John Kalomiros: A Few Thoughts on Ecumenism

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.