St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 60:1-2 (2016), 171188

The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora

An Observers Point of View

Ivana Noble1

The theme of my presentation raises a challenge: how is it possible

to observe a future that does not yet exist, except perhaps only in
nuce? To what degree can we make a guess to answer this question
on the basis of the insights we have gained from having observed
what is now past? Father John Behr, quoting Kierkegaard, reminds
us: We only understand life backwards, but we must live forwards.2
Understanding backwards, as Jacques Derrida rightly notes, means
that we own presence only in reflection. We understand it when
it is no longer here, retrospectively, or to use Derridas language,
in its absence. We could say that in the absence we create a fiction
about what was here. At the same time, however, it belongs to the
open dialectics of understanding that the new life that is becoming
present always provides a critique to our fictions. It breaks certainties
that were fixed and thus deprived of the dynamics of life.3 At the
same time, it includes all that is pastnow in our reflection.4 This
1 This paper is a part of the research project Symbolic Mediation of Wholeness in
Western Orthodoxy, GAR P401/11/1688.
2 See John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press,
2006), 15.
3 The dynamic notion of tradition and its certainties is not alien to Orthodoxy. We can
consider Gregory of Nyssas work with the Pauline notion of epektasis and how this
re-emerged, e.g., in the theology of Fr Dumitru Stniloae, for whom the whole of
creation is in a dynamic stage of becoming, and the life and change are in their entire
movement related to God. See Dumitru Stniloae, The Experience of God: The Or-
thodox Dogmatic Theology 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God (Brookline,
MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), 12, 203, 206, etc.
4 See Jacques Derrida, How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, in Derrida and Negative
Theology, H. Coward & T. Foshay, eds. (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1992), 74142. Derrida presents here a critique of what he calls metaphysics
of presence. He says that we live in the illusion of positing presence in events. Yet

171

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 171 12/22/2015 10:26:41 AM

 172 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

is how I will try to speak about the Orthodox diaspora, looking at

how the memories of the past can be accepted and healed and how
Orthodoxy in the West can move forward toward a more plentiful
life.
Speaking of memories, we need to be aware that each one of them
is multi-layered and as such has an impact on living forward or on
the decision to live backwards. And this includes the very concept
of the diaspora. In my paper, I will start by looking at where and
how these reflected memories show the presence of the Orthodox
in the West in terms of the diaspora and in terms of the local church,
and ask what this difference can mean for the forms of life and
mission carried toward the future. Then I will consider the problem
of a multiplicity of jurisdictions while looking at the political and
ethnic aspects of the fragmentation of Orthodoxy in the light of the
diverse memories of past belonging and deprivations.
I will look more closely at the assumption that the Orthodox
diaspora was formed by a sense of shared religion and shared
experiences of marginalization in the former homelands of the
Orthodox coming to the West. Then I will consider the spiritual
and theological heritage that has been formative for Orthodoxy in
the West, especially the renewal movements in pre-revolutionary
Russia. Here I will ask how, and in what sense, understanding these
and participating in their discoveries helps Orthodoxy in the West
to open space for new life or, to use Florovskys phrase, to move
forward to the tradition,5 and how they can move toward the future,
assuming that there can be theological and spiritual uniformity.
In the conclusion I will try to identify some key areas that in my
view remain vital, even after the plural process of the rooting of
Orthodoxy in the West has largely succeeded.

for experiencing and understanding of events we need to see them in their absence.
Because their absence helps to reconstitute their presence in reflection, it makes an
appropriation of what was present possible. On the other hand, presence provides us
with a permanent destruction of our fictions about what was present.
5 See George Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology I (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publish-
ing Company, 1979), xviii.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 172 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 173

Diaspora or the Local Church?

The spiritual, ecclesial, and theological life of the Orthodox in the
West can best be compared to a cloth woven from many different
threads, a fabric that does not have one dominant color or material,
one which has to negotiate constantly how to sustain its plurality
along with some kind of unity. Giving space to both sides of this
open dialectics is, in my view, vital for a move from being diaspora
to becoming a local church. For an understanding of who the
Orthodox in the West have been, it is also necessary to remember
that those who came in through different circumstances brought
with them different models of establishing Orthodoxy in a new
territory, as well as different models of relationship with regard to
the mother churches.
The first type of groups that started to settle in Western Europe
were economic and political immigrants, coming from the
beginning of the 18th century. They saw it as natural to establish
their ethnic churches.6 Despite the fact that their choice of
resettlement was more or less a free choice, home in a deeper, and
often idealized, sense remained somewhere else than where they
lived. These groups contributed to what can be called the Orthodox
diaspora in the West. Even here, though, we need to be aware that
the ancient concept of the diaspora needs to be transposed for at
least two reasons: first it cannot refer to a territory among the
barbarians, about which Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon
speaks, and which according to that canon automatically falls
under the jurisdiction of Constantinople.7 In modern times, the
Orthodox came to countries with a long Christian tradition and
brought with them different home-oriented Orthodox traditions.

6 See Tim Noble, Pravoslavn misie vAmerice a zpadn Evrop ped rokem 1920,
in Cesty pravoslavn teologie ve 20. stolet na Zpad, Ivana Noble, Kateina Bauerov,
Tim Noble & Parush Parushev, eds. (Brno: CDK, 2012), 14856.
7 The full text of the canon and the discussion concerning its hermeneutics and
application can be found in John Erickson, Chalcedon Canon 28: Yesterday and
Today, accessed August 28, 2012, http://www.svots.edu/content/chalcedon-canon-
28-yesterday-and-today.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 173 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 174 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

This takes me to the second point. The notion of diaspora needs

to be changed from singular to plural, as there was not only one
diaspora and one jurisdiction, that of Constantinople, but rather
an emerging non-canonical multiplicity of jurisdictions in one
territory, something that has caused ongoing disagreements within
Orthodoxy. This anomaly started already with the first arrivals but
then exploded when hundreds of thousands of political emigrants
fled, or were deported, to the West from Russia after the Revolution.8
The Orthodox in the West, when looking back more than forward,
developed polarized notions of home and the West as strategies for
preserving their home cultures and their versions of Orthodoxy as
something that should not change. Bringing home abroad also had
its positive side. We must not forget the most valuable contributions
of those who in modern times brought with them the fruits of the
multi-layered renewal process in pre-revolutionary Russia and vitally
contributed to the vision of pan-Orthodoxy, dialogue with Western
Christianity, and to various forms of Western intellectual and
cultural life. We need to remember Nikolai Berdyaevs circles, which
for the first time brought the Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants
into dialogue in France;9 Fr Sergius Bulgakovs pastoral expression
of all-in-one that can be traced through his influence as spiritual
father to various people who often stood on the edge of their own
tradition; Mother Maria Skobtsovas and Fr Dimitri Klepinins
care for the Jews; Vladimir Losskys and the Kovalevsky brothers
vision of Orthodox tradition with its spiritual depth in the Western
culture; Fr George Florovskys, Fr Alexander Schmemanns, and Fr
John Meyendorff s notion of the new mission in the West and their

8 From Greece there were mainly economic migrants, as indeed was the case with the
Balkans and Arab countries. The main migration to the United States took place in
roughly the thirty years from 18901920. Only with Yugoslavs moving to Germany
is there a really substantial migration postSecond World War, and then perhaps
again movements after 1989.
9 See Tim Noble, Springtime in Paris: Orthodoxy Encountering Diverse Others Be-
tween the Wars (paper presented at the XVII Academic Consultation of the So-
cietas Oecumenica: Dialogue inside-out: Ecumenism encounters other religions,
Belfast, August 25, 2012).

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 174 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 175

work toward the shift from diaspora to the local church expressed
in the Orthodox Church in America.
The self-understanding of American Orthodoxy in terms of
the local church was helped by its reflection on its origins, which
were different from Western European Orthodoxy. Memories of
the enculturated Alaskan mission can help the church in living
forward with a hope that the Spirit in co-operation with the spirited
people can bring new life in an unexpected measure, as happened
when the monks from the Valaam monastery defended the rights
of the poor, included the local culture into liturgy, iconography,
music, and canon law, and insisted on local theological education
to enable the native people to administer their church.
This transforming hope is needed, for today in neither Western
Europe nor North America can we speak only of the local church.
The multiplicity of the ethnic churches, and their remaining
in the status of diaspora, or rather diasporas, as they bring with
themselves the non-canonical multiplicity of jurisdictions in
one territory, brings the two models of the Orthodox presence
in the West into an ongoing tension. It seems that the future of
Orthodoxy in the West largely depends on if and how this tension
will be dealt with.
Problem of Parallel Jurisdictions
The non-canonical existence of parallel jurisdictions in the West
has been motivated both politically and ethnically. The political
impact could be seen in the Greek Archdiocese in America, which
around the time of its establishment was divided between royalists
and Venizelists,10 but most of all in the tensions among those who
emigrated from Russia, beginning with ROCOR11 being placed
under the recently re-installed Serbian patriarchate,12 whose anti-

10 See Katerina Bauerova and Tim Noble, Cesty od diaspory kmstnm crkvm, in
Cesty pravoslavn teologie ve 20. stolet na Zpad (Brno: CDK, 2012), 23740.
11 The synod of the part of the Orthodox hierarchy gathered at Sremsky Karlovtsy in
19211922 formed the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR).
12 For the restoration of the Serbian Patriarchate, see Radomir Popovich, Serbian

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 175 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 176 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Communist and politically right-wing monarchist program,

including an oath to restore autocratic tsarism and the dynasty
of the Romanovs in Russia, was not acceptable for other parts of
the Russian emigration. Metropolitans Evlogy in Western Europe
and Platon in the United States, who also wished to protect the
Russian Orthodox emigrants from the reach of a church forced into
loyalty to the Communist regime, had no desire to participate in
re-establishing tsarist autocracy. In their view tsarism was at least
partly responsible for the social and political collapse of Russia.
After complicated negotiations, the Metropolitanate based in
Paris moved under the patriarchate of Constantinople,13 and the
Metropolitanate in the United States proclaimed independence
and struggled for autocephaly, which was reached in 1970.14
There were also those who felt bound to faithfulness to the
Moscow Patriarchate, who, while distancing themselves from the
pro-Communist proclamations of their mother church, had no
wish to leave the church in a time of need, and for whom political
reasons were not a sufficient justification for such a decision.15
While one can understand why the extreme political situation
Orthodox Church in History (Beograd: Artprint, 2005), 1019, 9093; Jan Rychlk,
Mezi Vdn a Caihradem 1 (Praha: Vyehrad, 2009), 3031.
13 This was a reaction to the Proclamation of Loyalty to the communist government
signed by Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii) in 1927. There was a brief reuniting
with the Moscow Patriarchate after the war, but with the following Stalinist policies
the Metropolitanate returned under Constantinople where it remains until now. See
Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 19171982, Vol.
I (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984), 108.
14 See The Tomos of Autocephaly. Tomos of Alexis, by the Mercy of God, Patriarch of
Moscow and All Russia (10.4.1970), http://www.oca.org/DOCtomos.asp?SID= 12.
15 In Western Europe, as well as in America, hierarchs were installed representing the
Moscow patriarchate as well. Among the figures that belonged under this jurisdiction
we find Berdyaev, Vladimir Lossky, Leonid Ouspensky, the Kovalevsky brothers,
and the Institute of St Denys till 1953, when, taking the Institute with them, the
Kovalevskys left to start the Orthodox Church of France, which since then has
changed jurisdictions several times. See A Propos de lEglise Catholique Orthodoxe
de France, Questions poses par six thologiens orthodoxes (Pre Cyrille Argenti,
Pre Boris Bobrinskoy, Olivier Clment, Michel Evdokimov, Nicolas Lossky,
Jean Tchekan), Supplment au Service Orthodoxe de Presse (SOP) 39 ( June 1979):
document 39.A, 118.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 176 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 177

caused non-standard solutions, and why pastoral care for the

emigrants took precedence over the principle of canonical
territoriality, it is also important to ask why the solutions from
the time of crisis remained, and furthermore why, after the fall of
Communism, there is even more jurisdictional fragmentation than
before.16
Besides the political reasons for the parallel jurisdictions, there
are also ethnic reasons. According to Archimandrite Grigorios
Papathomas, ethnophyletism is the greatest heresy of modern
times, breaking church communion and divinizing concerns that
are not ultimate ones.17 While I agree with his point, it seems to
me that when looking at the ethnically motivated jurisdictional
anomalies, instead of the more common criticisms of the modern
understanding of the nation that served as a secular replacement
of the bond of unity given by belonging to the church, it may be
helpful to look at the pre-modern sources of the problem.
To understand the memories of marginalization and their impact
on the current situation, we need to go back as far as the Byzantine
missions, where two models were competing with each other: one
based on a desire to build new local churches as equal to the mother
church; and the other making the new Christianized territories
ecclesially and politically dependent on an idealized source of
true identity.18 As a result of such politics, we find already at the
turn of the 12th and 13th centuries the Bulgarians and the Serbs
struggling for political liberation and ecclesial independence. The
Patriarchate in Constantinople represented for them not only a

16 See Tim Noble and Kateina Bauerov, Cesty od diaspory kmstnm crkvm, in
Cesty pravoslavn teologie ve 20. stolet na Zpad (Brno: CDK, 2012), 25457.
17 Archim. Grigorios Papathomas, In the Age of the Post-Ecclesiality (The emergence
of post-ecclesiological modernity), Kanon 19 (2006): 321.
18 The mission to Russia, unlike the mission of Cyril and Methodius, was much more
linked with territorial control. From the 11th century, then, in the Slav territories be-
longing under the Patriarchate in Constantinople, the weakened Byzantine Empire
utilized a Hellenizing church politics and made sure that only Greeks were allowed
to hold high church offices. See Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, History of Eastern
Europe: Crisis and Change, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 7273.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 177 12/22/2015 10:26:42 AM

 178 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

spiritual and ecclesial foundation, but also a power forcing them into
submission and into accepting an unequal position in the Byzantine
commonwealth, making them inferior to the Greeks.19 Memories of
inequality also come from the period of Ottoman oppression, and
thus I disagree with the interpretation of the past that under the
Ottoman yoke there was a shared experience of marginalization
for the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and others it would often be memories
of a double marginalization, the Ottoman one and the Greek one.
Accepting and understanding these memories of inequality is vital
for a healthy moving forward, as without such a healing process
they will continue to bring bitterness and mistrust into the inner-
Orthodox conversation both in the East and in the West.20
Healthy moving and living forward here may mean that the
understanding of backward may need what Vladimir Lossky calls
the apophatic attitude. Lossky speaks about this attitude at a
personal level, in terms of metanoia, the change of heart, in which
repentance of the human person before the face of the living God
19 This discrimination was so strongly felt that until the Byzantines decided to give the
status of Patriarchate to Serbia and renew the Patriarchate in Bulgaria, the Bulgarians
and the Serbs both considered union with the Western papacy. See John Meyendorff,
Byzantinum and the Rise of Russia (CambridgeLondonNew York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 7. Serbia gained the status of patriarchate in 1219, and the
Bulgarian patriarchate was renewed in 1235. Compare to Popovich, Serbian Or-
thodox Church in History, 1019; (),
, , . ,
(: , 1980), 1621, at 1718;
, -, , . ,
(: ,
1980), 8385.
20 We need to recognize that the Orthodox Church, whether in the traditional
Orthodox lands or in the West, will not move beyond ethnocentric discourse until, as
Pantelis Kalaitzidis says, it abandons any illusion of returning to Byzantine theocracy,
or any other romantic, anti-modern idea of Christian society, like Holy Russia, the
sacralized Balkan monarchies, etc. I agree with his analysis, pointing out that not only
political preference is at stake here, but that the fact they touch upon the Churchs
understanding of the ultimate, stating that theocracy and neo-nationalism are but sec-
ularized forms of eschatology, Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology
(Geneva: WCC, 2012), 136. Kalaitzidis further refers here to Nicolas Berdyaev, Realm
of the Spirit and Realm of Cesar (London: Victor Gollancz, 1952), 71.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 178 12/22/2015 10:26:43 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 179

includes letting go of idols, of our partial images of reality that used

to claim completeness but could not deliver it, of our attitudes that
were based in this false knowledge but also of despondency, and of
eliminating the living God from the spaces of our grief. The apophatic
attitude as a tendency towards an ever-greater plenitude, revealed
and rendered by its Mystagogue, the Holy Spirit, 21 can be, in my
view, sought and prayed for also at a communal level. It can be an
antidote to the politics of domination, or, as Aristotle Papanikolaou
calls it, the politics of bullying, whether past or present, in which
harm was done on a larger scale, by states and churches relating to
others from a superior identity construct and as a result provoking
anger, fear, or hatred.22
It seems that while there is no easy solution to the problem of
the politically and ethnically motivated jurisdictional multiplicity,
cultivation of the apophatic attitude as highlighted above can
help in the kind of living forward that would allow for the letting
go of hurts held against the guilty other, as well as being forgiven.
Work that can be done at the spiritual and pastoral level can then
shed a new light on the theological and canonical debate.
Paths beyond Theological and Spiritual Uniformity
In this final part I want to talk about a paradox that lies in the fact
that while looking at the canonical situation of Orthodoxy in the
West there seems to be plurality without unity, while looking at
the theological landscape, with some exceptions, there seems to be
uniformity without plurality. Of course, this is a grave simplification,
but in it there may be some elements with which are worth engaging.
I will concentrate on the separation of the neo-patristic school from
other forms of renewal that used to be integrally connected to it.23
21 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James
Clark & Co., 2005), 23839.
22 See Aristotle Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical
Orthodoxy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 19798.
23 The Russian monastery of Optina, where Hesychasm was practiced from the end of
18th century, became in the 19th century also an important center of intellectual life.
Its library contained writings of St Paisii Velichovskii, usually his own first editions,

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 179 12/22/2015 10:26:43 AM

 180 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

These included Hesychasm, Slavophilism, Christian attempts to

stimulate social reform, and, especially, Sophiology.24 In the West a

manuscripts of the homilies of St Isaac the Syrian, the personal library of the Elder
Macarius, as well as copies of the old Slavic translations of St Macarius the Great,
St John Climacus, St Barsanuphius and John, edited by Paisii himself, homilies and
catechetical works by St Maximus the Confessor, texts by St Theodore the Studite
translated from modern Greek, homilies by St Gregory Palamas and other Hesychast
writings. In 1845 a great translation work started there, initiated by Ivan Vasilievich
Kireevskii, a proponent of Savophilism, who converted to Orthodoxy, together with
his spiritual father Macarius, under the protection of Philaret, the Metropolitan of
Moscow. At the end of the 18th century, the history of the early church was brought
back into theology as an alternative to Neo-Scholasticism by Methodii Smirnoff,
a rector of the Kiev Academy. Half a century later, the archbishop of Chernigov,
Philaret (Gumilevskii) together with his former teacher Korunskii initiated a sys-
tematic plan of translating the patristic corpus. In the Moscow Academy, the Greek
Fathers of the 4th7th centuries were translated, and in the St Petersburg Academy
the early church histories and Byzantine chronicles, Eastern and Western liturgies,
a large portion of the works of St John Chrysostom and Theodore the Studite. The
Kiev Academy translated the Latin Fathers, and the Kazan Academy documents
from the Ecumenical Councils, local councils from the patristic period, apocrypha,
as well as Origen, Hippolytus, and Gregory the Great. A journal Pravoslavnoe ob-
rozenie followed with translations of pre-Nicene texts, and various Oriental scholars
added their translations of Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopian manuscripts. Phil-
aret wrote the first patrology ( , 1859) and
twenty years later it was accompanied by the history of the Russian church by the
Metropolitan of Moscow, Makarii Bulgakov ( , 1879). Their
pupils then published small monographs dedicated to the particular Fathers. Thanks
to this multilayered effort in Russia at the end of the 19th century, new possibilities
coming from the ancient sources appeared, which included questions such as how
to follow the Church Fathers in responding to the social problems of their time. See
, (Paris: YMCA Press, 1998), 50; Fr Leo-
nid Kavelin, Elder Macarius of Optina (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brother-
hood, 1995), 15875; Aidan Nichols, Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fa-
thers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanasev (18931966) (CambridgeNew YorkPort
Chester: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15.
24 The contribution of each of the currents was analyzed in Ivana Noble, Rusk pra-
voslav vstupujc do modern doby, Cesty pravoslavn teologie ve 20. stolet na Z-
pad (Brno: CDK, 2012), 85107; it was also addressed in more detail in the group
presentation of Ivana Noble, Tim Noble, Parush Parushev and Kateina Bauerov
Going forward to the Roots: The Problem of Pre-Eschatological Absolute Refer-
ence Points and their critique in Orthodox Ecclesiology in XXth Century (Russian)
diaspora, (paper presented at Where We Dwell in Common: Pathways for Dialogue
in the 21st Century, Assisi, April 20, 2012).

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 180 12/22/2015 10:26:43 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 181

conflict arose between what Fr Florovsky called the Russian religious

Renaissance, which he characterized as a pseudomorphosis of
tradition,25 and neo-patristics. Plurality was replaced by synthesis: a
negative synthesis of the Russian religious Renaissance, under which,
except for Hesychasm, all other streams were classified; and a positive
synthesis of the Fathers, where space for the particularity of the
contribution of each of them and for the tensions and disagreements
among different voices was at risk of disappearing.
With notable exceptions, such as Vladimir Lossky or Dumitru
Stniloae, the neo-patristic synthesis became the new via
affirmativa, or we could even say a new scholasticism in an
Orthodox key, promising a distinct Orthodox identity in polemics
with the West and with modernity. The current generation of
Orthodox theologians, such as Fr John Behr, Aristotle Papanikolau,
or Pantelis Kalaitzidis, have provided detailed and sharp criticisms
of such identity building.26 What still needs to be done, in my view,
is the recovery of the lost plurality.
Living forward here needs to also include understanding the
good things that the neo-patristic turn brought, beginning with the
25 Florovsky took the actual concept of the Russian religious renaissance from Nico-
las Zernov (see Nicolas Zernov, The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth
Century (New York: Harper&Row, 1963), but he gave it a new, negative meaning.
Especially Slavophilism and Sophiology were for him examples of giving up tradition
for the sake of modernity, hence he speaks of pseudomorphosis. Russian religious
philosophy for him represented a history of errors, and this view was largely accepted
by other representatives of the neo-Patristic school, such as Fr Alexander Schme-
mann, or, to a lesser degree Fr John Meyendorff or Vladimir Lossky. See Florovsky,
Ways of Russian Theology 1 (Belmont: Nordland, 1979), xviixviii. For an account
of the conflict between Fr Florovsky and the so-called Russian religious renaissance,
see Andrew Blane, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual and Orthodox Churchman
(Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1993), 6068; 11011.
26 See, e.g., John Behr, Faithfulness and Creativity, in Abba: The Tradition of Ortho-
doxy in the West, John Behr, Andrew Louth, & Dimitri Conomos, eds. (Crestwood,
NY: SVS Press, 2003), 15977; Aristotle Papanikolaou, Tradition or Identity
Politics: The Role of the West in Contemporary Orthodox Theology, Theologia
34 (2010): 1825; Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Between the Return to the Fathers and
the need for a Modern Orthodox Theology, SVTQ 54.1 (2010): 536; especially
at 78; Challenges of Renewal and Reformation Facing the Orthodox Church,
Ecumenical Review 61.2 (2009): 13664.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 181 12/22/2015 10:26:43 AM

 182 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

attention given to the actual detailed study of the Church Fathers,

which in fact provided antidotes to uniformity. There the synthesis was
counter-balanced with paradox, namely affirmation of the apophatic
way toward the mystery of God. The orientation toward liturgy, and
especially toward the eucharistic celebration, gave foundations to a
non-legalistic, communion-based, and eschatological ecclesiology
and liturgical spirituality. Historical perspective was complemented
by an eschatological one. I could go on.
At the same time we need to say that what has been discovered as
the main strength of Orthodoxy by the neo-patristic school became in
isolation also its main weakness. The eschatological perspective without
the historical one tended toward mythology, liturgical spirituality
without the practical engagement for the poor and marginalized became
ungrounded, and mystical theology without reflection of the political
use and abuse of Orthodoxy became unreal. In the detailed study of the
Fathers, there was a lack of critical awareness of ones own choice of the
figures and themes that were included in the synthesis; for those that
were excluded, a more solid work with the patristic interpretation of the
Scriptures was often missing, and insufficient attention was given to the
less attractive themes in the Church Fathers, such as implicit and explicit
anti-Judaism or the demonization of women. These areas present a
challenge for Orthodox theology in the 21st century, both in the East
and in the West.
An expansion of what is seen as the Orthodox theological heritage
can help here, including the re-evaluation of the legacy of other
currents of renewal that became temporarily marginalized. This
process has already begun27 but, in my view, needs to be taken further.
It has already brought some very helpful insights. For example,
Hesychasm, despite the fact that it was studied at the Western
27 See, e.g., the curriculum of St Vladimirs Seminary, where Fr John Behr and Peter
Bouteneff teach theology not as an abstract synthesis but through the contextual
reading of the Fathers and through the plural development of 20th-century theology
and religious thought, or the programs of Volos Academy where Western Orthodox
thinkers are regularly engaged, or the interesting new series of lectures on Modern
Orthodox Theology at the Amsterdam Centre for Eastern Orthodox Theology.
These are just a few examples of more profound changes.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 182 12/22/2015 10:26:43 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 183

seminaries theologically, and that Fr Florovsky and FrMeyendorff

contributed most valuable studies that we gratefully use until now,
was not, with exceptions,28 accompanied by a Hesychast spiritual
practice during the first two generations of post-Revolution
emigrants. In fact, liturgical spirituality pushed away Hesychast
spirituality. This has at least changed thanks to places like St John
the Baptist Monastery in Essex and others, where living forward
means striving for the unity of spiritual, intellectual, and social life.
Likewise, we can see that the Slavophile movement did not die out
with the ideology of pan-Slavism.29 Khomiakovs notion of sobornost
partly found its new expression through Fr Afanasievs eucharistic
ecclesiology and then in Fr Schmemanns liturgical ecclesiology.
Nevertheless, in my view, Khomiakovs mystical anthropology
and ecclesiology combining mutual love and freedom,30 as well as
Kireevskiis notion of integral knowledge bringing together the
scientific approaches with the reasons of heart,31 still await being
more deeply valued.
28 Among the exceptions were Vladimir Lossky or the brothers Kovalevsky. Olivier
Clment writes about how Lossky introduced him to the practice of the Jesus prayer,
which was at that time shared also with the Catholics, and in the group there was also
Fr Sophrony, who later founded the monastery in Essex. See Olivier Clment, Lautre
soleil (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 2010), 120, 135, 13954.
29 Nicolas Zernov, while being critical of the extremes of the Slavophile ideology, sees
also the initial value of the movement, saying: Slavophiles were painfully aware of
the fact that the majority of their social class were foreigners in their own land. They
were convinced that Russia can give as much to Europe as it can receive, provided it
will recognize the originality and the value of their Orthodox culture. Nicolas Zer-
nov, Eastern Christendom: A Study of Development of the Eastern Orthodox Church
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961), 185. For the criticisms of the nation-
alist agenda and abuse of Slavophilism, see Parush Parushev, Romantick vlivu na
poatku ruskho slavjanofilskho hnut, in Kesanstv a Romantismus, Ivana Noble
& Ji Hanu, eds. (Prague: CDK, 2011), 6483; Susanne Rabow-Edling, Slavophile
Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (New York: SUNY, 2006).
30 See Alexey Stepanovich Khomiakov,
. , in , III.
(: , 1882).
31 See Ivan Vasilievich Kireeevskii,
[
, in (:

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 183 12/22/2015 10:26:44 AM

 184 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

The Christian foundations of social reform, especially after the

experience of the Communist regimes, felt like utopia.32 And yet,
in Berdyaev, Fr Bulgakov or Mother Maria Skobtsova, the thread
re-emerged, whether in the philosophy of freedom or in the
reflection of the particular help to the needy.33
Sophiology was marked as heretical due to the process with Fr
Bulgakov, and yet it cannot be reduced to the problematic teaching
on the fourth hypostasis.34 In connection to its Slavophile roots, it
has been rediscovered as a way of holistic growth toward pan-unity,
challenging the exclusion of embodied knowledge and of mystical
knowledge, as well as the separation of the Christian East from
the Christian West or Christianity from other forms of finding
goodness, beauty, and truth. As such it was more often adopted by
Roman Catholic rather than Orthodox theologians,35 but even here
we find exceptions, such as Antoine Arjakovsky or Stoyan Tanev.36
These are just some examples of the plurality that has been lost,
though in no way exclusive of still other possible ways of spiritual
, 1861), 174222; 22364; in English: On the Necessity and Possibility of
New Principles in Philosophy, in On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, Boris Ja-
kim & Robert Bird, eds. (Hudson: Lindisfarne Books, 1998), 23373.
32 See Ivana Noble, Politika, spolenost a kultura v kontextu sakramentln teologie
Alexandra Schmemanna, Studia Historica Brunensia C 53 (2006), (Brno: Ma-
sarykova Universita, 2007), 2536.
33 See Kateina Bauerov, Vydat se a do krajnosti: svdectv muednk, in Cesty
pravoslvn teologie na Zpad ve 20. Stolet (Brno: CDK, 2012), 31526.
34 See e.g., Sergius Bulgakov, Sophia, The Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology
(New YorkLondon: The Paisley PressWilliams and Norgate, 1937); for the
case against Bulgakov, see Blane, Georges Florovsky, 6068; Kateina Bauerov,
Zkuenost a teologie ruskch emigrant, in Cesty pravoslvn teologie na Zpad ve 20.
Stolet (Brno: CDK, 2012), 284393.
35 See e.g., Tom pidlk, Sofiologie, in Nov cesty pastorln teologie: krsa jako
vchodisko, Tom pidlk & Marko I. Rupnik, eds. (Velehrad: Refugium, 2008).
36 Antoine Arjakovsky, Glorification of the Name and Grammar of Wisdom (Sergii
Bulgakov and Jean-Marc Ferry), in Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radi-
cal Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World Through the Word, Adrian Pabst & Christoph
Schneider, eds. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 2939; Stoyan Tanev, Divine Sophia
and Energeia in 14th and 20th Century Orthodox Theology, in The Legacy of Fr
John Meyendorff, Scholar and Churchman (19261992), Joost van Rossum & Goran
Sekulovski, eds. (Paris: YMCA, forthcoming).

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 184 12/22/2015 10:26:44 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 185

and theological life, which may also be genuinely Orthodox. The

recovery of the lost plurality is not a way to lose the sources from
which Christian and Orthodox life flows, and it is not giving up on
the need for discernmentyet it is a plea for the discernment to not
be done on ideological grounds.
Conclusion
In conclusion, let us summarize the challenges as well as some of the
hopeful signs of living forwards endowed with an understanding
of the past and with what Vladimir Lossky called an apophatic
attitude37 in Orthodoxy in the West.
First, there is the desire for a non-reductionist understanding of
the past that enables a movement beyond its shadows. In fact, even
this conference is an expression of such a desire. Moving beyond
what the wounded Orthodoxy in the West in the last century has
passed on, as I sketched in my presentation, involves struggling with
the issue of where and why Orthodoxy in the West did not grow into
becoming local churches: the problems of ethnophyletism but also
of accumulated memories of being treated as second-rate ecclesial
citizens; the problem of multiplicity of jurisdictions; and the problem
of assuming theological and spiritual uniformity. Abandoning some
of the dead-ends of the 20th-century development of the diaspora,
then, goes hand in hand with searching for new solutions to the
recurring problems.
First, while we can say that Orthodoxy has already rooted itself
in the West, we have to add that this is not a finished process, and
creative, pastorally sensitive ways toward an organic continuation
are stilland always will beneeded. As was already said, it is
inappropriate to speak about the well-established autocephalous
churches, such the Orthodox Church in America, or even about
ecclesial and academic bodies with long traditions, such as the
Institut Saint-Serge or St Vladimirs Seminary, in terms of diaspora.
But perhaps it is helpful to ask where a diaspora mentality has
remained. Indeed, some features of the diaspora life prevail as a
37 See Lossky, Mystical Theology, 238.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 185 12/22/2015 10:26:44 AM

 186 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

legacy of the migrant situations. The question of where home in

the deepest sense is, culturally as well as ecclesially, changes with
the second and especially the third generation of the families that
came as refugees. The primary home moves to the country and
culture where the people actually live. At the same time, however,
with the ongoing flow of new immigrants, the links to the home
churches and home cultures outside continue to pose a challenge
to Orthodoxy in the West to not become a museum of national
Orthodox cultures; the living forward of an inner-Orthodox
hospitality (as well as hospitality toward others) and conversation
seem to be vitally important, and places that facilitate encounters
are of prime value for the future of Orthodoxy in the West.
The situation is not made easier by the multiplicity of jurisdictions.
While the past cannot be changed, how to deal with the past can
be changed, and healing may enter through this door, the door of
repentance. As Lossky reminds us, healing conferred by the great
Mystagogue of the apophatic attitude, the Holy Spirit, who makes
up all deficiencies, causes all limitations to be overcome,38 includes
both letting go and allowing to be forgiven. The apophatic attitude
applied to this area of Orthodox ecclesial life in the West may need
to involve, as far as is humanly possible, giving up identifications
with autocratic Orthodox utopias (be it the renewal of the Byzantine
empire or of Russia as the third Rome, etc.), as well as justifying
ones distance from others by remaining in the position of a victim.39
In both cases, what is needed is to allow the great Mystagogue to
lead people and communities beyond the certainties of division,
toward a greater plenitude. Hopeful signs for living forward in this
area are those who try consistently, credibly, and continuously to
remind the church that an ultimate Christian home is not in the
divided identities but in the Kingdom of God. Here an important
role is played by monasteries as places of hospitality that provide,
38 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 239.
39 I have dealt with the problem of posing victimhood as a permanent identity in Ivana
Noble, Theological Interpretation of Culture in Post-Communist Context (Farnham
Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 11216.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 186 12/22/2015 10:26:44 AM

 The Future of the Orthodox Diaspora 187

as Kalaitzidis says, an eschatological conscience of the church.40

Furthermore, it is important to be aware of the fact that even where
the complicated situations cannot yet be resolved at the ecclesial
level, they can be prophetically lived at a human level. Following
the consequences of a move from ecclesiology to anthropology as a
central theme, for which Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has pleaded,41
we may discover from a different angle that a radically relational
anthropology also has ecclesial implications.
Finally, when speaking about ways beyond spiritual and
theological uniformity, it is important to remark that it was more
often an assumed rather than lived uniformity. It was the grasp,
the understanding of the tradition in terms of the synthesis
while excluding those voices that disturbed its ideological borders.
While recognizing that criticism of uniformity within Orthodox
theology has never died, I emphasize the following areas that still
need strengthening. It is necessary to move beyond the theological
monopoly of the neo-patristic school, while keeping and further
developing its best achievements. Here it will be helpful to
re-appreciate how also other streams of the modern Orthodox
renewal worked with the Church fathers, how, while valuing
liturgical spirituality, they drew on Hesychast spirituality as well,
and why and how they have seen in both an impetus to engage with
the modern world, as much as the Church Fathers did with the
world of their time. This expansion of understanding the past may
need to be accompanied by further critical reflection and revision of
the internalized notion of the West within Orthodoxy, not always
corresponding to the actual West, of the political (in our time,
usually right-wing) use of Orthodoxy, and of a deficient attention
to the social implications of church liturgical life and dogmatic

40 Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology, 139.

41 Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says that while 20th century Orthodox theology
was dominated by ecclesiology, 21st century theology must pay more attention to
anthropology. The question: What is the Church? needs to be integrally linked
to a more fundamental question: What is the human person? Kallistos Ware,
Orthodox Theology in the 21 Century (Geneva: WCC, 2012), 25.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 187 12/22/2015 10:26:44 AM

 188 ST VLADIMIRS THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

teaching in our time. In my view these areas hold the key to new
possibilities of living forward spiritually and theologically, to (re)
kindling the spirit of renewal within but also outside Orthodoxy in
the West.

SVTX 60,1-2.indb 188 12/22/2015 10:26:45 AM