A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture - Road to Emmaus

A JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX FAITH AND CULTURE

ROAD TO EMMAUSVol. VIII, No.2 Spring 2007 (#29)

“TWO OF THEM WENT THAT

SAME DAY TO A VILLAGE CALLED EMMAUS...

AND WHILE THEY COMMUNED TOGETHER AND

REASONED, JESUS HIMSELF DREW NEAR,

AND WENT WITH THEM.”

LUKE 24: 13-15


ROAD TO EMMAUS

THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY

RESURRECTION

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

NORTHERN CLIMES:FATHER JOHN VENIAMINOV’S AKUN DIARY

THE ORTHODOX WORLDVIEW AND

C.S. LEWIS (PART II)

NOTES ON THE JESUS PRAYER

In the place where I labored, the people make very good Christians. Frankly speaking, it is there that I learned

the meaning of true Christian consolation.

ARCHIMANDRITE INNOCENT VENIAMINOV,in response to the inquiry of Russian Emperor

Nicholas I as to how the native peoples of Alaska received the Orthodox faith.

International Editor: Mother Nectaria McLees

U.S. Editor: Todd Richard Betts

Russian Co-Editor: Inna Belov

Production Manager: Bruce Petersen

Subscriptions: Elisabeth Litster

Art Direction and Layout: Bruce Petersen

Public Relations: Stephen Litster

International Liaison: Kate McCaffery

Shipping: Elisabeth Litster

Staff Correspondents:

Greece - Nicholas Karellos

Western Europe - Thomas Hulbert

Serbia and Great Britain - Xenia Murray

SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE

Road to Emmaus

P.O. Box 16021

Portland, OR 97292-0021 USA

Call toll-free (USA) 1-866-783-6628

9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (U.S.A.)

Pacific Standard Time

Monday-Friday

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.roadtoemmaus.net

Published quarterly.

$25/year, single issue $7.

(U.S. check or money order,

or by credit card on our website)

International subscriptions:

Canada add $5/year for shipping.

Outside North America add $15/year shipping.

Send International Money Order payable in U.S. dollars

(available from post offices world-wide)

or subscribe by credit card on our website.

Wholesale and library rates available upon request.

EDITORIAL OFFICE

Valaam Society of America Russian Mission

#10 Bolshaya Pereyaslavskaya, kv. 124

Moscow, Russia 129110

PUBLISHER

Christ the Saviour Orthodox Brotherhood

1516 N. Delaware St.

Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202 USA

ISSN 1544-4856

Printed in USA.

© Road to Emmaus. All rights reserved.

Front Cover: ???

Inside Front Cover: ???

Inside Back Cover: ???


ROAD TO EMMAUSVol. VIII, No. 2 Spring 2007 (#29)

CONTENTS

3 THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION

Toronto Reader Michael Ivanovich highlights the diverse native cultures and languages of Orthodox Alaska, and his Canadianparish’s efforts to make the Alaskan Orthodox literary heritageaccessible to Orthodox everywhere.

22 THE ANGELS OF AKUN

Letters from young Russian missionary and future saint, Fr. JohnVeniaminov, on his encounter with Ivan Smirennikov, an AleutianOrthodox native who was taught by angels..

38 NORTHERN CLIMES: FATHER JOHN VENIAMINOV’S AKUN DIARY

Excerpts from Fr. John’s pastoral visit to a small group of Aleutianislands.

44 THE ORTHODOX WORLDVIEW AND C.S. LEWIS (PART II)

Shine As the Sun: C.S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification

Chris Jensen on Lewis’s closeness to the deeper reaches of Orthodoxspirituality, and why many consider him an “anonymous Orthodox.”How did this Anglican writer get so much, so right?

68 NOTES ON THE JESUS PRAYER

Moscow’s Fr. Artemy Vladimirov offers short, engaging observationson the prayer of the heart for those of us who haven’t quite masteredthis traditional Orthodox practice.

3

THE ALASKANORTHODOXLITERARY

RESURRECTIONA Tradition of Linguistic Diversity

in Orthodox AlaskaRoad to Emmaus interviews Reader Mikhail Ivanovich, spokesman for the online nativeAlaskan linguistic project of All Saints of North America Church in Hamilton, Ontario,Canada. Currently working as a UNIX support specialist, Mikhail’s favorite job was as a truckdriver for an Italian bakery. His consuming interests are mountain trekking and trackingdown old Orthodox manuscripts.

RTE: Mikhail, will you please tell us about the Alaskan native language projectand how it developed?

MIKHAIL: First, I’d like to thank you and the staff of Road to Emmaus foryour interest and enthusiasm for the “Alaskan Orthodox texts” project.We’ve received an outpouring of goodwill and supportfrom around the world: Alaska, Finland, Russia,Latvia, Hong Kong ... we thank God everyday for theencouragement it has provided us and for the growingworldwide audience who are learning about ourOrthodox brethren in Alaska.

Father Geoffrey Korz, the rector of All Saints ofNorth America Orthodox Church in Hamilton,Ontario, Canada is the spiritual head of this effort,while my wife and I have been blessed to research and publish the originalAlaskan language texts. I’m of mixed Mediterranean & Eastern Europeanbackground, and only came to Orthodox Christianity in my mid-twenties, as

Official ‘emblem’ of the historic AlaskanOrthodox Texts project.

which were still being used. They had been printed in the late 1800’s, underthe influence of St. Innocent’s mission. How were you able to track downthese sources?

MIKHAIL: I looked on the internet, and found many Orthodox sites inRussian, Serbian, Greek, Albanian, even Orthodox Brazilian Portuguese-language sites, but nothing in the Alaskan languages. Everyone seemed toknow about the Alaskan native translation work, but nobody on the internetseemed to know where these texts were. After reading about the courageouscontemporary struggles of the Church in Alaska (as discussed on www.out-reachalaska.org/history.html), I prayed to St. Herman to help me, accordingto God’s will, to see what could be done to assist Alaska. His Grace BishopSeraphim of Ottawa and Canada (OrthodoxChurch in America), gave his blessing for thisproject, and off I went into the unknown.

At this point, a stroke of inspiration appearedout of nowhere, and using the internet, I founda treasure trove of rare Alaskan Orthodox textsscattered around various repositories through-out the United States. Many of these hadn’tseen the light of day since the early 1900’s.Through the dedicated work of many people(especially the staff at the Alaska State LibraryHistorical Collection), I was able to obtaincopies of the texts, and set to work typing themout. However, I soon ran into the difficulty oftrying to typeset Old Slavonic-looking letterswhich were especially invented by the mission-aries for the Alaskan languages (particularly,Aleut and Kodiak Alutiiq).

After more prayers to St. Herman for God’s help, it appeared possible tocome up with a scheme of creating “font composites” by super-imposing exist-ing computer fonts on top of each other so as to create the necessary charac-ters. The technical details aren’t that interesting, but the fact is that the Lordprovided the right answers at the right time. However, many of the copies Iwas working from were difficult to read as the originals had decomposedsomewhat, and in many places were completely unreadable. What to do?

5

THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION

did my wife who is of Chinese heritage. I currently serve as a church reader inToronto. Some people say that Toronto is the most multicultural city in theworld, and I think that has had a great influence on my love of languagesand travel. Before coming to Orthodox Christianity, I had the opportunityto travel and live in Russia, Finland, Greenland, and Canada’s Arctic terri-tory of Nunavut. Part of my experiences in Russia and Finland were key tomy conversion to Orthodoxy, while my time spent in the Arctic regions ofGreenland and Canada engendered a love and passion for the north.

One day, in the winter of 2005, I was visiting Father Geoffrey in Hamilton(about an hour’s drive west of Toronto), and knowing my love of historicbooks and the Arctic, he gave me a book called Alaskan MissionarySpirituality by Orthodox author Father Michael Oleksa. The book is essen-

tially a collection of documents, letters, andjournal entries – translated into English – ofthe most well-known people associated withthe Orthodox Christian mission to Alaska in the1800’s ... this would include St. Herman ofAlaska, St. Innocent Veniaminov, St. JacobNetsvetov, and others. This collection and theexcellent commentary discuss the efforts of themission to reach the native peoples in their ownlanguages, to baptize their venerable culturesinto their natural fulfillment in OrthodoxChristianity.

Anyone who reads the life stories of St.Innocent and St. Jacob is sure to learn abouttheir heroic exploits and their incredible trans-lation work into the native languages of Alaska.In fact, in everything I read about these saints, it

is obvious that their work in Alaska paralleled that of Sts. Cyril andMethodius in evangelizing the Slavic peoples. We all know of the richSlavonic literary legacy of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, but where, I wondered,was the physical evidence for the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacob in Alaska?

RTE: Years ago, I asked this same question of Kodiak natives, and they toldme that they knew of nothing except some very old Slavonic-Aleut servicebooks that existed in tatters in small churches in the Aleutian islands, and

Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)

4

Original Aleut-language Holy Gospel of St. Matthewtranslated by St. InnocentVeniaminov and St. JacobNetsvetov.

Title page of a bilingual AlaskanAglemiut-Russian prayerbookpublished in 1896.

Alaska State Library, Alaskana Collection,PM 2455.Z71 D6 1901

relic. It is a blessing which we are not worthy of, but have been mercifullyallowed to behold. If God wills, many of these should be available on-line atwww.asna.ca/alaska in the years to come.

RTE: Your experience is very close to that of Fr. Elie Khalife, who is locatingand cataloguing the manuscripts of the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchatethat have been scattered around Europe. I remember him saying thatHorologions and Psalters are the most used books in existence. They wereread page by page at every service, every day, for centuries, and that inworking with them you know that you aretouching books through which thousands ofpeople have sanctified their lives. Saintshave used them or even written them.* Asyou say, these truly are relics.

MIKHAIL: It’s interesting you should men-tion that. Fr. Geoffrey and I were just dis-cussing this idea during a road-trip to amonastery we took last month. For me, it isall a matter of love for God in His Saints.Before I became Orthodox I had an icono-clastic fear of icons and relics of any kind.Yet, once, a number of years ago, on a veryrough flight over the mountains of Bolivia, Ifound myself kissing a wallet-picture of mybeloved who later became my wife. Why? It was a way of expressing love.This was not idolatry. Kissing the photo of my beloved, I thought, “If I neversee you again in person, I will treasure these few moments I have to see aphoto of your smiling face.” Love, that was all.

In a similar manner, if we have the diary of a loved one who has departedthis life, would we not kiss this diary? Would we not hold it tenderly, read itwith attention, and restore it, so as to preserve the memory of the one whowrote it? If we love the saints, especially the holy ones who have walkedamong us in our lands, would we not similarly wish to preserve and beautifytheir labours of love for the Lord? At the feast of Pascha, we sing “Christ isrisen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the

7

TITLE

Dictionaries for these languages weren’t readily available, and certainlynot in the 1800’s Cyrillic alphabet (since all Alaskan languages converted tothe Latin-based, English-type alphabet by the 1970’s). I called the RussianOrthodox Diocese of Alaska, and they directed me to Father Paul Merculief,a fluently-speaking Aleut archpriest and foremost linguist. To my amaze-ment, he had a nearly complete library of Alaskan Orthodox texts, but hadmet with little success in typing them out due to the “font composite”

problem I mentioned earlier (i.e. the use ofspecialized characters that didn’t exist in anyother languages).

This was a match made in heaven. With hislinguistic expertise, my experience with com-puters, and many long-distance phone calls,we were able to transcribe the complete set of all known Orthodox texts in the Aleut,Kodiak Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yup’ik languages. These texts are currently available at:www.asna.ca/alaska. Through the course ofthis project, my wife learned how to typeCyrillic in one day without any prior knowl-edge, (a miracle in itself), which greatly helpedthe digital production of the texts. Father

Michael Oleksa (the author of the book Alaskan Missionary Spiritualitythat had inspired this work) also sent Yup’ik-language materials for transcription — work that had begun 30 years ago, but is only now enteringthe electronic age.

We’ve had much assistance along the way: historians, scholars, archivists,Alaskan native peoples, and the prayers and support of His Grace BishopNikolai of Sitka, Anchorage & Alaska (OCA), which has been a constantsource of encouragement for us.

Very recently, the Lord blessed us with another cache of handwrittenmanuscripts which had never been published. Although many of these arein very bad shape for transcription, some of the better surviving texts arenow being prepared for publication for the very first time. One of these is anAleut-language sermon handwritten by St. Jacob Netsvetov himself, as wellas translations of the Holy Gospels and Catechisms. To look upon the wordsof St. Jacob’s ornate calligraphy, to touch his handwriting, is to touch a holy


6

"Collection of Church Hymnsand Prayers" in the Aglemiut-Kuskokwim dialect published in 1896. Icon of St. Jacob holding a

translation of Matthew 28:20 inboth cyrillic Aleut and English.

Photo courtesy Orthodox Church in America

* Fr. Elia Khalife, Antioch’s Golden Hoard: The Chalcedonian Orthodox Manuscript Treasury, Road toEmmaus, Vol. VI, No. 3 (Issue #22), Summer 2005.

RTE: One of the revelations in reading native Alaskan Orthodox history suchas Alaskan Missionary Spirituality, or From Mask to Icon: Transforma-tion in the Arctic, is how Orthodoxy was very much initially embraced andthen kept alive by the native peoples, sometimes without seeing a priest for years. Twenty years ago, I remember Aleuts from Kodiak simply saying, “To be native is to be Orthodox.”

MIKHAIL: Yes, indeed. Fr. Michael Oleksa goes into great detail about this inhis book Orthodox Alaska — how many elements of the pre-ChristianAlaskan worldview were not abolished, but rather fulfilled in OrthodoxChristianity. A number of themes such as cyclic time and symbol as expres-sions of true reality, show direct parallels.

An example given in Orthodox Alaska is that of a group of hunters inkayaks trying to catch a giant whale, upon which they depend for food andlife. Armed only with harpoons, the hunters realize that they have no chanceof bringing down this powerful whale who could either: a) crush them, or b) swim away. Only by voluntary self-sacrifice does the

9

tombs bestowing life.” The saints are alive in Christ, though we do not usually see them (although this is sometimes granted by God) — why then wewould refuse to show them our love? The restoration of holy writings, like the making of icons, is a form of prayer with which we, the Orthodoxfaithful, connect with those who have “fought the good fight” and “enteredinto the joy of our Lord.”

Manuscripts, and other holy relics, are the physical proof that a saint livedwith us, worked among us. My greatest fear was that someday someonemight say, “I don’t believe that the Orthodox Christians showed love for thenative Alaskan languages and cultures. Show me proof!” And we would havenothing to show ... Now we may face those who accuse the Orthodox, andsay, “Look, and be silent, here is your proof!” Actually this is a present reality... anyone can do an Internet search and find various bitter, hateful writingsaimed against the history of indigenous Orthodoxy in Alaska. Now, the voiceof indigenous Alaskan Orthodoxy cannot be ignored. The proof is in print,and it is there for all to see, thanks to God.

8

Caption? Caption?

there is no artificial separation between spiritual vs. physical, faith vs.works. Everything we do, everything we are, is, in the Patristic understand-ing, a holistic unity of body, soul and spirit.

When Christians affirm that Holy Communion is the true body and trueblood of Christ — a yrue re-presentation of the Last Supper — the Alaskanworldview would say, “Of course it is! How could it be any different?” Theevents of nearly 2,000 years ago are made present in its fullness in everyDivine Liturgy. These are things that the faithful Alaskan Orthodox knowexperientially, but something which many learned scholars and academicsfail to understand. But then, such wisdom was given to the simple fisherman— the Holy Apostles, and not to the wise of this world. (Acts 2-5, I Cor:1)

Historically, the monks of the original Valaam mission to Kodiak in 1794defended, with their lives, the indigenous Alaskans from the greedy prac-tices of the government fur-trading monopoly. They fought for full-citizen-ship rights and dignity for the native peoples. St. Herman had to flee Kodiakfor Spruce Island because of threats against his life by the fur-trading management. To this day, the local residents of Kodiak refer to St. Herman

11

whale allow itself to be caught. This worldview contains a glimpse ofChrist’s voluntary self-surrender in the garden of Gethsemane.

Another example cited is that of the role of the pre-Christian shaman,which could only be assumed by one who had undergone a ritual death andre-birth, someone who had gone to the land of spirits and returned. Alaskanpeoples could very clearly grasp the truth of Christ’s necessary death,descent into Hades, and resurrection for the salvation and transformationof their souls. Without baptism, as participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, humans would be separated from the fullness of reality.

The pre-Christian Alaskan worldview was maximalist in its view of ritualaction participating in the eternally-significant events of “those days” whenthe condition of man was less fragmented, less broken. Ritual actions uponleaving/entering one’s home and the layout of traditional native dwellings,strive to re-present the cosmos in microcosm. Similarly, in Orthodoxy, our making the sign of the cross, our liturgical blessings of water, wine andoil, Church architecture, iconography — everything we do is a means of harmonizing and directing our heart toward God in Christ. In Orthodoxy,

10

Caption? Caption?

requiring the priest to only chrismate them. Most of the Alaskan Orthodoxmanuscript legacy is from native clergy who rose to prominence after the1830s, after St. Innocent Veniaminov and St. Jacob Netsvetov, the firstpriest of Aleut ancestry.

In fact, it is interesting to note that the majority of Tlingit, from southeastAlaska, became Orthodox only after the sale of Alaska to the U.S. in 1867 —so it had nothing to do with Russian colonial interests, as some might say. In fact, the Tlingit had every economic and social incentive to join heterodox confessions rather than Orthodoxy, except for one little thing.Whereas the heterodox sought to deny Tlingit language and culture, theOrthodox affirmed it. Even after the 1917 Russian Revolution which broughtjurisdictional chaos to Orthodoxy in America, the Alaskan Orthodox Churchgrew because it was not an ethnic extension of a faraway place, it was thelocal Church.

RTE: Wonderful! How many languages and dialects are there in the nativeOrthodox population, and how many people still speak those languages?

13

as their beloved “Apa” (grandfather), who “comforted them with earthlysustenance and with words of eternal life,” (as we read in the Akathist to St. Herman of Alaska).

The saints of the Alaskan mission saw the image of God in everyone; they lived the fullness of the Gospel. They had a real love and respect for thepeople they ministered to. St. Innocent, like St. Nicholas of Japan, spent hisfirst years learning the language and culture of the people among whom hewas living. His preaching was one of true dialogue without compromisingthe truths of Orthodox Christianity, yet sensitive to the needs and culturalexpression of these truths in the local setting. Baptism and reception intoChurch life was strictly allowed only by free-choice, without monetary orother worldly incentives. Teaching was done in local languages, and leader-ship of the Church was quickly assumed by the local inhabitants. Initially,since there were so few clergy spread over such a vast territory, the faithfulconducted abbreviated Reader/Typica services, learning the church hymnsby heart. By necessity, each family had to become a church. Whenever clergy would arrive, they would find entire communities already baptized,

12

Caption? Caption?

in the 1850’s, and by Fr. Vladimir Donskoi and Michael Sinkiel in the1890’s. The Tanaina of central Alaska number around 1000, with 100 fluentnative-language speakers. In all cases, many more people understand thelanguage, but do not speak it.

The Native-languages all had a thriving press and literature through the1800’s under the auspices of the Orthodox Church. However, in the late1890’s and early 1900’s, the Protestant missions of Sheldon Jackson had adisastrous effect on native language vitality, and were clearly aimed at ripping out the roots of the Native Alaskan Orthodox cultures. Stories offaithful Aleut Orthodox being chained to the floors of their own homes byU.S. Territorial agents for speaking their language and courageously refus-ing to hand over their children to the Protestant boarding schools break theheart. Our native Alaskan Orthodox brothers were first-class confessors fortheir Holy Orthodox faith. They are heroes and defenders of OrthodoxChristianity. In the midst of the turmoil of American “English-only” language policy throughout much of the 20th century, the native languagesdeclined greatly. Much of the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacob was

15

MIKHAIL: That’s a very good question. I cannot claim to be a scholar, but Ican answer based on my experience with the texts, and having worked withthe wonderful priests of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska who provided their expertise.

Numerically, the largest contingent of Native Alaskan speakers are theYup’ik people, who number around 20,000 people, of whom 13,000 speakthe language across various dialects. The Alutiiq (known as Kodiak-Aleut inRussian America) number around 3000, of whom 500-1000 still speak thelanguage. Aleuts are divided linguistically into the Atkan and Easterndialectal variants. The total population of the Aleut people is given as 3000,with the vast majority being of Eastern-Aleut background. The Atkan-dialect of Aleut has approximately 60-80 fluent speakers, whereas theEastern-Aleut dialect has about 300 fluent speakers. St. Innocent focusedhis efforts in writing for the Eastern-Aleut, while St. Jacob concentrated ondeveloping the Atkan-Aleut and Yup’ik languages. The Tlingit population isestimated at around 17,000, of whom 500 are fluent in the language. Thebulk of Tlingit literature was developed in Sitka by Reader Ivan Nadezhdin

14

Caption? Caption?

system, with many sounds that are difficult for Indo-European languagespeakers to pronounce. Nouns and verbs have intricate case-based systemsfor declension and agreement with prefix, infix and suffix endings adjoinedto them.

Practically, I found Eastern-Aleut to be the easiest to work with, followedby Atkan-Aleut. Conjugation of Aleut verbs, word-length and prepositionalusage tended to show closer similarity of structure to Russian than any otherAlaskan native language. The Alutiiq (Kodiak-Aleut) and Yup’ik languagesbear many similarities with each other, but were more difficult with theirextensive use of diacritical (accented) Cyrillic. In addition, Yup’ik is a poly-synthetic language which means that it has very long words that correspondto nearly-complete sentences. Each word corresponds to a densely-packedarrangement of thoughts and grammar which areheld together in the one word. Every nuance of time,state, etc. tends to be reflected and compounded,which leads to a very logical, but lengthy composi-tion of letters.

One example is from the Resurrection Kontakionof the 1st Tone. In English the first sentence is: “AsGod, Thou didst rise from the tomb in glory, raisingthe world with Thyself.” In Yup’ik, the first sentencereads: “Agayutngucirpetun unguilriaten qungugneknanraumalriami, unguiqen ella malikluku.”

The Tlingit texts were the most difficult of all,probably due to the language’s very technicalphonology and pronunciation. It is also a tonal language, which means that a word may have variousmeanings despite being spelled the same way,depending on the pitch of the speaker in pronouncingthe word. Chinese is also a tonal language. An example of the difficulty oftonal languages is that the Chinese (Cantonese) word “siu gai yik” can mean“BBQ chicken wings” or “small chicken wings” depending on the tone of theword “siu”. Most times at the Chinese supermarket, I end up asking for smallchicken wings, and the nice shopkeeper smiles at me, because he reallyknows that I want large BBQ chicken wings (not small chicken wings!). I justcan’t “sing” the word properly. This idea of tonality applies to Tlingit as well.Unfortunately, the old Cyrillic alphabet for Tlingit didn’t represent tonality

17

TITLE

destroyed, but not completely. What we are seeing today is a veritable res-urrection of our Alaskan brothers’ texts, their languages, their authentical-ly Orthodox cultures. Their sacrifice is chronicled in such books as AlaskanMissionary Spirituality and Orthodox Alaska by Fr. Michael Oleksa.

RTE: Sadly, the mistreatment went on well into the latter half of the 20th cen-tury. The Russian Orthodox priests who remained after the United Statesacquired Alaska had little influence to protect the native Orthodox, and evenless after the 1917 Russian Revolution. I remember an Aleut Orthodox manwho said that, as late as the 1960’s, when he was a young boy at school, theuse of native language was still forbidden. If you were heard speaking it, aderogatory, humiliating sign was placed around your neck, which you woreuntil you heard another child speaking “native,” when you could pass the

sign on to him. The childwearing the sign at the endof the day was beaten by theprincipal.

MIKHAIL: It is unthinkablethat this type of mistreat-ment happened at all! In speaking with one priestin Alaska, all he said wasthat the people of the gen-eration born before 1970still bear many scars from

that period, and that linguistic revival will have to come from the youth. It’s happening slowly, but now it is critically important to document thoseliving links with the grandparents’ generation to preserve the true pronun-ciation of the various languages and dialects.

RTE: I’ve heard it said that the native Alaskan languages are consideredamong the most difficult in the world to learn. Is this true, and why?

MIKHAIL: I guess that depends on who you ask! My wife thinks Chinese iseasy, given as it is her first language! However, it is true that Alaskan nativelanguages are very difficult to learn — very complex and highly developed.These languages typically have a very rich and complex phonological


16

Paul Swetzof, Father Peter Kashevarof, and NicolaiMerculief. The date is unknown but is circa early1900's.

Photo courtesy Stephanie Lestenkof Mandregan of St. Paul Island, Alaska.

Father Michael Lestenkofwas a tireless worker forthe Lord who kept alivethe flame of Aleut lan-guage and Orthodoxyuntil his death in 2003 at the age of 89.

Photo courtesy StephanieLestenkof Mandregan of St. Paul Island, Alaska.

often tried to sanctify a culture and its language — to bring out that whichalready contains the “seed of the Word” (spermatikos logos), and to encour-age the native expression of the good news of Christ. This has been the experience of the Byzantine commonwealth, the African, Slavic,Georgian, Finnic, Japanese, and Siberian peoples as well. This is the gift ofPentecost that the Orthodox have shared. St. Innocent was heir to this glorious tradition and proved faithful to his calling.

RTE: Yes. And St. Jacob Netsvetov?

MIKHAIL: St. Jacob Netsvetov was born of a Russian father and Aleut motheron St. George Island in the Pribilofs, and was fully bilingual. All early Atkandialect texts from before 1850 are the work of St. Jacob; his monumentaldictionary still exists in manuscript form in the Alaskan Russian Churcharchives. Rather than create separate translations of St. Innocent’s texts intothe Atkan-dialect of Aleut, he sought to unify the dialects by incorporatingfootnotes for those words which were markedly different from the Easterndialect. His greatest glory in the Aleut literary tradition, however, is probablyhis mentorship of Fathers Laurence Salamatov and Innocent Shayashnikovwho later produced volumes of church texts in the Aleut language. Fr.Laurence Salamatov produced Atkan translations of the Holy Gospels andCatechisms in the 1860’s, while Fr. Innocent Shayashnikov would go on tocomplete all four Holy Gospels, the Acts of the Holy Apostles, a manuscriptprayerbook and a Catechism in Eastern-Aleut. His work was last printed in 1903, and served the Aleut faithful for over 100 years until the recent electronic re-publication of their texts on www.asna.ca/alaska. The disciplesof St. Jacob learned well from their teacher, and their work nourished generations of Aleut Orthodox.

But the story doesn’t end there for St. Jacob. After a series of tragediesincluding the death of his wife and the burning of his house, he felt that heshould become a monastic. However, the hand of God led him to minister tothe interior of Alaska beginning in 1844, where he learned new languagesand preached in the languages of the Kuskokwim region. Drawing upon St. Jacob’s work, Fr. Zachary Bel’kov compiled two prayerbooks, which werelater published by the Diocese of Alaska in 1896. These two texts remainedas the sole published inheritance of St. Jacob’s flock until 1974, when a new Yup’ik language Hymnal was produced (and later revised in 2002) by Fathers Martin Nicolai, Michael Oleksa, and Phillip Alexie.

19

TITLE

very well. These are just personal reflections, though, and I would defer tothe opinion of the many native Alaskan Orthodox priests with regard to thisquestion.

RTE: Could you enlarge now on the translating work of St. Herman, St. Innocent, and St. Jacob Netsvetov? We think of them as saints and missionaries, but most of us know little about their linguistic work.

MIKHAIL: St. Herman, as one of the original members of the Valaam mission to Russian America in 1794, was something of a pioneer in the fieldof Alutiiq (Kodiak-Aleut) with Hieromonk Gideon. Together, at the missionschool in Kodiak, they worked on a translation of the Lord’s Prayer andbegan compiling the first dictionary of the Alutiiq language. One of St. Herman’s disciples, Father Constantine Larianov, later compiled anAlutiiq prayerbook which exists in manuscript form in the Alaskan RussianChurch archives of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

St. Innocent Veniaminov is rightly regarded as the giant among earlytranslators in the Native Alaskan languages. From the time of his arrival inUnalaska (Dutch Harbor, Alaska) in 1824, St. Innocent dedicated himself tothe process of acquiring the language and culture of the Aleut people. As early as 1828, he set to work on translations of the Holy Gospels, butmuch of this early work was spoiled by errors in typesetting the text back inRussia. In 1833, St. Innocent wrote his famous Aleut-language work,Indication of the Pathway to the Kingdom of Heaven, which became aninstant classic. In 1840, when he returned to Russia, St. Innocent personal-ly supervised the printing of his texts: The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the Paschal readings, a lengthy Primer/Catechism, and theIndication treatise. Most of these texts were edited by Ivan Pan’kov, a Tigalda chief and friend of St. Innocent, and were annotated with foot-notes in the Atkan-Aleut dialect by St. Jacob Netsvetov. However, St. Innocent’s work wasn’t confined to Aleut, but also included Tlingit andAlutiiq. A comprehensive dictionary of Tlingit and Alutiiq was printed in 1846.

St. Innocent’s approach to language and inculturation of the Gospel wasfully rooted in the Orthodox tradition, but it was a novelty among all otherfaith traditions. Rather than demand the use of a specific language forenforced religious indoctrination, Eastern Orthodox Christians have more


18

RESOURCES ON NATIVE ALASKAN ORTHODOXY:

BOOKS

St. Innocent: Apostle to Americaby Paul D. Garrett - published 1979, SVS Presswww.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=3170Currently available from SVS Press

Alaskan Missionary Spiritualityby Fr. Michael Oleksa - published 1987, Paulist Presswww.amazon.com/dp/0809103869/Out of print, used copies available online.

Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Missionby Fr. Michael Oleksa - published 1992, SVS Presswww.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=200Currently available from SVS Press.

Journals of the Priest Ioann Veniaminov in Alaska, 1826 to 1836by St. Innocent (Veniaminov), tr. Jerome Kisslinger - published 1993, Univ. of Alaska Presswww.uaf.edu/uapress/book/displaysingle.html?id=7Currently available from Univ. of Alaska Press

Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity Through Two Centuriesby Sergei Kan - published 1999, University of Washington Presswww.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/KANMEM.htmlCurrently available from Univ. of Washington Press.

Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Dena’ina and Ahtna,1850s-1930sby Andrei A. Znamenski - published 2003, University of Alaska Presswww.uaf.edu/uapress/book/displaysingle.html?id=13Currently available from Univ. of Alaska Press.

From Mask to Icon: Transformation in the Arctic by S.A. Mousalimas - published 2004, Holy Cross Orthodox Presswww.store.holycrossbookstore.com/1885652631.htmlCurrently available from Holy Cross Orthodox Bookstore.

WEBSITES:

Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska: www.dioceseofalaska.org

Alaskan Orthodox Texts – Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, Yup’ik: www.asna.ca/alaska

The North Star - official publication of the Diocese of Alaska: www.oca.org/DOC-PUB-NS.asp?SearchYear=&SID=34

St. Herman Theological Seminary: www.sthermanseminary.org

Outreach Alaska: www.outreachalaska.org

Rossia Inc. - Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska: www.rossialaska.org

The Russian Church & Native Alaskan Cultures: www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian(U.S. Library of Congress exhibit)

21

THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION

This may seem like a dry re-collection of dates and events, but what I findmost incredible about these dates and names, is that from the efforts of twomen — St. Innocent and St. Jacob — they gave Native Alaskans a literarytradition which was embraced and further developed by the NativeAlaskans themselves. The works of Fathers Laurence Salamatov, InnocentShayashnikov and Zachary Bel’kov are a testament to this. There were otherauthors, too, such as Readers Andrei Lodochnikov and Leonty Sivtsov whoproduced ecclesiastical and popular works in Aleut. The Aleut, Yup’ik,Tlingit and other peoples paid for the printing of their own texts, and it wasthey who maintained the oral tradition of their church hymns.

It was also the native peoples themselves who kept the Orthodox flamealive in the face of American assimilationist pressure in the 20th century.Much like Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacobplanted the seeds of an authentically local Orthodox Church. When misguided people speak of Christianity as a foreign culture-destroying element, etc., this is completely false in the context of Alaskan Orthodoxy.Such popular thinking in the media is at best a misguided perception; at worst, it’s an outright lie. The Orthodox Church in Alaska — its faithful,its priests, its stewards — is an organic, integral part of the fabric of theFirst-Nations, the native peoples, and of all peoples of Alaska.

Please pray to God for His continued blessing to be upon this project.Please pray for the eternal salvation of our souls, and for all OrthodoxChristians in Alaska.

RTE: Amen.


20

When Archbishop Innocent Veniaminov’s future biographer, IvanBursakov, lamented the loss of the hierarch’s archives in a fire at the

Yakutsk monastery, the archbishop replied, “At any rate, they would have allburned with the earth at the apocalypse.” The disappointed Bursakov wasnot put off, however, and by the end of the 19th century had collected copiesof the archbishop’s letters and writings totaling nearly three thousandpages, to which we owe the following remarkable account.

St. Innocent of Moscow and Alaska (1797-1879) born Ivan (John) Popov-Veniaminov in Irkutsk, Russia, spent over thirty years in Alaska, first as amissionary priest and later as Bishop of Kamchatka and the Kuril andAleutian Islands. In 1867 he was named Metropolitan of Moscow, andserved as the first hierarch of the Russian Church until his repose. Buried inHoly Dormition Cathedral at Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra near Moscow,he was canonized a saint in 1977 by the Moscow Patriarchate.

Rightly, St. Innocent is often called a “renaissance man.” A zealous andeffective missionary, he was also an able scholar, linguist, and administra-tor. He trained missionary-priests, organized and taught in primary andsecondary schools, learned several languages and six Alaskan dialects, and(at first together with his translator, Ivan Pan’kov, an Aleut chief) devisedalphabets, dictionaries, and grammars to translate the Holy Scriptures and church services, that native peoples might read and write their own languages. One of Alaska’s first ethnographers and naturalists, his extensivecultural, geographical, botanical, and zoological observations, as well as his

23

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

major pastoral works are still in print.1 A married priest with six children,he was also an accomplished woodworker who crafted furniture, clocks, andhand and barrel organs, and aided in the construction of several churches,including St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka. In his early years as bishop, hewas one of only four priests ministering to ten thousand OrthodoxChristians in the Alaskan territories.

His three decades as an Alaskan missionary were extraordinary. In onefourteen-month period of visits to outlying parishes, he covered almost fif-teen thousand miles on foot and horseback, by boat, dogsled, reindeer andsleigh, frequently spending nights in the open in below-zero temperatures,lacking even the fuel to heat his food. As one writer notes, “His physicalexploits alone, in traveling through the territories of his diocese by dog-sledacross great expanses or in a one-man kayak through rough freezing waters,reveal something of his faith, courage, and inner stamina.”

One of the most striking events of his early years as a young missionarypriest was Fr. John’s astonishing meeting with an elderly Aleut on a mis-sionary journey to the island of Akun. Many of Akun’s villagers had beenbaptized thirty years earlier by Hieromonk Makary, one of the originalValaam Monastery monk-missionaries. Hindered, however, as Fr. Johnexplains, by the lack of a fluent translator, Fr. Makary had only given a

22

1 Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska Region and An Indication of the Pathway Into the Kingdom ofHeaven remain in print in English. Besides Fr. John’s Full Orthodox Catechism in the Aleut language andtranslation of the Gospel, his Aleut Grammar and Aleut-Russian Vocabulary were awarded a prize by theRussian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1836.

rudimentary explanation of the faith, and reposed before he could return.When Fr. John arrived in 1828 he was told of a series of miraculous eventsthat had sustained the faith of these local Christians, which he reported firstto his archbishop, Michael of Irkutsk2, and later, in a less formal retelling tothe Holy Synod.3 Here begins his report to the Synod:

In April 1828, during Great Lent, I went for the first time to the island ofAkun4 to visit the Aleuts. Approaching the island, I saw them all standing onthe beach, dressed as if for a celebration, and when I stepped ashore, theyjoyfully rushed to greet me. When I asked why they were so festivelydressed, they answered, “Because we knew that you had set out and wouldarrive today, we, in great joy, have come down to the shore to meet you.”“Who told you that I would come today, and how do you know that I am Fr.John?” “Our shaman (sorcerer), old Ivan Smirennikov, told us, anddescribed you just as we see you now.”

I found this rather strange and astonishing, but I didn’t give their wordsmuch attention and set about instructing them on how to prepare for HolyCommunion. The old shaman, too, came to me, expressing his desire to prepare for Communion. He attended the services very diligently, but I stilldid not give him any special attention, and after serving him the HolyMysteries, let him go. However, to my great surprise, after taking HolyCommunion, he went to his toion [chief] and expressed his dissatisfactionwith me because I hadn’t asked him at confession why the Aleuts call him ashaman. He found it very unpleasant to be called “shaman” by his own people, whereas in fact he was not. The toion informed me of oldSmirennikov’s discontent, and I immediately sent for him, that we mightclarify the situation.

Those I had sent for him were still on the way when they met Smirennikovcoming towards them. He said, “I know that the priest Father John is

calling me, and I am coming to him.” I began to question him in detail abouthis life, and when I asked if he could read, he answered that, although hecould not, he knew the prayers and the Gospels. I then asked him to explainhow he knew me, how he had been able to describe my appearance to hispeople, and how he had learned that on a certain day I was to come to teachthem to pray. The old man answered that two friends had told him about it.“Who are these two friends of yours?” I asked. “They are white people,” theold man replied. “They also told me that in the future you will send yourfamily home by the coast, and you yourself shall sail by water to the greatman (the Tsar) and speak with him.5 ” “Where are these friends of yours, the white people, and what are they like?” I asked him. “They live nearby inthe mountains and they visit me every day.” “And when did they first cometo you?” In reply, he told me a wonderful story.

Soon after he was baptized by Hieromonk Makary, there appeared to him,unseen by anyone else, first one spirit, and then a second, in human form,white-faced and clothed in white garments that, according to his descrip-tion, looked like deacon’s vestments trimmed with rose-colored bands. Theytold him that God had sent them to instruct, teach, and protect him. For thirty years, they had appeared to him almost daily in the daytime orlate afternoon, but never at night. They instructed him in Christian teachingand in the mysteries of the Faith; also, they rendered him help in illnesses,and at his request, others (though rarely)6. They always responded to hisappeals saying, “We will ask God and if He gives his blessing, we will fulfillthis.” Sometimes they informed him of what was happening in other places;very seldom they told him the future, and always with the remark, “If Godwills to disclose it,” meaning that they did this not through their own power,but by the power of God Almighty.

Although the teaching of these spirits seemed to be the doctrine of theOrthodox Church, I, knowing that the demons also believe and tremble,wondered if this wasn’t a shrewd and subtle trap of the evil one, and asked


25

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

2 Archbishop Michael II (Byrudov) of Irkutsk. Consecrated archbishop on 22 August 1826, reposed 5 June1830.

3 There are several versions of this incident by Fr. John: the letter written in June, 1828 to ArchbishopMichael of Irkutsk, a Tobolsk copy of which was translated into English by Lydia T. Black; a later and lessformal report to the Synod (quoted at length in the present article) and possibly delivered verbally on hisvisit to St. Petersburg in 1839; and a version of the letter to the archbishop quoted in Barsukov’s Life (seebelow), identical to the Tobolsk copy translated by L. T. Black but with small additions that do not appearin other copies. These additions are noted in this article’s footnotes.

4 According to Fr. John’s diary, he arrived on Akun on 12 April (Julian Calendar) 1828, leaving on 24 April.His talk with Smirennikov was on the evening of 23 April.

5 Ten years later, in 1838, Fr. John did indeed send his family home across the Bering Sea, up the coast toOkhotsk, then overland to Irkutsk. In November of 1838 to June 1839, Fr. John himself embarked on a voy-age half-way around the world, sailing from Sitka to St. Petersburg around the Cape of Good Hope on theRussian ship Nicholas I, in order to report directly to the Synod and the Russian government about condi-tions in Russian Alaska. After the sudden death of his wife Catherine, Fr. John made arrangements for hischildren in Irkutsk, and the following year took monastic vows with the name Innocent. It was asArchimandrite Innocent that he was granted an audience with Tsar Nicholas I (as Smirennikov had proph-esied), and at the Tsar’s expressed wish was consecrated bishop.

6 In an almost identical version of the letter, published in Barsukov’s Life, four years after St. Innocent’srepose, the angels rendered assistance “in case of illness or extreme lack of food.”

him how the spirits taught him to pray – to themselves or to God, and howthey taught him to live with others. He replied that they taught him to praywith the spirit and the heart and sometimes prayed with him for a long time.They taught him to practice all of the Christian virtues (which he describedto me in detail), and that above all, they advised to observe faithfulness andpurity, both within and outside of marriage. Moreover, they taught him virtuous behavior and rituals, such as how to make the sign of the Cross,that we should never begin to do anything without asking God’s blessing,that we should not eat early in the morning, that many families should notlive together, and the like.7

Then I asked if they had appeared to him that same day after Communion,and if they had told him to heed what I said. He answered that they hadappeared both after confession and after Communion, saying that he shouldnot tell the sins he had already confessed to anyone else, that right afterCommunion he should not eat foods rich in fat, and that he should attend tomy teaching. They had even appeared to him that day on the way to me andtold him why I was calling him, and that he should tell me everything with-out fear because nothing bad would befall him.

Then I inquired what he felt when they appeared to him – joy or sorrow?In their presence, he said, he felt pangs of conscience if he had done some-thing wrong, but at other times he did not feel any fear. As many people considered him a shaman, and he was unwilling to be thus treated, herepeatedly asked them to depart from him. However, the spirits’ reply wasthat they were not demons and were not allowed to leave him. When heasked why they never appeared to other people, they said that such was thecommand they had been given.

To make certain that his guides had indeed appeared, I asked him if Icould possibly see and speak with them. He answered that he didn’t knowand would have to ask them. Indeed, he returned within an hour saying thatthey had replied, “What more does he want to know about us? Does he stillconsider us to be demons? All right, let him see us and talk to us if he wishes.”They then said something favorable about me, but so that it will not be takenas vanity on my part, I will keep silent about this.

Then something inexplicable happened inside of me. I was seized with afeeling of fear and overwhelming humility. “Indeed,” I thought, “What if I

27

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

7 In Barsukov’s version is added, “… not to eat fish and animals that have just been killed and are still warmand not to eat some birds and animal-plants [zoophytes, such as jellyfish and sea anemones –ed.] at all, etc.”

see these angels, and they confirm all that the old man has said? How can Iappear before them? Sinful that I am, I am unworthy of speaking to them,and it would be pride and presumption on my part if I dared to go to them.Meeting angels might make me too proud of my faith, or think too highly ofmyself.” So I, the unworthy one, finally decided not to go to them. I gavesome preliminary instructions as to these events, both to Smirennikov andto his Aleut people, and told them that they should no longer callSmirennikov a shaman.”8

In his more formal letter to Archbishop Michael, Fr. John also describestwo miracles that happened through the prayers of Smirennikov and aninstance of foreknowledge:

1. The wife of the toion of the village Artelnovskoye, one Fedor Zhirov,on October of 1825 was caught in a fox trap, and her leg was badlyhurt. There were no means to help her, and she was expected to diemomentarily. The trap hit her at the kneecap by all three iron teeth,about two vershok [1.75 inches] in length. Her kinsmen secretlyasked the said old man Smirennikov to cure her. After thinking thematter over, he said that the patient will be well by morning. And,indeed, the woman rose in the morning from her deathbed, and iseven now entirely well, not suffering any pain.

2. In the winter of the same year, 1825, the inhabitants of Akun sufferedgreat lack of food, and some of them asked Smirennikov to pray for awhale to be washed ashore. After a short time the old man instructedthe people to go to a certain place, where they indeed found a freshwhale carcass – precisely in the spot designated.

3. Last fall I planned to visit Akun, but because of the arrival of stateships from Russia, I had to postpone the trip. Yet, the Akun people


28

8 Fr. John’s instructions to Smirennikov are given at slightly greater length in the Tobolsk copy of Fr. John’sformal letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk: …Therefore, in order not to weaken (among the people) thefaith and hope in the One Omniscient God, I, until I receive instruction from Your Grace, determined to ren-der the following decision: I see that the spirits which appear to thee are not demons and therefore I instructthee to listen to their teachings and instructions, as long as these do not contradict the teachings I deliver inthe assembly; just tell those who ask your advice about the future and request your help to address them-selves directly to God, as He is common Father to all. I do not forbid thee to cure the sick, but ask thee totell those thou curest that thou doest so not by thy own powers, but by the power of God and to instruct themto pray diligently and thank the Sole God. I do not forbid thee to teach either, but only instruct thee to con-fine this teaching to the minors. [At this point, Barsukov’s version adds, ‘…As for the future, do not say aword about it to anyone, even to me.’] I told the other Aleuts who were present not to call him a Shaman,not to ask him for favors, but to ask God.”

sent an escort and all expected my arrival. Only Smirennikov boldlyasserted that I would not come that fall, but should be expected nextspring. And so it happened, contrary winds did not permit my depar-ture, then the cold weather set in, and I was forced to delay my visituntil spring.

There are many additional instances which prove his gift of clairvoyance,but I shall omit them here.

Fr. John continues his evaluation, “It is possible to suppose that this manhas heard from me or from someone else the teaching of our faith that herecounted, and only for effect or out of vanity invented the appearance of thespirits. Yet, I must state that Aleuts do not fall prey to pride, vanity, andempty bragging….”

After enumerating scriptural events he had left out of his preaching, “for the sake of brevity and to avoid complications,” Fr. John comments thatSmirennikov, “told me these stories in detail… He himself is illiterate anddoes not know any Russian; therefore he could not have read about it… andthere is no one from whom Smirennikov could have learned in the mattersof Church teaching… [Ivan Pan’kov, as the villagers witnessed, had neverspoken to him, and hearing others call him a shaman, discouraged themfrom doing so also.] Moreover, the freedom, fearlessness and even pleasureof his discourse, and above all his clean manner of life, convinced me andconfirmed me in the conviction that the spirits which appear to this old man(if they appear) are not demons. Demons may sometimes assume the imageof Angels of Light, but never for the purpose of instruction, teaching and sal-vation of human beings, but always for their perdition. As the tree of evilcannot bear the fruit of good, these spirits must be the servants sent to thosewho seek salvation.”

Fr. John again explains to the archbishop why he himself did not dare togo to see the bright spirits who appeared to Smirennikov, “ …There was noneed for me to meet them. Why should I want to see them personally whentheir teaching is Christian teaching? Out of curiosity, to learn who they are?”For this I should ask the blessing of my Archbishop, to avoid the pitfall oferror, should I meet those spirits...”

He ends his letter to the Archbishop with the words: “In reporting to you,Your Grace, I deemed it necessary to ask Ivan Pan’kov, who translated mywords and those of …Smirennikov, to sign this statement in witness of the

31

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

truth of my story and the correctness of his translation. I also requested himto keep this matter secret for the time being. I beg Your Grace to let meknow if my decision was right, and if there is any need for me to meet withthe spirits which appear to the old man, and if so, what precautions I shouldtake. If I erred, forgive me.9

Signed: Your Grace’s Priest John Veniaminov, of the Church of Ascensionin Unalashka, June 1828

Signed: below by interpreter Pan’kov as follows:

To the truth of the words of Priest John Veniaminov and the accuracy oftranslation of the words of the old man Ivan Smirennikov attests Tigal’daToion Ivan Pan’kov

True copy of the original, Tobol’sk, 5 November 1829

Fr. John’s concern about the reception of the report if it were to be gen-erally known is reflected in an unpublished letter to Archbishop Michael onJuly 20, 1828, “…The description of my talk with the Aleut Smirennikovenclosed here is not an official report. I might have never reported thisevent that seems so strange to me if I didn’t rely completely upon yourfatherly mercy to me. Reading the account, someone may think that, at theleast, I am not alien to superstition and empty holiness. But I have the honour of reporting to your Eminence that everything put down here istrue, and I obediently ask your forgiveness if I was not right in doing this…10

In his reply to Fr. John,11 Archbishop Michael commends his reasoning,but nevertheless blesses him to meet the mysterious heaven-dwellers:

…True, this event is most rare and unheard of in our times. ThereforeI thought it necessary to impart it, if not to all of my acquaintances,


32

9 Barsukov’s version adds: “Your Eminence, merciful Archpastor! Having put down the facts you see above,I beg you to give me your …archpastoral instruction and permission: if I was right in this matter and, if I canand need, if the old man is still alive, to meet and talk with the spirits that appear to him and if so, what pre-cautions I should take.”

10 Quoted as an unpublished letter in Tom II, Prilozheniye k rabote: “Svyatitel Moskovskii InnokentiiVeniaminov i ego epistolyarnoye naslediye...” (Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, “Holy HierarchInnocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his Epistolatory Heritage, a course paper by fourth year student JobZamborsky, Russian Church History Department, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy (1980). (Fromthe collection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library, Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow.)

11 Quoted in Met. Vladimir of Tashkent and Central Asia. (see footnote 4)

to those distinguished in mind and heart, in whom it evoked a particular zeal to further hear any extraordinary event that may befall your Smirennikov during this year, as well as in the future…

I will tell you, without flattery either to your face or behind your back,that you, not allowing curiosity to prevail over your faith, are to bemore commended than all those who, like the Holy Apostle Thomas,subject the objects of faith to sensible perception. Nevertheless, asThomas’ disbelief is called good in our church hymns, my desire is, as well as many others’, that for the sake of yet greater glory of ourrighteous faith, you should resolve (provided that old Smirennikov isstill alive) to meet and speak with the spirits that appear to him. No greater caution is required than your pure faith and the prayer of the heart: only keep in mind the Lord’s Prayer during this meeting,and say it together with the spirits. As for your conversation withthem, it should be solely concerned with the future of your parish-ioners, the new Aleut converts. Whatever good you desire for them,ask this of God. For the clever, this will suffice.

Inform me by letter at a time convenient to yourself, or in person at our future meeting, of whatever God, through the gift of His Christ,grants you to learn. Invoking God’s blessing upon you, I ever remain,your well-wishing servant.

+Michael, Archbishop of Irkutsk

But the angels sent to the old Aleut did not reveal themselves to humancuriosity, however pious. In his next visit to the island of Akun, Fr. Johnlearned that Smirennikov had reposed.

A final fitting comment on the occurrence comes from an acquaintance ofSt. Innocent, Andrew Muravev: “One scarcely knows at which to be amazed –the miraculous gifts of the old Aleut or the humility of the missionary whoin patience is denied a singular opportunity to satisfy his obviously holycuriosity in such an unusual matter, simply in order not to transgress thecommandment of obedience. The old man’s premature death, however,

35

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

SOURCES

1. With the exception of Fr. John’s letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk(see below), the translations in this article are by Inna Belov and M.Nectaria McLees. The report to the Synod and Archbishop Michael’swritten answer to Fr. John’s letter was translated from: Vladimir,Metropolitan of Tashkent and Central Asia, Slova v dni pamyati osobopochitayemikh svyatikh (Words on the Feast Days of ParticularlyVenerated Saints, Book III ). In Russian:http://www.pravoslavie.uz/Vladika/Books/Slovo3/18Innokentiy.htm

2. “Letter from Rev. Priest John Veniaminov to Archbishop Michael ofIrkutsk,” 5 November, 1829, translated by Lydia T. Black in “IvanPankor, Architect of Aleut Literacy,” Orthodox Alaska, #8, 1978. Withgrateful acknowledgement to Professor Black for permission to cite hertranslation of the letter throughout this article (also reprinted inAlaskan Missionary Spirituality, Paulist Press, 1987). [Note from RtEEditor: The original letter to Archbishop Michael II of Irkutsk was writ-ten in June of 1828, two months after the incident. The date of 5November, 1829 assigned to the letter in Alaskan MissionarySpirituality refers to the date the letter was hand-copied in Tobolsk.]

4. Details of the letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk as published inIvan Barsukov’s initial biography: Innokentii, mitropolit Moskovskii iKolomenskii, po ego sochineniyam, pis’mam i rasskazam sovremen-nikov (Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. His Writings,Letters and Stories Told by his Contemporaries.) Moscow, SynodalPrinting House, 1883. (From the collection of the Moscow PatriarchalSynodal Library, Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow, Russia.)

5. Fr. John’s unpublished letter to Archbishop Michael II of Irkutsk onJuly 20, 1828 was translated from: Zamorsky, Job, Tom II, Prilozheniyek rabote: “Svyatitel Moskovskii Innokentii Veniaminov i ego epistol-yarnoye naslediye...” (Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, HolyHierarch Innocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his EpistolatoryHeritage, by Job Zamborsky, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy,1980. (From the collection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library,Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow.)

37

THE ANGELS OF AKUN

vindicated his actions by showing clearly that these revelations had beennecessary for himself, his family, and his people only for as long as theAleutian Islands remained spiritually neglected. Now, however, by thegrace of God, people have come to work towards their salvation, and theheavenly guides concealed themselves once again.” Nevertheless, “It is comforting to read about such miraculous Divine Providence towards…sons of Adam who, though forgotten by the world, were not forgotten byProvidence, but because human means were lacking, were fed through thefaith of one of their elders upon the saving faith.”12


36

12 Quoted in Garrett, Paul D. St. Innocent, Apostle to America., SVS Press, Crestwood, N.Y., 1979, pg. 85

NORTHERNCLIMES:

FR. JOHNVENIAMINOV’S

AKUN DIARYExcerpts from Fr. John’s pastoral visit to

Akun, Tigalda, Avotonok, and Akutan Islands

12. Thurs. morn. At 9 o’clock, setting out in a three-holed baidarka [kayak], accompanied by four smaller double-holed – crossed three straits between the islands, at 8 o’clock arrived safely at the village Artelenovskoye on Akun Island, lying not less than 120 versts north-east of Unalashka.X Beyond the islands of Unalgoi and Akustan, leaving the former behind on the right and the latter on the left,

I saw neither big waves nor opposing currents, only small ones from a light head wind.

13 Fri. 10, 11 The inhabitants of all three villages of Akunand 12 had come together and were waiting for me. I

gathered them in the tent to instruct them at length through my translator Ivan Pan’kovXX –the toion of the island of Tigalda.

In the afternoon I visited people’s homes, finding them rather clean.

14 Sat. Chrismated 46 people of both genders and different ages,

heard confessions of 53 people from the other two villages,

leaving the inhabitants of this village to confess on my way back; as for children under 9, I only instructed them.

15 Sun. 6. 7. After reading the rule, I served Liturgy in the tentand gave Communion to everyone, including 15 minors.

38 39

AKUN DIARY

X Judging from when the baidarka left, it can cover 10 versts [about 10 kilometers] per hour and evenmore with a favorable current.

XX He is a type of administrator here.

and (except 2 couples for whom it was impossibleXX) married.

18 Wed. morn At 5 o’clock set out with a quiet 2 degreesafternoon wind from of frost

Tigalda back to Akun. Arrived at 10 o’clock at Avatonok Island, lying

close to Akun and Tigalda. Came ashorenear a village in the north, having safely sailed at least 45 versts along the Derben Strait.

11, 12 Gathering the local people in the tent, I instructed them at length through the same translator, Pan’kov, in the afternoon chrismated 16 people and served 5 marriages. After the vigilheard 14 confessions and instructed the minors instead of confessing.

19 Thurs. 6, 7 After reading the rule, I served Liturgy 1.5 degreesin the tent, gaveHoly Communion of frostto all who had confessed and alsothe minors – 30 people.

Now all of the local people have been chrismated, have confessed, received the Holy Mysteries, and been married.

At 8 o’clock set out to Akun Foundagainst a quiet wind a baidarka

here thatacross Avataninsky strait…. had comeWas in a no small danger the day

before towhen water began pouring into pick me up.the baidarka; arrived at 11 back

41

AKUN DIARY

At 8 o’clock I set out in an 8-oar baidarka, in bright, quiet weather and in 4.5 hours arrived safely at the island of Tigalda, a village lying in the north-east of the island,

at a distance of not less than 65 versts from the main village of Akun. Crossed three windy straits (especially the last one), without the slightest trouble

because the sea was perfectly quiet and still.

16 Mon. 8, 9 Gathering all the local people and 1.5 degreesand 10 those from theisland of Umnaka XXX of frost in the

(about 15 versts from here) into the morning.tent, I instructed them at length through the same translator, Pan’kov – the toion.

11. 12. Chrismated 37 people of both genders and different ages.

5 - 10 Served vespers and matins in the stockade,X

hearing confessions of 43 people… and instructingthe minors in lieu of confession.

17 Tues. 9, 10 After reading the rule I served Liturgy 2 degreesin the tent and gave of frostCommunion to those who confessed and the minors – 63 people.

5. Served 9 marriages and visited people’s rather clean homes.

At this time, the local people have all been chrismated, confessed, received the Holy Mysteries


40

XXX They have moved here this spring because life there was difficult.

X Strong north wind did not allow us to put up tents.XX One because he was unwilling to take a blind wife with her children, and the other because his wifewas ill. [Trans. note: The first was possibly living with the woman, but unwilling to wed.]

who is considered to be a sorcerer here: but I found quite the contrary. (And to prove this I enclose my talk with him).

24. Tues. morn. At 5 o’clock I set out in a 16-oar canoe which had been sent

from the harbor to pick me up, stopping on the way at the island of Akutan, in Golovskoye, a village in the north. There are only 5 people living here.

Translated by Inna Belov and M. Nectaria McLees from the diary of Fr.John Venaiminov, in Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, “Holy HierarchInnocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his Epistolatory Heritage” by JobZamborsky, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy (1980). (From thecollection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library, AndreevskyMonastery, Moscow.)

43

AKUN DIARY

at the main village of Akun, Artelenovskoye.

20 Fri. Due to a strong wind it was impossible to put up a tent.

21 Sat. 6, 7 Served the vigil, listened to confessions 8, 9 of 29 local people

22 Sun. 7, 8, 9 After reading the rule I served Liturgy in the tent and gave Communion to those who had confessed and the minors. Afterwards served a moleben to St. Alexandra instead of yesterday because the wind didn’t allow tents to be put up.

11, 12 Served 12 marriages

Now all the local people have been anointed, have confessed, received the Holy Mysteries and been married (except one old woman who wasn’t here).

23 Fri. Wanted to visit and instruct the above-mentioned old woman in a village about 10 versts from here, when a sudden illness in translator Pan’kov’s foot prevented this. The Aleuts willingly

volunteered to bring her here.

5 They brought her, and after a short instructionX

I heard her confession and served her Communion.

In the evening I had a talk with one of the local old men called Ivan Smirennikov


42

X I could hardly give her the necessary knowledge because of her very old age.

When C.S. Lewis was president of the Socratic Club at Oxford Universityin the 1940s and 1950s, he liked to feature weekly discussions on

“repellent doctrines.” By this, he meant Christian teachings that were hardfor modern people to swallow—on topics like hierarchy, miracles, or pain.The Socratic Club was an open forum for discussing intellectual difficultiesrelated to the faith. Under Lewis, it became one of the best-attended societiesin Oxford. It welcomed agnostics and nonbelievers, which was apt consideringthat Lewis (1898-1963) once passed through the grip of atheism before find-ing the robust and articulate Christian faith that would make him one of the best-selling religious authors of the twentieth century. Lewis came to realize that many of the doctrines that once repelled him in fact conveyed life-giving truths. These truths, he thought, were the ones modern peoplemost needed to know but were least likely to recognize. “If our religion issomething objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elementsin it which seem puzzling or repellent,” he wrote. “The new truth which you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand.”1

Any list of repellent doctrines, in Lewis’s day or in ours, would include thedoctrine of deification. Largely unknown to modern Christians, deification(or theosis) has been described by Professor Georgios Mantzaridis of the University of Thessalonki as the deepest longing of man and the ultimate goal of existence, while Fr. Kiprian Kern calls it the religious ideal of Eastern Orthodoxy.2 Deification teaches that salvation is not just anintellectual consent to an idea, not just an external or ethical imitation ofChrist. Neither is it a solitary path to individual bliss. Rather, deificationexpresses human salvation as an inward process of transformation experi-enced within the life of the Church and leading to mystical union with God.As St. Basil put it, man is nothing less than a creature that has received theorder to become god.

This might sound puzzling or even heretical to some, but it certainly didn’tto C.S. Lewis — at least not to the Lewis of the 1940s and beyond when hewas leading the Socratic Club and producing many of his greatest writingsin which deification shines forth as one of his central convictions. In Mere Christianity, for example, he argues that the whole purpose ofChristianity is to turn people into what he variously calls “new men,” “littleChrists,” “Sons of God” — and “gods and goddesses.” In his wartime sermon“The Weight of Glory,” Lewis says, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of

45

SHINE AS THE SUN:

C.S. LEWIS ANDTHE DOCTRINE

OF DEIFICATIONFriend of Road to Emmaus, Chris Jensen, first presented this luminous essay at the 2005C.S. Lewis Summer Institute at Oxford University. We are very pleased to offer it here,adapted for our readers as Part II of “The Orthodox Worldview and C.S. Lewis.”

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses.

from The Weight of Glory

it should be said that deification does not mean the actualization or realizationof a person’s latent divinity (a belief which is less Christian than monistic orpantheistic). Nor does it mean that human beings eventually will evolve intosomething essentially equal to God. Despite his poetic bent, Lewis didn’t follow the path of Emerson or others who blurred dogmatic boundaries byconfusing God and creation or by teaching that human beings are naturallydivine. Only God is essentially perfect, immortal, transcendent, and uncre-ated. Lewis was always clear on the difference between creature and Creator– an irreducible ontological difference. This distinction is captured in thememorable phrase of Rudolph Otto, a writer to whom Lewis often referred,that God is “wholly other.”

Deification, in Orthodox Christian terms, has been described by thepatristic scholar Archbishop Basil Krivocheine as:

the state of man’s total transformation, effected by the Holy Spirit, when man observes the commandments of God, acquires theevangelical virtues and shares in the sufferings of Christ. The HolySpirit then gives man a divine intelligence and incorruptibility. Mandoes not receive a new soul, but the Holy Spirit unites essentially with the whole man, body and soul. He makes of him a son of God, a god by adoption, though man does not cease being a man, a simple creature, even when he clearly sees the Father. He may be called man and god at the same time. While affirming the possibility of ...deification even in this life ... its fullness belongs only to the eschatological infinite ... Divinization will always remain an awesome mystery, surpassing all human understanding and unobserved by most people.4

Lewis’s vision of deification is consonant with this. Stressing the bound-aries between God and creation, Lewis once said that he saw human destinynot as the transformation into angels nor the absorption into Deity but rather as the fulfilling of humanity, in which human beings will become“like God ... [but] with the likeness proper to men.”5 Deified human beingsforever remain human while at the same time sharing in divine grace orenergy, like iron in the fire shares the properties of flame but doesn’t ceaseto be iron. Human beings won’t melt into an impersonal God like a salt statue tossed into the ocean, or become new and independent divine beings

47

SHINE AS THE SUN

possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most unin-teresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you sawit now, you would be tempted to worship.”

Lewis was a professor of medieval and renaissance literature by trade. A self-described ordinary layman of the Anglican Church, he made no claimsto be a systematic or academic theologian. But he was a reader of immenserange and appetite who encountered the concept of deification in St.Athanasius’s classic On the Incarnation as well as in Pseudo-Dionysius,Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and George Macdonald, to name a few.In his writings, Lewis expressed the idea of deification in scriptural terms(being “in Christ,” becoming “new creatures,” sharing in the “glory of God”)as well as in figures (dances, fountains, marriages, winged horses, statues-come-to-life). All attest to Lewis’s abiding belief in the transforming power of

divine love. Significantly, rather than Lewisthe scholar or rationalist, it was Lewis thepoet, Lewis the Romantic, and Lewis theimaginative writer who was most sensitiveto this idea’s power. In this, he was kindredto the mystical and monastic tradition ofthe Christian East, where the doctrine ofdeification is taught to this day and wheretheology remains more poetic than propo-sitional, more experiential than systematic.

Given the obscurity of this doctrine inour times, perhaps it’s no surprise that scholars of C.S. Lewis have givenscant attention to the importance of deification for Lewis or to its placewithin the larger constellation of his ideas including myth, longing, temp-tation, or the sacramental life. This is unfortunate, because it is a key thatunlocks much of his life and thought. To study it not only promises to bringus nearer to the heart of Lewis, but also to explain why many in theOrthodox Church, including Bishop Kallistos Ware, consider him a trustedliterary companion and embrace him as an “anonymous Orthodox.”3

God In and Out

Some of the perplexity over the doctrine of deification comes from it beingconfused with variations in different religions. At the outset, then,


46

Chris Jensen on the .....

Deification as Glory

Others have rejected the doctrine of deification on grounds that it is nonbiblical, such as scholars who dismiss it as a vague platonizing form ofpantheism that betrayed the original understanding of salvation in favor ofGraeco-Roman paganism.9 While it’s true that the term theosis was adoptedby early Christians from the lexicon of Neoplatonism, it’s also evident that itbecame standard in Christian theology and spirituality precisely because itwas seen as expressing the genuine Biblical eschatological hope of personaland organic union with God. This hope is that humans, in the words of 2 Peter 1:4, could become partakers of the divine nature. The theme is basicto the Gospel of John with its motif of abiding or dwelling, a book where we find Jesus quoting Psalm 82 (“I said, You are gods...”). Further, the epistles of St. Paul teem with a mystical vision of life in Christ, of renewal inthe likeness of God, and of transformation into theimage of God. In fact, Lewis tells us that it was thevery language of Scripture that forced him to takeseriously the idea of deification.

He explains this in his 1941 sermon, “The Weightof Glory,” which was preached to one of the largestmodern crowds ever to assemble at the Church ofSt. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. In the address, he equates salvation with the Biblical term glory.This word, significantly, often is used in the patris-tic tradition to denote deification. For example, St. Maximus the Confessor defined deification as the work of divine grace bywhich human nature is so transformed that it “shines forth with a supernat-ural light and is transported above its own limits by a superabundance ofglory.”10 In Lewis’s sermon — its title alludes to 2 Cor. 4:17-18 — he says thatat first he failed to find much immediate appeal in the glory imagery of whiterobes, thrones, or splendor like the sun and stars, all of which he found inthe writings of the New Testament and other early Christian sources. In thissense, deification was initially repellent to Lewis. He was put off by theterm’s twin connotations of fame and luminosity. If glory meant fame, heobserved, this seemed to be a competitive passion or a desire to be betterknown than others. And if it meant luminosity, “Who wishes to become akind of living electric light bulb?”11 To him, the first seemed wicked and the

49

SHINE AS THE SUN

in a type of polytheistic evolution. Hence Lewis can’t be categorized withNeoplatonists, Hindus, Mormons, or any number of mystics who seemed tolose sight of the essential distinction between God and humankind.

If the doctrine of deification requires an understanding of God’s transcen-dence, it equally depends upon the notion of His immanence. This holds thatcreation, although distinct from God, is penetrated by divine energy and wisdom. As Lewis once put it, in speaking of the theology of the sixteenth-century Anglican writer Richard Hooker, “God is unspeakably transcendent;but also unspeakably immanent.” Centuries earlier, St. Athanasius made thepoint this way: God is in everything through His love, but outside of every-thing by His nature. We’re told by Lewis’s biographer that the most preciousmoments in life to Lewis were when he was aware of the spiritual quality ofmaterial things, of the “infusion of the supernatural into the workadayworld.”6 An analogy to this is found in Lewis’s land of Narnia, where treesdance, rivers teem with nymphs, birds carry messages, and stars are glitter-ing people with long hair like burning silver. Narnia’s enchantment suggestsa point about our world that Lewis made later in his book Letters toMalcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. “All is holy and ‘big with God’ ... and every bush(could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush.”7 Some have suggested thatbecause this sort of understanding of God’s immanence has been neglectedin much modern theology, deification has fallen into the background.

But not so in Lewis. In Mere Christianity, Lewis speaks of humans making direct contact with the uncreated spiritual life of God (which heterms Zoe, as opposed to the created and natural life, Bios). This divine andeternal life is how believers share in the transforming power of Christ.Lewis calls it a communicable energy that can be spread into the depths ofa person. Importantly, instead of seeing divine grace as something externallike paint that is applied to a person’s surface, Lewis says it’s like “a dye orstain that which soaks right through.” Its goal is not to produce betterhuman beings, but to generate a new kind of creature altogether.8 This lineof thought suggests that Lewis grasped the distinction made in theChristian East since the time of St. Basil between God’s essence,which remains beyond human reach or comprehension, and God’s energies(variously known as grace, providence, love, glory, and light) which allowone to make direct contact with God.


48

a sort of infinite satisfaction in such finite things: “They are not the thingitself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of atune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”16

Ideally, such experiences will keep us seeking something more, like “somevague picnicker’s hankering for a ‘better’ place.”17

The doctrine of deification is the capstone to Lewis’s theory of Joy insofaras it offers an explanation of how that old ache of longing will be filled:“There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”18 In TheProblem of Pain, Lewis wrote that our destiny in life is either to be like God— or to be miserable. There is no middle way. “If we will not learn to eat theonly food that the universe grows ... then we must starve eternally.”19

In describing this longing, he says,

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that isbounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put intowords — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receiveit into ourselves, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled airand earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves —that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy the beauty,grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poetstell us such lovely falsehoods ... We cannot mingle with the splendorswe see ... [But] some day, God willing, we shall get in.20

Deification, then, is bound up with Lewis’s abiding appreciation of mythand poetry. Although Lewis’s love for myth is most often remembered interms of how he saw pagan myths prefiguring the death and resurrection ofJesus Christ (e.g., Balder, Adonis, or Bacchus, the myths which later became“fact” in the Second Person of the Trinity), it’s equally true that Lewis saw inmythology a type of our resurrected life as well. Human participation inGod, Lewis says, is something that the poets and the mythologies know allabout.21 In “The Weight of Glory,” we are told that one of the reasons Lewisplaced such a high value on myth and poetry was because he saw in them anintimation of our divine destiny. In the lovely falsehoods told in countlessstories and poems, humans get married to gods, or west winds blow rightinto human souls. These may be false as history, but they may be quite nearthe truth as prophecy insofar as one day humans may pass beyond natureinto the source of beauty and power itself, eating at the tree of life and drink-ing from the fountain of joy. This poetic and mythical radiance resting on

51

SHINE AS THE SUN

second ridiculous. Misgivings aside, Lewis eventually came to understand theimagery and to believe that deification did indeed carry both connotations —luminosity in the sense of a glorious transformation of human persons bydivine grace into new creatures, and fame in the sense of a personalencounter with God in which approbation and acceptance were the blessedhallmarks.

One of Lewis’s favorite ways to describe this divine acceptance wasthrough the image of the dance, a figure that hints at heaven’s order andsanctity as well as its frolic and festivity. Lewis claimed that one of the mostimportant differences between Christianity and all other religions is that the Trinitarian God is not a static thing, not even a single person, but “a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life … Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”12 Such an analogy calls to mind early theolo-gians who described the dynamic exchange of love in God as perichoresis(meaning a dance or indwelling, from which we get our word choreography).

As John Meyendorff has explained, “Deificationor theosis of the Greek fathers is an acceptanceof human persons within a divine life, whichalready is itself a fellowship of love betweenthree co-eternal Persons, welcoming humanitywithin their mutuality.”13 Such divine welcome iswhat Lewis has in mind when he says that,“Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”14

The sermon is remarkable, too, for its presentation of Lewis’s cherished theory of Joyor Sehnsucht (also known as longing, desire,

or nostalgia). The importance of this theory for Lewis can hardly be overstated. “In a sense,” he wrote in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy,“the central story of my life is about nothing else.”15 The theory holds thathuman beings are conscious of a desire or longing that no natural happinesswill satisfy. Joy, then, is the fleeting, sweetly painful experience of longingfor divine or numinous beauty — an elusive experience which often departsas quickly as it arrives. From his youth, Lewis had many experiences likethis and later read about them in writers like Richard Hooker. According toLewis, these longings are often evoked by nostalgic memories, encounterswith nature, or certain books or music. All of these are merely vehicles ofsomething transcendent; the danger is that human beings will errantly seek


50

Gospels, follow the commandments.”25 Similarly, in Mere Christianity,Lewis asserts that the three main channels are baptism, belief, and Holy Communion. Lewis says he never would have guessed these could convey spiritual life but for that matter, he wouldn’t have expected ordinarybiological life to be reproduced in the way that it is, either. He calls thespreading of divine life the process of “good infection,” a phrase which nicely captures the internal aspect of deification:

Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy,power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into,the thing that has them ... They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.26

Lewis thought that because men and womenare physical beings, God uses material things(water, bread, wine) to infuse them with divinegrace. In Christianity — which he says is “almostthe only one of the great religions which thor-oughly approves of the body” — the body as wellas the soul participate in the spiritual life, andone day the rapture of the saved soul will flowover into the glorified body.27 That God’s gloryis in some sense communicable to physicalbeings is suggested by the face of Moses, whose skin shone after he met withGod (Exodus 34:29), or by St. Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons, which healedthe sick and drove away demons (Acts 19:12). For Lewis, deification won’tdestroy the human body but fulfill and resurrect it. In Christianity, the bodyis not to be dismissed as an inferior prison-house of the soul as it might be inPlato or in streams of gnostic thought — including contemporary varieties ofgnosticism such as one evangelical strand that some observers see as dualis-tic at the core.28 In Lewis’s view, it is not God but the devil who despises matter and resents the mingling of spiritual things with “dirt and slime.”29

Speaking of human embodiment, Lewis says that although we may not beable to conceive exactly what we will be in the next life, “we may be sure thatwe shall be more, not less, than we were on earth.”30

53

SHINE AS THE SUN

Christian theology is something that Lewis cherished. Just as Lewis said that the old myth of the dying God who finally “came down from theheaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history,”22 so too, we mightsay, the corresponding myths of godlike men and women will one dayascend from the earth of legend into the reality of paradise.

Big Medicine

The concept of deification has challenged those who are accustomed tothinking of salvation as a once-for-all-time decision or as divine pardon inwhich God overturns our guilty verdict and lets us off the hook. As VladimirLossky has observed, a treatise of St. Anselm of Canterbury called Cur DeusHomo (completed in Italy in 1098 AD) deeply colored popular Westernnotions of salvation by presenting the idea of redemption in isolation fromthe rest of Christ’s life and work.23 By so doing, the main focus of salvationbecame the cross and passion, where Christ is seen to have effected achange in the Father’s attitude toward fallen men. Oddly, this forensicmodel suggests that an angry God needs to be cured rather than sinful ormortal human beings. Salvation as deification, in contrast, accents humanhealing and transformation, looking to the Cross but additionally to theResurrection, the Ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The impli-cations here are significant. To see salvation as Lewis did — as infusion bydivine energy leading to deification, and not merely a juridical transactionor pardon — means that the Christian life is more than merely accepting anidea, more than merely an external moral imitation of Christ. A genuine lifein Christ becomes a possibility. In Mere Christianity, Lewis explained thatwhen Christians speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them,” this ought to mean more than just thinking about Christ or copying Him. It should mean that Christ is actually operating through them.24

But exactly how does Christ operate? Or how does one acquire the Christ-life within? Lewis answers that this process, which leads to deification, isn’t a matter of exceptional experience reserved for some special few mystics, but rather the calling of all the baptized within the context of thesacramental life of the Church. Bishop Kallistos Ware once wrote, “If some-one asks ‘How can I become god?’ the answer is very simple: go to church,receive the sacraments regularly, pray to God ‘in spirit and truth,’ read the


52

bird. The fire-berries — little coals which are too bright to look at — will takeaway a little of the Old Man’s age until he becomes young as a newborn childand rises again at the earth’s eastern rim to join the great dance. In this wefind echoes not only of Elijah’s miraculous sustenance by the ravens whocarried him bread and meat during his sojourn in the desert (I Kings 17), but also of the vision of Isaiah who saw the Lord of Hosts on a throne in the temple attended by Seraphim singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6), one of whom took a live coal from the altar with tongs and brought it to theprophet’s lips and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.”

In our day, Lewis’s stress on the importance of Holy Communion mightseem odd, at least in those Christian communities that celebrate theEucharist infrequently or express its importance in terms of how it affectsGod rather than how it transforms us.34 But Lewis was adamant that eternallife must be spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but also bybodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. He insisted that Christianity“is not merely the spreading of an idea ... [because] God never meant manto be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rathercrude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”35

Flip Side of Incarnation

One of the best-known lines from patristic literature on the topic of deifi-cation comes from chapter 54 of St. Athanasius’s classic On the Incarnation:“God assumed humanity that we might become God.” When Lewis wrote anintroduction to a new translation of this work made by his friend and longtime pen pal, the Anglican nun Sister Penelope, he praised St. Athanasius for “a very great book ... a picture of the Tree of Life ... sappyand golden ... [and] full of buoyancy and confidence.”36 In the book, deifica-tion is understood more broadly in the context of the renewal of all creationundertaken by the Word of God. Athanasius observes that the divine task ofmaking all things new belongs to the same divine person through whom allthings were made to begin with; hence there is a consistency between creation and salvation. Jesus Christ, as the Father’s divine agent, saw our

55

SHINE AS THE SUN

Lewis took seriously the food of immortality of the Eucharist (John 6:48-57). For him, Holy Communion was not only a symbol or metaphor of unionwith God but a genuine and concrete way to receive the good infection ofdivine grace and to participate in the life of God. Like many of Lewis’s mostcherished Christian beliefs, however, this one was an acquired taste. Hisbiographer George Sayer says that when Lewis first returned to the churchin the early 1930s following his conversion, Lewis took a rather limited viewof Holy Communion. At this point, he received it only on great holidays. Butby the early 1940s — about the same time he began meeting his spiritualdirector regularly for confession and counsel — Lewis began to perceive thesacrament differently and began to receive it weekly. Finally he developed agreat reverence for the mystery of the Eucharist.31 In Letters to Malcolm,which was published the year of his death, Lewis spoke of Holy Communionas an experience where the veil between the worlds gets thin. “Here a handfrom the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body ... Here isbig medicine and strong magic ... [and] I should define magic in this sense

as ‘objective efficacy which cannot be fur-ther analyzed.’”32 For Lewis, this qualifiedsense of ‘magic’ carried the positive conno-tation of mystery.

Lewis was reluctant to try to explain the mystery. He regretted that precise dog-matic definitions had been made on thissubject in the West (in part because hethought they led to divisions among

Christians). He once said that he was glad that Jesus Christ said, “Take,eat,” rather than “Take, understand.” Although Lewis didn’t embrace themedieval formula of transubstantiation he did accept the doctrine of realpresence as articulated by Anglicans like Lancelot Andrewes. In his reticence to take this mystery out of its holy context and to regard it as anobject among objects, he echoed the concern of Wordsworth, who oncewarned that we murder by dissecting. Or, as Lewis once wrote, “It is liketaking a red coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal.”33

In light of that analogy, it’s instructive to remember the passage from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the children meet a venerable OldMan living near the world’s end, a retired star named Ramandu. Everymorning, Ramandu is brought a fire-berry from the valleys in the sun by a


54

In patristic terms, what Lewis describes as the “taking of the manhoodinto God” is the deification of human nature achieved in Christ. In otherwords, as a result of the Incarnation, the first fruits of our substance were deified and a new root was created for accessing divine life and incor-ruptibility.41 However, the deification of all human nature in Christ — theso-called physical view of deification in Orthodoxy — doesn’t automaticallyguarantee the deification of every human person. At birth, human beingsare still linked to the old root of Adam, with its death and decay and dark-ened soul. The task of every person, then, is to grow the new root of Christby free, personal participation in God’s divine grace, and to put the old rootto death through faith, repentance, and following Christ’s commandments.Vladimir Lossky helpfully points out that the primary role of Jesus Christwas the redemption of human nature, while the Holy Spirit’s primary role isthe deification of human persons in Christ.42

One way to express this, using the notion ofimage and likeness, is that Jesus Christachieved the objective dimension of our salva-tion (our redemption) by bestowing upon ourhuman nature His own glory and immortality;thus when we participate in Christ’s death andresurrection in the sacrament of Baptism, thisimage of God in our nature is restored.However, as St. Diodochos points out in the Philokalia, there remains a further subjec-tive dimension to salvation, in which as persons we become transformedinto the likeness of God: “His likeness is granted only to those who throughgreat love have brought their own freedom in subjection to God.”43 Lewishimself captures both the objective and subjective dimensions of salvationwhen he writes, “The business of becoming a son of God, of being turnedfrom a created thing to a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporarybiological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us. Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation.”44

57

SHINE AS THE SUN

sorry state after the Fall and stooped low to assume flesh in order to banishdeath and to begin the process of reversing the ills of corruption, mortality,pain, and sin – in short, to re-create the world.

According to Athanasius, Adam and Eve were by grace “as God” (Psalm82:6) in Paradise in that they shared in divine life and were incorrupt andimmortal. Church Fathers commonly express this by reference to Genesis1:26, speaking of man and woman created in the image of God and with thepossibility of attaining to the likeness of God. Their state of incorruptionwas lost after the Fall and exile from Eden. Deification, then, is the summitof a gradual process by which human beings are reintegrated into the life ofGod, beginning with the restoration of God’s image through baptism andcontinuing with purification of the heart and illumination by divine grace.This process reorders the powers of the human soul and restores the stateof paradise inwardly while leading finally to the new paradise beyond thisworld. Orthodox describe this process as the Threefold Way, indicating thatthe soul must progress through three stages in order to reach the fullness of participation in God: first, purification or catharsis, in which the heartand mind are purified of egotistical passions and addictions; second, illu-mination or photisis, the enlightenment of the soul, a state that Adam andEve enjoyed in Eden; third, theosis or deification, which is the ineffableunion of the soul with God. Even at this lofty summit, we’re told that thestate of perfection is relative and not absolute; it is dynamic not static, forever ascending ‘from glory to glory’ (II Cor. 3:18). In the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, “True perfection never stands still but ever growstoward the better.”37 This notion of epektasis, of eternal life as unendinginfinite progress, is found in Church Fathers like St. Irenaeus and St. Maximos the Confessor and is echoed memorably by Lewis himself inthe final passage of the The Last Battle.

It is significant that Athanasius’s famous quote comes in a book about theIncarnation, since deification has been described as the “flip side” ofIncarnation.38 It might be said that Lewis’s belief in deification can be seenas an index of just how seriously he took the doctrine of the Incarnation.Lewis seemed to understand the Orthodox view that the Incarnation notonly revealed the incarnate God but also the transcendent man.39 Lewisonce wrote, “The Incarnation worked ‘not by the conversion of the Godheadinto flesh, but by the taking of the manhood into God.’ ... Humanity, stillremaining itself, is not merely counted as, but veritably drawn into, Deity.”40


56

If We Let Him

This appropriation of salvation, this bringing of our human freedom intosubjection to God, naturally requires our cooperation. Therefore, deifica-tion hinges upon human free will. For Lewis, human freedom was a bedrockbelief, fundamental to the idea of what it means to be created in the imageof God and essential to the possibility of genuine love. This finds expressionin The Magician’s Nephew at the creation of Narnia, where Aslan says in astrong and happy voice, “Creatures, I give you yourselves.”45 Lewis thoughtthat all humans beings had been given this same gift. Writes Lewis,

You must realize from the outset that the goal towards which [God] is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in thewhole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking youto that goal ... If we let Him — for we can prevent Him, if we choose —He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess,

a dazzling, radiant immortal creature, pulsatingall through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.46

Lewis’s doctrine of synergy was akin to themodel of St. Paul, who said we are to be fellow-workers (synergoi) with God (I Cor. 3:9). Thisinteraction of divine grace and human will wasdescribed memorably by a monk of the EasternChurch as “the cooperation of two unequal, butequally necessary forces.”47 For his part, Lewisonce described this paradox as follows: “I don’t

mean that I can therefore, as they say, ‘sit back.’ What God does for us,He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) tobe the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will.”48

Nowhere is the struggle to submit one’s will to God more evident than inthe arena of prayer, the spiritual discipline most basic and essential in theascent toward God. Lewis often stressed that prayer takes work and that it’sa duty, sometimes even an irksome and frustrating one, because human lifeis not yet perfect and our prayers are often impeded by distractions fromwithin and without. We must pray, even when we don’t want to — only inheaven will perfect prayer be possible and will there be no need for “ought.”


58

C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Church

C.S. Lewis’s belief in the doctrine of deification — as well as his apophatic sense of God’shiddenness, his teachings on Christ and the Trinity, and his understanding of creation andpersonhood — make a strong case for his “anonymous Orthodoxy.” So observes KallistosWare in the essay “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity” in The Pilgrim’sGuide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. But what was Lewis’s direct experience of theOrthodox Church?

First of all, Lewis knew of the Russian Orthodox tradition via his friendship with professorNicholas Zernov in Oxford. That Lewis attended at least one Orthodox service in England isconfirmed by a letter of 13 March 1956 found in Letters of C.S. Lewis, in which Lewis wrote,“My model here is the behaviour of the congregation at a ‘Russian Orthodox’ service, wheresome sit, some lie on their faces, some stand, some kneel, some walk about, and no onetakes the slightest idea of what anyone else is doing. That is good sense, good manners, andgood Christianity.”

Andrew Walker, in his essay “Under the Russian Cross” in A Christian for All Christians:Essays in Honour of C.S. Lewis, observes that Lewis’s friendship with Zernov and his wife,Militza, lasted from the 1940s until Lewis’s death in 1963. Writes Walker, “Militza Zernov toldme, ‘We have certainly talked with C.S. Lewis (we are calling him Jack) about the OrthodoxChurch. He was deeply interested in it.’ ” Nicholas Zernov was able to involve Lewis in anumber of activities, including presenting at least two papers to the society of St. Alban andSt. Sergius. One paper by Lewis, intriguingly entitled, “A Toy, an Icon, and a Work of Art,” hasapparently been lost. Another paper presented by Lewis to this society in 1945 has been pub-lished in The Weight of Glory under the title “Membership.”

A few years before his death, Lewis was able to visit Greece for the first time. His biog-rapher, George Sayer, writes that Lewis was moved by his visit to a Greek Orthodox cathe-dral in Rhodes during Pascha in 1960, where, with his ailing wife, Joy, he attended part ofthe Paschal service as well as an Orthodox wedding. In Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, Sayerwrites, “Whenever the subject came up between us, [Lewis] said that he preferred theOrthodox liturgy to either the Catholic or Protestant liturgies. He was also impressed by theGreek Orthodox priests, whose faces, he thought, looked more spiritual than those of mostCatholic or Protestant clergy.”

Perhaps, then, it was fitting that his friends the Zernovs brought an Orthodox cross madeof white flowers to Lewis’s funeral in November 1963, under which Lewis was buried at thecemetery of his Anglican parish at Headington.

59

world, because he is its guardian and master; he is saved, not apart fromothers, but with the rest of the Christian family, as one of its members.”55

Horror to Ourselves

Our participation in the divine energies not only helps to restore the knowledge of God that was lost in the Fall, but also increases our self-knowledge, hence leading to ever-increasing humility and repentance.So thought Lewis, who held that the closer one drew to the light of God, themore perfect one became and the more clearly one’s sins and imperfectionswere illumined. For example, we might point to theprotagonist Orual, the Queen of Glome, in Lewis’smasterful Till We Have Faces. Near her life’s end, shelooks back over the passing of years and comments, “It was like being with child, but reverse; the thing Icarried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.”56 Thisthing was her ego.

Lewis insisted that we are “creatures whose charac-ter must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is,when we really see it, a horror to ourselves ... I noticethat the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware ofthat fact.”57 In these terms, no one can dismiss deifica-tion as wishful thinking, escapism, or self-adoration;in fact, Lewis believed that even glorified human beings remained consciousof their sin, and that perfected humility called for continual repentance. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis suggests

It may be that salvation consists not in the canceling of these eternalmoments [of sin] but in the perfected humility that bears the shameforever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God’s compas-sion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe.Perhaps in that eternal moment St. Peter — he will forgive me if I’mwrong — forever denies his Master ...Perhaps the lost are those whodare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.58

Given this, it should be no surprise that Lewis came to see the practice ofconfessing sin as central to the Christian life — although it took him nearly

61

SHINE AS THE SUN

Lewis regularly prayed from the Book of Psalms (likely praying through all150 Psalms each month) and from the Book of Common Prayer because hethought written or “ready-made prayers” handed down by the Church kepthim in touch with sound doctrine and kept him from sliding so easily intothe phantom called “my religion.”49 Lewis would often spend an hour ormore doing his evening prayers, integrating his prayer with the reading of Scripture. Lewis stressed the obligation to pray for others including our enemies (he prayed for Hitler and Stalin). He knew that human beings werenot mere spirits and that it mattered what body position they took inprayer, and what they ate or drank beforehand: “They are animals and ...whatever their bodies do affects their souls.”50 The connection between thephysical and the spiritual was driven home to Lewis when he added the dis-cipline of fasting to his habit of prayer, finding relief from obsessive sins.51

The hard work of prayer made a difference in his life that others couldnotice. George Sayer, a friend and former pupil who knew him for twenty-nine years, said, “It was hard to be much in Lewis’s company without being aware of his goodness, even holiness. It was nourished by prayer — he meditated daily on verses from the New Testament — by his openness to mystical experience, and his habit of communing with nature.”52

Along with his private prayer, Lewis also attended daily Matins before hiswork day started. He understood the necessity for corporate expressions offaith, and explains his view in the essay “Membership,” which Lewis read in1945 to the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, a group that was co-founded by Lewis’s friend Nicholas Zernov, an Orthodox Christian whosought to bring eastern and western Christians together.53 In the essay,Lewis insists that the Christian is called not to collectivism nor to individu-alism but to membership in the mystical body. Deification, therefore, can’t be properly construed as a solitary trip to individual bliss, but rather a corporate undertaking in Christ in which “everything that is joined to theimmortal head will share His immortality.”54 Zernov himself, formerly theSpalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford University (a postlater held by Bishop Kallistos Ware), develops the same theme in his 1942book The Church of the Eastern Christians. Zernov explains that the Eastdoes not think about salvation in terms of the individual soul returning toits maker so much as the process of transfiguration of the whole cosmos:“The East is clear that salvation for an individual means to become part ofthe redeemed community ... Man is saved not from the world but with the


60

to genuine spirituality. On the contrary, Lewis shows us that salvation is notjust an idea but something to be done, and he points to the efficacy of spiri-tual direction, corporate prayer, confession, and Holy Communion. Suchpractices are the hallmarks of the mystical theology at the heart of ancientChristianity which — in its Orthodox fullness — offers the means to deifica-tion and perfect communion with God. As one hieromonk has written, “It isonly because the churches do not know about or make use of these meansthat our young people are searching elsewhere.”62

The doctrine of deification has further piquancy in an era when humanhopes for bliss and longevity are increasingly placed on the shoulders ofcyberspace, biotechnology, or psychotropic drugs. Lewis reminds us that ourpursuit of happiness is in accord with the fundamental pattern of reality; ourpursuit of happiness is indeed blessed by God, provided that it is transposedinto the key of another world. Thus Lewis both validates and redirects ourperennial yen for perfection. Only beyond the shadowlands of this life, Lewissays, will our deepest longings be fulfilled. Only in the eternal dawn will wemeet Glory face-to-face on that day when we are to shine as the sun.63

Finally, Lewis’s doctrine of deification reminds us that we must not expectthe path to perfection to be painless. The cross, he says, comes before thecrown. Acquiring the life of Christ is a process that will be long and in partspainful, and we shouldn’t be surprised if we are in for a rough time as wejourney through the Lenten lands of earthly life. The reason? God will useevery means possible to lift us to a higher level. “It seems to us all unnecessary,” he writes, “but that is because we have not yet had theslightest notion of the tremendous thing that He means to make of us.”64

Those who aspire to such heights are offered this advice in Lewis’s last sermon, which he preached in January 1956 at Magdalene College inCambridge, “Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodieperfecte incipere — grant me to make an unflawed beginning to day, for Ihave done nothing yet.”65

Chris Jensen teaches English at a community college in Portland,Oregon, where he lives with his wife and four children and serves as areader at the Church of the Annunciation (OCA). He first encounteredC.S. Lewis more than 20 years ago when a college professor assigned

63

SHINE AS THE SUN

a decade after his conversion to find out a person to whom he could confess.This man was Fr. Walter Adams, an Anglican monk who was 71 years oldwhen Lewis first went to him in Oct. 1940 when Lewis was 42. Fr. Walterbelonged to the Church of England’s Society of St. John the Evangelist, popularly known as the Cowley Fathers. Lewis called him his “confessorand ... Father in Christ” and Lewis met with him weekly for twelve yearsuntil Fr. Walter’s death in 1952.59 Shortly before his first appointment withthis priest, Lewis wrote to Sr. Penelope with concerns that many Orthodoxconverts could appreciate,

I am going to my first confession next week, wh[ich] will seem odd to you, but I wasn’t brought up with that sort of thing. It’s an oddexperience. The decision to do so was one of the hardest I have evermade: but now I am committed (by dint of posting the letter before I had time to change my mind) I began to be afraid of the oppositeextreme — afraid that I am merely indulging in an orgy of Egoism.

Shortly afterward, a relieved Lewis wrote another letter to Sr. Penelopeexplaining that he successfully had passed through the wall of fire and found himself alive and well. The “orgy of Egoism turns out, like all enemypropaganda, to have just a grain of truth in it, but I have no doubt that theproper method of dealing with that is to continue the practice, as I intend to do.”60 Years later, when a female correspondent asked Lewis why shecouldn’t simply confess her sins to a friend or a neighbor, Lewis assured herthat she could. But, he continued, the advantage with the priest was that heheld a special office appointed by God for this and that everything spokenwould be kept in sacred silence. While Lewis valued the counsel and advicehe received from his spiritual father, he thought the most crucial thing was that the confessor is the representative of the Lord and declares His forgiveness while holding one accountable for repentance.61

Happiness Transposed

Such, then, is Lewis’s vision of deification. If it remains puzzling to some,it may be positively attractive to others in an age when the Christian life has often been understood in abstract and privatized terms, and when traditional religious practices have been dismissed by many as impediments


62

12 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 152. The fact that Lewis uses dance imagery so often at the ends of hisworks (e.g., The Problem of Pain, Perelandra) further accents its teleological significance.

13 John Meyendorff, “Theosis in the Eastern Christian Tradition,” Christian Spirituality III (Crossroad,1989), p. 475.

14 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 37.

15 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, (Harcourt, 1955), p. 17. The theory is also cen-tral to Lewis’s autobiographical account The Pilgrim’s Regress.


17 C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, p. 49.

18 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 153.

19 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (HarperCollins, 2001), p. 47.


21 Ibid.

22 C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Eerdmans, 1970),p. 66.

23 Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, (St. Vladimir’s, 1974), pp. 97ff.


25 Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, New Ed., (Penguin, 1997), p. 236.


27 Ibid., p. 92, and “The Weight of Glory” in The Weight of Glory, p. 38.

28 Harold Bloom, in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (Simon &Schuster, 1992), argues that the American religion is gnosticism and that, perhaps unwittingly, manyAmerican Christians are closer to the ancient gnostics than to early Christians: “The American Christ is morean American than he is Christ.” The term is broad, but generally gnosticism suggests a religious outlook thattends to see ignorance as the fundamental human problem rather than sin and hence stresses the acquisi-tion of special knowledge; it tends to downplay the role of community and holds that there is no higherauthority than the private individual; it tends to see external or objective expressions of religion—like con-ventional church affiliation, creeds, dogmas, etc.—as unnecessary or as a genuine impediment to true spiri-tuality; it tends to be dualistic in stressing the purity of spiritual things and the inherent badness of matter;it tends to stress fate over human choice and free will; and it often holds that human beings have a spark ofdivinity within themselves independent of the body and soul. Bloom argues that this “American Religion” isthe result of revising traditional religion into a faith that better fits the national temperament, aspirations,and anxieties. Significantly, C.S. Lewis can be seen as anti-gnostic on every count.

29 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, pp. 158, 17.

30 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory, p. 86.

31 Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, p. 83.

32 C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 103.

33 C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm, p.105.

34 For example, Kimon H. Sargeant, in Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in aNontraditional Way, (Rutgers, 2000), notes that in the burgeoning “seeker church” movement in the UnitedStates connected with the Willow Creek Association, fewer than one in ten assemblies offers communionevery week, while most celebrate communion monthly or quarterly. In this setting, communion (rather thanbeing seen as an objective contact with God) is often conceived as a symbolic gesture or one that promotes

65

“The Discarded Image” in a course on medieval literature at theUniversity of California, Davis. Today he counts Lewis as one of his mostimportant literary mentors. For several years he taught a college seminarcourse on C.S. Lewis and he traveled in 2005 to Oxford University topresent a paper on Lewis at the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute, from whichthis essay is adapted.

1 “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Touchstone, 1975), p. 31; and“Christian Apologetics” in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1997), p. 91.

2 Kern qtd. in Georgios Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: St. Gregory Palamas and the OrthodoxTradition, (St. Vladimir’s, 1984), p. 12. Although deification is basic to Orthodox theology, Mantzaridisnotes that the doctrine of deification sometimes has been neglected in modern Orthodox parish life. OneProtestant scholar has observed that deification is “practically unknown to the majority of Christians (andeven many theologians) in the West.” See Robert W. Rakestraw, “Becoming Like God: An EvangelicalDoctrine of Theosis,” in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 40/2 (June 1997), p. 257.

3 Kallistos Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity,” The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewisand the Art of Witness, (Eerdmans, 1998), p. 55ff.

4 Archbishop Basil Krivocheine, In the Light of Christ: St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), (St.Vladimir’s, 1986), p. 389.

5 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Touchstone, 1975), p. 84.

6 Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis (Crossway Books, 1988), p. 327. On the notion of immanence, Lewis wasinfluenced by George MacDonald, whose Phantastes struck a deep chord with Lewis as a teenager during aperiod of intellectual skepticism. Speaking of MacDonald, Lewis once observed, “The quality which hadenchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, the mag-ical, terrifying, and ecstatic reality in which we all live” (qtd. in David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe:Mysticism in C.S. Lewis, (InterVarsity, 2005), p. 39).

7 C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (Harcourt, 1963), p. 75.

8 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Touchstone, 1996), p. 170, 183.

9 The Orthodox scholar John Meyendorff, in “Theosis in the Eastern Christian Tradition,” in ChristianSpirituality III (Crossroad, 1989), p. 470-71, defends deification as a “Christocentric and eschatological con-cept expressed in Platonic language but basically independent of philosophical speculation ... It reflects theexperience of Christ’s divinity.” Some of the negative assessment of deification in the past century took itscue from the Protestant church historian Adolph Harnack who sought an idealized Semitic Christianitywithout Hellenic influence. Yet certain Protestant writers have come to the defense of deification in recentyears, including F.W. Norris, in “Deification: Consensual and Cogent,” in the Scottish Journal of Theology49/4 (1996), who dismisses Harnack as poorly read on this point and sees these charges as false. Norris, whoalso finds examples of deification in Anabaptist writers, says “deification should be viewed by Protestantsnot as an oddity of Orthodox theology but as an ecumenical consensus, a catholic teaching of the Church,best preserved and developed by the Orthodox.” A.N. Williams, in The Ground of Union: Deification inAquinas and Palamas, (Oxford, 1999), p. 174, argues that “The West has no grounds for rejecting deifica-tion, not only because it can be found in Aquinas but also because it figures extensively in the patristic cor-pus and derives ultimately from scripture.” However, some contemporary writers continue to question whatthey call the “slender Biblical support” for deification, such as Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern OrthodoxChristianity: A Western Perspective (Baker, 1994), p. 158.

10 Qtd. in Leech, Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality, p. 258.



64

67

feelings of personal well-being that come from knowing that one is making God happy. For example, BillHybels, a pastor at Willow Creek, said in one of his messages that, “If you make a covenant with the Lord[to take communion], I think you’re going to sense smiles from Heaven; I think God’s going to say ‘Thatmeans a lot to me; your covenant moves me. Thanks for caring enough about me to remember me once amonth’” (qtd. in Sargeant, p. 72). The emphasis is thus placed upon change in God rather than change inhuman persons, creating an interesting parallel to forensic notions of redemption in which God is affectedby the passion more than human nature itself.

35 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 65. Some contemporary Protestant writers who are attracted to the ideaof deification have not yet understood the sacramental life as essential in the way that Lewis did. For exam-ple, one who defends deification nonetheless argues that a “weakness” of traditional deification doctrine is“a heavy emphasis upon the sacraments as the primary means of theosis” (Rakestraw, p. 267).

36 C.S. Lewis, “Introduction,” St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (St. Vladimir’s, 1996), p. 9.

37 Qtd. in George S. Gabriel, Mary: The Untrodden Portal of God, (Zephyr, 2005), p. 30

38 Urban T. Holmes, A History of Christian Spirituality, qtd. in Leech, Experiencing God: Theology asSpirituality, p. 258.

39 “He alone is known in two essences: as incarnate God and transcendent man” (The Octoechos, OrthodoxSunday Matins, Tone IV, Ode IV).

40 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory, p. 87.

41 Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man, p. 30.

42 Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 109.

43 “On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination,” Philokalia, p. 253.

44 Mere Christianity, p. 157

45 C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, p. 140.

46 Mere Christianity, p. 174, 176. See also chapter 13 in The Great Divorce, where Lewis calls freedom a“deeper truth” than universalism and predestination.

47 Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 222.

48 “A Slip of the Tongue,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 142.

49 Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (Harcourt, 1963), p. 12. Also, Dorsett, in Seeking the Secret Place,explores Lewis’s prayer life particularly in chapters 2 and 3.

50 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p. 25.

51 See Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, p. 102, and Sayer, Jack, p. 417.

52 Sayer, Jack, p. 416.

53 Andrew Walker, “Under the Russian Cross: A Research Note on C.S. Lewis and the Eastern OrthodoxChurch,” A Christian for All Christians, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 65.

54 C.S. Lewis, “Membership,” in The Weight of Glory, p. 130.

55 Nicolas Zernov, The Church of the Eastern Christians, (Macmillan, 1942), p. 54

56 C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, (Harcourt, 1957), p. 226.

57 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 62.

58 Ibid., p. 55

59 Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, pp. 86-88.


66

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Hieromonk Damascene, “The Sunrise of the East: From Eastern Religions to Eastern Orthodoxy,” TheOrthodox Word (No. 190, 1996), p. 210.



65 C.S. Lewis, “A Slip of the Tongue,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 142.

SHINE AS THE SUN

NOTES ON THEJESUS PRAYER

Warm, succinct suggestions on making the prayer of the heart come alive from Moscow pastor, Fr. Artemy Vladimirov.

We very much pity those Orthodox Christians who think that the bestrest for their exhausted soul is to watch television news. This isn’t a

bad thing, perhaps, but it’s a dead thing. You may spend all of the earthlytime you have been allotted with such distractions, but you will never be atpeace. If you want to calm your mind and ease your heart, try calling insteadon the most holy name of Jesus Christ, without haste and with only oneintent: to attract His attention and repent of your sins.

To stand before the face of God, to cleanse your heart and sanctify thespace of your life by invoking His name, this is your aim. We don’t knowhow God cleanses our heart by His name, but we believe that He does so ina supernatural way. In saying the Jesus Prayer, it is not so importantwhether you are “a monk or a drunk,” but you are to be very steadfast,attentive, humble, mild, and concentrated.

Try taking a walk for ten minutes as you invoke His miracle-workingname, and you will see spiritual profit. Begin in a simple, humble manner,“Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.” You may even do thissomewhat mechanically, knowing that this tradition has been sanctified bygenerations of saints, but as you walk and pray, try not to think of anythingelse. Just walk in the presence of God.

In these ten minutes, you will find that your fevered mind is soothed, thatthe noisy bazaar of your thoughts has become light, clear, and direct, and that

your heart has begun to say other prayers in a manner that satisfies you. Youpray, you breathe, you speak to God; you are not just repeating empty words.

What does it mean to have your mind in your heart? It means that you areto control your feelings. You are not to admit invaders into your heart, butare to check your heart with your mind, to observe everything that takesplace there. To have your mind in your heart is exactly what our Lord pre-scribes to us in His commandment: When thou prayest, enter into thy clos-et, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret…”.What does it mean to shut the door? It means to banish every earthly imageor passion with the concentration of your mind and will. When we pray weshould not admit feelings of lust or open our hearts to the snake of irritation;we are to rid ourselves of everything that is unpleasant. To have your mindin your heart is to control the space of your heart. It is the kingdom of GodAlmighty and of nothing else.

If you make progress in this humble prayer, you will begin to understandthat this commandment is very complete. Your heart will be filled with aspiritual warmth that embraces the center of your feelings. You will come tounderstand what attentive prayer is, and that your heart has been createdfor ceaseless prayer. Ceaseless prayer is not a perpetual repetition of this orthat word or phrase. The Holy Fathers say that it is the feeling of your heart.Just as you view the objects of this world with open eyes, so your heart,warmed by prayer to God, will partake of the spiritual world. This will bedue, not to your piety, but to God’s grace. Unceasing prayer may have nowords, but you will walk and sleep in the presence of God.

68 69

NOTES ON THE JESUS PRAYER

WINTER 2005 ISSUE No. 20

Eternal Questions: On Heaven and Hell

The Pearl

Christ, The Medicine of Life:The Syriac Fathers On TheLord’s Descent Into Hell

St. Milos and The Pascha Egg

FALL 2004 ISSUE No. 19

The Astonishing MissionaryJourneys of The ApostleAndrew

St. Andrew and TheMiraculous Isle of Valaam

Old Valaam: St. Andrew’s Legacy, A ContemporaryPhotomontage

Heaven, A Cave: Christmas in Bethlehem

SUMMER 2004ISSUE No. 18

We Are Going to Live inParadise: Orthodoxy in the Congo

Letters From An Apostle: TheInner World of Fr. Cosmas of Zaire

The Last Priest of Caesarea

Ascension

SPRING 2004ISSUE No. 17

The Golden Thread of Faith:Mental Illness and the Soul

George, Nadezhda, Tatiana,Sergei, and Michael

Columba Goes East

Cadam in Ryazan

WINTER 2007ISSUE No. 28

The Orthodox Worldview and C. S. Lewis (Part I)

Celtomania In Eastern Siberia

Blessed Matrona of Moscow:Saint and Wonderworker

Answered Prayers at St. Matrona’s

FALL 2006ISSUE No. 27

Songs of Freedom: A Rastafari Road toOrthodoxy

Nativity Address by Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia

31st and Troost: From Dividing Line to Gathering Place

Christmas in the Camp

SUMMER 2006 ISSUE No. 26

Life on The Golden Horn:Memories of GreekConstantinople, 1948 to 1963

Hymns and Laments on the Fall of Constantinople

Interfaith Dialogue: An Orthodox Witness

The Apples of Transfiguration

SPRING 2005 ISSUE No. 21

From Jainism to Orthodoxy:An Indian Passage

Witness For An Apostle:Evidence of St. Thomas in India

The Indian Verses of St.Ephrem the Syrian

The Village Church ofYegorievka: Part I


A City of Saints: The Forgotten Reliquaries of Paris

Holy France: The Pilgrim’s Road

Perspective and Grace:Painting The Likeness ofChrist

“Can These Bones Live?”


From Jainism to Orthodoxy:An Indian Passage

Witness For An Apostle:Evidence of St. Thomas in India

The Indian Verses of St.Ephrem the Syrian

The Village Church ofYegorievka: Part I

See what milestones you may have missed along the road.

Now you can order any back issue you may have missed by mail or online.

For a complete description of articles visit our website.Back issues: $7 plus shipping

To Subscribe/Order by Mail: Please send check or money order in the enclosed ordering envelope, or in a separate envelope to: Road to Emmaus , P.O. Box 16021, Portland, Oregon , 97292-0021

International Subscriptions by Mail: Please send an International Money Order, payable in U.S. dollars (available from post offices world-wide).

To Subscribe/Order Online: www.roadtoemmaus.net

NOTE: We are unable to take credit card orders over the phone. If you wish to subscribe by credit card, please do so on our website.

Questions/Comments? Call us at: 1-866-783-6628 (M-F, 9:00AM - 8:00PM, PST)


Everything In Love: TheMaking Of A Missionary

The Pearl of Great Price:Resurrecting Orthodoxy in China

“I Was Born In An OrthodoxWorld…”– Early Memories ofa Chinese Christian

The Nativity Sermon of St. John Chrysostom


Souls In Motion: The SpiritualLife of Teenagers

Double Faith, Dostoyesvskyand Bulgakov

Children Behind Bars: A Voice for Greece’s Juvenile Offenders

Anton Chekov: “The Student”

The Looking Glass:Perpectives on The Teenage Years

WINTER 2003ISSUE No. 12

The Bones of Contention

Forgive Us, Merciful Lord

Living Theology inThessalonica

Father Chariton


To Be and Not To Seem: My Mother-in-law, GrandDuchess Olga Alexandrovna

1919: A Refugee Christmas

The Kaaba and Jacob’s Pillow

The Christmas Vigil


Embracing Spring: The Christopolous Family Of Ioannina

Icon Of Great Joy: The Tinos Mother Of God

Bishop Kallistos Ware OnPersonhood, The Philokalia,And The Jesus Prayer

Pilgrimage Morning

Moscow Pastors On Children,The Church, And Free Will


The Stone In The Blender:Orthodox Greece AndContemporary Europe, Part II

Saints Alive! (The Bits theHagiographers Left Out)

G.K. Chesterton In Russia

Is Chesterton Worth Reading?

Singled Out: A Survey ofOrthodox Christians


Brittany’s Celtic Past

Tro Breizh: A Pilgrimage tothe Seven Saints of Brittany

Corsican Root and Branch

Global Perceptions and LocalRelations: Pitfalls inChristian-Muslim Dialogue


Daughter of Eagles

Albanian Diary: Ten Days in Shqiperia

Strength in Numbers

Orthodox Roots, Bektashi Neighbors


Diveyevo: A Pilgrim’sChronicle

An Album of Old Sarov andDiveyevo

1991: The Return of St.Seraphim’s Relics to Diveyevo

St. Seraphim’s Canonizationand the Russian Royal Familyat Sarov


Beyond the Great Wall:Orthodoxy In China

The Lotus Cross

The Ikon in the Home

The Lightness of Being(Orthodox)

FALL 2001ISSUE No. 7

St. Nicholas Monastery andthe Island of the Winds

The Obedience of Love: An Interview with SisterGavrilia

Letters from a VillageMatushka

Orthodox World View:Questions from Readers


The Stone in the Blender:Orthodox Greece andContemporary Europe

The Marvelous History of the Holy Cross

Together out of Time: Mosaicsin Moscow

A Siberian Grandmother on Confession


Orthodoxy in Indonesia: AnInterview with ArchimandriteDaniel Bambang Dwi Byantoro

Orthodox Mission Profile:Archimandrite Daniel Byantoroand the Indonesian Mission

The Prophet and the Pasha:Saint Cosmas of Aitolia andAli Pasha, the Lion of Ioannina

The Age of Wood

Survey of Orthodox Christians


My Work with English-Speaking Converts (Part III)

From Moscow to Lindisfarne:A Pilgrimage to the West

Contemporary Voices forCeltic Christianity

Saints Alive! (The Bits theHagiographers Left Out)


Petersburg’s Street Kids Finda Home

Ephraim of Nea Makri: A Saint for Troubled Youth

My Work with English-speak-ing Converts (Part II)


Russian Pickwickians:Dickens from an OrthodoxVantage

My Work with English-Speaking Converts

We are Once Again a People

Christ Visits a Muzhik

SUMMER 2000 ISSUE No. 2

Orthodox MissionaryOutreach: Foma:A Magazine for Doubters

Excerpts from Foma:So, Why is ConfessionNecessary?

The House Blessing

What Have I Done?

The Christian Parthenon and St. Paul


Fire from Heaven: HolySaturday at the Lord’s Tomb

Teaching Our Children toPray: Reflections of a Young Mother

From America to Russia: The Myrrh-Streaming Icon of Tsar Nicholas II

SORRY,OUT OFPRINT.

SORRY,OUT OFPRINT.

A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture - Road to Emmaus

Documents

Transcript of A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture - Road to Emmaus