Tolle Lege: For the Life of the World, Part 1: What Is Life For?

In 2018, Saint Vladimir's Press re-released a "little book" written by Alexander Schmemann which is now called For the Life of the World. It was originally written in 1963 as a conference address for students preparing for ministry, but reached wider readership in 1965 when it was published as Sacraments and Orthodoxy, and World as Sacrament, and then translated into French, Italian, Greek, and Russian. In 1973 it was released as For the Life of the World, and although it was written from the perspective of the liturgical theology of the Orthodox Church, Schmemann's insights have profoundly impacted Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars and practitioners for nearly fifty years now. In celebration of its re-release, over the next month or so I will be highlighting some of the key contributions that this "little book" continues to make today. 

Part 1: What is Life For? As Schmemann notes in his preface to the 1973 edition, For the Life of the World was written to help ministry students understand how the Orthodox liturgy ought to shape their understanding of the Christian mission in and for the world. The overarching question that he seeks to address is, What is life for?

He raises this question because he sees two fundamental distortions in the way that Christians approach the world and life therein (distortions which are also common within non-Christian approaches to the world). He labels these two distortions "spirituality" and "secularism".

According to Schmemann, the "spirituality" approach to Christian mission implies that this world is something from which we need to escape. In this approach, the church's mission is to convert people to live in another world, to a life that essentially sees this world as irrelevant, to a life that amounts to piety and patience as we wait for something beyond the here and now. 

The "secularist" approach implicitly affirms that life consists of making this world better. The world has been lost, and we need to take it back through social, economic, and political action. And yet, Schmemann, notes, with this approach the question still remains--what is this life that we must regain? 

For Schmemann, both these approaches fail to appreciate the world for what it really is, they fail to understand and embrace the telos of creation: "All that exists," Schmemann writes, "is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God" (pg.21). "Spirituality" rejects this world as God's gift to humankind, as a sacrament through which we share communion with God. And "secularism", in all its efforts to make the world better, fails to recognize the telos of this life as communion with God. The secularist approach treats social justice (as important as that is) as an end in and of itself. "When we see the world as an end in itself, everything...loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning and value of everything...The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world" (pg.24). 

"Whether we 'spiritualize' our life or 'secularize' our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them in a secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only-begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp" (pg. 20). 

So how do we avoid adopting these two distorted approaches to the world? What is the faithful way forward? Stayed tuned for Part 2: Humanity as Priests of the World.