by Haralambos Ventis
Our long-standing captivity to a sad caricature of Orthodoxy that
could be called “orthodoxism,” and whose main characteristics will be
summarized in what follows, has been largely consolidated by a
widespread attitude in the Church known as “the fear of theology.” It is
this fear that has propelled the substitution of theology with a
shallow, stale “spirituality” based on an excess of pious yet vacuous
sentimentalism.
Let us examine more closely the particular features of this
“orthodoxism.” What is it made of? It is a fundamentalist travesty of
Orthodoxy that shows a heightened aversion to thought, particularly of
the critical kind. It has an equal aversion to the materiality and
historicity of human life, and a corresponding near-exclusive emphasis
on “spirituality” revolving around the salvation of one’s soul in
heaven, in a way bordering Plato’s anthropology and metaphysics. More
substantially, we might say that Orthodoxism is structured around the
following theoretical pillars:
1). The fetishization or idolization of the Church Fathers as infallible and direct purveyors of divine truths. Following
centuries of near-total neglect, the Fathers eventually made a
much-needed and welcome return to the foreground of Orthodox theology,
as original and profound interpreters of the Gospels who pushed the
faith’s frontiers forward, often to incredible lengths. Unfortunately,
religious people may well live without God but never without an idol,
and in this case, the patristic corpus was soon turned into one: it has
long been seen, after the reinstatement of the Fathers, as a complete
and terminal point for every conceivable truth concerning God,
humankind, and the cosmos. According to this mentality, there can be no
going further than the final full-stop in the writings of the Fathers,
simply because the Fathers were all saints, and, as such, not only
infallible but the sole authorities on anything at all under the sun.
When faced with new questions, puzzles, challenges and concerns, we are
readily advised, as Orthodox Christians, to turn to the Fathers as
reference-books, or better yet as “phone-books,” because as the direct
mouths of God, anything that they wrote is beyond reproach. It is high
time we admitted that over time, we Orthodox have produced a “patristic
fundamentalism” in the image and likeness of the Protestant “scriptural”
one (the so-called sola Scriptura).
2). The notion of Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Church is
likewise seen as a finished, complete, and therefore static body of
knowledge, intended for passive consumption. There is neither room
for further development in it, nor any space for the new and the
unexpected that any sane society would normally acknowledge and factor
in as such. Thus, instead of being the premier forward-looking body in
the world, thanks to its eschatological orientation, the Church is
backward-looking, always extolling a “glorious” past whose norms must
dictate present and future conduct. What is amazing here is the complete
absence of the slightest suspicion that the Church must collectively
lend a listening ear to the Holy Spirit, whose task is, among others, to
refresh history and creation by producing new and sometimes even
unexpected forms of grace as well as new biological and social
realities, as He guides the Church toward the Eschata, the new world of
God which shall entail radical and unsettling reversals of what we
nowadays within history assume to be normal and acceptable (as promised
in the Gospel saying that “the last shall be first and the first last,” Mt. 20:16; Mk.
10:31). By giving up on its eschatological orientation, the Church
loses her promise to be a prophetic voice on earth, and so ends up so
frequently falling far behind society, as the world becomes more human,
more inclusive, and more just. Given the Orthodox Church’s fixation, or
lust rather, for the past, for the simplicity and supposed innocence of
previous times (based on ignorance), one is given the impression that
Eastern Christians are more truly Byzantine than Orthodox Christians.
This statement needs to be qualified: the Byzantines were, of course,
Orthodox, but Orthodoxy cannot be reduced to its Orthodox past;
Orthodoxy should be synonymous with continuous growth and enlargement,
with a ceaseless openness in space and time. It should also be
tantamount to honest self-correction where the need arises, as
regards cosmology and anthropology (not Christology or Trinitarian
doctrine). For the surest mark of any healthy form of spirituality is
its falsifiable character, meaning by that its willingness to
admit, address and correct past mistakes stemming from ignorance and
prejudice. An ossified spirituality is inherently denied the dynamism,
growth, and frankness of living organisms and can only become toxic for
adherents and the societies that share it, regardless of its original
intentions.
3). Orthodoxism harbors a strong aversion to modernity and its dual spin-offs, an open society and liberal democracy.
The whole culture of modernity is often publicly targeted by Orthodox
hierarchs and certain theologians as inherently anti-Christian, because
by taking human and civil rights seriously and by giving room to
tolerance, pluralism, and freedom of the individual, not only does
modernity allow for freedoms that the Church deems sinful and counter to
its normative values, it ultimately renders the Church’s voice but one
among many – in consistency with liberal democracy’s commitment to
pluralism and the freedoms of thought, conscience, expression and
self-determination. The major bone of contention here, is the separation
of Church and state (whether de jure or de facto)
that lies at the heart of political modernity. The Orthodox Churches, by
virtue of being predominantly national Churches, have long learned to
lean on the State for survival and benefits and do not take kindly the
prospect of one day sliding to one more voice in the public conversation
regarding civil affairs. They have learned to be Caesar’s partners
since day one, and that is the sole role they know how to embody. The
point missed by those state Churches is that when you become Caesar’s
partner, you inevitably turn out to be his whore as well. But even
sadder is the Church’s blindness to the fact that the distinction
between God and Caesar is first categorically drawn in the Christian
Gospels themselves. That, along with the radical social reversals
incurred by Christ, should have sufficiently demonstrated that the
Gospel is not at odds with most aspects of political modernity, but in
fact constitutes an early form of modernity, together with 5th
century BCE Athenian democracy. The problem with the Orthodox Churches’
hostility toward the open, democratic society, is that it ingrains this
hostility to the minds of believers, who are keenly trained to eschew
the entire culture of tolerance and civil rights – let alone look to
despots and demagogues as the most suitable candidates for political
rule, as long as they sell “piety” and religiously-sanctioned
authoritarianism. In that context, the protection of private lives and
the continuous expansion of civil rights are sternly denigrated as a
consent to “individualism,” which supposedly threatens the collective
standing of society – as if a society that crashes the individual and
demonizes otherness is one worth preserving in the first place.
4). Following directly from the above, Orthodoxism appears to be
(and in fact often is) anti-western, to the extent that western
democracies are the home of pluralism and the freedoms that make
Orthodox so nervous nowadays. This is very unfortunate, because
western societies, while far from perfect (a fact that they readily
acknowledge, as they are both willing and capable of self-criticism),
are still the only places in the world where the freedoms of thought,
conscience, speech, and act are more than mere words, and where
individual liberties and choices are taken seriously by the State.
Despite occasional setbacks and a fiscal crisis plaguing western
countries (as evidenced by the currently growing income gap that
threatens the middle classes with emaciation), the West is where groups
of people and individuals alike can flourish, because the intrinsic
worth and the distinctiveness of persons are therein taken into account
to a historically unprecedented degree. It is the place where religious
freedom means not only freedom of but from religion as well, in the
spirit of the Lord who invites us all personally to pick up our cross
and follow Him freely, out of our own will.
Anti-westernism is the worst kind of self-designation that Orthodoxy
can choose for itself; for, despite its Semitic origins, Christianity is
also the fruit of Judaism’s intersection with classical Greek culture,
and so by right belongs to the West. But anti-westernism aside, one
related but broader problem for Orthodoxy is that from a certain point
onward, she began to identify herself as against this or that, thereby
ending up being anti-everything. Rather than drawing self-affirmation
from the magnitude of her maximalist dogmatics and the beauty of her
basic premises, Orthodoxy designates herself in juxtaposition to others,
in effect making its believers intolerant towards anything falling
outside her visible boundaries.
Haralambos Ventis is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Theology, University of Athens.
A longer version of this essay was originally presented at an international conference on “Orthodoxy and Fundamentalism,” organized by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity and the Volos Academy for Theological Studies and co-sponsored by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University on May 10-12, 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia.
Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.