A response to Maksimologija

Recently I published an article entitled “Vernacular as the Orthodox Patristic Tradition,” where I posit that the spread of the Orthodox faith using the local vernacular in liturgizing is key to the fulfillment of the Great Commission and is the general position of the Church Fathers. I received a response to this article in the form of a twitter thread by Maksimologija. This article will serve as a response to his response. He addressed my article in a number of points which I will tackle one by one.

1. Firstly, he points out my use of the words “the intention of God” in the article’s introduction. I’d like to clarify that I wasn’t referring to my article as the intention of God, but was specifically talking about the Kontakion which I quoted immediately before. Take a look:
   
   The division of Babel was reversed and all were united, not in language, but in faith. The faith multiplied across the languages. We explicitly say this in the Kontakion for Pentecost: “When the Most High came down and confounded tongues of men at Babel, He divided the nations. When He dispensed the tongues of fire, He called all to unity, and with one voice we glorify the All-Holy Spirit.” This was the intention of God when He said “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:” (Matthew 28:19)
   
   As you can see, the thing to which I am referring as the “intention of God” is the reversal of the division of Babel such that we were all united in faith. I suppose it would be a bold claim, but I did not see it as being bold because I saw it as being confirmed by the Kontakion for Pentecost.
2. Here, he says that I misunderstand the purpose of language, or in his words, “risks misrepresenting the place of language in Orthodoxy.” What I think here is simply an academic misstep is that he talks about what Orthodoxy is, but doesn’t speak much about what the purpose of language is (Although he explains in a later point). I know that Orthodoxy is about worship and union with God, thus I agree with him on this. I also agree that we don’t go to Church primarily to learn things, but to worship God. I also agree that the Holy Mysteries are not primarily about the communication of information, but about union with God. What I don’t understand is why he’s teaching this to me as if I denied it or that my article might in some way contradict this. God is worshipped in whatever language and the Eucharist is the same for Greeks and Russians, but that’s not the actual point of the article. I spoke about the purpose of language as assisting in missionary work, but I’m not denying that the Church can operate without the use of other languages.
3. Here he says that I am too wide of the mark thinking that vernacular translation overcomes ethnicism, and he points to the ethnicism of the Romanians and Armenians as examples of vernacular as actually feeding into ethnicism, which he provides examples of.
   
   In this point, he oversimplifies my belief, but I suppose it may have been my fault for not expanding on this in the article or clarifying. Indeed, these nations have fed into ethnicism and export this ethnicism over the world, but this doesn’t go against my views on the necessity of vernacular. Rather, I think it proves it. Understanding the way vernacular fits into the Church leads you to understand that victims of ethnicism can also be perpetrators of ethnicism. Combatting the perpetrators of ethnicism requires vernacular, and the spread of vernacular prevents new perpetrators of ethnicism from arising. If there is no room for ethnicism to spread, because it is suffocated, then weed dies at the root. Example, the Romanian Church utilizes ethnicism in America, so the American Church need vernacular. This doesn’t deny that vernacular was immensely beneficial for the sake of the Romanian flock when it was being introduced and even to now, it just means one problem they faced in the past is a problem they now inflict these days. The problem spreads, but the solution does not. The context has changed because the Romanians were once victims of a foreign language and so they needed vernacular, their native language. In other countries, Romanian is the foreign language, and thus those other countries need their own vernacular.
4. Here is says vernacular in the Church and foreign languages in the Church are a false dichotomy since the Liturgical languages were very often not well understood by the people. His first example is liturgical Greek, Latin, and Slavonic. It should be noted that I have indeed addressed this situation before, although it was for a different sort of question. I confirmed almost everything he is saying here. I could not expect him to have read this since I’m not a well regarded writer, nor was it his intention to read any articles beyond the one he responded to. So he cannot be blamed for not knowing this. He is right, though, that Greek, Latin, and Slavonic were not the street versions of the local languages at that time. However, I don’t think this contradicts what I say because the people understood these languages despite it not being what they commonly spoken. What I think about Koine Greek in the 1st Century is the same as what I think about King James English today, which is that it is a high form of the local language such that we can speak to God and the saints in a more dignified manner, separate from worldly speech. The same applies for Church Latin and and Church Slavonic. It is worth noting that Saint Cyril wrote in the preface for the Church Slavonic Liturgy that the Liturgy should be regularly updated to fit the local language so that the people understand. It is on this basis that parishes of the Church of Serbia often uses Serbian in the Liturgy instead of Church Slavonic. Furthermore, the local Slavic Churches uses a local recension of Church Slavonic which was made in order to accomodate the people. You can tell, also, that the Russian Slavonic, Serbian Slavonic, Macedonian Slavonic, and Bulgarian Slavonic are all remarkably different for the same reason on which I based my article. I wish I could have spoken on this more, but I don’t have much academic scholarship on the issue and it wouldn’t have fit my article’s purpose which was Patristics. Even in the modern day there are calls by the hierarchy of the Russian Church to update the Church Slavonic translations to make them more comprehensible.
5. Here is says all the things I believe, but we disagree on terminology. He says liturgical languages are not vernacular. I say that liturgical languages must be a synthesis between understanding to need in a higher way to God while also being comprehensible to the common man. In my view, vernacular is that which is commonly understood. Aside from this terminological disagreement, were are in full agreement on point 5.
6. Point 6 is not a point he made, but rather is my choice to focus on the last tweet in his thread where he says we must not “degrad[e]” the Orthodox liturgy “insisting on its reduction to the vernacular.” The use of local languages is never a reduction, and even taking into consideration his view of what vernacular means, it was very improper to consider the usage of the local languages as degrading or reducing anything about the Orthodox Liturgy, nor is it a denial or contradiction to “the linguistic richness of Orthodox liturgy in its primary traditional languages of celebration.”

In Christ,

Kaleb of Atlanta