering of the assembly and includes both clergy and laity: “everyone ministers to God at the Eucharist. Neither separate groups nor separate members celebrate: it is the Church that celebrates. Everyone concelebrates at the celebration of the one – their president. There can be no celebration of all and there can be no eucharistic gathering apart from the one president.”22 Nevertheless, both Schmemann and Afanasiev emphasize that it is everyone’s vocation to pray, to worship, to give thanks, to offer, and to bless. Therefore the entire Church concelebrates around the one-bread and cup on the one altar.

Conclusion

A truly conciliar Church is one where both the clergy and laity openly engage in debate, discussion, reflection, and sometimes even in dissent, in a spirit of brotherly love and affection, but with full respect and freedom in Christ. In theory, the Church is supposed to be large enough for a variety

20 Robert E. Taft, “Ex Oriente Lux? Some Reflections on Eucharistic Concelebration” in Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Under- standing 2nd ed. (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2001), 111–32. 21 Schmemann, The Eucharist, 88. 22 Nicholas Afanasiev, The Lord’s Supper, trans. Alvian Smirensky, ed. Michael Plekon, forthcoming,2010. Also see Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit, trans. Vitaly Permiakov, ed. Michael Plekon (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 9–56. The term “president” is synonymous with the term priest or presbyter which loosely is translated as elder or leader. Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 455

of opinions and suggestions to be voiced as the entire people of God prays, celebrates, and lives their life common life together. Lay people should not be afraid to speak out against social injustices and abuse of power and authority among some of the clergy. Likewise, clergy should not be afraid to assist the laity in discerning their God-given talents and treasures. One thing is certain. Clergy should never abuse their spiritual authority and position over against the laity and should always be on guard against the temptations of power. If both the clergy and laity are truly seeking to live according to the will of God, even among a fallen humanity with human sinfulness and arrogance, there must be an expression of love based on the example of Christ Himself.23 Jesus gave us the supreme example of love through His passion and crucifixion on the cross, giving up His life for others. His life was an example of loving and serving others, not using power and authority over His disciples or anyone else in his life. Clergy are not called to have power and authority over the laity nor are the laity called to increase their power or authority over and against the clergy, but rather both should work together for the common good of all members of the Church. Ministry must first and foremost be service of love. Deacons, priests, and bishops cannot function in their respective roles without love. Neither can the laity fulfill and completely express their baptismal priesthood without love. Our most perfect example of love is Christ Himself who numerous times shows us His long-suffering love through His acceptance of the stranger and outsider, through His miracles, through acts of kindness such as the washing of the feet of His disciples, and ultimately through the sacrifice of His own life on the cross. It is at Golgotha where we see the greatest gift of love, the giving of oneself for the neighbour. Golgotha is where Christ affirmed his role as the high priest for us and where the one unblemished Lamb was slain. Christ became our High Priest so that we could continue this priestly ministry from generation to generation.

23 Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit, 255–276. 456 William C. Mills

To conclude, I offer several very practical and pastoral suggestions on how we as a Church can respond to divisions in the Church among clergy and laity and hopefully heal the wounds that are caused by such divisions. It is up to us, however, to our bishops, parish clergy, and lay leaders, to want to change, and to put our best foot forward as we grow together in faith, hope, and most important, love:

1. That bishops would meet regularly with their priests for open and frank dialogue, discussion, and debate on a regular basis and that the local diocesan bishop would include input from his clergy in decision making and future planning of the diocese. These meetings would be more than perfunctory, but would in essence be working meetings for fruitful progress.

2. That local parish clergy help equip their parishioners in their respective God-given talents and abilities for ministry in the local parish and in the world around them. And that parish clergy foster and encourage regular continuing education programs in their parishes, focusing on lay ministry, vocation, and the basics of the faith such as Scripture, liturgical catechesis, and outreach to the community.

3. That lay leaders would have administrative and mana- gerial positions on both the diocesan and national Church levels, either as secretaries, treasurers, or other administrative positions. They should hold not just consulting positions but be found in key decision-making positions also.

4. That seminaries would directly address the spiritual and pastoral temptation of clericalism and the tangential concerns of the abuse of power and authority, control, and of a top-down or one-way model of decision making (bishop-priest-laity).

5. That recent seminary graduates, primarily parish clergy, would be assigned a local clergy mentor to help guide Cracking the Clerical Caste: Towards a Conciliar Church 457

and direct the new priest in his first years of ministry, especially regarding decision-making processes in the parish.

® ® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 50 (2009) Nos. 3–4, pp. 459–479

Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances”

Basilio Petrà1

Introduction

As far as we know, this is the first time in history that this Catholic eparchy has held a conference, with the participation of bishop, priests, deacons, monastics and lay people, on the subject of married clergy (status clericorum matrimonio iunc- torum) viewed in its own terms and in terms of its value for the whole Church. We would dare to say that it is the very first time that a conference was held about the theological and ecclesial significance of the married clergy. There have, of course, been married priests for two thousand years; but contemporary writers lead us to think that nothing of the kind had been tried before. It is only natural to ask why this has taken place. All we must say at this point is that in the Western Church, since the eleventh century, there has been an extremely long list of theological and magisterial – as well as disciplinary, canonical, and spiritual – publications that defend the connection between celibacy and the ordained priesthood.2 This literature rejects directly or, in any case, con-

1 The original Italian version of this paper was given by the author at a conference held by the Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi in Sicily. Prof. George Gallaro of the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Sts. Cyril and Metho- dius in Pittsburgh kindly arranged a translation, which he submitted to Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. In keeping with our standard editorial practices, this essay has been edited for both style and clarity. 2 Perhaps the greatest recent example of this is Pope John Paul’s post- synodal apostolic exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, where we are told that priestly ordination makes of the priest the sacramental sign, ontologically 460 Basilio Petrà

tradicts the practice and, even more so, the theological meaning of the married clergy. In fact, in the Latin Church – in great measure – there came into being the implicit axiom that the priesthood automatically entails celibacy. Such an axiom is so widespread that it not only has survived the Second Vati- can Council, but has become even more deep-rooted and more strongly propounded after it.

Post-Conciliar Changes in the Roman Theology of Celibacy

It seems incredible, but it is true. Precisely after the council, which had given an ecclesial and theological dignity to the married clergy that for century after century had been merely a tolerated and provisional practice, to be eventually eliminated, many have gone so far, on the relationship between priest and celibacy, as to utter statements that no one had dared say configured not only to Christ, the head and shepherd of His people, but also to Christ as bridegroom of the Church to the extent that only the “celibate” priest is the full and true expression of the priestly ordination. Indeed, the following words must be brought to mind:

It is especially important that the priest understand the theological motivation of the Church’s law on celibacy. Inasmuch as it is a law, it expresses the Church’s will, even before the will of the subject expressed by his acceptance. But the will of the Church finds its ultimate motivation in the link between celibacy and sacred ordination, which configures the priest to Jesus Christ, the head and spouse of the Church. The Church, as the bride of Jesus Christ, wished to be loved by the priest in the total and exclusive manner in which Jesus Christ, her head and spouse, loved her. Priestly celibacy, then, is the gift of self in and with Christ to his Church and expresses the priest’s service to the Church in and with the Lord (PDV, no.29).

PDV has accomplished this apart not only from the sacramental tradition which has always linked the sign of Christ-the-spouse to matrimony but also apart from the existence of the Eastern tradition. PDV, moreover, glosses over the fact that the Latin tradition has had, and today in fact has, some married priests. The example of Eastern Catholics could be a corrective aide memoire to their Latin brothers here, but the former have failed to speak up – and when they do speak, even by very highly placed authorities, they seem to prefer to complain about married priests and to express their preference for the celibate clergy for reasons that are practical, albeit not just practical. Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 461

beforehand. The council had stated clearly that the married clergy had gained a greatly esteemed place in the history of the Church, and hence should be honored; that it is an authentic priesthood and arises from a divine call and from an ecclesial inspiration, just as the celibate priesthood; that it is a gift, namely a charism from God just like the celibate priesthood is; and that celibacy has special reasons of theological significance but remains nevertheless an ecclesiastical law. After all this, we have seen the appearance in 1992 of the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (PDV), which formally affirms the objectively-founded link between celibacy and priesthood. We want to stress the point: according to PDV, the Catholic Church, by imposing celibacy for the Latin Church, does not simply establish a law which has several motivations (of a practical and theological nature), but it adopts a norm based on the very meaning of ordination itself, which configures one ontologically to Christ, head, shepherd and bridegroom of the Church, and finds in celibacy its adequate parallel. In other words, the married priesthood becomes either an abnormal priesthood (in the sense that it does not correspond to what priestly ordination signifies ontologically speaking) and therefore is simply tolerated, or that it is a different kind of priesthood than the celibate priesthood. Before Vatican II no one had dared say as much. We remember that when we pointed out this idea of PDV to the then-secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Interpre- tation of Legislative Texts, he was extremely surprised and could not believe it himself. The same reaction we found in many others who remembered clearly centuries of theological manuals according to which the law of celibacy is merely an ecclesiastical law. And yet such texts as PDV strongly suggest a change in Latin theology and the documents of the Roman congregations confirm it repeatedly. The Congregation for the Clergy has reiterated this point in its “Directory for the Ministry and the Life of the Priests,” Tota Ecclesia (1994), and has proceeded along these lines in its activities of formation, both those put into practice through internal courses as well as those propounded by means of monthly video-conferences. 462 Basilio Petrà

On 5 April 2005, for instance, the congregation organized a global video-conference on the theme “Celibacy and Pater- nity of the Priest,” by assembling through modern communication technologies theologians from Rome, New York, Mos- cow, Bogotà, Madrid, Taiwan, Sydney, Manila, Johannesburg, and Regensburg. It is interesting to go down the list of theologians and their topics: Prof. Antonio Miralles (Rome), Priestly Celibacy “Propter regnum caelorum”; Prof. Alfonso Carrasco (Madrid), The Apostolic Origin of Priestly Celibacy; Prof. Gary Devery (Sydney), The Sign of Celibacy and Priestly Fatherhood; Prof. Igor Kowalewsky (Moscow), Virginity of the Body and of the Spirit; Prof. Michael Hull (New York), How to Respond to the Objection of Why the Priests of the La- tin Church Must Be Celibate?; Prof. Louis Aldrich (Taiwan), Celibacy and Holy Mass: the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Sacrifice of Life; Prof. José Vidamor (Manila), How to Live and to Witness Celibacy before a Secularized World?; Prof. Gehrhard Müller (Regensburg), What Factors Threaten the Correct Understanding of Celibacy?; Prof. Rodney Moss (Johannesburg), Celibacy as a Sign of Total Dedication to Christ and His Church; Prof. Silvio Cajiao (Bogotà), Brother- hood among the Priests as a Help to Better Live Their Celi- bacy; Prof. Paolo Scarafoni (Rome), Celibacy and the Blessed Mother. Two months prior to this conference, on 16 February 2005, the cardinal-prefect of Congregation for the Clergy at the time issued an interview, later published in a Dossier on the Clergy, prepared by the agency Fides. We think that the reply he gives to the first two questions is quite interesting:

1. Question: Priestly celibacy, some people say, is only a question of ecclesiastical discipline and legislation, which could eventually be modified. Is this true, or is there a special bond between vocation to the priesthood and celibacy?

Cardinal: This question gives me the opportunity to clarify that for believers celibacy is not merely a “question,” as if celibacy were a problem to be solved Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 463

or a simple theory; it is instead a gift of the merciful love of God which the Church continuously receives and wishes to treasure, convinced as she is that it is a supreme good for herself and the entire world. This has been propounded by the teaching of the Church since apostolic times and was reiterated more than once by the Vatican Council and in particular by the constitution Lumen Gentium (LG) where we find the following statement: “this precious gift of divine grace stands out, given by the Father to some (Mt. 19:11; 1 Cor. 7:7) to give themselves to God more freely and with undivided heart (1 Cor. 7:32–34) in virginity and in celibacy (no. 42.) With special reference to priestly celibacy, the conciliar decree Presbyterorum Ordinis (PO) states: “Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, commended by Christ the Lord … and through the course of time as well as in our own days freely accepted and observed in a praise- worthy manner by many of the faithful, is held by the Church to be of great value in a special manner for the priestly life” (no.16). There exists in fact a strict bond between celibacy and priestly ordination, a sacrament that ontologically configures the priest to Jesus Christ, head and bridegroom of his Church. I must add at this point that priestly celibacy is indeed an ecclesiastical law; however, the canonical injunction must not be understood as an arbitrary imposition of the Church, as if it were an external command imposed on the priest to pay, as it were, a kind of fee to God for becoming an ordained minister. The ecclesiastical law of celibacy has its roots in the mystery of Christ and His Church. Moreover, we cannot forget that the entire ecclesiastical legislation is founded on the saving will of God the Father, fulfilled in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Canonical law guides the Church in the mission which Christ has entrusted to her, to be the universal sacrament of salvation. 464 Basilio Petrà

Confronted with the difficulties and the objections raised from many sides and throughout the centuries about understanding and embracing this gift, the teaching of the Church, even after the last council, has reiterated that there exist theological reasons of a Christological, ecclesiological and eschatological nature which manifest the intimate link of celibacy to the ordained ministry in its dual dimension of relationship to Christ and his Church.

2 Question: Can you tell us something about these reasons?

Cardinal: I will sum them up by way of three principles of a biblical-theological nature. The first principle is of Christological nature. Christ, who has lived a celibate life, asked his apostles to imitate him and to follow him with an undivided heart and to leave everything in order to bring to humanity the salvation won by him on the cross, to the ends of the earth while waiting his final coming. The second principle is of an ecclesiological nature. The priest as sacred minister of Christ is called upon to love the Church in the all-embracing and exclusive manner whereby Christ, head and bridegroom, has loved her, namely with His total self, body and soul, thus witnessing Christ’s spousal love to the Church, His bride, and receiving in exchange a wide spiritual paternity in Christ. The third principle is of an eschatological nature. Through his full communion and personal gift of himself to Christ and his Church, the priest prefigures and anticipates in this world the communion and the total and final gift of Christ to His Church in eternity, thus becoming a living sign of the future world. In this light, it becomes easier to understand the reasons for the long-standing option of the Latin Church, which she still maintains “to confer sacramental ordination only to men who have given proof of Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 465

having been called by God to the gift of chastity in absolute and perpetual celibacy,” as the apostolic exhortation PDV clearly states. What John Paul II wrote in his autobiographical book Rise, Let Us be on Our Way about the link between celibacy and spiritual paternity is particularly appropriate and beautiful: “Celibacy, in fact, provides the fullest opportunity to live out this type of fatherhood: chaste and totally dedicated to Christ and to his Virgin Mother. Unconstrained by any personal solicitude for a family, a priest can dedicate himself with his whole heart to his pastoral responsibilities. One can therefore understand the tenacity with which the Latin Church has defended the tradition of celibacy for its priests, resisting the pressures that have arisen from time to time throughout history. This tradition is clearly demanding, but it has yielded particularly rich spiritual results” (pp. 140–41).

Both the program of the video-conference as well as the interview with the then-prefect show the extent of the change undergone, in Roman quarters, by the theology of celibacy. It is not, however, solely the Congregation for the Clergy that proceeds along this line, thus practically isolating the Eastern tradition into a kind of ecclesial reserve (not unlike an Indian reservation). Other Roman Congregations also embrace the same perspective. As a confirmation, let me quote the Instruc- tion Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Sacred Orders (4 November 2005), which begins:

According to the constant Tradition of the Church, only a baptized person of the male sex validly receives sacred Ordination. By means of the Sacrament of Orders, the Holy Spirit configures the candidate to Jesus Christ in a new and specific way: the priest, in fact, sacramentally, represents Christ, the head, shepherd and spouse of the Church. Because of this con- 466 Basilio Petrà

figuration to Christ, the entire life of the sacred minister must be animated by the gift of his whole person to the Church and by an authentic pastoral charity (no.1).

It needs to be added that, while the Roman Congregations proceeded with these changes in Latin theology, the Eastern Catholic Churches – and in particular the Congregation for the Eastern Churches – did not do much to point out that the married clergy is not an archaic reality, a discipline tolerated for practical reasons but lacking theological meaning, a practice to be rather kept hidden away. Rather,it has a theological significance, since it was born from the direct will of God and it constitutes an act of fidelity to the Lord on a par with the call to the celibate priesthood. The same cardinal-prefect, in the above-quoted interview, when questioned on the Eastern Churches, could only reply in the following manner:

3. Question: Does not the discipline of the Eastern Churches contradict the position of the Latin Church?

Cardinal: Absolutely not. There is no contradiction. I reply with the words of the Directory for the ministry and the life of the priest of January 31, 1994: “The discipline of the Eastern Churches which admit the married clergy in not opposed to the discipline of the Latin Church. In fact the Eastern Churches themselves demand celibacy for their bishops. Moreover, they do not allow the marriage of already ordained priests and do not allow a second marriage for widowed priests” (no. 60). This means that in the East as well as in the West it is never allowed for a priest to marry and that only celibate priests can become bishops. Therefore I reite- rate that priestly celibacy is intimately linked to the priesthood. The celibate priest imitates Christ and lives like the apostles. Celibacy is always a free choice and a joyous acceptance of a specific calling of love of God and of others, and it is not at all fruit of an empty Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 467

spirituality or contempt for human sexuality by the candidates to the priesthood.

This is indeed a strange reply: the practice of a married clergy is an imitation of the apostles? In the final analysis the suggestion prevails that even in the East the true priesthood, the one considered in its fullness, can only be the celibate priesthood and that the married priesthood is merely tolerated even in the East. All of this raises a series of substantial questions we must take up presently: does the persistence of a married clergy – strenuously defended – lack any positive significance? Does it lack a theological value? Is it not a true priesthood? Is it not the result of a call from God? And is the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO) perhaps the child of a lesser god?

The Theological Significance of Married Clergy in the East

Looking at the origins of the Eastern tradition, it is easy to perceive that, in maintaining a married priesthood, the value of fidelity to the apostolic mandate has always been preserved as attested by the pastoral letters of the Pauline corpus (1 Tim. 3: 2; Titus 1:6). As a consequence, the analogy between management of the home and management of the church highlighted by the pastoral letters was clearly kept in mind. The ability to be a good spouse and a good parent is a solid indication of the ability to manage the ecclesial community as well. In a way, the logic of the pastoral letters seems to indicate that the married priesthood reveals the family character of the ecclesial community, so much so that a discerning criterion of the managing ability of the candidate to the priesthood is precisely his ability to be a good husband and a good father, albeit within the limitations of the family culture of the first century after Christ. It is therefore inevitable that the pastoral letters outline a concept of the married priesthood as linked to an exemplary realization of a priestly family both in the relationship man/ woman as well as in the relationship father/children. This necessity of the exemplary quality of the priestly family can 468 Basilio Petrà

explain why the monogamy of the priests and of their wives is conceived as absolute, at least in principle, and why the life of a priestly family must be in perfect keeping with an exemplary Christian life. On this, both Orthodox as well as Eastern Catholic authors completely agree. For instance, Stephanos Charalambidis, bishop of Nazianzus, speaking about the married priesthood in Orthodoxy, clearly states: “All the canonical norms concerning married priests, which are in force in the Orthodox Church to this day, fully agree with the Christian ideal of an absolute monogamy. For priests this becomes a formal necessity.”3 Philotheos Pharos, a Greek theologian and psychologist and himself a celibate priest, sums up the traditional exemplary role of the married priest from the point of view of family management and parental role in this way:

A priest is bound to have a notably exemplary family life because, according to the Apostle Paul, If one does not know how to control his family, how can he look after God’s people? (1 Tim. 3:5). And John Chrysos- tom adds: “For he who cannot be the instructor of his own children, how could he be a teacher to others?” (Homily II on Titus, PG 62: 679); and elsewhere he continues: “He must see that his children are obedient and always respectful” (1 Tim. 3:4). Good example has to be exhibited in his house. For who would believe that he who had not his own son in control, would keep a stranger under command? “Church leaders must be in control of their own families” (1 Tim. 3:4). Even pagans say this, that he who is a good steward of a house will be a good leader. For the Church is, as it were, a small household, and as in a house there are children and a wife and domestics, and the man has rule over them all, just so in the Church there are women, children, and servants. And as he who presides in the Church has partners in his powers,

3 S. Charalambidis, Ministry and Charisms in the Orthodox Church (in Italian) (Milan: 1994), 98. Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 469

so in his house has the man a partner, that is, his wife” (Homily X on 1 Tim., PG 62: 549–550.4

It is particularly interesting how the Eastern Code adopts similar points of view (see canons 374–375 of the CCEO). I limit myself to underline how the exemplary character of the married clergy should be understood in the context of the Catholic doctrine of conjugal love. Canon 374 thus states: “Clerics, celibate as well as married, should shine forth with the splendor of chastity; it is for particular law to establish suitable means to attain this end.”5 Chastity is the virtue that allows love – an essential virtue for any person, as the apostolic exhortation PDV points out (7) – to fulfill itself in truth in the various states of life; conjugal chastity in particular safeguards the truth and the fullness of conjugal love.6 The necessity of the exemplary character of conjugal love mentioned by canon 374 is restated in a still clearer manner by canon 375: “Married clerics are to offer an outstanding example to other Christian faithful in conducting their family life and in educating their children.” To be a united couple and good parents, to build a family based on love and capable of radiating and manifesting love, is not simply a moral obligation for the priestly couple, as it is for all Christian couples. It becomes also intimately connected with the priest’s ecclesial role, indeed connected with the very

4 P. Pharos, The Clergy: the Unfulfilled Promise of Paternity (in Greek) (Nea Smyrne: 1992), 243–45. 5 The term “chastity” is used in its general sense, applicable both to celibates and to non-celibates. Both celibate clerics and married ones are called to chastity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “married persons are called to live a conjugal chastity, the others to practice chastity in continence” (no.2349). 6 See also Familiaris Consortio: “According to the Christian outlook, chastity does not at all mean either a refusal or a lack of esteem for human sexuality; rather it means a spiritual energy that is able to defend love from the dangers of selfishness and of aggressiveness and can foster it towards its complete fulfillment (no.33). See also PDV: “… [even] in virginity and celibacy, chastity maintains its original meaning, namely a human sexuality lived out as an authentic manifestation and precious service of love, communion and interpersonal self-giving” (no.29). 470 Basilio Petrà

meaning of the priestly ministry, because for the CCEO the life of a minister is by its very nature (through ordination) a call toward the exemplary condition of his very state of life, both celibate and married.7 This priestly witness is meant to be a clear example to all believers, and also, in a way, to those who do not belong to the fold of believers, because the priestly couple becomes inevitably the representative image of the Christian couple and family, as it were, in an institutional manner. Up to this point, we have spoken of the married clergy and of what is traditionally required of them. However, we have not yet considered what could appropriately be called the theological meaning of the married clergy. This development needs a brief explanation.

The Theological Significance of the Married Clergy and the Contradictions in the Latin Church

As I have argued in my book, Married Priests according to the Will of God? An Essay on a Church with Two Lungs (in Italian [Bologna, 2004]), Roman theology of celibacy has undergone changes in the last century. Before the Second Vatican Council, Catholic theology in general talked about the functional, pastoral, spiritual, devotional, disciplinary and practical value of celibacy. It also spoke of its theological ex- pediency in the sense that the celibate state appeared particularly suited in view of the totality of the service required from the ministerial priesthood and the exercise of representing Christ, head and good shepherd of His Church. However, this did not alter the fact that celibacy was merely an ecclesiastical law, subject to change and dispensation by the authority, and that, as a consequence, celibacy was basically something added to the priesthood, not something required by it.

7 This is explicitly contained in canon 368: “Clerics are bound, in a special manner, to the perfection which Christ proposes to his disciples, since they are consecrated to God in a new way by sacred ordination, to become more suitable instruments of Christ, the eternal priest, in the service of God’s people and, at the same time, to be an exemplary model to the faithful.” Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 471

With the recent developments, a great step forward was accomplished, albeit deviating from the council: celibacy is based on the very ontological meaning of ordination. Theolo- gically speaking, this means that ordination objectively demands the state of celibacy. This necessity is based on the idea that the priest, in addition to everything else, is configured in his ordination to Christ as spouse of the Church. Christ was a male and a celibate, and His characteristic of being spouse was totally directed to the Church. Therefore, considering the way Latin theology has developed, the true theological significance resides totally in celibacy, since the Christ-configuring ordination consists totally in celibacy. In this view there is no theological reason for the married condition of the priesthood. Only its historical existence is acknowledged because in Latin circles the principles expounded by Christian Cochini, Alfons Stickler and Roman Cholij were accepted without leaving any room for the true theological value of a married clergy. Roman theology has accomplished a master stroke: it has transformed the spousal character of Christ, which could have been the best way to theologically validate married clergy, into the very foundation for priestly celibacy. In fact, the celibate priest becomes the “true” sign of Christ the spouse. In such a context, where does the married priest really fit? In Latin theology, since he is not celibate, the married priest could not be the sign of Christ spouse of the Church, precisely because he is not celibate. In fact, however, being married, he, together with his wife, is the sign of the relationship of Christ to the Church. Thus, in the new Roman view, he is the sign of Christ-spouse inasmuch as he is spouse and father of a family, but not the sign of Christ-spouse in his capacity as shepherd and head of his community in the celebration of the Eucharist and the service to the community. And yet, he is truly shepherd, head and priest of his community, just as much as a celibate priest. This is a strange and absurd situation, the result of a theology that seems to have little interest in being “Catholic” (that is universal), namely capable of integrating all the truths of the Catholic tradition and is more interested in extolling the value of ecclesiastical celibacy. 472 Basilio Petrà

Consider a second example of this confusing situation, where all the theological motivations seem to favour celibacy. When the present Roman pontiff, on the occasion of World Mission Day (23 October 2005) uttered the words: “On the mystery of the Eucharist, celebrated and venerated, is founded the celibacy which priests have received as a priceless gift and a sign of the undivided love to God and to neighbour,” a married priest of the Byzantine tradition wrote asking in substance the question: “If these words apply also to married priests, I do not know how to behave. Must I celebrate the Eucharist or not?” The question was very direct: if ecclesiastical celibacy is the existential sign required by a true and proper celebration/adoration of the Eucharistic mystery and is a gift of God to priests, then where do married priests stand? He received the following reply from the Secretariat of State.

Reverend Father, recently you have sent to the Holy Father a letter where you speak of your personal experience as a priest in the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite. As I’m grateful to you for your letter, I urge you to continue living joyously your priestly mission, making of your life a constant offering to God, to your family and to the community entrusted to your care.

This is a bureaucratic masterpiece! The question becomes a personal witness and the response does not reply directly. It thanks with courtesy, and offers an exhortation instead. At times, however, the Lord makes use even of bureaucracy to tell us interesting truths. We will return to this note at the end of our article; but let us now return to the problem, which is precisely this: is there a theological meaning to the married clergy, or is it just a simple practice based on tradition but devoid of any theological value, whether Christological or ecclesial or eschatological (as Roman theology attributes to celibacy)? And from where must we begin our research in order to discover such possible theological value? Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 473

We believe that in order to identify the theological value of the married clergy we must begin from a key and permanent element of the Eastern tradition: those who are called to the married priesthood in reality are called to a spiritual path that, in the first place, is characterized by a conjugal/family form of life; and upon the solidity and continuity of such form they receive the priestly mandate. In the Eastern tradition it is a permanent practice that marriage must precede ordination. Moreover, marriage or ordination does not change the matrimonial/family way of life but it configures it according to the pastoral needs of the priestly mandate in the community. Therefore, married priesthood and Christian marriage are not mutually exclusive but have aspects of such continuity that the sacramental character of marriage can merge into the sacramental character of the priesthood without either contradicting one another or losing anything; indeed they find the fulfillment of an already present element. As each subsequent sacrament is at once continuation and further development of previous elements, so also marriage and married priesthood complement each other and develop into each other. We can comprehend this point today as never before, since we possess a theology of marriage that has brought to Catholic awareness elements not clearly perceived previously. In other words, today we are capable of better understanding the relationship between marriage and priesthood in the Eastern tradition because we have a theological awareness of marriage much deeper than in the past. In fact, in the present-day teaching of the Church, marriage is not simply a natural contract – which is blessed and elevated to the level of sacrament – binding man and woman for the purpose of procreation and education of the offspring. It is much more: it is a covenant/communion of life and conjugal love between man and woman which, celebrated as it is in the Church, is elevated to signify the very communion between God and man, between Christ and his Church, and, according to some, even the Trinitarian communion. Marriage becomes in a way a manifestation of the Church, and Christian spouses are a church that is fulfilled in the conjugal and family com- 474 Basilio Petrà

munion. “The Christian family as a ‘Church in miniature’ is in its own way a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church” (FC, 49). Two aspects in particular need to be considered and stressed. The first aspect concerns the kind of union that originates between the spouses by virtue of their total self-giving in matrimonial love. It is a deep and intimate union which can be called a kind of “one-in-two.”8 The second aspect is that the marriage sacrament and the family that issues from it, in the light of modern theology, is not simply a reality in the Church, but rather a reality “which is Church,” namely its actuation and symbol. This aspect was particularly developed and expressed in FC, to which we turn now at some length. In paragraph 49, the pope writes that

the Christian family is grafted into the mystery of the Church to such a degree as to become a sharer, in its own way, in the saving mission proper to the Church. By virtue of the sacrament, Christian married couples and parents “in their state and way of life have their own special gift among the people of God” (LG, 11). For this reason they not only receive the love of Christ and become a saved community, but they are also called upon to communicate Christ’s love to their brethren, thus becoming a saving community. In this way, while the Christian family is a fruit and sign of the supernatural fecundity of the Church, it stands also as a symbol, witness and participation of the Church’s motherhood (LG, 41).

8 John Paul II thus writes in his 1995 Letter to Women: “In their fruitful relationship as husband and wife, in their common task of exercising dominion over the earth, man and woman are marked neither by a static and un- differentiated equality, nor by an irreconcilable and inexorably conflictive difference. Their most natural relationship, which corresponds to the plan of God, is the ‘unity-of-the-two’, namely a ‘one-in-two’ relationship as a gift which enriches and which confers responsibility” (no.8). Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 475

For this reason the Christian family must be a “believing and evangelizing community.” Within and outside the family, the spouses have a mission of spreading the gospel and cate- chizing. Indeed, they are endowed with a universal missionary task. Therefore, “just as in the dawn of Christianity, so also today the Church shows forth her perennial newness and fruitfulness by the presence of Christian couples and families who dedicate at least a part of their lives to working in mission territories, proclaiming the Gospel and doing service to their fellowmen in the love of Jesus Christ” (FC, 54). The Christian family must be also a “domestic church,” a place of sanctification which originates from the sacrament of matrimony and from the presence of Christ in the life of the couple (see LG, 48). The spouses are called upon to be holy and faithful to their conjugal love, as FC makes clear:

Christian spouses and parents are included in the universal call to sanctity… [Christian marriage] is in itself a liturgical action glorifying God in Jesus Christ and in the Church. By celebrating it, Christian spouses profess their gratitude to God for the sublime gift bestowed on them of being able to live in their married and family lives the very love of God for people and the love of the Lord Jesus for the Church, his bride (FC, 56).

Precisely because in the center of Christian marriage there is a God-given love that becomes human love, the Eucharist is the very source of matrimony (FC, 57). FC says that “in this sacrifice of the New and Eternal Covenant that Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage originates, is interiorly structured and continuously renewed” (FC, 57). Marriage and Christian family are ordained by themselves towards a prophetic, priestly and kingly service of the Church and the world, beginning from the domestic dimension without becoming closed in it. Some families can open themselves only in a limited way. Other families, instead, have amazing capabilities of acceptance, service and availability to the 476 Basilio Petrà

mission of the Church. All of this must be considered within the ambience of God’s providence over the world and the Church. He it is who distributes gifts and charisms, who faci- litates or makes things harder, who has one way of calling or another. Such theological outlooks on marriage and the family are already a Catholic heritage. They did not originate nor were they developed in relation to the question of a contemporary married priesthood. However, we must say that they greatly illustrate the Eastern practice because they help manifest their deep significance in relation to the economy of salvation. Marriage and family life are not in contradiction to priestly ministry; on the contrary, they find in it a way (though not the only one) to fulfill completely the Christian meaning of marriage and the family, a marriage lived out as a ministry in the service of the Church and for the salvation of the world. According to this point of view, we may state that the married priest – namely a man called to accept/live his priesthood in marriage – receives a call that includes within its horizon his marriage and his family, his wife and his children. It is a call which is in continuity with the sacramental meaning of matrimony, namely to be a sign and participation of the love of God and his Church. Perhaps at this point we are given to perceive what, in my opinion, may be called the theological significance of the married priesthood, namely the meaning whereby the married priest – precisely because he is married – has a direct relation to the mystery of salvation in Christ. The spouse who is called to the priesthood, by way of his conjugal call (that is following the path of his call), by becoming a priest with the consent/sharing of his wife (and children), fulfills concretely and historically a full image of the ecclesial meaning of the very conjugal vocation. The conjugal vocation is in fact a call to build the Church through the one- in-two quality and to widen its boundaries. The husband, by becoming a priest, is called – within the one-in-two dimension, hence in sharing with his wife – to love more, not less, to widen his capacity to love. The boundaries of his family are widened, he acquires sons and daughters, his paternity is wi- Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 477

dened; his family becomes the community, and the community becomes his family. In the end, they acquire a still deeper strength and can love “to the end” by loving one another in marriage. These last words, which are a clear reference to John 13:1, are not quoted off-handedly. I take them from Pope John Paul II, from his letter to the Christian families of 1994, Gratis- simam Sane, where the pope comments on Ephesians 5:32:

The Church cannot therefore be understood as the Mystical Body of Christ, as the sign of man’s Cove- nant with God in Christ, or as the universal sacrament of salvation, unless we keep in mind the “great mystery” involved in the creation of man as male and female and the vocation of both to conjugal love, to fatherhood and to motherhood. The “great mystery,” which is the Church and humanity in Christ, does not exist apart from the “great mystery” expressed in the “one flesh” (cf. Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31–32), that is, in the reality of marriage and the family.

The family itself is the great mystery of God. As the “domestic church,” it is the bride of Christ. The universal Church, and every particular Church in her, is most immediately revealed as the bride of Christ in the “domestic church” and in its experience of love: conjugal love, paternal and maternal love, fraternal love, the love of a community of persons and of generations. Could we even imagine human love without the Bridegroom and the love with which he first loved to the end? Only if husbands and wives share in that love and in that “great mystery” can they love “to the end.” Unless they share in it, they do not know “to the end” what love truly is and how radical are its demands (Gratissimam sane, 19).

John Paul II says here forcefully what we have tried somehow to state previously: the theological meaning of married clergy is that it seeks to become, by its conjugal and priestly 478 Basilio Petrà

existence, the living image of the deep unity of the “great mystery,” both as domestic church as well as community church. “There is no ‘great mystery,’ which is the Church and the humanity of Christ, without the ‘the great mystery’ expressed in the ‘one flesh’ (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31–32), that exists in the reality of marriage and the family.” Such are the words of the pope. According to his words, the one is the symbol of the other, one manifests the other. Thus, married priesthood, because of the “personal” coinciding of the two “great mysteries,” manifests that the two are in reality a symbol one of the other; they are the only church that is manifested in two homologous and concentric forms. The conjugal love of the one who is called to the priesthood of the one-in-two is called to be the living image of that love of the bridegroom who gives His life for His Church, a special and adequate realization of that Christ-like love “to the end” to which every Christian is called since the moment he is taken from the baptismal font.

Conclusion

Now, to conclude this work of mine, let me go back for a moment to the bureaucratic note received by the married priest of Byzantine tradition, which I mentioned before. I said then that the Lord at times makes use of bureaucracy for His own unforeseen purposes. That reply, which was intended to be evasive, perhaps tells us something that brings us back to the married priesthood. In fact, it recognizes that the married priest is truly a priest and that he performs a priestly mission; it exhorts him to continue such priestly mission in joy, by “making of his life a constant gift to God, to his family and to the community entrusted to his cares.” In the final analysis, he is invited to show that marriage and priesthood can exist in mutual continuity and unity, in full fidelity to the will of God – and this is not something to be taken lightly! Thus does one finally come to see, albeit indirectly, a new and more theologically substantiated defence (if, perhaps, an unwitting or unintentional defence) of the married condition of Eastern priests as a reality with full right of existence in the Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances” 479

Catholic Church; it has its own theological meaning, which is neither superior nor inferior to ecclesiastical celibacy. It is simply different, but altogether in harmony and compatibility with recent magisterial teaching on marriage itself. The married clergy, by its very existence, manifests the full ecclesial vocation of every Christian marriage and the deep unity of this “great mystery.”

® ® ® ®

Review Essays

Metaphysics and its Role in Christian Division: A Review Essay Discussing David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 297 pp.

The Divide of East and West: The Backdrop

Bradshaw sets out on an ambitious road to explain one of the most significant divisions within Christianity, that between East and West. The challenges to unified Christianity came from many quarters. Though Christianity was born within the context of Greco-Roman culture, her mother was Jewish, the fullness of the perfection of the history of Israel. The earliest challenges to Christianity came from within the Jewish world, in whose house Christianity continued to reside for a number of decades after Jesus died. After Pentecost, and after the center of missionary Christianity shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch, new kinds of questions and challenges arose. Greek culture included the search for truth via the road of theoria. This road was one of understanding the nature and causes of reality, and hence it was the “way” of Thales, Parmenides, and Pythagoras that flowered in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It went beyond storytelling and description. Stories about Jesus were not sufficient. What was His nature? Was He divine? Was He human? What was His relation to God? The Church answered these questions universally in ecumenical councils: Nicea proclaimed Jesus as Homoousian with the Father. Chalcedon in 451 declared Him one person with two natures. Notice these are not stories about Jesus, but rather metaphysical and philosophical truths about His being. The introduction of language and insights that went beyond Scripture was itself a significant challenge within Chris- tianity. Yet, in the name of proclaiming the gospel, it had to be 482 David Fleischacker

done. The apostles were commanded to go to the ends of the earth, and this included the Greek world of philosophy, which interestingly resulted in giving her an expression that was more universal in nature. At the same time that some of the apostles and apologists were bring Christianity into the world of Greek philosophy, the Church was becoming incarnate liturgically and culturally in the various and diverse local regions throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. As this took place, differences arose, sometimes serious, which then needed to be addressed in local councils, and if widespread enough, in ecumenical councils. In these councils, one begins to see unity as well as the differences emerging from North Africa to Rome to Constantinople to Jerusalem to Alexandria. As the first millennium of Chris- tianity progressed, the growing differences in Christianity roughly fell into two sides, the East and the West, though that divide is not always clear. One also has to introduce the social and political divisions that emerged especially after Constan- tine died, along with linguistic differences between Latin and Greek that grew after the second century. Hence, during the first millennium after the birth of Christ, the unity of Chris- tianity was by no means one of uniformity and harmony. By the year 1054, the differences culminated in serious divide on many levels, including that of the faith itself. Dog- matically, the divide centered upon the filioque, though implicit as well was the validity of ecclesiastical authority. The attempts to rebuild the fallen Roman Empire into a Christian empire initiated by Charlemagne two centuries earlier seemed to be coming to find a limit in the unification of East and West. Yet, not only are the causes of this serious rupture still being debated and explored, so is the nature of that divide. What in reality do the mutual excommunications between pope and patriarch mean when the one was dead by the time the other’s letter was fully promulgated? And with the lifting of these excommunications in 1965, what is the status of the division of East and West? Political and social and theological divides certainly continue to exist, but these exist even within Catholic and Orthodox circles, and yet they are able to preserve eucha- Review Essay 483

ristic communion. So what is the precise nature and character of the division?

Metaphysics as the Key to the Division

David Bradshaw argues that he has found one key piece, if not they key, needed to understand and explain the rupture – metaphysics. Many historical accounts of the divide neglect the philosophical or metaphysical differences that emerged between the East and West, a neglect which Bradshaw hopes to remedy. The first five chapters layout the heart and source of Brad- shaw’s position – namely that the metaphysical key reduces to one basic term – energeia. These chapters examine the pre- and non-Christian history of the understandings and use of energeia. In chapter one, Bradshaw argues that Aristotle created the term to identify a key facet of metaphysics, though he argues it expresses two different elements, on the one hand the actuality and on the other the activity of being. In chapter two, Bradshaw examines Aristotle’s understanding of the prime mover as active in relationship to the world, both in terms of efficient causality and more fully in terms of ongoing activity, of energeia. Next, he examines energeia as it was taken up, transformed, or neglected in various Hellenistic schools from the era immediately after Aristotle’s death up until the era of Plotinus. Chapter 4 takes up the notion in Plo- tinus, and examines his “two acts,” namely the internal act, and then the exterior acts produced by the energeia of the internal acts.1 This distinction is applied not only to the prime mover, as in Aristotle, but to the whole of being, from the One all the way down to the lowest order of things. It creates an ordered “world view” with the One being the supreme illumi- nator of all that is, and thus the supreme “energeia.” However, in the later Plotinus, there are some doubts as to how this One can move “externally” and thus be an energeia of the world. Chapter 5 then examines the inheritance of Plotinus in the

1 Bradshaw, 76–77. 484 David Fleischacker

West through Porphyry and Victorinus (the latter, to recall, was instrumental in Saint Augustine’s conversion). Chapter 6 provides a transition from the philosophical history of energeia to its religious appropriation in non-Christian and early Christian contexts. Bradshaw examines the Christian use of the term in Paul’s letters, as well as in Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Eunomius. Energeia comes to refer to some of God’s activities and works such as God’s miracles, the incarnation, and to the inner or immanent Trinitarian relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It also is used to identify the activity of the demons and magic. Within Neoplatonism in the East, energeia was used in Iamblichus and Proclus, both of whose use and transformation of Plotinus further articulated the relation of God or the gods to the human soul in theurgic rites or through speculative reasoning. Chapter 7 posits the key conclusions of Bradshaw’s position, namely that the real divide begins to emerge in Chris- tianity as she differentiates esse and energeia, thus developing some of the notions initiated by the Neoplatonists and their theurgic rites. More specifically, the distinction emerges in the reflection upon eternity and God, or at least names of God, as well as the works of God, including most importantly those works that take place in the human soul and thus unite it with God. From the earliest stages of Christianity one finds an emerging tradition that uses energeia to understand the meaning of the Son and the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father, as well as all of the names and properties of God. The Son is the energeia of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the energeia of the Son, or of the Father. Names of God, such as truth, goodness, wisdom are likewise energeia of God, but they are not God’s ousia. As for the human union with God, Bradshaw argues that it takes place through a special participation in God’s energeia. It is in the energeia of the Holy Spirit, for example, that Saint Basil argues that “enduring and habitual states of the soul” are formed which then unite us with God. For Bradshaw, this is more than a mere cooperation, it is a participation in the Review Essay 485

divine. It is a theosis or divinization.2 Dionysius expands upon this union of the whole order of God, the angels, and us through a celestial hierarchy. The hierarchy is a result of “divine energeia” and the divine names are names of these energeiai.3 It is in the light of this celestial energeia that one understands how man is united with God. In chapter 8, Bradshaw then examines the further growth of the Eastern tradition starting in Saint Maximus the Confes- sor and ending with the twelfth century. Most of the chapter examines how the human soul comes to be united intimately to God, though part of the chapter is dedicated to the filioque controversy. Union with God takes place in prayer, which transcends concepts and thus also the mind and its intellectual acts. It moves one into an unspeakable unity with the Logos and the uncreated light. Chapter 9 is where Bradshaw concludes his thesis of the divide between the East and West as it had come to flower in the thirteenth century. Before he turns to this flower, however, he has to travel back to the Western roots in Augustine’s doctrine of divine simplicity. This doctrine results in a significantly different interpretation of the distinction and relation of esse and energeia from the East. In the West, because of divine “simplicity” there is no distinction between the names of God and the being of God, for in reality they are in complete identity. In the East, to recall, the names refer to energeia of God but the being (esse) of God is unnameable. Divine simplicity, in turn, has an impact on the understanding of how human beings are united with God. For Augustine, there are only two options: it “must be either a creature or the divine substance,” the latter being the beatific vision and the former exemplified by theophanies.4 Theophanies are special creations by God, e.g., perhaps an experience of an angel who is bringing a message to us from God. In the East there are three terms, not two, the third being the energeiai of God. The energeiai of God, while not the being of God, are still eternal with God, and human beings can in an intimate fashion claim

2 Bradshaw, 174. 3 Ibid., 183. 4 Ibid., 229. 486 David Fleischacker

to be united with these energeiai, even in this life, through prayer. Thus, Bradshaw argues that the East and West parted ways because of their different understandings of esse and energeiai. He writes

Clearly the gulf separating Augustine from the Eastern tradition is immense. It encompasses such basic issues as the nature of being, the simplicity of God, intelligibility of God, and the final goal of human existence. What is perhaps most remarkable is that the Augustinian presuppositions we have sketched could come to dominate the thought of the West, while having virtually no influence in the East, and yet for almost a thousand years neither side recognized what had happened. Instead the controversy between them focused on relatively poor referral issues such as the filioque and the role of the papacy.5

Bradshaw then argues that this divide came to the fore through Barlaam of Calabria, who was an Orthodox monk who had studied Augustine and acquired the notion of divine simplicity. His disagreements with his brothers in the East made this divide manifest. Eventually he converted to Roman Catholi- cism. These disagreements brought to the fore a controversy over the Hesychasts, a group who had developed a particular form of prayer intended on bringing the mind back into the heart in order to unite the whole person – body and soul – with God. Gregory Palamas was the one who came to defend the Hesychasts and in order to do so, he makes use of energeia to identify the kind of unity between body, soul, mind, and God that takes place in this prayer. Bradshaw argues that

Palamas draws together under the single concept of energeia a number of themes that previously had existed more or less in isolation: the uncreated light, the “things around God,” the Cappadocian teaching on the

5 Ibid. Review Essay 487

divine names, and the Pauline and Cappadocian understanding of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All are to be understood in terms of the manifestation of God through his uncreated energies.6

Palamas clearly distinguishes between divine esse and divine energeiai, both of which are eternal. Energeiai explains the relationship between God and all creatures, all logoi. It allows for a claim that God is one and multiple at the same time, without this multiplicity being hypostatic or personal. (In other words, the “multiplicity” in God consists not only of the three divine persons, but many eternal energeiai.) Thomas Aquinas, in contrast, builds upon Augustine and the doctrine of divine simplicity. God’s unity goes so far as to unite essence and esse into one.7 God’s esse is perfection in act. Hence all the divine attributes are perfectly in act in God and one with the divine esse. This results, Bradshaw argues, in a serious misreading of Dionysius and John of Damascus. What for them are names and properties of the energeiai of God distinct from the unnameable esse are for Aquinas one with that esse. Bradshaw then argues that this in reality annihi- lates God’s freedom in creating. God, who is absolutely one with no distinction from His “energeiai” or activities, cannot help but choose to create, because in choosing to love Himself there cannot be a distinction between this choice and His choice to create. Both are one and the same. Therefore creation would be as necessary as is God’s existence, contrary to all of Aquinas’s attempts to argue otherwise. Bradshaw then takes up some of the arguments of the supporters of this view, only to reject them as well. Similar problems accrue in understanding the union of the soul with God. For Thomas, the indwelling of God in the soul requires a created act, which for Bradshaw results in a divide between God and man that the East would reject. For the East, God’s indwelling in the soul is the indwelling of the uncreated light. Because in the West everything is either God’s uncreated

6 Ibid., 238. 7 Ibid., 243. 488 David Fleischacker

esse or a creature, the uncreated God cannot directly and immediately indwell in the soul. Bradshaw then turns to Rahner and others to show how the West has never solved this problem.8

Commentary on Bradshaw’s Thesis

Bradshaw’s book is a serious historical examination of the notion of energeia, one that is welcomed and much-needed. Especially welcome is his introduction to a number of much neglected figures. Furthermore, the notion of energeia does provide an important element that has been missing in various accounts of the divide between East and West. Given the wide variety of challenges that are introduced in discussing metaphysics, it would be worthwhile to comment on the more significant areas pertaining to Bradshaw’s analysis: the nature of metaphysical analysis; the relationship of metaphysics, God, and theology; the relationship of metaphysics and dogmatic development; and finally metaphysics and the explanation of historical events and movements.

Metaphysical Analysis: Implicit and Explicit Metaphysics

One significant challenge in analyzing the historical role of metaphysics is in grasping the nature and import of metaphysics and its impact upon life, thought, and action. If, for example, metaphysics regards the principles of being, and thus as well constitutes a horizon of being within the human subject, then it has a comprehensive role and influence that touches on every facet of existence and history, including the

8 As a note, one figure who proceeds from the Western tradition but who provides a different account of the indwelling is Bernard Lonergan. Around the same time that Rahner had discovered the weakness of the scholastic tradition on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Lonergan had done the same. Both propose new answers. Rahner identifies the immediate indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a type of form – a quasi-formal causality. Lonergan turns from the analogy of form to that of interpersonal relation, linked to some degree with Augustine. See Bernard Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics in The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12 (University of Toronto Press, 2007), 513–521. Review Essay 489

nature, life, and history of Christianity. If Bradshaw has this notion of metaphysics in mind, it is important to distinguish implicit metaphysics – views of reality and truth that have not been explicitly formulated yet form all human subjects because they are human – and the increasingly differentiated articulations of metaphysics. As metaphysics becomes differentiated, some articulations may be true, some false, some inadequate. Hence, the formulation of energeiai, for instance, or substance and accident, or potency, form, and act, are all differentiations of an explicit metaphysics. These differentiations take place within the operative implicit metaphysics, and will be more or less adequate articulations of that implicit metaphysics. Hence, in order to compare terms and notions of an explicit metaphysics, especially those elements that may be inadequately formulated, one has to uncover the implicit metaphysics operative in the local or regional culture in which the explicit metaphysics was developed. Bradshaw’s examination of the relationship of prayer and the apophatic articulation of God in a few of the Eastern figures are a welcome manifestation of this way of analysis. More of this type of analysis should be applied to all the figures on both sides, because only then can one more fully grasp the implicit and the explicit metaphysics and how their meaning shifts and changes.

Metaphysics, God, and Theology

A further set of questions regards the relationship of metaphysics and the understanding and articulation of God and theology. In general, the distinction between esse and energia that Bradshaw emphasizes is one that touches closely upon a fundamental epistemological question. How can we understand and talk about “God” at all? If we can, to what degree is such talk possible? As Bradshaw argues regarding the Eastern tradition, the energia of God are the way that we can “name” and “talk” about God, and have some kind of understanding. Yet, it is not an understanding of God as such. Here we see the centrality of the East’s “method” of apophaticism. When Bradshaw turns toward examining the West in chapter 9, starting with Augustine, he mentions that the West recognizes the 490 David Fleischacker

“incomprehensibility” of God, but then he argues that in their writings, they turn around and claim to “apprehend” something of God’s esse. He also then continues to point out seeming contradictions in Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles.9 In my own work on Augustine and Aquinas, I would hardly accuse them of blatant contradictions. I think part of the problem is that Bradshaw has not sufficiently understood these figures, and his rather short treatment of them – especially in light of his more extensive treatment of Eastern figures – provides evidence of this insufficiency. At the same time, the controversies over interpreting many statements in both St. Thomas and St. Augustine have a long history, so one cannot really blame Bradshaw for thinking they are internally contradictory. One of the key facets that I think Bradshaw should have given more attention to regarding the West is that of analogy. For Aquinas, analogical knowledge is neither complete nor metaphorical. Since the nature of the properties and names of God, and of how we understand God both in dogmas and in theological insights, are through analogical knowledge, this would be a key point of comparison to Bradshaw’s interpretation of energeia and esse and their use in the East. There are also many other areas of Western theology that would need to be explored for a more adequate understanding of the relation of East and West. For example, Bradshaw focuses largely upon intelligibility in Augustine, yet one can hardly ignore that Augustine’s analogies proposed for the Tri- nity speak about memory-knowledge-will or mind-knowing- love. Hence, Augustine adds more than intelligibility to his explorations of God. This misreading of Augustine points to a significant divide between St. Augustine/St. Thomas on the one hand and Plato/Aristotle on the other. In these Greek masters, being and truth were equated with intelligibility or form. But in St. Augustine, because of the issue of divine revelation, being is linked not to intelligibility and understanding but to Truth and judgment. Word, which is equated with “knowledge,” is not usually intelligibility, but rather truth. St. Thomas takes this further and links together judgment, being,

9 Ibid., 247–50. Review Essay 491

and act. These are not intelligibilities as they would be for Plato and Aristotle. Interestingly it is judgment as corresponding to truth and being that is also missing in Immanuel Kant. And Bradshaw likens the distinction between energeia and esse to phenomena and noumena in Kant.10 This points to the need for more adequate metaphysical analysis in order to compare what was happening between the East and the West, or even within the East and within the West. This expansion would need to include an examination of how each figure understands the nature of the mind and of epistemology. It is easy to confuse cognitive, epistemological, and metaphysical questions with each other, because of how closely these are related; and it is easy to neglect these questions as well. Differences rooted not in metaphysics but in specifications of being also require further exploration. Metaphysics provides general categories which then provide general analogies for understanding God and God’s relation and activity in creation. Analogies such as body-soul, notions of person, and the common good are not general metaphysical analogies, but rather specifications of being (or specifications of metaphysics) which then are used analogically to help us understand the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Church, or to answer the question “Three what?” when speaking of the Holy Trinity. Hence individuals or groups could possess a common metaphysics, yet run into serious division as a result of analogies taken from specifications of being (really from any of the departments of knowledge other than metaphysics). Lastly, a bit puzzling is Bradshaw’s identification of Augustine’s view of God as static, a view connected to the doctrine of divine simplicity.11 This is an accusation presumably levelled at Aquinas as well and along with him at much of the Western tradition. In contrast, the Eastern tradition is one that recognizes a dynamic God, at least in the energeia of God. Being dynamic certainly sounds better than being static in modern culture. I wonder, however, whether it is an historical anachronism to use this distinction. The “static

10 Ibid., 169. 11 Ibid., 224. 492 David Fleischacker

past” and the “dynamic present” became popular in the 1960s and was used to say that the past was unchanging and dull, and the modern is changing and exciting. In theological and philosophical circles, impersonal was added to unchanging and dull, which made the past appear almost repulsive. Yet, after reading The Confessions of Augustine, one can hardly accuse him of holding a view of God that is dull and inactive and impersonal. Bradshaw extricates the Eastern tradition from anti-traditional claims, but he seems to think that these claims apply to the West. I simply do not agree. Bradshaw’s identification of the West with the static and the East with the dynamic also raises some serious questions about the nature and being of God. If Bradshaw is correct about the East and the distinction between energeia and esse, how does one reconcile some of the “energeia” of God that would indicate an unchanging God with the notion of a dynamically changing “energeia” of God? To say it is hidden in the mystery of God’s being which is unknowable could be nothing more than a cloak for lack of insight. In the end, this still comes back to the question of knowledge of God. To say that God is beyond knowledge – or concepts – can have many meanings, and this requires further explanation. A tree is beyond knowledge in a certain sense. So is one’s own soul. Saying the tree or soul is beyond knowledge may mean that there exists a difference between knowledge and the object known. Yet, it could mean that objects simply cannot be known. There is an unbridgeable gap between the mind and reality. If this is the case when we turn to the esse of God, how does one know that God is esse? This is the same problem found in Kant’s analysis of the noumena and phenomena in Kant. Kant cannot explain how he knows there exists a noumena. It is a performative contradiction that undermines certain facets of his philosophy – to be specific it undermines his notion of knowledge and its relationship to reality and the noumena. Likewise, how does one even know there is a being of God beyond energeia? Is there an energeia that reveals this? But this means that this particular energeia reveals that God’s being is a being. Hence, it is a type of knowledge. Perhaps there are some modern Cartesian and Kantian notions entering Review Essay 493

into Bradshaw’s analysis of ancient and early Christian metaphysics and philosophy. It is a question worth examining, not just for him, but for all who try to study the past.

Metaphysics and Dogmatic Development

This brings up a further element that needs elaboration. As Christianity grew, her translation into Greek culture was centered upon proclaiming what was meant in divine revelation within a horizon cultivated by Greek theoria. How does one accomplish this proclamation without becoming inauthentic to the Revelation? This points to the problem of dogmatic development. At stake is the relationship between metaphysics, philosophy, divine revelation, and the ecclesial mediation of divine revelation into any culture, with the fruit being dogmatic development. This likewise must be discussed more fully if one wishes to better understand the metaphysical divide between East and West. Metaphysical terms such as energeia are not entirely sufficient to address this problem.

Metaphysics and the East-West Divide Once More

In the end, history, as Bradshaw recognizes is extremely complex. Explaining why events take place and movements emerge requires analyzing and integrating many human and non-human factors, usually on many different levels. This is what makes history both fascinating and at times frustrating. Analyzing the divide between East and West is no different. Metaphysics, both implicit and explicit, certainly has a role. But one wonders if the larger role deals with specifications of beings, such as a dialectic between grace and sin, as well as a variety of social and political factors. Bradshaw’s identification of the source of the divide upon Western metaphysics is a bit like Jacques Derrida’s attempt to blame the World Wars upon Western metaphysics. I would not claim – as does Bradshaw – that more important than the filioque or the papal controversies were the metaphysical foundations. The filioque and the controversy over papal primacy have roots in dogmatic development which takes place within the life of the Church as 494 David Fleischacker

she mediates divine revelation. These differences are not necessarily metaphysical, but could be rooted in specifications of being. Yet, once again, given the paucity of studies examining the role of metaphysics in the East-West divide, Bradshaw’s introduction to the role of metaphysics and philosophy is welcome, and anyone desiring to enter into this conversation would be well served by reading this text. On a final note, if the reader of this text is relatively unfamiliar with the debates and discussions surrounding metaphysics, philosophy, and the history of the differences between the East and the West, be sure to sit down with pen and paper to carefully sort through all the ideas, names, and movements. It will not be a book that one can easily follow. Bradshaw usually gives enough examples to illustrate the meaning he attributes to various terms, save when he comes to some of the Westerns, in which case one might need to pick up Augus- tine’s De Trinitate and Thomas’s Summa Contra Gentiles, and read through these texts. The footnotes are helpful in a number of places, as is the bibliography and the combined subject and name index.

David Fleischacker

® ® ®

Evagrius: Still Confounding, Still Profound

Books Discussed in this Review Essay

Julia S. Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), xi + 217 pp.

Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Bamberger (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), xciv + 96 pp.

Augustine M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), xii + 252 pp.

Luke Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), viii + 245 pp.

Jeremy Driscoll, Steps to Spiritual Perfection: Studies in Spiritual Progress in Evagrius Ponticus (New York/Mahwah, NJ: The Newman Press, 2005), 185 pp.

Antoine Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert. Évagre le Pontique (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004), 430 pp.

Evagrius of Pontus, The Greek Ascetic Corpus, trans. and commentary by Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford University Press, 2003), xl + 369 pp.

496 Andriy Chirovsky

Students at the Sheptytsky Institute have often asked me, “Is Evagrius the Origenist heretic that he is made out to be?” That question, of course, is not easily answerable. It is difficult even to begin to respond to such a query without clarifying a host of problems. There are issues of whether the second Ori- genist controversy in the sixth century, or even the first at the turn of the fourth to the fifth, properly grasped or presented the thought either of Origen or of Evagrius. There is the question of motivation on the part of Evagrius’s most vehement critics. There is the issue of the very approach to the fundamental interpretation of the teaching of Evagrius: is there a key to his often-enigmatic statements? Does he present an entirely coherent system of thought on central doctrinal issues? Scholarship in Evagrian studies has been divided on these and other issues. Sometimes I am tempted to respond to the inquiring student: “Who said so?” This is more than just a facetious response. Evagrius was named as a foul purveyor of heresy at the time of Justinian. That is clear. The foundational divide among students of Evag- rius sometimes seems to run along the fault line of whether being a heretic is a good thing or not. Among adherents of the latter, there are those who try to establish that he was a heretic, perhaps more endemically Origenist than Origen himself, in order to remove some of the heat from Origen. Hans Urs von Balthasar was a major proponent of such a view. Others seem to look for a way to interpret Evagrius that would allow for the possibility of avoiding the dichotomy that has reigned, explicitly or implicitly, for centuries: the tendency to accept the learned monk’s ascetical wisdom without having to reject his more speculative thought. Those, of course, who think that heresy is a value to be sought out, a characteristic of the fruitful and liberated mind, gleefully present Evagrius as a heretic, because these days heresy is all the rage in certain quarters, and Evagrius becomes yet another “free thinker” whose legacy was all but crushed by the oppressive patriarchy of orthodoxy. Thus, Evagrius’s presumed Origenist excesses are heroic, alongside Gnosticism, Arianism, and the implicit Nestorianism of those who continually abstract Christ’s humanity from His divinity. Review Essay 497

Augustine Casiday has done an admirable job of describing the various camps in the Evagrian fray with his astute and expansive 2004 review essay.1 He classifies the two main approaches as the Benedictine School and the Heresiological School. The first is led by the hermit and scholar Gabriel Bunge, and Jeremy Driscoll, but also includes Daniel Homber- gen, Luke Dysinger, and Columba Stewart. All of the above are actual Benedictines, though for Casiday this group also includes some associated scholars: Andrew Louth, Robin Dar- ling Young, and Samuel Rubenson. Perhaps it would be more profitable to classify these scholars in another way. What seems to unite them is the fact that they really take seriously the fact that Evagrius first and foremost sought a way of communing with God rather than about creating a system of thought. The Heresiological School, as Casiday names it, is inconceivable without the antecedent of the philologists who did the pioneering work of editing Evagrian manuscripts, Wil- helm von Frankenberg, Barsegh Sarkissian, Hugo Greßmann in the early 1900’s, and Joseph Muyldermans at mid-century – along with some more recent scholars. It was Antoine Guillaumont who would bring about a significant reorientation of Evagrian studies by focusing on a Syriac version of Evagrius’s Gnostic Chapters that appeared much more in line with those propositions that were condemned as heretical in the sixth century. The earlier-published Syriac text seemed much more difficult to pin down in comparison. What Guillaumont would do is to locate a sort of key to all of Evagrius’s thought in that most apparently suspect work. This line of thought would be continued by François Refoulé, Michael O’Laughlin, and Elizabeth Clark. The main difference between the so-called Benedictine School and the Heresiological School has to do with a fundamental approach. To the latter, what makes Evagrius interesting and attractive is precisely what they focus on as his un- orthodox thought. It is not as if the former are bent on proving Evagrius orthodox. Rather, they are intent on finding in something other than the Syriac version of the Kephalaia Gnostica

1 Augustine, Casiday, “Gabriel Bunge and the Study of Evagrius Ponti- cus,” Saint Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48 (2004): 249–97. 498 Andriy Chirovsky

and the Letter to Melania the key to Evagrius, whether it be his insistence on the fact that Scripture is central, or his deep connections to some unquestionably orthodox figures of the fourth century. Since Casiday’s essay, several important books have appeared that push Evagrian studies even further, although I think it is safe to say that his categorizations remain basically valid. The first of these recent studies is Un philosophe au desert: Évagre le Pontique, by Antoine Guillaumont. This publication of the fruits of Guillaumont’s half-century of research on Evagrius was brought out posthumously, since the scholar died at the age of 85 in 2000. His wife and collaborator in Evagrian studies, Claire, along with his son François, brought the present volume to completion, using Guillau- mont’s notes where needed to supplement unfinished sections of the well-documented and erudite work. This French ar- chaeologist and Syriac scholar held positions notably at the École pratique des hautes études and at the Collège de France, and was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres. His archaeological research centred on the site of the great monastic centre of Kellia in lower Egypt. As a philo- logist specializing in Syriac, Guillaumont devoted himself to issues of early monasticism and the Syriac manuscripts of the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, most notably the full Syriac version of the Kephalaia Gnostica, which was not preserved in the Greek. He was acknowledged as the world’s leading Evag- rian scholar. It was Guillaumont who published the so-called S2 Syriac text of the Kephalaia Gnostica, which served as the basis of the more or less established view of important aspects of Evag- rius’s mature doctrinal thought. Guillaumont found correspon- dences between S2 and Justinian’s 553 Fifteen Anathemas Against Origen. Thus, according to Guillaumont, in his 1962 study of Evagrius and Origenism,2 it was precisely Evagrian Origenism that was condemned in the sixth century, and this particular strain preached a Christology that would have all

2 A. Guillaumont, “Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire d’Origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens,” Patristica Sorbonensia 5 (Paris: Seuil, 1962): 124–70. Review Essay 499

rational beings eventually become isochristoi, “equals-to Christ.” Interestingly, the present book carries the same title as a 1972 article by Guillaumont. Whereas in 1962 Guillaumont was self-assured enough to proclaim that it was possible to now establish a “doctrinal synthesis, where all the elements of [Evagrius’s] thought would be put in their proper place,” the present volume is much more tentative, and recognizes that even though a much fuller picture of Evagrius has now emerged due to the publication of numerous texts, the fact that some of Evagrius’s important writings are known to us only in ancient translations is a serious liability, because translations can, in fact, alter meanings. The book is divided into three major sections, on the life (pp. 13–95), the writings (pp. 99–172) and the teaching of Evagrius (pp. 177–404). The introduction takes pains to emphasize that Evagrius was indeed a great ascetic and teacher of monks (a philosopher in the ancient sense of the word), but that he was also one of the great theological minds of Christian antiquity, fertilized by Hellenistic culture, given to endless definitions and distinctions (a philosopher more in the sense of a thinker, a metaphysician). In the end, however, it seems Guillaumont favours the latter over the former. The book has no synthetic conclusion. Since the dominant third section concludes with Guillaumont’s presentation of Evagrian eschatology, that constitutes the author’s final word. There is no doubt that Evagrian studies will long be indebted to Guillaumont. The question is whether Guillaumont’s favouring of the Ke- phalaia Gnostica as the key to Evagrius will remain as dominant as it has been for the last half-century. While Guillaumont presents Evagrius as a daring thinker, Luke Dysinger (like other members of Casiday’s “Benedictine School”) takes Evagrius seriously as a monk. That does not mean that Dysinger rejects Guillaumont’s interpretation of certain ideas that are found primarily in the Kephalaia Gnostica. What Dysinger does, in Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, is to focus on Evagrius’s most extensive work, his Scholia on the Psalms, along with a consideration of his monastic lifestyle, and use them as an interpretive matrix for the main lines of Evagrius’s thought, including the latter’s 500 Andriy Chirovsky

Christology, which looks very different from this perspective. It may seem obvious that Evagrius should be read this way, given the emphasis he placed on Scripture in general and psalmody in particular. Unfortunately, this has not been the dominant approach to the interpretation of Evagrius. There is still no critical edition of the Scholia in psalmos, but Marie-Josèphe Rondeau is preparing one that should soon appear,3 and Dysin- ger was able to use her work which, incidentally, is accessible in electronic form by permission of the editor. Dysinger helps the reader to understand the difference, as Evagrius saw it, between psalmody and prayer, and the extremely important position that the singing or recitation of the psalms has always held in monastic life. Dysinger’s background as both a theologian and a physician helps him make a unique contribution to Evagrian studies: he evaluates the ascetic teacher’s advocacy of psalmody as a therapeutic tool in light of the medical thinking of the late antique world. This, too, takes things a significant step beyond Guillaumont, who was very perceptive in making connections between Evagrius and the Cappadocians, as well as other teachers of Christian doctrine and metaphysical thought. But Dysinger ably demonstrates the connections between Evagrius and those who preceded as well as succeeded him when it comes to discussing the whole monastic context of Evagrius’s thought. Dysinger also correlates this therapeutic use of the psalms with Evag- rius’s Antirrhetikos, a work that many seem unwilling or unable to take seriously enough, perhaps because it details the (improbable for moderns) use of scriptural passages to counter the disruptive thoughts (logismoi) that make pure prayer, the purpose of human life, so difficult to attain. Dysinger shows how, for Evagrius, psalmody calms the incensive part of the soul. As already mentioned, Dysinger also studies the Christolo- gical data in Evagrius’s meditations on the psalms and comes up with a picture that is different from the enigmatic esoteric

3 She has been working on related issues since 1960, when she discovered a critical manuscript in the Vatican archives. See M.-J. Rondeau, “Le commentaire sur les Psaumes d’Évagre le Pontique,” Orientalia Chris- tiana Periodica 26 (1960): 307–48. Review Essay 501

isochrist vision of Guillaumont and others, based on the Kephalaia Gnostica and the Letter to Melania. Dysinger presents an entirely unique Evagrian Christ that is quite demon- strably and consistently different from all creatures. On the basis of all of these important contributions, it is safe to say that Luke Dysinger’s work seems to establish as significant a reorientation of Evagrian studies as that which Guillaumont achieved in the mid-twentieth century.4 Thanks to Toronto medievalist and Eastern Christian specialist Robert Sinkewicz, for the first time anglophone readers will have most of the principal ascetical works of Evagrius at their disposal, in one handy volume, with extensive annotations in The Greek Ascetic Corpus. The translations are based on critical editions where available. Where there are no critical editions, or not fully critical editions, Sinkewicz uses colla- tions of principal manuscripts. After a general introduction to Evagrius (pp. xvii–xl), Sinkewicz offers twelve texts in English translation. Each of them is preceded by an introduction to the given work and copiously annotated with very helpful commentary. There are two appendices. The first offers variant readings. This is extremely important in light of the difficult history of manuscript transmission. The second appendix gives the Greek text of Lavra Γ93, with variants noted. It is on the basis of this Greek text that Sinkewicz makes the Treatise to Eulogios finally comprehensible, and renders his English translation. Twelve pages of bibliography and welcome indices of scriptural references and subjects round out the volume. He does not translate the Gnostikos because of problems with the text, and reserves the right to return to this work by Evagrius in the future. Some of the texts have been translated into English before. For example, John Eudes Bamberger’s translation of the Praktikos and the Chapters on Prayer, first

4 It should be mentioned that Fr. Luke, a Benedictine monk of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, CA and professor at both St. John’s Semi- nary in Camarillo, CA and St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN, maintains a valuable web site with his own public domain translations of various writings of Evagrius. It can be found at http://ldysinger.com/CH_583_Patr/ 11_early-monast/00e_st_evag.htm. 502 Andriy Chirovsky

published in 1981 has recently been reprinted.5 Sinkewicz’s translation is at times more exact without sacrificing any readability or fluidity of style, and his annotations are volumi- nous. Like many, I cannot abide endnotes, because they neces- sitate an endless flipping back and forth between the text and the notes. It is not as if a serious student of Evagrius would want to ignore the notes in order to taste Evagrius au naturel. This is a study text, and the annotations are crucially important, offering many cross-references that actually incorporate the related texts in translation. I think that it would be praise rather than criticism to say that I would prefer to see Sin- kewicz’s valuable notes on the same page as the body of the text. I do not understand why Sinkewicz does not offer some of the known variants of commonly used titles for Evagrius’s works. There is a variety of ways of referring to certain of his writings. To give just one example, many authors will refer to the Skemmata, but Sinkewicz uses only the English rendering, Reflections. Scholars will have little difficulty with this, but it poses great obstacles for students. This having been said, there can be little doubt that this book will remain critically important for initiating many students into the ascetic works of Evagrius, and will be of tremendous value to scholars as well. Julia Konstantinovsky, junior research fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, has entered the fray of Evag- rian studies with what appears to be a doctoral dissertation that sits squarely on the side of positing the Kephalaia Gnostica as the central prism through which Evagrius is to be interpreted: Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic. She describes her own method, however, as “holistic,” by which Konstanti- novsky means keeping Evagrius’s “doctrinal, mystical and ascetical views together” (p.2). This is a term which she acknowledges borrowing from Luke Dysinger, while claiming that his work fails the test and her own is truly representative of such methodology. In fact, she explicitly criticizes Dysinger

5 Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Bamberger (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009). This is an exact reproduction of the Cistercian Publications 1981 edition. Its sole advantage is the much sturdier hardcover binding. My 1981 copy has long ago come apart. Review Essay 503

for looking at the whole of Evagrius from the point of view of psalmody, and then goes on to say that what is needed is a holistic approach that favors his “loftier” treatises, where different views are expressed, “at once more esoteric and more dear to the author’s heart.” The unsubtle conclusion is that Evagrius needs to be interpreted primarily in light of the more speculative parts of his corpus. Konstantinovsky is more holistic when she examines both Greek and Syriac texts of the Evagrian corpus, and evaluates the fourth century context of Evagrius. The author offers a survey of how the ideas of Clement and Origen, the three Cappa- docians, the Macariana and non-Christian sources from both Stoic and Neo-Platonic backgrounds may have influenced Evagrius. In each chapter, after she presents various aspects of Evagrius’s thought, Konstantinovsky looks for connections with his broader milieu. The book is quite ambitious. It seems that the author is at times very concerned with establishing the importance of her own findings. This is especially true of the conclusion, which – more so than the rest of the book – has the tone of a doctoral dissertation, in which the candidate feels compelled to focus on the contribution that is being made to the furtherance of human understanding. That is unfortunate and unnecessary, because there are many fine sections in the work, and the scholarship speaks for itself. There are weaknesses as well. The language of this study is sometimes laboured. It is evident that English is not the author’s first language. This is not so much a criticism of the author (whose command of the illogical language is actually quite good) as it is of the publisher Ashgate, whose web site trumpets the claim that “Every book on our list receives the individual attention of commissioning, editorial, production and marketing staff.” This book deserved a little more attention from editors and proofreaders. On p.4, as the author relates the structure of the argument, we read: “Chapter 5 is designed to provide a firm foundation for the focus of Chapter 4.” It is obvious from the context that the latter should read “Chapter 6.” There are a number of very glaring typos in the book. 504 Andriy Chirovsky

Another thing I found frustrating is the fact that the author seems to want to accomplish too much in this book: a stricter focus would have made it stronger. Konstantinovsky tells us that at its core this book is an examination of Evagrius’s understanding of what Christian gnosis is about (and that for her means eschatology) and how one becomes this kind of gnostikos, as exemplified in Evagrius’s own experience. On p.179 she informs us that “the purpose of this monograph from the very beginning was to clarify Evagrius’s key idea of spiritual progress as an ascent to knowledge.” This is not, in fact, always clear. What is clear is Konstantinovsky’s presentation of Evagrius’s overall views as consisting in a graded reality, which allows for considerable nuance on his part. In this she goes beyond Guillaumont. Overall, Konstantinovsky’s book is a welcome addition to anglophone Evagrian studies, but it is not quite as groundbreaking as its author might want it to be. The same Jeremy Driscoll, Benedictine professor at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, who published an English version of Evagrius’ Ad monachos6, has given us a companion volume to that text in the form of eight studies, all of which had appeared earlier elsewhere, but were reworked to some degree, in order to form a coherent whole: Steps to Spiritual Perfec- tion: Studies in Spiritual Progress in Evagrius Ponticus. This represents a decade of scholarly work. The first of these is a sort of student study guide approach to reading Evagrius for the purpose of spiritual progress, whether taken individually or sought in the relationship between the various works. This is followed by chapters on theological anthropology viewed through spousal imagery, and penthos and tears as an early stage that all must pass through. Then Driscoll offers one particular logismos, the evil thought of “love of money” as emblematic of the kind of issues that one deals with when fighting the temptations inherent in all eight logismoi. After this, we have a chapter on apatheia and purity of heart, the intermediate goal of Christian living. What follows is about the more advanced life, for abandonment by God is an experience

6 Evagrius Ponticus: Ad Monachos, trans. and commentary by Jeremy Driscoll (New York: Paulist Press, 2003). Review Essay 505

that is for those who have acquired purity of heart. Then Driscoll introduces the reader to some monastic figures who represent a way of approaching Scripture that informed the life of the desert monks. A final chapter challenges those who would too clearly distinguish between simple and erudite monks. All of the studies are brought to a summation in the conclusion. An abbreviations list (pp. 168–70) and a bibliography (pp. 171–85) complete the volume. This book will certainly be useful to those who want get to know Evagrius because he has something to say about how to live and how to approach God, rather than just study an esoteric teacher with an unconventional eschatology, which may or may not set him up for some Christological dilemmas that he might not have wanted to get involved in, but which later came back to bite him. We have already admired what the theologian A.M. Casi- day of the University of Durham has to say about Evagrian studies overall. It is therefore felicitous that his own Evagrius Ponticus has recently been published as part of the very fine ongoing series on the Fathers that Routledge Press is so helpfully continuing to turn out. This book is eminently readable. It will therefore be a welcome introduction to Evagrius for many university students. Like Jeremy Driscoll’s book, which starts with an introduction subtitled “Why Read Evagrius,” Casiday’s begins with a brief presentation of “Why Evagrius Matters.” But Casiday’s introductory essay (pp. 3–40) goes on to elucidate that issue by looking into his life and his “after-life,” as the author puts it, presenting Evagrius as he was received (or rejected) from his own times to ours. The treatment is very different from the precise bibliographical survey that we referenced at the beginning of this essay, but it is very clear. Casiday sums it up thus (p.36): “ In place of a metaphysical system, we have argued that Evagrius’ theology is better approached as a structured and disciplined way of living.” He then remarks sharply that “Evagrius has a serious expectation that ascetic undertakings are prerequisite to understanding. I am aware of no reason for 506 Andriy Chirovsky

supposing that we can ignore his expectations and still understand his teachings” (p.37). That is brilliantly to the point. After a brief glossary of terms, the rest of the volume presents a series of representative texts from Evagrius in Casiday’s own English translation. Several are the first to appear in English and thereby constitute a unique contribution. Casiday’s selection is full enough to give a real picture of the Evagrian corpus without becoming tedious. Neither his introductions nor his annotations are anywhere nearly as full as those of Sinkewicz, but he gives a much broader taste of Evagrius’s writings. Not restricting himself to the ascetic corpus, Casiday begins with several letters, and then moves to scriptural Scholia, treatises and chapters, culminating in the Chapters on Prayer. These are not merely selections, but rather complete works, carefully chosen for pedagogical value. For each of these Casiday lists where one can find both the source texts and translations into modern languages, including other English translations. A bibliography of primary and secondary literature (pp. 238–246) rounds out the volume, together with an index. One should also note that the cover is graced with an iconographic representation of Evagrius from an Armenian manuscript (the Armenian Church officially recognizes Evagrius as a saint), a fuller reproduction of which appears on p.xii. My only substantive complaint about this book is that it, like Sinkewicz’s volume, forces one to refer to endnotes. And I really want to read Casiday’s annotations. I could understand the difficulty of formatting footnotes in an age of lead type and galleys. What the problem is today I cannot fathom. Evagrius’s eschatology seems easier to figure out. I look forward to another, planned volume on Evagrius, edited by A.M. Casiday, to be published by Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press.7

7 A.M. Casiday, ed. Re-Thinking Evagrius Ponticus (Crestwood NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, forthcoming). Also forthcoming from the same publisher is the improbably titled book of Gabriel Bunge, Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread, trans. Anthony Gythiel. As this volume of Logos was going to press, I became aware of yet another book on Evagrius that will be published very soon: Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). Clearly, then, Review Essay 507

In this Internet age, scholarship is incredibly enhanced when the World Wide Web is used effectively. The website on Evagrius maintained by Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies editor Joel Kalvesmaki is a resource that anyone trying to keep up with Evagrian Studies should keep in mind.8 The website offers extensive and frequently updated entries and links on the life, corpus, bibliography of Evagrius, as well as images him and links to online resources. The resources reviewed in this article serve to demonstrate that as we get to know him better, Evagrius remains attractive, and deeply challenging. He also remains a touchstone of controversy. Evagrius would probably see all the arguing about his legacy as a massive distraction from the goal of pure prayer.

Andriy Chirovsky

® ® ® ®

Evagrius remains a going concern for many scholars, and we will have to revisit him in a future review of these new works. 8 It can be found at http://www.kalvesmaki.com/EvagPont/. Those interested especially in the eight evil thoughts should look up D. Frank Murphy’s web site at http://www.evagrius.net.

Book Reviews

Ken Parry, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christia- nity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 508 pp.

This is the seventeenth volume in a series of “Companions to Religion” that Blackwell has been publishing since 2000. By contrast to the standard “dictionary” format, which includes a very large number of mostly brief entries on a wide array of topics, these “companions” are composed of a smaller number of longer more in-depth essays on various aspects of a particular field of study. The present volume complements The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, also edited by Ken Parry, which appeared in 1999. The first fifteen essays in the book are devoted to specific churches or groups of churches in the Christian East: Arab, Armenian, Bulgarian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian, Greek (after 1453), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Syriac Christianity, as well as Eastern Christianity in the United States and China, and a single essay on the Eastern Catholics. The remainder of the book includes two articles on Eastern liturgical traditions; two on iconography and church architecture, four on hagiography in the Eastern Orthodox, Syriac, Coptic and Armenian traditions, and finally a concluding essay on sociology and Eastern Orthodoxy. Each article concludes with a bibliography for further reading. Altogether there are twenty-five contributors to the volume, all of them highly qualified to address the topic they were assigned. The result is a reference work that contains a wealth of information on the Christian East, and is very useful for the undergraduate, scholar, and general reader alike. While some of the topics are well known, such as the historical development of Byzantium and Russia, other articles on less familiar churches are particularly useful, especially the ones devoted, for example, to the churches in Georgia, Bulgaria, and Ethiopia. Inevitably a collection of essays by very different individuals will lead to a certain unevenness in the overall texture of 510 Ron Roberson

the articles. For example, the article on Russia by Basil Lourié deals at length with the historical developments of the six- teenth to eighteenth centuries, but devotes only two and a half pages to the dense and tragic history of that church from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the present. The article on Bulgaria by Ivan Zhelev Dimitrov, on the other hand, offers a very brief survey of the early historical development of the church in that country but focuses in much greater detail on developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Also, some of the articles, such as those dealing with the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Serbs, include sections detailing such matters as the church’s spirituality, institutions, popular devotions, or attitudes towards ecumenism, while others (Bul- garia, Georgia, Romania, Russia, China) are composed of a single straightforward historical survey that in some cases omits these aspects entirely. The reader would have benefited from greater consistency on this score, with parallel sections at the end of each essay dealing with particular churches. Some comments on individual articles are in order. “Ro- manian Christianity” – really the Romanian Orthodox Church alone – is well surveyed by Mircea Pacurariu, emeritus professor of theology in Sibiu and the author of many works on the history of his church. However, certain blind spots need to be noted. For example, he manages to describe the origins of the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania (197), without even mentioning the name of the new church. He also passes over in silence the situation of the Romanian Orthodox Church during the years of Antonescu’s right-wing dictatorship and alliance with Nazi Germany, a period when the Orthodox-inspired Iron Guard movement was in its ascendancy. Most astonishingly, he makes no mention whatsoever of the suppression of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church by the new communist regime in 1948, or the fact that the government handed over many hundreds of former Greek Catholic churches to the Orthodox at that time. (In fact, the story of the martyrdom of that Eastern Catholic Church is not told anywhere in this book.) Pacurariu also appears to support an ecclesiology that denies any role to the patriarchate of Constantinople among the Orthodox churches. He does not even mention the fact that Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 511

the Ecumenical Patriarchate formally recognized the autocephaly of the Romanian church in 1885 (the Romanian Orthodox Church dates its autocephaly from this year and not from the 1864 self-declared independence cited by Pacurariu), and he presents the establishment of the patriarchate in 1925 purely as an act of the Romanian synod and Parliament without reference to Constantinople’s formal acceptance of this move later in the same year. In the preface, editor Ken Parry of the Macquarrie Univer- sity in Sydney, Australia, writes that while he may not agree with everything the authors write, he respects their right to say it. Surely he is referring to the article on Greek Christianity after 1453 by Vrasidas Karalis, an associate professor of modern Greek at the University of Sydney. In his essay Karalis summarizes very well the plight of Greek Orthodoxy under Ottoman rule, and provides a valuable overview of developments in the nineteenth century when an Orthodox Church of Greece independent of the patriarchate of Constantinople came into existence and later expanded with the boundaries of the new Greek state. But at the end of the article, Karalis mounts a full scale assault on the ethos and mentality of the Orthodox Church of Greece today that goes on for several pages. He complains that its present situation “is the grossest distortion of the eastern tradition: the Greek Orthodox Church has to be seen as another political party, not as an eschatological community; it is characterized by arrogance, secularism and a marked anti-intellectual mentality which, disguised under the false pretences of defending faith and opposing secularity, impose a mentality of intolerance, sterility and fundamenta- lism” (184). Certainly there are elements of truth in Karalis’s excoriation of the Church of Greece, elements that would apply just as well to any number of other Orthodox churches. But his sweeping condemnation is not helpful, and stands in stark contrast to the uncritical approach that Pacurariu adopts in his article on the Romanian Orthodox Church. If there is a major lacuna in this volume, it is India. The ancient community of Thomas Christians in today’s Kerala along the southwest coast of the subcontinent traces its origins back to the preaching of the Apostle Thomas himself. For over 512 Ron Roberson

a thousand years it prospered along the Malabar coast, in full if sporadic communion with the Assyrian Church of the East. When the Portuguese arrived at the end of the fifteenth century, they found a Christian community fully integrated into Indian society with its own distinct liturgical, theological, spiritual, and canonical traditions. Even if Heleen Murre-van den Berg states in her article on Syriac Christianity (249) that the Indian churches will be treated elsewhere in the volume, in fact this does not happen. True, today’s Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, the largest of the churches descended from the Thomas Christians, is treated with necessary brevity by Peter Galadza in his article on the Eastern Catholics. But a church of such antiquity, uniqueness, and size merits much more ample treatment in a volume that devotes, for example, a nine-page article to Eastern Christianity in China where the first Russian Orthodox arrived in the seventeenth century and whose number of faithful has always been very small. A full study of the Thomas Christians tracing the development of the churches that resulted from the fragmentation of the community after the disastrous arrival of the Portuguese would have filled the gap. The articles on the various liturgical traditions of the East are well done and provide an excellent overview of the field, although strictly speaking Brian D. Spinks’s article on “Orien- tal Orthodox” liturgical traditions should not have included the Assyrians under that rubric. The Assyrians are appropriately omitted in Lucy-Anne Hunt’s article on the Oriental Orthodox icongraphic and architectural traditions but unfortunately they are not treated elsewhere. Perhaps a broader term such as “non-Byzantine” or “Syriac, Armenian, and Alexandrian” traditions would have allowed for the inclusion of all these churches in both cases. The four mostly brief articles on hagiography in various traditions are very illuminating, and attest to the continuing vitality and faithfulness of these Eastern Chris- tians through the great suffering they have often encountered in our own times. The book concludes with a very interesting essay by Peter McMylor and Maria Vorozhishcheva on sociology and Eastern Orthodoxy. The authors rightly lament the fact that Eastern Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 513

Christianity has tended to fall through the cracks in the study of the sociology of religion. They attribute this in part to the continuing influence of Max Weber whose bias against Catho- licism (and Orthodoxy by implication) is well known. They conclude with a critique of Samuel Huntington’s categoryza- tion of Orthodoxy as a separate “civilization” that is composed of Russia and a series of satellites that will eventually include Greece. They write that the notion of civilization inevitably leads to generalizations and produces oversimplified descriptions. The authors warn against a cultural reductionism where whole societies are explained by reference to their religion alone. Many other factors are at work, including politics, social structures and broader economic relations. It is much better, they argue, to see Orthodoxy “within the broad and deep civilizational framework of Christianity.” This points to the overall importance of the volume under review. The complex matrix of churches and traditions described here is an ancient and fundamental component of world-wide Christianity. It needs to be better known among students of Christian history and theology of all the other traditions since its absence results in an impoverished understanding of the Church. This collection of essays is a vital contribution to this urgent task.

Ron Roberson United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Washington, DC

® ® ®

514 Adam A.J. DeVille

David N. Bell, Orthodoxy: Evolving Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications/Liturgical Press, 2008), viii + 241 pp.

I rejoiced when I found David Bell’s new book. For I teach introductory courses on Eastern Christianity to students who are largely if vaguely Protestant, with a substantial minority of Roman Catholics making up the rest of my classes. Neither of these groups has any experience of Eastern Chris- tianity, and so I have been trying to find the best introductory text for them. In some ways, there has never been a better time to be on the hunt for good texts, which continue to be published, including, recently, the superlative introduction offered by John McGuckin’s major and massive work The Orthodox Church (Blackwell, 2008), which has perhaps set the pace for all new works to come in the “post-Kallistos Ware” world of Orthodox introductions. Metropolitan Kallistos is, of course, still alive and active, and we pray God that he remains so ad multos gloriosque annos. His scholarly achievements are many and considerable, and we all owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. I mean neither ingratitude nor disrespect when I note that it seems increasingly clear that Ware’s 1963 classic (reprinted many times, most recently in 1997) The Orthodox Church has two serious rivals as far as first-rate introductions by Orthodox theologians themselves. The first such rival is of course McGuckin’s text, which I should greatly love to use with my students save for its prohibitive cost and bountiful detail, much of which would be (alas) wasted on undergraduates. The other rival, which I have now adopted, is David Bell’s Orthodoxy. Before Bell, I was using Ware’s text because it covered most of the areas I thought important, and did so in an affordable paperback edition. But Ware, my students claimed (to my horror), has “too much history.” As one of a strongly historicist bent, I found that claim bewildering and depressing in about equal measure, but realized I could do little to resist it given the deplorable elementary education to which most of them have been subjected, with the time that could have been spent studying history instead wasted on self-esteem sessions. Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 515

Bell himself, as he recounts in the introduction, found among his students similar reactions to Ware’s extensive history, and he therefore decided to write this present text. The result is a perfect balance between dispassionate scholarly explanation of Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and an sensitive “insider view” on the other. Bell, a much published professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and recent inductee into the Royal Society of Canada, is also a subdeacon in the Canadian archdiocese of the Orthodox Church of America, in which capacity he is helping to lead a new mission parish in St. John’s. His text avoids any hint of triumphalism or smug- ness, and he also avoids taking things for granted by clearly explaining terms and making apt comparisons. To do all this in a brief, cogent, affordable book is no small achievement. An additional merit of this text is Bell’s even-handed and very straightforward admission of criticisms of Orthodoxy on several points, and his unstinting recognition that sometimes other Christians do a better job at certain things than Orthodox themselves do. He admits (134) that “some Orthodox bishops in recent years” have been “nothing short of disastrous.” He recognizes that the Catholic Church has been “far more enlightened” in affirming the theological works of women like “Julian of Norwich or Teresa of Avila” (both of whom he calls spiritual teachers “of first importance”), and says that only “obdurately stupid” Orthodox would deny the gifts and theological insights of such women as these (79). He is somewhat wary of the great influx of recent converts into Orthodoxy, some of whom bring a fundamentalist mindset and manifest “too much blind faith in the Orthodox world” (76). Finally, his treatment of the filioque is balanced and irenic. Bell very helpfully begins with his first chapter, “Taking a Look Around.” He has quite logically made this his first chapter on the assumption that for many people their first encounter with Orthodoxy will be precisely in a church – at a funeral or wedding, out of curiosity, or, in the case of my students, because they are required to attend at least one Eastern Christian service and then write about it. (These papers always yield richly comic results as in, e.g., the student who described the little entrance of the Divine Liturgy thus: “the priest 516 Adam A.J. DeVille

brought the very shiny bible [sic] through the Beautiful Gates” [sic]. Another described the priest “walking down the stairs with a long chain with jingling things attached and a round ball on the end with smoke coming out of it. I assumed it was an in scent burning [sic]”!) After this first chapter, Bell dips into a modest bit of history before going on to spend time on icons (the book helpfully includes six colour plates of icons) and doctrine, returning, only in his eighth chapter (“Going to Church”), to reflections that, logically, belong with his first. One of the only two very minor criticisms I have of this book is that its arrangement seems haphazard – connections between chapters are not always clear, and reflections on similar or related topics (especially liturgy and sacraments) are often scattered far apart in two or more chapters when they could have been either con- densed into one longer chapter or else been ordered consecu- tively. My only other equally minor criticism is that there is very occasionally a use of inadequately nuanced or hackneyed ideas and expressions. One sees both of these at work in Bell’s brief treatment of the development of papal primacy. Here he would do well to consider the far-reaching influence Maximus the Confessor played in advancing papal claims. As Andrew Eko- nomou has convincingly shown (see his Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590–752), papal history reveals to us the richly ironic and unintended spectacle that much of what the East today finds objectionable in the papacy is (in Ekonomou’s words) the “product of Eastern minds bent on combating a heresy [Monotheletism] of Eastern origin” and using every method at their disposal to do so. An additional reference that one would like to see here – at least in the notes – to nuance Bell’s use of that old line about Ortho- doxy only recognizing a “primacy of honour” (40) for the pope is Brian Daley’s landmark article “Position and Patronage in the Early Church: the Original Meaning of ‘Primacy of Honour,’” Journal of Theological Studies 44 (1993): 529–53. Daly makes it clear that “honour” has always entailed very real and substantial responsibility and authority. Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 517

Apart from these very minor issues, this is a wonderful introduction, and Bell is to be congratulated for giving us such a useful text.

Adam A.J. DeVille University of Saint Francis Fort Wayne, IN

® ® ®

518 Edith M. Humphrey

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) (Doubleday: New York, 2007), +400 pp.

Some may think it an impertinence to review a book written by the supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic communion. However, His Holiness makes it clear in his introduction that he offers this tome as “Joseph Ratzinger”: this is neither an encyclical nor a magisterial document. Rather, it contains theolo- goumena, or carefully considered opinion(s) on a controverted topic. In the foreword, he uses such modest language as “I have tried, to the best of my ability…” (xxi); “I wanted to try to portray the Jesus of the gospels” (xxii); “this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but solely an expression of my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord’” (xxiii). In- deed, along with his humble request for a sympathetic reading, he notes that “everyone is free, then, to contradict me” (xxxiv). A candid (but appreciative) response, then, honours his signalled intent. Of course, even a personal inquiry into difficult matters by a spiritual leader of such stature is nothing to take lightly. It is clear from his manner that the author wants both to engage others in the ongoing discussion about the historical Jesus and to be of pastoral assistance – troubleshooting where some are puzzled, and encouraging where others are in distress. His perceptive study accomplishes all these ends, and sustained the keen interest of this reviewer until the very last page. Despite the wide-ranging conversation into which the pope enters, he avoids footnotes – although the annotated bibliography at the back of the book is organized according to chapter, and by order of the authors mentioned. This feature (along with the glossary) is congenial to the non-specialist, but academic readers will find themselves both spotting and speculating upon the influence of other scholars, not explicitly cited, but rather subsumed under general references. Names mentioned make present a host from ancient days up until today, clearly worth the attention of both author and readers: Origen, Saint Cyril, Saint Gregory Nyssa, John Meier, Evdokimov, Schna- ckenburg, Soloviev, Gnilka, Neusner, Hengel, Stuhlmacher, Raymond Brown, and others. The book is both a catholic and a Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 519

twenty-first-century work, although vestiges of the earliest “quests for Jesus” may be glimpsed in a few charming passages, as when the gentle topography of the “Mount of Beati- tudes” is contrasted with the severity of Mosaic Sinai (67)! We are reminded of the donkey’s long eye-lashes that so captured Renan’s imagination in his Vie de Jésus. The very helpful foreword outlines the author’s method and presuppositions. He takes account both of the manner in which Jesus (in the gospels) read the Bible, as a united meta- narrative, and of scholarly critical method. Specifically, he argues: it is a mistake to separate the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith; because of the incarnation, the historical inquiry is consonant with a robust Christian faith though it has its limits; the Scriptures “belong together” yet they are diverse; canonical exegesis must supplement the historical-critical method; attention to genre, authorial intent, and historical context is sensible; there are three “interacting subjects” or speakers of the Scriptures, that is, the original authors, the people of God, and God Himself. One can, perhaps, discern some subtexts behind these principles. For example, it seems that the pope ap- proves the historical quest of, say, a John P. Meier, in contrast to the dismissive and arguably more docetic approach of Luke T. Johnson. On the other hand, the speculative limits of historical hypothesis, the value of canon, and the weight of the mature reading of the people of God must be taken into account. His Holiness intends, then, to incorporate the best of the historical-critical method with a respect for the canon and the traditional readings of the Scriptures, and so “offer a properly theological interpretation of the Bible.” His reference to canonical readings must point specifically to Childs and the Yale school. Moreover, his debate and positive approach surely are also informed by other insights of unnamed scholars: hypothesis-centered historical inquiry (liberal Protestant E.P. Sanders), allusive literary criticism (Methodist Richard Hays), composite theological-literary-historical-philosophical approach (Angli- can N.T. Wright, Orthodox Theodore Stylianopoulos) and the renewed interest in ancient “pre-critical” methods now evinced by those many who are reviving theological interpretation of the Bible. 520 Edith M. Humphrey

Prior to and during the course of his own argument, the pope offers a perspicacious sketch of the extended academic quest(s) for the historical Jesus (from von Harnack, Weiss and Schweitzer up to today), along with their philosophical underpinnings. This writer, however, was surprised to find scarcely a trace of the particular findings of the “third quest” (Sanders, N.T. Wright, Vermes, et al) with regards to the character of the Pharisees. This may be because the pontiff’s research was conducted mostly on the question of Jesus, and not extended to Paul, the Judaizers, and the Law. However, the realms overlap, and this omission entails an unfortunate blurring of lines between “ethics,” “legalism” and Pharisaic attention to the dis- tinctives of Torah (62) – ironically, the same presupposition that catalyzed the Lutheran reactions to Rome as promoting “works-righteousness.” Similarly, it was surprising that he gives no recognition to recent observations concerning the “ascent” (rather than descent) of the Son of Man of Daniel 7, which has borne such weight in discussions of the “little apocalypse” among N.T. Wright and his interlocutors. Mostly, however, the work is impressively nuanced, despite its designed audience of non-specialists. There is a cogent discussion of the meanings of the “Kingdom of God,” which neither dismisses the social or internal possibilities of the phrase, but then argues effectively for a Christological and dynamic sense, that is, Jesus as the active “Kingdom of God in person”(188.). His analysis of the Sermon on the Mount is enhanced by warm dialogue with Jacob Neusner, with whom he must ultimately differ, but from whom, he insists, we can learn much about obedience and the ongoing significance of the Decalogue “which Christians have to transfer into the context of God’s universal family” (122). The Beatitudes are enga- gingly personalized in the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi, who exemplifies the Christian’s call to die and rise again in baptism. The pope treats with subtlety both apocalyptic literature (not simply defined as eschatological) and the polyvalent but pointed parables of Jesus, entering into the scholarly conversation with ease, and pastorally indicating both its limits and its fruits. Careful exegeses of key points (for example, “deliver us from evil”) are explained by means of other perti- Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 521

nent Scriptural passages, and are skilfully woven into the major argument. The pope is also winsome in his response to skeptics who have dismissed some passages, for example, the “woes” that accompany the Beatitudes in Luke’s gospel are contextualized within the tradition of “two-way” wisdom writings, as a “warning sign” that “unmasks false promises and false offers” rather than as condemnations (96–7). Full of treasures, too, is the lengthy treatment of the gospel of John, where Jesus is seen both as the shepherd and the sheep-bearer! His Holiness’s pastoral character emerges in his trenchant, if sometimes too brief, words concerning some of the “hot button” issues of the day – the inadvisability of naming God “Mother,” the vulnerability of God in the incarnation, the effect of the Holy Spirit upon both human spirit and body, the conflict of Christological claims with a move to a univer- salized and non-specific religion, and the Nicene Creed not as a mere “hellenizing” document but essential for the life of the Church. While he holds a firm line in these areas, he does so with great affection for those who are questioning, with an attentiveness to the actual arguments put forth by skeptics, and with a marked avoidance of facile polemic. His approach and practice are a model to the faithful reader. Eastern Christians will find, as usual, that the pope is appreciative in many places of Orthodox spirituality and sacramentality, though the treatment of the Transfiguration remains unaccountably Western, with its call to “see, understand and hope,” but missing the invitation “to enter the cloud” today, to which the God-seers have testified (Luke 9:34). Despite this bifurcation, readers of varied backgrounds will find here solid food for thought and for the spirit, from one who joins Peter in encouraging creedal Christians to confess, with more depth: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Edith M. Humphrey Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Pittsburgh, PA

® ® ® 522 Michael Plekon

Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider eds., Encounter Bet- ween Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfigu- ring the World Through the Word, (Farnham, UK/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).

For some, perhaps many readers, both of the “orthodoxies” in the title of this collection may be unfamiliar. For all too many, “Eastern Orthodoxy” is equivalent to colourful icons, many candles and clouds of incense, and long services chanted in ancient languages. Likewise, the provocative movement, largely academic in nature, called “radical orthodoxy” may appear as a contradiction in terms, and also for the most part remains similarly unknown. Yet increasingly among students of theology and religious studies more broadly, both of these are getting to be more familiar. This collection of the papers presented at a conference held at Cambridge University in 2005 goes a very long way in bringing one up to speed on the present state of theological concerns and work in both orthodoxies. The editors are to be both congratulated and thanked, not only for holding this conference in the first place, but even more so for adding to the papers presented there further contributions from scholars who could not attend or were not able to offer presentations. Some of the authors are the leading figures within Radical Orthodoxy, including John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and Phillip Blond. These were joined by Ro- wan Williams, Michael Northcott, and David Bentley Hart. From the Eastern Orthodox side come Andrew Louth, Antoine Arjakovsky, Marcus Plested, Nicholas Loudovikos, Mihail Neamtu, and Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev. (Readers of Logos may recall that papers from an earlier encounter between Radical Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodoxy were published here in vol. 47, the result of a conference held at the Ukrainian Catholic University in June 2006: “Radical Orthodoxy: A Christian Answer to Post-Modern Culture”). Contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy, of course, continues different but not essentially divisive traditions and perspectives on Christian theology, liturgy, and life from those in the West. There are within Eastern Christianity churches in communion Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 523

with the bishop of Rome and those still separated since the great schism of 1054. And among all these Eastern churches there are decided differences not only in language but in theological viewpoints as well as differences more cultural than theological. Thus it is never really possible for any individual Eastern scholar to embody or speak for all in the churches. That said, those speaking from the eastern traditions offer a fascinating series of responses. These include, first of all, Antoine Arjakovsky’s setting the foremost Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century, Sergius Bulgakov, in dialogue with Jean-Marc Ferry (with a response by Rowan Williams, himself a Bulgakov scholar). Then there is Andrew Louth’s beautiful and profound meditation on the liturgy’s understanding of space and time, with Catherine Pickstock’s response. Closely related is Mihail Neamtu’s analysis of the social and political construction of monastic liturgy in the East. Marcus Plested’s insightful assessment of the Eastern Church Fathers’ sense of wisdom is very nicely matched by Adrian Pabst’s look at wisdom and politics in both the East and West. Nicholas Loudovikos specifically contrasts Eastern Orthodoxy with Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank responding with some ecumenical implications of the two. From the side of Radical Orthodoxy, we have John Mil- bank’s long and demanding yet brilliant effort to bring to Western theologians the insights of those who talked about Sophia, including Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, and most especially Sergius Bulgakov. Michael Northcott brings the market economies and societies of the world into conversation with hope, as Graham Ward confronts the suffering of the modern world with the New Testament understandings of kenosis, poiesis, and genesis. Phillip Blond takes on Aquinas and Christoph Schneider explores Lacan. It is, I think, the reader’s call as to whether or not the encounter between the two “orthodoxies” is successful, a real meeting of traditions, and beyond that useful. Some efforts in this collection I think do succeed in genuine dialogue while others, for various reasons, do not cross the bridge. A few remain rather solely within academic, intellectual borders, though some do attempt to connect with social and political 524 Michael Plekon

realities. Still others operate with perhaps incompatible readings of the ills of modernity. Sergius Bulgakov is passionately invoked by both “orthodoxies,” yet at least in my grasp of his theological project, Bulgakov, like others in the “Paris School,” sought conversation with the modern world and saw many positive aspects of its political, social, and economic development despite such monstrosities as the destruction of alleged “enemies” by both Bolshevik and Fascist regimes. On another point, I take issue with David Bentley Hart’s cavalier dismissal of historical developments in the West, for example, the emphasis on God’s transcendence, particularly when he makes the hackneyed claim that Eastern Orthodoxy is innocent of this and other theological deformations. I am reminded of Florovsky’s partisan and skewed account, The Ways of Russian Theology. Though such arrogance continues to be demonstrated, if some real dialogue with the rest of the Western churches is really desired, then Eastern Christians need to remove the beam from their own eyes before attempting to extract the splinters they so easily identify in the West. This same criticism goes for the equally wild, often in- coherent rejections of the modern period’s theology by propo- nents of Radical Orthodoxy. Milbank is one of the principal perpetrators. Yet despite these comments, the collection is impressive in the diversity of styles and approaches, and the ways in which it engages the modern world with the Christian tradition. I am reminded of another time when Christians of the West welcomed those of the East fleeing the Russian Revolution and seeking new homes in European cities such as Prague and Berlin and Paris. In Paris one of the most productive encounters between East and West took places in the religious-philosophical asso- ciations led by Nicholas Berdiaev, in gatherings held at Mother Maria Skobtsova’s house of hospitality, in the YMC Press and St. Sergius Institute that Paul Anderson of the American YMCA helped fund, and in the first ecumenical Anglican- Orthodox group to be founded, still existing today, the Fellow- ship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. In other words, conferences like this one in Cambridge and the earlier one in Lviv, with Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 525

their collegial connections established and information ex- changed, remain signs of hope for the future – for unity in the churches and for collaborative work “for the life of the world.”

Michael Plekon Baruch College of the City University of New York

® ® ®

526 J. Kevin Coyle

Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladi- mir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 314 pp.

Theological appreciation of Augustine of Hippo in the Christian East has been ambivalent at best. Until his De Trini- tate was translated into Greek in the thirteenth century, the East knew him mainly by reputation. If Orthodox theologians have long regarded Augustine as a saint, even father of the Church, since the mid-twentieth century they have tended to consider him as the vehicle, if not the origin, of problems like the insertion of the filioque into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan profession of faith; the western tendency to begin its discourse on God with the divine essence as absolutely simple, thereby reducing the Persons to mere relations; failure to properly distinguish between essence and energies in the Godhead; rejection of apophaticism; accentuating original sin and its dele- terious effect on free will; and prioritization of philosophy over theology. In that context Orthodox Readings of Augustine, a collection of papers delivered at the conference of the same title held in June 2007 at Fordham University in New York, is a welcome contribution to dialogue between East and West on Augustine. The first entry, by the editors (“Augustine and the Orthodox: ‘The West’ in the East”), is a very interesting overview of Augustine’s mixed reception by the East, and nicely complements the 2000 work of M.I Tataryn, Augustine and Russian Orthodoxy. Next, in her study of Manuel Planoudes’s translation of De Trinitate (c. 1280), Elizabeth Fisher examines the translator’s identity and theological and linguistic competence, and the translation’s reception; while Reinhard Flogaus in “Inspiration-Exploitation-Distortion: The Use of St Augustine in the Hesychast Controversy” zeroes in on Gregory Palamas’s dependence on Planoudes’s translation of De Trini- tate. In “Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen,” Joseph Lienhard suggests three ways to discern influences by these Cappodocians on Augustine: impressionis- tic (resonances between the three); census (the times Augus- Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 527

tine mentions the two Cappadocians by name); and textual (quotations where he names the authors): there are only two such substantial citations of Basil (one of them erroneously ascribed), but Augustine cites Gregory more often. In “Making a Human Will Divine: Augustine and Maximus on Christ and Human Salvation,” Brian Daley explores whether Augustine’s theology of sin and grace influenced Maximus the Confessor. Maximus could have gained knowledge of Augustine during his time near Carthage (late 620s to 645). Maximus speaks more in terms of deification where Augustine speaks of grace, but there are analogies between Maximus’s and Augustine’s thought on the humanity of Jesus, grace, and salvation. Lewis Ayres in “Sempiterne Spiritus Donum: Augustine’s Pneumatology and the Metaphyics of Spirit” argues that “Augustine offers an extraordinarily sophisticated account of the Father as principium of the Trinitarian communion of Father, Son, and Spirit … who together constitute … the Trinitas quae est Deus” (129); that Augustine always speaks of God’s being in terms of the three Persons and not simply as the divine essence alone; and that “Augustine’s mature pneumatology completes his account of this communion as eternally established by the persons’ mutual relationships” (140). In “Calling upon God as Father: Augustine and the Legacy of Nicaea,” John Behr suggests that “by starting with the in- separability of divine operations and paying close attention to the grammar of divine simplicity, we arrive at a much more sensitively drawn picture of Augustine’s trinitarian theology, and one which seems to render all the criticisms levelled against him as baseless” (160). Still, Behr concludes that “There is something seriously difficult and troublesome about Augustine’s trinitarian theology from an Eastern Orthodox perspective” (165). Jean-Luc Marion’s “Idipsum: The Name of God according to Augustine” argues that Augustine’s God-language is both apophatic and cataphatic, linkng God and Being and citing “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14), which he sees as God’s most proper name. This is often taken to mean that for Augustine God is “being itself” (ipsum esse), is “is” (deus est est); but with reference to God Augustine employs the phrase id ipsum (“that 528 J. Kevin Coyle

itself”) much more often. David Bentley Hart in “The Hidden and the Manifest: Metaphysics after Nicaea” challenges the diametrical opposition Orthodox theologians make between Augustine and the eastern fathers, particularly the Cappado- cians, and argues for a continuity between them. “In the case of Augustine there can be no doubt that, in its basic shape, his account of the order of intra-trinitarian relations is all but in- distinguishable from that of the Cappadocians” (195). Siding with Marion’s approach, Hart takes Behr and David Bradshaw to task for their rejection of apophaticism in Augustine. In “Augustine the Metaphysician,” Bradshaw defends the idea that Augustine rejected the essence/energies distinction. For the Greeks, God’s essence possesses no form and surpasses all naming, yet is distinguishable from the divine energies, whereas Augustine rejects apophaticism because he rejects any hierarchical relation between the One and Being. Thus God’s existence becomes identical with the divine essence. In a postscript Bradshaw responds to Hart: “I maintain that Augus- tine rejected apophaticism in the specific sense that God is an object of νόησις” (247), so “there is a real difference on this issue between Augustine and the Greek fathers” (248). Carol Harrison’s “De produndis: Augustine’s Reading of Orthodo- xy” is concerned with lower-case orthodoxy. Much of what Augustine writes defends true faith against errors; but in orthodoxy there is a “dark side” of ambiguity. Augustine’s defence of orthodoxy is based on Scripture, whose understanding calls for analogy and metaphor; and on Tradition, where recta fides must be re-articulated if it is not to become arcane or unintel- ligible. In “Augustine’s Christomorphic Theocentrism,” David Tracy disputes the notion that Augustine is primarily a philosopher: his sermons reveal a theocentrism informed by affirmation of Christ’s divinity. Focusing on Augustine’s biblical commentary rather than his polemical works, Tracy sees a consistent theme: “Augustine’s theology is theocentric through and through. At the same time, Augustine’s theocentrism is constituted in and through his emphatic christomorphism” (273). More, even though Augustine wrote no treatise on christology or pneumatology, “the Christ-saturated Augustine … is Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 529

also a Spirit-saturated theologian” (274). The final contribution is Andrew Louth’s “Heart in Pilgrimage: St Augustine’s Reading of the Psalms,” which highlights Augustine’s homiletics, including his homily on Psalm 101 (LXX 100). Augus- tine’s homiletics provides a perspective on his theological thought different from approaches that typically focus on his major theological works (Confessiones, De Civitate Dei, De Trinitate) or his polemical ones. All the volume’s entries are thoughtfully written and rarely does the reader’s mind wander. It can be said that the overall picture here is not one of exoneration of Augustine; it needs to be said that western Christianity emphasized aspects of his thought it should not have while neglecting others to which it should have paid more attention; and that Eastern Christian thinkers might better focus on the latter instead of (usually) forming opinions from those other aspects. That said, the criticisms levelled at Augustine (from either direction) in this collection are usually fair. All the contributors caution against reading Augustine in the light of later theologies. Their collected papers not only present eastern and western readings of a great Latin theologian: they leave the reader with the impression that this collection is a vital source for anyone wishing to enter the debate of Augustine’s place in western theology and responsibility for the way Eastern Christianity views it.

J. Kevin Coyle Saint Paul University Ottawa, ON

® ® ®

530 Jennifer Spock

Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 297 pp.

Recently, Northern Illinois University Press (NIP) laun- ched a new series of books in Orthodox Christian studies. For a long time, NIP has published numerous titles in Russian studies. Now, however, this collection on Orthodox studies is more inclusive, including as it does titles pertaining to dogmatic and systematic theology, ecumenism, and relations between Orthodoxy and the West. This new line of books is a welcome addition to the growing interest in Eastern Christian theology that has been increasing over the years. Many larger colleges and universities now include a section on Eastern Christian thought in world religions courses, or a section on Orthodox theology in courses in Russian history or literature. With the launching of this new line of books, NIP is providing professors and researchers with important resources for sharing the beauty of Orthodox Christianity. Among NIP’s recent offerings is Jennifer Hedda’s new book, His Kingdom Come, a study on the pastoral care and social activism of clergy in pre-revolutionary Russia. This book is primarily focused on St. Petersburg and her theological academy, which became the fertile ground for a new interest in social and religious reform. The book is arranged into nine chapters, each dealing with one aspect of the new social- reform movement: the importance of the St. Petersburg Eccle- siastical Academy, preaching and pastoral care, Church and charities, catechesis and the new temperance movements, politics, and ecclesial renewal. We learn that the interest for social and philanthropic outreach was not inspired by the hierarchy but by the lower ranks of clergy, primarily the parish priests – including especially Georgii Gapon and Grigorii Petrov, on whom Hedda focuses her attention in several chapters. Among the many salient points made by Hedda, one in particular was striking: the way in which parishioners referred to the parish clergy. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, it was commonplace to refer to them as svaishchennik, which has roots in the Russian word sviat, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 531

meaning “holy.” Hedda states that sviat had strong connota- tions of ecclesiastical power and authority, and this helped put clergy on the proverbial pedestal, granting them more power than perhaps they ought to have had. Hedda, however, points out that in the early nineteenth century a shift occurred where parish clergy were increasingly called pastyr, or pastor, meaning “shepherd”; this of course reflects a metaphor used by Jesus in John 10:11–18. Here Jesus refers to Himself as the good shepherd who takes care of His sheep, leading them to good pasture and protecting them from ravenous wolves. The linguistic shift from sviaschennik to pastyr is not benign because it is also a shift in reference. The priest is no longer seen as a cultic leader but a shepherd and caretaker of the flock, someone who teaches, preaches, leads, and takes care of the parishioners through moral instruction and guidance. The sviaschennik, on the other hand, refers primarily to the sacramental and cultic duties – to the person who leads the liturgical services, conducts baptisms, marriages, and funerals, and collects his treby or memorial offerings. This seemingly insignificant shift in terms was revolutionary. His Kingdom Come is certainly a work of inspiration. Not only is the book important for its historical value, but stands as a prophetic word to the Orthodox Church, and not just in Russia but around the world. Many parish clergy today have a narrow understanding and vision of their role. Are they to be seen primarily as cultic leaders slavishly following the Typicon or are they prophetic and inspired pastors leading their flocks to greater social outreach and care for the neighbour, thus fulfilling the command of Jesus in Matthew 25? If the Orthodox priest today is to be a living witness to the gospel, he must be inspired – as we all must – by the prophetic witness of these Russian pastors who fought for the poor, the widow, and the orphan, who used their talents and gifts not just for themselves or their congregations but for the culture and society around them. The only negative comment about this book is the lack of quotations from primary sources. Hedda does provide many references and resources for her well-documented work, but there are few direct citations from the sources themselves. 532 Jennifer Spock

While reading His Kingdom Come, I wanted to hear directly from Gapon and Petrov, from the faculty at St. Petersburgh Academy, and from others in order to allow these historical persons to come alive again. Perhaps this daunting task is for another young budding doctoral student, who can provide us with an anthology of primary documents from this period in Russian history in order to let these prophetic pastors speak for themselves.

Jennifer Spock Eastern Kentucky University Richmond, KY

® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 533

Kenneth F. Yossa, Common Heritage, Divided Communion: Advances of Inter-Orthodox Relations from Chalcedon to Chambésy (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), x + 272 pp.

The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has recently posed a deeply troubling question: why is it that “every serious ecumenical engagement between the Orthodox and Catholic communions reveals depth upon depth of substantial agreement, and yet always fades upon the midnight knell”? That question perforce applies, mutatis mutandis, to the ongoing efforts to find unity between the Eastern and Oriental Ortho- dox Churches, a process very carefully detailed and analyzed here by the Romanian Catholic priest Kenneth Yossa in this superb and important book, which is based on his doctoral dissertation at Marquette under the Jesuit ecumenist Michael Fahey. This book is very cogently and lucidly written, and has none of the “dissertationese” or other weaknesses one sometimes finds in such texts. Yossa begins with two chapters that tell the history of doctrinal definitions and divisions in the early Church. These two chapters are an impressive synthesis of a vast body of literature dealing with complex issues and a diversity of personages over the course of several centuries. This part of the book would function well on its own as an introduction to the first four ecumenical councils and their aftermath. The third chapter is also largely historical and descriptive in nature, though this time with a focus on the beginning of Orthodox ecumenical dialogue in 1960s and subsequent years, which saw astonishingly rapid and successful rapprochement between the Eastern and Oriental Churches. The first (unofficial) 1964 Aarhus, Denmark consultation, followed by the 1967 consultation in Bristol, England, both, in a matter of days, produced an agreement on the part of theologians and bishops on both sides that neither side was guilty of “the heresy suspected of it by the other” (100). The Bristol consultation also produced the (to my mind) astonishing statement that “dogmatic formulae can be transcended by the experience of the Church, which can complete them and extend them … safeguarded by the holy limits of Revelation.” If that is not an 534 Adam A.J. DeVille

endorsement of the concept of “development of doctrine” that some Orthodox theologians sneeringly dismiss whenever Ca- tholics raise the notion, then I do not know what is. After continued unofficial and official meetings over the next two decades, progress was made to such a point that, in 1990 in Chambésy, the agreed statement affirmed that “we have now clearly understood that both families have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith, and the unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition, though they have used Christological terms in different ways” (124). They went on to call for the lifting of “all anathemas and condemnations” and a consequent restoration of full eucharistic communion. As things have turned out, the greater difficulty has proven to be not the Christological debate, but the anathemas and condemnations each side hurled at the other. To retract these now would seem to suggest that the canonical and liturgical texts were somehow in error, a mind- boggling notion for many. 1993 was the last time the Eastern-Oriental Orthodox dialogue met officially. Since then, no formal meeting of all representatives of Churches on both sides has taken place, and no individual Church on either side of the divide has actually rati- fied the agreed statements. Worse, in the late 1990s, as the Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe continued to emerge from their communist pasts, some of them – the Georgian in particular – actually repudiated the earlier agreed statements, unhelpfully calling them “unacceptable.” This sad development followed on shortly from the Georgian Church’s with- drawal, in 1997, from the World Council of Churches. The situation in the Middle East, however, is much more positive, as Eastern and Oriental Churches there have continued the work of drawing closer to one another. The Coptic and Greek patriarchs of Alexandria, and the Greek and Syriac patriarchs of Antioch, have produced very similar agreements on limited sacramental sharing, catechetical co-operation, and other pastoral matters. Here, as in Europe, the focus has “shifted from the ‘what’ of the Christology to the ‘how’ of ecclesiology” (148). Today both sides need to grapple with the role of councils and their reception, with anathemas of saints Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 535

and fathers, and with jurisdictional questions (“one bishop to one city”). A further question has arisen in this dialogue as in the Eastern Orthodox-Catholic one: what is the real meaning and purpose of lifting an anathema or excommunication if it does not in fact lead to a shared sacramental life around one eucharistic table? If we are not excommunicated from one another, but yet not sharing one chalice, then what are we? Is there some kind of half-way house to unity? Are we, in other words – as Hart asked in the essay cited at the top of this review – really sure that we are in fact divided? (See Hart, “The Myth of Schism” in F.A. Murphy and C. Asprey, eds., Ecumenism Today: the Universal Church in the 21st Century [Ashgate, 2008]). Yossa’s last chapter contemplates the actual prospects for unity today, and treats first the vexed question of what to do with anathemas on one side of figures revered as saints on the other. Yossa proposes a “first step” of “amendments to the decrees of the general councils, particularly Chalcedon and Constantinople III” (179). He suggests the Orthodox (Byzan- tine and Oriental) could come meet together in a Pan-Orthodox synodal or patriarchal assembly to enact these amendments. Yossa also recognizes that this and similar gestures must be accompanied by a widespread healing of memories, and by what he variously calls “local ecumenism” or “popular ecumenism.” He notes that “very little, if anything, has changed in the popular view regarding ‘Monophysites’ in the West and in most Eastern Orthodox communities” (185). I spent the better part of a decade involved in the World Council of Churches, and I am intimately aware of how widespread a problem this is – and, of course, we know that this problem more than any other wrecked the prospects for union after Florence-Ferrara. Most people today know little about ecumenism and care even less. If theologians, hierarchs, and ecumenists do not “carry the people” with them, unity will never take hold. But in the case of Byzantine-Oriental dialogue, it is more than the laity whom the Spirit must convict to work for unity – or at least to cease opposing efforts towards it. Monastics (especially the Athonites) and not a few clerics and hierarchs on 536 Adam A.J. DeVille

both sides need to overcome the ancient mentality which continues today to condemn the other side as “heretical” and/ or “schismatic” and to slander all labourers for unity as guilty of the “pan-heresy” of “ecumenism.” Difficult though ecumenical dialogue and progress may be, Christians of all traditions need to realize that the will of Christ for unity among His followers is not something we can chuck because it is tiresome, or condemn because it does not fit into straitened and simplistic categories. After sixteen centuries of division, when the Byzantine and Oriental Orthodox have already come so far and unity is so agonizingly close, can any of us afford to continue to try the Lord’s patience by failing to advance towards the full and complete unity He demands of us?

Adam A.J. DeVille University of Saint Francis Ft. Wayne, IN

® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 537

Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self- Identity in the Modern Age, trans Peter Chamberas and Nor- man Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007), xi + 379 pp.

In reading this work, one cannot help but have mixed feelings. On the one hand, one welcomes the appearance of a new translation of the controversial and prolific Greek “neo- orthodox” philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras (b. 1935), who, along with John Zizioulas, is one of the few truly constructive Orthodox thinkers in the last forty years. The present work is one of four recent translations of Yannaras by the eminent translator and Patristic scholar Norman Russell (here with Peter Chamberas) published by Holy Cross Press. On the other hand, faced, as one is in this book, with such a jeremiad of passionate anti-western intensity combined with an uncritical paean to an Orthodox “theology of ecclesial experience” (180 and see 195), one is at first embarrassed as his fellow communicant, then inevitably tempted to dismiss the book as an aberration not reflective of contemporary Orthodox theology. Yet this would be a mistake for even in such deeply ecumenical and quite different thinkers from Yannaras as Zizioulas and Thomas Hopko, one encounters – albeit with less provinciality than is evidenced in our volume – both a collapse of Orthodoxy with Christian Hellenism (or “Greek- ness”) and the claim that “the West” has, in a favourite phrase of Yannaras, “distorted the Christian Gospel” (33, 41, 51 etc.). Yannaras’s paradigm – an assertion of a pan-Orthodox identity which is coextensive with Hellenism and a polemic against the “West” as that alienating reality which represents the distortion of Orthodoxy – is in no ways anomalous but has become the default option for a majority of Orthodox thinkers (with notable exceptions like Met. Kallistos Ware and Olivier Clément). This status quo has reigned since at least 1936 when Georges Florovsky began to outline his (now scholasticized) “neo-patristic synthesis” in two vastly influential papers given in Athens at the first Pan-Orthodox Congress of Theologians (“Patristics and Modern Theology” and “Western Influences in Russian Theology”). 538 Brandon Gallaher

The book is, then, a Florovskian history of the Western “pseudomorphosis” of Orthodoxy in Greece from the first Greek translations of Aquinas (whom Yannaras regards as among the scholastic architects of “totalitarianism” [12]) to what he regards as the awakening of Greek theology of the 1960’s with its (it must be said, rather belated) patristic revival. As a study, then, the work clearly hearkens back in a Greek mode to Florovsky’s Ways of Russian Theology (1937), showing itself thereby as an example of the contemporary creative exhaustion of the neo-patristic synthesis both in its unre- mitting attack on the Westernization of Orthodox theology (one thinks of Berdyaev’s quip that Florovsky’s volume should have been called “The Waywardness of Russian Theology”) and its identification of Orthodoxy with the Byzantine heritage. Yet the resemblance ends there as Florovsky’s history is a tour de force of one whom even his opponents acknowledged as “a real theological encyclopedia” (Vasili Zenkovsky) whereas with Yannaras, with the notable exception of his very critical account of Nikodemos the Hagiorite with his “Frankish God” (133), one must wait until the last five chapters before he goes beyond citing merely secondary literature and begins discussing the primary materials. These last chapters, beginning with his account of how the Bavarian government of Greece effected the autocephaly of the Church of Greece, sundering it from its mother-church, are, therefore, naturally, the most persuasive as he moves somewhat beyond potted biographies in the service of generalizing polemic to a detailed analysis of the undoubted manipulation of Greece by foreign powers and the wounds of its very real and enduring Latinization and self- surrender to Pietism. Particularly fascinating, as a witness to the latter, is his scathing and authoritative indictment of the sad Puritanism of the powerful Greek Brotherhoods (e.g., Zoe and Sotir) who had a lock on Greek society for almost three quarters of a century. Yannaras, as a former member of Zoe, broke from them under the influence of the remarkable Greek theologian (“Master Builder”) Demetrios Koutroubis. It is not doubted that Orthodox theology had a “Latin captivity” and so a return to the sources in the Fathers and the liturgy then was certainly needed, but it is hard to discern the shape of this his- Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 539

torical movement because of the thickness of the cloud of anti- western gas that covers the landscape of texts such as those of Florovsky, Yannaras and their sundry co-polemicists. Yet how then can we understand the relationship to the West in contemporary Orthodox theology? In what is perhaps Constantine Cavafy’s, best-known poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1904), we are given a heuristic device for understanding contemporary Orthodox theology’s continuing need to vacillate between constructing monuments of its own mag- nificence and edifices of its enduring alienation. The poem takes place in the capital of some unnamed Hellenistic realm, perhaps Constantinople, where, we are told by the dispassionate narrator, the populace is assembled in the agora waiting for the conquering barbarians, whom we know nothing about except that they are a ferocious people, utterly unsophis- ticated and non-urbane. The city, in awaiting its doom, moves sharply between inaction (the senate not passing laws, orators not making speeches) and preening aimed at dazzling the coming wave of barbarians with the greatness of its treasure. Yet night comes and Godot has not arrived and indeed messen- gers come to say that “there are no longer any barbarians.” Instead of elation, this news causes “unrest and confusion,” leading people to return to their homes “deep in thought” since “now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were some kind of solution.” Orthodox theology, likewise, is in a bind for in its assertion of its Eastern identity, it needs someone who can fulfil the role of barbarian, whom it can define itself against. However, by affirming its difference through condemning its Western barbarians, Orthodoxy has not found a solution to its confusion but has actually become ever more dependent upon the West. This dual movement – self-affirmation through negation of the Other – is particularly evident in the shifting sense of the “West” in Yannaras, who tells us that in his critique of “Western theology” he is not meaning “as an Orthodox” to contrast an externalized “Western” reality that is “wrong” with something “right” that is internal to himself (viii). As a “modern Greek,” he embodies the contradiction and alienation of the remains of “ecclesiastical Orthodoxy” in thirsting for the 540 Brandon Gallaher

“right” yet still bearing the unhappy reality of the “wrong” in a society “radically and unhappily Westernized” (viii). He is, then, a “Western person” so that in critiquing the West, he is engaging in “self-criticism; it refers to my own wholly Western mode of life” (ix). In his book, Yannaras is somewhat consistent with this working definition of the “West.” When Yannaras actually defines the term “West,” rather idiosyncra- tically, as the “spiritual failure” of the “religionizing of ecclesial reality, its transformation into self-centred moralism with legalistic presuppositions” it is in the context of his critique of Nikodemos the Hagiorite so that the spiritual failure which is “the West” “is not confined to Western Europe’ but is actually exemplified by him (137). Yet Yannaras does not hold to this definition of the “West” consistently, for the origin of “the West” continually seems to be identified with foreignness (184–85) and the triumph of the barbarian German tribes in the West-Roman Empire, western churches, and various presuppositions that define Western Christianity. It can be traced by him to Western “scholasticism,” whose poisoned well is Augustine and his “teachers” (Tertullian and Ambrose) (16– 17). The “West,” in turn, is contrasted with Orthodoxy, which Yannaras identifies with Hellenism, but we are told this reality is not “a place” but a “mode of life” or “existence” (6, 23–24). There would, then, seem to be some sort of symmetry here between his working definition of “West” and what he means by “East” as both are (apparently) modes of being or Heideg- gerean “stances” towards the world and its history not historical periods or territories. However, when Yannaras speaks of Orthodoxy he once again abandons his own definition of “East,” for it is inevitably tied to the “Greek spirit” (126) by which he means not only the Greek Fathers and their characteristic teachings but a uniquely Greek approach to reality expressed in Christian Hellenism whose origins clearly are in the Greek-speaking Eastern empire. What is troubling about this binarism of East and West, and this does not only apply to Yannaras, is that it too often makes the writer, to use Yannaras’s words, “oblivious to the Western origins of the ideas they propogate” (86). Yet this is by no means accidental. The binarism functions as a necessary Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 541

veil to hide from the subject his own dependence on the Other, thereby allowing him the necessary illusion that his identity is self-contained, that he is, as it were, in terms of personality, wholly a-se (i.e., aseity), from himself alone. Thus not only Yannaras’s negative polemic against the West is taken from Western sources (and he admits as much in earlier writings) but his positive reading of what constitutes “East” is actually quite Western in its provenance and he by no means acknowledges this. For the very sort of existential personalism that Yannaras espouses as uniquely Orthodox can be found in the work of Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas – not to mention, in a more marked religious vein, Mounier, Marcel, Buber, Brunner, Balthasar et al. Yannaras, and this might be applied to countless other contemporary Orthodox theologians, would then seem to be the most dependent on the West at the very points at which he claims to be most Greek, most Orthodox. Perhaps the very trouble with the scheme with which he is working is that it denies a basic truth, which is that I never come to know myself except in relationship to those who are not and indeed need not be the same as me. Thus an Eastern Orthodox cannot identify himself as Orthodox unless he first acknowledges that there are people in the world who are not Christians and there are some Christians who are not Eastern Orthodox but “Western.” Yet because one can identify them as Christian, one must simultaneously acknowledge that in their mode of life and teaching they coincide with Eastern Orthodoxy, which opens up the possibility that one need not be particularly Eastern Orthodox to be called properly “Christian.” But does this mean the end of Orthodoxy? When as an Orthodox one discovers that not only is there no essential “West” as was first thought, but that the West as one knew it does not and never did exist, and furthermore that neither is there an essential “East” as was initially conceived and that there never was such an East, one can either lose one’s religion and enter deeper into yet new forms of alienation or one can embrace one’s identity in seeming dissimilarity and gain one’s soul. Perhaps, then, the future of Orthodox theology is not through the tired self- reflexive movement of grasping desperately at a purely Eastern 542 Brandon Gallaher

phronema somehow available hermetically sealed from the West in the Fathers and liturgy – although such tradition should in no way be rejected – at the same time as it distinguishes itself from all that is not itself, alien, Western. Rather, Orthodox ecclesial identity might be discovered in and through a positive encounter with all that is Western including Western Christianity. Therefore, I know myself as most Eastern, most Orthodox, precisely in my encounter with what is not myself and through this meeting, I discover my heart’s true home. To alter Kipling, East is West and West is East and ever the twain shall meet; implicating one another in a ceaseless creative tension, a coincidence of opposites. Beginning with the East, although we might just as well begin with the other pole, we come to know Palamas best, then, at the very points where he uses (as Richard Flogaus has shown) Augustine’s De Trinitate and encounter Yannaras with the full force of truth when we see how he has uniquely transmuted Heidegger and Roman Catholic personalism in light of Palamas so being Augustinian despite himself. The West in this re-envi- sioning of neo-patristic methodology, beyond the sterile pola- rity of East and West (for we are not advocating abandoning these categories but only reconceiving the antinomy), would no longer be viewed as an alien Other, a barbarian whom I am always already awaiting as a convenient solution for my lack of a “daring of spiritual assurance” (Florovsky), but, instead we might meet the West as our brother and friend, the basis of my own self-exploration and self-discovery, through whom I arrive where I started and know myself for the first time. One hopes that with the increasing availability of Yannaras in English it will stimulate such a rethinking of Orthodox theological methodology rather than simply encouraging its further re- entrenchment in a “theology of repetition” (Florovsky).

Brandon Gallaher Regent’s Park College University of Oxford

® ® ® Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 543

Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), xv + 456 pp.

There is a certain strangeness that clings to this volume due to both its uniqueness and its idiosyncrasy in modern Orthodox theology. Before turning to its idiosyncrasy, which led to its condemnation in the 1930’s by both the Moscow Pa- triarchate and the Russian Church Outside Russia, let us note its singularity. The Lamb of God is the first volume of a multi-volume dogmatic theology. More precisely, it is the first volume (pub. Paris, 1933) of Bulgakov’s so-called major dogmatic or systematic trilogy (O Bogochelovechestve, On Godmanhood) and the latest volume to appear of Boris Jakim’s monumental En- glishing of Bulgakov. Before discussing its unique structure and some key elements of its profound idiosyncrasy, it would be wise to give a brief overview of what is a very complex work. It is divided into five chapters with a substantial introduction that surveys patristic Christology from the fourth to seventh centuries and it sets out what Bulgakov regards as the fundamental problematic of Christology, which his book attempts to answer, which is how to explain “divine-humanity” or “how is the Incarnation possible” as the union in the one person of Christ of two natures (4–5). The introduction is an impressive work of patristic scholarship and theological synthesis and its translation would finally have put pay to the notion – encouraged by Lossky and Florovsky – that Bulgakov was a mere religious philosopher with no knowledge of the Fathers, if Boris Jakim had not throughout the book (but especially in the introduction) removed or radically abridged many of the notes as well as many longer quotations and ex- curses. As it is, if one only read the English translation of Bulgakov one would have a poor sense of the intricacies of the theological debates Bulgakov is engaging in. Jakim believes, to be fair, that the notes tend to be “overdetailed and sometimes arcane” (xii), but so many aspects of his argument remain obscure without this material. Next, there follow the first two chapters on, respectively, the Uncreated/Divine So- 544 Brandon Gallaher

phia (Ousia) and the Created/Creaturely Sophia (world soul/ creation). (We shall return to the problematic nature of this distinction below). These two chapters – which are essentially on the doctrines of the Trinity and Creation including anthropology – set out the fundamental grammar of Bulgakov’s Christology, as the interplay of the two Sophias, and its major themes of divinization and kenoticism. The next three chapters express Bulgakov’s basic vision of God and the world in Christ. The third describes how the incarnation is the foundation of creation and this is possible because creation itself is sophianic so that the hypostatic union is possible because Sophia exists on both sides, as the divine nature (Divine Sophia) and human nature (Creaturely Sophia). Yet, turning to the fourth chapter, there is still apparently a vast “abyss” (242) between the Creator and the creature, the divine and the human. But how can one bridge this abyss? In order for the higher divine essence to accept the lower, and, for it to gradually raise that lower to itself, without in any way negating its proper life, it needs to empty itself and to take the lower into its very life. This kenosis of divinity can be seen for Bulgakov principally in a pre-eminent sense in the eternal absolute self-giving of the hypostases (here he influenced Balthasar) and this serves as the foundation for divine kenosis in the creation of the world and by extension in the Incarnation (although neither of the latter two disrupt or change the intra- trinitarian divine life. Here Bulgakov shows a profound albeit critical grasp of nineteenth-century (primarily German but also British) kenotic theology. Lastly, in the fifth chapter, Bulgakov uses the three-fold office of Christ as prophet, priest and king as the structure through which he examines the work of Christ. What is most striking methodologically in LG is both Bulgakov’s resolute Trinitarianism, making him in the same line as Barth, Rahner and Balthasar, where all dogma, as revealed mysteries, are understood in a Trinitarian manner (LG, p.371) and his antinomism or teaching on antinomy. All religious truths, he holds, building on the thought of Flo- rensky, are antinomic in that they contain two conceptually contradictory theses, which are equally dogmatically necessary but which reason cannot synthesise so they can only be held Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 545

together through faith. Thus, the Holy Trinity is completely unrelated to creation and unchangeable. The Trinity, however, without ceasing to be itself, simultaneously allows the relative to be posited in its own life, permitting itself to be related to a world and thereby opening itself up to change in its proper life. The Absolute becomes or is born as the Absolute-Relative or “God”: “the Absolute becomes God, united with creation in man through the God-Man” (398; cf. pp.121, 221ff.). The sweeping nature of Bulgakov’s systematics is wholly unique in modern Orthodox theology and is in stark contrast to neo-patristic synthesis, which, as the dominant movement in contemporary Orthodox theology after WWII, with the notable exception of figures like Staniloae and Romanides, has tended to avoid the writing of systematic theologies or dogmatics since it generally regards such endeavours as the product of western rationalism’s zeal to erect systems to contain the un- containable life of the Christian gospel. The fundamental structure of Bulgakov’s dogmatics, however, is drawn not from the Latin manual tradition and Lutheran and Calvinist scholasticism, as is the case for the dogmatics of Christos Androutsos, Panagiotes Trembelas and even Staniloae (who, for example, before he discusses the Trinity first deals with divine being, energies and attributes), but – as Andrew Louth has recently shown in an important essay – from the Byzantine liturgical tradition. The structure of the major trilogy, in turn, is patterned on the anaphora of the Byzantine Rite which is offered principally to the Father together with “your only-begotten Son and your Holy Spirit.” Thus the first two volumes (LG and The Com- forter) are dedicated to the Incarnate Son, symbolized in the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit. Finally, the last volume of the trilogy, The Bride of the Lamb, is dedicated to the Church and eschatology. Furthermore, Bulgakov not only engages with the patristic corpus – obscured, alas, by cuts by the translator – but, unusual for an Orthodox, responds to the major currents in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy. In short, Bulgakov’s work is unique in twentieth-century Orthodox theology in its originality, breadth, depth and sophistication and to find its peer, one must turn to figures outside Orthodoxy 546 Brandon Gallaher

with similar grand projects like Barth and Balthasar. If sheer creativity, synthetic power and erudition were the central factors in determining the worth of theological works then the LG would be held up, arguably, as one of the three or four greatest single volumes of twentieth century theology in any Christian tradition. It seems strange, then, to review the first English translation seventy-five years after it was first published. But the reason it has taken this long is also due its doctrinal idiosyncrasy, which we believe rightly drew (a sadly crude) official censure. To understand the volume’s idiosyncrasy one must first understand that Chalcedon, for Bulgakov, is absolutely fundamental. Apollinarius, he argued, was badly misunderstood because his account of the composition of the God-Man not only anticipated the scheme of Chalcedon but also in some ways provided intimations of the beginning of a positive definition, an answer to “how” the union might be possible. For Apollinarius, believes Bulgakov, sensed that the union of the divine and the human natures in the Logos was not an arbitrary external act of two utterly alien realities. Rather, the basis for the descent of the Logos to man is the fact that He already eternally is in some sense human, that is, the Logos possesses an eternal heavenly humanity (being the second Adam, the man from heaven) and it is after this image that the earthly man or first Adam was created. The patristic material cut by Jakim, therefore, is far from superfluous insofar as the whole volume can be viewed as an attempt, drawing on the intimations of Apollinarius but without falling into his errors, to express patristic Christology positively. The detailed discussion of Patristic Christology is foundational for the whole volume, and its abridgement in the introduction as well as Jakim’s later cutting of an excursus where Bulgakov defends himself from the accusation he is elaborating a contemporary Apollinaria- nism (which is one of the things of which he was later accused by Lossky and Stragorodski), is extremely regrettable. This is the only major flaw in what, it should be emphasized, is otherwise an impressive intellectual feat. “Sophia,” for Bulgakov, is the missing piece of the puzzle that explains how the divine and the human can be united in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 547

Christ. The divine and the human are capable of a “living identification” in the one life of the hypostatic union precisely because there is “something mediating or common which serves as the unalterable foundation for their union” which is the “sophianicity of both the divine world, i.e., of Christ’s divine nature, and of the creaturely world, i.e., of His human nature” (196–97). There are any number of difficulties with this scheme. “Sophia” is a difficult, highly problematic notion in Bulgakov due to its extreme polyvalence. In its divine mode, it is divine ousia, love, glory, the body of God, divine world, divine-humanity, etc. Bulgakov refuses to identify it solely with the Logos, departing from the Fathers, although he acknowledges that insofar as it is the humanity of divinity it is directly hypostatized by the Logos as the Divine Man, the divinity to its humanity. Yet if this seems confusing, then the whole matter becomes even murkier, for he wishes to speak of Sophia as the divine essence of love as hypostaticity (ipostas- nost’) or the capacity or basis for the hypostases own per- sonalization through ecstatic self-giving to one another yet this reality itself is quasi-personal and not only is loved by the hypostases but can respond in turn in love (hence the accusations that he had created a quaternity). When sophiology is applied to creation, Bulgakov argues, here following Solov’ev and Luraianic Kabbalism’s idea of zimsum (popularized by Moltmann), one must envision creation out of nothing as a process internal to God by which He allows for a “nothing” in Himself which He then plunges within becoming God in becoming, a divine repetition in creation. It is not surprising, then, that given that Bulgakov holds that the world is created both out of (and, in some sense, in) God’s essence that He argues that the two Sophias, Divine and Creaturely, are one reality in different modes so that properly speaking only “God” as Absolute exists because there is nothing apart from him. Indeed, Sophiology, and here we see one of its central expressions, often seems like a fog obscuring the form of Christian teachings whose contours once were crisp and lumi- nous. For if the divine is already in some sense human and the human is in some sense divine then what need is there for God to become man as man is already in some sense God in his 548 Brandon Gallaher

foundation. Bulgakov’s sophiological panentheism, it must be admitted, often seems on the verge of collapsing into a pan- theistic and deterministic monism. At its nadir it is, indeed, as Met. Sergii (Stragorodskii)’s 1935 Ukaz put it, “alien to the Holy Orthodox Christian Church” in its “novel and arbitrary” distortions of the dogmas of the faith. Yet perhaps the risks he ran to hold together heaven and earth in a unity in difference were worth taking, for without risk there is no faith. In daring so much, Bulgakov’s errors, like Origen, become instructive to contemporary theologians, as in their flawed brilliance like a lightening flash they not only darken one’s sight but illumine the shape of the rule of faith much more than a dozen windy dissertations regurgitating Cappadocian ontology in a theology of repetition ever could. Bulgakov daringly creates new ways of speaking that can be brought into the heart of the Church and purified through prayer and communion. It is my belief that as his work becomes better known, it will become gradually apparent how so much of contemporary Orthodox God-talk (from eucharistic theology, to the strong emphasis on the apocalyptic and even the revival of Palamas) can be traced to one who is like an awakening giant.

Brandon Gallaher Regent’s Park College University of Oxford

® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 549

Sergius Bulgakov, Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd- mans, 2008), xiii + 149 pp.

Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944) was a prominent Orthodox theologian, one of the brightest representatives of the Paris School of Russian theology, and at the same time a largely controversial figure in some Orthodox circles both in his own day and still in ours. Despite the latter fact, his rich theological legacy – everything from philosophical tracts on economic issues to political theology, Sophiology, and Imiaslavie – today continues to attract enormous attention in academic circles. Bulgakov’s legacy is being explored by many in the West, but only in the last decade have his major works become available in English translation. Most of them were translated by Boris Jakim, who is well known for his earlier Bulgakov translations, as well as his translations of Florensky, Solovyov, Khomiakov, and Frank. The task of translating complex philosophical and theological concepts and language of these prominent thinkers underlines the considerable competence of the translator. Churchly Joy is a translation of the Russian original Ra- dost tserkovnaia: slova i poucheniia (Churchly Joy: Words and Teachings) that was first published in Paris in 1938. Now, after more than 70 years, it is presented to the English-speaking reader. The book is a collection of sermons that were delivered by Bulgakov between 1924 and 1935 in Paris. During this time (from 1925) he served as a dean of the Saint Sergius Theologi- cal Institute, and his influence and authority in the circle of the Russian émigrés continued to grow. The listeners of these sermons were Russian émigrés (most of them, including Bulgakov himself, in exile from their home country) between the two world wars. This context is very much related to the theme of suffering and joy, the antinomy that is presented throughout the orations. Bulgakov was trying to find the source of eschatological joy and the meaning of the sufferings these people endured during those years. The ongoing theme of these orations is “the perfect joy” (John 15:11). 550 Marta Samokishyn

This is the joy of the Kingdom, eschatological joy, that leads Bulgakov throughout his other works, including this one. The Church, in this context, becomes the means of transfiguration of suffering and embracing understanding of what it means to be human. The central theme of his sermons is the salvation and deification of the human person on a day-to-day basis in the liturgical life of the Church. Thus the joy Bulgakov is talking about is eucharistic in its essence. His homilies are very much interwoven with Scripture and liturgical texts, as well as with his interpretation and theology of icons. Bulgakov shows in these orations his faithfulness towards the Church with the combination of his creativity and freedom, given to us by the Holy Spirit. The book contains twenty-eight sermons, ordered chronologically according to the major feasts of the church year in the Orthodox tradition. The feasts included are not just the twelve major Marian and dominical feasts of the year, but days during Great Lent and the feast of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. Uniting them all is Bulgakov’s frequent theme of the antinomic connection between the city of God and the city of man. For Bulgakov, the main goal of the sermons is to give an opportunity to his flock to connect to the eschatological experience of the Kingdom of God here and now. This reflects the author’s experience and knowledge of the human soul, revealing his pastoral skills. Bulgakov, often seen as a scholastic Orthodox theologian, reveals here his enormous talent for preaching, and his openness to everyday human experience, which he seeks to transform from within. The book includes important notes by the translator. The Bible citations are in some rare cases translated from the Rus- sian Bible to correspond to the context of the sermon. Besides, in some cases, Boris Jakim slightly adapts the King James Version of the Bible, when, for example, changing the word “charity” for “love” (66) or using “Holy Spirit” in place of “Holy Ghost” (84). He explains the play on words used by the author and gives useful historical and other explanatory notes. In my opinion, the translator has a good sense of Bulgakov’s theology and this translation is a valuable contribution to the field of Bulgakov’s works in English. Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 551

As Bulgakov indicates himself in the preface to this book, the oration is a difficult literary form. Furthermore, Bulgakov suggests that orations may be compared to works of sacred art. The author, we may conclude, completed his work with the grace of a true iconographer of the word. Bulgakov’s vision of the heavenly realm invites his readers to enter the joy, which Christianity sometimes tends to forget, but which is the central point of the gospel. To the extent that Bulgakov reminds us of joy’s centrality, this book will be valuable not only to Bulga- kov scholars but also to anybody seeking to understand the spirit of Christianity.

Marta Samokishyn Saint Paul University, Ottawa

® ® ®

552 Jars Balan

Paul Laverdure, Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Re- demptorists of North America 1906–2006 (Yorkton, SK: Redeemer’s Voice Press, 2007), 421 pp.

The history of Ukrainians in Canada now spans more than a century, comprising a not insignificant branch of Ukrainian history as a whole. This is especially true for the history of the former Austro-Hungarian territories of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia – a major source of emigrants to the New World from the late 1800s through the first half of the twentieth century. Canada figures especially prominently in the migrations from Galicia, which provided the largest share of the Ukrainian settlers who came in three major waves, the first from 1892–1914, the second from 1924–1939, and the third from 1947–1954. Indeed, Western Ukraine has continued to supply many of the newcomers who have moved to Canada since the break-up of the Soviet Union in what is now regarded the “fourth wave” of Ukrainian immigration, reinforcing Gali- cian influence within the composite formed by the Ukrainian- Canadian society that has now evolved over a period approaching 120 years. After initially being concentrated in the prairie provinces (primarily in several rural bloc settlements that were for the most part ethnically homogeneous), Ukrainian Canadians began to put down in roots in other parts of the country as well, chiefly in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. The Ukrai- nian community in Canada thus acquired notable regional distinctions. Ukrainians have produced a multitude of complex and fragmented organizations in Canada, each a reflection of a combination of local, regional and historical forces. Among these organizations, churches have played a con- spicuously large role in giving shape to the transplanted Ukrainian communities and to forging and maintaining a “hy- phenated” Ukrainian-Canadian identity. Paul Laverdure’s Re- demption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America – 1906–2006, tells us of one such organization and he makes a major contribution to our understanding of this community from the pioneer era to the present. It is, of course – as clearly indicated in the book’s title – a treatment not restricted Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 553

exclusively to the Redemptorist history among either Ukrai- nian Canadians or Ukrainians in general, but also including Byzantine-Rite Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Hungarians. Never- theless, because of the critical mass created by Ukrainian Greco-Catholics, his book of necessity devotes much of its attention to them and their foundation in Saskatchewan. For this reason, the book will be of special interest to those engaged in Ukrainian Canadian studies, besides being of obvious value to historians of the Catholic Church and religious life in Canada. It should further be pointed that the monograph is an “official” account of the Eastern Redemptorist mission in North America. As such, Laverdure had to digest and summarize over a century of Redemptorist activity on the continent, a challenge that he met most admirably. Although a commis- sioned work, the Redemptorists are to be congratulated for having the courage to go outside of their own ranks to hire a professional historian and accomplished scholar to tell their story rather than simply producing an “in-house” hagiographi- cal tribute. Laverdure, who played a key role in getting into print an English translation of the Flemish-language biography, Eternal Memory! Father Achiel Delaere (1868–1939): The First Eastern Rite Redemptorist and Canada’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, by Josef de Vocht, CSsR, is also the author of Re- demption and Rule: The Redemptorists of English Canada, 1834–1934, published in 1996. Given his great skill in the present volume, as well as these two previously published works, one can only hope that Laverdure takes on the task of writing the history of the Redemptorists of French Canada, and so producing a complete account of the Canadian experience of the Catholic Church’s Congregation of the Holy Most Redeemer. Laverdure presents his material in a well-ordered way, aided no doubt in significant measure by the fact that the Re- demptorists commendably gave him access to their archives and library, which Laverdure spent four years organizing. (One can now assume that the records are now well-ordered and properly catalogued thanks to his efforts, a boon to other scholars wishing to do follow-up work on the Redemptorists.) 554 Jars Balan

Laverdure’s easy-to-read writing style ensures the text is accessible to anyone wanting to learn more about the Yorkton Redemptorists. Generously illustrated with documentary pho- tographs and beautifully printed by the Redeemer’s Voice Press, whose history is itself covered in the text, the book is attractively laid out. Nevertheless, the density of the information conveyed, its wide-ranging scope, and the complexity of the issues touched upon, make Redemption and Ritual a book that will be primarily of use to serious students of church history (Ukrainian and otherwise) and to scholars with a broad interest in the religious experience in North America. Despite the fact that Laverdure is dealing with a story that has many epic qualities, he does not allow himself to indulge in hyper- bolic prose, allowing the details of Redemptorist achievements to speak for themselves without unduly trumpeting successes or overly dramatizing failures and conflicts. He has a dispassionate narrative voice that remains consistent throughout the volume. The book is especially good at even-handedly describing some of the internal tensions, personality conflicts, and frequent difficulties experienced by the Congregation as it slowly grew and then contracted over the years. It deftly handles the occasionally strained relationships involving the different Re- demptorist provinces that at various times oversaw and finan- cially subsidized their Eastern-Rite counterparts, and the lack of understanding toward Ukrainian Catholics and to Eastern Catholicism sometimes shown by Rome and by Catholic orders active in North America. Another virtue of the book is that it challenges commonly held assumptions about the insularity of Ukrainians, despite their inherent wariness, occasional ingratitude, and even open hostility toward outsiders. The book at the same time demonstrates that a seeming “backwater” like Yorkton, Saskatche- wan, can play a major role in the international arena despite its modest size and relatively remote location – influencing developments in distant places such as Australia and the United States, while serving as a hub in relationships linking Belgium, Western Ukraine, and the Vatican with the heartland of North America. Most important of all, the book chronicles how the Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 555

Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer was able to embrace change and successfully adapt to a daunting environment in the New World, starting with the momentous decision to allow some of its Latin-Rite members to adopt the Byzantine Rite so as to serve among Greco-Catholic immigrants from East Cen- tral Europe. Needless to say, it is an impressive and inspiring story that deserves to be better known, an objective that Redemption and Ritual capably fulfills. It somehow seems churlish to point out any shortcomings in what is a truly groundbreaking work. In view of the scope and the time-frame spanned by the history, it is understandable that the book should on occasion have a terse, summary feel to it, or that it would leave out certain events and offer little in the way of expository information on some of the people and places it refers to. For instance, Laverdure cites the memoirs of the Protestant Ukrainian activist John Bodrug in his bibliography, but neglects to mention the 1912 murder of an Indepen- dent Greek Church priest in Goodeve, Saskatchewan – which Bodrug describes at length and unequivocally attributes to a Ukrainian Catholic “fanatic.” Although arguably a peripheral incident, it seems that reference should have been made to the tragedy as an illustration of the highly-charged atmosphere created by the intense confessional rivalries that wracked the Ukrainian community during the pioneer era. At other times, a few explanatory facts could have been judiciously included in the endnotes for readers who do not have an extensive background in Ukrainian history or ready access to sources that would help illuminate particular passages. Thus, in mentioning that Metropolitan Sheptytsky had “offered a large home close to the cathedral and some land on the outskirts of the city,” it would have been good to identify the cathedral as St. George’s and the city as Lviv, while also indicating the central role played by both in the Ukrainian Catholic church (67). Another example would be a reference to Bishop Michael Kuchmiak of Philadelphia having been forced during the Second World to serve in the German SS Division Galicia without any explanation about the Ukrainian Diviziia Halychyna or the controversy that still surrounds it (310). Of course, one realizes that every such insertion would add to the 556 Jars Balan

length and factual bulk of the book, but a couple of additional lines in select places would undoubtedly have been appreciated by those readers not immersed in everything Ukrainian. Equally helpful in this regard would have been the inclusion of an appendix with a chronology of major dates in Eastern-Rite Redemptorist, as well as wider Ukrainian-Canadian, history. One also wishes that Laverdure had given greater attention to the challenge posed by the 1918 founding of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada, since Saskatchewan and Manitoba were key battlegrounds in the frequently-bitter conflict that saw many Ukrainian Catholics break with their ances- tral church. The polemics between the two camps, conducted in periodicals, pulpits, community halls and courts, are certainly a subject worthy of further investigation that would help to flesh out a pivotal period. Indeed, a thorough discussion of the impact that Ukrainian “nationalism” has had on the Re- demptorists could easily be the basis of a separate study, as it is clear from Laverdure’s numerous references to it that “nationalism” was an issue the Congregation had to constantly grapple with throughout its North American history. Even though Laverdure makes clear how often the Redemptorists resisted nationalism in their own communities, one suspects that it will take time for the wider Church to transcend the deeply-rooted obsession with questions of language, culture, and identity. But none of the shortcomings identified above detract from the great achievement represented by Redemption and Ritual. Laverdure has contributed a unique chapter to the larger history of the Redemptorists and to the Byzantine Catholic Churches. He has also made a major contribution to the history of Ukrainians in North America. In drawing on extensive French, Ukrainian, English and Flemish sources to produce his readable and authoritative synthesis, he has illuminated and given recognition to the work of the many dedicated Eastern- Rite Redemptorists, who had to frequently set aside their own aspirations for more traditional Redemptorist lives in order to take on parish work and other tasks usually handled by other clergy. That they patiently assumed numbing workloads and suffered numerous hardships and even martyrdoms in fulfilling Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 557

their clerical vocations speaks of their discipline, their dedication, and their humility in serving the Church: qualities that both Saint Alphonsus, the founder of the Redemptorists, and Father Achiel Delaere, the heroic Belgian who laid the foundation of the Eastern-Rite Congregation in North America, so radiantly embodied.

Jars Balan Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Edmonton, Alberta

® ® ®

558 William C. Mills

Roman Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holi- ness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 275 pp.

Oxford University Press has now issued a paperback version of Roman Cholij’s book Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness, which was originally published in a hardcover edition in 2002. The book, a revision of Cholij’s doctoral dissertation for Oxford University, considers the importance and impact of Theodore’s monastic reforms in the Eastern Church. Cholij is an Eastern Catholic priest whose Clerical Celibacy in East and West was published in 1989 by Gracewing. He currently resides in Cambridge where he is a researcher and writer. With Theodore the Stoudite, Cholij turns his attention to the life and work of one of the greatest monastic reformers in the Eastern Church. The book is divided into three parts: part one provides a biographical sketch of Theodore and his religious and cultural world, which alone is worth the price of the book; and parts two and three consider the principles of order or structure in ecclesiastical life – namely secular and ecclesiastical authority – as well as such principles of holiness as the rites of sanctification, baptism, heresy, and the sanctification of the monk and lay person. It must be said that Theodore the Stoudite is one of the few English-language studies of this great reformer and most likely will remain a foundational work for the near future, not least because Cholij’s book is so well researched, as the very rich footnotes make clear. While reading about Theodore’s life we see it as a typos or type of great ecclesial leaders in the Church, a story told and retold throughout history. He was a son born into a wealthy family during a great time of crisis – that of iconoclasm, which lasted throughout the ninth century – who entered into monastic life, was eventually exiled (twice!) into foreign lands, and finally made great reforming contributions to the Church. We learn that Theodore was a reformer, increasing not only the number of monastic candidates in his urban monasteries but also returning monastic life to the tradition of the great desert dwellers Dorotheus of Gaza and Basil the Great, two lumina- ries in monastic life. His reforms lasted beyond his lifetime Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 559

and his memory is still revered for them rather than for his monographs or sermons, which are comparatively few in number. Cholij notes, however, that among his works are several collections of pastoral letters to his monastics, several collections of writings, and his catechesis. Cholij is certainly a trained historian who has dug deep into the annals of the high Byzantine court showing us the many conflicts between Theodore and the various Byzantine emperors who were often fickle about the Christian faith. What is lacking, however, are any pastoral or practical implications of monastic reform for the Church. We are in dire need of some creativity in paving the way for liturgical and monastic reforms in both the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Church. We need to ask ourselves how we can foster and encourage monastic reform today when so many of our monasteries are declining in numbers and lacking new vocations? Is it possible for us to be more creative in thinking about how a vibrant and robust monastic life which is faithful to the great Tradition of the Church can be established here in North America – though may be expressed in new shapes and forms? Here I think of the creativity and vibrancy of Mother Maria Skobtsova of Paris who, with the blessing of her spiritual father Metropolitan Evlogy, lived as a monastic in the world rather than behind a cloister, scavenging around the streets of Paris feeding countless of people in her flop houses on Rue Lourmel, saving Jews from being captured by the Nazis, and seeking shelter for the homeless. Or perhaps we can look to the work of the communities of New Skete in Cambridge, New York who for the past forty years have been continually rethinking and reshaping monastic life for their particular context. Or perhaps we could adapt some of the practices from the Roman Catholic spiritual tradition, especially the idea of lay oblates, lay men and women who are affiliated with a particular monastic house and are faithful to a monastic community rule of life, often making group retreats to the monastery yet live “in the world,” active in their secular vocation and raising families, but very much grounded in a strong spiritual tradition. People are hungry for sound spiritual practices rooted in Christian tradition but need some direction in how to incarnate 560 William C. Mills

these interests in a healthy way. Perhaps we could look to Theodore for some direction, especially his interest in reform and renewal, which, then as now, remain necessary in all areas of ecclesial life.

William C. Mills Charlotte, NC

® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 561

William Riordan, The Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 294 pp.

William Riordan’s The Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite is a solid introduction for undergraduates or others to the essential Christian thought of Pseudo- Dionysius the Areopagite. Riordan’s work, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, is strong in its explanation of the Chris- tian metaphysical principles underlying the Dionysian corpus and Dionysius’s place in the tradition of scriptural commentary, although it is a bit weak in some of its analyses of difficult passages in the first two chapters, and most particularly in its understanding of the Platonic elements of Dionysius’s thought discussed in chapter two. The last two chapters of the book, where Riordan examines the role of Christ in the hierarchies (ch. 3) and the intellect and will (ch. 4) are particularly strong; here Riordan makes a number of fine points with reference to Dionysius’s Christology and his use of scripture. Overall, Riordan’s work will supplement the existing Diony- sius scholarship in English, especially that which focuses its examination on Dionysius’s Platonism. Chapter one discusses the historical background; Diony- sius’s method; general doctrine; and influence in the East and West. Riordan’s survey of Dionysius’s general doctrine, including his use of positive and negative theology and the basic structure of the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, is of particular interest. Here, Riordan does a fine job of showing scriptural parallels of Dionysius’s tenets of the universe. Riordan is clearly at his strongest when he finds scriptural parallels to Dionysius’s metaphysics, e.g., “for the sacraments are the indispensable means whereby Christ, the God-man, raises men into participation of the divine nature in a new way. In this sense, they manifest Christ’s own incarnational being: God, without ceasing to be God, has become even our corpo- real (mineral), carnal being (Jn. 1:14)” (51). In this way, Riordan explains seemingly esoteric theology so that the crux of its meaning is clear to the Christian reader and the reader can now understand why one should continue to read and 562 Sarah Klitenic Wear

study Dionysius as part of a corpus of commentators on Scrip- ture. Chapter two deals with “Denys and Neo-Platonic Philoso- phy.” In this chapter, Riordan’s main argument is that Diony- sius differs from his non-Christian Platonic counterparts in his depiction of God’s beneficence in creation, and love for creation, something described mechanistically by Platonists from Plotinus through Damascius. This chapter, however, seems to consider briefly and generally the thought of Plotinus exclusively, only mentioning the Platonism of Proclus and Iambli- chus without analysis or discussion of their arguments in any particular works. Riordan does a poor job in his discussion of Platonic arguments on matter (85–87), in that he briefly summarizes Plotinus’s view of matter as evil, without mentioning Proclus’s view of the subject. This error is especially glaring given how Dionysius’s own lengthy discussion of matter in chapter four of the Divine Names seems to be directly dependent on Proclus’s monograph On the Existence of Evils, with which Riordan seems to be familiar (see p.25, fn. 12; cf. p.137). Riordan also seems to confuse the Platonic understanding of “world soul” as something separate and apart from the individual soul in his discussion on p.101. Moreover, he omits the most important, recent secondary literature on the topics discussed in this chapter, including that by C. Steel, J. Opsomer, J. Dillon, and Y. De Andia. In chapter three, “God and His Cosmos: Sacred Theater of Divinization,” Riordan makes an extremely interesting analysis of Augustine’s Commentary on the Gospel of John and Aquinas’s commentaries on John 1:3–4 on the issue of the divine archetype. Also strong in this chapter is Riordan’s description of Dionysius’s Christology, which is often overlooked by scholars, some of whom even deny its existence. Riordan describes the Christology as biblical, particularly Pauline (148–51), which makes Denys “a true disciple of Saint Paul” (150). Chapter four, “The Divinization of Human Souls: God and the Intellect and Will,” outlines the four ways of knowing God, including symbolic theology, affirmative and negative theology, and mystical theology. Here, Riordan makes a fine argu- Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 563

ment that the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies are connected through symbolic theology, which includes Scrip- ture and Tradition (173). Riordan offers an appendix comparing features of mystical contemplation in Dionysius’s thought with some of the patterns found in primitive and archaic initiations, as outlined by Mircea Eliade. This appendix might be of interest to some scholars of comparative religion. While there are no glaring errors, there are a few oddities: on p.38, the author gives the translation, the Greek, and the transliteration of Greek for a three-word Dionysian (Platonic) idiom. This format appears throughout the book (e.g., p.115, 128, etc.) There also seems to be an abundance of paragraphs which appear to be in italics for the purpose of the author’s emphasis, which is a bit distracting. Overall, however, this is a very solid and accessible introduction to Dionysius and a welcome addition to scholarship on him in English.

Sarah Klitenic Wear Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio

® ® ®

564 Myroslaw Tataryn

Serhii Plokhy, Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 391 pp.

Serhii Plokhy’s volume is an engaging compilation of all but three previously published essays. In spite of it being therefore an edited volume it reads well and flows virtually flawlessly. It is an important volume for anyone interested in the creation of Russian and Ukrainian national identities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Plokhy convincingly presents the story of two neighbours who share much in terms of history, cultural attributes, and religion, but yet are not identical – notwithstanding ideologies and mythologies which have sought to homogenize a past that is not univocal and a current political reality that does not unify. Plokhy’s analysis does not fall into the trap of either national romanticism or chauvinistic imperialism. It is balanced, nuanced and insightful. The range of topics touched upon is varied: from the role played by Hrushevsky in the construction of a national identity, to the tussle within the Russian psyche between an ethnically Russian state and a multi-ethnic Russian Empire. Plokhy’s breadth of interest is impressive and presents the reader with a new lens through which to understand the complex weaving of national identity. But Plokhy’s work should not just be read as a view of political-identity construction. Many of his insights do in fact relate to other aspects of cultural identity, including the creation of a religious identity. His discussion in chapter three of the mystification of an era in the creation of national identity can be seen as a tool utilized in certain religious communities which idealize one period in their formation and totally discount another period – as if the “gaps” in their history are irrelevant in the formation of their current identity. In chapter four, Plokhy points to the politicized nature of religious art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and rightly observes “that meticulous research into the rich legacy of the Cossack iconographers and the discovery of the multi- layered significance of their work remains largely a task for the future” (76), a task which some are thankfully commen- cing. The discussion of varying understandings of the Pereia- slav Agreement/Union (chapter six and eleven) and the con- Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 565

trast between the “legend” and the “agreement” may be instructive in a renewed analysis of the Union/Articles of Brest of 1596. As Plokhy demonstrates, the issue of Pereiaslav has come to be seen as a fundamental prism for “reading” Ukraine’s history and so too one’s understanding of Brest: whether it was a capitulation of the elite, or a religious union, or the starting point for capitulation to the Roman ecclesial system, is critical to one’s understanding of the Ukrainian religious scene even today. More attention surely needs to be paid to the reality of Brest from the perspective of the intentions of all the participants, including its construction in the policies of the most powerful player: the papacy. Plokhy’s reference to Rozenfeld’s claim (“the oath sworn by the Ukrainians in Pereiaslav marked the opening stage of negotiations, not their conclusion”) could be instructive for a renewed perspective on Brest – even though such negotiations never took place and were, in fact, unimaginable for a post-Tridentine papacy. The latter chapters in the volume shift our perspective from history as reconstructing the past to history as a foundation for current identities. Although much of the volume’s focus is on the Cossack period, this focus does not diminish in the shift to current identities. It is a central part of the discussion of chapter fifteen, “Crossing National Boundaries” given competing Russian and Ukrainian claims to the “Cossacks.” Yet, it is also there in the background for the twelfth chapter “Remembering Yalta” and the tenth, “The City of Glory.” The issue of Crimea relates both to the current territory of Ukraine and inter-state relations with Russia, as it does to questions of historic identity. But it cannot be forgotten that Crimea is critical to the pivotal Cossack mythology underlying this entire volume. In fact, the issue of Crimea could be seen as emblematic of the fundamental thesis of Plokhy’s work as presented in the volume: Ukraine should not be considered an ethnically homogeneous nation-state, but rather a “civilizational and cultural borderland” (301), a multi-ethnic state with a very con- flicted history and as a result, at times, conflicting state identities. This thesis, once more, has import for students of Ukraine’s religious environment. As this reviewer has remarked elsewhere, it is too simplistic to view Ukraine’s reli- 566 Myroslaw Tataryn

gious landscape as simply a scene of conflict between Ortho- dox and Uniates. Ukraine, rather, has been the scene of a number of very vibrant forms of Christianity – witness the current phenomenon of the “Embassy of God” Church in Kyiv – and, Plokhy reminds us, of a significant Muslim heritage as well. Though this book could have been more carefully edited in a handful of places to deal with repetitions, it is clearly a masterful work, and thanks are due to Plokhy and the Univer- sity of Toronto Press for bringing the volume together. As with any good work of scholarship, it opens up many new possibilities, not the least of which is a renewed appreciation of religious life on the territory of Ukraine.

Myroslaw Tataryn University of Saint Jerome, Waterloo, ON

® ® ®

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 567

Lorenzo DiTommaso and Lucian Turcescu, eds. The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannen- giesser, 11–13 October 2006 (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2008), 608 pp.

There is much scholarly achievement to be grateful for in the life of Charles Kannengiesser, and so it was fitting that scholars from around the world should gather at Concordia University in Montréal in 2006 for a colloquium to celebrate his eightieth birthday, acknowledge his scholarly contributions in the field of the study of early Christianity, and recognise his most recent publication – the monumental Handbook of Patris- tic Exegesis (Brill, 2004). The proceedings of this conference were published as The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity. This reflects not only the overarching theme of the twenty-five articles but also the predominant focus of Kannengiesser’s lifetime of scholarship. The presentations at this conference were organized around four themes: Early Rabbinic Literature, Patristic Writers, Biblical Apocrypha, and Gnosticism. The present collection includes an introduction by the editors; a congratulato- ry letter from Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury; the keynote address by Robert Louis Wilken; twenty-three papers (four of which are in French); a special guest paper by Charles Kannengiesser; and an eighteen-page bibliography of his works containing 208 entries – thus amply demonstrating that there is much to honour in his lifetime of scholarly achievements. The introduction by the editors DiTommaso and Turcescu provides us with an overview of Kannengiesser’s life, highlighting his dramatic experiences during the Second World War, his decision to join the Jesuits, then his many years of formal education which culminated with the completion of two doctorates on Saint Athanasius. Kannengiesser’s teaching career, which began in 1953, is surveyed down to the present day showing that he has held some of the most prestigious academic positions and has collaborated with many of the key 568 François Beyrouti

figures in the field of early Christianity during the past fifty years. While it is recognized that “no collection of essays can address the subject of the reception and interpretation of the Bible in late antiquity in anything but the most summary fashion” (xxv), this collection does cover a wide array of topics connected to the theme, including art (Wilken), amulets (De Bruyn), authority (Bussières), monasticism (Perrone), and the rootedness of the past and continued relevance of the “fathers” in today’s ever changing and complex world (Kannengiesser). It is a tribute to Kannengiesser’s Handbook and to the present volume that both focus upon how the Bible has entered the day-to-day life of believers in a comprehensive manner – whether public or private. As Wilken notes, “there is little one can touch in this period without discovering the Bible in the background or more often in the foreground, whether it be art or architecture, poetry or history, preaching or spiritual life, law or theology, pedagogy or statecraft – all displaying specific features drawn directly from the Scriptures” (9). Wilken expands upon his claim in his keynote address: “The Novelty and Inescapability of the Bible in Late Anti- quity” (3–14). Others pick up on this, including Basser, who notes that the direction and themes of exegesis were determined by “the religious traditions of the respective exegetes” (37) but does not fail to note that this process frequently involved interactions with others. Thus to discuss and highlight the interactions between Judaism and Christianity and Chris- tianity with its various movements, e.g., Manichaeism (Coyle and Pettipiece) and Gnosticism (Pasquier), is not only an important part of this history, but crucial in showing how this process actually helped form the guidelines for the reception and interpretation of both the canonical and non-canonical texts. This volume is successful in what it tries to accomplish by honouring Charles Kannengiesser. This volume not only shows how particular authors and groups have approached a variety of topics in antiquity, but goes further to analyze the implications of this reception and interpretation. Bright points out: “Reception appropriates texts and transforms them” (55). Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 569

Kannengiesser’s closing article affirms that a study of the history of interpretation has not only transformed the texts but also the lives and world of those interpreting them. He notes: “what shows itself to be more than ever highly significant about the legacy of the Fathers is the creative process itself in the ongoing biblical reception even today, generating in the light of that legacy a new Christian view of our whole world in full reshaping” (541). This volume helpfully reminds the reader that this dynamic process continues today.

François Beyrouti Saint Paul University, Ottawa

® ® ®

570 Vigen Guroian

Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Baylor University Press, 2008), vii–xiv + 290 pp.

Two decades ago, the late Jaroslav Pelikan composed a brief dictionary of theology titled The Melody of Theology. Among the approximately one hundred entries, only fifteen of which are on historic figures, Pelikan includes Fyodor Mikhai- lovich Dostoevsky. Pelikan writes, “with the possible exception of Goethe, no figure in modern literature has so much claim for inclusion in this dictionary.” In his analysis of crime, guilt, and confession in Crime and Punishment, he adds, “Dostoevsky’s theology is unmatched by the work of any theologian.” This is the judgment of one of the most eminent historians of Christianity in the twentieth century. There have been some very good books written about Dostoevsky’s religious vision. From the Russians, to name just a few, are Nicholas Berdyaev’s Dostoevsky, L.A. Zander’s book of the same title, and in a more subtle form, Mikhail Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Among English speaking writers, A. Boyce Gibson’s The Religion of Dostoev- sky, P. Travis Kroeker’s and Bruce K. Ward’s Remembering the End: Dostoevsky as Modern Prophet, and Malcolm Jones’s Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience stand out. In his monumental five volume intellectual biography of Dostoevsky, Joseph Frank is very attentive to the role of religion and especially Russian Orthodox Christianity in Dos- toevsky’s life and writing. And in the past decade, George Pattison and Diane Oenning Thompson edited a really superb collection of essays, Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, has read these and many other studies of Dostoevsky, and he has produced what is to date certainly one of the finest books on Dostoev- sky’s religious vision. Brilliantly, Williams demonstrates the connection between this vision, yes, even faith, and the art that Dostoevsky created. The fulcrum of Williams’ analysis, the main support from which Williams gains purchase on this integration of religious vision and art in Dostoevsky, is the famous statement that the author made early in his life in a letter that Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 571

he wrote in 1854 to Natalya Fonvizina who had sent him, while he was in prison, a copy of the New Testament. Dostoevsky wrote, “If someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it was really the case that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than the truth.” Much has been made of this comment. It has given justification to readings of Dostoevsky as an existentialist for whom human freedom and subjectivity over- rule any sort of objective truth: man creates his own values. Christ is not so much a person as an ideal concept or cipher through which Dostoevsky reads out human subjectivity as the only plausible ground for meaning in existence. Williams disagrees with this interpretation and argues, instead, that the truth which Dostoevsky subordinates to Christ in this passage is a thoroughly modern concept of truth, truth as an ensemble of empirically demonstrable facts about the world, facts that are opaque to any deeper, transcendental reality and indifferent to human desire and the religious sense. There is, in other words, more to reality than naturalism, utili- tarianism, or scientism allow or describe. There is another truth, a divine and human truth, which the Incarnation has revealed. The Godman, Jesus Christ has demonstrated through his freely offered sacrifice of self that love and not law, freedom and not determinism, are at the core of the ontology of this world. “So Christ’s place ‘outside the truth’ becomes in effect Christ’s place in or with or as the reality of freedom [and love] beyond the systems of the world.” The world of fiction is truer to our human reality than “the world of mathematic closure,” writes Williams. In this closed universe, cause and effect grind out inevitable outcomes, the future is decided by the past and there are no significant decisions to be made in the present that can alter that future. From the standpoint of human desire, from the standpoint of love and personal experience of freedom, this is a violent and arbitrary world. But fiction has the capacity to capture and represent a larger and more capacious human world in which “everything is still to play for…. The novel, in its narrative indeterminacy is a statement of ‘nonviolence,’ of radical pa- 572 Vigen Guroian

tience with the unplanned and indeterminate decisions of agents.” And even God may be included in these decisions. Williams adds that “Dostoevsky … implicitly developed a theology of writing, specifically of narrative writing. Every fiction is at its most fictional in its endings, those pretences of closure and settlement.”

The gratuity of faith arises from its character as response to the freedom of the creator as unexpectedly encountered in the fabric of the world. The gratuity of fiction arises from the conviction that no kind of truth can be told if we speak and act as if history is over, as if the description of what contingently is becomes the sole possible account of language….

Dostoevsky works on the basis that the novelist is able to show to some degree what divine creation might be like: that is, by creating a world in which the unexpected and the unscripted is continuously unfolding, in which there is no imposed last word.

Dostoevsky’s fiction is not a religious apologetic. He does not make an argument for belief through his fiction, or set out to persuade that God exists. Rather he explores through character, plot, and speech what the difference is between believing in a God and living our lives in a relationship to Him, and dis- believing and living our lives in and by that disbelief. True to the subtitle of his book, Williams’ analysis aims to explain Dostoevsky’s appreciation of language as a conveyer of meaning. Dostoevsky was concerned over the death of language in modernity and nihilistic denials that the human world which it brings into existence has a metaphysical foundation and basis in the creative act of God. If language has not this power and relation to the divine Word, then culture is not possible, and humankind cannot survive. Williams quotes Terry Eagleton from his book Holy Terror: “‘Since human beings perpetually exceed themselves in the surplus known as culture, they become inhuman when they are stripped to no more than themselves.’” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 573

The last chapter of this book is the best. It is titled “Sacri- lege and Revelation: The Broken Image.” In it Williams discusses two episodes in Dostoevsky’s novels where icons are desecrated. The continued presence of images in our lives is at stake, and, thus, the continuance of culture itself. Human culture cannot exist without images. Images reflect the relation of the human and the divine. Human culture transcends itself as it reaches toward divine life. True to its etymology, a symbol joins human and divine realities. Through symbols and images human beings participate in divine reality. Through the image or icon, whether it be painted or narrated, God also manifests himself. Divine and human meet in the image. God is the original image-maker. The divine Word, the exact image of God, makes the world and makes Himself present in it through images. The twentieth-century Russian theologian Paul Evdokimov has written that human “culture is the icon of the Kingdom of Heaven.” The violence of atheism is not just that it denies God but also the image and likeness of God in the human person and human culture. Dostoevsky honours the image and likeness by his narrative portrayal of holiness in a figure like Father Zosima of The Brothers Karamazov. But his art of narrative imagery is not limited to this portrayal of holiness. The eternal Word of God was vulnerable to disfigurement, even unto death. That is what it meant for the Word to have become flesh. Thus, for Dostoevsky, “whatever images this embodying of the eternal image [Christ] is bound [necessarily] to be subject to the possibility of violent disfiguring in various degrees.” Dostoevsky’s fiction is faithful to this truth, above all other truths. We recognize this vulnerability in such characters as Sonia Marmeladova of Crime and Punishment and Dimitri Karamazov. But no human being lacks the image of God and a relationship to God entirely, not even Ivan Karamazov or Nikolai Stavrogin of Devils. No human being is utterly beyond the pale of God’s absurd and eternal love. No humans beings may be fully stripped of the image and likeness of God. Rowan Williams has written a work of philosophical theology. It is by most measures a difficult book. The reader seeking a more standard and programmatic literary assessment 574 Vigen Guroian

of Dostoevsky’s corpus is advised to look elsewhere. This is a book for those who have done some reading in Dostoevsky and want to be challenged to look deeply into his creative art. In this regard, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction will not disappoint.

Vigen Guroian University of Virginia

® ® ® ®

Briefly Noted

Christopher C. Roberts, Creation and Covenant: the Signifi- cance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of Marriage (New York and London: T&T Clark, 2007), xiii + 266 pp.

For too long “conservative” Christians, trying to win the battle against so-called same-sex marriage, have relied on often amateurish and apocalyptic pseudo-sociological rants about same-sex marriage destroying the family and society. (Rampant sexual license, contraception, abortion, and divorce have long since done their damage here.) These arguments have been posed against even more inadequate claims from “liberal” Christians whose “theology” often consists of spe- cious sloganeering about “inclusivity” and “rights.” Instead of approaching matters sociologically, Christians should be engaged in arguing the theological importance of human sexual differentiation and the consequences that flow from that, resisting the nonsense that “gender” (as it is incorrectly if commonly called) is purely and entirely a social construct of no lasting import. Much of the argument in favour of accepting the agenda of same-sex relations rests on such presuppositions that the sex of the person to whom one is attracted is entirely incidental to the point of being – morally, at least – irrelevant. Christians need to grapple, in a deeper and more sustained way than most have hitherto, with the fact that God did indeed create the human person male and female, and this differentiation is an ineradicable part of His plan which we cannot ignore. (This applies not just to homosexuality but perforce to the claims of the so-called transgendered as well.) Few have been making this theological argument in a sustained way until now. In Christopher Roberts’ extraordinarily useful and welcome book, which very much deserves a wide audience, we have an author setting himself the modest but profoundly important goal of discovering what exactly Chris- tian tradition has believed about human sexual differentiation. Proceeding chronologically, he takes us through selected patristic literature (including, inter alia, Clement of Alexandria 576 Briefly Noted

and Gregory of Nyssa, with Augustine of Hippo having pride of place); through such medievals as Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas; into Protestant sources (Luther, Calvin, Barth); and ending with Pope John Paul II. At every turn, he allows the sources to speak, and commendably resists imposing anachronistic questions or tendentious exegesis on them. He cogently and lucidly demonstrates that the picture is far from complete, but does show that the Christian tradition in- dubitably comes down firmly on the side of arguing that sexual differentiation is a significant part of God’s plan and cannot be dismissed. He further acknowledges several critical contemporary voices that conclude that sexual differentiation (“gender”) is theologically meaningless, and therefore homosexuality can be approved; but Roberts elucidates the flaws in these unsatis- factory arguments, which quickly fall apart. Finally, he notes in his conclusion that he has focused almost entirely on the Western tradition, and that the “Eastern fathers” would have different things to say, reflecting their own “conceptual hetero- geneity.” Here Roberts, posing a challenge that some enterpri- sing Eastern Christian theologian desperately needs to take up in our day, argues for the importance of “a scholar to write something contrasting these different arguments with the Augustinian tradition” in order to flesh out the entire Christian tradition more fully, and to strengthen it. Who among us will take up this challenge?

® ® ®

Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: a Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), vi + 192 pp.

Debates about the nature of Catholic universities in North America have raged for more than forty years now. The May 2009 bestowal by the University of Notre Dame of a doctorate of laws honoris causa on the most radically pro-abortion man ever to occupy the White House only made matters incalcu- Briefly Noted 577

lably worse. While there is much that is unique in these modern debates, there is also a sense, as we learn from this fascinating new book by Alasdair MacIntyre, that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. MacIntyre, who is not simply Notre Dame’s best-known philosopher but also the most illustrious moral philosopher and philosophical historian of our time, does not address current controversies directly. Instead, proceeding chronologically from antiquity to modernity, he looks at some of the dominant figures of a given age to understand variously their notions of divinity, philosophy, and the university. As with earlier – though much briefer – treatments of questions about universities (see the concluding chapter of his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry), MacIntyre ends on a pessimistic note: “what in fact we find is that the most prestigious Catholic universities often mimic the structures and goals of the most prestigious secular universities and do so with little sense of something having gone seriously amiss.” MacIntyre concludes that “it rarely, if ever, was otherwise.” All these recent debates and developments have occurred in Roman Catholic institutions for the obvious reasons that they are the most numerous and, indeed, until very recently, there were no Eastern Catholic universities – and no Orthodox universities, either, at least in North America. Now, however, Eastern Christians have a unique opportunity to see if Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) can find its way forward not only as a university that is seeking to be both doctrinally orthodox and intellectually rigorous, but also a university that may well be an embodiment of a patristic vision of learning envisaged by such as Saint Gregory the Theologian and described by Stanley Hauerwas recently in this journal (“To Love God, the Poor, and Learning: Lessons Learned from Saint Gre- gory of Nazianzus,” Logos 47: 7–28). UCU is, in fact, attracting increasing attention from around the world. Damien Thompson, a writer for the London Daily Telegraph, ran a piece (picked up by other sites) in May 2009 about UCU based on his interview with her indefatigable and illustrious father-rector, Boris Gudziak. Thompson wondered hopefully if UCU’s Centre for Spiritual Support of the Handi- 578 Briefly Noted

capped (run in relationship to Lviv’s L’Arche community) did not mark her out as entirely singular in the world of Catholic higher education. This Centre is just such an embodiment of “love for the poor” as Nazianzus described in his fourteenth oration by that name. UCU’s attempts to live out a different, more holistic and more patristic vision of higher education, together with her doctrinal fidelity, marks her out in Thomp- son’s words as “arguably the world’s most exciting Catholic university.” If UCU can be successful in its ventures, as we fervently pray and certainly hope she will, then perhaps down the road a new chapter will need to be added to the lamentable history MacIntyre narrates, a chapter detailing not abandonment of fidelity and diminution of vision, but just the opposite.

® ® ®

Sarah Klitenic Wear and John Dillon, Dionysius the Aeropa- gite and the Neoplatonist Tradition: Despoiling the Hellenes (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), x + 142 pp.

If the number of recent publications (more than a dozen books in the last five years alone) is anything to go by, Pseudo-Dionysius is enjoying a considerable reassessment today. This new book by Wear (a professor of classics at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio) and Dillon (a Regius professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin) adds to that burgeoning interest. Its slender size belies its hefty content, as the authors in turn consider such major works and problems as the divine names, celestial and ecclesial hierarchy, evil, and union with God. The book’s cogent introduction is very useful in bringing readers up to date on the latest scholarship about Dionysius’s identity and biography, his role in the Monophysite controversy, his relationship to Severus of Antioch, and the corpus of his works. Additionally, the authors briefly reflect on those works to which Dionysius refers but which are no longer Briefly Noted 579

extant. They conclude their introduction with a note about the technical language in Dionysisus’s works. Reading this volume requires a ready and considerable command of Greek – even when transliterated, as the authors so helpfully do here. And given the ponderous and profound nature of the topics addressed, this book does not lend itself to “light” reading. But given the lasting influence of Ps-Diony- sius, it is and should be necessary reading for all who are interested in this recondite theologian.

® ® ®

Judith Herrin, Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), xxiii + 392 pp.

It has always seemed to me gratuitously unfair to use the word “Byzantine” pejoratively as too many journalists – whether from indolence or ignorance – often do when describing (or, rather, dismissing) some organization or plan. The pejorative usage connotes malevolent trickery and bewildering and superfluous complexity. These characteristics have never been singularly associated solely with the East-Roman Empire. In Judith Herrin’s generally delightful book, that empire comes alive in ways that many today will indeed find surprising. The impetus for her book, she charmingly recounts in the introduction, was a conversation with two workmen renovating her building in King’s College, London. Seeing her office’s nameplate, “Professor of Byzantine History,” they stopped to ask if the wager they had just made – viz., that “Byzantine” had something to do with modern Turkey – was correct. She was thus confronted with the task of trying to explain in the briefest and simplest terms what exactly “Byzantine history” is. Herrin recounts this East-Roman history via a method at once chronological and thematic, moving from the inaugura- tion of Constantinople on 11 May 330 to its invasion and ruin 580 Briefly Noted

in 1453. She does not tell every detail of every period but focuses on a particular issue, theme, or personage – e.g., Hagia Sophia, Roman law, the economy, Islam, “Greek fire,” and so on. She deftly provides both a good overview and also a good level of detail that does not overwhelm. Herrin’s deftness is, however, lacking in other areas. She erroneously claims, e.g., that “often the bishop of Rome was the sole western representative” (36) at the ecumenical councils even though we have no evidence that any pope ever attended any of the councils in person; she calls Arius “a deacon” (35) when he was a priest; and she claims that “the Transfiguration … commemorates the light which surrounded Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane” (42) rather than atop Mount Tabor, as the gospels plainly recount. After these errors, it is reassuring that the author manages to avoid any disasters in her simplified and brief discussion of Christologi- cal terminology (ousia, hypostasis, physis, etc.) in the conciliar debates. Herrin’s conclusion is one very much worth pondering: the “Byzantine” empire, by resisting Arab intrusions from the late seventh century, was able to preserve a much weaker and more fractured Western Europe from total Islamicization. Indeed, she claims that “Byzantium” made “Europe” possible, protecting the West from invasion and capture long enough until it could defend itself not only militarily but also through the strength of its ideas, leadership, and culture.

® ® ®

Briefly Noted 581

William M. Ramsay and Gertrude L. Bell, The Thousand and One Churches, with a new foreword by Robert G. Ousterhout and Mark P.C. Johnson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl- vania Press, 2008), xxxiv + 580 pp.

The text of this volume was originally published in 1909. In this new version, the original illustrations are replaced with 200 high-quality digitized images from the Gertrude Bell Archive at England’s Newcastle University. Bell and Ram- say’s original study sought to examine the architectural monuments in post-classical Anatolia, especially the large Christian site of Binbirkilise, near Konya.

® ® ®

William C. Mills, Our Father: a Prayer for Christian Living (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2008), xix + 73 pp.

Id., Feasts of Faith: Reflections on the Major Feast Days (Rollinsford: ORI, 2008), xii + 153 pp.

The prolific Orthodox priest William Mills has recently published a number of books in pastoral theology and scriptural commentary. The two noted above are marked by a simplicity of style and clarity of expression. The first, on the Our Father, is a short attempt to introduce or re-introduce this most basic of prayers to those who, having perhaps recited it by rote for too long, discover a desire to enter more deeply into the meaning of its various phrases, which Mills winsomely compares to the patches that make up an Amish quilt. (He used to live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish capital of the world.) The book on the feasts would surely come in handy in every priest’s library. Generously quoting from the various liturgical texts of the twelve great feasts of the year (according to Byzantine usage), the author highlights key aspects that speak to our own life today. These commentaries would surely 582 Briefly Noted

be useful in homiletic preparation or for further personal spiritual reflection. He concludes with three useful appendices, the first offering guidelines on how to observe liturgical feasts at home in families; the second containing the scripture readings (for Matins, Vespers, and Divine Liturgy) of each feast; and the third excerpting various patristic commentaries on the feasts.

® ® ®

Russell Shaw, Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 174 pp.

One of the most damning and wholly justifiable charges against American Catholic and Orthodox hierarchs of late (cf. the sexual scandals of the former with the financial scandals of the latter in the Orthodox Church of America) is that bishops in both instances cravenly covered up the malfeasance, whether their own or that of their clerical confreres. Christians, intimately acquainted with human sinfulness, are not as hyste- rically exercised by it as the media; but Christians are rightly vexed by the mendacity of those whose job it is to teach the world that truth by which alone we are free. Russell Shaw has written a very useful book asking how it is that bishops in particular could behave in such a manner, and what the consequences are for the Church. Shaw is perhaps better placed than anybody to write such a book, having been for many years the director of communications for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Shaw is not a foaming polemicist: his love for the Church, and sense of hurt at the damage her hierarchs do to her, is palpable. He neither rants nor proposes simplistic solutions. Instead, he poses acute theological and ecclesiological questions, asking if the propensity for secrecy in far too many instances does not in fact undermine not only the liberating power of truth but also the very nature of the Church as a communion among brothers and Briefly Noted 583

sisters of the same Father who openly and endlessly com- municates His life and Word to us. Prescinding from its obvious sacramental applications, Shaw demonstrates that the Church resorts to secrecy far too often – far more than comparable secular organizations – and that such secrecy is neither necessary nor healthful for other organizations, and a fortiori it cannot be good for the Church either. He marshals relevant scriptural and magisterial texts to argue that the Church needs to be much more open in order to be more accountable, and that everyone has a role to play in this process of transforming the Body of Christ into “the Church with nothing to hide.” While recognizing that “there are no panaceas,” Shaw nonetheless helpfully suggests nearly a dozen practical changes to how the Church operates, including an argument that properly formed lay people should be permitted a role in the selection of leaders, including bishops. Those Catholics – especially curialists – who may be anxious about this possibility need to take a look at those Orthodox Churches – e.g., Romanian, Armenian, and Russian – that permit lay people not merely a consultative role (as Shaw recommends) in episcopal election, but an actual vote. The theology for this practice is far more sensible than that which insists that the ambassador (nuncio) to a secular government cherry-picks three men for selection sub secreto pontificio. No system is perfect, but given the infelicitous quality of too many Roman appointees in recent years, Shaw is certainly right in calling for reforms.

® ® ®

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth: Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), xviii + 256 pp.

The is a collection of fifteen previously published papers on different topics, but most involve what might be called a sociological treatment of questions of Orthodox identity – in 584 Briefly Noted

the late Ottoman Empire, in the pre-modern Balkans, in Atho- nite communities, and in the development of a “Greek conscience.” Two articles focus on the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP): “From Orthodox Commonwealth to National Communities: Greek-Russian Intellectual and Ecclesiastical Ties in the Ottoman Era” and “The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ‘National Centre’.” In the former, the author traces out some of the cooperation between Constantinople and Moscow towards developing a “commonwealth” to replace the Byzantine Em- pire. In the latter, Kitromilides looks at the tension between the “impregnable wall of ecumenicity” represented by the EP on the one hand, and the burgeoning Greek nation-state in the nineteenth century on the other. This would lead to ongoing tension between Constantinople, Athens, and Mt. Athos over who was to be the primatial centre of ecclesial unity in Greece.

® ® ®

William A. Simmons, Peoples of the New Testament World: an Illustrated Guide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 352 pp.

Simons, a professor of the New Testament at Lee Univer- sity in Tennessee, has produced a handsome text with many colourful plates of people and places both ancient and modern. In twenty chapters he surveys biblical and, in some cases, contemporary ideas about such peoples as the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, Zealots, and other lesser known groups who make an appearance in the Scriptures.

® ® ®

Briefly Noted 585

James Allen Hewett, New Testament Greek, rev. and expanded by C.M. Robbins and S.R. Johnson (Peabody, MA: Hendrick- son Publishers, 2009), xxiii + 326 pp.

Originally published by Hewett in 1986, this present hardcover volume has been revised and updated, and very helpfully includes a CD with various texts, programs, and software for continued study of the Greek language. It is laid out clearly, with ample whitespace on each page for notes; and includes accentuation and declension tables, a brief dictionary, and a subject index.

® ® ®

Thomas Bremer, ed., Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave Mac- millan, 2008), xi + 242 pp.

It is an increasing commonplace among academic publishers that collections of articles make for bad books and poor sales, but this present volume seems determined to confirm that thesis with a vengeance. It is a small book with a large price ($74.95), and it is not worth it. It has been appallingly edited, if edited at all: the most elementary errors of spelling and grammar abound. The obtuse introduction does not invite confidence in the rest of the book by claiming that “religion is an explanation of the world, of human existence and of salvation, but not a tool to understand oneself in a national or any other way” (2). Anyone who thinks that would seem to be incapable of understanding the phenomenon of religious nationalism not just in Eastern Europe but elsewhere. Of the eleven articles in this book, several treat topics so obscure that they merit no mention; a few articles simply state obvious points already well-known (e.g., Gert Pickel’s “Religiosity in European Comparison” tells us Christianity in Europe is declining – no surprise there); and one article on 586 Briefly Noted

Romanian Orthodox theologians actually manages to overlook the obvious by failing to treat the work of Romania’s pre-eminent theologian, Dumitru Staniloae, and by failing to acknowledge the most blatant rejoinder to the author’s happy-talk about Romanian ecumenism: viz., the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church (well known and documented even by Orthodox theologians) in the destruction of the Romanian Greco-Catholic Church. Additionally, the author’s chronology of events overlooks the presence of the Romanians at the singular 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress in Constantinople. (On this, see Patrick Viscuso, A Quest for Reform of the Orthodox Church: the 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress: an Analysis and Translation of its Acts and Decisions [Berkley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006].) This author further tries the reader’s patience – in a book heavily focused on geography no less – by claiming that the celebrated Faith and Order conference of 1927 took place in “Lausanne (France) [sic]” (153). Lausanne is in Switzerland. The one very useful article in this book is that of Johannes Oeldemann, “The Concept of Canonical Territory in the Russian Orthodox Church.” He shows how hollow Russian invocations of this phrase (against Roman Catholics in Russia proper, and Greco-Catholics in Ukraine) are, concluding that “from a geographical perspective, the use of this term is extremely problematic: a glance into church history is sufficient to realize how often the boundaries of jurisdictional areas of churches have moved” (233). He notes, moreover, that “from a theological point of view” canonical territory is problematic insofar as it “presupposes an understanding of a unity of the Churches.” Until the problem of Christian division is solved, there “cannot be any acceptable solution to the problem in the end” (234). Finally, he notes “from an ecumenical view” that canonical territory must be abandoned if it would entail Catholics being exclusively responsible for evangelizing and sustaining flocks in Western Europe, and Orthodox exclusively for those in Eastern Europe. The problem with this arrangement – in addition to overlooking questions of migration, and freedom of conscience, which the author does not mention – is that Briefly Noted 587

this would result in a continued separation of Catholics from Orthodox, and nothing would change from the patterns of isolation and ignorance that preceded the schism of 1054.

® ® ®

John Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America: a Short History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 136 pp.

This book, published in hardback in 1999 and reissued here in paperback, is indeed short, but no less useful for that. Erickson has a winsome narrative style that serves him well in writing a text that should be accessible to those completely innocent of Orthodox history, both ancient and modern. This history remains contentious among Orthodox in North Ame- rica, who are rightly sensitive to the fact that the early promise of pan-Orthodox unity in the “new world” quickly gave way to ongoing jurisdictional chaos because of (what else?) nationalism among Eastern Christians. The book includes a number of valuable appendices, including the controversial Ligonier statement of 1994, a proposal to heal the continent’s jurisdictional divisions that was sabotaged by some in the so-called old world for – one strongly suspects – reasons of fear: of the loss of influence, of the loss of money, of the loss of support for tiny, embattled communities in places like Syria and Turkey that continue to decline because of Islamic persecution and also because the Christians who remain have failed to have enough children (as David Goldman has recently documented in his article “The Closing of the Christian Womb” in the Asia Times). Erickson’s bibliography is very brief, and not at all comprehensive; his glossary even more so. A further appendix contains brief data on each of the Orthodox Churches around the world (though Erickson neglects to provide their websites), and Erickson is right to caution that some of the numbers of adherents of each Church are very dubious and little more than hopeful guesses 588 Briefly Noted

on the part of the Churches themselves. (As Robert Taft has said, “‘Eastern’ and ‘statistics’ is an oxymoron.”)

® ® ®

Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford: OUP, 2008), x + 298 pp.

This is a paperback version of a disturbing book first published in 2003. Oakley, one of the most distinguished and prolific of medieval historians, has, for more than forty years, been investigating the diverse set of beliefs called “conciliarism.” This latest work makes invaluable contributions in lucid and taut prose that brilliantly condenses sources in many languages. Oakley begins by asking how it is that the Latin Church has been so successful in engaging in “a quite startling instance of institutional (and institutionally sponsored) forgetting” (2) about the teachings of the Council of Constance (1414–18). What was forgotten, and why? Constance was called to try to bring an end to the great Western Schism, which, at one point, had successive rival claimants to the papacy in three con- comitant lines: Roman, Pisan, and Avigonese. It was assembled legally under Pope John XXIII, a product of the Council of Pisa (1409), which had tried to heal the schism and only succeeded in deepening it by introducing this third papal contender, who is today counted by Rome as an “anti-pope.” (Given the complexity of this cast of characters, and the speed with which Oakley narrates so much history, his book could have benefited from a time-line and from papal “family trees” to see who was descended from whom.) John fled the scene when the political winds shifted against him. The fathers of Constance, who recognized John as legitimate pope, were unsure how to proceed in his absence, and the council came close to falling apart (which puts the lie to one of many Briefly Noted 589

misconceptions about this council, viz., that the bishops were “episcopalists” engaged in some kind of proto-Protestant power grab). But seeing the Church’s ever deepening disarray, the bishops screwed up their courage and went on to issue Haec Sancta:

this holy synod of Constance, which is a general council, for the eradication of the present schism and for bringing unity and reform to God’s church in head and members, legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit to the praise of almighty God, ordains, defines, decrees, discerns and declares … that … it has power immediately from Christ; and that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the said schism and the general reform of the said church of God in head and members.

Next, it declares that anyone of whatever condition, state or dignity, even papal, who contumaciously refuses to obey the past or future mandates, statutes, or- dinances or precepts of this sacred council or of any other legitimately assembled general council, regarding the aforesaid things or matters pertaining to them, shall be subjected to well-deserved penance, unless he repents, and shall be duly punished.

To Catholic ears of the last 150 years, this decree sounds radical and wholly sui generis – because of the aforementioned institutional forgetting – but Oakley shows how deeply it was grounded in the relevant and widespread canonical theory and practice of the day, and how it had even deeper, more ancient roots in the communio ecclesiology of the early Church, in the light of which Haec Sancta, he insists, is “impeccably orthodox.” Misconceptions abound about this decree. One after another they wither under Oakley’s scrupulous scholarship, until we are left finally, nearly 600 years after the fact, to face the question: what should be made of this decree that is deeply 590 Briefly Noted

unsettling to the claims of the modern papacy? What, in other words are we to make of the fact that “a divided Christendom had indeed been reunited but only because a general council, acting in the absence of its papal head, had formally claimed on certain crucial issues to be the legitimate repository of supreme power in the Church” (42)? How can any of this be reconciled with Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus (lately enshrined in Lumen Gentium and the 1983 CIC)? And yet without some attempt at synthesis if not reconciliation, there are massive caesura in modern papal historiography and theology, and papal treatment of Constance ends up looking capricious and self-serving. In examining these questions, Oakley allows no escapes here through the usual dodges about Constance’s early sessions, which produced Haec Sancta, being ultra vires. Other evasions about “emergency” situations, “development of doctrine,” or lack of “ecumenical” status (conveniently given only to select decrees from Constance, the rest, as with the above passage, being retroactively rubbished by timorous popes) all collapse in the face of the relevant evidence he has relentlessly amassed. Oakley not merely closes off all such escapes, but seals the doors, leaving nowhere to turn but to face squarely the question: what is the proper relation between council and pope, and why has one modern notion (i.e., that which culminated in Pastor Aeternus) been the only one allowed to exist with official sanction, all others in earlier councils having been bundled off into an ecclesio-historical gulag? This question acquires even greater prominence when one realizes that Orthodox-Catholic unity will not be possible absent a renewed understanding of the role of councils and synods vis-à-vis the pope. Bringing Constance in from the outer darkness might prove helpful here. Thus one can only echo Oakley’s epilogue, where he challenges ecclesiologists (and, one presumes, ecumenists) to “steel their resolve and bring themselves to attend to the particular instance of unfinished business” (262). Until that is done, he asks plaintively, “can one hope to erect a future capable of Briefly Noted 591

enduring, if one persists in trying to do so on the foundation of a past that never truly was?”

Adam A.J. DeVille University of St. Francis Fort Wayne, IN

® ® ® ®

Books Received

Books Received by Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies:

Laurent A. Cleenewerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches (Euclid Consortium, 2008).

Sergius Bulgakov, Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year (Eerdmans, 2008).

Wm. M. Ramsay and Gertrude Bell, The Thousand and One Churches (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

Paul Robert Magocsi, The People From Nowhere: An Illustra- ted History of Carpatho-Rusyns (Padiak Publishers, 2007).

George Liacopulos, Church and Society: Orthodox Christian Perspectives, Past Experiences, and Modern Challenges (Somerset Hall Press, 2007).

Douglas Koskela, Ecclesiality and Ecumenism: Yves Congar and the Road to Unity (Marquette University Press, 2008).

Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009).

Vlad Naumescu, Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social Change in Ukraine (Lit Verlag, 2008).

Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis (Oxford, 2009).

594 Books Received

_____. The Lost History of Christianity: the Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How It Died (HarperOne, 2008).

Elizabeth Theokritoff and Mary B. Cunningham, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge, 2009).

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions (Yale University Press, 2009).

Frank Coppa, Politics and the Papacy in the Modern World (Praeger, 2008).

William Sametz, My Father the Priest: the Life and Times of the Very Reverend Dr. Peter Sametz, Founding Missionary Priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada (To- ronto: Hypertext Plus, 2008).

Norman Russell, Fellow Workers With God: Orthodox Think- ing on Theosis (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009).

Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009).

Paul Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catho- lic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecume- nism (Oxford, 2008).

Thomas Robinson, Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early Jewish-Christian Relations (Hendrickson, 2009).

Bruno Forte, The Portal of Beauty: Towards a Theology of Aesthetics (Eerdmans, 2009).

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Columbia University Press, 2008). Books Received 595

James Lindsay Hopkins, The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: a Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship Between Church, Nation, and State in Bulgaria (Columbia University Press, 2009).

William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Ox- ford, 2009).

® ® ® ®

Contributors to Volume 50, Nos. 3–4

Jars Balan is administrative coordinator of the Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in the University of Alberta.

Francois Beyrouti is a Melkite Greek Catholic priest who is finishing a dissertation at Saint Paul University, Ottawa on Origen’s biblical exegesis.

Andriy Chirovsky is a full professor who holds the Peter and Doris Kule Chair of Eastern Christian theology and spirituality at the Sheptytsky Institute at Saint Paul University, Ottawa.

J. Kevin Coyle is full professor of theology at Saint Paul Uni- versity, Ottawa, specializing in Augustine.

Adam DeVille is assistant professor of theology at the Univer- sity of Saint Francis, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

David Fleischacker is chairman of the Department of Philo- sophy and Theology at the University of Saint Francis, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Peter Galadza is a full professor and holder of the Kule Family Chair of Eastern Christian Liturgy at the Shep- tytsky Institute, Saint Paul University, Ottawa.

Brandon Gallaher is a doctoral candidate at Oxford Univer- sity.

Vigen Guroian is professor of religious studies at the Uni- versity of Virginia.

598 Contributors to Volume 50, Nos. 3–4

Edith Humphrey is a Canadian-born Orthodox Christian (Antiochian), and William F. Orr Professor of New Testa- ment Studies at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

John Jillions is associate professor at the Sheptytsky Institute in the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa.

Jean-Claude Larchet is an Orthodox layman with doctorates in theology and philosophy. The author of fifteen books, including a three-volume study in French on St. Maximus the Confessor, he is currently at work finishing his trilogy on illness and healing in the patristic tradition.

William Mills is rector of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church in Charlotte, NC, and adjunct professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Queens University in Charlotte.

Michael Plekon is a priest of the Orthodox Church of America and teaches in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Ronald Roberson is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC.

Marta Samokishyn is a collection development librarian at the Jean-Léon Allie Library, Saint Paul University, Ottawa.

Steven Scherer teaches in the Department of History at Cen- tral Michigan University where he specializes in the history of modern Russia and Eastern Europe.

Jennifer Spock is associate professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University where she specializes in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on monastic life in northern Russia. She is the series editor of Contributors to Volume 50, Nos. 3–4 599

Eastern Christian Studies, a sub-series of the Ohio Slavic Papers.

Myroslaw Tataryn is a Ukrainian Catholic priest and vice president and academic dean at Saint Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Lucian Turcescu is associate professor of theology at Concor- dia University, Montreal.

Sarah Wear is professor of classics at the Franciscan Univer- sity of Steubenville, Ohio.

THE METROPOLITAN ANDREY SHEPTYTSKY INSTITUTE OF EASTERN CHRISTIAN STUDIES

OUR MISSION As a centre of higher learning, research, ecumenical understanding and prayer, the Institute is an academic unit of the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, offering accredited undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Eastern Christian Studies to both men and women – laity, religious and clergy.

OUR COMMITMENT As a centre of higher learning, the Institute is committed to quality education in Eastern Christian Theology and related disciplines, both at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, as well as in its outreach programs. As a centre of research, the Institute is committed to scholarship and publication in the various fields of Eastern Christian Studies, cooperating with other educational institutions, learned societies and individual scholars. As a centre of ecumenical understanding, the Institute is committed to fostering respectful and fruitful encounter among the various Eastern Christian Churches (Orthodox and Catholic) and between Eastern and Western Christians. As a centre of prayer, the Institute is dedicated to integrating academic study and worship of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

OUR HISTORY Founded at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1986, the Institute came under the patronage of the Ukrainian Catholic Bishops of Canada in 1989, and in 1990 became a part of Saint Paul University in Ottawa.

OUR HOPE In dialogue with contemporary societies, the Institute hopes to communicate the power of Christian Faith and living Tradition, so that all may share in the very life of God.

Mission Statement Spring 2000

Academic Programs of the Sheptytsky Institute

Graduate Programs

Through Saint Paul University’s Faculty of Theology, the Sheptytsky Institute offers a graduate concentration is Eastern Christian Studies, closely following the established structural pattern of other concentrations in the Faculty, while maintaining a firm commitment to a genuinely Eastern approach to the graduate study of theology. The graduate concentration in Eastern Christian Studies includes both civil degree programs leading to an M.A. (Th.) and Ph.D. (Th.), and ecclesiastical degree programs for the licentiate (L.Th.) and doctorate (S.Th.D.). Four areas of study are offered: Spirituality-Doctrine, Liturgical Studies, Historical Studies, East-West Ecumenism.

The 2009-2010 Academic Year Graduate Courses in Ottawa

FALL 2009 THO 6375 Foundational Texts in Eastern Christian Church History Prof. John Jillions (Monday 9:00–12:00 noon)

THO 6378 Resources and Methods for the Study of Eastern Christianity Prof. Peter Galadza (Thursday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 6397 Foundational Texts in East-West Ecumenism Prof. Andrew Onuferko (Tuesday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 6398 Interreligious Issues and the Christian East Prof. Symeon Rodger (Monday 5:30–8:30 p.m.)

WINTER 2010 THO 6310 Theological Hermeneutics Prof. James Pambrun (Wednesday 9:00–12:00 noon)

THO 6350 Contemporary Theology I: Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? Prof. Catherine Clifford (Thursday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 6392 Iconography and the Spiritual Tradition of Hesychasm: The History of Eastern Christian Institutions, Movements, Persons Prof. Nazari Polataiko (Monday 1:15–4:15p.m.)

Undergraduate Programs

The Sheptytsky Institute (Saint Paul University, Faculty of Theology) offers the following undergraduate programs of study.

Bachelor of Theology Programs (Eastern Christian Studies)

The Bachelor of Theology (ECS) programs seek to foster in the students: a. General knowledge of contemporary theology solidly rooted in the Catholic- Orthodox tradition and open to the contributions of other Eastern and Western Christian and non-Christian traditions; b. The ability to perceive the relationships between the various areas of theology; c. The aptitude to exercise critical discernment both in the selection and use of theological texts (scripture, liturgy, Church Fathers, ecclesiastical documents, particular theologies, etc.) and also in the assessment of various historical situations (of the church, of the world; of the past and of the present); d. A clear-minded and searching interiorization or personal appropriation of the realities of the faith; e. The aptitude to perceive ministerial activities as contributing to the life of the church in spirit and in truth; f. Adequate knowledge of the sources, the methods, and the tools needed to continue the study of theology indepen- dently; g. More profound knowledge of the disciplines with which theology maintains special bonds; h. Sensitivity to the different cultural formulations of theology and the four great families of Eastern Churches; i. Basic formation in theology which gives access to graduate studies in theology.

The Civil B.Th. (Eastern Christian Studies) is a 120-credit program consisting of two parts: 1) a 30-credit cluster equivalent to one year of university, 2) A 90-credit (30 course) cluster of compulsory and elective courses, which may included up to twenty-two courses in Eastern Christian subjects.

The Ecclesiastical B.Th. (Eastern Christian Studies) is a 90-credit program in Theology to which are added 18 credits of philosophical formation.

The Ecclesiastical B.Th. (ECS) is conferred by Saint Paul University and the Civil B.Th. (ECS) is conferred jointly by Saint Paul University and the University of Ottawa. The civil and ecclesiastical B.Th. (ECS) programs can be followed concurrently, if desired.

Certificate in Eastern Christian Studies

The Certificate of University Studies in Theology (Eastern Christian Studies) is a 24-credit program, which provides a general but serious initiation to the most important issues addressed by contemporary Eastern Christian theology. This program also allows students to study certain issues more deeply, according to their needs.

Since this program can be completed in two sessions (September-April), it is of special interest to those who lack the time to undertake a Bachelor of Theology program. This program is especially suitable for: professors of religion and catechetics who wish to gain more complete understanding of the message they are called to transmit; religious men and women who have a doctrinal year as a part of their formation; those who wish to take refresher courses to update or broaden their understanding of the Eastern Churches; those who wish to register for the M.A. in Pastoral Studies but do not have the required theological preparation.

The 2009-2010 Academic Year Undergraduate Courses in Ottawa

FALL 2009 THO 2130** Foundations of Eastern Christian Theology Prof. Peter Galadza (Tuesday 1:15– 4:15 p.m.)

THO 2131** General Introduction to the Eastern Churches Prof. Bob Anderson (Wednesday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 3319* Eastern Christian Doctrine I: Trinity, Christ and Holy Spirit Prof. John Jillions (Thursday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 3322* Byzantine Eucharistic Liturgies Prof. Peter Galadza (Monday 5:30–8:30 p.m.)

WINTER 2010 THO 2119 Eastern Christian Pastoral Theology: Selected Topics in the Practice of the Church I Prof. John Jillions (Thursday 5:30–8:30 p.m.) Note: Video-conferencing available

THO 3301* Hermeneutics and Exegesis in Eastern Christianity Prof. Andrew Onuferko (Internet)

THO 3318* Eastern Christian Spirituality Prof. Maxym Lysack (Tuesday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

THO 3324** Introduction to Eastern Christian Ethics Prof. Ihor Kutash (Monday 1:15–4:15 p.m.)

* Compulsory ** Compulsory basic (Foundational)

Mark your calendars!

SHEPTYTSKY INSTITUTE STUDY DAYS An Eastern Christian Feast for the Mind and Heart

A conference for all – adults and youth alike – who are interested in deepening their knowledge of Eastern Christian theology and spirituality.

June 28 to 30, 2010 Saint Paul University in Ottawa

Theme: Holiness and Healing

Special public Lecture on Sunday evening, June 27, 2010

The details of the program are being finalized as Logos goes to print

Saint Paul University 223 Main Street Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1S 1C4 Tel. 613-236-1393 (ext. 2332) Fax 613-782-3026 Toll-free in North America 1-800-637-6859 (ext. 2332) [email protected] www.ustpaul.ca/sheptytsky

Resources Available from the Sheptytsky Institute

Sheptytsky Institute Study Days (July 2 to 4, 2009) Audio CDs of Plenary Sessions Featuring plenary sessions by Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome (Liturgy: The Foundation of Authentic Spitrituality), Father John Behr, Dean and Chancellor of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York (The Cross in Patristic Spiri- tuality), and Martha Shepherd of the Madonna House Apostolate in Ottawa (Embracing Silence: Finding God in the Desert) Cost: each session CDN $15.00 US $13.00 / Set of all 3 CDN $40.00 US $34.50

Sheptytsky Institute Study Days (July 2 to 5, 2008) Audio CDs of Plenary Sessions Featuring plenary sessions by Fr. Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Christian Doctrine in an Age of Relativism / Fr. Peter Galadza, Professor, Sheptytsky Institute, Eastern Litur- gy in a Western World / Frederica Mathewes-Green, noted author, speaker and media personality, Morality in a Post-Christian Age / Fr. Andriy Chi- rovsky, Professor and Founding Director, Sheptytsky Institute, Good News in Tough Times: The Evangelization of North America. Cost: each session CDN $8.00 US $6.50 / Set of all 4 CDN $25.00 US $20.35

Pray for God’s Wisdom: The Mystical Sophiology of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Andriy Chirovsky ISBN 1–897937–00–0 The first major monograph on the spiritual core of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky’s thought and life – his devotion to the Wisdom of God. Fr. Andriy Chirovsky studies the life and literary output of Metropolitan Andrey, looking for clues to a clearer understanding of the many levels of meaning that Wisdom-Sophia held for the saintly primate of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church. Comparisons with the three Russian sophiologists (Solovyov, Bulgakov, and Florensky) show how much more rooted in the Tradition were the sophiological musings of Sheptytsky. xx, 279 pp. Cost: CDN $20.00 US $16.30

The Theology and Liturgical Work of Andrei Sheptytsky (1865– 1944). Peter Galadza ISBN 1–895937–13–2 Metropolitan Archbishop Sheptytsky is arguably the most important Ukrainian churchman in modern history. This is the first comprehensive study of the sources and characteristics of his theology, as well as the first full account of his liturgical initiatives. Co-published with Pontificio Istituto Orientale. Volume 272 of their on-going series Orientalia Christiana Analec- ta. 524 pp. Cost: CDN $49.95 US $40.65

The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship. Peter Galadza, Editor-in-Chief ISBN 1–895937–12–4 A one-volume source for singing the Divine Liturgy in English with sections in Ukrainian. This book contains Sundays, Festal and Weekday Musical Settings for the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Music for the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, the Hours in English, Propers for the Liturgical Year, Tables for Scriptural Readings, Hymns and Carols, Bles- sings and other Brief Rites. xiv, 1160 pp. Cost: CDN $58.95 US $47.95, bulk discounts available.

The Divine Liturgy for Congregational Singing (Two-CD Set) This recording, by the renowned chorus Schola Cantorum of Chicago, under the direction of J. Michael Thompson, includes the main sections of the book, The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship (2004). All of the propers of the eight resurrectional tones are also recorded. Over 2 hours of music. Cost: Two-CD Set CDN $25.00 US $20.35

Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine – the Legacy of Andrei Sheptytsky. Andrii Krawchuk ISBN 1–895937–04–3 As a pre-eminent Ukrainian Greco-Catholic churchman of the 20th century, Sheptytsky defended the rights of persecuted Orthodox Christians and who saved Jews during the Holocaust, devoting his life to upholding universal Christian ideals among the Eastern-rite Catholics of Ukraine. Exhaus- tively documented, this is the first analysis of an inspiring moral response to delicate Ukrainian-Polish and Catholic-Orthodox issues, sociallism and communism, church-state relations and the Nazi occupation. xxiv, 404 pp. Cost: CDN $49.95 US $40.65

Eastern Christians in the New World: An Historical and Canonical Study of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. David Motiuk ISBN 1–895937–14–0 A canonical and historical overview of the development of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada, highlighting the growth of the first parish communities, the appointment of its first bishop and the establishment of the Metropolitan See of Winnipeg. The author examines relations with the Latin Church, various decrees of Bishop Nykyta Budka, Bishop Basil Ladyka, and the Ukrainian Catholic Conference in Canada. A significant portion of the work collects into one volume the major sources of the Particular Law of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. xiv, 426 pp. Cost: CDN $49.95 US $40.65

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE! Unité en division: Les lettres de Lev Gillet (Un moine de l’Église d’Orient) à André Cheptytsky, 1921–1929. Edited with Introduction by Peter Galadza. Cost: CDN $39.95 US $33.00

Canadian residents add 5% GST. Contact us for shipping rates.

For a complete list of Sheptytsky Institute publications, contact us:

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies Saint Paul University 223 Main Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 1C4 Tel. 613-236-1393 (ext. 2332) Fax 613-782-3026 Toll-free in North America 1-800-637-6859 (ext. 2332) [email protected] www.ustpaul.ca/sheptytsky

Autres revues publiées par l'Université Saint-Paul Other Journals Published by Saint Paul University (223 Main, Ottawa ON K1S 1C4) Theoforum

Revue publiée, en français et en anglais, par la Faculté de théologie. Elle paraît en janvier, mai et octobre. Les articles traitent de sujets d'intérêt pour la communauté théologique et aussi pour le lecteur cultivé, ouvert à ce domaine. Abonnement: CDN 54 $ (TPS incl.). Étranger: CDN 65 $ ou US 48 $. A journal of the Faculty of Theology published in January, May and October. A referred scholarly journal, in French and in English, its articles are also of interest to the general educated reader. Subscription rate: CDN $54 (GST incl.). Outside Canada: CDN $65 or US $48. Secrétaire de rédaction/Editor: Léo Laberge, O.M.I. Studia canonica

Revue publiée deux fois par année, en français et en anglais, par la Faculté de droit canonique. Abonnement: CDN 50 $ (TPS incl.). Étranger: CDN 65 $ ou US 47 $. A journal published twice a year, in French and in English, by the Faculty of Canon Law. Subscription rate: CDN $50 (GST incl.). Outside Canada: CDN $65 or US $47. Roch Pagé, directeur/Editor, Patrick Cogan, S.A., Lynda Robitaille: directeurs adjoints/Associate Editors

Counseling et spiritualité / Counselling and Spirituality* Revue publiée deux fois par année, en français et en anglais, par la Faculté des sciences humaines. Elle a pour but de promouvoir le dialogue entre chercheurs, formateurs et praticiens et de contribuer à l'intégration de la théologie et des sciences humaines dans une perspective œcuménique. Abonnement: CDN 40 $ (TPS incl.). Étranger: CDN 45 $ ou US 38 $. A journal of the Faculty of Human Sciences, published twice a year, in English and French. The journal provides a forum for dialogue among researchers, trainers and practitioners. It aims to contribute to the integration of theology and the human sciences in an ecumenical framework. Subscription rate: CDN $40 (GST incl.). Outside Canada: CDN $45 or US $38. Rédactrice/Editor: Pierrette Daviau, Rédactrice adjointe/Co-Editor: Terry Lynn Gall *succède à Sciences pastorales / continuation of pastoral sciences Mission

Revue bilingue (français et anglais), publiée deux fois par année par l'Institut des sciences de la mission. Mission succède à Kerygma avec le premier numéro de 1994. Revue favorisant le dialogue entre les missionnaires, de même qu'entre les missionnaires et le monde académique. Abonnement: CDN 30 $ (TPS incl.). Étranger: CDN 34 $ ou US 28 $. Bilingual (English and French), published twice a year by the Institute of Mission Studies. Mission is the continuation of Kerygma, starting with the first issue of 1994. A journal which fosters dialogue between missionaries as well as between missionaries and researchers. Subscription rate: CDN $30 (GST incl.). Outside Canada: CDN $34 or US $28. Rédacteurs/Editors: Peter Pandimakil, Carolyn Sharp

60 Logos pub.indd 140 5/16/07 3:55:43 PM Revues publiées par l'Université Saint-Paul Journals Published by Saint Paul University Bon de commande \ Order Form 223 Main Ottawa ON Canada K1S 1C4

nom \ name______adresse \ address______ville \ city______province______pays \ country______code postal \ postal code______téléphone \ telephone______télécopieur \ fax______courriel \ email ______Commande \ Order

QTÉ TITRE PRIX TOTAL QTY TITLE PRICE TOTAL Theoforum

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Mission Counselling et spiritualité \ and Spirituality Studia canonica

Paiement \ Payment ❑ chèque ou mandat postal \ cheque or money order payable à l'université saint-paul \ payable to saint paul university

❑ facture \ please bill me université saint-paul \ saint paul university att: carole paquette 223 main ottawa on canada k1s 1c4 613-236-1393, poste \ ext.: 2214 1-800-637-6859 Merci de votre commande! Thank you for your order!

60 Logos pub.indd 141 5/16/07 3:55:43 PM

LOGOS: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies Saint Paul University • 223 Main Street • Ottawa, Ontario • K1S 2C4 Tel: 613-236-1393 or 1-800-637-6859 ext. 2332 • Fax: 613-782-3026 email: [email protected] web: www.ustpaul.ca/sheptytsky

LOGOS BACK ISSUES

Volume Unit Price* (30% off back issues) Qty Total Other Canada countries Volume 50, Nos. 1-2 and 3-4 CDN $45.00 US $40.00 (2009) Volume 49, Nos. 1-2 and 3-4 CDN $45.00 US $40.00 (2008) Volume 48, Nos. 1-2 and 3-4 CDN $45.00 US $40.00 (2007) Volume 47, Nos. 1-2 and 3-4 CDN $45.00 US $35.70

(2006) $31.50 $25.00 Volume 46, Nos. 1-2 and 3-4 CDN $45.00 US $35.70

(2005) $31.50 $25.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volumes 43-45 (2002-2004) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volumes 41-42 (2000-2001) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volume 40, Nos. 1-4 (1999) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $26.75 US $23.00 Volume 39, Nos. 2-4 (1998) $18.73 $16.00 CDN $10.70 US $8.60 Volume 39, No. 1 (1998) Available on CD only $7.49 $6.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volume 38, Nos. 1-4 (1997) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volume 37, Nos. 1-4 (1996) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $37.45 US $31.45 Volume 36, Nos. 1-4 (1995) $26.22 $22.00 CDN $20.00 US $17.15 Volume 35, Nos. 1-4 (1994) Available on CD only $14.00 $12.00 CDN $26.75 US $23.00 Volume 34, Nos. 3-4 (1993) $18.73 $16.00 CDN $10.70 US $8.60 Volume 34, Nos. 1-2 (1993) Available on CD only $7.49 $6.00 * 5 % GST included in Canadian Price Contact the Institute for airmail rates TOTAL

Name: Email: Address: City: Province/State: Postal Code:

Enclosed is my cheque or money order for $ Cheque or money order payable to: Sheptytsky Institute – LOGOS