The Importance of Vladimir Lossky

Thoughout this Lent, it has been my particular struggle to read less, and pray more. To use the word "struggle" in this context is to imply the reality of constant failure amidst strenuously exerted attempts. This struggle has assured of (at least) one important reality: despite my strong academic leanings, I remain a very poor theologian. How can one possibly be in a position to speak about God the Holy Trinity when one has not struggled to praise the Holy Trinity in one's prayers? It is my hope that, the more I can get myself into a habit of saying the daily prayers on a regular basis, the more the "worldview" of the Fathers will become second-nature to me. To some extent, I suppose, that is just beginning to occur, though I of course cannot say for sure, not being privy to such matters of the soul. It has been in this struggle, however, that the true significance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity-in-Unity has become apparent to me: the prayers in their structure seem to be more doxology than narrative or mere description. This would indeed make sense in light of traditional Eastern teaching concerning the distinction between "theology" and "economy." One is reminded of our Lord's prophecy that the time would come when his followers would worship Him in "spirit and in truth." Those Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic academic theologians who have followed in the wake of Rahner have placed too much emphasis on the former and precious little on the latter. The Trinity does not explain the Incarnation (either logically or ontologically), nor does the Incarnation explain the Trinity. Rather, a glimpse of the reality of the eternal life of the Holy Trinity was revealed by our Lord in order to give a right understanding of the Incarnation, and it is only in the light of this truth that the Trinity can in turn be the model of our own collective communion with the three Divine Persons, and not vice versa.

One may ask at this point what any of this has to do with the title of this post, and I will answer that, the more I struggle to enter into the daily habit of prayer, the less "ecumenical" I feel. It's not that a certain antipathy toward all things Western has begun to seep through my understanding of Eastern Christianity. I only mean to say that, the more I learn about authentic Eastern Christian piety, the less interested I get in how "other" Christians have done it in the past. In Eastern piety I recognize nothing less than the sheer perfection of the practice of the Gospel, and it is difficult to add to that perfection or argue with the profound success that Eastern Christian monasticism has been. It is in light of this personal experience that some of Lossky's less-than-ecumenical statements have come back to me with a new force, as it were. Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism might look very similar on paper, but the respective ethos that governs their spiritual practice is quite differently manifested in each Church. This is not to deny the vast areas of similarity that exist between the two Churches, but rather to point out that one must not assume a secondary importance of spirituality and monasticism for the sake of a unity of faith which exists only on paper in many respects.

As I continue to re-read Lossky's collection of essays entitled, In the Image and Likeness of God, I hope to be able to continue to comment on these and similar themes, in order to show that the practice of negative theology fits much better with the spiritual practice of the Fathers than the philosophical approach of much modern Christianity...