Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) was a protopresbyter and leading theologian of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to émigrés from St. Petersburg who had fled Russian after the October Revolution. When still a child, his family moved to Paris, where he was educated. During his preparation for the priesthood at the St. Sergius Institute, he studied under Sergei Buglakov. He was also influenced by Catholic theologians such as Jean Daniélou and Louis Bouyer. He was ordained a priest in 1946. Five years later he moved with his family to the United States to teach, at the invitation of Georges Florovsky, Church history and liturgical theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He was an observer at the Second Vatican Council and for thirty years his homilies were transmitted by Radio Liberty to the Soviet Union, where they won the admiration of Aleksandr Solzhenitysn. He was also active in establishing the Orthodox Church in America, which was granted autocephaly by the Patriarch of Moscow in 1970. An influential proponent of liturgical theology, his writings continue to be widely read and admired.
In this interview, AndrewT.J. Kaethler offers an introduction to Schmemann and his work.
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Who was Alexander Schmemann? Alexander Schmemann was a twentieth-century thinker and Russian immigrate. His family moved to Paris, where he grew up in an Orthodox home and became an Orthodox priest and scholar. At a fairly young age, he moved with his family to the States, to teach at St. Vladimir's in New York. He spent the rest of his life teaching there and was the Dean for most of that time.
You have written on Schmemann. What drew you to study him? It is a funny story. One day I sat down for lunch with my friend, the theologian Hans Boersma, and asked him for five books every theologian must read. Besides Henri de Lubac's Catholicismand Augustine's Confessions, one of the books he mentioned was Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World. So, I went to the bookstore and pulled all those books off the shelf.
At the time, I was a new teacher, working at a university in Lithuania, and did not have much time on my hands. All the books seemed too long except for For the Life of the World. So, I bought it and began reading it. I was sitting in a car when I finished it. My wife came back into the car from shopping and I told her, “If I ever do a PhD, I'm going to do it on Alexander Schmemann.” That is exactly what happened.
I spent four years at St. Andrew’s, looking at Schmemann alongside Joseph Ratzinger.
"For Schmemann, there is no theology outside of the liturgy."
Schmemann was an important proponent of liturgical theology and has influenced Catholics, such as Aidan Kavanaugh OSB and David Fagerberg, who have written extensively on the same theme. For Schmemann the liturgy is not just one of the many sources of theological reflection. It is not just another locus theologicus. What exactly does he mean by liturgical theology? David Fagerberg puts it very well: the liturgy is prima theologia. It is the heart of theology. All theology comes out of the liturgy. The Latin phrase—lex orandi, lex credendi—provides a simple way of thinking about this.
For Schmemann, there is no theology outside of the liturgy. It is fairly easy to substantiate this thesis. The early Church baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, without a developed Trinitarian theology. The theology came later. Everything began with worship.
You see this in the way that Schmemann talks and writes. Everything leads back to worship. Hans Urs von Balthasar said something similar: theology begins on one’s knees. True, but the person praying on his knees does not do so out of some individualistic pietism but within the life of the church. Everything is received from the Church, then contemplated.
Systematic theology, therefore, is secondary theology. It comes out of our experience of worship.
Arguably Schmemann’s most important academic work is his doctoral dissertation, Introduction to Liturgical Theology. It has not made your shortlist. Is this because it is too technical and academic? Yes, Introduction to Liturgical Theology and his book, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, are quite technical. Moreover, he swirls around a lot in the latter as he attempts to get to the heart of what the Eucharist is. Most of the former book, which is more historical in character, comes out in his other books in a more digestible manner.
"We need to understand that we exist in a sacramental world."
Schmemann appreciated and acknowledged the contribution of various Catholic theologians to a renewed sense of the primacy of the liturgy. Nevertheless, as a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, he does not accept that the Bishop of Rome is “the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the multitude of the faithful” (Lumen gentium, 23). Moreover, he makes the common Orthodox criticism that the Western Church has gone astray by embracing rationalism. Most of what Schmeman writes is valid and illuminating for Catholics. What should Catholics not take away from his works? That is a big question. Schmemann is very critical of the West and often claims that Orthodoxy has been held captive by Western thought. However, he caricatures Western thought. Unfortunately, except for his PhD dissertation, in his works he either does not acknowledge his engagement with Catholic thinkers—such as Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and above all Louis Bouyer—or only does so minimally. He never brings them up in his other books. Hence, it sounds as if he has discovered these great flaws within Western thought. However, ressourcement theologians had made the same critiques. They had called for a return to a liturgical mode of thought and the Eastern fathers. They had moved away from the manualist tradition. Consequently, one should be a little wary of Schmemann's critique of the West and realize that it is inspired by Western thinkers or at least that Western thinkers were aware of these issues.
Moreover, he misreads Western theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas. He repeatedly claims that Western theology has been prisoner to a juridical mentality and rationalism. As a liturgical theologian, he is very wary of rationalism and believes that we need to encounter the joy of Christ in the present. We are not Gnostics. Hence, he detects within Catholic theology a tendency to rationalize and get stuck in the head: to be too juridical and think in terms of obligation and rules. Instead, he wishes to draw his readers back to the spirit of the liturgy to use Guardini's title. Schmemann is important for us Catholics because he highlights pitfalls to which we can succumb, even though, in my opinion, he learnt about them from various Western thinkers.
For example, he is quite concerned about transubstantiation and the Western Church’s definition of it, as if, once we have defined it, we can walk away from it. Schmemann reminds us that that we can never walk away from this great mystery. For him, all the sacraments and above all the Eucharist, the sacrament par excellence, are epiphanic. They reveal. They are not some sui generis thing that are like nothing else in the world and which we can never understand. They are not simply miracles that we accept by faith. Schmemann rejects such a view and insists that, if we enter into the mystery of the Eucharist, it reveals all reality. Hence, we cannot claim to have defined it and then move on. No, the definition just leads into a greater mystery and should make us think in a Eucharistic manner.
Here Schmemann’s observations are really positive and important for us Catholics. The problem is that he misconstrues how we Catholics perceive things. He gives the worst-case scenario of Catholicism or one very specific read of Catholicism. We need to be aware of this when reading him.
Theologians are not known for their elegant prose and readability. However, like various other twentieth-century Orthodox theologians, Schmemann is an engaging writer whose works are accessible. To what do you attribute this? In many ways, I think this is why I fell in love with Schmemann. My PhD supervisor thought Schmemann had too much purple prose which was in need of semantic hygiene. However, I love his writing.
He writes in a very poetic and inspiring manner, which leads you not into some academic exercise but into prayer. Why is that?
Well, he was a lover of poetry and was shaped by it. His Journalsis one of the books I have recommended. Unfortunately, it has been edited for the English translation, which does not have as much about poetry in it. His wife figured that English-speakers would not be able to appreciate his reflections on poetry. However, the original Russian contains many such reflections. He also loved novelists, especially French ones, such as Bernanos, whom he quotes. This comes out in his writing.
The form of his theology matched its content. His writing is beautiful just as the liturgy is. The liturgy is not some rational argument, in the manner of, given A and B, therefore C. It is an experience one enters. This comes out in his writing.
"Schmemann argued that most Americans were secularist not because they did not believe in God, but because they did not think in the light of God for the rest of the week. They only thought about things in the light of God on Sundays."
1.
The first work you have chosen is For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. It outlines the Christian worldview and how it “stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church.” Why does this work top your list? Largely on account of what he says on the first page of that book. He begins by quoting Feuerbach’s remark that we are what we eat. With great brilliance, Schmemann flips the meaning of Feuerbach’s remark. He agrees with Feuerbach. We are what we eat. If we eat dead food, we are led onto death. However, if we eat the Eucharist—and the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, God himself, life itself—we live.
This sets the tenor for the rest of the book, which is a fantastic read but also challenging. Why is it so important? Well, although he is not entirely successful, he attempts to set out a sacramental way of seeing reality: a sacramental ontology. He wants us to realise that the world is full of meaning and that this life matters. It matters because God is communicating to us through everything there is in this world, if we can have the eyes to see this.
This is vitally important for us Catholics. We need to understand that we exist in a sacramental world. The whole world is a type of inchoate, limited communion with God. Schmemann rightly concludes that if we fail to understand the world as sacramental, we will never be able to understand the sacraments.
In For the Life of the World Schmemann, criticises secularism. Is his liturgical theology also a social teaching, one rooted in the sacraments? Yes, because it gives us eyes to see how things are. Schmemann’s understanding of secularism is quite profound. He says that secularism is not simply how twenty-first century thinkers see the world and where people who believe in God are regarded as a strange anomaly. No, it is deeper than that.
Back in the sixties and seventies, he argued that America was the most secular nation on earth. That might seem a strange claim. At the time, the majority of Americans attended church on Sunday. However, Schmemann argued that most Americans were secularist not because they did not believe in God, but because they did not think in the light of God for the rest of the week. They only thought about things in the light of God on Sundays. The rest of the week they separated the sacred from the secular. This is the type of thing secularism does.
So yes, his liturgical theology is a critique of the social and a way of engaging with the world. He is not that concerned about rubrics per se. Rather, he is concerned about the spirit of the liturgy and what the liturgy tells us about reality. Through the liturgy, we begin to see the world aright: as symbolic. It teaches us to see God present in the world. Secularism does not see this; it regards the world as an end in and of itself.
"The body is so important because it is the way by which we communicate with one another and God communicates with us."
2.
For many years, Schmemann preached sermons in Russian that were broadcast by Radio Liberty to the Soviet Union. Many of theme have been published posthumously in collections. The next book—O Death, Where is thy Sting—is one such collection. Why have you chosen this collection over the others?
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