The Garments of Salvation

by Krista West

  Much of the beauty of an Orthodox Christian church building comes from the layering of adornment found therein. The first layer of this adornment is the church’s orientation to the east, manifesting our spiritual orientation to the Morning Star, Christ our Lord and his position as the “comprehensible Sun of righteousness [which] appeared on Earth in those regions of the East where the perceptible sun rises.”3 The next and most substantial layer is formed by the architecture of the building, a style that dates back to early Christian centuries and, in its purest form, aims to evoke an “outside-in” experience, meaning that,

  The Byzantine architect was more concerned with the decoration of the interior of the church than with that of the exterior. Externally the Byzantine church is relatively plain, free of all superfluity, while inside it has an unsurpassed wealth of decoration. As a Christian church, it “could not be, like the temple of the heathens, a dwelling of a god according to the prototype of the dwellings of men,” that is, a mansion built out of marble, but had to become a miniature of the universe, because in it dwells the one and only God.4

  Once inside the “miniature universe” of the church, the senses are overwhelmed by layer upon layer of decoration: iconography which adorns the walls, domes, and ceilings with powerful images of the saints, the Mother of God, and events in Christ’s life; beautifully carved icon screens, altars, sacrament tables, icon stands and their embroidered coverings; and elaborate marble and tile work. Finally, in chant and liturgical vestments, we find special layers of adornment in that these require a living human presence: chant requires voices and vestments must be worn. These multiple layers of beauty in an Orthodox Christian church work together to create a most compelling and harmonious expression of the Kingdom of Heaven, a mystical and awe-inspiring place, a veritable microcosm of heaven on earth.

  Through the beauty of the church the human soul is drawn toward theosis, or union with the Holy Trinity. Man, created in God’s image, forever experiences a longing for the beauty of his Creator and thus knows a sense of peace and grace when he sojourns within the church, the heavenly dwelling place of the Creator God. While the natural beauty of the world, such as might be found in a restful forest or a rushing waterfall, may also inspire this desire for theosis, it is in the beauty of a church that the fullest expression of beauty is to be found. In the traditions of the artistic forms of architecture and adornment that have been handed down for generations are found a stability that nourishes the soul amidst the inconstancies and whims of the current age.

  The sublime beauty found within the church is understood to be the pinnacle of beauty because it is physical matter transformed from its earthly state to a heavenly reality, much as bread and wine assume a mystical identity in the celebration of the Eucharist. This spiritual beauty draws the creature to his Creator and inspires man to strive and struggle in spiritual ascesis to draw continually closer to his God. Not only an inspiration but also a source of spiritual nourishment, the beauty of the church refreshes and restores the Christian along his journey, and the church, with its requisite beauty and adornment, becomes his fortress, protection, and encouragement as he advances on the path of salvation.

  One of the hallmarks of beauty within the Church is its quality of “unending gladness and delight.” There is a peaceful quality to the beauty in the Church as expressed in her architecture, chant and adornment that is restful to the nous, that part of our being that meets and knows God for who He is—our Creator and Savior. The beauty of the Church is not sentimental or emotive. There are no jarring or discordant melodies or motifs, but rather a sweet gladness, a joyful delight that keeps one coming back for more. The colors are exquisite and compelling, the sounds are prayerful and fascinating, the space is one of purity and harmonious repetition. There is a depth and richness to beauty in the Orthodox Church because her beauty does not originate from the exterior, which is the physical, corruptible world, but rather from the interior, which is the spiritual, incorruptible world.

  While the earthly church temple grants man access to the heavenly realm, so also it is in the physical space of a church that Christ incarnate comes to man in the Eucharist. Through the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ the entire created world experiences redemption and resurrection, no less the very trees, stones and fibers that are the earthly elements of our church buildings. An Orthodox Christian enters a church and sees the priest adorned in glorious apparel and he gives thanks that Christ so raises man up from his sinful state to such glory. He has before him the living proof that he is a son of God by adoption and has been given garments of honor and majesty, despite his ever-present sinfulness. Such awareness of Christ’s great love and mercy in turn humbles man and causes him to desire even more to approach the Creator of All. A great, cosmic interchange is opened up between man and God in the physical space of a church that allows the fallen Adam to enter once again into Paradise, the rightful place he was created to inhabit. This truth is best described in a hymn of the Lenten Triodion for Forgiveness Sunday:

  O precious Paradise, unsurpassed in beauty, tabernacle built by God, unending gladness and delight, glory of the righteous, joy of the prophets, and dwelling of the saints, with the sound of thy leaves pray to the Maker of all: may He open unto me the gates which I closed by my transgression, and may He count me worthy to partake of the Tree of Life and of the joy which was mine when I dwelt in thee before.5

  One of the primary qualities of beauty in the Orthodox Church is that it is God-created, not man-made. To fully participate in the return to Paradise through the grace-filled beauty of the Church, we must first and foremost grasp that true beauty is a manifestation of the energies of God. As can be seen in the hymn quoted above, Paradise is surpassingly beautiful and wondrous because it is “built by God” and contains not only visual appeal, but also deep, lasting spiritual joy and gladness. It is in no way artificial or superficial, but rather is entirely and ultimately true and profound. The artisans of our Church—iconographers, chanters, woodcarvers, and tailors—have performed their work throughout the centuries in the full knowledge that they create nothing out of their own fallen and sinful human existence, but rather labor in cooperation with the Divine energies to produce works that are ultimately “built by God.”6

  The Church’s artistic traditions have been shaped and formed over many centuries and are not the work of any single person, but rather they incorporate the inspired efforts of a long line of artists and craftsmen, all working as a community within the forms handed down from one generation to another through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Despite the modern misconception that such limitations on individual creativity lead to ossified and stilted artistic forms, working within such bounds has created some of the most sublime and compelling art the world has known. Consider the mosaics at Ravenna with their masterful technique, each tessera set at a precise angle to cause a specific reflection of light, or wonder at the silk brocades of the Byzantine era whose quality and design have never been replicated, or simply contemplate the stunning architectural grandeur of Constantinople’s Agia Sophia, and one cannot help but come to the conclusion that something dynamic occurs when an artist works within the confines of tradition. The true craftsman of the Church understands that his goal is not to create something from his own limited human imagination but rather to serve and perpetuate an ultimately God-created, not man-made, tradition. Kontoglou makes the following comments regarding iconography, but their meaning can readily be extrapolated to other types of adornment within the Church:

  The works of Eastern iconography attained an hieratic perfection and venerable stability which can be accounted for by the faith which painters had that their work was fearful, like the dogmas of the Church. For this reason, they worked with humility on the archetypes which had been handed down to them by earlier painters, without inopportune and inappropriate changes. To this stability, which we see in their works, contributed the fact that they painted in every church the same forms, century
after century. In this way they developed forms which were more and more stable, because through elaboration they were freed from everything superfluous and inconstant.7

  Heavenly beauty that nourishes the soul is to be found not in innovation, but in the venerable forms vouchsafed by holy Tradition.

  Incarnational Theology and the Beauty of the Church

  As we consider those distinctions which make the beauty of an Orthodox church building unique, we discover yet another quality of true beauty in the Orthodox Christian conception: its participation in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ. Orthodox Christian theology begins, continues, and ends with the Incarnation and therein finds its understanding of the material world. Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) emphasizes the importance of matter within the Orthodox Christian theological schema: “It is the human vocation to manifest the spiritual in and through the material. Christians in this sense are the only true materialists.”8 Through the incarnation of the eternal Logos, the Creator God takes on the matter of the earthly world in order to save us, His creation. We do not repudiate the world or earthly matter, but rather we recognize that this matter has been redeemed and resurrected for our eternal benefit through the saving death and resurrection of Christ, who took on matter in order to achieve our salvation. This understanding is of vital importance to any study of vesture within the Orthodox Christian Church as it places liturgical vestments in their proper theological category as “images” and demonstrates that vestments (as well as the other images in the Church, such as iconography, architecture, and chant) are not mere physical adornments meant to please the senses, but have as their ultimate purpose the manifestation of grace as a means to salvation. As St Germanos instructs us, “In this way earthly things imitate the heavenly, transcendent, the spiritual order of things. . . .”9

  At various times throughout Christian history there have been misguided reactions against the material world, from the iconoclastic heresy of the eighth and ninth centuries, with its rejection of sacred images, to modern-day Protestant sects that consciously eschew any type of vestments, iconography, or physical adornment of their meeting spaces. From such an anti-materialist viewpoint, any kind of thoughtful consideration of the beautification of the church is seen as a shallow pursuit, beneath the notice of the true believer whose mind should be on higher, more ethereal things. This type of deliberate abandonment of imagery or adornment views the material world as superfluous and nonessential and is, at its heart, a sort of Manichaeism, a heresy which rejects the physical body and matter and instead promulgates a hyper-intellectualized spirituality, a faith experienced solely with the mind and having no interaction with the created world. This false teaching has crept into Christendom throughout the ages in various guises. In the eighth century, facing the anti-materialist bias of the iconoclast heretics, St John of Damascus was compelled to explain the Orthodox view of matter by stating:

  I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. . . . I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with His grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me. Was not the thrice-happy and thrice-blessed wood of the cross matter? Was not the holy and exalted mountain of Calvary matter? What of the life-bearing rock, the holy and life-giving tomb, the fountain of our resurrection, was it not matter? Is not the ink in the most holy Gospel-book matter? Is not the life-giving altar made of matter? From it we receive the bread of life! Are not gold and silver matter? From them we make crosses, patens, chalices! And over and above all these things, is not the Body and Blood of our Lord matter? Either do away with the honor and veneration these things deserve, or accept the tradition of the Church and the veneration of images.10

  A deeper investigation of historical Orthodox theology reveals yet further refutations of anti-materialism. In the words of one of the Church’s foremost theologians, St Athanasius the Great:

  [Christ] has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. . . . for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.11

  And:

  God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known. . . . They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all.12

  And yet again:

  The Saviour of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, halfway. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body.13

  It is instructive to note that on Mt Athos, the center of Orthodox Christian monasticism, great care and devotion is given to the adornment of the church buildings and the vesting of the clergy. Some of the most ornate and elaborate vestments in use today can be seen in the churches of what is, paradoxically, one of the most austere settings in the world: the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. Such devotion to material beauty by those who have found their calling in a life of liturgy and prayer is surely a further witness to the understanding within Orthodox Christianity that physical matter is not only redeemed, but also has a vital role to play in the salvation of mankind.

  As if the witness of the great Church Fathers were not sufficient to establish the fact that the very cornerstone of our theology is anchored in the material world, some have argued against the beautification of the church building by saying that there is no mention of such adornments in the New Testament. While the specific traditions of how we beautify and adorn the church—such as the artistic expressions of our icons, the style of our liturgical garments or the decorative forms that are employed in woodcarving or ornamentation—are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, St John of Damascus once again illuminates us on this point:

  The tradition of the Church is not only passed on in written documents, but has also been given in unwritten form. . . . St Basil says, “Among the carefully guarded teachings and doctrines of the Church, there are some teachings we received from written documents, while others we receive secretly, for they have been handed on to us from the apostolic tradition. Both sources have equal power to lead us to righteousness . . . .” What is the origin of the three immersions at baptism, or praying toward the east, or the manner in which we celebrate the eucharist? Therefore the holy apostle Paul says: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”14

  Our understanding of beauty in the Church has both its origin and its fulfillment in the Incarnation and the subsequent redemption of the material world, and finds its standardized expression in the traditions of the Church, both written and unwritten. We realize that adornment begins with the material world, but by working within the forms and traditions handed down, and through the grace of the Holy Spirit, “mere” matter is transformed to find its ultimate purpose in manifesting Paradise on earth and drawing man to God. All things are gathered up to God in one great hymn of praise and the entire material world finds its “true destiny, that is, to be blocks in the cosmic temple of God’s glory.”15

  A Holy Fulfillment: The Old Testament and the Adornment of the
Church

  Any discussion of the theological importance of liturgical vesture within the Church is not complete without considering the place of the Old Testament Scriptures that specifically refer to garments used in Levitical worship. The primary scriptural references to the priestly garments of the old covenant are found in Exodus 25–36, in which God gives explicit instructions to the Prophet Moses for the outfitting of the Tabernacle as well as the garments to be worn by the priests. Indeed, these instructions read like technical notes, with emphasis given to how things are to be made: “The hem shall be interwoven with the rest, to prevent ripping” (Ex 28.27); what they are to be made from: “Gold, silver, and bronze; blue, purple, and scarlet cloth; fine spun linen, and female goats’ hair, ram skins dyed red and skins dyed blue, and incorruptible wood; oil for the light, and incense for anointing oil and for composition of incense; sardius stones, and stones for the carved work of the breastplate and the full-length robe” (Ex 25.3–7); and who is to make them: “Now Bezalel and Aholiab, and every gifted artisan in whom the Lord put wisdom and knowledge to know how to do all manner of work for the service of the holy place, did according to all the Lord commanded” (Ex 36.1).

  It is interesting to note that over one quarter of the book of Exodus is devoted to these detailed instructions for the outfitting of the Tabernacle and the garments of the priests of God. The decorations of the tabernacle, ephod, and breastplate are no mere afterthought; indeed, thirty-eight verses are devoted solely to the curtains and the garments of the priests and are quite specific in the colors and symbols that are to be used (gold, blue, purple, and scarlet fabric and pomegranates and bells, respectively). There is a careful and methodical approach to these adornments and in this it is demonstrated that the worship of God must be attended to with order and reverence. Through this meticulous precision we see God teaching mankind that things used for his glory are to be “built by God.”