Uncanny — I just fin­ished read­ing Fr. Schmemann’s work myself. It’s an excel­lent med­i­ta­tion on — rather than a for­mal study of — the his­tory of the Ortho­dox Church. I highly rec­om­mend it.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: I for­got to do that, but … ditto!

I hap­pened across this book in a box of books I got from an Ortho­dox friend, and it was just what I’d been look­ing for. I’ve tried to get a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive before, but at the end I always feel like they’re leav­ing the impor­tant parts out. I know that his­to­ri­ans aren’t sup­posed to try to make deter­mi­na­tions about mat­ters of faith, right­eous­ness, spir­i­tual matu­rity and such — espe­cially since they would lack per­spec­tive, as we see it. So I’m glad some­one as qual­i­fied as Fr. Schme­mann under­took to do this.

I wish the book offered some more con­tem­po­rary infor­ma­tion, though. It looks like it doesn’t go very far into the 20th century.

Sorry to dis­sent from the love feast. There is more to this than meets the eye, and it is not good. The Church is a liv­ing Real­ity out­side of us, and ful­mi­na­tions about “nat­ural reli­gion being pagan­ism” do not can­cel it. These words can be used (and have been used, in the past 40 years) to jus­tify attacks on tra­di­tional faith and prac­tise on the grounds that they are “pagan nat­ural religion”.

As for me, I tend to look askance at any intel­lec­tual crit­i­cism of Church cus­tom and prac­tise, and Schmemann’s com­ments are merely of that genre. He was not an elder or con­fes­sor, after all (nor was he a pas­tor or bishop, just a pro­fes­sor). When I com­pare him to St Ilar­ion Troit­sky or St Ignaty Bri­an­chini­nov, his works are not on the same level.

Be wary of any­thing that fits the zeit­geist, and this is def­i­nitely one of them.

Vara

hmmm… inter­est­ing com­ment, Vara. I didn’t read Schmem­man in that way at all. I read him basi­cally reit­er­at­ing Jesus’ warn­ings to the Phar­isees who made God ordained form and rit­ual (g)od, and St. Paul’s warn­ing to peo­ple who hold a “form of reli­gion but deny the power thereof.” We can­not affirm super­sti­tion, albeit pious super­sti­tion, as “true reli­gion” sim­ply because it is found within the walls of an Ortho­dox edi­fice. The Church does not exist “out­side us”, we ARE the Church and the King­dom is within us and we ARE the body of Christ. I agree there is an “objec­tiv­ity” to the sacra­ments of the Church that tran­scend our human knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, but we can­not on the other hand affirm super­sti­tion as sacra­men­tal just because a super­sti­tious per­son brings his pagan notions within the walls of an Ortho­dox Church.

Dear s-p:

Many recent arrivals (and I do NOT know if you are one of them) are unaware that much of Mr Schmemann’s writ­ing is uncrit­i­cal rep­e­ti­tion of the argu­ments of the obnov­lentsy (Ren­o­va­tion­ists). Much of it is not main­stream, which is not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing that Mr Schme­mann received his intel­lec­tual for­ma­tion at St Sergius, an insti­tu­tion of the unrep­re­sen­ta­tive and mod­ernist “Paris Exarchate”.

If you com­pare the writ­ings of Mr Schme­mann with (let’s say) Alek­sandr Vve­den­sky (the two “v“s in his name are NOT a typ­ing error), there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence to be found. There­fore, he is a fig­ure on the periph­ery of the Church, much like Alek­sandr Men or Georgy Kochetkov (do read the per­cep­tive crit­i­cism of the lat­ter by Archi­man­drite Tikhon Shevkunov).

He is con­sid­ered a guru in OCA cir­cles to be sure. That is because that body would not exist in its present form with­out Mr Schmemann’s influ­ence. I say, “the tree is known by the fruits thereof”. The ulti­mate author of the cur­rent OCA cri­sis is, indeed, Mr Schme­mann, and that in itself (with­out tak­ing into account the Amer­i­can phyletism he fos­tered, no small mat­ter, that!) is enough to make one use his works with extreme caution.

Vara

Hi Vara, Thanks„ I read vora­ciously so I’m always look­ing for rec­om­mended read­ing. Yes, I am a “recent arrival” (about 10 years ago). I’m not what you’d call a “Schme­mann fan” although I’ve read most of his major works on sacra­ment. I’m aware of his (and sev­eral of the St. Vlad’s faculty’s) con­nec­tion to St. Sergius and the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing that school of thought. While I agree there are ele­ments of spec­u­la­tive thought etc. in Schmemann’s writ­ings, my com­ment was spe­cific to the cited pas­sage and not intended to be a broad cri­tique of his cor­pus of work. I think you give a fair warn­ing to the read­ers who may read Schme­mann with­out a broader expo­sure to Ortho­dox the­olo­gians other than the “con­vert faves”. I don’t want to hijack Grace’s blog, so if you are will­ing, I’d like to dis­cuss some of these mat­ters fur­ther with you off the com­ment page in private.

Grace:

Remove Steven’s e-mail address from his com­ment, as we have got­ten into con­tact pri­vately. Don’t leave it there for spam­mers to get their hands on it!

Vara

Done

I tried post­ing this a few min­utes ago, but the sys­tem balked. My apolo­gies if this turns into a dou­ble posting.

1. Grace — I received my copy of THRoEO the same way. Uncanny.

2. Vara — Why the con­stant use of “Mr. Schme­mann” instead of “Fr. Schmemann”?

3. All — is it just me, or does Vara’s attempt to lay the OCA’ cur­rent admin­is­tra­tive prob­lems at the feet of Fr. Schme­mann — nearly 25 years after his repose — seem just a TAD harsh?

BJohnD

1. Okay that’s just weird.

3. To be hon­est, that just went over my head. I wasn’t sure what was meant by that, and it sounded like some­thing too lengthy (and pos­si­bly dis­pu­ta­tious) to get into in a blog com­ment thread.

If it turns out I was right, I might still ask that it turn into an e-mail con­ver­sa­tion as it did with s-p. Not that I’m that unwill­ing to get into big top­ics, but this has the sound of some­thing that will go on for quite a while.

Dear­est BJohnD:

Firstly, it is “Father Alexan­der”, never “Father Schme­mann” (the lat­ter is a Latinism/Anglicanism).

Sec­ondly, Mr Schmemann’s career was solely as an aca­d­e­mic (except for a very brief period at Cla­mart in France), not a hier­arch, not an elder, not a pas­tor of an ordi­nary parish in the US or Canada. There­fore, “Mr” is more appopri­ate. In any case, we are not in church, we are hav­ing a free dis­cus­sion in the agora, a pro­foundly sec­u­lar venue.

Thirdly, it is not harsh to lay the present cri­sis at the feet of Alexan­der Schme­mann, for if it had not been for this rather sin­gu­lar (but quite mis­taken) man, there would have been no OCA at all. It has been run on his prin­ci­ples ever since.

There have been only two tow­er­ing fig­ures in the his­tory of the Amer­i­can Ortho­dox mis­sion (it is still too imma­ture and juve­nile to be a fully-fledged church). They are Arch­priest Alexan­der Schme­mann, and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Phi­laret Voz­ne­sen­sky. Between them, they forged the church life of the past forty years.

This does not mean that I agree with the thought of Mr Schme­mann, for I do not. How­ever, when the his­tory of 1965 to 2005 is writ­ten, his is a very large role, indeed. Alas, I fear that church his­to­ri­ans of the future shall not be kind to his uncrit­i­cal mod­ernism (wit­nessed by his sup­port of the equiv­o­cal monastery at New Skete) or to his weak­ness for the inno­va­tion­ism of the Liv­ing Church schism.

In any case, we are lliv­ing in “inter­est­ing times”, where the ver­i­ties of the last forty years of church life are no more, and none of us knows the ulti­mate out­come. In any case, Mr Schmemann’s vison is dead, not to be resurrected.

Pray for me, the sinner.

Vara

Hi BJohnD, I too have never heard of a priest called “Mr.” by any­one, ever (except rabid romoph­bic protes­tants). But I’ve only been Catholic, Epis­co­palian and now 9 years Ortho­dox. At worst, it seems if one does not want to come off as dis­re­spect­ful or at worst, a pri­va­tized lai­cizer of clergy one does not par­tic­u­larly like, if we do not regard them as “Father” (legit­i­mately so since it IS tech­ni­cally a pas­toral title), then at the least, out of respect for the ordi­na­tion I’ve heard them self ref­er­ence and be referred to “Priest Alexan­der”. I think the moniker “Father Schme­mann” has become short­hand in order to iden­tify him from among the mul­ti­tudes of “Fathers Alexan­der” when writ­ing or con­vers­ing about him, just as many peo­ple will refer to Fr. (Priest) Seraphim as Father Seraphim Rose when no one would address him in that way in per­son if he were alive today.
Just a thought on the unspo­ken and non canon­i­cal rubrics of inter­net dis­cus­sion about Ortho­doxy as I’ve expe­ri­enced it over the years.
Indeed Vara has some inter­est­ing per­sonal per­spec­tives on the cur­rent state of Amer­i­can Ortho­doxy but they are best taken off Grace’s blog and dis­cussed pri­vately with her.

Vara:
I’m going to turn off com­ments on this thread, so if you want to go on with this, you’ll just have to spray paint it on a wall some­where. I’m not crazy about the con­tentious, patron­iz­ing tone you’ve set­tled into. Peo­ple don’t have to agree with me (or with each other) on my blog but they do have to behave themselves.

I don’t know what con­clu­sions oth­ers came to, but I’m going to con­tinue read­ing and enjoy­ing “The His­tor­i­cal Road to East­ern Ortho­doxy.” I’m not going to throw it out, burn it, or mark “Bad man! Per­verter of truth!” in the mar­gins. I don’t plan on get­ting rid of “For the Life of the World”, “Great Lent” or any of the other books writ­ten by Fr. Schme­mann (I know, I know. Latinized/Anglicanized, blah blah blah) because sim­ple con­vert that I am, I find them inspi­ra­tional, clear-headed and edu­ca­tional. And lest you think I’ve taken the first step on the road to perdi­tion, all I can say is that since the Church is, as you noted, “a Liv­ing Real­ity out­side of us” per­haps it’s you and not Fr. Schme­mann that can’t always rec­og­nize the vehi­cles of God’s Grace.

Then again, I could be wrong. It’s been known to hap­pen. But I’ll just have to live with that. Don’t know if it makes you cranky to be dis­agreed with, but hope­fully not. In any case, this wagon train is movin’ on.