Page 210 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
though temporarily, had given in to the temptation of History
to subsume the catholicity, that pertains to its nature, to na-
tional expediencies, which led even to fratricidal conflicts
between Orthodox peoples. One can observe here that the
idea of a national Church involves a serious antinomy because
the Christian tradition comprises an ecumenical teaching,
while nationalism is by definition a force of division on the
basis of collective particularities.
With these observations as our point of departure, we can
proceed to the examination of the role of the leader of the
Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in facing up
to the challenge of the major ideological and social force of
modernity, nationalism. The Enlightenment did not leave un-
affected the spiritual, ideological and administrative mecha-
nism of the Church. Many of the Enlightenment’s ideas pen-
etrated into theological thought, education, preaching and so
on, while learned Greek was perfected and employed in all
sectors of the life of the Church as an assertion of the leading
position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the cultural tradi-
tion of Orthodox Christianity. He nevertheless believes, cor-
rectly in my opinion, that the Ecumenical Patriarchate kept its
distances from the values of nationalism. It is true, of course,
that the ideological principles of Greek nationalism were ad-
opted by important personalities in the hierarchy of the Ecu-
menical Patriarchate, but, as is made plain by the example of
Patriarch Gregory V and his general attitude toward the Greek
Revolution of 1821, the rise of revolutionary nationalist ideas,
as it had been the case with those of secular Enlightenment
more generally, were viewed with great reserve by the leader-
ship of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Moving forward to the examination of historical change
during the twentieth century, we can note the drastic transfor-
210