John Chryssavgis. Essay Review: A Tribute to Philip Sherrard (1922-1995). Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.2 (1996) 345354.

Essay Review A Tribute to Philip Sherrard (1922-1995)

John Chryssavgis General biography and bibliography
Philip Sherrard--poet, translator, literary scholar, theologian, and interpreter of the Orthodox tradition--died in London on 30 May 1995, aged 72. A pioneer of Modern Greek studies in England, Sherrard was highly influential in making major Greek poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries known in the English-speaking world. A profound thinker and prolific writer, Sherrard was captivated by a lifelong mission to reinstate a sense of poetry in the aridity of life, and to restore a sense of sacred cosmology to the world. His own selected poems recently appeared in a volume entitled In the Sign of the Rainbow (1994). Shortly before Easter 1995, he had completed a new book that he entitled Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition and that contained an intuitive, almost predictive chapter on "Death and Dying." This book is currently under consideration for publication by Holy Cross Press, Brookline. Born in Oxford and educated there as well as in Cambridge, Sherrard served as Assistant Director of the British School at Athens and lectured on the history of the Orthodox Church at the University of London. He spent most of his life as a writer and translator, bringing to both pursuits a breadth of literary and theological knowledge. Inspired by the values of modern Greece, Sherrard wrote on and translated (with Edmund Keeley) Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, and Elytis, among others. See, for example, Six Poets of Modern Greece (1960). Yet he was also profoundly imbued with the prayer and silence of Orthodox Christianity, interpreting the cultural background of Greek poetry and life through the spiritual wealth of the Orthodox tradition, as in his early book The Marble Threshing Floor (1956). His love for Greece is well attested in his brief yet masterly introduction to the anthology The Pursuit of Greece (1964). In 1977 Greece became his adopted permanent place of residence, but Orthodoxy had been his "home" since the early [End Page 345] 1950s, when he became acquainted with the Orthodox Church, into which he was formally received in 1956. I met him only once, on the Holy Mountain, but understood through our

correspondence what Greece meant for him, why the Holy Mountain was revered by him, and how the entire world was seen by him as a burning bush of divine energy. "Every Thing that Lives Is Holy" was the title of the last lecture he delivered in London (1994); he spoke then of the beauty "in every natural form of life and being," the beauty that "is itself the overture to paradise." This lecture was given at the Temenos Academy, in the very room in which Darwin first expounded his theory of evolution. This must have amused Sherrard. Everything that Sherrard did was undertaken with passion. He wrote fervently about the sacred power of sexual love in Christianity and Eros (1976); he endeavored fearlessly to discern the philosophical, political, and social reasons for the division between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy in The Greek East and the Latin West (1959), and also in Church, Papacy, and Schism (1978); in an effort to address the ecological crisis, he forcefully castigated our exploitation of natural resources in The Rape of Man and Nature (1987), The Sacred in Life and Art (1990), and Human Image, World Image (1992). He condemned any attitude that detracts from or blurs the sacramental dimension of the world. The conviction displayed in his writings and even their occasionally categorical tone were supported by the consistency of his own committed life. His compassion, gentleness, generosity, humor, and humility were firmly rooted in the spiritual tradition of silence and prayer that he so loved and to which he devoted the greater part of his life. He wrote about Athos: The Mountain of Silence (1960), and from the mid-1970s until the very end of his life was the translator (in collaboration with, among others, Bishop Kallistos Ware) of the four volumes of the Philokalia, the anthology of Greek Patristic writings between the fourth and fifteenth centuries on prayer and the spiritual life. While Sherrard has been criticized--misunderstood for his seemingly negative attitude toward the West, for his sharp comments against the introduction of roads on Mt. Athos, as well as for his radical questioning of much contemporary theology (which earned him the unfair label of "pantheist")--what is often ignored is his consuming love for the natural world in light of the spiritual dimension of life. Humanity and the natural world are out of balance, according to Sherrard; a greater awareness is needed of our place in the scheme of things. He was convinced that Orthodoxy is not simply a matter of doctrine and liturgy, but a spiritual experience of life and the world as sacrament, leading to a peace above all knowledge. Sherrard practiced this alternative world-view. He lived in a sparsely [End Page 346] populated spot in Katounia, Evia, where most of his books were written and where he built a small chapel using traditional methods of construction. This essay review focuses on two significant areas of Sherrard's interest: theology and ecology. Sherrard was neither a professional theologian nor a professional environmentalist. His involvement in theological and ecological issues derived not so

much from professional study as from a deep love of God and the world. Vivid human being that he was, he could not fail to respect all of creation and to revere its Creator.

Spirituality and Orthodoxy

One of the principles that Sherrard strongly defended was the intimate relationship-almost identity--between theology and life. For Sherrard, a doctrinal attitude is inevitably reflected in practice. Spirituality is dogma lived out; the Church's ethos applies its thought to life. He would have strongly agreed with Vladimir Lossky that "spirituality and dogma, mysticism and theology, are inseparably linked in the life of the church" (1957:14). This conviction is nowhere more clearly expressed among Sherrard's writings than in The Greek East and the Latin West (1959), a study of the Christian tradition, examining the "rise" and "fall" of Christendom, the "formation" and "de-formation" of the single, unified Greco-Roman Christian world. However, the book is neither merely a manual of ecclesiastic history nor simply a history of Christian thought through the centuries. In fact, it is intimately linked with the author's profound interest outlined above, inasmuch as it represents his "first serious attempt to confront and to find some explanation for the spiritual dereliction . . . of the modern Western world. Since then of course the consequences of this dereliction have become far more apparent and in a certain sense far more devastating and totalitarian" (1959:v). This book, then, is a study of the world-views and theologies prevalent in the Greek East and the Latin West--the development of a common culture, the divergence over time, and the resulting differences in mentality. Chapter One presents a stimulating exposition of Christianity in relation to classical culture and philosophy. See especially the emphasis on polis and on the role of religio (1959:12, 14). Chapter Two examines church-state relations in a new light, proceeding to discuss the method of theologizing in the patristic tradition in order "to explain the tension and conflict between the spiritual and temporal spheres of authority during the Byzantine period" (1959:47). The "other side" to this story, the change in the relationship between "sacerdotium [End Page 347] and regnum," is considered in Chapter Four, where the author describes the results of the Latin West's loss of an emperor and the pope's assumption of a secular role. In the East, by contrast, when the emperor no longer provided temporal and social support, the patriarch's role assumed not secular but ecumenical dimensions. Chapter Three, which deals with the so-called schism between East and West, neither greatly emphasizes any "radical division in the nature of the Church" (1959:48) nor minimizes the theological and spiritual breach that occurred in Christendom. Relating how truth is expressed in doctrine, Sherrard defines in the Christian way the role of the philosophical intellect. The emphasis here is on the nature of theology and

particularly on the understanding of God as Trinity in the East and West: on the filioque as well as on the distinction between God's essence and energies. The emerging divorce between East and West--"the dissolving order"--is summed up in Chapter Five as an attachment either to Aristotle (particularly in the Latin West, with the rise of scholasticism) or to Plato (particularly in the Greek East, with the restoration of its classical heritage). The "platonic reaction in the Greek East" is crystallized in Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355-1452), who not only wrote "On the Differences between Aristotle and Plato" but also manifested the implications of these differences. Sherrard reminds us that a concern for the global environmental crisis goes at least as far back as Plethon:

The Christian conception of a personal God who creates the world ex nihilo by a free act of His will, and who, further, does what He likes when and how He likes, seemed to Plethon to imply an arbitrariness and, so to speak, irresponsibility in God . . . Plethon therefore opposed to the Christian tradition another tradition . . . (1959:135) Hence there is, in the full Christian perspective, no contradiction between the statement that God creates the world ex nihilo by a free act of His will, and that the creation of the world is a necessary consequence of His perfection. Both statements are valid. (1959:136) But what Plethon sought to put in the place of Christianity . . . contributed to what he was most concerned to prevent: the spiritual disintegration of the Western world. (1959:138)
The results of this "disintegration" are expounded in the final two chapters of the book. Chapter Six looks at the emerging secular--even materialist--mentality of the medieval West and of European civilization. Chapter Seven examines "the nonChristian sequel" in modern Greece, which "turned more towards ancient Hellenism than . . . Byzantium" (1959:177): [End Page 348]

Korais, a devoted reader of Gibbon, saw civilization in terms of a "classicism" which had been born in

the Hellenistic and Roman period, was submerged in the "dark" Christian Middle Ages, whether Latin or Byzantine, had been reborn in Italy with the Renaissance, and whose present bearers were the enlightened and liberal spirits of the eighteenth century. (1959:180)
In this regard, the "appendix" of the book is an illuminating study of church-state relations in modern Greece. The author is convinced that "Christianity is the spiritual tradition of the West" but also that "the modern West resembles . . . the pre-Christian Hellenistic and Roman world" (1959:196).

Spirituality and ecology

A second principle strongly advanced by Sherrard was the profound relationship between our way of thinking or theologizing and our attitude toward the world. He was convinced that the ways in which we behold our God in heaven and behave toward each other on earth reflect what we believe about our environment. As already observed, this principle was not a recent or fashionable interest for Sherrard, although voiced in the last decade of his life; rather, it derived from his urgent need to speak out time and again, ever more "loudly," and on various levels. The Rape of Man and Nature (1987), his first publication on strictly ecological matters, is an inquiry into the origins and consequences of modern science. Its sequel, The Sacred in Life and Art (1990), explores the beauty and sacredness of the world in Orthodox cosmology. The third book in this trilogy is Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology (1992), which deconstructs contemporary cosmological assumptions and reconstructs traditional cosmology. There are three areas upon which I would like to focus in reviewing Human Image, World Image. The first is the environmental crisis that stands at the center of our current theological, ideological, social, and political concerns. I might add that the first of these concerns, the theological one, is usually the last to appear on the scene, doing so only after much pressure from the others. Hence, it is particularly encouraging to see an Orthodox scholar coming to grips with such issues. Sherrard was not a theologian, at least not in the narrow sense. This, however, is hardly a disadvantage, because he was thereby in a better position to extend the boundaries of traditional Orthodox doctrine. The result is not heresy; it is a valid presentation of Orthodox thought from a new perspective. Few would doubt that today, for the first time in human history, we [End Page 349] face an ecological crisis that threatens to affect our planet's total biosphere. However, at the same time as this crisis escalates, there is also a growing ecological awareness.

People such as Sherrard call for a renewal of the earth, for a respect for creation, and for a reversal of our attitudes concerning the environment. It is of course not a new idea to suggest that the origin of the current ecological crisis is the "mechanistic," "atomistic" world-view that subordinates the natural environment to the demands of production and consumption. This world-view derives from the Enlightenment, as has been made abundantly clear by religious writers such as Sean McDonagh, Daisetz Tei Suzuki, and Charles Birch, ecologists such as Wendell Berry (see his The Unsettling of America [1977]), and process theologians such as Sallie McFague (see her The Body of God [1993]). These writers believe that it is crucial for science and technology to be inspired by a balanced religious vision. Jrgen Moltmann (1985:13) observes that "the center is the recognition of the presence of God in the world and of the presence of the world in God." Accordingly, Sherrard examines the cosmologies of the pre-Renaissance world (ch. 1) and of modern technology (chs. 2-4). His description of the fatal consequences of the world-view prevalent in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance periods is depressing indeed. The very words contained in Sherrard's chapter titles--"fetish," "iconoclasm," "apotheosis," "bogey," "predicament"--reveal his negative feelings. I am reminded of his anguish in The Rape of Man and Nature (1987), in which he describes the extent of the resulting dehumanization of humanity and the desacralization of the natural world. Sherrard argues here, as elsewhere, that our ecological problems derive in large part from the Aristotelian philosophy espoused by Western Christian thought, since according to this philosophy the divine substance cannot interrelate with or interpenetrate the material universe. This ideology paved the way for our modern scientific predicament. Sherrard's words appear harsh, but surely we need to speak harshly about the causes of the environmental crisis that threatens to obliterate many of the world's organisms, including ourselves. I am not so sure that the blame should be placed exclusively on Western Christianity; no single cultural force or historical era is solely responsible for the "greenhouse effect" or the depletion of the ozone layer. Accordingly, it is gratifying to note how Sherrard advances in this work from lamentation over the horrendous consequences of Western philosophy, theology, and science, to a crucial synthesis between physics and metaphysics. The ever-present warfare between science and religion has often proved damaging to both, but Sherrard's critique of two influential Western mystics and visionaries, Teilhard de Chardin (whom he sees as [End Page 350] distorting Christian doctrine) and Oskar Milosz (whom he sees as resurrecting Christian cosmology) lays the foundation for his own vision of a sacred cosmology grounded in traditional Christian theological principles and reconciling the invisible with the visible, the Creator with creation. A second important area considered by Sherrard in this book is the traditional

Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo. No one dares approach such dogmas in the Orthodox Church--"the hands of no uninitiate can touch them"; "all mortal flesh is silent." Yet Sherrard is bold enough to approach, to touch, and to question. The result, in my opinion, places him firmly in the tradition of the Church Fathers. Pagan creation myths assume the eternal existence of both matter and a divine being. They are described as fundamentally dualistic. Christianity, by contrast, has from the earliest times expounded a doctrine of creation out of nothing, thereby safeguarding the independence of God and insuring the dependence of the world on its Creator. The inherent danger, however, is to press the independence of God to the point of separation from the world, not simply of distinction from it. Dualism was rejected early in the Church's history, and the problems with "deism" (belief in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it) are all too evident for anyone to feel threatened. We prefer instead to speak of "theism" (belief in the personality and sovereignty of one righteous and eternal deity who has revealed himself supernaturally to humanity) and yet are afraid to move any further, lest we be criticized of "pantheism" (belief that the universe, conceived as a whole, is God). Others, in order to draw some line of demarcation between God and the world, speak of "panentheism" (belief that the universe is not identical with God [pantheism], nor separate from God [deism], but in God [theism], who in his divine nature transcends it); however, advocates of panentheism are not always entirely clear about what they mean. The interpretation of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo troubled Sherrard for decades. Challenging nave interpretations, he is afraid neither to pursue the implications of this traditional doctrine nor to address all the available alternatives. He cannot bear to limit the limitless God; here he treads on the traditional ground of apophatic theology. However, it is not possible for Orthodox theology to speak in a vacuum, ignoring tradition. First of all, there must be a "demythologization" of the elements in our theological thought that have contributed to this crisis. Nor can Orthodox theologians any longer provide mottoes or recipes in the guise of solutions; they must first unpack all loaded concepts (be they ex nihilo, "essence," or "energies"), carefully considering their impact. Indeed, the full potential of the Orthodox distinction [End Page 351] between divine essence and divine energies has not yet been explored in relation to creation as much as it ought to be. Of course if we are trying to unite the Christian vision with modern science-Sherrard's recurrent theme--then we will do well to remember that, seen by the physicist, the human body is 99.99% void and its tiny material portion is empty space--the whole being made out of nothing. Who said that we cannot formulate a kind of "quantum" creation theology in the place of (or as part of) our theology of creation ex nihilo? This means, of course, that we must be prepared to re-present traditional Christian doctrines, not necessarily to revise or reject them. The third area of Human Image, World Image upon which I would like to focus is

Mariology. What a joy to see Sherrard treating the Theotokos in a manner that does justice to Orthodox iconographic, liturgical, and monastic spirituality! Gone is the aloofness attributed to the Virgin Mother by Roman Catholic theology owing to its emphasis on virginity alone. Orthodox doctrine stresses the Theotokos's double aspect as virgin and mother--as virgin she heals the brokenness of the world, as mother she fulfills the barrenness of creation. No wonder that she is so esteemed by the celibate and married alike. Sherrard creatively advances the Virgin Mary's role as the parallel and even the premise of the cosmic event of Christ. He is not the first to do so. The Old Testament abounds in symbolism of eternal wisdom (Sophia). Orthodoxy's liturgical and mystical writers have developed the tradition of the eternal motherhood of Mary, while its iconography endorses this mystery in images. In Sherrard's writings the environmental crisis is the ground not only for a sound reflection on the problem at hand but also for consideration of the real underlying issues of life and theology. Sherrard's fundamental argument is that this crisis is rooted in our one-sided view of ourselves and our world; in fact, he claims that it is the immediate result of our distorted "human image" and "world image." For those who take seriously themselves, the world, and the salvation of both in Christ, Human Image, World Image is compulsory--indeed, compelling--reading. But the reader must be forewarned: this is the kind of book that requires a radical response: one must either "warm" to it or be repelled. Those who are "lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot" (Rev. 3:16) will find the book indigestible. This in itself may be a sign of the truths it speaks.

A final farewell
Not only is "every thing that lives holy" but, as Sherrard wrote in one of his poems: [End Page 352]

I know I entirely miss the point of this death-work, unless I see in it, too, the hand of Him who is all-loving, all-merciful; unless I discern--invisible, inaudible-the angels of resurrection already staging in your otherwise derelict flesh: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Sherrard died at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. His wife and daughter were with him. He passed away gently and peacefully in total contrast to his fiery convictions and passionate love of life but in total accordance with his kind character and compassionate heart. For two days, his body lay in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral during the feast of the Ascension. His remains were returned to Katounia in Evia,

where a crowd of people--local priests, neighbors, villagers, and friends--were waiting by the sea with candles and lanterns. The funeral procession led to the small chapel on his own home grounds, garlanded as if for a festival. After an all-night vigil, the funeral liturgy was celebrated--the first ever held in that chapel--and then burial took place beside the chapel. Philip Sherrard's body was, in the words of his wife, "consigned to the hands of God, to the living breathing earth in an embrace of cypress trees next to a running stream." Sherrard will be missed by many people and in many ways, visible and invisible, known and unknown. He will for long be a vital source for and reminder of the mystery of human life, the mystagogy of man and woman, and the sacredness of the entire world. His was a life worth living. Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology

References Cited and General Bibliography

Berry, Wendell

1977 The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Lossky, Vladimir

1957 The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clark. (Translation of Essai sur la thologie mystique de l'Eglise d'orient. Paris, 1944.)
McFague, Sallie

1993 The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press.
Moltmann, Jrgen

1985 God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Translated by Margaret Kohl. San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Sherrard, Philip

1956 The Marble Threshing Floor: Studies in Modern Greek Poetry. London: Vallentine, Mitchell. 1959 The Greek East and the Latin West: A Study in the Christian Tradition. London and New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted in Athens by Denise Harvey Co., 1992.) 1960 Athos, the Mountain of Silence. London and New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted as Athos, the Holy Mountain in Woodstock, New York by Overlook Press, 1982.) 1963 Constantinople: Iconography of a Sacred City. London and New York: Oxford University Press. 1964 The Pursuit of Greece: An Anthology. London: J. Murray. 1976 Christianity and Eros: Essays on the Theme of Sexual Love. London: S.P.C.K. 1978 Church, Papacy, and Schism: A Theological Enquiry. London: S.P.C.K. 1979 The Wound of Greece: Studies in NeoHellenism. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1987 The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science. Ipswich, U.K.: Golgonooza Press. 1990 The Sacred in Life and Art. Ipswich, U.K.: Golgonooza Press. 1992 Human Image, World Image: The Death and

Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology. Ipswich, U.K.: Golgonooza Press. 1994 In the Sign of the Rainbow: Selected Poems, 1940-1989. London: Anvil Press Poetry. n.d. Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition. (forthcoming).
Sherrard, Philip, translator

1961 Pandelis Prevelakis, Nikos Kazantzakis and His Odyssey. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1974 History of the Hellenic World. Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon.
Sherrard, Philip and Edmund Keeley, translators

1960 Six Poets of Modern Greece. New York: Knopf. 1975 C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1979 Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1981 Odysseus Elytis, Selected Poems. New York: Penguin. 1995 George Seferis, Collected Poems, revised edition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Sherrard, Philip, G. E. H. Palmer, and Kallistos Ware, translators

1979-95 The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Moun-tain and St. Makarios of Corinth. 4 volumes. London and

Boston: Faber and Faber.