The Witness of Bartholomew I, Ecumenical
Patriarch
William G. Rusch, Editor
Eerdmans £14.99
Church Times Bookshop £13.50 (Use code
CT366 )
FIVE years ago, William Rusch, a Lutheran and Professor of
Lutheran Studies at Yale Divinity School, edited a symposium,
The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: Its premises and
promises. In this new book, the subject is the Ecumenical
Patriarch, Bartholomew I, who, while working from the most fragile
of contexts in Istanbul (where the Orthodox population comprises a
very small minority indeed compared with earlier generations), has,
none the less, provided extraordinary spiritual leadership to the
Orthodox world and ecumenically.
The seven essays that make up this collection consider various
aspects of Patriarch Bartholomew's ministry. Anna Marie Aagaard's
opening chapter looks at the Ecumenical Patriarch in a European
context, particularly with regard to the challenges in Turkey,
where the Patriarch is treated as a local bishop without any
recognition of the part that he plays as head of a world-wide
communion of Orthodox Churches. As Bartholomew himself has put it,
"the secular attitudes of Turkey are our main problem. . . we have
fewer problems with most of the religious Muslims we meet in the
corridors of the state than with the strong secularists and the
right-wing nationalists who do not want to have any Christian
minorities in the country."
Peter Bouteneff, from St Vladimir's Theological Seminary, New
York, writes perceptively about Bartholomew's ministry as
primus inter pares of the Orthodox Church. Bouteneff notes
that his "witness to the outside world" has been "of monumental
importance for the Orthodox", as has been his commitment to
inter-Christian relations, which has not been without its problems
because of the sometimes vociferous stance of some Orthodox who
viewed any ecumenical engagement as a betrayal of Orthodoxy to
Papists and Protestants. As Patriarch Bartholomew trenchantly put
it: "Orthodoxy has no need of either fascism or bigotry to protect
itself. Whoever believes that Orthodoxy has the truth does not fear
dialogue, because truthhas never been endangered by dialogue."
The essays by Gunter Gassman and Mary Tanner show how Patriarch
Bartholomew's engagement with the World Council of Churches (WCC)
and the Faith and Order Commission (of which he was, before his
election as Patriarch, a significant member) honed his ecumenical
understanding. When the WCC was causing anxiety in the Orthodox
world by what seemed to be a political, social, and activist
agenda, little attention being given to the concerns of Faith and
Order and to deep concern for the visible unity of the Church as
inseparable from the calling to mission, Patriarch Bartholomew
played a significant part in both articulating Orthodox concerns
and reminding the WCC of the ecumenical vision.
Within Orthodoxy, the "Diaspora" poses a sharp ecclesiological
question, in which different cultural expressions of Orthodoxy -
Russian, Serbian, Greek, Romanian, and many others - create
different identities and hierarchical structures outside their
historic lands of origin. Behind this is often the fusion of
Orthodox religious identity with nationalism, condemned from a
wider perspective as "phyletism", but something that played an
important part in the creation of new states (and national
Churches) from the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ecumenical Patriarch, as Bouteneff notes, has to adjudicate
on the questions how new local Churches form, and how autocephaly
is granted. Patriarch Bartholomew, exercising a Primatial ministry,
has sought through the mechanism of Episcopal Assemblies to
co-ordinate the theological and pastoral activity of the churches
and aid in the articulation of a common witness to Church and
society. In discussing the environmental concerns that have earned
Patriarch Bartholomew the title of "the Green Patriarch", Bouteneff
emphasises the theological grounding of his concern in a
sacramental theology that echoes that of Alexander Schmemann in
The World as Sacrament, and in the rediscovery of the
anthropology of Maximus the Confessor.
Two contributions - by Fr Ronald Roberson and Joseph Small -
look respectively at Orthodox-Catholic and Orthodox-Reformed
dialogue, and provide some useful perspectives of these
encounters.
Dale Irvin's essay on Patriarch Bartholomew as bridge-builder
provides not only a concise history of the Patriarchate in its
Turkish context, but reminds us how Bartholomew himself was a
native of Imbros, one of two ethnically Greek islands at the
entrance to the Dardanelles (but now with only a tiny remaining
minority of the Orthodox population). From his own life-history,
Bartholomew is aware of the reality of powerlessness, which can,
none the less, enable a Christian leadership rootedin humility. As
Olivier Clémentputs it: "The ecumenical patriarch has no pretension
to be a 'universal bishop'. He claims no dogmatic infallibility, no
direct jurisdiction over all the faithful. He has no temporal
powers. As a centre of appeal whose aim is to preserve the faith
and unity of all, his primacy consists not in power, but in
sacrificial offering of service, in imitation of the One who came
not to be served but to serve."
Not only the Orthodox but the whole Christian world has occasion
to give thanks to God for calling Bartholomew to this remarkable
ministry.
The Rt Revd Dr Geoffrey Rowell is a former Bishop of
Gibraltar in Europe.