Antoine Arjakovsky
The following article by Antoine Arjakovsky, originally
published in The Ecumenical Review, Vol. 58, Nos. 3–4 (July–October
2006), pp. 265–279, is reproduced for the purpose of examining the theological
and ecclesiological implications of the contemporary ecumenical movement. Bold
emphasis has been added by the editor to draw attention to passages of
particular significance for traditional Orthodox ecclesiology. The author's
original text has otherwise been preserved. – Blog Admin.
Dr Antoine Arjakovsky, an Orthodox layman originally from
France, holds a doctorate from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, Paris. He is Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the
Catholic University, Lvov, Ukraine.
God, in your grace, transform the world...
Transform us in the offering of ourselves so that we may be
your partners in transformation
to strive for the full, visible unity of the one Church of
Jesus Christ,
to become neighbours to all,
as we await with eager longing the full revelation of your
rule
in the coming of a new heaven and a new earth.
God, in your grace, transform the world.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
- The Message of the Ninth Assembly of the WCC
There has certainly been real
ecumenical progress at Porto Alegre in the form of consensus decision-making,
the adoption of the recommendations of the Special Commission on Orthodox
Participation in the WCC, the adoption of substantial documents, particularly
in the area of ecclesiology, overall organization at a highly professional
level, the warm welcome by the Christians of the host country, the support
shown by President Lula of Brazil, and many church leaders, and much more.
There are, however, some
outstanding questions, and it now falls to those elected to the central
committee to work on them. And the new central committee meeting in Geneva in
September 2006 turned its attention to the seven WCC programme areas: The WCC and
the Ecumenical Movement; Unity, Mission and Spirituality; Public Witness:
addressing power and affirming peace; Justice and Diakonia; Ecumenical and
Faith Formation; Inter-religious Dialogue and Cooperation; and Communications:
giving voice and witness in the world.
The foremost question, for me,
however, is this: did we really hear at Porto Alegre the call of the Spirit for
the conversion of our churches? Will the redefinition of ecumenism sketched
out at Porto Alegre encourage the Orthodox to redefine themselves? Are the
Orthodox also prepared to be transformed as they are touched by grace, the
grace of encountering others?
I have decided to write this
report from a personal perspective. First of all, because, although I am a
member of a number of Orthodox associations, this article represents only my
personal viewpoint. But, most of all, because at Porto Alegre, as I listened to
Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Dr Norberto
Saracco and Cardinal Walter Kasper, I found myself lifted up to a higher plane
where academic theology is not separate from ecumenism as it is actually lived.
Six months on, it is still difficult to come down from those heights.
Progress made at the Ninth
Assembly
There was a fear before the
assembly that the WCC, by holding its assembly on the campus of the Pontifical
Catholic University, the venue of the World Social Forum in past years, might
succumb to the often naive siren voices of antiglobalist ideology. But
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin put a stop to that temptation. Even though
anti-globalist thinking can be given a Christian interpretation (as was seen in
the testimony by Vera Araujo on the economic experiment of the Focolari
movement), as a representative from a former communist country, he said in
effect that the Church cannot afford the luxury of indulging in new ideologies.
It must work with international institutions such as the WTO and the World Bank
and transform them from within. This is already being actively--and
successfully--done by APRODEV with the European Commission in Brussels thanks
to the efforts of Robert van Drimmelen, a former WCC staff member.
The consensus process has perhaps
been a useful safeguard against a drift into utopianism. This way of making
decisions that takes the views of everyone into account does not result in a
decision based on the lowest common denominator but in the maximum of truth in
the Spirit. Its aim is to rediscover, after five centuries of parliamentary
methods, the spirit of the Apostles' Council in Jerusalem. Jill Tabart explains
in her book Coming to Consensus [1] that the process of parliamentary
decision-making in an adversarial way, by means of majority vote, was actually
only formalized in 1583 in Thomas Smyth's Lex Republica Anglorum. The
time has now come, mainly for reasons of long-term effectiveness, for the
churches to present a new decision-making model. The aim is not to gain victory
over others by means of argument, but to "engage in a process of
discernment in which God's will is sought by mutual attentive listening to the
views of each one". In this way diverse views ensure a successful outcome,
since all share a common belief. Towards the end of the assembly this
decision-making by consensus proved fruitful. But the future success of the
ecumenical movement depends first and foremost on the spiritual strength of its
members, and that is a double-edged sword.
The ecclesiology text Called
to Be the One Church is more a convergence text than a consensus text. It
does, however, have the merit of directing the movement for Christian unity
towards new horizons at a time when many are talking of a crisis in the
ecumenical movement. In effect, it asks each church to state "the quality
and degree of their fellowship and communion, and ... the issues which still
divide them". The Church is a 'who' and not a 'what', as also appears in
the Faith and Order text The Nature and the Mission of the Church [2]. It is
thus normal for it to have different levels of awareness and embodiment, all
of them necessary, all of them worthy of respect, and with ways of doing
things appropriate to each level.
The ecumenical movement can thus
be understood as a vertical spiral, able to be loose at the base (like the
Global Christian Forum, provided that it shares the spirit of the WCC) and much
tighter at the top (with--and why not?--the blessing of local
inter-communion, when the bishops are satisfied that there is spiritual
communion). The ecumenical movement is here in perfect harmony with the
current search aiming to promote local ecumenism [3]. That will also be one of
the major concerns of the European Ecumenical Assembly at Sibiu in September
2007. Dr Peter Bouteneff, of St Vladimir's Institute, opened up the way for
this on the Orthodox side, when he stated at the Rhodes Consultation in 2005,
retracing a whole tradition of Orthodox thinking from St Basil the Great to
Father Sergei Bulgakov, that the Orthodox churches should change their attitude
towards their ecumenical partners [4].
WCC theologians thus desire to
allow the churches individually to take steps forward on important issues such
as: common observance of the date of Easter, holding a joint ecumenical
council with the Roman Catholic Church, and mutual recognition of baptism,
eucharist and ministry. It is, of course, unrealistic at the present stage
to hope for rapid progress towards eucharistic unity between the Russian
Orthodox Church and the Neo-Pentecostal communities of Brazil! None the less,
locally, Christian churches can work very actively together. In Moscow there is
a Catholic-Orthodox cultural centre, which functions very harmoniously. In
Ukraine, there is a Christian academic association, where university personnel
from the Catholic, Greek-Catholic and Orthodox churches (from the three jurisdictions)
meet together in peace.
For the first time in the history
of WCC assemblies, the Orthodox have declared their full support for the
decisions of the assembly. This more relaxed attitude in the Orthodox world
comes as the result of the work of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation
in the WCC, which cleared the ground in 1999-2002, particularly by its
insistence on the issue of ecclesiology, by initiating the process introducing
decision-making by consensus, and by making a clear distinction between
confessional and interconfessional common prayer. Tribute should here be paid
to the notable work of the Special Commission and to its co-moderators,
Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima (who replaced Metropolitan Chrysostomos of
Ephesus) and Bishop Rolf Koppe [5].
Outstanding issues
There remain, of course,
outstanding issues after Porto Alegre. How will the WCC now put into practice
its new vision of the Church? What are the issues that theologians must now
work on to encourage the expansion of the ecumenical movement? How will the WCC
be able to continue to develop with a budget more than 40% of which depends on
the Evangelical Church in Germany, whose financial contribution is being
reduced? What are the challenges facing the Orthodox churches who take
seriously their involvement in the WCC?
Putting the new vision into
practice
Regarding the first question, it
would seem to me to be logical in the first place for the central committee to
work on ways of encouraging those churches that genuinely seek to be more
closely involved with the WCC as a fellowship of sister churches. The WCC must
be logical in its aims. Now, a neutral stance, or one that treats everybody
equally, would lead to stagnation. By contrast, if churches succeed in
demonstrating that in the course of the past years they have entered into a
certain number of agreements of mutual recognition (from the most basic level
of recognizing that dialogue with such or such an ecclesial community is a
possibility, to the most advanced level of mutual recognition of ministries),
then the WCC should gradually devote more time and means to the projects of
churches proportionately to the results achieved [6].
That would certainly have the
effect of further encouraging those churches that had made most progress in
dialogue, while at the same time respecting the caution of those churches who
are now setting out on the journey of discovering one another's unity in the
faith. It could be imagined that, where doctrinal agreements have already been
reached (as in the case of the Chalcedonian and Pre-Chalcedonian Orthodox
churches), that policy would encourage church leaders to take further steps
towards even closer relationships.
It would also be logical to
expect that after Porto Alegre the WCC would make a particular effort at
education. In fact, the consensus method could run the risk of seeming to be a
device used by rich countries in those countries that do not know even the most
elementary democratic procedures. It is, however, a technique that can be
adapted to any context, provided that it is taught and learned there. The
Ecumenical Institute at Bossey could play a major role with the theological
formation desk of the WCC in this task of communicating knowledge.
I have not seen any proposal for
ecumenical distance learning in the WCC programmes. At the Institute for
Ecumenical Studies at Lvov, we are currently setting up a programme of distance
learning for our master's degree in ecumenics, which is internationally
recognized. Would it be possible for us also to contribute, with WCC help, to
the formation of leaders skilled in consensus methods in the countries of the
former Soviet Union?
Regarding the reception of the
Porto Alegre documents, as a basic condition for effective implementation of
the decisions taken there, it seems to me that the WCC needs to rethink the way
in which some of its commissions work. They could become places where
ecumenical spaces are created and opened up, rather than simply driving forces
devoted to spreading the idea of ecumenism. The role of Faith and Order could
be reassessed, if its Commission were reorganized as a body that gathers,
collates, analyses, synthesizes and distributes much more regularly to the
member churches the present state of 'levels of awareness' within the Una
Sancta.
In this regard, one cannot but
rejoice at the recent decision of the Faith and Order Standing Commission to
nominate Bishop Vasilios (Karayiannis) of Trimithus as its moderator. He hopes
to take forward, together with Dr Tom Best, important issues such as the date
of Easter, the celebration in 2007 of the 25th anniversary of the document
Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, and the one hundredth anniversary of the Week
of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2008. This will make the work of Faith and
Order more widely accessible to a greater number of people. Moreover, the new
programmes set up by the WCC central committee, such as 'Faith, Science and
Technology', are fine examples of ecumenical thinking turning its attention to
all spheres of life.
This new vision will give
theologians the opportunity to be much closer to day-to-day ecumenical issues,
to appreciate ecumenical activities regarded as somewhat irregular that cannot
easily be fitted into WCC categories (such as mixed marriages, professional
associations, lay ecumenical communities, etc.) and to communicate to the media
much more consistently and convincingly the many examples of fruitful
cooperation between Christians, instead of the all too often simplistic
presentation of existing divisions. This will also give the WCC the opportunity
to have access to a greater number of theologians, now that networking of ideas
and initiatives can take place via the Internet. Such a fresh approach will
finally help theologians to shed the somewhat negative image of being
obstructionist and getting nowhere that they have gained in people's minds in
many churches!
This follow-up of agreements
reached and their incorporation into programmes, this more widely accessible
and better recognized education programme and this popularization of
theological research would enable everyone to understand better where the causes
are to be found for the unjustifiable lack of love between our churches.
New themes and new approaches
The above proposals enable us to
reply more easily to the second question on future issues to be considered. As
I see it, priority ought to be given to everything that makes it possible for
us to go beyond a way of thinking that thinks only at world level. Our
churches could cease clinging to their confessional identities, if traditional
ontological theology were to be replaced by a theology of love. This
theology, aspired to by Benedict XVI (Deus caritas est), Geoffrey
Wainwright (Doxology) and Christos Yannaras (Essai sur le Cantique
des Cantiques), is contextual but not relativist. Its starting point is
persons and their experience, and it concludes, against all canon law
arguments that, when two or three are gathered in his name, Christ is in their
midst.
That is why I hope and pray for
an ecumenical theology of marriage, an ecumenical theology of economics, an
ecumenical theology of the liturgical calendar, etc. I also believe that our
recent ethical problems could benefit from being exposed to such theologies.
That does not, of course, mean that the Church should give equal recognition to
everybody, nor that it should downgrade its vision of the kingdom. We all have
our particular enthusiasms. But such a theology would remind the world of the
power of God's mercy. The gospel indeed declares that the Father causes the sun
to rise on the farthermost corners of the earth.
It is my dream also that the
churches that enthusiastically received the speeches of Archbishop Anastasios
of Tirana and Archbishop Rowan Williams pleading for a humble Christian
self-identity, will explore the theme of the Wisdom of God as a possible key to
inter-religious dialogue. Serious consideration of the biblical figure of the
Wisdom of God as a personal reality and not simply as a divine attribute
(sophiology) makes possible a rapprochement with Islamic mysticism, Jewish
spirituality, and even Asian traditions. In the Koran it is written that
Jesus was taught Wisdom by Allah. For Jews, the Torah is nothing less than the
Wisdom of God. Finally, following Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians, where he
describes Wisdom as polypoikilos, i.e. manifold, dialogue is a
possibility with Hinduism and Buddhism. [7]
It would also be good to see the
WCC (as Bishop Vasilios Karayiannis advocates) more consistently following up
certain documents, such as Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, of course, but also
the 1997 Aleppo document "Towards a common date for Easter". It so
happens that on 8 April 2007 we shall be granted once again, by God's universal
mercy, the opportunity to celebrate Easter together. Does that not give us an
opportunity to fix once and for all the observance of Easter by all Christians
on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the northern spring
equinox, moving it by one week if the date coincides with the Jewish Passover,
following the other recommendation of the Council Fathers in 325? [8]
Was not the decision by the
Council of Nicea to fix a common date for Easter for all Christians according
to the lunar calendar determined primarily by a desire to indicate that
Christ's resurrection reached to the farthest ends of the created world? The
318 Fathers solved the long-standing conflict with Pope Anicetus, not by
astronomical proof, but by taking a joint decision in openness to the Holy
Spirit's leading.
Church leaders would gain much
credibility in the eyes of the faithful if they managed to persuade their
synods to observe Easter in that way. Of course, some groups will continue to
observe Easter according to their own calendar. That has always happened and,
to an extent, that can be accepted by the majority of the faithful, for the
resurrection of Christ is unique and is celebrated as such every Sunday. But
the bishops who have accepted the WCC agenda, the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity and the synaxis of the Orthodox churches will not be
able to be criticized by the faithful. On the contrary, the responsibility
for a possible schism would rest on the shoulders of those Christians unwilling
to manifest the visible unity of the body of Christ for the life of the world.
Challenges for the Orthodox
churches
Whatever may have been the
reasons given to justify the absence of a common eucharist at Porto Alegre, one
fact stands: the Orthodox churches, despite the pressing requests of Christophe
d'Aloisio, the President of Syndesmos (the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth),
were not able to concelebrate. At a time when the whole world is witnessing
growing rivalry in the leadership race between Moscow and Constantinople, that
only reinforces the impression that the Orthodox world is passing through a
serious crisis. There is no end to the disputes between the two churches: the
non-recognition of the Orthodox Church in America, the struggle to take over
parishes in Western Europe, the setting up of parishes of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate (Constantinople) in Estonia, and even in Ukraine, etc.
Moreover, the process of
reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church in
diaspora, one of the church bodies originating in Orthodoxy which is most
opposed to the ecumenical movement, is giving rise to a number of problems. Is
it possible for the same church both to be associated with a body opposed to
any common prayer with non-Orthodox, and also to have voted four months
previously for all the decisions taken by the WCC assembly?
Finally, how is it possible for
certain Orthodox theologians--although there is no unanimity here, as is shown
by the example of the mixed French Catholic-Orthodox Commission--to condemn the
Eastern Catholic churches when they express the wish to be recognized by Rome
as local churches in communion with other Orthodox churches? [9] How can they
on this point be divided among themselves--as has been shown by Professor John
Erickson [10]--on the issue of autonomy and autocephalicity, which is
recognized in the Tradition of the Church?
These questions, which must not
be evaded, lead me to go back to the probing comment made to the Orthodox by Dr
Mary Tanner at the conclusion of the work of the Special Commission. She said, "Is
there a place in your ecclesiology for other churches?" [11] Is
Orthodox ecclesiology compatible with participation in the ecumenical movement?
As many eminent Orthodox theologians present at Porto Alegre think--I am
thinking of Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna, Fr Heikki Huttunen, Fr Viorel
Ionita, Fr Emmanuel Clapsis, and others--has the time not come for us to
admit that a great number of heresies, hiding beneath a cloak of apophatism,
have accumulated in the course of the years of persecution suffered by the
Orthodox?
The need to redefine Orthodoxy
To arrive at an answer to those
questions, we need to make a short excursus into contemporary Orthodox
theological thinking. But, first of all, academic honesty and spiritual
humility demand that we admit clearly that the Orthodox world is passing through
a deep crisis, both as regards unity and more generally as regards its
spiritual strength. The representatives of the Orthodox churches at their
meeting at Rhodes in January 2005 admitted as much in the prayer that they
produced: "In your Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, You have
renewed us. Yet we continue to deny this gift. We fall away, and need to be
called back in repentance. We have distanced ourselves from you: do not
remember our sinfulness!" [12]
The authors of that prayer were
not writing abstract elegant language but were acknowledging publicly the sins
of historic Orthodoxy. Peter Bouteneff, professor at St Vladimir's Orthodox
Theological Seminary, expressed the wish that, once rationalism had been
condemned, Orthodox theology might become more 'kataphatic'. Anne
Glynn-Mackoul, an Orthodox American lawyer, suggested that Orthodox should shed
their constant stance of being the victims of one Babylonian captivity or
another. If that repentance is sincere, an in-depth investigation, illumined by
the Spirit, into the foundations of Orthodox identity will again become
possible.
Orthodox historiography regards
the history of the Church as only possible if we admit that the Church itself
is a personal reality embracing the whole of history. The divine/human nature
of time gives an understanding of how historical narrative is itself in
evolution. Our attitude to the past is coloured by our experience of the
present and of the future.
To see this, we only have to
compare Istoria Religii (The History of Religions) by Father Alexander
Eltchaninoff, written in collaboration with Pavel Florensky and Vladimir Ern
[13] at the beginning of the 20th century, with The Orthodox Church [14]
written by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware in 1963. In the course of the 20th
century Orthodox historiography became less ethnic and more open about its
plural identity--Russian, Greek and Arab.
However, despite all their
efforts, historians of Orthodoxy in the 1960s did not fully succeed in making
universal their narrative of the 'historic journey of Orthodoxy'. Fr Alexander
Schmemann has failed to explain how it was that after the 1054 schism Western
Christianity became heterodox overnight. Olivier Clement in his admirable Byzance
et christianisme (Byzantium and Christianity) does do justice to the
orthodoxy of Western Christianity up to the Council of Florence and thus
extricates Orthodoxy from its tradition of being culturally restricted to the
Russian and Byzantine empires. But, in his 1961 essay on L'Eglise Orthodoxe
[15] (The Orthodox Church), he fails to be convincing when he states that the
crisis of modernity affecting the Orthodox Church in the West has not changed
the apostolicity of the Orthodox Church in the East. While there is a clear
physical continuity from the church of the apostles to the church in the East,
the historic continuity is not always obvious between the Acts of the Apostles
and the Pidalion, the manual of canon law of the Greek Church.
Today the idea of orthodoxy has become synonymous in the eyes of the public and the media with a rigid and even fundamentalist attitude. It has thus been devalued and has lost the proper significance that it has acquired in the history of Christianity.
However, this significance proper
to Orthodox Christianity has itself been exaggerated in the modern and
contemporary age, most often by Christians themselves, to the point of its
taking on a new and exclusive meaning. A recent work contains the following
definition: "The concept of 'Orthodoxy' describes that group of Eastern
churches originating in the Byzantine tradition and in communion with the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople." So, those who are not
fortunate enough to belong to a church in the Byzantine tradition, or those
belonging to that tradition who do not live exclusively in communion with that
second Rome, are obliged to choose between assured salvation and a false
definition!
This view of orthodoxy as
exclusive is, in most cases, not deliberate. It is mainly, as I see it, the
result of muddled thinking. The monopolization of orthodoxy and its
exclusive identification by one single Christian church creates many problems,
for it is unacceptable from an Orthodox perspective to turn the Orthodox faith
into a concept or an institution. It is not justifiable to dissociate the idea
of Christian orthodoxy (with a small 'o')--however radical it might be--from
the living tradition of the Orthodox Church. In both cases, that means that we
need to present the history of the Orthodox Church as being orthodox and to
describe orthodox Christianity as tending towards Christian Orthodoxy.
Fr Andre Borrely, a French
theologian of Orthodox confession, gave an open definition of Orthodoxy in a
lecture at the Institute for Ecumenical Studies at Lvov in November 2004:
“There is an historical fact that
should give Orthodox cause for thought and that is that the Ancient Church did
not rebaptize Arians. In fact the seventh canon of the Second Ecumenical
Council at Constantinople in 381 decided that, after renouncing their heresy in
writing, Arians were to be marked or anointed with holy chrism in the form of a
cross on their forehead, their eyes, their nose, their mouth and their ears.
“Not to rebaptize someone who
has already received baptism is a recognition that there is orthodoxy beyond
the visible perceivable boundaries of the Orthodox Church. It is an
admission that, while nothing heterodox exists in the lex credendi or
the lex orandi, the teaching or the worship, of the Orthodox Church, the
whole of Orthodoxy is not contained within the visible perceivable boundaries
of the Orthodox Church.
“Truths are firmly believed,
realities are intensely experienced, and acts--often heroic acts--are sometimes
performed that are truly Orthodox, although situated outside the visible
boundaries of the Orthodox Church. The belief and the worship of the
Orthodox Church comprise all that is contained in the definition of Orthodoxy,
but more than one of the constituent parts of Orthodoxy can and must be
discerned in the faith and worship of Christians outside the empirical
boundaries of the Orthodox Church.
“Philosophically speaking, I
would say that the concept of Orthodoxy is more comprehensive than that of the
Orthodox Church.” [16]
It is thus preferable to define
Orthodoxy as a symbolic idea representing two realities. On the one hand, the
term 'orthodoxy' designates a way of acting that is a manifestation of the life
of the Church, a way of thinking specific to the Christian revelation, and a
way of organizing a community in conformity with the Beatitudes. On the other
hand, the word 'orthodoxy' also signifies a self-awareness, a specific identity
marked by the striving of a community towards the Orthodox Kingdom as it is
represented.
Orthodoxy is thus not
something that one possesses or does not possess. That is why the history
of Orthodoxy is not static. It is the story of the mystic life of the Bride and
the Lamb and the consequent striving of Christian communities to attain it. The
history of Orthodoxy extends beyond the orthodox self-awareness of a particular
church at a given time. It is the narrative which brings together the life
of the mystery of the Church and the activities, sometimes faithful, sometimes
faithless, of the churches, all of which are striving towards orthodoxy in
their belief.
There is thus a spiritual,
European history of Orthodoxy, which does not present the Body of Christ as a
railway track with forks and sidings. That sort of approach is often governed
by pseudo-legal or pseudo-theological a priori thinking. I think of the concept
of canonical territorial jurisdictions, which is insufficiently linked with the
pastoral care that we see in early church tradition. Such thinking is often
merely the result of a simple misunderstanding of other people, resentment, or
indeed nothing more than sheer human arbitrariness.
To take the example of the
tradition of hesychasm, which to the Orthodox seems so typically Orthodox,
Father Andre Louf has demonstrated at a seminar at the Bose Community in Italy
that the West too has experience of the quest for solitude and silence, the
practice of continuous prayer and openness to the divine energies. According to
him, Nil de la Sora and Guillaume de Saint Thierry are very close to each
other. It is also known that St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain owes much to St
Ignatius Loyola, just as Bossuet read Nicolas Cabasilas widely. The
spirituality of inner monasticism of someone such as Paul Evdokimov was also
prepared over a long period by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.
That is why an attempt can be
made to reinterpret the ages of Orthodox identity as follows. Orthodoxy has
been understood and lived historically in four ways:
The first age, from the time of
the early Christian communities to the conversion of Constantine in 312, was
when Christianity was experienced eschatologically, essentially in expectation
of the return of Christ. Then Orthodoxy was understood as simply glorification.
[17]
The second age, from 312 to the
failure of the Council of Florence in 1439, was when Christianity was lived
politically, with Christians as participants in the building of an earthly
city. Then Orthodoxy was understood as the correct truth, authentic belief.
[18]
The third age, from 1439 to 1918,
was when Christianity was lived confessionally, through Christians' belonging
in a particular territory to a universal church. Then Orthodoxy was understood
as faithful memory, beyond the conflict between faith and reason. [19]
Finally, the fourth age is when
Christianity is lived 'sapientially', i.e. as a way of life attempting to give
adequate expression to its faith and its works. Now Orthodoxy is experienced as
new life in Christ by the Spirit. [20] In this sense, orthodoxy means
catholicity, participation in the whole triune divine life. Understood as
striving towards the orthopraxis of the Kingdom, Orthodoxy is also
rediscovering, beyond all the mistakes and tentativeness of the historic
churches, the prophetic sense of the Reformation as a return to the living
Tradition and of the Counter-Reformation as a defence of the primacy of Peter.
This pragmatic approach
enables us to include non-confessional orthodoxy within the history of
Orthodoxy. It also allows confessional Orthodoxy to purify its memory of
the dross of the past. This pragmatic approach, this Jacob's ladder of
Christian awareness, provides a paradigm for the plan of history in general but
needs also to be seen in the context of its age, of religious communities and
of individuals.
Seen in this Christian
perspective, the history of Orthodoxy holds many surprises for those who have
ears to hear. History becomes the power of the resurrection. Ecclesiology
becomes a discovery of the angelic hosts. Theology ceases to be the defence
of a fortress but becomes an invitation to spiritual adventure.
Conclusion
By stating loud and clear
that, beyond all confessional allegiance, its profound identity is life in
Christ in the Holy Spirit, the Orthodox world could allow the whole of the
Christian world to reach out anew towards Orthodoxy. No one could accuse the
Orthodox church of unhealthy proselytism, but all would rejoice in enjoying its
blessing. As WCC theologians write in the document The Nature and the Mission
of the Church, "The Spirit given to the Church is the Spirit of the
Lordship of Christ over all creation and all times. The Church is called to
remove all obstacles to the full embodiment of what is already its nature by
the power of the Holy Spirit." [21]
Time is short. As Rev. Dr Walter
Altmann, WCC central committee moderator, said at its meeting in Geneva in
September 2006, the decision after the Porto Alegre Assembly by the Brazilian
Methodist Church to withdraw from the National Council of Christian Churches in
Brazil shows that there are real tensions between the churches. The political
situation in the Middle East is a reminder to Christians of how much their
witness, in the full sense of the word, will be necessary to avoid a fresh
conflict between all fundamentalisms. During the recent conflict the
peace-making role at the United Nations of Dr Tarek Mitri, the present Minister
of Culture of the Lebanese government and the former WCC staff member
responsible for inter-faith dialogue, provides ample evidence of this.
In order to solve the
institutional problems facing the ecumenical movement, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia,
the WCC general secretary, has ventured to speak of 'friendship' to the central
committee members. It could well be possible that this rediscovery of the idea
of friendship, of the depth of meaning in Christ's words "I have called
you friends" (John 15:15) will prove to be the surest path towards the
kingdom for the ship of the ecumenical movement.
Translated
from the French, Language Service, World Council of Churches.
[1] Jill
Tabart, Coming to Consensus, A Case Study for the Churches, Geneva, WCC,
2003.
[2]
"The biblical images already treated as well as others as the flock (John
10:16), the vine (Isa. 5, John 15), the bride of Christ (Rev. 21:2, Eph.
5:25-32), God's house (Heb. 3:1-6) and the holy city the new Jerusalem (Rev.
21:2), evoke the nature and the quality of the relationship of God's people, to
one another and to the created order.", The Nature and Mission of the
Church, Geneva, WCC, 2005, pp. 22-23.
[3] Le
partage eucharistique est possible, theses sur l'hospitalite eucharistique,
(Eucharistic sharing is possible, theses on eucharistic hospitality), Centre
d'Etudes CEcumeniques (Strasbourg), Institut de recherches oecumeniques
(Tubingen), Institut de Recherches Confessionnelles (Bensheim), Fribourg,
Academic Press, 2005.
[4] Peter
Bouteneff, Looking Towards the Future: Ecclesiological Implications and
Challenges of the Special Commission Report, Grace in Abundance, Orthodox
Reflections on the Way to Porto Alegre, pp. 92-99.
[5] For
myself, I was impressed by the quality of the interconfessional common prayer
at the Assembly. In my Porto Alegre diary for 18 February I wrote: This
morning, at the interconfessional common prayer in the great tent where twice a
day there gather 4,000 representatives from all Christian confessions from some
one hundred countries from around the world, Peruvian music accompanied an
Australian prayer, read by the worship leader:
"God of
wandering camels and faraway places, Of remote red gorges and Aboriginal faces;
God of deep silences and awesome setting sun, Of the moonlit plains and dingoes
on the run; ... God of immense horizons and blowing sand; Confront us and teach
us within this cryptic land."
The crowd
then prayed a traditional Urdu prayer 'Khudaya raeham kar, Khudaya raeham',
meaning 'Lord, have mercy on us'. At the end of the time of prayer, while
Brazilian drums rolled, a smiling young woman presented me with a sunflower. I
find this 'world spirituality' deeply moving. There is no trace of New Age in
it, but rather a sense of purity, of mountain-top experiences. On the other
hand Lydia d'Aloisio makes me double up with laughter when she tells me about
the Bible study she had attended the previous day (and there was no
maliciousness in her story just the comedy of cultural dissonance). A woman in
green dungarees read Bible verses out loud and invited the particpants to hum
"ahumm" while moving from foot to foot! Really you can find
everything in the ecumenical movement.
[6] I am
very pleased that the WCC finances so many social initiatives (such as help for
people with HIV, support for minorities and for the poor etc ...). But does the
WCC have any indicators which allow for an evaluation of the "added
value", the long term effects and results obtained through programmes
financed by the churches compared with the state or NGO programmes? Robert van
Drimmelen proposed that the WCC ask the churches to supply reports of the state
of development in their own countries.
[7]
Dominique Cerbelaud, Ecouter Israel, une theoloqie chretienne en dialogue,
(Listening to Israel, a Christian theology in dialogue), Paris, Cerf, 1995. The
deepest and most thorough attempt to think about Wisdom from an ecumenical and
inter-religious perspective that I know of is that made by Father Sergius
Boulgakov in his book L'Epouse de l'Agneau (The Bride of the Lamb),
Paris, YMCA Press, 1944. Cf. Antoine Arjakovsky, Essai sur le pere Serge
Boulgakov, philosophe et theologien chretien, Paris, Parole et Silence,
2006.
[8] Taking
the Jerusalem meridian as the reference point.
[9] On this
question of the ecclesiology of the Eastern Catholic churches see also, Antoine
Arjakovsky, Entretiens avec le cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Paris, Parole et
Silence, 2005.
[10] John
Erickson, The Challenge of our Past, Crestwood, SVSP, 1991, chap VII.
[11] Mary
Tanner, "The significance of the Special Commission", Grace in
Abundance, op. cit., p. 117.
[12] Report
of the Consultation, Grace in Abundance, op. cit., p. 9.
[13] A.
Eltchaninoff, V. Ern, P. Florensky, Istoria Religii, Moskva, Ruski Put',
2004 (1909).
[14] T. Ware,
The Orthodox Church, updated ed., Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1993.
[15] Olivier
Clement, L'Eglise Orthodoxe, Paris, PUF, (1961), 1985, p. 5.
[16]
www.ucu.edu.ua/fr
[17] For
instance we know that 'doxa' is the translation used in the Septuagint
for the Hebrew term 'kabod' which means glory of God.
[18] This
definition can be found in the patristic writings from the time of the Arian
controversy onwards.
[19] In
Poland identification is even made between the Orthodox world and the world of
the pravoverny (those who have true faithfulness).
[20] This
quotes a definition of Orthodoxy given by Sergius Boulgakov on the first page
of his book L'Orthodoxie, (Orthodoxy) published in Paris in 1931. This
definition is reinforced later in the book.
[21] The
Nature and the Mission of the Church, op. cit., p. 32.
Source: The Ecumenical Review, Volume 58, Issue 3‐4,
July‐October 2006, pages 265-279.
