Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko

Elmwood City, Pennsylvania - December 2008

Abba Amoun of Nitria came to see Abba Anthony and said to him, “Since my rule is stricter than yours how is it that your name is better known amongst men than mine is?” Abba Anthony answered, “It is because I love God more than you do.” (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Amoun of Nitria, 1)

A half century ago Fr Alexander Schmemann wrote some brief “remarks” that were “inspired by the reading of a new manual of Pastoral Theology by Father Cyprian Kern.” [1] In his “remarks” Fr. Alexander stated that the purpose of Pastoral Theology was to “relate the…unchanging doctrine of the pastoral ministry…to a concrete situation, describing the ways and means of this ministry in a particular society and culture.” The culture to which Orthodoxy was now obliged to relate, he said, was that of “our pluralistic and secularized world.”

Fr. Alexander then went on to lament that, in his view, “the Orthodox are either blindly “conservative” or enthusiastically “progressive.” He deplored these misguided extremes, while insisting that “in Orthodoxy one can never progress without a return to the sources of the faith, to the foundations of church life.” He would repeat this conviction countless times during the remaining twenty-five years of his life.

Fr. Alexander would also endlessly repeat his critique of Fr. Cyprian’s book. While praising his mentor for grounding his reflections on pastoral ministry in “the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist,” Fr. Alexander faulted Fr. Cyprian for still focusing, as was classically done at the time, “exclusively on two subjects – the personal life of the priest and the ‘seelsorge’, the care of souls.” Fr. Alexander found such a focus to be tragically one-sided, and, as such, ultimately ineffective and fruitless. He even saw it to be, in the extreme, a distortion of Christian being and life itself.

Fr. Alexander insisted that the Church’s pastors – the bishops and presbyters – must first understand themselves as members of the Church who work together in unity and harmony for the edification of the Church corporately, and then for each of her members individually. The clergy are called, trained and ordained first of all to be pastors of the “flock” as a whole who serve to build up the entire Body. And as such, they then care for each particular member by attending to the inspiration, instruction, consolation, healing and saving of individual souls.

Holding such a view, it is not surprising that Fr. Alexander saw the pastor’s “real task” as being wholly involved in the “real life” of those in his care as the sacramental head of a given ecclesial body who bears “not only the judgment but also the joy of Christ’s presence, His truth and His love” which alone can purify, illumine, heal and save God’s people for everlasting life in Christ’s coming kingdom - which, after all, is what human being and life, and so Christ’s holy Church, are essentially, and even exclusively, all about.

Thus we find Fr. Alexander calling for a “more explicit description and interpretation of the pastoral ministry in terms of the Church.” He insisted that the priestly, teaching and pastoral roles of the ordained “minister of the Church” can never be divided from each other, just as he would later argue, in 1974, in his book Of Water and the Spirit, that the prophetic, priestly and pastoral dimensions of human life generally, for all baptized and sealed members of Christ and the Church, can never be separated - except to the deformation and distortion, and perhaps even the outright destruction, of the Church’s communal and personal being and life, which, alas, he lamented on almost every page of his Journals.

To my knowledge, Fr. Alexander left no specific writing about the place of Pastoral Theology in a curriculum of theological education. Several comments on the subject, however, are found in his Journals. They are all in this vein and spirit:

Yesterday [we had] a faculty seminar with a presentation…about pastoral theology. [It was] very learned [academic, scientific, intellectual] with Greek and psychological terminology and diagrams. And it all may have been formally “correct.” But the knowledge of these norms does not help at all. In no way and never will they produce pastorhood… “Learned [or academic, scientific, intellectual] theologians” do not understand this, they do not see it. The sum of scientifically presented truths does not disclose, does not reveal Truth. The sum of knowledge about God does not give knowledge of God… There is something pathetic in these debates, agreements, disagreements, corrections, clarifications. And with all my strength I feel this right now…. It is always the same, the absolute: “without Me you can do nothing….[John 15.5]” (2 Oct 1979)

I feel so sharply, that theology – the transmission in words – is not of the words, ideas, beliefs of others, but of that experience by which the Church lives, and lives now, reveals now, participates in now. But theology – contemporary theology, that which is “now being taught” – is alienated from the Church and from this experience. It has become self-sufficient and wants, more than anything, to be a “science.” A science about God, about Christ, about eternal life!.. (2 Oct 1981) [2]

I had many opportunities to hear Fr. Alexander’s views on this subject, not only at faculty meetings, but in many private conversations in which he expressed his opinions with impassioned conviction. Although it was always rather easy to know what Fr. Alexander was against in his critical thoughts about academic theological education, and so, its relation to pastoral ministry, it was not always easy, at least for me, to see exactly and precisely what he was for, and how he thought it could be accomplished. [3] My understanding of Father’s views, drawn from many conversations and observations, is the following.

I think that Fr. Alexander believed that every course in a theological school – surely in institutions dedicated to educating, training and forming pastors - should have a clear and explicit pastoral dimension and purpose, a content and goal that he would also call “soteriological.” This would apply to “scholarly” courses in scripture, doctrine, worship, patristics, church history and canon law as well as to “practical” courses like liturgical practice, homiletics, liturgical music, parish administration and spiritual counseling. Classes in Biblical exegesis, Church doctrine, worship and ecclesiastical history, for example, would be consciously and purposefully related to the pastoral tasks of edifying the church, conducting parish life and work, and inspiring, healing and saving souls in the given time and place. The “practical” courses would be conducted in the context of the Church’s theological, liturgical and spiritual vision and experience, as well as its path through history, synthesizing and applying this vision and experience, with its lessons from history, to the real lives of real people in the real world in which they lived and died. The point and purpose of both the “scholarly” and the “practical” courses, therefore, would be to present “the Good News as the answer” to all theological, ecclesial and pastoral issues, to “release the tormented ones to freedom”, and to “introduce people to life, to joy, to the reality of the Church” as the sacramental presence and foretaste of God’s coming kingdom. (June 9, 1982)

Fr. Alexander wrote in his Journals about his personal involvement in pastoral ministry. He confessed his frustrations and difficulties, and even his failures and sins, in the area of personal spiritual direction and pastoral counseling. He revealed his questions and confusions about the sacrament of Confession, about psychology and psychotherapy, and about his being called upon to provide concrete advice to people seeking guidance and direction in specific situations. We find these concerns already expressed at length in one of his first entries in his Journals. Indeed, the entry for September 27, 1973 is a splendid expression of Father Alexander’s convictions on this subject that he will repeat many times in his private reflections. Here is but a small part of it.

I sometimes think that each person is called to say and do but one thing, perhaps even quite small – but genuine, and something that only he [or she] can say and do. […]

I am convinced, for example, that I am not called to any personal guidance of people. I have an aversion to “intimate” conversations, to any sort of personal outpourings of the soul. […] But people expect this from the priest, they demand such guidance [or direction] and they see in it the very essence of the priesthood. Perhaps I’m gravely mistaken, but I have never seen any particular benefit around me in the Church from such spiritual guidance. On the contrary, I have rather seen harm: an indulgence of egocentrism, a refined spiritual arrogance (on both sides [i.e. in both the pastor and the person]), a kind of reduction of faith to oneself and one’s problems. The essence of Christianity for me always, since my childhood, consisted in the fact that it does not solve problems, but that it removes them, it translates a person into that level where they no longer exist. On the plane in which they do exist is exactly why they are unsolveable. Therefore, Christianity is always a preaching – it is the revelation of that other, higher plane, of reality itself, and not an explanation of it….

They may say to me: but what about eldership that it is so fashionable these days to be interested in? It is possible, even certain, that eldership is a special calling in the Church, not at all corresponding with priesthood, with pastoral ministry as such. But it is exactly a calling, if we take seriously what we know about eldership, in which there is not at all any intimate spiritual guidance that consists in explaining and solving problems, but it consists in the very revelation of reality itself. And this is why false eldership is so harmful….

Personally I would lay aside confession, except for that occasion when a person commits an evident and concrete sin and confesses it, and not his or her moods, doubts, despondencies and temptations. But what, then, to do about such usual “conditions”? I am convinced that a genuine sermon is always (whatever it would be about) simultaneously an answer to these things, and their cure. This is because it is a sermon about Christ, and only Christ can “take away” all this, knowledge about Him, meeting with Him, obedience to Him, love for Him. And if a sermon is not all these things, then it is simply not necessary. And its power is in this, that a genuine preacher directs his sermon first to himself – to his own despondency, lack of faith, lukewarmness, etc. And what can spiritual conversations add to this?

It is striking how people “interested in the spiritual life” do not love Christ and the Gospel. And it is understandable why: there is nothing said there about “spiritual life” as they understand it and love it. […] (27 September 1973)

Fr. Alexander often returned to this same meditation.

To what am I “called”? To give lectures, to preach, perhaps to write – as a continuation of my lecturing and preaching (not “research”). […]

To what am I not called? To “spiritual guidance.” To “scholarly guidance.” To “spiritual conversations.” To “education.” To “disputation.”

This means that the question arises: Am I really not called? Or am I fleeing from something – because of indifference, or laziness, or an absence of strength? I think and think about this, and it seems to me – perhaps it only seems! – that no, this is not from indifference to people. On the contrary. I’m interested in “the person”, in his individuality and uniqueness…. This means, rather, that it [i.e. the “not”] is due to my distrust of everything in this area – to “guidance”, and to my lack of conviction that it is at all necessary, justified, beneficial.

In regard to myself, and my own life, I know for sure that I was never in any way “guided” by anyone in this specific sense. But this does not at all mean that I was not influenced. On the contrary, I know very well and to how many I am obligated, and to what a great degree I am grateful to them….. All those who influenced me, and to whom I am sincerely and endlessly grateful, influenced me by what they, voluntarily or involuntarily, gave to me of their own, by that which I came from within to love in them. And the more I loved what I saw in them, the less I felt any need for any sort of specific “personal” relationship or personal “guidance.” That truth, that vision, that image of good which I received from them, that was their guidance, their influence, their help, etc. And it was my task to apply it to my life, to my “problems.”….

Yes, and in Christianity itself, and first of all in the image of Christ, I see no basis for “concern for the soul” in the sense in which this excitedly attracts the lovers of “spiritual guidance.” I don’t know. Perhaps I’m not seeing something that is evident to others, something that I don’t see or feel. But still sometimes I feel with all my strength that what draws others to the Church, to Christianity, etc. is totally foreign to me, and what interests, grasps, rejoices and convinces me – remains totally alien to so many around me. (4 May 1977)

I have often thought that Fr. Alexander would have benefited greatly, both personally and pastorally, from a disciplined and sympathetic reading of the spiritual and ascetical writings of the great Church fathers which, I believe, he hardly knew or was even interested in. I believe that he was negatively predisposed to this literature because of the cheapness and phoniness he saw in so many around him who claimed to be interested in it, but who for the most part were ignorant of it themselves as they took pleasure in popular “writings beneficial to the soul (dushepoleznoye chteniye)” of questionable inspiration, content and quality.” [4] I believe that if Father had forced himself to study the classical time-proven literature of the Church’s greatest spiritual teachers he would have been happily surprised by what he found there. He may even have been amused and amazed! But be that as it may, the personal ascetical side of Church life, which is real, true and necessary, was clearly not Father Alexander’s “thing” even in its purest, truest and most authentic forms. He said it himself many times, and wrote about it often in his Journals. As he put it, we have already noted, he was a man of “one idea.”

I have just read over and leafed through this little notebook. I have the impression that everything in it ‘gathers together” what I’m truly concerned with - “from within” - and not what I’m occupied with “from outside.” Someone said…that every philosopher really has but one idea (insight? intuition?), and he is, in fact, only concerned with it in reality. God knows, I don’t consider myself a philosopher. But if I would apply this saying to myself…then I think I must acknowledge that my “idea”, my “question”, is the idea of otnesennost’ [referredness or relatedness; the character, quality and reality of being referred or related]. It is the idea of the otnesennost’ of everything to the Kingdom of God as the revelation and content of Christianity.

The sin of Christians is in limiting the horizon, the destruction, the cutting off of otnesennost, its interruption by idols and the worship of idols. And the depth and the “novelty” of this sin of Christians is that the idol here is nothing other than that which exists for the sake of otnesennost itself: the church, theology, church services, piety, and, so to speak, “religion” itself. This can sound like a cheap paradox, but the church, more than anything, harms the “Church” itself. And orthodoxy – “Orthodoxy”, and piety – the Christian life. (12 May 1977)

Sometimes I feel like standing and shouting: “Brothers, sisters! All that I can say, all that I can witness to is in my lectures. I have nothing else, and therefore, please, don’t ask anything else of me.” In everything else, it is not that I’m lying, but that I don’t have the “anointing.” […] My soul “hides” from people, and all that I do, beside “announcing the Gospel” (most of all personal conversations, counsels, etc.), is for me boundlessly burdensome…. (17 May 1981)

Many of us, his children and disciples who were surely “burdensome” to him more than we realize, are boundlessly grateful to Fr. Alexander. We are grateful for him, for his “one idea,” and for his “announcing the Gospel” that saves us not by providing therapeutic “help” to “solve our problems” and “satisfy our needs” as we define them in to this fallen world, but by granting us Eternal Life as we learn to refer all things to God and His coming kingdom in Christ and the Holy Spirit at the end of the ages." [5]

Without his one great “idea”, his compelling “insight” and his steadfast “intuition,” Fr Alexander would not have been Fr. Alexander: the wonderful man, the faithful friend and the powerful prophet, priest and pastor who inspired us, served us and loved us to the end. And we, in turn, would not be who we are now but for the grace of his presence and ministry among us. We thank God for Fr. Alexander Schmemann as a bearer of God’s grace, peace, joy, truth, beauty, love and life in our midst. For indeed (to boldly quote words spoken long ago of another) “he was a burning and shining lamp” and we were blessed “to rejoice for a while in his light.” (John 5:35)

May his memory be eternal!

[1] “Some Remarks on Pastoral Theology”, SVTQ, 1958, 2:1, 50-54.   In these quotations, and those to follow from Fr. Schmemann’s Journals, the italicized emphases, the quotation marks and the parentheses are his.  The words in brackets are mine. [Back to article]

[2] See also Journals, 12 November 1974, 13 October 1976.  23 December 1976, 4 May 1977, 14 February 1979, 2 February 1982, 10 May 1982.  Also “The Task of Orthodox Theology Today” and “Theology and Liturgy” in Church, World, Mission,  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979, 117-146.[Back to article]

[3] Perhaps what he wanted might be something like the new curriculum instituted at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in the fall of 2007.[Back to article]  

[4] See Journals, 27 September 1973, 1 November 1974, 2 and 3 October 1975, 10 February 1976. 13 October 1976, 23 December 1976.[Back to article]  

[5] See Fr. Alexander’s most popular and influential work, For the Life of the World, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1963,1973,1979, especially p. 99 ff. [Back to article]