The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983

Rating:
Summary: Very intimate, challenging.
Review: Father Alexander Schmemann is one of the greatest theologians and teachers America has ever known, and he was very open in these journals. They are a valuable look into the heart of a great man. His honest desciption of his vision of the ecclesiastical world, his own failings, and the realities of seminary life may be eye-opening to some, perhaps even discouraging. But his tenderness and sensitivity to the world saturate almost every page, and his rich wisdom and deep faith will challenge every reader. Here is the spiritual life of an authentically human Orthodox Christian.

Rating:
Summary: Diaries of a holy man
Review: Richard John Neuhaus has a beautifully touching review of the "Journals" and tribute to Father Schmemann (the dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary who died in 1983) in the January 2001 issue of "First Things" magazine. The seven-page article has extensive quotes from the book, including Schmemann's friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Father Neuhaus (Roman Catholic), who became friends with Fr. Schmemann (Eastern Orthodox) in his last years, terms him a true "man in full." I'm looking forward to reading the book, to learn more about his impressions of America (he moved here in the 1950s from Paris, after growing up in Estonia), his efforts at ecumenism, as well as his great love for the Divine Liturgy. Schmemann writes: "All of life flows out of -- and is connected with -- the Liturgy!"

Rating:
Summary: Diaries of a holy man
Review: Richard John Neuhaus has a beautifully touching review of the "Journals" and tribute to Father Schmemann (the dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary who died in 1983) in the January 2001 issue of "First Things" magazine. The seven-page article has extensive quotes from the book, including Schmemann's friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Father Neuhaus (Roman Catholic), who became friends with Fr. Schmemann (Eastern Orthodox) in his last years, terms him a true "man in full." I'm looking forward to reading the book, to learn more about his impressions of America (he moved here in the 1950s from Paris, after growing up in Estonia), his efforts at ecumenism, as well as his great love for the Divine Liturgy. Schmemann writes: "All of life flows out of -- and is connected with -- the Liturgy!"

Rating:
Summary: Revealing look into the mind of a Christian thinker
Review: This book is an edited compendium of entries from the personal diaries of Fr. Schmemann, discovered after his death in 1983. Fr. Schmemann was a noted theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose journal, spanning the last 10 years of his life, very personally, lay out his reflections on his life, his work, and the meaning of Christianity in the world today.

Very refreshingly for someone deep within academic circles, his views on life and the role of Christianity are very un-stuffy. He completely dismisses as boring scholastic-style theological debating, and thus comes to a simple realization and exposition: that the role of the Church should be concerned with eschatology (a concern for final things -- life, death, the contradiction between the Church being in the world but not of the world), and the transmission of the meaning of the Incarnation to the world by knowledge of the joy at the heart of the concept of the Word-made-flesh, and the teaching of the Eucharist (communion) as the symbol of the victory of Christ over death, and the liturgical forms of the Church as a link to that existence beyond time.

Beyond that, Fr. Schmemann's journals show no patience for the petty intrigues of church politics, nor for the "maximalist" abberations of those around him -- For him the Church was the quiet harbor and home for the paradoxes of Christian teaching, not the arena in which extremists of any ilk should parade, whether ultra-traditionalist or modern-reductionalists (i.e. Church as social agency, and nothing more).

While seeing nothing rivaling Christianity in eastern religions like Bhuddism or Hinduism, it is interesting for me to see the parallels between some of Fr. Schmemann's thinking and some aspects of Zen Bhuddism. Like a Zen master, Fr. Schmemman had no patience for pettiness, or for elaborate debates along the lines of how many angels on the head of a pin. He took delight in the very simplest aspects of existence: the weather, the natural world around him. For all his wonderful mastery of exposition and dialogue, he seemed to relish his quiet times the most. A clarifying no-mindedness was more important to him than intrigues about who can't get along with whom.

A fascinating segment of his journal concerns his contact with author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose maniacal and exclusive focus on Russia, and Russia-as-victim at the hand of others, was not something Fr. Schmemann could identify with. While Fr. Schmemann's roots were Russian (or more specifically, in the Russian emigree world of Paris in the 30s and 40s), he saw himself as beyond any suffocating association with nationalism, when his own mission was about the Church in the West.

That above all makes Fr. Schmemann remarkable: He traveled the world, lectured all over Western Christendom to many Western Christian denominations, and kept his focus on the "big picture" of the world, salvation, life and death -- ever insisting that the Church be concerned with the fundamental Christian message regarding these big questions, and not fall into petty ghettoization.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in understanding the life of a major Christian thinker, and his views on where the Church should be. For anyone familiar with Fr. Schmemann's other works, this book is indispensible as the keystone in an arch.