Alexander Schmemann

2. The Triumph Of Christianity (27 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 18

When we judge this period, however, we must not forget that the problem of the Church’s influence on the world was posed for it in a different way than it is now posed for us. We judge and measure the past by standards of Christian achievement and quality of life, because behind us lie centuries of gradual development of this urge toward the ideal in the human mind, progressively infecting all aspects of life with a thirst for absolute perfection. We speak of problems of the state, culture, and society; but they became “problems” only in the light of the image of the perfect Man and the perfect life that illuminated the world, and in the light of our new knowledge of good and evil. We often forget with what difficulty and what struggles this growth of a perspective took place.

The first obstacle the Church encountered was not any particular imperfection or defect of the state or society, but paganism itself. It is impossible to evaluate truly the achievements of the period without understanding the nature of this struggle. We think of paganism as primitive idol worship and consider the victory of the Church something simple and self-evident. But behind the worship of idols, actually making it far less primitive, lay a very particular and integrated perception of the world, a complex of ideas and beliefs deeply rooted in man, which it was no easy matter to eliminate. Even today, two thousand years after the appearance of Christianity, it has not completely disappeared. In its most general and simplified form it can be defined as the subjection of man to irrational forces, which he senses in nature — a concept of the world and of life in it as a fate dependent on these forces. Man can somehow propitiate them or redeem himself by sacrifice and worship. To some extent he can even control such forces with magic; but he can never comprehend them, still less liberate himself from them. His whole attitude toward the world is determined by fear and the sense of dependency on mysterious powers; he can invoke or “charm” them, but cannot make them intelligible or beneficent.

Christianity regarded paganism as a terrible lie about the world, which enslaved man and was consequently a lie about God; and it used all its forces in the struggle for the human soul. Only in the light of this conflict can we completely understand what now seems to us the increasing worldliness of the Church. During the period of the persecutions, Christians were the little flock, which, being legally condemned, was outside the state and public life. It could not undertake any role in the world except to bear witness by word and blood. But now the situation was radically changed. After Constantine the masses began to pour into the Church. In addition, through the conversion of the emperor, even before the official condemnation of paganism, the Church was placed in a central position in the life of the empire, the place occupied by the official religion in previous times.

We have seen that the function of this official sort of religion in state and society was to protect the public well-being by worship and sacrifice, to place the lives of all under the protection of the gods, and to ensure their obedience to divine laws and their loyalty to the state. If Christianity had been only eschatology, a call to reject the world and turn wholly to the coming kingdom “not of this world” (as many think today), the acceptance of this function would indeed have meant that the Church had become worldly. But the witness of the martyrs had demonstrated that Christians do not separate religion from life, but affirm that the whole man and all his life belong wholly to the kingdom of Christ. The entire meaning of the Christian message was that the kingdom of God had drawn near with the coming of Christ and had become the seed of a new life here and now in this world. In the light of the reign of the Lord, nothing in the world could any longer claim to be an absolute value: neither the state, nor culture, nor the family — nothing. Everything was subordinate to the One Lord; such was the significance of the Christian refusal to give this title to the emperor.

 

Previous Page / First / Next

Schmemann, A History of the Orthodox Church: Table of Contents

Cf.  Books for getting closer to Orthodox Christianity ||| Orthodox Images of the Christ ||| Byzantium : The Alternative History of Europe ||| Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day ||| A History of the Byzantine Empire ||| Videos about Byzantium and Orthodoxy ||| Aspects of Byzantium in Modern Popular Music ||| 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium  ||| Greek Literature / The New Testament

On Line Resources for Constantinople * On the future of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

Greek Forum : Make a question / Start a Discussion 

Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/schmemann-orthodoxy-2-triumph.asp?pg=18