How can our tradition interact with the world while maintaining its essential identity? by Archpriest ISAAC SKIDMORE
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e often encounter situations that raise the question of where Orthodoxy draws its borders—how it defines what’s in and what’s out. These situations include questions about how to respond to nonOrthodox visitors to church who eagerly approach the chalice, fellow parishioners who spotlight their political views in coffee-hour conversation, or the priest whose academic work broaches topics that, were they discussed in Sunday school, would scandalize. Raised to their ultimate level, these questions impinge on our understanding of salvation itself. “Who is in the Church and who is out?” “Who will be saved?” The conversation and controversy sparked by David Bentley Hart’s recent book, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, indicates how near to the surface such questions reside for us. While I cannot, in this article, answer the question of where such borders need to be drawn, or enter dialogue with Dr. Hart, I will attempt to say something about the spirit of our border drawing—some principles I believe should inform our perspective when, inevitably, we must draw them. I will also offer an image I find useful when thinking about how a tradition such as Orthodoxy can interact with the surrounding world while maintaining its essential identity. We might be tempted to think of borders as concrete and static, like the markings on maps that delineate nation from nation with a sharply printed line. In actual life, though, borders usually function in a more dynamic manner. Children are sometimes surprised, when first visiting a border between states or countries, to find it marked by little more than a modest sign, on a terrain with few other features to distinguish one territory from the next. A look at how jacob's well
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borders operate in personal relationships, in biological systems, and in Holy Scripture confirms their dynamic rather than static quality. In personal relationships, borders are often referred to as boundaries. Many of us know the discomfort that results from having boundaries that don’t adequately serve our needs. We may, for example, find ourselves in the crosshairs of others’ expectations that we will spend unrealistic amounts of time with them, because we have not made clear the limits of our availability. On the other hand, we may wish to draw closer to someone, only to discover that our rigid focus and schedule, or the ways we guard our emotional security, stand in the way of satisfying intimacy. In general, if we don’t consciously structure our own personal boundaries, our unconscious will do so for us. Unconscious boundaries, though, tend to depend on self-protective strategies that are primitive and immature—like passive-aggression or peoplepleasing—compared to those we fashion consciously, which makes it more likely they will cause hurt and misunderstanding. The boundaries we set often prove to be inadequate because we don’t fully understand ourselves and our needs. If I were to give you an iguana and ask you to set boundaries to keep it safe and healthy (or to keep others safe from it), you would be able to do so only if you understood iguanas and their needs. Otherwise, you’d only be guessing, and would just as likely harm the iguana as help it. Our setting of personal boundaries can suffer in the same way if we’re only guessing at what healthy boundaries are. To set healthy boundaries, we need to fulfill the admonition to "know thyself.” The world of plants and animals provides another means of seeing borders as dynamic. In biological
