For the Life of the World? And of the Church too! Quality of Ethics as a Diagnostic Key for the Orthodox Church

Introduction

As it is usually the case with texts of a ground-breaking character, the profound document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church is expected to give birth to a ‘big bang’ of thought elaborating on its various aspects.

I am grateful to the editors of this issue for inviting me to participate in a feast of Orthodox theological reflections. It is with awe that I am called to offer an overall commentary on the document. I will do my best to try to distill and highlight crucial aspects of Christian life.

Although the most frequently applied approach to a multi-faceted text is the thematic one, I will choose a different path. Let me explore the document across three axes: radicalism, pervasiveness, and consistency.

Radicalism

Routinely, Orthodoxy and radicalism are hardly expected to fit into the same sentence. The Orthodox Church has acquired a reputation of immobility and stagnation, for good or for bad; therefore, for the very same reason, some feel contempt while others are attracted by Orthodox teaching and practice.

It should not be so. Mantzaridis reminds us that ‘Christian ethics … is revolutionary and radical … is the activation of Christian ontology … of the “new creation” … which Christ revealed in the world with his victory over death’. ¹ What is at stake though is the Church's actual ability to support this idea.

To start with, a statement like the following both describes and addresses all people of good faith: ‘All peoples possess some knowledge of the good, and all are able to some degree to perceive the requirements of justice and mercy … the deepest moral commandments of God's law are inscribed upon every human heart’ (7). Is there anything radical here?

So far, no. This important declaration has been a commonplace since Rom. 2:10-15; here, what is to be welcomed with joy is its theological foundation. The document proceeds to dig deep into the goldmine of Saint Maximus: ‘These precepts are “the law of the mind”; they are among the deepest rational principles, the eternal logoi, written upon the foundation of creation and residing eternally in the Logos, the divine Son’ (7). ²

This statement belongs to those positions of the document that make a significant theological mark. It no longer invokes the (so extensively, yet implicitly in Orthodoxy, used) Thomistic ‘nature’; instead, it introduces Maximian ‘nature’ into the discussion, namely, a fertile soil with anthropological implications. The conclusion sounds familiar in its wording, but excellently founded: ‘[R]ecalling human beings everywhere to the decrees written into their very nature, and summoning them to the sanctifying labor of justice and mercy’ (7). Universality in Christ, therefore, becomes more manifest; while such a declaration can be well received in secular contexts, it remains Christological in its depths.

A statement that radically challenges mentalities endemic among Orthodox people, which date their origin from Byzantium, is as follows:

The Orthodox Church, then, should be thankful that God has providentially allowed for the reduction of the Church's political enfranchisement in most of the lands of ancient Christendom, so that it may more faithfully conduct and promote her mission to all nations and persons (13).

So, what is perceived as poverty can in fact become richness and what is externally considered as weakness may result in a spiritual strength, provided that we Orthodox stay loyal to the privilege of our mission and refuse to be seduced by secular power. Tough as it is to mourn that the Byzantine Church-state model is no longer valid, it is even more challenging to accept it is theologically wrong that such a model is still embraced by many Orthodox leaders and followers.

Another highly significant declaration is the following:

The Church has for far too long retained in her prayers and Eucharistic practices ancient and essentially superstitious prejudices about purity and impurity in regard to women's bodies, and has even allowed the idea of ritual impurity to attach itself to childbirth. Yet no Christian woman who has prepared herself for communion through prayer and fasting should be discouraged from approaching the chalice (29).

This statement indirectly challenges our conception of (male) priesthood; but, above all, it epigrammatically and without any noise explicitly undoes centuries of an Orthodox practice bound to canons that prohibit Holy Communion for menstruating women.

The following declaration may not be considered radical at first glance, because numerous women have been anticipating such an articulation for a long time:

…the Church laments the ubiquity of the loss of life in utero through miscarriage and stillbirth, understanding these experiences as particularly powerful forms of bereavement for the family, and it must revise those of its prayers that suggest otherwise, and rise to the sensitive and loving pastoral care that loss of pregnancy requires (26).

Yet I praise its radicalism because it also undoes false premodern beliefs which assumed that humans are preserved in the male body as seeds, meant to be merely put and hosted in uterus for growth; a miscarriage was therefore considered a failure in hosting, that is, an involuntary sin. ³ I guess we Orthodox should not be proud for having self-evident modifications look radical! In any case, better late than never.

A similar decisive revision is found in the issue about funeral services for those who committed suicide:

Christian love dictates that Church burial and full services for a person who has taken his or her own life should not be presumptively refused, nor should the faithful regard the person who dies by suicide as someone who has willingly and consciously rejected God. This is a case of divine economy and compassion informing sacramental and pastoral economy. Here the antique prejudices of the tradition should be corrected by the superior diagnostic and therapeutic discoveries of the modern age (31).

As in (29) this statement dared to call ‘superstitions’ the mentalities on which some early canons were founded, and bravely proceeds to self-criticism by speaking of premodern ‘prejudices’. I doubt that any document carrying synodical signatures has ever so explicitly disapproved sources that have inspired canons of Ecumenical Councils, by attributing to them a non-Christian origin (as with the previous case of 29).

As the pan-Orthodox condemnation of euthanasia ran the risk of leaving the impression that physical life is absolutely-valued-in-any-case, the following statement clarifies the issue in a nuanced and thus desirable way: ‘[I]t is perfectly permissible for those who are dying to refuse extraordinary medical treatments and technologies that artificially prolong bodily life long past the point when the body would have naturally yielded up the spirit’ (31). It brings us now more ‘on earth’, more attuned with unbearable suffering.

It seems that at certain points we are witnessing monumental interventions. Elsewhere we come upon an excellent and unexpected statement:

Nor are borders anything more than accidents of history and conventions of law. They too may have at times a useful purpose to serve, but in themselves they are not moral or spiritual goods whose claim upon us can justify failing in our sacred responsibilities to those whom God has commended to our special care (67).

While healthy patriotism is reasonably not challenged, nationalism is being lethally wounded here by theology. National borders of traditionally Orthodox countries often seem to be covered by a sense of sacredness. Therefore, highlighting the conventionality of national territories modifies the psychological landscape that has allowed, or even facilitated, an Orthodox blessing on weapons. Through this perspective a certain defensive war may sometimes be considered a justifiable tragedy, but never a sacred war. Christian should lament the presence of weapons, not take pride in them.

As a conclusion to this first part, I would like to emphasize that the radicalism of the Orthodox Church is not meant to be revolutionary or reactive; the above statements trigger a pleasant surprise because of a long habitual surrender to premodern false conceptualizations and relevant habits. This daring step became feasible as soon as Orthodox thought considered modernity seriously; indeed, this document is a great step towards a constructive dialogue with scientific facts on how they apply to the life of an Orthodox Christian. ⁴

Pervasiveness

This document sprang forth from an Autocephalous Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate. To what degree does it speak for the other Churches? How much should it speak for them? And, to what extent can it affect them?

I can already imagine some readers considering it inappropriate to speak of limited pervasiveness; they would rather talk of a legitimate diversity. After all, the Russian Orthodox Church has issued its own declaration; what if these two differ at certain points? And is there any built-in mechanism to warrant conformity? On the other hand, should social ethos be different for each one of the Orthodox Churches? A widely known lack of unity is an unacceptable (but understandable) failure at the psychological level, but is there any real divergence in theological principles?

I have no answer to these queries, at least in this context. Nonetheless, I do admire particular statements, in the wish that they had been embraced by all Orthodox Churches. As we know, a chronic handicap of Orthodox Churches has been their provincialism. For many Orthodox Christians their local collective self-consciousness becomes the centre of the world; a strong indication that they have not been exposed to the catholicity of truth.

I will start with an endemic problem:

[T]he inequality of men and women in almost every sphere of life is one of the tragic realities of our fallen world. In fact, while the Orthodox Church has always held as a matter of doctrine and theology that men and women are equals in personhood, it has not always proved scrupulously faithful to this ideal (29).

Gender inequality has been culminating in Russia, often in a false theological theorization which tends to consider equality a harmful byproduct of Western civilization. ⁵

How is this statement going to be disseminated to the rest of the Orthodox world? We well know that some local Orthodox Churches are characterized by a traditional stance which favours male superiority. This attitude is over-represented among extreme conservatives and fundamentalists in terms of their religio-political profile. And—last but not least—they are men in their vast majority. ⁶

These findings are signs of a defective or insecure male identity. Men with unconscious doubts about their masculinity often resort to macho lifestyles, or traditional social values, or extreme right-wing political parties. A unaffirmed male identity can be the worst motivation for shaping social roles or ideological formations; this situation becomes far more painful when it gives birth to a false Christian image of a defensive nature.

Judeo-Christian tradition, generated and grown in the middle of the centuries-long journey of premodern cultures, undoubtedly honoured and elevated women; yet it still accepted the broader cultural belief that proclaimed man's superiority over woman. Although nowadays some Orthodox clergy and theologians refuse to admit and conform, in the tradition’s sources males are considered as the ‘proper’ human beings, the real agents, the measures of humanity; all statements are therefore biased by this primacy. For example, a series of advice (Prov. 6:25, 29:30; Sir. 9:8, 25:21, 26:9) encourages young men to resist beautiful or promiscuous women; we cannot find the reverse in the Bible. This atmosphere makes an intense contrast with contemporary vindication of healthy female eroticism, Christian women's included, not with arrogance or licentiousness but as part of a normal unfolding personality.

Christ Himself and the ancient Church made remarkable steps regarding women's position, taking into consideration the limitations of that era. However, elevation of women towards equality proved unsustainable. In synaxaria female saints are praised for attributes that imitate male characteristics, namely, for elevating themselves higher than their expected status. Conceiving women as inferior, or impure, or sources of temptation and sin, excluded them from decision-making and thus restored the temporarily ‘threatened’ order. The Maximian description of gender as a different way (tropos) to live and implement the common logos of human nature, obviously did not turn out to become an influential theological inheritance.

We do justice to early, brave theological voices that have been the soil from which this current document came to bloom, such as this:

Attending to the apostolic word (Galatians 3:28) and trying to read the signs of the times in its light, I believe that Orthodox women must be called out of their silence. I am not referring to the blessed and fruitful silence of prayer from which flow strong and inspired words, but rather to sterilized silence of resignation and indifference, a silence that does not exclude but rather produces futile chatter. It was probably that useless noise that St. Paul had in mind when he issued his famous injunction (1 Corinthians 14:34) which people never fail to bring up. Yes, it is time that Orthodox women dare to speak out: not in a spirit of surly confrontation, bitterly demanding certain rights. Orthodox women should rather speak out in order to undertake a reflection together with their fathers, brothers, and husbands on the tasks that confront us today, we who are all the members of the royal and priestly people of God. ⁷

Should the Orthodox Church wish to depart from its present, distressful condition, I think she has to start with abolishing the premodern unhealthy ideas which feed ecclesiastical attitudes against contemporary phenomena. I would also add that clergy's pastoral training must consider new approaches to the position of women in marriage and in their erotic life, in terms of counselling and confession. Heterosexual eros and sexuality have to be rediscovered in the cultural landscape of modernity and then associated to Orthodox theology in a convincing way. These improvements are far more urgent in the so-called traditional Orthodox countries than in Orthodox congregations of the West.

The time has come for the Church to stop feeding or cultivating an unconscious fear of women. Common as it used to be in premodern societies, this ‘Achilles heel’ of men is nonetheless the culprit for androcentrism, women's subordination, domestic violence, hostile attributional mindsets (‘women are the source of evil’) and other morbid phenomena. Fragile male identities supposedly had to be confirmed through sexism and oppression. It is obvious that fear of women cannot be extinguished by a simple decision or advice, let alone an encyclical; however, an overall reorientation of the ecclesiastical body will bring us closer to this goal.

In other words, pastors’ appeals against male violence over women will be fruitful only when the Orthodox Church can (a) accept the normal eroticism of women, (b) call women to equally share the responsibilities of ecclesiastical administrations, and (c) promote the couple as the fundamental unit of consultation and decision-making.

Let us move to another point. By wonderfully resorting to the ancient Church—an inexhaustible source of inspiration, indeed—the document presents a brief, yet eloquent, guideline for all Orthodox Churches. ‘The earliest Christians were a community committed to a radical life of love, in which all other allegiances—nation, race, class—were replaced by a singular fidelity to Christ's law of charity’ (6). This short sentence sounds effective enough for eliminating endemic nationalism, isolationism, suspicion, and separatism. (If taken seriously, of course.) It is obvious that this ancient desirable task becomes more difficult for Orthodox congregations of a homogenous ethnic character.

As I am almost illiterate in economy theory, I am unable to assess the accuracy of the following statement. However, I found myself hesitating on whether an official Orthodox document should delve into specific issues of financial policy, like these:

[G]ross inequalities of wealth often produced or abetted by regressive policies of taxation and insufficient regulation of fair wages, which favor the interests of those rich enough to influence legislation and secure their wealth against the demands of the general good …The far more common reality is one in which the wealthiest members of the investment class are protected against bearing a tax burden proportionate to the benefits they enjoy from their place in society, while corporate entities are allowed to indulge in practices that create markets for cheap labor at the expense of the welfare of workers. The results of this are both a greater burden placed upon the earnings of the working middle classes and, often enough, inadequate public provision for the poor … The claims of the Church Fathers that the plenty of creation is the equal birthright to all those created in God's image, and that therefore the wealthiest among us are entrusted and obligated to share their substance with the poor, may run contrary to some of the modern world's most cherished understandings of private property (35).

The reason for my reservations is that the more detailed theological declarations become, the closer to casuistic politics they approach, thus running the risk of both losing their vitality and becoming arguable. Economic decision-making may vary across circumstances; simultaneously it is too complex, because of the numerous interweaving parameters it has to consider, therefore it might be wise for theology to resist sanctioning concrete guidelines. ⁸

Apart from technical nuances though, if the goal of the document here is to criticize neoliberal trends prevalent in the West, which sometimes claim compatibility with the Gospel (like in the USA), I will be the first to applaud. Indeed, a statement on this issue was more than necessary, in times like this when a ‘hard’ mentality about markets, insurance and welfare threatens to contaminate Orthodox congregations too. This is one more case of cultural elements pervading and distorting Orthodox morality.

The document adeptly handles the issue of human rights by introducing a distinction between the minimality of their current discourse and their rich theological background. More specifically, it declares:

The language of human rights may not say all that can and should be said about the profound dignity and glory of creatures fashioned after the image and likeness of God; but it is a language that honors that reality in a way that permits international and interfaith cooperation in the work of civil rights and civil justice, and that therefore says much that should be said (61).

And it soon proceeds to further clarify by providing an excellent example: ‘To be fully free is to be joined to that for which one's nature was originally framed, and for which, in the depths of one's soul, one ceaselessly longs’ (62). Indeed, the huge spiritual depth and height of freedom should not become an alibi for bypassing or underestimating the suffering of people who lack their empirical freedom.

Unfortunately, the discourse about human rights is still disputed in some Orthodox contexts which prefer to consider it a Western ‘Trojan Horse’ in all its insidious imperialism. By associating human rights (either in good or in bad faith) with endemic insanities of the West, some Orthodox end up ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’, therefore it is important that a statement like the following has been included:

The language of human rights is, in many ways, a minimal language. It is also, however, a usefully concise language that can help to shape and secure rules of charity, mercy, and justice that the Church regards as the very least that should be required of every society; and so it is a language that must be unfailingly affirmed and supported by all Christians in the modern world (63).

No wonder why those succumbing to the suspicion mentioned above are usually hostile to other contemporary values like gender equity, democracy, free speech etc.

How can pioneering declarations pervade into the entire body of Orthodox Church? How are they to become influential to the degree they deserve? I guess it is an issue of complex actions, such as planned translations, theological groups and conferences, schools and seminary exchanges, catechetical and educational handbooks, and other aspects that can be invented by an enthusiastic imagination. Where there is a will there is a way.

Consistency

By consistency I mean that principles elaborated in one area of life are expanded to others too. This is an innate characteristic of Orthodox ethos that expects to be discovered and applied. Ethical imperatives are in fact theological principles, implemented in the vast diversity of people's lives. Therefore, while our real lives are usually inconsistent, the desired principles should possess a permeating power. ⁹

An endemic fixation of Orthodox Churches is explicitly addressed by the document:

It is something of a dangerous temptation among Orthodox Christians to surrender to a debilitating and in many respects fantastical nostalgia for some long-vanished golden era, and to imagine that it constituted something like the sole ideal Orthodox polity. This can become an especially pernicious kind of false piety, one that mistakes the transient political forms of the Orthodox past, such as the Byzantine Empire, for the essence of the Church of the Apostles … Far too often, the Orthodox Church has allowed for the conflation of national, ethnic, and religious identity, to the point that the external forms and language of the faith—quite evacuated of their true content—have come to be used as instruments for advancing national and cultural interests under the guise of Christian adherence. And this has often inhibited the Church in its vocation to proclaim the Gospel to all peoples (10).

Such boldness is more than valuable in our ecclesiastical context, as it makes a testimony of truth against centuries-long distortions that undermine the very essence of the Orthodox Church. However, a condemnation of ‘a debilitating and in many respects fantastical nostalgia for some long-vanished golden era’ does not seem to be limiting itself to political associations. Fixation in the past does underlie a variety of aspects in Orthodox ecclesiastical life today. If we are to take the document seriously we have to consider again worship, order, habits, wordings and canons, in the light of disapproving this nostalgia.

It seems to me that Saint Irenaeus’s golden rule has not yet adequately received the attention it deserves: ‘our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion’. ¹⁰ The Church's hope resides in the eschata and is continuously revived and experienced in every Divine Liturgy. Therefore, a congregation that is psychologically anchored in the glorious past lacks an awareness of the current action of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist then becomes a fossil and does not reflect the Body's life.

In the excerpt just mentioned, the document introduces the re-interpretation of the heavily abused concept of ‘tradition’. Although theological elaboration has already generated thousands of pages distinguishing between Tradition as the core spirit of the Church and temporary traditions, ¹¹ thus producing ‘credos’ that our recent grandparents could not even dream of, clergy and congregations are still far from capturing the significance of this distinction. In my opinion, this point marks one of the most harmful failures of Orthodox bishops, preachers and educators, and has to be urgently addressed. The matrix of Orthodox isolationism and fundamentalism lies here. ¹²

Feeling uncomfortable in the contemporary era is one thing, yet stagnation is another which stems from the former. A permeating consistency of the nostalgia issue hinders renewal. To what degree is an emotional fixation to a lost ‘golden era’ responsible for not even daring to discuss issues such as married bishops, women deaconesses, distribution of Holy Communion by select lay persons, simplification of a bishop's vestments, more congregation-friendly worship, adaptation of the liturgical monastic order to parish needs, translation of liturgical texts into the common language, correction of canons about menstruation, and so on? ¹³ Rigidity of the Orthodox Church has been proverbial; is it not a side-effect of a morbid nostalgia for select eras that it ends up detaching us from the spirit of the ancient Church?

The following declaration is bold and up-to-date:

It is true, as a simple physiological and psychological fact, that the nature of individual sexual longing is not simply a consequence of private choice regarding such matters; many of the inclinations and longings of the flesh and the heart to a great extent come into the world with us, and are nourished or thwarted—accepted or obstructed—in us at an early age. It must be accounted, moreover, a basic right of any person—which no state or civil authority may presume to violate—to remain free from persecution or legal disadvantage as a result of his or her sexual orientation (19).

Nevertheless, I would like to shed light on an issue of consistency here, because I feel that a vocabulary confusion arises in the following statement: ‘But the Church understands human identity as residing primarily not in one's sexuality or in any other private quality, but rather in the image and likeness of God present in all of us’ (19). What is implied here by ‘identity’ is a theological connotation which the document correctly founds on our creation. However, ‘identity’ in common discourse is understood absolutely in its psychological meaning. In this, among many other parameters, human sexuality constitutes an indispensable part.

Why am I focusing on this incongruence? Because it is more than obvious that the document aspires here to effectively respond to the widespread secular claim of defending and promoting one's own sexual ‘identity’. By challenging the empirical sense of ‘identity’ it conscientiously introduces the divine creation and calling, which is indeed the only source of human dignity. Nonetheless, ignoring contemporary people's mindset only adds confusion and ineffectiveness.

Of course, psychological ‘identity’ does reside in private qualities, some of which are shared with others. Theological ‘identity’, though, pertains to the common endowment of the divine image and likeness, which exceeds all other properties. I would dare to say that Orthodox theology has not yet adequately captured the difference, because of a certain deficit in its encounter with modernity. Putting aside further distortions that post-modernity has added to identity, the concept's meaning must be taken seriously if we are to be influential.

The theological content of identity is our fundamental starting point, yet it has to be bridged with contemporary ‘language’ which is psychological. Leaving ontological principles as they are, without their necessary links to psychology, does not offer the contemporary faithful access to implementing a relevant social ethos, inasmuch as the document itself perspicaciously remarks that

ours is an age in which sexuality has become yet another area of life colonized by the logic of consumerism and the dynamics of the market. Sexuality has today, in fact, become as much a consumer strategy or consumer product—tantalizing in its fluidity and pervasiveness—as an innate dimension of human personality (18).

Besides ‘personality’ itself being a term of psychology, the phrase ‘an innate dimension of human personality’ describes sexuality as a factor of human identity. So, the first problem in terms of consistency lies between sections (18) and (19). The second one dwells in the ambivalence of the document regarding identity being ontological or psychological.

Relevant challenges accrue here for the Orthodox Church: If sexuality is a part of people's identity among many other aspects, how will it be embodied to the theological meaning and vocation of identity? To me, the confusion stems from the fact that theological ‘identity’ is an attribute of human nature (which differentiates us from all other creatures) that blossoms only in a personal calling of love by the other, whereas psychological ‘identity’ pertains to specific attributes that build the subjective feeling of uniqueness. Although psychological ‘identity’ is gradually shaped through relationships, it is primarily authored and sanctioned by the subjects themselves.

In other words, ontological ‘identity’ refers to what we all have in common, endows us with the value of being created ‘in His image’, pursues love, and expects to be loved. Alternatively, the empirically used notion of ‘identity’ depicts individual differences; when it is mentioned collectively it unites persons who share certain attributes, albeit separating them from other humans who do not. ¹⁴ Sexuality enters the stage here as one of the major components of these attributes, demanding to be accepted from the very beginning, prior to being uniquely loved and as a basis for a personal loving relationship. How is this discrepancy to be practically treated and not rhetorically bypassed? This labour does not fall into the mission of this document, yet it stands in front of us as one of the most challenging anthropological problems of the twenty-first century.

Interestingly, an issue that was triggered by homosexuality comes to stir up theological considerations for heterosexuality as well. In other words, we still have a long theological way to walk until psychological ‘identity’ is Christianized; or, if you prefer, until ontological realities are offered ‘citizenship’ in the modern landscape. This task is specifically faced by sexuality, making it a most urgent aspect to clarify and integrate.

The following point makes an appropriate example of what I called consistency. I cannot praise enough this statement:

There has been at many times in the history of the Church something of a tension between the married life and monasticism, at least as regards their relative spiritual merits. In large part, this was the result of an earlier, pre-Christian understanding of marriage; it was also the result, however, of the unfortunate reality that, until fairly recently in Eastern Christian tradition, spiritual teachings on these matters have been advanced principally by celibate men with no experience of the married life (20).

It takes much honesty and courage for such a confession to be both pronounced and sanctioned!

Interestingly, this statement comes as an extension of the ones I just commented on (19 and 20). By admitting that married life has neither been equally treated nor deservingly appreciated in the Orthodox Church, the document indirectly realizes that theological identity as a background is not enough. Had it been so, married members of the Church would have found their way toward ‘spiritual merits’ by relying merely on their theologically conceived endowment. If psychological identity did not matter, why bother with mentioning specific conditions of marriage?

The theological inconsistency of the Orthodox Church here exerts serious psychological impacts in terms of neglecting marriage as an essential identity factor. Obviously, marriage is not reduced to sexuality, yet we are witnessing here broader consequences of the Orthodox Churches’ detachment from people's sense of identity. Orthodox anthropology cannot flourish in isolation from current anthropologies, otherwise its message becomes irrelevant.

The document's remarks on the impact of our current digital era on the developing psyches of minors are especially valuable. Again, consistency issues appear every time objectivity invades a document of principles.

The concern about its ethical aspects can be distilled in the following sentence: ‘To protect children against this profound perversion of their created natures is one of the most urgent responsibilities incumbent upon adult Christians in the age of mass communication’ (17).

I am also wholeheartedly siding with the intentions of the following statement, although I would have reservations on rating an ‘objective’ devaluation of sins before Christ: ‘No offense against God is worse than is the sexual abuse of children, and none more intolerable to the conscience of the Church’ (16). Notwithstanding moral, political and practical considerations, it seems unwise to engage in assessing the severity of sins. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I am fully aware of the disastrous consequences of sexual abuse, as well as the current pressure on Church leaders which demands the heaviest possible condemnation; nonetheless, legitimizing a proclamation of the worst sinful act perhaps would not be a wise initiative to launch for the future, as other considerations with the ambition to identify the worst sin may appear in the future.

In general terms, the following statements are correct and anticipated: ‘A human being is more than the gradually emergent result of a physical process; life begins at the moment of conception. A child's claim upon our moral regard then is absolute from that first moment, and Christians are forbidden from shedding innocent blood at every stage of human development’ (25), and ‘some practices of in vitro fertilization or stem-cell treatments for spinal injuries may involve the destruction of very young human embryos, and this the Church cannot support’ (69).

However, particular forms of assisted reproduction (such as in cases where no fertility problems exist and the method is used for avoiding genetic syndromes and hereditary diseases) entail implantation of healthy ova only and rejection of the sick ones. Has this possibility (of a high preventive outcome, whatever it may mean for the later psychological and spiritual benefit of the family) to be necessarily disapproved just because it engages/involves the rejection of sick ova? Does an ovum outside the mother's uterus possess the same ontological status as a naturally growing fetus?

The following sentence leaves space for a personalized pastoral attitude: ‘Again, each individual case of treatment may need to be adjudicated separately’ (69). Although its context pertains to stem-cell therapies, I suggest that it is also considered in the cases I just mentioned. I do not feel qualified to express certainties here, yet my anecdotal experience from spiritual fathers has been that it may be a field to consider compassion and oikonomia.

My last point will be on the ethical dimensions of depicting reality. As reality is called to be sanctified, it proves quite distorting when it is kidnapped for selfish interests.

Today, the distinctions between reality and fantasy, between facts and opinions, between news and ideologically motivated propaganda, and between truth and lies have become ever more obscure and fluid, precisely as a result of the enormous power of the internet (70).

This critique of ideology applies within the Church, too. As ecclesiastical activities are very often used for propaganda purposes, the temptation of fake news, or exaggerated news, or purposefully silenced news, or trivial activities that actually do not deserve the status of news, has become quite attractive. Consistency here requires a new type of asceticism! Even in the best-case scenario where clergy have fully assimilated the principles of this document, the issue of publicity and social media remains a demanding arena. Any failure in this area may undermine success in the rest.

Linking Ethics and Pastorale

Practically speaking, how can this document ‘help guide Orthodox clergy, health care professionals, and educators’, as the wording of the editorial puts it? A mere declaration of principles is meaningless if it is not influential. Obviously, being part of interdenominational theological discussions is valuable and desirable, but what about the dissemination of its spirit throughout the Church?

Insofar as the document For the Life of the World is more grounded in the contemporary era than similar documents have tended to be, it affirms a vital link between Orthodox ethics, on the one hand, and pastoral theology and pastoral psychology, on the other. For decades the former would stay distanced from the latter, as if ethics was a branch of systematic theology and pastoral practice a second-class application. Fortunately, in some theological schools the two topics have come into contact and in certain cases are taught by the same professor.

In my view this gradual proximity finds its ultimate point in this document. Two factors are to be credited for this progress; the document seems to a) make a historical shift toward accepting contemporary scientific developments and the impact they exert on Christians’ lives, and b) be remarkably free of obsolete legalistic nuances that used to accompany Orthodox moral imperatives for (literally!) ages. These two characteristics function as loyalty to the world and to the rich theological inheritance, respectively. No moral teaching can claim validity, let alone effectiveness, detached from this double loyalty. ¹⁵

A theology oriented to the surrounding world—culture and science included—is capable of being meaningful for real people. ¹⁶ Furthermore, a theology that does not betray the core of the spirit of the Church can point to the real God, not to His false representations. ¹⁷ Christian theology has long suffered from aloofness, namely in addressing ideal types of people through ideal conceptual notions and guidelines. The key medication for healing this chronic and endemic morbidity is connecting Orthodox ethics with pastoral theology and pastoral psychology. Reasonably, it was not the aim of this document to explicitly speak on pastoring, yet it has provided us with many hints that encourage this connection.

Conclusion

Let us be honest. For this document to influence catechesis, preaching, spiritual guidance during confession, mission, proclamations in the public sphere etc. requires a ‘new deal’ on ecclesiastical training. Workers of the vineyard are not prepared simply by reading suggested documents. The route seems both-ways: an effort has to be taken so that clergy and laity who work on the mentioned aspects will familiarize themselves with the document and hopefully comprehend it, toward the purpose that a changing Church will give birth to new workers.

Resistance is highly expected. People traditionally tend to cling onto schemas and rules because of a fear of freedom and thought. On the contrary, the document has come closer to a youthful stance stemming from the liberty that the Holy Spirit inspires, as Saint Sophrony Sakharov put it:

Let us leave aside those who, lacking in wisdom, become immoderate adherents of outward ‘forms’ and, consequently, are diverted from the spiritual quintessence contained in them … Those who have matured in her [the Church's] bosom through long ascetic struggle to keep the Gospel commandments and find the liberty of sons of God are no longer bound by any geographical situation or local tradition. Established conventions neither hamper nor harm them. ¹⁸

In my opinion, the target group to be outreached should be spiritual fathers and catechists-educators. They are the first to participate in the openness of the Church and become agents of Christ's catholicity. The late father Lev Gillet condensed adeptly this dialectic between truth and love:

In our moral actions, we are not bound by hard and fast formulas. We are linked to the will of God: ‘Thy will be done’ … These forms may very well change, but they are of secondary importance. What should continue to be, however, and should not change, is our sincere and profound intent to do that which God wants … In the world of the spirit, the same circumstances never recur. There are never two individual cases that are identical. This does not give us the right to say: ‘To each one according to his truth’. We cannot and we should not bend principles according to what we choose. But while safeguarding the principle we should, in the concrete application of things, have much prudence and love … Here we are no more in the realm of morality but rather of the pastoral, of the spiritual clinic, wherein one should know how to combine the most clear vision of the goal to be achieved, with the greatest flexibility in the means of reaching the goal. The Orthodox Church gives us an example of this respect. She proclaims certain principles, and yet at the same time, she avoids entering into unnecessary details; she is always ready to pay considerate and compassionate attention to difficult individual cases. ¹⁹

But, wait a minute! The Lord asked the paralyzed ‘Do you want to get well?’ (John 5:6). Who, after thirty-eight years of invalidity, would refuse healing? And why?

The question is perspicacious. Translated psychologically, it could sound like ‘Are you really willing to bear the responsibilities of a normal life?’ or ‘Are you ready to live on your own?’ or ‘Do you know how to relate to people in equal terms from this moment on?’ Modifying a years-long equilibrium causes distress and calls for new skills.

We enthusiastically join in proclamations of principles, implicitly implying that they are destined only for others! What if we start applying corrections to ourselves?

John Chryssavgis, in clarifying terminology, writes that ‘we would rarely identify ourselves fully with such a [spiritual] person … we would never want our child to marry a social activist, let alone be one’, with the former perceived as if in ‘some other state’ with their head in the heavens, and the latter being a constant trouble-maker. By juxtaposing these two caricatures, he proceeds to describe what an integrated Orthodox Christian would look like. ²⁰

Drawing from his humorous remarks I am wondering what a person or a congregation fully inspired by the principles of this document would look like! Surely all of us would appreciate such a rare specimen of combined spirituality and social concern, namely a Christian attitude that incarnates sound theology. Yet, are we ourselves longing to be like this? Is it an example to which we hope our children will aspire?

In other words, how much are we—real people—willing to pay the price for observing the principles exposed in this document? I am alluding to a warning that our congregations are not trained to think that way. Furthermore, not even our clergy practise and proclaim a theology compatible with the principles we all praise. For example, to what degree are we Orthodox willing to lower our income, standards or change our routine to provide relief for Third World peoples, or to abandon our Church's institutional dependency upon a favorable state or government, or to give birth to more children just to enrich the Kingdom of God?

As applied theology, this document invites and requires an accompanying asceticism. This has always been the case with moral teachings, of course, yet this one in particular seems more updated and more connected to our real lives, so spiritual life stemming from it becomes inevitably less exotic and more anxiety-provoking. As long as Orthodox moral imperatives were articulated in a somehow abstract or obsolete mode, thus detached from actual life, they looked less ‘dangerous’. Churches are now urged to take theology seriously. Enough is enough with the divorce between theology and ecclesiastical life!

As the document pays tribute to Fr. Alexander Schmemann's famous and influential book with its title, I will close my commentary by mentioning his last chapter ‘And Ye Are Witnesses of These Things’. ²¹ In this our great theologian had warned about the danger of reducing Orthodox morality to mere humanitarian principles, a condition that he thinks equivalent to succumbing to secularism. In such a case, he adds, Orthodoxy is appreciated as vaguely ‘mystical’ and anti-materialistic, like other Eastern practices. ²²

If we really seek ‘living water’, Schmemann continues, we have to escape the pseudo-dilemma between ‘religion’ (as he calls the distorted form of Christianity) and secularism. ²³ For him, our calling is to become witnesses of the Kingdom to come, of the Risen and Coming Christ. In this vision Orthodox moral testimony is a foretaste of the future, which cannot but be radical (because there is nothing more radical than a divinized human person), pervasive (as a consequence of the unity and catholicity of the Church), and consistent (as ‘All things have been created through Him and for Him … in Him all things hold together’, Col. 1:16).

In this perspective the document succeeds in staying loyal to the amplitude of the Church, as well as to the author of the original title ‘copyright’ who had emphasized joy, peace and liberty in Christ. The task in front of us now is to convincingly transmit the blessing of these gifts throughout Orthodox congregations if they are ‘to contribute in their own local parishes and communities to the work of the Kingdom’ (82).