The Role of the Liturgy in Orthodox Theological Education
By Dan-Ilie Ciobotea (Patriarch Daniel of Romania, Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Muntenia and Dobrudgea, Locum tenens of the throne of Caesarea of Cappadocia, Patriarch of Romania)
Source: St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 31.2 (1987) 101-122.
I. Theology as witness to the Church's experience
The problem of the relation between the teaching of theology and the liturgy today was analyzed in 1970 at the first international conference of Orthodox theologians in the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Mass., by Father Alexander Schmemann in his report on "Theology and liturgy." (Published first in the "Greek Orthodox Theological Review," 17, 1/1972, pp. 86-100 and quoted in the book of A. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, N.Y., 1979, pp. 129-146.) He stressed that both the theology and the liturgy of the Orthodox Church are in a deep crisis which is mainly due to the separation or rupture between theology and liturgy in the post-patristic period. The authentic and healthy relation demonstrated by the Fathers between Christian theology and the liturgy as an experience sui generis of the Church was destroyed first of all by Western scholastic theology. Under the influence of this theology on Orthodoxy, this relation was also compromised in the Orthodox Church with serious consequences for the life of the Church in general.
What constitutes this crisis of relations between Orthodox theology and liturgy, according to Fr Schmemann's analysis, and how is it manifested today?
Minimalism is a selection from and arbitrary reduction in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, according to criteria which have nothing to do with the "lex orandi" of the Church.
According to Fr Alexander, the liturgy has remained the focus, the "holy of holies"; it is the main—if not the exclusive— "occupation" of the Church. However, a deeper analysis would reveal here also a very serious crisis which cannot be resolved by the hasty and superficial liturgical reforms advocated by many today. A first aspect of this crisis is the growing nominalism of liturgical life and practice. In spite of its apparent conservatism and even archaism, this practice is hardly expressive of the genuine "lex orandi" of the Church. Entire and essential strata of the liturgical tradition, while faithfully preserved in liturgical books, are little by little disappearing from practice or else are preserved symbolically and transformed beyond recognition. Eucharist and the sacraments, liturgical seasons and the celebration of feasts, rites of blessing and sanctification of life—everywhere one finds the same pattern: a "selection" of certain elements, a rejection of others; a selection, however, based not on the principles of the "lex orandi" itself, but on considerations totally alien to it. (Idem.,pp. 131.)
Fr Schmemann continues:
This means that all theology should become liturgical, not in the sense that liturgy should become the unique "object" of studies, but in the sense that its ultimate criterion should be the faith of the Church as manifested and communicated in the liturgy, in this vision and catholic (global) experience, which is now lacking in theology because of its alienation from the liturgy.
Indeed, under the influence of Western, post-patristic theology, Orthodox theological schools accepted, often without criticism, the Western manner of organizing the teaching of theology in autonomous disciplines, leading to a fragmentation of theology.
While in the Roman Catholic Church this fragmentation may still be overcome by the principle of a hierarchical "magisterium," understood as an external authority for theology, in Orthodoxy this fragmentation of theology can be overcome only if theology is again rooted in the "leitourgia" of the Church which is a global vision of its lived faith.
Having presented this summary of Fr Schmemann's analysis of the problem of the relation between theology and liturgy in the life of the Church today, we should like to look more closely at the affirmation that every theologian should be above all, not only a simple student of the faith of the Church, but also a witness to that faith as an experience "sui generis" of the Church. We must emphasize that without this dimension of witness, the teaching of theology lacks an "apostolic continuity" and "patristic faithfulness," and it cannot depict nor really announce the new life in the Spirit of Christ, or have the power to invite others to it. It is this dimension of theology as a witness to the experience of the Church which makes it "consubstantial" with the theology of the apostles and the Fathers.
II. The Liturgical life of the Church as a source of theological experience and witness
"Our doctrine conforms to the Eucharist and the Eucharist in turn confirms our doctrine" (St Irenaeus of Lyon, Adv. Haer. IV,18,5).
1) For the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers, the Christian faith is not restricted to a simple intellectual doctrine to be learned and taught, but it is truth and life; it is knowledge based on the experience of the living relation which God establishes with man who responds to Him freely. Every truth of the faith is revealed, not as a response to mere curiosity, nor to increase some philosophical knowledge, but for the sake of an existential communion of life and love between God and humanity. It is only within this communion that the truth of faith is manifested as the truth of life.
Christ is the supreme revelation of God in the world precisely because He is the revelation of God as supreme communion of life and love. Christ reveals the living God as eternal communion, the Holy Trinity; and He reveals man as one created for free participation in that communion of life and love. Christ is the Divine Light of the world, the ultimate sense of its existence, precisely because it is in Him that the mystery of supreme and indestructible union between God and humanity, between the Creator and the creature, is revealed. The eternal Logos of God who became man is revealed in fact, as the supreme Theo-Logos in this world, not primarily because of the greatness of His teaching, but by virtue of the uniqueness of His Person: in Jesus of Nazareth God speaks of God. He interprets Himself through acts and words which He accomplishes in the history of humankind. Thus every true theology in the Church is a reflection inspired by and springing from the theology accomplished in and by Christ. Therefore every Christian theology must have as its point of departure and destination the divine-human communion revealed in Christ. Similarly, the true life of the Church as the Body of Christ is experienced in the spiritual communion in Christ on every level and in every aspect: in liturgical and sacramental life, in the ascetic life, and in diakonia or service in the world.
In fact, the theological reflection of the apostles is above all their witness to this experience of God-Love, who reveals Himself in Christ in order to attract the entire humanity to Himself, to make it participate in the life of the Holy Trinity. However, the testimony which the Apostles render to the living God revealed in Christ has as its principal aim the appeal to all people of every race, age and social condition, to live this new life revealed in Christ. Their theological reflection is not knowledge which fans pride and despises those like them. It is a humble amazement before the mystery of the inexpressable love of God for the world. A humble wonder before the mystery of Christ, a courageous and joyful testimony to Him, and an ardent appeal for communion with Him—this is the theology of the apostles. All this is expressed simply and profoundly by St John, named by the Church "the Theologian": "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 Jn 1:1-3)
However, the description of this divine-human communion, the testimony to it by the apostles, and the appeal to all men to enter into it—all this is accompanied by effort to find words and shape proper expressions which could, without betraying, reducing or deforming the message, make it accessible in different cultural contexts and at different times.
While the unity of the apostolic witness is based on the uniqueness and the identity of the person of Christ, whom they knew, the diversity of forms of expression is due mainly to the diversity of cultural contexts or communities to which the apostles spoke as direct witnesses to Jesus Christ, as those who knew His earthly life and who had met Him especially after His resurrection from the dead. The historical experience of the apostles, as direct witnesses of historical events accomplished through and in Christ, remains unique; this is why it is the foundation and the main criterion for the whole faith of the Church.
The most important aspect of the testimony of the apostles is the fact that they interpreted all the events of the life of Jesus in the light of His resurrection from the dead and the working of the Holy Spirit whom they received on the day of Pentecost. The first public address of the apostles, that of St Peter on the day of Pentecost, is the most eloquent in this respect. Jesus, raised by God and witnessed to by the apostles, was elevated to the right hand of God, received the Holy Spirit from the Father as promised, and transmitted this Spirit to the apostles. (Acts 2,14-36). Later the miraculous meeting with the risen Jesus influenced the whole life and preaching of St Paul. All those who believed in Christ on the basis of the preaching of the apostles were baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They followed exactly the teaching of the apostles, the brotherly communion, the breaking of bread and the prayers. They had everything in common, they received their food with joy and simplicity of heart, they praised God, and they enjoyed the favor of the whole people. And every day the Lord increased the number of those who were saved. (Acts 2, 41-47)
Faith in Christ gives rise to a new life which is communion in the Holy Spirit with the risen Christ together with brotherly communion. This experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ among those who are united in His name is common to the life of the apostles and of those who believed in Christ through their preaching.
Indeed, this experience is the constant fulfilment of Jesus' promise to His disciples both during His earthly life and after His resurrection from the dead: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Mt 18:20) "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20). "To the close of the age" means that this promise concerned not only the apostles, but also all those who share the faith of the apostles to the close of the age. This is a promise to the Church. In this world the Church is the experience of the presence of the risen Christ and of spiritual communion with Him to the end of time, when He will come in glory. Without this experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ the Church loses its sense of being the real Body of Christ. Since the risen Christ is the radical novelty in this world and the anticipation of the world to come, the Church as the sacrament, testimony and prophet of this new life of the risen Christ is by nature and vocation the presence of the eschaton in this world; the anticipation in this world of the life of the kingdom of God which will come in fullness. This fundamental eschatological dimension of the Church distinguishes it radically from any other religion and any other institution or community in this world. The Church is the goal of this world and at the same time the anticipation of a new world. In it the fallen world comes to an end, and at the same time a new life begins—eternal life, "hidden now with Christ in God" (Col 3:3), but it will be manifested in all its glory with the glorious coming of Christ.
This eschatological experience is the experience of the saints. When theology is no longer founded upon this experience nor inspired by it, the Church does not recognize it as its voice and consciousness.
2) But the Church receives mainly (but not exclusively) the experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ and of new life with Him in the sacramental life: "The visible in our Redeemer has now come into the sacraments," said St Leo the Great.(St Leo the Great, Sermo. 74, 2, PL 54, 398.) However, the eucharistic liturgy is the central and supreme ecclesial celebration of the presence of the risen Christ and of communion with Him. Especially by celebrating the eucharistic liturgy the Church becomes fully what it is—the Body of Christ and the experience of the coming Kingdom.
The celebration of the Eucharist was instituted by Christ so that the Church could be a reality in history as a commemoration of Christ crucified and risen, as communion with Him and anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God: "Do this in rememberance of me" (Lk 22:19). "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him" (Jn 6:54-56). "I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (Mt 26:29). Thus through the celebration of the eucharistic liturgy the Church comes to the supreme point of the truth of its faith, its nature and vocation, renders a unique testimony to Christ and the Holy Trinity in this world, and anticipates the participation of the world in the Divine-human life of Christ risen and glorified. In this sense the eucharistic liturgy is the most intense and complete ecclesial and theological act, as it is also the cup or the synthesis of the whole faith of the Church, of its experience and doctrine. All this is wonderfully expressed in a hymn of the Orthodox liturgy sung by the people after the eucharistic communion and before leaving the church. This hymn can be called the existential "conclusion" and theological testimony of the whole liturgy: "We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith, we adore the Holy Trinity who has saved us." This hymn summarizes in a few words what the believers learn in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. It shows that the eucharistic liturgy is a school or place of theological learning, where the theological knowledge is not simply discourse about God but also dialogue with God; it is not simply speculative reflection about God but a meeting with God and communion with Him. In the eucharistic liturgy knowledge about God truly becomes knowledge of God.
3 ) We have seen the True Light
From the moment of gathering in the church till the time of leaving, the eucharistic liturgy as a whole is a vision with its prayers, hymns, iconography, gestures and all the actions performed. It is a vision for the true world view of the Church. It is a vision of existence in the light of God's presence. Through it the Church looks at the world with the eyes of Christ. The Divine Liturgy is the true vision of the whole of creation and of life in history, because they are seen in their beginning and their end, their origin and their final goal. The Divine Liturgy is the vision of the primary and final divine meaning of the whole of existence. It makes it possible to see and to understand existence according to the Son of God who became man. In the eucharistic liturgy the Church shows that it has the mind of Christ (I Cor 2:16). He is the Light of the World (Jn 8:12). Therefore, the Church sees the world and life in the light of Christ. It sees them in the light of what He taught and did, through His presence and in communion with Him, who is the risen Kyrios and the Pantocrator, the support of the whole of created existence.
At the culmination of the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, the Church's knowledge of the world is expressed in the recognition that the world is a gift of God: "The gifts, we take from among thine own gifts, we offer them on behalf of all and for all." Thus created existence is a gift of God. God is its origin and its sustainer, and God pursues a goal with the world which is His gift. He gives this gift to those who are able to receive it and understand what it is—precisely the gift of God. The world as a gift of God is addressed and given to man. "Eucharist," thankfulness, is, therefore, the state and the action through which man sees and approaches the world theologically: in its origin and in its end. Following the example of Christ, who took the bread and the wine during the Last Supper and thanked God the Father, the Church gives thanks for the whole creation, because it comes from God and is his gift to humanity.
The very fact that the Church offers the bread and the wine of the Eucharist as a "pars pro toto" for the whole universe demonstrates that the whole creation is food for man; his original and ultimate vocation is realized through communion with the gifts of God. Through all these gifts, through the very gift of the whole creation, God comes to man and offers himself to him. God's creation is an expression of the love of the Creator for man, since man is the only "eucharistic" being on earth able to express thankfulness for the whole creation. The Eucharist is precisely the "rational worship" through which man recognizes existence as the gift of God. In the eucharistic liturgy, the Church proves to be the eucharistic consciousness of the whole cosmos. If in the light of the eucharistic liturgy the Church sees the world as the gift of God, this means that the world is not God, but neither it is separated from God, since it comes from God and is maintained by God as His permanent gift, as a possible permanent context for communion between God and man. While distinct from God, creation is however not a reality which is sufficient in itself, in its origin or in its goal. In the eucharistic liturgy the world is in God, and God is present in the world; the love of the Giver and His beauty are expressed in His gifts. This presence of the Holy God in the world is contemplated and praised by the Church: "Heaven and earth are full of thy glory."
In the eucharistic liturgy, the Church understands the world neither as an idol, i.e., an ultimate and absolute reality with a closed and self-sufficient autonomy, nor as a bad reality, but as the reality through which God wants man to know Him and wants to enter into communion of free love with him. According to its vocation, creation should be a permanent context for the manifestation of the God who is love, a window towards Him and a bridal room to meet Him. Only sin and death make the world a wall between God and man and man's necropolis. The vision of the world in the light of the eucharistic liturgy shapes the theological attitudes of the Christian towards creation. This eucharistic vision differs from a pagan and idolatrous pantheism, from a modern, self-sufficient secularism, as well as from a pessimistic nihilism deprived of joy, since it is unable to grasp the presence of the living God in His creation.
The eucharistic vision of creation as a gift of God inspires thankfulness and joy, mobilizes responsibility for the life of the world and appeals to the whole Church and every Christian to transform the gifts of creation into the Eucharist, a sharing and a communion with all human beings.
Highly significant is the fact that during the Last Supper Christ identified the bread and wine with His Body and Blood. First of all, He thus shows that sharing food as a gift of God has communion with God Himself as its ultimate aim. The Body and the Blood of Christ are His divine-human life. So the goal of human life is not the mere consumption of transient gifts of God, but participation in His gifts, in the eternal life of God, the life of the risen Christ. Indeed the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Christ, become the first fruits or anticipation of the new creation, the New Jerusalem, transfigured and glorified, eternal and sinless, victorious over death, like the body of the risen Christ. This anticipation prepares the wish and the hope for plentitude: "O, Christ, great and Most Holy Pascha! O, Wisdom, Verb and Power of God! Give us a more intimate communion with Thee in the day without end of your Kingdom," (prayer after communion).
On the other hand, the very fact that Christ through the bread and the wine offers his Body and Blood as eucharistic food, reveals that not only the material elements should become a eucharist, an offering of free love, but the whole of human life finds its fulfilment to the extent to which it is an offering of love to God and to our neighbors. Following the example of Christ and in communion with Him, the life of a Christian should never be closed in on itself but a free self-offering to Christ and to our neighbor. Thus true Christian life is eucharistic and is expressed as an offering of free love. The death of Christ on the cross is the expression of His obedient love for the Father: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit"; as well as the expression of His love towards man, including his enemies: "Father, pardon them, since they do not know what they are doing." His death on the cross confirmed in action the truth that His love was stronger than death. His resurrection from the dead proved that the love of God for those who love Him to the end is also stronger than death. The Eucharist communicates this power of the love of Christ to us and reveals that human life is not limited to a biological, animal dimension, but is fulfilled as a free self-offering to the other. It is human in so far as it is a communion of love. The eucharistic liturgy makes concrete the words of Christ: "The one who seeks to keep his life, loses it, but the one who loses his life for my sake and the Gospel, keeps it."
The action of eucharistic offering, performed by the Church through the gifts (the bread and the wine), is a movement involving our hearts and our lives which become a Eucharist, a "living, holy offering pleasing to God, a reasonable worship" which is not in conformity with the mentality of the fallen and self-sufficient world, but in conformity with the renewal of the mind according to the will of God (Rom 12:1-2). All this is requested many times in the eucharistic liturgy in the words: "Let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God." This eucharistic vision of the real sense of human life, fulfilled as a self-offering to God and the neighbor, is the dynamic of the whole ascetic and diaconal life of the Church as a spiritual struggle against all individual or collective egoistic passions. Through these egoistic passions, individuals and communities concentrate on themselves; in an egoistic spirit and act of possession, they cling to things or persons whom they finally reduce to the state of things. All this leads to an isolation and a pride, insensitive and indifferent to the needs of others, to their life and their hopes for true communion.
The eucharistic vision of life is a judgement on all personal and communal life which is not an offering of free and liberating brotherly love.
The light of the eucharistic liturgy projected upon life unmasks as inhuman and false any life reduced to an excessive and egoistic accumulation of material goods, oblivious of the needs of the neighbor, and any mentality of consumption without the joy of sharing. The eucharistic vision is also a judgement on any oppression of the neighbor, since justice, peace, love and service to the neighbor are the only basis for true relations among people and nations.
Here we would also like to note the eucharistic vision that the Church has of humanity in general. Indeed, the Church does not perform the Eucharist only in commemoration of Christ, but also remembering the whole of humanity united to Him. When it celebrates the Eucharist in commemoration of Christ, it prays to God to remember in His kingdom the whole of humanity which places its hope in God. The spiritual and bloodless worship offered by the Church to God is performed not only for the local worshipping community, but for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and for the whole universe.
Christ ordered, "Do this in remembrance of Me." The eucharist, therefore, is not only a commemoration of the Last Supper, but also a commemoration of the person of the living Christ, of all He did and will do for humanity. This explains why the Church also commemorates the Resurrection of Christ and His parousia. Just because the Church commemorates the living person of Christ, it cannot see and understand Him in isolation, since He is united for ever with the whole of humanity, and first of all with the Church, His Body.
The eucharistic liturgy is not a meeting with Christus Solus, but with Totus Christus, Christ Himself being the Alpha and Omega of the new humanity, its head and its absolute future. This explains why the proskomidia commemorates first of all our Lord, and then honors and commemorates the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, with the Prophet and Precursor John the Baptist, all the holy prophets, the apostles, the holy hierarchs, the holy martyrs, the theophorous monks, the holy miracle-workers and all the saints in general.
Then God is asked to remember the whole clergy and the people in the Church, the dead and the living. The same vision is found in the prayer of anaphora and the diptika of the eucharistic liturgy, which initiate Christians to see humanity in its ontological unity and in the realization of its fundamental vocation: to be a communion of life and love in God, transcending time and space, differences of race and sex, of age and social standing. The grace and mercy of God heal the divisions produced by sin and death and call humanity as a whole to rediscover its ontological unity and its existential solidarity in the beauty of the communion of life and love, based upon the fact that everybody lives not for himself but for Christ, for God and for his neighbor. The eucharist also teaches that the life of everyone becomes the life of all and the life of all the life of everyone. The liturgy teaches the real relation between the member and the Body: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Cf. A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, SVS Press.)
"Beside our destiny we find all human destinies. The litanies like powerful waves swell the faithful beyond themselves and their family circle towards the assembly present, then to those absent, to those who are travelling and in danger on earth, in the sea and in the air, to those who toil, who suffer, who are in agony.
Then the prayer embraces those who possess power, the city, the country, the nations and peoples and, finally, the whole of humanity. The prayer asks for an abundance of the fruits of the earth and the whole cosmic order. The prayer ends with an ecumenical invocation for peace and the union of all. In this communion humankind, reborn and renewed by this caritative dynamism, rediscovers its own truth and the true essence of things. The isolation is broken and even nature, while hoping for its liberation, flourishes in the cosmic liturgy." (Paul Evdokimov, L'Orthodoxie, Neuchâtel, 1965, p. 240.)
Thus the eucharistic liturgy becomes the paradigm and source of inspiration for everyday life, which should be understood as a "liturgy after the liturgy." But this eucharistic vision is also a paradigm of renewed unity in God—a unity which is not a despotic subordination or uniformity, but prayer for each other, mutual reconciliation, brotherly mutual love and diakonia to each other.
In the light of eucharistic liturgy, humanity constitutes the center of God's love and attention: "From nothing you led us to being, you raised us who were fallen, and you acted unceasingly until you elevated us to heaven and gave us the gift of the coming Kingdom." Because the eucharist is a commemoration of the dead and risen Christ for the life of the world, the Church in its celebration does not forget the life of the world but remembers it before God. Thus the eucharistic liturgy shows that the Church is the memory of humanity before the living God. It is evident that this eucharistic vision of the concrete life of the Church and the world is a judgement on any theology which is indifferent to the concrete life of the Church and the world.
However, it is a paradox that the eucharistic liturgy shows that the Church can authentically remember the world if it does not confuse the Kingdom of God with the world. The Kingdom of God is not of this world: this is the meaning of the words: "Let us now leave aside all earthly cares." However, the world is called to enter into the Kingdom of God. Therefore, it has to be seen in the light of the Kingdom.
The light of the eucharistic liturgy shows us that the world as an object of Divine love should also be the center of the Church's intercession and mission, while the world as pride, sin, egoism and self-sufficiency is called to metanoia, to conversion, without which it cannot enter the Kingdom of God which is "justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14:17).
4) We have received the Heavently Spirit
The eucharistic liturgy not only gives the true light to understand the true vocation of creation and humanity or to see them with the eyes of Christ; it offers also the experience of the Holy Spirit which permits us to live in this world with Christ. St Paul says: "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him" (Rom 8:9). And, "It is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom 8:16). Indeed, the Church is really the Body of Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit from Pentecost until the end of the world. All the intercession of the Church, all the appeals to the grace of God, show that it breathes and lives in this grace. Thus any Christian prayer is offered in the Holy Spirit, who "intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26).
The epiclesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit on the eucharistic gifts, so that He may transform them into the Body and the Blood of Christ, is not aimed at a change as such, but at communion with the new life of the risen Christ, with the life of the heavenly Kingdom: "So that they may become for those receiving them sobriety of soul, remission of sin, communion with thy Holy Spirit and fullness of the heavenly Kingdom" (prayer after the epiclesis).
The Holy Spirit communicates to the Church the new life of Christ as holiness, a life according to the coming Kingdom. Many Fathers of the Church identified the experience of the presence of the coming Kingdom in this world with the presence of the Holy Spirit, according to the Letter of Paul to the Romans (14:17). (Evagrius, De orat., 58; Gregory of Nyssa, De orai. Dom. PG 44, 1157C; Maximus the Confessor, Expl. orat. Dom., PG 90, 884 Β.)
The eucharistic liturgy—when the Holy Spirit is invoked not only upon the eucharistic gifts which must become the Body and Blood of Christ, but also upon the members of the eucharistic community—brings about the conversion of our reason and hearts so that they may receive and understand Christ as the Life of our life. This conversion, this transformation or renewal of the mind, turns a Christian into a witness to the new life in Christ and makes him a theologian, following the example of Fisherman Apostles. Thus, communion with God in the Holy Spirit is the main condition for a theology witnessing to the knowledge of the living God (1 Cor 2:13-14). In this sense the famous definition of the theologian given by Evagrius: "If you are a theologian you should truly pray, and if you pray you are a theologian," (Evagrius, Treaty on prayer, 60.) is not a pietistic pronouncement, but it means that theology which is not a living communion with God, cannot witness to Him; it is not knowledge of God, but is in danger of becoming merely intellectual or philosophical knowledge about God.
Of course, this does not mean that intellectual efforts and scrupulous scientific research are not necessary. They are necessary to be able really to understand the experience of the Church through the ages and also, in every age, to find the language needed to express and communicate to our contemporaries the experience and witness of the Church. However, if the Church in this world does not really live the experience of the new life in Christ, and its theologians do not participate in it, they will not have the inspiration to generate a theology able to lead people to Christ and to arouse their thirst for a new life. The communion with the Spirit of Christ makes all the life of the Church a permanent theology. His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch, depicted the ecclesial experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the following words: "He personally is the newness acting in the world. He is the presence of God-with-us, united with our spirit (Rom 8:16). Without Him God is far away, Christ is in the past, the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is a simple organization, authority becomes domination, mission is propaganda, worship is an evocation, and Christian action is a morality of slavery. But in Him, and in indissoluble synergism, the cosmos is elevated and groans at the birth of the Kingdom, man struggles with the flesh, the risen Christ is present, the Gospel is the power of life, the Church means a trinitarian communion, authority is a liberating service, mission is a Pentecost, the liturgy is memorial and anticipation, and human action is deified." (Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch, Resurrection and Modern Man. SVS Press, 1985.)
To paraphrase this description one can say that theology which is not based on the experience of the Spirit of Christ runs the risk of becoming a religious ideology, aggressive or defensive according to the need to defend not the truth-communion but the interests of the institution, or of becoming an accumulation of historical data and responses to questions which no longer concern the concrete life of the Church. But when it is open to the Spirit of Christ, theological reflection becomes a joyful announcement of a new life, a critical call to the permanent conversion of people and structures, and a prophetic word of hope.
5. We have found the True Faith
The liturgical life of the Orthodox Church is the synthesis of its entire experience of faith. On many historical occasions, and during long periods of difficulties, the liturgical life, and especially the Eucharist, were the sole school of theology for all Orthodox believers. The learning of the Orthodox faith through participation in liturgical life has proved to be the most accessible and most sure way to the heart of Orthodoxy. The eucharistic liturgy became a point of reference for the true interpretation of the Orthodox faith throughout the Byzantine era. In this respect Father John Meyendorff remarks as follows:
It is exactly this experience of communion with God that makes the faith of the Church the true faith and allows the didactic dimension of the faith to be transformed from an intellectual knowledge into doxology and praise of the One who, in a mysterious way, is present amidst His Church and is in communion with Her.
The Letter to the Hebrews characterizes faith as "a way of possessing things hoped for, of knowing things not seen" (Heb 11:1) eucharistic communion really confirms that the faith of the Church is such because it is the vision of the true light, invisible to the eyes of the flesh, and communion with the Holy Spirit, "The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor know Him" (Jn 14:17).
But, as the true faith is indeed the true relationship of love with God-who-is-Love, the truth of the Orthodox faith is indeed expressed in the adoration of God-Love who is the Holy Trinity: "We worship the Holy Trinity who saved us." The theology presented by the eucharistic Liturgy is not abstract speculation about the Trinity as such, but rather a descriptive reflection and doxology with regard to the philanthropy of the Holy Trinity, its love for the world and its saving act for the world. Thus, the eucharistic Liturgy makes one a partaker of the mystery of true theology, theology as a science of salvation and of communion with God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Such a theology which is a continuous and manifold doxology (at one and the same time historical, biblical, poetical, intellectual, musical, proclamational and iconographie)—is also a permanent assertion of the inexpressable value of the human being as a created being, called to become a partner in dialogue and in eternal communion with God. The fact that the unbreakable communion between God and man, which was initiated in Christ Crucified and Risen, is the centre of the doxological theology of the Orthodox Liturgy, and that eucharistic communion aims at a dynamic deification of man, shows that the eucharistic Liturgy is the most intense affirmation of Christian theological humanism. Like the Liturgy, academic theology today should take more into consideration this affirmation and this maximum glorification of man in God, since, according to Father Dumitru Staniloae (in his Dogmatics, published in Bucharest in 1978): "Christianity cannot be useful for any time, and therefore not for today either, unless it gives what only Christianity can give—the link with the infinite source of the power of God who became man. Only in this way can it help progress through a constant 'pneu-matization.' As today's theologians, we can and must show, more than in the past, the humanist Christian contribution of the main acts of the Divine Revelation culminating in Christ— the Incarnation of the Son of God, His Sacrifice on the Cross, His Resurrection and Ascension as Man—with their consequences for the service of progress and spiritualization in general. The dogma of Incarnation, Resurrection and Deification contribute greatly to this human progress in its authenticity. The hypostatic union of two natures in Christ is in fact an eternal fortification of the relative by the Absolute, i.e. of the Created." (Dumitru Staniloae, Teologia Dogmatica Ortodoxa, Bucarest, 1978, v.I, pp. 105 (in Rumanian).)
On the other hand, we must stress that today it is absolutely necessary to explain, in theological schools and to believers, the eucharistic Liturgy and the whole liturgical life of the Church, not as a set of symbolic details which this life preserves sometimes in an excessive and too complicated manner, but to give an explanation which manifests the deep link to be realized between the Liturgical life and every-day life. For only when it is understood and lived in its existential and theological depths can the Liturgy of the Church become truly a place of theological learning and revive theological reflection at all levels of church life. The recent publication of Father A. Schmemann "Liturgy as Sacrament of the Kingdom" (Paris, YMCA Press, 1984 (in Russian), 1985 (in French); English translation in preparation.)(in French and Russian), is a decisive step in this direction.
We are convinced that a real renewal of the life and theology of the Orthodox Church will be always linked to its paschal center and life-giving source, namely the Divine Liturgy. Through it, the eternal youth of Orthodoxy is renewed, when it is not reduced to ritualism but lived as a "complete theology."
Historical experience shows that the attitude of the local community or an Orthodox church to this celebration and understanding of the eucharistic Liturgy is the Icon of either "disfiguration" or "transfiguration" of its very life.
In conclusion, the Liturgy of the Church is always the primary context for theological education for all believers, since at the same time it is a vision of the Divine sense of the world and its life, the most intimate experience of communion with the Risen Christ, the confession of the true faith, and the adoration and testimony rendered by humanity united in Christ to the true God in Trinity.
Source: St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 31.2 (1987) 101-122.
By Dan-Ilie Ciobotea (Patriarch Daniel of Romania, Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Muntenia and Dobrudgea, Locum tenens of the throne of Caesarea of Cappadocia, Patriarch of Romania)
Source: St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 31.2 (1987) 101-122.
I. Theology as witness to the Church's experience
The problem of the relation between the teaching of theology and the liturgy today was analyzed in 1970 at the first international conference of Orthodox theologians in the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Mass., by Father Alexander Schmemann in his report on "Theology and liturgy." (Published first in the "Greek Orthodox Theological Review," 17, 1/1972, pp. 86-100 and quoted in the book of A. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, N.Y., 1979, pp. 129-146.) He stressed that both the theology and the liturgy of the Orthodox Church are in a deep crisis which is mainly due to the separation or rupture between theology and liturgy in the post-patristic period. The authentic and healthy relation demonstrated by the Fathers between Christian theology and the liturgy as an experience sui generis of the Church was destroyed first of all by Western scholastic theology. Under the influence of this theology on Orthodoxy, this relation was also compromised in the Orthodox Church with serious consequences for the life of the Church in general.
What constitutes this crisis of relations between Orthodox theology and liturgy, according to Fr Schmemann's analysis, and how is it manifested today?
Whatever its 'key' or orientation, Orthodox theology seems deeply alienated from the Church, from her real life needs. Although taught in official ecclesiastical schools, its impact on students usually evaporates on the day of graduation. It is viewed as an intellectual abstraction nowhere to be really applied; as an intellectual game which the people of God—clergy and laity —simply ignore. In our Church today, professional theologians constitute a kind of Lumpenproletariat and, what is even more tragic, seem to be reconciled to this status. Theology is no longer the conscience and the consciousness of the Church, her reflection on herself and on her problems. It has ceased to be pastoral in the sense of providing the Church with essential and saving norms; and it has also ceased to be mystical in the sense of communicating to the people of God the knowledge which is the very content of life eternal. A theology alienated from the Church, and a Church alienated from theology: such is the first dimension of today's crisis. (Church, World, Mission, pp. 130.)What about the crisis of liturgy? Fr Schmemann defines it as nominalism, minimalism, and lack of influence on the concrete life of Christians. Liturgical nominalism means that the forms and rites originally expressing the existential, spiritual experience of the church often remain forms derived of content, because of the lack of such experience in the liturgical and practical life of the Church and Christians today.
Minimalism is a selection from and arbitrary reduction in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, according to criteria which have nothing to do with the "lex orandi" of the Church.
According to Fr Alexander, the liturgy has remained the focus, the "holy of holies"; it is the main—if not the exclusive— "occupation" of the Church. However, a deeper analysis would reveal here also a very serious crisis which cannot be resolved by the hasty and superficial liturgical reforms advocated by many today. A first aspect of this crisis is the growing nominalism of liturgical life and practice. In spite of its apparent conservatism and even archaism, this practice is hardly expressive of the genuine "lex orandi" of the Church. Entire and essential strata of the liturgical tradition, while faithfully preserved in liturgical books, are little by little disappearing from practice or else are preserved symbolically and transformed beyond recognition. Eucharist and the sacraments, liturgical seasons and the celebration of feasts, rites of blessing and sanctification of life—everywhere one finds the same pattern: a "selection" of certain elements, a rejection of others; a selection, however, based not on the principles of the "lex orandi" itself, but on considerations totally alien to it. (Idem.,pp. 131.)
Fr Schmemann continues:
What is more serious, however, is the fact that the liturgy—central as it may be among the activities of the Church—has ceased to be connected with virtually all the other aspects of the Church's life; to inform, shape and guide the ecclesiastical consciousness as well as the "world-view" of the Christian community. One may be deeply attached to the "ancient and colorful rites" of Byzantium or Russia, see in them precious relics of a cherished past, be a liturgical "conservative," and at the same time completely fail to see in them, in the totality of the Church's leitourgia, an all-embracing vision of life, a power meant to judge, inform and transform the whole of existence, a "philosophy of life" shaping and challenging all our ideas, attitudes and actions. As in the case of theology, one can speak of an alienation of liturgy from life, be it from the life of the Church or the life of the Christian individual. Liturgy is confined to the temple, but beyond its sacred enclave it has no impact, no power. All other ecclesiastical activities—in a parish, a diocese, a local church-are based more and more on purely secular presup-positions and logics, as are also the various "philosophies of life" adopted by professed Christians. Liturgy is neither explained nor understood as having anything to do with "life"; as, above all, an icon of that new life which is to challenge and renew the "old life" in us and around us. A liturgical pietism fed by sentimental and pseudo-symbolic explanations of liturgical rites results, in fact, in a growing and all-pervading secularism. Having become in the mind of the faithful something "sacred" per se, liturgy makes even more "profane" the real life which begins beyond the sacred doors of the temple. (pp. 131-132.)This double crisis of theology and liturgy, depicted above, is presented as a contradiction between the foundations and the life which should be based on these foundations.
The Church's life has always been rooted in the lex credendi, the rule of faith, theology in the deepest sense of the word; and in the lex orandi, her rule of worship, the leitourgia which always "makes her what she is": the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Today, however, there rapidly develops a dangerous alienation of the "real" Church from these two sources of her life.(p. 132.)In order to remedy this situation Fr Schmemann believes there is a double task to perform: a liturgical criticism of theology and a theological criticism of the liturgy.
This means that all theology should become liturgical, not in the sense that liturgy should become the unique "object" of studies, but in the sense that its ultimate criterion should be the faith of the Church as manifested and communicated in the liturgy, in this vision and catholic (global) experience, which is now lacking in theology because of its alienation from the liturgy.
Indeed, under the influence of Western, post-patristic theology, Orthodox theological schools accepted, often without criticism, the Western manner of organizing the teaching of theology in autonomous disciplines, leading to a fragmentation of theology.
While in the Roman Catholic Church this fragmentation may still be overcome by the principle of a hierarchical "magisterium," understood as an external authority for theology, in Orthodoxy this fragmentation of theology can be overcome only if theology is again rooted in the "leitourgia" of the Church which is a global vision of its lived faith.
Theology is always an invitation "to taste and see," an announcement and a promise to be fulfilled in communion, vision and life. Biblical exegesis, historical analysis, doctrinal elaboration ultimately converge in and prepare the celebration: the act of witnessing to and participating in the mystery itself, in that epiphany of life, light and knowledge without which all words remain inescapably "human," all too human. (p. 143.)But all this supposes a conversion, not only of theological methods, but also of the theologian who, after mastering the akribeia, the precise content and exactness of method of the discipline, and after gaining intellectual integrity and acquiring the humility appropriate to any authentic rational effort, must learn how to plunge himself into the joy of the Church—the language of the "leitourgia." He must become not only a student of the faith of the Church, but above all its witness. (pp. 143-144.)
Having presented this summary of Fr Schmemann's analysis of the problem of the relation between theology and liturgy in the life of the Church today, we should like to look more closely at the affirmation that every theologian should be above all, not only a simple student of the faith of the Church, but also a witness to that faith as an experience "sui generis" of the Church. We must emphasize that without this dimension of witness, the teaching of theology lacks an "apostolic continuity" and "patristic faithfulness," and it cannot depict nor really announce the new life in the Spirit of Christ, or have the power to invite others to it. It is this dimension of theology as a witness to the experience of the Church which makes it "consubstantial" with the theology of the apostles and the Fathers.
II. The Liturgical life of the Church as a source of theological experience and witness
"Our doctrine conforms to the Eucharist and the Eucharist in turn confirms our doctrine" (St Irenaeus of Lyon, Adv. Haer. IV,18,5).
1) For the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers, the Christian faith is not restricted to a simple intellectual doctrine to be learned and taught, but it is truth and life; it is knowledge based on the experience of the living relation which God establishes with man who responds to Him freely. Every truth of the faith is revealed, not as a response to mere curiosity, nor to increase some philosophical knowledge, but for the sake of an existential communion of life and love between God and humanity. It is only within this communion that the truth of faith is manifested as the truth of life.
Christ is the supreme revelation of God in the world precisely because He is the revelation of God as supreme communion of life and love. Christ reveals the living God as eternal communion, the Holy Trinity; and He reveals man as one created for free participation in that communion of life and love. Christ is the Divine Light of the world, the ultimate sense of its existence, precisely because it is in Him that the mystery of supreme and indestructible union between God and humanity, between the Creator and the creature, is revealed. The eternal Logos of God who became man is revealed in fact, as the supreme Theo-Logos in this world, not primarily because of the greatness of His teaching, but by virtue of the uniqueness of His Person: in Jesus of Nazareth God speaks of God. He interprets Himself through acts and words which He accomplishes in the history of humankind. Thus every true theology in the Church is a reflection inspired by and springing from the theology accomplished in and by Christ. Therefore every Christian theology must have as its point of departure and destination the divine-human communion revealed in Christ. Similarly, the true life of the Church as the Body of Christ is experienced in the spiritual communion in Christ on every level and in every aspect: in liturgical and sacramental life, in the ascetic life, and in diakonia or service in the world.
In fact, the theological reflection of the apostles is above all their witness to this experience of God-Love, who reveals Himself in Christ in order to attract the entire humanity to Himself, to make it participate in the life of the Holy Trinity. However, the testimony which the Apostles render to the living God revealed in Christ has as its principal aim the appeal to all people of every race, age and social condition, to live this new life revealed in Christ. Their theological reflection is not knowledge which fans pride and despises those like them. It is a humble amazement before the mystery of the inexpressable love of God for the world. A humble wonder before the mystery of Christ, a courageous and joyful testimony to Him, and an ardent appeal for communion with Him—this is the theology of the apostles. All this is expressed simply and profoundly by St John, named by the Church "the Theologian": "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 Jn 1:1-3)
However, the description of this divine-human communion, the testimony to it by the apostles, and the appeal to all men to enter into it—all this is accompanied by effort to find words and shape proper expressions which could, without betraying, reducing or deforming the message, make it accessible in different cultural contexts and at different times.
While the unity of the apostolic witness is based on the uniqueness and the identity of the person of Christ, whom they knew, the diversity of forms of expression is due mainly to the diversity of cultural contexts or communities to which the apostles spoke as direct witnesses to Jesus Christ, as those who knew His earthly life and who had met Him especially after His resurrection from the dead. The historical experience of the apostles, as direct witnesses of historical events accomplished through and in Christ, remains unique; this is why it is the foundation and the main criterion for the whole faith of the Church.
The most important aspect of the testimony of the apostles is the fact that they interpreted all the events of the life of Jesus in the light of His resurrection from the dead and the working of the Holy Spirit whom they received on the day of Pentecost. The first public address of the apostles, that of St Peter on the day of Pentecost, is the most eloquent in this respect. Jesus, raised by God and witnessed to by the apostles, was elevated to the right hand of God, received the Holy Spirit from the Father as promised, and transmitted this Spirit to the apostles. (Acts 2,14-36). Later the miraculous meeting with the risen Jesus influenced the whole life and preaching of St Paul. All those who believed in Christ on the basis of the preaching of the apostles were baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They followed exactly the teaching of the apostles, the brotherly communion, the breaking of bread and the prayers. They had everything in common, they received their food with joy and simplicity of heart, they praised God, and they enjoyed the favor of the whole people. And every day the Lord increased the number of those who were saved. (Acts 2, 41-47)
Faith in Christ gives rise to a new life which is communion in the Holy Spirit with the risen Christ together with brotherly communion. This experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ among those who are united in His name is common to the life of the apostles and of those who believed in Christ through their preaching.
Indeed, this experience is the constant fulfilment of Jesus' promise to His disciples both during His earthly life and after His resurrection from the dead: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Mt 18:20) "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20). "To the close of the age" means that this promise concerned not only the apostles, but also all those who share the faith of the apostles to the close of the age. This is a promise to the Church. In this world the Church is the experience of the presence of the risen Christ and of spiritual communion with Him to the end of time, when He will come in glory. Without this experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ the Church loses its sense of being the real Body of Christ. Since the risen Christ is the radical novelty in this world and the anticipation of the world to come, the Church as the sacrament, testimony and prophet of this new life of the risen Christ is by nature and vocation the presence of the eschaton in this world; the anticipation in this world of the life of the kingdom of God which will come in fullness. This fundamental eschatological dimension of the Church distinguishes it radically from any other religion and any other institution or community in this world. The Church is the goal of this world and at the same time the anticipation of a new world. In it the fallen world comes to an end, and at the same time a new life begins—eternal life, "hidden now with Christ in God" (Col 3:3), but it will be manifested in all its glory with the glorious coming of Christ.
This eschatological experience is the experience of the saints. When theology is no longer founded upon this experience nor inspired by it, the Church does not recognize it as its voice and consciousness.
2) But the Church receives mainly (but not exclusively) the experience of the spiritual presence of the risen Christ and of new life with Him in the sacramental life: "The visible in our Redeemer has now come into the sacraments," said St Leo the Great.(St Leo the Great, Sermo. 74, 2, PL 54, 398.) However, the eucharistic liturgy is the central and supreme ecclesial celebration of the presence of the risen Christ and of communion with Him. Especially by celebrating the eucharistic liturgy the Church becomes fully what it is—the Body of Christ and the experience of the coming Kingdom.
The celebration of the Eucharist was instituted by Christ so that the Church could be a reality in history as a commemoration of Christ crucified and risen, as communion with Him and anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God: "Do this in rememberance of me" (Lk 22:19). "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him" (Jn 6:54-56). "I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (Mt 26:29). Thus through the celebration of the eucharistic liturgy the Church comes to the supreme point of the truth of its faith, its nature and vocation, renders a unique testimony to Christ and the Holy Trinity in this world, and anticipates the participation of the world in the Divine-human life of Christ risen and glorified. In this sense the eucharistic liturgy is the most intense and complete ecclesial and theological act, as it is also the cup or the synthesis of the whole faith of the Church, of its experience and doctrine. All this is wonderfully expressed in a hymn of the Orthodox liturgy sung by the people after the eucharistic communion and before leaving the church. This hymn can be called the existential "conclusion" and theological testimony of the whole liturgy: "We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith, we adore the Holy Trinity who has saved us." This hymn summarizes in a few words what the believers learn in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. It shows that the eucharistic liturgy is a school or place of theological learning, where the theological knowledge is not simply discourse about God but also dialogue with God; it is not simply speculative reflection about God but a meeting with God and communion with Him. In the eucharistic liturgy knowledge about God truly becomes knowledge of God.
3 ) We have seen the True Light
From the moment of gathering in the church till the time of leaving, the eucharistic liturgy as a whole is a vision with its prayers, hymns, iconography, gestures and all the actions performed. It is a vision for the true world view of the Church. It is a vision of existence in the light of God's presence. Through it the Church looks at the world with the eyes of Christ. The Divine Liturgy is the true vision of the whole of creation and of life in history, because they are seen in their beginning and their end, their origin and their final goal. The Divine Liturgy is the vision of the primary and final divine meaning of the whole of existence. It makes it possible to see and to understand existence according to the Son of God who became man. In the eucharistic liturgy the Church shows that it has the mind of Christ (I Cor 2:16). He is the Light of the World (Jn 8:12). Therefore, the Church sees the world and life in the light of Christ. It sees them in the light of what He taught and did, through His presence and in communion with Him, who is the risen Kyrios and the Pantocrator, the support of the whole of created existence.
At the culmination of the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, the Church's knowledge of the world is expressed in the recognition that the world is a gift of God: "The gifts, we take from among thine own gifts, we offer them on behalf of all and for all." Thus created existence is a gift of God. God is its origin and its sustainer, and God pursues a goal with the world which is His gift. He gives this gift to those who are able to receive it and understand what it is—precisely the gift of God. The world as a gift of God is addressed and given to man. "Eucharist," thankfulness, is, therefore, the state and the action through which man sees and approaches the world theologically: in its origin and in its end. Following the example of Christ, who took the bread and the wine during the Last Supper and thanked God the Father, the Church gives thanks for the whole creation, because it comes from God and is his gift to humanity.
The very fact that the Church offers the bread and the wine of the Eucharist as a "pars pro toto" for the whole universe demonstrates that the whole creation is food for man; his original and ultimate vocation is realized through communion with the gifts of God. Through all these gifts, through the very gift of the whole creation, God comes to man and offers himself to him. God's creation is an expression of the love of the Creator for man, since man is the only "eucharistic" being on earth able to express thankfulness for the whole creation. The Eucharist is precisely the "rational worship" through which man recognizes existence as the gift of God. In the eucharistic liturgy, the Church proves to be the eucharistic consciousness of the whole cosmos. If in the light of the eucharistic liturgy the Church sees the world as the gift of God, this means that the world is not God, but neither it is separated from God, since it comes from God and is maintained by God as His permanent gift, as a possible permanent context for communion between God and man. While distinct from God, creation is however not a reality which is sufficient in itself, in its origin or in its goal. In the eucharistic liturgy the world is in God, and God is present in the world; the love of the Giver and His beauty are expressed in His gifts. This presence of the Holy God in the world is contemplated and praised by the Church: "Heaven and earth are full of thy glory."
In the eucharistic liturgy, the Church understands the world neither as an idol, i.e., an ultimate and absolute reality with a closed and self-sufficient autonomy, nor as a bad reality, but as the reality through which God wants man to know Him and wants to enter into communion of free love with him. According to its vocation, creation should be a permanent context for the manifestation of the God who is love, a window towards Him and a bridal room to meet Him. Only sin and death make the world a wall between God and man and man's necropolis. The vision of the world in the light of the eucharistic liturgy shapes the theological attitudes of the Christian towards creation. This eucharistic vision differs from a pagan and idolatrous pantheism, from a modern, self-sufficient secularism, as well as from a pessimistic nihilism deprived of joy, since it is unable to grasp the presence of the living God in His creation.
The eucharistic vision of creation as a gift of God inspires thankfulness and joy, mobilizes responsibility for the life of the world and appeals to the whole Church and every Christian to transform the gifts of creation into the Eucharist, a sharing and a communion with all human beings.
Highly significant is the fact that during the Last Supper Christ identified the bread and wine with His Body and Blood. First of all, He thus shows that sharing food as a gift of God has communion with God Himself as its ultimate aim. The Body and the Blood of Christ are His divine-human life. So the goal of human life is not the mere consumption of transient gifts of God, but participation in His gifts, in the eternal life of God, the life of the risen Christ. Indeed the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Christ, become the first fruits or anticipation of the new creation, the New Jerusalem, transfigured and glorified, eternal and sinless, victorious over death, like the body of the risen Christ. This anticipation prepares the wish and the hope for plentitude: "O, Christ, great and Most Holy Pascha! O, Wisdom, Verb and Power of God! Give us a more intimate communion with Thee in the day without end of your Kingdom," (prayer after communion).
On the other hand, the very fact that Christ through the bread and the wine offers his Body and Blood as eucharistic food, reveals that not only the material elements should become a eucharist, an offering of free love, but the whole of human life finds its fulfilment to the extent to which it is an offering of love to God and to our neighbors. Following the example of Christ and in communion with Him, the life of a Christian should never be closed in on itself but a free self-offering to Christ and to our neighbor. Thus true Christian life is eucharistic and is expressed as an offering of free love. The death of Christ on the cross is the expression of His obedient love for the Father: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit"; as well as the expression of His love towards man, including his enemies: "Father, pardon them, since they do not know what they are doing." His death on the cross confirmed in action the truth that His love was stronger than death. His resurrection from the dead proved that the love of God for those who love Him to the end is also stronger than death. The Eucharist communicates this power of the love of Christ to us and reveals that human life is not limited to a biological, animal dimension, but is fulfilled as a free self-offering to the other. It is human in so far as it is a communion of love. The eucharistic liturgy makes concrete the words of Christ: "The one who seeks to keep his life, loses it, but the one who loses his life for my sake and the Gospel, keeps it."
The action of eucharistic offering, performed by the Church through the gifts (the bread and the wine), is a movement involving our hearts and our lives which become a Eucharist, a "living, holy offering pleasing to God, a reasonable worship" which is not in conformity with the mentality of the fallen and self-sufficient world, but in conformity with the renewal of the mind according to the will of God (Rom 12:1-2). All this is requested many times in the eucharistic liturgy in the words: "Let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God." This eucharistic vision of the real sense of human life, fulfilled as a self-offering to God and the neighbor, is the dynamic of the whole ascetic and diaconal life of the Church as a spiritual struggle against all individual or collective egoistic passions. Through these egoistic passions, individuals and communities concentrate on themselves; in an egoistic spirit and act of possession, they cling to things or persons whom they finally reduce to the state of things. All this leads to an isolation and a pride, insensitive and indifferent to the needs of others, to their life and their hopes for true communion.
The eucharistic vision of life is a judgement on all personal and communal life which is not an offering of free and liberating brotherly love.
The light of the eucharistic liturgy projected upon life unmasks as inhuman and false any life reduced to an excessive and egoistic accumulation of material goods, oblivious of the needs of the neighbor, and any mentality of consumption without the joy of sharing. The eucharistic vision is also a judgement on any oppression of the neighbor, since justice, peace, love and service to the neighbor are the only basis for true relations among people and nations.
Here we would also like to note the eucharistic vision that the Church has of humanity in general. Indeed, the Church does not perform the Eucharist only in commemoration of Christ, but also remembering the whole of humanity united to Him. When it celebrates the Eucharist in commemoration of Christ, it prays to God to remember in His kingdom the whole of humanity which places its hope in God. The spiritual and bloodless worship offered by the Church to God is performed not only for the local worshipping community, but for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and for the whole universe.
Christ ordered, "Do this in remembrance of Me." The eucharist, therefore, is not only a commemoration of the Last Supper, but also a commemoration of the person of the living Christ, of all He did and will do for humanity. This explains why the Church also commemorates the Resurrection of Christ and His parousia. Just because the Church commemorates the living person of Christ, it cannot see and understand Him in isolation, since He is united for ever with the whole of humanity, and first of all with the Church, His Body.
The eucharistic liturgy is not a meeting with Christus Solus, but with Totus Christus, Christ Himself being the Alpha and Omega of the new humanity, its head and its absolute future. This explains why the proskomidia commemorates first of all our Lord, and then honors and commemorates the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, with the Prophet and Precursor John the Baptist, all the holy prophets, the apostles, the holy hierarchs, the holy martyrs, the theophorous monks, the holy miracle-workers and all the saints in general.
Then God is asked to remember the whole clergy and the people in the Church, the dead and the living. The same vision is found in the prayer of anaphora and the diptika of the eucharistic liturgy, which initiate Christians to see humanity in its ontological unity and in the realization of its fundamental vocation: to be a communion of life and love in God, transcending time and space, differences of race and sex, of age and social standing. The grace and mercy of God heal the divisions produced by sin and death and call humanity as a whole to rediscover its ontological unity and its existential solidarity in the beauty of the communion of life and love, based upon the fact that everybody lives not for himself but for Christ, for God and for his neighbor. The eucharist also teaches that the life of everyone becomes the life of all and the life of all the life of everyone. The liturgy teaches the real relation between the member and the Body: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Cf. A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, SVS Press.)
"Beside our destiny we find all human destinies. The litanies like powerful waves swell the faithful beyond themselves and their family circle towards the assembly present, then to those absent, to those who are travelling and in danger on earth, in the sea and in the air, to those who toil, who suffer, who are in agony.
Then the prayer embraces those who possess power, the city, the country, the nations and peoples and, finally, the whole of humanity. The prayer asks for an abundance of the fruits of the earth and the whole cosmic order. The prayer ends with an ecumenical invocation for peace and the union of all. In this communion humankind, reborn and renewed by this caritative dynamism, rediscovers its own truth and the true essence of things. The isolation is broken and even nature, while hoping for its liberation, flourishes in the cosmic liturgy." (Paul Evdokimov, L'Orthodoxie, Neuchâtel, 1965, p. 240.)
Thus the eucharistic liturgy becomes the paradigm and source of inspiration for everyday life, which should be understood as a "liturgy after the liturgy." But this eucharistic vision is also a paradigm of renewed unity in God—a unity which is not a despotic subordination or uniformity, but prayer for each other, mutual reconciliation, brotherly mutual love and diakonia to each other.
In the light of eucharistic liturgy, humanity constitutes the center of God's love and attention: "From nothing you led us to being, you raised us who were fallen, and you acted unceasingly until you elevated us to heaven and gave us the gift of the coming Kingdom." Because the eucharist is a commemoration of the dead and risen Christ for the life of the world, the Church in its celebration does not forget the life of the world but remembers it before God. Thus the eucharistic liturgy shows that the Church is the memory of humanity before the living God. It is evident that this eucharistic vision of the concrete life of the Church and the world is a judgement on any theology which is indifferent to the concrete life of the Church and the world.
However, it is a paradox that the eucharistic liturgy shows that the Church can authentically remember the world if it does not confuse the Kingdom of God with the world. The Kingdom of God is not of this world: this is the meaning of the words: "Let us now leave aside all earthly cares." However, the world is called to enter into the Kingdom of God. Therefore, it has to be seen in the light of the Kingdom.
The light of the eucharistic liturgy shows us that the world as an object of Divine love should also be the center of the Church's intercession and mission, while the world as pride, sin, egoism and self-sufficiency is called to metanoia, to conversion, without which it cannot enter the Kingdom of God which is "justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14:17).
4) We have received the Heavently Spirit
The eucharistic liturgy not only gives the true light to understand the true vocation of creation and humanity or to see them with the eyes of Christ; it offers also the experience of the Holy Spirit which permits us to live in this world with Christ. St Paul says: "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him" (Rom 8:9). And, "It is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom 8:16). Indeed, the Church is really the Body of Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit from Pentecost until the end of the world. All the intercession of the Church, all the appeals to the grace of God, show that it breathes and lives in this grace. Thus any Christian prayer is offered in the Holy Spirit, who "intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26).
The epiclesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit on the eucharistic gifts, so that He may transform them into the Body and the Blood of Christ, is not aimed at a change as such, but at communion with the new life of the risen Christ, with the life of the heavenly Kingdom: "So that they may become for those receiving them sobriety of soul, remission of sin, communion with thy Holy Spirit and fullness of the heavenly Kingdom" (prayer after the epiclesis).
The Holy Spirit communicates to the Church the new life of Christ as holiness, a life according to the coming Kingdom. Many Fathers of the Church identified the experience of the presence of the coming Kingdom in this world with the presence of the Holy Spirit, according to the Letter of Paul to the Romans (14:17). (Evagrius, De orat., 58; Gregory of Nyssa, De orai. Dom. PG 44, 1157C; Maximus the Confessor, Expl. orat. Dom., PG 90, 884 Β.)
The eucharistic liturgy—when the Holy Spirit is invoked not only upon the eucharistic gifts which must become the Body and Blood of Christ, but also upon the members of the eucharistic community—brings about the conversion of our reason and hearts so that they may receive and understand Christ as the Life of our life. This conversion, this transformation or renewal of the mind, turns a Christian into a witness to the new life in Christ and makes him a theologian, following the example of Fisherman Apostles. Thus, communion with God in the Holy Spirit is the main condition for a theology witnessing to the knowledge of the living God (1 Cor 2:13-14). In this sense the famous definition of the theologian given by Evagrius: "If you are a theologian you should truly pray, and if you pray you are a theologian," (Evagrius, Treaty on prayer, 60.) is not a pietistic pronouncement, but it means that theology which is not a living communion with God, cannot witness to Him; it is not knowledge of God, but is in danger of becoming merely intellectual or philosophical knowledge about God.
Of course, this does not mean that intellectual efforts and scrupulous scientific research are not necessary. They are necessary to be able really to understand the experience of the Church through the ages and also, in every age, to find the language needed to express and communicate to our contemporaries the experience and witness of the Church. However, if the Church in this world does not really live the experience of the new life in Christ, and its theologians do not participate in it, they will not have the inspiration to generate a theology able to lead people to Christ and to arouse their thirst for a new life. The communion with the Spirit of Christ makes all the life of the Church a permanent theology. His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch, depicted the ecclesial experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the following words: "He personally is the newness acting in the world. He is the presence of God-with-us, united with our spirit (Rom 8:16). Without Him God is far away, Christ is in the past, the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is a simple organization, authority becomes domination, mission is propaganda, worship is an evocation, and Christian action is a morality of slavery. But in Him, and in indissoluble synergism, the cosmos is elevated and groans at the birth of the Kingdom, man struggles with the flesh, the risen Christ is present, the Gospel is the power of life, the Church means a trinitarian communion, authority is a liberating service, mission is a Pentecost, the liturgy is memorial and anticipation, and human action is deified." (Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch, Resurrection and Modern Man. SVS Press, 1985.)
To paraphrase this description one can say that theology which is not based on the experience of the Spirit of Christ runs the risk of becoming a religious ideology, aggressive or defensive according to the need to defend not the truth-communion but the interests of the institution, or of becoming an accumulation of historical data and responses to questions which no longer concern the concrete life of the Church. But when it is open to the Spirit of Christ, theological reflection becomes a joyful announcement of a new life, a critical call to the permanent conversion of people and structures, and a prophetic word of hope.
5. We have found the True Faith
The liturgical life of the Orthodox Church is the synthesis of its entire experience of faith. On many historical occasions, and during long periods of difficulties, the liturgical life, and especially the Eucharist, were the sole school of theology for all Orthodox believers. The learning of the Orthodox faith through participation in liturgical life has proved to be the most accessible and most sure way to the heart of Orthodoxy. The eucharistic liturgy became a point of reference for the true interpretation of the Orthodox faith throughout the Byzantine era. In this respect Father John Meyendorff remarks as follows:
Whereas the gradual development in the West of a juridically authoritarian papacy led to an understanding of liturgical rites as external signs placed at the Church's disposal and easily modified and regulated by Church authority, Eastern Christianity visualized the liturgy as an independent, authoritative source and criterion of faith and ethics. Admittedly, this difference was never formalized and, perhaps, never consciously understood by either side, but seen in historical perspective, it sheds light upon an important aspect of Byzantine civilization ... [In the Islamic territories the liturgical life] served as practically the only available source of knowledge about Christian scriptures and the doctrines of Christianity. It was the means of a unique esthetic, intellectual, musical, poetic and visual enjoyment. Its extraordinary richness, both in volume and variety, made it a substitute for schooling and sermon-listening." (John Meyendorff, "The Liturgy: a Clue to Orthodoxy," in the collective work Orthodox Theology and Diakonia, edited by Demetrios J. Constantelos, Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1981, pp. 86-87.)However, while in the past the Liturgy sometimes took the place of a theological school, no academic theological school can ever replace the Liturgy of the Church, precisely because the Liturgy is not mere information about faith, but rather the faith of the Church in action, the faith confessed and celebrated as a relation to the living God. It is a teaching about God which becomes the most authentic Church experience, experience in the sense in which it was understood by the Holy Fathers. "What I call experience," declared St Maximus the Confessor, "is knowledge in action which transcends every concept . . . participation in a thing revealed beyond any thought." (St. Maximus the Confessor, Quaest. ad Th., 60, PG 90, 624 A.)
It is exactly this experience of communion with God that makes the faith of the Church the true faith and allows the didactic dimension of the faith to be transformed from an intellectual knowledge into doxology and praise of the One who, in a mysterious way, is present amidst His Church and is in communion with Her.
The Letter to the Hebrews characterizes faith as "a way of possessing things hoped for, of knowing things not seen" (Heb 11:1) eucharistic communion really confirms that the faith of the Church is such because it is the vision of the true light, invisible to the eyes of the flesh, and communion with the Holy Spirit, "The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor know Him" (Jn 14:17).
But, as the true faith is indeed the true relationship of love with God-who-is-Love, the truth of the Orthodox faith is indeed expressed in the adoration of God-Love who is the Holy Trinity: "We worship the Holy Trinity who saved us." The theology presented by the eucharistic Liturgy is not abstract speculation about the Trinity as such, but rather a descriptive reflection and doxology with regard to the philanthropy of the Holy Trinity, its love for the world and its saving act for the world. Thus, the eucharistic Liturgy makes one a partaker of the mystery of true theology, theology as a science of salvation and of communion with God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Such a theology which is a continuous and manifold doxology (at one and the same time historical, biblical, poetical, intellectual, musical, proclamational and iconographie)—is also a permanent assertion of the inexpressable value of the human being as a created being, called to become a partner in dialogue and in eternal communion with God. The fact that the unbreakable communion between God and man, which was initiated in Christ Crucified and Risen, is the centre of the doxological theology of the Orthodox Liturgy, and that eucharistic communion aims at a dynamic deification of man, shows that the eucharistic Liturgy is the most intense affirmation of Christian theological humanism. Like the Liturgy, academic theology today should take more into consideration this affirmation and this maximum glorification of man in God, since, according to Father Dumitru Staniloae (in his Dogmatics, published in Bucharest in 1978): "Christianity cannot be useful for any time, and therefore not for today either, unless it gives what only Christianity can give—the link with the infinite source of the power of God who became man. Only in this way can it help progress through a constant 'pneu-matization.' As today's theologians, we can and must show, more than in the past, the humanist Christian contribution of the main acts of the Divine Revelation culminating in Christ— the Incarnation of the Son of God, His Sacrifice on the Cross, His Resurrection and Ascension as Man—with their consequences for the service of progress and spiritualization in general. The dogma of Incarnation, Resurrection and Deification contribute greatly to this human progress in its authenticity. The hypostatic union of two natures in Christ is in fact an eternal fortification of the relative by the Absolute, i.e. of the Created." (Dumitru Staniloae, Teologia Dogmatica Ortodoxa, Bucarest, 1978, v.I, pp. 105 (in Rumanian).)
On the other hand, we must stress that today it is absolutely necessary to explain, in theological schools and to believers, the eucharistic Liturgy and the whole liturgical life of the Church, not as a set of symbolic details which this life preserves sometimes in an excessive and too complicated manner, but to give an explanation which manifests the deep link to be realized between the Liturgical life and every-day life. For only when it is understood and lived in its existential and theological depths can the Liturgy of the Church become truly a place of theological learning and revive theological reflection at all levels of church life. The recent publication of Father A. Schmemann "Liturgy as Sacrament of the Kingdom" (Paris, YMCA Press, 1984 (in Russian), 1985 (in French); English translation in preparation.)(in French and Russian), is a decisive step in this direction.
We are convinced that a real renewal of the life and theology of the Orthodox Church will be always linked to its paschal center and life-giving source, namely the Divine Liturgy. Through it, the eternal youth of Orthodoxy is renewed, when it is not reduced to ritualism but lived as a "complete theology."
Historical experience shows that the attitude of the local community or an Orthodox church to this celebration and understanding of the eucharistic Liturgy is the Icon of either "disfiguration" or "transfiguration" of its very life.
In conclusion, the Liturgy of the Church is always the primary context for theological education for all believers, since at the same time it is a vision of the Divine sense of the world and its life, the most intimate experience of communion with the Risen Christ, the confession of the true faith, and the adoration and testimony rendered by humanity united in Christ to the true God in Trinity.
Source: St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 31.2 (1987) 101-122.
