Father Alexander Schmemann continues this seventh chapter of The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom: Sacrament of the Kingdomby noting, in the words I quoted previously, that the loftier the word, the more ambiguous it is and the more discernment is needed. Words are in need not simply of definition, but of salvation, and this salvation can only come from God. Theology involves referring words to the reality of God, so that they become manifestation and gift.
The flaw of contemporary theology (including, alas, Orthodox theology) and its obvious impotence lies in the fact that it so often ceases to refer words to reality. It becomes “words about words,” definitions of a definition. Either it endeavours, as in the contemporary West, to translate Christianity into the “language of today,” in which case – because this is not only a “fallen” language but truly a language of renunciation of Christianity – theology is left with nothing to say and itself becomes apostasy; or, as we often see among the Orthodox, it attempts to thrust on “contemporary man” its own abstract and in many respects “archaic” language, which, to the degree that it refers neither to any reality nor to any experience for this “contemporary” man, remains alien and incomprehensible, and on which learned theologians, with the aid of all these definitions and interpretations, conduct experiments in artificial resuscitation.
But in Christianity, faith, as experience of an encounter and a gift received in this encounter, precedes words, for only from this experience do they find not simply their meaning but their power. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). And thus words that are not referred to this experience or that are turned away from it inevitably become only words – ambiguous, easily changed and evil. (149)
This is particularly true for the key Christian term: unity, for this refers to the very life of God Himself.
Because the Christian faith, in all its depth, is directed toward the triune God – the knowledge of God in his triunity – through this knowledge it knows also the creaturely life created by him. It knows it in its original state, it knows it in its fall, it knows it in its salvation. …
This means that to the Christian faith, unity is not something important and desired but nevertheless “supplementary,” distinct from faith, as if there could be faith without “unity,” and as if unity were not contained, manifested and living by faith. In unity is the very essence, the very content of faith, which also is entrance into unity, the reception of the unity forfeited by the world in its fall, and the experience of unity as salvation and new life. (150-151)
The danger of “unity from below” lies in its potential to pervert this most fundamental of realities. While the devil could turn us away from God, the one “thing he could not and cannot do: change the very essence of life as unity.” (152) Everything that lives, lives from and strives towards unity.
The substitution, the victory of the “prince of this world,” however, lies in the fact that he has torn this unity away from God, its source, content and goal, and thus has made unity and end-in-itself or, in the language of faith, an idol. Unity, which is from God, has ceased to be unity with God and in God, who alone fulfils it as genuine unity and genuine life. Unity becomes its own content, its own “god.” (153)
Because unity is from God it continues to shine in this world, but, to the extent that it becomes an idol, it becomes “‘easily transformable,’ unstable and easily shattered, but also the generator of every new division, evil, violence and hatred” (153) as is seen in the ideologies of both the left and the right. By contrast, the Church’s manifestation of unity in this world means that she remains radically dependent on the kingdom and will always remain a sojourner on earth where the preaching of the Gospel brings not unity but division.
But the whole power of this truly saving division, the whole, absolute, radical distinction between it and the destructive division brought into the world by the devil, which comprises the very essence of sin and the fall, is that it is the exposure (and I mean this in the literal sense of this word: the manifestation, revelation, the “unmasking”) of the devilish substitution, the lie, the conversion of the “unity form below” into an idol, and the service to it in idolatry, in separation from God, in the division of life, in destruction and death. Only because the divine unity from above came into the world, was manifested and granted and abides in it, can man finally come to believe in it, i.e., to see, to accept its entire essence, to love, to know it as the heart’s treasure and the one thing needful, but in the same manner to see and comprehend the utter depths, the entire horror, the whole dead-end of the fall, of the “unity from below” that the devil has kept secret from us under cunning and seductive makeup. The conversion that necessarily lies at the foundation of Christian faith is first of all a conversion from “unity from below” to the “unity from above,” the rejection of the one for the reception of the other, for without renunciation it is impossible to receive, without “repudiating the devil and all his angels and all his service” the baptismal unity with Christ is impossible. (155)
Only now can we turn to the creed – for it is in this confession, in this naming, that the unity from above is given, it is this confession that grants us communion and truth.
Everything in the Church, all her forms and structure, and even worship and piety, can be “reinterpreted,” for there is no limit to the guile and cunning of the “prince of this world”; everything in the world – even religion, even “spirituality,” even visible splendour – can become an idol and idolatry. But as long as the Church, and each of us with her and in her, repeats the confession of faith and by it judges herself and again and again is enlightened by the truth, the “gates of hell” shall not prevail against her, shall not dry up the eternally revivifying, the eternally healing power of her life, “illumined by the Holy Trinity in a mystic unity.” (158)
***
I have been avoiding commenting on this book, partly because of time constraints, and partly because it touches on things that are too personal to speak on in public. But this chapter raises issues that I can’t just pass over in silence and which converge with other things I’ve been aware of. This is already too long, but I’ll try and do a separate post addressing some of this before too long…
August 12, 2010 at 3:30 pm
This business of speaking “words about words” really speaks to me. Those few individuals who, to my mind, really spoke from the heart, and I think of John Main and Abraham Joshua Heshchel, both of whom I heard speak in person, spoke in what seemed to be very simple sentences, words which seemed to go straight to the heart, rather than through the mind. But the kind of abstract “theology” – which Schmemann’s words make me think of – has always turned me off. And his explanation for that rings true.
Further, can we really speak of the Trinity using the word “unity” – since to me “unity” seems to imply “parts coming together” and the word “unity” doesn’t “satisfy” somehow. At least not in English or not for me. I’ve been pondering this since you posted this quote.
Plus, the danger, the allure, of anything becoming an idol or idolatry – that is so true! I so recall the moment I had the thought: “Wait a minute… what’s more important, God or the Roman Catholic Church?” Well… there was only one answer… And when one feels one’s life in God (whatever that means) demands moving beyond even the soil that has, till then, seemed or professed to nurture that life in God, that is a perilous moment. But there’s no going back from it.
I have no idea where you’re at… not even sure where I’m “at” sometimes. But whatever Holy Mystery the REALITY of “God” refers to – I do see that as central to my life, no matter how poorly I attend to that or understand it or even worse, act on that as I feel I should. (And all the ways that I transgress that….)
I truly hope you will find a way to speak of what you verge on saying – but hesitate to say. These things are so personal, so much like stripping naked (well, to me anyway). So I think I understand your hesitancy. But somehow I’m hoping, maybe it’s a fantasy on my part, that what you have to say will be illumining for others – like for me. For it seems to me, forgive me for saying so, that you are someone who tries to risk being naked before God (however poorly you may manage it). So I’m hoping for some “word” – like those who would ask a staretz for “a word” – on just these issues you’ve been circling in your reading.
August 12, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Here’s an interesting link I just found:
http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/theologian-implores-lcwr-remain-prophetic
And one quote which, whether or not one is a woman religious or still within the RCC, rings powerfully:
Acknowledging the importance and difficult nature of the moment, she said “as church, we live in a situation and time of forfeiture and loss, of ambiguity and uncertainty, of breakdown before logical expectations and rational solutions. Surely our situation and time cry out for meaning and grace and hope, for the healing balm and consolation of the Holy Spirit.”
The professor of theology examined what she called three aspects of the nature of Christian commitment: radical openness, suffering and the grace of hope.
August 17, 2010 at 11:49 am
TheraP,
Sorry for not responding earlier. And I’m sorry to have to disillusion you on several fronts!
1. I am very definitely not staretz material! And part (not all; I also find writing difficult and so avoid it – one of my reasons for starting a blog!) of my hesitation in writing is that my reflections arise out of concrete situations and I am hesitant to write about those because it means exposing people and situations.
2. While I am not at all comfortable with the demonising of the LCWR etc found in certain Catholic groups, and find the contemporary polarisation among Catholics tragic, I am also (in greater or lesser degree) somewhat uncomfortable with arguments and directions coming out of that milieu. I have become increasingly suspicious of language like “radical openness” and “prophetic” (when applied to one’s own group) because I have seen such arguments far too often used to undermine the fundamental content of Christian revelation.
3. While I have been acutely aware that groups can indeed become idols, if I believed in the fundamental claims of the Roman Catholic Church, then I don’t think that I could see it as an idol. While there are things around the Church that we can make into idols, the Church herself is a fundamental ontological reality, and I therefore get uncomfortable with the suggestion that we can make her into an idol for such a view tends to reduce her to simply an institution which gets played off against the “openness” and “prophetic spirit” referred to above. Unfortunately this viewing of the Church in institutional terms has taken deep roots in Roman Catholicism, despite the vestiges of an earlier Orthodox understanding. When I left my community one of the older, very devout, sisters reproached me for being concerned with the Church rather than with Jesus – which just underlined for me the difference in approach. I am not tearing my life apart for “an institution” but because we cannot have Christ without His Body.
August 18, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Thank you, dear Macrina! Your words are very reassuring. Actually, I was kidding about the staretz. But what am I interested in is that you’ve got both an academic background (in theology, I gather but I’m not really sure) and a monastic background. AND that you’ve thought deeply about some things which I’m coming to see are so vital. And you’ve staked EVERYTHING – and it has led you to Orthodoxy.
Yes, you’re right that in the RCC the “institution” has loomed too large – and that’s speaking as a cradle Catholic, who has struggled with that identity since my last year of college – but especially for about the past 5 or so years – since approaching age 60 actually. I’m very happy to be Orthodox now (the night before I turned 65 – this Spring), but in this half decade I’ve deepened my faith and gained a deep LOVE for the Church (universal) along with a great sadness for the brokenness of the Body of Christ. (and I too wavered back and forth – in fits and starts with regard to remaining within the RCC) So I would agree with your sentence: I am not tearing my life apart for an “institution” but because we cannot have Christ without His Body. You phrased it way better than I – and you have, through those words, explained to me something which I’ve acted on, but didn’t really have the words for. (“unformulated experience” – what we “know” but don’t yet have the vocabulary for – term in my field) Thanks for that!
Thus I have come to love that line in Psalm 102, which talks about loving “the stones, the very dust” of Jerusalem (which I feel is both prayer and commentary about the Church).
Each of us has a personal story. I totally respect that yours is difficult to discuss on the web – as it concerns others. Mine is different in that I’m a nobody and my story doesn’t really expose anyone else – plus writing under a pseudonym makes it easier too. (I don’t know where I fit in someone’s “category” of defining anyone, spiritual or otherwise, but I’m just doing my best to follow along as I’m able to do – with head and heart and all my personal limitations and with God nudging me, to the degree I notice that or even comprehend what I notice.)
I’m going to get a WordPress “identity” (so soon I’ll “appear” with my nice “grace note” – if all works out. Putting that in the list of things “to do” – along with ordering a new dishwasher, to replace the one that died nearly 6 years ago – just before I started off on this, most recent, spiritual odyssey.)
I do look forward to you figuring out how to express what you’d like to “say” nonetheless. And I appreciate that you’ve got a deeper grasp of the words and the concepts than I do. I could debate “psychodynamics” – but in this I’m an amateur trying to climb Mt. Everest without the necessary equipment, I guess. 😉