Culture: Friend or Foe?

Patristic theology, and traditional teachings of Orthodoxy from the Church fathers of apostolic times to the present. All forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.


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Justin Kissel

Culture: Friend or Foe?

Post by Justin Kissel »

There seems to be two main schools of thought on secular culture (as relating to the Church):

1) Culture can be a friend, for it can be used by the Church as a vehicle for spreading the truth. This school of thought points out that Christians didn't keep their Hebrew culture of God's Israel, but readily accepted and used Greek culture to their advantage. This isn't to say that an entire culture becomes Christianized (it's hard enough having a thoroughly Christian sub-culture), but rather than certain aspects and practices of a culture can be "baptized" for Orthodox use.

2) The other school of thought is that culture is a foe, and always has a corrupting effect on Christianity. Those who hold to this point to all the corruptions that creep in during even "the best of times" (e.g., even when Saintly Emperor's reigned, and there were multitudes of saints, all sorts of bad corruptions and lapses crept in). Therefore, those in this school suggest a complete cutting off from culture as the safest course.

I think both schools of thought are acceptable, and I think you can find multitudes of saints holding to both types of belief. The question for us is, what do we do about western culture? Do we try to "baptize" some things and use them to our advantage, or do we "wall ourselves off," so to speak, from western secular culture. IMO, neither should be considered unorthodox. The former is not necessarily "caving to culture" or "changing with the times[/I], and the latter is not necessarily "closing ourselves off from everything". This has nothing to do with Orthodoxy herself, but it has rather to do with what methods--or vehicles--Orthodoxy will use in it's communication with those outside the Church.

What do we do, for instance, about contraception? The Fathers were clearly against it in principle. Yet, the Fathers were also clearly against slavery in principle, but in government (both civil and ecclesiastical) we do not see an attempt to eliminate slavery, but merely attempts to control it's use (or abuse). No one today is going to say that slavery is a good thing: yet it was so much a part of the culture at the time that--even if pious Christians were wholly against it--that the Church didn't even strongly press for a change. It was a concession to weakness, as it were (much like God had allowed Moses to give regarding divorces). The question is, could we also be experiencing such a need for a concession for weakness today? Anyone who's read anything I've written about contraception in the past few months knows that I am very strongly against the general usage of contraception. However, I've been befuddled by how even very conservative ROCOR priests will sometimes make more concessions than what the early Church seemed to do. Is this perhaps one of those times and issues for concessions to be made?

I don't mean for this to be another debate on contraception, I'm merely bringing it up as an example of an aspect of our culture which the Church must learn to deal with. The larger intent of the thread, though, again, is just to talk about the Church's relation to culture generally.

rebecca
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Post by rebecca »

I read an article by a priest in Indonesia. He said that one of the biggest mistakes of missionaries is to try to suppress the local culture. The locals think, "Oh, here come those racist western colonists again, trying to push their culture on us." He said that one needs to emphasize the universality of the church, and allow people to retain the local language and customs, such as traditional wedding garments. I'm not sure how much music should change. Should the Chinese Orthodox have Buddhist chant-style church singing? Is traditional Byzantine/Greek chant based on Hebrew music, or something pagan or secular? How much of what we consider to be "mainstream" Orthodox culture originated in pagan or secular customs?

Justin Kissel

Post by Justin Kissel »

Some interesting questions. I know a number of people would "have a cow" if we did some of the things now that happened in the early Church. The Ambrose of today would probably not be received very well in his introduction of antiphonal singing. The Cappadocian Churches would probably be called "Protestant" for the power they gave to the laity regarding ecclesiastical elections.

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