In the last post, I wrote that there is a legitimate diversity in belief and practice within the Church, that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” can sometimes designate variances within this spectrum. For the Fathers, the unity of the Church was so great a good that they were willing to bend over backwards to preserve it. Although they are sometimes wheeled out as doctrinal rigorists who were quite to silence the heretics, they were usually far more generous.
Here is an example how far one Father was willing to go for the sake of reconciling the heretical Arians to orthodoxy. In his day, St. Basil the Great was pastor of a diocese whose priests were largely Arian. For the reconciliation of these priests and other Arians to the Church, he required nothing more than a confession of the Nicene faith and refraining from using the term “creature” with respect to the Third Person of the Trinity:
At such a time, then, there is need of great effort and diligence that the Churches may in some way be benefited. It is an advantage that parts hitherto severed should be united. Union would be effected if we were willing to accommodate ourselves to the weaker, where we can do so without injury to souls; since, then, many mouths are open against the Holy Spirit, and many tongues whetted to blasphemy against Him, we implore you, as far as in you lies, to reduce the blasphemers to a small number, and to receive into communion all who do not assert the Holy Spirit to be a creature, that the blasphemers may be left alone, and may either be ashamed and return to the truth, or, if they abide in their error, may cease to have any importance from the smallness of their numbers.
Let us then seek no more than this, but propose to all the brethren, who are willing to join us, the Nicene Creed. If they assent to that, let us further require that the Holy Spirit ought not to be called a creature, nor any of those who say so be received into communion. I do not think that we ought to insist upon anything beyond this. For I am convinced that by longer communication and mutual experience without strife, if anything more requires to be added by way of explanation, the Lord Who works all things together for good for them that love Him, will grant it. (St. Basil the Great, Letter 113: To the Presbyters of Tarsus [emphasis added])
Although he himself was a proponent of the divinity of the Spirit, St. Basil refrained from proclaiming it directly for the sake of reconciling these separated believers to the Church. He was willing in his day to accept differences in something so essential as the nature of the Spirit, as long as there was a minimum adherence to the Nicene Creed.
Now, do we often find this kind of broadness of mind among Catholics who regard themselves as “faithful to the Magisterium”? My experience suggests the contrary. Rather, there is frequently a kind of theological maximalism in the Church today that is quite obsessed with distinguishing an orthodox remnant from the heterodox masses. How shall we, who are so eager to delineate divisions in the Body of Christ rather than mend them, find a good defense before the dread tribunal of Christ?
May 7, 2008 at 10:14 am
Bravo to St Basil and you as well!
I do not know how St Basil would respond to the different challenges we face in the Church today. There is, I think, nevertheless much wisdom to be found in our reflecting on our own responses in light of the St Basil’s words.
You are correct, it does seem that many in the Church–East and West–are more anxious to divide the Body then heal the wounds of schism (both internal and external). As a sad result, it is hard for us to move toward each other without at the same time risk creating new divisions.
Like you, I worry about how I will answer for my role in all this at the final and terrible judgment.
In Christ,
+FrG
May 7, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Hi!
I found your blog through the Eastern Christian Blog Awards for which my friend is nominated in the ‘Domestic Church’ category (Crazyacres). I just wanted to let you know that I have been reading your blog and enjoying it too!
May 8, 2008 at 1:14 am
@ Fr. Gregory: Thank you. I’ve been wondering myself what our East-West ecumenical conversations might sound like if we approached them with the hermeneutic of generosity that St. Basil exemplified. I don’t know what St. Basil would say either, but I do think that the first thing for which he would rebuke us is the deficiency in our will to unity. For most of us, the unity of the Church simply isn’t as high of a priority as it was for him. May God have mercy on us all!
@ ukok: Thank you for reading and commenting. I didn’t realize that I’d been nominated at the EC Blog Awards until your comment, so thank you for that too.
May 9, 2008 at 1:26 am
It may be interesting for you to look at a book edited by Fr. Michael Plekon, Tradition Alive, which contains thoughts on precisely these lines in several articles by Russian theologians of the early and mid-twentieth century in Ecumenical dialogue with the Anglicans in “The Fellowship of St. Sergius and St. Alban” which nearly came to full communion—but alas fell to pieces on resistance from both the Anglican and the Orthodox sides.
Also, I am not so sure St. Basil is addressing Arians/Eunomians here. It seems to me he is rather addressing a group of people to whom he himself (and his ascetic mentor Eusebius of Sebaste) belonged … They believed the Son and the Spirit to be divine, but refrained from calling him God or “consubstantial”; they would rather speak of “of like substance” so that the difference between Father (often simply indicated by “God”) and His Son and Spirit be preserved, as well as some pitfalls with the term “consubstantial” itself be preserved. These are the group of conservative Greek Christians whom St. Athanasius was able to reconcile with because they refused Nicea not because they believed the Son (or the Spirit) to be a creature, but they believed Him to be truly divine (yet different from the Father).
Anyway, the point of Basil’s “liberal” or “ecumenical” attitude is that those who hold the same faith but confess it differently ought not be severed from communion because they are every bit as much “of Christ” as those who confessed the divinity of Son and Spirit in a more outspoken fashion. St. Gregory Nazianzus, when facing some of the same people, argued in his Theological Orations that “if not a creature then he must be God.” Evagrius Ponticus (student of these Cappadocians) does the same thing in his On the Faith (aka Epistula Fidei). The minimum faith is trinitarian in the sense of Nicea but is “liberal” on how it is expressed—not on content.
For us, Orthodox, Catholic, Assyrian Church of the East, and Oriental Orthodox, this opens up a wide ecumenical opportunity—but I fear it is nipped in the bud once “fundanuts” start throwing around the word “branch theory” at which point all conversation stops and a knee-jerk reaction follows suite.
Dn. Gregory Wassen
May 9, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Fr. Gregory,
Thank you for your informed comments and the book recommendation. I’m also learning much from reading your weblog, which I just discovered today.
Your contextualization of St. Basil’s letter certainly does make sense. I know nothing of its historical setting except that suggested by Bishop Hilarion in his book, The Mystery of Faith. Elsewhere in this letter, St. Basil seems to regard the threat as a very serious and pervasive one. Could this warrant reading his letter as a response to Arianism, which that loomed much larger? Also, in several places in the same letter, he refers to those to be reconciled as “blasphemers”. I have no access to the original Greek, but wouldn’t he be less likely to use this language if he himself had close connections to those separated?
Regardless, I find extremely helpful your statement that “the minimum faith is trinitarian in the sense of Nicea but is ‘liberal’ on how it is expressed—not on content.” The Fathers were certainly not wishy-washy about the faith they confessed, but they were at the same time sensitive to the limitations of human words to describe the mystery of God. A reminder to us, I suppose, of the tremendous need for humility and love when it comes to theological conversations, especially ones in which we disagree.
Thanks again!
W.H.
May 9, 2008 at 5:36 pm
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”
1st Epistle of St. John the Theologian, Chapter 2:19
When was there EVER unity amongst those who have left the Church?
May 10, 2008 at 8:02 am
W.H.
I don’t have access to the Letter in Greek either. I am was simply trying to remember what was said in the course I took with Fr. John Behr last year or so … He gave a course on the Cappadocians. I remember Basil became increasingly disenchanted with Eusebius whom he eventually came to denounce as a heretic (if memory serves me well). I am not so sure about the Arian context though Eusebius could certainly be caricatured as a Eunomian (I don’t think he actually became one). But that there were considerable differences between how “Arians” were reconciled to the Church is obvious – although the term “Arians” might be misleading because not all covered under that term in this period held the same doctrine. Even those who subscribed to Nicea did not hold to the same doctrine! One could subscribe to Nicea and still be a sub-ordinationist (Nicea does not rule that out) which could be caricatured into Arianism rather easily (Eusebius of Ceasarea comes to mind here).
Anyway, the point is that if we have a minimum of Orthodoxy – even if it is expressed differently and perhaps insufficiently – there are no reasons why there should be “schism” or “heresy trials”. Conciliation and communion are the cure. Anathemas don’t do a whole lot of good, especially since they are often used (abused) as a weapon to strike a perceived heretic with, rather than severing someone from communion for the salvation of his soul (as St. Paul did in the Corinthian community). Such anathemas are suspect, and I dare say utterly void of Christian content.
In Ecumenical talks today – far less generosity is being extended to our partners in this dialogue. Especially on internet forums the “pan-heresy” of Ecumenism is anathematized thrice over. I believe I read a comment on another blog by an Orthodox clergyman (or perhaps it was in Fr. Gregory Jensen’s Ancient Faith interview) where it was said that the attitude of many “fundamentalist Evangelicals gone Orthodox” did not change – but the amount of doctrines to defend with that attitude did. That is indeed one problem we are facing in the US today.
I believe it is evident that Ecumenism is not a “pan-heresy” but rather a Gospel requirement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The series of posts you are devoting to this topic clearly point in this direction (for which I am very grateful). That being said, there are of course ways in which NOT to do Ecumenism and from first hand reports of members of the WCC I have learned of (at least) some of them. I remember one of my professors at SVS was not amused at some German Lutherans whose interests went out to Neo-pagan ceremonies and beliefs rather than Christianity and unity based on Christian beliefs (just one case in point).
I am hesitant about uniting by agreeing to use the same vocabulary and mean (totally) different things, I am much more inclined to have the same faith expressed in different vocabulary – it seems less forced and possibly more authentic. It is my understanding this is how St. Cyril was able to reconcile with John of Ephesus back in the day wasn’t it? Signing on a common declaration of faith which safeguarded an “Orthodox minimum” while accommodating the differences in christological language. I don’t think John was forced to sign the 12 anathemas, was he? Neither was Cyrill required to agree to Theodoret’s counter-anathemas. Just some thoughts from the top of my head – hopefully something is useful, if not I apologize for wasting time and cyberspace.
Dn. Gregory
May 10, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Wei Hsien and Fr. Dn. Gregory,
Some historical notes, which may or may not be helpful to your discussion:
At the time St. Basil wrote his letter to the Church in Tarsus, early in the 370’s, the East was splintered ecclesiastically among many factions. In the city of Antioch, there was a division between Christians who recognized Meletius as their bishop and Christians who recognized Paulinus; both of these groups would now be recognized as having been orthodox, and their theological differences would be seen as minor and essentially terminological. (Some, however, would say that these terminological differences actually did amount to something theologically significant; they describe the Meletians as “New Nicenes” and the Paulinians as “Old Nicenes,” and argue that the “New Nicenes” understood divine unity in a somewhat weaker sense than the “Old Nicenes” did.) The Meletians were supported by the majority of bishops in the East; the Paulinians had the support of the West and of Egypt. Besides these, there were also, in Antioch, followers of Apollinarius of Laodicea, who were orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity but had a peculiar doctrine concerning Christ’s person, which was subsequently condemned. There were also still some Novatians in the East, who were orthodox on the Trinity but denied the possibility of second repentance after baptism. Aside from these groups, there were various shades of Arianism: Homoians, Anomoians (=Eunomians), Pneumatomachians …. All of these would have seen the Holy Spirit as a creature, and the first two would also have rejected the Nicene Creed, so it seems pretty clear that St. Basil rejected communion with all of them, but not with the groups formerly mentioned (the Meletians, the Paulinians, the Novatians, and possibly the Apollinarians). Also, there were Manichaeans and other groups that would now be seen as falling quite outside the pale of Christianity, although St. Epiphanius describes them as Christian heresies.
(One qualification regarding the Pneumatomachians: some of them, while they did not go so far as to call the Holy Spirit “God,” were also uncomfortable about speaking of him as a “creature.” It was apparently these Christians in particular that St. Basil was trying to win over by his policy of arguing for the Holy Spirit’s divinity inductively; an echo of that policy is found in the text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which does not directly and categorically state that the Holy Spirit is God, but implies this teaching through stating the Spirit’s divine attributes: he is “Holy, Lord, the Giver of Life; he proceeds from the Father; together with the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified; he spoke through the prophets.”)
I hope these historical remarks do not muddy an already difficult question, or distract from the main point of your excellent article. The question might be asked: If, among divided Christians, there is both legitimate variance and illegitimate variance, how does one differentiate between the two? If, at Basil’s time, adherence to the Nicene Creed and common confession that the Holy Spirit is not a creature were a sufficient standard of orthodoxy, at least in Basil’s view, would the same criteria suffice today? My guess is that they probably would not. But that is not to say that no adequate criteria could be found.
One final point. I think it is worth pointing out that the passage from the letter that you quote was also cited by John Bekkos in the thirteenth century when he was arguing in favor of renewed communion between Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking Christians (i.e., between Orthodox and Catholics). Rightly or wrongly, he regarded himself as following the policy of St. Basil and other saints when they found themselves faced with divisions; rightly or wrongly, he viewed the Filioque issue as fundamentally a matter of differing terminology, not a matter of fundamentally different faith. And, if the Latin Church was not heretical with regard to its trinitarian faith, he thought that the ancient papal prerogatives still ought to apply: one should again regard the Bishop of Rome as first in the Church, and as having the right to hear appeals from other churches. Some version of such an agreement, it seems to me, is what ecumenical dialogue is currently trying to work out, and necessarily must work out if there is ever to be communion again among divided Christians.
Sorry if this gets the “pan-heresy” crowd raving!
Peter Gilbert
May 11, 2008 at 9:51 am
Fr. Gregory and Dr. Gilbert,
Thank you for your contributions to this discussion, from which I am learning much.
When Dr. Gilbert mentioned John Bekkos’ use of St. Basil’s letter, I did some research and discovered that it was also cited in the common declaration signed by Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece on December 14, 2006. Paragraph 3 of the declaration reads:
Coincidence? Perhaps not.
W.H.