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Protopresbyter Vitaly Borovoy
The right approach to today's problems
Orthodox Church life and work should be focused not on an abstract and speculative orthodoxy, but on ortho-practice, that is, Christian diakonia.
The right approach to the task of restoring the former role and influence of the Church should be based on faithfulness to the forefathers, a free meeting with the West and spiritual sobriety in the dialogue and cooperation with society.
Faithfulness to the forefathers presupposes the creative use, in the spirit of the patristic tradition, of the heritage left by the 19th- and 20th-century movements toward the restoration of the Church's influence. The Church should also make use of the rich materials produced by the 1905-1907 Pre-Council Conference and the Actions and instructions issued by the 1917-1918 Local Council, which gave a general outline of steps to enhance the influence of the Church in society.
Free meeting with the West
The legacy of the theologians and religious thinkers of the 20th century Russian Diaspora, especially Ilyin, Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank, Lossky, Father Florovsky, Zenkovsky, Kartashev and Fedotov, should also be considered.
A free meeting with the West presupposes the use of the historical experience gained by Western Churches in renewal, dictated by the demands of time, for they, in their own centuries-old history, also suffered periods of heavy crises and decay. They also underwent regeneration and renewal before they achieved the present state of relative stability.
Spiritual sobriety and concreteness presuppose that our projects and aims in restoring the influence of the Church in society should ensure the historical continuity of the 19th and 20th century movement for the renewal of the Church.
A consistent continuation of the renewal planned by the 1917-1918 Council, but interrupted by the revolution, the present projects and aims should be concrete and intelligible for the parish clergy and faithful. They should also be relevant to and attractive for the intelligentsia, youth and mass media.
At the same time, they should take into account our realities and resources in each stage of their implementation, as we cannot allow the tragic history of the so-called Renovators to repeat itself.
The criteria for any theology and any church task or initiative are practice and actual context. Faith is recognized only by deeds.
No contradiction between faith and service
In order to make Christian witness and diakonia complete and successful, it is necessary to avoid the extremes of any one-dimensional Christianity, for it is pseudo-Christianity; it is actually an ultra-right or ultra-left ideology Christianized by theological phrases. Christianity, however, is not an ideology, but the Good News of the New Life in abundance.
True Christianity and authentic patristic Orthodoxy reject any false alternatives. The is no alternative between evangelization as Orthodox witness and humanization as Orthodox diakonia. There is no alternative between the heart's turning to God and the improvement of our suffering brothers' life. There is no contradiction between the vertical aspiration of faith and spirit and the horizontal service of people's needs here on earth.
Those who try to separate these elements destroy the theological unity of the Person of Jesus Christ. For such were the faith and witness of early Christians who lived in the heathen Greeco-Roman world, preaching the kingdom of God, and "righteousness (justice), peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:17) were essential parts of this preaching.
The same preaching should be put in the basis of our witness to Christ and our diakonia in the name of Christ in the post-Soviet society. We should build this new society together with other people in our country, with all our brothers and sisters. This means to learn to live together with them, sharing their joys and sorrows, successes and failures.
Revival of church life
To live together means to share their hopes and needs. Our witness and diakonia in the name of Christ is our and their task alike; it is a common cause of all and every member of the Holy Orthodox Church.
Our Church can succeed in her primary calling of witness to Christ only if all the above-mentioned aspects of the healthy growth of the church body are involved in the revival and restoration of church life, as they were in the Early Church. Her witness and diakonia will reach people's hearts only if she becomes a faithful servant of all those working and burdened in our country.
Just as the Early Church, our Church will then again "enjoy the favour of the people" (Acts 2:47), and the Lord will "add to their number daily those who are being saved" (Acts 2:47).
In doing this, we should always remember as a warning for the future the words Christ said to the paralyzed man: "You are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you" (Jn. 5:14).
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