Alexander Schmemann

5. The Dark Ages (16 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 11

Silence of Orthodox Theology.

Most important of all, during the Reformation, at the most critical point in the ecclesiastical history of the Christian West — a period of review and re-evaluation of traditional values in the West — the Orthodox Church was mute, and because of this the Western dispute was one-sided, deprived of any genuine universal perspective. The East could only fence itself off, defend itself, preserve; it lacked resources to contribute its own experience or its uninterrupted tradition as a way out of Western blind alleys. The first Reformers, convinced that in combating the papacy and medieval Catholicism they were returning to apostolic Christianity, made attempts to appeal to the Eastern Church as the arbiter of their dispute with Rome. Negotiations with the Protestants were particularly energetic under Patriarch Jeremiah II (1572-95), who subjected the Augsburg Confession, which had been sent to him, to a detailed analysis and exposed its obvious heresy from the Orthodox point of view. “You can never be in agreement with us, or rather, say with the truth,” wrote Jeremiah, “And we beg you not to trouble us further, not to write us or appeal to us while you go on reinterpreting the guiding lights of the Church and its theologians in other ways, paying them respect in words but repudiating them in deeds . . . Go your way, and write us no more about dogmas.”

The Orthodox Church could reject and condemn Protestantism, as it could fence itself off from Catholic advances, but unfortunately it could not perform its duty to bear witness to Orthodoxy and reveal its vital and creative significance. Moreover, from that time on Western Catholic and Protestant influences gradually began to penetrate into Orthodox theology itself, inculcating a sense of inferiority toward everything Western, and for a long while pulling it away from its own heritage. This influence came in through the young people who were sent to study in the West — in England, Switzerland, and Denmark — and who, lacking a firm foundation in their own faith, were easily infected with the latest Western theological fashions, absorbed its theological and spiritual atmosphere, and then became teachers of the Orthodox clergy. A clear example of this process is the well-known case of Cyril Lucaris, who as patriarch of Constantinople published his Confession of the Orthodox Faith in Geneva in 1629, a document, which was completely Protestant in content and inspiration.

 

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