Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England

7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England

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Orthodoxy and the Conversion of

England

By the Revd Derwas J. ChittySource: http://www.westernorthodox.com/chitty.html

A paper read at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St.

Sergius, on 31st July, 1947, and subsequently revised, by the Rev. Derwas J.

Chitty.

In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Almighty.I HAVE entitled this paper Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England. First,

I would ask you to keep in mind throughout that there is no conversion

save to the utter simplicity of the Christin whom dwelleth all the fulness

of the Godhead bodily. But this is no plea for false simplificationa

simpliste solutionin the true simplicity, all the intricate details of alluniverses can find the reason of their being.

Two days ago, my brother-in-law, Mr. Kitson Clark, ended his paper on the

note of the Daphni Pantokrator (image below).
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I would begin with another ikon akin to itthat ivory relief in the Cabinet

des Medailles in Paris (image below) which shows the Emperor and

Empress, Romanus and Eudocia, in all the jewelled trappings of Byzantine

Royalty: between and above them stands the Lord Jesus of Nazareth, the

King of All, in the meek robes of His humanity, with no splendour savethat of the Uncreated Light: His hands are upon their heads in blessing.

To be converted is not just to gaze upon Him, or to imitate Him as from

outside, but to have our life taken into His Sonship, by the Spirit of

Adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father.

Is it necessary to press the urgency of the need, for the world, for this

country, and for ourselves? What I do urge is that we have no time to-day

for things that are inessential. If we have not, in that which has brought us

here, the key to the treasure which is above all treasures, let us go away at

once and seek for it elsewhere. If we can get on without each other, let us

do so. But I say we cannot. Beware lest the Lords words thunder against

usWoe unto you, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye

entered not in yourselves, and those that were entering in ye hindered.
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Perhaps this is, in the first instance, a challenge to the Church of England

Council of Foreign Relations, which may seem to be concerned mainly with

diplomatic relations with foreign Churches. Surely what is required of it is

an all-out drive to give to world-wide Christendom, as already in being, at

least as important a place in the mind of the ordinary Englishman as isoccupied to-day by the foreign missions of our own Church. Too long we of

the Church of England have been concerned, in an ominously self-

conscious manner, with asserting that our Church is all that any other

Church is. And, in consequence, the habit has grown on us of thinking and

acting as if we could afford to stand alone. Problems of India are thought of

in terms of England, and it does not appear to us incongruous that the

Cingalese or the South-Sea-Islander should be expected to find their

spiritual home in Canterbury.

So long as we are confined to a West-European view of History, this is

inevitable. Within this view, we must either submit to Rome or claim that

we are as good as she is. And within this view, Rome is historically the

centre. Those who cannot stomach this at any price are left without any true

centre, perhaps without any faith at all in history since Christ. I suppose the

Church of England has tried to hold a balance, neither accepting nor

rejecting Rome completely. I would like to suggest that herein she has

given evidence of her vocationher appeal is to history: but she has been

awaiting a world-view of History for which she has not hitherto been

ready.

Actually, the only heart of the Church on Earth, the only heart of the world

and of all History, is neither Canterbury nor Romenor Constantinople or

Moscowbut Jerusalem. When that is properly understood, the seat or

seats of government of the Church become of secondary importance.

This is the context in which I believe we are to see the great vocation of our

Fellowship.

For several generations now there have been men whose names we honour,

working for friendship between our Churches. But in that friendship, while

I know not how much we have wished the Orthodox to learn from us, it has

been too commonly assumed that all we have to gain from Russian or

Greek, apart from support for our determination to be Catholic without

being Papist, was in the nature of caviare or rose-petal jama spiritual

luxury delightful in its place, and even salutary, but not to be indulged in

to excessfor we must remain Westernand not indispensable. Even

Birkbeck seems to miss the point of Khomiakoffs reply to the Magdalen

tractarians question how to arrest the pernicious effects of Protestantism


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Shake off your Roman Catholicism. And for a more recent example, I

would refer you to a passage in Brother George Everys new book on the

Byzantine Patriarchate, in which I am not at all convinced that the writer

expresses his real mind.

The Fellowship also has been guilty in this matter, too often slipping

through the fingers of any attempt to concentrate it on real dogmatic study.

When it was our duty to proclaim to the world an Orthodoxy that was not

peculiar to any one country, we have sought to find in the Russian word

"Sobornost" some idea not contained (though really it is contained) in the

original Catholicitywhile protecting ourselves with the bizarre, Russian

sound of the word, from any idea that it was binding on us English. Or,

instead of turning our minds to the classic teaching of the Fathers, we have

fastened on the Holy Wisdom philosophy of some outstanding Russian

thinkers, classing in our minds as typical of Eastern Orthodoxy just those

elements which other Orthodox themselves feel to be exotic, and perhaps

due to Western influence. It is greatly to be hoped that Vladimir Losskys

book on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church will appear in

English as soon as possible as a counterblast to this.

Perhaps it is not fair to describe all this as fiddling while Rome

burns. Perhaps it was inevitable that we should not be ready until now for

a greater work. But perhaps we are ready to-day. At least I know that I am

no longer by any means alone in the point of view which I intend to sketchfor you. Others, perhaps many more than I know, have come to it quite

independently of me.

Twenty years ago I found myself in Jerusalem with, as it were, scales

falling from my eyes. I had been there for the best part of two years, as an

Anglican student enjoying the genial hospitality and admirable teaching of

the French Dominicans of the Ecole Biblique of St. Stephen. But almost

imperceptibly, through what I saw in the Holy City of the Church

Universal, and through the influence of one close Russian friendship, andthe warmth of Russian Church Life to which that admitted me so freely, I

found my view of life revolutionized:

I slept, methinks, and woke, and, slowly gazing, found me stripped in

sleep.

It was as if I had, without noticing it, unlearned everything that I had

known before, and started as a child to learn it all over again. The truths I

now saw were the same truths: but a new light bound them together and

interpreted them differently, explaining apparent contradictions, and


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leading in many ways to implications hitherto unnoticed. At the same time

I had a deep conviction that herein the simpler faith of my country-rectory

boyhood was somehow being vindicated against the siren voices with

which Oxford had, to some extent, confused it.

I returned to Cuddesdon to find myself reading between the lines of all

ordinary books of history and theology, testing this new view, and finding

that it seemed to fit the facts. I went to the St. Albans Conference at which

our Fellowship was founded, to see whether Orthodox theologians would

actually interpret their Faith in the way which seemed to me implicit in the

somewhat general impressions I had so far gained of their worship. Again I

found I had not been mistaken. So the process of growth went on.

Of course a new question presently arose. Orthodoxy now appeared to

show me the true vocation of the Church of England. But, having once seen

the fuller, freer truth, could I personally remain tied up in the knots of our

chequered history? Back in Palestine in 1929, I was very near, or so it

seemed, to taking the bull by the hornsto becoming a member of the

Eastern Orthodox Church in a land where it was native, and serving it

there, leaving aside as not to concern me personally the question of the

validity of the Anglican Church. But then I became painfully aware of an

attitude all too common among Anglicansfortunately never universal

an attitude which, as it seemed to me, however polite and friendly on the

surface, fundamentally despised Orthodoxy, and had no room for it eitherinside or outside our Communion. My combativeness was roused. I might

not be a very good Anglican, but at least I represented the true heart of our

Church better than theseand if I could remain, I must, to prove that. And

here I should say that I am never so sorely tempted to doubt the validity of

our Church as when I hear people arguing that she is the best Church. What

need of that? Knowing that she has her faults, we must not presume to

compare her with other empirical Churches, but only with that perfect

heavenly Church, the Church of the First born in which is no spot or

wrinkle. For all her faults, it was here that Christ first called me, and thereis only one Christ.

So, after another two years, I found myself in my country parish, convinced

that we must follow Christ and build from the bottom if we are to attain

true unity, and to save the world. I have not been a great success, either as a

country parson or as a Naval chaplainbut I am convinced that that

experience of the wider mind of the Church which has sometimes made me

appear exotic to men of my own type of English training, has brought me

closer to the ordinary people of England and not separated me further fromthem.


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A warning for Anglican ecclesiastics, whose task it should be to know and

understand foreign Churches, and to interpret them to their people:again

and again I have found non-conformists, and Anglican laymen of no

specially ecclesiastical interests, who have met the Orthodox Church, in

Greece or elsewhere, and have understood her and appreciated her better, itwould seem, than they have appreciated our Church, or than our

ecclesiastics have appreciated the Greek. We have started with too many

presuppositions, and our knowledge, incomplete and in a different

framework of thought, has been a hindrance rather than a help to the

understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy. Such an understanding is not

possible for a Western unless he is ready to start again as a child from the

very simplest beginningsor rather, it is not possible for any man, Eastern

or Western, unless he learns to be doing this continually.

Moreover, this Church, which at first sight appears so highly hierarchical, is

much more of a laymans Church than either ours or the Roman. I had

already long surmised what I found clearly before my eyes when I went to

Greece for the first eight months of her liberation in 1944Here is a

Church from which we may perhaps learn the secret for bridging the gulf

between our clergy and laity. Here also Church and community remain

identical with a lack of self consciousness which makes it possible to find

room for free expression within one undivided Church of very many varied

movements of the Spirit which have with us usually resulted in

multiplication of sects. Let us lay aside, for the moment at least, the

assumption that we of the Church of England are called to be the bridge

between Catholic and Protestant or Reformed, and face the possibility that

there may be points on which Orthodox and Free-Churchmen (Methodist,

Presbyterian, or Congregationalist) may be better fitted in the first instance

to understand and be understood by each other than is the Anglican or the

Roman Catholic to understand either. I will not now elaborate this point

what Fr. Edward Every will have to say about the Church in Greece will, I

think, have a bearing on it. Meanwhile, I would already suggest to you that

our task may be to discover in Orthodoxy that miraculous glue which aloneis capable of reuniting the shattered fragments of Western Christendom. I

should like to call this possibility urgently to the attention of all whose

impatience for unity with other Churches of their own country may

otherwise lead them to wreck their cause on the rocks of betrayal of

principle.

But this brings me back to my main contention. I do not ask you to accept it

in a hurry, lock, stock and barrel. But I do ask you not to rule out of court,

as most of us appear to have done in the past, the possibility that in the 11thCentury Schism between East and West there were fundamental issues


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involved, and that in these the East was right and the West wrong; and that

this breach was but one aspect of a disastrous, tyrannical revolution within

the Western Church itself. In the light of this possibility, I would suggest as

a fruitful field of research for a Medivalist, the hints in the Spiritual

Franciscans, Wycliff, the Moravians, and perhaps elsewhere, of anunderground tradition in the Westor was it only a wistfulness?that the

pure Faith, lost or obscured in Rome, had remained with the Greeks. And I

would urge on your notice the fact that on every issue on which the

Reformers of the 16th Century broke from Rome, Roman faith and practice

were deeply, if subtly, different from the Greek. I would suggest that, both

then and subsequently, all the divisions of Western Christendom have

been rooted in the search for some elements of Christian Life which would

have been found in Orthodoxy.

Do not think that I am asking the Western to become Eastern. I can, in some

measure, consent to Michl Ramsey when he says that East and West

sorely needed each other, and ever since they went their separate ways,

neither has been able to present the wholeness of Christian and Church

life. Only I would remind you that it is not less true that the apostasy of the

old Isrl, the defection of the Arab to a false prophet, the refusal of the

Indian to see those elements in Christianity which are not to be found in

his own religions, have also thwarted our presentation of the wholeness of

Christ. But we do not, therefore, say that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and

Buddhism, are on the same level as the Christian Church. Moreover,

the Easternism of Orthodoxy is apt to be exaggerated, as if it expressed only

one national or racial culture. Here the Fellowship has suffered in the past

by seeing too little of anything but Russian Orthodoxyand, at that, of one

element within Russian Orthodoxy. Anyone who has become used to the

Orthodox Liturgy at home in several different milieuxsay Russian, Greek

and Syrianwill know what vast differences of culture and racial character

can express themselves fully and freely through the medium of what

remains clearly the same Liturgy and the same Faithdifferences at least as

great, in the first instance, as any which distinguish Eastern and WesternEurope. In fact, one begins to wonder whether, in practice, any Christian

Liturgy is so well fitted for naturalization into the mind and language of

every people in the whole world, as that of St. John Chrysostom. And yet

the Orthodox Church has never in theory denied that, for instance, the

Roman Mass was, in its purity, an Orthodox Liturgy. And Fr. Evgraph

Kovalevsky is showing us to-day the practical possibility of a Western

Orthodoxy.

Furthermore, we must beware, lest our desire to remain Western should bea mere cloak for our clinging to those restrictions of Christian outlook


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which nine centuries of separation have planted upon us. Everyone of us

does, in fact, shrink from the task of this return to the simplicity of the

Christ which must involve for us, not a rejection, but, as it were, a divesting

ourselves, without passing judgment, alike on Newman and Pusey, Laud

and Cromwell, Loyola and Luther, Thomas a Kempis and Richard Rolle,Francis and Aquinas, Bernard and Anselm; Rafl and Botticelli and

Leonardo; Kings College Chapel, Chamber Court at Winchester, Salisbury

Spire, and the wonder of Chartres:even further back, as we seek towards

the roots of the trouble, Jerome and Augustine must be called in question.

For most of us, the process seems far too like being flayed alivethis

putting off of our coats of skins. But when we do get back behind the

division, is it not true that the comparatively unformed architecture of our

fragmentary Anglo-Saxon survivals seems to have links with Byzantine and

Universal Christendom which are lost as soon as the Saxon sets into theNorman. I put it to youwere Jerome and Augustine themselves, Patrick

and Columba, Gregory of Rome and Benedict, Wilfrid and Chad, to return

to earth to-day, may it not be that they would all alike find in modern

Eastern Orthodoxy something more recognizably identical with the Church

they had known in their own countries than anything they would find now

in the Western Churches?

I am not suggesting that there have not been Saints in the West, whose

holiness has penetrated behind the middle wall of division to the

simplicity of Christ our God. But I do know how, especially in Jerusalem,

one could feel even in the least satisfactory representative of the Orthodox

Church an unhindered continuity with the Church of the Fathers such as

one could not feel in any Western Church there.

Why do I not ask the Orthodox to divest themselves of Gregory Palamas or

Seraphim of Sarov? In a sense I do: but in another sense it is not necessary

for me to do so: for the Saints themselves, and the heart of accepted

Orthodox Theology, have always called us to such a divesting, saying Not I,

but Christ living in me; forgetting those things which are behind, andreaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark

for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Is not this the secret

of the survival power of the Byzantine Church, cleansed through the loss of

so much that was once its highest outward expressionHaghia Sophia,

that Heaven on earth which converted Vladimirs envoys: the Christian

empires of Old and New Rome, of Serbia, and of Russiaso that a Syrian

village, without art or learning, perhaps without even a priest, and

surrounded by Islam, can in some ways reveal to us more of Orthodoxy

than the Byzantine Court? The apophatic or negative mystical way rulesover all Orthodox theology. It is the way of humility, which cannot fall


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because it sets itself from the beginning in the lowest place; the way by

which the Mother of God was prepared for the Incarnationfor he that

humbleth himself shall be exalted.

If we cannot approach the Western Church of the last nine centuries withthe same confidence, is it not precisely because, since the clerical revolution

of the 11th Century, she has not dared to submit herself or her theology to

the primacy of this path? Desiring an assurance of salvation which her

reasoning could apprehend, she has not dared to throw herself entirely on

the mercy of a God whose Essence remains unknowable. Where her Saints

have penetrated to this, she has been tempted to explain them awayto

treat their path as an extra, to which some few mystics are called concerning

devotion rather than theologywhereas, for Orthodoxy, devotion and

theology are more clearly inseparable. The inner bond which bound the

Saints together is thus gradually lost from view, until the Reformers

thought it necessary to call for a turning from saints seen in practice as

separate individuals to the one Christ. But the true Fathers, and the True

Church, are taken into the Tabor-light of the Christ Himself just because

they are at every moment submitted to the touchstone of the God who is

beyond all knowledge and all essence.

I know little of the "Palamite" controversy of the 14th Century: and in

England it has been either overlooked completely or assumed to be of no

real importance. But I strongly suspect that if we studied it closer weshould find it to have been a real seeking out of the spiritual and

theological meaning of the breach between East and West. Until we have

studied it, we have no right to assume that these differences are of a

superficial character. I do suggest that just because of this clear distinction

between the unknowable Essence of God and His Activitiesthe

Uncreated Lightthe Orthodox are able to develop a teaching of

Deification bolder than is ever found in the West, and at the same time to

be preserved from the danger of Creature-worship. As soon as the Doctrine

of the Church as the Body of Christ is in any way watered down into ametaphor, the justification for worship of the Saints is lostand no

theoretical distinction between veneration and adoration will be felt to be a

sufficient safeguard: each saint stands like a solid image, self contained,

whatever light he may reflect. But when each is seen but as a star keeping

his place in the firmament of the Churcha window through which the

light of the Christ shines in upon usone ikon among all which cover the

walls of a Churchthen we can fearlessly offer through each all our

devotion to God.


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There cannot be within the Heaven of the Church any gnostic descending

hierarchy, each level one stage further from the purity of the Godhead.

Even the historical earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of

God, cannot without idolatry be treated in isolation from His continued

Incarnation in the Church. Hence the not unimportant fact that Orthodoxinstinct, believing fully in the reality of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of

Christ, does not in practice isolate the Sacred Elements for any special

veneration outside their place in the Liturgy. This mystery is part, albeit a

central part, of the whole mystery of the Church as the Body of Christ: nor

can it be understood or have any meaning outside that universal mystery. I

know next to nothing of the Schoolmen, but wonder if they did not fall into

the error of allowing the profane, the unconverted or imperfectly converted

regions of their minds, to pry into matters which should have been reserved

for their minds fully converted;I will not tell Thy secret to Thineenemies.

In this context it surely becomes impossible to speak either of the Pope or

of the Hierarchy as the earthly Vicars of Christ: for He, being truly present

in His Church, needs no vicar Here we do feel that the Hildebrandine

Revolution set the seal upon a false tendency in the West which had

already been encouraged by the failure to translate the Liturgy into the

vernaculars (connected, we cannot help suspecting, with a certain

intellectual laziness in the Latin language itself), and by the position in

which the clergy found themselves as purveyors of Roman Civilization to

the Western Barbarians. The clergy tended to become the purveyors of

Christ in doctrine and sacraments, rather than the essential organs of a

living body which is all equally Christ. This is an error from which we did

not at the Reformation really succeed in freeing ourselves. It is doubtful

whether the Presbyterians succeeded either. Possibly at a later date the

Methodists may have been nearer success. But it is worth considering

whether, in the face of what appeared as an Apostasy of the Hierarchy, the

method of amputation (if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out) may not have

had gains, in approach to Orthodoxy which is the Simplicity of the Christ,to counterbalance in part our retention of the outward form and succession

at the price, perhaps, of our continuing to be in some measure a Church in

which the Faith is imposed rather than elicited.

Here we come to another fundamental point. As in standards of personal

righteousness, so in doctrine of the Church, there is for Orthodoxy no such

distinction of esse and bene esse as is sometimes made among Protestants

the only righteousness is the perfection of the Christ, the only true Church

the perfect Church of the Consummation: and no Saint save the Lord JesusHimself, and no actual empirical Church on earth, has attained to the full


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measure of this. The lower standards which we tolerate, and

employ economically as stages in our working towards the higher, are in no

sense substitutes for it both we and the Orthodox look askance at

doctrines of Merit, and Works of Supererogation. Yet, in so far as we are

truly aiming at the Perfection of the Christ, His Grace is with us and wehave attained it. I t may be that the Papacy, purified of error, will be found

to be as much of the esse of that perfect Church as is the Episcopate (Thou,

when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren). And yet the Orthodox

Church does, I believe, represent on earth to-day that perfect Church in a

truer sense than does the Roman. I, as an Anglican, must believe that the

one Spirit did and does continue, however imprisoned, in the Roman

Church, if I am to believe that the same Spirit has been handed down

through History to us. Only, may it be that in some sense the Faith has

remained in the West like the Sleeping Beauty needing the kiss ofOrthodoxy to raise it back to full life? And remember, that kiss might come

too late.

Here again we seem to be approaching, as near the root of the issue, a

difference in conception of Nature and Gracewherein the Reformers,

seeking blindly, only stumbled further into the mire witness the

preconceptions which made the translators of the Authorized Version able

to spoil the contrast of I Corinthiansanimal man and spiritual manby

translating [psychikon] as naturala mistake (retained in the Revised

Version) which must surely be due to their inadvertently reading

[physikon] as a result of their preoccupation with Augustine. To the

Orthodox, Nature and Grace are complementary rather than contrasted.

Natural man is Adam before the Fall, or the New Adam. What the West

calls natural man is unnatural man[para physin]. Certainly Grace also

introduces what is supernatural. But remember that St. John Climacus

argues that the highest gifts of GraceFaith, Hope and Charityare among

the natural virtues, and are found even among the animalsalthough no

supernatural gift can be as important as these.

Mans true nature is neither altered in its fundamental essence nor

obliterated, but imprisoned and corrupted, by the Fall. Its penitence and its

prayer go up through the thousands of years before Christ, until at last it is

enabled in Mary to see the Angel visitor, and to submit itself to Gods Will.

It is here that both we and the Orthodox are suspicious of the doctrine of

the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Mother of God, lest in reducing a

mystery to the definitions of human logic, we should obscure our whole

conception of Human Nature, bound up with the fact that she is one of us,

needing her Son to be her Redeemer too, though she be fore-cleansed bythe Spirit [prokathartheisa to pneumati]a phrase used also in the Mena


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in reference to Jeremiah and other prophets) to become His Mother. The

freewill of a woman set right the disobedience of the first Eve.

Undisturbed, as it were, by all the ages of the fallen creature, God takes the

creature itself to be the means of His own redeeming Epiphany. We are not

to be saved from our Natureour Nature is to be saved by union with HisDivine Nature. If we pay special honour to the God-Bearer, it is to

safeguard this double truththat He truly took Manhood of Her, and that

He makes her and us (and here, too, she is our prototype) truly partakers of

His Divine Nature.

His Grace is such that His Creation, transfigured by Him, shall show a

rightly balanced outshining of the Divine Nature. Here, I believe, at its

simplest, is the reason why we feel the Filioque clause to be impossible for

Orthodox TheologyThe Trinity is primarily revealed in Jordan, where the

Holy Ghost is seen proceeding from the Father and resting on the

Son. Surely this is more than the consecration of His Manhood, and

embodies an eternal truth of the Godhead Itself. And even in the temporal

mission, though He with the Father sends His Spirit to prepare the way for

Him, and to extend His Incarnation in the Church, yet at every point He

Himself, in the unity of His Incarnate Person, remains the goal of the

Spirits work. Is it fanciful to suppose that the Filioque clause has in fact

either represented or been responsible for the general Western failure to

treat the doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ as other than a

metaphorthe Son remaining aloof upon His Fathers throne, sends the

Spirit as a kind of deputy to do His work for Him, through earthly vicars?

So, in effect, it may seem that the Papal tyranny stultified for us the

Doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Doctrine of the Trinitytook away that

key of Faith which is the deification in Christ of the human understanding,

to leave us only a faith of blind obedience, a logic over-confident in itself

because it must not question its own premises, and too often, as a result, a

liturgical worship becoming the formal execution of a duty, and private

prayer entrusted to the emotions at the expense of the intellect. It is a

significant tragedy that there is no proper translation for [nous] and itsderivatives in Latin or its daughter languages, or in Englishthe

Schoolmen were forced to borrow the Greek wordI should like to know

whether there was a word in Anglo-Saxon: certainly there are Greek

distinctions which could be made in Anglo-Saxon, but not in Latin, and can

no longer be made satisfactorily in English.

The picture I am drawing of the Western Church may be something of a

caricature. Much of it would be outrageously unjust if applied to the

Roman Church at its best. But any account of error and distortion in aChurch is bound to stress that error in a manner disproportionate to the


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great body of truth retained. The indictment is not against the Roman

Church alone. Nor would I suggest that, in the fragmentation of Western

Christendom, Rome did not retain faithfully against the Reformers

elements as necessary for the fullness of Orthodoxy as any after which the

Reformers were striving against Rome. It remains, however, true that it wasthe Papal Revolution of the 11th Centuryitself following on the Cluniac

departmentalizing of the Churchwhich necessitated the fragmentation in

the process of recovery of the fuller freedom of Orthodoxy. If the view I am

trying to present, of the West as she might be seen through Eastern eyes, is

unfamiliar, it is all the more necessary that we should realize what that

view may be. Having done so, you can examine for yourselves how far it is

justified.

What, then, is that distortion of the Faith towards which the West was

being ledagainst which it kept no sufficient safeguardand to which, in

some points at least, it might seem to have become committed?

Organization here takes the place of organism. Dogma, liturgy and personal

devotion are pigeon-holed into separate compartments of life, and their

organic bond is obscured. Faith becomes imposed and not eliciteda blind

acceptance of what you are told. The Mother of God loses her solidarity

with mankind. The Spirit (whom God giveth not by measure) is dispensed

by measure through the earthly vicars of a Christ aloof. Worship is

conducted for you in a foreign language by a clergy who even in Heaven orhell retain a higher dignity. Even the parish priest, by reason of his

enforced celibacy, or his special education, ceases in some measure to

represent his people, and becomes the agent among them of a foreign

power or of a strange class. A legalistic God and a feudalized Redemption

are partly imposed by fear, partly made acceptable by the sentimental

appeal of the Child Jesus, or by pity for the sufferings of the Crucified (as if

we should presume to pity the brave man in his fight, let alone the

victorious Son of God). The heavenly ratification promised by Christ to the

decisions of the Church (Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be boundin Heaven) is narrowed and twisted to a right (in some measure at least) to

decree the fate of souls even after death. A legal minimum, which comes

short of the Glory of God, is accounted for righteousness, and merit

attributed to what goes beyond it in prayer or good worksand where are

Our Lords words, Say, we are unprofitable servants? The Cup of which

Our Lord said Drink ye all of this is denied to the laity. The simple bread

over which He gave thanks, hallowing the every-day food of life

(wherefore Greeks and Russians treat all bread as holy) gives way to the

unfamiliar Azymes (contrary even to the earlier Western practice, and, if theGreeks are right, against the necessary meaning of the Greek word, [artos],


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used in the Scriptural accounts). Rebellious against its tedious vocation to

convert the kingdoms of this world, the Papal Church sets itself up

impatiently as an earthly kingdom. Holy Scripture, the free, the living

word, becomes once again the deadening letter of old lawand what does

it matter, then, whether that letter be defined still further by Jeromestranslation, and the interpretations of Councils and Popes, or whether it be

limited to the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New? In either case it

is reduced to little better than a Ouran, imposed from a heavenly throne to

which we cannot in the full sense attain. The Holy Mysteries of the Church,

wherein all life is hallowed, become the isolated points at which an

extraneous God breaks inand what does it matter, then, whether they be

two or seven?

The Reformers failed to escape from the prison of Western categories of

thought; for the real issue was not the limits, but the character, of

infallibility; not the number, but the nature, of the Sacraments. But it is at

least arguable that, in narrowing the limits of the infallible text, they were

groping after a right instinct of human freedom, and that their

concentration on Baptism and the Eucharist represented a sincere seeking

to recover the simplicity of the Christ. Through all their errors, their

rejections, losses, and neglectings of Christian Tradition, have not the

Churches of the Reformation still in the last resort been anchored to this

appeal?

But old habits of mind die hard. It has taken all the force of modern science

to knock us off our fundamentalist pedestaland still we do not realize

that the process has only been restoring to us the possibility of true,

Orthodox Christian Faith.

For nine hundred years, the West has not dared to have full faith in God

Himself, but has sought for an infallible earthly rock on which to build.

There was more than a flutter when Luther set about dethroning the earthly

Church, and Copernicus the Earth itself, from a false fixity and centrality.But neither had gone far enough: for Luther had but put the Bible in place

of the Church, and Copernicus the Sun in place of the Earth. With modern

development of historical and physical science, Scripture and Sun alike are

gone the way of Earth and earthly Church, and we find ourselves, from the

unredeemed point of view, without any rock or fixed point, afloatif

indeed we are afloaton a boundless and bottomless Ocean. And then at

last we have our eyes opened to see the only true centrality of Earth, the

only unshakeable fixity of the Church, as we interpret the texts about the

Rock in the light of othersThou hast founded the Earth upon the waters:An anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, and which entereth in to that


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within the veil. Or we turn to St. Gregory of NazianzusFor He hath in

Himself gathered up all that to be can mean, which neither had beginning

nor shall have an end, like some Ocean of Being, endless and illimitable,

falling outside and beyond every thought both of time and of nature; by the

mind alone sketched in, and that all too dimly and in a measure, not fromthe things on His level but from the things about Him, with fancies

gathered one from here and one from there into a single image of the Truth,

which frees us before we have a hold upon it, and escapes us before our

mind has grasped it, shining just so much about our master-faculty, even

when that is cleansed, as the speed of lightning which stays not shines

about our sight; as it seems to me, that by its apprehensibility it may draw

us to itself (for that which is completely inapprehensible cannot be hoped

for nor attempted), but for its inapprehensibility it may be wondered at,

and being wondered at may be longed for the more, and being. longed formay cleanse us, and cleansing may make us God-like, and, when we are

become so, may hold converse with us as its ownmy word here dares

some youthful boldnessGod unto gods united and made knownand

even so much, perhaps, as He knows already those that are known.

This is a different paper from what I had intended to write. Perhaps my pen

has run away with me. I meant to be practical: but perhaps it was necessary

first to set forth something of the Vision. I must content myself now with

urging the Orthodox to realize to the full their vocationthat in their

tradition they have the answer to modern science and social theory, the way

of union for the Church, and the key to the worlds Salvation: and with

urging my brother English, of whatever party or denomination they may

now be, to use this light to rediscover the same treasure hidden in our own

past, in the days when the One Christ first came to our forefathers. I am not

urging this as a means to outward unity. That would be a joy and a strong

weapon: but even when we have attained explicit unity of Faith sufficient

for it, it is not unlikely that international politics would still, in one way or

another, long hinder its attainment. Noit is simply for the conversion of

ourselves, of our country, and of the world, that we must act upon what wehave discovered.

Here I must bring you to earth. For such action must, among other things,

involve our seriously considering a revision, in several respects, of our

teaching, and our liturgical and devotional practice. n some cases, this may

mean a return from modern Anglo-Catholic practice to something more like

the older ways of the Church of England. n others, points may need to be

stressed which have been much longer forgotten. ere are a few examples.

Perhaps you can add others.


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THE FILIOQUE

Has long been recognized by historians to be an addition to the Creed madewithout the authority of the whole Church, and retained in the face of Eastern

protest. Even the Pope at first disallowed it. It may well be that the clause has

had a disastrous effect on our doctrine of the Holy Spirit: at least we cannot

deny that it is precisely on the point of the nature of the Holy Spirits work in

the Church that both we and the Orthodox believe Rome to have erred. Surely

it cannot be mere chance that the only point of credal divergence should

concern the Holy Spirit. The natural supposition is that there lurks in the

clause something expressive of Romes error. To Dollinger, I believe, it

appeared quite incomprehensible that any Church should accept it save onPapal authority. It is not in the Nicene Creed, and it is not in the Scripture. I

cannot, therefore, believe that I am acting contrary to the true mind of the

Church of England in omitting it. Surely the time has come for us to act.

History, honesty, and humility alike demand that it should go.

AZYMES

Here (small point though it may seem) is one of many examples of the

disastrous haste of our fathers. Commonly to-day the first sign in an AnglicanChurch of movement in a Catholic direction is the use of wafers in the

Eucharist. This was not the primitive practice in Rome or in the West any

more than in the East. It came in in the West not earlier than the 9th Century,

if as early. Its reintroduction has added an extra, quite unnecessary difference

between us and the Orthodox. The Greeks (through whose language we have

all our knowledge of the Institution of the Eucharist) agree with the naive

Englishman in saying It is not bread. The Scriptural evidence, itself uncertain,

must be interpreted in the light of Church tradition. We have no right to

defend a sacramental practice on grounds of mere convenience. Azymes, too,

surely must go.

THE CONSECRATION OF THE EUCHARIST

Whatever may have been written of late, I believe the Eastern rite as we now

have it to sum up within itself in a true balance the primitive practice and

belief. Where the principle of organic growth allows it, the Scottish Liturgy

provides a good pattern for us. And were I quite sure that the 1928 Canon had

the unquestioned authority of the Church behind it, I should certainly use it

without being personally satisfied with it at all points. Meanwhile, I verytentatively suggest that, provided the people are taught what is happening, it
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may provide a better balance and an easier organic development for us if,

after reciting the Words of Institution aloud, without elevation or

genuflection, we kneel, with the peoples Amen, and make the Anamnesis

and Epiclesis silently (as they are made to-day in the Orthodox Liturgy), then

proceed with the Prayer of Oblation and the Lords Prayer. This gives theWords of Institution the same centrality that they have in the Orthodox

Liturgya pleading of the One Sacrifice by right of which we actwhile its

application to our particular Mass in the Epiclesis would be clearly

subordinated thereto.The placing of the Prayer of Oblation and the Lords

Prayer in their more historical position, before Communion, does seem to me

to be requiredpartly on the ground that I do not believe that Cranmers

theory at the moment when he produced the present order has ever won

acceptance in the mind of the Church: at any rate, I doubt if anyone holds it

today: and to continue using one form and meaning another can only result ininconsequence of mind a condition not uncommon in the Church of England!

The separation, within the last two generations, of Communion as a semi-

private act from the Mass as corporate worship is a disaster from which we

must seek an escape. So also, in general, we should aspire towards the

Orthodox ideal of one Mass of each Church, and of each Christian, in the day.

Something is involved here of far more primary importance than the ancient

and pious practice of fasting before Communion, for the sake of which the

disaster has been allowed to occur. Once the liturgical and dogmatic balance

has been recovered, we may expect that practice, where it has been lost, to

grow up again inevitably: and then, fasting until midday may not after all

appear an excessive demand (in any case, whatever spiritual value there is in

early rising, there is none in fasting until 8 a.m.!) Until then, let us concentrate

on inculcating that sacramental Faith from which the outward reverence will

arise, and not trouble the consciences of others over a secondary practice.Herein, too, we need to learn again from the Orthodox what our fathers knew

of the importance of both Matins and Evensong, and their organic connection

with the Mass. For the Orthodox they are not, as they may appear in Westerntradition, mere monastic and priestly offices, but are shared in fully by the

people, and are an essential part of the liturgical whole. It is absurd that we

should have allowed the natural order to be inverted as it has been8.00

Mass; 1l.00 Matins; 6.00 Evensongwhereas clearly the right order,

psychologically and liturgically, is Saturday Evensong (the Scriptural

beginning of Sunday, as Sabbatarians have failed to observe), Sunday

Morning Matins, Litany, and Mass. Duplication of the Mass, and virtual

obliteration of Matins, is no remedy. Spiritual valetudinarianism, and the

memories some of us have of those Sunday mornings of our boyhood whenMatins was followed by both Litany and Ante-Communion, have robbed us


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of a great liturgical tradition, which we should aim at recoveringthough we

might well copy the Orthodox in making it easier for people to slip in and out

in the course of the service! In any case, there should be no isolation of the

central act of Divine Service ([theia leitourgia]) from the rest of the worship of

the Church. However incomplete their worship, it is not true that people havenot been to Church if they have not been to Mass.

Then as to the veneration of the Holy Mother of God and the Saintsyou will

have realized, I hope, how very important I believe this to be. Its absence in

our Church leaves a void which must be filled. But I do not thinkI wish I

couldthat Anglo-Catholic preaching has often succeeded in really making

this a practice of the mind and heart of the Englishmantoo often it appears

as a sentimental trapping of devotion, in shallow imitation of Roman

methods. This is far too serious a matter to be played with. There is a

Christian obligation upon us. But it can only be fulfilled by devotion welling

up sincerely from the mind and heart. And there is only one way to thisthe

way by which the Church gradually learnt it in the first centuries of her

history. Turn first to the fullness of the Christs simplicity, and as you begin to

realize the need of it for the right understanding and worship of Him, you

will find the right veneration of His Mother and of His Saints taking its place

in your minds devotion. I think the Orthodox will understand this quiet way,

of development to be the right way for us.

The same principles apply to images and pictureswe have been too ready,in our reaction against bareness, to accept anything in the way of Church

Artbe it Italian peasant women posing as the Mother of God, or members of

the Girls Diocesan Association dressed up as angels, or fairies pretending to

be the Child Jesus. Perhaps the next Oecumenical Council might well be

concerned with anathemas, not on verbal heresy, but on the heresies implied

in some types of Church Art. Here we must try to be rigorous. I do not in the

least mean that we should reject all Western art, or accept all Eastern. But we

should search, in the light of Orthodoxy, for true principles of

discriminationremembering that sthetics may be conditioned by dogmajust as much as metaphysics or ethicsthe Good, the Beautiful, and the True,

are equally ultimate. Rightly or wrongly, I confess to a feeling in favour of Fra

Angelico, perhaps of Botticelli, while I would reject utterly much of Rafl

including the ikon of the Mothers Union. In Eastern Art, as against many

ikons which, whatever beauty and truth they have, are marked also with a

local and temporal character which makes it too easy for them to be

preserved, at least in England at present, as mere curiosities, I would urge the

speedy publication of a series of coloured reproductions of the great classic,

universal types of Byzantine ikonography;the mosaics of Agia Sophia assoon as that is possible: the Daphni and Cefalu Pantokrators; the Daphni


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Crucifixion, the St. Marks Anastasis; the Blachern, Vladimir and Kazan

ikons of the Mother of God; and so onthese to help to restore the balance in

our countrys knowledge of Christian Art, and mould our minds towards our

own Christian Art of the future. Probably we should, from henceforth, accept

the Orthodox distinction, and give up tile making of solid images forChurchespsychologically they err by being either more (as if containing

what they represent) or less (as mere statues) than the flat ikon which is a

window onto Heaven: and they are more apt to stand out in isolation from

their place in the whole ikonography of a Church. We should also feel that a

series of ikons of the Great Feasts of Our Lord would be a better first step in

introducing ikonography into our Churches than the Stations of the Cross,

which are typical of the Western tendency not to pass beyond the Cross to the

fullness of Resurrection. In any case, we must do nothing to spoil Orthodox

balance in our Churchesbetter no pictures than the wrong pictures.

Perhaps I should remind Anglo-Catholics of the fact that, very often,

Orthodox people actually seem to find themselves more at home

in Evangelical English Churchesjust as also Evangelicals and other

Anglicans have been known to find themselves more at home in the Orthodox

Liturgy than in some of our Masses. This cannot be treated as insignificant.

Hymns, again, are a matter onto which we shall have to turn the light of

Orthodoxyand the resultant sifting may have some surprising results, both

in rigorous exclusiveness and in inclusiveness. It is surprising howthoroughly in place I found on one occasion, in Greece, a child-like English

(or American) revival hymn sung, at home after a baptism, among a whole

series of Byzantine troparia. And in another direction, the poetry of Francis

Thompson has certain qualities which are perhaps nearer than anything else

to the best style of Byzantine Church poetrya style which we are not

accustomed to expect in hymns.

In regard to the Churchs yearwe must feel a great loss in the fact that our

Church has no feast of Our Lords Baptismand may even have a suspicionthat this was at some time purposely obscured in the West, because of its

possible implications in regard to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. While it may

appear out of the question for us now to adopt the Orthodox use of Epiphany

for this purpose, at least we could, on a basis of Western practice, restore thc

commemoration of the Baptism on the Octave of Epiphany, and stress this as

a major Feast of the Church. Then, we may doubt if it is possible now for us to

take Trinity back into Whitsun, and use its Octave, as in the last, for the

Sunday of All Saints. But we should at least take note how forcibly, coming so

as the culmination of the Gospel Feasts, this brings home the doctrine of theChurch as the Body of Christ.


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In regard to Scripturewe need to realize that neither Authorized nor

Revised Version can be regarded as an infallible translation of the Infallible

Book. We should also recognize that, once a truer, more historical, and more

Orthodox conception of inspiration is attained, the Septuagintine books which

we call Apocrypha (a term which, if only because it is open to grossmisunderstanding, could well be changed) are seenwhatever distinction

may rightly be drawn between them and the other booksto have an organic

place in the unfolding of the whole body of Scripture. We must also face the

fact that, if you do not want to treat the lost original documentsJEDP, etc.

as the only really inspired works, there is a great deal to be said for the view

that the Greek translation of the Old Testament, as being on the line of

development by which the Holy Spirit led up to Our Lords coming, is

perhaps more authoritative for Christians than the Hebrew originalapart

from the fact of its probably preserving in some cases a text closer to this latterthan is the Masoretic.

In regard to Confirmationthere is a lot to be said for having some service

wherein the child, on coming towards full growth, openly accepts his

obligations in the Church. But it is probable that this ought not to be

Confirmationapart from the difficulty of explaining theologically the

halfway position of the baptized and unconfirmed child. It is probable that

the organic conception of the Church is better inculcated when, as with the

Orthodox, the child is confirmed and admitted to Communion immediately

after Baptism, and from the first learns the Faith by sharing to the full in the

Life.

But these are details, though not such as can be neglected. More important is

it that we should learn, in the light of Orthodoxy, to look at exact Trinitarian

and Christological Dogma, not as the outworn relics of old councils, but as the

living test of a true Christian response to GodHallowed be Thy Name: to

develop a new sense of the Christian Society, and of the Unity of all LifeThy

Kingdom Come: and that we should make a new scrutiny of our methods in

the Spiritual Life (hitherto taken somewhat uncritically from the Medivaland Post-medival West) in the light of greater knowledge of the Greek

Fathers and of the Eastern tradition (and in particular, of the ancient Jesus

Prayer of humility)Thy Will be done.

In all these matters there is an urgent duty, after prayer, for deeper study, and

more general translation and publication of sources.

Oh, for an Orthodox monastery in England to bring to our service not books,

but the living tradition of Orthodox Spiritual Life!
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I am suggesting matters which we, as English Churchmen, must examine in

the light of our experience of Eastern Orthodoxy, with a view to the

conversion of ourselves, of our country, and of the world. I believe we are on

an organic path for the fulfilment of our Churchs vocation. At the same time

we must seek first, not England, but the Kingdom of God. So for years thewords have been ringing in my earsHearken, O daughter, and consider,

incline thine ear: forget also thine own people and thy fathers house. So shall

the King have pleasure in thy beauty: for He is thy Lord God, and worship

thou Him

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Orthodoxy and the Conversion of England

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