Month: December 2012

Asceticism and the Free Society

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The underlying thesis in the essay below is that 1) man is fundamentally a moral being, and 2) the restoration of culture is fundamentally a moral enterprise. The essay is reproduced by permission of the Acton Institute but note something about that: There is more interest in the Orthodox contribution about the intersections of faith and culture outside of Orthodox circles than within it. What does that say about us, that we are asleep at the switch? Yes, maybe it does. Apart from the boutique issues we don’t really say much.

The author brings forward the necessity of ascetic discipline (think of it as self-discipline as an exercise not only of body but also the soul) as an ordering principle not only for the self, but the larger culture as well. No man is an island which is also to say that no man is an individual. Conservatives are correct in resisting the collectivist impulse of secular liberalism but if they think that individualism is the antidote they are mistaken and will end up living in the same arid lands of dehumanization that foster a greater loss of human dignity and ultimately liberty. A fuller vision of the human person is required and the author starts making the case for it below.

Source: Acton Institute Blog

Dylan Pahman

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to present a paper at the Sophia Institute annual conference at Union Theological Seminary. This year’s topic was “Marriage, Family, and Love in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.” My paper was titled, “What Makes a Society?” and focused, in the context of marriage and the family, on developing an Orthodox Christian answer to that question. The Roman Catholic and neo-Calvinist answers, subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty, respectively (though not mutually exclusive), receive frequent attention on the PowerBlog, but, to my knowledge, no Orthodox answer has been clearly articulated, and so it can be difficult to know where to begin. To that end, it is my conviction—and a subject of my research—that a historically sensitive, Orthodox answer to this question can found be in the idea of asceticism, rightly understood.

While I will not reproduce my paper here, I wanted to briefly summarize two of its main points that might have broader interest. First of all, what is asceticism? Second, how can asceticism be viewed as an organizational principle of society? Lastly, I want to briefly explore—beyond the scope of my paper—the relevance of this principle for a free society.

With regards to the first question, it is very important to recognize that there are many forms of asceticism. Asceticism comes from the Greek word askesis and basically means exercise. Applied to our spiritual lives, it carries the connotation of denying our bodily comforts in order to train our souls through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, etc. Often, however, people only think of the negative forms when they hear the word, such as, for example, the sort of asceticism that St. Paul denounces in his Epistle to the Colossians, writing,

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (2:20-23)

The problem with this sort of asceticism was that it confused means with ends. The ascetic disciplines (prayer, fasting, almsgiving, simplicity, etc.) are not ends in themselves, not for Christians anyway. This attitude toward them can be seen in the many sayings of the desert fathers, in which, for example, they criticize those who refuse hospitality for the sake of their fast.

Rather, according to St. Moses the Ethiopian, the disciplines “are to be rungs of a ladder up which [the heart] may climb to perfect charity [i.e., love].” And according to Fr. Georges Florovsky, “True asceticism is inspired not by contempt, but by the urge of transformation.” Rather than viewing the body as something evil that deserves to be mistreated, it views it as the means by which we improve our souls, training ourselves in the virtues and, ultimately, love. It is the means by which we put to death our members on the earth and set our minds on things above (cf. Colossians 3:1-11). In this way, Christian asceticism actually has an exceptionally high view of the body: it is not evil or devoid of spiritual worth but rather essential to our spiritual development.

But how can asceticism, often associated exclusively with monks and mystics, be a societal principle? As I write in my paper,

[W]e can confirm this by reflecting on the everyday habitus of the family. Do we not call dysfunctional a family in which the children are allowed to eat ice cream for breakfast, where the family spends no intentional time together, and disobedience is never disciplined? Do we not rightly call deadbeat a parent who abandons his/her children, refusing to sacrifice in order to provide for them, instead pursuing a selfish existence? Healthy families, on the other hand, eat meals together according to their own established dietary limitations (“eat your vegetables, then you can have dessert,” for example); they share time and space with one another; the parents sacrifice their time and desires in order to work to provide for the children; the children are required to do chores to contribute to the household; and so on. Society simply does not “work” apart from ascetic self-renunciation.

I go on to clarify: “True, such asceticism may be quite light by most standards and not the perfect embodiment of the ideal, but the basic principle must, nonetheless, be present.” Understood in this way, there is no society that can survive apart from some degree of asceticism.

I find this to be a perspective particularly suited to the Orthodox tradition because there is still an expectation there that everyone would take part in asceticism to some extent. Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days, and the periods of Advent and Lent, among others, are periods where greater emphasis is not only put on fasting, but prayer, almsgiving, simplicity, repentance, etc. Intentional asceticism is still an integral part of the Orthodox ethos, and the Orthodox tradition is full of wisdom regarding the ascetic way of life.

All of this is well and good, but what does it mean for a free society? According to Edmund Burke,

Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Asceticism is historically the means by which Christians train themselves, in cooperation with divine grace, to put “a controlling power upon will and appetite.” The more self-restraint people have within, the more limited government they can afford to have. The more austere people are with themselves, the more they will have to give to others, thus reducing the need for government assistance. Thus government austerity requires a culture of austerity (and generosity).

In our nation today, both are needed to a great extent. We have a problem with debt that is only getting bigger by the day, and a significant portion of it is due to making promises to future generations that we cannot realistically keep if our attitudes and practices toward debt and deficits do not change. We are simultaneously promising our children all sorts of entitlements, many of which are in fact laudable things and worth trying to save, but all of which together are economically unsustainable at our current rate. Yet if we want our government to be more austere for the sake of fiscal responsibility—and we should—then we also ought to encourage a more ascetic culture, where austerity for the sake of generosity and love, i.e. true asceticism, is seen as a way of life, what holds our society together, and the means by which we are truly free. Otherwise it will be our own passions that “forge [our] fetters,” and we will only need to look in the mirror to see who to blame.

“There’s Plenty of Freedom, But Little Truth”: Solzhenitsyn Remembered

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Source: Pravmir.com HT: Acton Blog

Back when I was a college student I stumbled on Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Harvard Address” in the library. I read it and knew immediately that Orthodox Christianity contained the spiritual depth I was looking for as a Christian. I had no real idea what Orthodox Christianity was and started reading up on it. I assumed too that Orthodox Churches existed only in Russia and Greece until I met my wife to be a few months later who happened to be Greek Orthodox. The rest, as they say, is history.

From the Acton Blog by John Couretas:

Pravmir.com, a Russian site, has published an English translation of an interview given by Archpriest Nikolai Chernyshev, who is identified as “the spiritual father of the Solzhenitsyn family during the final years of the writer’s life.” The interview touches on Aleksandr Solzenitsyn’s upbringing in a deeply religious Russian Orthodox family, his encounter with militant atheism ( … he joined neither the Young Pioneers nor the Komsomol [All-Union Leninist Young Communist League]. The Pioneers would tear off his baptismal cross, but he would put it back on every time). Fr. Chernyshev describes the writer’s later “period of torturous doubt, of rejection of his childhood faith, and of pain.” The priest talks of Solzhenitzyn’s return to the faith after his experience in the Gulag and how “he suffered and fretted about the Church being in a repressed state. For him this was open, obvious, naked, and painful.”

Archpriest Nikolai Chernyshev

Fifty years ago this month, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in the journal Novy Mir (New World). Both the author’s first work to appear in print and the first account of Stalinist repression to be openly distributed in the Soviet Union, it marked the beginning of Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic career. In celebration of his life and work, we offer an interview given shortly after the writer’s death by Archpriest Nikolai Chernyshev, cleric of the St. Nicholas Church on Maroseyka Street in Klenniky (Moscow), who served as the spiritual father of the Solzhenitsyn family during the final years of the writer’s life.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn departed on his final journey in accordance with the Orthodox tradition. What was the writer’s path to faith?

I would refer you to Ludmila Saraskina’s book about Solzhenitsyn that was recently published [in Russian, 2009] in the series “Lives of Great People.” The biography of the writer found in this book is the most complete and sober.

Aleksandr Isayevich grew up in a deeply religious Orthodox family and was conscious of himself as an Orthodox Christian from the very beginning. These were the years of militant atheism, so he had trouble with his classmates and teachers at school. Naturally, he joined neither the Young Pioneers nor the Komsomol [All-Union Leninist Young Communist League]. The Pioneers would tear off his baptismal cross, but he would put it back on every time.

At that time the churches in Rostov-on-Don (Rostov Oblast), where the writer was born and was then living, were closed one after another. By the time he was growing up there, not a single functioning church remained within hundreds of miles of Rostov. As we know, at that time the ideas of Marxism and Leninism were imposed not just actively, but aggressively. In educational institutions, the study of Diamet [dialectical materialism] was unavoidable. The young Sasha Solzhenitsyn took an interest in Marxism, in dialectical materialism, and this ran contrary to his childhood faith. An unbearable weight was placed on his fledgling soul. At that time many people were crushed by this burden.

As Aleksandr Isayevich relates, this was a period of torturous doubt, of rejection of his childhood faith, and of pain. He could see that there was no truth in what was going on around him. But the theory, as it was soothingly expressed in the books, had its appeal.

His true return to God and his second thoughts took place not at the front, but in the camps after the war. In these, the most difficult moments of his life, he was reminded of the “leaven” given to him in his family by his mother. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that his coming to faith was abrupt and unanticipated. Faith had been passed down from generation to generation in his family, and it came out the stronger.

Aleksandr Isayevich described the change he underwent in the camps in his 1952 poem, “Acathistus.” He speaks in earnest, poetic form of his breaking point and of what took place in his soul during this change:

When, oh when did I scatter so madly
All the goodness, the God-given grains?
Was my youth not spent with those who gladly
Sang to You in the glow of Your shrines?

Bookish wisdom, though, sparkled and beckoned,
And it rushed through my arrogant mind,
The world’s mysteries seemed within reckon,
My life’s lot like warm wax in the hand.

My blood seethed, and it spilled and it trickled,
Gleamed ahead with a multihued trace,
Without clamor there quietly crumbled
In my breast the great building of faith.

Then I passed betwixt being and dying,
I fell off and now cling to the edge,
And I gaze back with gratitude, trembling,
On the meaningless life I have led.

Not my reason, nor will, nor desire
Blazed the twists and the turns of its road,
It was purpose-from-High’s steady fire
Not made plain to me till afterward.

Now regaining the measure that’s true,
Having drawn with it water of being,
Oh great God! I believe now anew!
Though denied, You were always with me… [1]

Aleksandr Isayevich said of himself that he was “not a specialist in church questions.” What aspects of church life did interest him?

He was not, of course, a “church person” in the sense of being interested in the church canons, in the structure of the divine services, or in the external organization of one or another aspect of church life. What interested him was the life of the soul, life as prayer and as the fulfillment of the Gospel. But if we are to speak of aspects of the life of the Russian Church, he suffered and fretted about the Church being in a repressed state. For him this was open, obvious, naked, and painful. Starting with the divine services, everything is becoming more and more incomprehensible and taking place further and further apart from the people, resulting in the Church’s ever decreasing role in the life of society and in the spiritual care of both young and older people. He was interested in how the life of the Church should be based on the Gospel.

He was worried by the problem of the unity of the Church. This is something that cannot but pain the heart of every believing person. Aleksandr Isayevich experienced it like a personal pain. He saw, of course, that ecclesiastical divisions have an effect on society. He saw the schism of the seventeenth century as a persisting problem. He had extraordinary regard for the Old Ritualists, seeing how much truth was in them. He suffered from the fact that there was no genuine unity, although canonical communion is observed.

All problems that related to any kind of division in church life were extraordinarily painful to Aleksandr Isayevich.

Today many people remember the writer’s famous “Lenten Letter” to Patriarch Pimen (1972) and say that Solzhenitsyn expected, and even demanded, greater participation by the Church in society. What were his views in this regard at the end of his life?

Solzhenitsyn was one of those people who could not remain silent; his voice was always heard. And, of course, he was convinced that the Savior’s words Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature should be fulfilled [Mark 16:15]. One of his convictions, his idea, was that the Church, on the one hand, should naturally be separate from the government, but by no means should be separate from society.

He felt that they are quite different, that they are completely opposite things. Its inseparability from society should become more and more manifest. And here he could not but see the encouraging changes of recent years. He joyfully and gratefully took in everything positive taking place in Russia and in the Church – but he was far from complacent, since all of society had become twisted and sick during the years of Soviet rule.

He understood that if the sick lead the sick, or if the lame lead the lame, then nothing good will come of it. The activity he was calling for, that inseparability from society, should by no means be expressed in violence, in the suppressive structure of thought and action customary of the Soviet era.

He felt that, on the one hand, the Church is called to lead society and to have a more active influence on the life of society – but today this should by no means find expression in those forms used by the ideological machine that broke and mangled people. The situation has changed in recent years – and he could not help but sense new dangers.

Once he was asked what he thought about the freedom for which he had fought and what he felt about what was going on. He replied with a single hammered-out phrase: “There’s plenty of freedom, but little truth.” He keenly perceived the danger of a false substitution – and, therefore, was far from calm.

When he returned to the Motherland and began to travel around Russia, he saw the country’s whole plight – not only the economic side, but also its spiritual condition.

Of course, he saw a fundamental difference between the thirties or fifties and the present state of things. He was not a dissident in a state of constant confrontation with everything. This wasn’t the case. There are people who try to make him into this, but this wasn’t who he was. Despite exposing these terrible societal wounds, there was always a powerful life-affirming force in what he wrote and did. He had a Christian’s positive, life-affirming, and luminous attitude.

A. I. Solzhenitsyn was one of the past century’s most outstanding Russian thinkers. Did any conflict arise in his soul between reason and religious feeling?

Such conflict had its place in the years of his youth, beginning in the upper grades of school, during the years of the front. This was a time when all the churches were closed, when there was no one with whom to advise, and when church life has been almost completely destroyed by the Bolshevik’s machine of repression. Then there were such conflicts. It was in the camps that his return to the roots of his faith began, a renewed sense of responsibility for every step and every decision.

Of course, Aleksandr Isayevich was a person of complexity. People will, and should, argue about him. With a personality of this caliber and magnitude, it could not have been any other way. This was a person who did not simply repeat certain studied thoughts, but approached the truth of the Gospel through his own searching.

In his tribute to Aleksandr Isayevich read at his funeral, His Holiness the Patriarch [Alexy II] cited an evangelical precept from the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake [Matthew 5:10]. This applies to the long and burdensome pages of Aleksandr Isayevich’s life. Other words of the Savior likewise apply to his entire life, from his school years right up to his last days: Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled [Matthew 5:6]. Of course, we tend to place the accent on the first part of this phrase. But I saw how he experienced the blessedness and spiritual fulfillment that is achievable in this earthly life: joy came to him in his last days for having carried out his vocation.

He said: “If I had organized my life according to my own plans, it would have consisted of terrible mistakes. Now I can see this. But the Lord always rightened and recast my life, sometimes invisibly and sometimes in an obvious manner. Now I see that everything came together in the best possible way.” These are the words of a person of deep faith, who is grateful to God, and who accepts gratefully all that the Lord sends him.

Could Aleksandr Isayevich be said to have been a parishioner of any particular church? Was he frequently in church?

When we met Aleksandr Isayevich he was already ill and almost never left the house. When the Solzhenitsyn family returned to Russia, Aleksandr Isayevich and Natalia Dmitrievna came to our church and got acquainted with our clergy and parishioners. Afterwards, Natalia Dmitrievna began to visit often and to ask us to come to give Confession, Unction, and Communion to her husband in their home in Troitse-Lykovo.

Our form of communication was due solely to the fact that Aleksandr Isayevich himself no longer had the strength or ability to attend services. It should be said that I visited them regularly, not just on a case-by-case basis.

Speaking as a priest and spiritual father, what memories of the deceased have stayed with you?

The most striking thing in him was his simplicity and guilelessness. An amazing tenderness and mutual care always reigned in their family. This likewise manifests his Christian attitude to his neighbors and the way in which he built up his home as the “little Church.” This was truly amazing. Guilelessness, simplicity, sensitivity, carefulness, and attentiveness – all of these were characteristic of Aleksandr Isayevich.

At the time that we met, he asked himself a question, the answer to which had previously been obvious to him: What ought he to do? He said: “I have done everything; I think I have fulfilled my vocation. I don’t know why I have been left behind. Everything I have thought necessary to say and write, I have said and written; all my works have been published. What more is there to do?” His children had grown up; he had given them a proper upbringing. The family was in good order. In this situation, it became necessary to remind him: “If the Lord has left you in this world, this is for a reason. You should pray about this, to understand why you have been given this time.” Then, after some time had passed, he said: “Yes, I have now understood that this time has been given to me for myself – not for external work, but for self-examination.”

He touched on this in one of his interviews: Old age is given to us for self-examination; for us to evaluate, reflect upon, and look more strictly at every moment of our lives.

All the while, these thoughts were not fruitless navel gazing; rather, they served as the basis for him to serve according to his strength until very recently. Despite his infirmity, he nonetheless never permitted himself any slackness or carelessness. He scheduled his time strictly until recently. Along with this strict work schedule, he tried to receive people – many, many people, from completely different spheres of life. He tried to leave no one who appealed to him, whether in personal conversation or in writing, without an answer.

Many people called him, and continue to call him, a recluse. They allege that he secluded himself and was not involved with anything. This was not the case. Many people came to him; many people turned to him for help.

That he was buried with Orthodox rites was not simply a matter of tradition. It witnesses to the fact that this man completed his earthly life in true service to Christ and to His Church.

Interview conducted by Maria Moiseeva.

Translator’s note:

[1] As translated by Ignat Solzhenitsyn in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005. Edward E. Ericson and Daniel J. Mahoney, ed. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 21.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

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Orthodox Christians need to remain faithful to their traditions.

In the Christian tradition of both east and west, the twelve days of Christmas refer to the period from Christmas Day to Theophany. The days leading up to Christmas were for preparation; a practice affirmed in the Orthodox tradition by the Christmas fast that runs from November 15 to Christmas day. The celebration of Christmas did not begin until the first of the twelve days.

As our culture became more commercialized, the period of celebration shifted from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Christmas celebration increasingly conforms to the shopping cycle while the older tradition falls by the wayside. It’s an worrisome shift because as the tradition dims, the knowledge that the period of preparation imparted diminishes with it.

Our Orthodox traditions — from fasting cycles to worship –exist to teach us how to live in Christ. The traditions impart discipline. These disciplines are never an end in themselves but neither can life in Christ be sustained apart from them.

The traditions only make sense only when they have the Gospel as their reference. If we forget that these traditions are given to us to help us lay hold of Christ, then they appear to be superfluous and the disciplines they encourage us to do seem to serve no real purpose. We start to evaluate the discipline by the values of the dominant culture — by a cost-benefit calculus, rather than seeing them as ways to morally reorient ourselves towards Christ.

Instead of preparing for the birth of Christ through inward reorientation, we follow the direction of the dominant culture and skip any preparation altogether. We party instead of fast. We get caught up in the commercial energy of the season rather than wait on the Spirit of God.

It’s a dangerous path. Our culture is becoming increasingly secularized; the sacred dimension of creation is slipping from view. This loss of this sacred sensibility has grave ramifications for society that are expressed in many different ways such as the vulgarization of popular culture or the reduction of an unborn child to a commodity. If this view prevails our culture will inevitably view man as nothing more than an animal or a machine.

But man is more than an animal or a machine. The scriptures reveal man is created in the image and likeness of God, a phrase that means that man is not complete unless he partakes of God — God must be part of man’s life. This longing — this innate knowledge that man is created for God — never leaves man although a person can bury it if he so chooses.

A secularized mind is blind to the inherent holiness of life. Maintaining our traditions is one way to avoid this debilitating malady. Christmas is not just “Jesus’ birthday” (an impoverished notion heard more and more even among Orthodox faithful), but much more.

The birth of Christ and His baptism ought never to be divorced. Both events define the Christmas season. It imparts to the Christian the knowledge that Christ’s coming into the world and Christ’s sanctification of the waters makes our new life possible — a sonship by adoption accomplished through baptism.

When the link between Christmas and Theophany is broken (and by neglecting the proper preparation we break it), the cultural memory of the promise of new birth expresses itself in weakened and ultimately insufficient cultural forms. These forms function as a new tradition.

Religion is not the product of culture; religion is the source, writes philosopher Russell Kirk. “It’s from an association in a cult, abody of worshipers, that human community grows…when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay swiftly. The material order restson the spiritual order.”*

Orthodox Christianity can contribute to the recovery of the moral foundation of American culture by imparting knowledge that can strengthen and deepen that foundation. It won’t happen however, if the Orthodox faithful adopt the practices of the dominant culture in place of their own tradition.

*Russell Kirk “Civilization with Religion” The Heritage Foundation Report (July 24, 1992).

This article was published in “The Hellenic Voice,” January 7, 2003.

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