08 — The Critique

Clément is among the most ecumenically open of modern Orthodox lay theologians, and that openness has been contested inside the Orthodox Church. This section reports the criticism: first the flagship dispute over his proposals on papal primacy, then the wider objections to his ecumenism, his method, and his reading of non-Christian religion. It reports his own arguments in his own terms, and the criticism in its own terms, and it adjudicates nothing.

Tradition: Orthodox (Western Europe)

How this section is governed

Three rules, taken from the repository’s METHODOLOGY.md, determine everything here.

§4.1 — Confessional standpoint. This repository is written from within the Orthodox Church. Where the Church has a dogmatic position against another confession — and papal supremacy and infallibility as defined at the First Vatican Council in 1870 are exactly such a case — Orthodox teaching is presented as the teaching of the Church. That does not change because a distinguished Orthodox theologian made an irenic proposal. Clément’s positions are his, are presented as his, and revise nothing.

§4.2 — Both-sides treatment. How far an Orthodox theologian may go in meeting Rome, and whether Clément went too far, is a dispute within Orthodoxy that the Church has not settled. It therefore receives both-sides treatment: the arguments on each side stated as their holders would state them, proponents named where they can be named, and no verdict issued.

Do not invent opponents. A great deal of the Orthodox reaction against Clément is real but diffuse — Athonite and traditionalist opinion, Greek and Russian commentary, parish and internet argument — rather than documentary. Where this guide can name a critic and a text, it does. Where it cannot, it says so rather than manufacturing an authority.

What is and is not in dispute

Not in dispute among Orthodox: that Clément was a serious and learned writer; that The Roots of Christian Mysticism is a good book; that his theology of the body and the person is substantially sound — the notable point being that Jean-Claude Larchet, no friend of theological accommodation, reviewed Corps de mort et de gloire warmly (see Body of Death and Body of Glory).

In dispute: the papal-primacy proposal; the propriety and the effect of his ecumenical acts; his approach to the non-Christian religions; and, at a lower temperature, whether the anthological method smooths the tradition and whether his personalism owes more to Berdyaev than to the Fathers.

File Focus
The Papal-Primacy Question The flagship dispute: Clément’s argument and its limits; the Orthodox case against it, stated in its own terms; the sourcing problem; what the Church has and has not said
Ecumenism, Method and the Anthology The wider objections: common prayer and ecumenical gestures; the “seeds of the Word” and the religions; the anthology as a form; Berdyaev and the neo-patristic purists; the counter-case

See Also