The linked articles (below) provide a Roman Catholic analysis
of the pending schism within Eastern Orthodoxy. The issue is over Ukraine.
While Constantinople has the historical claim of episcopal primacy, Moscow has
for centuries held the upper hand in terms of the Orthodox world. This coupled
with Moscow's 'Third Rome' doctrine has created some rather interesting
dynamics.
Orthodoxy has long allowed for ethno-national or autocephalous 'churches' to form, each
having its own autonomous hierarchy and yet granting primus inter pares or 'first among equals' status to the Patriarch
of Constantinople. Eastern Orthodoxy finds its unity in its understanding of
doctrine, adherence to the creeds and to the ancient tradition. The Patriarch
also serves as a focus for unity but this is secondary.
The Roman Catholic commentator interestingly cites Ethnophyletism as the disease of
orthodoxy. Roman Catholics place the primary emphasis on Catholicity (as
opposed to doctrine) and their binding principle of catholic-universality is
found in the Bishop of Rome, hence the very specific label of Roman Catholicism. This of course is rejected
by the Eastern Orthodox world and certainly all Protestants.
The Catholic commentator in this case is condemning what
might be called a patriotic-nationalist tendency among the Orthodox and he has
a point. It's not mere orthodoxy which binds them, but in addition to the body
of conciliar ecumenical doctrine they do find a type of unity in ethno-nationalism.
Certainly the Russian Orthodox would find it difficult to escape this charge.
Contrary to this position, the New Testament views the Church in trans-nationalist
terms. We are not citizens of the world but pilgrims living as those in diaspora.
There's no place for ethnophyletism.
And yet the idea that unity is therefore found in Rome, is
equally erroneous.
Of course the Eastern Orthodox would say Papal-phyletism is the disease of Romanism and they too would be
right.
Both catholicity and orthodoxy are valid concepts and
concerns for New Testament Christians and both ideas are directly tied to
apostolicity, something that (despite their extravagant claims) neither Rome
nor the Orthodox possess. Apostolicity is found not in an organic ritual or form
(symbolising succession) but in orthodoxy, true Biblical orthodoxy. The East is
(in principle) right on that point but they've defined orthodoxy in the
retention and maintenance of a body of tradition which arose centuries after
the New Testament, a tradition born of the post-Constantinian synthesis.
Conceptually they are correct but practically speaking their 'orthodoxy' is
supremely un-orthodox and sometimes is little more than baptised Hellenism.
Apostolicity is gauged by and wedded to obedience to the
doctrine of the apostles, the teachings of the New Testament. The successors of the apostles are those that
teach their doctrines and thus follow in their footsteps. Institutional
continuity that is (practically speaking) based on buildings, relics, vestments
and other man-made trappings can never lay claim to apostolicity.
And as the second article demonstrates, for all of the East's
claim to focus on orthodoxy, in reality the state and politics end up becoming
supreme, hence the caesaro-papist
label often attributed to the East. They too have a sort of pope, and he
doesn't live in the Phanar district of Constantinople. All too often he's the
head of state of the ethnically (and largely politically) defined autocephalous
church. Poroshenko would certainly seek to fulfill that role if an
autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church is formed. And yet the Chocolate King (Poroshenko)
is but a tool in the hands of others.
Some say that the Orthodox are less political than what is common in the Latin/Western tradition.
In one sense this is true but in another their low-level concern for politics
is explained in that they are totally subservient to the state and thus
function as a political arm of the state, almost as a department of government.
You don't have the Canossa or Thomas Becket episodes in the East. Orthodox
Ecclesiastics have no rigorous tradition of challenging the secular power,
instead they submit to it.
And this is the case here. Ukrainian autocephaly is pure
politics as are Moscow's concerns regarding it. They are pawns within a larger
game.
The question for me is... what's driving Bartholomew to
embrace a pro-Western position?
And, as Ankara moves closer to Moscow, will that alliance
lead to pressure being put on the Phanar?
Time will tell...
See also:
As a small correction: the East does have a tradition of standing up to monarchs, namely in the two Iconoclastic controversies under the Isaurians. And then there were the schisms in the Russian church over those Russophilic tendencies (the Josephites I believe) and those who expressed more loyalty to a strictly Byzantine tradition. And then there were further splits when Peter the "great" attempted to update the church to bolster his own power. And then under the Soviets, when Stalin began to lift the ban on Orthodoxy, some still resisted (instanced in ROCOR). The fact is that the Orthodox have been just as fractious as the West, but for various reasons, these splits have been paved over.
ReplyDeleteWhich leads me to laugh at the Roman criticism of ethnophyletism. Where I live there are various Catholic churches of various ethnicies for the people who came to work, and the tensions ran far deeper than not sharing the language. Hungarians didn't want to associate with Slovenes, the Irish wanted nothing to do with Germans, etc. etc. Roman unity is an umbrella that nominally allows these ethnic tensions to seethe under one umbrella. It's only structurally different than Orthodoxy, and thus handled in a different manner, but it's not a different spirit.
I don't put too much stock in many conspiracy theories about Freemasonry, but it does function as a high-octane social network among powerful people. Various occupants of the Phanar have been freemasonry, and the Greek church (especially in the US) is full of freemasons and freemason-related fraternal orders, which, I would guess, provide various American and British contacts. Even though he's in Turkey, the office functions as an extension of the Greeks, and the Church is generally in bed with the American imperial deep-state. So it doesn't surprise me that Bartholomew took this turn, but what's sad is that so many indoctrinate Bosphorous-swimmers, the "AmeriDox", don't see this decision as rank politiking, and instead believe that it's out of some ecumenical goodwill to provide autocephaly for a church of a distinct nationality. The myth of a perfect "home" lures many into naivete and confusion.
In reply to your post on Non-Conformity:
DeleteI understand what you're trying to say about Non-Conformity from 1662 to mid 19th century in social terms. But presence and access to Westminster isn't all there is. Non-conformists led the charge not so much to take a part the aristocracy or democratize, but to carve their own space into the English (soon to be British) geopolitical order. Non-Conformists led the way in merchant capitalism, ramping up the slave trade. Non-Conformists were the pioneers who formed colonial plantations to make a profit. Quakers were notorious in the 18th century as great merchant families, rather brutal in exploitation of Irish, Germans and Africans, in various ways and degrees, to run merchant centers like Philadelphia.
Perhaps it's unexpected given certain accounts, but popular riots in the late 18th century targeted Whiggish, Enlightened, Non-Conformists. Their economic abuses in running proto-industrial towns and merchant ports were pretty severe to draw a reaction. These popular attacks were essentially similar to Gordon's Riots and the Luddite movement; it was not anti-catholicism or anti-technology (respectively), but reaction of the poor against the wealthy. Baxter's influence created a Non-Conformist culture that prized individual productivity and struggle, in a way that usually flattened employees or victims of exploitation. The clothier industry was pretty brutal on workers, almost a precursor to the Taylorite system a hundred years later.
And even if we count economic power and control, Non-Conformists were pretty active in Westminster, even before loosening of tension. Roger Morrice's diary shows the power and presence of Non-Conformists in and out of parliament. Many of them flocked to quasi-state institutions like the East India Company. There's a lot of literature about the continued growth of power and influence of non-Conformists before the slow shift, post-1688, towards a "Protestant Interest" approach to empire, reaching its zenith in George III.
Some non-Conformists had a stronger sense of the Church's separation, but most did not; separation was only from the "ungodly", not from the levers of state and merchant capital. Pleas for tolerance were merely stepping stones along the way. Presbyterians, even when they became Unitarians in the late 18th century, had no compunction about jailing Quakers and state crackdown on their meetings. Non-Conformity was almost a cure worse than the disease.
What's interesting, to me at least, is how a certain ecclesiology developed in the Church of England, providing the radical impetus for separation in the Non-Juror split. You get a position that argues for the separation of Church from political action, a bifurcation of English society between a civil identity (English) and a spiritual identity (Christian) that can coexist, but do not overlap. You never get this even from the Scottish Covenanters, who still believe the prophetic work of the synod ought to control the actions of the monarch. The Non-Jurors are not well understood, but I'm working on clearing that up.
Just recently I was reading about Baxter and some of the pro-usury camps within Protestantism. As far as the Quakers go I've always found their peace and plain testimony to be at odds with their economic drive. Golden Age probably carried the wrong connotation. It wasn't all gold to be sure and there's plenty to critique from the period. I'm thinking more of the common man, not the leaders, not the entrepreneurs but the regular chapel-going folk who were barred from the positions of power. There's no doubt about it, the Reformation for all the good it did, it did not reform certain areas of thought and ethics and in fact took some rather bad turns.
DeleteAnd you're right there's a lot more to power than just politics. That's a point I've been trying to make for years. It seems obvious to me but I don't think a lot of people understand it. As I've said before standing in lower Manhattan I was left wondering.... is this the capital of the United States, or is it really Washington? The answer is of course, both.
And even putting the blame on the Reformation is also an oversimplification. There were plenty of avaricious usurious and profit-minded Catholics in the Renaissance well before Luther and Calvin.
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DeleteIn some ways, and I think you've made this point elsewhere, is that the puritan cast of mind you find in the Non-Conformists and the New England Congregationalists is genealogically related to the police-state mentality between the Sodomite morality police. It's not enough for the state to permit it, and then allow people to harbor their own opinions of it. No, it must be enforced; it must be truly believed. The "ungodly" (for the moral policing/reforming/reprogramming is merely secularized theological categories) must suffer if they wish to remain, they must be crushed to dust under the heel of the state. Thus, the school-teachers in Scotland are extensions of the "godly" magistrate of Sodom. The "godly" must lived in a society where no utterances of "blasphemy" go unpunished. It's in this way that the Protestant Harlot has been equal, if not worse, to the Roman variety one can find in its most brutal form in the Franciscan missions in the south-west and California. We're now reaping the whirlwind.
DeleteIt's that communitarian ethos.... it's quite anti-liberal in its sensibilities. I find it interesting that some Christian thinkers are even using the term. The other day I heard a Christian conservative praising Orban's project in Hungary and advocating for a communitarian model.
DeleteLiberalism (at least the old variety) valued individual rights to speech and opinion. The Puritans didn't believe that for a moment and neither does the Christian Right.
That's fine but then you can't claim the American Founding Fathers.
You're right, in Scotland et al. they do view themselves as 'godly' though they wouldn't put it that way. They're just good heirs of Scottish Presbyterianism which (it could be argued) has undergone another series of reforms. There's a new confession in town and they're just as keen to enforce it. It's a different kind of sacral society. Theonomists will argue that all societies are that way so we should just try to make it our version. It's for the best.
That's what is so interesting about the old liberalism and the American project. It didn't work but wow, what a break with Christendom! Just don't tell David Barton!
Funny you mention the Franciscan missions. I remember taking field trips to the mission in San Diego when I was in high school. We learned about Junipero Serra but if I recall it was all painted in a rather positive light. I was thinking about that not long ago and I wondered if schools take field trips there anymore and wow, what do they say?
From the literature I've read, the Franciscans were a nightmare. They were so bad that the Spanish colonial government had a vicious fight to get control of the missions to protect the Indians, who were being run into the ground. Governors feared depopulation or violent rebellion (both of which happened to various degrees). The Franciscans even gave the Russian Orthodox a few martyrs, Aleutian converts killed around San Francisco.
DeleteComing off as a Marxist, the economics behind an empire or a state is more important than its political apparatus. You can't conduct wars, mass enslave people, dominate a territory if you don't have coin. The Non-Conformist economic pioneers were quite keen on footing the empire's bill, and they leveraged this point for greater liberties. That was why the Quakers were virtually untouchable by the 18th century. They had too much money, and collected too much debt.
The Founding Fathers were quite a mixed bag. Certainly in figures like the John and Samuel Adams you see that Puritan spirit; with the governorship of Samuel being heavily resented for its moral reforms. There was certainly a strong ideological commitment to republicanism, a communitarian ethic that sought to create an American national identity that was strong and binding. And yet in Madison especially, federalism comes out less as a binding mechanism than a restraining mechanism. Despite Madison's predilection for a Whiggish oligarchy (rather than the secular puritanism of Adams or the republican imperialism of Hamilton), his vision of federalism offered a theoretical space for freedom.
It's interesting to take deToqueville's remarks about America in the 1830s into account. He was a pretty staunch liberal, and he thought American democracy as rather communitarian in respects. He remarks how everyone is very politically active, but many don't make their own decisions, but follow the leaders of their clubs and parties, falling in lockstep. I think that's an uncharitable description, but the interesting point is that there is a liberal condemnation of a lack of individualism in the United States (perhaps ironic, given the retrospective hagiographies about all the self-made men).
Thus, what you see in elements of Madisonian federalism is not classical liberalism nor a secular theocracy viz. republicanism, but an attempt to forge a mechanism that will counter-balance all of the forces that will seek to control the levers of state, with all checking each other. Of course, Madison did not plan for the "stock-jobbers" and the "speculators", who he quickly realized would become the power behind the throne, bankrolling candidates and making their interests the de-facto norm. Madison resented this because it took power away from the natural aristocracy, those who had the money to grow up with a good education.
And it's not for nothing that classical liberalism usually supported unfettered expansion of financial interests. Some, of course, did not, but believed that other forces would mitigate this unleashed power. Adam Smith believed that a home-bias, an inbred sympathy for one's own and homeland, would check utilitarian calculus and prevent free-roaming capital as if by an "invisible hand".
As we know, the theonomists are correct in setting up the question, but fail the answer. Secularism very easily becomes its own civil religion becoming, as William Cavanaugh puts it, "killing for the telephone company". All of this is why Madison's concept of federalism is, perhaps, the best of all worlds. It's not an answer, it's trying to suspend giving one. The conclusion is all political factions are rotten: one can despise both the merchant/nascent-industrial capitalism of the Whig bank project and the American System, at the same time deploring the Jacksonian white nationalism that attacked this system. And yet there is a level of rejoicing that one force was unsheathed to attack another force.
DeleteSorry to keep going on, but the problem with classical liberalism is that the theories associated with it infect Christian ecclesiology and theology. Sin is reduced to an individual phenomenon, with a functional Pelagianism for social affairs. The Church is reduced to a gardening club, a corporation, or an NGO, of which Christians volunteer to work for or not. Preferably, the best kind of federalism is one that takes into account various bodies. Thus, we, as a church in network with other churches, act with a communitarian ethic, while not imposing that same ethic on the whole state infrastructure, which is to balance powers. Yet, most can't think in this way, and we either get embrace of communitarianism, stretching to creating a Christian nation and/or Christian state, or we get an embrace of liberalism, which reduces everything down to individual actions, problems, and the interrelation of people are reduced to commercial transactions.
Anyway, that's all for now,
cal
One last comment:
Delete"It wasn't all gold to be sure and there's plenty to critique from the period. I'm thinking more of the common man, not the leaders, not the entrepreneurs but the regular chapel-going folk who were barred from the positions of power."
I know what you mean here, but we get to a pretty thin slice of English society. Non-Conformists were already a pretty small proportion of English society, under 10% prior to 1688, with little increase. And even though not all were pastors or trans-Atlantic financiers, there were many who ran small industries, your lower-middle class sorts. And much of non-Conformity had a higher representation in England's proto-industry and merchants. So, to imagine our small chapel-goer, who is not running a business and harassing people through work-place moral policing, we have an incredibly small number. Not an exact analogy, but it's the equivalent to working class people within Confessional Reformed denoms. It's few, and they probably don't know much. Bunyan is probably the exception, someone who is knowledgeable and pretty lowly on social scale.
I'm interested in politics and economics because they help to explain the society in which live and also how it interacts with others. That said, my interest is always limited by the fact that I don't have any stake in it. I have no skin in the game. I want to understand the world and culture I'm called to live in and respond accordingly. And yet another level of interest is added because of the fact that the Church continues to buy into this or that model and join itself to this or that faction. That, I think is something we need to expose and refute.
ReplyDeleteTo state the obvious, if the Church embraces a separatist ethos, the danger of cultural assimilation decreases. There are other dangers and certainly unhealthy varieties of separatism but having gone back and forth on this for years I would still rather see a slightly unhealthy separatism than assimilation.