Orthodoxy cannot be made equivalent with conservatism, however that problematic term may be understood. Nor should it simply be called radical, although Fr Louth says as much in his Foreword to Fr John Behr’s The Way to Nicaea: “Orthodoxy is radical, not conservative.” Orthodoxy, it would seem to me, is at once conservative and radical (avoiding the political implications of these terms as much as one can). It is conservative in that it does indeed believe that the whole fullness of Truth has been revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ, and that a search for Truth must always, in a sense, be backward looking: above all to the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition. It is radical, though, in the sense that it is always returning to the root (Latin, radicalis) of things: Tradition maintains its validity only to the extent that it truly and accurately reflects the image of the Living Christ. Moreover, there is something finally important that is not in fact behind us: the return of the Bridegroom at the consummation of time. It is this that Bishop Atanasije characterizes, in a passage I posted some time ago, as “a future nostalgia, an eschatological nostalgia for the future.” Conservatism is essentially reactionary and pessimistic (and rightfully so, much of the time); radicalism is often anti-historical and optimistic. Christianity, however, accepts both the fallenness of man and his deification in Christ; it accepts both that the Evil One is the prince of this world and that Christ has conquered evil. Orthodoxy contains within itself both the backward-looking pessimism of conservatism and the forward-looking optimism of radicalism. (What the political implications of this, however, remains another question.) Christ, indeed, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending… which is, and which was, and which is to come (Rev 1:8).
