THE RESTORATION

Reflections on the feast of St. Dunstan

by Fr. Chrysostom MacDonnell

Essentially, engagement in Orthodox Christianity involves a process of change. Anyone who believes that they have encountered Christ and has not been changed has not encountered Christ. This change, however, is not just a moral reformation where one might claim: "I was a sinner but now I’m a saint". It certainly involves moral change but this cannot be a singular occurrence, for change - through continuous repentance - is the very stuff of Orthodox spirituality. Nor is it just an alteration of lifestyle, as if we said: "I’m committed to going to church on Sunday mornings now." The change implicit in the Christian faith and in particular, the Orthodox understanding of it, is something far more pressing than a mere alteration in the way one lives - it has to do with what it actually means to be human.

Unlike any other religion, the Christian faith seeks to transfigure human nature itself in order that we might be reconciled and enabled to commune with God. It is in our very realisation that, being made in the image (icon) of God, [Gen.1:26ff] we discover that we have lost the ‘likeness’ of God. Even after our fall in Adam our humanity still retains the image of God. It is, though, the recovery of that very ‘likeness’ which forms the content of our spiritual endeavour; our aim is to become like the One who for our sakes became like us for our salvation. There is a wonderful mystery here that lies at the heart of our faith, that we, who were created in the image of the Second Person of the Trinity are restored to communion with God by him who became one of us, taking on our fallen humanity. Christ joined in his person the whole of our humanity to the whole of his divinity which is his from eternity. For as the Fathers often pointed out: what is not assumed is not saved. [See: Ephesians 1:9-10; 2:14-16] Or, more astoundingly; ‘God became Man that Man might become god (divine).’

Christianity is not turning our humanity into something different in nature nor does it seek to make us ‘gods’ alongside the Trinity. It is, rather, a restoration of what God intended us to be in the beginning. In the Genesis story, Man is put out of paradise because, choosing his own will, he looses his innocence and now knows good and evil yet still has access to eternal life (Gen.3:22) As a result, he is cast into this world, one of change, flux, evolution and ultimate separation from God, the source of life. Thus, we lost the likeness of God, his power, his holiness, his knowledge, his beauty, his immortality. This is the origin of all suffering in creation as we now know it, all of which is finally related to the passing of Time and so to Death, our last enemy. But in Christ we are invited to become partakers of the divine nature (II Pet.1:4) - theosis - which is precisely what we mean by salvation.

No other religion can deal with this for though they might express that human longing and realisation that something is wrong in the heart of man, yet they, not knowing Christ, (the only way back – see Jn.14:6) cannot offer the solution of this ultimate problem. Hinduism, for example, in its higher form, aims at the final release (Moksa) of the soul (Atman) from continual change (Samsara) and rebirth (reincarnation) and its eventual return and absorption into God (Brahman). Christianity of course, rejects the idea of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. Such ideas did seep across into the ancient western and middle-eastern world but we hold to the once and final resurrection of the dead when time itself is consummated upon Christ’s return. The problems of our existence are not rooted in the effects of actions (karma) inherited from our past lives but in the ancestral sin that leads us to death and is now part of our human nature. Only Christ has overcome this (I Pet.1:3).

Islam, on the other hand, can only impose the submission of the human will to a totalitarian monotheism with no change at all in the human essence. There is no participation in the saving divine energies (the ‘likeness of God’) which alone is found in Christianity. God (Allah) in Islam remains utterly ‘other’. Islam has never been able to define what it means by the person of God and the nature of God. In itself it contains no new or final revelation, as it claims, and in fact is a reversal to the Old Testament in its theological endeavour.

Judaism, of course, as it survives today, is the pharisaic form but devoid of the temple cultus since 70AD. It still follows the Torah (The Law) which can only serve to highlight the fact of our un-likeness to God and cannot, of itself, perfect our nature. [Rom.8:1-11]. The Jews are still God’s old people though the new Israel (the children of Abraham) now embraces the whole gentile world. So they have yet to be brought in to accept that Christ has come and that the Law has now fulfilled its purpose (Eph.2:15).

In other words, Christ is the only source of our true salvation if the word is to mean anything at all. For us, it means the restoration of our primal humanity, one that is created for eternal communion with God the Trinity, the source of Life. Change, therefore, from our perspective, is not an alteration so that human beings becoming a different species by some spiritual evolution. It is, rather, a true restoration, a transfiguration where the energies of God (his ‘likeness’) shine out of our humanity. We call this Theosis. This very restoration as a process, must embrace not just us as individuals but even our communities and every aspect of our common life. This is so because our religion cannot be a private leisure activity. We take, rather, an holistic view of our spiritual endeavour: that everything we do affects everything else; that all things are connected.

This is in harmony with what I believe is the authentic Orthodox Christian world-view: it is, essentially, a symbolic view of reality, that the physically and time-contained objects of this world are symbols, manifesting the underlying spiritual realities that give the physical things their meaning. The Church herself, for example, is not the Kingdom of Heaven but, as a visible institution, it is a mysterion, the sacrament or sign on earth of that kingdom.

This being so, every aspect of what we are: heart, mind, soul, body, relationships, work, politics, leisure, possessions, must be redeemed. ‘As above, so below’, the watchword of the alchemists of old, seems in harmony with this Christian world-view. This is not surprising as it has the same provenance in the ancient world. Alchemy, at its best (if we leave the charlatans and ‘puffers’ to one side), in its pursuit of transforming base substance into pure gold, acknowledged a spiritual goal: the need for the refining of human nature and its perfecting. As such, like all worthy religion or philosophy, it realises the dis-ease within the heart of man Moreover, like other ancient ways of thinking, alchemy held to the interconnectedness of things. This same world-view is an integral approach, inherent in Orthodox Christianity, the reason being, we have not altered our theology nor our theologising. The adventurous speculations of western Christianity have at times threatened the Eastern Orthodox Church, whether through philosophical systems, political influence or culturally through artistic and musical forms, for example, the innovations introduced into the Russia by Tsar Peter The Great. But, in general, we have stood firm.

Here then, is the essential irony. For though our seemingly rigid conservatism and traditionalism might be disparaged or thought obscurantist by post-modern western thought, we are unchanging precisely because we believe in change! Being married to the spirit of the age does not lead to the restoration of our humanity. Though our concern not to alter the liturgy, not to depart from the teachings of the Fathers, not to question the dogmatising of the seven great councils, must make us appear an anachronism, even so, we have maintained the integrity of the faith and, generally, avoided the fragmentation inherent in western Christianity.

If we bear in mind what has been said above, what should be our relationship with the culture that surrounds us? How do we engage with the contemporary western world and, even more daringly, call it back and restore its faith? Firstly, to this end, we can have no part with those, particularly in politics, who seek to minimise the role of Christianity in the West - promoting the multi-cultural illusion that all religions are really the same (i.e. untrue) and of equal use and value – because they are not.

The religious history of Britain can, of course, be viewed from various perspectives: the old liberal (Whig) historians saw it as one of progress from superstitious Popery to enlightened and reasonable Protestantism. However, their ‘project’ (if we may call it that) has proceeded to advance through empire, industrialisation, decline, secularism and materialistic hedonism. An Orthodox understanding of this history can see and accept the fact of these gradual movements yet will hesitate to see it as necessarily ‘progress’. Indeed, most historians recognise that the very idea of liberal progress in human affairs began to dissolve on the battlefields of 1914-18. From our perspective, change in British religious history has been in the form of a steady decline in the spiritual lives of the peoples of these islands. For us, this began with the Norman conquest of 1066 and the gradual isolation of the Orthodox spiritual patrimony which once flourished here among the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon churches. Of course, evidence of that tradition still linger, even to this day, often hidden like pearls in the old country and folk customs of this land; still clinging on like lichens to the old rocks, whether the memory of a distant hermit, commemorated in a place name or the reverence for a holy well, once a site of pilgrimage.

Yet our contention is that this is not the end of the story; a change, something new yet in fact, old, has started to blossom once again in this land. It is significant, perhaps even a sign that in my own Antiochian congregation, we worship in a building once dedicated to the western (post-schism) saint Osmund, a man specifically employed by the Conqueror to assist in the process of removing all traces of the old Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Orthodox) church and spiritual tradition, substituting the new Papalism. Now however, a new patron is invoked, one who, though reigning in heaven, once toiled by the grace of God to establish that older understanding of the faith. St. Dunstan (f.d. 19^th May) once again toils with us, praying for us in our spiritual struggle. And once again, the essence of this struggle is change; not the old liberal idea of political advance through factual knowledge but through a supreme paradox: change for us is found in a revolution through tradition. Change for us is a return to our real origins. If this is true for us as individuals and in our own spiritual experience, then it is also true of our place in history. Orthodox Christianity re-emerged in Britain from the 17^th Century onwards. Slowly and in fits and starts, it has been replanted here. To be honest, it is still at a very delicate stage of growth. If we may continue the analogy, we are still in the green house and not yet in the garden. Most Christians in this country and certainly, most people in general, know nothing about us and certainly do not realise that we hold the ancient treasure that once belonged to their forefathers.

Our spiritual lives are all about change. We struggle by repentance to regain our primal purity and communion with God. From what our human nature (essence) has become we are journeying back to that humanity created in the image and likeness of God. Change for us is returning to what we were intended to be by our Creator. The same must be true of our very mission in this land: the re-hallowing of Britain, of which I have often spoken, is our agenda. The Gospel itself, remember, is news – something new and yet, it is old. There is a delicious irony in that we, the most ancient, the most traditional, the most old-fashioned of all bodies called churches, we the Orthodox, are the true promoters of change. There is nothing new under the sun, says the book of Ecclesiastes [Eccl.1:9] and that is true of this world. But the provenance Gospel is not of this world, it is not a philosophy, a system, an analysis or a form of self-help psycho-babble. As the famous Anglican, Dean Inge, once remarked: ‘The Gospel is good news, not good advice!’ The good news, as expressed in the parable of the Prodigal Son we heard before Great Lent is ‘Come home, all can be forgiven’.

As well as endeavouring to save our own souls, we are here also, in the first place, to call the English people back to the roots of their own national identity. The origins of the English as a nation is a complex business; as a bloodline (genetics) it is quite ambiguous but nationality is more than just tracing a line of decent [Mat.3:9!] The fact remains, the Church here is an older institution than the Monarchy itself; it was a Christian identity that established the nation, not the other way round. Is it no wonder that there is so much political and social ambiguity and even anxiety around the concept of English nationhood (as others, like the Scots, assert a measure of independence). Having gradually lost their religion, the English have now begun to lose their very soul. Having been through all the pages of their history: reformation, enlightenment, empire, decline and secularism, the idea of absorption into a European superstate and globalisation do not appear too attractive, perhaps.

Yet it is in this very Areopagus of ideas (see: Acts 17:19) that we preach change in Christ, the Good News of the kingdom of God according to the original Orthodox faith of their fathers. This change, however, is different. Who knows, perhaps in times yet to come, later historians will talk of another great movement alongside the Reformation, the Enlightenment and The Globalisation - The Restoration of Christian England and the rediscovering of what was once hallowed in this land.