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The Ecumenical Contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Edmund Schlink
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Extract

The Orthodox Church within the Soviet Union has so far made no direct contribution to the ecumenical work which has been done in the World Council of Churches since its constitution in 1948 and before that in the ecumenical movement which led up to its constitution. The political situation has so far prevented this—just as the autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the Balkans, which shared in the ecumenical work before the Second World War, have found it impossible to do so since they have been in the Communist sphere of influence. There is, to be sure, a negative contribution from the Moscow Patriarchate, namely the ‘Resolution on the question of “The Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church”’, passed in July 1948 in connexion with the jubilee celebrations of the Russian Orthodox Church on the occasion of the fifth centenary of its independence, and in accordance with this the refusal on 1st August 1948 of the invitation from the general secretariat of the World Council of Churches to participate in the Conference of Churches in Amsterdam. In this connexion, however, it must be borne in mind that at that time and as a result of many years of isolation it was hardly possible for the Russian Orthodox Church to take an objective view of the World Council, inasmuch as the Council's understanding of itself before the Amsterdam Conference could in fact only be discerned imperfectly from written documents alone, and in particular the important Toronto declaration clarifying this understanding was not made until 1949.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1959 , pp. 41 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1959

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References

page 41 note 2 Dokumente der orthodoxen Kirchen zur ökumenischen Frage, I : Die Moskauer orthodoxe Konferenz vom Juli 1948, ed. by the External Affairs Bureau of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Witten. n.d.); pp. 39ff; Ecumenical Review, I (1948–9), 189ff.

page 41 note 3 Dokumente, p. 56f; Ecumenical Review, I, 188f.

page 41 note 4 Ecumenical Review, III (1950–1951), 53ffGoogle Scholar; cf. Brunner, Peter, ‘The Realism of the Holy Spirit’, Ecumenical Review, III, 221ffGoogle Scholar.

page 43 note 1 ‘“Atomic Tests and Disarmament’, Ecumenical Review, X (1959–1958), 70ffGoogle Scholar.

page 43 note 2 After this article was written, a meeting took place on 7th-gth August 1958 at Utrecht between representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and of the World Council of Churches. A communiqué of the meeting, which was of a preliminary and exploratory nature (cf. section V, 3 and 4 below), appeared in Ecumenical Review, XI (1958–9), 79f.

page 43 note 3 The journey was undertaken at the invitation of the Moscow Patriarchate, along with the President of the Evangelical Church in Westphalia, D. Wilm, the President of the External Affairs Bureau of the Evangelical Church in Germany, D. Wischmann, and Professors Iwand of Bonn and Vogel of Berlin, in agreement with the chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop D. Dibelius. It lasted from 26th March to 16th April 1958.

page 46 note 1 Yevgraf Duluman and P. Darmansky.

page 48 note 1 See the detailed report and the very instructive analyses by Rössler, Roman, ‘Das Journal des Moskauer Patriarchats als Spiegel kirchlicher Entwicklung in der Sowjetunion’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, New Series IV, 26–63Google Scholar.

page 49 note 1 See the ‘Resolution on the question of “The Vatican and the Orthodox Church”’ of 17th July 1948, Dokumente, pp. 35ffGoogle Scholar.

page 49 note 2 See the report of the ‘Conference of all Churches and Religious Communities in the U.S.S.R. for the Protection of Peace, 9th-12th May 1952’ published by the Moscow Patriarchate.

page 51 note 1 For the following see: Shelton Curtis, John, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917–1950 (New York 1953)Google Scholar; Rössler, Roman, ‘Entwicklung der sowjetischen Kirchenpolitik’ in the miscellany, Das Sowjetsystem in der heutigen Welt, Schriften des Auslands- und Dolmetscherinstituts der Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, II (Munich 1956)Google Scholar; Schaeder, Hildegard, ‘Die orthodoxe Kirche des Ostens’, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1949Google Scholar; and the documentary report in Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1956. Cf. also the careful current reports in the Herder-Korrespondenz.

page 52 note 1 Dokumente, p. 63; full text (in English) in Spinka, Matthew, The Church in Soviet Russia (New York 1956), pp. 161ffGoogle Scholar.

page 53 note 1 The beginnings of a critical study of this aspect of Russian church history and of a transformation of the principle of ‘symphony’ between Church and state to correspond with the altered situation are to be found in the miscellany, Kirche, Staat und Mensch, russisch-orthodoxe Studien (Geneva 1927)Google Scholar; see especially the contribution by Kartaschov, , ‘Die Kirche und der Staat’, pp. 78ffGoogle Scholar.

page 56 note 1 The Lutheran Church in Latvia still gives the impression of a people's church. By the time the Russians occupied the Baltic states in accordance with the agreement between Stalin and Hitler, the period in which churches were closed by the Soviet government was over, and so most church buildings have been kept for public worship. The same is true of the Lutheran Church in Estonia, according to the statements of the Lutheran bishop of Reval [Tallin], whom we met in Riga. A great difficulty for both churches, however, is that since the Soviet occupation of the country they have lost their theological faculties in Dorpat [Tartu] and Riga and have so far been able to prepare their young pastors for ordination only in special courses.

page 57 note 1 Dokumente, p. 42f and the very instructive official report, Anglo-Russian Theological Conference, Moscow, July 1956, ed. by Waddams, H. M. (London 1959)Google Scholar.

page 58 note 1 Johann Arndt (1555–1621), Lutheran writer of devotional works (Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum, 1609), persecuted for his inclination to mysticism; August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), Lutheran theologian, professor of theology at Halle, leader of German Pietism, formed Collegium orientale theologicum as a link with Eastern Christianity.

page 58 note 2 See report by Schaeder, Hildegard in Informationsblatt für die Gemeinden der niedersächsischen lutherischen Landeskirchen for 2nd August 1954, No. 16Google Scholar.

page 59 note 1 Cf. Schlink, E., ‘Wandlungen im protestantischen Verständnis der Ostkirche’, Ökumenische Rundschau (1959), pp. 153ffGoogle Scholar, and ‘La Christologie de Chalcédoine dans le dialogue oecuménique’, Verbum Caro (1958), pp. 23f.

page 60 note 1 Cf. my morphological reflections on questions of principle and method involved in the treatment of the ecumenical problem of the unity of dogmatic assertion, in the study, ‘Die Struktur der dogmatischen Aussage als ökumenisches Problem’, Kerygma und Dogma (1959), pp. 251–306Google Scholar.

page 61 note 1 Cf. the important canonistical books by Hieronymus I Kotsonis, ΠPOBΛHMATA THΣ' EKKΛHΣIAΣTIKHΣ OIKONOMIAΣ and H KANONIKH AΠOΨIΣ ΠEPI THΣ EΠIKOINDNΩNIAΣ META TΩN ETEPOΔOΞΩN (both Athens, 1957).