Status
Available
Call number
Publication
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (1997), Edition: 2nd Revised & enlarged, 151 pages
Description
Of what life do we speak, what life do we preach, proclaim, and announce when, as Christians, we confess that Christ died for the life of the world? In For the Life of the World Alexander Schmemann suggests an approach to the world and life within it, which stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. He understands issues such as secularism and Christian culture from the perspective of the unbroken experience of the Church, as revealed and communicated in her worship, in her liturgy--the sacrament of the world, the sacrament of the Kingdom. For over half a century For the Life of the World has challenged, illumined, and inspired readers from many backgrounds. For some it is an introduction to the Orthodox Church, while for others it is a call to plunge more deeply into the life of the Kingdom, both manifested and anticipated here and now in the liturgy of the Church. This updated edition of Schmemann s classic text includes a new foreword by Dr Edith M. Humphrey, along with new explanatory notes and an index. -- ‡c From publisher's description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member jesposito
Argument/Thesis: Schmemann seeks to show that as originally intended, the world and in fact all material is sacramental for humanity. This is true because matter is itself a means by which we are able to commune with the Triune God as we receive the gift and return it to the Father. Humanity must
The original sin then was to make the world an end in itself rather than a means to communion with God. When Adam ate of the tree, he made that food the end of his pursuits rather than rightly using food as a springboard toward a relationship with God. Thus, it is the creation of a dichotomy between the material and the spiritual that makes possible two separate ends: materialism and religion. Both of these are false ends according to Schmemann since it is precisely the separation of material from spiritual that allows one to think about the world without thinking about God and vice versa. It is this separation that leads to idolatry. The stated purpose of the book "is to remind its readers that in Christ, life--life in all its totality--was returned to man, given again as sacrament and communion, made Eucharist. " Christ came to restore the sacramental life as it was intended from the beginning. All of mission then must be centered on this Eucharistic center. In establishing this, it is Schmemann’s hope to show that mission begins and ends with the Kingdom of God, which must necessarily destroy the distinction between the spiritual and material. This in turn requires that those who participate in this Eucharistic Kingdom must do so by living between both secularism and religion by participating in the unified whole of the Kingdom as it was meant to be—ecstatic, kenotic love of God and humanity.
Evaluation of Sources: Fr. Schmemann is a well known, widely respected writer coming out of the Orthodox tradition. His books however are not limited to merely the Orthodox, but have been utilized widely in both scholarly and practical applications. This particular book is not intended to be research based, but rather it is more pastoral. In his stated intentions, Schmemann says that the impetus for writing was “to outline—to students preparing themselves for a discussion of Christian mission—the Christian “world view”, i.e., the approach to the world and to man’s life in it that stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. ” Thus, we would expect that much of his writing would draw from his lengthy experience of performing the liturgy and reflecting upon its meaning. Therefore, we are not surprised to see very few external references to ‘authorities’ in their field. Rather the focus is clearly upon an exegesis of his own tradition. However, the implications for this study extend well beyond the figurative boundaries of the Orthodox Church. Indeed, this study is important for any Christian in terms of understanding Creation, Fall, Redemption and Sacrament. I find this study to be very helpful indeed.
Tracing the main idea: From beginning to end, Schmemann exegetes a view of sacrament that integrates both the material and the spiritual as necessary parts of a seamless whole. This unification of supposed parts has major implications for mission. Indeed, it is the rightful sacramental participation of the church as the body of Christ in the world, offering the world and ourselves back to the Father in the Spirit that is both salvation and mission. This is the way in which we transform our world, by ceasing to use the world as an end in itself and instead returning the gift of the world given to us back to the Father. This understanding of mission posits that the world itself, having been created as good and very good, needs to be redeemed through Christ and not merely the individual self. As has been said before, this holistic understanding limits the secular and religious view of the world in favor of a unified sacramental whole. Indeed, he claims that Christianity is not itself a religion, but the death of all religion since Christianity seeks to recognize the reorientation of all of life toward God through Christ and in so doing transforms the world. But, when Christianity mutates into religion, secularism recognizes it as dead and rejects it in a movement to oppose all religion (rightfully so?). Yet, sacramental Christianity, the recognition of God’s kingdom reigning on earth as it is in heaven (even if ever so faintly through the body of Christ at present) to accomplish God’s purposes, is both life and mission. This Eucharistic existence is “indeed the preface to the world to come, the door into the Kingdom: and this we confess and proclaim when, speaking of the Kingdom which is to come, we affirm that God has already endowed us with it. This future has been given to us in the past that it may constitute the very present, the life itself, now, of the Church. ”
This, then, is the impetus for mission—that people are drowning in both religion and secularism respectively. The religious are awaiting another reality outside of this one, and in so doing, miss Christ here. The secularists in reaction to this religion cannot dismiss the reality before them and thus believe all of this is an end in itself. Both of these beliefs are heresy and cause despair and death. “But the Christian is precisely the one who knows that the true reality of the world…is in Christ” . Thus our mission is to announce the Kingdom of God and invite persons to participate in the life giving reality of it. For “…as long…as we make our life an end in itself, no meaning and no goal can stand, for they are dissolved in death. It is only when we give up…the self-sufficiency of our life…that the ‘newness of life’…is given to us. The world then truly becomes the sacrament of Christ’s presence, the growth of the Kingdom and of life eternal. ”
My Evaluation: This is one of the better books I have read in a while. Schmemann makes a compelling argument for understanding all of life as sacramental and for doing away with the categories of secularism and religion in favor of a more unified view of reality. This book has tremendous implications for mission as well. If God’s redemptive activity is not about saving a disincarnate soul from some future spiritual death, but about saving the whole incarnate world beginning now, then our aim in mission needs to be much more holistic. Indeed, the original sin is to disconnect the material from the spiritual and to treat it as an end in itself rather than a means to an end in God. Thus, if we do not reunite these two seemingly disparate parts we really do not participate in God’s mission at all. God is about redeeming the whole world through one man—Jesus Christ. The Gospel of the Kingdom recognizes that the incarnation is the supreme moment of identification for God with the world where God becomes a bunch of borrowed earth and matter and yet does not cease to be God. Thus our mission must pattern after God’s own. We must cease proclaiming a rest after death for a discarnate soul and start proclaiming eternal life that begins to manifest right now through the body of Christ and never ceases. This Gospel is not about escape from the world, but rather about radical incarnate transformation of the world through full, sacramental participation in it.
“A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ and rejoices in Him. And this joy transforms all his human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all his mission the sacrament of the world’s return to Him who is the life of the world. ”
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rightly stand “in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God—and by filling the world with this Eucharist, he transforms his life…into life in God, into communion with him” . He seeks to establish this point in order to show that both secularism and the “almost Manichean rejection of the world, for an escape into a discarnate and dualistic spirituality” (which he terms ‘religion’) are not Orthodox positions and thus neither are good starting points for mission. The original sin then was to make the world an end in itself rather than a means to communion with God. When Adam ate of the tree, he made that food the end of his pursuits rather than rightly using food as a springboard toward a relationship with God. Thus, it is the creation of a dichotomy between the material and the spiritual that makes possible two separate ends: materialism and religion. Both of these are false ends according to Schmemann since it is precisely the separation of material from spiritual that allows one to think about the world without thinking about God and vice versa. It is this separation that leads to idolatry. The stated purpose of the book "is to remind its readers that in Christ, life--life in all its totality--was returned to man, given again as sacrament and communion, made Eucharist. " Christ came to restore the sacramental life as it was intended from the beginning. All of mission then must be centered on this Eucharistic center. In establishing this, it is Schmemann’s hope to show that mission begins and ends with the Kingdom of God, which must necessarily destroy the distinction between the spiritual and material. This in turn requires that those who participate in this Eucharistic Kingdom must do so by living between both secularism and religion by participating in the unified whole of the Kingdom as it was meant to be—ecstatic, kenotic love of God and humanity.
Evaluation of Sources: Fr. Schmemann is a well known, widely respected writer coming out of the Orthodox tradition. His books however are not limited to merely the Orthodox, but have been utilized widely in both scholarly and practical applications. This particular book is not intended to be research based, but rather it is more pastoral. In his stated intentions, Schmemann says that the impetus for writing was “to outline—to students preparing themselves for a discussion of Christian mission—the Christian “world view”, i.e., the approach to the world and to man’s life in it that stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. ” Thus, we would expect that much of his writing would draw from his lengthy experience of performing the liturgy and reflecting upon its meaning. Therefore, we are not surprised to see very few external references to ‘authorities’ in their field. Rather the focus is clearly upon an exegesis of his own tradition. However, the implications for this study extend well beyond the figurative boundaries of the Orthodox Church. Indeed, this study is important for any Christian in terms of understanding Creation, Fall, Redemption and Sacrament. I find this study to be very helpful indeed.
Tracing the main idea: From beginning to end, Schmemann exegetes a view of sacrament that integrates both the material and the spiritual as necessary parts of a seamless whole. This unification of supposed parts has major implications for mission. Indeed, it is the rightful sacramental participation of the church as the body of Christ in the world, offering the world and ourselves back to the Father in the Spirit that is both salvation and mission. This is the way in which we transform our world, by ceasing to use the world as an end in itself and instead returning the gift of the world given to us back to the Father. This understanding of mission posits that the world itself, having been created as good and very good, needs to be redeemed through Christ and not merely the individual self. As has been said before, this holistic understanding limits the secular and religious view of the world in favor of a unified sacramental whole. Indeed, he claims that Christianity is not itself a religion, but the death of all religion since Christianity seeks to recognize the reorientation of all of life toward God through Christ and in so doing transforms the world. But, when Christianity mutates into religion, secularism recognizes it as dead and rejects it in a movement to oppose all religion (rightfully so?). Yet, sacramental Christianity, the recognition of God’s kingdom reigning on earth as it is in heaven (even if ever so faintly through the body of Christ at present) to accomplish God’s purposes, is both life and mission. This Eucharistic existence is “indeed the preface to the world to come, the door into the Kingdom: and this we confess and proclaim when, speaking of the Kingdom which is to come, we affirm that God has already endowed us with it. This future has been given to us in the past that it may constitute the very present, the life itself, now, of the Church. ”
This, then, is the impetus for mission—that people are drowning in both religion and secularism respectively. The religious are awaiting another reality outside of this one, and in so doing, miss Christ here. The secularists in reaction to this religion cannot dismiss the reality before them and thus believe all of this is an end in itself. Both of these beliefs are heresy and cause despair and death. “But the Christian is precisely the one who knows that the true reality of the world…is in Christ” . Thus our mission is to announce the Kingdom of God and invite persons to participate in the life giving reality of it. For “…as long…as we make our life an end in itself, no meaning and no goal can stand, for they are dissolved in death. It is only when we give up…the self-sufficiency of our life…that the ‘newness of life’…is given to us. The world then truly becomes the sacrament of Christ’s presence, the growth of the Kingdom and of life eternal. ”
My Evaluation: This is one of the better books I have read in a while. Schmemann makes a compelling argument for understanding all of life as sacramental and for doing away with the categories of secularism and religion in favor of a more unified view of reality. This book has tremendous implications for mission as well. If God’s redemptive activity is not about saving a disincarnate soul from some future spiritual death, but about saving the whole incarnate world beginning now, then our aim in mission needs to be much more holistic. Indeed, the original sin is to disconnect the material from the spiritual and to treat it as an end in itself rather than a means to an end in God. Thus, if we do not reunite these two seemingly disparate parts we really do not participate in God’s mission at all. God is about redeeming the whole world through one man—Jesus Christ. The Gospel of the Kingdom recognizes that the incarnation is the supreme moment of identification for God with the world where God becomes a bunch of borrowed earth and matter and yet does not cease to be God. Thus our mission must pattern after God’s own. We must cease proclaiming a rest after death for a discarnate soul and start proclaiming eternal life that begins to manifest right now through the body of Christ and never ceases. This Gospel is not about escape from the world, but rather about radical incarnate transformation of the world through full, sacramental participation in it.
“A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ and rejoices in Him. And this joy transforms all his human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all his mission the sacrament of the world’s return to Him who is the life of the world. ”
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LibraryThing member johnredmond
A mind-altering book. A good chance that reading this book will change your understanding and approach to the sacraments. Schmemann is the very opposite of the kind of form/matter rigorism which if we aren't careful can limit our ability to grasp the sacramental experience. On my first read I was
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somewhat annoyed by the casual assumption of the problems with western theology, but the book was worth coming back to and I'm glad I did. Show Less
LibraryThing member saintbedefg
One of the clearest and most penetrating books ever written on the nature of "sacrament." The first two chapters (as well as the final essay 'Worship in a Secular Age') contains one of the most helpful discussions of what the Eucharist and all Christian worship is about.
Schmemann was a Russian
Nov 2002 Goodnewslette
Schmemann was a Russian
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Orthodox theologian (and a few parts of this book are specifically focused on Eastern Christian traditions), but his wok had deep impact on many Anglicans. If you are thirsting for a new and thoughtful way of understanding worship and the purpose of being human, then this book might be the ticket,.Nov 2002 Goodnewslette
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LibraryThing member nicholasjjordan
Incredible and incredibly challenging.
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1963
Physical description
151 p.; 5.75 inches
ISBN
0913836087 / 9780913836088
Other editions
Sacraments and orthodoxy by Alexander Schmemann (Hardcover)
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