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Alexei Khomiakov
First published: l’Union Chrétienne in 1860, No. 45.
Sir,
Whatever opinion I may have of the program of your publication, the questions that you treat in your journal touch me so closely that I cannot remain indifferent to the polemic they engender and to the attacks they attract against the Church. I dare hope you will not refuse to publish a few remarks in response to a brochure of Father Gagarin (A Russian’s Response to a Russian
).
In a recent discourse, the respected father wrote:
Would you believe, my brothers, that in the Slavonic translation of the Creed the word catholic has been replaced by an obscure and vague expression that does not give the idea of universality? In chanting the Creed, millions of Christians, instead of saying, I believe in the catholic Church
, say: I believe in the synodal Church
. And, after this, we are accused of distorting the Creed!
To this absurd accusation, you responded that the word sobornyi means catholic
, that this is the meaning it has in the ecclesiastical dictionary, that this is the meaning it has in the title of the Epistle to St. James, and so on. The purpose of Father Gagarin’s brochure is to justify his initial attack, but, pushed to the wall, convicted of ignorance, what does he find to say in his justification? Here are his words: However the matter may stand, one sees that it is permissible to regret that the Creed, as it is chanted in Russian churches, does not contain an expression that can make the meaning of the word catholic shine with all its brilliance.
...
Let us first look at his criticism that the Russian expression is obscure and vague
. Perhaps. But the word he prefers has no meaning. It means nothing in French, German, or Italian; nor in any language except Greek. In order to make it understandable, one must explain it, retranslate it. But the vague expression can also just as easily receive, through explanation, a more definite meaning. Where then is the accusation? But the word sobornyi, we are told, is used in other senses too. It can mean synodal, cathedral, and even public. I admit that. But is it the case that the Greek word catholic has no other meaning except that assigned to it by the Creed? It seems that the Jesuit father not only lacks all familiarity with Greek, but that he doesn’t even have a poor little Greek dictionary in his cell in which he could look up different meanings of this word in the only language in which it has any meaning whatever. Where then is the accusation?
This is the ridiculous side of the critique, but here is the serious side of the question. Does the Jesuit father understand the word catholic?
Universal
, says the Jesuit father. But universal
in what sense? I ask. But that’s perfectly clear -- in the sense that the Church embraces all nations.
I do not extract from Father Gagarin an explanation other than what he gives himself, for here are his words:
What the Eastern communion lacks most of all, the thing whose absence is the most striking — is catholicity, universality. One has only to open one’s eyes to see that the Churches of the Eastern communion are local, national Churches, that they do not form a universal Church. In this respect, they are in a situation inferior to that of Protestantism: There are Protestants everywhere; one cannot say the same thing about the Eastern communions.
Catholic
thus means: belonging to all the nations. But what then is the catholic Church? Where is it? In Rome? Show me the Roman Church among the Turkish nation in Turkey, among the Persian nation in Persia, among the blacks in the interior of Africa! I will be told that I am nitpicking, and that the important thing here is more or less
. One must have all the frivolousness of the most frivolous children of our age to believe that the Creed of the Church of Christ can contain such base definitions. More or less
!
What about when the Church was in its cradle, within the narrow enclosure that was illuminated by Pentecost’s tongues of fire — was it the Church or was it paganism that was catholic in your sense? And when victorious Mohammedanism extended its hawk’s wings from the Pyrenees to the frontiers of China, enclosing within its grasp the little world of the Christians — who was catholic in your sense? The Church or Mohammedanism? If we do nothing more than count heads, is not Buddhism at present more catholic than Rome? Alas! In your sense, the word catholic can be attached only to the ignorance and vice that characterise all nations and all countries.
Or will it be said that the Church is and has always been catholic, not in the sense that she bears within herself the promise of embracing all the nations, in the sense that she is catholic in virtue of her future? I believe that. But then, how can the absence of a thing that is to come leap out at the eyes in the present? No! The Jesuit father was not thinking of the future. He was thinking only of the grandeur of the contemporary rule, of the extent of the present domain, and he imperceptibly fell into absurdity under the vague idea that the whole universe was already Latin, or virtually so. For him, numbers are everything. A few more million people and several colonies, and then Protestantism would, in his eyes, have the most important and characteristic trait of Catholicism. That is what his words imply.
That is not how the Church thinks. The Church attributes to herself other traits than a universality to come. Whatever may be the destiny of the world’s material forces, the intellectual movements of nations, or even the success of the Apostolate, the character of the Church’s catholicity is independent of all this. This character does not change and never will change. That is how Saint Athanasius understood it. He did not say, We are more populous, or more widely distributed in the universe
(that would have been doubtful in relation to the Arians and even more doubtful in relation to the Nestorians, who came later). Instead, he said: In whatever country you may be, you are everywhere only Arians, Ebionites, or Sabellians. But, as for us, we are everywhere catholics and recognised as such.
(Not having Saint Athanasius’s works in front of me, I give his meaning, not his exact words.) It is a question not of numbers, or extent, or of geographical universality, but of something much loftier. Your names are due to human chance; ours come from the very essence of Christianity.
That is how Saint Athanasius understands catholicity. How does the Church understand it?
Father Gagarin regrets that the Slavonic Creed does not contain an expression that can make the idea of universality shine with all its brilliance. Be that as it may. But what is the reason for that? Should one suppose that the translators did not find or did not wish to find this so-regretted expression? Was the Slavonic tongue too poor, or were the translators too feeble to master its riches?
Let us begin with the translators. From the very outset, the Apostles of the Slavs wished to give a translation of the Holy Scripture to the people they were summoning to Christ. Is it probable, is it possible that they would not have immediately translated the Creed? True, we do not have copies that date from the time of the translators, but there is no doubt that the translation has come down to us from them. And the Apostles Methodius and Cyril, Greeks by origin, but in communication with Rome, are claimed, wrongly, by the Latinisers as their own. Cyril and Methodius must thus have a certain authority even in Father Gagarin’s eyes. It is they who chose the word sobornyi to render the Greek term katholikos; and so it is by the word sobornyi that one can judge about the meaning they attributed to katholikos. Was there a word in the Slavonic language that could express the concept of universality? One can find several, but it suffices to cite two, vsemirnyi and vselenskii, to be assured that there was no shortage of expressions to render this idea.
The first of these words occurs in very old homilies. The second is indisputably ancient and is used to render the idea of the universal Church (vselenskaia tserkov) or in the ecumenical sense (vselenskii sobor = ecumenical synod). Thus, the translators could have used such expressions to render the word catholic, if they had understood it in the universal sense. I am certainly not denying that katholikos (derived from kath ' -ola and implying ethne, klimata, or some other related expression) can have this sense of universality. But I assert that the Apostles of the Slavs did not understand this term in this way. The geographic or ethnographic definition of the Church did not enter their heads. It appears that such a definition was not part of their theological system. The word they chose was sobornyi. Sobor implies the idea of an assembly, not necessarily gathered in some place or other, but existing virtually without a formal gathering. It is unity in plurality. It is, therefore, evident that, in the thought of the two great servants of God sent by Greece to the Slavs, the word katholikos came not from kath ' -ola but from kath ' olon. Kata often means according to
(kata Loukan, kata Ioannen = according to Luke
, according to John
). The catholic Church is the Church that is according to all, or according to the unity of all, the Church of free unanimity, of perfect unanimity, the Church in which there are no more nationalities, no more Greeks or barbarians; in which there are no more differences in conditions, no more masters and slaves. This is the Church prophesied by the Old Testament and realised by the New. This, finally, is the Church as Saint Paul defined her.
Was it a profound knowledge of the character of the Church, a knowledge drawn from the very sources of the truth in Eastern schools that dictated the choice of the word sobornyi to translate the katholikos of the Creed? Or was it a yet loftier inspiration sent by the One who alone is the truth and the life? This question I do not dare answer. But I do dare to emphasise that the word sobornyi contains a profession of faith. Latins, you who claim the Apostles of the Slavs as your own, hasten to deny them! You who have broken the unanimity and unity be altering the Creed without consulting with your Eastern brothers, what can you make of the definition of the Church that has been bequeathed to use by Cyril and Methodius? This definition condemns you. Keep your pretensions to geographic universality. You cannot go beyond them. Let your children, the Protestants, hold to the same explanation of the word catholic, for the true sense of the word condemns them as well. The Church of the Apostles in the ninth century is neither the Church kath ' eskaston (according to each) as with the Protestants, nor the Church kata ton episcopon tes Romes (according to the bishop of Rome) as with the Latinisers. It is, rather, the Church kath ' olon (according to the unity of all) as it was before the Western schism and as it still is with those whom God has preserved from the schism; for this schism, I repeat, is a heresy against the dogma of Church unity. ...
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