Faith and Learning in Higher Education: Historical Reflections for Orthodox Scholars Today

Andrea Sterk

University of Florida

Consultation of the Orthodox Theological Society in America and the Office of Vocation & Ministry, Hellenic College Cenacle Retreat Center, Chicago, Illinois June 12, 2008

Before I begin my formal presentation, I’d like to situate myself and say something about the thrust of my comments. Although not myself Orthodox, I have been very much influenced by the Orthodox tradition. In my thinking as a historian of I have particularly particularly benefited from the work of Father Georges Florovsky and Father John Meyendorff, among other prominent Orthodox historians and theologians. With regard to pedagogical experience, I have had the privilege to teach in a variety of institutional settings: a Presbyterian seminary, a small Christian liberal arts college, a Catholic university, and now in a history department at a large public research university. I am aware of the diversity of institutions and departments represented here, but my remarks will be especially geared to those who teach or do their scholarship in (or for) a largely secular academic context—although I trust my reflections will be relevant to a broader audience of Christian academics. Finally, I am certainly not an expert on the issues I’ll be addressing tonight but rather a fellow pilgrim in this journey through the academic life; so most of my remarks are intended to spur further thought and discussion as we have much to learn from each other.

Higher Education in the 21st Century: Some Challenges and Possible Responses My reflections begin not with history but with the contemporary situation of the academy in the 21st century. What are some of the major challenges that academics—teachers and scholars, believers as well as unbelievers—face toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century? Some of these are intellectual challenges arising largely from within the academic milieu; others are social and economic challenges, largely imposed from outside the academy, but have just as serious ramifications and are just as important for our consideration as academics, especially academics of religious conviction, as the intellectual challenges we face. For many committed Christian scholars—especially for those who work in the humanities—the most obvious challenge that comes to mind is post-modernism (though I hesitate to use this as a monolithic term). The deconstruction of texts and meaning, an emphasis on subjectivity, and the contingency of all truth pose obvious challenges to Christian scholars. Many Orthodox academics, however, have ignored postmodernism; others have responded positively by embracing some of its methodological perspectives while at the same time affirming the reality and complexity of Christian metanarrative.1 However, even for Christian scholars who have found constructive ways to negotiate the labyrinth of postmodern approaches

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to their disciplines, incorporating its insights while eschewing certain of its underlying foundational assumptions about truth, it is important to recognize that postmodern thinking undergirds many of the structures of our institutions of higher education and affects the undergraduate curriculum as a whole. Particularly disturbing is the postmodern emphasis on fragmentation, bricolage, lack of methodology in the various disciplines. A good example of the eclecticism that characterizes much post-modern scholarship is the work of the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, though not, strictly speaking, a post-modernist. A recent review (in the Times Literary Supplement) describes his books as: …disheveled collages of ideas, ranging from Kant to computer science, St. Augustine to Agatha Christie. There seems to be nothing in heaven or earth that is not grist to his intellectual mill. One digression spawns another until the author seems as unclear as the reader about what he was suppose to be arguing…In typically postmodern style, his work leaps impudently over the frontiers between high and popular culture, swerving in the course of a paragraph from Kierkegaard to Mel Gibson. Trained as a philosopher in Ljubljana and Paris, he is a film buff, psychoanalytical theorist, amateur theologian and political analyst…2

The description of his work continues at length in much the same vein. If Žižek himself is “a strenuous thinker,” as the reviewer claims, and his books “lucid in style” with “prose that is crisp and consumer friendly” despite his postmodern method, the same certainly cannot be said of much that passes as postmodern scholarship today. While an emphasis on interdisciplinarity has certainly enriched scholarship in the humanities and social sciences in recent years, one wonders how the emphasis on fragmentation has affected teaching and learning when placed in the hands of academics less astute or less well-trained than Žižek or other scholars of his caliber. This postmodern emphasis on fragmentation coincides with what is a broader trend and perhaps a more pernicious threat to the academy, namely the lack of cohesiveness in higher education. As some have put it, in our increasingly narrow areas of specialization we have gradually shifted from the notion of a university to a multi-versity. Despite paying lipservice to interdisciplinarity in many institutions, the disciplines remain fragmented and nothing really ties things together. We have lost the idea that various branches of knowledge ought to cohere, and we have lost the value and even the notion of the humanities altogether; indeed the very concept of the human comes into question. A second challenge is the diminishing role of higher education in society. The university is clearly taken much less seriously than it once was. While one may disagree with some arguments of John Sommerville regarding the “decline” of the secular university, the title of his recent book, I believe he has rightly analyzed the changing status of higher education in the U.S.3 Universities are becoming increasingly marginalized in terms of their influence in American society. They do not provide the leadership in politics and culture that they once did, and even in the sciences universities increasingly hire their labs out to business and government with the goal of gaining patents. There has also been a shift toward vocational and professional education rather than the traditional liberal arts curriculum. Perhaps the decreasing status of the university in American society is one of the reasons that higher education, especially public education, has been so hard hit by the economic crises of our day. This leads me to another challenge to the academy in the first decade of the 21st century, namely economic strains and their effects. While many public as well as private universities and colleges have been affected by the general economic decline, my own university has been

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particularly hard hit. The University of Florida is in the midst of a $47 million budget cut. A large percentage of the cuts are coming in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and most of these cuts are in the humanities. A little over a month ago the university announced that graduate programs would be suspended (including philosophy), departments such as German and French would be merged into a department of modern languages, and multiple staff and 18 untenured faculty were laid off – all of these in the humanities and primarily in languages. Yet the university also announced that it had made these difficult decisions without jeopardizing “the core mission of the university,” a statement which left many of us bewildered. In any case, there is no end to these strains in sight, and we need to be aware of such trends in the academy as a whole and prepared to respond to them in our particular institutional settings. Some of these challenges I’ve described are unique to the U.S. in the twenty-first century, but questions of how should view learning and the very purpose of higher education have long been issues of debate among scholars. So, how might we as Christian scholars and teachers respond to these and other challenges facing higher education in our day? Before considering some models from the past, I’d like to highlight three types of responses that I believe are fairly typical – both today and throughout history: The first is a response of antagonism. This is a typical response of some evangelical scholars who lament the “decline” of the secular university or pose an us/them dichotomy with regard to Christians and the academy. But this is not just an evangelical mindset. There are many examples of Christian scholars throughout history being antagonistic toward the ideals if not specific institutions of higher education. Tertullian is typical in his famous diatribe, “What has to do with Jerusalem?” or the tension between the so-called rigorists (most often ) and the laxists (most often scholars) in Byzantine history. The rigorists, of course, were characterized by a more antagonistic response to higher education. At times Christians expressed more of a caution than an antagonism toward pagan culture. St. Basil, for example, considered the ancient classics as part and parcel of an educated Christian’s formation but was careful to warn: “You should not surrender to these men once for all the rudders of your mind.”4 In general, however, the Orthodox tradition has had a relatively positive outlook on learning. A second response is withdrawal. Withdrawal comes in various forms and is perhaps a more widespread response among Christian academics. In some cases, we carefully frame our scholarly subjects to avoid controversy, perhaps publishing only in “safe” journals. For others, withdrawal is not as much a retreat from challenging intellectual ideas as a withdrawal from administrative work, decision making, the petty debates and rivalries that mark our departments or our educational institutions as a whole. We want to crawl into our shells and pursue our own scholarly agendas, our own work, leave the fighting to others. Still others withdraw from any kind of potential disagreement with colleagues; and by all means, don’t let anyone know I may have a point of view that is shaped by my Christian faith. My guess is that the tendency among Orthodox scholars is not as much to be antagonistic toward the secular university as to withdraw, or perhaps to dichotomize academic life and the Christian or ecclesiastical sphere of our lives. A final, and I think the healthiest, response to challenges we face in higher education is one that I would label “thoughtful engagement.” There are many different forms of engagement, and not every Christian scholar can or should respond to the challenges of the academy in the same way. Before we think further about what forms Christian engagement might take in our own day, I want to introduce three models of engagement from history— scholar-teachers from the third to the 10th century from whom we might learn in light of the challenges of our own day. I should also say that one thing history teaches us is that the past is

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messy. Father Florovsky speaks of the “dust of small facts” that confound our orderly vision of “fixed characters” or “typical individuals.”5 None of the examples I use here are completely virtuous or heroic, nor do their careers perfectly correspond with those of our own academic world. In fact, two of the three may seem a bit odd. But I hope we can draw from different types of Christian engagement with education in very different contexts a few thoughts that might serve as an impetus to further reflection and discussion, if not models for emulation in our own educational settings.

Historical Models of Engagement Origen of Alexandria: The Challenge of Scholarship My first example of a Christian scholar engaging the intellectual life of his era is one you might most expect. The most important theologian of the third century and one of the great Christian thinkers of all time was Origen of Alexandria. If one had to choose an ancient Christian scholar who best counters the tendency toward over-specialization in our day—embodying the integration of faith and learning and the cohesiveness of education—it would certainly be Origen. Origen was a genius and a polymath! He could work in almost any field far better than most other people could work in one! Regarding , he was a one-man divinity school; he seems to have invented some disciplines that are now regular parts of advanced theological education. But permeating all of Origen’s scholarly work was a concern to make the Christian faith intellectually relevant and convincing to outsiders. Alexandria was one of the great centers of learning in antiquity. From Hellenistic times it was famous for its great library and renowned as a center of literary and philosophical studies. There was also an important Jewish community there. Origen benefited from both settings—the intellectual and the Jewish--in constructing his theology. Raised in a Christian family, Origen had a great love for the and devoted his life to its interpretation. But he was also trained in Greek philosophy and tried to relate philosophy, especially Platonism, to his study of Bible. Using the metaphor of Israelites “spoiling the Egyptians,” Origen believed Christian intellectuals should take the best of pagan learning and apply it to the study of Scripture and theology. Writing to his own student and disciple, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Origen counseled: Your natural aptitude is sufficient to make you a consummate Roman lawyer and a Greek philosopher too of the most famous schools. But my desire for you has been that you should direct the whole force of your intelligence to Christianity as your end…I wish to ask you to extract from the philosophy of the Greeks what may serve as a course of study or a preparation for Christianity, and from geometry and astronomy what will serve to explain the sacred Scriptures, in order that all that the children of the philosophers are wont to say about geometry and music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy, as fellow- helpers to philosophy, we may say about philosophy itself, in relation to Christianity.6 [Letter to Gregory, c.235]

Origen was also one of the few Christians of his day whom we know was taken seriously as a thinker or philosopher even by pagan intellectuals. The leading neo-platonic philosopher, Porphyry, wrote specifically about Origen in his treatise Against the Christians. He basically accused Origen of being too philosophical, of stealing great philosophical ideas of Plato and inappropriately applying them to Christianity--which Porphyry considered an unreasonable & lowly set of teachings. Let me read you a passage from the pagan Porphyry about Origen: …For this man [Origen], having been a student of Ammonius, who had attained the

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greatest proficiency in philosophy of any in our day, derived much benefit from his teacher in the knowledge of the sciences; but as to the correct choice of life, he pursued a course opposite to his… Origen, having been educated as a Greek in Greek literature, went over to the barbarian recklessness [Christianity]. And carrying over the learning which he had obtained, he hawked it about, in his life conducting himself as a Christian and contrary to the laws, but in his opinions of material things and of the Deity being like a Greek, and mingling Grecian teachings with foreign fables. For he was continually studying Plato, and he busied himself with the writings of Numenius and Cronius…and those famous among the Pythagoreans. And he used the books of Chaeremon the Stoic, and of Cornutus. Becoming acquainted through them with the figurative interpretation of the Grecian mysteries, he applied it to the Jewish Scriptures.7 -Porphyry, Against the Christians

If Origen were alive and an active academic today, how might Porphyry’s accusation read? I’ve attempted a possible reconstruction of such a text:

…For this man, having been a student of Stanley Fish, who attained the greatest proficiency in literary criticism of any our day, derived much benefit from his teacher in the knowledge of literature and culture; but as to the correct choice of life, he pursued a course opposite to his…Origen, having been educated at Duke and Chicago in philosophy and literary theory, went over to Christian pursuits. And carrying the learning he had obtained, he used it unashamedly, in his life conducting himself as a Christian and contrary to the philosophical ideals of our day, but in his opinions about literature and epistemology, being like a postmodernist, and mingling sophisticated poststructural ideas with simplistic religious beliefs. For he was continually studying Foucault, and he busied himself with the writings of Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas as well as those famous among the structuralists and post-strucutralists. And he used the writings of Derrida and Levinas. Becoming acquainted through them with the deconstructionist reading of texts he applied what he learned to his study of the Christian Scriptures.

In certain Christian circles today, if a secular academic were to describe a Christian professor in this way, you can be sure that many believers would be skeptical that the man was even a Christian! In any case, Origen was a prime example of the attempt of a Christian scholar to make the faith comprehensible to the Greco-Roman intellectual world of the third century. Although deeply rooted in and committed to Scripture, Origen was willing to learn from and incorporate the best philosophical ideas of his day to help interpret the Bible and to explain Christian truths both to the church and to non-Christian intellectual colleagues. It is well known, of course, that some of Origen’s ideas got him into trouble 150 years later when a big controversy arose over the "orthodoxy" of some of his teachings. This brings us to a negative example of the use of learning in the Christian tradition and a very ugly fight among Christian intellectuals: the Origenistic controversy. In any case, even many theologians who condemned Origen were tremendously influenced by his writings on the Bible and theology. Origen had thoroughly learned the subject matter and discourse of the pagan intellectual world of his day; and he was unafraid to engage and even incorporate some of these ideas. Because of this engagement, he was respected (albeit it grudgingly) by pagan intellectuals and was better able to help Christians understand their faith and respond to intellectual challenges facing the

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church. Embodying the integration of Christian faith with diverse branches of knowledge, Origen also stands for the cohesiveness of learning and as a counter-example to the trend toward ever narrower specialization. For my next example, I wanted to focus on Basil or the Cappadocians, and of course they do express views on the place of learning, especially secular learning, in the education of Christian youth. Perhaps particularly relevant in Basil’s writings to the theme of faith and higher education is his ambivalence regarding the purpose of education, reflecting a more general debate among intellectuals of his age.8 The dispute focused on the relative merits of study or learning for its own sake (study, of course, included philosophy and its accompanying self- discipline, together with literature and grace of style) and, on the other hand, education placed at the service of public life. This is an issue which continues to be debated in our own academic world, and something which Orthodox theologians might want to address from the wealth of the Orthodox tradition in ways that engage the university today. Yet while both Basil and were recipients of a classical education in philosophy and rhetoric, neither of them served in the kind of setting in which many of us find ourselves, that is, in a largely pagan (or what we might today call a “secular” academic) environment. So, I decided to focus on someone much less famous but who more closely fits this description in the late ancient world, a Christian teacher of rhetoric named Prohaeresius, likely one of the teachers of Basil and Gregory in Athens.

Prohaeresius & the Vicissitudes of Academic Life Not much is known about Prohaeresius’s youth or Christian upbringing. Most of what we know about him is from a single pagan source, Lives of the Philosophers and by , who was for a time a student of Prohaeresius. So some of what I say may be a bit speculative due to scant sources; and I’m not trying to propose Prohaeresius as a new Christian for academics. Nonetheless, I think we can learn something from his career about the intersection of academic and political life in the late and about how a Christian might fare when engaged in a largely pagan academic setting. Despite his family’s poverty, Prohaeresius, an Armenian by birth, eventually made his way to Athens to continue his studies along with his friend Hephaestion. Little is known of his student days, but Eunapius tells us that Prohaeresius and Hephaestion were “devoted friends and rivaled one another in their poverty”;9 indeed, in one of his many anecdotes he says they were so poor that they had only one threadbare set of clothes between them (typical graduate students?) so could attend classes only on alternate days. Prohaeresius studied under the leading in Athens in the early fourth century, of Cappadocia, and became his teacher’s foremost pupil. When Julian died c.330 there was considerable contention for his endowed chair. Here we get into the internal and external political aspects of higher education in late antiquity – for pagans as well as Christians – which are not all that different from situations we face today. Though Julian of Cappadocia had favored Prohaeresius and even given him his house and hence control of his school, his chair was a public teaching post and therefore not his to give. Such an endowed chair included a stipend, exemption from certain taxes and duties, and considerable prestige, so many contenders vied for the post. The decision for such a chair was usually made by the city council after a review of the applicants, and in this case, the council elected 6 finalists. Each finalist was required to give a declamation (a kind of “job talk”) before an audience which included the governor of the province who would make the final decision. According to Eunapius, Prohaeresius and his friend & fellow-countryman Haephestion were the

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strongest contenders at this stage, but Hephaestion withdrew from the competition and left Athens. At this point it seems that the other job candidates, jealous of Prohaeresius’s growing influence in Athens and his success in recruiting students, bribed the governor and drove him out of town in the late . If local university politics drove Prohaeserius temporarily into exile, it was largely imperial politics that eventually enabled him to return to the city. This time his Christianity was probably an asset to his career. Prohaeresius made his way to the territory controlled by the western , where he stood out, according to a recent study, as “a rare breed” among the emperor’s largely Latin-speaking subjects.”10 At a time when many pagan academics were still questioning the intellectual potency of Christianity, a noted Christian rhetor like Prohaeresius could bolster the intellectual credentials of the new faith. Eunapius, a convinced pagan, would be unlikely to say this directly; nor does it seem that Prohaeserius would have sought or desired this status as a kind of Christian intellectual “showpiece” in the west – a Christian Athenian teacher of rhetoric. But this seems to be what happened. Eunapius tells us that a new proconsul in Athens eventually recalled Prohaeresius to the city and was able to offer him a publicly funded chair “because the emperor was supportive.” The next year Constans invited Prohaeresius to his court in Gaul and then to to give declamations “since he was ambitious to show what sort of men he ruled over.”11 So we see that affirmative action could work for as well as against Christians—in what was still a largely pagan academic world! Backed by imperial favor, the next phase of Prohaererius’s career in Athens was much more secure. He continued to attract to his school large numbers of both pagan and Christian students. While he had good connections throughout Asia Minor that enabled him to recruit students (critical to any school’s success), his reputation for teaching was also a major factor behind his popularity. Though publicly identified as a Christian teacher of rhetoric in several texts, we have little evidence that Prohaeresius tried to incorporate Christian ideas into his scholarship. Eunapius refers repeatedly to his rhetorical skill, but there are no extant speeches of Prohaeresius that might indicate how he handled the pagan elements that were traditional in sophistic oratory. It has been suggested that he treated them as allegories and that it is unlikely he overtly introduced Christian themes. His declamations on historical themes seem to have been best remembered, and in these he could largely avoid religious ideas.12 Others have suggested that he likely made little impact as a Christian since, among other factors, Gregory and Basil studied under him but make no mention of his influence. But before we quickly dismiss Prohaeresius as an ineffectual Christian academic, a few points warrant clarification. His career was at its height in the 330s and 340s, when Christianity was just beginning to penetrate in significant ways the Roman intellectual world. While there had been brilliant theologians like Origen before him, he was one of very few Christians in this era to be teaching in a primarily pagan milieu in a pagan institution. (Origen had headed the catechetical school in Alexandria; so he was primarily teaching believers.) Also, Prohaeresius was not a theologian but a teacher of rhetoric, and needless to say, there were not many models of Christians integrating their faith with the teaching of classical rhetoric. Moreover, by the time Basil and Gregory were studying in Athens, Prohaeresius was close to 80 years old, and likely much, if not all of the teaching of his “school” was in the hands of his assistants. So it is perhaps unfair to judge him too harshly for not being more innovative or influential in what some today call “Christian” scholarship. Prohaeresius was certainly known by both students and colleagues to be a Christian, and his pagan student Eunapius, who wrote his Life, speaks highly of his integrity and character as well as his brilliance in rhetoric. And Gregory of Nazianzus, though he

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does not describe his personal influence, wrote an epitaph to honor the teacher.13 Yet if we have doubts about his sincerity as a Christian, a final episode should serve to dispel them. The last stage of Prohaeresius’s career brings us back into the politics of academic life, for it was marked by the famous decree of the pagan Emperor Julian the Apostate essentially forbidding Christians to teach the classical curriculum. While Constans favored Prohaeresius and furthered his career, Constantius II ignored him; but the pagan emperor Julian was strongly ill-disposed to the Christian rhetor. It seems surprising, then, that when Julian placed his ban on Christian teachers, he offered Prohaeresius an exemption. This move, however, was calculated to appear as an act of compassion toward Christians while still promoting Julian’s pagan objectives. Prohaeresius could either keep teaching and break ranks with other Christian professors (a potentially great propaganda triumph for the pagan emperor) or he could step down, thereby furthering Julian’s intended aim of making the schools better able to facilitate conversions to . Along with other Christian professors, most notably Marius Victorinus in Rome who served as an important symbol for St. Augustine, Prohaeresius stepped down. writes in his Chronicle: “The Athenian sophist abandoned his school of his own accord after the enactment of the law which forbade Christians from teaching the liberal arts. This was in spite of the fact that Julian had made an exception for him so he could teach as a Christian.”14 Emperor Jovian overturned Julian’s law after several months, so Prohaeresius was soon able to resume teaching and the leadership of his school—which he apparently did until his death in 366 at the age of 90! In Prohaeresius’s career we find several elements that are useful for further reflection: 1) a highly competent scholar known to be a Christian in a largely “secular” university; one who was praised by both pagans and Christians, even if he did not actively seek to “integrate” Christian thought with his teaching of rhetoric; 2) a victim of the vicissitudes of academic as well as imperial politics—reminding us that our situation as Christians in the secular academic world is not unique and that the opposition or problems we face may have little to do with a general hostility toward Christian faith; and 3) a Christian academic who was unwilling to compromise his Christian commitment under pressure.

Teachers among the Slavs: Cyril & Methodius, Clement & Naum A final example of engagement is that of a group of scholar-teachers who operated in a very different milieu from either a catechetical school or a university. These men are all associated with Byzantine missions to the Slavs, but I would like to single out their work as teachers. And as I highlight a few details in a very complex political and ecclesiastical narrative, it is especially the communal dimension of their mission as educators—their teamwork—that I want to emphasize. The story of Slavic missions did not start in east-central or southeastern Europe but rather in in the second half of the ninth century. One of the major factors contributing to the outburst of missionary fervor that characterized this period in Byzantine history was a revival of learning and education connected with the great scholar and churchman, Photius. A great lover of learning, he promoted humanist as well as biblical and patristic scholarship summoning leading scholars to the university in Constantinople. Several of these became major church leaders as well as scholars including the future apostle to the Slavs, Constantine-Cyril. It was Photius who responded to the request of Prince Rastislav of Moravia for missionaries to be sent to his land. Recognizing the importance of Rastislav's request, Photius seized the opportunity! His choice to head the requested mission was not a or bur rather the scholar Constantine, who later

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took the monastic name Cyril. Again, Cyril’s career began not as a priest but as an academic, a teacher at the university. In fact, he is generally known as Constantine the Philosopher in the sources. Cyril and his brother Methodius had grown up near Thessalonica, which had a very large Slavic population, and they were familiar with the south Slavic dialect spoken there. Before leaving Constantinople it seems that Cyril (apparently with a group of other scholars) invented an alphabet for the Slavs to translate the Scriptures, liturgy, and various theological works into the Slav tongue. So Cyril, Methodius, and their co-workers arrived in Moravia in the autumn of 863 and were well received by the prince. Unfortunately we don’t have much specific information about their activities, but we do know that alongside , the main thrust of their missionary work was educational.15 Near contemporary Lives of the brothers report that during the course of 3 years they “trained disciples.” Rastislav “gathered students and gave them over to Constantine for instruction...”16 Another text notes that “with great zeal they passed on the divine teachings to the most able of their disciples” and names the principal Moravian leaders whom they trained: Gorazd, Clement, Naum, Angelarius, and Savva.17 This group of trained disciples would continue the educational work of the brothers in their absence and after their death. So Constantine-Cyril, Methodius and their co-workers engaged in ongoing translation work and educated native priests. It is also worth noting that these teachers didn’t just get by with the basics of the language. Cyril’s suggest that he had come to understand the nuances of the Slavic language, into which he effectively translated Greek idioms. He apparently even attempted poetic compositions of his own. But as is well known, the brothers soon faced difficulties in Moravia. Opposition, probably motivated by envy, arose from the Frankish clergy who were already working in this territory. After Cyril’s death a new ruler usurped the throne with the support of the clergy, and Methodius was thrown into prison for three years. Though eventually released and allowed to return to his translation work and teaching, both he and the team of leaders he had trained were constantly harassed by Frankish priests. However, after being cast out of Moravia, two disciples, Clement and Naum, ended up in Belgrade, were summoned to by the now Christian ruler, Boris, and from there were sent off to what is modern-day Macedonia. At the time this Slavic-speaking region was still largely pagan territory. According to the Life of Clement, our best source for these events, besides preaching, Clement’s missionary work was largely focused on education.18 He first developed Slavic primary-level schools, then chose more advanced students for preparatory schools to train native candidates for the priesthood. He even encouraged the most advanced and talented students to do their own writing. He is said to have trained some 3500 disciples, whom he sent out in groups of about three hundred into the twelve regions which had been entrusted to him to instruct. He had a monastery built in Ohrid where he often stayed with his disciples. Even if the numbers have been exaggerated, Clement’s work was outstanding for both its scope and success. Besides praising his literary, pastoral, and evangelistic work, his biographer emphasizes Clement’s concern for the material welfare of the people. He helped to educate them in practical ways, for example, improving their agriculture. Specifically he taught them how to improve their arboriculture by grafting onto their wild fruit trees good shoots from Greece. But in the tradition of his mentors, Clement particularly devoted himself to the work of translation and education. He was anxious to provide his disciples with homiletic literature they would need for their pastoral work. Toward this end he translated from the Greek many sermons for the liturgical year and homilies of the church fathers; he also wrote liturgical hymns for the divine

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service in Slavonic. He seems to have been the first prolific author of original compositions in Church Slavonic, and his work spawned a great period of literary and cultural flowering. Scholars of Slavic literature who analyze Clement’s foundational role in the creation of Bulgarian literature and a Slavic literary culture rarely emphasize the missionary dimension of his educational work. Conversely, missiologists show relatively little interest in the cultural renaissance that flowed from his initiatives. In Clement’s career, however, these two thrusts of his work were intertwined. But what I want to emphasize with regard to all of these teaching missionaries among the Slavs is first, the holistic nature of their work—involving scholarship, teaching, preaching, and attending to material needs—and second, the role of teamwork and community in their educational endeavors—whether translating, teaching, or training disciples.

Practical Lessons and Suggestions I’d like to devote the rest of my reflections to more practical matters by considering how we might respond to some of the challenges posed at the outset or by some of these historical vignettes. To return to the title of our consultation: “Being Orthodox in the University: Does it matter? Should it Matter?” My suggestions here are intended as a prod to further reflection and discussion rather than any kind of program for reforming higher education.

Engaging the academy Perhaps the place we need to start as Christian scholars is with a reexamination of the purpose of education—and the Orthodox tradition has much to offer here that may be relevant to the larger academic world. For example, we might reflect on the tendency toward narrower & narrower specializations—whether in the sciences, English, or theology—and consider the consequences of this development. Though graduate education must be highly specialized, is it possible to cultivate what Florovsky calls a “catholicity of mind” and an “integrating reorientation” in higher education given current trends?19 Do Orthodox scholars have something to contribute to this discussion—if not in writing then at least in their particular contexts— whether in teaching or in departmental or university-wide discussions of curriculum? Besides rethinking the purposes of education and curricular issues, engagement with the university involves an exchange; and I think Christian scholars need to be more willing to listen and learning from colleagues with whom we may disagree. Certain tenets of post-modernism are clearly irreconcilable with Orthodox Christianity. The reviewer of Žižek’s book, cited earlier, notes how the writer “has only to scent an orthodoxy to feel the itch to put his foot through it.” But at the same time we try to respond to such claims in a thoroughly informed and gentle manner, we need to acknowledge the rightness of certain post-modern critiques of of history, society, and culture and learn from, even integrate, some ideas of our postmodern colleagues. For example, challenging the notion of center and periphery, one of many Foucauldian approaches adopted by post-modern scholars, has been particularly helpful in my own research as I work on a book on eastern Christian mission from Constantine to the conversion of the Slavs. Sensitivity to the constructed nature of such concepts has led me to examine the evidence of “mission from below” and the theological significance of that notion - which is often missed by scholars focusing on Byzantine imperial missions. Perhaps another area in which post- modernism has something to teach the church as well as Christian scholars is the corruptive influence of power. In his deconstruction of the Englightenment, Foucault provides the famous example of the Damiens affair, in which the French authorities, alarmed by the potential subversive effects of Enlightenment ideas, submit the author to a horribe death for attempted

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regicide. Foucault paints a detailed and vivid picture of Damien’s prolonged torture and gruesome execution. Here in the age of “light and reason” we encounter the stubborn perdurance of human cruelty. This is a sober reminder of the abuse of power—whether in the hands of the state, the university, or the church—and of the fallenness of the human condition. Be open to learn even from intellectual currents that seem largely antagonistic toward Christian faith, and don’t assume hostility on the part of all non-Christian academics. The emphasis on “culture wars” in evangelical lingo of the last few decades has generally been harmful to Christian scholars. After all, the problems Cyril and Methodius faced in their educational mission were largely from the church and not from hostile pagan intellectuals! This has often been my own experience as well, as I find myself trying to interpret the university to the church as well as Christian faith to the university. This is not to deny that hostile secular academics exist, but they are not in the majority and not always as hostile as we imagine. Many Christian academics view themselves as besieged minorities in a hostile sea of secularism, while most non-Christian faculty with whom I interact see themselves as besieged minorities in American culture (especially in the American south). So there are ways to relate to non- Christian colleagues on deeper personal as well as intellectual levels if we simply listen and identify with some of their issues or concerns.

Building a Christian community of scholars In preparing this talk I turned to a volume of Father Florovsky’s collected works which included his essay “The Predicament of the Christian Historian”—looking for his thoughts on scholarship; but I also found my attention drawn to several other articles in which he repeatedly emphasized the social and communal nature of Christianity. Though he does not explicitly discuss this issue, I believe a “community” of Christian scholars is something he would have encouraged – especially given his combination of ecumenical spirit and emphasis on communal life. Florovsky describes the situation of the early church as an “antinomy”: a choice between “a flight into the desert” or a “construction of the Christian Empire”—both of which, historically speaking, “proved to be inadequate and unsuccessful.” 20 Yet the monastic movement was not for the most part a movement of “apocalyptic dread” but rather a lay movement to leave the society of this world in order to build another society. Florovsky emphasizes the centrality of communal life describing monasteries as “worshipping communities and working teams.”21 He then speaks of the ongoing importance of community in the work that Christians are called to do “in this world” and “in this age.” Although the church, or more concretely the local parish, is the primary community for Christian scholars, and organizations like OTSA are a tremendous help, I would like to propose the importance of cultivating and participating in a community of Christian scholars within a specific college or university. Given the distinctive challenges facing Christian academics, especially in a secular university setting, we desperately need to interact with likeminded colleagues, whether or not they represent different Christian traditions. Frankly, our churches often don’t understand or can’t provide the kind of support we need to serve in the academic contexts to which we’ve been called. Like monks, Christian scholars are called not to flee the world of the university, but to transform it. And this work necessitates community. The various missions to the Slavs consistently show the importance of teamwork and community in Byzantine missionary work (which again, was largely educational); yet today we are increasingly separated in our educational efforts. The community of Christian scholars seems crucial not only for our own spiritual welfare in a challenging milieu, but particularly if we are to have the

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transformative influence Florovsky proposes on our society, the academy. Perhaps in this regard we can learn from the example of students—both those of the early church and in our own day. I think of Basil and Gregory in Athens, encouraging one another to faithfulness amidst rowdy peers and contentious masters, and hundreds of student fellowships meeting across the country today while many Christian faculty studiously avoid their Christian as much as their secular colleagues. Gatherings of Christian faculty may call for particular grace, broadmindedness, and ecumenicity; and there is always the pressure of time and multiple commitments. But I’m convinced that committed Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant faculty in a given institutional setting need one another, especially if they hope to make a broader impact on their institution, and they ought to find some way to cultivate conversation and community.

Academic life as Christian vocation I’d like to propose that we view the academic vocation as a spiritual calling or ministry, and I’ll highlight three different areas that might be influenced by such a perspective. These three spheres are very closely related to the areas in which faculty at most of our institutions are evaluated for tenure and promotion, namely scholarship, teaching, and service. First of all, consider scholarship. For those of us working among students and faculty in higher education, the academy is our “mission.” Therefore we need to learn the “language” and discourse of the university, become immersed in its culture, and be willing to learn from it as we bring our own perspectives to the table. There have been many efforts to integrate or use the resources of the Christian tradition in scholarship. My own edited volume offers some models.22 However, most of this work has not been done by Orthodox scholars—who have much to offer—so this is a plea to enter into this discussion.23 Secondly, view academic life as a Christian vocation in your teaching and mentoring of students. Can an Orthodox scholar make a difference in pedagogy – even at a secular or public university? One need not be active evangelist in the classroom; indeed in most institutional settings this would be expressly forbidden, even if some of our atheist or post-modern colleagues actively “proselytize” for their own points of view. But I would argue it should make a difference whether or not our subject matter has anything to do with the humanities. Stanley Fish has rightly emphasized the calling of faculty to do best what they have been trained to do – teach, research, create, produce, and disseminate. He also insists that we can’t possibly determine what students will make of what we offer them in the classroom once they are out in the wider world. Moreover, “you can’t make them into good people,” he continues—and I’m with him up to this point until he concludes—“and you shouldn’t try!”24 By way of contrast, Mark Schwehn, in his book Exiles from Eden, calls for “passionate engagement” as the hallmark of spiritually-rooted colleges and universities.25 This kind of engagement keeps alive certain big questions leading students as well as scholars “toward community and the quest for truth and…against reductionism.”26 Whether or not we teach in religious institutions, as Christian academics we ought to take seriously this kind of engagement as teachers and mentors. For those at research universities or at liberal arts colleges where students are considering graduate school, I would encourage you to think of ways to gather together Christian graduate students to discuss questions of Christian faith and academic life. For several years my husband and I have led a monthly dinner-discussion group at Florida for around 20 Christian graduate students from across the disciplines. We even got a small outside grant for this experiment. We quickly learned that many Christian graduate students are hungry for this kind of conversation

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with Christian faculty mentors. (You might even be able to get funding to convene such gatherings!) If you can’t start an official group, dialogue with and encourage more junior Christian colleagues or graduate students at the universities you serve. In my experience, faculty and graduate students are not getting much encouragement from their churches when it comes to their vocation in the academic world. And whatever else you do as a teacher, remember that you never know who’s in your class. Like Prohaeresius, you might have a Eunapius or a Julian as much as a Basil or a Gregory sitting before you as a student in your classroom. The manner as much as the content of your teaching can make a difference. Thirdly, we must take our Christian vocation seriously in relating to our colleagues and serving our institutions. The academic world is an intensely competitive environment, bringing out our more primordial instincts in petty displays of power or haughty demonstrations of intellectual prowess. The rewards of this profession are very limited, and because of this, our departments can be come quite nasty. As Henry Kissinger observed, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” What I want to emphasize, however, is not that academics can be proud or mean (that is probably all too obvious), but rather that academics are actually quite needy people emotionally—often fragile and insecure beneath a steely or highly competent exterior. If we take seriously our academic vocation as a Christian calling it will inevitably affect our relationships with colleagues as well as students. It may be here, rather than in path-breaking scholarly tomes, that we have our greatest impact as Christian academics. Similarly, eschewing our natural inclinations toward antagonism or withdrawal, our willingness to serve in the more “menial” tasks or positions in our departments is a form of stewardship. At most research universities the position of “undergraduate coordinator” tends to be lowest on the totem pole, the least glorious, most often imposed on the lowest of assistant professors. There are surely comparable administrative positions at other institutions. But these kinds of tasks are also part of academic work, and doing them cheerfully (or at least willingly), I would contend, is a particularly important aspect of our vocation as Christian scholars.

Conclusion. I’d like to end with a citation from an obituary of a Christian scholar. I beg your indulgence for closing with a Presbyterian rather than an Orthodox scholar. I might have found an equally compelling commentary on the life of Father Florovsky or Father John Meyendorff, with whom I had the privilege to study for a semester at Fordham. However, I came across this reflection somewhat accidentally on the internet as I was composing this article in Princeton, N.J., and I was particularly struck by its encapsulation of many of the themes I’ve touched on here. I was also moved by the fact that one of the faculty members who comments on this Christian scholar’s career is a Jewish professor, now emeritus, who was my husband’s dissertation advisor. The scholar himself was Elmore Harris Harbison, affectionately referred to as “Jinks”, a professor of Renaissance and Reformation history at Princeton University, who died in 1964. He was, in the words of his friend and colleague, Professor Joseph R. Strayer, “a profoundly religious man, a learned and honest scholar” who “wrestled all his life with the problem of reconciling the apparent meaninglessness of history with the Providence of God.” His struggle with this seeming paradox is clearly seen in his two most influential works…These books reveal his lucid expression, his subtle humor, his rejection of both dogmatism and skepticism, and, above all, “his profound conviction that, in spite of all appearances, there is no contradiction between Christian faith and historical reason.”

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…He was described by two of his former students, Professors Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Siegel, as a rare example of the teacher “able to combine teaching, scholarship, and personal conviction so that each grows out of the other.” His faith, and “the humanity of his attitude”' toward that faith, they say, “ensured that his influence extended to colleagues and students who had spiritual commitments different from his own.” Harbison's convictions and his reasoned way of expressing them made him an effective committee member and trustee. Besides service on faculty committees, for which he was in frequent demand, he was chairman of [many outside committees and served on many boards]… At their meeting following his death, the faculty paid him this tribute: “Jinks raised important questions in his writing; his great gift as a teacher was to make his students raise important questions in their turn. He was a master of the Socratic method, and could make it effective at all levels, from a freshman class to a graduate seminar…” “In the long run, this will be Jinks's most important legacy. The next generation will revise his ideas about university organization, and rewrite his essays on Christianity and history -- for this is the nature of academic life. But the men of the next generation who do this will be, in great part, men who studied under Jinks. Through his students and his students' students, his ideas will live and his influence endure far beyond the end of our days.”27

It is my hope that such things may be said of many Christian scholars and teachers who engage the academic world of own generation.

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Endnotes

1 For insights on how the Orthodox have responded to postmodernism and why, I am indebted to Ann Bezzerides as well as the participants in the June 2008 OTSA colloquium. 2 Terry Eagleton, “True to his Desires” TLS April 25, 2008. 3 John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). See especially Chapter 1, “The Marginalization of Our Universities,” 3-21. 4 Basil of Caesarea, Address to Young Men on Greek Literature in Roy J. Deferrari, trans., St. Basil. The Letters, 4, Loeb Classical Library 270 (reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), 381. 5 Georges Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Christian Historian,” Christianity and Culture. The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Volume 2 (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland Publishing Company, 1974), 46-47. The phrase “dust of small facts,” is drawn from Henrei-Irenée Marrou, De la conaissance historique (Paris, 1954), 47. 6 Letter to Gregory, Commentaries of Origen, in Ante Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, (repr. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1955), 295. 7 In of Caesarea, Church History, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, (repr. Grand Rapids Mich.: Eerdmans, 1955), I, 265-266. 8 For an excellent treatment of Basil’s own experiences and perspectives on education within the broader context of the mid-fourth century see Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), … 9 Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, tr. Wilmer Cave Wright, Loeb Classical Library 8 (: Heinemann, 1922), 485; for the whole Life of Prohaeresius, 477-515 10 Edward Watts, Edward J. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berekeley: University of California Press, 2006), 59. 11 Eunapius, Lives, 507. 12 George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 245. 13 Gregory, Epitaph 5, PG 38, 13. For a generally more positive evaluation of Prohaeresius’s Christian faith and its influence on his role as a teacher of rhetoric in Athens and on Gregory of Nazianzus personally see John McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus. An Intellectual Biography (Scarsdale, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 60-62. 14 Jerome, Chronicle, 242-243. 15 Still foundational for the Byzantine mission to Moravia is Francis Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs Ss. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 160-193. 16 VC ?, and VM, ? For an English translation of the Life of Constantine-Cyril and the Life of Methodius see Marvin Kantor, trans. Medieval Slavic Lives of and Princes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983). 17 Life of Clement of Ohrid,in Ivan Duichev, ed., Kiril and Methodius. Founders of Slavonic Writing: A Collection of Sources and Critical Studies, tr. Spass Nikolov, East European Monographs, Boulder, No. 172 (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1985). 18 An English translation of the entire Life of Clement by Theophylact of Ohrid is published in Duichev, ed., Kiril and Methodius, 93-126. On Clement see also the study of Dimitri Obolensky, “Clement of Ohrid,” chapter 1 in his Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 8-33. 19 Florovsky, “Predicament of the Christian Historian,” 53. 20 Florovsky, “Faith and Culture,” in Collected Works, 2, 28-29. 21 Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert,” in Collected Works, 2, 87. For similar discussions of community and monasticism see in the same volume his essays “Christianity and Civlization,” 121- 130, and “the Social Problem in the ,” 131-142. 22 Andrea Sterk, ed., , Scholarship, and Higher Education. Perspectives, Models, and Future Prospects (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). See especially the essays in Part II, “Religion and Scholarship: Disciplinary Perspectives.” 23 As I was preparing this essay I received another copy of an excellent dialogue on the roles of Catholicism and Proestantism in American higher education: Mark A. Noll and James Turner, The Future of Christian Learning. An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue, ed. Thomas Albert Howard (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2008). It is unfortunate for all parties that Orthodox interlocutors are not often included in such conversations. 24 Stanley Fish, “Aim Low,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 16, 2003. The jist of this article reappeared in his op-ed piece, “Why We built the Ivory Tower,” The New York Times, May 21, 2004. Elsewhere, however, Fish extols collaborative learning and dialogue among peers as pedagogical practice.

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25 Mark R, Schwhen, Exiles from Eden. Religion and the Academic Vocation in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 26 Al De Ciccio, “Spirituality the Professoriate, and the Curriculum,” in Bruce W. Speck and Sherry L. Hoppe, eds., Searching for Spirituality in Higher Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 88, contrasting the views of Mark Schwehn and Cliffort Geertz with those of Stanley Fish. 27 http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/harbison_elmore.html From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).

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