Page 22 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
sent her. Yet these shadows do not alter her essence. So long
as she preserves her worship and her theology unadulterat-
ed—so long as the lex orandi and the lex credendi retain the
ancient content given to them by the Fathers of the Church—
the failings of her representatives will not threaten her great-
ness.
The dangers, however, are always many, and the compla-
cency of triumphalism may prove fatal. Two thousand years
of creation and offering will ultimately be judged not by the
past, but by the future.
Orthodoxy in the Modern World: Crisis and Calling
What does the Orthodox Church have to offer to the mod-
ern human being? If all she has to give is her splendid past,
then the place history reserves for her is in the museum of
humanity. If the greatness of Orthodoxy lies only in the cul-
ture and art she has bequeathed—as many of her admirers
would claim—then her historical mission has already been
exhausted.
But this is not so. Orthodoxy is a proposal of life and a
mode of existence.
In today’s civilization, which is passing through a profound
crisis and facing deep impasses, the message of Orthodoxy
may prove salvific. It is, first of all, a message that stands
against individualism by affirming the concept of the person
as the image of God. By proposing a culture of persons in
place of the individualism that dominates our age, Orthodoxy
offers a response to many of the problems that trouble our
time.
The same holds true with regard to the sacredness of God’s
creation, which modern humanity so violently violates, pro-
voking through its hedonistic individualism the ecological
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