CHURCH AND CULTURE
From the very beginning, the ecclesial community held the firm con- viction that it lived and moved in the world, but that it was not a product of this world («in the world but not of the world»). The escha- tological and eucharistic being of the Church gives the Church’s identity a paradoxical character: while it relates to each human culture by maintaining an incarnational and «in the world» perspective, it does not con- form itself to the spirit of the world by falling into identification with one particular historical form. Of course, in the two-thousand-year history of the Church and its relationships with each cultural system, there were many cases not only of confusion of criteria but also of complete identi- fication of the Church with specific and even quite elevated cultural ex- pressions of human creativity (cf. the Byzantine Empire). Here, the issue of the relationship between Hellenism (culture) and Christianity (the Gospel) is the best example of the way in which the Church should ap- proach its relationship with the post-modern world today.
In this meeting between Church and culture, and Gospel and culture, the key issue on the table is the boundaries of the connection between the Church and the cultural complex. The Church, as a community that lives «in the world», desires to evangelize and transform the world. In this perspective, culture is the «locus» of the manifestation of the truth, a tool for the «timely» expression of the eschatological and theological con- sciousness of the Church. This model of the relationship between Church and culture, which is derived from the Incarnation, seems to correspond to the unbalanced version of Chalcedonian Christology, in which the hy- postasis of the Logos plays the decisive role. It should not be forgotten that the ultimate criterion of the truth of the Church is the theanthropic Christ. Otherwise, the Church thinks of itself as an ark of salvation for national, ethnic, and cultural ideals, or even as an association designed to address the individual psychological needs of man and his culture. Secu- larization (in the theological sense, meaning becoming «of the world») then becomes the Church’s constant temptation, when it ceases to live proleptically the eschatological anticipation of the coming Kingdom, and when it becomes self-satisfied, trapped in the cultural achievements of its glorious past (e.g., the Greek language) and tries to resurrect an outdated worldview (e.g. of the Middle Ages).
The Church, however, continually walks a kind of tightrope between the temptation of identifying with a particular culture and the tendency to flee or radically distance itself from the world and culture. The Church is called to incarnate, again and again, the Gospel of Christ in each time, in and from each set of historical, social and cultural circumstances. Thus each incarnation and actualization of the Gospel is the fundamental sphere in which the model for the encounter between Church and culture is tested. It must not be forgotten that the Church’s basic aim is the salva- tion and transformation of the world, the victory and overcoming of death. The goal of inculturation in each instance must be no less than the re- newal of creation. And here theology, as the prophetic consciousness of the Church, must overcome the danger of becoming either a purely meta- physical construct or a kind of sacred archaeology, so that it can play a decisive role in shaping the necessary framework, which will provide the criteria and the presuppositions for a sound meeting between the Gospel and the cultural complex.
A host of crucially important questions arises within this theoretical framework. What is the relationship between Gospel and culture, wor- ship and culture, theological language and culture, mission and local tra- ditions and culture? Is it possible, for example, to proclaim the Christian Gospel, independent and irrespective of each historical and cultural en- vironment? On the other hand, how legitimate is it, theologically, to iden- tify the Church with a particular historical culture (e.g. Hellenism), turn- ing theology into a tool and subjugating it to history, nation, and culture? While in other Christian – or, more broadly religious – traditions, there is felt today an urgent need to be grafted into a particular culture (incul- turation), in the case of the Orthodox peoples, with their well-known connections between Church and nation and Church and local traditions (even to the point of complete identification, in certain cases), perhaps what is needed is to disentangle the Church from particular cultures and local traditions (deculturation)? Is a theology of culture necessary today in the Orthodox milieu? Finally, in this perspective, what should the relationship between history and eschatology be, specifically in terms of ec- clesiology? Is a model of theology justified which has as its starting point an archaic formalism of the past, or perhaps is there a need for a theol- ogy which will be continually incarnated to meet the realistic needs of man in a Christologically kenotic way?
To address these questions, the Volos Academy for Theological Stud- ies has organized an international conference, to be held May 7-10, 2009 in Volos, Greece, under the title «Church and Culture». In parallel, from February to May 2009, the Volos Academy will also host a series of events, conferences, and seminars on topics such as: «The New Hagiography (‘Synaxarion’) of the Orthodox Church», «The Return of Religion and Its Place in the Public Sphere», «The Theology of Peace in Orthodoxy», «Is- sues of Renewal and Reform», «Biblical Theology of Liberation, Patristic Theology and the Ambivalence of Modernity», et al.
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