Ecumenism, Scripture, and the Antisemitic Attacks

Two substantive fronts in the controversy over Men are examined here: his ecumenical openness, which is a live intra-Orthodox dispute and is given both sides; and his handling of biblical criticism, which is likewise a real argument with real stakes. A third thing is then named, and named as what it is rather than balanced against anything: the antisemitic strain of attack that used Men’s Jewish descent against him.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate)

I. Ecumenism

What Men actually held

Men’s ecumenical position, so far as it can be reconstructed from his lectures and writings, had three components.

A universal history of religion fulfilled in Christ. The six volumes of In Search of the Way, the Truth and the Life treat the religions of humanity as genuine movements of the human spirit toward God — containing real intimations, and superseded not by refutation but by fulfilment in the Incarnation (see In Search of the Way and the Pseudonymous Press).

Warmth toward Western Christians. Men worked with Western Christians of all confessions in a situation where they were, practically, the only source of Bibles, books and support available to Soviet believers. He published through a Catholic-sponsored press because there was no other. He was befriended and later biographized by the French Catholic scholar Yves Hamant.

A refusal of confessional triumphalism. Men held that Christianity was still at its beginning — “it has taken only the first, I would say timid, steps in the history of the human race” (“Christianity,” lecture of 8 September 1990) — and drew from that the conclusion that the divisions of Christians were not to be treated as final settlements.

The Orthodox position that the critics defend

Per METHODOLOGY §4.1, the Church’s own teaching is stated as such and is not relativized here. The Orthodox Church confesses herself to be the one Church of the Creed; she has examined and not received the Roman doctrines of papal supremacy and infallibility, the Filioque, and the Immaculate Conception; and she has never taught that the Christian confessions are branches of equal standing (see Orthodoxy and Catholicism; The Filioque). Nothing in Men’s opinions alters any of this, and his critics are defending the Church’s actual position when they insist on it.

The dispute, both sides

Against Men. That his openness went beyond the ecclesial limit: that a schema in which all religions are stages of one search relativizes the uniqueness of the Church and of Christ; that “seeds of divine truth scattered through all religions” and the commendation of the Bhagavad Gita as a sacred text of high spiritual flight cross from generous apologetics into syncretism; and that his practical closeness to Catholicism amounted to a material Uniatism — Kuraev’s charge that he was in effect an Eastern-rite Catholic (Благодатный огонь, “Куда способны увести наставления протоиерея Александра Меня”; “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense,” East–West Church and Ministry Report).

For Men. That he never denied a single Orthodox dogma; that his Christology is strong and his ecclesial practice unimpeachable — he baptized his converts Orthodox, communed them in an Orthodox parish, and never suggested that they might as well have gone elsewhere; that the “seeds of truth” language has patristic ancestry in St. Justin Martyr’s logos spermatikos; and that publishing with the only press that would print Russian religious books is a fact about Soviet conditions rather than about ecclesiology (Bishop Seraphim Sigrist in “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense”; OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men,” on the absence of specific textual citations in the accusations).

This collection does not adjudicate. It notes that the wider Orthodox argument about ecumenism, of which this is an instance, is itself unsettled and is treated at length elsewhere in the repository (see The Ecumenism Debate).

II. Scripture and Biblical Criticism

What Men did

Men was, among other things, a working biblical scholar in a country where the discipline had been abolished. He read Western critical literature, wrote handbooks on how to read the Bible, compiled a Bibliological Dictionary covering the authors, schools and methods of biblical studies, helped refound the Russian Bible Society in 1990, and launched the journal The World of the Bible (see The Open Orthodox University and the Works of Mercy). In Son of Man he appended discussions of the Gospel sources and of the historicity of Christ.

The dispute, both sides

Against Men. That he accepted the presuppositions of the historical-critical method along with its results; that he rejected biblical inerrancy (one of the nine points in Daniil Sysoev’s indictment); that his acceptance of evolution imported a naturalistic frame into the doctrine of creation; and — in the harshest formulation, from the writer publishing as Archbishop Sergei Antiminsov — that he altered the wording and sense of Scripture in ways that diminished the divinity of Christ, and set aside miracle and eschatology (OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men”; “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense”).

For Men. That engagement with biblical criticism and with evolution is normal in Orthodox theological education and not in itself a deviation — Bishop Seraphim Sigrist’s point exactly; that his purpose in appending source-critical material to Son of Man was apologetic, to answer the standard Soviet allegation that Jesus never existed; and that the accusations of altering Scripture are not supported with citations (Sigrist, in “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense”; OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men”).

Where this sits in the repository

The underlying question — what an Orthodox use of the historical-critical method can and cannot be — is not peculiar to Men and is treated on its own terms elsewhere (see The Historical-Critical Method; The Orthodox Biblical Recovery). Men’s case is one data point in a much larger argument, and readers who want the argument rather than the man should go there.

III. The Antisemitic Attacks

This is not a dispute with two sides and it is not treated as one.

The fact

A strain of the hostility directed at Alexander Men, during his life and after it, was not theological criticism but the use of his Jewish descent against him. The evidence is not in dispute:

  • Dmitry Vasiliev, the leader of the ultranationalist organization Pamyat, denounced Men as a heretic, and the investigation of the murder examined the anonymous letters and the nationalist agitation surrounding him (Lenta.ru, “Сионисты, алкоголики и фанатики…”, 9 September 2020).
  • The KGB’s own first working hypothesis after the murder was that the killing had been done by antisemites — the agency’s initial theory being that Men was targeted as a Jew who had become a Christian priest (Christian History Institute, “Who Wanted Godly Alexander Men Dead?”).
  • The polemical literature against Men has repeatedly foregrounded his descent. The traditionalist reference wiki Два града titles its article on him using the patronymic form “Александр Вольфович” — his father’s Jewish given name — rather than the form Men used and by which he is universally known (Два града, art. “Мень Александр Вольфович”). The usage is a rhetorical marker, and readers of the Russian polemical literature will encounter it repeatedly.

Why it is named and not balanced

METHODOLOGY §4.2 requires both-sides treatment of live disputes within Orthodoxy and of contested factual questions. It does not require, and this collection does not offer, a balanced presentation of the proposition that a man’s Jewish ancestry counts against his Orthodoxy. That proposition is not a theological position with which one may reasonably disagree. It is contrary to the Gospel — “there is neither Jew nor Greek… for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) — contrary to the whole apostolic practice, and, in the specific form of hatred it takes, condemned by the Church.

The point is stated once and not dwelt upon, for two reasons. First, dwelling on it would give the ugliest voices in the controversy a prominence they have not earned. Second, and more importantly, it would be unjust to Men’s serious critics. Alexei Osipov, Andrei Kuraev, Daniil Sysoev and the writers of Blagodatny Ogon make theological arguments about syncretism, ecclesiology and the reading of Scripture; those arguments stand or fall on their merits and have nothing to do with Pamyat. To let the antisemitic strain color the treatment of the theological criticism would be to smear people who are entitled to be answered rather than dismissed — and it is a rhetorical move that Men’s admirers have sometimes made and that this collection declines.

The distinction from the theological question about Israel

There is, separately, a genuine theological question in this area, and it should not be lost in the shadow of the ugly one. Feliks Karelin questioned Men’s views on the national calling of the Jewish people and on the “double consciousness” of Jewish Christians — that is, on how a Jew who becomes Orthodox should understand his relation to Israel (“Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense,” East–West Church and Ministry Report). This is a real and difficult question, on which Orthodox theology has said less than might be wished, and Karelin’s raising of it is legitimate theological work. It is a different thing entirely from the use of descent as an accusation, and the two are kept apart here.

And the murder

Finally, the distinction insisted on in The Investigation and the Theories is repeated. That antisemites hated Men is documented fact. That antisemites killed him is an unproven theory which the investigation pursued and could not sustain. Neither statement is evidence for the other.

See Also

References

  • “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense.” East–West Church and Ministry Report (eastwestreport.org/articles/ew07302.htm). (Karelin on the Jewish national calling and “double consciousness”; Kuraev on Men as an Eastern-rite Catholic; “Antiminsov” on the alteration of Scripture; Sigrist’s defence, including that engagement with evolution and biblical criticism is common in Orthodox seminaries.)
  • Благодатный огонь [Blagodatny Ogon], “Куда способны увести наставления протоиерея Александра Меня,” by Tatyana Petrova (blagogon.ru/digest/105). (“Seeds of divine truth scattered through all religions”; the Bhagavad Gita; “theoretical super-ecumenism.”)
  • OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men.” (Sysoev’s nine points, including the rejection of biblical inerrancy and the acceptance of evolution; the absence of specific textual citations in the accusations; no censure by the Moscow Patriarchate.)
  • Lenta.ru, “Сионисты, алкоголики и фанатики: 30 лет назад убили одного из главных священников России — Александра Меня. Дело так и не раскрыто,” 9 September 2020. (Dmitry Vasiliev’s denunciation of Men as a heretic; the anonymous letters; the collapse of the “Zionist” investigative line.)
  • Christian History Institute, “Who Wanted Godly Alexander Men Dead?” (The KGB’s first hypothesis of antisemitic perpetrators, framed by Men’s Jewish origin; the resentment of conservative churchmen at his ecumenism.)
  • Два града [Dva grada], traditionalist reference wiki, art. “Мень Александр Вольфович” (dvagrada.ru). (An instance of the rhetorical foregrounding of Men’s Jewish descent in the polemical literature.)
  • Men, Alexander. “Христианство” [Christianity], lecture of 8 September 1990. (The “first, timid steps” passage.)
  • Scripture: Galatians 3:28.
  • METHODOLOGY.md §4.1–4.2, this repository.