By Archpriest John Meyendorff
We cannot speak of Christology and salvation without explaining in more detail the fact that Christ had a body, that His body is now the Church, and that this is, in a certain sense, also the way in which the fulfillment of the messianic hopes of the Old Testament times took shape. We also know that these hopes were shrouded in a peculiar and exciting uncertainty. The Holy Prophet Isaiah, for example, spoke of the suffering servant. These texts of his can be interpreted as having reference both to the Person of the Savior – Christ or the Messiah, and to the New Israel, to His people. Therefore, in the messianic hope of Israel there is also an implied connecting meaning, which says that the Messiah is, in a certain sense, also the people. There is no Messiah without a people, and there is no people without this end – this new identity between divine life and human life, which was discovered in Jesus Christ.
If, therefore, we study in the New Testament the history, especially of the first days of the Church, as they are described in the book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles, we notice there the enormous role that the Holy Spirit plays in these days in a very personal way. In every major event described in the book of Acts, we hear the testimony of the Holy Spirit, who speaks and acts almost visibly. The people could understand whether a particular community or group of people had received the Holy Spirit or not, depending on the visible manifestations or signs – the result of the action of the Spirit. And this is one of the mysterious circumstances that are described in the New Testament.
Now this dedication and this receptivity to the action of the Holy Spirit, which – as we believe – has never ceased in the history of the Church, is, in a sense, already lost to us. In the piety of the Church – both in the East and in the West, this concern for a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit has been largely overshadowed by other aspects of Christocentric and Mariological piety, or by the veneration of the saints. Of course, all these aspects are perfectly justified, but they have overshadowed this very early Christian dedication and this constant sense of the presence – in a particularly personal way – of the Holy Spirit among us as immediate, personal contact with God in the Church.
And yet, the Tradition of the Church, as such, has preserved the role of the Holy Spirit. Here we can immediately recall that in the Byzantine rite, as in all the main traditional successions, from apostolic times to the present day, the Holy Spirit is the One who sanctifies and who is invoked in every major sacramental action. There is a constant reminder of the fact that what makes the Church the Church is precisely the presence of the Holy Spirit. And, of course, as everyone knows, again in the Byzantine rite the prayer to the Holy Spirit – the King of Heaven is also the prayer with which all church services begin. This is why, when the Church gathers together in the Name of Jesus Christ, the first thing she does is to invoke the Holy Spirit, since it is He who – just as at Pentecost – transforms the community of the New Israel into the Body of Christ.
On the spiritual level, on the level of spirituality, we find, especially in the monastic tradition of the East, this specific spirituality of the Spirit, which, for example, can be illustrated so vividly in the case of St. Seraphim of Sarov, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Russia. Insofar as St. Seraphim’s true spirituality was based on the Jesus Prayer, he belonged to the tradition of hesychasm. What has been said is that his spirituality was based on the Incarnate Word. However, one of the descriptions of this Christocentric spirituality that he gave was that it was precisely an invocation of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he described the Christian life as a constant invocation of the Holy Spirit. So what makes Christ present among us is the invocation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes the Church manifest Christ, and this leads us again to a better understanding of salvation itself. The action of the Spirit, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and His constant presence throughout the centuries that followed, make the work of Christ real to us. It is only through the power of the Spirit that the apostles became true, living apostles. They were undoubtedly chosen by Christ. Christ instructed them. He truly made a very personal choice of these twelve men. Yet even the choice by Christ was not sufficient in itself to make them apostles. Even after such a choice, they still did not truly understand what was expected of their ministry. They did not even understand the work of Christ Himself—until the Spirit, fifty days after the Resurrection, came upon them, gave them the gift of speaking in tongues, and made them what they were meant to be. Therefore, without the Holy Spirit none of this would have been possible. The Holy Spirit is the living, active force that calls forth the presence of Christ in this new way of participation in the divine life in which we now participate.
Of course, the Holy Spirit is also the One who is the Spirit of Truth – and He is so according to the words of Christ Himself. He is, therefore, the One who reveals and manifests the truth that is in Christ: “I am… the truth.”[1] The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth who is sent by Christ and who establishes this contact – this reality of Christ’s presence in the Church. Thus, the presence of the Holy Spirit and His activity are the specific aspect of our period of salvation history. First there is the Old Testament – the period of preparation. Then came the work of Christ – the Incarnation and the Redemption. And between the Incarnation and the eschatological consummation – when Christ will be all in all,[2] – lies our present period, during which the Spirit of Truth – the Comforter, the Advocate – abides in us. This inner, spiritual way is the specific way in which God is present among us now. This is also the period during which humanity, each of us, must choose our path. This period is a period of choice and freedom – the period of a freely made decision. Are we with Christ now, or are we against Him? This is also the period of the Church’s mission – this call to the world, addressed by God, with the aim of all men being reunited in the Person of the Messiah, as the people of God. And that is precisely why in the epistles of St. Apostle Paul there is constantly this contrast, which is established between the Spirit as freedom, opposed to the Law of the Old Testament times.
We find one of the greatest manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit in this sacrament, which is par excellence the sacrament of the Holy Spirit – the sacrament of Confirmation, which follows the sacrament of Baptism. How difficult it is to discover the specific role of this sacrament when we approach it rationally. Is it just a matter of some pastoral necessity among Eastern Christians – to confirm them immediately after their baptism, or does Confirmation also have its own specific role in the salvation of each of us? Of course, the fact that theologians have difficulty in defining more clearly the meaning of this sacrament is due to precisely this lack of perspective regarding the role of the Holy Spirit.
The sacrament of the seal of Confirmation is the gift of the Holy Spirit to the individual, and of course there is an appropriate distinction here, which is very common in patristic literature, namely that if Baptism represents in some sense the redemption of human nature, then Confirmation refers primarily to the person. The fruits of the redemption refer to nature itself, but this gift of the fruits of the redemption in relation to human nature also requires a personal acceptance of these fruits. This is also one of the reasons why – and especially in the Western Church – the sacrament of Confirmation is postponed until such time as this personal response can be given. In Eastern practice, the sacrament of Confirmation is inseparable from Baptism, since for the Eastern Church Baptism without full participation in the Body of Christ is something like an incomplete acceptance of the new Christian into the Body of Christ. This consecration must be a simultaneous action leading to the perfection of participation in the sacraments of the Body and Blood of Christ immediately after Baptism. In any case, the gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift to the person – to the hypostasis.
To put it in a concise theological formula – Baptism saves nature, while Confirmation or First Communion is the personal Gift of salvation, the personal binding of the human hypostasis to the Body of Christ. And if we look at this mystery of salvation in the light of theology – for example, the theology of St. Maximus the Confessor – we see how appropriate this formula is. St. Maximus distinguishes the will – or human energy, which belongs to nature, from human nature itself. The human will is by nature free from sin. The human will, which is both in Christ and in us, and in every human nature as such, is not something that needs to be redeemed. The human will is free from sin, in itself, because it is the natural expression of human nature. Sin is situated, so to speak, in what we call the gnomic will, and which corresponds roughly to the notion of free will or liberum arbitrium of Latin theology, which is a specific characteristic of the hypostasis of man that needs redemption. Therefore, what needs the presence of the Holy Spirit is the gnomic will, so that it can become identical in everything with the natural will, which – being by nature such as God created it – follows the will of God. And therefore the union of the Holy Spirit with the personal commitment of the saved person to freedom is something very central to the theology of both the Holy Spirit and the sacrament of Confirmation or First Communion.
If we now look at the relationship that exists between the Holy Spirit and the Church, we must, first of all, realize – as is clear from the New Testament writings – that although the Spirit of freedom is a Gift for the individual who is saved, He is not essentially opposed to order in the Church. Since the time of the Reformation, it has been most common for Protestant anti-institutional theology to oppose the Spirit to order. In the New Testament, however – and especially in St. Apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit is in no way opposed to order. He rather sets the precise criterion of this order. He creates the church order. Order is something that coincides with the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The Spirit is the One who makes each of us the Body of Christ, and each body also has its own structure, organization, order. A body cannot be chaotic. The body is an organic whole. Therefore, this Body, which is created precisely by the Spirit, cannot be in disorder. This very theology of the Body – in its relationship to the Spirit – already presupposes in itself an impossibility of the Holy Spirit being opposed to order. The Spirit is life, and life is in a sense also a matter of organization. And in this way the Holy Spirit is, therefore, also the One who creates the separate functions of the parts of the Body, and maintains each of them in its proper place.
However, this circumstance that the Holy Spirit creates the Body – as a whole – and not simply some individual part of it, means that the Spirit is also the life of the entire Body. Which in turn means that the different functions of the Body, the individual members of this Body are in a situation of interdependence with one another. The laws of the Holy Spirit in the Church are this criterion according to which these interdependencies – of the separate ministries of the different functions in the Body of Christ – are realized.
Now, to illustrate how all this works – at least in the Eastern case, it is important to pay some attention to two phenomena in the history of the Church. The first of these is the function of the prophets in the New Testament. The specific ministry of the prophets is known in the New Testament, where – in the epistles of St. Paul the Apostle – they are constantly mentioned, along with all the other ministries. What we know about these prophets is rather unusual, since they were obviously great non-conformists. They spoke in different tongues, etc., and the Church had some problem with them. St. Paul the Apostle had to insist that everything should be in order; that the Holy Spirit, the true Holy Spirit, does not disrupt order in the Church, but bears witness to it.[3] Nevertheless, the prophets existed in the Church – as a specific charismatic ministry. It is interesting to note that this charismatic ministry disappears in connection with the condemnation of the heresy of Montanism. Montanism is one of those charismatic sects whose charismatic spirit has compromised the positive elements contained in prophecy. One of the unfortunate things about schisms is that when a schism arises, it generally does so in defense of some good element in the existence of the Church, but understood one-sidedly. Then, after the Church has condemned that particular schism, the particular good thing in whose defense it arose disappears with it. And thus the Catholic Church loses, at least a little, of the manifestations of its catholicity. In practice, Montanism discredits prophecy in the Church, and so prophecy disappears as an institution. However, both in the East and in the West, but perhaps more persistently in the East, the form of monasticism remains. Apparently, in monasticism some of the traditions of the ancient prophets are preserved. If we study monasticism, and especially early monasticism in the East, we see that monks in general were much more inclined to affirm freedom – as opposed to church institutions. In the beginning, both in the East and in the West, monasticism was a lay movement. It usually consisted in refusing to accept even the possibility of its leaders being ordained as priests. Over time, monks gradually accepted being ordained and even began to be elected as bishops. And in fact this became one of the great problems of the Eastern Church throughout the fourth and fifth centuries, namely – how to integrate this charismatic movement of the laity into the structure of the Church. There were also several monastic sects similar to Montanism. For example, the Messalians of the fourth century insisted that a true Christian was only one who constantly prayed. Therefore, if one wants to be a Christian, one must be a monk. Priests, bishops, and churches were seen as obstacles to salvation. Thus, the temptation to over-emphasize the charismatic element was an ever-present temptation in the monastic movement. In general, the monastic movement developed as a charismatic prophetic counterpart to the institutionalized, organized, legalized Church of the Byzantine Empire, especially after Justinian (527-565). Once integrated into church life, however, this prophetic element preserved—and still preserves—something of its prophetic charismatic function.
Sometimes in the history of the Orthodox Church and in the history of its spirituality, we can be perplexed by the role assigned there to the charismatic, to the saint, to the elder. From figures such as St. Simeon the New Theologian of the eleventh century, who – as abbot of one of the monasteries of Constantinople – without asking the permission of the Patriarchate, unexpectedly decided to canonize his former abbot. In practice, this was an old tradition of the ancient monastic communities, which, however, in Byzantium in the eleventh century was already difficult to continue, but he fought for it. He also fought for the preservation of a form of confession that was practiced by the laity, which, however, in the eleventh century already created theological problems of a sacramental nature. Other similar examples appear in the fourteenth century, when hesychasm flourished as the dominant form of spirituality throughout the Byzantine Empire. The monks of Mount Athos will proclaim the Tomos of Mount Athos, which contains their beliefs with an emphasis on the charismatic, non-institutionalized, eschatological life as the true and only way to await the Kingdom of God – something that will often enough be opposed to the church authority. And they will insist that it is they – as monks – who have been personally initiated into these truths, and that the Church, if it also wants to be in the truth, is obliged to follow them. I do not think that there was any desire in their minds to weaken the authority of the bishops, but there was certainly one among them a feeling that the One who creates the different functions of the Body in the Church is the Holy Spirit; that He is the One who makes the bishops bishops and the apostles apostles. And that the Holy Spirit is the One who helps them to see God.
We can therefore see how at least one case of conflict between the opinion of the bishops and that of the saints can become a problem. It is not absolutely certain, unless you believe in the infallibility of the bishop, that the bishop is right and the saint is wrong. And this kind of tension between what modern theology calls institution and event is felt throughout the history of the Church. In Protestant theology this opposition is too often exaggerated, in which the institution is almost identified with sin. Insofar as we believe that the institution, that the sacramental structure of the Church is also a fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit, this is wrong. However, between the freedom of man, between the personal free decision that each of us makes at the moment when he receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and the structural elements of the Church, there is also a correlation, and sometimes a necessary tension. The Holy Spirit is given not simply to the individual, but to the entire Body of the Church. It would be equally wrong, therefore, to conceive of the Church as an institution in which the Holy Spirit acts exclusively through its hierarchy, and equally wrong to fall into Montanism or Messalianism and believe that only the saints are destined to lead the Church.
In our age, which is situated between the First and Second Comings of the Lord, there is necessarily a tension between these two elements. The very life of the Church in this world presupposes and contains this tension. And this leads us to the conviction – at least in the Orthodox Church – that the Spirit is the only active force that sustains the Church, being in the Church and confirming it in the apostolic faith. In order to understand, in a corresponding way, the Orthodox position on this issue, it is important to remember the entire background of Christology, anthropology and spirituality that I have tried to outline above.
One of the fundamental intuitions of Eastern Christianity – and, of course, the later Byzantine theologians and modern Orthodox theologians particularly insist on it – is that Christianity is essentially a direct contact with God, an experience, a free experience, which is given in Baptism and Confirmation, first of all through the sacramental belonging of each of us to the Body of Christ. Christianity is not blind obedience. It is not just integration into some institution. It is not simply obedience or acceptance of some law. Above all, it is a vision of God. Every page of the New Testament is filled with this idea. All the charismatic movements in the history of the Church claim the same thing, sometimes becoming a problem for the Church itself. However, this problem is solved when their view of Christianity – as a vision of God – is understood as a reflection on the view of the sacraments and the Church – as a sacramental Body. Here I can quote St. Gregory Palamas, who, defending the spirituality of the fourteenth-century hesychasts, based his argument precisely on the fact that these hesychasts could claim to see God because they had previously been baptized and received communion in the Church. Thus, when Barlaam asked how these monks were able to see God themselves, St. Gregory Palamas replied that every Christian could see God within himself because through Baptism he had received the Holy Spirit and because he received the sacrament of Communion. Why then are the hesychasts not capable of this? Thus, immediate vision – even in this present life – is Palamas’ defense of the sacramental nature of the Church – as opposed to the Neoplatonic notion of the natural divinity of the soul. This means just as clearly that there is an objective reality, a sacramental reality in the Church, which makes Christians Christians, which makes this vision of God possible in Christ. St. Gregory, however, is also a very strong defender of the view that the saints, those who actually see God in this life, have something to say also regarding what is true and what is not. And these prophets or these saints are responsible for the maintenance of both the authentic Tradition and the well-being of the whole Body of the Church. And this essential and first intuition of the Christian faith – as an immediate vision of God, which is therefore also responsible and free, and represented in all the faithful – laity, priests and deacons, and every member of the Body of Christ in general – is an important element, and probably the very foundation of the Orthodox understanding of the Church.
Thus, the maintenance and preservation of the Church in the truth is also a miracle of God’s faithfulness to us – sinners, since without a doubt these gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to people who are incapable of fully understanding them. No human being is able to see and realize in its entirety all that which God, in Christ, reveals to each of us, personally. However, this entirety and this fullness continue to be bestowed and to abide in the Church through the Gift of the Holy Spirit.
All of us – both Orthodox and Roman Catholics – agree in our understanding that the Church is a miracle in history, regardless of the shortcomings of its members.
The most important aspect of the debate – not only between Roman Catholics and Orthodox, but also between Orthodox Protestants – is the problem of the criterion that testifies to when the Holy Spirit acts as the Spirit of truth. How are we to understand whether this bishop or this council, this saint or this prophet is in the truth? Of course, the whole history of Western Christianity – and, again, here we must include the Protestant world – can be understood as a search for spiritual certainty. We are all searching for this criterion that will allow us to have the confidence that one or another action of the Holy Spirit – in truth – is infallibly guaranteed to us and therefore we can be sure of it. The great dispute between East and West is that Orthodoxy has not followed the West in the way it has developed the resolution of this question. And the reason why the Orthodox East did not follow these developments is that in the East they perceived that the recognition of some external criterion – be it the See of Rome or the Bible – seemed to weaken this whole idea of the vision of God which is given to all the members of the Body, in accordance with the individual role of each of them in the Church. Truth – as such – is something which does not need any external criterion in order to be true. My feeling is that the difficulty here can be understood simply by the help of common sense. It is quite clear that if we simply face the problem of religion and faith in a universal way, forgetting our schisms and divisions, then it becomes obvious that true, authentic religion must be the free acceptance of an initiation. No true religion is the blind acceptance of some external criterion. And therefore the reason we are Buddhists, Roman Catholics or Pentecostals is because we want to be. The majority of people belong to a religious faith because they were born and raised in it, but true Christians or true Buddhists are those who freely embrace their religious beliefs. But what is it that makes them believe that their beliefs or their allegiance and their participation in the Godhead are the true ones? That they see them as true. They see that they have the truth, and they commit themselves to that truth as absolute. Of course, an existentialist will tell you that for this very reason there is no objective truth. That everything is individual and subjective. But as Christians we know that our religion is a commitment to Jesus Christ, to the One who is objectively the Son of God. Therefore, in this respect we cannot accept any kind of relativism. But the fact of the relationship between objective truth and personal commitment – its personal perception – is something that is beyond doubt.
The search for the criterion in the West – as I have described it – contains within itself a desire for certainty, which is understandable, since it is contained in the very idea of law. And indeed, the argument in favor of this – and I understand it perfectly – is that law is a natural element of the visible world. No society can live without law. Without law no organization would survive – and the Church would not survive without the law either. Until the eschatological end at the end of time, our knowledge will always be incomplete. And the experience of the saints, to which I referred, is incomplete until the Second Coming. Therefore, the law is something that helps the sinful nature of man to establish itself in the truth. At the time of the eschatological end, there will no longer be any canonical law, nor any criterion. We will all see God.
Until then, however, the law will remain necessary. Perhaps the problem here can ultimately be reduced to a debate about a more or less “realized” eschatology. There are those who profess the belief that the Kingdom of God is already among us and that it is a Kingdom of freedom. This Kingdom is what makes the Church the Church. Now it can impose requirements, have canon law and criteria that help human beings to be in it. However, these criteria are secondary and peripheral, since they aim to manifest this reality of the Kingdom, not to be its substitute, and they can never be absolute. The canons of the Church are ways of expressing the principled presence of the Kingdom among people and help the members of the Body of Christ to stay together, but they can never replace the truth itself. The laws must express the truth. In past centuries, these peripheral questions have been debated for their own sake, while the real questions have been left in the dark. Perhaps our contemporary situation – and, I would say, even more particularly our situation here in America – is particularly conducive to a new dialogue, because we speak the same language and understand each other much better than our ancestors did. Just a hundred and fifty years ago, this modern dialogue would have been physically impossible, because then people spoke different languages and lived in different worlds. Therefore, for us, this is a tremendous opportunity that has been given to us.
In the past, for example, the Orthodox have always perceived the Eastern Rite Roman Catholics as some kind of war machine directed against Orthodoxy. They were an example of something that the Orthodox did not want to become. If, however, this were to change, if, contrary to the above, the Uniate Churches could help both sides to understand that the real issue is not the liturgy or the petty regulations of Latinization or de-Latinization, but that the problem is really how we can be truly Christians, then they would be of great benefit to the ecumenical dialogue. Now, of course, the issue here is particularly sensitive, since the emphasis on liturgical rites and regulations, as well as on making the Byzantine Rite as Orthodox as possible, could become ends in themselves, and then lose their ecumenical significance.
In this effort, which must of course be made on both sides, we – the Orthodox – must realize that the question of papal supremacy and of Roman ecclesiology is not simply a question of seeking power. That it is also a certain understanding of Revelation itself, even if we do not share this understanding. We agree that, out of love for humanity, God created the organized Church – to help sinners enter His Kingdom. We do not agree only on the form of this organization. We must, therefore, avoid irrelevant polemics. On both sides we must realize the real issues, and especially the one that has to do with the Holy Spirit – in his relation to human freedom – and thus somehow realize in ourselves those fruits of the action of the Holy Spirit which we have all received.
Source: Meyendorff, J. “The Holy Spirit in the Church”. – In: John XXIII Lectures, Vol. 1: Byzantine Christian Heritage, NY: Fordham University Press 1966, pp. 68-75.
[1] See John 14:6.
[2] See 1 Cor. 15:28.
[3] See, for example, 1 Cor. 14:29-40.
