Anchored in the future: globalization and church consciousness: an Orthodox perspective

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2004 by Athanasios N. Papathanasiou

I should like to comment on an icon of a 5th-century saint which is to be found in a number of churches around Greece. (1) It depicts the Egyptian Abbas Sisoes ( ca. 429) standing before the open tomb of Alexander the Great, (2) mourning as he stares at the skeleton of the king in its depths. An inscription on the painted surface explains the scene:

   Sisoes, the great ascetic, before the tomb of Alexander, King of
   the Greeks, who was once covered in glory. Astonished, he mourns
   for the vicissitudes of time and the transience of glory, and
   tearfully declaims thus:
      The mere sight of you, tomb, dismays me
      and causes my heart to shed tears,
      as I contemplate the debt we, all men, owe.
      How can I possibly stand it?
      Oh, death! Who can evade you?

The icon, profoundly humane and philosophical as it is, is also of interest for the historical circumstances that gave rise to its creation. It is noteworthy that it first appeared after the sack of Constantinople by the Muslim Turks (1453). It may be argued that the icon actually records the collective trauma caused by the collapse of the once mighty Roman empire and, most importantly, represents a viewpoint different from the one that was dominant before the fall of the Eastern capital.

From as early as the reign of Constantine the Great, the Byzantines had looked to Alexander as a symbol of exemplary world leadership and a predecessor of Byzantine universality. (3) The figure of the Macedonian had gone through a process of Christianization and had acquired almost saintly dimensions. (4) Numerous legends about his exploits relate how wisely he prepared himself for his death and how gloriously his burial was carried out. Nevertheless, popular consciousness was gradually (and especially after the fall of Constantinople) preoccupied with the idea that Alexander remained alive in a mystical way. Either literally dead or mystically alive, he consistently occupied an extraordinary place, as characteristically confessed by Augustus in Roman times. The historian Dion Cassius (155-235 AD) reports that after Augustus had visited the body of Alexander, he was asked if he also wanted to visit the tombs of the Ptolemies, the sovereigns of Hellenistic Egypt. He refused, saying: "I came to see a king and not dead men". (5)

All these fit within the frame of a certain ideology. The Roman concept (that had, to a great extent, already permeated the Christian world) held that the empire covering the length and breadth of the known world was the highest and final stage in the history of humankind. The Byzantine people perceived Christian globalization as an eternal reality. It was believed that the empire was actually imperishable but, should it chance to be destroyed, history would come to an end, and with it the entire world. (6) Thus Alexander, now an integral part of the imperial ideology, was seen as the living symbol of the perpetuation of the empire in spite of all its vicissitudes. He certainly was not seen as a common human decaying in his tomb.

Although this image of Alexander bathed in everlasting glory became a moving image of crucial importance to a nation's self-confidence and survival, it nevertheless threatened to eclipse the church's teaching that all creatures (even the most noble and most glorious) are merely transient, and that only the future kingdom of God is eternal. In the theological perspective of "inaugurated eschatology", (7) the kingdom will be fulfilled at the end of history, so it cannot be identified with any particular stage of history. In stark contrast with the imperial ideology mentioned above, the unthinkable happened and Constantinople fell; nevertheless, history did not come to an end. Thus, when the "humble icon painters at work during the period of Turkish rule "8 painted the icon in question depicting Alexander neither as a paragon of the glorious dead nor as a living demigod, but as a decomposed body in the tomb, they were reasserting the major theological conviction long held in abeyance. In so far as Sisoes, the ascetic, dares to declare what Augustus could not conceive and captures the truth of all creation, he is infinitely more ecumenical than the conquering Macedonian, whose campaigns had taken him to the very edges of the known world and beyond.

I mention Abbas Sisoes to underline the fact that this is not the first time the religious community has been faced with the phenomenon of globalization. Let us not forget that one of the very first dilemmas faced by the church--and described in the Acts of the Apostles--was whether to remain within the confines of its Palestinian cradle and the context of Jewish culture, or to open itself up to the realities of the huge Mediterranean region, Greco-Roman civilization, and the Roman manifestation of globalization. After a great deal of disagreement and debate, the church elected the latter course. It read the age realistically and dared open itself up to the world. But which world? To the one in which the Christians were persecuted by the emperors in Rome, but also to the oikoumene which hosted marvellous creativity. The church, brought face to face with a philosophy she had not known while confined to the land of her birth, gave rise to the amazing synthesis of the 4th century, spoke the language of the peoples, brought new life to art and political institutions, and so much more. Thus, the first mistake we can make today is to betray the historical experience of the church, and--driven into a panic by the rapid change that indubitably surrounds us--retreat to the local, the partial and the nationalistic instead of opening ourselves up to ecclesiastical ecumenicity. There can be no doubt that such an opening (and one needs to be particularly careful at this point) is anything but a feckless and naive cosmopolitanism; in fact, it may embrace the goal of an ascetic creativity that is often both uncomfortable and difficult. For example, let us recall the difficulty of Christ's last earthly discussion with his disciples.