A Boring Essay on Culture and Evangelization (class notes)

Fedotov and the Spirituality of Kyivan Rus’

This semester, I am teaching a class on “The Spirituality of Kyivan Rus’”.  It’s a fun course because I get to discuss topics like the dynamic between native cultures and Christianity and the effect this dynamic has on the penetration and spread of the Gospel.  One of the books that I am using is Fedotov’s classic; The Russian Religious Mind; Kievan Rus’ 10^th-13^th Century.  It’s not a perfect book***, but I use it because he is intentionally trying to describe the way different factors interplay to create the spiritual culture of the nation of Kyivan Rus’ and I have yet to find a book that does this better than his (Mp. Illarion’s book The Ukrainian Church: Outlines of history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Two Volumes is excellent, but harder to find; I use that book as a source for lecture notes; as a mentor told me; “assign the second best book and lecture from the best one”).  Here are some thoughts generated from a recent class session (forgive the misspellings etc. – I’m a terrible writer and a worse editor!).

The Unintended Consequence of Evangelization and Worship in the Vernacular

One of the points Fedotov makes is that the blessing of Church Slavonic and the resulting ability of the Slavs to hear the Gospel and worship the true God in the vernacular (or something close enough to it as to make no nevermind) created some problems for the development of the Orthodox culture of “Russia”.

How does this work?  Let me begin by saying that there is no doubt that the ability to hear the Gospel and experience the Liturgy in a comprehensible language was a real blessing.  It is a recognition of this that led to the formation of the Ukrainian Autocephalist Orthodox Church (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had long been subjected to the control of the Russian Orthodox Church, a department of the Russian Empire which used this control to pacify the Ukrainians by turning them into Russians by refusing to allow them to worship and preach in the local language – or even to use a more familiar pronunciation of Church Slavonic!!!) and this same spirit allows for the Orthodox evangelization of America in its native tongues.

So what is the downside?  It has to do with the sample of texts that the Eastern Romans gave to nation of Rus’: it did not include any of the philosophical or literary texts that provided the symbols and stories for a vibrant, joyful, and healthy Christian life.  It is wonderful that salvation (i.e. the Gospel) was presented in the vernacular, but compare the development of the Christian mind in that situation with what happened in Greece, Rome, or (especially) the newly baptized peoples of Western Europe.  In the Eastern Roman Empire, one learned Greek by studying Plato, Aristotle, and Homer.  These classic created and reified conceptual spaces that could then be filled with the truth of Orthodoxy.  In Rome and Western Europe, one had to learn Latin in order to read and hear the Gospel, and Latin was taught through immersion in classical pagan philosophy and literature.  Again, this created an enormous capacity to engage the symbols and stories of the economy of our salvation.  While Fedotov did not discuss this, the same was true for the Jews: the study of Jewish scripture and lore (e.g. Torah, Midrash, Talmud, and apocalyptic literature like Enoch and Jubilees) allowed Messianic Jews to comprehend a redeeming, divine Messiah that would graft all nations to the Chosen people, Israel).

So What happened to the Nation(s) of Rus’?

Fedotov’s argument – and he is not alone in making it – is that the canon of texts Rus’ received did not include philosophy or classical literature.  This created the mistaken idea, reified over time into a dogmatic instinct, that philosophy and literature were irrelevant to Orthodoxy at best and, at worst, antithetical to it.  Please note that the sample of books DID include fantastical quasi-canonical texts like Enoch and mythical narratives of Jewish history, but it did NOT include even Orthodox authors like Dionesius the Aeriopogate, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximos the Confessor who would have helped provide much-needed philosophical-conceptual expansion for the “Russian Religious Mind.”  The result is a spirituality that is overly dogmatic with strong temptations to fundamentalism and triumphalism; abnormalities that the theologians of the Paris School worked so hard to address and counter.

A Note on the Possible Exception of Ukraine

Metropolitan Illarion (and Fr. Stepan Jarmus in “Spirituality of the Ukrainian People: A Brief Orientational Survey”) make the case that Ukraine was spared the  most deleterious effects of this incomplete inheritance by the vibrancy of the Ukrainian national culture.  They claim that the paganism of pre-Christian Rus’ was noble and good, providing fertile ground for the growth of a healthy Orthodox culture (Jarmus even goes so far as to call this culture the “muse” of Ukraine… one of the reasons I do not assign that book).  They celebrate the way this beautiful pagan folk culture was blessed by and integrated within a new Ukrainian Orthodox spirituality.  Native paganism played the functionally equivalent role for the Ukrainian Orthodox that classical philosophy and literature played for the Eastern and Western Roman Orthodox before. them  It also allowed the Ukrainian Orthodox to see the value of reading mythical and philosophical texts that were not explicitly Christian or Orthodox.  Russia, on the other hand, rejected pagan influences and had a negative visceral reaction to the use of Latin, Greek, philosophy, and literature in theological education.  One example of this (and there are many more) is the different way Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox describe the legacy of St. Petro Mohila; to the Ukrainians he is a canonized saint who helped save and revitalize Orthodoxy in Ukraine … but to the Russians (even to the Paris School) he is a latinizer who is regularly condemned for tainting Russian Orthodoxy with Western philosophy and Roman Catholic theological concepts.  Of course nothing is so black and white as this; all four parts of this two by two table (Ukraine vs. Russia and Open vs. Closed Minded) is populated.  The stereotype remains valid, though.  To see why, simply compare the demonization of the west that comes out of Orthodox Moscow to the more nuanced criticism of the west that comes out of Orthodox Kyiv.

What does this have to do with anything?

Regardless of whether you agree with Fedotov (or me), the point that the sample of texts persons and cultures embrace affects the life of Orthodoxy is sound.  Ditto for the point Fedotov (and Mp. Illarion and Fr. Stepan) makes about the combined effect that the nature of the native culture and the attitude of the religious authorities towards that culture has on the life of Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy in America provides variation on all these variables: we have a variation in the sample of texts, we have different native cultures, and we have dramatically different  attitudes of bishops and priests towards those cultures.

My instincts are pastoral and follow the spirituality of the Jordan/Theophany: Christ sanctifies the entire cosmos around him by His presence; bringing water to the deserts, turning back demons, and transforming sinners into saints.   According to this logic, evangelism involves finding touchstones within the lives of (repentant) suffering people, building upon these touchstones, and growing of holiness in their personal, familial, and communal lives.  Demons and sin flee as this holiness grows.  Within this context, teachings about rules and the like are always received within their true prescriptive context.  Because everyone is different and salvation involves submission to a personal God within a community, and because the cultures of those communities vary… the result is a living, vibrant, but diverse Orthodoxy.  The sample of texts used are selected and presented by the catechist as carefully as a doctor prescribes medicine; looking for the perfect blend that will help work with the body’s system to move it towards the health it created for and can attain through Christ (Palagianism is a temptation in such an approach; but knowing this keeps the pastor on guard).  Done well, this approach is sanctifying, but when it is done without discernment and discipline, it can degenerate into a chaotic and egoist “everything goes” Christianity.

At the opposite extreme is the prophetic approach.  If Palagianism is the temptation of the pastor, Docetism is the temptation of the prophet.  His is the spirituality is that of Christ at the Temple, driving out the money-changers; that of the Christ who warns “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand; and that of the kenotic hesychast who knows that the only way to live in Christ is to kill his own “old man”.  The prophet is suspicious of the pre-existent culture and chooses texts that will point out the deficiencies in the surrounding culture and in the constitution of every person, so that genuine repentance and kenosis can occur.  Done with humility, generosity, and charity, such an approach is a risk-averse way to build up the kingdom of God, creating a pious and relatively homogeneous Orthodoxy almost ex nihilo.  But without love, it creates a parasitical Christianity that strains at the gnat (or the calendar, for example) and swallows the camel (of docetism etc.).

[Of course most people use a mix of these two approaches.]

At the risk of stereotyping and exaggeration, it is a rich irony of history that two Churches whose nations share a border exemplify each approach, with Ukrainian Orthodoxy typically embracing the former and Russian Orthodoxy typically embracing the latter.  Both have their historic “golden years” when they were a living icon of the Kingdom of God… but they both also have those years when they fell into temptation and became a living icon of something much worse.

May the Lord guide us all as we seek to do His will!

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*** For example, Fedotov does not always substantiate his claims (as when he claims that the development of the iconostas, “secret” priestly prayers, and obtuse theo-liturgical verbiage were designed to offset the accessibility that the use of the vernacular allowed; it may be true and it certainly has that effect, but effect does not prove intent).  Moreover, his use of the word “Russian” to include the nations of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine is archaic, distracting, and unintentionally, offensive.  I say “unintentionally” because he was writing at a time and place when this was the normal way for historians to write.  In this it is, as best a bit like the language of Flannery O’Conner (e.g. her story “The Artificial Nigger”) or, a worse, the way Thomas Jefferson’s ownership of slaves taints his beautiful work on fostering liberty against tyranny.  I would prefer a new version of his work that corrected these things, but until then, I just have to spend class-time (and blog space) on caveats.

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And if you aren’t already bored out of your skull, here are my lecture notes from class (most of it is a review of Fedotov):

Kyivan Spirituality
Lecture Notes, Class One

 Introduction to Orthodox Spirituality

• Man is body and spirit/soul
• Reactive and Instinctive Gut, Logical and Imaginative Mind, Noetic Heart
• Sacrament/Mystery, Prayer, Doctrine/Dogma, Canon Law
• Spiritual world; elohim, hades, heaven, throne room, gods, angels, half-breeds, demons, monsters, humans, sacred and cursed spaces
• Theosis and the theology of the Transfiguration
• Blessing and the theology of Theophany (segue: blessing cultures)

What was to be Blessed?  the Pagan Culture of Rus-Ukraine

• Hard to know with any specificity
  • Why is it hard – what records do we have?
  • Why does Fedotov say that studying recent culture gives a good indication of Rus-Ukraine’s pre-Christian culture?
  • Note that the same factor makes the Orthodoxy of Rus’-Ukraine so much more vibrant than other places
  • Creates a very vibrant and real “dual faith” as the “organized” part of folk religion was swept away (was superficial at best) quickly but deep rooted traditions remained
• Ukraine has porous borders in each direction (minus the Carpathian Mountains); what did that do to Ukraine’s paganism?
• Nature “religion” of folk tales
  • Beasts and personification of wind and frost
  • While they were largely peasants (farmers), the moon and sun did not seem to be prominent in their mythologies
  • Instead of looking up to the stars etc; the eastern slavs were drawn down to Mother Earth; mother, not virgin, dark and rich, not white and puritanical; gives nourishment in life and peace in death; probably had a mate?
  • Nature was also personified through дріади, мавки, русалки, sacred springs, etc.
• The род (gen or clan); instinctive connection to broad familial ties (e.g. forms of address)
  • Ancestral connection is typified in the домовик or house spirit
  • Again, the earth comes in; with family plots, villages, and cemeteries; think of the internment verse; “O gaping earth, receive the body formed from you by the hand of God, again returning to you as to its mother. What has been made in His image, the Creator has already reclaimed. O Earth, receive this body as your own.”
  • Note the linguistic connection between народ and природа!
• More on this during our lesson on paganism and dual faith

What did the Blessing?  The Culture of Byzantine Orthodoxy

• Not Orthodoxy, exactly, but the Byzantine Orthodoxy of 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th century that was passed to Kyivan-Ukraine
• Johannine and Platonism perfected into a unique fusion
  • The “Word Incarnate” of John lays ground for sacramental theology
  • Platonism lays ground for contemplation in monasticism
  • No tension between the two
• The doctrinal theology is more “Cyril of Alexandria” (third council in Ephesus) than Leo of Rome (fourth council in Calcedon) – monophysite tendencies (one nature, especially when it comes to will)
  • God in human flesh… rather than a real man (with ignorance, emotion, sorrow, fear) who is also real God
  • According to Fedotov, the hymnography reified this temptation
  • The Pantocrator … vs. sinful man (who needs sacrament and repentant prayer)
• Preaching  (and the witness of the Church) was theological, not moral or ethical (this was not true of earlier generations)
  • Stopped trying to transform society
  • Left pagan Hellenism intact

What was the Result?  Slavic Byzantism

• Greek was awesome; way better than Latin… so why is Russian Orthodoxy so backwards (Fedotov claims this was also true of Kyivan Rus’ – that is disputable)?
• Rus’ did not receive the entire inheritance – it did not receive the classical culture of Greece
  • In the West, salvation was written and taught in Latin; to learn Latin meant learning the Roman classics
  • For the Slavs, salvation was written and taught in Slavonic; it had nothing but the translated texts
• The translations they did receive were not the fullness and were not chosen for Rus’-Ukraine!
  • The Bible was in lectionary form; so an incomplete Old Testament – early New Testaments were probably lectionaries (although they got complete sets early)
  • Psalter was the most read, followed by the Prophets (for anti-Jewish polemics), and Wisdom of Sirach
  • The OT was read in the form of the Palea (similar to Josephus), with folk tales/apocrypha included
  • Apocrypha were treated as canonical scripture – they loved it for its mythical/magical content
  • Lives of the saints were very popular (mostly Greek lives)
  • Patristic collections (biased sample; not complete – no Nyssa, Maximos, Dionysius)
• The liturgy as a saving grace
  • Not much on doctrine, but they got a lot of Chrysostom (morality and hope) and Ephrem the Syrian (repentance)