Theology

In 1942, Russian emigre and lay theologian Nicholas Zernov published a little book on the Orthodox Church under the auspices of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. Much of Zernov’s “The Church of the Eastern Christians” is aimed — no surprise — at educating the British public about the Orthodox Church and advancing the cause of unity between Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox. He also has some things to say about how the Church governs itself that we would do well to reflect upon today.

“The Eastern Church rejects altogether the attempts of the West to locate Church authority in one or another ecclesiastical institution,” Zernov wrote. “It is the Holy Spirit speaking and acting through the whole body of believers who is the teacher and guardian of truth for them.”

In his introduction, written against the backdrop of WWII, he identified two major problems facing Christians: the lack of unity and the rise of totalitarianism, first in Russia following the revolution and then Nazi fascism.

The various divisions among Christians “constitutes a serious obstacle to the victory of faith,” Zernov wrote. He observed that most Christians don’t even know precisely what it is that makes cooperation among themselves impossible so therefore they cannot see the steps that should be taken to remove the barriers to unity. Any movement towards unity must necessarily involve the active participation of the laity.

On the subject of totalitarianism, Zernov said that the Russian Revolution must be considered as “a turning point” in the history of Christianity. That’s because the revolution marked the first time that the Church had its authority challenged — indeed was marked for extinction — in a major European country. While this turn of events for the Russian Church was greeted with condescension and indifference by many in the West, it soon became apparent that the Western churches would meet the same fate under Hitler. “Totalitarianism is prepared to make a temporary truce with some decadent forms of Christianity, but is uncompromisingly opposed to any robust faith and to those who allegiance to the Church is firm and explicit,” he warned.

The following excerpts from Zernov’s “The Church of the Eastern Christians” look at how authority is organized and exercised in the Church:

The Popular Character of Eastern Orthodoxy

The constitution of the Eastern Church is based on the principle of self-government, in which both clergy and laity share. Parochial councils, diocesan conferences and national synods must include representatives of all members. But this constitution is not always adhered to in practice. When it breaks down, it is usually as the result of State intervention. The popular character of Eastern Orthodoxy is the source of its strength; for this reason, whenever the secular authorities have wished to check the influence of Christianity, they have tried to narrow the Church’s constitution and deprive the laity of any part in its administration. Russia, before the Revolution of 1917, was a conspicuous example of this policy. Continue reading →

Both on the AOI blog and my own my post, “Pentecost, Lincoln and the American Experiment,” brought some very interesting and thought provoking comments. Your thoughts have helped me think a bit more deeply about the relationship between the Tradition of the Orthodox Church and the American Experiment. For this I thank you all.

And even more importantly, your words were very much in mind as I read Michael Baxter recent review of American Babylon: Notes of A Christian in Exile, by the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus.

As is no doubt clear from what I wrote, I do not see Orthodoxy and the American Experiment as necessarily in opposition to each other. Or maybe it might be more accurate to say, that the differences between Orthodoxy and America are certainly no wider or deeper than what one would expect between that between God and Caesar, between the City of God which is to come and the City of Man which is here and now.
Be that as it may, however, my interest in political philosophy is motivated by the intuition that—for better and worse—the City of Man conditions the pastoral situation of the Church until the Kingdom which is to come. Continue reading →

Address given at the SVS conference on Orthodoxy unity in America, June 20, 2009.

Highlight: Met. Jonah introduces into official discourse the need to de-imperialize Orthodox ecclesiology.

1917 Council and Tomos: St Tikhon’s Vision Then and Now

Metropolitan Jonah

The Great Council of 1917, and the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church that it began, are aspects of the de-imperialization of the Orthodox Church and its canonical structures. This began a process of the transcendence of the imperial domination of Orthodox ecclesiology, which reigned from Constantine and Theodosius to Nicholas II, and the beginning of the adaptation to a new era in which the Church is independent of the state. This was the beginning of a new conciliar vision, which has developed significantly over the past century. What it did is to set up a new set of structural and canonical interpretations, demanding a worldwide rethinking of Orthodox ecclesiology.

The fruit of this vision, partially, is the Orthodox Church in America, and her autocephaly. The conflict with the old ecclesiological and canonical interpretations forms the context for the issues surrounding the acceptance or rejection of the autocephaly. This conflict is, however, also the fruitful ground for a creative resolution to the issues confronting the OCA, and the Orthodox Church throughout the world.

The Orthodox Church in Russia began preparing for a great Council over a hundred years ago, particularly in 1905. In the final decades of the Russian Empire there was a tremendous intellectual ferment among the clergy and intelligentsia of the Russian Church that not only sought a way out of the morass of the Oberprokurator system suppressing the Patriarchate, established by Peter the First, but that was also very much in dialog with the social, political and cultural developments of the time. The Russian Empire not only had tens of thousands of churches, and over a thousand monasteries, in its own territory, using Slavonic and a “standard” practice also taught in the seminaries and academies; there were dozens of missions to tribes of many languages, as well as extensive foreign missions, including that to North America. Each of these served in the local language, generated liturgical and catechetical material in these languages, and recruited and trained local indigenous clergy.

Continue reading →

In part five of the “On the Road” series, Steve the Builder stopped in front of whore house in the middle of the Nevada desert. Sex and death are inextricably intertwined in the human being. That is why the Playmate Ranch is the perfect icon of our fallen humanity.

Listen here: