0 Death, WHERE IS THY STING? A L E X A N D E R S C H M E M A N N d e a t h , w h e r e is t h y s t i n g ? 0 Death, WHERE IS THY STING? Alexander Schmemann translated by Alexis Vinogradov st v la d im ir’s sem inary press Crest wood, New York LIBRARY OF CONGRESS C ATALOGING-1N - PU B LI C ATION DATA Schmemann, Alexander, 1921-1983. [Smert’! gde tvoe zhalo?. English] O Death, where is thy sting? / Alexander Schmemann; translated by Alexis Vinogradov, p. cm. isbn 0-88141-238-4 1. Death—Religious aspects—Orthodox Eastern Church. 2. Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines. I. Title. BX323.S2413 2003 230’. 19— dc2i 2002037035 Copyright © 2003 s t v la d im ir ’s sem in a r y press 575 Scarsdale Rd • Crestwood • New York • 10707 1-800-204-2665 www.svspress.com ISBN 13: 978-O-8814I-238-3 ISBN 10: O-8814I-238-4 All Rights Reserved Book illustration, design, and cover by Amber Schley PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents Introduction 7 1 The Question of Death 13 2 The Last Enemy 21 3 The Origin of Death 29 4 The Resurrection of the Body 37 5 The Week of the Cross 45 6 Pascha 53 7 The Week of Anti-Pascha (Thomas Sunday) 63 8 The Nature of Man 71 9 The Religion of Salvation 79 Appendix: Trampling Down Death by Death 89 Introduction Near the snow; near the suny in the highest fields, See how these names are feted by the waving grass And by the streamers of white cloud And whispers of wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center. Born of the suny they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour. —Stephen Spender, “I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great” (1936) 7 0 DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? In their lexical currency the church fathers have left us this rare banknote: “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is truly a theologian .” We can’t redeem this treasure by a simpler expla­ nation; it is itself an irreducible truth. If theology then is bordered within the mystery of prayer, a great theologian is perhaps the one who risks leaving the joy of his prayerful encounter to tell us what he has seen and heard. Among those who, in Spender’s words above, “fought for life,” Fr Alexander Schmemann is that rare, great the­ ologian whose theology is always and only about life, for it is rooted in the One who is Life. Not surprisingly, then, in a book about death, in these transcribed conversations delivered by Fr Alexander as broadcasts to Russia on Radio Liberty, there is so much more about life than death. There is no sentimental philosophizing here about death as illusion, or as some sad but necessary passage to another elusive but colorful Introduction afterlife. He sets squarely before us the apostle’s affirmation, “The last great enemy is death!” and reminds us that at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, Jesus did not give a comforting sermon on how everything will be fine; rather, he re­ minds us of the evangelist’s report that “Jesus wept.” In these tears running down the cheeks of God lies the great lament over what the world has become and particularly what man has tragically accepted about himself and his own destiny, within a world that Fr Alexander unabashedly calls a “cosmic cemetery.” In this collection of talks we are not led comfort­ ably and systematically down a corridor of neat proofs that will provide the definitive and last word on the subject of death. It is precisely the philosophical legacy of such systematic proofs, as Fr Alexander demonstrates, that they have added nothing to the perennial ambiguity about death but have produced instead an irreconcil­ able polarization of two worldviews that either 9 O DEATH, W E R E IS THY STING? reject this world in favor of an elusive other world, or simply deny death in a mad material­ ist progress into an equally elusive Utopia. It is Fr Alexander’s “trademark” and familiar approach that he leads us instead toward the Church’s liturgical and specifically Paschal mystery, where the meaning and transformation of death into life is revealed in the encounter with the One who is himself the Life of life. Precisely because the Paschal mystery, and there­ fore the teaching concerning life and death, is at the core of Christian theology and experience, Fr Schmemann’s whole teaching directly or indi­ rectly alludes to the theme of death. We find echoes of his references here to the materialists and Feuerbach already in the introductory chap­ ter of his landmark study, For the Life of the World. The sixth chapter of that volume, “Tram­ pling Down Death by Death,” we have included as a fitting epilogue to the present collection, but we also urge the reader to enjoy it within the Introduction framework of the original study. There he him­ self writes, “The whole life of the Church is in a way the sacrament of our death, because all of it is the proclamation of the Lord s death, the con­ fession of his resurrection”1 In his broadcasts, Fr Alexander notes: In order to console himself, man created a dream of another world where there is no death, and for that dream he forfeited this world, gave it up decidedly to death. Therefore, the most important and most profound question of the Christian faith must be, How and from where did death arise, and why has it become stronger than life? Why has it become so power­ ful that the world itself has become a kind of cosmic cemetery, a place where a collection of people condemned to death live either in fear or terror, or in 11