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An Examination of Jaroslav Pelikan's Embrace of the Eastern Faith International Journal of Orthodox Theology 5:1 (2014) 59 urn:nbn:de:0276-2014-1049 Ambrose Mong Ih-Ren Return to Orthodoxy: An Examination of Jaroslav Pelikan’s Embrace of the Eastern Faith Abstract After a long life as a Lutheran scholar of church history, Jaroslav Pelikan was chrismated in the Orthodox Church on 25 March 1998, at the age of 75. His reason for moving towards the Orthodox Church was both personal and theological, but it was not so much a conversion as a return to where he believed he truly belonged. As a result of many years of historical study, he was finally convinced that the Orthodox Church was the most faithful custodian of the apostolic faith. This paper seeks to examine Pelikan’s position on Christian doctrinal development, his sympathetic and yet critical view of Roman Catholicism, and his encounter with Hellenism, which eventually led to his reception in the Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong, PhD, O. P., is a Domini- Orthodox Church. Though he ended can Priest. He teaches his life as an Orthodox Christian, his part-time at The Chinese admiration for Luther and love for the University of Hong Kong spirit of catholicity remained. This and also at the University paper concludes that Pelikan was of St Joseph in Macau. 60 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong indeed a true ecumenist who loved the Christian traditions he interpreted and whose life work advanced the cause of ecumenism. Keywords Hellenism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, Ecumenism. 1 Introduction It is commonly believed that all writing is autobiographical. In this regard, the writings of Jaroslav Pelikan reveal his spiritual journey that brought him to the bosom of the Orthodox Church which he aptly described as a “the logical culmination of a development in my mind and spirit that has been going on for decades.”1 A Lutheran pastor and theologian for most of his life, Pelikan ended his life as an Orthodox layman, as a result of many years of historical study when he became finally convinced that the Orthodox Church was the most faithful custodian of the apostolic faith. In exploring Pelikan’s “homecoming” to Orthodoxy, this paper seeks to examine his understanding of Christian doctrinal development, his sympathetic and yet critical view of Roman Catholicism, and his encounter with Hellenism, which eventually led to his reception into the Orthodox Church. Unlike Adolf Harnack who believed that the hellenization of the Christian faith was a corruption, Pelikan believed that for Christianity the turning towards Greece was indeed necessary 1 Open letter to members of Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven, Conn., the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation to which Pelikan had belonged. “Pelikan to Orthodox church,” http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=1897. Return to Orthodoxy: An Examination of 61 Jaroslav Pelikan’s Embrace of the Eastern Faith and providential. Even as early as the 1970s, when he published the first and second volumes of The Christian Tradition: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100 -600) in 1971 and The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600 – 1700) in 1974, the writings of Pelikan revealed his love for and affinity with the Eastern Church. Regarding the second volume, Robert Louis Wilken, a former student and friend of Pelikan, claimed that there was little evidence in his public life that Pelikan was moving towards Eastern Orthodoxy. However, if writing is autobiographical, one can trace his attraction towards the Eastern Church by his critical yet optimistic assessment of both the hellenization of Christianity and of the Greek Fathers. But it took quite a long time before Pelikan landed on the shore of Orthodoxy. It was only on 25 March 1998, at the age of 75, that Jaroslav Pelikan was chrismated in the Orthodox Church. To the bishop who received him, he said: “Any airplane that circled the airport for that long before landing would have run out of gas.”2 His reason for moving towards the Orthodox Church was both personal and theological, but it was not so much a conversion as a return to where he truly belonged. Both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church have a long history with their roots going back to the apostolic tradition. Compared to Protestantism, they have more to offer to their adherents in terms of dogmatic teaching and tradition. That Pelikan chose the Orthodox Church over the Catholic Church revealed his own Slavic background which is more at home in Eastern Orthodoxy. As an ardent admirer of Martin Luther, Pelikan believed that “one could be catholic and orthodox 2 Spoken to His Beatitude Metropolitan Theodosius regarding his late entry into the Orthodox Church. Jaroslav Pelikan, “A Personal Memoir: Fragments of a Scholar Autobiography,” in: Orthodoxy & Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His Eightieth Birthday (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), p. 44. 62 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong without being papal.”3 Though he ended his life as an Orthodox Christian, his devotion to Luther and love for the spirit of catholicity remained. This paper concludes that Pelikan was indeed a true ecumenist who loved the Christian traditions he interpreted and who had given much thought to the importance of the ecumenical cause – the unity of Christians. 2 Slavic Heritage4 Born in Akron, Ohio, on 17 December 1923, Jaroslav Pelikan described his home as a place where there was an abundance of “good food (…) music, books, languages, and above all tradition and faith.” Of European Slavic descent, his father was from Slovakia and his mother from Yugoslavia. From his mother he acquired a “seriousness about the conduct of life” and from his father, “a deep and all-but-pantheistic sense of affinity with Nature.” Both his father and grandfather were Lutheran pastors who could preach eloquently and powerfully in their native Slovak as well as in English. Pelikan claimed that unlike many of his academic peers, he never had serious doubts about the fundamentals of Christianity because he possessed that simple “Slavic piety.” His father said that Jaroslav “combined German 3 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600 – 1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 2. A person of the church, he was also at home with the Benedictine monks in St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Patrick Henry and Valerie Hotchkiss, Was wir ererbt haben in Orthodoxy & Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His Eightieth Birthday (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), p. 17. 4 See See Jaroslav Pelikan, “A Personal Memoir: Fragments of a Scholar Autobiography,” in Orthodoxy & Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His Eightieth Birthday (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), pp. 29 – 44. Return to Orthodoxy: An Examination of 63 Jaroslav Pelikan’s Embrace of the Eastern Faith Lutheran scholarship and Slavic orthodox piety – and fortunately not vice versa.”5 Conscious of his minority status as a Slovak in the United States, he was determined to master German and other languages such as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Czech, Serbian and Russian, besides Slovak and English. Alongside this gift of languages at an early age, Pelikan’s ability to work long hours, to fall asleep instantly and his monkish temperament made him an ideal scholar. As a result he was able to complete both his B.D. at Concordia Seminary and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1946 by the age of 23. As a church historian, Pelikan stood in the tradition of Adolf Harnack who wrote the History of Dogma (1896-9), but he sought to offer a different understanding of Christian doctrinal development. Pelikan had warned his readers – “we shall ignore Adolf Harnack at our peril”6 – thus it is important to have some understanding of Harnack’s fundamental ideas on early church history and the development of dogma. 3 Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) The decline of the Christian faith, according to Harnack, is due to the transformation of the Gospel by Greek philosophy, which led to the formulation of dogma. A definite stage in Christian history, dogmatic Christianity stands between Christianity as the religion of the Gospel, which implies personal experience, and Christianity as a sacramental and cultic religion. The Christian faith aligned itself with either one or the other. It is 5 John H. Erikson, “Jaroslav Pelikan: The Living Legend in Our Mist” in Orthodoxy & Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His Eightieth Birthday (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), p. 7. 6 Jaroslav Pelikan, “Introduction to the Torchbook Edition by Jaroslav Pelikan “ in Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. vi. 64 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong obvious that Harnack favours primitive Christianity based on personal experience. When Christianity becomes intellectual, he asserts, “there is always the danger …that as knowledge it may supplant religious faith, or connect it with a doctrine of religion, instead of with God and a living experience.”7 This intellectualization of the Christian faith eventually leads to the secularizing of Christianity. The formation of dogma, Harnack argues, is the work of the “Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel.” The Gospel was expressed in Greek thought in order to make itself more intelligible to the Gentiles and it was through this hellenization of the Christian faith that the Church spread its influence and power over the ancient world and formed its peoples. Although Harnack acknowledges it as a triumph of the Christian spirit, he insists that the Gospel itself is not dogma, “for belief in the Gospel provides room for knowledge only in so far as it is a state of feeling and course of action that is a definite form of life.”8 Contrary to Harnack, as we shall see, Pelikan has argued that it was Hellenistic culture that had been influenced by the spirit of the Hebrew Scripture and the Gospel, and not the other way round.
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