Alexander Schmemann – Christianity is the End of All Religion
Christianity is in a profound sense the end of all religion. In the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus made this clear.
‘Sir,’ the woman said to him, ‘I perceive that thou art a prophet.
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem
is the place where men ought to worship.’
Jesus saith unto her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when
ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father… But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such
to worship him’ (John 4:19-21, 23).
She asked him a question about cult, and in reply Jesus changed the whole perspective of the matter. Nowhere in the New Testament, in fact, is Christianity presented as a cult or as a religion.
Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God
and man. But Christ who is both God and man has broken down the wall
between man and God. He has inaugurated a new life, not a new religion.
It was this freedom of the early church from “religion” in the usual,
traditional sense of this word that led the pagans to accuse Christians
of atheism.
Christians had no concern for any sacred geography, no temples, no
cult that could be recognized as such by the generations fed with the
solemnities of the mystery cults. There was no specific religious
interest in the places where Jesus had lived. There were no pilgrimages.
The old religion had its thousand sacred places and temples: for the
Christians all this was past and gone. There was no need for temples
built of stone: Christ’s Body, the Church itself, the new people
gathered in Him, was the only real temple. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up…” (John 2:19).
The Church itself was the new and heavenly Jerusalem: the Church in Jerusalem was by contrast unimportant. The fact that Christ comes and is present was far more significant than the places where He had been.
The historical reality of Christ was of course the undisputed ground of
the early Christians’ faith: yet they did not so much remember Him as
know He was with them. And in Him was the end of “religion,” because He
himself was the Answer to all religion, to all human hunger for God,
because in Him the life that was lost by man — and which could only be
symbolized, signified, asked for in religion — was restored to man.
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From Fr. Al. Schmemann’s, For the Life of the World.
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
