Clément’s choice of the Orthodox Church points us to the origins, ecclesiology and fruitful creativity of the theologians of the Russian Diaspora to which he was introduced as a young teacher in Paris. For Bulgakov ‘the inspiration of the
Eucharist ought to accompany us in all our creative activity in life, and the Liturgy […] must be transformed into a liturgy celebrated outside the temple.456
Paul Evdokomov, Maria Skobtsova and Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, spiritual children of Bulgalov who lived out this ‘social ecclesiology’, were active in the French Resistance, as was Clément, and in work with the poor and displaced persons of the Second World War. A characteristic of émigré theology was the notion of sobornost, defined as freedom, unity and conciliarity; it carries the meaning that church life is ‘collaborative and yet hierarchical’ building up the Body of
454 Gudziak, ‘Towards an Analysis’, quotes Kallistos Ware from an interview with Gudziak in
Rome, 1995, p. 236, n. 85.
455 Nicolas Lossky, p. 69-70.
456 Sergius Bulgakov, ‘The Eucharist and the Social Problems of Modern Society’, Journal of the
Fellowship of St Alban ad St Sergius, 21 (1933), pp. 13, 15, cited by Plekon, ‘Social Theory’, p. 98.
Christ.457 Nicolas Afanasiev458 had set out his theological thesis on eucharistic theology, that the gathering of the faithful around the Scriptures and eucharistic table forms the Church’s ecclesial identity; this forms the starting point of the ecclesiology of communion recognised by most Christian Churches and Confessions today, and is a significant contribution to ecumenical dialogue. Afanasiev’s radical vision, expressed in his words, ‘the Eucharist makes the Church’, was shared by many contemporary Catholic theologians, including Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar. Significantly Afanasiev’s studies in eucharistic ecclesiology were mentioned in Vatican II’s working sessions and drafts for the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.459 Clément notes that for Christians of the first centuries there was no ecclesiology per se, but affirms the Church was above all the Body of Christ, ‘the sacrament, or “mystery” as the East says, of the Risen One who raises us.’ ‘It is the Eucharist that makes the Church the Body of Christ;’460 the Eucharist is the ‘mystery of mysteries’.461
In 1968 Clément visited Athenagoras I, Patriarch of Constantinople, at Istanbul where as a service to unity he aimed to publish the dialogues they shared. He considers this to be one of his most important books.462 His two chief aims were to underline the universality of Orthodoxy, committed at the same time to love and respect for other expressions of faith, and to introduce Orthodoxy to Christians and non-Christians of the West. The patriarch, Clément affirms, delivered him from a fear: in spite of the fact that the Orthodox Church had been an immense light for him and remained so, he became aware how often the Orthodox defined themselves against the other, and pronounced others with differing views as heretics.463 This Clément found quite ‘suffocating’ as it did not correspond with his own experience of those who were labelled heretics. Perhaps
457 See Mary B Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, Cambridge Companion, p. 11; and
Jillions, ‘Orthodox Christianity in the West’, p. 281.
458 Afanasiev’s eucharistic theology returns to the early Patristic sources to understand the Church
in relationship with the world, its engagement with the world and the culture within which it lived. Athenagoras I recommended Afanasiev’s appointment as observer at Vatican II where his
ecclesiological work influenced the writing of Lumen Gentium. See Nichols, Theology in the Russian Diaspora. See also, Michael Kaszowski, ‘Sources de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique du P. Nicolaus Afanassieff’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 52 (1976), 331-343.
459 Plekon, Living Icons, pp. 149-150. 460 Clément, Rome Autrement, p. 10. 461 Ibid.
462 Olivier Clément, ‘Notes autobiographiques’, Contacts, 228 (2009), pp. 407-12. 463 Clément, ‘Notes autobiographiques’, p. 412.
this was redolent of childhood memories of a fractured Christianity and society in the Languedoc region, the bitterness this engendered and his father’s rejection of Catholicism. Athenagoras did not ignore the problems but recognised what was positive in difference and looked at others with the eyes of Christ. The patriarch also taught a profound and simple rule for spirituality for everyday life. He was keen to explain that Christianity was not made up of prohibitions but is about ‘fire, creation and illumination’.464
Clément may have always seen Catholicism as being too juridical especially concerning ethical and sexual problems, but
nevertheless Clément considered, this was better than saying nothing.465 As he listened to the patriarch he entered into the rhythms of silence, of respect and of opening so important in the East; Athenagoras’ face appeared as an icon of age and wisdom as he spoke of his belief that the depth of things is not ‘nothing’, but love.466 This was a message that Clément knew contemporary society, caught in the nihilism that followed the carnage of two world wars, needed to hear; he judged that the West was experiencing a night of the soul, ‘perhaps in the sense of St John of the Cross, a mystical night’,467
or the powerless pagan idols referred to by Jeremiah, which he labels ‘Nothings’,468
all too redolent of the Nothings turned to by a society disenchanted with religion while fearing annihilation and death.
Olivier Clément loved Russian religious thought, but without isolating it from other forms of Orthodox thought, Byzantine or Syriac for example, or from the great Christian theologians and writers of the West. He believed that Orthodoxy had allowed him to become a Christian; it had also given him some keys to understand and love other confessions. He was well aware of the quarrels and divisions that erupted in the Russian community in Paris between exponents of religious philosophy, sophiology, neo-Patristic synthesis and neo-Palamite systems of theology, for himself he resisted taking ‘the inquisitorial party line’; rather he wished to recognise the debt he owed to Vladimir Lossky, Paul
Evdokimov and the ‘astonishing intuitions’ of other religious philosophers of the emigration. He discerned that opposition leads to caricature, but those who love
464 Ibid. 465 Ibid., p. 410. 466 Clément, Dialogues’, p. 9. 467 Ibid. 468 Jeremiah 14:20.
Christ can find precious sparks of life and truth beyond the systems.469 Orthodoxy had spoken to Clément of the meaning of kenosis, the Transfiguration, the Trinity as source of all communion, and of the way of the Philocalia. Speaking of the joy of repentance, he finds it is not possible to separate joy from repentance; his experience of metanoia, the turning of the heart and mind to God, to discover there was no longer death, only separation, was the experience of joy.470