Manuel Sumares
All Articles by Manuel Sumares
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of Portugal, Braga
Schmemann’s Approach To The Sacramental Life Of The Church: Its Orthodox Positioning, Its Catholic Intent
[…] we need in this world the experience of the other world, its beauty, depth, treasure, the experience of the Kingdom of God and its Sacrament – the Eucharist.
Alexander Schmemann, The Journals, p. 24–25.
The nominalist contagion has become transversal in contemporary culture. Schmemann sees it as pervasive in Western Christianity, but it can be also found in the Eastern Church in the excessive ritualism and formalism associated with Byzantium: in sum, Orthodoxism and the issue of clericalism. Moreover, the transversality of nominalism is such that it practically defines secularism with its own universalist pretensions. The two great church bodies that see themselves as apostolic and catholic would do well to look back to Schmemann’s criteria for the right kind of consolidations, especially in regard to sacramental realism, to break the hold of nominalism. In exploring this theme, we shall note Paul Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics to bring forth the peculiarities of Schmemann’s Orthodox positioning, and, we shall briefly allude to some facets of Donald Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation to suggest how the dialogue might proceed, as well as Bulgakov’s own take on Una Sancta and where it meets one of Schmemann’s crucial concerns.
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The issue of ‘Mapping the Una Sancta’ would have interested Father Alexander Schmemann. To begin with, from the time of his upbringing in Paris to his mission on behalf of the Orthodox Church in North America, his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church was been never less than meaningful.1 Along with his
In his Journals he would recall his student life in Paris and the positive experience of stopping by to hear parts of the Catholic Mass. He associated with it the same intuition that he experienced as an Orthodox and will have a place in this essay, namely, ‘the coexistence of two heterogeneous worlds, the presence in this world of something absolutely and totally “other.” This “other” illumines everything, in one way or another. Everything is related to it—the Church as the Kingdom of God among and inside us.’ The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann (1973–1983) translated by Juliana Schmemann (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 19. Besides his interest in the works of Catholic theologians, specifically those associated with La nouvelle théologie and the idea of returning to the Fathers as an important resource for overcoming the dominance of neo-scholastic theology in their Church, he became an Orthodox observer at the Second Vatican Council. From the Catholic side, Fr Richard John Neuhaus’s admirable and admiring recollection of him in, ‘A Man in Full’, written on the occasion of Schmemann’s posthumous publication of his Journals in the influential periodical, First Things (January, 2001), gives us a picture of a man to be reckoned with.
The Life of Ordinary Life: Hesychasm and Immanence
Following upon the effects of modernity, the regulation of ordinary life relative to the practicalities of human existence became a sphere of its own with no need of ontological justification. Charles Taylor’s monumental works on modern identity and secularisation represent a valuable resource in appreciating a situation that may be Western in inspiration but is, in fact, ultimately global and, thereby, affects the potential of Orthodox thought, and, more particularly that of Saint Gregory Palamas, to make a difference. However, the apparent inability for Western thought to provide an ontology for ordinary life offers an opening for reactivating the potential of Hesychast spirituality to speak of ordinary life in ontological terms. After considering Taylor’s contributions, we turn to Saint Gregory’s critique of ‘Hellenic error’ in order to suggest an ontological revalidation of ordinary life through the enhancement of immanence and to point to its permanence in the Orthodox Church.
In the epilogue to his The Deification of Man: St Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, George Mantzarides briefly raises the issue of the Orthodox Church’s effective reception of Palamite teaching on ordinary pastoral life. It seems to him to have been, for all practical purposes, forgotten. In this notable introductory work, he provides a concise presentation of Palamas’ doctrine of theosis, having gathered into itself the dominantly Christocentric perspective of the Greek Fathers with the mystical, Spirit-centred practices of the Hesychasts. However, in evaluating its posterior fate in the concrete realities of church life, he observes that, ‘The vision of uncreated light, which for the Hesychasts and Palamas was the most exalted and mystical form of man’s divinising communion with God, soon became neglected to the point of virtual disappearance’.1 He is aware of the distance between the cultural ambience of the early centuries of Christendom, as well as the hesychastic experiences, and that of secularised contemporary society. Yet, Mantzarides believes that the ideal of deification ought to be more than a ‘pious hope’. By this, I take him to mean something more than religious sentiment. What matters truly is its ontological content (i.e., actual participation in a transformative reality), the kind that reflects Christian revelation in its fullest sense as the experience of theosis. Just how this is