“Theology as a Hope for the Future of the Church”

Address of His Holiness Irinej
Archbishop of Pech, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and
Serbian Patriarch

St Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Theological College
University of Divinity
MELBOURNE
8 March 2016

Your Grace the Right Reverend Dean of St Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Theological College, Your Eminence, Your Graces, Distinguished Vice Chancellor of the University of Divinity, Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy, Venerable Monastics, Esteemed Professors, Dear Students, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Kindly allow me to express my gratitude for the honour which you have bestowed upon me this day, and through my humble person to plentitude of the Serbian Orthodox Church. I am deeply touched by your heartfelt welcome and by the opportunity to share a few thoughts with you on the uniqueness which Orthodox Christian Theology offers all of us as hope for the future of the Church – truly ancient, yet ever evolving solutions to contemporary problems.

However, before I begin, I would be entirely remiss if I did not highlight, for us in Orthodoxy, the essential correlation of Theology and Martyria, i.e. witnessing for the faith. Here, I would like to pause and pay my profound respects to the long-suffering Coptic Orthodox Christians and their Church. Standing as a mighty pillar, you are summoned to bear witness to Christ Jesus in the most difficult of times, both historically and today. We have but to recall from recent events how 20 Coptic Orthodox Christians and their African Christian brother died for their faith in Jesus Christ. These 21 men were martyred by ISIS on a beach at Sirtre, Libya, in February 2015.

Profoundly motivated by this martyria, a young Serbian Orthodox iconographer, Nikola Saric of Hannover Germany, a graduate of our own Academy of Serbian Orthodox Church for Arts and Conservation, wrote an icon of the New Martyrs of Libya. This icon was displayed in an exhibition at Brenkhausen Monastery in Höxter, Germany with the intention of offering it in support of the bereaved families of the martyrs.

Albeit austere, as an icon should, this deeply moving icon depicts both the seen and unseen realities. Here the Christians are all lined up on their knees before hooded ISIS terrorists with knives drawn. The men are show with their eyes looking to Christ, except for one who looks at us, inviting us to prayer. Here also, we see Christ welcoming them into His kingdom as they share in His death and suffering, in anticipation of the Resurrection of the dead. Truly, our Church is established on the blood of the Holy Martyrs.

In like manner, our own suffering Serbian Orthodox Church has been summoned to bear and continually bears witness to Christ in Kosovo and Metohija. This martyria comes at a time precisely as our own Church has been blessed with growth and development in Theological education offering Orthodoxy at large new, young and capable theologians. The presence of His Eminence Metropolitan Dr Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral, one of our eminent theologians and educators, testifies to the same.

In this spirit I submit for your consideration certain reflections on the way the Orthodox Christian Church understands its theological witness in this beginning of the new millennium. I am, in particular, grateful to His Grace Bishop Dr Anba Suriel, who has established the St Athanasius Coptic Orthodox College of Theology, for his dedication to promoting the traditional discipline of theological education here in Melbourne. The brief lecture that I shall now deliver is titled: “Theology as a Hope for the Future of the Church”.

I. Theology as a Hope for the Future of the Church

As our renown Serbian theologian, St Justin the New of Cheliye said, “If the Church of Christ does not solve the profound questions of the human spirit, it is not necessary.”  Theology must be preserved as the primary expression of the Church’s experience without ignoring either sociological concerns or the natural sciences. It is a theology that, through its patristic and liturgical foundations, claims to have a vision of cosmic transformation, of a transfiguration of the world and the conversion of the human individual into a true person living in the image of the Holy Trinity. We cannot train Orthodox theologians without opening up their eyes to all aspects of existence. But, this can be done only with a sound Dogmatic Theology. Georges Florovsky once stated, “Without sober guidance, without the stable element of sound doctrine, our feelings would but err and our hearts would be blinded.”

However, we cannot decide on these criteria unless we answer the question: What kind of hope does the Church offer?  The Holy Apostle Paul rightfully notes, “The House of God, which is the Church of the loving God, is the pillar and ground of truth” (1Timothy 3:13). The Church is a place where the God-man has instilled His mode of being through His Incarnation and Resurrection. That mode leads us to the level of person (relation and self-offering) and not the level of individuum (the individual, i.e. self-sufficiency and self-protection). This awareness gives rise in the latter half of the 20^th century to a Theology of Personhood in which the ‘person’ is an event of irreducible uniqueness and freedom from the balance of created nature. Only a person can live life as a self-offering being; the individuum is not capable of sharing.

In our Christian tradition God is revealed, known, and communicated as a perfect communion of the Three Persons. John Zizioulas expresses our own relationship relative to ‘otherness’ by noting, “The person is otherness in communion and communion in otherness”.[1] This is expounded upon by Stylianos Harkianakis, who in addressing the issue of ‘otherness’, in terms of the dramatic tension created amongst humanity by ‘relationship and inequality’, as well as ‘heredity and freedom’, explains that the “Christian faith is basically the result of communion between two persons”.[2]

In light of this principle, another one of our contemporary Serbian thinkers, St Nicholai of Zhicha spoke about the “The Orthodox Doctrine on Causality”, stating: “Our religious mysticism is nothing misty, nothing nebulous, nothing obscure or mystified. It is our clear and perennial doctrine of causality.  If we have to call this doctrine by an ‘ism’, we may call it personalism... Both naturalism and materialism are a teaching of blind fatalism without the smallest door of escape or the smallest window for sunshine.  We Orthodox Christians must resist this blind fatalism, as all Christians should do, and defend our intelligent doctrine of personal causality of and in the world".[3]

Here Archbishop Stylianos, our profound local theologian and ecclesiologist, has turned to the question of ongoing Holy Tradition. This unique offering of Orthodoxy to Western Christianity, in which the Truth is presented without compromise from one generation to the next in a living, creative manner wherein “… tradition is not so much a treasury of structures and forms but rather a living current of life, a way of existing, thinking and feeling… tradition is not just a way of handling matters of major or minor importance, but rather the spirit which leaves its creative traces through all possible expressions”.[4]

The Church is the work of God in history and, thus, within Itself, the Church must be a reflection of the Triune God. In the image of the crucified and resurrected Christ, who “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the Church also receives the tragic and sinful experiences and failures of man, for it is the Body of the Crucified Lord. In order to save the world, the Church must pass through the reality of death. As St Paul says, death takes place within us (the Apostles), so that life can begin inside you (i.e. the Corinthians and members of the Church) (cf. 2 Cor. 4:6-12).  Without this identification with the tragic destiny of the world, there can be no salvation of the world.

The Eucharist demonstrates that the Church exists for the entirety of creation and not simply for itself or humanity. Such an understanding of the church is drawing upon the most influential form of ecclesiology in 20^th century Orthodox thought, eucharistic ecclesiology, providing an opportunity to every individual church to confirm its faithfulness to the Eucharistic Body of the one Christ.

Here, in an attempt to overcome the impasse in the dialogue between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, which in recent decades has seen remarkable progress in in offering substantial agreement on theological issues, most especially in Christology, Hilarion Alfayev recently addressed the role of the local church and recognizing in the person of the bishop, who is primarily defined by his presiding over the eucharistic assembly, the necessary and sufficient criteria for determining the fullness of a local church.[5]

It is important today to move from mimicking tradition and ‘recycling’ Theology (a mere repetition of accepted definitions) to offering new avenues of recourse for Orthodoxy in our contemporary world while fully retaining Sacred Tradition and traditional values. To this, consequentially, Archbishop Stylianos would add, ‘When traditionally established values are questioned, it is natural for one to be disoriented and for the future of the world to lie at risk. And when ‘orientation’ in life is lost, it follows that ‘anxiety’ will prevail in all facets of life. This crisis of modern times is surely supported and aggravated by… a way of life that increasingly depends on contemporary technology, which fatally favours ‘extraversion’. Thus derives an unacceptable levelling not only of persons, but also of ideals, since one’s noblest desires are forcibly levelled. It is the very person that sociologists then come, descriptively, to call ‘unidimensional’.”[6]  

St Nicholai of Zhicha, characteristically said something that, in my opinion, faithfully describes the ongoing spirit and direction Orthodox theological education that provides the antidote to such ‘unidimensionality’: “Christianity is a religion not so much of principles, rules and precepts, but primarily and above all of personal attachments, in the first place an affectionate attachment to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through him to other members of the Church, the living and the dead.... The benefits we are drawing from such personalism in the doctrine of causality are manifold... It helps us enormously toward educating and forming strong personal, or individual, characters. It inspires us with a spirit of optimistic heroism in suffering, self-sacrificing, and in enduring martyrdom for Christ's sake beyond description, as testified in our Church history”.[7]
 

II. Relevancy of Orthodoxy in Oceania

Theology, therefore, in our time must be inspired by such visions that continue to bear witness, to confess, and to proclaim the Mystery of Christ, the transformation of the entire reality of the salvation of the world, with the communal and ‘catholic’ character of the Eucharist as a ‘gathering in one place,’ which culminates with our participation in the Supper of the Kingdom. Precisely, Orthodoxy faithfully discovering itself anew in the Spirit.

In Oceania, theology as a hope for the future of the Church is summoned to be the ongoing experience of Orthodoxy and its dialectical outreach, filled with promising opportunities. Contextually, it is the history of a people and their ancient faith entering into new nations and a new epoch. The Church is beyond geography and time in a new reality, one that is constantly moving, progressing and developing, yet always remaining steadfast to its Sacred Tradition. The presence of Orthodoxy in Oceania is, therefore, not stagnant, rather filled with life, joy and hope for the future.