Contemporary Orthodox theology: an attempt at characterization. Meyendorf I., prot. Orthodox theology in the modern world
From "Return to the Fathers" to the Necessity of Contemporary Orthodox Theology
The theological trend of "return to the fathers" and the desire for de-Westernization have become the hallmarks of Orthodox theology. For most of the twentieth century, this determined the basic paradigm of Orthodox theology to such an extent that it overshadowed all other theological issues. In the published translation of Pandelis Kalaicidis's article, there is concern about the isolation of Orthodox theology and a call to overcome it in order to achieve the openness of the ecumenical nature of Christianity and the catholicity of human thinking.
"Return to the Fathers"
At the First Orthodox Theological Conference held in Athens in 1936, Fr. Georgy Florovsky, perhaps the greatest Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. and the largest figure in the ecumenical movement in modern Orthodoxy (he was one of the founders of the World Council of Churches, as well as an outstanding member and representative of the Faith and Order commission), declared the need for Orthodox theology to “return to the fathers” and to free the Western theology - captivity that occurred at the level of language, assumptions and thinking. Moreover, he repeatedly returned to this text, using the term "pseudomorphosis" to describe the long process of romanization and Westernization of Russian theology. Many theologians of the Russian diaspora, especially the theologian-emigrant Vladimir Lossky, as well as Archimandrite Cyprian Kern, Archbishop Vasily Krivoshein, Mira Lot-Borodin, Fr. John Meyendorff and others. He also gained an ardent following in such traditionally Orthodox countries as Greece, Serbia and Romania; very indicative in this respect is the example of the outstanding Orthodox theologians Fr. Dumitru Staniloe (Romania), Fr. Justin Popovich (Serbia) and Greek theologians of the 60s generation. XX century. The theological trend of "return to the fathers" and the desire for de-Westernization have become the hallmarks of Orthodox theology. Throughout most of the XX century. this to such an extent determined the main "paradigm" of Orthodox theology, for many theologians it has generally become the main task, which overshadowed all other theological issues, as well as all the difficulties that have appeared and continue to appear in the modern world, while other theological movements such as the Russian school of theology were gradually lost sight of. Although all this movement was undeniably personified by Fr. Georgy Florovsky, we must not forget or underestimate the most important contribution that other theologians (for example, those mentioned above) made to its crystallization. Their influence reached such a significance that many opinions, which as a result prevailed, sharply diverge from the well-known theological views of Fr. Georgy Florovsky (for example, "forward to the fathers", openness of history, etc.), which thus gives an even more conservative character to the movement, which already by its nature ("return") contained similar elements.
So, XX century. was an era of renewal of Orthodox theology, which for the first time in many centuries, under the influence of the Orthodox diaspora and ecumenical dialogue, dared to go beyond its traditional territory and start a conversation with other Christian traditions. As a result, it tried to bring its identity and self-consciousness beyond the limits of the dominant academic scholasticism and pietism of the late 19th century. This transcendence took the form of a "neo-patristic synthesis" characterized by the "existential" character of theology, and in defining which repetition and imitation are opposed to synthesis, so that it simultaneously combines loyalty to tradition and renewal. But, despite its innovative features, it seems that the 20th century - precisely because of how the "return to the fathers" was perceived and thanks to the accompanying program of "de-Westernization" of Orthodox theology - became for Orthodoxy a time of self-closure, conservatism and a static, or fundamentalist, approach. to the concept of tradition, which has often come to be equated with traditionalism. So, just as some Protestant Churches still suffer from a certain fundamentalism regarding the understanding of the Bible and biblical texts, the Orthodox Church, for its part, is immobilized, falling into the trap of the "fundamentalism of tradition" or "fundamentalism of the fathers", which makes it difficult for her to really search for her pneumatology and blessed measurement. All this does not allow her to be a part of the modern world, or at least to enter into a dialogue with it, and deprives her of her inner aspiration to show her creative gifts and powers.
Indeed, the characteristically traditionalist understanding of Florovsky's “return to the fathers”, as well as the systematization of his theory of “Christian Hellenism” (Hellenism in it is regarded as “ eternal category Christian existence ", he" in the Church is not only a historical and transitory stage "; this theory internally connects Hellenism, the teaching of the fathers and conciliarism) - all this contributed to the assertion of the idea that one must constantly seek refuge in the past of the Church, and therefore, in particular, with the fathers, in order to surely remain within the boundaries of truth. Moreover, this version of “returning to the fathers”, it seems, never focused on the future “together with the fathers” (a thought that Florovsky himself defended both in his writings and in his reports), which deprives Orthodox theology of speechlessness and confidence in the face of the complexities and challenges of the modern world. Apparently, we Orthodox Christians have enough confidence in the tradition that distinguishes us, because the Orthodox, more than other Christian confessions, have preserved intact the theology, spiritual heritage and piety of the Church until its division. Following this view, the Orthodox world is often unable to understand yet another purpose and role of theology in the modern world, in addition to a constant return to sources and roots, or repetition and "translation" into the modern conceptual language of the works of fathers and other church authors who are past placed in the treasury of faith by the guidance of the Holy Spirit; in this way a kind of monophysitism is created. It, in turn, leads to condemnation, oblivion and even the expulsion of the human mind, because, according to him, there is nothing more to say, since the fathers at all times have said everything that needs to be said: after all, patristic theology is a solution to all problems of the past. , present and future. However, the human mind, like all human nature, was fully adopted by the hypostasis of the Word of God at the Incarnation and deified at the Ascension of the Lord, when He sat down at the right hand of the Father.
Indeed, as we noted earlier, Florovsky always emphasized that "returning to the fathers" does not mean repeating or imitating the past, contained in various forms, just as it does not mean escape from history or denial of the present and the future. On the contrary, he constantly emphasized and paid attention to the creative return and meeting with the spirit of the fathers, the acquisition of the mind of the fathers (ad mentem Patrum) and the creative fulfillment of the future. According to Fr. Georgy Florovsky (this is an excerpt from an important passage in the last chapter of his classic work "The Paths of Russian Theology"):
Orthodox theology can restore its independence from Western influences only through a spiritual return to paternal origins and foundations. But returning to the fathers does not mean leaving the present, leaving history, retreating from the battlefield. Father's experience should not only be preserved, but also disclosed - from this experience to proceed into life. And independence from the heterodox West should not degenerate into alienation from it. It is precisely the break with the West that does not give real liberation. Orthodox thought must feel and suffer Western difficulties and temptations, it does not dare to bypass them or keep silent for itself<...> Under the sign of obligation the future opens to us more faithfully and deeper, than under the sign of expectations or premonitions... The future is not only something that is sought and desired, but also something that can be created ... The vocation inspires us precisely by the responsibility of duty.<...>Orthodoxy is not only a tradition, but also a task<...>The true historical synthesis is not so much in the interpretation of the past as in the creative performance of the future ...
However, the way Florovsky insisted on the timeless and eternal character of Christian Hellenism, i.e. the necessity of Greek thought categories for the formulation and expression of the eternal meaning of the Gospel always and everywhere, as well as how he refused to even imagine the possibility of going not "back to the fathers" and "forward with the fathers", but "beyond the fathers", to a large extent negates the openness of his theology and his focus on the future. Florovsky thought of "returning to the fathers" as creativity and renewal, he could also passionately urge to go "forward with the fathers"; however, it seems that the element of "return" is of the greatest importance in his work (primarily because of the way it was understood and interpreted by his followers). The call to “return to the fathers” did not just offer Orthodox theologians a way to think about themselves and their identity that would help them survive the horrific upheavals of the 20th century. and survive in it spiritually and intellectually. He gave them an easily digestible slogan and a sense of security and warmth amid a crumbling Christianity.
In this regard, it should be noted that the movement "return to the fathers" is not a unique phenomenon that took place only among the Orthodox. As I show in my recently published article, the starting point of any church reform was the desire to "return to the roots", and this is what we see in the Protestant world with its dialectical theology, and in the Catholic environment with biblical, patristic and liturgical renewal movements. ... In addition, just as all these Western movements are unthinkable outside the context of the complexities and questions posed by modernity, so in the Orthodox diaspora, movements have become, in fact, attempts to react to modernity. It was there that the movement "return to the fathers" first arose, as did its rival, the Russian school of theology, which is represented primarily by the great Russian theologian and priest Fr. Sergiy Bulgakov (a former Marxist economist who later became an influential figure in the Russian diaspora in Paris as professor and dean St. Sergius Institute). The difference lies in the fact that while the respective Western movements were created within the framework and context of modernity, their Eastern counterpart - the "return" movement represented by neo-patristics, which prevailed over the Russian school of theology - served as a bulwark of modern resistance.
Indeed, these two theological schools followed different or even opposite approaches to solving the problems and questions that modernity poses to Orthodox consciousness. It seems that the Russian school of theology took a position of accepting the world, based on the desire to open Orthodoxy to the conditions and requirements of modernity, while neo-patristics tended to a more or less restrained and contemplative approach, calling for a "return to the fathers" and the liberation of Orthodoxy from Western and modernist influences of the last centuries, which as a result did not allow Orthodoxy to truly immerse itself in modern problems. According to some researchers, the conflict between these two different schools was an example of a dispute between modernists and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives; it was a clash between the orientation of Orthodox theology either "back to the fathers" or "beyond the bounds of the fathers." However, this is what Christine Stoeckl points out:
If, however, we take a closer look at the neo-patristic position, it becomes clear that all these formulations do not fully cover all the issues that were resolved in those years. The theological dispute between the two schools did not arise around whether the Orthodox Church needed renewal after centuries of stagnation and Western influences - there was a consensus on this issue - and not even about whether the Church should turn to the world - the view on this was also common for both sides; the dispute was about the basis on which this renewal and appeal to the world could occur<...>I propose to consider the Russian school of theology and neo-patristics as two ways to give an answer to the problems and questions of the modern world that Orthodox thinking has had. The Russian school of theology found a source of inspiration in the Marxist criticism of Western capitalism and in romanticism, its ideal was the Church, facing the world, having an active role in modern society. Thinkers of the neo-patristic trend were looking for answers to the questions of our time on completely different grounds. The theology of neo-patristics chose a starting point outside the modern world, namely, the patristic tradition, from where it wanted to extract the conceptual apparatus for referring to the modern world. Consequently, neo-patristic theology offered the basis for a broader philosophical-ontological critique of modernism, and this potential was realized, first of all, by the neo-Palamite direction of this school. Both the Russian school of theology and neo-patristics are different types of responses to questions and problems of the modern world, different types of participation in modernity. However, it would be wrong to say that these two approaches encompass the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy's response to modernity - this was not the case in the 1930s. XX century, it is not so now. A wide range of currents within Orthodoxy, it seems, are not at all turned towards modernity; they simply turn away from it, condemn it, or try to create their own world outside of it.
Thus, it becomes clear that the problem of relation to modernity and the dilemma of going “back to the fathers” or “beyond the fathers” are of paramount importance for our analysis. The Russian school of theology seems to be more open both to the problems posed by the modern world and to the recognition of the need for post-patristic theology. Fr. Alexander Schmemann describes her theological task as follows:
Orthodox theology must adhere to its patristic foundation, but must also go "beyond" the Fathers in order to respond to the new situation created by centuries of philosophical development. And in this new synthesis or reconstruction, the Western philosophical tradition (the source and mother of Russian "religious philosophy" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), rather than the Greek, must provide theology with its conceptual structure. Thus, an attempt was made to "transpose" theology into a new "tonality", and this transposition is seen as a specific task and vocation of Russian theology.
Unfortunately, the connection of this theological trend - especially in the person of Bulgakov - with German idealism and sophiology, as well as the dogmatic confrontation with Lossky and Florovsky, which became a reaction to this connection, made this goal a fruitless declaration and for several decades destroyed the possibility of any serious discussion of potential post-patristic theology within Orthodoxy, which made the "return to the fathers" the only acceptable Orthodox "paradigm" for most of the 20th century. with all the consequences of such a monopoly.
Results of the activity of the theological movement "return to the fathers"
The consequences of the “return to the fathers” and the overemphasis on the importance of patristic research that arose under its influence, among other things, are as follows: 1) disregard for biblical studies and a decline in interest in it; 2) an ahistorical approach to patristic theology and, as a consequence, the exaltation of traditionalism; 3) the tendency towards self-isolation and almost complete lack of representation of Orthodox theology among the main lines of development of theology of the 20th century; 4) polarization of East and West, encouragement and strengthening of anti-Western and anti-ecumenical sentiment; 5) the weakness of theology's reaction to the problems and issues of the modern world and, more broadly, the existence of unresolved issues in the relationship between Orthodoxy and modernity.
1. In the Orthodox environment, biblical studies were previously neglected; now there is a theological justification for this. Biblical studies came to be considered “Protestantism,” while patristics and the rediscovery of the tradition of asceticism and spiritual sobriety came to be regarded as truly “Orthodox” subjects. Despite the flourishing of patristics in the second half of the 20th century. both in the Orthodox diaspora and in traditionally Orthodox countries and the subsequent strengthening of the characteristic theological traits of Orthodox "identity", the question of the role of biblical studies on our theological horizon was still open to such an extent that we, the Orthodox, as is well known, are still we underestimate or even be suspicious of biblical studies and biblical studies, and even consider reading and studying the Bible a Protestant practice, which does not correspond to the Orthodox patristic and ascetic spirit. Indeed, in imitation of the old "Protestant" principle of the objective authority of the text, we often simply replace the authority of sola scriptura with the authority of the consensus patrum. In fact, in practice, it happens that the authority and study of the patristic texts - the overwhelming majority of which are commentaries-interpretations of the Bible - have acquired greater significance and influence than the biblical text itself. Thus, Orthodox theology ignored the biblical foundations of the Christian faith, the unbreakable connection between the Bible and the Eucharist, the Bible and the Liturgy. Although we justified our Orthodox Christianity by the fathers, we did not notice that all the great fathers were the most important interpreters of Scripture. It has been forgotten that patristic theology is at the same time a non-fusion and inseparable biblical theology, and that the Orthodox tradition, like Orthodox theology, is based on the Fathers and on the Bible at the same time; they are patristic and Orthodox only to the extent that they are biblical.
2. Patriotic theology was o mythologized, removed from its historical context, he was treated ahistorically, almost metaphysically. Certain historical circumstances under which the works of the fathers were written, their constant interaction and dialogue with the philosophy and movements of the "external" philosophy of their era, their scholarship and free use of the hermeneutic methods of their time - all this was forgotten. And we have not yet properly considered this, as it seems, an extremely characteristic example of how the Church takes elements that are initially completely alien to her theological and ontological premises, and fruitfully assimilates and introduces them into her life and theology. Now this "meeting" seems to us self-evident, and we forget the titanic battles that preceded it. Perhaps we have ceased to realize or notice how difficult it was for early Christianity (with its Jewish and generally Semitic roots and origins) to accept and include Greek concepts and categories such as nature, essence, homoousion, hypostasis, personality, logos, intellect, nous, meaning, cause, action, incident, energy, kath 'holou, cosmos, etc. But this ahistorical approach to patristic theology is, in fact, a "betrayal" of the spirit of the fathers, since it betrays and does not notice the very core and essence of their thought, that is, an incessant dialogue with the world, a meeting with the world, acceptance of the historical, social, cultural and the scientific context of his time, which is especially evident in the interaction with the Hellenism of the great fathers of the fourth century. Today - and in this we clearly differ from the courage and breadth of the fathers - the widespread propaganda, popularization and "inevitability" of the call for "returning to the fathers" not only made the fathers an obligatory "feature" of the Orthodox "establishment", this call is also now characteristic and inherent in any neoconservative and fundamentalist version of Orthodox theology. And the constant invocation of the authority of the fathers for any reason - even for such that obviously could not exist in the era of the fathers - led to the objectification of patristic theology and to a kind of "patristic fundamentalism" - does not this remind the biblical fundamentalism of radical Protestants? Finally, this extrahistorical approach to patristic thought led to the belittling of the contribution of Western theology to the movement that rediscovered the theology of the Greek Fathers and liberated theology from scholasticism. In fact, it is widely known that since the beginning of the XX century. Western theology in all its forms follows its own path of repentance and self-criticism and tries to free itself from the shackles of neo-scholasticism and rationalistic theology. Its most prominent representatives are looking for the tradition of the Church, as it existed before the division, and strive for a dialogue with the modern world. The re-discovery of the eschatological self-consciousness of the Church, especially in the context of German Protestantism, and movements to renew Roman Catholic theology, such as the movement of the return to the fathers (the most characteristic examples of which are the Fourier school in Lyon and the publication of patristic studies of the Sources Chrétiennes series carried out the most prominent representatives), the movement for liturgical renewal, the new unification of the Bible and the liturgy, as well as the social dimension in the theology of the Church - these are just a few aspects of the desire for liberation and self-criticism in Western theology that were associated with the so-called. the “nouvelle théologie” movement, without which the Orthodox “return to the fathers” movement would probably have been impossible.
3. Orthodox theology was so busy - with a few exceptions - with the serious problem of freeing itself from Western influence and “returning to the fathers,” in other words, self-knowledge and the search for oneself, that it was almost not represented in the most important areas of theological research of the 20th century. and almost did not influence the creation of the theological agenda. Dialectical theology, existential and hermeneutic theology, theology of history and culture, theology of secularization and modernity, “nouvelle théologie”, contextual theology, theology of hope and political theology, liberation theology, black theology, feminist theology, ecumenical theology “The other” - this whole revolution that took place in theological science of the 20th century has hardly touched Orthodox theology. On the contrary, for a century Orthodox theology has been preoccupied with its own "internal" problems; escape from "Western" influences became one of his main tasks. It seems that these theological trends, with the possible exception of ecumenical theology, missionary theology, patristic and liturgical renewal movements, did not have an impact on Orthodox theology, despite the fact that significant Orthodox theologians took part in the ecumenical movement from its inception. The silence of Orthodox theology and its refraining from participating in theological discussions, it seems, did not go unnoticed among modern Western theologians, who did not fail to note the inability of Orthodoxy to express itself in modern language and its incessant appeals to the authority of the fathers and tradition.
4. Judging by the results, it can be said that the "return to the fathers" had a decisive - and negative - impact on the polarization between East and West, on the complete rejection of the West by Orthodoxy and on the encouragement and strengthening of anti-Western and anti-ecumenical sentiments. Speaking of "anti-Westernism", we mean not completely natural criticism of the West and its deviations from the tradition of the Church before its division, and not the practice of calm and restrained pointing out differences, and not discussing examples of the problems of the West and its dead ends. We are talking here about creating a duty image of the enemy, about one-sided, inaccurate, abusive criticism that sees in the West only errors, heresies, betrayals and deviations from Christianity (while extolling the East for its loyalty to tradition). This criticism, without considering historical facts and creating its own reality, continues to view the relationship between East and West as a relationship of constant opposition, collision, division, erasing in one fell swoop ten centuries of common Christian life and church communion, and forgetting that the catholicity of the Church implies both East and West.
Here we are faced with a significant paradox that is worth analyzing separately. Fr. Georgy Florovsky, the main advocate of the "return to the fathers" and the greatest theologian both within this movement and for the whole of Orthodoxy throughout the 20th century, was nourished not only by patristic literature, hymnography and even not only the Bible, but also by the greatest works of modern Western theology, which he took into account, and with which he was in constant dialogue (A. von Harnack, K. Barth, E. Brunner, I. Kongar, A. De Lubach, L. Bouyer, E.L. Maxal, R. Bultmann, A. Nigren, I.A.Möhler, P. Battifol, J.L. Prestige, G. Kittel, E. Gilson, J. Lebreton, P. Tillich). Moreover, Florovsky was never a supporter of the idea of a polarization of East and West, he turned to the Western fathers, such as, for example, to Bl. Augustine, in his writings on the Church. He wrote many of his classics with ecumenical readers in mind, or preparing papers for ecumenical conferences. Most importantly, he always easily admitted that the catholicity of the Church cannot exist not only without the West, but also without the East, and that for catholicity both "lungs" of the Church, western and eastern, are needed, which are similar to Siamese twins. However, as we have already noted above, the movement of "return to the fathers" was influenced by other philosophers (Lossky, Staniloe, Popovich, etc.), and the positions of principle, as well as the general line of theological thought, which in the end turned out to be stronger. were in many respects little compatible with Florovsky's position - first of all, we are talking about anti-Westernism and anti-ecumenism. The Fathers and their theology were often regarded as a unique feature and exclusive property of the East, so that the contribution of the West to the rediscovery of the Fathers was clearly neglected; more than once, patristic theology was used to create old-fashioned and devoid of logic invectives against the West. Thus, Orthodoxy appeared to be the owner of the treasures of the true thought of the fathers, rich liturgical experience and mystical theology, while the spiritually exhausted West was deprived of all this and, as a result, was content with scholasticism, pietism, theological rationalism and legalism. As a result, the younger generation of Orthodox theologians learned not only to use the interpretive scheme “Orthodox East versus the heretical West,” but also it became commonplace to smugly oppose the best version of Christianity, that is, Orthodoxy (with the Cappadocian Fathers, Maximus the Confessor, the so-called “mystical theology,” St. Gregory Palama, Russian theology of the Diaspora, etc.) is a worse version, that is, the West (with its scholastic theology, Thomas Aquinas, the Holy Inquisition, theology of legalism and pietism, etc.). This is how the modern West is imagined in many Orthodox countries. Despite significant advances in patristics, local theology, and eucharistic ecclesiology, the West is still looked at through these distorting lenses - for convenience and simplicity, or, more simply, out of ignorance. This intellectual climate has helped to deprive the young generation of Orthodox theologians of the right and opportunity to get acquainted with and interact with the fundamental works of Western theology, which for the most part remain untranslated and unknown in the Orthodox world. It turns out that we have forgotten how much the theology of the Russian diaspora, as well as the theology of “returning to the fathers,” owes the West. In other words, Orthodox theology of the second half of the 20th century. lost a sense of history and ability to interact.
The situation with another great theologian of the neo-patrist movement and the “return to the fathers” movement, with the more conservative and “traditionalist” Vladimir Lossky, is even more complicated in terms of his attitude towards anti-Westernism. The work of this great theologian of the Russian diaspora, and in particular his classic work "Essay on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" (this work, not to mention the influence it had on theologians in the West, was especially authoritative in matters of mystical theology among the younger generation of Orthodox theologians; she served as an inspiration for a new awakening of interest in Corpus Areopagiticum and Palamism, especially among the next generation of Greek and Eastern theologians in general), is in constant dialogue with Western Christian tradition. Moreover, as Meyendorff notes, this work was positively and fruitfully inspired by the movement towards patristic revival that took place in the Roman Catholic Church in those years:
This book answered the current request: French Catholicism was going through a period of a new discovery of patristism and liturgy, after the war this movement spread to other countries, developing especially vividly in Germany. Lossky was an Orthodox voice eager to meet this movement and offer the West the alluring riches of Eastern Orthodoxy.
However, Christina Stoeckl notes in her study:
Lossky, despite the fact that he rejected the philosophical and theological language, which largely created the Slavophil and Eurasian enmity towards the West, he himself often emphasized the doctrinal differences between East and West. Lossky seems to have tried not to deduce political and cultural statements from these differences, but some of his students, such as Christ Yannaras, have nevertheless come up with bold political and cultural statements. Lossky's work contains all those elements that have made the perception of contemporary Orthodoxy in the West both fruitful and problematic; These elements made possible both the view that something new is happening in Orthodox thought and the dismissive view that all this is a repetition of the old song about the exclusivity of Orthodoxy and Slavophilism, which has already been heard many times.
There is no doubt, however, that both the Russian diaspora theology and other theological movements for renewal in other Orthodox countries reached dawn and developed in dialogue with the West, and not in an atmosphere of fanaticism and self-closure of Orthodoxy. And therefore, as strange and tempting as it may sound to some, it was precisely the meeting and dialogue with the West that led to the revival of Orthodox theology in the 20th century. and to his liberation from the "Babylonian captivity" by Western scholastic and pietistic theology. Opportunities and fruitful difficulties that arose before Orthodoxy by ecumenical dialogue, as a result, brought Orthodoxy out of its small-town isolation and self-sufficiency. It was they who played a decisive role in the addition of the most striking forms of diaspora theology and original examples of synthesis in Greek-speaking theology, for example, in the theology of personality. Orthodox fundamentalism, which often thrives in monastic and near-monastic environments, and which considers anti-Westernism and anti-ecumenism to be important components of Orthodox identity and the most characteristic features of patristic theology, obscures and stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the truth.
5. Despite the theological interests of Florovsky and other Orthodox theologians who followed him (for example, incarnation, historicity of theology and openness of history, contextualization of the Gospel message, catholicity of the Church, including East and West, etc.), and their never disappeared interest in a creative and rejuvenating appeal to the spirit of the fathers, i.e. towards neo-patristic synthesis and revival, one has to admit that "return to the fathers" and "Christian Hellenism" as the proposed theological agenda are, in fact, a conservative option, since they appeal more to the past of theology than to its present or future. And although the intention of this theological movement is to push Orthodoxy out of inertia and bring it into dialogue with the modern world on the basis of a neo-patristic synthesis, this movement itself is, in principle, absent from the theological agenda defining the broader historical contours of this dialogue, that is, modernity and late modernity. Of course, it must be remembered that, for purely historical reasons, the Orthodox world did not participate in the phenomenon of modernity. He did not survive the Renaissance, reformation and counter-reformation, religious wars and the Enlightenment, the French or industrial revolution, the heyday of interest in the subject, human rights, the formation of a secular nation-state. Orthodoxy has not been touched by what is considered to be the core of modernity, and it continues to be suspicious of modernity. This ambiguity helps explain the difficulty that Orthodoxy faces in dealing with the modern (post-) modern world, and it simultaneously raises the question of whether Orthodox Christianity and (neo) patristic theology came to an end even before the advent of modernity.
Indeed, if we consider the precedent of the Roman Catholic Church, we see that scholastic philosophy and theology - when they were introduced in the second half of the 19th century, with neo-Thomism at their head - were conceived, among other things, as a defense against those difficulties and problems. which the modern era presented to the inflexible theological establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, mutatis mutandis, the next question in our case is the main one: did not the famous "return to the fathers", as it was understood and implemented by several Orthodox theologians, serve as a bastion in which one can hide from the era of modernity and its problems - itself unwillingly and contrary to the declared goals of the revival? Did it not, therefore, stand in the way of the Word of God in its embodiment and revelation in any of the existing specific social and cultural contexts; has it not hindered the development - in Orthodox theology - of hermeneutics, history and biblical studies, systematic theology, anthropological and feminist studies, political theology, and liberation theology? Has it not contributed to turning the entire Orthodox church life into a prisoner of social and semantic structures and practices that existed before the era of modernity, into a prisoner of a conservative mentality?
One way or another, the era of modernity and postmodernity (or late modernity) and the system of coordinates that they create constitute that broad historical, social and cultural context in which the Orthodox Church is called to live and carry out her ministry; it is here that the Church is called again and again to embody Christian truth about God, the world and humanity. Of course, modern Orthodox theology, inspired mainly by the spirit of the fathers, in the 20th century. re-formulated a beautiful theology of incarnation, "taking the flesh." However, his position on a number of issues, revolving mainly around various aspects of the phenomenon of modernity, as well as the very core of his church identity, did not allow this generally remarkable theology to be put into action, made it socially sterile. Among such issues are human rights, the secularization of politics and social institutions, the desacralization of politics and ethnicity, the overturning of the existing social hierarchy in order to create a more just society, the assertion of the meaning of love and corporeality and the spiritual meaning of sexuality, the position of women, social and cultural anachronisms, etc. The usual Orthodox approach to these issues, unfortunately, once again confirms the opinion that Orthodox people are content with theory and cannot achieve anything in practice or even do not take action; that we prefer to “contemplate” and “observe” rather than act, forgetting or bypassing the fundamentally antinomical and non-traditionalist nature of the Church's event and community in it, finding a calm and safe place within the boundaries of tradition and customs inherited from the past, in comfort traditional society, which in the minds of many of us is equated with the tradition itself. However, theology must finally be embodied, constantly reminding us of the antinomical and idolatrous nature of the Church's event, must take seriously the consequences of the theology of the incarnation and the conclusions from it.
The Need for a New Incarnation of the Word and the Complexity of Contextual Theologies
If every text has a "context", and if we agree that the specific and defining context of patristic theology was the dominant Greek culture and philosophy at that time, then we need to seriously and honestly think about whether we have the same context today, whether we live and create in the frame of reference of the same culture, or we are faced with the complexities and problems of the post-Greek and, therefore, post-patristic era. And if this is so, then the next key question sounds like this: is the duty and task of theology to protect or preserve a certain era, a certain culture, a certain language, or, on the contrary, its task and duty is to serve the Gospel truth and the people of God at all times and everywhere, in any culture and in any language? Since there is no abstract universal theology, some kind of ahistorical, unchanging, timeless tradition and monolithic teaching, theology exists only in certain cultural and historical contexts as an answer to specific questions and problems. Consequently, the term "contextual theology" denotes both how the big "theological project" is understood and the methodological frame of reference in which theology is dealt with. Obviously, the above analysis presupposes an approach — both constructive and critical — of contextual theology. Although sometimes extreme, contextual theology tends to emphasize the intimate links between text and context and keeps us from forgetting that it is impossible to pursue theology purely intellectually and academically, abstracting from time, history and sociocultural context, from pastoral needs and countless different forms of human culture and forms of expression of theological meanings.
Consequently, theology, as a prophetic voice expressing the self-consciousness of the Church, must act taking into account the antinomical and two-nature essence of the Church. Just as the Church is not of this world, so theology seeks to express the experience revealed by grace and the transcendental reality, which is higher than words, concepts or names and is not grasped by them. Just as the Church lives and goes out into the world, so theology strives for dialogue and interaction with the historical present in each era, adopting its language - the flesh of the thinking system of each particular era, the historical and cultural present of this or that time. Theology is not equal in scope to history and cannot be equated with history, but it cannot exist in the absence of history, and, more importantly, it can no longer ignore the lessons of history. Without this process of mutual but non-fusion penetration and acceptance of the world and history, without a gesture inviting to dialogue, without a gesture of movement towards peace and “witnessing” about the world, neither the Church nor theology can exist, but the revelation of God cannot be realized, so how the Church does not exist for herself, but for the world and for the benefit of the world, "for the life of the world." After all, divine revelation has always occurred within the created world and history, and not in some ahistorical, timeless universe not connected with the world. As the theologian Panayiotis Nellas (founder of the well-known Greek journal Synaksis), prophetically accurately noted in one of his works more than twenty years ago:
It is impossible to have a true revelation of God without making the material of this revelation today social, cultural, scientific and other realities. It is impossible for God to call a person to action, to touch him until he touches precisely our, historically concrete flesh; it is impossible for Him to save a person if he does not transform our life.
Developing this same thought, we can therefore add that a disembodied theology that refuses to enter into conversation with the wider social and cultural realities of its time is simply unthinkable, be it in the era of modernity, postmodernity or late modernity. A theology that does not take on the "flesh" of its time is equally inconceivable, just as it is inconceivable for the Church to isolate itself, not allow itself to be pulled out of itself towards the world and history, enlighten them with the light of the Gospel and transform them. So, the Church and her theology cannot achieve anything in the world without noticing the world or not appreciating the world that is around them, just because this world is "non-Christian", because it is not what they would like or would like conveniently. Likewise, the Church and her theology cannot move and touch modern people, people of the modern and late modern times, as long as the Church despises and neglects the modern world, does not see in it the material from which to create revelation, and the flesh to be accepted. to myself.
This means that for Orthodox theology there is an urgent need to invent - with the help of the Holy Spirit - new terms and new names ("create new names", in the words of St. Gregory the Theologian), correlated with today's needs and problems, just as there is an urgent need for a new incarnation of the Word and the eternal truth of the gospel. A theology of repetition, a theology that is content only with “return to origins” or based on “return to the fathers” and neo-patristic synthesis, by definition cannot meet these needs and the manifold complexities and problems of the pluralistic world of the postmodern era. Consequently, what is required is not repetition, eternal denial and silence, which is usually chosen by Orthodoxy as a position in relation to the era of modernity and pluralism, but a creative meeting and a serious theological dialogue with the complexities and problems of modernity and postmodernity - whatever they may be, “reorientation ( modernity) from within ”, according to the apt expression of His Eminence Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch. Will the Orthodox Church be faithful to the renewed God-manhood and the true theology of the Incarnation and, inspired by the vision and experience of the Resurrection, will it take in the tradition, boldness and spirit of the fathers and the great theological syntheses that they created mainly in the Eastern Church? Will it enter into a dialogue and make an attempt (and why not?) A new synthesis, taking the best that exists in modern times, bringing about the meeting of East and West, which has been talked about for several decades?
Eschatological understanding of tradition
From an Orthodox point of view, the key to understanding the above topics and to finding answers to all these questions can be found in eschatology. Eschatology introduces a moment of active aspiration, perceived in the dimension of the future, combined with a renewed power of inspiration - these dimensions are so important to the life of theology, and they are so lacking now. Indeed, in response to the trials and challenges brought by globalization, cosmopolitanism and internationalism, today again the wind of traditionalism and fundamentalism has come with renewed vigor into the life and theology of the Church. While fundamentalism is a flight into the past of pre-modern eras and involves reversing the course of history, eschatology is an active and persistent desire for the coming of the Kingdom of God, the new world that we await. By virtue of its nature, eschatology gives strength for a dynamic immersion in the present, a life-affirming openness to the future of the Kingdom, in which the fullness and essence of the Church must be sought. In other words, the Church basically receives her essence not from what she is, but from what she will become in the future, in the eschatological time, which, from the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, has already begun to illuminate the present and history and influence them. ...
In the light of eschatology, even the church tradition itself acquires a new meaning and a new dimension, a perspective full of optimism and hope. In this perspective, tradition is determined not by habits, customs, ideas, or generally by what is inert and stagnant in history, but by a person, Jesus Christ, the coming Lord of Glory. As St. Cyprian of Carthage: “The Lord told us:“ I am the truth ”. He did not say, "I am the tradition." Tradition is not at all associated primarily with the past; in other words, it is not constrained by the patterns that have developed in the past, by what has already happened. As bizarre as it sounds, in a true ecclesiological perspective, tradition faces the future. Its source, first of all, is the coming Kingdom of God, that which has yet to be revealed and manifested, that the love of the Lord and his providence prepare us for the salvation of the world and man. Therefore, the eschatological understanding of tradition corresponds to the definition of faith by the ap. Paul: "Faith is the fulfillment of the expected and confidence in the invisible." It is an analogue of the eschatological "memory of the future", the experience of which is expressed in the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy: glorious paki coming". And this is so, because, as it is argued in some scholy on the Corpus Areopagiticum, attributed to Maximus the Confessor (although now scholars are inclined to attribute them to John the Scythopolitan), the entire Divine Liturgy is not some eternal heavenly archetypes or some kind of reality in the realm of ideas. but the eschatological kingdom to come, the reality of the future, where the true meaning of things and symbols will be found.
Consequently, just as the last events in a person's life turn out to be the first in their meaning, and eschatology gives the meaning of protology, so does the Kingdom of God - the fullness of life and truth, which must fully come true and open at the end of times and which determine and give the meaning of the church tradition. The future is thus a cause, not a consequence of the past, since, according to Metropolitan John Zizioulas:
The world was created for the eschatological Christ, who will come at the end of time as the unity of the created and the uncreated. According to St. Maximus, the Church experiences this in the Eucharist: in her what will be at the end of times is really present now, the future becomes the cause of the present. During the Holy Eucharist, we travel back in time: from the future to the present and to the past.
Or you can recall the relevant words of the modern Greek theologian Nikos Nissiotis:
Therefore, the Orthodox tradition<...>not history, but evidence; it is not a fait accompli of the past, but a call to embody it in the future. Understood from the standpoint of such a Beginning, Tradition is a "new" thing that invades the world in order to immediately and forever renew everything in Christ, and then preserve it in the Holy Spirit through the Church.
Here are the words of Fr. Georgy Florovsky, who laid the foundation for the movement of "return to the fathers" and "neo-patristic synthesis":
Thus, "tradition" in the Church is not simply the continuity of human memory or the immutability of rituals and customs. Ultimately, "tradition" is the continuity of the divine presence that does not leave us with the presence of the Holy Spirit. The church is not bound by a "letter." “Spirit” constantly leads her forward. The same Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who “spoke through the prophets,” who guided the apostles, enlightened evangelists, still rests in the Church and leads her to a deeper understanding of divine truth, from glory to glory.
If you look at it from this perspective, then tradition is not a letter that kills, nostalgic repetition, uncritical acceptance or maintenance of the continuity of the past, but the creative continuity of the Holy Spirit and openness to the future, to the new world and the Kingdom of God, which we actively expect. In this light, it seems that the patristic tradition in its various forms of manifestation acquires a different meaning and a different perspective, since, in turn, it is judged and studied in the light of the last times and the coming Kingdom of God, while “the return to the fathers "Is a kind of milestone on the path full of events to a broader renewal in the Holy Spirit of Orthodox theology, a renewal that has not yet been completed. And "Christian Hellenism" is one of the varieties, or paradigms, of the relationship of the Church to the world, and not an "eternal category of Christian existence" or an unchanging and timeless force.
Instead of a conclusion
Of course, the main and most weighty question that naturally arises from all of the above is: is it possible for an Orthodox tradition and theology to exist that would not be patristic? In other words, can we talk about post-patristic theology in Orthodoxy (both in the temporal and in the normative sense of the word)? According to prof. Petros Vassiliadis:
Contemporary Orthodox theology today has reached an important and decisive crossroads in its historical development. For Orthodoxy XX century. was essentially a period of restructuring of self-consciousness in the course of the new discovery of the "patristic" tradition. Having found the quintessence of his uniqueness in its "liturgical" - that is, Trinitarian, pneumatological, iconographic, cosmological and, above all, eschatological dimensions, now it is time for him to take the next step, that is, to dare to go beyond the traditional "patristic" theology, just like that. in the same way, how the patristic tradition proper went beyond the early Christian tradition, and the early Christian tradition went beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. Of course, this does not mean that it is necessary to leave behind the spirit or even the style of the patristic era, it does not follow from this rejection of the contemporary Greek philosophical categories of the fathers, which they adopted; it is about dynamically going beyond them. Indeed, this truly is the heritage of the great Fathers of the Church.
Another fundamental question: have the "return to the fathers" and the neo-patristic synthesis succeeded? The Russian Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk does not hesitate to answer this question in the negative, referring, among other things, to one objective difficulty that did not allow this undertaking (which Florovsky so defended) to come to a positive outcome:
In the XX century. the time for such a synthesis has not yet come. However, it can still be achieved if we do not deviate from the path outlined by the theologians of the 20th century.<...>But one more quantitative leap forward is needed in order to build a neo-patristic synthesis on its basis, a leap that we, who have entered the 21st century, can make. It is necessary to find a new approach to the fathers, one that will allow us to see the patristic heritage more holistically. I am deeply convinced that the logical and consistent application of the contextual method in the reading of patristic texts should become a fundamental and integral element of such a new approach.
However, the problem with Alfeev's approach is that, although he is critical of the self-defending “protective Orthodoxy” and the romantic and ahistorical vision of patristic theology that it generates, and although he even draws an analogy between, on the one hand, the use of ancient philosophy by the Greek fathers , and, on the other hand, by the appeal of modern church philosophy to the philosophy of existentialism, nevertheless, it seems, in the same text, he holds an idealizing view of patristic thought and its relation to modernity and the problems of our time. So he, for example, declares: "The works of the fathers never lose their relevance, as they address questions, the answers to which are of key importance for the present and future of mankind," and this is so, because the confession of "patristic faith" implies not just studying the writings of the fathers and trying to revive their legacy, but also the belief that our era is no less "patristic" than any other. The "golden age", which began with Christ, the apostles and early fathers, is preserved to this day in the writings of the Church Fathers.
If Orthodox theology of recent decades was inspired and renewed by the calls for a “return to the fathers” and by its liberation from the captivity of academism and scholastic theology, and having failed, nevertheless, to avoid coincidence with the caricatured image of traditionalism, patristic archeology and the confession of faith hiding in the trenches, then Today, in the globalized, pluralistic world of the postmodern era, there is an obvious and urgent need for a breath of fresh air in order to overcome certain provincialism and self-righteous isolation in Orthodox theology, for the openness of the ecumenical nature of Christianity, the challenges of the “other” in faith and catholicity of human thinking. The prophetic role of theology encourages him to constantly go beyond his own limits, constantly transform and update all sorts of established forms of expression and creativity - even those inherited from patristic thought - in order to take a leap similar to the one that was required for patristic thought in comparison with the early Christian system of thought. , and perhaps even more daring. Perhaps the time has come for us to realize that fidelity to the patristic tradition, the familiar words "we, following the holy fathers ..." mean not just continuity, renewal or a new understanding of tradition, but rather - following the precedent created by the mental leap made by early Christianity and the fathers, - going beyond the patristic thought where and then, where it is necessary? "Return to the Fathers" was in the XX century. conceived as a "paradigm shift" of Orthodox theology. The question is, are we now facing the inevitability - and do we need it - of a "paradigm shift" in Orthodox theology? To pay due attention to this issue, one more article will be required, but here I was only able to state some preliminary considerations.
Staying true to this spirit, we tried not to forget or bypass the patristic thought, but to bring it into a dialogue with the complex and provocative questions posed by the era of modernity and late modernity. I believe that the Holy Spirit has not ceased to endow us with his gifts, and this gives me reason to believe that Orthodox theology of our time should try to develop its own approach to those issues that patristic thought did not raise - and indeed could not raise. Thus, I hope to find a new path for Orthodox theology that combines fidelity to tradition with renewal and the introduction of a new one, following which theology will be able to boast in the Lord of the positive things that it has already offered; however, at the same time, self-criticism and openness to the future will be possible. However, first of all, I call for the creation of a free space for an open-minded dialogue, in which all points of view can be expressed and considered, taking into account the diversity of "others" who are the image of the "other" parexcellance - God. Publishing my point of view on the problem of "returning to the fathers" and the need for modern Orthodox theology on the hospitable pages of the magazine St. Vladimir "s Theological Quarterly, I do not pretend to any infallibility of opinions, and therefore discussion and criticism, perhaps, will most fruitfully help me in my endeavor.
Translator's note: Hereinafter, the philosophical and culturological term "modern", as a designation of a special era in the development of society and its culture, is translated in two ways, depending on the context - either as "modernity", then as "modern". The choice of the option was dictated by considerations of relevance in the context and stylistics of the Russian language, however, the reader is advised to remember that in both cases the concept of “modern” is used in the original English, which in general means “modern” as a cultural and historical era.
The article was originally presented in German at this conference: cf. G. Florovsky, “Westliche Einflüsse in der russischen Theologie,” in Procès-Verbaux du Premier Congrès de Théologie Orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 Novembre-6 Décembre 1936, Ham. S. Alivisatos (ed.) (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939), 212-31; the same text can be found in Kyrios, II, nr 1 (Berlin, 1937), 1-22. English translation (T. Bird and R. Hugh): "Western Influences in Russian Theology" in book, vol. 4: Aspects of Church History (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), 157-82.
G. Florovsky, Western Influences in Russian Theology, Decree. op. passim, cf. ibid, Ways of Russian Theology, part I, transl. by R. L. Nichols, volume 5 in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky(Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979) and part II, tr. R. L. Nichols, vol. 6, in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky(Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987). On the origin and use of the term “pseudomorphosis” in Florovsky's works, see N. Kazarian, “La notion de pseudomorphose chez Oswald Spengler et Georges Florovsky” (unpublished report at the international conference “Le Père Georges Florovsky et le renouveau de la théologie orthodoxe au 20e siècle , ”St Sergius Institute, Paris, November 27-28, 2009). Wed critical analysis of the theory of "pseudomorphosis" by Fr. G. Florovsky in Dorothea Wendebourg, “‘ Pseudomorphosis ’: A Theological Judgment as an Axiom for Research in the History of Church and The-ology,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 42 (1997): 321-42.
Among the Greek theologians, two well-known figures should be noted separately: Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas and Fr. John S. Romanides. Both of them were outstanding students of Fr. G. Florovsky and representatives of the "neo-patristic synthesis" and the movement "return to the fathers", but each went his own way in the world of modern Orthodox theology. In his writings, Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon (ecumenical patriarchy) tried to formulate a creative version of the "neo-patristic synthesis" open to the world of modern philosophical thought and dialogue between East and West, constantly speaking about the need for a theological synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions, without which there can be no true catholicity Churches. (cf. eg, "Introduction" to his classic Being as Communion, especially pp. 25-26). In accordance with some interpretations of his ideas, although Zizioulas remains true to the concepts of the Cappadocian fathers (for example), “thinks with the fathers about what is outside the fathers” (A. Papanikolaou, Apophaticism v. Ontology: A Study of Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas, PhD Dissertation, 250. Cf. a more conservative analysis in A. Brown, “On the Criticism of Being as Communion in Anglophone Orthodox Theology,” in Douglas Knight (ed.), The Theology of John Zizioulas... Fr. John Romanides in the late 50s - early 60s XX century. opened a new direction in Greek theology and provided a hopeful example of a "neo-patristic" theologian. In his doctoral dissertation (The Ancestral Sin, Athens, 1955), Romanides rebukes Orthodox theology for its suffocating adherence to academism and scholasticism and unfolds the argument about the alternative found in the healing spirit of Orthodoxy with a thoroughness that has proven his theological insight. Nevertheless, the publication in 1975 of his book "Romiosyne" ("Romance") marked a sharp turn in his work, which began to shift from the sphere of theology to cultural criticism, ethno theology and anti-Westernism. From that moment on, the opposition of the Greek and Latin-speaking "romancy", on the one hand, and the "Frankish beginning", on the other, began to dominate in the work of Romanides: he saw in the Frankish beginning endlessly ripening conspiracies aimed at the destruction of romanism. The lack of an eschatological perspective combined with immanetism in the corpus of Romanides' writings (the immanetism embodied in his theological concept of "purification, illumination and deification") is ideally combined with the attribution of "sacred geography" to the romania, which manifests itself in it as a sacred kingdom inhabited by the sacred race of Romans , a new chosen people, for whom salvation is prepared for one.
Wed, e.g., e.g. Florovsky. Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 4: Aspects of Church History (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), 17. According to Metropolitan John Ziziulos (“Fr Georges Florovsky: The Ecumenical Teacher,” Synaxis, issue 64 (1997): 14-15 [in Modern Greek]), “ the main task of theology for him (Florovsky) was "neo-patristic synthesis", which meant, as we shall see, a deeper search for the existential meaning of patristic theology and its synthesis, which requires rare creative forces and the gift of synthesis. "
Compare, for example, the "theological testament" of Fr. G. Florovsky, published by A. Blaine, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman(Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1993), 154: “This is how I came up with the idea of what I now call 'neo-patristic synthesis' early enough. This should be more than just a collection of patristic sayings and quotes. This should be a synthesis, a creative re-evaluation of the revelations that were given to the sages of antiquity. He must be patristic, true to the spirit and vision of the fathers, ad mentem Patrum. However, this synthesis must be neo-patristic, since it must address a new era, which has its own problems and needs. "
G. Florovsky, “Ways of Russian Theology,” at Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 4: Aspects of Church History, 195. Cf. his Ways of Russian Theology, in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 6, 297.
G. Florovsky, “Ways of Russian Theology,” op. cit., p. 195. Wed his Ways of Russian Theology, in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 6, 297.
In a sense, the Church itself is Hellenistic, she is a Hellenistic entity - in other words, Hellenism is an invariable category of Christian existence.<...>let's become more Greek, to become more catholic, truly Orthodox "G. Florovsky," Patristics and Modern Theology, "in Procès-Verbaux du Premier Congrès de Théologie Orthodoxe à Athènes, op. 241-42. Wed See also “The Christian Hellenism,” Orthodox Observer, no. 442 (January 1957): 10: “Let us be more‘ Hellenic ’in order that we may be truly Christian.” An exhaustive analysis and criticism of these Florovsky ideas is contained in my doctoral dissertation P. Kalaitzidis, School of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2008, especially pp. 173-205 [in modern Greek]. Wed his “L'hellénisme chrétien du Père Georges Florovsky et les théologiens grecs de la génération de '60” (unpublished report read at the international conference: “Le Père Georges Florovsky et le renouveau de la théologie orthodoxe au 20e siècle”, Holy Sergiev Institute, Paris, November 27-28, 2009). Wed See also M. Stokoe, Christian Hellenism, a dissertation submitted to partially meet the requirements for a Master of Theology work (St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, April 17, 1981). According to this researcher, "Christian Hellenism" can be considered a model of contextual theology that meets the needs and expectations of all times and peoples. 61 (2009): especially 144-46.
In this part of the work I follow the analysis done by P. Vallière, Modern Russian Theology. Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Orthodox Theology in a New Key(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), especially pp. 1-11; and Christina Stoeckl, Community after Totalitarianism. The Eastern Orthodox Intellectual Tradition and the Philosophical Discourse of Political Modernity(Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2008), especially pp. 94-104. Wed A. Schmemann, “Russian Theology: 1920-1972. An Introductory Survey, SVTQ 16 (1972): 172-94; R. Williams, “Russian Christian Thought,” in A. Hastings, A. Mason, and H. Pyper (eds), The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought(Oxford University Press, 2000), 630-33; M. Kadavil, “Some Recent Trends on the Sacramentality of Creation in Eastern-Oriental Traditions,” in J. Haers and P. D. Mey, Theology and Conversation: Towards a Relational Theology(Leuven & Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2003), especially 324-30; A. Papanikolaou, “Orthodox Theology,” in: E. Fahlbusch and J. M. Lochman (eds), The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI & Leiden: Eerdmans-Brill, 2008), 414-18.
R. Bird, “The Tragedy of Russian Religious Philosophy: Sergei Bulgakov and the Future of Orthodox Theology,” in J. Sutton and W. van den Bercken (ed.), Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Europe(Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 211-28.
Wed similar remarks and bibliographic references in P. Kalaitzidis, “Rudolf Bultmann’s History and Eschatology— The Theory of Demythologization and Interiorized Existential Eschatology: Putting Bultmann in Conversation with Contemporary Greek Theology,” introduction to the Greek edition of the Rudolf Bultmann’s classic work. History and Eschatology. The presence of eternity(Athens: Indiktos Publications, 2008), lix [in Modern Greek]. Florovsky's approach seems to be closer to another direction: “The testimony of the fathers inherently and internally belongs to the very structure of the Orthodox faith. The Church is equally devoted to the apostolic preaching and to the dogmas of the fathers. Both are inseparable from each other. The Church is truly "apostolic." But the church is also “fatherly”. And only by being “fatherly” can the Church continuously remain “apostolic”. The Fathers testify to the apostolic character of the Tradition. " G. Florovsky “Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church” in the book Collected Works of Georges Florovsky 2nd ed. (Paris: Cerf, 1958) Ecumenism II. A Historical Approach, vol. 14 of Collected Works of G. Florovsky(Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1989) 209-10; G. Florovsky, “Ways of Russian Theology” in Aspects of Church History, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Georges Florovsky(Belmont, MA: Nordland, 989), 202-4.
The rise of neo-patristics, leaving behind the Russian school of theology after 30-40 years. XX century, received nourishment, among other things, from people who converted to Orthodoxy from Western denominations, from those who shared the passion of this movement for the liturgical, ascetic and mystical traditions of the fathers. Wed P. Valliere, Modern Russian Theology. Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Orthodox Theol-ogy in a New Key, op.soch,, 5, 6.
Wed P. Kalaitzidis, Hellenicity and Anti-westernism in the Greek Theological Generation of the 60's, op cit, especially 54, 48 [in Modern Greek].
V. Lossky, Essai sur la Théologie Mystique de l'Église d'Orient (Paris: Aubier, 1944). English translation: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church(London: James Clark, 1957).
Kristina Stöckl, Community after Totalitarianism, decree. op, 101. Cf. P. Kalaitzidis, Hellenicity and Anti-westernism in the Greek Theological Generation of the 60's, op cit, 51, 530-35 [in modern Greek].
J. D. Zizioulas, “Ortodossia,” in Enciclopedia del Novecento, Instituto dell 'Enciclopedia Italiana, vol. V, (Roma, 1981), 6 Cf. also P. Kalaitzidis, Hellenicity and Anti-westernism in the Greek Theological Generation of the 60's, decree. cit., especially p.47 [in modern Greek].
Wed P. Kalaitzidis, op cit, 100-101, 104-5 [in Modern Greek]. It is worth noting that the issues raised above regarding the Orthodox Church and the era of modernism were discussed, considered and studied within the framework of the curriculum at the Volos Academy of Theology of the Metropolitan Dimitriados (Volos, Greece) in the 2001/2002 academic year. The texts of the reports at the conference were published by the publishing house "Indiktos" (Athens) in 2007 (in modern Greek). In addition, the Institute of Theology. St. John of Damascus, Balamand University (Lebanon) organized (together with the Department of Orthodox Theology of the Center for the Study of Religions at the University of Münster in Germany) an international symposium on the topic “Reflecting on the Modern Era: Towards Reconsidering the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Contemporary Culture” 3-5 December 2007 The volume containing the materials of the conference is in press.
In this paragraph of the article, I use the materials of the analysis in my book. Orthodoxy and Modernity: An Introduction, op.soch., pp. 105-7, 109 [in modern Greek].
Wed the constructive and critical approaches of Orthodox theologians in the context of contextual theology in the books: N. Nissiotis, “Ecclesial Theology in Context,” in Song Choan-Seng (ed.), Doing Theology Today (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1976), 101-24 ; E. Clapsis, “The Challenge of Contextual Theologies” in Orthodoxy in Conversation. Orthodox Ecumenical Engagements(Geneva / Brookline, MA: WCC Publications / Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), 165-72; Bishop Hilarion Alfeev, “The Patristic Heritage and Modernity,” in Orthodox Witness Today (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2006), especially pp. 152-65; P. Vassiliadis, "Orthodoxy and Contextual Theology" in the book Lex Orandi, Studies in Liturgical Theology, 1st ed. (Thessaloniki, 1994), 139-56 [in Modern Greek]. Interesting reports on this topic were presented at an international symposium held in 1992 in Thessaloniki (Greece) by the Theological Faculty of the University of Thessaloniki in cooperation with the Bossi Ecumenical Institute, dedicated to the role of Orthodox theology in the ecumenical movement and the dialogue between the "classical" and "contextual" types of theology. The lectures were published by the Greek Theological Gazette Kath 'Odon, Volos Academy for Theological Studies, Winter Program 2000-01 (Athens: Kastaniotis Publications, 2003) [in Modern Greek]; P. Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Modernity: An Introduction, op cit, 163-78 [in Modern Greek].
Maximus the Confessor (John of Scythopolis), Scholias on "On the Heavenly Hierarchy", PG 4, 137 CD. For the attribution of this fragment to John of Scythopolis see P. Rorem and J. C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite(Oxford: Clarendon Press / New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 174.
Metropolitan John of Pergamon (Zizioulas), “The Church and the Eschaton,” in P. Kalaitzidis (ed.), Church and Eschatology, op. Op. 42 [in Modern Greek].
N. Nissiotis, “Orthodoxy, Tradition and Renewal. The Problem of Cultural Relations between Orthodoxy and Hellenism in the Future, ”in the book Orthodoxy, Tradition and Renewal(Athens: Analogio / Efthyni, 2001), 93-94 [in Modern Greek].
P. Vassiliadis, Interpretation of the Gospels (Thessaloniki: Pournaras Publications, 1990), 7 [Modern Greek].
Approx. ed .: Hilarion (Alfeev), Archbishop of Volokolamsk - until February 1, 2010. After - Metropolitan Volokolamsk.
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Witness Today (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2006), 153. in the same book on the use of the contextual method (p. 157): "I believe that solutions can be sought precisely in the consistent use of the principle of contextual reading of sources, which implies the theologian's ability to explore other traditions in an effort to understand, and not condemn or humiliate them." ... Inevitably, the contextual reading of the fathers is inseparable from the lack of equating tradition with Hellenism / Byzantinism, since the tradition includes, in addition to Byzantine, Latin, Syrian, Russian and other traditions (pp. 154-157).
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Witness Toda y, op. Op. 158: “Like ancient philosophy in the time of Clement of Alexandria or Origen, the philosophy of existentialism can serve — and for many has already served — as a" teacher "leading to Christ. Existentialism can be churched in the same way as ancient philosophy was churched by the Greek Fathers in the ΙΙΙ-IV centuries. In addition, the conceptual language of existentialism, which is undoubtedly closer to modern people than the language of ancient philosophy used by the Greek fathers, can be used, if not for the implementation of "neo-patristic synthesis", then at least for the interpretation of its main points in the language of our contemporaries. ".
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Witness Today, op. op. , 170. Cf. also the following thesis: "The advice of the fathers, I believe, is much more universal than the fundamental postulates of Freudianism and can be applied to people living in completely different cultural and temporal contexts" (170).
I will reveal in more detail my position on the problem of post-patristic theology at the upcoming international conference "Neopatristic synthesis or post-patristic theology: can Orthodox theology be contextual?" to be held June 3-6, 2010 in Volos (Greece). This conference is organized by the Volos Theological Academy in cooperation with the Department of Orthodox Theology at the Center for the Study of Religions at the University of Münster (Germany) and the Program for the Study of Orthodox Christianity at Fordham University (USA), as well as the Romanian Institute for the Study of Inter-Orthodox, Interfaith and Interreligious Interaction (INTER, Romania).
I would like to warmly thank my colleague Nikos Asprulis (MA) for his kind help in preparing the final version of this article.
* (Approx. Per.) Quotations from Russian-language books are given in the following editions: 1) G. Florovsky, “Ways of Russian Theology,” - G. Florovsky, “Ways of Russian Theology”, Paris, 1937; 2) V. Lossky, Essai sur la Théologie Mystique de l'Église d'Orient (Paris: Aubier, 1944) / The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clark, 1957) - V. Lossky, Essay on the mystical divinity of the Eastern Churches (despite its immense fame in Russia, it is written in French, so it probably should not be included); 3) Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Witness Today (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2006) - bishop. Ilarion (Alfeev), Orthodox Testimony in the Modern World, Oleg Abyshko Publishing House, 2004.
A somewhat abbreviated version of this article was presented at the WOCATI-ETE / WCC International Congress, organized by the Academy of Theology in Volos (Greece) on June 5, 2008. The text of the article was translated from New Greek by Fr. Gregory Edwards (except for quotations from P. Kalaicidis's book "Orthodoxy and Modernity: An Introduction" [Athens, Publishing House "Indiktos", 2007], translated by Elizabeth Theocritus).
Translated by A. Avdokhin
Christianity theology theology
Since we live in an Orthodox culture, we also need to become familiar with the soteriological tendencies prevailing in modern Orthodox theology. It should be said that until recently, before the beginning of the century, the same traits and the same motives in the understanding of salvation prevailed in Orthodoxy as in Western soteriology. And although we cannot equate the understanding of salvation by the Eastern Church with Protestant or Catholic positions, nevertheless there was a lot in common in the understanding of salvation by Orthodox theologians since the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century, when the Orthodox Church, being on the territory of the Turks, could no longer freely exist and develop. Ideologically, she was forced to feed on Western theology, thereby assimilating the scheme of the legal understanding of salvation, i.e. understanding salvation as justification and redemption. This is not to say that this system is not biblical: Scripture speaks of justification and redemption. Scripture uses these categories to explain what happens to a person when he is saved. Nevertheless, even in the past, and especially in our time, a number of Orthodox theologians began to emphasize that such a view of salvation is limited and insufficient. And this limitation is due to the emphasis only on the negative aspect of salvation, i.e. this view shows how the problem of sin is solved, but says nothing about what happens next. Salvation must necessarily include not only the element of justification and redemption of a person, but also a positive aspect: what happens to a person further - the subsequent growth of a person in God, his approach to God, his union with God, etc. In a word, they are trying to expand the understanding of salvation and say that before the captivity of Orthodox theology by Western thinking (Florovsky), the Orthodox Church understood salvation more broadly, and now they are trying to use the so-called neo-patristic synthesis (going back to the works of the holy church fathers, to the past) in order to propose a more balanced soteriological framework that would be free of the shortcomings of what they saw as narrow legal understanding of salvation.
The famous Orthodox theologian, former Metropolitan and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Sergiy Stragorodsky in 1898 at Kazan University in his master's thesis entitled “The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation” sharply criticized the Western scheme of salvation understood only as a legal justification. But what is interesting is that this dissertation did not suggest any other alternative.
The next generation of Orthodox theologians, such as John Meyendorff, who lived and taught at an Orthodox seminary in America, Vladimir Lossky, a Russian theologian who also lived almost his entire life in the West (France), Georgy Florovsky, a Russian theologian, Christos Yanaras, a modern Greek theologian, John Zhizoulas - a representative of the Greek Orthodox Church - express the soteriological position of the Orthodox Church in one concept, which in Greek is called theosis or, in Russian, “deification” of a person. This concept includes not only an element of justification, but also an element of the inner transformation of a person. Man in the process of salvation becomes like God, he becomes like God.
Orthodox theologians love to repeat the expression borrowed from Athanasius the Great and concerning the mystery of the incarnation of God, "God became human so that man could be deified."
Theology and philosophy
28 minutes
Modern theology is a topic that has no boundaries: you can talk a lot about it, but you can talk very little, depending on how you talk and for what or for whom you talk.
It is absolutely clear that to this day we have a crisis of theology, and to many it seems unnecessary, even harmful to spiritual life, because it is far from life and very harsh, to many it seems to contradict the principles of love, personal freedom and unity.
Here I recall one vivid expression of Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev that theologians will be the worst at the Last Judgment. And about. Alexander Schmemann said that now “theology is treated with hostility or with distrust. Theology has become the lot of theologians alone ”(1, p. 3). And he also noted that “we call a lot of theology,” so there is “abuse of the word, or relaxation of the word,” and this is “original sin, the poison of which also poisons our spiritual life. We use any word in any sense ”(ibid.).
Alas, this is indeed often the case. And so, perhaps, we need to somehow decide, try to at least provide a common basis for a modern conversation on any theological topics, including ecclesiology.
Here they can say that there are wonderful publications of recent times, excellent reports were made and books were published that have now been published, and all this can be simply read. This is probably to some extent correct, if you have the time and sufficient preparation for this. And for such, I would like to immediately refer here to the course of lectures on dogmatic theology of Fr. Alexander Schmemann's Introduction to Theology, published in 1993, on the works of Fr. John Meyendorff, in particular, "Introduction to Patristic Theology", to his reports included in the collections "Synergy" and "Orthodoxy and the Modern World", or, for example, to the interesting report of Bishop Callistus (Weer) on theology at the Fifth International Conference Syndesmos 'a on Christian education, which took place on Halki in 1994, the Russian translation of which was published in the journal "Orthodox Community" No. 24. Old works, which are now intensively reprinted in Russia, are also interesting - like the beginning of the century (for example, in the three-volume encyclopedic dictionary "Christianity") , and, of course, patristic ones - although none of the modern works on theology, naturally, ignores the heritage of the holy fathers. (We will mainly use all these works).
Generally speaking, there is a lot of confusion in the definitions of theology. Preparing for this speech, I was surprised to see that it is impossible to simply take one of the definitions given even by very authoritative authors (sometimes even by the holy fathers), because sometimes these definitions only complement each other, but sometimes contradict each other, sometimes they are too one-sided and sometimes too generalized and even exaggerated.
For example, sometimes the definitions of theology are contrasted, based solely on either the experience of knowledge of God, or on the gift of revelation, sometimes they say (this is from the report of Vladyka Callistus) that theology is Wisdom and therefore it is Jesus Christ Himself (2, p. 86). This is a beautiful expression, but perhaps it is still somewhat exaggerated. Or you can also read (from Father Alexander Schmemann) that theology is the highest calling (1, p. 3). The same Bishop Callistus also says that theology is an all-encompassing way of life, for it itself is “a complete transformation through the entry of the Holy Spirit” (2, p. 88).
Of course, it is possible that out of context these and similar expressions will seem strange, in the context they sometimes sound softer and, perhaps, only strengthen the thought of certain authors. But be that as it may, now everyone, apparently, will agree that the source of theology is both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, in the highest sense in which we use these words, as well as the consequent doctrinal and liturgical experience of the Church. ...
The founders of systematic Christian theology are the ancient Alexandrian teachers Clement of Alexandria and Origen. We must not forget that the very word "theology" does not exist in the Bible. This is not a biblical, but a Hellenic concept, and it is important enough. “The need to theologize was born,” writes Fr. Alexander Schmemann, - for the first time in Alexandria, but not only from the desire to protect the faith from its enemies ”(1, p. 19). Although we note that this is perhaps the most widespread point of view, that it was the apologetic goal that was the main and almost the only motive here. It is very important to note that this is not only the case. The need to theologize in the Church arose primarily from an internal initiative, from the need for an internal spiritual life, even from its necessity, “from a certain theological eros” (ibid.), As the Holy Fathers sometimes said, inclined towards personal, especially contemplative mysticism. True, here, probably, it would be necessary to emphasize one more point, adding a third ecclesiastical source of theology in the Church. Of course, it was born out of the system of adult catechism and the training of catechists for it. It is no coincidence that Clement of Alexandria and Origen (see ibid.) Stand at its origins, that is, those who most successfully headed the Alexandrian school of catechetes.
Christian doctrine developed gradually. We can talk about it already, probably, from the middle of the second century. It begins to develop from that time as a system of teaching and as a science, but “the foundation of not only the teaching itself, but also the liturgical experience in the Church always remains the symbol, the Gospel and apostolic succession” (1, p. 18). However, the Church, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “once she lived without a written Gospel, and without a formalized hierarchy, but she never remained without the Eucharist” (ibid.). From this he draws an interesting conclusion for us that “only through the liturgy can theology and church piety be returned and revived” (ibid.). We could add only one thing to this - through Baptism in its fullness, for the Church never lived without Baptism, which together with the Eucharist constitutes a single sacrament of the Enlightenment.
This raises the problem of studying and assimilating the experience of the holy fathers. Of course, all members of the church of the catholic tradition understand this, and hardly anyone will argue with the fact that our faith and life are fatherly in principle. But even here, in the opinion of Fr. John Meyendorff, “it should always be remembered that the Church defines itself as the Church of the Apostles, and not of the patristic. He is revered as a Holy Father who, in correct (or, to use the expression of St. Basil the Great, in "godly") terms, interprets the apostolic faith for his contemporaries. Such a person clearly sees the problems of his time and preaches Christianity in such a way as to solve these problems, answer questions, and resist delusions. In this case, a clear "legal" formulation is impossible: the whole Church, the entire Tradition serves as a criterion. This lack of clear definitions is, in a sense, a great inconvenience - people like to be guided, guided, told how to act and what to think. The emergence of the papacy in a sense can be seen as a manifestation of this universal desire for clear rules, external criteria and recipes for truth (3, p. 9).
The holiness of the holy fathers does not mean that they “were absolutely sinless: one God without sin. The Church has never considered sinlessness a condition for recognizing someone as a saint ”(ibid.).
“If we consider the writings of the holy fathers of the Church to be evidence of the truth, we should be with them in spiritual continuity. This does not mean at all that we must blindly repeat everything that is written by the holy fathers, but rather presupposes the assimilation of a certain inner logic, intuition, the sequence of development of patristic thought. On this holy path, there is always a danger of falling into heresy, but one should not forget that no man, simply because of his human limitations, is free from such danger, and that, on the other hand, only the devil is a completely heretic, once and for all who said no to God.
Like all people, the Church Fathers lived in a specific historical and cultural setting, and their writings were answers to specific questions addressed to specific people. As for heresy, let us repeat it once more: in our fallen world, complete freedom from delusions does not exist, and in a sense, people even “have the right” to delusion. Heretical statements can be found in any holy father. But there is no such thing as a complete, absolute heretic ... Only the faith of the Church as a single whole, as a community of believers united and guided by a single Spirit, can “recognize” heresy, can draw the line between truth and error, ensure that continuity and constancy of Christian thought in time and space, which constitute the essence of Church Tradition ”(3, p. 10-11).
Theology, therefore, is always modern and requires a new language for the eternally new Christ's Truth. According to Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “finding a new language for a new truth is the merit of the holy fathers” (1, p. 22). This, in particular, gives rise to our task of churching the minds of people who come to Christ and live in the Church.
“When it was necessary to confess the facts about which the Holy Scripture narrates, the fathers did not neglect the profane language to forge“ godly words ”and, turning to the language of their time, used it to serve the truth” (1, p. 24).
“Man is not a tabula rasa. He has some prerequisites; therefore, the truth about the Church was given to the world in the language in which he was able to perceive it ”(1, p. 14).
"New language for new truth", of course, also means "traditional." Tradition is a thing inseparable from church spiritual life, as long as it is, at least sometimes contradictory, but nevertheless inseparable from church tradition. And here, in connection with this tradition, and at the same time in connection with the general problem of the language of the church, it must be admitted that there is also the problem of the Church Slavonic language, which, according to Fr. Alexander Schmemann, is only a "fragment of the Greek" (1, p. 29).
Other problems are closely related to this issue, in particular, the contradiction between the language of the church and the school. The language of the church often diverged and diverged from the language of theological schools. “The language of the Church has become not the language of the school, and the language of the school has not become the language of the Church. The whole special world of the spiritual school was taken from there, and a gap was created between it and the life of the Church, ”says Fr. Alexander (1, p. 31).
There is also a more general problem of the contradiction between the secular (including culture) and the church, or, better to say, the secular and the spiritual. “The unity of culture and the Church, which existed in Moscow Russia, was violated,” and it is no coincidence that secular theology arose in the 19th century, but already in the 20th century, mostly outside Russia, these paths met - “the paths of the Church and the paths of culture "(1, p. 33–34).
At least a partial solution to the problems of language and this meeting led in many cases to the rehabilitation of the human mind. But, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “the mind must be rehabilitated not according to the human mind (ratio), but according to the Logos, through which the likeness of God is embodied in man” (1, p. 34). In this regard, in our time, new problems have become aggravated, in particular, those associated with criticism of reason and, consequently, with scientific criticism.
And here we must remember how the criticism inherent in every human mind, its work and its method, “was determined by a sober view of things, and before it became destructive, criticism was the main virtue of a monk and an ascetic, for its main point is reasoning, sobriety ... And sobriety is one of the first steps on the path of Christian theology. This sobriety consists in criticizing oneself, in testing emotions, the sphere of the soul ”(1, p. 35).
Thus, we all need to strive to ensure that the fullness of spirit and meaning is achieved in the Church, in order to “throw off those multi-colored pieces of paper that have been hung (for a long time) on Christianity, because false defense of Christianity is not needed” (ibid.).
Based on all that has been said, we can conclude that “theology itself is not something ready and delineated once and for all, as if it had fallen from heaven. It is a product of a continuous creative process, which can be characterized as "created modernity." Theology will always depend both on our spiritual needs and on the degree of its merging with the Orthodox Church and penetration of the Truth that the Church carries with it ”(1, p. 34).
Let us now dwell on some of the modern methods of theology. Among these methods, I would like to dwell most of all now, without being able to talk about this in detail, on the methods of history and liturgical. In connection with the first of them, let us emphasize that “theology,” as Fr. Alexander Schmemann, - is not an organic development of the facts themselves, for they have always been, but the cognition of them. Therefore, the theologian is obliged, first of all, to know the facts ”(1, p. 37), but“ the apostolic succession and transmission of theological truths is the same (but already metahistorical) transmission of Christ ”(1, p. 38).
“Christianity has not become a systematic fragment of history, it is in constant development. And we grasp the truth not in its torn, separate parts, but in its entire plyrome (that is, in its entire totality, completeness and integrity), as a kind of organic whole. The preaching of Christianity about the Kingdom of God is also given to us (as it were) in a historical aspect. The symbol of the Kingdom is always something that can grow, develop ”(ibid.), As we all well remember from the Gospel parables. These symbols are something organic, and not "some abstract system of concepts" (ibid.).
“To treat history honestly and truthfully does not mean measuring the past of modern church life, to love or not to love it because of its past (this approach is typical of a conservative or activist). It is necessary to love what is true in it, to love Christ in it, Who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, Who pleased to create His Body in history ”(1, p. 39).
For theology, the liturgical experience of the Church and the liturgical method are extremely important. “By it is meant not only knowledge of liturgical books, but the very worship of the church ... The tree of theology - lex credendi - is always powered by lex orandi, this is the law of the nourishment of the Church. … Theology is only the revelation of what God reveals to man in spiritual experience ”(ibid.).
In this regard, our task also arises to actualize the catholicity of theology. The disclosure that has just been discussed, the disclosure of the spiritual experience revealed by God to man, should always be catholic.
As Fr. Alexander, “in every Christian the entire experience of the Church is reflected, and this is the basis of Christianity ... Theology is a reflection and testimony of all the truth of the Church. Christianity in the deepest sense is not provincial, not individualistic, and therefore, before rejecting anything in the church, one must make sure that it does not coincide with the truth of the Church, and not with our tastes and desires. There should be no gap between theology and the world. " Theology is the path of “the regeneration of the whole person in accordance with Christ. And he who sows and reaps the fruits of theology is the same Christ ”(1, p. 40).
Continuing the most important theme of the catholicity of modern theology, let us recall that we currently live in a world that has changed significantly, and, as Fr. John Meyendorff is primarily in two respects. First, "both Eastern and Western Christianity can now be considered represented throughout the world," so that "the Orthodox Church found itself in the mainstream of ecumenical (world) events." Second, “all Christians face the challenge of a united and radically unchurched world. This challenge must be faced as such, as a problem that needs a theological and spiritual answer. For younger generations, wherever they are, it is immaterial on which spiritual genealogy this answer depends - Western or Eastern, Byzantine or Latin - so long as it sounded true and life to them. Therefore, Orthodox theology will either be truly "catholic", that is, truly for everyone, or it will not be theology at all. It must define itself as "Orthodox theology" and not as "Eastern", and this can be done without abandoning its historical eastern roots.
These clear facts of our current situation do not mean at all that we need what is usually called a "new theology" that breaks with Tradition and succession; but the Church indisputably needs theology to resolve today's issues, and not repeat old solutions to old issues ...
At present, our task is not only to remain faithful to our fathers, true to their thoughts, but also to imitate them in their openness to the problems of their time. History itself took us away from cultural limitations, from all provincialism and ghetto psychology ”(4, pp. 57–58).
As Fr. John, "Orthodoxy can avoid a new historical catastrophe in our generation only through a healthy theological revival ... We really need biblical, patristic and modern theology ... The only healthy and meaningful future is in theology ..." (4, pp. 75–76).
In the opinion of the same authoritative modern theologian, the Church in the face of modernity "must avoid two very specific dangers." The first is that the church should avoid considering itself a “denomination,” and the second is that “the church should not see itself as a sect. Those, for example, who identify Orthodoxy with the nationality, necessarily exclude from among the members of the Church and even from church interests everyone and everything that does not belong to certain ethnic traditions.
The denomination and the sect have in common that both of them are exceptional: the first is relativistic by its very definition, since it considers itself as one (only) of the possible forms of Christianity, and the second because it finds pleasure (really demonic pleasure) in isolation, in separation, in difference and in the complex of superiority ”(4, p. 76).
The task of Orthodox theology, according to Fr. John, is to exclude and condemn both of these dangers from your life. “Theology alone, of course, combined with love, hope, humility and other necessary components of true Christian behavior, can help us discover and love our Church as a Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church, as we all know, is not only “universal”. It is true not only in the sense that it possesses truth, but also in that - here Fr. John says very bold words - that she rejoices in finding the truth outside herself. It is for all people, and not only for those who are its members today, and it is ready, without any conditions, to serve everywhere any progress towards good. She suffers if somewhere there is delusion or division, she never allows compromise in matters of faith, but is infinitely compassionate and tolerant of human weakness ”(4, p. 77). In all this, only our true Orthodoxy and the victory of Christ in us and through us are manifested.
In this connection, naturally, a special theological concept of the Church arises - ecclesiology, primarily pneumatological and personalistic. This is what Fr. says about such a special challenge of our time as personalistic ecclesiology. John Meyendorff: “To be a member of the Body of Christ also means freedom. In the end, freedom means personal (here, perhaps, it would be better to translate as “personal” - Fr. G.K.) existence ... Given that many Christians today have a huge need to identify their Christian faith with social activism, with the dynamics of groups , political convictions, with utopian theories of historical development, they just lack what is the center of the New Testament evangelism: a personal living experience of communication with a personal God ”(4, p. 70).
“Orthodoxy has a special responsibility: to realize the enormous importance of the spiritual and patristic understanding of the Church as a Body, which is both a sacrament ... and a community of living, free individuals, with their personal direct responsibility to God, to the Church and to each other ...
It is obvious that it is in this antinomy between the sacred and the personal that the key to understanding the authority of the Church is found. Will there be anything here to say to Orthodox theology, which rightly claims that it has preserved a balance between authority, freedom and responsibility for truth? " (4, p. 71–72). At least to a small extent, but now in Russia it also depends on us.
So, concluding this speech, I would like to express in some other way the main thing that is contained in the modern understanding of theology and in our need for modern theology, which wants to be and remain ecclesiastical, catholic and modern, otherwise it is like us we already know, and not theology at all.
Yes, “God always speaks and we answer” - in such a wonderful formula, Fr. John Meyendorff contains the entire inner impulse of our theology, for our theology is the language of the Church, this is the word of the Church to God and about God in response to the word of God to the Church and about the Church, this is the language of God-manhood, which means - the language of God, the world, life and man in their unity, holiness, connection and difference.
This language is always directly related to mystical, mystery and ethical-aesthetic church experience. Therefore, it is the language of ascent, transformation, but also of descent, economy, kenosis of God and His Church. This is a continuation of the embodiment of God-human Wisdom, and therefore - the language of God-knowledge and gnosis, on the one hand, and divine Revelation and prophecy, on the other. This is a revelation of the heart and lips, a revelation of the ears and eyes, which suggests the possibility of expressing this experience in both philosophical and theological language. Therefore, wishing to learn modern theology, we should not shy away from the constructions of religious thinkers and philosophers who, like many centuries ago, serve the Church.
The path of ascent for us is always associated with the image of a certain angelic "ladder", that is, with the ethical-aesthetic, sacramental-ascetic and mystical experience of the knowledge of God, on which a special emphasis is placed in the tradition of the Orthodox Church. But the path of descent is also associated with the "ladder", which can be expressed by the same ethical-aesthetic, ascetic-sacramental and mystical experience of the Revelation of God, on which the Western Church often emphasized in a special way. But it is precisely both that together reveal to us the fullness of the divine economy (economy) in the world.
From here we can, of course, throw a bridge both to the problems of divine-human culture and to contemporary problems of ecology.
Theology is the collection and generalization of the entire experience of the Church, as the experience of the Epiphany and Vision of God, Divine Revelation and theology of God, the experience reflected in the Holy Church Scripture, that is, in the Bible, and in the Holy Church Tradition fulfilling it, as well as in the writings and traditions of the fathers. and in the writings and traditions of the whole Church.
This experience is always outwardly expressed, like any spiritual experience of any person, in mythopoetic language. There is no other language for this, for any language of feelings speaks about subjective things, and a rationalistic language can only speak about objective and scientific things, it can explore theological tradition, but it will not be the very fabric that expresses the living experience of theology.
Mythopoetic signs and images can live for millennia. But over time, they also need special explication or translation. The problem of translation in the Church is always the problem of translating the same Revelation and the experience of knowledge of God into a mythopoetic language that should be imperceptibly but adequately read by modern man, that is, perceived by him as much as possible. This means moving away from what is no longer read and perceived by modern man, and this, in turn, implies the use of new mythologemes. Here is the whole essence of the problems of modern mission, catechesis and theological education, the guarantee of their real success.
Theology in a certain narrow sense is precisely the doctrine of the Divine, the church theory, the fruit of the contemplation of God and His creation by the Church, i.e. life, peace and man, in prayer and in the sacraments of faith and the life of man in the church community led by the grace of God.
Thus, theology is also a way of church witness, so that a person, both witnessing and receiving this testimony, could become ecclesiastical, for theology is a way of perceiving and transmitting “the power and glory and energy of God,” as Didim the Blind put it.
Theology is always open - up and down, and in breadth, that is, both vertically and horizontally, both for spiritual knowledge, and for the perception of revelation, it is open to all people, to all living things and to all that world, who has not turned his back on God. Closed theology is not authentic, even if it outwardly correctly repeats all previously known formulas and forms of true revelation and knowledge of God.
Literature
Protopres. Alexander Schmemann. Introduction to Theology. A course of lectures on dogmatic theology. M., 1993.
Bp. Callistus (Ware). Theological education in Scripture and St. fathers. Report at the V International Conference on Christian Education (Halki, August 1994). Orthodox community, no. 24 (6), 1994, p. 83-92.
Protopres. John Meyendorff. An Introduction to Patristic Theology. Lecture notes. Per. from English Larisa Volokhonskaya. Ed. 2nd. Vilnius-Moscow, Vesti, 1992.
Protopres. John Meyendorff. Orthodox theology in the modern world. Per. from English In Sat: Orthodoxy and the Modern World. Minsk: Rays of Sofia, 1995, p. 57–78.
Christianity. Encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1993. I. D. Andreev and others. Theology. T. 1, p. 275-286.
Protopres. John Meyendorff. Orthodox testimony in the modern world. Lecture at the Minsk Diocesan Administration (June 1992). In Sat: Orthodoxy and the Modern World. Minsk. Rays of Sofia, 1995, p. 4-30.
The pagination of this electronic article is consistent with the original.
Prot. I. MEYENDORF
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY IN MODERN WORLD *)
In our century, a huge event has taken place in the history of Christianity: the linguistic, cultural and geographical barriers between Eastern and Western Christians have collapsed.
Until fifty years ago, contact between East and West was rare and limited to the formal and scientific spheres. In countries where Orthodox and Catholics tied together their national feelings with those of the Church, there could be no fruitful dialogue between the churches. This picture has changed dramatically these days. After two wars and a revolution in Russia, Eastern and Western Christians were scattered all over the world. This was facilitated by the Russian dispersal after the revolution and the displacement of other national groups - mainly after the Second World War. Added to this was the maturation of American Orthodoxy. All these factors allowed the Orthodox Church to join the mainstream of the ecumenical movement. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, the deeply secularized world challenged all Christians at the same time and it turned out to be impossible to ignore this challenge; it requires a serious theological response. Modern youth is indifferent to what kind of spiritual continuity this answer is based on: Eastern, Western, Byzantine or Latin - youth are looking only for Truth and Life. Thus, our Orthodox theology faces a choice: - either
*) Speech delivered on October 17, 1968 in a large auditorium of St. Vladimir's Theological Academy in New York in connection with the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Academy.
become truly catholic, or disappear completely. Our theology should be defined as "Orthodox" and not as "Eastern", and for this it should not abandon its "Eastern" roots. There is no talk of a so-called “new theology” that breaks with tradition and continuity - on the contrary, the Church needs a serious theology capable of solving the pressing issues of our time.
The ancient Cappadocian Church Fathers are considered great theologians precisely because they preserved the entire content of Christ's Gospel from attacks from the Hellenic philosophical worldview. They achieved this by being able - partly retaining and partly discarding this worldview - to understand it and thus affirmed the significance of their theology.
Our modern task is not only to keep their thoughts true, but, imitating them, turn our face to the issues of our time. History itself has freed us from cultural restrictions, from provincialism and from the psychology of the "ghetto".
How can we define the philosophical world in which we live now and with which we are called to conduct a dialogue? First of all, as a world of paradoxes.
Here is the main statement of the famous Protestant theologian Pavel Tillich:
« Vs I will say to Pascal: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and Jacob, and the God of philosophers are one and the same God, ”with these words he is trying to build a bridge over the abyss that separates biblical religion from philosophy. But then he recognizes the limitations of man in the knowledge of God. He writes: "(God) is a Personality and at the same time a Denial of Himself as a person." Faith, which for Tillich does not differ in anything from philosophical knowledge, “at the same time includes itself and self-doubt: Christ is Jesus — and there is His denial. Biblical religion is both an affirmation and a denial of ontology. The task and dignity of human thought is to live serenely and courageously in such tension (antinomy) and be able to ultimately find complete unity both in the depths of one's own soul and in the depths of Divine life. "
Modern radical theologians often criticize Tillich for his, in their opinion, an exaggerated interest in biblical religion, but nevertheless it is he who expresses in his theology that basic humanistic direction to which they all belong: - The highest religious truth is in the depths of a person's soul, and not in the Holy Scriptures.
The mainstream in modern Western Christian thought is essentially nothing more than a reaction against the ancient Augustinian dichotomy, that is, the separation of "nature" from "grace." This division defined the entire history of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages and up to our time. Although he himself is bliss. Augustine and was able to partially fill the formed ontological abyss between God and man with the help of Plato's anthropology, attributing to sensus mentis a special ability to cognize God, the bifurcation remained the main theological category both in scholasticism and in the Reformation.
According to the teachings of blessed. Augustine, the Fall so distorted the nature of man that there was nothing in common between him and God - neither salvation, nor a worthy man of creativity. He needs a special “anticipatory grace”, which alone can create within him a certain habitus, that is, a “state” in which his actions acquire a positive character. Such a relationship between God and man becomes purely external: "grace" bestowed on man by virtue of the "merits" of Christ, who, with His atoning sacrifice, "satisfied" Divine justice, which condemned man in the fall. The Protestant reformers dropped the notions of "merit" and "good works" but remained true to the original division between God and man; they even strengthened it in their understanding of the Gospel as a free gift of God, opposed to the complete impotence of fallen man. The final fate of a person is decided only through "grace"(Sola Gratia), and we learn about salvation only through Holy Scripture (Sola Scriptura). The cheap "means of acquiring grace" handed out by the Medieval Church are thus replaced by a proclamation of mercy from the Person of the Almighty Transcendent God.
Barthes' Protestant neo-orthodoxy gave new impetus to the Augustinian way of thinking of the Protestants. But, in our time, Protestant theology is sharply repelled from Augustinism. Karl Barth himself in the last volume of his "Church Dogmatics" radically turns away from his previous views,
expressed in the early 1920s in his interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans. In later writings, Barthes affirms the presence of God in creation regardless of the act of incarnation. Thus, he himself reflects a new mood in theology — something that brings together such diverse people as Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin. This is where the more radical, but less serious American New Theology begins. Hamilton a, Van Buren a and Alitzer a.
We then return to the ontology of creation that underlies the theology of Barthes and Tillich. Let's notice so far the obvious parallelism of their thought with the main theses and conclusions of the Russian "Sophiological" school. If, as we have noted, some of the last portions of Barthes Dogmatics could be written by Fr. Sergiy Bulgakov - this can be said, for example, about Tillich's Christology, in which he, like Bulgakov, speaks not so much of the miracle of the Incarnation in history, as an expression of the eternal "God-manhood." This similarity with Sophiology rests on a common foundation of German idealism: if Florensky and Bulgakov were a generation younger, or if their works were known in the West, they would probably have received no less influence and would have enjoyed no less success than Tillich and Teilhard.
In our time, sophiology does not attract the attention of young Orthodox theologians too much; they prefer to overcome dichotomy (duality) by walking the path of Christocentric, biblical and patristic. But Protestantism is dominated by a philosophical approach to Christian Revelation. The predominance of this approach coincides with another "revolution" in an area inevitably central to Protestants: in the interpretation of the Bible.
The insistence of Bultmann and his followers to dissociate Christian preaching from the facts of history is a new way of subjectivizing the gospel.
For Bultmann, Christian faith did not arise from testimony eyewitnesses of the risen Lord, and quite the opposite: the Christian faith gave birth to the myth of the Resurrection. Consequently, faith is nothing more than a natural, subjective function of a person, a gnosis without an objective criterion. If, on the other hand, the created order of things is considered unchangeable, even for God Himself, on the basis of the premise that any fact that has not been verified by science - such as the Resurrection - ipso facto is not
historical myth, then the very created order of things is deprived of content, turns into determinism, obligatory for God Himself, Revelation, therefore, must be subordinated to this very order of things created by God. God cannot but follow the laws and principles established by Himself. Consequently, cognition of Revelation does not differ qualitatively from other forms of cognition; Christian faith, - to use Tillich's expression, in this case, only striving towards the Unconditional, or towards the "depth of creation."
For Tillich, as for Bultmann, the historical Christ and His teaching remain the center of the Christian faith: “The material norm of systematic theology,” writes Tillich in his work Systematic Theology, “is the New Being in Jesus as Christ; it is for us the Main Object of interest to us ”, The only difficulty is that in Tillich's worldview there are no objective reasons for the historical Christ to be chosen at the forefront of life - hence the choice is arbitrary. Since Christianity is defined only as a response to man's eternal striving for the Absolute, there is no reason not to find this answer in other teachings, outside of Christ. Such a substitution clearly happened to William Hamilton. He writes that "the Theologian is sometimes inclined to think that it is easier to understand Christ not as an Object or Basis of faith, not as a Person, Event or community, but simply as a starting point, as a platform in common with love for one's neighbor." The "platform", under the influence of Hegel and Marx, is known to have turned into a social "concern". And, in the end, Christianity turns into a form of simple left-wing humanism.
Of course, radical humanists like Alitzer - Hamilton - Van Buren are a minority among modern theologians, and the reaction against their ideas is already beginning. But the very nature of the reaction is not always healthy. Sometimes it boils down to a simple return to traditional authority, that is, to the Magisterium among the Roman Catholics, and to the Bible, to the so-called fundamentalism, among the Protestants. Both trends require a kind of credo quia absurdum, blind faith, detached from reason, science, or modern social phenomena. Obviously, such an understanding of authority is no longer theological, and, in essence, expresses the irrational conservatism usually associated in America with political reaction. Thus, it is rather paradoxical - both extremes in theology identify the Christian
Evangelism with empirical phenomena of life: - sociological, political, revolutionary - of this world. It becomes quite obvious that the old antinomy of "grace" and "nature" remains unresolved; most likely, it is muted either by a simple denial of all "supernatural", or by the identification of God with the heavenly Deus ex machina, whose main function is to keep dogmas, societies, structures and authorities intact.
It is clear that the seat of Orthodox theology is not in any of these camps. The main task of Orthodoxy is to re-formulate the biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Divine Presence in the world; a Presence that does not destroy the empirical world, but saves it; Which unites everyone in the same Truth, but at the same time endows everyone with different gifts. The Holy Spirit is the highest Gift of life - but also the Giver of it, being always above creation; The Holy Spirit is the foundation of Church Tradition and continuity, and His very presence makes us truly and forever free sons of God. As Metropolitan Ignatius Hazim said at a meeting in Uppsala this summer: “Without the Spirit, God is far from us; Christ belongs to the past, and the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church becomes a simple organization, authority becomes dominion, missionary work is propaganda, worship is remembrance, and Christian activity is purely slavish morality. "
It is difficult to approach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the abstract. This is probably why so few good theological works are devoted to the Holy Spirit, and even the Holy Fathers talk about Him either in separate polemical writings or in purely spiritual literature. And yet, without delving into pneumatology, it is impossible to understand either the Christology of the Church Fathers, or the ecclesiology of the first centuries of Christianity, or even the very idea of salvation.
I will try to show this with five examples that seem to me to be the starting points of the Orthodox witness, which is so important in modern theology.
1. The world is not divine and needs salvation.
2. Man is a theocentric being.
3. Christian theology is Christocentric.
4. Genuine ecclesiology is personalistic.
5. True understanding of God is threefold.
1. The world is not divine
In the New Testament, and not only in the Evangelist John, one can hear the constant opposition of the Spirit of truth "who proceeds from the Father" (John 15:26), "Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him and does not know Him" (Io. 14:17), - the spirits who must “be tested whether they are of God” (I John 4.1).
The Epistle to the Colossians speaks of the entire cosmos as being in the power of forces, the dominions of the "elemental spirits of the world," opposed to Christ, although "created by Him and for Him." Christianity brought something completely new to the world: it freed the world and the universe from myths. The belief that God dwells in the elements, in water, in springs, in the stars, in the Emperor - all of this was rejected from the very beginning by the Apostolic Church. And the same Church condemned all forms of Manichaeism, all dualism. The world itself is not evil; his elements are to proclaim the glory of God; water can be sanctified, space can be controlled; an emperor can become a servant of God. All the elements that make up the world are not an end in themselves, as the pre-Christian world considered them, which deified them. Christianity, on the contrary, defines the entire nature, the entire cosmos to the very depths in relation to the Creator as a created element, and also to man, the Image of God in the world. This is why Orthodox worship (like other ancient Christian liturgies) places such importance on the ordinances of consecration, which include
a) elements of exorcism (“Thou hast crushed the heads of the serpents ...” From the Great Consecration of Water, on the day of the Epiphany);
b) Invocation of the Holy Spirit "from the Father issuing", that is, "not from the world," and
c) the assertion that in its new, sanctified being, the substance, fortified in God and restored in its original relation to the Creator, will henceforth serve the person whom God created as the master of the universe.
Thus, the blessing and consecration of any substance in the world frees a person from addiction and puts this substance in the service of man.
Thus, ancient Christianity stripped the elements of the physical world from the veil of myth. A similar task must be done by modern theology in relation to "Society", "Gender", "State", "Revolution" and other fashionable idols.
The new prophets of secularization are partly correct when they say that Christianity is secularizing the world: freeing the world from pagan mythology was a Christian idea from the very beginning - but the fact is that for many modern Western Christians the Church itself must be secularized and replaced by a new idolatry, worship of the world — and in this way man again renounces the freedom given to him in the Holy Spirit and again goes captive to the determinism of history, sociology, Freud's psychology or utopian progressivism.
2. Man is a theocentric being
In order to understand what "Freedom in the Holy Spirit" consists of, let us recall the completely paradoxical statement of St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Image of God "(Adv. Haer. 5, 6.1). This excerpt from St. Irenaeus, as well as several others parallel to her, should be regarded not according to the definitions of post-Nicene theology, which would raise too many questions,î ho in its positive content. This positive content runs through the writings of all the Holy Fathers. Man becomes man only through the presence of the Spirit of God in him. Man is not an autonomous, not self-sufficient being; his humanity consists - on the one hand, in his receptivity ("openness") to the Absolute, to immortality, to creativity in the image of the Creator, and on the other hand, in the fact that God went towards this receptivity ("openness") of His creation, and therefore communication and participation in Divine life and glory for man is his natural property.
The later Patriotic tradition consistently developed the ideas of St. Irenaeus (not necessarily his terminology), which is especially important for his doctrine of human freedom.
According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, the fall consisted in the fact that man fell under the power of cosmic determinism, whereas before, while he preserved the image and likeness of God and participated in the Divine life, he was completely free. This means that freedom is not the opposite of grace, but grace, that is, the Divine life itself is not a coercive force that forces us to obey God, and is not an addition to human nature, necessary to increase the price of our
good deeds. Grace is the state that gives a person the reality of freedom: “When they turn to the Lord, then this veil is removed. The Lord is Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But we all with our open face, as in a mirror, beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image of glory into glory, as from the Lord's Spirit ”(And Cor. 3: 16-18).
One of the main statements of this text is ap. Paul, like the anthropology of Saints Irenaeus and Gregory of Nyssa, is that nature and grace, man and God, human mind and the Holy Spirit, human freedom and divine presence - all these elements are compatible. Genuine humanity in her work, in true freedom, in pristine beauty and harmony, and manifests itself only when she participates in God or when, according to the ap. Paul and St. Gregory of Nyssa, she ascends from glory to glory, not exhausting to the end either the riches of God or the possibilities of man.
A popular slogan of our day is the assertion that theology must turn into anthropology. An Orthodox theologian cannot and should not shy away from discussing this issue, provided that from the very beginning an “open” approach to a person will be put in the foundation. Modern fashionable "dogmas" about secularism, human autonomy, cosmocentrism, social action should be discarded as dogmas. Many of them, as already said, have deep roots in Western Christianity, which has long been afraid of the idea of human participation in divine life (since it usually identifies it with emotional mysticism) and is rather inclined to view a person as an autonomous being. This approach is false in its very essence.
Even today, the "prophets" of godless Christianity are primarily mistaken in their interpretation of man.
Young people today are not “secular”, they yearn to satisfy their natural need for the “Other,” the Transcendent, “The Truth Itself,” but they seek this in such dubious ways as the adoption of Eastern religions (Buddhism, etc., with drugs and various means that induce hallucinations.
Our century is not only the century of secularism, but also the century of the emergence of new religions, or rather, the replacement of true religion -
false. And this is inevitable, because man is a theocentric Being: when he is deprived of the True God, he creates false gods.
3. Christocentric theology
If patristic anthropology is correct, then all forms of Christian theology become Christocentric.
It is customary to contrast Christocentrism with pneumatocentrism. Indeed, if we adhere to the idea of external redemption based on the so-called satisfaction, that is, when the grace of satisfying God's justice is only applied from outside to a person who in other respects has a completely autonomous being, then the opposition is inevitable. Such a Christology contradicts pneumatology, since there is truly no place in it for the action of the Spirit.
But since we believe that it is the presence of the Spirit that makes a person a real person, and that the purpose of a person is to restore full communion with God with the help of the Holy Spirit, then Christ, the New Adam, is the only one in whom genuine humanity has been manifested, because He was born in history "of the Holy Spirit and the Ever-Virgin Mary" - cannot but be the center of our theology. And this centrality does not limit in any way the role of the Holy Spirit.
Christocentrism in theology is now under strong attack from Bultmann's interpretations of Scripture. If every phenomenon is a myth, as soon as it does not follow the laws of empirical science and experience, then the historical Appearance of Christ loses its absolute uniqueness, since His uniqueness is subjective. Nevertheless, "Christocentrism" is still firmly established not only among the remaining supporters of the neo-orthodoxy of Barthianism, but also by Tillich. He “co-exists” in the writings of theologians who, like John McCarey, try to reconcile the de-mythologization of events such as the Resurrection and Ascension with the general classical presentation of theological doctrine.
And yet, even among such comparatively traditional or semi-traditional writers, there is a clear tendency towards non-storian and adoptionist Christology. Tillich, for example, formally expresses this (when he writes that “man is Jesus
can only be “adopted” by God, but His humanity cannot be “eternally” or transformed: for transformed humanity is deprived of its ultimate freedom and is not free to become anything other than divine ”). This position clearly shows the old Western idea that God and man, grace and freedom are mutually exclusive. This is Tillich's residue of that "closed" anthropology, which excludes Orthodox Christology, replacing it with Nestorian: in Christ there are separately man and God.
Since the nineteenth century, historians and theologians have been engaged in the rehabilitation of Nestorius and his teacher Theodore of Mopsuest in the name of human autonomy. This rehabilitation has attracted several prominent Orthodox theologians, who also show a clear preference for this kind of "historicity" of the Antiochian school, which believes that in general history can be exclusively "human" history.
To be a face « historical», Christ was not only meant to be quite human, but also, as it were on its own and independently by man. Meanwhile, the main statements of St. Cyril of Alexandria that the Son of God Himself became the Son of Mary - who became the Mother of God, and that the Son of God “suffered in the flesh” are presented at best as abuses of terminology or bizarre theology. How can the Logos, i.e. God Himself die flesh on the cross, if God, by its very definition, is immortal.
There is no need to enter here in a detailed discussion of theological concepts related to the doctrine of the hypostatic unity of the Divine and Humanity in Christ. I just want to emphasize with all my might that the formula of St. Cyril of Alexandria: “The Word suffered in the flesh” is one of the greatest Christian statements of the authenticity of mankind. Because if the Son of God Himself, in order to identify Himself with humanity, in order to "be like us in everything, even to death" - human death - died on the cross, He thus testified with a power exceeding our imagination that humanity is truly the most precious, the most essential, infallible creation of God.
Of course, the Christology of St. Cyril in advance presupposes The "open" anthropology of the early and later Church Fathers. The humanity of Jesus, being "hypostatized" in the Logos, was
no less full of humanity, because the presence of God does not destroy man. Even more: it can be said that Christ was a more complete man than ourselves. Here again, quoting Karl Rahner'a (in this matter, the closest to the patristic tradition among Western theologians), “humanity is a completely“ open ”reality upward; a reality that achieves its perfection, the realization of the highest achievements of man, when the Logos Himself dwells in the world in it ”.
It can also be said that a Christology that includes "theopaschism" (that is, the idea of the suffering of God in the flesh) presupposes at the same time "openness" on the part of God.
Thus, only in the background this is exactly Christology, one can accept the idea that theology becomes, by necessity, anthropology and, conversely, that only the true understanding of man - his creation, fall, salvation and final destiny - is revealed in Christ, in the Word of God, crucified and risen.
4. Personalistic doctrine of the Church(ecclesiology)
Since the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person makes it free, and if by grace is meant liberation from predestination, then belonging to the Body of Christ means also freedom. In the end, freedom means personal Existence.
Our worship teaches us the great personal responsibility that each member of the Church has. Dialogue before the sacrament of Baptism, the development of penitential discipline and communion show private the nature of the participation of members of the Church in Christian life. We are well aware that in the New Testament the word "member" (μέλος ), when he designates Christians as “members of Christ” (I Cor. 6:15) or as “members of one another” (Eph. 4:25), it applies only to individuals, never to whole groups, such as local churches. The local church, the Eucharistic community is the Body, affiliation to her as a "member", it is exclusively private Act.
In our time, talking about "personal Christianity" and "personal faith" is extremely unpopular, largely because in the West, religious personalism is immediately associated with pietism and emotionalism. Here again we see the same old misunderstanding of the true participation of man in the Divine
life; either grace is given to the Church as an institution, or it is some kind of free gift given by God's omnipotence to all mankind - and then these manifestations of personal communication with God acquire the character of pietism and emotional mysticism. Meanwhile, the desire of many Christians to identify their faith with social action, with group dynamics, with politics, with utopian theories of historical development - this desire is devoid of what is at the very core of New Testament evangelism: the personal living experience of communion with a personal God. Sometimes this evangelism comes from the evangelical revivalists or Pentecostals, and then it really pours out into an emotionally superficial form, but this is because such evangelism does not have a solid foundation in either theology or ecclesiology.
All of the above imposes a special responsibility on the Orthodox Church, which must realize the enormous importance of the biblical and patristic understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ, and the Sacrament, which reveals the objective presence of God in the hierarchy of the church structure, independent of the personal dignity of its members, but also how communities of living, free individuals with individual and direct responsibility to God, to the Church and to each other. Personal experience acquires both its reality and its authenticity from participation in the Sacrament. But the Sacrament is given to the community only so that personal experience becomes possible within the community. The paradox between "personal" and "communal" perception of the Church is best shown by the great Father of the Church, St. Simeon, the New Theologian, the most "sacramental" spiritual writer of Byzantium. He considers as the greatest heresy the opinion of some of his contemporaries that personal communication with God is impossible. All saints, ancient and modern, can attest that this "paradox" is at the very center of Christian life. It is through this antinomy of the “sacramental” and the “personal” that the key to understanding authority in the Church can be found. And again, in this the responsibility of Orthodoxy is completely exclusive.
At present, it is becoming clearer that the issue of authority is not just an external dispute between the Medieval East and the West, expressed in the struggle between Constantinople and Rome, but that the deepest drama of all Western Christianity is contained in this very issue. The authority of Rome, which for many centuries mistakenly believed itself to be the only one responsible for Truth and
which has achieved remarkable success in educating Church members in the virtue of obedience, but at the same time exempted them from responsibility, is now openly contested (often on false grounds). He has to fight defensively in unprotected positions. It is Orthodoxy that must show the world that the salvation of the Christian faith lies not in external authority, but in spiritual and theological "rebirth." Will Orthodox theology, which has maintained a balance between authority, freedom and responsibility for truth, be able to give a convincing answer to the world? If it fails, then it will not be our loss of religious pride, which, like any self-affirmation, is demonic by nature, will be tragic, but the consequences of this for the Christian faith as such will be tragic.
5. True understanding of God is threefold
When a little earlier we mentioned the Christological formula of St. Cyril of Alexandria: "One of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh", that is, the words that are sung at each Liturgy in the chant "The Only Begotten Son ...", we argued that this is primarily the recognition of humanity as a value important to God Himself, so much for It is significant that for her sake He accepted the torment of the cross. But, in addition, this formula affirms the Personal or Hypostatic being of God.
All objections to this formula are based on the identification of the existence of God with His essence. God cannot die, said the Antiochian theologians, because He is immortal and unchanging, both in nature and in essence: the concept of "death of God" is such a logical contradiction of terms that it cannot be true - neither in the religious nor in the philosophical sense. At best, this, like the term "Theotokos" as applied to the Virgin Mary, can be a godly metaphor. However, in Orthodox theology, the formula of St. Cyril was accepted not only as a religious and theological truth, but was recognized by the Criterion of Orthodoxy at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553).
God is not bound by those philosophical requirements or attributes that our logic ascribes to Him. The patristic concept of hypostasis, unknown to Greek philosophy (she used the word hypostasis in a different sense), is different in God from His incomprehensible, inaccessible to man and therefore indefinable essence. It presupposes the idea of "openness" - imma-
neness of God and enables the Divine Person, or Hypostasis, to become fully human. This condescension of God meets the "upward openness" that characterizes man, and makes possible the fact that God does not remain "there, above" or "in heaven," but that He does descend to the level of the human, mortal state, not in order to swallow man. or destroy, but in order to save him and restore the former communion with Himself.
This “condescension” of God, according to patristic theology, occurs at the level of the personal or hypostatic being of God. If this happened in relation to the nature or essence of God - as some so-called "kenotic" theories have argued - then the Logos, so to speak, gradually, with the approach of death, would become less and less God, and at the moment of death it would cease to be. St. Cyril, on the contrary, claims that the question: "Who died on the cross?" - it is impossible to answer otherwise as the word "God", because in Christ there was no other personal being, except the Logos; and also because death is a personal act. Only Someone can die, not something.
“In the grave of the flesh, in hell with the soul, like God, in paradise with the robber and on the Throne you were with the Father and the Spirit, all fulfilling the Undescribed” - this is what the Church proclaims in the Easter song: the union in a single hypostasis of the essential features of the divine human nature, and each of them remains itself unchanged.
The human mind cannot argue against this dogma, referring to the qualities of the Divine essence, because this essence is absolutely unknown and indescribable, and also because our direct knowledge of God is possible precisely because the Person of the Son of God took on a different nature, not divine, entered the created peace and spoke to man through the mouth of Jesus Christ, died a human death, rose from a human tomb and established eternal communion with man through the sending of the Holy Spirit.
“No one has ever seen God. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed ”(John 1: 18).
It would undoubtedly be too superficial to establish a parallel between the newfangled theological theory of the "death of God" and St. Cyril of Alexandria. The whole context and the whole purpose of theology are completely different in both cases. On the other hand, it is possible and even necessary for Orthodox theologians
to assert that God is not a philosophical concept, not an "essence with properties", not a concept, but that He is exactly who Jesus Christ is; that the knowledge of Him consists first of all in a personal meeting with the One in Whom the Apostles recognized the incarnate Logos, as well as with the “Other”, who was subsequently sent “Intercessor with unspeakable sighs” in anticipation of the end. So, in Christ and through the Holy Spirit we come to the Father Himself.
Orthodox theology does not proceed from proofs of the existence of God and from the conversion of people to philosophical deism; it brings them face to face with the gospel of Jesus Christ and expects their free response. Their life in the Church is this answer.
It was often said that the Eastern Fathers, speaking of God, always begin with the three Persons of the Divine, in order to subsequently prove their "consubstantiality", while the West begins with the consubstantiation of God, trying to further introduce the concept of Three Persons. These two lines of theology formed the basis of the ancient debate about the Filioque, but they also define theological thought in our time. God, in Orthodox theology, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit - as Persons. Their common divine essence is completely unknowable and transcendent, and is best defined in negative terms. But all three Persons, acting independently, give us the opportunity to take part in Their common Divine life (or energy) by Baptism "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." New life and immortality become true reality and experience - and this is accessible to man.
At present, the Orthodox Church is being included in an inevitable historical process not only in the so-called "ecumenical dialogue", but, here in the West, at the same time in the mainstream of social evolution.
Unfortunately, the Orthodox Church is unable to control this process. We frankly admit that the Pan-Orthodox Conferences began after the Local Churches took decisive steps towards participation in ecumenism, and when our Churches, priests and laity were already involved in modern social processes. In addition, all the Orthodox "scattering" - ("diaspora") and, especially, the American Church, which is now an organic part of Western society,
groom in constant exchange of opinions with other Christians, with atheists and agnostics, whether she wants it or not. We can only think about the accomplished fact. Moreover, only a healthy theological revival can help to avoid a new historical catastrophe of Orthodoxy in our generation. I say: "a historical catastrophe in our generation" because I believe that the Spirit of Truth will not allow a catastrophe in the Church itself, as such, although He, as in the past, allowed catastrophes in individual churches and even in entire generations of Christians. I completely agree with Professor Karmiris *) when he says that those who reject theology and replace it with sentimental ecumenism, while avoiding the so-called “difficult questions,” betray the true spirit of Orthodoxy. We just need theology - biblical, patristic and modern, and here we must remember that it was precisely in disputes with the outside world - with Jews, pagans and heretics - that our Holy Fathers, apostles and, finally, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, developed their own theology. Let's imitate them.
Here I want to note that the ecumenical movement itself is going through a period of reassessment of its views, and thus gives new opportunities to Orthodoxy. No matter how grandiose the meetings of church leaders may be, no matter how loud general solemn gatherings may be, no matter how clever the plans of church politicians may be, the average educated Christian is less and less interested in superficial ecumenism. Conservatives avoid these gatherings for fear of ambiguity and compromise. Radicals are not interested in them, since, in their opinion, the Church, as an institution, has no real existence, and they openly expect its liquidation. Consequently, the future can only lie in the understanding by all Christians of the true meaning of the Gospel. The only lasting and significant future lies in Theology and, as I tried to show with my five examples, it is the Orthodox testimony of God and man that people seek, consciously or unconsciously.
The Orthodox Church and her theology must inevitably define themselves in two directions: both as tradition and loyalty to the past and, at the same time, as an answer to the questions of our time.
*) IN Karmiris, professor at the University of Athens, gave a speech on contemporary Orthodox theology during the same Symposium within the walls of St. Vladimir Academy.
Turning to the present time, the Church, in my opinion, must fight against two dangers:
2) assert yourself in isolation how sects do.
Both temptations are powerful, especially in America. Those, for example, who merge Orthodoxy with nationality - by necessity, exclude from members of the Church and even from the area of church interests everyone and everything that does not belong to their own ethnic tradition. The commonality between these two directions is their exclusivity: in the first - relativism, which considers itself, as it were, one of the possible forms of Christianity and, therefore, refuses missionary work, in the second - pleasure - truly demonic - in isolation, in contrast, in separation, in superiority complex.
We all know that both these trends are observed in American Orthodoxy. And the role of Orthodox theology is to condemn and destroy them. Theology alone, combined with love, with hope, humility and other features of genuine Christian behavior, can help us know and love our Church, in her true catholicity.
The Catholic Church, as we know, is not only “universal”. She is the truth, not only in the fact that she “possesses the truth,” but also in the fact that she rejoices in meeting the truth from others. It exists for all people, not only for those who are fortunate enough to be its members today. She is always ready to serve every prosperity in good. She suffers wherever she sees delusions and divisions, and does not compromise on matters of faith, and at the same time, she is infinitely compassionate and tolerant of human weakness.
Such a Church is not a product of human creativity or organization. She simply could not exist if we alone were left to take care of her. Fortunately, we are only required to be faithful members of Her Divine Head, according to St. Irenaeus: “Where there is a Church, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace; but the Spirit is Truth "(Adv. Haer. 3, 24.1).
The page was generated in 0.29 seconds!
