Volume 47, Nos. 3–4 (2006)

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 © 2006 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies

Editor-in-Chief: Andriy Chirovsky (Sheptytsky Institute) Managing Editor: Andrew T. Onuferko (Sheptytsky Institute) Associate 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), John Sianchuk, CSSR (Yorkton Province of the Ukrainian Redemptorists).

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

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

Volume 47 2006 Nos. 3–4

Table of Contents

Editorial

East-West Ecumenism Back on Track? ...... 1

Articles

To Love God, the Poor, and Learning: Lessons Learned from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus Stanley Hauerwas...... 7

Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy in the Twilight of the Romanovs Argyrios K. Pisiotis ...... 29

Notes, Essays, Lectures

The Theotokos in the Christian East and West George Dmitry Gallaro...... 81

Logos: Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4 Table of Contents

Review Essay

Lev Gillet, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity (John A. Jillions) ...... 111

Book Reviews

Iaroslav Isaievych, Voluntary Brotherhood: Confraternities of Laymen in Early Modern Ukraine (Sophia Senyk) ...... 131

Gillian Crow, This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony (Roman Rytsar)...... 134

John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican 1850–1950 (Adam DeVille)...... 139

Charles Morerod, Ecumenism and Philosophy: Philosophical Questions for a Renewal of Dialogue (Adam DeVille)...... 145

Dennis J. Dunn, The Catholic Church and Russia. Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars and Communists (T. Allan Smith) ...... 149

Brian E. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus (John A. McGuckin)...... 155

Peter M. Doll, ed., Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: 300 Years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford (John Gibaut)...... 158

Arthur Holder, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (Andriy Chirovsky) ...... 163

iv Logos: Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4 Table of Contents

Briefly Noted ...... 169

Books Received...... 173

Contributors...... 181

The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies

Resources, Books, Academic Programmes

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4, pp. 1–6

Editorial

East-West Ecumenism Back on Track?

It is certainly something to celebrate when the Joint Inter- national Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (JIC) recommences its work after a painful six-year hiatus. An added symbolic note accompanied the recommencement of the commission’s work: the dialogue took place in Belgrade. When the Balkans are a place of understanding rather than war, the human race should give thanks to the Lord. It is a special joy to note that Father Ivan Dacko, president of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catho- lic University, was included this time as one of the participants of the Catholic delegation to Belgrade. I remember well the day in the summer of 1995 when the members of the Kyivan Church Study Group, meeting with Cardinal Cassidy at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, petitioned that the Catholic delegation be composed of representatives of each of the Churches of the Catholic communion. At least now the Catholic Church of Kyiv is adequately represented. For that we can also thank God. The JIC’s work for unity was further blessed by the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople when they met in the latter’s headquarters at the Phanar in the city that the world refers to as “Istanbul” but we prefer to call by its ancient name, Constantinople. For them, as for the JIC, the item at the top of the ecumenical agenda is finally what it should have been many years ago: a discussion of papal primacy. Now, perhaps, we can see progress being made and some of the focus on the Eastern Catholic Churches can be shifted to its proper place in the larger process. Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint asked for help in imagining a papacy that would be effective in protecting the unity of the Church but nevertheless recon- 2 Andriy Chirovsky

figured in such a way that it would not be a stumbling block for non-Catholic Christians. This invitation was especially aimed at the Orthodox Churches with whom the popes of recent times have emphasized that a real if still not entirely perfect communion exists. To be sure, there are certain extreme voices among the Orthodox who claim that the papacy is almost irreparably de- fective if not actually diabolical. However, it is safe to say that most Orthodox leaders do see a need for primacy and many would even add that some form of papal primacy would be good to have in today’s very complicated world. That is why the fact that the JIC is now studying the issue of papal primacy is so important. It is also extremely important that Pope Bene- dict XVI has restated his predecessor’s invitation for people outside the Catholic Church and especially the Orthodox to help re-imagine the exercise of papal primacy. It is no secret that the encyclical of one pope need not be emphasized by the next. Pope John Paul II’s revolutionary request for help in re- envisaging papal primacy could have gone by the wayside but it has not and we should thank God for that, too. Not to be outdone in ideas of seismic proportions, in an interview with the Roman news agency Zenit on 1 December 2006, his All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew of Constan- tinople, speaking of the papal visit to the Ecumenical Patriar- chate concluded that day, proffered the requisite words of enthusiasm and thanks (“Benedict XVI’s visit has incalculable value in this process of reconciliation”), but then made a comment in response to a question about the future of Catholic- Orthodox unity:

In this respect, I can say that I spoke with His Holiness of something – something that we could do. I presented him with a proposal which I cannot now elaborate on, as we await an official response, but I can say that His Holiness was very interested and that he received it favorably. We hope it can be undertaken as it is directed to that ecumenical progress that, as we have af- firmed and written in the common declaration, both of us are determined to pursue. Editorial 3

Bartholomew’s comment immediately bestirred speculation as to what was proposed. The most plausible explanation to date seems to be that the bishop of Rome and the archbishop of New Rome will both go to the 2007 meeting of the JIC and participate in person. If that is the case, it would truly be helpful for dialogue participants to be able to pose questions and to raise points of disagreement speaking directly to the pope of Rome. One of the worrisome aspects of the papacy as it is currently configured is that it is extremely difficult for the pope to glean unfiltered information for himself because there are so many levels of bureaucracy protecting first themselves and, second, supposedly also protecting the pontiff. (Recall the old Orthodox adage: “it is not the pope we fear but his helpers.”) Perhaps the Holy Spirit could act more directly in a session where enlightened ideas about a papacy that is truly strong enough to do what is necessary but open enough to be pala- table to the Orthodox could be presented directly to the bishop of Rome. There was another very positive development during Pope Benedict’s visit to Constantinople. The two leaders were able to speak about evangelization, emphasizing the need for a rea- wakening of the Christian faith in Europe, without any recrimi- nations about suspected aims of proselytism and sheep-stealing or violation of ancient “canonical territories.” Perhaps that is because the encounter was between the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople rather than the former meeting with the patriarch of Moscow, whose Church is usually the first to react against calls for a re-evangelization of Europe as if that were a code word for Roman advances into Russian and Russian-occupied canonical territory. In fact, the Russian Orthodox Church has recently identified itself and the Catholic Church as the two logical spear- heads of a movement to preserve Europe’s Christian roots. In May 2006, a conference, organized in Vienna by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, addressed an appeal against the spread of secularization and de-Christianization under the title “Give a Soul to Europe. The Mission and Responsibility of the Churches.” 4 Andriy Chirovsky

Russian leadership on this question (among others) brings us to the long-standing intra-Orthodox dispute about primacy among the autocephalous Churches. Since the fall of Constan- tinople in 1453, there have been voices in Moscow claiming that the rightful leadership in the Orthodox world should belong to the so-called third Rome (Moscow) because the first Rome and New Rome (Constantinople) had both fallen into disgrace and been punished by God with military oblivion. There are still those who believe that Moscow should exercise supreme leadership in the Orthodox world because this patriarchate has the largest membership. While Constantinople languishes under unreasonable restrictions by the government of Turkey, which seems incapable of comprehending what it needs to do for religious freedom in order to gain the membership in the European Union it so desperately desires, it seems that the Russian Church reflects the appetites of the Russian government, which hungers for a restoration of empire and seems to believe that might actually does make right. Thus it is all the more important that Pope Benedict, early enough in his pontificate, made a visit to Constantinople to support that embattled ancient see. The world’s media, unfortunately, missed the point almost entirely, portraying the papal visit as an exercise in coddling and soothing the irrational reactions of too many Muslims to the pope’s talk on faith and reason at the University of Regensburg in September. But even Catholic media did a less than stellar job in co- vering what is perhaps not so novel any more since two previous popes have visited the Phanar but what is still of immense significance. The fact that the visit was essentially and clearly a sign of respect and brotherly love for the Church of Constantinople was evidenced by the choice of date. For it was on the Feast of Saint Andrew, the first-called apostle and brother of Saint Peter, that Pope Benedict chose to be in Con- stantinople to celebrate its patronal feast. If this visit had been in any way planned as a follow-up gesture to Regensburg, the extremely symbolic date of the feast of the patron of the Ecu- menical Patriarchate would have been assiduously avoided. The press, both secular and religious, by and large failed to emphasize this fact. EWTN, e.g., aired embarrassing coverage Editorial 5

of the pope in Hagia Sophia (the commentators, time and time again, kept referring to it as the “Ayiasofia museum”), presen- ting it with almost no understanding of how painful it is for Eastern Christians – both Orthodox and Catholic – that the Great Church of God’s Wisdom had been reduced to a mosque and still cannot be used for prayer of any kind. One can only imagine how painful it would be had European communists prevailed and turned Saint Peter’s Basilica into a museum. This may seem a minor point or some sort of nitpicking but it is illustrative of the fact that while Eastern Christians sometimes have the tendency to remember suffering from the past all too well – even after they should have let go of those feelings for their own good – Western Christians, for their part, simply do not try hard enough to put themselves into the shoes of the Christian East and its history of long-standing persecution of incredible proportions. In fact, all of this ecumenism will really have little effect if the average believer – whether Orthodox or Catholic – does not begin to really care about the tragedy of the division of the body of Christ. His Beatitude Patriarch Lubomyr (Husar) has pointed out that unity could be restored much more easily if there were a true desire for it. Certainly it gets the requisite amount of lip-service but one wonders whether there are believers who weep over the fact that Catholics and Orthodox are not able to share the Eucharist. Over many years, I have taken a large number of students on visits to as wide a variety of Eastern Christian churches as possible, especially during our summer programs. We make it a point to try to visit churches representing the four families of apostolic Christianity: Oriental and Byzantine Orthodox, As- syrian, and Eastern Catholic. Occasionally, while attending a sublimely beautiful liturgy in a church with which we are not in communion, one or two of the students, when the Eucharist is explicitly denied us, will come to me with tears streaming down their cheeks, understanding for the first time the depth of the tragedy of Christian division. The same has happened with Orthodox students who have attended the Divine Liturgy at the Sheptytsky Institute’s Saints Joachim and Anna chapel. Although we invite our Orthodox brothers and sisters to 6 Andriy Chirovsky

receive Holy Communion, we also encourage them to be obedient to their own Church’s leadership. Some of these Ortho- dox students have also come to me weeping and explaining that they felt entirely at home in this Eastern Catholic liturgy in which they experienced nothing heterodox. To both groups of students I offer an embrace and after an appropriate length of pained silence, I tell them that they have now earned the right to work in the field of ecumenism for they have experienced the Lord’s own pain at what we have done to His one body. If only all of us could feel that holy pain every day as intensely as the students just mentioned, then I think that there could be a lot less speculation, a lot less indignation, and a lot more supplication for the grace of God to heal the tragic wounds of Christian division. Perhaps in praying for the restoration of Christian unity, we are understandably inclined to pass too quickly over the essential moment of recognition that, as the recent popes have wisely stated, it is not a question of whether we have the right to reunite but rather we have the right to continue the division of the Church any longer. Perhaps the most horrible thought is that most Catholics and most Orthodox really do not care about communion with each other. Perhaps that is why visits of popes and patriarchs to each other’s sees are still so very important to encourage the Churches to really awaken to this issue. Do we have an internal impulse towards wholeness in the Church? Or will it take the threat of Islam setting the crescent above the cross to bring us to our senses? Or perhaps an even worse fate could strike terror into our hearts as the dollar- sign moves both cross and crescent to the background. In any event, let us all continue our prayer: maranatha.

Andriy Chirovsky, Editor-in-Chief

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Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4, pp. 7–28

To Love God, the Poor, and Learning: Lessons Learned from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus

Stanley Hauerwas

Abstract (Українське резюме на ст. 27)

The author, one of the most prominent theologians of our time, examines the relevance of Gregory of Nazianzus’s oration “On Love for the Poor” and its implications for contemporary Christians and especially for academics. Drawing on the recent scholarship of John McGuckin, Brian Daley, Susan Holman, and Frederick Norris, Hauerwas argues that the Cap- padocian father’s reflections on the poor were born of his family’s wealth and prestige but nonetheless put to powerful use rhetorically in defence of the poor and in arguing for the creation of a virtuous society where the poor could be seen as part of the commonwealth of God. Hauerwas describes the relationship between the poor and the university by envisaging the politics necessary for them to be properly welcomed, noting that universities desiring to both teach and especially live the gospel may need to have at the center of their work a l’Arche home or a Catholic Worker house or something similar. Such an arrangement would be in contrast to the socio- political and academic thought on poverty of modern liberalism which, Hauerwas says in citing Saba Mahmood, robs the poor of agency and leads to a monopoly of the state in osten- sibly looking after them. In the end, Gregory’s lesson to us today is that to live as an ascetic need not be in tension with learning if we understand the discipline of thought to be one of the forms asceticism must take for the good of rich and poor alike.

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8 Stanley Hauerwas

“It is the poor who tell us what the polis is” (Oscar Romero)1

1. The Poor and the University

“Woe is me,” wrote Gregory of Nazianzus when he was delayed from leaving Constantinople to return to Nazianzus and retirement.2 These are exactly my sentiments faced with the task of writing on Gregory of Nazianzus. I am without eloquence yet I must write about this most eloquent theologian in the Christian tradition. My plight is even more deplorable. I am not a scholar or the son of a scholar. Even less can I count myself a patristic scholar. Alas, I am but a theologian, which means I live in fear that someday someone will say in response to a paper such as this, “You really do not know what you are talking about, do you?” To which I can only reply, “Of course I do not know what I am talking about because it is my duty to talk of God.” That, surely, is a self-justifying response that may indicate that theologians live in a permanent state of self-deception. That I am in such a woeful state is the fault of Fred Norris. He told me I would be a natural for writing on Gregory of Nazianzus. So I have read Gregory’s Orations just as Fred told me I should. I have also read the extraordinary scholarly work on Gregory by Fred Norris, John McGuckin3, and Susan Hol- man. But my reading has only made me aware of my inadequa- cy. At best I can be no more than a reporter of their work. I can only ask you not to judge me harshly for I am only doing what Fred Norris asked me to do. I must now report, however, that this opening gambit exem- plifies the rhetorical device known as the “Southern con,” that is,

1 Quoted in Susan Holman, The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 107. 2 Letter 182 in The Fathers Speak: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Georges Barrois (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 71. 3 Editor’s note: John McGuckin reviews Brian Daley’s new book on Gregory Nazianzus elsewhere in this issue. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 9

feigned incompetence to secure your listener’s sympathy. As far as I know the scholarly study necessary to trace the origin and development of the “Southern con” has not been done, but I suspect we – that is, those of us lucky to be born Southern – learned to use it on the Yankees who assumed if you talked with a drawl you must be stupid. It is a great advantage for your enemy to assume you are not all that bright. My use of the “Southern con,” however, is meant to pay homage to Gregory who, McGuckin observes, often disparaged “rhetoric” as “superficial decoration and verbosity.” Yet McGuckin notes that if we look closely we will see that Gregory is “merely using a carefully crafted rhetorical device to persuade his audience to lay aside their resistance to the craft he is employing to convince them of his argument’s merit.”4 It turns out the Greeks must have had roots in the South. The only problem is that this time the “con” happens to be true. God only knows what I am doing writing a paper on Gre- gory of Nazianzus and, in particular, his oration, “On Love for the Poor.”5 It has been years since I originally read Gregory of Nazianzus. As a Wesleyan, I have always held the Cappado- cians in high regard: theosis, we Methodists believe, was but an early anticipation of Wesley’s understanding of perfection.6 Moreover, reading Gregory again reminded me how deeply I ad- mire his theology and style. Yet it remains true I have nothing new to say about Gregory’s theology and, in particular, his “On Love for the Poor.” Nonetheless, I do want to put to work Gregory’s reflections on poverty, and in particular lepers, to show why Christians have a stake in sustaining the work of the university. You may well

4 John McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biogra- phy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 41. 5 Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, “On Love for the Poor,” in Select Ora- tions, trans. Martha Vinson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Ame- rica Press, 2003), 39–71. All references to “On Love for the Poor” will appear in the text using the usual format of the number of the Oration followed by the paragraph number. 6 Cf. S.T. Kimbrough, ed., Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002); and Idem., Ortho- dox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005). 10 Stanley Hauerwas

wonder what lepers have to do with universities, but I take it that Fred Norris’s life’s work has been to make unlikely connections. After all, Norris is a self-declared Anabaptist who has spent his life trying to teach anti-Catholic Protestants why they cannot make sense of their ecclesial practices unless they attend to the theologians that did their work in the wake of the Constantinian settlement.7 I lack Norris’s erudition, but like him I at once want to be a free-church Catholic who refuses to leave behind the institutions of Christendom, institutions like the university, simply because they are too often in service to Caesar rather than the poor. Universities are institutions that depend on as well as serve wealth. Gregory of Nazianzus was able to develop his remarkable rhetorical skills because he came from a family of wealth and power. Gregory’s years in Athens made him one of the most educated persons of his time, but his rhetorical power was used to serve the poor.8 So it is not impossible for there to be a connection between the university and the poor, a connection which, I hope to show, Gregory’s life and work not only exemplify but can help us to rethink as Christians what we ought to be about as people committed to love learning as well as the poor. That connection, moreover, entails a politics that I need first to make explicit.

7 For Norris’s self-description as a Anabaptist, see his The Apostolic Faith: Protestants and Roman Catholics (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), xiii. Not to be missed is his wonderful account of his family and the religious background they represented. 8 Prior to going to Athens, Gregory had studied at Caesarea Maritima, which McGuckin describes as “the closest thing in the fourth century to a Christian university town” (Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, 36–37). Gregory’s decision to study in Athens and to study rhetoric seems not to have pleased his mother because Athens, according to McGuckin, was widely known for its devotion to the gods and even excelled Rome in its devotion to pagan cults (48). Gregory, however, unlike Basil, loved Athens and excelled not only in his study of the Bible but the Hellenistic classics. His father basically forced him to leave Athens by cutting off his money. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 11

2. Gregory the Philosophical Rhetorician

According to Norris, Gregory “was a philosophical rhetoric- cian.”9 Norris’s description has the advantage of making clear that Gregory, though he desired to be a monk, could not avoid being drawn into the rough and tumble world in which Christians began to create an alternative political reality. To be a “philosophical rhetorician” was to take on the task, a political task, of establishing a Christian commonwealth through speech. It is only against that background that we can appropriately appreciate the significance of Gregory’s great oration, “On Love for the Poor.” Gregory was indebted to Hellenic culture for his rhetorical skill. He thought Christians must use the resources and gifts of Hellenism to sustain the work of the Church. But his commitment to Hellenism was always disciplined by his Christian convictions. Gregory was in fact baptized in Athens, but he knew, according to McGuckin, that his baptism meant that he was radically committed to Christian disciplines that might create tensions with his intellectual ambitions.10 Yet under the influence of Prohaeresios, Gregory stood in the tradition of Origen, believing that there could be no disparity between the works of the Logos and the best developments of human culture.11 McGuckin, however, reminds us that Gregory’s commitment to literature and learning was but a correlative of his desire to live as an ascetic. For Gregory, to live as an ascetic was not in tension with his learning because he understood the discipline of thought to be one of the forms asceticism must take. Gregory did not follow the pattern of the idle rich, but rather he was

someone who wanted to follow the demands of intellect in a serious spiritual quest. The tools of his ascesis were books, enquiring conversation, and reflection in simple solitude. He is certainly an early and serious

9 Frederick Norris, “Introduction,” Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory Nazianzen, trans. Lionel Wick- ham and Frederick Williams (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), 25. 10 John McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, 55. 11 Ibid., 61. 12 Stanley Hauerwas

witness to the physical asceticism of vigils, and simplicity of lifestyle, and in this followed the intellectual tradition of simplicity of lifestyle as advocated by his intellectual hero Origen.12

In the Hellenistic world, to become a philosopher was to be identified with a way of life and politics. Gregory wanted to be a rhetor but he understood that vocation to be a contribution to the establishment of a Christian polis.13 Like the Hellenistic polis, the city Gregory served was a city of words. According to the Jesuit patrologist Brian Daley, the Hellenistic city was one:

supported by the power of words, of rhetoric, and em- bodying what might be called a philosophy…. Basil and the two Gregories sought to move the heart by the incantation of words, cunningly arranged, and by the power of the imagination to elicit new resolve for action; they invited their hearers to enter into and know themselves, by what Pierre Hadot has called an ancient

12 Ibid., 97. McGuckin notes that as the son of a very wealthy land- owning bishop, Gregory spent much of his career reflecting on the moral value of wealth. He came to the conclusion that the only attitude one could take toward wealth was to assume that material goods are only temporary. As we shall see in Oration 14, he comes to the conclusion, in McGuckin’s words, that “only almsgiving can restore to a human being that condition of freedom that humanity lost in the ancient fall from grace, since it renders us liberal in the image of God rather than cramped in cupidity which is the mark of oppression” (152–53). 13 Gregory was a rhetor, but he had no use for rhetoric to secure personal power. With his usual candor, in a letter to Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus accuses Nyssa of desiring glory by pushing away Scripture for pagan literature. “You have taken in hand dried-up, insipid writings, and the name of rhetor is more pleasant to your ear than the name Christian. But we prefer the latter, and all thanks to God! No my dear, do not suffer this any longer; sober up at last, come back into yourself, defend us before the faithful, defend yourself before God and before the mysteries from which you have estranged yourself! And do not serve me captious arguments in the manner of rhetors, saying: ‘What then? Was I not a Christian, while I was a rhetor?’ No, my dear, you were not! Forgive if I make you sad, it is out of friendship; or if I flare up for your own good, the good of the entire priestly order and, I should add, of all Christians. And since we ought to pray with you or for you, let God assist your weakness, He who brings the dead back to life.” Barrois, The Fathers Speak, 37–38. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 13

variety of “spiritual exercises,” as well as to reflect on the universal characteristics of human nature; their aim was not simply to promote a way of living successfully in the city, but of living well – of realizing human excellence and perfection in self-mastery and social responsibility, of acting before others in the city in such a way as to win their admiration and even their envy.14

The significance of the Cappadocian commitment to learning, to rhetorical beauty, can be best appreciated against the background of the Emperor Julian’s policy to prohibit Christians from holding the office of teacher. According to Julian’s Edic- tum de Professoribus (17 June 362), “it is dishonest to think one thing and teach another. No professor, therefore, who does not believe in the gods must expound the ancient writers.”15 Julian argued that a culture cannot be divorced from its religious heritage without being damaged. Constantine had tried to replace the gods with Christianity but that project, from Julian’s perspective, had to fail: Rome could not survive without the gods. Gregory of Nazianzus rightly understood the imperial edict to be a challenge to his rhetorical vocation. Accordingly he gave himself the task to explore the nature of a Christian alternative to Julian. As a consequence, he composed rhetorical texts for the classroom to be used by Christians because he was convinced “of the importance of providing a body of didactic material for Christian training.”16 At the end of his life he sold his books to give the money to the poor, but he also desired that his letters and orations be collected because he thought them important for the use of those charged to lead the Church.

14 Brian Daley, “The Cappadocian Fathers and the Rhetoric of Philanthropy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999): 459. Daley argues that Basil’s great social and monastic enterprise, the large and complex welfare institution that became known as “Basileias,” “represented a new and increasingly intentional drive on the part of these highly cultivated bishops and some of their Christian contemporaries to reconstruct Greek culture and society along Christian lines, in a way that both absorbed its traditional shape and radically reoriented it” (432). 15 John McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, 117. 16 Ibid., 118. 14 Stanley Hauerwas

For Gregory, good Hellenist that he was, rhetoric was intrin- sic to the formation of a good society necessary for the training of good people. He held himself accountable for what he said as well as how he said what he had to say. To speak the truth required that the speaker be truthful. Susan Holman observes in the Hellenistic world a leader’s moral standing “was judged on the basis of his class, his education, and his consequent ability to verbally express himself with eloquence within a given rhetorical structure. Words in this culture were spoken – even when they were (also) written down.”17 Through words and actions, which for Gregory of Nazianzus were the same thing, he sought to build a world that would be an alternative to the world that Julian had tried to re-establish. The significance of “On Love for the Poor” must be understood against this background. For Gregory is not simply urging those not afflicted by poverty or leprosy to aid those so afflicted. Rather, his rhetorically powerful descriptions of the afflicted seek to make them unavoidable citizens of the new Christian politics coming to birth. Gregory seeks to make the poor visible, to make the poor part of the community, because unless they are seen to be integral to the community we will fail to see Christ. Gregory, the great Christian rhetor, in the words of Susan Holman,

expresses moral excellence by his physical style in oral declamation, so he also points his audience to Christ, the word made flesh…. The poor and destitute who had no rhetorical voice of their own – the incarnation of the Word takes on meaning by the rhetor’s (that is, the bishop’s) verbal identification of these poor with the body of Christ. As the Cappadocians use traditional New Testament images to identify the poor with Christ, the body of the poor – in its most literal, mutable sense – gains social meaning. The rhetorical expression of this body gains a language and a voice of its own as it is viewed as the body of the Logos. The theology of the incarnation takes on

17 Susan Holman, The Hungry are Dying, 22. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 15

meaning relative to the culture in which it is defined, and this culture profoundly influences the way the theology is understood.18

3. “On Love for the Poor”

Hopefully we are now in a position to appreciate Gregory’s argument in “On Love for the Poor.”19 The date or the reason for Gregory’s oration cannot be established with certainty. It seems reasonable to associate Gregory’s oration with Basil’s building of his hospice for the poor and lepers in Caesarea in response to a famine. McGuckin suggests quite reasonably that “On Love for the Poor” was written in 366 and 367 to raise money for Basil’s Leprosarium.20 That Gregory’s oration was connected to Basil’s building for the poor is significant because such a connection makes clear that the building and the oration should be understood “liturgically.” “Leitourgia” in the ancient world was understood as any “public service performed by private citizens at their own expense.”21 Julian had called attention to Christian philanthropy for the poor to shame his pagan priests to do more for the poor than the Christians. Julian argued, without much evidence, that the physical care of the poor – as an act of piety – was required by Hellenic religion. Basil’s building and Gregory’s oration were, therefore, a counter-politics to that of Julian. Care of the poor constituted the center of the work that they understood was necessary for the constitution of the community they sought to establish.

18 Ibid. 19 Some might dispute the description “argument” for “On Love for the Poor.” For a good defence of Gregory’s “method” as argument see Norris, “Introduction,” 35–39. 20 John McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, 145–46. Holman provides a very good overview of the various arguments for when and why Gregory wrote Oration 14. McGuckin thinks “On Love for the Poor” was “conceived as a general fund-raiser, that also served as an important discourse setting out the terms for the Christian imperium’s policy of philan- thropia. As such it is a key piece of political oratory, as well as a decisive theological essay in which Gregory sets out his mind on the social altruism that characterizes the inner spirit of the religion of Christ” (147). 21 Susan Holman, The Hungry are Dying, 21. 16 Stanley Hauerwas

Basil’s sermon on behalf of the poor and Gregory’s oration exemplified Hellenistic leitourgia. The Greeks assumed it was the obligation of well-off citizens to contribute to the well-being of the city. What is different, Holman argues, drawing on the work of Evelyne Patlagean, is the rise of a new type of donor. The donor who had been an eminent citizen now renounces the identities of such citizenship – that is, marriage, family, property – “to choose poverty, celibacy, and ascetic generosity.”22 The system of leitourgia was a patronage system, but the character of the patron was now transformed. Gregory, therefore, begins “On Love for the Poor” by making himself one with the poor: “My brothers and fellow paupers – for we are all poor and needy where divine grace is concerned, even though measured by our paltry standards one man may seem to have more than another – give ear to my sermon on loving the poor” (14, 1). Throughout the oration, Grego- ry emphasizes that those who are better off should never be tempted to think that ipso facto they are fundamentally different than the poor and the leper. After all, we all share the “affable enemy and scheming friend,” that is, the body which has been given to us to remind us of our weakness and true worth (14, 7). That some are poor and some are rich is but a reminder that we are all subject to fickle fortune.

Our fortunes run in a cyclical pattern that brings changes one after another, frequently within the space of a single day and sometimes even an hour, and one may rather count on the shifting winds, or the wake of a sea-faring ship, or the illusory dreams of night with their brief respite, or the lines that children at play trace in the sand, than on human prosperity. The wise are those who because of their distrust of the present save themselves for the world to come (14,19).

Gregory asks us to think how abandoned we would be if we were allowed to think our prosperity was permanent. Given how at- tached we become to what we have, how addicted we are to our

22 Ibid., 17. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 17

possessions, how firmly enthralled by our riches we are, how fortunate it is that misfortune befalls us (14, 20).23 Gregory refuses to speculate whether affliction actually comes from God:

Who really knows whether one man is punished for his misdeeds while another is exalted for praiseworthy behavior, or whether the opposite is true: one man is placed on a pedestal because of his wickedness while another is tested because of his goodness, the one raised the higher that he may fall the harder, the other persecuted for no discernible reason in order that any impurity he has, even if scant, may be smelted out (14, 30)?

No one is free of corruption, making it impossible to attribute every instance of hardship to moral turpitude or a reprieve from piety (14, 31). The reason that some are favoured and some afflicted is often unintelligible to us and that unintelligibility is itself a gift. For our difficulty of comprehending the reason behind favour or affliction points us to the “reason that transcends all things. For everything that is easily grasped is easily despised, but what is beyond us increases our admiration in proportion to our difficul-

23 Gregory says, “Let us not struggle to amass and hoard fortunes while others struggle in poverty, lest from one direction the divine Amos reproach us with these harsh and ominous words, Come now, you who say, ‘When will the new moon be over,’ that we may sell…. May we avoid the same fate in our day; may we not be so addicted to luxury as actually to scorn the compassion of a God who condemns this behaviour, even though he does not turn his wrath upon sinners at the moment of their transgression or immediately after it” (14, 24). In Oration 17, Gregory observes that “prudent men” declare that it is good to be afflicted. That is why we should “relinquish neither anxiety in time of happiness nor confidence in time of sorrow. Even in fair weather let us not forget the gale, nor in the storm the pilot; yes, let us not lose heart in the midst of afflictions or become wicked servants who acknowledge their master only when he treats them well and repudiate him when he tries to correct them. Yet there are times when pain is preferable to health, patience to relief, visitation to neglect, punishment to forgiveness. In a word, we must neither let our troubles lay us low nor a glut of good fortune give us airs” (17, 5). 18 Stanley Hauerwas

ty in apprehending it; and everything that exceeds our reach whets our desire” (14, 33). That is why we should neither ad- mire health or loathe disease “indiscriminately,” but rather we should “both cultivate contempt for the benighted health whose fruit is sin and respect for that disease that bears the badge of saintliness by showing reverence toward those who have triumphed through suffering” (14, 34). That disease which bears the badge of saintliness Gregory identifies with leprosy, the “sacred disease” that devours flesh and bones and marrow (14,6).24 His “respect” is evidenced by his profound identification with those that bear the disease. His description of their suffering is devoid of sentimentality. He understands that the leper’s physical disfigurement is but the outward sign of a deeper disfigurement, namely, they become unrecognizable to themselves. As a result, they call out the names of their mothers and fathers in hope they might be identified from the way they used to look. Yet even the fathers and mothers of those so afflicted drive away in fear those they once loved. The mother, this poor woman, “wants to embrace her child’s flesh but shrinks from it in hostile fear” (14,11). The affliction of leprosy is horrid enough, but even worse is the knowledge of those so afflicted that they are hated for their misfortune (14,9). They are driven away, not only because of the

24 Some may think Gregory’s focus on leprosy makes his case too easy. Little can be done to cure the leper, but we think much can be done to al- leviate poverty. Gregory certainly thought, as we should think, that poverty should not exist, but he did not think being poor was the worst thing that could happen to a person. Indeed he thought there might be some distinct advantages to being poor if we are to follow Christ. From Gregory’s perspective, the rich, not the poor, are the most burdened. Sam Wells recently stated this reality when he remarked, “the rich, if we are Christians, need the poor in a manner the poor do not need the rich.” My colleague Romand Coles, in a letter responding to this essay, observed the implication of Gre- gory’s Oration is that “truly responding to poverty is to radically transform the world by profoundly questioning the meaning of wealth and poverty and by taking up enduring relationships with those who are poor while recognizing one stands to receive far more than we can give in such relationships.” To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 19

irrational fear they may infect us, but because we refuse to com- prehend their suffering.25

So they wander about night and day, helpless, naked, homeless, exposing their sores for all to see, dwelling on their former state, invoking the Creator, leaning on each other’s limbs in place of those they have lost, devising songs that tug at the heartstrings, begging for a crust of bread or a bit of food or some tattered rag to hide their shame or provide relief for their wounds (14,12).

Yet there is no comfort even in their common suffering. “They lie beside one another, a wretched union born of disease, each contributing his own misfortune to the common fund of misery, thus heightening each other’s distress; pitiful in their affliction, more so in the sharing of it” (14,13). Gregory fears his detailed descriptions of those that suffer from leprosy may alienate his listener’s festal spirits. Yet he tells them he speaks with such detail because he seeks to persuade them “that sometimes anguish is of more value than pleasure, sadness than celebration, meritorious tears than unseemly laugh- ter” (14,13). For whether his hearers like it or not, the lepers he describes are formed from the same clay as they are, the lepers are knit together with bones and sinews as they are, and, more importantly, lepers “have the same portion as the image of God just as we do and who keep it perhaps better, wasted though their

25 Gregory tells his hearers that they should at least help those suffering from leprosy by offering encouragement and keeping them company.

You will not demean yourself in the process; you will not catch their malady even if the squeamish deceive themselves into believing such nonsense; or rather, this is how they justify their, call it over-cautious or sacrilegious, behavior; in point of fact, they are taking refuge in cowardice as though it were a truly worthwhile and wise course of action. On this score accept the evidence of science as well as of the doctors and nurses who look after these people. Not one of them has every yet endangered his health through contact with these patients. You, then, servant of Christ, who are devoted to God and your fellow man, let compassion overcome your misgivings, the fear of God your fastidiousness (14,27). 20 Stanley Hauerwas

bodies may be; whose inner nature has put on the same Christ and who have been entrusted with the same guarantee of the Spirit as we” (14,14). It is not the leper, but the well off, who walk by and neglect those so afflicted, who are in greatest peril. Gregory’s depiction of the rich is as uncompromising as his portrait of those that suffer from poverty and leprosy. “As for us,” he addresses the rich,

we magnificently ensconce ourselves on high and lofty beds amid exquisite and delicate coverlets and are put out of temper if we so much hear the sound of begging. Our floors must be scented with flowers – even out of season – and our tables drizzled with perfumes – so that we might coddle ourselves all the more. We eat from a table lavished with meats arranged in a manner to pander to our indecent and ungrateful belly. Wine is rejected and praised in an effort to gain the reputation of being extravagant voluptuaries as if it is shameful not to be considered depraved (14,17).

Why, Gregory asks, are we so sick in our souls, a sickness worse than any that affects the body? The body’s illness is, after all, involuntary, but the sickness of wealth is deliberate. Why do the rich revel amid the misfortune of their brothers? Surely it is because we fail to see that we can only “gain our lives by acts of charity.”26 To so give is to imitate the character of God. Grego- ry reminds his hearers that no matter how much they give, “you will never surpass God’s generosity even if you hand over your entire substance and yourself in the bargain. Indeed, to receive in the truest sense is to give oneself to God” (14,22).

26 Gregory began “On Love for the Poor” with a description of twenty virtues that might be considered primary, but concludes that charity is the first and greatest of the commandments. For “nothing so serves God as mercy because no other thing is more proper to God, whose mercy and truth go before, and to whom we must demonstrate our capacity for mercy rather than condemnation; and by nothing else more than by showing compassion to our fellow man do we receive compassionate treatment in turn at the hands of him who weighs mercy in his scale and balance and gives just recompense” (14, 5). To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 21

Gregory ends “On Love for the Poor” by urging his hearers to “appropriate the beatitude” that blesses those who are the merciful (14,38).27 He concludes thus:

If, then, you place any credence in what I say, servants of Christ and brothers and follow heirs, while we may, let us visit Christ, let us heal Christ, let us feed Christ, let us clothe Christ, let us welcome Christ, let us honor Christ, not with food alone, like some; nor with oint- ments, like Mary; nor with tomb alone, like Joseph of Arimathea; nor with obsequies, like Nicodemus, who loved Christ in half measure; nor with gold and frankincense and myrrh as the Magi did before these others. Rather, since the Lord of all will have “mercy, and not sacrifice” (Mt. 9: 13) and since a kind heart is worth more than myriads “of fat sheep,” (Dn. 3: 39) this let us offer to him through the poor who are today downtrodden, so that when we depart this world they may receive us into the eternal habitations (Lk.16: 9) in Christ himself, our Lord, to whom be the glory forever. Amen (14, 40).28

27 Gregory’s rhetoric, as the following quote makes clear, is suffused with biblical allusions. I have obviously not done justice to his use of Scrip- ture as integral to the rhetorical power of his argument. 28 Holman raises the interesting question whether it matters whether the Christology is Arian or Nicene for Gregory’s identification of the poor with Christ. She observes that none of the texts by Basil, Nyssa, or Nazianzus on the poor are theological treatises, but she says their

elevated view of the poor as they relate to transcendent and incarnate deity in the Cappadocian texts is different from implications that logically attend Eunomius’s Arian view of Christ, at least as the Cappadocians understood that view, as one in which the Son differed from the Father in hypostasis and substance precisely because of the Son’s generate nature. A “Eunomian” identification of the poor with Christ would most logically, in theory at least, maintain a certain unbroachable divide between generate (be it Christ or the poor) and transcendent. None of the three Cappadocians recognizes any such barrier. The religious power of the poor in fact rests on the belief that they hold a direct line of access to the highest realm of deity; their generate nature in no way limits this access and is in fact one of its most characteristic features. 22 Stanley Hauerwas

4. A University of the Poor

Gregory’s “On Love for the Poor” was a liturgical action in which the poor and the leper, through the power of beautiful words, were made the center of a city ruled by Christ. Lepers are not recipients of charity, but rather they are God’s charity for a community both formed by as well as to be charity. Gregory “entitles” the poor, but, as Holman observes, “the power of the poor depends on their place of primary honour in the kingdom of God. It depends on their revisionist identity as kin. The rights of these poor depend on their constructed religious role: as patrons, engaging in civic gift exchanges by receiving alms and effecting redemption.”29 Gregory’s great gift, a gift made possible by his classical education, was to make his words work. Norris beauty- fully describes the way Gregory’s words work thus:

When Gregory looked outside his own life to the lives of others, he found it easier to describe how any Chris- tian ought to look at the poor and the lepers by speaking of the situations in picturesque language. He focused the attention of the Constantinopolitan community on such problems by rhetorically connecting the death of Christ for human sins and the Christian treatment of those economically less fortunate or those so pitifully diseased. He made his appeals through strong rhetorical arguments, images that convinced. Here, as a contemplative who painted the ugliness of poverty and leprosy contrasted with the beautiful life created by Christ, he empowered his congregation to recognize that the saved, sinners nursed to health, should assist those whose condition was so grave. Contemplation was good but so was action. He described the afflicted in poignant terms. Those with no voice, no breath, no hands and no feet gave thanks that they had no eyes to see their ravaged bodies. Not even the misery of human life in itself could be detailed

Holman, The Hungry are Dying, 181. 29 Holman, The Hungry are Dying, 151. To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 23

without the use of images and carefully crafted phrases. Ugliness would have to be presented with the same attention to detail that the contemplation of beauty demanded for speaking of magnificence. The contrast would only be properly strong if the same approach were employed in discussing each.30

Gregory had been born rich, but he had learned to live as one born poor. Gregory had received the best education available, but that education had not alienated him from the poor. Yet that is exactly what happens to most that receive university educa- tions in our time. At best the modern university produces people, even some who may have come to the university from poverty, who, after being at the university, want to “do something for the poor.” The university is not able to produce people, as Gregory was able, to see and describe the poor as beautiful. He was able to see the beauty of the poor because schooled by Christ he had no reason to deny or wish they did not exist. His descriptions of those who suffered from leprosy were loving because he had learned to love Christ and, therefore, he could not help but love the afflicted, even those afflicted with leprosy. Yet love of the poor and the leper is a profound challenge for those schooled by the presumptions of the modern university. In her extraordinary book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Saba Mahmood observes that the scholarship surrounding the poor and oppressed sponsored by the modern university robs them of agency. Mahmood’s subject is Isla- mic women determined to learn to live lives of submissive modesty through prayer and the veil. Mahmood observes that such women are usually described in scholarly studies as de- prived of the ability to enact the ethics of freedom “founded on their capacity to distinguish their own (true) desires from

30 Frederick Norris, “Gregory Contemplating the Beautiful: Knowing Human Misery and Divine Mystery through and Being Persuaded by Ima- ges,” in Gregory Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, eds. Jostein Bortnes and Tomas Hagg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 19–35. I am using a manuscript in which the above quote came from p.11. 24 Stanley Hauerwas

(external) religious and cultural demands.”31 Yet, Mahmood observes,

if we recognize that the desire for freedom from, or subversion of, norms is not an innate desire that moti- vates all beings at all times, but is also profoundly me- diated by cultural and historical conditions, then the question arises: how do we analyze operations of power that construct different kinds of bodies, knowledges, and subjectivities whose trajectories do not follow the entelechy of liberatory politics?32

Mahmood notes that there is a politics assumed and legi- timated by the scholarship that describes Islamic women as devoid of agency. It is politics of secular liberalism that assumes the task is to privatize religious convictions in the interest of a progressive realization of freedom.33 The university has been a crucial legitimating institution for such a politics by underwriting the state as the agent of liberation. Claims of and for rights,

31 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Femi- nist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 148. 32 Ibid., 14. Mahmood observes that even subaltern studies that are intent to show that the oppressed are not without agency through subversion or resistance nonetheless continue to presume that a category of actions exist shaped by the universal desire for freedom. In contrast Mahmood notes that even though her study focuses “on the practices of the mosque participants, this does not mean that their activities and operations they perform on themselves are products of their independent wills; rather my argument is that these activities are the products of authoritative discursive traditions whose logic and power far exceeds the consciousness of the subjects they enable. The kind of agency I am exploring here does not belong to the women themselves, but is a product of the historically discursive traditions in which they are located” (32). That, I believe, is almost an exact description of what Gregory’s “On Love for the Poor” performs for lepers. 33 I am hesitant to use the descriptor “liberalism” but Mahmood uses that term to describe “the belief that all human beings have an innate desire for freedom, that we all somehow seek to assert our autonomy when allowed to do so, that human agency primarily consists of acts that challenge social norms and not those that uphold them” (5). This view, which she also identifies as secular, is not simply a view of the state, though it is that, but rather she identifies it as a “form of life” (191). I think she quite reasonably calls this position “liberal.” To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 25

goods, and services made on the basis of identities shaped by liberal understandings of agency fall on the state as the source of their fulfillment. As a result all aspects of human life such as those associated with the family, education, worship, welfare, commercial transactions, birth and death, are now “brought under the regulatory apparatus of the state.”34 The privileged place of the sciences, particularly the sciences associated with medicine, in the modern university reflects this ethos of freedom and subsequent legitimation of the state. The sciences are often justified as having special status because al- legedly scientific knowledge is less arbitrary than the knowledges associated with the humanities. However the prestige of science in the contemporary university has less to do with its assumed epistic status than the assumption that science promises to give us the power to be freed from the limits of the body. Ac- cordingly science enjoys governmental support because governments in modernity legitimate themselves by promising to save us from illness and death. In such a world, Gregory’s oration is unintelligible. Indeed it challenges the deepest presuppositions of the politics of our day that gain legitimacy by promising to eliminate suffering. Christians would be fortunate if the political challenge to Grego- ry was a Julian, but our problem is more complex. We are now the enemy unable to sustain educational alternatives capable of producing people like Gregory who through the gift of speech create community in which the loneliness of suffering is over- whelmed. Shaped by the rhetorical habits of the modern university, Christian and non-Christian alike, we cannot help but read Gregory’s “On Love for the Poor” as reactionary. Of course it may well be asked why Christians need universities at all if they are institutions that are antithetical to Grego- ry’s call for us to love the poor. The answer to such a challenge is that Christians need places of study where works like that of

34 Ibid., 193. It is important, however, to note that it is to the credit of the modern university that someone like Mahmood has been produced. The liberal formation of knowledges characteristic of the university as we know it is capable of self-correction. That it is so indicates that Christians cannot nor should we want to disparage the work of the liberal university. There is no “going back,” but we must go forward in the world as we find it. 26 Stanley Hauerwas

Gregory’s “On Love for the Poor” will continue to be studied and hopefully imitated.35 Like Gregory, Christians must continue to learn from Hellenism, which will no doubt come in surprising forms, if we are to say for ourselves and the world why eloquence, an eloquence learned from patient endurance, is crucial if we are to love and be loved by the poor.36 It is crucial for such an enterprise that people like Gregory of Nazianzus exist. “No monks, no Christianity” is, I think, a generalization that is true for the very existence of the Church. But I also think any university that would be about the formation of people who can love the poor will need those who have learned to live as the poor live by living with the poor. It may well be, for example, that universities that desire to have what they teach be disciplined by the gospel have at the center of their work a l’Arche home or a Catholic Worker house.37

35 Harry Huebner argues that the Church needs to challenge the university to place on its agenda the claim that a people’s faith can be sustained only when its people are trained to negotiate economics, politics, science, sociology, and philosophy of the biblical faith in a world of competing claims. “The church needs an educated people to present more complexified view of human nature – of violence, sin, peace, and love – than most people have, given their somewhat distorted view of things learned from popular culture. The church needs an educated people to present alternative answers to questions of justice, international relations, and power, to present alternative models for how people can live together in ways that liberate and heal brokenness. The church needs an educated people to promote structures that foster the art of welcoming the stranger in a culture of protectionism; to promote that truth is not a possession but a gift in a age of capitalism; to promote that forgiveness in a viable strategy of social reconstruction in a culture of fear.” “Learning Made Strange: Can a Univer- sity be Christian?” in God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauer- was, eds., Greg Jones, Reinhard Hutter, and Rosalee Velloso Ewell (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 303. 36 Mahmood has an extraordinary account of the virtue “sabr” which is akin to Christian patience and means “to persevere in the face of difficulty without complaint” (Politics of Piety, 171). Mahmood notes that the justification of “sabr” is not the ability to reduce suffering nor to help one achieve self-directed choices, but rather how such a virtue makes one subservient to God (173). 37 Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the Catholic Worker, and Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, were formed by and formed ways of understanding the world that came from universities. See, for example, Mark and Louise Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and To Love God, the Poor, and Learning 27

Gregory drew on Hellenism to learn to be a rhetor, but he would not have been able to write an oration like “On Love for the Poor” without being baptized into Christ. To produce people like Gregory in our day, we will need the gifts of the university, but we will equally need people who do not need to attend the university to live their baptism faithfully. For Gregory, great rhetor that he was, knew that a people must exist with ears trained by the worship of the true God if the beauty of words like those he used in “On Love for the Poor” could persuade. Our task as Christians, and in particular those of us privileged to serve in the university, is to be as well as to train a people capable of reading and receiving a Gregory in our own day.38

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Резюме

Автор, який є одним з найвизначніших богословів сього- дення, аналізує значимість промови Григорія Націянзан- ського під назвою “Про любов до бідних” та застосування цих ідей в контексті сучасного християнства, а зокрема в академічному колі. Опираючись на нещодавніх досліджен- нях таких авторів, як Джон Макґакен, Браєн Дейлі, Сюзан Голман та Фредерік Норис, Гавервас стверджує, що роздуми кападокійського отця про бідних зародилися на грунті ро-

Spiritual Origins (New York: Paulist Press, 2005). Jean Vanier, the founder of l’Arche, wrote his dissertation on Aristotle on friendship. His book, Made for Happiness: Discovering the Meaning of Life with Aristotle (London: DLT, 2001) is a wonderful exemplification of his ability to transform Aristotle’s understanding of happiness and friendship through what he has learned through l’Arche. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, Romand Coles argues that the hunger of the belly and the hunger of the mind cannot be separated. The intellectual task will fall short, Coles suggests, if it seeks to proceed without engaging the questions of hunger with the hungry. See his “Hunger, Ethics, and the University: A Radical Democratic Good in Ten Pieces.” 38 Fred Norris is one such person who has spent his life trying to help us listen to Gregory, which is why it is so appropriate we honor him. I am, moreover, indebted to Sheila McCarthy for pressing me to try to articulate the relation between the university and the poor. 28 Stanley Hauerwas

динного багатства та престижу, проте вони стали сильним риторичним знаряддям для оборони бідних та відстоювання думки про створення суспільства збудованого на чеснотах, де бідні були б частиною Божого народу. Гавервас описує зв’язок між бідними та університетом, коли викладає своє бачення впровадження необхідних змін для належного прийняття бідних в університетське коло, зазначаючи, що університети, які мають намір навчати, а особливо жити згідно з Євангельськими чеснотами, повинні мати в своєму центрі будинок католицького руху робітників, Л’ярш, чи щось подібне. Такий підхід несумісний із суспільно-полі- тичними та науковими ідеями сучасного лібералізму про бідність, який як зазначає Гавервас, з посиланням на Сабу Махмуд, позбавляє бідних свободи та призводить до моно- полії держави щодо опіки над ними. В підсумку, Св. Григо- рій вчить нас, що життя аскета не заперечує навчання, якщо науку розглядати як форму аскетизму, якої він повинен набути для блага як багатих так і бідних.

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Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4, pp. 29–80

Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy in the Twilight of the Romanovs1

Argyrios K. Pisiotis

Abstract (Українське резюме на ст. 79)

In groundbreaking historical research and socio-religious analysis, the author utilizes mostly unpublished and previously unused sources from the Russian State Historical Ar- chive (RGIA) and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) in order to show that pace the Russian clergy’s traditional image as apologists of tsarism and turgid functionaries of the state, from 1905 on many Orthodox clerics joined lay society in a revolution that shook the Romanov monarchy. Among the hundreds of clerics from all over the empire who took part in open debate and protests demanding the radical reform of absolutist government, the author concentrates on the examples of Vasilii Popov, Vladimir Lakhin, Iona Brikh- nichev, Pavel Sokolov, and the “Khar’kov Five,” Pavel Grigorovich, Vladimir Kuplenskii, Vladimir Shapovalov, Ioann Filenskii and Nikolai Voznesenskii. These and other clerics often supported the same demands as other social groups, e.g., the freedoms of press, conscience, speech, association, and assembly as well as the abolition of capital punishment, the inviolability of residence and person, and wider land distribution. Clergymen were also incriminated in inciting peasants to violent acts against landowners and destruction of private property, or instigating riots and attacks on the police. Influenced by moral theology and diffuse socialist tenets, Russian clerics developed a distinct blend of Christian

1 I wish to dedicate this article to my wife Ulrike, who patiently and judiciously edited for cogency much of the research on which it was based. 30 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

socialist ideas (and idealism), with strong populist and cleri- calist undertones.

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What do I care for your laws now? What are your customs to me? Your morals, your life, your State, your Faith? Let your judges judge me. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gentle Creature2

Introduction

By the first years of the twenty-first century, a revolution that started in Tehran in 1979 had within two decades spread political Islam across the Middle East and south Asia and shown religion to be as formidable a stimulus of political mili- tancy as the most radical of the modern era’s secular ideologies of social liberation. For its part, Christianity had also motivated radical political action at distinct times. In the core of such action lay the egalitarianism of Christian divine and natural law, derived from the purely religious equality taught by Jesus Himself.3 This spirit of egalitarianism had been kept alive in East and West by patristic tradition and by the theory and practices of monasticism. It re-emerged at times of social distress to legitimate the European peasantry’s democratic inclinations and numerous uprisings.4 After the Reformation, the militant asceticism of Protestant sects fed political upheavals that overturned ancient kingship, such as the English monarchy.5 In late imperial Russia, too, progressively-minded Ortho- dox clergymen blended Christian belief and morality with the

2 The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, trans. David Magarshack (New York: The Modern Library, 1979), 294. 3 See Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., trans. Olive Wyon (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956), I: 369. 4 See Ibid., I:370–75. 5 See, for instance, Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (New York: Atheneum, 1968). Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 31

gospel of social equality propagated by socialist ideologues of their time. By the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of liberal constitutionalism among Russian lay “society” had also overflowed into the mentality of a younger generation of better educated and civic-minded priests. Most of all, however, the political mind of dissident clergymen betrayed influences of traditional Russian pro-agrarian populism (narodnichestvo) as well as anxious aspirations of clerico-professional and social advancement. The two tendencies combined to create a spontaneous, specifically Russian, populist clericalism or clerical populism, often with socialist undertones, which, at least in the case of rural clergymen, was only diffusely informed by the tenets of Western Christian socialism. After a brief review of some of those tenets of Western Christian socialism, we will turn to an examination of the context and causes of Russian socialist attitudes and agitation among Orthodox clergy at the end of the Romanov and imperial eras. We review differences among rural and urban clergy and then concentrate on the particular examples of Va- silii Popov, Vladimir Lakhin, Iona Brikhnichev, Pavel Soko- lov, and the “Khar’kov Five,” Pavel Grigorovich, Vladimir Kuplenskii, Vladimir Shapovalov, Ioann Filenskii and Nikolai Voznesenskii. Each of these is illustrative of the fact that Orthodox clerics were not – contrary to how they are too often portrayed – apologists of tsarism and turgid functionaries of the state. Rather, from 1905 onward, many Orthodox clerics joined lay society in a revolution that shook the Romanov monarchy deeply.

1) The Early Proponents of Christian Socialism

Christian socialism arose gradually in the nineteenth century as a response to the mechanization of human productivity and the destitution of the industrial proletariat, the triumph of utilitarian ethic in the organization of economic and political life, and the swelling of the state’s bureaucratic and military power. Romantic thinkers such as Novalis (Friedrich von Har- denberg, 1772–1801) prepared the way for Christian socialism by uncovering the inability of industrial society to provide 32 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

sufficient fellowship after having destroyed the traditional (non-work-related) ties that bound people to their communities in their former rural environments.6 In the first half of the century, the advancing theories of industrial capitalism and laissez-faire individualism challenged Christian activists to demand political and economic action on behalf of all indivi- duals, including the losers of the economic changes. French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon expounded a “new Chris- tianity” primarily concerned with the plight of the poor. His adherents believed that society should develop in the spirit of association with religion as the dominating force, which would gradually supplant the prevailing competitive individualism. Inter alia, they advocated abolition of inheritance rights so that capital could flow away from self-seeking capitalists and into projects for “the common good.” The term “Christian socialism” was first appropriated by a group of British men including Frederick Denison Maurice, novelist Charles Kingsley (son of an Anglican vicar), and John Malcolm Ludlow. They and their successors gained inspiration from the failure of the Chartist agitation of 1848 and the subsequent rise of social democracy. One of the Christian socialist concepts that proved most resilient in time was the “kingdom of God.” Ludlow and Kingsley aimed at vindicating for “the kingdom of Christ” its “true authority over the realms of industry and trade,” and “for socialism its true character as the great Christian revolution of the nineteenth century.”7 To be sure, the doctrine of the kingdom of God was not a dogma of the Church, although the term had been equated with the “Church” since the patristic era. In fact, nineteenth-century Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican theologians had considered that the Church of Christ proved that the kingdom of God existed on earth.8 Interest in the kingdom of God was spurred by the concept of progress, which entered natural sciences and humanities alike through

6 Troeltsch, Social Teachings, II: 796. 7 Neville C. Mastermann, John Malcolm Ludlow, 89 ff. 8 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Develop- ment of Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), V:217–8. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 33

Darwinian theory.9 Part of the theological response to the theory of evolution was a belief “in the progress of the kingdom” together with the awareness that “religion develops in accordance with the progress of the times,” as Lamennais put it in his Essay on Indifference in the Matter of Religion.10 In The Future (L’Avenir) and Words of a Believer (Paroles d’un Croyant), Lamennais also strove to disengage the immortal kingdom of the Church from the rise and fall of earthly, secular kingdoms, including the monarchies of the time and the papacy, which condemned him.11 Benjamin Harrison of the Oxford Movement for the Renewal of the Church of England published in 1834 The Kingdom of Heaven, in a series of Tracts for the Times.12 On the opposite edge of European Christendom, Greek theologian Hierotheos Mitropoulos expressed in his True Worship the belief shared by other theologians that there was a corporate nature to all human life, that the “kingdom” was to be perceived universally, and not only individually.13 His Russian coreligionist, philosopher Vladi- mir Sergeevich Soloviev, posited in The Spiritual Foundations of Life (Dukhovnyia osnovy zhizni) that believers should strive to ensure that the kingdom of God was not only “over all,” which it was independently of human volition, but that it be “in all,” a “universal” and “manifest kingdom” in which humanity would attain unity with God.14 French-reared and educated, Ludlow was influenced by the writings of Saint-Simon’s disciple Philippe-Joseph-Benja- min Buchez and by the emergence of cooperative societies in France. Stirred by the appalling conditions among the poor at English factories and workshops, Ludlow enlisted other churchmen to promote Christian principles in industrial organization. They criticized socially conservative Christianity and laissez-faire attitudes and urged that cooperation replace com-

9 Ibid., V:216. 10 Cited in Ibid., V:217. 11 Ibid., V:222. 12 Ibid., V:218. 13 Hierotheos Mitropoulos, He alethes threskeia, 2nd edition (Athens, 1895), pp. 250–251, cited in Pelikan, Christian Tradition, V:219. 14 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, III:224. 34 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

petition. Joining forces with the cooperativist movement, Ludlow’s group financed several small cooperative societies that favored co-partnership and profit-sharing in industry. They first founded the Council for Promoting Working Men’s Associations and in 1854 the Working Men’s College in London. Although the movement did not survive past the late 1850s, some members went on working for cooperativism in England and encouraged the formation of numerous Christian Socialist organizations in the 1880s and 1890s.15 Kingsley was similarly influential. In 1848, probably still unaware of Karl Marx’s characterization of religion as “the opiate for the people,” he asserted in his “Politics for the People” that the Bible had been wrongly used “to keep the poor in order.”16 Thus, unlike previous Christian thought, Christian socialists argued that spiritual and ethical development relied not only on individual spiritual struggle, but also on a healthy collective social constitution. They therefore rejected pietistic withdrawal from the world as an attempt to quiet the Christian conscience and demanded a reconsideration of Christian ethics’ relation to the monumental social changes of the industrial era. Emphasizing the gospel’s demand for universal brotherhood, Christian socialism claimed that the bourgeois order of industrial societies had ultimately arisen from the fact of sin. However, Christian socialist activists in various countries started diverging in their views almost as quickly as the res- pective national movements developed. Contrary to Marxist socialism, for instance, which gradually spread out from a single source based on an extensive body of ideological writing produced by a mere duet of initial proponents, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and formally represented from the 1870s onwards by consecutive institutionalized centers of ideological orthodoxy (the socialist Internationales), Christian socialism was of spontaneous, multi-centric origin. To be sure, as reactions to a common stimulus (the breakdown of the

15 See Neville C. Mastermann, John Malcolm Ludlow: the Builder of Christian Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). 16 Charles Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, 1st Series (London, 1852): 47. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 35

traditional socio-economic order brought about by industrialization) arising from similar ethical-intellectual backgrounds, Christian socialist movements shared elementary core traits such as the repudiation of capitalist greed, the rejection of pietistic withdrawal from the “world,” and the longing for a restitution of human community broken down by the uprooting of the formerly rural populations. With a few exceptions, Christian socialists across Europe also respected the right to private property. From that point on, however, local conditions and particular confessional backgrounds gave distinct characters to national Christian socialist groups, despite mo- mentary efforts at imitation of examples from abroad. a) France

In France, priest Felicité Robert de Lammenais spear- headed a Roman Catholic social movement from the middle of the nineteenth century. A little later it inspired French Protes- tants, who replicated Ludlow’s movement. The Protestant As- sociation for the Practical Study of Social Questions, founded in 1888, opposed bourgeois Protestantism while also rejecting a flattening, egalitarian socialism. b) Belgium

In the heartland of Western European, Belgium’s strong Catholic traditions found their expression in the Parti Social Chrétien, which has remained that country’s main right-of- center Christian-democratic party since 1884 (originally called Catholic Bloc).17 Christian socialist movements in Catholic central Europe took on a decidedly traditionalist (if not autho- ritarian) direction which placed them squarely in the right-of- center of the political spectrum – a tendency that is still echoed in the contemporary remnants of nineteenth-century roots in the partisan politics of Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

17 See John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism (London: Hurst, 1996). 36 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

c) Hungary

In the 1860s, Bishop Ottokár Prohászka started elaborating a Hungarian brand of Christian socialism as a distinct reaction to political liberalism and atheistic evolutionary socialism. Hosted in a number of political formations under different names, Hungarian Christian socialism consolidated in the Christian Socialist Workers Union in 1903, which was re- named National Christian Socialist Party four years later. Hungarian activists developed into critics of both Marxism and reactionary Catholicism, advocating what would later be known as “the welfare state.”18

d) Austria

Austria’s Christian Social Party (Christlich-Soziale Partei) was born in 1893 out of earlier organizations such as the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Sozialer Verein) and Chris- tian Social Workers Union (Christlich-Sozialer Arbeiterve- rein). Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Nova- rum, Austrian Christian socialists wanted to improve the social situation of the working classes and effect ethical and reli- giously-based social reforms.19 Their opposition to liberalism and capitalism coupled with respect for property rights can be traced all the way to the post-1945 Austrian People’s Party, remaining to date the alpine republic’s main right-wing party.20

18 See Jenö Gergely, A keresztényszocialismus Magyarországon, 1903– 1923 [Christian Socialism in Hungary, 1903–1923] (Budapest: Akadémia Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977). 19 John W. Boyer, Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897–1918 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). 20 See Anton Staudinger, Wolfgang C. Müller and Barbara Steininger, “Die Christlich-Soziale Partei,” in Handbuch des politischen Systems Öster- reichs: Erste Republik 1918–1933, eds. Emmerich Herbert and Ernst Hainisch (Vienna: Manz, 1995). Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 37

e) Bavaria

In Bavaria, the Catholic Center Party (Zentrum) became the main representative of federalist ideas, rural interests, and opposition to trade unions, in a Prussia-dominated unified German state which was decidedly anti-Catholic, pro-industrial, and progressively pro-trade-union. The party was dis- solved after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 but re-emerged as the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union) after World War II to dominate Bavarian politics with a distinct Catholic traditionalist agenda ever since.21 In Protestant Ger- many, the movement for Christian social action became en- meshed in anti-Semitic agitation. Court preacher and founder of the Christian Social Workers’ Party Adolf Stoecker was a leading figure in the anti-Semitic drive of the late nineteenth century.22 f) America

In the United States, Henry James, Sr., the father of novelist Henry James and philosopher William James, had argued the identity of the aims of socialism and Christianity as early as 1849. The Society of Christian Socialists was organized in 1889. The first years of the twentieth century in the United States witnessed the rise of the Social Gospel movement, stressing the social aspect of salvation.23 From the beginning of the twentieth century, “Christian socialism” came to be loosely applied to any movement that attempted to combine the fundamental socialist aims with Christian ethical convictions. Christian socialism rejuvenated Christianity’s ancient drive to prevail over all human institu-

21 See Haneke Burkhard and Hans-Seidel-Stiftung, eds., Geschichte einer Volkspartei: 50 Jahre CSU 1945–1995 (Grünwald: Atwerb-Verlag, 1995). 22 On Stoecker’s movement and influence see the newer studies by Grit Koch, Adolf Stoecker, 1835–1909 : ein Leben zwischen Politik und Kirche (Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1993) and Günter Brakelmann, Adolf Stocker als Antisemit (Waltrop: Spenner, 2004). 23 See Robert T. Handy, The Social Gospel in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press: 1966). 38 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

tions if the kingdom of God on earth was to materialize. It thus reintroduced a long-missing utopian revolutionary ele- ment to Christianity, which surfaced among others in the politics of late imperial Russian Orthodox clergy.24 To them we now turn in an in-depth analysis of both the ideas and their context and also several of the major proponents.

2) The Russian Church and Social Change

In Russia, in contrast to their traditional image as apologists of tsarist autocracy, some Christian Orthodox clergymen also joined lay society in a revolution that shook the foundations of the Romanov monarchy from 1905 on. After two centuries of the Russian Orthodox Church’s uneasy subjection to the state, hundreds of Orthodox clerics from all over the empire took part in actions of protest that demanded the radical reform of autocratic government. In a period dubbed by contemporary Russian publicists as a new “time of troubles” (smutnoe vremia), low and middle-rank Orthodox clergy, inspired both by secular (socialist and liberal) ideologies and Christian ethics, and in collaboration with lay dissident groups, challenged government authority. Parish clergy joined the open debate on the social and political ills of the country. Influenced by their Christianity, they often supported the same demands as other social groups, e.g., the freedoms of press, conscience, speech, association, and assembly; the abolition of capital punishment; the inviolability of residence and person; and the distribution of more land to their agrarian flock. Dissident political activities included licentious talk against the tsar, the imperial family, statesmen and political institutions, and public critique of government policies, including “national security” matters such as the war that started against Japan in February 1904. Clergymen were also incriminated in inciting peasants to violent acts against landowners and destruction of private property, or instigating riots and attacks on the police.25

24 Troeltsch, Social Teachings, II: 726–8, 1010–1013. 25 See Argyrios K. Pisiotis, “Orthodoxy versus Autocracy: The Ortho- dox Church and Clerical Political Dissent in Late Imperial Russia, 1905– 1914” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 2000), chs. 1 and 4. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 39

The government pressured the bishops to quell political dissent in clerical ranks from the outset of the 1905 revolution until the beginning of World War I. Surprisingly, the hierarchy resisted government pressure to punish clerical political protesters. The Church’s complacent response to anti-tsarist protest by Orthodox clergy challenges the traditional percep- tions of the Orthodox Church’s willing servitude to the state and the clergy’s isolation from lay society and political engagement in late imperial Russia.26 Around the turn of the twentieth century, imperial Russia’s most known clerical champions of ideas that could be branded as Christian socialist were two Orthodox intellectuals in St. Petersburgh: the prolific writer and archpriest Grigorii Spiri- donovich Petrov and the archimandrite Mikhail Semёnov. After the notorious priest Georgii Gapon, who on 9 January 1905 led the workers’ procession to the Winter Palace that was drowned in blood by troops and sparked a two-year anti-tsarist revolution, Grigorii Spiridonovich Petrov was the most famous among the imperial capital’s elite priesthood. He had published tracts criticizing the Orthodox hierarchy’s slavish subordination to an unpopular regime as well as on the need to renew Orthodox parish life by allowing middle clergy and laymen a greater say.27 In 1906, when Russian parties started competing for the popular ballot in Russia’s first elections, Petrov, like the majority of liberal city clergymen, associated himself with the main liberal party, the Kadets. In early 1907, Petrov was sentenced to three months of confinement in a monastery for being a Kadet candidate and deputy-elect to the Second Duma and therefore sowing “temptation and confusion” among believers. The archpriest was not short on support from all corners of society. Duma President Golovin, other Duma deputies, and the liberal press advocated his release. Kadet deputy N.N. Kutler from St. Petersburg, where Petrov had been elected, visited the chief procurator twice to plead for the priest’s release. The majority of bishops in the

26 See Ibid., ch. 2. 27 Jennifer E. Hedda “Drawing New Boundaries: The Redefinition of Church and Nation in the Writings of Father Grigorii Spiridonovich Petrov,” paper presented at the 31st National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, St. Louis, MO, 18 November 1999. 40 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

synod were indeed ready to release him, but Chief Procurator Izvol’skii warned that if Petrov were released, his speeches in the Duma would have a “pernicious influence” on peasants, with whom he was also popular.28 Petrov’s popularity was unquestioned even by his enemies, who ascribed it to his clerical identity. Pobedonostsev’s successor in the office of chief procurator strongly believed that priestly rank lent more credibility to political opposition. Archbishop Nikolai, the exarch of Georgia charged by the synod to submit a recommendation on the Petrov affair, advocated defrocking. According to Nikolai, Petrov had strayed from Orthodox teaching in his many publications and owed his influence to the Church: “without cassock and a priest’s cross, Father Petrov will no more be the same as he is now in the eyes of simple people. He will be greatly discredited.”29 But Russian hierarchs were not so concerned by the anti- establishment essence of dissident clerical writings and speeches. Instead, they resented being put in a defensive, compromising position of having to answer for their dissident subordinates to the state and to the conservative monarchist establishment. Clerics like Petrov alienated conservative urban circles from the Orthodox hierarchy. Even in an atom- sphere electrified by the vicious circle of radicalism and repression in the inter-revolutionary period, the size of conservative circles, especially in Moscow and Kiev, could not be underestimated. Most importantly, clerical dissident activity threatened to put the Church out of favor with the government and the tsar himself. In the midst of a slow but tenacious campaign for comprehensive ecclesial reform, including the restoration of the patriarchate, the hierarchy could not afford to turn their eyes the other way in cases like Petrov’s and suffer the autocrat’s disfavor.

28 See Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, Vol. 2, Authority Restored (Stanford University Press: Stanford, 1992): 330–34. For the newest research on the social activism of St. Petersburg priests Petrov and Gapon see Jennifer E. Hedda, “Good Shepherds: The St. Petersburg Pastorate and the Emergence of Social Activism in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1855–1917” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1998) chapters two through seven. 29 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6668, l. 16. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 41

On 15 May 1907, the day of his release from his monastery sentence, thousands of people gathered outside the Warsaw station in St. Petersburg to welcome Petrov. He was on par with the stars of lay opposition: crowds greeting the priest with “hurrahs” filled the streets all the way from the station to his apartment, while deputies delivered speeches of welcome when he finally took his seat in the Duma.30 Due to their humbler milieu, other clerical oppositionists who were also elected to the Duma, such as Tikhvinskii, Ognev, and Elabuzhskii did not attract quite the same support from lay society.31 Still, their great popularity in the provincial towns of their origins echoed the support hundreds of provincial dissident clergymen received from their village parishes. Mikhail Semёnov, on the other hand, had given his hierarchy much cause for vexation before the 1905 revolution broke out. After it did, however, the young lecturer at the St. Peters- burg Theological Academy hardly missed an opportunity to criticize both Orthodox prelates and the tsarist autocracy. He even went so far as to call himself a “populist socialist” (na- rodnyi sotsialist).32 As a result, he was defrocked and eventually crossed over to the Old Believers, who had existed since the great schism of the seventeenth century. By the twentieth century, they had split into several groups and some of them were notorious for their stringency in applying the faith in everyday life. Their appeal to clergymen like Semёnov could

30 Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, 334–35. 31 On V. Ognev and F. Tikhvinskii see the homonymous entries by Argyrios K. Pisiotis in Ray P. Domenico and Mark Y. Hanley, eds. Encyclo- pedia of Modern Christian Politics, 2 vols., (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 2:420–21 and 559 respectively. On Elabuzhskii, see Argyrios K. Pisiotis, “Orthodoxy versus Autocracy: The Orthodox Church and Clerical Political Dissent in Late Imperial Russia, 1905–1914,” 158ff. 32 See Mikhail Semënov’s own political tract, Kak ia stal narodnym sotsialistom (Moscow, 1907). On his contribution to the fermentation of liberal ideas during the first months of the 1905 revolution in the capital, see James W. Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Revival in Russia, 1905–1906 (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 1981), 58, 120, 315. 42 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

be found in their history of being indomitable to secular (tsarist) authority.33 Nevertheless, the numbers of clerical dissidents in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the agitated inter-revolutionary period from 1905 to 1917 were rather unimpressive, despite the opportunity for massive defiance offered by the December 1905 uprising in Moscow. Certainly, arch-conservative Metro- politan Vladimir (Bogoiavlenskii) left Muscovite clergy no doubt that dissent would not be tolerated.34 However, the very low number of formal accusations by state authorities and private citizens against Moscow and St. Petersburg clergymen is highly misleading as to the extent of clerical political activities in the capitals. St. Petersburg in particular was a hotbed of clerical liberalism long before the outbreak of the 1905 revolution and the press instruments of clerical-lay societies and the Ecclesiastical Academy echoed loudly the society’s call for freedoms. Metropolitan Antonii Vadkovskii, encouraged in 1905 and at least tolerated during 1906 much vocal criticism of the status quo, especially as it coincided with the hierarchy’s bid to free the Church of state control. Clerical political dissent in St. Petersburg was shielded by a rather tolerant diocesan administration, by high-standing sponsors,

33 On the anti-statist history of the Old Believers see the classic studies by Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of the Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison: Univer- sity of Wisconsin Press, 1970) and Roy R. Robson, Old Believers in Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996). Cf. the more recent findings by Irina Paert in Old Believers, Religious Dissent and Gender in Russia, 1760–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 34 Metropolitan Vladimir was one of those trained (and training others) in the latter half of the nineteenth century to counter subversive socialist tenets. He was a prolific writer of anti-socialist tracts on the worker question and urban poverty, such as The Children of the Devil and their Sermon of Freedom (Deti diavola i ikh propoved’ svobody) (Kazan’, 1905); On Labor and Property (O trude i sobstvennosti) (Moscow, 1905); To rich and poor (K bogatym i bednym) (Moscow, 1906); On the Workers’ Question (O rabochem voprose) (Moscow, 1907); Evening Discussions Between a Peasant, a Factory Worker, and a Priest (Vechernie sobesedovaniia mezhdu krest’ianinom, fab- richnym rabochim i sviashchennikom) (Sergiev-Posad, 1908); Our Pastoral Task in the Fight With Social-Democratic Propaganda (Nasha pastyrskaia zadacha v bor’be s sotsial-demokraticheskoiu propagandoiu) (Moscow, 1909). See also Cunningham, Vanquished Hope, 22. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 43

and by a sympathetic public.35 Such dissent was covered with the lacquer of loyalty by being publicized in official and other legal press, and it was ignored at least by middle and low levels of the policing agencies, more urgently challenged by the wave of lethally radical lay dissidents and insubordinate workers.36 From 1905 to early 1907, thanks to all these factors, clergy in the imperial capital avoided the immediate and persistent police harassment their colleagues in the provinces so commonly suffered during the same period. To be sure, from 1907 on, the hierarchy was forced to purge clerical liberals in the Academy, in the seminary, and in the Church’s press. Even then, however, the importance of political dis- loyalty as reason for repression was matched by the serious- ness of the challenge that priestly liberalism had presented to episcopal primacy during the 1905–1906 debates over ecclesial reform. To be sure, a relatively few among the liberal clergy of the capitals either called themselves or were called by contemporaries “Christian socialists” (khristianskie sotsialisty) but without much consistency. It is mostly the hindsight of historians on that period which sees part of the ideas formulated by progressive clergymen before, during, and after the revolutionary outburst of the early twentieth century as a manifestation of a Russian Christian socialism.37

35 See the example of Fr. Grigorii Petrov and consult footnote 33 above. 36 On the challenge radicals presented for the tsarist police, see Jonathan W. Daly, Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905 (Northern Illinois University Press: DeKalb, 1998), 98–123. 37 See James W. Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Revival in Russia, 1905–1906 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981) and “The Orthodox Church and the Russian Revolution” in Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, 1991: 7:169–215. See also the recent research by Jennifer E. Hedda in “Good Shepherds: The St. Petersburg Pastorate and the Emergence of Social Activism in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1855–1917” and “On the Importance of Religion in the Russian Orthodox Church in the Late Imperial Period,” paper delivered at the “Workshop on Modern Russian Religious Spirituality,” University of Michigan, 19–20 March 1999. 44 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

a) Rural and Urban Differences among Dissenters

Away from St. Petersburg and Moscow, from 1905 through the start of the Great War, hundreds of rural, or at least provincial, Orthodox clergymen and their statements and activities became the cause of formal and informal investigations and judicial proceedings by secular and ecclesiastical authorities for anti-governmental propaganda. The clergy’s populist sympathy for the peasantry stimulated the boldest protest.38 That the overwhelming majority of dissident clergymen in all provinces were posted in rural (that is, village) parishes as opposed to semi-urban ones in district capitals and urban parishes in major cities also echoes the importance of a prosperous countryside in the clergy’s overall vision of a future free, democratic, tolerant, but decidedly Orthodox Russia. The dissident actions of Russia’s provincial parish clergymen revealed little if any knowledge of the cross-national theoretical background of Christian socialism. In fact, precious little is known about the work and lives of most provincial clergymen who were implicated in dissident political actions in the wake of the 1905 revolution. In their overwhelming majority these servants of the Orthodox Church had never surfaced in any published document or publicized event before or beyond the administrative or judicial procedures that ad- judicated their political trespasses.39 Although there is little evidence of coordinated action (and none of a systematic common ideology) for the majority of these anti-tsarist activists, the incidents in which they were incriminated were clearly the overflow of a much broader wave of disaffection of Orthodox

38 On how akin Orthodox clergy felt their social origins and culture to the peasantry’s, see Laurie Manchester in “Secular Ascetics: The Mentality of Orthodox Clergymen’s Sons in Late Imperial Russia” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1995), pp. 95–112. 39 For a thorough collective analysis of all (almost exclusively archival) information available about the nearly 300 Orthodox clergymen who were implicated in anti-governmental activities between 1905 and 1917 see Argyrios K. Pisiotis, “The Unknown Dissident: the Prosopography of Cleri- cal Anti-Tsarist Activism in Late Imperial Russia,” in Modern Greek Studies Yearbook: A Publication of Mediterranean, Slavic and Eastern Orthodox Studies, 18/19 (2002/2003): 63–94. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 45

parish clergy from the autocracy. This disaffection, which was vocalized by a relatively small number of the total of Orthodox clergy of the time, was shared by many if not the majority of clerical colleagues, who subscribed to and read the editorials, accounts, or letters of the most vocal ones, in ecclesiastical journals. Most typical for their progressive views were the official journals of the theological academies, Russia’s top educational and research institutions of Orthodox learning – Tser- kovnyi Vestnik (St. Petersburg), Bogoslovskii Vestnik (Mos- cow), Pravoslavnyi Sobesednik (Kazan’), and to a lesser degree Trudy Kievskoi dukhovnoi akademii (Kiev).40 They, along with other clerical professional journals, were produced in the cities but read throughout the empire, from the distant corners of which they regularly published correspondence. In this context, the statements of rural clerical dissidents bore the unmistakable marks of populism concerned with ameliorating the day-to-day lives of peasant parishioners. To this end, rural clerics encouraged peasants not to pay dues to landowners or render recruits to the government and even to ransack estates, breaking into cereal reserves, stealing grain and cutting down private woods in the winters of 1905 and 1906. Principally during the 1905–1907 revolution, and in subsequent years, rural priests also became chief organizers of the movement for trustworthy and effective representation of peasant interests, chiefly embodied in the Peasant Union. In written explanations rendered to consistories or in interviews with the diocesan investigators, accused rural clerical dissidents had an opportunity to elucidate the motives behind their actions and counter the facts and interpretations of their activities reported by agents of the Ministry of Interior and private denouncers. Not being as prolific writers as some urban clergymen, rural clerical dissidents revealed their political minds with their actions rather than expound them in lengthy manifestos. City clergymen, though as interested in social justice as their provincial colleagues, exhibited a more sophisticated in-

40 See the excellent relevant study by Vera Shevzov, “Bogoslovskii Vestnik, 1905–1917: A Response to Reform and Change in Russia’s Years of Revolution” (Master of Divinity thesis, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1986). 46 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

tent to reform political institutions and legal procedures in order to lay the foundations for rule of law in the Russian state. Urban clerical dissidents voiced protests inspired by a liberal defense of individual rights. To be sure, the populism of rural clergy was not devoid of appeal to liberal ideals, nor was the liberalism of theological academy graduates indifferent to the plight of rural masses. Urban dissident clergymen were simply more visible. The secular, ecclesiastical and religious press published them and about them, members of high society talked about them, and statesmen and politicians concerned themselves with them individually. Serving in city and town cathedrals, or as chaplains along main traffic junctions such as railways, urban and semi-urban clergymen utilized more the possibilities for expression offered by the press. In fact, most urban clergymen acquired files with the police as dissidents precisely because of their publicist activity, in which they expounded their views on social and political questions as well as clerical vocational issues. Still, to participate in the wave of political protest from 1905 on, both urban and rural Orthodox clergymen had to overcome two ingrained ideological barriers. The first was an initially common Christian ascetic withdrawal from the “world,” an evil system “which could only be accepted or rejected en bloc.”41 This “otherworldliness” had been a particularly strong trait in Eastern Orthodoxy, built on the medieval “kenotic” ideal of religious devotion and represented through the modern era by contemplative monasticism.42 The second barrier stood in almost paradoxical opposition to the first. Since the Pauline conciliation with the state as an institution of justice, order, and civic morality, the Christian Church had fostered obedience to secular authority.43 Specifically in Russia, the heritage of Byzantine “symphony,” 44 as well as the

41 Troeltsch, Social Teachings, I:100–101. 42 On kenoticism, or “self-emptying” humility, see G.P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, Kievan Christianity: the Tenth to the Thir- teenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 94– 131; on Russian ascetic traditions see Ibid., 132–57, 387–88. 43 See Troeltsch, Social Teachings, I:80. 44 “Symphony” (Greek for consonance, agreement) had its roots in the writings of the founder of Christian church history, Eusebius, bishop of Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 47

victory of Saint Joseph of Volotsk (1439–1515) and the “Pos- sessors” in the fifteenth century underwrote an alliance between Russian rulers and Orthodox clergy, which survived in the next centuries despite the crises of the Great Schism and Peter’s onslaught on the constitution of the Church.45 Well

Caesarea (on Palestine’s coast), who envisaged this interdependence of temporal (imperium) and religious authority (sacerdotium) at the time of Emperor Constantine. “Symphony,” however, owes its name to Emperor Justinian, who legislated it into a fundamental principle of the late- Roman/Byzantine political constitution. The concept was – possibly inten- tionally – vague and it never really implied or resulted in an equality of power between temporal and religious authorities. It did, however, imply a close and harmonious coordination of the two separate authorities, acting freely, for the benefit of a society of faithful (subjects). To be sure, Byzan- tine emperors (basileis) as well as Kievan and Muscovite princes often used their powers to diminish the Church’s ability to manage this contract under truly free leadership. Imperial protegés, clerics and even laymen, were elevated to the patriarchal throne to replace obstreperous Patriarchs who resisted the basileis’ religious or other policies. These violations of the principle notwithstanding, symphony remained a commonly accepted ideal and a goal towards which to strive, even if to seldom attain. See Eusebius of Caesarea, Tridecennial Oration, cited in Harry J. Magoulias, Byzantine Chris- tianity: Emperor, Church and the West (Rand McNally & Company: Chicago, 1970), 1. See also Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G.A. Williamson (Penguin Books: Baltimore, 1965); Michael J. Hollerich, “Religion and Politics in the Writings of Eusebius: Reas- sessing the First ‘Court Theologian,’” Church History 59 (1990): 309–25; Norman H. Baynes, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (Haskell House: New York, 1975); John Meyendorff, “Justinian, the Empire and the Church,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 22 (1968): 45–60; H.A. Drake, “Constantine and Consensus,” Church History 64 (1995): 1–15 and Steven Runciman, The Byzantine Theocracy (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1977). 45 Joseph, abbot of the influential monastery in Volotsk, led the “Pos- sessors,” i.e., the party of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy who insisted on the Church’s possession of material wealth as precondition of its independence and ability to fulfill its mission in terms of soothing popular poverty, checking secular power, and serving important national goals, such as the then incipient Russian colonization of the pre-arctic North and (slightly later) Siberia. His main ideological adversary, eremitic Nil of Sora, led the group which advocated a Church without property and manifestations of earthly exaltation. See Helene Iswolsky, Christ in Russia: The History, Tradition, and Life of the Russian Church (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1960), 74–76; Nicolas Zernov, The Russians and Their Church, 3rd ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), 53–55; G.P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2: The Middle Ages; The 48 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

into the modern era, Orthodoxy’s very periodization of Church history was patently intertwined with the institution of empire.46 By the time the 1905 revolution erupted, exposure to secular liberal and radical thought and the lived reality of the social injustice, which the autocracy sustained, had under- mined in a generation of younger Orthodox clergymen the unquestioning obedience to this authority. b) Vasilii Popov

Illustrative of this erosion of tsarist loyalties was a “letter to the peasants,” which Father Vasilii Popov wrote in the Arkhangel’sk prison in 1906. The gendarmerie had arrested Popov on 9 February 1906 for “publicly preaching the armed overthrow of the existing state order” in his “Letter by a Priest to Peasants, no. 1.” A few months later the priest escaped and fled abroad. His “letter” contained caustic attacks not only on the autocracy, but also on the Church hierarchy, which is why the synod resolved to defrock Popov three years later, in Sep- tember 1909.47 Popov’s letter expressed the ethos of Russia’s new priesthood, which, after the Great Reforms increasingly believed that the clergy should have a voice in all social and political debates. Moreover, the letter illustrated a radical waning of monarchial myths and belief in ecclesial authority on the part of this young priest:

Brothers peasants! You are suffering much from your enemies. You are in the dark, the Tsar does not give you education, the pops48 only fool you with stories about devils…. I am a priest, but do not think that I want to fool you. No, I am only explaining to you

Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 313–15. 46 According to Pelikan, Christian Tradition, V:79 the first period was from Christ to Constantine; then came the era of the seven ecumenical councils, followed by the time from the East-West Schism to the fall of the Constantinople; the final period spanned the time from 1453 to the present. 47 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6648, ll. 31–33 (Holy Governing Synod [HGS] resolution n. 8077, 11 November 1908). 48 Pop (plural popy) is a pejorative term for “priest.” Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 49

how the Tsar and the rich drink your blood…. Christ always said “love each other; let everyone love his neighbor like himself…. Our neighbor is every human being: no matter whether he is a Jew, a Tatar, a Japa- nese, etc. So when your Tsar, Nicholas the Bloody, undertook this nonsensical war against Japan, our prelates, and we priests after them, started to deceive the people: “we must beat the Japanese; whoever kills more of them will acquire the heavenly kingdom”…. But God said “do not kill!” In order to fool you even better, the priests devised the oath…. Christ does not command the oath. “Do not swear on anything,” he said, “not even on your hair.” This is how we changed Christ’s law for the benefit of Tsar – the good father, this Tsar-drinker of people’s blood. Brothers Peasants! The prelates and we, priests, tell you that the Tsar is God’s Anointed. He is not Anointed by God, but by the Metropolitan, and maybe even by the devil. For God does not love royal authority. There are literate people among you. Let them look up in the Bible, how God reproaches royal authority, how he reproaches even the authority of good kings; as for such bloodthirsty kings like our little fool Nikolushka – God does not even want to look at them. In the Bible God tells prophet Samuel that royal authority is not dear to Him. Whereas prelates and priests say that there is nothing better than a Tsar and his authority. Whom should one believe the most? I, my friends, believe God over those lecherous [bludnikam] bishops. Prelates say that the Tsar is God’s Anointed and for this deception they receive sixty thousand rubles per year. These prelates are monks. They took vows, comrades, that they will not have any money, and yet they receive thousands. You see, brothers peasants, this is what they are – vow-breakers. These monastic prelates do not eat meat, but on the other hand devour sturgeon and salmon and wash them down with expensive wines. And they terrify you, the unenlightened 50 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

peasant, with hellish sufferings for drinking a pot of milk. O, darkness, darkness of the peasants!!!49

Popov concluded with the implication that the Church hierarchy was also responsible for the wretchedness of the people: “Remember, you, unenlightened brother, that it was prelates who crucified Christ to whom you swear. Peasant friend, believe less those prelates and priests and you will live better…. Remember that, as Christ exposed the prelates while he lived, so he would now tell them: ‘woe to you deceivers and hypocrites’.”50 Popov’s written explanation to the consistory judging him was similarly caustic. Expressing regret for the Church’s support for repression, his explanation hardly refrained from the irreverent remarks on the hierarchy that had permeated his “Letter:”

I deeply despise the carriers of the “grace” of Free- dom-Loving Jesus, who clean the exterior of the window-glass while its interior is full of every rapacity and hypocrisy. … I feel shame when people say that the clergy stands aloof of politics. I feel shame because even the service to God is oriented towards the promotion of the idea of autocracy. I feel shame because the Synod itself supports known political ideas, accusing the Russian people of selling out to the enemies of the people and until this day the Synod does not realize how provocative its stance is. I feel shame because the Synod does not consider propaganda the clergy’s call on the people to fight against sedition … while calling on the same people to overthrow the “Tatar yoke” is severely punished. … The “miracle-worker” of Kronstadt 51 does not get

49 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6648, ll. 23–24. 50 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6648, l. 24. 51 Popov refers to the renowned priest of his time, Ioann Sergiev, known as Ioann of Kronstadt, who was already then venerated as a saint across various social strata all over Russia, but mainly in St. Petersburg, where he lived. Despite his recognition, Ioann, who was officially declared Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 51

censored for his fraternization with the police, and for his blessing the pogrom on Jews; instead, they give a “luxurious” miter to this spokesman of “Christ-like” poverty. But fraternization with the working people and those having large families is persecuted as a criminal act. Are we not ourselves destroying the Church for whose foundation the Son of God came to the world? I am afraid, that if Christ were alive, he would say “woe to you, scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites for the perversion of My commands of love for God and for thy neighbor.” God is God, i.e., Absolute Sub- stance and, as such, It cannot forgive the immoral actions of any Government, even less a Government which does not derive its authority from the will of the people. Does the saying “the voice of the people is the voice of God” not apply to the Government? Should we not look for the beginning of this wise aphorism in antiquity, when the Russian people invested their rulers with their trust? … At that time, despite the “godless” mores – according to today’s terminology – the Orthodox faith flourished: is this not what the abundance of saints and relics show? Now there are no saints, and the majority does not believe at all in the recently canonized “new saints,” as it sees in these canonizations a clearly political lining aimed at promoting convenient political ideas among the unenlightened mass of people. The sources of healing have dried up now, because of the association with police precincts; love has dried up – if one can talk of love at all in the case of the “Miracle-Worker” of Kronstadt. Now, according to the example of the a saint decades later, was anathema to critics of the autocracy and liberally- minded clergy such as Popov, because of his association with the radical right and his role in helping to quell riots in his parish on the island of Kronstadt, in 1905. The depth of Ioann’s collaboration with the right, as well as his alleged anti-Semitism, have been contested in the light of recent research. The most authoritative work on the life, thought, and cult of this, most famous saint of modern Orthodoxy is by Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (Universi- ty Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). 52 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

ancient emperors, it is forbidden to join Christ and thus tear up the Church’s criminal connection to the police. … It seems that Nil Sorskii, Philipp of Mos- cow, Nicholas of Novgorod – these great defenders of the oppressed and the downtrodden are hardly tole- rable to the Investigation Department of the Gendar- merie. Your Holiness, if I thought and said lies, prove it and expose me. If not, “why my persecution?”52

c) Vladimir Lakhin

Also in 1906, Father Vladimir Lakhin’s explanations of his political activities castigated social injustice in Russia and betrayed socialist influences. Lakhin served at the “Manchu- ria” train station of the China railway under Bishop Innokentii Figurovskii of Pereslavl’ and head of the China Mission. The priest had been arrested by General Ivanov of the Rear-Guard Army, who arbitrarily boasted in his report that he had “suspended priest Vladimir Lakhin’s right to preach and officiate.” The military then surrendered the priest to the Vladivostok diocese to adjudicate Lakhin’s case. The report of the military investigation charged that “in his sermons he called on the flock to fight against the millionaires, saying that they are the evil of the state and church, that Christ was against them, and therefore the workers should unite in unions and unions of unions, and fight against the millionaires, until their millions are equally divided among all the people.” Lakhin was also reported to have said that “the scribes and the Pharisees lead the state as they want; battleships, canons and machine guns are kept for the protection of their interests, but if the people take everything into their own hands, which is possible, then all of these expensive armaments will be useless.” Before the Rear-Guard Army Staff forwarded its report, Lakhin had already submitted to the Vladivostok diocese his own revealing explanation:

52 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6648, ll. 12–14 (explanation by priest Vasilii Popov to the bishop of Arkhangel’sk). Though not quoting verbatim from the Bible, Popov’s words seem to have been inspired by one of the following passages: “Why do you, like God, pursue me?” (Job 19:22) or Paul’s words: “Why am I still persecuted?” (Galatians 5:11). Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 53

I wholeheartedly declare that I am not and was not, nor did I belong to any union, or union of unions, strike committees, or revolutionary parties. Speaking from the pulpit, I did not incite the people against the Government, or much less against the Sovereign. It is true that in society and in the press, I have long fought and expressed myself against the unraveling bureaucratic regime, and I pointed to the necessity of reforms. For this reason, the Manifesto of October 17 was a true feast to my soul. Traveling across my railway parish by train, from Lao-Ian to [Port] Arthur, before the war and at its beginning, I heard and saw too many of all possible immoralities and abuses. Later, too, at the end of the war, in Kharbin at the “Manchuria” station, where I have served for two years, I saw the same pictures of these Manchurian bacchanalia:53 bribery, embezzlement of funds – this new “Babylon.”

Earlier, as a rural priest for ten years in the village Zimy,54 I saw how the Russian farmer collects a few pennies with sweat and blood, and how these pennies fly away in the hungry years through various state taxes. In Manchuria, I also saw how millions of these very pennies fell like a golden rain, in the form of all kinds of bribes, embezzlements, forgeries, astronomi- cal stakes at card games, drinking orgies in places like

53 In Greco-Roman religion, Bacchanalia, also called Dionysia, were any of the several festivals of wine god Bacchus (Dionysus). They probably originated as rites of earlier fertility gods. The most famous of the Greek Dionysia were in Attica and included the Little, or Rustic, Dionysia, characterized by simple rites. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy, the Bac- chanalia were at first held in secret on three days of the year and attended by women only. Admission was later extended to men and celebrations took place as often as five times a month. In 186 BC, the reputation of these festivals as orgies led to a Roman Senate decree that prohibited the Bacchanalia throughout Italy, except in certain special cases. Lakhin used the term as a synonym for “festival of immorality.” 54 Lakhin had served in the Riazan’ province before being transferred to Manchuria. See his service record in RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6627, ll. 6–7. 54 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

“Kolchida,”55 peculations; in the form of every kind of fictitious contracted public works and railroad projects…. Bishop Innokentii himself protested against those outrages. His circular letter was not well received by the Kharbin “Epicurians,” and Innokentii left to Peking…. Am I then supposed to betray my pastoral duty and become part of that filth, those parasites and spongers, as influential as they may be? Am I then supposed to look silently upon the social moral bankruptcy which is taking place before my very eyes? Am I supposed to be afraid to tell the bitter truth? For, this is what demoralized our army and our workers! Is it really possible to call all of those sermons of mine, in which I castigate the local mores, “incitement against the Government and the Sove- reign?”! For, this is the accusation that the Staff of the Rear-Guard Army and its agents, mister gendarmes, thought of me. The Manifesto of October 17 was a “funeral march” for them.

Lakhin combined his indignation at widespread popular poverty with outrage at the scandalous corruption in the civil service. He also ascribed his incrimination to animosity and slander by the police, whose corruption he had exposed:

As I sympathized with the ideas of the Manifesto, I was understandably an eyesore to such gentlemen…. They wanted to settle old accounts with me, and pay me back for my articles in the press. But my parishioners love me and sent several telegrams to the Staff of the Rear-Guard Army pledging my innocence, because they know that I am right. One of them was signed by 448 people. My enemies, the half-literate gendarmes, may have either misunderstood or distorted the meaning of some of my sermons, which I delivered in front of the local intelligentsia, sometimes

55 Gamblers’ night club in Kharbin. The name is derived from the Rus- sian for Kolchis, the Greek name for the region on the Black Sea coast (present-day Georgia) and reputed in ancient Greek legend for its wealth. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 55

in a literary language. Such was my language, for instance, with my sermons on the topic of riches, on political-economic struggle, on war, on the revolution [smuta]. I tried to convince everybody to wait quietly until the State Duma equalizes the rights of the citizens, as a result of which, money, the wealth of the world, will be equally divided among people.

Lakhin went on to expound his global millenarian vision, expressing disdain for the pursuit of material wealth even as he propounded the equal distribution of material goods. Lakhin’s words showed familiarity with international issues as well as prophetic idealism about the prospect of ecumenical institutions:

Expounding the ideal of the future Christian life on earth before an educated audience, I said that, under the influence of the Gospel, there will come such a time in the history of our civilization – even if not soon – when mankind will finally realize the harm that materialism and capitalism do. The deluge of material wealth will end when the bloody struggle on earth will cease; the good will vanquish evil; “peace on earth and goodwill among people” will reign; the shameful militarism will prove useless; there will be a global tribunal based on international treaties; and God’s Kingdom on earth will come as promised by our Lord Jesus Christ, i.e., a higher cultural-moral kind of life for people. In order to achieve these prophecies of the Gospel, we should not try to accumulate all the earthly riches because in this manner we “serve Mammon” and put the brakes on the development of a Christian culture. I confirmed this negative stance of the Savior towards the material, by using His words: “If you gain all the world and lose your soul…”

Lakhin claimed that his sermons had actually averted bloodshed and worker uprisings in the area:

56 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

I was not conducting political agitation from the pulpit. On the contrary, I always admonished people not to be fascinated by extremities, and perhaps it was these admonitions that prevented the expected pogroms. On December 25, I criticized from the pulpit the extremist direction of some meetings. On January 9, I convinced the workers of the depot of the China/ East railway not to march with protests and flags. Only the workers of the Zabaikal’sk depot, who did not hear my sermon, went to the protest and therefore the catastrophe of January 9 [1906] at the “Manchuria” station ended with few victims during the collision of workers with soldiers. These two facts show that I did not belong to the revolutionaries, I did not incite the parishioners, and that, on the contrary, I calmed them down in every possible way.

Though dismissing the notion that he was a revolutionary, the priest sided with the protesters, accusing the gendarmerie of excessive zeal. Lakhin also defended the right of clergymen to help and assuage victims and all people in need, irrespective of their political ideas. He was thus one of many priests of the late empire, reported dissidents or not, who reclaimed rights and obligations derived from Christian morality and clerical calling, which the autocracy had violated for two centuries:

The gendarmes also hold against me my visits to the injured protesters in the hospitals after January 9. They say that among them was an agitator – who, however, was entirely unknown to me. The majority of protesters were beaten without sufficient cause. There, among the ill, lay my dear army cook. I do not find any criminal political secretiveness in these visits with suffering people. I visited them twice, as a pastor and a Christian, out of sympathy. The first time, I even went with the Holy Eucharist. For, a priest will give a last admonition even to a brigand before capital punishment. The beaten ones enjoyed the care and attention of the entire [railway] station. In Riga, Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 57

bishop Agafangel even put together a committee to offer help to all those who suffered during the revolution. Let them interrogate all the ill and beaten down, and ask what I said at the hospital.

Finally, Lakhin revealed his political ideology with enviable candor. His bold political confession in what was supposed to serve as exculpation showed more than a particular dissident’s naïve enthusiasm. It was an indication of the laxity (if not outright tolerance) on political self-definition the Church had afforded to its servants in the last decades of the nineteenth century as long as the former did not disrespect or embarrass ecclesiastical authority vis-à-vis secular authorities:

I, as a populist progressive [narodnik-progressist], sympathize with all my soul with the liberation movement, but I do not belong to the “extreme leftists,” called “revolutionaries” by the bureaucracy. I do not share their violent, bloody methods of fight. I fully realize that by the laws of evolution, everything in the world develops gradually, without any kind of strikes and violence. The development of the political and economic conditions of the life of states should also be subject to this universal law. There must necessarily be planning consistency [planomernost’] and civil maturity. Therefore I refused to participate in the strike committee and I held a neutral stance all this time, far from the strikers. Besides, it is uncom- fortable for me, a cassocked man, to take on such a role for myself. The military and civil authorities were good to me. Before the coming of Father Golubev, for some time I even served as chaplain of the Lao-Ian garrison…. For that service I was recently awarded the order of St. Anna-3rd degree by the Chief Com- mander. At the end of the war I kept aloof from military people, and as for the gendarmes, I always had only service relations to them.56

56 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6627, ll. 31, 31ob, 32. 58 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

In his official testimony later submitted to the consistory, Lakhin repeated arguments from this written explanation. He even offered additional evidence of his progressive views: “In private conversations I always stood for civil reforms and church reforms in the spirit of the Manifesto of October 17, as all of thinking [mysliashchaia] Russia. In the purpose of realizing the Manifesto of October 17, I sympathize with the liberation movement.”57 The priest submitted several of his sermons to prove that they never contained extremities. After considering the first explanation and the official testimony, the Vladivostok Consistory freed Lakhin of the accusation of inciting the population against the tsar’s authority and of conducting anti-governmental agitation. At the same time, the Consistory ruling com- mented that Lakhin seemed to mix or confuse “the truth of Christian teaching with socialist theories.” The bishop of Vla- divostok, Evsevii Nikol’skii, concurred with the Consistory’s ruling and in July 1906 petitioned the synod for permission to renew Lakhin’s right to officiate, which had been suspended during the investigation. Three weeks later, Lakhin’s immediate superior, Bishop Innokentii also lifted the priest’s suspension from service. Lakhin applied for a post either in the China Mis- sion along his familiar railway, or in Vladivostok diocese. In August 1906, the synod replied to Evsevii that the ruling of the consistory was invalid because Lakhin belonged in the jurisdiction of the China Mission. However, in view of the identical rulings by Innokentii and Evsevii, the synod allowed Evsevii to appoint Lakhin in his diocese, prescribing as a measure of disciplining a mere “episcopal admonition” by Evsevii.58 The heads of two diocesan jurisdictions, a consistory and a synod, had surprisingly proven right a dissident priest’s truthful confession of his moral-political ideals and his trust in their tolerance. Simultaneously, Church authorities had indirectly concurred with Lakhin’s perception of himself and the Orthodox clergy as active participants in the concerns of secular society, on par and in fellowship with this society’s most enlightened part – “thinking Russia.” Certainly, from 1907 on, as the government pressured the Church to silence vexatious critics, it became dif-

57 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6627, l. 33. 58 RGIA, f. 796, o. 187, d. 6627, ll. 27–28, 49–50. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 59

ficult – yet not uncommon – for hierarchs to grant dissident clergymen such leniency. Nonetheless, as long as Orthodox dissidents did not misrepresent Christian teachings to promote oppositionist ideologies and did not denigrate clerical dignity with their behavior, they enjoyed a fair degree of Church protection from accusations of overzealous government agents through the end of the tsarist monarchy. This said, ecclesial authorities could do little to protect the most brazen clerical mavericks from police harassment and pro- secution. Particularly unforgivable were dissident clergymen who additionally exhibited morally reprehensible behavior. The synod and other hierarchs did not want to jeopardize relations with secular authorities in order to protect people who did not take to heart the needs and concerns of the Church. Such was the case of twenty-five-year-old Father Vasilii Popov from the Don Oblast’, whose sermons from 1905 to 1908 preached militant disobedience. A 1908 investigation by the Don diocese showed that Popov was of “excessively liberal orientation” and that “he is fascinated by politics and tries to promote his personal liberal political convictions to his parishioners, through personal discussions and in his sermons.” According to Archbishop Afanasii Parkhomovich of Don and Novocherkassk, Popov devoted the entire content of his sermons to explication of various political ideas, which “he always expounded in the spirit of full freedom, in the spirit of hatred of the poor class for the richer and better- provided-for classes.” The archbishop offered a typical quotation from a sermon by Popov:

We can observe that one part of the population of our fatherland wants in bread and land and is therefore condemned to lead a pitiful existence under the constant fear of dying from hunger and of letting their families die from hunger, too. While the other part, significantly smaller in numbers than the first, drowns in luxury and squeezes the last juices out of the toiling people, never having any idea what the words labor and work mean. And using its wealth, it devours for its benefit the fruits of the work of poor people. … Then we may conclude that many of us have forgotten 60 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

the teaching of Christ…, that many of us have lost their conscience.59

By 1908, Archbishop Afanasii saw no reason in continuing to bail out a dissident who did not seem to value his service. Furthermore, Afanasii had genuine concerns about Popov’s po- tentially corrupting influence on parishioners’ morals and faith. According to the prelate, Popov had virtually stopped giving sermons on anything but political issues, “neglecting the human soul, whose salvation was entrusted to him as a pastor of the flock of Christ.” Popov himself had not been to the confessional for two years (1907, 1908). In September 1908 the Synod ruled in favor of Popov’s defrocking. Afanasii had proposed to exclude Popov from the clergy by means of the latter’s petition for voluntary laicization, in order to spare him negative consequences in further professional pursuits, especially in the event Popov intended to seek employment in the civil service.60

d) Iona Brikhnichev

Aside from notorious clerical dissidents such as St. Petersburg archpriest Grigorii Petrov and archimandrite Mikhail Semënov few clergymen published on as broad a range of issues in the inter-revolutionary period as Father Iona Brikhnichev from Tiflis, who eventually joined the pro- Bolshevik Renovationists after the October revolution. His clear thought, knowledgeable argumentation, moral idealism, and intrepid expression before autocratic authority revealed that the intellectual world of the capitals and that of the provinces was not always too dissimilar. Brikhnichev was one of many provincial priests who acted as mediators between the modern(ist) thought and mores of the city and the provincial intelligentsia’s efforts to catch up with them. By late 1906, Brikhnichev’s immediate jurisdictional superior, the Georgian Exarchate’s synodal office, had already

59 RGIA, f. 796, o. 189, d. 7577, l. 1. 60 RGIA, f. 796, o. 189, d. 7577, l. 3 and 4–5 (report by Afanasii to the HGS, 10 July 1908, and HGS resolution n. 7756, 30 September 1908 respectively). Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 61

resolved to defrock him for the content of his journals. The first issue, published on 27 April 1906, consisted of sixteen pages, each divided in two columns of text, and was titled Rise, You Sleeping!!! (Vstan’ Spiashchii!!!). Brikhnichev published three more issues under this title, in weekly intervals (7, 14, and 21 May 1906). After his journal was banned, Brikhnichev continued to publish it in identical format, but titled with the scriptural quote Go in the Light (Khodite v Svet) and under the nomi- nal editorship of A.V. El’chaninov, while his wife was named as publisher. The first issue under the new title came out on 5 June 1906. When this was also banned, the journal came out the following week (June 11) under yet a new title Beacon (Maiak). To make sure that Father Brikhnichev’s readership would not be confused, the first page contained a confirmation in large characters that this was the first issue of a journal of the same publisher as Rise, You Sleeping!!! Underneath it there was an announcement that Father Nikandr Pokrovskii, the editor of The Spiritual Herald (Dukhovnyi Vestnik), a well-known religious journal published in St. Petersburg, would be a corresponding writer. A second issue of the Beacon came out on 18 June 1906, while issue no. 1 of another journal of the same format came out on the same day, under the title Rise and Walk! (Vstan’ i Khodi!). Layman K. Nazarenko was named chief editor of this journal, while Brikh- nichev’s wife remained the publisher. The first page reassured the readership that well-known publicists authored the published material. While Father Brikhnichev figured first among them, layman A. El’chaninov, characterized as a local revolutionary by state authorities followed, together with laymen Vladimir Ern, a woman named Dubrovina, “worker N.S.” and another two writing under the pseudonyms “Russian Officer” (“Russkii Ofitser”) and “Soldier” (“Voennyi”). All issues contained articles castigating abuses by the police, officialdom and the Church hierarchy.61 Others educated readers by explaining in an oppositionist spirit terms such as “constitution” (konstitutsiia), “terrorists” (terroristy), “1st May: Worker’s Holiday,” (rabochii prazdnik 1go maia) and “authority”

61 Columns 5–8 of issue n. 1 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 12–19. 62 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

(Avtoritet).62 The journals also included poems of similar content and short articles on morality inspired by quotations from the scriptures.63 The first issue of Rise, You Sleeping!!! reprinted an editorial in The Russian Word [Russkoe Slovo] by the famous oppositionist cleric from St. Petersburg, archpriest Gri- gorii Petrov. Titled “Request for Admonition” (“Prosit’ vnushit’”), the editorial was representative of clerical repudiation of the policing role with which the autocracy had traditionally burdened the clerical estate. The title derived from a standard phrase included in the civil authorities’ letters to bishops, when communicating to the latter anti-governmental statements or activities of their subordinate clergy and asking the bishops to take measures to repress such activity. Castigating the hierarchy for not shedding these policing duties pushed upon them by the Ministry of Interior, Petrov, the most renowned liberal clerical intellectual of the time, wrote in the article that had been reprinted by Brikhnichev:

The Marshal of Nobility of Chernigov province and member of the zemstvo board complained to bishop Antonii for the love of freedom that certain priests exhibit and asked the prelate to bear his influence on the “red” pastors. … On the other hand, when the people … begin to raise their voices, then they call this insurrection, rebellion. And they call policemen, they request Cossack troops. And if the police with the Cossacks do not help either, then they call on the clergy: “You Fathers, influence the people. Instill in the people humility and obedience, meekness and much patience.”

But, fear not, when the people were serfs, oppressed in slavery, then the Marshals of Nobility did not call on prelates with such words: “Your Holiness, tell your pastors to admonish the landlords not to oppress the

62 Columns 12–14 of issue n. 1 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 12–19. 63 See, for instance, issue n. 1 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 12–19. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 63

people and to free the serfs…”. Then the Marshals of Nobility were silent and were content with the clergy’s silence, too.

What a nice, obedient, diligent estate. Give any order – they will carry out everything. Now, however, that the clergy started to cross over to the side of the downtrodden people and deplores the poverty of the countryside, the Chernigov Marshal of Nobility and others like him do not like the new activity of the clergy. The Chernigov Marshal of Nobility and people of his mind eagerly see the Church as the higher department of the police precinct – and the clergy as cassocked policemen, constables, and chiefs of police. Thus they have bound Orthodoxy in a policing and bureaucratic role.

Petrov expands his accusation and then contrasts the Russian situation with that of other Orthodox countries:

They even created a particular doctrine, a tenet of faith, that Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality are one. But, on the other hand you have Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. There, like in our country, Orthodoxy is the religion, but the nationality is theirs, not ours – Greek, Serbian, Rumanian. This means that the faith is not bound to a race. Christ the Savior came to earth not for the Russians, but for all humankind. One should not bind faith to nationality. One should also not bind the type of government to the type of religion. Religion is one thing and the type of government is another. The state may be based on a constitution; it might even be a republic. This has nothing to do with Orthodoxy. This also means that one should not join the autocracy with Orthodoxy. To say that Orthodoxy and autocracy are one is blasphemy. At the very least it reveals ignorance about religion. … In the great temple of Russia, a source of light and warmth, a source of popular blessing and free sovereignty of the 64 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

people is being established now. The old fanatics are raising their old song in a new form: “Orthodoxy does not allow love of freedom; Orthodoxy does not tole- rate pastors who are friends of the people.” Evidently, in their opinion, Orthodoxy obliges pastors to be friends of the police, guardians of the people’s oppres- sors, and only preachers of stupefied servility to the people.64

Brikhnichev did not only reprint editorials by the chief representative of clerical liberalism. Brikhnichev’s own devotion to democratic ideals was sincere and broad. It manifested itself in statements and publications championing the right of workers and peasants to a better life and deploring the abuses of the bureaucracy. For instance, a May 1906 article in Brikh- nichev’s journal attacked bureaucrats as “mercenaries who serve not the Fatherland, but General Trepov’s measures of repress- sion.” The article advocated that the people take all power away from the bureaucracy in order to stop government arbitrariness and the “senseless waste of money on the fight against the people.”65 The overwhelming majority of reported dissident clergymen castigated the bureaucratic regime in similar ways. Yet urban and semi-urban clergy, to which Brikhnichev belonged, went demonstrably further than their rural colleagues in advocating a liberal ideology of tolerance and equal rights for all. Moreover, such liberal dissidents insisted on the link between Christian teaching and certain liberal ideals. An article in Brikh- nichev’s journal, titled “Civil Rights and Christianity” (“Grazh- danskiia prava i khristianstvo”), posited that people need freedom “like fish need water;” that without freedom people “cannot develop those qualities that God granted them;” that the gospel blesses freedom, and through the mouths of the Apostles it commands all Christians: “do not become slaves to people….

64 Columns 9–11 of issue n. 1 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 12–19. 65 Columns 3–7 of issue n. 2 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 20–27. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 65

Stand in freedom, which Christ granted you.”66 Another article titled “Conservatism and Christianity” (“Konservatizm i khristianstvo”), by a collaborator of Brikhnichev, dared to posit that conservatism is anti-Christian and even atheistic, and offered an original yet theologically dubious explanation. According to the article, conservatives thinking that nothing needed to change were against progress. Progress and change, however, were necessary for the kingdom of God to materialize, since it had obviously not materialized yet;67 but police and bureaucrats tried in every way to prevent this kingdom of God from developing in the people.68 It was an article titled “Duma” that cost Brikhnichev his conviction by the Georgian-Imeretian synodal office in late 1906.69 In the second part of the article, Brikhnichev wrote that the tsar could not hear any “live human voice” because a series of ceremonies and protocol prevented him from speaking to the people or even to Duma deputies face to face. Thus, the tsar had no choice but to listen to his courtiers. Brikhnichev drew a parallel between the tsar and prisoners, who also cannot talk to anyone but prison wardens. According to Brikhnichev, if the tsar could talk directly to the people he would realize that they – not various “semi-bandits, semi-thieves” (polurazboiniki, poluvory) like “Trepov, Durnovo, or Witte” – were the best protectors of the monarchy. On the contrary, because of his advisors and ministers, contended the author, “he, the tsar, could not visit a single Russian city without danger for his life and had to sit like a prisoner in Tsarskoe Selo, surrounded by enemies.” Illustra- ting how bureaucrats had drawn the tsar away from the people,

66 Columns 7–13 of issue n. 2 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 20–27. 67 For the proliferation of the theory on the kingdom of God among Russian clergy at the time, see Jennifer E. Hedda, “Good Shepherds,” chapter 3. 68 Columns 18–20 of issue n. 2 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 20–27. 69 Imeretia is a region of Western Georgia, Kutaisi being its main city. To the West, it borders the lowland region of Mengrelia or Mingrelia with the port town of Poti on the Black Sea coast. Both regions were bishoprics in the Exarchate of Georgia. The Georgian-Imeretian Office of the Synod was the highest administrative instance in the Exarchate, to whose immediate jurisdiction Brikhnichev belonged. 66 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

Brikhnichev deplored that, after his throne speech, Nicholas refused the people’s lawful deputies, “the nation’s best people” as he called them, an audience, “as is parliamentary practice in all Europe.” According to the author, instead of staying to listen to the deputies’ reply, “the tsar was quickly led out, under the music of military bands, so nothing could be heard, even if somebody cried something.” Indeed, in its address the Duma had called bureaucratic arbitrariness the most important sore in Russia’s political life. Brikhnichev concurred, lamenting Nicho- las’s receiving “all kinds of ‘patriots’ and their delegations, set up by his own ministers such as Trepov and Durnovo.” Brikhnichev went on to elaborate an Orthodox version of the “social contract” between ruler and ruled. The priest said that God gave the tsar obligations toward the people and did not make the people slaves to the tsar. According to Brikhnichev, this was the meaning of the oath tsars took before the altar when they came to the throne. If this oath was broken, the author asked, then “what meaning does the people’s oath before the tsar have, if an oath is a bilateral promise, from both sides?” “But what can be done, when one of the sides clearly infringes on its obligations?” The author then attacked Trepov again, quoting offensive characterizations from the press. The churchman and publicist culminated with a bold call to readers, for which he could be easily accused of sedition:

Peoples of Russia! If the Tsar does not want to talk with our representatives, with our Duma; if the Tsar is insulting us with his refusal to hear our voice; if the Tsar’s manifestos and the Tsar’s words are clearly being violated; if the Tsar prefers the police spy and his likes to all of Duma, to all of the peoples of Russia, then we must defend our representatives, our Duma, with our own lives. If the Tsar is with the people, i.e., in unity with the Duma, then the people are also for Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 67

the Tsar and the Duma. But if the Tsar is against the people, then our life is for the Duma!70

For this article, Brikhnichev was arrested for sedition and im- prisoned in the Metekhi Prison in Tiflis. Consequently, the Georgian Imeretian Synodal Office recommended his defrocking. Appealing this resolution, the priest addressed from the prison an appeal to the synod, in which he revealed remarkable candor, civic maturity, and a liberal outlook that other Orthodox clergymen of his generation shared:

I do not reject and never rejected the Supreme Autho- rity, as I do not belong to the party of anarchists-communists by my convictions. But, as a student of Christ, I consider all authority not as a right, but as an obligation.

I know that the higher a man stands on the hierarchical ladder the more responsible he is for what is hap- pening around him. At some point Moscow Metropo- litan Filaret said that “the episcopal rank is not an honor, but an achievement.” The Lord himself Jesus Christ teaches us to understand authority this way: “whoever of you desires to be first among you shall be slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44).71

Unlike clergymen who expressed surprise at persecution for their oppositionist activities, Brikhnichev was aware that his dissent would have unpleasant consequences. Furthermore, Brikhnichev propounded Christ’s teaching itself as motivation to dissent and moral support against repression:

“O, you, who speak of the Lord, do not fall silent!” Let us hear God’s behest … I did not keep silent … I knew that prison, exile, my family’s going hungry awaited

70 Columns 3–9 of issue n. 3 of Rise, You Sleeping!!! in RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 28–35. 71 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 116ob–117; this excerpt is from Mark 10: 43–44. 68 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

me for this, and nonetheless I did not keep silent, because I also knew that “who loves mother or even father more than Me, is not worthy of Me … and who does not take his Cross and does not follow Me, he is not worthy of Me.” And so, I acted as my pastor’s duty commanded me and I did not do something “unbecoming clerical dignity,” as the decree of the Synodal Office said about me.72

Having mocked in the last sentence the usual justification ecclesial authorities used to censure dissident clergymen, Brikh- nichev posited that everything he did was mandated by the Christian faith he was bound to uphold:

I “preached the word, I was ready in season and out of season, I convinced, I rebuked, I exhorted” (II Timo- thy 4:2). Nowhere did I, not even by a single word, reproach the Supreme Authority as such. However, by my pastor’s duty I extended my word to the Represen- tative of this authority, bringing to His attention the unlawful actions that are taking place.73

After a few paragraphs dedicated to exposing the officialdom’s hypocrisy about the evils visited on the people, Brikhnichev wrote of his social origin. Although his non-clerical roots made him a relative exception among the Russian pastorate, they help to explain his social morality, as he was one of those who chose priesthood out of calling, after a reform of 1869 opened the clergy to men whose fathers did not belong to the clerical estate.74 Also, Brikhnichev went on to explain his love for the working people, especially for railway technicians, through his father’s profession: “As the son of a poor artisan, a smith, I observed from my childhood, not with-

72 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 117–117ob. 73 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, l. 117ob. 74 See Gregory L. Freeze “Caste and Emancipation: The Changing Status of Clerical Families in the Great Reforms,” in The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research, ed. David L. Ransel (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 124–50. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 69

out bitterness, how many humiliations my father had to suffer from the lowest government agents alone.”75 The priest’s words indicated that the constant power abuse by state officials may have been just as important as the constitutional short- comings of the autocracy in provoking oppositionist disposition among subjects, including clergymen. Condemning social injustice and deploring the absence of Christian morality in late imperial society, Brikhnichev’s idealism hinted at a populist outlook that led many Orthodox youths to the priesthood in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Brikhnichev’s impressive factual knowledge exemplified a growing interest in public questions of morality, social justice, economy and trade, as well as foreign policy. In- sofar as Brikhnichev and other clerical dissidents were representative of a younger generation of priests, they belie the picture of obscurantist ignoramuses Western travelogues and later Soviet propaganda drew of the Orthodox clergy as a whole. For instance, Brikhnichev wrote succinctly about the causes and extent of recurrent famine and epidemics on the countryside at the turn of the century, indicating how important these side-effects of Witte’s industrialization policies were in radicalizing the peasantry and some rural clergy.

I saw how the rich (Christians!!!) oppress the poor, how the strong oppress the weak, the senior – the junior, the boss (a Christian, too…?) his subordinate, and almost nowhere or very rarely did I come across life constructed on the principles of Christ’s Gospel…. Where is life such as in the Apostolic Church, when “there was no one among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need” (Acts 4: 34–35). In 1891, when famine took a toll of six hundred thousand human lives on us, the landowners [pomeshchiki] ex- ported abroad almost 400 million puds of grain

75 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, l. 118. 70 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

(384,274,000 p.).76 This amount would have sufficed to keep thirty million people from dying in a year. Then the famine was repeated in 1897 and 1900. Finally, the specter of famine showed its face again this year in twenty-eight provinces with a population of fifty-five million. In the meantime, grain is still seized away from our hungry motherland and from the starving people who ripened it and collected it with callous-filled peasant hands. And landowners sell it abroad at the same time that in the neighboring village people are tortured by hunger-induced typhus and writhe with convulsions from hunger.77

As other dissident clerics wrote in their appeals, Brikhnichev, too, exemplified the Orthodox parish clergy’s gradual move from the role of religious officials to that of spiritual community leaders: “I am ready for pastoral (not mercenary) service.” With this a given, Brikhnichev explained his radicalization after Bloody Sunday:

[That was] after that shameful war, caused by some adventurists and ending in full destruction of our dear fatherland and of its finances, and with the death of hundreds of thousands of Christians. Could I betray my outlook then, when, on January 9, the ruined and oppressed people requested, and later demanded “land and freedom” while they were and still are being shot at?… I knew perfectly well that there are no consequences without causes, that the people who surprised everyone with their century-long patience, could not “have risen” without serious reasons.78

Escalating his outcry against repression, Brikhnichev castigated the autocracy as the author of the ignorance and back- wardness of Russia’s countryside. With an apt juxtaposetion of tsar and Christ, the priest also alluded to Nicholas’s fall from the

76 1 pud equals 36.11 lb. or 16.38 kg. 77 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 119–119ob. 78 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 119ob–120. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 71

pedestal of centuries-old imperial myth. To progressive churchmen such as Brikhnichev, Bloody Sunday was not just the end of tsar as the nation’s father (batiushka) but also Nicholas’s resigna- tion as ruler in the image of Christ:

Who continued to keep the people in the darkness of ignorance and absence of civil rights, holding the keys of freedom and enlightenment? Who obliged the people to obey not through the power of fair and bene- ficial laws but with canons and machine guns, execu- tions, hanging gallows, prisons, exile, martial and field courts, martial law and states-of-siege, … in one word by all of what Christ hated?… I cannot imagine Christ, my Teacher and Lord, ordering the shooting down of a crowd of workers or peasants, assembled to discuss their most essential issues, even if this crowd did not disperse “at first demand.”79

Brikhnichev concluded by exonerating his actions with the reminder that a pastor’s duty is to behave not simply according to Christian morality but after the example of Christ himself:

I was never an opponent of the Supreme Authority as such. But, as a pastor, I addressed its Representative with words in which the Synodal Office sees “criminal, revolutionary tasks and a desire to create distrust to the Supreme Authority.” In reality, however, any unprejudiced reader will find in my words only the voice of a pastor true to his duty and of a citizen who loves his ruined and oppressed motherland and his forgotten, unhappy people fervently and with self-sacrifice. Is it possible that to love one’s country is criminal?80

If the love of Christ and the sincere execution of one’s duty and the self-sacrificing love for all those whom Christ, too, loved, i.e., for the “humble and downtrod-

79 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, l. 120. 80 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, l. 120. 72 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

den…,” or for the proletarians (as they call them now) is considered a crime;

If explaining to Christians the true meaning of the teaching of Christ and the exposure of injustices committed even by the strong of this world is criminal and is called “revolutionary propaganda;”

If, in the address of a pastor of the Church to the tsar aiming at bringing to his attention the illegalities committed, one can see such a horrible crime, as did the Synodal Office, that it becomes necessary to oust this pastor from the priesthood … then I should not be laicized now, but I should not have been granted the clerical dignity in the first place. For, yesterday, too, I was who I am today. … In fact, I myself would leave a place where everything I mentioned above is considered a crime, without need for an invitation.81

Despite this impassioned defense, and while Brikhnichev’s personal rebellion against social injustice may have annoyed ecclesial superiors only superficially, his attack on the episcopate was bound to scandalize them and deflate any desire to resist the state authorities’ pressure to punish him. The priest had charged in his appeal: “As a priest, when I came of age, I served together with some pastors of the Church who made a trade store out of Christ’s altar. And the bishops decorated precisely such people … whereas they repressed those who impeded them from doing so.”82 Unsurprisingly, the synod endorsed Brikhnichev’s defrocking.

e) The Khar’kov Five

Like Brikhnichev, five priests from Khar’kov also exemplified the political activity and outlook that fit urban clerical dissidents more so than their rural colleagues. Archpriest

81 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 120–121. Brikhnichev’s letter was an appeal against the ruling of the HGS’ Georgian-Imeretian Office. 82 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7035, ll. 121. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 73

Pavel Grigorovich and priests Vladimir Kuplenskii, Vladimir Shapovalov, Ioann Filenskii, and Nikolai Voznesenskii were incriminated for giving speeches in and out of their churches, in late 1905 and 1906. Like the most renowned of urban clerical dissidents and unlike most rural parish clergy, the five Khar’kov churchmen had graduated at the top of their classes and were highly educated. Filenskii, for instance, had received both the candidate’s and the master’s degrees at Kiev Theological Acade- my. All five priests had taught for years at a variety of Khar’kov’s schools; Filenskii had even been a lecturer at the University of Khar’kov.83 They had received all the major ecclesiastical honors, including epigonation, skull-cap, kamelaukion, and pectoral cross. In their sermons and speeches, the five churchmen had subjected government officials to scathing criticism. However, unlike rural clerical dissidents, who dwelt on the deleterious effects of bureaucratic corruption on the peasantry’s financial condition, the Khar’kov priests decried the lack of representative or accountable government in the Russian autocracy. Another focal point of their speeches and activity was a persistent attack on capital punishment in the wake of hundreds of death-sentences meted out by field courts-martial across Russia and after the insurrection of December 1905 in Khar’kov itself. In January 1906, the five priests published an editorial in the local news- paper The Wave (Volna), titled “The Priest’s Voice about Capital Punishment” (“Golos sviaschennika o smertnoi kazni”). The editorial condemned all kinds of murder, but admitted that the authors’ main motive was to decry the forceful quelling of the rebellion and the application of the death penalty to various political crimes. According to Khar’kov Archbishop Arsenii Briantsev, the liberal and revolutionary press saluted the article and its authors, while the majority of the city’s society was upset and dissatisfied. While the bishop may have had a skewed understanding of which newspapers represented the majority of Khar’kov’s public opinion, he was correct in reporting a negative response by the majority of church-going Kharkovites in the well-off parishes in which the priests served. Priestly relations to

83 See RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7161, ll. 22–23 (information from Filen- skii’s service file, compiled on 2 September 1910). 74 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

parishes weighed heavily on episcopal decision-making about dissident clergymen, and this was one reason behind Arsenii’s negative reporting of the activities of the five accused. The priests planned to couple their editorial with a public call by the city’s priests to Khar’kov’s governor-general to re- frain from the use of force while suppressing the rebellion. The public petition never materialized because of the reluctance of other priests to co-author it. Among the death-sentences issued to people who took active part in the winter insurrection, one was for high school pupil (real’naia shkola) Skripchenko, who had murdered a constable. As teachers in the city’s high schools, the five priests were close to the concerns of pupils, who drafted a petition to the prosecutor to free Skripchenko. Voznesenskii co- signed and submitted himself the petition to the prosecutor; the other teachers had refused to sign it.84 The five Khar’kov priests were also at the forefront of the movement for clerical reform that flared up in 1905 and 1906. The diocesan pastoral assemblies that met throughout 1906 to discuss ecclesial problems and vocational demands subjected bishops, consistories, and district superintendents to heavy criticism. Both urban and rural clergy were involved in organizing and electing delegates to the assemblies, but it was mainly city and town clergy who defined the reformist agenda in that forum. After the end of the assemblies, urban priests engaged more vocally than rural clergy in activities critical of ecclesial administration and episcopal authority. Through editorials and attempts to organize permanent groups of clergymen (kruzhki) that would antagonize episcopal primacy and advocate ecclesial reforms, city priests became an obstacle in the hierarchy’s efforts to keep the clergy united in its claims vis-à-vis the government and obedient to the episcopate during the chaos of the revolution. The five priests’ leading part in pro-reform activities motive- ted Archbishop Arsenii’s negative disposition towards them more than their stance against capital punishment. Although the Khar’kov diocesan consistory surprisingly sentenced the priests to mere monastery penance and transferred two to other parishes, the ruling mentioned as top offense not the priests’ anti-govern-

84 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7161, ll. 2–4 (Arsenii’s report to the HGS, 4 March 1906). Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 75

mental speeches but their “insistence on creating a group and voicing opinions separate from the rest of the clergy.”85 In this as in other cases of dissident Orthodox clergymen, ecclesiastical disciplinary measures, which appeared as political repression carried out on the government’s demand, were actually the in- cidental result of the Church’s efforts to keep its own from divi- ding in partisan factions at a time when the synod was mounting its supplication to the throne for the most drastic overhaul of ecclesial administration in two centuries. At least until effective Church leadership was handicapped by the scandals and mediocrity of Rasputin protégés after 1911, the episcopate’s belated, sporadic, and mostly soft-handed response to the white clergy’s political protest in the post-1905 years was motivated by aversion to intra-church dissent and disobedience and not by servile eagerness to cleanse priestly political views of anti-autocratic ideas. f) Other Village Clergy

Some village priests also became involved in publicist activity. Such a case was initiated in 1907 by the Saratov Inspector of Press Affairs (inspektor po delam pechati), who notified the governor of Samara that Father Pavel’ Sokolov from a village of Samara diocese published a literary- philosophical journal and his own poems of anti-governmental character. In January 1908, the governor sent an indignant letter to local diocesan Bishop Konstantin Bulychev, for- warding the first issue of the journal Survivals (Perezhitki) and highlighting in it a poem titled “Songs for Freedom” for its “ideas of extremist orientation.” This and other poems in Survivals contained highly critical remarks about the wasteful and corrupt state bureaucracy and the thinly veiled threat of its eventual demise. Also, Sokolov’s poem praised in the person of an imaginary archetypical revolutionary all those who had been convicted by the government for their fight for freedom, as heroes who fell in the “great and glorious fight for their oppressed people:”

85 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7161, ll. 4–5 (reporting of the Consistory’s ruling in Arsenii’s letter to the HGS, 4 March 1906). 76 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

The free, grateful people will weave a wreath out of gold for him; They will cover him up with honor. … The names of barbarous tyrants who have ruined many great minds the people will peruse with gnashing of teeth, as great violators. … The highest government circles forgot about the poor folk a long time ago; they’re thinking only about scams, throwing away the people’s money.86

Other priests in provincial towns exemplified varying degrees of familiarity with national and international political and ideological issues and language. Through 1906 and 1907, Father Leskov’s sermons to his flock of factory workers of Perm’ province exemplified socialist, liberal, and populist influences. Leskov talked about “the unfair and unequal division of goods between the working people and the entrepreneurial class and accusing the latter for this.” According to Leskov, “efforts should be made so that the working people could live better.” The priest brought up the example of foreign countries where this was done. In Russia, on the contrary, the rich only pretended to give to the poor, according to Leskov, and in reality the rich “squeeze out their juice and drink their blood.” Leskov was optimistic in a manner that raised police suspicions: “much in Russia is not finished yet; we need to finish it, going ever forward and forward.” In another sermon, the priest stated that in Russia there were “too many people in prison, which could only be accounted for by the existing political system.” According to reports by other clergymen, Les- kov held private conversations in which he said that “the head of the state should be elected” and that “Russia should be

86 “Emu svobodnyi, blagodarnyi narod/ zlatom venok spletet./ Vspo- mianet on bortsa svobody/ s pochetom, slavoiu zalet/ … imena tiranov dikikh,/ sgubivshikh svetlykh temy golov,/ on, kak nasil’nikov velikikh,/ prochtet so skrezhetom zubov…/ V pravitel’stvennykh vysshykh sferakh/ davno zabyli bedniakov,/ zabotiatsia lish’ ob aferakh,/ metaia den’gi muzhikov.” In RGIA, f. 796, o. 189, d. 7761, ll. 2–3. Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 77

governed not by one, but many persons.” Although Leskov’s preoccupation with the form of the political system fitted mostly liberal political programs, his ideas about the land question betrayed agrarian populist and Christian socialist leanings. He had told his parishioners that “land and forest should be taken from their owners and people should not have to pay for them.”87

Conclusion

The various ideological tenets and dispositions motivating clerical dissent hint at a wave of clerical disaffection with the regime that was much more extensive than publicized protest and registered political crime. Much more than the dissent of clerical intellectual Grigorii Petrov and the politically net- worked Georgii Gapon, the anti-autocratic opposition of provincial clergy did not require ideological sophistication or presuppose alienation from the Orthodox clerical Weltan- schauung. It was motivated by traditional agrarian sympa- thies, more recently developed sensitivity for urban squalor, and the material impoverishment of the clerical profession. It was phrased in a mixture of biblical language and terminology borrowed from the socialist movement. The intellectual roots of clerical political activism of the inter-revolutionary period lay also in nineteenth-century pastoral theology. Pastoral manuals tasked the clerical family with becoming a living example of Christian life and values such as modesty, industriousness, justice, humility, and asceticism. Any non-work activities in which clerical families engaged were supposed to serve a utilitarian purpose.88 Clerical prac-

87 RGIA, f. 796, o. 188, d. 7069, l. 7 (report by bishop of Perm’ Nikanor to the HGS, 21 October 1907). 88 Iakov, Pastyr’ v otnoshenii k sebe i pastve (St. Petersburg, 1880), 43– 116; V. Pevnitskii, “Semeinaia zhizn’ sviashchennika,” Rukovodstvo dlia sel’skikh pastyrei, 1885, n. 23: 132–33; Platon, Napominanie sviashchenniku ob obiazannostiakh ego pri sovershenii tainstva pokaianiia (Moscow, 1861), II: 153–154, 251–252; all cited in Laurie Manchester, “Harbingers of Modernity, Bearers of Tradition: Popovichi as a Model Intelligentsia Self in Revolutionary Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 50: 3 (2002), 335. 78 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

tices also required leading communities of faithful. The clerical predilection for work followed even clerical sons who avoided the priesthood and manned mostly the bureaucracy, the education system, and free professions. Condemnation of leisure as selfishness in the works of clerical sons from the middle of the nineteenth century89 paralleled the apostolic fervor of their contemporary young radicals as it was also echoed in Anton Chekhov’s emphasis on hard work as the only worthwhile endeavor amidst the vanities of life.90 Likewise, the activism of most Orthodox clergy of the early twentieth century did not necessarily presuppose “enlightenment” by Western social theory transferred to Russia by the lay intelligentsia. Following the overthrow of the Romanov autocracy, the Bolsheviks quickly managed to control the first spontaneous effort by laymen to create a Christian socialist movement. Headed by the worker (weaver) Fedor I. Zhilkin, the Christian Social Labor Party was formally registered into existence in Moscow on 8 June 1917. In February 1919, the Bolshevik government forced it to reorganize in a pro-Soviet direction and to create communist canteens, shops, cooperative societies, workshops, factories, libraries, agricultural storehouses, orphanages, and poorhouses. Although the party never had more than a hundred official members, nonetheless events organized by Zhilkin’s party, which was financed by member fees, publications, and lecture fees, were attended by thousands of Muscovites. After Bolshevik authorities accused and convicted Zhilkin of anti-Soviet activities in September 1919 (he was sentenced to imprisonment in a labor camp until the end of the civil war), the party was labeled “anti-Soviet” and was forced to cease its operations, while its funds were confiscated.91

89 Manchester, “Harbingers of Modernity,” 335, 337. 90 Consider, for instance, the emphasis on work in the closing scene (Act IV) of Uncle Vanya: “VANYA: I’ve got to get busy with something right away. Work! We’ve got to get to work!” and “SONYA: Well, Uncle Vanya, we should get back to work.” See The Plays of Anton Chekhov, trans. Paul Schmidt (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997), 251. 91 See the recent research by Irina Novichenko, “A Christian Labor Movement in Eastern Europe?” in Between Cross and Class: Comparative Christian Socialist Views among Orthodox Parish Clergy 79

The Bolshevik revolution either marginalized and eventually persecuted as class enemies, or temporarily tolerated and co-opted, the true activists of a Russian proto-Christian-Socia- lism, Orthodox clergymen. Many known urban clergymen who had stood out in the last years of tsardom for their progressive ideas and their desire to mobilize society and regime in support of the victims of economic upheavals ended up in the so-called Living Church, the part of Orthodoxy under ostensible Bolshevik sponsorship that split off from the Mos- cow Patriarchate in the 1920s. By the 1930s their majority perished in the Armageddon of Soviet social re-engineering.92

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Резюме

В цьому переломному історичному дослідженні та суспільно-релігійній аналізі, автор використовує здебіль- шого ще ніколи недруковані та нові джерела з Російського Державного Історичного архіву та Державного Архіву Ро- сійської Федерації для того, щоб показати, що незважаючи на традиційну думку про російське духовенство як апологетів царського режиму та його тупих виконавців, від 1905 значна кількість православного духовенства ра- зом з мирянами приєдналася до революції, яка похитнула монархію Романових. Серед сотень духовенства з цілої імперії, які взяли відкриту участь в дебатах та протестах з вимогою радикальних реформ абсолютизму в державі, ав- тор виокремлює такі постаті, як Василій Попов, Володи- мир Лахін, Йон Брихнічев, Павел Соколов та “Харківську п’ятірку”: Павел Григорович, Владімір Купленський, Вла- дімір Шаповалов, Іоан Філенський та Ніколай Вознесен- ський. Ці та інше духовенство часто підтримували вимоги інших соціяльних груп населення, такі як свобода преси, совісті, слова, асоціяції та на публічні зібрання, а також скасування вищої міри покарання, недоторканість житла та особи і ширшого розподілення землі. Духовенство та-

Histories of Christian Labor, 1840–2000, eds. Lex Heerman van Voss, Patrick Pasture, and Jan de Maeyer (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). 92 See their story in the excellent study by Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002). 80 Argyrios K. Pisiotis

кож звинувачували в підбуренні селян до насильства про- ти їхніх поміщиків та в поваленні приватної власності, або ж в організації непокори та нападів на поліцію. Під впливом морального богословія та прерізних соціялістич- них поглядів російське духовенство витворило своєрідну суміш християнських соціялістичних ідей (та ідеалізму) з сильним популістським та клерикальним забарвленням.

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Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 47 (2006) Nos. 3–4, pp. 81–110

The Theotokos in the Christian East and West

George Dmitry Gallaro

Introduction

In the last number of years, there has been an increasing ecumenical focus on the role and theology of the Mother of God.1 The international Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue has issued a statement on her2; the Groupe des Dombes has done likewise3; and many Protestant theologians and faithful have begun showing a greater interest in the Mother of God and a recovery of certain forgotten or previously disdained beliefs and devotions.4 Among Catholics and Orthodox, there has not been so marked a recent increase in interest in part because both Churches have historically had very strong, and very similar, theologies of, and devotions to, the Theotokos. This essay reviews those devotions and doctrines shared by Catholics and Orthodox and does so historically and non- polemically. The result will be to see that such divergences as there are are slight and are methodological rather than substantial or doctrinal. In the end, East and West find common celebration in her whom the Byzantine tradition hymns as “more

1 See, inter alia, Marc Ouellet, “Mary and the Future of Ecumenism,” Communio 30 (2003): 26–38. 2 Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ (Toronto: Novalis, 2005). 3 Groupe des Dombes, Marie dans le dessein de Dieu et la communion des saints (Paris: Centurion, 2003). 4 See, e.g., “Hail, Mary,” the Time cover story and accompanying articles on how “Protestants Are Finding Their Own Reasons to Celebrate the Mother of Jesus,” Time 165 (21 March 2005). 82 George Dmitry Gallaro

honourable than the cherubim and by far more glorious than the seraphim.”

A Christological Corollary and History

Devotion to, and the theology of, the Mother of God began in the context of early Christological controversies and their doctrinal settlements; Mariology in the East developed simultaneously with Christology. Marian heortology itself follows the same route, even though various historical circumstances have accelerated the process. A very positive aspect of the Eastern tradition is the fact that theology, liturgy, heortology, hymnography, and iconography all proceed hand-in-hand; often, and indeed almost always, one corroborates the other, so that an obscure aspect of one easily finds clarification and explanation in another. If, on the one hand, the final definition of the Church’s authentic faith about the person and the nature of the Savior, as it was handed down by the apostolic tradition, found its final expression only in the fourth and fifth centuries, on the other hand, ever since apostolic times, it became necessary to reject as outside Christian belief those views which reduced the Redeemer to a simple man, or to a man particularly endowed with a divine power variously interpreted, or even to a divine being who had only an appearance of human nature. Since the beginning, the Church professed faith in Christ’s perfect divinity and perfect humanity. The problem that arose from theological thinking was one of harmonizing these two dimen- sions: Christ as perfect God and perfect man. However, this is a problem of synthesis, not of faith that must be accepted. Whoever does not accept it places himself outside the Church. Clarity about Christ always entailed clarity about the person and the role of the all-holy Virgin. “There is but one Physician, both of the flesh and of the spirit,” writes Ignatius of Antioch (†107), “begotten and unbegotten, God in the flesh, true life in death, both from Mary and from God; first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ Our Lord.”5 Ignatius wishes

5 Jack Sparks, ed., The Apostolic Fathers (Minneapolis, MN, 1978): Ephesians 7:2. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 83

to proclaim the human reality of the Savior in addition to His divine reality; and no proof appears more obvious to him than the declaration that the flesh Christ assumed really comes from Mary: “Our God, Jesus the Christ was conceived by Mary in accordance with the plan of God – of the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit; He was born and was baptized in order to purify the water by the passion.”6 Viewed from this perspective, Mariology in the East, in the pre-Nicene period, can be summed up in three points: divine maternity, perpetual virginity, and the parallel Eve-Mary. However, it must be stated at the outset that all three points flow from theological premises strictly essential to the plan of salvation carried out by the Incarnate Word; they are never viewed as simply “privileges” that the Word-made-man gave to His mother. The Marian mystery from this point of view is therefore an integral part of the mystery of the Incarnation. It is precisely for this reason – the manner of viewing the figure of the Theotokos – that it is very difficult to find in the early centuries, in the Christian writings even after Nicaea, certain themes which later on the awareness of the Church in her theological development would universally accept, such as Mary’s immunity from sin or her glorification after death. We must keep in mind that when these new aspects achieved their full development, the East, forever bound to the ancient tradition, always tried to connect them with the Christological mystery. If today some themes of Marian theology plainly seem to differ between East and West, these different trends diverge more in words and formulations than in substance. In- deed the whole Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western, is in total agreement in considering the Blessed Virgin firmly bound to the Christological mystery and in deeming in- complete any Christian faith that would not accept in the Redeemer the Marian mystery as well.

6 Ibid., Ephesians 18:2. 84 George Dmitry Gallaro

Mary, the New Eve

An undisputed point for Eastern Marian theology is that the Blessed Virgin is part of humanity and is a source of pride for humanity, whose full destiny she shares. Only in this manner can humanity claim victory over evil by cooperating with grace, precisely because a creature like us and one of us has uttered a firm “yes” to God and a resolute “no” to evil, thus taking the place of Eve, becoming the new Eve, so as to change the course of human history away from the course initiated by the first Eve. Even in her obedience, however, the Blessed Virgin must not be seen as a robot, perfect in itself but still a robot. One thing is impossible even to God, despite His almighty power: He cannot force man to love Him in return. God created man as a being endowed with freedom, and man’s freedom allows him to choose to love God or not. The very union of the creature with God can only be a freely undertaken act. If God were to coerce man, He would do violence to man’s freedom and man would thus cease to be truly man, that is, a creature in the image of God. Love obtained with force would not be love. Love emanates from freedom and reaches its fullness when it becomes one with the object of love. The consent that the Blessed Virgin gives is therefore a free act. Her “yes” gives rise to a new creation of man, the creation of those who are born “not of the flesh or blood but from God” (John 1:13). This is the new man who is not born in the pains of childbirth but virginally from the baptismal font. From this point of view, the Blessed Virgin is identified with the Church, the place where the union between the creature and the Creator, between the human and the divine, is accomplished. The concept Mary-Church is very ancient indeed; it is found in the pre-Nicene period. Thus, for instance, wrote Cle- ment of Alexandria (†215):

O mystic marvel! The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and one is the only Virgin and The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 85

Mother. I love to call her the “Church.” This Mother, when alone, had no milk, because alone she was not a woman. But she is at once Virgin and Mother – pure as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, that is with the Word for childhood.7

Thus the Blessed Virgin is like a bright star, a guiding beacon for man; she is the “Hodigitria,” and at the same time the goal to be achieved in that every man must accomplish what she has already done, that is to say the deification, or the perfect union with God, the mystical nuptials between the creature and the Creator. Union with God, however, had become impossible on account of the legacy of original sin and of death resulting therefrom. In the view of the Greek Fathers, original sin is a personal act of Adam and Eve. As their descendants, we did not exist then; therefore we are not personally guilty. However, even though Adam’s sin was not a collective act of the human race, it is still a fact that tainted human nature, which after the transgression finds itself existing in a different condition. The outcome of all this is what is called the legacy of Adam: death and bodily corruption in all of us who descend from Adam. Personal guilt enters into the picture only when each of us personally imitates the sin of Adam. This proclivity to sin results from the disorder and wicked inclination that is in us. Instead of obeying God and aspiring to unity with Him, we inherit the tendency to disobey Him and cling instead to ourselves and to creatures. Saint Cyril of Alexandria (†444) writes:

Adam succumbed to temptation, and, having trans- gressed God’s commandment, was condemned to corruption and death. But what kind of relationship can there be between us and Adam’s transgressions?… Mankind is sinful not because it took part in Adam’s transgression – it did not exist yet – but because it

7 Simon Wood, Clement of Alexandria: Christ, the Educator of Little Ones (Washington, DC, 1954), I: 6,30. 86 George Dmitry Gallaro

shared his nature fallen under the law of sin. There- fore, as in Adam human nature fell into corruption, so it found salvation in Christ.8

In this sad situation, man was inexorably walking into the abyss. But God is moved to compassion by man, His own creature, made in His likeness. God therefore wishes to re- deem him. Man’s redemption could only be the work of God; however, it was also necessary for man to accept it, and accept it freely. The work of redemption required that man’s condition in Eden be renewed. In other words, God reinstates His original plan, that is, the union between Himself and man, a plan broken by man’s transgression. This time it was necessary that, unlike what had taken place in Eden, man should give his free assent to God’s offer of love. The Lord, in His utmost mercy, prepared man through the centuries for the dawn of the mystery, the day of the mystical nuptials. Through gradual purification, carried out from generation to generation, God looked forward to a particular family of the chosen people which, through the years, became more and more selected until it ended in a most pure person who drew to herself the Omnipotent’s benevolent look. This creature is perfectly free; but her holiness is total. Indeed, the more perfect the holiness of a person is, the more the person’s will is in conformity with the will of God. Her state of perfection is such that, in the alternative between choosing to cling to a creature or to cling to the Creator, there is no hesitation. The all-holy Blessed Virgin is possessed of holiness so sublime as to be at “the very boundary between the created and the un- created” (Saint Gregory Palamas). In her God begins again the dialogue with man which had been broken in Eden. All this takes place in the event of the Annunciation at Nazareth. At the Annunciation, God spoke to mankind through the Archangel Gabriel, and once again sought the free consent for the mystical nuptials between the Creator and mankind. Incar- nation would be impossible without the free consent of the

8 PG 74, 788–789. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 87

Blessed Virgin. She is aware of being part of Adam’s nature, and only asks the messenger how the mystery can be accomplished because the human nature she inherited gives birth in pain only to death and corruption. The divine messenger replies that God will descend upon her. At this point the Virgin gives her assent, precisely because she is all-holy: and the Word became flesh. The Virgin’s role in giving flesh to Christ is abundantly discussed in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the first Christian apologists. In Saint Justin of Nablus (†165), we find this doctrine already fully developed: “He (Christ) called himself Son of Man, and this either because of his birth from the Virgin, who was of the family of David and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, or because Adam himself was the fore- father of all the above mentioned patriarchs from whom Mary traces her descent…. He is also Son of God.” Justin goes on to highlight the Mary-Eve connection, speaking of Christ as being

born of the Virgin in order that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed in the same manner in which it had originated. For Eve, an un- defiled virgin, conceived the word uttered by the serpent and brought forth disobedience and death. On the contrary, the Virgin Mary … gave birth to Him, concerning whom we have shown so many passages of the Scripture that were written and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who have become similar to the serpent, but he frees from death those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ.9

The same aspect of Marian theology is developed by Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (†200):

In accordance with this design, the Virgin Mary is found obedient when she says: “I am the handmaid of

9 Thomas Falls, “Dialogue with Trypho” in Writings of St. Justin Martyr (New York, NY, 1948), 304–05. 88 George Dmitry Gallaro

the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word.” Eve instead was disobedient; and she disobeyed while she was still a virgin. Now, if Eve, having Adam as her spouse but being nevertheless a virgin, … has been disobedient and thus brought death both upon herself and the entire human race; so also Mary, having a man betrothed to her, but still a virgin nevertheless, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and to the whole human race precisely through her obedience…. In the same manner the knot that Eve’s disobedience had tied was untied by Mary’s obedience; in fact what the virgin Eve had bound fast with her incredulity was set free by the Virgin Mary with her faith.10

In another place, Irenaeus insists on the same concept by making it clearer and more precise:

the first Eve broke God’s commandment, while the second Eve was obedient so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. Thus as the human race fell into bondage of death on account of a virgin, so it was set free on account of another virgin; the disobedience of a virgin is thus offset by the obedience of another virgin.11

We would like at this point to emphasize two ideas that relate to Christology and the Blessed Virgin, developed by Irenaeus in the above-quoted passage and which will be expan- ded further in Byzantine theology. First, “life ascends from Mary to Eve,”12 not in the opposite direction. Man will reverse his steps and follow the road traveled by Adam in order to go back to the paradise from which he had been expelled when he was cast out into this world of ours. However, in this walk towards salvation, Adam’s position before the fall is not a goal for man, because the Garden of Eden is not the goal of man

10 Irenaeus, Against Heresies (3, 22, 4) in Wigan Harvey, The Ante- Nicene Fathers I. 11 Ibid., 5, 19. 12 Ibid. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 89

who was created in God’s image. It is only a necessary passage. The true goal for man is not Adam, but Christ, the Word who is the perfect image of God. In Christ, union with God, or man’s deification, is effected, because Christ will lead us to the Father. Therefore the various points of transit for man towards salvation will be: Eden-Christ-God, which is equivalent to say: the Virgin Mary-Christ-God. The Virgin, a creature like us and daughter of Adam, is the pacesetter leading us to Christ; by following her, man is certain to attain salvation because in the universal darkness of humanity, she remains the ever-resplendent lamp for all ages.13 Second, in Byzantine Marian theology, another conclusion evolved concerning Irenaeus’s commentary about the genealo- gy and the most representative figures among the Lord’s ancestors mentioned in it. The Byzantine liturgical tradition celebrates the memory of these ancestors of the Lord on the Sundays preceding Christmas. This is done on account of the fact that the Holy Spirit is manifested in these forefathers through successive purifications up to the parents of the Virgin, Joachim and Anna.14 In the Virgin who is to give birth to the divine person, the purification is total; hence she sums up and contains in herself the entire holiness of the Old as well as of the New Testament. She is “more worthy of veneration than the Cherubim and without parallel more glorious than the Seraphim.”15 According to Origen (†254), the very compre- hension of the divine Scriptures as well as the contemplation of the divine mysteries is a gift of God when man, just like the Apostle John, can rest his head on the Savior’s breast and be entrusted, like him, with Mary as his mother.16

13 Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ (New York, NY, 1974). 14 Gregory Palamas, “Sermons on the Nativity, Annunciation, and Dor- mition,” Patrologia Orientalis 19 (1926): 456–510. 15 Joseph Raya-José Devinck, Byzantine Daily Worship (Allendale, NJ, 1968), 55: “O You, higher in honor than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, you gave birth to God the Word in virginity. You are truly Mother of God: You do we exalt.” 16 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Books 1–10, trans. Ronald Heine (Washington, DC, 1989). 90 George Dmitry Gallaro

Mary as Theotokos

As concerns divine maternity, Eastern Marian theology remains faithful to the doctrine of the Third Ecumenical Coun- cil (Ephesus). However, neither the doctrine nor the very term “Theotokos” were invented by the council and by those who convened there, or during that patristic period. The concept itself comes from Scripture. Matthew, harking back to Isaiah’s text, writes: “the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, a name which means ‘God- is-with-us’” (Matt. 1:23). If the one who is given birth is God, then the one giving him birth is the Mother of God. Only a person who does not profess faith in the divinity of the Redeemer can question the authenticity of this doctrine as it is expressed by Tradition since the very first centuries. During the Virgin’s visitation to Elizabeth (see Luke 1:43), the mother of the Forerunner calls the Virgin “mother of my Lord.” The same Luke, describing the mystery of the Annun- ciation, writes that the angel calls the Savior “Son of the Most High” and “Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Thus the angel implicit- ly calls the mother, to whom he gives the announcement of the mystery, “mother of the Most High,” and “Mother of God.” The Apostolic Fathers use the same language: “born of the Father before time,” “born of the Virgin in time.” The various “creeds,” even the earliest ones, reflect this same faith of the early Church. In Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition we find the words: “do you believe in Jesus Christ, son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit?”17 In the same manner, the Creed of the Roman Church of the second century professes: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”18 The two ecumenical Councils of Constantinople I and of Nicaea I simply repeat these same formulas, known and familiar in all places in those centuries. The acceptance of those formulas, however, did not imply necessarily the divine maternity in the strict sense of the word,

17 J. Neuner-J. Dupuis, The Christian Faith (New York, NY, 1982), 3. 18 Ibid., 5. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 91

which was certainly expressed more effectively by the Greek word “Theotokos,” already in use everywhere in the East in the third and fourth centuries. The theological reflection on the relationship between Christ the true God and Christ the true man produced a detailed deepening of the faith expressed in a simple form and accepted by all. During the first centuries it was the concept of Christ the Savior which drew everyone’s attention and which everyone accepted. Nothing beyond this was then professed. Debate only arose later as with, e.g., Patriarch Nestorius (†451) in the great Church of Constantinople. Having come to lead this church from Antioch, Nestorius brought with him a priest by the name of Anastasius, whom he esteemed greatly and kept as his advisor. One day, in a talk in the presence of Nestorius, Anastasius uttered the following statement: “No- body ought to call Mary ‘Theotokos,’ since Mary was human, and it is impossible that God be generated by a human.” Anastasius’s statement met with general disapproval, but he was defended by Nestorius, who tried to explain his words by using the language of the Scripture itself, which – in his opinion – spoke of Christ the man to whom the Word was united. Nestorius never denied that Jesus Christ was true God, as well as true man; neither did he deny the fact that, from the moment of conception in the Virgin’s womb, the person of the Word was indissolubly united to the person conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit, so as to form a single individual, a single subject – in two distinct persons – despite the fact that Mary had conceived only a human person. In this manner (even for Nestorius), the person of the Word truly lived for nine months in the Virgin’s womb, inasmuch as the Word was united to the human person of Christ, conceived by Mary. Therefore, together with the human person of Christ, the Word too was born from Mary. This birth, according to Nestorius, must be understood as a passing through, not as a relationship of mother-to-son. Nestorius could not perceive that God too can begin to exist in time in a new manner of existing, namely as God-man, so that as God He is outside time, but as man He is subject to time. 92 George Dmitry Gallaro

To explain the indissoluble union between Christ-God and Christ-man, Nestorius made use of a vast terminology. What was absolutely unacceptable for the school of thought from which Nestorius had come was above all the “communicatio idiomatum” (= the interchange of terminology) inasmuch as the actions proper to one nature are attributed in Christ to the other nature as well, in such a way that we could say that “God is born,” “God sleeps,” “God eats,” and so on. However, many of the defenders of Nestorius – or at least many who tried to justify him and defend his orthodoxy, while rejecting outright the language of the “communicatio idiomatum” – did not reject the use of the term “Theotokos” for the Virgin, both because the use in the Church was universal and ancient, but also because Nestorians themselves admitted that the person of the Word had truly dwelt in the Virgin’s womb and was truly born from her. The distinction, which might seem subtle, between the relationship of filiation and of “passing through,” or “coming from,” did not even please many Nestorians. The Church responded at the Council of Ephesus by judging the Nestorian formulation to be outside the Church’s tradition: the Redeemer is only one person, namely the person of the Word, uniting to himself human nature. Rightly Saint Cyril wrote to Nestorius: “since the Holy Virgin has given human birth to God who was united with the flesh according to the hypostasis, we call her rightly Mother of God; certainly not as if the existence of the nature of the Word had its beginning with the Incarnation.” And the same Cyril said: “if anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel is true God and therefore that the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (since she has given birth, according to the flesh, to the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.”19 Therefore, with Cyril and the Council of Ephesus, we say that the Virgin has given birth to God, not to a man, even though evidently she had given him birth as man, namely inasmuch as he became flesh. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (†390) had similarly written: “whoever does not

19 Ibid., 147–51. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 93

consider Mary as mother of God (Theotokos) is outside the divine faith.”20 The Council of Ephesus rejected even the term Christoto- kos (= Mother of Christ), that is, the one who gave birth to Christ. The term in itself is correct; however, it does not express the theological concept of the hypostatic union. While acceptable both to orthodox and the heterodox, it is a neuter term and as such is rejected by the Council because it could give rise to some equivocation. Saint John of Damascus (†750), very masterfully as always, sums up patristic thinking on the theology of the divine maternity for the Eastern tradition:

we proclaim the Blessed Virgin to be properly and truly Mother of God. Indeed, as he who was born of her is true God, so is she truly Mother of God having given birth to the true God who took flesh from her. Now, when we say that God was born of her, we do not mean this in the sense that the divinity of the Word had its beginning of being from her, but in the sense that God the Word himself, who was begotten of the Father before all ages and exists without beginning and eternally together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, did in the last days come for our salvation to dwell in her womb, and of her was made flesh and born, without undergoing change. The Blessed Virgin, therefore, did not give birth to a simple man, but to the true God; not God as such, but God made flesh. God did not bring his own body down from heaven and come through her as through a channel; but he assumed from her a body consubstantial with us and subsisting in himself.21

If we deny that the Virgin is truly “Mother of God,” we must of necessity admit that the person to whom she gave flesh is

20 Charles Browne, Select Orations of Gregory Nazianzen (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 7, 345–51). 21 St. John of Damascus Writings, trans. Frederic Chase (New York, NY, 1958), Orthodox Faith: Book Three. 94 George Dmitry Gallaro

someone other than the second person of the Blessed Trinity. If, on the other hand, the son is truly God, then the mother is truly Mother of God. To summarize, the term “Theotokos” was certainly used before the Council of Ephesus, indeed even before the Council of Nicaea. It is difficult to say where the term was first used; we know, however, that before the Council of Nicaea it was in use, and there is no evidence that there was any opposition to its use before the Nestorian controversy. The term is used by Origen,22 by Alexander of Alexandria,23 and by Peter of Alexandria.24 Outside Egypt, it is used by Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechesis and frequently by the Cappadocian Fathers.25 It is found also in the “anaphora” of Saint Basil.

Mary Ever-Virgin

The tradition of the Eastern Church is unanimous in believing that the conception of the Redeemer in the womb of the Mother of God was a virginal conception. Even the communities that separated from unity by not accepting the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, or Chalcedon (Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites) have always professed this faith, which, at any rate, has deep roots in Holy Scripture itself. Even the Nestorians never questioned or debated the perpetual virginity of the mother of the Redeemer; for them it was a necessary requirement because the person of Christ, united inseparably with the person of the Word, was the new Adam who had to come from a virgin soil and therefore from a virgin nature. The virginal conception of the Savior therefore is not an act of convenience or a privilege, but a necessity, taking into consideration the divine plan. For this reason it has always been considered one of the fundamental articles of the Chris- tian faith, making its appearance in the oldest creeds, whose open profession was always required from the candidates to baptism before receiving the sacrament. Indeed a baptism

22 PG 12, 813. 23 PG 18, 568. 24 PG 18, 517. 25 PG 22, 1100; PG 37, 177. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 95

without faith in this mystery had no meaning, since Christ conceived and born virginally is the cause of our spiritual rebirth. Hence whoever did not accept this mystery could not accept the entire mystery of baptism. We might ask in this connection whether faith, in addition to the virginal conception, includes also the virginal birth. First of all, there is no doubt that the universal tradition of the Church has always spoken of virginity before conception, during birth, and after birth. For the East, the Sixth Ecumeni- cal Council (Constantinople III) in its canon 79 indicates a profession of faith in the virginal birth. Consider the context in which this profession became necessary. Here and there, on the day after Christmas, out of devotion to the Mother of God, people used to bake some cakes, which were then exchanged and eaten in the same way as it was done to feast any woman who had given birth. These cakes were taken to the bed of the new mother. The Council severely condemns this practice because it considers it contrary to the Christian belief in the virginal birth:

Since we profess the faith in the divine birth by the Virgin, without her being subjected to puerperium, as well as in the virginal divine conception, and since we proclaim it openly to the entire flock, we wish to intervene in this matter so that some uses may be corrected that are done improperly out of ignorance. Therefore, since some people, on the day after the nativity of Christ our God are in the habit of baking some cakes which then they distribute with the intention of so honoring the presumed puerperium of the all-immaculate Virgin Mother, we command that no such thing should be done by the faithful, since when we try to honor the Savior and his mother with actions which may be appropriate for any human, we pay no honor to the Virgin, who has generated in the flesh the uncontainable Word in a manner which is above any human understanding. Therefore, if anyone will be found from now on doing such a thing, if he is 96 George Dmitry Gallaro

a cleric shall be deposed and if a lay person he shall be excommunicated.26

There is thus no doubt that the virginal birth must be considered an article of faith just as much as the conception itself. The basic error of those who deny the virginity in birth is once again the desire to rationalize the mystery: the more we want to analyze it with the human mind, the more it escapes us; and the more we accept it as a fact of faith, the more intelligible it becomes. Mysteries – this one like any other – will be better understood only when we will be purified and enlightened by the Spirit. Divine light can be contemplated only by divine light. The one who was born in the grotto of Bethlehem was God, and all the aspects of the mystery that take place in it are necessarily supernatural: “I see a mystery which is marvelous and out of this world: the cave is changed into heaven, the Virgin sits on a cherubic throne, the crib is a narrow dwelling in which the Infinite is contained, Christ our God.” Thus writes Saint Cosmas the Melodist in a Christmas hymn.27 The only one in Christian antiquity who does not believe in Mary’s virginity in birth and after birth is Tertullian (†225). In this he separates himself from the universal tradition for the apologetic reason of opposing the doctrine of docetism which denied the reality of Christ’s flesh. Tertullian speaks like everyone else about the virginity of conception; but not about the virginity at birth: “a virgin where the male is concerned, not as relates to the birth.” And in another passage: “while she conceived virginally, she gave birth as a woman.”28 Saint

26 George Nedungatt, Michael Featherstone et al., The Council of Trullo Revisited (Rome, 1996) (=Kanon 79). 27 For the full text of the hymn, see the December Menaion (Newton, MA, 1985) for December 25, where Ode 9 of the festal canon reads: “Magnify, O my soul, the Virgin more glorious than the heavenly powers. Behold a strange and wonderful mystery: the cave is heaven, the Virgin a cherubic throne, the manger a noble place where reposes Christ the uncontainable God. Let us praise and magnify Him!” 28 Quintus Tertullian, De Carne Christi, 23, trans. E. Evans (Oxford, 1972). The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 97

Jerome (†420) says simply of Tertullian: “he did not speak for the Church.”29 In reality, the faith of the Church in Mary’s perpetual virginity was universally held. In the East not a single Father or ecclesiastical writer doubted or questioned it. One passage from Origen might lead into error a reader who read it superficially. The great teacher from Alexandria, while commenting on a passage of Leviticus30 and Exodus, according to which every first-born male must be offered to the Lord (the Greek text reads “every male that opens the mother’s womb”), says that the scriptural passage applies properly only to Christ because He alone has opened the mother’s womb at birth, while in all the other births, the woman’s womb is opened by the man in the act of conception and not at birth.31 According to this manner of speaking, and if the reading stops here, it would seem that for Origen too, as for Tertullian, we should speak of virginity only in conception and not at birth. How- ever, things are not so. Origen himself gives the genuine interpretation of his own thought. In fact when commenting on Ezekiel’s prophecy, “this door will remain closed, it will not be opened and no one will pass through it, because it will be the Lord God of Israel to go through it,”32 he attributes the prophetic meaning to the Redeemer and to His birth (as does the entire Eastern tradition), and he adds that the Savior will pass through the virginal door of his own mother, but this door will still remain closed inasmuch as “by the power of the one who is born, nothing is shut because everything is open.”33 In any event, Origen is not the only one to speak in this manner. Many of the ancient writers imagined the virginal birth to have taken place like ordinary birth – as stated above – while still maintaining the maternal virginity. In fact the same

29 John Hritzu, St. Jerome’s Works: Against Helvidius (Washington, DC, 1965), 36. 30 Gary Barkley, Origen: Homilies on Leviticus (Washington, DC, 1990), 218–31; Ronald Heine, Origen: Homilies on Exodus (Washington, DC, 1981), 375–87. 31 Joseph Lienhard, Origen: Homilies on Luke (Washington, DC, 1996), 56–61. 32 Marcel Borret, Origène: Homilies sur Ezekiel, Hom. 44 (Paris, 1989). 33 Ibid., Hom. 13. 98 George Dmitry Gallaro

Origen elsewhere writes: “she conceived and gave birth while remaining a virgin.”34 On the other hand, Clement of Alexan- dria (†215), predecessor of Origen in the famous school of that city, seems to give credence to the legend of the Apocrypha according to which the “midwives who came after the birth attest that they had found Mary a virgin.”35 In any case, the Eastern tradition is unanimous and it is based on theological grounds both on account of the role that the Virgin has in the New Testament as well as because human conception and birth, in the natural manner in which they now take place, are considered consequences of the original sin. The same must be said of the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity after birth. For the Eastern tradition, this is a matter of faith, the reason being the role of the new Eve which the Virgin fulfills in raising the fallen Eve of old and correcting her mistakes. If the Virgin fulfills this role of hers, it is not sufficient that the Redeemer be born of her virginally; we must also exclude that she might have generated any other son in a natural way. It is not necessary to quote any patristic text in this sense, since they are so many as to be found at every page, as it were, by those with any familiarity with the writings of the Eastern Fathers or with Byzantine liturgical texts. We must add another theological reason, however, to show why the perpetual virginity is a dogma of faith in the Eastern tradition. With the incarnation, the Virgin attains the most perfect union with God; this excludes any possibility of a material, physical union with any creature, because this would be a renewal of the original fall. It is precisely in this turning to the material world, in preference to the Creator, that for the ancient tradition constitutes the original sin. Everything else is its consequence. Therefore, to assign to the Virgin any union of her heart and mind with the material world, after such an

34 Gary Barkley, Origen: Homilies on Leviticus, 153–55. 35 Alexander Robert, Clement of Alexandria: The Stromata, Book 7, Chapter 16, 550–54. “As appears, many even down to our own time regard Mary, on account of the birth of her child, as having been in the puerperal state, although she was not. For some say that, after she gave birth, she was found to be a virgin when examined.” The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 99

intimate union with God, freely and willingly accepted, is indeed a blasphemy. It is well known that the Greek term adelphòs (= brother), found in the gospel in reference to Jesus, must be interpreted in the generic sense of “relative.” This is common in the Greek biblical language, and it is interpreted in this sense by many Church Fathers. Others think that these “brothers” of the Lord were children of Joseph from a wife whom he could have had before becoming engaged to the Virgin Mary; this would make him a widower. A quotation from Chrysostom is sufficient at this point. When he comments on the gospel phrase “and he did not know her until” (Matt. 1:25), the great bishop writes: “the Gospel uses the word ‘until’ not that you should think that afterwards he (Joseph) did know her, but to inform you that before the birth the Virgin was wholly untouched by a man.”36 In addition, it would be difficult to reconcile the Virgin’s reply to the Archangel Gabriel as it is reported in Luke unless we accept the fact of her perpetual virginity. To the announcement of her conception and the birth of a son she replies with the question: “How can this come about since I do not know man?” The archangel had not told her that she was already with child but that she will be later on. Now she was betrothed to a man and about to begin cohabitation with her spouse. There should not have been any wonder about a future conception in the life of a normal couple. But Mary is still left won- dering, and says: “I do not know man.” Luke could hardly have been clearer. It is not unlikely that all information about the birth and the infancy of the Savior came to Luke from the very lips of the Virgin. Another observation is in order. The Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists of the first centuries have always called her Maria he Parthénos. It is probable that Ignatius knew the Vir- gin personally when she was well advanced in years. The virginity in her young life is sufficient to justify this terminology in Ignatius who was writing to the Christian communities of Asia Minor, many of which had some personal knowledge of

36 George Baronet, John Chrysostom: Homilies on Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI, 1965), Hom. 5. 100 George Dmitry Gallaro

the Mother of God. The fact, therefore, is historically and theologically certain.

The Conception of Mary in Eastern Thought

Another aspect of Marian theology that was developed in the West in the latest centuries is the doctrine of the Immacu- late Conception. This refers to the exemption of the Virgin from original sin. As is well known, this doctrine was defined as a dogma of the Catholic faith by Pope Pius IX with the bull Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December 1854. Now we should ask how Eastern Christians understand the Catholic doctrine. Many controversial writings have been published on this topic, and from one side or the other many things have been said that are less than correct. Some theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Churches have called this doctrine an innovation in the faith and a totally new dogma, without any theological and historical-patristic foundation. On the other hand, Catholic theologians have attempted to find Greek patristic texts to prove that the Greek Fathers have always held the same faith as it is believed nowadays in the West. We do not embrace the opinions of either side. An impar- tial study of the patristic texts leads us to conclude not only that not a single Greek Father has asserted anything of the sort, but also that none of the Latin Fathers did. The exemption of the Virgin from original sin is a doctrine foreign to the ancient tradition. Hence some Orthodox theologians are right when they say that the dogma cannot be based on texts which are merely laudatory or totally generic in nature, but should be based on clear and precise texts of the Scriptures as interpreted by the constant tradition of the Church. We will not dwell on the fact that many Fathers, including Pope Saint Leo the Great,37speak of a purification of the Virgin before the incarnation, nor do we give much importance to the fact that some Fathers ascribe to the Virgin some imperfections. The legitimate evolution of Christian dogma, as it is accepted both by Catholics and Orthodox, after the Councils of Ephesus and

37 Jane Freeland, Leo the Great: Sermons (Washington, DC, 1966), Sermon 22 (Christmas), 80–87. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 101

Chalcedon, has reformulated Marian theology with greater accuracy and has excluded in her any imperfection by considering her all-holy and all-immaculate always since the first instant of her existence. The doctrine is unanimously professed by the universal Church, both in the East and the West, at least since the end of the fifth century, without any of the Fathers ever contradicting it. All of this, however, does not amount to exemption from original sin. The reason for this statement is based on the concept that the Fathers had of original sin, which, as we have said previously, is not a guilt to be imputed individually to each newborn. Each of us does not inherit from Adam the guilt of his sin but the natural condition, the mode of existence in a state of sin. According to the ancient Christian tradition, both in the West and in the East, in order to be exempted from original sin one would have to be conceived and be born not as people are conceived and are born normally, according to the laws of nature. Such is precisely the case of the virginal conception and birth of the Redeemer, who was obviously exempted from original sin. Therefore, in the theological language of the Fathers, to say that the Virgin was exempted from original sin is equivalent to say that she was conceived virginally by her mother Anna and that she was born in a similar fashion. This would mean that she had no earthly father, but was conceived through the Holy Spirit as was our Savior. Catholic theology cannot mean to make such an assertion! Indeed it maintains that the Virgin not only was conceived and was born in the natural way as all humans but also that she was redeemed through the saving power of the Redeemer. Pope Pius IX’s bull – in the typical language of the West – correctly says “intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis” (= in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of humankind).38 The Virgin, then, was saved by the Redeemer, as was all mankind, even if in a unique and peculiar way. This language precisely excludes any form of exemption from original sin according to the Fathers of the Church. There is no substantial

38 Roy Ferrari, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St. Louis, MO, 1955), 413. 102 George Dmitry Gallaro

difference between the East and the West on this matter. However, today’s distinction between the Western doctrine and the ancient patristic tradition lies in its formalized articulation or systematization. The formulation does speak of exemption from original sin, but the true meaning of the papal bull states that the Virgin was redeemed – hence she had original sin; however, the Pope adds, she was sanctified from the first instant of her conception. Therefore on this point the East also is in agreement. Ever since the first instant of her conception, divine grace was present in the Virgin Mary in such a way that there was never a moment in which her body and soul were separated from God; at all times and in every instant of her life she has been the all-holy and all-immaculate. Thus it is a question of formulation and not of doctrinal divergence. The Western formulation followed the theological thought-pattern of the time, and this does not raise any wonder. What is important is to look at the essence of the doctrine. We think that the substance of the doctrine of Pius IX and of Western theology is in agreement with the faith professed in the East. Following patristic theological language, we could accurately say that the Blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin inasmuch as she was part of the fallen human race, but she was sanctified, through a singular divine intervention, from the first instant of her conception. Saint Gregory Palamas (†1359), interpreting the Greek Fathers, in his homily about the Virgin’s entering into the temple, speaks of the successive purifications effected by God on her ancestors up to Anna, whom tradition holds to have been sterile, in order to emphasize the divine intervention in which the temple of the Word made flesh, under the action of the Almighty, is sanctified since its arising so as to be made ready to receive the Incarnate Word. Palamas’s teaching does not differ from Pius IX’s teaching except in the manner of expressing it: the former is patristic, the latter is scholastic; both are respectable because they express the same truth.

The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 103

The Repose of the Theotokos

The dogma of the assumption into heaven of the Mother of God, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII on 1 November 1950 has also caused many debates. Here, too, we must immediately add that the truth of the Assumption is professed by the entire Eastern tradition at least since the sixth century and is clearly accepted by the liturgy and the spiritual life of the people. On the other hand, nothing about this truth can be found in Scrip- ture or in the ancient tradition. This fact causes many theologians to wonder whether this theological understanding should be considered and declared a dogma. The debate in this case concerns more the dogmatic formulation of this concept. Here is how it is reported by the Eastern tradition:

As the time drew near when our Savior wished to bring his own mother next to him in heaven, he informed her through an angel three days before that he would carry her from this earthly life to the blessed and eternal abode in heaven. Being apprised of it, Mary ascended hastily to the Mount of Olives where she used to go often to pray. Having given thanks there, she went back home to prepare for her own burial. As these events were taking place, a cloud en- veloped each of the apostles so that all of them found themselves gathered from around the world in the house of the Theotokos. She informed them about the reason of the unexpected gathering. As a mother, she consoled them for their sadness. She lifted her eyes to heaven, prayed for the peace of the world and blessed the apostles. Then she properly placed herself on the bed and delivered her soul into the hands of her Son and God. The apostles took her body with great devotion and amid songs and lights brought it to the burial, while the angels too accompanied her who is higher than the Cherubim. A Jewish man, who, out of hatred, had extended his hands toward the casket, was immediately punished by divine justice: his two hands were cut off. When they arrived to Gethsemane, they 104 George Dmitry Gallaro

buried the immaculate body of the Mother of God, which is the source of life. On the third day after the burial, as the apostles were breaking the customary bread, comforting one another and invoking the name of Jesus, the Mother of God appeared to them. They understood from the vision that the Mother of God had been taken to heaven in her body. The Church, having learned all these facts from the patristic traditions and having added other facts through the hymns and songs as topics of devotion, today celebrates the event for the glory of the Mother of our God.39

Additional reports speak of the arrival of the Apostle Thomas on the third day, and of the opening of the tomb, which was found empty. However, as the quoted text says, this event is seen by the Easterners as a “proof” of piety, not as dogmatic fact. In brief, everyone accepts the fact, but it would be difficult to argue with skeptics on account of the weakness of the documentation. According to the thirteenth-century Byzantine historian Niceforos Callistos,40 the first information about the bodily

39 Raya and Devinck, Byzantine Daily Worship, 757:

The holy Apostles were taken up from every corner of the world and carried upon clouds by order of God. And they gathered around your pure remains, O source of life, and kissed them with reverence. As for the most sublime powers of heaven, they came with their leader to escort and pay their last respects to the most honorable body that had contained life itself. Filled with awe, they marched together with the Apostles in silent majesty, professing to the princes of heaven in a hushed voice, “Behold, the Queen of all, the divine maiden, is coming!” Lift up your gates and receive with becoming majesty the Mother of light that never fades. Because through her, salvation was made possible for our human race. She is the one upon whom no one may gaze, and to him no one is able to render sufficient glory. For the special honor that made her sublime is beyond our understanding. Wherefore, O most pure Mother of God, forever alive with your Son, the source of life, do not cease to intercede with Him that He may guard and save your people from every trouble, for you are our intercessor. To you we sing a hymn of glory with loud and joyful voices, now and forever. 40 PG 145, 809–816. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 105

assumption into heaven reached Byzantium in the fifth century, when the Empress Pulcheria (†453) asked for relics of the blessed Virgin from Jerusalem. In answer she was told the above-quoted report, which, up to that moment, had been a fact known only in the local Church of Jerusalem. The bishop of Jerusalem, Juvenal (†458), himself apparently reported the story. If this is true, it would be an already ancient tradition. Unfortunately we lack any documentation from those times, having only dates from several centuries later. Saint Epipha- nius (†403)41 says that he does not know anything on the subject. In the East, the account becomes known around the eighth century though homilists, such as Saint Andrew of Crete (†740), Saint John of Damascus (†750), and Saint Germanus of Constantinople (†733). And it is accepted by all. Hence the faith was professed since that time in Byzan- tium and the event was proposed under its theological aspect as an anticipation of the resurrection. We would like to state precisely that this is the true meaning of the dogma: the resurrection of the body at the end of time. On this point also, the Virgin does not differ from the lot of humanity, even though in her case the resurrection is anticipated in time. More properly, the dogma consists of two essential points: the resurrection (of all) after our bodies, subject to corruption, are buried in the earth, so that they might arise transformed; and the resurrection of the body of the Mother of God, which had given birth virginally and in no way could it be given over to corruption. We are dealing here with a theological corollary which was developed when Marian theology was almost completed in the East. The Eastern tradition believes that the Blessed Virgin died and was resurrected after three days, and it expressed this faith in the liturgy of August 15 when it sings: “forever dedicated to prayer, the Mother of God, with un- shakable hope in divine protection, was not held prisoner by tomb and death, because as Mother of life, the One who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb brought her into Life.” And again: “the laws of nature are conquered in you, O Immaculate Vir-

41 PG 42, 716. 106 George Dmitry Gallaro

gin. Your maternity in fact is virginal and life replaces death. You are virgin after giving birth and are alive after death.” A contemporary Russian theologian, Vladimir Lossky (†1958), expresses the Orthodox theology on this matter:

The Holy Spirit descended once more upon the Virgin on the day of Pentecost; this time not in order to avail himself of her nature as an instrument, but to give himself to her person in order to become the instrument of her divinization. So the most pure nature, which itself contained the Word, entered into perfect union with divinity in the person of the Mother of God. If Mary still remained in the world, if she submitted to the conditions of human living to the point of accepting death, it is by virtue of her perfect will whereby she imitated the voluntary kenosis [= incarnation] of the Son. Death, however, had no dominion over her. Like the Son, she was raised from the dead and carried up to heaven, becoming the first human person in whom was fulfilled the final purpose for which the world was created. Therefore the Church and the entire universe have already here their crown, their personal achievement which throws opens the way to the deification of the whole creation.42

These words perfectly indicate the direction of Byzantine Marian theology.

Mary in the Liturgical Year

Heortology accompanies the development of theology. The most ancient memorial of the Mother of God in the Byzantine calendar was observed during the days that followed Christmas. Today it is set on the day following Christmas. And the reasons are obvious. It was meant to be the celebration of divine maternity. Even the Annunciation, the very day when the Word became incarnate, which from Justinian’s time

42 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London, 1957), 193–94. The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 107

on was set on March 25, was celebrated formerly one or two Sundays before Christmas. In the East, at the time, the Christological heortology, and as a consequence the Mariological heortology, had a twofold aspect: one was meant to celebrate the first coming of Christ on earth. This was the Christmas cycle, which had as its center the Theophany or Epiphany on January 6, when Christmas, the baptism of Jesus, and the adoration by the Magi and by the shepherds, were commemorated. When Christmas was moved to December 25, the whole period from this date to January 6 in Constantinople was festive in its entirety, but it maintained the old significance. The second cycle, Easter-Pentecost as a single festive period, celebrated the second coming of Christ; it had an eschatological significance, namely the eternal union with God as opposed to the temporal one of the first cycle. The Marian heortology was present in the two cycles precisely on account of the role of Mary in the Christological mystery. The more strictly historical heortology will appear after the sixth century. The feast of the “Encounter” (feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin in the West), which was celebrated with solemnity already in the fourth century in Jerusalem (as testified by the Peregrinatio Aetheriae), maintained the old meaning, contained in the word itself, which is still kept in the Byzantine calendar, namely Hypapanté. It is observed as a feast of the encounter between Christ and humanity in the person of Simeon, or between the Old and the New Testament. Apart from many local feasts of the Blessed Virgin, known in the entire Eastern and Western world, the Byzantine Church has two great feasts which celebrate both the Lord and the Virgin, the Annunciation (March 25) and the Encounter (Feb- ruary 2); it has also three great strictly Marian feasts, the Nativity (September 8), the Entrance into the Temple (Novem- ber 21), and the Dormition (August 15). To these three we must add the Synaxis tes Theotokos, the celebration of the Divine Maternity (December 26), connected with the Nativity of Our Lord, both as event and as date. All these are “days of precept.” Liturgically speaking, they have both a vigil and an octave. 108 George Dmitry Gallaro

There are also minor feasts, which have no vigil and no octave. Such are, e.g., the Deposition of the Vestments of Bla- chernae (July 2), the Deposition of the Cincture of Chalco- pratia (August 31), and the Deposition of an icon relating to the period of the iconoclasts (September 1). All these feasts are universal, not local. The day of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin is also celebrated universally on December 9, but it is a feast of Saint Anna, namely the “Conception of Saint Anna.” This feast was observed in the East at least since the ninth century. The two feasts of the Annunciation and of the Encounter, as they are celebrated today, were fixed in the Byzantine calendar, both in their dates and meaning, at the beginning of the sixth century, under Emperor Justinian. The liturgy of the day maintains still the hymn of Romanus the Melodist. The Annunciation, considered as incarnation of the Word, has a special character. It is an actual parenthesis within Lent. The fast is partially broken, inasmuch as eating fish is allowed and tradition has it that, if it coincided with Good Friday, the solemnity would be celebrated after the rites of the passion of the Lord. Only starting with the last century did a decree of the Patriarchate of Constantinople suggest that, in such case, the Annunciation should be transferred to the same day of Easter to be celebrated together. However, the monasteries maintain the old custom. There are many traditions connected with the Annunciation. The feast of the Entrance into the Temple goes back to the sixth century. As with many other feasts, it originated in Pa- lestine. In 543, Justinian had built a large temple to the Blessed Virgin in Jerusalem next to the ancient Hebrew temple. Thus the memorial of the entrance into the temple by the Virgin and her dedication to God was begun as the celebration of the Dedication. Towards the end of the seventh century, the feast was introduced in Constantinople, where it was celebrated with great solemnity. The feast of the Nativity followed the same path. Celebra- ted in Jerusalem by the sixth century, it became universal some decades later through Constantinople. The homilies of Saint Andrew of Crete, Saint John of Damascus and of many others The Theotokos in the Christian East and West 109

prove its universality in the East at least since the middle of the seventh century. Jerusalem also gave origin to the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. At the time of the Council of Ephesus, the burial place of the Blessed Virgin in Gethsemane was already known. It was the destination of many pilgrims. According to the testimony of the historian Nicephoros,43 this celebration was introduced in Constantinople and was already universal at the end of the sixth century when Emperor Mauritius extended it to the entire empire. The date of August 15 was also fixed at this time. Since that time, the feast has been preceded by a fast beginning on August 1. An ancient tradition, generally observed, dictates that the faithful go to communion on August 15 and during the fifteen-day period. Another special Marian celebration in the Byzantine calendar falls on the Saturday of the fifth week of Lent. The day is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and it intends to commemorate the miraculous delivery of Constantinople surrounded by enemies in the seventh century when the emperor and his army were away. Tradition has it that the patriarch took hold of the garments of the Blessed Virgin from her shrine and carrying them walked around the walls of the city, which was defended by just a handful of armed men, absolutely inadequate to the task. All of a sudden the Virgin was seen in the sky, and at the same time a great storm sank the enemy ships and drowned the soldiers. The people, rescued by such a miracle, spent the entire night in prayer in the Marian shrine, singing a most renowned hymn written by Romanus the Melodist. Since that time the hymn was called Akàthistos because it was sung while standing all night long. The same hymn, undoubtedly the best poetic composition in honor of the Blessed Virgin, nowadays is still sung during Lent, particularly on the fifth Friday-Saturday.

43 Nicephoros of Constantinople (†828), Church History, 17, 28; also The Chronicle of Teophanes Confessor, trans. Cyril Mango (New York, 1999). 110 George Dmitry Gallaro

Conclusion

As we have seen, there are no substantial differences of a theological nature between the Orthodox Church and the Ca- tholic Church concerning Marian doctrines. The doctrinal substance is the same. To speak of divergence concerning the Im- maculate Conception and the Assumption into heaven is only really possible when dictated by a purely polemical spirit. In fact, the divergence is about manners of expression. We must respect these diversities because they give greater guarantee and force to the truth, which in itself is only one.

® ® ® ®

Review Essay

Lev Gillet, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Rela- tionship Between Judaism and Christianity (London: Lutter- worth, 2003).1

1. Orthodoxy and Jewish-Christian Relations

In 2003, the Lutterworth Press of London helpfully repub- lished a work it had originally put into print in 1942: Lev Gillet’s book, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity. Notwith- standing the fact that this book was published some sixty years ago, and the fact that it has recently been reissued, it was and remains little known and rarely cited in Orthodox theological literature or that of Jewish-Christian relations. This is unfortunate because, as Bishop Kallistos Ware has rightly remarked, Communion in the Messiah “still remains timely and challenging today.”2 Gillet’s book is a remarkably prescient work that anticipated many of the developments in Jewish-Christian relations in the last fifty years and deserves a hearing still. Gillet is not usually considered for his work on Jewish- Christian relations. The “Monk of the Eastern Church,” as he is often called, is best known for his books on Orthodox spirituality.3 His ecumenical and inter-religious work has received much less attention. Yet he is one of the only Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century to reflect deeply on Jewish- Christian relations, and more than anyone else took a personal interest in advancing understanding between Christians and

1 This paper is based on a presentation made at the 2005 Colloquium of the University of Sherbrooke program in Orthodox Studies. I am grateful to Dr. Paul Ladouceur for his editorial help. 2 Cited in Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church, trans. Helen Wright (Oxford: Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, 1999), 10. The French original was published in 1993. 3 For example, these books re-printed and widely distributed by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Orthodox Spirituality (1945); The Jesus Prayer (1951); The Year of Grace of the Lord (1972); Serve the Lord with Gladness: Our Life in the Liturgy (1973) and Be My Priest (1962). 112 Review Essay

Jews. Communion in the Messiah is all the more remarkable for having been written in 1941 during the Holocaust. Gillet acknowledged that Christianity, and especially Orthodox Christianity, had a heavy historical guilt for the anti-Judaism of the past which no doubt prepared the ground for the Nazi campaign. His book needs to be taken seriously by Eastern Orthodox Christians, whose cultures have traditionally been especially Judaeophobic.4 Huge progress has been made in the last fifty years in Jewish-Christian relations. The Roman Catholic Church has been in the forefront of this movement, most prominently with the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate.5 Pope John Paul II made improved relations with Judaism a personal priority.6 The Orthodox world has lagged behind, but there is progress

4 Moscow State University currently has a project underway to examine Christian attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in “Latin” and “Orthodox” medieval and early modern Christendom to answer the question as to just how Judaeophic the Eastern Church was in comparison with the West. See www.his.msu.ru. Anti-Semitism is especially virulent among non-religious Russians, but even church bookstores sometimes carry anti-Jewish literature. In one case, an acquaintance had written to the local bishop to protest this. On returning to the parish bookstore she found that the offending books were removed from the bookshelves. When asked about this the attendant explained that someone had complained and so the books were no longer on the shelves. But then he obligingly produced a copy for her from under the table! 5 The document itself is available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_ councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_ en.html. Pope Benedict XVI recently remembered the fortieth anniversary of this revolutionary document with a commemorative letter: http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_ 20051026_nostra-aetate_en.html. 6 It was during Pope John Paul’s pontificate that several revolutionary things took place in Catholic-Jewish relations: inter alia, the Holy See finally recognized the State of Israel and established relations with her in 1993; and in 2000, the pope went to the Holy Land, visiting the Holocaust museum and praying at the Western Wall for forgiveness where Christians had harmed Jews. The pope also promulgated several significant statements or documents including “We Remember: a Reflection on the Shoah” of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews” presented in Rome on 16 March 1998 and available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998 shoah_en.html. Review Essay 113

here too. Five international academic meetings on Judaism and Orthodox Christianity have been held. The latest, in Thes- saloniki, Greece (2003), was chaired by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and adopted five principles:

i) Judaism and Christianity, while hearkening to common sources, inviolably maintain their internal individuality and particularity.

ii) The purpose of our dialogue is to remove prejudice and to promote a spirit of mutual understanding and constructive cooperation in order to confront common problems.

iii) Specific proposals will be developed to educate the faithful of both religions to promote healthy relationships based on mutual respect and understanding to confront bigotry and racism.

iv) Being conscious of the crises of ethical and spiritual values in the contemporary world, we will endeavour to identify historical models of peaceful coexistence, which can be applied to minority Jewish and Orthodox communities in the Diaspora.

v) We will draw from our spiritual sources to develop programs to promote and enhance our common values such as peace, social justice and human rights, specifically addressing the concerns of religious minorities.7

These ideas have become commonplace today and they are a long way from the ghettos, pogroms, and Protocols of the Elders of Zion many Jews associate with Orthodox Chris- tianity. But the “rapprochement in relations and the development of a new way of thinking were pioneered by a small

7 See the website of the International Council of Christians and Jews, http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?id=1988. Other gatherings have also been held. In November 2005, Saint Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute in Moscow sponsored a conference on the fortieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate. 114 Review Essay

number of scholars and religious leaders in the first half of the [twentieth] century.”8 Lev Gillet was one of those pioneers and indeed, as we shall see, even sixty years ago he would have wanted to take the dialogue much further than the five principles enunciated above.

2. Lev Gillet and Israel

Gillet was born in 1893 and was raised in a pious French Catholic family.9 He served in World War I, was wounded at the Somme, and after the war pursued a vocation as a Benedic- tine monk, first in France and then in England from 1920. He was deeply attracted to eastern Christian spirituality, so it was not surprising that when the famous Ukrainian Catholic leader Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky met him in 1921, Gillet took up the invitation to join him for work in Ukraine. Sheptytsky ordained him priest in 1925 but Lev Gillet soon became disillusioned with Vatican politics and its aggressive attitude toward mission in Russia. Gillet had accepted Sheptytsky’s idea that there could be “pluralistic ecclesial unity,” but it was clear that Rome was interested in “conversion rather than unity” and wanted to take advantage of the Russian Church’s weakness in the early years following the Bolshevik Revolution. Gillet returned to France, maintained a correspondence with Sheptytsky,10 but asked finally to be received into the Russian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Evlogy in 1928. He was received by concelebration, with no Chrisma- tion and no renunciation required.

8 The Editors’ Preface to the Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations, eds., Edward Kessler, Neil Wenborn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 9 I draw all my biographical information from Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church, trans. Helen Wright (Oxford: Fel- lowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, 1999). See also Michael Plekon, “Lev Gillet: The Monk in the City, A Pilgrim in Many Worlds,” in Idem., Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 81–101. 10 For newly discovered correspondence, see Peter Galadza, “Lev Gillet (‘A Monk of the Eastern Church’) and His Spiritual Father, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky: An Analysis of Their Correspondence, 1921–1929,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 43–45 (2002–04): 57–81. Review Essay 115

This was a time of great creativity and ferment in the Russian Orthodox community in France: Sergius Bulgakov, Maria Skobtsova, Alexander Elchaninov, and Paul Evdokimov were all his friends. (Elisabeth Behr-Sigel was the last living link to this generation: born in 1907, she was received into the Orthodox Church by Gillet in 1932 and died in 2005.) He taught on and off at the Saint Sergius Institute in Paris, but otherwise had a diverse set of ministries serving the poor with Mother Maria, encouraging the development of French Ortho- doxy, ministering in prisons, and caring for refugees. The common link among these diverse forms of ministry was the fact that they were “on the margins of the institutional Church.”11 In the mid-1930s in France, Gillet came into contact and developed a close friendship with Aimé Pallière, the celebrated Catholic writer who converted to Judaism and became a rabbi (on the eve of his death he returned to the Catholic Church). In late 1937, Gillet, in search of a new ministry, travelled to England and met Paul Levertoff, a Hebrew scholar who had converted to Christianity and had taken Anglican orders. It was Levertoff who took Gillet’s initial interest in Judaism to a new level; and it was in England that he began to delve more seriously into the place of Judaism within early Christianity. As the persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria intensified in 1938, he opened a house of refuge at Holy Trinity Church in London to care for Jews and Christians of Jewish origin fleeing Nazism. In early 1938, Gillet returned to England, with the ap- proval of Metropolitan Evlogy, who wanted him also to do ecumenical work with the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. Gillet moved into the house of refuge to help Lever- toff and he even joined in street protests, carrying placards to urge Britain to do more to protect the Jews. From 1938 to 1940, he lived at the shelter and was co-director (with Lever- toff) of the Christian Institute of Jewish Studies. In early 1940, the British government interned the German and Austrian residents of the refuge house as enemy nationals and

11 Michael Plekon, “Lev Gillet: The Monk in the City, A Pilgrim in Many Worlds,” 99. 116 Review Essay

German bombing destroyed the shelter later in 1940. Gillet then moved to Selly Oak College in Birmingham with the help and financial support of the Quakers. There he devoted himself to researching and writing Communion in the Messiah. The book was finished in 1941 and was published in 1942 according to “War Economy Standard” in the Lutterworth Library “Missionary Research Series.” Even then book was regarded as demanding and “challenging.” George Bell, the Anglican bishop of Chichester, wrote the foreword but warned that he could not agree with everything in the book. Yet it was an important book and was appearing at a time of dire need “when the Jew is in such fearful danger.” Bell went on to note that

the author urges that it is not enough for Christians to be moved with compassion towards the Jew as a man, but that “the Christian is called to recognize the Jew as a brother,” and that help to the Jew “means to help the whole of Israel to fulfill the mysterious destiny to which it is called, and which is inseparable from the destiny of the Christian Church itself.”12

Characteristically, Gillet writes for all Christians and Jews, not for a narrow Orthodox audience. But he stresses the book’s particular relevance for Orthodox because of their heavy historical guilt vis-à-vis the Jews:

I am, moreover, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Churches have a heavy historical guilt towards Judaism; in the persecutions of the Jews, chiefly in Russia and Rumania, they have often sinned either by their silence or by their acquiescence or by their incitements. I would here, as far as an individual can do, atone for this guilt (ix–x).13

12 Communion in the Messiah, v. All subsequent references in the text will be to this volume. 13 Importantly, Gillet notes some exceptions to this dolorous record on the part of Russians and Romanians. Review Essay 117

Why did he write the book? Gillet’s main idea is that sympathetic dialogue must be substituted for “one-sided mission to the Jews.” This does not mean that Christians must give up mission – though how he understands mission needs careful attention. Most importantly, he sees mission as double-sided: Christians have a mission but so do the Jews have a God-given mission to the Church. His aim is to help readers develop an appreciative attitude toward Judaism, “to enter sympathetically into the sentiments of Judaism to enable the reader to realize at least a little bit of what it feels to be a Jew” (ix–x). Gillet is especially intent on showing that Jewish Chris- tianity was the earliest model of Church life, long before it was overrun by Gentiles, then abandoned and condemned by the patristic and canonical traditions. The later vitriolic hostility toward Judaism and Jewish forms of Christian life were sad deformations that betrayed the love that Jesus and the earliest disciples shared for the synagogue and temple. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) represented the generosity of Jewish Chris- tians – then the majority – toward the new Gentile converts and was “a defeat of the Judaizing extremists” (9). “It promulgated, on the whole, this freedom from Jewish customs which Paul claimed for the Gentiles. It consecrated the existence with equal rights of the Gentile Church” (9). But this generosity was not reciprocated when Jewish Christians became the minority:

When the numerical proportion of the believers was altered and Judaeo-Christianity reduced to a nucleus, this nucleus was practically swallowed up by the Gen- tile Christian environment. The Church of the Gen- tiles, forgetting the broad-minded and large-hearted attitude of the ancient Church of Jerusalem towards the Greeks, disdained the Jewish Christians, supplan- ted them, and finally treated them as strangers and prohibited their old customs. The Gentile Christians proved to be narrower than the circumcised Christians (9).

118 Review Essay

The problem begins with Church texts that promote an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility toward Jews. The early period was not anti-Jewish, but from the fourth century the Fathers for the most part “took a one-sided view of the Jews” and their writing on Judaism is overwhelmingly of the adver- sus Judaeos type. Chrysostom preached a series of sermons (as many did) against the Jews and declared “I hate the Jews” (14). These polemics were all the more ironic given that the Church was developing an elaborate ecclesiastical life that was increasingly being shaped by Old Testament patterns.

The apologetics of these Fathers are of a low intellectual level. Ignorant of everything Hebraic, they brought out catenas of texts in which words are everything, little account being taken of historical reference or even of grammatical meaning. At the very moment when they were elaborating a ritual and a discipline as binding and almost as complicated as the priestly code, they thought Jewish observances laughable and con- temptible (14).

Nor is Gillet the only observer to notice this disturbing pattern of abuse. Elizabeth Theokritoff has recently studied the anti-Jewish texts in the Byzantine services of Holy Week and concludes that they do indeed “contain some phrases that can only be described as gratuitous invective against the Jewish people … insulting epithets.”14 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.” Suspicions about the Jews emerge at various points in the tradition.15 Sometimes they emerge completely gratuitously,

14 Elizabeth Theokritoff, “The Orthodox Services of Holy Week: The Jews and the New Sion,” Sobornost 25 (2003): 25, 45–46. 15 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 story of the Samaritan woman (John 4), especially when read in Arabic, is edited to omit Jesus’ saying “for salvation is from the Jews.” Review Essay 119

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.16

This comes so suddenly, with no other mention of Jews any- where in the text before or after. Moreover, as far as we know, there were no Jews for miles around. (The translator of this text is also baffled by this and footnotes the page with a puzzled question: “Meant symbolically?”) Blanket warnings about Jews were a commonplace in the Byzantine tradition. A number of canons explicitly forbid any familiarity with Jews:

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.17

Similarly, the sixty-fourth of the so-called Apostolic Canons reads: “If any clergyman or layman shall enter into a

16 Paphnutius, History of the Monks of Upper Egypt and the Life of Onnophrius, trans. Tim Vivian (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 159 (emphasis mine); Life of Onnophrius, 22. I am grateful to Symeon Rodger for this reference. 17 Council in Trullo, c. 11. 120 Review Essay

synagogue of the Jews or heretics to pray, let the former be deposed and let the latter be excommunicated.”18

3. Communion in the Messiah

In Communion in the Messiah, Gillet is interested in more than denunciations of past mistakes. He is intent on looking for models from Church history for dialogue with Judaism. He is also interested in re-building the ruined foundations of Jewish Christianity. In this he is far ahead of the modest aims of the recent Thessaloniki conference that looks merely for models of “peaceful coexistence.” The book is complex and far-ranging. I can only give some of its flavour and will concentrate on Gillet’s most controversial points about mission. Among other things, Gillet’s first chapter is concerned with the question of the nature of dialogue, “apologetics,” and scholarly discussions, ancient and modern, about Judaism and Christianity. His second chapter is significantly entitled “The Per- manent Values of Jewish Tradition” and focuses on scriptural and mystical sources especially. The permanent value of Judaism is seen especially in its understanding of tradition, “building a fence around the Torah,” as a protection against biblical fundamentalism. Gillet stresses as well its joy, warmth and mysticism. Gillet’s third chapter, “Judaism and the Christian Creed,” looks at various “elements common to Judaism and Christiani- ty” while the fourth chapter focuses on Jewish and Christian messianism and the common messianic hope. Christians look to a personal messiah but have largely lost the eschatological hope that inspired the early Church. Jews look to the future, have a sense of eschatological hope, but have no sense of a personal Messiah. They could help each other and find “messianic communion” if they were each willing to learn from each other and make changes in their current limited outlook:

18 Adapted from H.R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. XIV) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977 [1899]). Review Essay 121

The majority of Jews do not believe in a personal Messiah, but keep a decided messianic attitude. The majority of Christians believe in a personal Messiah but have no longer any Messianic attitude. Now could Jewish Messianism and Christian Messianism be brought together? Could the Christian receive something from Jewish Messianism?

Gillet answers his own question by saying that a

real messianic communion would be possible between Jews and Christians if both were inspired by a common Messianic hope and expectation. Such an authentic Messianic attitude requires a deep change of life in Jews and Christians alike. The former would have to disentangle themselves more and more from these material interests which are always for them the greatest temptation and hindrance and to concentrate on the approaching Kingdom. The latter would have to take more seriously than they ever did the Second Coming of their personal Messiah (106–07).

Gillet’s fifth chapter, “The Jewish Life of Grace and Its Relation to Christianity,” is where his approach is boldest and most clear. Jews and Christians need to share in the life of each others’ communities if they are to grow together in communion. Christians need to be aware of their debt to Judaism and to share in it, especially through Sabbath worship, festal celebrations, piety, and way of life. None of this is “hostile or foreign to the Christian mind” (139). For the Orthodox, this would mean setting aside as obsolete those ancient canons restricting or forbidding such contact: “we dare to advocate here a kind of communio in sacris between Christians and Jews” (133).

There is, or there ought to be the consciousness of a sharing in the blessing of Israel (for the gifts of the Father are “without repentance”) – the consciousness 122 Review Essay

of the real and objective value of the means of grace once imparted to Israel and even preserved by it. The Christian should feel at home in a Jewish sanctuary: 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” (134).

In “Christianity and the Earthly Problems of Israel,” his sixth chapter, Gillet argues that Christians should sense that Judaism is their “elder brother,” that “we have been grafted in” and should be grateful for this. Christians need to find active ways to come closer to Jewish experience and he suggests visits to synagogues, attendance at prayers, following the lec- tionary, and also going to Jewish restaurants, museums and settlements. He also advocates Christian practical support for Zionism and establishment of a Jewish state (though it must be said that he was less enthusiastic about Zionism in the decades after the war, especially after visiting Lebanon and seeing the mistreatment of Palestinian refugees in Israel). Gillet’s seventh chapter, “Israel and the Mission,” takes us to this controverted and complex question. Communion in the Messiah was published as part of series on Christian mission, and Gillet acknowledges that the question of how Christians should relate to mission and the Jews is the most difficult aspect of the book. He rejects supercessionism, and says that Judaism continues to have a God-given mission to Chris- tianity. There is need for a vibrant Judaism that is not sub- sumed into Christianity. But there is still a place for Christian mission. More on this controversial subject will be given below. Gillet ends his book with a short “Conclusion: the Mys- tery of Israel” (in which he argues that Christians have yet to understand the mystery of Israel as Paul did and must share Paul’s desire for their complete restoration with Israel) and then appends twenty-six short notes on special terms and topics. These are instructive in themselves to show his breadth of interest in Judaism, and include comments on Martin Buber, Jewish and Christian priesthood, Jewish creeds and messiahs, Review Essay 123

conversions to Judaism, a Jewish Christian liturgy, incidents of Jews and Christian united for worship in a bomb shelter, and a proposal for Jewish learning for Christian students. In this last he allows himself to dream:

We will try to formulate a dream. We hope that the day will come when a few Jews and Christians, and possibly a few Muslims, could form a small community in Jerusalem and share in a common life of prayer, religious study and varied service to society. This humble settlement, which would have a likeness to an Indian Ashram, could perhaps become a useful instrument of God in Palestine and even outside (240).

4. Gillet and “Mission”

As we have noted already, one of the most important parts of the book, and the most controversial, is Gillet’s treatment of mission. He sees mission as occurring in both directions. There is mutuality and Christians have as much to learn from the Jews as vice versa. Both are part of God’s divine mission. He firmly rejects any notion that Israel’s mission ceased after the death of Christ even as he acknowledges that “this is the standpoint of most Christians” (191). This mistaken outlook is in direct opposition to Romans 9. “Israel has a privileged function in the divine economy” which most Christians refuse to accept (183). “Israel is nowadays used and will, to a greater extent still, be used in the service of the Revelation:”

The people of the Law and of the Prophets is per- petually sent (missus, mission) by God to the Christian Church in order to witness to certain truths and powers. The Synagogue does not organize missions to Christians, though there are conversions from Chris- tianity to Judaism which deserve our attention; but the Jewish people remains entrusted with a universal message…. The present task of Judaism is to maintain certain affirmations of which Christians are in need no 124 Review Essay

less than Jews and for the proclamation of which Israel has a particular authority (191–92).

What is more surprising is that having said that Judaism has a continuing God-given mission, he does not take this to imply that Christian mission to the Jews must be abandoned. This is the point at which Jews involved in dialogue with Christians may think of parting company with Gillet, since it is precisely “mission to the Jews” which they regard as most problematic. Indeed, Kessler and Wenborn are happy to report that recent advancements in Jewish-Christian relations mean that “the problem of mission to Jews has been significantly reduced.”19 Gillet is aware that mission is a troubling concept, but nevertheless insists that we need to be “quite clear about the validity of the missionary approach to the Jews.” He argues that “Christianity is necessarily missionary, in the true sense that a Christian ought freely to give what he has freely received” (182–83). But because of its terrible history, any mission today must be carefully customized “to build a theology of Christ for Israel” (184). He advances four key factors.

i) Apologetics. The missionary task of bringing the message of Christ begins with “apologetics,” persuasive discussion with Jews concerning the person of Jesus. (In practice, Gillet begins with service and not with words: “We shall speak of our faith only when we have proved our love.” See point iii below.) Gillet argues that “it will be necessary to begin as apologetics. We should not be afraid of this word, which the Church Fathers used. These apologetics will be centered around the person of Jesus.” Such a personal encounter, Gillet continues, is the point de départ. One would expect that the normal approach to Judaism would be through the Hebrew Scriptures, but Gillet says that this is not the case in practice. Direct experience of the person of Jesus is what often causes the hearer to leap-frog theoretical discussions and “the Jew not seldom ‘falls in love’ with Jesus” (184). In many of his writings, Gillet keeps returning to personal experience,

19 Editors’ Preface, Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations. Review Essay 125

and this discussion on mission is no exception. Apologetics, while they may prepare the ground, “cannot take the place of the direct experience of Christ in the soul…. A missionary who has none of it and therefore cannot share it will be of little use” (184).

ii) Joint Examination of Theology. Christian theology must be “translated” to make it intelligible to Judaism:

This is only possible through a determined confronting of Christian and rabbinic theology. Nothing of the true Jewish tradition – from Hillel to the modern Hasi- dism – needs to be altered in order to adjust itself to the Gospel: it needs only to be complemented. The Christian doctrines of the Word, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Mediator, the Holy Spirit, the Com- munity are legitimate interpretations and extensions not only of Scriptural, but also rabbinical Judaism (186).

More is needed than parallel comparisons of patristic and rabbinic exegesis. The dialogue “must go further than comparing and translating…. It must establish a kind of fundamental theology of both Judaism and Christianity, a common ground serving as basis for the discussion on divergences”(186). All strands of Christian theology need to be involved in this common dialogue with Judaism (187). Indeed, movement toward reconciliation with Israel is a powerful force and a pre- requisite for bringing the Churches together:

Can the daughter Churches, i.e. the Christian Chur- ches, become reconciled if they take no step towards their mother, the Church of Israel? We firmly believe that, in the plan of God, the mother will be – some day still far off – the centre and the instrument of unity (189).

126 Review Essay

iii) Diakonia to Jews Must Come before the Message. Words from Christians will never be trusted unless Jews first see a change in Christian behaviour towards them:

When Christians address people other than the Jews they may begin with the message; the Apostles themselves did so, in the days of Pentecost. The reason why we cannot do so now is that, since Christianity began, nineteen centuries have elapsed during which Jews have suffered in greater or lesser degree at the hands of Christians. We have no right to approach Jews now as if our hands were clean. We must first of all atone for our gross violation of the law of our Master and deserve the forgiveness and confidence of Israel. We shall speak of our faith only when we have proved our love (190).

Some Jews may accept Christ, but Fr. Lev avoids speaking of their “conversion:”

Conversion means to turn from a certain state to another state not only different from, but opposite to the precedent one. It implies that one is brought over from error to truth…. Such is not the case with Judaism… [which] contains nothing opposed to the Christian faith…. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Jewish belief that a Jew turned Christian ought to reject. Christianity is, in relation to Judaism, a completion and fulfilment (196).20

20 Words like “complement,” “completion,” “extension,” and “fulfilment” when applied by Christians in reference to Judaism are red flags in contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. The influential Dabru Emet statement signed by 150 Jewish scholars in 2000 explicitly rejects this view and states that Jews and Christians should each simply be faithful “to their revelation.” However, one of the signatories has suggested that more is needed. “Indeed a serious Jewish theology of Christianity will need to go further than simply respecting Christians’ faithfulness to their revelation”; it requires an understanding of the significance of that revelation in terms of the Divine plan for humanity” (Rabbi David Rosen, “Dabru Emet: Its Significance for the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” The Institute for Christian Review Essay 127

What of those who remain unconvinced after hearing the Christian message? There is no guilt for “the pious Jew who… has not accepted Jesus.” Even remaining in their res- pective traditions, “a true Christian and a true Israelite communicate in the same Messiah. This communion is partial and implicit. God will make it some day total and explicit” (196).

iv) Mission Is Not Simply Adding Members to Existing “Gentile Churches.” While this may be the only practical solution for the time being for those who wish to become Christian, Gillet does not think this is “either normal or desirable.” He advocates the restoration of an authentic Jewish Christianity “inside the Church universal” as the only true solution. He sees two possibilities for Jewish Christianity: “unsynagogued” and “synagogued:”

“Un-synagogued” Jewish Christianity means a Jewish Christianity which has broken its ties with the synagogue. Such a Jewish Christian group might exist under two forms. It could be a special and autonomous branch of one of the present Christian Churches, e.g., of the Eastern Orthodox Church, or of the Roman Catholic Church, or of the Episcopal Churches in communion with Canterbury. The condition of this branch, having its own ritual, discipline, and theological tradition, would offer some analogies with the position of the Eastern Uniat Churches in the Church of Rome. Or the Jewish Christian group could become an independent Christian Church, like the Moravian and Waldensian Churches (207).

“Synagogued” Jewish Christianity refers to a community that “keeps, as far as possible, its ties with the Synagogue.” These are “Jews who accept faith in Christ but do not wish to secede from the synagogue” (207). This he admits is more and Jewish Studies, 2001, 12/9/2005). This is precisely the point that Lev Gillet is making from the Christian side: the need to see Judaism as an essential part of the divine plan. 128 Review Essay

complex than the “unsynagogued” solution. Some will be satisfied to keep their faith in Christ as a matter of the heart. Others will want to supplement their synagogue life with some attachment as well to a Christian Church. He notes that Quakerism, “by its silent worship, absence of ritual, undogma- tic frame of mind, makes this koinonia particularly easy, and may play a great part in building bridges between Judaism and Christianity” (208). Still others will continue their synagogue life while adding their own home gatherings, as in the apostolic Church. “The transformation of Jewish rites into sacraments, as it was achieved by Jesus and his disciples, might perhaps be attempted again in circumstances not dissimilar from the present ones” (208). What freedom he grants to these new Jewish Christian communities! These ideas take Fr Lev far out into the deep, a great distance from the shores of cautious Orthodox ecclesiology, let alone of fundamentalism. Indeed, he refuses to identify the “universal Church” solely with the “visible historic Church.” On this point he quotes Nicholas Berdyaev ap- provingly:

The universal Church has not been entirely actualized in the visible historic Church…. Beyond the diversities of Christian confession, the one universal Church is in process of affirmation, and of this fact we may become aware even while we still remain faithful to our own confessions (210, citing Berdyaev’s Freedom and the Spirit).

5. Conclusion

After he finished Communion in the Messiah, Fr. Lev Gillet undertook a post-war ministry that was as eclectic and wide-ranging as his pre-war. He continued to work as assistant director of the Christian Institute of Jewish Studies and edited its newsletter. He served as a priest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in London, as chaplain of Saint Basil’s House and kept up his ecumenical work, especially with the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. He became chaplain to Syn- Review Essay 129

desmos (the newly-formed international fellowship of Ortho- dox youth) and made frequent trips to Lebanon to work with youth. His inter-religious work took on a larger role when in 1960, with the blessing of Archbishop Athenogoras of Thya- teira, he took up the post of secretary of the World Congress of Faiths and for five years kept up a busy schedule of administration, travelling, preaching, speaking, and writing. From the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s he continued his pastoral work in London and travelled extensively to speak and lead retreats. In the Middle East he worked closely with the Orthodox Youth Movement and is credited with helping to revive the Antiochian Church. Patriarch Ignatius and Metro- politan George Khodre, among many others, were deeply influenced by him (I was told recently that his picture can still be found in many Orthodox homes in Lebanon and that Church youth grow up hearing about him). When Gillet died on 29 March 1980 (his funeral was celebrated at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in London, where his old friend Metropolitan Anthony Bloom presided and gave the eulogy), he left not only his various ministries, many spiritual children, and numerous books, but also a richly promising and profoundly important legacy of insights into Jewish-Christian relations, insights which were and are both ahead of their time and yet relevant for our time. Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity is an unusual volume from a singular churchman who still has much to teach us.

John A. Jillions Sheptytsky Institute

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Book Reviews

Iaroslav Isaievych, Voluntary Brotherhood: Confraternities of Laymen in Early Modern Ukraine (Edmonton, Toronto: Cana- dian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2006), xxxi + 324 p.

The book under review is an updated and adapted version of the author’s work Bratstva ta ikh rol’ v rozvytku ukrainskoi kultury XVI–XVIII st. (Kyiv, 1966). In the last decades of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth, among the most active forces in Ruthenian society and Ruthenian church life were brotherhoods, confraternities. Their schools, publishing activity, and political and social involvement created a ferment that stirred up Ruthenian culture and Ruthenian church life and contributed notably to arousing them out of their lethargy. Brother- hoods continued to exist into the twentieth century, but with much less vigor after the mid-seventeenth century. The author briefly considers the rise of Ruthenian confraternities in a wider European context. He reports a series of divergent views by various scholars on the origins of western European confraternities; the reader would have liked to know to which he subscribes. He then discusses the social composition and organization of the brotherhoods, their participation in public life and religious conflicts, and their educational and publishing activity. He also writes about the sources that document the organization and activities of brotherhoods. Among the book’s merits is the extensive use the author has made of archival sources. The wide range of activities and of influence of the Lviv brotherhood and of a few others, however, was not typical. A work charting the course of ordinary parish brotherhoods still has to be written. The present work, as the author tells us in his Introduction, started out as a study of the Lviv Confraternity, and the work still concentrates on that one brotherhood, which was unquestionably the most active and influential and which has left the most documents illustrating its history and activity. I would question the author’s categorical assertion on p. 42, though, that its history 132 Book Reviews

ended in the 1780s. The Stauropegian Institute certainly considered itself a continuation of the old confraternity, and as for the statement that its role was minor, such had been already the role of the confraternity throughout the eighteenth century. In his Introduction, the author describes the difficulties he had in publishing the first version of this book because of the censorship to which scholarship, particularly Ukrainian scholarship, was subjected in the USSR. In the English edition, he has discarded Marxist terms and explanations. But if he has abandoned political correctness of one kind, it does not mean that he has avoided political correctness of another kind. Like so many other writers, he applies today’s state/national boundaries to periods that did not know them. The Lviv brotherhood had close ties with that in Vilnius, and the author writes also about the brotherhood in Brest. What today is Ukraine and Belarus was one cultural and confessional area at the turn of the sixteenth century, and to hide the fact in the title, or to avoid the term Ruthenian and write about Ukrainians and Belarusians, is anachronistic. How would one define the townspeople in Brest, in the early seventeenth century, for instance? This tendency is carried to absurdity on p. 161, where the author translates a Latin phrase in which a person calls himself “Ruthenus” as “Ukrainian.” Likewise, it may be politically correct, but is historically anachronistic to speak of Greek Catholics rather than Uniates in those times. Another example of applying modern schemes and preoc- cupations to other periods on the part of the author is the Ukrainization of the names of churchmen. In those times, and for a long time after – indeed, to a certain extent even today – all clergy and monastics, of whatever rank, and both Orthodox and Uniate, always used and were known by the Church Slavic form of their names. Hence, writing in English, one may an- glicize and write Peter Mohyla, but not Petro; he always signed himself Petr. Likewise, to give only two other examples, vernacular Ukrainian or Belarusian forms such as Mykhailo or Ivan were never used by the metropolitan (whom the author unaccountably calls Rohoza rather than Rahoza) or the monk-polemicist. Book Reviews 133

The author cites, but does not accept – perhaps again to be politically correct – what Kiselev pointed out long ago, that Adelphotes can be cited as the title of a grammar only by those who fail to understand its meaning; it is, rather, the name of the institution that put out the book. Marxist ideology remains, though shed of its crasser expressions. Throughout the book the author makes much of the conflict between the Lviv confraternity and Bishop Gedeon (he writes Hedeon) Balaban. On p. 9, he writes that parish confraternities were often anticlerical. The “often” would have to be demonstrated, which it is not. As for the conflict in Lviv, real enough and prolonged, was it based on principle, opposition against a particular church order, or was it owing to a quarrel between the brotherhood and a particular bishop? Its antecedents, and the difficult relations between the townspeople of Lviv and the Balaban family, might provide some clue. That the confraternities praised “learning” the author takes to mean that they were becoming rationalistic (p. 141). This is so only if you assume that faith is the province of the ignorant and are unaware of the many statements by the monks-writers of Kievan Rus’ in praise of books and study. Some minor corrections may be pointed out. Would anyone think of looking up in the index Maksim Grek under “Grek” (see s.v.)? “Breviary” is an improper translation for “chasoslov,” as “missal” is for “sluzhebnyk.” Unnecessary and incorrect application of modern Ukrainian morphology accounts for “subitnyk” (p. 241) rather than “subotnyk” and for Kosiv rather than Kosov, as all sources of those times have it. On p. 21, the author writes that Patriarch Joachim’s document to the Lviv brotherhood was basically in Ukrainian (and the passages he takes to be written in “Old Church Slavic” are only set formulas and quotes), but on p. 34 he says that it was “translated into Ukrainian” in 1695. The English form of the apostle’s name is Philip, not Philippus (p. 34). It is debatable at best whether “Moldavian lands belonged to the Galician- Volhynian Kingdom” (p. 132). “Divinely redeemed” on p. 33 I take to stand for “bohospasaemyj” (= “divinely saved”). On p. 37, the footnote numbers jump from 140 to 241. What he 134 Book Reviews

throughout calls the palatinate of Ruthenia, I would suggest is more correctly translated as the palatinate of Rus’. Despite these faults, the book is an important contribution to studies in English on Ruthenian history, in particular about Ruthenian burghers, in early modern times. At the same time, it should be of interest to those who study confraternities in western Europe.

Sophia Senyk Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome

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Gillian Crow, This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006).

When I first picked up Gillian Crow’s biography of Metro- politan Anthony Bloom, I was surprised at the title “This Holy Man.” My surprise was twofold: first, it seemed to me a mar- keting mistake to use such a title insofar as many modern readers may likely dismiss with a smile or complaint any biography with the word “holy” in the title, a book thereby marked as hopelessly hagiographic. The second source of my surprise was my own study of the metropolitan’s life and works, which have attracted a not inconsiderable number of detractors, some of whom have forcefully and publicly said that Bloom was far from being a saint. This surprise, was, happily, short-lived, for when I opened to the first pages of the introduction, I was relieved to read the author’s explanation that “this book is not a hagiography, for he was not a saint but, like everyone, a human being with his sins and weaknesses, which could be irritating and at times distressing to those with whom he had dealings” (xi). Such is the promising beginning to a needed study of Bloom’s life. Book Reviews 135

The inheritance left to the Church by Anthony Bloom has not yet been sufficiently discovered. All his published books – over 25 – deserve careful theological consideration. Scholars of Bloom have their work cut out for them: he was not a systematician, and most of his publications are not mono- graphs but simply compilations of talks, homilies, and speeches he had given, and given in his customary way without notes. Only a handful of studies and documentaries on his life currently exist. The bulk of his work awaits serious study. To the extent that he is known at all in North America, it is through his books Living Prayer, School for Prayer, Courage to Pray and God and Man. Who was Metropolitan Anthony? He was born in 1914 in Lausanne, Switzerland to Xenia Scriabin, a well-educated polyglot, and Boris Bloom, a diplomat who was sent to Persia as consul. Parts of his early childhood were spent in traveling and discovering life in the Middle East. His early life was marked with suffering and insights into fear and loneliness. After settling in Paris, he was sent as a boy to a rough school where only one word ruled – “fight” – and one emotion, terror, seemed to predominate, both leaving deep and long-lasting impressions on Bloom. This atmosphere of terror and suspicion was compounded by the divorce of his parents, and got so bad at one point that he contemplated suicide. As a teenager, Bloom participated in the Student Christian Movement. Until 1929, he did not believe in God, and once during a camp he heard Sergei Bulgakov speak on Christianity. Bloom disliked this speech and decided to make sure that Christianity was worthless nonsense, so he began to read the Bible. Selecting the shortest gospel, Mark, he began to read. Then, as Crow tells us, he “realized Christ is standing here, without doubt…. [I]f Christ is standing here alive, that means he is the risen Christ … and everything that is said about him in the Gospel is true.” This was not a sensory hallucination or mystical experience or the product of his emotions. Rather, it was a sober encounter with reality. He used to say about this event that “God for me became a fact.” Another important thing that struck him from the first reading of the gospels was Christ’s “godlessness” on the cross. 136 Book Reviews

“My God, my God why have you abandoned me?” – these words became a motto later in life as Metropolitan Anthony would constantly preach that Christ suffered not only all consequences of sin, including death, but also experienced separa- tion from the divine presence of His Father. This experience and its insights changed Bloom’s life. Now he had found a rai- son d’être. He asked Fr. Afanasy Nechaev, who was a monk living an eremitic life, to be his spiritual father. The influence of Fr. Afanasy was immense. Bloom would later describe him as a “profound yet very simple man, not a saint, just a man of our times – but a man who was free, with that incomparable, sovereign freedom of which Christ speaks.” Under Fr. Afanasy’s influence, Bloom became a monk, choosing the new name of Anthony, after Saint Anthony Pe- chersky. Bloom also trained as a physician before later becoming a priest, bishop, and metropolitan. His early religious life was marked with not untypical zealousness, but later he would come to realize that such zeal can sometimes choke out what he realized was “the supreme Christian principle of love. That was a valuable lesson for him to learn, and as a bishop he would warn against such excess of piety.” Once he forbade one woman all her pious activity and insisted she had to spend time each day just sitting quietly enjoying the peace of her room. “Sit and knit before God. But I forbid you to utter one word of prayer” he said. When Bloom was elected by the Moscow Patriarchate as an auxiliary bishop, it was neither because of his cooperation with the Russian government nor because of his religious life, but because of his talent as an organizer. He had become a famous preacher not only within Orthodox Church but also beyond the bounds of it, being regularly invited by the BBC World Service to broadcast in both Britain and the Soviet Union. (Bloom’s relationship with Russia and the Russian Church was mixed. On the one hand, he felt how everything was close to him because Russia was “Holy Mother Russia” for him; but on the other hand he once said that “modern Rus- sia is alien to me.”) Bloom’s episcopal tenure was not without controversy. He began as archbishop of Sourozh, the ancient name given to Book Reviews 137

his territory in the British Isles to avoid using the names of Western sees, and later was appointed as exarch of Western Europe. He was sacked from this latter position when he took part in a prayer service for Solzhenitsyn. As bishop, his methods of administration were not always typical. Bloom never had a formal theological education and evidenced a dislike of seminaries. Thus he preferred to ordain men of “solid faith who had leadership qualities, good experience of life and whom congregations felt they could trust.” Bloom’s views on ecumenism were unconventional. He was a member of the Russian Church’s Ecumenical Commis- sion and yet found formal ecumenical dialogue uncongenial. He could, however, generously see holiness and virtue in com- munions other than his own. He once said that “the greatest thing that the Catholic Church produced was the period of mysticism from about the 16th-19th century,” including such outstanding figures as Saint Theresa of Avila and Saint Jean Vianey, figures whom most Orthodox knew nothing about but should, according to Bloom. Bloom’s views on ecclesiology were also unconventional. He saw the Church as an inverted pyramid, resting on the shoulders of Christ. “On Christ’s shoulders stood patriarchates and above them the metropolitans, the bishops, the clergy and the people, directed upwards; each rank bearing the burdens of those above him in this inverted pyramid.” Bloom understood that hierarchs had the vocation of service and no more. Bloom put this into practice, too, and was not averse himself to clean- ing the church, scraping the worst of the candle wax off the floor, and washing dishes. For Gillian Crow, these examples were a manifestation of “his conviction that the sacramental priesthood and episcopate had genuinely to share the characteristics of Christ’s life of humility and service, not by making the occasional grand gesture … but by living the basic, simple life.” Who was Metropolitan Anthony? Does Crow provide an adequate answer to this question? I would say yes. It is her accomplishment not only to show the positive sides – as we have seen – of one of the most significant Orthodox persona- ges of the twentieth century, but also his weaknesses. She is 138 Book Reviews

not afraid to be critical. Bloom was not the living saint that his more sycophantic admirers took him to be. He could often be dictatorial, inconsistent (treating people as though they alone existed for him at one minute but then turning away from them as though he did not know them the next), and muddled in his administration. He liked to be surrounded by a clique of admirers, especially women. Such, then, is the complex human being – at once charis- matic, warm, and joyful while also someone who fought hard with inner demons, including depression – whom Crow com- pellingly presents. It is her accomplishment to show the lights and the shadows of Bloom – though it is not surprising if the lights predominate: Bloom was Crow’s spiritual father for part of her life after she converted to Orthodoxy. Her biography, then, should be read with this in mind. What we are still awaiting, after this commendable first attempt at bringing together the data about this unusual churchman in popular form, is a more scholarly consideration of Bloom’s works in connection with his life and the politically, ecumenically, and ec- clesiastically convoluted, complex context of the twentieth century. There is much work to be done.

Roman Rytsar Sheptytsky Institute

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Book Reviews 139

John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 265+ pp.

As this review is being written, the bishop of Rome and the archbishop of New Rome are visiting each other in the latter’s see-city of Constantinople. International papal travels are a relatively new phenomenon, begun somewhat tentatively by Pope Paul VI in 1964 – who piously if naively thought he could get away with making his first trip to Jerusalem a “private pilgrimage” – and then, of course, undertaken with astonishing vigour and frequency by the late Pope John Paul II. These trips are always interesting for what they accomplish and for how they are undertaken. The pope travels as head of state with – usually – the privileges, freedoms, and appurte- nances pertaining thereto. He leaves from and returns to an internationally recognized independent city-state. Within the confines of international protocol, he is free to come and go as he wishes, and when he dies the cardinal electors are free to come to Rome to elect whomever they and the Holy Spirit choose. None of this is he case with the Ecumenical Patriarch, sad to say. He is buffeted by a hostile Turkish government, stuck unceremoniously in the dangerous and frequently violently attacked Phanar (which only the truly fatuous would ever call the “Orthodox Vatican”), and unable to take up his office unless he becomes a citizen of a country that has publicly murdered not a few of his predecessors and driven all but a few hundred of his flock away. One mentions these differences between Rome and Con- stantinople not in a sanctimonious spirit of triumphalism but simply to point out to those (e.g., certain fringe figures of the Catholic left or the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément in his book You Are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection on the Exercise of Papal Primacy) who occasionally decry the Vatican’s independence and diplomatic contacts that no sane Christian should ever lightly dismiss the Vatican’s hard-won liberties or romantically imagine that the poverty and persecution of the Phanar somehow make it a morally superior exem- 140 Book Reviews

plar. The ecclesiological and ecumenical problems – and they are serious – caused by having a pope who is at once a local bishop, regional primate and patriarch, universal pontiff, and head of state pale in comparison to the ghastly fight for sur- vival on the part of Constantinople, whose future looks very grim indeed. Now of course the differences between these two hierarchs and their churches, as well as the countries in which they live, are explicable in historical, sociological, and theological terms, but they are also, to a significant – and hitherto greatly overlooked – degree explicable in financial terms also. It is to the credit of John Pollard, an historian and fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, that his superb new study is able to understand the extent to which money has been so influential in shaping the modern papacy. Theologians and especially ecumenists do not seem to have inclined much toward the study of the role of money in the shaping of ecclesiastical structures and institutions as well as ecumenical relations. And yet one must ask how much Orthodox suspicion and fear of Catholics, especially in the post-Soviet period, stems from the perception (of whatever accuracy) that Catholics (particularly Americans and Germans) are rich enough to muscle into historically Orthodox territories and impress the locals with their financial clout, organizational ability, and “professional” social or catechetical programs? This question does not seem to be asked much because it seems that mentioning money at all is somehow thought to be in poor taste. In many instances, as Pollard demonstrates, the modern Vatican – and Catholics in general – seem to have viewed money as something rather dirty (because associated with Jews, Protestants, and liberals) and best kept out of sight. Thus Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) personally kept much of the Vatican’s gold, money, investments, and jewellery in a locked iron box under his bed! Such attitudes and approaches seem odd given that Catho- lics and Orthodox do not shy away from acknowledging the centrality of the material and the mundane in ecclesial and sacramental life. Nonetheless, when it comes to the question of money, many Christians ricochet between two extremes, Book Reviews 141

either treating the question like the Victorians did prostitution (some things are better left unsaid) or else viewing it as the cause and instrument of worldly suffering, salvation from which is available through something called “social justice,” that insufferably tedious platitude of the comfortable bour- geoisie. Pollard’s book is neither a simplistic reduction of all Vati- can actions to avarice and Jesuitical intrigue nor an overly pious exoneration of the financial machinations of the world’s tiniest country – as though it were run entirely by impecu- niously discalced monks of spotless virtue. His book, moreover, is not a dry, dusty tome of facts and figures, of tedious statistics piled up and numbers numbingly crunched. This book, rather, is an exemplary piece of scholarship, at once clearly focused on a particular issue while also attending to the larger context and consequences of the actions and actors in question. Pollard’s narrative is cogently written and should be of interest to historians, economists, and sociologists, as well as to canonists, theologians, and ecumenists. Pollard’s historical method and training do not prevent him from asking such important theological questions as how the modern Vatican’s move towards interest-bearing capitalist investments could be squared with the teaching on usury. The short answer seems to be that the Vatican preferred not to ask that question of itself, which, given how the Vatican has usually operated, is not necessarily a case of hypocritical avoi- dance or double standards so much as it is a typical instance of various departments not knowing what the other was doing. The moneymen, such as Bernardino Nogara or Ernesto Pacelli – cousin to Eugenio, later known as Pope Pius XII – were, as laymen, harder to control than clerics and less likely profess- sionally to scruple over the inevitable moral issues that money raises. Pollard’s central thesis, stated forcefully at the outset and convincingly documented throughout, is that both the Vatican as we know it – that is, as an independent city-state having, inter alia, diplomatic relations with nearly 180 countries today and such things as its own police force, passports, and financial institutions – and the papacy as we know it, that is, an 142 Book Reviews

institution exercising a worldwide magisterium and universal control over a vast flock, is a distinctly modern creation from the latter part of the nineteenth century. Both institutions owe their rise in very large part to the increasingly competent management of Vatican finances and to two major developments enriching the bottom line: the “Peter’s Pence” fund and the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The latter, at a stroke, wiped out most of the Vatican’s debt and promised it a steady income as a result of which, Pollard demonstrates, Pope Pius XI was able to go on a “spending spree” building many new colleges, offices, and other buildings in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The former, the Peter’s Pence, which goes back to the fifteenth century, was skillfully manipulated by the ultramon- tane defenders of the papacy following the loss of the Papal States as a means whereby the faithful could directly contribute to the support and sustenance of their supposedly persecuted pope, with whom they were increasingly encouraged to feel themselves in personal relationship. Pollard shows just how heavily the Vatican came to rely on these donations and how much this fund has contributed to what he calls the “cult of papal personality.” (Pollard thinks that cult reached its apogee under Pius XII in 1950, but I would argue that Pius is a gnat compared to the superstar status enjoyed by Pope John Paul II. This status has, thankfully, been pared back by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.) This cult was augmented not only by the Peter’s Pence but also by the rise of mass pilgrimages to Rome, often for canonizations (under Pius IX and then Leo XIII, there were more beati and saints proclaimed than in the preceding four hundred years combined); and by mass media, including L’Osservatore Romano (founded in 1861), La Civiltà Cattolica (1854), and many diocesean papers dependent on Rome for funds to keep them afloat. One of the most influential components in the cultivation of this cult was the massive number of encyclicals Leo XIII cranked out. Leo, as Owen Chadwick, George Weigel and others have demonstrated, was the key figure who sealed the transformation of the papacy into a global pastor and teacher. Book Reviews 143

It has long been a commonplace among historians, theologians, and ecumenists that the so-called modern papacy acquires its problematic theological form at the end of the eleventh century, following the Gregorian reforms, but Pollard demonstrates just how much of that form could not be filled out in any seriously robust way until the Vatican had the financial clout to do so. Thus only at the outset of the twentieth century is the Vatican able to assert universal jurisdiction through appointing all the bishops in the world (a “right” it canonically claims for itself only in 1917) and then keeping watch on them by sending nuncios to their host governments – nuncios who can also helpfully outmaneuver the local bishop and appeal directly to the faithful for money for Rome that the bishop may wish to keep for his own diocese. The only criticisms that can be levelled against this book are few and relatively minor. There are several typographical errors including, on p. 75, the embarrassing claim that John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus was issued in “1981” when, of course, the very title indicates that the encyclical commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. On a more substantial level, there are a few instances where some of the book’s arguments are insufficiently nu- anced or sensitive to necessary details. Thus, e.g., the glossary of terms includes the term “Uniate” to define Eastern Catho- lics, and fails to mention how pejorative a term this is; and the glossary defines a “motu proprio” as “a decree issued on the authority of the pope to regulate the administration of a given part of the Roman curia.” Neither part of that definition is correct: the first is too general and the latter too specific. All Roman magisterial documents are “issued on the authority of the pope” but not all have their origins at his hand; most are generated and written by his assistants. What distinguishes a motu proprio in this context is that is it usually a much shorter document issued directly from the pope himself, who initiates the entire process: the term literally means “by his own mo- tion.” These can be on any topic, and are by no means limited only to curial regulation. 144 Book Reviews

This lack of precision and nuance comes through towards the end when a telegraphic paragraph speaks of Pope John Paul II having “expressed many times in his reign” a “profound suspicion of liberal-democratic, individualistic, Western capitalistic society.” There is, alas, ample evidence of the late pope’s suspicion, but it was, at least, tempered by his striking claim – that Pollard seems to have overlooked – in Centesimus Annus that there are “many positive aspects” of the “modern business economy” (§32). It is to Pollard’s credit that his book has so capably dealt with Vatican machinations and manipulations without being salacious or gratuitous in his criticisms. He recognizes that sometimes churchmen have gotten involved in shady dealings, but often the greater problem is simple incompetence or ignorance. Most of the time, however, the Church’s stewardship of her financial resources is precisely what it should be: un- ostentatious service of the earthly Church and her institutions and far-reaching generosity to the poor and suffering.

Adam DeVille Sheptytsky Institute

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Book Reviews 145

Charles Morerod, Ecumenism and Philosophy: Philosophical Questions for a Renewal of Dialogue, trans. Therese C. Scar- pelli (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2006).

Morerod, a Swiss Dominican who is dean of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome and a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission as well as the international Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, has, with this book, opened up an extremely important area of research for ecumenists and all those concerned about Christian unity. A translation of a book published in French in 2004 by Parole et Silence, Ecumenism and Philosophy attempts to understand problems to which ecumenists have only recently begun to attend. What is the nature of dialogue and its methodological underpinnings and presuppositions? What intellectual categories, often unconscious, do theologians and ecumenists borrow from philosophers and others? These and other such questions were scarcely asked by anyone in the first heady years of the ecumenical movement, especially since the Catholic Church came fully on board that movement with the Second Vatican Council. Since 1965, ecumenical dialogue enjoyed a period of great favour and great fervor, both of which have since declined in the last fifteen years or so. Part of the reason for that decline, Morerod suggests, may be found in the insufficiently examined presuppositions and methods upon which much of that dialogue was undertaken, and the overly zealous way in which some thought mere dialogue would be enough to restore full communion among all Christians. These factors have combined to threaten ecumenical progress anew. Morerod, moreover, discerns another, largely undiagnosed and counterintuitive threat to ecumenism: “the real threat to ecumenism today is the failure to identify differences properly. This negligence can lead to two attitudes: either that of claiming that differences no longer exist or that of clutching one’s own identity, terrified of poorly identified differences. Both attitudes entail a rejection of ecumenism as either useless or dangerous.” Catholics and Orthodox can each think of some of their co-religionists who view ecumenism as useless or dangerous. 146 Book Reviews

Each also has first-hand awareness, especially in the last fifteen years, of the inadequacies of dialogue alone to resolve long-standing problems. At the height of the crisis in the 1990s and early part of this decade over “uniatism” and “proselytism” in Western Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, it rapidly became clear that many regarded the official Catholic- Orthodox dialogue as “useless” to resolve these differences (hence its suspension for more than half a decade) and indeed any relations with the other as dangerous to one’s own identity – however poorly understood. It also became clear that no matter how many times the Patriarchate of Moscow accused Catholics (both Roman but especially Eastern) of “violence,” “proselytism,” “theft of parishes” (etc., etc.), and no matter how many times Catholics refuted these charges, neither side seemed to understand the terminology – especially “proselytism” – in quite the same way or assess the charges according to the same standard of evidence, and hence both became caught up in a fruitless loop of accusation-denial, of tedious charges and countercharges. Morerod’s book does not take up those issues. Indeed, his book is confined to Catholic-Protestant dialogues and the issues arising therefrom, but he does note in his introduction that “dialogue with the Orthodox … could be examined from the same perspective.” Such a book would be extremely profitable and it is to be hoped that someone takes up the challenge. In the meantime, some of what Morerod has to say in general terms about the nature of dialogue in general is still applicable to East-West ecumenism, mutatis mutandis. Morerod, of course, is not one of those above-mentioned people who sees ecumenism as either useless or dangerous. He very much wants to see it overcome some of its present problems. To do that, he argues, will require more than mere pious exhortation to more or greater dialogue. To build deep and lasting unity, we must first clear away much of the under- growth and examine both the roots of our traditions but especially the roots of the whole concept of “dialogue” in a way that has not been done before. The term is freighted with all sorts of meanings that are not often clearly acknowledged or understood, and it is this lack of clarity about what we are Book Reviews 147

doing in an ecumenical dialogue that can lead to many frustra- tions. In reading this book, one finds that it is very groundbreaking and very insightful in some respects but very uneven and unfinished in others. There are parts of the book, chiefly in the second half, that evidence acute scholarship of the kind one would expect from a philosopher-theologian of Morerod’s caliber (he holds a licentiate and a doctorate in each of theology and philosophy). In this second half, devoted to the “Philo- sophical Presuppositions of the Reformation,” Morerod has dug deeply and skillfully into the primary works of Luther, Cajetan, and Calvin, all of whom he discusses with evident sophistication and detailed insight. But then there are parts, including especially chapters two and three of the first half, that do not reach the same level of intensity and focus and give the impression of perhaps having been thrown together with unnecessary haste. One might examine the third chapter bearing the title “Popper, Kuhn, Feyerbend’s Principles Applied to Ecumenical and Inter- religious Dialogue.” This chapter attempts to apply these dense and detailed epistemological theories of all three to ecumenical and interreligious dialogues, and does so in a scant seven pages. This underdeveloped third chapter is perhaps the weakest point of an insightful book, but regrettably one might ask whether a similar criticism might not apply to certain other parts of the first half of the book. Even the author of the book’s preface, Georges Cardinal Cottier, theologian of the Papal Household, cannot avoid noting – with all the taciturnity for which Vatican officials are known – that the book’s second half is “more developed.” Perhaps as a groundbreaker Morerod simply intended to stir up debate and discussion about these overlooked issues and did not intend his work to be the last word. Perhaps in a nod to his Franco-Swiss roots, Morerod was doing what the great liturgical historian Robert Taft once memorably described: “with admirable boldness Francophone authors will throw into the agora an inchoative theory to be gnawed on by the critics before retrieving what remains and polishing it up 148 Book Reviews

for a second edition. They cover their flank by calling their sallies esquisses, jalons, essais.” This book is nowhere described in those terms, but the careful reader will observe in the bibliography and footnotes that much of the book was previously published in essay form in the French edition of the journal Nova et Vetera, of which Morerod has been the editor since 1997. In sum, this book, at times helpfully insightful and at other times leaving the reader hungry for more depth, essays some very difficult questions and Morerod has done us a service by raising them. As Alasdair MacIntyre has recently noted in his new book about Edith Stein, the very raising of questions can sometimes be of more importance and of longer lasting significance than the putative answers (Alasdair MacIntyre, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913–1922 [Lanham, Mary- land: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006], pp.7 and 186). It is hoped that the frequently promised future book that More- rod mentions in the current one will more fully elaborate upon these important questions that he has helpfully started to lay out for us. We are in his debt thus far and may yet happily in- cur more of the same in the years ahead.

Adam DeVille Sheptytsky Institute

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Book Reviews 149

Dennis J. Dunn, The Catholic Church and Russia. Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars and Communists (Ashgate, 2004), ix + 260 pages, 4 plates, index.

In the preface to La Russie en 1839 (translated into En- glish as Empire of the Czar: A Journey through Eternal Rus- sia [New York: Doubleday, 1989]), the Marquis de Custine comments that in Russia he found barbarism supported by a fettered Church and civilization imposed by a government of foreigners. That rough assessment of Russia underlies the present study of Catholicism and Russia penned by Dennis J. Dunn. Like many westerners who encounter Russia, Dunn is mystified by a society that on some levels is very similar to the West but on many others is utterly foreign. For Dunn the explanation is religion. Whereas the West had Catholicism as its spiritual foundation, Russia had Eastern Orthodoxy; what is more, in Dunn’s view, Russia developed an early and enduring suspicion of Catholicism which crippled its ability to evolve into a mature, western-style state. Dunn conveniently over- looks Catholicism’s own history of arrogant disdain for Chris- tian churches that are not Catholic, a stance only officially corrected at the Second Vatican Council. Dunn maintains that whereas the western world produced societies in which religion was free of state control, Russia did not. Because religion is not free there, and because it persisted in its anti-Catholi- cism, Russia was unable to develop into a modern and success- sful state. That is the thesis which Dunn seeks to demonstrate. That the Christian Church evolved differently in Russia and Western Europe is a fact which makes the author uneasy. That Russian society could import western intellectual, techni- cal and scientific expertise but resist westernization as it created its own place in human history perplexes him. Russia perplexes Russians too, a feature of Russian history that Dunn uses to his advantage as he seeks a solution to the riddle that is Russia. While he is to be commended for bringing religion into the discussion, his claim that a more positive reception of Catholicism would have spared Russia much of its misery is questionable. Shades of grey are missing from the author’s pa- late as he paints a black and white image of relations between 150 Book Reviews

Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy, the West and Russia. It is difficult to understand how Dunn can maintain that Catholicism opposes absolutism while Orthodoxy defends it. Catholicism’s poor record of opposing dictatorships and absolutist regimes in Latin and South America, and its troubled history with intellectual freedom, are only a few examples that should have given Dunn pause. Indeed one of the stumbling blocks for any reader of this study is Dunn’s undefined concept of Catholicism. It appears to be a supra-historical religious phenomenon always the same and always perfect, at times symbolizing the whole of western culture. The West is the second stumbling block. Though he does not state it in so many words, the West seems to mean liberal democracy, where religion plays a significant role, free of state inter- ference, in shaping the values by which it lives and progresses through time. Chapter One, “Russia’s Problem with Catholicism,” begins inauspiciously. Dunn reports that Rome and Constan- tinople “split in 1054 when the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other” (1). This is inaccurate. The reigning pope, Leo IX, died 15 April 1054. The excommunication occurred on 16 July 1054 when the papal legate, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, an- nounced the excommunication in Hagia Sophia. When news of this reached the chancery, Humbert was himself excommunicated by Patriarch Michael Keroularios. Because Humbert’s authority was extinguished on the death of the pope, there is considerable debate about the legitimacy of his actions. Next Dunn presents a misleading description of the simi- larities and differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. He notes that both believe in a hierarchically structured church, claiming that while the West had a pope elected by a college of cardinals (this is anachronistic for the eleventh century), the East had four patriarchs. In fact, the East by this time viewed Church governance as a pentarchy, with Rome as one of the five patriarchates! According to Dunn, Orthodoxy believes that Jesus Christ “was born with the frailties of human nature, including sin” (3), surely a misunderstanding of his unidentified theological Book Reviews 151

sources. It would have been helpful to point out that contemporary Orthodox Christians accept the content of the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption but reject their definition as dogmas. Dunn’s brief treatment of the filioque is confusing. The Greeks did not consistently state that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone – a position defended by the ninth century Patriarch Photios – but also spoke of the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son. That the Spirit is “the manifestation of God’s love of humankind” (3) does not accurately reflect Catholic Trinitarian doctrine. Finally, his claim that the Union of Brest entailed no profound changes except the acceptance of papal governance and the filioque betrays a curious, though admittedly western, lack of historical awareness about the two key issues that still divide eastern and western Christians: ecclesiology and theology proper (how to speak about God). In short, theology is not the author’s strong suit. Dunn then recounts the history of Catholic-Orthodox relations among the East Slavs from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. To his credit, he highlights the vibrancy of Ukrai- nian and Belorussian culture under the influence of Poland- Lithuania and its majority Catholic faith. But when he turns to Muscovy and the Russians, all is darkness and oppression. When Muscovy did invite westerners (or grudgingly accepted their presence as trading rivals) into its midst and adopted some of their learning, it did so out of envy and a sense of in- feriority, claims Dunn. Without the leaven of Catholicism, Muscovy developed into an absolutist state with the willing support of the Orthodox Church. Russian society became xenophobic and anti-western as a result. This reading of mediaeval Russian history is overly simplistic. In chapter two, he continues his narrative exposition of Catholic fortunes in Russia from Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich to Alexander I Pavlovich. Dunn, like most historians, is hard- pressed to come to terms with Peter the Great, who invited western Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) to Russia but subjected them to the same legal strictures he imposed on the Russian Orthodox Church. He writes that Peter the Great aimed to institute “more tolerant religious policies à la West” 152 Book Reviews

(30), but one wonders what West he envisions: the France of Louis XIV and XV? The partitioning of Poland brought large numbers of Catholics under Russian imperial rule, and Dunn points out that the Uniates were victimized by both Orthodox and Roman Catholics. The subordination of the Church, no matter its confessional identity, to the state and the seeds of secularization are two important developments in the eighteenth century that Dunn correctly interprets as weakening the ability of the Church (Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant) to agitate for reform of Russian society, something which carries over into the next century. At the beginning of chapter three, Dunn writes that Tsar Nicholas I Alexandrovich “lacked the intellectual ability to realize that a religion under secular control could never help Russia become a modern, successful state” (50) but offers no evidence for Nicholas’s intellectual disabilities. One wonders how the Church of England would respond to Dunn’s conten- tion that a religion under secular control cannot contribute to the positive development of society. Interestingly, religious freedom was restored to Roman Catholics in Great Britain only in 1829, and yet that nation had managed to develop into a modern, successful state. The repressive political regime of Tsar Nicholas I tightened its hold on the Russian Church and, as Dunn shows, negatively affected the Catholic Church in Russia, particularly the Uniates. But he interprets the ill-fated efforts of Nicholas to defend the rights of Orthodox peoples in the Ottoman Empire as part of his innate anti-Catholicism and claims that Russia’s military defeat in the Crimean War was “further evidence that Russia was behind the West” (56). When Russia defeated Napoleon, would that be evidence that the West was behind Russia? The rest of the chapter looks at the instability of the Catholic Church through successive imperial reigns down to Nicholas II Alexandrovich and the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. Freedom of religion, slowly and grudgingly accepted in Western Europe, did indeed create a climate for social change – but not in the direction that Dunn approves. Instead, we see the West producing Marxism and other brands of socialism, a massive drop in religious obser- vance by the upper and middle classes, and the transformation Book Reviews 153

of Christianity in all its forms into little more than a form of European folklore. Chapters four and five examine in general terms the fate of religion during World War II and the machinations of Stalin and Hitler to eradicate all religion from human civilization. The efforts of war-time popes Pius XI and Pius XII to defend persecuted Christians and Jews and western Christian civilization receive adequate treatment by Dunn. He directs some of his harshest criticisms against President Roosevelt and in the process highlights an anti-Catholic bias even in the West. Chapters six, seven, and eight focus on the Cold War era, ending with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union. Dunn notes the dramatic change inaugurated by Pope John XXIII with respect to Catholic-Soviet relations, further developed by Pope Paul VI and brought to maturity by Pope John Paul II. This is the strongest section of Dunn’s book, filled with details of the rebirth of Catholicism in the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union and the slow but ineluctable decline of communism. Mikhail Gorbachev receives a fair appraisal as a good man attempting to keep some semblance of order while his country and its sustaining worldview spiralled into chaos. Chapter nine presents a snapshot of recent developments in Russia, most of which are positive for the permanence of Catholicism there, though difficulties remain. In his conclusion, Dunn rehearses his opinion on the positive role that Catholicism can play in the regeneration of Rus- sian society. Towards the end he writes:

If the experience of the West is the guide, it is clear that religion is necessary for a modern, successful society, but Orthodoxy evidently cannot play that role in Russia. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has assisted Russia before in its modernization effort. It, or reformed Orthodoxy in combination with Catholi- cism, is the logical solution to Russia’s dilemma and to its participation in and evolution toward European society (220).

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This sums up Dunn’s beliefs and the major problem I have with his book. He does not define what a modern successful society is, though one guesses he is thinking of the United States of America in particular. Nowhere does he prove that religion is a necessary component of that transformation. If I look at European society today, I am not so sure that Russia should seek to evolve along its path. The European Union refused to make explicit reference to the Christian heritage of Europe in its constitutional documents despite the spirited intervention of the Vatican, Catholic bishops, and Protestant and Orthodox religious leaders. Ireland, once the bastion of Catholicism in Western Europe, has gone the way of secula- rism in much the same way as Quebec did after its Quiet Revolution. Church attendance declines steadily in all Euro- pean countries. The other problem is that he considers Russia a problem to be solved. Many non-westerners consider the West a serious problem, a culture that has gone astray and has no direction. Undeniably, Catholicism has made extremely important contributions to the evolution of various forms of western societies, but anti-Catholicism remains a potent force even there. Dunn’s book offers good insights and generally reliable information about the state of religion in Russia in the past half century, but not for earlier periods. Inaccuracies and the me- chanical application of his thesis make the book less helpful than one had hoped.

T. Allan Smith University of St Michael’s College

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Book Reviews 155

Brian E. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus (New York and Lon- don: Routledge, 2006), paperback, 273pp.

Routledge’s very useful series of patristic biographies with central texts offered in translation continues with this present volume, the fifteenth in the series, dedicated to the life and work of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (known in Orthodox tradition as Saint Gregory the Theologian). He was the skilled rhetorician, philosopher, and moderate disciple of Origen who ended up as the archbishop of Constantinople after Theodosius I expelled the Arians in 380, and was the surprise president of the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, in 381, after the death of its first president, Meletios of Antioch. The first 61 pages of this book are devoted to the ecclesiastical and intellectual life of the theologian; the heart of the book is represented by Fr. Daley’s lively and accurate translations from the Greek of some of Gregory’s key works (pp. 62–189); and the remainder of the book is taken up with scholarly notes (pp.190–258) and a small bibliography and index (pp. 259– 73). Gregory the Theologian was without question the most learned of all Christians of the early period. He has been called, by both the Byzantines and the Renaissance scholars of the West, the “Christian Demosthenes.” In the culture of the Greek Church and on into the Slavic Orthodox traditions, Gre- gory was regarded as the supreme theologian among all the Fathers. While many of the other Fathers responded brilliantly to controversies of their times, Gregory, it was thought, was above all the intellectual’s theologian: a wise and urbane voice who articulated a lofty theology that had space within it for a considered Christian articulation of culture, literature, politics, and the pursuit of friendship and bonhomie. Among the By- zantines, Gregory’s works were copied and recopied more than any other single book, with the exception of the scriptures. He was so passionately advocated as a theological hero in the schools that the church authorities had to institute a liturgical feast-day dedicated to all “Three Holy Hierarchs” (Gregory, Basil the Great and John Chrysostom) to put an end to student violence among the Gregorianists, Chrysostomites, and Basi- 156 Book Reviews

lians who took it all very personally and passionately in those days. In the West, however, his reputation has never been so passionately advocated. He was rarely translated into Euro- pean tongues, although Rufinus made an ancient Latin version of his justly famed Theological Orations (Orations 27–31) and it won for him a high reputation as arbiter of Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, his real contribution to Trinitarian dogma was heavily overshadowed by the West’s subsequent reliance on Augustine, who departs from Gregory’s system on significant points: not least the concept of the Father as the sole Arche (cause or principle) of the hypostases of the Son and Spirit. It was the issue of the single Arche of Godhead being synony- mous with the Father in Gregory’s thought that made for him the logic of Trinitarian unity (the Godhead of the Son and Spirit being that of the Father alone, not a common possession of a single divine nature applicable to all three); and it was precisely this issue that would eventually cause such a long drawn-out dissension between the Greeks and Latins over the issue of the filioque. Gregory, however, for all his importance in the Trinitarian debate, had so many other wonderful things to say that it is striking that he was so rarely cited in later Western thought. Victorian commentators and patristics specialists of the early twentieth century neglected him unjustly. Only in recent times, with Paul Gallay’s biography of the mid-century, and my own full-length critical study of 2004, has his life and work been set into the context of the theological and philosophical currents of his time. The present book by Brian Daley has used the latter biography sympathetically and creatively as a foundation for its own historical synopsis; and has the great merit of being one of the shortest, liveliest, most up-to-date and most contextualised introductions available for under- graduates to this towering intellect from antiquity. Daley has selected representative pieces from Gregory which can be used in class or seminar discussion to great effect. I have only one lament – that because the author thought the Theological Orations were commonly available elsewhere, he did not include them (or any part of them) in this present Book Reviews 157

compilation. The effect of this is like having the “Best of Puccini” without La Bohème or Butterfly. What has been included at last allows the non-Greek specialist to escape from the awful (and grossly inaccurate) versions of Gregory that are partially represented in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers versions. Daley has had his task facilitated here by the wonderful critical labours of the Source Chrétiennes series that has finally issued a near-complete edition of the prose works in Greek and French (the poems still patiently wait a critical edition to this day). The chosen works include some of the smaller devotional poems (there is a larger collection of the devotional poems by myself [1995]), and of the theological poetry by Moreschini and Sykes (1996). But the collection is chiefly comprised by the carefully selected orations (Nos. 8, 14, 20, 26, 38, 39, 42, 44) and letters. The latter collection chiefly gives the sense of how Gregory functioned as a skilful “maker of connections” for the Nicene cause. Among the orations are the very important texts: On the Poor (Oration 14, arguably the first Christian defence of the rights of the poor to healthcare); and On Theophany and On the Holy Lights (Ora- tions 38 & 39, a very important theology of baptism as mystery initiation). His Funeral Oration for Gorgonia is the first ever exemplar of Christian panegyric for a woman. Other orations show Gregory considering the state of Christian leadership in his day (lamenting its dreadful quality) and give the reader a unique window into momentous events of Church history. Brian Daley is to be congratulated for having put together one of the most interesting and useful volumes in a series that is proving to be of great value in the contemporary teaching of patristics and Church history in seminaries and undergraduate schools.

John A. McGuckin Columbia University

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Peter M. Doll, ed., Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: 300 Years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006).

In late January 2007, the mandate of the third phase of the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue (ICAOTD), which began in 1989, was fulfilled when the members of the commission formally presented their final report to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Ecumenical Patriarch at official ceremonies at Lambeth Palace and West- minster Abbey. At this point, one can only hope for a solid scholarly response as part of the wider ecclesial process of reception that will follow the publication of the agreed statement. Coincidently, two excellent scholarly works on Anglican- Orthodox relationships preceded the completion of the work of the ICAOTD. The first is Orthodox scholar Judith Pinning- ton’s trenchant book, Anglicans and Orthodox: Unity and Sub- version, 1559–1725, published in 2003. The second is the book under review here, an eclectic series of essays from both Anglican and Orthodox writers in Anglicanism and Ortho- doxy: 300 years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford, edited by Anglican scholar Peter M. Doll. The papers in this volume, however, were originally presented at a conference held in Oxford in September 2001 to commemorate the significant albeit short-lived (from 1699–1705) ecumenical experiment known as the “Greek College,” a college at the University of Oxford established by Anglican initiative to educate members of the Orthodox Church. The significance of September 2001 is that it marked the 300th anniversary of an iconic moment in the life of the college, when it conferred an honorary doctorate of divinity on Archbishop Neophytos of Philippopolis. The very conception of a Greek College within an English Anglican university arose from over a century of largely positive encounters between Anglicans and Orthodox, especially amongst the Greek-speaking Orthodox Churches under the Ottoman Empire. On the one hand, there was an Anglican fascination with Eastern Christianity, and a genuine desire to offer assistance to a Christian community suffering great hard- Book Reviews 159

ship. On the other, there was an Orthodox recognition of a church somewhat like itself, and one that could be a potential ally as it endured Turkish oppression. Sadly, a common feature that bound Anglicans and Orthodox in the seventeenth century was a virulent strain of anti-Roman Catholicism. One of the serious challenges for the Greek Orthodox Church under the Ottomans was a low level of education, particularly in theology. Here, the Anglican educational opportunities in the English universities and a willingness to assist Orthodox students, combined with the Orthodox need and trust in the Church of England, coalesced over a number of years to create the Greek College in Oxford in 1699. After a series of (student) scandals, Orthodox dissatisfaction with the college, financial woes, and what was patently more an Anglican interest in the project than Orthodox, the Greek College came to an end in 1705 – though one Greek student seems to have still been in Oxford in 1707. The essays in the first half of the book deal with Anglican- Orthodox relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, largely as they pertain to the Greek presence in England at that time, particularly in Oxford. As such, these essays ably set the context for the emergence of the Greek College at the end of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth. These chapters are mostly written by Anglicans, although there are significant contributions from Orthodox writers Ephrem Lash, Vasilios N. Makrides, and Kallistos Ware. This section of book is clearly the product of well-honed British historical scholarship and delights the reader with the depth of scholarship and evenly crisp style of writing. Like Pennington’s 2003 book, it is a treasure-trove of information on the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Church of England, Hellenic Ortho- doxy, and their particular points of confluence in the “Levant” and England culminating in the Greek College at Oxford. These chapters are not quite the stuff of popular church history for either Anglicans or Orthodox. They tell the story of the fascination, trepidation, and in the end, deep devotion toward one another by members of both traditions. The numbers of people directly affected by the new relationship, then as now, was small; they included, then as now, significant representa- 160 Book Reviews

tion amongst the lay and ordained leadership of the two traditions. As E.D. Tappe writes in the opening sentence of his chapter “The Greek College at Oxford, 1699–1705,” “there has perhaps never been a time since the Reformation when some group in the Anglican Church has not been exploring the possibility of a rapprochement with some section of the Orthodox Church” (p. 153). A much shorter series of articles deals with the present relationship between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy. These articles are all by Anglicans, unfortunately. However, an article by Russian Orthodox liturgical scholar Gregory Woolfenden in the first series on “Orthodox Influences on Anglican Liturgy” more appropriately belongs in the section on the contemporary relationship. Woolfenden not only skilfully traces the influence of Orthodox liturgies on the Book of Common Prayer as well as “alternative” Anglican liturgies from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, but also in present liturgical revision. Here, Woolfenden’s reflections are limited to the present Church of England, as well as a single appreciative nod toward liturgical revision in the Anglican Church of Canada. Having written an extensive article on the influence of Orthodox liturgical texts on Anglican liturgy myself in this journal (see Logos vol. 41–42 [2000–01], 269–314), I found Woolfenden’s Orthodox perspective on this well-trodden Anglican path il- luminating, challenging, and in the end, quite affirming. Similarly, I was much encouraged by the reflections of A.M. Allchin, arguably the Anglican doyen of Anglican- Orthodox dialogue, in his chapter entitled “Orthodox and An- glican: An Uneasy but Enduring Relationship.” With Wool- fenden, Allchin offers a perspective on the influence of Ortho- doxy on Anglicanism, but from a wider horizon than just the liturgical. He notes the vastly increased availability and acces- sibility of books on Orthodoxy to an English readership during the past fifty years. He notes the places of classical Byzantine icons in the spiritual lives of Anglican communities and indivi- duals. Regarding Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, Allchin observes that it provides Western Christians “with a new icon of the mystery and majesty of God, rebuking silently our inherited problems about the ‘Old Man with the beard’” (pp. 337– Book Reviews 161

38). Allchin notes the gift of the Jesus Prayer in contemporary popular Anglican spirituality, beginning in the 1930s when The Way of the Pilgrim first appeared in English translation. It would have been enlightening had an Orthodox paper been included, reflecting any Anglican influence on Orthodoxy. Allchin’s article also treats some of the history of the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue from its current beginnings in 1973 to the publication of The Dublin Report in 1984. Later in the volume, a much fuller narrative of the dialogue is presented by William B. Green, a priest of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and a member of the dialogue from 1973 to the present. Unfortunately, Green’s history stops in 2000, the last meeting of the dialogue before the conference on the Greek College in 2001. Consequently, the significant final stages of the dialogue culminating the final report of ICAOTD simply do not appear. Lastly, nearly 130 pages of primary source material dealing with the Greek College, including course lectures, are produced in a series of appendices at the end of the book. Also included in its entirety is Bishop Thomas Rattray’s 1728 “Of- fice for the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist being the Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem,” a virtual Anglo-Byzan- tine hybrid liturgy composed for the Scottish Episcopal Church which would later be a significant model for twentieth-century Anglican liturgical revision. Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: 300 Years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford is a marvellous and timely collection which will be of particular interest to East-West ecumenists both within and beyond Anglicanism and Orthodoxy. There are, however, some weaknesses which ought to be noted. The first is the preponderance of Anglican articles; more Orthodox articles would have given the volume more balance, and more credibility. To the ecumenically disingenuous, it may appear that the in “uneasy but enduring” relationship between Angli- cans and Orthodox, the keener partners are the Anglicans. A second weakness is that “Anglican” largely means the Church of England, and secondarily the Anglican Communion. Given the context of the Greek College at Oxford this may be entirely appropriate, but the title of the book suggests a broader 162 Book Reviews

definition. Likewise, “Orthodoxy” means largely Greek Or- thodox, which, again, is understandable given the historic event of the “Greek” College. The place of the Slavic Ortho- dox Churches is seldom mentioned. There are interesting references to what editor Peter Doll considers the true heir of the Greek College at Oxford, namely the present Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies at Cam- bridge. Doll notes the presence at the conference of the first principal of the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, John Jillions, now a professor of the Metropolitan Andrey Shep- tytsky Institute Eastern Christian Studies within the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University. There are, however, other worthy heirs of the Greek College project. Readers of Logos ought to be challenged to appreciate Saint Paul University as another worthy inheritor of the vision of the Greek College, arising from an even broader ecumenical vision. For here, within a pontifically accredited faculty of theology, Orthodox and Anglican scholars and students, having shed their seventeenth century anti-papal phobia, find themselves alongside Eastern Catholics as the ecumenical partners of a Roman Ca- tholic intellectual community nourished by the generous ecumenical spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

John Gibaut Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University

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Book Reviews 163

Arthur Holder, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 568 + 14pp.

Blackwell Publishing has produced a series of volumes entitled The Blackwell Companion to Religion. This is a very wide-ranging series which attempts to be “accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader.” These companions are in fact collections of individual articles which have been assigned to leading scholars in various fields; and the series desires to offer such scholars a forum where they “can make their views and research available to a wider audience.” The series includes not only companions to Judaism, Protestantism, contemporary Islamic thought, and Hinduism, but also companions to the sociology of religion, political and post-modern theology, Christian ethics, the Bible and culture, and, in the midst of all of this, the present Companion to Christian Spirituality. It is edited by Arthur Holder, an Episcopal scholar at the Graduate Theologi- cal Union in Berkley, California, who is active in the Christian spirituality group of the American Academy of Religion. His chief contribution to the volume at hand is an eleven-page introduction in which he stresses the interdisciplinary approach of the book and its broadly ecumenical assemblage of scholars whom Holder identifies as representative of the most significant recent developments in their field of study. There are six sections. Part 1 is the most brief, consisting of one article by Sandra M. Schneiders, whose name, it seems, must appear in any contemporary collection on spirituality. She offers a piece entitled “Approaches to the Study of Chris- tian Spirituality” in which one will not find any great revela- tions. Part 2 is no surprise. Entitled “Scripture and Christian Spirituality,” it includes two articles – one on the Old Testa- ment, and the other on the New. Part 3 is where the readers of Logos might be most interested. For this section on “Christian Spirituality in History” is the only part of the book where we have the pleasure of reading the work of such scholars as Columba Stewart, OSB, monk of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, an 164 Book Reviews

expert in Cassian and early monasticism. Stewart is assigned “Christian Spirituality during the Roman Empire (100–600).” It is unfortunate that periodization often imposes a sort of limit on the relevance of a given topic in and of itself. Thus the next article, John McGuckin’s “Christian Spirituality in Byzantium and the East,” is limited to the years 600 to 1700. This, of course, sends a loud and clear message that the spirituality of the Christian East is something that belongs in history books and museums but is not a contemporary phenomenon. How unfortunate a misconception that will be planted in the minds of undergraduate students, scholars, and interested readers of the general public. It is true that McGuckin, a Ro- manian Orthodox priest and author of, inter alia, a serious intellectual biography of Saint Gregory the Theologian, attempts to break through the temporal shackles imposed on him by the editor and/or publisher by focusing on the Philokalic renewal from the eighteenth century to the present. He mentions the Jesus Prayer, obedience to spiritual elders, and texts such as The Way of the Pilgrim as having “brought the tradition of quietness and heart-centred concentration to the attention of a large readership in the West.” Both Stewart and McGuckin have something to say in this incredibly diffuse and far-ranging volume which may well serve an adversarial role for many a student of Christian spirituality instead of being a companion. There are too many places throughout the book where the tired jabs at the supposedly world-denying and body-hating asceticism of early and especially Eastern monastics are advanced. Precious little differen- tiation is offered between Platonism and the patristic re- reading and re-application of certain Platonic ideas which von Harnack loved to call the Hellenization of Christianity but which more recent scholars have described as the Christian baptizing of Hellenistic categories of thought. There are several articles in part 4 of this collection, “Theology and Christian Spirituality,” that exhibit an understanding of the crucial contribution of patristic thought to anything that claims to be Christian spirituality. It would seem obvious that the Fathers must be acknowledged in any treatment of Christian spirituality. They gave us the very catego- Book Reviews 165

ries in which we conceive of and describe God, prayer, the world, and our selves (corporately and individually). Their identification of the very terms of reference of our experience of a triune God – who becomes enhominized and invites us to participate in the interpenetration of persons that is God’s eternal, life-creating dance of joy, in the sobering inebriation of drinking the Spirit while feasting on the medicine of immor- tality and thereby coming fully alive (gloriously but humbly) – is the cornerstone of any spirituality that claims to be Christian and any Christianity that claims to be Spirit rather than dead letter. Mark A. Mcintosh demonstrates his understanding of this core of truth as he unpacks the life-giving paradoxes woven into the very core of kenotic self-transcendence that finds its origins in Trinitarian faith and Trinitarian spirituality. “Trini- tarian belief,” he aptly explains, consists not in “an artificial set of formulas by which to regulate Christian spirituality. Ra- ther, Trinitarian belief is an itinerary, a call beckoning believers to a shared journey into mystery.” This man has been drinking at the fountain of patristic wisdom. Somewhat less successful in his appropriation of the Christological language and understanding of the Fathers is William Thompson-Uberuaga’s chapter on Christology. His attempt to present what he calls “combinative” approaches is a distant echo perhaps of the antinomic genius of the Chalcedo- nian horos which so perfectly balanced the Antiochene and Alexandrine traditions. As is currently fashionable, the author distinguishes the Antiochene position from the Chalcedonian- Alexandrine. If the Chalcedonian conclusions were so clearly leaning toward Alexandrine concerns, would we have seen such a lasting division of the Church as resulted from Chalce- don’s final decree? At times the author stretches his patris- tically based metaphors to the breaking point. Perhaps there is a fear lurking in this article that granting too much importance to the categories of the Fathers per se would undercut the relevance of the text to the trendy heterodoxies of the moment. Employing references to Nietzsche in an article on Christo- logical aspects of Christian spirituality certainly is different, but the different is not in and of itself always valuable. Still, 166 Book Reviews

the author is conversant in the essential categories of Christo- logy and even by abusing them to a certain degree demonstrates that one is hard-pressed to say anything central about the mystery of the God-man without employing the words, concepts, and frameworks of the Fathers. Robert Davis Hughes III, in his chapter on the Holy Spirit, makes clear that the Christian East has done a better job of keeping the Spirit at the centre of spirituality, and his section on the decline of pneumatology in the West would certainly prop up the self-satisfaction of Vladimir Lossky in the latter’s condemnation of the far-reaching consequences of the filioque. What is most positive in this chapter is the author’s recognition of Eastern Christianity’s ability to give positive value to the material through the doctrine of theosis, a one-word summa- tion of both the doctrine and the spirituality or lived reality of salvation. He calls it a “little-noticed paradox” but that perhaps should be geographically delimited for what he calls “little-noticed” is the idea that a strong doctrine of the Holy Spirit leads to a greater significance for physicality and, more precisely, the human body in spirituality. Is this paradox little- noticed in the East? It might not be too audacious to say that just about everything in Eastern Christianity pays serious attention to the body: from liturgy that is sung in a standing posture to fasts from food and feasts for the eyes and ears in churches dripping with icons and reverberating with bells (in belfries and on bishops) to the heavy air of services illumina- ted by beeswax candles and olive-oil lamps and perfumed by incense (sweet or bitter), appropriate to the occasion. It is too bad that he does not use this opportunity to help denigrators of patristic and later Eastern monastic ascesis to understand that the body is disciplined in monastic life (whether exterior or interiorized, as Paul Evdokimov would describe the universal vocation to choose the better part) precisely because this body has ultimate significance. It is only the loved body that is trained for eternal life. The crypto-Platonism of so many today who look with disdain on the severity of serious ascetics is something that cries out for attention and correction. Abstracting from the question of how Hughes utilizes patristic evidence one might note that the most welcome asser- Book Reviews 167

tion of this article is found at its beginning and its conclusion, viz., that spirituality is most clearly understood and is most genuinely a reflection of the living Tradition when it is “a description of the indwelling Spirit at work in the saints fulfilling the Trinitarian missio in us and the world as we all move toward the destined sacramental pleroma.” In Philip Endean’s chapter on anthropological aspects of Christian spirituality, there is little on the wisdom of the Fathers but he does hold out a tantalizing reference to “Roman and other Catholic traditions” (p. 228) but does not unpack this further. That is a pity. When one peruses the chapter on sac- ramentality and Christian spirituality, one waits with bated breath, hoping that one author will catch on to the fact that the mystical theology for which the Christian East is renowned has something to do with the holy mysteries. Alas, this is nowhere to be found. While David Lonsdale’s chapter on “The Church as Con- text for Christian Spirituality” does not explicitly refer to the Fathers, in many ways it transmits patristic categories of understanding Christian life. The liturgy is described as a school of spirituality. The issue of unruly affections and desires that disrupt both individual and corporate Christian living is treated along with the necessity for a school of discernment and the Trinitarian grammar that is its educational content. These are recognizable patterns of patristic discourse on real progress, the progress which is so often ignored by the world’s progres- sives (but which is the only progress that has eternal value). Part 5 focuses on “Interdisciplinary Dialogue Partners for the Study of Christian Spirituality.” Articles on the social and natural sciences, aesthetics, feminist and ritual studies, and the theology of religions all offer perspectives that are sometimes interesting in their propositions and at other times merely pre- dictable recitations of certain ideological positions. It is surprising that the article on “personality sciences” examines the contributions of various psychological and psychiatric trends and schools but entirely omits the work of Han F. de Witt, whose work in contemplative psychology may well establish a vocabulary that could help to connect those who speak of mental and emotional health and those who speak of a way 168 Book Reviews

towards intimacy with God. Perhaps we will have to wait for Suzette Philips, a doctoral candidate of our own Sheptytsky Institute, to uncover some of those connections. Part 6 of the Companion focuses on “Special Topics in Contemporary Christian Spirituality.” Here we find experience, mysticism, interpretation, nature, practice, liberation, and interfaith encounter. Interestingly, the article on aesthetics by Alejandro García-Rivera does look at iconography but with such brevity that the importance of the Byzantine icon as a place of encounter with God is for all intents and purposes left unexplored. In summary, the volume is an interesting idea. Its execution is a little disappointing, especially from the point of view of those who live the ascetical-mystical tradition of the Eastern Churches. When Blackwell decides to treat more fully and adequately the patristic and later Eastern Christian spiritual tradition as something alive rather than to conjure up myths of ancient “dualisms” that enslave those who are faithful to this way of experiencing God, then another review will be due and we can expect that it will be much more positive.

Andriy Chirovsky Sheptytsky Institute

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Briefly Noted

The Splendour of Orthodoxy: 2000 Years of History, Monu- ments, Art, Volume II: Patriarchates and Autocephalous Chur- ches, ed. Kostas E. Tsiropoulos (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 2000), 542+ pp.

This magnificent book harkens back to the days when bookmaking was a monastic practice requiring great skill and patience. Its handsome covers, richly decorated pages, lavish calligraphy, and outstandingly numerous colour plates, together with its articles from some prominent scholars, all combine to make this not just a book but itself a monument to the bibliographer’s art. One opens this book with a certain reverence. It is sad, then, that this book, the second of two volumes, has received almost no notice in North America. Though it has been in print for nearly seven years, no library in Canada seems to carry it, very few in the United States do, and most on-line book sellers have no information about it, still less a copy of it. Both volumes were published in Greek and English sets in Athens in conjunction with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The first volume is more chiefly devoted to the monuments and art (iconographic and otherwise) of Orthodoxy in general while the second volume covers these issues but in less detail so as to make room for an examination of the history, structure, and polity of the Byzantine Orthodox Churches. It is this latter aspect that makes this second volume so singular. When one searches for recent scholarship on Orthodox polity, one discovers that contemporary, accessible, comprehensive analysis in one volume for the twenty-six Eastern Orthodox Churches, to say nothing of the six Oriental Ortho- dox Churches or the Assyrian Church of the East, does not seem to exist. There are, of course, some well-known and often outstanding introductions to the Eastern Churches written in general terms; and there are occasional studies on the structure and polity of individual Orthodox Churches; but both 170 Briefly Noted

are often dated and do not take account of all the changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Splendour of Orthodoxy begins – but only begins – to fill this gap. Now, to be sure, the scholarship is by no means exhaust- tive, and some of it was badly edited (e.g., the book is littered with many spelling errors), but at least an attempt has been made to provide an undergraduate student or a general reader introductory information about how the Patriarchate of Mos- cow differs in its structures and governance from the Ecu- menical Patriarchate, which, in turn, is different from the other patriarchates. The structures and polity of each Church have changed through history and in relation to different political contexts and shifts in geography, and some of these changes are noted by the authors (most of whom are Greek academics). This book is introduced by two noteworthy essays. The first is “Orthodoxy Faces the Third Millennium” by Anastasios Giannoulatos, the archbishop of Tirana and All Albania and a professor emeritus in the University of Athens, who has written a moving, wonderfully irenic essay that, without any triumphalism and with sober, self-critical realism, discusses Ortho- doxy’s joys and struggles in the third millennium. (This heart- felt desire for unity comes through again in the Afterword, written, not surprisingly, by Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon, who says that “there can be no place in true Ortho- doxy for any anti-Western fanaticism or any sense of self- satisfaction that limits the catholicity of the church, exhaust- tively or otherwise, either simply to the West or to the East. Orthodoxy longs for the church of the first eight centuries and puts it forward as a model of unity.”) The second essay is by the American canonist Archbishop Peter L’Huillier of the Orthodox Church of America: “The Origins, Development and Significance of the Administrative Institutions of the Orthodox Church: Patriarchates, Autono- mous Churches and Autocephalous Churches.” L’Huillier’s essay is a mere introduction and, given that mouthful of a title, could have been much more developed, not least because, as he admits, defining and comparing patriarchates is a challenge enough but “it is far harder to define precisely what is implied by the status of autonomy and semi-autonomy.” His essay Briefly Noted 171

provides only a very small sketch painted in very broad strokes but it, like this book as a whole, has nonetheless begun to fill some gaps in the literature. That it does so in so handsome a volume as this only adds to the reader’s delight.

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Books Received

Books Received by Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies:

Unless otherwise noted, all books listed here as received by Logos are reviewed in this issue or in forthcoming issues in 2007.

Robert C. Hill, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Commentary on Psalms 1–81 (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006).

Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Chris- tianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkley, CA: Uni- versity of California Press, 2006).

Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council – Revised Edi- tion (Paperback) (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005).

Eugene Rogers, Radical Traditions: After the Spirit. A Con- structive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).

Victor Roudometof, Alexander Agadjanian, and Jerry Pank- hurst, eds., Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age: Tradition Faces the 21st Century (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2005).

Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark Swanson, and David Thomas, eds., The Encounter of Eastern Christianity With Islam (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006).

Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden, Netherlands: 2006).

174 Books Received

Kees den Biesen, Simple and Bold: Ephrem’s Art of Symbolic Thought (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006).

Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis (Brill, 2006).

John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: CUP, 2006).

Andreas Andreopoulos, In the Sign of the Cross: The Gesture, the Mystery, the History (Paraclete Press, 2006).

Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 2006).

David Frick, trans., Rus’ Restored: Selected Writings of Mele- tij Smotryc’kyj (1610–1630) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Alastair Hamilton, The Copts and the West 1439–1822: En- counters with an Ancient Church and the Language of the Pharaohs (Oxford: OUP, 2006).

Sergey Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford: OUP, 2006).

Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church From Apostolic Times until the Council of Flo- rence (paperback ed.) (Oxford: OUP, 2005).

Henny Fiska Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism (Oxford: OUP, 2006).

Michael Angold, ed., Cambridge History of Eastern Christia- nity (Cambridge: CUP, 2006).

Books Received 175

Books Received by the Saint Paul University Library:

Sergei Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).

Wil van den Bercken and Jonathan Sutton, eds., Aesthetics as a Religious factor in Eastern and Western Christianity: Selected Papers of the International Conference held at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in June 2004 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005).

Rifaat Ebied and Herman Teule, eds., Studies into the Chris- tian Arabic Heritage (Leuven: Peeters, 2004.

Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

Pauline Allen, Severus of Antioch (London; New York: Rout- ledge, 2004).

Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius (London; New York: Rout- ledge, 2004).

Robert de Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, Jean Dufour- net, trans. and ed. (Paris: H. Champion, 2004).

Tomás Spidlik, S.J., The Spirituality of the Christian East, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986–2005).

Tim Vivian, Words to Live by: Journeys in Ancient and Mo- dern Egyptian Monasticism (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005).

176 Books Received

Ivan Z. Dimitrov et al., Das Alte Testament als christliche Bibel in orthodoxer und westlicher Sicht: zweite euro- paische orthodox-westliche Exegetenkonferenz im Rilak- loster vom 8–15 September 2001 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).

Emmanuel Clapsis, ed., The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralis- tic World: An Ecumenical Conversation (Geneva: WCC Publications; Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004).

Christopher Catherwood, Christians, Muslims, and Islamic Rage: What Is Going on and Why It Happened (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003).

Vladimir Vodoff, Autour dy mythe de la sainte Russie: christianisme, pouvoir et société chez les slaves orientaux (Xe-XVIIe siècles) (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2003).

Simonetta Salvestroni, Dostoïevski et la Bible, trad., Pierre Laroche (Paris: Lethielleux, 2004).

Fedor Dostoevskii, The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works, ed., J.I. Packer et al (Farmington, PA: Plough Pub. House, 1988).

Anita Davidenkoff, ed., La Russie en devenir: mélanges en l’honneur de Nikita Struve (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2002).

Abp. Ioann of Western America and San Francisco, La Véné- ration de la Mère de Dieu dans l’Église Orthodoxe, trad., Hélène Pignot, Mikhaïl Syrokhvachine. (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2006).

Joseph L’hésychaste, Lettres spirituelles, trad.Yvan Koenig (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2005).

Books Received 177

Jean-Paul Deschler, Manuel du slavon liturgique (Paris: Insti- tut d’études slaves, 2002–2003).

Jeremy Duff, The Elements of New Testament Greek, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

André Partykevich, Between Kyiv and Constantinople: Olek- sander Lototsky and the Quest for Ukrainian Autocephaly (Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1998).

Jean Corbon, Cela s’appelle l’aurore: homélies liturgiques (Nouan-le-Fuzelier, France: Éditions des Béatitudes, 2004).

Walter Emil Kaegi, Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (Camb- ridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Cesare Pasini, Inventario agiografico dei manoscritti greci dell’Ambrosiana (Bruxelles: Societe des Bollandistes, 2003).

Serhii Plokhy, Tsars and Cossacks: a Study in Iconography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Jean-Marie Gourvil, “Ne nous laisse pas entrer dans l’épreuve:” une nouvelle traduction orthodoxe du Notre Père (Paris: F.-X. de Guibert, 2004).

Charles Bozidar Ashanin, Essays on Orthodox Christianity and Church History, 2nd ed. (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2006).

Nicolas Ross, Saint-Alexandre-sur-Seine: l’Église russe de Paris et ses fidèles: des origines à 1917 (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2005).

Paolo Odorico et Panagiotis A. Agapitos, eds., Les vies des saints à Byzance, genre littéraire ou biographie histo- 178 Books Received

rique?: actes du IIe Colloque international philologique EPMHNEIA, Paris, 6–7–8 juin 2002 (Paris: Centre d’étu- des byzantines, néo- helléniques et sud-est europeennes, 2004).

Kallistos Ware, L’île au-delà du monde, trad., Françoise Lhoest (Paris: Éditions du Cerf; Pully: Le sel de la terre, 2005).

Ronald Pepin and Hugh Feiss, trans., Saint Mary of Egypt: Three Medieval Lives in Verse (Kalamazoo, MI: Cister- cian Publications, 2005).

Robert Doran, trans., Stewards of the Poor: the Man of God, Rabbula, and Hiba in Fifth-Century Edessa (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2006).

Roger S. Bagnall and Dominic W. Rathbone, eds., Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians: an Archaeological and Historical Guide (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 2004).

Ruth Rouse, Stephen Charles Neill, and Harold E. Fey, eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1968 (Gene- va: World Council of Churches, 2004).

Donald E. Queller et al., The Fourth Crusade: the Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd rev. ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).

Brigitte Pitarakis, Les croix-reliquaires pectorales Byzantines en bronze (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 2006).

Ion Bria, Dictionar de teologie ortodoxa A-Z (Bucuresti: Edi- tura Institutului Biblic si de misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1994).

John F. Healey, Leshono Suryoyo: First Studies in Syriac (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005). Books Received 179

Claude Lepage, Les églises historiques du Tigray: art éthio- pien (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, 2005).

Henri do Contenson, Antiquités éthiopiennes: d’Axoum à Haoulti (St-Maur-des-Fossés: Éditions Sépia, 2005.

Joseph Tawil, The Patriarchate of Antioch throughout History: An Introduction (Boston: Sophia Press, 2001).

Bernadetta Wojtowicz, Geschichte der Ukrainisch-Katholis- chen Kirche in Deutschland vom Zweiten Weltkrieg bis 1956 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000).

Gillian Crow, This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005).

Alice-Mary Talbot, ed., Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints’ lives in English Translation (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998).

John D. Garvey, Seeds of the Word: Orthodox Thinking on Other Religions (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Semina- ry Press, 2005).

S.T. Kimbrough, Jr., ed., Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladi- mir’s Seminary Press, 2005).

William Peter van den Bercken, Holy Russia and Christian Europe: East and West in the Religious Ideology of Rus- sia (London: SCM Press, 1999).

Dimitri Giannelos, La musique byzantine: le chant ecclesias- tique grec, sa notation et sa pratique actuelle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996).

180 Books Received

Roberta De Giorgi, I quieti della terra: gli stundisti: un movi- mento evangelico-battista nella Russia del XIX secolo (Torino: Claudiana, 2006).

Poirot, Éliane Poirot, Le glorieux prophète Élie dans la liturgie byzantine (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, France: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 2004).

Léonide Ouspensky et Vladimir Lossky, Le sens des icônes (Paris: Cerf, 2003).

Sarah Coakley, ed., Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).

Stephen Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus (Lovanii: Peeters, 2004).

Christelle et Florence Jullien, trad., Actes de Mar Mari (Lou- vain: Peeters, 2003).

Threskeutike kai ethike enkyklopaideia, 12 vols. (Athenai: Ath. Martinos, 1962–1968).

Saint John Chrysostom, Eight Sermons on the Book of Gene- sis, Robert Charles Hill, trans. (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004).

Iaroslav Isaievych, Voluntary Brotherhood: Confraternities of Laymen in Early Modern Ukraine (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2006).

Walter C. Warzeski, Byzantine Rite Rusins in Carpatho-Ruthe- nia and America (Pittsburgh, PA: Byzantine Seminary Press, 1971).

® ® ® ®

Contributors to Volume 47, Nos. 3–4

Andriy Chirovsky is the holder of the Peter and Doris Kule Chair of Eastern Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Sheptytsky Institute in the Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University, Ottawa. He is the founder and was the first director of the Sheptytsky Institute.

Adam DeVille is a doctoral candidate at the Sheptytsky Insti- tute of the Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, where he is finishing a dissertation on Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy in response to Ut Unum Sint. He has published widely in juried, professional, and popular journals in Europe and North America.

John Gibaut is associate professor of Church History in the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, as well as an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity Col- lege, Toronto. An Anglican priest and the Canon Theolo- gian of the Diocese of Ottawa, he is also a member of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Rela- tions, and from 1992 a member of the International Com- mission of the Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue.

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theo- logical Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University in North Carolina. He has published widely, chiefly in the areas of virtue ethics and ecclesiology, and in 2001 gave the renowned Gifford Lectures published as With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology. He was named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time in 2001. His book A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic was selected as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century.

182 Contributors to Volume 47, Nos. 3–4

John Jillions is an assistant professor at the Sheptytsky Insti- tute in the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa and rector of the Orthodox Church of America’s Cathedral of the Annunciation in Ottawa.

John McGuckin is a priest of the Orthodox Church who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York where he is currently the Nielsen Professor of Early Eccle- siastical History as well as Professor of Byzantine Chris- tianity at Columbia University. He has published twenty books and over eighty research articles on religious and historical themes; and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1986, and a Fellow of the Royal His- torical Society in 1996. His The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Theology, and Spiritual Cul- ture is to appear from Blackwell-Wiley in 2007.

A.K. Pisiotis holds a doctorate from Georgetown University in the history of modern Russia and Eastern Europe. He has researched, published and taught domestic politics and institutions as well as foreign policy of modern and contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe at Georgetown and Kent State University. He recently began work as a Senior Policy Officer with the European Commission in Belgium.

Roman Rytsar is a Ukrainian Catholic priest with a licentiate in dogmatic theology from Lublin Catholic University in Poland. He lectured for two years at the Ukrainian Catho- lic University in Lviv and in the theology department “Bo- bolanum” in Warsaw. An author of several articles and reviews in Polish and Ukrainian, he is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Saint Paul University writing a thesis on Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

Sophia Senyk is a professor of Ukrainian ecclesiastical history at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

Contributors to Volume 47, Nos. 3–4 183

T. Allan Smith, CSB, is associate professor for the history and theology of Eastern Christianity at the Faculty of Theolo- gy, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, and associate fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Stu- dies. He specializes in mediaeval and modern Russian church history and theology, with a particular interest in monasticism. He is the translator of Sergei Bulgakov, The Burning Bush (forthcoming), and is currently translating Jacob’s Ladder and Unfading Light.

Resources Available from the Sheptytsky Institute

CDs and Audio Tapes 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. Two-CD Set CDN $25.00 US $21.50

Therapeia: Insights into Healing from Orthodox Theology and Spirituality Opening ceremony for the first Ph.D. (Eastern Christian Studies) program in the “New World” and keynote address by Dr. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald. December 4, 2000. Audio-cassette CDN $7.00 US $6.00

Christian, Muslims and Jews Building a Future Together in the Holy Land A public lecture by Archimandrite Emile Shoufani Melkite-Greek Catholic pastor of Nazareth (Israel). Mostly in French with some English. October 20, 1999. Audio-cassette CDN $7.00 US $6.00

What is Eastern Catholic Theology? Round-table discussion at the 53rd Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America. June 13, 1998. Two 60-minute audio-cassette CDN $7.00 US $6.00

International Symposium on English Translations of Byzantine Liturgical Texts (Stamford, June 17-20, 1998) I. Opening session with Keynote Address (Rev. Robert Taft), “Theological & Philological Accuracy” (Archimandrite Eprem Lash), “The Style of the Translation” (Bishop Kallistos Ware, Rev. Anthony Ugolnik) with discussions. Five 90-minute audio-cassettes CDN $37.00 US $32.00 II. “Survey of Translations” (Rev. David Petras, Bishop Nicholas Samra, Archimandrite Serge Keleher, Dr. Paul Meyendorff, Rev. John Chryssavgis, Archimandrite Daniel Griffith) with discussions. Four 90-minute audio-cassettes CDN $30.00 US $26.00 III. “Singing the Translation” (Michael Thompson, Mark Bailey) with discussions. Two 90-minute audio-cassettes CDN $18.00 US $15.00

COMPLETE AUDIO PROCEEDINGS Eleven 90-minute audio-cassettes CDN $60.00 US $52.00

XIXth Congress of UCWLC (June 25, 1998) Opening speeches and keynote address by Fr. A. Chirovsky 90-minute audio-cassette (Bilingual) CDN $7.00 US $6.00

Video Tapes

The Iconography of Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Church in Chicago A theological commentary by Fr. Andriy Chirovsky on the iconographic program of a properly decorated Byzantine church. Ecclesiology in colour! Available in English or Ukrainian. Coming soon on DVD Please contact the Institute for prices

To Write an Icon A six-hour video course giving step-by-step instructions on the process of creating a traditional Byzantine icon. Schemamonk Damian of Holy Trans- figuration Monastery in Redwood Valley, California is the instructor for this in-depth study, offering not only the technique, but the theology of every facet of the process and a solid introduction to the spirituality of the icono- grapher. Coming soon on DVD Please contact the Institute for prices

Symposium Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky – Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Nov. 17, 1994 Presentations include: “The Liturgical Activity of Metropolitan Andrey” (Fr. Peter Galadza); “Metropolitan Andrey on Prayer and the Wisdom of God” (Fr. Andriy Chirovsky); “Metropolitan Andrey and Social-Ethical Questions during the German Occupation” (Dr. Andrii Krawchuk) VHS (NTSC) CDN $20.00 US $17.00

Canadian residents add 6% GST. Please contact Sheptytsky Institute Publications for shipping rates.

Sheptytsky Institute Publications, Saint Paul University 223 Main Street Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1S 1C4 tel. (613) 236–1393 (ext. 2332) fax (613) 782–3026 [email protected] www.ustpaul.ca/Sheptytsky

Books Available from the Sheptytsky Institute

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. The study treats clerics, divine worship, and the administration of the sacraments – viewed in the context of the Ukrainian Church. A significant portion of the work collects into one volume the major sources of the Particular Law of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. These sources are reproduced in their original languages (Latin and Ukrainian), together with English translations. xiv, 426 pp. Price: CDN $49.95 US $43.00

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. Price: CDN $58.95 US $49.95; bulk discounts available.

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 Ana- lecta. 524 pp. Price: CDN $49.95 US $43.00

Following the Star from the East: Essays in Honor of Archimandrite Boniface Luykx. Andriy Chirovsky, ed. ISBN 1–895937–02–7 This collection of scholarly articles and popular reminiscences highlights the life and work of Archimandrite Boniface, the founder of Holy Transfiguration (Mount Tabor) Monastery in Redwood Valley California. In addition to articles on the archimandrite’s accomplishments and a bibliography of his extensive published works, the volume includes scholarly studies in the fields of monasticism, liturgy, iconography, and patristics by over 20 scholars from a variety of universities. xii, 274 pp. Price: CDN $20.00 US $17.00

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. Price: CDN $20.00 US $17.00

Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine – the Legacy of Andrei Sheptytsky. Andrii Krawchuk ISBN 1–895937–04–3 A stimulating study of the legacy of a remarkable religious leader who left his distinctive mark on twentieth-century Christian thought. A Catholic who defended the rights of persecuted Orthodox Christians and who saved Jews during the Holocaust, Andrei Sheptytsky transcended his own Polish and Latin-rite background, devoting his life to upholding universal Christian ideals among the Eastern-rite Catholics of Ukraine. Exhaustively documented, this is the first analysis of an inspiring moral response to delicate Ukrainian-Polish and Catholic-Orthodox issues, socialism and communism, church-state relations and the Nazi occupation. xxiv, 404 pp. Price: CDN $49.95 US $49.95

Canadian residents add 6% GST. Please contact Sheptytsky Institute Publications for shipping rates.

Academic Programs of the Sheptytsky Institute

Undergraduate Programs The Sheptytsky Institute (Saint Paul University, Faculty of Theology) offers the following undergraduate programs of study.

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.

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 independently; 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.

For a current listing of 2006-2007 courses, please consult www.ustpaul.ca/Sheptytsky

The 2006-2007 Academic Year Summer Programs (2006)

The Twentieth Annual Sheptytsky Institute Summer Intensive Program at Ottawa, Ontario, June 24 – July 22, 2006.

THO 2138 Selected Topics in Eastern Christian History I: Sources for the Study of the Early History of the Church of Kyiv (Ukraine), X–XIII Century (Prof. Andrew T. Onuferko)

THO 2144 Selected Topics in Eastern Christian Spirituality I: A Contemporary Reading of The Way of a Pilgrim. (Prof. Suzette Phillips)

The Tenth Annual Summer Institute at Holy Dormition Monastery in Univ, Ukraine, June 24 – July 22, 2006.

THO 2144 Selected Topics in Eastern Christian Spirituality I: Eastern Christian Spirituality and the Encounter with the Post-Modern World (Prof. Andriy Chirovsky)

THO 2306 Selected Topics in Eastern Christian Liturgy/Sacraments I: Introduction to Liturgical Studies (Prof. Peter Galadza)

The 2006-2007 Academic Year Undergraduate Courses in Ottawa

FALL 2006 THO 2130** Foundations of Eastern Christian Theology (Prof. John Jillions)

THO 3319* Eastern Christian Doctrine I: Trinity, Christ and Holy Spirit (Prof. Andriy Chirovsky)

THO 3322* Byzantine Eucharistic Liturgies (Prof. Peter Galadza)

WINTER 2007 THO 3301* Hermeneutics and Exegesis in Eastern Christianity (Prof. John Jillions)

THO 3305 Eastern Christianity and the Encounter with World Religions (Prof. Andriy Chirovsky)

THO 3318* Eastern Christian Spirituality (Prof. Maxym Lysack)

THO 3324* Introduction to Eastern Christian Ethics (Prof. Peter Galadza)

** Compulsory basic (Foundational) * Compulsory

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.

For a current listing of 2006-2007 courses, please consult www.ustpaul.ca/Sheptytsky

The 2006-2007 Academic Year Graduate Courses in Ottawa

FALL 2006 THO 6310 Theological Hermeneutics (Prof. James Pambrun)

THO 6375 Foundational Texts in Eastern Christian Church History (Prof. John Jillions)

THO 6378 Resources and Methods for the Study of Eastern Christianity (Prof. Andriy Chirovsky)

THO 6388 Foundational Texts in Eastern Christian Liturgical Theology (Prof. Peter Galadza)

WINTER 2007 THO 6319/6379 Issues in Eastern Christian Hermeneutics and Exegesis (Prof. Marina Greatrex)

THO 6387 Issues in Eastern Christian Liturgical History: Byzantine Hymnography (Prof. Peter Galadza)

THO 6792 Histoire des institutions, mouvements, et personnages importants du christianisme oriental: L’école parisienne de la pensée orthodoxe russe (Prof. John Jillions)

MISSION STATEMENT

THE METROPOLITAN ANDREY SHEPTYTSKY INSTITUTE OF EASTERN CHRISTIAN STUDIES

The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies is a centre of higher learning, research, ecumenical understanding and prayer. 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. As an academic unit of the Faculty of Theology, the Sheptytsky Institute offers accredited undergraduate and graduate degree programs to both men and women – laity, religious and clergy.

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.

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.

Spring 2000

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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

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