ELEMENTS of FAITH AN INTRODUCTION TO ORTHODOX THEOLOGY Christos Vom hapa sELEMENTS OF FAITH An Introduction to Orthodox Theology by Christos Yannaras translated by Keith Schram T&T CLARK EDINBURGHA R06 -T&T CLARK 59 GEORGE STREET EDINBURGH EH22LQ SCOTLAND Copyright © T&T Clark, 1991 Authorised English Translation of &ApaPytépr tis xioms published by Domos, Athens © Christos Yannaras, 1983 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording.or otherwise, without the prior permission of T&T Clark. First Published 1991 ISBN 0567 291901 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Yannaras, Christos Elements of faith 1. Catholicism. Doctrines. 2. Orthodox Eastern Church I. Title \e 230.042 Typeset by Saxon Printing Ltd, Derby Printed and bound in Great Britain by Billing & Sons Ltd, Worcester Hibiothal UGLY | oe ron To Spyridon and Anastasis, a daily legacyBy the same author The Freedom of Morality, tr. Elizabeth Briere, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY 1984 (in English). Heidegger and Areopagite: On the Absence and Ignorance of God, Ekdoseis <> 1987 (in Greek). De l’absence et de Vinconnaissance de Dieu, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1971 (in French). The Metaphysics of the Body. Ekdoseis<> 1971 (in Greck): The Modern Greek Identity, Ekdoseis Gregori 1983 (in Greek) Outline for an Introduction to Philosophy, Ekdoseis<> (in Greek). * Philosophie sans rupture, Editions<>, Geneve 1986 (in French). Person and Eros, Ekdoseis<> 1987 (in Greek). Person und Eros, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht-Verlag, Gottingen 1982 (in German). Proposals for a Critical Ontology, Ekdoseis<> 1985 (in Greek). The Real and the Imaginary in Political Economy, Ekdoseis<> 1989 (in Greek). Truth and the Unity of the Church, Ekdoseis Gregori 1977 (in Greek). cies tcc tect anne errs pare le Translator’s Introduction A reader may be surprised by two things about this book: The first is that the references and supporting material he might expect are not present. As Prof. Yannaras indicates in his “Prologue”, the audience he wishes to address with this book is not especially the professional theologians for whom such notes would be most desirable. It must be remembered that this book is a summary of many years of refléction and exploration. The footnotes are contained in the previous and often more technical studies that lie behind this work. His . views about the epistemological chasm that divides the: orthodox and ‘‘western” mentalities are set out, for instance, - with full documentation in his Introductory Outline of Philosophy (in Greek).") Secondly, we are not accustomed to such strong language in an age of ecumenism. For this reason alone, the book is worth reading. These opinions are not unique to him, although his analysis of the foundational ecclesial differences within Christianity shows a more penetrating and perceptive aware- ness of the issues than is sometimes encountered in other theologians, whether more polemical or more eitenic. This consciousness leads him to question, in fact, whether our present inter-Church dialogues are not merely dealing with superficial symptoms of a profounder disunity. See especially his book Truth and the Unity of the Church (in Greek). Prof. 1 Published in French as Philosophie sans rupture, (Genéve, Editions “Labor et Fides”, 1986). Two other books by Prof. Yannaras are available: in English, The Freedom of Morality, (St Viadimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1984) and in German. Person und Eros, Gottingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht Verl., . 1982).Yannaras provides a salutary notc of caution to the euphoria of “agreed statements”. It has been my concern to retain the sense of enthusiasm and commitment to the truth of the Church that is so evident in the Greek original of this book. I hope that not too much of his warmth, vigour and directness has been lost. For any errors or - infelicities in this translation, I apologize to the reader and to the author. Keith Schram. Contents Translator’s Introduction Prologue 1 2 a b. c d. 3. 4. 6. a. roe mpancp* “Positive” Knowledge and Metaphysics The Problem of God The religious beginning The search for truth The personal relationship Choice of goal and route Faith Apophatic Knowledge Dogma and heresy a. b. The limits of experience Gs d. Figurative language e Apophaticism Greek philosophy and Christian experience God as Trinity . The Biblical testimony . The philosophical challenge The linguistic “flesh” of truth |. Essence and hypostasis The person The experience of relationship . The revelation of life . The lifegiving principle Freedom and love The World .. The scientific worldviewb. pee gettin ps PP Ror rR me po ee Me mean The “logical” composition of matter Natural energies Natural theory “Mediator” — “microcosm” Ascetical apprenticeship Use of the world Man Image Soul - Rationality — free will— dominion Person Scientific language Ecclesial language Life after death The distinction between the sexes The power of love The fall Consequences of the fall: nakedness - Consequences of the fall: guilt . Consequences of the fall: the tragedy of creation Consequences of the fall: anxiety before death Consequences of the fall: the “coats of skin” 8. Jesus Christ POM rR me an oe The scandal Selfemptying “Without confusion” and “without division” Perfect God and perfect man Theotokos Historical ct-bidinates “Source” and “sources” Willing death “Ransom” and “redemption” The Risen One The general resurrection The “eighth day” 9. The Church a b. Called — gathered Paschal meal = o re thoan op 5 Sr ro me on Renewal of life Pentecost Existential transformation “Transubstantiation” and “symbol” Mysteries The ecclesiastical hierarchy Synods, primacy and authority Religious alienation Orthodoxy Apophaticism and ritualism Heresy and catholicity The criterion of orthodoxy . The Greek contribution The Western Deviation The historical change The Westernization of the East . Orthodoxy and the west today Index 124 128 130 132 135 139 149 149 150 151 153 154 157 162 165Prologue This book does not seck to convince anyone of its positions, nor to dissuade any hypothetical opponents. It is not an “apology” for Christian faith, nor does it aim to convert the reader to its views. It has just one ambition: to distinguish what the Christian faith is from what the Christian faith in not. Thatis, to clear up as much as it can the confusion which seems to exist today in our consciousness relative to the truth of the Christian Church and to purify this truth from the blend of alien and foreign ingredients which tend to substitute them- selves for it. Butall this must be donc in a way that is simple, comprehen- sible, and accessible to the “average man”, as we put it, and more particularly to the average “intellectual” because it is chiefly he, the intellectual, who is the bearer and the victim of this confusion. Cut off, as a tule, from the experiential roots of faith, perhaps also psychologically oppressed by a ritualistic family religiosity and recollections — usually negative — from a superficial course of catechesis in school, today’s intellectual rejects something that he thinks is the faith, while in reality he is ignorant of that faith. But if he wishes at some time to become informed about what it is exactly that he is rejecting, there should still be one small book—a primer or an elementary handbook ~ written in his own language in which he might find refuge, This is, however, an audacious undertaking because it is almost impossible to speak about certainties of life with the language of the mind, the language of thought. But to announce the ecclesial faith is, first of all, the same act of love with which the Church “endures all things” (1 Cor 13.7). Ibis,xiv then, necessary to endure even this “wretched generation of enlightened men”, as the poet says.) It is, we might say, up to each of us to take aim at the rationalist who is to be found in all of us today. Even love must speak a language which will be comprehensible to today’s man caged in his own logic without changing that language into a rationalistic system and which will build a bridge over to his side. Briefly, this book, which might be more exhaustive or better expressed, offers at least: “a primer of faith”. The faith expressed in it is the orthodox faith of the Church — no one’s private opinions. But the mode of expression and the accent are nevertheless an individual endeavor, with weaknesses and omissions, certainly. To find the right way to present the faith calls for much love. Love is neither emotionalism nor mere good intentions, but rather the supreme struggle for that selftranscendence which is, as the Church puts it, holiness. If, in spite of all this, someone or other succeeds in reading the faith out of this primer, he will have once again confirmed the paradox of Siloam: with a little mud of the earth, human eyes open to the wonder of life (Jn 9.6-7). 2T.S. Eliot. Choruses from “The Rock”, MII, in Collected Poems 1909-1962. (London, 1963) p. 181. | i i ' : i meme reir tne magenta btn atttantthe tte nether ye weeny EN “Positive” Knowledge and Metaphysics There are areas of learning or sciences which we call “posi- tive”: They claim to be, positive, to be assured, to have the * character of unquestionable certainty. Anyone can verify them by observation, experiment or mathematical reasoning. They relate to the reality of the world which surrounds us; they are areas of learning or sciences of physical reality. Likewise, the sciences which are occupied with the phe- nomena of the social life.of man and its organization and - function, or with reliable information about the past (the history of man), present themselves as positive. Here know- ledge is immediate, empirically verifiable and, consequently, assured and obligatory for all. The most-basic pursuit of our civilization today seems to be for this assured, positive and unquestionable knowledge. Every detail of our way of life, from family upbringing to education in school, to our vocation and the organization of the structures and institutions of our social life presupposes and aims at what we call objectivity: firm knowledge, tangible, plain to all. As an attitude of mind, an atmosphere, or a self-evident necessity, the demand for objectivity marks the man of our time. We grow up learning to value what is logical, unques- tionably right, We are equipped to be objectively right because this is the only standard imposed on us and only this will lead to social recognition and the attainment of concrete goals. But at the same time, within our rationally organized life there lurk a few questions which it is impossible to submit to the demand for positive knowledge. A first set of such2° “Positive” Knowledge and metaphysics questions is connected with the experiences‘ which we have in the field of art: What is it that differentiates a painting of Rembrandt from a painting of Van Gogh or the music of Bach from the music of Mozart? How does it happen that the artistic creativity of a man persists without being subordinate to any positive predetermination or objective classification? And how do marble, colour, or words “keep the form of man”, as the poet says? How do they preserve the uniqueness and dis- similarity of each artist which is impressed on his work? The very observation of nature gives birth to such ques- tions, which cannot be answered by “positive knowledge”, as soon as we go beyond the simple description of objects to wonder about their initial cause and their final purpose: How did all that exists around us come to be and where is it heading? Was it made by someone? Did it come about by chance? Has it always existed and will it continue to exist in the same irrational and inexplicable way? Whatever answer we give will be equally arbitrary and indemonstrable — in any case with the criteria of positive knowledge. How is the beauty of the world to be interpreted, the harmony, the order, the organic functionality which serves every tiny detail of the physical world? Beyond all this, at some moment of our life, some “turn in our road”, we will be met inescapably with sickness, decay, death. And then, they pose the most implacable questions: What is the logic of this ephemeral cycle of our biological existence? Does it all just end in two metres of earth? What is it that is extinguished by death and leaves the body a neutral thing to dissolve in the ground? What are a man’s look, his reason, his laugh, his gestures, his “expression”? What is extinguished by death is what makes him unique, distinct and unrepeatable — the way he loves, enjoys, hurts, the distinctive way with which each man realizes life. Are these all just biological functions like digestion and breathing and ; the circulation of the blood, or the conscious and the subconscious and the unconscious, and finally the “ego”, the identity of man or whatever else “depth psychology” (as it is called) tries to study today with its scientific attitude? Or maybe man is, exists, in a way which is not exhausted with his biological “Positive” Knowledge and metaphysics 3 functions and this way makes a man truly existent without his being touched by time and death? . At some moment of his life, a bend or “turn in his road”, a man suspects that positive knowledge answers only the smallest of his questions and that there exists an area beyond physics), the metaphysical area (the area of art, of love, of the mystery of existence) which must be approached, if someone is ever to come to knowit, using ‘weights and measures” very different from those which assure the simple description of the perceptible data of nature. For whole ages man has wrestled and still wrestles with meta-physical questions. Philosophy, art, the religions are forms of this ceaseless and perpetual struggle which dis- tinguishes man from every other existing thing and creates his civilization. Today we live in a civilization which tries to lay its foundations by repressing, forgetting, metaphysical ques- tions, though even this posture is once more metaphysical and itself lays the foundations (or lays them again) of a civilisation. Besides, as much as man tries to flee the implacable questions of metaphysics, as much as he undertakes to forget them in the midst of the fever of professional activity, of political service or of the insatiable search for pleasure, as much as he despises them and ridicules them in the name of a mythologized “science” which “has an answer for everything” or “will one day have an answer”, still the questions bide their time at some * moment on the road. The sudden “breakdown”, as Diirren- matt puts it, an automobile accident, cancer, some cardiac “episode”, and the armour of self-sufficiency collapses, the heart-rending nakedness of man is revealed. The chaos ‘of unanswered questions is opened unexpectedly before us and these questions are not just doubts in the mind, but frightening gaps in our existence. In these unanticipated moments of ‘metaphysical awakening”, one might say that all our questions are sum- marized automatically in one significant word, spontaneously known and immeasurably unknown: God. Who first spoke to us about him? What is he? And where is he? A creature of iIn Greek, ‘meta ta physica, —tr.4 “Positive” Knowledge and metaphysics man’s imagination, a necessity which our mind suggests — ora real existence, but hidden like the poet within his words and the artist within his paintings? Finally, does he exist or does he not exist? Is he the cause and goal of existence and of the world? Does man have within himself something from him, some- thing which surpasses space, time, decay, and death? 2 The Problem of God If we ask ourselves how men began to speak about God, how this problem entered into their life, we shall find three rather basic and very important points of departure: a. The religious beginning Religious need is the first point of departure.- There is within man, in his own “nature”, we might say, a spontaneous need to relate to something which surpasses him, to some existence muich superior to his own. Perhaps this need may start from ‘man’s fear in face of natural powers which are a threat and a danger to his life. He wants to propitiate these powers, to be reconciled with them and’so to restrain the fear which they occasion him. The way for him to do this is to attribute reason to them, to consider them rational existences which can hear him, understand him, accept the gifts which he offers them as sacrifices. Thus, man sees a rational existence, superior, immeasurably great, which hurls thunderbolts and stirs up the - seas and shakes the earth and fertilizes seeds and perpetuates life. He calls this power God and often sees it as fragmented; he sees as many gods in the world as there are powers which impress themselves on him. We do not know if this is the most. probable motive for the beginning of religion. But certainly we often meet such a level of religiosity in human societies even today. It is an anthropo- centric religiosity: it wishes to assure and to safeguard man in his weakness, to silence his fears. Therefore it is not confined only to a religious faith in higher powers, but also offers man