Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 31

Underlying Gains.

Temporal aspects of these events were the disgraceful use of force, which revealed what Justinian meant by “symphony” and how he carried it out; the obsequiousness of too many of the bishops, which made force almost a legitimate form of imperial administration of the Church; and the quick resort to excommunications, curses, and schisms on the surface of Church life.

The eternal aspect was the meaning nevertheless revealed in these disputes, which outwardly appeared almost fortuitous or even imposed from above. In returning to problems that seemed already solved, the fathers of the council indeed finished the work of Chalcedon and for the first time freed its decisions from possible reinterpretation, placing it in its truly Orthodox theological perspective. It was not accidental that the council condemned simultaneously both Origen and the most extreme representatives of the school of Antioch. This was the judgment of the Church, not only of heresy but also of its own past; it revealed completely the defects of both trends and their one-sidedness within Orthodoxy itself. Neither Antioch nor Alexandria alone could give an integral, catholic description of the faith of the Church. Chalcedon had been a formula for synthesis, but the formula by itself was inadequate. It had to be revealed in appropriate concepts, and the whole system of thought and terminology had to be realigned in accordance with it. This work was performed deep in the mind of the Church.

Justinian had behaved rudely, and much in the history of his reign is darkened forever by this rudeness and violence. But there was a genuine dispute within the Church about the Eastern Fathers; their writings were really sharply contradictory to the tradition of Chalcedon. Again, the dispute about Origen was genuine, not forced on the Church by Justinian. The truth in the solution of these questions was not Justinian’s, but the truth and rightness of the decisions and achievements of the period.
This is the only truth the Church recognizes in considering the Council of 553 as one of the ecumenical councils. And the whole future development of Orthodox theology confirmed it.

The historian inevitably generalizes. But Justinian’s reign should not be reduced to a mere triumph of caesaropapism in its Byzantine form. This appears on the surface of Church life, while behind the seething tumult of events it is sometimes hard to discern the creative processes developing in the depths. We see monks rioting in the churches and squares of a city, crushing the Church en masse. From this it is so easy to draw conclusions about their lack of culture, their fanaticism, their intolerance, as many historians do without hesitation. But we need only open the monastic literature of these times to find a world of spirituality — such amazing refinement of the human mind, such perception and holiness, such an all-embracing, wonderful concept of the final meaning of our life!

Can even Justinian be fitted into his own plan “with nothing left over” beyond his political schemes and calculations? Do we not see evidence even today in St. Sophia — a church dedicated to wisdom, or meaning, whose very cupola floods the world with an unearthly light — of something completely different in his dreams and visions? One point is beyond question: it was in just these decades that Christian culture began to be outlined and filled in. While Justinian’s synthesis of Church and state would soon reveal its weakness, this culture of the Incarnate Word, the summit and symbol of which St. Sophia has remained throughout the ages, prevents us from oversimplifying that complex period.

 

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