Alexander Schmemann

5. The Dark Ages (16 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 12

But this is far from the only example. As time went on, it became increasingly clear that even if the Orthodox Church managed to preserve its independence from the Catholics and the Protestants, Orthodox theology had lost that independence and had changed into either a bare and sweeping denial of the West by means of dubious arguments, or a sort of compromise between Catholic and Protestant extremes.

After the fall of Byzantium only the West theologized. Theology is essentially a task of the universal Church, but it was only taken up separately, in schism. This is the basic paradox in the history of Christian culture. The West was theologizing when the East was mute, or, even worse, was repeating Western lessons without reflection. Until the present time the Orthodox theologian has been too dependent on Western support for his own constructive work. He received his primary sources from Western hands, read the Fathers and the acts of the councils in Western editions (which often were not accurate), and learned the techniques of dealing with the assembled material in a Western school.[39]

Our knowledge of the history of our own Church is primarily due to the achievements of many generations of Western scholars. This applies both to the accumulation and the interpretation of the facts . . . Western thought always lives in this past, with an intensity of historical recollection, as if to compensate for the painful gaps in its own mystical memory. The Orthodox theologian also ought to bear witness to this world, a witness drawn from the internal memory of the Church.[40]

Nationalistic feeling, the decline of education, the petrifaction of theology, the poison of temptations from other forms of worship — these were the negative aspects of this period in the history of the Orthodox Church. Its historical perspective was narrowed at this time, and unfavorable outward conditions were not solely responsible for this. Even today Orthodoxy has not fully recovered from all these illnesses.

 

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