Source: Επίγνωση, Issue 88, Spring 2004.
The ecumenical movement now
counts behind it several decades and has produced various examples of writing,
upon which certain reflections can be made. Depending on the point of view,
Ecumenism has been praised, has undergone serious criticism, has created hopes
or has accumulated sorrow, even division among the children of the Church. In
any case, it is a subject that rightly returns and provides food for thought,
so that reflection may be renewed and brought into coordination with the
conscience of the Church. It is rather self-evident that the discussion
concerning Christian unity cannot be confined to closed conferences of
specialists, nor can the result be evaluated on the basis of the resonance of
the relevant discussions among a few academic theologians, Orthodox and
non-Orthodox alike. On the contrary, a crucial problem that must be addressed
is the finding of theological criteria which will evaluate each result with the
conscience of the broader ecclesiastical body as the standard. In order for this
to be done, first the theological vigilance of the Orthodox on these matters
must be secured, and secondly their trust in the overall process. These require
much labor, which I think has not been done up to the present.
We shall set forth certain
reflections, which we address with the criterion of our understanding of the
good of the Church and with respect toward the persons involved and toward the
institutions they represent.
In discussing Ecumenism at the
level of basic principles, we ought to have recourse also to the very roots of
the differences among the Christian traditions. Christians share a common
religious framework, the common historical tradition of the first centuries.
However, within this framework there arose essential theological differences,
which led to different meanings and different interpretations. Thus, in the
course of time, different traditions were formed regarding the very meaning of
the Church, of salvation, and of the Christian life. This is the grievous
reality which every effort for a true and deep, and not an external and
superficial, unity must confront.
If the division of Christians
were due only to historical problems and to obsessions and misunderstandings of
a political nature, then it would undoubtedly be the Christian duty of all to
work, at the appropriate time, so that forgiveness and repentance might come
for whatever was committed mutually (or even unilaterally, it makes no
difference). In this case, the ecumenical movement would have a considerably
easier task to accomplish, since, by goodwill alone, it could be clarified that
the differences that accumulated do not touch the deeper meaning of the faith
of the Gospel. However, when behind the different traditions there is concealed
a different ontological basis, a different interpretation of the meaning of the
faith, which touches life itself, thought, culture, the image of God and of the
world, then indeed one understands that the course which a genuine ecumenical
effort worthy of Christians must undertake is long, laborious, and requires
endurance and immense patience.
On the contrary, if the
ecumenical movement for Christian unity is not characterized by this endurance
over time, but hastens ahead, setting aside essential differences, on the altar
of “coexistence within diversity,” that is, of mere cohabitation, then it sets
political and not ecclesiastical, theological goals, and justly becomes the
object even of severe criticism.
The root of the theological
difference between the Orthodox and the Western tradition—this which leads Fyodor
Dostoevsky to see in the Western teachings a crucial alteration of the
Evangelical proclamation, as it was also seen by the Fathers of the East—lies
in Augustinian theology, which runs like an axis through Western civilization
from the first centuries until today. It is a matter of an ingenious
transposition of Roman law, of the Neoplatonic ontological tradition, and
perhaps also of certain Manichaean, Gnostic elements, within the framework of
the Christian thought of the first centuries. This beginning had sufficient
dynamism to secure for the West a theological particularity, something like a
distinct identity, in contrast to the corresponding Greek and, more generally,
Eastern one. At the same time, however, it introduces a closed conception of
spirituality, an individualized inwardness, a mysticism. Man withdraws into an
inner intuition of divine truths through the intellect, through his psychic faculties
which comprehend by analogy with the divine and eternal truth. God, on the
other hand, within the framework of Augustinian theology, withdraws into His
thereafter characteristic for the West “Silence,” into His perfect
non-participation in the affairs of the created world, since His incommunicable
essence is ontologically identified with His Energy.
In this dynamic philosophical
construction, there is present in seed the dogmatic tradition which constituted
the basis of the differentiation between East and West. Also present in seed is
the tradition of the Scholastics, as well as contemporary expressions of
Western philosophy. This theological framework embraces both the Roman Catholic
and the Protestant tradition, with the result that it sets certain common terms
for the approach to these two great Christian currents.
The ontological theological
tradition of the East was formed on entirely different foundations, through the
work of saints such as Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New
Theologian, and Gregory Palamas, whose work constitutes an essential critique
of the errors of Western ontology. The center of Orthodox ontology is the
evangelical demand for the renunciation of the hard shell of the “ego,” its
opening to personal communion, the demand of Christian humility with the aim of
the unity of creation in God, the overturning of the facts of the Fall. A
theological example of writing in this direction is the use of apophatic
language, which renounces objective certainties and absolute schematizations.
Central is the understanding of man as the personal image of the personal God,
who participates in God through the Divine uncreated Energies. At the center of
Orthodox ontology stands the image of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor: an
image of the deep change of fallen nature within the grace of the Divinity,
which is poured forth by virtue of the Resurrection of Christ and transforms
all things. God, who in Western ontology is distant from the nature of the
created, in Orthodox theology participates through His Energies and becomes the
Center of Creation in the person of Christ.
Thus, Christ in the Orthodox
tradition is by no means a mere instrument of the divine economy for the
salvation of men from “sin.” The ontologization and objectification of evil and
of sin lies outside the universe of Orthodox ontology. Christ is our ontological
prototype, the very root of human nature in its eschatological adoption and in
its final glory, which is granted to it by God. His own Incarnation is that
which makes us human; His own seal grants us human dignity; His own
Resurrection and glory is our own destiny.
These differences we must bring
to light; this is the proclamation which we have a duty to set forth through
the ecumenical dialogue—not in a manner of self-justification, which in any
case stands in radical opposition to the above ontological demands, but in the
spirit of humility and offering, the spirit of love and of the Cross. It is not
possible for the Orthodox to renounce the birthright of the sacred tradition,
as we received it from our Fathers, under the pretext of equality in dialogue.
As Metropolitan Philaret observes in the “Sorrow Epistles,” which he sent to
the primates of the Orthodox Churches (1969 and 1971), the prism of ecumenical
practice—where Orthodox and Westerners are equally right and equally wrong—is
mistaken. Evidently, the issue here is not persistence in a secularized claim
of “right,” but the unwavering decision of the Orthodox to remain within the
exact framework of Tradition and to present it as the basis of unity, as a call
to return—a return to the sacred tradition which, although it belongs to them
historically, they too must labor to rediscover and to present not only to
those opposite them, but also to the Orthodox themselves. The Orthodox also
must come to know and to return to their tradition.
It is characteristic that within
the framework of the ecumenical movement, even theologians who represented
pro-Orthodox currents of return to the sacred tradition express views which see
in the West the necessary complement of the Christian Church: “…it would be
very unwise to erase Saint Augustine, if we wish to assume the whole heritage
of Christianity…” Yet does the sacralization of the Augustinian tradition,
through its direct or indirect acceptance by Orthodoxy, truly advance Christian
reflection and assist in a turning toward the spirit of the Gospel?
Christian unity, however
desirable it may be, cannot constitute an end in itself. If a long-term
struggle is not undertaken that aims at a common ontological basis within the
framework of the sacred tradition, the entire undertaking may prove successful,
but it will lack true spiritual significance. This work cannot concern only
academic theologians and scholars. It must go beyond the lecture halls and
touch a critical mass, so that it may become a living experience and culture,
both in the West and among us Orthodox.
Perhaps such an effort does not
immediately help the matter of “unity” and may entail enormous delays. However,
only when these elements of tradition permeate in a corrective manner the life
and culture of East and West, only then will it be possible for a meaningful
ecumenical unity to be forged, with an ontological basis, so that a common
“rational” sacrifice may be offered.
We are often confronted with
statements and “agreed” texts which do indeed promote ecumenical “unity,” but
fall short of the above presuppositions. They are rather constructed upon the
basis of a scholastic, “technical” conception of the Church, which is far from
the spirit of the patristic tradition, since it disregards theology and
doctrine as a presupposition of unity in truth. Thus we learn that East and
West preserve the same Apostolic Succession, as if succession were simply a
mechanistic result of the laying on of hands, and not succession in the faith
and in the sacred teaching. How is it that divergent spiritual traditions,
divided for centuries, preserve the “same priesthood” and the “same mysteries,”
without a long-term convergence in theology, which would ultimately also touch
the sacramental life of the Churches? For the Orthodox, the mysteries are not a
“technical” matter, deriving from an institutional ecclesiastical conception,
but presuppose the truth of theology, since man can be found in the Spirit only
in truth. And of course, no one denies the possibility of participation in the
energy of the Spirit for every Christian soul that thirsts; however, common
succession and a common sacramental life among traditions that subsist
institutionally can take place only as a result of unity and not as a basis of
dialogue with the aim of rediscovering unity.
Often, again, the demand for
Christian unity collapses into an appeal for tolerance within diversity. This
observation is sorrowful, not because tolerance and the acceptance of diversity
are wrong, but because they ought simply to be self-evident! Although the
acceptance of diversity ought to be a given in the pluralistic society of
today’s world, this oversimplification is of a political nature and does not
belong to the spiritual order. Spiritual unity is accomplished upon the basis
of a common meaning and inevitably has a theological, ontological dimension.
There, dogmas play a role not as mere formulations, but with respect to the
meaning of life which they reveal or perhaps conceal.
Dogmas, therefore, are judged on
the basis of the measure and the fullness of life that has been handed down
from the Apostles and the Fathers, and agreement in them—even in their
detail—precedes every declaration or even simple manifestation of unity.
The rediscovery of this common
measure of life is also the only true meaning that the ecumenical effort can
have, without which unity in Christ proves to be an unattainable chimera.