Cabasilas & Schmemann: Intellectual Speak
This is an absolutely unfair and completely biased and subjective opinion—I think my emphasis is quite clear in saying how the following probably should not be said in a proper and balanced evaluation of these two books, but will be anyway, for I think it is helpful to the reader in determining how to interpret my thoughts on these two books—but Schmemann’s book seems too theologically “uppity”, where Cabasilas is more like hearing wise thoughts that may be partially over the listener’s head, but the understood pieces become pearls to cherish.
[ This is where you choose to read any of the following articles or not. I am not anti-Schmemann; I loved the book, but this work, and I am assuming others of his as well, are written "higher" than necessary. ]
St. Nicholas’s book, for all of its distance from us in time and geography and culture, seems to treat Baptism in a way that hits our modern context more directly than Fr. Alexander's book. It is not better, and Fr. Alexander is in no way deficient. The two books certainly have a different character and tone. Schmemann would likely come across as too difficult for many people. Now, to be a little bit more fair, I found myself re-reading passages of Cabasilas’s book, trying to understand his meaning, much more often than I did with Schmemann. However, there are a few nuggets in Cabasilas, easily understood by all, that are well worth the read, despite the difficulty of some passages. Maybe it would be good to suggest Cabasilas’s Life in Christ with a slight disclaimer, but it still should be in the hands of today’s converts.
This may be an aside, but it serves as a good example of this difference between Cabasilas and Schmemann: it is in words like ontology and ontological. This is one of many such words you find in Schmemann, but never in Cabasilas. Cabasilas is almost speaking in a parable style, relating all of these “noetically complicated” ideas into everyday illustrations. Again, though, I feel bad for attacking Schmemann on this point, for he does seem to try to teach us what these words mean: “...based on the ontological character, that is, belonging to the very nature of man assumed by Christ for its salvation”. If ontological and noetic and phronema pose too much of a barrier for the proposed reader, maybe the nod goes to Cabasilas on this one.
[ This is where you choose to read any of the following articles or not. I am not anti-Schmemann; I loved the book, but this work, and I am assuming others of his as well, are written "higher" than necessary. ]
St. Nicholas’s book, for all of its distance from us in time and geography and culture, seems to treat Baptism in a way that hits our modern context more directly than Fr. Alexander's book. It is not better, and Fr. Alexander is in no way deficient. The two books certainly have a different character and tone. Schmemann would likely come across as too difficult for many people. Now, to be a little bit more fair, I found myself re-reading passages of Cabasilas’s book, trying to understand his meaning, much more often than I did with Schmemann. However, there are a few nuggets in Cabasilas, easily understood by all, that are well worth the read, despite the difficulty of some passages. Maybe it would be good to suggest Cabasilas’s Life in Christ with a slight disclaimer, but it still should be in the hands of today’s converts.
This may be an aside, but it serves as a good example of this difference between Cabasilas and Schmemann: it is in words like ontology and ontological. This is one of many such words you find in Schmemann, but never in Cabasilas. Cabasilas is almost speaking in a parable style, relating all of these “noetically complicated” ideas into everyday illustrations. Again, though, I feel bad for attacking Schmemann on this point, for he does seem to try to teach us what these words mean: “...based on the ontological character, that is, belonging to the very nature of man assumed by Christ for its salvation”. If ontological and noetic and phronema pose too much of a barrier for the proposed reader, maybe the nod goes to Cabasilas on this one.
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