Self and the Church
A response to Edward Moore's 'Defining Orthodoxy: Is It Possible?'
M.C. Steenberg
University of Oxford
The struggle to 'define Orthodoxy' has long been part and parcel of the Church's life and consciousness. In a world of multiplicity and division, the desire to comprehend and maintain the singular nature of right belief (one of the definitions of the term orthodoxy) has been at the forefront of Christians' minds since the earliest days of the patristic witness, as we encounter it in Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus and others; but before even these, since the days of the Apostles and of Christ Himself. So the question posed by Edward Moore in his premiere article for Theandros, 'Defining Orthodoxy: Is It Possible?', is not new. What do we mean when we proclaim 'orthodoxy', not only in the face of other systems of belief and thought, but also in the contexts of self-identity and devotion?
While it is the case that these questions are not new but have been present in the Christian world since its beginnings, it is also true that they are questions which do not find their place solely in the inquisitive deliberations of academic pedantry. The manner in which an Orthodox Christian defines 'orthodoxy' is rooted to the core of his or her belief, praxis and devotion to the faith. Belief and action go hand-in-hand. To define orthodoxy is not only to expound a term or reflect upon a concept: it is to confess a belief and a way of life. It is therefore to be approached with caution, with care, as itself an act of faith and inquisition into the mind of the Church.
Examining the linguistic reading.
Moore is right to consider that reflection on the definition of Orthodoxy must begin with the terminology itself. But has he read too much into the supposed history of the terms that form the composite ortho-doxia? The Greek orthos does indeed have a meaning of 'standing straight, upright' (thus does Homer use it of standing horses, and Hesiod of upstanding hair[1]), but it has equally ancient meanings of 'right and proper'[2] or 'real, genuine'[3]; and in the Classical world the response 'orthos!' was the conversational standard for 'exactly!' Later, more metaphorical readings of the term (which linguistically means simply 'straight') would never lose their central grounding in the image of straightness that equates to correctness. When Moore quotes Kittel and Friedrich regarding the application of orthos to such a one as directs the state successfully, it should be added that it is above all this sense of 'rightly', 'correctly' that informs such usage—just as a wise man might be termed one possessing orthobouleia, 'right counsel', or an oracle orthomanteia, 'true prophecy'. But I am unaware of any instance in which orthos implied, without substantial contextual qualification, a sense of self-reliance or self-sufficiency—aspects of the word which Moore takes as cardinal and revealing. That 'a thick, solid pillar, or a wise and judicious king would have been described by this term'[4] is indeed true, but this is because a pillar is straight and a judicious king thinks and governs rightly. The term, of itself, bears not at all upon the potential or real self-sufficiency of the object it describes.[5]
The Greek doxa has a similarly multifaceted history. Its basic meaning comes from the verb dokeô, taken in the passive (as a substantive) to mean 'what one expects', and so it is used by Homer, Herodotus and other classical writers including Plato.[6] The meaning of 'judgement, opinion', which also comes from the same root verb, is found after Homer in nearly every writer to employ the term. This implication of deliberation or judgement consequently led to another common category of use, mildly pejorative, by which was implied a 'mere opinion': Moore cites Plato for such a usage,[7] and I would mention also Herodotus and Thucidydes, among others.[8] It is in fact Herodotus who offers us one of our earliest examples of doxa being used to mean 'good repute' or 'glory' (inasmuch as good repute implies glory in the ancient world).[9] This reading of doxa would become extremely important to the history of religious language, especially in and after the era of the Septuagint, wherein it was used to translate the Hebrew Shekinah, the 'glory of God',[10] coming to imply also outward radiance or glory.
The combination of orthos and doxa as orthodoxia occurred somewhat later: its meaning as 'right opinion' is evidenced in Pollux in the second century AD,[11] Hierocles Platonicus in the fifth,[12] and Olympiodorus in the sixth.[13] When Christian writers took up the term (and they did so as early as Methodius,[14] Epiphanius,[15] Eusebius[16] and the writings of the pseudo-Clementine corpus, among others) it was largely in this sense: to distinguish those of 'right opinion' from those of the wrong (i.e. the heretics), and the polemical context of the early patristic era explains its weight upon this use of the term.[17] The proclamation of orthodoxia as referring also to 'right glory' or 'right glorification' (i.e., worship) came in the context liturgical considerations of a somewhat later date.[18]
From language to implication.
I have thus far dwelt on terminology, not out of historical interest so much as to demonstrate that the primary implication of the orthos in orthodoxia is rectitude. Whether one takes doxa to mean belief/doctrine or glory/worship, the significance of the orthos in 'Orthodoxy' is in its proclamation of right belief, right worship. The implication is clear: there is also a wrong belief, a wrong manner of worship. The witness of the great Fathers of the early patristic era--we might mention Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, Athanasius, among others--is that the task of proclaiming Orthodoxy is to maintain this rectitude in opposition to the ever-present danger of encroaching modification and change. Only the fundamental belief that there is a rule by which to judge what is right (what is orthos), could give the impetus to Irenaeus' five volume Against the refutation and overthrow of knowledge falsely so-called, or Justin's lost Against all heresies. Only such a belief could inspire the lifetime of opposition that Basil of Caesarea would give to Arius and his followers.
But Moore makes a valid and important point, phrased as a question on the value of patristic reflection: 'Are we simply giving a beautiful and satisfying rendition of the doctrine(s) of the Fathers, or are we really embodying the spirit of their intimate engagement with God?'[19] That is, do we simply reiterate the words of bygone individuals, however sanctified and illumined, as the measure of our own 'right belief', or do we take into account that the second implication of doxa, that of 'glory, worship', suggests and in fact requires that our belief be grounded in a living and active engagement with the glory of God? Here the fact that 'worship', 'glory' and 'belief' in Orthodox terminology are all drawn from the same Greek word is especially revealing. In English these terms often seem distinct and independent. But belief and worship, intellectual reasoning and the dynamic engagement with God's glory, are and must be intertwined if Orthodoxy is to be fulfilled.
Tradition and engagement.
This brings us to what appears to be the intended heart of Moore's consideration: how is this living, intimate engagement with God in His glory to be related to the tradition of right belief that has come down to the modern-day Church through the councils, canons and writings of the Fathers? How is the individual person to relate to the 'institutional Church' (a terminology I do not favour)?
Moore argues energetically for emphasis to be put on 'self-sufficiency', or 'our innate tendency to serve as our own support in this world'. He writes in this regard:
The psyche of the human being is self-constitutive, creative and - while all-too-easily conformable to the norms and dictates of society - maintains always a capacity for unique engagement with the world, independently of the structured, objective relations of 'culture' or society. [...] The one who is truly Orthodox stands on his/her own, ready for the full experience of God's glory, yet also ready for the ethical demands placed upon him/her as a unique and unrepeatable entity dwelling in the world.[20]
Moore directly relates his emphasis upon 'self-sufficiency' to his definition of orthodoxy (e.g. his mention of 'the possibility of orthos or self-sufficiency'), but I have shown in the preceding sections my doubts as to the validity of such a definition. If anything, the consistent declaration of the Church has been that the human person is not self-sufficient: it is for this reason that Irenaeus suggests Eve was created as a helpmeet for Adam[21]; that Ignatius insists upon communion with the bishop.[22] Indeed, the Christian notion of humankind as created in the image of God is, if we are truly Trinitarian, a declaration of humanity as created in the image of Trinity, of relationship. At the core of the human self is the image of a God who is Himself relational, Himself communal. Even as the Father is not the Father without the Son and the Spirit, as God is not God without the eternal triadic relationship of His Trinitarian being, so the humankind that bears His image is not human in solitude or isolation. Man is neither complete nor whole in contradistinction from other men—a fact made clear when God beheld Adam and proclaimed 'it is not good that man should be alone' (Gen 2.18).[23]
If we emphasise self-sufficiency in the human person, we fall short of the 'right belief' of Orthodox proclamation. This proclamation indicates precisely the opposite: that we are not self-sufficient, but radically insufficient as regards the whole of our life - and especially that which we might categorise as our 'spiritual' or 'religious' life. Here I would turn one of Moore's statements on its head: where he writes that 'The Church embodies the collective values of the persons comprising it', I would suggest that tradition proclaims the opposite to be true. Human persons living in the Church are meant to receive their values from it, to receive direction and illumination from the Church rather than offer guidance or constitutive value to it. The Orthodox understanding of this relationship is built upon the firm belief that Christ is the Church, and as such the Church is not a static or 'institutional' entity, but the dynamic and ongoing revelation of the Son of God in the world and in the life of the believer. To suggest that 'the institutional Church is part of the “object world” and cannot make any claims upon the spiritual orientation of the personality' seems to me a slight misapprehension of Orthodox ecclesiology and anthropology. The Church is only partially a part of the 'object world': it is more fundamentally a revelation of the divine world. The 'orientation of the personality' is never the product of 'self' alone, but of the human individual in union and communion with the manifestation of God in the world and in his or her own heart. To separate the one from the other is to fail to appreciate fully the relational and communal character of the human person, as well as the divine station of the Church.
Defining Orthodoxy.
What, then, has all this to do with 'defining Orthodoxy'? The question must ultimately be related back to the terminology, set alongside the realities of self and Church. Does the language behind the term orthodoxia reveal to us anything about the relationship between the self, the Church, and God? If so, what?
'Orthodoxy' proclaims, first of all, the existence of right belief. This is both a personal and ecclesial proclamation, for on the level of self, right belief must be held and embraced by the individual; and on the ecclesial level, to call the Church 'orthodox' is a confession of its proclamation of that right belief--of its being, to borrow the words of the late Philip Sherrard, a body 'through which both the sacred doctrine and the sacred initiatory rites are transmitted chronologically in an authentic and uninterrupted form'.[24] That Orthodoxy enshrines the notion of right belief in its very name indicates how this dynamic relates both man and Church to God: the right belief is that delivered to the Church, which the Church then delivers to the individual. The human self is fulfilled only if it actualises in its own being the right belief which the Church grants, and to this degree 'self' and 'church' can never be in opposition as theological concepts. More importantly, they can never be isolated one from the other. Orthodox personhood is indissolubly bound together with Orthodox ecclesiology.
Secondly, 'Orthodoxy' proclaims an ever-present dynamism to the life of the Christian person and community, for doxa is not only 'belief', grounded in the unchanging eternity of the divine, but also 'worship' and 'glory', and worship is never static, never motionless or detached. This living encounter with and experience of God can only come about in an authentic way through the realisation and actualisation of true realities bearing upon God and man, as enshrined in the 'right belief' of the Church's doctrine; but the sole purpose of this doctrine is to enable in the individual--properly understood as an inseparable part of the human community, Christ's own body—the intimate engagement with God that is the ultimate dynamic of all life. It is not, we might suggest, a 'static tradition bearing little connection with the state of the world in the present day', but a tradition which enables the statically-disjointed present-day world to become that which 'sparkles with the vitality of the Logos'.[25]
Moore's article reminds us that the human person is a living, struggling, active creation which flourishes when the burden of its relational existence (and there is a burden here: Christ did not promise the absence of a yoke, only a manageable one) is uplifted by an intimate engagement with God. While certain among the propositions put forth in his text seem to me questionable, surely this reminder cannot but be of benefit, especially in our modern day.
M.C. Steenberg
Oxford
Notes:
[1] Cf. Homer, Iliad 23.271; Hesiod, Works and Days 540.
[2] As in justice, characterised by Herodotus, 1.96.3.
[3] Cf. Aristides, Pol. 1279a18; Plato, Phaedrus 244e, 249c.
[4] Moore, 'Defining Orthodoxy: Is It Possible?', Theandros 1/1 (2003). Given the lack of referable page numbers in an online text, all further quotations from Moore's text will refer simply to the document on www.theandros.com, with which the reader is invited to confer and which it is assumed will have been read in advance of this review.
[5] This is further evidenced by the substantial number of Greek composites with orthos that more obviously have nothing to do with self-reliance. See e.g. orthoepeo, 'to pronounce correctly'; orthokerôs, 'straight-horned', commonly used to describe the way one's hair looks after a great fright; or orthodikîs, 'right justice', which always implies mutual interactivity.
[6] Cf. Homer, Iliad 10.324, Odyssey 11.344; Herodotus 1.79; Plato, Sophist 216d.
[7] Cf. Plato, Symposium 202a.
[8] Cf. Herodotus 8.132.3; Thucidydes 5.105.2.
[9] Cf. Herodotus 5.91.2.
[10] Exodus 16.10 LXX. Genesis 61.16 LXX uses the term in the same way.
[11] See Pollux 4.7.
[12] Cf. In Carmen Aureum 10.
[13] Cf. In Platonis Phaedonem commentaria.
[14] Cf. Methodius of Olympus, De resurrectione mortuorum 1.54.
[15] Cf. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 68.4.
[16] Cf. Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia ecclesiae 3.23.2.
[17] The passage cited above from Eusebius specifically employs the term 'orthodoxy' as the opposite of 'heresy'.
[18] See the rather thorough catalogue of examples in G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961) 971-2.
[19] Moore, 'Defining Orthodoxy'.
[20] ibid.
[21] Cf. M.C. Steenberg: 'The role of Mary as co-recapitulator in Irenaeus of Lyons', forthcoming in Vigiliae Christianae 58 (2004).
[22] Cf. Ignatius, Epistle to the Mangesians 3-4, 7; and esp. Epistle to the Trallians 2.
[23] Though the focus of this review article does not permit its further exploration, it seems impossible not here to make a brief comment on monasticism in light of what has just been said regarding the individual and community. Suffice it to note that the monastic life, even in its most eremitic manifestations of extreme solitude, has always been seen as a specific type of re-integration into the society of persons that is the body of Christ, not a disassociation from or rejection of it.
[24] P. Sherrard, Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 22.
[25] P. Sherrard, ibid., 24.
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