There has been a great deal of interest, in the last decade, by many
Christians, in returning to the Classic phase of the Christian
Tradition. The Patristic heritage (of the Latin West and Greek East) is
held high and warmly honoured and respected. This turn comes as both a
critique of a faltering and failing liberal ecumenism and the
fragmentary nature of much modern and postmodern thought. There has
been a quest, in short, for an era and ethos in the Great Tradition
when there was some sort of depth and unity.
Thomas Oden has
done much to urge the North American Evangelical world to go deeper and
further in their historic faith journey. The publication of
Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (1995),
Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox in
Dialogue (1997), Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism:
A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (1999) and Ancient-Future Faith:
Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (1999) have done much
to build on the work of Oden and further enrich this process of
returning to the sources (ad fontes). The problem with much of this
turn to Tradition, by Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Orthodox, is
that it is, for the most part, an American phenomena, and, more to the
point, a turn by those within the USA of republican sympathies to the
Great Tradition.
It might be more honest to state that the
return, interpretation and read of the Fathers and the Great Tradition
is more a right of centre republican approach to the past. It is within
such a context that we, as Canadians, welcome a book on the Orthodox
theology of Archbishop Lazar Puhalo. It is somewhat sad and tragic when
Canadian theology becomes co-opted by American theology. This
colonization of the Canadian mind is all too common, and Archbishop
Lazar has done much to resist and oppose such colonization.
Unfortunately, Andrew Sopko’s fine primer on Archbishop Lazar tends to
miss this basic and essential point.
The Orthodox Tradition in
North America has done much in the last few decades to make its
presence felt and known. The ethnic Orthodox and the Orthodox Church of
America
(OCA) have waged their wars to make the Orthodox way relevant to the
North American context. The OCA has established itself as a leading and
articulate voice in this debate.
Many
have been the fine volume and seminary that has walked the extra mile
to articulate a view of Orthodoxy that comes as a needful and necessary
critique of western theology and denominational schism. Many have been
the Orthodox mystical theologian that has made the Orthodox way
appealing and attractive. Most of us have either heard of or read
Kallistos Ware, Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorff, Alexander Schmemann,
Thomas Hopko, John Zizioulas and clan. But, there is a form of
Orthodoxy in North America that is not as well known, not as much in
the mainstream nor part of the Orthodox establishment and Sanhedrin. It
is this tradition and motherlode that Andrew Sopko has attempted to
unpack and unravel in his book, For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love: The Theology of Archbishop Lazar Puhalo (2004).
Archbishop
Lazar has dipped his bucket deep in the wells of Metropolitan Anthony
Khrapovitsky, John Romanides, Michael Azkoul and George Florovsky. In
fact, Andrew
Sopko (the author of For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love) did an earlier book on John
Romanides (Prophet of Roman Orthodoxy: The Theology of John Romanides, 1998).
Sopko is now working on a biography of the life and theology of Anthony Khrapovitsky.
There
is, therefore, this alternate form of Orthodoxy in North America that
has a lively pedigree and family tree. It is, though, this line and
lineage that has often been ignored by many within the Orthodox club in
North America and those within the Evangelical, Roman Catholic and
Orthodox traditions that are meeting and coming together in their
interest in The Great Tradition . Andrew Sopko, to his heroic credit,
is doing yeoman’s labour to tell the fascinating tale of this often
ignored form of Orthodoxy in North America, and For a Culture of
Co-Suffering Love: The Theology of Archbishop Lazar Puhalo is a fine
primer in this revisionist vein.
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo is,
without doubt, the most prolific Orthodox theologian in Canada, and he
is certainly one of the most prolific Orthodox theologians in North
America. It is about time that Archbishop Lazar was given his due, and
For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love does such a deed well. The book is
divided into eight sections: 1) Introduction: Orthodox Christianity and
Culture 2) Christian Existentialism, 3)Gender as Prophecy, 4) Beyond
Morality and Ethics, 5) Science and Theology as Empirical Quest, 6) The
Aesthetics of Reality, 7) Last Things and 8) Epilogue: Church and/or
World. In each of these probing chapters, Sopko carefully examines and
explores how Lazar has engaged the world he lives in on a variety of
key cultural issues.
The strength of For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love…
is the way Andrew Sopko has highlighted for the interested reader how
and why Archbishop Lazar, as an Orthodox theologian, has engaged the
culture he has lived in rather than retreating into an idealized past,
an ethnic subculture or a reactionary and right of centre political
theology.
There is a way of studying culture (much indebted to
Matthew Arnold) that tends to do an end run on material questions such
as economics and politics. The Arnoldian approach to culture has been
soundly challenged by those like Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Terry
Eagleton and, in Canada, Robin Mathews. It is one thing to argue that
culture deals with literature, literary criticism, philosophy,
theology, the arts, science and religion, gender questions, identity
politics and various levels of theory. It is quite another thing to
argue culture and cultural studies include the tough and challenging
questions of war and peace, wealth and poverty, crime and punishment.
It is this fuller view of culture that Sopko has ignored in For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love.
A
weakness of the book is the way that Sopko has tended to exclude
economic and political questions from culture: Archbishop Lazar has
never done this. Again and again, Archbishop Lazar has faced and
confronted many of the tough and troubling economic and political
questions. He has dared to address, much to the annoyance and chagrin
of many of his fellow Orthodox theologians, many of the large issues of
injustice rather than either slip into an insulated pietism or
genuflect to American republican politics and new forms of Caesar
worship. It would have helped if Andrew Sopko had highlighted how and
why Archbishop Lazar has articulated a political theology that cannot
be taken captive by the right, sensible centre of political left, and
done so from the unique Canadian Red Tory tradition. It is from this
Canadian perspective that Archbishop Lazar writes, and, as such, offers
a way of thinking through a political theology that has not been
co-opted by an American republican turn to the Great Tradition.
We
must and should make the turn to the Great Tradition, but we must be
wary about how this is done. There are many ways of reading the
Fathers, and we must be careful, in our turn to such a perspective,
that we do not reduce them to either inward looking pietists or
American republicans. The Canadian approach to such an issue by those
like
Archbishop Lazar, George Grant, Stephen Leacock or Robert Crouse
is a needful and necessary corrective to a rather reductionistic view
that tends to dominate the intellectual scene at the present time.
For a Culture of Co-Suffering Love
is a fine primer on the work of one of the pre-eminent Orthodox
theologians of North America. It would be wonderful if others would
take the time and exert the energy to probe the integrated theology of
Arcbishop Lazar in much more depth and detail. Such a probe could take
Canadians in the direction of a post-colonial theology.
Ron
Dart teaches in the department of political science/philosophy, and
religious studies at University College of the Fraser Valley,
Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.
rsd