The Mission of the Church.

The Byzantine concept according to which the empire and the Church were allied in the leadership of a single universal Christian oikoumene Church in the World implied their cooperation in the field of mission. The designation of “equal-to-the-Apostles” (isapostolos) was applied to Constantine the Great precisely because of his contribution to the conversion of the oikoumene to Christ. The emperors of Constantinople, his successors, were normally buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles. Their missionary responsibility was stressed in court ceremonial. The emperor was expected to propagate the Christian faith and to maintain Christian ethics and behaviour, and to achieve these goals through both legislation and support given to the Church’s missionary and charitable activities.

Outside the imperial borders, the Church-state alliance frequently led to a de facto identification, in the eyes of the non-Christians, of the political interests of the empire with the fate of Orthodox Christianity. Non-Christian rulers of Persia and Arab caliphs often persecuted Christians, not only out of religious fanaticism, but also because they suspected them of being the emperor’s allies. The suspicion was actually frequently justified, especially during the lengthy holy war between Islam and Christianity, which made spiritual contacts, mutual understanding, and meaningful dialogue virtually impossible. For this reason, except in a very few cases, Byzantine Christianity was never able to make any missionary inroads among the Islamic invaders coming from the East.⁹

Missionary activity was quite successful however among the barbarians coming from the North — Mongols, Slavs, and Caucasians — who flooded imperial territories and eventually settled as the empire’s northern neighbours. It is this missionary work which actually preserved the universal character of the Orthodox Church after the lapse of the non-Greek communities of the Middle East into Monophysitism and after the great schism with the West. After the ninth century particularly, Byzantine Christianity expanded spectacularly, extending its penetration to the Caspian Sea and the Arctic Ocean.¹⁰

The Byzantine mission to the Slavs is usually associated with what is called “Cyrillo-Methodian ideology” and is characterized by the translation of both Scripture and liturgy into the vernacular language of the newly converted nations by two brothers, Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, in the ninth century. In actual fact however Byzantine churchmen were not always consistent with the principles adopted by the first missionaries; historical evidence shows that enforced Hellenization and cultural integration were also practiced, especially when the empire succeeded in achieving direct political control over Slavic lands. Still the fundamental theological meaning of Christian mission, as expressed by Cyril (or “Constantine the philosopher,” Cyril’s secular name), was never challenged in principle:

Since you have learned to hear, Slavic people,

Hear the Word, for it came from God,

The Word nourishing human souls,

The Word strengthening heart and mind. ...

Therefore St. Paul has taught:

“In offering my prayer to God,

I had rather speak five words

That all the brethren will understand

Than ten thousand words which are incomprehensible.”¹¹

Clearly, the author sees the proclamation of the Gospel as essential to the very nature of the Christian faith, which is a revelation of the eternal Word or Logos of God. The Word must be heard and understood; hence the necessity of a translation of Scripture and worship into the vernacular. This principle — expressed by the Prologue in terms which Martin Luther would not have disavowed — will remain the distinctive characteristic of Orthodox missions, at a time when the Christian West was opting for a unified but dead language — Latin — as the only channel for communicating the Word. Cyril and Methodius, during their mission to Moravia and their stay in Venice, had several discussions with Prankish missionaries who held the “heresy of the three languages,” believing that the Gospel could be communicated only in the three languages used in Pilate’s inscription on Jesus’ cross: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. By contrast, Cyril and Methodius stressed that, in the East, Slavs, as well as Armenians, Persians, Egyptians, Georgians, and Arabs, praised God in their own languages.¹²

The deliberate policy of translation implied a mission evolving into the rapid “indigenization” of the Church, which became an integral part of the various national cultures. Eventually, Byzantine Orthodox Christianity became deeply rooted in their lives, and neither foreign domination nor secular ideologies could easily uproot it. But indigenization also implied the existence of “national” churches, especially after the dismemberment of what Obolensky has called the “Byzantine Commonwealth.” Modern nationalism further secularized the national self-consciousness of East European nations, damaging the sense of Christian catholicity among them.

Byzantine missionary methods and principles found their continuation in Orthodox Russia. Stephen of Perm (1340-1396), for example, is known as the apostle of the Zyrians, a Finnish tribe in north-eastern Russia. Having learned Greek, Stephen translated the scriptures and the liturgy into the language of the Zyrians and became their bishop.¹³ His example was followed until the twentieth century in the missionary expansion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Asia and even on the American continent, through Alaska.

Eschatology.

Eschatology can never really be considered a separate chapter of Christian theology, for it qualifies the character of theology as a whole. This is especially true of Byzantine Christian thought, as we have tried to show in the preceding chapters. Not only does it consider man’s destiny — and the destiny of all of creation — as oriented toward an end; this orientation is the main characteristic of the sacramental doctrines, of its spirituality, and of its attitude toward the “world.” Furthermore, following Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, it considers the ultimate end itself as a dynamic state of man and of the whole of creation: the goal of created existence is not, as Origen thought, a static contemplation of divine “essence,” but a dynamic ascent of love, which never ends, because God’s transcendent being is inexhaustible, and which, thus, always contains new things yet to be discovered (novissima) through the union of love.

The eschatological state however is not only a reality of the future but a present experience, accessible in Christ through the gifts of the Spirit. The Eucharistic canon of the liturgy of John Chrysostom commemorates the second coming of Christ together with events of the past — the cross, the grave, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. In the Eucharistic presence of the Lord, His forthcoming advent is already realized, and “time” is being transcended. Similarly, the entire tradition of Eastern monastic spirituality is based upon the premise that now, in this life, Christians can experience the vision of God and the reality of “deification.”

This strong emphasis on an “already realized” eschatology explains why Byzantine Christianity lacks a sense of direct responsibility for history as such. Or if it acknowledges such a responsibility, it tends to rely on such institutions as history itself may produce, particularly the Christian empire. The Christian state and the Church as such, assume a responsibility for society as a whole, receiving guidance and inspiration from the Christian Gospel. But the dynamic “movement,” which characterizes the “new humanity in Christ,” and for which the Church is responsible, is not the movement of history but a mystical growth in God, known to the saints alone. The movement certainly occurs in the midst of history and may, to a degree, influence the historical process, but it does not belong to history essentially because it anticipates the end of history. It is, indeed, the “movement” of nature, and of the natural man, but natural humanity — humanity as originally conceived and created by God — presupposes communion with God, freedom from the world, lordship over creation and over history. It must, therefore, be independent from what the world understands as history.

Existing in history, the Church expects the second coming of Christ in power as the visible triumph of God in the world and the final transfiguration of the whole of creation. Man, as centre and lord of creation, will then be restored to his original stature, which has been corrupted by sin and death; this restoration will imply the “resurrection of the flesh,” because man is not only a “soul,” but a psychosomatic whole, necessarily incomplete without his body. Finally, the second coming will also be a judgment, because the criterion of all righteousness — Christ Himself — will be present not “in faith” only, appealing for man’s free response, but in full evidence and power.

These three essential meanings of the parousia — cosmic transfiguration, resurrection, and judgment — are not subjects of detailed speculation by Byzantine theologians; yet they stand at the very centre of Byzantine liturgical experience.

The feast of the Transfiguration (August 6), one of the highlights of the Byzantine liturgical year, celebrates, in the “Taboric light,” the eschatological anticipation of Christ’s coming: “Today on Tabor in the manifestation of Thy Light, Ο Word, Thou unaltered Light from the Light of the unbegotten Father, we have seen the Father as Light and the Spirit as Light, guiding with light the whole of creation.”¹⁴ On Easter night, the eschatological dimension of the Resurrection is proclaimed repeatedly: “O Christ, the Passover great and most holy! Ο Wisdom, Word, and Power of God! Grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the day which knows no night in Thy Kingdom.”¹⁵ The parousia, as judgment, appears frequently in Byzantine hymnology, particularly in the Lenten cycle. In this cycle, too, active love for one’s neighor is often emphasized by the hymnographers: “Having learned the commandments of the Lord, let us follow this polity: let us feed the hungry, let us give drink to the thirsty, let us clothe the naked, let us welcome strangers, let us visit the sick and the prisoners, so that the One who comes to judge the whole earth may tell us: come, Ο blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom which is prepared for you.”¹⁶

The only subject on which Byzantine theologians were forced into more systematic and theoretical debates on eschatology was the Medieval controversy on purgatory. The Latin doctrine that divine justice requires retribution for all sins committed, and that, whenever “satisfaction” could not be offered before death, justice would be accomplished through the temporary “fire of purgatory,” was included in the Profession of Faith signed by emperor Michael VIII Paleologus and accepted at the Council of Lyons (1274).¹⁷ The short-lived union of Lyons did not provoke much debate on the subject in Byzantium, but the question arose again in Florence and was debated for several weeks; the final decree on union, which Mark of Ephesus refused to sign, included a long definition on purgatory.¹⁸

The debate between Greeks and Latins, in which Mark was the main Greek spokesman, showed a radical difference of perspective. While the Latins took for granted their legalistic approach to divine justice — which, according to them, requires a retribution for every sinful act — the Greeks interpreted sin less in terms of the acts committed than in terms of a moral and spiritual disease which was to be healed by divine forbearance and love. The Latins also emphasized the idea of an individual judgment by God of each soul, a judgment which distributes the souls into three categories: the just, the wicked, and those in a middle category — who need to be “purified” by fire. The Greeks, meanwhile, without denying a particular judgment after death or agreeing on the existence of the three categories, maintained that neither the just nor the wicked will attain their final state of either bliss or condemnation before the last day. Both sides agreed that prayers for the departed are necessary and helpful, but Mark of Ephesus insisted that even the just need them; he referred, in particular, to the Eucharistic canon of Chrysostom’s liturgy, which offers the “bloodless sacrifice” for “patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith,” and even for the Virgin Mary herself. Obviously he understood the state of the blessed, not as a legal and static justification, but as a never-ending ascent, into which the entire communion of saints — the Church in heaven and the Church on earth — has been initiated in Christ.¹⁹ In the communion of the Body of Christ, all members of the Church, living or dead, are interdependent and united by ties of love and mutual concern; thus, the prayers of the Church on earth and the intercession of the saints in heaven can effectively help all sinners, i.e., all men, to get closer to God. This communion of saints however is still in expectation of the ultimate fulfilment of the parousia and of the general resurrection, when a decisive, though mysterious, landmark will be reached for each individual destiny.

The Florentine debate on purgatory seems to have been largely improvised on the spot, and both sides used arguments from Scripture and tradition which do not always sound convincing. Still, the difference in the fundamental attitude toward salvation in Christ is easily discernible. Legal-ism, which applied to individual human destiny the Anselmian doctrine of “satisfaction,” is the ratio theologica of the Latin doctrine on purgatory. For Mark of Ephesus however salvation is communion and “deification.” On his way to God, the Christian does not stand alone; he is a member of Christ’s Body. He can achieve this communion even now, before his death as well as afterward, and, in any case, he needs the prayer of the whole Body, at least until the end of time when Christ will be “all in all.” Of course, such an understanding of salvation through communion excludes any legalistic view of the Church’s pastoral and sacramental powers over either the living or the dead (the East will never have a doctrine of “indulgences”), or any precise description of the state of the departed souls before the general resurrection.

Except for the negative act of rejecting the Latin doctrine of purgatory implied in the canonization of Mark of Ephesus and in later doctrinal statements of Orthodox theologians, the Orthodox Church never entered the road of seeking exact doctrinal statements on the “beyond.” A variety of popular beliefs, often sanctioned in hagiographic literature, exists in practice, but the Church itself, and especially its liturgy, limits itself to a fundamentally Christocentric eschatology: “You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col 3:3-4). Until that ultimate “appearance,” the Body of Christ, held together with the bond of the Spirit, includes both the living and the dead, as symbolized on the paten during the liturgy, where particles of bread, commemorating those who repose in Christ and those who are still parts of the visible Christian community on earth, are all united in a single Eucharistic communion; for, indeed, death, through the Resurrection, has lost its power over those who are “in Him.” It cannot separate them either from God or from each other. This communion in Christ, indestructible by death, makes possible and necessary the continuous intercession of all the members of the Body for each other. Prayer for the departed as well as intercession by the departed saints for the living expresses a single and indivisible “communion of saints.”

The ultimate fulfilment of humanity’s destiny will consist however in a last judgment. The condemnation of Origenism by the Fifth Council (553) implies the very explicit rejection of the doctrine of apocatastasis, i.e., the idea that the whole of creation and all of humanity will ultimately be “restored” to their original state of bliss. Obviously, the basic reason why apocatastasis was deemed incompatible with the Christian understanding of man’s ultimate destiny is that it implies a radical curtailment of human freedom. If Maximus the Confessor is right in defining freedom, or self-determination, as the very sign of the image of God in man,²⁰ it is obvious that this freedom is ultimate and that man cannot be forced into a union with God, even in virtue of such philosophical necessity as God’s “goodness.” At the ultimate confrontation with the Logos, on the last day, man will still have the option of rejecting Him and thus will go to “hell.”

Man’s freedom is not destroyed even by physical death; thus, there is the possibility of continuous change and mutual intercession. But it is precisely this freedom which implies responsibility and, therefore, the ultimate test of the last judgment, when — alone in the entire cosmic system, which will then experience its final transfiguration — man will still have the privilege of facing the eternal consequence of either his “yes” or his “no” to God.

Notes

1. Henri Gregoire, Byzantium: An Introduction to East Roman Civilization, edd. Ν. Η. Bayncs and H. St. L. B. Moss (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 134-145.

2. Mystical Theology, p. 7.

3. See Chapter 11.

4. Novella VI, Corpus juris civilis, ed. Rudolfus Schoell (Berlin, 1928), HI, 35-36. The basic study on the subject is Francis Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy: Origins and Background (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Studies [IX], 1966), in two volumes and containing exhaustive bibliography. See also J. MeyendorrT, “Justinian, the Empire, and the Church,” Dumbarton Oal(s Papers 22 (1968), 45-60.

5. The festal Uenaion, p. 254.

6. Acta patriarchattis Conslaniinopolitanit edcl. F. Miklosich and I. Muller (Vienna, 1862), pp. 188-192.

7. Title 2, Jus graeco-romanum, ed. Zepos (Athens, 1931), II, 241.

8. On this last aspect of Byzantine ideology, see D. J. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1968).

9. See J. Meyendorff, “Byzantine Views of Islam,” Dumbarton Oafa Papers 18 (1964), 115-132; and A. Khoury, Les theologiens byzantins et I’lslam (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1969).

10. For the history of these missions and their cultural consequences, see Francis Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970); and D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453 (London: Weidenfeid and Nicolson, 1971).

11. Trans. by Roman Jakobson in “St. Constantine’s Prologue to the Gospel,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 7 (1963), No. 1, 17-18.

12. Vita Constantini 16, 7-8 in Constantinus et Methodius Thessalonicenses. Fontes, Radovi Staroslovensf(pg Instituta 4 (1960), 131.

13. On Stephen, see particularly George Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), II, 230-245.

14. Exaposteilariont The festal Menaion, p. 495.

15. Paschal canon, ode 9, Pentekpstarion; this troparion is also used as a post-communion prayer in the Eucharistic liturgy.

16. Meat-fare Sunday, vespers, Lite, Triodion.

17. Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. H. Denziger, No. 464.

18. Ibid., No. 693.

19. See the two treatises of Mark on purgatory in L. Petit, “Documents relatifs au Concilc dc Florence. I: La question du Purgatoirc a Ferrare,” Patrologia Orientalis 15 (1920), No. 1, 39-60, 108-151. A Russian translation of these texts is given in Amvrosy, Sviatoy Mark Efessfy i Fhrentiis^aia Unia (Jordanville, New York, 1963), 58-73, 118-150. J. Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 119-125, offers a brief account of the controversy.

20. “Since man was created according to the image of the blessed and supra-essential deity, and since, on the other hand, the divine nature is free, it is obvious that man is free by nature, being the image of the deity” (Disp. cum Pyrrho; PG 91:304C).

Conclusion.

Antinomies.

The conversion of Greek intellectuals to Christianity meant that philosophical concepts and the arguments of logic would be extensively used in expressing and developing Christian truths. Yet the sacramental understanding of the church implied the hierarchical structure, a continuity in the teaching office, and, finally, conciliar authority. Neither concepts nor hierarchy however were conceived as sources of the Christian experience itself, but only as means to safeguard it, to channel it in accordance with the original rule of faith, and to express it in such a way as to give it life and relevance in the changing and developing processes of history.

In order to preserve its identity, Byzantine the theological thought had to experience several major crises: the recurring temptation of adopting the Hellenistic world-view of Origenism; the conflict with the Roman papacy on the nature of Church authority; the doctrinal controversy over the “energies” of God in the fourteenth century, and several others. Inevitably, the controversies led to formal attitudes and definitions, partly determined by polemics. A certain “freezing” of concepts and formulae was the inevitable result. However, even in their formal definitions, Byzantine theologians have generally succeeded in preserving a sense of inadequacy between the formulae and the content of the faith: the most obvious and positive truths of Christian experience were thus expressed in antinomies, i.e., in propositions which, in formal logic, are mutually exclusive without being irrational.

Thus, the Byzantine concerns on the doctrine of God, derived from the polemics of the Cappadocian Fathers against Eunomius and crystallized in fourteenth-century Palamism, affirms in God a real distinction between the Persons and the common “essence,” just as it maintains that the same God is both transcendent (in the “essence”) and immanent (in the “energies”). Similarly, while essentially unchangeable, God is affirmed as becoming the creator of the world in time through His “energy;” but since “energy” is uncreated — i.e., is God — changeability is seen as a real attribute of the divine. The philosophical antinomies required in this theology reflect a personalistic and dynamic understanding of God, a positive experience of the God of the Bible, inexpressible in Greek philosophical terms.

On the level of anthropology one finds equally antinomic concepts in Byzantine Christian thought. Man, while certainly a creature and, as such, external to God, is defined, in his very nature, as being fully himself only when he is in communion with God. This communion is not a static contemplation of God’s “essence” (as Origen thought), but an eternal progress into the inexhaustible riches of divine life. This is precisely the reason why the doctrine of theōsis — i.e., the process through which, in Christ, man recovers his original relation to God and grows into God “from glory to glory” — is the central theme of Byzantine theology and of the Eastern Christian experience itself.

If one understands the ultimate destiny of man, and therefore also his “salvation,” in terms of theōsis, or “deification,” rather than as a justification from sin and guilt, the Church will necessarily be viewed primarily as a communion of free sons of God and only secondarily as an institution endowed with authority to govern and to judge. Again, it is impossible to define Byzantine ecclesiology without at least a partial recourse to antinomy, particularly in describing the relation between the “institution” and the “event,” between the “Levite” and the “prophet,” between the “hierarch” and the “saint.” In the absence of any legal or infallible criterion of authority, with frequently reiterated statements that authority is not a source of truth but is itself dependent upon the faith of those who are called to exercise it, it was inevitable that the monastic community, as well as individual spiritual personalities, would occasionally compete with bishops and councils as spokesmen of the authentic tradition and as witnesses to the truth. In fact, this polarity was an integral part of the Church’s life and did not necessarily lead to conflict: it only reflected the mystery of human freedom which was seen as the very gift of the Holy Spirit, bestowed upon every Christian at his baptism and making him a fully responsible member of Christ’s Body, However, even then, the sacramental understanding of ecclesiology served as a guarantee against individualism and arbitrariness: responsibility could only be understood in this ecclesial and sacramental framework, which, in turn, was impossible without an identifiable ministry of bishops and priests.

These are the basic intuitions which determined the social and individual ethics of the Byzantine Christians. Actually, one can hardly find, in the entire religious literature of Byzantium, any systematic treatment of Christian ethics, or behaviour, but rather innumerable examples of moral exegesis of Scripture, and ascetical treatises on prayer and spirituality. This implies that Byzantine ethics were eminently “theological ethics.” The basic affirmation that every man, whether Christian or not, is created according to the image of God and therefore called to divine communion and “deification,” was of course recognized, but no attempt was ever made to build “secular” ethics for man “in general.”

The religious inheritance of Christian Byzantium has frequently defined itself in opposition to the West, and indeed its entire concept of God-man relationships is different from one which prevailed in post-Augustinian Latin Christianity. Contemporary man — searching for a God who would be not only transcendent but also existentially experienced and immanently present in man, and the gradual discovery of man as essentially open, developing, and growing — should be more receptive to the basic positions of Byzantine thought, which may then acquire an astonishingly contemporary relevance.

Note.

1. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doc” trine I. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 9.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 615