Father Lazarus Abboud
Critique is a process of analyzing texts and rereading them, distinguishing in them their essence and the circumstances of their writing, and understanding their content in a new way. This critique applies to all human intellectual production, even the theological, and Holy Scripture has been subjected to a harsh critical process. For critique works to understand what the writer wants and to extract the meaning, and to understand how a certain thought grew in the life of the Church, the reason for its emergence and its necessity in her life today, and subjecting tradition to a critical process, and the ecclesiastical inheritance, delivers us from the problems into which we have fallen:
1. Through stagnation, for we no longer treat the social, pastoral, and ecclesiastical situations emerging today in the light of the events that formed ecclesiastical thought in a certain age.
2. Through conservatism, that is, that the present should not be under the authority of the past, and thus we submit to a new legalistic spirit and kill the charismatic spirit, and thus the conservatives see themselves as pure, applying the new law, and reject everyone who is different.
3. Creating new religious orientations far removed from the Christian spirit, isolating themselves from reality.
4. Stereotyping and repetition (sterile theology). 5. Futurism, and reading the present in the light of the end of time.
To understand further, we must grasp what tradition is, and what the Christian inheritance is.
Tradition is precisely “the imitating of others: that is, walking after their example.” But here, who are the others, and what do we imitate of them?
The other is God the Father and Jesus Christ. Tradition is for us to do the divine work: “the work which You have given Me to do, I have finished it.” The first imitator is Jesus: “I do the work of My Father.” As for the inheritance (Holy Scripture, the exegeses, the liturgical works, the councils…), it is how this work was accomplished. Tradition is what the Church received at Pentecost, which is the Holy Spirit who makes the work of Jesus alive in the world, as Metropolitan Paul Yazigi expresses it. It is not the preserving of information and passing it on. The living tradition is continuing the work of Jesus in our works, that is, tradition is not preserving the inheritance and passing it on and keeping it, because the inheritance is the recording of how we accomplished the work of Jesus. Thus Holy Scripture is part of the ecclesiastical inheritance that explains to us how Jesus did the work of the Father, and how the disciples did the work of Jesus. The writings of the Fathers and others are an explanation of how the Church accomplished the work of Jesus (tradition). Tradition is the truth; the inheritance is the form. Tradition is the work, and the inheritance is the recording of the work of the past. One of the bishops indicated at the Council of Carthage 257 (the Lord said: I am the truth, and He did not say: I am the custom or the custom of my forefathers).
When we grasp the meaning of tradition, and understand that the inheritance in its variety is the product of human work and is influenced by the factors of human and civilizational history in the attempt to express the accomplishment of the work of Jesus, and did not come down from above but evolved and grew under various conditions, then it is varied and different according to the environments and must be altered and changed. And we understand that the human attempts in many cases failed to express the divine truth and recorded works that are not the work of Jesus, and introduced into it many impurities through the influence of Judaism and of other religions and philosophies across history, and that it contains much that is purely human, and at best, pious opinions, but not part of the one precious inheritance that bears the essential elements of the Christian message (as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says), yet it remained within the inheritance that the Church carried. From here we grasp our need for a true critical process for the whole inheritance of the Church, to bring out what has clung to it over the years. And it is astonishing today how the Orthodox master the science of biblical criticism and strip sacredness from Scripture in order to study it, while they are incapable of stripping sacredness from the received inheritance in order to criticize it, clarify it, and extract from it the foreign tares that entered it. And the examples are many – the many teachings about the impurity of the woman, the Jewish concept of time, the concept of the false messiah, the idea of Constantinople as the holy city, the chosen people, the salvation of the Orthodox alone, and many more. And on the other hand, should we not be obliged to understand the formulas of the dogmas in a new, living way? What does the virginity of Mary, or the two natures of Christ, or the two wills of Christ mean for man today? Indeed, what do these dogmas mean today? Why do the Orthodox fear a critical process of the sacred inheritance after they have performed a critical process of Holy Scripture? Is the sacred inheritance something sent down and infallible? Do the Orthodox regard the inheritance as higher than Holy Scripture? Or does the inheritance carry a sacredness that cannot be touched? Is the production of the Fathers and the writers of the Church beyond reproach, while Holy Scripture was in need of critique?