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TALKING ABOUT THE DEVIL Tribute to Fr. John S. Romanides, by Thomas Shaw, “The Orthodox Reader,”January, 1999, no. 17.
TALKING ABOUT
THE DEVIL
Tribute to Fr.
John S. Romanides, by Thomas Shaw, “The Orthodox Reader,”January, 1999, no. 17.
Two decades
ago, while still a young Orthodox Christian, I had the privilege of hearing Fr.
Alexander Schmemann speak. I cannot clearly remember now the topic of his talk,
but one sentence still rings in my ears; “What surprises those in the
ecumenical movement is that, while they are discussing the great project of
unification of the churches, the Orthodox are still talking about the Devil.”Orthodoxy
is still talking about the Devil because we continue to see his effect on the
culture around us and we continue to experience his war upon the Church.
Because we are engaged in this unseen warfare, Orthodox theology has always
been dynamic. Each generation must discover the truths of the Holy Tradition
anew, and in that process of discovery there will be differing understanding of
the content of the Tradition. This dynamism has always brought forth
controversial theologians within the Church.
They are those
who step outside the safe formulas and attempt to rephrase the Tradition using
unfamiliar guideposts.
One such
theologian is Fr. John Romanides. His work, in contrast to today’s
micro-specialist, presents a strong unified thesis that he applies over vast
periods of time and place. His boldness is dismissed as simplistic and overly
dogmatic by some. I first encountered Fr. Romanides as a student of theology at
the University of Thessaloniki. I was in the last course he taught in Orthodox
Dogmatics before his retirement. I took classes from him for three years and
have read most of his works including Franks, Romanism, Feudalism and Doctrine.
Fr. Romanides
is every bit the absentminded professor. His nickname at
Holy Cross was Fr.
Midnight because he seemed so unaware of his surroundings when he talked. He
would always begin a lecture the same way. Sitting down, he would speak in a
soft, almost inaudible, voice. Begin¬ning almost in mid-thought, it seemed as
if the lecture were already going on in his head. As he warmed to his subject
his voice would raise and his eyes would flash. Sometimes he would become very
quiet and would even seem to nod off for brief periods. His lectures were
always well attended because he was a man with something to say. It seemed odd
that even though his area of expertise was dogmatics, his lectures always
seemed to be history. The details of the goings-on in 9th and 10th century
France and Italy were constantly being related, or the details of 18th century
France and Russia. He was criticized for this. After all, he was not a trained
historian! But as a patristic theologian, he taught that the Fathers cannot be
understood without understanding their history.
Fr. Romanides
has an over-arching thesis: the purpose of the Church is to heal man of spiritual
illness brought on by the Fall (this spiritual illness is characterized by the
quest for happiness) and enable him to know God. His secondary the- sis is that
dogmatic controversies throughout the history of the Church are caused by those
who do not understand the function of the Church as a spiritual hospital. Thus,
the real difference with the West is their loss of this understanding which
occurred because the Western ecclesiastical institutions were subverted by
political forces into mere political institutions. As political institutions
they became concerned with man’s happiness instead of his glorification; with
mere forgiveness of sins, rather than purification.
It is this
thesis that is controversial. It is accepted in ecumenical circles that the explanation
for the schism of East and West is cultural. According to this concept, the
Western, Latin- speaking, Roman Church and the Eastern, Greek-speaking, Byzantine
Church became estranged due to cultural and political factors. The essential
elements of the “undivided Church” remain the same in both East and West. The
task of ecumenical theology is to regain this lost common understanding.
Romanides’ thesis attacks these concepts. There never was a “Byzantine” Empire.
This was an invention of 18th century Western historians. The Roman political
institutions remained intact from the founding of New Rome, Constantinople, in
the 4th century to its fall in the 14th century. Romanides, then, tells
a different story. Not the story of the Greek East and the Latin West, but the story
of Romans and Franks. His is a story not of people drifting apart, but of the
Romans struggling to assert the truths of Orthodoxy even when faced with
impossible opposition. His understanding of the crucial centuries leading up to
the schism and the crusades is one of the systematic subjection of the Roman
population of the West to the Frankish overlords who eventually were able to
capture even the Roman papacy and conform it to their feudalistic scheme.
The truth of
his thesis is captured in our language where franchise (to have the rights of a
Frank) means to be able to vote and villain (Roman town dwellers) means an evil
man. It was not the Roman Empire in the East that was estranged from its roots
and traditions, but the Roman Empire in the West which was replaced by
feudalism. So, while other theologians discuss the great project of unifying
the churches, Romanides keeps talking about the Devil.
It is the story
of warfare, seen and unseen. It is the story of the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church in the West and the threat to us as Orthodox if we do not understand our
history, our
heritage, and our Holy Tradition rightly. If we allow the Holy Orthodox Church
to become simply another cultural institution with its peculiar rites and
practices, if we allow the Holy Orthodox Church to become a religion, we will
be playing the Devil’s own game and will subject ourselves to our overlords
without a peep. Because of the controversy surrounding Romanides’ secondary
thesis, many lose track of his first and primary thesis.
Let Fr. John
state it himself:
“We are obliged
to have a clear picture of the context within which the Church and the State
viewed the contribution of
the glorified
to the cure of the sickness of religion which warps the human personality by means
of its search for happiness both in this life and after the death of the body.
It is within this context that the Roman Empire legally incorporated the Orthodox
Church into its administrative structure. Neither the State nor the Church saw the
mission of the Church as the simple forgiveness of sins of the faithful for
their entrance into heaven in the next life. Both the Church and the State knew
well that the forgiveness of sins was only the beginning of the cure of the
happiness seeking sickness of humanity. This cure begins by the purification of
the heart, it arrives at the restoration of the heart to its natural state of
illumination and the whole person begins to be perfected beyond one’s natural
capacities bythe glorification of body and soul by God’s uncreated glory (shekinah—the
English transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning “dwelling” or “settling” and
denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, Ed.). The
result of this cure and perfection was not only the proper preparation for life
after the death of one’s body, but also the transformation of society here and
now from a collection of selfish and self-centered individuals to a society of
persons with selfless love which does not seek its own.”
Page 85
Orthodox Heritage Vol. 14, Issue 11-18
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