Comments on the Late Fathers Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff
A Reply to Mr. Ognian Rangachev
by Bishop [now Archbishop] Chrysostomos of Etna
Editor’s note—. This past spring, the official journal of the Bulgarian
Orthodox Patriarchate published a very harsh attack, by a student of theology at the
University of Sofia, Ognian Rangachev, against Bishop Chrysostomos of Etna, criticizing
him for comments which the latter made, during a trip to Bulgaria in early 1995, about the
late Fathers Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. Mr. Rangachev dismisses the
traditionalist Bulgarian Orthodox Church as having no real ecclesiastical status, praises
Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff in particular for their studies of liturgical theology
and their opposition to "godless ideologies," and questions the integrity of
Bishop Chrysostomos’ criticisms of these two well-known theological writers. Emerging
as they are from the communist yoke, many Eastern European theologians have been deeply
influenced by the works of Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff, one Romanian theologian
having referred to them recently as the "New Pillars" of Orthodoxy and
"theologian saints." In light of this influence, we believe that Bishop
Chrysostomos, in his response to Mr. Rangachev, which has appeared in the traditionalist
Church press in Bulgaria, makes some very important observations about the life and work
of these two Churchmen, strong observations which provoke caution but which avoid
disrespect or hyperbole. We hope that they will help our Eastern European readers, as well
as others, to reflect more circumspectly on the "Westernized" theology
represented by Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff and by their students and followers.
During a recent trip to Bulgaria, I had occasion
to preach to the Old Calendar Faithful under the omophorion of
Bishop Photii of Triaditza. My short, extemporaneous homily was quoted in the Church
journal published by the Bulgarian Old Calendarists, leading to a response by Mr. Ognian
Rangachev, a fourth-year theology student at Sofia University, in the pages of the
official periodical of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. I hasten to respond to the hyperbolic
words contained in this most unfortunate article.
The writer in question takes great exception to
what he claims was a characterization, in my homily, of the late Fathers Alexander
Schmemann and John Meyendorff as "the most perverted theologians who have spoken
within the Orthodox Church." He also notes that I spoke of them as being "not
Orthodox, but Uniates." These stark and misleading statements, first, are taken
wholly out of the context of my sermon, which was a warning against the
"Westernized" theology which is so prevalent in contemporary Orthodox circles.
Second, taken out of context and thus misquoted, as they are, these comments certainly do
not represent other of my statements, found in a number of articles and books, which admit
that, despite their "perversion" by the ecumenical movement and the Western
spirit to which they were exposed in the Roman Catholic schools where they received much
of their education—my actual accusation—, Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff did
much in America to bring attention to the profound teachings of the Orthodox Church.
Third, I did not call these theologians "perverts," as Mr. Rangachev’s
selective extractions from my homily would suggest, but observed that they were perverted,
to a greater extent than any other of the voices known universally in the contemporary
Orthodox Church, by their Western "captivity." And finally, since I live in
America and am a witness to the excessive ecumenism preached by these two
theologians—to the point of accepting the validity of Greek Catholic
("Uniate") and other heterodox sacraments—, I have every right to express
my opinion that they were "Uniates" and not Orthodox, though I am, of course,
speaking of their spirit, not of their actual affiliations: they were Westernized
Orthodox, that is, "Uniates," in their intellectual outlook.
Let me also say that the late Father Georges
Florovsky, the mentor of my vicar Bishop (if Mr. Rangachev will allow us a
"venturesome" claim to clerical office) and a friend and spiritual advisor when
I was at Princeton, also expressed great reservations about the Orthodoxy of Fathers
Schmemann and Meyendorff. Much of their theology, he often told us, he considered
"Uniate in tone, if not substance," to use his own words. This was also the
opinion held by the outstanding traditionalist theologian, Protopresbyter
Michael Pomazansky. It seems to me that, though Mr. Rangachev apparently feels that we
Old Calendarists cannot reckon ourselves part of the Church, and that when we express
strong opinions we are "blasphemous and impertinent," we have every right to
speak critically of two Orthodox theologians who, whatever their accomplishments,
seriously compromised their Orthodox confession by excessive ecumenism and writings which are not wholly Orthodox (a subject on which I shall subsequently comment at greater length).
Nor should we be subjected to vulgar accusations for exercising this right. After all,
while I consider the theological spirit of these two men to have been wholly perverted by
their ecumenistic leanings and a Western mentality (a tragic thing, given their obvious
intellectual and scholarly skills), I
consider them to be Orthodox in the technical sense and do not deny that they were
Orthodox clergymen. This is a compliment
which Mr. Rangachev obviously does not return, since he questions, again, whether we
traditionalists ("Old Calendarists") constitute even a Church. He is not alone
in his ignorance of the Church’s ecclesiology of resistance, but his unfortunate
antipathy is unwarranted, especially since, as I have pointed out, he quotes me out of
context, in a hyperbolic spirit, and without granting me the right to offer strong
criticism without being accused of impertinence and blasphemy.
With regard to Mr. Rangachev’s assessment of
the theology of Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff, I would ask, first, that he look at
their legacy: St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York, an
institution which many of the members of Orthodox Church in America consider a center of
"liberal ecumenism," tainted as it is by a distaste for monasticism and an
anti-Patristic ethos. For example, its present Dean, Father Thomas Hopko, who comes from a
Uniate background and is an ecumenical activist formed in the theology of Fathers
Schmemann and Meyendorff, has written that it is not a belief of the Orthodox Church that
the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ without the "physical violation" of her
virginity. This statement shows both an ignorance of Old and New Testamental exegesis and
of the Church’s services, wherein this doctrine is clearly set forth. He also writes
that St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was not an ascetic (though the services in the
Saint’s honor point out that he was famed for fasting and vigils), influenced as he
is by the "de-mythologizing" of St. Nicholas by the Roman Catholic Church.
Father Hopko also teaches, as did Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff, that the Chrismation
of a heterodox believer into Orthodoxy constitutes an "acceptance" by Orthodoxy
of his heterodox baptism, and not an act of oikonomia
by which, to quote the late Blessed Justin
of Serbia, the Panmysterion of the Church creates Grace where it was not before. Such
ecumenical views, Uniate confusion, and un-Orthodox teachings are the direct legacy of the
two theologians in question. That they are known throughout the Orthodox world makes the
tragedy of their theological shortcomings—without hyperbole—tragic beyond words.
Now, with regard to Mr. Rangachev’s specific
assessment of the theology of Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff, let me say that the
former’s commentaries on Orthodox liturgics are anything but Orthodox, as I and
others have argued in a number of theological journals. Both were influenced by the spirit
of Roman Catholic liturgical reform and were especially inimical to the
"hierarchical" notion of worship found in the traditional Patristic sources
which have for centuries formed our Orthodox understanding of worship. Schmemann, in fact,
fully accepted the idea that Eastern worship was "corrupted" by post-third
century liturgical developments, developments which traditionalist Orthodox scholars see
as the full development of the embryo of Orthodox worship present in the persecuted Early
Church. He developed a "Eucharistic" liturgical theology which placed emphasis
not on the organic nature of the Church’s witness and the integral
mystery of the whole cycle of worship, that is, on the experience of the Transfiguration,
but on the image of liturgical a-cension—an active work focused on the worshipper and
conveyed in liturgical symbolism. The essence of Orthodox worship is not an
"ascension" into the Heavenly Realm, but the meeting and integration, through
the efficacy of mysteriological Grace, of Heaven and Earth, making the Liturgy, not an
eternal enactment of the Mystery of Salvation alone, but, more importantly, a very
immersion into the Mystery of God. Nor is the Liturgy symbolic or simply a typological
re-enactment of a greater mystery partly separated from us until the Parousia, a
living and eternal promise of salvation, as Schmemann opines; the Divine Liturgy
constitutes the fullness of God’s Revelation outside time and space, a participation
in the Divine and communion with the Resurrected Christ.
Let us also note, in response to both Schmemann
and Meyendorff’s notion of a restorative Christian ritual in which spiritual health
is achieved by a kind of liturgical "acting out," that the Divine Liturgy is
restorative only in the sense that communion with the Divine transforms our very flesh. It
enlivens the Kingdom of God within us, not because it is a regenerative process itself or
because it has the "essential power of psycho-drama," as one of Father
Schmemann’s students recently argued, but because it is a Perfect Supper, wherein we
gain nourishment which is regenerative. The distinctions which we are making are subtle
ones, so subtle that they lead us traditionalist Orthodox to accept St. Dionysios the
Areopagite as a Great Father of the Church, while they led Fathers Schmemann and
Meyendorff, and especially the former, to seek out "new" alternatives to
"Pseudo-Dionysios" and his supposedly Neo-Platonic hierarchical ideas and to
imitate the spirit of Roman Catholic liturgical "renewal," misunderstanding both
Neo- Platonism and the Fathers in a way that no good theologian should.
Did Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff really fight
godless ideologies, or did they, as the leaders of an uncanonical jurisdiction which
separated from the anti-communist Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, negotiate with the
Moscow Patriarchate, under communist domination, to recognize their jurisdiction as the
"Autocephalous Orthodox Church of America"—an autocephality even now
recognized by no Church except Moscow? And did they not do this with the aid of Nikodim of
Leningrad, long suspected of KGB ties and recently accused by a Greek Catholic writer of
being a secret Roman Catholic bishop and a Jesuit? Did they not, representing American
Orthodox believers who a generation ago were seventy-five percent Greek Catholic,
collaborate with a communist-dominated Church to thwart dialogue between the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad, which is based in the United States and made up primarily of
Russian immigrants, and the Moscow Patriarchate? Did they not also support political
ecumenism, the same ecumenism which calls the Orthodox modernists to embrace Papists as
brothers and to revile us traditionalists as heretics and schismatics? Is this in the
spirit of opposition to godless ideologies? Forgive me, but while Fathers Schmemann and
Meyendorff often courageously and effectively spoke out against communist repression and
aggression in the former Soviet Union, there were two sides to their anti-communism and
many lapses in their opposition to godless ideologies!
Finally, Orthodoxy is measured, as St. Photios
tells us, by our fidelity to the Fathers. Personality has nothing to do with the issue.
For that reason, we should never come to the point of defending those whom we like and
reviling those whom we do not like, as Mr. Rangachev has falsely accused me of doing, but
which he himself does in calling me ugly and unedifying names. We must measure all things
by our fidelity, again, to Holy Tradition, which Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff often
opposed and overturned. Only a superficial reading of their works and an unfamiliarity
with their activities in America would lead any objective observer to any other
conclusion. This is not to denigrate these men or to argue that their positive
accomplishments were anything but that. However, their witness must be put in context and
it must be acknowledged that they were not "Pillars of Orthodoxy," equals to the
Church Fathers, or traditionalist Orthodox thinkers. They did much for Orthodoxy from
mindsets that were essentially Uniate and which were unfortunately polluted and perverted
by the panheresy of ecumenism and the insidious effects of Western theological thought.
I regret that my words were taken out of the
context of my overall sermon and that my comments about Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff
seemed so hyperbolic. I apologize for this latter lapse. I do not apologize, however, for
expressing my honest opinions. It is Mr. Rangachev who should apologize to me and to his
traditionalist Orthodox brothers in Bulgaria for language that is unbecoming a Christian,
for attitudes that engender hatred and not love, and for a spirit that thrives in the
realm of ecclesiastical politics, but which causes true Christian charity, toleration, and
forgiveness to wane. We traditionalists have a Divine responsibility to speak boldly and
at times harshly about the errors of the modernists. In so doing, as long as we do not
fall to the sin of personal condemnation and character assassination—the primary
weapons, unfortunately, of those who wrongly court warfare in the Church—, we should
not be subjected to condemnatory diatribes from those who, under the influence of
modernism, would, in fact, most likely benefit from our guidance.
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