The Tablet
ORTHODOXY AND THE WEST
John Chryssavgis and Brandon Gallaher
When
Western people think of Eastern Orthodoxy, they often conjure up in
their minds a picture of wafting incense in an ancient icon-frescoed
church, populated by bearded monks in ornate vestments and grandmothers
holding candles for four-hour vigils celebrated in dead languages. This
picture of Orthodoxy emerges from a myth of the ‘mystical and timeless
East.’ It can also accompany a polemic against the ‘medieval, petrified,
barren, barbaric’ Eastern churches. Both of these Orientalist visions
of Orthodoxy have come out in the Western media in and around the Holy
and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that has been taking place at
the Orthodox Academy of Crete this week.
The
truth is more complex. The Council is dealing with the real Orthodox
Church. It does not live in a mystical or ossified East. It is partially
westernized and modernized and under immense strain and continuing
persecution from autocratic state powers, foreign ideologies and
lingering historical wounds. But its divisions are also due precisely to
the fact that for several centuries Orthodoxy has been wrestling with
how to articulate its identity as a body touched intimately by the West
but not Western, with a faith that is pre-modern and non-western. The
Orthodox Church’s theology – expressed in its Byzantine liturgy – has
been slow to recognize the goodness, and even existence, of a Western
world outside the cultures shaped by the Byzantine empire. Many Orthodox
have appropriated Western myths about ‘the mystical theology of the
Eastern Church’ and defined themselves as the ‘East’ against a
monolithic and corrupt ‘West.’
The
Council’s significance cannot be overstated. It is an historically
unprecedented and long-awaited moment in which Orthodoxy as a Church
self-consciously grapples on a universal level with its history and
contemporary identity in a world dominated by the modern West. The
Council was actively planned for almost 60 years and in discussion for
over a century. Although many important landmark Councils have been
formative of Orthodoxy since the Seventh and last Ecumenical Council in
787, none has had such wide representation and scope as the present
gathering. It can, therefore, quite justifiably be called the first
‘Holy and Great Council’ in 1200 years.
The Orthodox Church – that sees itself as the Una Sancta of the Creed – is composed of 14 universally recognized, self-governing (‘autocephalous’) Churches. These Churches are very different bodies, from often radically different regions and embracing a plethora of languages and cultures. The differences themselves are a strength. There is a real diversity of the Churches with no one culture dominating another. The differences can also be a weakness. There is factionalism in the form of nationalism and episcopal rivalry.
The Orthodox Church – that sees itself as the Una Sancta of the Creed – is composed of 14 universally recognized, self-governing (‘autocephalous’) Churches. These Churches are very different bodies, from often radically different regions and embracing a plethora of languages and cultures. The differences themselves are a strength. There is a real diversity of the Churches with no one culture dominating another. The differences can also be a weakness. There is factionalism in the form of nationalism and episcopal rivalry.
The
Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Istanbul (old ‘Constantinople’),
‘first among equals’ among all these Churches, initiated and led the
pre-conciliar process. All of the Churches had participated in the long
pre-conciliar preparation and planning for the Council. This was not
without difficulties because the nature of Constantinople’s universal
primacy is disputed. With only few exceptions, the Orthodox Primates at a
meeting in January 2016 in Chambésy, Switzerland, signed every page of
the pre-conciliar rules and decisions, including the agreed documents
that will be examined at the Council on the Church in Diaspora, the
Church in the Modern World, the Church and other Christian Groups,
Church Governance, fasting and marriage. At a meeting in March 2014 and
subsequently reiterated, Moscow insisted on the addition of the key
phrase in documents that the Council would take place in June 2016
‘unless impeded by unforeseen circumstances.’ This phrase can now be
seen as strategically crucial for Moscow.
In
the last week and a half before the Council opened, a few churches
called for its postponement and then boycotted it: Bulgaria, Georgia,
Russia and Antioch. Antioch’s position was that it reserved the right to
decide to not go to the Council if its dispute with Jerusalem over the
canonical jurisdiction of Qatar was not resolved before the Council. The
post-Soviet Churches had difficulties with the pre-conciliar documents.
The documents did not handle the real dividing issues, were ill
prepared and did not make a clear enough distinction between the
Orthodox and heterodox. There were objections that the Ecumenical
Patriarchate was acting as an ‘Eastern Pope’ and forbidding changes to
the texts. These difficulties can, arguably, be traced to a) these
churches’ suspicion of Constantinople’s primacy; b) a relatively new
ecclesiology that speaks of a series of ethnic and linguistic nation
churches each of which has complete independence (autocephaly) in its
canonical territory and over their ‘peoples’ abroad; and c) a growing
tendency to oppose the Orthodox Church to the ‘West.’
Moscow,
ever eager to assert itself as an alternative power base to
Constantinople, called for a 10 June emergency Synaxis of the Primates
to especially resolve the issues concerning the texts. Division has
focused on a rule of the Council that all the decisions require
unanimity understood as ‘consensus.’ But there is no consensus on
consensus. The four boycotting Churches have retrospectively applied
this rule to the issue of the quorum for the Council. They now argue
that a Pan-Orthodox Council could not even be convened unless all 14
churches were present. Thus consensus is identified with absolute
unanimity and quorum with the presence of all invited Churches.
Constantinople met in an extraordinary Synod and stated, following the
agreed upon rules, that changes to the texts were to be dealt with at
the Council and called all the Churches to rise to the occasion and
attend the Council. There was no need for Moscow’s emergency Synaxis of
Primates on 10 June since a Synaxis had already been scheduled in Crete
for 17 June.
Following
the Ecumenical Councils themselves and the practice of local Synods
including Moscow, Constantinople understands ‘consensus’ as an
overwhelming majority and not complete unanimity. However, it conceded
for the purposes of passing documents at the Council that consensus
could be unanimity. As is the case with other international bodies,
Constantinople holds that a meeting is not invalidated because one body
does not attend. Absence cannot be held as a veto. It is deemed an
abstention. The Council, therefore, has gone forward without the
presence of the four boycotting churches though the Primates have
reached out to their absent brothers.
Now
that the Council has begun, it has a unique opportunity. In the last
1,200 years, many Orthodox teachings have remained suspended, undefined
at a universal conciliar level. These include the teaching of
deification (theosis). The end of Christian salvation in Christ is that
all might become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (II Peter 1:4).
Related to this is the teaching expressed classically by St Gregory
Palamas (1296-1359) that one can come to know God and be deified through
direct and personal participation in the divine energies which pervade
creation, although the divine essence is utterly unknowable. It is the
teaching of God transcendent and yet immanent, God inapproachable and
incomprehensible and yet fully accessible and knowable.
Other
teachings are demanded by the rise of modernity and the West. Thus, no
universal Council has ever spoken on the spread of democracy, human
rights, ecumenism, encounter with other religions, ethical challenges of
new forms of bio-technology and genetics and the ecological crisis. All
of these issues are discussed elaborated in the pre-conciliar documents
that will be discussed and the message of the Council being drafted.
Although the analogy is neither entirely accurate nor even appropriate,
it is easy to make connections with Vatican II.
This
is the Orthodox moment. It is a decision to come out of disunity and
isolation to witness boldly to the world concerning the Orthodox Faith.
This Orthodox Council for the 21st Century will be the first of a series
of Pan-Orthodox Councils to respond from the depths of living tradition
to a new world and to the long suspended issues. Such an opportunity to
forge an ecumenical Orthodoxy freed from all provincialism requires
risk. It requires a humility of spiritual daring. The Orthodox are
called to embrace the imperfect process of conciliar dialogue with its
chaotic messiness trusting that the Spirit will lead the Church, the
Body of the Living Christ, through its bishops into all truth. In this
spiritual task, the Orthodox need the same creativity, community and
love that inspired the Seven Ecumenical Councils. To quote the poet,
‘But where danger is, grows/ The saving power also’ (Hölderlin).
Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis is Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and director of its Press Office at the Council.
Dr
Brandon Gallaher is a Lecturer of Systematic and Comparative Theology
at the University of Oxford Exeter and Subject Expert at the Council.
Published in a slightly different version in THE TABLET
(http://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/8547/unity-still-elusive-after-all-these-years)