Posted on by The Orthodox West

Why the Eastern Orthodox Church Needs the Western Rite

Moving Past Polemics, Restoring the Whole Tradition,
and Fulfilling our Mission in the West

By the Very Rev. Fr. Patrick Cardine
St. Patrick Orthodox Church, Bealeton, Virginia

Originally published in The Basilian Journal V. 2.n.1 Fall 2020 #3
As a companion discussion, listen to the Gazette Podcast episode, “Moving Past Polemics.”

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Recognizing a Polemical Problem
  3. Inaccurate Depictions of Western Tradition & Self-Concept Via Polemics
    1. St. Augustine
    2. Anselm of Canterbury
    3. Thomas Aquinas
  4. The Byzantine Lists; Different Forms, Different Faiths
  5. Anti-Western Bias Affecting Evangelism
  6. Catholicity; The Whole Tradition
  7. Resource List

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I. Introduction

I love my Church. I did not grow up Eastern Orthodox, but it is now my Church just as Abraham and Jacob are my fathers. And though I am not Jewish, Israel’s history has become my history. My family and I have been warmly embraced by those whose ancestors have been Orthodox for generations. My new family is largely Arab and I was a little surprised, but delighted, to discover in their hospitality such an affinity with my Italian heritage. I love my new family, I respect them, and they have shared with me the pearl of great price and adopted me into their apostolic bloodline. Although I serve the Western Rite, I also love the Eastern Rite. Quite frankly, I was more drawn to the Eastern Rite initially. I begin in this way because what follows may be challenging, but I want to be clear that it comes from love and a place of security in the Church I cherish. I want to see my Church grow and flourish in the West, I want others to find what I have found.

I learned to despise the West at the same time I was learning to love the Faith of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The commensurate relationship between scorn for the West and love for the East was no happenstance, nor is it unique to my experience. I was taught to scorn by the same ones teaching me to love. For seven years, I was immersed in a polemical catechism emphasizing the Orthodoxy of the East and the heresy of the West. But, over time, I came to a crisis as the anti-Western polemic, which initially drew me in, became the barrier that kept me from becoming Orthodox for another 10 years.

II. Recognizing a Polemical Problem

There is not space, nor is it my purpose, to enumerate and address objections to the Western Rite in Orthodoxy. Neither is this a comprehensive philosophy of the Western Rite and its implementation. My aim is introductory, and this brief paper is essentially the appraisal of a challenge facing our Church, based on my personal experience over the past 30 years. The problem, or, more accurately, the symptom, I am describing is an anti-Western sentiment and bias along with polemical and exaggerated dichotomies between East & West.[i] The problem results in numerous ill effects for the Orthodox Church and Christianity in general. The polarizing effects of this bias demonstrate a lack of charity. The intention may be to protect our Orthodox purity, but in reality, it perpetuates division and hinders our mission to the non-Orthodox. It also undermines our catholic witness, by suppressing our own catholic history and experience. It is reductionist and impoverishing. And finally, it is dangerous, because doing theology via polemics often leads to a heterodox self-concept. By calling attention to this challenge, perhaps we will see a solution in the restoration of the Orthodox Western Rite, along with its devotional habits and praxis.

I will mention a few examples later in this paper, but I hesitate to provide a full list of the stereotypical dichotomies. As important as it is to address our real and perceived differences, this paper cannot resolve these debates. Furthermore, a long list may actually avert our attention from the problem I am describing, which is far more than a list of differences, it is an underlying bias and sentiment that permeates much of our writings, sermonizing, and attitudes.

As Eastern Orthodox, we have a propensity to maintain our critical distinction through polemical exaggeration. No matter how much common ground we find with the West, or how many false dichotomies are debunked (such as Original vs. Ancestral Sin and various Atonement models),[ii] we still insist on our ontological otherness. We seem, at times, incapable of self-concept apart from polarity with the pernicious West. When we define ourselves by what we are not, we effectually degrade Orthodoxy to a reactionary group. If we redacted all the anti-western text from our theological manuals, blogs, or sermons we would end up with a lot of black on the page. To make things worse, our descriptions of the West are often inaccurate and exaggerated.

Our tendency to define ourselves in opposition to the West impairs our vision and self-understanding. We fail to see that the differences between East and West are often little more than variations of accidental forms. We are so convinced of our absolute distinction, that even when differences are demonstrated to be accidental, we appeal to our mystical Orthodox phronema to secure the boundaries of an ontological chasm separating East from West. It is not uncommon to encounter the theory that the Western Christian tradition was somehow deficient early on, inevitably derailing with St. Augustine. Given this assertion, Western Christians must cross that chasm, abandon their flawed tradition, and become truly Orthodox by becoming Eastern. This may sound extreme, but this notion is latent in the philosophy which drives the anti-Western sentiment, and, though not everyone is as radical as to suggest such a thing, it is the inevitable entailment when taken to its logical conclusion. To the question, why is the West no longer Orthodox, some have speculated that it never fully was.

I am not suggesting that we have no serious differences with developments in the Christian West. But rather I am suggesting that many of those differences have been exaggerated for polemical purposes, which has adversely affected the Orthodox Church and her ability to fulfil her mission to the world. The solution implicit in this appraisal is the restoration of a robust and living Western Rite and ethos within Eastern Orthodoxy.

III. Inaccurate Depictions of Western Tradition & Self-Concept Via Polemics

Specious anti-Western bias is manifest in several ways. For one, apologetic and teaching materials are often inaccurate in their presentation of Western doctrine, theology, liturgics, ecclesiology, and ethos. I will provide three examples of the archetypical bogeymen of the West.

St. Augustine – It has become a sanctioned convention that St. Augustine taught that we are personally guilty for Adam’s sin. The problem is that St. Augustine did not teach this and went out of his way to say otherwise. Besides the tragic result of the great Saint losing credibility among the Orthodox, our reaction to the caricature has weakened our understanding of sin and, in some cases, even produced a heterodox doctrine of sin.[iii]

Anselm of Canterbury – Vladimir Lossky’s condemnation of Anselm of Canterbury’s model of the atonement has decisively misshapen our views of Western soteriology and, in some cases, our own soteriology. Lossky presents a caricature of Anselm’s atonement model which, unfortunately, has become representative of what is considered to be the West’s anemic, juridical, and punitive soteriology, devoid of the doctrine of deification. Modern Orthodox teaching has often reacted to this ghoulish image by expunging juridical and punitive language and motifs. Instead of clarifying our understanding of these metaphors and language, we frequently describe salvation almost exclusively in terms of therapy and healing.[iv]

Thomas Aquinas – In our day, thanks to the influence of the Slavophiles and Greek theologian John Romanides and his colleagues, Thomas Aquinas has become representative of the failed West, bringing Augustine’s spurious teachings to their logical conclusions. The rationalist schoolman Aquinas has, for the Orthodox polemicist, irrevocably confirmed the West to be more interested in philosophy than theology, syllogism and systemization than direct experience, and devoid of true grace because of his insistence on absolute Divine simplicity. But this is a misreading of Aquinas theology. Further, his condemnation fails to recognize that he was greatly valued by the Greeks when his teachings were translated in the 14th century.[v]

When these distortions are shrewdly positioned alongside the truth of Orthodoxy, the East shines very bright indeed. Whether the tendency to misrepresent the Western Christian Tradition is a result of poor scholarship, sincere misunderstanding, or laziness, I’ll leave aside. Whatever the reason, it is inexcusable and damaging, if not a moral problem. It not only drives the informed seeker away, but it puts us at odds with our own Western Saints and tradition. It is self-sabotaging.

Advancing our self-concept via crude polemics can result in a lack of clarity on crucial doctrines. When we mistakenly oppose Original Sin to Ancestral Sin (because we have misunderstood St. Augustine’s doctrine), we end up with a diluted doctrine of sin. Sin becomes mortality and weakened will sans the stain of sin, which in turn affects our understanding of the doctrine of baptism. Similarly, various models of the atonement have been discarded because they sound too forensic or have been erroneously conflated with a problematic Reformed atonement model. The rejection of these models impoverishes our ability to grasp and communicate the truth of our Salvation in all its density. Enriching images of the atonement are uniquely expressed in the Latin Mass, differently than in the Byzantine Liturgy.[vi] What have we lost if we jettison this aspect of our own Tradition? When we uncritically condemn the West, we mistakenly subvert our own Tradition even as we think we are protecting it, and, in the process, we run the risk of distorting our understanding of the Faith.

IV. The Byzantine Lists; Different Forms, Different Faiths

Anti-Western sentiment is further manifest in the pattern of using differences in accidental forms between East and West as proof that the West is not Orthodox but heretical. Differences in ethos, culture, and ritual lead to the assumption that if it is not Eastern it is not Orthodox. When, in truth, there are things that look, sound, and smell Eastern which are not Orthodox, and things that are clearly not Eastern which are Orthodox.

The tendency to regard differences in form as irreconcilable is not a modern development in Orthodox polemics, but famously evident in a genre of texts dating from the 11th century, known as the Byzantine Lists.[vii] The purpose of these lists was to catalogue and enumerate the heretical and impious errors of the Latins, illustrating the longstanding history of an us-vs-them rhetoric. The Byzantine Lists are not primarily concerned with dogmatics, but cultural and ritual differences such as fasting practices and dress. The Lists may appear to be superficial rants; however, it would be a mistake to regard them as trivial. On the positive side, the Lists demonstrate the interpenetrating relationship of doctrine, culture, and ritual. With this in mind, it is understandable that the Byzantines were concerned about ritual differences with the Latins, but their fears led to a problematic conclusion. Their polemics lead to dogmatizing particular cultural forms and rituals, making all other traditions or forms heretical. Are the Latins really heretical because they fast on Saturday and are clean shaven?

The sad reality is that the incessant pattern of condemning the other side over accidentals has been perpetuated in modern times when it should be soundly rejected. Again, it is not my purpose here to delve into the real, actual, and problematic differences, but to point out the devastating effects of turning benefic differences into cause for dissension.

The Orthodox West has its own venerable Rite and forms inspired by the Spirit, forged and planted by the Apostles, and nurtured by the prayers and enduring piety of the Saints. I agree with the authors of the Byzantine Lists that dogma and form cannot be arbitrarily torn asunder, lest faith become an abstraction. The liturgical forms particular to a given culture distinctly express the Faith in that culture. As Orthodox, we have no problem recognizing this for the East, but it is a sad irony to deny this dignity to the venerable Orthodox Western Tradition. Is this what we are doing when we expect Westerners to reject their heritage when becoming Orthodox? Universally, our Faith does not change, but the cultural forms and rituals which express that Faith are varied. We must respect holy custom and culture without dogmatizing it, thus making all variants heretical. Cultural forms and rituals are instruments conveying the scent of holiness because the Faith, the Spirit, flows through them.

V. Anti-Western Bias Affecting Evangelism

The Faith is not a hard sell. Someone with even moderate skill in evangelistic rhetoric can have the genuine seeker starry eyed for Orthodoxy in short order. And this is what makes the coupling of the Orthodox Faith with an imprecise denunciation of the West so egregious. The Truth of the Faith is so irresistible one is prone to naively swallow the bitter pill of a polarizing and simplistic dichotomy – East/good, West/bad – without misgiving. We must admit the strategy has worked to bring many people into the Orthodox Church, but at what cost? And of equal concern, how many have not entered the Church because of this tendency?

Of those who become Orthodox while embracing an extreme East/West dichotomy, some have a crisis of faith when they discover the differences have been exaggerated. They may even question their choice, suspecting it was made under false pretense. For others, the discovery of the Western Orthodox Tradition is a celebratory resurrection of their previously forfeited heritage. These are elated when they realize they can be fully Western and fully Orthodox. There are other converts who are perfectly content and settled in their adopted Eastern Rite and ethos, but happily enriched by a recovery of Western saints and traditions. And though they worship in the Eastern Rite, they are relieved to be rid of a nagging and foul resentment of their Western heritage.

I have described the experience of some converts upon learning about the Western Orthodox Tradition. But there is another large group of people who come knocking at the door of the Church and never enter in. They are enticed and even convinced by our Faith, but cannot accept the anti-Western East/West dichotomies which seem to be a requirement for conversion in some circles. Disappointed and confused, they walk away. Some hang around, but are in limbo. You will find them loitering in the narthex of Orthodoxy, wanting to enter, but unable to reconcile the truth they have come to love with the polemical dichotomies they know to be false. I have personally interacted with many people who fit this description. I have found success in helping them by acknowledging their complaint as just, but not something that should keep them from entering the Church. One does not need to adopt an anti-Western bias in order to become Orthodox. This has come as a relief and revelation to many seekers who love the Western Christian tradition.

My defense of the Western Christian tradition is not meant to disparage the Eastern Rite or take away from its vital role in bringing Orthodoxy to the West. The reality of Orthodox missions in the west is that most converts will become Eastern Rite. But when Westerners do struggle with having to adopt a foreign culture through Rite, we must admit they are reacting justly to something that should have never been, yet now is necessary. To face this honestly will help potential converts adjust in a healthy way. Obviously, there are many who do not have this struggle and happily break with their past associations and religious culture. But there are many, and we will never know how many, who are not able to resolve the dissonance, made acute by the polemics we are discussing.

VI. Catholicity; The Whole Tradition

The first decade of my 20-year journey to Orthodoxy was spent falling in love with the East while honing my lacerating rhetoric against all things Western. But a growing uneasiness (it was conviction, truth be told), prompted me to re-examine my position. This led to a crisis that kept me from entering the Church for another decade. How could the Orthodox claim of catholicity be reconciled with her apparent disinterest and even hostility toward her own Western Tradition? Eventually, I realized the standard narrative of East-good West-bad, conveyed by well-meaning people, was simply mistaken. This did not negate the Truth of Orthodoxy, but it did create a stumbling block. When I realized that I didn’t have to accept this mistaken narrative and reject the Western Tradition in order to become Orthodox, my crisis was resolved.

Here I am, 33 years later, an Eastern Orthodox Priest serving and promoting the Western Rite in the Church I love. I have discovered as a result of this journey, with such a long gestation, a grander and more beautiful catholic Orthodox Faith. Can the Orthodox Faith be grander, more beautiful? The Faith cannot, but our vision and experience of that Faith can be. To be reunited with Saints Leo, Gregory, Benedict, Ambrose, and Patrick, as well as the rich hymns, liturgical tradition, and devotional life of the West, will only serve to make us more effective in our mission, and enrich our experience and understanding of the Apostolic Faith. There are positive signs towards correcting the narrative and reclaiming the whole of our tradition. In recent years, serious Orthodox theologians and historians have written correctively about our Western tradition, and Eastern Rite priests and lay people have been reconnecting with their own Western heritage.

By casting suspicion on the Western Tradition, we have eschewed the fullness of our own Patrimony, impoverishing and depriving us of what is ours. This does not mean the Eastern Orthodox Church is lacking substantial catholicity, but it does mean she is poorer without a robust living experience of Her Western Tradition. Being deprived of that Western Tradition is akin to being deprived of one of the four gospels. If we only had the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, we would still be the Church, but we would be the poorer for it. Possessing all four gospels provides ocular depth and horizon to our perspective of the mystery of salvation.

Without the Latin Patrimony we have weakened our catholic witness. According to Florovsky, there is no Patristic synthesis without the Latin Tradition. How can we recapture that tradition? We cannot restore the Latin Patrimony strictly through texts and academic pursuits, it is primarily rehabilitated through the liturgical life. This is fundamental to the ethos of Orthodoxy, expressed in the maxim, Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian. The Western Tradition must be breathed back into the Eastern Church through the ethos and culture of the Western Rite, along with its prayers and devotions.

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[i] Anti-Westernism among the Orthodox goes back to medieval times and continues into the present, although the critiques have morphed and undulated over the centuries. Many of the resources in the resource list (below) address these attitudes. See in particular, Vasilios Makrides, “’The Barbarian West’: A Form of Orthodox Christian Anti-Western Critique,” in Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness: Values, Self-Reflection, Dialogue, ed. Andrii Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 141-158. This article assesses the anti-Western program of the 20th century Greek Orthodox philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras. Also pages 27-28 of George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Orthodox Readings of Augustine. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008. Although beyond the scope of this paper, a re-assessment of the “so called” Great Schism is necessary to evaluate the issues being introduced here. See in particular D. Bentley Hart, “The Myth of Schism.” Clarion Journal. 2014. Also, Metr. Kallistos Ware, “Orthodox and Catholics in the Seventeenth Century: Schism or Intercommunion?” The Orthodox West. 2018. See accompanying resource list below for website links when available.

[ii] See Patrick Henry Reardon, Reclaiming the Atonement: An Orthodox Theology of Redemption: Volume 1: The Incarnate Word. Indiana: Ancient Faith Publishing. 2015. From the introduction (pg. 14), “I narrate this account of my experience by way of explaining why, when my family and I joined the Orthodox Church in 1988, we had no sense of discovering something new or different in respect to redemption. On this point, at least, our transition into the Orthodox Church was absolutely seamless. Although I had never read any modern study of Orthodox soteriology, I found Orthodox teaching on salvation identical to biblical doctrine to which I had already adhered for more than forty years. My formal, academic study of theology depended, in large part, on recent secondary sources written by Western Christians, but it prepared me to feel completely at home in the Orthodox Church.”

[iii] Florovsky referred to St. Augustine as the “greatest Father of the Western Church, indeed of the Church universal”! See in particular pg. 105 of Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert, and Nicolas Marinides, On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement. New York: Holy Trinity Seminary Press. 2016. Additionally, note especially the following articles from The Orthodox West website journal section, links available in the accompanying resource list (below). Eric Lozano, “Ancestral/Original Sin.” Eric Lozano, “Original and Ancestral Sin: A Church Dividing Issue?” Nathaniel McCallum, “Original Sin and Ephesus: Carthage’s Influence on the East.” Nathaniel McCallum, “Inherited Guilt in Ss. Augustine and Cyril.”

[iv] See David Bentley Hart, “A Gift Exceeding Every Debt: An Eastern Orthodox Appreciation of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo.” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, 7, no. 3 (1998). McIntyre, John, St. Anselm and His Critics: a Re-Interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo. Alvin Rapien, “A Non-Violent Reading of Anselm’s Atonement Theology.” The Poor in Spirit.

[v] See Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. 2012. For a review of this book, see Dylan Pahman, “Review of ‘Orthodox Readings of Aquinas’ by Marcus Plested.” Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. 2015. Additionally, note especially the following articles from The Orthodox West website journal section, links available in the accompanying resource list (below). Marcus Plested, “Aquinas in the Orthodox Tradition.” Marcus Plested, “St. Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas: Between East and West.” These articles are transcriptions of lectures by Dr. Plested which are viewable on YouTube. See also the lecture by Andrew Louth, “Aquinas and Orthodoxy.” Links to these lectures are included in the accompanying resource list (below).

[vi] See in particular Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert, and Nicolas Marinides, On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement. New York: Holy Trinity Seminary Press. 2016. See also the presentation given by Fr. Patrick Reardon, “On the Mass,” linked in the accompanying resource list (below).

[vii] Tia M. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. 2009.

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VII. RESOURCE LIST

BOOKS

  • Baker, Matthew, Danckaert, Seraphim, and Marinides, Nicolas, On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement.
  • Briel, Matthew, A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios.
  • Cleenewerck, Laurent, His Broken Body, Understanding and Healing the Schism Between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
  • Demacopoulos, George E., and Papanikolaou, Aristotle
    • Orthodox Constructions of the West.
    • Orthodox Readings of Augustine.
  • Kolbaba, Tia M.
    • Inventing Latin Heretics: Byzantines and the Filioque in the Ninth Century.
    • The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins.
  • Lyonnet, Stanislas, and Sabourin, Leopold, Sin, Redemption, and Sacrifice: A Biblical and Patristic Study.
  • Manoussakis, John P., For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West.
  • Mikitish, John, Jesus Crucified: The Baroque Spirituality of St. Dimitri of Rostov.
  • Mcintyre, John, St. Anselm and His Critics: a Re-interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo.
  • Mogila, Peter, The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church.
  • Plested, Marcus, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas.
  • Reardon, Patrick Henry, Reclaiming the Atonement: An Orthodox Theology of Redemption: Volume 1: The Incarnate Word.
  • Siecienski, A. Edward, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy.
  • Williams, A.N., The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas.

ARTICLES

VIDEO

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES