Orthodoxy: An Unlimited Expression
by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios
(Recorded by Yale Divinity School on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - 5:30pm)
Thank you so much, not only for the warm introduction, but for the warm climate which is a little bit something that has to do with the paper I’m going to deliver to your kindness in which I imagine St. John Chrysostom who didn’t like applauding when he was speaking. So, you applaud in advance and we are through with it. I express my very sincere thanks to dean Dr. Harlow Ethridge, my good friend, distinguished New Testament scholar and wonderful classmate at another institution. You see, I am adapting easily to the local habits and traditions. For the invitation to visit here divinity school and to offer this lecture on the topic “Orthodoxy: An Unlimited Expression,” the timing of this kind of lecture seemed to be most propitious, coinciding as it does with stealth of the conference on Eastern Christian Accretion traditions of epiphany, tomorrow and the visit of the Cappella Romana choral group next week, both of which are sure to provide eloquent examples of some impressions of orthodoxy such as we are discussing here today.
I use a word, orthodoxy after expressing my thanks not only to the dean, but to people, faculty and people of Yale divinity school and the very distinguished audience tonight, I see among you not only students and professors, but some visitors as well, related to Yale, our own legal counselor in the archdiocese is a seven-year Yale student college and law school, and he’s with us tonight. You see, we try to have more than one line of connection here.
I’m using the word “orthodoxy” as, in a certain sense this evening. It is the name the historic churches of the east have taken for themselves as a conscious declaration of the central place that doctrine in worship have in our worldwide faith community. As it is well known, the word orthodoxy comes from the two ancient Greek roots, “ortho-,” meaning straight or right, correct, and “doxa,” meaning glory, as in the English word “doxology,” or opinion, as in the English word “dogma,” tenet. Orthodoxy then is used by the orthodox to proclaim that right doxological worship, together with right doctrine, are the core values of our communion, and are essential in our ultimate identity as a body of uncompromising believers in Jesus Christ.
But one must never fall into the so-called etymological fallacy, the error of restricting a word’s meaning to the sum of its parts. It is equally necessary to understand that for the orthodox, orthodoxy is an expression of faith not at all limited either to the theological system or the liturgical tradition of the church. Put more simply, orthodoxy’s not merely a religion; it is a complete way of life, a complete program of the community. Orthodox Christianity and the cultures with which and within which it conjunctly developed, can never be artificially separated. There is rather, between the divine revelation and the human, cultural expression a kind of co-easiness, coexistence, and Hypostasis, to use a composite Greek term, which is reminded of the union of the nature in the presence of Jesus Christ. The faith produces the orthodox culture. The culture becomes an expression of the faith, or if you will, the culture incarnates the faith.
The ongoing action of giving human flesh to the articles of faith has no limit. It is quite extensive with every field of human endeavor. To understand why this is so, one must appreciate the orthodox Christian understanding of creation. The creation is not merely sun, moon, stars, earth, wind, fire, and water. These are but one side of the universe, the visible natures, the material world. There is, according to the fathers of the church, another side of the created order, the invisible natures, the eternal world of thought, the noetic realm, which includes the angelic hosts among its citizens, among other. At the nexus of the world of mind and the world of matter stands humankind as a crown of creation, the living link between the two worlds, and a microcosm comprehending both realms of nature, the visible and the invisible.
St. Gregory the theologian develops this theme most eloquently, as he calls the human being a new angel, a mingled worshiper, earthly and heavenly, temporal and yet immortal, visible and yet intellectual and invisible. One scholar has summarized this patristic view this way, “In man alone, mind and matter, the word of nostos and eschatos of matter and spirit intermingle and interpenetrate. Through man alone the material becomes articulate in the praise of the immaterial God.” The calling of humankind therefore, according to orthodoxy, is precisely to cultivate and train every aspect of the material world to become articulate in the praise of God. This is the orthodox philosophy of culture, and it incorporates everything, language and music, prose and poetry, art and architecture, textiles, civic life, and institutions.
It is no exaggeration to say that as a religious cultural phenomenon, orthodox Christianity is by design and in reality an unlimited expression of entities, forms and dimensions. Orthodoxy is an unlimited expression in the sense of comprising an unlimited number of multi-faceted, infinite expressions of all kinds.
Let me, then, start with orthodoxy as an expression related to language. We turn first to an investigation of orthodoxy as an unlimited linguistic expression. Historically, of course, orthodoxy flourished in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, where Greek coincidentally continued to be spoken as a lingua franca throughout its borders. This is quite different from the western half of the empire, where Latin in different forms became the standard language of many lands. Within orthodoxy, the local vernacular was always encouraged as the language of worship, yet most citizens of the Byzantine empire were also fluent in koine or koine Greek and among the educated, this Greek remained the dominant language of worship, poetry, and prose. As a result, there was a tremendous development of the Greek language within orthodoxy, not only in terms of maintaining and preserving the literature of the classical word, but also in terms of extending the corpus of literary masterpieces expanding the lexicon, inventing new genres and advancing the scientific study of language and grammar as expressions of orthodoxy.
Let me now present within this linguistic phenomenon, five particular aspects. A. The flowering of classical Greek language among the orthodox. It is a great irony of history that Julian the apostate, the last imperial persecutor of the Church was perhaps in no small part responsible for the flowering and developing of Hellenistic Greek within orthodoxy. Julian, in his efforts to re-paganize the empire, sought to rid the schools of Christians and their influences. In return, the theologians of the fourth century consciously responded by producing the highest quality literary works as tour de force, demonstrating of the affinity between classical excellence and Christian virtue. Well known, for example, is a beautiful epistolary exhortation of St. Basil the great, entitled “To the Youth on How They Might Derive Benefit From Greek Literature,” where he adjourns young scholars to be like honey bees who go among all the flowers to take away the sweet nectar they find while leaving behind the rest. So, with the works of ancient poentent philosophy, says Basil the Great, “the youth are to read broadly and absorb the virtuous elements they find, not imbibing the less-worthy aspect of pagan practice they might encounter in these works.”
St Basil’s attitude enriched, and not only his immediate pupils, but the entire world down in his day, for if the study of classical literature had not been legitimate by such a prominent theologian and the other fathers, like Gregory and Chrysostom, it is possible that the scriptoriums of medieval times would have failed to continue copying the words of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and other, and everything else that we cherish from ancient Greek literature. Without this chain of manuscripts down through the ages, most probably nothing would have survived for us from the vast corpus of ancient literature, except for Potshairs and Stillis.
But Orthodoxy’s contribution to the Greek language is far more than just as a reliquary for classical writings. The forms and styles of ancient literature continue as part of the living language within orthodoxy. For example, St. Gregory the theologian alone, it is estimated produced some 300 pieces of classical verse in the form of hexameters, perimeters and elegiacs. St. Gregory did not merely copy Homeric language or techniques of the classical Greek poetry, but even extended the genre of his writings of the fourth century. Another orthodox writer, Anna Corsini, the daughter of Alexius I, emperor of Byzantium produced in perfect attic Greek a history of her father’s reign called the Alexiad. This work was completed in the 12th century. As such, it stands as a remarkable testimony to the continuous propagation of classical Greek as a living language among the orthodox for more than a millennium.
B. The expansion of Hellenic Greek poetic forms is another really important thing. Classical Greek, it must be noted, is not identical to the Hellenistic Greek of the first centuries of the Common Era. There were many important differences between the language of ancient Athens and the language which arose within the empire of Alexander the Great. Once more, but exceptionally important change was the shift in pronunciation from pitch accent to stress accent. In the earlier language, the acute grave and circumflex accents corresponded to tonal variations in voice. When Greek language became a lingua franca across a wide territory, this pitch accent evolved into a different difference in syllable emphasis as in several modern European languages. With a change in accent, the distinction between long and short vowels was also lost, so that omega and omicron, for example became identical. Originally omega was O, omicron was o, but here with the shift to accent, it became both of them, “O,” just an example.
With these phonological changes, new kinds of metrical structure in poetry could be developed based on patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, rather than on heavy and light, long and short syllables. One of the masters of this form was the sixth century St. Romanos Numerados. He used this form along with many other stress based meters to produce an enormous number of hymns of considerable length. He is credited with the invention of the cantation, a selmonic type of text in several verses on a particular scriptural theme, originally chanted by a single voice following the reading of the Gospel. To this day in Greek Orthodox churches around the world, Romanos’ akathist hymn to the mother of God is chanted in its entirety on the fifth Friday of the Lenten period. It is a monumental work of 24 stanzas, organized as an acrostic of the Greek alphabet, interweaving scriptural allusions, theological concepts and rhetorical devices.
Orthodox Christian writers were responsible for the flowering of different genres of prose writing as well. Perhaps the chief example of this is the hermeneutical traditions that arose leading in the development of astonishing Biblical commentaries. Allow me a parenthesis which is not in my text, I see here my friend and colleague Dean Artridge, and he has as you know produced a monumental commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews. There have been these patron works centuries before that anticipated this kind of thing.
The genre of commentary is an unusual type of literature. It is a work of various Biblical interpretive scholarships, geared for a popular audience or readership. It elucidates a literal sense of scripture, often as a spiritual sense of the same, and concludes with parenesis, exalting the listener or reader to actions that accord with a higher calling of the Christian life. In normal delivery, this content was typically delivered with great flourish using classical devices of a predicted oratory, resulting in a hermeneutical tour de force spoken bravura that engages the listener both intellectually, aesthetically, emotionally, and morally. In fact, St. Gregory the theologian, in his oration number 36 suggests that, it’s interesting, that his deficiency in the apostolic gift of miracles, he said I can produce miracles as the apostles, was compensated for by the rhetorical gifts he had received, and so was able to produce the monumental works that he did.
B. The expansion of the Greek philosophical lexicon. This is another expression of orthodoxy in the field of language. Crucial to the hermeneutic work of orthodoxy as a remarkable linguistic offering, as well as its philosophical output, was a development of a vocabulary fitted for the world view which we eluded. What we needed is a most apt wording of the late professor Jaroslav Pelikan, who said that we needed at that time a lexicon of transcendence. Orthodox theology is highly apophatic; how does one speak of that which cannot comprehend our human mind? Yet, the mysteries of the trinity and the incarnation must be expressed and defended, and they have to be produced and then described in human language. But where do we have the vocabulary for that? Here we start with an expanding of traditional philosophical terms like the term “logos,” logos. To give one example beyond that, consider how orthodox theologians pressed the words “ousia” and “hypostasis” into the service of theological debates. These words were essential synonymous; in classical Greek, usia is being or essence, hypostasis is akin to Latin substantia, substance. But the Orthodox Church fathers produced a considerable distinction between the two terms in order to express the idea of the holy trinity. God is one in ousia, in essence, but three in hypostasis, in persons. I this way, and the many other ways you can see how the lexicon of transcendence was created and expanded.
One more aspect of the linguistic expression of orthodoxy, the advancement of grammatical studies in orthodoxy. One cannot speak of the linguistic expressions of orthodoxy without making some mention of the exceptional place of language, about language in the history of ideas. The grammarians of the Byzantine Empire had a special role, both in preserving the philosophical achievements of the classical world and in advancing scholarly inquiry into the structure of language in all its aspects. In his random stone study of the Byzantine grammarians, Professor R. H. Robins of the University of London shows how the linguistics scholars of this Byzantine era anticipated some of modern theoretical approaches to language. I particular, the monk Empolimoth Maximus Planutis developed an approach to the aspect intense verbs far more complete and nuanced than any before him. Through the work of scholars like him, the learning that came to the West with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 greatly facilitated the linguistic flowering of the Renaissance in Western Europe. Thought the names of these grammarians like Michael Singulus, John Lekis, and Gregory of Corinth have largely been forgotten, modern linguistics owes such scholars a great intellectual debt for their work ultimately is a tremendous work and is a debt to orthodoxy as linguistic factors are involved.
We proceeded to, and we turn from the faculty of language to the faculties of sight and sound to the fine arts as unlimited expressions of orthodoxy, rendering the material world articulate in the praise of God.
A. The art of iconography. Coming from a Jewish context and the structures of the second commandment against idolatry, Christian culture of the first was greatly limited in its expression through the visual arts. There were, to be sure, some elementary forms of painting, mostly in simple motifs and symbols such as a cross, the anchor, the fish, the dove. From these humble beginnings, a more intricate form of expressions quickly evolved that included figures of Christ as a good shepherd, Eucharistic scenes of the mystical supper, images of Jonah as a type of Christ, and even iconography which imitated, in the beginning, pagan models, as in the famous mosaic of Christ as the sun god helios in the so-called Julian tomb of the necropolis under the tomb of St. Peter in Rome.
In time, these more static styles of portraiture developed into the dramatic examples of iconography that we are familiar with today. Scenes of resurrection with Christ in white robes, dragging from death Adam and Eve, or scenes of the nativity, scenes of the transfiguration, and then gradually scenes from the life of the saints and martyrs. From a few basic constringents grew an unlimited number of iconographic types, developed in several distinct schools such as the great Cretan school, the Macedonian school, the Russian school and so on. In all these schools a variety of mediums were used for the depiction of icons, painting and oils, watercolors, and egg tempera on canvas, paper, wood, plaster, al fresco, even glass, ceramic, metal, ivory, wood, mosaics, encaustic painting, in hard works and mastic tapestry woven embroidery, and all of them just becoming iconographic items and expressions of orthodoxy as a faith, but in a very visible way.
Then, for every scent or scene from sacred history, there are a number of canonical types, but this number is by no means fixed. Just for icons of the mother of God with Christ child, there are several common types. If I had the time to present to you a list of the articles related to the mother of God, I would need much time because there are hundreds of them, and this is indicative of the expression of faith as a very creative kind of way.
The orthodox iconographer works within a fairly narrow set of traditional strictures with regard to subjects, placement of figures in a scene, postures, facial expressions, colors, perspective. Yet, despite the highly specified norms, works of tremendous ingenuity and freshness were possible. For, I’m sorry to say that, but there is no other way, for the male visitors of Mount Athos, sacred mount of northern Greece, if you go to the Protaton, which is the center of Mount Athos, and there is the church of the Protaton, and there you have the iconography by a famous iconographer, Panselinos. You would see one of the best university expressions in painting of the human face. The faces of Panselinos are just amazing; you can sit there and look, and you don’t want to leave the place. This is the 14th century, and seems to be connecting the Byzantine with a renaissance kind of style, but very, very vaguely. Here you have the orthodox belief and worship produced this kind of continuous iconography. Even today, you should know that here in America we have quite an activity in iconography because of the churches, and because of something that is an interesting phenomenon, churches that had been built in 1970, let’s say, or ’80, and have a poor or not-so-impressive kind of iconographic content change; the people want more, more beautiful, more elaborate, more spiritual. There is a change from painting of poor quality to mosaics, in spite of the high cost of mosaics, but this is indicative of the need for the expression through iconography of the content of faith. That was A.
B. Micro technique and fine arts apart from iconography. Whether the work of orthodox artisans and craftsmen is not exhausted in the production of iconography. Orthodoxy gave rise to a whole range of artistic endeavors, purely decorative in nature that were concerned with the production of article ultimately, articles for worship. A particularly exquisite craftsmanship arose in the making of ecclesiastical vestment and liturgical coverings. Here there was a tremendous evolution and expansion of the fiber art since the time of the simple linen garments of the apostolic church. In embroidery, in knitting, in raise work, in weaving, in silks, and in other kinds of needlecrafts, rich decorative traditions for textile production developed in conjunction with the orthodox liturgical tradition. The textiles became the realm of expression of faith. The fiber arts have become an integral part of the orthodox liturgical life as the change of ecclesiastical seasons is marked by a change of colors in sacred vestments for clergy, for instance, or for other similar occasions.
Then you go to something that is more elaborate, and this is now the production of liturgical metal works. Here you have the metal workers whose method over time came to include what we know as clausone, rapus, and filigree work. Here we are speaking of gold, silver and jeweled covers of the gospel, used in worship, of sacred vessels like the challis and pattern, various kinds of censors like the turibal and the catsion, or hand censor, blessing crosses and pectoral crosses, baptismal founts and sprinklers for holy water to name but a few. It’s a whole immense work.
One of the most beloved forms of orthodox metal working is the art of casting bells. Bells hold a special place in the heart of the orthodox community. They have been called “icons in sound,” and “singing icons.” In Russian orthodox tradition, bells are like a member of the family. When a new bell is installed in the church, it is literally baptized by a washing with holy water, anointed with sanctified mere, as in the baptism, and christened with a saint’s name, much as a child would be. It has been said that bells extend the walls of the church for as far as their tones can reach. In a traditional orthodox setting, the church bells announce to those near and far the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the recitation of the creed, and the consecration of the holy gifts. Bell ringing techniques evolved into many highly intricate patterns in liturgical practice in places like Holy Mountain, and the sound of bells became a hallmark of orthodox Christian community. For this reason, when the Turks captured Constantinople and when the communists took over southeast Russia, one of the first acts of the new overlords was to remove all bells from all churches and to melt them into new uses, not bells any longer.
I had a personal experience about this beautiful relationship to the bells last year when I was in Slovakia in Prussia, and they have exactly the celebration for a new bell. It was quite a situation, I must tell you. The people were jubilant, they were dancing, the bells were ringing, and the name was given. It was for the people a great, great day that would last for weeks.
C. The expression of musical artistry. The subject of bells brings us back to the topic of orthodox music and hymnody as a substantive expression of orthodoxy. We have said already that there was a veritable flood of poetic expressions of faith in the life of the church. There was concomitantly a great expansion of musical compositions to provide melody for those lyrics. These compositions developed into a form of exegesis in song, usually based on a Bible event of the Old Testament or the New Testament. In a series of verses orthropalia, the subject matter is lovingly expounded in great detail, bringing out the meaning and the mural import of the story. Among the larger musical compositions, of note are the great canons and the catabasi which are beautiful musical compositions in many different tones of the well-known music. By the way, in the Byzantine music, as you know; you have a wonderful musical school, we have eight basic tones, but there are variations of these eight basic tones that go beyond what we know from the European, western type of music, to the minor or major key music.
These hymns, along with many other new types of musical genres were invented in orthodoxy as joyous expressions of faith of the life of a Christian community. In order to record the newly coined hymnology, a system of musical notation was also invented. This notation, called numis in English predate the five line stuff notation of western music. It is a system of markings over the text of a hymn that encode the melody by indicating relative pitch changes for such syllable. This developed from a cantillation marks that were written into the text of the gospel, designated for public reading. There is a precious gospel with such cantillation marks in the Jaharis Byzantine Gallery in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you happen to be there, visit, look at this gallery, and see a beautifully preserved codex of the gospel, where you see above the written text in red ink, small dots and signs indicating the pitch of the voice in which the gospel should be chanted or intoned.
D. The art and drama of orthodox worship. This in fact, no small element of drama and theater in the traditions of orthodox worship in the form of ritual gestures, processions in and outside the sanctuary, interactive recitations of homilies and synodal decrees and the effects of candles, incense, and other similar things. Really, here we encounter another expression of orthodoxy, of creativity related to what we could c all theatrical arts, especially the services of holy week are conducted with a panoply of audio and visual elements particular to each day. Orthodox holy week has been called the original virtual reality, for the action of carrying out the services from start to finish leave the worshiper with an ineffable sense of having been a witness to the events themselves with no sense of separation in time or space. If one travels to the heart of orthodox monasticism, the peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece, the experience of worship as an event involving theatrical elements is very evident. All aspects of the liturgical life are really, especially presented, choreographed, with precision and respect at the same time for the sacred and the holy.
Moreover, the cycle of services that has been developed through the centuries contribute to the sense of drama and culmination through the course of the day, the week, the month, the year. There is a, so to say choreography in terms of time and repetition along each year, each month, each week, each day, with a succession like vespers, compline, messianic decorn, martins first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, culminating in the service of the holy liturgy in the Eucharist. The same sense of ebb and flow of spiritual energy occurs with the various ecclesiastical seasons, with the crest of the highest wave coinciding with the time of the resurrection.
A crucial aspect of the dramatic effect of orthodox worship as an expression of faith is derived from the sacred space in which worship takes place. For this reason, the canons of architecture have evolved in conscious detail with a purpose of contributing to the lexicon of transcendence now in architecture in statements of wood, and stone, brick and mortar. In this instance, we meet another expression of orthodox faith as an inspiring factor in creative architecture. For many people, the mention of Orthodox Church architecture specifically brings one or two images to mind as a prevailing aspect. Either the handsome, Byzantine churches with their characteristic domes or the towering structure of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. But antithetically, I have the freedom idea tonight to make some parentheses. I feel that way because I see the type of audience here.
Parenthetically, I was recently in Constantinople two weeks ago, and visited once again Hagia Sophia. This time, all the scaffolding that was inside for all the years is out, it is not there. They eliminated it last year because of Constantinople, Istanbul was the cultural capitol of Europe. This was the first time I just became conscious of the magnitude and the tremendous uplifting power of this church. In fact, I asked a good deacon who was with me and he’s here tonight, I said, can you count the chandeliers that are hanging, big chandeliers. He went, came back, says 55, you have 55 big chandeliers is an amazing kind of thing.
Of course, the first orthodox churches were simple in architectural form, with the exception of St. Constantin to the imperial throne, the classical Greek and later Roman business hole, the basilica became a basic style. With advances in civil engineering, the domed roof became visible and quickly emerged in orthodoxy as a preferred architecture. The church, no matter what the shape is, cross or rectangular or round, but with a dome on top. This is so, not only for the larger roof dimensions that the dome allows, but even more for a theological reason. The downward curving lines of the dome express a spiritual truth that the meeting of God and humankind in worship happens through a divine impetus edifying coming down. On the other hand, the domed ceiling is placed, the heavens and stands as a witness to the act of incarnation: God comes down, in order to raise humanity up to heaven. Dome functions in this double way, bringing the idea of God coming to us, and us coming, going up, ascending up to God. The domed church, though, is but one of the many kinds of architecture found in orthodoxy, and it would be another lecture to go just to study the architecture of the Orthodox Church as an expression of faith.
Architecture or massive pieces like the great church of Hagia Sophia, are possible only within a society that has both the talent and the wealth that is both stable and prosperous, that the world of Byzantium inhabited by the soul of orthodox Christianity could be such a common worth for a great period as it was in on itself is a testament to the high level of social organization and institutional ingenuity that goes much to orthodoxy.
Within the realm of orthodox Christianity, a huge number of social innovations were born of which, for time’s sake I will very briefly consider only three. First, there is not, because now we went from language to arts, to architecture, to music, now we go to institutions, and first there is the institution of the ecumenical synods such as those at Nicaea, starting 325 AD, and then Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, starting from the 4th, going up to the 9th centuries. Never before had been convened such a meeting. It was an international meeting, not in a big hotel, it was an international meeting in Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, people coming from far distances, some of them because of the distance and the age, some of the members of these senates, they died before they reached the senate, or they died on their way back. It was a tremendous achievement of international proportions. International meetings in the form of a senate. The senate wasn’t only a tremendous achievement theologically, and ecclesiologically, it was a tremendous achievement in bringing people from all places together for a common purpose, for a very serious and sacred purpose.
Here is something very important, but then you have a second item, and this is the philanthropic work of orthodoxy as expression of their faith. Fathers of the church have been very active in this kind of thing, and they thought that human beings, being the crown of creation, need care and therefore we have at that time the very important element of appearance of methodically organized institutions for health, for people suffering from various diseases or orphanages, places for wives and allow me to say that during some of the periods, especially of the Byzantine empire, because of the wars there was a big loss of manpower, and was a tremendous amount of women as widows, so they have to be taken care of. A tremendous amount of care developed in that time in Byzantium. Then, this is the thing.
We have a third very important item, which is the educational aspect. Already, verily in the 5th century, we have in Constantinople an institution called Pandivancterion, literally meaning a place when you teach everything. It’s a university, 5th century, and it continues of course, and in this kind of education was heavily and fully promoted in Byzantium, with result to have really astonishing events in producing a tremendous amount of scholars. When Constantinople fell in 1453, before and after a great number of scholars left Byzantium and went to the west and they were very instrumental in what then has been called a renaissance, because they conveyed to the west a high, very high level of human knowledge, wisdom, philosophy, and science.
Let me close this presentation, thanking you for your attention, and saying that we have as expressions of faith in orthodoxy, a very big number of phenomena from language, to art, to architecture, to social common civil institutions. There is no end in these type of activity and expression. I have been purposely used in the title of the lecture, the singular “Orthodoxy: An Unlimited Expression,” singular, deliberately. It is, as a phenomenon in itself an unlimited expression. You look everywhere and you see it, but it has as a consequence an unlimited number of expressions of faith. Here is one general, unlimited expression, orthodoxy being this type of thing, but at the same time, giving birth, producing quite an unlimited number of particular expressions that cover all aspects of life. All ways, with very basic focus point of translating the material into the spiritual, making even bricks, sounds, language, metals, making all of them spiritual entities declaring the glory of God. In a way, we could somehow by extending a beautiful passage from the book of Psalms, heavens declare the glory of God, to say human productivity, especially related to faith as in orthodoxy, declare the glory of God. Thank you for listening.
by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios
(Recorded by Yale Divinity School on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - 5:30pm)
Transcript
(May contain transcription errors)
Thank you so much, not only for the warm introduction, but for the warm climate which is a little bit something that has to do with the paper I’m going to deliver to your kindness in which I imagine St. John Chrysostom who didn’t like applauding when he was speaking. So, you applaud in advance and we are through with it. I express my very sincere thanks to dean Dr. Harlow Ethridge, my good friend, distinguished New Testament scholar and wonderful classmate at another institution. You see, I am adapting easily to the local habits and traditions. For the invitation to visit here divinity school and to offer this lecture on the topic “Orthodoxy: An Unlimited Expression,” the timing of this kind of lecture seemed to be most propitious, coinciding as it does with stealth of the conference on Eastern Christian Accretion traditions of epiphany, tomorrow and the visit of the Cappella Romana choral group next week, both of which are sure to provide eloquent examples of some impressions of orthodoxy such as we are discussing here today.
I use a word, orthodoxy after expressing my thanks not only to the dean, but to people, faculty and people of Yale divinity school and the very distinguished audience tonight, I see among you not only students and professors, but some visitors as well, related to Yale, our own legal counselor in the archdiocese is a seven-year Yale student college and law school, and he’s with us tonight. You see, we try to have more than one line of connection here.
I’m using the word “orthodoxy” as, in a certain sense this evening. It is the name the historic churches of the east have taken for themselves as a conscious declaration of the central place that doctrine in worship have in our worldwide faith community. As it is well known, the word orthodoxy comes from the two ancient Greek roots, “ortho-,” meaning straight or right, correct, and “doxa,” meaning glory, as in the English word “doxology,” or opinion, as in the English word “dogma,” tenet. Orthodoxy then is used by the orthodox to proclaim that right doxological worship, together with right doctrine, are the core values of our communion, and are essential in our ultimate identity as a body of uncompromising believers in Jesus Christ.
But one must never fall into the so-called etymological fallacy, the error of restricting a word’s meaning to the sum of its parts. It is equally necessary to understand that for the orthodox, orthodoxy is an expression of faith not at all limited either to the theological system or the liturgical tradition of the church. Put more simply, orthodoxy’s not merely a religion; it is a complete way of life, a complete program of the community. Orthodox Christianity and the cultures with which and within which it conjunctly developed, can never be artificially separated. There is rather, between the divine revelation and the human, cultural expression a kind of co-easiness, coexistence, and Hypostasis, to use a composite Greek term, which is reminded of the union of the nature in the presence of Jesus Christ. The faith produces the orthodox culture. The culture becomes an expression of the faith, or if you will, the culture incarnates the faith.
The ongoing action of giving human flesh to the articles of faith has no limit. It is quite extensive with every field of human endeavor. To understand why this is so, one must appreciate the orthodox Christian understanding of creation. The creation is not merely sun, moon, stars, earth, wind, fire, and water. These are but one side of the universe, the visible natures, the material world. There is, according to the fathers of the church, another side of the created order, the invisible natures, the eternal world of thought, the noetic realm, which includes the angelic hosts among its citizens, among other. At the nexus of the world of mind and the world of matter stands humankind as a crown of creation, the living link between the two worlds, and a microcosm comprehending both realms of nature, the visible and the invisible.
St. Gregory the theologian develops this theme most eloquently, as he calls the human being a new angel, a mingled worshiper, earthly and heavenly, temporal and yet immortal, visible and yet intellectual and invisible. One scholar has summarized this patristic view this way, “In man alone, mind and matter, the word of nostos and eschatos of matter and spirit intermingle and interpenetrate. Through man alone the material becomes articulate in the praise of the immaterial God.” The calling of humankind therefore, according to orthodoxy, is precisely to cultivate and train every aspect of the material world to become articulate in the praise of God. This is the orthodox philosophy of culture, and it incorporates everything, language and music, prose and poetry, art and architecture, textiles, civic life, and institutions.
It is no exaggeration to say that as a religious cultural phenomenon, orthodox Christianity is by design and in reality an unlimited expression of entities, forms and dimensions. Orthodoxy is an unlimited expression in the sense of comprising an unlimited number of multi-faceted, infinite expressions of all kinds.
Let me, then, start with orthodoxy as an expression related to language. We turn first to an investigation of orthodoxy as an unlimited linguistic expression. Historically, of course, orthodoxy flourished in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, where Greek coincidentally continued to be spoken as a lingua franca throughout its borders. This is quite different from the western half of the empire, where Latin in different forms became the standard language of many lands. Within orthodoxy, the local vernacular was always encouraged as the language of worship, yet most citizens of the Byzantine empire were also fluent in koine or koine Greek and among the educated, this Greek remained the dominant language of worship, poetry, and prose. As a result, there was a tremendous development of the Greek language within orthodoxy, not only in terms of maintaining and preserving the literature of the classical word, but also in terms of extending the corpus of literary masterpieces expanding the lexicon, inventing new genres and advancing the scientific study of language and grammar as expressions of orthodoxy.
Let me now present within this linguistic phenomenon, five particular aspects. A. The flowering of classical Greek language among the orthodox. It is a great irony of history that Julian the apostate, the last imperial persecutor of the Church was perhaps in no small part responsible for the flowering and developing of Hellenistic Greek within orthodoxy. Julian, in his efforts to re-paganize the empire, sought to rid the schools of Christians and their influences. In return, the theologians of the fourth century consciously responded by producing the highest quality literary works as tour de force, demonstrating of the affinity between classical excellence and Christian virtue. Well known, for example, is a beautiful epistolary exhortation of St. Basil the great, entitled “To the Youth on How They Might Derive Benefit From Greek Literature,” where he adjourns young scholars to be like honey bees who go among all the flowers to take away the sweet nectar they find while leaving behind the rest. So, with the works of ancient poentent philosophy, says Basil the Great, “the youth are to read broadly and absorb the virtuous elements they find, not imbibing the less-worthy aspect of pagan practice they might encounter in these works.”
St Basil’s attitude enriched, and not only his immediate pupils, but the entire world down in his day, for if the study of classical literature had not been legitimate by such a prominent theologian and the other fathers, like Gregory and Chrysostom, it is possible that the scriptoriums of medieval times would have failed to continue copying the words of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and other, and everything else that we cherish from ancient Greek literature. Without this chain of manuscripts down through the ages, most probably nothing would have survived for us from the vast corpus of ancient literature, except for Potshairs and Stillis.
But Orthodoxy’s contribution to the Greek language is far more than just as a reliquary for classical writings. The forms and styles of ancient literature continue as part of the living language within orthodoxy. For example, St. Gregory the theologian alone, it is estimated produced some 300 pieces of classical verse in the form of hexameters, perimeters and elegiacs. St. Gregory did not merely copy Homeric language or techniques of the classical Greek poetry, but even extended the genre of his writings of the fourth century. Another orthodox writer, Anna Corsini, the daughter of Alexius I, emperor of Byzantium produced in perfect attic Greek a history of her father’s reign called the Alexiad. This work was completed in the 12th century. As such, it stands as a remarkable testimony to the continuous propagation of classical Greek as a living language among the orthodox for more than a millennium.
B. The expansion of Hellenic Greek poetic forms is another really important thing. Classical Greek, it must be noted, is not identical to the Hellenistic Greek of the first centuries of the Common Era. There were many important differences between the language of ancient Athens and the language which arose within the empire of Alexander the Great. Once more, but exceptionally important change was the shift in pronunciation from pitch accent to stress accent. In the earlier language, the acute grave and circumflex accents corresponded to tonal variations in voice. When Greek language became a lingua franca across a wide territory, this pitch accent evolved into a different difference in syllable emphasis as in several modern European languages. With a change in accent, the distinction between long and short vowels was also lost, so that omega and omicron, for example became identical. Originally omega was O, omicron was o, but here with the shift to accent, it became both of them, “O,” just an example.
With these phonological changes, new kinds of metrical structure in poetry could be developed based on patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, rather than on heavy and light, long and short syllables. One of the masters of this form was the sixth century St. Romanos Numerados. He used this form along with many other stress based meters to produce an enormous number of hymns of considerable length. He is credited with the invention of the cantation, a selmonic type of text in several verses on a particular scriptural theme, originally chanted by a single voice following the reading of the Gospel. To this day in Greek Orthodox churches around the world, Romanos’ akathist hymn to the mother of God is chanted in its entirety on the fifth Friday of the Lenten period. It is a monumental work of 24 stanzas, organized as an acrostic of the Greek alphabet, interweaving scriptural allusions, theological concepts and rhetorical devices.
Orthodox Christian writers were responsible for the flowering of different genres of prose writing as well. Perhaps the chief example of this is the hermeneutical traditions that arose leading in the development of astonishing Biblical commentaries. Allow me a parenthesis which is not in my text, I see here my friend and colleague Dean Artridge, and he has as you know produced a monumental commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews. There have been these patron works centuries before that anticipated this kind of thing.
The genre of commentary is an unusual type of literature. It is a work of various Biblical interpretive scholarships, geared for a popular audience or readership. It elucidates a literal sense of scripture, often as a spiritual sense of the same, and concludes with parenesis, exalting the listener or reader to actions that accord with a higher calling of the Christian life. In normal delivery, this content was typically delivered with great flourish using classical devices of a predicted oratory, resulting in a hermeneutical tour de force spoken bravura that engages the listener both intellectually, aesthetically, emotionally, and morally. In fact, St. Gregory the theologian, in his oration number 36 suggests that, it’s interesting, that his deficiency in the apostolic gift of miracles, he said I can produce miracles as the apostles, was compensated for by the rhetorical gifts he had received, and so was able to produce the monumental works that he did.
B. The expansion of the Greek philosophical lexicon. This is another expression of orthodoxy in the field of language. Crucial to the hermeneutic work of orthodoxy as a remarkable linguistic offering, as well as its philosophical output, was a development of a vocabulary fitted for the world view which we eluded. What we needed is a most apt wording of the late professor Jaroslav Pelikan, who said that we needed at that time a lexicon of transcendence. Orthodox theology is highly apophatic; how does one speak of that which cannot comprehend our human mind? Yet, the mysteries of the trinity and the incarnation must be expressed and defended, and they have to be produced and then described in human language. But where do we have the vocabulary for that? Here we start with an expanding of traditional philosophical terms like the term “logos,” logos. To give one example beyond that, consider how orthodox theologians pressed the words “ousia” and “hypostasis” into the service of theological debates. These words were essential synonymous; in classical Greek, usia is being or essence, hypostasis is akin to Latin substantia, substance. But the Orthodox Church fathers produced a considerable distinction between the two terms in order to express the idea of the holy trinity. God is one in ousia, in essence, but three in hypostasis, in persons. I this way, and the many other ways you can see how the lexicon of transcendence was created and expanded.
One more aspect of the linguistic expression of orthodoxy, the advancement of grammatical studies in orthodoxy. One cannot speak of the linguistic expressions of orthodoxy without making some mention of the exceptional place of language, about language in the history of ideas. The grammarians of the Byzantine Empire had a special role, both in preserving the philosophical achievements of the classical world and in advancing scholarly inquiry into the structure of language in all its aspects. In his random stone study of the Byzantine grammarians, Professor R. H. Robins of the University of London shows how the linguistics scholars of this Byzantine era anticipated some of modern theoretical approaches to language. I particular, the monk Empolimoth Maximus Planutis developed an approach to the aspect intense verbs far more complete and nuanced than any before him. Through the work of scholars like him, the learning that came to the West with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 greatly facilitated the linguistic flowering of the Renaissance in Western Europe. Thought the names of these grammarians like Michael Singulus, John Lekis, and Gregory of Corinth have largely been forgotten, modern linguistics owes such scholars a great intellectual debt for their work ultimately is a tremendous work and is a debt to orthodoxy as linguistic factors are involved.
We proceeded to, and we turn from the faculty of language to the faculties of sight and sound to the fine arts as unlimited expressions of orthodoxy, rendering the material world articulate in the praise of God.
A. The art of iconography. Coming from a Jewish context and the structures of the second commandment against idolatry, Christian culture of the first was greatly limited in its expression through the visual arts. There were, to be sure, some elementary forms of painting, mostly in simple motifs and symbols such as a cross, the anchor, the fish, the dove. From these humble beginnings, a more intricate form of expressions quickly evolved that included figures of Christ as a good shepherd, Eucharistic scenes of the mystical supper, images of Jonah as a type of Christ, and even iconography which imitated, in the beginning, pagan models, as in the famous mosaic of Christ as the sun god helios in the so-called Julian tomb of the necropolis under the tomb of St. Peter in Rome.
In time, these more static styles of portraiture developed into the dramatic examples of iconography that we are familiar with today. Scenes of resurrection with Christ in white robes, dragging from death Adam and Eve, or scenes of the nativity, scenes of the transfiguration, and then gradually scenes from the life of the saints and martyrs. From a few basic constringents grew an unlimited number of iconographic types, developed in several distinct schools such as the great Cretan school, the Macedonian school, the Russian school and so on. In all these schools a variety of mediums were used for the depiction of icons, painting and oils, watercolors, and egg tempera on canvas, paper, wood, plaster, al fresco, even glass, ceramic, metal, ivory, wood, mosaics, encaustic painting, in hard works and mastic tapestry woven embroidery, and all of them just becoming iconographic items and expressions of orthodoxy as a faith, but in a very visible way.
Then, for every scent or scene from sacred history, there are a number of canonical types, but this number is by no means fixed. Just for icons of the mother of God with Christ child, there are several common types. If I had the time to present to you a list of the articles related to the mother of God, I would need much time because there are hundreds of them, and this is indicative of the expression of faith as a very creative kind of way.
The orthodox iconographer works within a fairly narrow set of traditional strictures with regard to subjects, placement of figures in a scene, postures, facial expressions, colors, perspective. Yet, despite the highly specified norms, works of tremendous ingenuity and freshness were possible. For, I’m sorry to say that, but there is no other way, for the male visitors of Mount Athos, sacred mount of northern Greece, if you go to the Protaton, which is the center of Mount Athos, and there is the church of the Protaton, and there you have the iconography by a famous iconographer, Panselinos. You would see one of the best university expressions in painting of the human face. The faces of Panselinos are just amazing; you can sit there and look, and you don’t want to leave the place. This is the 14th century, and seems to be connecting the Byzantine with a renaissance kind of style, but very, very vaguely. Here you have the orthodox belief and worship produced this kind of continuous iconography. Even today, you should know that here in America we have quite an activity in iconography because of the churches, and because of something that is an interesting phenomenon, churches that had been built in 1970, let’s say, or ’80, and have a poor or not-so-impressive kind of iconographic content change; the people want more, more beautiful, more elaborate, more spiritual. There is a change from painting of poor quality to mosaics, in spite of the high cost of mosaics, but this is indicative of the need for the expression through iconography of the content of faith. That was A.
B. Micro technique and fine arts apart from iconography. Whether the work of orthodox artisans and craftsmen is not exhausted in the production of iconography. Orthodoxy gave rise to a whole range of artistic endeavors, purely decorative in nature that were concerned with the production of article ultimately, articles for worship. A particularly exquisite craftsmanship arose in the making of ecclesiastical vestment and liturgical coverings. Here there was a tremendous evolution and expansion of the fiber art since the time of the simple linen garments of the apostolic church. In embroidery, in knitting, in raise work, in weaving, in silks, and in other kinds of needlecrafts, rich decorative traditions for textile production developed in conjunction with the orthodox liturgical tradition. The textiles became the realm of expression of faith. The fiber arts have become an integral part of the orthodox liturgical life as the change of ecclesiastical seasons is marked by a change of colors in sacred vestments for clergy, for instance, or for other similar occasions.
Then you go to something that is more elaborate, and this is now the production of liturgical metal works. Here you have the metal workers whose method over time came to include what we know as clausone, rapus, and filigree work. Here we are speaking of gold, silver and jeweled covers of the gospel, used in worship, of sacred vessels like the challis and pattern, various kinds of censors like the turibal and the catsion, or hand censor, blessing crosses and pectoral crosses, baptismal founts and sprinklers for holy water to name but a few. It’s a whole immense work.
One of the most beloved forms of orthodox metal working is the art of casting bells. Bells hold a special place in the heart of the orthodox community. They have been called “icons in sound,” and “singing icons.” In Russian orthodox tradition, bells are like a member of the family. When a new bell is installed in the church, it is literally baptized by a washing with holy water, anointed with sanctified mere, as in the baptism, and christened with a saint’s name, much as a child would be. It has been said that bells extend the walls of the church for as far as their tones can reach. In a traditional orthodox setting, the church bells announce to those near and far the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the recitation of the creed, and the consecration of the holy gifts. Bell ringing techniques evolved into many highly intricate patterns in liturgical practice in places like Holy Mountain, and the sound of bells became a hallmark of orthodox Christian community. For this reason, when the Turks captured Constantinople and when the communists took over southeast Russia, one of the first acts of the new overlords was to remove all bells from all churches and to melt them into new uses, not bells any longer.
I had a personal experience about this beautiful relationship to the bells last year when I was in Slovakia in Prussia, and they have exactly the celebration for a new bell. It was quite a situation, I must tell you. The people were jubilant, they were dancing, the bells were ringing, and the name was given. It was for the people a great, great day that would last for weeks.
C. The expression of musical artistry. The subject of bells brings us back to the topic of orthodox music and hymnody as a substantive expression of orthodoxy. We have said already that there was a veritable flood of poetic expressions of faith in the life of the church. There was concomitantly a great expansion of musical compositions to provide melody for those lyrics. These compositions developed into a form of exegesis in song, usually based on a Bible event of the Old Testament or the New Testament. In a series of verses orthropalia, the subject matter is lovingly expounded in great detail, bringing out the meaning and the mural import of the story. Among the larger musical compositions, of note are the great canons and the catabasi which are beautiful musical compositions in many different tones of the well-known music. By the way, in the Byzantine music, as you know; you have a wonderful musical school, we have eight basic tones, but there are variations of these eight basic tones that go beyond what we know from the European, western type of music, to the minor or major key music.
These hymns, along with many other new types of musical genres were invented in orthodoxy as joyous expressions of faith of the life of a Christian community. In order to record the newly coined hymnology, a system of musical notation was also invented. This notation, called numis in English predate the five line stuff notation of western music. It is a system of markings over the text of a hymn that encode the melody by indicating relative pitch changes for such syllable. This developed from a cantillation marks that were written into the text of the gospel, designated for public reading. There is a precious gospel with such cantillation marks in the Jaharis Byzantine Gallery in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you happen to be there, visit, look at this gallery, and see a beautifully preserved codex of the gospel, where you see above the written text in red ink, small dots and signs indicating the pitch of the voice in which the gospel should be chanted or intoned.
D. The art and drama of orthodox worship. This in fact, no small element of drama and theater in the traditions of orthodox worship in the form of ritual gestures, processions in and outside the sanctuary, interactive recitations of homilies and synodal decrees and the effects of candles, incense, and other similar things. Really, here we encounter another expression of orthodoxy, of creativity related to what we could c all theatrical arts, especially the services of holy week are conducted with a panoply of audio and visual elements particular to each day. Orthodox holy week has been called the original virtual reality, for the action of carrying out the services from start to finish leave the worshiper with an ineffable sense of having been a witness to the events themselves with no sense of separation in time or space. If one travels to the heart of orthodox monasticism, the peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece, the experience of worship as an event involving theatrical elements is very evident. All aspects of the liturgical life are really, especially presented, choreographed, with precision and respect at the same time for the sacred and the holy.
Moreover, the cycle of services that has been developed through the centuries contribute to the sense of drama and culmination through the course of the day, the week, the month, the year. There is a, so to say choreography in terms of time and repetition along each year, each month, each week, each day, with a succession like vespers, compline, messianic decorn, martins first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, culminating in the service of the holy liturgy in the Eucharist. The same sense of ebb and flow of spiritual energy occurs with the various ecclesiastical seasons, with the crest of the highest wave coinciding with the time of the resurrection.
A crucial aspect of the dramatic effect of orthodox worship as an expression of faith is derived from the sacred space in which worship takes place. For this reason, the canons of architecture have evolved in conscious detail with a purpose of contributing to the lexicon of transcendence now in architecture in statements of wood, and stone, brick and mortar. In this instance, we meet another expression of orthodox faith as an inspiring factor in creative architecture. For many people, the mention of Orthodox Church architecture specifically brings one or two images to mind as a prevailing aspect. Either the handsome, Byzantine churches with their characteristic domes or the towering structure of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. But antithetically, I have the freedom idea tonight to make some parentheses. I feel that way because I see the type of audience here.
Parenthetically, I was recently in Constantinople two weeks ago, and visited once again Hagia Sophia. This time, all the scaffolding that was inside for all the years is out, it is not there. They eliminated it last year because of Constantinople, Istanbul was the cultural capitol of Europe. This was the first time I just became conscious of the magnitude and the tremendous uplifting power of this church. In fact, I asked a good deacon who was with me and he’s here tonight, I said, can you count the chandeliers that are hanging, big chandeliers. He went, came back, says 55, you have 55 big chandeliers is an amazing kind of thing.
Of course, the first orthodox churches were simple in architectural form, with the exception of St. Constantin to the imperial throne, the classical Greek and later Roman business hole, the basilica became a basic style. With advances in civil engineering, the domed roof became visible and quickly emerged in orthodoxy as a preferred architecture. The church, no matter what the shape is, cross or rectangular or round, but with a dome on top. This is so, not only for the larger roof dimensions that the dome allows, but even more for a theological reason. The downward curving lines of the dome express a spiritual truth that the meeting of God and humankind in worship happens through a divine impetus edifying coming down. On the other hand, the domed ceiling is placed, the heavens and stands as a witness to the act of incarnation: God comes down, in order to raise humanity up to heaven. Dome functions in this double way, bringing the idea of God coming to us, and us coming, going up, ascending up to God. The domed church, though, is but one of the many kinds of architecture found in orthodoxy, and it would be another lecture to go just to study the architecture of the Orthodox Church as an expression of faith.
Architecture or massive pieces like the great church of Hagia Sophia, are possible only within a society that has both the talent and the wealth that is both stable and prosperous, that the world of Byzantium inhabited by the soul of orthodox Christianity could be such a common worth for a great period as it was in on itself is a testament to the high level of social organization and institutional ingenuity that goes much to orthodoxy.
Within the realm of orthodox Christianity, a huge number of social innovations were born of which, for time’s sake I will very briefly consider only three. First, there is not, because now we went from language to arts, to architecture, to music, now we go to institutions, and first there is the institution of the ecumenical synods such as those at Nicaea, starting 325 AD, and then Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, starting from the 4th, going up to the 9th centuries. Never before had been convened such a meeting. It was an international meeting, not in a big hotel, it was an international meeting in Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, people coming from far distances, some of them because of the distance and the age, some of the members of these senates, they died before they reached the senate, or they died on their way back. It was a tremendous achievement of international proportions. International meetings in the form of a senate. The senate wasn’t only a tremendous achievement theologically, and ecclesiologically, it was a tremendous achievement in bringing people from all places together for a common purpose, for a very serious and sacred purpose.
Here is something very important, but then you have a second item, and this is the philanthropic work of orthodoxy as expression of their faith. Fathers of the church have been very active in this kind of thing, and they thought that human beings, being the crown of creation, need care and therefore we have at that time the very important element of appearance of methodically organized institutions for health, for people suffering from various diseases or orphanages, places for wives and allow me to say that during some of the periods, especially of the Byzantine empire, because of the wars there was a big loss of manpower, and was a tremendous amount of women as widows, so they have to be taken care of. A tremendous amount of care developed in that time in Byzantium. Then, this is the thing.
We have a third very important item, which is the educational aspect. Already, verily in the 5th century, we have in Constantinople an institution called Pandivancterion, literally meaning a place when you teach everything. It’s a university, 5th century, and it continues of course, and in this kind of education was heavily and fully promoted in Byzantium, with result to have really astonishing events in producing a tremendous amount of scholars. When Constantinople fell in 1453, before and after a great number of scholars left Byzantium and went to the west and they were very instrumental in what then has been called a renaissance, because they conveyed to the west a high, very high level of human knowledge, wisdom, philosophy, and science.
Let me close this presentation, thanking you for your attention, and saying that we have as expressions of faith in orthodoxy, a very big number of phenomena from language, to art, to architecture, to social common civil institutions. There is no end in these type of activity and expression. I have been purposely used in the title of the lecture, the singular “Orthodoxy: An Unlimited Expression,” singular, deliberately. It is, as a phenomenon in itself an unlimited expression. You look everywhere and you see it, but it has as a consequence an unlimited number of expressions of faith. Here is one general, unlimited expression, orthodoxy being this type of thing, but at the same time, giving birth, producing quite an unlimited number of particular expressions that cover all aspects of life. All ways, with very basic focus point of translating the material into the spiritual, making even bricks, sounds, language, metals, making all of them spiritual entities declaring the glory of God. In a way, we could somehow by extending a beautiful passage from the book of Psalms, heavens declare the glory of God, to say human productivity, especially related to faith as in orthodoxy, declare the glory of God. Thank you for listening.
