His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew recently published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal<\/em> (\u201cOur Indivisible Environment<\/a>,\u201d 26 October 2009) in which he argues that \u201cjust as God is indivisible, so too is our global environment.\u201d\u00a0 He asserts that as the \u201cmolecules of water that comprise the great North Atlantic are neither European nor American\u201d so too the \u201cparticles of atmosphere above the United Kingdom are neither Labour nor Tory.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the surface, his words reflect a cultural and intellectual tradition with deep roots in classical, pre-Christian Greek thought (especially Aristotle) as well as Holy Scripture and the teachings of the fathers of the Church (East and West).<\/p>\n

His observations also owe much to Scholasticism, those Medieval Catholic scholars wrestled who the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christian faith, as well as the relationship of Christian faith to Judaism and Islam.\u00a0 To his credit, the Patriarch is also in a discussion with scholars of different faith and intellectual traditions.<\/p>\n

There is a difference here worth noting, however, and it is the difference between Christian scholars and scholars of other faith and ideological traditions. At the core of biblical faith lies the \u201cscandal of particularity,\u201d the notion of God’s election of a particular people, the Jews. This notion also lies at the heart of the Christian Gospel.<\/p>\n

Particularity is an irreducible tenet that sets Judaism and Christianity apart from other faith traditions. It has been a source of tension in human history, but also a well-spring of great insight. This difference is so critical to the self-understanding of Jews and Christians that it must remain in the forefront of any project that seeks to embrace the entire human community.<\/p>\n

The Medieval Schoolmen undertook the encounters they had with the traditions of their Jewish and Muslim neighbors with deep seriousness and deliberation. Contrary to Patriarch Bartholomew’s call for practical agreement that will \u201ctranscend doctrinal differences,\u201d the Scholastics developed relationships with their non-Catholic neighbors that affirmed the common ground that united them in a manner that did not discount or diminish the differences that separated them.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the relationships that grew out of their conversations were collaborative. Other times they were combative. Rather than construct a false peace, medieval thinkers \u2013 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim \u2013 accepted the conflict and disagreement as the cost of being faithful to their respective teachings. For them, it meant they were being true to God.<\/p>\n

The Patriarch’s call to \u201ctranscend doctrinal differences,\u201d does not follow the practice of the Medievalists. In fact, it runs counter to the notion of particularity that runs strongly throughout all of Christian tradition. It draws, I contend, from the secularism of the Enlightenment rather than biblical or patristic thinking.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the Enlightenment project is the criticism (sometimes accurately, sometimes overstated) of the harm that religion in general and Christianity in particular have at times inflicted on humanity. The long term result of this criticism is that, for better or worse, an intellectual tradition developed that fosters a critical distance from all received wisdom, both cultural and religious.<\/p>\n

I am not saying that the Ecumenical Patriarch is teaching heresy; he certainly is not.\u00a0 But it does appear <\/span>that he accepts uncritically the Enlightenment\u2019s skepticism of religion when he says that the \u201csurvival of our planet…unites us in ways that transcend doctrinal differences.\u201d If he is correct in his assessment of the environment, then his words are nothing less than an appeal to the self-interest of both persons and nations. To be sure, the appeal is intended as enlightened <\/em>self-interest since it fulfills the \u201ccommon good.\u201d He says, \u201cClimate change will only be overcome when all of us\u2014scientists and politicians, theologians and economists, specialists and lay citizens\u2014cooperate for the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Missing in the appeal however, is the recognition that self-interest is never abstract and always personal. While men and women from different faith traditions can and often do agree on practical matters, they do so for reasons particular to themselves. The Patriarch however, is encouraging us to seek an agreement in ways that require us to ignore and perhaps even negates the particularity of our traditions.\u00a0 By his implicit counsel that we level our differences of doctrine and faith, he repeats one of the great failures of the Enlightenment: the exchange of deep personal and communal motivations for those of abstract reason which invariably causes us to replace community with bureaucracy and ultimately freedom with tyranny.<\/p>\n

Our differences are important reflecting as they do what is unique about us as persons and communities.\u00a0 Our disagreements, if honestly faced, can be sources of moral and practical wisdom which can in turn enrich our shared commitments to work for the betterment of the whole human family. It is within our differences and disagreements that we can find what His All Holiness calls the \u201cspiritual dimension\u201d of practical projects. This is an important insight and one that the Church must preserve and teach. If our focus is only on transcending differences however, we risk losing the wealth gained through them.<\/p>\n

As an Orthodox theologian, Patriarch Bartholomew knows that the human heart seeks not abstract unity but personal communion, not bureaucracy but communion, not the tyranny of sin but true and lasting freedom.\u00a0 In Orthodox theological terms all of this rests in the Most Holy Trinity itself although not on the level of ousia<\/em>, that is, through the shared divine nature, but by the hypostasis<\/em>, that is the union of Divine Persons\u2014Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Whether in the Holy Trinity or in the human family, personal communion is radically different then the union possessed by \u201cmolecules of water\u201d or by \u201cparticles of atmosphere.\u201d The union of the physical creation is impersonal. There is no communion between molecules of water or particles of air.<\/p>\n

Thus the comparison of the human to the non-human world in these terms makes all conversation about what is in our best personal or national interest meaningless. When particularity is subsumed into an abstraction, the differences between people ultimately have no meaning.<\/p>\n

A press release from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America describes Patriarch’s Bartholomew’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal as \u201ca powerful statement for the Orthodox Christian view of creation and the need for the protection of the environment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I respectfully but firmly, disagree.\u00a0 His words owe more to his uncritical adoption of the secular thought than to Christian theology.<\/p>\n

In Christ,<\/p>\n

+Fr Gregory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew recently published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal (\u201cOur Indivisible Environment,\u201d 26 October 2009) in which he argues that \u201cjust as God is indivisible, so too is our global environment.\u201d\u00a0 He asserts that as the \u201cmolecules of water that comprise the great North Atlantic are neither European […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1023,256,847,160,1021,1022,440],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4244"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4249,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}