3

SOBORNOST

SOBORNOST
incorporating EASTERN CHURCHES REVIEW

volume4 number 1 1982

EDITORIAL BOARD
SERGEI HACKEL editor, NORMAN RUSSELL reviews editor, SEBASTIAN BROCK, ROBERT MURRAY, KALL1STOS WARE and HUGH WYBREW with the Fellowship's Secretary St Basil's House, 52 Ladbroke Grove, London Wll 2PB

incorporating EASTERN CHURCHES REVIEW 4^1

Contents
EDITORIAL NOTES ARTICLES St Symeon of Thessalonica: a polemical hesychast Ecclesiology: some dangers and temptations Paradosis: the Orthodox understanding of Tradition Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac and the Orthodox Church Beholding the light of His countenance: Solzhenitsyn and U-81 POEM Prologue for a carol service REPORTS The D.J. Chitty Papers Anglican-Orthodox Discussions 1981 OBITUARIES Bishop Samuel Patriarch Elias IV Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III Bishop Ceslaus Sipovich REVIEWS The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition by Andrew Louth Jeremiah Prophet of God by Mother Maria The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in theNiceneConstantinopolitan Creed ed. Thomas F. Torrance Spirit of God - Spirit of Christ ed. Lukas Vischer. Sergei Hackel 5

David Balfour Vladimir Lossky Constantine Scouteris Ernest C. Miller John Arnold John Heath-Stubbs Kallistos Ware/ Sebastian Brock Colin Davey

6 22 30 38 49 55 56 58

Use Friedeberg Andreas Tillyrides/ Sebastian Brock Clare Birch Amos Helle Georgiadis

60 63 64 67

Louis Bouyer Charles Dilke E.L, Mascall Edward Every

70 74 76 79

The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition by Sebastian Brock The Philokalia. The Complete Text tr. and ed. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware La vie religieuse a Byzance by Jean Gouillard . . . . The Latin Church and the Crusader States by Bernard Hamilton . St Innocent: Apostle to America by Paul D. Garrett The Dynamic of Tradition by A.M. Allchin Towards Reunion. The Orthodox and Catholic Churches by Edward J. Kilmartin Le buisson ardent by Paul Evdokimov Many Worlds: A Russian Life by Sophie Koulomzin. Zakatnyegody by N.M. Zernov Christ the New Passover by Valentina Zander BOOKS RECEDED FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS The Fellowship Conference 1981 The Secretary's Notes. Foryourdiary ILLUSTRATIONS

Edward Yarnold Louis Bouyer George Every John Gillingham SergeiHackel Kallistos Ware Peter C. Phan Peter C. Phan Philip Walters John Lawrence Hugh Wybrew

82 84
86

Editorial Notes

yi

92 96 99 100 101 103

105

Hugh Bates Gareth Evans GarethEvans

108 113 117

1 St Symeon of Thessalonica from Cod. Vatoped. 47 (dated 1763) 2 StDemetriosofSalonica (Xenophontos, Athos)

13 17 27 43
54

3 The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Suzdal) 4 'The Picture': at the consecration of Bishop WeUer (1900) 5 The Angel and the Shepherds (Ottoman MS) 6 Bishop Samuel with Pope Shenouda III (1979)

61

In the symposium Spirit of God Spirit of Christ (reviewed below) the World Council of Churches recently published a carefully prepared Memorandum which urges that 'the original form of the third article of the Creed, without filioque, should everywhere be recognised as the normative one and restored'. It is a recom mendation by an ecumenical working party with no particular authority and it does not in itself bring nearer the day when all those who use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (the sixteenth centenary of which was celebrated last year) are at one both in their formulations and their faith. But it could certainly stimulate fresh discussion of this and of related issues. In Britain, at least, the British Council of Churches (prompted by the Orthodox) has already raised the question with its members. Such questions are not easy to discuss in the current ecumenical climate; and their resolution is not impeded merely by theological or historical factors, important though these are. Paradoxically, growth in mutual understanding is too often seriously frustrated by the apparently positive by-products of ecumenism: courtesy, familiarity and tolerance. As a result the promotion of this or any other cause in order to serve/accommodate/please/respect 'our Orthodox friends' can blur the issue, which is one of truth. Furthermore, when the Orthodox seek to point this out, they are not infrequently discounted for being rigoristic, intransigent, unyielding, uncooperative. Sinning as they do against those ecumenical virtues of courtesy and tolerance (= indifferentism?), their insistence on regrettably divisive truths is taken in ill part. Yet it could be argued that the ecumenical movement is as much hampered by friendliness and facile fellowship as by divisive truths. For there is a danger that a body like the World Council of Churches, as it completes a further term between Assemblies, might yet find (the recent Memorandum notwithstanding) that 'speaks the truth with love' (Eph. 4:15) is less likely to appear on its end of term report than 'neither hot nor cold' (Rev. 3:15). And such a condemnation can too easily be earned by any body, however large or small. Only by care, sobriety and painful effort can it be avoided. SERGEI HACKEL

ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST

St Symeon of Thessalonica : a polemical hesychast *

DAVID BALFOUR

though during the last thirteen years of his life he was immersed in political strife, in creating liturgical texts and regulations and in writing hortatory and polemical treatises, his earlier years were spent as a true hesychast, carefree, remote from worldly concerns, devoted to inner prayer. In this respect, of course, he resembled many a 'hesychast' hierarch of his day, including several disciples of Gregory of Sinai and Gregory Palamas who became Ecumenical patriarchs. Beginning as pure contemplatives, they went over later to the active life. The early reputation Let us first take a brief glance at St Symeon's life story. If you look him up in standard works of reference, you will find next to nothing, except that a certain John Anagnostes (John the Reader) described how his death during the siege of Thessalonica dealt a disastrous blow to the morale of the population, so stead fast and devoted a pastor had he been. Apart from that, he was simply known as the principal liturgiologist of the Byzantine Church in its late period. He had written a great treatise, called Dialogue in Christ (though better known in the West as Adversus haereses), first describing and refuting the main heresies and then, above all, going on to comment on the rites, sacraments, prayers and customs of the Orthodox Church, with special interest in their symbolic significance. This epitome of Orthodox faith and practice became a classic, because it supplied a need: it corresponded exactly to the stubborn mood of inward-looking anti-Moslem and anti-Latin conservatism, with which such remnants of the Byzantine world as resisted the temptation to apostasy faced and weathered the prolonged and agonis ing storm of Turkish imperial domination. Together with six other less voluminous works of his (two minor liturgiological treatises, a collection of Questions and 'Answers, and three brief compilations on the Creed), this great Dialogue was copied in innumerable manuscripts and published by Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, as a printed book in 1683.* In 1866 it was incorporated into Migne's Greek Patrology, where it occupies the whole of volume 155. These works were also translated into the vernacular tongues of the Orthodox East, and became very popular. In the West, Symeon was notorious for his anti-Latin bias. Even so, he was appreciated by learned liturgiologists. Professor Phountoules of Salonica University has recently produced a study on his liturgical work and is in course of publishing his liturgical texts. 2 But Symeon as a human being remained a mystery. He was barely known as

The Greek Church, in our day, has canonised a number of fairly recent saints. The latest addition to the calendar is Symeon, who was archbishop of Thessalonica from about 1416 or 1417 to September 1429. He died about six months before Thessalonica fell to the Turks for the second and last time after eight years of blockade and siege. Symeon had been the life and soul of resistance to the besiegers, both under Byzantine rule and under the tutelage of the Venetians, to whom the Byzantine governor, Andronikos Palaiologos (third son of the Emperor Manuel II), ceded the city in 1423. The canonisation of this exceptional man was proclaimed in Salonica on 3 May 1981, following about a year of examination, cul minating in unanimous synodal decisions by the Holy Synod in Athens and by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It so happens that in the last two years I have published two volumes containing, and commenting on, this new saint's unedited works, which provide a good deal of hitherto unknown detail about his life and thought. I will trace first a general out line of the man a critical outline, not just a stereotyped panegyric such as is beginning to appear in Greece following his canonisation and then examine him as a hesychast author. Symeon was a polemical thinker and activist of Orthodoxy; he wrote treatises against heretics. So naturally he was aggressive in his approach to hesychasm too. One may call him a polemical hesychast. Let me say at once that Symeon of Thessalonica was not a hesychast in the narrow sense of being a contemplative monk who spent the whole of his life in isolation and holy quietude. There is a broader sense of the word, which should be borne in mind. For one thing, Symeon would not and could not have been chosen as archbishop of the second capital of the Empire in the second decade of the fifteenth century, had he not been an adherent of the hesychast or monastic party which, having triumphed in the mid-fourteenth century over the philosophicotheological resistance of Varlaam, Akindynos, Nikephoros Gregoras and their sup porters in the clergy and laity, dominated the Church of the dying Byzantine Empire, and launched among the Slavonic and other Churches dependent on it a broad and beneficial movement of spirituality and reform which lasted for centuries. However Symeon as I claim to have shown also received his monastic upbringing in one of the main contemplative centres of the hesychast movement of his day, and * A paper delivered at the Fellowship Conference of 1981. 6

1.

2.

Symeon, tou makariou Archiepiskopou ThessalonikSs, Kata haireseon kai peri tes mane's orthes ton christianon hemon pisteos, ton te hieron teleton kai mysteriOn tSs ckklesias DIALOGOS [.. .] (Jassy 1683). Edition sponsored by Dositheos and paid for by John Doukas, Voevod of Moldavia. The text, including an extensive index, was prepared by John Molivdos (Comnen) of Bucharest, a doctor-philosopher and notarios of the Great Church, who later became Hierotheos, Metropolitan of Drystra. I.M. Phountoules, To Leitourgikon Ergon Symeon tou Thessalonikes (Salonica 1966); and Symeon Archiepiskopou Thessalonikes ta Leitourgika Syggrammata (I: Efkhai kai Hymnoi [Salonica 1968]; II: TypikaiDiataxeis [still under preparation]. 7

DAVID BALFOUR

ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST

a holy man, the die-hard defender of his city against the Turkish conqueror. Apart from that, it became a habit to treat him as unknowable. New discoveries In 1940, however, I unearthed and photographed a collection of unedited works of St Symeon, which throw much light on his character and vicissitudes. They were in a unique manuscript, originally owned and corrected by the author himself; it had somehow become the property of a Phanariote bishop, who ascended the patriarchal throne of Constantinople as Kallinikos III in 1757 but was soon driven off it into retirement at his native village of Zagora on Mount Pelion. There he donated the volume with others to the local Greek School of the Saviour. Five of the twenty unedited works in that valuable codex are to be found in other manu scripts as well, and these I have collated with the Zagora version. I confess I did nothing for over 3 5 years about getting this material published. I found and still find Symeon unattractive as a thinker and theologian; but his account of contem porary political and military events and of his own endeavours and sufferings in their midst seemed to me rather fascinating. So I selected eight of the inedita, all of some historical and autobiographical interest, and these were published (with my introduction and commentaries in English) by the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the end of 1979.3 A second volume followed (1981), containing the remainder, that is twelve unedited polemical and theological works of Symeon, adopted for publication (this time with my introduction and commentaries in Greek) by the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Salonica.4 Professor Phountoules and I will thus have increased by nearly one half the volume of this author's known literary work. Symeon now emerges as not only a liturgiologist, but an apologist and champion of Orthodoxy, whose writings ranged far beyond the confines of his own diocese. And in his personal life he is seen to be of heroic stature; not always sound in his judgments perhaps, but utterly wholehearted in his devotion to God's cause as he conceived it. This man of God was a strange combination of deep humility and highly intransigent Orthodoxy. As we shall see, his was to be a tragically ironical fate, which he bore with great patience.

New Rome is for him the fount of true faith and right practice, because it derives them from the principle of conciliarity, not from the authority of a single hierarch.5 Its inhabitants are for him 'the divine people of Christ'. Though obliged to accept his appointment to Thessalonica, he regraded it as exile and often begged to be allowed to return to his birthplace. Of his family origins we know nothing. In his youth he must have received some good schooling, for he writes clear, correct Greek. At the same time his style, while in no way demotic, is purely ecclesiastical: it contains little of that pseudo-classical archaic affectation which makes the writings of some Byzantine authors so tediously artificial. Nor does he show signs of having studied much besides grammar and theology. He has no interest in philo sophy and the natural sciences, treating them sometimes with contempt, sometimes with mistrust. Actually, his outlook is somewhat influenced by neoplatonism; but he is unaware of that, since the influence has reached him through certain patristic sources, such as Pseudo-Dionysios. Symeon's mentality would seem to indicate monastic tonsure in his early youth. When chosen to be archbishop he was in priest's orders, a hieromonk and probably a pnevmatikos (confessor). But he is unlikely to have been ordained before he was 30. He had written a treatise for a candidate for the priesthood, exhorting him to take it very seriously.6 It is notable that he takes as his ideal that a priest should live so pure a life as to be worthy to celebrate the eucharistic Liturgy every day.7 We may contrast this with a later statement of his, denouncing the Latin clergy of his day for openly keeping male and female concubines, yet saying Mass daily.8 George Scholarios, that great scholar who denounced the Council of Florence and became Patriarch Gennadios II under Turkish sovereignty, knew hieromonk Symeon in his youth and listened to him preaching to the people; he describes him as a highly educated man of outstanding virtue, who, 'enlightened by God, drew very close to the charism of Wisdom'.9 Symeon's mentors Where was Symeon trained to be so saintly a man, and how was he chosen to be archbishop of Thessalonica? I have been at pains to argue, on the basis of one of his letters published in my first book, 10 that he was a personal disciple of Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos, two hesychast recluses around whom there grew up in Dialogue, Ch.39;PG 155. 277 C-D. This is the last of the seven works originally published at Jassy and reprinted by Migne. The title (hopelessly garbled in Migne's Latin translation) declares the author to have been in priest's orders. PG 155. 972 C. Those acquainted with the exigencies of Oriental Canon Law and priestly regulations will realise how difficult this actually is. BETh B6.6814. Oeuvres completes de Georges Scholarios, ed. L. Petit, X.A. Siderides and M. Jugie (Paris 1928-37), i. 506. BPHW 91-3; cf. 211-28 and 279-86. 9

Symeon's youth Symeon was born and bred in Constantinople, for which holy city his pious enthusiasm knows no bounds. The claims of the Old Rome mean little to him; the 5. 6. 3. Politico-historical Works of Symeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica (1416117 to 1429). Critical Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary by David Balfour (= Wipner Byzantinistische Studien xiii) (Vienna 1979). Will be quoted as BPHW. Most personal 7. details in it regarding Symeon are contained in his very long 'Discourse on the recent miracles of St Demetrios' (pp.36-69 of the Greek text) and in his 'Apologia' concerning his 8. attempted flight to Constantinople (pp.70-6). 4. Hagiou Symeon, Archiepiskopou Thessalonikes (1416/17-1429) Erga Theologika. Kritike~ 9. ekdosis met' eisagoges hypo David Balfour (= Analecta Vlatadon 34) (Salonica 1981). Will be quoted as BETh. 10.
8

DAVID BALFOUR

ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST

the Byzantine capital in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century a community called that 'of the Xanthopouloi'. These two ascetics, who were probably brothers, produced a standard work in a hundred Chapters on the hesychast life and method of prayer, entitled 'Method and Rule [...] concerning those who elect to lead the contemplative life as monks', which became very popular in ascetic circles, parti cularly in the Slavonic lands including Russia. You will find it in volume iv of the Philokalia. Unfortunately the editor, Nikodemos of Athos, in his introduction, has wrongly identified Kallistos as Patriarch Kallistos I of Constantinople.11 No, Kallistos I was an earlier hesychast who died in 1363, the disciple and biographer of the famous Gregory of Sinai; whereas Kallistos Xanthopoulos became Patriarch Kallistos II, only reigned for three months and died unexpectedly during Sultan Bayezid's siege of Constantinople in 1397. But his brother Ignatios must have lived much longer and survived as head of the community when Symeon wrote his letter in 1423. From this authentic fountain, then, Symeon derived his hesychasm; in this school of sanctity he was formed. He happens to be almost the only source of our scanty knowledge about the two holy men. In chapter 295 of his Dialogue he des cribes the extraordinary love and harmony which united blessed Kallistos and Ignatios, and says that the Divine Light of Mount Thabor visibly shone forth in them. 'And the witnesses who saw them in this state', he declares, 'having truly been through this beatific experience and gained their knowledge by observation, speak out clearly regarding the Divine Light of God's natural energy and grace; and they quote these saints as witnesses of it, as they are also witnesses of the sacred prayer'. By this latter phrase, as the context shows, he means the Jesus Prayer. Surely Symeon here is claiming personal acquaintance with them? Is he not one of the eyewitnesses of the sacred halo round them? At the very least he must have consorted with such eyewitnesses. In the letter I have referred to, he praises the spirit of peace and gentleness which the brotherhood ('our holy kellion\ he calls it) had inherited presumably from these two. If this was the spiritual environment in which Symeon grew to manhood, it is not astonishing that he describes himself before his consecration as having 'spent his previous life peacefully, exempt from public business'; he had 'enjoyed a quiet life owing to the great weakness of his constitution, living without cares, reaping by God's mercy more than he deserved of the benefits of a life of relaxation in his native place'. Content with them, he had eschewed all ambition for 'seemingly greater things'; so he had not thrust himself forward for promotion to the epis copate. Yet divine compulsion, he says, intervened and he was 'obliged' to mount the archiepiscopal throne of Thessalonica despite his strong reluctance. For he felt unworthy and knew something of the magnitude of the task which awaited him in
11. Philokalia ton hieron neptikon (Venice 17821. p.1015 (also Athens 1976. iv. 195). Nikodemos is not alone in this. Irenee Hausherr SJ, in his controversial La methods d'oraison hesychaste (Rome 1927), p.132, makes the same mistake, though on the very same page he sneers at the editors oi the Philokalia for their chronological inaccuracy. 10

that turbulent city. Then how was his consent obtained? There is a simple expla nation. The community 'of the Xanthopouloi' stood very close to the Emperor Manuel II who, according to an independent contemporary source, 'listened to them more than anyone'. 13 Symeon will have been a spiritual friend of the pious Emperor, perhaps his confessor; that is, the predecessor of another monk of that same community called Makarios (of Jewish descent) whom we find to be Manuel's confessor at the Emperor's death in 1425. 14 With such an imperial sponsor, Symeon was unable to refuse; perhaps also he was under pressure of obedience to his spiritual fathers in the brotherhood. But he never ceased to protest, indeed to pro claim publicly, his unworthiness of the episcopate and his incapacity to cope with his responsibilities. Archbishop of Thessalonica Here we come up against Symeon's extraordinary humility. Protestations of general sinfulness were common among the Byzantines, and especially among the monks; they were often a matter of tradition and habit rather than of conviction. But Symeon in his humility goes further and rings truer than most. He proclaims himself inferior to his contemporaries and his predecessors in the episcopate; he is at a loss to say how he can have been chosen as bishop; he feels outclassed by his more scholarly colleagues; he considers it only natural that others should despise and criticise him, and is, prepared to bear it patiently. Yet he prays that he may be spared temptation, for he is very weak; he longs to escape from Thessalonica and retire into obscurity. This man is not a hypocrite but a very sincere Christian. Nor can his words be treated as self-illusioned rhetoric; for he and they were put to the test through thirteen years of public struggle. Rather is this sort of humility a gift of the Holy Spirit: it is mystically infused into the souls of the saints, who, being pure of heart, truly see God and tremble before his overwhelming sanctity. One is reminded of a somewhat similar Western saint, the Cure d'Ars, succesful as a strict and austere parish priest, yet running away one day, so appalled was he by his unworthiness. For Symeon was strict too. He arrived in Thessalonica hurriedly and alone, quite unknown to its inhabitants, at some date between June 1416 and April 1417. He was well received at first, but soon ran into sharp and wounding opposition from persons unnamed. This must have been widespread and open, since in a public speech he mentions it as a well known fact.15 As often happens with humble men who have the inner strength of inspired holiness, Symeon's adherence to his faith and to his moral principles was so unbending and his outspokenness so fearless that he made enemies of many who preferred compromise. He started straight off by
12. 13. 14. 15. Apologia 5 (BPHW 72; cf. 195). Mazaris' Journey to Hades (Buffalo 1975). George Sphrantzes, Chronicon Minus (PG 156. 1032 B; ed. Grecu 20). BPHW 72-3. 11

DAVID BALFOUR

issuing an encyclical calling on his whole flock suffragan bishops, clergy and all to repent; for if he neglected to do so, he said, he would be responsible for all their sins.16 His inflexibility and his blunt disapproval of others, combined with his constant avowals of his own unworthiness, seem singularly apt to irritate the unruly populace and selfish upper class of a notoriously factious city. The trouble began with his strictness in the law courts. As to Canon Law, presiding in his own eccle siastical court he would make no concessions over matrimonial impediments; while in the civil courts, where a judicial reform dating from 1329 had also given him jurisdiction, he defended the weak from the powerful, turning a deaf ear to the advice of others. But that was not all. Finding his flock deeply divided on poli tical issues, he attempted to overcome the dissension, but quite failed. Symeon had long been in bad health, and now his distress plunged him, he says, into 'seven years' of grave sickness which brought him near to death.17 His nervous system, it seems, could not stand the strain. So we must visualise this pillar of the defence of Thessalonica as always in a weak state; during half his episcopate he was scarcely able to stand up, but still carried on valiantly from his bed. Yet in such condition on 8 June 1422 he attempted to return by land and sea via Athos to Constantinople. Turks or Venetians? Symeon's purpose was plausible. The position was critical. The young Turkish Sultan, Murad II, who had recently succeeded his father Mehmed I, was openly pre paring for war against the Byzantines for having injudiciously supported a rival claimant to his throne. Thessalonica, the second capital of the Empire, had surren dered to Turkish sovereignty from 1387 to 1403 and there was a large party, sup ported by a majority of the populace, which felt that the resultant regime had been tolerable and that to resist the Sultan again was suicidal because hopeless. Another party had already begun, it seems, to make private overtures to the Venetians to take over the city (a plan which was actually carried out next year). Symeon agreed with neither party and had done his best to persuade the young governor, the Despot Andronikos, to maintain a purely Byzantine policy indepen dent of both. With the Despot's approval, he slipped away unobserved, leaving behind an Apologia explaining to the Thessalonians that he was proceeding to the capital to solicit such imperial aid from Manuel II as might enable them 'to stay with their Orthodox masters'. His quest was probably hopeless, and anyway he could hardly have chosen a more inopportune moment; for within five days, first Constantinople and then Thessalonica were blockaded by Murad with a view to their siege. Symeon got no further than Mount Athos; he was persuaded to return to his see; he hints at dangers and afflictions suffered on the Holy Mountain; he must have returned by sea. From then on, as he often complains, he was virtually
16. BETh 157-70. 17. BPHW 54,55,58,13. 18. BPHW54, 73. 12

DAVID BALFOUR ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST

a prisoner on his own throne. Reading between the lines one gets the impression that he had not really intended returning at all. He would not be allowed to repeat the escapade. There followed over a year of mounting anguish, during which Symeon fell even more ill, until in mid-September 1423 Thessalonica was handed over to Venice by Andronikos, reluctantly but with his father Manuel's approval. The new sources show that to the very last the saintly Archbishop resisted the hand-over; but he accepted the fait accompli and it is recorded that he enjoined obedience to the Venetian authorities as now established by God.19 He could hardly have done otherwise, seeing that the Palaiologoi, father and son, had approved the take over. But he never ceased to regret what had occurred, or to say so openly. It was a bitter pill for this rigorous anti-Latin to swallow: circumstances now obliged him to become the loyal supporter of a heretical regime which held him prisoner, yet des cribed him and rewarded him as fidelissimus noster. Was this perhaps God's way of reproving him for his lack of understanding for other Christians? The circumstances that led up to the hand-over had been tragic. The accepted view, based on superficial reading of Anagnostes, that Symeon must have been popular with the inhabitants, is completely refuted by his own account. As the siege initiated in June 1422 progressed and privations and dangers began to multiply, the pro-Turkish party, the party of surrender, became vociferous and took to violence. It had nearly succeeded in betraying the city to a ferocious Turkish leader called Musa who besieged it in 1411. It saw no hope now in resis tance to Murad. The majority of the people, as we learn from both Anagnostes and Symeon, wanted to capitulate to the Turks, and the Archbishop was singled out as a principal target of popular indignation, because his utter opposition was well known. Much rioting went on. One has to grasp the fact which modern Greek patriotism tends to ignore that apostasy to Islam was becoming a mass pheno menon; some of the tumultuous rabble must have been intending it, for the rioters, Symeon reports, threatened to drag him down and his churches with him. It was this danger that induced a group of notables to force the Despot Andronikos to call in the Venetians, since it had become evident that Byzantion could do nothing effective. But when that sole solution of the city's predicament was proposed, Symeon rejected it too. He thus became unpopular with nearly everyone, and when during negotiations with Venice he stood up for his Church's rights under the future Latin regime he met, he says, with 'contemptuous treatment and disdain ful insults'.20 He describes himself in the words of St Paul, whom he loved to emulate, as 'buffeted by all [ . . . ] , reviled, especially by his own household [ . . . ] , persecuted and forcibly detained [ . . . ] , made as the filth of the world, the offscouring'. He was, he writes, the subject of critical discussion at home and abroad,
19. John Anagnostes, Diegesis peri tes teleftaias haloseos tes Thessalonikes 8 (ed. Tsaras

'some thinking this and others that'. 21 So the saintly Archbishop was not only very ill; he was not even enjoying the personal respect and public honour due to him. He did succeed with difficulty in inserting into the agreement with Venice a clause guaranteeing his Church's independence from the Latin Church. But his stand for Orthodoxy and Empire, against both Islam and the Franks, was a veritable martyr dom; he suffered agonies of frustration and humiliation, and nearly died of his distress. However, under the Venetian regime from 1423 onwards he does seem gradually to have recovered some degree of respect. The party of surrender now had to keep quiet; some of its leaders had soon been arrested and exiled. The Venetians, sensing how unreliable the population was, appreciated Symeon's outstanding reso lution to resist the Turks. He became the most important citizen in their eyes. The people were soon disillusioned with their new masters and learned to appreciate better Symeon's stand against the hand-over. But the beleaguerment continued. Murad dropped the siege of Constantinople after a few months and later signed a peace with the Emperor which, onerous though it was, relieved Thrace of the ravages of war for the next twenty-nine years. But Murad refused to recognise the Venetians' right to take over Thessalonica, and continued the blockade of the city, punctuating his blockade with marauding skirmishes and at least one mass onslaught, the progress and final defeat of which Symeon most graphically and fully describes.22 In the end, Murad in person descended on Thessalonica with over whelming force and seized it on 29 March 1430, and all its surviving inhabitants were held for slavery or ransom. Symeon himself escaped that fate by dying suddenly a little more than six months before the fatal date. Symeon's reputation at low ebb After the fall and pillage of the city there was a strong reaction against Symeon, for his die-hard policy of resistance, in the hope that God and St Demetrios would miraculously save it, had proved fruitless. Soon after, the important town of Ioannina in north-western Greece, headed by its Metropolitan, surrendered to the Turks and received a generous charter granting a degree of self-government. Then could not Thessalonica have done likewise? Great ecclesiastical establishments comparable to Symeon's, such as Akhrida and Mount Athos and Patmos, had sub mitted and came out intact. Why had Symeon insisted on the duty of resistance to the last? One cannot help sympathising with his critics to some extent. It was this largely that stood in the way of Symeon's canonisation at the time. He had also become unpopular in Constantinople, partly because he actively opposed the move ment for reconciliation with the Western Church which was to culminate in the Council of Florence. Ironically enough, these two reasons for his non-canonisation in the fifteenth century seem to be turning out, in the eyes of modern Greek patriots, to be among the principal reasons for his canonisation in the twentieth.
21. BPHWSS. 22. BPHW 60-2. 15

[Salonical958],22).
20. BPHW58. 14

DAVID BALFOUR

Symeon's integrity But Christians must and will look rather at his role as an ecclesiastical author, his zealous care for his flock, his compassion for the poor and the suffering, his heroic constancy and faith. He showed these qualities eminently during the long siege. He settled down in a spirit of self-sacrifice under the alien regime which held him prisoner, with a paradoxical combination of two very different aims: to save the Church from the Latins and the state (now Latin) from the Turks. He ceaselessly preached resistance unto death, repentance, acceptance of hardship and confidence in the miraculous intervention of the city's patron saint, the martyr Demetrios. But at the same time he resisted the slightest semblance of communicatio in sacris with the Italians. He held public services of supplication and spent nights in prayer. He issued proclamations anathematising any who even thought of surrender. His whole personal spiritual programme consisted in trying to compensate for what he felt to be his complete inadequacy by staying close to his flock and sharing their affliction and privations. Throughout the eight years of the siege the population was hungry, and Symeon has left us gruesome descriptions of the famine and the cold. The possibility of his own death by starvation was a hazard which he too had to face daily. His destiny, he wrote, had been 'to come here for Christ and dare to speak out like Christ without human circumlocution, and suffer much here for Christ, and be ill-treated and oppressed together with this people'. 23 And indeed, speak out he did. He openly castigated the selfishness of the rich, who treated the starving poor, he said, 'as scarcely human'. The pusillanimity and supineness of the Thessalonians (two words often occurring in his writings) had alienated God. He denounced hoarding by speculators and abuses perpetrated by lawyers and money-lenders; he had tried to prevent the authorities from surrendering to the Turks the Christian deserters from the Turkish army who took refuge in the city;he persisted, despite Venetian objections, in presiding over the law courts, to which people began to flock for redress of injustices. His death, it is reported, was felt by everyone, includ ing the Italians and even the Jews, as a dire deprivation and a manifestation of the chastening wrath of God. The'polemical hesychast' Despite his physical weakness and the numerous handicaps and distractions which weighed on him, St Symeon was a prolific author. I have no time to dwell on his liturgical compositions and on his reform of the church services in his cathedral. He wrote encyclical and personal letters, some of which have survived, and he sent lengthy treatises to other parts of the Greek-speaking world, several of them containing exhortations to, resist islamisation or the infiltration of Latin innovations
23. BRHW 55 OPPOSITE

St Demetrios ofSalonica. Detail from a mosaic at Xenophontos, Athos, c.l lth century.
16

ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST DAVID BALFOUR and malpractices contrary to the true faith. It is time we looked at the specifically Palamite content of the works of this 'polemical hesychast'. We have seen how closely Symeon was related to the teachers of hesychast prayer and asceticism, Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos. He was also which is not quite the same thing an ardent supporter of the doctrine formulated by St Gregory Palamas and others in the course of their defence of hesychast monastic practice. Thus in the dogmatic part of his Dialogue he has three chapters (30-2) in which he first praises them by name (while castigating by name those whose doctrines they refuted), and then engages in a long development, on the basis of Scripture only, of the theology of the eternal Divine Light. Here he dwells on that natural effulgence of God, distinct from the divine essence and nature and the hypostastes of the Trinity, which holy men can see not with the physical senses, but spiritually, and by means of which they are divinised. Further on, in his section on prayer, he deals in four chapters 24 with the Jesus prayer, which he declares to be 'sacred and truly deifying'. His recognition oShesychia, the purely contemplative life, as the highest monastic ideal is brought out in a treatise on monasticism which he wrote for the monks of the Great Lavra on Athos. 2 5 Symeon explains that the purpose of monasticism is to return to the paradisiac state of the first man before his fall: he develops this theme in detail and adds that it is the imitation of Jesus and of the angels and saints. Let us live then in the name of Jesus Christ [he writes] and carry it round in our heart and say it with our lips [. . . ] . And how to say it and dwell on it in the heart and how to cleave to it, is something which many of the Fathers have taught, as having themselves experienced it, as being a work which acti vates true Christianity. This is obviously a reference to the hesychasts' 'prayer of the heart' a fact con firmed by the marginal heading 'That Christ was the first to practice hesychia', that is, the contemplative life. Further on in this treatise he distinguishes those monks who live 'under obedience and submission', and those who are leading the contem plative life. And of the latter he says: Let us imitate as far as possible [Jesus'] perfect life in the mountains, undistracted and frugal, or rather, foodless, and his prayers to the Father, obtain ing his presence in us by dwelling on him in mind, heart and spirit; that on the mount the sun of justice may shine for us too, granting us the pledges of his eternal brilliance and radiation, and making us truly children of light, adopted sons of the Father through him the beloved Son, who when trans figured on the sacred mountain received the assurance from the Father for our sake'. It is noticeable how Symeon seems to class himself with the hermits. As we have seen, his early monastic training as the disciple of well known solitaries had taught him these things. 24. Chs. 293-6 (PG 150. 536C-548A). 25. BETh 171-84. 18 In that passage, with its mention of the heart, of the eternal Light and, of the Transfiguration of Christ as earnest of man's divinisation in that Light, we have what one may call the scriptural and mystical doctrine of hesychasm, which was a matter of constant tradition both before and after the so-called hesychast quarrel. But St Symeon is also a hesychast in the sense of being a Palamite; that is, a partisan of the theological formulae with which St Gregory Palamas defended the hesychasts, and the councils of the fourteenth century condemned their critics. He insists on the distinction between the essence of God and his energies; only he does not concentrate exclusively on the word 'energy', any more than Palamas really did, but, like him, he uses combinations of several words such as 'grace and power and energy and kingdom' or 'spiritual effulgence and ineffable illumination' or 'the gift and grace and energy of the Spirit'. And he does not share Palamas' rather discon certing habit of using abstract neuter adjectives (to aennaon, to apeiron, to pronoetikon and the like) as expressing ontological realities. To believe that we can participate not only in the gift and grace of God, but in his essence, says Symeon, 'is the heresy of the Messalians and the Bogomils', and he attributes it not only to the Varlaamites but to the Latins too. For their theology, he maintains, either teaches just that, or it must deny that man can have any parti cipation at all in God; and this is a thing which he often harps on, bringing it in on the slightest pretext. Thus in an encyclical on the Christian life, having quoted Acts 2, as saying that the disciples were 'all filled with the Holy Spirit', he hastens to explain: That is, with his grace, not his hypostasis, for it is impossible for us to receive the Spirit hypostatically or for the indivisible to be split into parts, or for someone to receive what is eternal through breath which has a beginning; but being the fount of charisms, the Spirit is shared out in the energies. 26 And right in the middle of a delightful homily on the evangelical beatitudes sent to a rich man of noble family, when he comes to 'Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God', Symeon needs must launch out into an attack on the Latins. They know nothing about grace [he declares] because they hold that we receive the Holy Spirit hypostatically; and this is the worst sort of blasphemy, to say that we receive the uncreated and ineffable nature of God and thus madly to imagine the incarnation of the Spirit. And he goes on ranting for a whole page: These innovators blaspheme and are far from the Spirit [. . . ] . The Spirit is not in them at all, so their sacraments are deprived of grace [. . . ] . There is nothing spiritual in them; everything is new and altered in violation of divine tradition. 2 7

26. BETh 99 (Bl, 491-6). 27. BETh 225f. (B14, 139-61). 19

DAVID BALFOUR

ST SYMEON OF THESSALONICA: A POLEMICAL HESYCHAST

Symeon against the Latins I have let the cat out of the bag: the polemical character of Symeon's hesychasm comes out principally in his rigid anti-Latinism. It crops up every now and then in his Dialogue and is particularly exemplified in a long letter - a veritable treatise, over 8000 words long already published anonymously in a well-known anti-Latin compilation of the late seventeenth century,28 which I have identified as a work of Symeon's on the basis of two early manuscripts and included among the critical texts in my second volume. It was composed to strengthen the faith of a group of Cretans, isolated and under pressure from the latinising Venetian regime imposed on their island. It is quite an able composition, but to summarise all it says would, I fear, bore some and irritate others. So I will quote only enough of it to show that its Trinitarian doctrine its predominant theme, since the Filioque issue was of paramount importance has Palamism closely intertwined with it. Having traced a general outline of the Trinity, Symeon insists that what is granted to man is not the hypostasis or the essence of the Spirit, but the grace and gifts of the Spirit. Grace is common to the whole Trinity; there is only 'one energy and power', communicated to us through the Incarnation. This goes on for several pages: the divinisation of man takes place 'according to grace', he declares, 'not according to nature';29 and the Spirit is poured out and dwells within us, so that we become one with Christ and with the Father, not 'through the Persons and the essence', but 'in the gifts and in grace'.30 The error of the Latins consists, he thinks, in their failure to distinguish the outpouring and gift of the Spirit, which is common to the three Persons of the Trinity, from the procession of the Spirit before all time, with the result that they say that 'the Spirit itself is given, the very hypostasis, the very essence of God'. 31 This is what was taught by the Messalians and by Varlaam. By denying God's powers and energy they make God inoperative (anenergetos); whence it follows, he says, that the creation is self-subsistent and eternal a doctrine leading to polytheism, and a direct result of saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. Whereas Orthodoxy teaches that God continually sustains his creation, not by his essence and nature, but only by his grace and energy and providence and power.32 There is much more in this strain, but Symeon never quotes the original words of those whom he is refuting; and one may wonder if he has an objective appre ciation of their meaning. As I said in the beginning, St Symeon's success and influence was due to his reflecting the introspective, conservative, defensive mood of the Orthodox in his
28. Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Tomos Agapes kata Latinon (Jassy 1698); in which this letter figures as the last of 25 documents by various writers and is headed: 'By an anony mous author, against the Latins'. For the full collated text* see BETh 195-219 (=B13). 29. BETh 204f. (B13, 199-204). 30. BETh 206(813, 260-2). 31. .BETh 207 (B13, 266-8). 32. BETh 207 (B13, 287-308).
20

day. He was a good author for internal consumption within his own Church, but a man unable to understand and sympathise with any but the models of thought im printed on him by his own upbringing; this polemical heyschast would have found himself entirely at variance with the attitudes prevalent among us all today as a result of the ecumenical movement. He had a particular aversion to the Latins because he regarded them as arch-innovators, who 'had overturned almost every thing in the Church by their changes'.33 This will shock our Roman Catholic friends, who are given to regarding themselves as arch-traditionalists. But to read the passages where Symeon enlarges on it is instructive, because quite a large part of his criticism is justified. On the other hand, in ritual matters he is sometimes led astray by the illusion that pseudo-Dionysios was a contemporary of the apostles and therefore reflects the actual sacramental practice of the primitive Church. The humble, sickly man of prayer But though he wrote some resounding stuff about how everyone else except the Orthodox be they Latins and other Christian heretics or Bogomils, Moslems, Jews or unbelievers were in grave error and destined for hell, he also insisted that one should not engage in heated argument with them. Thus the Cretan group are advised to withdraw into themselves, avoid all contentiousness and have no part in 'technological and vain discussions' by which I take him to mean the formal scholastic and syllogistic disputations on which the medieval Latins set such store. And in the first chapter of Symeon's Dialogue, when asked how unbelievers can be attracted to the true faith, he replies: First of all by praying to God for them, then by humility and deeds of spiri tual love, and by a blameless life which witnesses to the faith as the apostles taught it. and showed it for this is an apostolic work. And finally [note that 'finally'] by uncontentious words drawn from the sacred Scriptures. For con tentiousness and strife are alien to the Church. With that we are back with the humble, sickly man of prayer, who was dragged from his retreat to struggle heroically in a beleagured city. Death providentially removed him from it, writes John the Reader, just in time to save him from the catastrophe which enveloped it, because God wished to demonstrate to those about him his holiness and his deserts.34 He has always been spoken of as a saint, and now his Church, after 552 years, has put the official seal on that designation. Whatever you may think of his theo logical bias and his die-hard politics, I invite you to rejoice in this recognition of his heroic spiritual stature. It is that alone which should count in our eyes; unless of course we are prepared to reject the saints of all other Churches from which our own is separated and imagine that only our own Church can produce such men.
33. BETh 216 (B13, 593-308). See also Symeon's Dialogue: Chs. 19 to 32 (PG 155,97 D-176C), 43, 56, 64, 69, 75, 89, 90, 91, 93, 183, 285 (185 BB-520B); also Ch.88 of his treatise Peri tou theiou naou (733B-740B) and his Answers 3 (940C-941B) and 52 (897A900A). 34. Anagnostes.jWegesi's 3 (ed. Tsaras 10). ^ 21

ECCLESIOLOGY: SOME DANGERS AND TEMPTATIONS

Ecclesiology: some dangers and temptations*

VLADMIR LOSSKY

immutable divine fullness and her inconstant human incompleteness, the latter complemented by the grace of the Holy Spirit who 'heals our infirmities and com plements our defects'. As in the God-Man Jesus Christ 'dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily' (Col. 2:9), so in his Body the Church does the Holy Spirit realise 'the fullness of him that fills all in all' (Eph. 1:23). And there should be no division or confusion between these two principles. Neither should it be postulated, with the Church's monophysites, that the Body of Christ descended from heaven in its complete corporeality; nor, with the nestorians, should there be any division of the Church's unity into two aspects, 'heavenly' and 'earthly'. The Church and her uniqueness Fidelity to this chalcedonian dogma on the Church carries with it an obligation simultaneously to confess the historical, concrete character of the Church and also her uniqueness in regard to the world, her freedom from the world and the laws of its life; for she is not of this world. This means that the Church is not one historical factor among many, but the historical factor par excellence: the nodal point of the world and its history, the centre round which and in relation to which the history of the world revolves. For only by reference to this centre can the historical process be understood and encompassed. The outsider's secular methods of historical research are inapplicable to the history of the Church. They ignore the Church's uniqueness and turns the Church itself into one of the components of world history, into a Jewish sect which prospered exceptionally well. It should be recog nised that the methodology of church history still remains to be established; this is a problem for theologians. Not to acknowledge the Church as an independent, concrete and historical Body means to efface her essential distinctness from other historical phenomena, to consign her to the world of historical factors, to place her in a necessary depen dence on them, to deny her primordial freedom from history, from the elements of the natural world. But this is paramount to a denial of the very work of Christ him self. The Church is not of this world, rather is she in the world and for the world, just as Christ is not of this world but came into the world for its sake. And just as Christ was free of the world, silent as he was before the judgment seat of Pilate, so the Church often silent before the powers of this world preserves her trans cendental freedom even though it is sometimes difficult to distinguish this freedom beneath the appearance of humiliation. The cross, which was foolishness to the Jews, remains foolishness for many. Many would prefer to see the Church as one of the forces of history, comparable to other worldly factors. In this connection, there are many orthodox who are not proof against a certain inferiority complex when faced with the might of Roman Catholic organisation. Church and world However, while confessing the absolute uniqueness of the Church which lives in and for the world, no one should be tempted by abstract schematism and close
23

There are two basic temptations in the field of eccesiology to which the name of two christological heresies can be applied, the monophysite and nestorian. Ecclesiological monophysites seek only to preserve the Truth, and in the process have no hesitation in stifling church economy, that multifaceted and ever varied activity of the Church by which, in accordance with the needs of a given time or place, she nourishes the world. By contrast, ecclesiological nestorians are prepared, for economy's sake, to lose sight of the immutable fullness of the truth abiding in the Church: instead of enriching the world by means of it they look for the Church's nourishment to the outside world, to human creativity (whether philo sophical, artistic or social). The former forget that the Church safeguards divine treasures for the salvation of the world; the latter cease to perceive that the Church's source of life and insight is the Holy Spirit, not the world. The Church's monophysites confuse essentials with the trivial, the immutable with the transitory, and they ascribe a divine, static and sacral significance to every thing alike. Thus, the question of 'old calendar' acquires for them the character of a church dogma. The Church is separated from the life of the world and juxtaposed to it like some mummified and lifeless organism. Consciously or unconsciously, the Church's nestorians divide her into a 'heavenly' and 'terrestrial' (or 'historical') body. On the one hand they disincarnate the Body of Christ and transform it into an abstract 'spiritual principle'; on the other hand, they confuse it with the world, from which it is not distinguished. A chiliastic striving to attain the Kingdom of God on earth, to achieve social justice comes to dominate Christ's disciples, who once more call on him to divide their earthly inheritance. The Church begins to live the life of the world as one of its elements, and can no longer give it what the world expects of her. For she no longer differs in her essentials from the world. Together with it, and as fruitlessly, it searches in the dark for novel social, philosophical and political ways. Both monophysites and nestorians come in a variety of shapes and shades. Neither accommodates the chalcedonian dogma of ecclesiology concerning the union inseparable yet without confusion of two principles in the Church: her
* This article appeared originally both in Russian and in French in the first issue of Messager de I'Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale (1950), pp.16-28. The present translation is made from the Russian text, but with occasional amplifications from the French text (which does not invariably correspond to the Russian). Translation by Sergei Hackel.
22

ECCLESIOLOGY: SOME DANGERS AND TEMPTATIONS VLADIMIR LOSSKY

their eyes to the fact that the Church in history has been closely linked with the elements of this world. Insofar as her members are also members and builders of the earthly city, they do not abandon the world, but live within it and are called upon to act and to create within its bounds. When Khomiakov stated that 'each one of us is of the earth, the Church alone is of heaven' he sought to establish the catholicity or sobornost of the Church as something other than the result of various secular opinions, strivings and decisions being reconciled; his words point rather to a funda mental, primordial quality of divine origin, which manifests itself in a milieu com prising numerous cultural, national, social and political forms. Each of us is of the earth, belongs to a particular political structure, a particular social class, each is in part the product and at the same time the creator of contemporary culture. But each of us, belonging as we do to the unity of the Church, can and must rise above his personal political interests, above his class, above his culture, since the Church grants us the possibility of being free of our limited nature. Inevitably, there will be a variety of political, national, social and cultural interests and trends in any Christian milieu. To oppose them would be to oppose life itself, in all its richness and variety. The Church does not prescribe any political views, social teachings or cultural peculiarities for anyone. At the same time she cannot allow the interests or arrangements of particular individuals or groups to be promoted as the Church's interests since her primary concern must be for the perservation of unity, outside which there is no catholicity, no certitude, no distinction between Church and world. She cannot allow individual peculiarities or characteristics to take precedence over her unity, in the absence of which her sovereign freedom from the world is lost and displaced by subordination to conflicting elements and interests (patriotism of various kinds, social justice, the defence of 'Christian civilisation'). In this sphere church schisms are inevitably brought about, and ecclesial awareness is corrupted. Canon law as church frontier The basic significance of canonical structures consists precisely in the preserva tion of the Church's uniqueness vis-a-vis the world as well as in the inner structures of her life so as to safeguard that freedom which our Lord obtained by his precious blood. The canons are not magic formulae, the blind application and fulfilment of which results in church unity. They represent that boundary, the transgression of which signifies a rupture with the Church's unity, a unity which excludes any act of self-will and which (in accordance with the pattern given by the Holy Trinity) en compasses only a single, common will or more precisely, the immutable union of two wills expressed in the phrase 'it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us' (Acts 15:28). And insofar as the canons are observed [...] the Church remains inviolable and invincible throughout the ages despite persecutions, despite martyrdoms, despite apparent humiliations at the hands of the triumphant forces of a world which always remained inimical to her, even when it seeks an alliance. But when the canons are violated the Church's independence is eroded, she becomes entangled with the elements of this world, she lives its life, she defends secular interests and
24

thus easily subjects herself to the blows of worldly forces while retaining nothing within herself with which she can oppose them any more. The canons are the expression of the Church's independence, of her external limits and inner structure. They render her a visible and concrete body. They pertain above all to the episcopate by virtue of that divine authority which was conveyed to the apostolic circle by the God-Man himself on the evening of his resurrection: 'Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained' (John 20:22-3). In distinction to Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is here communicated to the apostles in their unity, to an assembly which stands at the head of the Church. And he is communicated as a kind of objective, formal force which is not affected by personal qualities, defects, sins or limitations of faith. By contrast, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends on each member of the Church as the source of personal sanctification and progress towards divinisation, which cannot be achieved in its fullness otherwise than by unity in the Church. Bishops and their role Canonical authority to safeguard this unity is entrusted to the circle of apostles and to their successors. In other words, the divine and absolute power to bind and to loose which belongs to the God-Man is entrusted to men, that is to limited beings who are capable of erring in their application of this power. Yet none the less their authority remains obligatory so long as it is not abrogated or amended by the universal apostolic circle or by a local such circle on the territory of an autocephalous Church. As long as the canonical acts of a given bishop are recognised as such by the apostolic circle, they should be considered as the expression of the Church's unique authority and will. Such and such a sanction of ecclesiastical authority (be it interdiction or excommunication) may be unjust; even so, before protesting, one should submit to it in anticipation of the judgment to be made by the appropriate apostolic circle (metropolitan province, patriarchate or consensus between heads of autocephalous Churches). In applying this or that canon in the life of the Church or in creating new rules in response to the needs of the day, the church hierarchy pursues a double goal. On the one hand it seeks to defend the freedom and uniqueness of the Church from worldly elements. On the other, it applies economy in respect of the world in which it has its being. An example of a canon which runs counter to economy is that which led to the rebaptism of heterodox Christians and which was applied at one time in the East; while an example of a pseudo-canon which runs counter to the uniqueness of the Church is that which expresses Bulgarian ethno-phyletism and seeks to declare the nation as the basis of the local Church. The first error is per petrated by ecclesiastical monophysites; the second by ecclesiastical nestorians. Authentic church stewardship, expressed in the application of ancient church regu lations and in the creation of new ones presupposes the gift of discernment, a gift which we have the right to expect from the bishops. For they have received not
25

VLADIMIR LOSSKY

only an unconditionally objective authority conferred exclusively on the apostolic circle, but also the faculty to 'have the mind of Christ' (1 Cor. 2:16) which is afforded to all members of the Body of Christ in the sacrament of Chrismation. Those who apply the gift of discernment in the exercise of their stewardship are known by their fruits and not infrequently acclaimed as saintly bishops. Those who neglect this gift are poor stewards, although no less endowed with authority insofar as they remain in union with the Church. Prematurely to deny the significance of the Church's hierarchy and canonical structure on the basis that the hierarchy is fallible is to introduce into the Church a restless, revolutionary and anarchical spirit, a protestant individualism, a deficient faith, even a covert lack of faith in the Church (not the abstract 'heavenly' Church, but that which is concrete and historical) as recipient from Christ himself of the power to bind and loose. The errors of individual hierarchs (so long as these do not lead to their deviation from unity) may be corrected by the conscious will of the Church in its local or uni versal expression. But revolt against the hierarchy, a church revolution, this is an evil which it is difficult to cure; and spiritually it is destructive. A false perception of the Church The frequent infractions of church unity in our time, the light-mindedness with which schisms are regarded ('a temporary, but inevitable evil'), the scornful attitude towards the canons, which some wish to see merely as external, administrative pres criptions rather than as the living expression of that church unity which is safe guarded by the hierarchy all these lamentable phenomena conceal in their depths a false perception of the Church. They involve a denial of her living flesh, a disincarnation, or at any rate a weakening of the unity of divine and human elements in the Church. This false situation amounts in some sense to an outcrop of protestant spiritualism on orthodox soil. It finds its expression in an almost com plete indifference towards the concrete and historical character of the Body of Christ. There remains only the liturgical apprehension of this Body, of the Church as an organism in which the sacraments are effected (and here the divine and the human are usually confused in an ambiguous concept of the 'theandric nature' of the Church). As for any awareness of the Church as Ecclesia, with her canonical and hierarchic structure, with responsibility for her unity and independence which devolves above all on the hierarchy, but subsequently on each of us as well: such an awareness has vanished from the minds of many. If the Church in her concrete and historical manifestation is not the very Body of Christ, summoned to exist in the conditions of the contemporary world, then of course everything becomes relative and indifferent. Then schisms become only a temporary phenomenon which are to be overcome some day and indeed are already
OPPOSITE

The Descent of the Holy Spirit. A panel from the Golden Gates at Suzdal Cathedral. Damascene work, c.1227-37.
26

ECCLESIOLOGY: SOME DANGERS AND TEMPTATIONS VLADIMIR LOSSKY

overcome in the 'invisible Church'. The injustice of individual hierarchs, their deviation from sound teachings will be reviewed at some stage by a competent council, but for the present they may be tolerated. To raise the level of an ecclesial awareness in decline is not an easy task. It is tempting to suggest that it should be bequeathed to some future generation. Anyone would think that the 'theory of progress' were applicable to the Church (if it is applicable at all). As if the 'tem porary nature' of this untoward phenomenon could serve as its justification; as if our very life was not a temporary phenomenon; as if we were absolved of all res ponsibility as the result of the temporary character of whatever takes place! In an attempt to justify our sins, our indolence and passivity, we might be pre pared to see in the Church herself some objective reasons which prevent the full ness of her life from being realised here and now, were it not for the example of the Russian Church before us. It is an example which demonstrates that the Church can and ought to exist in the outside world, whatever the conditions; that, in the new conditions of her life she can and must 'kindle the former flame in the hearts of believers' (to quote Patriarch Sergius [of Moscow] ). This 'former flame' is the same as in apostolic times, in the age of persecutions, the age of ecumenical councils, in other no less glorious times, and in our days too. Ivan Aksakov, a churchman of the last century, once wrote to K.P. Pobedonostsev, Procurator-General of the Russian Holy Synod, 'If in those days you would have been asked whether the ecumenical councils should be convened, councils which we now recognise as holy, you would have marshalled so many well-founded arguments against their convocation that probably they would never have taken place'. The weakening of ecclesial awareness, the sin of despair vis-a-vis the Church, disbelief in the plenitude of her powers at any given moment of her history: these things are not new. Similar attitudes were often in evidence, of course, even in the age of the ecumenical councils. It is enough to read the ancient historians or contemporary testimonies to appreciate that those who were able to discern the Church's strait way without being unduly impressed by incidental imperfections were compara tively few. This royal way in the life of the Church escapes the monophysites who would deny life and would confine the Church to the mummified and customary forms of days gone by. It is not perceived either by the nestorians of ecclesiology, for whom the 'historical Church' is dissolved into the relative phenomena of this world, while the Church of 'meta-history' remains a pious abstraction. Both parties are critics of the [contemporary] Russian Church: the one reproaches her for nestorian innova tion, for a compromise with a new world, the other for her monophysite formalism, her canonolatory. But their attacks are based on a misconception; in reality they are at issue with each other. Responsibilities of here and now If we leave them aside and turn to the Church, particularly to the Church in such conditions as cause her to live her life with an exceptional sense of responsibility (as
28

in contemporary Russia) and ask ourselves what has changed since the period of the early Church, we would have to reply, nothing but the external forms and circum stances of the Church's life, only her economy in regard to the external world, in other words nothing but what ought to change with the times so that the Church should remain ever capable of accomplishing her task, the salvation of the actual world in which she leads her life. The plenitude of her powers remains undiminished, and if this is something which we do not see or do not wish to see, then this testifies merely to our blind ness, to our lack of spiritual vigour, to our despair. It is such despair which causes us to evade our responsibility, our decision fully to engage ourselves in service of the Church. To this service we are called at the present moment and in the present circumstances, without any waiting for 'normal' times. There are no such times before the parousia. The Church can accomplish today what she sought since 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. 6:34).

29

PARADOSIS: THE ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING OF TRADITION

Paradosis: the Orthodox understanding of Tradition

CONSTANTINE SCOUTERIS

There can be no doubt that we are living in a tragic world, a world embarked on a course with no end in sight, a path which seems to lead nowhere. It is to this world of ours, caught up in its own futility, that the Church comes to show another path, and she does this by projecting her own mode of existence. After all was it not Christ who said 'I am the way'? Thus it is that the Church comes to pit against the tragedy of human history, her own being, her own life. 'For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us' (1 John 1:2). Within the uncertainty of the contemporary world, the Church emerges as the only possibility for genuine life. The Church enters the universe as a 'new cosmos', as the 'creation of another world'.1 Of course it is evident that when we speak of the Church we do not mean a social or a secular organism, or even a humanitarian society concerned with the moral betterment of human life. By Church we mean the life-giving Body of the God-Man: we mean Christ himself transmitted and extended to the ages. In the final analysis, when speaking of the Church we mean the transmission (paradosis) of life. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudi ments of the world, and not after Christ' (Col. 2: 6-8). The union of Church and Tradition Tradition and Church are not simply parallel concepts but realities which are essentially interrelated and bound together. Without being confounded they cannot be separated; they exist united together without confusion. Indeed, in a sense, the Church is Tradition, and Tradition, in its turn, is understood as the conscience of the Church. Hence, it is impossible for one to speak about Tradition without at the same time speaking about the Church. The teaching on Tradition is eccleilology: indeed, the very heart of ecclesiology. Here Tradition is Christ, whom we have * A paper given at the Anglican-Orthodox Joint Discussions held at Chambesy in July 1981. 1. Gregory of Nyssa, in Canticum Canticorum, ed. H. Langerbeck, pp.384, 386 (PG 44. 1049BC, 105 2 A).
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'received', as St Paul says; and it is precisely this Tradition that is the antithesis to the 'tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ'. When we say Tradition is Christ we mean that the Church refers back in Christ and through Christ to the sovereign principle of God the Father, to the source of Trinitarian and ecclesiastical unity: "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all' (Eph. 4:4-6). Thus we arrive at the source of the Church's unity, at the source of Tradition, at the cause of every gift.2 In the life of the supraessential and life-giving Trinity the Father, who is the sole cause and principle of the hypostases3 gives himself over to the other two divine Persons, generating the Son and causing the Holy Spirit to proceed. We should understand this 'giving over' (paradosis) as a communicating of all the divine essence of the Father to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as a complete kenosis of the Father. Primacy is here understood to be the extreme limit of love: theparadosis of the Father for the benefit of the other two persons. The Son and the Holy Spirit respond to this gushing forth of the Father's love. They do not usurp the Father's love for their own benefit, nor seize it (Phil. 2:6) but in their turn offer their exis tence and life similarly, in love - to the Father. This exchange (antidosis) is ex pressed as absolute obedience to the Father's will.4 Similarly, in the Church, which is the image and reflection of the life of the triune God, the Son gives himself up for the life of the world (John 6:51). And here, too, there is an abundance of love and of offering. Here we have a giving over in love (e paradosis en agape). 'For God so loved the word that he gave his onlybegotten Son' (John 3.16). The Son's absolute obedience to the Father leads him to kenosis, to humility, for the sake of the world's salvation. Likewise the Holy Spirit sojourned in the world to be a constant witness to the truth (John 15:26). Proceeding from the Father and being sent through the Son, the Holy Spirit, con tinues the work of Christ in history, being the Comforter of men. The descent of the Holy Spirit, understood as paradosis and enoikesis (indwell ing) in the body of the Church, ensures the preservation of the truth and the new life. The Holy Spirit is given over (paradidetat) to the Church; it does not repeatedly descend upon the earth but abides and indwells in the historic Church. Pentecost is not an event belonging to the past: rather is it a continuous present in the life of the Church, a universal reality which embraces the Church and makes her a living image of eternity within the history of the world. Thus, both within the relations between the three divine hypostases as well as within the Church (which in her turn is an image of the communion of the Trinity) God's love is manifested as paradosis, as a constant outpouring. God the Father 2. 'For every good gift is from above and comes down from Thee, the Father of lights [...]' (The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom). 3. M. Farantos, 'Orthodoxy and Contemporary Reality', Koinonia (1977), p.32. 4. Ibid. 31

ECCLESIOLOGY: SOME DANGERS AND TEMPTATIONS CONSTANTINE SCOUTERIS

gives himself over for the sake of the other two divine persons; the Son, out of love, becomes one of us and gives himself over to the race of men; finally, the Paraclete indwells the body of the Church until the synteleia of the ages and continues the Son's work in the world. Revelation and Tradition The Holy Spirit's indwelling of the body of the Church means that the Church preserves the truth and revelation in the same way that a living body preserves its soul. Revelation the culmination of which, as we know, is Pentecost constitutes the primal factor in the life of the Church. The Church is alive because she possesses Revelation, and she possesses it precisely so that she can exist. In the final analysis, however, when we say that the Church possesses and preserves Revelation we mean to say that she does this because Revelation is Tradition (paradosis) and becomes Tradition within the Church. It is Tradition precisely because it was transmitted (paradothe) in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, and it becomes Tradition because the Church preserves it throughout the course of history, as the power of her life. In other words, Tradition is the unceasing existence of Revelation in the Church. It is that inner and cohesive power which holds the Church together. Through Tradition the Church is preserved alive and changeless simply because only in Tradition can the authentic message of Revelation be found, and only through Tradition does the life of the Church arrive at each given moment in time. From the very beginning of her existence up to the very present the Church is aware with the same inten sity now as then of the presence of Christ and the Paraclete. Thus, the Church from the very first moment of her existence, to the very present, lives and expe riences Revelation, and she shall continue to do so forever, since the gates of hell shall not prevail against her (Matt. 16:18). This living and reliving of Revelation in the Church, this continuous now of Revelation which is realized through Tradition, constitutes the very life of the Church: the gospel 'which also we have received, and wherein we stand; by which also we are saved' (1 Cor. 15:1-2). Tradition, conse quently, is the certainty that what we today possess is not something suspended in mid-air, but rather is organically connected with the life of Christ and with all that the apostles received. In other words, Tradition assures us of the eternity, intertemporality and universality of the gospel, which is lived within the Church at each and every historical present, and which through the Church is conveyed to the world as the kerygma of salvation. Tradition and the present time We should at this point state that Tradition is not simply the voice of the past; it is rather the voice of eternity. Tradition is not a kind of sacred archaeology, nor even a reference to the experience of the past. Tradition's value and significance is not to be found in that it is based upon an external historical authenticity, but in that it is based upon the unchanging and ever living voice of Revelation. This fidelity in Tradition does not simply mean a recognition of the historic past, but also an
32

acceptance, in humility, of the word of God. Tradition is not only the testimony of history, the 'yes' to the life of the past: rather, it is chiefly a reference to the truth which was revealed in Christ and is preserved in the Church in the Holy Spirit. Fr George Florovsky puts it very well when he says: Tradition is not a principle striving to restore the past, using the past as a criterion for the present. Such a conception of tradition is rejected by history and by the consciousness of the Church. Tradition is authority to teach, potestas magisterii, authority to bear witness to the truth. The Church bears witness to the truth not by reminiscence or from the words of others, but from its own living, unceasing experience, from its catholic fulness [ . . . ] . Therein consists that 'tradition of truth', traditio veritatis, about which St Irenaeus spoke. For him it is connected with the 'veritable unction of truth', charisma veritatis cerium, and the 'teaching of the Apostles' was for him not so much an unchangeable example to be repeated or imitated, as an eternally living and inexhaustible source of life and inspiration. Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words. Tradition is a charismatic, not a historical, principle.5 Tradition, as a charismatic event, as an unceasing revelation of the word of God in the Holy Spirit at each specific historical present is not something distant, some thing springing from history and which one must discover by going centuries back, but it is a reality which is extremely contemporary, just as the fruits of the Spirit ('love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance' [Gal. 5:22-3]) are extremely contemporary for the life of modern man. Tradition is ever present, here and now. It is always open, ready to embrace the present and accept the future. Just as the Church at every given historical moment accepts new members, so too is Tradition tangible and believable in every age, simply because the Church is the living bearer of Tradition. The contemporaneity of Tradition is based on the unbroken presence of Christ in the Church, and on the certainty that the teacher of the Church is the Holy Spirit. Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem in his Confession (1672) writes: We believe the catholic Church to be taught by the Holy Spirit. For he is the true Paraclete, whom Christ sends from the Father in order to teach the truth and to dispel the darkness from the minds of the faithful. The teaching [didache] of the Holy Spirit, however, does not directly make the Church splendid and brilliant, but indirectly, through the fathers and leaders of the catholic Church.6 The denial of Tradition's importance is essentially the denial of the work of the Holy Spirit in history and the doubting of his charismata. In the final analysis, to reject Tradition means to reject the Church as the body of Christ and as the vessel of the Holy Spirit. By calling into question the fact that Tradition possesses tremen dous importance for the here and now of the Church, if we deny that Tradition is 5. G. Florovsky, 'Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church' in The Church of God, An Anglo-Russian Symposium, ed. E.L Mascall (London 1934), pp.64-5. 6. J.N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church ii(Graz 1968), p.835.
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CONSTANTINE SCOUTERIS

PARADOSIS: THE ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING OF TRADITION

the image of the catholic and inter-temporal nature of the Church, we reduce and alter the Church from its God-Manness to a simple society of men, based exclusively on human standards. Rejecting Tradition is like accepting that Christ has forsaken the Church, that his words, 'and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Matt. 28:20) and 'I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever' (John 14:16) are in the end a deception. By accepting the premise that we today are able to understand and to interpret the gospel by basing ourselves solely on our brilliance and experience, without Tradition, we strip the Church naked of Christ; we sever the body from the head, we take away its life-giving Spirit, thus leaving the gospel open to individual judgement and to the arbitrary whims of our own subjectivity. The Orthodox Patriarchs of the East in their famous Encyclical of 1848 describe very simply and yet with complete theological fulness this living continuity of Tradition: For our faith, brethren, is neither from men nor by man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, which the holy apostles preached, the sacred ecumenical councils upheld, the most great and wise doctors of the oikoumene transmitted through their teaching, and the holy martyrs confirmed with their blood. We hold pure the confession which we have received.7 We cannot deny the life of the Church, that 'unbroken chain', which defines the 'sacred enclosure' of the Church, 'the door of which is Christ and in which the entire Orthodox fold is shepherded'.8 Tradition and the people of God The question is thus posed: how can we test the genuineness of Tradition? The Patriarchs of the East give the following answer in their Encyclical: 'The defender of the faith is the body of the Church, that is the people [laos]'.9 The people of God, taken together as a whole, possesses a spiritual sense with which it can test whether or not, and to what extent, our actions and kerygmata are in accordance with the life and word of the catholic Church. Thus Tradition is protected within the entire ecclesiastical body. The hierarchy of the Church teaches, that is it inter prets Tradition, and the people in its entirety makes declarations concerning its faithfulness to Tradition. Here we have an inner reciprocity. The teachers of the Church interpret Tradition, they transmit the gospel to the people, and the people judges whether or not the interpretation transmitted to it is authentic or not. This means that all who interpret the gospel can never disregard the people, because the people in its entirety is the bearer of Tradition. Thus it is that botlrthose who teach and those who are taught, both hierarchy and people, constitute a whole which labours for the preservation of the truth, for the protection and understanding of Tradition. Each from his own viewpoint contributes to the same task. The hier7. 8. 9. Ibid., p.1002. Ibid., p.1003. Ibid., p.1000. 34

archy passes judgement on tradition, and the people judges the judgements of the hierarchy. Thus it endorses its teaching and its decisions. When St Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, 'hold the traditions' (2 Thess. 2:15) he was acknowledging precisely this: the right which the people has to maintain the Tradition and to reject every foreign element which might affect the purity of the life of the Church. Thus it is that the entire body of the faithful carries out a tremendous task in preserving the genuiness of Tradition. With the instinct which comes from the very experience of Tradition itself it is able to ascertain what is contained in the consensus patrum et apostolorum and what remains outside of it. This special sense which the people of God possesses and which in the end makes the people the 'guardian of the faith' is nothing else than the fruit of the very same experience lived by the apostles and received and lived by the fathers and the saints of the Church and preserved alive in every historical present of the Church. Thus, it is the identity of the experience which ensures the faithfulness of Tradition. Throughout the ages the Church preaches and lives the very same gospel, the very same truth. And of course this truth is not an idea, a concept, but a specific person, the theandric person of Christ (John 14:6). Christ then is 'the same yesterday, and today, and for ever' (Heb. 13:8), and the Holy Spirit who vivifies the faithful and ensures the unity of life. Thus, the experience of the faithful people of God today is not of another order than the experiences of the saints and the apostles. And it is this one and the same experience of the people of God which in the final analysis is fidelity to Tradition. It is self-evident that when we speak about fidelity to Tradition we do not deprive the Church of the right, nor do we call into question her obligation, to express in a new way, relevant to the needs of each and every age, the one unique gospel message. On the contrary, fidelity to Tradition very often compels us to abandon the forms and schemata of the past. Thus, fidelity to Tradition never hindered the fathers of the Church in expressing in new terminology and in a new fashion all that the Church had already lived and experienced from the very beginn ing of her existence. Hence, whatever the fathers or ecumenical councils stated in later times, precisely because it sprang from the same catholic fullness, is of equal value and authenticity with whatever was said from the very beginning. Tradition and traditions At this point it is necessary to recall the difference between Tradition and tradi tions. What we have written thus far has had this distinction in mind. The tradition of men should not be confused with the catholic fullness of the life of the Church, with the one universal Tradition. In contrast to this one Tradition, which constitutes the conscience and the identity of the Church throughout the ages, traditions are the work of human hands; they come and go, change and are supplemented, are rejected or sustained, depending upon the prevailing spiritual climate. These tradi tions may be useful, positive, and creative; but they can also be without meaning, or even the result of man's sinfulness. They may possibly help in the understanding
35

CONSTANTINE SCOUTERIS

PARADOSIS: THE ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING OF TRADITION

of Tradition, but then again, they may also become an insurmountable obstacle in approaching the Christian message. Therefore, when we speak about Tradition, we do not mean all those human elements which are encountered in the historical Church, but the one and only deposit of faith which is found in the Church, and because of which the Church is 'the pillar and ground of the truth' (1 Tim. 3:15). The Joint Doctrinal Commission appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Archbishop of Canterbury for con sultation on the points of agreement and difference between the Anglican and the Eastern Orthodox Churches (1930) issued the following statement: We agree that by Holy Tradition we mean the truths which came down from our Lord and the Apostles through the Fathers, which are confessed unani mously and continuously in the Undivided Church, and are taught by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Everything necessary for salvation can be founded upon Holy Scripture as completed, explained, interpreted, and understood in the Holy Tradition, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit residing in the Church. We agree that nothing contained in Tradition is contrary to the Scriptures. Though these two may be logically defined and distinguished, yet they can not be separated from each other nor from the Church.10 Scripture and Tradition It is now necessary that we briefly examine here the question of Scripture and Tradition. Generally speaking, Scripture and Tradition should neither be separated nor confused ('though these two may be logically defined and distinguished yet they cannot be separated from each other nor from the Church'). Scripture and Tradition constitute an unbroken whole, the one is contained within the other. Or if we wish to be more explicit, Scripture is contained within Tradition. Paul put it quite clearly in Thessalonians: 'brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle' (2 Thess. 2:15). Tradition is channelled into the Church through word and through the Scripture. Here there is no relationship either of superiority or subordination. The spoken word and Scripture possess a mutuality and agreement, a mutual fulfilment and confirmation. As St Basil puts it, 'both have equal force for piety'. 11 And St John Chrysostom was to add, 'they did not transmit all things through epistles; much was handed over not in writing. In like manner, both these and those are worthy of belief. Hence, we consider the Tradition of the Church also worthy of belief. Is it Tradition? Then inquire no more'. 12 In Western Christianity the distinction between Scripture and Tradition was more firmly stressed. Thus they are either considered as 'two sources of Revelation' (Rome) or else Tradition is completely rejected so as to create the concept of sola scriptura (the Reformation). Actually, there is no difference between Rome 10. Lambeth Occasional Reports 1931-8 (London 1948), pp.52-3. 11. De Spiritu Sancto, PG 32. 188Aff. 12. Horn. 4.2 in 2 Thess, ed. B. de Montfaucon, 11. 532B.
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and the Reformation in this regard. In both instances the distinction between Scripture and Tradition is emphasized. Rome views Scripture and Tradition as two sources of the faith, while the Reformers opt for Scripture alone. In both cases the belief that Scripture and Tradition are two different things is presupposed. Against such a viewpoint, which in the end reduces the spiritual relationship between Scripture and Tradition to a legalistic one (of equality or superiority) the East posits her own understanding of the matter, which is based on the principle that Scripture and Tradition co-exist within the Church. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, understands Scripture (composed with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) in the light of Tradition (also the work of the Holy Spirit). Church, Scripture and Tradition In other words, Tradition is Scripture interpreted by the Church. And just as the Church understands Scripture in the light of Tradition, so in like manner does she understand Tradition in the light of Scripture. Tradition is full of Scripture; that is why her theology, the theology of the fathers and the councils, is nothing other than biblical theology. Scripture and Tradition are mutually understood and exist together. Both are united unshakeably with the Church. Scripture is born in the Church and for the Church, and Tradition bears from the very beginning the seal of the Church. If is in the Church that Scripture and Tradition appear and are contained. Thus Scripture, Tradition and the Church are linked through an inner relationship, a harmonious co-existence, a mutual supplementation and agreement. Scripture and Tradition as revelationary-charismatic realities are contained within the Church which is also a revelationary-charismatic reality. Those who separate Holy Scripture, Tradition and the Church come to the false conclusion that either Scripture is superior to the Church and Tradition, or that the Church is superior to Scripture. The first opinion is to be found among Protestant theologians, the latter in Roman Catholic theology. This hyperbole leads to an altera tion of the meaning of the Church, either to an under-evaluation (subordination) or to an over-evaluation. By placing the Bible over and above the Church and Tradition we destroy the balance, we corrupt its canonical position, and take the first step towards an individualistic theology outside the Church. On the other hand, the idea that the Church is superior to Holy Scripture leads to the opinion that the Church is able to elicit every dogma from within herself. Only if we accept that the Church, Tradition and Scripture are neither separated nor confused, being united without confusion, will we be able to understand that the Church alone is she who can find the true meaning of Holy Scripture, just as the Son alone is he who is able to under stand the words of the Father. 13. C. Scouteris, 'Holy Scripture and Councils', Sobornost 7:2 (1975), pp.112-13. See also D. Staniloae, 'Holy Scripture in relation to the Church and Tradition', The Living Logos. A Spiritual Symposium on Holy Scripture (Athens 1970), p.83.
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BISHOP GRAFTON OF FOND DU LAC AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

Bishop Graf ton of Fond du Lac and the Orthodox Church

ERNEST C. MILLER

The Tractarian Movement, Grafton firmly asserted that It is one of the commonest mistakes to suppose that the Tractarian Move ment was intended to favour or spread the doctrine or practices of the Church of Rome. There was nothing pro-Roman about its leaders' positions. They believed in the Catholic Church as a whole, and did not vaunt them selves as belonging merely to Western Christendom. Their terminus ad quern was not reunion with Rome [...] .6 If not with Rome, then with whom? As the years went by, and especially after the papal pronouncement of 1896, Grafton became more and more assured that re union with the Orthodox Churches was the goal of the Catholic Movement in Anglicanism. In another tract, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy, written some time after 1896, he averred that 'there are brightening prospects in the East. Thither, it would seem, God's providence is directing us'. 7 Thither, at least, God's providence directed Charles Grafton. This essay is an attempt to describe Grafton's relationship with Orthodoxy, more particularly the Russian Orthodox Church, and to draw attention to one sphere in which this intercourse seems to have influenced his theology, in the hope that it may provide an example and encouragement to other Anglicans in their search for the fullness of catholicity. Monk and priest Charles Chapman Grafton was born into a wealthy Boston family in 1830 just three years prior to the preaching of Keble's famous sermon on 'National Apostasy' in Oxford.8 Grafton's parents intended that he enter upon a fitting professional career and so, when the time came, he was enrolled in the Harvard Law School. Since his youth Grafton had been intimately associated with the parish church of the Advent in Boston where, as his biographer notes, 'he came slowly to realise the catholic nature of the Episcopal Church and his calling to proclaim it'. 9 The years of vocational uncertainty came to an end when, to the disgust of his family, Grafton resolved to seek Orders under Bishop Whittington of Maryland. The latter ordained him deacon in 1855 and priest in 1858. The next seven years revealed a growing interest in monasticism which culminated in 1865 when Grafton sailed to England to join the young Fr Benson at Cowley. During his first months in England Grafton became acquainted with leaders of the Catholic Movement such as E.B. Pusey, J.M. Neale and T.T. Carter; he also came under the spell of the advanced ritualism of the day. On the Feast of St John the Evangelist in 1866 Grafton, together with two other men (one of them Fr Benson himself), took vows as religious in the Society of St John the Evangelist, the Cowley Fathers.
6. 7. 8. 9. The Tractarian Movement (Milwaukee 1908), p.61. B.T. Rogers, ed., The Works of the Rt Rev Charles C. Grafton (8 vols: Cathedral Edition) (New York 1914), i.365. Henceforth cited as Works. For this biographical sketch I follow Kinney, '+C.C. Fond du Lac'. Ibid., p.3. 39

The Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century bore fruit in many areas of Anglican church life. One significant result was the renewed interest in Eastern Orthodoxy which characterised many of the movement's adherents.1 Such an interest sprang, no doubt, from the patristic emphasis of the first Tractarians. This theological interest found practical expression in men such as William Palmer,2 John Mason Neale and the Eastern Church Association, and later, in W.J. Birkbeck. While this interest in Orthodoxy found its chief proponents in England, the Episcopal Church in America made its own, albeit forgotten, contribution to this renewed interest in Orthodoxy in the West.3 Charles C. Grafton, the second bishop of Fond du Lac and perhaps the most colourful American high-churchman in the latter 19th century, took a profound and active interest in Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, 'the life and witness of Bishop Grafton remain virtually unknown to many Anglicans, for the only biography of Grafton is an unpublished thesis in the Nashotah House Seminary Library.4 This ignorance of the life and thought of Bishop Grafton especially concerns his relation to Orthodoxy which his biographer treats in a scant three pages. The reasons for this neglect are not hard to determine. Bishop Grafton's ritualism seemed decidely Romish, and many pictures of the Bishop suggest a prelate of baroque proportions. Moreover, the theology of the romanising Anglo-Catholics in the first half of the twentieth century is assumed to have been characteristic of their nineteenth-century predecessors. This latter fact is ironic given Grafton's contempt for 'Rome and Romanisers'. Sadly, his biographer perpetuates this false impression by his description of Bishop Grafton simply as 'a leader of the Catholic Movement in the American Church for three decades'.5 The question which must be asked is this: what kind of Catholicism was it that Grafton saw as the goal of the Catholic Revival? In one of his many tracts, entitled
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. See P.E. Shaw, The Early Tractarians and the Eastern Church (Milwaukee 1930). See John Lawrence, 'William Palmer of Magdalen College and the Russian Orthodox Church', Sobornost/ECR 2:1 (1980), pp.80-2. Foi the history of Orthodox interaction with the Episcopal Church see P.E. Shaw, American Contacts with the Eastern Churches, 1820-1870 (Chicago 1937). J.M. Kinney, '+C.C. Fond du Lac. The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton, Second Bishop of Fond du Lac' (STM thesis, Nashotah House Seminary, 1967). Ibid., Preface. 38

ERNEST C. MILLER

BISHOP GRAFTON OF FOND DU LAC AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

After some time Grafton returned to the States and began mission work. In due course he came to the church of the Advent, then in the hands of the Cowley Fathers, where he was elected rector in 1872. His years in Boston were not peaceful ones. Difficulties arose with his superior, Fr Benson, and with others among his English co-workers at the Advent. Troubles steadily increased until the summer of 1882 when Grafton left the Society, though he retained his vows and remained as rector of the church of the Advent. He continued his work there tirelessly and effectively. Fr Grafton drew an ever-increasing congregation; he erected the beauti ful gothic revival church which stands today on Brimmer Street; and he founded the community of the Sisters of the Holy Nativity. All this until his sudden resig nation in the April of 1888. The bishop and his background Not surprisingly, when the 'advanced' diocese of Fond du Lac in Wisconsin con vened to elect a new bishop following the death of Bishop Brown in the early autumn of 1888, Charles Grafton's name was submitted. His eminent qualifications won him the vote at the second ballot on 13 November 1888. However, many months elapsed before the necessary episcopal consent was procured from the American bishops. Though some feared his reputation as a high-churchman, the recommendation of several 'broad-church' bishops allayed the concerns of their very evangelical brethren and on St Mark's Day, 25 April 1889, Charles Grafton was consecrated as the second bishop of Fond du Lac. It was during his episcopate, which was to last until his death, that Grafton's interest in Orthodoxy flowered. To understand this interest it is helpful to focus on several aspects of his theo logical formation, aspects which seemed to have continued throughout his life as priest and then as bishop. A perusal of Grafton's work reveals his wide reading of the Fathers of the undivided Church. Quotations from Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine and even Symeon the Stylite, to name a few, reveal a sympathy for the witness and synthesis of the patristic age. At the same time, Grafton possessed a keen knowledge of and love for the Anglican tradition as expressed in men like Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, Patrick Forbes, Thomas Ken and Jeremy Taylor. He was a man who appreciated the Anglican via media insofar as it was a return to a patristic vision of scriptural Catholicism. In addition, Grafton's acquaintance with the leaders of the Catholic Revival in England can only have confirmed his patristic-reformation perspective to the extent that, at least initially, they attempted to bring this vision to bear once again upon nineteenth-century English society in a meaningful way. Only lately have we begun to appreciate anew the very Greek perspective of a John Henry Newman.10 Such a perspective was not lost on Grafton. Likewise Grafton's early comrade, R.M. Benson was himself a man whose appropriation and exposition of Christian faith and life had in many ways a distinctly Orthodox character, as
10. See, for instance, C.S. Dessain, 'Cardinal Newman and the Eastern Tradition', Downside Review (April 1976), pp.83-98. 40

recent studies reveal.11 It is hard to think that even in those early days at Cowley Grafton was not greatly influenced by Benson's prodigious spirit. All of these factors seem to have coalesced and come to fruition in one final characteristic of Grafton's theological orientation: his reading of contemporary Orthodox theology. Although no detailed description of his reading is available, Grafton's own works reveal an acquaintance with the writings of at least two of the great Orthodox thinkers of the last century: A.S. Khomiakov and Philaret of Moscow. The fact that Grafton knew the content of some of the works of these theologians is a testimony to the way in which he had appropriated the spirit of classical Anglicanism and had followed it to its logical theological conclusion. Unlike most of the Episcopalians who made the acquaintance of Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, Grafton did not allow his interest to remain a purely bookish one. Indeed, Grafton was a man of singular wilfulness and vision, charac teristics which determined that his rapprochement with the Orthodox was to prove disturbing to many Episcopalians. The consecration of Bishop Weller This is best exemplified in the events surrounding the consecration of R.H. Weller as coadjutor bishop of Fond du Lac in November 1900. Bishop Grafton, much of whose mission to the Episcopal Church consisted in asserting through out ward and visible signs Anglicanism's continuity with the universal Church, invited to the consecration service Bishop Tikhon of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America. Bishop Tikhon, having received sanction from the Holy Russian Synod, came to Fond du Lac for the event with his two chaplains, commissioned by the Committee on Anglican Orders in Moscow to send a report back concerning the apostolic succession among Anglicans. Not only did Bishop Grafton invite Tikhon to vest for the service, but he stationed Bishop Tikhon in the episcopal throne of the cathedral church of Fond du Lac, over-seeing the entire rite. Although Tikhon remained an observer and did not take part in the act of consecration itself, the force of Grafton's action was not lost on observers, least of all on all those who (oddly enough) suspected him of romanising. A reporter for a local newspaper remarked in disgust: A Russian bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church was seated on the Episcopal throne at the consecration of a bishop of the Anglican Church. It would have been a shock if the Russian prelate had been simply one the clergymen assigned to a place inside the chancel rail, but he was given the supreme honour. The Greek Catholic, the man of an alien faith, occupied the Episcopal Chair [...].12 Needless to say, Grafton did not consider Bishop Tikhon a man of an 'alien faith', and we can but suppose that if asked why he arranged the seating as he did he would have responded: 'there are brightening prospects in the East. Thither, it would seem, God's providence is directing us'.
11. See Martin Smith, SSJE, ed., Benson of Cowley (Oxford 1980), pp.27-53. 12. From the OshkoshNorthwestern, quoted by Kinney, '+C.C. Fond du Lac', p.186. 41

ERNEST C. MILLER

Yet the events surrounding the consecration (referred to by its detractors as 'the Fond du Lac Circus') were not over. Following the consecration service Bishop Grafton and the other dignitaries posed for a photograph in which, amidst the Anglican bishops, stood the Russian Bishop Tikhon with his two chaplains. 'The Picture' (as it came to be called) was given a notoriously wide circulation in various church periodicals and caused an outrage which lasted for months. To this disruption Grafton paid little attention, assured (as he seemed to be) that what he had done had not compromised, but rather had affirmed the integrity of the Anglican Church. 'They treated him just like a Bishop' This event in Fond du Lac initiated a friendship between the two bishops; and it must have been at Tikhon's instigation that Grafton was urged to make a visit to Russia on behalf of relations between the Anglican and Russian churches in the autumn of 1903. Though the documentation is rather sparse, the flavour of the visit may be perceived in the sources which are available. Despite the ill will of many Episcopalians the attitude of the Orthodox Churches towa'rds Anglicanism generally remained quite friendly at the time of Grafton's visit. The 'Epistle of the Russian Holy Synod to the Patriarch of Constantinople' of 23 February 1903 characterises the climate of Anglo-Orthodox relations thus: The Anglicans assume a somewhat different attitude towards Orthodoxy. With rare 13 exceptions they do not aim at the perversion of Orthodox Christians, and upon every occasion and opportunity strive to show their special respect for the Holy Eastern Church, admitting that she, and not Rome, is the true conservator of the traditions of the Fathers [. . . ] . Love and goodwill cannot but call forth love on our side also, and nourish us in the good hope of the possibility of church union with them in the future [ . . . ] . On our side, in our relations towards Anglicans, there ought to be a brotherly readiness to assist them with explanations, an habitual attentiveness to theii best desires, all possible indulgence towards misunderstandings which are natural after ages of separation, but at the same time a firm profession of the truth of our Oecumenical Church as the one guardian of the inheritance of Christ and the one saving ark of divine grace.14 As W.J. Birkbeck remarked in a commentary on the letter, it 'contains nothing which ought to wound the feelings of any English Churchman'.15 Such, then, was the temper of things when on 22 August 1903 Bishop Grafton sailed from New
13. One such exception had been the effort of the American Episcopalians in the Middle East and Turkey earlier in the nineteenth century. 14. From the Guardian (4 September 1903), quoted by Athelstan Kiley, ed., Birkbeck and the Russian Church (London 1917), p.253. 15. Ibid., p.265. ~~ OPPOSITE "

'The Picture': at the consecration of Bishop Weller (1900). Bishop Grafton is seated at the centre. Bishop Weller is in the second row, third from left. Bishop Tikhon stands to the right.
42

ERNEST C. MILLER

BISHOP GRAFTON OF FOND DU LAC AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

^ork to London with his chaplain en route for Russia. When Grafton arrived in England in early September he immediately made the acquaintance of W.J. Birkbeck, the Norfolk high-churchman who was doing so much to foster communi cation and understanding between the two Churches. Birkbeck was impressed with the Bishop, whom he described as 'quite delightful';16 and Grafton quickly per suaded Birkbeck to accompany him to Russia in his effort 'to promote, if possible, a rapprochement between the American and Russian Churches'.17 Grafton and his party arrived in St Petersburg as guests of Antonii, the Metro politan of St Petersburg and the presiding member of the Holy Russian Synod on 13 September, the eve of the feast of the Holy Cross. Upon arrival Birkbeck wrote back to his friend Lord Halifax that 'Bishop Grafton has been received splendidly'.18 The very night of their arrival Grafton attended vespers and matins at the AlexanderNevsky Monastery, Birkbeck notes that Bishop Grafton, was received within the royal doors, and quaintly remarks that 'the dear old Bishop, with his purple cassock and beautiful face, was supremely happy, and they treated him just like a Bishop all about the censings, etc.' 19 . Moreover, Orthodox hospitality did not stop there. It is worth recalling Birkbeck's excited words regarding the rest of the service: At the end of the service after Gloria in Excelsis there is the solemn lowering and raising of the Cross I. . .] and then began the Veneration of the Cross in the middle of the nave, and we went down with the other ecclesiastics and did what they did, and then the Exarch of Georgia, before the whole congre gation, embraced the Bishop! It was really most moving [. . . ] . The following day they attended the Divine Liturgy at St Isaac's cathedral where the Bishop and his entourage were again honoured much as the night before. Amidst all this Grafton entered into the spirit of Orthodox piety in a way which impressed even the well-seasoned Birkbeck. 'It is such a blessing', writes Birkbeck, 'to have a Bishop who knows how to behave like a Bishop, and does what he ought to icons and relics [.. . ] ' . 2 1 Of course, Bishop Grafton did more than just attend the Liturgy. While still in St Petersburg he had occasion to meet and converse with the revered John of Kronstadt. Their chief topic of conversation was prayer and the reunion of the Church. In the last week of September Grafton and his companions travelled on to Moscow where they were the guests of Metropolitan Vladimir. Grafton was received at the Chudov monastery in the Kremlin. Much discussion with Orthodox officials took place during these weeks, yet Grafton also had occasion to visit not only churches and monasteries in and around the city, but some of the theological
16. Letter of Birkbeck to Lord Halifax, 6 September 1903, in K. Biikbeck, The Life and Letters of W.J. Birkbeck (London 1922), p.242. 17. So Giafton is repotted to have described his journey, ibid., p.241. 18. Letter of Biikbeck to Halifax, 14/27 September 1903, ibid., p.246. 19. Ibid., p.247. 20. Ibid., loccit. 21. Ibid., loccit.
44

institutes as well, meeting seminarians and professors. The party then returned to St Petersburg for conversations with Metropolitan Antonii. Bishop Grafton presented to Antonii a short letter, translated into Russian by Birkbeck, which laid out the essential doctrines of the Anglican Church with special emphasis on the prospect of intercommunion. Correspondence with Antonii of St Petersburg The Bishop and his chaplain returned to America on 8 November 1903. There, at the bidding of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Grafton continued his dis cussion with Antonii by letter, sending him some books on Anglicanism. This correspondence, consisted of only two letters from Grafton to Antonii, yet it provides a fascinating insight into the Bishop's own understanding of Anglicanism. The second letter (the lengthier of the two) focuses on issues and doctrines which pertain directly to the prospects of reunion. It begins with an acknowledgement of the needy condition of the Anglican Church, asserting that 'we [the Anglican Church] turn to the East and look towards Jerusalem with the eyes of children toward a mother'. 22 The Bishop goes on to note those many doctrines upon which both communions agree: the nature of the Church, the priesthood, the number of the sacraments, 'and the necessity of our union with Christ by a living, loving faith'. After condemning various innovations resulting from 'the rationalizing processes of the Latins', the letter explains some of the practices of the Episcopal Church which the Orthodox might find questionable. Among the more problematical areas, the letter first addresses the eucharistic doctrine of the Episcopal Church. After interpreting Article 28 of the Thirty-nine Articles so as to reject the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, the Bishop states that tne Anglican doctrine suggests 'a change, or a metabole, effected by conse cration', in which the essence of the bread and wine are not obliterated but mysteriously joined to the Body and Blood of Christ. This, he rightly asserts, is in conformity with Orthodox teaching. Attention is then turned to the place of the saints and especially to the place of 'the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary' in the life of the Church. Grafton contends that the prayers of the saints are desired by Christians not as 'client' to 'patron' (to use his words), but rather with a view of the saints as Christians who worship together with us in the Church of God which transcends all temporal and spatial boundaries. Here too he presents an attitude which is consistent with the Orthodox understanding of the Church and the Communion of Saints. The Bishop then turns to 'the greater barrier' between the two Churches, namely the use of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed. While acknowledging it as part of the Anglican tradition through her Western influence, yet also conceding the impropriety of the manner of its insertion, Grafton bluntly states that 'it is certainly to be admitted as a great satisfaction that there is between us no difference in doctrine'.
22 The text of the Letter is given in Works iv.262-70.
45

ERNEST C. MILLER

BISHOP GRAFTON OF FOND DU LAC AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

He then cites John of Damascus' discussion of the arche of the Trinity as the basis of the Anglican understanding of the relation between the three divine persons of the Godhead. Finally he turns his attention to the councils, more particularly to the dogmatic status of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Grafton points out that this council has nowhere been explicitly rejected amongst Anglicans. On the contrary, he notes that the liturgical life of the Anglican Church testifies to an implicit acceptance of the council's dogmatic decrees in affirming that worship (latreia) is due to God alone, but veneration (timetike proskinesis) to holy objects and people. Given this situa tion, says Grafton, 'we must not let its academic aspect separate us'. If Bishop Grafton's presentation of the faith held by the Episcopal Church in America was not always as reflective of the actual status quo as it might have been, nevertheless this letter testifies to the extent to which Grafton's own presentation of the doctrine of the Anglican Church was influenced by his understanding and appreciation of Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, the Bishop himself did not carry these discussions further, although he did send to Antonii a selection of books on Angli canism which, he thought, would describe the spirit, doctrinal and liturgical, of the Anglican tradition as understood and lived in the American Church. Sadly, no mention is anywhere made of the books which Bishop Grafton selected for this purpose. The aftermath On settling again in Fond du Lac the Bishop wrote a tract for more popular consumption entitled Oriental and Anglican in which he again reviewed the doc trinal divergences and similarities between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy. After a simplified treatment of such questions as the Eucharist, the Communion of Saints, the veneration of images and the Filioque, Grafton mused upon the direction which the Catholic revival in Anglicanism would take. 'What is the future of American Christianity to be?', he asks. And he answered: 'Surely [...] it will be avast advan tage if our Church is in recognised fellowship with the East [...] .' 23 No doubt it was with this vision in mind that Grafton continued his friendship with Bishop Tikhon in the United States. Invitations were sent to one another to attend important ecclesiastical functions in their respective churches; and in 1905, at Grafton's suggestion, Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary in Wisconsin conferred upon Tikhon, later the Patriarch of Moscow, the DD degree.24 By this time, how ever, seven years before his death in 1912, Grafton was quite an old man of 75 and his active involvement with Orthodoxy began to wane.
23. Works vi.353. 24. Tikhon became Metropolitan of Moscow in 1917 and at the end of the same year was elected as the first Patriarch of the Russian Church since 1700. He was to remain in office through the difficult years of persecution in the young Soviet state until his death in 1925. 46

The Kingdom attained Bishop Grafton's 'diplomatic' involvement with Orthodoxy is itself a note worthy episode in nineteenth-century ecumenism generally, and in the Catholic Movement in the States particularly. It was also to have its doctrinal expression. Grafton's presentation of the Eucharist reveals a desire to rethink the Anglican eucharistic liturgy in an Orthodox way. One of the Bishop's tracts on the Eucharist, Plain Suggestions for the Reverent Celebration of the Holy Communion has a final section called 'The Mystical Mean ing'. Of particular interest is his discussion of the 'fourth and last great division' of the service of Holy Communion. In the 1892 Book of Common Prayer, this fourth part of the eucharist consisted of six parts: (1) after the administration of the sacra ment the rubric directs that 'When all have communicated, the Minister shall return to the Lord's Table, and reverently place upon it what remaineth of the consecrated Elements, covering the same with a linen veil'; (2) the Lord's Prayer; (3) the PostCommunion Prayer; (4) the Gloria in Excelsis; (5) the blessing; and (6) the con suming of the remaining Elements. Laying aside all historical-critical discussion, Grafton describes this fourth part of the Eucharist as 'full of the spirit of the risen and ascended Christ'.25 Both the Lord's Prayer and the Post-Communion Prayer by their words and placement point toward the interpretation which the Bishop will give to the Gloria and the blessing. In the Lord's Prayer the congregation prays for the coming of the Kingdom ('thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven'). Then, in the Post-Communion Prayer the union of the Church both in time and space, and beyond, is affirmed: ' [ . . . ] we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son Jesus Christ, which is the blessed company of all faithful people'. In this context, then, his observations are set forth. One of his purposes is to criticise the Roman practice, then coming into vogue among some high-church Anglicans, of consuming the Elements immediately after the communion. Instead, Grafton pleads for obedience to the rubrics which direct the reservation of the remaining Elements on the altar until after the final blessing. This admonition was not at all an instance of mere rubricism on Grafton's part. I would suggest rather that his understanding of the goal of the eucharistic celebration led him to interpret this feature of the Anglican rite in a profoundly Orthodox manner. Noting that the Gloria in Excelsis and the blessing are, according to the rubrics, to be performed in the presence of the consecrated Elements, he comments that 'Like the apostles we assemble about our risen Lord [ . . . ] . We gather about Him as when the disciples took their last walk with Him in the glorious sunlight of His resurrection'.26 Moreover, in singing the angelic Gloria in the presence of the Gifts, 'we have been raised up and made to sit in heavenly places'.27 It is remarkable how similar this sounds to the emphasis on the ascension of the Church which is so central to the Orthodox understanding
25. Works vi.56. Italics mine. 26. Ibid., pp.56-7. 27. Ibid., p.57. 47

ERNEST C. MILLER

of the Eucharist. In the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, for instance, the priest prays to God the Trinity: Thou [. . .] didst not cease working all things until thou broughtest us up to heaven, and didst bestow on us thy Kingdom which is to come. Grafton points to this theme of ascension but from a somewhat different perspective: We gaze not up into a material heaven, but into the heaven whereof we form a part and wherein we are with the apostles, as when they gathered beneath the benediction of the uplifted hands, and worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 28 Naturally, the Western liturgical and theological tradition did not readily provide Grafton with a vocabulary to express this liturgical reality. Nevertheless, it is plain that he apprehends the heart of such a theology and is attempting to express it as best he is able. He too seems to perceive the eucharistic liturgy as culminating in that divine 'breakthrough' of which Fr Schmemann speaks,29 one which ushers the Church to the very table of the heavenly banquet in the Kingdom, where we 'sit in heavenly places'. In this way Grafton gives to the Gloria in Excelsis something of its original significance as a hymn of the resurrection; moreover, his emphasis on the presence of the resurrected Christ and the Kingdom suggests a decidely eschatological dimension to the liturgy, thus renewing in an unexpected way the ancient eucharistic tradition. Given this perspective, it is not surprising that the Bishop so disdained the practices of romanising high-churchmen for whom the eschatological, ascension character of the liturgy was of no account; such practices contradicted his more Eastern theology of the eucharistic celebration. Grafton's pilgrimage Charles Grafton's pilgrimage is one which has important ecumenical implications for Anglicans today. Schooled in the Fathers and the Anglican divines of great patristic erudition, Grafton quite naturally saw in the Orthodox Church of his own day an ally as well as a focus of ecumenical interest. This interest led him toward an appreciation and understanding of the contemporary Orthodox tradition which, in turn, influenced his own understanding of the doctrine and liturgy of Anglicanism in general, and of the Episcopal Church in particular. This pilgrimage is exemplified in his mystical understanding of the Eucharist. Certainly in some respects Grafton's presentation of Anglicanism may have been unrealistically optimistic in favour of Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, his life and witness speak prophetically today, providing as they do an example of the way in which Anglicans can gain new insights into their own tradition, both as it is and as it could be, through an examination and appropriation of the riches of Orthodoxy. For 'there are brightening prospects in the East'.
28. Ibid., loc.cit. 29. Alexander.Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood 1973), p.39.
48

Beholding the light of His Countenance: Solzhenitsyn and 11-81*

JOHN ARNOLD

Nothing illustrates better than his famous Prayer the unique combination of tradi tion and originality in Solzhenitsyn's writing: How easy it is for me to live with you, Lord! How easy it is for me to believe in you! When my mind is distraught and my reason fails, when the cleverest people do not see further than this evening and do not know what must be done tomorrow You grant me the clear confidence that you exist, and that you will take care that not all the ways of goodness are stopped. At the height of earthly fame I gaze with wonder at that path through hopelessness to this point, from which even I have been able to convey to men some reflection of the light which comes from you. And you will enable me to go on doing as much as needs to be done. And in so far as I do not manage it, that means that you have allotted the task to others. Here he talks with God as with a friend, or, indeed, as Ivan Denisovich talks to him self, recounting his day. Such talk is equidistant from the dull sloganising of official Soviet literature and from the contrived artistry of the new novel in the West. It is also unlike much conventional religious language. But it has the directness, crudity and disconcerting alternation between self-consciousness and self-forgetfulness of some of the Psalms. Its hallmark is authenticity. Solzhenitsyn uses living and lively
* Part of a paper given at the Fellowship Conference of 1981. Portions of the paper had earlier appeared in The Times. 49

JOHN ARNOLD

BEHOLDING THE LIGHT OF HIS COUNTENANCE: SOLZHENITSYN AND U-81

language as an instrument for getting at the truth about himself and about the world. The author is thus both subject and object of a probing vision, sustained by a passionate concern to understand the inner meaning of his own personal and social experience and clarified by the renunciation of despair, self-pity and false modesty. This true humility is characteristic of his heroes and heroines, all of whom are defeated, powerless, crippled by social, political and physical weakness, but en nobled by those qualities which in the Bible are ascribed to the poor. The very refusal to opt for comfortable words and the short cuts of superficial optimism leads Solzhenitsyn through the experience and remembrance of anguish to that 'clear confidence' which enables him not just to stand his ground, but also to love life ordinary, everyday life and to celebrate it as no other contemporary writer. 'I absolutely do not understand why Cancer Ward is accused of being anti-humanitarian', he said to the Secretariat of the Writers' Union in 1967. 'On the contrary [in my novel] life conquers death, and the past is overcome by the future'. Return from the house of the dead Solzhenitsyn writes of resurrection with authority. He was born in 1917 and wholly formed in Soviet Russia. His novels come out of the living death of imprison ment and mortal disease. He had volunteered for the Red army on the outbreak of war in 1941, was twice decorated for bravery and fell victim in 1945, not to the enemy, but to the charge of questioning in a private letter the strategical genius of 'Usatyi', the man with the moustache Stalin. He spent eight years in a variety of camps, followed by Siberian exile 'in perpetuity'. He had survived the war. Now he survived the camps only to face death a third time from inoperable cancer. Yet he survived again. He was released from exile after Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. He has faced both personal and impersonal evil the four horsemen of the twentieth-century apocalypse, War, Prison, Exile and Cancer. Like Dostoevsky a century earlier he came back from the house of the dead to warn his brethren (initially) in three great novels which are closely related to each other and to the author's life (The First Circle, Cancer Ward and One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich). Eventually he was to be exiled again, this time abroad; and the story is not over yet. The image of resurrection which characterises his life, is also appropriate for his contribution to literary form. Just as Bach in his day turned aside from the tempta tion of fashionable Italian opera and, for his masterpieces, took up and transfigured the traditional church music of his own country, so Solzhenitsyn has, with a new, well-tempered language, re-animated the Russian novel in recognisable continuity with the nineteenth-century masters Goncharov, Leskov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He shows himself to be what indeed he is, Russian and Orthodox, in loving and venerating the traditions of his country, his culture and his Church, not paying them lip service, but treating them as living sources and as streams of the life which triumphs through suffering in the struggle with death, deceit and decay.
50

Ivan Denisovich In the late 1950s Solzhenitsyn put aside the vast, unwieldy 'First Circle' for a while to write his masterpiece, One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, a novella less than one-fifth the size of its companion works. It is set in Karaganda, a complex of camps covering an area the size of France, with 100,000 prisoners servicing the industry, agriculture and mines of Kazakhstan. This is a low circle, but not the lowest; not as low as Oi-Muakoi (the coldest place on earth) or Vorkuta, Magadan or Solovki in the permafrost regions north of the arctic circle. Published in 1962 as the first truthful account of life in the camps, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich was not only a political sensation, breaking a tabu, but also a literary landmark. For he achieves here a rare and perfect unity of form and content. The story is neither pure fiction, nor even the fictionalised autobiography of The First Circle and Cancer Ward. We are made scarcely aware of the narrator and totally unaware of the author. Everything is experienced and expressed by one simple 'little man', Shukhov. The tale is told in his own words but in the third person singular, not the first person singular. For this is how Shukhov experiences his own existence in the camp, as a subjected object and as an objectified subject. This device gives Solzhenitsyn the distance the possibility of standing back from the picture which is so important in coming to terms with painful, humiliating and embittering experience. The emotion is recollected intensely recollected, but in tranquility. As Shukhov says of one of the other characters, 'he continued his story without self-pity, as if he were talking about somebody else'. This is the quality which gives to Solzhenitsyn's anonymous victims their Homeric character and their kinship with the dramatis personae of the great tradition of Russian realism. The bread on the cloth Shukhov finished up his gruel without making any effort to see who was sitting around him [ . . . ] . All the same, he noticed that when the man directly opposite him vacated his place, a tall, old man U-81 sat himself down Shukhov had been told that this old man had spent countless years in camps and prisons, and had never benefited from a single amnesty, and that whenever one ten-year sentence ran out, then they slapped another one on him immediately. Now Shukhov examined him closely. Among all those men in the camp with bent backs, his back stood out as straight as a board, and it seemed as if he had put something on the bench beneath him to lift himself up [ . . . ] . The old man's eyes didn't dart around to see what was going on in the mess-hall, but were fixed above Shukhov's head at some invisible spot of his own. He ate the thin gruel with a worn wooden spoon at his own pace, but he didn't bend his head towards the spoon but carried the spoon all the way to his mouth [ . . . ] . His face was quite drained of life, but did not look weak or unhealthy rather, looked dark and as if hewn out of stone. And from his hands, which were big and cracked and blackened, you could see that not much soft work had come his way in all those years. But it was clear that the one thing he wasn't going to do was give in: he wasn't going to put
51

JOHN ARNOLD

his bread, like everybody else, straight down on the filthy table - but on a piece of cloth which had obviously been washed many times.1 In this vignette Solzhenitsyn (artist rather than propagandist) draws an individual human being out of darkness for a moment and then lets him slip back into obscurity. He sets him before the eyes of Ivan Denisovich and therefore of the reader as a man who remains human in, and in spite of, his environment. U-81 has been tested, but through his testing he has preserved certain characteristics. First, he is upright. In spite of everything he is not bent like a beast of the field; he retains this essential element of being made in the image of God. Secondly, 'the old man's eyes didn't dart around to see what was going on in the mess-hall, but were fixed above Shukhov's head at some invisible spot of his own'. He is different, in that he lifts up his eyes and sees. He sees 'as one seeing the invisible'(Heb. 11:17). Thirdly, we should note the way he eats. He does not bend his head to the spoon, but he carries the spoon all the way to his mouth. That is to say, he eats as though he were giving himself Holy Communion according to the rites of the Orthodox Church. And last, the symbol par excellence of endurance and difference is that instead of putting the bread straight down on the table, he takes out a little square of care fully washed cloth and places the bread upon it. I ask, who habitually takes bread and places it on a little square of cloth? The suffering servant and his glory We do not know and I do not think it matters whether Solzhenitsyn means to say in his allusive way that U-81 is a priest or bishop. He may well be. We know that many such have spent long periods in the camps. Or U-81 may be a layman. But whatever his canonical status, U-81 is a man in the image of God, formed by a long liturgical tradition, surviving and reflecting as in a mirror the glory of a suffer ing servant. When I first read this page of One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich I thought of the collect for the Transfiguration, 'Grant unto us thy servants, that in faith behold ing the light of thy countenance, we may be strengthened to bear the cross and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory'. The transformation of human suffer ing in the light of faith in Christ is a common factor in the works of Solzhenitsyn. He is not just life-affirming; his work is truly eucharistic, for in it 'life conquers death, and the past is overcome by the future'.
1. A.I. Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, ti. Gillon Aitken (London 1970), ' p.l33f. 2. I habitually read the obituaries in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. For me the most moving part of each nekrolog is the gap in the middle. All the details of a man's career are given up to a certain point, often in the 1930s. Then there is a gap, and the narrative is resumed in the 1950s. Eloquent silence is also an art-form. 52 53

TV

, ,

OVERLEAF:

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Prologue for a carol service

John Heath-Stubbs To shepherds, watching at midnight (and if it was midwinter Impoverished, vagrant shepherds affluent pastors Had penned their flocks against the rough season) There breathes a music down from the pinpoint stars With signals of redemption manifesting Swift-pinnioned squadrons of unnumbered angels. Princedoms, dominations, virtues, powers we know them: Abstract laws, those that rule The operations of the elements, and keep The circling planets and the galaxies Each in its orbit, execute The stern judgements of history, impulses That meet us in a gleam of beauty, moments Of exaltation, insight, and of love. But if we could see them And we shall see them - standing In the bright morning at the end of time, They will be persons, unimagined beings That wheel and soar and sing, playing In the great river of glory as it flows On from the throne of God. And now their message is of incarnation. We join our human voices to that consort. How do we dare? The instruments of art Are fallible: rust and woodworm Shall nestle in the organ's citadel, chords of the larynx Falter and crack when frosty age shall grip them And all shall be brought low, sons and daughters of music. And yet so bold we must be, the occasion impels Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh But taking of the manhood into God. Now therefore, While shepherds watch, and herald angels sing, Christians awake, adeste, In royal David's city.
55

REPORTS

Reports
THE LIBRARY OF THE HOUSE OF ST GREGORY AND ST MACRINA, OXFORD: THE DJ. CHITTY PAPERS The Library of the House of St Gregory and St Macrina at Oxford is a specialist library containing books and periodicals on the Eastern Churches. The nucleus of this collection is formed by the personal library of the Revd Dr Derwas J. Chitty (1901-71), member of the Fellowship of St Albans and St Sergius from its foun dation in 1928, and author of The Desert a City (1966; reprinted 1978).1 After his death, Fr Chitty's books were entrusted to the care of St Gregory's House by the generosity of his widow, Mrs Mary Chitty. Included in the collection was a considerable number of his papers, which have now been roughly sorted into a series of boxes and files. Many of these papers represent materials intended to form the basis of publications which Fr Chitty never lived to complete, and some of these could well prove of interest to scholars working in the same areas. Other items, however, are of less importance, since they consist of notebooks, drafts of his published works, and so on. There is also a number of card indices,2 contain ing lexical and prosopographical materials connected with the Greek texts on which Fr Chitty was working over a period of more than forty years. The following list gives a brief indication of the contents of the series of boxes and files containing these papers. Any enquiries in connection with this archive should be addressed in the first instance to The Librarian, The House of St Gregory and St Macrina, 1 Canterbury Road, Oxford 0X2 6LU.
KALLISTOS WARE SEBASTIAN BROCK

BOX 3 BOX 4 BOX 5

BOX 6 BOX 7 BOX 8 BOX 9 BOX 10 BOX 11

John Climacus; Greek text and partial English translation. See also Files 4-6. Cyril of 'Scythopolis; Greek text. Miscellaneous materials on: 1. Cyril of Scythopolis. 2. Abba Isaiah.5 3. Evagrius; beginnings of an index. 4. Abba Isaiah; beginnings of a translation. See also File 24. 5. Abba Isaiah; index graecitatis. 6. Ammonas, Letters; index graecitatis. 1. Ephrem, Hymns against Julian; English translation. Apophthegmata (British Library, Add. 11869 and 22508); index graecitatis. See also File 7. Pachomiana; mainly English translations. See also Files 8-10. Carbon copies of articles, published and unpublished; some corres pondence. Miscellaneous. Assorted microfilms and photographs of manuscripts. Archaeological material from excavations at St Euthymius etc. in cluding some small fragments of wall paintings on plaster. See also Box 1. Barsanuphius. See also Box 2. John Climacus. See also Box 3. Apophthegmata. See also Box 6. Pachomiana. See also Box 7. Life of Peter the Iberian; typed English translation. Athanasius. Life of Antony, Letters to Dracontius and to Amun; index graecitatis. Marcian (British Library. Add.28825). Gregory of Nazianzus, Homily on Theophany, from Bodleian manu scripts. Miscellaneous translations of liturgical texts. Miscellaneous notes from reading of texts. Nicodemus, Invisible Warfare; English translation.

FILES 1-3 FILES 4-6 FILE 7 FILES 8-10 FILE 11 FILE 12 FILE 13 FILE 14 FILE 15 FILE 16 FILE 17

BOX 1 BOX 2

Materials on the excavations at St Euthymius etc. in the Judaean Desert.3 See also Box 11. Barsanuphius; Greek text.4 See also Files 1-3.

1. For an account of Fi Chitty's life and a list of his writings, see Eastern Churches Review vi(1974), pp.1-14. 2. It should be noted that many of these are not by any means complete. 3. Cf. reports in Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement 1928-30, 1932. 4. Cf. Patrologia Orientalis xxxi, fasc.3. 56

5. Cf. Journal of Theological Studies, n.s.xxii (1971), pp.47-72. 57

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REPORTS

FILES 18-20 Ascetica, including Greek life of St Dositheus, partial index to some of Basil's works, and materials on the Historia Monachorum. FILE 21 FILE 22 FILE 23 FILE 24 FILE 25 FILE 26 Articles and addresses (published and unpublished). Typescript and proofs of The Desert a City. Three miscellaneous notebooks. Abba Isaiah; provisional text, typed. See also Box 5. Marcus Eremita; index graecitatis. Marcus Eretnita; includes collation of Bodleian ms Laud. 84.

COMMUNIQUE This year's meeting of the Anglican/Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission met at the Orthodox Patriarchal Centre at Chambesy in Geneva as guests of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 20 July to 27 July 1981. After separate preliminary meetings from 1966 onwards, joint meetings of the Full Commission and its Sub-Commissions have taken place annually since 1973. The three Sub-Commissions on this occasion dealt with the topics of The Mystery of the Church, Participation in the Grace of the Holy Trinity, and Tradition. In each case it was agreed that the topics would require further consideration at the Sub-Commissions' next meeting at Canterbury from the 12 to 19 July 1982, when papers will be presented on the topics of the Apostolicity of the Church, Christian Holiness, and Christian Worship. The report of the first Sub-Commission on the Mystery of the Church acknow ledged that the Church has been entrusted with a message of reconciliation for man kind. 'All this drives us to seek unity amongst ourselves, in order to contribute to the healing of the divisions of mankind', continues the preliminary report. 'The unity of the Church is expressed in common faith and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It takes concrete form as the Church, gathered round the Bishop in the common celebration of the Holy Eucharist, proclaims Christ's death till he comes'. With regard to the Holy Trinity, the second Sub-Commission strongly asserted that at the heart of the Christian life there lies a personal experience of God, who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. 'We must not understand doctrinal formulae in any way which detracts from the mystery of God, which is handed down in the Church from the Apostles by the Fathers', the report continues. Anglicans expressed their appreciation for the Orthodox exposition of the doctrine concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the new perspective this gave on the doctrinal reasons why the Filioque has no place in the Creed. The third Sub-Commission dealing with Tradition considered both theological and pastoral questions. It was emphasised that Tradition has a great importance as a dynamic reality in Church life. The preliminary report acknowledges that within the freedom of the Anglican Communion there is a commitment and responsibility to Tradition. It was also agreed that on the Orthodox side, there exists freedom and understanding of Tradi tion as the constant action of the Holy Spirit in the Church. During the week, the delegates visited the Geneva headquarters of the World Council of Churches, where they were warmly welcomed. They also had the oppor tunity to visit the ancient city of Yvoire in France.

ANGLICAN-ORTHODOX JOINT DOCTRINAL DISCUSSIONS 1981 The meetings of AOJDD in the summer of 1981 for the most part went very smoothly indeed following the resolution of certain problems of procedure and organisation at Llandaff the year before. The official communique is given below and gives some indication of the subjects covered. It is envisaged that in 1982 we should do further work in SubCommissions and that in 1983 all the materials circulated since 1977 should be used to produce another Agreed Statement. In my own memory several things stand out. In the first Sub-Commission there was a valuable morning spent on the church situations from which each member came. There were two moments of real illumination in the second Sub-Commission, the first when Anglicans at last got to the bottom of what one of the Orthodox representatives was saying about his approach to the doctrine of the Trinity, the second (for me) when trying to record accurately what he had been saying and finding that it seemed to be the opposite of what I had imagined it to be! There was the moment when Dr John Mbiti (Kenya) pointed out that a report on the doctrine of the Church looked to him like 'a rather beautiful picture in a museum' but said nothing as yet of the joy of the people in Africa, Asia or the Pacific who became Christians for the first time and experienced a new life, a deliverance, such as they had never known before. Throughout the week there was also the continuous experience of sharing alter nately in Orthodox and Anglican worship in the striking new church at the Orthodox Centre, whose frescoes by the Greek painter Rallis Kopsides combine ancient forms of iconography with a modern style of execution.
COLIN DAVEY

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59

OBITUARIES

Obituaries
BISHOP SAMUEL

The 'little ones' especially were close to his heart. Anyone who knows something of his work among the garbage collectors, living in thousands in the slums on the outskirts of Cairo, will realise that he was not concerned with 'charity', but with giving assistance for self-help. He founded training centres and technical schools for them, in order to enable them to become active members of society, always showing deep respect for each and all, be they Copts, other Christians or Moslems. In those who were suffering, he saw only the human being, and in him Christ him self.

Samuel, bishop of the Coptic Church in Egypt for Ecumenical Relations and Social Services, was killed on 6 October 1981 by the same shots which killed President Sadat. In him the Church ofChrist lost one of her sons respected and beloved the world over, far beyond her own boundaries. His funeral, attended by eight or ten thousand people, among them Christians of all confessions, Moslem and Govern ment delegates, bore witness to that. Born in 1920, Bishop Samuel was one of the pioneers of the present-day renewal movement in the Coptic Church. Already as a student, forty years ago, he began to be active in the 'Sunday School Movement', a catechetical and missionary move ment for children and adults, especially those living as small Christian minorities in Moslem villages, with a view to grounding, encouraging and strengthening them in their faith. As one of the first young intellectuals, he entered monastic life, joining one of the ancient desert monasteries in Wadi-el-Natroun: El-Souryan, where, he said, he was soon followed by others, among them the present Pope and Patriarch Shenouda III and the present Metropolitan of Beni Souef, Athanasius. These young pioneers were part of a monastic movement which has been constantly growing since and which has re-populated the desert monasteries with large numbers of young graduates: doctors, engineers, architects and others. While continuing the ascetic and prayer life of the desert Fathers and attracting many seekers and young people whose spiritual fathers they became, they are at the same time concerned with modern agricultural development, with teaching people from the villages how to make the desert blossom. Many of the present church leaders of the Coptic Church came out of this renewal movement, of which Bishop Samuel remained one of the pillars. Bishop Samuel, known for many years (before his episcopal consecration) as Fr Makary-El-Souryani, was active in the ecumenical movement almost since its beginnings. For over twenty years he was a member of the WCC Central Committee and of its commissions. He was actively involved, too, in the All African Conference of Churches (AACC) and in the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), being one of its three presidents. Always concerned for unity and reconciliation, open to all from whatever national or confessional background, he was respected and appreciated everywhere for his wisdom and experience, his love and care for great and small alike.
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Ifcs*

ABOVE

Bishop Samuel with Pope Shenouda III (1979)

Photo: John Taylor

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It was Bishop Samuel who began to found church communities among the Copts dispersed abroad. Ever since 1958 he visited them in USA, Canada and in the dif ferent countries of western Europe. The Coptic parishes abroad, among them one in Great Britain and eight in West Germany, as well as the Coptic Orthodox Centre with the St Antonius Monastery (a spiritual centre for western Europe, founded near Frankfurt in 1980) are unthinkable without his initiative and constant care. Bishop Samuel's last (and very delicate) service was to chair the Five Bishops' Committee, instituted by President Sadat for negotiations with the State on 5 September 1981 when the President took strong action against the Moslem extremists and, in the course of that, against the Coptic Church as well, banning Pope Shenouda into the desert monastery of St Bishoy and imprisoning eight bishops, sixteen priests and many laymen of the Coptic Church. On 7 September Patriarch Shenouda was to write from his enforced retreat: 'From the depth of my heart I pray for the success [of the Five Bishops' Committee] in all their work. They are all distinguished Fathers, with long experience in service, and they are the subject of my love'. Only a month later he was to write I present my condolences to all of you for the passing away of Bishop Samuel. I have greatly grieved for him and wept a great deal, remembering a loving relationship with a brother that lasted 32 years, starting in 1949. Bishop Samuel was kind-hearted, energetically active and ready to serve. We worked together with sincerity and in a spirit of co-operation. He accompanied me on all my journeys, and he passed away without my bidding him farewell. May his soul rest in peace. I have celebrated a Liturgy in his memory on 7 October at noon when I offered special prayers and supplications. Who could possibly fill the gap, or the many gaps left by him? Bishop Samuel did not only leave gaps in connection with his work but especially in connection with his pastoral care and loving heart [ . . . ] . May you rest in peace. Peace to the Holy Church and peace to our dear nation. May God be with you. Pray for me. Pray for us, Bishop Samuel.
ILSE FRIEDEBERG

PATRIARCH ELIAS IV His Beatitude Elias IV Mu'awwad, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, died in Damascus on 21 June 1979 at the age of 6 5. Though his patriarchate was comparatively short (he was enthroned on 27 September 1970), it was parti cularly remarkable for the strong support he lent to the Arab cause in the Middle East. Born in 1914 at Arsoun in the Lebanon, he studied initially at the patriarchal school in Damascus, from which he graduated in 1935; subsequently he continued his studies at the Theological school of Halki (1935-9). He was ordained deacon in 1934, and priest in 1939. In the latter year he was raised to the rank of archiman drite. From 1939 until 1941 he served as rector of the seminary at Balamand (Lebanon), and then, from 1941 until 1947, he taught theology and Arabic philology at the patriarchal school in Damascus. After this he spent three years (1947-50) in charge of the Arabic-speaking Orthodox community in Rio de Janeiro. In May 1950 he was elected Metropolitan of Aleppo, and during his time as metro politan he represented the Patriarchate of Antioch at all the Pan-Orthodox con ferences (1961, 1963, 1964 and 1968). He succeeded Theodosius VI on the patriarchal throne in 1970, at a time of schism within the patriarchate, and it was an indication of his diplomacy and tact that the four dissident bishops were shortly afterwards reconciled. As patriarch he made a number of important visits abroad, to Greece in 1971, to the USSR in 1972 and 1974, to Pakistan, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria in 1974, to Saudi Arabia in 1975, and to the USA in 1977. The visits to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were of particular significance. The occasion of the former was the Islamic Conference held in Lahore in February 1974, to which a Christian delegation from the Middle East had been invited by the Pakistan Government. As head of this dele gation the Patriarch was given the singular honour of addressing this very large gathering of Muslim theologians. His speech, which mainly concerned the attitude of Middle Eastern Christians to the Palestinian question and the issue of the occupied Old City of Jerusalem, was well received and did much to ease the course of the Muslim-Christian dialogue in the Middle East. Indeed such was his popularity among Muslim Arabs in general that he came to be known among them as 'the Patriarch of the Arabs'. When he visited Saudi Arabia in May of the following year (1975), he was received by King Khaled himself. The discussions which took place in Jiddah bore remarkable fruit, for permission was given for the creation of a metropolitan see in the province of Al-Hasa, to serve the considerable number of Greek and Christian Arab workers in the oil fields there. Such a concession in this homeland of Islam is a signal indication of the respect in which he was held in the Arab world. Patriarch Elias spoke six languages. He proved a wise and courageous leader for his Church in troublesome times, and he was not afraid to innovate or to take
63

ANTIOCH The last few years have witnessed the deaths of two Patriarchs of Antioch, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Ilyas (Elias) TV, and the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III. Since their lifetimes span a period in the histories of their Churches perhaps as important as any since the Arab conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century, we are including the following two notices. The first, briefer and largely factual, account is derived in part from information to be found in the Chronique o/Proche Orient Chretien (1974, 1975 and 1979), while for the second we are fortunate in having a more extended personal assessment. S.P.B.
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difficult decisions. During his period of office he won the love, sympathy and admiration of both Christians and Muslims in the Middle East, and he must be counted among the great pioneers of peace, unity and reconciliation in that turbu lent area. His influence as a Christian leader extended well beyond the bounds of the Orthodox world.
ANDREAS TILLYRIDES and SEBASTIAN BROCK

PATRIARCH IGNATIUS YACOUB III Mar Ignatius Yacoub III, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, who died in Damascus on 26 June 1980, had lived through a particularly difficult period in the history of his Church. As a child he witnessed the persecution of his people in south-eastern Turkey, and the uprooting from Turkey of many of those who survived the massacres. As a young man he lived through the tumultous years that saw the birth of nationalist Arab states, with such important consequences for the Christians of the Middle East. In his years as patriarch he was faced by the problems posed by the increasing emigration of the Syrian Orthodox people from the Middle East. It is a measure of the man that he was ready to face the problems that these new times presented. He did not always find the solutions (it may be that there are none?), but at least he was very conscious of the questions. His Holiness Mar Ignatius Yacoub was born on 12 October 1912 in Bartelli, a large village lying twelve miles from Mosul (Iraq), almost entirely populated by Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholics, and having a long and venerable history in the annals of the Syrian Orthodox Church. His given family name was Saba, and he was the son of Toma (Thomas), in turn the son of Gabriel. It is perhaps parti cularly appropriate that the patriarch who was to witness such an era of change should have been born into an environment so deeply steeped in the traditions of his people. Mar Ignatius Yacoub was later to refer to Bartelli as 'the capital of the Syrian region around Nineveh'. At the age of eleven Saba was sent to study at the seminary school attached to the nearby ancient monastery of Mar Mattai. There he showed a natural inclination towards a monastic and priestly vocation. His years at Mar Mattai were formative, providing him with a deep knowledge of the language, culture and ecclesiastical traditions of Syriac Christianity. Years later, in 1961, he was to publish a history (in Arabic) of this monastery which has particular associations with the name of Gregory Abu'l Faraj, or Barhebraeus, the great polymath of the thirteenth century. After spending eight years at Mar Mattai, the future patriarch was sent, in 1931, to Beirut, to the Syrian Orthodox orphanage which had been established there in the aftermath of the massacres of the Syrian Orthodox and Armenian people. Here he was appointed to teach the Syriac catechism. Two years later he took his 64

monastic vows in Horns (Syria), taking the name in religion 'Abd al-Ahad. This was early in the patriarchate of Mar Ignatius Ephrem I Barsoum, who had recently moved the official seat of the patriarchate to Horns. A close relationship between the patriarch and the new monk was begun and was to continue for many years, even though 'Abd al-Ahad was sent to India in the year he took his vows. In India he was to serve as secretary to the patriarchal legate. He remained in India for thirteen years. He was made deacon and ordained priest in 1934. He was appointed professor and later dean at the theological seminary of St Ignatius in Kerala. After returning to the Middle East in 1945 he became a member of the faculty of the patriarchal seminary of St Ephrem in Mosul, where he was also responsible for initiating the publication of a journal devoted to Syriac and Arabic studies. In 1950 he was appointed patriarchal vicar for the diocese of Beirut and Damascus, and several months later he was consecrated as bishop for this diocese (12 December 1950). As bishop he took the name of Severios Yacoub, in commemoration of Bartelli's most illustrious son, Mar Severios Yacoub bar Shakko, bishop and writer of the thirteenth century. On the death of Patriarch Mar Ignatius Ephrem I in 1957 he was elected by the Holy Synod as patriarch on 14 October 1957, and was enthroned on 27 October. He took the name Ignatius Yacoub III (Ignatius has been assumed as a name by all Syrian Orthodox patriarchs since 878). One of his first acts (1959) was to move the patriarchal residence from Horns to Damascus in view of the increasing importance of the Syrian capital, and among his earliest concerns was the healing of the schism in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India. Largely as a result of his efforts this breach, which had opened up in 1911, was healed in December 1958. In 1964 he was to journey to India to instal a new catholicos, Mar Basil Augen I. Throughout his patriarchate Mar Ignatius Yacoub travelled widely. His purpose was two-fold, establishing and renewing ecumenical contacts, and ministering to his increasingly scattered people. Among the most important of the Patriarch's journeys were two visits to Rome. In October 1971 he met Pope Paul VI: this was the first meeting of its kind since the division between the Churches arising from the Council of Chalcedon (451). In 1980, only a few weeks before his death, he met with Pope John Paul II, and the two leaders prayed together for the unity of the Churches. He also took the oppor tunity to meet Patriarch Demetrios during a visit to the Syrian Orthodox community in Istanbul (October 1973). He visited the World Council of Churches at Geneva on various occasions. Indeed it was during his patriarchate that the Syrian Orthodox Church became, in 1960, a member of the WCC. He was actively involved in the synod of the Oriental Orthodox (so-called 'Monophysite') Churches which at Addis Ababa in 1965 began its work of determining the common position of these Churches in order to facilitate their rapprochment with other Churches. In 1979 he visited England, meeting both the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been particularly anxious to make this visit, since it was in some sense a cen65

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tennial commemoration of a visit made to England in 1875 by the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Peter IV.1 On a visit to Gottingen in West Germany (1971) he addressed a congress of orientalists on the history of his church.2 Pastoral ministrations to the growing Syrian Orthodox diaspora in Europe took him in 1979 to Holland, where he consecrated Mar Yulios as metropolitan of the new Syrian Orthodox archdiocese of Middle (Central) Europe.3 He had previously established a new diocese for Scandinavia and Great Britain (1977). The Patriarch was an accomplished linguist and writer, and his knowledge of lan guages included English and Malayalam (a heritage of his years in India). He was the author of over forty works in Arabic and Syriac, a member of the Arabic Language Council and Academy of Damascus, and also of the Scientific Academy of Iraq. He was the recipient of two honorary doctorates. His work on the Himyarite martyrs of South Arabia and his history of the monastery of Mar Mattai are particularly notable. His own early career in theological education led him to an appreciation of its importanae in the life and renewal of the Church. He was responsible for transferr ing the patriarchal seminary of St Ephrem to new and purpose-designed buildings at Atchaneh outside Beirut in the Lebanon (1968). He was an ecumenist both on the official and unofficial level. As well as leading his Church into the WCC and encouraging it to take part in various bi-lateral dialogues, it was under his guidance that the Syrian Orthodox Church became the first of the Eastern Churches to join the Near East Council of Churches (now the MECC). But on a different level the hospitality and charm that he extended towards western visitors made a marked impression upon them. He welcomed close personal relationships with the Anglican Church, and my husband can testify to the warmth with which he was welcomed when he taught for two years at the seminary at Atchaneh. Perhaps fittingly, a learned orientalist from the west, Dr Arthur Voobus, was there to visit him when he died. He had come to study manuscripts with the Patriarch, and remained for his funeral. At heart Mar Ignatius Yacoub III was a man of the Middle East. He had to wrestle with the troubles that his community faced as a Christian minority con fronted with the problem of emigration, a community trying hard to survive as an entity in the Middle East today. It is a particular problem for Christians of the Syriac tradition, since many of their number are inclined to see their identity and visualise their destiny as something completely separate from that of the Arab
1. The visit of Mar Ignatius Peter IV was notable among other things because, at the request of Queen Victoria, he prayed in Syriac over the tomb of Prince Albert. The visit also resulted in contacts between the Church of England and the Syrian Orthodox Church being opened up. 2. This address was subsequently published in English, The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch (Atchaneh 1974). 3. See 'The Syrian Orthodox Church in Europe', Sobornost/ECR 2:2 (1980), pp.66-7. 4. Details of his writings can be found in R. Macuch, Geschichte der spat- und neusyrische. Literatur (Berlin 1976), pp.453-5. 66

tion in Poland was of Latin rite and from 1935 to 1938 he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Vilna. The worsening political situation obliged him to complete his studies abroad, first at the Gregorian University and then at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. There he was ordained a priest of the Byzantine rite in 1940. He obtained his doctorate with a thesis on Jason Smogorzewski, the 18thcentury Uniate Metropolitan, and the following year came to London as Rector of the Byelorussian Catholic Mission for refugees from Eastern Europe. Here he estab lished Marian House, a centre in Finchley, North London. From the first he took a friendly interest in the work of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius and was a welcome visitor at St Basil's House. He was elevated to the episcopacy in 1950, and in 1961 was elected Superior General of the Marian Fathers (an office he held for seven years). Bishop Ceslaus was thus able to take a full part in the Second Vatican Council, where his particular concerns were shared between the documents on the Eastern Churches and on the Religious Life. He remained a member of the Oriental Congregation and of the Vatican Commission for Oriental Canon Law until the end of his life. His appoint ment as the Apostolic Visitor for Byelorussians with the spiritual care of the Bye lorussian Catholic community world-wide involved much travelling abroad. It is probable that his generous and conscientious response to these commitments led to the heart condition which eventually caused his death. Beyond all his 'official' duties Bishop Ceslaus's zest and the value he placed on God's gift of life, found outlets in many cultural, ethnic and ecumenical initiatives in London. In 1954 he became a founder of the Anglo-Byelorussian Society. In 1961 he established St Cyril's House as a residence for Byelorussian students and in 1971 he established the Francis Skaryna Byelorussian Library and Museum. These are in the same complex as Marian House and the original building with its Byzantine-rite Chapel is now the centre piece of four houses. It is also the head quarters of the Society of St John Chrysostom, with which he was actively con cerned since its revival in 1959, and of which he was chairman until his death. This Society, which has the double aim of educating western-rite Catholics in an under standing of their eastern brethren and of promoting unity between Rome and other Eastern Churches, gave the Bishop many opportunities of working in the cause of peace and unity which was always close to his heart. Amid all these interests and concerns, however, Bishop Ceslaus never forgot the plight of the suffering and persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe, among whom were members of his own family. It was particularly fitting, therefore, that his last public engagement was on the Sunday before his death when he led the sixth annual 'Pilgrimage of Crosses' organised by Aid to the Church in Need. This took place at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and was itself an 'ecumenical' event supported by many ethnic groups. As a Marian Father Bishop Ceslaus had a deep personal devotion to Mary, the Theotokos. His address at this gathering has been published as a cassette by ACN.
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world in which they now live. Moves towards Assyrian nationalism have'also begun to affect the Syrian Orthodox Church over the last few years. In the face of such tendencies Mar Ignatius Yacoub insisted, probably rightly, that his Church should be fully a part of the Arab Middle East. He had a profound respect for the Arabic language, and he expressed himself forcefully against the occupation of Arab Jerusalem, identifying himself closely with the Arab cause. In 1979 a synod con vened by the Patriarch specifically disavowed the tenets of the Assyrian nationalist movement. The life of the Patriarch spanned an era of change. Perhaps he was a little too much of an autocrat for the 1980s, perhaps it needs a new face and fresh impetus to try to solve the problem of the Church in India which have unfortunately erupted again in recent years, perhaps it is time for new ideas and new vigour to deal with the new problems that emigration is now bringing. But for all his authority he had a simplicity that made him a most attractive person, infecting others with a love for the culture of his Church. One of my husband's favourite memories of his years at Atchaneh is of the day that the Patriarch entertained a group of visiting orientalists. As they were about to sit down to lunch, one of the visiting scholars asked the Patriarch a question about Syriac chant. In response the Patriarch burst into song to demonstrate what he meant. Others around could not resist joining in, and soon a Syriac song-swapping session developed which lasted a couple of hours. Much later a group of scholars eventually began their lunch. They were by then very hungry. But they had gained a special insight into the beauty and depth of this Christian people's culture which none of them would ever forget.
CLARE BIRCH AMOS

In recent years death has sadly depleted the number of Byzantine-rite priests at Marian House. Happily the authorities concerned are well aware of the value of its witness under Bishop Ceslaus and the present intention is that, with God's help, the good work initiated by the Bishop will be continued.
HELLE GEORGIADIS

Obituaries for Archbishop Alexis van der Mensbrugghe and the Revd Dr Edward R. Hardy are to appear in the next number o/Sobornost/ECR.

BISHOP CESLAUS SIPOVICH The ecumenical fraternity in England has been much impoverished by the sudden death of 4 October 1981 of Bishop Ceslaus Sipovich. He was the first Byelorussian Catholic bishop of Eastern rite since the Uniate Church was suppressed in Russia in 1839. His name rarely made the headlines and he never sought publicity. But he was deeply committed to Christian unity and a tireless worker for this cause. Bishop Ceslaus was born into a poor farming family at Dziedzinka, northern Byelorussia, on 8 December 1914. He had a robust and cheerful attitude to life but with a sensitive sympathy for his fellow men and a remarkable gift of making friends through every chance meeting with strangers. His unassuming simplicity hid an exceptionally astute and highly trained intellect and his qualities of mind and character brought him early recognition in the Catholic Church. He joined the Marian Fathers in 1933, having been a boy at their school in Druja. The Congrega68 69

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Reviews
The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, from Plato to Denys by Andrew S u t h (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981, pp.xviii + 216, 12.50). r ,hat has been called 'Christian mysticism' truly Christian? This is a question \ S ^ e e T M t o d since at least A. Ritschl, and which modern Protestants, with which has been as* a t i v e l y a n d eVen contemptuously - for example, Erml few ^ ^ ^ 3 N y ^ e n and, more recently, G. Ebeling. And Friedrich Brunner, Karl Barth m yg ^ of ^ . ^ m mystlclsni) 2 ; ; ^ S thanlnybody in his book o n ^ 1 that 'mysticism' ^ n S e t d y foreign in origin and content to the biblical tradition in general and to ft, T o d to particular. Bit however impressive such a consensus may seem at first * ht its ut er Maciousness is revealed not only by any seriously^critical approach fn the question, such as that, of Andrew Louth, but even by the mere semantic ^udt of the temi mystikos. Such a study should convince any scholar worthy of fhe name that provided we do not take 'mysticism' in an utterly vague sense or else iefineTt i n M abstract according to unhistorical a priori criteria, it would be much more defensible to maintain there there is no 'mysticism' in the proper sense out^ M y ^ e ^ u T S s m of the present book is that although the author has J thTtex with the most perceptive insight, he has, strangely enough not read the texts wi F Illuminating essay of Dom TeZ sTolz has b come too odious to be left aside. Nevertheless, although f ^ l h S V s arts with an analysis of Plato and the neo-platonists he has resented us with a beautiful vindication of the fully Christian nature of Christian S i c S which only those who base their judgments on hearsay or prejudice will ? y S T o refeet It is high time that such a survey should have been produced, when even Tfaiholfc priest and religious, Pere A.-J. Festugiere who is also a 1 s t dais scholar, at least in Greek philosophy and the spirituality it has tended to o er L come to endorse the negative view of Christian mysticism mentioned hove In fact Louth makes clear even in his study of Plato and the neo-platonists L t it to only by reading into their texts a Christian substance which was never S e in the first place that we can come later to the strange accusation that the S a n mystics found their mysticism not in the sources of Christianity but only <w was and will ever remain foreign to it. m Of ou r e th^is not to say that, to begin with, the theological systematisation of S S T m y r t i c i - r n , which was to be the work of some of the greatest Fathers of
, it h one of the surprises of the bibliography of the present volume that Hetler's book is mentioned there without any reservation.
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the Church, did not make free use of many terms and even ideas borrowed from the Greek, and more specifically, from the platonist tradition. But what Louth's very careful and-precise analysis of the texts brings into sharp focus is that all the basic notions have undergone in the process such a transformation, and even transposition, that the same words no longer connote the same realities. As he makes crystal clear, the whole matter turns upon the introduction of the purely biblical notion of a personal God who is the Creator of man, as opposed to a finally impersonal deity, of which the human soul could be seen as a mere sparkle. Therefore instead of a (so-called) mysticism implying only a rediscovery by man of his true nature, and a mere return to its primeval condition, we have the genuinely Christian mysticism of a purely gratuitous gift enabling man to become through his surrender in faith and love to the generous initiative of a loving God what he could never have dreamt of becoming through his own endeavour. Behind all this is the purely biblical vision of a God of love meaning purely generous love, the communication not only of what one has but of what one is and its culmination in the evangelical vision of that same divine love 'poured into our hearts by the Spirit of God who has been given to us' as St Paul has it. Here again it is a pity that Louth has paid so little attention to semantics. The use of two Greek words (or the lack of their use) by those whom Augustine calls simply 'the platonists' and by the Christian Fathers is most revealing. Both Plotinus and the Cappadocians (especially Gregory of Nyssa) use henosis as a description of that which takes place at the highest level of what we would call their respective forms of mystical experience. However, it is only the Christian Fathers who use the word with a complement: henosis to theo or to Christo union with God or with Christ. The neo-platonists instead use henosis absolutely. For them it has the mean ing not of union with 'another' but of unification. When we recover our funda mental unity as beings, we are again 'being' itself, in other words 'divine'. This leads immediately to a second semantic fact which is no less remarkable. How many times, especially since Harnack, have the Greek Fathers been reproached for not only having hellenized but having paganised Christianity by insisting on the theosis (or theopoiesis) of the Christian by Christ on a supposed ontological association of man with God, and even assimilation to God through Christ seen as the incarnate God? It is remarkable that the use of these words with this particular meaning is purely Christian. In platonist or neo-platonist literature especially it is never applied to anything of the kind. More generally, when theosis appears in non-Christian texts it means the same as apotheosis and involves the public acknowledgement that a being who appeared to be a man was in fact a God. As for theopoiesis, it is used only of the making of idols. This is easily explained by the fact that the only occasions on which we find something approaching the Christian view in Plotinus is when he says that he who recovers the original unity of his own being 'becomes God'. However, it is typical of his deeper thinking that he corrects himself immediately, saying 'or rather is God'.
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He means of course that since the soul is essentially divine, having only lost the consciousness of being so, it has only to receive its deeper unity to realise its own divinity. Louth has an excellent chapter on Origen. His chapter on the effect of the Nicene controversy is no less interesting but perhaps more uneven, again, I would say, because he has not paid sufficient attention to the linguistic aspects of the spiritual theology of the Fathers. It is this, I think, which leads him to the strange notion that Athanasius was fundamentally 'anti-mystical'. This, I think, is just non sensical. Either one expresses in our own terminology the realities which were then discussed while that terminology did not exist, or one considers the process through which the terminology was eventually to emerge. If one does the former, I would say rather that Athanasius has provided Gregory of Nyssa and his followers precisely with the ideas which they were simply to synthesise and re-express in the mystical terminology of which they are if not exactly the creators at least the ultimate organisers. For Athanasius the concept of theosis is absolutely central. It expresses the reality of our association with Christ's fully divine sonship. The whole of Christianity is a communication to man of the divine life, or rather, his association with this life, in so far as it was made possible for mankind as a consequence of the incarnation of the Son-Logos in our own flesh. Now this is exactly what is described explicitly by Gregory of Nyssa and all those whom he has influenced Evagrios Pontikos, pseudo-Makarios, and finally pseudo-Dionysios as the substance of that experience (peira) to which they are the first to apply the regular qualification of mystical mystikos. But in spite of what is constantly repeated in the manuals, and more generally in the second-hand modern literature on the subject, not only is there not a single really convincing example among the earlier Fathers of this specific use of the word mystikos, but nothing even remotely approaches it among the platonists or neo-platonist philosophers. Plotinus, for example, never uses the word mystikos in whatever sense, and only once uses mystikds, the adverb, apply ing it, however, not to any kind of experience or process concerning man and the higher life, but simply to an allegorical explanation of mythology. This leads me directly to what is so unhappily lacking in Louth's book: in spite of the very high quality of his textual studies, he never raises the fundamental question of how many people, whether Christian or not, come to the idea of a mystical experience, and apply the term to an experience of union with God, or more exactly, to an experience of assimilation of human life to the life of God himself. Had he tried to answer this question, with all his accuracy and insight, he would certainly have been struck, as have all those who have embarked on the task in the steps of Dom Anselm Stolz, by the palpable evidence of the texts. Never did anything of this kind take place among the neo-platonists, but it is a very characteristic feature of the development of the vocabulary in depen dence on a development of the most specifically Christian aspect of their expe rience among the Fathers who were more directly interested in spiritual problems. As I myself and others before or after me have shown simply by aligning
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the texts, it corresponds to a third phase of semantic development of the meaning of the word mystikos in direct connection with mysterion, which is purely and only Christian. In the first phase, which is especially noticeable in the writings of the school of Alexandria in the 3rd century and also in independent witnesses elsewhere among the earlier Fathers, mystikos is applied to the specifically Christian interpretation of the whole Bible in so far as it centres upon the mystery of Christ in the specific meaning which the phrase has from St Paul, or more exactly, as it is applied to Christ himself seen as the 'mystery', as the last word of the 'wisdom' of God, of his design for the redemption and adoption of mankind (see 1 Cor. 1 and 2). With Origen, as he emphasises the development of the Pauline mystery in the epistle of his captivity, it focuses more especially upon what Paul himself calls 'Christ in us, the hope of glory'. Thus we have a first and decisive orientation towards the sense of mystikos as applied to spiritual experience. However, the final transition to this takes place only after the appearance of a second level of meaning in dependence upon the first in the word mystErion, still taken in conjunction with mystikos that which applies these words to the Christian sacraments, especially the introduction to the Eucharist through baptismal initiation. According to the doctrinal development of the 'mystagogical catechesis' in the 4th century (see especially Cyril [or John?] of Jerusalem), this introduces the believer into an actual though hidden participation in the mystery of Christ, in the mystery of his death and resurrection. Then still presupposing the former two allied meanings, we come at the end of the 4th century (above all in Gregory of Nyssa), and then more and more regularly all through the 5th century, to its final systematic use in the Dionysian corpus, which leads to the ultimate third meaning: the spiritual experience of this 'mystery' resulting from faith and sacramental practice for those who surrender fully to Christ through asceticism. Although he makes full use of the studies of Roques on 'Denys', which heavily underline the neo-platonic inheritance of this author, Louth has very justly demon strated that the substance of the experience he describes as 'mystical' is genuinely Christian and not at all 'pagan' or 'hellenic'. It is all the more strange that he has not noticed that nearly every time 'Denys' uses mystikos as the qualificative of an experience of the soul, it is either in the context of a meditation on Scripture (as when he describes bis alleged master 'the divine Hierotheos') or of a celebration of the Christian Liturgy (as when he describes the feelings and dispositions which should be those of the celebrant bishop). From the point of view of the constant inter-relation between the 'mysticism' of the Fathers and their concentration on the 'mystery of Christ', it is to be regretted that Louth, while following so closely the great texts'of the Fathers on what has come to be called in Christianity 'the mystical experience', and often unravelling their implications so well, seems to have ignored the studies of Balthasar on 'Le mysterion d'Origene', and most of the writings of Walther Volker. Thus he
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quotes Volker's study of Gregory of Nyssa once, mentions (but does not appear to have made great use of) his study of pseudo-Dionysios, and seems to ignore his book on Origen absolutely. Another, different, weakness in his examination of the pseudo-Makarian literature is what I would consider an uncritical adoption of theses which have received from Dorries a wide measure of acceptance among scholars. I mean the identification of these writings with the Messalian handbook, without paying attention not only to the complete rejection of the Messalian hypothesis by Werner Jaeger, but even to the very cautious and moderate remarks on the subject by such an authority in that field as Antoine Guillaumont. He mentions the post humous book of Dorries himself on the subject, but does not seem to realise how far in this last production Dorries himself has moved away from his former affirmations. These few criticisms should not be interpreted as belittling the importance and lasting value of the present book, which abounds with deep and illuminating dis cussions, and the main line of which is undoubtedly very sound. It is only to be deplored that since the author has so fully realised the genuinely Christian character of mysticism as understood by the Fathers, he has not looked in greater detail at its source in Paul and John. He would then have become fully aware of those aspects of the problem that he has unfortunately passed by, but which would have given much more depth and strength to his main thesis. As I am unable to discuss the whole book in a short essay, I want only to add that his most original treatment of Augustine would in itself merit a full article, and also that it seems he has convincingly established (against H.-Ch. Peuch) the con tinuity not only verbal but substantial of the theme of mystical obscurity from the Fathers to St John of the Cross. It is not often that we chance to meet with a book so rich that it would be impossible to discuss it in full without writing another one at least as long.
LOUIS BOUYER

Jeremiah Prophet of God by Mother Maria, edited by Mother Thekla (Whitby: The Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption 1981, pp.173, 6.50). The rather confusing appearance of this interesting book is due to the fact that Mother Maria over a long period wrote various comments on Jeremiah but died before gathering them together into a coherent book. Consequently Mother Thekla thought it best to publish her work in the state in which she left it, as she tells us in the preface. The book consists of a very helpful introduction to the prophets, fol lowed by a commentary and text of the autobiographical part of Jeremiah, generally considered to be the work of Baruch. There is a short section on the vocation of
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Jeremiah and finally a translation of the whole book apart from the sections appearing as the 'Baruch book'. Jeremiah was monk, a man called to proclaim God's message not only by his speech and writing, but also by his way of life. Hence his unmarried state was a part of God's message. Furthermore his life had to demonstrate the rejection of the message by the people, a rejection which nevertheless was integrated into the divine plan for the ultimate good of God's people. This is why there is more autobio graphy in Jeremiah than in the other prophets. It is also why he has been more clearly perceived as a type of our Lord. Mother Maria's explanation of the forms of Hebrew language and poetry is refreshingly readable. She seems to have had the gift to make scholarship interesting. She admirably shows how one must approach the text with the right disposition of humility, patience and simplicity. Part of this simplicity consists in realising that words like 'saviour' and 'conversion' are rather too pretentious equivalents for the actual Hebrew words. This pretentiousness seems to creep into theological language because God's presence is less and less felt as it is more and more defined. Thus the Hebrew word for 'saviour' is really 'helper'; as for'conversion', the Hebrew expresses simply 'coming home'. The translation is made direct from the Hebrew, so that it lacks the richness of the Septuagint. Indeed it is forthright and effectively plain: Throne of glory, From the beginning exalted, our sanctuary's place. Hope of Israel, The LORD. Shame shall come to all who forsake you And to the apostate extermination! Because they have left the well-spring of life (17:12-13). Mother Thekla seems to have done with Mother Maria's writings what the 'redactor' did with the oeuvre of Jeremiah in combining various things from various sources for convenience. Mother Maria followed modern scholarship in making judgments between 'authentic' and 'non-authentic' passages and in separating out texts that have been conflated in the canonical text. Thus in chapter 19, in the passage about Jeremiah's symbolic act of breaking the earthenware jug, she prints separately what she and most modern scholars believe to be the two separate inci dents that make up the story. There is a danger here of distorting the word, because what we are saying in doing such things is that the canonical text is not a true presentation of the prophet's message. What if the various editors or redactors who are responsible for the text in the form it has come down to us knew more about the correct interpretation of Jeremiah than we? Obviously the 'authentic', historical, words of a prophet are capable of being taken in more than one way and thus of being misunderstood. Hence the sacred editors chose to combine, conflate, omit or embellish in order that the prophets' doctrine should be correctly understood and applied by subsequent generations. In the critical tradition of Scripture studies this aspect has been brought out by Brevard Childs.
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This book, a contribution to the Library of Orthodox Thinking, is admirably produced and clearly printed. An attractive reproduction from the Sistine Chapel decorates the cover. CHARLES DILKE

The Incarnation: 6.50).

Ecumenical

Studies

in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan

Creed

We cannot escape even today from the issues posed by the Arian controversy. Either we travel with Arius or we follow Athanasius: there is in fact no third way. All too often, however, the lessons of the fourth century are paid less attention than they deserve. Only so can one account for the fact that in recent centuries sundry forms of Arianism, generally characterised by their shallowness, have appeared; and, surprising though it may seem, have re peatedly encountered a Church unable or unwilling to tackle them head on [. . . ] . The Myth of God Incarnate is only a symptom of a much more wide spread attenuation of classical Christian faith (p.74f). Dr Heron concludes his discussion, massively fortified with patristic footnotes as it is, by insisting that what matters in the last resort is not the word homoousios but that to which it refers: 'The key to the Gospel is not the word homoousios, but the Word made flesh, not the word chosen by the fathers of Nicaea, but the Word in whom our life has been chosen, redeemed and sanctified to the glory of the Father' (p.76). There follows an essay on 'Christ and Creation' which may well reduce the reader to tears. In it Dr Daniel W. Hardy declares his decision to 'develop a means whereby we may grasp the topic from within a modern perspective' (p.88), and the perspective chosen is that of modern scientific cosmology and information theory. Now these are two branches of science which are both unfamiliar and extremely difficult to the outsider, though their main features can be got across by a careful and imaginative exposition, as is witnessed by the number of interesting and intelli gible popular works that are available. But Dr Hardy has no consideration for his readers whatever. Presumably influenced by Dr Thomas Torrance's important point (made in his book Theological Science and elsewhere) that the method of any dis cipline should be conditioned by its subject-matter (or, as he puts it, the knower should be 'noetically qualified by the reality to be known'), he rejects 'a number of approaches often used for the topic which prevent a proper treatment of it' (p.89); these include 'the collection and justification of beliefs, the study of human exis tence, the study of presuppositions, the study of being qua being, or of change, or of logic' (p.90); in fact almost every method by which men have essayed to under stand the world and their experience of it is condemned as either subjective or extrinsecist. What is needed is a noetic qualification which is 'a qualification by an object or objects, but one which is a process with its own dynamic' (p.98); such, it appears, is characteristic of various departments of modern mathematical physics and in particular the highly modish information theory. Unfortunately, Dr Hardy in spite of involving the reader in pages of unexplained technicalities, never manages to explain what he is getting at and what are the grounds for believing it. 'With suitable development', he tells us, 'this theoretical grasping can yield an understanding of God as Trinity who has, in the fashion of "I am who I am", bound himself by self-choice in a high information-density, con densing all the signal information by which his energy is directed' (p.107). But he never gives it this development or indeed clearly explains what it is. i am inclined to suggest that, since Jesus is the eternal Word or Self-expression of God the Father, 77

edited by Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press 1981, pp.xii+ 180, These papers, now assembled and edited by Dr Thomas F. Torrance to mark the sixteenth centenary of the Council of Constantinople (recognised in East and West as the Second Ecumenical), were originally read at the conference of the Academie Internationale des Sciences Religieuses at Norwich in the spring of 1978. Conscious of the recent publication of The Myth of God Incarnate, but not unduly shaken by it, these scholars provided an impressive defence of both the truth and the relevance of the orthodox Christian dogma, declared at Nicaca in 325 and reaffirmed at Constantinople more than half a century later, that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, is the eternal and co-essential Son of the heavenly Father and is the uncreated Word through whom all things were made. In the first paper Archbishop Methodios (of Thyateira and Great Britain) situates and clarifies the famous term homoousion ('co-essential'), which was defined at Nicaea and uncompromisingly defended by the great Athanasius;but it is Dr George D. Dragas who really brings the issue to life. Stressing the recovery by modern scholars of the recognition that the New-Testament description of Jesus as the Son of God clearly implies his origin in the Godhead, he goes on to locate Arius' error in a fundamental mistake about the relation between God and creation which makes any real union between the two impossible: The point of divergence between St Athanasius and Arius is not merely the conception of divine sonship, but the understanding of the divine nature [. . . ] . Put simply, St Athanasius sees God's nature not as an abstract and static being, but as being-in-doing, or being-in-act, as the being of the Father who eternally begets the Son and sends forth the Spirit. On the other hand, Arius understands God's being in an absolute static and abstract sense' (p.33). And so, Dr Dragas tells us, Athanasius sees man as radically open to the redeeming and transforming power of God. 'Jesus Christ the Son of God reveals God in humanity, the Creator in creation, the divine in the human, the eternal in the temporal. As such he is the Saviour, the only foundation of the faith' (p.47) Dr Alasdair Heron rams the point home: 'What was missing in Arms' entire scheme was, quite simply, God himself (p.68). And this, he insists, is not just a matter of ancient history: 76

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information theory might provide a fruitful conceptual structure of his eternal relationship and his personal character, but Dr Hardy never says anything as simple as this. This is very saddening, for I suspect that, if only he could discover how to say it, Dr Hardy, with his knowledge of information theory and its related concepts of entropy and free energy, may have a really important contribution to make to the reconciliation of the outlooks of Christian faith and natural science. This will need a much more careful and persistent effort of communication than he has hitherto shown himself to be making; as it is at present one is left wondering how many people he expects to reach and who they can be. And there is something ironical about the fact that someone who is clearly trained in all the technicalities of information theory is so extraordinarily unsuccessful in communicating information. Fr A. Houssiau, of Louvain-la-Neuve contributes an account, mainly historical, of belief in the Virginal Conception of Christ, leading up to an assertion of the in evitability of Mariology. Dr James B. Torrance writes a splendid and widely sym pathetic discussion of the Vicarious Humanity of Christ. 'Participation' is, he asserts, the key word: 'Vicarious Humanity and Union with Christ (the Headship of Christ and participation in Christ) are twin doctrines which must not be separated' (p. 145). And, in a sentence which if fully accepted could go far to transcend our divisions and antagonisms, he declares: 'Our worship is seen as the gift of participat ing through the Spirit in Christ's communion with the Father' (p. 130). The sym posium concludes with a closely packed article by Fr J.H. Walgrave, of Louvain, on Incarnation and Atonement; he leads up to the proclamation that 'the whole creation, included in man, participates in the curve of incarnation, cross and exal tation in which Christ included in himself that humanity which he saved from death'. And this, he says, 'would demand an attitude towards nature quite different from that of modern technological man' (p.l73f.). This is a fine book, which, while not planned as such, forms an impressive wit ness to the abiding strength and creativeness of traditional Christology. My one major criticism is that it was a pity to limit its scope to Nicaea and Constantinople. Even in Britain it has been usual to recognise that Christology went on to AD 451 and the Council of Chalcedon, while elsewhere it has been traced to 555,681 and even 787. And with the recent reconciliation of the theologians of the 'nonChalcedonian' Churches with both Orthodoxy and Rome it is hardly necessary to restrict oneself simply to Nicaea in the interest of ecumenism.
E.L. MASCALL

Spirit of God Spirit of Christ. Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy edited by Lukas Vischer (London: SPCK/Geneva: WCC 1981, pp.186, 6.50). In October 1978 and May 1979 the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC arranged theological consultations in Schloss Klingenthal, near Strasbourg, 'to study the famous controversy over the filioque formula in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed'. This book is the report of these consultations containing a Memorandum of 16 pages on 'The filioque clause in ecumenical perspective' for which the participants are jointly responsible, and eleven papers by individual theologians. Of these, three are by Eastern Orthodox theologians, Markos Orphanos of Thessaloniki, Fr Boris Bobrinsky of the Orthodox Institute in Paris, and Fr Dumitru Staniloae of the Church of Romania. Two are by Roman Catholic patristic scholars, Fr Andre de Halleux of Louvain and Fr Jean-Miguel Garrigues of Aix-en-Provence. Two impor tant papers are by Kurt Stalder and Herwig Aldenhoven, both Old Catholic theo logians of Berne. Canon Donald Allchin writes on 'the filioque clause an Anglican approach'. Three papers are by theologians of the Reformed Churches, A. Heron of Edinburgh, J. Moltmann of Tubingen, and D. Ritschl of Mainz. The Memorandum ends with three recommendations (p. 18). The first is that the dialogue should continue and states that this requires 'a new sensitivity to the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the one who in his fullness both rests upon Jesus Christ and is the gift of Christ to the Church'. The second, which is crucial, is 'that the original form of the third article of the Creed, without filioque, should everywhere be recognised as the normative one and restored, so that the whole Christian people may be able, in this formula, to confess their common faith in the Holy Spirit'. The words of the Creed follow. The third recommendation is that all the Churches should consider particular ways in which 'a renewed reception of the Nicene Creed can play a vital role in the growing together of the separated Christian traditions into the unity of faith'. The second recommendation is what the Eastern Orthodox have consistently declared to be necessary. But the Memorandum is not simply a statement of the Eastern Orthodox position. It records a genuine attempt made by Eastern and Western theologians to understand one another. Roman Catholic participation in this is significant. The two Roman Catholic scholars whose papers are published declare their willingness to have the Creed without the Filioque used by Roman Catholics everywhere, if the dialogue between the Catholics and the Orthodox results in a theological agreement about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The agree ment would mean that the Greek phrase ek tou Patros ekporeuomehon need not be translated into Latin by a Patre procedens, and the Latin phrase qui a Patre Filioque procedit need not be translated into Greek as if it were the Greek phrase cited above with the addition of kai ek tou Uiou. In words acceptable to both sides it would be agreed that both theologies were really Orthodox and Catholic. Then
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the Creed would be restored to its original form which, incidentally, is used by Catholics of the Eastern Rite, and even in the Greek version of the Roman Missal approved for Greece. It is interesting to notice that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland appears to accept the Roman Catholic view of the matter. It is ready to remove the Filioque from the Creed, not now, but after dialogue with other Churches 'in East and West' if it is not possible for the clause to be 'universally accepted in an agreed sense', 'admitted as a valid optional expression of pure trinitarian doctrine', 'modified', or 'replaced by some more widely acceptable formula'. The Old Catholics, whose two papers seem to me to be very important, have for more than a century regarded the Filioque as something which came into the Creed 'in a canonically illegitimate way' without any 'ecumenical conciliar decision by the whole Church'. As they came to this view they omitted the words from the Credo at Mass 'at once in some places, much later elsewhere' (p.97). They heard the Eastern Orthodox criticism of the Filioque in the Bonn Conference of 1874 and 1875 and received more of it in their correspondence with Russian Orthodox theo logians between 1892 and 1913. Their dialogue with the Orthodox, resumed after the Second World War, has led them to accept the Orthodox statement that 'the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone', with the qualifying clause, 'in regard to the eternal relation of origin'. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Son and this can be termed 'procession from the Father and the Son'. But in the Orthodox-Old Catholic agreement we are told that 'nothing is stated, either positively or negatively, about eternal relations which are not relations of origin' (p. 108). Kurt Stalder thinks that it is 'a fundamental ecumenical task to reach a theological consensus' in respect of these relations. Some may doubt whether this is important or even desirable. The Old Catholic paper by Herwig Aldenhoven seeks to connect the Filioque with 'an attack by the intellect on the mystery of the trinitarian person' (p. 132). Like many Orthodox theologians he sees the Western Christian doctrine of God, since the scholastics and even perhaps since St Augustine, as having been concerned with the One Essence of the Godhead rather than with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Old Catholics were concerned about the Filioque in the course of formulat ing their own ecclesiological stand. For the Anglicans it has been almost exclusively a matter of Anglican-Orthodox relations. My sole criticism of the able paper of Canon Allchin is that it draws a sharp distinction between his own views and those of the late Dr D.J. Chitty (d.1971). Canon Allchin sees the question as 'a symptom rather than a cause of an underlying difference between East and West about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit' (p.94). Dr Chitty was certainly in agreement with the Orthodox criticism of the Filioque clause; but it is hardly accurate to write of the 'logical neatness' of his position, and he was always aware of the complexity of the historical and theological issues. He denied that the Filioque was part of the Creed and omitted the words 'and the Son' in saying or singing the Creed. But he was ready to read aloud Article V of the Thirty-nine Articles. In principle he was not
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opposed to the words 'proceeding from the Father and the Son' outside the Creed, although he explained these words in terms of the 'economic' Trinity. In this he was preceded by Percy Richard Barrington-Brown (d.1947), who as an Anglican ordinand had studied at Halki in 1909-10. Both were parish priests in country places. Professor Ritschl of Mainz writes that he is 'free to favour the Orthodox critique of the filioque without getting into difficulties with the church which ordained him' (p.48). This is because the Reformed make very little use of the ancient creeds. Another Reformed contributor, Alasdair Heron of Edinburgh, says that many Western Christians regard the controversy as 'an abstruse theological curiosity' and remarks that 'a willingness to jettison the filioque which rested on nothing more than a sublime indifference to the whole matter would scarcely constitute a genuine step towards rapprochement with the East' (p. 112). But it might be a necessary preliminary to a proper theological dialogue between East and West that the Filioque should be jettisoned, not from Western theology but from the Creed. The Creed is not the proper place for any theological 'curiosity'. It is a historical docu ment, just as the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament are. If we jettison the words about the three heavenly witnesses in the First Epistle of St John, this is not in any sense a theological controversy; it is a matter of the text. To justify the retention of the controverted clause we have to show that it is important, rather than that the question at issue is important. It is repeatedly suggested in some of the papers in this book that the original form of the Creed does not indicate the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. Certainly it does not indicate a relationship of origin. But the doctrine of the Trinity is not merely a doctrine of origin. The Creed states that the Son was in carnate 'from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin'. The Apostles' Creed says that the Son was conceived of the Holy Spirit. It was never said, as far as I know, that the Son was begotten a Patre Spirituque; but if Arians or other heretics had said that the Holy Spirit was inferior to the Father and the Son, such a statement might have been made in order to answer them. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the principium and the 'cause' of the external or 'energetic' manifestation of the Godhead in eternity, as the whole Church teaches. The Creed is not a statement of metaphysical principles. As Ritschl well writes 'It is important to remember that any reference to the Trinity is originally doxological [ . . . ] ' . All such doxological references to that inner life must be checked by reference back to the biblical message concerning God's activity and presence with his people' (p.64). In the Bible the Incarnation and the Baptism of Christ, as well as the sending by Christ of the Holy Spirit to the Church, are the manifestation of the worship of the Trinity. It is important to notice that the Latin verb procedere differs slightly in meaning from the Greek verb ekporeuesthai, and is used in John 8:42 to translate exelthon as well as in John 15:26 to translate ekporeuetai. It has frequently been suggested that the Orthodox could accept procedere as a translation of such a verb as proer81

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chesthai and translate a Patre Filioque procedit accordingly. The remarks of Fr Staniloae on page 177, where he strongly objects to the use of the words 'who pro ceeds out of the Father and from the Son', are easily explained if we remember that Romanian is a Latin language. It is not only in the West that the Orthodox use in their Liturgy languages derived from Latin, and the interesting proposal of Fr JeanMiguel Garrigues (p. 158) that the Orthodox should translate ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon by qui se port hors du Pere ('who goes forth out of the Father', or Vho issues from the Father') will present real difficulties to any Romanian. It is interesting that the English text of the Bonn Agreement of 1875, as it was then published, used the verb 'issue out of; the verb 'proceed' on pages 98-9 of the present work is the recent English translation of the German text quoted by Kurt Stalder. It seems to me that Anglicans, having been in communion with the Old Catholics for the past fifty years, should be doing as they did and need not await the outcome of the dialogue between the West as a whole and the East as a whole before doing so.
EDWARD EVERY

the gifts of the Spirit, and the invocation of the Spirit over the water, the oil and the candidates. Chapters 6 and 7 digress slightly from the central theme to investi gate the links between the Spirit and, respectively, the Eucharist and Mary. Finally the author shows how.baptism was sometimes conceived as a Pentecost. Dr Brock argues that the Syrian rite developed from three models. The first is that of Jewish circumcision. The prebaptismal anointing, often called a rushma (mark), is described by some authors as the Christian equivalent of the Jewish rite, and cutting imagery is applied to the oil. The baptism which follows (as Jewish bap tism followed circumcision) is related to a second model, namely Christ's own baptism, conceived as the moment of the proclamation of his Sonship; hence Christian baptism is seen as a rebirth. The rushma is also linked to a third model, that of the Old Testament anointing of priests and kings. (The link between Christ's baptism and priestly and royal 'anointing' is made already in Acts 10:38.) The rushma is also often compared to a mark of ownership, like a brand on a sheep or an identification mark on a soldier. Towards the end of the fourth century in the area of Antioch (as, much earlier, in the West) the Pauline view of baptism as a death and resurrection is adopted, with the consequence that it seems inappropriate to confer the gifts of the Spirit before baptism. Accordingly the prebaptismal rushma begins to be interpreted as a means of purification and a sign to repel the devil, and the gift of the Spirit is associated either with baptism itself or a new post-

The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition by Sebastian Brock (The Syrian Churches Series, ed. J. Vellian, vol. 9) (Kottayam, Kerala: Deepika Book Stall 1979, pp.140, available from the Fellowship Bookroom at 5.25). Many Western Christians have come to realise how much they can enrich their own traditions by drawing on the wealth of the Greek East. The last decades have seen a growing awareness of another, distinct Christian Eastern tradition, that of the Syrian Churches, whose culture was Semitic rather than Hellenistic. Dr Brock has done as much as anyone to draw the attention of English-speaking readers to the riches of this Syriac tradition, with its luxurious growth of imagery. In the work under review he concentrates his attention on the understanding of the Holy Spirit expressed in the early Syrian baptismal liturgies and liturgical commentaries. The first chapter of the book clarifies the scope of the work and analyses the concept of the Holy Spirit in the Syriac bible, where the feminine gender ofruha, the Syriac word for spirit, naturally led some early writers to envisage the Spirit as a mother. In the second chapter the author examines the three leading symbols of the Holy Spirit in the early Syrian writers: fire, the dove, and oil. In the next chapter Dr Brock clarifies the four main types of Syrian baptismal rites: the East Syrian (Assyrian and Chaldean), the Syrian Orthodox/Catholic, the Maronite and the Melkite (mostly Arabic). He then lists and describes the early literary sources, making it clear that some of them, especially those from the bilingual area of Antioch, were written in Greek (for example the Didascalia, Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia). The two central, and most important chapters treat of
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THEOLOGY AND ECONOMY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: AN EASTERN APPROACH by Dr. Petro B. T. Bilaniuk This book is a penetrating study in the unknown areas of Eastern Christian Pneumatology and it brilliantly unfolds the economy of the Holy Spirit as the Lord and giver of life. It is ecumenical in spirit and represents Eastern Christian thought at its best (pp.220 + xvi). Price: Limpcover4.00 Hardcover 5.00 THE MYSTERY OF BAPTISM by Dr. Paul B. Kadjcheeni This is an indispensable document on the Sacramental Theology of the Chaldean tradition. The author publishes the Syriac manu script of the treatise 'On Holy Baptism' of the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy II (1318-32) and an English translation together with a valuable introduction (pp. 130 + xv). Price: Limpcover 4.00.
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Daptismal anointing, also sometimes called a rushma, but more properly a hatma ^seal). We are warned against trying to identify one particular "rite within the total sacramental action as the moment at which the Holy Spirit is imparted: 'the gift of the Spirit is essentially conferred by the rite as a whole, and within the rite the anointing and the baptism in water form an inseparable unity.' Nevertheless, within the basic unity of the baptismal rite' Dr Brock distinguishes 'three traditions which focus' the gift of the Spirit on different elements, namely one of the anointings, the water and an imposition of hands (p.37). Dr Brock shows a masterly knowledge of his sources, and I find the attempt he makes to trace a pattern in their complexities generally convincing. There are how ever some details over which I would disagree with him. The Apostolic Constitutions in three different versions of the rites sets out a post-baptismal anointing, but attributes the gift of the Spirit rather to the prebaptismal anointing. Theodore of Mopsuestia also gives a post-baptismal anointing (I would have welcomed a reference to the reasons for thinking the passage genuine), but connects the gift of the Spirit with the moment of immersion. Conse quently the introduction of the post-baptismal anointing should not be linked too closely with the desire to have a rite expressing the gift of the Spirit after baptism. There is also an inconsistency in the dates assigned to this change: 'in the fifth century' (p.24), 'towards the end of the fourth century' and 'around 400' (p.38). I wonder too if the author is justified in affirming that 'the gift of the Spirit is essen tially conferred by the rite as a whole'; may not this interpretation of the effect of the rite be simply one more tradition distinct from the three mentioned above? The list of Chrysostom's baptismal homilies omits the Montfaucon set contained in Migne. Finally, I would have liked a discussion of the possible influence of Cyril of Jerusalem on the evolution of the Antiochene rite. This is an invaluable book for the liturgical scholar, for it enables him to gain a synoptic view of the complex varieties of the Syrian rites. It also makes available specimens of the riches of Syriac sacramental imagery. It would be a great pity if its Indian provenance makes the book hard to obtain in Europe. The typography, un fortunately, is not easy on the eye, and there are a number of misprints. The provision of an index would have enhanced the utility of this magisterial work.
EDWARD YARNOLD

The PMokalia; The Complete Text compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, translated from the Greek and edited by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (London & Boston: Faber & Faber, vol. 1 1979, pp.379, 12; vol. 2 1981, pp.414, 12.95).
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Like the first volume published in 1979, the second has been translated with the assistance of The Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Brookline), Constantine Cavarnos, Basil Osborne and Norman Russell. They are the first part of a complete translation (the first ever produced in a western language) of this classic of Orthodox spirituality. The notices have been revised by the editors in accordance with the requirements of modern criticism, but all the texts are given in full as selected by the two justly famous leaders of the great spiritual and theological renewal of Orthodoxy of nearly two centuries ago. It would be difficult to exag gerate the importance of such an endeavour, the first results of which are to be commended highly for the care and competence with which they have been made available to the public. There is no need to underline the importance of the growing popularity in the West of the 'Jesus Prayer', as it is commonly called. It was first made known in an attractive way through various translations of The Way of a Pilgrim (ET 1930). Since then, mainly through the work of one of the editors of the present volume, G.E.H. Palmer, in cooperation with E. Kadloubovsky, Western Christians have already been provided with some of the most interesting texts of the spiritual tradition of which the 'Jesus Prayer' is the focus. Meditation on these texts is essen tial if the meaning of such a practice is to be grasped properly. However, the very fact that the previous selections concentrated exclusively on the 'Jesus Prayer' itself could give rise to a double misunderstanding. First, they did not convey an impres sion of the wealth, fullness and balance of the hesychastic tradition, within which the 'Jesus Prayer' came to prove so fecund in producing the fruits of a most authentic Christian spirituality. Secondly and in consequence, these texts could, if not exactly encourage, at least make possible a terrible mistake: a notion that the mere practice of the prayer, by itself and independently of traditional Christian belief and asceticism, could induce the highest mystical experiences. A few years ago a popular but very brilliant American novel, Franny and Zoe, presented a devastating exposition of the possible consequences of such a fundamental blunder. In reaction to this misunderstanding, the suspicion which was always present in some quarters concerning the practice itself of the 'Jesus Prayer', or, more widely, the whole of the hesychastic tradition, has developed into a strong mistrust. Let me add, however, something that is made clear by the texts themselves when they are fully understood: even the constant pondering of these texts cannot suffice to guide the reader into the right use of the 'Jesus Prayer' without the supervision of a spiritual master himself fully aware both of the practice of the Prayer and of its theological and ascetical implications. This last point is precisely what will now become perfectly clear for those who will read (and re-read time and again) the two priceless volumes under review and the others which are soon to follow. But it is not only for the dispelling of illusions and the correction of deviations that the publication now in progress is so heartily welcome. It is welcome first of all for the intrinsic value of many of the greatest spiritual texts which are still very little known among us, and also for the mutual
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light they shed on one another from thus being brought together. In a time like aurs, when so many Christians are ignorant of the beauty and power of their mystical tradition and are in danger of embarking on foreign, dubious, or simply poorly understood practices, and therefore of losing not only their faith but also their sanity, such a publication is of the first importance. I would add that the care with which, to judge from these first two volumes, the task (and what a difficult one!) has been performed, makes this publication the perfect gift for every Christian who wants to learn about and make his or her own what has justly been called 'the art of prayer'. The first volume gave us, along with some of the most important texts of Evagrios Pontikos, Cassian, Mark the Ascetic and others, that jewel of patristic spiri tual theology, the treatise of Diadochos of Photiki On Spiritual Knowledge and Dis crimination. Even more precious is the recently published second volume, for its main bulk is made up of practically everything of fundamental importance among the spiritual works of St Maximos the Confessor. The paramount importance of this Father has been acknowledged increasingly in the last twenty years in both East and West. But for the English-speaking public and for most westerners generally his writings have remained until now largely inaccessible. And even when this was not the case, it must be admitted that the density of his thought and the concision of his style (not to mention other difficulties) have kept him almost unapproachable in ordinary translations. Did not Photios himself (the most learned and one of the most subtle of the great Byzantine theologians) say of him that, while being immensely interesting and deep, he might appear at times impossible to understand? Here at last we have translations which, while never falling into questionable para phrase, make the essentials of his insights, spiritual and theological, as lucid as they may be made without being oversimplified or evaporated. Such an achievement is the best possible indicator of the quality of this undertaking.
LOUIS BOUYER

himself translated it does not explain the resemblance between this letter and his own. The^importance of these and the other letters addressed to the Emperor lies in the light they throw not on Roman attitudes but on the Byzantine opposition. This is further explored eight years later (1976) in a study of 'The Eastern Church and the primacy of Rome at the time of iconoclasm', especially before, at and after the second Council of Nicaea. There are differences of accent and attitude between the monk John of Jerusalem (who protested against the iconoclast Council ofHieria), Theodore the Studite (in conflict with his patriarch in 809, and on the side of his patriarch against the emperor in 820), and the Syrian Melkite Theodore Abu Qurra (who is contemporary with iconoclasm but not at all concerned with the question). All agree that a council without Rome has no ecumenical authority, but none of them would think of putting the pope in place of a council. Five other papers are concerned with themes related to iconoclasm, contem plation and sacfed imagery, such as 'Art et litterature theologique a Byzance au lendemain de la querelle des images', and a study of a life of Euthymius of Sardis, here ascribed to the Patriarch Methodius, an addition to his other hagiographical works. Of those outside the subject the most comprehensive is a survey of heresies and of the names given to them, the most interesting a study of Constantine Chrysomallos in the twelfth century disguising his idiosyncracies 'under the mask of Symeon the New Theologian'; a self-portrait of Nicolas Cabasilas discerned in books vi and vii of the Life in Christ; and an exposure of 'Supercheries et meprises litteraires' in the works ascribed to Theodore of Edessa.
GEORGE EVERY

The Latin Church in the Crusader States. The Secular Church by Bernard Hamilton (London: Variorum Publications 1980, pp.410, 18). La vie religieuse a Byzance by Jean Gouillard (London: Variorum Reprints 1981, pp.364, 22). This book contains sixteen articles varying in dates from 1939 to 1976, in length and in the size of the type (so much so that the number of pages underestimates the amount of material). The most substantial refer to iconoclasm and its aftermath. The largest is concerned with the letters ascribed to Pope Gregory II, one addressed to the Patriarch Germanos, and two to the Emperor Leo III. Of the first Gouillard concludes that 'par l'inspiration comme par la forme, le lettres de Gregoire pourrait aussi bien etre signee Germain.' To suppose that the Patriarch had 86 This lucid and thoughtful book provides the English reader with something he has hitherto lacked: a clear account of the secular Latin Church in the Crusader states. Most earlier studies in this region have concentrated on the Church in the kingdom of Jerusalem By including the principalities of Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli, Mr Hamilton has covered not only a larger territory but also a wider range of problems. Whereas in the kingdom the Franks imposed themselves on a population that was overwhelmingly Muslim, further north they found they had to deal with substantial Christian communities: Orthodox, Armenian, Jacobite and, in Tripoli, Maronite. Syria under Frankish rule was, in Hamilton's own words, 'the meeting place of all the Christian confessions' and the way in which the Latins came to terms with these other,Christians provides one of the main themes of his book,
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We are introduced to the theme in the opening chapter on 'The First Crusade and the Eastern Churches'. Hamilton insists that Urban II's avowed intention of 'liberating' these Churches should be taken at face value - with the proviso that by the 'Churches of the East' the pope meant only the Orthodox patriarchates under Muslim rule. In other words, in order to retain the goodwill of the Byzantine emperor, Urban intended that the rights of the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem should be respected. What actually happened was something very different: the establishment of Latin Churches by the crusaders. To some extent this was the result of an accident: the death, in August 1098, of Urban's legate, Ademar of Le Puy, who up until that point had been able to ensure that papal policy was carried out. But in part it was well within the logic of events. While pope and Byzantine emperor kept their distance - and both were men who faced problems far more pressing than those of the Syrian periphery - it was inevitable that at some stage policy would be made on the spot, by the crusaders themselves as they conquered territory and undertook the tasks of settlement and government in an alien environ ment. For them, as Hamilton puts it, 'the thought of being spiritually subject to orthodox bishops drawn from a subject race was as little acceptable as the appoint ment of Indians to Anglican bishoprics would have been to the British rulers in nineteenth-century India'. As so often in its history the papacy had found it easier to initiate movements than to retain control over them. But doubtless 'in the eyes of Jacobites, Armenians and Maronites the Latin 'liberation' they actually received was preferable to the more Orthodox brand which Urban II had envisaged. In order to give some structure to the rest of the book Hamilton has divided it into two chronological sections, the first up to 1187 (pp. 18-211) and the second from 1187 up to the fall of Acre in 1291 (pp.212-360). Both sections contain chapters on the Latin patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem (chapters 2, 3, 9, 10) and on relations with Eastern-rite Churches, (chapters 7, 8, 12, 13). The 12thcentury section has three additional chapters: on Latin parish organisation, on the senior clergy and on the Church's sources of income, while the 13th-century section contains only one: 'The economic problems of the Latin Church in the 13th century'. The chapters on Antioch and Jerusalem provide the narrative backbone of the book. They are well done, and include some excellent thumbnail sketches of the patriarchs, among them men as controversial as Heraclius, Aimery of Limoges and Daimbert of Pisa. But it is in the other, more analytical chapters that Hamilton makes clear just what kind of Church it was - a Church very different from the Latin Church in the West. There were, for example, very few parishes in the countryside. A map of the dioceses might give the impression that the new ecclesiastical organisation encom passed the whole of the conquered territories, but this was because bishoprics formed part of the Frankish pattern of government. Parishes, on the other hand, reflected the Frankish pattern of settlement. They huddled in the towns and were almost entirely absent from rural areas where the population remained overwhelm88

ingly either native Christian or Muslim. As for the senior clergy, although in time a few of them were Franks born in the East - the outstanding example being William of Tyre - none of them were members of the local aristocracy. In marked contrast to the practice in the West, in the crusader states not a single nobleman is known to have entered the church - neither the regular nor the secular church. Daughters could enter nunneries but sons were urgently needed for the permanent task of military defence. This is all the more remarkable since the rule applies also to those churches, like Antioch and the Holy Sepulchre, which were distinctly rich. In general, though, Hamilton is inclined to believe that most of the Latin churches were rather poor - despite their enjoyment of tithes. (Here is a subject on which he might have enlightened us further, particularly in view of the contrast, emphasised by Mayer, between tithes on the Western model, assessed on the tenant's income, and Frankish tithes, assessed on the income of lords and including the dues paid to lords by non-Latin tenants. This, Mayer has argued, was a device which enabled the Latin Church to tap sources of wealth which would otherwise have escaped it). In particular, by pointing to the costs of administration and transfer of funds, Hamilton is unwilling to allow that churches like the Holy Sepulchre, Bethlehem and Nazareth derived much financial benefit from their extensive properties in the West. But scepticism on this point makes it difficult to understand one of the other 'peculiarities' of the crusader Church: the dominating position achieved by the Military Orders. Despite these divergences from the Church 'at home', the Frankish Church remained, in Hamilton's words, 'a branch of the Western Church set down in the Levant; it remained alien to the culture of Syria despite being established there for two hundred years'. It is doubtless only to be expected that it remained alien to Jewish and Muslim culture but the reader might have expected some discussion of the Latin Church's relations with these groups, particularly with the Muslims who, after all, constituted the bulk of the population in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Naturally they are mentioned here and there but only in passing and since the rather oddly arranged index contains no heading 'Muslims', Hamilton's views on this important subject are not easy to track down. For him the question which really seems to matter is: to what extent did the Latins remain alien to Christian culture in Syria? His answers to this question are ambivalent and even contradictory. In the last two sentences of the book at the end of a short chapter entitled 'The spiritual work of the Latin church in Syria', Hamilton writes that whereas the leaders of the first crusade in a.mood of religious xenophobia had begged pope Urban to help them 'to root out and destroy' the Greeks and Armenians and Syrian Jacobites, it became the aim of Urban's successors to gather these separated Christians into the unity of a single church. This is the true measure of the spiritual achievement of the Latin church in Syria. This positive conclusion stands in marked contrast to Prawer's negative judgment on the crusader Church, but it is, unfortunately, a rather illogical one. If 13thcentury papal attitudes are compared, not with what Urban was asked to do, but
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with what he wanted to do, what then would remain of the achievement of the years after 1098? Certainly men in the 13th century were better informed about the 'true nature of the church universal' than their 11th-century predecessors had been, but the question still remains: what use had they made of this additional information? At times it may have seemed as though much had been achieved. In the mid-13th century, for example, many Eastern Churches were in communion with Rome: Armenians, Maronites, the Orthodox of Antioch, some Jacobites (including the patriarch) and some Nestorians. But with the exception of the Maronites, these were ephemeral unions, the products of a combination of mutual misunderstanding and short term diplomatic expedient. Moreover the inescapable fact remains that, no matter what arrangements the Latin Church was prepared to make with other Christian communities in the Middle East, those non-Latins who actually lived in crusader territory were always treated as second-class citizens. Thus the only Orthodox patriarch to remain on cordial terms with Rome throughout the crusading period was the patriarch of Alexandria. Only within these limits is it possible to speak of 'a growth of toleration and mutual understanding'. But though the book finishes on a positive note, at other times Hamilton gives the impression that he would have rated the Latin Church higher had it ended earlier. He writes, for example, of a 13th-century breakdown of the 12th-century symbiosis between Latin and Orthodox Christians; of a 'general collapse of morale among the lower clergy' in 13th-century Syria. Undoubtedly the crusader states after 1187 were in many respects different from the crusader states before that date, but it is possible to go too far in this direction. If a section of the Orthodox community in Jerusalem was ready to open the gates to Saladin in 1187, how real can the 12th-century symbiosis have been? As for the supposed 13th-century decline in the Latin Church, this is based on indications of abuses found in papal registers and in the letters of a zealous bishop, James of Vitry. But for the 12th century these types of evidence do not exist and, in their absence, Hamilton has invented an ideal picture of the clergy of the time, dedicated to the proper conduct of divine worship and capable of inspiring fervour in the people among whom they lived. It may be so, but direct evidence is lacking and indirect evidence, for example the absence of any attempt to convert Muslims - though comprehensible - does not point to the existence of a fervent religious community. The problem of evidence leads on to what seems to me to be both the book's greatest achievement and its greatest weakness. The surviving evidence is so frag mentary that Mayer, in his Bistumer, Kloster and Stifte im Konigreich Jerusalem (Stuttgart 1977), suggested that it would probably never be possible to write a coherent history of the crusader churches. Yet this, for the secular church at least, is precisely what Hamilton has succeeded in doing. But his very success raises questions. Given the gaps in the evidence how could such coherence be achieved? Perhaps there has been a certain amount of papering over the cracks. But the absence of any systematic analysis of the evidence on which the book is based makes it difficult for the reader to assess the width of the cracks. Hamilton discusses
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neither the evidence which does exist how reliable, for example, is the western redaction of the Old French continuation of William of Tyre as an authority for events at the end of the 12th century? nor the evidence which does not. Given the fact that the fall of the Frankish states meant the almost total destruction of the archives of the crusader churches, this is a serious omission, and one which can lead to misleading interpretations of what does survive. But it would be wrong to end on a critical note. Hamilton always writes with vigour and perception. On many points of detail he is able to correct mistakes made by earlier scholars. If, on the broader canvas, I have some doubts and reservations I have come to them only because this is the kind of book which makes the reader think.
JOHN GILLINGHAM

St Innocent: Apostle to America by Paul D. Garrett (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press 1979, pp.345, 6.50). In October 1977 there took place the canonisation of a nineteenth-century Metro politan of Moscow, Innocent (or Innokentii) Veniaminov (1797-1879). He was canonised by his own Church and in his own diocese. But the event probably had as much significance, if not more, for the Orthodox of America. For the newlyproclaimed saint made his greatest contribution as priest-missionary and eventually first bishop of the Russian settlements in the New World. This is not to say that he was simply a chaplain to the Russian traders and colonisers of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Certainly, he spent much of his career as an employee of the Russian-American Company. But his principal concern was for the indigenous peoples of his vast domain, for whom he soon developed a last ing respect. 'Many a so-called "savage" is morally superior to us so-called "en lightened" people', he was to write after two decades of service among the Aleuts. By contrast, he found the Russians in America to be 'an obstacle to spreading and confirming Christianity'. 'Why should we be baptized?' he was to be asked in Alaska then, as also in Iakutia later. 'To become like the Russians: deceivers [and] pro fligates?' Shamefacedly, he had to admit that it was'hard to answer such objections': 'I told them not even to look at the Russians with whom they have dealings; these Russians are worse than all the rest'. It was a problem to be faced by many another missionary, who was all too often seen as an aid and accessory to trade and foreign domination. Innocent was pain fully aware that, just before he arrived, an established method for recruiting stable hunters and workers was to convince them that they should be baptized. Thus the Russians (as Innocent noted in 1839) 'could make more adherents for themselves
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since baptized Aleuts honour their sponsors as fathers will serve them exclusively and diligently'. No other Russian could lure away another's godchild. The future Bishop Innocent was concerned not with the temporal profits of the colonists, but the eternal welfare of their work force. It was fortunate that there was one kind of Russian to whom the latter could look, a Russian in whom an authentic image of Christianity could be perceived. Innocent did not sway them by gifts or even by eloquence. He preferred to preach through an interpreter even when he had learned the local language; and his message was simple. Above all it was the integrity and transparency of his personality which must have made the decisive impact wherever he preached or ministered. In 1867, as Alaska was being sold to the United States and an age seemed to have come to an end, Innocent was none the less looking forward to a wide-ranging English-speaking mission to America. He urged the ordination of American converts and the celebration of services in English. The establishment of an autocephalous Orthodox Church in America may be seen as the culmination of a process which he not only foresaw but helped to set in train. His canonisation gives added weight and blessing to that process. Paul Garrett's book is not a hagiography. Although it refrains from taking a critical stance in respect of any of the saint's characteristics or activities, it offers a straightforward biographical survey. It draws effectively on the standard nineteenthcentury compilations of Ivan Barsukov and also on unpublished papers to which the latter had no access. There are detailed accounts of the many and demanding missionary journeys, and the work will be of interest to the student of the local scene, as well as to the church historian. But above all it is aimed at the general reader. The very plainness of the narrative corresponds to the simplicity of its principal character.
SERGEI HACKEL

The Dynamic of Tradition, by A.M. Allchin (London: Darton, Longman & Todd 1981, pp.viii + 151, paperback, 4.50). For many years the concept of tradition has evidently fascinated Canon Donald Allchin. One of his early works, The Spirit and the Word (1963), contains the in triguing statement, 'The tradition of the Church is not so much a long line stretched out in time, as the gathering up of tinje itself into the communion of the living God.' Such is the approach to tradition that he now develops more fully in the present volume. For Fr Donald the question 'What is tradition?' involves at once the more basic question 'What is man?' John Macquarrie is quoted (p.26): 'Man differs from a
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thing or even from an animal in so far as he is not only aware of the present but remembers the past and anticipates the future.' Man is to be defined, not just as a rational animal, but also and more fundamentally as an animal that remembers. The distinctive characteristic of human personhood is the ability to bring together into living unity the three dimensions of past, present and future, thereby making the present instant 'authentic' and transforming it into kairos, the moment of opportunity. Tradition is precisely this act of recapitulation or anamnesis that renders us genuinely human; it is 'the presence of the past', the reliving and recreation of the past so that it becomes the present and, indeed, the future. By thus re-experiencing the past as present, we also reach out beyond the temporal sequence altogether, towards Eliot's 'point of intersection of the timeless with time'. Such is the basic argument of the book. Its immediate predecessor, The Kingdom of Love and Knowledge, bore as sub-title 'The encounter between Ortho doxy and the West'. The Dynamic of Tradition is concerned with a different but related type of encounter, that between the Church of today and the Church of former ages. Its subject is 'ecumenism in time', as Fr Donald puts it, using George Florovsky's phrase what may be termed 'vertical' ecumenism, complementing our horizontal 'ecumenism in space'. To illustrate what he means by 'the presence of the past', Fr Donald selects two periods in the English religious tradition: the later 14th century (Julian of Norwich, St Erkenwald, Langland's Pzm Plowman) and the mid-17th century (George Herbert, Lancelot Andrewes, the Aberdeen theologian James Sibbald). Casting his net wider, he then speaks of the Celtic tradition, still very much alive in such contemporary Welsh-language poets as Euros Bowen and Saunders Lewis: 'To discover the world of Wales is like finding hidden rooms in an ancient house with which one thought one had long been familiar' (p.82). How true! Throughout the discussion there are cross-references to the tradition of the Christian East: I recall in particular several telling citations from the Romanians Fr Andrei Scrima and Fr Dumitru Staniloae. Non-Christian sources, such as the Hindu Vedas, are also seen as contributing to our Christian 'reliving' of the past. Understood in so broad a sense as this, Christian tradition runs the risk of becoming merely eclectic. Because he starts from his own national roots, Fr Donald has on the whole avoided this danger but not, I fear, entirely. We need to be told more clearly wherein lies the inner coherence of tradition. How are we to distin guish wheat from chaff, true traditions from false, Holy Tradition (with a capital T) from mere custom? The note of hope which marks this book is welcome, and Fr Donald is right to quote, more than once, the moving words of the Lady Julian: 'AH shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.' But sometimes he appears over-optimistic; I would wish, for example, to qualify his cheerful generalisations about the doctrinal basis of present-day ecumenism (p.96). Even though Christ's descent into hell forms a master-theme running through the book, something of the challenge and the bracing severity of the gospel message is missing. More needs to be said about repentance, penthos and ascetic warfare.
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NEW BOOKS

Darton Longman SL Todd

Holiness and Politics 1982 Bampton Lectures Peter Hinchliff
Religion tends to provide absolute ideals. Politics tends to be about expediency. Yet Christians are committed to putting their ideals to work in every part of their lives. The author of The Human Potential grapples with this vital problem. June 216 x 135mm 272 pp. Paper 232 51502 6 8.50 net

There is, however, very much indeed for which we should be grateful. The remarks about converts are especially helpful in the context of a Fellowship such as our own: Changes of nationality, like changes of church allegiance, can have a greater positive value than we are sometimes ready to admit, especially when they are made without any violent repudiation of the past. They can be ways of bring ing together positions formerly thought to be incompatible (p.21). I enjoyed the personal anecdotes, and trust that we shall have more of these in future writings; the way in which a Greek monk treats books as contemporary wit nesses, while bothering little about questions of dating and sources, is well con veyed (pp.27-9). There is a fine section on the role of music in worship (pp.84-5). Three things above all I appreciated in this book as a whole. First, it emphasises the all-pervasive presence of God in nature: each material object is a theophany, for 'even in the smallest details of life earth as well as heaven is full of God's glory' (p. 133). Secondly, it brings out the significance of national traditions from a reli gious viewpoint, the spiritual value of patriotism; ethnic identity can become 'trans lucent'. More than once I was reminded of Fr Derwas Chitty's words: We all come back to the homes of our childhood, with a special love. And somehow if we lost that special love, we should lose with it our power for loving any other place in all the world [. . . ]. Universal love is to be found through the right development of home-love in all men, not by a homeless cosmopolitanism. As human beings we apprehend the catholic and universal in and through the local and specific; to quote Fr Donald, 'The universality of the Church, its true Catho licity, is never something uniform or abstract. It expresses itself through the multi plicity of peoples and languages' (p.22). Thirdly, and most fundamentally, Fr Donald does not limit the Christian tradition narrowly to doctrinal texts, but shows how art and literature even literature that is apparently secular have a vital place within it. For him the best theologians are often the poets. His standpoint is that of Fr Robert Murray in his essay 'Mary, the Second Eve in the Early Syriac Fathers' (Eastern Churches Review iii [1971], p.384): All theology starts with the human mind reaching out to evoke some echo or reflexion of the ineffable by means of poetic imagery, knowing that the in effable cannot be pinned down; there follows a period of rising confidence in the intellect's power, then of declining vision and confidence; finally, in deca dence, an abject literalism which can no longer distinguish the levels of dis course and discern what was poetic imagery, what was philosophical symbolism and what was matter-of-fact language. The peaks of theological poetry remain to inspire us again Ephrem, Dante, Milton, Blake, T.S. Eliot. It would be good for the Church if they were put more in the forefront of theological study. ' The Dynamic of Tradition forms the final volume in a trilogy, drawing together the topics opened up in The World is a Wedding (1978) and The Kingdom of Love
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Reprint Richest of Poor Men John R H Moorman

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Resurrection Rowan Williams

Why is it 'good news' to say 'Jesus is risen'? What has the resurrection to do with our understanding of salvation? This book shows how the experience of Jesus' resur rection was, from the first, an experience of forgiveness, of the healing of memories of injury, guilt or failure. Out of this heal ing grow new patterns of life together, and a new understanding of God. Rowan Williams is a Lecturer in Divinity at Cambridge and the author of The Wound of Knowledge. April 216 x 135mm 160pp Paper 232 51546 8 4.95net

This Year in Jerusalem Kenneth Cragg

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Hearts Not Garments Michael Hollings

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Canterbury and Rome Sister Churches Robert Hale

The book explores in a concrete way that unity in diversity which the two Churches are seeking. The Sister Churches of Pope Paul's famous phrase can and should now work together closely everywhere. Robert Hale, an American Roman Cathohe Benedectine monk presents a freshly argued case for a joint mission to a des perate humanity. April 216 x 135mm 160pp Paper 232 51555 7 4.95 net

Charles Lowder and the Ritualist Movement Lida Ellsworth

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Pearl of Great Price Sergei Hackel

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and Knowledge (1979). Together the three constitute an impressive achievement. And while throughout the series Fr Donald writes in a refreshing and attractive manner, in this third volume he has surpassed himself. It is the most unified of the three, far more coherent and closely argued than its predecessors. The experience of reading it over Christmas proved for me a recreation, in the true and full sense of the word: re-creation.
KALLISTOS WARE

Towards Reunion. The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches by Edward J. Kilmartin (New York/Ramsey/Toronto: Paulist Press 1979, pp.118, 3.75). In this relatively short book Edward J. Kilmartin (professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and Executive Secretary of the United States Catholic Conference's Committee for Dialogue with the Orthodox Church) provides a bird'seye view of the history of the relationships between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches up to 1978 both in the United States and on the international level. The most stimulating and constructive part of the book focuses on five doctrinal issues which have been considered as serious obstacles to reunion. The first three items, which no longer seem unresolvable, are the different approaches to the problems related to the Trinity: our knowledge of God; the mission of the Spirit to the Church; and the procession of the Spirit within the Trinity. The author believes that Gregory Palamas's theory of uncreated divine energies is not irreconcilable with some contemporary Roman Catholic theologians' understanding of the immanent and economic Trinity. The same is said of the mission of the Spirit to the Church: in the wake of M.J. Scheeben and H. Muhlen he sees the Church as a con tinuation of the mission of the Spirit to Christ rather than simply a continuation of the Incarnation. As to the Filioque he points out that the addition by Rome failed to respect the mutual understanding of East and West that no addition be made to the creed without consulting the whole Church and that the Filioque is a theological theory which should have no place in a creed intended to express the common faith of both Churches. The last two issues that still offer a serious challenge to both Churches relate to ecclesiology, namely the identification and interpretation of the significance of the ecumenical councils of the whole Church and the Petrine office (papal primacy and infallibility). Regarding the problem of ecumenical councils, the author offers two helpful comments. First, no list of ecumenical councils exists which has been imposed with dogmatic authority. Further, Paul VI himself has introduced an important distinction between the seven ecumenical councils and the general synods held in the West in an official letter of 5 October 1974 addressed to
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Cardinal Willebrands. This may mean that in the event of reunion it is unlikely that the Orthodox would be asked to affirm that those councils of the West, which were held after the schism, were ecumenical. Therefore they would not be bound to affirm the conciliar decisions as having binding force on them, but only insofar as they proclaim the faith of the undivided Church. Secondly, the author warns us against an overly mechanistic understanding of general councils and the value of their decrees. Since these decrees need to be understood in the light of Scripture, liturgy and authentic Christian practice, the function of the whole Church in the subsequent reception of these decrees and teachings cannot be entirely disregarded. Thus there seems to be a possible way to concur with the Orthodox position that subsequent reception of conciliar decrees by the whole Church is necessary in order that they may be known as statements of the faith. Lastly the author addresses the most difficult problem in the dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, namely, the role of the papacy in the universal Church. To help us understand the current discussion on the papal primacy, the author summarises it in four steps. First, there is a growing awareness that in the New Testament the experience of the life of the Church has caused a shift in the thinking of Peter's role from mis sionary fisherman to shepherd of the flock, model martyr, recipient of a special revelation, confessor of the true faith, overseer of doctrine and church disciplines. This awareness induces the scholars to replace the former question: 'Did Jesus install Peter as the first pope?' with 'To what extent does the later use of the image of Peter in relation to the papacy correspond to the trajectory of the New Testament?' Secondly, to answer this question scholars agree that historically, at least up to the fourth century, the authoritative role of the pope was not justified by the theo logical theory of the primacy of Peter based upon the exegesis of Matthew 16:17-19, but was brought about by a variety of factors such as Rome being the capital of the empire; the exceptional fidelity of the Roman community in time of persecution and the purity of its doctrine; the conviction that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome; the motif of passage from Jerusalem to Rome present in the Acts of the Apostles. Again we find the process of appropriating and interpreting the New Testament in terms of experience of the Church: the general awareness of Rome's pre-eminence in supporting the faith of the whole Church led to a new understand ing of Peter's role in the New Testament. Thirdly, this process of re-interpreting the Scripture in the light of the ecclesial experience of faith occurred again at Vatican II. Whereas Vatican I had stressed the primacy of the pope, Vatican II explicitly situates it within the context of episcopal collegiality. Fourthly, if the Petrine office has been re-interpreted in the light of Scripture, Tradition, and newer knowledge and experience of the life of faith, it cannot be said a priori that the present understanding of it and the style in which it is exercised will never change.
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In fact, according to Kilmartin, there is a new understanding of the Petrine office afoot today. Basically it results from an understanding of the theological meaning of jurisdiction and the nature of the local church. On the one hand autho rity or jurisdiction is seen as a service of the gospel of freedom. The pope should be the model pastor who protects Christian freedom and promotes variety to meet the needs of local churches while safeguarding the unity of faith. On the other hand the communion ecclesiology considers the local churches to be churches in the full sense and not simply parts of the universal Church. Consequently the pope is not a super-bishop who delegates jurisdiction to local bishops. Rather the author urges that the pope should be understood primarily as bishop of the local church of Rome. This means that he will have less world-wide administrative responsibility but will be able to concentrate on the essentials of the Petrine service to the Church: preserving the unity of the faith and fostering freedom and pluralism in all else. The other problem relating to the papacy is infallibility. Again the author correctly emphasises that the infallibility of the pope presupposes the infallibility of the Church: for it is only meaningful if the Church infallibly believes this in fallibility. Nevertheless, the pope is not simply a spokesman of the current majority opinion but an authentic teacher who represents Jesus Christ. He can take a stand against the leading opinions of the day since he represents the sovereignty of the gospel over the Church. Kilmartin rightly rejects Hans Kiing's reduction of infalli bility to indefectibility because the claim to ultimate binding can only be grounded on a claim to truth. This does not mean, however, that dogmas can exhaustively express the truth or that they are the proper content of faith. They are but 'sacra ments' or signs which point to the proper content of faith, namely, God revealing himself in Jesus Christ in the Spirit. Therefore dogmas must be understood as historically open questions, always susceptible of a new interpretation. Kilmartin has written a very useful book. It deserves wide readership because of the rich information it provides and of the many suggestive approaches it adopts towards solving the doctrinal obstacles that still stand in the way to full communion between the two Churches. Perhaps it is to be regretted that the author has not fully developed the trinitarian ecclesiology and the theology of the local church: for in my judgment it is only in these theological frameworks that the most serious impediments to Orthodox-Roman Catholic reunion can be overcome, namely papal primacy and infallibility.
PETER C. PHAN

Le buisson ardent by Paul Evdokimov (Paris: Dessain & Tolra, 10 rue Cassette75006, 1981, pp.176, n.p.). One of the sure signs of the vitality and relevance of a thinker is the posthumous re-impression of his or her works. Paul Evdokimov is numbered among the few modern theologians who enjoy this honour. His major writings, such as Dostoievsky et le probleme du mal, La Femme et le salut du monde, L'Orthodoxie, L'Espritsaint dans la Tradition orthodoxe, have recently been reprinted. The book under review is a collection of his articles, most of which were published in the periodical Bible et Vie Chretienne. The book opens with a preface by Evdokimov's friend, Celestin Charlier, a Benedictine monk and a well-known biblical scholar. He gives a moving account of the deep influence Evdokimov exercised, perhaps unconsciously, upon him by opening up for him the rich treasure of the patristic and liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church. Besides a profound and lasting friendship despite differences in age, nationality, formation, and church membership, Evdokimov offered Charlier his collaboration in the journal Bible et Vie Chretienne, whose editor the latter was until removed from this position by the former Holy Office. One of the reasons for this measure was the appearance of Evdokimov's many articles in this ecu menical review. The first chapter contains Evdokimov's autobiographical reflections on the most significant events of his life since he emigrated from Russia. These reminiscences also reveal the various thinkers who shaped Evdokimov's mind: Dostoevsky, Kierke gaard, Pascal, Berdiaev, and Bulgakov among others. Particularly noteworthy are his 'priestly ministry' to the victims of the Second World War, his liturgical services to a group of Protestant Germans, his participation in the Masses celebrated by Fr Charlier, and finally his involvement in the work for Christian unity. The other chapters collect in thematic fashion articles that deal with light in the Bible; light in the patristic tradition; the mystery of the word; St John the Baptist; the liturgical significance of doors in the Orthodox churches; the Divine Liturgy; Pentecost in Orthodox tradition; and eschatology. The book ends with a postscript by Irenee Fransen who recalls the history of Evdokimov's collaboration with Bible et Vie Chretienne. The book, while providing us with a useful introduction to the various aspects of Evdokimov's thought, is far from being an anthology of his representative and most original writings. No doubt the editor was limited in his selection of the author's works to those published in Bible et Vie Chretienne. A complete anthology of Evdokimov's works should include at least some of his writings on marriage, the role of woman, interiorised monasticism, ecumenism, and art. It is my hope that some English publisher would'Undertake the task of publishing an anthology of this kind. This would be a valuable service to the English-speaking world and a well99

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deserved homage to an author whose original thought continues to animate the spiritual life of many Christians.
PETER C.PHAN

Many Worlds: A Russian Life by Sophie Koulomzin (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press 1980, pp.236 with photographs, 6.95). Sophie Shidlovsky (later Sophie Koulomzin) writes simply about the complex up heavals in her own eventful life. The book begins with an idyll of life on the family estate at Voltchy in Old Russia, 'The Happy Kingdom', and in the family home in St Petersburg. The October Revolution of 1917 puts an end to this, and the family emigrates. Sophie, her brother and her parents spend two years in Estonia, where her father dies and where Sophie holds down a full-time job as well as completing her own education with night-time study. She and her brother win scholarships to a German university and the family moves to Berlin. Sophie's mother works for the YMCA, and when this body moves its headquarters to Paris in 1924 the Shidlovskys go too. At that time, Paris was rapidly becoming the centre of Russian emigre life. Sophie then spends a year in the USA with a YMCA scholarship, returns to France to build up the religious educational work of the Russian Student Christian move ment among emigre children, and makes the decision to get married and bring up a family rather than become a nun. The Second World War brings years of wandering, hardship and privation for the Koulomzins and their children, and many moral dilemmas confront them. Should they accept jobs from the Germans while hating Nazism? What should their attitude be to the German invasion of the USSR if the Soviet regime is thereby to be over thrown? In 1948 the Koulomzins take the decision to emigrate to the USA where they finally achieve a stable home life and financial security. Sophie Koulomzin is able to devote herself to her pioneering work on the religious education of Orthodox children. She retires in 1969, receiving the degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa. The following year she revisits Russia, Leningrad, her family home and one room in particular: 'on the door there were still remnants of the padded oilcoth that insulated my father's study from our noisy games'. Thus we travel through the 'many worlds' of Russia, Europe and the USA with the author and her family. The book is full of sketches of all kinds of people and of the organisations with which they and Sophie are connected: Fr Sergii Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdiaev, Mother Maria Skobtsova; the YMCA, the Russian Student Christian Movement. There is also another, spiritual level on which 'many worlds' encounter one another. Sophie Koulomzin is anxious, as a devout Orthodox Christian, both to understand the faith of non-Orthodox Christians and to examine the assumptions
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of her own faith in the light of her experiences. In Estonia she has her first contact with 'Protestant idealism of the American vintage' in the shape of the YMCA workers she meets there. While admitting that 'I vaguely felt that somewhere there was a discrepancy between the world-view on which all these activities were based and our own Orthodox concept of life', she works with the YMCA out of a sense of responsibility for reconstructing society after the First World War. When in Estonia, she has the opportunity to go to the USA to become a YMCA secretary, and realises that to accept this offer will mean leaving her parents alone. 'At this point all my newly acquired "American Protestant" beliefs in the God-given right to pursue happiness, my belief in my own freedom and personal rights, came into a violent clash with my deeper Orthodox world view'. She consults an Orthodox priest and it becomes clear she must not go. Through the whole of Sophie's story there is a strong sense that despite all difficulties God's will is nevertheless working itself out in her life. Sophie Koulomzin tells her story in a self-effacing style which at the time of reading tends to minimise the significance of her own impressive achievements as scholar, pioneer of Orthodox education, loyal daughter and loving mother. Never theless, the continuing necessity facing Sophie to exercise her faith constructively and to respond creatively to every new opportunity makes this autobiography invigorating to read.
PHILIP WALTERS

Zakatnye gody [Sunset Years] by N.M. Zernov (Paris: YMCA-Press 1981, pp.175, n.p.). This 'epilogue to the family chronicle of the Zernovs' is a moving account of the Sunset Years of a great Christian, the late Dr Nicolas Zernov. It contains very diverse material, too diverse for a short review to cover properly. Nicolas (as all his English friends called him) begins with the remarkable change in the Weltanschauung of the Russian intelligentsia (or.better, educated society) which took place in the last years before the Revolution of 1917. Many members of this society were to be driven into exile by that Revolution. There, the older emigres tended to live in the past, while the younger tended to assimilate to the lands of their exile. But the Zernovs and their generation came to terms with the West, while remaining Russian to the core, with the Orthodox Church at the centre of their lives. There follows a most perceptive description of the role of the first Russian emi gration and its part in the Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century (to quote the title of Nicolas'great book).
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half price sale NORDLAND publishing international

GEORGES FLOROVSKY
Collected Works vol. 1 Bible, Church, Tradition vol. 2 Christianity and Culture vol. 3 Creation and Redemption vol.4 Aspects of Church History part 1 vol. 5 Ways of Russian Theology, pbk. normally 5.50 8.60 12.00 9.80 12.00

A short chapter on 'Lenin and atheism' has particular significance since it was dictated by Nicolas to his wife Militza a few hours before his death. These last words are as well thought out as anything he ever wrote and they have the almost supernatural insight or clear-sightedness (prozorlivosf) which is given to some at the end of their life. The reader is taken back to 1917 and sees the arrival of Lenin through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old Nicolas Zernov. The passage concludes with a paragraph of subtle analysis of why so many God-fearing Russian peasants fell easy victims to primitive atheist propaganda. It was at this point that Nicolas said to his wife, 'I am tired and will dictate the end later, but you know it yourself. Within a few hours he was dead. Death scenes are out of fashion. The more's the pity. With great skill and spiritual tact Militza has filled the gaps in what Nicolas left concerning the illnesses of his last years. Here there is no false modesty about death and suffering. 'See how a Christian can die!' were Arthur Connolly's last words to his Muslim tormentors before his barbarous execution in Bokhara. And the reader will want to apply these words to the death of Nicolas Zernov. These chapters will give courage and con solation to many. I have no space to touch on Nicolas' reminiscences of some of the remarkable people he knew and the still more remarkable movements in which he took so great a part. But I must not pass over the chapter entitled 'Militza', which is a most unusual tribute to a very happy marriage. Without the least touch of sentimentality Nicolas bares his most intimate feelings. His words are tender, but he adds, 'Our life was a duel in which noone was beaten'. Zakatnye gody is very readable: short chapters in good classical Russian. It should translate well, and it is to be hoped that a good deal of it will appear in the shortened English version of the Zernov family chronicle which is in preparation.
JOHN LAWRENCE

GEORGE FEDOTOV
Collected Works vol. 1 St Filipp Metropolitan of Moscow vol. 2 Treasury of Russian Spirituality vol. 3 The Russian Religious Mind (I): Kievan Christianity vol. 4 The Russian Religious Mind (II): The Middle Ages: The Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries 9.80 4.50 4.50
4.50

A. Gratieux,AS. Khomiakov and the Slavophile Movement (tr. E. Meyendorff), two vols. Sergei Bulgakov, Karl Marx as a Religious Type (introduced by Donald Treadgold) George A. Maloney SJ, A History of Orthodox Theology since 1453 D. Stremooukhoff, Vladimir Soloviev and his Messianic Work

24.00

Christ the New Passover: On the Services of Holy Week and Easter in the Orthodox: Church by Valentina Zander, tr. Anna Garrett and Pegeen O'Flaherty (London: Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh, 34 Upper Addison Gardens, W14, 1980, pp.30, 75p). This is a translation of a booklet originally published in Russian in Paris in 1940. It is intended to lead the worshipper through the services of Holy Week and Easter, helping him to penetrate into their theological and spiritual meaning. It begins with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and, drawing on the liturgical texts and scripture readings, shows how the services of Holy Week enable the wor shipper to follow the drama of our redemption, as it unfolds in the final week of the Saviour's lifeon earth. Dlustrated by many quotations from the liturgical texts,
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5.00 13.00 12.90

All these Nordland titles (as well as some others) are available at HALF MARKED PRICE from the Fellowship Bookroom, 52 Ladbroke Grove, London W l l 2PB.
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THE NICOLAS ZERNOV MEMORIAL FUND

First progress report
The Appeal Committee responsible for the Nicolas Zernov Memorial Fund is happy to report that since the launching of the appeal in February 1981 there has been an encouraging response. By the end of 1981 10,042.53 had been received, not counting sums promised for future years under four-year covenants or money recoverable from the income tax authorities. Steps are now being taken by the Appeal Committee to implement the various aims of the Nicolas Zernov Memorial Fund. The search has now begun in earnest for a place in Oxford to serve as the initial centre for a community of senior scholars belonging to the different Christian traditions. The English translation of vol. iii (the Epilogue) of the Zernov Family Chronicle is complete; it is now being revised by the editor, and possibilities for its publication are being explored. Work on the cataloguing of Dr Zernov's library is to begin soon. We invite the generous support of those members of the Fellowship and other readers of Sobornost/ECR who have not yet contributed to the Fund. Deed of Covenant and Bankers' Order forms are available from: The Honorary Treasurer, P.A.L. Cooper Esq., Maryfield, Woodeaton, Oxford 0X3 9TL, England. Cheques, made payable to The Nicolas Zernov Memorial Fund, should be sent to the Honorary Treasurer. Archimandrite Kallistos Ware Chairman of the Appeal Committee

the booklet explains the symbolism and typology woven into the services of the Holy and Great Week, through whose observance the believer can enter into the joy of the risen Lord. It will certainly be of value to anyone who takes part in the Orthodox celebration of Holy Week and Easter, both as a guide for those taking part in the services for the first time, and as a reminder to those who are familar with them of the spiritual and devotional riches they contain.
HUGH WYBREW

Books

Received

Augustinus-Verlag, Wiirzburg: Die Eucharistieversammlung als Kirche. Zur Entstehung und Entfaltung der eucharistischen Ekklesiologie Nikola] Afanas'evs (1893-1966) (Das ostliche Christentum, Neue Folge, Band 31) by Peter Plank, 1981, pp.268, DM45. Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556: Prayer of the Heart by George A. Maloney SJ, 1981, pp.206, n.p. Editions du Centre Orthodoxe, Chambesy, Geneva: Eglise locale et eglise universelle. Topike kai kata ten oikoumenen ekklesia. Etudes theologiques de Chambesy I, 1981, pp.360, SFr 20. Synodica V: Congres pour Vexamen de la question d'une celebration commune de Pdques par tous les Chretiens le meme dimanche. Proces-Verbaux et Textes, Chambesy-Secretariat pour la preparation du saint et grand Concile de l'Eglise orthodoxe, 1981, pp.152, SF4.20. Geoffrey Chapman, London: God and Man in African Religion by Emefie Ikenga Metuh, 1981, pp.xiv + 182, 3.95. Editions du Cloitre, 13490 Jouques, France: En quite de la sagesse; du Parthenon a VApocalypse en passant par la nouvelle etla troisieme Rome by Louis Bouyer, 1981, pp.64, 24F. Darton, Longman & Todd, London: The Restless Apostle. From the Writings of Don Orione with a foreword by Bishop Christopher Butler, 1981, pp.x + 146, 4. Domograf, Circne Tuscolana38, Rome: Three Meditations for Eastertide by Joseph Patron, 1981, pp.44, n.p.
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BOOKS RECEIVED

Van Duren, Gerrards Cross: The Representatives. The Real Nature and Function of Papal Legates by Mario Oliveri, 1980, pp!l92, 7.95.

GOD BE IN MY THINKING
by H.A. HODGES
A privately printed edition of a short work by the late Professor Hodges. A discussion of the Christian's pilgrimage in its 'intellectual rather than its volitional or emotional aspects'. A closely argued but immensely stimulating work reflecting a lifetime of wide reading and thought. Hodges writes as a believer, speaking to fellow believers, and as a philosopher who reveals much of his own personal struggle to maintain his faith and to answer his own sceptical, questioning mind.

Gee & Son, Denbigh, Wales: The Sacrament of the Word by Edward Lewis, 1981, pp.136, 1.50. Handsel Press, Edinburgh: Creed and Personal Identity. The Meaning of the Apostles' Creed by David Baily Harned, 1981, pp.120, 5.50. Labor et Fides, Geneva: Chemins vers la verite by Mgr Urs Kury, 1980, pp.280, n.p. Edizioni Liturgiche, 21 via Pompeo Magno, 00192 Rome: The Sacrifice of Praise. Studies on the Themes of Thanksgiving and Redemption in the Central Prayers of the Eucharistic and Baptismal Liturgies in Honour of Arthur Hubert Couratin edited by Bryan D. Spinks, 1981, pp.272, n.p. Novosti Press Agency, 3 Rosary Gardens, London SW7: Church and Religion in the USSR by Vladimir Kuroyedov, 1977, pp.56, n.p. Society for the Study of Religion under Communism, Wheaton, Illinois: Vasyl Romanyuk: A Voice in the Wilderness. Letters, Appeals, Essays, 1980, pp,126, n.p. Ph. Spyropoulos, 28 Oktovriou62, Athens: Die Beziehungen zwischen Staat und Kirche in Griechenland by Philip pos C. Spyropoulos, 1981, pp.186, n.p. World Council of Churches, Geneva: Experiments with Bible Study by Hans-Ruedi Weber, 1981, pp.x + 322, 6.95.

The book is available from the Fellowship Bookroom, 52 Ladbroke Grove, London W112PB

YMCA Press, Paris: On ne joue pas avec I'etemite. Recit d'une conversion by Hieromoine G., 1980, pp.100, n.p. Correction to Sobornost/ECR 3:2 The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry by Henri J.M. Nouwen. On p.249 the author of the review describes Henri Nouwen as 'a theologian from the Reformed Tradition'. Fr Nouwen is in fact a Catholic priest (although there is nothing in the blurb or in the body of the book to indicate this). We apologise for any offence or distress caused by the misattribution.
107 106

Price (including postage) 2.00 (US $5).

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

Fellowship Affairs
THE SUMMER CONFERENCE 1981

I have been here before, I thought; not perhaps at High Leigh but at Broadstairs. The Subject was The Prayer of the Heart - Fourteenth Century Spirituality Eastern and Western and its relevance today. The sun was shining in the sky which it had no business to be doing the first week in August. Already simple souls (and others, too, far from simple) were preparing to bask in its light and warmth. Only a little imagi nation would have been needed for the Thomist and the Palamite to materialise out of the heat haze walking hand in hand.1 The promise or the threat, depending on your point of view, was not entirely fulfilled. The word 'apophatic' was not dropped in deadly earnest until the Wednes day morning, three days into the conference. Twenty-four hours later a paper on Dionysius the Areopagite was being delivered against a background of thunder and lightning. By Saturday afternoon, the time for that essential piece of conference liturgy, the Cricket Match, the ground conditions were such as to render batting, bowling and fielding hazardous in the extreme. As usual, a good time was had by all, and no damage was done that rest and prolonged immersion in hot water could not cure. More to the point, however, the great debates of yesteryear were not to be repeated on this occasion. 'Where had all the Thomists gone?' They seemed to have vanished along with the young children whose presence could formerly be counted on to enliven and divert the scene. Where were the Palamites too? What is a Palamite anyway? No answer was given, unless the presence of Fr Kallistos Ware was, amongst other things, intended to serve as a model for ostensive definition. Possibly space might have been found in the programme for a clear and concise account of the origins, background and issues of the hesychast controversy. This is a topic with which not all Western Christians by any means are familiar, and simple souls do not have to be condemned to perpetual simplicity. However, so much for the atmospherics, which conventionally are left to the last paragraphs in conference reports. One must now become wissenschaftlich and show a proper respect for the occasion. Save for the singular exception just mentioned, the Subject was widely covered,' and the foundations were well laid in the first two papers of the conference, those of Gerald Bonner ('The Spirituality of St Augustine and its influence on Western Mysticism') and Sebastian Brock ('Some Oriental Roots The Prayer of the Heart in the Syriac Tradition'). On the face of it these 1. The allusion is to E.L. Mascall, Pi in the High (London 1959), pp.42ff. ('Ecumenism exem plified - Reminiscences of an Anglo-Orthodox Summer-School'). 108

two topics are far removed in time (if not in sacred time) from the fourteenth cen tury, but they proved to be integral to what was to follow. In spirituality, as in other things, St Augustine has set the tone, either by action or reaction, for Western Christendom. Also, the title itself forces us to ask what we mean by words like 'spirituality' and 'mysticism'. German scholars with their in built suspicion of the word tend to deny Augustine the title of'mystic', for them a dubious compliment, though there are passages in the Confessions which suggest a contrary view. However, in the sense of spirituality being the orientation of the whole man to God, nobody can deny Augustine his position as one of the great spiritual Fathers of the Church. The difficulty is that it is often hard to distinguish his description of the processes of the intellectual cognition of truth from those of man's awareness of God. The difference brought about by his conversion was the new conviction of the centrality of Christ and the overwhelming power of the grace of God which now regulates and revitalises all that was there before. The Syriac tradition, on the other hand, described by Dr Brock, is the back ground of those writings of pseudo-Denys which were so influential in the East generally and in the West partially. So the study of the oriental roots of the Prayer of the Heart was especially valuable. It is always a joy to renew acquaintances with the otherwise nigh inaccessible gems of Syriac poetry, and especially important was the emphasis on the heart as comprising the whole personality of the one who prays, which, for present purposes, includes the head and our whole physical and emotional being as well. This provides a sound corrective against the temptation to make the business of prayer alternatively either wholly cerebral or sentimental. Six papers provided discussions on different specific aspects of fourteenth-cen tury spirituality itself. Clifton Wolters gave a largely factual introduction to the four English mystical writers, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing and Mother Julian of Norwich. The influence of Denys in East and West was discussed by Andrew Louth. Only certain writings of the Dionysian Corpus were translated, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (Denys' Hid Divinitie translated by the author of The Cloud). These came into the Western tradition by way of St Bernard, Thomas Gallus, the Victorines and possibly also Grosseteste, and produced the kind of writings described by Fr Wolters. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy however does not appear to have been known, and there is nothing in Western spirituality to correspond to Nicholas Cabasilas' Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. If the West had known the whole of Denys and not part only its understanding of the place of liturgical prayer would have been better, or at least other. Fr Kallistos proffered a meticulous comparison and contrast of the differing approach to the invocation of the Holy Name in East and West. In the East the hesychast tradition is conveniently summed up in the person of Gregory of Sinai; in the West Richard Rolle (? Pickering's personal hermit) and his Fire of Love provides an example of devotion to the Name of Jesus. Certainly devotion to the Name has had a long history both in East and West. In Rolle it has the character of intense
109

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

affective prayer, but in Gregory of Sinai and his predecessors it is a much more systematic and comprehensive business. For Rolle the result is in a warmth of feeling; for the hesychast the invocation of the Name is a demanding discipline of lips, heart and mind alike. A similar comparison was promised by Donald Allchin's paper entitled 'Palamas and Julian of Norwich'. In fact there was-a good deal more about Julian than Palamas, and a sensitive interpretation of the relationship between prayer and theology as exemplified in Julian's writings. 'The theologian is one whose prayer is true'. To be given the results of original research is a rare treat, which we were privileged to enjoy in David Balfour's paper on 'Symeon of Thessalonica: a polemical hesy chast'.2 In the previously unedited work which Dr Balfour has discovered and studied it is possible to discover many details of Symeon's life that were hitherto unknown. He was born in Constantinople, brought up with an intensive monastic training, and reluctantly consecrated Archbishop of Thessalonica in 1416/7. He died a few months before the fall of the city in 1430. Living under siege conditions it is hardly surprising that he came to develop a siege mentality. He supported the lost cause of keeping Salonica politically Byzantine. He worked under the pressure of the need to keep the faith and resist apostasy alike to Rome and Islam. In the circumstances it is hardly likely that he would be an easy or an attractive person. Nevertheless he is one who reveals something of a heroic stature, who combines the qualities of a prejudiced bigot with those of a humble man of prayer. In similar vein the portrait of another earlier hesychast, the Bulgarian St Symeon of Turnovo, was given by Muriel Heppell. Symeon was by way of being the apostle of hesychasm in Bulgaria, and we were shown something of the contribution he made not only to the Church but to the national life of his people. It would be a grave mistake to think of hesychasts as recluses totally absorbed in the practices of omphaloscopy. The fourteenth century was an 'age of anxiety' in East and West alike: there was plague, turmoil and the threat of foreign conquest. Not only did the hesychasts seek the vision of the heavenly light beyond the shadows of the world that were closing round them. If the two Symeons are anything to go by they were ready and willing to make their contribution to the culture and politics of the times in which they lived. Coming to modern times, perhaps the most influential work on the Prayer of the Heart has been The Way of a Pilgrim, written anonymously in Russia in the last cen tury and widely known in the English translation of R.M. French. The spirituality of the book and the practice of the Jesus Prayer were discussed in two successive lectures by Metropolitan Anthony. The true practice of the Jesus Prayer is insepar able from a life of real pilgrimage. Before he undertook his pilgrimage, the 'pilgrim', a cripple, was by virtue of circumstances a useless member of his peasnnt com munity. He depended for whatever he had entirely on the kindness and goodwill of others. This condition was further enhanced by the act of pilgrimage, a self-imposed 2. Published above. 110'

exile for the sake of a spiritual journey in which all security is foregone for the sake of the promised goal. True pilgrimage, therefore, produces a detachment, objectivity of vision, and time and room to enter into an inner silence. The Jesus Prayer springs from these conditions. It is not a mantra, nor a pious exercise of recollection as it is often (mis)understood. It is the prayer of the heart in the sense of it being the response of the whole of one's being to God. In a state of life that has been reduced to the bare essentials it says all that can or needs to be said. We came right into the twentieth" century in the moving final paper of the conference given by John Arnold under the title 'Life Conquers Death - Prayer from the Heart in Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn'. The theme was developed through Pasternak's poem about the night in the hospital when he was brought in, supposedly dying, after a severe heart attackj then further, in Solzhenitsyn's picture of the anonymous prisoner U-81 in One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.3 Perhaps it is in such scenes as these that we should look to discover the light from Mount Tabor in our own times. Having innocently and perhaps misguidedly attempted to treat the conference theme systematically, I am hardly surprised to find that a good deal has been left out. Dom Edmund Jones, for example on the new venture of Cockfosters in Turvey; Elizabeth Moberly on the Prayer of the Heart and its relationship to healing and wholeness; Archdeacon House and his recollections of contacts between East and West in the years before and after the last war. Michael Grant's paper on 'Some questions of meaning' was important if rather heavy going. It is good to be reminded that things do not always mean what they appear to mean, not least in prayer. We were fortunate in also having minds like those of John Byrom and Ursula Bickersteth readily accessible to explain the mysteries of structuralism, and thus make much clear. Unfortunately there was no comparable expertise available on the fourteenth century Altaic culture claimed by Charles Graves as the spiritual ancestry of the sophiology of Sergius Bulgakov. Whether or not this particular connection can be sustained, the question was raised whether the Christian faith may not be too selfconscious about its inheritance from cultures other than that of the Hellenistic Mediterranean world. This question was unexpectedly answered in Macdpnald Milne's cheerful introduction to South Pacific spirituality, some of which re appeared in the concert on Saturday night. The visuals this year were taken care of by Nicholas Gendle with an illustrated candle-lit lecture on 'The Iconography of the Transfiguration in Byzantine Art', thereby providing in an unwitting tableau vivant a parable of the distinction between created and uncreated light. The twelve discussion groups went, happily on the whole, about their business in their own ways or according to their leader's whim. They formed a particularly important part of this conference in which a far higher proportion of those present 3. The second part of this paper is published above.
Ill

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

were 'first attenders'. In the worship the indefatigable Andrea Keck now appears to have taken charge of Anglican as well as Orthodox music and tribute must be paid to her stamina as well as to her patience. For me, the most moving experience of the week was to hear Fr Kallistos chanting the Canon of the Transfiguration at the Vigil on the Saturday evening. Not only was this the only extended piece of Orthodox liturgical music that I can remember hearing in which all the words were fully audible; the power of the words themselves, their inspiration and their litur gical setting were something all of their own. The making of many books and lectures, however useful and necessary, cannot stand comparison.
HUGH BATES

THE SECRETARY'S NOTES Praise in all our days On most days in St Basil's Chapel we make some use of the Taize prayer book entitled Praise in all our days and feel an identity with that significant twentiethcentury community centred in France where 'the search for the visible unity between Christians has always been integrated in a life of prayer and community'. So it was a special joy to welcome some of the seven thousand students who came to London for the Taize Pilgrimage of Reconciliation from 28 December to 1 January, to talk and pray with them. A number stayed at St Basil's House. Barriers of tradition, age and language melted (despite the inhospitable ice and snow of London) in the efforts to share the common faith. We also shared a clearly expressed anxiety for the future of the Churches in the face of so many common problems; equally a concern for the destiny of Poland and her people. The Pilgrimage now becomes a memory and the students have departed home to many countries (at the time of writing there are just a few oranges left from that generous offering which was brought for us all the way from southern Spain). But in the aftermath we remain grateful for the encouragement, while the Fellowship has gained some new members and many new contacts. The summer conference In our Fellowship of common purpose and desire, the summer conference provides an annual watershed of enriching experience. A report of our last con ference is given above. All too soon the 1982 conference will be with us. It will be held at High Leigh, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire 2-9 August. The theme isMartyrdom. Already applications are coming in and provisional bookings are being made. This year there will be more accommodation and extended facilities including a new conference hall. There will be a number of new family rooms; and generally more washbasins in the rooms. We anticipate that we shall be able to increase the number of student bursaries we offer. It need hardly be said that if anyone would like to contribute to the bursary fund, contributions will be most gratefully received. Picking of peas . As may be imagined, life at St Basil's House is full of (generally welcome) inter ruptions as people pass through London or plan to come. Our mini-United Nations attracts many callers of many nationalities - not least among them our foreign branch and chapter secretaries. While I was compiling these notes, looking back at our journal of forty years ago and reading Use Friedeberg on Fellowship conference experience in war time with 'arguments about Apostolic Succession over the pick ing of peas and [discussions of] of grace in Lutheran theology over the hoeing of cabbages' (Sobornost NS 25 [1942], P.19f), who should call but the very same Use Friedeberg 'our secretary in Germany and Switzerland and the inspirer of Philo113

Selected papers from the conference of 1981 are to be published in the next number of Sobornost/ECR.

DIVINE LITURGY OF ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: MUSIC

compiled and edited by Andrea Keck

Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius 52 Ladbroke Grove, London W11 2PB 3.50 (US $8) post-free
112

FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

xenia. The Fellowship is still the setting for such arguments and discussions, and it was decided that in December 1981 we should hold a day conference at St Basil's House, when those who wished could enlarge on our basic concerns. A fuller report of the conference will be given in our next issue. Such a report could be enhanced if readers would like to consider the day conference topics and let the Secretary have their views, the sooner the better. The day conference began with a Liturgy; it ended with a plenary session and a Council meeting. In the intervening period groups discussed: our aims; our publications; our local branches; our programme; our resources; our publicity. Any comments, together with the reports of the dis cussion groups, might provide us with useful indicators for the future life of the Fellowship. At the moment when In that same number of Sobornost (1942) Nicolas Zernov began a sentence with the words, 'At the moment when Tatiana Desen, our representative in Estonia, was taken and shot [ . . . ] . We are still apprehensive and uncertain of happenings after the moment when. Not infrequently members in Eastern Europe, Ethiopia, Latin America or SouthEast Asia are taken, sometimes to return, sometimes not, while their dependents are left in dire straits. In our Fellowship of prayer you might like to receive a leaflet to help remember such members, such areas of need and concern; you might yourself wish to contribute information to such a leaflet. In either case, please let the Secre tary know. Branches The sharing of information about activities among branches in increasing and secretaries are reminded that details of branch activities can be obtained from the Fellowship office or better still by direct contact with opposite numbers in other branches. Our thanks to all secretaries and local officers for support and work during the past year, and especially to those who have taken the responsibility of starting an actual (or nurturing a potential) branch. In particular our thanks to Sister Andrea in Canada as she looks for a successor in her Fellowship responsi bilities (although we would still like to hope that she might be able to continue with the work herself. . .). Funds The New Year for many is a time for the paying of bills. It is also a time for subscriptions. As from January 1982 we would like to implement a single policy for all subscriptions to run on a calendar year basis. Reminders are being sent out, indi cating your subscription status. We really do need the minimum subscripton of 5 a year from all members, and more if it can be afforded. We are grateful for the generosity of all concerned, and while our income and expenditure account and balance sheet give cause for a certain amount of satisfaction (insofar as they register
114

survival!), nevertheless costs are remorselessly escalating and regular subscriptions and donations are needed. As regard bankers' orders: we welcome the payment of British subscriptions in this way or else through organisations like Charities Aid Fund. The date of payment for existing orders should not be affected by our request. Fr Lev Gillet It is a particular pleasure to announce the publication of the Fr Lev Gillet memorial number (116) of the French Orthodox journal Contacts. It contains articles on Fr Lev, reminiscences and unpublished material by Fr Lev himself. Copies may be obtained from 43 rue du Fer a Moulin, 75005 Paris, or from the Fellowship bookroom. The bookroom price is 4 (postage included). Marjorie Milne Brian Frost is at work on a biography of Marjorie Milne of Glastonbury (190777). In the early days of the Fellowship Marjorie Milne came into contact with Orthodoxy. Anyone with reminiscences of these contacts is invited to write to Brian Frost at 3/35 Buckingham Gate, London SW1. Alternatively, his telephone number is 01-828 2483. Information I have said that the sharing of information about activities among branches is in creasing. But there is always a need and a thirst for more information. This was stressed at our recent day conference. Please send your Fellowship news or commentary to the Secretary. In this way we may all learn more of what it means to be (in the words of a Taize parable) 'a ferment of reconciliation in that commu nion which is the Church'.
GARETH M. EVANS

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FELLOWSHIP AFFAIRS

For your diary

THE BYZANTINE SAINT

University of Birmingham X l V t h Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies A volume of selected papers edited and introduced by SERGEI HACKEL ANTHONY BRYER, ' "The Byzantine Saint": the XlVth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies'. ORIGINS HENRY CHADWICK, 'Pachomios and the Idea of Sanctity'. HAN J.W. DRIJVERS, 'Hellenistic and Oriental Origins'. THE SAINT AND SOCIETY SUSAN ASHBROOK HARVEY, 'The Politicisation of the Byzantine Saint'. ROSEMARY MORRIS, 'The Political Saint of the Eleventh Century'. PAUL MAGDALINO, 'The Byzantine Holy Man of the Twelfth Century'. RUTH MACRIDES, 'Saints and Sainthood in the Early Palaiologan Period'. EVELYNE PATLAGEAN, 'Saintete et Pouvoir'. LENNART RYDEN, 'The Holy Fool'. THE LIFE AS GENRE ROBERT BROWNING, 'The "Low Level" Saint's Life in the Early Byzantine World'. MICHEL VAN ESBROECK, 'Le saint comme symbole'. ANNA CRABBE, 'St Polychronius and his Companions but which Polychronius?' FLOR VAN OMMESLAEGHE, 'The Acta Sanctorum and Bollandist Metho dology'. JOSEPH A. MUNITIZ, 'Self-canonisation: the "Partial Account" of Nikephoros Blemmydes'. THE SAINT IN CULT AND ART E.D. HUNT, 'The Traffic in Relics: some Late Roman Evidence'. NICHOLAS GENDLE, The Role of the Byzantine Saint in the Development of the Icon Cult (4th to 7th centuries)'. DAVID BUCKTON, 'The mass-produced Byzan tine Saint' {summary). ZAGA GAVRILOVIC, 'The Forty in Art' {summary) VERA D. LIKHACHEVA, 'The Iconography of the Byzantine Saint in the Illuminations of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries' {summary). SPEROS VRYONIS Jr, 'The Panegryis of the Byzantine Saint: a study in the nature of a medieval institution, its origins and fate'. Sixteen pages of ILLUSTRATIONS, one MAP, endpapers, index. Price (post-free): 6.50 (US $20) The Bookroom, 52 Ladbroke Grove, London, Wll 2PB. Cheques/money orders to 'Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius'.
116

Lev Gillet Memorial Lecture. The second memorial lecture will follow our Annual General Meeting at St Basil's House on Saturday 20 March 1982. The AGM will begin at 2.30 p.m. and the lecture will follow. The lecturer is the Revd Jean-Paul Hornus and his subject is The Spiritual Value of Apostolic Succession. Fellowship retreat The retreat will take place at the House of Retreat, Pleshey 2 4 April 1982. It will be conducted by Canon Edward Every with the theme Holy Week in Jerusalem. Applications to the Fellowship's Secretary. Annual Liturgy at St Albans The Divine Liturgy will be celebrated at St Albans Cathedral on Saturday 19 June 1982 at 11.30 a.m. The Liturgy will be followed by prayers at the shrine. A buffet lunch is bookable in advance from the Fellowship's Secretary (at 1.50). Thereafter the St Albanstide Fellowship lecture will be given in the Chapter House at 2.45 p.m. The celebrant and lecturer is Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. Fellowship Conference The conference will take place at High Leigh, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire 2-9 August 1982. Cost approximately 65 (including VAT). Further details from the Secretary. Buffet receptions These will take place at St Basil's House from 7.30 p.m. on 20 May, 7 October and 9 December 1982. They are planned to enable visiting members to meet others. It is helpful to know in advance from anyone who might like to come. Christmas party at St Basil's House Saturday 18 December 1982 at 7.30 p.m. Carols, readings, poems, pies and punch. Guests most welcome. Occasional events For details of seminars, lectures, chapel services and (often hurriedly arranged) meetings with overseas visitors piease contact the Secretary. At all times The chapel and library of St Basil's House are open daily, as is the bookroom.
G.M.E.

117

ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

Annual Accounts
The accounts and balance sheet overleaf are submitted to members of the Fellowship by the Secretary on behalf of the Fellowship's board of directors. The accounts of the Fellowship have been examined and audited by Messrs A. Andersen & Co. They are prepared under the historical cost convention and give a 'true and fair' view of the Fellowship's financial affairs. The accounts have been recommended to the Fellowship's Council and adopted by the Council at its meeting prior to the Annual General Meeting (20 March 1982). The Balance Sheet and Income and Expenditure Accounts are to be presented to the 1982 AGM for acceptance. GARETH M. EVANS Secretary
THE FELLOWSHIP OF ST ALBAN AND ST SERGIUS INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 SEPTEMBER 1981 1980 4,593 3,608 5,064 390 251 39 13,945 865 919 232 332 2,026 69 4,443 UPKEEP OF HOUSE Rates Lighting and Heating Insurance Chandlery and Clearning Repairs and renewals Less: Transfer from provision for repairs Depreciation of furniture etc. 1,228 1,097 232 439 2,393 55 5,444 CHAPEL Expenses HOSPITALITY AND MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES EXCESS OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE For the year carried down ACCUMULATED FUND AT SEPTEMBER 1981
109 782

1981 ADMINISTRATION EXPENSES Salaries and National Insurance Contribution Telephone, Postage, Advertising, Printing and Stationery Sobornost printing and other expenses Audit and Accountancy Travelling Expenses Bank Charges 5,220 2,111 6,908 450 278 49 15,016

4,093 1,700

HOLY WEEK AND EASTER AT CONSTANTINOPLE

A unique recording of services at the Patriarchate of Constantinople in April 1981. An album of traditional Byzantine chant on FIVE RECORDS (OPK 101-5). An accompanying booklet (c.48pp.) contains all texts in Greek and English, together with a full introduction by Dr Grigoris Stathis. Distribution in UK: CONIFER RECORDS. Available from all good record shops at 25 the set. All profits to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
118

100 611

19,099
404

21,351
7

19,503 11,578

21,358
11,585

11,578

11,585

119

BALANCE SHEET AT 30 SEPTEMBER 1981

1980 11,578 1,700 1980 7,086 1,562 8,648 560 12,779 7,644 5,135 6,505 6,563 (58) 1,260 3,958 MEETINGS Receipts Less: Expenditure 8,904 8,822 82 INVESTMENT INCOME A N D DEPOSIT INTEREST LEGACY A N N E SPALDING SPECIAL PURPOSES F U N D Allocated towards expenses 834 1,000
3 1 9 8 1

1981 ACCUMULATED F U N D (Per annexed account) PROVISION FOR REPAIRS LOANS Free of Interest, repayable o n demand C U R R E N T LIABILITIES Creditors and accrued expenses 200 1,679 11,585

200 SUBSCRIPTIONS A N D DONATIONS Ordinary subscriptions Covenanted subscriptions INCOME TAX RECOVERABLE ON DEEDS OF COVENANTS N E T PROCEEDS FROM SALE OF LITERATURE 1 Receipts '2i5 Less: Expenditure 8,904
7

9,789 1,605 H394

719

630

l n

14,197 SPECIAL F U N D S Miss Hill Bequest Fund Balance at 3 0 September 1 9 8 0 Surplus o n redemption of investment Investment Income Less: Expenditure Anne Spalding Travel Fund Balance at 3 0 September 1 9 8 0 Investment Income Less: Expenditure Library Fund Balance at 3 0 September 1 9 8 0 Investment Income 1,238 Less: Expenditure Anne Spalding Special Purposes Fund Balance at 3 0 September 1 9 8 0 Less: Allocated in year Gillet Archive Fund Balance at 3 0 September 1 9 8 0 Received in year Legacy Donation Less: Expenditure

13,464

4,115 1 409 4,525 361 3,901 443 4,344 325 4,019 4,164

4,115

3,901 19,503 404 11,174 11,578 EXCESS O F INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE brought d o w n ACCUMULATED F U N D AT 3 0 SEPTEMBER 1 9 8 0 21,358 1 11,578 11,585 2,042

1,238 111 1,349 51 1,298

2,042 307 651 1,000 194 1,845 30

1,735

651 11,947 26,144

1,815 13,031 26,495

120

121

1980 3,472 140 3,612 FIXED ASSETS Freehold Property (St Basil's House, 52 Ladbroke Grove, W . l l ) at cost Furniture. Fixtures & Fittings at cost Less: Depreciation (Note 1)

1981 3,972
85

Our contributors
4,057

1,465 1,325

1,465 " 1,380

3,416 1,100 878 103 5,088

7,169 14,197

INVESTMENTS AT COST 2,100 The Mutual High Yield Unit Trust Units 5,900 Allied Equity Income Units 155 M & G Dividend Fund Income Units 3,300 Unicorn Extra Income Trust Shares Market Value 4,613 (1980 5,217) CURRENT ASSETS Stock of books, records etc. (Note 3) Income tax recoverable Debtors Bank balances SPECIAL FUND ASSETS Investments at cost 858 Central Board of Finance of the Church of England Fixed Interest Securities Fund Shares 175 Allied Breweries Limite 13A% Unsec. Loan Stock 1998/98 1,456 M & G Dividend Fund Income Units 3,130 Britannia National High Income Trust Units 2,930 2Wo Consols 480 British Transport 3% Stock 1978/88 2,230 Central Board of Finance of the Church of England Investment Fund Shares Market value 9,272 H.980 10,190) Income tax recoverable Debtor Bank balances

Mrs Clare Birch Amos, Lecturer at the Near East School of Theology, Beirut.
972 1,301 148 995 4,418 1,575 438 (440) 3,416

V Revd John Arnold, Dean of Rochester; chairman of the East-West Advisory Committee of the BCC. Dr David Balfour, Retired diplomat; one of the founders of the Benedictine Priory at Amay (later Chevetogne), who joined the Orthodox Church in 1932.

5,991 13,464

Revd Hugh Bates, Vicar of Pickering, Yorkshire. Revd Dr Louis Bouyer of the Oratory; formerly professor at the Institut Catholique (Paris) and at the University of Strasbourg. Dr Sebastian Brock, Lecturer in Syriac, University of Oxford. Revd Colin Davey, Vicar of St James', Sussex Gardens, London; Anglican Theo logical Secretary to AOJDD. VRevd Charles Dilke, Provost of the London Oratory, Brompton. Revd Gareth Evans, Secretary to the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. Revd Canon Edward Every, Formerly canon of St George's Cathedral, Jerusalem. Mr George Every, Church historian on the faculty of Oscott College, Birmingham; formerly joint editor of ECR.

952 157 911 1,476 637 253 3,501 7,887 5,055 13,031
84 5

7,885 4,055 11,947

2 5

Miss Use Friedeberg, Secretary of Philoxenia; interpreter at the WCC. Miss Helle Georgiadis, Editor of Chrysostom: Hon. Secretary of the Society of St John Chrysostom. Dr John Gillingham, Senior Lecturer in International History, London School of Economics. V Revd Dr SergeiHackel, Reader in Russian Studies, University of Sussex; editor of Sobornost/ECR. Mr John Heath-Stubbs, Poet and dramatist.

26,144 26,495 Note: 1. No depreciation has been provided on freehold property. Depreciation of furniture, fixtures and fittings has been provided at a rate of 20% of cost. 2. Credit has been taken for subscriptions when received. The proportion of subscriptions received in advance has not been carried forward. 3. Stock is valued by the Secretary at the lower of cost or net realisable value. A.M. ALLCHIN & R. AVERY Directors

Sir John Lawrence Bt, Chairman of the Council of Management, Keston College; formerly chairman of the Fellowship's Council (1957-9). Professor Vladimir Lossky, Eminent theologian of the Russian emigration (190358).
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THE FELLOWSHIP OF ST ALBAN AND ST SERGIUS OUR CONTRIBUTORS LOCAL BRANCHES AND CHAPTERS Revd R.M. Browning, 21 Wight St., Kensington 3031. Sister Andrea SSJD, 11717 93rd St., Edmonton, Alberta T5G IE2. London (Ontario) Dr W. Bush, 81 Wychwood Park, London, Ontario. Kingston Canon J. Coombs, 68 Earl St., Kingston, Ontario K7L 2G6. Toronto Sister Nora SSJD, 1 Botham Rd., Willowdale, Ont. M2N 2J5. DENMARK: Fru K. Holm, A. Henriksensgade 2B, 502-2300 Copehagen S. GERMANY & SWITZERLAND Miss 1. Friedeberg, 22bis Clochettes, 1206 Geneva. GREECE: Revd S.J.B. Peake, 6 Karneadou St., Athens 139. Mrs J. Demos, POB 27, Kifissia, Attica. NEW ZEALAND: Mr M. Elder, POB 21, 056 Edgeware, Christchurch. NORWAY: Mr J. Gjessing, St Teresa Huset, Haugbovegen 10, 1375 Hon. SWEDEN: Sister M. Nordstrom, Alsike kloster, S-741 00 Knivsta. USA: Arizona Rt Revd J.M. Harte, 815 E Orangewood, Phoenix, Ar. 85020. Mid-West Dr W. Baar, Emmanuel Church, Kensington Ave., La Grange Illinois. New York Mr J.C. McReynolds, 74 Trinity Place, New York NY 10006. Seattle Miss L Barinoff, 2818 Boyer Ave E, HS BT-7, Seattle, WA98102. UNITED KINGDOM: Bristol Mrs E. Crook, 14 Beaconsfield Rd., Bristol 8. Cambridge Revd P. Irwin, Pembroke College, Cambridge. Canterbury Canon A.M. Allchin. 12 The Precincts. Canterbury. Cornwall Revd P.L. Eustice, St Stephen in Brannel Rectory, St Austell. Durham Mr G. Bonner, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham. Lincoln Revd R. Gribben, Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln LN1 3BP. London The Secretary, 52 Ladbroke Grove, London W l l 2PB. Manchester Mr K. Parry, 7 Holly Vale, Mill Brow, Marple Bridge, Cheshire. Merseyside Mr D. Penn Reynolds, 507 Portland Ct., Wellington Rd., Wallasey. Norwich Miss M. Asbury, 49 Newmarket Rd., Norwich. Oxford Mr C. Tolley, New College, Oxford. St Albans Miss R. Duncombe, 39 Camp View Rd., St Albans. Southampton Dr J.M.Wagstaff, 16 Oakmount Ave., Highfield, Southampton AUSTRALIA: CANADA: Please contact the following for information about emergent branches Coventry Mr K. Enston, 23 Ena Rd., Coventry CV1 4HQ. Cumbria Mr C. Morris, 95 Bellingham Rd., Kendal, Cumbria. Doncaster Mr A. Tatham, 24 Hampton Rd., Town Moor, Doncaster. Stoke Revd. C. Lantsbery, Vicarage, Upper Belgrave Rd., Normacot Stoke. Wales Mr R. Charles, Pencincoed, Glyn Brochan, Llanidloes, Powys.

Revd Canon Eric Mascall, Formerly Professor of Historical Theology, University of London; editor of Sobornost (1937-46). Ernest C. Miller Jr, Senior theological student, Nashotah House Seminary, Wisconsin. Revd Peter C. fCho D.JPhan, Member of the faculty in the Department of Theology, University of Dallas. Dr Constantine Scouteris, Lecturer in the Faculty of Theology, University of Athens. Dr Andreas Tilly rides, Member of the faculty at the recently established Orthodox seminary of Nairobi. V Revd Dr Kallistos Ware, Spalding Lecturer in Orthodox Studies, University of Oxford; joint editor of ECR 1967-78. Revd Canon Hugh Wybrew, Vicar of Pinner, Middlesex. Revd Dr Edward Yarnold SJ, Formerly Master of Campion Hall, Oxford. The views of each writer are his or her own and the editorial board does not neces sarily agree with them.

Saint Deiniol's Library Hawarden

DEESIDE CLWYD CH5 3DF

A library of over 120,000 volumes: Theology, Literature, History (including Patristics, Byzantine and Eastern Church material). Chapel Common Room Study-Bedrooms. Write for brochure and details of full board. Very reasonable terms, with reductions for parochial clergy and full-time students.

ASSOCIATED GROUPS
Bedford Midlands Ireland Scotland Mr G. Flegg, 20 Clapham Rd., Bedford. Dr Z. Prvulovich, 26 Wheelers Lane, Birmingham. Revd A. Falconer, 20 Pembroke Park, Dublin 4. V Revd C. Gray Stack, Kenmare Parsonage, Kerry. Mr E. Mucha, 6 96 King Street, Aberdeen.

Fellowship Membership is open to all those who accept the conditions which aie set out on the Application Form. Members subscribe to Sobornost/ECR at (currently) 4.00 per annum. They are also asked to donate at least 1.00 annually towards the work of the Fellowship. The Fellowship itself is a charitable institution, legally incorporated as a company with limited liability. The Application Form may be obtained from the Secretary, who would also be glad to supply a descriptive leaflet (as well as Covenant and Banker's Order Forms).

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