Schmemann on the inversion of Christian love

Already for centuries, and apparently with a pure conscience, not only individual Christians but also whole churches have affirmed that in reality Christian love must be directed toward one’s own—that to love essentially and self-evidently means to love neighbors and family, one’s own people, one’s own country—all those persons and things that we would usually love anyway, without Christ and the gospel. We no longer notice that in Orthodoxy, for example, religiously colored and justified nationalism long ago became a genuine heresy, crippling church consciousness, hopelessly dividing the Orthodox East and making all of our profuse tatlk about the ecumenical truth of Orthodoxy a hypocritical lie. We have forgotten the other, no less strange and frightening words that the gospel contains about this merely “natural love”: “He who loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37), and “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers…he cannot be my disciple (Lk 14:26). If coming to Christ signifies the fulfilment of his commandment, then, obviously, Christian love not only is not a simple increase, “crowning” and religious sanction of natural love, but is radically distinguished from it and even contraposed to it. It is really a new love, of which our fallen nature and fallen world are incapable and which is therefore impossible in it.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2003), 135-136.

 

Between heresy and orthodoxy

In his latest blog post entitled “Thoughts on Bulgakov, Apollinarius, and Ourselves,” Fr. Gregory Wassen enters into a conversation with the late Fr. Sergius Bulgakov on the role of Apollinarius in the formulation of orthodox Christology in the early Church. Fr. Gregory writes:

Our lives are a mixture of sin and holiness but equally a mixture of truth and heresy. Both are a human condition which needs healing. Origen had already spoken of saving doctrines in his On First Principles (refering to scriptural doctrines concerning Jesus Christ) because he understood that, as sin is a result of a sickness in our soul, so is heresy—and we all of us have it.

Some bold statements here, I think—of the kind I’m afraid is true but am less willing to confess.

Fr. Gregory’s post got me wondering about the nature of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Is truth—the defining criterion, so to speak, of orthodoxy—something we “have” or “possess”? In both Orthodox and Catholic communions it is common to say that each Church believes itself to “possess” the fullness (pleroma) of that truth which has been revealed by God. I wonder, however, if this language of possession is not more a matter of polemics than of faith. After all, who among us “possesses”—even if only in part—the Truth who is God Himself? Do we really believe that the One who is Truth can be contained in the makeshift crib of the human mind?

I submit that it is more helpful to consider our relationship to truth as one of participation rather than possession—in other words, to think of truth as something in which we “participate” rather than something we “have”. This appears to be more consistent with the language of deification in which Scripture and the Fathers express the goal of the Christian life. Rather than speaking of our “possession” of God, they seem to prefer to speak of theosis as the deepening of our participation or sharing in the Trinitarian life:

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17.22-23)

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers [κοινωνοὶ] of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1.3-4)

To try to discover the meaning of the commandments through study and reading without actually living in accordance with them is like mistaking the shadow of something for its reality.  It is only by participating in the truth that you can share in the meaning of truth.  If you search for the meaning without participating in the truth and without having been initiated into it, you will find only a besotted kind of wisdom. (St. Gregory of Sinai, On Commandments and Doctrines 22, in The Philokalia, Vol. IV)

Through this hermeneutic of participation, it is easier to see how it is that, in the words of Fr. Gregory, “our lives are a mixture of sin and holiness but equally a mixture of truth and heresy.” It also becomes clearer why, according to him, Origen held that “as sin is a result of a sickness in our soul, so is heresy—and we all of us have it.”

Perhaps orthodoxy is not an either/or phenomenon—for then one is either orthodox or one is not—but rather something like a continuum. To the extent that we participate in the Truth who is God Himself, we are “more” orthodox; and to the extent that we move away from Him, we become “more” heterodox (i.e. tending toward some “other” [hetero-] kind of glory rather than the “right” [ortho-] glory). And so, the drama of heterodoxy and orthodoxy in the life of the Church becomes fundamentally bound to the drama of sin and grace which plays itself out in the soul of every man and every community in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. This being the case, the true remedy for heresy or heterodoxy in the Church is not polemics, polarization or politicization but the therapeutic regiment of grace. As Fr. Gregory writes:

What we need is a healer and a place of healing—the Church. What we don’t need is more temptation and more accusation. This is why Jesus Christ is both the Healer and the Medicine for sin and heresy alike…. The way we treat and look at heretics could almost be said to be a good indicator of our spiritual health. For the heretic and the orthodox both find a home in us as much as do the sinner and the saint.

Let me conclude with a strange fact that struck me in the case of the Council of Ephesus in 431. The “arch-heretic” at Ephesus, Nestorius the Patriarch of Constantinople, in mid-council asked to be released from his duties and returned to his monastery in Antioch. He had, in the words of Henry Chadwick, “had enough.” I wonder if his journey from Ephesus to Antioch might not hold symbolic value for us. Even if we grant that Nestorius did in fact hold the errant ideas attributed to him then and now, I don’t think we can deny the basic merit and the orthodox impulse in his response: to return once again to that place where the Divine Physician can be found in the mystery of worship and the flesh-and-bone of brotherhood.

Clarifications on that crazy idea

Since at least two of the regular readers of this blog are my friends who served the United States military in the ongoing crisis in Iraq, I felt the need to clarify my statements in two previous posts on nonviolence as well as in the Comments section.

Yes, I believe that nonviolence is the Christian ideal to which Jesus Christ called his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. I also believe that the posture of nonviolence is anchored in the New Testament as a whole and, following John Howard Yoder, that it finds its germ already in the Old.

But we live in a broken world that has very little space for ideals. In this broken world, shit happens. Mothers miscarry, parents divorce, bad men rise to power, governments turn racist. And while I still believe that nonviolence lies at the core of the Christian commitment to peace, by no means do I think that every situation comes in a clear black-and-white package. While I still believe that the suffering which comes from our nonviolent strategies is always redemptive, I confess that the consequences of such nonviolent choices are often disruptive and destructive not only for ourselves but, perhaps more importantly, for those affected by our choices.

I say this because I do not wish to dishonor the service of men and women who’ve sacrificed their lives to defend the citizens of their nation or strangers in others. Every war is a disaster whether its cause is reckoned just or not, and I respect the decisions of men and women who make sacrifices to attempt to alleviate it. I admire their bravery and greatness of spirit which I so seldom find in others, much less in myself.

And as for those among them who are Christians, I do not hesitate for a moment to call them my brothers and sisters in the one Lord. I am not yet so confident of my own exegetical conclusions as to criticize their sacrifice or stem my deep admiration for their heroic generosity.

Moriyo rahemelain oovadarain.

“Approach him who can alone save the lost”

A Christ-loving layperson asked the same Old Man if one should reflect a great deal about the sacred mysteries, and whether a sinful person approaching these would be condemned as being unworthy.

Response by John:

When you enter the holies, pay attention and have no doubt that you are about to receive the Body and Blood of Christ; indeed, this is the truth. As for how this is the case, do not reflect on it too much. According to him who said: “Take, eat; for this is my body and blood,” these were given to us for the forgiveness of our sins. One who believes this, we hope, will not be condemned.

Therefore, do not prevent yourself from approaching by judging yourself as being a sinner. Believe, rather, that a sinner who approaches the Savior is rendered worthy of the forgiveness of sins, in the manner that we encounter in Scripture those who approach him and hear the divine voice: “Your many sins are forgiven.” Had that person been worthy of approaching him, he would not have had any sins. Yet, because he was a sinful man and a debtor, he received the forgiveness of his debts.

Again, listen to the words of the Lord: “I did not come to save the righteous, but sinners.” And again: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but only those who are sick.” So regard yourself as being sinful and unwell, and approach him who can alone save the lost.

Letter 463, from Letters from the Desert: Barsanuphius and John, trans. John Chryssavgis (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003).

Hat tip: Thicket and Thorp

How Christianity can make life meaningless

Life must not be a preparation for death, but victory over death, so that, in Christ, death becomes the triumph of life…. When it considers life only as a preparation for death, Christianity makes life meaningless, and reduces death to “the other world,” which does not exist, because God has created only one world, one life.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Journals, Entry for September 16, 1974