04 — For the Life of the World

The book that made Schmemann’s reputation outside the academy: commissioned in 1963 as a study guide for an ecumenical student conference, published that year, revised and expanded in 1973, translated into more than ten languages, and still the most widely read Orthodox book in English. This section treats its origin and its argument.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

For the Life of the World was not conceived as a book at all. It was commissioned by the National Student Christian Federation as preparatory material for the 19th Quadrennial Ecumenical Student Conference at Athens, Ohio, over the New Year of 1963–64, an event attended by some 3,200 students — a fact recovered from the NSCF papers at the Yale Divinity School Library by William C. Mills, “Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World: A Retrospective,” Logos 54, nos. 3–4 (2013): 199–228. That origin explains the book’s most distinctive feature: it is not addressed to Orthodox readers, and it assumes nothing.

Its argument is the most compressed statement Schmemann ever made. The world is created as sacrament — the matter of communion with God; the human being is homo adorans, the priest of creation who receives the world as gift and returns it in thanksgiving; the fall is the loss of that eucharistic relation; and the Liturgy is the ascent in which the Church carries the world into the Kingdom. Everything else in his corpus can be read as commentary on those four sentences.

Contents

File Description
The Book and Its Origin The 1963 commission, the Athens conference, the editions and retitlings, the reach
The World as Sacrament Homo adorans, the eucharistic relation, the fall, and the liturgical ascent

See Also