Questions to Guide Your Reading

 

Alexander Schmemann, “The Life of the World,” in For the Life of the World

 

1. What is the statement with which the German materialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all “idealistic” speculations about human nature?  What does Fr. Schmemann think about this statement?  How does he interpret it differently?  What does it express for him?

 

2. Fr. Schmemann begins his discussion with a reflection on the Biblical statement that Christ died “for the life of the world.”  (See, for example, Jn 6.51: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”) The first thing you might notice is that this phrase is the title of the book.  The question you should ask yourself now is why Fr. Schmemann would have chosen that particular passage from Jn 6.51 to serve as the basis for his book on the sacraments.  (Please note that the answer is not merely, “because it’s in the Bible.”  Yes, it is in the Bible, but so are a lot of other things.  Why this particular passage?  The first part of the answer has to do with what Jesus is talking about in Jn 6.51.  The other part of the answer has to do with how Fr. Schmemann interprets the phrase “for the life of the world.”  Here’s a hint: What is the mistake Fr. Schmemann sees in the way some people talk about “religious life.”  Now, ask yourself again: What sort of “life” did Christ give his life for?  Religious life?  Or life pure and simple – that is, “the life of the world”?  Explain.)

 

3. On p. 13, Fr. Schmemann asks, “what is this life that we must regain for Christ and make Christian?  What is, in other words, the ultimate end of all this doing and action?”  What is his answer?

 

Section 2

 

4. According to Fr. Schmemann, while Ludwig Feuerbach and his religious opponents disagreed on whether in addition to his material functions, man possessed a spiritual “superstructure,” they both agreed on the same fundamental opposition between two poles.  What is this fundamental opposition? 

 

5. What does Fr. Schmemann think about this fundamental opposition between the spiritual and the material?

 

6. Take a step back from the text for a moment and reflect: Why, in a book on the sacraments, would Fr. Schmemann be trying to break down this hard-and-fast opposition many of us seem to have between the material and the spiritual?

 

7. Toward the bottom of p. 14, Fr. Schmemann says that “Man is a hungry being.”  What is he hungry for?                                                                               

                                                                                               

8. Let’s think about this for a minute: “Man is a hungry being.  What is he hungry for?”  Your first answer might be: for food.  Duh.  Absolutely.  In fact, is Fr. Schmemann denying that?  Absolutely not.  But then we might ask ourselves this: “Is food the only thing man is hungry for?”  (Does man live by bread alone?)  Is having enough food sufficient for you to have the “fullness of life” we were talking about above?  If not, what else do you require?

            Let’s say that, along with food, clothing, housing, shelter, and perhaps some other things like “a good job, doing things I love to do,” and “the appreciation of my peers,” you finally come to the conclusion that you need friends and loved ones for a full, flourishing human life.  Fine, but you still need to eat, right?  Absolutely.  But are those two things – eating and friends – necessarily mutually exclusive?  Indeed, are they not often enough combined?  We eat with friends or with family, and we enjoy their company.  We don’t merely “graze” like cattle (well, not when we’re at our best, at any rate); we share a meal.  We “break bread together.”  And when we eat in this way, we nourish not only our bodies (not unimportant), but our spirits as well.  Is there any reason to say, “Well, yes, but the food cheapens the whole experience.  Let’s nourish our spirits without the food”?  Why would we say that?  We are a unified whole made up of body and spirit, spirit and body – neither solely one or the other.  Why should we go off and eat alone and then come together only to do “spiritual” things?

            By the same token, would we not find it odd (perhaps a bit like a pig) for someone to say: “You know, I’m eating, and the food is the thing!  Talking just keeps me from chewing.  So shut up and let me eat.”  We don’t begrudge the person his nourishment, of course, but we may suspect that he is missing another dimension to a meal that can be especially fulfilling.  If he asks us: “What, so the food tastes better if you talk?” our response would probably be: “Well, in a sense, yes, but the food will only taste better if you forget about the food as an end unto itself and start enjoying the company as well as the food.” Or perhaps it might be better to create a new word (they do this in German all the time, but it’s not as common in English) and say: What we are enjoying is the “food-and-company.”  In other words, we are enjoying a “meal together.”  

            Does this help you make sense of why Fr. Schmemann wants to break down the radical opposition between the “spiritual” and the “material”?  (Note that my examples have to do with breaking down the opposition between the “spiritual” and the “material” in terms of our fellowship with one another.  Fr. Schmemann obviously has in mind another dimension as well: breaking down the opposition between the “spiritual” and the “material” in terms of our relationship with God.)

 

9. How does Fr. Schmemann interpret the passage in Genesis about Adam “naming” the animals?

 

10. What, according to Fr. Schmemann, is the only “natural” (and not merely “supernatural”) reaction of man to the gift of creation?

 

11. What is it, according to Fr. Schmemann, that distinguishes man from other creatures in this regard?

 

12. What does Fr. Schmemann offer as “the first, the basic definition of man”?  Please explain what he means.

 

13. At the top of p. 16, Fr. Schmemann claims that, “Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian.  Food is still treated with reverence.”  Is he talking about gourmands – people who eat and taste the food itself as though it were the important thing about a meal?

 

14. Shortly thereafter, Fr. Schmemann claims that, “To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily function.”  Is it?  How about for you?  When you eat, is it largely a “utilitarian” thing, primarily about “fueling” yourself for the day’s activities, or perhaps simply about remedying that “ache” in your stomach?  Are meals for you a “grab-and-go” thing?  Do you eat at your desk, or on the run somewhere? 

 

Section 3

 

15. As Fr. Schmemann points out, “the biblical story of the Fall is centered again on food.”  (You’d think a society like ours, completely obsessed with diets, would have noticed this fact.  But no.  Perhaps it’s because we’ve gotten too used to reading these things “spiritually.”)    How does Fr. Schmemann interpret the “fruit of that one tree” that caused all the problems?

 

16. “Man has loved the world,” says Fr. Schmemann.  Isn’t that a good thing?  Where does the problem arise?

 

17. In what sense, according to Fr. Schmemann, is the world a “fallen world”?  And why has the religion of this fallen world not been able to heal or redeem it?

 

18. Let’s take a step away from the text for a minute, because there’s an interesting observation to be made about two senses or uses of the word “world” in the New Testament.  On the one hand, Jesus says that He gives his life for the life of the world.  On the other hand, in the same Gospel, Jesus says of his apostles that, “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.” St. Paul also often condemns people for being “worldly” or “of the world,” – as, for example, when he says to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3.3), “You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”  So is God condemning the world, or does He love the world?  Or do we perhaps have two senses of the word “world” being used in different contexts?  Explain the difference.

 

19. According to Fr. Schmemann, what was the “natural dependence of man upon the world” intended to be transformed into?

 

20. How have man’s “love” and his “hunger” been diverted from their true direction?

 

21. According to Fr. Schmemann, we must not “see the world as an end in itself,” because “the world is meaningful only when it is the ‘sacrament’ of God’s presence.”  If that seems strange to you, consider this.  What if I asked you what would happen if you were to view a woman’s body “as an end in itself”?  So, for example, you might say about your girlfriend: “Well, I have her body, why do I need any personality.  That just gets in the way.  I mean, let’s be honest; I’m not interested in her for her mind.”  Do you suppose the woman in this case would find that comment flattering?  (In fact, we might try to suggest to him that if he thinks he can “have her body” without somehow having a relationship with her, then he’s just plain wrong.  Or at the very least, he’s missing the best part.)  And again, like our gourmet friend and his food, if our sad, adolescent young man says to us: “What, is the sex better if you actually talk to the girl?” our response might well be: “Well, yes, actually it is, but only if you don’t talk to the girl merely as a means to having sex.”  He would probably consider us crazy: “But having sex is the whole point!”  Well, yes, that is one not-entirely-uncommon view.

            And I’m not sure the situation would get much better if our sad young adolescent male were to say: “No, I’m not interested in something as vile as sex.  But I do worship her body.”  Again, the attention seems misplaced somehow.

            But by the same token, I suppose the woman would not be particularly happy if her beloved said to her: “You know, I love you in spite of your ugly body.”  Ouch.  That’s probably not altogether healthy either.

            Isn’t what the woman wants to be loved as a whole person, both body and spirit.  Yes, she wants her “body” to be loved, but she wants the man to love her body, not as an end in itself,” but as a “sacrament” of her presence.  Although whatever interactions she has with others will take place by necessity in and through her body, yet, by the same token, who she is as a person transcends the mere “materiality” of her flesh, does it not?  Her body, then, is meant to be appreciated, when it is appreciated properly, as the sacrament of her presence.  And when appreciated this way, her body takes on a whole new beauty.  Not that we think of “her” apart from her body – the “spiritual” her.  Rather, we appreciate her body because it is hers. 

            This is what happens in love.  We often imagine that what happens in love is that I look at a woman and add up her good traits – good hair, beautiful eyes, nice legs – and I subtract her negative traits – small ears, big feet, odd freckles – and then by means of some “cost-benefit” analysis, we come up with the magic number that equals “I love her” or “I love her not.”  But that’s not quite how it works.  Those who have ever been in love know that the process is reversed.  When you’re in love, you love her hair because it’s hers.  You love her eyes because they are hers.  You love her body because it is hers.  You can even love what might seem to others to be “imperfections” (an odd sort of freckle, one finger shorter than the others, or even a really weird laugh), again, precisely because they are hers. 

            Note that we’re not talking about loving moral evil.  We’re not saying, “I love her sadistic treatment of small animals, because it is hers.”  Right now we’re only talking about the relationship of the body and the spirit.  How we love people who are decidedly imperfect in moral character (as all of us are, ultimately) is another issue.

            The point I wish to make is simply this: that loving woman’s body without loving the woman whose body it is, is not only to miss the best part of love, it is, in effect, not to see the woman really.  You see the material “stuff” – arms, legs, buttocks – but in only seeing them as “things” that exist in and for themselves, you have missed what they really are and what really gives them value: namely, the fact that they are the arms, legs, and buttocks of this person, with whom you are called upon to have a relationship based upon a fundamental respect for her dignity as a whole person, and not just an agglomeration of parts.  Those “parts” are not merely material for your pleasure or use.  They are integrated parts of a whole, and their true value and character is revealed only when they are seen as embodiments of the whole person.  This hand is her hand, not a photo opportunity, not an object for me to worship, not a part to be harvested for my body-parts museum. 

            So, when Fr. Schmemann says that “the world is meaningful only when it is the ‘sacrament’ of God’s presence,” he means that loving the world without loving the Creator whose gift of love it is (whose love is “embodied” in it) is like loving the body of the woman without loving the woman.  Just as people can and do “love” the body without caring about (or really even seeing) the woman (ask him whether he knows the color of your eyes), so too people can and do “love” the world without caring about (or really even seeing) what the world really is.  What makes the world really valuable is not simply that it provides “material” for you to “use” according to your will and desires.  What makes it really valuable is that it is in reality (and thus will be seen as when seen rightly) an instrument of God’s love.  We can feed not only ourselves, we can feed others.  And not only can we feed others, we can sit down to a meal with them and give them much more: hope, love, our fellowship.

            How do you view the world?  As a sacrament?  Or as “material” for your “use” – something to be shaped and fashioned and controlled according to your will?

 

22. What happens to man, according to Fr. Schmemann, when he doesn’t treat the world as “sacramental”?

 

23. At the bottom of p. 17, Fr. Schmemann claims that, when man “lost the eucharistic life” (that is, when he lost his sense of the world as a sacrament), he “ceased to be the priest of the world and became its slave.”  That’s an interesting notion.  Why (and how) does man become a “slave” of the world?  Why is it the case that the more a man views the world as “material” to be shaped and fashioned and controlled according to his will, the more he becomes its slave?  Note how Fr. Schmemann introduces this concept in the context of his discussion of the Fall.  Why is that especially appropriate, given the particular temptation of the serpent in Gen 3?  (What does the serpent promise Eve?  He is lying.  What actually happens.  What does she hope to gain?  What does she lose?)

 

Section 4

 

24. Speaking of the Fall, how does Fr. Schmemann describe “original sin”?

 

25. “The fall,” says Fr. Schmemann, is not that he [man] preferred the world to God, [thereby distorting] the balance between the spiritual and material.”  What is it instead?

 

26. Says Fr. Schmemann:  God had created man “after his own heart” and for Himself [that is, to be in a communion of love with Him], “and man has struggled in his freedom to find the answer to the mysterious hunger in him.”  This is an interesting scenario – an interesting description of our situation: We are hungry for something – for we-know-not-what – that will truly fulfill us.  According to Fr. Schmemann, did God leave man to fend for himself in this “predicament of confused longing”?  If not, what did He do?

 

27. On p. 19, Fr. Schmemann makes a rather startling claim – be sure not to miss it!  He says: “As Christians we believe that He, who is the truth about both God and man, gives foretastes of His incarnation” not only in and through the prophets of the Old Testament, but also “in all more fragmentary truths.”  Please explain what he has in mind.  And then talk about this very odd claim: “In the great religions which have given shape to human aspirations, God plays on an orchestra which is far out of tune, yet there has often been a marvelous, rich music made.”

 

28. As Fr. Schmemann points out at the bottom of p. 19: “Nowhere in the New Testament ... is Christianity presented as a cult or as a religion.”  Where, according to Fr. Schmemann, is “religion” needed? 

 

29. Now take a step back from the text.  Why was this reflection on Christianity not being a “cult” or a “religion” (in the sense in which “mystery cults” are considered “religions” and have “religious” artifacts) important in the context of Fr. Schmemann’s discussion of the sacraments?  [Hint: What do you suppose most people, especially those who don’t really understand the sacraments, think the sacraments are?] Why, according to Fr. Schmemann, was there no need for sacred temples or sacred places in Christianity?  What is the one truly important thing in Christianity?  How does this key insight help us to understand the sacraments? In the final analysis, what is the difference between pagan cultic rituals and the sacraments of the Catholic Church? [Please note, the difference has nothing to do with what the two different rituals look like from the perspective of an outsider.  And what might surprise you, it also doesn’t have anything to do with, “Well, those are false gods, and ours is real.”]

 

30. Note that Schmemann has read an awful lot of later sacramental theology back into his interpretation of the texts in Genesis 1 and 2.  Is that acceptable?  Has the importation of those later doctrines falsified the original text?  Or helped clarify it?