.png "English"){kind=small}
TOWARD A SOCIAL ETHOS OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
A New Document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
A New Document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis
Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Throne
In January 2020, the Ecumenical Patriarchate approved a social
document crafted by a theological commission that was charged with
formulating general parameters and guiding principles for the role of
the Orthodox Church as well as the responsibility of Orthodox Christians
in the modern world. In his letter of endorsement, Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew welcomed the collective achievement of the commission for
addressing “the complex challenges and problems of today’s world,
without at the same time overlooking the favorable potential and
positive perspectives of contemporary civilization.” For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church
was published online (on the Facebook page of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate and the official website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese
of America) on March 27, 2020, in the heart of the Lenten period for
repentance and reflection. In May 2020, it also appeared in book format
(Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 121 pages).
For the Life of the World imparts general guidelines and
principles toward a much-needed social ethos for Orthodox Christians
struggling to navigate modern-day challenges. It follows a liturgical
thread and adopts a pastoral tone, opening with the fundamental contours
of an Orthodox Christian worldview and concluding on a prayerful
anticipation of transformation and a positive aspiration of hope. It
comprises a sustained, albeit sensitive pastoral approach to critical
and controversial issues including racism and poverty, human rights and
bioethics, as well as technology and climate change. The specific
contents address the role of the church in the public sphere, the course
of human life, the challenge of social justice, the tragedy of war, the
importance of ecumenical dialogue, and the relationship between science
and religion.
The reflection of a dozen scholars throughout the world, the document
is in itself an unmistakably collaborative “achievement,” which is how
the Ecumenical Patriarch describes it in his endorsement. The commission
members deliberately and studiously refrained from incorporating
personal positions in their effort to articulate pastoral perspectives
on issues encountered by Orthodox Christians in communities of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate. This was a document initiated by leaders and
theologians of the Church, informed by hierarchs and faithful of the
Church, and intended for clergy and laity of the Church. Indeed, as the
tangible result of extensive hierarchal consultation—there was direct
input from dozens of Orthodox Metropolitans and Archbishops throughout
the world and theological review by renowned Orthodox Hierarchs—and
ultimate synodal commendation, it is a virtually “pentecostal” and
verily unprecedented fulfilment of “a complicated, not to say
contentious undertaking,” as the editors describe it in their preface.
The text, which runs to 33,000 words, seeks to delineate the profile of an Orthodox ethos:
It is impossible for the Church truly to
follow Christ or to make him present to the world if it fails to place
this absolute concern for the poor and disadvantaged at the very center
of its moral, religious, and spiritual life. The pursuit of social
justice and civil equity—provision for the poor and shelter for the
homeless, protection for the weak, welcome for the displaced, and
assistance for the disabled—is not merely an ethos the Church recommends
for the sake of a comfortable conscience, but is a necessary means of
salvation, the indispensable path to union with God in Christ; and to
fail in these responsibilities is to invite condemnation before the
judgment seat of God. (§33)
The document is equally judicious and perspicuous on controversial
issues, such as wealth and the refugee crisis, as well as science and
climate change:
Among the most common evils of all human
societies—though often brought to an unprecedented level of refinement
and precision in modern developed countries—are the gross inequalities
of wealth often produced or abetted by regressive policies of taxation
and insufficient regulation of fair wages, which favor the interests of
those rich enough to influence legislation and secure their wealth
against the demands of the general good. (§35)
The developed world everywhere knows the
presence of refugees and asylum-seekers, many legally admitted but also
many others without documentation. They confront the consciences of
wealthier nations daily with their sheer vulnerability, indigence, and
suffering. This is a global crisis, but also a personal appeal to our
faith, to our deepest moral natures, to our most inabrogable
responsibilities. (§66)
And the Church encourages the faithful to
be grateful for—and to accept—the findings of the sciences, even those
that might occasionally oblige them to revise their understandings of
the history and frame of cosmic reality. The desire for scientific
knowledge flows from the same wellspring as faith’s longing to enter
ever more deeply into the mystery of God. (§71)
None of this, however, is likely possible
without a deep training in gratitude. Without thanksgiving, we are not
truly human. This, in fact, is the very foundation of the Church’s
Eucharistic understanding of itself and of its mission in the world.
When humanity is in harmony with all of creation, this thanksgiving
comes effortlessly and naturally. When that harmony is ruptured or
replaced by discord, as it so often is, thanksgiving becomes instead an
obligation to be discharged, sometimes with difficulty; but only such
thanksgiving can truly heal the division that alienates humanity from
the rest of the created order. (§74)
This groundbreaking document has special significance given the
historical background of Orthodoxy. In recent years, the Eastern Church
has been allergic, even aversive to social statements. This is arguably
the result of a struggle to understand its place in the world in long
periods of isolation or persecution of many traditional Orthodox
homelands, particularly behind the Iron Curtain. The church has always
grappled with its place and role in the world. Whether speaking of
heaven in relation to earth, or of the world in relation to the kingdom,
it has covered the full spectrum from identifying with the world to
becoming estranged from it. The standard tension of the church being “in
the world” but not “of the world” (based on the words of Christ before
the Passion) was variously petrified into either a retreat to some
blameless past or a retaliation against a corrupt present.
At some point on the lengthy Byzantine excursion, Eastern
Christianity stopped dealing with questions related to the present and
started focusing on the reiteration of answers from the past. The church
was equipped for handling otherworldly or sacred things, whereas the
state was entrusted with worldly or secular things. This understanding
of a clearly defined role for the church in relation to the clearly
designated responsibility of the state shaped and sharpened the Eastern
approach to social justice. In fact, it was the sin of Byzantium was
precisely its arrogant conviction that the institutional church could
identify with the divine nature of Christ.
As a result, issues of politics and policy (especially as they relate
to power and corruption), even economy and science (especially as they
relate to poverty and prosperity), were reduced and relegated to the
scope and concern of Western Christianity. In fact, the West excelled in
these domains. By contrast, matters of personal maturity and spiritual
integrity became the principal interest and mystical investment of
Eastern Christianity. Moreover, these issues came to be seen as the
exclusive propriety and distinctive prerogative of the East, which
became all the more disengaged from interest and involvement in matters
of the world. The truth is that the church not only disregarded its
social principles, but largely also dismissed its social priorities.
Yet it wasn’t always this way. The early and Byzantine church had a
bold voice on social justice. A cursory reading of fourth-century
writers like Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom reveals the
prominence of the social core of the gospel teaching in the minds and
ministry. Certainly Basil the Great forcefully disapproves of any
retreat by Christians from the world. Any eschatology that galvanized
escapism from time and place was denounced as heretical and hazardous.
Over time, however, an emphasis on monasticism (as the silent withdrawal into the heart) and mysticism
(as the spiritual enchantment of the heavenly) provided justification
for disengagement from the world in the Christian East with diverse
ramifications for its ecclesiology, liturgy and ethos. Even the
conventional safety-valve of Orthodox Christian ethics—namely, the
relationship between spiritual elder (almost exclusively male) and
spiritual disciple—is frequently a way of evading a universal commitment
to principles and surrendering to the personal discretion of an
individual. Despite the promise and potential of transcending the
limitations of institutional clericalism, in reality the relationship
with a charismatic authority is a phenomenon that has increasingly
tended to stifle individual freedom and development in the last decades.
More recently, the social doctrine was further reduced to an emphasis
on nationalism as the means of survival in times of persecution and
oppression. During such periods, the church instinctively identified
with the early martyrs and invariably internalized a negative criticism
of external ethics and evangelical mission. While there may be some
merit to a criticism of Christianity that merely seeks to be “useful” in
a world of competing promises for security, the alternative does not
need to be a Christianity that is predominantly “useless” in an age of
pluralistic choices of fulfilment.
In this regard, Orthodox theologians should remember that the lack of
critical or systematic thought is not always virtuous or advantageous.
The emphasis on apophatic thought does not signal a lack of response or resolve. And eschatology should be perceived neither as imminently apocalyptic (a convenient pretext for indifference, inaction and irresponsibility) nor as naively optimistic
(a superficial dismissal of sin, evil and struggle). Being “in the
world” but not “of the world” suggests an uneasy, unresolved and
unending contention with the world. The tension between the “already”
and the “not yet” commands contention with the social challenges of our
time and of our world. By the same token, the incompleteness or
imperfection of our engagement with the world is what arguably shapes
the beauty and dignity of our struggle to respond to the Christian
gospel.
Nonetheless, a further reason why Orthodox Christianity has abandoned
or avoided articulating a clear social vision over the centuries is the
tendency—frequently a temptation—to denounce or dismiss all things that
resemble or reflect Western Christianity. Thus, beyond any
philosophically apophatic and apocalyptic dimensions, there is the
purely apologetic aspect of an approach to social challenges in
Eastern Christianity. However, in 2000, the Church of Moscow published
“The Basis of the Social Concept,” a preliminary, albeit admirable
attempt to outline the social principles of the Orthodox Church in
Russia after an extended period of suppression and defining its role in
an otherwise anomalous and antagonistic world. Within this context, the
overall approach of that document was critical, if not cynical toward
the world, which it regarded as a threat to be defied and defeated. Such
a defensive posture may survive and thrive under conditions of
confessional isolation, but often dwindles and dissolves in the context
of ecumenical exposure.
In contrast, from the middle of the twentieth century, it was an
openness to other traditions and cultures through an encounter with
other confessions and religions—in many ways, the first time that the
Orthodox were brought into close contact and critical conversation with
the modern world—that at least partly inspired and impelled the
worldwide Orthodox Churches to embark upon the long and arduous process
of convening the Holy and Great Council. Meeting in Crete for the first
time after almost a millennium, Orthodox patriarchs and hierarchs—along
with a handful of consultants, clergy and laity—issued a formal decree
as well as an encyclical message on “the role of the Orthodox Church in
the contemporary world.” In this sense, the current document complements
and completes the work of the extraordinary Holy and Great Council of
the Orthodox Church that convened in June 2016 and may be considered as
part of the process of its reception.
While the crafting this document was historically unparalleled as a
process of transparency and unprecedented as a collaboration between the
official hierarchy and theological scholarship, the readiness and
openness of the church to involve and inform the laity in matters
related to doctrine and polity still falls far short of the ideal and
appropriate for chipping away at the hardened nucleus of clericalism.
Nonetheless, the fact that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
commissioned, entrusted, and endorsed this social document is a welcome
and refreshing shift in mentality and priority for a church
traditionally associated with the past and alienated from the present.
The Orthodox Church should no longer settle for mere survival.
For the Life of the World should be received as a step
toward reflection on the social ethos of the Orthodox Church and
consideration of the role of the Orthodox Church in the contemporary
world. It provides a roadmap for reconciling contemporary issues with
the wisdom and beauty of the Orthodox spiritual tradition, while
initiating a conversation with parishes and congregations, schools and
seminaries, as well as ecumenical circles and the broader community.
* An abbreviated version of this article first appeared in Commonweal (April, 2020) 19–19.
