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I have been asked to make some remarks at this point on Religious
Freedom from an Orthodox point of view. I will preface the theological
portion of my statement with some observations on current Orthodox
concerns about Religious Freedom.
I
Of the 150 million Orthodox Christians throughout the world today,
the great majority are behind the Iron Curtain. Many millions
of these people have lived through several decades of persecution
and are now enjoying what seems to be precarious toleration. Several
million Orthodox have survived the social and religious disabilities
imposed upon them by Islamic conquests. The few million who are
today within the Islamic world enjoy a ghetto-type toleration
not very different fronI that of old. In at least one modern and
supposedly liberal Islamic state the Orthodox population has in
receut years undergone one more persecution and is now living
in a state of terror.
In one European country the Orthodox Church is the state religion
and in another predominantly Lutheran nation the small but dynamic
Orthodox minority enjoys the status of a state church. The 500,000
citizens of the newly democratic Cyprus have elected as their
first president an Orthodox Archbishop and in spite of their insignificant
numbers are members of the United Nations with a vote equal to
that of India.
Nevertheless, a recent American author[ 2 ] has
indirectly, and I believe unintentionally, informed more than
three million Americain Orthodox Christians that they are not
regarded as real Americans because they
have not yet disappeared in the boiling oil of the "triple
melting pot" of Protestantism, Roman Catitolicism, and Judaism.
From this very brief description of current conditions one can
readily see why most Orthodox Christians must remain content with
toleration at the church-state level. A radical separation of
church and state has become the rule for almost all Orthodox churches,
and indications are that these churches have benefited in the
process. In the United States the Orthodox Church is in an advanced
stage of transition from a religion of immigrant groups to that
of second- and third-generation Americans. Fourth-generation Americans
are increasing by the thousands every year. We are getting greater
numbers of third-generation candidates for the priesthood at our
theological schools.
We have survived the melting pots of Communism and Islam and are
not about to accept the social disibilities inherent in the "triple
melting pot" theory based on the false impression that Cristianity
is a monopoly of Catholics and Protestants. Until the time comes
for the reunion of Christendom, we are here to stay, and as real
Americans. We have a melting pot of our own and are not about
to use anyone else's.
American Orthodox of Greek ancestry are especially proud and very
sensitive about the fact that so much of the ancient democratic
and republican traditions of Athens and Rome have been incorporated
into American democracy. Perhaps one of the reasons most Greek
immigrants joined the Democratic party was that it never occurred
to any Republican to explain to them that the Latin word res
publica means almost the same thing as the Greek word "democracy".
Father Ellis[ 3 ] pointed out that great
sections of the United States once belonged to Catholic Spain
and France. It's also interesting to note that the largest state
in the Union was once ruled and christianized by Orthodox Russia.
Orthodox Christianity came to Alaska, which then included Oregon
and Washington, in the middle of the eighteenth century and after
200 years is still the religion of a large section of the native
population. We were the first to establish Christianity in Alaska
and have been on the North American Continent longer than the
Constitution of the United States. Regardless of the significance
it may or may not have, this Union is made up of vast expanses
once ruled by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox nations.
Before I turn to some observations on the theological aspects
of the new principle of religious freedom, which is somehow lumbering
through the limits of the mere toleration of private individual
or group conscience, I would like to point to the significance
of the fact that within the last year all Orthodox churches behind
the Iron Curtain have joined the World Council of Churches. Orthodox
membership is now 100 per cent and comprises about half the total
membership of the Ecumenical Movement. The basis of this encounter
between Protestants and Orthodox is obviously not mere toleration,
but a sincere desire for dialogue and understanding in an atmosphere
of mutual respect, not only for each other's persons, but also
for each other's beliefs. Some Roman Catholics and even some Protestants
may be horrified by this turn of events, but there are those who
already appreciate the tremendous possibilities of this revolutionary
and extremely daring adventure.
II
In speaking of the three contributions to the meaning of religious
liberty that a Protestant Christian finds in his most basic faith
and theology, Dr. Shinn expects considerable agreement with Jews
and Roman Catholics since this faith is rooted in the Bible. An
Orthodox Ghristian, faithful to the theology of his church, must
also give his wholehearted endorsement, but would preface it with
some remarks about God's love for man and add some further remarks
about the nature of man's love for God and neighbor. While the
points I am about to make would take us well beyond the level
of toleration, they are still short of any guarantee of religious
freedom.
The attitude of Orthodox faith and theology to sociological realities
outside of her sacramentaltal reality as church, in other words,
to those not participating in her inner soteriological experience,
is governed by the nature and purpose of her inner cornmunity
life, which, in turn, is determined by her understanding of God
and spiritual freedom.
The doctrine of beatific vision, borrowed by Augustine of Hippo
from the Neo-Platonists, whereby man's destiny is to become completely
happy in the possession of the vision of the divine essence, is
unknown to the Orthodox Patristic tradition. Man's destiny is
rather the transformation of the desire for happiness into a non-utilitarian
love which does not seek its own. Whereas in Neo-Platonic Christian
theologies the reward of the just will be or is the vision of
God, and the punishnient of the unjust will be the privation of
this vision, in the Orthodox tradition both the just and the unjust
will have the vision of God in His uncreated glory, with the difference
that for the unjust this same uncreated glory of God will be the
eternal fires of hell. God is light for those who learn to love
Him and a consuming fire for those who will not. The reason for
this is not that God has any positive intent in punishing but
that for those who are not prepared properly, to see God is a
cleansing experience, but one which does not lead to the eternal
process of perfection. This understanding of the vision of God
does not belong to the rewards and punishment structure of theologies
geared to transcendental happiness and therefore overcomes the
dualistic distinction between an inferior world of change and
frustration and a superior world of immutable realities and happiness.
Salvation is not an escape from motion, but an eternal movement
toward perfection within the time process.
Preparation within the eschatological dimension for the vision
of God unto blessedness and not unto spiritual stultification
depends on whether or not man has allowed God the possibility
of beginning the transformation of self-centered happiness and
security-seeking love, which is a good at its own level, into
a love which does not seek its own. Salvation, therefore, cannot
be the product of unmerited meritorious works and intentions rewarded
finally by the happiness of the beatific vision. Good works and
good intentions are only preliminary steps to the necessary preparation.
To reward these preliminary steps with the vision of God would
not be salvation, but damnation. Neither are these preliminary
steps meritorious in the sense that they are possible by virtue
of the gift of prevenient and habitus grace continuously moving
the will to good intentions and good works. In the Orthodox tradition
the responsibility for good works and good intentions rests with
what one may call natural man, both within and without the church,
whereas the good work of transforming man takes place by the grace
of God in cooperation with man. It is the latter stage of cooperation
which leads from a utilitarian to a non-utilitarian love of eternal
perfection. Being a Christian is not to attain to the reward,
which in a real sense will he ommon to all, but of being
prepared that the reward will not in fact be an eternal stagnation.
God has predestined all the salvaion, but by their own spiritual
laziness some will be spiritually stymied.
It goes without saying that the doctrines of original sin, atonement,
and predestination were never understood by Orthodox Christians
in an Augustinian, Anselmian, and Calvinistic manner. Original
sin is not an inherited guilt, nor is death a punishment from
God for such guilt. God permitted death in order that sin may
not become eternal. Salvation is not a question of satisfying
a wrathful God. God really loves those who refuse to return his
love and so are eternally damned. Therefore, anyone who thinks
that he has a special claim on the love of God because of any
special church affiliation or predestination will be in for a
real surprise. On the other hand, he who has confidence in the
love of God and is indifferent to the question of salvation will
also be in for a surprise.
I was especially gratified by Dr. Shinn's remarks about self-knowledge
and hidden motives. It has been my impression that the Augustinian
Latin tradition restricted or overemphasized the work of grace
in moving the will to faith and good works to the detriment of
the Greek patristic understanding of the work of grace in what
some people call the subconscious in which we call the heart,
distinguishing it clearly from human reason and will. From the
Orthodox position willful good works and a faith rationalized
by the needs of a sick subconscious can hardly be called a work
of the Holy Spirit. The heart captive to hidden motives produces
a utilitarian love which seeks to use either God or its neighbor
or both for the satisfaction of the desire for happiness.
It is my suspicion that each man's understanding of God and the
nature of love has more to do with our problems than we are usually
led to suspect. For me personally the principle of utilitarianism
is good and legitimate at the level of public order, but with
the limitations based on equality of humin rights and secular
interests. However, when this same principle becomes the basic
guiding light of one's convictions concerning the relaionship
between God and man, then I fail to see how such a religion differs
from nature worship even in its transcendentalized form of Platonic
idealism. If I believe that God is just waiting to punish those
who refuse to join my church or that most people
won't join because they haven't been eternally elected, then we
would have a hard time maintaining the case for tolerance, let
alone religious freedom and mutual respect. There is a strong
tendency for people who believe that they have a monopoly on God's
love and that God by a positive decision is going to punish others,
to be sometimes tempted in anticipating future punishment by beginning
to help God now. I say this in full awareness of the fact that
the Orthodox Churches have not always been careful in living up
to their theological insights. A form of cul ture religion is
a real problem with us also and was partly re solved by Islamic
conquest, and the Communist revolution has helped do away with
some of it.
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[ 1 ] Delivered at the First National Institute of the Project, Religious
Freedom and Public Affairs of the National Conference of Christians
and Jews, Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C., November 20, 1962,
on the occasion of the presentation of a paper by Dr. Roger I.
Shinn, "A Protestant Looks at Religious Freedom," to
be published by Union Seminary Quarterly Review.
[ 2 ] Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1955).
[ 3 ] John Tracy Ellis, "Religious Freedom in America,"
a paper presented November 18, 1962, at the First National Institute
reffered to innote 1. Cross Currents, Vol. xiii, No. 1,
Winter 1963, pp. 3-12.
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