Alexander Schmemann

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

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 44

Unfortunately the clergy themselves, supposed to be a model for the faithful “in word, life, love, spirit, faith and purity,” were not beyond reproach. In many places the level of clerical education fell: the council assigned the bishops to preach every Sunday, and not to give way to their own ideas but to be guided by the Fathers. Many canons forbid presbyters to maintain hotels, lend money on interest, accept payment for ordination, or play games of chance. They portray a perceptible decay in the monastic life as well; the council especially insisted that monasticism is a way to salvation, not a means of avoiding military service or achieving a secure old age. Monks should not leave the monasteries, spend the night under the same roof with a woman, or arrange a celebration for their own tonsure.

All this does not mean that religious life in Byzantium consisted only of defects. The council mentions them because its purpose is to combat them. If only by their resemblance to the defects of almost all subsequent periods of Church history, they demonstrate that Christianity had ceased to be selective, had become the religion of the masses, and for too many was only a self-evident form the inner meaning of which was not even considered. For these it had truly become a natural religion, and they no longer heard its call for a “renewal of nature.”

Church life at this period cannot of course be judged only by the canons of the Trullan Council. The effort to remedy defects and expose sins is evidence that spiritual leaders had preserved unsullied the genuine ideal of Christianity. Moreover, this ideal had truly grown into the human mind, fundamentally transforming not only individual lives but the whole spirit of the culture, all that composed its main value for each era. For the past must be studied and judged from its concepts and from the treasures toward which its heart strives — not only by its failures. In other words, we must discover not only how far this society realized its ideal, but just what the ideal was.

 

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