ZDTh Te UT ee eR ToT SUPPLEMENT SERIES 4 published by the Committee for the Advancement of the Study of Dialectical Theology responsible editors of this edition Gerrit Neven (Kampen) & Bruce L. McCormack (Princeton) ISSN 0169-7536 © 2010 Protestantse Theologische Universiteit. in Kampen. The contents of this journal may not be distributed or reproduced in any form without prior written approval of the editor.Karl Barth and the Early Church on Time Liturgy and Time according to Alexander Schmemann + Zeitschrift fiir Dialektische Theologie + Supplement Series 4 + Hans van Loon In this article I would like to compare Karl Barth’s understanding of time (and eternity) with that in the early church. Rather than myself piecing together what “the early church” thought on this subject, I have chosen to summarize the view of one theologian on how the church dealt with time and eternity in its liturgy during the first five centuries of the Christian era. This theologian is Alexander Schmemann. I will start with some brief biographical notes on this Eastern Orthodox liturgist and then present his understanding of the early church’s “liturgical theology”. In order not to break the flow of the presentation of Schmemann’s position, the comparison with Barth is placed in footnotes and summarized at the end of the article. Despite the differences, Schmemann’s theological outlook at times shows remarkable resemblances to that of Barth. ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN* Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) was born in a Russian Orthodox family in Estonia, but his parents fled communism and moved to Patis, when he was seven years old. From then on, he was raised in a bilingual environment, but he remained a Russian at heart, and many of his later 1 _ See for more biographical information on Alexander Schmemann: John Meyendorff, “A Life Worth Living”, in: Thomas Fisch (ed.), Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections of Alexander Schmemann, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990, 145-154, first published in Saint Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 28 (1984), 3-10; Peter Scorer, “Alexander Schmemann (1921- 83)”, Sobornost 6 (1984), 64-68; Mathai Kadavil, “A Journey from East to West: Alexander Schmemann’s Contribution to Orthodoxy in the West’, Exchange 28 (1999), 224-246. 209210 writings were originally written in his mother tongue. At the beginning of the Second World War he entered the Orthodox Theological Institute “St. Serge”, at which he became a lecturer in church history after his gtaduation. In 1943 he was married and in 1946 he was ordained a priest. He was in touch with and influenced by the liturgical movement in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1951, Schmemann followed Georges Florovsky, who had moved to the United States and was building up St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York. He taught early church history, liturgical theology, and pastoral theology. From 1961 till his death he was dean of the seminary. Alexander Schmemann made it his life's mission to re-establish the link between theology and liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox Church — a link which he considered vital and which he regarded as (at least partly) severed.” For him, lex orandi lex est credendi. It is “faith as experience, the total and living experience of the Church, that constitutes the source and the context of theology in the East, of that theology at least which characterized the patristic age”, and “this experience of the Church is primarily the experience given and received in the Church's leitourgia — in her /ex orandi”’ This, however, does not imply a reduction of theology to liturgy, but both a liturgical critique of theology and a theological critique of the liturgy.* It is Schmemann’s thesis that already in the fourth century the proper understanding of the liturgy started to be clouded over. In order to substantiate this claim he studied the liturgical practice of the early church and the theology inherent in it. It is in this study that time, more than eternity, finds an essential place. THE LITURGY OF TIME AND THE EUCHARIST According to Schmemann, the liturgical life of the early church was a combination of two fundamental elements: the Eucharist (with which all the other sacraments are somehow connected) and what he calls “the 2. Seehis article “Theology and Liturgy”, in: Alexander Schmemann, Church, World, Mission: Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1979, 129-146; originally published in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 17 (1972), 86-100. Also republished in: Fisch (ed.), Liturgy and Tradition (see n.1), 49-68, 3 Ibid., 133 and 135, 4 Ibid., 140,