Fr. Alexander Schmemann och Kyrkan som mysterion
What is the Church? This question has been asked in many times and places. In Sweden, it seems asif there's a general identity crisis among the churches. It seems like many churches don't know whythey exist, or at least they have a very vague understanding of the full meaning of the Church.Some 50 years ago, we had a new encounter in Sweden. Immigrants from Orthodoxcountries came to live here, and they brought their church and tradition with them. We didn't knowmuch about that, since our history classes teach only the bare minimum of the history of easternEurope from the time of the great schism to the bolshevik revolution. This old church is theOrthodox Church, and its tradition and heritage goes way back, it is much older than that of thechurches in Sweden. In fact, they count the Apostles as the founders of their church. Perhaps theycan teach us something about the nature of the Church and why we should have it? The meeting ofthe two different traditions, the latin west and the greek east, did in fact give good fruit, not the leastthrough Russian intellectuals, philosophers and theologians who fled from Russia in the beginningof the 20th century. They had an influence on the theological schools in the west, particularly that ofthe roman catholic ressourcement-movement, represented by e.g. Henri de Lubac and JeanDaniélou among others.One of the best representatives of this Russian intelligentia was Fr. Alexander Schmemann,a Russian theologian and priest who lived both in Paris and New York. He was active in themeeting of east and west, and he worked hard on figuring out how one could apply eastern religionin a very different philosophical and cultural context ? the west. What he has to say about theChurch is very interesting, and I think it may give some directions for the churches today.This essay tries to answer the question of how the Orthodox, primarily Fr. AlexanderSchmemann, manages the meeting with the western culture. But it also tries to see how the Churchis a sacrament in the writings and teachings of Schmemann. This is done by looking at hisunderstanding of the symbol, the divine liturgy, and the sacraments.