Orthodoxy is marked by its autocephalous churches. Each
nation, in good sacral fashion establishes its own episcopal hierarchy and is
headed by a primate. There is no pope in this system to tie the various
Orthodox bodies together.
They all look to Constantinople as the titular head and
leader of the Orthodox community (the Ecumenical Patriarch) but he has no
authority akin to the Pope. Additionally the rise of Moscow in the 1500's
marked a change in Orthodox leadership. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks
and Muscovy was the new politically empowered heir of the Byzantine legacy.
While never accepted by the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Moscow's assertion of
being the Third Rome created a situation in which the mantle of Orthodox
leadership effectively fell on Moscow. Whether openly acknowledged or not, for
centuries it didn't matter as the Constantinople Patriarchate was reduced to
symbolic insignificance and Moscow held all the cards and was the de facto
leader of the Orthodox world.
But the Russian Revolution changed all that and shifted the
narrative, one Russia has been trying to recapture in the wake of 1991.
The Orthodox bodies have always been closely wed to the state
and indeed many have referred to the Orthodox system as Caesaro-papal in that
the Caesar, the ruler has what could be called the equivalent of papal
authority. The Orthodox primate answers to him (the Byzantine Emperor or the
later Tsars) and of course this became particularly confused and murky during
the communist era. On the one hand the Orthodox Church was suppressed, on the
other hand it was controlled and not a few Bishops and Patriarchs were 'turned'
and operated as agents for the communists and for the Red Tsars of the 20th
century.
Ukraine is a somewhat contrived nation. Some will take great
umbrage at this and yet the idea of it as an autonomous nation (certainly with
its present borders) makes for a weak case. The East is clearly Russian and
part of its heritage and cultural sphere. Kiev represents the old capital of
the Rus and the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Western Ukraine comprised of
largely forgotten regions like Galicia, Volhynia, Ruthenia and Bukovina has its
historical connections to Poland, Austria-Hungary and what would become
Romania.
These are parceled lands with mixed heritage. While there's
an Orthodox presence to be sure, there are also standard Roman Catholic
Churches, Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic Churches, also sometimes known as Greek
Catholic or Uniate and even traces of Protestantism. Ukraine is not only
divided politically but culturally. The West is more or less part of Central
Europe while the eastern portions of the country are historically and culturally
part of the Russian sphere.
What would the creation of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church mean?
It would grant religious legitimacy to the Ukrainian nation and it would weaken
the hand of the Moscow Patriarchate and by extension the narrative power and
claims of the Moscow Kremlin.
The article is interesting because of the suggestion of
ecumenical dialogue between a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Rome,
something Moscow does not want to see.
One possibility is that if Moscow does not recognise a new
autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Patriarchate, then it could lead to division
and perhaps even schism between Moscow and Constantinople. The relationship is
already tense. Such a move by Constantinople could potentially introduce a
sharp division.
American advocacy for the Constantinople Patriarch signals
further Western interests and attempts to involve itself in these affairs.
There's a wedge, a tension between Constantinople and Moscow and you can be
sure Washington will do what it can to exploit it. In recent years Moscow and
Constantinople have clashed over arrested abbots, the monasteries on Mt. Athos,
and there was a major falling out in 2016 when the Russian Orthodox refused to
attend the synod on Crete. The council ended in failure and left Bartholomew I
of Constantinople with egg on his face.
Is Francis acting as an agent for the West? To some degree
yes, but clearly he's not 'playing ball' in the way some would wish and he's
not being as aggressive as some would like to see. But remember, there are
public statements and then there are the realities on the ground and while
Francis might be saying one thing there are others in the Roman fold who can
act 'in the trenches' in a different way. Whether they are doing so in accord
with the wishes of Francis is another matter and adds yet another layer to the
already intriguing back and forth between the various spheres of power.
And add to this the fact that Bartholomew I has (apparently) been
the target of at least two assassination plots. Who's after him? No one is
sure. There are some indications that it's Turkish nationalists, others would
point to the Russians and others to the NATO connected Turkish Deep State.
While the latter might seem counterintuitive in light of the fact that Washington and the West
are attempting to establish closer ties with Constantinople, given past
attempts at using political violence to manipulate public opinion, it's not
implausible. The murder would certainly be pinned on others, just as many
believe the attempted assassination of John Paul I was not the result of a
Turkish assassin being run by the Bulgarians (and KGB) but through the NATO
connected Grey Wolves. After Susurluk and the revelations regarding Abdullah Çatli,
anything seems possible.
See also:
But even JPII's attempted assassination was not merely a prop to blame the Russians. He had become a little haughty, refusing to properly wield the IOR for propping up a financial shell-game, which resulted in its collapse, as well as back-dealing with the Russians for a Polish settlement. While he might be considered a committed Polish patriot, we know that conflict between Solidarity and the Commissariat had nothing to do with Polish welfare for its American backers.
ReplyDeleteSo, while I'm sure the Phanar wields moral capital and is a kind of voice for orthodoxy, I'm not sure what power he actually has to wield or why his assassination would be plotted? I know that his influence is primarily contained to the Greeks, the Levant, and American Orthodox, who, besides ideal reasons, circle around him to resist Russia's claims. But the majority of Orthodoxy is in the Russian orbit, and most Orthodox, like any sacral body, do not concern with the "game of thrones" except in as much as it means something at a socio-national way. I'm just speculating, but I'm sure the Phanar regulates or has access to the networks and funds of influential and international Greeks. Maybe that's what it's about.
PS. As a note on your post about images. There's a couple of interpretations I take issue with, though I generally agree with the key admonition to caution, but I was a little surprised by your evaluation of Plato. His distrust of the arts as lies then fed into his use of the arts in the Republic to construct popular myths that can carry ideas. But for him, the arts is not just pictures, but poems, songs, all varieties of word-based acts. These too were lies, but, like Socrates in the Phaedrus or elsewhere, they can be utilized to for the unenlightened to get them to sign up. For Plato, the eternal things were met in the soul, they were not things that you could even talk about, hence all the indirect and misdirect approaches throughout the dialogs.
As Christians, we certainly do not believe that the problem with creation is that it is a world of flux that cannot bear the eternal (otherwise the Incarnation and Scripture would be lies). If we're going to deal with art, on principle, it has to be the whole gamut, not limited to visible representations. But, if we're going to deal with Scriptural mandates, not derived from systems, then some of that is irrelevant. The word is given primacy, but it too can be used idolatrously. Taking the Lord's name is vain involves speech acts. I think you're not grappling with the totality of Plato here, but the truncated view of the arts hamstrings a fuller discussion. The visual, the oral, and the written are of a piece, but one that Scripture demarcates for us in our discussions. We're commanded to preach the world, to prophesy, and bring Christ to bear in Scripture. But in there, where does that leave us the word? Is Tolkein's Christ-like types (in Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf) idolatrous or not? Could this point be misleading, as much as Lewis' Aslan, who is more clearly Jesus, but speaks words that Lewis pens? Realist art is itself a bit of a charade, because all art is representative, and it cannot give you im-mediate access to some Reality. That's the same way photographs work. If someone took a picture of Jesus, would it be more "authentic"? Would we "see" who Jesus is? One way is to crudely label all pictures and images as lies, but another is to appreciate all arts as representations, and they need to be assessed on what is indirectly being gestured at. Thus, the Sallmon Head represented a series of false theological claims, whereas the Isenheim altarpiece (which I'm partial to) reveals the complexity and odd paradox of Christ's power in weakness, etc.
But of course, as you rightly point out, the question of veneration is out of bounds.
My purpose wasn't to spend a lot of time elaborating Plato. It was merely an interesting aside. I'm interested in the question of art communicating truth. I was not attempting to discuss the way in which art can be used by those who would exploit it. Though I will grant that probably is an issue related to the school of the laity discussion, if one wanted to pursue how the RCC as a political power used art as a means of propaganda. One thinks of the Counter-Reformation in particular.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Aragorn or Aslan.... that opens up a discussion in the realm of art's legitimacy, something I am not at all opposed to. I think we as Christians can produce a type of Christian art.
But, the problem is, once you open that door many seem to think by implication that it can then be introduced into the life and worship of the Church. That I am opposed to on various grounds.
Write a story, paint a picture.... not of Christ, but these arts belong in the realm of the the world not the Church vis-a'-vis God. They can be part of our witness and testify to truth, our struggles, the plight of the world etc. Those that cannot separate the holy from the profane cannot grasp this distinction. The monism that dominates the Evangelical world falsely casts all duality and tension as some kind of absolute dualism.
As far as the RCC/Orthodox world.... yes, JPII certainly changed his stance with regard to the IOR after his recovery. I guess the question is did he just look the other way and let the IOR/P2/Mafia/CIA groups do what they will, or was he active in the corruption and in the various projects? Obviously he did his part in Poland however complicated and messy the narrative became.
I think you're right in that the Phanar doesn't really wield any power but I think there are those who would empower it a little more as it were and use Bartholomew I to be the rallying point of an anti-Moscow alliance. I wonder too if maybe the overtures to the Phanar are stepping stones to legitimising the American Orthodox bodies. Imagine if they took their place among the autocephalous entities?
I think this can go without saying, but I hope you know that my comments are always in the spirit of "iron sharpening iron", never to impugn. Anyway:
DeletePer images: Yes, Evangelicalism has tends towards sacral monism, though severely paired down. One of my long term research interest (so to speak) is to see how America became sacralized for churches, even when the idea of a national church was officiall rejected. While a federal polity and division of powers was very much a secularizing approach, it was paralleled with quasi-mystical veneration for the American nation: the land, the people, the spirit of things. But I digress.
I guess my concern is that all art, whether writing or pictoral, are repsentations, of one sort or another. And we can't escape that reality, only using wisdom to determine whether representations are good or not. There is good and bad preaching, though the criteria is whether the concatenation of our words and phrases reveals and hands over Christ to the audience. And the same with pictures. I guess I don't know how exactly to deal with the general iconographic tradition of detailing snapshots of Scripture, not necessarily even depictions of Christ Jesus. Is it wrong to draw David killing Goliath? Wouldn't that image draw our minds to holy things, and thus reverence? Here I think it gets tricky. There's something embedded in the art itself that can determines usage. If we have a head-shot of Jesus, what other purpose would it be for?
The word of the Decalogue prohibits vain and profaning speech, as well as the engraving of images. But just as Israel is commanded to speak God's name, so too are images commanded for the Temple. Utilizing any of this prima facia, without understanding the New Testament, is a form of a Judaizing, but John Damascene's lame defense for icons on a highly speculative system is out too. The whole thing is so tricky because of the weight of traditions behind them. Having a phobic fear of our meeting space not being "idolatrous" depends on the Reformation's sacralism, with its own obsession for white walls, level pulpits, and scholarly preacher outfits. So I would go as far as to say that decorating a space one uses for worship is no problem, adiaphora. But then that easily can slip into the notion of "sacred art" or "sacred music", which gets us back to where we started, with ecclesiastical worship spaces being treated as temples and all that entails. But the key is distinguishing the holy from the common, and that's not a conversation most are willing to have, or think too hard about, before they lapse into well-worn historical cliches and traditions.
Per Rome: From what I understand, JPII had already started to be rather haughty with using the IOR funds before he got shot. He was more than willing to take large sums for funding Solidarity, but he shrugged when Calvi needed money to pay off the shell game of stock trading, which promised to generate money out of nothing to cover the activities of the Mafia and the Babas.
Per Phanar: Yes, there are certainly those who want to turn Bartholomew into the equivalent of a Pope. And maybe that is the point. Unlike the Roman pontiffs, his power would be a creature of CIA/NATO designs. But that still doesn't tell me why the Turkish deepstate would want him killed. Maybe its part of Erdogan's purge. The patriarchs have long been in the pocket of non-Orthodox powers, whether the Ottomans or, as Masons, the West. Maybe there's a link between Bartholomew and Gulen, or maybe the patriarch is willing to work with Erdogan too much. I don't know enough about the specifics, but it's an interesting spot to dig up lots of strange intrigues. And, as I said, maybe there's a lot of money that the patriarch has his fingers in among the Greeks and Orthodox Arabs, who may very well be crucial to NATO designs in the Middle East. It's a world of shadows.
On images: if God can't be seen, then all that was physically visible of Christ was his human nature, his divine nature only 'seen' through the eyes of faith (I owe this observation to Cal from a previous conversation). A picture of Christ would therefore only ever portray his human aspect, just a picture or photo of anyone can only gesture towards the reality of who they are while hardly being exhaustive.
ReplyDeleteThat said, your thoughts about whether it's possible to look at a picture of Jesus, accepting it as such, without reverencing it in some way strikes me as important. I've naturally found myself passing over narrative images of Christ, not wanting to dwell or meditate on them as some would.
Such considerations make me have serious misgivings about my own part in a dramatization of Mark's gospel some years ago... it was all the words of Christ from the gospel I was speaking, but my portrayal went beyond a reading to something that focussed emotional attention on me rather the words, if that makes sense.
*or on me rather than *just* the words.
DeleteA follow-up article
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.eu/article/petro-poroshenko-ukraine-russian-orthodox-church-a-national-security-threat-to-ukraine-says-president/
Moscow Patriarch to meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
ReplyDeleteThe symbolism is interesting....the Patriarch of the Third Rome is journeying to the Phanar, the humble residence of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Why? Because Moscow is desperate to shut down Ukrainian autocephaly.
http://www.lastampa.it/2018/08/07/vaticaninsider/patriarch-kirill-to-meet-patriarch-bartholomew-on-aug-a-risky-opportunity-SvPAT2arfTSwFjXONc6EVM/pagina.html