R308: ORTHODOX PARISH SCHOOLS AND NEW TESTAMENT GREEK

For the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to three kinds of ancient Greek: Classical or Pre-Hellenistic Greek; Hellenistic and Patristic Greek from the time of the Septuagint Old Testament on; and the Modern Greek of today's Greece, based to no small degree on Demotiké Greek. The discussion also takes for granted that something not very different from the Modern Greek pronunciation became current in Alexandria (the capital of ancient learning well before the time of Christ) and Palestine by the time of Jesus, though not till later in Athens. Many dialects emerged during the long Turkocracy or Turkokratía in the Balkans and Greek islands (not overrun by the Slavs like mainland Greece) as well as Magna Graeca in the South of the Italian peninsula (where Greek had a Doric lineage). Very little was printed during the hegemony of the Turkish Muslims (given Turkish prohibitions on printing Greek religious works and the ignorance of most of the clergy and hierarchs in Constantinople). During that time, the Greek community in Venice eventually published a Greek book in 1471. Publishing flourished in Venice, and by the 1500's there were (according to a conservative estimate) 500 publishers there, "turning out some 8,000,000 individual volumes in the second half of the sixteenth century." Most were in Latin, of course, but some were Greek. Unlike presses of Jews and even Serbs and Albanians, all in the Ottoman realm, the Hellenic Orthodox Presses in the Ottoman realm were few. By 1871, the end of the Turkokratía, the Greeks had published only 5000 editions, in contrast with the Venetian average of 186 titles a year in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

This and the on-going effects of the initial status of Orthodox immigrants to America constitute the situation that Orthodox parishes are faced with. The Greek parishes will no doubt continue to teach Modern Greek, and Antiochian parishes with a significant number of Arabic speakers will wish to offer Arabic; Slavic parishes may wish to offer Church Slavonic and perhaps Russian or Serbian. But the essential emphasis, and the only emphasis in non-ethnic parishes, should be on ancient Greek--at least some suitable Classical literary or philosophical works but predominantly the writings of the Church Fathers. Note that Patristic Greek looks pretty much like Classical Greek, despite the pronunciation. A somewhat simplified kind of Hellenistic Greek (loss of the optative mode except in ossified expressions comparable with English "Be that as it may"and most duals) is found in the New Testament, which makes it a good starting-point.

Languages should be taught before the language window closes for most people in early puberty. When the social window opens at this time, history and geography can begin to be profitably offered. Mathematics can be done at all ages. The sciences should not be taught in reverse order; physics should come first, then chemistry, and finally biology. What one might call amateur logic is a must, seeing how few adults know how to argue properly. English is a waste of time if the usual misconceived view of grammar prevails, and if literature is taught as a chore rather than as an art that gives satisfactiont and edification, or at least an understanding of one's situation. Properly taught, English is of course essential, especially the ability to write and argue properly by competently expressing ourselves in what is the world language.

Well, given (a) the Turkokratía in the Balkans and (b) the overwhelming presence of Latin Jesuits in Russia and their influence on education there, the Orthodox Faith became predominantly Papalism Lite after the fall of Constantinople. The decline of Mt. Athos was a further factor. Much writing fortunately involved lives of Fathers and Mothers of the Church, along with important works on piety. But in correspondence initiated by Tübingen Lutherans with the Patriarch of Constantinople in the years following 1573, the Patriarch, Jeremias II Tranos, used terms like "the Seven Ecumenical Synods" and "Seven Mysteries." By 1 , the Union of Brest (in Ukaïnia near the Polish border), Slavic Orthodox were defecting to Rome, who let them establish Uniate (a term derived from the Union of Brest) jurisdictions allowing married priests (at least in principle if not always in practice), the divine Liturgy, and other customs in return for their allegiance to the Papacy and Latin doctrines, including Transubstantiation: Papalism Lite. (The Uniates were not treated well in Communist Yugoslavia; their temples were given to the Orthodox. In America, various former Uniates have come over at different times to Orthodoxy.) Important dates are 1438-1445 when a Union between the Orthodox and the Papacy was sealed and 1596, when the Ukrainians came under the Roman (h)omophorion or rule in the Union of Brest. The 1445 union was repudiated as soon as the delegates returned to the East, though some defected and stayed with the West. Only the remarkable Orthodox hero, the saintly St. Markos Evyenikos, the Primate of Ephesos, never yielded to the Roman plan, either at Florence or subsequently.

To return to the question why it is important for the Orthodox to foster Patristic Greek learning, the Fathers and Mothers offer the way to guide Orthodoxy back from Papalism Lite to true Orthodoxy, unadulterated by Latin influences from the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusaders and especially after the conquest of what was left of the Byzantine Empire by Turkish Muslims. The state of the Patriarchate, both intellectually and morally (bribery became rampant), declined. By the time of St. Gregory Palamas (died 1359), one of only two or three Saints other than the author of the Fourth Gospel to bear the title of "the Theologian," many Greeks had begun to latinize in their thinking. When Aquinas's works were translated into Greek, they naturally made their mark. Gregory gallantly refuted their claims, becoming one of Orthodoxy's greatest bulwarks.

It should be remembered that, while the West was steeped in seven centuries of Dark Ages (Rome was ravaged before and after Augustine's Death in the Province of Carthage and became a depopulated village), Constantinople flourished in the arts and science. But the Arabs, who had translated all of Greek learning around 800 AD, reached their apogee in Córdova, a city at least as large and modern as Constantinople. They invented algebra and other disciplines and dominated the sciences till their sudden eclipse just before 1200, a time when the Mogul Empire was rising in the East. The date, 1200 is not insignificant, because Constantinople was trashed from 1204 till 1261. After the fall of the Great City to the Turks in 1453, true Patristic Orthodoxy declined in Istambul and in the Balkans concurrently with the Latinization of Russia and its dependencies (including Romania).

When the first immigrants arrived in America with no knowledge of English and (in the Greek case) no priests, they naturally tended to bond together in ghettos in the cities or mining towns where they lived and worked. That they have come so far is just one more remarkable story, anticipated by similar developments among the Latins of Polish and Italian ancestries. Since the Latins of Irish ancestry spoke English, their rise was of course more rapid. When the first theologians of stature arrived, many knew French, but few if any knew English. They inevitably grasped at whatever Latin (or Protestant) terms they found at hand—in English Bibles and in Latin and even Protestant theological writings—with no realization of how those terms invoke an alien paradigm and have counter-Orthodox meanings to native speakers of English. That this situation hasn't been greatly remedied among native-speakers of English is deplorable. We constantly see translations of books whose very titles are mistranslated. The main exceptions to this situationhave been the recently reposed Protopresvyter John Romanides and his disciples like Dr. George Gabriel (trained at an Orthodox academy in Paris), an American, and the recently reposed Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros, a Greek, who read the Fathers (in Greek) from his youth.

It is this situation, I suggest, Orthodox schools and higher academic institutions, not to speak of parish teaching, should be intent on rectifying by disseminating Patristic Orthodoxy.

Two compelling reasons make the foregoing pressing. On the pisteutic level, the level of belief, the purity of the genuine Orthodox Faith needs to be established in English. On the practical level, Papalism Lite is a looser. If a potential convert wants Papalism Lite, that person can find it today in many RC parishes having far greater facilities than American Orthodoxy, as a whole, has to offer. If a potential convert, say a Protestant, comes to us with the misconception that we offer Papalism Lite and is unwilling to make the necessary paradigm-shift to our paradigm (which does not supplement Western Christian paradigms but rather stands in conflict with both of them), it would be a loss. Not only would the person in question lose. In the long run, it would be anything but good for Orthodoxy, though at first it would increase numbers and contributions of money and time. As a faux Orthodoxy, however, there would inevitably result a spiritual loss from propagating what is not true Orthodoxy—the form that Orthodoxy maintained before being infected with Western Christian culture and thinking—juridical views of imputed guilt and merit, a juridical soteriology (teachings on Salvation, with an emphasis on EGO's Salvation that can outweigh an emphasis on worshiping God), a juridical concept of ecclesiastic structures, a view of moral teachings in terms of commands, an essentialist view of the Trinity, and so on.

It is bad enough that we have parishes named Assumption and Epiphany (which has the same origin as the Theophany but otherwise agrees with the Theophany only in respect to its date), teachings of "Deification" (i.e. by essence, rather than Divinization through the uncreated Energies), and on and on. But in the realm of theology, the effect of misusing terms is worse, since the terms one uses create one's mental world—one's phrónēma or outlook, or more academically, one's paradigm. This is why a vital aspect of preserving the Orthodox phrónēma is the right use of words.