It is not enough to merely repeat answers previously formulated in the West – the western questions must be discerned and relived. Russian theology must confidently penetrate the entire complex problematics of western religious thought and spiritually trace and examine the difficult and bewildering path of the West from the time of the Great Schism. Access to the inner creative life comes only through its problematics, and one must therefore sympathize with that life and experience it precisely in its full problematicality, searching, and anxiety. Orthodox theology can recover its independence from western influence only through a spiritual return to its patristic sources and foundations. Returning to the fathers, however, does not mean abandoning the present age, escaping from history, or quitting the field of battle. Patristic experience must not only be preserved, but it must be discovered and brought into life. Independence from the non-Orthodox West need not become estrangement from it. A break with the West would provide no real liberation. Orthodox thought must perceive and suffer the western trials and temptations, and, for its own sake, it cannot afford to avoid and keep silent over them. The entire western experience of temptation and fall must be creatively examined and transformed; all that “European melancholy” (as Dostoevsky termed it) and all those long centuries of creative history must be borne. Only such a compassionate co-experience provides a reliable path toward the reunification of the fractured Christian world and the embrace and recovery of departed brothers. It is not enough to refute or reject western errors or mistakes – they must be overcome and surpassed through a new creative act. This will be the best antidote in Orthodox thought against any secret and undiagnosed poisoning. Orthodox theology has been called upon to answer non-Orthodox questions from the depths of its catholic and unbroken experience and to confront western non-Orthodoxy not with accusations but with testimony: the truth of Orthodoxy. .... Orthodoxy is summoned to witness. Now more than ever the Christian West stands before divergent prospects, a living question addressed also to the Orthodox world. Therein lies the entire significance of the so-called “ecumenical movement.” Orthodox theology is called to show that this “ecumenical question” can only be decided through the consummation of the Church in the fulness of a catholic tradition that is unpolluted and inviolable, yet constantly renewing itself and growing. Again, return is possible only through “crisis,” for the path to Christian recovery is critical, not irenical. The old “polemical theology” has long ago lost its inner connection with any reality. Such theology was an academic discipline, and was always elaborated according to the same western “textbooks.” A historiosophical exegesis of the western religious tragedy must become the new “polemical theology.” But this tragedy must be reendured and relived, precisely as one’s own, and its potential catharsis must be demonstrated in the fulness of the experience of the Church and patristic tradition. In this newly sought Orthodox synthesis, the centuries-old experience of the Catholic West must be studied and diagnosed by Orthodox theology with greater care and sympathy than has been the case up to now. .... The encounter with the West has yet another dimension. During the Middle Ages, a very elaborate and complex theological tradition arose and flourished in the West, a tradition of theology and culture, of searching, acting, and debating. This tradition was not completely abandoned even during bitterest confessional quarrels and altercations of the Reformation. Nor did scholarly solidarity completely disappear even after the appearance of freethinking. In a certain sense, western theological scholarship since that time has remained a unit, bound together by a certain feeling of mutual responsibilitiy for the infirmities and mistakes of each side. Russian theology, as a discipline and as a subject of instruction, was born precisely in that tradition. Its task is not to abandon that tradition, but to participate in it freely, responsibly, consciously, and openly. The Orthodox theologian must not, and dares not, depart from this universal circulation of theological searching. After the fall of Byzantium only the West continued to elaborate theology. Although theology is in essence a catholic endeavor, it has been resolved only in schism. This is the basic paradox of the history of Christian culture. The West expounds theology while the East is silent, or what is still worse, the East thoughtlessly and belatedly repeats the lessons already learned in the West. -- Fr Georges Florovsky, Breaks and Links, Ways of Russian Theology
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 05:53:20 +0000
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