ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh:

‘The Church in the third millennium’ - from an interview with Alena Maidonovich, published in Ruskaya Mysl’ on 8 June 2000.

I have a vivid impression, and at the same time a rather dark feeling, that upon entering into the third millennium we enter an obscure, complex and to some extent uninviting time.  As to Church life, the faith should stay whole, but we should not be afraid to think freely and speak freely.

This will all find its proper place at some stage, but if we simply endlessly repeated what has already been said, many years ago, then more and more people would fall away from faith (I think this about the world in general, not just Russia). This would not happen because what was said before is not true, but because we would not use the same language or the same approach today.  Different times, different people - we think in a different way.

And it seems to me we should root ourselves in God and should not be afraid to think and feel freely.  By 'freely' I do not mean freedom of thought and disdain for the past and the tradition, but God does not want slaves.  ‘I no longer call you servants... I have called you friends‘ (John 15:15)
I believe this is terribly important: we should be able to think and share with Him.  There are so very many things we could share with Him in the new world we live in. To think freely is wonderful and important: not to try to adapt - it is important that thinking people with open minds should think and write.

The Church (I am speaking about the clergy and those people who consider themselves educated laity) is often afraid of doing something wrong.  After all the years when people were deprived of the opportunity to think and speak to each other freely and to move beyond, so to speak, the 19th century, there is still a lot of fear, and the desire to repeat only accepted things, to repeat only what has already become, as it were, the language of the Church and the thought of the Church.  Sooner or later this ought to change.

It seems to me the Church  is now undergoing a period when, on the one hand, it tries to be extremely traditional and on the other, people are not only unprepared for this but some of them start thinking – and they are not being helped in this.  (I am speaking in general and not about particular individuals.) Are we missing the moment, the opportunity given to us to grow from a church organisation into the Church?

Personally, I have now arrived at the realisation that I will never become a scholar or a theologian. I cannot now improve my theological education and can speak only about what has grown in my soul.  If this would seem unacceptable to many in its form, it might not be unacceptable in its essence. I believe I am not departing from the spirit of the Church, from the spirit of the Holy Fathers in the essentials, but I am using a different language to speak to a different people.  I think the same was said about many Fathers, too.  Not to mention Cyril of Alexandria, many Fathers of the Church were accused of ‘innovaton’ or ‘fantasy’ - not in those very words for they did not exist then, but in a similar way. I think the Church is now in the midst of a prolongued crisis.

When  Soviet Russia came to an end, I wrote to the Patriarch: ‘Don’t expect rapid changes in people’s mentality’.  We now witness the same situation as when the Jews left Egypt.  They became free, but freedom was not welcome.  People kept saying: ‘Why did we leave?  Where are the pots full of meat and other good food?  There is only sand around here, and what we can catch ourselves.’  This is one thing.

And another thing: the distance between Egypt and the Promised Land could have been covered in several days, maybe a week.  They were wandering for 40 years – why?  Because God made them wander until the generation who grew up in slavery had died and the new generation could grow up who were brought up in freedom and in the wilderness, where they had their faith in God and nothing else.  Indeed they were brought to Sinai on the way and received Ten Commandments, but the whole generation of slaves had to disappear.

I think the same applies to the Church.  It is certainly quite terrifying to start thinking and start posing questions now, after all these years when the Church could continue to exist only through exceptional loyalty to all the outward forms.  It is striking that all the Fathers of the ancient Church did was to pose questions.  If they gave answers, this happened precisely because they themselves asked the questions. The answers to unasked questions did not fall from the sky.  And these questions were addressed to people surrounded by a pagan culture, by an alien experience and an alien perception of the world.  This is what we should take into account.  No one lives today in a Christian country.  There are heroes of spirit, and people true to the Gospel and so on, but one does not speak about the whole countries being Christian or not. In the same way it would be wrong to speak about ‘Russian’ Orthodoxy.

For example, here [in London] a whole group of people (not very numerous) at the moment accuses me of not being loyal to 'Russian Orthodoxy', of not building a Russian Church… But from the very start I always said that we were building the Church as close as possible to the original ancient Church, when people who had nothing at all in common were united only by Christ and their faith.  Slaves and lords, people of all languages, stood next to each other.  This was my goal here: to bring together all sorts of people, who could say that they had one thing in common, the Lord.

This is the solution of the problem, I think.  If we start talking about Russian, Greek or any other Orthodoxy, we lose people, and not just in the parishes. Already more than 40 years ago I spoke to Bishop Jacob of Apamea, a very good priest and a good man.  He told me that they were losing about 150 young people a year because they were not very interested in the Greek language. I asked ‘Why not send them to us?’ – ‘No, we prefer them to leave the Church rather than go to a “foreign” Church’…  This is precisely what I have been and will be fighting against.  We need faithful people, people who have met God.  And I am not speaking in grandiose terms - not everyone can be an Apostle Paul - but about people who can even in a small measure say: ‘I know Him!’  So each of these people knows something similar and we can all stand together even though we have different customs.  Customs themselves are not transformed overnight.

I would like to be able to carry on with my Russian talks for another year, and revisit certain essential things.  There might be aspects in those essential things, which would not be sympathetically received … Fr Georgii Florovsky once told me: ‘You know, there is not one Father in whose teaching one cannot find heresy, except St. Gregory the Theologian, who was so cautious that had never said anything out of line…’ So in all of their teachings something can be found.  But where you find this, take what is said and what you consider wrong, think about it and say something of your own - not necessarily something critical, but something you say on the basis of what you have heard:  ‘I have had these thoughts and let us see how they compliment or correct the other…’

I believe it is very important now to think and share our thoughts; even risking getting it wrong, for in the future someone else will correct us, that is all. I remember how I was confused when Nicholas Zernov told me fifty years ago: ‘All the tragedy of the Church started with the Ecumenical Councils, when issues which should have been left flexible were canonised’.  Now I think he was right, but at the time I was horrified.  This does not mean that the Ecumenical Councils were wrong, but that they were expressing the point they had arrived at... And since then the theologians also have achieved certain things… For example, Fr Sergii Bulgakov was considered a heretic but is now looked at by many in a different light.  There are things that are unacceptable and things that are quite the opposite…