Window Quarterly
Vol. 3, No. 2, 1993
Copyright 1993

[Permission is granted to use, print, reproduce this article 
provided the following acknowledgment is given:  From 
Window Quarterly 3, 2 (1993); ACRAG c. 1993. 

***

LIVING COVENANT AS THE BEGINNING OF 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY

by Dr. Lewis Shaw

The West has, for generations, faulted Orthodoxy for its 
"antiquarianism" - supposedly an excessive attachment to 
ancient externals, and rigid forms, coupled with a lack of 
spontaneity.  What is supposed to be Orthodoxy's liturgical, 
doctrinal, and disciplinary formalism is said to have 
suppressed the spiritual vitality of people, and reduced the 
soul's search for God to superstitious ritualism, unforgiving 
sternness, and an immovable ecclesiology incapable of 
addressing the desperate questions of the late twentieth 
century.
	
This characterization of Orthodoxy arises from a particular 
kind of theological understanding which, as basic premises, 
opposes Law to Gospel; the God of mercy to the God of 
justice; and grace to law and nature.  Such a critique deplores 
the supposed sense of guilt which the Orthodox way 
inevitably presses on Christians.  The spirit behind this kind 
of criticism is the distinction between a merely human 
institution identified by an emphasis on empty 
ceremonialism, on the one hand, and a dynamic faith 
emphasizing an inner, personalist faith of relationship, on the 
other.  Critics evoking such an understanding might assert 
that Orthodox tradition had no inherent spiritual significance 
outside of ancient Mediterranean political commonwealths, 
and was adhered to after the fall of Byzantium primarily with 
the intention of exacting obedience from an oppressed 
peasantry.  Pleasing God was a secondary concern at best.  
According to such a view, the image of a person who builds 
his life around the normative Orthodox guidelines of 
tradition, discipline, and observance, reveals a servile 
orientation to life.
	
Modern theorists of religion have focused in the past on the 
epistemological conflict between science and religion, but 
now seem to focus more on what would appear to be the 
negative and oppressive views of humanity which, they say, a 
religious viewpoint indispensably involves.  Thinkers 
adopting this stance stress human responsibility for history, 
and as a consequence presume the necessity of overcoming 
the passivity and self-negation which they assume a religious 
world-view entails.  Celebrating human autonomy and 
freedom in determining history, they revolt against any 
theology or religious philosophy which would seemingly 
undermine, or deny, such liberty.  Man, the morally-
accountable agent, is the measure of all things - God and 
history included.  The heart of this outlook is entirely man-
centered; its promotion of human autonomy makes man lord 
not only of history, but of God as well.  God is reduced to 
either a kindly, but not terribly active, Being of a sort of 
deism, or a "thought-concept" having little meaning for a 
truly free individual.
	
Now, it may be the case that belief in an omnipotent, 
benevolent Lord of history can foster feelings of 
powerlessness and retreat in the face of injustice.  Moreover, 
one can endure, to a certain extent, suffering in this world if 
one believes that there is divine justice at the end of the day.  
One can offer resignation to the moral and natural evils of 
the present, or the past, or the future, if one anticipates that 
there will be a time of divine reckoning for all that has gone 
wrong.  History ceases to be a meaningful arena for the 
exercise of justice either divine or human.  Apathy about the 
present state of the world seems the only safe refuge.
	
It may be that traditional Orthodoxy sometimes expresses 
itself in such a way as to suggest that believers are 
psychologically repressed, angry, inhibited, and apathetic; 
that they are never spontaneous, unguarded, or cheerful; and 
that they lack the bravery, self-confidence, and will to be 
responsible historical agents.  The example of a typical 
nineteenth century Russian or Armenian priest, often a 
liturgical functionary with little zeal for learning, pastoral 
work, or societal change, offered scant inspiration to 
contemporary liberal Orthodox political activists.  Amongst 
other Orthodox groups, however, devotion to Christ was 
replaced by the idolatry of nationalism; the ends of nation 
and of Church, while in reality often opposed, were seen as 
identical.  
	
In contrast to the above Western theological and secular 
views of Orthodoxy, I would characterize it as a God-
centered way of life encouraging initiative and freedom, a 
path predicated on an autonomy made possible by Christ.  An 
ecclesial-covenantal vision of life and history, with Christ-
Church as the bond between Christians and God, and 
tradition as the articulation of, and organizing principle of, 
relationship between Christians and God, sets man free into 
wholeness and a life lived in the divine Presence.  Tradition, 
mediated through the Pentecost covenant, pushes man into an 
"upward openness" where he is desirous both of meeting God 
and of assuming responsibility for history.  Apathy, retreat, 
and resignation are not characteristic of the Christian living 
out the demands of a sacramental vision of creation in God's 
Church.
	
The Church, the extension of the Second Person of the 
Trinity into the world, is unique.  The Church is itself a 
sacrament, Christ present for us today.  The election and 
birth of the Church at Pentecost in Jerusalem represent a 
metaphysical claim regarding the ontological uniqueness and 
oneness of the Church.  The Church cannot be other than 
one, because Christ is one.  This uniqueness is not something 
vague, nebulous, or abstract; it is observed and expressed 
clearly when the Church acts to celebrate the sacraments.  I 
subscribe to a view that a serious commitment to God as 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a commitment to sacrament 
and tradition, ask one to believe that the Church embodies 
perhaps the most authentic way for the worship of God - with 
an all-encompassing claim for discipleship.  Christ provides 
us with a center and an anchor point beyond the histories of 
particular communities, and leads us into the fullness of 
human history.  The anchor point He gives us is the Church, 
the home and shape of man's story.
	
The Church puts the Christian inside a community.  Since 
God's covenant in Christ is made with the whole body of His 
people and not with Christians as individuals. The Christian's 
pilgrimage is communal, and cannot take place in isolation.  
The covenant between God and His Church, sealed as it is in 
the loving, uncompelled commitment of sacrament 
celebration, forges an unbreakable bond between 
theonomous persons and the Person of Christ in His 
community, the Church.
	
Although the conceptions of the Church as sacramental 
Pentecost community - place of God's covenant with creation 
in Christ, and destiny of the highest manifestation of that 
covenant, man - has its precedents in the Orthodox catholic 
tradition, they are not the only ecclesiological concepts found 
there.  Contemporary theology has used many models and 
metaphors to expand and explicate the connection between 
God and people in Christ's Body, the Church.  Scholars have 
found the ideas of theologians - Paul Evdokimov, Sergei 
Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, John Zizioulas, Yves Congar, 
Henri de Lubac, and Avery Dulles, amongst others - helpful 
in talking about the Church.  Fundamental ecclesiological 
principles discussed by these thinkers relate not only to 
definitions of the Church's authority, but also and especially 
to the question of God's authority.  This is a matter intimately 
linked to the twin problems of the idea and of the exercise of 
ecclesial authority.
	
God's power to call humankind, through the Church, into the 
covenant made with Israel at Sinai, and to require the 
allegiance of humanity, rest on what God the Son did for us 
on Calvary, His gift of the Spirit to us at Pentecost, and His 
continuing provision for our needs - during our walk in this 
earthly wilderness - in the sacraments.  We are bound to God 
because of what He has done for us in Christ: "But now in 
Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been made near 
by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13).  God's redemption 
and providence establish His right to allegiance - it is a right 
which must, in a sense, be earned.  God does not claim, 
however, the fealty which is His by right.  In the life of Jesus 
of Nazareth, the divine Champion Who assumed all human 
nature into His person, God invites us into the way of 
creative co-partnership, the way of building His kingdom in 
history - an invitation to participate in active discipleship.  
The Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, Who in Jesus 
Christ constitutes the fullness of covenant, offers to 
humankind the way of the Cross - imitation, self-denial, and 
resurrection - and the Church on behalf of humanity accepts 
it.  The Church community walks the pilgrim way both 
because it loves God and appreciates the significance of the 
road which the way charts.  God has the community's belief, 
loyalty, and obedience because tradition lends meaning to its 
relationship with God, and its journey in history.  Imitation of 
Christ, belief, and obedience are not, in my thinking, 
interpreted as the collective price demanded by God the Son 
for what He did in His earthly life, but are themselves signs 
and gifts of God's incarnate love.  As love given and accepted 
cannot be coerced, but perhaps only invited, the community's 
acceptance of the Way - while not independent of Pentecost - 
is not bound by tit-for-tat interpretations of Calvary and the 
Atonement.  Acceptance of the gift of the Way of 
discipleship does not depend on the promise of future reward 
or punishment.  It is a commitment grounded in freedom and 
love, as only it can be.
	
Because the relationship between God and humanity is one 
of love, I find it most adequately and poignantly expressed 
not by monarchical language, but by the biblical metaphor of 
husband and wife.  Marriage, while an eschatological image, 
is also an image of God's love for Israel - it is an invitation to 
intimacy which abolishes the personhood of neither partner.  
The will and commitment to respond to the feelings and 
needs of the other becomes a part of one's own personhood, 
such that there is a communication of idioms between the 
two, which destroys the will of neither.  The marital 
relationship and sacrament - in which persons bless each 
other with mutual affection and accord - is fundamental to, 
and cannot be taken away from, the partners' understanding 
of themselves as persons.  God has "legislated" the autonomy 
of humanity - but it is an autonomy centered and grounded in 
a personal, communal relationship with God.  Marital and 
family relationships involve a fusion of the independent and 
relational aspects of personality - just so, God and Church 
join in a relational bond.  The love of the Church for God is 
such that Christians do not act in isolation, but always in 
consciousness of their intimate tie to the whole of redeemed 
creation.  Christians define themselves as persons through 
their relationship to God, both as a community and as 
individuals, and therefore always live, work, and do, in the 
life-giving presence of the Spirit.  But the Christian path of 
creative co-partnership with God - the destiny of man - is not 
a union with God in which individual self-consciousness is 
swallowed up in a sea of divinity.  Rather  - taking the Person 
of Jesus as model - creative co-partnership with God is a 
communion of, and communication of, traits in which God's 
longing to be human is met by our desire to be divine.  Thus 
seen, one's otherness is not only accepted, but celebrated, as 
a gift of God - and the purpose of one's personhood is the 
discovery of the unique role one has to play in the deification 
of the universe.  Crucial to one's celebration of otherness is 
the responsibility that one has for the discovery of one's part 
in creation. 
	
The images of Christ as Teacher, and of His followers as 
pupils, are complementary metaphors I should like to bring 
forward as being descriptive of the relationship between God 
and His Church.  Christ as Teacher - a figure recognized and 
cherished in the iconography of the Christian faith - is an 
image of encouragement to His disciples to think for 
themselves, and assume responsibility for the way tradition is 
to be understood and practiced.  The fact that the Church not 
only declared that the age of prophecy had ended, but also 
put the lives of Saints Gregory the Illuminator, Gregory of 
Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus on a 
par with the prophets, seems to suggest that the Church has 
certainly as high an appreciation of the role of teacher, as it 
does for the role of prophet.  Christ the Teacher of a group of 
disciples, even today instructing His Pupil the Church 
through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is an ecclesiological and 
Christological metaphor the depths of which have not begun 
to be plumbed.  The figures of God as Husband and as 
Teacher prevent a tit-for-tat system of rewards and 
punishments from operating in the dynamic between God 
and Church.  These are imageries in which the personhood 
and integrity of all covenantal parties is acknowledged; 
walking the pilgrim way, humans are given the gifts of 
personal dignity and of responsibility.  These metaphors 
partially illustrate my understanding of the Pentecost 
covenant as mediated by tradition.
	
In order to do justice to the way Christians have understood 
the community's bond with God, it is essential to go to the 
tradition - built upon the twin foundations of dogma and 
Gospel - and not only to the Bible.  For many centuries, 
Christians committed to the Orthodox catholic faith have 
viewed what the Church thought about Trinity, Jesus Christ, 
the universe, and itself - expressed in its liturgy, iconography, 
sacraments, literature, and councils - as no less valid than 
written Scripture.  Addressing himself to this issue, one 
theologian argued that all Church doctrine and tradition 
existed in embryo in the apostolic teaching, and unfolded and 
was expounded as the need arose.  But how can the Church 
give these things a weight equal to that of the written word of 
God?  What one finds in studying the decisions and 
proceedings of councils, for example, are reasoned 
arguments about the way God, the Church, and the world are 
related.  None of the conciliar proceedings, nor any of the 
Fathers' commentary regarding the subjects of those 
proceedings, begins with the statement "thus says the Lord."  
Unlike the Bible, conciliar texts do not emphasize direct 
intervention by God in contemporary events.  In Scripture, 
God is at the center of the stage on which the drama of the 
redemption and salvation of humanity takes place.  God 
guides, punishes, and responds.  He speaks to humankind 
through His chosen prophets, apostles, and martyrs.  In the 
tradition, however, it is the community, the Body of Christ - 
Christ-Church extending the Second Person of the Trinity 
into the present - through its Fathers and teachers, which 
occupies center space. Yet, despite the fact that there is no 
claim per se to direct revelation in the councils, the reader 
who penetrates beneath the surface of a given discussion 
realizes how deeply God is present, and involved, in the 
councils.
	
Theologians and teachers who devote their lives to the study 
of the tradition show the Church how it is to understand what 
God requires of it. The existence of the tradition contradicts 
the idea that "later" means "spiritually inferior."
	
To accord the tradition equal status with Scripture is to 
augment revelation not merely with a particular body of 
literature or school of teachers, but with a manner of 
interpretation that emphasizes the open-minded possibilities 
of learning from Christ and the Holy Spirit.  The tradition's 
creative style of interpretation gives Christians the freedom 
to apply their own reason, within the realm of grace, to the 
understanding and application of covenant.  For a Christian, 
the meaning of covenant is defined by tradition.

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