Looking East: the impact of Orthodox theology

Christian Century, Dec 28, 2004 by Jason Byassee

THINK OF THE standard theological debates in Western Christianity: is conversion a matter of divine grace or human free will? Are theological disputes to be arbitrated by appends to the Bible or to church tradition? Do the church's authority and unity cohere in the pope, in a set of bishops, or in assemblies of the faithful?

These sorts of questions expose a traditional line of demarcation from which Catholics and Protestants generally break in opposite directions. Yet in none of these cases do Eastern Orthodox Christians feel obliged to choose sides. That's a key reason why theologians in the West have recently been looking to Orthodox theology for help in getting beyond their theological impasses.

Orthodoxy; has deeply influenced some of the most important Protestant theologians working today. Geoffrey Wainwright, Sarah Coakley, Rowan Williams and John Milbank (from Great Britain); Wolfhart Pannenburg, Jurgen Moltmann and Miroslav Volf (from central Europe); Robert Jenson, Eugene Rogers and Kathryn Tanner (from the U.S.)--these and many others have avidly turned to Orthodox sources. It is difficult now to do serious theological work without extensive reference to ancient and modern Orthodox sources.

Perhaps the most important dualism never foisted on the Orthodox is that between academic theology and worship. Theology, is certainly an intellectual endeavor for the Orthodox, but it is more pronouncedly doxological. Theology is a loving word of praise to the God who first speaks his Word to us in Christ and by the Spirit draws us into the church. Orthodox theology is conducted in the first-person plural--"we," not an impartial "they;" are drawn to the Father by the Son.

This vision of doxological theology, is at odds with the standard fourfold division of seminary education in the West, which keeps "Bible," "church history," "theology" and "practical ministry" cordoned off from one another. For the Orthodox, theology is simply commentary upon the saints' commentary on scripture for the sake of the church's worship. As the fourth-century Orthodox monastic writer Evagrius of Pontus says, "A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian."

This vision of the church and theology affects Orthodox interaction with Western Christians at a basic level. An advertisement for an Orthodox church in a rural American town full of self-proclaimed Bible-believing churches invites people to come to "a church that knows the Bible because it wrote the Bible!" Top that if you can. This is how Orthodox believers view their dynamic continuity with the ancient church and scripture.

Orthodox theology is anything but individualistic. As theologians in the West have sought to recover a view of Christian community as more than a conglomeration of individuals, they have often turned to the work of John Zizioulas, a Greek Orthodox bishop and theologian. In his highly influential Being as Communion he argues that the inter-relationship of the three persons of the Trinity should serve as a model for human relationships.

Sarah Coakley thinks Zizioulas has been popular among Protestant theologians because they were already looking for a way past the "rampant individualism" of their culture. A vision of persons acting in self-emptying ways toward one another is deeply appealing in such a setting. Protestants' embrace of Zizioulas also reflects a "renewed interest in liturgy as a source of 'truth.' The tug of an ancient, unchanged liturgical tradition becomes especially pronounced in this climate," says Coakley, a professor at Harvard Divinity School.

Many of the Orthodox bridges across Western intellectual divides would not have been built without the cataclysmic political events of the early 20th centre. Westerners encountered Orthodox in the flesh when a wave of theologians and church leaders left Russia following the 1917 revolution. Some of these set up camp at the Institut Saint-Serge in Paris, a seminary for Russian emigres presided over for a time by Sergei Bulgakov, who along with Vladimir Lossky was one of the beloved leaders and theologians of the Orthodox church of his generation. Other Russians fled farther west. George Florovsky first went to Paris, but went on to lead St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood, New York, and then to teach at Harvard.

The emigre generation remains enormously influential. Florovskw's work has been available in English for some time. Translations of Lossky's books are probably the most often read theological introductions to Orthodoxy. (The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams wrote his dissertation on Lossky. Williams also has a helpful introduction to Eastern Orthodox theology in The Modern Theologians, edited by David Ford.) Bulgakov is now being translated at a furious pace. Non-Russian Orthodox such as the Greek Zizioulas and the Romanian theologian Dmitru Staniloae have also had wide influence.

Orthodox intellectual life in America has long been centered at St. Vladimir's, where John Meyendorff and Alexander Schmemann produced writings on liturgy and theology that remain must-reading for theologians, and at Holy Cross School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both school's publishing houses remain crucial sources for Orthodox theology new and old. Kallistos Ware, Olivier Clement, Alexander Gollitzen and Verna Harrison are other theologians and church leaders whose influence goes beyond Orthodox circles.