Cabasilas & Schmemann: The Intended Audience
Fr. Alexander Schmemann starts off his book with a lamentation about our need to understand Baptism. That clearly reveals his intended audience: Orthodox Christians. Over and over throughout his book, he finds every exhortation, every inspirational liturgical detail, every symbol lost on the modern ear to help reconnect modern Orthodox Christians with the richness of Baptism, Chrismation, and the Eucharist. And that is a message that needs to be heard, especially in the 1970s when he wrote it. He makes references to abbreviation or outright removal of seemingly redundant, meaningless, or outdated parts of the baptismal service, which to him is particularly abhorrent because such changes usually proceed from ignorance of the sacrament.
St. Nicholas Cabasilas seems to have had a different audience in mind. On the surface, he, too, is speaking to Orthodox Christians, though it is difficult to say if that be to his own flock, because there is much uncertainty as to whether he ended his life a bishop in Thessalonica, or alternatively as a layman, or maybe even entering a monastery late in life and there being ordained a priest.
In determining his audience, it is important to remember that he is a contemporary of St. Gregory Palamas. This was a time of ideological struggle between the spiritual worldview of East and West, a time when the differences were being very clearly defined, and as I will point out in a later article, Cabasilas is not throwing around the catchwords of his time (hesychasm, essence and energies), nor is he quoting Palamas. In fact, he hardly, if ever, quotes the Fathers. It seems he is attempting to position this work not so much as the “the spiritual life of an Eastern Orthodox Christian in Christ”, but rather “the life of all Christians, East and West, in Christ”.
Interestingly, he himself says that everything he is saying “has been discussed at length by the ancients as well as by more recent writers, and they have omitted nothing which ought to have been said”, however, it is not enough for St. Nicholas to only run through the finer points of the mysteries themselves, for he feels a need to move onward to instruct the reader how to retain the grace we received in those sacraments. And that is where his book excels.
St. Nicholas Cabasilas seems to have had a different audience in mind. On the surface, he, too, is speaking to Orthodox Christians, though it is difficult to say if that be to his own flock, because there is much uncertainty as to whether he ended his life a bishop in Thessalonica, or alternatively as a layman, or maybe even entering a monastery late in life and there being ordained a priest.
In determining his audience, it is important to remember that he is a contemporary of St. Gregory Palamas. This was a time of ideological struggle between the spiritual worldview of East and West, a time when the differences were being very clearly defined, and as I will point out in a later article, Cabasilas is not throwing around the catchwords of his time (hesychasm, essence and energies), nor is he quoting Palamas. In fact, he hardly, if ever, quotes the Fathers. It seems he is attempting to position this work not so much as the “the spiritual life of an Eastern Orthodox Christian in Christ”, but rather “the life of all Christians, East and West, in Christ”.
Interestingly, he himself says that everything he is saying “has been discussed at length by the ancients as well as by more recent writers, and they have omitted nothing which ought to have been said”, however, it is not enough for St. Nicholas to only run through the finer points of the mysteries themselves, for he feels a need to move onward to instruct the reader how to retain the grace we received in those sacraments. And that is where his book excels.
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