A Crisis in Contemporary Orthodox Ecclesial Self-Awareness: Is Any Notion of “External Correctness” Allowable in Orthodoxy?

by Bishop [Metropolitan] Photii of Triaditza

Former Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XVIII (2001), No. 3, pp. 2-10.

 

 

Your Eminence, Your Grace, Reverend Fathers, Pious Monks and Nuns, Beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Lord, Dear Guests:

His Eminence, Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna has bestowed on me the great honor of opening the annual Clergy Conference of the American Exarchate of the Holy Synod in Resistance of the True (Old Calendar) Orthodox Church of Greece. The fact that this conference is taking place here in Bulgaria, under the vaults of our cathedral and thousands of miles away from the home of its participants, is itself a moving testimony to the catholicity of Holy Orthodoxy, which, in its supra-national and meta-historical catholic fullness, unites, through Christian truth and the love of Christ, people of different nationalities and cultures. Moreover, our spiritual communion, here and now, is a living expression of this fullness, a positive contrast to a phenomenon which, to some degree, touches all of us and which I shall essay to address in my talk before this audience today; that is, the crisis posed for our contemporary Orthodox ecclesial consciousness by the idea of a criterion of “external correctness" in the Church. Begging your prayers and gracious condescension, I trust that the joy of our communion, as well as our common love of suffering Orthodoxy, will assuage the bitter fare poured out upon human souls by the enemy of our salvation, ever inflicting new wounds on the brutally crucified Body of Christ's Bride, the very Church of God, against which, nonetheless, the gates of hell shall not prevail (St. Matthew 16:18).

I. The crisis in Orthodox ecclesial self-awareness today is obvious. Likewise obvious are various of its manifestations, which can be observed and described. But to comprehend this crisis in its whole scope, to penetrate into its nucleus, to identify and articulate its essential aspects—this is a difficult and demanding enterprise, and it is perhaps at the least auspicious of times that I venture to take such a task upon myself. Nevertheless, the crisis in Orthodox self-awareness in our days is a reality that has been acknowledged, and it can be analyzed and assessed from various standpoints. The value of each attempt in this direction is defined not solely by its intellectual attributes, but foremost by its spiritual authenticity, since the value of any such attempt must not, and cannot, be measured by the egocentrism of theological intellectualism, which occasions such broad and sweeping problems, or by formal erudition, political adroitness, literary skill, or short-sighted, legalistic smugness. The only possible criterion of assessment must be, above all else, our pain: the ability to feel spiritually the depth and tragedy of this crisis—the ability to feel both one’s own infirmities and, as well, the power of Christian truth that “is made perfect in weakness’’ (cf. II Corinthians 12:9). To imagine oneself so adequately gifted that, in his own right, simply by virtue of being Orthodox, he is competent to speak about this or that aspect of the contemporary crisis of the Orthodox ecclesial consciousness, and to do so “objectively,’’ “from the periphery’’; to consider oneself competent to speak authoritatively and to hold forth as though from the high court of a rational judge—all of this means that one has become a party to a very perilous facet of the very crisis in question. When we point out deviations from the truth and the spirit of Orthodoxy, when we speak against this or that delusion, we should not forget that delusion of one kind or another also inevitably lurks within ourselves; indeed, that nothing but a vivid awareness of our own susceptibility to delusion can, together with our love for the truth, shield us against every other delusion. Hence, the God-inspired words of St. Ignaty Bryanchaninov: “We are all in a state of ‘prelest’ [‘spiritual delusion’]. It is, above all, this awareness that protects us against ‘prelest’" (St. Ignaty Bryanchaninov, Complete Works, Vol. I, Ascetic Essays [in Russian] [Moscow: “Pravilo Very’’ Orthodox Editions, 1993], p. 228).

II. “Is any notion of ‘external correctness’ allowable in Orthodoxy?” This rhetorical question directs our attention to a process which unfolds eschatologically in time, both in scope and intensity, reaching its culmination in the concluding point of historical time itself. This is how St. Theophan the Recluse understands the fulfillment of this process. In his opinion, what will determine the spiritual state of mankind will not be human disbelief and obvious heresies alone. The Bishop writes: “There will be those who will adhere to the true Faith as it has been handed down [to us] by the Holy Apostles and preserved in the Orthodox Church; however, not a small part even of these will be Orthodox in name only, while in their hearts they will lack the stature that their faith requires, since they will have loved this age.... Even though the name ‘Christian’ will be heard in all places, and even though one will see churches and see order in them, all this will be a mere appearance; and within: a genuine apostasy. On this ground will be born the Antichrist, and he will grow in the same spirit of mere appearance, that of having no relationship to what is essential” (St. Theophan the Recluse, Works, “An Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles: Epistle to the Thessalonians, Philippians, and Hebrews” [Moscow: Sretenie Monastery Publishing House, 1998], p. 308). Therefore, it is in this internal falling-away from the fullness of Orthodoxy as the Truth, as the Way, and as faith and life in Christ—or, if examined yet more minutely, in the unnatural disintegration of the notion of “correctness” and in its deprivation of intrinsic authenticity, of its formalizing, of its ominous loss of meaning—that St. Theophan the Recluse sees the nucleus of apostasy, and even the environment that will bear and nurture the Antichrist himself. To be sure, we are referring to a phenomenon which has brought disgrace upon Christians, to one extent or another, and which has assaulted the life of the Church in every age. The historical examples of this are quite ample. The cunning mind of the relativist instantly seizes on them, in fact, making of them a banner for the call to “situational historicity,” “realism,” or “theological sobriety,” over and against “super-Orthodox” fundamentalism, all sorts of apocalyptic hysteria, and the unhealthy absolutization of phenomena well-known since ancient times in the life of the Church. To be sure, lamentable as it is, such foibles and distortions exist, and a clever polemicist can forge them into effective arguments. Nonetheless, there is something else that we should not forget: from the soft armchair of intellectual self-assurance, pseudo-spiritual pomposity, conformity, and earthly comfort, it is difficult to see those black streams, coming in sudden floods through the ages, ever more portentously merging, today, into a single muddy torrent, which is assailing and fiercely buffeting the ship of the Church from all sides.

III. The degree to which the notion of “correctness” becomes formalized and loses its authenticity is determined by the degree to which we retreat from communion with, and are alienated from, the inherent authenticity of the Orthodox way of living and the Orthodox spiritual life; i.e., from an essential understanding of Orthodoxy as the fullness of the Truth and as faith and the life in Christ. It is precisely this process of the fatal alienation of the Orthodox from Orthodoxy (which is tantamount to alienation from Christ) that eschatologically accelerates the course of time. Today, this process is impulsively precipitated by a modern anti-Christian civilization. The ultimate aim of this “mystery of iniquity,” increasingly global in its activity, is to “clone” Orthodoxy in some way, creating, in its place, a duplicate, an “Orthodoxy” to some extent externally correct, but a spiritually inauthentic “Orthodoxy”; to wit, a kind of devitalized “Orthodoxy,” reduced to a cultural, political, religious, and folk institution—in mentality, an “Orthodoxy” that is earthly in every way and, though wrapped in “heavenly” metaphors, pulsating with the rhythm of this age, internally reformed “after the rudiments of the world” (Colossians 2:8) and torn away from Christ.

To diminish the significance of this process in our days, to shrink its dimensions in the name of a “well-balanced approach that takes into account the reality of modernity” and to reduce it to the straw man brandished by “super-correct” fundamentalists—this is to adduce that converse evidence by which, alas, this process gathers greater power. The late Father Seraphim (Rose) wrote in 1975: “Modern Church problems are not at all as simple as we see them in our comfortable historical era, and many reefs await us in the future. The common problem of all Orthodox Churches in our days is the loss of a taste for Orthodoxy, having gotten accustomed to the Church as though she were something understood pro ipso, replacing Christ’s Body with an ‘organization,’ with the idea that Grace and the Mysteries are somehow ‘automatically’ bestowed. Logical and prudent conduct will not be able to guide us through these reefs; one needs much suffering and experience, and only a few will understand...” (Father Seraphim Rose, from a letter of 19 February/4 March 1975, cited in Vertograd-Inform, No. 8 [53], 1999, p. 35).

What is especially tragic in this crisis is the fact that the most powerful surge in the loss of a taste for, or a sense of, Orthodoxy is largely brought about by none other than the multitude of Bishops: “I am grieved by the lack of interest in salvation in our world, and especially among the Bishops,” the Optina Elder and struggler for piety, Abbot Nikon (Vorobyoff), wrote already in 1948 (Hegumen Nikon [Vorobyoff], “What is Left to Us is Repentance,” in Letters [Moscow, 1997], Letter 127, p. 186). What harsher blow against ecclesial consciousness could there be than this: that this self-awareness should be shattered by those who should be its highest exponents? What more severe trauma could one be called to bear in the life of the Church than this: that the builders have become destroyers and the pastors wolves? Unallowable concessions before the “powerful of this age,” unbelief, coldness, indifference, and a disdain for Orthodoxy— whether visible or intellectually sublimated in an attempt to rethink the identity of Orthodoxy according to the realities of the modern world: these are not, in our days, only isolated phenomena; rather, they are exceedingly virulent cancer cells, which in many, indeed in the most critical, instances spread from the head down to the rest of the body. The consequences of this touch the whole dark spectre of a home-spun Orthodoxy characterized by a folk culture, prompting a multifarious, revisionist pathos for “modernizing” Orthodoxy, leading to clearly intentional betrayal and destruction at the highest levels of the Church, both administratively and theologically, and something at times camouflaged under the mask of a “traditionalist” Church polity. And what is most appalling about all this? The offense against “these little ones” (St. Matthew 18:6), disorientation, decay, the chaos in ecclesial self-awareness, and estrangement from “what is essential” by its substitution with the “spirit of mere effect.” It is essential that I underscore, once again, that most hurtful, in this sense, are the destructive changes in the consciousness of the Episcopate itself. Disheartening though it is to say, by their conduct, the bulk of the leading Hierarchs in so-called “official” Orthodoxy do not stand forth as the ultimate protectors of the Truth, but elevate their own persons to the rank of the prime criteria of veracity, correctness, and canonicity in the Church. This is probably the most destructive of the mechanisms by which an “organization” comes to replace the “Body of Christ.” It is telling that the more liberal Hierarchs, while they speak of tolerance, ecumenical openness, and broadmindedness towards the heterodox and the modern world, are, at the same time, markedly authoritarian, intolerant, and absolutely closed to dialogue when it comes to those Orthodox who, out of a most sincere concern for, and anxiety about, fidelity to the dogmatic and canonical traditions of the Church, raise questions that are “awkward” for the “official” Church authorities. As a result, the Hierarchy authoritatively challenges, sullies, and even restates the lofty values that guide every Orthodox Christian’s conscience: pious reverence, trust, and sacred obedience to the Bishop and the Council of Bishops as the supreme keepers of Truth. This is the tragic outcome of a long process which, under the influence of various factors, arises and develops in consort with an ever-widening rupture, over time, between the dogmatic and canonical traditions of the Church. Rare in our times are those with a vivid awareness of the fact that the Church’s canonical tradition is part of her dogmatic tradition; that the canons are, in fact, dogmas of Faith applied to the practical life of the Church. Today the canonical tradition of the Church has been reduced to Church law—an autonomous system of rules. Canonical rules, primarily focused on faith itself and spiritual in their essence, have been translated into the formal language of jurisprudence and reinterpreted in ways alien to the spiritual essence of the Church (see St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 [1964], pp. 67-84). It is here that we discover the root cause of the potential replacement of the “Body of Christ” by an “organization”: in the artificial distinction—and this with Roman Catholic, Protestant, and political overtones—between the idea of the Church, in her spiritual dimension, as a mystical entity both Heavenly and earthly and the Church as an organizational structure. As a result of this distinction, there emerges either what we may call an ecclesiological spiritualism (i.e., a quasi-Orthodox version of the theory of the Una Sancta, at times moderate and at times quite excessive in expression), or the political ecclesiology of Sergianism (having as its primary clandestine principle the survival of the “organization” by any means as a precondition for the survival of the “Body of Christ”) and the consequent unproductive ecclesiological experience that proceeds from it. According to the latter, the solid, palpable reality of the Church lies in its ecclesial “organization,” while the prime reality— the Heavenly and earthly Church as the Body of Christ, for which “the organization” is but a mere external expression—is relegated to some “idea,” to an “ideal,” to something sublime but conditional, as regards the reality of “the organization.” In all three of these instances, we see different ways of replacing the Body of Christ with something else: in the first instance, with an obviously non-Orthodox theological abstraction; and in the latter two cases, with an “organization” struggling to survive within, and according to, the rudiments of this world. The bolder applications of this last kind of substitution inevitably lead to an ever-growing and sharper conflict between two different “ways of thought”: “On the one hand, there is the notion of organic continuity in a Church which knows herself to be a reality, a body, a living continuity..., [and]...on the other hand, a legalistic notion, in which the whole of Church life is nothing but a system of jurisdictional subordination” (see “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: the Canonical Problem,” by Father Alexander Schmemann, “Orthodox Christian Information Center,” http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/ schmem_canon.htm). Here we come to see the unnatural, frightening dilemma in which some Hierarchs of “official” Orthodoxy have, in our day, placed thousands of racked human consciences: whether to trust in the spiritual authenticity of Tradition, in the Church as a “living continuity,” or to be loyal and obedient to the Church as a “system of jurisdictional subordination.” If the hierarchy embraces, or even simply tacitly tolerates, anything opposed to ecclesial Truth, then it comes to contradict itself, placing itself under the condemnation of the canons, which express this very Truth. Thusly, the Hierarchy itself comes to constitute an erosive contradiction to a truth that is obvious to the Orthodox conscience; namely, that obedience to a Bishop and a Council of Bishops is obedience to the Church, a prerequisite for participation in the Body of Christ. Now, it is, of course, true that there should not exist any contradiction between obedience to the Episcopate and obedience to Truth. But how harmful it is when sincere people, suffering because of the wounds in the body of the Church, reduce her existence, out of a desire not to inflict new wounds therein, to the existence of her Hierarchy, who, as it were, “automatically” bestow the Grace of the Mysteries. If you will forgive me, as regards the trust and the upright intentions of such individuals, for an “organization” to supplant the “Body of Christ” through the impermissible equation of the Episcopate with truthfulness, correctness, and canonicity, let alone with an abstract or coarsely personal principle of self- sufficient validity, is to put forth a non-Orthodox, magical understanding of the Church. The young Father Alexander Schmemann writes: “There grows around us a peculiar indifference to authenticity, to elementary moral considerations. A Bishop, a priest, or a layman can be accused of all sorts of moral and canonical sins. The day that he ‘shifts’ to the ‘canonical’ jurisdictions, all of these accusations become irrelevant. He becomes ‘valid’ and one can entrust to him the salvation of human souls! Have we completely forgotten that all the elements of the Church are not only equally important, but are also interdependent, and that what is not holy—i.e., right, correct, just, and canonical—cannot be ‘apostolic’? In our opinion, nothing has more harmed the spiritual and moral foundations of Church life than the truly immoral idea that a man, or an act, or a situation is ‘valid’ simply by a purely formal act of ‘self-validation.’ It is this immoral doctrine that poisons the Church.’’

IV. In the context of what I have hitherto said, there is also contained the essential issue of widespread ecumenism. Many Spirit-bearing Hierarchs and theologians, expressing the living voice of Orthodox Tradition, warn us with great concern that ecumenism is the chief heresy of our time, an ecclesiological heresy which distorts the Orthodox doctrine of the Church. Unlike the ancient heresies, however, ecumenism does not seek a clear and consistent doctrinal expression, presenting itself as truth and openly essaying to replace a doctrinal truth spawned or formulated by the conscience of the Church. It is precisely for this reason that it is difficult to provide an exhaustive definition of ecumenism, making our struggle against it all the more difficult. There are but only a few Hierarchs and theologians who consider themselves Orthodox and who, at the same time, confess ecumenism in its most drastic form—that of interreligious syncretism— or profess ecumenism in the “purest’’ sense of an ecclesiological heresy: that is, that as a result of the divisions among Christians, the one visible Church of Christ no longer exists and is now being revived in the bosom of the ecumenical movement. A greater number of these liberal Hierarchs and theologians simply aspires to “broaden’’ or “expand’’ the Church beyond its borders and gradually to shelter within her all of those heresies which have heretofore been hewn away from the Body of Christ. And perhaps the largest number of these “church politicians’’ is found among those who do not delve more deeply into theological thought, but accept the ecumenical movement in a pragmatic sense, principally in terms of its powerful role as a religious and political reality that one can perceive in various ways, yet from which one must not separate himself, unless he should wish to lead the most miserable of marginal existences, outside the “realities of the modern age.’’ This is the rationale of “political ecumenism’’; however it is not the logic of the Orthodox ethos, of Orthodox ecclesial self-awareness. Incidentally, it is precisely the politics of diplomacy that clearly marks the attitude of the “official” Hierarchy towards ecumenism (within the whole spectrum of positions, from various levels of criticism to approbation); and in the categorical refusal of the “official” Hierarchy to treat ecumenism as a heresy, we see a trying perplexity and even a loss of awareness of “what the Church of Christ is and what fidelity to her entails” (see Hieromonk Seraphim [Rose], “Митрополит Филарет Нью-Йоркский” [“Metropolitan Philaret of New York”], Русский Пастырь, Nos. 33-34, 1999, p. 56). The call not merely to withdraw from the World Council of Churches, but to condemn ecumenism at a synodal level on the basis of theological analysis and the evaluation of the essence of ecumenism at a conciliar level, remains a monopoly of what are called “super-Orthodox” or so-called “arch-conservative schismatic groups.” Here again, we see the manifest symptoms of “external correctness”: “correctness” has not been compromised, since the Hierarchy has not officially proclaimed the presence of innovation in the Faith; therefore, the Church, i.e., “the organization,” remains ostensibly intact. Indeed. But at the same time, behind this Facade, the “Body of Christ” suffers a series of ruthless blows. And when, through the catalytic action of ecumenism, the clash between the “two ways of thinking” cited above comes to a head—i.e., when, in order to preserve the authenticity of Tradition and “the organic continuity of the Church,” the “system of jurisdictional subordination” is rent—, every possible curse and accusations of schism fall on the heads of those aspiring to remain in the fullness of Christ’s Church. But in matter of fact, in the event of a threat of heresy, a walling-off from the “official” jurisdictional structure is a move towards the preservation of the very “organic continuity” of the Church, prompted, above all, by the ambiguous, elusive, “political” attitude of the Hierarchy towards heresy, or, in other words, by the substitution of Christ’s Body with “the organization,” that is, by the system of Church administration and jurisdiction, reaching its fruition in heresy itself. To call this walling- off a schism is logical only from the standpoint of a logic which defends, at any cost and by all means, the formal, self-sufficient validity of this administrative and jurisdictional system, regardless of whether it is a lawful, external exponent of the Body of Christ or has begun to transform itself into a substitute that mars its authenticity. Should we scrutinize this matter informally, we might define as schism such divisive action as that by which one falls away from the canonical jurisdictional system of the Church as well as from her organic spiritual continuity as the Body of Christ, given that these two no longer exist in their natural state of unity and integrity.

V. In conclusion, I would like to describe several manifestations of the symptoms of “external correctness,” which pose no small danger to traditionalist Church bodies. To be sure, I am here dealing merely with a very general, tentative and not fully-developed model, since each traditionalist jurisdiction has its own specific features and since this is not the proper place to consider this matter in a more detailed fashion. At any rate, we are speaking about a danger which, in some sense, is the opposite of what I have been hitherto examining. If in “official” Orthodoxy there is a strong tendency to refashion correctness into an array of elements irreconcilable with correctness, into a “spirit of appearance without relation to what is essential,” in the traditionalist jurisdictions, more often than not motivated by a sincere zeal “not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2), there exists the danger of identifying the spirit with the letter, the contents with the form, and, as a consequence of this, the illicit absolutization of correctness. A serious danger threatens the ecclesiological self-awareness of these jurisdictions in their attempt to find their own ecclesial identity. The tragic divisions among the Orthodox traditionalists, and this many years in duration, has provided lamentable examples of what might be called an ecclesiological independence and a rigidity that reduce the catholicity of the Church, i.e., “the correct and salvific confession of the Faith” (to quote St. Maximos the Confessor), to a sense of infallibility and exclusivity, seeing one’s own jurisdiction as the sole exponent of the true Church. Consequently, instead of recognizing the tragedy of this division among sincere and zealous Orthodox Christians, it is sealed, until a time unknown, with unbending theological rigidity, a blend of sincerity and fanaticism—expediency and slavery to the letter—in which a theological opinion is quickly “transformed” into Church doctrine and a “universal” standard of truth.

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Alas, there are so many reefs that surround us, and so many reefs await us in the future, too. Indeed, we need much suffering and much experience: we need a deep awareness of our own delusions, an awareness that will protect us against further delusion, in order to begin to live in concord with the heartbeat of the suffering Body of Christ, which is yet in its anguish triumphant and, though being humiliated, racked, crucified, and supplanted, is... invincible. We need great fidelity and intense faithfulness, so that its heartbeat becomes our heartbeat, its humiliation our humiliation, its suffering our suffering, its glory our glory. The road stretches ahead. Lord, illumine our darkness!

Thank you for your patience.