Upload
blackkat
View
219
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
1/21
Orthodoxy and the Conversion of
England
By the Revd Derwas J. ChittySource: http://www.westernorthodox.com/chitty.html
A paper read at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St.
Sergius, on 31st July, 1947, and subsequently revised, by the Rev. Derwas J.
Chitty.
In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Almighty.I HAVE entitled this paper Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England. First,
I would ask you to keep in mind throughout that there is no conversion
save to the utter simplicity of the Christin whom dwelleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily. But this is no plea for false simplificationa
simpliste solutionin the true simplicity, all the intricate details of alluniverses can find the reason of their being.
Two days ago, my brother-in-law, Mr. Kitson Clark, ended his paper on the
note of the Daphni Pantokrator (image below).
http://www.sobornost.org/http://www.sobornost.org/http://www.sobornost.org/http://www.sobornost.org/7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
2/21
I would begin with another ikon akin to itthat ivory relief in the Cabinet
des Medailles in Paris (image below) which shows the Emperor and
Empress, Romanus and Eudocia, in all the jewelled trappings of Byzantine
Royalty: between and above them stands the Lord Jesus of Nazareth, the
King of All, in the meek robes of His humanity, with no splendour savethat of the Uncreated Light: His hands are upon their heads in blessing.
To be converted is not just to gaze upon Him, or to imitate Him as from
outside, but to have our life taken into His Sonship, by the Spirit of
Adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father.
Is it necessary to press the urgency of the need, for the world, for this
country, and for ourselves? What I do urge is that we have no time to-day
for things that are inessential. If we have not, in that which has brought us
here, the key to the treasure which is above all treasures, let us go away at
once and seek for it elsewhere. If we can get on without each other, let us
do so. But I say we cannot. Beware lest the Lords words thunder against
usWoe unto you, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye
entered not in yourselves, and those that were entering in ye hindered.
http://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Mavromagoulos_Baptism_Holy_Spirit/perieh.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Mavromagoulos_Baptism_Holy_Spirit/perieh.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Mavromagoulos_Baptism_Holy_Spirit/perieh.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Mavromagoulos_Baptism_Holy_Spirit/perieh.htm7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
3/21
Perhaps this is, in the first instance, a challenge to the Church of England
Council of Foreign Relations, which may seem to be concerned mainly with
diplomatic relations with foreign Churches. Surely what is required of it is
an all-out drive to give to world-wide Christendom, as already in being, at
least as important a place in the mind of the ordinary Englishman as isoccupied to-day by the foreign missions of our own Church. Too long we of
the Church of England have been concerned, in an ominously self-
conscious manner, with asserting that our Church is all that any other
Church is. And, in consequence, the habit has grown on us of thinking and
acting as if we could afford to stand alone. Problems of India are thought of
in terms of England, and it does not appear to us incongruous that the
Cingalese or the South-Sea-Islander should be expected to find their
spiritual home in Canterbury.
So long as we are confined to a West-European view of History, this is
inevitable. Within this view, we must either submit to Rome or claim that
we are as good as she is. And within this view, Rome is historically the
centre. Those who cannot stomach this at any price are left without any true
centre, perhaps without any faith at all in history since Christ. I suppose the
Church of England has tried to hold a balance, neither accepting nor
rejecting Rome completely. I would like to suggest that herein she has
given evidence of her vocationher appeal is to history: but she has been
awaiting a world-view of History for which she has not hitherto been
ready.
Actually, the only heart of the Church on Earth, the only heart of the world
and of all History, is neither Canterbury nor Romenor Constantinople or
Moscowbut Jerusalem. When that is properly understood, the seat or
seats of government of the Church become of secondary importance.
This is the context in which I believe we are to see the great vocation of our
Fellowship.
For several generations now there have been men whose names we honour,
working for friendship between our Churches. But in that friendship, while
I know not how much we have wished the Orthodox to learn from us, it has
been too commonly assumed that all we have to gain from Russian or
Greek, apart from support for our determination to be Catholic without
being Papist, was in the nature of caviare or rose-petal jama spiritual
luxury delightful in its place, and even salutary, but not to be indulged in
to excessfor we must remain Westernand not indispensable. Even
Birkbeck seems to miss the point of Khomiakoffs reply to the Magdalen
tractarians question how to arrest the pernicious effects of Protestantism
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
4/21
Shake off your Roman Catholicism. And for a more recent example, I
would refer you to a passage in Brother George Everys new book on the
Byzantine Patriarchate, in which I am not at all convinced that the writer
expresses his real mind.
The Fellowship also has been guilty in this matter, too often slipping
through the fingers of any attempt to concentrate it on real dogmatic study.
When it was our duty to proclaim to the world an Orthodoxy that was not
peculiar to any one country, we have sought to find in the Russian word
"Sobornost" some idea not contained (though really it is contained) in the
original Catholicitywhile protecting ourselves with the bizarre, Russian
sound of the word, from any idea that it was binding on us English. Or,
instead of turning our minds to the classic teaching of the Fathers, we have
fastened on the Holy Wisdom philosophy of some outstanding Russian
thinkers, classing in our minds as typical of Eastern Orthodoxy just those
elements which other Orthodox themselves feel to be exotic, and perhaps
due to Western influence. It is greatly to be hoped that Vladimir Losskys
book on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church will appear in
English as soon as possible as a counterblast to this.
Perhaps it is not fair to describe all this as fiddling while Rome
burns. Perhaps it was inevitable that we should not be ready until now for
a greater work. But perhaps we are ready to-day. At least I know that I am
no longer by any means alone in the point of view which I intend to sketchfor you. Others, perhaps many more than I know, have come to it quite
independently of me.
Twenty years ago I found myself in Jerusalem with, as it were, scales
falling from my eyes. I had been there for the best part of two years, as an
Anglican student enjoying the genial hospitality and admirable teaching of
the French Dominicans of the Ecole Biblique of St. Stephen. But almost
imperceptibly, through what I saw in the Holy City of the Church
Universal, and through the influence of one close Russian friendship, andthe warmth of Russian Church Life to which that admitted me so freely, I
found my view of life revolutionized:
I slept, methinks, and woke, and, slowly gazing, found me stripped in
sleep.
It was as if I had, without noticing it, unlearned everything that I had
known before, and started as a child to learn it all over again. The truths I
now saw were the same truths: but a new light bound them together and
interpreted them differently, explaining apparent contradictions, and
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
5/21
leading in many ways to implications hitherto unnoticed. At the same time
I had a deep conviction that herein the simpler faith of my country-rectory
boyhood was somehow being vindicated against the siren voices with
which Oxford had, to some extent, confused it.
I returned to Cuddesdon to find myself reading between the lines of all
ordinary books of history and theology, testing this new view, and finding
that it seemed to fit the facts. I went to the St. Albans Conference at which
our Fellowship was founded, to see whether Orthodox theologians would
actually interpret their Faith in the way which seemed to me implicit in the
somewhat general impressions I had so far gained of their worship. Again I
found I had not been mistaken. So the process of growth went on.
Of course a new question presently arose. Orthodoxy now appeared to
show me the true vocation of the Church of England. But, having once seen
the fuller, freer truth, could I personally remain tied up in the knots of our
chequered history? Back in Palestine in 1929, I was very near, or so it
seemed, to taking the bull by the hornsto becoming a member of the
Eastern Orthodox Church in a land where it was native, and serving it
there, leaving aside as not to concern me personally the question of the
validity of the Anglican Church. But then I became painfully aware of an
attitude all too common among Anglicansfortunately never universal
an attitude which, as it seemed to me, however polite and friendly on the
surface, fundamentally despised Orthodoxy, and had no room for it eitherinside or outside our Communion. My combativeness was roused. I might
not be a very good Anglican, but at least I represented the true heart of our
Church better than theseand if I could remain, I must, to prove that. And
here I should say that I am never so sorely tempted to doubt the validity of
our Church as when I hear people arguing that she is the best Church. What
need of that? Knowing that she has her faults, we must not presume to
compare her with other empirical Churches, but only with that perfect
heavenly Church, the Church of the First born in which is no spot or
wrinkle. For all her faults, it was here that Christ first called me, and thereis only one Christ.
So, after another two years, I found myself in my country parish, convinced
that we must follow Christ and build from the bottom if we are to attain
true unity, and to save the world. I have not been a great success, either as a
country parson or as a Naval chaplainbut I am convinced that that
experience of the wider mind of the Church which has sometimes made me
appear exotic to men of my own type of English training, has brought me
closer to the ordinary people of England and not separated me further fromthem.
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
6/21
A warning for Anglican ecclesiastics, whose task it should be to know and
understand foreign Churches, and to interpret them to their people:again
and again I have found non-conformists, and Anglican laymen of no
specially ecclesiastical interests, who have met the Orthodox Church, in
Greece or elsewhere, and have understood her and appreciated her better, itwould seem, than they have appreciated our Church, or than our
ecclesiastics have appreciated the Greek. We have started with too many
presuppositions, and our knowledge, incomplete and in a different
framework of thought, has been a hindrance rather than a help to the
understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy. Such an understanding is not
possible for a Western unless he is ready to start again as a child from the
very simplest beginningsor rather, it is not possible for any man, Eastern
or Western, unless he learns to be doing this continually.
Moreover, this Church, which at first sight appears so highly hierarchical, is
much more of a laymans Church than either ours or the Roman. I had
already long surmised what I found clearly before my eyes when I went to
Greece for the first eight months of her liberation in 1944Here is a
Church from which we may perhaps learn the secret for bridging the gulf
between our clergy and laity. Here also Church and community remain
identical with a lack of self consciousness which makes it possible to find
room for free expression within one undivided Church of very many varied
movements of the Spirit which have with us usually resulted in
multiplication of sects. Let us lay aside, for the moment at least, the
assumption that we of the Church of England are called to be the bridge
between Catholic and Protestant or Reformed, and face the possibility that
there may be points on which Orthodox and Free-Churchmen (Methodist,
Presbyterian, or Congregationalist) may be better fitted in the first instance
to understand and be understood by each other than is the Anglican or the
Roman Catholic to understand either. I will not now elaborate this point
what Fr. Edward Every will have to say about the Church in Greece will, I
think, have a bearing on it. Meanwhile, I would already suggest to you that
our task may be to discover in Orthodoxy that miraculous glue which aloneis capable of reuniting the shattered fragments of Western Christendom. I
should like to call this possibility urgently to the attention of all whose
impatience for unity with other Churches of their own country may
otherwise lead them to wreck their cause on the rocks of betrayal of
principle.
But this brings me back to my main contention. I do not ask you to accept it
in a hurry, lock, stock and barrel. But I do ask you not to rule out of court,
as most of us appear to have done in the past, the possibility that in the 11thCentury Schism between East and West there were fundamental issues
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
7/21
involved, and that in these the East was right and the West wrong; and that
this breach was but one aspect of a disastrous, tyrannical revolution within
the Western Church itself. In the light of this possibility, I would suggest as
a fruitful field of research for a Medivalist, the hints in the Spiritual
Franciscans, Wycliff, the Moravians, and perhaps elsewhere, of anunderground tradition in the Westor was it only a wistfulness?that the
pure Faith, lost or obscured in Rome, had remained with the Greeks. And I
would urge on your notice the fact that on every issue on which the
Reformers of the 16th Century broke from Rome, Roman faith and practice
were deeply, if subtly, different from the Greek. I would suggest that, both
then and subsequently, all the divisions of Western Christendom have
been rooted in the search for some elements of Christian Life which would
have been found in Orthodoxy.
Do not think that I am asking the Western to become Eastern. I can, in some
measure, consent to Michl Ramsey when he says that East and West
sorely needed each other, and ever since they went their separate ways,
neither has been able to present the wholeness of Christian and Church
life. Only I would remind you that it is not less true that the apostasy of the
old Isrl, the defection of the Arab to a false prophet, the refusal of the
Indian to see those elements in Christianity which are not to be found in
his own religions, have also thwarted our presentation of the wholeness of
Christ. But we do not, therefore, say that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and
Buddhism, are on the same level as the Christian Church. Moreover,
the Easternism of Orthodoxy is apt to be exaggerated, as if it expressed only
one national or racial culture. Here the Fellowship has suffered in the past
by seeing too little of anything but Russian Orthodoxyand, at that, of one
element within Russian Orthodoxy. Anyone who has become used to the
Orthodox Liturgy at home in several different milieuxsay Russian, Greek
and Syrianwill know what vast differences of culture and racial character
can express themselves fully and freely through the medium of what
remains clearly the same Liturgy and the same Faithdifferences at least as
great, in the first instance, as any which distinguish Eastern and WesternEurope. In fact, one begins to wonder whether, in practice, any Christian
Liturgy is so well fitted for naturalization into the mind and language of
every people in the whole world, as that of St. John Chrysostom. And yet
the Orthodox Church has never in theory denied that, for instance, the
Roman Mass was, in its purity, an Orthodox Liturgy. And Fr. Evgraph
Kovalevsky is showing us to-day the practical possibility of a Western
Orthodoxy.
Furthermore, we must beware, lest our desire to remain Western should bea mere cloak for our clinging to those restrictions of Christian outlook
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
8/21
which nine centuries of separation have planted upon us. Everyone of us
does, in fact, shrink from the task of this return to the simplicity of the
Christ which must involve for us, not a rejection, but, as it were, a divesting
ourselves, without passing judgment, alike on Newman and Pusey, Laud
and Cromwell, Loyola and Luther, Thomas a Kempis and Richard Rolle,Francis and Aquinas, Bernard and Anselm; Rafl and Botticelli and
Leonardo; Kings College Chapel, Chamber Court at Winchester, Salisbury
Spire, and the wonder of Chartres:even further back, as we seek towards
the roots of the trouble, Jerome and Augustine must be called in question.
For most of us, the process seems far too like being flayed alivethis
putting off of our coats of skins. But when we do get back behind the
division, is it not true that the comparatively unformed architecture of our
fragmentary Anglo-Saxon survivals seems to have links with Byzantine and
Universal Christendom which are lost as soon as the Saxon sets into theNorman. I put it to youwere Jerome and Augustine themselves, Patrick
and Columba, Gregory of Rome and Benedict, Wilfrid and Chad, to return
to earth to-day, may it not be that they would all alike find in modern
Eastern Orthodoxy something more recognizably identical with the Church
they had known in their own countries than anything they would find now
in the Western Churches?
I am not suggesting that there have not been Saints in the West, whose
holiness has penetrated behind the middle wall of division to the
simplicity of Christ our God. But I do know how, especially in Jerusalem,
one could feel even in the least satisfactory representative of the Orthodox
Church an unhindered continuity with the Church of the Fathers such as
one could not feel in any Western Church there.
Why do I not ask the Orthodox to divest themselves of Gregory Palamas or
Seraphim of Sarov? In a sense I do: but in another sense it is not necessary
for me to do so: for the Saints themselves, and the heart of accepted
Orthodox Theology, have always called us to such a divesting, saying Not I,
but Christ living in me; forgetting those things which are behind, andreaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Is not this the secret
of the survival power of the Byzantine Church, cleansed through the loss of
so much that was once its highest outward expressionHaghia Sophia,
that Heaven on earth which converted Vladimirs envoys: the Christian
empires of Old and New Rome, of Serbia, and of Russiaso that a Syrian
village, without art or learning, perhaps without even a priest, and
surrounded by Islam, can in some ways reveal to us more of Orthodoxy
than the Byzantine Court? The apophatic or negative mystical way rulesover all Orthodox theology. It is the way of humility, which cannot fall
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
9/21
because it sets itself from the beginning in the lowest place; the way by
which the Mother of God was prepared for the Incarnationfor he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.
If we cannot approach the Western Church of the last nine centuries withthe same confidence, is it not precisely because, since the clerical revolution
of the 11th Century, she has not dared to submit herself or her theology to
the primacy of this path? Desiring an assurance of salvation which her
reasoning could apprehend, she has not dared to throw herself entirely on
the mercy of a God whose Essence remains unknowable. Where her Saints
have penetrated to this, she has been tempted to explain them awayto
treat their path as an extra, to which some few mystics are called concerning
devotion rather than theologywhereas, for Orthodoxy, devotion and
theology are more clearly inseparable. The inner bond which bound the
Saints together is thus gradually lost from view, until the Reformers
thought it necessary to call for a turning from saints seen in practice as
separate individuals to the one Christ. But the true Fathers, and the True
Church, are taken into the Tabor-light of the Christ Himself just because
they are at every moment submitted to the touchstone of the God who is
beyond all knowledge and all essence.
I know little of the "Palamite" controversy of the 14th Century: and in
England it has been either overlooked completely or assumed to be of no
real importance. But I strongly suspect that if we studied it closer weshould find it to have been a real seeking out of the spiritual and
theological meaning of the breach between East and West. Until we have
studied it, we have no right to assume that these differences are of a
superficial character. I do suggest that just because of this clear distinction
between the unknowable Essence of God and His Activitiesthe
Uncreated Lightthe Orthodox are able to develop a teaching of
Deification bolder than is ever found in the West, and at the same time to
be preserved from the danger of Creature-worship. As soon as the Doctrine
of the Church as the Body of Christ is in any way watered down into ametaphor, the justification for worship of the Saints is lostand no
theoretical distinction between veneration and adoration will be felt to be a
sufficient safeguard: each saint stands like a solid image, self contained,
whatever light he may reflect. But when each is seen but as a star keeping
his place in the firmament of the Churcha window through which the
light of the Christ shines in upon usone ikon among all which cover the
walls of a Churchthen we can fearlessly offer through each all our
devotion to God.
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
10/21
There cannot be within the Heaven of the Church any gnostic descending
hierarchy, each level one stage further from the purity of the Godhead.
Even the historical earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of
God, cannot without idolatry be treated in isolation from His continued
Incarnation in the Church. Hence the not unimportant fact that Orthodoxinstinct, believing fully in the reality of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of
Christ, does not in practice isolate the Sacred Elements for any special
veneration outside their place in the Liturgy. This mystery is part, albeit a
central part, of the whole mystery of the Church as the Body of Christ: nor
can it be understood or have any meaning outside that universal mystery. I
know next to nothing of the Schoolmen, but wonder if they did not fall into
the error of allowing the profane, the unconverted or imperfectly converted
regions of their minds, to pry into matters which should have been reserved
for their minds fully converted;I will not tell Thy secret to Thineenemies.
In this context it surely becomes impossible to speak either of the Pope or
of the Hierarchy as the earthly Vicars of Christ: for He, being truly present
in His Church, needs no vicar Here we do feel that the Hildebrandine
Revolution set the seal upon a false tendency in the West which had
already been encouraged by the failure to translate the Liturgy into the
vernaculars (connected, we cannot help suspecting, with a certain
intellectual laziness in the Latin language itself), and by the position in
which the clergy found themselves as purveyors of Roman Civilization to
the Western Barbarians. The clergy tended to become the purveyors of
Christ in doctrine and sacraments, rather than the essential organs of a
living body which is all equally Christ. This is an error from which we did
not at the Reformation really succeed in freeing ourselves. It is doubtful
whether the Presbyterians succeeded either. Possibly at a later date the
Methodists may have been nearer success. But it is worth considering
whether, in the face of what appeared as an Apostasy of the Hierarchy, the
method of amputation (if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out) may not have
had gains, in approach to Orthodoxy which is the Simplicity of the Christ,to counterbalance in part our retention of the outward form and succession
at the price, perhaps, of our continuing to be in some measure a Church in
which the Faith is imposed rather than elicited.
Here we come to another fundamental point. As in standards of personal
righteousness, so in doctrine of the Church, there is for Orthodoxy no such
distinction of esse and bene esse as is sometimes made among Protestants
the only righteousness is the perfection of the Christ, the only true Church
the perfect Church of the Consummation: and no Saint save the Lord JesusHimself, and no actual empirical Church on earth, has attained to the full
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
11/21
measure of this. The lower standards which we tolerate, and
employ economically as stages in our working towards the higher, are in no
sense substitutes for it both we and the Orthodox look askance at
doctrines of Merit, and Works of Supererogation. Yet, in so far as we are
truly aiming at the Perfection of the Christ, His Grace is with us and wehave attained it. I t may be that the Papacy, purified of error, will be found
to be as much of the esse of that perfect Church as is the Episcopate (Thou,
when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren). And yet the Orthodox
Church does, I believe, represent on earth to-day that perfect Church in a
truer sense than does the Roman. I, as an Anglican, must believe that the
one Spirit did and does continue, however imprisoned, in the Roman
Church, if I am to believe that the same Spirit has been handed down
through History to us. Only, may it be that in some sense the Faith has
remained in the West like the Sleeping Beauty needing the kiss ofOrthodoxy to raise it back to full life? And remember, that kiss might come
too late.
Here again we seem to be approaching, as near the root of the issue, a
difference in conception of Nature and Gracewherein the Reformers,
seeking blindly, only stumbled further into the mire witness the
preconceptions which made the translators of the Authorized Version able
to spoil the contrast of I Corinthiansanimal man and spiritual manby
translating [psychikon] as naturala mistake (retained in the Revised
Version) which must surely be due to their inadvertently reading
[physikon] as a result of their preoccupation with Augustine. To the
Orthodox, Nature and Grace are complementary rather than contrasted.
Natural man is Adam before the Fall, or the New Adam. What the West
calls natural man is unnatural man[para physin]. Certainly Grace also
introduces what is supernatural. But remember that St. John Climacus
argues that the highest gifts of GraceFaith, Hope and Charityare among
the natural virtues, and are found even among the animalsalthough no
supernatural gift can be as important as these.
Mans true nature is neither altered in its fundamental essence nor
obliterated, but imprisoned and corrupted, by the Fall. Its penitence and its
prayer go up through the thousands of years before Christ, until at last it is
enabled in Mary to see the Angel visitor, and to submit itself to Gods Will.
It is here that both we and the Orthodox are suspicious of the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Mother of God, lest in reducing a
mystery to the definitions of human logic, we should obscure our whole
conception of Human Nature, bound up with the fact that she is one of us,
needing her Son to be her Redeemer too, though she be fore-cleansed bythe Spirit [prokathartheisa to pneumati]a phrase used also in the Mena
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
12/21
in reference to Jeremiah and other prophets) to become His Mother. The
freewill of a woman set right the disobedience of the first Eve.
Undisturbed, as it were, by all the ages of the fallen creature, God takes the
creature itself to be the means of His own redeeming Epiphany. We are not
to be saved from our Natureour Nature is to be saved by union with HisDivine Nature. If we pay special honour to the God-Bearer, it is to
safeguard this double truththat He truly took Manhood of Her, and that
He makes her and us (and here, too, she is our prototype) truly partakers of
His Divine Nature.
His Grace is such that His Creation, transfigured by Him, shall show a
rightly balanced outshining of the Divine Nature. Here, I believe, at its
simplest, is the reason why we feel the Filioque clause to be impossible for
Orthodox TheologyThe Trinity is primarily revealed in Jordan, where the
Holy Ghost is seen proceeding from the Father and resting on the
Son. Surely this is more than the consecration of His Manhood, and
embodies an eternal truth of the Godhead Itself. And even in the temporal
mission, though He with the Father sends His Spirit to prepare the way for
Him, and to extend His Incarnation in the Church, yet at every point He
Himself, in the unity of His Incarnate Person, remains the goal of the
Spirits work. Is it fanciful to suppose that the Filioque clause has in fact
either represented or been responsible for the general Western failure to
treat the doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ as other than a
metaphorthe Son remaining aloof upon His Fathers throne, sends the
Spirit as a kind of deputy to do His work for Him, through earthly vicars?
So, in effect, it may seem that the Papal tyranny stultified for us the
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Doctrine of the Trinitytook away that
key of Faith which is the deification in Christ of the human understanding,
to leave us only a faith of blind obedience, a logic over-confident in itself
because it must not question its own premises, and too often, as a result, a
liturgical worship becoming the formal execution of a duty, and private
prayer entrusted to the emotions at the expense of the intellect. It is a
significant tragedy that there is no proper translation for [nous] and itsderivatives in Latin or its daughter languages, or in Englishthe
Schoolmen were forced to borrow the Greek wordI should like to know
whether there was a word in Anglo-Saxon: certainly there are Greek
distinctions which could be made in Anglo-Saxon, but not in Latin, and can
no longer be made satisfactorily in English.
The picture I am drawing of the Western Church may be something of a
caricature. Much of it would be outrageously unjust if applied to the
Roman Church at its best. But any account of error and distortion in aChurch is bound to stress that error in a manner disproportionate to the
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
13/21
great body of truth retained. The indictment is not against the Roman
Church alone. Nor would I suggest that, in the fragmentation of Western
Christendom, Rome did not retain faithfully against the Reformers
elements as necessary for the fullness of Orthodoxy as any after which the
Reformers were striving against Rome. It remains, however, true that it wasthe Papal Revolution of the 11th Centuryitself following on the Cluniac
departmentalizing of the Churchwhich necessitated the fragmentation in
the process of recovery of the fuller freedom of Orthodoxy. If the view I am
trying to present, of the West as she might be seen through Eastern eyes, is
unfamiliar, it is all the more necessary that we should realize what that
view may be. Having done so, you can examine for yourselves how far it is
justified.
What, then, is that distortion of the Faith towards which the West was
being ledagainst which it kept no sufficient safeguardand to which, in
some points at least, it might seem to have become committed?
Organization here takes the place of organism. Dogma, liturgy and personal
devotion are pigeon-holed into separate compartments of life, and their
organic bond is obscured. Faith becomes imposed and not eliciteda blind
acceptance of what you are told. The Mother of God loses her solidarity
with mankind. The Spirit (whom God giveth not by measure) is dispensed
by measure through the earthly vicars of a Christ aloof. Worship is
conducted for you in a foreign language by a clergy who even in Heaven orhell retain a higher dignity. Even the parish priest, by reason of his
enforced celibacy, or his special education, ceases in some measure to
represent his people, and becomes the agent among them of a foreign
power or of a strange class. A legalistic God and a feudalized Redemption
are partly imposed by fear, partly made acceptable by the sentimental
appeal of the Child Jesus, or by pity for the sufferings of the Crucified (as if
we should presume to pity the brave man in his fight, let alone the
victorious Son of God). The heavenly ratification promised by Christ to the
decisions of the Church (Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be boundin Heaven) is narrowed and twisted to a right (in some measure at least) to
decree the fate of souls even after death. A legal minimum, which comes
short of the Glory of God, is accounted for righteousness, and merit
attributed to what goes beyond it in prayer or good worksand where are
Our Lords words, Say, we are unprofitable servants? The Cup of which
Our Lord said Drink ye all of this is denied to the laity. The simple bread
over which He gave thanks, hallowing the every-day food of life
(wherefore Greeks and Russians treat all bread as holy) gives way to the
unfamiliar Azymes (contrary even to the earlier Western practice, and, if theGreeks are right, against the necessary meaning of the Greek word, [artos],
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
14/21
used in the Scriptural accounts). Rebellious against its tedious vocation to
convert the kingdoms of this world, the Papal Church sets itself up
impatiently as an earthly kingdom. Holy Scripture, the free, the living
word, becomes once again the deadening letter of old lawand what does
it matter, then, whether that letter be defined still further by Jeromestranslation, and the interpretations of Councils and Popes, or whether it be
limited to the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New? In either case it
is reduced to little better than a Ouran, imposed from a heavenly throne to
which we cannot in the full sense attain. The Holy Mysteries of the Church,
wherein all life is hallowed, become the isolated points at which an
extraneous God breaks inand what does it matter, then, whether they be
two or seven?
The Reformers failed to escape from the prison of Western categories of
thought; for the real issue was not the limits, but the character, of
infallibility; not the number, but the nature, of the Sacraments. But it is at
least arguable that, in narrowing the limits of the infallible text, they were
groping after a right instinct of human freedom, and that their
concentration on Baptism and the Eucharist represented a sincere seeking
to recover the simplicity of the Christ. Through all their errors, their
rejections, losses, and neglectings of Christian Tradition, have not the
Churches of the Reformation still in the last resort been anchored to this
appeal?
But old habits of mind die hard. It has taken all the force of modern science
to knock us off our fundamentalist pedestaland still we do not realize
that the process has only been restoring to us the possibility of true,
Orthodox Christian Faith.
For nine hundred years, the West has not dared to have full faith in God
Himself, but has sought for an infallible earthly rock on which to build.
There was more than a flutter when Luther set about dethroning the earthly
Church, and Copernicus the Earth itself, from a false fixity and centrality.But neither had gone far enough: for Luther had but put the Bible in place
of the Church, and Copernicus the Sun in place of the Earth. With modern
development of historical and physical science, Scripture and Sun alike are
gone the way of Earth and earthly Church, and we find ourselves, from the
unredeemed point of view, without any rock or fixed point, afloatif
indeed we are afloaton a boundless and bottomless Ocean. And then at
last we have our eyes opened to see the only true centrality of Earth, the
only unshakeable fixity of the Church, as we interpret the texts about the
Rock in the light of othersThou hast founded the Earth upon the waters:An anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, and which entereth in to that
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
15/21
within the veil. Or we turn to St. Gregory of NazianzusFor He hath in
Himself gathered up all that to be can mean, which neither had beginning
nor shall have an end, like some Ocean of Being, endless and illimitable,
falling outside and beyond every thought both of time and of nature; by the
mind alone sketched in, and that all too dimly and in a measure, not fromthe things on His level but from the things about Him, with fancies
gathered one from here and one from there into a single image of the Truth,
which frees us before we have a hold upon it, and escapes us before our
mind has grasped it, shining just so much about our master-faculty, even
when that is cleansed, as the speed of lightning which stays not shines
about our sight; as it seems to me, that by its apprehensibility it may draw
us to itself (for that which is completely inapprehensible cannot be hoped
for nor attempted), but for its inapprehensibility it may be wondered at,
and being wondered at may be longed for the more, and being. longed formay cleanse us, and cleansing may make us God-like, and, when we are
become so, may hold converse with us as its ownmy word here dares
some youthful boldnessGod unto gods united and made knownand
even so much, perhaps, as He knows already those that are known.
This is a different paper from what I had intended to write. Perhaps my pen
has run away with me. I meant to be practical: but perhaps it was necessary
first to set forth something of the Vision. I must content myself now with
urging the Orthodox to realize to the full their vocationthat in their
tradition they have the answer to modern science and social theory, the way
of union for the Church, and the key to the worlds Salvation: and with
urging my brother English, of whatever party or denomination they may
now be, to use this light to rediscover the same treasure hidden in our own
past, in the days when the One Christ first came to our forefathers. I am not
urging this as a means to outward unity. That would be a joy and a strong
weapon: but even when we have attained explicit unity of Faith sufficient
for it, it is not unlikely that international politics would still, in one way or
another, long hinder its attainment. Noit is simply for the conversion of
ourselves, of our country, and of the world, that we must act upon what wehave discovered.
Here I must bring you to earth. For such action must, among other things,
involve our seriously considering a revision, in several respects, of our
teaching, and our liturgical and devotional practice. n some cases, this may
mean a return from modern Anglo-Catholic practice to something more like
the older ways of the Church of England. n others, points may need to be
stressed which have been much longer forgotten. ere are a few examples.
Perhaps you can add others.
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
16/21
THE FILIOQUE
Has long been recognized by historians to be an addition to the Creed madewithout the authority of the whole Church, and retained in the face of Eastern
protest. Even the Pope at first disallowed it. It may well be that the clause has
had a disastrous effect on our doctrine of the Holy Spirit: at least we cannot
deny that it is precisely on the point of the nature of the Holy Spirits work in
the Church that both we and the Orthodox believe Rome to have erred. Surely
it cannot be mere chance that the only point of credal divergence should
concern the Holy Spirit. The natural supposition is that there lurks in the
clause something expressive of Romes error. To Dollinger, I believe, it
appeared quite incomprehensible that any Church should accept it save onPapal authority. It is not in the Nicene Creed, and it is not in the Scripture. I
cannot, therefore, believe that I am acting contrary to the true mind of the
Church of England in omitting it. Surely the time has come for us to act.
History, honesty, and humility alike demand that it should go.
AZYMES
Here (small point though it may seem) is one of many examples of the
disastrous haste of our fathers. Commonly to-day the first sign in an AnglicanChurch of movement in a Catholic direction is the use of wafers in the
Eucharist. This was not the primitive practice in Rome or in the West any
more than in the East. It came in in the West not earlier than the 9th Century,
if as early. Its reintroduction has added an extra, quite unnecessary difference
between us and the Orthodox. The Greeks (through whose language we have
all our knowledge of the Institution of the Eucharist) agree with the naive
Englishman in saying It is not bread. The Scriptural evidence, itself uncertain,
must be interpreted in the light of Church tradition. We have no right to
defend a sacramental practice on grounds of mere convenience. Azymes, too,
surely must go.
THE CONSECRATION OF THE EUCHARIST
Whatever may have been written of late, I believe the Eastern rite as we now
have it to sum up within itself in a true balance the primitive practice and
belief. Where the principle of organic growth allows it, the Scottish Liturgy
provides a good pattern for us. And were I quite sure that the 1928 Canon had
the unquestioned authority of the Church behind it, I should certainly use it
without being personally satisfied with it at all points. Meanwhile, I verytentatively suggest that, provided the people are taught what is happening, it
http://www.oodegr.com/english/protestantism/kritsinia1.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/protestantism/kritsinia1.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/protestantism/kritsinia1.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/protestantism/kritsinia1.htm7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
17/21
may provide a better balance and an easier organic development for us if,
after reciting the Words of Institution aloud, without elevation or
genuflection, we kneel, with the peoples Amen, and make the Anamnesis
and Epiclesis silently (as they are made to-day in the Orthodox Liturgy), then
proceed with the Prayer of Oblation and the Lords Prayer. This gives theWords of Institution the same centrality that they have in the Orthodox
Liturgya pleading of the One Sacrifice by right of which we actwhile its
application to our particular Mass in the Epiclesis would be clearly
subordinated thereto.The placing of the Prayer of Oblation and the Lords
Prayer in their more historical position, before Communion, does seem to me
to be requiredpartly on the ground that I do not believe that Cranmers
theory at the moment when he produced the present order has ever won
acceptance in the mind of the Church: at any rate, I doubt if anyone holds it
today: and to continue using one form and meaning another can only result ininconsequence of mind a condition not uncommon in the Church of England!
The separation, within the last two generations, of Communion as a semi-
private act from the Mass as corporate worship is a disaster from which we
must seek an escape. So also, in general, we should aspire towards the
Orthodox ideal of one Mass of each Church, and of each Christian, in the day.
Something is involved here of far more primary importance than the ancient
and pious practice of fasting before Communion, for the sake of which the
disaster has been allowed to occur. Once the liturgical and dogmatic balance
has been recovered, we may expect that practice, where it has been lost, to
grow up again inevitably: and then, fasting until midday may not after all
appear an excessive demand (in any case, whatever spiritual value there is in
early rising, there is none in fasting until 8 a.m.!) Until then, let us concentrate
on inculcating that sacramental Faith from which the outward reverence will
arise, and not trouble the consciences of others over a secondary practice.Herein, too, we need to learn again from the Orthodox what our fathers knew
of the importance of both Matins and Evensong, and their organic connection
with the Mass. For the Orthodox they are not, as they may appear in Westerntradition, mere monastic and priestly offices, but are shared in fully by the
people, and are an essential part of the liturgical whole. It is absurd that we
should have allowed the natural order to be inverted as it has been8.00
Mass; 1l.00 Matins; 6.00 Evensongwhereas clearly the right order,
psychologically and liturgically, is Saturday Evensong (the Scriptural
beginning of Sunday, as Sabbatarians have failed to observe), Sunday
Morning Matins, Litany, and Mass. Duplication of the Mass, and virtual
obliteration of Matins, is no remedy. Spiritual valetudinarianism, and the
memories some of us have of those Sunday mornings of our boyhood whenMatins was followed by both Litany and Ante-Communion, have robbed us
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
18/21
of a great liturgical tradition, which we should aim at recoveringthough we
might well copy the Orthodox in making it easier for people to slip in and out
in the course of the service! In any case, there should be no isolation of the
central act of Divine Service ([theia leitourgia]) from the rest of the worship of
the Church. However incomplete their worship, it is not true that people havenot been to Church if they have not been to Mass.
Then as to the veneration of the Holy Mother of God and the Saintsyou will
have realized, I hope, how very important I believe this to be. Its absence in
our Church leaves a void which must be filled. But I do not thinkI wish I
couldthat Anglo-Catholic preaching has often succeeded in really making
this a practice of the mind and heart of the Englishmantoo often it appears
as a sentimental trapping of devotion, in shallow imitation of Roman
methods. This is far too serious a matter to be played with. There is a
Christian obligation upon us. But it can only be fulfilled by devotion welling
up sincerely from the mind and heart. And there is only one way to thisthe
way by which the Church gradually learnt it in the first centuries of her
history. Turn first to the fullness of the Christs simplicity, and as you begin to
realize the need of it for the right understanding and worship of Him, you
will find the right veneration of His Mother and of His Saints taking its place
in your minds devotion. I think the Orthodox will understand this quiet way,
of development to be the right way for us.
The same principles apply to images and pictureswe have been too ready,in our reaction against bareness, to accept anything in the way of Church
Artbe it Italian peasant women posing as the Mother of God, or members of
the Girls Diocesan Association dressed up as angels, or fairies pretending to
be the Child Jesus. Perhaps the next Oecumenical Council might well be
concerned with anathemas, not on verbal heresy, but on the heresies implied
in some types of Church Art. Here we must try to be rigorous. I do not in the
least mean that we should reject all Western art, or accept all Eastern. But we
should search, in the light of Orthodoxy, for true principles of
discriminationremembering that sthetics may be conditioned by dogmajust as much as metaphysics or ethicsthe Good, the Beautiful, and the True,
are equally ultimate. Rightly or wrongly, I confess to a feeling in favour of Fra
Angelico, perhaps of Botticelli, while I would reject utterly much of Rafl
including the ikon of the Mothers Union. In Eastern Art, as against many
ikons which, whatever beauty and truth they have, are marked also with a
local and temporal character which makes it too easy for them to be
preserved, at least in England at present, as mere curiosities, I would urge the
speedy publication of a series of coloured reproductions of the great classic,
universal types of Byzantine ikonography;the mosaics of Agia Sophia assoon as that is possible: the Daphni and Cefalu Pantokrators; the Daphni
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
19/21
Crucifixion, the St. Marks Anastasis; the Blachern, Vladimir and Kazan
ikons of the Mother of God; and so onthese to help to restore the balance in
our countrys knowledge of Christian Art, and mould our minds towards our
own Christian Art of the future. Probably we should, from henceforth, accept
the Orthodox distinction, and give up tile making of solid images forChurchespsychologically they err by being either more (as if containing
what they represent) or less (as mere statues) than the flat ikon which is a
window onto Heaven: and they are more apt to stand out in isolation from
their place in the whole ikonography of a Church. We should also feel that a
series of ikons of the Great Feasts of Our Lord would be a better first step in
introducing ikonography into our Churches than the Stations of the Cross,
which are typical of the Western tendency not to pass beyond the Cross to the
fullness of Resurrection. In any case, we must do nothing to spoil Orthodox
balance in our Churchesbetter no pictures than the wrong pictures.
Perhaps I should remind Anglo-Catholics of the fact that, very often,
Orthodox people actually seem to find themselves more at home
in Evangelical English Churchesjust as also Evangelicals and other
Anglicans have been known to find themselves more at home in the Orthodox
Liturgy than in some of our Masses. This cannot be treated as insignificant.
Hymns, again, are a matter onto which we shall have to turn the light of
Orthodoxyand the resultant sifting may have some surprising results, both
in rigorous exclusiveness and in inclusiveness. It is surprising howthoroughly in place I found on one occasion, in Greece, a child-like English
(or American) revival hymn sung, at home after a baptism, among a whole
series of Byzantine troparia. And in another direction, the poetry of Francis
Thompson has certain qualities which are perhaps nearer than anything else
to the best style of Byzantine Church poetrya style which we are not
accustomed to expect in hymns.
In regard to the Churchs yearwe must feel a great loss in the fact that our
Church has no feast of Our Lords Baptismand may even have a suspicionthat this was at some time purposely obscured in the West, because of its
possible implications in regard to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. While it may
appear out of the question for us now to adopt the Orthodox use of Epiphany
for this purpose, at least we could, on a basis of Western practice, restore thc
commemoration of the Baptism on the Octave of Epiphany, and stress this as
a major Feast of the Church. Then, we may doubt if it is possible now for us to
take Trinity back into Whitsun, and use its Octave, as in the last, for the
Sunday of All Saints. But we should at least take note how forcibly, coming so
as the culmination of the Gospel Feasts, this brings home the doctrine of theChurch as the Body of Christ.
7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
20/21
In regard to Scripturewe need to realize that neither Authorized nor
Revised Version can be regarded as an infallible translation of the Infallible
Book. We should also recognize that, once a truer, more historical, and more
Orthodox conception of inspiration is attained, the Septuagintine books which
we call Apocrypha (a term which, if only because it is open to grossmisunderstanding, could well be changed) are seenwhatever distinction
may rightly be drawn between them and the other booksto have an organic
place in the unfolding of the whole body of Scripture. We must also face the
fact that, if you do not want to treat the lost original documentsJEDP, etc.
as the only really inspired works, there is a great deal to be said for the view
that the Greek translation of the Old Testament, as being on the line of
development by which the Holy Spirit led up to Our Lords coming, is
perhaps more authoritative for Christians than the Hebrew originalapart
from the fact of its probably preserving in some cases a text closer to this latterthan is the Masoretic.
In regard to Confirmationthere is a lot to be said for having some service
wherein the child, on coming towards full growth, openly accepts his
obligations in the Church. But it is probable that this ought not to be
Confirmationapart from the difficulty of explaining theologically the
halfway position of the baptized and unconfirmed child. It is probable that
the organic conception of the Church is better inculcated when, as with the
Orthodox, the child is confirmed and admitted to Communion immediately
after Baptism, and from the first learns the Faith by sharing to the full in the
Life.
But these are details, though not such as can be neglected. More important is
it that we should learn, in the light of Orthodoxy, to look at exact Trinitarian
and Christological Dogma, not as the outworn relics of old councils, but as the
living test of a true Christian response to GodHallowed be Thy Name: to
develop a new sense of the Christian Society, and of the Unity of all LifeThy
Kingdom Come: and that we should make a new scrutiny of our methods in
the Spiritual Life (hitherto taken somewhat uncritically from the Medivaland Post-medival West) in the light of greater knowledge of the Greek
Fathers and of the Eastern tradition (and in particular, of the ancient Jesus
Prayer of humility)Thy Will be done.
In all these matters there is an urgent duty, after prayer, for deeper study, and
more general translation and publication of sources.
Oh, for an Orthodox monastery in England to bring to our service not books,
but the living tradition of Orthodox Spiritual Life!
http://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htmhttp://www.oodegr.com/english/ag_grafi/pd/Isaiah/Masorete_Septuagint.htm7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England
21/21
I am suggesting matters which we, as English Churchmen, must examine in
the light of our experience of Eastern Orthodoxy, with a view to the
conversion of ourselves, of our country, and of the world. I believe we are on
an organic path for the fulfilment of our Churchs vocation. At the same time
we must seek first, not England, but the Kingdom of God. So for years thewords have been ringing in my earsHearken, O daughter, and consider,
incline thine ear: forget also thine own people and thy fathers house. So shall
the King have pleasure in thy beauty: for He is thy Lord God, and worship
thou Him